Archive for 2015

NEW YORK POST: Preet Bharara’s off-base strike at Internet trolls.

A lot of cretins talk trash when protected by the anonymity of an online account.

Problem is, the Supreme Court ruled that law-enforcement action’s not justified unless there is a “true threat” — made with the credible intent of carrying it out.

The comments on Reason are plainly just idiotic hot air.

So the subpoena seems a dangerous case of overreaction — by an office whose attorneys must regularly appear before the same judge.
Yes, the US Marshal’s Office is investigating real threats against the judge posted on the “dark Web” — sites that require special settings or permission to access.

But that doesn’t justify treating every online blowhard on a public site as a likely assassin.

For better or worse, the Web encourages hyperbole. Policing it requires prudence — which Bharara’s office seems to have ignored with this subpoena.

This is the prosecutorial equivalent of a brushback pitch — trying to tell people that talking shit about a federal judge will get you in trouble no matter what the First Amendment says. That’s an abuse of authority, for which Preet Bharara should be punished. But, of course, he won’t be, because prosecutors aren’t accountable for their abuses of authority.

SO I BLOGGED A WHILE BACK ABOUT THE ORGREENIC NONSTICK PANS, and some reader said that I should step up to the ScanPan line instead. The Orgreenics finally lost their non-stickiness, and “seasoning” them as per instructions didn’t seem to help. So I ordered the ScanPan and it’s obviously much higher quality (the Orgreenics are kinda disposable) and the nonstick on it seems to be terrific — even the Insta-Wife enjoyed making eggs in it.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: America’s Law School Applications And Enrollment Just Keep Falling. Applications are actually way up at the University of Tennessee College of Law, which will be reflected in a modest increase in class size. But that’s certainly not the national trend.

SOCIAL “SCIENCE” UPDATE: Obama’s Gun-Control Misfire: Before the 2014 election, the FBI claimed that mass shootings were up. False.

Last September the Obama administration produced an FBI report that said mass shooting attacks and deaths were up sharply—by an average annual rate of about 16% between 2000 and 2013. Moreover, the problem was worsening. “The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents,” said the authors. “During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually.”

The White House could not possibly have been more pleased with the media reaction to these findings, which were prominently featured by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post and other major outlets. The FBI report landed six weeks before the midterm elections, and the administration was hoping that the gun-control issue would help drive Democratic turnout.

But late last week, J. Pete Blair and M. Hunter Martaindale, two academics at Texas State University who co-authored the FBI report, acknowledged that “our data is imperfect.” They said that the news media “got it wrong” last year when they “mistakenly reported mass shootings were on the rise.”

Mind you, the authors did not issue this mea culpa in the major news outlets that supposedly misreported the original findings. Instead, the authors published it in ACJS Today, an academic journal published by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. “Because official data did not contain the information we needed, we had to develop our own,” wrote Messrs. Blair and Martaindale. “This required choices between various options with various strengths and weaknesses.” You don’t say.

It’s like this stuff is driven by politics, not by the data. Related: Bloomberg’s School of Public Health Cherry Picked Claim that firearm homicides in Connecticut fell 40% because of a gun licensing law.

Plus: Preelection FBI ‘Active Shooter’ Study Team Admits Media Misinterpreted It — Six Months Later.

THERE’S SOMETHING TO THIS: Philip Klein: If Republicans can’t beat Hillary, they should disband the party.

[T]he next election will test whether demographic headwinds are too much for Republicans to overcome.

As I noted the first time Clinton announced in April, the election result will hinge on whether Clinton can maintain the coalition of voters that elected President Obama twice. He achieved margins among minorities and young voters that far exceeded the historical margins for Democrats. Is that because, as a youthful African-American candidate, he had a special bond with these groups? Or has there been a more fundamental shift?

Everything Hillary Clinton does between now and Election Day should be viewed through the prism of these two questions.

In the speech today, it was clear how she intended to win over these groups through policy and emotional appeal.

Yep. The 2016 presidential election is a battle of color-blind, America-supporting rationalism versus race-obsessed, America-hating emotionalism.

WHY AMERICANS ARE TURNING AGAINST FREE TRADE: When the proceeds of growth are not widely shared, the consensus in favor of pro-growth measures cracks.

I also think that (1) we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns, since trade is pretty free already; and (2) both political parties are so un-trusted that everyone is suspicious of passing big new catch-all agreements with lots of unread fine-print, especially when lobbyists have been laboring for years.

THERE’S ONLY ONE SHADE OF “BLACK”:  . . . at least according to Slate writer Jamelle Bouie:

What’s key is that you can’t choose your position in the hierarchy. The political designation of race is a function of power—or, put differently, you are whatever the dominant group says you are. A Nigerian immigrant might not identify with black Americans, but she’s still “black,” regardless of what she says, and if she gets pulled over by the police, that identity will matter most. And on the other end, a black American with dark skin and African features could identify as white with her friends, but in society, she’s black, regardless of how she feels. . . .

To belong to the black community is to inherit a rich and important culture; to be racially black is to face discrimination and violence.

. . .

We don’t know the entirety of [Rachel] Dolezal’s story, and we will likely learn more. If it’s troubling, it’s at least partly because it feels like Dolezal is adopting the culture without carrying the burdens. And with the fake father and the fake children, it seems like she’s deceiving people for the sake of an à la carte blackness, in which you take the best parts, and leave the pain aside.

