Ms Lisa Page Feels Hurt

For John, BLUF:  I wonder if Ms Page now has some sympathy for Mr Carter Page (apparently no relation), and for others who suffered from leaks by Federal Officials?.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Lisa Page sues FBI and DOJ, citing 'cost of therapy' after Trump mocked her salacious text messages

Here is the sub-headline:

From Fox News, by Gregg Re, 10 December 2019.

Here is the lede plus three:

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page is suing the FBI and Department of Justice, alleging that the government's publication of her salacious text messages with anti-Trump ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok constituted a breach of the Federal Privacy Act.

In the complaint filed Tuesday, the 39-year-old Page said she suffered numerous damages because of the disclosure, including a "permanent loss of earning capacity due to reputational damage" and "the cost of therapy to cope with unwanted national media exposure and harassment" at the hands of President Trump.

Page's complaint also sought reimbursement for "the cost of childcare during and transportation to multiple investigative reviews and appearances before Congress," the "cost of paying a data-privacy service to protect her personal information," and attorney's fees.

On Dec. 12, 2017, Page said in the complaint, "DOJ and/or FBI officials disclosed" her sensitive text messages "directly to a select group of reporters to ensure they would become public."  Page alleged that after discovery, she would be able to prove that senior officials knew they were violating the law, and that their conduct was "willful and intentional."

I wonder if this move by Ms Page will serve to refute the view of the FBI and DOJ as squeaky clean?

I would have hoped that Ms Lisa Page would have adopted a John Profumo like posture, accepting that she needed to clean up her public act a little bit, and thus reaping benefits later on in life.  Alas, that seems not to be happening.  Sadly.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

More on Michael Flynn

For John, BLUF:  I say change the rules.  If you expect me to be honest with you, I expect you to be honest with me.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Pope Hat on Michael Flynn Conviction

And here is a tweet by a CNN Commentator:

Here is Ms Mary Katharine.

Put me in the group that thinks the Michael Flynn debacle was not one of DOJ's, and the FBI's, finer moments.

Regards  —  Cliff

What is Truth?

For John, BLUF:  Remember, the Government lies to you with impunity, but reserves the right to punish you if you lie to them.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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COMEY’S FBI LIED ABOUT LYNCH-CLINTON MEETING

From the Power Line Blog, 4 August 2017, by Blogger John Hinderaker.

The American Center for Law and Justice has doggedly pursued information about then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s infamous tarmac meeting with former president Bill Clinton.  The Department of Justice has finally responded to ACLJ’s FOIA request with a small number of documents.  Several interesting points emerge from the DOJ’s emails, beginning with the fact that the FBI falsely claimed not to have any documents relating to the meeting:

If you are a Democrat you aren't going to believe this anyway.  Or, you are going to create a mental exception, in the back your mind, to the rule about the Government not lying to us based on the fact that it somehow involves "Trump".

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Schumer Breaks His Word

For John, BLUF:  Or is it just that he is a New Yorker?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Chuck Schumer Promise

From Pajama Media and Columnist Michael Walsh, 23 January.

It appears some believe that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer promised to approve Representative Mike Pompeo as CIA Director on Inauguration Day, and then thought better of it.

I thought with the replacement of Senator Harry Reid with the more pragmatic Senator Chuck Schumer as Senate Minority Leader that the nasty, dingy performance of the former would be replaced by a more enjoyable experience.  It appears I was wrong.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Lying is Wrong. Anywhere

For John, BLUF:  I hope the City will do this for me if the License Commission is taken to court.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Judges Reject Orange County's Claim That Social Workers Didn't Know Lying In Court Was Wrong

Thank God!

This is from The Orange County Weekly.  The Reporter is Mr Scott Moxley and the Dateline is 6 January 2017.

Here is the sub-headline:

Using taxpayer funds, government officials in Orange County have spent the last 16 years arguing the most absurd legal proposition in the entire nation:  How could social workers have known it was wrong to lie, falsify records and hide exculpatory evidence in 2000 so that a judge would forcibly take two young daughters from their mother for six-and-a-half years?

Here is the lede plus one:

From the you-can't-make-up-this-crap file, county officials are paying Lynberg & Watkins, a private Southern California law firm specializing in defending cops in excessive force lawsuits, untold sums to claim the social workers couldn't have "clearly" known that dishonesty wasn't acceptable in court and, as a back up, even if they did know, they should enjoy immunity for their misdeeds because they were government employees.

