Release of American student from North Korea

The New Neo Posted on by

I hadn’t followed this story, but it sounds horrendous:

University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier has been medically evacuated from North Korea in a coma after being detained for 17 months, his parents told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

Warmbier, 22, is due to arrive home in Cincinnati on Tuesday evening, after a stop at a U.S. military facility near Sapporo, Japan.

The family said they were informed that North Korean officials had told American envoys that Warmbier became ill with botulism sometime after his March, 2016, trial in North Korea, where he was serving a 15-year-sentence for “hostile acts against the state.”

The North Korean account, the family said, claimed Warmbier then fell into a coma after being given a sleeping pill. The Warmbiers said they were told their son has remained in a coma since then.

You can read the whole story at the link, including the Trump administration’s recent efforts on Warmbier’s behalf.

I sincerely hope he makes a full recovery.

The next step for the Resistance

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wondered what the next step for the Resistance would be.

First there was the idea that Trump had colluded with the Russians. When that fell through, we had the charge of obstruction, which is current.

That almost certainly won’t end up going anywhere. But if Trump does fire Special Counsel Mueller, the progression will be to impeachment for that:

…[I]t is unnerving to see Trump loyalists not simply question Mueller’s independence for partisan purposes, but lay the groundwork for Trump to engineer his firing as well.

That’s according to Brian Beutler, writing in The New Republic. He makes a great many assumptions in his article, and feels little need to explain or justify them, but the gist of it is that of course the firing of Comey was not for cause (despite all the causes that have been elaborated), and of course the firing of Mueller would be likewise not for cause but merely “for partisan purposes.”

Yesterday I wrote “there’ll always be a sion or a tion” for the Resistance, and when I read the Beutler piece I wondered what the “sion/tion” of firing Mueller would be. Beutler provides it:

Democrats could also forestall Trump’s interference by stating that such extraordinary corruption would merit impeachment.

So it’s “corruption”—although in the legal sense, I don’t see how that charge would apply. In the legal sense, “corruption” ordinarily (although not always) refers to financial gain, which is not at issue here. Beutler doesn’t see fit to explain his claim, of course; he thinks the corruption is self-evident and/or an explanation unnecessary because after all it’s Trump, and he’s corrupt by definition.

Beutler adds:

[Democratic] Party leaders have been generally and unnecessarily sheepish about calling for Trump’s impeachment, but this would be a perfectly defensible place for them to draw a bright line.

That makes me chuckle. Oh, those sheepish Democrats, so tactful and reluctant to talk about Trump’s impeachment!

[NOTE: I don’t predict that Trump will actually fire Mueller, by the way.

However, here’s a discussion and analysis of the legal issues that would be involved were that to happen. The word “corruption” is not mentioned.]

Meanwhile, the Obamacare replacement efforts march on

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s getting real: Obamacare boosters, who have counted on the disarray of the GOP to continue indefinitely (not ordinarily a bad bet), are running scared because the repeal/replace effort may actually succeed.

In what form, isn’t exactly clear.

The article I just linked is a bit unintentionally humorous, though, with sentences such as this one:

Meanwhile, across the nation, health insurance plans are beginning to flee the Obamacare marketplace. They’ve cited the uncertainty around the health care law’s future, sown by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration.

Anyone who’s been following this for the nearly four years that Obamacare has actually been in operation realizes that the insurance companies aren’t just beginning to flee the Obamacare marketplace, and it’s not because of the big bad Republicans. No doubt the departures have increased (or will begin to increase) as it becomes more clear that a repeal/replace is imminent, but the flight has been going on for years, documented in countless reports and articles.

One interesting sideline is the role the famously contentious Ted Cruz appears to be playing in all of this:

The first-term senator from Texas is seeking to unite warring wings of the Republican Party around an effort to kill Obamacare and is showing a new willingness to compromise with colleagues to devise a replacement plan…

Cruz, 46, said Trump’s election and Republican control of the government prompted him to change his approach. These days, he’s negotiating regularly with McConnell and other senators. “The entire world changed on election day,” Cruz said in one of several recent interviews. “My focus today is on delivering results and not wasting this historic opportunity.”

