McConnell’s moment was a long time coming

The New Neo Posted on by

I want to call your attention to this article by Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard on how McConnell twisted arms to get the Gorsuch nomination. Some of the usual suspects—Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Bob Corker were extremely hesitant to vote for the nuclear option, the first two because they were afraid that Gorsuch would tip the SCOTUS balance to the anti-abortion side, and Corker out of respect for tradition.

Barnes describes the pressure McConnell brought to bear—and I doubt it’s the whole story of that pressure, either, because what is described in the article seems a lot milder than the (figurative) arm-twisting I suspect happened. But what is clear is that McConnell was resolved to do this.

What’s also important to remember is that McConnell’s actions were a two-parter, and occurred over a period of a little more than a year. Justice Scalia died in February of 2016, and Gorsuch could not have been nominated and confirmed without McConnell and the GOP in the Senate stonewalling the Garland nomination. In some ways that was the more precedent-breaking move; the nuclear option for SCOTUS nominations merely restored the Senate’s tradition of approving a president’s qualified nominees, and Gorsuch is eminently qualified:

When I [Barnes] interviewed McConnell shortly after Gorsuch was confirmed, he wanted to talk before I asked a question. He had plenty to say. It’s rare there are things “you can say you did on your own.” One was his snap decision to bar the Senate from taking up a Supreme Court nomination until a new president took office. Only the majority leader could do this. “It is the most consequential decision I ever made,” McConnell said.

And it turned out the open seat was an “electoral asset” for Trump. Voters didn’t like him or Hillary Clinton. But once filling the seat became the “principal issue,” Trump had the advantage. Everyone knew she would dump Garland, a moderate, for someone further to the left.

“We didn’t know if the president would be a conservative or not,” McConnell said. However, he had promised to pick a nominee from a list of 20 conservative jurists. (McConnell had advocated such a list.) “This reassured conservatives.”

Note that little sentence that’s slipped in there, parenthetically: McConnell had advocated such a list. Trump may not have been McConnell’s choice to win the nominations—in fact, I very much doubt he was his first choice or even his second or third. But nevertheless, McConnell may have been instrumental in helping Trump beat Hillary Clinton, once it was clear that Trump would be the nominee (Trump released his first list in May of 2016 and his second in September of 2016).

McConnell has an interesting history that might shed a little light on this:

…McConnell graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was president of the Student Bar Association…

…McConnell was an assistant to Senator Marlow Cook (R-KY) and was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald R. Ford, where he worked alongside future Justice Antonin Scalia.

For McConnell, finding Scalia’s replacement may have been both political and personal.

I have a question for people who hate the GOPe

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday the Senate GOP did something a lot of people thought they’d never do: used the nuclear option in order to clear the way for the confirmation of Gorsuch.

I’m certainly not going to defend all the actions of the GOP in Congress; I’ve criticized them plenty myself. But I’ve also defended them on many occasions too numerous to mention, pointing out that a great many people on the right expected them to do things that just were not possible, and were incredibly angry at them as a result, and that in some cases it was those people who were being unreasonable.

I’m not going to re-fight those battles now, or even link to them, but anyone who reads this blog probably knows what I’m talking about.

What I’m wondering now, though, is this: did some of you think the GOP wouldn’t have the cojones to do this? Were you surprised that they did? Are you willing to give them any credit for it? Does it change your general opinion of them at all?

Truck terror attack in Sweden

The New Neo Posted on by

There has been a truck attack on a crowd in Sweden. The modus operandi indicates that it almost certainly is jihadi terrorism. Truck attacks have become favored because they are lethal and frightening (two goals of terrorists),and cheap and easily available to the free-lancer.

Here is a report on security in Sweden that was written before the attack. It wasn’t hard to predict the following:

There hasn’t been a terror attack on Swedish soil since two bombs exploded in Stockholm in 2010, killing only the attacker himself, and Sé¤po thinks the biggest threat of a future terror attack now lies with lone actors: that is to say, a single person planning and carrying out an attack, rather than one orchestrated by a larger organization…

Sé¤po analyst Ahn-Za Hagstré¶m pointed out that Islamic State meanwhile has changed its strategy from encouraging people to travel abroad and join them, to encouraging them to carry out attacks in their homeland in Europe. That can mean an increased threat to Sweden, and the consequences can be seen in recent attacks on nearby European nations, she noted.

Choices in Syria and the world: crossing lines, red and otherwise

The New Neo Posted on by

After the Syrian gas attack, President Trump had a choice: do nothing or do something. It’s a choice all presidents face, because sooner or later they will be tested—usually sooner, and not just once but many times and in many ways in many places.

