About “The Second Coming”

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently I wrote a post that featured the Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” Today I decided to look up more about the poem’s background, and came up with this:

Modernists read the poem as a dirge for the decline of European civilisation in the mode of Eliot, but later critics have pointed out that it expresses Yeats’s apocalyptic mystical theories, and is thus the expression of a mind shaped by the 1890s.

Well, poems are written in a certain time and place by a certain person, but posterity can find additional meaning to add to the original. If a poem is good enough—and “The Second Coming” is most definitely good enough—it can continue to speak profoundly long after it was first written.

Yeats had “a life-long interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology” that was reflected in his work, and “The Second Coming” is no exception. The gyre, for example (“turning and turning in a widening gyre”) was his word for a historical cycle:

Yeats incorporates his ideas on the gyre – a historical cycle of about 2000 years. He first published this idea in his writing ‘a vision’ which predicted the expected anarchy that would be released around 2000 years after the birth of Christ. The gyre suggests the image of a world spinning outwardly such that it cannot recall its own origin.

I don’t share Yeats’ belief system; I doubt anyone does at this point. But I do think he may have been onto something nevertheless, in some intuitive way. By post-WWI 1919, the year “The Second Coming” was written, the modern age had begun, and I think something really did shift around the time of the new millennium in 2000, leading to increasing chaos throughout the world.

[NOTE: More about Yeats here.]

The most common defense of Obama…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is that he’s a fool rather than a knave. It’s come down to that.

There are still defenders (or at least partial defenders) of Obama’s Middle East policy, and they’re not even all liberals. Ross Douthat, one of those partial defenders, is a NY Times conservative, meaning that every now and then he actually writes something conservative but often occupies some in-between wavering zone instead.

Douthat summarizes what he thinks happened during the Bush years in Iraq, a description that serves as part of the build-up for his semi-apologia for Obama:

…[I]t took all the king’s horses and all of David Petraeus’s men just to hold Iraq together; a different bad actor, Iran, ended up empowered; and the old problem of repression led to the Arab Spring and the civil wars that followed.

Sticking to the Pax Americana model after these developments would have required keeping American troops in Iraq for decades.

Douthat is ignoring the hard-fought improvements that had been made in Iraq by the time Obama took office, so dramatic that even Obama declared the state relatively stable and successful. By the time Obama pulled the troops out entirely in 2011 it would not have taken “all the king’s horses and all of David Petraeus’s men just to hold Iraq together” any more, and the “American troops in Iraq for decades” would have been a relatively small force. We’ve had troops all around the world “for decades” (many of them since World War II and the Korean War) and this would have been a particularly cost-effective deployment. There was no need to pull out entirely as Obama did (except what he saw as his own political interest), and the result has been a much greater amount of influence over Iraq for that bad actor, Iran—a bad actor Obama is now actively rather than passively encouraging and empowering.

Douthat thinks the following overarching plan is what’s behind Obama’s foreign policy decisions:

Haltingly but persistently, this administration has pursued a paradigm shift in how the United States relates to the Middle East, a shift from a Pax Americana model toward a strategy its supporters call “offshore balancing.”

In a Pax Americana system, the United States enjoys a dominant position within a network of allies and clients; actors outside that network are considered rogues and threats, to be restrained and coerced by our overwhelming military might. Ideally, over time our clients become more prosperous and more democratic, the benefits of joining the network become obvious, and the military canopy both expands and becomes less necessary.

In an offshore balancing system, our clients are fewer, and our commitments are reduced. Regional powers bear the primary responsibility for dealing with crises on the ground, our military strategy is oriented toward policing the sea lanes and the skies, and direct intervention is contemplated only when the balance of power is dramatically upset.

I fail to see any “balancing” that’s being set up by Obama. Seems to be all Iran, all the time.

