VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON SUSAN RICE: The Obama Administration’s Zelig.

Yet, to be fair, it is difficult to know whether Rice was a seasoned architect of that duplicity. Given her reputation as a useful naïf and loyal fall person, perhaps she was easily manipulated into going on five Sunday shows to mislead and distort. Her subordinate Ben Rhodes needed a vessel to assure the nation that the Benghazi attacks were not due to administration policy failures, and Rice was deemed the ideal vehicle to spread that myth.

And the fable of the supposedly honorable Bowe Bergdahl (currently facing Pentagon charges of desertion)?

Rice was there, too. To prop up an unhinged trade of five terrorists at Guantanamo for an AWOL soldier, Rice falsely claimed that Bergdahl had “served with honor and distinction.” Then she trumped that with a quite unnecessary fillip: “Sergeant Bergdahl wasn’t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield.” Left unsaid was that a number of American soldiers were killed as a result of efforts to find his walkabout whereabouts.

Again, note always the weird but characteristic Rice emphatics: Just as she did not go on one show but five to disseminate Benghazi falsehoods, so too it was not enough just to leave Bergdahl’s story at “honor and distinction” without the added “captured on the battlefield” nonsense. Unfortunately, she can be counted on to give a tough, no-holds-barred confirmation of something false — on the logic that bogusness gains credibility the louder and stronger it is expressed.

Her expertise is in telling the Big Lie, yet the media still seems mostly happy to treat her as an expert on most anything else.

KEEP ROCKIN’: LA Times left out a few crucial details in tweet about awful shooting in San Bernardino.

(Classical reference in headline.)

CHANGE: Toshiba warns it may not survive crisis.

Did anybody pick Toshiba ahead of Sears in the Established Brands dead pool?

CULTURE OF INTIMIDATION: Florida sheriff under fire over anti-drug video defends tactics: ‘We don’t negotiate’

In the video shared on Facebook, Lake County Sheriff Peyton Grinnell told heroin drug dealers to “enjoy trying to sleep at night” because his officers were coming for them.

“You can’t negotiate with these drug dealers. They know what they’re doing,” Grinnell said Tuesday on “Fox and Friends.” He added, “They are pushing this poison out on our streets. We need to take a tough stance on it and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Critics seemed to be riled up more by the four agents wearing black hoods and masks standing behind him.

The sheriff, who has been on the job since January, said the agents are working undercover in a “dark and dangerous world” and their identities must be protected.

“But they wanted to be a part of that video,” Grinnell said. “They have a passion to serve. They want to make sure this county is safe so I was proud when they wanted to be on that video.”

Drug criminalization may be even more corrosive to our institutions than drug use can be to individuals.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1433: House Oversight Committee Republicans Call On President Trump To Fire Commissioner Koskinen.

STANDING UP FOR INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE:

One of the greatest threats to intellectual freedom on campus is having tenured full-professors who are afraid to speak up because of fear of administrative censorship and that has resulted in UT acquiescence to the Tennessee legislature, said Mary McAlpin, a professor of modern languages and literature and one of Monday’s speakers, who encouraged faculty members to be advocates for the issues they believe in.

“Tenure is a privilege and like all privileges it comes with related responsibility,” McAlpin said. “It allows us to participate in shared governance with our administrators and to hold them accountable.”

But that’s not the only thing that tenured full professors are afraid of. I know several at the University of Tennessee who have said they’re afraid to admit they support Trump, or oppose Black Lives Matter, and don’t like the way the university administration has reacted on either front. But one nice thing about increased legislative interest in what happens at universities is that it reminds people of the importance of academic freedom, something that in many places seemed forgotten — or actively disparaged — back when everything was leftist hegemony.

But I certainly think that faculty members should be “advocates for the issues they believe in,” and I certainly intend to keep that up.

GRANDSTANDING: Transportation Committee Dem Wants Hearing on United Airlines Incident.

Must every problem or pain find its solution or palliative in Washington?

TRUTH TO POWER: Drawing Criticism, Jordan Peterson Lectures at ‘Free Speech’ Initiative.

Discussing his public refusal to use pronouns other than “he” and “she,” Peterson said, “One thing I won’t do is use the made-up words of postmodern neo-Marxists, who are playing a particular game to gender identity, as an extension of their particular reprehensible philosophy.” . . .

Speaking to an audience overwhelmingly comprised of white men, Peterson said he thought college campuses were “overrun, in large part, with disciplines that have, in my estimation, no valid reason to exist.”

“I think disciplines like women’s studies should be defunded,” he said. “We’re causing full time, destructive employment for people who are causing nothing but trouble. What they promote has zero intellectual credibility.”

Props to Harvard for having such a speaker without a riot.

I HAD NO IDEA: As the freshman Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch will have ‘cafeteria duty’ and a few other hazing rituals.

How do you keep a new Supreme Court justice’s head from getting too big?

Start by making him take notes and answer the door at the justices’ private meetings. Then remind him he speaks last at those discussions. Finally, assign him the job of listening to gripes about the food at the court’s cafeteria.

