If you want to watch Hillary Clinton’s press conference live…

The New Neo Posted on by

…go here. It’s supposed to occur at 2:15 PM.

I won’t be watching, for the simple reason that as usual I prefer to read excerpts or the transcript, and then watch some clips if there’s anything of special interest where I want to see a person’s demeanor.

My prediction: excuses, excuses, plus a lot of assertions about how transparent and above-board she’s been about releasing the emails. Also perhaps some “Jeb did it” accusations thrown in. But of course Jeb Bush was a mere governor, not the Secretary of State with all the special security concerns that position entails.

[UPDATE: Ace summarizes what Clinton said.

More at Politico, including the following:

Clinton said her lawyers had examined all of her emails, about 60,000 in all over four years at Foggy Bottom, and sent every government-related missive ”” about 30,000 ”” to the State Department in the hopes that all would be released to the public on the Web.

Yet in an act of defiance certain to stoke a new round of questioning, Clinton said she had no intention of turning over any of the approximately 30,000 emails she deemed “personal” for the sake of her family’s “privacy” ”“ exchanges she said included planning for daughter Chelsea’s wedding and her mother’s funeral, correspondence with her husband and yoga schedule.

When a reporter asked her if she planned to allow an independent commission to examine all of the emails on her personal she server, she responded with a flat ”“ no way.

“The server contains personal communications from my husband and me,” Clinton said of the system, which was originally set up to handle Bill Clinton’s post-presidential correspondence. “And the server will remain private.”

So, Hillary says that Hillary gets to decide.

It strikes me that, whatever the legality or illegality of her email setup, it could have been a tactical error to mix the private with the governmental if the account is subject to subpoena in the event of an investigation for wrongdoing. Taking that into consideration, if Hillary had wanted to use private email for government business, it might have been wiser of her to have set up a second private email account just for her Secretary of State business.

One big problem with using any sort of private email for public business is the fact that it can be so easily hidden from FOIA accountability (although for Hillary that was probably a feature rather than a bug). The other is, of course, lack of security.]

Obama outdoes himself

The New Neo Posted on by

Get a load of this. When asked to comment on the letter that forty-seven Republican senators sent to Iran saying that a future president could revoke any deal Obama makes, the president said:

“I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran. It’s an unusual coalition,” Obama told the reporter.

Common cause? What is he talking about? Well, you see, the Republican letter-writers don’t want the deal to go through as is. And the Iranian hard-liners don’t want the deal to go through as is. So they have a common cause, which is thwarting Obama and the reasonable, friendly Iranians with whom he’s on the verge of agreement. Get it?

But Obama wasn’t finished:

I think what we’re going to focus on right now is actually seeing whether we can get a deal or not. And once we do — if we do — then we’ll be able to make the case to the American people, and I’m confident we’ll be able to implement it.”

Sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it? Trust us, he is saying. Then afterwards—when it’s a fait accomplli and there’s nothing you can do about it—you’ll find out what’s in it.

Fool us once, fool us twice, fool us three times…actually, I’ve lost count.

[NOTE: More about the letter here.]

Can you always tell?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not trying to pick on Annie Lennox.

I think Lennox is great. Great voice, great entertainer, and I must say she looks sensational for her age—or any age.

But Lennox touched on a long-held pet peeve of mine when she observed this:

I go to America, where I see a lot of plastic surgery. I have no problem with plastic surgery, but the issue is, I don’t think it’s done very well because it kind of screams at you from hundreds of yards away. It tells you: Wow, that woman’s had a lot of work, or that man’s had a lot of work. I find it disturbing. If I were going to do some work, which I mean, again, I haven’t done it yet, I might. But if I did, I wouldn’t want to end up with this frozen mask, which is Botox, which is surgery. I think, the day they get it right will be the day that you can’t really tell.

