Archive for 2018
April 19, 2018
MICHAEL BARONE: Collusion, Anyone?
As the likelihood of the charges of Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia seems headed toward zero, the likelihood of proof of a different form of “collusion” seems headed upward toward certainty.
The Russia collusion charge had some initial credibility because of businessman Trump’s dealings in Russia and candidate Trump’s off-putting praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was fueled by breathless media coverage of such trivial events as Jeff Sessions’ exchange of pleasantries with the Russian ambassador at a Washington reception.
And, of course, by the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel. But Mueller’s prosecutions of Trump campaign operatives were for misdeeds long before the campaign, and his indictment of 13 Russians specified that no American was a “knowing participant” in their work.
Now, there’s talk that Mueller is winding up his investigation. Whenever he finishes, it seems unlikely his work will fulfill the daydreams so many liberals have of making Trump go the way of Richard Nixon.
Meanwhile, the evidence builds of collusion by the Obama administration’s law enforcement and intelligence personnel in trying to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat and delegitimize Donald Trump in and after the 2016 presidential election.
The investigation of Hillary Clinton’s illegal email system was conducted with kid gloves. One glaring example of impropriety came when FBI Director James Comey was given (and accepted) Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s order to call it a “matter” rather than an “investigation.” Clinton aides were allowed to keep her emails and destroy 30,000 of them, plus cellphones. They were not subject to grand jury subpoenas, and a potential co-defendant was allowed to claim attorney-client privilege.
On June 27, 2016, Lynch clandestinely met with Bill Clinton on his plane at the Phoenix airport — a meeting that became known only thanks to an alert local TV reporter. Lynch supposedly left the decision on prosecution to Comey, who on July 5 announced publicly that Clinton was “extremely careless” but lacked intent to violate the law, even though the statute punishes violations intentional or not.
Contrast that with the collusion of Obama officials with the Clinton campaign-financed Christopher Steele/Fusion GPS memorandum alleging Trump ties with Russians. Comey and the Justice Department used it, without divulging who paid for it, to get a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign operative Carter Page’s future and past communications — the “wiretap” Trump was derided for mentioning.
Similarly, when Comey informed Trump in January 2017 of the contents of the then-unpublished Steele memorandum, he didn’t reveal that the Clinton campaign paid for it. Asked on his book tour why not, he blandly said he didn’t know.
Well, we know.
PROCUREMENT: The Navy’s F-35 Has a New Weapon (To Strike Deep Into Enemy Territory).
“With JSOW-C in its internal weapons bay, the Navy’s F-35C can now eliminate the toughest ground targets from significant standoff ranges,” Mike Jarrett, vice president of Raytheon Air Warfare Systems, said. “JSOW’s advanced warhead and smart fuse provide fighter pilots with plenty of flexibility against hard and soft targets — plus, it has many programmable effects.”
The JSOW — which integrates a dual-charge BROACH warhead with a WDU-44 shaped augmenting warhead and a WDU-45 follow through bomb — is particularly adept at cracking open high value hardened targets.
Carriers aren’t obsolete yet.
AND NOW THIS: Tesla’s 2018 Goes From Bad To Worse As Safety Regulators Launch Probe.
Tesla’s “planned” factory shutdowns could end lasting far longer than planned. That is, if California workplace safety regulators have anything to say about it.
What has been a volatile and taxing month for Tesla just got worse, because in the latest headache for Elon Musk, Bloomberg reports that California regulators are now looking into workplace safety issues…
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health said it has opened a new investigation into Tesla Inc. following a report about worker protections at the company’s lone auto plant in Fremont, California.
The state agency “takes seriously reports of workplace hazards and allegations of employers’ underreporting recordable work-related injuries and illnesses” and “currently has an open inspection at Tesla,” said Erika Monterroza, a spokeswoman for the state’s industrial relations department.
California requires employers to electronically submit what it calls Log 300 records of injuries and illnesses. Monterroza said that while the state doesn’t disclose details of open inspections, they typically include a review of employers’ Log 300 records and checks to ensure that serious injuries are reported within eight hours as required by law.
… ostensibly prompted by a scathing expose that was published earlier this week by Reveal, questioning whether Tesla was accurately reporting its workplace safety incidents.
SpaceX is having a very good week. Tesla, not so much.
IF THE PULITZER WAS WORTH ANYTHING, LUKE ROSIAK WOULD HAVE ONE: I’ve been saying for more than a year that if the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Luke Rosiak doesn’t get a Pulitzer for his exposure of the Imran Awan scandal in Congress, there’s no justice in this world.
Imran Awan was Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’ IT aide who, along with half a dozen family members and friends, did IT work for dozens of prominent House Democrats, including members of the House intelligence and foreign affairs committees. They had access to members’ email, documents and contacts.
Among much else, Imran Awan was caught downloading data from the House IT network to a private server. His latest documents Imran Awan’s family links to the Pakistani intelligence service, which is notorious for playing all sides (and for playing the U.S. for rich fools for many years).
Considering the depth of irrelevance to which the Pulitzer has lately sunk and the growth of Right journalism, it’s time for somebody to endow a new award to recognize investigative reporting excellence by folks like Rosiak.
JOURNALISM: Let’s Apply The Sean Hannity Standard To ‘Objective’ Journalists With Hidden Political Ties.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but this double standard is overwhelming. Hannity makes his pro-Trump, pro-Cohen bias clear. Meanwhile, Jim Sciutto, George Stephanopoulos, Glenn Thrush, Mark Leibovich, and John Harwood pretend to be neutral players despite their ties to Democrats. If Hannity is going to face such scrutiny, so should these so-called “objective” journalists.
