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Clinton, Russia and the Uranium Deal Explained

By
Taylor Griffin
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SOURCE: http://www.uranium1.com/

This story was updated on Dec. 21, 2017 to reflect the Justice Department’s renewed interest in the Uranium One deal.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviving a probe into Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2010 approval of a deal that allowed Rosatom, a Russian state-owned nuclear power company, to acquire Uranium One, a Canadian firm with significant uranium mining assets in the U.S., according to an NBC News Report.

The State Department, which Hillary Clinton led at the time, holds one of the nine seats on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a panel chaired by the Treasury Department that is charged with evaluating the national security implications of foreign acquisitions of U.S. assets. While there is no indication Clinton intervened in the deal, a New York Times report that Uranium One executives made donations to the Clinton Foundation led some, including President Donald Trump, to suspect pay-for-play.

The Backstory

Over a period of several years, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, acquired a majority stake in Uranium One, a Canadian company that controlled significant U.S. uranium deposits. Because the deal potentially affected U.S. national security interests, this triggered a CIFIUS review. CFIUS determined that the deal did not threaten U.S. national security and unanimously recommended to President Obama that the transaction be allowed to go forward.

Why It’s Controversial

A New York Times investigation in 2015 revealed that Uranium One executives had donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s former chairman had long been among the Clinton Foundation’s largest donors. While his contributions to the Foundation predated the deal, other executives with Uranium One did make donations contemporaneous with the consideration by CFIUS and most of the donations were not disclosed by the Clinton Foundation. Further, the same month the deal went through, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 by a Kremlin-linked investment bank to give a speech in Moscow.

Also troubling, a recent report by John Solomon and Alison Spann in The Hill revealed that before the deal was approved, the FBI uncovered evidence of a Russian bribery scheme related to Rosatom’s efforts to gain control of Uranium One. According to the report:

“Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.”

Senator Chuck Grassley is now investigating whether this was considered before the deal was approved: “The fact that Rosatom subsidiaries in the United States were under criminal investigation as a result of a U.S. intelligence operation apparently around the time CFIUS approved the Uranium One/Rosatom transaction raises questions about whether that information factored into CFIUS’ decision to approve the transaction,” he wrote in a series of letters to 10 government agencies.

What to Make of It

Given that Clinton was one of the more hawkish members of Obama’s cabinet, she was among those most likely to block it. It’s reasonable to speculate that the donations by Uranium One executives to the Clinton Foundation could have been an attempt to secure her support. As the Washington Post’s Callum Borcher wrote, “it is virtually impossible to view these donations as anything other than an attempt to curry favor with Clinton.”

None of this looks good, but there’s no indication that Clinton took any action to encourage the deal’s approval. Most CFIUS decisions are handled at the deputies level, although occasionally more controversial matters rise to the principals. And the State Department’s  representative on CIFIUS, Jose Fernandez, told Time that Clinton “never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter,” including this one.

Further, the State Department was not solely responsible for the approval of the deal. Eight other federal agencies and the Canadian government also signed off. The concern about Uranium One was U.S. dependence on imported uranium for nuclear power. However, uranium ore from the U.S. mines owned by Uranium One was not licensed for export. That was enough to allay concerns of the CFIUS panel.

Bottom Line:

Rosatom’s acquisition of Uranium One did not give Russia 20% of America’s uranium. It actually gave Russia no uranium at all. Unless President Trump decides to issue an export license permitting the export of uranium ore from these mines to Russia, something which President Obama declined to do, this deal does not give Russia one ounce of American uranium. Besides, as one of the world’s largest uranium producers, Russia hardly needs U.S. uranium.

While the donations to the Clinton Foundation from people linked to Uranium One look shady, there’s no evidence that they prompted any action from Clinton. Clinton did not singlehandedly turn over U.S. uranium to Russia, but she didn’t stand in the way either.

Reflections on September 11, 2001

By
Taylor Griffin
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It is hard to describe just how normal the world felt in the early morning hours of September 11, 2001. The saga of a missing DC intern transfixed the nation, the cover of a recent issue of Time Magazine declared the “Summer of the Shark,” and our most pressing national dilemma was what to do with the Federal budget surplus.

Then came a moment of consequence and horror that is indelibly etched into each of our memories. None of us will ever forget where we were on that day sixteen years ago that changed the world forever.

I remember watching the televised images of smoke billowing from the North Tower of the World Trade Center with my colleagues at the White House. And then, minutes later, the terrible realization, written in the flames and horror of United Flight 175 smashing into the South Tower, that our nation was under attack.

The shock came in waves. Soon, the Pentagon was in flames and with it the uneasy feeling that we were surely next. Before long, Secret Service agents sprinted through the halls ordering everyone to evacuate. Women were instructed to remove their heels and run. As, I made my way outside the gates of the White House, all of them, were flung open. The citadel of the free world had been breeched.

Somewhere over rural Pennsylvania, an extraordinary act of herorism was unfolding aboard hijacked United Flight 93, now bound for Washington, DC with either the White House or U.S. Capitol as its intended target. Passengers Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick and Todd Beamer conceived a plan to take control of the plane. Beamer recited the 23rd Psalm before rallying his fellow passengers with the words “Let’s Roll.”

In a sermon a few days after 9/11 at the National Cathedral, the great Rev. Billy Graham captured the moment when he said, “The lesson of 9/11 is not only about the mystery of iniquity and evil, but, it’s a lesson about our need for each other.”

The firefighters and police officers that rushed into the burning buildings to save people they never met, knowing the chances were good that they would be giving their own life in the process. The passengers of Flight 93 who sacrificed themselves to save the lives of countless others, perhaps even mine. The scores of young men and women who in extraordinary acts of selflessness chose to put on the uniform of our country in the years that followed, knowing that they were almost certainly bound for war — many of them never to return.

In the horror of that day, what was best about our country was revealed in countless acts of courage large and small; flags flown on streets and houses across the land and in the basic decency of a people who came together in shared grief for people whom they had never met, simply because they too called themselves Americans.

In Berlin, 200,000 people converged on the Brandenburg Gate in solidarity. In London, the Star Spangled Banner played at Buckingham Palace and the city fell silent as the chimes of Big Ben rang out. And In Paris, a Le Monde headline declared “We are All Americans.”

The terrorists that attacked our country hated the very things we love most about it. The freedom to worship in whatever manner we see fit. The equality of women. The right to choose how we are governed and criticize those who govern us.

They intended to break our spirit. They failed.

Instead they united us, a nation of different faiths, politics and skin color, in our common love for each other and our country, in our faith in the almighty, and in our solemn determination that the beacon of human liberty shine brighter than ever.

Is Climate Change Making Hurricanes More Intense?

By
Taylor Griffin
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PHOTO: NOAA satellite imagery shows Hurricanes Katia, Irma and Jose. Sept. 8, 2017

In the space of two weeks, two record-breaking hurricanes. Hurricane Harvey was the wettest storm in history, and now Hurricane Irma is barreling towards south Florida packing the highest winds ever recorded. Out in the Atlantic, Hurricane Jose is trailing Irma, and in the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Katia lurks in Harvey’s shadow. Three major Atlantic hurricanes at once is unusual. Since records have been kept, this has only happened three times: in 1893, 1961 and 2010. But, never before have three hurricanes threatened to make landfall simultaneously.

This year’s violent hurricane season has revived the debate about the role of climate change in extreme weather. Warming temperatures don’t necessarily mean more hurricanes, but scientists believe that storms will grow more intense as temperatures rise. Is that what’s happening this year?

Scientists have long agreed that temperatures are rising due to increased carbon dioxide from human activity. But, it’s hard to say how this impacts the severity of any particular storm. We can’t say with certainty that Hurricanes Irma and Harvey were more intense than they would have otherwise been as a result of climate change. But, we can say that science predicts that intense storms will be more likely at temperatures rise. A recent article in Scientific American, provided a useful analogy:

“[I]f a baseball player on steroids is hitting 20 percent more home runs, we can’t attribute a particular home run to steroids. But we can say steroids made it 20 percent more likely to have occurred.”

So, let’s set aside the question of whether climate change was responsible for Hurricanes Irma and Harvey. We can’t know that for sure. Instead, let’s talk about the basic physics involved and why it might suggest that climate change is making storms stronger.

The Warmer the Wetter

Last year, global average temperatures over land and water were 0.95 C warmer than the 20th century average, making 2016 the hottest year on record. We know from basic physics that warmer air holds more moisture at a given pressure than cooler air. This can be calculated using the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, which shows that at standard pressures, a 1 C rise in temperature yields a 7% increase in the moisture-holding capacity of the air. As ocean temperatures warm, evaporation off the water’s surface increases too. The result will be more moisture-laden air that generates storms with heavier rainfall.

According to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University, sea temperatures in the mid-Gulf have risen by about 0.5 C to 1 C over the past few decades. That translates to 3-5% more moisture in the air. So, it’s reasonable to suppose that this dynamic could have contributed to Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented rainfall.

Hurricane Harvey caused so much flooding not only because it rained so hard, but because it lingered so long. Harvey was pinned in by sub-tropical regions of high pressure over the southern and northern U.S. and a jet stream that has shifted northward. These are both conditions that are predicted by climate change models. There is also some evidence that suggests warming in the arctic may make it more likely that mid-latitude weather systems will stall, but this has yet to be conclusively proven.

Prevailing winds that would normally have moved Harvey along more quickly have also been weaker in recent years. Scientists suspect that weaker steering winds might result from climate change. But, they aren’t all that sure that climate change was to blame for the relatively calm prevailing winds that allowed Harvey to wobble over Texas for so long, according to Michael Wehner, a senior staff scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “If there is a climate signal, it’s one that’s so weak we haven’t been able to detect it,” he said.

Stronger, Faster

Hurricanes usually diminish as they approach land. Access to warmer water caused Hurricane Harvey’s winds to intensify by 45 mph in the 24-hours before it made landfall. Friday night, Hurricane Irma strengthened as well, back to a category 5 storm. While this is not unheard of, it is not common. Recent research suggests that climate change will make this more likely. The reason is simple, says Kerry Emanuel, a researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Hurricanes are powered by the evaporation of sea water,” he told National Geographic. “Water evaporates faster from a hot surface than a cold surface.”

A study Emanuel published last year, compared 6,000 simulated storms under 20th century conditions and those predicted at the end of the 21st century if emissions of heat trapping gases continue to rise. The study found that by the end of the century, storms that increase in intensity by 60 knots 24-hours before landfall will occur not once a century as previously expected, but once every five to 10 years. This effect may or may not have contributed to Harvey and Irene’s intensification, but it suggests that more storms might follow the same pattern in the future.

Hurricane Irma registered 185 mph sustained winds over 64 hours, the most intense ever recorded. It’s well known that hurricanes gain strength from hotter waters. Rising warm air cause storms to churn more violently. As temperatures rise higher maximum sustained winds in storms would be expected. Indeed, wind speeds have increased 5% over the last couple of decades according to NASA. Irma likely got a boost from warm sea temperatures as it moved towards Florida.

Higher Sea Levels, Higher Storm Surge

Global ocean temperatures were 0.75 C higher warmer in 2016 than the 20th century average. Warm water takes up more volume and melts ice. So, it comes as no surprise that sea levels have risen 8 inches on average. Higher sea levels make it easier for hurricane storm surges to wash over land and cause flooding. This effect may be magnified as Hurricane Irma makes landfall.

In Florida, sea levels have risen as much as 52% more than in other parts of the world according to a study published this week in Geophysical Research Letters. This is because sea level rise is uneven due to changes in the pull of gravity as glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica melt, says Isabella Velicogna, an earth science professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the paper’s author.

“With the warming, we expect an intensification of the strength, the frequency of hurricanes and extreme events,” Velicogna said. “The sea levels are rising more there, so it’s going to intensify again those effects.”

A Perfect Season

Climate scientists are careful to point out that the blame for this year’s unusually violent hurricanes can’t be pinned entirely on climate change. There is a natural rhythm of hurricane seasons of variable intensity, as this superb chart from Chris Canipe of Axios illustrates. According to Tom Knutson, a NOAA meteorologist at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., the data doesn’t conclusively demonstrate that this year is a new normal of super intense storms.

Chart: Chris Canipe / Axios. Click for full image.

“We really can’t detect these changes yet in the existing data in the way we can detect in changes, for example, in the global mean temperature,” Knutson said. Although we’ve seen some unprecedented storms, he says that there isn’t a “clear existing signal in storm data” that proves this year is more than just natural variability.

But, it does seem like hurricanes are growing stronger, says Jennifer Collins, a hurricane expert at the University of South Florida School of Geosciences Tampa. “The research is showing that with climate change we might be seeing more intense storms,” she said. “So the fact that they are major, that does link up with the climate change research.”

Yet, it’s important to remember that hurricanes require just the right combination of warm water, moist air, and low wind sheer. High wind sheer, which is the difference in speed and direction between upper and lower level winds, literally shears hurricanes apart. The low wind shear this year has been a big reason that the tropics are birthing hurricanes at such a rapid rate, Collins points out. The may not have anything to do with climate change.

“We’ve also got a season where we have these conducive conditions, so the environment is just right for them,” Collins said.

Does the American Constitution allow for the rise of a dictator?

By
Taylor Griffin
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The U.S. Constitution is built from the ground up to prevent a dictatorship. It was a topic into which the founders invested substantial thought.

The Constitution is carefully designed to frustrate the aspirations of tyrants through two principal mechanism: checks and balances and popular elections.

Checks and Balances

The first line of defense is in the design of three coequal branches of government in which the power of each branch of government is checked by the other two. As Madison wrote in Federalist 51:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

In this careful balance of power, each branch, and ultimately the people, will regulate against a despot. As Madison wrote, also in Federalist 51:

“[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.”

The Legislative Branch

The executive branch must seek acquiescence from the legislative branch to operate. The clearest and simpilist safety mechanism against dictatorship is the power of the purse held exclusively by the legislative branch.

“No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.” (US Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9)

So, the President may not spend even one penny without the authorization of Congress to do so. Without money to spend, a dictator is dead in the water. Full stop.

While this provision alone is fully adequate to prevent a dictatorship. We can keep going.

Only Congress can make laws, levy taxes and declare war. The Senate must approve a President’s nominees and any treaties he makes. Most of the powers of President must be delegated to him by act of Congrsss and can be rescinded by the same. So, without the legislative branch to raise and appropriate funds and delegate him lawful authorities, a would-be despot wouldn’t get very far.

The Judiciary

The Judicial Branch is designed to ensure the efficient and fair execution of laws. Judicial review constrains the Executive and Legislative branches within constitutional bounds. It also restricts the President’s ability to act outside of the authorities granted him by the legislature. Further, because judges are appointed for life, it possesses a degree of independence from the other two branches in making its judgements.

The People

The ultimate check on a tyrannical President is the people. An opportunity arises every four years for a tyrannical President to be thrown out on his ear. And if Congress doesn’t constrain him in the meantime, legislative elections every two years give voters the chance to ensure that he does. Regular elections ensure that even if a despotic President manages to capture the Legislative Branch, he cannot do so for long.

