AP SOURCE: YATES TO TESTIFY ON WARNING WHITE HOUSE ON FLYNN

[Hortensis]

19. Perhaps, but NONE are assassinations of American officials.

Btw, the point of all this is really that American officials don't assassinate each other in our advanced democracy and also that leaders of advanced nations simply do not assassinate each others' officials.

Probably not just because diplomacy has very well developed procedures that offer far better alternatives, and not just for moral and ethical reasons, but also in part for the same reasons it was once simply unthinkable for officers to order troops to aim at their counterparts, or for them to treat captured officers as anything but gentlemen deserving of special courtesy. But in any case, this prohibition is extremely well embedded in the cultures of all advances nations, and probably many others.

A murderous autocrat like Putin might enjoy thumbing his nose at other nations by assassinating Russians overseas and thus pushing way beyond the accepted behaviors of nations, but he would risk losing everything if he dared such an unthinkable aggression.

I enjoy good political thrillers, in print and film, but this kind of thing is mostly just enjoyable fiction, not reality. Of course, the bizarre, amoral, unstable, amateurs who used Rump to get "inside," might be capable of anything. But if they did indulge, it would only speed their transfer from the national scene to federal penitentiaries.