-
The Department of Justice delivered to Congress Jim Comey’s memos on his meetings with Donald Trump, and the memos promptly leaked. Mollie Hemingway writes that the memos demonstrate that Comey’s briefing of Trump on the Steele dossier was a setup intended to lend the dossier credibility as CNN published a story on it. The Department of Justice is investigating whether Comey leaked classified information when he gave two of the memos to a law professor friend, who handed them over to The New York Times. We also learned that Comey was under investigation for Hatch Act violations when Trump fired him.
-
Donald Trump hired Rudy Giuliani to represent him in the Robert Mueller investigation.
-
The narrative that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians isn’t going anywhere, so the Democratic National Committee decided to sue the Trump campaign, the Russian government, and a long list of other entities. The lawsuit claims there was an illegal conspiracy to damage Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
-
Aggressive protesters are targeting the NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, and his wife’s business. The protestors have splashed Cox’s house with fake blood, among other exploits.
-
Wells Fargo will pay a $1B fine imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over misdeeds related to consumer insurance and lending. Wells Fargo did not admit any guilt.
-
North Korea claims it has suspended nuclear and missile tests and will shut down its nuclear test site in advance of summits with South Korea and the U.S.
-
The Trump campaign is requiring Israel to spend American military aid on American products and services, which is squeezing Israeli defense companies.
-
The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $928 million contract to develop a hypersonic missile. There’s a perception that Russia and China are ahead of the U.S. in developing these weapons.
-
Big Republican donor Foster Friess is running for governor of Wyoming.
-
Of the caravan of about 1,500 migrants from Central America who were making their way through Mexico to the U.S., only 50 showed up at the border to request asylum.
-
Five shiploads of sorghum in route from the U.S. to China changed direction after China imposed tariffs on the grain.
-
Al Qaeda’s branch in Mali, the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), claimed responsibility for a complex attack that targeted French and U.N. forces in Timbuktu. One U.N. soldier was killed and 10 were wounded in the attack; seven French soldiers were wounded.
Tag: South Korea
Links for 4-16-2018
- Donald Trump apparently changed his mind about imposing another round of sanctions on Russia.
-
The U.S. and the U.K. accused Russia of conducting a global cyber attack that targeted networking equipment.
-
Jon Lerner won’t become Mike Pence’s national security advisor after all – he withdrew from the job so he wouldn’t become a distraction, a.k.a. a target for Donald Trump. Lerner will continue working for Nikki Haley.
-
The Government Accountability Office concluded that the EPA violated the law when it spent $43,000 to build a soundproof phone booth in Scott Pruitt’s office. The EPA failed to notify Congress of the expense.
-
Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA) underwent another surgery to treat his wounds from a shooting 10 months ago.
-
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich of his corruption convictions. This is the second time the Supreme Court has refused to hear a Blagojevich appeal.
-
Russian investigative journalist Maxim Borodin died after “security forces” apparently tossed him off a fifth floor balcony. Borodin helped break the story of Russian mercenaries who were killed in eastern Syria after they attacked an American/Syrian Defense Forces base.
-
Syria and Russia are denying inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons access to the site of the latest chemical weapons attack.
-
China’s Communist Party is injecting itself more deeply into the operations of foreign companies:
The party’s expanding presence in business is part of a broader push by Xi Jinping, China’s president and the party’s top leader, to make it stronger. He has reshaped education to include more Communist Party mythology and increased the party’s role in China’s military. Mr. Xi’s take on Communism — called “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” — has been unveiled with great fanfare across the country.
In the business realm, dozens of Chinese state-controlled companies have changed their articles of incorporation to give the party a greater role, including the publicly traded units of some of the world’s biggest companies, like Sinopec, ICBC and China Railway Group. The insurance giant China Pacific Insurance, for example, recently amended its articles of association to say that in key corporate decisions, “the board of directors shall first seek for the opinion of the leading party group of the company.”
Later:
The Communist Party has long been part of doing business in China. While party committees are a fixture in many foreign-managed workplaces, they were seen by foreign executives for years as more like social clubs. They would meet to read party announcements, recruit new members, make sure dues were collected and generally keep an eye on operations.
But on at least three occasions in recent months, foreign executives have been approached by their Chinese joint venture partners demanding that they involve internal party committees in strategic decisions, say lawyers and business executives.
