Watching Countdown ...

Did Howard Fineman just say that there was concern that the reason the FBI might be trying to contact as many pages in the Foley scandal that they could find was to threaten them to keep quiet?!

I must admit I was shocked that the mainstream media would be so matter-of-fact about the federal law enforcement community deliberately impeding a criminal investigation.

some reason for saying this. What?

on the e-mails sent by CREW?

CREW URGES DOJ I.G. TO PROBE WHY FBI FAILED TO INVESTIGATE FOLEY EMAILS SENT BY CREW THIS SUMMER
Administration Officials Must Explain Lack of Action

Washington, DC – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office today to ask for an investigation into why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to begin investigating Rep. Mark Foley’s emails to a former House page as soon as the Bureau learned about the emails in July 2006.

On July 21, 2006 CREW received a set of emails, allegedly from Rep. Foley to a former House page, which it sent to the FBI later that day. The emails, posted at www.citizensforethics.org, asked the page, who had recently left the Hill, his age, how school was going and what he wanted for his birthday. Rep. Foley also requested the boy’s photograph.

“As a former prosecutor who handled sex crimes in the District of Columbia, the emails set off alarm bells. Grown men simply do not send emails requesting photographs to teenagers over whom they have had some degree of authority,” Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW wrote today.

It appears only now, at the instigation of the House of Representatives leadership’s request, that the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation into former Rep. Foley’s conduct. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting an investigation into Rep. Foley’s actions as well as who knew about Rep. Foley’s conduct, when they knew it and why they did not forward that information to law enforcement authorities.

more at:
http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/newsrelease.php?...

that the FBI works for the Republican Party - since the days of J. Edgar. It seems to me that it's their JOB to threaten these pages. They're sitting on more evidence than they've ever actually released. And I'm NOT just talking about Foleygate.

but it seems almost like a paradigm shift when the MSM portrays intimidating witnesses as simply all in a day's work for the FBI. It wasn't that Fineman seemed to approve of it, it's just that if it is true, it's really quite horrifying. He mentioned it in such an offhand way that it momentarily didn't register.

that so many lies and crimes are cast as merely "Business As Usual" for the GOP ruling class. They have stolen three national elections in a row, but anyone who reports it is labeled a conspiracy theorist. Fineman is still a journalist, but it's only news, after all, not a Rove press release.

Your paradigm shift is actually the end of American Democracy. I don't think that has quite registered yet, either. And no one who perceives that horrifying news hides in the bland, offhand statements of today's newsheads can possibly be naive.

I mean, if the reality is that we now, officially, have secret police isn't a "hair on fire" situation, what is?

some uber-wealthy Dem provide protection for them?