Spy book exclusive: A thrilling new adventure with Captain Hornblower in the Seas of Araby!

Spy Book Exclusive:

HORNBLOWER AND
THE MAD BOMBERS

Editors' Note: Feeling overwhelmed by all of the horrible news about the collapse of American democracy?  Us too!  To provide some welcome diversion from the real world around us, the Spy is proud to present an exclusive excerpt from the latest adventure of famed British Captain Horatio Hornblower, the intrepid British sailor who roams the world thrashing the heathens in the service of His Majesty.

 

Chapter XXII

A well-lubricated encounter

 

Captain Horatio Hornblower paced the quarterdeck of the HMS Faded Glory, a magnificent 72-gun frigate of the Royal Navy.  Its magnificence was only slightly tarnished by the Admiralty's budget constraints, which left the vessel with only 12 guns and 60 logs painted black pointing out of the sally ports.

Hornblower scanned the horizon of the brilliant blue sea.  His second in command, Lt. Bush, stood by his side ready to assist his Captain, as he had on so many other occasions.

“I say Mr. Bush, what is that vessel approaching us?”

Bush raised his spyglass and noted the vessel's massive American naval standard: a portrait of King Donald parting the waters while holding a bucket of fried chicken. 

“I believe it is an American naval vessel of some sort,” Bush replied.

Hornblower greeted the Americans

Damnation!  Not the Americans again, Hornblower thought.  Who knew what was on the mind of these uncouth savages who couldn't tell the difference between a mizzen mast and a swizzle stick?

Hornblower allowed himself a small sigh.  “What are their intentions, Mr. Bush?”

The alert Lieutenant noted that the American vessel had launched a small lighter with several officers headed in the direction of Hornblower's vessel.  “They appear to be seeking a parley, Sir,” Bush said.

“Very well, Mr. Bush.  Prepare to receive our American visitors and lay out some simple but adequate refreshment.”

Bush nodded, but he realized that the request was not as simple as it appeared, as the Faded Glory was at that moment receiving a supply of victuals and spirituous refreshments from a small supply craft that had tied up along side.  He watched as the crew unloaded the various items from the local merchants, including, to Bush's satisfaction, several live sheep, who would supply copious amounts of food and recreation for the weary crew, not necessarily in that order.

Just then, Bush's thoughts were interrupted by a loud crash of an incoming projectile landing just off the port quarter.

Captain Hornblower picked himself off the deck and growled “What was that, Mr. Bush?”

Bush looked over the rail and saw immediately that the supply vessel had been smashed to pieces and its crew either blown to bits or wailing desperately for help.  Bush ordered the bosun's mates to organize a rescue of the shocked survivors under the direction of the ship's surgeon.  “My God, what a bloody mess!” Bush ejaculated.  At least the sheep were safe, he saw.

“The supply tender was attacked. I can only assume it was a shot from the American vessel,” Bush informed his superior.

“I shall certainly remonstrate severely with those Yankees!” Captain Hornblower replied.

With the efficiency for which the Royal Navy was famed, the crew had soon cleared the blood and body parts from the decks and prepared to receive their American visitors.

Captain Hornblower had never seen such a rum lot of naval officers before.  Even the Spanish had a more military bearing.  

The Americans, their jackets gleaming with medals of uncertain origin, each carried a variety of weapons, including what appeared to be machine guns and grenades.  They eyes were hidden behind sunglasses and instead of proper military uniforms, they wore green camouflage fatigues, useless on the open seas, and red caps emblazoned with the curious letters “MAGA.”

“Do you think that's the name of their vessel?” Bush asked.

“D-----d if I know, Mr. Bush, ” Hornblower replied, irritated by the lack of decorum shown by the oddly-attired Americans.  He awaited a request from their leader to board the Faded Glory.

None came. Instead the Americans clambered out of their boat and onto the mighty British warship.

One of the Americans snapped his chewing gum and said, “Who's in charge here, Pops?”

