Sometimes, the American system of justice just puts on a rubber nose and floppy shoes and does a clown dance for all the world to see. Consider the case of Aaron Cantu, a journalist who faces 75 years in federal prison for Being Around when some folks ran riot during Inauguration weekend last January. From The Santa Fe Reporter:

On January 20, a collection of DC police and federal law enforcement officers arrested more than 200 people in connection with a rally that began as a protest, but turned destructive as several people broke the windows of businesses, damaged vehicles and allegedly caused a police officer to break his wrist. Cantú was not named specifically by prosecutors as the cause of any of the destruction, as some defendants were. Instead, the indictment named him as being present while the damage happened. The arrests have been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union, other civil rights groups and newspapers as overly broad and lacking hard evidence.

(Not for nothing, but I, too, technically was "present" when this was going on. So were film crews from every major news outlet around the world. What is this chickenshit anyway?)

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Meanwhile, on this anniversary week of the Pulse nightclub massacre, the folks around Orlando are assured by a federal judge that this fellow will be home as he is no danger to them or to anyone else. From Fox 13 in Tampa:

Shot.

Federal Judge Thomas McCoun granted bond for Russell Friday, writing there was no clear and convincing evidence "the defendant represents a threat to any person or community."

Chaser.

Last month, cops found bomb-making material, weapons, and ammo in the garage of his Tampa Palms apartment. On his bedroom dresser, a framed picture of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. On his computer, Nazi and white supremacist propaganda. The 21-year-old, who is a member of the Florida National Guard, admitted to being a neo-Nazi sympathizer, and to making explosives materials. In federal court Thursday, we learned while cops were discovering all of this disturbing evidence, Brandon Russell went shopping to buy more guns and 500 rounds of ammo. This time he took a buddy along who shares the same neo-Nazi beliefs.

There's a gathering wildness in the country right now, much of it stoked by the basic appeal of the last successful presidential campaign, which was successful at least as much because of the appeals to that wildness as because of economic dislocation and insecurity. (None of this is About Race, of course, because nothing ever is About Race.) The wildness was gathering under the surface throughout the tenure of the last president, who insisted that it still could be outwrestled by the better angels of our nature. I never agreed with him for a moment about that, and I'm even less convinced of it today.

Our institutions of government are in a dangerous state of apathy, and they risk being overwhelmed by the wildness now unleashed. We need tough, partisan politics to solve the crisis in our institutions, because tough, partisan politics were their original fuel and what those institutions were designed to control for the general good. Tough, partisan politics make those institutions stronger and more capable of resisting the transient passions of the political moment. And those are at high tide right now.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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