Category Archives: History

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Mueller’s Press Conference

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He took no questions because there was a key question he didn’t want to answer.

I don’t want to hear one more word about what a “Boy Scout” Bob Mueller is.

And a reminder that the Clintons were not “exonerated” by the Whitewater report, either. There was abundant evidence of crimes, including obstruction of justice, but not sufficient to provide high confidence of a conviction, in which it would take just a single juror to hang the jury (as happened with Susan McDougal when Starr prosecuted her).

[Update at noon]

“Not exonerated” isn’t, and shouldn’t be the legal standard for this country:

That’s not how it works in America. Investigators are supposed to look for evidence that a crime was committed, and, if they don’t find enough to contend that a crime was a committed, they are supposed to say “We didn’t find enough to contend that a crime was committed.” They are not supposed to look for evidence that a crime was not committed and then say, “We couldn’t find evidence of innocence.”

I’m confident that Mark Levin will be incandescent in his rant about this on the radio later.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mueller inadvertently confirms that Barr didn’t misrepresent his report.

[Update a few more minutes later]

Mueller’s presser proves that this was nothing but a political hit job.

[Thursday-morning update]

Mueller’s damage-control concert:

If you do not understand that the Justice Department is a filthy cesspool of corrupt garbage bureaucrats, you should understand now. Before I get into the Mueller circus yesterday, I want to point out that Mueller and his ilk are running the criminal justice system in this country. Currently, they are going after high-profile targets like Trump and the Trump operation, so there is public interest and press coverage. But imagine what kinds of things they do sotto voce to regular Joes and Janes. I just read Sidney Powell’s book, Licensed to Lie about the corruption at the DoJ and it is horrifying. I highly recommend reading it because you will see that the Trump treatment was just business as usual. Here’s the real story, in my opinion, with Mueller’s press conference: Mueller doesn’t want to be called by Nadler to testify before the House Judiciary because he doesn’t want to answer tough questions under oath. Nadler doesn’t want to call Mueller because he doesn’t want Mueller answering questions that undermine the Democrats’ plan to keep a cloud of suspicion floating over Trump until 2020. Mueller and Nadler are communicating because Nadler was pretending to negotiate a Mueller appearance before his committee. Basically, Nadler was like, “I need you to give me something if you don’t want to be called to testify.” And of course, Mueller was more than happy to hold a press conference where he could recapture his rightful status on all those prayer candles after failing to seal the deal against Trump with his report. I should mention that the Senate Republicans can call Mueller to testify, but I have little faith they will do that because they are sad, weak little men.

I wish that Liz would tell us what she really thinks.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Collusionists, Leakers…

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…and other projectionists:

What have we learned about the Left’s moralistic talk of Trump’s supposed collusion, obstruction, Logan Act violations, and leaking? One, that these are all projections of real resistance behavior. The zeal to remove Trump by any means necessary justified colluding with Russians, obstructing justice, undermining his administration abroad, and chronic leaking. Two, these deep-state and media elites are narcissistically delusional. So inured are they to deference that they really believed they should have the power, indeed the right, to subvert democracy, to overturn a U.S. election on the justification that the wrong voters had voted for the incorrect candidate and both needed to be corrected by the right people. All that is why the last 28 months have been both scary and dangerous.

Whenever the Left accuses you of something, it’s a safe bet that it’s what they’ve been doing, or would like to do.

Business, Economics, History, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Design Regulations

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How they ruined American cars:

Car homogenization has become something of an Internet meme. It turns out that all new cars more or less look alike. I had begun to notice this over the years and I thought I was just imagining things. But people playing with Photoshop have found that you can mix and match car grills and make a BMW look just like a Kia and a Hyundai look just like a Honda. It’s all one car. Truly, this cries out for explanation. So I was happy to see a video made by CNET that gives five reasons: mandates for big fronts to protect pedestrians, mandates that require low tops for fuel economy, a big rear to balance out the big fronts, tiny windows resulting from safety regulations that end up actually making the car less safe, and high belt lines due to the other regs. In other words, single-minded concern for testable “safety” and the environment has wrecked the entire car aesthetic. And that’s only the beginning. Car and Driver puts this as plainly as can be: “In our hyperregulated modern world, the government dictates nearly every aspect of car design, from the size and color of the exterior lighting elements to how sharp the creases stamped into sheetmetal can be.” You are welcome to read an engineer’s account of what it is like to design an American car. Nothing you think, much less dream, really matters. The regulations drive the whole process. He explains that the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards with hundreds of regulations – really a massive central plan – dictate every detail and have utterly ruined the look and feel of American cars. There is no way out, so long as the regulatory state is in charge.

Gee, someone should write a book about this sort of thing.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Steele Dossier

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The “verified” document that wasn’t.

Someone’s (more than one someone) got a lot of ‘splaining to do.

[Update Monday morning]

How the FBI broke its own rules:

In the fall of 1975, FBI agent John Connolly met with Bulger in the agent’s car on an abandoned Boston street corner. What would follow was the FBI’s greatest scandal involving a confidential informant subverting the vast powers of the government in order to target his enemies. This stain on the history of the Department of Justice should have led to effective reforms but instead it only foreshadowed more of the same.

Well, to be fair, it was politically convenient to do the same thing with Steele.

[Update a while later]

Spy versus spy versus spy: How Comey, Clapper, and Brennan are turning on each other.

I hope they all rot in jail.

[Late-morning update]

Trey Gowdy says that there is a potential game changer if certain transcripts are released.

And thoughts on a tale of two coups:

The fact that the losers in this election appear to have attempted to undermine the winners is an extremely bad precedent because it leads to the winners deciding to take it out on the losers next time around and that in turn leads to people not relinquishing power short of being turfed out with violence – see Venezuela and any number of Latin American, Central Asian and African dictatorships. In fact allowing the losers to come up with one way after another to try and delegitimise an election they lost is bad on its own because the ability to “throw the bums out” is a key feature of democracy. If voters can’t trust that their votes will be respected they are likely to resort to other methods of expressing their displeasure with the current set of rulers and that is something that these rulers may come to regret. The good news is that the New AG seems to be doing his job and turning over any number of stones that various parties would have preferred remained unexamined.

Let’s hope.