- China is using house arrest to effectively detain dissidents who haven’t been charged with crimes.
-
The Department of Commerce banned American companies from selling components to Chinese telecommunications company ZTE. Commerce says ZTE failed to comply with a court settlement over ZTE’s selling of equipment and technology to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions:
As part of the agreement, Shenzhen-based ZTE Corp promised to dismiss four senior employees and discipline 35 others by either reducing their bonuses or reprimanding them, senior Commerce Department officials told Reuters. But the Chinese company admitted in March that while it had fired the four senior employees, it had not disciplined or reduced bonuses to the 35 others.
-
Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye dropped her appeal of her corruption conviction.
Links for 4-6-2018
-
Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed federal prosecutors to charge everyone caught crossing the southern border illegally, which he deems a “zero tolerance” policy.
-
The Treasury Department sanctioned seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control. They also sanctioned 17 Russian government officials.
-
Reuters reporters traced how Russia transports troops, mercenaries, and equipment to Syria despite sanctions intended to make this difficult.
-
The federal budget deficit for March was $207 billion. The government collected $213 billion in revenue, so it borrowed about $.50 for every dollar it spent.
-
Congressman Blake Farenthold (R-TX) resigned. In 2014 he settled a sexual harassment lawsuit using $84,000 in taxpayer funds, which eventually prompted him to say he wouldn’t run for re-election; now he’s leaving office before his term ends.
-
The Department of Justice asked a federal district court judge to make Harvard’s admissions records public as part of a lawsuit claiming the university discriminates against Asian-American applicants.
-
Former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy is running for U.S. Senate from Mississippi, seeking to replace Thad Cochran.
-
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva refused to turn himself in to begin a prison sentence. He’s holed up in the headquarters of a steelworkers union in São Paulo, surrounded by hundreds of supporters.
-
A South Korean court sentenced former President Park Geun-hye to 24 years in prison for bribery, abuse of power, and coercion. She was also fined $16.9 million.
Links for 3-28-2018
- The U.S. census included a question about citizenship for nearly 200 years, and it wasn’t controversial. Jonathan S. Tobin takes on the argument that including a citizenship question will reduce the census return rate:
But the assumption that illegal and legal aliens were happy to fill out these forms in 2010 but won’t do so again is unfounded. It is highly unlikely that illegal aliens are filling out census questionnaires — or any government survey — even if the word “citizen” is banished from the form. Illegal immigrants and even those with legal resident status tend to be extremely skittish — for understandable reasons — about doing anything that might, even in theory, attract attention from the government. The number of illegal immigrants shunning the census if it includes a question about citizenship isn’t likely to be much greater than the total of those who did so in 2010 when there was no such question.
The second point is just as obvious but is also clearly rejected by liberals. Including illegal immigrants in the count so as to ensure that states with large numbers of them get maximum representation in the House is inherently fraudulent. While the goal of the census is to count every person residing in the country, the notion that its purpose is also to ensure that those who are subject to deportation if caught are as entitled to fair representation in Congress as U.S. citizens is as bizarre as it is untenable.
- The $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill allocates a lot of cash to the Department of Defense but very little to building a wall on the southern border, so Donald Trump wants the DoD to build the wall.
-
Donald Trump replaced the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin, with the White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson. This appears to be a reward for Jackson’s handling of the media while delivering the results of Trump’s physical. Jackson does not have experience running a large government organization, and the VA is the second largest federal agency.
-
A federal district court judge ruled that lawsuits filed against Saudi Arabia’s government over the country’s role in the September 11 attacks can proceed.
-
The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Justice confirmed that it’s investigating potential FISA abuses by the Department of Justice and the FBI.
-
The FBI dragged its feet on breaking into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone because the Department of Justice wanted to pressure Apple into weakening its encryption.
-
The U.S. and South Korea updated their trade agreement such that South Korea will avoid the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel. There’s also a currency side deal:
The agreement, cobbled together quickly with only a few rounds of negotiations under Trump’s threat of withdrawal, will include a side-letter that requires South Korea to provide increased transparency of its foreign exchange interventions, with commitments to avoid won devaluations for competitive purposes.
-
Poland will buy $4.75 billion worth of Raytheon’s Patriot missile defense system.
-
The latest theory is that former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned at the front door of their home.
