Don't call my bluff

I didn't see this tactic coming:

Senate Democrats are quietly talking about asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to hold articles of impeachment in the House until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agrees to a fair rules package for a Senate trial.

Senate Democrats explained that this is their only chance to exert leverage over Mitch McConnell, who has his caucus completely lined up and won't need to get the consent of any intransigent Dems to whatever trial procedure he chooses to jam through on short notice.

Senate Dems to McConnell:  "Why, if you don't promise to make the Senate impeachment trial procedure less of a kangaroo court than we just inflicted on the country in the House, we'll . . . we'll . . . we'll get our House Dem colleagues to refuse to approve the articles of impeachment in the full House vote, that's what we'll do. Then where will you be?"

Situations like this make me think of the old joke about the missionaries being fattened up for the cannibal pot.  Told that their skins will be used to make canoes, one of them grabs a fork, pierces his arms and legs repeatedly, and yells "I'll fix your darn canoe!"

On the other hand, if Pelosi were looking for an excuse for a mercy killing for the articles of impeachment . . . .  But nah.  For all the talk about not whipping the vote, she must know what a disaster a down-vote in the full House would be.  They'd be lining up to use that new 988 number.  At least if this absurd business goes to trial, they can blame their loss on the Republican trial procedure, and in that light, the more rushed and unfair the better.  After all, the Dems' holding the initial investigation in a darkened dungeon did immeasurable good for the President.

Ace

Common Military Terminology Explained

Language warning.

House Judiciary Committee Approves 2 Articles of Impeachment

According to USA Today:

WASHINGTON – For the third time U.S. history, the House of Representatives will vote on the impeachment of a president after the House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Friday.

The committee voted along party lines to approve both impeachment articles following a marathon hearing that went late into Thursday evening.

The articles – one on President Donald Trump's alleged abuse of power and the other on obstruction of Congress during the impeachment inquiry -- were both approved in separate votes by a 23-17 margin with Democrats for and Republicans against.

What are your predictions? I think the House Democrats will make the vote on the best day for their primaries to make the best political use of something they know will fail in the Senate, and they will impeach on a party-line vote. But I'm sleep-deprived at the moment, so you shouldn't listen to me.

How about you? What do you think will happen next?

Witness protection

Now it's not enough to leave California, you have to change your identity and avoid ever doing business with anyone there again.

Whee

One of the most fun parts of a blowout conservative election is the editorial scrambling and the losers' bitter explanations for their failure.  Yesterday brought us the priceless "We won the argument, if not the election," which has to be up there with "I can't imagine how he got elected, no one I know voted for him."

There's also the 2016 Krugman Pronouncement:  this unexpected trouncing of my allies spells doom for the economy.  We may never recover.  Last week's UK editorials had largely given up on Labor's victory, so they spent a lot of time worrying that the Conservatives wouldn't command a convincing majority.  Maybe they would try and fail to cobble together a coalition.

CNBC worried earlier this week that the pound wouldn't fully recover from damaged inflicted by the recent parliamentary stalemate.  Ink was lavished over the danger that businesses wouldn't invest in an atmosphere of uncertainty over their beloved EU.  Interested readers of that CNBC analysis may glance at the bottom of the page and find today's update:  sterling surges on historic BoJo win.  The author can't help speculating, though, on how this stunning turn of events might still give a little hope that the Brexit stalemate could still drag itself along by its fingernails:

The analyst added that if a big majority over all other parties is realized then Johnson may now have the scope to “ignore the Brexiteers in his party and provide businesses with some certainty by quickly extending the transition period.”

I'm sure that's what the surging sterling tells us about what business investors--and voters--want to see: a further extended "transition" period.  The whole thing has simply been too rushed and abrupt.  On the other hand, from Johnson's victory speech this morning:

"And with this mandate and this majority we will at last be able to do what?" (Crowd shouts "Get Brexit done".)

By the way, all 18 Brexit defectors lost their seats. There's a convincing mandate for delay for you.

Meanwhile, the execrable anti-semite Communist Corbyn says he will resign, but not right away.  Certainly before the next election, but he's taking some time for "reflection."  Not to be outdone, everyone's favorite spybuster, Christopher Steele, announces that BoJo is a Russian asset.  As Sarah Hoyt says, in the future we'll all be Russian spies for 15 minutes.

BREXIT At Last

The voters have reinforced the government’s clarity over in the UK. Good for them — the chaos will be over, at least. The Resistance was firmly defeated.

Scotland may go independent, and Ireland may unify at long last. A general victory for many good causes.

Just for Fun: A British Vocal Coach Reacts to the Hu

It has the Hu, Tolkein comparisons, and a bubbly young London voice coach reacting to hearing Mongolian throat singing for the first time. Enjoy!

Or, you know, skip it if you're not in to bubbly.

Update: I think English translations have been added to all of the Hu's official videos. Interesting stuff.

A Lot Hangs

Virginia’s New Democratic government will be a lesson to the nation. Which lesson they choose to teach will be one of the major determinants of how 2020 breaks in purple states.

Imponderables

Andy McCarthy on the unwillingness to draw obvious conclusions:  We may never know the motive of those people in the FBI.

A followup from another Powerline post:

Consider one example of the misconduct Horowitz identified. An FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, obtained information that Carter Page, the subject of a FISA order, had gathered intelligence about Russia for that agency and was reliable — a fact that would cut against the notion that Page was working for the Russians. Clinesmith doctored the email conveying this information. He inserted the words “not a source,” even though he had been told that Page was a source.

Clinesmith then passed the doctored email on to the FBI agent who was assigned to affirm under oath the FBI’s allegations to the FISA court. That agent had told Clinesmith that he wanted “a definitive answer to whether Page had ever been a source for another U.S. government agency before he signed the final renewal application.” By doctoring the email, Clinesmith definitively gave the agent an answer he knew was wrong.

