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      A Commission to Investigate Presidential Crimes is a Terrible Idea

      A Commission to Investigate Presidential Crimes is a Terrible Idea

      History shows Rep. Swalwell’s proposal would hinder justice rather than render it.

      Mike Lofgren
      Aug 22, 2020

      On August 15, Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell of California proposed, through the medium of (what else?) Twitter, that after the election a "Presidential Crimes Commission" should be created to investigate the manifold derelictions of Donald J. Trump, including "[s]abotaging the mail to win an election." He evidently regards this idea as a bold and meaningful innovation: "I don't say this lightly."

      Why is this a bad idea?

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      Opinion
      Redacting Democracy

      Redacting Democracy

      What you can’t see can hurt you

      Karen Greenberg
      May 14, 2019

      The Nobel Prize-winning Czech author Milan Kundera began his 1979 novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by describing two photographs. In the first, two men are standing side by side, a Czech nationalist later executed for his views and the country's Communist ruler. In the second, the dissenter is gone, airbrushed out. Just the dictator remains. Today, if Kundera hadn't written that opening to his book, only someone with a long memory or a penchant for research would know that the two men had ever shared a podium or that, on that long-gone day, the dissident had placed his fur hat on the dictator's cold head. Today, in the world of Donald Trump and Robert Mueller, we might say that the dissident was redacted from the photo. For Kundera, embarking on a novel about memory and forgetting, that erasure in the historical record was tantamount to a crime against both the country and time itself.

      In the Soviet Union, such photographic airbrushing became a political art form. Today, however, when it comes to repeated acts meant to erase reality's record and memory, it wouldn't be Eastern Europe or Russia that came to mind but the United States. With the release of the Mueller report, the word "redaction" is once again in the news, though for those of us who follow such things, it seems but an echo of so many other redactions, airbrushings, and disappearances from history that have become a way of life in Washington since the onset of the Global War on Terror.

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      Opinion
      QAnon: Why We Have the CIA Partly to Thank for the Craziest Conspiracy Theory Yet

      QAnon: Why We Have the CIA Partly to Thank for the Craziest Conspiracy Theory Yet

      The roots of the wackiest pro-Trump conspiracy can be traced back to the CIA

      Jefferson Morley
      Aug 09, 2018

      As the editor of the JFK Facts blog, I try not to spend a lot of time on stupid conspiracy theories, but given widespread ignorance and confusion on the subject, unpleasant journalist duty often calls.

      Who killed JFK? The Federal Reserve? Nah. The Secret Service man? A hoax. Ted Cruz's father? Pure B.S. George H.W. Bush? Heavy breathing is not the same as credible evidence. On a recent Black Vault podcast, the most common JFK question I heard was, "Was Kennedy assassinated because of his interest in UFOs?" Um, no, he was not.

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      Opinion
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