Tag Archives: responsibilities

More Mueller Leaks

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Even Howard Kurtz seems to be catching on, as he wrote for Fox News.

Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation leaks are continuing apace.

Suddenly, there are a whole lot of leaks about Paul Manafort.

Could this, just possibly, be the special counsel’s way of putting pressure on President Trump’s former campaign chairman?

And

[T]he detailed nature of the leaks is also troubling. As a onetime Justice Department reporter, I can tell you that such leaks in a criminal investigation are rare, as well as illegal.

Here are two of the latest Mueller team leaks (leaks Mueller continues to allow, if not encourage, as demonstrated by his choosing to do nothing about stopping them):

The [New York] Times discloses that when federal agents conducted an early-morning raid at Manafort’s Virginia home in July, they picked the lock. As for details, the story says the agents not only took documents and copied computer files, “they even photographed the expensive suits in his closet.”

Who knows such detail other than Mueller’s agents conducting the raid (assuming we can accept that the NYT isn’t making up such entertaining items)?  Certainly not Manafort; had he been there he surely would have opened the door for the agents.

And

CNN reported that federal investigators wiretapped Manafort both before and after the election.

Certainly, Manafort or anyone associated with him would not have known about the taps and so could not have leaked this item.  Their knowledge would have defeated the purpose of the tap.

And another leak, this one unmentioned by Kurtz:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has interviewed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The only people familiar with the investigation would be Rosenstein and his team and Mueller and his team.  Rosenstein and his associates have no interest in leaking this interview; indeed, Rosenstein and his associates plainly know better than to leak, both from a legal perspective and a political one as members of the Trump administration.  Only Mueller has an interest in leaking this interview.

It’s time for Mueller and his team to be fired for cause and an honest cop put in charge of the special investigation, together with an honest team of investigators.  And yes, at this late date, an honest investigation needs to occur—promptly, efficiently, and speedily—in order quickly and without further delay or stall either to vindicate Manafort, Trump, the Trump campaign, et al., or to produce legitimate and serious charges.

And Mueller and each member of his team need to be investigated regarding the felonious nature of these leaks.

Antifa, a Gang

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David Pyrooz and James Densley had some thoughts on this in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.  They’re on the right track in that they urge Antifa be formally designated a gang with all the social—and legal—ramifications that would flow.

There are a couple of points I’d like to make or emphasize.

[D]on’t be fooled by Antifa’s diffuse structure. Conventional street gangs are pretty disorganized too.

Diffuse isn’t, of necessity, disorganized: the Bloods and Crips, which Pyrooz and Densley cite in their piece; the Black P-Stone Nation; al Qaeda; and the Daesh all are diffuse, by design, and well organized.

The emphasis:

Which brings us to the caveat: most gangs are apolitical. The line between domestic extremist groups and gangs is blurry at times. Antifa’s agenda sets it apart to the extent….

No, Antifa’s agenda doesn’t set it apart. Antifa meets the definition of “gang” laid out by Pyrooz and Densley. There’s no need to cloud the question with concern about motive.

Aside from that, we convict criminals for their behavior, not for their alleged motives. Motive is a concern only for sentencing.

Further aside: much of Blood, Crip, and Black P-Stone Nation behavior is domestically terrorist in nature; they consciously use terror to control their territories. We don’t waste time on irrelevant labels on their members; when they behave criminally, we convict them for that behavior, not for their “purposes.”

The irrelevancy of a “domestic terrorist” label was correctly dismissed by Pyrooz and Densley.

Just apply the “gang” designation, and move on from there with the full force of the law and the courts.

Our Pledge of Allegiance and God

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A Detroit teacher is forced onto leave now because she forced a student to stand for the class’ routine recital of our Pledge of Allegiance.  Used to be, such disrespect was handled in exactly this way, and quite properly so.

The boy actually had a good reason, though, even if he misunderstood what the pledge of allegiance is about:

God said don’t worship anything other than me, don’t worship any idols, and pledging to a flag would kind of be like worshiping it[.]

It’s certainly true that our pledge opens with a pledge of allegiance to our flag, then moving on to our Republic.  However, it’s no violation of God’s injunction to have no other gods before him, nor is it a violation of His injunction to worship no graven images.

The pledge demands no worship, only loyalty, allegiance, to our nation.  The flag is no graven image; it’s a symbol of our nation—for which it stands—not of any god.