Douthat realizes this, but doesn’t understand that it’s purposeful on Obama’s part:

…[O]ffshore balancing offers the most benefits when your entanglements are truly minimal, but it’s very hard for a hegemon to simply sidle offstage, shedding expectations and leaving allies in the lurch.

And letting bad guys get even more powerful.

…[O]ffshoring American power and hoping that Iran, Iran’s Sunni neighbors and Israel will find some kind of balance on their own will probably increase the risk of arms races, cross-border invasions and full-scale regional war. The conflicts we have now are ugly enough, but absent the restraint still imposed by American military dominance, it’s easy to imagine something worse.

That’s kind of a no-brainer, isn’t it? I wonder how Douthat would explain Obama’s seeming failure to see something so elementary. But he doesn’t say; he doesn’t even try. The article pretty much ends there, with just some generalities to tie it up.

That’s the problem faced by those who would be the least bit kind to Obama at this point. They end up writing things that sound at best confused. I’m picking on Douthat, but I’m not really meaning to single him out; his is just the first article I happened to encounter.

The comments to Douthat’s article are the usual NY Times reader stuff. We’re in the Middle East only for oil, it’s all Bush and Cheney’s fault, etc.

Walter Russell Mead voted for Obama in 2008, and by November 2010 still thought it to have been a good move for reasons so strange and convoluted I cannot follow them (be my guest and try to understand what he’s saying here; suffice to say he was wrong, wrong, wrong and showed a profound lack of understanding of the man whose character and plans were already crystal clear.). Today, however, Mead is singing a different tune:

…[N]obody should miss the most important point here: even the President’s ideological fellow travelers can no longer mount a cogent defense of his Middle East policy. The MSM will still do all it can to avoid connecting the dots or drawing attention to the stark isolation in which the White House now finds itself as ally after ally drops away. It still doesn’t want to admit that the “smart diplomacy” crowd has been about as effective at making a foreign policy as the famous emperor’s smooth-talking tailors were at making a new suit of clothes. But it’s getting harder and harder to find anybody willing to gush about how snazzy the President looks in the sharp foreign policy outfit that he’s sporting around town.

Mead’s a smart man; I cannot understand why he was so fooled originally. But he’s not so fooled any more:

The shocked silence of the foreign policy establishment, the absence of any statements of support from European or Asian allies about our Middle East course, the evidence that the President and the “senior officials” whom he trusts continue to be blindsided by major developments they didn’t expect and haven’t provided for: all of this tells us that our Middle East policy is indeed in free fall.

Much like Douthat, though, Mead describes the president and his advisors as being “blindsided” by “major developments they didn’t expect and haven’t provided for.” In other words, Mead comes down firmly on the “fool” side of the “knave vs. fool” question. I’m not sure why, except I think that, for those who once supported Obama as both a smart and a good man, it’s easier and less threatening for them to think they were wrong about his brainpower than about his goodness.

[NOTE: I found an unintentionally funny comment to this article:

It’s suspicious how hard Nothinyahoo and the GOP are trying to stop a peace process. They seem like this is so urgent, like their lives depend on it…]

The libertarian approach to Indiana’s religious freedom law

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a good article on the subject, which pretty much summarizes my opinion, which is the basic “moderate libertarian” (is that an oxymoron?) point of view.

It doesn’t really deal with the issue I see as vital, however, which is this one: where to draw the line in terms of a business’s right to refuse a service. Must the decision be based on religious grounds, or can it be arbitrary prejudice? And how to decide which is which? How reasonably must it be related to a religious point of view, and must the religion be an accepted mainstream one?

No doubt there is quite a bit of case law on this, but I certainly haven’t kept up with it and I’m not going to write a long, in-depth post on it now; I’ll just state the questions and call it a day (although some of the legal history is summarized here, if you’re interested). But the issues are very important to those of us who value individual liberty, which sometimes seems to me to be a dwindling group.

[NOTE: Further reading on the libertarian POV towards anti-discrimination laws in general.]

No, impeachment was not “ruled out” by Boehner

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen the meme over and over and over on the right: stupid Boehner ruled out impeachment for Obama.

But as I see it, nothing of the sort was done, nor could it be done. Congress can’t waive its right to impeach, nor was Boehner trying to do that.

Remember the context: it was during the buildup to the 2014 Congressional election, and Democrats were saying that if the Republicans won control of both houses they would impeach Obama. It was in trying to counter that propaganda that Boehner said the following:

Talk of impeachment was cooked up by a White House desperate for something to rally Democrats ahead of November’s elections, House Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday, flatly ruling out any action on the controversial suggestion.

“We have no plans to impeach the president. We have no future plans,” Mr. Beohner said. “Listen, it’s all a scam started by Democrats at the White House.”

Democrats have acknowledged impeachment talk has been good for their fundraising, but also say there’s some fire behind all the smoke. On Tuesday, congressional Democrats circulated a list of GOP candidates and sitting lawmakers who have said they want to see President Obama be impeached.

So, as of July 2014 (the article’s dateline), the Republicans had no plans to impeach Obama, and no future plans to impeach Obama. Those are two non-statements meant to pacify the fears of imminent impeachment. They are neither promises nor sign-offs on making future plans someday.

That is separate, of course, from the question of whether Republicans would actually make those plans. We don’t know. But Boehner’s prior statements about it are evidence of absolutely nothing.

My opinion about what’s brewing now—and I’m sure many of you may disagree—is that the Republicans would consider impeachment/conviction if they thought enough Democrats would join them. Right now, they just don’t have the votes. They will not impeach Obama unless they think they can win a conviction, and I think that’s wise.

I actually think there’s a small chance that Obama’s actions on Iran could force their hand, depending on what he does and how awful it is. How likely do I think it is that enough Democrats would turn on Obama, and that the Republicans would then act? Highly unlikely.

But it has not been ruled out.

They’re in a hurry to indict Menendez

The New Neo Posted on by

Expect an indictment as early as Wednesday:

The FBI and the Justice Department have been investigating Menendez’s ties to Dr. Salomon Melgen, a close friend and financial backer of the New Jersey senator, for months. It’s not clear exactly what charges Menendez could face, although honest services fraud, receiving improper gifts, and misusing his office for personal gain are all possibilities, according to the sources. Both Menendez and Melgen have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Quite a few comments to the article suggest sarcastically that Menendez should have just used his own server and destroyed it. In this case, though, investigators probably could have followed the money trail even without emails. What’s more, since it’s Obama who has Menendez in his sights, I’m sure his creative team could dig up some charge/scandal or other no matter what the challenges.

I’ve been trying to discover whether Menendez would have to quit the Senate if he’s indicted. The gist of what I’ve found is that he can stay. My guess is that he’s highly motivated to stay. He’s gone on record as saying he’s innocent of the charges, and he seems dedicated to stopping Obama on Iran [from March 6]:

[Menendez said] that he had “always conducted [himself] appropriately and in accordance with the law. I fight for things I believe important ”¦ and for the people of our country,” he also said. “That’s who I am. I am not going anywhere.”

Perhaps Menendez will stay. But the idea of his prosecution is that it will undermine Menendez’s credibility as he attacks Obama, as well as (more importantly) serving notice to other Democrats that the administration will retaliate against any of them who choose to defy Obama on this or anything else. An indictment prior to any possible vote on sanctions is important, because Obama and Holder want to make sure that they get the message across to Democrats in Congress before any such vote occurs, and make them understand that the administration means business and that the threat is very real and will be followed through on. Understand, also, that Menendez is being indicted for activities that are pretty much standard for members of Congress, so any of them are vulnerable.

[NOTE: I’ve previously written about the Menendez case here.]

Meet Wendy Sherman, Obama’s chief Iran negotiator

The New Neo Posted on by

For a long time the right has been sounding the theme of the relative lack of experience of Obama’s advisors. Obama surrounds himself with sycophantic worshippers and/or neophytes, word-people whom he has elevated to positions of power.