“Captain Horatio Hornblower, at your service.”

“Hornblower – that's a stupid name,” the American replied. 

The Americans seemed to enjoy the Royal Navy's hospitality

“And whom do I have the honor of addressing?” Captain Hornblower replied politely, inwardly incensed at the cavalier attitude of his visitors. 

“I am Lord High General and Admiral of the United States Pete Hegseth. Now drop and give me 20!”

Captain Hornblower was nonplussed by the incomprehensible greeting from Hegseth, who appeared to be tottering from side to side.  That gave the resourceful King's officer an opening.

“May I interest you in a bit of spirituous refreshment, Lord Hegseth?”

The cheeky American sat at the Captain's table and pounded it with his fist. “Jaeger Bombs all round.  And be snappy about it!”

Hornblower's eye fell on one member of of the American party.  “Any may I suggest that your sepoy join our other ranks below decks, so that they may entertain him properly?”

Hegseth appeared puzzled but said, “That is not my sea boy.  That is General Patel, our nation's leading crime fighter, and he will join us.”

“My apologies,” Hornblower responded.  He nodded at his manservant, who promptly brought out pewter cups and a large flagon of Royal Navy rum.  The able seaman poured healthy rations for each member of the party.

“Where's the pineapple juice and maraschino cherries?  This isn't a real Scorpion Bowl, ” muttered General Patel.

“I'm afraid that in the King's Navy we take our rum neat. Cheers!” Hornblower replied.

After all had downed the first ration of grog, the mood in the Captain's quarters lightened considerably.

“May I enquire as to the purpose of your delightful visit today, gentlemen?”

“May I inquire as to why my cup is empty?” Lord Hegseth responded brightly.

With a barely perceptible nod, Captain Hornblower summoned his steward to refill the pewter cups.

After draining his second ration of rum, Lord Hegseth ran his hand through his oiled hair and banged the table with his fist.  “We're here to find out why you English cowards are not sending your warships to open the Strait of Hormuz.”

Captain Hornblower raised one eyebrow.  “Indeed?”

“F***in-A indeed.  We bailed you out of two world wars.  You owe us this one,” Lord Hegseth responded, slumping down in his chair.

“I have no orders from the Admiralty to engage Iranian forces,” Hornblower replied equably.

“D**n your Admiralty,”  Lord Hegseth shouted.  “Now get your ships to the Strait right after you buy us another round.”

Hornblower nodded to his faithful retainer again, and once again the cups were filled. “I shall be glad to seek instruction from the First Sea Lord and will revert to you promptly when I receive a response.”

Lord Hegseth downed his third cup and let out an audible belch.  “And how soon will you hear?”

“I think we should be able to get a response in three or four months, depending on the wind, ” Hornblower replied.

“Speaking of wind – ” General Patel said with a peculiar gleam in his eye.

“Not now, Kash!” Lord Hegseth thundered.  “My King will not be pleased by your response, I warn you.”

“I am most sorry to hear it,” the imperturbable Hornblower said. 

To break the ensuing silence, the British Captain ventured a question of his own: “Was that an American shell that destroyed the supply tender whilst it was provisioning my ship?”

General Patel ejaculated: “That was a boat full of narco-terrorists, according to our intelligence.”

With a scornful glare at the swarthy American, Hornblower replied, “Those were unarmed merchants.  Don't you know anything about the laws of war?”

The General muttered, “S--- happens.”

Lord Hegseth then rose suddenly, turned on his heel, and tripped over his chair, falling flat on his face.  He lay prone on the deck, moaning softly.

Captain Hornblower turned to his servant.  “Tell the bosun's mate to escort or carry our guests back to their lighter,” he ordered.

Once the guests had been ushered out of the room, Captain Hornblower turned to Lt. Bush with a mischievous gleam in his eye and said, “Now let's inspect those sheep, shall we, Mr. Bush?”

