JustOneMinute

The Email Investigation With New Petraeus Spin

The WaPo reports on the email investigation into everybody but Hillary:

In Clinton email investigation, Justice Department grants immunity to former State Department staffer

The Justice Department has granted immunity to the former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server, a sign the FBI investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing is progressing.

A senior U.S. law enforcement official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.

As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents will likely want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said.

The inquiry comes against a sensitive political backdrop in which Clinton is the favorite to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

"Sensitive"? Really? Does anyone imagine for a moment that Barack Obama and Loretta Lynch will simply let the chips fall where they may?

Please - I am more likely to be indicted for Hillary's emails than she is. However, normally the example of Gen. Petraeus (court factual basis) is cited as an example of the Feds taking their security rules seriously, at least when the target is a possible Republican.

But we get new-to-me spin here (although I could have seen it a week ago):

Current and former officials said the conviction of retired four-star general and CIA director David H. Petraeus for mishandling classified information is casting a shadow over the email investigation.

The officials said they believe that Petraeus’ actions were more egregious than those of Clinton and her aides since he lied to the FBI, and classified information he shared with his biographer contained top secret code words, identities of covert officers, war strategy and intelligence capabilities. Prosecutors initially threatened to charge him with three felonies, including conspiracy, violating the Espionage Act and lying to the FBI. But after negotiations, Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information.

He was fined $100,000 and sentenced to two-years probation. FBI officials were angered by the deal and predicted it would affect the outcome of other cases involving classified information.

Petraeus “was handled so lightly for his offence there isn’t a whole lot you can do,” said a former U.S. law enforcement official who oversaw counterintelligence investigations and described the email controversy as “a lesser set of circumstances.”

Since Petraeus merely resigned, paid a fine and took a wrist slap Hillary is all good. Away we go.

 

 

Megan McArdle On #NeverTrump vs. #TrumpOn

OK, I made up that second  hashtag but I'm sure there is one out there for his supporters and I'm sure it's not #TrumpUberAlles.

Megan McArdle listened to the NeverTrump side; today she has a column about the Trump supporters. She crystallizes seven reactions by the supporters, and dismisses the first five:

1. Of course they won’t vote for him! Trump is smashing their cushy establishment control over the party!
2. Of course they won’t vote for him! Trump is going to actually force the party to do something about immigration and make them move their companies back from China!
3. Of course they won’t vote for him! Trump is going to stop their obsessive focus on tax cuts and Obamacare to focus the party on the issues that Real Americans actually care about!
4. Of course they won’t vote for him! They’re neocon hawks who would be more comfortable with a Clinton presidency!
5. Of course they won’t vote for him! They’re exactly the sort of crypto-Democrats we need to run out of the party!
6. Of course they won’t vote for him! They’re too afraid of the liberal media calling them racist, and it’s exactly this sort of craven capitulation we need to fight!
7. Actually, they will vote for him. They’re just having a bit of a tantrum now.

The first five are dead wrong, based on my (admittedly unscientific) sample.

...

Trump fans should know that the #NeverTrump Republicans who wrote to me are not rejecting you, or even your issues. They are rejecting Donald J. Trump, because they think he is a bad person, so incompetent, aggressive and shamelessly unprincipled that they do not trust him with the Oval Office, or the helm of their party.

This seems like a good moment to exhort folks to take a look at Ace's recent post explaining his ongoing support for the Trump message but rejection of the messenger.

My response to (6) - the evergreen 'racist' charge - is a bit more forceful than Megan's but ladies first (boors to follow):

The Trump fans are at least a little bit right in two of their explanations about Trump abstainers. Some who shout "#NeverTrump" today probably will vote for him, when it comes down to it in November. And some #NeverTrump Republicans are afraid to stand with him because they'll be painted with the same brush as the KKK.

Here’s the concession you really wanted to hear: The media is liberal, it does like to scrutinize conservative politicians for the slightest hint of racism and misogyny, and conservative politicians are hypersensitive to that label. Or at least, most successful ones are. Trump has gotten this far by wearing those labels proudly, and it's not a viable long-term strategy. More on that in the next column.

OK, she does say "some" don't want to wear the racist label. But as to timing, I recall #NeverTrump launching after the fiery Republican debate last Thursday (here is the earliest result for a Twitter search on "#NeverTrump trending"), well before the KKK debacle on Sunday.

