Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Political Indictment

The politically-driven charges against former Governor Rick Perry have been dismissed by order of the appeals court.  Perry was indicted for the crime of vetoing a budget.  He had threatened the veto against the budget for Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg.  She had previously been arrested - and filmed - for driving drunk.  She's a mean drunk and tried to order the police to release her.  Perry wanted her resignation or he wasn't going to fund her office.  She didn't resign and he vetoed the budget.  That was sufficient to indict.  Clearly, the governor should not be able to veto or attempt to remove criminals from public office.

There is talk that this hamstrung his short-lived bid for the presidential nomination but he really didn't have a chance.  He had sunk himself in 2012.  Still, the Democrat DA who brought the case was glad to pick off a potential rival to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.  That, of course, was the point of the doomed prosecution; it did exactly what it was meant to do.  The same thing was done to Tom DeLay, by the same Travis County DA's office!  Huh, imagine that.
 
It is amazing how easy it was for a Rick Perry (Republican) to be indicted for exercising his legal authority as governor while at the same time it is near impossible to indict a Hillary Clinton (Democrat) for setting up a private server to dodge FOIA requests, putting classified and top secret material on an unsecured off-site server, instructing subordinates to send Top Secret documents via unsecured email, and deleting half the server's contents while assuring investigators that none of the deleted material was related to her position as Secretary of State (except that one of the deleted emails was found on General Petreus's email account).  Yes, it is wonderful to live in a nation of laws, where all people, regardless of political party, are treated equally.

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