The DOJ’s defiance of Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

Kimberly Strassel in the WSJ on the real constitutional crisis that’s going on:

The Constitution set up Congress to act as a check on the executive branch””and it’s got more than enough cause to do some checking here. Yet the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have spent a year disrespecting Congress””flouting subpoenas, ignoring requests, hiding witnesses, blacking out information, and leaking accusations.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has not been allowed to question a single current or former Justice or FBI official involved in this affair. Not one. He’s also more than a year into his demand for the transcript of former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s infamous call with the Russian ambassador, as well as reports from the FBI agents who interviewed Mr. Flynn. And still nothing.

Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, is being stonewalled on at least three inquiries…

Not only that, but the Democrats and the press (redundant, I know) would have us believe that it’s Congress and the right who are out of line for questioning or doubting the DOJ and its veracity and fine intentions, despite all the reasons there are to doubt that veracity and those fine intentions (and as though the left itself doesn’t doubt that veracity and those fine intentions when it suits the left’s purposes).

This intransigence [on the part of the DOJ] is creating an unprecedented toxicity between law enforcement and Congress, undermining what has long been a cooperative and vital relationship. It is also pushing lawmakers ever closer to holding Justice Department officials in contempt or impeaching them. Congress hasn’t impeached a member of the executive branch (presidents excepted) since the 19th century. Let’s agree such a step would amount to a real crisis. And the pressure to use these tools to get disclosure is growing, as congressional Republicans worry about losing their oversight authority in the midterms, and suspect the Justice Department is stringing them along for that very reason.

So make no mistake about it. As I wrote yesterday, none of this investigation of the excesses of the DOJ re the Trump campaign would be going on if the GOP didn’t control Congress. This fact should be driven home by every GOP participant in the Congressional campaign for 2018, because I believe most people don’t connect those dots and realize what the effect of a Democrat-controlled Congress would be (and by “most people” I include a lot of people who call themselves conservatives and are angry at what they call the GOPe).

As Strassel wrote, “congressional Republicans worry about losing their oversight authority in the midterms,” and well they should. In fact, we should all worry about it.

Strassel ends her piece this way:

…[Trump should] declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the public see the truth. That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for itself, to “undermine” an investigation. And it would end the Justice Department’s campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to its reputation with the public and with Congress.

No doubt the Democrats would shriek if he were to do that, but I agree that it may be the only remedy at this point.

Jonathan Haidt on the extreme importance of opinion diversity to challenge motivated reasoning

The New Neo Posted on by

Brilliant talk by Haidt:

I’ve become more and more impressed with Haidt over time. Fearless, clear, supported by evidence, he keeps churning out these videos and giving these talks. He started as a liberal—I don’t know where he’s at politically at this point, and it really doesn’t matter to me. He’s doing such good work on the problems at universities, and the chilling effect of SJWs on the pursuit of truth.

It is extremely disappointing, however, that that video has only about 85K views. That’s almost nothing in the world of YouTube.

It’s also interesting to me that two psychology professors who are not on the right or of the right (or who at least didn’t used to be), Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, are doing such fine work in countering the anti-free-speech tyranny that has taken hold at universities.

Two different worlds: If you look at the MSM, you’d think Trump was doing very very poorly

The New Neo Posted on by

And that has been true for his entire presidency.

So take a look at a sampler for today at memeorandum. Nothing unusual about today; it’s very typical. Trump doing badly vis a vis North Korea. Trump “venting anger” at this and that (often, it’s Trump “raging” and/or “out of control”). “Concerned by Trump, some Republicans Quietly Align With Democrats” (although funny thing, what I’ve seen most of the time is a few concerned Democrats quietly aligning with Republicans). Sad tales of separated “immigrant families” (i.e. illegal immigrants). Focus on a weirdo 9-11-truther GOP candidate for Congress in a district in Illinois in which the Republican primary was uncontested and the Democrat is virtually certain to win anyway. Hit piece du jour on Jordan Peterson. Seahawk wide receiver saying “Trump is an idiot, plain and simple.” Featured op-ed in the WaPo entitled, “Are Republicans abetting a demagogue—or something worse?” And perhaps my personal favorite: “The Chilling Effect of Trump’s War on the FBI.”

