[Red State] The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), Rosemary Collyer, was widely praised on Tuesday for her sharp rebuke of the FBI over their abuses of the FISA application process. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ report listed seven mistakes or omissions in the first application for a warrant to spy on Trump advisor Carter Page. By the time of the third renewal, there were 17.
Judge Collyer was angry. After all, this was such a shock. Here’s what she wrote:
The frequency with which representations made by F.B.I. personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other F.B.I. applications is reliable.
The court expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing,
Judge Collyer has ordered the DOJ and the FBI to review each application they have submitted to the court and "to explain what steps have been taken to assure the candor of each submission." And she has set a deadline of January 10, 2020 for this report.
It’s great that she appears to be cracking down on these agencies in the wake of the IG’s revelations, but why did Judge Collyer fail to act when Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), then-Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote to her in 2018 to express his concern that the FBI had acted improperly?
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel reported on Friday that Nunes sent a letter to Judge Collyer on February 7th, 2018 to tell her what his committee had found during their investigation of the FBI’s four applications. He wrote, "The Committee found that the FBI and DOJ failed to disclose the specific political actors paying for uncorroborated information that went to the court, misled the FISC regarding dissemination of this information, and failed to correct these errors in the subsequent renewals." Mr. Nunes "asked the court whether any transcripts of FISC hearings about this application existed, and if so, to provide them to the committee." Strassel wrote:
#1
WIKI - Collyer was one of four FISA Court judges who approved a FISA warrant (issued in October 2016 and renewed several times) authorizing the wiretapping of Carter Page.[8] In December 2019 Collyer issued an order saying the FBI "provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI's case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page"[9] ordering the government to inform the court of planned procedures to "ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application."
#2
Because letters from politicians get forwarded to the IG. Judges are supposed to stay out of the politics. The court is in a tough spot on this one. If a judge investigated every congressional letter, the dems would flood them.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/21/2019 7:49 Comments ||
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#3
Admiral Rogers reported surveillance and FISA abuses as early as 2015. Much of this was reported in bits and pieces by Rantburg at the time. Clapper tried to fire Rogers for this exposure in an attempt to cover up. The following timeline in the article is revealing: Mike Rogers is an American hero.
The FISA courts must have been aware of these abuses as well. I am always astounded daily by the depths of corruption that existed in the previous administration. My naiveté.
[Breitbart] Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) praised Breitbart News in a Thursday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
"By God’s grace, we’ve got a few outlets like Breitbart that are willing to share the truth," said Johnson while reflecting on recent interviews he had done with CNN and MSNBC regarding Democrats’ impeachment push against President Donald Trump.
Johnson described the acrimony he perceived from CNN and MSNBC figures during his interviews with them.
"I spent a lot of time over the last week ... going into those lions’ dens," said Johnson, referring to CNN and MSNBC. "I think I did six or seven CNN and MSNBC shows, for example, over the last four or five days to go and present our case. Now, you know going into those arenas, that it’s [going to be] a hostile interview. Some of these [interviews] we put on our Facebook page."
#1
Note that Congressman Johnson's district is the home of the Global Strike Command and the Second Bomb Wing (B-52's.) In case anything kinetic should develop.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/21/2019 13:23 Comments ||
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#2
The whining at Breitbart makes Hannity look like a stud. Gawd help us all...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/21/2019 15:57 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
[Marginal Revolution] - Men and women are different. A seemingly obvious fact to most of humanity but a long-time subject of controversy within psychology. New large-scale results using better empirical methods are resolving the debate, however, in favor of the person in the street. The basic story is that at the broadest level (OCEAN) differences are relatively small but that is because there are large offsetting differences between men and women at lower levels of aggregation. Scott Barry Kaufman, writing at Scientific American, has a very good review of the evidence:
At the broad level, we have traits such as extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness. But when you look at the specific facets of each of these broad factors, you realize that there are some traits that males score higher on (on average), and some traits that females score higher on (on average), so the differences cancel each other out. This canceling out gives the appearance that sex differences in personality don’t exist when in reality they very much do exist.
For instance, males and females on average don’t differ much on extraversion. However, at the narrow level, you can see that males on average are more assertive (an aspect of extraversion) whereas females on average are more sociable and friendly (another aspect of extraversion). So what does the overall picture look like for males and females on average when going deeper than the broad level of personality?
