Monthly Archives: December 2022

Show Me the Logs

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One of the latest Twitter Files batch demonstrated that Old Twitter and the FBI colluded to suppress FBI-disparaged information and that the FBI paid Old Twitter’s costs in the doing to the tune of more than $3.4 million dollars. The Twitter File release carried, among other things, email exchanges between FBI worthies and then-Twitter functionaries talking about the exchanges and the payment for the quid pro quo.

Of course the FBI, in its best wide-eyed innocent Dondi impression, denies any such kind of interaction.

We are providing it [the input] so that they can take whatever action they deem appropriate under their terms of service to protect their platform and protect their customers, but we never direct or ask them to take action[.]

An example of the FBI’s “input:”

Hello Twitter contacts, FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy[.]

However, FBI officials insist

We did no [sic] request anything of the sort.
We focus on activities attributed to foreign actors, not on the content or narrative[.]

But for the non-requests, Old Twitter functionaries bragged about the payments.

Jim [then-Deputy General Counsel Baker], FYI, in 2019 SCALE instituted a reimbursement program for our legal process response from the FBI. Prior to the start of the program, Twitter chose not to collect under this statutory right of reimbursement for the time spent processing requests from the FBI. I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!

This, too, FBI officials…demurred from.

…[the payment was just] reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process…for complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure.
…
We don’t just reimburse Twitter….

Well then, FBI Director Chris Wray. Show us the logs. Show us the notes taken by the FBI agents in their conversations with Twitter functionaries. Show us the accounting books.

Merry Christmas

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First posted in 2011, I repeat it here.

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.
-Ralph W. Sockman

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
-Benjamin Franklin

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
-Hamilton Wright Mabie

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.  If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.
-Calvin Coolidge

Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great and good philosopher and teacher.  Others of us believe in the divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that he was and is the promised Prince of Peace.
-Ronald Reagan

 

Update:
What do you call Santa’s helpers?
Subordinate clauses.

Overreach

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The New York banking regulator, the New York State Department of Financial Services, has announced “rules” that would require banks of all sizes to consider climate change in their risk assessment considerations. NYSDF’s rules are made the worse because it has outsized influence due to the plethora of Wall Street institutions in the State.

Banks would be called upon to look at climate-related risks when bringing on new clients and when extending credit.

This is naked government overreach, even at the State level, and it’s one more reason financial institutions should leave New York. I can suggest Miami, Austin, Dallas, Sioux Falls, and Fargo as alternative locations.

It’s more than that, though. It’s an…inaccurate…goal. The only climate-related risk any American business, banking or other, faces is Government behavior vis-à-vis government bureaucrat-perceived climate situations.

Not Just DoJ

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It has come to light that DoJ prosecutors convened a grand jury and got subpoenas with which to investigate then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R) and a number of Republican Committee staffers during Nunes’ Committee investigations into what are now known to be Progressive-Democratic Party collusion with DoJ to create a false narrative of Republican collusion with Russia.

“The FBI and DOJ spied on a presidential campaign, and when Congress began exposing what they were doing, they spied on us to find out what we knew and how we knew it,” Nunes said. “It’s an egregious abuse of power that the next Congress must investigate so these agencies can be held accountable and reformed.”
The subpoenas demanded a broad swath of records from Google, including “all customer and subscriber account information” for [then-Committee Senior Counsel Kash] Patel and the other staffer, “addresses (including mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses,” user names, “screen names,” “local and long distance telephone connection records,” and even the “means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records.”

That’s bad enough, but I’m especially concerned about another, closely related matter. Retired FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence, Kevin Brock:

A federal grand jury subpoena for records can only be issued after some type of criminal investigation has been opened.  So whoever sought the subpoena will have to be prepared to articulate why they thought these staffers broke the law. And it better be a substantial violation, something more than just a media leak investigation for example, otherwise it will risk being perceived as a gross misuse of the grand jury process to intimidate or chill a congressional committee demanding pointed answers from DOJ.

The larger question in my view—especially if the subpoenas were issued on an allegation of a chump change crime—is who were the judges, if any, who played along and approved the grand jury subpoenas, what were their rationales for their approvals? Also, who were the prosecutors convening the grand jury? It’s possible they came from the DC US Attorney’s Office, but who in particular?

Mistaken Goal

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French President Emmanuel Macron says the West must give Russia security guarantees as part of a peace settlement regarding its invasion of Ukraine.

This is, to use the technical term, a crock.

Macron needs to stop parroting the barbarian chieftain’s claims of security risks and, instead, say explicitly what security threats actually face the barbarian. He cannot because none exist that are unrelated to the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine needs security guarantees (which Macron so kindly conceded along with his “must give”), and those guarantees must be real, not the sham/con job that was the Budapest Memorandum that was centered on Ukraine.

The Russian barbarian, on the other hand, will receive his security guarantee in the form of his removal of his hordes from Ukraine—all of Ukraine. From that moment risks to, threats against, the barbarian will virtually cease to exist.

The reason for expanding NATO, for bringing into any sort of Western alliance nations bordering on the Russian Federation, is wholly defensive—to increase the security of those nations against the barbarian’s expansionism, an acquisitiveness empirically demonstrated by his denial of Ukraine as an actual nation followed by his invasion of that nation. When the barbarian leaves off from his expansionist policy, risks and threats regarding him will cease to exist entirely.

Russia has, after all, exactly nothing (which is to say nada, zilch, zip, zero) which anyone in the West wants that can’t be gotten far more cheaply through threat-free, peaceful, mutually beneficial free trade exchanges.

Even one so enlightened as Macron knows this.