That’s what awaits Neil Gorsuch, who joined the Supreme Court on Monday as the “junior justice,” the freshman of the nine-member court. The menial duties for the newest justice are a part of tradition, but not a bad deal for a job that comes with lifetime tenure and the prestige of a high court seat.

I’m not sure “menial duties” count as hazing, but they’re probably good for the ego.

DESPITE ALL THE TALK, TRUMP HASN’T DONE A TINY FRACTION OF WHAT FDR DID: FDR’s War Against the Press.

Like Trump, he feuded with the mainstream media; like Trump, he used a new medium as a direct pipeline to the people. He also used the government’s machinery to suppress unfavorable coverage, a fate we hope to avoid in the age of Trump. . . .

In the 1936 election, Roosevelt claimed that 85 percent of the newspapers were against him. In the standard work on the subject, historian Graham J. White finds that the actual percentage was much lower and the print press generally gave FDR balanced news coverage, but most editorialists and columnists were indeed opposed to the administration. Convinced that the media were out to get him, Roosevelt warned in 1938 that “our newspapers cannot be edited in the interests of the general public, from the counting room. And I wish we could have a national symposium on that question, particularly in relation to the freedom of the press. How many bogies are conjured up by invoking that greatly overworked phrase?”

Roosevelt’s relationship with radio was warmer. The key distinction was that broadcasters operated in an entirely different political context: Thanks to federal rules and administrators, they had to tread much more lightly than newspapers did. At its inception in 1934, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reduced the license renewal period for stations from three years to only six months. Meanwhile, Roosevelt tapped Herbert L. Pettey as secretary of the FCC (and its predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission). Pettey had overseen radio for Roosevelt in the 1932 campaign. After his appointment, he worked in tandem with the Democratic National Committee to handle “radio matters” with both the networks and local stations.

It did not take long for broadcasters to get the message. NBC, for example, announced that it was limiting broadcasts “contrary to the policies of the United States government.” CBS Vice President Henry A. Bellows said that “no broadcast would be permitted over the Columbia Broadcasting System that in any way was critical of any policy of the Administration.” He elaborated “that the Columbia system was at the disposal of President Roosevelt and his administration and they would permit no broadcast that did not have his approval.” Local station owners and network executives alike took it for granted, as Editor and Publisher observed, that each station had “to dance to Government tunes because it is under Government license.” . . .

Even as he was securing domination of the ether, Roosevelt worked hard to neutralize criticism from the print media. Here he used a combination of manipulation and intimidation. By 1935, the famous Roosevelt charm was much less of a guarantee of success, and his press conferences became increasingly orchestrated. Like Trump, he singled out some reporters who wanted to ask questions and ignored others. Writing for The Washington Post in 1938, Harlan Miller commented that Roosevelt only answered questions which enabled him to “utter an oral editorial.…He selects only those on which he can ring the bell.”

He also gave special access to pro-administration outlets, such as J. David Stern’s Philadelphia Record and Marshall Field’s Chicago Sun. Another Field publication, PM, was probably the closest facsimile to a New Deal Breitbart. In both editorials and news reports, PM repeatedly demonized FDR’s enemies, often comparing them to fascists. These pro–New Deal outlets had a special entrée to top administration officials, who gave them valuable scoops. The collaboration went both ways. In 1942, Field brought an antitrust complaint against the much less Roosevelt-friendly Associated Press.
The Black Committee

Roosevelt’s intimidation efforts reached their apogee in the hands of the Special Senate Committee on Lobbying. The president indirectly recruited Sen. Hugo L. Black (D–Ala.), a zealous and effective New Deal loyalist, as chair. The committee’s original mission was to probe the opposition campaign to the “death sentence” in the Public Utility Holding Company Bill, a provision that would have allowed, under certain circumstances, the dissolution of utility holding companies. The Black Committee gained traction with the public when it brought to light evidence that some lobbyists had concocted thousands of “fake telegrams” sent to Congress to protest the bill. Smelling blood, Black expanded the investigation into a general probe of anti–New Deal voices, including journalists.

The Treasury granted Black access to tax returns dating back to 1925 of such critics as David Lawrence of the United States News. Then he moved to obtain his targets’ private telegrams, demanding that telegraph companies let the committee search copies of all incoming and outgoing telegrams for the first nine months of 1935. When Western Union refused on privacy grounds, the FCC, at Black’s urging, ordered it to comply.

Over a nearly three-month period at the end of 1935, FCC and Black Committee staffers searched great stacks of telegrams in Western Union’s D.C. office. Operating with virtually no restriction, they read the communications of sundry lobbyists, newspaper publishers, and conservative political activists as well as every member of Congress.

Sounds more like Obama than Trump.

Related (From Ed): And then there was that time in 1942, when FDR gave a New York Daily News journalist whose reporting he disagreed with a Nazi Iron Cross medal.

THE LARGE PRINT GIVETH AND THE SMALL PRINT TAKETH AWAY: Here’s the Fine Print On The Country’s Biggest-Ever Free College Plan.

