...And Then There Were Seven

Molly Hemingway, yesterday:

For more than year and half, the media have gone all-in on reporting every possible angle of President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia.... But as the Russian collusion story disintegrates, another interesting story ascends. Investigations by multiple congressional committees as well as an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Justice have shown irregularities in the handling of the most politically sensitive probes...

These investigations have resulted in the firing, demotion, and reassignment of at least six top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice. And all of those personnel changes were made before even the first official reports and memoranda from these investigations were made public.

Emphasis added.

Today, in the Washington Post:

A Justice Department official who helped oversee the controversial probes of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election stepped down this week.

David Laufman, an experienced federal prosecutor who in 2014 became chief of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, said farewell to colleagues Wednesday. He cited personal reasons.

Probably just a meaningless coincidence.

Politics all the way down

Is there any limit to the weaponizing of federal bureaucracies under the Obama administration?  Am I naive to believe this process reached levels not experienced under previous administrations?

Zerohedge has a horrifying summary of evidence in the FBI's possession that inexplicably had no impact on the Uranium One deal or the willingness of someone, anyone, at any time, to look honestly at what the Clinton money machine might be up to.  The story mentions reporter Michael Isakoff at one point. Isakoff is the author of the Yahoo article that, in classic circular disinformation style, was used to burnish the credibility to the Clinton/Steele dossier before the Carter Page FISA court, even though the only source of the Yahoo article was the dossier itself.

Isikoff says he was "stunned" to learn that his article was cited in the FISA warrant. We "believe" him.

The Connaught Rangers

Two songs with the same name, a proud British army song and a defiant mutineers' song.

Formed in 1881 from two older regiments, the Connaught Rangers were one of eight Irish regiments in the British army. The regiment served in the Second Boer War and World War I, and it helped suppress the Easter Uprising.

However, in 1920 nearly 90 soldiers from the regiment mutinied in protest against martial law in Ireland. In 1922, after the establishment of the Irish Free State, the regiment and five others from Ireland were disbanded. Many of the soldiers from these regiments returned to Ireland and joined the new Irish army.

The Senate piles on

No criminal indictments of FBI or DOJ personnel for lying to the FISA court, but the Senate has referred Steele himself for criminal investigation for lying to the U.S. Government.  The Senate's referral implies that Sidney Blumenthal fed the dossier's contents to the Russians in the first place.

What Wrong Looks Like

Apparently it looks like 1984 plus Han Chinese racism.

In Praise of Emotion

A new book argues that we've not been giving our feelings enough credit, or a big enough role in shaping our lives. I find the thesis shocking, but the review is glowing.

Confused? Mission accomplished.

The focus over the last couple of days has become:  did the FISA application for surveillance on Carter Page adequately disclose that the Clinton campaign bought and paid for a phony Steele dossier by mentioning in footnote somewhere that there may have been a political origin of some kind to the dossier?  As an Ace commenter put it:

Without the dossier, the case for spying on Page was "some Russians tried to get close to him and didn't." Which is pretty thin gruel. The dossier spices it up to say Trump and Russia are a thing, so it is no surprise that Page and Russians are close….

Conservative Treehouse adds an argument, based on curiously lined-up background identification facts in court filings, that Carter Page was an FBI informant in Russian spy sting operations until very shortly before he became a surveillance target himself, on the heels of developing a relationship with the Trump campaign.

It stinks to high heaven.  But as another Ace commenter put it, "Confused?  Mission accomplished."

And another, assuming the nod-nod-wink-wink in the infamous footnote was duly heard and received:

FISA Applicant: Judge, Hillary Clinton would like us to open an investigation on her opponenet in the Presidential campaign.

FISA Judge: Well, what evidence of crime do you have?

FISA Applicant: We heard from a guy, who heard from Sydney Blumenethal, who heard from....

FISA Judge: OK, that's enough. Warrant granted.

Young Dubliners

... and some Irish history in the links.

'Twas England bade our Wild Geese fly
that small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves
or the fringe of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side
or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their names we will keep where the fenians sleep
'neath the shroud of the foggy dew

The Talmadge Bridge

If you ever go to Savannah, you will see arcing across the river a mighty bridge. This bridge, the Talmadge Bridge, is named after former Democratic governor of Georgia Eugene Talmadge.

Since long before the monuments controversy, I've been expecting them to change the name. Talmadge was an important Georgia governor, to be sure. He was a fierce opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, these days considered a major saint by Democrats but in those days intensely opposed even by many fellow Democrats. He was a fierce opponent of labor unions, declaring martial law when necessary to break strikes. He was against civil rights for blacks, and deeply disturbed by the idea that whites and blacks might intermarry. Indeed, he ran his 1950 re-election campaign chiefly against miscegenation as a reason to favor segregation.

Yeah, it's been a while now I've been expecting people to look around and notice they have a big bridge named after him.

So anyway, the Girl Scouts of America have decided they'd like the bridge renamed after their founder, Juliette Gordon Lowe, who came from Savannah. Her house is a major tourist attraction.

I see no reason to oppose this change.

Asian Bee-Eating Hornets

Kind of a fun bit of reporting from Out East.

The bees also exploit a unique bit of insect anatomy: The hornet doesn’t have a heart—literally and I suppose kind of figuratively when you think about it....