As to the racist label, please - the math this campaign is simple. Democrats can't win without energized blacks and youngsters, as was soundly demonstrated in 2010 and 2014. Obama was black enough and young enough to show his smiling self and work the magic. On the campaign trail, Hillary is a not Barack - she is more of an Ambien with a scotch chaser. (Yeah, Trump is a Red Bull with a crystal meth chaser, but energy counts).

Dispatching Bernie by playing the racist/sexist card was not necessary. But even if the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa Hillary was going to spend six months screaming about Republican racism and sexism.

And since the wealthy, earnest liberals of Hollywood have just been told that they too need absolution, being "sorority racist", well, Hillary's reassurance that they were still better than the Republican variety of racist would be a soothing balm. Last night Hillary trotted out "Let's make America whole" as a slogan. Right - let's make it whole by tarring half the country as racist and sexist. We all know it's coming. Remember, Mitt Romney was an uncaring sexist pig because he had "binders full of women". Hillary is a rape enabler, but so what? KKK!

OK, I'm warming up here. Let me just refocus. Oh, I'll refocus after I thank Kevin Drum for this olive branch and then smack him with it:

Will Conservatives Do the Right Thing in November?

For years, liberals have been arguing that the Republican Party is built on appeals to racist sentiment. It's gotten subtler over time, but it's still there. Sometimes it's overt, other times it merely takes the form of tolerating racial animus in others. Sometimes it comes wrapped in a policy package, other times it's wrapped in dog whistles. Either way, it's all part of the GOP's electoral strategy. They know their base well.

Republicans, needless to say, don't take kindly to this. It's all phony and cynical, a way for liberals to take principled differences and turn them into racial appeals of their own. Sure, there may be racists who vote for Republicans, but there are plenty who vote for Democrats too. It's liberals who are addicted to playing the race card.

But now we're living through the era of Donald Trump.

Trump's a racist and a xenophobe. And a misogynist. We get it.

But when it comes to doing the right thing, it's conservatives who truly have the tough choice this year. Trump looks likely to win the Republican nomination, and that means the right thing for them to do is to literally hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton. Can you imagine how hard that's going to be? Hillary Clinton! And we're asking them to vote for her. Or, at the very least, to campaign against Trump and cast a protest vote. Either way, they're giving up their chance to kill Obamacare, to nominate a Supreme Court judge, to restore religious liberty as they see it, and to repeal all those executive orders they hate.

Will they do it? I don't know, but it's no joke to say that I feel their pain. All the cynicism and schadenfreude in the world can't mask how hard this is going to be. Conservatives are about to be tested as few political movements ever are.

Hmmph - one might well ask, are the Democrats going to do the right thing this spring and dump Hillary? The case can be made that her email conduct was criminal (the full Loretta Lynch cover-up and possible FBI protest resignations may be delayed until after her nomination). Her Goldman Sachs cronyism, contempt for questions from the press or her own party about the Goldman transcripts, her rape-enabling, her ongoing shakedowns through the out-of-control Clinton Foundation - why is this a hard choice for Democrats, or a choice at all? This is not "Hold your nose" and vote for Hillary; this is "put on the hip-waders". Oh, because "history" and "Scary racist sexist Republicans". And because the electorate is clearly calling out for four more years of crony capitalism and with Jeb! out who embodies that better than Hillary?

I'm a racist whoever I back, Chris Rock says Kevin Drum is a racist, Bernie Sanders and his supporters want millions of impoverished dark-skinned people to die, and away we go. Welcome to 2016.

OK, I did get sidetracked. Should have stopped at the Red Bull.

Megan offered a seventh point from Trump supporters commenting on the #NeverTrumpers:

Actually, they will vote for him. They’re just having a bit of a tantrum now.

Well... Trump gave a relatively restrained, bombast-free press conference rather than a victory speech last night. That does not rebut the criticism that he is a chameleon and a con man, but it may bring people home.

And as much as I say right now I could be OK with Hillary winning, if the inevitable email cover-up is bad enough and the prospect of her picking a Supreme Court Justice becomes even more of a "Set a thief to catch a thief" issue, well - let me be the first to claim hiding space behind Sean Connery's kilt and I'll rehearse a mumbled "Never Say Never Again".

But that is down the road. This is not that day!