Even if a majority is willing to acquiesce to a dictator, the Constitution still has tricks up its sleeve. The system of checks and balances limits a tyranny of the majority:

“The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”

The longer term of Senators (and originally their election by state legislatures), separates their interests from the popular whims of the moment. Further, the rules of that body, especially the filibuster, allow the minority to frustrate the will of the majority.

The electoral college system ensures that regional interests are accounted for in the election of Presidents. The electors are also empowered to ignore the popular vote altogether and vote their conscience, providing a corrective mechanism should the popular masses be hoodwinked by a demagogue.

The founders of the American Republic laid multiple layers of traps to ensnare even the most devious of aspiring tyrants. Whatever scheme a would be despot might employ, their ingenuity stands ready to frustrate it.

North Korea’s Nuclear Test Explained

By
Taylor Griffin
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Early Sunday morning, North Korean state TV announced that it had tested a hydrogen bomb designed to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), declaring that it was a “perfect success.” The test came hours after North Korean media released photos of what if claimed to be a hydrogen bomb ready to be used on a missile. It’s not known whether this was a working device. For all we know, it could be just a mock up filled with confetti.

Early indications are that it could indeed be a hydrogen bomb, also known as a thermonuclear bomb — or at least a boosted fission device, a regular atom bomb that gets some additional oompf from a small fusion reaction. This is significant because the fission devices tested by North Korea were likely too large to be delivered by a missile. A thermonuclear weapon, on the other hand, can be miniaturized to fit atop a missile. The test confirms that if North Korea doesn’t already have a nuclear warhead that can be deployed on an ICBM, it soon will.

Rumblings in the Ground

Whatever North Korea tested was huge compared to its five previous tests. The first indications came Saturday night in a bulletin from the US Geological Survey (USGS) reporting a 6.3 magnitude seismic event near the surface centered at North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site. The signature was unmistakeable. This was North Korea’s sixth nuclear test — and it was far larger than those of the past.

Based on the seismic data, NORSAR, a Norwegian nuclear monitoring group estimated the yield of the device as equivalent to 120 kilotons of TNT. This would make it 8 times more powerful than the 15 kiloton weapon dropped on Hiroshima.

Basics of the Teller–Ulam configuration. The X-rays produced by a directed primary fission explosion at one end of a chamber heat and compress fuel material at the other end, triggering the secondary fusion reaction. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

How a Hydrogen Bomb Works

A staged thermonuclear nuclear device, or hydrogen bomb, is different from an atomic bomb. The nuclear weapons previously tested by North Korea were simpler fission devices similar to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These sorts of weapons derive their power from splitting atoms of uranium or plutonium in a process called fission. By contrast, thermonuclear weapons fuse atoms together to release far more power through nuclear fusion, the same process that produces energy in stars.

A basic thermonuclear device contains two two stages: a primary fission stage that serves as a trigger for a much larger secondary fusion stage. It’s unknown exactly what specific bomb design North Korea is using.

In a typical thermonuclear bomb configuration, the primary is an implosion type boosted fission device. This will usually consist of a multi-layer sphere with an outer shell or “tamper,” often made of Uranium-238, a void filled with fusion fuel (likely a hydrogen isotope such as tritium or deuterium gas) and a core of Plutonium-239 or Uranium-235. High explosives are used to initiate a fission chain reaction in the core. This compresses the hydrogen isotope fuel, causing its atoms to undergo fusion. This bombards the fissile material with high-energy neutrons, which are reflected back by the tamper to cause further fission. While the fission reaction itself does not produce much energy, it dramatically increases the energy released from the fission reaction. It’s possible the test was only of this first stage.

The second stage consists of a Uranium-238 or lead tamper containing the fusion fuel — typically lithium deuteride. When detonated, the hot plasma and radiation from the primary boosted fission stage is channeled into the secondary stage, compressing the fuel and initiating a much larger fusion reaction.

Most of the weapons deployed by the five acknowledged nuclear powers are thermonuclear devices. Such devices  the advantage of being both more powerful and more compact.

A staged thermonuclear device  is far more difficult to build than a simple atom bomb. It is possibly that what North Korea actually tested is only the primary boosted fission first stage. But, if so, it still is pretty alarming. A boosted fission device is a more powerful weapon on its own and a big step towards a full hydrogen bomb.

The Missile Threat

The missile test late last month demonstrated that North Korea’s ICBMs had the range to reach the United States. Whether it is capable of successfully delivering a warhead intact is still an open question. Video from a Japanese weather station of the ICBM test seemed to show the re-entry vehicle burning up as it came back into earth’s atmosphere. This suggests that the missile system may not yet be capable or delivering a weapon. But, this is hardly the most challenging part of designing a missile system. With a workable miniaturized warhead, the rest is just a matter of time.

No Good Options

The U.S. strongly condemned the test, as did many countries including China and Russia. The question is what to do about it. None of the options are good.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis appearing, in the Rose Garden at the White House on Sunday, said that “any threat to the United States or its territories including Guam or our allies will be met with a massive military response.” It’s notably tough rhetoric coming from Secretary Mattis, a man not known for hyperbole.

The military options for halting North Korea’s nuclear development are all terrible. Taking out their nukes with a surgical strike with conventional weapons would be nearly impossible. North Korea’s nukes are hidden in caves and bunkers throughout the country where they are hard to find and even harder to bomb. North Koreas conventional military capabilities, including 14,000 artillery pieces, thousands of which are in range of Seoul and the 25,000 U.S. troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula, are sufficient to inflict an unacceptable cost if Pyongyang decides to retaliate.

The diplomatic options aren’t very good either. President Trump suggested that the U.S. was considering cutting off all trade with countries that do business with North Korea, which means China. That would be a complete disaster.

Additional sanctions will surely be on the table. But, how effective they are will depend heavily on China, Pyongyang’s ally and largest trading partner. And it’s unclear that North Korea will respond to pressure, even from China at this point.

It seems more likely that North Korea’s leader Kim Jung Un has decided that the benefits of a deliverable nuclear weapon outweigh the risks. It would be a game-changer that would allow Kim to come to the table from a position of strength. It would provide him an insurance policy to guarantee his regime’s survival and leverage to achieve policy goals – chief among them forcing the U.S. off the Korean Peninsula. It will also help the young leader consolidate his power. Kim’s frequent killing of political rivals suggests that his internal political position may not be fully solidified. Refusing to back down in the face of pressure from the west and winning will go along way to securing his internal grip on power.

Kim is gambling that preemptive military action by the U.S. is not a substantial risk. After all, North Korea got away with building a bomb in the first place. Kim might concluded that he can get away with further development of it too. With diplomatic options running out and military contingencies all bad, the U.S. may be stumbling its way towards a third strategy — just live with it.

Jim Mattis and the Heroes of Houston Remind Us Who We Are

By
Taylor Griffin
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Sec. James Mattis in Jordan; A Texas National Guardsman carries a resident from her flooded home following Hurricane Harvey in Houston (Photos: YouTube, DoD)

Amid the dank rancor of our present political moment, glimmers of light must be celebrated. A few weeks ago, Americans watched in horror as some of us beat each other with bats and clubs and a car plowed into a crowd leaving a young woman dead. Charlottesville was a demoralizing blow that left us asking, is this who we are? Is this what we’ve become?

A video of an impromptu speech Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave when he unexpectedly happened on a group of troops deployed in Jordan went viral this week because it reminded us, quite unequivocally, the answer is no.

“I know you’re far from home every one of you, I know you could all be going to college you young people, or you could be back on the block….we’re just grateful,” Mattis said. “The only way this great big experiment you and I call America is gonna survive is if we’ve got tough hombres like you.”

“You’re a great example for our country right now. It’s got some problems—you know it and I know it,” Mattis continued. “It’s got problems that we don’t have in the military. And you just hold the line, my fine young soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines. You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it, of being friendly to one another. That’s what Americans owe to one another—we’re so doggone lucky to be Americans.”

https://youtu.be/T4Nc_6MK818?t=11s

“We’ve got two powers, the power of inspiration – and we’ll get that back. And we’ve got the power of intimidation. And that’s you, if someone wants to screw with our families, and our country, our allies,” he said. “So, thanks so much for being out here.”

“I flunked retirement, OK?” Mattis joked. “The only reason I came back was to serve alongside young people like you, who are so selfless and frankly so rambunctious.”

“Oorah!” they barked back approvingly. And then, speaking for all of us, someone shouted, “God bless America!” Indeed.

Mattis’ words were of gratitude, not grievance; respect for one another, not resentment. His reverence for the great American project was infectious in its plain-spoken eloquence. It was a much needed reminder that, as bad as things seem, we need not despair.

Heroes of Harvey

Meanwhile in Texas, as the flood waters rose in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, countless acts of selflessness, generosity and downright heroism underscored his point.

Ordinary people plied Houston’s flooded streets in boats, kayaks, and air mattresses in search of neighbors in need of help. Among them, an armada from Louisiana calling themselves the “Cajun Navy” — hundreds of volunteers who were determined to repay the community that had taken them in after Katrina by rescuing stranded families from the roofs of flooded homes. Their slogan, “floodwaters don’t discriminate” rings so right.

When a man was stranded in his car, strangers linked hands in a human chain to pull him from the floodwaters. Another human chain of neighbors formed outside of a flooded apartment to help a woman in labor reach a truck that would ferry her to the hospital.

Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, a Houston furniture store owner turned his showroom into a makeshift shelter. Over the past week he’s fed and housed 400 people. It’s costing him $30,000 a day, but he was not worried about that. “Furniture’s made to be sat on, slept on, laid on, whatever…to hell with profits, let’s take care of people,” McIngvales said. “We’ll have a Harvey floor model sale, or something — I’ll come up with some shtick…this is the right thing to do. That’s the way I was brought up.”

“These are my people, black, white, brown, white it doesn’t matter. These are my people and I’ve got to help my people,” he told CBS News.

McIngvale who also opened his store’s doors to Katrina evacuees, recoils at being called a hero. Although by any definition he most certainly is one. “The heroes are these people that have been flooded out. The heroes are the Gallery Furniture employees who are unsinkable. The heroes is the entire community, forget Democrat, Republican, left, right, they’re all coming together in a spirit of solidarity saying we’re Texas and were about helping each other,” McIngvale said, his voice trembling now. “It’s what my wife and I are trying to teach our children, service above self.”

Among those troops in Jordan, and in Jim Mattis, the patriot who leads them we saw it. In the heroes of Houston we saw it too. That indomitable American spirit that rises in times of hardship to unite us. It renders the charlatans that seek to divide us powerless. It makes the rancor of our political differences seem so petty.

“We are a great nation. We forget,” wrote Peggy Noonan in a wonderful column Friday. “But what happened in Texas reminded us. It said: My beloved America you’re not a mirage, you’re still here.”

Jim Mattis promised those fine, rambunctious men and women that we’ll get the power of inspiration back. In a small way we already have.

A Tale of Two Trumps

By
Taylor Griffin
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ILLUSTRATION: DonkeyHotey

This week has been the tale of two Trumps. In dueling speeches Monday and Tuesday, we saw two sides of President Donald Trump. On Monday night, we saw a subdued, serious, very conventional president speaking from a TelePrompTer, announcing that he will order more troops to Afghanistan — a reversal of Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to pull out. On Tuesday evening, we got Trump the unhinged populist, shooting from the hip and tossing red meat to his base.

One can almost imagine a bargain struck between Trump and his new Chief of Staff, John Kelly. On Monday Trump was made to eat his vegetables, on Tuesday he got his desert. As ABC’s Matthew Dowd observed on Twitter, AMC was airing the “release the Kraken” scene from Clash of the Titans just as Mr. Trump’s speech was getting underway. Fitting.

Mr. Trump clearly enjoyed himself Tuesday night. But, there’s a political angle here too. Mr. Trump’s plan to send more troops to Afghanistan was a rebuke of the isolationist nationalism championed by ousted White House advisor Steve Bannon and embraced by a large swath of his base supporters. Sending more troops to Afghanistan didn’t sit well with the alt-right. Bannon’s Breitbart News ran scathing articles declaring that Trump’s announcement was merely a reheated version of President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy (they weren’t entirely wrong.)

Much of Tuesday’s speech was aimed at reassuring the alt-right wing of the President’s base unhappy about Bannon’s ouster, a softening of the President’s tone on race, and the Afghanistan announcement. For them, Mr. Trump played all the hits. He assailed trade deals, suggesting he might pull out of NAFTA after all. He hinted that a pardon might be forthcoming for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the stridently anti-immigration Maricopa County, AZ sheriff convicted of contempt for defying a Federal court order to cease racially profiling hispanics on suspicion of being in the country illegally. And of course, there was nearly a half hour devoted to a blistering attack on the “very dishonest media.” He assailed journalists as “really bad people,” who dislike America, determined to prevent him from Making America great again.

On Monday night, from behind the TelePrompTer, a much different scene played out. Mr. Trump announced a very difficult decision to add to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and did it well, looking very much the conventional President.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump assailed the Afghanistan campaign, now entering its 16th year, as a “total disaster,” calling for a “speedy withdrawal.” As he announced that he was reversing that position Monday, he showed flashes of humility, a trait not usually associated with Mr. Trump.

“My original instinct was to pull out,” Mr. Trump said. “And historically, I like following my instincts. But all my life, I heard decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.”

The Afghanistan announcement came on the heels of a lengthy policy review into U.S. force posture in the Central Asian country amid a deteriorating situation there. President Trump faced only bad choices, abandon progress made so far to the Taliban insurgents, risking the possibility that terrorists would once again establish a safe-haven in the country, or double down in hopes of succeeding where his predecessors failed.

Nothing about this decision was easy. Staying means taking responsibility for an unpredictable situation and reversing his campaign pledge to end America’s longest war. Mr. Trump will now own the casualties and the outcome. Leaving means allowing terrorists to take advantage of the chaos left behind. The rise of ISIS following the 2011 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq demonstrated that this is a very real risk. He’ll own that too.

For all the criticism of Mr. Trump in the wake of his response to Charlottesville, the President’s Afghanistan decision was as thoughtful and deliberative as his response to Charlottesville was impulsive. Those who thought they were seeing a new side to President Trump in his scripted speech Monday were soon disabused of that notion.

Mr. Trump’s rally in Phoenix Tuesday night was a reminder that there is no Trump 2.0, no matter how much Republicans wish it. While Mr. Trump may occasionally put on the clothes of a conventional Republican president, on him they are an ill-fitting and uncomfortable garment that he will always cast off at the first available opportunity. If anyone doubted this, in Arizona Tuesday night there stood Donald J. Trump stark naked and howling at the moon.

Eclipses Echo Through History

By
Taylor Griffin
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V0024734 Astronomy: a view of London in 1748, with diagrams of an ecl Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Astronomy: a view of London in 1748, with diagrams of an eclipse. Engraving. 1748 Published: 1748 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The modern view of eclipses is still one of wonder. But, their rarity and strangeness caused them to take on great significance throughout history. From the ancient to the modern, here’s how eclipses have collided with human destiny over the centuries.

