Tea at Trianon: They Thought Nobody Would Ever Know

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

They Thought Nobody Would Ever Know

From The American Spectator:

An administration siccing the surveillance state on the opposition party’s presidential candidate based on dubious reports compiled by the favored presidential candidate’s campaign ranks as a terribly reckless strategy risking the future freedom of its architects for their future power, no?

“Not if you think you will win the election and no one will ever find out,” an animated Joseph diGenova tells The American Spectator. “That’s why they did it. They thought she would win and no one would ever find out.”

Alas, Hillary Clinton did not, as so many expected, win the presidency. So, the incoming administration, investigated by dubious means, got to see what the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and various Justice Department officials believed it would never see.

DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney and independent counsel tasked with investigating the George H.W. Bush administration’s accessing of candidate Bill Clinton’s passport file, believes the malfeasance surrounding the Department of Justice securing warrants to electronically surveil Donald Trump adviser Carter Page rose to a criminal level. And he thinks the conflict of interest inherent within tasking the Justice Department investigating criminal wrongdoing within the Justice Department strikes as just the type of situation imagined when the Office of the Special Counsel was created.

“There are a number of people in the high ranks of government in both civil service and political positions who have an animus toward the president and engage in activities that clearly violate the law,” diGenova tells The American Spectator. “It is my understanding that an investigation into the leaking has been ongoing.” (Read more.)