Talking sports with the inimitable Mr. Carlson

My friend Brad Carlson, multimedia sensation that he is, will have me on his radio show tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. Central. We'll be previewing the NFL season, with particular attention to the NFC North. Brad is a diehard but rational Vikings fan. I am a diehard but (mostly) rational Packers fan. If you're in the metro, tune in to AM1280; it's also available in a variety of other formats that Brad details here. It's always a good (and good natured) time; the only drama will be to see if I can accurately pronounce the names of Olabisi Johnson and Marquez Valdez-Scantling, among others.

The Sanctimony Bulk Pack

James Comey is a tall man and his self-regard towers over even his expansive height. Jonathan Turley reminds us of a few things:

The inspector general has confirmed what was clear and obvious. The memos were FBI material, and Comey did violate provisions of the Federal Records Act and FBI rules clearly barring their removal and disclosure. Moreover, the inspector general agreed that it was not necessary to guarantee an investigation into Trump. Investigations were ongoing and the report cites other “options” that Comey refused to use. The report concludes, “What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.”

The reason Comey violated these rules was as obvious then as it is now. Leaking the memos was designed to improve his stature in the media and it worked. Comey transformed himself into a badly needed hero to use against the villain Trump. He knew the memos would change the focus of media coverage to his new role as a federal government whistleblower.

No one owes James Comey an apology.

Something else to watch

My alma mater, Beloit College, is a lefty place. They do have a Young Americans for Freedom chapter on campus and the YAF is bringing in some really heavy hitters to campus this upcoming semester:

Here comes Dick

Given the reaction on campus that Erik Prince received last year, this should be fun. And I suspect the world, or at least the academic world, will be watching.

The old-fashioned way

Some people decry Ilhan Omar because of her anti-Semitism. That's not what could bring her down, though. Simple, old-fashioned graft just might:

An independent government watchdog says Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's campaign may have committed serious campaign finance fraud.

Omar's campaign spent $21,547 on travel for the E Street Group, run by Tim Mynett, whose wife is now accusing him of leaving her for Omar. Tom Anderson, who is with the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, said the travel payment may actually be Omar using campaign funds for personal use, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

"We believe Representative Ilhan Omar may have touched the third rail of campaign finance law: disbursing campaign funds for personal use," Anderson said. "It's a brazen act Representative Omar was caught doing before in Minnesota and all of the evidence we've seen tells us she’s probably doing it again."

Omar has operated under the assumption that the Esme Murphys of the world will cover for her. If the "probably" turns into "is," she'll have to leave. There are dozens of the DFL politicos who would love to have her seat in Congress. We're watching this one.

Musical interlude

More than 70 years ago and it still stands up.

All hell's breaking lose, but it's not even that interesting

Trump is nuts. Trump's a genius. Joe Biden's doing fine. Joe Biden's sinking. China is winning. China is caving. We're already in a recession. What recession -- it's a boom!

I feel fine.

Back online

Our computer had a long, slow slide to oblivion. We have a new one now (it's even shiny!), which will make it easier to get back to the blogging business.

Whether or not I'll blog more often than I have recently is an open question. Time is a factor; it was my practice to get up waaaaay too early in the morning to blog. A lack of sleep and a too-often sedentary lifestyle is a good way to end one's blogging permanently, if you know what I mean and I think you do. So I'm not likely to do that anymore. But I do want to find time to blog, so I'll be experimenting with it a bit.

Two cents

I don't think Trump is serious about gun control. Do you?

Ten days in

One thing is obvious at my new gig: trial lawyers and regulators may not have a stake in the business, but they drive much of the activity. I'd always suspected as much, but until you're in the environment, you don't really get to experience it. It's something else.

The headline we all expected

We also would have accepted "Arkancide"

As inevitable as the dawn:

Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced millionaire who was facing federal sex trafficking charges, died by suicide early Saturday in his Lower Manhattan prison cell, three law enforcement officials told ABC News.

Epstein hanged himself, law enforcement sources said. He was transported in cardiac arrest at 6:39 a.m. from Metropolitan Correctional Center to New York Downtown Hospital, according to sources.

We got a sneak preview of some of Epstein's clientele yesterday:

On Friday, a federal appellate court in New York unsealed around 2,000 pages of documents from a now-settled civil defamation case between Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an alleged Epstein victim, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime Epstein associate.

Giuffre accused Maxwell of recruiting her while she was working as a locker-room attendant at Mar-A-Lago in 2000 and bringing her to Epstein's home for a massage. She claims that she eventually became a teen sex slave to Epstein, and a victim of sex trafficking, beginning at age 17, at the hands of both Epstein and Maxwell.

The newly-unsealed documents showed that Giuffre alleged that Epstein and Maxwell directed her to have sex with, among others: Prince Andrew; criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz; former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson; former Senator George Mitchell; a well-known prime minster, who she wouldn't name; and a foreign man who was introduced to her as a "prince."

