If You Break the Law, Should You Go To Jail?

I believe that the answer to this question is people who have broken the law need to go to jail. That may seem harsh to some people, but the reality is if there are no consequences for breaking the law, people will continue to expand their illegal behavior. The gangs of people who raided the stores in San Francisco and other parts of the country stealing handbags and clothing and pharmaceuticals did so without any interference from the store owners or other people. If they were by chance arrested, they were out on the street very quickly because we had prosecutors who didn't want to prosecute the lawbreakers.

What message do government officials and politicians send to the electorate when they lie, cheat, or steal? When the Justice Department personnel signed off on the FISA warrants to investigate Donald Trump, they knew that they were swearing an oath that the evidence contained in the warrant was accurate and true. They knew the Steel Dossier wasn't true, but they signed it not once, twice, or three, but four times. They didn’t believe they were accountable to the law. They believed they were above the law. What does it say about the respect of the law when Hillary Clinton destroyed 33,000 emails that were under subpoena? She was never indicted for her actions. The FBI had Hunter Biden’s computer and disclosed nothing to the public before the 2020 presidential election.

Look back at the number of mayors who decided they needed to defund the police in 2020. The local governments did not support the local police force. The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlins Blake said to the police,” I've made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything they could to make sure the protestors were able to exercise their right of freedom of speech.” Cities across the nation were being destroyed by riots and looting while the police were being killed and injured. According to ABC news, a report from the FBI showed that 60,000 officers were assaulted in 2020 with 18,600 injured. There were almost twice as many officers that were killed vs. civilians. 

Let’s step back in time and see if it is possible to identify a singular event that was the turning point in the American value system. I think it was when Bill Clinton was running for president. Do you remember the interview on 60 minutes with Bill and Hillary? The subject matter was his infidelity to Hillary. Should American voters cast their vote for a womanizer?  

The American women’s movement supported Clinton and indirectly his behavior. The next step in devaluing the law was the impeachment of Bill Clinton. America faced the immoral behavior of the sitting President of the United States having sexual relations with a White House intern. Clinton was not convicted and so the American electorate got the clear message that lying and breaking the law was ok.  

Three more lies helped change the moral foundation of America. 

Lie 1: "Is oral sex performed on you within that definition as you understood it?" Clinton replied, "As I understood it, it was not, no." 

Lie 2: It was a one-way relationship. The president seemed to deny kissing Lewinsky's breasts or touching her breasts or groin. "So, you didn't do any of those three things with Monica Lewinsky?" Clinton responds, "You are free to infer that my testimony is that I did not have sexual relations, as I understood this term to be defined.” "Including, touching her breast, kissing her breast, or touching her genitalia?" prosecutors asked again. "That's correct.” 

Lie 3: "When I was alone with Ms. Lewinsky on certain occasions in early 1996 and once in early 1997, I engaged in conduct that was wrong." (So, it wasn't “sex”???)

Sex researchers point to former President Bill Clinton, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, a notorious blue dress - and perhaps a cigar - for a recent study that shows college students are growing more hesitant to call oral sex actual sex. 

According to the University of Kentucky study of sexual definitions, only 20 percent of students considered oral-genital contact to be "sex." That's about half the number who responded that way in similar "sex" classification studies in 1991 and 1999-2001. 

"Unlike respondents in the previous samples, our respondents were adolescents after the Clinton-Lewinsky era, which our comparisons of data over time suggest may have been a turning point in conceptualizations of oral-genital contact. The dramatic and sudden shift in attitudes toward oral-genital contact can therefore be termed the Clinton-Lewinsky effect."

The impact of the Clinton-Lewinsky effect on future generations and their decisions on all kinds of issues has left several generations who believe they make the decisions of right and wrong, not the law or law enforcement. Think about the message the President's activity had on the behavior of future generations and their value foundations.

This new morality is why James Comey made the decision not to charge Hillary Clinton for destroying 33,000 emails. Comey announced that he had decided that the government would not prosecute Hillary on the missing emails. The issue at play was that he did not have the power to make the decision that was the right of the Attorney General to make. Here we have an example of non-elected officials ignoring the law and deciding that they alone can make the right decision legal or illegal.

We must promote and enforce the rule that if you do the crime, you will do the time regardless of your position. When Americans want to take the law into their own hands, they must know there will be a price to pay if they break the law, no matter how powerful they are or what position they hold.