Johnson ploughed a British flag-themed digger, marked "Get Brexit done", through a styrofoam wall with "gridlock" written on it, in a bid to ram home his core message in time for Thursday's snap vote.Now that I've seen the picture I think I understand what that sentence is intended to mean, but the first time through I was a little lost.
He Did What Now?
It's election day in the UK.
Or You Could _Not_ Register It
With respect to Virginians, it's helpful that they're going to be such a powerful good example next year before the 2020 elections.
“In this case, the governor’s assault weapons ban will include a grandfather clause for individuals who already own assault weapons, with the requirement they register their weapons before the end of a designated grace period,” Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said in a statement Monday evening.I don't live in Virginia, but I can assure you that I will not be registering any firearms with any governments at any point. Defiance of unconstitutional laws is an important part of the duty of a citizen.
Wings of Gold
Naval aviators refer to their flight wings in this way. Pensacola is the location of Naval aviator flight training. Last week's attack by a Saudi national at Pensacola killed three naval aviators in training. Today, all three were posthumously awarded their wings out of respect for "exceptional heroism and bravery in the face of evil."
I'm confused
An all-girl troop that's part of the Boy Scouts, but they do things completely separate from the boys and no boys are allowed? As they're saying on my FB feed, "that just sounds like the Girls Scouts with extra steps."
Three perspectives on the IG report
The Inspector General's perspective is that, in pursuing the FISA warrants against Carter Page, the FBI committed 17 significant errors and omissions. This is in addition to many errors in the "Woods Procedures" that are designed to ensure that a confidential human source's otherwise unverified stories are at least vetted in by specific statements from the source's FBI handler concerning his experience with the source. In this case, the FISA application inexplicably included statements that Steele's handler did not and would not support.
The IG calls these “serious performance failures" and found "unsatisfactory" the explanations it received for the lapses. Nevertheless, the IG cannot quite bring himself to conclude that all these inexplicable errors can be attributed to political bias. Nor is he prepared to "speculate" whether the higher-ups who were duped by the errors of subordinates would have approved the FISA applications if they hadn't been misled. It's hard to understand why he would need to speculate. Why not ask the higher-ups directly: would you still have approved the applications, knowing what your subordinates misled you about? Why or why not?
Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham already have weighed in with alternative views. Barr stated:
The IG calls these “serious performance failures" and found "unsatisfactory" the explanations it received for the lapses. Nevertheless, the IG cannot quite bring himself to conclude that all these inexplicable errors can be attributed to political bias. Nor is he prepared to "speculate" whether the higher-ups who were duped by the errors of subordinates would have approved the FISA applications if they hadn't been misled. It's hard to understand why he would need to speculate. Why not ask the higher-ups directly: would you still have approved the applications, knowing what your subordinates misled you about? Why or why not?
Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham already have weighed in with alternative views. Barr stated:
The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration. In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source. The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory. While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.Durham stated:
[Unlike the IG investigation], our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.
Inspector General Report
The Federalist raises some issues, first:
Read the rest.
These admissions should outrage Americans: The FBI is intentionally failing to document confidential sources’ credibility and reliability problems so defense attorneys do not learn of them! Or, as the IG report concluded, “by withholding potentially critical information from validation reports, the FBI runs the risks that (1) prosecutors may not have complete and reliable information when a CHS serves as a witness and, thus, may have difficulties complying with their discovery obligations.”Indeed, you can’t meet your obligations to disclose exculpatory information if there is a systematic avoidance of documenting that information.
Read the rest.
Grinding Bones
What could be better for the hound of the Hall than to grind bones by the fire as the evenings run toward Yule?
Gentlemen, we cannot afford a salt-shaker gap
Business Insider must be angling for a Pulitzer with its new expose on condiment equality in Trump's America.
Down the memory hole
Embedded in this South Carolina article is a video of a CNN
video of an interview Friday morning with House Majority Whip Clyburn saying he won't "whip" a vote on impeachment. Oddly enough, CNN has scrubbed both the Clyburn video and its transcript from its website. Links from other sites now show up as broken. A search on the CNN site turns up nothing for any Clyburn interview in the last few days or any article mentioning Clyburn and impeachment this month. The video link embedded above is a "share" from a Washington Examiner article, but I can't embed it because noting I can do will call it up from a YouTube search bar. I'll be interested to see if the link continues working.
