"Bureau Special"

 I'm often asked why the Watchman doesn't post articles more frequently. It's because he doesn't want to just regurgitate the news as so many bloggers do. He looks for a fresh angle or an uncovered story, things not so easy to find. A story like this one.

The terrible shooting in Arizona is an open and shut case, is it not? The gunman was captured immediately after the shooting. There were hundreds of eyewitnesses. The entire tragedy was captured on videotape by nearby security cameras. Can there be a more slam dunk conviction?

Yet the FBI has allocated 250 special agents to this case. This is called a “bureau special” in which agents from anywhere in the United States can be involved in this case. In addition to the FBI resources, there are 170 local investigators on this project. Why?

"We are pursuing all of Loughner's associates and all his movements for the last 22 years. We're examining who he knows, running down every lead and trying to collect all the information we can," said FBI Special Agent Jason Pack.

If this was a private investigation, where investigators cost real money and real people had to come up with that real money to pay for them, this would not be happening. It's only in the surreal world of the public sector where investigators are as unlimited to deploy as the printing presses are that print the money to pay for them, that we see this kind of wanton waste.

They are not kidding about this, folks. The FBI intends to interview every living soul which had any contact with his crazy man on any day of his life over the last 22 years. That's why you need 250 FBI agents – to conduct all those interviews. And that number could rise to 500 as it has in previous “bureau special” operations.

What is the public interest here? Surely it's to see that justice is done, to see that Loughner gets a fair trial and a swift execution. But is it in the public interest to determine what Loughner's motive was? The Watchman thinks not.

It's a fool's errand to try to determine the motives of a crazy man. And enough information has come out in the press, including Loughner's own writings and the many reports of people who knew him well, for us to accept with a great deal of confidence that Loughner is indeed, crazy.

What is to be gained by learning that in, say, the sixth grade, Loughner was encouraged by another crazy kid to shoot and kill government officials? Isn't there a statute of limitations on conspiracy? And even if there isn't, who cares? Crazy is as crazy does. It's that simple.

It's tempting to think that this might be a plot by the left to uncover evidence in support of their initial absurd claims that the shooting was somehow caused by the rantings of talk radio personalities. But that does not appear to be the case. This is not government waste with a mission, this is just standard operating procedure government waste. They do this all the time for high profile murder investigations.

The lesson to be learned from the battalion of G-men combing the Arizona desert is simply this: Even when the government is doing something that it should be doing as opposed to wasting time doing things it has no business doing, it does that thing poorly and wastefully and to excess.

God save the United States of America.