 

 

 

 

She Has Become What She Beheld

On the trail with Hillarity!

BREAKING: Hillary Clinton actually takes questions from reporters, after 87 days

...

Something has changed since then [1992]. Emails from her tenure as secretary of state, released in batches by the State Department under a court order, reveal a person who is deeply suspicious of the media. Clinton seems to no longer trust that journalists will cover a controversy fairly and then go forward to something else.

Her misgivings might be justified — in some cases, at least — but it’s hard to know because she seldom gives the press a chance these days. As she casts a perpetually wary eye on the media, journalists do the same to her, wondering what she might be trying to hide by not talking, or talking only on her own terms.

C'mon, Hillary's The One! What earlier candidate was respected for a vast resume yet unloved for lacking the personal touch; was paranoid, secretive, loathed the press which loathed him right back, and was widely (and correctly!) viewed as ethically malleable? 
 
Too Tricky? Let's flash back to 1968:

"He entered every primary and assembled a team of media consultants who helped him create the image of a "New Nixon," more statesmanlike, less combative, more mature and presidential, an effort chronicled in "The Selling of the President 1968" by Joe McGinnis. The centerpiece of this self-recreation was a series of carefully managed television interview programs packaged by the Nixon campaign. These programs showed Nixon at his best, answering questions posed by ordinary Americans, and shielded him from questions by reporters, who sometimes brought out his worst."

The young woman who investigated Nixon has become the old war horse emulating him. Greek tragedies don't get better.

SERIOUSLY? What, you want to know what she was asked, and even how she answered? The only clue we get is... wait for it... Trump.

@HillaryClinton talks to traveling press for 1st time in 87 days says very disappointed about @realDonaldTrump & David Duke

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) March 1, 2016

Bold positioning! As to whether anyone was disappointed about her failure to release the Goldman Sachs transcripts, who knows?

Whither The Conservative Movement?

Brooklynite Reihan Salam lays out his populist conservative economic agenda:

Folks Before Kochs

To save itself, the Republican Party must finally put the working class ahead of the donor class.

I am hardly one to resist a rhyme but with the latest round of Trump coverage, "Folks" and "Volk" seem awkwardly similar. However, lots of good ideas. For some reason his immigration stuff is sure to be bitterly controversial, although it is the practice in Canada:

A Pay-Your-Own-Way Immigration Policy

No issue better illustrates the divide between elite Republicans and the party’s base. One recent survey found that a large majority (67 percent) of Republicans favor decreasing immigration levels while only 7 percent of them favor an increase. Nevertheless, leading Republicans, including Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, have backed proposals that would greatly increase immigration levels in defiance of the Republican grassroots. Trump, meanwhile, has used incendiary language to electrify Republicans who oppose immigration.

What accounts for this divide between the policies prominent Republicans have backed and those favored by rank-and-file GOP voters? For high-income Republicans, skilled immigrants are their colleagues, neighbors, and friends, and less-skilled immigrants provide them with the low-cost child care, restaurant meals, and other services that allow them to lead comfortable lives. These affluent conservatives thus take a more relaxed approach to immigration, which is reflected in the immigration reform proposals they’ve advanced. Less-affluent conservatives, meanwhile, are far more likely to see immigrants as either competitors for scarce public resources or as a burden on hard-pressed taxpayers.

To unite the right, the GOP ought to embrace a simple immigration reform principle: The U.S. will only welcome immigrants who can pay their own way. Immigrants who earn high wages are less likely to need public assistance than those who earn low wages. They are in a better position to provide for their families, and their children are more likely to flourish as adults. Republicans should not shrink from advocating immigration policies that protect the interests of American workers. That means welcoming immigrants who are economically self-sufficient and who can help finance social programs for poor Americans—whether native- or foreign-born, of every racial and ethnic group—rather than relying on those social programs themselves.

This would require us to dial back family reunification and we can hear the howling. But if we have to pay more for our lawn care to keep Hillarity! out of power, I am sure some of my neighbors will step up. Not all, of course...

Super Tuesday Kickoff

I had my Super Tuesday picks somewhere. Let's see, lots of winning for "Mad Max: Fury Road"; "The Revenant" will do well in Texas... wait, what?

Best song nominees include "Goodbye, Rubio Tuesday". But give that a few weeks - it is not this day.

Time will surely tell.