Category Archives: culture

“Special Prosecutor”

Posted on by
Reply

The 9th Circuit has appointed one to “investigate” President Donald Trump’s pardon of ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio last summer.  This was done in response to the fiction offered the court by the Perkins Coie law firm that the pardon, an explicitly named power of the President under Article II, Section 2, is somehow unconstitutional and a violation of due process.

Never mind that the due process—to the extent this…claim…is relevant to the matter of pardons—was supplied by the prior trial and conviction of Arpaio, a trial without which there would be no pardon to grant.

9th Circuit judges William Fletcher and Wallace Tashima, making their own claim that their Circuit “needs ‘the benefit of full briefing and argument’,” of the legitimacy of a President’s Constitutionally authorized pardon, appointed their “special prosecutor.”

Two things must flow from this usurpation of Executive Branch power.  One is that the Senate must get off its collective duff and confirm Trump’s nominees to fill the 9th Circuit vacancies.

Separately, judges William Fletcher and Wallace Tashima have violated their oaths of office, which include a promise to support and defend the Constitution. As they’re no longer hold[ing] their Offices during good Behavior, they need to be removed from the bench.

From the DNC’s Lawsuit

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that the Democratic National Committee is suing the Trump campaign, the Russian Federation, Wikileaks, and several of their brothers and uncles over the hack of DNC emails and the DNC’s loss of the 2016 elections.

Here, via The Wall Street Journal, is a brief excerpt to the DNC’s filing along with my perhaps rude comments.

V. THE SIGNIFICANT HARM INFLICTED UPON PLAINTIFF

135. The illegal conspiracy inflicted profound damage upon the DNC. The timing and selective release of the stolen materials prevented the DNC from communicating with the electorate on its own terms. These selective releases of stolen material reach a peak immediately before the Democratic National Convention and continued through the general election.

This is bogus.  The release (the timing of which is wholly irrelevant) went alongside DNC communications “with the electorate;” it did not prevent anything.  The DNC easily could have refuted the claims in the release, point by point.  Oh, wait—how does one refute claimed statements, when the statements are plain for all to see?

It’s also highly suspicious that, when the FBI sought access to the hacked servers, from which the “stolen materials” were stolen, the DNC denied the access.  Why would the DNC not want the cops to investigate the crime it claims was committed, and the hackers caught and prosecuted?

136. The timing and selective release of stolen materials was designed to and had the effect of driving a wedge between the DNC and Democratic voters. The release of stolen materials also impaired the DNC’s ability to support Democratic candidates in the general election.

See above.  In addition, the wedge was driven by the DNC leadership, who were busily stacking the race against one of the candidates—a stack against which “Democratic voters” would have demurred from the jump had they been permitted to know the bias was being acted on before the hack and release.

A question the DNC, even now, has declined to address: had Bernie Sanders won the Party nomination despite the leadership’s best efforts, would they have supported him with the same level of effort and zeal they did the candidate they had designated as the Party nominee before the primary campaigns?

137. The public release of stolen DNC materials was enormously disruptive to the convention, undermining the party’s ability to achieve unity and rally members around their shared values. The release cast a cloud over the convention’s activities, interfering with the party’s opportunity to communicate its vision to the electorate.

Again, bogus.  What was disruptive and undermining was the plain dishonesty of DNC leadership and its having been caught in its attempt to fix the election.  Besides, Sanders worked very hard, and successfully, to bring the Party together for the general election, despite the leadership’s having so thoroughly cheated him.  This beef has no actual damage done.

A DNC Lawsuit

Posted on by
Reply

The Tom Perez and Keith Ellison-led Democratic National Committee is suing the Russian government, the Trump campaign, and WikiLeaks, claiming the three acted to mess with the 2016 elections.

Bring it.

I have two comments on the suit.  One is, admittedly, purely cynical.  The Trump party should refuse any attempt to settle the suit.  Instead, they should force the thing into court and through all appeals brought by the DNC, and they should use every hour of any time periods allowed to produce this or that document, brief, what-have-you for the court.  Use up the DNC’s money.

The other comment is more serious and more straightforward.  Discovery should be fun.  Let the Trump party have all of the DNC’s servers and contents for inspection pursuant to this suit so they can look for evidence of the interference.  Included in that discovery must be those DNC servers and contents that the DNC claims were hacked and which the DNC refused to allow the FBI to inspect at the time in the FBI’s search for evidence.  In addition to the servers and contents, the DNC should be required to provide all the steps it took to preserve that evidence from the time of the hack.

“Support the Troops”

Posted on by
Reply

Maj ML Cavanaugh, Nonresident Fellow at West Point’s Modern War Institute, had an op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal demurring from Alphabet’s Google’s (a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet) employee’s objection to Alphabet’s working with DoD on a major artificial intelligence project: such work would “irreparably damage Google’s brand” they argue because military.  Cavanaugh suggested that, on the contrary, such mutual work was to the net good, falling behind our enemies on AI could well be fatal to us, DoD should work to expand Defense/tech company interaction, and so on.

Then he closed his piece with this hopeful claim.

Silicon Valley and the US military share compelling interests, and in the end they’re on the same side.

Are they on the same side? With Alphabet’s and Facebook’s repeated anti-democratic copying of personal information, coupled with their deliberately convoluted and incomplete instructions on how individuals can manage parts of their personal information, and now Alphabet’s apparent disdain for the US being able to defend itself, I’m not at all sure that’s accurate.  Especially with Alphabet having already signed a contract with the People’s Republic of China to work on…artificial intelligence.

Equal Protection Under Law

Posted on by
Reply

Harmeet Dhillon, a trial lawyer and California Republican National Committeewoman, has a tweet up regarding equal protection, San Jose, CA, style:

From the 9th Circuit argument Monday morning in Hernandez v. San Jose—City attorney says SJPD should not be held responsible for forcing Trump supporters to walk through a violent mob, because attending a Trump rally is an inherently dangerous act! Did they ask for it?

Play the video, and listen especially to the exchange between the San Jose lawyer and the judge (you may have to crank up the volume to hear the judge).  San Jose is utterly disingenuous in this case.  Equal protection applies, in SJ, only to SJ-approved groups of people.