Terror plot in Italy thwarted

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a curious article. It describes the arrest of three men in Venice who were allegedly planning an attack on the Rialto Bridge, out of admiration for and in imitation of the recent attack on Westminster Bridge in London.

I can’t quite make out from the information in the article how far the planning had gone (it doesn’t sound like very far), but I noticed two things of interest.

The first is that the arrests were made as a result of telephone surveillance, triggered by a visit to Syria:

In wire-tapped telephone conversations, the suspects were recorded appearing to celebrate last week’s attack in London, in which Muslim convert Khalid Masood, 52, drove a car into crowds walking across Westminster Bridge, killing three people, before fatally stabbing a policeman, Keith Palmer, outside Parliament.

A phone intercept caught one of the men telling another: “You’ll go straight to paradise because of all the infidels in Venice. Put a bomb on the Rialto.”

In another conversation, one of the men said: “I can’t wait to take an oath to Allah. If they let me take the oath, I’m ready to die.”…

Police had kept the alleged cell under surveillance for months. The undercover operation began last year after one of the men came back from a trip to Syria. All had residency permits and were living in Italy legally. “There was a lot of talk about unconditional support to Isil. It wasn’t just theory and dogma,” said Mr D’Ippolito. The suspects were close to moving towards “planning and projects”, he said.

And the second is that the three men were Kosovars. I had not realized that Kosovars were especially simpatico with ISIS, but apparently there is a sizeable group that is:

Around 300 Kosovars have gone to fight with Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq, including Isil and al-Nusra Front.

Kosovo once had the dubious distinction of producing the highest number, per capita, of “foreign fighters” of any country in Europe. The number of Kosovars joining extremist groups has waned in the last year, partly as a result of the government cracking down on recruitment by radical imams and partly because of an education campaign.

Kosovars are overwhelmingly Muslim. But until now they have been seen as overwhelmingly moderate in their brand of Islam, and as friends of the west and as Europeans. That is probably still true of the vast majority. But, as this incident demonstrates, there are also worrisome pockets of radicalized Kosovars who are vulnerable to ISIS’ siren call.

Let’s hear it for the editors of the LA Times

The New Neo Posted on by

That title wasn’t sarcasm; I mean it.

The editors of the Los Angeles Times thinks it was overreach for California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra to charge the makers of the Planned Parenthood videos with crimes:

There’s no question that anti-abortion activist David Daleiden surreptitiously recorded healthcare and biomedical services employees across the state of California with the intent of discrediting the healthcare provider, Planned Parenthood ”” something his heavily edited videos failed to do. There’s also no question that it’s against state law to record confidential conversations without the consent of all the parties involved.

But that doesn’t mean that California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra should have charged Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Susan Merritt, with 15 felony counts ”” one for each of the 14 people recorded, and a 15th for conspiracy. It’s disturbingly aggressive for Becerra to apply this criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a contested issue of public policy, regardless of how sound or popular that policy may be. Planned Parenthood and biomedical company StemExpress, which was also featured in the videos, have another remedy for the harm that was done to them: They can sue Daleiden and Merritt for damages. The state doesn’t need to threaten the pair with prison time.

The LA Times claim consistency in this, whether the alleged offenders being charged are on the left or the right:

In similar cases, we have denounced moves to criminalize such behavior, especially in the case of animal welfare investigators who have gone undercover at slaughterhouses and other agricultural businesses to secretly record horrific and illegal abuses of animals. That work, too, is aimed at revealing wrongdoing and changing public policy.

That’s why the state law forbidding recording of conversations should be applied narrowly, and to clear and egregious violations of privacy where the motive is personal gain.

A great deal of the editorial is devoted to assuring readers that the Times’ editors are on the side of Planned Parenthood in general. Not surprising. But that only underlines the fact that the stance the editors are taking on Beccara is a correct one—and even in some ways a brave one. As discussed in the post below this, departing at all from the Democrats’ party line can be risky.

Why are Democrats so much more united than Republicans?

The New Neo Posted on by

A good question, one asked by commenter “Cornhead” in the Republican unity thread:

But why are the Dems so united? They rarely ”“ if ever ”“ break ranks. Nebraska’s Ben Nelson was a perfect example. Conservative state but he voted for Obamacare and every single Dem bill.

The thread is loaded with answers from other commenters to that question, and well worth reading.

But here’s mine:

(1) Democrats are far more wedded to ends justify means, and less wedded to the specifics of justifying their personal ideology and beliefs.

(2) Many Democrats see progressivism as a movement, almost like a religion. As such, they follow their leaders for what they see as the greater good.