When faced with similar circumstances in Syria, Obama declared the existence of a red line and then ignored it. This is one of the worst response/nonresponses possible. It indicates indecision and lack of resolve, a president who talks tough but his threats means nothing and can be safely ignored.

Trump’s reaction was, if not the opposite, something like the opposite. After sending out some signals that he was going to be less interventionist about Assad’s regime in general, he acted more boldly when challenged. His actions—speaking louder than words—would be par for the course for most presidents in a similar situation. They only seem unusual at this point because we’ve grown accustomed to Obama’s post-bluster inaction.

Assad may have calculated that nothing whatsoever would happen, not just because of recent comments by the Trump administration but because of recent history:

Dr. Monzer Khalil, Idlib Province’s health director, said such extreme tactics aimed to demonstrate the government’s impunity and to demoralize its foes.

“It makes us feel that we are defeated,” said Dr. Khalil, whose gums bled after he was exposed to scores of chemical victims on Tuesday. “The international community will stay gazing at what’s happening ”” and observing the explosive barrels falling and rockets bombing the civilians and the hospitals and the civil defense and killing children and medical staff ”” without doing anything.”

“Militarily, there is no need,” said Bente Scheller, the Middle East director of the Berlin-based Heinrich Bé¶ll Foundation. “But it spreads the message: You are at our mercy. Don’t ask for international law. You see, it doesn’t protect even a child.”…

By showing it puts no limits on the tactics it uses, Mr. Yazigi [an opposition Syrian economist] wrote, “the regime shows to the world the West’s impotence and weakness.”

“The West’s impotence and weakness” started even before Obama. We may not like being the world’s policeman (Trump has certainly made many statements to that effect). But if not us, then who? And if no one is the world’s policeman, what then?

That’s the dilemma in a nutshell. It’s the same dilemma that led to the rise of the foreign-interventionist group of neocons who have been so reviled in recent years. But the dilemma remains.

Liberal Democrats used to be more inclined to applaud such interventions, as well. But in recent years they’ve adopted a simple way of reacting that goes like this: anything a Democrat does is good whether it be isolationist or interventionist, and anything a Republican does is bad.

Nor is it the case that Trump’s action in bombing the Syrian air base will heavily undermine Assad’s power. That would take a lot more—something like the Iraq War, which I am virtually certain is not in the cards. But Trump’s action does send a message that a new policeman is in town—and that now there are indeed limits and red lines, and costs for crossing them. And that is worth something.

[NOTE: Some of Trump’s alt-right supporters don’t like this move:

President Trump’s surprise decision to launch 59 missiles at a Syrian airfield, and his call for “all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria,” angered some of his staunchest supporters ”” paleo-conservatives, noninterventionist libertarians and the self-identified members of the “alt-right” nationalist movement.]

A little nuclear option history

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a bit of nuclear option history:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was smugly looking ahead to the presidency of Hillary Clinton last October and the possibility that Senate Republicans might dare to filibuster the new president’s Supreme Court pick.

“[I]t’s clear to me that if the Republicans try to filibuster another circuit court judge, but especially a Supreme Court justice, I’ve told ’em how and I’ve done it, not just talking about it,” he told Talking Points Memo in an interview published that month. “I did it in changing the rules of the Senate. It’ll have to be done again.”

More than five months later, the filibuster is on the other foot.

Please read the whole thing.

The current fight over SCOTUS nominees that led to this move today was started with the Democrats’ blocking Reagan nominee Robert Bork, led by Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy. Here is Kennedy’s attack on Bork at the time:

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.

Sound familiar? Absurd hyperbole—but it worked, and Bork was not seated. In fact, it really really worked, because the judge who ultimately became a SCOTUS justice instead of Bork was Anthony Kennedy, the current swing justice on the Court.

Which brings us to more recent history:

When Republicans filibustered some of Obama’s judicial picks in 2013, Reid and the Democrats changed the rules.

Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warned them at the time: “I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, you will regret this, and you may regret it at lot sooner than you think.”

It’s four years later. However, I doubt the Democrats regret it at all. They knew this would probably happen if the GOP ever got the Senate and the presidency back—they just didn’t think that would happen, so they thought they were safe. In other words, they don’t regret the nuclear option, they regret the election results of 2016. Another reason they don’t regret what they did in 2013 is that going nuclear allowed them to complete their takeover of the federal courts, which during Obama’s tenure went from being somewhat conservative to being controlled by liberals. This has already paid off in a host of ways for the Democrats, based on recent federal court decisions by Obama appointees.

