Category Archives: Media Criticism

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Comey Saga

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It seems to be coming to a sad end:

How pathetic Comey sounded during his testimony. A weak man who couldn’t even muster the courage to tell Donald Trump to his face when he thought Trump had crossed a line. Instead, Comey schemed behind the scenes to document conduct which even Comey will not publicly claim was criminal.

Trump’s distrust of Comey ultimate[ly] was vindicated by what we now know about Comey.

Pathetic also was the word that came to mind when Comey described how he succumbed to pressure from then Attorney General Loretta Lynch to call the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server a “matter.” That was how the Clinton campaign wanted it portrayed. From an electoral perspective, they dreaded the accurate description that Hillary was under “investigation.” The Attorney General served as the functional equivalent of a campaign enforcer in the campaign against Trump.

It all puts the secret meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton in a new perspective, and should result in a re-opened investigation not only of Hillary’s server but a new investigation of Lynch.

Yes, it should. It should also result in a proper investigation of Hillary Clinton and her server, and finally, after all these decades of Clinton corruption, indictments. History indicates that it probably won’t, though.

[Mid-morning update]

Mr. Comey’s not very good day:

The Donald was revealed again as a man who talks too much, with a gift for the memorable insult, the demand to have his ego stroked. But didn’t we already know that? What we know now about James Comey, only suspected earlier, is that he’s what the British call “wet,” a wimp under pressure. He offered evidence at last of collusion, but it was only evidence of his eagerness to collude with his own emotions. He was incapable of standing up to Donald Trump, beyond the instinctive deference everyone accords a president.

He’s guided by his feelings, which perhaps explains why he has become a late hero of the present age. He testified that he “felt” “directed” to terminate the investigation into the activities of Mike Flynn. “I mean, this is the president of the United States, with me alone, saying, ‘I hope this.’ I took it as, this is what he wants me to do.”
One of the most telling moments of the day was an exchange with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democrat, asking the question that Republicans have raised over the weeks of rumor and not much real news. When he “felt” that Mr. Trump was asking him to throttle his investigation, she asked: “Why didn’t you stop, and say, ‘Mr. President, this is wrong?’“

“That’s a great question,” Mr. Comey replied. “Maybe if I were stronger, I would have.”

This is the rough and tough G-man, scourge of killers, robbers, rapists, terrorists and purveyors of wicked mayhem the world over. “Maybe if I were stronger, I would have.” That’s a real man that real men would follow anywhere.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is from before the testimony, but an interesting read: James Comey, novelist.

[Update late morning]

Trey Gowdy is taking over the House Oversight Committee. He seems like just the guy to get to the bottom of Lynch’s obstruction of justice.

[Update just before noon]

Did Comey’s leaks violate the FBI Employee Agreement?

Probably.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Comey came to indict Trump, but he may have indicted himself:

Congress criminalizes lying to Congress under oath. The relevant statutes are 18 USC 1621 and 18 USC 1001. Section 1621 requires a person first, be making a statement under a sworn oath; second, that statement be “material” to the proceeding; third, the statement be false; and fourth, the statement be knowingly and willfully false. Section 1001 mirrors those elements, without the same tribunal prerequisites: it also requires the government prove a person willfully made a materially false statements. In either case, the primary focus is: first, a false statement; second, a false statement as material to the matter; third, the false statement be made knowingly and willfully. A statement is not false if it can be interpreted in a completely innocent manner. A statement is not material if it is not particularly relevant or pertain to the subject of the matter. Willfully remains a very high standard of proof in the criminal law, though less in perjury cases than in tax cases: it requires the person know they are lying.

Sadly, for Comey, Sessions has the smoking gun: Sessions’ own email sent and read by Comey, according to the Department of Justice statement, showing Comey in fact did know “the parameters of the Attorney General’s recusal” despite his repeated comments to the contrary to Senator Kamala Harris’ questions.

Oops.

[Saturday-morning update]

The damaging case against James Comey. And Trump committed no crime. Get over it.

[Bumped]

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Campus Sex Police

4 Comments

Trump’s budget cuts funding for it. Good, except it will probably be restored by Congress. Devos needs to put the right people in place, and issue new guidance.

[Update a while later]

Related, sort of. Students are largely not learning to think in college. Because it’s more important to the universities to indoctrinate them, while taking their money and blighting their futures.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

No, This Is Not Terrorism In England

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It’s a protracted insurgency. It’s war, regardless of how much people want to deny it:

Britons trying to remain optimistic note that they survived and eventually defeated Irish nationalist terrorism not all that long ago. But this is a flawed analogy. In the first place, at any given time during the Troubles, the number of active Provisional Irish Republican Army terrorists seldom exceeded a hundred. Moreover, the PIRA was a “normal” terrorist group with rational political motives, not a religiously-motivated death cult, and it generally eschewed killing civilians for its own sake. Indeed, atrocities like the 1987 Enniskillen attack, which murdered 10 innocents, proved a black mark for the group, even among staunch republicans. Therefore, comparing the PIRA to ISIS and its murderous Western wannabes isn’t much help to practical counterterrorism.