(3) The Democratic Party has been engaged for quite some time in (successfully) purging its more moderate members. So it really IS more united than the GOP, because the outliers have either left politics or come over to the GOP.

(4) The Democratic leadership plays hardball (more so than the Republican leadership), and those who would defect realize that they probably wouldn’t have a very lengthy political future.

Think about it. The right focuses more on individualism (rugged or otherwise), the left on collectivism. Doesn’t it follow that members of the left would be more inclined to submerge their individual beliefs for what they see as the good of the collective (the party, in this case) than members of the right would? This represents a personality difference as well as a difference of philosophy, and as such both are internal motivations to do what the party leaders say. But there are also external reasons (for example, numbers 3 and 4 above) that play into the phenomenon and foster party unity for Democrats as well.

Those tendencies and coercions toward party unity have been more successful within the US left in recent years. But the drive for unity has had to push against the tendency of radical groups to splinter. Here’s a humorous depiction of the latter:

Brexit: breaking up…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is hard to do.

As Britain is now learning.

When a country voluntarily signs away some of its autonomy—in this case, to join the EU—it would seem at the outset that such a decision would be reversible if that country so desires. After all, the vow wasn’t “till death do us part.”

But if France and Germany have anything to say about it, they’ll make Britain pay for Brexit:

Before I go into detail about the phone calls, remember that no one really knows what will happen next because this has never happened before. Article 50 in the Lisbon Treaty allows member countries to leave the EU after two years of negotiations. If the country and the EU cannot reach an agreement then the country leaves without anything.

But like many promises made during the courtship stage, easier said than done. A price might be extracted:

Wolfgang Sché¤uble said Britain would be bound by tax rules after it leaves the European Union (EU) which would restrict giving incentives to retain investors.

The German finance minister also said the UK would be forced to pay EU budget bills for more than ten years, echoing proposals for the UK to pay an exit bill of up to £43billion.

Theresa May had been looking to close ally Germany, as a net exporter to Britain, to quell French demands the UK “pay a price” for wanting to leave the bloc.

Read the whole thing.

Germany and France aren’t historically accustomed to uniting on much, but apparently they’re united on this.

Republican unity: an oxymoron

The New Neo Posted on by

In his column today in the NY Post, Michael Goodwin discusses some contradictory communications from Trump about the failed health care bill. Goodwin also mentions that calls for bipartisanship are doomed (agreed), and suggests that what Trump really needs to do now is unite the GOP:

The only way forward is for Trump to unite the Republican Party.

If he can do that, Dems will be forced to engage in substantive negotiations because the alternative is exclusive Republican rule on every piece of legislation. In effect, GOP unity could force Dems to the table for at least a semblance of bipartisanship that would be good for the country.

But if Trump can’t unite his party, if its circular firing squad is permanent, major parts of his agenda could be DOA. And Dems will be giddy at the funeral.

But “Republican unity” is an oxymoron. It’s not just recently that it’s gone down the tubes; as far as I can recall, it hasn’t existed in my lifetime. Rockefeller Republicans vs. Goldwater Republicans were an earlier manifestation, and a bitter one. Reagan challenged incumbent president Gerald Ford in 1976. And it’s been going on ever since.

Now, perhaps it’s reached a fever pitch at the moment, but I actually don’t see it as worse now than then. Perhaps it’s more important, but not worse. One of the reasons it may be more important right now is that Republicans need to roll back many aspects of the Obama administration, and they have the numbers to do it if they could only unite on their goals and a way to achieve them. For the first time in a long time Republicans have relatively solid control of the executive branch and legislative branches and are poised to nominate one (and perhaps more, in time) SCOTUS justice of a conservative stripe.

So it may be that their lack of unity is highlighted right now. But, as much as I fault Trump for many things (including what I see as not really even trying to get to some sort of actual consensus on the bill, but rather rushing it and strong-arming it), I don’t think that unity was ever in the cards. The rift in the GOP is very real, bitter, and old.

Unfortunately.

Presidents and the press

The New Neo Posted on by

You think the press is bad now? And you think relations between the press and presidents have never been worse on both sides? Don’t be too sure.

The following quote is taken from an article by Ryan Holiday about a book by Harold Holzer called Lincoln and the Power of the Press:

In addition to waging war on the battlefield, in the courts, in Congress, Lincoln was also required to fight and win on the hotly contested front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

If you were to ask the average person what they know about Lincoln and the media, they’d probably say something about him throwing journalists in jail or suspending certain Constitutional rights. That is true and it is interesting.

Actually, I disagree about what the “average person” would say. I don’t know what circles the author of that article moves in, but I’d estimate that maybe—maybe—about 10% of the population knows about those things. And I actually think that’s being generous.