With all that as background, I recently learned of another member of the Obama administration: Wendy Sherman. Never heard of her? Neither had I, until I came across a reference to her as the administration’s chief Iran negotiator:

But the problem [of North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons] didn’t start with Bush. Instead, it began earlier when Obama’s current chief negotiator with Iran, Wendy Sherman, was crafting another bad deal with North Korea while working in the Clinton administration. The moment the West started making concessions…and bribing the North Koreans to stop working toward a bomb, the mad Communist dictatorship knew it had won.

North Korea went so well that the same person is the Iran negotiator? You can find her qualifications for the job here (as well as here):

What about her qualifications and experience?

Ms. Sherman brings just the sort of credentials you would expect in a Clinton and Obama appointee, currently the fourth-ranking employee in the Department of State:

A degree and work experience in social work;
The former director of EMILY’S list, the abortion-supporting political fundraising organization contributing almost exclusive to Democrats;
Former head of the DC office of the failed Dukakis presidential campaign;
The former director of the office of child welfare of Maryland
Founding president of the Fannie Mae foundation, a money-dispensing offshoot of the quasi-governmental agency that more than anyone else was responsible for the 2008 mortgage crisis [although Sherman’s tenure was much earlier than that].

The last two Democrat presidents found these qualifications so compelling they made her responsible for some of the most complex and highest stakes negotiations of the current era.

It’s hard to know what to say, except that she’s probably a lot more qualified than most of Obama’s other advisors, and more qualified than Obama himself. At least she’s had some experience running things, even though she may not have run them well. And I suppose a social worker might be a good negotiator—with families and child protective services and the like. Of course, if the goal is to give Iran what it wants and only maintain a pretense of actual negotiations (as I suspect it is), Sherman is probably as qualified as anyone.

[NOTE: I wrote “actual negotiations” in the above paragraph, but as I see it, negotiations with a regime such as Iran’s is a pipe dream, unless the US carries a big big stick and indicates it is willing to wield it. Even then, I don’t see that negotiations will yield much of anything as long as the Iranian regime remains in place. I think that there are people who sincerely believe that good can come from negotiations with a bad actor intent on our destruction, although I see them as deluded. But people’s desire to believe that such talks could be fruitful is understandable; the alternative is far more frightening. Unfortunately, it is also more realistic.

Even Sherman once said, while testifying before Congress, that the Iranian government lies. Actually, she said “we know that deception is part of the DNA” of the Iranian leaders/negotiators, a statement that earned her some flak. Trouble is, neither Spencer nor the administration appear to be acting as though they believe it. If you are negotiating with a regime that continually (a) professes to wish your destruction; and (b) lies through its teeth, you’d better emphasize the “verify” part at the expense of any “trust.” And you’d better bring a lot of very real economic pressure to bear. Lifting that pressure while assuming it will cause some change in the attitude of that regime is just insane (if in fact that is what Sherman truly believes; I’ll assume for the sake of argument that she is sincere even if Obama is not), although it’s a very social worker-ish way to look at things.

The sort of yielding they’re looking for on the part of the Iranians is not the way tyrannical regimes have operated in the past. If history tells us anything, it tells us that. Pressure that comes from a position of strength is the only language they listen to.]

Obama’s plans for Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

This has been alluded to before, but more details can be found here.

I have little doubt that Obama plans to stab Israel in the back as forcefully as possible, and that this is not a new idea for him.

The real question is will he actually need to do this (if he’s successful in Iran—meaning in empowering and arming Iran, he might not see the need), will he succeed in doing it, and what will be the reaction of the US Congress and people. I would say it ought to be impeachment/conviction time (not that it will be). But the damage to Israel will have already been done.

Read this for more.

