Is Justice Served?

Marc Baier, Ryan Adams and Daniel Gericke, who illegally transferred computer-hacking technology to the United Arab Emirates, have successfully pled out their crimes of computer fraud and violating export control laws, and they’ve received their sentences.

The men will have to pay $1.7 million to resolve the criminal charges in the “Hacking for Hire” operation.

Their deal also includes

a deferred prosecution agreement also requiring the men to cooperate with the investigation, sever ties with any UAE intelligence or law enforcement agencies, and forego security clearances. The Justice Department will abandon the prosecution if they comply with those and other terms for three years[.]

Never mind that computer fraud, on a first conviction, is punishable by prison terms of up to 10 years, and that export control violations are punishable by prison terms of up to 5 years.

This compares with a navy sailor who ignorantly took souvenir pictures in a classified area of a submarine, and then actually did a year in jail.

Justice most assuredly was not served. The three men, with their wealth, were able to buy their way out into light sentences and a supervision period much less than the jail time for which they were eligible.

In Which I Disagree

There is a bipartisan bill afoot that would cut all taxpayer-based funding for any gain-of-function research into any virus or bacterium for at least next five years.

I disagree.

As the Wuhan Virus, which the People’s Republic of China government released onto the world (whether by design or by incompetent lab carelessness) demonstrates, we need, desperately, to understand such plussed up biologics, whether they’ve been…enhanced…for politico-military use, as our enemies are surely researching, or they’ve naturally jumped from their animal origins to human infectiousness.

That requires gain-of-function research because that’s the only way we’ll be able quickly to understand and then to respond to a new disease. We just need to do the research entirely domestically rather than relying on, or paying, our enemies to do the research for us.

The VA Fails Again

Just when you thought maybe it was getting better, too. Nope.

Not only did one of our veterans die in a VA facility, in a stairwell 60 feet from the door to his residential room, the Bedford, MA, VA hospital in which he was resident couldn’t be bothered even to search for him. His

decomposing body wasn’t found until a month after his disappearance in an emergency stairwell just 60 feet from the door of his residential room at the facility.

The VA didn’t even take care of routine business—which likely would have led to locating the man sooner, even if maybe not in time to save his life. That lack even of the routine

prevented anyone at VA from encountering [the deceased veteran] during the month after he was reported missing through routine patrols or cleaning of the emergency exit stairwell in which his body was found.

The VA’s IG report can be read here.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Did He Do It?

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley stands accused by the journalists Bob Woodward and his co-author Robert Costa of having made apparently treasonous calls to his counterpart in the People’s Republic of China government to assure them that an attack was not imminent and promising to give them a heads up if the US were about to attack.

He’s also accused by these journalists of having illegally inserted himself into the chain of command, instructing the generals involved to not act on the Commander-in-Chief’s (i.e., the President of the United States) order to launch our nuclear weapons under any circumstance without first involving him, Milley, in the decision.

These are plainly treasonous actions, and Milley deserves serious sanctions, as do those Generals who meekly went along with his illegal actions.

If Milley did the deeds.

However, the accusations are made by journalists who chose to cite only unnamed, carefully hidden, sources. Two hundred of them.

Which raises the question, as put by Huntsman, a logistician and founder of Fortis Analysis:

I want to know about the 200 sources who apparently corroborate this account about Milley and the PLA…
….And subsequently didn’t step forward to report it.
They leaked to Woodward, but didn’t say boo until now?
Something is way off here.

In addition to that, I want to know why Woodward and Costa, individually or together, chose to sit on these seemingly treasonous actions until they were ready to release their book and make some bucks.

Maybe the something is that the “sources” don’t exist. Maybe the something—8-10 months after the supposed deeds occurred—was intended to keep alive the Irrational Trump idea that is the lead conspiracy theory of the Left. And a source of book sales.

 

H/t Ralph Schwartz

“Unfortunately”

Our Surgeon General has let the cat out of the bag. Again, regarding the cat.

Centering his remarks on vaccination against the Wuhan Virus and President Joe Biden’s (D) edict that we must all take the vaccine—because it’s not about freedom or personal choice—Vivek Murthy had this to say regarding exemptions to that edict:

Unfortunately, as a country, we have experience in dealing with exemptions….

Because what Progressive-Democrats want in their all-governing, heavily intrusive reign is one-size-fits-all rule, no exceptions. Ever.