RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
September 6 to September 12, 2020 The advent of virtual Zoom meetings in these troubled times has opened windows onto the workings of social institutions that we don't ordinarily see. Surely one of the strangest was the attempted online ouster of Carlin Romano last month before 115 colleagues at the National Book Critics Circle, for the crotchety critic's supposed racism. From a source, Richard Bernstein secured access to the secret tribunal and, in RealClearInvestigations, recounts what happened -- blow by woke, anti-racist blow. Takeaways: - Romano's sin apparently was impolitic criticism of a proposed anti-racism pledge - criticism being what critics in an organization of critics are generally expected to do.
- A liberal, but not being one to always suffer social-justice warriors gladly, Romano called equating American publishing with American police departments "ridiculous."
- That was a trigger for the pledge organizer's resignation, a Twitter onslaught of racism charges, and a petition drive to sack Romano before he saved his neck - barely - by marshalling absentee votes in advance.
- The episode illustrates, one, how the trend to ferret out "microaggressions" is now spreading to other elite institutions of American life besides academe.
- Two, it signaled the repudiation of an honored and admired intellectual archetype - the curmudgeon.
- Three, it highlighted another, perhaps more far-reaching, aspect of the culture wars: how the woke left tends devour old-school liberals instead of hard-core racists.
Despite warnings from Christopher Steele's FBI handler about his "crazy" behavior, bureau officials continued to describe the ex-British spy to America's surveillance court as tried, true and reliable to justify spy warrants, a new Senate report shows. Eric Felten of RealClearInvestigations found the unreported testimony of FBI agent Michael Gaeta on page 900 of the fifth and final volume of the Senate committee's probe of Russiagate. It raises new questions about the basis of the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign. Felten reports: - Gaeta said that after his 2016 warnings about Steele got around the bureau, "people's ears were bleeding."
- Steele had broken confidentiality with the FBI and taken his dodgy dossier findings to Mother Jones magazine "because he was upset that the Director's reopening of the [Hillary Clinton email] investigation was going to negatively affect the election" for the former Secretary of State.
- "I'm very upset about - we're very upset - about the actions of your agency," Steele said, according to Gaeta. Using the first person plural, Steele likely meant himself and his client, Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson (whose client was the Clinton campaign).
- Gaeta said the episode wasn't just "crazy source-related stuff," but "one of the craziest" cases he had seen in two decades.
- The words are significant: Steele's behavior had been downplayed as mere professional disagreement with the bureau, uncomfortable, perhaps, but not unreasonable.
- Gaeta's bluntness undercuts subsequent efforts by the FBI to rehabilitate Steele in order to justify using his "reporting."
The crime problem on Indian reservations is shocking enough -- especially rapes and murders of women and girls -- but now it's on a collision course with growing demands by tribes for greater sovereignty over law enforcement, Naomi Schaefer Riley reports for RealClearInvestigations: - In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that about half of Oklahoma is within a Native American reservation.
- Last September, North Dakota agreed with five tribes to expand their authority over foster homes.
- The National Congress of American Indians says "the essence of tribal sovereignty" is making and enforcing the law through tribal police and courts.
- Such factors raise questions about the ability - and willingness -- of tribes to insure safety and justice.
- Native American women are raped at a rate at least 2½ times the national average, federal statistics indicate, and one in every four girls and one in every six boys in Indian country is molested before the age of 18.
- Homicide is the third leading cause of death among Native American females between 10 and 24 years of age and the fifth leading cause of death for those between 25 and 34.
- Since the Supreme Court's decision, many indigenous women have told RealClearInvestigations that greater tribal control could threaten the safety of native women and children.
- In Oklahoma, amid new jurisdictional doubts after the ruling, Tulsa authorities dropped a second-degree murder case against a father for the heat deaths of his daughter and son in his pickup truck.
