Has the FBI terminally discredited itself?

Investor's Business Daily thinks it has.

The FBI says it won't prosecute anyone at the IRS for its admitted targeting of the president's political foes. This just as the agency claims the law is no longer its main mission. So it's a political goon squad now.

. . .

The reality is, the acts reeked of political targeting, the most illegal of acts, a corrupt use of government power, and a worthy target of checks and balances provided by the FBI in the name of law and order.

But for some reason, the FBI has neither interviewed the Tea Party activists targeted for intrusive scrutiny, nor has it noticed anything amiss in light of the White House's rabid attacks on Tea Party activists ... And it hasn't picked up the clue from the Center for Responsive Politics showing that IRS employees donated to Obama's campaign by more than 2 to 1 over Tea Party-tied Republicans — let alone that the prosecutor chosen by the president to look into this case is a fat-cat donor to Obama.

If New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie can be criticized for a traffic jam, then the White House's attacks on political opponents are in a league with what goes on in Venezuela. That the FBI won't get involved in this and is willing to wreck its reputation for apolitical probity suggests this investigation is leading to a place the bureau would rather not go — namely, the White House.

There's more at the link.

I think that perhaps the most damaging achievement of the Obama administration has been to discredit so many agencies of the federal government by suborning them for partisan political ends.  Apart from the FBI's unconscionable conduct, consider:

• The ATF and its manifestly criminal smuggling of guns to drug cartels in Mexico, leading to the murders of at least two officers from other federal agencies;
• The use of the IRS to target political opponents of the Administration;
• The NSA scandal, which admittedly began under earlier Administrations but has been defended and continued by the present one;
• The cover-up of the Benghazi affair and other foreign 'adventures', to the very public discredit of the State Department;
• And a host of other issues.

Personally, I think that all these scandals add up to what the constitution refers to as 'high crimes and misdemeanors' . . . but I doubt whether anyone will do anything about that.  Our politicians just don't care - or, if they do, they care that it was the other party that got away with it.  They won't make too many waves, because they can hardly wait for the opportunity to get away with the same things themselves in due course.





Peter