Tag Archives: politics

Incidental Unmasking

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Now we know that then-National Security Advisor to then-President Barack Obama (D) Susan Rice asked several times for American names to be unmasked that had been masked since their presence in communications of foreign nationals that were being legitimately monitored was entirely incidental to the communications and the reasons for which those communications were being monitored.

Rice’s requests were strictly legal; the NSA incumbent is one of the Executive Branch officials with the legal authority to ask for, and to receive, the names to be unmasked without having first to go through a court, even the secretive Star Chamber FISA court.

There are a couple of questions, though, that aren’t being answered.  One is why she asked for these unmaskings.  NSA could have entirely legitimate reasons for that, but the names for which she asked seem centered on then-President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign and transition team members.

The other question concerns how long such unmasking, whether by Rice or by others of Obama’s administration, had been going on.

A Thought on Filibusters and Supreme Court Nominees

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In a Wall Street Journal piece on the potential for Senate Democrat obstructionism (my term) provoking an end to the filibuster as it concerns Supreme Court nominees, Kristina Peterson had this remark:

If the Senate is able to confirm Supreme Court nominees with just a simple majority, centrists in both parties fear that future presidents whose party also controls the Senate will have no incentive to pick a nominee aimed to garner bipartisan support.

What Peterson has missed, though, is that the Progressive-Democrats in the Senate have denied any possibility of bipartisan support for some time. There has been no such possibility at least as far back as 2012, when Senate Democrats announced through their spokesman, Harry Reid, that they would never work with a President Mitt Romney.

Who’s Trying to Bully?

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Tom Perez, the new Democratic National Committee Chairman, which makes him the functional head of the Progressive-Democratic Party, has gone hysterical over his party’s loss of the Presidential election five months ago (see, especially, the opening of the video at the link to get the full flavor of his irrationality).

Donald Trump, you don’t stand for our values. You didn’t win this election[.]

Aside from the utter denial of facts about who won the election, it is true that Donald Trump doesn’t stand for DNC values, which center on their fundamental belief that

the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

That, after all, is what Hillary Clinton was saying when she said millions of Americans were irredeemable and deplorable.  That is what Barack Obama said when he dismissed millions of Americans as nothing more than bitter Bible-clinging, gun-toting denizens of flyover country.

No, Donald Trump’s values are much closer to American values than they are to Progressive-Democrat values.

And this bit:

We have a bully in Washington in the White House[.]

Actually, no.  The bully wannabe has left the building.  Wannabe because a bully can’t succeed without the willing acquiescence of his intended victim—bullies being, fundamentally, cowards, after all.  And too many Americans refused to be cowed by Obama’s threats and slurs.

When Perez isn’t being hysterical, he’s merely projecting.

Contrasts

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As the Trump administration begins to shape its policy on drugs, tension is growing between a treatment-focused approach, embodied in a new commission on opioids headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and the aggressive prosecution of drug crimes promised by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

There need there be no tension because there is no contradiction.  The two approaches—nail hard those who prey on the vulnerable and the addicted—and working to free the addicted from the controls of their addiction (“free from the controls” because an addict never loses his addiction; he can only reach a point where he can say reliably, “not today.”  That’s where current medical technology has us) rather than simply jailing them, too, potentiate each other.

But what about the user who pushes, also?  He certainly needs help getting his addiction under control, and jail won’t help that.  But he also deserves jail for that preying on his fellow addicts—he knows firsthand the damage he’s doing.  But the two can occur sequentially.

Continued Veterans Administration Failure

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Dr Dale Klein is, formally, on the Veterans Administration payroll—to the tune of a $250,000/yr salary—but he’s not employed by them, and so his pain management skills are actively denied our veterans who would benefit from them.  Klein blew the whistle on his proximate employer’s—Southeast Missouri John J Pershing VA facility—secret waiting lists and wait time manipulation practices.  Now he’s shunned by his employers and banished to a room by himself where he’s denied access to his patients and patients are denied access to him.

VA management is continuing to refuse to clean up its act, preferring to serve their employed bureaucrats rather than, and at the direct expense of our veterans.  This has to stop, and the only way is to disband VA and commit its budget—all of it, including overhead—to vouchers for our veterans with which they can see doctors, clinics, and hospitals of their choice.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.