Oh, you don’t say!: Biden had classified documents in his office

The New Neo Posted on by

I think we’re on safe ground in expecting no charges to come from this:

Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden’s vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney’s inquiry.

The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys “were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar with the matter told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets.

Neither did Trump’s, but that didn’t stop the MSM from publishing rumors and innuendos that the did contain nuclear secrets.

More:

Garland assigned U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to find out how the material marked classified ended up at the Penn Biden Center. The review is considered a preliminary step, and the attorney general will determine whether further investigation is necessary, including potentially appointing a special counsel.

I predict we’ll hear very little more about this from them, except some sort of exoneration.

Here’s what McCarthy said:

GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called the recovery of documents with classified markings from Mr. Biden’s time as vice president “very concerning.” He added, “He’s had these classified [documents], and what has he said about the other president with classified documents?” Asked if this instance is different because attorneys found them and “immediately” handed the material over, McCarthy replied, “Oh, really? They just now found them after all those years.”

McCarthy has been strong when speaking on a highly related topic, long before his recent showdown with the Freedom Caucus. Back in August of 2022 McCarthy was in the news objecting mightily to the MAL raid on Trump:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday the House would investigate the Department of Justice if Republicans took the majority.

Why it matters: McCarthy’s pledge was the crescendo to widespread Republican condemnations of the DOJ after the FBI raided former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

It comes as Republicans are preparing a litany of probes into everything from Hunter Biden to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

What they’re saying: “I’ve seen enough,” McCarthy said in a statement, asserting the DOJ “has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”

McCarthy said if Republicans retook the House, “we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.”

“Attorney General [Merrick] Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he concluded, signaling plans to subpoena Garland.

The next few months should indicate whether any of this will happen, and then whether it will make any difference. For examle:

“The political usefulness of this for the Republicans, as people attack Donald Trump about his issues. I get it and they’re not the same. And yes, there will be conflation here. But the political usefulness of this cannot be underscored, cannot be overstated enough,” Jennings said with glee.

Jennings continued: “to give Republicans this talking point for the rest of their natural lives almost exonerates Trump in terms of debates and what comes up. I mean, if this ever comes up and somebody brings it up, you’re always gonna have this retort.”

“Everybody in politics is laughing their rear end off tonight that this happened to Joe Biden given how strident his commentary was in attacking Donald Trump about this in the first place. So, yeah, it’s a big deal politically,” Jennings added.

Maybe.

Annals of cancellation: the beloved aux jack

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes yes they can take that away from me:

My quest for a new cellphone accelerated the other day for various connectivity reasons too boring to explain. I long ago decided I want my next cellphone to be another Samsung Galaxy. I’ve had that type of phone for ages and been satisfied with it. Plus, why have to learn a whole different habit system for the phone’s operation?

And then I discovered to my dismay that a recent trend in cell phones as a whole – starting with the nefarious Apple, leader with other computer “improvements” I detest, such as the flat chiclet keyboard – is to eliminate the handy auxiliary phone jack. It gives them more room in the phones to have longer-lasting batteries, they say. But it also is a way to push more and more bluetooth items, which become obligatory.

Interestingly, the low-end models – at least with Samsung – still have the jacks. For now, anyway, although haughty Apple has eliminated them entirely. The good news is that the low-end models such as the A13 and A23, are – well, low-end, which means less expensive. But that means that often some of the features I’d like (or at least think I’d like), such as a more spiffy camera, are missing.

So it really comes down to this: how badly do I want that auxiliary jack? Is it just my stubborn reluctance to change that’s operating here? As the young (looked about twelve to me) guy working at Best Buy asked me: “Do you have a bluetooth?” My answer is: tons of them. I use them quite often, because my arm problem makes it hard for me to hold the phone for calls of more than a few minutes. I’m an early bluetooth adopter, and have many different in-ear kinds and also an over-the-ear headset type. I actually like over-the-ear types, but have found that my trusty wired headet is very useful at times, too: very comfortable, inexpensive, and with good sound fidelity for music. Why should I have to surrender it?

“Ah,” but you say, “you don’t have to surrender it. They have these little adapter doohickeys that work just fine.” And yes, they do have them. But if you want to listen with your headset while charging your phone – which I find convenient at times – then you have to get a gadget that also has a charging port as well as the aux jack. No problem; they sell them. Except that consumers often report that using them to listen and charge degrades the signal and causes static. With a simple and elegant aux port, that has never happened to me.

So I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time researching and mulling over this decision. But before I bite the bullet and spring for an A23, I’m curious to get some of your opinions. Not that I’ll do what you say, of course.

Let’s have another roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) If you’re interested in the process of how a Speaker could be removed, I think this article is pretty accurate about how it could work, even at this point.

(2) Russian bots didn’t matter in the election of 2016. Now It Can Be Told.

(3) Here are the current investigative plans of the House, agreed to by McCarthy. A lot of people who detest and/or distrust McCarthy think he agreed only because his arm was twisted. I’m pretty sure that’s true of some and perhaps all of the rules that limit his power – I have little doubt he only surrendered on many or all of those because of the pressure. But even before the election I recall reading quotes by McCarthy and many of the more middle-right wing of the GOP that investigations of the FBI et al (Hunter Biden, COVID lockdowns) were already planned.

Now, you may say it was all hot air, but McCarthy was talking about certain investigations of that sort back in August. Jordan was a McCarthy ally, and he was poised to be given power in the Judiciary Committee to investigate “weaponization of the DOJ against the American people.” In this article from October, McCarthy said the following:

McCarthy says he intends to boot Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both Californians, from the Intelligence Committee and remove Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from Foreign Affairs.

Pushed on how he might use subpoena power in hypothetical investigations of Hunter Biden or the Department of Justice, given Democrats’ decision to press for Republicans’ phone records, McCarthy responds, “Our role is oversight, and we’re not going to sit back and not do it.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to know where Covid originated?” he asks. “Why would you not want to know what happened in Afghanistan? Why wouldn’t you want to know why the DOJ went after parents?”

You may distrust him (and the GOP) so much that you say none of this would have happened without the Freedom Caucus. That’s certainly possible, but even prior to the fight over the Speakership I fully expected that it would happen.

(4) Brazil’s January 6th?:

After thousands of Bolsonaro’s backers stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace on Sunday, police in riot gear amassed at the pro-Bolsonaro camp outside Brasilia’s army headquarters, while troops took down tents, Reuters witnesses said. The protesters were dispersed.

(5) DEI has become the overarching mission of American universities, replacing the quest for truth.

At least leftist radicals of the 60s didn’t care if their feelings were hurt

The New Neo Posted on by

In the comments to Saturday’s post about some AI at Blogger flagging a 17-year-old piece of mine for very very little, and attaching a warning to it, one commenter wrote that Blogger is the least of his concerns and the FBI knocking is of greater concern.

I think just about everyone here might agree.

But the two are somewhat linked in that they are both steps in the process of weaponizing mere political disagreement, including speech. Also, in the case of the Blogger warning, it didn’t even involve political disagreement; the old post appears to have been flagged merely because of a passing, fleeting mention of the existence of this story that was in the news way back when. That post is now – nearly two decades later – considered “sensitive” content that could hurt feelings or religious sensitivities (in this case those of Muslims). It is especially ironic since the story in question involved allegations by Muslim detainees at Guantanamo against the actions of staff there.

The whole thing started me wondering when this all began – that is, this expectation by the left that no one (at least no one in a group defined as downtrodden in some way) would ever feel the need to experience hurt feelings or crushed sensitivities. I certainly don’t recall such things being demanded by the leftists during the Sixties or earlier. Early leftists tended to be tough cookies and expected the fight to be harsh, even though some Sixties leftists were from what might be called “privileged” backgrounds. But somewhere along the line – and by the time I attended grad school in the early 90s it had already occurred – the standard for behavior now included protection for the feelings of those oppressed groups from the ravages of speech, and those ravages would be defined by the supposed victims.

I can’t remember a transition time, either. One moment that standard wasn’t there, and the next moment it was. That doesn’t mean it actually happened overnight. During the transition years of the 70s and 80s I was busy with my young adult life and then with being a mother, and probably not paying a whole lot of attention. One thing of which I’m pretty sure is that the change happened first in the universities.

Blogger flagged me

The New Neo Posted on by

I got a little note from Blogger recently – that is, from the entity that hosts my original blog at Blogspot, which apparently is still accessible. I assume the missive is not from a sentient being, but rather from some sort of AI. But it’s a sign of our touchy touchy times that this post originally published in May of 2005 (yikes!) is now considered to be insufficiently sensitive (that link is to the version that came over to the newer site, but it’s the exact same post).

The email notice of the flag read like this:

Hello,

As you may know, our Community Guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow– and don’t allow– on Blogger. Your post titled “Tracing the use of the anonymous source” was flagged to us for review. This post was put behind a warning for readers because it contains sensitive content; the post is visible at http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/2005/05/tracing-use-of-anonymous-source.html. Your blog readers must acknowledge the warning before being able to read the post/blog.

