By Muriel Sluyter

Greetings, gentle reader,

Political candidates are homegrown. They come from the towns, cities and counties, including ours. They may rise to the top, but they start small. We will have a chance, one more time, to choose honorable men and women for our leaders, so let’s see how it works.

Political po-wer is attained by a mixture of skill, knowledge and intrigue. Even if a politician is a good, decent man, he will have people in his government who love intrigue. On the other hand, a thoroughly corrupt leader will run at the head of his pack of predators.

Even in this country, where we elect our leaders from the common people, intrigue can play a big part in a politician’s rise to power. If he is corrupt, it will even be a part of his governing style. He will manipulate things and people so that, whatever he does, he will come out unscathed while his followers take the rap.

The first thing our present administration did was fire every U.S. Attorney in the nation and quickly replace them with its own people. This administration hired a private investigator to collect files on judges. When Judge Royce Lamberth ruled against the president in a case of sexual molestation, the White House people had his file and they attacked him viciously and personally.

The employees and managers of the White House travel office were fired immediately after this administration came to office; they were accused of mishandling funds. The top man has had to fight to prove his innocence. His decades-long career has been destroyed by the charges, and even though the truth has come out, his career is over.

But, one of the most egregious offenses committed by this administration has been laid at the door of Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Halloway Johnson. Remember that statue in which the holder of the scales is blindfolded? Scratch that one. Judge Johnson has abandoned the system of assigning cases on a random basis. Not only has she deliberately assigned Clinton-appointed judges to Clinton-Gore Democratic Party corruption cases, she asked the Justice Department to formally request that she (Johnson) assign Maria Hsia’s case to Judge Paul Friedman. (Hsia was the woman who arranged Gore’s flagrantly illegal fund-raiser at the Buddhist Temple). True to his mandate, Judge Friedman dismissed the case against Hsia.

Judge Johnson has assigned six Clinton or Clinton-Gore connected cases to Clinton appointees, and has been rewarded with rulings friendly to the administration. This kind of corruption of the legal system is to be expected if the head of the country sends the message that he is corrupt. Powerful but unprincipled leaders cannot keep themselves out of hot water, unless they have an equally corrupt legal arm. Intrigue comes naturally to this kind of personality, and a hunger for political power comes equally naturally. Remember the line the writer used when he wrote of the war between Sweden and Peter the Great’s Russia? He had his actor (the Swedish king, if I remember correctly) say, "War is the real sport of kings."

Unfortunately, that is true to the mentality of sociopathic leaders, be they king or president. They live and breathe intrigue. They connive, manipulate, coerce, betray, abuse and deny. They lie and their supporters lie with them. They destroy lives and their followers cheer them on. They corrupt the weak, and their victims both love and hate them.