Familiar smirks and the rot they bespeak

In recent days, both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok have appeared before senate panels. The hearings were convened to explore whether anti-Trump bias had impacted ongoing investigations.

DOJ Rod Rosenstein, during his senate testimony

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok, at Senate hearing

The two were remarkably unsympathetic witnesses, dripping with an arrogance doubtless peculiar to Swamp-system beasts who believe themselves to be without law's reach, and are contemptuous of the common American whose legitimate interests they purportedly safeguard.

Their smirks struck me as familiar. Then I remembered where I'd seen them before. And I recalled two others who'd laughed at justice, confident that they had nothing to fear from an official process.

This photo is of Mississippi Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price and Sheriff Laurence Rainey during a 1964 hearing. Price had delivered civil rights workers James Chaney, Micky Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman to their KKK murderers. The pair enjoyed sympathizers' uncritical support, just as Rosenstein and Strzok received senate Democrats' fierce backing.

Those smirks are the product of confidence that processes are rigged, that loyalists without integrity have corrupted their machinery.