Got it. Black = impuissance and being permanently subjected to violence/discrimination. If this disappears, one’s blackness disappears. This explains why prominent, conservative blacks such as Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Tim Scott, Condoleezza Rice, Thomas Sowell and Allen West are so often labeled “Oreos” or “Uncle Toms” by prominent, liberal/progressive blacks. If a black person doesn’t constantly wallow around in his/her “blackness,” he/she isn’t genuinely “black.”

HE’S NOT A HERO: The encrypted files held by Edward Snowden have been hacked by Russian and Chinese officials, exposing the identities of U.S. and British spies.

MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, has withdrawn agents from overseas operations because Russian security services had broken into encrypted files held by American computer analyst Snowden. . . .

The files held by Snowden were encrypted, but now British officials believe both countries have hacked into the files, according to the report.

The newspaper quotes a series of anonymous sources from Downing Street, the Home Office and British intelligence saying that the documents contained intelligence techniques and information that would enable foreign powers to identify British and American spies. . . .

A “senior Home Office source” was also quoted by the newspaper, saying: “Putin didn’t give him asylum for nothing. His documents were encrypted but they weren’t completely secure and we have now seen our agents and assets being targeted.”

The Sunday Times also quoted a “British intelligence source” saying that Russian and Chinese officials would be examining Snowden’s material for “years to come”.

“Snowden has done incalculable damage,” the intelligence source reportedly said. “In some cases the agencies have been forced to intervene and lift their agents from operations to prevent them from being identified and killed.”

Snowden’s disclosures about NSA metadata collection were essentially duplicative of earlier NSA whistleblowers, and by leaving the country and taking classified files with him, Snowden has done a good deal of damage to national security.

IN THE MAIL: Deborah L. Rhode, The Trouble with Lawyers.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Masterbuilt 20077615 Digital Electric Smoker with Window and Bonus Pack, 30″, $199.99 (50% off).

And, also today only: 60% or More Off Men’s Clothing.

Also: 50% off on Rockport Men’s Shoes. I wear the Dressports — rubber-soled wingtips — and I like them a lot. They look good, and they’re much comfier than the Church’s English wingtips I have from back when I practiced law.

CLASSY: Hillary Clinton’s director of political engagement, Marlon Marshall, tells Clinton supporters in an email, “FU Republicans. Mafia till I die.” Not surprisingly, Marshall previously served as President Obama’s deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, a baldly political agency overseen by senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.”  That helps explain the mafia reference.

RELATED: In true Mafia style, two RNC staffers sporting “Stop Hillary” shirts were forced to turn their shirts inside out or be ejected from Clinton’s launch rally. Because, you know, Hillary isn’t really a fan of the First Amendment.

AUSTIN BAY: Turkish Election a Model for Secular Arab Spring Revolutionaries.

In nationwide parliamentary elections held June 7, Turkish voters rejected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “soft Islamist” power grab. In doing so, Turks strengthened their secular republic’s democratic system and provided the globe with an example of democratic temperance.

Turkey deserves congratulations and, in the world’s hard corners, political emulation. Using the ballot box — change the right way — Turks ended almost 13 years of single-party parliamentary domination by Erdogan’s moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP.

Curbing Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian ambitions not only is good news for Turkey but also makes a global statement about democratic resilience and the wisdom of free, informed voters when faced with difficult choices.

Culturally Islamic nations desperately need inclusive secular political models and free market development models. To the dismay of the Islamic State group’s homicidal caliph and al-Qaida terrorists, the Turkish election demonstrates that a secular, democratic political system in a culturally Islamic society can be strong and confident enough to halt its most powerful leader when the ego-tripping head of state is in the process of going rogue.

Turkey’s achievement has immense implications for the Middle East and, for that matter, the whole developing world. One of the major questions the Arab Spring posed in 2011 is how to modernize culturally Islamic nations. Islamic State modernity requires a strict seventh- or eighth-century religious social order (complete with ritual beheadings). However, it gets to possess 21st-century weapons and employ social media propagandists. Islamic State economics, beyond subsistence agriculture, amounts to the caliph’s magnanimously dispensing loot and pillage to the faithful. What the caliph says goes, or his thugs kill you.

In contrast to this tribal violence and rule by the big man’s whim, Turkey’s democratic revolution, launched in 1923 by Turkey’s republican founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, offers stability, freedom and prosperity.

Sadly, not everybody wants those.

OF COURSE HE DOES: In trade defeat, Obama declares victory.

It is a common tactic in Washington to downplay bad news, but the White House brought it to a new level on Friday after House Democrats soundly defeated a package of free trade legislation that the president had personally implored them to pass. The White House chose to highlight the fact that one part of the package passed, even though two approvals were necessary to give Obama the trade authority he needs to negotiate the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” a chipper White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday, praising what he called “bipartisan support” for the legislation. The 126-302 defeat of a key trade measure was just a glitch: “To the surprise of very few, another procedural snafu has emerged. These kinds of entanglements are endemic to the House of Representatives.’’

But the truth was more complex, and more troubling for the president.

Yeah, you know Obama’s becoming a lame duck when he loses Nancy Pelosi.