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Our Dangerous Drift from Reason Media distortion of ‘officer involved’ police shootings has consequences. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 24th, 2016

In a time when “narrative” has supplanted factual reporting, Fox’s Bret Baier’s evening news program is usually an oasis in the desert. So I winced when he asserted, amid Thursday’s report on the deadly Charlotte rioting — euphemized by the media as “unrest” and “protest” – that blacks are significantly more likely than whites to be killed by police.

It echoed the distortion peddled by the Chicago Tribune in July, when “officer involved” shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana led not merely to “unrest” but to a massacre of cops in Dallas. African Americans, the paper claims, are two and a half times more likely than Caucasian Americans to be killed by police.

Are they really? The Trib says so, but only after adjustments are made for the marked population difference between the two races. But wait a second: If there is so plainly a bounty on black men – if the chances that a young African American will be killed in a police encounter are so uniquely high that our cities are in upheaval, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is on permanent alert, and black parents nationwide feel compelled to have “the talk” with their kids – then why is statistical fiddling necessary to portray this crisis?

Because there isn’t a crisis – unless we’re talking about one that is wholly manufactured.

The exceedingly inconvenient fact of the matter for the “cops are preying on black men” narrative is that far more whites than blacks are killed in confrontations with police. Last year, in fact, it was roughly twice as many.

The social justice warriors can’t have that, of course. So, making like Olympic judges from the old Soviet bloc they so resemble, today’s narrative repairmen knead the numbers to make the story come out right. The spin becomes “fact,” dutifully repeated in press coverage and popular discussion.

In this instance, the hocus-pocus is to factor in that, although there are 160 million more whites than blacks in the country, this 62 percent portion of our population accounts for “only” about half of “police involved” fatalities (49 percent). Blacks, by contrast account for an outsize 24 percent of the deaths despite being only 13 percent of population.

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Review: The American Revolution and The Politics of Liberty by Edward Cline

Posted By on September 24th, 2016

It’s interesting that Barack Obama’s newest press secretary, Josh Earnest, characterized the conflict between ISIS and Obama’s friendly treatment of ISIS (aka ISIL), a brutal, mass murdering terrorist organization, as a “war of narratives.” In short, he denigrated any opposition to ISIS, or any criticism of Obama’s overall pro-Islam policies, as arbitrary say-so. Doubtless Earnest would also characterize the arguments between Britain and the colonies in the 18th century as a “war of narratives.”

Pamela Engel, writing for Business Insider, wrote on September 19th:

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told CNN on Monday morning that the US was in a “narrative fight” with ISIS.

Earnest appeared on the network as authorities in New York and New Jersey investigated bombs found throughout the area over the weekend, including one that injured 29 people when it exploded on Saturday night in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Authorities on Monday morning seemed to be changing their initial assessment that the bombs weren’t connected to one another and did not appear to be related to international terrorism.

“What I can tell you is that we are, when it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight, a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle,” Earnest said, using an alternate name for the terrorist group, which is also known as the Islamic State or Daesh. “And what ISIL wants to do is they want to project that they are an organization that is representing Islam in a fight, in a war against the West and a war against the United States.”

Earnest continued: “That is a bankrupt, false narrative. It is a mythology. And we have made progress in debunking that mythology.”

It is a “bankrupt, false narrative” only in the minds of Earnest and the rest of the Obama administration. Islam is without a doubt at war with the West, but the West refuses to acknowledge that declaration of war. It can’t bring itself to concede that Islam is more a political ideology than it is a “religion.” The Obama meme is that Islam is basically a “religion of peace” (continuing the George W. Bush line) that was “hijacked” by murderous renegades. This is the actual “mythology” that should be debunked.

But the Obama administration and the MSM and all their minions will not be persuaded otherwise. It would scuttle their whole approach to combating Islamic terrorism. They have a vested interest in the Progressive/Left ideology that defines their world view. They are ideologues trapped in a locked room in which they go round and round, chasing their own tails.

