Tag Archives: ethics

A Gordian Knot Solution

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Sometimes blunt instruments are the appropriate ones.

DoJ, while the ink was still drying on its promise of transparency and cooperation with Congress regarding the House’s Intelligence Committee investigations, welched on that promise.  Regarding the electronic communication—memo—that launched the counterintelligence investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,

Chairman Devin Nunes (R, CA) received an official response from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd.
…
Upon inspection, however, [the response] looks more like an effort to distract attention from Mr Boyd’s refusal even to mention Mr Nunes’ main request of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

That main request was for a clean, unredacted copy of the document.  Instead, the key data in the doc, the data central to the Intel Committee’s investigation, were carefully redacted.  The excuse?  The data would give up the name of the nation whose intel service is cooperating with us.  Never mind that the New York Times already has published Australia as the source for the Papadopoulos claims and that ex-CIA Director John Brennan already has bragged about Great Britain’s relationship with the FBI.

Enough stonewalling.  President Donald Trump needs formally and explicitly to declassify the memo and order the FBI to release it.

Sure, he’ll take heat from the Progressive-Democrats and the Left generally. What else is new?

Social Media Censorship

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Facebook’s management is making some moves in the name of its version of transparency.

Facebook Inc will soon require that advertisers wanting to run ads on hot-button political issues go through an authorization process first, a move the social network hopes will prevent the spread of misinformation across its platform.

And

In October, Facebook unveiled a similar authorization requirement for election-related ads. The latest move will cover “issue ads”—those that don’t specifically mention a candidate but weigh in on a divisive issue, including during an election campaign.

These moves strike me as just move by Facebook management and IT types to facilitate their efforts at censoring the speech of which they personally disapprove.  These steps have nothing at all to do with separating fake from truth—which is the sole responsibility of the reader, anyway.

Trump Not a Target?

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It seems that Special Counselor Robert Mueller has told President Donald Trump’s lawyers that Trump is not a criminal target of Mueller’s “investigation;” Trump is merely a subject of it.

While WaPo has based its story on sources that may or may not exist (“three people familiar with the discussions;” we don’t get to know who they are, we don’t even know if “three” is accurate), let’s take the story as accurate, arguendo.  Some of Trump’s advisors think Mueller’s remarks are just an attempt to bait Trump into sitting for a Mueller interrogation.

There’s another aspect to this, though.  Keep in mind that it’s entirely legal for a government agent—policemen, FBI agents, a special counselor—to lie to their investigatees, even as it’s a crime for the lie to go the other way around.

There’s no reason to take Mueller’s claim seriously.  Or perhaps Trump and his lawyers should: apart from being a bait attempt, it could be an attempt to sandbag Trump or anyone associated with him into getting careless.  The same perjury trap some of Trump’s lawyers worry about being the purpose of a Mueller interrogation of Trump could be in play here, too.

Abuse of the Special Counsel Function

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It turns out that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein authorized—in a secret memo, yet—Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Paul Manafort, Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s sometime campaign manager, regarding Manafort’s work for the Ukrainian government.

To the extent what Manafort did is a crime—Mueller has indicted him on charges of

conspiring against the US, conspiring to commit money laundering, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, and making false statements. A subsequent indictment…alleges he committed tax and bank fraud.

and Manafort has both denied the accusations and formally pled not guilty—his actions would not be out of the ordinary, and they don’t warrant a special counsel’s investigation.

If DoJ had legitimate interest in Manafort’s actions, DoJ would investigate with the FBI and/or other, established and regular, police forces.  The fact that these accusations are further alleged to have occurred in Ukraine is not relevant to such run-of-the-mill crimes.

Identity Politics

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This time it’s via rank sexism.  Lots of women, lots more than in past campaigns, are running for office, and they’re doing it on the basis of their gender as much as, or more than, their policies.

Erin Collier, a 34-year-old economist, made a late entry into the crowded race [primary, to determine the Progressive-Democrat candidate who will run against Congressman John Faso (R, NY)] in March with an announcement video that ended: “I’m not going to let those boys beat me.”

Not because her policies are better for the district than those of her competitors.

Nor is it limited to Progressive-Democrats.

Congresswoman Martha McSally, a Senate candidate in Arizona…former fighter pilot, denounces “BS” and tells national GOP leaders to “grow a pair of ovaries” in her introductory campaign video.

Kelly Dittmar, Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics:

Women are more willingly and successfully using gender as an electoral asset instead of seeing it as a hurdle they have to overcome.  It’s going to be important for these women not to present messages that could be perceived as marginalizing men.

Dittmar’s condescension is itself sexist.  We men aren’t the precious snowflakes she assumes; we don’t feel marginalized by the sexist identity politics of these candidates.  We’re just irritated by the dishonesty of this extension of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) identity politics.

And that’s the larger point.  Running on their gender—rather than running as an American candidate and doing so on the basis of policy—is sexist bigotry no matter the claimed motive or the cuteness of their framing of the matter.