Daily Digest |  |
- Even the Spies Are Woke
- Leading House Dem won’t seek reelection
- Today in Slow-Joe Replay
- Biden says Americans aren’t racist. Does he believe it?
- The Giuliani warrants
| Posted: 30 Apr 2021 04:58 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) This story from the Telegraph evidently is not a parody. Britain’s spy agency promises to focus on sniffing out other countries’ carbon dioxide emissions:
After all these years, Moore is the first head of MI6 to be interviewed on broadcast media. And what does he talk about? Global warming. China will be the agency’s #1 target. Will MI6 focus on China’s rapidly growing navy? Its threats against Taiwan? Mass incarceration and murder of the Uighurs? Nope.
We can only hope that this is disinformation, but sadly, I suspect it is for real. And I doubt that our own intelligence agencies are much more serious.     |
| Leading House Dem won’t seek reelection Posted: 30 Apr 2021 02:54 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) has announced that she will not seek reelection in 2022. Bustos was head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last year (currently, she heads the House Democratic Steering Committee). The Democrats were expected to gain seats in 2020, but ended up losing some and barely holding their House majority. In addition, Bustos, who had won reelection in 2016 by 20 points even though Donald Trump carried her district, won in 2020 by only four points. Her district in Northern Illinois is trending Republican. Bustos’ explanation to the Huffington Post of her retirement decision included the obligatory “spend more time with my family” theme. Does she fear losing her seat and/or being in the minority come 2023? I don’t know. Should she fear one or both of these potential outcomes? On the face of things, it looks like Bustos would face difficulty being reelected in 2022. However, the Democrats are in control of redistricting in Illinois. Thus, they could have given her an easier path to reelection. And now that she’s retiring, the Democrats might well have to reconfigure the district if they are to hold it. However, Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report suggests that the Democrats might no longer be able to draw a map of Illinois in which they can maintain their 14-3 edge in the U.S. House. As for Democratic prospects of maintaining their majority in the House, when members from the majority party start resigning in more than very small numbers, it’s often a sign that the majority party will struggle in the next election. This certainly was true of the Republicans in 2018, as John McCormack reminds us. But Bustos is just one member. McCormack points to four House Democrats — Cindy Axne in Iowa, Tim Ryan in Ohio, Val Demings and Stephanie Murphy in Florida — who are considering leaving the House to seek higher office. I’m not sure that this signals fear of losing the House. It might simply signal ambition. Thus, as McCormack says, it’s premature to read national implications into Bustos’ decision to retire. But it’s worth keeping an eye open to see whether other Democrats follow her path in the coming year, or so.   |
| Posted: 30 Apr 2021 02:13 PM PDT (Steven Hayward) News item: The Biden Administration is going to restrict travel from India starting next week. But last year, candidate Biden said this:
Meanwhile, who needs slow-motion replay when you have stellar moments like this in real time:
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| Biden says Americans aren’t racist. Does he believe it? Posted: 30 Apr 2021 10:36 AM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) Tim Scott’s powerful response to Joe Biden’s address to Congress has forced both Biden and Kamala Harris to reject a core belief of the BLM movement and the American left. Both the president and the vice president have now stated that the American people are not racist. Biden said this:
Here are my thoughts about Biden’s statement: First, if Biden doesn’t believe the American people are racist, he should do everything in his power to make sure the federal government doesn’t promote the contrary view — that Americans are racist. Racism is evil. Accordingly, it’s hard to imagine any doctrine more demoralizing to the nation than the belief that Americans are racist and/or that Whites should be ashamed of their race. It’s Biden’s patriotic duty, therefore, to make sure the government isn’t on the wrong side of this question. For example, federal money must not be granted to any school district that teaches students that Americans are racist or that shames students for being white. To the contrary, the federal government should investigate schools accused of demeaning students on account of their race. Now that Biden is on record that Americans aren’t racist, let’s see him act as though he actually believes this. Second, America has been “dealing” for decades with the effects of slavery and Jim Crow on African-American education, health, and opportunity. Welfare checks go to Blacks to a disproportionate degree. In terms of health, Blacks benefit to a disproportionate extent from free care (Medicaid) and from subsidized care (the Affordable Care Act). In terms of education and opportunity, Blacks receive preferential admission to American colleges and universities — elite and otherwise (although whether this helps them is debatable). It’s true, though, that at the K-12 level, Blacks, to a disproportionate degree, receive an inadequate education from America’s public schools. That’s why Biden should immediately try to break the stranglehold of public schools on the education of Blacks (and others). He should support school choice, including voucher programs and charter schools. In addition, Biden should ensure that under his leadership ( unlike Obama’s), the