Dershowitz has denied everything, in forceful terms. Mitchell and Richardson deny the allegations in the linked article from ABC. It's likely coincidental that Richardson and Mitchell's political party isn't mentioned in the article, because why would that matter, right?

The rumors that have long simmered, and that matter most of all, concern Bill Clinton, famous for his horndoggery and credibly accused of untoward behavior by many other women.

It will be interesting to see if the prosecutors decide to redouble their efforts against Maxwell in order to get the story out. Had Epstein been Scott Walker, it all would just mysteriously leak out to the press. But he wasn't, so the story may end here. We'll see.

Random observation

Your mileage may vary on this, but this is what I'm seeing right now.

• Trump is a front man, but he's not a political philosopher. He's less concerned about underlying theories and more concerned about what might work. For all his faults, he understands that governing is the job, but he's willing, even eager to delegate much of the day-to-day work to subordinates. Many of his subordinates are excellent; they are the ones who the MSM doesn't discuss much.
• Every Democrat in the race wants to rule, not govern. They all have, to varying degrees, a political philosophy and a particular approach to communicating that philosophy, but every one of them wants to rule.

That's the choice. It's been the choice for a while now, but at this point the differences couldn't be more stark.

Ownership

The guy who shot up a Walmart in El Paso appears to be a bad dude who hates Mexicans. The guy who shot up the Oregon district in Dayton (I've been to that bar, by the way) was a Bernie/Warren supporter.

Politicians don't own these guys. We can play tit for tat all damn day on it. Let's not.

The new gig has begun

Started today. Will be there for 18 months. I have a lot to learn, but I am thrilled to have the opportunity.

Thank you for your support and your prayers. A lot of my former colleagues are still looking, so I feel fortunate indeed.

Games Prosecutors Play

Andrew McCarthy explains what Mueller's Little Helpers were up to:

The special counsel’s staff wrote a 448-page tome, overflowing with details about a traitorous collusion plot that never happened and the obstruction of an investigation that was never actually impeded in the slightest. Even though the regulations call for a confidential report from the special counsel to the attorney general, the Mueller report was patently written with the intention that it would be transmitted to Congress and the public. (Indeed, even before the report was submitted to the Justice Department, various industrious publishers planned to make it available for sale.) Moreover, when AG Barr undertook to announce only the special counsel’s bottom-line conclusions, Mueller’s staff threw a fit, grousing to the media that Barr was wrongly withholding the report and denying the public the condemnatory narrative in which they had couched these benign conclusions.

It's been done before. Remember what happened to Scott Walker in Wisconsin? After the corrupt John Doe investigation was scuppered, the rogue prosecutors found a way to get their theories into the press, leaking to the British newspaper The Guardian, a media outlet last seen informing the world about Danielle Stella, the Ilhan Omar opponent from Bizarro World central casting. A summation of the Wisconsin prosecutor's tactics:

Prosecutors treated conservative organizations as if they were dangerous drug cartels or mob operations. As the Wisconsin Supreme Court said, they executed search warrants against the personal homes and families of the leaders of these nonprofits in “pre-dawn, armed, paramilitary-style raids in which bright floodlights were used to illuminate the targets’ homes.”

Here is the meritless theory behind the investigations: Any support for issues important to Gov. Scott Walker, such as the bill reducing union power over state government employees, was illegal “coordination.”

As the state Supreme Court said, however, our democracy is supposed to assure the “unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.” Instead, the prosecutors’ theories “would assure that such political speech will be investigated with paramilitary-style home invasions conducted in the pre-dawn hours and then prosecuted and punished.”

Also known as the Roger Stone treatment.

You don't have to like Donald Trump, or Scott Walker, or any Republican. You can certainly argue they are scoundrels; Trump certainly has had his scoundrel-like moments. But if we give prosecutors unfettered power, we are risking something far more dangerous than impolite Tweets.

Who knew?

I'm impressed by this. The Guardian must have a hell of a Twin Cities bureau to scoop everyone about this development:

A pro-Trump Republican candidate for Congress who is aiming to unseat Ilhan Omar in Minnesota has been charged with a felony after allegedly stealing from stores.

Danielle Stella was arrested twice this year in Minneapolis suburbs over allegations that she shoplifted items worth more than $2,300 from a Target and goods valued at $40 from a grocery store. She said she denied the allegations.

Stella, a 31-year-old special education teacher, was reported this week to be a supporter of the baseless “QAnon” conspiracy theory about Donald Trump battling a global cabal of elite liberal paedophiles.

I follow politics fairly closely. I'd never heard of Stella before. Had you? Impressive bit of reporting by the Guardian, I gotta say.

I'm pretty sure I saw the Elite Liberal Paedophiles open for the Del Fuegos at the Turf Club back in '88.

