In House testimony today, Loretta Lynch…

The New Neo Posted on by

…performs the extremely-limited extremely-modified hangout.

See also this and this.

And although it’s not directly related, what’s up with Ruth Bader Ginsburg going on and on lately about the awfulness of Donald Trump? In this case, Trump is the one taking the high road, and he’s absolutely correct:

“I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it’s a disgrace to the court and I think she should apologize to the court. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”

He continued: “That she should be saying that? It’s so beneath the court for her to be making statements like that. It only energizes my base even more. And I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible.”

Allahpundit has some theories, and this one seems most likely to me:

…she’s already planning to get off the Court as soon as possible. Four days ago, anticipating her “RBG Uncensored” knocks on Trump this past weekend, Ginsburg told a reporter from the AP that the next president, “whoever she will be,” will likely have multiple Supreme Court vacancies to fill. That was a hint that she’s on her way out and that she thinks Hillary has this in the bag. She may feel so confident about Clinton’s chances and so sure about her own impending retirement that she’s lost her inhibitions about signaling bias against the other party’s nominee, suspecting that she’ll never have to rule on an initiative of President Trump’s.

Ginsburg is getting old, and it may be a sign of some sort of age-related disinhibition. Another idea I have is that her friendship with Justice Scalia acted as a check on her, and this check has been removed since his death.

Election 2016: what might have been

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s often an empty exercise to mourn what might have been.

One reason is that one can never know, because the road not taken is just that: not taken. We are free to imagine any “if only” that suits our fancy, and no one can disprove it wouldn’t have happened that way any more than we can prove it would have happened that way.

So it’s an empty exercise, but a tempting one. And with that caveat, I have to ask your indulgence while I’ll go down that speculative road not taken, just for a moment.

I spent most of the 2016 primary season worrying that Trump might be the Republican nominee. Far from laughing at him, I took his candidacy very seriously nearly from the very start, and opposed it with all my might. I was against that prospect for two rather simple reasons, ones which more fervent Trump supporters would strongly disagree with: the first was the character and history of the man himself (and since I’ve written so many posts on both subjects, I see no need to recap now), and the second was that I was strongly convinced that Trump was the weakest of all the possible candidates against Hillary Clinton.

That was my reasoning. It was somewhat analogous to the old joke, “The food is bad, and such small portions!” He’s terrible, and I don’t think he’ll win, which is an awful prospect because I suspect she’ll be even worse. That was it in a nutshell.

Why am I going into all of this again? One reason is that the convention is coming up, and it’s not over until the chorus of fat ladies has belted out that Trump is the 2016 Republican nominee. The other reason is that I’ve been reminded of it many times recently when people who had told me months ago that they were thinking of voting for a Republican for the first time in their lives—usually their choice was Rubio, whom they seemed to like—have now been very clear that they will vote for Hillary although they don’t like her at all, for the simple reason that Trump is completely unacceptable to them and however much they detest her they will never, never ever, vote for him.

These people are very reluctant Hillary voters who were looking to vote for a halfway decent GOP candidate after a lifetime of voting Democratic, and Trump lost them. What their numbers actually are I don’t know; this is the most anecdotal of anecdotal evidence I’m presenting. And whether they will ultimately be offset by those mythical Democratic voters who are said to be about to defect to Trump I don’t know, either. But the people I hear from are the opposite: possible GOP voters who are turned off by Trump.

[NOTE: The title of this post is a quote from the third-to-last verse of this John Greeleaf Whittier poem.]

Compare and contrast: Jason Brezler and Hillary Clinton

The New Neo Posted on by

Hillary Clinton’s decision to use an alternate and insecure email system has never been adequately or convincingly explained. Her initial excuse was nonsensical and/or mendacious (wanting to use one device), and people have speculated ever since on the real reasons. But no one—not even Hillary herself—has ever offered a possible reason that was altruistic.