The loyal Lieutenant allowed the wisp of a grin to play over his weathered features. “As you wish, Sir!” 

His work is done: it's back to Southie for beloved ICE czar and beer loving white man Todd Lyons!

By Immigration Correspondent Emma Goldman with
Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

Last week, we treated you to a look at The Boston Globe's tongue bath profile of a local boy made, in the Globe’s view, good: the Acting Chief of the gang of thugs and losers doing business as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), Southie’s own Todd Lyons. 

Despite his apparent wonderfulness and devotion to duty, this week Todd Lyons decided that he's had enough, using the patently preposterous excuse of his kid's senior year in high school: 

His son will be a high school senior next year, and Lyons said he promised not to miss any football or baseball games.

“It’s time to get back home,” he said. “I’ve really always put family first.” 

And once again his faithful lapdog, The Boston Globe, was there to glaze this cruel, vicious apparatchik.  Grab your hankies, boys and girls:

Those who know Lyons say he is not the fire-breathing partisan one might expect to lead the nation’s most controversial federal agency. He is affable and even-keeled, according to interviews with more than two dozen people who know him, and while a reliable Republican voter, he is not particularly political.

A Boston College High School graduate and Air Force veteran who worked as a police officer in Florida, Lyons previously headed Boston’s field office for ICE, where he at least once personally intervened to prevent deportation.

Speaking of knowing Lyons, once again we quote Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials: “By their fruits we best know them.”  

So to really get to know the pride of Southie (a post formerly held by luminaries like rock-throwing Louise Day Hicks and mobster bro Billy Bulger), let's look back at some of deeds for which Mr. Affable will remembered.  All of which took place in the week before his announcement.

1.  Goons reporting to Family Man Lyons intervened in a family dispute in Alabama by, wait for it, throwing an 86-year old French grandmother into their torture gulag:

Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé was arrested in her nightgown at the home she shared with her late husband, a retired US army captain, in Anniston, Alabama, more than two weeks ago. She had overstayed her 90-day visa, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Lyons is known as a good family man

She had moved 4,000 miles from her home in Brittany in north-west France to marry her former sweetheart William “Billy” Ross, whom she had met in the 1950s when she was a secretary working at a military base where he was stationed in France. 

It turns out that the body snatchers had acted at the request of her stepchildren, who were trying to swindle her out of any share of her late husband's estate in violation of state law:

[Alabama state probate] Judge Millwood wrote in her ruling that she believed that Mr. Ross’s younger son, Tony Ross, who she said was a retired Alabama state trooper now working at a federal courthouse in Anniston, had used his position as a government employee to have Ms. Ross-Mahé arrested. 

Don't worry though: after 13 days of terror and life-threatening mistreatment, she was finally booted back to France:

The New York Times reported that Ross-Mahé’s adult children met her at Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris on Friday morning, and that she was still dressed in her detention uniform of orange shoes, sweatpants and a grey sweater covered in stains and holes. One of her sons said she was in a state of shock and exhausted after her ordeal.... 

Before her release from detention, Ross-Mahé’s son said the family had been extremely worried after she was “cuffed by the hands and feet like a dangerous criminal” during her arrest on 1 April, as she suffered from heart and back problems.

He said he, his brother and his sister had heard no news about their mother for a week after she was arrested, until French consular officials were allowed to visit her.

2.  Speaking of Todd Lyons' network of concentration camps,  the detainees (who have been convicted of zero crimes) continue to die from mistreatment and denial of medical care at an appalling rate:

Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt is the 17th Reported ICE Detention Death of 2026 A 27-year-old man from Cuba died on April 12, one day after the 16th death of the year. The pace of detention deaths holds at an average of 1 every 6 days. austinkocher.substack.com/p/aled-damie...

[image or embed]

— Austin Kocher, PhD (@austinkocher.com) April 17, 2026 at 5:43 PM

3.  As with previous instances of mass concentration camps intended to terrify through their cruelty, the living might be envying the dead:

If she's looking for a new gig, ICE is hiring!

In a report published last week, the legal services non-profit Raíces and advocacy group Human Rights First documented “widespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm inflicted on families” incarcerated at Dilley. Nearly 4,000 medical professionals sent a letter to Donald Trump calling for the release of all children held at the facility, writing that detention was causing “predictable, severe, and lasting harm” to their health.

In a statement sent to the Guardian, the DHS denied the poor conditions at Dilley detailed in the report. Detainees said they found hair, worms, bugs and dead flies in their meals. 

Sounds like the cuisine at Todd Lyons's favorite Southie watering holes.

4.  One of the key responsibilities of any leader of an organization is staffing and recruitment?  How'd family man Todd do in that regard?

Rapid recruitment and expansion by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has led to an influx of employees with questionable qualifications, an investigation has found.

The track records of some of the new recruits amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda stand out – and not in a good way.

They include characteristics such as two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years, an allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman – an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of the recruit’s integrity – and a job candidate who once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer.

The common bond is that all were hired recently by ICE during an unprecedented hiring spree – 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its force.... 

Heckuva job, Toddie!

5.  Not only has Todd recruited unqualified goons for his secret police, he's also failed to supervise them to prevent them from committing crimes against those they are supposedly protecting:

6. Speaking of departures, Lyons, when not (or perhaps while)  watching his kids jock it up, has implemented a program of deporting noncitizens previously granted a form of immigration relief (withholding of removal) to violent s***holes where they are mistreated, imprisoned, and tortured in violation of U.S. and international law, according to intrepid freelance journalist Gillian Brockell.

The destinations of these flights include countries like the Congo, as violent and lawless as Southie was in 1975.  Perhaps Todd is too young to remember. 

And this was only one week's worth of torture, crimes, and outrages perpetrated by secret police reporting to the BC High grad who isn't a fire-breathing partisan.   According to the Boston Globe, that is.

Why the Globe has worked so hard to ignore Lyons's record of cruelty, lawlessness, and depravity as ICE Leiter remains a mystery.  The paper has had a long record of overlooking the manifest shortcomings of white men, usually Irish or WASP, it has anointed as saviors, like Kevin White or Bill “Happy Hour” Weld. 

But the ludicrous effort to whitewash Lyons as Dad and/or Martyr of the Year doesn't pass the laugh, or perhaps the scream, test:

Lyons told the Globe he was proud to have been a voice for the tens of thousands of people working under him at the agency.

“I would much rather me be the villain and be demonized than the work the men and women of ICE did and do every day,” Lyons said.  

And the Globe would apparently rather burn its reputation and integrity than grapple with the evil that white men from Southie do. 

We can only hope that a reconstituted Department of Justice will someday be less gullible and forgiving.

But he's from Southie: The Globe whitewashes cruel ICE czar

By Immigration Correspondent Emma Goldman with
Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

Last Sunday, The Boston Globe treated, if that’s the word, its readers to a warm, glowing profile of a local boy made, in the Globe’s view, good: the current Acting Chief of the U.S. bureau of body snatchers, known in court papers as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), Southie’s own Todd Lyons.

As described by the Globe, he sounds like a nice fella:

Affable and even-keeled, a self-described “football and baseball dad,” Lyons supervises an army of armed agents and officers who have shattered car windows, dragged immigrants from vehicles, and killed a US citizen, leaving terror in their wake.

Those who know Lyons say he is not the fire-breathing partisan one might expect to be leading the nation’s most controversial federal agency. Rather, in more than two dozen interviews, people from across the political spectrum portrayed him as respectful, cordial, and occasionally funny — the consummate professional.... “He’s a really nice guy,” said Simona Flores-Lund, Lyons’s former boss in ICE’s Dallas office. “Don’t judge him because of the job he does.”

How else would you judge someone? We asked Justice Robert Jackson for comment, and he said simply:  “By their fruits we best know them.”  