In other words, the role of a senator in a majority party with a president belonging to the same party is different than when that senator’s party affiliation is in opposition to the majority in the Senate and/or the party affiliation of the president.

The details of the final plan—and its success or failure—have yet to be revealed. What’s that phrase again? We’ll see.

The media: the march against Trump goes on, from “collusion” to “obstruction”

The New Neo Posted on by

For the media and Trump, the “collusion with the Russians” narrative is effectively over. But there’ll always be a sion or a tion, so now it’s “obstruction of justice,” despite the fact that no credible case can be made for it, even according to such non-Trump-fan legal experts as Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz.

That doesn’t stop the “resistance.” I wonder what the next charge will be in their relentless quest for Trump’s impeachment.

Another interesting bit of fallout from the Comey testimony is how many revelations in it went against the MSM and its galley of anonymous informants, and how weaselly or even non-existent the retractions were. For example, see this “correction” from CNN, a news outlet which had repeatedly asserted that Comey would be contradicting Trump’s claim about having been informed he was not under investigation by the FBI:

The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published.

Wow. No, Comey didn’t directly dispute it. You know what? He didn’t even indirectly dispute it. In fact (shhh, don’t tell!) he confirmed it.

But the NY Times’ behavior was even more self-serving. After Comey testified that a Times article alleging contacts between Trump aides and Russian intelligence officers was “mostly not true,” the Times responded thusly:

Mr. Comey did not say exactly what he believed was incorrect about the article, which was based on information from four current and former American officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was classified. The original sources could not immediately be reached after Mr. Comey’s remarks, but in the months since the article was published, they have indicated that they believed the account was solid.

So, who are you going to believe, Comey or the Times’ unnamed sources, who suddenly and mysteriously “could not immediately be reached”?

[NOTE: In related matters, this Victor Davis Hanson article is well worth reading.]

Barron Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Has moved into the White House with his mother and grandparents. He’s certainly a tall tall kid for eleven years old.

Barron is either going through early puberty or is going to be a giant, or both. He has two tall parents, but my guess is that he will exceed them both in height.

It is truly amazing how vicious some Trump opponents can be about Barron. The old saw that children of presidents are off-limits went by the wayside long ago. Actually, very little surprises me about the Trump opponents—and those who mock Barron would probably say that, since Trump isn’t a real president, his son isn’t a real president’s child and therefore is fair game.

Do you remember the Boston busing crisis?

The New Neo Posted on by

Or do you just think you do?

[The following is a repeat of a previous post, somewhat edited.]

I thought I remembered it pretty well. But when I started to research the subject, the first articles I read puzzled me and made me doubt my memories. The articles were short, and concerned the black children bused in from Roxbury High to Southie and how terribly they were treated.

And that was absolutely true, of course; I recalled reading about that originally. But I also thought I remembered that the busing was reciprocal, and that it was this reverse busing in particular that raised the ire of the South Boston community, because their kids were bused out of their own neighborhoods to schools in the black ghetto. The low-income white kids of South Boston were the sacrificial lambs to the idea of desegregation; children of the white rich didn’t have to go anywhere.

I started to think that maybe my memory was faulty, but Wiki, of all things, came to my rescue by describing what others had not. Here’s the relevant passage, and the situation was even worse than I had remembered. To me, the only word to describe the particulars of this plan is “crazy” [emphasis mine]: Continue reading →

New federal judge nominees

The New Neo Posted on by

This should warm the cockles of your hearts:

President Donald J. Trump today announced his fourth wave of Federal judicial nominees. These nominations follow the successful confirmation of Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court, the successful confirmation of Judge Amul R. Thapar of Kentucky to serve as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the nomination of numerous candidates to other judgeships.

You can find the list at the link.

This is an example of the non-sexy, non-juicy, but highly important work of a president. It has a profound effect on future legal decisions, which can have a very profound effect on the course of history.

Many Trump voters held their noses and voted for him for just this one reason. In that respect, their nose-holding is paying off.

Have you tried those fasting diets?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article that purports to go into the science of the currently popular fasting diets, rather than the hype.