Unlike the case of Jason Brezler, in which his motive was decidedly selfless.

Brezler’s actions and the possible consequences for those actions as a member of the military are subject to the rules/laws of that institution; Clinton’s are not. And like Clinton, Brezler has never been indicted for a crime, although like her he sent classified information through a regular email account. But his motives, the extent of his offense, his behavior after the offense, and official reaction to that offense have been markedly different from what Clinton did and what happened to her afterward.

Brezler had served as a Marine in Afghanistan, and in 2012 (two years after returning home; he was now a reservist), Brezler received an urgent email from a fellow officer warning him about the reappearance of an Afghan named Jan with whom Brezler had previously had extensive dealings:

[While in Afghanistan] Brezler had come to the conclusion that Jan was involved in narcotics and arms trafficking as well as facilitating attacks by the Taliban, even selling Afghan police uniforms to the enemy. Jan also was alleged to be what Brezler’s lawyer would call “a systematic child rapist” who allegedly ran a child kidnapping ring and acquired “tea boys” with the help of U.S. taxpayer job development money.

…Brezler kept pushing and was finally able to pressure the provincial governor into removing Jan from his post, a rare and notable bright spot in the bloodiest province in the bloodiest year of the war.

That’s the background. Here’s what the 2012 email was about, and what happened next [emphasis mine]:

…[H]ere was this email from a fellow Marine officer in Afghanistan saying Jan was back as police chief and had allegedly been raping as many as nine boys at Forward Operating Base Delhi. The email asked Brezler for any information he might be able to provide.

The Marines had not issued laptops during Brezler’s deployment, and he had used his own to send and receive reports while in the war zone…it seemed like a stroke of great luck that the lone report he inadvertently still had on hand summarized the allegations against Jan.

Brezler attached the report to his reply and emailed it with…urgency…

The fellow officer who had made the inquiry and received the response, identified by one source as Marine Maj. Brian Donlon, noted that in his haste Brezler had sent what was technically a classified document via an insecure mode of communication. Brezler acknowledged the error and duly reported himself, in keeping with a code of honor befitting a graduate of the Naval Academy.

The aftermath? Nothing was done about Jan, he and his “tea boys” continued to come and go on the base, and seventeen days later one of those boys entered the base gym and murdered three unarmed Marines, wounding a fourth. The murders occurred in August of 2012, and in December of 2013 a panel recommended that Brezler be “tossed from the military but given an honorable discharge.”

Brezler’s case has not gone unnoticed by certain members of Congress, among them Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), who have tried to clear his record:

“The one person who did the right thing is the person who’s being penalized,” King said.

King made that statement in late 2013, and in November of 2015 Brezler lost and the military’s decision was upheld:

A senior Navy Department official decided Monday to force a Marine Corps officer out of the service for his handling of classified information, three years after he was first investigated after sending a warning to deployed colleagues about an Afghan police chief whose servant later killed three Marines.

Maj. Jason Brezler will be separated from the Marine Corps following a decision by acting Assistant Navy Secretary Scott Lutterloh, said Michael Bowe, Brezler’s attorney.

That was the military’s decision. After that, the case went to the civilian courts for further appeal:

“We will now proceed to a real court and prove that Commandant Amos and his generals illegally retaliated against Major Brezler because they were more concerned with politics and their careers than the lives of their Marines and the service of a good Marine who did the right thing,” [Brezler’s attorney] Bowe said in an e-mailed statement. “I look forward to their cross-examination.”

There are other legal elements involved in the military’s handling of Brezler and of the murders, including a civil lawsuit:

…filed by the family of one of the Marines killed [which] remains pending against the service in federal court. It alleges that the service ignored Brezler’s warning that the police chief, Sarwar Jan, was corrupt and sexually abusing children, allowing for the Aug. 10, 2012, ambush in which Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley, 21; Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson, 29; and Cpl. Richard Rivera Jr., 20; were killed at Forward Operating Delhi, a Marine Corps outpost in Helmand province’s Garmsir district. A fourth Marine sustained five gunshot wounds but survived.

The suit was filed…by the Buckley family, which also is represented by Bowe. In court filings, they have repeatedly expressed frustration with the amount of information the Marine Corps has provided them about the case.

As of now, Brezler’s case is still proceeding through the court system, and his defense plans to make use of the decisions made in the case of Hillary Clinton’s classified emails:

An attorney for Brezler, Michael J. Bowe, said that he intends to cite the treatment of Clinton “as one of the many, and most egregious examples” of how severely Brezler was punished…

Bowe said it is impossible to reconcile President Obama’s statement that Clinton’s intentional act of setting up a secret, unsecured email server did not detract “from her excellent ability to carry out her duties” while Brezler received a “completely opposite finding”¦ involving infinitely less sensitive and limited information.”

If Hillary Clinton were to become president, those duties would include being Commander in Chief of the armed forces. As such, of course, she would nevertheless still be a civilian and not subject to the military justice system nor to military rules.

Majority of Americans disapprove of Comey’s/Lynch’s decision not to charge Hillary

The New Neo Posted on by

56% disapprove, to be exact, and only 36% approve.

I had two thoughts on hearing this. The first was surprise that it was that many disapproving, and the second was, “What difference, at this point, will it make?” I doubted whether it would cause a single Hillary-voter to change his or her mind from voting for Hillary to not voting for her. After all, although Comey offered a few more details that made Hillary look even worse than before, it’s not as though the gist of it hasn’t already been known for a long time.

The survey had some slightly-encouraging statistics on the question of possible vote-changing, though:

Most also say the email controversy won’t affect their vote in the presidential election. But 28 percent say it leaves them less likely to support her…

But will those people “less likely to support her” still vote for her anyway? After all, you can be 90% likely to support her down from 95% likely to support her, and you will still end up voting for her.

Here are some more numbers, but they don’t really answer the question (and of course there’s lots of time to go before November):

Among Democrats, the email issue makes no difference to three-quarters, and 16 percent say it has strengthened their support (likely given that she wasn’t charged) ”” but 10 percent say they’re less likely to vote for her because of it.

Most independents, 58 percent, say the issue won’t influence their choice, but those who say it has made them less likely to support Clinton far outnumber those who say it has made them more apt to vote for her, 33 percent versus 5 percent.

[ADDENDUM: I offer some anecdotal evidence, for what it’s worth—I was at several social functions this past weekend that featured a lot of Hillary supporters, not one of whom voiced the least bit of doubt about voting for her. In fact, those who spoke (which wasn’t everyone) seemed extremely supportive of her and protective of her.]

Black Lives Matter is not leaderless

The New Neo Posted on by

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has gotten some flak for criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement by making a:

…condescending comparison between demonstrators who stood shoulder to shoulder with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and today’s anti-police protesters…

He said modern-day protesters have chosen whooping and hollering over meaningful dialogue because “it makes for good TV.” Bratton also launched into a history lesson about meaningful social protest.

“Unlike the civil rights movement, which focused on the broad needs of desegregation and a segregated country, the needs of jobs, the needs of voting rights, the needs of education, the Black Lives Matter movement has focused entirely on police, and is not engaging in dialogue, instead engaging in protests where there’s a lot of yelling and screaming…”

But another part of Bratton’s statement caught my eye as being more significant: he called the movement “leaderless.” And he said that all the BLM-inspired “yelling and screaming” about police brutality “accomplishes nothing.”

So far I haven’t been able to find a transcript of the Bratton interview, but the excerpts indicate a gap in Bratton’s background knowledge of the BLM movement. He’s correct that it doesn’t have “leaders” in the same sense as the civil rights movement of the 60s and Martin Luther King, Jr.; visible charismatic speakers who were looked up to by the rest and who made headlines almost on a daily basis. But the BLM movement is not some grass-roots mass of protoplasm that just spontaneously rose from social media, it does have founders and people who try to direct its course, people with a history of agitation, activism, and extreme leftism, such as Alicia Graza whom I featured in a post on Saturday (please read the links there if you haven’t already).