As I said, what the Democrats deeply regret is losing the 2016 election, which put the GOP in charge and able to take advantage of the nuclear option themsevles. Republicans are now poised to make their own federal judge appointments as well as this present SCOTUS appointment. What goes around does indeed come around.

Here’s a question, though: if the Democrats had not gone nuclear in 2013, would the GOP have done it now? I don’t know the answer, but my gut feeling is “no.”

The Susan Rice unmasking timeline and motives

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday “The Other Chuck” had several questions, and this was one of them:

There are several things about the unmasking by Rice other than the political angle that bother me. If it was motivated purely by politics, surely she would snoop in on communications of other Republican candidates. And if not, why Trump who was a long shot at best in 2015 when this started?

I believe that this is the wrong timeline of the Susan Rice involvement. There are varying reports from different sources and I’m not sure which is correct, but the ones that seems to be from the most trustworthy sources I can find indicate that when the surveillance began Rice does not appear to have been involved, and that people connected with the Trump campaign were initially eavesdropped on as part of an ongoing investigation of other people, but not as targets themselves.

The pattern of Rice’s requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government’s policy on “unmasking” the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like “U.S. Person One.”

It appears to have only been later—after Trump had already been elected, but while Obama was still president—that Rice got involved (again, there are somewhat varied reports on this timeline, but from my reading of it this is the best summary we have of the scenario). After Trump’s election, her actions were to request that the identities of people connected with Trump who had been incidentally surveilled be revealed although they were not the targets.

This request by Rice was later spotlighted by a different investigation:

In February [2017] Cohen-Watnick [the person at the National Security Council conducting the review] discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel’s office, who reviewed more of Rice’s requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations — primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.

So that indicates that Rice’s activities in connection to this unmasking incident occurred between Trump’s election and his inauguration—the so-called transition time.

“The Other Chuck” has another question:

It seems obvious that they wanted this stuff to leak out, as McCarthy suggests. But was the reason solely political or did they actually believe there was collusion between the Russians and certain Trump operatives?

These contacts were initially uncovered through surveillance of the Russians, so at the beginning it seems that nothing was suspected about Trump or his operatives and their possible connection to the Russians. Certainly that was not the reason for the eavesdropping. However, once the contacts with Trump’s people were uncovered, I suppose the government (I believe it would have had to have been the Department of Justice rather than Susan Rice) could have taken a look at the situation and sought further investigation of the Trump people as targets, on that basis. But they would have had to have met a certain burden of proof to do that, and follow certain procedures (more on that topic later in this post). However, that doesn’t appear to have happened.

At any rate, none of that has anything to do with Rice and the unmasking. Rice is not tasked with investigating such things (see this Andrew McCarthy article). The unmasking was done at Rice’s request, however. Since she was not investigating, the motive for her unmasking request could only have been one of two things, or both: (1) to learn the names of the contacts for further action of some sort or other (2) to let the names filter down to other people so that they could be leaked to the press. That latter part—which is what actually happened—is the real scandal.

Andrew C. McCarthy is my go-to guy on this story. Here he further explains:

The sole purpose of foreign intelligence collection is to understand the actions and intentions of foreign powers and their operatives. If the government’s purpose is to understand the actions and intentions of American citizens, there are two proper ways to go about that: (a) conduct a criminal investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause of a crime, or (b) conduct a FISA investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause that they are acting as agents of a foreign power.

If neither of those two alternatives is chosen, then the American citizens are not supposed to be the subject of the intelligence collection effort ”” they are supposed to be protected. The snooping to which they are subjected is an incidental byproduct (i.e., an unintentional albeit inevitable consequence) of snooping on foreign powers. The incidental snooping deprives them of privacy protections rooted in law ”” the requirement that the government obtain a judicial warrant before seizing and eavesdropping on their communications. The law allows this to happen, but only if post hoc safeguards are applied. That is why, as Director James Comey testified before Congress, the FBI is “obsessive” about concealing the identities of Americans. That is why unmasking is a big deal.

Please read the whole thing.

[NOTE: See also this.]

The nuclear option is activated

The New Neo Posted on by

We all knew it would happen. But now it has happened: the GOP has voted to exercise the nuclear option for the confirmation of SCOTUS justices. This does away with the ability of the minority Senate party to block a president’s nominee to the Court, but it doesn’t address other circumstances such as what will happen when the president is of a different party than the Senate majority.

