congressional immunity

guess what's hidden in the new funding bill?

just a quick one here as this is so outlandish it requires little explanation or exposition. as most know, the house just dropped a 1,500 page short term funding bill, business as usual for the DC swamp dwellers.

as many suspected, it’s full of pork. it’s also full of nightmares. buried in this vast tome of “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” are some things that i think we all really need to find out about BEFORE it’s passed because if they pass, well, we’ll never find out anything else again.

chief among them is the “congress critter full immunity act,” a set of new self-bestowed privileges so egregious as to beggar belief and constitutional compliance alike.

it is the very definition of “above the law.”

it’s buried in an innocuous section (605) ostensibly about the treatment of electronic services.

it’s made to sound like some sort of boring IT issue. it’s not.

here’s the money shot: (source, jon herold)

it’s even retroactive.

**Retroactive Application:** - The law applies to ongoing matters at the time of enactment, potentially nullifying previously issued legal demands for data.

this absurdity grants each house member and office the right to quash subpoenas for data from their office including emails and electronic records.

it essentially makes them grand jury and discovery proof.

this is as egregious as it is anathema to the idea of responsible, representative government.

you cannot possibly hold the state accountable when the state has this sort of privilege (in the most literal sense of “private law”) to be free from investigation.

this is transparently an attempt to stymie and eliminate accountability, stop all existing investigations dead in their tracks, and prevent any new ones from being brought.

it really ought to go without saying that public officials wielding public power and the public purse need to be MORE accountable than the general public, not less and certainly not absolved from it.

and yet here we are.

this is truly astonishing.

you think you’ve plumbed the depths of their brazenness and self-dealing, but you have not. there is always more, always a new amoral void in which to further sink.

this is nothing less than the house voting to make itself and its carrion capitalist cronies impossible to scrutinize or subpoena.

what is one to call this if not an aristocracy seeking to grant itself new aristocratic prerogative free from investigation or accountability?

this is really, truly beyond the pale.

there should be an instant and implacable investigation into authorship.

who put this in the bill?

i'd be very curious to know and to start asking some VERY pointed questions about what they are trying to hide...