RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 28 to May 4 Featured Investigation:
Anti-Trump Offenses, Pro-Clinton Defenses "MAYBE THERE WAS SPYING?" When Beltway chronicler/cheerleader Politico tucks that that lead-in line into its daily newsletter, as it did on Friday, you get the sense that maybe there was not just spying, but also a dramatic shift in the Russiagate story and how it's perceived. And indeed this appears to be the case: The New York Times reports its intelligence sources' confirmation, with some new details, of what has been taken for granted among non-mainstream media "Spygate" mavens for some time now: that the intelligence community sent a woman to engage Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos -- a blond operative he identifies as a "honeypot" in his memoir released weeks ago. Not only that, John Solomon at The Hill keeps breaking new details on Democrat, not Republican, efforts to enlist a foreign power, Ukraine, not Russia, to help the Hillary Clinton campaign, not the Trump campaign, in the 2016 election. No wonder that Democrats have been eager, in the wake of the Mueller Report's no-Trump-Russia-collusion finding, to cast Attorney General William Barr as their new Public Enemy No. 1, ever since he said there had been spying on the Trump campaign and his department was looking into it. With more damaging revelations anticipated, a lot of DC elites are in that time-honored protective mode often put in indelicate anatomical terms. A reading list follows. The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Exclusive: Loretta Lynch Under Oath on Clinton Tarmac Meeting
RealClearInvestigations
Amid all the news about anti-Trump offensive activity during campaign 2016, RealClearInvestigations has uncovered news bearing on the Clinton campaign's defenses of its vulnerable flanks. It has obtained exclusively a transcript of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch's closed-door testimony under oath to Congress last year about her meeting with Bill Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac in June 2016. In her testimony, RCI's Eric Felten reports, Lynch describes an encounter that is both perplexing and preposterous -- and one that defies innocent explanation -- even if she did not veer from her public comments that the conversation had nothing to do with influencing the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Felten writes: - Lynch shifted her previous account of the meeting away from it being a pleasant happenstance. Rather, she told lawmakers, it was a forced and awkward encounter in which the former President was strangely eager to meet with her, so eager that he made it up the stairs and onto her plane without being invited.
- And once aboard, Lynch testified, Clinton simply could not be persuaded to leave - as he chatted and chatted about grandkids, travel plans, coal mining, golf, and Brexit, strangely oblivious to Lynch's repeated hints he had overstayed his welcome.
- But before the two talked at length, Lynch testified, Clinton worked the fuselage, schmoozing with two members of the flight crew in particular. He "said hello to them, shook their hand, spent about five minutes talking with both of those two individuals."
- Then Clinton came up front to engage Lynch and her husband for " a little under 10 minutes," Lynch said, including chatting about what he was doing in Phoenix.
- Was he doing anything campaign-related? Lynch was asked. "He didn't share that with me," she said. "He said he had been playing golf" - unlikely for a 110-degree summer day in Arizona when few are found out on the scorched greens.
- Lynch was asked whether at some point the thought occurred to her, "Maybe I shouldn't have this conversation"? Lynch replied: "As we — as his conversation continued, I just felt that the conversation was continuing for too long."
Felten writes: "Let's assume for the sake of argument that Lynch was not lying to Congress. If so, it seems to have dawned on her rather late that Clinton had compromised her, had put her in a jam. What if that's exactly what he set out to do?" To put Lynch on her guard, Felten concludes, Clinton "didn't have to make heavy-handed threats or otherwise put himself at risk of an obstruction of justice charge." "Give Bill Clinton his due," he writes. "The man is no amateur." Read Full Article Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Advocacy Groups' Leftward 'Mission Creep' is Creeping Up on Free Speech
RealClearInvestigations
Human rights groups are increasingly abandoning their core missions to chase attention-getting and donor-friendly leftist causes at the expense of free speech, Mark Hemingway writes for RealClearInvestigations. Summarizing an unmistakable long-term trend among premier nongovernmental organizations, Hemingway points to a number of groups previously identified with free speech causes that are now backing away from the issue. These include: - Amnesty International, which last year published an extensive eight part report, "Toxic Twitter -- A Toxic Place for Women" that prominently and deliberately refers to all forms of written insults, not just tangible threats, as "online violence."
- PEN America, the literary organization, which has hedged on campus free speech and faced members' open revolt over a post-massacre award to the French satirical publication Charlie Held, publisher of controversial cartoons on Muhammad.
- The ACLU, which appears to be leaning into a new, overtly political identity after a memo suggesting it would not defend speech that "may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values."
Hemingway also looks back at the Southern Poverty Law Center, long a media darling, which imploded this year amid scandal and corruption. Hemingway asks: Why was the SPLC's internal rot ignored for so long? Was it because its allies on the left — even those that claim to focus on free speech issues — were happy to let the organization use its powerful "hate group" designation to help scare away donors and ultimately silence common political enemies on the right? Germany: How the Right Dominates Social Media
Der Spiegel
Important news about virtual political activity this week, and not just about Ukraine's new President, who avoided human contact with his electorate and got elected anyway by exploiting YouTube and Instagram posts and his TV presidential persona. In Germany, Der Spiegel unpacks an American researcher's finding that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is "the country's first Facebook party." His analysis reveals the degree to which German right-wing populists are dominating the country's social media landscape. While political surveys indicate that support for the party is currently between 11 and 15 percent, 85 percent of all shared posts originating from German political parties stem from the AfD. "Davis believes that opinion polls currently being conducted ahead of May European Parliament elections could be dramatically underestimating the AfD's strength," Der Spiegel says. Canada's New Far Right: Extremist Subculture Revealed in Chats
The Globe and Mail
There's a similar investigation of right-wing activism in Canada: An analysis of 150,000 chat room messages paints a picture of a collection of people actively recruiting new members, buying weapons and trying to influence political parties, the Globe and Mail finds. "They come from all walks of life: tradesmen, soldiers, a student teacher, a financial analyst, an aspiring lawyer, among others. And they are in every province, in communities large and small," the paper reports. "The record of their continuing conversations reveals a movement, energized by the rise of white ethnonationalism in the United States, that aims to upend a decades-old multicultural consensus in this country." 'Ghost Warrants': Criminal Records Haunt Americans
The Guardian
If you were brought before the criminal justice system decades ago and your charges were dismissed, there still might be warrant out for you. The Guardian reports that "ghost warrants" get people thrown in prison for charges from years ago. People can be arrested again and again and spend months behind bars only to be eventually released with no further charges. That's what happened to Causey Davis, who was locked up in 2014, 2015, and 2017 based on a 2006 conviction. Ghost warrants occur after a defendant serves his or her time but a clerk fails to to type the judge's order into the court record, or to transfer the updated records to the sheriff's office to be entered into the database of warrants. Such simple errors make it look as if people are still wanted for the same crime. The Mystery of the Millionaire Hermit
Bloomberg
Breaking your nose and then dying by a stroke seems like a bad way to go. Even worse would be if there was no one around to find you. But that's how many people, like Eugene Brown die every year. What made his death complicated is that there was no will to be found. Bloomberg reports how in such cases, public administrators have to go through the deceased's home in an attempt to find the will. What they find is not always pretty. Focusing on two administrators, Tisserand and Rodrigue, Bloomberg reports that, "They often find themselves wading through the detritus of a life that had begun decomposing years, if not decades, before they arrived. It's not uncommon for them to find rooms packed to the ceiling with garbage or a gaggle of semiferal pets huddled under a sofa. One time they discovered the jellified remains of cats -- 30 of them -- individually wrapped inside cardboard boxes. Another time they rescued and found homes for a pack of mange-infected dogs." Investigators found that, despite investments worth about $2.7 million, Brown did not leave a will. Such cases have inspired a political and philosophical debate: Who should get the money? Should genetics determine how property is passed on? The Lo-Fi Voices that Speak for America
Politico
AM radio stations are dwindling in numbers and profitability, Politico reports. But despite its decline, AM has influence on millions of Americans. Unlike restricted FM radio, AM can cover vast geographic areas. To show the diverse range of AM radio voices, Politico sought out a number of distinctive AM hosts across the country. "They include a sheep farmer who reports on the agricultural industry for a vast rural audience," Politico reports, "An icon of inner-city Baltimore who inspired a character on 'The Where'; and one of the only on-air personalities who broadcasts in the Navajo language. Some are conservative, some are liberal, some avoid politics altogether." The Curious Tale of the Salish Sea Feet
Longreads
Twenty-one disembodied feet have washed up on the shores of Seattle's Salish Sea, but what at first looked like the work of a serial killer turns out to be something mundane -- and maybe even more unsettling. When millions of people live by the sea, they go missing in it -- and die by it, too. From a study on the fate of pig carcasses in water conducted at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, this article reports, we know that in the ocean, feet tend to disarticulate from bodies, and since they are inside floatation devices like tennis shoes, will float on tides toward shore -- providing sad but necessary closure to loved ones. Still, "It seems like this is fairly unique to the British Columbia coastline," says Andy Watson of the BC coroner's office. 'If You Want to Kill Someone, We Are the Right Guys'
Wired
Most of us have only heard of the dark web -- the private part of the Internet where people engage in criminal activity. But this piece introduces us to some of the darkest people and places on the Internet. It tells the story of Stephen Allwine, a seemingly normal computer nerd who used the internet and cyroptocurrency to put out a hit on his wife, Amy Allwine. Wired takes us through every step of the process as Allwine contacts killers and gives advice on how to kill his wife, and then how the criminal justice system used the same technology to track him down -- but not before Amy took her own life. |