We know from direct evidence that Clinesmith was aligned with the resistance to Trump. However, even without that direct evidence, one should conclude, absent a satisfactory explanation for the doctoring, that Clinesmith doctored it intentionally and for a bad motive. Even without direct evidence of bias, one should conclude that Clinesmith was out to get Trump.

These are good points, highlighting the problem of how to address the shocking failures in the FBI and DOJ in the FISA warrant abuse uncovered in Crossfire Hurricane. Were the failures incompetent, or corrupt? That determination makes a difference in how you might craft reform measures.

Incompetence is something fairly easily addressed in performance reviews involving a record of success and a record of violations of policies that have been demonstrated to result in success without injustice or scandal in past investigations. Corruption might instead entail discovering whether someone's otherwise inexplicable mix of failures and successes in achieving law enforcement goals that held up on appeal corresponded with a pattern of various illicit motives. Was the agent taking bribes? Was he a victim of extortion? Was he a political operative? Was he an agent of a foreign power?  Was he merely ambitious, unprincipled, and willing to do whatever his superiors wanted?--in which case the inquiry shifts to the motives of the superiors.  Right up the chain of command.

We can't always roll our eyes and say we can never look into another person's soul and determine a motives with certainty.  A glaring pattern of failures may be exactly what points us to criminal violations.

They've never heard of it either

The Bee:  Trump's popularity surges as nation discovers he obstructed Congress.

The Interdependence of Nature and Nurture

This topic comes up regularly at the Hall, so I've been looking into it. As far as I can tell, the common view among geneticists, psychologists, evolutionary biologists, etc., seems to be that nature and nurture are interdependent.

In fact, what you do or what happens to you can change your genes or change how they influence you. Smoking damages your genes, for example. Children who grow up in isolation, denied any socialization, will effectively have very low IQs, for another.

The following "Lost Lectures" discussion by Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics Steve Jones explains this reasonably well, I think.

We also know that which groups of genes become active can depend entirely on the environment the organism exists in, including the social environment.

Here's a TED Talk by neuroscientist Gene Robinson about his research on bees, genetics, and social environment that discusses this.

My current hypothesis is that the free will vs. determinism debate will play out the same way. To paraphrase Forrest Gump's conclusion on this matter, maybe it's both, happening at the same time. But, I would shape that a little by saying, maybe it's both, interacting with each other continuously.

If you're interested, here's another TED Talk by human evolutionary biologist Irene Gallego Romero. She has further interesting examples, but this is mostly a reiteration of the two above.

A Small Matter

Rep. Mark Meadows -- my Congressman, as it happens -- notes an interesting exchange in the Horowitz hearing:

Cruz: “A lawyer at the FBI creates fraudulent evidence, alters an email that is in turn used as the basis for a sworn statement to the court that the court relies on. Am I stating that accurately?"

Horowitz: "That's correct. That's what occurred"

That's kind of a problem.

NAS Pilots: Arm Us

You're planning to trust them with F-18s, why not a 9mm?

Realization dawns

I'm starting to conclude that Adam Schiff has been lying about, well, everything, all along.  As in practically every word out of his mouth, for years now.  Not just judgment calls, but bright-line facts.

Not Everyone Has Classification Authority

As PJ Media helpfully points out -- Schiff is claiming to have classified some House Intelligence memoranda. Under what authority would he be doing that? There's a complete list of people with original classification authority here. They're all Executive Branch. Who delegated authority to a Congressman?

Did anyone?

A Reason(able) Assumption

On the Horowitz findings:

The FBI investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia was not politically motivated, but agents involved in the probe made significant and appalling mistakes.

These mistakes should terrify all Americans....

The IG report is a wakeup call: for Republicans who foolishly claimed the FBI's secretive spying process was necessary and unthreatening, for anti-Trump media pundits who uncritically parroted the talking points of top officials, and for any Americans who still think it is worth trading away their liberties. If government agents were this sloppy during a politically charged investigation that they knew would put their entire apparatus under the spotlight, it's safe to assume their normal conduct is even worse.

"Mistakes" is a bit generous, I think. We may see the actions otherwise characterized when the criminal investigation into them comes due.

Fatal Eruption Without Warning in NZ

Five are confirmed dead and several more are missing after a sudden volcanic eruption at a tourist destination on White Island, New Zealand.

Tell Me Another One

Headline: “ Judge Discovers Gun Safety Groups Don’t Offer Gun Safety Classes.”

It’s the “War Games” school of gun safety: the only winning move is not to play.

The stuff I predicted just hasn't happened yet

Hey, it works for climatistas.  The Manhattan Contrarian, noting with dismay the Democrat assumption that government spending is economically expansionary, takes on an economist whose career was marked by nothing more strongly than the failure of every prediction he ever made.  But his equations were great.

"When this war [World War II] comes to an end, more than one out of every two workers will depend directly or indirectly upon military orders. We shall have some 10 million service men to throw on the labor market. We shall have to face a difficult reconversion period during which current goods cannot be produced and layoffs may be great. Nor will the technical necessity for reconversion necessarily generate much investment outlay in the critical period under discussion whatever its later potentialities. The final conclusion to be drawn from our experience at the end of the last war is inescapable--were the war to end suddenly within the next 6 months, were we again planning to wind up our war effort in the greatest haste, to demobilize our armed forces, to liquidate price controls, to shift from astronomical deficits to even the large deficits of the thirties--then there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.”

In fact, after the war, government spending fell 61%, and the result was an economic boom. Economist David Henderson calls Samuelson’s prediction of a post-war depression the single most disastrously wrong economic prediction ever.