I can envision all sorts of things that could happen. For example, the GOP blocked the Garland nomination in just that instance, when Obama was relatively near the end of his tenure. This was actually a risky move on the part of the GOP, because had Hillary Clinton been elected (which certainly was a very good possibility) they would have almost certainly been forced to deal with the prospect of a far more liberal justice than Garland.

I also think it somewhat likely—I’d bet more likely than not—that, before the next four years is up, the nuclear option will be extended to other Senate business.

What I foresee if that happens is that the majority party in Congress will be able to pass laws more readily, but those laws will be more easily reversed the minute Congress changes hands. The Senate used to act as a brake on precipitous moves that were strictly partisan or especially extreme. No more, particularly if both houses of Congress are controlled by the same party, which often happens.

I foresee the possibility of the country careening more wildly between one extreme and the other. Sort of like this:

[NOTE: By the way, I wanted to start that video at minute 1:36. For some reason, although I tried to do it the way I always do when I change the start time of videos, it didn’t work and the video starts at zero. It’ll take me a while to figure out what’s wrong, but I suggest you start watching it at 1:36.]

The reluctant McCain and the filibuster

The New Neo Posted on by

I feel his pain.

No, truly, I do. RINO extraordinaire John McCain has indicated (if these reports are correct) that he will be voting to end the filibuster for the Gorsuch nomination. He says he’s not happy about it:

“It is depressing; I’m very depressed,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “We’re all arguing against it, but we don’t know any other option.”

It is a sad thing. The filibuster—annoying though it may have been when you’re the majority party and want to get things done—was one of the blocks to tyranny of the majority, and one of the goads to reasonable compromise. The extremists among us don’t like compromise (I sometimes don’t like it, either), but on the whole I think the tradition helped the country more often than it hurt it.

And for a long time both sides saw this, and had a gentlemen’s agreement (yes, the Senate was and still is mostly men) to keep it, to each side’s mutual advantage for the time when they wouldn’t be the ones in the driver’s seat.

That’s gone, and McCain is lamenting its demise. I don’t blame him for being sad—although you might. His hand has been forced; the gentlemen’s agreement is over. I would vote for ending the filibuster too, under these circumstances.

Some Democrats are saying that the filibuster should go, period, for everything, and some even seem quite sanguine about it. No doubt they’re salivating at the idea that some day they’ll control the Senate and can enact their dream legislation:

… [A]n increasing number of advocates, mostly Democrats, favor scrapping the filibuster for nominations ”” and even potentially rethinking how it’s used to block legislation.

“I’m a believer that we should change the rules of the Senate,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “I don’t think we should do it in the context of a particular legislative or confirmation fight, but I think we should stand back and have a discussion about whether we want the filibuster to be used in the way it historically has been.”

Yesterday MCain called those who seem okay with that (or even happy about it) “stupid idiots.” It’s clear that he’s referring to Democrats such as Chris Murphy, and others who might think it’s just hunky-dory to do this and to take it even further.

But see how certain websites on the right are presenting McCain’s statement? Put McCain’s remarks in context and you can see how subtly misleading this article is. A reader without the background I just offered would draw the conclusion that McCain is calling the Republicans who advocate ending the filibuster the “stupid idiots.” And all the comments I see at that article I just linked seem to be angry at McCain, probably based on this misunderstanding (and on their already-existing animus towards him).

I’ve noticed over the years that the leftist media and some of the media on the right like to work up the GOP rank-and-file against RINOs such as McCain. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t often very real reasons to be angry at RINOs like McCain. But be angry at them for what they actually do, say, and mean, rather than things about them that the media seeks to distort in order to manipulate readers.

And if McCain ends up voting against ending the filibuster (that is, assuming that the Democrats activate the filibuster and the issue comes to a vote, which I’m almost certain it will)—then there’ll be some tasty crow for me to eat.

[NOTE: By the way, here’s some background on Chris Murphy’s recent use of an actual (not symbolic) filibuster.]

The neo archives

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m still taking everyone’s suggestions (thanks for so many!) about the renaming of the blog under advisement. I may just be lazy (and responsive to most of you) and keep the status quo. But if I change it, it will be to some form of “neo.”

But I wanted to clarify, for those who don’t read all the comments and therefore didn’t see my explanation, that “neo.com” and various other obvious forms of that are not available domains. That’s part of the problem, although there are creative ways around it.

Also, whatever I do, if I do anything it will include a redirect of some sort so that the old URL still leads to the blog, and the new URL does as well.

