Well,

Well, well, well

Image from … a friend. I suspect Jesse Barrett, but I could be wrong.

Today is my birthday¹, and I woke up to a couple of rather lovely gifts.

The first — and the nicest — is that our last two releases are holding down the #1 and #2 slots on Amazon’s New Releases in Science Fiction Anthologies:

The second was learning that Dan Bongino has been named as the #2 at the Federal Bureau of Instigation, Iniquity, Infamy, Investigation. Long-term Gentle Readers are aware of my distaste for that agency, and newer Readers can read a condensed version here.

I have no feelings about Bongino personally. I have read that he was a NYPD cop for four years — 1995 to 1999 — transitioned to the United States Secret Service in 1999, and retired from that agency in 2011. That looks like 16 years in law enforcement to me, of which twelve years were at the Federal level, so I’m guessing that he understands Federal law enforcement.

There’s a lot of screaming going on that there should be a “career FBI agent” either at the helm of that agency, or as #2 if the FBI Director isn’t a “career FBI agent”, and “That’s how it’s always been.”

You know what? “That’s how it’s always been” has led to an agency that happily writes blatantly unConstitutional Rules of Engagement, murders an unarmed woman under that ROE, and never suffers any of the consequences that they’d stick on any local agency; has led to an agency that lies under oath to Congress multiple time, and never suffers any consequences; has led to an agency where an agent feels free to lie about investigating multiple on-going rape allegations, feels free to falsify victim statements to cover his laziness, and never suffers any of the consequences that the FBI would have piled on a local officer who did the same thing; and who are comfortable enough to try to unethically and unlawfully sneak a “confession” from an innocent man by telling him they’re making a “training film”, and would he pretend to be the bad guy and read this Miranda Warning on tape? For training, of course.

Nah. Sod ‘em. “That’s how it’s always been” has given us a Federal law enforcement agency that — if we want to be charitable — has become² an outfit that differs from an organised crime association only by where they buy their suits³.

Two outsiders that show up ready to put their boots in the butt of the FBI can’t give us any worse than the agency we’re already stuck with.

Going to be a good birthday.

Ian

1. I’d like to point out that the fact that my body cracks like a chemlight getting out of bed every morning, yet still stubbornly refuses to glow … is just rude.

2. I maintain that they’ve been dirty from the moment that J. Edgar Hoover created them to be his secret police, but I’m willing to have my mind changed.

3. "We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail… Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him." ~President Harry S Truman