BY NOT BEING JERKS ON COMPANY TIME: How NFL players can avoid playing into Trump’s hands.
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Archive for 2018
July 22, 2018
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Broken bones could increase death risk for older adults.
HOW TO BUILD a great home entertainment system.
DON’T FIGHT, GUYS. I MAY NOT HAVE THAT MUCH TIME: Human Longevity sues genome pioneer J. Craig Venter, alleging theft of trade secrets.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: WORLD NAKED BIKE RIDERS IN ST. LOUIS EXPOSED PENISES AND VAGINAS, SEXUALLY MOLESTING MY KIDS.
Ayn Rand didn’t intend for The Return of the Primitive to be a how-to guide for life.
IN THE MAIL: From Brad Thor, Spymaster: A Thriller.
BEST SPOOF ACCOUNT OF THE MONTH: Beverly Hills Antifa.
SJW DISCOVERS KOBAYASHI MARU SCENARIO: Plus-Size Blogger Who Posed in Bikini in Times Square Furious That Men ‘Fetishized’ Her.
KISSINGER ON TRUMP: “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.”
This is similar to what I keep saying, that the fundamental characteristic of Trump’s presidency is the renegotiation of post-WWII arrangements and institutions. Those who consider themselves responsible and far-sighted should be thinking about how that renegotiation should take place, rather than mindlessly fighting change.
Plus: “In the 1940s, European leaders had a clear sense of direction. Now they are just trying to avoid trouble.” And they are not doing a very good job of it.
IF THIS IS THE BEST THAT MUELLER CAN COME UP WITH … Department of Justice officials purposely or otherwise may have revealed a key part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s expected collusion case against President Donald Trump. For some odd reason, I am reminded of Cap’n Dan way up on that shrimp boat’s mast venting his fury against God in “Forrest Gump.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Yale law prof encourages people to ‘hide immigrants from ICE.’ “Gregg Gonsalves is more than willing to disclose the locations of ICE employees, however, encouraging others to release their home addresses and saying he would have ‘no qualms’ about showing up at those homes himself.”
When taxpayers get tired of subsidizing these institutions, we’ll be told it’s because of “anti-intellectualism.”
EUGENE VOLOKH: The Mismatch Effect: A Danger for Students of All Races.
Say that you apply to many schools, including some where other students have much better predictors (chiefly test scores and grades from earlier institutions) than you. And you get in! Maybe it was affirmative action (whether based on race, socioeconomic status, or something else), maybe it was a preference because your relatives had gone to the same school, maybe it was something in your admission essay, maybe it was just luck. Either way, you’re thrilled.
Might you have reason to be less thrilled, and actually not want to go to this highly ranked school? (Conversely, might the school reconsider its policy that led you to be let in?) If the predictors are actually reasonable predictors (and apparently grades and test scores tend to be reasonable predictors), then you can expect you’ll end up lower in the class at the new school than you might be at some other school, precisely because the other students are better than you. The advantage of having a more prestigious degree might be counteracted by the disadvantage of having a less prestigious class rank. But might you end up getting a worse education, being less likely to graduate, and being less likely to pass any professional licensing exams (such as the bar) that you might be expecting to take?
I dunno, but if you get into Yale Law just go, because everyone graduates, nobody expects the grads to know much real law anyway, and judging by the recent letter from YLS students opposing the Kavanaugh nomination, they can’t be smarter than you.
BYRON YORK: Why is Mueller handing off key cases? “What is going on? I asked a few former federal prosecutors if they saw any messages in Mueller’s move. The takeaway: These aren’t encouraging developments for those longing for a big collusion/conspiracy/coordination indictment from Mueller.”
Plus, see his thread on the Carter Page wiretap FISA applications.
YES, THE FISA PROCESS WAS ABUSED AND WEAPONIZED, BUT IT’S ALSO CLEAR THAT THE FISA COURT IS IN FACT SERVING AS A RUBBER STAMP: Andrew McCarthy: “I’m really embarrassed because I told people for months that this could never happen….It’s astonishing. It’s as if they took the dossier and slapped a caption on [the Steele Dossier] to give it to the judge. They ought to be looking at the judges who signed this stuff.”
EXERCISE AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST: An MV-22 revs up at night.
FLASHBACK: 2015’s “Cyber Pearl Harbor.” Obama did essentially nothing to respond, and the press didn’t care because lightworker.
AT AMAZON, Lightning Deal, BESTEK Surge Protector 8-Outlet and 40W 6-Port Smart USB Power Strip with 1500 Joules Surge Protection.
“FOR THE PEOPLE:” Roger Kimball: The DNC limps towards a laughable midterms slogan.
SHOCKER! Google “Theresa Lund” or read Ed Driscoll’s post here.
Now tell me if this surprises you.
LOOKING PRETTY SHADY: The FISA Documents Used To Wiretap Carter Page Just Dropped.
Until now, both Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have sent out memos trying to characterize the Page warrant in their respective favors, but now The New York Times and other news outlets have obtained the warrant applications through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). . . .
Of particular note are a couple footnotes in the third FISA renewal application. One footnote mentions that Steele was paid by the FBI for his information, but “suspended its relationship” with Steele after it learned he had disclosed information to the media. “Subsequently, the FBI closed [Steele] as an FBI source,” according to the documents. Yet still, the FBI determined Steele’s information to be reliable because his previous reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings,” according to the application. The FBI states in this footnote that the “incident that led the FBI to terminate its relationship with [Steele] occurred after [Steele] provided the reporting that is described herein.
A later footnote claims that Steele said he only provided information from the dossier to his business associate (believed to be Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that was paid by Perkins Coie, the law firm used by the DNC, for Steele’s information), and not to the media, though information from the dossier was the basis for a September 23 Yahoo! News article about Page’s surveillance. But in late October 2016, the FBI learned that Steele had since contacted another media source because he was “frustrated” by former FBI Director James Comey’s letter about more Clinton emails found on the laptop of former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Steele, according to the FISA documents, “told the FBI that he/she was frustrated with this action and believed it would likely influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.” So he gave media outlets compromising information about a different candidate.
The FBI, even after learning what Steele had done, “continues to assess [Steele’s] reporting is reliable, as noted above, the FBI closed [Steele] as an active source.”
The original document is here.
That multiple warrants could be issued against an American citizen on such shaky evidence calls into question the entire FISA process.
UPDATE: More from John Hinderaker. “The application relies to an astonishing degree on anti-Trump news stories published in the Democratic Party press. Does the FBI really get surveillance warrants on the basis of partisan press accounts? Apparently so. . . . Amazingly, the FISA application relies on ‘speculation in U.S. media’ for the proposition that Russia was behind the phishing of DNC emails.”
NOW HOW ABOUT THE REST OF US? The Democratic Party Apologizes to Black Voters. Snark aside, this suggests that the #WalkAway campaign is having some impact.