FROM ANN ALTHOUSE, A QUESTION FOR COKIE ROBERTS, ET AL.: “The question, of course, is why didn’t she or any of the other women in the press corps say it out loud? And what are you still not saying out loud? Are you just waiting until somebody else exposes one of the politicians you have been protecting or is there no one else you’re just hanging back not talking about until the day comes when you’ll be saying, once again, oh, yeah, we all knew that?” Oh, there’s someone else.
Archive for 2017
November 28, 2017
IN THE MAIL: Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder.
DAVID SOLWAY ON THE WAGES OF INVERSION:
We live in an age in which things are no longer what they are supposed to be. Words have come to denote the opposite of what they signify. Cultural institutions on which we rely to serve our personal and national interests have morphed into caricatures of their original intentions, working against their foundational purposes.
Linguistic and institutional inversion is the time-dishonored strategy of totalitarian systems and is generally associated with the theory and practice of the Left, which has infiltrated the culture and polity of the free world, particularly in the areas of language use, the media, education, the arts and gender relations. The democratic West is now at the mercy of its own reverse polarity.
Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: U. Texas president caves rather than tell judge why he personally overturned student’s exoneration. “Did University of Texas President Greg Fenves unilaterally overturn a finding in favor of a student accused of rape because the accuser’s father gave the university a hefty donation? We’ll never know, because the public university settled with ‘John Doe’ rather than risk Fenves having to testify earlier today in the accused student’s lawsuit against him and the school.”
WHAT A FARRAGO: At CNS News, I argue that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an offense to the Constitution, and it is time to abolish it.
CONTINUE APPLYING PRESSURE UNTIL THE BLEEDING STOPS: Congress Pressured to End Sexual Harassment Secret Payoffs as They Expect More Scandals.
This is such a good-government no-brainer that it takes a US Congress to get it wrong.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Denzel Betrays Own Message with “Roman J. Israel Esq.”
I’m willing to cut him some slack. Every big-name actor takes questionable roles, but Denzel seems to have taken fewer than most.
AT AMAZON, Cyber Monday deals continue all week.
SNATCHING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY: Trump’s invoking “Pocahontas” to criticize Elizabeth Warren at a ceremony to honor Navajo war heroes was to say the least highly inappropriate and buffoonish. Yet somehow, the Democrats and their media allies have shifted the focus to a clear loser, the question of Warren’s phony claim to Native American heritage. Meanwhile, media outlets keep referring to Warren as having “claimed” or “unsubstantiated” Native American heritage. Five years after the controversy over her “claim” originally broke, if there were any evidence, DNA or genealogical, supporting the claim she would have produced it by now. Why can’t reporters bring themselves to write something like “apparently false claim…” at this point? I think we know the answer. You want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Another Conyers Accuser, Indian Warren and Much, Much More.
ANN ALTHOUSE NOTES A DOUBLE STANDARD AT THE WASHINGTON POST: “I wonder what we’d think of a divorced man who wrote an essay about his life and began by sharing the thoughts he had as he looked down on the dark-blond head of some woman attending to his genitals.”
Well, male sexuality is icky. Female sexuality is liberating.
PRESIDENT TWEETS, ROME BURNS: While The President’s gratuitous snark about Elizabeth Warren dominates the news cycle, major media seems to be missing the real news that will seriously affect them as journalists and the public at large. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a provision of law that allows the government to conduct mass surveillance of innocent people, including Americans. The Hill reminds readers that Congress is poised to jam through reauthorization of this mass surveillance:
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has marked up the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act, S. 2010. The bill, sponsored by Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is actually worse than existing law. It explicitly allows the attorney general to use [electronic communications] information collected under Section 702 for domestic crimes that have nothing to do with national security and forbids judicial review of that decision.
The idea of walling off such action from judicial review ought to put a scare into anyone. Moreover:
The House version of the USA Liberty Act, for instance, has a weak warrant requirement, which would allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct backdoor searches of electronic communications collected by the NSA for domestic, non-terrorism investigations.
The potential for abuse is endless.
DAILY CALLER: Congressman Said Coke-Addled Staffer Tried To Shake Him Down For $1.8M After Sleeping With Him.
Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green had sex with a staffer who he said was a drug addict and then sued her when she threatened to go public with claims she suffered a hostile work environment, saying he “will not be extorted or blackmailed.”
