The Heat is On.

I noticed yesterday that my home state of Kentucky had the highest heat index in the entire nation.  Imagine that.  I do not know what part of it is manmade (I suspect it is a minor fraction), but there can be no doubt that climate change is occurring.  It seems like every year is now a testament to the fact that there is no “normal” to weather patterns anymore.  We get hot and dry early in the year, as well as late.  The violent storms can hit us anytime of the year and those unexpectedly heavy rains can lead to flash floods that no one is expecting. 

But weather discussion aside, this time of the year in my part of the world is pretty demanding.  Hay is getting put down and being put up; gardens are coming in with beans demanding to be picked, along with squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn.  We will soon be digging potatoes.  Even in dry times, the yards need mowing once a week and you simply cannot bush hog enough to keep the filth in the fields and right-of-ways under control.  Livestock concerns center around the heat index, pasture conditions, and water availability; not to mention the calves that are unfortunate enough to be born into this furnace.   Add to this equation the fact that school is out and the brief summer break is packed tight with activities that can only be accomplished during this window in time.  It is really difficult to enjoy the old family vacation knowing what is waiting for you when you return home and how much farther behind you have fallen while away. 

It is kind of amusing to see the parallels between early summer in rural America and the political environment in WDC these days.  As chaotic as some days are on the farm, they are equally chaotic in our nation’s capitol.  I can appreciate that a good deal of this turmoil is the normal course of events for our President and how he usually operates.  But I have to believe that even for him and his hyper-drive life, the combination of investigation, debate, protest, legislating (or lack thereof), SCOTUS appointments, Administration personnel dramas, media mind games, and of course foreign affairs must be astronomically trying and demanding.  It leads me to agree more enthusiastically than ever with those learned journalists who have bemoaned the existence and continued reliance on Special Prosecutors. 

Regardless of how your Trump barometer reads, one cannot dispute that there is a serious question about the value and validity of the Mueller Team and its daily mission creep.  The indisputable fact is that our government is designed with checks and balances between its three branches.  And even though corrupt people in positions of power can distort and pervert the oversight duties with which they are charged; we must rely on the faith that our system of government is greater than each of those individuals who comprise it.  We have to believe that our administrative state can withstand any distortions thrust upon it by our political state.  History has shown us that we came through power-hungry Nixon and Watergate with WDC still intact.  Even Clinton’s escapades with his female friends and loose relationship with literal truth failed to bring down the Presidency.  How reaffirming was it for all of us to experience how our nation came together in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy?  For that brief time, we put aside our trivial political pursuits and focused on the essentials of what makes our country special.  Times like that remind us of what we’re capable of, how resilient we can be, and that all things shall pass.

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The critics of the Special Prosecutor provisions say that it unnecessarily distracts from the President’s need to spend his entire focus on leading the country.  It is pretty much a fact that Mueller has created his own, personal Department of Justice with unlimited funding ($15-$25M), by increasing personnel for an ever-increasing agenda, and most infuriating of all…a total lack of accountability to anyone or anything.  He has quite simply unleashed his team of agenda-driven lawyers with free reign to look anywhere for anything they would like to investigate.  With no end in sight, can there be any doubt that an investigation of this nature takes a terrible toll on the ability of our President to focus on his appointed duties?  And of course, it goes without saying that the Executive Branch, Congress, and the federal Judiciary are laden with people whose assigned duties are designed to do precisely what the Special Prosecutor and his Shadow Department are supposedly all about. 

What a colossal waste of time and energy.  We have people who are being paid every week to do the things that Mueller’s Dream Team is playing with.  President Trump has spent the first year and a half of his first administration dealing with this Russian Collusion nonsense and it shows no sign of abatement.  It is a legitimate criticism to say that the President has not helped himself much in how he has publicly handled the Mueller investigation.  But even if he had said nothing…even if he had simply ignored the existence of the Special Prosecutor…the sheer weight of its presence and pursuit would be a tremendous drag on the Chief Executive’s ability to perform his job.  With all that is going on in this crazy world; with the rapid-fire political and social developments that spontaneously erupt in our society daily; with the short time that this individual who was legitimately elected by the voters of our nation has to achieve the ideals upon which he ran for office…no truer words can be spoken about the Special Prosecutor’s misadventures than those of Representative Trey Gowdy… “Wrap it the hell up!”.  For all of you Republicans who are still raw about Obama’s dalliances with abuse of Executive power and with Hillary’s legal pass on her private server escapades; just forget about new Special Prosecutors.  Let the system envisioned by our founders work its will and let the people who are paid and hired to perform checks and balances do their freaking jobs.  It is a waste of time and money; it is an aberration of our government as it was conceived; and it is simply too disruptive to the execution of our bureaucracy.   The heat is on right now, but a cold front will eventually push through and bring temperatures back to some semblance of normal.