Category Archives: ethics

Missile Violation?

Posted on by
Reply

Iran has begun launching ballistic missiles as part of their intermediate-range and intercontinental-range ballistic missile development program.  The motorboat skipper who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair insists that these launches, while “inconsistent” with UN requirements, are not actually violations of the recently concluded nuclear weapons deal.

Here’s what that Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action actually says (the document can be seen here and here).

The E3/EU+3 and Iran commit to implement this JCPOA in good faith…and to refrain from any action inconsistent with the letter, spirit and intent of this JCPOA that would undermine its successful implementation.

It’s certainly true, though, that the letter of the agreement does not proscribe ballistic missile development efforts, but such a program plainly is “inconsistent” with JCPOA requirements, central as missiles are for delivery of nuclear warheads.  Such developments, then, are clear violations of the “intent” not to “undermine” the agreement.

As backdrop to these missile test launches, the JCPOA also says this:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be requested to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related measures as detailed in this JCPOA.

Iran has refused to allow the IAEA to conduct inspections on the military bases that house parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, and it has refused to allow the IAEA to inspect the nuclear reactor at the heart of its program.

And this, buried at the bottom of the first link’s article:

Iranian Revolutionary Guards senior commander was quoted as saying last week that its latest round of missiles were being designed to hit Israel.

Hmm….

Is the Democratic Party

Posted on by
Reply

…above the law, or do they just think they are?

Seven congressional Democrats, including the ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, have written to the State Department and Intelligence Community watchdogs demanding that their investigations of Hillary Clinton’s private email be “impartial, independent and diligent.”

From their letter, signed by, among the five, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) and Congressman Adam Schiff (D, CA):

Based on public reports and communications from your offices to Congress, we have serious questions about how this review is being conducted….  Already, this review has been too politicized. We are relying on you as independent inspectors general to perform your duties dispassionately and comprehensively[.]

And

Classification determinations are complex, subjective, often in dispute between different agencies, and are not normally within the purview of Inspectors General[.]

Because one of their own and her staff are being investigated for their complicity in mishandling classified information.  Can’t have that.  Never mind that the IGs agree that classification determinations aren’t within their purview.

The Intelligence Community Inspector General has not determined whether the Clinton emails contained classified information,” the source said.  “Recent sworn declarations from the CIA said the emails contained classified information when they hit Clinton’s server.  The ICIG was passing on the CIA’s findings, and was not the decision maker.  This is also true with the NGA (national geospatial) and other agencies.

The Democrats in Congress know this, of course, hence my question.

There’s lots more in the linked article; RTWT.

The Left’s Iron Curtain

Posted on by
Reply

…is getting a bit taller. I wrote earlier about the Democratic-Progressive Party’s wish to erect an Iron Curtain to keep American companies from leaving for more economically (read: tax) sound environments. Now, Democratic-Progressive Party Presidential candidate and proud Progressive Hillary Clinton is enlarging her Iron curtain. Clinton now is proposing this:

Companies that move jobs and production out of the US would lose previous years’ tax breaks under a proposal Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton released Friday during a speech in Detroit.

The US would seek to “claw back” previous tax incentives for research and development and for domestic manufacturing associated with facilities or jobs that move abroad.

On top of that,

The Clinton campaign didn’t have an estimate of how much money its tax plan would generate for the government.

Of course not. The purpose isn’t to recover monies foregone as incentives to do this or that, it’s strictly to imprison private enterprises within the US, Soviet-style—because private enterprises aren’t jobs factories, rather they are, according to this candidate, jobs welfare programs.

Remember this in the fall.

Upsetting Someone

Posted on by
Reply

I seem to be, anyway. Some of you may have noticed that I take a dim view of the People’s Republic of China’s aggression and acquisitiveness in the East and South China Seas.

So, apparently, do the folks of the PRC government take a dim view of my dim view. For the last several days, this blog has been getting hit by spam comments from a series of IP addresses owned by Chinanet, which is headquartered in Jiangsu Province in the PRC.

Hmm….

Clinton’s Handling of Classified Material

Posted on by
Reply

Fox News‘ Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne have a piece centered on the potential for password exchanges among Democratic Party Presidential candidate and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a number of her minions as the means of getting access to classified information and to Clinton’s unclassified and unprotected personal email server. In that piece, a number of scenarios were posited for “jumping the gap,” a physical gap between the classified network and the unclassified network—the World Wide Web that is the Internet on which Clinton’s personal server existed—there is no connection other than the air we breathe between those two networks. Those scenarios were

  • Reading intelligence reports or briefings, and then summarizing the findings in emails sent on Clinton’s unsecured personal server.
  • Accessing the classified intelligence computer network, and then lifting sections by typing them verbatim into a device such as an iPad or BlackBerry.
  • Taking pictures of a computer screen to capture the intelligence.
  • Using a thumb drive or disk to physically move the intelligence, but this would require access to a data center. It’s unclear whether Clinton’s former IT specialist Bryan Pagliano, who as first reported by The Washington Post has reached an immunity deal with the Justice Department, or others had sufficient administrator privileges to physically transfer data.

The problem with the last three is that cell phones and tablets aren’t allowed into areas where classified material exists: they have radios. Neither are laptops, or any computing device, including cell phones and tablets, that are not owned by the facility containing the classified material. Cameras and other recording devices—optical or magnetic—also are banned from such facilities, including thumb drives or anything else that might be plugged into an existing computer or storage device. Bringing these sorts of things into those areas, more than once, would have to be a deliberate—and so criminal—act.

Even a single occurrence, absent-mindedly done, is a fireable offense: folks who are granted access to classified material, whether in those secured areas or elsewhere are too well trained and no better.