Countering that? A few neutral articles—neutral in the sense that they’re not directly about Trump nor are they attacks on Republicans, nor even about politics—as well as one from Kimberly Strassel that appeared in the WSJ and presents the other side: “The Real Constitutional Crisis: The FBI and Justice Department continue evading congressional oversight.”

So that’s the picture with the featured articles (“Top Items”). Different worlds, and the world of the right is far less visible to the casual observer. And this represents the usual ratio of left-to-right coverage in the MSM generally. It requires no effort at all to see the views on the left, which are presented as mainstream, standard, the default positions. The right’s point of view is something you have to seek out. And how many do?

I certainly never did, before the internet. It was the internet that made such things easily accessible. Nor was I purposely seeking out the point of view on the right. It actually came to me by accident, through links from other articles I happened to be reading, and I was naive and ignorant enough that I didn’t even realize which periodicals I clicked on were from the left and which from the right.

But that’s how I ended up reading so much on the right without being fully aware of what I was doing, and ultimately discovering that the right side made more sense to me than the left. I had just never been exposed to it before.

Elections have consequences

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s rather commonplace to see people on the right mention that the machinations of Comey, Clapper, McCabe, et. al. regarding the investigation of the Trump campaign would never have been revealed to the American people had Hillary Clinton been elected president, as was expected.

I’ve also often seen it said by people on the right that the GOP in Congress is nearly worthless and that the two parties constitute a “uniparty” with little distinction between them. But although I certainly agree that the Republicans in Congress often deeply disappoint, I have long argued that not only are they better than the Democrats but the idea that the two parties are alike is a destructive one.

And so it is in the spirit of that latter thought that I will add something I rarely if ever see pointed out, which is that while it is correct that the entire operation by which the “deep state” spied on the campaign of Donald Trump would not have been revealed without the election of Trump, it is also the case that it is unlikely to have been revealed without the election of a Republican-majority Congress as well.

In other words, it was necessary to have someone like Devin Nunes as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, pushing for disclosure. The way Congress works is that the majority party gets to chair committees and set agendas. Does anyone really think the same revelations would have seen the light of day had the Democrats been in charge?

Trump calls Kim’s bluff and finesses him

The New Neo Posted on by

At least, that’s the way I see this announcement:

“Please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place,” Trump wrote in a letter to Kim.

Why?:

On Wednesday, a top North Korean official launched another verbal fusillade at the Trump administration, calling Vice President Pence a “political dummy” and saying his government is just as ready to inflict an “appalling tragedy” on the U.S. as it is to talk.

The president returned the favor in his letter, writing that while Kim likes to “talk about” his nuclear capabilities, “ours are so massive and so powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”…

Trump, however, did not close the door to sitting down with the reclusive North Korean leader in the future.

“Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you,” he wrote. “If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.”

I used two metaphors from card playing: calling a bluff (poker) and finessing (bridge). Not being much of a card player myself, maybe I’m not using then exactly correctly. And of course negotiations with North Korea are not a game.

Except that all negotiations are games, not in the sense of being light entertainment, but in the sense of strategy and tactics and sizing up one’s opponent. Here Trump is delivering a message that says: you think you’re in charge? Think again. If you want to meet with me, there’s a certain standard of behavior that’s required.

Whether the message will be received in a way that ends up being to the US’s advantage—and, as Trump suggests, to the world’s advantage—remains to be seen.

