On September 25, a federal grand jury indicted former FBI director James Comey on charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding (by making that false statement) in 2020.

The false statement? The word “no,” in answer to the question of whether he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation.”

The “someone else” is former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, himself fired for those unauthorized disclosures … and for lying about them.

The claim of a known liar that someone else lied seems like a pretty weak prosecutorial rede. That explains why DOJ prosecutors reported no probable cause to seek the indictment. US president Donald Trump bullied their boss, US Attorney Erik Siebert, into resigning, replacing Siebert with a sycophant (Lindsey Halligan) who could be counted on to follow Trump’s orders.

BUT!

Comey himself is also a known liar. That’s not speculation. It’s not an open question, it’s a confirmed fact.

In 2020, Comey told Congress that he didn’t know about Hillary Clinton’s plans to link Trump to Russia using disinformation — “that doesn’t ring any bells with me.” Subsequently declassified documents established that he had been briefed on Clinton’s plans by then CIA director (and former Communist Party member, and also known liar) John Brennan.

Comey also told Congress that he had only briefed Trump on the “salacious” parts of the infamous “Steele Dossier” (part of Clinton’s disinformation campaign). Again, subsequently declassified memos establish that he discussed the entire dossier, in depth, with Trump.

In fact, perhaps the only time Comey was very truthful was in 2016 when he more or less admitted that Clinton had committed crimes by negligently exposing classified information through her illegal use of a private email server, but wouldn’t be prosecuted because, well, she was Hillary Clinton.

It seems like Comey’s tenure was mostly lies. So pardon me if I decline to break out even the world’s smallest violin for his current legal problems.

On the other hand, it’s also true that this prosecution has nothing whatsoever to do with the alleged lie in question.

It’s partly about Donald Trump’s desire to “get” Comey for having proven insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.

It’s mostly about Trump’s need for distractions from his close personal relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein.

So, OK, prosecute Comey.

And release the Epstein files.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

The Producers at the Muny in 2008. Photo by Meetmeatthemuny. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

“The White House budget office,” CNN reports, “is telling federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings in the event of a government shutdown …”

Programs that these fake “shutdowns” don’t normally affect would “be targeted for sweeping reductions in force that could permanently eliminate jobs that are deemed ‘not consistent’ with President Donald Trump’s priorities.”

The headline characterizes Trump’s latest move as a “threat” intended to encourage Democrats to capitulate, and dissident Republicans to get back on side, in the latest fight over government spending.

Threat?

Maybe to Democrats who can’t bear the thought of any reduction, in any government function, ever.

Maybe to Republicans who have pet programs they know would be affected by “reductions in force.”

The rest of us should reply as Br’er Rabbit did to Br’er Fox’s threat to cook him and eat him: “Oh, Br’er Fox, I don’t care what you do with me, so long as you just don’t throw me in that briar patch over there.”

The two wings of America’s single-party state, and their pet media, treat the threat of a “government shutdown” as existential, and spend a lot more time trying to pre-emptively apportion blame to each other than trying to do a deal.

In reality, these “shutdowns” are pure Hollywood magic, all special effects — “no animals or bureaucrats were harmed in this production.”

Supposedly “non-essential” government operations shut down, raising the question of why, if they’re not “essential,” taxpayers subsidize them in the first place, and making it clear that “non-essential” actually means “provides the best material to elicit public notice.  “You can’t visit your favorite museum … THIS week.”

When a deal gets made, all those “non-essential” operations re-open, complete with turning the government employees’ time off into a retroactive paid vacation.

And the “spending exceeds revenues, guess we have to borrow!” can gets kicked down the road some more.

Trump’s “threat” is that instead of temporarily shutting down some “non-essential” fat, he’ll carve some real meat off the federal government bone.

Good! Do it!

For once, let’s see how small the federal government can get before anything “essential” actually stops happening.

My guess is that if a black hole opened up beneath the District of Columbia and sucked the entire federal government into non-existence, we’d suffer a very short period of re-adjustment before most people realized we’re better off that way.

Please, Br’er President, anything but the briar patch!

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A senile reality TV star and a publicity-seeking nepo baby walk into a press conference and announce that a widely used pain reliever may cause autism …

Punch line? No punch line. It really happened, though few would have noticed if the senile reality TV star (Donald Trump) wasn’t the president of the United States and the publicity-seeking nepo baby (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) wasn’t a member of that president’s cabinet.

Because of their identities, I guess we need to talk about whether what they’re saying is true, and about why they’re saying it now.

Guess what? What they’re saying MAY be true.

At least some studies have indeed found at least some correlation between acetaminophen use by pregnant women and subsequent diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorder and/or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in their children.

Correlation is not the same thing as causation, and studies have yet to establish the latter at any significant level of confidence. It might well turn out that the underlying causes of the pain, rather than effects of the drug used to alleviate the pain, are responsible. Or the correlation could just be random statistical noise.

But it does seem like an investigation that’s worth pursuing.

And it does seem like a legitimate reason for pregnant women to consider solutions other than acetaminophen for their pain relief needs.

In fact, it’s just one more in a long line of reasons for everyone to avoid acetaminophen. The drug has been CONVINCINGLY linked to liver damage (especially among drinkers) and kidney damage (among long-term users).

Maybe there’s really no  causal link to autism/ADHD; maybe there is. But with any number of pain relief options out there, does it really make sense to continue using a drug we already knew was bad for us?

While a senile reality TV star and publicity-seeking nepo baby might not be the best spokesmen for an anti-acetaminophen advocacy campaign, those of us who care about our own health and the health of our loved ones should probably just take the “I learned something today” win here.

As to reasons for the sudden, and obviously fast-tracked, rollout of the Trump/RFK campaign, we can plausibly infer that it’s of a piece with other recent publicity plays, from Trump’s murder campaign in the Caribbean, to the making of a podcaster into a partisan martyr, to the “cancellation” campaigns against anti-Trump media.

What ties all those things together? Donald Trump’s quest for distractions from the matter of his close personal relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein.

He’s “flooding the zone with sh*t,” as Steve Bannon put it, in hope of making that controversy go away.

Release the Epstein files.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY