Category Archives: Law

Higher Education

is in decline. It has been for many years, but only now are more people finally noticing:

The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has summed up the consensus among faculty: “The sad truth is that US higher education is in decline.” A poll in 2012 showed that 89 percent of American adults and 96 percent of senior academic administrators agree that American higher education is “in crisis.” When a recent dean of Harvard College writes a book subtitled How a Great University Forgot Education and laments “the loss of purpose in America’s great colleges”—meaning Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the other elite universities that follow their lead—the presumption must be that something has gone very wrong. These are the opinions of academics, most of whom are by no means conservative.

Some authorities still insist that colleges, even if they teach no specific knowledge, at least improve “critical thinking.” But this contention is not borne out by a test designed to measure such thinking, the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). Since the 1980s the improvement in students’ CLA scores during their four years of college has dropped by about 50 percent, and such improvement now averages just 7 percent over the first three semesters.

Along with government-recommended nutrition, this is one of the biggest public-policy disasters of our time. And it doesn’t even mention the degree to which the student-loan debt for these worthless degrees blights the lives of young people, while lining the pockets of banks and colleges at no risk to them.

[Update late morning]

I think it says something about the state of higher education, and particularly BU, that economics major Alexandria O-C is so fundamentally ignorant about not just the federal budget, but basic arithmetic.

The Scandals From The “Scandal-Free” Administration

Mark Tapscott says they all have common elements:

Just as Holder refused to turn over Fast & Furious documents sought by Congress, the DOJ and the FBI have done the same thing.

Just as Obama, Rice, Powers and Clinton lied about Benghazi, so did Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (appointed by Trump), former FBI Director James Comey (appointed by Obama), and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe (promoted by Comey) — when they signed the FISA applications and thereby certified the credibility of the material included in the documents.

Just as Lerner weaponized the IRS against the Tea Party, using the FISA process and the Steele dossier to enable surveillance of Page was a raw exercise of federal law enforcement and intelligence resources in an effort to harm Trump and thereby help Clinton.

Finally, just as the double standard of justice protected Clinton, the FBI investigation of the Russian collusion allegations led to the Mueller probe against Trump, even though it was Clinton who paid for Russian dirt on Trump.

In Republican administrations, the media are bulldogs. In Democrat administrations they’re lapdogs. This is one of the reasons to vote Republican.

Trey’s Letter To The FISA Judges

In light of recent revelations, if Nunes is right and the FISA judges involved were mislead by the FISA applications, they’re in an interesting position. You would think that they would infuriated at the agents who mislead them, and caused them to authorize the violation of the Constitutional rights of Carter Page and others involved. But we’ve heard nothing from them. Trey Gowdy is one of the few people on the Hill who has seen the unredacted documents, so he would know best the actual circumstances. He hasn’t written it yet, but here’s a draft of the letter I’d write if these allegations are true, and I were him, to give him a start.

“To the Honorable Judge ______:

It has come to the attention of this committee that the FISA application(s) for warrant that you authorized, were authorized on the basis of information that went beyond misleading, in that there were actual lies of both omission and commission, and that the information presented therein was both uncorroborated and unverified, with much of ostensibly independent sources being in fact circular. This was done so with the signature of the FBI personnel who applied for the warrants. It is understandable that in the light of the information you were provided that you would authorize the warrants.

But because the authorization was based on false or misleading information, your authorization in fact resulted in the deprivation of fundamental civil rights, guaranteed by the Constitution, of American citizens. As you are surely aware, the granting of a surveillance warrant out of public view is a far greater responsibility than upholding due process in an open court, and I’m sure that you take this grave responsibility to protect the rights of American citizens with the utmost seriousness. Speaking for myself, were I in your position, I would be infuriated at how I had unknowingly participated in such an act, as a result of duplicitous and lawless behavior on the part of the Executive branch.

As a legislative body, Congress has no ability to enforce the law against lawbreakers, but were I in your position, I would act on that justifiable anger, by appropriately sanctioning the individuals who participated in this lawlessness, and abused your court and the system of justice.

I hope that you are in agreement with our position, and will take the action necessary to ensure that nothing resembling this happens again.

If, however, you do nothing, our committee will be compelled to take such inaction as an acquiescence to the unlawful actions. In such an event, while the branch created by Article I has no direct power to discipline employees of the branch created by Article II, this House does have the power to discipline unlawful and unconstitutional behavior of those appointed to the branch created by Article 3. It is my sincere hope that the recommendation of this committee to the full House to use such power will be unnecessary.

Respectfully,

Congressman Trey Gowdy

Chairman, House Committee of Oversight and Reform”

The FISA Warrant

OK, one post (at least) before I hit the road. The big news this weekend, is that Judicial Watch (finally) got a (heavily redacted) copy. Of course, the mainstream media is lying (or to be more charitable, ignorant and desperate to maintain the narrative) about its implications. I’m seeing lots of tweets from partisan hacks in both media and politics (like Adam Schiff) that this somehow undermines the Nunes memo, when in fact it supports it.

It’s been amazing how both sides can look at the same fact pattern here, and see a completely different narrative. It’s almost like the blue/yellow dress, or the “Laurel/Yammy” thing. The other thing that’s amazing is the dramatic historical role reversal, with Democrats defending the (corrupted) intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, and going into full McCarthy mode over Russia Russia Russia. Not to mention the amnesia about the Obama administration and “the eighties called, they want their foreign policy back.”

I’d expand on this and dredge up more links if I had more time, but I have to hit the road. But feel free to comment.

[Update a few minutes later]

The FBI goes full Nixon with the FISA report.

This is a clear abuse of power, and a much bigger scandal than Watergate, perhaps the greatest one in the nation’s history.

[Tuesday-afternoon update]

Byron York: The next step is to declassify the entire thing. I think it would be better to bring in someone else to go through it with White House staff, maybe out of Bolton’s office, to determine which things would actually damage NatSec if declassified, and which are only covering up the obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

[Update a couple minutes later]

OK, not what I’ve read the piece myself, that’s basically what they’re proposing, so it’s a misleading hed. Probably not Byron’s fault.

Space Is Not A Global Commons

A Twitter thread from the U.S. representative to COPUOS.

Strzok’s Smirk

Yes, he’s lying, and yes, he’s filth. And so are the people not just defending him, but praising him.

[Update a few minutes later]

Liz Sheld has more.

[Saturday noon update]

Denying the obvious doesn’t make it go away. What was breathtaking about his performance was not that he claimed that the bias didn’t affect his behavior; it was his insane claim that the bias didn’t even exist.

[Sunday-morning update]

More from Melissa Mackenzie:

The creepiest witness to ever grace a Congressional hearing, minced in his seat and evaded questions for hours on end Thursday. His name? Peter Strzok (pronounced “Struck” for the Democrats on the committee who kept mispronouncing it). The general impression from his testimony? What a complete weirdo. It is astonishing that someone so strange, supercilious and seemingly evil reached so high a position in law enforcement.

As I tweeted a few weeks ago, I’d have a lot more confidence in Mueller if the people telling me about his probity and character weren’t the same people who told me that about Comey. I have to wonder how many other Strzoks, Pages, Ohrs, McCabes et al are at the agency. I think it needs a thorough housecleaning.

[Bumped]

Unmasking Antifa

Three reasons it’s a bad idea.

I’m not sure he’s entirely serious.

[Update a while later]

Related: Why Leftists become thugs:

What turns people into wicked punks while they no doubt continue to believe themselves to be decent and good? Bad ideas, that’s what, ideas that give people license to answer words and policies with terror. What’s the bad idea on the left? Control. The notion that the left’s cause is so righteous it needs to pay no mind to liberty but simply deserves to win by any means necessary. Let five judges on the Supreme Court make law and damn the “outdated” Constitution. Give unelected bureaucracies like the EPA the power to regulate people’s lives without appeal or oversight. Give ignoble gnomes like Peter Strzok the wherewithal to criminalize the political opposition. And of course, bring on the socialism: a philosophy that declares a person’s work, his time, his life, his property belong not to him but to the state. Control.

Yup.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sarah Hoyt: The Left misunderstands the Constitution. Again.

[Late-afternoon update]

The power-hungry Left loses its cool. Though “power-hungry Left” is redundant.

[Late evening update]

Glenn has a good point on how Leftists become thugs. Maybe the causation goes the other way.