Biden Administration Guts Due-Process Rights for College Students

From Emily Yoffe, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "Biden's Sex Police":

The White Houses's new regulations will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.

Joe Biden has fulfilled one of the first promises he made upon becoming president. His administration has just announced a comprehensive set of regulations—701 pages worth—that will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.

Apparently, Biden learned nothing from going through his own sexual assault accusation crucible.

During his vice presidency, Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man for a major domestic initiative: ending sexual assault on campus. There is no question bad, sometimes criminal, sexual behavior occurs on campus. Eliminating it is a worthy, if elusive, goal. But the Obama-Biden mandate expanded the definition of sexual misconduct so broadly that jokes, flirting, or “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” could be punishable offenses.

The Obama administration set out to change campus culture, and it did. But in doing so, it undermined women, demonized men, and diverted vast resources away from education. Under rules promulgated by Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education under Trump, many of these policies were rolled back. The Biden administration now plans to restore much of this.

Male college students (the accusers were almost always female, the accused male) were subjected to quasi-criminal proceedings on campus in which many were never told explicitly what they had done wrong and were unable to mount a defense. An adverse finding could end an education and foreclose many career possibilities.

Biden traveled the country, describing campuses as places where male classmates put young women in relentless danger (“This is a toxin on college campuses”), and where indifferent campus officials disparaged the women willing to report assault. But Biden's portrait was at odds with the way the majority of such cases unfold—often beginning as consensual encounters, then later ending up in dispute, frequently due in part to alcohol, miscommunication, and hurt feelings.

In numerous college speeches, Biden declared alarming, inflammatory, and dubious statistics on the frequency of campus assault. Biden advocated that all sexual encounters on campus be governed by “affirmative consent.” This means that each touch, each time, even between established partners, requires explicit—preferably verbal, preferably enthusiastic—agreement. Affirmative consent was adopted widely on campuses, and became a law governing student behavior in California, Connecticut, and New York.

Then Donald Trump was elected president, and Betsy DeVos, decided to reform what the Obama administration had done. In one of the most uncharacteristic acts of that chaotic presidency, DeVos went through the lengthy and burdensome process of writing actual regulations (the Obama administration had only issued “guidance”). The rules she released were, on balance, careful and thorough, providing necessary protections for the rights of both accuser and accused. I spent several years reporting on what was unfolding on campuses, and I wrote at the time that the DeVos regulations were an example of an immoral administration doing the moral thing. (See, for example, here and here.)

The DeVos rules went into effect in August of 2020, in the midst of campus covid shutdowns, so they have hardly had a chance to be tested. Now they will be struck. They will be replaced by some of the most pernicious procedures of the Obama era. (These dueling Department of Education regulations come under the aegis of Title IX, the fifty-year old federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.)

The new rules recommend a return to a “single investigator” model that was barred under the DeVos reform. This means one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint. The new rules also undo many of the procedural protections for the accused—including the right to see all the evidence, inculpatory and exculpatory, gathered against him. “It’s an evisceration of the procedural protections given to the accused,” says historian KC Johnson, co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities.

Under the DeVos rules, adjudication of a formal complaint required a live hearing be held that included cross examination. The Biden administration lifts this obligation. The Biden rules also call for a return to investigations initiated by third parties, even if based on rumors or misunderstandings, in which male students can be subjected to Title IX proceedings over the objection of their female partners. (Robby Soave at Reason has a good summary of the Biden proposals.)

“It’s a document that validates all of the concerns we had about due process and free speech being on the chopping block,” says Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He adds that the administration is giving schools the blessing of the Department of Education “to cut many corners that are essential for fundamental fairness.”

As vice president, Biden made clear that campuses were just the first stop in an effort to remake throughout society how males and females interact...

Keep reading.

Vladimir Putin's Trifecta

From Allahpundit, at Hot Air, "Is Putin trapped?":

His [Putin's] decision to attack Ukraine is frequently described as a “gamble” but consider how much of a gamble it is. He didn’t merely place a huge bet, he bet on a trifecta. First, that Russia could take Ukraine quickly without much blood spilling. Second, that Zelensky would go wobbly and Ukrainian resolve would break, clearing the way for a puppet ruler to be installed without much resistance. And third, that the west would be too weak and divided to impose painful sanctions on Russia at a moment of high inflation, knowing how westerners will end up sharing that economic pain.

That first bet is still winnable, I suppose, but each day that passes makes it less likely. “We have indications that the Russians are increasingly frustrated by their lack of momentum over the last 24 hours, particularly in the north parts of Ukraine,” a senior defense official told Fox News. “We also continue to see indications of viable Ukrainian resistance.” A British defense minister claimed last night that Russian battle plans are way off schedule. Ukrainian air defenses are reportedly still operating despite Russia’s best efforts to eliminate them...

A good post. More here.

Ukraine Soldier's Viral Tweet on Russian Invasion: 'We've got everything. Your ass is ours, fellows!' (VIDEO)

Except for those fleeing the country (for good reason), Ukrainians are very upbeat. Yesterday morning it was all gloom and doom on the telly, but today it's looking like a long grind --- and the more we see of Russian forces, the less formidable they look. 

Added subtitles.

Translation by @joelreymont and @SandiResistz . pic.twitter.com/dYhwu8DshA

— Peedu Tuisk (@peedutuisk) February 25, 2022

Ukraine's Reckless Blunder

This is the hardest, most brutally honest piece I've read on the conflict thus far, "Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble":

Russian President Vladimir Putin chose this war, Joe Biden said in his Thursday afternoon speech to America regarding the conflict in Ukraine. That is true, but U.S. elites also had something to do with Putin’s ugly and destructive choice—a role that Democrats and Republicans are eager to paper over with noble-sounding rhetoric about the bravery of Ukraine’s badly outgunned military. Yes, the Ukrainian soldiers standing up to Putin are very brave, but it was Americans that put them in harm’s way by using their country as a weapon, first against Russia and then against each other, with little consideration for the Ukrainian people who are now paying the price for America’s folly.

It is not an expression of support for Putin’s grotesque actions to try to understand why it seemed worthwhile for him to risk hundreds of billions of dollars, the lives of thousands of servicemen, and the possible stability of his own regime in order to invade his neighbor. After all, Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things backed by the United States, like entering Syria and then escalating forces there. So why has he adopted exactly the opposite strategy here, and chosen the road of open high-risk confrontation with the American superpower?

Yes, Putin wants to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. But the larger answer is that he finds the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine genuinely threatening. That’s because for nearly two decades, the U.S. national security establishment under both Democratic and Republican administrations has used Ukraine as an instrument to destabilize Russia, and specifically to target Putin.

While the timing of Putin’s attack on Ukraine is no doubt connected to a variety of factors, including the Russian dictator’s read on U.S. domestic politics and the preferences of his own superpower sponsor in Beijing, the sense that Ukraine poses a meaningful threat to Russia is not a product of Putin’s paranoia—or of a sudden desire to restore the power and prestige of the Soviet Union, however much Putin might wish for that to happen. Rather, it is a geopolitical threat that has grown steadily more pressing and been employed with greater recklessness by Americans and Ukrainians alike over the past decade.

That Ukraine has allowed itself to be used as a pawn against a powerful neighbor is in part the fault of Kyiv’s reckless and corrupt political class. But Ukraine is not a superpower that owes allies and client-states judicious leadership—that’s the role of the United States. And in that role, the United States has failed Ukraine. More broadly, the use of Ukraine as a goad against enemies domestic and foreign has recklessly damaged the failing yet necessary European security architecture that America spent 75 years building and maintaining.

Why can’t the American security establishment shoulder responsibility for its role in the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine? Because to discuss American responsibility openly would mean exposing the national security establishment’s role in two separate, destructive coups: the first, in 2014, targeting the government of Ukraine, and the second, starting two years later, the government of the United States....

What kind of strategy dictates that a state hand over its security vis-a-vis local actors to a country [the United States] half the world away? No strategy at all. Ukraine was not able to transcend its natural geography as a buffer state—and worse, a buffer state that failed to take its own existence seriously, which meant that it would continue to make disastrously bad bets. In 2013, the European Union offered Kyiv a trade deal, which many misunderstood as a likely prelude to EU membership. Young Ukrainians very much want to join the EU, because they want access to Europe so they can flee Ukraine, which remains one of the poorest countries on the continent.

The trade deal was an ill-conceived EU project to take a shot at Putin with what seemed like little risk. The idea was to flood the Ukrainian market, and therefore also the Russian market, with European goods, which would have harmed the Russian economy—leading, the architects of this plan imagined, to popular discontent that would force Putin himself from office. Putin understandably saw this stratagem as a threat to his country’s stability and his personal safety, so he gave Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych an ultimatum: either reject the deal and accept Moscow’s $15 billion aid package in its place, or else suffer crippling economic measures.

When Yanukovych duly reneged on the EU deal, the Obama administration helped organize street demonstrations for what became history’s most tech-savvy and PR-driven regime change operation, marketed to the global public variously as Maidan, EuroMaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, etc. In February 2014, the protests forced Yanukovych into exile in Moscow. Consequently, Nuland and other Obama administration officials worked to assemble a new Ukrainian government friendly to the United States and therefore hostile to Russia.

In late February, the Russians responded to the American soft coup in Ukraine by invading Crimea and eventually annexing it and creating chaos in Eastern Ukraine. The Obama administration declined to arm the Ukrainian government. It was right to avoid conflict with Moscow, though by leaving Kyiv defenseless, it showed that the White House had never fully gamed out all the possible scenarios that might ensue from setting a client state on course for conflict with a great power. Instead, Obama and the Europeans highlighted their deadly miscalculation by imposing sanctions on Moscow for taking advantage of the conditions that Obama and the Europeans had created.

The White House seems to have taken a perverse pride in the death and destruction it helped incite in Eastern Europe. In April 2014, CIA Director John Brennan visited Kyiv, appearing to confirm the agency’s role in the coup. Shortly after came Vice President Biden, who took his own victory lap and counseled the Ukrainians to root out corruption. Naturally, a prominent Ukrainian energy company called Burisma, which was then under investigation for corruption, hired Biden’s son Hunter for protection.

By tying itself to an American administration that had shown itself to be reckless and dangerous, the Ukrainians made a geopolitical blunder that statesmen will study for years to come: A buffer state had staked its future on a distant power that had simply seen it as an instrument to annoy its powerful neighbor with no attachment to any larger strategic concept that it was willing to support. Russia then lopped off half of the Donbas region on its border and subjected Ukraine to a grinding, eight-year-long war, intended in large part to underline Russian capacity and Ukrainian and American impotence.

Ukraine then made a bad situation even worse. When the same people who had left them prey to Putin asked them to take sides in an American domestic political conflict, the Ukrainians enthusiastically signed on—instead of running hard in the opposite direction. In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign came calling on Ukrainian officials and activists to lend some Slavic authenticity to its Russia collusion narrative targeting Donald Trump. Indeed, Russiagate’s central storyline was about Ukraine. Yes, Trump had supposedly been compromised by a sex tape filmed in Moscow, but Putin’s ostensible reason for helping Trump win the presidency was to get him to drop Ukraine-related sanctions. Here was another chance for Ukraine to stick it to Putin, and gain favor with what it imagined would be the winning party in the American election.

With the CIA’s Brennan and a host of senior FBI and DOJ officials pushing Russiagate into the press—and running an illegal espionage campaign against the Trump team—Ukrainian political figures gladly joined in. Key participants included Kyiv’s ambassador to Washington, who wrote a Trump-Russia piece for the U.S. press, and a member of the Ukrainian parliament who allegedly contributed to the dossier. The collusion narrative was also augmented by Ukrainian American operatives, like Alexandra Chalupa, who was tied into the Democratic Party’s NGO complex. The idea that this game might have consequences for Ukraine’s relations with its more powerful neighbor doesn’t seem to have entered the heads of either the feckless Ukrainians or the American political operatives who cynically used them...

RTWT.

 

Nine-Hundred U.S. Troops Still Deployed to Syria. Oh. Why? And Who Lied About It?

At LAT, surprisingly, "Inside U.S. troops’ stronghold in Syria, a question of how long Biden will keep them there":

KHSHAM, Syria — At a makeshift military outpost abutting a natural gas field in eastern Syria, the signs of the country’s violent upheaval are everywhere. Bombed-out concrete buildings lie in ruins. The pipes that once carried liquefied natural gas are shredded and twisted. A tattered U.S. flag strung between 40-foot-tall gas processing towers flies high over the base, a visible symbol that American troops are here — and not planning on leaving soon.

“We’ve got the flagpole planted,” said Army Lt. Alan Favalora, a Louisiana National Guard soldier at Conoco, the name the base acquired from the long- departed U.S. oil and gas firm that once operated the wells. “We want them to know we are committed to this region.”

How committed President Biden will be to keeping troops in Syria is uncertain, however.

The Biden administration does not appear to be in any rush to pull out the 900 U.S. troops who remain in the country, a relatively small force that some White House officials see as key to preventing a resurgence of Islamic State and a rush to reclaim the area’s oil fields by Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.

But White House officials have said they are reviewing the troop presence in Syria — an announcement that has raised concerns that Biden could reconsider the deployment as part of a larger scaling back of U.S. troops in the Middle East and a planned shift of Pentagon focus to Asia.

What Biden is going to do “is the one question I got from everybody,” Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie Jr., the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said in an interview after visiting eastern Syria on Friday. “I think the new administration is going to look at this, and then we’re going to get guidance.”

Robert Ford, who was an ambassador to Syria during the Obama administration, called the U.S. strategy “deeply flawed” and said Biden should withdraw the remaining troops who have helped the Syrian Democratic Forces — a Kurdish-led militia — carve out a semiautonomous enclave in the country’s northeast.

“I don’t think it’s worth it,” Ford said about the American deployment in an interview. Islamic State “is largely contained and not in a position to threaten the U.S. homeland or even to send fighters to Europe.”

The Arab population in northeastern Syria initially supported Kurdish militias’ efforts to oust Islamic State. But many Arabs now resent being under the Kurds’ governance, creating a new source of recruits as Islamic State tries to recover, Ford added...

Well, of course Biden's policy is "deeply flawed," because his foreign policy advice has been "deeply flawed" all around, particularly during the Obama administration, when the "red line" fiasco basically put Russia in the driver's seat, giving that neo-imperialist power strategic advantage, of which it hasn't wasted, to the disadvantage of U.S. interests. Now Biden's just trying to salvage his own reckless legacy and save whatever loss of face he can for all the f*cked up Democrat foreign policy fiascos. These people are liars and hacks. 

Biden's Drive to War in the Middle East (VIDEO)

It's Caroline Glick:

On Monday, Iran tested a new rocket. The Zuljanah rocket is a 25-meter (82-foot) three-stage rocket with a solid fuel engine for its first two stages and a liquid fuel rocket for its third stage. It can carry a 225 kg (496-pound) payload.

The Zuljanah’s thrust is 75 kilotons, which is far more than required to launch satellite into orbit. The large thrust makes the Zuljanah more comparable to an intercontinental ballistic missile than a space launch vehicle. The US’s LGM-30G Minuteman-III land-based ICBM for instance, has 90 kiloton thrust. The Zuljanah can rise to a height of 500 kilometers for low-earth orbit or, if launched as a missile, its range is 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) – far enough to reach Britain from Iran.

Israeli missile experts estimate that Iran has paid $250 million to develop the Zuljanah project. Monday’s rocket launch itself likely cost tens of millions of dollars.

Iran is in deep economic distress today. Between the COVID-19 global recession, Iran’s endemic corruption and mismanagement and US economic sanctions, 35% of Iranians live in abject poverty today. Iran’s rial has lost 80% of its value over the past four years. Official data place the unemployment rate at 25% but the number is thought to be much higher. Inflation last year stood at 44% overall. Food prices have risen 59%.

When viewed in the context of Iran’s impoverishment, the government’s investment in a thinly disguised ICBM program is all the more revealing. With 35% of the population living in utter destitution and food prices rising steeply, the regime has chosen ICBMs over feeding its people.

Most of the media coverage of the Zuljanah launch failed to register the significance of the project both for what it says about Iran’s capabilities and what it says about the regime’s intentions. Instead, the coverage focused on the timing of the test. The Iranians conducted the test as they flamboyantly breach the limitations on their nuclear activities which they accepted when they agreed to the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Iranians are now enriching uranium to 20% purity – well beyond the 3.67% permitted under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (JCPOA). They are using prohibited advanced centrifuges for enrichment in cascades at their Natanz nuclear installation. They are beginning uranium cascades with sixth generation centrifuges at their underground Fordo nuclear reactor in total defiance of the JCPOA. They are stockpiling uranium yellowcake far beyond the quantities permitted in the deal. They are producing uranium metal in breach of the deal. And they are test firing rockets that can easily be converted to nuclear capable ICBMs.

Reportage of Iran’s aggressive nuclear has presented it in the context of the new Biden administration in Washington. It is argued that Iran is taking these aggressive steps to pressure the Biden administration to keep its word to return the US to the JCPOA and abrogate economic sanctions on Iran. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump renounced the JCPOA and re-imposed the economic sanctions that were abrogated in 2015 with the deal’s implementation. Iran’s idea is that out of fear of its rapid nuclear strides, the Biden team will move urgently to appease Iran.

Notably, the Zuljanah test exposed the strategic insanity at the heart of deal, which was conceived, advanced and concluded by then-President Barack Obama and his senior advisors.

The main strategic assumption that guided Obama and his advisors was that Iran was a status quo, responsible power and should be viewed as part of the solution – or “the solution” — rather than the problem in the Middle East. Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, its proxy wars and its nuclear program were unfortunate consequences of a regional power balance that put too much power in the hands of US allies – first and foremost Israel and Saudi Arabia – and too little power in Iran’s hands. To stabilize the Middle East, Obama argued, Iran needed to be empowered and US allies needed to be weakened. As then-Vice President Joe Biden put it in 2013, “Our biggest problem was our allies.” A new balance of power, Obama argued would respect Iran’s “equities” in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. As for the nuclear program, which was illegal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed, it was totally understandable. Given that Pakistan, India and allegedly Israel have nuclear arsenals, Obama’s advisors said, Iran’s desire for one was reasonable.

With this outlook informing its negotiators, the JCPOA’s legitimization of Iran’s nuclear program makes sense. The purpose of the deal wasn’t to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It was to “balance” Israel by delegitimizing any Israeli action to block Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

While Israel and America’s other allies would be massively harmed by this new balance of power, Obama and his European partners assessed that they would be more secure. They were convinced that once secure in its position as a regional hegemon, Iran would leave them alone.

The deal reflected this view. A non-binding clause in the JCPOA calls for Iran to limit the range of its ballistic missiles to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) – taking the US and most of Europe out of range.

Many commentators view the Biden administration nothing more than Obama’s third term. And from the perspective of its Iran policies, this is certainly the case. President Joe Biden’s Iran policy was conceived and is being implemented by the same people who negotiated the JCPOA under Obama...

She nails it, as usual (and there's more at the link).  

Raoul Berger, Impeachment

At Amazon, Raoul Berger, Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems.

'13 Minutes'

At the People's Cube, lol.

John Krasinski to star in Trump era remake of Benghazi movie “13 Hours”

It’s called “13 Minutes”. It chronicles the 13 minutes from when the Marines landed at our Baghdad embassy to when the Iranian backed militias ran like cowards.#Benghazi

— The People's Cube 🚁🤸 (@ThePeoplesCube) January 1, 2020

Does It Even Need to Be Asked?

At the Other McCain, "Democrats: Pro-Iran or Anti-American?"

Trump Ties Obama as Most Admired Man in 2019 — Leftist Heads Explode Everywhere

Heh.

How could this be possible? Trump as admired as Obama? No way!

So says Gallup, to exploding leftist heads everywhere.

Via Memeorandum:

Barack Obama and Donald Trump tie as the most admired man this year. https://t.co/4bM4XVDNm1 pic.twitter.com/V10ArtL2bL

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) December 30, 2019

Checking Robert Mueller

From Kim Strassel, at WSJ:

Robert Mueller has operated for 19 months as a law unto himself, reminding us of the awesome and destructive powers of special counsels. About the only possible check on Mr. Mueller is a judge who is wise to the tricks of prosecutors and investigators. Good news: That’s what we got this week.

Former national security adviser Mike Flynn a year ago pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Mr. Flynn’s defense team this week filed a sentencing memo to Judge Emmet Sullivan that contained explosive new information about the Flynn-FBI meeting in January 2017.

It was arranged by then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who personally called Mr. Flynn on other business, then suggested he sit down with two agents to clear up the Russia question. Mr. McCabe urged Mr. Flynn to conduct the interview with no lawyer present—to make things easier.

The agents (including the infamous Peter Strzok) showed up within two hours. They had already decided not to inform Mr. Flynn that they had transcripts of his conversations or give him the standard warning against lying to the FBI. They wanted him “relaxed” and “unguarded.” Former Director James Comey this weekend bragged on MSNBC that he would never have “gotten away” with such a move in a more “organized” administration.

The whole thing stinks of entrapment, though the curious question was how the Flynn defense team got the details. The court filing refers to a McCabe memo written the day of the 2017 meeting, as well as an FBI summary—known as a 302—of the Flynn interview. These are among documents congressional Republicans have been fighting to obtain for more than a year, only to be stonewalled by the Justice Department. Now we know why the department didn’t want them public.

They have come to light thanks to a man who knows well how men like Messrs. Mueller and Comey operate: Judge Sullivan. He sits on the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, and as he wrote for the Journal last year, he got a “wake-up call” in 2008 while overseeing the trial of then-Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. Judge Sullivan ultimately assigned a lawyer to investigate Justice Department misconduct.

The investigator’s report found prosecutors had engaged in deliberate and repeated ethical violations, withholding key evidence from the defense. It also excoriated the FBI for failing to write up 302s and for omitting key facts from those it did write. The head of the FBI was Mr. Mueller...

Still more.

Kim Strassel's the best. Seriously.

My latest on the Flynn case and Judge Emmet Sullivan---a judge for these prosecutorial times.https://t.co/cVk0aGZQVR via @WSJOpinion

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 14, 2018

1) The information contained in the Flynn defense filing about FBI behavior is pretty concerning, and I encourage folks to read it themselves: https://t.co/hdU7DSx4wv

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

2) Remember, at this time, the FBI's investigation was still secret. Flynn did nothing wrong in contacting the ambassador, and had no reason to believe himself in legal jeopardy. Meanwhile, this was a man with 33 years of exceptional military service.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

3) A paratrooper, Army Ranger, intelligence officer, three-star-general, and then National Security Adviser. That's a resume that earns you benefit of doubt. FBI had the transcripts of the ambassador conversation and could have just noted that and asked him about it.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

4) Instead, it looks like they set this up to catch him in a lie. They don't tell him about transcript. They encourage him to do the interview with no lawyer. Also deliberately choose not to give him standard warnings on lying. This is how our law enforcement operates?

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

5) Ask which sounds more likely: That a highly decorated military officer invited FBI officials to his office (with no legal counsel) in order to tell bold-faced lies? Or, as initially reported, he just forgot details of conversation?

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

6) Also worth noting that two FBI officials behind this moment have themselves been fired for misconduct: Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok. Court has cause to throw this whole thing out.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

This is encouraging news. See our editorial from tonight, The Flynn Entrapment: https://t.co/QvICXkrTnE

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 13, 2018

What the Establishment Misses About Trump's Foreign Policy

From Professor Randall Schweller, at Foreign Affairs, "Three Cheers for Trump’s Foreign Policy":

No more Uncle Sugar, no more multilateralism, no more free riding: Three cheers for Trump's foreign policy. https://t.co/uteDMsvf9o

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 16, 2018

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election heralded nothing less than certain catastrophe. At least, that was and remains the firm belief of “the Blob”—what Ben Rhodes, a foreign policy adviser in the Obama administration, called those from both parties in the mainstream media and the foreign policy establishment who, driven by habitual ideas and no small amount of piety and false wisdom, worry about the decline of the U.S.-led order. “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight,” the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman forecast after Trump’s victory. Others prophesied that Trump would resign by the end of his first year (Tony Schwartz, the co-author of Trump: The Art of the Deal), that he would be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in six months (the liberal commentator John Aravosis), or that the United States might be headed down the same path that Germany took from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich. That last warning came from former U.S. President Barack Obama last December at the Economic Club of Chicago, where he invoked the specter of Nazi Germany. “We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly,” he said. “Sixty million people died, so you’ve got to pay attention—and vote.”

So far, the world has not come to an end, far from it. A year into Trump’s first term, the Islamic State, or ISIS—a fascist organization, by the way—had been virtually defeated in Syria and eliminated from all its havens in Iraq, thanks to the Trump administration’s decision to equip the largely Kurdish militia fighting ISIS in Syria and give U.S. ground commanders greater latitude to direct operations. All the while, Trump has continued the Obama doctrine of avoiding large-scale conventional wars in the Middle East and has succeeded where his predecessor failed in enforcing a real red line against Bashar al-Assad’s use of nerve gas in Syria by launching targeted air strikes in response. In North Korea, Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure” has cut the country’s international payments by half, forcing Kim Jong Un to realize that his only choice is to negotiate.