There’s some screwy logic there. If you notice some people with plastic surgery, does that mean you are noticing everyone with plastic surgery? Or even the majority of them? Wouldn’t the hallmark of good plastic surgery be its undetectability? Its naturalness? Wouldn’t you walk past the person with really good plastic surgery and not think a thing except maybe how good that person looks?

The same is true of hairpieces. I always smile when someone swears he/she can always tell when a person is wearing one. Oh, really? Can’t you merely tell the ones you can tell, and wouldn’t the others just pass you by without drawing your attention?

Of course, some plastic surgery looks really awful, and there’s much more that just looks sort of awful. What percentage are they of the whole, though? I haven’t a clue, and neither has Lennox. If she’s just trying to say that she wouldn’t have plastic (or cosmetic) surgery until bad results were so rare we hardly ever see them, that makes perfect sense. But that doesn’t appear to be what she’s saying.

The Clinton emails: it’s the coverup, stupid

The New Neo Posted on by

More than any previous scandal, the email controversy seems to be threatening to sink Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. But why?

One reason is that it is being driven from left rather than right. The MSM usually plays the role of Democrat defender, but although there have been some defenses mounted here and there, this scandal has been unusual in that it targeted a leading Democrat but was initially led by liberal newspapers.

That could be because Clinton had thwarted the Freedom of Information Act, which was originally a liberal cause. But I don’t buy that, and to understand why just imagine that it had been Obama instead of Hillary. Do you think for a moment that liberal newspapers wouldn’t be defending him mightily?

And I doubt that this is driven by people being “tired” of Hillary. Why such a sudden sense of fatigue? Until just a short while ago, no one seemed all that tired.

No, it’s being driven by something else, and that something is (IMHO) the Obama administration having given the word that Hillary is persona non grata, either because they have a different successor in mind (Elizabeth Warren?), or because Hillary could expose them in some way (Iran?), or simply because of old animus from 2008.

The original Benghazi incident, the one that sparked the Congressional investigation that sparked the document request that sparked the revelation that Clinton was using private rather than government email, always has been important to the right. It certainly was important to me and to readers of this blog, and extremely frustrating that it appeared to going nowhere. Now it may be bearing fruit in an odd and unexpected way, proving once again the old adage that it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.

The Hillary private email situation is just one big coverup, and a preemptive coverup at that. Clinton established the system at the very beginning of her Secretary of State post, as though she knew there’d be lots to be keep quiet about. There’s something about the scope and timing that makes the coverup intent obvious. Even long-time Clinton apologist Lanny Davis has struggled to come up with a defense. As Chris Wallace said to him towards the end of their interview: “Do you ever get tired of cleaning up Clinton messes?”

Joe Manchin’s dilemma

The New Neo Posted on by

When I saw that the title of this article was “Joe Manchin’s Dilemma,” I thought I knew what his dilemma was: whether to keep disagreeing with Obama and run the risk of following in Bob Menendez’s footsteps to some DOJ criminal charges, or shut up and play ball.

But it’s not about that at all; it’s about whether Manchin should stay in the Senate or run for governor of West Virginia. Of course (even though the article never states this), a governorship would probably get him out of the Obama line of fire, since he would no longer be voting yea or nay in the Senate on pet bills of the president, but would instead be occupied with West Virginia affairs.

At any rate, Manchin is one of the few remaining moderate Democrats, and as with almost any senator, the DOJ could probably find some sort of irregularity for which to cry “corruption!” The cost of crossing Obama appears to be getting higher in these last years of his administration.

Here are some details about the Menendez case. It’s been ongoing for about two years, and the timing of the latest news seems highly suspicious. Menendez’s strong opposition to Obama’s foreign policy is not new; it was already in clear evidence two years ago, when the DOJ started the legal proceedings that seem to be reaching a fever pitch now that Menendez has been so vociferous in criticizing Obama’s Iran policy right in the middle of the president’s efforts to reach a deal with the Iranians.

