Category Archives: culture

Jumped the Shark?

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In most venues, receiving stolen material is a felony.  Only precious journalists get a pass on that crime.

Yet self-styled media critic Howard Kurtz is worried that that pass might be getting a second look—however tenuously—from the recent arrest of James Wolfe, now ex-Director of Security for the staff of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to which New York Times reporter Ali Watkins’ email and phone (and Twitter?) records were seized.  (Kurtz also is downplaying the importance of Wolfe, too, referring to him as a “veteran Senate Intelligence Committee staffer.”)

What triggered the arrest is the FBI’s investigation into leaks of material, some of it potentially classified, from that Committee’s deliberations.

[Wolfe]…was indicted for allegedly giving false statements to the FBI about his contacts with three reporters and for lying about giving two reporters non-public information about committee matters.

Watkins was one of those reporters, at the time apparently working for Buzzfeed and/or Politico.

Kurtz said the importance of the case cannot be overstated and could lead to some reporters’ sources “drying up.”

And

“It’s a real classic chilling effect. … It’s a crime to leak classified information. At the same time, journalists rely on these leaks to get what they think is important information,” said the MediaBuzz host, noting that some of the communications with Wolfe were through encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

That encryption is a strong indication that Wolfe knew what he was doing was illegal, and the recipients’ acceptance of those encrypted messages and their ability to decrypt them is a strong indication that those recipients knew they were getting illegally released material—stolen material.

Does Kurtz actually listen to himself?  Journalists rely on leaks of classified information to get their stories?  It’s a short hop from there to journalists actively soliciting leaks of classified information, but that’s a separate story.

Beyond that, I certainly hope these criminal sources get dried up.  It would be a short hop from there—but probably too far a leap for journalists—to instead actively seek out legitimate information from legitimate—and named, not hidden—sources.  It would be a short hop—but too far for journalists, apparently—to cite two on-the-record sources to corroborate “information” supplied by “anonymous” sources, like journalism standards used to require.

But a return to honest journalism would be a Good Thing, however inconvenient journalists might find that.

Another Obamacare Episode

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The Justice Department has declined to defend Obamacare in the suit against it brought by a large number of States in the aftermath of Congress’ repeal of the Individual Mandate penalty tax.  Recall that Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the law in 2012 to recreate the penalty as a tax in order to preserve the IM as constitutional, and thereby to preserve all of Obamacare as constitutional because of the inseverability of all parts of the law.

With the repeal of the IM’s…tax…that inseverability should doom the rest of Obamacare.

As a result of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision not to defend the law,

University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley said three Justice Department attorneys withdrew their names from the brief [wherein DoJ advised the court of its position].

Three Justice Department attorneys also should withdraw their names from the Federal payroll.

A Thought on Nationhood

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Germany has one, and it centers on immigrants assimilating into German culture rather than holding themselves apart while taking advantage of the German benefits that drew the immigrants in the first place.  It’s articulated by Joachim Gauck, President of Germany from 2012-2017.  He told Bild

“I find it unacceptable that people who have been living in Germany for decades cannot hold a conversation in German, do not attend parent-teacher conferences or keep their children from going to classes or sports.”

He said people should not shy away from standing up for German values out of fear of being seen as a racist or xenophobe and that there should be “something like binding rules for living together and not several societies alongside one another.”

Absolutely.  A nation’s culture, its ability to rule itself, its very existence are at risk when immigrants as large groups don’t assimilate, and the receiving nation allows that to occur.  The nation ceases to be; it devolves into a collection of disparate groupings who happen to occupy a geographic area.

Another Facebook Fail

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Chinese firms Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL were among numerous handset makers that were given access to Facebook data in what the US company said was “a controlled operation.”

The social media giant’s vice president of mobile partnerships, Francisco Varela, confirmed a report in The New York Times Tuesday that Facebook had given Chinese device makers deep access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent.

A “controlled operation.”  Meaning the accesses were deliberately granted, consents were deliberately not requested in advance.  Which raises the question: were any consents actively withheld and those denials ignored by Facebook?

Huawei already has been identified as a threat to our national security.  Lenovo is headquartered in Beijing, Oppo (Electronics Corporation) is headquartered in Dongguang near the south coast of the People’s Republic of China, and TCL is headquartered in Huizhou, just down the road a piece from Dongguang.  These three are each under the influence, if not the control, of the PRC government.  Facebook knew these things at the time they engaged in their “controlled operation.”

Here’s Varela again, this time in his best What, me worry? impression:

…we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei servers[.]

Well, that settles it, then.  Huawei has no way at all to copy data “stored on [its] device” to its servers.  Nope.  Can’t be done.

Sure.

Merit?

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We don’t need no stinking merit.  That’s what the Progressive-Democratic Party in Pennsylvania says.

In May, two women were elected to the Progressive-Democratic State Committee.  Then the Committee said the election doesn’t matter.  They rejected the women, denied them their places on the committee.  The committee instead

[gave] the positions to men who garnered fewer votes. Believe it or not, Democrats are justifying this decision in the name of gender equity.

If Darrell Clarke and Noam Kugelmass, the two men who were gifted the seats resoundingly won by Judi Golding Baker and Mariel Martin, had a scintilla of grace, of self respect, of integrity, they’d have refused to accept the seats.  But….

It’s not only the dishonesty of the Party’s hypocrisy that’s in play here.  It isn’t even the Progressive-Democrats’ plain war on women that this move illustrates.  It’s both of those, but even more importantly, it’s the deliberate overruling of the will of the voters.  The Progressive-Democrats didn’t just ignore their voters.  Having been issued their instructions by those voters, the Party flat overruled them.  Voters’ votes just don’t count according to this Party.

This is the sort of thing we can expect if the Progressive-Democratic Party regains a majority in the House this fall—in spades if they regain the Senate.