WHOSE STATE DEPARTMENT IS IT, ANYWAY? State Dept. Still Sitting on a Motherlode of Clinton Emails.
Archive for 2017
October 24, 2017
OUR RULING CLASS, STILL CLUELESS: On Safari In Trump’s America:
Hale and Watson’s opening remarks to focus groups were an honest statement of the group’s animating worldview: that all things are possible when politicians make the right sales pitch to a fundamentally reasonable electorate that can agree on a lot of things. That in a time of division, they could find the things that still bound Americans together. That with enough research and focus groups and listening tours and charts and graphs, they could figure out—and cure—what ails the body politic.
It was a thesis that would not go unchallenged, even in flyover country. In rural Wisconsin, it turns out, the natives have Google.
We had come to the final stop on our listening tour, and the hippies were wary. Viroqua, a town of less than 5,000 people, has in recent years become home to a tiny progressive community. Earnest college graduates toil on organic farms; a “folk school” offers classes in sustainable living, from rabbit butchering to basket-weaving. Migrants from the likes of Madison and Berkeley are attracted to a rural idyll of food and electric co-ops, alternative schools, and locally sourced everything.
“Isn’t this underwritten by the DNC?” a local cafe owner asked Watson after his just-here-to-listen opening spiel. “I read somewhere you’re spending $20 million,” another man said. Another participant asked about corporate donors.
See, that’s their real problem. The rubes have wised up.
PETER BERKOWITZ IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: James Comey and Robert Mueller Imperil the Rule of Law: The former FBI directors tend to investigate Republicans far more zealously than Democrats.
News broke last week about possible Russian wrongdoing in the U.S., and it didn’t involve the Trump campaign. The Hill reported that in 2009 the FBI “gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”
The FBI kept that information from Congress and the public, the Hill reported, even as Hillary Clinton’s State Department in 2010 approved a deal that transferred control of more than 20% of America’s uranium supply to a Russian company. The Hill also reported the FBI had documents showing that during this period Russia engineered the transmission of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
The FBI director at the time: Robert Mueller, now special counsel in charge of investigating “Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election and related matters.” The revelations can only heighten anxieties about Mr. Mueller, the FBI and the rule of law. . . .
Then-FBI Director Comey played softball with the 2015-16 Hillary Clinton investigation. Despite the gravity of the matter—military service members can be court-martialed and discharged for sending classified information on nonsecure systems—Mr. Comey mostly avoided issuing subpoenas and cooperated with the Obama Justice Department in obscuring the investigation’s criminal character. He permitted Mrs. Clinton and her team to destroy evidence and granted generous immunity deals to her advisers. He drafted a statement exonerating Mrs. Clinton months before the FBI interviewed her. And his FBI neither recorded the interview nor compelled her to answer questions under oath.
In addition, in a July 2016 press conference, Mr. Comey usurped the authority of Justice Department prosecutors by publicly exonerating Mrs. Clinton. In the process, he confused the pertinent legal issue by asserting she did not intend to violate the law. But intent wasn’t a necessary condition for a crime. Federal law criminalizes “gross negligence” in mishandling classified information. By Mr. Comey’s own account, Mrs. Clinton had been “extremely careless.”
With Mr. Trump, by contrast, Mr. Comey is playing hardball even after leaving government. In May, shortly after President Trump fired him, Mr. Comey—possibly in conflict with FBI policy—leaked notes of an Oval Office meeting with the president. His purpose, Mr. Comey publicly acknowledged, was to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
Mr. Mueller is playing hardball too. Unlike the Clinton investigation into narrowly defined allegations, his mandate authorizes pursuit of unspecified crimes.
Hardball for Trump, softball for Hillary, and how dare you call us biased tools.
CHANGE: Japanese defense minister sounds alarm on North Korea.
The minister, Itsunori Odonera, said this rising threat means his country, along with South Korea and the United States, have to collectively take what he called “different responses.”
He did not elaborate.
The comments were made at the outset of a meeting with US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and South Korea’s defense minister, Song Young-moo, at a meeting in the Philippines.