federal government does nothing to undermine the ability of teachers to discipline students for disruptive behavior. Black students (and others) are deprived of their full educational opportunities when teachers are deterred from taking disciplinary action because the government is looking over their shoulder to make sure discipline is meted out based not on behavior, but on considerations of race. Third, slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago. It has been half a century since Jim Crow prevailed. African-Americans have taken advantage in vast numbers of having obtained equality under the law. This would not have happened if the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow had, in Biden’s words, “left [them] in a position where they are so far behind the eight-ball.” Thus, we must consider the possibility that those who are “behind the eight-ball” have left themselves behind — by declining to do the things that other Blacks (and members of other groups that began their time in America in a disadvantaged condition) have done to get ahead. If Biden wants to confer additional benefits on Blacks who are left behind, he should show that their status, somehow, is the result of slavery and Jim Crow, rather than the result of their decisions and their behavior. It’s neither a showing he can make, nor one he’s interested in attempting.   |
| Posted: 30 Apr 2021 10:17 AM PDT (Scott Johnson) The Foreign Agents Registration Act is the last refuge of a prosecutorial scoundrel. That was my reaction to the New York Times story yesterday reporting that Rudy Giuliani is under investigation for an alleged FARA violation. The Times has a follow-up story here today with additional information on the focus of the investigation. My reaction was of course elicited by Robert Mueller’s persecution of Michael Flynn. The FBI showed up at Giuliani’s apartment around 6:00 a.m. this past Wednesday morning to seize his cell phones and computers with warrants issued in the investigation. Giuliani is himself a former United States Attorney of some notable accomplishment. In that capacity I think he accorded Michael Milken a serious taste of the unsavory treatment Flynn later received from Mueller, but put that to one side. He is President Trump’s former lawyer and when it comes to federal criminal procedure, he knows what he’s talking about. Last night Giuliani sat down for an interview with Tucker Carlson about the seizure of his devices along with two in his possession owned by a third-party. I have posted the 10-minute video at the bottom. Tom Lifson takes Giuliani’s statements at face value and comments favorably on the interview in this American Thinker post. Please check it out. Tom takes up a few points that I am glossing over here. I am dubious of two of Giuliani’s statements. I think they are worth noting and doubt that they should be taken at face value. Giuliani emphasized that the warrants required the agents to take all electronic devices within the scope of the warrants, and yet they failed to take three Hunter Biden hard drives in his possession. He emphasized and reiterated this several times, including one point at which he referred to the warrants as a subpoena. I note in passing that it is a rare case in which the subject of a search warrant complains that the officers didn’t seize enough evidence. As I understand the law, a warrant only authorizes the seizure of items within its scope. Officers generally have discretion to execute the warrant in good faith. I am aware of no law that requires officers to seize all items subject to it. The only requirement is that agents execute the warrant within 14 days. See generally Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and this warrant form. I don’t think this is nitpicking. The alleged requirement that officers take every piece of evidence subject to the warrant is central to Giuliani’s contentions. From Giuliani’s remarks, it isn’t even clear (to me, anyway) that the warrants authorized seizure of the Hunter Biden hard drives in his possession. For the purposes of my comments here, I assume the warrants authorized but did not require their seizure. Giuliani further stated that the warrants were “completely illegal” because there has to be “some evidence” that the person subject to them is going to “destroy” or “run away” with the evidence. To obtain a search warrant, however, federal officers need only establish probable cause that a crime was committed and that items connected to the crime are likely to be found in the place specified by the warrant. Again as I understand the law, probable cause is the key and a federal magistrate must sign off on the finding that probable cause exists. Yesterday’s Times story vaguely reported that the criminal investigation involves Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine. Today’s Times story is ambiguous about Giuliani’s status: “The warrants do not accuse Mr. Giuliani of wrongdoing, but they underscore his legal peril: They indicate a judge has found that investigators have probable cause to believe that a crime was committed and that the search would turn up evidence of that crime.” So is Giuliani a target, a subject, or a witness in the investigation? The Times is mum on this point. Clarity is lacking. FARA is a farce, but I doubt that Giuliani’s allegations about the illegality of the warrants and their execution are accurate. From Giuliani’s remarks in the video at 7:00, I infer that he may have seen the affidavit underlying the warrants and/or that he understand he is at least a subject of the investigation. Giuliani makes other points in the interview that I do not address above. The whole thing is of interest and worth your time if you haven’t seen it yet.   |
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