Researchers have figured out how to get mice to do it. Seems like the same thing should work in humans. Between this sort of thing, stem cells, and brain-controlled exoskeletons and prosthetics, it’s a much better world for those paralyzed. Faster, please.
The “Smoking Gun”
This, folks, is prima facie obstruction of justice.
ALERT: After subpoena @JohnPodesta suggested withholding emails between HRC & BO.
I'd say those were pretty damn material to investigation. pic.twitter.com/4EopMQvvb3
— Harlan Hill (@Harlan) October 14, 2016
Congress should demand that Comey reopen the investigation.
The FBI 100
And did Comey lie to Congress? Well, duh.
[Update Saturday morning]
Comey lied, and the scandal died.
[Update a while later]
It’s worth remembering that one of the charges against Richard Nixon was interfering with an FBI investigation. Everything that Nixon would have been charged with, Obama has gotten away with.
Want To Restore Article II?
Elect Donald Trump:
We are in the last few weeks of a presidential campaign that presents the most horrible choice on offer in our lifetimes, and perhaps in American history. The worst things that each major-party candidate say about each other are largely true. The next President to take the oath to defend and preserve the Constitution will very likely either be someone who despises it (particularly the first two amendments of the Bill of Rights), or someone who has almost certainly never even read it. Both of them have high public levels of disapproval, and a large swathe of the nation will loathe the next president, regardless of who wins. That is where we are. But there may yet be a glimmer of hope.
My thoughts, over @ricochet.
[Friday-morning update]
Related thoughts from Ace:
So both are bad actors. The question which remains is: Which bad actor will be more restrained by the political establishment of Washington DC?
You can’t judge a predator’s ability to ravish an environment without looking at the environment in which that predator operates.
Trump, if these allegations are true (and even if they’re not — he’s still shady and megalomaniacal) is a jackal being released into a swamp full of alligators looking to devour him.
Do I fear the jackal abroad in the swamp full of alligators? Well — no. No I don’t.
I almost pity him.
This jackal, being megalomaniacal, may think he can bully and beat up the alligators.
The rest of us know better, and know this particular jackal will be a warm, full feeling in someone’s belly by the dawn of the third day.
Clinton, meanwhile, is a jackal being set loose in a field full of sheep with no defenses (any Republican or Christian unprotected by the elite power structure) and a pack of ravening jackal minions who will gladly join her in hunting and tearing apart the sheep.
Yes.
[Late-morning update]
Trump the transgressive candidate. I do think he is unique to the moment.
[Saturday-morning update]
Let me make the point a different way. Mitt Romney liked to be able to fire people. The American people should like that, too. Trump is the only one of the two to whom we’ll be able to say “You’re fired!”
[Sunday-afternoon update]
I hadn’t noticed this at the time, but David Galernter was thinking along the same lines about the same time (though I actually pointed it out months ago):
Mrs. Clinton is right at home in the Oval Office and thinks she owns it. She holds herself entitled to supreme power, as her friends are entitled to fancy positions with enormous salaries and her followers to secure government jobs or ample government funds, as the case may be.
But forget psychology. Ordinary politics says that Mr. Trump will not do crazy things or go off half-cocked, because Republicans in Congress will be eager to impeach him and put Mike Pence in charge. That was the subtext of the vice-presidential debate, though Mr. Pence himself (probably) didn’t intend it. When it’s my turn, you can all relax. Democrats, obviously, will be eager to help when the task is removing a Republican.
Impeachment is Trump-voters’ ace in the hole. It’s an abnormal measure, but this is an abnormal year. Impeachment has temporarily dropped out of sight because of special circumstances. Republicans impeached Bill Clinton but got burned in the process; Mr. Obama, as the first black president, was impeachment-proof. Any other president would have encountered serious impeachment talk on several occasions, especially when he ignored Congress and the Constitution and made his own personal treaty-in-all-but-name with Iran.
As I pointed out, she will be impeachment proof as well, because a) she’s a Democrat, b) she’s a Clinton and c) any attempt to do so will be decried as “sexism.”
SpaceX Update
A reported quote from Elon (no URL, yet):
We are close to figuring it out. It might have been formation of solid oxygen in the carbon over-wrap of one of the bottles in the upper stage tanks. If it was liquid it would have been squeezed out but under pressure it could have ignited with the carbon. This is the leading theory right now, but it is subject to confirmation. The other thing we discovered is that we can exactly replicate what happened on the launch pad if someone shoots the rocket. We don’t think that is likely this time around, but we are definitely going to have to take precautions against that in the future. We looked at who would want to blow up a SpaceX rocket. That turned out to be a long list. I think it is unlikely this time, but it is something we need to recognize as a real possibility in the future.” [Emphasis mine]
I think that the Arocket list had speculated about this early on.
Voting By Mail
Yes, it’s a terrible idea:
People should have to vote in person on paper ballots, after showing ID, and then get their thumbs dyed blue. You know, like they do elsewhere in the world where standards are higher.
Funny how this is one area where the Left doesn’t want us to be like other countries.
Another Way Out Of This Campaign Charlie Foxtrot
Faithless electors could in theory give us President Gary Johnson. And, though he doesn’t mention it, a Vice President Pence.
The Founders would smile.
[Update late afternoon]
An elector toys with not voting for Clinton. They should all give it some thought.
The Selective Moral Outrage
Old enough to remember when Left's hair was on fire over WJC's sexual assaults and how unfit it made him.
Oh, wait, no one is that old.
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) October 13, 2016
Our Raunchy President
The media covered up JFK’s predatory sexual behavior and other things, like his mafia ties, while he was in office. Looks like, toward the end of his final term, they’ve doing the same thing with Barack Obama. As Glenn often says, if you want a media that will be a watchdog, instead of a lapdog over the White House, elect a Republican.
The Decision To Not Indict Clinton
In other words, Comey lied to Congress when he said it was unanimous. Unless he meant it was unanimous to indict.