The MSM has kept relatively hush-hush about the leftist background and driving forces of the Black Lives Matter movement, so it’s understandable that the average person wouldn’t be aware of them. But if NYPD’s Bill Bratton isn’t aware, that’s a pretty sad commentary. What’s more, his remark that it “accomplishes nothing” seems naive at best. It depends what the goal is. In the case of the leaders of the “leaderless” BLM, the goal is not what Bill Bratton (and a lot of BLM followers) may think it is. The goal is very much in the Cloward-Piven mold—to force a crisis that leads to a societal upheaval that moves the country even further to the left, rather than to peacefully solve an immediate problem.

[NOTE: See also this for some historic background on a group called the BLA, please see this previous post of mine.]

There are more things in heaven and earth…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Recently scientists announced:

Triple-star systems with detected planets are rare enough; this is believed to be just the fifth such discovery. But the giant gassy world in this one ”” formally known as Planet HD 131399Ab ”” has the biggest known orbit in a multi-star system.

Its orbit is double Pluto’s ”” or roughly 550 Earth years. That’s how long it takes to orbit its system’s brightest star, a super-size sun. The two smaller stars orbit one another and, as a pair, orbit with their big stellar brother…

During part of the planet’s orbit, all three stars are visible on the same day, offering triple sunrises and sunsets and allowing for day and night. For about one-fourth of its year ”” around 100 to 140 Earth years ”” there’s continuous daylight. That’s because as the big sun is rising, the two smaller ones are setting.

“With three suns, the planet will see different weird combinations of sunrises and sunsets,” said co-author Daniel Apai, a University of Arizona astronomer.

He added: “This is a system for which I would not want to design a calendar.”

Case studies for Comey: Part II(b)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here, and Part II(a) is here.]

In addition to the Petraeus case (which I discussed in Part IIa), another well-known case that’s relevant to Hillary Clinton’s emails is that of Sandy Berger, described here.

It’s never been all that clear why Berger removed classified documents (the original and some copies of a single report) from the National Archives reading room and lied to authorities about it (he says it was to prepare for testimony he was about to give). But like Petraeus, Berger was threatened with jail and ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge. The Berger case seems to have involved a decision to prosecute in a situation that seems to have featured less serious offenses than Hillary’s rather than more.

Politico offers this summary of some of the relevant cases:

Former FBI agent J.J. Smith was charged with five felonies, including grossly negligent mishandling of classified information for allowing an FBI informant to obtain highly sensitive bureau information. Smith was having an affair with the informant, Katrina Leung, who was also working for Chinese intelligence. Leung wound up with several FBI documents including a “Secret” memo on Chinese fugitives and an unclassified FBI phone directory…

In a plea deal, Smith pleaded guilty to a single felony count of lying to investigators. He was sentenced to three months house arrest, three years probation and a $10,000 fine…

There are also a handful of cases involving lower-level employees or contractors where prosecutors have pursued criminal charges or jail time despite the lack of a clear public link to espionage, leaking or some other malfeasance.

A Boeing engineer who took home what prosecutors called “an adult giraffe”’s-worth of sensitive information on missile defense programs, Abraham Lesnik, pled guilty in 2008 to a felony charge of unauthorized retention of classified data.

Lesnik’s travel and ties to Israel appear to have been a factor, but prosecutors said they had no evidence he planned to misuse the roughly 2000 classified documents, including about 400 marked top secret found on a thumb drive, laptop and other devices at his California home and in a storage locker…

The toughest punishment handed down in recent memory for mishandling classified information went to former National Security Agency analyst Kenneth Ford Jr., who was sentenced in 2006 to six years in prison for taking to his home two boxes of classified documents and other records from NSA headquarters in Maryland. He was also convicted of lying on a job application form.