More from Holiday:

“He lies like a newspaper” was a common mid-19th century expression about people you couldn’t trust. Or as Lincoln once joked to a friend about the “reliability” of newspapers, “they lie and then they re-lie.”

And was the telegraph the Twitter of its day?

In addition to the propagation of “Lightning Presses” which made it truly possible and economical for large scale daily newspapers, the newness of telegraph probably had the single largest impact on mid-1800s journalism. As the Richmond Dispatch reported in July 1863 about the impact of the telegraph on reporting:

“It covers us all over with lies, fills the very air we breathe and obscures the very sun; makes us doubt of everything we read, because we know that the chances are ten to one it is false; and leaves us uncertain, at last of our own existence. Men say it brings intelligence quick; yet every event announced by it is always so obfuscated by these quick-coming reports, all destroying one another, that the true story is generally longer in being ascertained than it was before.’

And “fake news”? Here’s an entire article about the charges and counter-charges concerning fake news swirling around the perennial populist candidate William Jennings Bryan (circa 1896):

In an era before the internet, television, or radio, the best way to reach the masses is with newsprint. So, without the option of tweeting his grievances after losing the election to William McKinley, what does Bryan do? He starts his own newspaper. And he uses it to rail against “fake news.”…

“There seems to be an epidemic of fake news from the city of Lincoln, [Nebraska], and it all comes from Mr. Bryan’s ”˜friends’””names not given,” Bryan’s newspaper, The Commoner, wrote in 1907. “It would seem unnecessary to deny reports sent out to which no name was attached, and yet it has been necessary to send a number of telegrams to notify other papers that the report was unauthorized…

I’ll close with three quotes from Thomas Jefferson, from an even earlier era:

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Plus é§a change, plus c’est la méªme chose.

Another attempt to prosecute the makers of the Planned Parenthood videos

The New Neo Posted on by

It happened before, in Texas. Now it’s happening in California:

The duo who bravely exposed Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts operation through undercover videos has been charged by California prosecutors with 15 new felony counts.

In 2016, both David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt with the Center for Medical Progress were indicted by a Texas grand jury on felony tampering charges. Daleiden also received a second indictment. All charges were eventually dropped, and Planned Parenthood was left seething at the Harris County district attorney’s office.

Now, California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra has charged the pair with 15 felonies…

In response to the new charges, the Center for Medical Progress issued the following statement:

“The bogus charges from Planned Parenthood’s political cronies are fake news. They tried the same collusion with corrupt officials in Houston, TX and failed: both the charges and the DA were thrown out…”

Of course, California is not Texas, and vice versa.

The Walmart experience

The New Neo Posted on by

There are certain things I buy at Walmart. One of them is plain old T-shirts, of which Walmart carries an astounding variety of shapes and types for prices that range from about $2.50 to barely $6.00. The other day I braved the Walmart aisles in order to lay in a supply to supplement my decimated stock of them (I use them for blogging and for sleep, in medium for the former and very large for the latter).

Then I wandered around the store for a while; wandering around the vastness of Walmart can be good exercise on a rainy day. In the produce section I noticed some wonderfully large boxes of wonderfully large blackberries for about $3.50, and decided to take a chance on them at that price. I wasn’t expecting much—after all, I’ve found that the blackberries in most groceries usually look good but are sourish. But hope springs, even at Walmart…

And lo and behold, when I got home and ate a few, I discovered them to be the very best blackberries I’ve ever tasted. Sweet and intensely flavorful. The brand is Driscoll’s, for anyone who cares to look for them. I was so taken with them that I went back the next day (yesterday) for more, hoping that I’d find some from the same batch. I bought three packages—and yes, they were just as sweet and just as good.

But the rest of my Walmart experience was disturbing. The entire store had an odd vibe—even for Walmart, and that’s saying something. It was about 9 PM, but the store was almost deserted, and there were three checkout aisles open. The first one I waited in featured one customer ahead of me, a person with some oddity that was indescribable but notable. Perhaps he was intellectually challenged, perhaps emotionally, perhaps both, but something was just off, and the same was true for the clerk behind the register, who sported red hair so brightly colored that it resembled no hair found in nature, and piercings on his face that were strange even for piercings. His nose, for example, had what looked like straight pins hanging from it.

The clerk was ringing up (archaic phrase, that) the last of four enormous canvas bags of goods the man was buying. At the very end, the laborious end for which I’d patiently waited, some glitch occurred that invalidated the entire transaction and the clerk said he had to start all over and ring everything up again. Since this had already been occurring at a snail’s pace (and a particularly slow snail at that), I moved to open register number 2.

