Quick Takes (v68): Bring on the Bounty Hunters

Breaking News Alert: Pence has classified documents, too!'

From the article:

Lawyers for former Vice President Mike Pence said a “small number” of classified documents were found at his home in Indiana last week.

Pence’s lawyers notified the National Archives and Records Administration of the discovery on Wednesday, according to a letter obtained by CNBC. The news was reported earlier by CNN.

The classified documents were discovered on Jan. 16 after Pence had outside counsel “with experience in handling classified documents” search his own home and records “out of an abundance of caution” following the news that classified documents were found at President Joe Biden’s home and office.

I'll let you put your own spin on why Pence waited until documents were found at President Biden's property and his old office, instead of doing that when they were found at his old boss's place.  

My spin? He realized that if it can happen to Biden - a regular, church-going guy - it can happen to anyone.

And what happens now?

• Does the press go back to slamming the Rs for their carelessness, and give Biden five or ten minutes of breathing room? 

• Does the media now invest air time trying to determine the political viability of Pence, who many think might be running for president against Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and that other guy?

• Will the House Oversight and Accountability Committee decide we need to know who's been in Pence's house? Who wouldn't love to see that visitor log, right? And why he waited so long to disclose the finding? And why the documents weren't already in a locked safe? And why he hired a lawyer to search, instead of inviting the FBI to tea? And what, exactly, constitutes a "small number" of documents? Is that Joe Biden literally a small number, or is that a Trumpian small number? And did Mother know he had them? 

• Will the Ds put their rising young stars (or their ancient ones) in front of the cameras to read their Republican colleagues' scathing tweets and press releases about how horrible it is when Democrats mishandle documents?

Shortly after seeing the headline, I sketched out a perfect solution.

The houses, garages, car trunks, libraries, golf bags, duffel bags, diaper bags, bar carts, and sock drawers of every member of Congress, as well as every living president and vice president, must be searched for classified documents or other absconded-with items; the search must happen as soon as possible, to protect our national sanity, er, I mean, our national security.

And Ivanka's grave, too, must be searched - don't forget Ivanka's grave. I mean, who buries his ex-wife on his golf course while under investigation for missing documents?

Who does that? Donald Trump does, that's who.

I realize this would be an expensive search, given the whole debt ceiling and fiscal cliff and whatnot. I also understand we have a shortage of law enforcement officers across the country, so we certainly can't repurpose any of them for this. But I have a plan for that.

Pull all of the Republican pork-barrel spending from the omnibus spending bill passed last month. There's at least $900M in there that they don't want, and think is wrong, and I expect they'd be delighted if it didn't get spent in their districts.

Now that we've got the funding lined up, how do we spend it?  

Call up the Texas bounty hunters.

Pay them on a graduated scale, starting at $2K per page for the lowest level of classification, and up to $10K for the highest level: top secret - classified - eyes only - compartmentalized - secured room - share under penalty of death - don't even think about burying this with the mother of your favorite kids - or sharing it with your financially impaired son - yada yada yada.

 I'm thinking that $900M would be a tasty enticement for these folks.

Why the Texas bounty hunters, you ask?

Anyone who can determine the date of a random woman's last period as she walks past them into doctor's office surely would be able to determine if a document has a classified marking on it. This should be a piece of cake for them. 

Got an idea for how to bring this all to an end? Drop a comment!