-
Turkey is making more noise about attacking Kurds in Manbij, Syria; American forces also operate from Manbij. Meanwhile American forces nearly bombed another group of Russian mercenaries in Syria.
-
Catherine Engelbrecht delivers an update on True the Vote’s lawsuit against the IRS, which features double dealing by the Department of Justice.
Links for 3-22-2018
-
Senator Rand Paul endorsed the Convention of States Project.
-
Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled legislature is moving to impeach the Democrat state supreme court justices who imposed a new congressional district map on the state. It’s nice to see checks and balances working for a change.
-
Last year Andrew McCabe initiated an investigation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ potential ties to Russians. The Department of Justice is so politicized that it’s time to think about razing it and starting over from scratch.
-
Next month John Bolton will replace H.R. McMaster as Donald Trump’s national security advisor.
-
Donald Trump instructed the U.S. Trade Representative to impose $60 billion worth of tariffs on imports from China. The items to be taxed are supposed to be beneficiaries of “improper access to U.S. technology.” In reaction the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 724 points, or 2.93%.
-
The House of Representatives voted 256–167 to approve the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill. Ninety Republicans voted against it, so House Speaker Paul Ryan got it passed with a lot of help from Democrats.
-
Federal prosecutors dropped charges against 11 of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards. Four of those bodyguards still face charges related to beating up protesters outside Turkey’s embassy in Washington, D.C. back in May 2017. Prosecutors claim they didn’t face political pressure to drop charges.
-
“Guccifer 2.0,” the hacker who accessed the Democratic National Committee’s computers during the 2016 election, slipped up and revealed himself to be an officer in Russia’s military intelligence directorate (the GRU).
-
Former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was charged with accepting bribes while he was in office.
Links for 3-19-2018
- An article in the Guardian portrays data and media consulting company Cambridge Analytica as the devil that used Facebook data to elect Donald Trump. Michael Brendan Dougherty writes that what was considered brilliant strategy by the Obama campaign is now considered a data breach:
Cambridge Analytica has been accused of misrepresenting the purpose of some of its data mining, which yielded something like 30 million Facebook profiles it could comb for data. It is alleged not to have deleted data on Facebook’s request. It was promptly kicked off Facebook after the Guardian and New York Times stories.
Mashable ran an editorial arguing that it was time to protect yourself and your friends, who were made vulnerable to manipulation. In a think piece for The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal writes, “If Cambridge Analytica’s targeted advertising works, people worry they could be manipulated with information — or even thoughts — that they did not consent to giving anyone.”
Where were these worries four years ago for the much larger and arguably more manipulative effort by the Obama campaign?
If you have a Facebook account, you’re being manipulated by Facebook and the companies that pay for access to its data. If that bothers you, delete your Facebook account.
-
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the implementation of Pennsylvania’s new congressional map, which was drawn by the state Supreme Court for the benefit of the Democratic Party.
-
Donald Trump instructed federal agencies to cut regulations, but the State Department found a backdoor way to make international adoptions more difficult and expensive without writing new regulations:
Under the Hague Convention, U.S. law makes the State Department the central authority over international adoption, but it requires another public or nonprofit entity to act as the “accrediting entity” (AE), holding adoption agencies to certain fiscal and ethical standards. Since 2013, COA [Council on Accreditation] has been the only AE for international adoption.
In the letter, COA president Richard Klarberg notified agencies it would soon step down as an AE. “The Department of State … is requiring COA to make significant changes in the nature and scope of our work in ways which will fundamentally change our responsibilities … and which are inconsistent with COA’s philosophy and mission,” Klarberg wrote.
In an interview, Klarberg tells me the State Department was requiring new procedures that bore a striking resemblance to the regulations it had withdrawn: “They are doing by indirection that which they could not do directly. It is a back-door effort.” Klarberg predicts that as a result of DOS-enforced changes, “the number of children who will be eligible for immigration via adoption will definitely shrink. The number of agencies involved with intercountry adoption will also shrink.”
Later:
Instead, the State Department has created a climate of fear and mistrust. In every interview I conducted, a single name emerged as the primary source of this adversarial relationship: Trish Maskew, chief of the Adoption Division in the Office of Children’s Issues.