Robert H. Webking, author of The American Revolution and the Politics of Liberty, contradicts the received wisdom that the revolutionaries were little more than ideologues who had no philosophical or moral foundation on which to base their opposition to the growing expansion of British power over the lives of the American colonists, and so they declared their independence from Britain more from roiling emotion than from principle. Webking is a professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso.

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Why Did the Obama Justice Department Grant Cheryl Mills Immunity? By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 24th, 2016

Well, what would Friday be without the latest document dump from the Clinton email investigation? Yesterday afternoon, with the public in distracted anticipation of the coming weekend and Monday’s Clinton-Trump debate showdown, the FBI released another 189 pages of interview reports.

Along with this document dump comes remarkable news: The Obama Justice Department reportedly gave top Clinton aide and confidant Cheryl Mills immunity from prosecution for any incriminating information located on her personal computer.

According to House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), the limited immunity was granted in order to persuade Ms. Mills to surrender her laptop computer so the FBI could check whether classified information was stored on it.

This is very strange. There was no need to grant concessions to Mills. The Justice Department could have required the production of the computer by simply issuing a grand jury subpoena. And had there been any concern that Mills would not cooperate, would destroy the computer, or would “misplace” it (as Team Clinton claims to have misplaced so many Hillary devices), investigators could have applied for a search warrant and seized the computer.

In normal cases, the Justice Department does not grant immunity in exchange for evidence when it has lawful power to compel production of that evidence.

Mills is not alone. Apparently her subordinate, longtime Clinton aide Heather Samuelson, was given the same deal.

Unbelievably, Mills and Samuelson, who are lawyers, were also permitted to represent Hillary Clinton in the very same investigation in which, we now learn, they were personally granted immunity from prosecution. That’s apart from the fact that both of them were involved as government officials at the time they engaged in some of the conduct under investigation – a circumstance that, by itself, should have disqualified them from later serving as lawyers for other subjects in the same the investigation.

As readers may recall, I have been trying to draw attention to questions about immunity in the Clinton emails investigation since last spring (see here and here). That was when we first learned that some form of immunity had been given to Brian Pagliano. He is the Clinton family employee who serviced then-Secretary Clinton’s unauthorized private server and, astonishingly, later drew a large State Department salary while continuing to be paid on the side by the Clintons.

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The ‘Act of Production’ Privilege Does Not Explain DOJ’s Immunity Grant to Cheryl Mills By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 24th, 2016

As explained in my preceding post, there appears to be no good rationale for the Justice Department’s decision to grant Cheryl Mills immunity from prosecution for any incriminating data on her computer in exchange for her agreement to surrender the computer. The Justice Department could simply have issued a grand jury subpoena requiring Mills to hand over the computer. Nevertheless, this being a legal discussion, I wouldn’t disappoint you by saying there are no caveats.

I should thus address what’s known as “act of production” privilege. It is derived from the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, reflecting the salient difference between (a) a physical object, and (b) the potentially incriminating testimonial implications of surrendering that object to investigators.

The easiest way to think about this is to consider the difference between arrest and interrogation. If, as an investigator, I arrest you for armed bank robbery, I am entitled to get any evidentiary benefit your physical person gives my case. For example, I can put you in a line-up to enable eyewitnesses to identify you as the robber, or I can search your pockets for the money and the gun. But the Constitution bars me from coercing you to make any statements that would help me prove your guilt. Under the Fifth Amendment, you have the right to remain silent.

These same principles operate with respect to physical evidence that is in your possession, even if it is not located on your physical person.

