{"id":97239,"date":"2016-05-24T20:27:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T04:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=97239"},"modified":"2016-05-24T20:27:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-25T04:27:37","slug":"glenn-reynolds-when-leaders-cheat-followers-follow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=97239","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Reynolds: When leaders cheat, followers … follow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glenn Reynolds writes<\/a>: The state is \u201ca gang of thieves writ large,\u201d economist Murray Rothbard is said to have remarked. I\u2019ve always viewed that sort of comment with a bit of skepticism. But now I\u2019m beginning to wonder.<\/p>\n

I wonder more when I read things like this report from the Washington Examiner: \u201cThe CIA’s inspector general is claiming it inadvertently destroyed its only copy of a classified, three-volume Senate report on torture, prompting a leading senator to ask for reassurance that it was in fact \u2018an accident.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a hint: It very likely wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Is that unfair? I mean, it could have been an accident, right? Yeah it could have been. But it wasn\u2019t. Accidents like that just don\u2019t happen \u2014 or, when they do, they\u2019re generally not accidents. And it\u2019s right for people who have custody of evidence to know that any convenient \u201caccidents\u201d will give rise to the presumption that they had something pretty awful to hide, and that they hid it.<\/p>\n

But, of course, the CIA\u2019s \u201caccident\u201d was only the latest in a long rash of \u201caccidental\u201d losses of incriminating information in this administration. The IRS \u2014 whose Tea Party-targeting scandal is now over 1,100 days old without anyone being charged or sent to jail \u2014 seems to have a habit of \u201daccidentally\u201d destroying hard drives containing potentially incriminating evidence. It has done so in spite of court orders, in spite of Congressional inquiries and in spite of pretty much everyone\u2019s belief that these \u201caccidents\u201d were actually the deliberate, illegal destruction of incriminating evidence to protect the guilty.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Hillary\u2019s email scandal, in which emails kept on a private unsecure server \u2014 presumably to avoid Freedom of Information Act disclosures \u2014 were deleted. Now emails from Hillary\u2019s IT guy, who is believed to have set up the server, have gone poof.<\/p>\n

\u201cDestroy the evidence, and you\u2019ve got it made,\u201d said an old frozen dinner commercial. But now that appears to be the motto of the United States government.<\/p>\n

So why do the rest of us bother to obey the law? And, yes, that\u2019s an increasingly serious question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glenn Reynolds writes: The state is \u201ca gang of thieves writ large,\u201d economist Murray Rothbard is said to have remarked. I\u2019ve always viewed that sort of comment with a bit of skepticism. But now I\u2019m beginning to wonder. I wonder … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t