Later still:
On the other side, we have what I would call “adoption critics” like Maskew. They focus heavily on the potential for abuse in the adoption process, and on preserving the possibility for children to be reunited with birth relatives. In a 2009 paper aimed directly at refuting Bartholet’s human rights argument, Maskew called international adoption “a profoundly problematic institution.” She also cited an author who frames international adoption in terms of racism and Western colonialism. “A conception of poor, third-world countries as subordinate nations fits very comfortably with the practice of international adoption,” this author wrote.
- An Uber self-driving car hit and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona.
-
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he’ll continue his military offensive against the YPG along the entire border between Turkey and Syria, and, if necessary, into northern Iraq. Turkish troops and their militia allies are reportedly looting Afrin, and people are still fleeing the city: “A Syrian Kurdish official told Reuters that more than 200,000 people who had fled the Afrin offensive were without shelter, food or water in nearby areas.”
-
South Korea’s military is building a new surface-to-surface missile unit that will use thermobaric weapons to take out North Korean artillery.
-
Norway’s governing coalition may collapse over a controversy involving Justice Minister Sylvi Listhaug:
On Tuesday parliament will debate a no-confidence motion against Sylvi Listhaug, who has triggered uproar by accusing the opposition Labour Party – in 2011 the target of the country’s worst peacetime massacre – of putting terrorists’ rights before national security.
Later:
On Sunday, daily Verdens Gang and broadcasters NRK and TV2 quoted sources close to [Prime Minister Erna] Solberg as saying her cabinet would stand by Listhaug and resign if the no-confidence vote succeeded.
-
A Ukrainian army recruiting video:
Links for 3-6-2018
- Donald Trump’s top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, resigned. Cohn opposes the tariffs Trump intends to impose on steel and aluminum imports.
-
Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special counsel to investigate FISA abuses during the Obama administration.
-
Ladar Levison writes that all Americans should be afraid of how the FBI used uncorraborated information to obtain and renew FISA court warrants targeting Carter Page:
In the case of Carter Page, his private life was monitored, for almost a year, without his knowledge, and then placed on display for strangers at the FBI to peruse, all based on a suspicion that he was colluding with Russia. On the basis of hearsay, business associations, and possibly Page’s political opinions, the FBI received a classified surveillance warrant and then renewed it three times. And yet, Page was never officially charged — suggesting that, even given the ability to surveil him in ways that might make the general public cringe, the FBI was never able to find enough evidence for a single crime.
It has become clear that a secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review is an insufficient check to our intelligence agencies and law enforcement. When express disagreement on a foreign policy issue — namely the current sanctions against Russia — form even part of the basis of an allegation which meets the bar for a probable cause warrant, there is something terribly wrong with the current system. The health of our political system depends on the ability to express an unpopular opinion without official recrimination.
-
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel opined that Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act twice during Alabama’s special election to fill a U.S. Senate seat.
-
South Korean negotiators reported that North Korea is willing to discuss nuclear disarmament during future talks with the U.S. Kim Jong Un also agreed to meet with South Korea’s president next month. North Korea has a long history of offering false promises as a delaying tactic as sanctions start to bite.
-
There are strange developments in the case of a 14-year-old Mexican girl in U.S. custody who is pregnant. Her appointed lawyers are in a rush to obtain an abortion, and in the process they appear to have stretched if not broken Texas law; the Texas Attorney General’s office is investigating.
-
Antifa shut down a debate at King’s College in London that was organized by a libertarian group. The Antifa protesters called the people attending the event “fascists,” which is pretty much the exact opposite of what the event’s sponsors believe. Score one for willful ignorance.
-
Colleges in Georgia are restricting the First Amendment rights of Christians.
-
Nashville Mayor Megan Barry resigned as a part of a plea bargain. Barry pleaded guilty to felony theft of property over $10,000, a side-effect of her affair with her police bodyguard. She’ll serve three years unsupervised probation and pay the city back $11,000.
-
Paul Allen discovered the wreckage of the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea.
-
The Afghan military captured a German citizen fighting for what’s supposed to be an elite unit of the Taliban.
-
The Syrian Democratic Forces are deploying another 1,700 fighters to Afrin to battle Turkish troops.
-
A Russian transport plane crashed in Syria, killing 39 people. Everyone who died was on board the plane, which went down near a Russian air base in Latakia Province.
-
Brazil’s top appeals court ruled that former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will have to report to prison while courts hear his appeal of corruption charges.