This is a missed teaching opportunity.  It was missed by the teacher, who was inarticulate in this particular moment, and it was missed by a stupefying margin by the school’s administration, which plainly doesn’t even understand the question.

This also is an illustration of the shabby condition of our public schools today.

What Else?

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Adjunct Professor Michael Issacson at the John Jay College, a part of the City University of New York system and a used-to-be prestigious school has expressed his disdain for and hopes for violence against police officers, tweeting

He then showed he meant it, telling the New York Daily News regarding his tweet,

Oh, that s—?  Everybody dies.

The college management’s response?  President Karol Mason in her press release:

I want to state clearly that I was shocked by these statements. They are abhorrent.  This adjunct expressed personal views that are not consistent with our college’s well-known and firm values and principles and my own personal standards and principles. I am appalled that anyone associated with John Jay, with our proud history of supporting law enforcement authorities, would suggest that violence against police is ever acceptable.

Fine sounding words, but what has she actually done to show they’re not just idle chit-chat?  She closed her presser with this:

The safety of our students, faculty and staff is our top priority. Today, members of the John Jay faculty received threats, and our students expressed concerns for their safety in the classroom. Out of concern for the safety of our students, faculty and staff, we are immediately placing the adjunct on administrative leave as we continue to review this matter.

Notice that.  Isaacson is put on “administrative leave” for the school’s sake, not because Isaacson did anything wrong in the eyes of school management.  Apparently, he didn’t.  Idle chit-chat, indeed.

Beside that, Isaacson is an adjunct professor, and he can be fired at will at any time.  Even a tenured professor could be fired over this; it clearly would be a violation of his terms of office.

Administrative leave.

Aside: it’s interesting that Isaacson’s implied threat was made late last month, but the NLMSM is only just starting to report on it.  In limited fashion.

Loss of Power

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And of communications, air conditioning in hot and humid environs (and of heating in cold environs), food and water distribution, fuel supplies, and so on.

Block by block and city by city, utilities face one of the largest power restoration challenges in US history as they bring back electricity to more than 15 million people affected by Hurricane Irma.

Almost 60,000 utility workers from the US and Canada are descending on Florida and other states hard hit by the storm, with more line crews and contractors expected soon….

The Wall Street Journal article from which the above quote was taken was strictly about the subject of that quote.  However, there’s a much larger lesson, of much broader national security—even survival—implication, that Irma (and Harvey) would teach, were we willing to listen.  The lesson needs to be learned widely, too, from individual citizens to government at all levels.

That lesson is the outcome of an EMP strike or strikes, which would drop our power grid, producing all of those follow-on failures even more thoroughly and over the entire nation.  Such a strike is the sort of thing Russia actively tested when it was the core of the USSR, a capability possessed by the People’s Republic of China, and something northern Korea has been threatening us with since they successfully tested an ICBM.  We got a taste of this from the Northeast Blackout of 1965, and that wasn’t even from an EMP, just an “ordinary” failure that cascaded.  These hurricanes should finally prompt us to take action.

Some estimates, possibly apocryphal, but maybe not, have 90% of the American population dying in the immediate and near-term aftermath of a suitably timed EMP attack.  The collateral damage would hit Canada and Mexico, too, limiting their ability to help us as they would need to see to their own survival first—as Mexico has had to do with its withdrawal of an offer of aid to Texas in the face of its own back-to-back devastating earthquake off its West Coast and hurricane coming ashore on its East Coast.

The necessary lessons involve individual preparation: non-perishable food and water supplies, alternative power sources or thought-out plans for doing without power (Florida Power and Light and Duke Energy are estimating nearly a week to restore power to “most” customers in one area and 10 days or more to customers in another area), neighborhood plans for security and first aid patrol until legitimate authority can arrive (days or weeks later in the case of an EMP attack, at least days later as the hurricanes are demonstrating).  At the corporate level, the lessons include hardening facilities against EMP attack (a stretch, with Equifax demonstrating that corporations too often can’t be bothered with hardening against hacks) and provisioning alternate power sources.  Government lessons begin with restoring security and medical services promptly; restoring power/facilitating utilities’ efforts to restore power; and food, water, and fuel distribution.  At the national level, this includes hardening our power grid against EMP attack and ensuring continuity of communications with the population and with our defense establishment.

And that’s just for starters.