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Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey appeared before a U.S. Senate panel on May 3rd to defend his agency's conduct under his leadership during the 2016 elections:
Comey acknowledged that the realization the bureau could have affected the election's outcome left him feeling "mildly nauseous." But, he added, "honestly, it wouldn't change the decision." Comey has been transformed into an unusual kind of political celebrity over the past year, his decisions coming in for sharp criticism from almost every point of the political spectrum.
News reports have cited anonymous sources within the intelligence community casting him as too fond of the spotlight, despite his repeated insistence to the contrary. Whether he sought it or not, Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing was yet another center-stage moment for the FBI director. Cable networks carried virtually uninterrupted coverage of his testimony from the moment he took his seat before a scrum of news photographers.
Comey explained his reasoning behind the decision to inform Congress about Clinton emails discovered during an investigation into Anthony Weiner, and said that he had made the right choice. One event that factored into the decision and his earlier July 2016 announcement about the Hillary Clinton investigation was Bill Clinton's meeting with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. At Wednesday's hearing, Comey faced criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike on topics including the FBI's delay in disclosing an investigation into the Trump campaign and the decision to not charge Huma Abedin for mishandling classified information. On the day before the hearing, Hillary Clinton blamed the FBI Director for her loss, while President Trump tweeted that "FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!"
Comey appeared to confirm that the FBI is investigating whether its agents leaked information to Rudy Giuliani, a Trump ally. He also took the time to denigrate WikiLeaks by calling it "intelligence porn", and alleging that WikiLeaks acted as a "conduit for the Russian intelligence services or some other adversary of the United States just to push out information to damage the United States". Here's what Julian Assange had to say in response. Comey did not confirm whether or not the government is planning to charge Julian Assange with crimes related to his organization's recent activities. CNN reported in April that the U.S. is preparing to charge Assange with... something, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently called WikiLeaks a "non-state hostile intelligence service".
Also at The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times (editorial).
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 05 2017, @10:58PM
Actually Plato's progression [mit.edu] was more like:
(1) Aristocracy (in Plato's ideal world, ruled by philosophers), degrades through miscalculation of good "breeding" for the next generation (I mean literally "bad math," because Plato believes in a sort of numerological method for determining when good and bad births happen). It degrades to...
(2) Timocracy, a society governed by honor, rather than reason. The infatuation with honor leads to unnecessary war and "secret" longings for wealth and other personal interests, over the communal good. The accumulation of wealth and goods from this ambition, spoils of war, personal interests, etc. leads to...
(3) Oligarchy, government by a rich ruling class. Honor is no longer a driving force, but merely accumulation of wealth and power. The leaders create policies to make themselves richer and keep the poor poor. They restrict social mobility and desire to keep the "underclass" permanent, no longer allowing the poor to join the ranks of the ruling class. The class warfare leads to further social divisions, and the poor begin acting badly, turning to crime, theft, etc. to try to get ahead. Eventually the wealth-seeking of the ruling class combined with their bad parenting and bad decisions of spoiled children causes wealth and power to be lost for foolish reasons, eventually degrading to...
(4) Democracy, government by everyone. In more extreme versions of class warfare in an oligarchy, this may come about from violent revolution and expulsion of the oligarchs. It might also, in Plato's world, be conceived as government by no one, since his "democracy" seems to rapidly degrade into something like anarchy. Everyone has "freedom" and there are no rules, so everyone does as he likes. Everyone follows his own desires, destroying a sense of communal policy. It all sounds and looks good, but eventually democracies undermine their own systems of laws, which can be changed on the whims of the populace. The internal warfare among classes and individuals escalates, eventually devolving to...
(5) Tyranny. Having lost their way and no longer having effective leadership, goals, or communal purpose, the ignorance of the masses causes them to follow any "protector" who might emerge. Within the democracy, various groups (especially businessmen) gain power and lose it, but they contribute more and more corruption, leading to dissolution of laws, and eventually leading to calls for trials and impeachments of the corrupt leaders. The "protector" who claims to solve these problems for the masses is actually a very bad man (since all men in the democratic society have lost the true way of philosophy and are solely driven by internal desires), but the ignorant masses only listen to his false promises and small victories he gives to the poor. The people cheer on this protector and give away their power to him, until he becomes absolute ruler. Having no discipline or principles (because of his origin in a democratic state), he becomes a tyrant. An an Orwellian twist, excessive freedom has led to slavery.
Plato's view of democracy was pretty negative, but if you had lived through his lifetime, you'd know why. But he was right that democracies both before his time and subsequently have frequently devolved into tyrannies, particularly when some crisis emerges and the populace elects a leader who promises some good things, but ultimately is intent on consolidating his own power. Populism descending to tyranny is arguably a major failure of the Roman Republic, the rise of Hitler, etc. And Plato isn't unique in his criticism -- basically almost all the extant Greek writings we have are more critical of Athenian democracy than approving. Athens did some pretty bad stuff under democratic rule, too.