House votes to roll back portions of Dodd-Frank

The New Neo Posted on by

The bill passed with bipartisan support, 258-159. The beneficiaries will be smaller banks that claim to have been unduly hampered by the bill:

The bill stops far short of unwinding the toughened regulatory regime put in place to prevent the nation’s biggest banks from engaging in risky behavior, but it represents a substantial watering down of Obama-era rules governing a large swath of the banking system. The legislation will leave fewer than 10 big banks in the United States subject to stricter federal oversight, freeing thousands of banks with less than $250 billion in assets from a post-crisis crackdown that they have long complained is too onerous.

Republican lawmakers and the banking industry cheered a measure they said would help unshackle banks ”” and the economy ”” from regulatory burdens.

The Senate had already passed a version of this back in March, also with strong bipartisan support—16 Democrats and one Independent joined. That seems pretty rare nowadays for a bill that actually might mean something.

More here:

The bill, once signed, will be one of the most significant rewrites of financial industry rules in nearly a decade. It would lessen regulatory scrutiny on smaller banks, including regional banks like BB&T, SunTrust Banks, Key Bank, and American Express, as well as community banks and credit unions.

The bill’s proponents say it’s an example of bipartisanship at its best. But progressives say it goes too far and that it purports to help small community banks when its changes really benefit large financial institutions.

And the bill has exposed fault lines within the Democratic Party: Progressives and many 2020 presidential hopefuls in the Senate have lined up against the legislation, while some moderates and those from rural states support it and seek to hold it up as an example of their ability to work in a bipartisan manner.

Of course. The latter want to be re-elected in their more moderate districts and states, if possible. The progressives are appealing to an entirely different constituency.

Duke strikes another blow against freedom of thought

The New Neo Posted on by

Safe spaces at Duke.

Safe from thought, by way of purges:

About 100 students and alumni have asked Duke University to reinstate a professor whose teaching style encourages students to think critically about their opinions and opposing views.

They believe that the private university refused to renew a contract for Evan Charney, associate professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy, because he made some students feel uncomfortable by playing devil’s advocate on sensitive issues.

“In a time when political tribalism and divisiveness keep us from engaging fruitfully with one another, the skills Charney teach us are necessary to train the next generation of citizens,” they wrote in an open letter to The Duke Chronicle.

At least some students at Duke are interested in freedom of speech and liberty, even if the administration isn’t.

That’s not all that’s going on at Duke in the free speech (or rather, anti-free-speech) realm. There’s also this:

A Duke University Divinity School professor who called diversity training a “waste” of time has resigned after disciplinary proceedings were launched against him and he was barred by his dean from faculty meetings.

At issue is a February email in which Professor Paul Griffiths advised his colleagues not to bother with a proffered volunteer diversity training, called “Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training.” Slated for March, it would work to ensure the divinity school is “equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture,” according to the invite.

“I exhort you not to attend this training,” Griffiths stated in his Feb. 6 listserv reply to his peers. “Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty.”

“”¦ We have neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it,” he added.

For that, he was accused of racism and sexism, and disciplinary proceedings against him were launched.

He resigned instead. Here’s part of a letter of explanation he wrote:

…[Born in England,] I’ve been a delighted citizen of the United States by naturalization since 1994, and have lived here much longer than that, from the bitter end of the Carter presidency to the astringent beginning of the Trump years. I’m sixty-one now, and was twenty-four when I landed at JFK Airport with a suitcase, a scholarship, and $500. My life in those years has been a university life, which has been both a privilege and an ecstasy.

Deep in me is a love for, and romanticism about, the United States that is perhaps only possible for an alien. Equally deep, the gift of class and temperament, has been a need to make my way. That’s an ordinary immigrant passion, at least for those without resources. I had none, except for words. And so words, in universities, have been what I’ve used to make my way. I’ve used them to elucidate, to explain, to understand, and to argue. The word-life, which is the same as the life of the mind, has been for me one of struggle to accentuate and sharpen intellectual differences with the goal of increasing clarity about what they come to and what’s at stake in them. I’ve been rewarded for that word-struggle with academic positions and some academic honors. For those rewards I’m grateful and, often, still, astonished. How is it possible that I’ve held professorial chairs at top-flight universities? It didn’t seem possible when I began; it scarcely seemed so even when it happened; and now that it’s over it seems like a Taoist butterfly-dream or a Buddhist sky-flower.

It’s over because I recently, and freely, resigned my chair in Catholic Theology at Duke University in response to disciplinary actions initiated by my dean and colleagues. Those disciplinary actions, in turn, were provoked by my words: critical and confrontational words spoken to colleagues in meetings; and hot words written in critique of university policies and practices, in support of particular freedoms of expression and thought, and against legal and disciplinary constraints of those freedoms.

Griffiths held the Warren Chair of Catholic Theology at Duke University.

If you want to dig deeper into the back-and-forth of the emails that led to the disciplinary actions against Griffiths and his firing, you can find them here. It makes for sobering and depressing reading. But it’s not that we don’t already know about this sort of thing happening; we do. This is precisely the sort of issue that has earned Jordan Peterson his fame—a popularity which is only growing, despite attempts at hitjobs on him in the press, such as this one appearing in the august and oh-so-objective NY Times.

The focus today is on James Clapper

The New Neo Posted on by

And it’s not pretty:

“Clapper is, indeed, a leaker and a liar. He is also a consummate slimy operative.”

In case you don’t know who James Clapper is, he’s the former director of intelligence under President Obama. See this from a month ago:

Buried within a newly declassified congressional report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections is a shocking revelation: former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper not only leaked information about the infamous Steele dossier and high-level government briefings about it to CNN, he also may have lied to Congress about the matter.

As I said, that was written a month ago. This no longer qualifies as “shocking” information. Each day there are so many new revelations about the wrongdoing of the previous administration that it’s difficult to keep up, even for bloggers who spend a great deal of time trying to follow this mess.

And yesterday we had this, titled “Lying Liar James Clapper Just Lied Again About His Previous Lies About NSA Spying”:

Meghan McCain confronted Clapper about a statement he made while testifying before Congress five years ago, when he was asked whether or not the NSA was spying on Americans.

“In 2013 when you were asked about it, you said ”˜no,’” McCain said. “So that is a lie.”

“I made a mistake,” Clapper said. “I didn’t lie. I was thinking about something else, another program.”

Once again, take your pick. Knave or fool? I say “knave.”

[NOTE: See also this and this in related news, as well as this. That last link is to an article by Andrew C. McCarthy.]

Jonathan Turley on the “spy”

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonathan Turley is another writer—a lawyer—whose viewpoints especially interest me because he doesn’t parrot any party line. He’s mostly a libertarian, and as far as I can tell he tends to vote Democratic or libertarian. At any rate, he’s not a Trump guy, but often quite fair and cautious.

This is what he wrote today:

[A 2012 memo to the DOJ] continued, “Simply put, politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

Halper [the “spy”] reportedly was part of a covert operation. However, Halper adds a new, potentially significant element to this controversy. Indeed, it is hard to understand the objections to the investigation of his role [see NOTE* below]. All Americans should be concerned by the implications of an administration running a long investigation into the activities of its opposing party. Three questions could well determine if there was a serious problem of abusive tactics or merely bad optics in the running of [Halper].

The first involves timing: the earlier, the more suspicious. The second involves money: was he paid, and how much, and by whom? The third involves what is called “intrusion.” Turley explains:

Perhaps the most serious allegations deal with Halper’s reported effort to advise the Trump campaign or secure a position in the new administration. If Halper was a longtime paid asset of the FBI and CIA, such a role would be deeply troubling. If successful, the FBI could have had a person working with the campaign or even in the administration who was on its covert budget. Even if they stopped paying Halper, it is doubtful that he would disclose his prior relationship. Trump officials have said they were unaware of the connection in their conversations with him.

In his meetings, Halper was clearly trying to influence or possibly join the campaign while working with the FBI. At a minimum, Halper met with with Trump campaign advisers, including Papadopoulos, Page and former national campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis. Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro reportedly submitted Halper’s name for a post during the presidential transition. If the FBI knew Halper was actively seeking a role in either the campaign or the administration, this could be every bit as serious as Trump alleged.