Come to think of it, has anyone done a wellness check on Clyburn since Friday?
The interview suggests that Clyburn has recently noticed that impeachment might be divisive. Shoot, if the Ds had known that I'm sure they'd never have pursued it in the first place.
Come to think of it, has anyone done a wellness check on Clyburn since Friday?
The interview suggests that Clyburn has recently noticed that impeachment might be divisive. Shoot, if the Ds had known that I'm sure they'd never have pursued it in the first place.
SBR
Congress is nonfunctional so this probably has no chance of passage, but it's definitely correct on the merits.
The NFA is probably unconstitutional front-to-back, of course, but the courts aren't there yet. Getting there, maybe.
On Tuesday, Marshall introduced the Home Defense and Competitive Shooting Act of 2019. This would change provisions of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) that put extra restrictions on the ownership of short-barreled rifles—that is, rifles* with a barrel shorter than 16″ in length or that have a total length of less than 26″.As the article points out, this law affects all sorts of rifles -- break action, lever action, and so on. This bit Steve McQueen at one point in his storied career, when his 'Mare's Leg' prop cost his studio a small fortune in ATF fees. Weirdly, as the Wiki article goes on to explain, it's perfectly legal to manufacture the same rifle as a pistol, rather than making a rifle and then cutting it down.
The NFA requires owners of short-barreled rifles to register them with the federal government; they must also pay a one-time $200 excise tax per gun. If Marshall's bill becomes law, these extra requirements would disappear; short-barreled rifles* would be regulated under the same rules as semiautomatic rifles....
Gun lobbying groups have praised Marshall's bill for, as Gun Owners of America (GOA) puts it, attempting to undo the "egregiously unconstitutional registration, taxation, and regulation of short-barreled rifles." GOA is joined by the National Rifle Association, which supported the NFA back in 1934 but now backs Marshall's bill.
The NFA is probably unconstitutional front-to-back, of course, but the courts aren't there yet. Getting there, maybe.
Eek part deux
As Glen Reynolds like to say, why is the Democratic primary system such a cesspool of racism and sexism? Apparently Kamala Harris never had a chance of winning the Democratic party presidential nomination in "Trump's America." I had no idea Trump had succeeded in co-opting the frantically partisan left wing of the Democratic party. The man is a legend. Speaking of which,
Pearl Harbor Day
Few are left now who were there to tell us what they remember. The Navy has people detailed to making sure the rest of us know the story.
The Mayflower Compact Goes West
Florida naval base shooting
We may never know the motive of this young man, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani.
Points of Disanalogy
All analogies always break. This is because they are comparisons of things that are not the same, and thus at some point the differences will emerge. This is true of even the best analogy. Nevertheless, analogies remain essential tools for reasoning because in life we generally have to make decisions about things that are not the same. Even standardized industrial products -- blue jeans, say, from a particular manufacturer and in a particular size and style -- will differ in slight ways, and certainly can differ in important properties (e.g., ownership: that one is yours, and this one is mine, and you are not free to dispose of mine as you are your own).
So when we are reasoning analogically, the thing to look for is the place (or places) where the analogy fails to hold. Then we have to see if the conclusion being drawn comes before, or after, the point of disanalogy.
For example, in today's impeachment hearings, Professor Karlan made an analogy to explain why she thought the President's conduct was impeachable.
1) She is analogizing to a 'quid pro quo' situation of exactly the kind that the last months of inquiry have not shown to have taken place. The closest we got to that was Amb. Sondland testifying that he had kind of understood that to be the situation, but that no one in the administration -- indeed, not on the whole planet -- had told him that it was the case. This is somewhat like a prosecutor who has failed to prove that a wrongful killing has happened trying to convince the jury with an analogy to a murder. "Wouldn't it be wrong if it had been murder? Wouldn't you know in your gut that was wrong?"