We apply warning messages to posts that contain sensitive content. If you are interested in having the status reviewed, please update the content to adhere to Blogger’s Community Guidelines. Once the content is updated, you may republish it at [a blogger appeal link]. This will trigger a review of the post.

Lovely.

No one goes to that old site of mine anymore, as far as I know. Note that the post is over 17 years old. And it’s not the least bit sensitive in content at all, although the reference to a news story in the 2nd sentence is almost undoubtedly the offender in their eyes (or AI’s eyes). It was a report that someone tried to flush a Koran, but I didn’t deal with the report at all in the post, which had to do with the history of anonymous sourcing in the news.

I’m not planning an appeal.

[NOTE: By the way, in the transfer to this site of all my pre-2008 posts from Blogger, the comments to each post are listed backwards in time, with the more recent ones at the top. I can’t fix it; that’s just the way it is.]

Speaker squeaker: on the battle behind and the battle ahead

The New Neo Posted on by

One thing I can say about last night is that it certainly was dramatic.

Another thing is that nearly every article I read points out that McCarthy is now weakened. He’s certainly weakened by the rule change that allows a single GOP member of Congress to call for what amounts to a vote on whether to remove him (motion to vacate), but prior to that change the rule apparently was that five people could do it, and he had more than five who greatly opposed him already anyway.

But as far as “weak” goes otherwise – I think that the tiny GOP majority in this session would have made any GOP Speaker somewhat weak, because the party is so divided and a few members of either wing can bolt and hold up the works. It remains to be seen how weak or strong he really will be, but I think some weakness was already inherent because of the small size of the GOP margin.

I also think that in a little while these beginnings won’t matter; what will matter is what actually happens when Congress is in session. And because the Senate and presidency are in Democrat hands, the power of the House is mostly to say “no” to things the Democrats would otherwise be doing, as well as to investigate a lot of events and machinations that have cried out for investigation.

From Tucker Carlson, with whom I agree on this (stated on Thursday night, before the final votes):

If you want to be the guy who’s second in line from the presidency in America, you’ve got to work for it. And Kevin McCarthy certainly has worked for it this week, whatever you think of him. You get the feeling McCarthy would crawl naked through a sewer to get this gig. And that’s not necessarily an insult, by the way. It’s what it takes, obviously. Maybe it’s what it should take.

So if you take a deep breath and you think about it for a second, nothing we have seen in Washington recently, the supposedly apocalyptic world-ending drama of politicians arguing with each other, none of it qualifies as especially unusual or even bad.

In the comments today, commenter “MBunge” had this to say:

So, the guy no one can actually explain WHY he should be third in line for the White House becomes Speaker after several days of public embarrassment by making “concessions,” most of which should have been no-brainer things for a Republican-led House to do in the first place. Do I have that right?

No, I don’t think he has that right.

First of all, no one campaigns for Speaker or justifies a candidate for Speaker by saying why that person should be third (or second, if you leave out the president, so it depends where you start the count) in line for the White House. Although every Speaker is second/third in line, it’s not ordinarily the reason that person is elected, and few of them would qualify to be president or even be a desirable president.

However, plenty of people have explained why McCarthy would be a good Speaker, which is the real issue. You may not care for their reasoning or for them, but they’ve certainly explained it. It’s instructive to look at articles that attempt to explain it, such as this Federalist piece on the subject from October of 2022. One of the people promoting McCarthy for Speaker was Jordan.

Lastly, I think it’s good to put “concessions” in scare quotes. The reason I think it belongs there is that there is a frequent assumption that all the things in those rules were concessions that McCarthy would not otherwise have agreed to without the extreme pressure. I submit that some of them were just that (the vacate rule that diminished his power, for example, making it easier to have a vote to get rid of him), and some were things he would have done anyway. Which were which? We don’t know for sure, although I think there are clues in that Federalist article I linked.

You may say that was just hot air, and that without the recent fracas McCarthy wouldn’t have done a thing except appease the left, and that may end up happening all too frequently anyway. I say what I often say: wait and see. But don’t expect him to have the power to pass conservative legislation that the Senate will approve and Biden will sign.

Tonight’s vote for Speaker [scroll down for UPDATES]

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought I’d put up a separate post for this, in case this one really ends up electing McCarthy. I make no predictions about that.

They’ve released a rules package. Here it is, all 55 pages of it. I haven’t read it, but I skimmed it very quickly and noticed that on page 50 through 55 you’ll find some of what looks like their contemplated legislative agenda.

UPDATE 11:58 PM:

McCarthy came up one vote short. But as I was starting to research the situation for my update, I noticed (if this breaking story is correct) that there will be another vote later tonight.