Nuremberg Opening Statement at  ❡❡190.

Southie has given us many fine regular guys.

Lyons is what fellow Bostonians might call “a regular guy”: unpretentious and easy to get along with, someone who likes to play golf, watch the Patriots, and have a beer.

He has salt and pepper hair, which he wears slicked back over a broad face, and he speaks firmly and directly. He comes off more relaxed during interviews with conservative podcast hosts than with mainstream journalists. He is personable, if guarded, and known to crack a joke....

A regular guy from Southie who enjoys a brewski, like Dapper O’Neill and the other goons who threw rocks at school buses 50 years ago.

Lyons...now trumpets the hard-edged policy of the second Trump administration. “We are being allowed to do our job,” he told the Globe.

“People just can’t believe, ‘Oh my god, I’ve been here eight to 10 years, now you’re arresting me,’” Lyons said on a podcast last year. “Well, yeah, you’re here illegally, right?”

You might also be locked up in some ICE hellhole even though you have pending claims for immigration relief, like the hundreds of thousands Lyons’s body snatchers have incarcerated despite long-pending applications for asylum or status by marriage.

Lyons justifies his cruelty with a story, not verified by the Globe or anyone else about a junkie cousin whose death Lyons blames not on the junkie but on his dealer, who Lyons claims was an immigrant (there being no U.S. citizens involved in drug trafficking):

The work of ICE also became more personal for Lyons, family members said, after a cousin he was close to died in 2019 of a fentanyl overdose. ... “I think he always felt a sense of ... he wished he could have done more,” Jack Lyons said. “So his way now is, he goes after that: fentanyl dealers, drug dealers. … That probably fed a little bit into some of the border stuff too, keeping drugs from coming over.”

In a podcast interview last year, Lyons suggested the drugs that killed his cousin came from a dealer in Lawrence, an undocumented immigrant who Lyons claimed was free because local police did not honor a custody request from ICE. Such ICE requests that are ignored by so-called sanctuary cities are a major bone of partisan contention — and an enormous point of frustration for Lyons.

In fact, to the extent anything in this story is true, the reason the Lawrence Police did not hold someone in the absence of sufficient state criminal charges is because the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that local police agencies did not have the power to jail people just because ICE asks them to. Lunn v. Commonwealth, 477 Mass. 517 (2017). You could look it up. As could Lyons or the Globe reporters.

The Globe was proud enough of its story to plug it in their immigration newsletter:

We wanted to know: How did this “regular guy” go from humble Southie, where he dreamed of becoming a Boston cop or firefighter, to leading a major federal agency and one of the president’s top issues?

Maybe that’s what these reporters want to know. We wanted to know how they could present Todd Lyons as a wonderful family man devoted to justice without considering that the agency he runs has perpetrated the following atrocities against human beings in just the last few weeks:

1.  Beer-lovin' Todd runs a vast gulag of detention centers marked by incompetence, cruelty, torture.  And death.

This year alone, deaths in ICE detention are running at the rate of one per week.  Many if not all of these deaths are to the failure of ICE contractors to provide even basic health care and Lyons' depraved indifference to this unconstitutional denial of care to civil detainees:

Septic shock?  Bet that really would cut into your ability to enjoy knocking back bevos with your Southie boyos. 

The full story was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

2.  If the gruesome ICE concentration camps don't kill you, you may will wish you were dead, which is obviously the point of this illegal punitive incarceration:

“What we saw tonight inside the facility was shocking,” [Rep.] Stanton told reporters outside the Mesa facility after the brief tour, calling the conditions inside “significantly overcrowded.”

He described concrete rooms with no bedding or blankets, packed with people mostly laying on the floor. When the lawmakers entered the facility, many of those individuals also scrambled to the doors of the holding cells, asking them for help.

[Rep.] Ansari was visibly shaken by what she saw.