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The American Revolutionary War

The first important eclipse in American history came on June 24, 1778. It was predicted well ahead of time, thanks to Ben Franklin’s Poor Richards Almanac. General George Washington notified his commanders of the coming phenomenon.

Geo. Washington at the Battle of Monmouth

General George Rogers Clark used it to rally his men, telling them that it was a good omen. Clark and his men captured the city of Kasakia less than two weeks later. It was also long associated with the victory of the Continental Army in the Battle of Monmouth that occurred two days later.

Another eclipse in 1780 sparked an early American scientific expedition. It was one of the first concerted efforts for the young nation founded on the ideals of the Enlightenment to leave its mark on science. Harvard Professor Samuel Williams led a team of scientists to Penobscot Bay in Maine aboard a ship provided by the Navy. While the expedition missed the path of totality due to flaws in Williams’ calculations, it provided an early observation of Baily’s Beads. Williams wrote:

By Arief R. Sandan (Ezagren), CC BY 1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47428116

The sun’s limb became so small as to appear like a circular thread or rather like a very fine horn. Both the ends lost their acuteness and seemed to break off in the form of small drops or stars some of which were round others of an oblong figure. They would separate for a small distance, some would appear to run together again and then diminish until the whole disappeared.

Not fully understood until years later, Baily’s Beads are the glimmers of light shining through canyons between the moon’s mountains.

Fear and Trepidation

In pre-scientific times, eclipses were viewed with dread and awe. “In ancient times, every culture had a sun god, and it was usually one of the chief gods of their whole pantheon,” explains Bradley Schaefer, astronomy professor at Louisiana State University told CNN. “Humans couldn’t touch what’s in the sky, so they believed it must be where the gods are. When you have a total solar eclipse, it looks like the death of a god, and to them, that couldn’t be a good thing.”

Eclipses were taken very seriously in antiquity. “It happened against this unnerving backdrop, this existential realm where the gods displayed messages of great import, messages that could be read only by the highest and most learned priests,” Ross Anderson writes in The Atlantic. 

An Athenian Error

Sometimes superstitions about eclipses could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. During the Peloponnesian War in 413 B.C., the Athenians who had launched an expedition to capture Syracuse on the coast of Sicily, were losing badly and planned a retreat. But, a lunar eclipse delayed the Athenian fleet’s departure, giving the Syracusan navy time to destroy their fleet of 200 ships and kill or enslave 29,000 Athenian soldiers.

Eclipses of the Bible

The Christian gospels record a darkening of the sky on the date of Christ’s crucifixion. Some speculate that this may have been the result of solar eclipses occurring in 29 or 33 C.E. But, this doesn’t fully add up. Neither eclipse would have been visible from Jerusalem.

The scriptures also record that the crucifixion occurred during Passover, which is marked by the first full moon of Spring. “You need a new moon, not a full moon, for a solar eclipse. Exactly the wrong phase of the moon,” Brother Guy Consolmagno, a research astronomer who is also director of the Vatican Observatory said.

But maybe it was actually a lunar eclipse, rather than a solar eclipse and that fact got lost in the retelling. Scholars think the crucifixion occurred around April 3, 33 C.E. and astronomical records indicate a lunar eclipse occurring on that date. Another bible account in the Book of Acts bolsters the lunar eclipse theory. On the day of Pentecost, as Peter preaches, he quotes a prophecy from Joel 2:31, telling the assembled crowd:

the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood (Acts 2:20).

Indeed, a partial eclipse of the moon may cause it to take on a reddish hue. But, some scientists say that the effects of this partial lunar eclipse may have been so slight as to not be clearly apparent from Jerusalem. Still, it’s possible that a lunar eclipse seen in Jerusalem or elsewhere found its way into the oral accounts of the crucifixion and were eventually conflated for a solar eclipse by the time the gospels were actually written down decades later.

Another explanation for the darkness described in the Gospels with better scientific evidence is a sandstorm associated with an earthquake. The gospels also tell of a great trembling that occurred upon Jesus’ death on the cross. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 27, mentions that an earthquake coincided with the crucifixion:

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open.”

In 2012, geologists found evidence of seismic activity near Jerusalem during this period. According to NBC, “varves, which are annual layers of deposition in the sediments, reveal that at least two major earthquakes affected the core: a widespread earthquake in 31 B.C. and a seismic event that happened sometime between the years 26 and 36.”

Or perhaps it was just a metaphor. That is the view held by modern scholars. Two biblical scholars, W. D. Davies and Dale Allison conclude “It is probable that, without any factual basis, darkness was added in order to wrap the cross in a rich symbol and/or assimilate Jesus to other worthies.”

Or, for the faithful, it may just be a miracle. “From a theological perspective,” Ryan Maderak, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Benedictine College, a Catholic college in Atchison, Kansas said, “if God is omnipotent, then he has sort of a little, shall we say, a little leeway to override the laws of physics.”

The Old Testament also records a solar eclipse. “I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the Earth in the clear day,” reads a passage o the book of Amos 8:9. This may be a reference to the eclipse observed at Nineveh in ancient Assyria on June 15, 763 B.C., which was recorded on an Assyrian tablet.

Death of Kings

Superstitious ancient societies sometimes went to great lengths to avert the dark events eclipses were thought to portend, specifically the death of kings. Clay cuneiform tablets dating from 2300 and 1800 B.C. found in Mesopotamia document a bizarre ritual around eclipses. Eclipses were thought to precede the death of a king within 100 days. To prevent this, the king would abdicate the throne, temporarily changing his vocation to farmer with a convicted criminal taking his place. The criminal would be assassinated within 100 days, fulfilling the prophesy and allowing the king to safely return to the throne. Problem solved.

King Henry I of England, the son of William the Conqueror, died in A.D. 1133 soon after a solar eclipse. As the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” recorded it: “In this year King Henry went over sea at Lammas, and the second day as he lay and slept on the ship the day darkened over all lands; and the Sun became as it were a three-night-old Moon, and the stars about it at mid-day. Men were greatly wonder-stricken and were affrighted, and said that a great thing should come thereafter. So it did, for the same year the king died on the following day after St Andrew’s Mass-day, Dec 2 in Normandy.”

King Louis XIV of France, the “sun king”, whose emblem was a golden sun, died following an eclipse too.

Scientific Advances

Eclipses have also ushered in scientific advances. Helium was discovered during an eclipse in 1868 when English astronomer Norman Lockyer observed a yellow line in the spectral signature of light from the corona of a total eclipse that year, correctly recognizing the signature of a new chemical element, which he named helium.

An eclipse in 1919 allowed astronomer Arthur Eddington to confirm Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. using calculations based on bending light during an eclipse.

New York Times headline, Nov. 10, 1919

A major prediction of Einstein’s theory is that the gravity of a massive object, such as the sun, would bend light in a phenomenon called gravitational lending. Eddington set out to test this theory in an eclipse that occurred May 29, 1919 by measuring the bending of light from the Hydes star cluster as it passed by the sun. By comparing the observed position of the light from the star compared to its calculated position, Eddington was able to confirm that indeed the light had indeed been bent by the sun’s gravity. When it was announced later that year, the finding made Einstein an instant worldwide celebrity as the scientist who had upended Newton’s theory of gravity.

“Light’s All Askew in the Heavens” the New York Times headline of December 10, 1919 declared. “Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Results of Eclipse Observations. EINSTEIN’S THEORY TRIUMPHS,” proclaimed the subheadings.

Throughout the centuries, eclipses have pulled on our imaginations. They’ve marked the passing of kings, punctuated great battles, inspired fear and hope and given rise to advances in human understanding. It is fitting that we should witness “The Great American Eclipse” in 2017, a year sure to be remembered as one of the stranger moments in our history.

The Great American Eclipse: Complete Guide

By
Taylor Griffin
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This image shows the Aug. 1, 2008, solar eclipse at the point of totality, when the moon completely blocks out the body of the sun, revealing the normally hidden, halo-like corona. Image Credit: The Exploratorium

For the first time in 99 years, America will experience a total eclipse spanning from coast to coast. Those in the path of totality, a 70 mile wide strip stretching from Oregon to South Carolina, will be plunged into 2 to 3 minutes of total darkness. The sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona, which is usually blocked by the brightness of its surface, will briefly become visible allowing a rare glimpse into the workings of our nearest star. But, even outside the path of totality, people will still see the awe inspiring site of the moon’s shadow darkening the sky.

Photo: Nasa.gov

Several features are available online that can show you exactly how much you can expect to see and when.

Cloud cover can spoil your view of the eclipse. This infrared satellite image from the National Weather service will give you a good idea of whether clouds might hamper your view.

National Weather Service Infrared Satellite forecast Aug. 21, 2017

Viewing the Eclipse

We can’t stress this enough, looking directly at the eclipse is dangerous. Do not do it. Special glasses are required to view the eclipse safely. Sunglasses will not work. Several retail vendors including WalMart, Lowe’s, Kroger and Best Buy stock them, according to a list compiled by NASA. They have sold out many places, so you might call ahead first.

If you can’t see the eclipse in person, all the major TV networks will be airing live coverage. But, NASA TV is going all out with four hours of coverage including views from weather balloons, NASA research aircraft and live reports across the country beginning at noon ET. You can watch here.

Why Does an Eclipse Occur?

An eclipse occurs when the orbits of the earth and the moon around the sun align in such a way that the moon blocks out the sun. It happens regularly, every 18 months or so, but often over water — which covers most of the earth after all. It is more rare to see an eclipse over land.

How Eclipses work
PHOTO: Nasa.gov

According to NASA: “When the moon does eclipse the sun, it produces two types of shadows on Earth. The umbral shadow is the relatively small in diameter point on Earth where an observer would see a total eclipse. The penumbral shadow is the much larger area on Earth where an observer will see a partial eclipse. Here, the sun is not completely covered by the moon.”

The rarity of eclipses is related to the fact that the moon orbits in a slightly different plane to the earth’s. The moon’s orbit tilts five degrees relative to the earths. Most of the time, the moon’s shadow points away from the earth. So, only once in a while do the orbits happen to align in such a way that an eclipse can occur.

A Magnificent Free Show

The experience of an eclipse is truly odd. Animals may behave strangely. Crickets will begin chirping. Birds will sing their bedtime songs, and newspapers will write stories full of tortured eclipse metaphors. As a 1925 article in The New York Times put it, a total eclipse is “the most magnificent free show nature presents to man.”

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What Steve Bannon Leaves Behind

By
Taylor Griffin
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When news broke this afternoon that White House Senior Advisor Stephen Bannon had resigned, traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange erupted in cheers. The chaos inside the White House revealed so vividly in President Trump’s disconcerting response to last weekend’s riots in Charlottesville had markets gyrating this week. But, it’s not certain that Brannon’s departure will end it.

Bannon’s resignation came after a remarkably candid phone call with a reporter from the left-leaning American Prospect, in which he repeated short-lived White House Communications Director Anthony Scarammucci’s mistake of failing to secure an agreement that the conversation was off the record. In the call, Bannon savaged colleagues by name, contradicted the President’s statements on North Korea, and boasted that he was removing a State Department staffer he found irksome — something he was not empowered to do. It was hardly likely that Bannon could survive it. But, his departure was a long time coming.

The image of Steve Bannon that emerged early in the Trump administration as a Svengali-like figure pulling the strings of the President was  wrong. There was never a “President Bannon,” as some derisively claimed. This was always, for better or worse, Donald Trump’s show. Steve Bannon and Donald Trump forged a partnership because they were so similar in outlook, says Bret Stevens of the New York Times. “Both understood showmanship: slogans, narrative, put-downs and especially conflict,” Stevens wrote. “They knew the value of rage and outrage alike — the first as fuel for a movement; the second as the indispensable foil for that movement.”

But, Bannon is a figure as complex as he is polarizing. His knowledge of history is vast. He’s far more firmly anchored in policy details and ideology than most within the White House. In many ways, he has long been out of step with the Republican Party mainstream, something he and Trump shared. Bannon wanted to push  economic policy left on trade and taxes. He championed protectionist policies and higher taxes on the wealthy. He pushed for spending on infrastructure, arguing that government should lead the way in creating jobs.

Bannon has long been the intellectual force behind the alt-right as editor of Bretbart News. It should not be surprising that Bannon, who spent years breeding deep hostility towards the Washington establishment might find it hard to fit within it. Bannon had grander designs for a global populist movement of nationalism and dismantling of globalization that he saw Trump as a vehicle to implement. But, there was little appetite for it among other Trump advisors or Congress.

It turns out that Bannon and Trump’s brand of populist nationalism translates poorly into actual policy. Bannon’s first major policy foray, President Trump’s executive order banning entry into the U.S. from Muslim countries was a disaster. Brash promises to repeal Obamacare resulted in a legislative train wreck. Of the Trump campaign promises Bannon kept a list of on the wall of his office, few ever were checked off.

Bannon clashed frequently with the President’s other advisors, specifically his daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jarred Kushner, and their ally Gary Cohen, the former Goldman Sachs banker who leads the White House Economic Counsel. To Brannon and his allies, collectively known as “the globalists,” a catch-all pejorative Bannon applies to  elite, even-tempered, pro-immigration, pro-free trade opponents of the alt-right.

Bannon dug his hole deeper, when he masterminded a failed campaign to oust H.R. McMaster, the retired General who succeeded Michael Flynn as chair of the National Security Counsel. That did not sit well with the new chief of staff Gen. John Kelly, an ally of McMaster’s.

But, perhaps Bannon’s biggest sin was allowing his image to outshine the President’s. A series of “power behind the throne” magazine profiles irritated the President, opening a rift that never fully healed. The American Prospect incident only served to confirm to his detractors within the West Wing that Bannon was too eager to court the press as a means of bolstering his own image and to leak damaging information on his internal rivals.

The loss of Bannon removes some of the ideological fire from the Trump Administration. It might calm some of the infighting too. No one else in the White House was as dedicated to the President’s agenda at such a granular level as Bannon. With Bannon’s departure, the ideological keeper of the flame passes to Stephen Miller, the pugnacious White House advisor and youngest member of Trump’s staff and Sebastian Gorka, the far-right isolationist foreign policy advisor rumored to be next on Kelly’s hit list. While Miller is said to have a good relationship with the President, he’s unlikely to be able to go toe “toe-to-toe with “the globalists” in the same way Bannon was.

The White House agenda has been adrift for a while now, consumed by repeated crises, many of them self-inflicted. Bannon’s departure is unlikely to change that. So much of it comes from the top. But, without Bannon fighting “the globalists” tooth and nail, the White House may amble in a more conventional policy direction. Whether the removal of Bannon helps Chief of Staff Kelly build a more smoothly functioning West Wing remains to be seen. Ultimately, the buck stops with the President.

 

The Agony and the Alt Right

By
Taylor Griffin
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In times of strife, Americans look to their Presidents for moral grounding. When the nation’s eyes turned to President Trump this week, they found a man adrift. Charlottesville was a moral test, and one that President Donald Trump made far harder for all of us. Most of us were appalled by the white nationalists who marched there and reject the bigotry they represent. But, in our deeply divisive political moment, the lines between our political loyalty and our moral obligations have become blurred. President Trump could have drawn those lines clearly. Instead he chose to blur them further.