How about Michelle Obama in 2016?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Mrs Whatsit” asks:

Is anyone besides me wondering whether the reason that the Obama administration has been so quick to throw Hillary under the bus might be to make room for a new candidate who’d offer the trifecta of being black and female and having great name recognition and besides that, would circumvent the 22nd Amendment ”” that is, Michelle Obama?

I’ve been hearing people predict for years that Michelle would run in 2016. I have never thought so, and I still don’t think so.

It’s not that I don’t think Obama would want it. I just don’t think people would buy it, due to Michelle’s complete and total lack of political experience—and by “people” I mean also Democrats. Hillary Clinton has been a senator for years and then a Secretary of State, and no matter what you think of her performance in each job you can’t deny it’s relevant experience for a run for the presidency. Michelle only has the First Lady experience behind her, which I don’t think would be enough for her to win, even with the Obama name.

People have also long suggested that Obama is going to force some sort of crisis before the 2016 election, declare a state of emergency a la Reichstag fire, and run for a third term. Again, I am fairly certain that he would run again if he could, but I don’t think he can or will. That’s not because I think there won’t be a crisis (manufactured or natural, there are plenty of potential possibilities). Nor is it because the US is so filled with people who are wedded to and protective of the Constitution; I think fewer and fewer people care about the importance of following a constitutional process that protects us against a tyrant. The reason I think Michelle won’t run is that many Democrats and even some on the left are sick of Obama, and they want new blood. For the left, that new blood would be someone like Elizabeth Warren, not Michelle. And since Warren would also be a first woman president, it’s not necessary to the left that she also be black; first black president has been done.

I recall that right before the 2008 election quite a few people thought the economic crisis had been engineered by shadowy behind-the-scenes operators such as Soros, in order to facilitate Obama’s victory. I never bought that conspiracy theory, but it is the case that the economic crisis certainly acted to do just that. And by the way, this seems as good a place as any to point out to those who are angry that McCain ran against Obama, because McCain was such a poor and RINO-esque candidate, that I think you should refresh your memory as to the entire list of Republican candidates that year. Besides McCain, there was Thompson, Huckabee, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney. Who of those do you think would have been able to beat Obama?

My favored candidate at the beginning of the season was Giuliani, but he ran a poor campaign and dropped out. I seem to recall he was rejected as being a RINO by the right of the party. And I don’t see how any of the others would have had a chance against Obama—except perhaps for Romney, but only after the economic downturn. But by then the primaries had ended and the candidate, McCain, had been chosen. McCain was, unfortunately, probably the weakest of all of them on economic affairs (which had become particularly important) and Romney the strongest, which might have meant that by November of 2008 Romney would have been a far better candidate than he seemed to be back when the Republican field was being winnowed down.

That’s one of the problems with the nomination process; it’s not nimble enough to react to changing circumstances—although I think it was highly probable that Obama would have won against any of those 2008 GOP candidates, because Americans were determined to repudiate Bush and the Republicans and go with hope and change.

So here we are.

About Indiana’s religious freedom law…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and the firestorm around it—

The topic makes me weary, weary, weary, to see that everything that we predicted is coming to pass. What began as a simple “gay people ought to be able to get married” morphed seamlessly into “anyone who doesn’t agree is a bigot and must be destroyed” (see Eich, Brendan) and then into “if you offer a service and we want you to facilitate the wedding ceremony you have no right to refuse on religious grounds, even though there are plenty of other people eager and willing to participate instead” and then on to “a state that passes a law protecting those religious rights must be boycotted.”

Well, quelle surprise. I wrote a post about this issue around a year ago, when it surfaced in Kansas (although Kansas hadn’t actually passed a similar law, but merely voted on it). At the end of that post, I referred back to another post I’d written a year before that, and quoted it:

I’ve written before that I personally have no problem with gay people marrying. But I have a huge problem with compelling Christians to be part of such celebrations or face lawsuits or the loss of their businesses. And I have a huge problem with propaganda that misrepresents what those who oppose gay marriage are suggesting and why. But such propaganda doesn’t surprise me in the least, nor should it surprise anyone else.

