It was put in place as a result of holdovers continuing an "investigation" begun under the Obama administration, a lot of Democrat political strategy and organizing, and the complicity of establishment Republicans, all fanned and propagandized by the establishment left in the media.

The final blow was the political incompetence of Sessions, who should not have been appointed Attorney General, in allowing himself to be needless pressured into recusing himself and turning power in the Justice Dept over to the anti-Trump coward Rosenstein, together with the irony that the anti-establishment new president didn't yet understand what was happening and what to do about it

They deliberately and cynically hit him hard, fast and unethically right at the beginning. Only one example of that was Comey's acknowledgement of how he moved in fast to "interview" Flynn with no legal representation, boasting that he exploited the fact that the new administration was till getting organized, and admitting he knew he wouldn't get away with that at any other time and in any other administration. They want power and they mean it. This kind of coup isn't the country we used to know.

It has been remarked recently that if the more experienced and professional Barr had been the Attorney General from the beginning then the Mueller investigation, aka, Weissman coupe, would likely have been head off because of the weak link in Sessions.

Trained socialist mafia under Obama and Hillary not only caused it, by the nature of their own cynical power mongering and allies in the media they would have easily prevented it from being done to them even if any Republicans were able and willing to try subverting the election. Remember that it was the Hillary campaign that paid to spike the "evidence" given to the FBI from the beginning.

So it's more than a matter of incompetence at politics. The game was rigged by shear statist evil against a group that thought it is all played by the rules. It was not the only such result of corruption in the Obama administration aided by establishment Republicans.

What makes this so much more appalling is that this entire "investigation" happened under the auspices of the Trump administration.
Think of the sheer level of incompetence at politics that it takes to let something like that happen.
Can you ever imagine something like that happening if Obama or Hillary were in office?

Merit means less than nothing to the far left.

I think there is great merit in this approach. I wonder if it could catch on

The original and early states had exactly that. The powers of the federal government were so minimal that it didn't matter that the vast majority of the country couldn't vote because they didn't care.

I've done experiments where I list off what the federal government did/could do back then and asked people if that was all it did, would they care about voting for its representation? Almost universally, even among hard progressives, the answer has "no, why bother?".

I've even managed to use that as a window for some of the hardliners on bigger government to explain how that makes life more political which, for the rank and file of even progressive democrats, they don't really like everything being political. The converts have been small in number, but resilient in their new understanding. The insane screeching on the left has helped my case more and more this last couple of years.

Thanks, Lucky. I try. :)

"how to change back when the original federal system is being merged into a unitary government?"

I don't know, and wish I did. If we look at it historically (I do a lot of this for some really out there ideas), it doesn't look good. Short of a technical dictatorship or monarchy, the few cases of it happening it took actual, armed revolution. No country in known history has every had it as long as we did and slipped as far down as slowly as we have, so precedent is hard to see.

Basically, there is only one way I see being even semi-realistic that does't involve armed revolt, secession, or catastrophic collapse: leave and start over. Historically when we've hit points similar to what we have now, we've moved away to places where there was no functional governmental jurisdiction and built anew, usually incorporating the lessons learned. From the family to the village, then to city-states, to nations, to "new" continents, we've always used that as our pressure valve.

But we've pretty much run out of room here. That leaves us few options, excluding natural disasters.

1) We "grow out of it"
2) Armed "resetting"
3) Leave the planet

I have very little confidence in #1. If it did happen it would likely take many generations and be fought by collectivists. For option #2, I'm not highly confident in that either. Not only do I find that the least desirable, I think it even less likely given the distribution of density and districts.

Under #2 I'd include secession, as it is merely going on at a smaller scale. For example if Texas said "nope, we're out lets get back to basics". I include it under "armed" because historically states pulling out of the union have required armed action. I can imagine "Texit", but I just don't see it happening. Even if it did, Brexit (which is a small step in that direction) is still being fought after three years. But even with Brexit it is a very small step.

This leaves item #3: leave the planet. This is the most "realistic" in my view because a) it matches up with what we've done historically, and can be done arguably easier than the other two. From a technical perspective as someone who has spent decades on the subject (complete with many, many blind alleys and wrong turns), it is nowhere near as hard as we think it is. Hard, yes, but that adds to the chance of success because it works to preclude "soft" entitled people. Shared adversity is an incredible equalizer.

