Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that McCabe misled investigators about his role in directing other officials at the FBI to speak to “The Wall Street Journal” regarding his involvement in a public corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Horowitz’s report on McCabe was referred to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility and the career officials there recommended McCabe’s termination.That means McCabe had to be fired. I never had a job in which I wouldn’t have been fired if an internal investigation showed I had lied on the job. Have you? In a law enforcement job, this is an even worse offense. Firing for cause is virtually mandatory. Of course it is. But here, for example, is “The Atlantic”:

“Andrew McCabe, a former acting and deputy FBI director who had drawn the ire of President Trump, was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday evening, a decision that raises troubling questions about the independence of both the Justice Department and the FBI.”

What? It raises no “troubling questions” at all! McCabe had to be fired. The fact that the President had criticized him is 100% irrelevant. He would have had to be fired if the President said he was the salt of the earth. He would have to be fired if the President said he was the spawn of Hell. McCabe lied. The internal investigation said so. He was fired. Good.

There were plenty of other reasons to be suspicious of McCabe. NBC News reported,  for example, that when McCabe’s wife, Jill, ran for the state Senate in Virginia in 2015, she accepted a donation from a political action committee controlled by then Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, one of the Clintons’ closest allies. Then, in 2017, McCabe became a key official in the investigation of Hillary’s e-mail tricks. He should have recused himself: it’s called the appearance of impropriety. James Comey should have forced him to recuse himself. Never mind: the lies alone were enough to mandate a firing.

The news media, many believe (including me), support McCabe because he was a source for leaks—in other words, he violated the law and legal ethics to pass along confidential information. For that, if it could be proven, McCabe ought to be disbarred and prosecuted.

To read my progressive Facebook friends’ rants, as their IQ and integrity declines further every day, the current outrage is over the fact that McCabe was fired a mere day before he could take early retirement. Again, good. A high-ranked FBI official who lies on the job must be fired, not allowed to escape accountability by retiring. Once he retired, the only recourse for the Justice Department would be to indict him. It doesn’t matter that he was a day away from retiring. So what? What if he was a month away? A year? A minute? He lied. He deserved to be fired, not to be allowed to retire. The quick retirement dodge was how the Obama Administration justified letting IRS officials that criminally misused the agency for partisan warfare escape accountability.

2. And this is why the President of the United States shouldn’t tweet like a junior high school student, or like Larry Tribe  Here is former CIA Director John Brennan’s tweet in response to McCabe’s firing”

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.

It is unprofessional, uncivil, misleading and unethical. However, when the President of the United States’ daily habits make such tweets a Presidential norm, this is what you get: not just a Nation of Assholes, but a government of assholes.

Kudos to journalist Sharyl Attkisson for tweeting the perfect response to Clapper’s thuggishness:

“A guy like this would never misuse intel or his authority—would he?”

3. Funny! But stupid.. From the state of my birth, a classic and hilarious/depressing example of the Niggardly Principle! The Ethics Alarms Niggardly Principles, which you should review, were inspired by a jaw-droppingly idiotic episode in the Washington D.C. government many years ago, where an employee was fired for using the term ” niggardly”—meaning stingy or penurious—in an office discussion. Someone complained that this was a racial slur, and even though the offending employee’s only crime was that he was more erudite than the typical D.C. public schools grad, he was canned anyway. An explosion of outrage and ridicule in the press got his job back, and the First Niggardly Principle was born:

“No one should be criticized or penalized because someone takes racial, ethnic, religious or other offense at their conduct or speech due to the ignorance, bias or misunderstanding by the offended party.”

Now we have this: Massachusetts State Rep. Michelle DuBois (D-Plymouth) called for the removal of a Massachusetts Statehouse sign that reads “General Hooker Entrance,” so named because it faces  a statue of Civil War general “Fighting Joe” Hooker, son of Hadley, Mass:

DuBois, an idiot, says the sign is an affront to “women’s dignity.” “Female staffers don’t use that entrance because the sign is offensive to them,” DuBois told a reporter. 

If the General’s surname offends them, then they need to go back to the sixth grade. Is William Shatner’s old cop show “T.J. Hooker” now to be banned because his character’s surname offends ignorant feminists? Is Anthony Weiner’s name so offensive that he can’t be mentioned in polite society? I have a good friend whose maiden name was “Teats.” I think my favorite cretinous name-censorship fiasco was the plight of three-year-old Hunter Spanjer, who is deaf, and was told that by school officials that he couldn’t use the sigh-language symbol for his first name, since it required making a finger gun.

These are your people, your zealots, your representative, progressives! Be proud…or do something about them and the ideology that nurtures this nonsense,

DuBois said, as part of her brief for removing the sign, that she had heard teen boys joke with teen girls that they were “general hookers” while using the door. Oh! Well that’s different! By all means, lets censor the public square so teenage boys don’t tease girls any more. That will work!

Writes Jon Keller at CBS Boston,”There are all sorts of benign words in our language that sound like words unfit for polite company,” also referencing the planet Uranus.. “And they offer us an opportunity to teach snickering kids about Civil War history or outer space—and about showing respect for others while avoiding making fools of ourselves.”

You would think this is obvious, but increasingly, progressive zealots seem to have no compunction about making fools of themselves if they can signal their virtue in the process. Hey! Maybe Debbie Wasserman Schultz should coordinate a “Children’s Crusade” to have those cruelly teased girls walk out of school and go on CNN to protest the sexism and the patriarchy represented by General Hooker’s name, not to mention Abraham Lincoln for putting such a misogynistically named general in command of the Army of the Potomac.

Nonetheless, I am grateful for the wonderful Niggardly Principle exhibit. I’m almost tempted to change it to “The Hooker Principle.”

Oh: Dubois gets an official Ethics Alarms Incompetent Elected Official of the Month.

One sour note: in writing about this embarrassment at “Reason”, Elizabeth Nolan Brown initially stated that Hooker had “famously defeated Confederate General Robert E. Lee in battle,” thus proving that nobody ever taught HER about the Civil War. Hooker was a very successful Union general, but he is most remembered for his epic defeat BY Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Every American should know this stuff. They don’t because our public schools stink, and because the vital importance of citizens knowing their nation’s history is neglected in our culture.

If you wonder why Civil War monuments are being pulled down because they “celebrate racism,” this kind of mass ignorance is the reason.