“Shameful, absolutely shameful that the United States government, funded by our taxpayer dollars, is allowing this to happen,” she said.

Ansari said that each of the rooms holding immigrant detainees lists its maximum capacity; the majority had a capacity of 21, while two others were 24. Ansari, Stanton and Grijalva all said they counted more than 40 people in each of the 6 rooms and estimated around 250 people in total were inside the facility.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my entire life,” [Sen.] Grijalva said, fighting back tears. The Tucson Democrat described the way people were laying down inside as “like sardines.”

“It is frightening in there,” Grijalva said. “It is disgusting.”  

Bet the tormented detainees are relieved to know that their jailer is respectful, cordial, and occasionally funny. 

3. The pride of Southie is the boss of the body snatchers who arrested the wife of a U.S. Army Sergeant who was eligible for status by marriage.  She would had DACA status had the regime not lost her application.  

4.  The regular guy's untrained heavily armed goons have in the past two weeks shot and seriously wounded two more people.  Although Southie's beloved football dad was quoted making a number of smears about the victim, he provided no evidence to back up his assertions.  Available video appears to show that the man, shot six times in the face, had not tried to hit ICE secret police with his car, which makes this attempted murder.   

5. And to echo the request of every white man at a Southie bar, here's one more for the road.

 

 

We could go on listing criminal conduct by Lyons' untrained body snatchers, but you get the drift.

What lessons can we take from the sordid truth about fine family man Todd Lyons?

First as our old friend Kurt Vonnegut kept telling us, you are who you pretend to be.

We also know that when you feel besieged and beset, like Lyons, the human response is anger and defensiveness. This response is likely to be heightened when you know that the criticisms are well-founded and the crimes committed by the agency you run are serious. You may also try to justify your continued service on the grounds that you are better than your likely replacement, although Lyons’ record at running his agency calls that into question.

Charming family man, seen here at Nuremberg

What would a worse job look like? Throwing detainees into the Black Hole of Calcutta? Impaling them on hot metal stakes (the Mad King’s dream)?

When you are responsible for a criminal secret police that has committed thousands of crimes and sent thousands more to torturous concentration camps, do we really care how sincere and charming you are?

We recently saw a movie about another charming government official described by his psychiatrist thusly:

“There were people and things that he liked—his family, his friends and animals, and for them, nothing was too good. On the other hand, he had a complete and total disinterest in any living thing which did not fall into one of these groups.”  

The title of the movie was Nuremberg.

You may ask: why are we getting so exercised about a newspaper story recounting the banal details of a government official’s life? 

Our friend Hannah Arendt answered that one in 1963.  You can read it here.

The Mad King's crime spree continues

 

By Legal Editor Saori Shiroseki with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Great Purge of 2026 continued, with the Supreme Leader pushing discredited stock-market tout Pam Bondi into the gravel pit of infamy, where she joins Kristi Noem.  Rumors are that the now former Legal Commissar will not be the last to be purged, as the Mad King's paranoia and fear spiral while his regime collapses around him as a result of his own insane diktats.

Pam Bondi, in happier times

Comrade Bondi, although a loyal bootlicker and apparatchik, apparently failed the Mad King by not indicting and sending to the gulag a sufficient number of the Mad King's political rivals and enemies.  Thus far, she has failed to bring to show trial any of the Mad King's targets, including dangerous deviationists like James Comey, Letitia James, Jerome Powell, or Adam Schiff, who all walk the streets as free citizens, an intolerable situation to the all powerful Leader whose whim is Law.

Unlike Comrade Noem, who was fobbed off with a sinecure appointment as Coordinator of the Five Year Plan for the Donroe International, Bondi was unceremoniously dispatched to the uninhabitable swamps of her native Florida.

While everyone enjoyed the spectacle of a cruel nasty incompetent toady getting her just rewards, the outrageousness not only of her conduct but of the reason the Mad King fed her to the alligators got in our view less attention than it deserved.