It is not clear that President Donald Trump is especially racist. But, this week could not have been much worse if he were. Mr. Trump seems to give quarter to white nationalists and wannabe neo-Nazis mostly because they stroke his vanity with flattering memes and political support, rather than agreement with their core beliefs.

Charlottesville presented President Trump with an opportunity for moral leadership. Instead, he chose to reward his flatters, even as their ideology tears at the moral fiber of the country.

In a bid to tamp down the furor loosed by his his comments Saturday that pinned the blame on “many sides,” President Trump condemned racism on Monday in a begrudgingly made rebuke that rang with all the authenticity of a hostage held at gunpoint. Still, he could have left it there. It would have all blown over.

But, then there was the matter of the President’s press conference on Tuesday in which he saw fault on many sides and alerted us to the very fine people among the wannabe Nazi’s marching through the University of Virginia campus carrying torches and chanting “blood and soil.”

In this, there was very little to distinguish the President’s argument from that of the genuinely despicable white nationalists. President Trump’s insistence of blame on both sides echoed the arguments of white nationalists who deflect from the fundamental moral depravity of their cause by pointing to the violence of counter protestors. When Trump spoke, they cheered.

“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” Duke said in a tweet.

It is fair to argue that a hostile media may have been unwilling to give President Trump credit no matter what he said. Still, if there was a question about whether President Trump’s response was adequate, it is answered in the approval of David Duke and other white nationalists. If they were pleased, he didn’t condemn them strongly enough.

This was never a question of who was more violent. White nationalism raise a fundamental moral question about who we want to be as a people. Are we a nation that belongs to white people or to all its people? Violence committed by either side is to be condemned. But the morality of their respective cause is not in any way equal.

The new white nationalists of the alt-right, arrived in Charlottesville in their hundreds, toting bats and shields ready for a fight. President Trump watched as we all did as they marched through UVA’s campus Friday night carrying torches, greeting each others with firmly outstretched arms angled upwards in an imitation of the traditional Nazi salute. They chanted “jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil,” an homage to a Nazi party slogan, “Blut und Boden.” Where we cringed, he saw “very fine people” among them.

In Charlottesville, the white nationalists co-opted a fight that was not theirs. They sought to protect a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee not for the heritage it represented, but the shameful pain of racial oppression that stains it. It is these same simplistic notions that drives those on the left campaigning to tear it down.

There are good reasons to oppose tearing down statues and renaming buildings. It is an attempt to revise our story to a more pleasant, but less true narrative. This zeal to forget, misses the point of studying history — to remember our triumphs, our mistakes and our shame, and to learn from them. As former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it, “When you start wiping out your history, sanitizing your history to make you feel better, it’s a bad thing.” Preservation is not about glorifying the racial oppression that stains our past, but maintaining visible reminders of the story that made us who we are as a people.

In making this cause their cause, the white nationalists of Charlottesville pollute legitimate debate over preservation with noxious overtones of bigotry. They are not welcome. Their support is not wanted.

President Trump may indeed not be one of them. But, he’s invited white nationalist rabble out of the shadows of their mom’s basement and given them the reason to believe that they are on the right side of history. That is frightening. The fact that he’s doing it for no good reason makes it no less so.

Two years ago, the country faced another bitterly decisive racial moment as Dylan Roof, who gunned down members of an African-American church in Atlanta made his first court appearance. The members of that church, many of whom lost loved ones and friends at his hand, were given a chance to speak to Roof directly. One by one they walked up and said, “I forgive you.” It was an inspiring moment of moral courage and Christian mercy. It’s the kind of thing that lifts up and inspires. The kind of thing that reminds us of what we aspire for our nation to be. The kind of thing we hope to find in our President.

Charlottesville presented President Trump with an opportunity for moral leadership. He could have lifted us up and brought healing to our divisions. Instead, he wallowed in them. That’s not the media’s fault, nor the left’s, nor even the white nationalists’ — it is his alone.

The FBI Was Denied Access to the DNC’s Server. But, Does it Matter?

By
Taylor Griffin
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Among the most persistent objections for the attribution to Russia of the 2016 hacking of the DNC is the DNC’s refused to grant access to their physical server to the FBI. President Donald Trump raised the issue as recently as last month at the G-20 in Hamburg.

But, the fact that the FBI didn’t directly examine the server is probably not as big a deal as it might seem. It is not unusual for organizations subject to hacks to not turn over the keys to their servers. “This is normal practice,” Matt Tate, a British cybersecurity and intelligence expert, explained. “In cases like this, the onus for digital forensics is on the third-party contracted by the company that’s calling in the incident response team, in this case CrowdStrike.”

The New York Times followed the same approach when it was hacked in 2013, bringing in Mandiant, another cybersecurity firm to do the analysis work and coordinate with the FBI.

‘An Appropriate Substitute’

For investigators, access to the physical server falls into the “nice to have” category. It isn’t critical. The FBI was provided malware samples from which it could verify Crowdstrike’s findings. In January testimony before Congress, former FBI Director James Comey addressed the issue. “We got the forensics from the pros that they hired which — again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute,” Comey said.

Beyond Crowdstrike

It is true, that the FBI depended on Crowdstrike’s analysis for some of the technical details. But, the attribution of the hack to Russia does not rest solely on CrowdStrike’s findings. Several other cybersecurity firms, including Fidelis, FireEye, SecureWorks, and ThreatConnect have independently validated CrowdStike’s conclusions or surfaced additional evidence linking Russia to the DNC hacks.

The FBI also independently detected Russian attacks on the DNC as far back as September of 2015. That’s when the FBI notified a DNC IT staffer that hackers suspected to be associated with Russian intelligence services had infiltrated their computer systems. Later, the FBI alerted the DNC that a computer on their network was “phoning home” to Russia. (Some have raised the question of how the FBI could have known this. It is likely that the attacks were detected at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) and then relayed to the FBI.)

In addition, the intelligence community’s conclusions were informed by classified sources including SIGINT intercepts and NSA capabilities. While that evidence is not publicly available, it is likely that it includes intercepted communications between Russian officials discussing the hack and forensics that directly traced the source of the hacks back to Russia. According to Snowden and others, the NSA reportedly has capabilities. that allow it to trace internet traffic through Tor server hops the hackers used to obscure their identity.

More Than a Shred of Evidence

It’s become a common refrain that there is “not one shred of evidence” for Russia’s hacking of the DNC. But, that’s m just not true. There is extensive evidence that establishes Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the election. Some of it is classified intelligence reporting, but there’s more than enough that is publicly known to verify it.

Here are a few examples of the non-technical forensic evidence that points to Russia. While any one of these details alone might not be conclusive, combined with other evidence it becomes possible to establish attribution when you have enough evidence that only one threat actor could possibly fit all of the evidence. In this care, Russia.

  • Command and control IP addresses used in the DNC hacks have been used in prior attacks attributed to Russia. For example, the same IP address hard-wired into the code used in the attack on the CDU in Germany last year that was attributed to Russia’s hackers was also used in DNC attack.
  • Malware used in the DNC hacks is unique to hackers associated with Russian intelligence services.
  • The hackers spoke Russian, operated on St. Petersburg business hours, and used computers with Russian language settings at least some of the time.
  • Gucifer 2.0, who claimed responsibility for the hacks, said that he was Romanian. It is now thought that G2 was a fictional persona that served as a cut-out for Russian intelligence agencies. As it turns out, G2 appears to be several different people, none of whom could speak Romanian properly, but all of whom spoke perfect Russian. G2 released docs created on computers with Russian language settings and used the )) emoticon, an idiosyncrasy of Russian internet culture.
  • The Bitly account used in the spear phishing attack that snagged John Podesta was also employed in thousands of other hacks, almost all of which were primarily of interest only to the Kremlin.

Russian Strategy

Russian hacking of the DNC is entirely consistent with Kremlin strategic doctrine. Similar effforts they have conducted in other countries. Roy Godson, a professor emeritus Georgetown University and an authority on American intelligence, explained Russia’s rationale in a recent Senate Intel. Committtee hearing.

“They actually believe, whatever we think about it, that this gives them the possibility of achieving influence well beyond their economic and social status and conditions in their country,” Godson said. “For many, many decades, we did not take this subject seriously, and they were able to take enormous advantage.”

Russian interference in elections is completely reasonable in light of the Kremlin’s strategic objectives. Russia’s primary goal is to deter Western interference in its military operations against weaker neighbors and force western recognition of a sphere of influence in its near abroad. It seeks to fracture the NATO alliance and foster divisive internal politics in Western countries that constrain policymakers in their ability to counter Russian challenges to Western interests.

Improbable Conspiracies

There’s more than enough external evidence to rule out the theory that the Russian attribution is solely a CrowdStrike fabrication. To account for all the evidence, you’d have to believe that the FBI, American and foreign intelligence services, the media, and at least three other cybersecurity firms were in on it as well. It is absurd to believe that delegitimizing Trump’s victory provides a sufficiently compelling interest to unite so many actors in a massive conspiracy.

And it’s even harder to believe that a conspiracy so extraordinary in its deviousness and criminality, with so many people involved, would not have been blown open a long time ago by a whistleblower. Secrets that big don’t stay secret for long unless only two people know them and one of them is dead.

We don’t know whether Russian meddling delivered Trump the election, nor do we know that there was any collusion between Trump and the Russians. Anyone who says otherwise is speculating. But, it seem certain that the only rational conclusion to be drawn is that Russia did hack the DNC and attempt to interfere with the election. Our focus should be on what to do about it now.

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https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2017/08/does-a-new-study-prove-the-dnc-hack-was-an-inside-job/

Does a New Study Prove the DNC Hack Was An Inside Job?

By
Taylor Griffin
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Updated 8/14/17 to include responses from Forensicator and additional information.

The question of Russia’s culpability in the 2016 hacking of the DNC is a settled matter in the view of the U.S. intelligence community and most cybersecurity experts. But, for President Donald Trump’s supporters it’s all a big lie, a fable concocted by Democrats, the media and the “deep state” to excuse Hillary Clinton’s loss and undermine Trump’s victory. Instead they contend, the source of the leaked DNC emails was a disgruntled DNC staffer rather rather than Russian hackers. This week, they got new ammunition.

An article published by journalist Patrick Lawrence in The Nation claims a new study raised “big questions” about the DNC hack. It quickly echoed around the right-wing blogosphere under headlines proclaiming that the Russian hacking narrative had been debunked. It hadn’t

Lawrence’s story was based principally on an analysis that had already been making the rounds on right wing websites for several weeks authored by an anonymous cybersecurity expert calling himself “The Forensicator.” His report first appeared a month ago, on July 9th, two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin flatly denied that his government was responsible for the hacks of the DNC in a meeting with President Trump on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg. Now there was evidence that purported to back that up.

The report claims to show that at least one batch of files made public by the Guccifer 2.0 entity last September were copied locally, rather than hacked remotely, on a machine set to the U.S. Eastern Time Zone. Some have seized on this as absolute proof that a DNC insider, not Russia was responsible for the DNC hacks. That substantially overstates the case.

The Forensicator does not claim to debunk the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC, rather he says he is merely raising questions that demonstrate this conclusion merits greater scrutiny. Upon close reading, it might not even do that much.

Bytes and Bits

The analysis he presents is dense and technical. But, beneath a lot of jargon and meandering logic, he makes two core points. First, he claims that the data was transferred at a rate of 23 megabytes per second, which would translate to 184 megabits per second in the units used to measure download speeds of consumer internet connections. This, he says, suggests that the files must have been copied locally. Second, he claims timestamps on the files establish that they were copied onto a computer set to the U.S. Eastern Time Zone. But, the evidence he presents in support of these “findings” is not overwhelmingly convincing.

For example, a download speed of 23 MB/s is quite fast, but hardly impossible to achieve, especially for a nation-state hacker. Further, changing the time zone settings on a computer is a simple matter. It took your humble writer all of five seconds to switch my desktop computer to the Moscow time zone…and, what do you know, the time stamps on all my files changed to Moscow time too.

Following this logic, I’m now a Russian hacker. Who knew? In fairness, Forensicator addressed this point when commenters raised it. “Some reviewers have noted that Guccifer 2 could have manually set his timezone to Eastern time – [this is] true,” he replied. In response to some questions we posed to him, Forensicator told us that he didn’t see a reason that a hacker would do so.

“The method used to determined that East Coast time zone settings were in effect is non-obvious and unlikely to have been anticipated by individual(s) linked to Guccifer 2. Thus, it is highly unlikely that Guccifer 2 intended to communicate that fact. The argument against the idea that Guccifer 2 set the time zone on his computer to Eastern Time is that Guccifer 2 spent a lot of time and effort to convince everyone that he is a Romanian hacker. Many have challenged that claim, but no one has suggested that he might live on the East Coast.”

Still, switching time zone settings might be a prudent thing any hacker would do. In fact, thanks to Wikileaks; Vault 7 dump of CIA documents, we know that obscuring timestamps is standard operating procedure, for U.S. cyber-spies. A CIA “Dos and Don’ts” documents for developers warns:

“DO NOT leave dates/times such as compile timestamps, linker timestamps, build times, access times, etc. that correlate to general US core working hours (i.e. 8am-6pm Eastern time)”

The reason seems obvious enough. Doing so:

“Avoids direct correlation to origination in the United States.”

It seems very unlikely that Russian hackers would not employ similar tradecraft. But, as Forensicator pointed out in his reply to me, among the circumstantial evidence for Russian attribution is the fact that they were more active during business hours in Russia:

“Per this NYT article, dated Dec. 13, 2016, states: ‘Another clue: The Russian hacking groups tended to be active during working hours in the Moscow time zone.’ in reference to Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear and their alleged DNC hacking activities. Apparently, those Russian hackers didn’t get the Vault 7 memo. There are several other “bread crumbs” that have led back to Russia; the presence of obvious clues has raised eyebrows among a few security researchers.”

Adjusting the hours people work is a good bit harder than just switching time zones. It may be that doing so just wasn’t worth the hassle. Still, Forensicator could very well be right. It is plausible that the Guccifer 2.0 was working in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone, which raises the tantalizing possibility that the DNC leak operation was aided from within the U.S. That does not mean that it was a DNC insider doing the helping. Russia has more intelligence assets in the U.S. that at any time in the past 15 years.

DNC Lockdown

None of this really proves that the files were copied locally from a DNC computer. In fact, there’s pretty good reason to suspect they weren’t. By July 5th when the files were copied, Guccifer 2.0 had already been releasing DNC documents for weeks and the DNC was on full IT security lockdown.

It seems incredibly unlikely that a DNC insider would risk going back for more at that point. Given the intense security that had by that time been put in place at the DNC, a huge transfer of hundreds of documents would have surely set off alarms with access logs would pointing right at him. It seems like a sure fire way to get caught.

If we were able to view the contents of the July 5th Guccifer 2.0 7z archive, we might be able to tell when they were exfiltrated from the DNC servers by verifying the dates the files were last modified by actual DNC staffers. While we do not have access to the contents of those files, we do know that the most recent emails in the Wikileaks email dump were dated May 25 — more than a month earlier. If a DNC insider was responsible for both sets of documents and was actively removing files through July 5th, it seems odd that he would have left a month’s worth of emails on the table.

A Simpler Explanation

There’s a simpler explanation. It seems far more likely that the files had been previously downloaded from the DNC by hackers to a desktop computer or central sever. On July 5th, they were simply copied from there to a laptop or another desktop using a LAN connection or USB drive. This seems like exactly what you might expect to see in a sophisticated state-sponsored hack and is entirely consistent with all the evidence presented.

Forensicator conceded this was possible in response to a commenter who raised this. “Some have opined that if Guccifer 2 pulled data from his previously claimed hack and simply copied that data to say his local hard drive on July 5, 2016 that the pattern present in the metadata might result; [this is] also true,” he wrote.

There’s little in this analysis that challenges the intelligence community’s assessment in any meaningful way. To his credit, Forensicator has engaged skeptics — including us — cheerfully and substantively. While his responses to not give us great confidence that he has found anything resembling conclusive proof, that, he says, isn’t his point. “In my view,” he wrote in a comment, “the ‘standard of proof’ should only be sufficient enough to encourage a formal, thorough, investigation of the various claims of Russian hacking and interference.” That’s a low bar that this study may clear, if only barely.

Read More

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2017/08/the-fbi-was-denied-access-to-the-dncs-server-but-does-it-matter/

Read Forensicator’s response to us here.

Here’s What’s Going On With North Korea

By
Taylor Griffin
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North Korean guards at the DMZ
North Korean guards at the DMZ. (Photo: Taylor Griffin)

The war of words between North Korea and the U.S. escalated again Wednesday as North Korea announced it was preparing a plan to launch missiles at Guam, a U.S. territory 2,100 miles south of Pyongyang. This latest provocation came a day after President Donald Trump pledged that further threats from Pyongyang would be met with “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen.” While the situation is serious, you probably don’t need to start digging a bomb shelter just yet.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” – President Donald Trump

In a typically bombastic statement to North Korea’s state news agency Wednesday, General Kim Rak Gyom, commander of North Korea’s strategic forces, mocked Mr. Trump’s fire and fury remark, saying “sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him.” North Korea also said its military is “seriously examining [a] plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets in order to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.” The threat was unusually specific, noting that the missiles will fly over Japan before landing in the sea near the island. The plans will be presented to Kim Jong Un by mid-August, who would then have the final word on executing it. Guam is home to several thousand U.S. troops and Anderson Air Force Base, an important forward-deployed bomber base. B-2 bombers have been operating out of Anderson AFB recently in response to North Korean missile tests.

David vs. Goliath

North Korea’s response was a direct challenge to President Donald Trump, but not a particularly surprising one. North Korean propaganda is deeply rooted in a mythology that portrays the Kim regime as the David to America’s Goliath. In light of that, Kim cannot afford to be seen as backing down in the face of President Trump’s threat. It is likely that North Korea’s statement is intended for domestic audiences, but could also be calculated to brush back President Trump.

President Trump’s “fire and fury” statement was unusually blunt and apparently improvised, according to media reports citing Trump advisors. Administration officials, notably by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, have sought to downplay worries that Trump’s remarks represent a shift in strategy or that the White House was contemplating imminent military action.

“Nothing that I have seen and nothing that I know of would indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last twenty-four hours,” Tillerson told reporters in a rare press conference Wednesday morning. “And I think Americans should sleep well at night and have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the past few days. . . . What the President was just reaffirming is that the United States has the capability to fully defend itself from any attack, and its allies, and we will do so.”

The effort by Trump administration officials to tamp down Mr. Trump’s statement might be read in Pyongyang as indication that the President overreached in his comments. By ratcheting up the rhetoric, Kim might strengthen the arguments of those within the administration, like Tillis and Mattis, urging a more cautious line.

A War No One Wants

Rhetoric not withstanding, neither the U.S. nor North Korea want a military confrontation. It would be devastating for both countries, but most of all for North Korea. U.S. military capabilities substantially outmatch those of North Korea. America’s precision guided weapons and technologically advanced command and control systems, integrated air, sea, and ground war-fighting abilities, and modern weaponry would devastate North Korea’s large but unsophisticated military.

Photo published in March by North Korean state newspaper the Rodong Sinmun showing Kim Jung Un with what appear to be a “miniaturized” nuclear device adjacent to a Hwasong-13 (KN-08) ballistic missile that could be used to deliver a weapon.

Still, North Korea is now closer than ever to being capable of reaching the U.S. mainland with its nuclear weapons. According to a Washington Post report this week, a new U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment says that North Korea has developed a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop an intercontinental ballistic missile. Coming on the heals of last month’s tests of North Korean missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, this is a worrying development. Even if North Korea doesn’t yet present a credible threat to the U.S. mainland, it will soon. It can confidently reach Seoul, Tokyo, and US military facilities on Guam with it’s short and intermediate range missiles already.

The Nuclear Threat

While North Korea has made substantial advances in its nuclear program, they do not yet have a credible ability to actually deliver a bomb to the United States. North Korea is capable of inflicting substantial damage, but their missiles are unreliable and the explosive power of their nuclear devices is relatively small by the standards of American and Russian weapons.

Photo by CSIS
Hwasong-14 launch, July 4, 2017.

North Korea has managed to test two Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) since the beginning of last month. Both are capable of reaching at least some parts of the U.S. The second test demonstrated a missile that could reach all the way to New York, Chicago, perhaps Washington, DC. But, there are serious questions about the reliability of the Hwasong-14 system.

Significantly, the missile’s reentry vehicle, which protects the warhead from the heat and pressure generated as it reenters earth’s atmosphere, may have failed during the most recent test July 28. A video captured by a Japanese weather camera seems to show the reentry vehicle breaking up on reentry. This suggests that the system may not yet be able to deliver a nuclear device that arrives intact. However, reentry systems are far from the most daunting technical challenges of ICBM design.

What North Korea Wants

Actually launching a nuclear weapon at the mainland United States would be suicide. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is so determined to develop a nuclear capability because he calculates that it will provide an insurance policy that guarantees his regime’s survival. Yet, actually using nukes would guarantee its demise. There are no bunkers deep enough to protect Kim and his leaders from the certain American retaliatory strike. Kim has somewhere between 30 to 60 nuclear devices to America’s 6,800. If North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at a U.S. city, America would not rest until it wiped Kim and everyone he knows off the face of the earth. A North Korean nuclear attack is unlikely, because for North Korea, it would defeat the point of having nuclear weapons in the first place.

All this posturing should be seen as jockeying for position rather than a prelude to war.

Let’s all keep our heads. This is serious, but it’s not time to panic — at least not yet. All this posturing should be seen as jockeying for position rather than a prelude for war. Kim Jong Un wants to impress his people with military strength and global importance, and leverage his status as a nuclear power to boost his standing on the world stage.

North Korean propaganda has long portrayed the country as an enviable world power. And it goes to great lengths to prop up this facade. North Korea’s government built a massive museum into the side of a mountain to house trinkets foreign dignitaries have given Korea’s rulers over the years. A basketball signed by Michael Jordan from Madeline

International Friendship Exhibition (Credit: Taylor Griffin)

Albright, a stereo system from a Japanese electronics company executive, and a skinned bear from Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu are among the assorted junk exhibited as priceless treasures given by world leaders in tributes to the greatness of North Korea’s regime. The death of Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder, was said to have been mourned with wailing grief by nations across the globe.

ALl of which is nonsense. But, Kim Jong Un hopes to use his nuclear arsenal to compel the respect from the world its leaders claim they already have.

Are there legal grounds to disobey a presidential order to launch a nuclear weapon?

By
Taylor Griffin
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n unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test at 11:34 p.m. PST Feb. 20, 2016, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Senior Airman Kyla Gifford/Released)

No. None. Zilch. As Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College and an expert in nuclear strategy put it, the idea of legal grounds to disobey a launch order is “untouched by knowledge of [how] that process works.”

It is Fast

The US nuclear protocols are built around the concept of “launch under attack.” The idea is to get missiles into the air before Russian nukes can destroy them in their silos.

To make that happen, the entire sequence, from detection, to assessment, to the President issuing a launch order, to turning the keys (there is no button), has to occur within the 25–30 minute flight time of a Russian ICBM.

To get an idea just how quickly this all must happen, Jeffrey Lewis of the Nuclear Threat Initiative has put together an outstanding interactive timeline, which shows that in a surprise attack scenario the President may have as little as 8 minutes to make a decision.

There is no time for ruminating about the Geneva Convention or pondering the implications of international law. The system, says retired Gen. Mike Hayden, “is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision.”

Missileers are psychologically screened, and rigorously trained, to ask few questions, and just follow orders. Any hint of navel gazing will get a missile officer reassigned.

Facing a modern-day Nuremberg trial is the least of a missile officer’s worries. During the cold war, a missileer’s life expectancy after a nuclear release would probably be exceedingly short. He likely would have just a few minutes before Soviet counter-battery fire composed of nukes that crater 200 feet into the ground blow him out of his 100 ft hole and vaporize him, along with his worries, into oblivion.

There are no checks and balances. If the President decides to launch tomorrow, there are no legal grounds to stop him. Perhaps that should change, but for now it is the way it is.

Anyone in the chain of command for a nuclear launch could theoretically refuse a launch order. This is true. It would be illegal, but rather than destroy the world on the orders of a madman, they may very well do so. There are contingency plans to shift authority in this scenario. But, the question was would they have legal grounds for disobeying a launch order. The answer to that question is still unequivocally no.

While in other military contexts, a subordinate may disobey an illegal order, the unique case of nuclear launch protocols is an exception. Once a properly formatted and authenticated launch order is received from the President, it must be executed.

The only legal way to stop a launch is to remove the President. There is a far-fetched scenario in which the Vice President could intervene by invoking the 25th Amendment, which reads:

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” – U.S. Const. Amd. XXV, Sec. 4

It seems unlikely that the Vice President could gather the support of a majority of the cabinet, transmit a notification to Congress, take the Oath of Office, and issue a stand down order all in the few minutes between the President issuing an order and launch. But, it’s not inconceivable that there are contingencies in place for this. Let’s hope there are.

PHOTO CREDIT: An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test at 11:34 p.m. PST Feb. 20, 2016, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Senior Airman Kyla Gifford/Released) 

Mattis on Ethics

By
Taylor Griffin
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DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr
This week, we’ve been thinking a great deal about our current national moment. And the vitality, especially in times like these, of the institutions of our Republic, and the good men and women that lead them. One of those good men, and if you ask us, among the best men — is Defense Secretary James Mattis. Today he sent a memo to all DoD staff reminding them what it means to hold the public trust, and reminding us why we have come to admire him. It’s not the first ethics memo from a Secretary of Defense, but it is written with the square-jawed integrity that is signature Mattis. We’ve reproduced it for you here.
MEMORANDUM FOR ALL DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES
August 4, 2017
Re: Ethical Standards for All Hands
Those entrusted by our nation with carrying out violence, those entrusted with the lives of our troops, and those entrusted with enormous sums of taxpayer money must set an honorable example in all we do.
I expect every member of the Department to play the ethical midfield. I need you to be aggressive and show initiative without running the ethical sidelines, where even one missstep will have you out of bounds.
To ensure each of us is ready to do what is right, without hesitation, when ethical dilemmas arise, we must train and prepare ourselves and our subordinates. Our prior reflection and our choice to live by an ethical code will reinforce what we stand for, so we remain morally strong especially in the face of adversity.
Through our example and through coaching of all hands, we will ensure ethical standards are maintained. Never forget our willingness to take the oath of office and to accept the associated responsibilities means that even citizens who have never met us trust us to do the right thing, never abusing our position nor looking the other way when we see something wrong.
I am proud to serve alongside you.
James Mattis

Sign of the Times

By
Taylor Griffin
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Yesterday, we learned that a grand jury has been empaneled to investigate allegations related to a sitting President; someone within the U.S. government leaked highly sensitive transcripts of a President’s phone calls with foreign leaders — in an apparent effort to embarrass him; and, investigators are examining financial dealings of a sitting President and his associates in a probe of a foreign intelligence operation targeting the American election system.

BEFORE 2017: OMG!! OMG!! (lights hair on fire)
NOW: Just another Thursday

It is easy to forget that we are living through extraordinary times. Our current national moment will be remembered as one of the great inflection points in American history. But, this chapter of our national story is still being written. What happens next, and what it will mean for the generations to come, is up to us.

Will this be remembered as the moment Americans lost faith in this great experiment our founders set in motion more than two centuries ago? Will the concept of objective truth finally succumb to our partisan delusions of reality as “fake news” and “fake news” as reality? Will the great institutions of our Republic finally be flung apart by the centrifugal force of the swirling nonsense, outrage and distrust that surrounds us?

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2017/02/the-year-that-truth-died/

Or, will this be a moment like so many others in our history that proves to be a darkness before a new dawn. Will this be when we all put down our smartphones and talk to our neighbors again? When we start showing up to town council meetings again, not to shout our anger, but to contribute constructively to our communities? When we began to care more about understanding why those we disagree with believe as they do rather than showing them to be wrong? When we finally started to use the infinite wealth of information available to us on the devices resting in our hands to deepen our understanding of the world and its complexities?

And anti-Trumpers, I’m talking about you too. As terrible as President Trump’s behavior may seem, a President that erodes institutional norms does not justify chipping away at them in return. To do so only compounds the damage.

The leaking of transcripts with foreign leaders is case in point. The first obligation of a member of the White House staff is to the constitutional office, the second is to the man that occupies it. The leaking of these transcripts serves neither.

There is recourse for a President’s  behavior, leaking transcripts of foreign leaders just isn’t among them. It resides first with the voters, who will choose to reelect him or not. And, in the meantime, with the co-equal branches — the judiciary, which may constrain his actions to those allowed within the law; and the legislature, which may decide what that law should be, curtail a President’s powers and, in extreme cases, remove him from office altogether.

To allow people to take it upon themselves to undermine the ability of a President to fulfill the duties the people appointed to him, no matter how well or poorly he performs them, sets us off on a dangerously slippery slope. Presidents come and go, but the institutions of our republic must endure.

I, for one, believe that this time will be the preface for a time of civic renewal. For the last 241 years — through wars, depressions, recessions, scandals and tragedies — America has always proven to be the safe bet. Whether it continues to be depends on what we all do right now.

Make Applicants Great Again

By
Tyler Cralle
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Illustration courtesy DonkeyHotey, CC2.0

We are facing an economic crisis in this country.  The way President Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders tell it, we are facing an invasion and an exodus all at the same time.  President Trump’s biggest fear is the shuttering of factories who take their products and jobs with them.  President Trump on many occasions has reiterated the falsehood that America’s manufacturing is on the decline arguing that “we don’t make anything anymore.”  This, of course, is not true. Manufacturing  output continues to reach record highs every year.  Senator Sanders, on the other hand, is worried about the exact opposite problem. His concern is more on who is coming in than who is going out.

