See the linked article for the FBI's proposal in 1950 to arrest 12,000 and suspend habeus corpus. What do you think would have happened in the past 7 years had J. Edgar been the head of the FBI under the current President?
J. Edgar Hoover was all about creating an independent power center in the FBI. I'm not sure any president, including the current one, would want that. It's not the power many president's object to; it's the independence. That said, you can bet that Bush would love to have someone with Hoover's proposed power that was loyal to him. In a way, that's what got Nixon into trouble. He had Hoover, and he wanted an FBI with those powers under his (Nixon's) control. Since he couldn't have both, he started building his own shop within the White House (the 'Plumbers'.) After Hoover's death in May, 1972, Nixon began an effort to do so, but was almost immediately ensnared by scandal.
He's too young for the Hoover (has any con ever had such an appropriate surname?) era. Maybe Rock Hudson or Liberace...
J. Edgar Hoover & A. Mitchell Palmer Considering that Hoover would have been more than one hundred years old, not much! If you want a comparison to actual events, perhaps you could recall the "Palmer Raids": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids "by January 1920, Palmer and Hoover had organized the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, rounding up at least 10,000 individuals." This all took place in a Democratic administration! Perhaps Ru Guiliani, since there are many published photos of him wearing a dress, but none of Hoover.
We must celebrate/elevate this post, a superb integration of the patently inane with the whirlwind that is P&CE. Next to defecation upon the failed and crippled thinking of the conservatives that once roamed these digital plains, and the condemnation of the "Moderates" who will "middle ground" us to a nice, reasonable nothingness upon which the former group will certainly tread (and has tread throughout the most recent unpleasantness), folks like yourself who offer up such concomitant wit in association with your presence is what I miss most. Happy Holidays.
what would have happened had FDR been president this past 7 years? how many camps would be needed to hold all the Muslims in the US?
This is pretty f***ed up. When he was a grad student, my dad and his professors got "interviewed" by the FBI, just because he was working for his philosophy PhD and ordered 'subversive' books authored by european philosophers/thinkers/politicians (marxists, leninists, etc). Anyone in his situation trying to write an academic dissertation on communist/fascist thought and philosophy woulda needed such books for research. But back then - that was a topic not many would touch. Sadly, my dad's advisor died before my dad could finish his research (3+ years into it). Surprisingly (or not), not one other professor would take him on and let him finish his PhD. Though he is a bright and dedicated guy, he wound up teaching philosophy101 (untenured) at the Candian equivalent of a community college for a few years, before he tossed it all away and found a job in a very different field that was basically an insult to his intelligence and capabilities. I always thought that was a horrible example of how a government could discretely control thought. Cuz face it - my dad was bright, but he was no Karl Marx. But because of (government? societal?) pressure, he was not able to finish his PhD and put out a (probably never to be read) academic analysis on socialist/communist thought. But I guess he got off easy. If Hoover had his way, my dad would probably have been one of those 12,000 gitmo'd, just for trying to learn, understand, and critically analyze socialist philosophy. That's messed up.
It's interesting how J. Edgar was using his power to keep us safe from the ravages of thought. All the while he was denying the existence of the Mafia in particular and organized crime in general. But he sure wasn't going to risk some grad student having an idea or two. EDIT: Man, this is convenient. There's a book review in todays NYT on this topic! http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5DC1238F931A35754C0A96F948260 For 40 years, the Mafia's looting was largely unchallenged by the Federal Government, and much of the blame rests with the F.B.I.'s J. Edgar Hoover. For reasons known only to Hoover, he barely acknowledged the Mafia's existence, let alone its threat.
Hoover was afraid that the Mafia would corrupt his agents, as they had many local police agencies & judges during Prohibition.
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney Though he looks older, Cheney is only 66; also, he's only known to have shot one person, who later apologized! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney#Hunting_incident "Later, Whittington apologized to the vice-president for the trouble the event had caused him"
Re: Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney Yeah, he just reminds us of death. He's not quite there though, yet. Also, I remember hearing about that re. the hsooting before. TBH that is so ridiculous as to belong on a Jack Bauer/Chuck Norris list; Dick Cheney once shot a man, then made his victim publically apologise.