The internet is forever, baby

Michael Moore in 2019, after Mueller flamed out:

I,  Tire Fire Tiresias

What Michael Moore said in 2018:

Look upon my works, yet Mighty, and despair

Bad Trump Bad Trump whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when Mueller comes for you?

Speaking of things that haven't aged well. . .

The internet is forever, baybee:

Mueller ain't coming, Mikey

By the way, it's remarkable how punitive our friends on the portside are.

Purviews, or I Can't Get Into That

Bob Mueller, at the top of his game:

That went well, now didn't it?

Franken Agonistes

Al Franken wants his old job back:

At his house, Franken said he understood that, in such an atmosphere, the public might not be eager to hear his grievances. Holding his head in his hands, he said, “I don’t think people who have been sexually assaulted, and those kinds of things, want to hear from people who have been #MeToo’d that they’re victims.” Yet, he added, being on the losing side of the #MeToo movement, which he fervently supports, has led him to spend time thinking about such matters as due process, proportionality of punishment, and the consequences of Internet-fuelled outrage. He told me that his therapist had likened his experience to “what happens when primates are shunned and humiliated by the rest of the other primates.” Their reaction, Franken said, with a mirthless laugh, “is ‘I’m going to die alone in the jungle.’ ”

And now, a musical interlude:

Regrets, he has a few, which Franken shared with Jane Mayer, last seen going after Brett Kavanaugh for things Kavanaugh hadn't done, but now in commiseration mode with a politician who actually did things:

When I asked him if he truly regretted his decision to resign, he said, “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.” He wishes that he had appeared before a Senate Ethics Committee hearing, as he had requested, allowing him to marshal facts that countered the narrative aired in the press. 

The piece I've linked, in the New Yorker, is very long and full of attempts at exculpation. Does Franken deserve a second chance? Was what happened to Franken fair?

Well, Franken's not going to get to represent Minnesota in the Senate again, unless Tina Smith were to stand down. Do you see that happening? I don't. Do you think Franken is going to primary Smith, the former Planned Parenthood executive? Do you think the DFL would let him? I don't. If Amy Klobuchar were to retire after her term is up (she's not going to be president, you know), Franken could run for that seat, but he'll have to wait until 2024 to have a chance. Franken will be 73 years old at that time, and there's little reason to believe Klobuchar would give up her seat in any event, unless she runs for president again. If that were to happen, there's a gaggle of younger DFL politicians a mile long who would want her seat and would not be amenable to standing aside to let Franken assuage his psyche.

If Franken really wants to avenge his situation, there's another solution: move back to New York and challenge Kirsten Gillibrand. Of course, he'd have to wait until 2024 for that chance, too. But if he's got anyone to blame for his fate, assuming he doesn't look in the mirror, Gillibrand is the culprit. Back to Mayer:

Minutes after Politico posted the story, Senator Gillibrand’s chief of staff called Franken’s to say that Gillibrand was going to demand his resignation. Franken was stung by Gillibrand’s failure to call him personally. They had been friends and squash partners. In a later call, Gillibrand’s chief of staff offered to have Gillibrand speak with Franken, but by that time Franken was frantically conferring with his staff and his family. Franken’s office proposed that Franken’s daughter speak with Gillibrand instead, but Gillibrand declined.

Gillibrand then went on Facebook and posted her demand that Franken resign: “Enough is enough. The women who have come forward are brave and I believe them. While it’s true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against Roy Moore, or Harvey Weinstein, or President Trump, it is still unquestionably wrong, and should not be tolerated.”

Minutes later, at a previously scheduled press conference, Gillibrand added insult to injury: she reiterated her call for Franken to resign while also trumpeting her sponsorship of a new bill that banned mandatory arbitration of sexual-harassment claims. She didn’t mention that Franken had originated the legislation—and had given it to Gillibrand to sponsor, out of concern that it might be imperilled by his scandal.

For her part, Gillibrand regrets nothing:

I recently asked Gillibrand why she felt that Franken had to go. She said, “We had eight credible allegations, and they had been corroborated, in real time, by the press corps.” She acknowledged that she hadn’t spoken to any accusers, to assess their credibility, but said, “I had been a leader in this space of sexual harassment and assault, and it was weighing on me.” Franken was “entitled to whichever process he wants,” she said. “But he wasn’t entitled to me carrying his water, and defending him with my silence.” She acknowledged that the accusations against Franken “were different” from the kind of rape or molestation charges made against many other #MeToo targets. “But the women who came forward felt it was sexual harassment,” she said. “So it was.”

So Franken got knifed by an ambitious pol who pretended to be his friend. Should we be sympathetic to his plight? You can if you'd like. But as far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to feel sympathy for a former Minnesota senator, I'll pick Norm Coleman instead.

Nicholas Kristof says Republicans are a cult of personality

Thus Spake Kristof

Video evidence: