A Mueller Interrogation

It’s well enough known that Special Counselor Robert Mueller is anxious to interrogate President Donald Trump as part of Mueller’s “investigation” of Russian interference in our 2016 election and of the Trump campaign’s alleged role in colluding with the Russians in that interference.  Trump’s counselor, Rudy Giuliani, says that Trump should not agree to the interrogation unless and until Mueller details the degree of DoJ spying on the Trump campaign, including what the FBI’s planted “informant,” Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper (who may be only one of two or three such plants), was doing and what he passed on to his FBI handlers.

Giuliani is right about that.  Trump can take a number of direct actions on the matter himself, though, that would speed things along.  After much stonewalling by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Federal judge presiding over a related-only-by-Mueller-claim case got fed up with Mueller’s own stonewalling in that case and ordered Mueller to deliver up the DoJ letter and amendment specifying the scope of Mueller’s investigation.  On DoJ’s claim that the documents are classified, they were delivered under seal to the judge.

House and Senate committees that also have requested those documents have been refused: Rosenstein objects to petty Congressmen overseeing his august activities.  Trump should order Rosenstein to deliver the documents to the House and Senate committees under a short deadline, say by noon Eastern Time this Friday.  If Rosenstein really is concerned about classification, they can be delivered to the subset of committee members who have the requisite clearance—and, yes, the committees have members of both parties with the clearances (their need to know already is plain).  If those documents are not delivered on time, Trump should, at 1201 Eastern, declassify the documents (Presidents are the ultimate arbiters of what’s classified and not classified) and order them hand-carried to the committees by COB Friday.

Trump should handle documentation related to the FBI’s spy(s) in his campaign similarly.  He should order Rosenstein to deliver all documentation, including correspondence with and about Halper (et al.), related to the plants and what they passed back to their handlers, delivered to those same committees and to the White House (perhaps to Giuliani in particular).  In view of the probable extensive amount of such documentation, Rosenstein should be given until, say, noon on Monday to produce.  If that deadline goes unmet, Trump should, at 1201 on Monday, declassify those documents and order their hand-carried delivery to the committees and the White House by COB Monday.

It’s time to put an end to the stonewalling and get things moving again.  Then a Mueller interrogation can have a chance to be an honest one.

Journalistic Integrity

I got an online newspaper survey (requested by a highly respected paper), and one of the questions opened a text box into which I was asked to enter my thoughts on subjects to be addressed by the paper’s contributors.  This is my list of topics.

  1. ID of “anonymous” sources
  2. Explanation of why [the paper] has walked away from journalistic standard of corroborating “anonymous” sources with at least two on the record sources [Note: this paper is not unique; the standard has been ignored by all news media]
  3. Explanation of why we readers should believe “anonymous” sources actually exist
  4. On the premise that at least some of the “anonymous” sources actually exist, explanation of why we should believe what the source is claiming, given his fundamental dishonesty as demonstrated by his leak, which came at least in violation of his terms of employment if not his oath of office
  5. On claims that the leaker is actually a whistle-blower, explanation of why proof was withheld from readers that he exhausted all of his whistle-blower channels before he leaked
  6. Regarding 5 above, provision of that proof
  7. Identification of the whistle blower, since he needs no anonymity; whistle-blower laws protect him

How Bad is a Vocational Education?

Especially compared with a formal college education?  Oren Cass, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, had some thoughts on that in a recent Wall Street Journal piece.

Elevating vocational education, and prioritizing its students, must begin with a substantial reshaping of American high schools. Vocational education will not succeed so long as culture and public policy consign it to second-class status—a dumping ground for students who interfere with what school districts consider their real mission, college prep.

It’s absolutely true that we shouldn’t be deprecating the status of those with or who prefer, for any reason, vocational educations.  These folks—the VoTech graduates, the OO graduates—the trades and secretaries are critical to our economy. What road gets built, what office buildings or houses get built, what communications networks get laid out without the trades?  What office is operable without the secretaries and office managers who do the actual nitty-gritty of running things?

What will a designer or an engineer or an architect do without the trades and secretaries to turn ideas into action?

Cass is spot on.

They Shouldn’t Let…

…the door hit them in the fanny on the way out.

About a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the tech giant’s involvement in Project Maven, a controversial military program that uses artificial intelligence, Gizmodo reports.

Maven is a DoD project for developing an AI capability to quickly process vast amounts of drone-generated data for human decision-makers.  Such a capability, if successfully developed, would enhance our war-fighting—and especially our war-winning—capability.

These ex-employees should consider their view of citizenship in light of their view that the US should not be allowed to take steps to defend itself.

And then they should have the moral courage to publish the results of their analysis.

The Irrationality of the European Left

It’s epitomized by a carefully unsigned piece in Spiegel Online, coming only from “Der Spiegel Staff.”  After you’ve read it, you’ll see why the author(s) were too embarrassed to sign their names to it.

…Trump’s Tuesday announcement that the US was withdrawing from the nuclear agreement with Iran, one of the core pieces of international diplomacy in recent years….

Indeed it was.  And it was one of the core pieces of failure in international diplomacy.  Even the authors’ term “nuclear agreement” gives the game away.  All the JCPOA accomplished was the codifying of Iran’s right and ability to obtain nuclear weapons—the “agreement” expires, after all, in a few short years; even were Iran abiding by it, after that expiration, they would be free to develop nuclear weapons with no further hindering from the international community.  But we can’t even know Iran is abiding, since the “agreement” bars inspections, particularly of military bases, which is where weapons development occurs.  The only inspections the “agreement” allows is of sites for which Iran will give permission, and then only after the inspectors say “pretty please” some months in advance.

Oh, and we paid Iran the princely sum of $140 billion—in cash—for the privilege of being snookered by them.  American money, too, keep in mind.  France, Germany, and Great Britain paid not a cent or a pence into that fund.

The risk [from our withdrawal] is very real that the move will worsen tensions in an already unstable Middle East and lead to an American-led war against Iran.

The instability is Iran’s doing, and no one else’s.  See their recent unprovoked Quds Force attack on Israeli installations.  See their use of their militias inside Iraq to keep that nation unstable.  See their funneling of money and weapons to their client terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was quick to threaten a return to industrial-scale uranium enrichment and few doubt that such an eventuality could lead to conflict.

We don’t know that Iran isn’t already enriching apace.  See “inspections” above.

An attack on the Iran deal is an attack on the pride of European foreign policy.

This is risible.  If Europe feels like its foreign policy is under attack, it’s only their hysteria getting in the way of their thinking.  They’re united in their insistence, in the present case, on staying in the Iran nuclear weapons deal—the anonymous authors of the piece at the link brag about that.

She [EU High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini] then appealed to Iran to continue to adhere to the deal. “Stay true to your commitments, as we will stay true to ours.”

This ignores a basic fact: Iran isn’t in the deal, and it has made no commitments regarding the deal.  Iran has not signed the JCPOA.

Trump has humiliated Europe to a greater degree than any US president before him. Macron fawned over him recently in the White House, Merkel swung by for a working lunch and British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson also made the trip across the Atlantic in an attempt to save the deal and somehow find some kind of a compromise.

Humiliated?  Because our government, after listening very carefully to these leaders, decided no to do what they instructed him to do or asked him to do?  This is precious snowflakery at its best.

In Aachen on Tuesday, Merkel essentially repeated the sentences she uttered last year during an appearance in Bavaria: “Europe can no longer rely on the US. It must take its fate into its own hands.”

Here is Merkel joining Mogherini in foolishness.  Europe has been freeloading off the US ever since its economic and political recovery from the ravages of Europe’s roll in the wars of the mid-20th century.  Ever since that time, Europe has been at least morally obligated to see to its own fate, and they’ve been shirking their duty.

The anonymous piece goes on in that vein, but you get the idea.

Europe must, indeed, see to its own future in accordance with its own imperatives.  We’re happy to help them, and we’re happy to contribute to the political, economic, and military defense of Europe.  But that’s not helped by, for instance, Germany’s toadying up to Putin in their snit over our withdrawal from a dangerously bad “deal.”