About a year ago I wrote, in a lengthy piece about gay marriage:

I’m not personally a follower of a religion or religious subdivision that still subscribes to such beliefs in the literal sense. But I respect religious people and think I understand the reasons for their objections to same sex marriage. I believe that”¦SSM [same-sex marriage] is merely one step in a long “progressive” march towards the eradication of religion and/or its demonization (a word that has an ironic twist in this context, does it not?).

I see absolutely no reason to change my mind.

There’s even less reason to change my mind now. There is absolutely no interest in liberty on the part of progressives if it’s the liberty to oppose something they want, and they will make sure to stifle that liberty if they possibly can. They’re well on their way.

[NOTE: If you want to read a legal analysis of the Indiana law, there’s this from Jonathan H. Adler at Volokh.

I’ll also add that I wonder if the forces driving the anti-Indiana campaign would be interested in making an exemption for devout Muslims who run businesses and don’t want to be forced to be part of gay marriage ceremonies. Somehow I think they might.]

Further thoughts on the Germanwings co-pilot

The New Neo Posted on by

The motivations behind the extraordinarily destructive act of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz remain a mystery.

We know a little more about him, though—the most salient fact so far being that investigators found a torn-up “doctor’s note that called for him to go on medical leave on the day of the tragedy.” He was being treated for some sort of illness, but authorities either won’t say what it was or don’t know yet what it was. I believe it’s the former.

Speculation, however, is that it was depression. Lubitz is reported to have had a depressive episode six years ago during his pilot training that caused him to take some time off.

Of course, depressed people have a higher likelihood of suicide, particularly if the depression is severe. But they don’t usually take 149 other people with them. So even if it turns out the Lubitz suffered from depression, that really explains very little.

Was he taking anti-depressants? He might have been, if Germany is anything like the US, because since 2010 pilots in the US have been allowed to take one of four antidepressant medications, although only after 12 months of being grounded and undergoing monitoring and successful treatment. That does not seem to have been the case with Lubitz; if it had been the airline would have known.

The reason this might have been relevant is that some people, and some studies, have said that antidepressants cause a higher incidence of suicide and other violent behavior. I haven’t seen many studies that convince me that’s correct, and I’ve seen quite a few that seem to indicate otherwise (see this and this). Nor would anti-depressants negate any criminal liability. And at any rate, there’s no evidence that Lubitz was taking antidepressants.

I have generated some theories about Lubitz’s behavior, both of them extremely speculative. So take the following with more than a grain of salt.

One is what I’d call the Charles Whitman theory. Whitman was the man who climbed a tower at the University of Texas in 1966 and killed 13 people before being shot dead by police. Later it was discovered that he had brutally murdered his mother and wife earlier in the day. But he had also left a journal and notes that indicated he knew something was very very wrong with him, and he had no idea what it was:

I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.

It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight ”¦ I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationa[l]ly pinpoint any specific reason for doing this…

Earlier Whitman had gone to several doctors for treatment, complaining of terrible headaches and irrational, overwhelming impulses to do violence, impulses which he experienced as invasive and foreign to his nature. He even left a note asking authorities to do an autopsy after his death, and when they did, they:

…discovered that Whitman’s brain harbored a tumor the diameter of a nickel. This tumor, called a glioblastoma, had blossomed from beneath a structure called the thalamus, impinged on the hypothalamus, and compressed a third region called the amygdala. The amygdala is involved in emotional regulation, especially of fear and aggression. By the late 1800s, researchers had discovered that damage to the amygdala caused emotional and social disturbances.

There’s been much argument ever since about whether this could have been the cause of Whitman’s behavior. I doubt it was the entire reason, but it could certainly have contributed to an increase in the severity of his hostile impulses and a decrease in his ability to moderate them, although he still probably would have been held criminally responsible had he survived.

