A Few Questions

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Then-Vice President Joe Biden (D) retained an (unknown and still growing) number of classified documents, taking them with him when he vacated his Vice Presidency in January 2017. I have some questions. In no particular order,

  • he signed the documents out of their secure storage, or he had a staffer sign them out for him. Where are the sign-out logs showing what document(s) were signed out and who signed them out—including for whom if it wasn’t the actual user of the docs?
  • when were the documents signed out?
  • what is the level of classification of the documents?
  • What is the subject matter (in general terms) of the classified documents Biden had (and still has?) squirreled away?
  • what is the nature of the documents?
    • were they finished products?
    • drafts?
    • notes for a draft or taken during meetings that were then classified by the note-taker?
    • some combination of the three?
  • what was Biden using these classified documents for or intending to use them for when he took them with him as he left office?
  • where is the documentation that the National Archives receives that identifies Executive Branch classified documents as they’re created?
  • when did the National Archives receive that documentation?
  • when do National Archive logs indicate the National Archives received the classified documents themselves, as listed on that prior documentation?
  • from whom do those logs indicate the National Archives received the documents?
  • when did the National Archives start asking questions about the classified documents it knew had been created but had not yet received?
  • where are the certifications the National Archives receives that the classified documents it received are the only copies of those documents?
  • who signed those certifications?

In the end, it’s clear that Biden, despite his claims to the contrary, knew and knows full well that he had those documents and has kept them all this time. He’s the one who signed them out or had a staffer sign them out for him. He’s the one who didn’t return them and sign them in when he was through or had a staffer do so in his name. He’s the one who moved those classified documents, or authorized an assistant to move them, from his VP offices to…someplace…between the time he had them in his VP offices and the time the Penn Biden Center was created. He’s the one moved those classified documents, or authorized an assistant to move them, from their ad hoc location variously to the Penn Biden Center and to his residence-cum-classified storage facility.

Finally, as Vice President, he had no declassification authority whatsoever beyond the authority of anyone with a clearance to declassify the notes he took and classified at the time he took them.

One more Finally: Biden says (now through his Presidential staffers) that he has no visitor logs for the building he occupies in Delaware and in which he garages his Corvette because, he claims, that’s his residence. This is nonsense. As soon as Biden moved those classified documents into his garage and a room in that building adjacent to his garage, that building ceased being his residence and became a classified storage facility. Visitors are required to be logged in and out of classified storage facilities, regardless of who lives there, and any of those visitors or Biden himself who viewed or removed from storage for viewing those classified documents are required to log them out and back in. The lack of logs is illegal.

One last Finally: Biden claims he advised the National Archives promptly as soon as his uncleared personal lawyers noticed he still had them. Promptly? He’s known for the last six years that he had these documents. What took him so long to get around to “promptly?”

Federal Debt Ceiling

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The Progressive-Democratic Party says they’ll refuse to negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. Not at all. Those politicians are looking to hold our nation’s weal and our national security hostage against their demand to spend, spend, spend.

Republican Party politicians—at least those in the House and some of them in the Senate—insist that the debt ceiling can’t be raised without agreement on spending cuts in the next and subsequent budgets: not agreement to talk about cuts, but actual, specific cuts.

These Leftist politicians insist that the debt ceiling is solely about current bills that must be paid and that future spending questions—cuts or otherwise—are separate questions and must be negotiated separately. This is badly mistaken.

Today’s debt ceiling problem is the result of past failures to cut spending: failures to agree to do more than just talk about cuts and, where cuts actually were agreed, failures to honor those agreements. The next budget’s spending will impact the next debt ceiling and create pressure to raise the ceiling again. Failure to accept, or even to recognize, the relationship between a debt ceiling and budgeting just leads to functionally automatic debt ceiling raises and so functionally automatic debt increases.

Current debt ceilings and future spendings are inextricably intertwined. The Republicans in the House need to stand tall and not allow any debt ceiling increase without agreement to specific, measurable cuts (not reductions in increases) in future budgets’ spending on specific programs. Senate Republicans need to find backbone and stand tall on this pairing, also.

Progressive-Democrat refusal to negotiate on this puts our nation’s debt crisis squarely on their backs, and no place else. Their refusal to negotiate is just their demand to continue spending us average Americans‘ money in ever increasing amounts, their demand to drive our nation ever more deeply into debt—demands born of the irrational concept that money can be created out of the æther with no economic consequence.