But back to Earth,the best shot at a peaceful rollback would really need to be highly localized - below the state level. It also depends on the local laws. In Montana, as I recall, counties have the legal authority to dissolve cities as they are hierarchically superior to them. However, I suspect that this method would have a tendency to push toward secession when it is successful inside the state and the obvious detriment of the federal overreach became more obvious and resented.

"Is there a best size for a State, by area or population or what?"

I've long sought that answer, and it eludes me. I think the factor of density comes into play heavily for many reasons. It may be one of the leading factors overall, hence my doubts about a reversal. Data on size of cities and towns is fairly easy to come by, but density is often only publushed/calculated for large ones. You'd have to get that as well as a way to quantify political results that lead collectivist. Then you'd need to track those over time, as well as raw size and population to see if there is a "breakpoint" in there. We might be able to get a reasonable proxy of the political aspect by using registered voters where party affiliation is part of it.

Interestingly there is a site that does a "best 10 cities for (liberal | moderate | conservative) voters". The largest one for conservatives was 50k, and still not densely populated. Bear in mind conservative/liberal is a proxy here as there is no way to get the better details at that scale. As a seriously wide-ass guess I cold support a supposition that cities above 10,000 people per square mile have a very strong tilt toward stronger government. Sort the cities by pop/mi2 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... and eyeballing them puts the vast majority of them in that category. Again, off the cuff there.

Similarly some off the cuff guesstimates can be made looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_... and sorting the counties by size. I would put most of the ones on the left in the more likely to be for more government category than the ones on the right. Note that I'm using the term "county" slightly generically as a political division, that role isn't always called the same thing.

Also with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_... it would be neat to combine the political angle with that data. Eyeballing it with my rather limited knowledge of those counties, the ones I do know about about follow the pattern. County level is more difficult than city level due to two main factors: sometimes cities spread across county lines and most counties in the country are "red" - by a large margin. If electors were based on current counties, Democrats would not be able to get elected to POTUS without all but becoming Republicans. For example Trump won 84% of all ~3100 counties, while Hillary won 88% of the 100 largest.

"Is a confederation better than a federation? "

Possibly. It would depend on the details.

"There is an principle called subsidiarity where decisions are made at the lowest/local level. If that principle were used the type of government- unitary, confederation, federal, becomes less important."

Yes, and this is key to my vision. To explain the earlier references better this is how it'd work.

Take the structure of the government as defined before Senators were voted in. Executive elected by electors from each state, Senate represents and selected by the state governments, and House by the people in the jurisdiction. Now apply that recursively. For Texas that'd mean the Governor chosen by electors from each county, a Senate chosen by county governments, and a House where members represent at the county level and are voted in by the people in the county. You can then apply that at the city level (replacing the city council) though it may not be of value in smaller cities - and where that boundary lies is variable and unknown.

However, I think that doing that at the federal, state, and county level would be sufficient. You would need more explicit language expressing that all power is reserved to the smallest level first and shrinks as it rises in the hierarchy. Reinforcing that with money I'd apply my preference for hierarchical payment. The only direct taxation would be allowed by the smallest unit. Imagine that the federal government had no direct tax authority, but instead took their expenditures and apportioned them to the states by population.

Thus if your state is 15% of the country's population, it gets a bill for 15% of the expenditures - no ifs, ands, or buts. You carry that down the next step which, in the example above, means the state government go Texas would divvy up its expenditures, including the bill from the federal government, among its counties by population. The counties can then decide how to collect that revenue.

This would have some rather interesting and, I think, corrective effects. You could directly rate elected officials on the change of that unit's share of the bill, for example. If the county wants to use income tax for it, so be it. Perhaps a different county can do better using sales, or even property taxes. Or maybe they charge for services at a rate high enough to cover their share. Regardless, it lets the people closest to each other make the best decision for them, and to be more able to change course if needs be.

I think that would also put a downward pressure on costs because it exposes us directly to those costs, whereas currently they are all hidden. They are outright hidden, but also buried in the sheer size of the federal expenditures.

Most of us don't really understand big numbers of things; such as just how much a 3 trillion dollar expenditure total is. So it floats on by us. But if you can break that down into smaller chunks we can grasp, we can not only feel like we can understand, we can understand.

Anyway, this is probably long enough already. ;) I guess if I were to plan a way to caw out way back, this would be it. But I don't really know how we'd get to the above other than in a new land.

I think you are on to something that indicates the USA should be treated as individual states with a loose association for defense and free movement of goods and people among the states. Federal powers should be severely limited.

TheRealBill A thoughtful essay, thanks, I agree with most of it.

