…PRC style. The truth police are there to help.
China’s government will set up cybersecurity police units at major Internet companies, in Beijing’s latest move to tighten control over the country’s online forums.
And
China’s Ministry of Public Security didn’t say which companies will have the new police units.
The modern version of Партийных аппаратчиков.
Pavlo Klimkin, Ukrainian Foreign Minister acknowledged over the weekend that Russian forces are in control of his country’s oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk.
He also said that it’s time for Russia begin
“real negotiations” about a cease-fire and stabilization in Ukraine’s war-torn east which will require fair elections that are intentionally monitored.
He’s right. But that would require Vladimir Putin first to stop lying about Russia’s behavior toward Ukraine. In the end, too, an acceptable conclusion to Russia’s invasion, IMNSHO, would be Russian withdrawal from eastern Ukraine and the end of their occupation of Crimea.
Edward Snowden will likely remain hiding in Russia for some time, with Washington officials and most Americans offering no leniency or forgiveness for him notoriously stealing classified information and jeopardizing U.S. national security.
President Barack Obama, through his Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco, said this about that:
Mr Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work…to protect it[.]
And then he tossed a petition to pardon this…scofflaw, the petition a product of a two year effort to let Snowden skate, into the round file.
Hear, hear.
There’s a contradiction in terms.
In January parents filed a petition to convert Palm Lane Elementary in Anaheim into a charter under California’s 2010 parent-trigger law, which allows a majority of parents in any failing school to force changes.
Naturally, the school’s district officials and teachers union demurred. Never mind that
Palm Lane had made the state Department of Education’s list of underperforming schools since 2003. Fewer than 40% of students scored proficient in English in 2013. About 85% are Hispanic, and most are low-income.
(Where is the Obama DoJ and disparate impact? Oh, wait…).
The officials and the unions went so far as to disregard California law as they dragged their feet and openly obstructed the conversion—and loss of union jobs and of income for the district officials’ use.
[U]nion even complained that signature gatherers were bribing parents with free iPads, a false allegation that the district superintendent repeated in a cautionary letter to parents.
Though more than 60% of parents signed the petition, the district threw out dozens of signatures that could not be “verified.” That is, the parents could not be reached between the hours of 8:30 am and 4:30 pm to confirm that they signed the petition. Maybe that’s because they were working.
Fortunately, and once again, a judge got one right.
Last Thursday Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks ruled in favor of the parents on all counts and rebuked the district’s conduct as “unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious and unfair.” He also scored district officials for violating their obligation under the trigger law to work in good faith with parents….
Judge Banks has ordered the district to accept the petition and allow parents to immediately begin soliciting charter school proposals.
Been all right, too, if the Judge also had ordered the district officials and the union to compensate the petitioners for their time wasted fighting these frivolous delays. Such an order might have given these officials pause as they plan their inevitable, time-wasting, delaying tactic of appeals.
Still, it’s a good ruling.
It just gets better and better. Hillary Clinton has released a “FAQ” about her emails and her destruction of a significant fraction of them. Byron York, writing in The Washington Examiner, had some thoughts about them.
One of the FAQ questions Clinton posed concerned whether any of her emails were under subpoena at the time they were destroyed.
The emails that Clinton chose not to keep were personal emails—they were not federal records or even work-related—and therefore were not subject to any preservation obligation under the Federal Records Act or any request. Nor would they have been subject to the subpoena—which did not exist at the time….
Except that
The subpoena to which Clinton referred was issued March 4, 2015, after the committee learned that Clinton kept her emails on a separate, secret server. Clinton seems to be confirming that she destroyed her email records (and all backups, according to her attorney) in early December, which would be three months before the Benghazi committee subpoena. So Clinton’s argument is: there’s no way I was subject to a subpoena because I destroyed everything before the subpoena was issued.
Putting aside the question of whether Clinton’s emails were already covered by an earlier subpoena—Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy [R, SC] maintains they were—there is still the question of whether Clinton, all along, had a legal obligation to preserve her emails and hand them over to Congress. And on that question, there seems no doubt Clinton was legally required to do just that—and despite that obligation destroyed the emails anyway.
On September 20, 2012, nine days after the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Clinton asking for “all information…related to the attack on the consulate.” The letter told Clinton, “In complying with this request, you are required to produce all responsive documents that are in your possession, custody, or control, whether held by you or your past or present agents, employees, and representatives acting on your behalf.” The letter specified emails as documents covered by the request.
The letter was clear. In response, the State Department produced not a single email to or from Clinton. The world now knows, of course, that Clinton did in fact possess emails covered by the request and did not turn them over.
Even if Clinton’s argument that her personal emails were somehow not covered by the Letter, the subpoena, or the Federal Records Act and related legislation holds water, how can we know Clinton destroyed only personal correspondence, correspondence that “were not federal records or even work-related” as she claims? We can’t know. Clinton destroyed the evidence.
It’s all the more important that Congress lay hands on her servers, hard drives, and other storage media, and do a proper forensic investigation.