The brouhaha seems to involve Gaetz. Earlier today people were talking as though it was finally sewn up for McCarthy, so I’m wondering whether Gaetz made some sort of dramatic switcheroo to vote “no” instead of “present” right at the end, the better to humiliate McCarthy and drag out his own day in the sun further. I’ll update again if and when I get some clarity on this.

UPDATE: 1/7/23 12:25 AM

They’ve started voting again. Here’s one very recent take on what may have happened earlier, and what might be about to happen:

When Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., had to be physically restrained from going after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., he was frustrated because Gaetz had been holding out for a subcommittee gavel on the Armed Services Committee, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Rogers is poised to chair the full committee. Gaetz voted “present” again on the 15th ballot, which with other present votes could secure the speakership for Kevin McCarthy.

And this had happened earlier to get to the 15th balloting:

During the roll call vote on a motion to adjourn until Monday, it was becoming clear that it was going to fail because several Republicans were opposed.

Then, Gaetz went to the dais and voted against adjourning and then went to McCarthy and they shook hands. Suddenly, McCarthy switched his vote to also oppose the motion that his own ally brought to the floor.

A number of Republicans then began to follow McCarthy’s lead in switching their votes.

I’d love to know what led to that handshake. Perhaps Gaetz realized – or was made to realize – that his behavior wasn’t getting him anywhere further at this point? Was he becoming a pariah even with his former allies?

UPDATE 12:46 AM:

It’s over and McCarthy is the Speaker of the House.

I actually think it was over – although not officially – with the handshake mentioned in my 12:25 AM update.

Also:

The switches [on ballot 15] came after a remarkable confrontation following the 14th vote between McCarthy and Gaetz, who appeared to have decided at the last minute to pull his support from the party leader.

If true, that’s exactly what I surmised had happened (writing in my 11:58 PM UPDATE) – that Gaetz may have pulled a John McCain when, having deferred his vote till the final moment of ballot 14, he broke some sort of assurance he had made earlier to McCarthy or the McCarthy supporters. If that report is true, Gaetz apparently let McCarthy think the vote was in the bag for the 14th ballot, and then pulled the rug out from under McCarthy in the most dramatic and publicly humiliating fashion.

I plan to write more tomorrow about tonight’s drama.

Hating Republicans: why not look it up?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s very common for me to see a question – sometimes rhetorical and sometimes otherwise – that can be answered rather easily with a simple search. Most of the time I don’t mind doing that search, but I wonder why people don’t do it themselves more often. After all, one of the good aspects of the internet is that it gives us the ability to look things up quickly without hauling ourselves to the library and spending a ton of time locating the proper source. It’s all here at our fingertips – literally.

Sometimes the searching isn’t so simple, of course. But it often is. For example, I sometime read something like, “No GOP politician has ever spoken out against [fill in the blank] or supported [fill in the blank].” And yet all I have to do is take 30 seconds of searching to find quotes from GOP politicians doing just that.

So, what gives? Do we often think if we haven’t heard something it means it didn’t happen? There’s a cacophony of noise out there and only some of it filters through.

While I’m at it, I’ll mention something else, which is that a huge percentage of online commenters on the right hate, despise, and detest the GOP and especially its representatives in Congress. The sense of betrayal is epic, fueled by hundreds of truly disappointing, frustrating, and infuriating incidents. That colors perceptions of just about everything that happens in Congress, from the idea that Democrats always get what they want (no, they don’t, although they often do), to the idea that Republicans in Congress are utterly corrupt liars who only care about money and are in league with the Democrats but just aren’t honest about it (the “Uniparty”).

I don’t quite agree, but not because I don’t feel some of the same feelings. And it’s not because I’m so trusting of the GOP, either. I think it’s because I’m more cynical, not less, about the possibilities of government and of Congress. I’m actually pretty cynical about all politicians. But I think that means that at a certain level I accept that the people who enter politics have certain characteristics and motivations that many of the rest of us don’t share, or we’d be entering politics too. Those characteristics don’t tend to be noble, although a few of them are. Politics is always a pretty dirty business and I think there’s something inherent in it that means it’s not going to become clean, and that purists and idealists do well in politics only in the movies. In addition, I do think that some people in Congress are quite smart, hard-working, and dedicated, but it’s not the rule and I don’t think it’s ever going to be the rule.