On the domestic front, the unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent in May, a level not seen since the heady days of the dot-com boom—with unemployment at an all-time low among African Americans; at or near multidecade lows among Hispanics, teenagers, and those with less than a high school education; and at a 65-year low among women in the labor force. Meanwhile, on Trump’s watch, the stock market and consumer confidence have hit all-time highs, the number of mortgage applications for new homes has reached a seven-year high, and gas prices have fallen to a 12-year low. Finally, with Trump pledging to bring to an end the era in which “our politicians seem more interested in defending the borders of foreign countries than their own,” illegal immigration was reduced by 38 percent from November 2016 to November 2017, and in April 2017, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded 15,766 apprehensions at the southwestern border—the lowest in at least 17 years.

As his critics charge, Trump does reject many of the core tenets of the liberal international order, the sprawling and multifaceted system that the United States and its allies built and have supported for seven decades. Questioning the very fabric of international cooperation, he has assaulted the world trading system, reduced funding for the UN, denounced NATO, threatened to end multilateral trade agreements, called for Russia’s readmission to the G-7, and scoffed at attempts to address global challenges such as climate change. But despite what the crowd of globalists at Davos might say, these policies should be welcomed, not feared. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign relations marks a United States less interested in managing its long-term relationships than in making gains on short-term deals. Trump has sent the message that the United States will now look after its own interests, narrowly defined, not the interests of the so-called global community, even at the expense of long-standing allies.

This worldview is fundamentally realist in nature. On the campaign trail and in office, Trump has argued that the United States needs its allies to share responsibility for their own defense. He has also called for better trade deals to level a playing field tilted against American businesses and workers and to protect domestic manufacturing industries from currency manipulation. He is an economic nationalist at heart. He believes that political factors should determine economic relations, that globalization does not foster harmony among states, and that economic interdependence increases national vulnerability. He has also argued that the state should intervene when the interests of domestic actors diverge from its own—for example, when he called for a boycott against Apple until the company helped the FBI break into the iPhone of one of the terrorists who carried out the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California.

This realist worldview is not only legitimate but also resonates with American voters, who rightly recognize that the United States is no longer inhabiting the unipolar world it did since the end of the Cold War; instead, it is living in a more multipolar one, with greater competition. Trump is merely shedding shibboleths and seeing international politics for what it is and has always been: a highly competitive realm populated by self-interested states concerned with their own security and economic welfare. Trump’s “America first” agenda is radical only in the sense that it seeks to promote the interests of the United States above all...

Still more.

Time for Truth

From VDH, at RCP, "The Truth Will Set Us All Free."

Read this now. https://t.co/bQ7Ghjcag8

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 31, 2018

'Lady Justice does not wear a blindfold over only one eye...'

From the inimitable Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "When Justice Is Partial" (and here):

"Prosecutors can claim all they want that they are applying the law equally, but if they only apply it to half the suspects, justice is not served. . . .Lady Justice does not wear a blindfold over only one eye."
https://t.co/UNrzX1Avi5 via @WSJOpinion

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) August 24, 2018

The country has watched the FBI treat one presidential campaign with kid gloves, the other with informants, warrants and eavesdropping. They’ve seen the Justice Department resist all efforts at accountability, even as it fails to hold its own accountable. And don’t get them started on the one-sided media.

And they are now witnessing unequal treatment in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Yes, the former FBI director deserves credit for smoking out the Russian trolls who interfered in 2016. And one can argue he is obliged to pursue any evidence of criminal acts, even those unrelated to Russia. But what cannot be justified is the one-sided nature of his probe.

Consider Mr. Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who this week pleaded guilty to eight felony charges. Six related to his personal business dealings; the other two involved campaign-finance violations arising from payments to women claiming affairs with Donald Trump. The criminal prosecution of campaign-finance offenses is exceptionally rare (most charges are civil), but let’s take Mr. Khuzami’s word for it when he says Mr. Cohen’s crimes are “particularly significant” because he’s a lawyer who should know better, and also because the payments were for the purpose of “influencing an election” and undermining its “integrity.”

If there is only “one set of rules,” where is Mr. Mueller’s referral of a case against Hillary for America? Federal law requires campaigns to disclose the recipient and purpose of any payments. The Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to compile a dossier against Mr. Trump, a document that became the basis of the Russia narrative Mr. Mueller now investigates. But the campaign funneled the money to law firm Perkins Coie, which in turn paid Fusion. The campaign falsely described the money as payment for “legal services.” The Democratic National Committee did the same. A Perkins Coie spokesperson has claimed that neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC was aware that Fusion GPS had been hired to conduct the research, and maybe so. But a lot of lawyers here seemed to have been ignoring a clear statute, presumably with the intent of influencing an election.

Prosecutions under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) are also exceptionally rare, though Mr. Mueller is getting media kudos for hammering the likes of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates for failing to register as lobbyists for foreign entities. The law is the law.

But under this standard, where are the charges against the principals of Fusion GPS, who Sen. Chuck Grassley has said look to have been lobbying on behalf of powerful Russians against a U.S. sanctions law, with its payment again funneled through a law firm? This was a sideline to its dossier work, but Mr. Mueller usually has no issue with sideline charges.

Or what about an evenhanded look at dossier author Christopher Steele?

Keep reading.

The Surreal Helsinki Summit (VIDEO)

Stephen Cohen a professor of history and Russian expert who is married to Katrina vanden Heuvel, the publisher and editor of the far-left magazine the Nation.

Cohen's been a strong critic of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia, arguing that U.S. provocations --- such as the expansion of NATO to the border of the Russian federation, and the American bombing war in Kosovo in the 1990s --- is responsible for hostile U.S.-Russia relations and the every-ready risk of war.

He argues that we're in a new cold war at the video below, an interview with Tucker Carlson from earlier this week.



And here's Ms. Katrina's essay at the Nation yesterday, "Parsing the Surreal From the Sensible in Trump’s Helsinki Performance":

Donald Trump, that self-described “very stable genius,” delivered a remarkably unhinged performance in his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin after their Helsinki summit. Trump used the global stage to savage Democrats and to attack the Mueller investigation and his own intelligence officials, while once more boasting about his election victory. Putin, clearly pleased to be accorded Trump’s public respect, noted that as “major nuclear powers, we bear special responsibility for maintaining international security.”

Not surprisingly, Trump’s remarks triggered a furious reaction. Former CIA director John Brennan called them “treasonous.” The liberal activist group MoveOn echoed the charge. Republican Senator John McCain called it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi suggested that Trump’s behavior “proves” that the Russians “must have something on the president.”

In this toxic atmosphere, it is worth parsing the inane from the sensible in what the president said. Trump’s bizarre comments on Russian interference in the 2016 election made it clear that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation should continue....

Although he was widely reviled for it, Trump is also not wrong to say that both powers have contributed to the deteriorating relations. Leaders of the US national-security establishment protest our country’s innocence regarding the tensions in Georgia and Ukraine. But it was perhaps the wisest of them, the eminent diplomat George Kennan, who warned in 1998 that the decision to extend NATO to Russia’s borders was a “tragic mistake” that would eventually provoke a hostile response. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan said presciently. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies.”

RTWT.

#NATO's Challenge is Germany, Not America

From VDH, at American Greatness:

NATO’s Challenge Is Germany, Not America https://t.co/9nosINM1NI pic.twitter.com/mGwkpfwWkS

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) July 19, 2018

During the recent NATO summit meeting, a rumbustious Donald Trump tore off a thin scab of niceties to reveal a deep and old NATO wound—one that has predated Trump by nearly 30 years and goes back to the end of the Cold War.

In an era when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are now ancient history, everyone praises NATO as “indispensable” and “essential” to Western solidarity and European security. But few feel any need to explain how and why that could still be so.

Does NATO still protect the West? Does it prevent destructive European feuding? Does it ensure the postwar global order of free trade, commerce, travel, and communications? And is NATO—or the United States and its leadership of NATO—the real reason there has not been a World War III or a return to global tribalism and chaos?

NATO’s post-Cold War expansion to 29 nations and to the border of Russia meant the alliance became more expansive at the very time the old existential Soviet threat disappeared. Larger membership tended to weaken common ties, even as common dangers disappeared.

The result was that the idea of NATO membership became more important to the countries that are part of it than the reality and responsibility of actual military readiness.

Polls show that in most NATO countries, the idea of fighting on behalf of another country receives scant public support. The notion that the Dutch would march into Estonia to save its capital, Tallinn, from Russia is a cruel joke.

NATO’s 21st-century problem is not the United States, which provides a large percentage of its wherewithal, but Germany. As the most populous and most affluent of European nations, Germany still insidiously dominates Europe as it has since its inception in 1871.

Berlin sends ultimatums to the indebted Southern European nations. Berlin alone tries to dictate immigration policy for the European Union. Berlin establishes the tough conditions under which the United Kingdom can exit the European Union. And when Berlin decides it will not pony up the promised 2 percent of GDP for its NATO contribution, other laggard countries follow its example. Only six of the 29 NATO members (other than the United States) so far have met their promised assessments.

Germany’s combination of affluence and military stinginess is surreal. Germany has piled up the largest trade surplus in the world at around $300 billion, including a trade surplus of some $64 billion with its military benefactor, the United States, yet it is poorly equipped in terms of tanks and fighter aircraft.

Ostensibly, NATO still protects Europe from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, just as it once kept the Soviet Red Army out of West Germany. But over the objections of its Baltic neighbors and the Ukraine, Germany just cut a gas pipeline deal with Russia—the purported threat for which its needs U.S.-subsidized security.

Stranger still is Germany’s growing animosity toward the United States...

More.

President Trump Says He Misspoke at Helsinki Summit (VIDEO)

At LAT, "Facing heavy criticism, Trump now says he misspoke over Putin-friendly remarks":

President Trump, seeking to stanch a national furor, said on Tuesday that he misspoke at his Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin, and meant to say that he does in fact see Russia as the culprit that interfered in the 2016 election, just as U.S. intelligence agencies have found.

The president's new version was unlikely to satisfy many critics. It is undercut by his full, widely watched remarks on Monday, which gave weight to Putin's denials while criticizing the United States.

To many, Trump had missed his chance to speak truth to power alongside Russia's president. He made his correction to reporters at the White House, as he sat alongside Republican lawmakers.