Trump-Russia/2020 Election News Woodward Book: Trump Intentionally Downplayed Virus Washington Post
The Real Joe Biden and Anita Hill American Spectator
Another Anti-Trump Whistleblower New York Times
Phones of Lisa Page, Weissmann, Others on Mueller's Team Erased Daily Mail
Microsoft: Russian Hackers vs. 200 Election Groups Wall Street Journal
Georgia: 1,000 Double-Voted in Primary Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Absentee Ballot Rejections Could Triple Associated Press Other Noteworthy Articles and Series The Left Secretly Preps for Violence After Election Day
Daily Beast
Progressive activists are already planning for Nov. 4, war-gaming how they should respond to various electoral outcomes. During one two-hour meeting, this article reports, contemplated challenges included, "how you occupy shit, hold space, and shut things down, not just on Election Day but for weeks … [and] what quick transportation options can be in place should poll locations mysteriously close." Another major concern is how to respond "when armed right-wing militia dudes show up in polling places," Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, and a participant in the meeting said. "Progressive groups at the end of the day believe in our democracy and, while it is not perfect, believe in building upon it and strengthening it. And we will fight to protect it from what we truly see as a president who has gone off the rails and taking this country down an authoritarian fascist path." Big Safety Review of Boeing Dreamliner Flaws
Wall Street Journal
Production problems at a Boeing 787 Dreamliner factory have prompted air-safety regulators to review quality-control lapses potentially stretching back almost a decade, according to an internal government memo and people familiar with the matter. The plane maker has told U.S. aviation regulators that certain parts produced at its South Carolina facilities failed to meet its own design and manufacturing standards. Boeing has told regulators a defect resulting from the quality lapse doesn't pose an immediate safety threat to Boeing's flagship fleet of Dreamliners, which have an excellent safety record. But that slip-up combined with another recently discovered assembly-line defect prompted Boeing to take the unusual step in late August to voluntarily tell airlines to ground eight of their 787s for immediate repairs. Files Show How NY Times Blundered Into Sarah Palin Lawsuit
Columbia Journalism Review
After a politically motivated gunman fired at a group of Republican members of Congress playing softball in 2017 the New York Times ran editorial that grouped the shooting with a 2011 attack on Democrat Rep. Gabby Giffords by a man with severe mental illness. In positing a moral equivalence between the two episodes, the Times claimed both shooters were incited by a politically toxic environment; the editorial specifically repeated the canard that connected the Gifford's shooting to a map of targeted House races run by Sarah Palin's PAC. Palin is now suing the Times. and this article focuses on the role former editorial page editor James Bennet played in crafting the since-corrected editorial. Two interesting points emerge. First, when the paper started receiving blowback, Bennet sent this text to his colleagues: "Hey guys — We're taking a lot of criticism for saying that the attack on Giffords was in any way connected to incitement.… I don't know what the truth is here, but we may have relied too heavily on our early editorials and other early coverage of that attack." (Emphasis added). Second, when the judge in the case asked Bennet whether the editorial was "saying that this map circulated by Sarah Palin's political action committee was a direct cause of the kind of political incitement that you think led to various acts of violence?" Bennet responded, "I would not use the word ‘cause,' your Honor." Bennet later added, "It wasn't in my head that that was tantamount to complicity in attempted murder. It's simply rhetoric." (Emphasis added). TMZ Newsroom a Den of Racism, Misogyny, Abuse
BuzzFeed
This article reports that the brash tone the celebrity website TMZ displays in its coverage "is consistent with a toxic workplace where the staff regularly endures verbal abuse, misogyny, racism, and other inappropriate behavior." Interviews with one current and 23 former employees who insisted on anonymity paint a picture of an abusive, male-dominated workplace. "If you're talking about the rights of Black people, if you're talking about misogyny, if you're talking about equality amongst everyone, it's never reflected in the workplace," the employee said. "We're reporting on all of that stuff, but we're not doing it ourselves." Coronavirus Investigations Inside Coronavirus That Outsmarted Science Wall Street Journal
For Covid-19 Apps, Tug of War Between Privacy, Efficiency Bloomberg
Spy vs. Spy in Vaccine Race New York Times
Baseball's Corona Tutorial for America Wall Street Journal |