Lucinda Daniels, his onetime district director, claimed she suffered a hostile work environment, claimed sexual harassment and demanded $1.8 million. Green sued her, saying she was using their sexual relationship to shake him down at the behest of other unnamed conspirators.
“Daniels has threatened to go public with her complaints if the Congressman does not per her money. Green has done nothing wrong and refuses to pay ‘hush money’ just for political expediency. Green will not be extorted or blackmailed by Daniels. He will not be the victim of a shakedown by Daniels and her agents. Green demands vindication of his actions and now sues Daniels for declaratory judgment relief relating to her workplace allegations and her quest for money,” documents Green filed in federal court in 2008 say.
The story stayed under the radar until now, much like Cokie Roberts’ belated admission that “Oh, we all knew to avoid getting in an elevator with Rep. Conyers.”
OOPS: Backfire: Project Veritas ‘sting’ of Washington Post only makes the paper look better. Well, good for the Post: This kind of source-vetting is what the press is supposed to do. (Compare with Sabrina Erdely on the made-up UVA rape story). I hope that the idea that people might be trying to sting them with phony stories will encourage other media to do as well, though I fear they’ll be vetting for O’Keefe connections as much as for accuracy. But maybe I’m too cynical.
As for O’Keefe, well, the ACORN sting was great, and some of his other work has been good, but ACORN was a soft target and the WaPo is a hard target. And ACORN was the first such sting, while now people know they’re at risk. The question is whether this sort of thing is the best use of resources, compared to straightforward journalism.
THE PARTY OF THE LITTLE GUY: “I didn’t report the harassment because it was clear nobody wanted to take it seriously. John Conyers is a powerful man in Washington, and nobody wanted to cross him.”
Deanna Maher, Conyers’ former deputy chief of staff who ran his downriver office from 1997 to 2005, told The Detroit News that the Detroit Democrat made unwanted advances toward her three times.
Maher is the second former Conyers staffer to go public with accusations about the veteran lawmaker. Conyers on Sunday stepped aside as the the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee amid a congressional ethics probe of sexual harassment allegations involving former staffers.
The first instance of harassment happened, Maher said, shortly after the congressman hired her in September 1997 during an event with the Congressional Black Caucus.
“I didn’t have a room, and he had me put in his hotel suite,” said Maher, 77, adding that she rejected his offer to share his room at the Grand Hyatt in Washington and have sex.
The other incidents with the now 88-year-old Conyers involved unwanted touching in a car in 1998 and another unwanted touching of her legs under her dress in 1999, she said.
Cokie Roberts’ years-long silence effectively empowered Conyers.
WHAM, BAM, YOU’RE SERVED WITH PROCESS MA’AM: Congressman Slept With And Then Sued Allegedly Drug-Addicted Staffer. “Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green had sex with a staffer who he said was a drug addict and then sued her when she threatened to go public with claims she suffered a hostile work environment, saying he ‘will not be extorted or blackmailed.'”
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Franken seeks to head off calls for resignation.
AND ANOTHER ONE Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) “quietly arranged a ‘severance package’ in 2015 for one of his top staffers who threatened a lawsuit claiming the Arizona Democrat was frequently drunk and created a hostile workplace environment, revealing yet another way that lawmakers can use taxpayer dollars to hide their misbehavior on Capitol Hill.”
THIS IS DISAPPOINTING: NASA’s next flagship telescope is “not executable” in its current form.
A new report—released without fanfare on the Wednesday before the Thanksgiving holiday—calls into question the viability of the project. “The risks to the primary mission of WFIRST are significant and therefore the mission is not executable without adjustments and/or additional resources,” the report states. It estimated the cost of the project at $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion, significantly above the project’s $3.6 billion budget.
Produced by an independent and external team to review the technical aspects of the program, its management, and costs, the report is critical of a series of key decisions made by NASA. The addition of a coronagraph and other design choices have made for a telescope that is “more complex than probably anticipated” and have substantially increased risks and costs, according to the report.
It also offered a scathing review of the relationship between NASA headquarters and the telescope’s program managers at Goddard Space Flight Center. “The NASA HQ-to-Program governance structure is dysfunctional and should be corrected for clarity in roles, accountability, and authority,” the report states.
Just the surreptitious timing of the report lends it more credibility than NASA has enjoyed in recent years, but I do hope they get the bugs worked out of WFIRST quickly enough to make it a success.