Of course, Menendez could be guilty as charged, but even the WaPo is suggesting that the case against him is weak:

To convict Menendez under relevant federal corruption laws, prosecutors would be tasked with proving that Menendez acted knowingly in return for personal gifts ”” such as flights on Melgen’s private jet and visits to his resort home in the Dominican Republic. Melgen donated $700,000 to a super PAC supporting Menendez and other Democratic senators in 2012, as Menendez was campaigning for a second full term in the Senate.

“When there’s lengthy friendship, that quid pro quo aspect dissipates,” said Michael L. Koenig, a former Justice Department prosecutor now in private practice as a white-collar criminal defender…

Was he doing things on behalf of Dr. Melgen because he was receiving campaign contributions?” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor who works in the area of public corruption. “Or was he doing it because he likes Dr. Melgen, which is not criminal?”…

Complicating the matter for Menendez is that he admitted to not disclosing expensive flights taken on Melgen’s jet in 2010, writing a $58,500 check in early 2013 to reimburse the Florida doctor for the expenses.

Menendez explained the lapse as an oversight and did not seek to report the flights as gifts from a personal friend, as is allowed under Senate rules with a waiver from the body’s Ethics Committee.

Prosecutors could seek to charge Menendez for “knowingly and willfully” filing false disclosure forms, but establishing criminal intent in that case could be difficult…

Another obstacle that Menendez’s lawyers have already throw up in front of prosecutors is the Speech or Debate Clause, the constitutional provision that gives lawmakers immunity from prosecution for legislative acts.

As corruption charges go, these seem like relatively small potatoes, the sort of thing they could dig up on virtually any senator they wanted out of the way. And Menendez is definitely someone the president would dearly love out of the way. Other members of Congress can look at the Menendez case and easily put themselves in his shoes, and the message cannot be lost on them: play along with the president or you could be next.

Holder the destroyer: prepared to “dismantle” the Ferguson police force

The New Neo Posted on by

The Department of Justice has released its report on the police force of Ferguson, triggered by its investigation of possible charges against Darren Wilson. The charges were dropped because all the credible evidence pointed to his innocence, but the report found the department guilty (without benefit of trial).

I’ve read many discussions (on both sides) of the DOJ report, the findings of which basically charge the Ferguson police with systemic racism against the black population of Ferguson. I’ve read most but not all of the report itself; it’s over 100 pages of dense reading, a great deal of it resting on something that resembles a sociological research study.

I’ve been mulling over what I will write about it, because it’s the sort of thing that would literally take a book to explain, and I don’t have time to write a book on it.

This post is not that book. It’s not even the post (or series of posts) I would like to write on the subject, because even that is so long and technical I don’t know quite how to tackle it. But I’ll just say here that one of my main problems with the report is the shoddiness of the research itself. Social science research (a field in which I have quite a bit of training and some experience, as well) is notorious for how difficult it is to do correctly and especially to deal with the problem of uncontrolled variables in the real world. Therefore there is always a pressing need to attach multiple caveats to much of what’s said. None of this was accomplished in the DOJ report; I don’t think it was even attempted.

Whether or not the Ferguson police department was or is generally racist—and it’s certainly possible that it was/is—has not been proven by this report, although that’s what the DOJ wants you to believe, and what most people will take away from it.

I hope I get around to offering you more details soon about how I reached my conclusion. I plan to read the study in more depth, but I’ve given you my preliminary impression.

Which brings us to Eric Holder, head of the DOJ, who expressed the following:

Despite a Justice Department report clearing police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder says he will do everything he can to change the law enforcement culture in Ferguson, Mo. If he feels the need to, Holder says he will seek to dismantle the Ferguson Police Department. “We are prepared to use all the powers that we have, all the power that we have, to ensure that the situation changes there,” Holder told reporters on Friday according to the White House pool report. “That means everything from working with them to coming up with an entirely new structure.”

Hey, you know what? I bet he’s prepared to use all the powers that they don’t have.