Plus, the GOP hasn’t had anything but narrow majorities for a long time, and because members of the GOP tend to be less likely to toe the party line than Democrats are, you always will get some defectors here and there. When majorities are large – and the Democrats often used to have very large majorities during the 20th century, although not recently – a few defections don’t matter. When majorities are small (as the rare GOP majorities have tended to be since before FDR), defections do matter – as the Democrats found out during the last Congress, when Manchin and Sinema made the rest of the Democrats gnash their teeth with frustration at their refusal to get with the program.

So just a few people can frustrate narrow Republican majorities. John McCain did that with the “skinny” Obamacare repeal in 2017, casting the deciding vote against it. His defection seems to have been a surprise:

McConnell, who seemed to exhaust every trick in the procedural playbook to get to this point, seemed surprised and undercut by the result.

The defeat ends — for now — the health care debate in Congress. The chamber adjourned following the defeat, and there are no further Senate votes this week…

Republican senators said there was no consensus and no plan for what comes next on health care. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned of potentially severe political consequences for Republicans for failing to deliver on what has been the GOP’s unifying campaign pledge for the previous three elections.

“I sadly feel a great many Americans will feel betrayed,” Cruz told reporters, “that they were lied to, and that sentiment will not be unjustified.”

The “skinny repeal” was a pared-down version of Republican proposals to undo Obamacare with no plan for what to replace it with. It would have eliminated the individual and employer mandate and key taxes, defunded Planned Parenthood for a year and eliminated key protections of health benefits that were required under Obamacare.

The bill was deeply unpopular, but GOP leaders worked to assure members it would never become law. Instead, they wanted the Senate to pass it in order to advance the legislation to a third round of negotiations with the House to try to craft a final bill both chambers could pass.

Many of you who hate the GOP for this and so many other failures will probably say it was all a plot, that McConnell knew what McCain would do and colluded with it, and that the GOP never actually wanted to repeal Obamacare. What do I think? I think the Republican Party was divided about what was an acceptable alternative to Obamacare – they’d studied and proposed tons of them – and that McCain blindsided McConnell, with great relish. I think the confused-sounding agenda described in the last paragraph – “they wanted the Senate to pass it in order to advance the legislation to a third round of negotiations with the House to try to craft a final bill both chambers could pass”- is a reflection of the way Congress works when a party doesn’t have overwhelming and united majorities in both houses. I think compromise is hard, and members of Congress used to be better at it and voters more tolerant of it. Those days aregone.

And yes, I would like to see a much better leader in there than McConnell. But whom would that person be, and would that person actually want the office? Being Speaker is a complex, difficult, and mostly thankless task, especially with such tiny majorities. And although the job seems powerful and it is, the actual power can be thwarted by just a few members of Congress and then the Speaker gets blamed for it.

But ah, you say, the Democrats stay united. My answer is that they don’t always – again, see Manchin and Sinema – and also that Democrats are different than Republicans in temperament and in the willingness to go with the group.

In other words, Republican cats are more difficult to herd than Democrat cats.

Hate on the GOP in general or certain Republicans in particular all you want. But I think we should be realistic about what’s possible in Congress and especially with a tiny majority in one house of Congress. Also, if someone in the GOP (or anyone, actually) is reported in the media and/or blogs and/or social media as having said something that gets your goat, please look up the entire quote and its context. You may get some surprises.

Clarification on how the police nabbed Kohberger

The New Neo Posted on by

I see a lot continuing speculation on how Kohberger was traced and caught. That leads me to believe that many of you haven’t seen the affidavit that explains it fairly well. Here’s a link to the document.

The gist of it is that there were plenty of surveillance cameras that recorded a car driving around the neighborhood both before and after the murders occurred. And there were almost no other cars driving in the neighborhood at the time, so it was relatively easy to narrow it down to that car and then to its owner. They then were able to access the suspect’s cellphone records, which implicated him although he thought to evade detection by turning the phone off as he approached the crime scene.

As far as matching his DNA goes, there had been speculation about police using public DNA databases. But that turns out to have been erroneous. Actually, they found someone’s DNA on the knife sheath left behind (on the bed of one of the victims), and since they had the identity of the suspect from the camera and phone records they didn’t need to use a database because they used the old tried and true garbage technique. In other words, they went to the family home in Pennsylvania and got something out of the garbage (once you discard something that way it’s perfectly legal to take it and test it):

On December 27, 2022, Pennsylvania Agents recovered the trash from the Kohberger family residence located in Albrightsville, PA. That evidence was sent to the Idaho State Lab for testing. On December 28,2022, the Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash and the DNA profile obtained from the sheath, identified a male as not being excluded as the biological father of Suspect Profile. At least 99.9998% of the male population would be expected to be excluded from the possibility of being the suspect’s biological father.

That enabled them to arrest Kohberger.