Month: June 2018

A Time to Kill

It was 1996, amazingly, twenty-two years ago.  John Grisham’s novel about race and the South, A Time to Kill, was released on film. Matthew McConaughey played the young white lawyer who discovers his own prejudices; his client, Samuel L Jackson, falsely accused of rape, made them clear.  His mentor, a disbarred and disgraced Southern gentleman, was Donald Sutherland. Sandra Bullock was the young researcher who found the important information, and was kidnapped by the Klan. The pivotal scene, when the white McConaughey convinces a white Southern jury to be color blind is one of the great closing arguments in cinema.

Trey Gowdy, retiring Congressman from South Carolina, is fifty-three, too old for the McConaughey role. But he’s carefully combined the smoothness of McConaughey with the worn tiredness of Sutherland to create his own persona.  Thursday, his “cross examination” of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the House Judiciary Committee; tied pulled loose, three days of blonde beard on his face; had the drama and pace of that climatic scene in A Time to Kill.

Of course, it wasn’t a cross examination, it was a closing argument.  Gowdy used the idiotic tweets of FBI Agent Peter Strozk, to try to discredit the Mueller investigation.  Gowdy tried to demonstrate that Strozk’s bias against Trump managed to save Clinton from prosecution, and prevented Trump from being President.  It would all make sense; except that Trump did become President. The Russia investigation was never leaked out.  The FBI and Strozk protected it, keeping it so secret that they misled the media, convincing them that there was no investigation.

Gowdy demanded that Mueller take his evidence and, “…present it to the damn grand jury.”  “Finish it the Hell up,” Gowdy insisted of the year-long investigation. This, after leading his own Benghazi committee on an $8 million, 322,000 word, two and a half year quest to find wrong-doing by Hillary Clinton: and found nothing.

The fact that the Judiciary committee questioned Strozk himself this week was left silent. Strozk, and the Democrats on the Committee, asked for the testimony to be made public, but the Republican members have kept it classified, carefully cherry-picking snippets to bring up in public hearing.

But Gowdy did make one good point in his “McConaughey” moment.

During the hearing, the US House of Representatives, led by the Freedom Caucus and not Speaker Ryan, voted to warn General Rosenstein that they will consider his impeachment if the Justice Department doesn’t give them the “scope and sequence” documents of the investigation.

Those documents outline the “who, what, and where” of Mueller’s investigation.  It is beyond unheard of that a criminal inquiry would be opened bare in the middle of the investigation, even more that the information would be turned over to those being investigated, as Mayor Giulani has suggested.  Mueller and Rosenstein will never allow it:  should the House of Representatives truly want, they can create a Constitutional crisis.

Rosenstein may be impeached by the House.  The Republicans are so enamored with defending the President, that they are “all in” regardless of what might come out of the investigation.  And while the Senate would never remove Rosenstein, the impeachment itself would probably require his recusal from oversight of Mueller. Or, more likely, it would give the President the excuse to fire him.  And once Rosenstein is gone, Mueller loses his “air cover,” and is open to attack.

The Mueller investigation can bring charges against almost everyone involved, except for the President himself.  It is highly unlikely that Mueller would bring those charges; instead, he will probably report to the same House Judiciary Committee a referral for impeachment of the President.  Whether that report is private to the Committee and buried, or public to all; is up to Rosenstein, or whoever would replace him.

Where will things go? We have the crisis on the border, the Supreme Court vacancy, the ongoing trade war with our “former” allies, and a President still unconvinced that Russia attacked our elections.  We are in a world of crisis, and the Mueller investigation is looming over all.  Gowdy’s dramatic diatribe, intentional or not, was really a warning:  get the investigation done, get the charges out; or the political situation may spin so far out of control that no one can foresee the consequences.

On that point, he’s right.

 

Civility or Civil War

Democratic member of Congress Maxine Waters spoke at a rally last weekend.  She called on the crowd to harass Trump Administration members:

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them!”

The owner of the Red Hen Restaurant of Lexington, Virginia, asked White House Press Secretary to leave her restaurant.  She could not, she said, in good conscience serve the spokesman for the President who split families and took children.  The Trump supporter response has forced the restaurant’s closure for at least two weeks.

Stephen Miller, Presidential Counselor and the purported author of the child separation plan, was shouted out of a Mexican bar in Washington, DC.  Protestors gathered outside his apartment complex. Protestors also gather outside of Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Neilsen’s home, broadcasting the cries of babies being removed from their parents.

President Trump is no stranger to threats and intimidation.  Through his tweets and in his political rallies, he has slandered, sworn, and threatened a variety of people.  According to the President, Maxine Waters is “low-intelligence,” and NBC news commentator Chuck Todd is a “sleepy eyed son-of-a-bitch.”  In a recent rally he pointed out CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was then verbally attacked by the crowd.  Trump has offered to pay the legal fees of audience members who beat up protestors. He has suggested violence against gang members in police custody, and found “good people” among white supremacists.

The “Resistance” to Trump has taken on a new tactic.  While mass marches and demonstrations continue, some have taken the attack personally to the Trump Administration.  In response, many, both “Trumpsters” and others, have cried foul, saying that this lack of “civility” is beneath the goals of the resistance.  They quote Michelle Obama (in response to the Trump campaign)  “…when they go low, We go high!”

Those in favor of the new tactics, cite American history.  They view themselves as the modern day Abolitionists, fighting an ultimate evil. As the Abolitionists might have done anything to end slavery, including fomenting revolution as John Brown did at Harper’s Ferry, so many feel today.  They see the President committing the ultimate immoral action of using children as political pawns.  They feel that “stolen” children are beyond the rules of civility, and must be met with “the gloves off.”

The resignation of Justice Kennedy makes that desperation even greater, as their most important rights are now on the block:  from women to LGBTQ to organizing as workers.  In some ways the Kennedy resignation nullifies whatever results of the future November election might be; regardless of the outcome the conservatives will remain in control of the Supreme Court. It doesn’t help that the Democratic leaders in the Senate like Dick Durbin are whining about being the minority, one vote short of control.  They offer no hope.

So what should the analogy be?  Is our era equivalent to the pre-Civil War times?  Is this what we must do to maintain morality, recreate the Abolitionist movement of the mid 1800’s to stand against Trump’s actions?  And if we are in that sorry a state, does it mean that there is an inevitable conflict coming among Americans?

There is the theory of revolution:  revolutions among the people don’t occur when things are at there worst.  They occur when things get better, and then dramatically change to worse.  It’s a “darkest before the dawn” idea. We went from a progressive era, represented by the Obama Presidency, to this present.  Are we at the darkest moment of this era, or will the “Resistance” be even more aggrieved in the future?  Are we facing a second American apocalypse, or is this “counter-revolution” to progressivism a last gasp?

Enough questions:  my answers are also taken from American history. While we have from time to time had extremists in control of the government, we have also ultimately rebounded back from it.  In 1968, when the nation was rocked by assassination, anti-war protests, civil rights demonstrations, and the cultural revolution of the “age of love;” the nation chose Richard Nixon as President.  It seemed like a complete reversion from the hopes and dreams that John F. Kennedy had provided.

It was an ugly time, and would continue to be so through Watergate to the end of the Vietnam War.  But there ultimately was a “dawn” after all of the darkness.  In the same way, the darkness that “Resistors” see now, may well change. There is November, and the opportunity to regain Congress.  There is the Mueller investigation, and the opportunity to find out what really happened in 2016.  There is still hope.

And if there is hope, there is power.  Despite Dick Durbin’s message of futility, the Resistance still can make a difference, and make a change.  The chanting crowds in the restaurants and at the homes of Trump officials are emotionally satisfying, but they are ultimately signs of weakness and hopelessness. Stephen Miller won’t be changing his mind because of confrontation, in fact he probably went to the Mexican bar looking for it.

It’s not about civility, it’s about directing energies to create change.  We have November, focus on that.  As the two famous phrases from the civil rights movement say:  “keep your eyes on the prize” and “we shall overcome.”

 

I watched “Selma” this week.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.  It’s about moral courage in an important and desperate cause – and sounds eerily like today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rights on the Border

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.” – Trump Tweet – 6/25/18

Tuesday (6/26/18) the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Trump v Hawaii.  This was the question that started out as the “Muslim Ban,” the campaign pledge made by candidate Trump to ban all Muslims from travel to the United States, “…until we find out what the hell is going on.”  This pledge was translated into an executive order in the first days of his Presidency, banning travel from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen; all Islamic countries.

The ban immediately started a firestorm, focusing on the religious singularity of the order.  The question: was the President of the United States able to ban “a religion” from entering the country?  It didn’t help that the ban went into effect so immediately that folks got onto flights to the US with visas, and arrived to find they were “rejected.”

Federal courts in various states stepped in to put a hold on the action. The administration issued a revised ban, modified but still including only Islamic countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.   This ban was blocked by the Courts as well.  Subsequent to those court orders, a third revision was issued, significantly adding North Korea and Venezuela to the list.

It was this third iteration that the Supreme Court evaluated.  The additions of North Korea and Venezuela clearly altered the “Muslim Only” issue.  The Court, in a Conservative/Liberal (Republican/Democrat appointee as well) split of five to four, ruled that the National Security duties and powers of the Executive branch give the President great latitude to make policy decisions.  And while the Court noted the statements made by candidate Trump prior to the election, they chose to focus on the “black letter” wording of the executive order itself. The religious singularity issue no longer applied, with Catholic Venezuela and mainly Buddhist North Korea added to the list.

The Supreme Court decision gives great deference to the President’s powers on issues of national security.  This was the same deference granted to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he instituted a plan to place American citizens of Japanese descent, known as Nisei, into internment camps for the duration of World War II.  The Supreme Court, in the 1944 decision in Korematsu v United States, ruled that the “national security” emergency of World War II overcame the Constitutional rights of those American citizens of due process and from government seizures.

It was a dark period in American history, comparable to the Trail of Tears removal of Native Americans and slavery.  And while Korematsu himself was exonerated in 1983 by a Federal District Court, the actual Supreme Court decision was never overturned.

However, Chief Justice Roberts referenced Korematsuin the Trumpdecision, stating that a executive decision based, “…solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority.” Roberts made it clear that Korematsuwas no longer a part of American legal precedent, joining  (Dred) Scott v Sanford and Plessy v Ferguson as historic relics.

So it is now established law that race cannot be used to deny rights to citizens in the United States, even when national security is the “excuse.”  It is also established that the President can bar travel into the United States based on national security concerns.

So what rights do non-citizens have once they are on US soil (or under the jurisdiction of the US)?  The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution applies here, stating:

“…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Do non-citizens fall under the US Constitution, entitled to 14^th Amendment protections, or are they some other class of persons who have lesser rights?

In the 2008 case of Boumediene v Bush, a Guantanamo prisoner filed a writ of habeas corpus with the Court.  This motion requires that the government authority holding the prisoner show cause (proof) of the reasons.  The US government argued against answering the “writ,” citing national security and location.  National security  based on the government stating that the “proof” would require them to reveal sensitive intelligence data and sources.  In addition, the government claimed that the prisoner was not located in the US, but in Guantanamo, and therefore not eligible for Constitutional rights.  And finally, as a non-citizen, the right to habeas corpus would not apply.

The Court ruled in favor of the prisoner, stating that the he was within US jurisdiction even if not US territory proper, and therefore gained Constitutional rights.  This even though Boumediene himself was a non-citizen designated an “enemy combatant” in the War on Terror.

In light of these decisions we can draw the following conclusions.  First, non-citizens under US jurisdiction have Constitutional rights (Boumediene.)  Second, while the President’s authority in the interest of national security are powerful, they do not extend to actions based on race (Korematsu).  And that the President does have significant powers when it comes to immigration (Trump.)

So it clearly is within the President’s power to stop illegal border crossings.  While it hasn’t reached the Supreme Court level, lower courts are already weighing-in on the actions of the government to separate families, finding against it. Could the President deny Constitutional rights to due process (legal hearings) to an illegal border crosser who claims the legal right to asylum in the United States, as his tweet demands? Taking the decisions together, I believe not, even in the reign of the conservative Court created by Senator McConnell.

So if there ever was a question if voting makes a difference:  had Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to the Court, been confirmed rather than Neil Gorsuch, this case would have been decided differently.  The outcome is the reward for Senator McConnell’s refusal to allow a vote on Garland. If the Democrats gain control of the Senate in November, they should definitely remember his actions.

 

 

 

Government for Sale

It was Christmas of 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Communist Party Secretary and leader of the Soviet Union, failed.  In his four years of power, the economic and political reforms he introduced to save the Soviet Union, desperate changes to “Communism,” foundered.  The economy didn’t recover, the disparity of wealth between the party apparatchiks and the rest of the people was too great.  The “member states” of the Union had broken away.  Gorbachev had decided to “…tear down this wall” in East Germany, and the readymade markets of Eastern Europe were gone.

Hard line members of the Communist Party revolted against the reforms in August, but were faced down by Boris Yeltsin (standing on a tank) and the people.  The Communist Revolution of 1917 was over:  Gorbachev resigned on Christmas Day, and on New Year’s Eve, 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved.

The Soviet Union was a Communist based economy.  That meant that the means of production, the factories and the stores; were all owned by the government.  So were the collective farms, the fields and machinery.  With the end of the government, all of this went up for sale; up for grabs to the highest bidder.

Much like the US South after the Civil War, those with some money, both insiders and “carpetbaggers,” were able to “buy low” in the fire sale of a buyer’s market.  Billons of rubles were made and lost; and a whole new class of wealthy “apparatchiks” were created.  They were not Communists; their path to government power was based on their money, legal or illegal.  Russia went from a Communist state to a “kelptocracy,” a nation based on theft, the theft of the fortune that was the Soviet Union.  The Russian people were still left with the money at the top, and the vast majority left to struggle.

Those billions of rubles moved throughout the world economy, impacting most aspects of finance.  The world center for financial markets is located in New York City, so it was no surprise that Russian rubles began to exert influence on American business and politics.

There has long been a strain of American conservatism that believes that whatever needs to be done, private industry can do it better.   There is an old cartoon from the early 1960’s that shows Senator Barry Goldwater, the father of modern conservatism, with an aide whispering in his ear “…Senator, the post office has always been owned by the Government.”  It was a joke, the Post Office is an original Constitutional authority of the government.  It’s not a joke anymore.

The Trump Administration issued its proposal for Government reorganization last week, under the fog of the immigration scandal.  The big items:  merging the Departments of Education and Labor into one, “…to address the educational skills and needs of American students and workers in a coordinated way…” and moving all of the nutritional aid programs from the Department of Agriculture into a renamed Department of Human Services (to become the Department of Health and Public Welfare.)

But it’s in the privatization of long government-administered programs where the money can be made. The air traffic control functions of the FAA, and the Postal Service are two services on now to go on the block.  This is in addition to the private contracting of such services as the housing of interned migrants.  The $10 million contract for the “tent city” camp erected in the Texas desert southeast of El Paso, was let to General Dynamics, a company best known for building defense systems.

And now the Trump Administration is looking to build what can only be called internments camps for many thousands of immigrants on military bases throughout the country. Those camps will be paid for by the Defense Department, but the actual building won’t be by the Army Corps of Engineers or the Seabees.  These are high priced contracts, going out to private companies.

It has been the “mantra” of conservatism that private industry can do it better.  We in Ohio have seen the folly in that plan, at least in the traditional government function of education, with the colossal failure of ECOT, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, a private computer based school that received an enormous amount of state funding.  ECOT ultimately enrolled thousands of students who didn’t “attend,” and received millions of dollars for them.  While it is now being sorted out in the courts, at least $60 million in state educational funding was misused.

So while the privatization of government may seem like a good “capitalist” plan, we should look carefully at the available examples.  The “fire sale” of the Soviet Union, that brought us the kleptocrats of Russia, made the rich richer, and left the people even farther behind.  And we know that Russia seems to be admired by the far-right minds that provide the Trump ideology.  And we also know there’s lots of money to be made by “selling” the government.

Doesn’t that sound like ideas designed to appeal to President Trump?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mom’s War

On June 25^th, the Union Jack will fly from the flagpole at my house. Mom would be one hundred years old.  She left us seven years ago, surrounded by her family, and giving instructions until the end.  That was Mom, in charge.

I was thirteen years old in 1970, living in Dayton, Ohio. My Mom was from England; we had been there to visit relatives several times.   I knew she had done something more in World War II than the civil service job she mentioned.  I also knew she had a deep-seated hate for the Germans (a hate that faded when my good friend’s Dad turned out to have served in Luftwaffe.) But I didn’t know much about what Mom did during the War.

1970 was twenty-five years after the end of the War.  It was also when the Official Secrets Act oath expired.  Mom had sworn to keep her wartime activities secret, and had lived up to the promise.  So we were in a car, driving down the South Dixie Highway, when Mom began to tell her story:  the story of a covert operative at war.

Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor was born in June of 1918, during the Great War.  She was the fifth and youngest child, and given the nickname Babs that stayed with her the rest of her life.   Her parents did their best to raise their children in the tradition of the British “Public” School (what in the US we would called private boarding schools.) Mom went to several, finishing her education at the Loretto School in Leige, Belgium.  When she returned to London, she was fluent in French with a Belgian accent, and began her study of English Literature at the University of London.

It was the late 1930’s:  as the nations of the world recovered from the Great Depression, the young people found ways to have fun.  Babs was friends with a group studying at Oxford University, and while in her later years she would strongly deny it, they were a partying crew.  She fell for a young man, her “…golden haired Apollo,” and they loved life.  Her parents held an engagement party; twenty men and twenty women attended.

 

“Babs” O’Connor Dahlman – 1945

But Nazism was growing more powerful in Germany, as Hitler moved to take over Europe. The leaders of Great Britain made compromises to appease him, but on September 1^st, 1939, he invaded Poland, starting the Second World War. All of Babs’ male friends went into the service, her fiancé joining the Royal Air Force.  By 1940 the Nazis determined that they could bomb Great Britain “…to her knees,” and the Battle of Britain began.

The Spitfire pilots of the RAF defended the island at a high cost.  Her fiancé, stationed not far from London at Grantham, would “buzz” her home after each mission.  But inevitably, he did not come back; shot down and killed.  Of the twenty men at the engagement party, all perished in the war.

When the war began, military intelligence was forced to staff up quickly.  One major source of personnel was academia, the professors from Oxford and Cambridge were brought in to defend their nation.  As the young men went to the service to fight, their older professors went to the intelligence agencies.  As these same young men died defending the skies over England, a new branch was formed:  Special Operations Executive.  The goal was to run missions in Nazi-occupied Europe, disrupting the infrastructure, and keeping Nazi troops pinned down controlling the countryside.  SOE worked with underground resistance groups throughout Europe, and also performed solo missions.

What SOE needed was dedicated operatives, willing to risk everything, who could blend into the population.  A young woman, educated in Belgium and desperate for a chance for revenge, would be perfect.  Babs was approached by an SOE officer who was familiar with the Oxford group and the fate of her fiancé.  He offered her that chance:  “it would be very dangerous, was I willing to chance my life?”  She was.  She was given a code name:  Virginia.

The select team was trained to be spies.  They practiced tradecraft, how to leave and take secret messages.  They learned how to work the tiny radios, and were trained to memorize at a glance (Mom was a master of “pelmanism,” what we would call fifty-two card pickup.  We thought it was a game.)  They followed each other through the streets of London, learning the art of remaining undetected.

They were sent to commando training in Scotland, climbing cliffs and making forced marches.  Her group raided other groups, practicing their techniques as they stole cases of Scotch. It made the ten mile march back easier.  While a sprained ankle delayed her parachute training, she was still ordered to deploy.  Training was over.

Mom’s favorite plane was called a Lysander.  It was a single engine, top wing plane that could land and takeoff on short and rough runways (we used to visit the one hanging in the Air Force Museum in Dayton.) The SOE used it to fly their agents into fields in Europe, lighted only by a few torches.  Virginia started her first mission from RAF Base Tempsford, headed to France.

Lysander at US Air Force Museum

A chance encounter with a Messerschmitt almost ended things before they began, but the pilot was able to evade, and a few days later she was off again to France.  The Lysander landed in a farm field, met by the Resistance.  Information was exchanged, and soon after another Lysander landed in the field and she was back in England.

During those early missions, Virginia was paired with a teammate, Tony Graham.  Tony was another dashing blonde from Oxford, part of the social group that included her fiancé.   He fell in love with her, and she loved him, but only as a great friend.

Virginia and Tony went on many missions into occupied Europe.  In one, she had the information about the mission, he had the explosives needed for the job.  They landed in Belgium, contacted the underground, and delivered the goods.  A Nazi troop train was destroyed, and Virginia and Tony were picked up by another plane.

The plane was shot up and caught fire.  They bailed out, parachuting back into Belgium.  The pilot wasn’t so lucky, staying with the burning plane into the ground.  Virginia made her way to a safe house.  Tony was on his way to the same place, when he ran into a German tank column, asking for directions.  He directed them in perfect German and both went on their way.  Tony arrived at the safe house, and in a day, both were back in England, Babs at her cover assignment in the pensions office.

Tony was later sent to the Tehran conference (Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met in Tehran in 1943 to plan the invasion.) He was captured by the Nazis along the way.  Of the ninety-six members of Virginia’s group in SOE, only three survived the war.

Virginia was sent to Yugoslavia (now Serbia) to work with the Resistance there.  She aided in their operations, and met the leader and future dictator of  Yugoslavia, Tito.

When back in London, Babs continued to find ways to have fun.  An American was coming to London and arranged a blind date with her through a mutual friend.  Since Americans had “terrible reputations,” she wanted to meet publicly, so she chose a restaurant called “the Queen’s Brasserie.”  As she described it, “… she kept looking at the tall blonde Americans coming in the door.  But then there was a dark haired smaller man, he looked interesting.”

Don Dahlman – 1944  (thread on canvas by Patricia Dahlman) 

Babs and Don fell madly in love.  They talked through the night, walking through the blacked out streets of London. Don only had suspicions of what Babs did (he had some friends in US Army Intelligence) but he wanted to be near her, so he wrangled a transfer to be closer to London.  They were married on March 27^thof 1944, but their honeymoon was interrupted.  Don was sent to a port in England to prepare for the D-Day Invasion, Virginia was flown to France to help the coastal Resistance groups prepare.

After the invasion, Don followed the fighting across France.  Virginia continued missions ahead of the battle, and for ten months they were separated.  After one mission, she hitchhiked across France to find Don.  When she finally located his unit, he was out on the town and she had to return without seeing him.

As the Nazis faced total defeat, Virginia was sent to search for her SOE teammates in the Concentration Camps, where they might be taken if they weren’t executed.  She found Tony at Dachau.  The Nazis had done brain surgery experiments on him, and there was little left to save. She got him back to England, but there was nothing the doctors could do.  He soon died.  As Mom said, “…Virginia died then too.”

In late 1945, Babs and Don left England for the United States, sailing on separate ships.  They went to Cincinnati (Don’s hometown) to start a family, then teamed together to advance his career in broadcasting.  It wouldn’t be until that drive in 1970 that she would talk about her real role in World War II to family and friends:  Babs, Virginia, Mom; we learned about a real story of sacrifice in the War.

Don and Babs Dahlman – 2008

It is Mom’s 100^thbirthday, and her story lives on.  She had a final request, that as much as she loved the United States, she was “always, always,” to be remembered as a citizen of  England.  We quoted her favorite poet, Rupert Brooke, on her headstone.

 

Mom’s Grave Stone

 Note:  Mom told us many of her stories in the latter years of her life.  We (the family) are lucky to have them both in written and recorded form.  The actual SOE records were destroyed in the 1950’s –burned in a fire – too many lives lost. I have used information from her writings for this essay, as well as my own ‘history teacher’ memory.

My sister Pat has done a complete art work of Mom’s life – link here.  Thanks  for allowing me to use one of her works in this essay.

Men in Black

It was 1997.  One of the leading movies of the year was “Men In Black”, starring Tommy Lee Jones as “ Agent K” and Will Smith “Agent J.”  It was a story of the “MIB,” a secret government agency that managed the aliens that were already here on earth.  While the “MIB” had multiple weapons, at the end of each alien “event” they brought out their “neuralizers” and with a flash of light removed any spectator’s memory of the incident.

One of the prime investigative sources that “K” used was tabloid newspapers.  Early in the script, “K” taught “J” the value of the tabloids:

K – We’ll check the hot sheets.                             

J – These are the hot sheets?  (K riffles through the tabloids)                           

K – Best investigative reporting on the planet.  Read the ” New York Times” if you want.      They get lucky sometimes.                             

J- I cannot believe you’re looking for tips in the supermarket tabloids.                            

K – Not looking for —  Found.

(here’s the scene – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brawJsSUtxk)

The National Enquirer is one of the most successful “newspapers” in the United States, with circulation just under the Sunday New York Times and ahead of the Washington Post.  The difference between the Enquirer and the Times and Post is that the Enquirer is a tabloid paper, one with banner headlines and stories about celebrities that are mostly not true.  Whether it’s news about the aliens that “K and J” are supposed to control, or the sordid actions of Brad Pitt cheating on Angelina Jolie, the Enquirer screams out its headlines from the check-out line of every supermarket in the country.  You might not buy “the rag,” but it’s still in your face – every time.

It’s a joke.  You buy one to have a laugh, to read on a long road trip, to use as an example in classroom of un-vetted journalism or how the Spanish American War started.  But while it only sells a million, the front page is seen by hundreds of millions.  Those banner headlines are an un-recognized force, quietly planting ideas in the public mind, even if they don’t actually ever read the paper.

And when the National Enquirer took a side in the 2016 election, we didn’t really even notice it. When all of the Trump articles and headlines were positive, and all of Clinton’s were negative, it went under conscious perception.  But read the headlines, at every check-out counter, the week before the election day:

11/5/16 – Hillary Clinton Hooked on Narcotics

11/4/16 –  Hillary Clinton’s Satanic Inner Circle

11/2/16 – Sick and Tired Hillary Erupts at Bill Clinton Rape Protestor

11/2/16 – Hillary Clinton FBI Investigation – ‘The Fix is In”

11/1/16 – Clinton “Love Child’ Wants DNA Sample – From Monica’s Stained Dress

11/1/16 – Hillary Clinton:  8 New Shameful Email Leaks

10/31/16 – Top FBI Agent:  The Clintons are a ‘Crime Family.”

And the “beat goes on,” even recently:

4/17/18 – Hillary Clinton Plans Her Own Hero’s Burial (brain-cancer patient eyes Arlington for eternity.)

But what we didn’t know in 2016, is that the publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, was not only a Trump supporter, but was allowing the Trump campaign, through Attorney Michael Cohen, editorial control of the paper.  Positive articles about Trump, and damaging faked headlines and articles about Hillary were checked with Cohen, who made the final decision about publication.  In essence, the Enquirer became an arm of Trump campaign.

In addition, Pecker paid $150,000 for Karen McDougal’s story of a year-long affair with Donald Trump, and then quashed the story. It never made the Enquirer, or any other paper.  This was done in coordination with Michael Cohen, and could be considered an unreported campaign contribution, along with the value of all of the headlines from the election year.

The Trump era is clearly the time of “Reality TV Politics.”  With the First Lady wearing signs on her coat, the drama of the morning “tweet,” the barrage of unsubstantiated and false information coming out of the White House, the invention of “fake news,” and now the revelation of the weaponizing of tabloid newspapers; it never seems to end.  Last night Tom Arnold added his schizophrenic view to the mix.  It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

Maybe it will make a good movie in twenty years. Tommy Lee Jones won’t probably be around (the National Enquirer I’m sure will let us know) but Will Smith would make a great hero.  Or maybe after the “Trump Era” is over, we can all get a flash from the “neuralizer.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four Letter Words

WALL

The President tweeted this morning – no surprise there.

“Republicans should stop wasting their time on immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/Women in November.  Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solve this decades old problem. We can pass legislation after the Red Wave.” 

The Republican controlled House failed to reach any solutions to the immigration issue this week. The Goodlatte Bill, considered a conservative response to the issue, included a legal status for Dreamers, an end to child separation at the border, and the full $25 Billion funding for the President’s Wall.  Every Democrat voted against the bill, but the bill’s fate was decided by the Republican Freedom Caucus.  Forty-one Republicans voted against the bill, including many of the hardline caucus members.

The key complaint of the Freedom Caucus – an eventual path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

A second, more moderate Republican alternative was pulled from consideration by Speaker Paul Ryan. The Freedom Caucus has united to stop it, and even though there would probably be enough Democratic votes to overcome the block, outgoing Speaker Ryan is unwilling to violate the unwritten “Hastert Rule.” The Republican rule states that if the bill cannot pass with Republican votes alone, the Speaker will not put it on the floor for consideration. The unwritten code puts a group like the Freedom Caucus, with enough members to prevent a Republican majority, in control.

Ryan is unwilling to risk revolt in his last few months as Speaker by negotiating with Democrats for needed assistance.

And while the Senate is considering some narrowly written bills regarding child separation, the House is unlikely to vote on any of them without getting their Wall funding.  This failure marks the end of the “Zero Tolerance Maneuver” strategy from the White House, who hoped by creating the crisis on the border, they could force through immigration legislation.  While the policy may continue on the border, its prime goal has failed.

DON’T

I Really Don’t Care – Do U?

 First Lady Melania Trump, rumored to have influenced the President’s decision to end the “child separation” strategy, went to visit a care center in Texas yesterday.  The optics of the visit were great, as she asked significant questions of the care workers, and showed great concern.  Yet the carefully crafted message of a “caring” First Lady was completely blown up by a bizarre jacket choice.  Mrs. Trump, on a humid eighty-degree day, wore a $39 raincoat with a large-writ message on the back:  “I really don’t care – do U?”  While she took the coat off upon arrival in Texas, it was back on for the flight back to DC.

So the question is: did the First Lady want to send the message that she didn’t really care about the kids?  The President later tweeted that she didn’t care about the “fake news media,” but that seems like a convoluted means of sending that message. Perhaps she was sending a message to the President, but whatever the thoughts were; the jacket definitely overshadowing her intended message.

She obviously knew what she was doing – just the fact the former fashion model was wearing a “cheap” jacket proves that.  So either there was a huge staff controversy about her decision prior to the trip, or someone on the staff needs to be fired.  Maybe they were the same staffers who plagiarized Michelle Obama’s text for her “Be Best” book, or the convention speech.  They should definitely hear the President’s trade-marked phrase.

CAMP

“Since more illegal immigrants are rushing the border, more kids are being separated from their parents and temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps, or as the San Diego Union-Tribune described them today as looking like basically boarding schools,” – Laura Ingraham

Fox commentator Laura Ingraham decided that since there were tents and cafeteria-style meals served, the detention facilities for the children taken at the border were “summer camps.”  This as contrasted to:

Senator Jeff Merkley – concentration camps

First Lady Laura Bush – internment camps

Attorney General Jeff Sessions – concentration camps is an exaggeration.

So if they are like summer camps, except for the fences and the detention, then Laura wouldn’t mind if parents could get their kids back?  No job consequences were announced for Ingraham.

WOMP

“Womp-Womp” – Corey Lewendowski

Corey Lewendowski, Trump advisor and former campaign manager and currently employed by Vice President Pence’s political committee, was in a heated discussion on Fox News about child separation at the border.  When his “opposing” debater mentioned a ten-year old girl with Down’s Syndrome separated from her mother, Lewendowski responded with the universal adolescent sign for indifference:  “womp-womp.” The phrase, best known from cartoon character Bart Simpson, enraged the opposite speaker, but didn’t seem to faze the moderator.

The Vice President Pence had no comment on the “womps.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find Ken Feinberg

This is my fifth essay on the border crisis.  The “unwritten rules” of Trump World are to not get stuck on one subject, and not “chase” the headlines.  As General MacArthur said,  rules are made to be broken.   

President Trump signed an executive order yesterday to end his “policy” of separating children from parents who cross the border illegally.  He did so under extreme public pressure, and even greater pressure from the Republicans in Congress.  They saw the policy as a huge campaign liability for November.

President Trump states that separating children from their parents will stop.  He also stated that the policy of “zero tolerance” at the border will continue.  This means that every person who crosses the border outside of the designated “ports of entry” will still be charged with a crime, and held for trial.

This was the change that started the entire border crisis.  Prior to the beginning of May, those caught crossing illegally were processed for a “civil” offense, then released until trial.  Ninety-nine percent of those released were returning for their trial, even though the result might well be deportation.  The “zero tolerance” policy made the crossing a criminal action, and those charged are held in custody.

So the arrests will continue.  Families will be held together in custody.  Within eight days all of the existing facilities designed for families are likely to be filled.  This will be the first of a series of cascading crises keeping this issue at the fore of American thought.

The second crisis is centered around the Flores Agreement.  This legal understanding, originally settled in 1997, determines how long children can be held in custody by the Departments of Homeland Security or Justice.  The agreement states that after twenty days, the children must be removed from custody. If the parent(s) is still held in legal custody, and the children are not released to a custodial parent or relative, then the government is obligated to transfer the child to a “least restrictive” situation.

The government considers that “ least restrictive situation” the camps and facilities, run privately under contract to the Department of Health and Human Services. They are holding 2342 separated children now, as well as several thousand other minors who crossed the border on their own.  Lawsuits have already been filed questioning that action.  The Attorney General has given notice that he will go to court to get the Flores Agreement modified, giving him more time to hold families in jail. As a twenty-year old decision, it is unlikely the courts will do so.

The second crisis under “zero tolerance” will be when the “families in custody” reach the twenty-day limit.  Under Flores, those children have to be released.  Under the Executive Order, they cannot be separated from their parents. Will the Government release the families, or ignore the courts, or separate the children again?

Or will President Trump declare “victory in defeat;” release the families, and blame the Congress for failing to build “the Wall?”  This could make his policy failure into a “hot” political issue for the November elections.  “My hands are tied by Congress, give me a bigger Republican majority,” might be his tweet the day that the families walk out.

All of these are a few days out.  But the greatest crisis arising from the President’s actions is occurring right now. 2342 children, from eight months to seventeen years old, have been “seized” by the US government, and literally scattered across the country.  While the government has kept the locations and conditions of these privately run facilities secret, we already know that they are located in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Michigan, as well as in the southern border-states.

There is no plan to return these children to their parents.

The parents are in the custody of the Justice Department.  The children are held in private facilities, ostensibly under control of Health and Human Services.  There is no direct method, no wristband or bar code, that connects these kids to their parents.  The numeric coding used by the Border Patrol doesn’t transfer to HHS.  And if the parent gets deported, there is no process to send the kids with them.

There are already multiple cases of parents returned to their home country and unable to get their kids for months.  Former leaders of the Department of Homeland Security have made it clear that there will be children who will NEVER BE RE-UNITED with their parents.

The United States has taken these kids from their parents.  We have kidnapped them.  The penalty for the parent’s misdemeanor offense of crossing the border illegally: loss of their child, maybe forever.

This cannot be allowed.

Ken Feinberg is the attorney America turns to in its greatest moments of need.  Feinberg was the “special master” who distributed the funds from 9-11, from the BP oil spill, from the Penn State molestations, and from the Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings.  Ken Feinberg sorts out the biggest problems that our country has, and while he isn’t always perfect, he is able to take these incredibly complicated actions and provide some relief.

The Immigration, Customs and Enforcement Agency had no plan to put these kids back together with their parents.  The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t either.  The kids, some infants, have been “disappeared” into the maze of facilities and foster care programs.  It will take a special person with special powers to get them back to parents, who might well be back in the dangerous slums of El Salvador or Guatemala before they can be reunited.

Ken Feinberg should be appointed as the “special master” by the courts, and given whatever powers and authorities he needs to get the job done.  The US government is willing to spend over $750 a night per kid to keep kids in tents in the desert; if they can afford that, they can afford Ken Feinberg. Whatever the cost, it’s the right thing to do, and it needs to be done NOW.

Beneath the Screams

The United States is faced with a moral crisis. Our nation is taking children from their parents and holding thousands of them in detention.  We are not starving them, but we are abusing them.  We have snatched them from their parents, and we are not offering them a sure way to reunite their families.  The mental and emotional damage is difficult to estimate, but it is sure.

There is a tremendous amount of emotion in this issue.  In the House of Representatives hearing on the Inspector General’s Report, Elijah Cummings, Democratic Congressman from Maryland, ignored Mr. Horowitz at the table, and eloquently demanded the Congress free the children.  Multiple reporters and new commentators have emotionally broken down on air; Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are full of the arguments about what America should do.  It’s hard to post “rational” comments on those, it is so much easier to scream out.

So let’s start with the facts.  The facts are the government of the United States has altered the immigration enforcement policy on the Southern Border.  No “statutory law” has been changed; what changed was the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice enforcement policy.

Crossing the border is and always was illegal.  So is driving faster than the speed limit.  Both of these offenses were considered “civil” offenses, in neither case was the lawbreaker held in jail.  The government of the United States for many years (and many Presidents) treated illegal border crossings as a civil offense; offenders were picked up, processed, and returned across the border.

The Trump Administration has changed that interpretation.  They have criminalized border crossing.  They have ordered the Justice Department to prosecute every case of illegal border crossing to the full extent of the law.  The analogy is:  now when you get caught for speeding, you are arrested and go to jail.

There have been “unaccompanied minors” crossing the border for several years.  This came to a head in the last couple of years of the Obama Administration, and the immigration service has had to find ways to house and care for these teenagers.  So when the argument is made that Obama, Bush, and Clinton held children, it’s true. They held these teenagers, crossing by themselves without parents.

They also held those few children who crossed with parents, but whose parents committed other crimes beyond the crossing itself.  Clearly if a parent with child tried to evade the border patrol, much like those poor folks killed this week in a tragic car chase, then the parent would be jailed until trial, and the child would need to be cared for.

So what has happened to create today’s crisis?  By criminalizing illegal crossings, the Trump Administration has created a whole new class of immigrants who are jailed until trial.  Court rulings have made it clear that the minor children cannot be jailed (their parents committed a crime, they didn’t) and so the families cannot be held together.  Now, all of a sudden (since the April implementation of the policy) the Border Patrol is faced with thousands of minors to care for, ranging from the teenagers they were used to, to babies.  They weren’t ready for the numbers, and they certainly weren’t ready for the little ones.

So in answer to the right-wing cries that every President did this:  not true. In answer to the claim the “the law is the law:” no – it’s changed.

And to answer the President’s cry that it’s up to Congress to fix this:  no, you changed it, you can fix it.

And meanwhile the kids pile up at the border.  And it’s not only the change in policy that created this crisis.  In addition, the Department of Homeland Security knew that there was a “spring” influx of migrants heading toward the border.  In the past there has been increases in the hearing officers, judges, and attorneys needed to quickly evaluate the claims of immigrants for amnesty.  This time, DHS did nothing.

The lines to cross “legally” are days and weeks long.  The Mexican border towns, long known for their lawlessness, are dangerous places for these families to wait.  And as they wait, more and more migrants pile up behind them.  The pressure builds to pay the last “bribe” to find someone to lead them across the border, illegally.  Once they cross, they turn themselves into the Border Patrol.  And since they are “criminals” their children are taken away.

The Trump Administration is wholly responsible for creating this crisis.  At every turn, they have made choices to exacerbate the situation. And, just as DHS wasn’t ready at the border, they weren’t ready for the influx of kids they’ve created.  They are scrambling to find places for them, building tent cities in the desert, and shipping children all over the country (reports of young children being sent to Florida and New York City.)  No one; no one for or against the policy, has any assurance that those children can be tracked and linked back to their parents. Adults have been deported, unable to regain their children, and unable to get them back.  We stole their kids.

Besides the horror of government sanctioned kidnapping, there is the economic cost.  Who will pay for these children who get “left” in America? Perhaps a new private industry will grow up; right now the defense giant General Dynamics is making a fortune providing instant housing.  The tent city in the desert of Texas costs $10 million.

We have a border crisis, and a moral crisis.  And we aren’t even sure we can get the kids back, whatever we decide about the parents. It grows darker and darker, an artificial crisis, created on purpose, with tragic results.

 

 

 

 

This is Bannon’s Crisis

I first began writing essays for Trump World in February of 2017.  One of my earliest was called The Bully and Bannon.  It was an attempt to try to predict what the Trump Administration would do through the known views of Trump’s political “wizard,” Steve Bannon.  Trump himself seemed malleable, willing to take on whatever view achieved his goal, but Bannon was much better defined and had the President’s ear.

Bannon is no longer a part of the Administration, though adherents like advisor Stephen Miller are still in place. But the President believes that Bannon’s philosophy won the Presidency, and that it will keep him there.

There’s a lot of what Bannon believed that has come to pass.  His philosophy was that the US is stronger in one-on-one relationships with countries, rather than in international groups. The size of the US economy gives it the advantage in almost every bilateral negotiation. We are the big bully.  So, the United States has removed itself from multi-lateral treaties and groups.  The Pan-Pacific Trade Agreement, the Paris Climate Accords, the Iran Nuclear Agreement and the threats to the North American Free Trade Agreement are just a few we have reneged on.  In addition, the actions at the last G-7 summit, where the US declared a tariff war on our allies Canada, Mexico, and the European Union fits in with Bannon’s view.

The same holds true with the actions towards North Korea.  The beginning strategy was one of bluff and bluster, from “fire and fury” to “bigger buttons.”  Then, without asking for the aid of other nations, including South Korea, the US opened bilateral negotiations with the North with a Trump/Kim summit.  Whatever the outcome of this strategy will be, it fits perfectly with the bi-lateral view.

Bannon also believed that the US needed to stop being the “role model” for other nations.  His view was that the US should do what’s best for the US, no matter what impact it might have on others.  It’s not surprising then, that long held allies, NATO in particular, have felt slighted and insulted.  This view also lead to US actions in the Middle East, where the transfer of the embassy to Israel to Jerusalem cost hundreds of Palestinian lives. That wasn’t “our concern.”

But perhaps one of the scarier Bannon philosophies was his world-view.  He saw the word poised on the brink of a world conflict between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern; between Muslims and Christians, and between white people and brown.  He looked to nations with similar problems to ally with, most notably Russia, with its significant and restive Muslim population. Bannon, and potentially now the US government, is on the side of the nationalist movements in Europe, including Brexit in the United Kingdom, the new leader of Italy, and other far right organizations.

It should be no surprise that President Trump tweeted yesterday:

“The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”

There is no false nicety here:  this is about race.   It’s not just Europe; it’s here too.  The US actions on the Southern border, seizing the children of immigrants who commit the misdemeanor offense of crossing the border outside of the “ports of entry” wouldn’t be happening if they were Norwegian refugees.  It is no surprise that Attorney General Sessions was parsing the difference between his actions and those of the Nazis on Fox News last night. There are too many similarities.

The “browning” of America, where “whites” become a minority by 2050, is a focus of the White House.  Presidential actions from the travel ban, to Charlottesville, to Puerto Rico, to the border, all have one thing in common.  The President reacts very differently to the problems of “brown” people then he does for “white” people.  And it is exactly what we should have expected from Steve Bannon.

We have placed this philosophy in power.  We have elected the radical right to run America, whether we knew it at the time or not.   It is now up to us to determine what we can do about it. We can accept this nationalist, racist, apocalyptic view of America’s future; or we can stand against it.  We are in the same position as the Abolitionists of the 1850’s and the civil rights marchers of the 1960’s.

We don’t have a border crisis; we have a moral crisis.

 

 

 

 

 

Hostage Choice

In the “post truth” world it is difficult to find “a real” fact.  President Trump’s rant on the White House lawn on Friday exemplified this, with multiple statements that simply were not true.  He claimed the Inspector General’s Report on the FBI Clinton email issue completely cleared him of any wrongdoing in the Russia scandal. He claimed the Democrats have total control of the immigration debacle on the Southern border.  Both of these statements are false.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirsten Neilsen claims that there is no policy of separation at the border. She is parsing the legalities of the situation.  Her stand: if migrants cross legally with an asylum claim, they are not separated from their children.  If they cross in any other way, either not at a “port of entry” (cross the border illegally) or without a prior asylum claim, they are “criminals” and therefore lose their children.

The change is not in the law, it is in the policy of enforcement.  Prior to April, immigrants who claimed asylum were processed as families regardless of how they crossed the border.  In April, a “zero tolerance” policy, developed and pressed by White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, was instituted.  Everyone who came across the border without the full legal niceties was considered a criminal.  Criminals go into the criminal justice system, they are not processed in the immigration system.  Since they are in the criminal system, they lose their kids.

So when President Trump says this is a Democratic law, and their problem to fix, it simply isn’t true. What is true is that the Miller created and driven policy has generated the crisis, putting thousands of children in Federal custody, without their parents.  Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “President Trump can stop this policy with a phone call.”  So why doesn’t the President make the call?

The President and the Republicans in the House of Representatives are using the children as hostages to force their border wall agenda.  A bill soon to be introduced in the House will offer to end the family separation policy, and give Dreamers special status allowing them to remain in the US; in exchange for the $25 billion border wall.  Whether that bill can pass the House (the Freedom Caucus radical Republicans aren’t sure it’s tough enough) or the Senate (Senate Democrats aren’t interested in hostage blackmail) remains to be seen.  But Trump and Miller are looking for a big immigration “win” before the November elections and they see this crisis as giving them the legislative leverage to get it.

First Lady Melania Trump is even part of this strategy, as she chimed in this weekend.  A statement released through her spokesperson said:

“Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform,” her communications director, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN on Sunday. “She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”

Steve Bannon, the architect of many of the President’s more controversial policies, returned to the political fray, saying “…It’s zero tolerance. I don’t think you have to justify it.” And, of course, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has quoted the scriptures to justify the policy, quoting Paul’s message to obey Caesar’s laws (Romans:13.)

But to the Administration, this is about politics, not children.  They are betting that the Trump base will stand with the President, enforcing the “law” against the “criminals.”  Administration surrogates throw the magic words “MS-13” onto the flames, as if the gang members are bringing kids with them to sneak across the border.  And they are happy to have this distraction from the Mueller investigation.

To many, many others, this is seen as a moral crisis.  Since April, 1174 children have been separated from their parents at the McAllen Immigration Processing Center alone.  We, and this is being done in the name of the citizens of the United States so it is ‘we’, have put thousands of children in custody.  We are imprisoning them, even if the prisons have clean sheets and “three squares a day.”

But they are not prisoners.  They are hostages, taken to secure the President’s border wall and win seats in Congress in November.  It will be up to the citizens of the United States to determine the outcomes of this action, through protest, demanding legislators to act, or at the ballot box.

What actions, what morality, are we willing to accept from our government?  President Trump admires Andrew Jackson, who had no problem ordering an entire race to be moved across the country in the Trail of Tears.  We are setting up camps, just as we did during World War II with the Japanese/American internment camps. We are reproducing some of the most immoral periods of our nation.  In the end, it’s our choice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspected and Certified

Michael Horowitz has the unenviable job of Inspector General to the Department of Justice.   For those of us who watch “Law and Order” on TV, the Inspector General is the hated Internal Affairs, the IAD.  Horowitz determines whether the law enforcers follow the rules as they enforce the law. IG’s are never going to be popular; their job is to criticize and hold up to the light what was wrong.

Like many of the other players in this long drawn out crisis, Horowitz is a product of the best law schools (Horowitz graduated from Harvard, as did Deputy AG Rosenstein, Mueller from Virginia, Comey from Chicago, Chris Wray, Yale.)  His job is to be thorough, to examine every action, and to make recommendations. Sometimes he suggests improvements in departmental regulations; sometimes criminal charges.

Last week, Horowitz released an incredibly detailed report about the conduct of the FBI in the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation, known as “Midyear.”  For all sides in the ongoing crisis called the Trump Presidency it was anticipated to be an inflection point, setting the next direction of debate.  It turned out to be exactly what it was supposed to be, a detail review of the actions of the FBI team and whether they adhered to policy and the law.  And to all of the pundits, waiting to pounce on the report to further their side; it was a disappointment.

To those looking for a Deepstate conspiracy to further the Clinton campaign and stop the Trump candidacy:  to use the phrase of this crisis, there wasn’t much “there, there.” The only red meat was more foolish texts from lead investigator Peter Strozk to his paramour D of J attorney Lisa Page, pledging to “stop Trump.”  Horowitz found Strozk, Page and others to have been unprofessional in their use of government owned devices.  For experts in counter-terrorism, they were either so confident, or so arrogant, that they never thought their communications would be read.

Horowitz hammered home on the “appearance of bias.”  But, to the Deepstate conspirators dismay, Horowitz also described a decision making process with many involved.  He found no evidence of Strozk’s bias changing the outcome. And in fact, Horowitz suggested that the final actions of FBI Director Comey influenced the outcome of the election towards Trump favor.

There was no declaration that “Clinton was let off” or “FBI agents protected Clinton.”  The only unanswered question:  why did the search of Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer (I refuse to say laptop) stall for three weeks.  Deepstate conspirators may point to that as protecting Clinton, but the outcome; Comey’s “October Surprise” letter to Congress, now seen as the reason for Clinton’s defeat.

To those looking to “shut down” the Deepstate rumors, the report wasn’t enough either.  The Inspector General carefully circumscribed his examination to the Clinton e-mail; he did not enter the Russia investigation at all (originally lead by Strozk.)  And while the IG mentioned the “culture of leaking” that pervades the FBI, he did not provide any details about the long suspected New York Office–Giuliani link. Many Clinton supporters believe that it was this connection that drove Comey to write the October letter.

In more than five hundred pages, Horowitz outlined the evidence gathered in his study.  He did not give an opinion on the result of “Midyear” other than to say that he found the outcomes to be reasonable given the evidence found.  His criticism was reserved for the actions of Director Comey after the investigation was concluded, and the “appearance of bias” the text messages showed.

No one is going to be “locked up” (much to Giulani’s dismay.)  Horowitz has made recommendations to FBI Director Chris Wray, and Wray has promised to follow up and make changes.

Hillary Clinton has been reserved in her response.  For the sake of Democrats in the 2018 election, she needs to be.  While she will find reason to be angry in the IG report, her further response will simply become more fodder for the “right.”

President Trump has declared that the report exonerates him from any “Russian Collusion” and proves he was right to fire Comey.  The report states neither, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from creating his own “fake news.”

In short, the report did exactly what it was supposed to do. It examined the FBI investigation, and it showed what was right and wrong about it.  It detailed the past and made recommendations for the future.  It didn’t reveal much, it simply added more detail to what we already knew.  It will take the next report to change the direction of the debate, and the nation.

It will take the Mueller report.

 

 

Twenty-Four 

[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!

No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it – text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page

 

“24” was a Fox television series that ran from 2002 to 2011.  The lead character was Jack Bauer, an agent for the Central Terrorist Unit of the US Government.  His job, hour by hour, was to protect the United States from a variety of threats, often using any means necessary.  Brutal torture was one of Bauer’s tools, but only to “really bad guys.”  He saved the country, again and again.

If Jack Bauer had been around during the summer of 2016, here’s what might have happened.

A famous reality star and businessman, Ronald Crump, was running for the Presidency of the United States.  As the season begins, we find out that members of Crump’s campaign have been in contact with Russian Intelligence operatives.  Russian intelligence has hacked into the email of the Crump’s opponent, Jillian Hinton, and a clearly coordinated release of embarrassing emails hits the internet at the optimum time.

Bauer receives further intelligence through highly secret electronic intercepts that the highest members of the campaign are working with the Russians.  In addition, an old friend in British intelligence lets Bauer know that Crump is deeply indebted to Russian oligarchs, all controlled by the leader of Russia.  He also reveals that the candidate engaged in deviant sexual behavior that Russian Intelligence has on tape.  “Kompromat,” blackmail, was another hook into the Crump’s campaign.

Bauer is faced with the possibility that a “Manchurian Candidate;” controlled by Russian Intelligence, is a major party nominee for President of the United States.  And Bauer has another problem, Crump’s opponent is also flawed; Hinton has been extremely careless with emailing classified information, an investigation that Bauer concluded last season.  But now, there are more emails that might further damage her candidacy.

Through all of this, Bauer is having an affair with a Justice Department attorney.  Both are married to other people, but see each other daily on the job.  The pressure of their highly classified missions pushes them together.  They want to communicate, but can’t use their own personal phones for fear their spouses will see the texts.  So they use their government issued phones, classified from their spouses, to carry on their relationship.

What would we expect Jack Bauer to do?  Will the US elect a “Manchurian Candidate,” who could be used by the Russians to further their foreign policy aims of destroying the post Cold War world order? Will the flawed opponent overcome her email mistakes?  As the clock clicks down to the end of the season, we sit on the edge of our couches, wondering what will happen next.

Bauer, confident that the US voters will make the right choice, continues to build the case against the Crump campaign.  But then, in an unexpected plot twist, Bauer’s boss at CTU decides to release new information about Hinton’s email.  Thousands of messages have been found on the laptop of a sex deviant, and turns out the deviant, a former Congressman, is married to Hinton’s chief campaign advisor.

The Director of CTU releases the news that the Hinton investigation is reopened, ten days before the election.  Bauer and his lover are desperate; Crump, even though some of his deviant sexual actions are now public, is recovering in the polls.  The election closes in, and Crump, by a fluke in the Constitution, becomes President of the United States.

As the last hour ticks away, Bauer goes back to work, building a case.  The man elected President of the United States is under control of the Russians.  Tune in again next season, to see what happens next.

Of course, that season of “24” couldn’t run on Fox.  Maybe NBC will pick it up.

The Power of Tweet

Mark Sanford, Republican Congressman from South Carolina, lost his primary bid for another term this week.  Sanford, the former Governor of South Carolina, is a well-known conservative, who has also spoken out against some of the excesses of President Trump.  He is not a “never-Trumper,” the kiss of death in Republican circles, and he has baggage of his own, including his famous “ naked hike” on the Appalachian Trail that turned out to be a flight to Argentina to meet his lover.  But he thought that was all behind him, until, the tweet.

Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina. I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie! – @RealDonaldTrump 

It was the day of the election, and President Trump weighed in with his view.  It was his first entry into this campaign.

There is a famous scientific phrase, “correlation does not equal causation:” just because something happened, it doesn’t mean it caused something else to occur.  Sanford had run a “lean” primary campaign, saving money for the expected tougher general election campaign in a “blue wave” environment. And Sanford’s criticisms of Trump were well known.  But the Republican primary turnout was low, and Sanford lost by less than 3000 votes out of 63,000.  The general consensus among “those who know” is that the tweet was the decisive factor. The message the President sent was clear:  speak out about me, and I will cut you down with a tweet.

To those of my generation (the end of the baby boomers) it still is hard to comprehend the power of the tweet.  We grew up with information filtered and vetted, through news sources we trusted. Twitter is twelve years old; it is hard to “wrap our head” around the impact it has.   To my generation, twitter was a “kid” thing, something to send funny memes and videos, or more nefariously, a way to harass and threaten.

And it’s even harder to imagine that a seventy-two year old man who doesn’t know how to email would become a master of twitter.  But here we are, and while most agree that there is a “twitter team” in the White House that runs the Trump feed, Trump’s greatest power seems to be his ability to tweet.

Abraham Lincoln was able to move the nation through his oratory.  But it wasn’t only those few that actually heard the speeches that were moved. It was the reprints in the newspapers and pamphlets that spread across the nation, from the famous debates with Stephen Douglas (a house divided), to the Gettysburg Address (this hallowed ground) and the Second Inaugural (with malice towards none.)

Teddy Roosevelt believed in moving the nation through his own example.  Whether he was boxing on the front lawn, dragging ambassadors on hikes through Washington, or riding in the American West; Roosevelt created his image as a role model.  And he made sure the press was with him, to report his example to the world.

His cousin Franklin became the master of the new medium, the radio.  He used his voice not so much in oratory (though he did say “nothing to fear but fear itself”,) but in living room conversations with America, broadcast from the fireside in the White House.  In the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt talked to America assuring them and giving them reason to hope.  And through his use of radio, and the dramatic broadcasts from the battles of World War II, Americans came to trust the voices of CBS, NBC, and ABC.

President Kennedy was the first to master the television, but it was President Reagan who used the medium to its fullest.  Reagan, trained as an actor, was able to reach Americans through his speeches and press conferences, making them understand his views and actions through his folksy charm and modesty.  And again, the nation got its contact with the President through the three networks, and continued to trust both him and the other news they delivered.

The Trump team has found a way to circumvent the press.  They first generated attacks on the mainstream media (MSM is the derogatory shorthand) aided by the long running feud between Fox News and the rest of the industry.  They “softened the ground,” chanting the “fake news” mantra over and over, backed up by the alt-right internet and Fox News personalities.  “Don’t trust the MSM,” they said, “they are the same liberal ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ that Spiro Agnew declaimed in 1970.”

Then they set out their own facts, directly to the public, on Twitter.  The President, much as FDR did in the 1930’s, spoke directly to the people, this time in one-hundred and forty characters (later doubled.)  And while Twitter didn’t have the penetration of radio or television, it still became the preferred means of talking to Trump’s nation. It is their “news,” now not just from the President, but from everyone around him.  And since “the nation” no longer trusts “fake news,” then what comes out on Twitter is just as likely to be considered true.

Trump has mastered the power of tweet.  It has allowed him to try to create his own universe of fact, whether we are safe from North Korean nuclear attack, or in a trade deficit with Canada.  And as the whole nation approaches the crisis of the Mueller results, it will be a real battle: the power of the tweet, versus the power of Mueller’s findings.  The results of that conflict may well determine the future of America.

Not My Country

I know I wrote about this subject last week.  I know that this was President Trump’s number one priority:  his first speech as he glided down the golden escalator, about stopping the murderers and rapists (and maybe some good people) at the border.  I know that we are getting exactly what he promised.  But my country is not Nazi Germany.

I also know that the “family centered” support of the Trump Administration simply doesn’t apply to brown people. Chief of Staff John Kelly made it clear in his statement to NPR that, while they aren’t bad people, they can’t “assimilate” into the United States, “…they’re overwhelmingly rural.” Hey, General, they’re overwhelmingly Hispanic too.

And Attorney General Jeff Sessions believes he has the plan:  let potential immigrants from Central America, legal or illegal, know that their families will be separated and their children sent away if they come to the United States.  That way – they won’t come.  Put them in jail when they get here, and put their kids in a “kiddie jail” too.  And if we run out of room for all of the kids – well our pardoned buddy Sheriff Joe Arpaio has the answer:  put them in tents on a military base.  That’s a great place to herd a bunch of unsupervised kids.

I know my friends from “the other side” will tell me that it’s not the US Government’s fault.  The adults that brought those kids risked them from the moment they left their homes.  They risked kidnapping, rape, human trafficking, exposure to the elements, and starvation.  And that was just the journey.  So they “get what they deserve” when they reach the border.

To quote the kids from Parkland, I call BS.  America is better than this.  These are the kind of people America wants, folks who care so much about their families and their lives, that they are willing to risk it all for a better place. The vast majority of them are not – “OH MY GOD – MS-13!!!.”  They aren’t even the young drug runners from Mexico.  They are, literally, “ the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

This is  what America was made of.  And it’s not just what happens to the immigrants, or the kids. It’s about what happens to the Americans who are put in the position of doing these deeds.  Doesn’t anybody recognize the words, “you’re just going to take a bath.”  Will we start playing symphonies as they go next?  Those AMERICANS who are forced to separate the screaming kids from their screaming parents:  what are we doing to them?

And for those who say President Obama was doing this before – not so much.  There was a whole lot of underage immigrants coming to the border, and the Obama Administration was faced with dealing with all of those teenaged kids.  But they were alone, not with their parents.  Americans had to take charge and control of them.

Stop this.  Stop doing this in OUR name.  I know the Trump Administration has promised to stop illegal immigration, and while we can have the long argument about what the policy should look like:  STOP THIS NOW.  We are America – we do not abuse the weak and helpless, even if it gets a few more votes “from the base.”  STOP THIS – in the name of whatever it is you believe in that makes you human, STOP.

Who Votes

While our attention was turned to the events in Singapore, the US Supreme Court released a decision that upheld Ohio’s law to remove and update the state’s voter registration list. The Supreme Court split five to four for the decision, with the conservative five lining up against the more progressive four.

The Ohio Law is one of several state election laws brought into question in the courts.  Each of these laws has a process for automatically removing voters from the registration lists if over a period of time those voters either don’t vote, or don’t respond to communications from the elections department.  The avowed claim is that this is simply a “housekeeping” chore, removing those from the voting rolls who have moved, or died.  Ohio’s law is one of the more reasonable versions.

If a voter fails to vote for two years, the Board of Elections sends a card in the mail asking them to respond.  If the voter fails to respond, it triggers a series of mailings over the next four years. If the voter neither responds nor votes during that time, the voter’s name is stricken from the voting list.

It seems reasonable. Voting is tied to residency; if a voter is no longer living at the residence given on the election registration, then the voter is no longer eligible to vote in that precinct.  Election officials point to voting lists filled with the moved and the dead; and warned that such lists are inviting voting fraud. They claim that in order to prevent fraud, the lists need to be purged.

So if the law seems reasonable, then why was it brought to court, and why was the Supreme Court so split on its response?

The Ohio law was passed by the Republican dominated legislature, as part of a nationwide effort by Republicans to maintain power by limiting voting.  This has three principal strategies:  gerrymander districts to maximize Republican representation; restrict voting access by limiting days, times and places to vote; and restricting voter registration by requiring voter identification and constant registration monitoring.  All of this is legal, and much of it has been done in the name of “safe and secure” elections.

But the reality is that our elections are more than safe and secure.  Every non-partisan study of voting shows that are incredibly few incidents of illegal voting in the United States (Time: The Actual True and Provable Facts about Non-Citizen Voting.)  And while the President has claimed that as many as five million votes cast (all for Hillary Clinton, of course) in the 2016 election were illegal, the organization of Secretaries of State (the state officials in charge of elections) completely disagrees.

So the Ohio law and others like it are fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.  So how does a registration list law like Ohio’s influence elections?

Statistically (and sadly) Democratic voters are less likely to vote than Republican voters.  This is why partisan results are often so different in Presidential election years, when there are a lot more votes, than in off-years.   For example, while Ohio is consistently a “purple” state, closely balanced between Republican and Democrat during Presidential elections, all but one statewide office is held by Republicans, most elected in off-years.  A law that removes folks for not voting is more likely to remove Democrats than Republicans.

Lower income voters are more likely to change addresses, and are more likely to have difficulty getting “land mail.”  This is common sense, as lower income voters are more likely to live in rental situations. While voting registration is tied to residency at an address, changing address does not necessarily disqualify a voter.  In Ohio, an address change should trigger a “provisional ballot.” And, as lower income voters are more likely to be Democrats, the law is going to effect them.

Finally, when this is combined with a strict voter identification law (requiring state issued ID) and with restricted voting days, locations and times; the overall effect is to reduce the number of Democrats that can vote.

The Ohio law is one of the more “moderate” versions.  Other states go so far as to scour the lists, looking for duplicate registrations. Somehow, thousands of “John Smiths” remain, will multiple “Juan Gonzales” get removed.  It is all part of a legal scheme to retain Republican control.

Ohio’s law has been upheld by the Supreme Court, but even their decision represents a partisan act. The refusal of the Republican US Senate to consider President Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, then filling the vacancy with Neil Gorsuch after the Trump election, in all likelihood determined the outcome of yesterday’s decision.

And unfortunately, the battle over the “legal” restrictions ignores the real threat to our voting system: outside “hacking” into registration to prevent legal voting.  The facts are that Russian intelligence attacked at least twenty-one state voter registration databases before the 2016 election:  we still haven’t determined what damage was done.  Last week in the California primary, over 100,000 voters disappeared from the Los Angeles County voting rolls.  While those effected were allowed to cast “provisional” ballots, there still has been no clear explanation of what happened.  (For more information on possible voting “hacks” check out unhackthevote.com.)

The United States is a Republic and the foundation of our nation is free elections, not only free from outside interference, but also free from partisan lawmaking that restricts voter access. Our goal should be for every citizen to vote: Ohio and the Supreme Court have raised one more barrier prevent that. But it can all be overcome by citizens, Democrat and Republicans, voting; even if it’s hard, even if means checking to make sure you’re still registered, even if it requires waiting in line at the polls.  Because in a Republic based on the will of the majority, when the majority shows up, they will prevail.

The Nuclear Apprentice

Today begins the climax of the “Celebrity Apprentice goes Nuclear” season.  Last week, President Trump was in the outdoor boardroom in Quebec, where he was able to say his famous phrase “your fired” to America’s strongest allies of the last seventy years.   Trump particularly tried to humble the young and handsome Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, who had the audacity of trying to treat “the Donald” as an equal.

The Quebec boardroom episode left America and the world in suspense.  Would Donald develop a new alliance with the Russians and Chinese? Was Donald simply making the old allies “work harder” to keep traditional balances, so that he can take advantage of the chaos?  Is the President working his famous “gut” to find a better deal?  Or, as some fear, is Donald under the influence of his secret boardroom advisors, who have as their goal a New World Order (NWO – also a pro-wrestling team and a rap music group) where the US doesn’t need allies.

That was last week. The President left the episode calling Trudeau a weak back-stabber.  He stepped on the famous Trump Airliner (now Air Force One) and flew off to exotic Singapore, where this year’s final episode is being filmed.

In this week’s edition, the President goes nuclear.  He meets with Kim Jung-un, the “boy leader” of North Korea.  Kim has developed his nation into a nuclear power with ballistic missiles despite US and world sanctions, and now wants his seat in the “boardroom.” Trump wants Kim to give up all of his nuclear and ballistic missiles, Kim wants Trump to lift the sanctions to allow North Korea to grow economically, and remove US troops from the region.

The problem:  if Kim gives up his weapons, then, like Trudeau, he will appear weak – the biggest failure in the Trump world.  Weakness in the boardroom means only one thing: “you’re fired” (which hopefully doesn’t translate into the North Korean term for “fire the missiles” to prove you’re not weak.)

Kim has been preparing for this episode literally his whole life.  While he might appear as a “boy king,” Kim has over and over demonstrated his ruthlessness.  In a previous episode he sent a captured American student back to the US physically destroyed and on the verge of death.  That was a different season, but he brings that “strength” to the boardroom, a trait that “the Donald” needs to take into consideration.

The President comes into the meeting with his famous ability to “make a deal.”  He also has raised the stakes of this episode:  after last week is his famous “gut” able to make this deal work, or will we have a season finale where all of Trump’s deals fall through? And if the negotiations get into the “nitty-gritty” details, will the President be prepared?  He hasn’t studied for this meeting, he says, he’s been preparing “all of his life.”

The President says he’ll know within minutes of the start whether Kim will make a deal or not.  Old viewers of American policy, might remember President George W Bush’s claim that he could “…look Vladimir Putin in the eyes and see into his soul.”  The soul turned out to be cold and empty, much to Bush’s surprise.  Putin turned his nation away from democracy, and moved to a kleptocratic autocracy.

But “the Donald” has a special weapon at his disposal.  Look for a guest appearance by that famous character of the nineties, basketball legend Dennis Rodman.  Rodman has previously developed a rapport with Kim, who appears in awe of the pierced and tattooed member of the famous Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls.  If Trump can’t find a way to get some concessions from Kim, perhaps Rodman can.

But there might be success even in failure for “the Donald.”  The secret boardroom advisors are looking for an excuse for war:  if “the Donald” fails in Singapore, they can then say that he did everything he could, and it’s time for the US to move. Trump advisor John Bolton has been preparing for that scenario for years.  In a New World Order based on strength, Bolton wants a show of US might against someone:  if not Iran, North Korea might well work.

But that is a script from next year’s season.  Today we brace for the season finale, “Trump goes nuclear.”  Let’s hope the episode title isn’t too prophetic.

Bro Code Rules

There is a set of rules among boys and men called the “Bro Code.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen it written down, they are what sociologists call “mores,” but they are none-the-less real. We learn them in young adolescence as we develop close relationships with other guys, and then start to get interested in romance.

There is no one closer than “bros.”  They stick together, they share secrets, they get in trouble, they try things, both legal and illegal, they are the brothers that “bros” represent.  They sometimes fight, but in the event of trouble, they have each other’s backs.  In fact the true test of how much of a “bro” you are, is when there is a fight.  There are those that find a way out, and there are those that find a way to stand up. Stand up guys are true “bros.”

Part of the code governs what to do when friends are both interested in the same romantic relationship. The code states that the first to express interest, should get to pursue the romance.  But the code also recognizes that sometimes love (and lust) trumps all other rules.  It allows forgiveness for failing to follow the code when it comes to love.

And the final part of the code covers when one of the “bros” falls in love,  and falls away.  It recognizes that romantic relationships take all attention and time, and that when it happens, that “bro” will not live up to the other obligations of the code.  If the romantic relationship is temporary, the code allows the “bro” to be forgiven and come back.  If it is more permanent, then the “former bro” will be forever remembered as part of the group, but no longer a “bro.”

The alliance that developed in response to the Cold War is like “bros.”  The World War II “bros” of the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Canada was joined by Germany and Japan to become the most influential alliance in the world.  They had each other’s back, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They had arguments over the Middle East and other issues, but they stood together against the Soviet Union and Communism.

And like any “bro group” they looked for one nation to be the leader.  The United States, the most powerful and most wealthy, used its strength to pursue the goals of the group.  Since the 1950’s, this group has been together, surviving falling outs, romances with other groups, wars and depressions. They’ve also had great successes including the end of the Cold War and the fall of Communism.

Now, one of the group seems to be in love with someone else.  President Trump is leading the United States to love affairs with autocrats and dictators: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jung-un, Recep Erdogan, Mohammad bin Salman, Xi Jinping.   Even Benjamin Netanyahu, like Trump, can act without much input from his government.  Trump is a “personal guy,” he relates to the world by how he feels about their leaders.  And, since Trump views himself as a decisive and strong “bro,” he relates to other leaders who can make decisions on their own without consultation or vote.

My expectation is that Trump views the G 7 leaders this way.

1. Justin Trudeau of Canada is an Obama type liberal, and a kid.
2. Macron is a slick operator, but in the end, way too French.  Trump really doesn’t like to hold hands, with anyone.
3. Angela Merkel is a woman who dares to compete with him for leadership.
4. Theresa May is weak both at home and abroad.
5. Shinzo Abe, a good golfer, and is doing a good job of “schmoozing,” but the Japanese gave up their military.  Trump cannot stand weakness, ask Puerto Rico.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that President Trump has treated the G7 disrespectfully.  He did the same thing with NATO (most of the same folks) and even with the European Union, seen by Trump as the antithesis of decisive.

The “G6” is complaining that Trump is walking away from the “bro group.”  He thinks they don’t really have a choice, that the US is such an important “bro” that they will stick with the group, regardless of what he does. And besides, he wants to start a new group, one that has the power to do anything it wants.  Trump, Putin, Xi; that’s the “bro group” he wants.

If he and his “theorists” (Bannon, Miller, and Bolton) get their way, the world will be a very different place.  The US will be aligned with nations where power rather than ideology is the critical factor.  But if the US turns back from the Trump Doctrine towards the “bro group” of democracy, we can only hope that “bro rules” apply.  Maybe they will take us back.

 

 

 

The Comey Dilemma

It sounds like the President’s birthday present may be the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on the conduct of former FBI Director James Comey during the Hillary Clinton investigation.  “Deepstate” theorists are keenly awaiting the release, sure that it will reveal a conspiracy to protect Clinton from the consequences of her email use.

It’s a tremendous contradiction.  Comey is the “proximate cause” of the defeat of Hillary Clinton.  His actions in announcing the reopening of the email investigation (the search of the Weiner laptop – there has to be a better way to say that) ten days before the election, clearly stopped the Clinton momentum and lead to the narrow results giving us President Trump.  It also made all of the other influences, including Russian involvement and possible voter tampering, factors in the outcome.

In short then, Comey got Trump elected President.  So what’s everyone complaining about?

The President speaks of “Comey and his band of thieves.”  But theft isn’t going to be what the Inspector General finds in his report, so what will Mr. Horowitz discover?

Without any investigation, there are several areas where James Comey probably stepped over the edge of Department of Justice policies.  Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein has already outlined many of these actions in his letter prior to Comey being fired.

1. He announced the results of an investigation without filing any charges, but used the opportunity to draw conclusions on the actions of a “suspect”. This was the July speech announcing the results of the Clinton investigation, without consulting his superiors in the Department of Justice, and determing that charges should not be filed. He then chided Clinton for being “careless,” hardly a legal determination.  That decision  to file charges is made by the prosecutors at Justice, not the investigators of the FBI.
2. He then violated the “sixty day rule” of the Department of Justice. The rule states that the Department, including the FBI, must avoid unduly influencing elections by avoiding actions within sixty days of an election.  Comey’s October 26^thannouncement clearly violated that policy.  In addition, that statement also was done without consultation with his superiors at Justice.
3. It is now known that there was a three-week delay between the discovery that there were Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop, and permission to search those emails. Whether Comey is responsible for the delay, or his deputy McCabe, or there is some other rationale, this delay caused the “October surprise” reopening of the Clinton email investigation.  Had they started the laptop search earlier they would have been able to clear Clinton weeks before election day instead of hours before.

It won’t take an Inspector General’s report to reveal these issues, they are already well known.  Comey makes a strong argument for taking the first two actions, based on what occurred with Attorney General Loretta Lynch. A few days prior to the determination that the FBI would not recommend charges for Clinton, Lynch had an indiscrete meeting with former President Bill Clinton at the Phoenix Airport.  This meeting created an aura of impropriety around the Attorney General.  She did not recuse herself from the investigation, but stated she would accept the FBI results and recommendations. This and Comey’s desire to keep the FBI out of politics, made him feel empowered to make the July statement.

And the reaction of Republicans in Congress to that announcement, in particular the House Government Oversight Committee and Chairman Trey Gowdy; made the October letter inevitable.  Comey had assured the Committee that he would notify them if anything changed regarding the Clinton emails, their presence on Weiner’s laptop was a major change.

It is also rumored that the Weiner Laptop information was already being leaked from the New York FBI office.  Rudy Giuliani claims to have had forewarning of the information, and Comey probably had little choice but to get out ahead of the release.

Comey almost assuredly violated Department of Justice regulations, and while he had good reason, and felt that he also had the authority to do so, “Monday morning quarterbacking” by the Inspector General will probably find him wrong. None of these actions rise to the level of violation of law; the ultimate penalty for them would to be removed from the Director’s job.  That’s happened.

The Trump campaign owes Comey a huge favor.  He’s why Trump is in office; he couldn’t have strategized it better if it was planned. But instead, Comey is called a “thief,” and this report will be used to create fog and doubt around the Mueller investigation.  Happy birthday, Mr. President:  but soon the Mueller report will be your real present.

 

I was going to take this morning off, but then I heard Mr. Trump and “Comey and his band of thieves,” and I had to write!!!

 

1968

Yesterday was the fiftieth Anniversary of the death of Robert Kennedy.  The coverage brought back a lot of memories.

It was the worst year I can remember:  worse than 2017, worse than even 2001.  It was the year I turned twelve, and the year that I became involved in politics, history, and the life of America.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about politics before.  In 1960, I proudly wore a JFK for President button.  When visiting a very Republican family friend, I was told to take the button off or sit outside.  I patiently waited outside the door and eventually they relented and let me in. I still have the small iron elephant they gave me as a present that day.

In 1966 my parents took me to see the President of the United States at the Fairgrounds in Dayton, Ohio.  I was excited and in awe just getting to see the President in person.  As Lyndon Johnson began to speak, a line of young people in the front, wearing black turtlenecks, began chanting for the President to stop the war in Vietnam.  They were from Antioch College in nearby Yellow Springs:  I was shocked that they would interrupt the President.

But it was in 1968 that I really became part of the American political system.

It was a Presidential election year, and it was the year that the Civil Rights movement and the movement against the Vietnam War both went to the streets.  Richard Nixon was back as a Republican running for the Presidency, and the Democrats were in disarray.  Gene McCarthy, running against the War, chased President Johnson out of the race with a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary.

Bobby Kennedy, also against the war, was reluctant to run against Johnson and the “Best and the Brightest” staff chosen by his brother and still running the government.  But he finally entered, infuriating the kids who got “clean for Gene” and splitting the anti-war Democrats.  Hubert Humphrey, the Vice President, also entered as Johnson’s proxy (I got to meet him at the Dayton Airport.)  There were protests at colleges (my sister was at Miami) and in the streets, both anti-war and civil rights.  We were a nation in turmoil.

The Civil Rights movement was torn:  Martin Luther King continued to lead the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the main organization, but the younger generation of leaders were splitting off.  The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had broken away, and more radical groups like the Black Panthers and the Black Muslims were pressing for change.  King, seeing that black men were the greatest proportion of dying soldiers in Vietnam, came out against the war.

He began the Poor People’s Campaign, and marched in the streets for the sanitation workers in Memphis.

Each morning I woke at seven to catch the bus for Van Buren Junior High School.  The day began with a click, followed by the “clock-radio” with rock and roll.  Each half-hour, they read the news.  The news at 7 am on April 5^thwas that Martin Luther King had been shot and killed in Memphis.

Dayton burned that night. We sat in our family room, watching the live coverage from the TV station Dad managed.  Mom made sure we all stayed close to home.

I became a Bobby Kennedy supporter, and following his lead, and that of my sisters and Walter Cronkite, came out against the War.  It was not the majority view in suburban Kettering, Ohio, a town that was dominated by heavy industry and Wright Patterson Air Force Base.  Looking back, it probably wasn’t a majority view of my parents either.

I closely followed the Democratic campaigns.  Gene McCarthy refused to withdraw. He had earned the right to stay in the election, but at the time I wanted him out to give RFK a clear path to the nomination. It came down to California, and the delegate fight after, to see if anti-war Kennedy or pro-war Humphrey would gain the nomination.

June 5, 1968:  the clock-radio clicked and I woke to the news that Bobby Kennedy had been shot.  The next morning, the clock-radio clicked again, and he was dead.   The following days were quiet as we watched another Kennedy funeral.  The church service was in New York, and Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy:

“…my brother…a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal, saw war and tried to stop it.”

He concluded with the words that were the driving force of the Kennedy Campaign,

“some men see things as they are and say why, I see things that never were and say, why not.”

It felt like the “things that never were” would never be.  Bobby Kennedy’s promise was lost.  We watched the mourning train go from New York to Washington, thousands lining the tracks, and the burial beside his brother in Arlington.

I spent the summer doing what eleven year olds do.  I swam, I rode my bike all over the city, and I played.  In late August, right before the start of school, I broke my arm.  After they set the break (without pain killers, I really remember that, just “hang on”) I was told to stay still for the next few days.  I sat on the couch with a “beer box” under my arm, and watched the continuous coverage of the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

It was a convention of disaster.  While the anti-war forces were marching the streets, the pro-war Humphrey forces had control of the convention.  Mayor Daley, a Humphrey man, decided to clear the protestors.  There were riots, there was tear gas; the live television coverage included beatings, and gassings, and cops chasing protestors and reporters into hotel lobbies and up stairwells.  It permanently disabled the Humphrey campaign.

It came as little surprise in November then, when the Principal announced over the PA system that Nixon was the next President of the United States.  Van Buren Junior High erupted in cheers, and I felt pretty miserable. There was little good to say about 1968.

Christmas of  ‘68 seemed to be more about turning the page on the year, and moving on towards the ‘70’s.  The one shining achievement was space exploration.  After the 1967 tragedy of Apollo 1, burning up on the Launchpad and killing three astronauts, the space program returned with earth orbits of Apollo 7 in October.  But it was Apollo 8 that was the first to leave earth and travel to the moon.

As they orbited, Astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders made live broadcasts back to earth.  It was Christmas Eve, and the voices from far away read the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth…” as we watched the sun rise over the moon.  It was the most watched TV broadcast ever (at the time) and we all watched as three men in a tiny vessel reached out across space to remind us that we are one on a small world.

The war would drag on for seven more years, and the issues that Martin Luther King died for are still apparent today.  It seemed like we turned away from hope.

Now, fifty years later, we may feel like we have turned away from hope again.  But, just as in 1968, we are a resilient country and a nation of essential goodness, and we will persevere and return to hope.  And somewhere, there is some eleven year old, watching all of this, probably between video games, and learning about politics and the world in 2018.  I hope that child will find the leaders and inspiration for a better future.