There are some situations in which complying with a subpoena can be the functional equivalent of admitting guilt. Let’s say I’m a prosecutor in a drug investigation. I issue a subpoena demanding that X produce any ledger of illegal narcotics transactions in X’s possession. Turns out that X does possess such a document, but his lawyer realizes that, if X hands the document over to me, this would be an implicit confession that (a) the document is, in fact, a ledger of illegal drug deals, and (b) X has been in possession of it. So, if X were to comply with the subpoena, which the law requires him to do, I would obtain not only the physical ledger, the contents of which I can use in a drug conspiracy prosecution against X; I would also get a windfall: what amounts to testimonial admissions by X that would help me prove his knowing participation in the drug conspiracy.

Obviously, X does not want to give me the ledger. Yet, X knows that he has been issued a lawful subpoena for this physical evidence. If I later find out that he has withheld the ledger in defiance of the subpoena, I could prosecute him for obstruction of justice and contempt.

To resolve this dilemma between (a) the lawful duty to comply with a subpoena demanding production of physical evidence and (b) the constitutional privilege against admitting guilt, the prosecutor grants a limited form of protection known as “act of production” immunity.

Under this arrangement, X must surrender the ledger, and if there is information in the ledger that incriminates X, the prosecution may use that information against X. But the prosecution forfeits the ability to use against X the fact that X, by surrendering the ledger, effectively admitted both that it was a drug ledger and was in X’s possession.

As you can imagine, this is very routine in law enforcement.

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Dr. Lisa Bardack’s Faustian Bargain By Jay Michaels

Posted By on September 24th, 2016

“Oh what tangled webs we weave, when we first practice to deceive.” Sir Walter Scott

When Dr. Lisa Bardack[*] was asked to become Hillary Clinton’s personal physician in 2001, it had to have been a crowning moment in the career of the Mt. Kisco internist. Dr. Bardack could have anticipated little downside. She already had the responsibility — and legal obligation under HIPAA — to protect the privacy of her patient. She and her staff would have to be especially scrupulous in the case of a senator with presidential ambitions, but this should not have posed a serious problem.

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton corrupts everyone who serves her. And this year Bardack encountered difficulties she could not have foreseen in 2001:

1. Clinton developed serious medical issues.

2. The candidate was being videoed, not only during campaign stops, speeches, townhalls, and the rare press conference, but before and after events — by individuals with cell phones who were under no obligation to obey orders given to servile journalists to turn off their cameras.

3. The internet not only permitted the mass distribution of these videos and photos, but it enabled those who were curious to check Bardack’s reports against information available on reputable medical sites. It also enabled skeptical physicians to share their doubts with hundreds of thousands of readers.

In July 2015, the Clinton campaign asked Bardack to give the candidate a clean bill of health. She was to disclose, selectively, some of her patient’s medical history. But the letter was not widely analyzed until after the disturbing September 11 video by Zdenek Gazda, the Zapruder of 2016. It was no longer possible to dismiss those asking questions about Hillary’s health as right-wing conspiracy theorists, and the campaign now requested a second letter from Dr. Bardack explaining the event. The physician duly issued a report on September 14. Now her real problems began.

Let’s take a look at the two letters and some of questions doctors have asked about the diagnoses and treatment.

I. The letter of 12 July 2015

Bardack’s summary revealed a couple of major health problems that had not been previously disclosed. We had been told that Clinton suffered an elbow fracture in 2009 and a concussion in 2012. The fact that a woman in her mid-60s would fall twice ought perhaps to have raised some red flags. In particular, unless you’re being tackled or attacked, a concussion can usually be avoided by the body’s reflexes. Arms are extended to break the fall.

But now the public learned that some time in 2009 and in December 2012, the month of the concussion, Clinton had suffered blood clots.

She already had a history of clotting. Running for the Presidential nomination in the fall of 2007, Hillary gave an extended interview on her 60th birthday in which she disclosed that she’d had a life-threatening medical emergency in 1998. The crisis had been kept a secret not only from the public, but from her staff, who were told she had a sprained ankle. Clinton’s foot had swollen and she was in great pain. A White House doctor told her to rush to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the diagnosis of a blood clot was made. “That was scary,” Hillary said, “because you have to treat it immediately — you don’t want to take the risk that it will break lose and travel to your brain, or your heart or your lungs. That was the most significant health scare I’ve ever had.” Clinton assured the reporter that she was no longer on blood thinners. This was probably the last time Hillary spoke candidly about her health.

