The forest for the trees, anyone?

I trust this page has made its im-

pressions of Mrs Clinton's inter-

esting history clear enough, for

us to venture a question into the

practices of our Federal Bureau,

in reviving the ex parte punish-

ments of our rough and tumble col-

onial origins. We pass over the

more salient question, of wheth-

er a police scold would undertake

to chastise a male Cabinet Secret-

ary for conduct tending to make

him squeamish, ignoring its legal-

ity. No, we pass over the exotic

relish a cleric was expected to

extract from such a frisson of pi-

ety, simply to ask this: have we

so abandoned discipline for our

contempts, that our highest echel-

ons of law enforcement are reduced

to projecting calumnious infamies

of prosecutorial frustration, in

confessing the law has been obeyed?

Then throw us in the dock, not the

ducking stool, Your Excellency.

17th C Ducking Stool

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Williamsburg, Virginia