What does this have to do with Lubitz? Probably absolutely nothing. But it’s at least a possibility, however remote, that something similar was happening to him, causing a change that was both sudden and severe. We will almost certainly never know, because the evidence—his brain—was most likely obliterated in the crash.

My second idea involves the phenomenon known as copycat syndrome. Whatever caused Lubnitz to become violent, the form his violence took—deliberately flying a large and loaded airplane into a mountain—is extreme. Extreme, but not unheard of; there have been several incidents of pilot murder/suicide over the years. One year ago, the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 received an enormous amount of coverage, and was the focus of so much attention—including the very strong suspicion that it was pilot murder/suicide—that it’s possible Lubitz was attracted by the idea of the world knowing and speculating about him, too.

In fact, an ex-girlfriend alleges (in a German tabloid) that this is exactly the case, although she doesn’t tie it to the Malaysia flight:

When I heard about the crash, I remembered a sentence, over and over again, that he said,” the woman, a 26-year-old flight attendant the paper gave the fictional name of Maria W. to protect her identity, told Bild. “‘One day I’ll do something that will change the system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it’.”

Far-fetched? Yes. But the whole thing is so far beyond the ordinary, so difficult to imagine and assimilate, that these explanations are as good as any at this point.

[NOTE: It also seems bizarre that a man so young as Lubitz, and with so little flying experience, was allowed to co-pilot a plane of that magnitude. I don’t think that would be allowed in the US, but I haven’t been able to discover what the rules are about that.

Another strange thing is that the German doctor’s excuse note was given to Lubitz to give to his employer. Isn’t there some requirement that the employer be notified by the doctor? Otherwise, isn’t there an enormous risk that the patient will do exactly what Lubitz appears to have done here: rip them up? Would giving the employer the information be considered some sort of confidentiality violation? Shouldn’t that be waived when there is a clear danger to others, a sort of duty to warn?]

Hillary must have figured…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it worked so well for Lois Lerner, it will work for me.

And perhaps it will. Seems to me, though that it’s a potential felony:

While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a statement.

Clinton was under a subpoena order from the panel for all documents related to the 2012 attacks on the American compound there. But David Kendall, an attorney for Clinton, said the 900 pages of emails previously provided to the panel cover its request.

Does the accused get to decide what is evidence and what is not, and can he/she destroy what hasn’t been turned over? Sounds a bit—let’s just say, irregular—to me.

As for getting hold of the server:

In a letter provided to the committee, Kendall said Clinton would not be turning over the server to a third-party for review and that the emails no longer exist on the private server located in her New York home.

“There is no basis to support the proposed third-party review of the server that hosted the hdr22@clintonemail.com account,” Kendall wrote. “To avoid prolonging a discussion that would be academic, I have confirmed with the secretary’s IT support that no emails”¦..for the time period January 21, 2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server.”

So of course, we need to take their word for it that there’s no possible way to recover them, and so there’s nothing there to see, move along. The funny thing (and I don’t mean “funny ha-ha”) is that most of the liberals/left will probably support this idea.

Take a look, for example, at the comments to the HuffPo article on the subject. Variations on the theme that I noted on a very quick perusal of the ones towards the top of the list: mockery of the GOP for caring, mockery of Trey Gowdy as a liar, saying Rice and Powell did it, too (used only a private server, and destroyed all emails after a subpoena??), saying the GOP is afraid of Hillary because she’ll win in 2016, and that they’re being especially hard on her because she’s a woman.

I think the saddest and most telling exchange is when one more reasonable commenter tentatively writes, “I agree Benghazi is a sham. But it’s hard to ignore the questions around this, if what he [Gowdy] says is even true.”

The response from the next commenter is, “it is NOT hard to ignore! You simply, well, ignore it.”

O’Brien explained how to do it to Winston Smith. It’s wasn’t easy at first, but Winston learned; he learned.