Category Archives: Law

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Hillary Email Probe

51 Comments

It is becoming “extremely serious.”

Of course it is. Because it always was.

[Saturday update]

Hillary’s zone of maximum danger:

so now one of two things will happen. First, Clinton could keep the FBI at bay and sell the idea that this is all another partisan witch hunt. In this scenario, she scares off additional contestants for a short period of time-say, five weeks-at which point it becomes logistically impossible for someone to wage a serious campaign designed to beat her. If it’s just her, O’Malley, and Sanders in the ring by the end of September, then she’ll slug it out and probably win the nomination in a closer-than-expected fight. That’s one possibility.

The other is that one of the aforementioned big guns does get in, at which point things get interesting. Republican races always pit two basic political factions against one another: the GOP establishment against actual conservatives. Democratic races have three factions: the party’s establishment machine, ideological liberals, and people obsessed with identity politics.

The Democratic establishment isn’t as powerful as its Republican counterpart, but it’s plenty formidable. Howard Dean couldn’t beat it with his ideological liberalism. Barack Obama was able to merge liberalism with identity politics, and he still nearly lost to the establishment machine, winning only because of Clinton’s massive strategic error of not focusing resources on caucus states.

If Biden or Warren or Patrick gets in, then we could hae a three-way face off between each faction of the Democratic party – an epic, asymmetric showdown, like shark versus crocodile versus giant squid. At which point Clinton would step into the octagon with the outcome very much uncertain. And if Obama decides to weigh in and back one of the new challengers, things get even tougher for her.

[Bumped]

Business, Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Punching Back Twice As Hard On Campus

Instapundit has some good advice for a fraternity under siege:

(1) Immediately complain to the Department of Education and the Department of Justice that you’re being targeted because of your race and sex, and denied your First Amendment rights. No, nothing will come of this, but that’s not the point. The process is the punishment. (2) Sue on the same grounds. (3) The real killer: Go to the Virginia Legislature and tell them they should cut Old Dominion’s budget. Come prepared with figures on the number of administrators on campus now, versus 10 and 20 years ago. File freedom of information requests and get the travel expense figures for the folks in the administration. Look over them for suspicious and large expenditures. (You’ll find them!) Make a big stink about those.

Administrative bloat leads to large numbers of “student life” educrats without enough to do, so they’ve created a quasi-police-state to fill the time. State legislators are looking for things to cut anyway, and higher ed doesn’t have the clout it used to have. This will hurt them more than anything else you can do.

I would love to see that happen.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Civil Rights Progress

5 Comments

In Detroit (as contrasted with murderous Chicago), the citizenry is legally arming itself, with the blessing of the chief of police.

It’s nice to see my home state at the forefront of the restoration of our rights. It will be very interesting to compare crime and murder rates to “gun-controlled” (where almost all the guns are in fact completely out of control) cities.

Law, Technology and Society

Got A Drone?

14 Comments

Here’s now to fly it by the FAA rules.

I’ve been thinking about picking up a cheap quadcopter just to play with, but probably not one big enough to require filing a flight plan.

[Late-morning update]

Man versus drone versus the law:

I personally like some of the quirkier aspects of old English law. I think limiting self-help against drones to thrown T-shirts would make a wonderful common law rule. If you can take it down by throwing a T-shirt at it, then it’s too damn close. If not, then tough luck.

“Excellent. We could call it the rule of ‘quod tangit tunicula.'”

Heh.

Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Campus Sexual Assault

14 Comments

The policy continues its descent into madness in California:

A student found responsible for campus sexual assault is often branded a rapist in local (and often national) media, his transcript is forever marked and his reputation is forever tarnished. And let’s not forget that a finding of responsibility can be achieved on nothing more than an accusation, with exculpatory evidence and witnesses ignored and a complete lack of due process.

An expulsion with a mark on the transcript could keep him from continuing his education. When accused students have been suspended and allowed to return to campus, outrage has sometimes ensued. Colleges are now being pressured simply to expel. Expelled students — again, expelled based on nothing more than an accusation — find it nearly impossible to transfer to another school. Their education is halted, and if they can’t afford an attorney to sue the university for wrongful expulsion, their lives are put on hold.

As one male student told Buzzfeed: “At first I thought they didn’t want me to participate in campus activities. Then I thought they didn’t want me to graduate. Now they don’t want me to have a job or be part of society. Do they want me to commit suicide? Is that what they want me to do? What is the endgame?”

We need some lawsuits over this. If I had a son, I wouldn’t let him attend school in the state.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Hillary’s Emails

18 Comments

Do they all still exist?

The Denver based company that Hillary hired to watch over her server, Platte River Networks, says it is highly likely that a full backup of all of Hillary’s emails was made from her old server before it was wiped clean. This calls into question how truthful Hillary has been with the voters and law enforcement.

You don’t say.

Platte River networks is not a suspect in any crime and is cooperating fully with the FBI. Hillary must hate that.

Yes.

[Monday-morning update]

Just pardon Hillary now:

Not only would a pardon have legal consequences. It would have political ones. It would be a tacit endorsement of Clinton, a message to Biden not to run. Scrutiny of Clinton would fade. A few news outlets might continue to dig around—we at the Washington Free Beacon will never, ever stop—but most reporters, who’d rather not be writing about this scandal anyway, would turn elsewhere.