WELL, YES. HENCE ALL THE DISTRACTION. Turns out Obama was the real Russian stooge.

The circumstantial evidence is mounting that the Kremlin succeeded in infiltrating the US government at the highest levels.

How else to explain a newly elected president looking the other way after an act of Russian aggression? Agreeing to a farcically one-sided nuclear deal? Mercilessly mocking the idea that Russia represents our foremost geo-political foe?

Accommodating the illicit nuclear ambitions of a Russian ally? Welcoming a Russian foothold in the Middle East? Refusing to provide arms to a sovereign country invaded by Russia? Diminishing our defenses and pursuing a Moscow-friendly policy of hostility to fossil fuels?

All of these items, of course, refer to things said or done by President Barack Obama.

Walter Russell Mead has made the same point.

ALL THAT “NOTORIOUS RBG” STUFF WENT TO HER HEAD: The Hill: Justice Ginsburg gambled to stay. Now she may lose her legacy.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Judge Richard Posner’s unimpeachable honesty; Or, why we should start electing federal judges.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Two Artificial Neural Networks Meet in an Online Hub and Change the Future (of Competition, Market Dynamics and Society).

FRUITS OF HILLARY’S FAILED, ILLEGAL WAR: Migrants Are Being Sold At Open Slave Markets In Libya.

INDEED: Enough With PolitiFact’s Opinion Journalism.

THIS IS STUPID AND DANGEROUS AND THE PEOPLE BEHIND IT SHOULD BE FIRED: Asking people to show up on time is not inclusive, says Clemson employee training. “It disrespects other people’s cultures to ask them to follow American conventions of appointments starting when they are literally scheduled to start.”

It disrespects our culture to be in America and not follow American conventions. And Clemson is mostly an engineering school, where precision and accuracy matter more than culture. Or should, anyway. . . .

WAIT, I THOUGHT TRUMP WAS PUTIN’S STOOGE: Tillerson: Russia must choose between Assad and the US.

POLITICS: Reporters on Dems’ thin bench: ‘Democrats are kind of screwed.’ What are you talking about? They’ve got Elizabeth Warren. And Hillary will be rested and ready in 2020, with her new motto, This Time It’s Really My Turn, Bitchez! and for the youth vote they’ve got Bernie Sanders!

But a caveat: “Democrats may not have many broadly appealing candidates but that’s only if you limit yourself to Senators, Governors and other office holders. If you expand the field to consider billionaires, pop stars, movie stars and other well-known faces who lean left (and let’s face it, the Democrats have lots of star power) then the bench might be looking a little better. That won’t help them take back seats in state houses but it could help them take back the White House.”

And right on cue, that fresh face, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is getting talked about.

IS UCLA A HOSTILE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FOR CHRISTIANS? UCLA professor smears Trump and Pence as ‘arrogant Christians in the White House.’

Prediction: In a decade, you’ll be missing their humble and measured approach.

I’M NOT BUYING THIS HUFFPO HEADLINE: Democrats Contemplate How To Forfeit Their Power Upon Regaining The Senate.

“When the Democrats return to the majority and capture the presidency ― which we will, that day is going to arrive ― we will restore the 60-vote margin,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told MSNBC on Monday. “We will ensure that for the Supreme Court, there is that special margin that any candidate has to reach, because that is essential to ensuring that our country has a confidence in people who are nominated, rather than just someone who passes a litmus test.”

This isn’t what the Democrat base wants to hear before winning back the majority, and it isn’t how the Democrat base expects to exact its revenge after winning back the majority, and it certainly isn’t what the Democrat base wanted when it forced Chuck Schumer into the ill-advised Gorsuch filibuster.

SCOTT SNYDER AND SUNGTAE PARK: A Menu of Imperfect Strategic Options for South Korea.

One potential option for South Korea is to gradually align with a rising China while loosening its ties with the United States. But this policy relies on the assumption that China will be the next hegemon in Asia.

Given China’s slowing economic growth, internal problems and the fact that it continues to face competition with other regional actors, this outcome is not assured. China also does not share common liberal democratic values with South Korea, and Beijing is highly unlikely to help Seoul in the case of a North Korean attack, or respect South Korean interests. Siding with China would also not inoculate South Korea against losses in the event of rising US–China competition or even military conflict.

Another option is for South Korea to balance against China’s rise, together with the United States and Japan. But this could result in Seoul losing Beijing’s support altogether in dealing with Pyongyang. Moreover, if South Korea were to become the frontline state in a coalition against China, it would bear the brunt of the consequences of a US–China conflict, just as in the Korean War. There is also no knowing whether such balancing against China would succeed, but the price of failing would be costly.

Seoul could instead seek to remain neutral. But when great powers compete, they have incentives to draw a neutral state into their respective coalitions to gain advantage. Without a great power ally, deterring North Korea would also become more difficult.

Read the whole thing.

South Korea is also undergoing a leadership crisis, and voters appear poised to install leftwing presidential candidate Moon Jae-in, who comes with all the expected anti-American baggage.

Our relationship status with Seoul has always been It’s Complicated, but it’s getting more so.