Get Taiwan in on these collective security talks.
CHANGE: Appeals court in SF allows challenge to state law banning prostitution. “Why should it be illegal to sell something that it’s legal to give away?”
DAVID HARSANYI: 10 Times CNN Told Us An Apple Was A Banana.
We’re talking about CNN host Chris Cuomo, who, in addition to his hopeless bias, regularly offers factually impaired assertions on every media platform available to him. During the presidential race, Cuomo argued that while it was “illegal” for citizens to look at WikiLeaks emails, the media was afforded special protection with illegally obtained documents. “It’s different for the media,” Cuomo explained, “So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us.”
You might also remember that after an anti-Islamist was shot in Texas a few years ago, Cuomo, who has a law degree, did a bit of victim-blaming by arguing that “Hate speech is excluded from protection” under the First Amendment. Instead of admitting that his aversion to speech critical of Islam had led him to say something untrue, Cuomo attempted to walk it back by offering examples that had absolutely nothing to do with his initial comment.
We’re talking about Sally Kohn and her cohosts, who raise their hands in the air in a nod to the “hands up, don’t shoot” slogan. Political commentators are free to engage in political theater, of course, but if we call out Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow when they perpetuate political myths, why not CNN, which fashions itself somewhere in the middle of Fox and MSNBC? CNN didn’t instruct its talent to stick to facts, it pushed the video out on its social media channels. Yet nothing in the Michael Brown case, not the ballistic or the DNA evidence or the witness statements, backs up the contention that Brown was shot with his hands up. Apples are not bananas no matter how many times you scream.
Read the whole thing.
If you’re unfamiliar with the apple/banana reference, here you go.
And a reminder: An apple is a banana, if the Party requires it to be.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Assault on Academic Freedom at UCLA.
SO FAR, SO GOOD: Donald Trump: King of Deregulation?
It seemed a characteristic bit of Trumpian magniloquence—he’s not only a boffo deregulator, he’s the best ever! Still, it was a remarkable claim. Trump has overseen more deregulation than George W. Bush or Ronald “government is the problem” Reagan?
But, measured by at least one significant standard, Trump’s claim is true. Patrick McLaughlin of the Mercatus Center, a free-market-oriented think tank at George Mason University, applies innovative research techniques to the study of regulation and the economy. He recently analyzed the output of regulatory restrictions promulgated in the last several presidencies, going back to Jimmy Carter. McLaughlin found that there have been periods in some presidencies when regulatory output slowed or declined—in several years of the Reagan presidency, for instance, and in 1996, when “reinventing government” was part of Bill Clinton’s election pitch. But over the full terms of each recent president, including Reagan, regulation increased, according to McLaughlin. So far the increase in regulatory restrictions under Trump has been near to zero.
“So in that sense, the president may be right,” the economist reports. “There may not be a net increase in regulations so far under him, and since there was a net increase in every four-year term for every preceding president, going back to the ’70s, then I think that could be a safe statement.”
How about a moratorium on new regulations until we get a serious net decrease?
EUGENE VOLOKH ON WOODY ALLEN’S MANHATTAN: Is sex with a 17-year-old statutory rape? “I’ll save for another post the question whether there’s something immoral about 42-year-olds having sex with 17-year-olds, and focus here on the law — and the law in New York, both then and now, is that this isn’t statutory rape at all. The general age of consent in New York is 17; indeed, most states set the age of consent at 16, several more set it at 17, and only about a dozen set it at 18. (For more details, see here.) In nearly all other Western countries, the age of consent is 16 or younger, though a handful set it at 17. And these age-16-or-17 ages of consent aren’t just a post-Sexual-Revolution innovation.” It used to be 10 to 12.
JOEL KOTKIN: The New State Role Models:
New York, California, Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey are all tilting left with policies driven by powerful public employees, greens, urban real estate speculators as well as ethnic and gender activists.
To be sure, kowtowing to these interests has landed these states among the worst fiscal situations in the nation. Yet some blue regions also have grown economically well above the national average since 2010, largely driven by asset inflation, particularly real estate and stocks, and technology. California’s robust growth, although now slowing, and its world-dominating tech sector has made it a creditable role model for similarly minded states.