Obama would look magnanimous. The country would be spared years of Clinton drama it doesn’t want. A pardon would be a final display of Obama’s moral superiority to the woman he defeated long ago—exactly the sort of self-righteous gesture that most appeals to him.

As Elizabeth Price Foley notes, he’s not being serious, of course, but it is fun to tweak this gang of corrupt thieves and liars. As Nixon said, he gave his enemies the weapons they needed to destroy him. So has Hillary. And I suspect, at this point, one of those enemies is Barack Obama.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Former CIA operative: “You or I would be fired and maybe jailed for this.”

It’s almost as though, in these peoples’ minds, the greater the responsibility, the least the accountability.

[Update a while later]

Surprise! The discovery of thousands of emails that the State Department denied the existence of in 2013:

…this has to be either willful incompetence or a conscious effort to obstruct a court order. If they missed a few responsive e-mails, I’d chalk it up to incompetence; if they missed the most responsive e-mails in an avalanche of data, willful incompetence might still be a good explanation. This looks much more like obstruction of justice, and perhaps the judge in this case may be persuaded to haul State Department officials into court to testify under oath about it. The court can start with John Kerry and start working downward.

At least we still have a judicial branch. It doesn’t seem like we have a Justice Department any more.

If she’s not prosecuted for this, a lot of people who have been will have a good equal-protection case for clemency.

[Update a while later]

Who down-domained the information?

As noted, whoever it is should be questioned. Maybe with conditional immunity.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary

Birthright Citizenship

32 Comments

I’m hearing that The Donald is proposing putting an end to it. That’s too bad, because I think it’s a good idea that will now be tainted by the source. Here’s what I wrote about it almost exactly five years ago:

if it were my choice, I’d much rather grant citizenship to someone who was willing to brave a desert and river crossing to get to this nation, learn the language and the civics, and work for a living, than someone born here who takes the nation for granted and refused to accept those responsibilities. Who is more deserving of the vote — the immigrant who has worked for it, or the native who spurns its requirements and demands public largesse? Or worse yet, a native who gangs with others to prey on his own neighbors? Why should someone, regardless of their behavior and level of social responsibility, be a citizen of this great nation through the sheer luck of having been born here, when many other true Americans who weren’t born here but “got here as fast as they can” are not?

Note that this isn’t about civil rights, at least not the traditional negative rights as stated in the Bill of Rights. Both citizens and civilians would have rights to free speech, rights to fair trials, even rights to bear arms if they’re not felonious, but voting is not and should not be a right — it should be a privilege, because, as noted above, it’s one that many will otherwise abuse to the detriment of their fellow residents, should they not be responsible and willing to pull their own weight, choosing instead to rob them at the ballot box.

Immigrants in fact tend to be harder working and more grateful to be here, though the Latin-American influx may be different because they aren’t necessarily coming to stay.

[Update a while later]

This isn’t exactly the same, but it would have much the same effect: Tom Tancredo is once again proposing that voters pass the same test that one must to become a citizen.

Works for me. And I have become long-inured to falsely being called a racist.

Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

A Perfect Feminist Storm

3 Comments

I’ve joked for years that I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, but someone should seriously do this to make their heads explode:

In the Perfect Storm scenario, the ex-boyfriend, when called before the tribunal, refuses to bow down. He does not beg for a lawyer. He does not offer pathetic, chauvinistic attacks against his victimized accuser. He does not beg for mercy.

Instead, the accused ex-boyfriend claims that the charge against him cannot possibly be true. The reality, he says, is that during the time he was dating his accuser, his gender identity was feminine. Not only was his gender identity feminine, it was also lesbian — and to the extent his appearance on campus was externally masculine, he behaved that way because he had discovered that he had much greater sexual success as a lesbian (with sexual success defined as encounters with other women) when those same women believed he was a man. He knew, however, at all relevant times, that he was a lesbian having sex with the woman now hiding behind a screen and accusing him of the heteronormative crime of rape.

Not only does the accused ex-lesbian boyfriend deny the charges against him, he counterattacks.

It would deliciously highlight the contradictions of the fascist SJWs.

Humor, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Mark Steyn’s New Book

6 Comments

Some commentary from the author on its reception so far.

I’ll be interested to see what people like Phil Plait have to say. I suspect they’ll try to pretend it doesn’t exist.

[Thursday-morning update]

Thoughts (and a lot of excerpts) from Judith Curry.

I’m not sure that the fact he’s making a lot of money on the book reduces his chances of getting damages from Mann. I’m sure he would have preferred to have been writing other books, and he needs the money for his legal defense.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Hillary’s FBI Investigation

15 Comments

Sorry, apologists, but yes, it is a criminal probe.

With all the laws being violated, how could it not be?

I’m trying to recall the last time the presumptive nominee of a major party was under investigation by the FBI. And failing.

[Update a while later]]

“People need to know whether she’s a crook.”

Really, after the history of the 90s, is there any doubt about that? But she’s their crook, supported by a party of long-time thieves and liars.