Tea at Trianon: The Inspector Who Never Inspected Anything

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

Thursday, April 16, 2020

The Inspector Who Never Inspected Anything

From American Greatness:

The intelligence community has a history of compromising its overseers. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, hasn’t held a single hearing over the intelligence community’s rampant and illegal domestic spying. Instead, Schiff has used his position to coordinate political attacks on President Trump.

The intelligence community long ago disabled its inspector general. First, it gutted the inspector general position. Then it installed Atkinson, who is one of its own, a swamp creature, so he could use the office as a base of operations in the campaign to resist or unseat a duly elected president.

Some history is in order. As Julie Kelly has reported, “In July 2016 . . . Atkinson was named senior counsel to John Carlin, then head of the National Security Division. Carlin was Robert Mueller’s chief of staff when he ran the FBI and was appointed NSD chief by President Obama in 2013.” She further noted, “the National Security Division chiefly is responsible for the Justice Department’s oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The NSD “closely coordinates with the FBI and other Intelligence Community agencies on . . . matters relating to FISA and other national security laws.”
That means, as Kelly points out, Atkinson likely had a hand in the now totally discredited Carter Page FISA warrant.

But even more troubling is that during Atkinson’s tenure with the NSD, it falsely certified that the National Security Agency was not abusing the powerful bulk data collection database. In so doing, the intelligence community concealed a January 7, 2016 inspector general’s report exposing vast abuses. (Read more.)