Question are-
how to change back when the original federal system is being merged into a unitary government?
Is there a best size for a State, by area or population or what?
Is a confederation better than a federation?

There is an principle called subsidiarity where decisions are made at the lowest/local level. If that principle were used the type of government- unitary, confederation, federal, becomes less important.

When Democrats are in power they don't need to investigate Trump to push him out of a position he is no longer in. They always fight among themselves.

I didn't say perjury, I said obstruction of justice. You don't have to be under oath to be charged with that.

But you are correct, what he was actually charged with was Title 18 1001 (a)(2) which makes it a crime to lie to a government agent about virtually anything. They don't even have to be investigating a crime.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;

Which is actually much worse than obstruction of justice which actually requires an investigation.

I think there is a case to be made for this on different grounds. It is still something I'm reasoning through, but the gist of it is that just from a basic standpoint we are too large. The combination of size and geographical diversity is too much for a functioning representative government.

By geographical diversity I mean the vast functional differences between region. Ignore the political difference and even just look at the social and economic differences between, lets say NYC,NY and even Austin, TX.

The economic differences alone preclude the ability to set any national policy that adequately considers and covers both of these two. Even is "trivial" as minimum wage can't be resolved - it is far cheaper to live in Austin than NY for starters. Housing costs (rent) alone are often more than double in NY compared to Austin (ATX). For purchasing it is 2-3 times as much - and that is comparing on an apartment basis, not even the house market.

The median 3BR, 2Bath home price in Austin is around 325k - and as someone who has shopped in that area that is a rather nice property level, too. In Manhattan that'll be around 2 million. And I'd put money on that Austin house being significantly larger. Food costs run 60-80% more expensive in NYC vs. ATX. Virtually every metric is higher in NYC than ATX. No minimum wage set to ATX levels will come near being enough in NYC. Any minimum wage based on NYC will be a princely amount in ATX and cause massive shocks to the economy - and not good ones, either.

Conversely, tax rates based on NYC would annihilate ATX families, and ATX rates would starve the NYC government (lets assume that to be a bad one just to play nice, here. ;) ). Any government covering those areas that went beyond the absolute bare bones functionality would look nothing like today, and very much like the kind in the early 1800s - when it had so little power and influence over the lives of the populace that people valued sitting on a porch with some tea or lemonade over shlepping down to somewhere to vote for some schmoe who could neither help nor hinder you.

We know beyond reasonable doubt that the human brain is wired for small group societies, not large ones. When a small group of smaller groups spread out over a large territory and no illusion of proximity because of things like going from coast to coast physical in less than a day or talking with someone anywhere in the country - or indeed in the world - immediately, we could manage it fine.

People often describe this as the world getting proverbially smaller. I used to as well, but I am leaning more and more toward a different phrasing: the world isn't getting smaller, our perceived individual world, and our individual reach, is getting larger. When it'd take a week to contact someone two states away, you mostly didn't care what they did. When you feel like they are (or they physically are) on the other side of a thin wall, you suddenly find you care much more.

There might be a way to diminish this by combining a more stringent, layered federalist setup (one which is continued further down, ie. fed -> sate, state -> county, county -> city style) with strict limitations on population density and district size, but that is probably less likely than splitting us up into smaller jurisdictions. Yet I find it to be more likely to be effective.

I'm not sure at what set of ratios or numbers we reach the tipping point toward collectivism, but I'm confident it is there. In a similar vein it has been pointed out that when it came to seeing women as equals, it was never the rough and ready areas where women stood shoulder to shoulder with men out on the ranch or farm that had a problem with it - indeed they were letting women own property, vote, and run for office even before the country was founded. Even more pointedly, the last places to allow women the privilege to vote were the high density places where women didn't do the hard work.

I know of one time and area in history where this problem was avoided despite the density. The pre-Civil War not-so-wild West. Honestly the details we have of that era and area was one of the most shocking revelations from history to me.

The federal government had a small military presence, but it was only there in case there was trouble between the citizens and the local indians that were not able to be handled by them - and intervention of that style was exceedingly rare prior to the Civil War. I've only been able to find a few recorded incidents, which orders of magnitude more places where peaceful coexistence was the norm - ad virtually, if not all, took place under Lincoln.

So absent the federal government, what did they do? In a sense the broke up the government. There was no regional government monopoly. You had various legal entities with their own laws and system. If you were part of it, which was voluntary (you could choose another and "switch") you were under that jurisdiction. If you got into a conflict with someone in a different jurisdiction, the systems of each, if they had not already established an inter-system mechanism would hash it out. If you didn't like the result you could try to get into a different one and try again, but that wasn't assured.

