How Many Divisions Has The Pope?

In the waning days of WW II, during a discussion of the future of Eastern Europe, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill cautioned Joseph Stalin to consider the views of the Vatican. To this the Soviet leader responded, "How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?"

He was giving a harbinger of Mao's famous dictum, that "power grows from the barrel of a gun". When you issue orders, you have to be able to force others to obey those orders, or they are meaningless. Conversely, when forbidden from doing something, there have to be people willing to back up the prohibition and punish the offenders, or there might as well not be any mention.

If people knew that the State Police were no longer issuing traffic citations, what do you think would happen to the speed limits used?

So when the President violates his oath of office, violates the very spirit of the document that gives his office any authority, and contemplates ever more egregious violations of the rights and privileges of the citizens of his country, what recourse remains?

And here is the interesting question, what happens when no one has both the authority and willingness to put a stop to it? When the nation's chief law enforcement officer routinely lies to both Congress (earning a contempt citation) and the American People, who issues the order? When the nation's chief diplomat is openly contemptuous of the military that will have to bear the brunt of his screwups, what's next?

When the Speaker of the House won't even consider overturning the most destructive and unpopular piece of legislation (that the Executive Branch routinely ignores), and the Supreme Court has ruled that no one has any standing to overturn what he described as a "tax" (even though the authors said explicitly to the contrary - that means it wasn't "interpreting", but rather "deleting and replacing the text", which means legislating from the bench), and State Supreme Courts rule that we have to surrender our civil rights in favor of politically-protected whims, who do we turn to?

Four kinds of boxes - soap, jury, ballot and the final arbiter.

Update: The Most Transparent Administration in History (tm) reports, "Why of course it isn't any of your business who the President and his staff talk to in that taxpayer-funded building", and the Federal Courts back them up.

So the President no one wants to stop from destroying this country can now meet openly with whoever he wants, and no one will ever know. The drumbeat continues apace...