Two young women were there, buying just a couple of things, so it looked promising. But then both of the women and the clerk, after hurried and almost-whispered consultation with each other, abandoned the register and disappeared. I waited for several minutes and they did not return. So I pushed on to register #3.

An older woman was there, buying two small cases of Enfamil. Perhaps for a grandchild, I thought. Seemed like this would be a simple thing. Of course, it was not. There were a lot of papers shown (not food stamps, by the way; bigger papers then that, and more of them). Then there was a wait for another clerk, a higher-up, to approve something or other. After that, the customer disappeared for a few minutes, and came back with some cash.

Let me add that at no time during all of these transactions did anyone, customer or clerk, address me or the fact that I was waiting. And if you want to know why I continued to wait, it was the power of those blackberries, the best I’d ever eaten.

And then finally it was my turn. The clerk who waited on me did address me, too, but only in song. Yes folks, he sang everything he said to me—and he wasn’t a good singer, either.

Are these signs of the coming apocalypse?

[ADDENDUM: I may not understand what was going on with the people in Walmart. But I may have solved the mystery of what was going on with the blackberries.

Driscoll’s has been transitioning to a sweeter variety of blackberry, and I may have tasted the fruit (literally) of their labors (the article is from 2013):

California-based Driscoll’s plans to phase out its sourcing of the public blackberry variety Tupi in Mexico over the next eight years, replacing it with sweeter cultivars in sync with an expanding surface area. blackberries.

Driscoll’s Blackberry CMx supply manager Gerardo Cruz [says]…

“We sell Tupi to the whole world, but the new varieties have a higher brix and are being accepted very well, and in that way we can differentiate ourselves from the competition,” he says.

“The average brix of Tupi blackberries is around 10° but our varieties Catherine and Dasha are above 13°.

Nice going, Driscoll’s.]

Sanctuary!

The New Neo Posted on by

I just published a post about sanctuary cities mayors’ defiance of Trump’s order regarding reporting the arrest of illegal aliens.

But now I want to emphasize the power of the word “sanctuary,” which was originally chosen by the activists behind the movement, I believe, to take advantage of the aura around it. “Sanctuary” implies something connected to the sacred—and it conjures up classic scenes such as this:

That’s for the older folk. That scene—and Laughton’s ringing cry of “Sanctuary!”—sent chills up my spine as a little girl when I first saw it, and it does the same thing now. For the young of more recent years, though, there’s this rendition of the exact same scene:

Animation has the freedom to show just about anything. All the animators have to do is imagine it and then draw it (or computer-generate it). If they want Quasimodo to swing on that rope, they draw it and don’t have to worry about having a living person do some sort of clever (but perhaps risky) stunt.

But for my tastes, the live action film has it all over the cartoon, in both its power and its appeal to the imagination. When Quasimodo holds the real live Esmeralda over that real live crowd (even if some sort of trick is used to simulate it and he’s not really holding her way up high), the cartoon can’t even begin to achieve the same effect. Note, also, the emphasis in the older film on the ecstatic reaction of the crowd, a joy and fervor in which we are encouraged to join.

And Charles Laughton in that role has it all over everybody, now and forever.

Sanctuary mayors defy Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Of course they do.

When a president tries to go against many years of local policies that have successfully defied the federal government—with some of those years involving the cooperation of the federal government in that defiance—it’s not going to go down easy.

It’s one thing for Trump to say he’ll end sanctuary cities. But even with the support of the majority of Americans in that endeavor, the local pockets of resistance (that is, the sanctuary cities themselves) are determined. It’s one thing to say this will change; it’s another thing to enforce that change.

The majority of the citizens of the cities involved detest Donald Trump, and most of them probably think he’s an illegitimate president as well. Their mayors are declaring their intention to defy his orders, and threatening to sue:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions took the podium at the White House press briefing to fire the broadside at cities that refuse to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they have illegal immigrants in custody. Judging from the response from mayors of the nation’s biggest cities, the Trump administration has a fight on its hands.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio downplayed the significance of Sessions’ message and said in his weekly television segment Sessions was more “saber-rattling.”
April 10, 2014: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at Cooper Union in New York. Expand / Contract

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio fired back after Sessions’ warning. (Associated Press)

“If they actually act to take away our money, we’ll see them in court,” vowed New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said taking federal funding from the city would be “unconstitutional.”

“We will fight to protect the safety and dignity of all Angelenos,” Garcetti said. “We will work closely with our representatives in Congress to make sure that Los Angeles does not go without federal resources that help protect millions of people every day.”