But what has been good in the aggregate has not worked so well for most Californians. Despite all the constant complaining about inequality and racial injustice, California, notes progressive economist James Galbraith, has also become among the most economically unequal parts of the country, topped only by Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Particularly damaged have been the prospects for the young and minorities, particularly in terms of achieving homeownership.
Texas and the red state alternative
Texas, California’s only real rival for national power and influence over the past 20 years, has out-performed its golden rival almost two to one in job growth, including in many high and middle-income sectors. It has also still managed to produce more jobs per capita since 2010. The Texas model is now being tested by the oil bust, and the controversy over Hurricane Harvey, both of which have intensified criticism of its development model.
I have a prediction as to how it will turn out.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Happy Mole Day!
TURN ABOUT IS FAIR RHINO: African rhino injures poacher in rare reversal of fortunes.
HALTING MEASURES THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION LEFT IN PLACE FOR NATIONAL SUICIDE SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO ME: Trump Admin Expected to Kill Landmark Boeing Plane Sales to Iran. Kind of like removing the plastic bag from one’s head. And yet the left will object.
HE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW? Japanese Defense Minister Sounds Alarm on North Korea. Of course the reeeee brigade thinks this is somehow because Trump “antagonized” Whoa That Man Fat leader of NK, instead of our passivity and Obama’s laxity in foreign affairs having brought things to this pass.
SOUNDS LIKE THEY SHOULD AVOID DEMOCRAT MEN (ODDS ARE, IN EACH INSTANCE CITED, THE HARASSER WAS A DEM): Warren, other senators share horror stories of sexual harassment.
THEY’VE ALREADY MADE THEIR BEDS: ‘We don’t want them back’: No mercy for foreigners who joined ISIS.
THE TALIBAN MERELY KEPT HIM IN A STEEL BOX 24/7 — THE US ARMY KEPT HIM IN A CUBICLE 9 TO 5, FIVE DAYS A WEEK. THE HUMANITY! Bowe Bergdahl: US treated me worse than the Taliban.
CLAUDIA ROSETT: The UN’s Mugabe Moment, and Its Perennial Iran Problem.
Mugabe’s appointment as a WHO goodwill ambassador provoked well-justified outrage, and it was at least commendable that the WHO rescinded an appointment it should never have made in the first place. But where’s the outrage over the rolling depravities rooted far deeper within the UN system?
Read the whole thing.
October 23, 2017
GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS: Kathy Griffin Blasts Feminist Lawyer Lisa Bloom as Incompetent ‘Fame Whore.’
AT AMAZON, deals in Winter Sports.
INTEGRITY LOST: The Journalism Chronicles.
BRENDAN O’NEILL: The Danger of “Believe the Victims.” And why Atticus Finch is an evil rape denier now.
It is not accidental that Mockingbird’s focus is a false accusation of rape. Accusations of rape were a key weapon in the armoury of racists in the American South. As everyone will know, black men were frequently lynched on the basis of accusations of rape. Others were lucky and were only imprisoned. What is less well known is that the culture around this racist weaponisation of rape accusations was strikingly similar to today’s “Believe Victims” movement. It likewise frowned upon scepticism, sought to protect women from cross-examination, and created a climate in which accusation alone was enough to destroy a man (a black man, in any event).
The accuser was always believed. In the words of Ida B Wells, the early 20th-century African-American journalist and activist, “The word of the accuser is held to be true”, meaning “the rule of law [is] reversed” and the accused must “prove himself innocent”. Then, as now, it was considered cruel to examine women or ask them to substantiate their accusations. In 1899, a writer for the Atlanta Constitution expressed his horror at “the very thought of a delicate woman being forced to go into the publicity of a court and there detail her awful wrongs in the presence of the brute who had inflicted [them]”. The woman’s goodness was proof enough, he said. This idea finds terrifying echo in Rose MacGowan’s insistence today that she doesn’t need to prove that Harvey Weinstein abused her. “I am the proof”, she said.
Read the whole thing.