“Election Day” has become a fuzzy concept lately: Officially it falls on “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November,” but most states offer early voting in person or by mail these days.

Millions of Americans have already cast their votes — and the probability that we won’t know all the winners and losers on “Election Night” is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100%. The US Senate race in Georgia may well go to a runoff. Some congressional races may come out close enough to justify a recount, and in some other races prospective sore losers have already announced their intention to litigate any result they don’t like until the cows come home.

Also, even though I’m writing this on the Saturday before “Election Day,” there’s a good chance you won’t see it until Wednesday or later. So now feels like as good a time as any for the “morning after” column.

So, how was it for you? Are you basking in the afterglow of “your team’s” victories, or venting loudly about the unfairness of “your team’s” losses?

Are you convinced that, after all the months of constant foofooraw leading up to “Election Day,” anything substantial really changed between Monday and Wednesday?

It didn’t. We’ve still got the same problems we had before, and we’ve still got the same people (minus a few old faces and plus a few new) who will spend the next two years promising to solve those problems if we’ll all just VOTE HARDER … next time.

The same people who’ve spent the last two years telling us that this is THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER said the same thing about the previous election and will say the same thing about the next election.

Those of us who believe that VOTING HARDER will solve our problems will find reasons why VOTING HARDER didn’t work this time.

Their team lost its Senate majority, or didn’t gain one.

The House changed majority parties, or didn’t.

The dog ate their ballots.

There was spit on that baseball or lead in that bat.

Whether we believe any of that or not, life will go on next week in much the same way it did last week.

Which, I guess, is better than the alternative.

I’ve worked full-time in politics for more than two decades and part-time for more than three.  I can summarize what I’ve learned in six words:

There’s nothing new under the sun.

The issues we tussle over may change in detail, but they don’t change in essence. VOTING HARDER answers the question “who do we let run our lives?” when we should instead be asking “why  let ANYONE run our lives?”

I follow (and occasionally practice) politics for the same reason a junkie seeks the next fix or a compulsive gambler places just one more bet, not because I expect VOTING HARDER to change my life for the better. It’s a nasty habit and I really should quit. But the dog ate my ballot.

What’s your excuse?

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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

An “experienced analyst” at the National Security Agency ran an illegal surveillance project that involved “unauthorized targeting and collection of private communications of people or organizations in the US.” The agency’s inspector general concluded that the analyst “acted with reckless disregard”  for “numerous rules and possibly the law.”

This happened ten years ago. The inspector general’s report was issued six years ago. But the public is just now learning about it, courtesy of Bloomberg. After some intrepid Freedom of Information Act work, we can now see a highly redacted version of the IG report.

The NSA’s investigation of the analyst began about a month before American hero Edward Snowden’s public disclosures of other illegal activities on the part of the  “intelligence community.”

Snowden’s reward for exposing crime in government? Involuntary exile to Russia under threat of life imprisonment.

Snowden’s comment on the report: “Defenders of broad surveillance authorities always insist that Americans don’t have to worry because our intelligence agencies are tightly constrained by law and policy …. But time and again we’ve seen that when laws are violated and powers are abused, no one is held legally accountable.”

New government offices/officials seldom solve anything, and usually make things worse. But something obviously needs to be done about the “intelligence community’s” lawlessness. How about a single replacement for multiple agency inspectors general?

Let’s call this proposal the “Intelligence Ombudsman Office.” It would presumably need to be created by Congress. They should get to work on that ASAP.

The IOO would replace all US intelligence agencies’ inspectors general and other internal enforcement mechanisms.

It would consist of a small board — with previous “intelligence community” affiliations an absolute disqualification for appointment — and a staff of reasonable size for the job.

The IOO would have complete authority to visit any “intelligence community” site, view any “intelligence community” generated document no matter its level of classification, interview any “intelligence community” employee under oath, and present allegations of “intelligence community” crimes to grand juries.

It would also run (hopefully very secure from “intelligence community” eavesdropping) tip lines via phone, Internet, snail mail, and in person, and it would be a felony to punish or retaliate against any “intelligence community” employee for using them.

The IOO wouldn’t solve the overall problem of America’s “national security” apparatus running amok. Supporters of freedom have been fighting a rearguard action against that apparatus’s encroachments since at least as far back as the 1940s. The only real solution is to disband the NSA, CIA, NRO, et al., and salt the earth where their headquarters once stood.

But if we can’t get rid of these rogue agencies, we should at least give an external board real power to police them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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

Missouri v. Biden, a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, cites a previous action (Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Univ.) to this effect:

“A private entity violates the First Amendment ‘if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.”

The plaintiffs say “That is exactly what has occurred over the past several years, beginning with express and implied threats from government officials and culminating in the Biden Administration’s open and explicit censorship programs.”

The suit was filed in May, but is only now proceeding to its deposition and discovery phases.  Among those to be deposed: Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The judge in the case notes that “there are compelling reasons that suggest Dr. Fauci has acted through intermediaries, and acted on behalf of others, in procuring the social-media censorship of credible scientific opinions.”

After nearly three years of stamping unjustified  endorsements from “SCIENCE!” on pure, undiluted authoritarian political measures, Fauci will now have to explain himself under oath.

The “under oath” part is important, given Fauci’s recent campaign to shift responsibility for the political implementations of his own statements and actions, throwing others under the bus so as not to call into question his claim: “I represent science.”

Trofim Lysenko, head of the Soviet Union’s Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, imposed a “Marxist-Leninist” line on biological research. He “represented science” in the USSR, and actual scientists who disagreed with him were censored, suppressed, even imprisoned and executed.

Fortunately, we never got to the imprisonment/execution stage with the COVID-19 pandemic. What we did get was suppression of actual science and actual scientists in support of a politically driven line on everything from masking to school closures to vaccine mandates.

From his perch atop NIAID, Fauci set himself up as, effectively, America’s Lysenko.

As the highest-paid (and among the longest tenured) employee of the federal government, he lied to us — and endorsed lies to us — about the efficacy of masking and vaccination, the advisability of school closures, and numerous other issues.

He also willfully participated in efforts to discredit, and even suppress public discussion of, actual science on the subject, as when he endorsed National Institutes of Health director Frances Collins’s call for a  “devastating takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, in which actual scientists cited actual science on behalf of a “focused protection” strategy versus the  NIAID/NIH/CDC’s rights-violating, economically damaging, non-science-supported “zero COVID” approach. That latter approach still enjoys a (thankfully dwindling) cult following and will likely slow down our return to normalcy for years to come.

Lysenko was eventually removed from his post in disgrace. Fauci hopes to retire with honors.

Hopefully Fauci’s deposition will go a long way toward shifting the stain on science’s reputation to his own reputation and those of his co-conspirators, where it belongs. Lysenkoism is too deadly to leave undiscredited.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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