2) A President of the United States has a formal duty to provide disaster relief to Texas or Louisiana that is much stronger than the analog case, treating a foreign country. Even if you want to argue that the President had a particular duty to provide this aid, since Congress had apportioned it, the duty is of a different kind. To refuse to help Americans in need would be a basic betrayal of loyalty in a way that pressuring a foreign government is not.
3) Her 'brand him a criminal' is disanalogous to 'open a formal investigation on this apparently corrupt action, working with the Attorney General as is in accord with our formal treaty governing such investigations.' It's not the same thing at all. The one thing is slanderous, perhaps; the other, given the strong appearance of corruption in the Hunter Biden matter, is a perfectly reasonable exercise of constitutional power by the duly elected officer charged with exercising that power.
It's a pretty sad spectacle. I hope she's a better professor about matters where she is less passionate. Passion is the enemy of reason as we all know, and as Professor Turley rightly pointed out in a far better set of testimony.
So when we are reasoning analogically, the thing to look for is the place (or places) where the analogy fails to hold. Then we have to see if the conclusion being drawn comes before, or after, the point of disanalogy.
For example, in today's impeachment hearings, Professor Karlan made an analogy to explain why she thought the President's conduct was impeachable.
Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that’s prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding. What would you think if you lived there and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for? What would you think if that president said, “I would like you to do us a favor? I’ll meet with you, and send the disaster relief, once you brand my opponent a criminal.”There are three points of disanalogy that leap out at me. Unfortunately for Dr. Karlan, all of the breaking points occur before the analogy could bear the weight she is trying to put on it.
Wouldn’t you know in your gut that such a president has abused his office? That he’d betrayed the national interest, and that he was trying to corrupt the electoral process?
1) She is analogizing to a 'quid pro quo' situation of exactly the kind that the last months of inquiry have not shown to have taken place. The closest we got to that was Amb. Sondland testifying that he had kind of understood that to be the situation, but that no one in the administration -- indeed, not on the whole planet -- had told him that it was the case. This is somewhat like a prosecutor who has failed to prove that a wrongful killing has happened trying to convince the jury with an analogy to a murder. "Wouldn't it be wrong if it had been murder? Wouldn't you know in your gut that was wrong?"
2) A President of the United States has a formal duty to provide disaster relief to Texas or Louisiana that is much stronger than the analog case, treating a foreign country. Even if you want to argue that the President had a particular duty to provide this aid, since Congress had apportioned it, the duty is of a different kind. To refuse to help Americans in need would be a basic betrayal of loyalty in a way that pressuring a foreign government is not.
3) Her 'brand him a criminal' is disanalogous to 'open a formal investigation on this apparently corrupt action, working with the Attorney General as is in accord with our formal treaty governing such investigations.' It's not the same thing at all. The one thing is slanderous, perhaps; the other, given the strong appearance of corruption in the Hunter Biden matter, is a perfectly reasonable exercise of constitutional power by the duly elected officer charged with exercising that power.
It's a pretty sad spectacle. I hope she's a better professor about matters where she is less passionate. Passion is the enemy of reason as we all know, and as Professor Turley rightly pointed out in a far better set of testimony.
Judiciary Pseudo-Impeachment
So far--the Nadler show has adjourned for some House votes after the first 45-minute rounds of questionings--this is what I've seen.
Karlan is astounding in her manufactured dudgeon or her hysteria, you pick 'em. That's all she has, even in her answers to questions.
It seems clear the Nadler lawyer and the three Progressive-Democrat law professors--each of whom have proclaimed the impeachable guilt of Trump for most of his term--coordinated their questions and answers ahead of time. The professors' answers are too rehearsed and glib. Nadler's lawyer also took a Turley remark in an op-ed out of context and refused to let Turley provide that context.
Gerhart asserted that there is no right to go to court to contest a subpoena. King Congress has spoken; kneel and obey (my phrasing in the last clause of the sentence).
Gerhardt says further that there's no need of an actual crime in order to impeach, only an appearance. This is an instantiation of the Ford view of "high crime and misdemeanor:" it's whatever the Congress says it is. And that's what the Nadler TV show is doing. Making up a convenient beef.
The Progressive-Democrats carefully avoided directing questions to Turley, except for a single one wherein Nadler's lawyer asked if Turley had written a single sentence in a WSJ op-ed (the above comment), carefully excising the context--the caveat, in Turley's terms. When Turley tried to supply the clarifying caveat, Nadler's lawyer told him to shut up and just answer the question about the sentence, "Yes, or no."
When Turley was allowed to testify, in response to Collins and Collins' lawyer, he dismantled the Progressive-Democrats' and their law professor witnesses' case virtually point by point.
It's disappointing that actual lawyers could so misunderstand the law.
If the prior was a Schiff show, this is a Nadler burlesque.
Eric Hines
Karlan is astounding in her manufactured dudgeon or her hysteria, you pick 'em. That's all she has, even in her answers to questions.
It seems clear the Nadler lawyer and the three Progressive-Democrat law professors--each of whom have proclaimed the impeachable guilt of Trump for most of his term--coordinated their questions and answers ahead of time. The professors' answers are too rehearsed and glib. Nadler's lawyer also took a Turley remark in an op-ed out of context and refused to let Turley provide that context.
Gerhart asserted that there is no right to go to court to contest a subpoena. King Congress has spoken; kneel and obey (my phrasing in the last clause of the sentence).
Gerhardt says further that there's no need of an actual crime in order to impeach, only an appearance. This is an instantiation of the Ford view of "high crime and misdemeanor:" it's whatever the Congress says it is. And that's what the Nadler TV show is doing. Making up a convenient beef.
The Progressive-Democrats carefully avoided directing questions to Turley, except for a single one wherein Nadler's lawyer asked if Turley had written a single sentence in a WSJ op-ed (the above comment), carefully excising the context--the caveat, in Turley's terms. When Turley tried to supply the clarifying caveat, Nadler's lawyer told him to shut up and just answer the question about the sentence, "Yes, or no."
When Turley was allowed to testify, in response to Collins and Collins' lawyer, he dismantled the Progressive-Democrats' and their law professor witnesses' case virtually point by point.
It's disappointing that actual lawyers could so misunderstand the law.
If the prior was a Schiff show, this is a Nadler burlesque.
Eric Hines
A Plan for 2020
Angelo Codevilla has suggested one.
He had this admonition: Our temptation to focus on fights regarding Trump has obscured the fact that their [the ruling class'] objection is to us.
Indeed.
This bit, Were Donald Trump to be reelected in 2020, as is likely, there is no reason to think his second administration would loosen the ruling class’s tightening grip on our lives any more than the first did, leads me to my own, somewhat more concrete suggestion of what Trump ought to do:
Demand the resignations of all White House staffers including the staffs of every agency and facility in the White House right down to the cooks and janitors, firing those who, like a lawyer in DoJ, refuse to resign. Put in place the heads of those staff agencies the people whom Trump can trust, and have them as their first order of business go through those resignations and retain those whom the new heads deem worthy. Then hire some (not many), if necessary, to flesh out the staffs.
That at least will give the President a measure of control over his White House staff and should hold leaks to a dull roar.
Eric Hines
He had this admonition: Our temptation to focus on fights regarding Trump has obscured the fact that their [the ruling class'] objection is to us.
Indeed.
This bit, Were Donald Trump to be reelected in 2020, as is likely, there is no reason to think his second administration would loosen the ruling class’s tightening grip on our lives any more than the first did, leads me to my own, somewhat more concrete suggestion of what Trump ought to do:
Demand the resignations of all White House staffers including the staffs of every agency and facility in the White House right down to the cooks and janitors, firing those who, like a lawyer in DoJ, refuse to resign. Put in place the heads of those staff agencies the people whom Trump can trust, and have them as their first order of business go through those resignations and retain those whom the new heads deem worthy. Then hire some (not many), if necessary, to flesh out the staffs.
That at least will give the President a measure of control over his White House staff and should hold leaks to a dull roar.
Eric Hines
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)