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Tainted by Suspicion: A Book Review By Richard Kirk

Posted By on September 24th, 2016

Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections, by Fred Lucas, Mount Vernon, WA: Stairway Press, 2016 (314 pages, $19.95, Paperback)

Who should read Fred Lucas’s book, Tainted by Suspicion? Folks whose knowledge of Aaron Burr comes primarily from a milk commercial, individuals who think Benjamin Harrison was one of the Beatles, and especially moderately informed voters who labor under the illusion that there once was a golden age of political decorum in the United States. Indeed, even history buffs are likely to discover a plethora of new facts and perspectives by perusing Lucas’s analysis of The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections — specifically the elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, 1888, 1960, and 2000.

“Historiphobes” should be pleased to know that Lucas, a veteran White House correspondent, doesn’t overwhelm readers with unnecessary facts and generally focuses attention only on relevant details. Most folks will easily cover one or two elections in a single sitting — without the twin dangers of drowning in mind-numbing minutiae or being starved with cartoonish oversimplification.

For each contested election Lucas provides a succinct portrait of the primary candidates, issues, and campaigns — descriptions that belie any notion of a kinder, gentler era of political discourse. Indeed, on the whole, one could easily conclude that modern campaigns are less vicious than their 19th century predecessors. In 1876, for example, Democrats chanted “Tilden or blood” when it appeared the supporters of Rutherford B. Hayes were going to string together enough disputed electoral votes to overturn what appeared to be a Tilden victory — a victory achieved, one must add, with the help of KKK vote suppression in the South. Fortunately, Tilden was more politic than his most ardent supporters, especially since both he and Hayes (subsequently known as “Rutherfraud”) were ready to end Reconstruction.

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France: What Is Hidden Behind the “Burkini Ban” by Guy Millière

Posted By on September 24th, 2016

In thirty years, France has undergone an accelerated process of Islamization.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the main Islamic movement in France, explained how Muslims living in the West have to proceed: they may use terror, they may use seduction, exploit Westerners’ sense of guilt, grab public spaces, change laws, and create their own society inside Western societies until they become Muslim societies.

France used to be a country where religious neutrality in the public space was seen as an essential principle. Muslim extremists appear to be using Islamic veils and head-coverings as visible symbols to create the impression that Islam is everywhere.

Politicians claim that they respect human rights, but they seem to have forgotten the human rights of the women who do not cover up — of those who suffer from Islamization, who are no longer free to write, think, or go for a walk on the street.

Politicians refused to “stigmatize” Islam and do not want to see the consequences: harassment, rapes, the destruction of freedom.

French journalists write under the threat of trial or assault, and almost never use the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” Almost all books on Islam in French bookstores are written by Islamists or by authors praising Islam.

Have non-Muslims lost the will to fight?

In Sisco, Corsica, on August 13, a group of Muslim men arrived on a beach in the company of women wearing “burkinis” (full-body bathing costumes). The Muslim men firmly asked the tourists on the beach to leave and posted signs saying “No Entry”. When a few teenagers resisted, the Muslim men responded with a harpoon and baseball bats. The police intervened — but it was just the beginning.

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David Singer: Islamic State Crows as Russia and America Trade Blows David Singer

Posted By on September 23rd, 2016

Islamic State combatants were no doubt jumping with joy following botched airstrikes against them by American, Australian and British warplanes in Syria that accidentally killed at least 60 Syrian soldiers and wounded more than 100.

The 15-member United Nations (UN) Security Council met on 17 September after Russia demanded an emergency session to discuss the American-led airstrike fiasco.

