Yes, the Mueller Investigation Has Obstructed Justice

The people who talk about obstruction of justice in Robert Mueller's investigation appear unaware that in the United States the prosecution can be guilty of obstruction of justice. 

Most people don't understand that the Bill of Rights provisions regulating law enforcement were added to the Constitution to prevent corrupt law enforcement agencies from misusing the criminal justice system to harass political activists.   One of the worst abuses in British legal history was  the "Star Chamber" proceeding which allowed the use of secret unsubstantiated allegations against the accused, especially political activists.

The involvement of British intelligence agent Christopher Steele in the investigation in effect makes it a form of Star Chamber proceeding.  I know he says he's retired, but think about it. Obviously,  if he's on a "secret mission" for the British government, he's not going to say "I'm on a secret mission to discredit Donald Trump."  He's going to say "I'm retired."   I have enough respect for Britain's MI6
to believe that it can  arrange  for agents on secret assignments to appear to have "jobs"  that have no connection to the British government. 

American courts need to know how information is obtained,    Agents like Steele need to keep some information and sources of information secret.  Courts need to know the truth. Agents must be able to lie convincingly such as when the British  overstated the status of Iraq's  Weapons of Mass Destruction.  

Regardless of whether or not  Steele  prepared the Trump dossier on assignment for his government, the dossier appears to be the type of propaganda piece an agent might prepare for his government. It's not important whether Steele's document caused the Mueller investigation or merely encouraged it.   What is important is that allowing a foreign agent to encourage a criminal investigation of an American politician allows other countries to meddle in our politics by providing evidence to destroy politicians they don't like.

Consider a hypothetical situation that could have occurred before the 2016 election.   A country wishing  to hurt Hillary Clinton might have secretly provided incriminating emails to Wikileaks.  Any country that has Hillary emails won't want our government to know it has emails with information about American procedures, personnel and goals so emails would have to be distributed secretly.   What if such emails indicated Hillary had worked out a deal with Britain to have Americans stay in Benghazi to protect equipment the British left behind when a terrorist attack caused them to  evacuate the area in exchange for something like a contribution to the Clinton Foundation or unspecified help if Hillary ran for president?  The emails could not have been used to start a criminal investigation because government could not have verified  that the documents were authentic unaltered emails which had been obtained in accordance with American laws. 

Now that I think about it, if Russia had been really anxious to elect Trump wouldn't it have  tried to secretly distribute real or fake Clinton emails?

Hire the People on the Border to Build the Wall

When is  President Donald Trump going to recognize that the  best way to deal with the border people is to hire them to build the wall?

Hiring the border people to build the wall  would create a win  / win  situation.  The border people would win by getting jobs.  

People living in the United States would win because people entering  the country from the south in the future would have to pass though check points where they could be screened for contagious diseases.   The recent measles outbreaks demonstrate the potential danger of open  borders.     Dangerous diseases like tuberculosis  that are largely controlled in the United States can  be common in countries some "illegals" come from.   There are more HIV/AIDS deaths per million south of our border than in our country. 

A century ago a judge might have agreed to punish illegal immigrants by forcing them to build a wall.  Judges no longer order such forced labor, but the government can hire immigrants to build a wall.

The large number of unemployed people on the border provide a golden opportunity to build a wall that was first needed in the 19th Century when raiders would cross the border to attack settlers.  We need to take advantage of the opportunity to build the wall now.    Having the border people construct the wall would produce a work force that could be used to construct the infrastructure projects we also need. Trump's economic program is creating so many jobs that we may not otherwise have enough extra workers for essential infrastructure projects.

President Vladimir Putin's Election Gambit

There is no evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a master at the board game called "chess", but he is a grand master at a real life version of the game.

In 2016. he began an operation to discredit the American system of elections.   He took advantage of the basic stupidity of many American politicians and journalists to create the delusion that he had colluded with Donald Trump to affect the presidential election.

Putin was a Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB, the highly effective Soviet Secret Police.  If  the Russians had been trying to elect Trump, any Russian contact with the Trump campaign would have been done in secret to avoid detection.  Putin is intelligent enough to know that some Americans would vote against a candidate favored by Russia.

Putin had Russians meet with Trump campaigners to set Trump up for a collusion charge in the event Trump won.  I became suspicious of the real purpose of  one meeting because a tv news story sounded like someone might have coordinated the meeting with the Department of Justice.  The discovery of the meeting seemed too  easy.  I'm not a fan of Putin, but I respect his intelligence.  He would not have used people so unprofessional that they would be caught while engaged in what  should have been a secret operation.

Putting people in apparently compromising situations  is an old KGB tactic that the KGB used to blackmail  people into cooperating with the KGB such as by providing access to information.    The Russian contact with Trump campaigners is a variation on this tactic with the goal simply being to frame people in Trump's campaign.

I doubt that Putin wanted either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to be President  of  the United States.   In 2016 Putin  likely thought the best outcome would be a discredited American election especially if the winner would be forced out of office.  .  Putin had been criticized for his  conduction of presidential    elections.   Creating a scandal about an Amercan presidential election might prevent unfavorable comparison of Russian elections to American elections particularly if Putin could claim the "American Secret Police" rejected the candidate voters wanted. 

Putin is certainly aware of how much the Soviet Union had benefited  from the Watergate controversy.  The fall of Richard Nixon  was followed by the fall of U.S. backed governments in Vietnam and Iran.  The  Soviet Union was able to take advantage of the weakened American presidency to invade Afghanistan.   

If Putin has any derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, he will probably keep it secret unless she is elected president.

This farce has gone on long enough.   Congress and President Trump  need to concentrate on the real problems our nation faces.