Tag Archives: government

“Value-Charged”

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A panel, the Texas Education Agency, that is “advising” the Texas State Board of Education wants to deprecate matters related to the Alamo and its defense by a band of heroic Americans (yes, I used those two terms.  Both of them).

The 7th grade social studies curriculum used to teach the defense of the Alamo currently uses the phrase siege of the Alamo and all of the heroic defenders who gave their lives there.  This panel told the SBOE to use only siege of the Alamo.  “Heroic,” they insist, is “value-charged.”

You bet it’s a value-charged characterization.  We shouldn’t hesitate to point out, even to emphasize, to the children to whom we’re teaching our history the trials, the costs, the lives paid by—the heroism of—those who defended us.  Here is a concrete example of what Thomas Jefferson meant when he described the fertilizer of our tree of liberty.

Far beyond that, we should celebrate our heroes.  Here is a concrete example of Benjamin Franklin’s meaning when he said that our republic can stand only if we are a virtuous people.

This group of alleged experts—they’re represented to be educators and historians—didn’t stop there, sadly.

They suggested deleting the Travis letter because they think when teachers talk about the Alamo they will absolutely mention it, but not having it outlined specifically just meant teachers would spend less time on it.

Why on earth should less time be spent on a letter, Travis’ Victory or Death letter, so central to the defense of Texas?  Why should our children spend less time learning their Texas history and this critical episode in their American history?

This is the letter—which I was taught way back when I was in junior high and ‘way up north in Iowa—that these personages consider too trivial to teach our children [emphases in the original]:

Commandancy of the The Alamo

Bejar, Feby. 24th. 1836

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World—

Fellow Citizens & compatriots—

        I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna — I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man — The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken — I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls — I shall never surrender or retreat.  Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch — The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days.  If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country — Victory or Death.

William Barrett Travis.

Lt.  Col. comdt.

P.S. The Lord is on our side — When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn — We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis

This performance of this panel of “experts” is shameful.

Connections

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One in particular stands out for me: that between Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) and the truth.  Charles Hurt, in the Washington Times, has the sordid story.

[Klobuchar] claims to have read 148,000 documents that reveal Judge Kavanaugh to be so heinous as to be unfit for the high court.

OK, let’s say Ms. Klobuchar spent two minutes reading each document. That would be 296,000 minutes—or 205 days—reading these documents. Which is pretty remarkable considering Judge Kavanaugh was nominated 55 days ago.

There is another word for this. It is called a “lie.” And the person who utters it is known as a “liar,” even if the person she tells this “lie” to is so sleepy-eyed as to appear to be fully asleep.

And this:

But this isn’t even the most astonishing part of Ms Klobuchar’s sewer dive on national television.

She goes on to say that as horrific as all these documents reveal Judge Kavanaugh to be, she is not allowed to share the documents with the American people. She is not even allowed to tell us what they say.

“I can’t even tell you about them right now on the show[.]”

In her opening remarks during Tuesday’s Senate Judicial Committee confirmation hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, she repeated lie about the documents, too.  The woman is shameless.

Remember this in the fall when she’s up for reelection.  Remember it in general as all the Progressive-Democrat candidates running this fall show their approval of her dishonesty with their silence.

On Keeping the Senate Informed

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…to the level Senators deem appropriate.  In a Wall Street Journal article about the fate of the newly negotiated trade agreement between the US and Mexico, there was this plaint from one Senator among others:

Lawmakers from both parties have complained that the Trump administration has broken with precedent by not regularly briefing with Capitol Hill and leaving them largely in the dark about crucial details of the negotiations. “Who knows what’s happening,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R, TN), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, with a shrug.

That’s all to the good. You guys leak like a sieve, not out of carelessness, but deliberately for personal political gain. And those leaks also often blow up negotiations in progress. But your leaks are more important.

Now the thing will be submitted to you, and you’ll have all the time you need to study it and vote it up or down.

Get over yourselves.

Trust and the FBI

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Thomas Baker, a retired FBI agent, had some thoughts in the The Wall Street Journal about how to restore trust in the FBI. Naturally, I have some thoughts on those thoughts.

The centralization of case management at FBI headquarters. According to Florida Rep Matt Gaetz [R], an email from Mr McCabe said that Hillary Clinton would receive an “HQ special”—lenient treatment in the investigation into her handling of classified materials. Mr Wray has tasked Associate Deputy Director Paul Abbate to review how the bureau manages sensitive investigations.

That’s the wrong step. Director Wray needs first to explain why some investigations are more sensitive than others and then to eliminate that dichotomy.  All investigations are sensitive.  Or does Wray think some Americans are more equal than others?

Bad relations with Congress. The FBI needs to re-establish a climate of mutual respect with lawmakers. The “Gang of Eight”—congressional leaders and intelligence committee chiefs—is the time-tested vehicle for sharing sensitive information. The bureau should use it.

The only way the Bureau can be trusted to use it is with a 100% turnover of current FBI management.  And with a law requiring the FBI to turn over all materials subpoenaed—without redaction—within [24 hours] of the subpoena being issued.

A dysfunctional Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has said Congress will look at this after the midterm elections. But the FBI and Justice Department need not wait. They should adopt an internal standard to avoid the use of FISA to target an American citizen….

No.  Star Chambers, secretive or otherwise, have no place in a free republic. The FISA courts need to be done away with.  That should be the direction of Nunes’ “look at.”

A lack of emphasis on the Constitution. FBI special agents always have been instructed about the Constitution. But a new category of employee arose after 9/11. Intelligence analysts, who don’t directly interact with citizens in ways that touch on the Constitution’s guarantees, now play a major role in the bureau’s mission.  …  It is imperative that they, too, receive training about the Constitution.

No.  The FBI is a domestic police force, it is not a domestic spy agency.  Intelligence is the purview of the CIA, which already is enjoined (badly; enforcement needs to be stepped up) from domestic spying.  Leave the policing to the police and the spying to the spies.  Where there’s overlap, Congress and the public courts can work the question, Congress in the more general case and the courts on individual cases.

None of this will work though, without a wholesale replacement of FBI management from the middle layers all the way up.  Middle management on up and not just the leadership alluded to above because the cultural failure caused by the FBI’s politically appointed management has gone on for so long that it reaches that deep.  The fastest way to restore the FBI’s culture is to get rid of the current, dysfunctional culture’s practitioners and outright adherents.

It’s true enough that this will entail removal of some good people along with those who’ve failed their duty.  However, the failures within the Bureau are so rampant, wide, and deep that a scalpel cannot meet the task. The situation wants an axe.

Flipping Witnesses

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President Donald Trump decries it.  So have I in writing about the Manafort case and the credibility of Mueller’s prosecutors’ witnesses.

What’s interesting to me and saddening, and what’s dangerous to our system of justice—which includes justice for the accused as well as the victim—is prosecutors’ response to Trump’s decrial.

Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor, said that Mr Trump’s comments amount to “an absolutely outrageous statement and to any prosecutor would just be shocking to hear.”

“It’s hard to overstate how fundamental” to prosecutions cooperating witnesses are, Mr Zeidenberg said.

And Stephen Gillers, a New York University School of Law professor:

Trump’s idea would effectively demolish one of the basic and valuable tools of criminal law enforcement in the US.

It’s dangerous for our prosecutors to so blatantly and avidly rely on their ability to do the testifying by using the mouths of “witnesses” they’ve either browbeaten into testifying in a certain way or who’ve sold their testimony to the prosecutors like Thursday night hookers.

If the prosecutors can’t make their case without such witnesses, they don’t have a case to make.