Moreover, the feds have got a lot of feelings about it:

He warned police departments across the country to heed his words, lest he go after them next. “I hope they’re listening to these comments, and understand the intensity with which the feelings are felt at the federal government level to ensure that we use all the tools that we can to make sure that what happened in Ferguson is uncovered and simply does not happen in any other part of the country,” Holder said. “But I also want to make people understand, there are 18,000 police departments in this country, and I think what we saw in Ferguson was an anomaly.”

Actually, many of the Ferguson statistics are fairly typical of police departments all over the country, including in liberal states and municipalities, and in police departments with large percentages of black officers—as I discovered from my own internet surfing on the subject. I am pretty sure Holder—or whoever wrote the study—knows that, too, because they’ve already investigated plenty of those cities and found them racist. Consider yourself warned.

[NOTE: Here’s an article that goes into some of the critiques of the DOJ report and its research methods, especially regarding the doctrine of “disparate impact.”]

The tolerance of intolerance: Netherlands chapter

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, we must respect all points of view and all that jazz, right?

From the Hague:

A number of Dutch schools refrain from teaching about the Holocaust because of resistance from Muslim pupils, teachers told lawmakers.

The centrist Christian Union party held a roundtable discussion about Holocaust education with teachers…

“Holocaust survivor Bloeme Evers does not dare give guest lessons in some schools,” Arie Slob, the party’s parliamentary leader and a former history teacher…

Among the teachers in attendance was Wissam Feriani, a social studies teacher who works at a vocational high school in Amsterdam where approximately half of the students are Muslim.

“The teacher says Jews, the pupils say Gaza,” said Feriani, who is Muslim. “The teacher says Holocaust, the pupils say it’s all bullshit.” In class, he adds, “It’s always the Jews’ fault. Some pupils say they [Jews] don’t belong. It’s difficult.”

And I predict it will be getting even more difficult, and more widespread.

On the light side

The New Neo Posted on by

Spring forward tonight.

I am so psyched!

Daylight Saving Time begins this evening—technically, tomorrow morning—at 2 AM. So set those clocks forward and enjoy the extra hour of daylight at the end of the day.

snowSunset

What a guy: notes from Ayatollah Khomeini

The New Neo Posted on by

Now that Iran has been so much in the news lately, I though it might of interest to revisit the words of the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, who is still much revered in that country.

First, we have his supple flexibility:

Khomeini once protested the shah’s enfranchisement of women, and then encouraged women to participate in his revolution and vote for his government when he needed their numbers. He once promised that clerics would hold only temporary positions in government and then allowed them to hold the most senior positions…He once said that the fact that “I have said something does not mean that I should be bound by my word.”

Next, we have his attitude towards good times:

One of his first orders [on returning to Iran in 1979] was to censor pictures of himself smiling, on the ground that this made him look frivolous. Mr. Khomeini later explained: “An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam.”

And lastly (although there’s lots more, of course) we have his strategy. The following was written by Daniel Pipes in 1986, long before a certain other politician emerged in our own country who was fond of employing a similar technique of deceptiveness about his own plans:

But all those years on the far fringe [before taking power] taught Mr. Khomeini lessons that he applied brilliantly to chart his path to power from 1977 to 1979. In a perceptive passage, Mr. Taheri explains the “lead from behind” strategy that Mr. Khomeini adopted. To keep his agents – mostly mullahs – from falling into police hands, Mr. Khomeini instructed his supporters to pretend to back secular opposition leaders. Delighted with this unexpected attention, these leaders were carried away by their own importance, and quickly found themselves in jail. Meanwhile, Mr. Khomeini’s followers remained free.

Leading from behind had another critical advantage. The majority of Iranians, who did not agree with Mr. Khomeini’s goal of an Islamic Republic, were fooled into thinking that he and the mullahs were mere figureheads who would return to their mosques after the shah’s fall. It took several years for Iranians to realize fully that the mullahs in power were determined to implement Mr. Khomeini’s radical vision.