My problem with these diets is very simple: if I go for too long without eating I get a migraine, almost like clockwork. Therefore most types of fasting diets are closed to me. The only variety I think I could ever try without getting a headache is the 12-hour window, which has the dieter fasting for 12 hours in a row. The bulk of the fasting hours can be at night, while asleep.

Maybe I’ll give it a go.

I found this part of the article rather amusing:

…[The research] team found that flies…experienced benefits from restricting their feeding windows to a confined period each day. For the insects, a 12-hour feeding window proved to be best, with flies eating for only half a day experiencing better-quality sleep, less weight gain, and a deceleration of cardiac aging compared to their counterparts who were fed the same number of calories, but in food administered throughout the day.

Better quality sleep. Flies sleep??

Deceleration of cardiac aging. Flies have hearts??

But strangest of all—less weight gain. Have you ever seen a fat fly?? Can a fat fly fly?

The case against Comey

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonatahn Turley lays it out.

Turley is an interesting figure. I’ve written about him many times before, most notably here. I find him to be one of the more objective and fair legal analysts writing today. I don’t always agree with him, of course, but he’s always intelligent and writes with great clarity. Politically he leans liberal, Democratic, and decidedly libertarian, which doesn’t mean that he toes the leftist line. He’s definitely a maverick, but a principled one who’s especially concerned with arguing against governmental abuses of power. You can read about both his politics and his previous legal positions here.

Comey’s self-admitted behavior offends Turley, as well it might, because he finds it unethical and Comey’s explanation self-serving. Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s Turley piece:

Comey described a series of ethical challenges during his term as FBI director. Yet, he almost uniformly avoided taking a firm stand in support of the professional standards of the FBI…

Comey said that he took these actions days after his termination, when he said that he woke up in the middle of the night and realized suddenly that the memos could be used to contradict Trump. It was a bizarrely casual treatment of material that would be viewed by many as clearly FBI information. He did not confer with the FBI or the Justice Department. He did not ask for any classification review despite one of the parties described being the president of the United States. He simply sent the memos to a law professor to serve as a conduit to the media.

As a threshold matter, Comey asked a question with regard to Trump that he should now answer with regard to his own conduct. Comey asked why Trump would ask everyone to leave the Oval Office to speak with Comey unless he was doing something improper. Yet, Trump could ask why Comey would use a third party to leak these memos if they were his property and there was nothing improper in their public release…

Many in the media have tried to spin this as not a “leak” because leaks by definition only involve classified information. That is entirely untrue as shown by history. Leaks involve the release of unauthorized information ”” not only classified information. Many of the most important leaks historically have involved pictures and facts not classified but embarrassing to a government. More importantly, federal regulations refer to unauthorized disclosures not just classified information.

Comey’s position would effectively gut a host of federal rules and regulations. He is suggesting that any federal employee effectively owns documents created during federal employment in relation to an ongoing investigation so long as they address the information to themselves. FBI agents routinely write such memos in investigations. They are called 302s to memorialize field interviews or fact acquisitions. They are treated as FBI information.

There’s much, much more at the link. I find it the most convincing and thorough explanation I’ve read yet of what Comey did re Trump and why it was clearly wrong.

Trump seems to have a great deal of luck in his opponents, who uniformly look bad against him. Some Trump supporters would say it’s not luck, it’s Trump’s skill—skill in driving them to do things that make themselves look bad. I think it’s a combination of both, although the “skill” is partly just the fact that their hatred of and discomfort with Trump’s personality drives them to extremes.

By the way, that’s an explanation for their behavior, not an excuse.

[NOTE: In other Comey news, rumor has it (I’ve come to regard most news reports that rely on unnamed sources as no more than rumor) that he’s signed or is about to sign a ten million dollar contract to write a book. Nice work if you can get it.]

More on Comey: did he commit an indictable offense? and other observations

The New Neo Posted on by

Somewhat lost in the Comey shuffle for some analysts: Comey’s admission that he was the memo leaker.

Jonathan Turley wonders about the possible legal consequences:

One of the most interesting new disclosures today in the Comey hearing was the admission by former FBI Director James Comey that he intentionally used a “friend” on the Columbia law faculty to leak his memos to the media. Comey says that he did so to force the appointment of a Special Counsel. However, those memos could be viewed as a government record and potential evidence in a criminal investigation…

The admission of leaking the memos is problematic given the overall controversy involving leakers undermining the Administration. Indeed, it creates a curious scene of a former director leaking material against the President after the President repeatedly asked him to crack down on leakers.

Which by the way sheds some light on Trump’s questioning Comey’s “loyalty.” Maybe we could paraphrase that as Trump’s asking, “Are you planning to betray me?” And if Comey was going to be honest (or “honestly loyal”), he probably should have answered “Only if you fire me.”

Turley adds:

Besides being subject to Nondisclosure Agreements, Comey falls under federal laws governing the disclosure of classified and nonclassified information. Assuming that the memos were not classified (though it seems odd that it would not be classified even on the confidential level), there is 18 U.S.C. § 641 which makes it a crime to steal, sell, or convey “any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof.”

There are also ethical and departmental rules against the use of material to damage a former represented person or individual or firm related to prior representation…

Comey’s statement of a good motivation does not negate the concerns over his chosen means of a leak. Moreover, the timing of the leak most clearly benefited Comey not the cause of a Special Counsel. It was clear at that time that a Special Counsel was likely. More importantly, Comey clearly understood that these memos would be sought. That leads inevitably to the question of both motivation as well as means.

In his testimony yesterday, Comey continually guessed at Trump’s motives. I suppose turnabout is fair play and we are free to guess at Comey’s. In view of that, Marco Rubio had an excellent question for Comey:

“Do you ever wonder why, of all the things in this investigation, the only thing that’s never been leaked is the fact that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the fact that both Democrats and Republicans and the leadership of Congress knew that and have known that for weeks?” Rubio asked Comey.

Comey responded “I don’t know,” adding that “matters briefed to the gang of eight are pretty tightly held,” referring to the eight lawmakers who have access to the most highly classified information.

But since Comey himself was the leaker, the implication is that he could have leaked it, and that he held back because that’s the item that would have helped Trump rather than hurt him. Therefore his answer here seems to me to be quite obviously disingenuous; he’s omitting himself from the picture.

Another point that emerged from the Comey testimony, particularly regarding Loretta Lynch (see this), is that Lynch as AG asked Comey to cover up the news that the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton, and he complied with her request; whereas Trump asked Comey to reveal that he, Trump, was not under FBI investigation, and Comey refused to comply while simultaneously revealing other things that would reflect poorly on Trump.

Hmmmm.

This tweet makes a related observation: “Unlike Clinton, where Comey laid out why she was guilty and then let her off, he lays out Trump’s innocence, and concludes he is guilty.” Good point.

And Frank Lutz points out that there were two major “anonymously sourced BOMBSHELL[s]…that [were] debunked by Comey’s on-record testimony. Reporters must do better.”

My response is that it depends what you think the reporters’ goals were in printing those anonymously-sourced anti-Trump stories in the first place. If you think the reporters were trying to get at the truth, then of course they must do better. But I think they had a different goal. I think they were trying to print damaging stories about Trump, while covering their butts by speaking to people off the record who held positions close enough to Trump and the story that, if ever challenged, the reporters could claim that they had every reason to believe their sources were reliable. The goal is to harm Trump, and it was done with the knowledge that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

[NOTE: See this for a discussion of the provenance of that quote at the end of my post.]

British election: May miscalculation

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t always get the parliamentary system’s finer points.

For example—until recently Theresa May’s party held a majority in Parliament, so why on earth would she risk losing it by calling for a snap election? I understand that she was gambling that the vote would strengthen her party’s hold rather than weaken it, but what leader in this day and age can have that much confidence? It seems foolhardy to me.

Now, although her Conservatives have retained a substantial plurality, May must scramble to enlist the help of DUP to form a coalition government. She appears to have successfully done so, thus averting a Jeremy Corbyn prime ministership. Whew. Dodged that bullet—for now.

One interesting fact about the election is that it appears May’s slim margin was due to support from Jewish voters in four London districts, who voted for May (or rather, against Corbyn and his party) because of Labor’s anti-Semitic tendencies.