The U.S. ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, chastised Russia for the move:

“Russia really needs to stop the cheap point scoring and the grandstanding and the stunts and focus on what matters, which is implementation of something we negotiated in good faith with them”

Russia made no bones about its feelings:

“We are reaching a really terrifying conclusion for the whole world: That the White House is defending Islamic State. Now there can be no doubts about that,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.”

The boot was however on the other foot with America blaming Russia for an airstrike a few days later that killed 20 Syrian Red Crescent aid workers and truck drivers delivering humanitarian aid relief to 78000 civilians trapped in Aleppo province.

Islamic State no doubt relishes these recriminations and counter recriminations that will guarantee the end of the current tenuous ceasefire.

This disastrous state of affairs could have been avoided had Russia, America and their respective cohorts agreed to concentrate on jointly destroying their common agreed enemy – Islamic State – under a UN mandated Security Council Resolution, rather than acting independently of each other.

President Obama’s decision to intrude uninvited upon Syrian sovereign territory in September 2014 without the backing of a Chapter VII UN Security Council Resolution has seen America behind the eight ball ever since.

President Putin warned in his speech at the UN just one year ago of the perils of operating outside a UN Security Council resolution:

“Russia stands ready to work together with its partners on the basis of full consensus, but we consider the attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations as extremely dangerous. They could lead to a collapse of the entire architecture of international organizations, and then indeed there would be no other rules left but the rule of force.”

The chickens are now coming home to roost for America as the consequences of its by-passing the UN unfolded this past week.

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Peter Smith Exploding Brains and Toolboxes

Posted By on September 23rd, 2016

A bomb detonates in New York and reporters fall over themselves to ignore the most likely culprits while suggesting ludicrously improbable alternatives. As here in Australia, the newsroom narrative insists on overlooking the Religion of Peace, but 49% of the population is nowhere near so stupid
Donald Trump had the temerity to call the pressure cooker device, similar to those used in the Boston bombing, which exploded in New York injuring people with flying shrapnel, a bomb. The man is unhinged.

I switched to CNN to find out the ‘true facts’ in the aftermath of what New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, had perceptively described as “an intentional act.” First, I was reassured by a ‘terrorism expert’ that the incident was most unlikely to have been a terrorist act, otherwise de Blasio would not have said at his news conference that there was no evidence of it. Seems logical, I thought dimwittedly. But, at the same time as being reassured on the one hand, I was alarmed by the suggestion, repeated on my count on six or seven occasions, that a toolbox near the scene could have been responsible; presumably by spontaneously exploding.

I have two toolboxes. You can image my feelings of trepidation at ever again visiting my storeroom, where they are kept. However, I took my courage in my hands and posted a notice on the door. “Beware!”, it says, “Approach with caution, potentially-explosive toolboxes inside.”

You think I am making this up. I am not imaginative enough to make it up. I kid you not — CNN did indeed proffer the suggestion, again and again, that a toolbox was the potential culprit. Most of the media, in the greatest nation the world has ever seen, is now so hopelessly biased in favour of the Religion of Peace™ that reporters act like blithering idiots without a hint of intelligent self-reflection or embarrassment. Donald Trump stands alone, a giant, against the crumbling of our civilisation for which the US media is a standardbearer.

The media here in Australia tries to match its US counterpart in the race to the bottom but still has a way to go. Don’t worry, they will get there. In the meantime, the lack of objectivity when it comes to anything Islamic is evident enough. This brings me to Pauline Hanson’s maiden Senate speech. After reading about this so-called ‘bigoted’ speech in the media I thought I would read it myself.

A first thing to say, with due respect to Ms Hanson, is that she is undoubtedly employing a good speech writer. It is a very well put together speech. “Of course, I don’t agree with all of it.” This isn’t me folks. It is the obligatory weasel line of those conservatives who ‘defend to the death’ her right to speak her mind; and to hell with 18C. For example, Tim Wilson was at it in The Australian (22 September). “There are certainly sections of her speech that legitimately raised eyebrows.” Which sections, Tim?

