No, it’s not “treason,” and it’s probably not even illegal, but yes, it was wrong.
But then…
It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that the Trump family is extremely ethics challenged. They are, after all, lifelong Democrats.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) July 12, 2017
Randy Barnett thoroughly dismantles a “living Constitutionalist.”
Was the New York Times sloppy, malicious, or careless? I think they were reckless. I won’t discuss the interesting parallels to my own legal case.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I like this comment:
Any settlement must include an apology printed on the front page of the Sunday Times, in large, boldface font, above the fold, including the statement: “The New York Times hereby acknowledges that the editorial was written by dishonest, ignorant, malicious idiots who perfectly represent the quality and tenor of this publication in general.”
If I were her, that’s what I’d demand.
People will die!
An interesting history from Yuval Levin.
Byron York lays it out. As far as I can tell, Obama was doing more to help Putin subvert the election than Trump was. And what are the Democrats who are blocking witness testimony trying to hide?
[Update a couple minutes later]
More thoughts from Don Surber. As Glenn asks, then why is Mueller hiring over a dozen more prosecutors? What’s the crime, and who is the target?
[Update a couple more minutes later]
Chaffetz: Congress has to look over Mueller’s shoulder. They certainly need to bring him in to explain himself. And the Justice Department should assign someone else to the hopelessly compromised obstruction investigation.
The issue, simmering for decades, is finally heating up. I haven’t read it yet, but Steve Freeland has a new paper out. An Australian law professor, he (as does his nation) supports the Moon Treaty (or did when I had beers with him a few years ago in Lincoln.
The FBI admits that Hodgkinson:
•vociferously raged against Republicans in online forums,
•had a piece of paper bearing the names of six members of Congress,
•was reported for doing target practice outside his home in recent months before moving to Alexandria,
•had mapped out a trip to the DC area,
•took multiple photos of the baseball field he would later shoot up, three days after the New York Times mentioned that Republicans practiced baseball at an Alexandria baseball field with little security,
•lived out of his van at the YMCA directly next door to the baseball field he shot up,
•legally purchased a rifle in March 2003 and 9 mm handgun “in November 2016,”
•modified the rifle at some point to accept a detachable magazine and replaced the original stock with a folding stock,
•rented a storage facility to hide hundreds of rounds of ammunition and additional rifle components,
asked “Is this the Republican or Democrat baseball team?” before firing on the Republicans,
ran a Google search for information on the “2017 Republican Convention” hours before the shooting,
and took photos at high-profile Washington locations, including the east front plaza of the U.S. Capitol and the Dirksen Senate Office.
•We know from other reporting that the list was of six Republican Freedom Caucus members, including Rep. Mo Brooks, who was present at the practice.So what does the FBI decide this information means? Well, the takeaway of the briefing was characterized well by the Associated Press headline about it: “FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind.”
If they don’t want to call it terrorism because it was an attempted political assassination, then fine, but this is insane. If they want to continue to drain away the last vestiges of confidence in their competence, this is the way to do it.
[Update Friday morning]
There’s no reason to beat around the bush here: what the FBI is claiming is mind-boggling when they claim the shooter had no target in mind. Consider the number of accidents of circumstance you would have to believe were going on here to not have the shooter doing what seems obvious from every piece of evidence we have: researching and planning for an attack on Republicans of some kind, particularly looking for an opportunity when security will be low and vulnerability will be high. This was an attack, not an “anger management” problem.
Step back, though, and think on the institutional conclusions here. Considering how ludicrous the FBI’s conclusions are as it relates to an attack on the third ranking member of the House of Representatives, you might reconsider whether to trust the FBI’s conclusions in other areas, as well. And this is how our faith in institutions is degraded: steadily, gradually, with incident after incident where men in suits stand in front of microphones and make claims we know are not the whole truth.
This is how you get more Trump. Despite the fact that Trump doesn’t seem inclined to do anything about it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related: Hey, Trump, how about firing Avner Shapiro? Your administration is full of people sabotaging your agenda. What are you going to do about it?
It appears to be ObamaCare Lite:
At a fundamental level, the Senate plan accepts Obamacare’s premises about the nature of health insurance and the individual market. It works from the assumption that the only way to make expensive health insurance cheaper is to subsidize it through the federal government. It is a plan that subsidizes, and therefore disguises, unaffordability, rather than attempting to bring down costs directly.
Republicans are useless.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bob Zubrin has a more radical plan:
…the problem that we face is not that there are too many people who lack health insurance, but that there are too many people who have it. If we want to get health-care costs under control, we need a system where the majority of medical expenses are paid for by informed individuals who shop for value and are free to choose what they want to buy accordingly.
So what should Congress do? The most effective action the government could take would be to simply ban health insurance and enact transparency laws forcing medical providers to clearly advertise their prices for services rendered. This would crash health-care costs overnight.
Unfortunately, things are not so simple. Health-care costs differ from grocery costs in one key respect: They are unpredictable, which means that for most people catastrophic health insurance would still be warranted. What’s more, there would still be indigent Americans unable to pay for health care even at the greatly reduced rates such a system would provide. Such people, however, could be given medical stamps, analogous to food stamps, to help cover all or part of their medical bills.
The recently failed Trump-Ryan health-care bill was useless, because it simply perpetuated the current nonsensical system in slightly altered form. To truly fix health care, we would need to build a new system from scratch with two cornerstones: the free market and a safety net — the former to drive down costs, and the latter to protect the most vulnerable.
Yup. The whole system is a disaster, and has been for decades, ever since employee-insurance and union demands completely warped the very concept of health insurance.
[Mid-morning update]
Well, here’s a different opinion:
Finished reading the Senate HC bill. Put simply: If it passes, it’ll be the greatest policy achievement by a GOP Congress in my lifetime.
— Avik Roy (@Avik) June 22, 2017
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the case, but Jacob Sullum’s take is pretty good. At a minimum, he should have been convicted of manslaughter, I think.
[Thursday-morning update]
Fear alone is no excuse for manslaughter.