Since being re-elected, the Mad King, with the passive or active support of every f****in' Republican, has engaged in a tyrannical attack on the Rule of Law on many fronts, including the perversion of justice involved in using the Department of Justice (among others) to investigate and mount frivolous criminal prosecutions of anyone who dared to oppose him.

His direction to the Department of Justice prosecutors to torment his enemies is both a crime (for which his Republican allies on the bent Supreme Court wrote him a full pre-emptive pardon) and an impeachable offense.

We know this because the late lamented Robert Mueller told us so, with respect to the Mad King's first term efforts, paltry by comparison, to pervert justice into a tool to persecute his enemies and reward his friends.

As a statutory matter, the President’s counsel has argued that a core obstruction-of-justice statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), does not cover the President’s actions. As a constitutional matter, the President’s counsel argued that the President cannot obstruct justice by exercising his constitutional authority to close Department of Justice investigations or terminate the FBI Director [and] has made a categorical argument that “the President’s exercise of his constitutional authority here to terminate an FBI Director and to close investigations cannot constitutionally constitute obstruction of justice.”

In analyzing counsel’s statutory arguments, we concluded that the President’s proposed interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2) is contrary to the litigating position of the Department of Justice and is not supported by principles of statutory construction.  

2 Mueller Report at 159.

As a matter of statutory interpretation, the Mueller Report concluded “Several textual features of Section 1512(c)(2) support the conclusion that the provision broadly prohibits corrupt means of obstructing justice,” and that applying a broad reading of that statute to Presidential obstructions of justice was constitutional.

Having established the legal framwork, Mueller spent hundreds of pages outlining each potential obstruction committed by the Mad King and exonerated him on none of them. 

In other words, Mueller and his staff were persuaded that the President's efforts to direct and nobble the investigation into Russian election interference and his later interference in the investigation of that nobbling constituted criminal obstruction of justice. 

We also know this because the other insanely corrupt Republican President of recent times, Tricky Dick Nixon, was impeached in 1974 on this charge, inter alia:

He got away with obstruction of justice, too

He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize, or permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the concealment of certain records made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of electronic surveillance. 

Art. II(2).

When Republicans told him that he would be convicted of such charges, Dick fled for the territories. 

So there should have been no doubt that the true reason the Mad King fired Pam Bondi was because she did not effectively carry out the Mad King's repeated obstructions of justice.

An objective lead for a story about her firing would therefore run something like this:

Frustrated by Attorney General Pam Bondi's inability to carry out his orders to obstruct justice by prosecuting his perceived enemies, President Trump today fired her, in a sign that he is likely to intensify his criminal assault on the rule of law.

Is there anything in there that isn't based on facts?  

Here's how the Paper of Record reported these momentous events:  

President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, removing the nation’s top law enforcement officer after privately venting his frustrations for months over her handling of the Epstein files and her failed efforts to prosecute his political enemies. 

See the difference?

In the Times account, it sounds like the firing was either based on insubordination or incompetence, with no mention of the enormity of a President directing his Attorney General to commit crimes by indicting the Mad King's political enemies out of pure spite.  Nowhere in the piece does the Times tell the reader that the Mad King's orders for the political prosecution of his opponents is a crime.

The Mad King may be immune from prosecution for such a crime, thanks to six bent Republicans on the Supreme Court, but the newly-unemployed Bondi sure isn't.

The accompanying tick-tock of her defenestration was full of juicy details about who hated whom, but likewise contained no mention of the underlying crimes. 

Two takeaways:

1. It is shocking that an obliviously demented President would order his Attorney General to commit crimes, and then fire her because she did a bad job of it.

2. It is even more shocking that 11 years into the Mad King's assault on America, our most respected media have gotten either bored with or inured to his crimes, thus normalizing them.

When a population forgets what the norms of justice and law are, the path is clear for tyranny to flourish.  We asked our old friend Lavrenti Beria if he agreed, but he was unavailable.