Time to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

If there is an entity today that operates in a Titanic-esque fashion, it is the federal government. Propriety and decorum have long since been thrown overboard as this collective crowd of buffoons argues over how to govern the country, protect our foreign interests and protect our borders all the while lining their own pockets.  

This is all without mentioning the irresponsibly accrued national debt which is going to come home to roost sooner rather than later.

I have a modest suggestion that might help right the ship of state. It will take a constitutional amendment, but let’s go for it.

Move the Department of Justice to the Judiciary Branch of the federal government. Yes, have the Attorney General, the FBI et al, report to the Supreme Court. This would be the easiest way to decouple the Department of Justice from politics.

Putting the Department of Justice in the Judiciary Branch – what a radical idea!

I surveyed several states and found that some have their attorneys general reporting to their governors while in others, it is an independent elected office. I am not going so far as to make the Department of Justice a fourth branch of government. I say just give it to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has the last vestiges of propriety and decorum left in our federal system. Except for a few shining stars among the tribes (take a bow, Jim Jordan, Dr. Wenstrup and a very few others), the balance of Washington would kick children out of the lifeboats on the Titanic to make a place for themselves.

The Attorney General should serve at the pleasure of the Senate, after having been selected by the Chief Justice. However, the Attorney General’s term should be for seven years, so that it has very little chance of aligning with any of the political office tenures.  

The whole Supreme Court, voting unanimously, should be able to kick out an egregiously behaving AG.

Justice is supposed to be blind, but as we have witnessed for the last several years, Lady Justice’s face mask has some eyeholes poked in it to the point the thing is in shreds, a filthy rag.

The Founding Fathers could never have imagined that we would get ourselves into the pickle that Washington has become today. They couldn’t imagine it because in those days, we were a largely agrarian society, and they did not have the perspicacity to see the coming industrialization (go to Mt. Vernon and see George Washington’s state-of-the-art grain threshing floor to grasp this) which would drive us to the cities.  

A farmer’s focus tends to be polite, respectful and pious, if for no other reason than to pray for rain for their crops (I am not joking). Massive urbanization, brought on by industrialization, has separated us from the vagaries of nature and left us foolishly thinking we humans are in charge of the world.

Bringing a modicum of sobriety to the office of Attorney General through the actions I have outlined here should go a long way toward righting the ship of state.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.

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