In that thread, commenter “Tom G” made the suggestion that I use my name more:

Are you ready to own your extremely thoughtful opinions with your conservative hating liberal friends? None of your “new friends” can fully replace some of your long time friends.

But you can more easily become an intellectual leader…using your real name and writing more for other pubs, especially PJ Media, maybe.

That comment made me realize that there are probably quite a few readers who aren’t aware of my history, so I thought I’d clarify. Actually, I wrote for PJ for about 10 years, the first few years as “neo-neocon” but in later years as Jean Kaufman. Then about a year or two ago they reorganized themselves and started using more in-house writers and dropped me and some others. (By the way, that link to “as neo-neocon” turns up not just my articles but some others in addition, for some reason. But my articles are also in there.)

I also have written for the Weekly Standard online edition.

Come to think of it, maybe I should put up links to those on the right sidebar.

Also, my friends and family all already know about my blog and my writing, although the vast majority never read the blog. So none of this is a secret among my friends and family. I don’t usually talk about the blog (or politics, for that matter) with people I meet casually, or with people who are just acquaintances, but people who know me well are well aware of what I do.

A note on dresses and prices

The New Neo Posted on by

I went shopping recently for a dress for a certain formal-ish occasion. Spent quite a few hours doing it, to no avail. So I decided to look online instead. I thought that would save me some time and effort.

Ha!

Ever look for clothing online? On my computer, the photos can take quite a while to load, although some sites are a lot better than others. And then really looking at each dress takes quite a while, too. Then when you click on one you like, you discover it’s not available in your size, or not in the right color, or not available at all.

Or, when you order it and it arrives, it doesn’t fit right or doesn’t look good, and you often have to pay to return it. Then, back to the drawing board—or the stores, in person.

Ah, woe is me! I know, I know—first-world problems.

However, what I really wanted to say is this: I was looking at dresses online at a few stores, and for the most part the prices were relatively reasonable, considering these were cocktail dresses or evening dresses—in the $100 to $250 range. But then suddenly, without warning, there would be a huge leap, and the dress prices would be like these.

Take a good look at that link. 4K for this little number? I know designer clothes are constructed far better than dresses for us peons, but how much better? Nearly four thousand dollars better, for a dress that looks like it’s maybe $75 off the rack, and isn’t what you’d call a remarkable feat of tailoring?

Sorry, I don’t get it.

Or this hideousity, a steal at $3,660? It makes even the model look a trifle fat, and that’s quite a feat:

There are some pretty dresses there, too, of course. But not all that pretty, and certainly not pretty enough to justify those prices, and not consistently prettier than the far more reasonable ones.

Seems to me that couture clothing used to look more special and more beautiful. Or maybe it’s the glow of memory. I wonder—have the couture clothes gotten worse, or have the ready-made clothes gotten better? My vote is for the first.

[NOTE: By the way, that Nordstrom’s website I linked to is one of the best and fastest-loading. Bravo and kudos, Nordstrom’s! On the other hand, boos to Lord & Taylor’s website. Much room for improvement.]

Why did Susan Rice request the unmasking?

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew C. McCarthy has an important point to make about Susan Rice and the ummasking:

The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.…

Those three collecting agencies ”” FBI, CIA, and NSA ”” must be distinguished from other components of the government, such as the White House. Those other components, Comey elaborated, “are consumers of our products.” That is, they do not collect raw intelligence and refine it into useful reports ”” i.e., reports that balance informational value and required privacy protections. They read those reports and make policy recommendations based on them. White House staffers are not supposed to be in the business of controlling the content of the reports; they merely act on the reports. Thus, Comey added, these consumers “can ask the collectors to unmask.” But the unmasking authority “resides with those who collected the information.”

Of course, the consumer doing the asking in this case was not just any government official. We’re talking about Susan Rice. This was Obama’s right hand doing the asking. If she made an unmasking “request,” do you suppose anyone at the FBI, CIA, or NSA was going to say no?

McCarthy has an idea why Rice asked for the unmasking, too:

As we know, the community of intelligence agencies leaks like a sieve, and the more access there is to juicy information, the more leaks there are. Meanwhile, former Obama officials and Clinton-campaign advisers, like Farkas, were pushing to get the information transferred from the intelligence community to members of Congress, geometrically increasing the likelihood of intelligence leaks.

By the way, have you noticed that there have been lots of intelligence leaks in the press?

Please read the whole thing.

In sum: the Trump transition was booby-trapped by his predecessor.