Facebook Collusion?

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According to the latest installment of Email Revelations, Facebook—i.e., Mark Zuckerberg, since he owns an outright majority of the voting shares of his Facebook (and its reincarnation, Meta)—responded to pressure from the White House (which can only mean President Joe Biden (D), since he’s the White House guy in charge) rather meekly (IMNSHO).

Facebook told an official at the Biden White House in March 2021 that the Big Tech company took action against the “virality” of “often-true content” regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, in addition to suppressed misinformation about the shots.

Zuckerberg, via his (identity redacted) staffer:

As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable information. This is often-true content, which we allow at the post level because it is important for people to be able to discuss both their personal experiences and concerns about the vaccine, but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.

Can be framed as…. By whom, exactly? Apparently by Zuckerberg and his minions.

Is Zuckerberg an abject coward, then, caving to unenforceable “pressure,” or is he all-in with the Progressive-Democrats and their demand to control speech?

I write, you decide.

But It Wasn’t Me

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The re-elect Lori Lightfoot for Chicago mayor sent an email to area high schools and to City Colleges of Chicago asking teachers to grant class credit to student volunteers who would work on her campaign. Not on any campaign for mayor or for any city office, but only on Lightfoot’s campaign for mayor.

When the campaign’s move was publicly exposed, Lightfoot claimed the email was a mistake and shouldn’t have gone out.

Then she blamed a junior staffer for the foul-up.

While Lightfoot called the email a mistake and said she was apologizing, putting all the blame on one young staffer. [sic] Lightfoot said she only learned the staffer reached out to CPS teachers and City Colleges staff on work emails Wednesday afternoon.

She tried to lighten the blame game:

“It was a mistake, she understands it was a mistake,” Lightfoot said.
…
Rather than firing the staffer, Lightfoot said it will be a teaching moment for her campaign….

However.

The staffer was operating directly within the parameters Lightfoot, as the MFWIC of that operation, already had set up. Lightfoot didn’t even acknowledge her own role in the mistake; she laid the whole thing off on the young woman.

Lightfoot’s procedure is simply to duck all responsibility and toss the staffer, who’s in no position to defend herself from her boss’ accusation, under the Mayoral bus. With Lightfoot at the controls.

“violent extremist views”

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Here is the cowardice and the bigotry of the Los Angeles Police Department management coterie. That crowd has banned the Thin Blue Line flag from being displayed in any of the department’s public areas. Never mind that that flag symbolizes support for the policemen and policewomen who are in the streets on their beats protecting the rest of us.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore defended the controversial move in an email sent to Fox News Digital, saying, “Yesterday, we received a community complaint of the presence of a Blue Line Flag” with “the view that it symbolized support for violent extremist views, such as those represented by the Proud Boys and others.”

Then Moore actually acknowledged the…bizarreness…of his move; although he doesn’t seem to recognize it.

It’s unfortunate that extremist groups have hijacked the use of the “Thin Blue Line flag” to symbolize their undemocratic, racist, and bigoted views.

But he banned the flag, anyway, instead of defending the meaning and rejecting the extremist groups‘ hijack.

The police union demurred from Moore’s move. The Los Angeles Police Protective League Board of Directors wrote in part,

It is difficult to express the level of utter disgust and disappointment with Chief Moore’s politically pandering directive to remove Thin Blue Line flags and memorials for fallen officers from all public areas within our police stations. This direction came as a result of complaints from anti-police, criminal apologists, and activists who hold too much sway over our city leaders and, unfortunately, our Chief[.]

Naked, bare-faced pandering, true enough. I think, though, it’s far worse than that: it’s cowardice and rank bigotry.

It’s cowardice because Moore and his management group caved promptly and cravenly to, in Moore’s own words, a collection of undemocratic, racist, and bigoted extremists.

It’s rank bigotry because Moore and his fellows in management carefully, consciously disregarded the violent extremism his flag ban inflicts on us average Americans who do respect the police and wish to show that respect with the Thin Blue Line flag, especially in police department public areas; it inflicts that same violent extremism on the police themselves by barring their own public display; and it favors the views of violent extremists like BLM, antifa, and other undemocratic, racist, and bigoted groups over the views of honest Americans and our cops.