by Les Weaver
Clash Daily Contributor
Although 82, I vividly recall when weekly, I and my brothers would lie on the living room carpet in front of the radio and listen to a favored broadcast; This is Your FBI. This program was a crime drama which aired 409 shows on ABC in the United States from April 6, 1945 to January 30, 1953. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave it his endorsement, calling it “the finest dramatic program on the air”. For those that don’t know, the theme song was a powerful composition titled; The Love of Three Oranges, (*). Those were the days.
Now I become sick and near tears whenever I see the letters FBI. I strain logic to accept that the rank and file agents remain persons of Honor, Honesty and Integrity. Those attributes may also reside in the rank and file members of the Federal Prosecutors office but it is becoming hidden by the highest executive actions. No longer is a powerful theme song being emitted into the air by the FBI. Because of those at the very top of the Justice Dept., the FBI and the Federal Prosecutors Office, the neo-emission is the stench of the Chicago Stock Yards of that same era. I pity the vast number of rank and file that now must work under that stinking fog.
It appears that those at the very top have taken “political” control of investigation and trial. Too often, their Federal power permeates down to State, County and even Municipal influence. It now appears that all a powerful politician has to do is state the desired outcome and the Justice Dept. will satisfy that end. Law and Justice are fading as synonyms. Lady Justice is no longer blind and her scale can be unfairly weighted for the right price or favor. The examples are many and growing daily.
Be aware that under the Constitution, the most powerful ELECTED police official is your local Sheriff. All of the rest from local to the head of the Justice Department are appointed. What happened to We the People determining who polices us? Many of our Sheriffs and most citizens have given the total, unchallenged power to a very few at the Federal level. What power they were not given, they are attempting to take by manipulating and spinning the laws and intent of the laws. I suspect that many of the lay persons in what has become the U. S. Dept. of in-Justice feel the same way but hazard termination or worse should they speak out.
By this expression, I accept that I place myself before what is becoming the most dangerous government in the world for expressing uncensored and non-preapproved opinion. I am part of the reason that so many politicians are expressing a desire to revise the First Amendment to the Constitution. At minimum, they want our present and next President to limit this kind of free speech by executive order.
With near tears, when I think back to This is Your FBI, my mind now revises to “This WAS your FBI”.
(A few days ago we hear on all news networks that the FBI is reopening the Clinton email investigation. Maybe honor will be returned to “OUR FBI”.)
(*) To enjoy this less than two minute powerful Prokofiev March, turn up your volume, key in Love of Three Oranges and listen to some nostalgia of the past.
Image: Quinn Dombrowski; https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/4797770156/; CC BY-SA 2.0
