Monthly Archives: September 2014

A Man Jumped a Fence

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…surrounding the White House Friday night and was able to get all the way inside the White House before he was stopped. A little birdie has told me how the penetrator was able to get so far.

The Secret Service successfully detected the man as he was climbing the fence, and they responded to him promptly. They committed their initial effort at stopping him to remonstrating with him as he moved across the lawn: this is the sort of thing that was done in the 19th century; such things are unseemly in the 21st. The man was on the wrong side of history, and his effort was doomed to failure, anyway. And so on.

When that didn’t appear to slow the man’s progress, the Secret Service sought to form an interdepartmental task force to intercept him. They tried to enlist the Capital Police, the DC police, they even went as far afield as the Montgomery and Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Departments. By the time the Secret Service realized that that effort wasn’t bearing fruit, the man was entering the North Portico—the front door of the White House—and they were forced to act unilaterally to apprehend him.

This was a devastating episode for the Secret Service.

More Party-of-No Yeses

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The House passed three more bills in this short period before the mid-term election campaign recess.

One bill makes it illegal for IRS workers to use personal email accounts to conduct official business.

It’s already illegal to do this in many circumstances, as all official business communications must be recorded and saved. It’s also already contrary to IRS policy; although the IRS has ignored this policy whenever that became convenient.

This is, at bottom, an obvious move, too: private enterprise has, for years, held the flip side—the use of company equipment to conduct personal business—to be a fire-able offense; although they allow some limited personal use.

Another bill guarantees groups that are denied tax-exempt status the right to appeal the decision to a separate IRS office.

Also an obvious move. No government decision should be appeal-proof at the outset.

The third bill addresses complaints from groups that have had their confidential taxpayer information improperly disclosed by IRS employees. The bill allows the IRS to tell victims about the status of investigations into the disclosures. Current law forbids the IRS from releasing such information.

Here, I disagree slightly: the bill should require the IRS to disclose status information, not merely permit it. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.

Watch these three obvious moves die in the Democratic Party-controlled Senate.

DoJ Doing a Racial Bias Study of Police Departments?

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That’s rich.

[T]he Justice Department has enlisted a team of criminal justice researchers to study racial bias in law enforcement in five American cities and recommend strategies to address the problem national[.]

Notice that: not researchers, not social science researchers, not social science of conflict researchers, not social science of culture researchers, not urban social science researchers, not…. Criminal justice researchers specifically. AG Eric Holder already has made up his mind on this one.

This study will be overseen by a DoJ led by a man who insists that

in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.

This study will be overseen by a DoJ led by a man who

dismissed voter intimidation case against two members of New Black Panthers, whose victims were white, even after those two had conceded the case by refusing to answer it.

This study will be overseen by a DoJ that’s openly racist in its civil rights enforcement.

A DoJ with its mind already made up on race expects to be trusted with a study of racial bias in police forces around the nation. This is, indeed, (trigger alert) chutzpah.

They Need to Make up Their Minds

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The Minnesota Vikings issued a statement early Wednesday saying that running back Adrian Peterson must remain away from all team activities until his felony child abuse case is settled.

The move was an about-face for the team, which reinstated Peterson to the active roster Monday after deactivating him following the All-Pro running back’s indictment Friday.

Peterson has an initial hearing scheduled for October 8 in Montgomery County, Texas on a charge of reckless or negligent injury to a child. He is accused of beating his four-year-old son with a wooden switch, leaving bruises and other wounds that were visible days later. Peterson told police that he was merely inflicting discipline and had not intended to hurt the boy.

He spanked his son with a switch. So were my brothers and I by our parents. Charles Barkley has said, without too much exaggeration,

Whipping—we do that all the time. Every black parent in the South is going to be in jail under those circumstances[.]

This pasty white blogger grew up in the Midwest, and spankings with switches, paddles, whatever fell to hand, were commonplace. We weren’t harmed, except in our pride. And we learned discipline. “Beating?” Bruises “and other wounds that were visible days later?” Based on what evidence? Besides rumors reprinted in newspapers, I mean?

The Vikings’ statement continued:

We want to be clear; we have a strong stance regarding the protection and welfare of children, and we want to be sure we get this right. At the same time, we want to express our support for Adrian and acknowledge his seven-plus years of outstanding commitment to this organization and this community.

This is hypocritical. They’re not supporting a man who’s losing a significant part of his career—even great running backs only have careers of 10 years or less. Sitting him down until his case is “resolved” will cost him this year, and the trial and appeals can go on for two or three years before the matter is “resolved.”

Pick a response and stay with it; quit the bouncing back and forth. But as the Vikings choose their final answer, they need to keep in mind a quintessentially American principle: in the end, of what is Peterson guilty? Not of what is he accused, what has he actually done? When was his trial? All the evidence isn’t available, only that subset of it that a press anxious for stories to peddle chooses to make available.

There’s also this minor contractual obligation:

Under the collective bargaining agreement, a team can only deactivate a player for non-injury reasons for a maximum of four games. The same limit applies if [a team] were to suspend [a player] for conduct detrimental to the team.

How Does This Work?

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A Senate investigation released Wednesday [17 Sep] found that hackers linked to the Chinese government broke into US military transportation companies’ computer networks 20 times in a year.

But the Senate Armed Services Committee says officials of the US Transportation Command, responsible for moving troops across the globe in times of crisis, were told about just two of those incidents. If a system was compromised, they may not have known, the panel said.

[Emphasis added.] How is it possible that military transporters were not told that systems on which their functions depended had been compromised? Who made the decision to withhold these critical data? Why is that person/those people not being called to account? Why are those contractors who sat on these data still under contract?