Here’s another article about Kenneth Ford. If you read it you will see that not only was his offense far less serious than Clinton’s, but he may also have been set up by a girlfriend.

Then there’s the Nishimura case, in which a Naval officer was charged for offenses which also seem less than Hillary’s and have no intent element. What’s more, this case was the result of an FBI investigation:

Just last year, former Naval Reserve Commander Bryan Nishimura was charged with misdemeanor mishandling of classified information he acquired during his service in Afghanistan. He admitted that he often moved classified data, including satellite imagery, to unclassified systems and brought it back to the U.S. when he returned.

After coming under investigation, Nishimura threw some of the storage media in a Folsom, Calif. lake. He was sentenced to two years probation and a $7,500 fine.

Giuliani said the way Clinton disposed of many of her emails could similarly buttress a prosecution.

You can find more information on the Nishimura case here.

The argument is presented in this article that the big distinction between Hillary and Nishimura is that in Nishimura’s plea bargain he admitted he “knew that he was only authorized to view such CLASSIFIED data in digital format on authorized government computers, and was not permitted to remove CLASSIFIED data from such authorized government computers.” But as with Petraeus, one can assume that this admission in the plea deal occurred because authorities were threatening to go ahead with a prosecution. “Legal experts quoted in a Wall Street Journal article noted that Clinton’s case cannot be compared to the cases of Petraeus, Deutch, or Nishimura” because she “denied knowing that any of the information at issue was secret or classified.” So does the main distinction between Hillary’s case and theirs boil down to “she didn’t know” or “she denied knowing”? But of course she knew or should have known; it’s bizarre to think she actually didn’t know merely because she said she didn’t know, and then to use that as a reason not to prosecute her.

In addition, as I’ve written before, there is simply no “similar situation” or “similar circumstance” (Comey’s phrases) to Clinton’s case. None of these previous cases involves a person in an extremely high position setting up an entire system to evade the law, a system which lasted for years, and then lying about it. What Hillary did was no accident, and no episode (like Sandy Berger’s, for example)—it was a seamless pattern purposely designed to circumvent the rules, and then much of the possible evidence was destroyed by Clinton’s lawyers. The fact that many people were involved in the wrongdoing does not absolve her, it merely raises the question of their possible complicity as well.

Hillary Clinton had a big job with big responsibilities, and she committed to what appears at the very least to have been a large, long-term, and potentially risky course of action. The unasked question (at least by the FBI) is: why did she do it? To evade FOIA laws, for example? What was her intent in designing the entire system? The FBI appears remarkably uncurious. But a lot of people smell a rat, and they don’t like it that such a person is probably going to be the next president of the United States.

Case studies Part II(a): relevant precedents for the Clinton email investigation

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here. I found as I researched and composed Part II that, as I had suspected, to write it properly would take several weeks of solid work and end up the equivalent of a lengthy law review article. I would have to read the court opinions in case after case after case and analyze them in great detail in order to understand all the similarities and all the differences, and I just don’t have the time and energy to do that. I wish someone would, but it’s not going to be me.

Instead, I’ve written this relatively brief look at some of the cases, done in a cursory way that doesn’t dig into those details. So I apologize in advance if I missed something important. I also found that, even then, the post was getting so long I had to divide Part II into two further parts, a and b.]

In his statement announcing that he was not recommending the prosecution of Hillary Clinton, FBI Director Comey mentioned that other cases of mishandling classified information that have been prosecuted contained an element of intent (or quantity of material exposed, or obstruction of justice, or disloyalty) that he feels is lacking in the Clinton email situation. Although intent is not an element of the crime in the statute as written by Congress, Comey seemed to be saying that as far as prosecution is concerned, it should be and in fact has been in the past.

