Jason Chaffetz for Speaker of the House

Dick Morris endorses Jason Chaffetz for Speaker of the House. In this video, he emphasizes Chaffetz's conservative record, and the fact that he would not be a "dishrag" for Obama, as Boehner has been. Morris believes it would be comparable to the Gingrich takeover of 1993. He urges all of us to contact our representative in Congress, and gives the phone number: 202 224-3121.

Corruption by law-enforcement agencies is the deadliest danger to a free society

The editors of National Review write,

Let’s not shy away from what the Secret Service actually was up to in the matter of its illegal spying on Representative Jason Chaffetz: conspiracy to commit blackmail against a member of Congress.

Representative Chaffetz has been investigating the scandal-plagued protective agency — the habitual drunkenness and whoring of its agents, among other things — when Secret Service personnel improperly accessed his protected records in a hunt for dirt. The aim of this was made clear by assistant director Ed Lowery, who wrote to assistant director Faron Paramore: “Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out.”

Critics are saying that the agency’s brass — at least 18 of them were culpably aware of the plan, and 45 employees illegally viewed the congressman’s information — have violated the Privacy Act. They certainly have, but that is the least of it. They have illegally accessed protected federal records, which is fraud under federal law and carries a ten-year prison sentence. Releasing embarrassing information about the congressman (assuming there was any), with the inevitable implicit threat of releasing more unless he backed off in his investigation of the Secret Service, rises to the level of prosecutable blackmail under federal law. Throw in the interstate-communication and obstruction charges and there’s an excellent case to be made for locking away Ed Lowery and his confederates for a long time. Frankly, it’s a pity more robust punishment is not an option. A society with a bit of moral vigor would have them flogged.

Public corruption is extraordinarily dangerous to a free society, and corruption by law-enforcement agencies is the deadliest of all. This isn’t a case of questionable police behavior with conflicting witnesses; the inspector general’s report is unequivocal on the facts of the case. Yes, of course, they should have their day in court — the problem with the Secret Service is that its agents never end up on trial when they have plainly broken the law, even when there are witnesses, and even when those witnesses are police officers. Men with guns and the power to put citizens under arrest must be held to the very highest standards — and punished with the utmost severity when they transgress.

Perhaps now that they’ve moved on from buying Colombian women to targeting congressmen, somebody in Washington can get around to treating these criminals like the criminals they are.

...But that should not be the end of the housekeeping. The Secret Service is, undeniably, a rogue police agency infected with a culture of lawlessness. Director Joseph Clancy has had an opportunity to address this, and he has failed. He should be relieved of his duties, and so should Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson if he cannot get this heavily armed goon squad under control.

And perhaps it is time to start thinking about transferring the Secret Service’s law-enforcement functions to the FBI and its protective functions to a new agency, one less prone to behaving like a crime syndicate.

Read more here.

so, what was the embarrassing information leaked to the media about Senator Chaffetz? That he had applied for a job as a Secret Service agent in 2003, but was rejected. So now they are trying to make his investigation into the Secret Service look like a personal vendetta on his part.

Jason Chaffetz announces for speaker job

The speaker election is set for Thursday. Emily Stephenson reports at Reuters that Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz has

declared a bid to become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Chaffetz, 48, of Utah, rose quickly to committee leadership after being elected in 2008. He has gained attention for aggressively targeting Planned Parenthood.

Read more (biased) coverage here.

Chaffetz is a life long Democrat, until he met Ronald Reagan, so proceed with caution. Jennifer Kern will write about this tomorrow in the Blaze.