Archive for 2022

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH: GOP presses for truth on Biden misinformation spy shop.

Several Republican senators pressed for a hearing on President Joe Biden’s “Truth Ministry” on Tuesday after new documents revealed that it planned to spy on the public and even included a “domestic terrorism branch” to look into election “misinformation.”

This is a betrayal of Biden’s — and the others involved’s — oaths of office. Talk about subverting democracy and the Constitution.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: ‘Dangerous’: Top FBI Official Had Close Relationship With Dozens of Journos, Accepted Tickets to White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

The FBI’s top national security official had dozens of improper meetings with journalists and accepted tickets from one journalist to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, interactions that FBI officials said were a “no-no” and “dangerous.”

Michael Steinbach, who served as an FBI executive assistant director, failed to report the gifts on his federal financial disclosures, according to an inspector general report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. He met regularly from 2014 until his abrupt retirement in February 2017 with 7 reporters and had contact with 21 others. His interactions with journalists overlapped with his work on major counterterrorism cases and Crossfire Hurricane, the ill-fated investigation into collusion between the 2016 Donald Trump campaign and Russia.

The report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, is the latest example of a top FBI official accepting gifts from journalists. The former head of FBI public affairs, Michael Kortan, received baseball game tickets and other gifts from CNN and New York Times reporters. Journalists also plied Steinbach’s former deputy, Bryan Paarmann, with a variety of gifts.

The FBI prohibits employees from accepting gifts from a “prohibited source”—a category that includes journalists—without prior authorization. FBI officials told the inspector general that off-the-books meetings like Steinbach’s could “lead to a lot of problems” within the bureau.

“You never know what can be said. You don’t know under what conditions it can be said. So it can lead to a lot of problems,” an FBI official told the inspector general’s office.

It should lead to jail time, but accountability isn’t a thing for the made men of America’s secret police agency.

JOEL KOTKIN: Bad Times in the Blue Zones: If they are to survive and thrive, cities need to become more people-friendly. “Crime has always been a part of the urban story, but in many ways, today’s wave is more terrifying and more random. Even the worst gangsters of the 1930s—like Murder Inc. in my mother’s Brooklyn slum—generally left “civilians” alone. Today’s crime, on the other hand, reflects what one Chicago resident described as “sociopathic idiocy.” In some great urban centers—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, New York—the social order has broken down, and these cities have become centers for homelessness, open drug markets, and petty crime. In many cases, crime has made people more reluctant to ride on public transport such as the New York subways, once a major asset to traditional cities. The current crop of urban leaders has only made things worse.”