Cisneros Update

About six years I go, I wrote a piece on one of the most amazing examples of otherwise rational, reasonable, responsible people going absolutely crazy that I have ever seen. The Cisneros affair, in which a public official was hounded into prison for not stating how much money he had paid his ex-mistress as alimony, after going back to his wife.

You probably don’t believe me. Why would the government spend $21 million (the figure given varies widely) investigating something that was not illegal– except that Cisneros did not state the correct amount when he was interviewed by the FBI as part of a background check for his appointment as head of HUD by Clinton? Because Janet Reno is a hysterical witch-hunter, that’s why. There was something about Cisneros’ offense– probably, the fact that he had left his wife– that imputed a kind of sinister magical aura to the deception. With a Democratic attorney-general treating the trivial matter seriously, the Republicans must have thought Cisneros was Satan himself.

Any sane person would ask, if this is the best the Republicans do at the moment, they are indeed desperate.

Lest you think that anybody has regained their sanity since then– other than Clinton, who pardoned him– check this out. The Republicans, who, glowing with an absorbed sense of impunity– they can do whatever they want because God told them to– are out for more blood. Especially with scandals brewing in their own cesspools.

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