That said, if Britain doesn’t soon devise tough countermeasures to its vast domestic jihadism problem, many of its cities may come to resemble Northern Ireland a generation ago, with armed soldiers in battle gear patrolling the streets as “aid to civil power” while enforcing frequent security checks on average citizens with the aim of stopping terrorists.

In their historically recent unwillingness to allow Britons to defend themselves (appalling, considering that we inherited our notions about the Second Amendment from ancient English Common Law), the contradictions of their multi-culturalism will become untenable.

[Update a few minutes later]

Counterterrorism lessons from America’s Civil War:

Destroying ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Muslim terror groups is not particularly difficult, far less difficult than Sherman or Sheridan’s task during the Civil War. It simply requires doing some disgusting things. Western intelligence doesn’t have to infiltrate terror groups, tap phones, mine social media postings and so forth (although these doubtless are worth doing). Muslim communities in the West will inform on the terrorists. They will tell police when someone has packed up and gone to Syria, and when he has returned. They will tell police who is talking about killing westerners, who has a suspicious amount of cash, who is listening to broadcasts from Salafist preachers.

They will tell western security services everything they need to know, provided that western security services ask in the right way. I mean in Phil Sheridan’s way. Like the victorious Union generals of the Civil War, the West does not have to be particularly clever. It simply needs to understand what kind of war is is fighting.

Yes, ultimately, the only way to victory is to make them fear us. As Mark Steyn has said, the question is not “Why do they hate us,” but “Why do they despise us”? It is because they have no respect for us, and given the behavior of the “elites,” it’s hard to blame them.

[Early-afternoon update]

In the face of terror, Londoners told to “Run, Hide, Tell.”

Contrast this with the London of eight decades ago.

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

Paris Agreement Advocates

Glenn Reynolds says they should practice what they preach, by government force if necessary:

First, we need to tax the “blue zones.” That is, we need to impose steep taxes on property in coastal areas that will be flooded by the sea-level increases that global warming is supposed to bring. By discouraging people from living or building there now, we’ll save ourselves from big problems in the future. Sure it’ll drive down property values, but those values should go down — they’re values for property that’s going to be flooded anyway, remember?

Second, we need to ban taxpayer-funded air travel to conferences. State legislatures could ban reimbursement for travel outside their states; Congress could require that no federal grant money be spent on air travel to conferences and similar events. A lot of academic conferences would fail, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the planet. And besides, it will encourage the development of Internet-based conference alternatives. A whole new industry might result: Green jobs!

Donald Trump can strengthen America by dumping Paris agreement: Sen. Inhofe
Third, we need to ban private jet travel. At first I thought about just taxing it heavily, but with the planet at stake, that might not be enough. It’s nice that John Travolta can have his own Boeing 707, or that Leonardo DiCaprio can jet around the world speaking against climate change, but the carbon emissions involved set a bad example that outweighs anything he might say. So no more private jets. Bigshots will just have to fly commercial like everyone else, the way they did in the 1950s. (And sorry, Leo, but massive yachts have to go, too). Politicians, too, should have to fly commercial. No more government-funded “executive jets” for them.

Fourth, we need a luxury tax on mansions. Any home more than twice the size of the average American home should be taxed at 25% of its value per year. Celebrities and the rich enjoy great powers of persuasion — but with great power comes great responsibility, and they have a great responsibility to set a good example for the rest of us on climate change!

As he says, it seems like a modest proposal.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Democrats And Climate

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They’ve lost the argument, and it’s their own fault:

…many voters don’t see Democrats acting like people who believe we’re facing an extinction level event. For instance, why aren’t we talking about adding hundreds of new nuclear power plants to our energy portfolio? Such an effort would do far more to mitigate carbon emissions than any unreliable solar or windmill boondoggle –certainly more than any non-binding international agreement. Maybe there are tradeoffs, who knows.

Or take prospective presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo. Setting intentions aside, in all practical ways, he’s been worse for the environment than Trump. Cuomo claims he “is committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Accord regardless of Washington’s irresponsible actions.” Yet as governor, he’s blocked natural gas pipelines and banned fracking, which has proven to be one of the most effective ways to mitigate carbon emissions. U.S. energy-related carbon emissions have fallen almost 14 percent since they peaked in 2007 according to the OECD – this, without any fabricated carbon market schemes. The driving reason is the shift to natural gas. Why do liberals hate science? Why do they condemn our grandchildren to a fiery end?

Fact is, Obama—as was his wont—tried to shift American policy with his pen rather than by building consensus (which was also an assault on proper norms of American governance, but the “Trump is destroying the Constitution!” crowd is conveniently flexible on this issue.) It’s not a feasible or lasting way to govern, unless the system collapses. It is also transparently ideological.

It’s impossible for any intelligent person to take them seriously.

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Our Decades-Long Diet Experiment

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We were all guinea pigs. Well, most of us, anyway. I gave it up in the nineties.

“The change in dietary advice to promote low-fat foods is perhaps the biggest mistake in modern medical history.”

And they still won’t fess up to it, and they’re still doing it with that disastrous school-lunch program. Betsy Devos should be doing something about that.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related, sort of: Did feminism cause the obesity epidemic? The fact that people aren’t cooking as much is certainly a factor, but I think the low-fat craze is probably more responsible.