Tag Archives: responsibilities

A Propos Missing Devices

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A report from cloud access security firm Bitglass analyzing all breaches of financial services firms since 2006 found lost and stolen devices [behind a registration wall] accounted for 25.3% of breach events

These missing devices only emphasize the incredible “excessive carelessness” of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s utter negligence in her handling of her own devices.  The damage to which we’re exposed and the damage done by…careless…handling isn’t limited to national secrets or even to politics.

The Courts’ Role in Law

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The New York Court of Appeals, the State’s Supreme Court, has inserted itself into the political debate concerning who is a parent.  It’s entered the moral debate, too, but its ruling is a legal and political one:

New York’s highest court Tuesday upended how the state legally defines parenthood, reversing course on a 25-year-old ruling that had blocked many same-sex couples from seeking the court’s help in custody disputes.

Until now, New York only recognized as parents those with a clear adoptive or biological tie to a child, shutting out those who otherwise may have played a key role in a child’s upbringing.
…
The court ruled that going forward, a partner can seek visitation and custody if it is shown “by clear and convincing evidence that the parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together.” The court recognized that some people could even deserve custody if they came into a child’s life after the birth, but said now isn’t the time to set a rule for such situations.

The Court justified its ruling in this way:

Tuesday’s decision by the New York Court of Appeals said society has changed in recent decades and that families formed by gay couples need to be protected.

And there’s this by Susan Sommer, an attorney at Lambda Legal:

Finally, New York is bringing its law in line with the reality of thousands of children who need protection for their relationships[.]

No, even if society has changed, this is a political decision that legitimately can be made only by that society—the citizens of New York, themselves or through their elected representatives.  The courts have no proper role to play in the political arena; they have only in a judicial one—which is to apply the law as it’s written (or strike it altogether if they can make the case that the law in question is unconstitutional).  The courts’ role does not include making law from the bench.

Our Dishonest Department of Justice

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The Obama Department of Justice has been caught again.  This time, it advised the Supreme Court—13 years after the DoJ’s misbehavior—that it had lied made “several significant errors” in the 2003 case Demore v Kim, a case concerning excessive detention times for aliens with criminal records who were being held without bail.  DoJ had “mistakenly” argued at the time—and convinced the Supremes with the argument—that the detention periods involved were four months or less and so not excessive.  From this, the Supremes upheld a blanket policy of bail denial to immigrants jailed while appealing deportation orders.

DoJ’s lately confession admits that the detention periods actually were longer than 12 months.

And this incident:

In 2012, the Justice Department told the court that it had inaccurately asserted in a 2009 case, Nken v Holder, that officials routinely “facilitate” the return to the US of deported aliens who later win their immigration appeals.

It turns out that DoJ hardly lifts a finger to speed such returns.

Unfortunately,

In both instances, more accurate information emerged through Freedom of Information Act requests filed by immigrant advocates who were skeptical of the government’s claims.

Clearly, DoJ knew these things and have been trying to hide the fact of their “mistakes.”  They knew they were lying “providing inaccurate information” at the time; they deliberately withheld accurate information from the Supreme Court.  That’s why it took FOIA requests to expose these facts.

Recall, too, the DoJ having been caught out overtly and deliberately lying in another immigration case in 2015, and that judge ordered DoJ’s lawyers to undergo ethics training.  President Barack Obama’s (D) Attorney General Loretta Lynch has refused to have her lawyers undergo that training.

Of course she has.  Lying is too deeply embedded in the culture of the DoJ.

This is a mess, spanning administrations, and it can be cleaned up only with a wholesale removal of DoJ leadership down to middle management and the discharge of the lawyers ordered to undergo ethics training and who have not yet done so.  But that won’t happen in a potential Clinton administration led by a candidate who has promised to continue and extend Obama’s policies.

Is This Felony Perjury?

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The perjury case officially has been referred to the US attorney for the District of Columbia by the House of Representatives.  In their letter to the DA, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R, UT) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R, VA) pointed out that

[Then-]Secretary [now Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary] Clinton stated “there was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received.”

But

FBI Director James Comey said July 5 that a “very small number of the emails containing classified information bore the markings indicating the presence of classified information.”  At least three emails had a (C) for Confidential which is the lowest level of classification. Fox News first reported in June that classified markings existed, despite Clinton’s public claims.

And

Clinton told [Benghazi Select Committee member Jim (R, OH)] Jordan that her team “went through every single email.”

But

The FBI Director said his investigators found that Clinton’s lawyers did not read all the emails, and relied on a narrow set of search terms to identify which emails were work-related.

“The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all her e-emails,” Comey said July 5. Instead, they “relied on header information and used search terms.”

And

Clinton also testified to Congress there was only one server.

But

[T]he FBI Director said investigators found “Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department and used numerous mobile devices to review and send e-mail on that personal domain.”

And

“I provided you, with all my work related emails, all that I had.  Approximately 55,000 pages. And they are being publicly released,” Clinton testified.

But

FBI investigators found “several thousand work related emails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.”

Keep in mind that Clinton’s claims made before those two committees were made under oath.

Second question: will President Barack Obama’s (D) DoJ, which owns the DC District Attorney and the James Comey FBI, do a more thorough job of investigating this than the DoJ and the FBI did of Clinton’s classified email handling gross negligence (which Comey was pleased to call “extreme carelessness”) with her private email server, which she used for official State Department business? Steven Pomerantz, “a retired assistant FBI director and 28-year-veteran of the bureau,” said that

…a perjury review is generally straightforward for agents.

“They look at the transcript of the testimony they provided in light of what they know to be, suspect to be the truth. They investigate both sides and take the aggregate and turn it over to the prosecuting authority for a decision.

“Since the Director (Comey) already established what she (Clinton) said and the investigation is complete, it would be a relatively simple matter to make a decision about perjury…given the history of this, it’s hard to say—it would seem to me a matter of weeks not months in this case.”

We’ll know soon, especially regarding the second question.

Racism in Student Governments

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Here’s an example.

The vice president of the Student Government Association at the University of Houston was punished by the Student Senate for a Facebook post that read, “Forget #BlackLivesMatter; more like #AllLivesMatter.”

The “offending” Facebook post by SGA VP Rohini Sethi has since been deleted, but below is an image of it.LivesMatter

UofH’s response at the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement?

[A] 50-day suspension beginning August 1, mandatory attendance of a diversity workshop, mandatory attendance of three cultural events per month, a reflection letter, and a public presentation at the Student Government Association meeting on September 28[.]

If she doesn’t complete this Mao-ist reeducation camp requirement, the SGA will banish her from their organization.  And expose her to continued harassment for her effrontery.

It is rank racism that proclaims the perhaps lives matter, but especially some lives matter more than others.