Bernie Sanders argued on the campaign trail that corporations were working to bring cheap labor into the United States to boost their bottom line and screw American workers.  Back in 2015, while laying out his immigration policy, Bernie Sanders speculated that, “what I think they [wall street and corporate America] are interested in is seeing a process by which we can bring low-wage labor of all levels into this country to depress wages for Americans, and I strongly disagree with that.”

It’s great to see that fear mongering can bring out the bipartisanship so rarely seen in Washington.

Trump and Sander’s are right.  America is in a crisis.  It’s just not the crisis they imagine.

Back in April, Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge picked up on an interesting factoid from the Federal Reserve’s normally “drab beige book.”  The Fed found that the lack of skilled and quality employees in certain markets was restraining the growth that should be naturally happening within our expanding economy.  This completely blows up the arguments made by Trump and Sanders.  Not only are there jobs available in this country but even with expanded visa programs, we still can’t fill all the positions.

So what is going on?  The Boston Fed seems to have found an answer, “one respondent said that during a recent six-month attempt to add to staff for a new product, two-thirds of applicants for assembly line jobs were screened out before hiring via math tests and drug tests; of 400 workers hired, only 180 worked out.”  A math test and a drug test knocked out 66% of the applicants.  I think we found our problem.  Now, this could have been a fluke.  Maybe this was an isolated incident.  Unfortunately,  it seems to be an epidemic.

Regina Mitchell, a co-owner of a factory in Ohio recently told the New York Times that 4 out of 10 otherwise qualified applicants couldn’t pass a drug test.  Some people are going to argue this is a good case for drug legalization.  Think again.  Mitchell told CNN’s Michael Smerconish that the necessity of drug tests was for safety reasons saying, “we have a 150-ton crane in our machine shop. And we’re moving 300,000 pounds of steel around in that building on a regular basis. So I cannot take the chance to have anyone impaired running that crane, or working 40 feet in the air.”

To make matters worse the legalization of marijuana is actually causing more problems than it is solving, “the difficult part about marijuana is, we don’t have an affordable test that tells me if they smoked it over the weekend or smoked it in the morning before they came to work. And I just can’t take the chance of having an impaired worker running a crane carrying a 300,000-pound steel encasement,” she said.

Drugs are clearly a huge problem and politicians are finally waking up to this realization.  However, drugs are not the only problem.  With so many politicians like Trump and Sanders blaming outside factors and using language like “American jobs,” Americans have developed an entitlement mentality.  They feel that they are entitled to a job regardless of their work ethic or attitude.  JD Vance writes about this poisonous attitude in his critically acclaimed book HillBilly Elegy.  Vance details the unfortunate work habits and attitude problems of a young couple he observed in a tile warehouse:

“Both of them were terrible workers. The girlfriend missed about every third day of work and never gave advance notice. Though warned to change her habits repeatedly, the girlfriend lasted no more than a few months. Bob missed work about once a week, and he was chronically late. On top of that, he often took three or four daily bathroom breaks, each over half an hour…Eventually, Bob, too, was fired. When it happened, he lashed out at his manager: ‘How could you do this to me? Don’t you know I’ve got a pregnant girlfriend?’ And he was not alone: At least two other people, including Bob’s cousin, lost their jobs or quit during my short time at the tile warehouse.”

This, of course, is anecdotal evidence.  For every one of these stories, I’m sure many can show me a great example of a young couple who is working and has a great work ethic.  The issue isn’t whether or not we have good workers in this country — this is America of course we do.  The problem today is we seem to have a lot less than we used to.  The opioid crisis is ravaging this country physically and the entitlement mentality is destroying us mentally.  If we truly want to Make America Great Again we may need to start by Making Applicants Great Again.

The Incredible Shrinking Trump Presidency

By
Taylor Griffin
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Continue

The Ten Day King

By
Taylor Griffin
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White House Communications Director Anthony “The Mooch!” Scaramucci lasted all of ten thrilling days. In an ironic turn, it was Scaramucci’s victory in forcing the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that ultimately undid him. After all, it was Priebus’ successor, Gen. John Kelly, that sent The Mooch! packing.

The short tenure of The Mooch! will be most remembered for that ill-advised, but sort of hilarious, profanity-laced tirade against White House colleagues Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon published by New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza. President Trump was reportedly thrilled by the unvarnished combative style of his new communications director at first, but soon grew irritated as the fallout from the New Yorker article settled.

So, when new Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly made full authority to hire and fire staff a condition of taking the job, Trump — likely knowing what that meant for the Mooch! — didn’t object. At 9:30 am Monday morning, The Mooch! was served his walking papers. The statement from White House was short and to the point: “Anthony Scaramucci will be leaving his role as White House Communications Director,” the White House said. “Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give Chief of Staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him the best.”

Yet, in the greater scheme of things, the legacy of Scaramucci’s short stent in the West Wing may not be that jaw-dropping interview, but his role as catalyst for the ascendance of Gen. John Kelly from Secretary of Homeland Security to White House Chief of Staff.

Reince Priebus may have been a fine chief of staff under different circumstances, but in this situation it was clear to the President’s supporters and detractors alike that things weren’t working. The West Wing has been mired in toxic, back-biting chaos for months. Whose fault it is doesn’t matter — it’s the chief of staff’s responsibility. Trump’s detractors and Priebus’ supporters argue that the chaos starts at the top and no chief of staff can tame it. But, Gen. Kelly will have as good a chance as anyone. His prudent move to end The Mooch! episode quickly is an early, promising, sign that Gen. Kelly can impose order on the President’s unruly entourage

President Trump likes generals. His cabinet is full of them. Gen. Mattis and Kelly are just the sort of tough as nails military officers that President Trump respects and to whom he is willing to defer.

The Mooch! will be most mourned by comedy writers and Twitter wits, who found a rich target in the cartoonish character of Anthony Scaramucci. Still, his departure may be the first indication that Kelly could bring the kind of professionalism and direction to the West Wing that has been sorely lacking. And for that, we will gladly trade all the jokes to which we were so looking forward.

What is “Skinny Repeal”?

By
Taylor Griffin
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As prospects for outright repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) dim, Republicans are still looking for some way to make good on their promise to banish Obamacare to the dustbin of history. The latest idea is a so-called “skinny repeal” that would jettison a few unpopular provisions, such as mandates to buy health insurance and a tax on medical devices, but leave the bulk of the law in place.

Skinny repeal is less a serious policy proposal than a bid to keep the path for a more comprehensive rollback open. Passing a bill, any bill, would trigger a conference with the House, allowing lawmakers more time to hash out a compromise. Think of it as a placeholder for a more comprehensive solution rather than a final product.

Skinny repeal is destined to be the sad little bill from Schoolhouse Rock…without the happy ending. It’s highly unlikely to ever become law as a standalone measure. Good thing too. If it did become law, it would create a mess of unintended consequences that would throw health insurance markets into chaos. This has put Senators in the absurd position of seeking assurances  before they for the bill that the House won’t do anything crazy — like actually pass it. We must have missed that episode of Schoolhouse Rock.

Health policy is insanely complicated. Seemingly small changes can have cascading effects that aren’t immediately apparent. For example, forcing people to buy health insurance isn’t a popular idea, so repealing this part of Obamacare seems like a no-brainer. But, doing so would cause a steep rise in premiums and add millions to the rolls of the uninsured.

The reason has to do with the one thing everyone likes about Obamacare, the provisions prohibiting health insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and limiting what insurers could charge them in premiums. This allowed loads of people with health problems that couldn’t get covered before to buy health insurance. But, the cost of covering these sorts of people is usually substantially greater than the ACA allows insurers to charge. To make it all work, you need more healthy people, who don’t need much care, to buy insurance. Their premiums could then offset the cost of all the new sicker people.

Among the reasons premiums have risen so steeply in recent rears is not enough healthy people actually bought insurance. This forced insurers to hike premiums on everyone to fill the gap. If the individual mandate were removed, the situation would become far worse.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this would result in an additional 20% increase over the rise in insurance premiums already expected. Over the next ten years, they reckon that 16 million more people would end up uninsured, either because they opted to go without coverage voluntarily or could no longer afford it.

If “skinny repeal” passes the Senate, it will keep the process alive, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for a solution to the country’s health care problems. A conference committee might figure out a more workable alternative. But, conferees will face the same set of politically unpalatable tradeoffs that have bedeviled Obamacare repeal all along.

  • Democrats will still be immovably opposed to dismantling their party’s signature legislative accomplishment.
  • Ending Medicaid expansion will still be a non-starter for Senators whose constituents received coverage through Medicaid expansion.
  • And covering people with preexisting conditions without forcing healthy people to buy insurance will remain a tough nut to crack.

Obamacare has lots of problems. But getting rid of it does too.

Why Mueller is Investigating Trump’s Business Ties

By
Publius Valerius
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The investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly turned to President Trump’s business dealings with Russia according to a new Bloomberg News story. We’ve long taken the view at Roughly Explained that this is where the investigation would inevitably lead. The infamous Don Jr. meeting not withstanding, the collusion case against Team Trump has always struck us as thin. Russia definitely meddled in the 2016 election, but we still don’t know that anyone from Trump world was in on it. With President Trump’s business dealings, there’s substantially more meat on those bones. A story we originally published in March looked at some of these issues. We reprint it here.

By focusing its attention on potential connections between President Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, the media is missing a bigger story: Trump’s business ties to Russians. While there have been some articles that document the latter, those have been few and far between. The press has largely ignored those pieces, instead it has focused on chasing what it thinks is the next big scandal.

Felix Sater

To find a connection between Trump’s real estate organization and Russians, you need look no further than 246 Spring Street in Manhattan, the location of the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium.The hotel-condominium is run by Bayrock Ltd. and the Sapir Organization. It was developed by them and the Trump organization. Both Bayrock and Sapir have Russian ties.

Bayrock’s founder is Felix Sater, whose father Mickhail Sheferofsky (also known as Mike Sater) was a Russian organized crime boss, according to a lawsuit. Mike Sater pled guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit extortion.

Like his father, Felix Sater reportedly has associations with organized crime – only in his case it is both the Russian and the Italian mafia. He was indicted on federal money laundering and stock manipulation in a case that top this day remains sealed. Felix Sater also was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a $40-million that involved figures from four of New York City’s five Mafia families.

Salvatore Lauria was Sater’s partner in the stock manipulation case. In a book about his criminal past (The Scorpion and the Frog: High Times and High Crimes), Lauria used an alias for Sater. But, if you know the facts of Sater’s life, it is clear the person is Sater. For example, Lauria wrote that his partner had his brokerage license revoked in 1991 after a bar fight during a celebration of Lauria passing his security licensing exam. Sater’s license was revoked after he attacked someone with a glass in a bar during Lauria’s celebration. The New York Times reported on that back in 2007. Lauria described his partner’s father as “a notorious, politically connected gangster who was high up on the food chain.” A description that fits Mike Sater, if the lawsuit is to be believed.

After their federal indictment, Sater and Lauria fled to – you guessed it – Moscow. Sater tried to negotiate immunity in a series of failed deals with the CIA that involved purchasing Russian military equipment from former Afghan freedom fighters. One of those operations reportedly had the assistance of a KGB general that Sater knew. The KGB officer had ties to Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance. When those arms deals failed to materialize, Sater and Lauria began negotiations for their surrender to U.S. authorities.

For those who do not remember this, three days before September 11, 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated, presumably by al Qaeda. Lauria stated that, shortly after the terror attacks, Sater told him the FBI was interested in the proposed arms deals with the CIA, since it now implicated national security and counter-terrorism activities. Lauria wrote that the Department of Justice wanted to hide their involvement with anything that dealt with the matter, which could account for the files still being sealed.

Tamir Sapir

Tamir Sapir, a Russian émigré, founded the Sapir Organization. Born Temur Sepiashvili in Georgia, he helped fund the purchase of the site that became the Trump SoHo.. For his part, Trump told New York Magazine that he considered Sapir and his son “great friends.”

Sapir’s son, who now runs the real estate business, told The New York Times, he did not know about Sater’s criminal history until the newspaper began investigating it. But, as the New York Magazine article stated, “Given the tight circle of Soviet-born real-estate players in New York, that’s hard to believe.”

Lest anyone think this is old news, a well-placed source tells us that federal authorities are currently looking into activity that gives an indication of potential money laundering at a Bayrock property in a former Soviet republic.

Investigations by U.S. government into collusion between President Trump, his campaign and the Russian government have so far turned up nothing, according to James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence. Further investigations by Congress, law enforcement, and the press likely will produce the same results. Although they may provide some tangential information that some campaign hangers-on sought to make some money on the side.

Rather than try to grab the highest ratings or the most web site hits with its obsession over Trump links to the Russian government, the media should conduct more serious investigative reporting of the business connections between Trump’s real estate empire and Russia. They might find some very interesting facts.

Why a “Made in America” Mentality Could Make Us Less Safe

By
Tyler Cralle
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It’s “Made in America” week at the White House and it seems like President Donald Trump is trying to keep the promises he made on the campaign trail.  However, doing so could disrupt a brilliant plan to diminish Russia’s role and influence in the world.

For two years on the campaign trail, Donald Trump frequently invoked saving jobs in manufacturing, coal, and any other industry that was near and dear to the hearts of rust belt voters.  It was a smart move. The voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan were the ones who put Trump over the top on that surprising November night.  However, there has always been a healthy skepticism on whether Donald Trump would actually follow through on this promises. The results have been mixed.  President Trump certainly talks a good game, but the recent news from Ford and Carrier that jobs may not be saved after all show it’s sometimes more style than substance.  Steel tariffs could be Trump’s first substantive action to protect a specific domestic industry.  Unfortunately, that same decision could have devastating consequences from a national security standpoint.

President Donald Trump has been complaining of steel dumping, focusing mostly on China, since even before he announced he was running for President.  Normally when it comes to enacting tariffs, the argument is always based on economics.  However, the current debate in the White House is actually a national security one.  Currently, there is a 232 investigation into steel dumping, a kind of trade investigation to determine the effect of imports on national security.  Advocates for tariffs argue that dumping of foreign steel in the domestic markets could cause American steel producers to go out of business.  This would then put us at a disadvantage in a time of crisis.  However, even if this is true, the global implications of steel tariffs could still make us less safe.

Thanks to their hatred of President Donald Trump, Democrats are finally waking up to the geopolitical threat that Russia poses to the United States.  America’s pullback from both Europe and the Middle East under Obama mixed with Russia’s extensive energy supply have made Russia an unfortunate partner to many. The absence of America’s allows a vacuum that competitors like Russia will fill. Luckily, this is fixable.

First, America needs to reassert it’s position of leadership in both regions.  Second, the United States needs to use it’s ever expanding energy supply to limit Russia’s.  Larry Kudlow and Elliot Kaufman recently published articles at The National Review arguing that President Donald Trump was setting the stage to expand energy exports to more countries in Europe.  Many of these countries are forced to work with Russia to keep the lights on.  Expanding our energy presence in Europe would not only put a hurt on Putin’s wallet it would severely limit the pressure he can exert on the continent.  This seems like a pretty good plan.  Unfortunately, the entire thing could be derailed by Trump’s “Made in America” attitude.