It sounds absolutely bonkers, I know. And we even have a word for it, one that I was absolutely against because I believed it unworkable until I discovered that history. But before I note it, I want to address one more aspect of the above system: you could be kicked out of a jurisdiction.

This wasn't a physical thing, but more a no longer covered thing. This was bad. This was very bad for you. Think of it like a very real and immediate excommunication from a church. This put you "outside of the law". It meant that you had no law protecting you. You could kill someone "outside of the law" and suffer no penalty because they had no protection.

This put significant pressure to behave, and if you did get kicked out to try like hell to find some group to let you in. You did not want to be an "outlaw".

Further, and tying that back into the topic of splitting up a large nation, groups could split or dissolve by vote or choice. If enough of you didn't like a decision of your cattleman's association you could band together and form a new one, and enter it to an agreement, much like treaties, with the previous one or with new ones. There are no recorded incidents that I have found (and boy have I tried!) of this involving violence or bloodshed.

When crime sprees would get out of hand, these various jurisdictions would band together, raise a temporary posse, put down the spree, and disband. We have the records demonstrating this in what are now large cities in California. Mostly these events were very short-lived as they were highly effective.

What was this system? They didn't call it this at the time, but we could now, and some well researched historians have done so: anarcho-capitalism.

There was no central authority, associations were voluntary, dissolvable, and privately created, while often being centered on an economic activity such as mining, farming, ranching, etc.. There was a "market for law", and the competition one would expect. They were based on individual freedom and private property.

Even in the more communal or business partnership style associations where there was "collective use property", the property remained under private ownership and authority. Government was as minimal is it could be. There was no standing police force in the vast majority of associations, no standing courts, and often no lawyers. Sometimes there were even barred by law. That is a sentiment I suspect many of us could get behind, even some of my lawyer friends.

But notice the key distinction there: there was a market and competition for law and order, privately run and managed, with geographical overlap. Each "government" was pretty small and, the tendency of cattleman's associations to use hired guns for final resolution where they felt they had no choice, largely non-coercive. Internally there had to be some, sure. But you were free to appeal, and ultimately free to take your own property and go somewhere else if they'd have you. Crime was shockingly low as well.

That pretty much started coming to an end as Lincoln began trying to establish more central control, and ended absolutely with the Civil War's ending. In many places murder was recorded as very rare - sometimes you'd go years without one - while in the more dense areas back east, it was commonplace. As the federal government went for total control they'd send out lawyers and police to "protect" the frontier families from "killers" - to places that had never had a murder. In every such case I've seen, murders followed. This was even reported on and recorded contemporaneously.

So it may also be the case that being divided isn't a problem, but perhaps not being divided enough could be. Ultimately, it is looking to me more and more that we've exceeded our political carrying capacity, to coin a phrase.

IIRC, the Flynn charge was "lying to the FBI", and the claim for Trump was OoJ. Lying to the FBI is not the same as perjury. The OoJ part w/Flynn we've already hashed out - insufficient evidence to support two of the three conditions required for a valid charge.

"The FBI agents interviewing Flynn (with the wiretaps in hand) made a point of being casual about the discussion to attempt to get him to "Obstruct them". And really, if they knew the contents of the call how did him not confirming it "Obstruct" anything?"

Change perjury to "lying to the FBI" and you're spot on. Perjury has requirements that lying to the FBI does not. Perjury, for example, requires intent to lie or conceal, as well as material relevance.

Technically you can't trick someone into OoJ because a crucial requirement is a corrupt intent.

"The biased, politically oriented Mueller "report" does not do that and is not the "last word". It even deliberately left out exculpatory evidence in its selective "quoting" and reinterpreting of witness statements in its overtly political appeals."

And yet still managed, despite itself, to demonstrate time and again how what was investigated lacked evidence, and often was nothing but exculpatory. There was a couple of times when reading it through the first time I thought "aha, now they have someth- wait they just explained why this is not OoJ as well".

I'm hosed.

"Is this true? "

Yes.

The Mueller report makes repeated statements that there was no underlying crime identified or able to be charged. It lays out a timeline that clearly shows that at no time were they even considering Obstruction until Trump fired Comey - something the report also demonstrates is itself not obstruction of justice.

"Couldn't someone obstruct justice by successfully destroying evidence? In this scenario, there would be enough evidence to prove obstruction but not the alleged crime the destroyed evidence may have pointed to?"