In his attempt to walk back his remarks in Finland, Trump said he accepts the consensus of American intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election. Yet in a sign that he cannot fully accept those findings — seeing them as a challenge to his election legitimacy — he added that the perpetrators "could be other people also." That assertion is not supported by known intelligence.

At a Helsinki news conference, as Putin looked on, Trump said the following to a reporter's question about whether he believed U.S. intelligence agencies, or Putin's denials of interference: "My people came to me...they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be" Russia.

On Tuesday, however, he said this: "The sentence should have been 'I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be' Russia."

"I have the strongest respect for our intelligence agencies, headed by my people," Trump told the reporters at a hastily scheduled session ahead of his meeting with some House Republicans about additional tax cuts.

He also said, "We're doing everything in our power to prevent Russian interference in 2018," referring to midterm elections.

Trump afterward ignored questions that reporters shouted, including whether he would criticize Putin, as White House aides pushed them out of the Cabinet room.

The day before, the president had blamed the United States for sour relations with Russia and criticized the FBI, Democrats, Hillary Clinton and the special counsel's investigation of Russia's election activities and possible Trump campaign complicity — all as Putin, occasionally smiling, stood feet away in the Finland presidential palace.

The scene almost instantly drew condemnation as it played out on television screens in the U.S. Trump, who repeatedly praised and deferred to Putin, was criticized by foreign policy and national security veterans as weak, an insult that is particularly galling to him.

In two subsequent interviews with Fox News and in his tweets after the summit, Trump sounded defensive, and more surprised and frustrated by the reaction than contrite. He did not, however, make any attempt to correct his remarks until more than 24 hours later.

"I came back and I said: 'What is going on? What's the big deal?" Trump said Tuesday...

Trump Calls Off Cold War II

It's Patrick Buchanan, at the American Conservative:

"European allies have freeloaded off U.S. defense while rolling up huge trade surpluses at our expense. Those days are over. Europeans are going to stop stealing our markets and start paying for their own defense. There will be no Cold War II." Buchanan: https://t.co/smXDYWl4ZH

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) July 17, 2018

Helsinki showed that Trump meant what he said when he declared repeatedly, “Peace with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.”

On Syria, Trump indicated that he and Putin are working with Bibi Netanyahu, who wants all Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias kept far from the Golan Heights. As for U.S. troops in Syria, says Trump, they will be coming out after ISIS is crushed, and we are 98 percent there.

That is another underlying message here: America is coming home from foreign wars and will be shedding foreign commitments.

Both before and after the Trump-Putin meeting, the cable news coverage was as hostile and hateful toward the president as any this writer has ever seen. The media may not be the “enemy of the people” Trump says they are, but many are implacable enemies of this president.

Some wanted Trump to emulate Nikita Khrushchev, who blew up the Paris summit in May 1960 over a failed U.S. intelligence operation — the U-2 spy plane shot down over the Urals just weeks earlier.

Khrushchev had demanded that Ike apologize. Ike refused, and Khrushchev exploded. Some media seemed to be hoping for just such a confrontation.

When Trump spoke of the “foolishness and stupidity” of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that contributed to this era of animosity in U.S.-Russia relations, what might he have had in mind?

Was it the U.S. provocatively moving NATO into Russia’s front yard after the collapse of the USSR?

Was it the U.S. invasion of Iraq to strip Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction he did not have that plunged us into endless wars of the Middle East?

Was it U.S. support of Syrian rebels determined to oust Bashar Assad, leading to ISIS intervention and a seven-year civil war with half a million dead, a war which Putin eventually entered to save his Syrian ally?

Was it George W. Bush’s abrogation of Richard Nixon’s ABM treaty and drive for a missile defense that caused Putin to break out of the Reagan INF treaty and start deploying cruise missiles to counter it?

Was it U.S. complicity in the Kiev coup that ousted the elected pro-Russian regime that caused Putin to seize Crimea to hold onto Russia’s Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol?

Many Putin actions we condemn were reactions to what we did.

Russia annexed Crimea bloodlessly. But did not the U.S. bomb Serbia for 78 days to force Belgrade to surrender her cradle province of Kosovo?

How was that more moral than what Putin did in Crimea?

If Russian military intelligence hacked into the emails of the DNC, exposing how they stuck it to Bernie Sanders, Trump says he did not collude in it. Is there, after two years, any proof that he did?

Trump insists Russian meddling had no effect on the outcome in 2016 and he is not going to allow media obsession with Russiagate to interfere with establishing better relations.

Former CIA Director John Brennan rages that, “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki … was … treasonous. … He is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

Well, as Patrick Henry said long ago, “If this be treason, make the most of it!”

Twelve Russian Indicted in Election Hacking Scandal (VIDEO)

At LAT, "12 Russians indicted in hacking of Clinton's campaign and computers handling voter registration."

And at the Hill, via Memeorandum, "Trump on Russia indictment: Why didn't Obama do something?"

Plus, a great Hannity monologue from last night:

Ben Shapiro's Legal Team Shuts Down 'Cock Boy' Appeal

Interesting.

At Twitchy, via Instapundit, "LED BY SUPERLAWYER KURT SCHLICHTER: Our long national nightmare is over: Ben Shapiro’s legal team cleans Clock Boy’s clock in appeals court."