I’ve written a great deal more about Khomeini. For background, see this, this, and this.

Holder says to proceed with corruption charges against Sen. Menendez

The New Neo Posted on by

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez has been the focus of corruption charges several times in the last decade. One was spearheaded by Republicans in 2006 (it was closed in 2011 with no charges filed). Another involved an accusation from the right that he dealt with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic, charges that were never substantiated. The present charges first emerged in a federal court in 2013:

It was reported on March 14, 2013, that a federal grand jury in Miami is investigating Menendez regarding his role in advocating for the business interests of ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen. Menendez’s efforts to push U.S. government officials to enforce a lucrative port security contract would benefit one of his major donors, Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, as well as Pedro Pablo Permuy, a former national security adviser and senior legislative aide to Mr. Menendez.

More about that original investigation here.

This case has been smoldering for quite some time. So the timing of the following announcement could be just a coincidence. But it’s certainly “interesting” that it has come right after the Iran deal controversy in which Menendez featured so prominently as a leading Democrat who joined with Republicans to vociferously criticize Obama:

The Justice Department reportedly plans to charge Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey with corruption for doing political favors for a donor and friend. “People briefed on the case say Attorney General Eric Holder has signed off on prosectors’ request to proceed with charges,” CNN reports. The FBI has been investigating Menendez’s relationship with Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, on whose plane the senator flew to the Dominican Republic in 2010. In 2013, Menendez paid back Melgen $58,000 after not disclosing the flight. Menendez has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Menendez, a Democrat, was reelected in 2012 and is considered a leading hawk on Iran and Russia in the Senate.

The grand jury investigation began in March of 2013, but Holder just signed off on proceeding with actual charges. Again, perhaps a coincidence. But it’s also interesting that by March of 2013 Menendez had been opposing President Obama’s policies on Iran and Russia for several years. I have no idea whether he was the only Democrat to do so, but he was certainly the most influential in terms of foreign policy, having risen to the post of chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2013, replacing Kerry when the latter became SOS. Menendez in turn was replaced in January of 2015 after the Senate was taken over by Republicans in the 2014 election. He’s been vigorously going after Obama on Iran ever since.

Getting rid of Menendez would have its down side for Obama, since Christie would get to appoint his replacement. But since Menendez seems to oppose Obama on foreign policy anyway, and since even with one more Republican in the Senate it still will be plenty hard to override any of the vetoes Obama has planned, Menendez’s loss probably doesn’t really present that much of a problem for Obama. Silencing and/or discrediting his voice is probably much more important. Nor could one more Republican in the Senate do much about Obama’s busy phone and pen.

[Hat tip: Ace.]

[ADDENDUM: Commenter “expat” calls my attention to this article, which offers a theory about timing that links the timing of the Clinton email revelations with the timing of the Menendez prosecution sign-off. The idea is that they both offer timely warnings to any Democrat who would dare oppose Obama on Iran:

The answer is that the two are related: This week’s tarring of Hillary Clinton is part of the White House’s political campaign to shut off debate about its hoped-for deal. It’s not hard to see why they’re anxious. With Netanyahu’s speech forcing lawmakers and editorial writers to face up to the proposed agreement’s manifest problems, the administration fears the prospect of Democrats jumping ship and signing on to Kirk-Menendez sanctions legislation that also would give Congress oversight on the deal. So far, the White House has managed to keep Democratic lawmakers in line, no matter how much they seem to question the wisdom of the proposed deal. Hillary Clinton, gearing up for a 2016 run in which she is likely to put some distance between herself and Obama’s dubious Middle East policies, is the one major national Democratic figure who can give Democrats in Congress cover.

Makes sense to me.]