A panel at the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this week ruled on Orange County's appeal of federal judge Josephine L. Staton's refusal last year to grant immunity to the bureaucrats in Preslie Hardwick v. County of Orange, a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages.  In short, judges Stephen S. Trott, John B. Owens and Michelle T. Friedland were not amused. They affirmed Staton's decision.

If you go to the link you will see the exchange between the lawyers.

And note that this goes back to 2000.  That would be back sixteen (16) years.  One wonders if the bureaucrats have now learned to tell the truth?

And people wonder why Mr Trump won?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Honesty in Government

For John, BLUF:  Remember, the coverup is worse than the crime.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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CLINTON-CARTWRIGHT COMPARISONS DON’T HOLD UP

A couple of Marines♠ look at the Department of Justice action with regard to handling of classified at War on the Rocks.

The Bottom Line is that General Cartwright and General Petraeus were not fully frank and honest with the FBI, which is a bigger sin than any other, in the eyes of the FBI.  The authors suggest that the actual case with regard to the handling of classified information wouldn't have held up (or in fact fell apart) in court.

Fortunately for Mrs Clinton, she just couldn't remember the answers to the questions.  She forgot.

As an aside, should the FBI be allowed to prosecute you for lying to its agents, while those agents are allow to lie to you?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Yes, one is retired, but once a Marine, always a Marine.

A Different Crew Views Hillary

For John, BLUF:  Ms Clinton does not inspire confidence at either end of the spectrum.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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(From a Fund Raising EMail)

For those of you wondering, "Nation of Change" is a Progressive organization.♠  It has been backing Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination for President.

It's contributors are the usual suspects.  Noam Chomsky, Juan Cole, Alexander Cockburn, E.J. Dionne, Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman, Melissa Harris-Perry, Chris Hedges, Jim Hightower, Naomi Klein, Katha Pollitt, Eugene Robinson and Robert Reich.♥  This is from a longer list in Wikipedia.

The point of this blog post is to point out that negative opinions of The Honorable Hillary Clinton exist on the "Left" of the political spectrum as well as the "Right".  I have a friend in Kansas who has been, and still is, pushing Bernie, who thinks Hillary is a crook.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  An article in Aeon, titled "Everyone was a liberal" discussed the morphing of the word Liberal vs the word Progressive.
♥  I was going to salt Jack Mitchell's name in there, but then decided I like Jack way too much to do such a thing to him.

Maybe Tom Didn't Do It

For John, BLUF:  I wonder what is the real story?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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I picked this up from Facebook, but it is The New York Times, which is supposed to be our Newspaper of Record.  It is from the "Sunday Review", by two American Enterprise Institute employees, Mr Kevin A. Hassett,director of economic studies, and Mr Stan A. Veuger, resident scholar.  The article is "Deflating ‘Deflategate’".

Is our Quarterback, Tom Bradey, owed an apology?

Regards  —  Cliff

Non-Extension Extension

For John, BLUF:  "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see”—Ben Franklin.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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When is an extension not an extension?  When you just testified that you were not going to give another extension.

Professor Althouse presents us with a multiple choice test (with all the quotes taken from Charles Krauthammer's effort at answering the question).

Hat tip to the Althouse blog.

Regards  —  Cliff

Are Scientists Truthful

For John, BLUF:  There seems to be a lot of fraud out there in science land.

Here is the link to an article on bad scientific research.  The source is The Washington Post and the reporter is Peter Whoriskey.  The story centers around Johns Hopkins University, but Reporter Zhang Jie contributed from Beijing.  Here is the lede and the following few sentences:

The numbers didn’t add up.

Over and over, Daniel Yuan, a medical doctor and statistician, couldn’t understand the results coming out of the lab, a prestigious facility at Johns Hopkins Medical School funded by millions from the National Institutes of Health.

He raised questions with the lab’s director.  He reran the calculations on his own.  He looked askance at the articles arising from the research, which were published in distinguished journals.  He told his colleagues:  This doesn’t make sense.

“At first, it was like, ‘Okay — but I don’t really see it,’ ” Yuan recalled.  “Then it started to smell bad.”

His suspicions arose as reports of scientific misconduct have become more frequent and critics have questioned the willingness of universities, academic journals and the federal government, which pays for much of the work, to confront the problem.