The bees can't get through the hornet shells with their stingers, so they came up with a pretty nifty alternative.

Man Of The Hour

Rep. Adam Schiff, apparently determined to do every single thing that Trump is accused of having done wrong. Colluding with Russian spies to affect US politics? The only reason he failed is that he got pranked. Exposing sensitive sources and methods to endanger US intelligence collection for partisan purposes? Included for the sole purpose of forcing the President to make redactions.

This guy is making a clear-cut case for restoring the practice of caning Congressmen.

Which campaign deserved surveillance?

This is a good timeline of the sorry affair of the Carter Page surveillance and its background.  This part jumped out at me:

[By October 2016,] the FBI is aware that the Hillary campaign paid lawyers to give money to Fusion GPS, who gave money to a foreign agent (Christopher Steele), who got information from Russian informants. Yet, the FBI counter intelligence effort was being run on the Trump campaign not the Clinton campaign.

More Bagpipes!

The WSJ asks if that's really what bagpipe bands need. "Is there such a thing as too many bagpipes? There’s a nagging suspicion, even among bagpipers, that the answer might be yes."

However, the real answer is, "No."

Tears of joy

Fun?  I'll say.  SpaceX STUCK the landings.  Their people have been shrieking with excited joy non-stop for so many minutes, I'm amazed they have voices left.  Even the East German judge gives it a 10.0.

Falcon Heavy

If you didn't watch the live video, it went well. The landing of the sideboosters is Buck Rogers stuff. Glad to see the private space program doing well, and having fun.

"An Idealist With The Scars To Prove It"

This story has everything. Puerto Rico is struck by a hurricane, and is in desperate need of food aid. FEMA issues a contract for 30 million meals to a contractor with only one person employed there, the 'minority female' owner (who is, under contracting laws, entitled to preference points in terms of contract awards for both of those statuses). She sub-contracts to a completely inadequate set of wedding caterers, who produce 50,000 of the 18.5 million meals needed at the first deadline. These meals also are not properly assembled, lacking a self-heating mechanism like an MRE's chemical heater. These have to be shipped separately.

So naturally, she's suing the government for terminating her contract.

Ms. Brown described herself in an interview as a government contractor — “almost like a broker,” she said — who does not keep employees or specialize in any field but is able to procure subcontracted work as needed, and get a cut of the money along the way. She claims a fashion line and has several self-published books, and describes herself on Twitter as “A Diva, Mogul, Author, Idealist with scars to prove it.”

After Tribute’s failure to provide the meals became clear, FEMA formally terminated the contract for cause, citing Tribute’s late delivery of approved meals. Ms. Brown is disputing the termination. On Dec. 22, she filed an appeal, arguing that the real reason FEMA canceled her contract was because the meals were packed separately from the heating pouches, not because of their late delivery. Ms. Brown claims the agency did not specify that the meals and heaters had to be together.

She is seeking a settlement of at least $70 million.

Planned Parenthood and Fusion GPS

This report comes from a clearly biased outlet, and cites only right-wing sources. On the other hand, I suppose it would be hard to find anyone critical of Planned Parenthood in the mainstream press -- especially given the particular subject of this report. So take it with salt, but see if it fits with other things you've read.

The FBI Faked A Whole Field of Forensics

So claims this article in Slate, based on another article in the Washington Post.

"The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.... Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.”

The shameful, horrifying errors were uncovered in a massive, three-year review by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project. Following revelations published in recent years, the two groups are helping the government with the country’s largest ever post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

Chillingly, as the Post continues, “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.” Of these defendants, 14 have already been executed or died in prison."

The article goes on to interview an expert who says that the problem generalizes. "Nor is the problem limited to bad hair cases—much the same type of eyeballed comparison is done on bite marks, ballistics, fibers, and even fingerprints."

I begin to see why they think we should be afraid to cross these folks.

Oh, Well, Is That All?

In an article about how California is likely to race ever-further left, given the absence of hope for Republicans in the state:

That means staking out the most liberal stance on issues such as single-payer health care in California, a highly expensive initiative that failed in the legislature last year. The push is in response to the uncertainty surrounding health-care revisions in Washington, but it is estimated to cost twice the state’s annual budget.

No, of course that's not all. That's the estimate. What was the estimate on that train project?

Getting Ahead of Ourselves

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is transforming practically every human activity: the way we make things; the way we use the resources of our planet; the way we communicate and interact with each other as humans; the way we learn; the way we work; the way we govern; and the way we do business. Its scope, speed and reach are unprecedented.

Think of it: Just 10 years ago, there was no such thing as a smartphone. Today, no one leaves home without it.

No one, that is, except that 32% of Americans didn't have smartphones in 2015, the last year for which numbers are available. That creates potential problems for models like Amazon's new checkout-free store, which requires both a smartphone and a checking account. The people who don't are of course the very people who are going to lose out in the new economy that these same companies are rushing to create.

They're aware of that, but so far their minds turn quickly to socialist solutions.

How can we secure the future of those whose jobs will be eliminated by machines? Do we need a guaranteed basic income? Should we impose taxes on software and robots? Do companies that provide global IT platforms have to comply with national rules and regulations? If so, how can they be enforced? What freedoms and rights should individuals have in the digital age?

Do you have any better answers? I'm not liking the way the discussion is shaping up. Even the list of questions sounds like a future I'd rather we could avoid.