No. You're make the predefined assumption there was a crime for which there is evidence to destroy. This is not how proper investigation and law enforcement works. This is where the "no crime, no obstruction" assertion comes from. If there is no crime, there is no evidence to destroy or hide. If there is no crime, thus no evidence to destroy, how do you charge someone with destruction of evidence?

That said, there is a loose and vague description which says you can obstruct in spite of no actual crime. However, the bar is set much higher - as admitted by Mueller's report. As the report laid out, there are three absolutely critical aspects to a proper charge of obstruction.

1. There has to be an "obstructive act",
2. There has to be a "nexus" (ie. a direct and incontrovertible connection) between the act, and
3. A corrupt intent to obstruct.

If any of those fail, there is no legal charge of obstruction possible. The Mueller report repeatedly shows that in every case they investigated, they lacked the necessary trifecta. Every. Single. Case. Note that a crime being committed is not listed in that criteria. Thus the lack of an original crime is, indeed, irrelevant.

I detailed much of the report in https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... so I won't repeat it here. However, lets run with your alleged scenario.

If there is no crime, there is no evidence to destroy, thus this does preclude - in your scenario - the act of "destroying evidence" to be an obstructive act. Thus right off the bat the lack of a crime means that whatever was destroyed was not an obstructive act, thus failing the first criteria. But lets step away from the destruction of evidence example because the lack of a crime automatically eliminates it from the realm of possibility. Let us look at Trump firing Comey.

Trump firing Comey is not an obstructive act, for several reasons. We can even assume there is a crime in there somewhere Trump could theoretically be wanting to hide. The act was no obstructive because 1) Comes repeatedly told Trump he was not being investigated 2) Trump fired him because he wouldn't tell that to the public, and 3) Trump explicitly told him to keep investigating the possible Russia interference even if it meant people in his campaign.

Because there was no investigation for him to obstruct, there was no nexus. Because Trump explicitly told him to keep investigating, we have evidence that there was no act that could even be considered obstruction. Because the reason for firing was not to corruptly stop an investigation or impede it, the act of firing can not be deemed corrupt.

Finally, as I detailed in that thread I referenced above, there has to a reasonable expectation that the an action would naturally lead to the alleged result. Trump could literally gone to the Secretary of the Department of Education, said he wanted Comey out to prevent him from investigating Trump for a crime he committed, instructed her to fire Comey, and it would fail the tests Mueller's report correctly outlines. Why? Because there is no reasonable way that would have resulted in the outcome expressed.

Similarly, on a much broader scale, a defendant pulling the fire alarm on their way to the court, or a person if interest pulling the fire alarm on their way into the precinct (or even when the police enter their building) is not obstruction because there is no reasonable expectation that the former leads to producing the outcome. On that grounds as well, even the firing of Comey fails the test.

Even more deeply let us assume a crime happened, and evidence was destroyed. Do we have obstruction? Not yet. The person doing it had to do it with corrupt intent. This is the underlying reason there is so much behind the "no crime == no obstruction". How do you prove a corrupt intent if there was nothing to cover up? That has to be a very high bar. How would you prove murder if the "victim" is still alive?

So your second question is answered: "nope".

So true. These two talk some time about the latest far left philosophy and methods on how and why they can dominate mixed groups, and how to stop them. They make all your points, plus so much more.
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

No amount of power is ever enought

What do you mean by "siding with people"? Siding with what people by what standard?

"If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon" was said by Obama, and that is the least of it from the Democrats now. You're right that there is no evidence that Trump is racist in any way, only opposed to the ethnicity-left, for which they lash out with the "racist" epithet against him.

Replacing valid concepts with invalid ones prevents rational thought for those who go along. In this culture they are increasingly corrupting the language to do just that.

They already do periodically seize power, and in a mixed system dominate. They don't investigate themselves and don't allow others to when they can stop it.

Real obstruction of justice, in the legal sense, not today's political meaning, means someone actively going out of his way to try to impede, disrupt or prevent the administration of justice under a legal investigation or court process. More legal details here https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstr...

In that form obstruction is legally a crime because it obstructs protection against an underlying crime. Much law enforcement today is not for the protection of the rights of the individual, but obstruction remains illegal.

Yes, splitting up statist governments into competing statism solves nothing, even if it could be done. Limiting government power is precisely what is not being advocated now on both sides of the false alternative in Washington and the voters who put them there.

This is why the left has made up a their own special woke definition of “racism” which they constantly preach to their followers and loudly demand everyone use.