One of these men had to reach down into his “creative self” to create the look. The other just acted naturally. Can you tell which?

I was a cop for thirty years. I am fully aware of the term “appearances are deceiving.” Absent any other information, a better guide in making a preliminary judgment is: “Which one of these things isn’t like the other?”

There is an empty seat at the table for Sunday dinner. Who are you gonna choose? Remember what Burt and Ernie would say.

Yesterday, Strzok looked and acted like a guy sitting on a Presidential pardon. In the Clinton White House, the staff just got to steal the housewares. Just for the sake of argument, what if I am right? Anybody associated with the Obama White House has been issued a pardon for criminal acts committed during Obama’s administration. What does the next administration do?

It seems like there are two choices. Indict, where appropriate, and make the defendants spend their pardons. At some point five, ten, one hundred pardons later the damage done to the Presidency, the justice system and both political parties would likely be immeasurable. The alternative is to noodle around, make a bunch of noise and ultimately achieve nothing. The Republicans look inept and Democrats obstructionist. Life goes on.

The playbook for Insurgency was written by Carlos Marighella back in the sixties. It is still relevant today criminal-justice/Marighella-revisited. Marighella realized that a guerilla force stood no chance of overthrowing an established government. However, a dedicated guerrilla group could create enough chaos to cause a government to lose credibility, legitimacy, and the consent of the populace to act on their behalf. He lays out the process in “The Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerrilla.” It is still being printed and is available on the Internet and this link. Viewed in that light, the actions I ascribe to the Obama administration in this instance make sense.

The choice is clear to me, confront the issue head-on, expose the government corruption. It won’t be pretty and there will be unanticipated fallout. But from the mess, the reformers can say, “what was before was wrong. The fact that we are taking steps shows that the system works.”