In 2002 President George W Bush implemented steel tariffs in an attempt to help save the domestic steel industry.  The results were disastrous.  200,000 people lost their jobs in steel reliant industries which equated to 4 billion dollars in lost wages.  This data, however, came out much later.  The reason President Bush and his administration decided to pull back on the tariffs was the retaliatory plans of trading parties in response to our tariffs.  Mark Tran of the Guardian explains “Mr Bush made his decision just days before a deadline that would have triggered retaliation from the EU, which was preparing to impose sanctions worth $2.2bn (£1.3bn) on US goods ranging from Florida citrus products to Harley Davidson motorbikes.”

Herein lies the problem.  If America imposes broad steel tariffs again, we could see our ability to export natural gas and extend our influence in Europe facing a significant roadblock.  In order to build the necessary infastructure, we need to be working openly with the Europe Union. The EU will be far less likely to back these costly infrastructure projects if they see it as a lopsided negotiation.  We need to ask ourselves a question.  Is propping up America’s steel industry worth hurting our economy and allowing Russia to maintain dominance in Europe?  I think most Americans would say no.

Why the Supreme Court is Allowing Trump’s Travel Ban to Go Into Effect

By
Taylor Griffin
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Photo: Wikipedia Commons

President Donald Trump finally caught a break in the courts Monday. The Supreme Court unanimously voted to allow much of his controversial travel ban to go into place while it considers the case. The move reverses injunctions issued by lower courts that blocked the ban. More broadly, it suggests that the Supreme Court — in contrast to lower court judges whose suspicions of Mr. Trump’s true motives were central to their decisions — intends to consider President Trump’s actions with the “presumption of regularity” it would apply to other Presidents.

Listen to the audio version of this story.

Monday’s order allows the portion Mr. Trump’s revised executive order barring entry for refugees and citizens of six countries at high risk of terrorism, without preexisting ties to the U.S., to go forward while it considers the case. “Denying entry to such a foreign national does not burden any American party by reason of that party’s relationship with the foreign national,” the Court said in its opinion. However, the Court leaves in place lower court decisions blocking enforcement of the order with respect to people with “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

The Court concluded that the injunctions should have been tailored more narrowly to entrants similarly situated to those at issue in the cases before the appeals courts. The Court’s opinion explained that the case before the Ninth Circuit considered Dr. Ismael Elshikh, a U.S. citizen living in Hawaii with relatives in Syria. Dr. Elshikh argued that the ban placed an undue burden on him by preventing his Syrian mother-in-law from visiting him in Hawaii. Yet, the injunction the court issued bars enforcement of the ban for all entrants, not just those in similar situations to Dr. Elshikh. That, the Court concluded, went too far.

The Government, the court said, has compelling interests n protecting national security. These “are undoubtedly at their peak when there is no tie between the foreign national and the United States… To prevent the Government from pursuing that objective by enforcing [the President’s Executive Order] against foreign nationals unconnected to the United States would appreciably injure its interests, without alleviating obvious hardship to anyone else.”

While the court hasn’t decided the case on its legal merits, its opinion signals that it could rule in favor of the Trump Administration when it takes it up in October. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent objecting to the court’s failure to reinstate the entire ban “the Government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits—that is, that the judgments…will be reversed.”

Trump and the ‘Presumption of Regularity’

The courts have historically given the President broad deference in matters of national security. The judiciary does not have intelligence services and foreign policy experts to equip it to make such judgements. The Trump Administration claims that the travel ban was intended to protect national security. So it was an unusual break with precedent when the lower courts declined to take his word for it. Pointing to President Trump’s campaign rhetoric, the appeals courts concluded that the primary purpose was instead to ban Muslims.

In the travel ban case, lower courts treated President Trump differently than other Presidents — substituting their judgement of what the President intended for his. In essence, they concluded that the President was lying.  Ben Wittes and Quinta Jurecic argue that this resistance to President Trump among judges is rooted in suspicion that he cannot be trusted to follow his oath of office faithfully and as such he should be treated as something other than a normal President:

It goes, not to put too fine a point on it, to the question of whether the judiciary means to actually treat Trump as a real president or, conversely, as some kind of accident—a person who somehow ended up in the office but is not quite the President of the United States in the sense that we would previously have recognized.

Whatever you think of the wisdom of President Trump’s travel ban or of the man himself, this approach sets a troubling precedent. The question of whether or not Trump is fit for the office he holds was, for better or worse, answered by the voters in November. The judiciary’s role is to interpret laws, not to psychoanalyze the President. As law professor Josh Blackman, who opposes President Trump’s travel ban on policy grounds but nevertheless believes it is legal, wrote in a Politico op-ed back in March, “[w]hen judges treat this president as anything other than normal, it sends a signal to the public that the chief executive is not as legitimate as his predecessors… Trump’s presidency will come to an end sooner or later. But the precedents set during this period will linger far, far longer.”

The judiciary’s role is to interpret laws, not to psychoanalyze the President.

Perhaps the most significant effect of the Court’s action Monday will be that it reestablishes the grounds for judicial considerations of President Trump’s actions within the normal bounds applied to other Presidents. Or, as Professor Blackman put it, “[t]he Supreme Court did what the lower court judges would not–treat President Trump like any other President with the ‘presumption of regularity.'”

A Veteran Journalist Explains How the News Media Really Works

By
Hal Tarleton
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Newspaper stack
Photo courtesy Jon S. via Flikr (CC2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/62693815@N03/6277208708

Some people seem to believe that American journalism is monolithic and all-powerful and that news reported in newspapers or in broadcast media has been prescribed and pre-written by a vast hierarchy of news dictators. Any rational examination of the U.S. news media reveals the silly impossibility of this conspiracy theory.

There are many hundreds of newspapers across the country and thousands of news outlets, including television, cable, radio and websites. It would be impossible to control or dictate to those many thousands, serving constituencies from small towns to large cities to professional associations. In the heyday of newspapers, when most respectable cities had at least two newspapers, those newspapers often represented different perspectives — liberal and conservative or Democrat and Republican.

The demise of daily newspapers has left most cities with only one newspaper, and it might present just one editorial viewpoint and endorse only one party’s nominees. But the essential need to sell newspapers to a broader population means most newspapers now take a more nonpartisan editorial stance.

He Said/She Said

A recent post on a current events/politics website prompted an angry reply from someone who blamed the news media for the current difficulties with public discourse. This person was tired of reading news stories that contained the terms “he said” or “she said.” The commenter, apparently, wanted reporters to own up to their own news stories instead of dodging responsibility by referencing someone else.

That commenter has never spent any time in a newsroom or a journalism class and never gave any serious thought to how news stories are generated or written. In 33 years as a newspaper editor and as an occasional college-level journalism teacher, I consistently emphasized to reporters that they are not news sources; they have no authoritative knowledge; they should have no opinion on a subject, even when they might have some personal opinion on the subject, as reporters, they have no opinion and no real knowledge. Their job is to interview those who do have knowledge, whether it is a witness to a traffic accident, a scientist involved in research that is of public interest, or a legislator pushing a bill through legislature. Their job is to accurately report what that source knows. This process should be done at least twice in every news story because almost every story has two sides; interview people on both sides of controversial issues and report what both sides have said, with as fairly equal treatment as practicable.

Facts or opinions that are not attributed to the source are like information in an academic paper that is not footnoted. The reader should ask, “where’s the reference?” As a newspaper editor, I often asked, “where’s your source?” Occasionally, I’d be told, “I saw it myself,” and I’d tell the reporter, only a little facetiously, “you need a better source! Who else saw this? Interview them.”

So the person who wanted to do away with “he said” and “she said” in news stories wanted something other than journalism. He/she wanted unsourced opinion, a personal perspective, not news. I suspect the angry commenter suspected reporters of dishonesty, of collusion with unseen puppet masters of journalism, of nefarious, insidious conspiracies against the public weal.

Political Bias and the Newsroom

Regardless of the leaning of the editorial page, however, respectable news sources mandate that news coverage be transparent, fair and non-partisan. Even the appearance of political bias could harm the public’s perception of a newspaper’s fairness. I had to threaten to fire a reporter who wanted to keep an outdated campaign bumper sticker on his car. I pointed out that his coverage of any political news would be seen as prejudiced as long as he had that sticker on his car. For that reason, I have never put a political sticker on my car or sign in my yard.

Reliable Sources

Concerns about citing news sources (“he said”) is something new. In years past, concern within and outside the news business had to do with anonymous sources, which are less trustworthy than named, clearly identified sources. Some newspapers tried to ban anonymous sources altogether, but that proved to be extremely difficult. Most anonymous sources are people who have clear, even unique, knowledge of a matter but cannot afford to be named because they would lose their jobs. This is especially common in the federal government, where clandestine plots are kept secret for fear of alerting opponents.

Most news organizations adopted a policy of requiring a second or even a third source for information from an anonymous source. The initial bombshell had to be verified by someone else with direct knowledge and with no direct ties to the original source. In hyper-partisan Washington, anonymous sources appear more frequently than ever.

A rogue reporter would have a hard time getting false or distorted news into a traditional publication exactly because of the “he said,” “she said” news style. A false report would have to get past one or more skeptical editors (and anyone who has spent much time in a newsroom is a skeptic). Then it would have to withstand the barrage of criticism from the sources themselves. No one likes to be misquoted, and most will demand a retraction, correction or the keys to the company as a defamation judgment.

At one time, bad reporting would not be tolerated. A news company had a reputational and financial interest in ensuring news is reported accurately. Bad reporters would be fired, or never hired. Editors and publishers kept close watch on news coverage. Facts had to be referenced and provable, thus the “he said,” “she said” requirement and editors asking, “How do you know this?” The proliferation of news sites made possible by the Internet gives readers access to more viewpoints and more sources for unvetted, unsourced, misleading news. The sad thing is that too many news consumers discern no difference between the reliability of the 150-year-old New York Times or Associated Press and the upstart Alt-Right or Democrats United.

On a Facebook feed, they all look about the same, so they must have the same reliability, right?

Hal Tarleton spent more than three decades as a working journalist and editor of The Wilson (NC) Daily Times. This post also appears on his blog, The Erstwhile Editor.  

A Veteran Journalist Explains How the News Media Really Works

By
Hal Tarleton
-
Newspaper stack
Photo courtesy Jon S. via Flikr (CC2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/62693815@N03/6277208708

Some people seem to believe that American journalism is monolithic and all-powerful and that news reported in newspapers or in broadcast media has been prescribed and pre-written by a vast hierarchy of news dictators. Any rational examination of the U.S. news media reveals the silly impossibility of this conspiracy theory.

There are many hundreds of newspapers across the country and thousands of news outlets, including television, cable, radio and websites. It would be impossible to control or dictate to those many thousands, serving constituencies from small towns to large cities to professional associations. In the heyday of newspapers, when most respectable cities had at least two newspapers, those newspapers often represented different perspectives — liberal and conservative or Democrat and Republican.

The demise of daily newspapers has left most cities with only one newspaper, and it might present just one editorial viewpoint and endorse only one party’s nominees. But the essential need to sell newspapers to a broader population means most newspapers now take a more nonpartisan editorial stance.

He Said/She Said

A recent post on a current events/politics website prompted an angry reply from someone who blamed the news media for the current difficulties with public discourse. This person was tired of reading news stories that contained the terms “he said” or “she said.” The commenter, apparently, wanted reporters to own up to their own news stories instead of dodging responsibility by referencing someone else.

That commenter has never spent any time in a newsroom or a journalism class and never gave any serious thought to how news stories are generated or written. In 33 years as a newspaper editor and as an occasional college-level journalism teacher, I consistently emphasized to reporters that they are not news sources; they have no authoritative knowledge; they should have no opinion on a subject, even when they might have some personal opinion on the subject, as reporters, they have no opinion and no real knowledge. Their job is to interview those who do have knowledge, whether it is a witness to a traffic accident, a scientist involved in research that is of public interest, or a legislator pushing a bill through legislature. Their job is to accurately report what that source knows. This process should be done at least twice in every news story because almost every story has two sides; interview people on both sides of controversial issues and report what both sides have said, with as fairly equal treatment as practicable.

Facts or opinions that are not attributed to the source are like information in an academic paper that is not footnoted. The reader should ask, “where’s the reference?” As a newspaper editor, I often asked, “where’s your source?” Occasionally, I’d be told, “I saw it myself,” and I’d tell the reporter, only a little facetiously, “you need a better source! Who else saw this? Interview them.”

So the person who wanted to do away with “he said” and “she said” in news stories wanted something other than journalism. He/she wanted unsourced opinion, a personal perspective, not news. I suspect the angry commenter suspected reporters of dishonesty, of collusion with unseen puppet masters of journalism, of nefarious, insidious conspiracies against the public weal.

Political Bias and the Newsroom

Regardless of the leaning of the editorial page, however, respectable news sources mandate that news coverage be transparent, fair and non-partisan. Even the appearance of political bias could harm the public’s perception of a newspaper’s fairness. I had to threaten to fire a reporter who wanted to keep an outdated campaign bumper sticker on his car. I pointed out that his coverage of any political news would be seen as prejudiced as long as he had that sticker on his car. For that reason, I have never put a political sticker on my car or sign in my yard.

Reliable Sources

Concerns about citing news sources (“he said”) is something new. In years past, concern within and outside the news business had to do with anonymous sources, which are less trustworthy than named, clearly identified sources. Some newspapers tried to ban anonymous sources altogether, but that proved to be extremely difficult. Most anonymous sources are people who have clear, even unique, knowledge of a matter but cannot afford to be named because they would lose their jobs. This is especially common in the federal government, where clandestine plots are kept secret for fear of alerting opponents.

Most news organizations adopted a policy of requiring a second or even a third source for information from an anonymous source. The initial bombshell had to be verified by someone else with direct knowledge and with no direct ties to the original source. In hyper-partisan Washington, anonymous sources appear more frequently than ever.

A rogue reporter would have a hard time getting false or distorted news into a traditional publication exactly because of the “he said,” “she said” news style. A false report would have to get past one or more skeptical editors (and anyone who has spent much time in a newsroom is a skeptic). Then it would have to withstand the barrage of criticism from the sources themselves. No one likes to be misquoted, and most will demand a retraction, correction or the keys to the company as a defamation judgment.

At one time, bad reporting would not be tolerated. A news company had a reputational and financial interest in ensuring news is reported accurately. Bad reporters would be fired, or never hired. Editors and publishers kept close watch on news coverage. Facts had to be referenced and provable, thus the “he said,” “she said” requirement and editors asking, “How do you know this?” The proliferation of news sites made possible by the Internet gives readers access to more viewpoints and more sources for unvetted, unsourced, misleading news. The sad thing is that too many news consumers discern no difference between the reliability of the 150-year-old New York Times or Associated Press and the upstart Alt-Right or Democrats United.