The Clinton emails: another case of “if only Obama knew”

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m sure there’s some germ of truth in this story, but I can’t figure out exactly where. I’m assuming that the lede is true:

The White House, State Department and Hillary Clinton’s personal office knew in August that House Republicans had received information showing that the former secretary of state conducted official government business through her private email account…

Were Republicans waiting for a more propitious time—say, after Hillary’s nomination—to spill the beans, and Clinton or the White House decided to finesse the GOP by releasing it now, and that’s why the Times decided to publish it? (That’s my speculation, not the article’s.)

The piece goes on to say that the White House had deferred to Hillary’s aides back in August, and that the latter made the decision to keep quiet about it. That seems implausible to me; the White House had no opinion on the matter? And the “aides believed the former secretary’s email practices broke no rules and were no cause for concern?” Yeah, right.

But this is my favorite part [emphases and sarcastic additions in brackets mine]:

As the scandal has grown, White House aides have worked to put distance between the president and the mess [including this article, which has that goal as its primary purpose]. Although Clinton aides have been in touch with the White House about the response in recent days [ya think?], the situation has put the White House in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the expected presidential candidate because her own staff [not us—her!!] has left a public vacuum””setting up a potentially precarious dynamic between staffers for Clinton, who have traditionally been reluctant to engage with reporters and aides, and aides to President Barack Obama [who are always open and transparent with the press and the public]. Between the two camps, animosity buried [in a very shallow grave] after their 2008 primary campaign occasionally flares up [only once in a blue moon, I’m sure].

White House press secretary Josh Earnest took care to point out that Obama himself was unaware of any issues with Clinton’s email. “The expectation of the president is that everybody throughout his administration is acting in compliance with the Federal Records Act,” Earnest said on Wednesday [even though they’d (probably) been getting emails from her private account for the entire time she was Secretary of State].

The White House does not have Clinton’s full email record, and was only made aware of the situation with her account after receiving the standard notification that a congressional committee had asked for, and received, documents from any agency, he said [if only Obama knew! I guess he read about it in the Times, where he appears to get most of his information].

So the article is alleging that until August, the White House was unaware of Clinton’s email habits, and that at any rate no one thought there was that much of a problem even after they were alerted to it, and that even then no one informed the president.

As usual.

[ADDENDUM: Valerie Jarrett adds that she never received any email from Hillary, and that she has no idea whether the White House ever did.]

[ADDENDUM II: Allahpundit offers a plausible theory as to why the report has come out now (somewhat similar to my initial theory that it’s a way for them to get ahead of a story that was probably going to come out anyway):

Not until three weeks ago did State finally hand over the files to Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi committee.

That last bit and not the Iran deal explains why this broke when it did, I think: State knew that if they didn’t get in front of this and leak it to the Times, Gowdy would notice Hillary’s private e-mail account(s) and break the news himself. That would have been a huge coup for his committee (it is a huge coup even though he didn’t get to announce it) and it would have made State look institutionally corrupt in having failed to release the news about Hillary’s e-mail account itself. So that’s what they did. They came clean ”” after six years, and only because the dreaded GOP was about to show just how shady they and their former boss are. To the extent that Iran figures into all this, I’d guess that it matters only insofar as Bibi Netanyahu’s speech affected the precise timing of the leak. The White House and State wanted to beat Gowdy to the punch as he closed in, but they also wanted to try to bury this news as much as possible by releasing it when it might be overwhelmed by bigger news. The obvious moment was the night before Netanyahu delivered his big speech to Congress.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?]

Obama as Spock

The New Neo Posted on by

Matthew Continetti demonstrates his Trekkie creds with an in-depth comparison. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but it kinda works:

Not only do Spock’s peacenik inclinations routinely land the Enterprise and the Federation into trouble, his “logic” and “level head” mask an arrogant emotional basket case. Unlike the superhuman android Data, a loyal officer whose deepest longing is to be human, Spock spends most of his life as a freelancing diplomat eager to negotiate with the worst enemies of Starfleet. He’s the opposite of a role model: a cautionary tale.