[name suppressed], 40, of New Milton and [name suppressed] of Buckhannon have been charged with the misdemeanors and face fines and up to a year in jail on each charge if convicted. Sutton has been released on bond, Wilson said, and Hommema is to be arraigned later this week. Wilson did not know Hommema's age.
Specifically, they were spying on teenage girls trying on prom dresses at a charity event. Nice.
I've suppressed the names because, who knows, they may be innocent. And if so, this will follow them around enough. Besides, I don't care about the names. Because this isn't about individual people. It's about federal officers in positions of power to act in ways that impact private citizens.
The comments to the article are filled with remarks about Obama's FBI. But the remarks that ring the truest are a handful suggesting that if now they'd just cheat on their taxes they could have a cabinet post. This isn't really about Obama's FBI, after all. There's every chance these guys were with the FBI under Bush, and a fair chance that they abused their trust then as well. The thing is, as a conservative I know that 1) human nature doesn't change, 2) human nature isn't universally warm and fuzzy and 3) human nature left unconstrained can do bad things. As a libertarian, I know, furthermore, that even if the Republicans are in charge, and even if they're conservative - really! - human nature doesn't change just because you've been given a position of power and trust.
This is not a story, then, about a couple of perverts looking at underage girls. This is a story about why there are already investigations into TARP fraud with the program barely half a year old. This is a story about why Chris Dodd took those friends of Angelo loans not to mention getting into an Irish cottage. This is a story about why Tim Geithner fudged his taxes. It is a story about why Joe the Plumber's financial and marital picture hit the front pages as fast as a functionary with access could pass it to the New York Times. This is a story, in short, about how power - any power and all power - corrupts. It is a story about how human frailty leads us to take advantage, abusing the strong position until we slip and find ourselves in the weak position.
The next time you're reading about "the government plan" for Chrysler, for AIG, for health care, you need to stop watching for the black helicopters and the Presidential storm troopers. Because the conspiracy isn't "them." It's us, a human race that often overreaches, through greed, through fear, through venality, even and often through good intentions. In the next year or so, we're going to hear about government "fixing" the economy, "creating" jobs and "making health care affordable." If you're a Republican operative, you can feel free to tremble at the evil that is Obama. But if you're a conservative or libertarian, I'd suggest that you forget about all that and think about two FBI guys in a mall in West Virginia using their office to spy on teenage girls. Because the real danger isn't an omnipotent Big Brother. The real danger is that people will start to believe in "the government" and forget that the government is just a collection of these bozos, some better, some worse, but all subject to the temptation to use the power we give them over us in ways we didn't plan on or agree to.