On a Facebook feed, they all look about the same, so they must have the same reliability, right?

Hal Tarleton spent more than three decades as a working journalist and editor of The Wilson (NC) Daily Times. This post originally appeared on his blog, The Erstwhile Editor.  

Dershowitz: Trump Didn’t Obstruct Justice in Firing Comey

By
Taylor Griffin
-

Alan Dershowitz is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, a prominent constitutional law scholar and among the left’s towering intellectual figures. But, at the moment, among many of his fellow liberals he is persona non grata. Professor Dershowitz has earned the enmity of the political left by arguing, in essence, that the same legal standard for obstruction of justice must apply whether a President is a Democrat or Republican. This is a perfectly reasonable position. Inconveniently, it also spoils their case for obstruction of justice against President Trump.

The anti-Trump contingent concedes that President Trump did have the authority to fire his FBI Director. But, they contend, this otherwise innocent act becomes illegal if the president was ‘corruptly motivated.’ Writing in the Washington Examiner Wednesday, Dershowitz warned that this is “a dangerous argument that no civil libertarian should be pressing.”

The law does not — and must not — bend to fit partisan ends.

What “corruptly motivated” means has a lot to do with where you stand politically. “If Hillary Clinton had been elected and Republicans were investigating her for asking the attorney general to describe the investigation of her as a ‘matter’ rather than a ‘case,'” Dershowitz wrote, “my colleagues would be arguing against an expansive view of existing criminal statutes, as they did when Republicans were demanding that she be locked up for espionage. The same would be true if Bill Clinton or former Attorney General Loretta Lynch were being investigated for his visit to her when she was investigating his wife’s misuse of email servers.”

As our friend Ted Frank might say, everyone remember to switch sides on what constitutes obstruction of justice. Professor Dershowitz deserves credit for forgetting to do so. The law does not — and must not — bend to fit partisan ends.

Among the more disturbing aspects of our current political moment is how readily we discard contrary facts and accept extremely dubious arguments when they serve our partisan biases.

Professor Dershowitz has taken enormous heat from his fellow travelers on the left for resisting this trend. Some have accused him of being paid off. Others have declared him to be “a Zionist Republican authoritarian bigot.”

When confronted with their own cognitive dissonance, people tend to react with anger — there is a special kind of bile partisans on the left or right reserve for those who challenge their own. “The point,” Dershowitz says, “is that many of those who disagree with my arguments refuse to believe that I am making them out of principle. They assume a corrupt motive.”

“We have to stop criminalizing political differences,” Dershowitz, told Fox News last week. “The criminal law should be reserved for obvious violations of the criminal law that exists, not for making political points against your political enemies on both sides.”

Professor Dershowitz has willingly suffered the relentless slings and arrows that seem to come with commitment to principle and intellectual honesty these days. While we may disagree with Prof. Dershowitz on many things, for this he has our respect — and the title of this week’s enemy of nonsense.

A Short Note on the Shooting in Washington

By
Taylor Griffin
-

Let’s all take a deep breath before we go blaming Democrats and the media for this morning’s shooting. The radicalization of politics as blood sport has happened on all sides. Judging from his Facebook page the shooter, James Hodgkins, was a Bernie supporter and rabidly anti-Trump. While we don’t know what caused him to open fire this morning, we might suspect that his political views had something to do with it. But, his political orientation is less meaningful than the concept of politics as warfare he apparently embraced. On this the left hardly has a monopoly.

What happened this morning is an alarming reflection of the depths to which our politics, on all sides, has sunk. We should respond with a call for civility, not just in those we disagree with politically, but also in ourselves.

What Sessions Didn’t Say May Be More Revealing Than What He Did

By
Taylor Griffin
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) makes opening remarks to a panel of Department of Homeland Security officials John Wagner, deputy assistant commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Field Operations; Anh Duong, director of Border and Maritime Division of Homeland Security's Advanced Research Projects Agency; Craig Healy, assistant director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's National Security Investigations Division; and Rebecca Gambler,director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, as they testify about the unimplemented biometric exit tracking system before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2016. (CBP Photo by Glenn Fawcett)

In testimony punctuated by flashes of anger, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called charges that he colluded in Russia’s effort to influence the 2016 election “an appalling and detestable lie.” The hearing revealed little new about the core issue of potential collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. There remains little hard evidence for that. But, the questions Mr. Sessions refused to answer were more intriguing than those he did.

Over the course of a sometimes contentious hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Tuesday, Mr. Sessions bristled at accusatory questions lobbed by Democrats. When Democratic Senator Ron Wyden pressed Mr. Sessions to explain what fired FBI Director James Comey was alluding to when he hinted last week at other reasons for Mr. Sessions recusal, tempers flared.

“Why don’t you tell me? There are none, Senator Wyden,” Mr. Sessions responded, his voice rising in anger. “This is a secret innuendo being leaked about me and I don’t appreciate it.”

Mr. Sessions frustration seemed well-justified. Mr. Comey’s vague accusation was a landmine that left Mr. Sessions in an impossible position – defending himself on charges about which he could only speculate.

From what we do know, Mr. Sessions contacts with Russian officials, specifically with Moscow’s Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, appear innocent. A meeting with a Russian Ambassador is not anything out of the ordinary for a Senator. Indeed, your humble blogger recalls meeting Mr. Kislyak’s boss, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavarov, many years ago as a young Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer. But, in light of the peculiar amnesia about meetings with Russians that infects Trump world, Mr. Sessions failure to initially disclose these encounters raises eyebrows nonetheless.

What Sessions Didn’t Say

But it was Mr. Sessions’ refusal to answer questions about the specifics of his conversations with President Donald Trump that ignited the most fireworks. Mr. Sessions declined to answer whether he discussed with the President potential pardons, the reasons for Mr. Comey’s dismissal and whether Mr. Trump had expressed his frustration with Mr. Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, invoking the ire of Democrats on the committee.

“There is also a congressional investigation, and you are obstructing that…investigation by not answering these questions, and I think your silence, like the silence of Director Coats, like the silence of Admiral Rogers speaks volumes,” Sen. Martin Henrich fumed.

Mr. Sessions cited Justice Department policy against revealing such discussions. However, Mr. Sessions was unable to cite exactly what policy precludes him from doing so. This led Democrats to press him repeatedly on whether he was asserting executive privilege. Mr. Sessions said he was not. “I’m protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses and there may be other privileges that could apply in this circumstance,” Sessions explained. Mr. Sessions selective refusal to answer questions about his discussions with the President and senior White House officials will not put these matters to rest. It seems certain that the committee will call his bluff. Senators will likely insist that either President Trump assert executive privilege or compel Mr. Sessions to answer their questions.

What Sessions’ Silence Might Tell Us

It’s reasonable to speculate that Mr. Sessions’ refusal to answer questions about whether he had talked with the President about certain matters could imply that he has. Elsewhere in the hearing, Mr. Sessions did deny that he had discussed various things with the President. In response to a question from Ranking Member Mark Warner about whether the President had confidence in Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Mr. Sessions responded, “I have not talked to him about it.” But, when Senator Warner asked whether any Department of Justice or White House officials have had conversations about the potential for presidential pardons related to the Russia investigation, Mr. Sessions declined to similarly deny that he had.

If there is internal talk about pardons, it suggests that while publicly the Trump Administration is dismissing the Russia probe as “fake news,” privately they are taking it more seriously. That shouldn’t be taken to mean that the charges of collusion in Russian election meddling are true. These investigations often uncover other issues that result in prosecutions. News reports indicate that several people formerly in Mr. Trump’s orbit could potentially face criminal liability on matters not directly related to Russia’s election meddling that have been raised in the probe.

  • Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn initially failed to disclose payments from Russian-owned TV network RT on his security clearance forms and financial disclosure filing. He also failed to register as a foreign agent for work his firm performed on behalf of the government of Turkey. Both potentially expose him to criminal liability under various federal statutes.
  • Special Council Robert Mueller is also investigating Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort’s business dealings with former Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian businessman and Kremlin ally. Both matters pre-date Mr. Manafort’s involvement in Trump’s campaign.

Mr. Sessions’ questioning, like Mr. Comey’s, didn’t change much when it came to the question of potential collusion in Russia’s efforts to influence the November elections. There remains little direct evidence that either Mr. Trump or Mr. Sessions were complicit on Russia’s scheme. Despite all the hype, we are still about where we started two weeks ago — waiting for Special Council Robert Mueller to report back to learn the truth.

In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s defenders would be wise to check their calls for firing Mr. Mueller. If Mr. Trump has done nothing seriously wrong, Mr. Mueller’s exoneration might be the only thing that will allow Mr. Trump to put the Russia story behind him. Firing Mr. Mueller would only exacerbate his problems. If he fires Mr. Mueller, whether he is innocent or not, the Russia cloud that so frustrates the President may never lift.

READ MORE

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2017/03/need-know-jeff-sessions-recusal/

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2017/06/comey-really-fired-five-things-matter-comeys-testimony/

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2017/05/2294/

 

Why Comey Was Really Fired and Five Other Things That Matter After Comey’s Testimony

By
Taylor Griffin
-
Photo: C-Span/Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia Commons

Former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Thursday was riveting, but in the long run, not as damning as the White House may have feared. In his first public remarks since being sacked by President Donald Trump last month, Mr. Comey mounted an effective defense of the FBI, refuted attacks of his leadership of it, and called into question the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration in the wake of his firing.

Yet, Mr. Comey’s testimony offered no clear smoking gun. It certainly didn’t help Mr. Trump, but it could have been worse. The damage was doled out in mostly superficial wounds to Mr. Trump’s credibility that mattered little to Trump supporters, among whom Mr. Comey’s version of events carries little currency.

To Mr. Trump’s supporters, the key takeaway was Mr. Comey’s confirmation that Mr. Trump was not a target in the FBI counterterrorism investigation into Russian election meddling. For the President’s critics, it was “lies, plain and simple” — Mr. Comey’s stark refutation of the White House’s characterization of his leadership of an FBI they claimed to be in disarray. At the end of the day, while Mr. Comey’s testimony wasn’t exactly the “total vindication” Mr. Trump claimed on Twitter, it wasn’t the decisive setback many predicted either.

The Real Reason Comey Was Fired

Constant leaks and Mr. Comey’s earlier testimony that the FBI was investigating potential collusion of Trump’s campaign in Russia’s election meddling left an erroneous impression that Mr. Trump was personally a target of the probe. The wisdom of Mr. Comey’s refusal to confirm what we now know as fact, that Mr. Trump was not, is debatable.  Mr. Comey’s rationalization that he would have a “duty to correct” if Mr. Trump later came under investigation seems lacking. It is fair to argue that Mr. Comey had a duty to correct the misperception that he was.

It’s plausible that Mr. Trump was not personally complicit in Russia’s election meddling. If so, Mr. Trump’s frustration with the “cloud” created by the FBI’s investigation, which emerged as a consistent theme in Mr. Comey’s testimony, seems more understandable. Andrew McCarthy argued in the National Review that it was Mr. Comey’s refusal to publicly confirm that Mr. Trump was not a direct target of the investigation that led to his firing. “Do you suppose the desperation to tell that to the world, the exasperation over Comey’s refusal to tell it to the world, just might have been at the front of the president’s mind?” he wrote.

Trump looked foolish and prideful, but not necessarily criminal. 

Despite all the hype leading up to Thursday’s hearing, on the primary question of Mr. Trump’s complicity in Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the needle barely budged. Nothing in Mr. Comey’s testimony suggested new evidence that Mr. Trump colluded in Russia’s scheme to influence the 2016 election. Mr. Trump’s overtures to Mr. Comey about going easy on former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and lifting the cloud the probe had placed on his Presidency, while arguably inappropriate and certainly a breach of the traditional protocol for interactions between a President and FBI Directors, aren’t in themselves criminal obstruction of justice. As Mr. Comey noted in his testimony, the President can fire an FBI Director for any reason or no reason at all. After Mr. Comey’s testimony, Trump’s pleas look less like obstruction of justice and more like poor judgement and lack of understanding of what is and isn’t appropriate in his interactions with an FBI director.

Media commentators thought Comey’s testimony was damning; Trump supporters were unfazed.

Media commentators universally thought Mr. Comey came off as the honest, sincere good cop. He was remarkably candid about both his interactions with Mr. Trump and his own actions and thinking. It was among the most stunningly open and unvarnished congressional testimonies of recent memory. Mr. Comey’s primary goal was to defend the FBI, and his actions as its leader against the attacks of President Trump and his surrogates. In this Mr. Comey largely succeeded, at least among audiences willing to listen.

Mr. Comey’s testimony may have caused Mr. Trump’s credibility to take a hit — but only among those inclined to view Mr. Comey as the more credible source. Mr. Trump’s supporters are thoroughly hardened against attacks on him. Trump loyalists view the mainstream media as fake news, polls as rigged, and Russian interference in the election as a fiction concocted by the press and their “deep state” allies to absolve Hillary Clinton of blame for Trump’s victory. Few of them will be inclined to take Mr. Comey’s word for it.

Comey’s candidness gave Team Trump fresh ammunition.

Mr. Comey’s candidness had a flip side. It provided fresh ammunition for Mr. Trump and his defenders. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz pounced on Mr. Comey’s admission that he orchestrated the leaked memos detailing Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Comey — an attack line later reflected in a tweet by Mr. Trump. The implication that the leak was illegal (it wasn’t) and that Mr. Comey is a “leaker” responsible for other media reports damaging to Mr. Trump were assumptions that Team Trump were more than happy to let stand.

Mr. Kasowitz’s response, while at times disingenuous, may prove more effective than the usual White House strategy of scattershot hyperbole, which often leaves the White House vulnerable to incredulous news stories that extend the story for days.

Kasowitz’s Complaints About Comey’s Leaked Memo May Violate Whistleblower Statutes

In their zeal to capitalize on Mr. Comey’s admission that he was behind leaks, Trump’s defenders may be overplaying their hand. The formal complaints about Mr. Comey’s leaked memos Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Mark Kasowitz reportedly intends to file with the Justice Department and the Senate Judiciary Committee could land Team Trump in hot water.

As the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump pointed out, it may qualify as retaliation under federal whistleblower statutes.

In other words, Comey, here, is an employee who is blowing the whistle, to use the idiom, on his former boss. That boss wants to punish him for doing so. That’s problematic — especially if there’s no evidence that Comey actually violated any law that would trigger punishment.

Comey’s testimony poured cold water on charges of partisan motives

The accusations of political motivations behind Mr. Comey’s actions regularly leveled by Mr. Trump’s defenders didn’t hold water in light of his testimony. Mr. Comey’s detailed and unusually honest account of the thinking behind his decisions revealed a consistent thread of concern for protecting the institution for the FBI and the credibility of its work. Mr. Comey was also quite critical of the actions of Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s attorney general. Mr. Comey revealed that Mr. Lynch instructed him to use language that downplayed the significance of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton:

“[T]he attorney general had directed me not to call it an ‘investigation,’ but instead to call it a ‘matter,’ which confused me and concerned me, but that was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude I have to step away from the department if we’re to close this case credibly.”

 

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