that congress in 1999 let lapse the law that created a special prosecutor that could not be fired by the president. a reform put in place after the saturday night massacre of watergate fame. we, as a country now, simply lack a criminal investigative mechanism that does not suckject to the president's direction and control. so the appointment of a special counsel, not an independent counsel, but a special counsel and especially this one, bob mueller who seems to be a man very hard to intimidate or push around should give us a measure of independence. but at the end of the day if president trump wants to direct him to be fired, he can do so. so that's going to be looming over this investigation that was not looming over independent counsel investigations in the '80s and the '90s and an investigation of -- a fact finding investigation from