Monthly Archives: March 2023

FISA Revamp

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Congress may be moving to revamp the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which among other things, creates a secret Federal court that empirically allows the Federal government to spy on American citizens in the United States—one of whom was a representative of citizens of Illinois whom they had elected to Congress—without a warrant.

[Congressman Austin, R-GA] Scott said lawmakers on the committee want to address who in government can query the database, who can be targeted and who must sign off on such warrantless surveillance. He also suggested there is some support for adding lawyers to the secretive process to help defend the rights of Americans who are being surveilled without their knowledge.

The problem with those first three…suggestions…is that there already are limits on who can query, who can be targeted, and who must sign off, and each of those limits have been routinely violated by FBI and intelligence personnel. There’s no reason to believe that new limits won’t similarly be blithely ignored.

The problem with that last is even larger: the secret process still would be secret, the lawyers supposedly defending the targeted Americans’ rights would be secret, they would be appointed by the same government that has been abusing FISA surveillance powers right along, and there would be no way for us American citizens to assess the skill with which those “defense” lawyers defend, or even their level of zeal.

It’s promising that there is finally a recognition that the FISA process is flawed in some way.

However, what’s truly required is to abolish altogether the Star Chamber that is the secret FISA Court. Scott made the case for abolishment—although he didn’t intend that—when he told JtN that there was clear evidence that the law’s past safeguards have been breached by the FBI and intel agencies. Given that, there’s no reason to believe those FBI and intel agency personnel won’t “breach” any new safeguards, also.

An End to the Ukrainian War

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The lede in a Wall Street Journal article goes like this:

Western leaders are beginning to have a clearer vision of how they hope the war in Ukraine will end.
What is missing is any plan to make it happen.

On the contrary. The principal, the nation that has been invaded by the barbarian, has a very clear vision of how the war will end. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has articulated that vision since the day the barbarian hordes swarmed over the borders: all Russian forces out of all Ukrainian territory. Full stop.

What’s missing is Western resolve to assist Ukraine in achieving that.

Far more likely, though, is a war of attrition that lasts until one side is so defeated or exhausted that it calls a halt without realizing its ultimate aims.
Such an outcome, many diplomats acknowledge, would be measured in years not months.

Such an outcome, though, is not at all predicated on an essential balance of Ukrainian-barbarian forces and a resulting grinding fight. Any attritional aspects to the war would be obviated if the West were to supply Ukraine with the weapons, ammunition, and logistical support that Ukraine’s defense leaders say they need and in the amounts and rate of supply they say they need them.

Instead, the Know Betters in the American, French, and German governments are slow-walking all of that, insisting that Ukraine doesn’t need to tools to win—only the tools to prevent a barbarian win. French President Emmanuel Macron provides the canonical example of this arrogant shortsightedness, doubting Ukraine’s ability to achieve a complete victory on the battlefield. A victory which, of course, Ukraine cannot achieve as long as the tools they need are slow-walked or outright withheld.

That’s what is the stuff of attrition, of unnecessary blood spilled by Ukrainian soldiers and civilians—women and children—and of continued barbarian atrocities of rape, child murder, wanton destruction.

The Purpose of Medicaid

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State Medicaid programs were created for the explicit purpose of providing health insurance coverage for State citizens on the lower rungs of that State’s economic ladder. The Federal government transfers Federal funds—the tax remittances of all of us citizens regardless of the State of which we might also be citizens—to support those Medicaid programs.

In California’s case, Federal transfers in support of Medi-Cal, that State’s Medicaid program, comprise more than 69% of the program. That amounts to 71.4 billion of our tax dollars.

Now the Progressive-Democrat governor of California, Gavin Newsom, wants Medi-Cal to pay the rent for the State’s homeless.

Newsom has proposed using federal healthcare funds to cover at least six months of rent for homeless California residents and those close to losing their homes.

The foolishness is spreading; California is not the only State pulling this stunt.

California is modeling the program off of similar programs in Oregon and Arizona that have been previously approved by the federal government.

Oregon gets 76%—$8.5 billion—of its Medicaid program covered by the Feds, and Arizona gets more than 80%—$14.3 billion—of its Medicaid funding from the Feds.

Newsom argues—and he’s actually serious—that this will save money in the long run because the State (as JtN cited him)

will not have to pay as much for these people’s expenses in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons.

This is a cynical non sequitur. Nursing homes and prisons aren’t centered on medical care, for all that medical care is a small part of those…services. Those services’ costs also are already factored into their budgets. Too, hospitals aren’t residences—and their medical service costs also are already factored into their budgets, including in part from California’s existing Medi-Cal.

Maybe it’s time to stop sending the Medicaid-related tax remittances of citizens of other States to these States.

Yellen and Law

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The Wall Street Journal editors wrote Thursday about Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s…flip-flopping…on making whole, or not, nominally uninsured depositors in the wake of SVB’s failure and the government takeover of Signature Bank. Their subheadline accurately summarized the matter.

Are all deposits insured or not? Only [Yellen] seems to know.

The editors’ lede was this:

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday walked back her comments from the day before that walked back her remarks the day before about providing a de facto guarantee on all US bank deposits.

The editors then asked the question: Who’s on first?

An especially a propos followup came just a bit later in that routine: “Q: When you pay off…who gets the money? A: Every dollar of it.”

Legally, in answer to the subheadline question is no; only deposits of $250k or less are insured. But what’s a law to a Progressive-Democrat? Only a suggestion, to be ignored at convenience.

Juice and Squeeze

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In Wednesday’s WSJ Letters Tirien Steinbach, Stanford Law School’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, sought to defend her own behavior in the disruption that prevented an invited guest from speaking at all.

She insisted on asking a key question:

We have to…ask ourselves: Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Steinbach blew up her own case with that question, which she also put to the invited guest speaker as she participated in her school’s censorship and cancelation of his speaking.

Free speech juice always and everywhere is worth the squeeze. We have sufficient laws, already, to deal with actual incitement to riot, actual creation of panic in stressful situations, slander, and so on.

The correct and only legitimate answer to speech to which someone or some group objects is speech by that someone or group, or a perhaps more articulate supporter, to contradict or refute the prior.

That Steinbach is oblivious to this demonstrates her unfitness for her role on Stanford’s management team, even her unfitness to retain such licenses to practice law as she might have.