This article goes on for a while.  Here is an item on the larger issue of retracted scientific articles:

Last year, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud had increased tenfold since 1975. The same analysis reviewed more than 2,000 retracted biomedical papers and found that 67 percent of the retractions were attributable to misconduct, mainly fraud or suspected fraud.

This thing about bad articles (both wrong in terms of the research and plagiarized) is of sufficient size it has its own blog, Retraction Watch.

I love science and it has done quite a bit to advance civilization (although I think engineering has done more), but when there are questions about the research, one wonders what we can trust and not trust.  This goes down for our visits to our primary care physician.  Who knows if (a) he or she has the latest dope, and (b) if the latest information being used actually makes any scientific sense.

And, one wonders if the pressure of "publish or perish" is part of what leads otherwise good people to go astray.

Regards  —  Cliff

Not Really Accepting Responsibility

For John, BLUF:  The Governor is trying to bamboozle us over the Sheila Burgess affair.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Ms Sheila Burgess, our Commonwealth's Director of Highway Safety has offered her resignation, effective 31 December.  This was precipitated by revelation that she has a bad driving record, including 34 incidents in her "permanent record", including two failures to stop for a police officer.

The search for who hired her has been ongoing, with Governor Patrick going on the radio and telling us that the Administration has been having trouble finding the records.  It looked like buck passing.

President Harry Truman famously said "The buck stops here".  There was no one he could blame for bad things happening.  In yesterday's edition of The [Lowell] Sun is an article♥ that tells us our Governor, Deval Patrick, says "I'm to blame for hiring highway chief".

You know the answer to that.  The ultimate responsibility for all things that go wrong or right in the administration lies with me, and I've said before, and if you want me to say it again I will, she shouldn't have been hired for that position.

The problem is, while he can say he was to blame, with the lack of understanding what happened it seems pretty bloodless.  It actually looks like a "limited hangout".♠  The actions of the Governor in this incident meets the criteria.

I would hope that Editors and Bloggers across the Commonwealth will call the Governor out on this.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Makes one think of the Richard Nixon Modified Limited Hangout.
♥  Remember, articles in The [Lowell] Sun go away after a while, to a different place.  I will not be updating their links unless I am bedridden and have read every book in the house.

It's About The Networking

A post by the InstaPundit sent me doing an Internet search for the take of The Boston Globe on a supposed cheating issue at Harvard, down county, in Cambridge.  The blog Inside Higher Education has a post at 3:00 PM, to be found here.  This is serious stuff.  I lost a roommate early one semester when he cheated off a classmate.  I think it was Chemistry, so we were Third Classmen (Sophomores).  When our Honor Rep debriefed us he said it wasn't clear at first who did it.  The innocent party graduated and went to the F-4 in the UK.  He was flying in the Wing Commander's back seat when the plane went out of control on the bombing range and he recovered it.  He got a chance to "upgrade" to the front seat and rotated into DaNang about the time I left for Germany.  Abut three months later (early 1967) he was shot down over North Viet-Nam and was stuck there until early 1973.  In a way, ironic.

As for those at Harvard, their fate is still unknown.  A slap on the wrist?  For Edward Kennedy it was a hitch in the Army, stationed in Europe.

But, is cheating that wrong?  Another of my roommates at the Air Force Academy, later an Economics PhD from Princeton, believes if a person turns himself or resurface in they might actually be more honest than someone who was never "tested".

Cheating Is:
	Always wrong
	Generally wrong, but engaged in
	Part of going to college
	Practiced only by lower types
	OK, because "the system is rigged"
	Pervasive
pollcode.com free polls

Regards  —  Cliff

"It's Not Capitalism When…"

From Samizdata we have this quote from Steve Baker, MP:

It’s not capitalism when private individuals stand to gain from their actions but the taxpayer carries the risk.  When risks are socialised and potential profits huge, individuals are bound to be reckless:  why be responsible?  It’s no good agonising about the culture of banking without considering the astronomical moral hazard endemic in the system today.  Of course people who do not have to bear the negative consequences of their actions behave badly.

I don't know, but I wonder if this has anything to do with Barclays Bank paying record fines, as reported in The Telegraph on Wednesday, the 27th?  I can remember how I was proud, back in 1974, to have Barclays, down on the High Street, as my local bank.  Oh well.

Note the terms "moral hazard" and "risks are socialized" (risks are spread out amongst the tax payers) and "not have to bear the negative consequences of their actions".

Regards  —  Cliff