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England Restored: To Understand Brexit, Look to History The British character and its liberties were centuries in the making; integration with Europe was a recent mistake. By Rupert Darwall

Posted By on September 23rd, 2016

Three months ago, Britain voted decisively to leave the European Union. Britain’s integration into a federal Europe has been a fixed — and wrong-headed — article of faith of American foreign policy for more than half a century. Across the spectrum of U.S. foreign-policy experts, opinion was united in favor of Britain’s continuing EU membership. Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal informed British voters that it would be imprudent for them to vote for independence. A couple of days after the vote, the dean of foreign-policy pundits, the Council on Foreign Relations’s Richard Haass, predicted that the United Kingdom would disappear within five years. Closer to home, military historian Anthony Beevor warned that in the event of a vote to leave that accelerated the EU’s unravelling, “We will instantly achieve most-hated nation status, not just in Europe but far beyond.” One doesn’t Brexit in polite society.

The immediate aftermath of the referendum tended to bear out the Brexit Cassandras. A political vacuum was created when David Cameron announced he was quitting as prime minister but would stay in place until September. Leave campaigners behaved as if they were a provisional government, and London had an air of St. Petersburg in 1917 between the March and October revolutions. Meanwhile north of the border between England and Scotland, there was a huge spike in favor of Scottish independence. To some observers, it seemed like the United Kingdom was falling apart.

Contrasting the Leave vote in the Brexit referendum with the remain vote in the referendum on Scottish independence two years earlier, a Northern Irish Catholic friend was closer to the mark. “The English had the strength of their convictions to vote for what the Scots didn’t dare to do,” he told me three days after the referendum. By early September, a poll showed that support for Scottish independence had retreated back close to the level of the 2014 referendum and only 37 percent of Scots wanted a second referendum on leaving the United Kingdom. In fact, the main effect of Scottish nationalism has been to destroy Labour’s historic dominance of Scotland, making Labour’s path to a majority at Westminster extremely difficult. A mere 19 days after David Cameron had announced his resignation, a new Conservative prime minister was stepping through the door of No. 10. As in May 1940, Britain’s constitution was ruthlessly efficient at ejecting a failed prime minister and providing fresh leadership.

It was England that had led the Brexit vote, with Wales following, opposed by Scotland and Northern Ireland. One month after the referendum, Cambridge historian Robert Tombs provided an alternative historical interpretation to Beevor’s. “If England is exceptional,” Tombs wrote in the New Statesman, “its exceptional characteristic is its long-standing and settled scepticism about the European project in principle, greater than in any other EU country.” The argument, constantly trotted out, that European integration was necessary to prevent war received less support in Britain, especially England, than elsewhere. Britain’s experience of the 20th century had been far less traumatic; “loyalty to the nation was not tarnished with fascism, but was rather the buttress of freedom and democracy.”

The 52–48 margin for Leave, Tombs argues, understates the public’s disengagement from the EU. “What galvanised the vote for Brexit,” Tombs writes, “was a core attachment to national democracy: the only sort of democracy that exists in Europe.” Only 6 percent of Britons supported deeper European integration — the lowest level of any member state — while two thirds wanted powers returned to Britain from Brussels, with a majority even among the relatively Europhile young. Tombs’s conclusion is stark: “In retrospect, joining the Common Market in 1973 has proved an immense historic error.”

Tombs’s Brexit essay forms a coda to his extraordinary The English and Their History, published two years ago. In a December 2015 review in The Atlantic, David Frum called it “spectacular,” a book crammed with explosives “carefully arranged to blow to smithereens three-quarters of a century of accumulated conventional wisdom.” It is a history of a people, of a nation, and of a civilization that changed the world, one stretching back to well before the ninth century when an Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to record the national history was commissioned, most probably by King Alfred, to be written in English.