Yes.
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE, CUNY LAW STUDENTS? Video: Thugs Storm Nigerian Senate, Steal Symbolic Golden Mace. “Footage from the incident shows men fighting and throwing chairs, as onlookers back off from the incident.”
BITING THE HAND: Venezuela arrests two Chevron executives amid oil purge.
“Chevron Global Technology Services Company is aware that two of its Venezuelan-based employees have been arrested by local authorities,” Chevron said in a statement.
“We have contacted the local authorities to understand the basis of the detention and to ensure the safety and wellbeing of these employees. Our legal team is evaluating the situation and working towards the timely release of these employees.”
A Chevron spokeswoman declined to provide further details on the case or the status of its operations. The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The executives were arrested after disagreements with their PDVSA counterparts over procurement processes, two of the sources said.
The arrests highlight risks for foreign firms in Venezuela. Some insiders say a fracturing ruling elite is using the purge to wage turf wars or settle scores.
It could also be that the two men are being used as either hostages or scapegoats — both of which are conventional tools of public policy in failing socialist paradises.
AND THE OFFICIAL OPENING ISN’T UNTIL TOMORROW: Little Pink House Having Huge Opening Week.
WHACK-A-MOLE: As Islamic State Fades in Syria, Another Militant Group Takes Root.
The group’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a former al Qaeda fighter, has vowed to conquer Damascus and impose Islamic rule across Syria. in a January speech, he exhorted followers to engage in “a war of ideas, a war of minds, a war of wills, a war of perseverance,” according to the SITE Intel Group.
Thousands of fighters with the group—an offshoot of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate—have dug in around Idlib, analysts say, as the U.S. concentrates on Syria’s other battles and moves toward what President Donald Trump has said would be a quick exit from Syria.
“The area seems to be out of focus for Western powers,” said Hassan Hassan, a Washington-based analyst with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, a think tank. “The jihadis are having a honeymoon there.”
Bill Whittle once compared killing terrorists to mowing the lawn — a chore that has to be done regularly, or else your yard becomes overgrown.
ACTUALLY, I THINK OUR RULING CLASS WAS ALWAYS LIKE TRUMP. THEY’VE JUST STOPPED PRETENDING. Trump Is Making Everyone A Little Like Him. “If there really is a social contagion, the president’s critics are patient zero.”
WINNING: Russia appears to have surrendered to SpaceX in the global launch market. “The 4 percent stake isn’t worth the effort to try to elbow Musk and China aside.”
In the past, Russian space officials have talked tough about competing with SpaceX in providing low-cost, reliable service to low-Earth and geostationary orbit. For example, the Russian rocket corporation, Energia, has fast-tracked development of a new medium-class launch vehicle that it is calling Soyuz-5 to challenge SpaceX.
On Tuesday, however, Russia’s chief spaceflight official, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, made a remarkable comment about that country’s competition with SpaceX.
“The share of launch vehicles is as small as 4 percent of the overall market of space services,” Rogozin said in an interview with a Russian television station. “The 4 percent stake isn’t worth the effort to try to elbow Musk and China aside. Payloads manufacturing is where good money can be made.”
According to an independent analysis, the global launch market is worth about $5.5 billion annually. Losing its half-share of this market, therefore, has probably cost the Russians about $2 billion, which is a significant fraction of its non-military aerospace budget.
An American President in cahoots with the Kremlin would probably find some regulatory justification to prevent SpaceX from stealing business from Russia.
FUTURE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT DECIDED IN ONE OF THESE THREE CASES? It could very well be a decisive blow either way could result from one of this trio of potential legal landmarks in First Amendment litigation.
Definitely worth keeping a scorecard. Author Michael Farris, BTW, spent years defending and growing homeschooling and now he’s running one of the pre-eminent First Amendment litigation shops in the country, the Alliance Defending Freedom. I understand that he sleeps once in a while as well.
WAIT, WHAT? Pittsburgh police told to prepare for protests over potential Mueller firing: report.
Lefties have been calling for riots if Mueller is fired. So what reaction should we expect from Trump supporters if Trump is indicted?
TYLER O’NEIL: Apple Will Launch a News Subscription Service to Combat ‘Fake News.’ “No word on how it will avoid anti-conservative bias…”
I’m still a fan of Apple’s hardware and software, but as the company looks increasingly to services to fuel growth, they’ve lost some of their famous focus — and have begun to annoy in other ways, too.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Rein In Student Mobs. “At NYU, administrators threatened the protesters’ financial aid, and the woke warriors went back to their rooms.”
ROBERT HEINLEIN WROTE ON THIS TOO: To Everyone Who Asks For ‘Just A Little’ Of Your Time: Here’s What It Costs To Say Yes.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Flight attendant reveals what to wear for a first-class upgrade.
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: James Comey goes stale fast, hits end of his shelf life.
AND IT’S COME HOME BRINGING MORE PROBLEMS WITH IT: Sweden has a problem .
OUR CONTINUING ACADEMIC IMPLOSION: Can’t be fired, eh? Perhaps some other punishment might be found.
NOT A BAD THING TO GIVE A ONCE OVER TO, EVEN IF THERE’S A REMOTE CHANCE YOU MIGHT BE INTERVIEWED ON BEHALF OF SOME CONSERVATIVE CAUSE: Details at Eleven or, A Crash Course in Public Relations.
THIS IS WHY THE ALIENS NEVER VISIT: The chances of anything coming from the stars…