In other words, we want to take federal money and fail to comply with federal law. Note, also, that the Trump order wasn’t to round up all the illegal aliens in town, it was “to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they have illegal immigrants in custody.”

While not a technical term, “sanctuary cities” are seen as communities that have refused to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials after detaining illegal immigrants. By federal law, they are required to inform the feds when they have an illegal immigrant in custody, even if he or she has not been convicted of a crime…

Sessions not only warned of “withholding grants, termination of grants, and disbarment or ineligibility for future grants,” he said the Trump administration could even “claw back” money that has already been disbursed to sanctuary cities.

And take a look at this:

And Boston Mayor Marty Walsh called the threat ”˜destructive’ and ”˜irresponsible’. Walsh has said that he would shelter immigrants in City Hall if needed, with the support of Boston Police Commissioner William Evans who said officers would not arrest immigrants living in the U.S. illegally unless they are accused of committing violent crimes.

Does that mean that in Boston there will be a two-tiered system of law enforcement? That illegal immigrants will—with the cooperation of the police department and its head—get off scot free for all but violent crimes, while the rest of Boston’s residents will continue to be arrested for non-violent crimes? So (for example) it’s okay to commit identity theft if the perpetrator is an illegal alien, but not if the criminal is a citizen or a legal non-citizen resident?

It’s especially interesting, since one of the original rationales for establishing sanctuary cities was to encourage crime reporting by illegal aliens who were the victims of crimes, without those victims having to fear deportation themselves. This turns that rationale on its head.

Trump’s order, however, might be unconstitutional for the following reason:

Ilya Somin, Professor of Law at George Mason University, has argued that Trump’s withholding of federal funding would be unconstitutional: “Trump and future presidents could use [the executive order] to seriously undermine constitutional federalism by forcing dissenting cities and states to obey presidential dictates, even without authorization from Congress. The circumvention of Congress makes the order a threat to separation of powers, as well.”

Perhaps Congress should take this up. There’s a history there, too:

On June 16, 2007 the United States House of Representatives passed an amendment to a United States Department of Homeland Security spending bill that would withhold federal emergency services funds from sanctuary cities. Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) was the sponsor of this amendment. 50 Democrats joined Republicans to support the amendment. The amendment would have to pass the United States Senate to become effective.

There was another failed attempt to do this in 2015. This is one of those situations in which, if the bill came before the Senate today, the Democrats might try to block it with a filibuster or voting against cloture. However, that might be a controversial move, and there might not be enough Democratic senators willing to go that route. I’m pretty certain that Jeff Sessions is well aware of all the possibilities.

I happen to be in favor of Trump’s policy—or, to be more precise, I am in favor of Congress passing a law to the same effect. Of course, that doesn’t mean it would be easy to enforce. It would be very difficult to enforce if—as in the quote from Boston—the head of the police force of a city, with the cooperation of the mayor, is determined to defy it. The idea of threatening the withdrawal of federal funds is that it won’t come to that, because the cities would be coerced into cooperation. But they might just say they will cooperate in order to get the funds, while winking at it in actual practice.

So, what’s going on with Gorsuch?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember him?

One of these days the Senate is going to vote on his nomination, and it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that they’ll approve him. But not just yet. And the mechanism by which it will happen—in particular, whether the nuclear option must be invoked to accomplish it—remains to be seen:

The Senate Judiciary Committee delayed the vote until next week to consider the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the delay was requested by the Democrats.

At least 15 Democrats and independents, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have announced their opposition to the Denver-based appeals court judge, arguing that Gorsuch has ruled too often against workers and in favor of corporations.

Schumer said Thursday he would be comfortable filibustering the nomination.

Gorsuch is one of the most qualified judges ever to be nominated to the Supreme Court, and Schumer and the the other 14 know it. They’re doing this to placate their base, and because they don’t like Gorsuch’s conservative point of view, and because they’re still angry that the GOP blocked Garland. Of course, the GOP was well within its rights to do so, and didn’t have to fiddle with nuclear options at all at the time because the GOP was the majority party in the Senate.

More:

The committee will meet again April 3 to recommend Gorsuch to the full Senate favorably or unfavorably.

McConnell has said he hopes to confirm Gorsuch on the Senate floor by the end of that week, before the Senate leaves for a two-week recess and in time for the Court’s April arguments.

If 8 Democratic senators vote for cloture, the 60-vote threshold will be reached and McConnell won’t have to use the nuclear option. I don’t know whether 8 will break ranks on this; my guess is that they won’t, but it’s just a guess. If necessary, though, I think McConnell is prepared to go nuclear in order to get Gorsuch confirmed. It’s that important.