However, Comey didn’t offer any details of what cases he might be talking about, so we really can’t examine his thinking. But some writers have tried to fill that gap. Writers on the left have emphasized differences between those cases and Hillary’s emails, whereas writers on the right have emphasized similarities or even ways in which Hillary’s offenses were more serious. And of course before looking at the cases, one must always keep in mind the fact that intent was purposely left out of the statute as written by Congress; “gross negligence” was established as the standard instead.

Andrew McCarthy attempt to explain why this was done. It was not arbitrary:

…[L]et’s for argument’s sake concede Comey’s premise that [Hillary Clinton] did not intend to make classified information vulnerable to hostile hackers when she purposely caused its transfer from the government’s secure server system to her own woefully non-secure system. Still, the felony statute at issue does not call for proof that she intended the harm done to the United States. Prosecutors need only prove what Comey so ably outlined: Clinton purposely engaged in the reckless behavior ”“ the installation and use of an impermissible and amateurishly non-secure, non-government server system ”“ that made harm to the United States virtually inevitable…

In criminalizing the grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, Congress sought to accomplish two objectives: (a) the protection of national security; and (b) the admonition to officials privileged with access to classified information that they have a high obligation to protect the secrecy of that information.

So Comey’s focus on “intent” was highly unusual, because there was a reason that intent was considered by Congress to be irrelevant and “gross negligence” sufficient to make the acts criminal.

Now to some of the cases. The Petraeus case is probably the most high-profile, and here’s an article that tries to argue that Petraeus’ offenses were different and somehow worse than Hillary’s, or at least more amenable to prosecution:

But as Michelle Lee has explained, Clinton’s case really is not like that of Petraeus. As part of his plea agreement, Petraeus admitted to mishandling information that he had known was highly classified; lied to the FBI during its investigation; and admitted to doing that, too. Petraeus acknowledged that these things were “knowing and deliberate.”

Unfortunately, there’s a paywall I can’t get past in order to read the Michelle Lee piece for myself. But my immediate reaction from reading that summary is to note that, if these admissions were part of Petraeus’ plea bargain, in order to get that far he must have been threatened with prosecution—and prosecution on a more serious charge, at that. If the FBI had threatened Hillary with prosecution on a serious charge I wonder what information she might have disclosed (probably none, but then again she’s not Petraeus, she’s Hillary). Like Petraeus, Clinton certainly “mishandled information that she had known was highly classified” (Comey said as much in his statement), but she has not admitted to doing so because (among other things) she’s never been in a plea bargain situation, unlike Petraeus.

And as far as her lying to the FBI goes—well, we already know there’s no transcript of her interview. We know that Hillary has lied repeatedly about almost every aspect of her email system, although it’s unknown whether she lied to the FBI (lying to the press is not a crime). But it certainly doesn’t seem that Comey has a clue whether she did or didn’t lie to the FBI (watch this video from around minute 1:23.00 to around minute 1:24.30 to see what I’m talking about).

Even the generally Democrat-friendly Politifact can’t quite figure out which offense was worse, Petraeus’ or Clinton’s, which should tell you something. Those who think Petraeus did worse seem to rely on the fact that he lied to investigators—well, as I said, we already know Clinton lied to the press and Congress, and it’s more than possible that she’s lied to the FBI as well (although she was never threatened with prosecution as Petraeus was, so there’s no comparison in that sense, either).

What we do know is that Clinton didn’t just take some files or classified information and show them to one person she trusted. She set up an entire email system designed to circumvent the secure system, sent classified information to a number of people, and exposed the information to hackers galore all around the world. How on earth this could be construed as less serious than what Petraeus did is beyond me. Nor was it the least bit unintentional.

One of the most sadly comical aspects of Comey’s testimony yesterday in front of the House questioners was to say that Hillary Clinton wasn’t “sophisticated” enough to understand some of the classified markings on the emails. Comey’s argument was ludicrous:

I leave you with that for today. I hope to have Part IIb (the conclusion) tomorrow.