The Sniper

The Associated Press loves to use aggrandizing headlines and shock tactics to get people to read their particular brand of drivel and sway people toward their thinly veiled political platforms as a matter of standard operating procedure, so the following lead paragraph from a recent AP story did not shock me in the least…

McALLEN, Texas – Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor.

Now, the average reader in America would only get about that far and then start yammering on about how corrupt Cheney is and how Gonzales should be thrown in the clink with all of his peer criminals (you know, like murderers and rapists and conservatives) and have the key thrown away. The above average American, however, would choose to read further and try to discern just what the heck is going on here. I lump myself in with the latter group and therefore I read more of the story…

The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens.

Ah. So, they haven’t really been indicted because the judge hasn’t signed the order and most likely he probably won’t because most likely he is not a grandstanding local DA with political aspirations. So the local DA gets a wild hair and puts in a request to indict and, even without an authorizing signature on the order, the AP jumps on it like a hero on a grenade… no, more like junkie on a packet of heroin.

But still, I’ve got an inquisitive nature and I long for justice as much as the next guy, so if there really are bad goings-on at the hands of our current VP and our former US Attorney General I want to know about it and I want it dealt with accordingly, so I read on…

Guerra said the prison-related charges against Cheney and Gonzales are a national issue and experts from across the country testified to the grand jury.

A “national issue”?!? Wow, that sounds really important now! I better keep reading and find out what all this “national issue” business is…

Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and “at least misdemeanor assaults” on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.

Okay, you lost me there. So because Dick Cheney has investments in a company which holds interests in other companies that administer jails in a various states, then Cheney himself is personally responsible for assaults on detainees because of a “link to prison companies”? What they hell are they talking about?!? He’s at least four places removed from any wrongdoing and they want to nail him to the wll for federal MISDOMEANOR charges? Gimme a break! Talk about guilt by association! I guess guilt by association is only off the table when the ties are much closer, when the ties are with known terrorists (Ayers? Is there a “Bill Ayers” in the house?), and Barack Obama is the target of those allegations.

Let’s just suppose for a second the sort of fourth handle accountability that they’re talking about isn’t off the table. Let’s say that you should be culpable for the actions of people tangentially related to you in government or in business. If that were the case, then Bill Clinton would be personally culpable for mass murder due to the bungled handling of the Branch Davidian fiasco in Waco, Texas at the hands of federal agents under the command of Janet “torch the town” Reno. Barack Obama would be personally responsible for all of the ACORN voter registration fraud because he has not only worked for but benefitted from and has served as benefactor for ACORN. But we all know that that isn’t going to happen.

In today’s us vs. them society where the liberally dominated media defines what is fact and what is fiction, there is scant little hope for any actual justice anymore. The best we can hope for is that eventually the hysteria and derangement syndrome that surrounds the current administration will die down and people will start looking past the hype and start actually dialing in on the facts.

We need to move past the recent “hope hype” and get down to the only real hope that America has anymore… the hope that people will start reading past the first paragraph.