While the media has tended to downplay these allegations, they are manifestly serious. The use of a paid FBI asset to target a national campaign in this way would be unprecedented.

NOTE*: Turley sometimes shows a puzzling naivete for a man so smart. He writes “it is hard to understand the objections to the investigation of his role.” But it’s not hard at all. It’s politics, Jake.]

Women’s March defends rapists…

The New Neo Posted on by

…as long as the rapists are Black and/or Brown.

This is not The Onion. This is for real:

Women’s March doesn’t believe any person””no matter their crimes””should be dehumanized this way [referred to as “animals,” that is]. It is true that some members of MS-13 have done terrible things. But the president is using those crimes to appeal to social fears of Black and Brown gang members and rapists in order to justify his racist policies.

I can only assume that the Women’s March spokespeople have no objection to “appealing to social fears” of gang members and rapists as long as the gang members are white.

By the way, MS-13 is a criminal gang that happens to be composed mainly of Central Americans, primarily people from El Salvador, but also Hondurans and Guatemalans.

They are notorious for their violence and a subcultural moral code based on merciless retribution…

In an interview with Bill Ritter in late 2017, Nassau County, New York District Attorney Madeline Singas, referring to crimes committed by MS-13 gang members, stated: “The crimes that we’re talking about are brutal. Their weapon of choice is a machete. We end up seeing people with injuries that I’ve never seen before. You know, limbs hacked off. And that’s what the bodies look like that we’re recovering. So they’re brutal. They’re ruthless, and we’re gonna be relentless in our attacks against them.”…

The gang is violent to migrants on the southern border of Mexico.

So among other things (child prostitution, for example) they prey on non-gang illegal immigrants coming through Mexico.

Are these people black? No. Are they “brown,” whatever that means? From the photos I’ve seen, some of them look more or less as brown as I am—meaning dark brunette, Mediterranean-looking (in my case, minus the tattoos). Some appear to have some native ancestry thrown in.

Yes, I am well aware that “brown” is now a term of art, a symbolic word meaning “maybe Caucasian or at least mostly Caucasian but of a group defined as third-world and therefore oppressed, so that their place must be defended on the hierarchy of victimhood” (see also this, a list I think holds up pretty well after all these years).

What is the actual racial composition of El Salvadorans? I don’t see what difference it makes, but since so many people do see what difference it makes, I looked it up and discovered it is very unclear. The vast majority of people in the country identify as mestizo, which is mostly people of mixed European and native origins—except that doesn’t seem to be exactly the case:

86.3% of the population are mestizo, having mixed indigenous and European ancestry. In the mestizo population, Salvadorans who are racially European, especially Mediterranean, as well as Afro-Salvadoran, and the indigenous people in El Salvador who do not speak indigenous languages or have and indigenous culture, all identify themselves as being culturally mestizo.

So it seems that nearly everyone in the country calls themselves mestizo whether they are technically mixed or not. And whatever black elements were once part of the mix have long ago been absorbed, and “there remains no significant extremes of African physiognomy among Salvadorans like there is in the other countries of Central America.” Also:

The low numbers of indigenous people [in El Salvador] may be partly explained by historically high rates of old-world diseases, absorption into the mestizo population, as well as mass murder during the 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising (or La Matanza) which saw (estimates of) up to 30,000 peasants killed in a short period of time.

As I already indicated, I could not care less whether MS-13 members are black, brown, red, white, or polka-dotted. I care what they do, and I think that “animals” (a word I personally do not use for human beings) is too kind a designation for them. They are exploitative sociopathic murderers who have made a culture of exploitative sociopathic murder, and anyone who defends them is part of the problem.

And what does it mean that this recently-sentenced gang member goes by the nickname “Animal”? He looks kind of baby-faced to me: