Don't Get in the Way of the Clinton Coronation

Loretta Lynch, the US attorney general, acknowledged on Friday that her meeting with Bill Clinton this week had “cast a shadow” over the justice department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

[...]

Speaking at the Aspen ideas festival in Colorado, Lynch said: “I certainly wouldn’t do it again because I think it has cast this shadow over what it should not, over what it will not, touch.

“It’s important to make it clear that that meeting with President Clinton does not have a bearing on how this matter will be reviewed and resolved.”

  Guardian

She wasn't forward-thinking enough to realize that a meeting with Bill might look suspicious?  Just the fact that she was willing (eager?) to sit with him at this point indicates she's already inclined to favor Hillary in any decision.

“The most important thing for me as attorney general is the integrity of this Department of Justice,” she said.

So....what? You were too obsequious or star struck to turn down at chance to sit with Bill?  Even at the risk of the integrity of the department?

Lynch also said she did not know when the investigation was expected to conclude.

At some point where it will do Hillary the least harm or the most good.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Pro-ISIS"

We Must Give More to Israel

The White House on Friday told members of Congress that it had offered to substantially sweeten a decade-long military aid package for Israel, the latest turn in months of fitful negotiations that have proceeded despite deep divisions over the Iran nuclear deal.

Under the proposed terms, the United States would insist that the Israelis use the tens of billions of dollars they receive under the deal to buy United States-made goods and services, rather than spend a sizable portion in their own country as they are permitted to do now.

The administration laid out details of the package in a lengthy letter to senators who had written to the White House in April urging the completion of a new aid deal.

[...]

In the letter on Friday, Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, and Shaun Donovan, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that the administration was prepared to increase the existing military aid package for Israel, worth nearly $30 billion, and sign a new one “that would constitute the largest pledge of military assistance to any country in U.S. history.”

[...]

The negotiations have unfolded in secret, with neither side willing to detail its position on an agreement that people close to the talks have said could top $40 billion.

  NYT

Surely Israel isn't going to make any deals that lessen their advantage in the last months of an Obama administration. All they have to do is wait until Hillary takes office to get the very best of all possible deals. More money and no restrictions.

Such an aid agreement “would build on the unparalleled support that the United States has provided to Israel under President Obama,” Ms. Rice and Mr. Donovan said. “Through word and deed, this administration has done more for Israel’s security than any other in U.S. history.”

Sorry. It's not enough.

Meanwhile, universal health care and free college tuition for US citizens is simply not doable, Bernie. Don't be ridiculous.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Is There Hope on the Floor of the DNC?

Did the campaign of Bernie Sanders really alter the Democratic Party? The answer is not yet entirely clear, but on many key issues so far the Hillary Clinton campaign has been unwilling to commit to delivering specifics about fundamental change in America, which have been at the heart of Sanders' campaign.

[...]

The Clinton campaign was ready to acknowledge serious problems: We need fair trade policy, inequality is a horrible problem, and unchecked climate change will wreck the planet. But when it came to specific policy changes, they often balked. Amendments against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and backing Medicare for all failed, with all the Clinton delegates voting against.

At which point we got (about 11 p.m., in a half-deserted hotel ballroom) to the climate section of the platform, and that’s where things got particularly obvious. We all agreed that America should be operating on 100 percent clean energy by 2050, but then I proposed, in one amendment after another, a series of ways we might actually get there. A carbon tax? Voted down 7-6 (one of the DNC delegates voted with each side). A ban on fracking? Voted down 7-6. An effort to keep fossils in the ground, at least on federal land? Voted down 7-6. A measure to mandate that federal agencies weigh the climate impact of their decisions? Voted down 7-6. Even a plan to keep fossil fuel companies from taking private land by eminent domain, voted down 7-6. (We did, however, reach unanimous consent on more bike paths!)


  Bernie Delegate Bill McKibben

Better luck next time.

Happily, the process is only one-third complete. And Team Sanders has claimed some victories: a strong stand against the death penalty, for instance, and remarkable in-depth language on Native American rights. Now the platform discussion heads to Orlando, where 187 delegates will weigh it in more depth. And the issues on which they still can’t agree can then be raised on the convention floor in Philadelphia.

Fun times ahead.  But, wait...

[F]our of Sanders's five appointees to the platform drafting committee had signed off on their partially finished product. (Cornel West was the lone holdout.)
  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Facebook Creep

On Friday, and again on Monday, Facebook told me that it uses smartphone location data to recommend new friends to its users.

[...]

I was surprised, since this could lead to all kinds of negative outcomes—unmasking strangers, for instance, who wanted to stay anonymous at a gathering for alcoholics. Security technologist Ashkan Soltani pointed out that using shared phone location to figure out people’s real world associations was a technique used by the NSA, as revealed in 2013.

[...]

After I reported this, lots of people said that this explained why certain people had popped up in their “People You May Know” box on Facebook.

But on Monday night, after lots of negative feedback, Facebook reversed course. A spokesperson told me that the company had dug into the matter further and determined that “we’re not using location data, such as device location and location information you add to your profile, to suggest people you may know.”

[...]

Facebook ran a test late last year that “temporarily” used location data for friend suggestions, but it was never rolled out to the general public.

[...]

We do know that Facebook is using smartphone location for other things, such as tracking which stores you go to and geotargeting you with ads, but the social network now says it’s not using smartphone location to identify people you’ve been physically proximate to.

[...]

There are other ways that they could divine this information beyond using your phone’s GPS coordinates, such as looking at shared use of a wireless network or looking at the IP address you are signing in from. IP addresses can be geographically mapped, sometimes precisely and sometimes imprecisely. The FTC recently fined a mobile advertising company $4 million because it was figuring out the location of people who had not given it location privileges by looking at the wireless networks they were near.

To know for sure, Facebook would need to spell out the “other factors” that go into their suggestions for people we may know. But for now, the company considers that proprietary information.

  Fusion

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We Don't Want to Upset the Coronation

Citizens United has sued for emails between a handful of State Department officials and people at the Clinton Foundation and a consulting firm, Teneo Consulting, which has ties to the Clintons.

[...]

In a court filing on Wednesday, administration lawyers said the State Department miscalculated the amount of material it would need to process [14,000 pages of emails from aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] as part of a lawsuit with the conservative organization Citizens United.

As a result, the government asked for a 27-month delay [until October 2018] to release the emails, which were originally due out on July 21.


“State deeply regrets these errors, and is working diligently to correct them as quickly as possible,” the lawyers said.

[...]

In a separate case involving the Republican National Committee, the State Department estimated that it could take at least 75 years to compile emails from a handful of Clinton’s aides.
  The Hill

You read that right. Years. Seventy-five.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Democracy in America: Still Going Down

People want more power over their own lives. They want to feel some connection to society. Most particularly, they don't want to be dictated to by distant bureaucrats who don't seem to care what they're going through, and think they know what's best for everyone.

These are legitimate concerns. Unfortunately, they came out in this past year in the campaign of Donald Trump.

[...]

People are still free to vote, and some peculiarities in the structure of the commercial media, combined with mountains of public anger, conspired to put one of the two parties in the hands of a coverage-devouring billionaire running on a "Purge the Scum" platform.

But choosing a dangerous race-baiting lunatic as the vehicle for the first successful revolt in ages against one of the two major parties will have many profound negative consequences for voters. The most serious will surely be this burgeoning movement to describe voting and democracy as inherently dangerous.

[...]

[S]elf-congratulating cognoscenti could have looked at the events of the last year and wondered why people were so angry with them, and what they could do to make government work better for the population.

Instead, their first instinct is to dismiss voter concerns as baseless, neurotic bigotry and to assume that the solution is to give Washington bureaucrats even more leeway to blow off the public.

[...]

Trump is going to lose this election, then live on as the reason for an emboldened, even less-responsive oligarchy. And you thought this election season couldn't get any worse.

  Matt Taibbi

Trump VP Pick

Well, it's not the first, because there are a number of vile characters who would run with him. Christie, Gingrich, Palin, Carson, and I bet even Ryan or Rubio and possibly even McConnell, to name just a few.





It doesn't matter who he picks. He'll get the same number of votes with any of them. Trump people are not voting for a vice president, nor will they be turned off by anyone. Unless he picks Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Or a Muslim.

And I wouldn't be surprised if whoever is being bandied about in the press is just speculation, and he'll make the choice a big surprise in the end, being the showman that he is.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

LOL

Whatever you say, dude.

The American Cheka

Freedom of the Press Foundation has been suing the Justice Department (DOJ) under the Freedom of Information Act for [their secret rules for targeting journalists and sources with National Security Letters] for the past year. Just two weeks ago, a coalition of three dozen news organizations, including the New York Times and Associated Press, demanded the DOJ release them. The DOJ, so far, has refused.

  Freedom of the Press Foundation

But, guess what? The leaky ship that is the ship of state these days has passed them to The Intercept.

First, the rules clearly indicate—in two separate places—that NSLs can specifically be used to conduct surveillance on reporters and sources in leak investigations. This is quite disturbing, since the Justice Department spent two years trying to convince the public that it updated its “Media Guidelines” to create a very high and restrictive bar for when and how they could spy on journalists using regular subpoenas and court orders. These leaked rules prove that the FBI and DOJ can completely circumvent the Media Guidelines and just use an NSL in total secrecy.

This isn't shocking, and I suppose the reason is that these days we simply expect the government to be spying on us all, including journalists, "legally" or not.

Second, the DOJ told the New York Times in 2013 that, despite NSLs being exempt from the media guidelines, they were still used under a “strict legal regime.” Well, the “strict legal regime” here is basically non-existent. The only extra step the FBI has to go through to spy on journalists with an NSL—besides the normal, lax NSL procedures, which they have flagrantly and repeatedly violated over the past decade—is essentially get the sign off of a superior in the Justice Department. That’s it!

And we're so much safer for it.

The other major question here is: why are these rules secret in the first place?

It's just the nature of the government, I think.

The fact that the FBI has to get another person in the bureaucracy to sign off on a particular investigation should not be a state secret, nor would it remotely harm any ongoing investigation, nor would “tip off” any alleged criminals to how to evade surveillance.

What the government does is none of the citizens' business. Go buy stuff. Incur some debt.

Congress is now engaged in a debate to dramatically expand the FBI's use of National Security Letters.

Of course they are.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.