On average, males tend to be more dominant, assertive, risk-prone, thrill-seeking, tough-minded, emotionally stable, utilitarian, and open to abstract ideas. Males also tend to score higher on self-estimates of intelligence, even though sex differences in general intelligence measured as an ability are negligible [2]. Men also tend to form larger, competitive groups in which hierarchies tend to be stable and in which individual relationships tend to require little emotional investment. In terms of communication style, males tend to use more assertive speech and are more likely to interrupt people (both men and women) more often‐ especially intrusive interruptions‐ which can be interpreted as a form of dominant behavior.
...In contrast, females, on average, tend to be more sociable, sensitive, warm, compassionate, polite, anxious, self-doubting, and more open to aesthetics. On average, women are more interested in intimate, cooperative dyadic relationships that are more emotion-focused and characterized by unstable hierarchies and strong egalitarian norms. Where aggression does arise, it tends to be more indirect and less openly confrontational. Females also tend to display better communication skills, displaying higher verbal ability and the ability to decode other people’s nonverbal behavior. Women also tend to use more affiliative and tentative speech in their language, and tend to be more expressive in both their facial expressions and bodily language (although men tend to adopt a more expansive, open posture). On average, women also tend to smile and cry more frequently than men, although these effects are very contextual and the differences are substantially larger when males and females believe they are being observed than when they believe they are alone.
Moreover, the differences in the subcategories are all correlated so while one might argue that even among the subcategories the differences are small on any single category when you put them all together the differences in male and female personalities are large and systematic. Interestingly, if you look at the citation - most scientists who did the research are female - these subjects are professional suicide for male scientists.
#5
I have a very hard time imagining a female engineer saying "It's an ugly sonofabitch, but watch it fly..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/21/2019 14:57 Comments ||
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#6
When Clarice Kelly comes along, there will be time to talk.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/21/2019 14:59 Comments ||
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#7
Male IQ distribution is wider. Women tend toward the mean. Males have more extremes.
No shit. Wymyns don't have p3nises to think with
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2019 17:01 Comments ||
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#8
I have a very hard time imagining a female engineer saying "It's an ugly sonofabitch, but watch it fly..."
I’m not sure ... there have been a great many engineers in my life, and on the whole the females are as charmingly direct about approaching the world as a series of problems to be efficiently defined and solved as the males. But Mr. Wife says mechanical engineers are more s3x-differentiated than ChemEs because MechE is more physical — auto heads and such, which girls tend not to be, whereas ChemE is more an intellectual exercise. On the other hand, that same problem solving approach has led a number of female engineers of my acquaintance (and MBAs, also trained as problem solvers) to choose to give up their careers to run their households when they had children. They generally ended up running the PTA committees that improved the education provided, and later charity committees, as their children moved through school and then into lives of their own.
Okay... This AM Boeing launches their version of the commercial manned spacecraft to ISS. The computers go insane and start maneuvering like ISS is right there when it is far away and use up most of their fuel while ignoring frantic messages from Earth to quit. That's cool... BUT THEN...
NASA in it's infinite bureaucratic wisdom decides to halt SpaceX's pending manned flight too and buy lots more seats on Soyuz! Seriously! WTF is wrong with NASA?
[NASAspaceflight.COM] After a gorgeous and 100% successful launch atop the Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance, Boeing’s uncrewed Starliner crew capsule suffered a mission-shortening failure just 30 minutes into its inaugural flight.
A Mission Event Timer issue resulted in Starliner burning a significantly larger amount of propellant than planned and forced Boeing and NASA to abort the planned rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station and opt instead for a landing at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, No Earlier Than Sunday morning (22 December) roughly 48 hours after launch.
#6
So the first launch failed. So what. How many Saturn rocket burned up on the pad, and more recently, how many space X rockets burned up or failed. Space flight is complicated. They will get it right,
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/21/2019 7:38 Comments ||
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#21
There was a plumbing outfit where I used to live that had a radio commercial tagline: "Who Can? Ameri-can!" Maybe diversity is a bit oversold these days? Chang? Gupta? Anybody?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/21/2019 13:42 Comments ||
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#22
A guy just went to jail for sabotaging an airliner in his role as a flight mechanic. No chance something like that could happen anywhere else in the food chain. No sir...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/21/2019 13:45 Comments ||
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#23
Use the housing algo that was made.by someone from china that was made to fail as per.wired magazine play.it safe.please.your.masters!
[Free Beacon] Al Sharpton's National Action Network has come to the defense of a Jersey City elected official facing pressure to resign over her anti-Semitic comments regarding a recent attack on a kosher market in the city.
While officials from across the Jersey City community have called on Joan Terrell to resign from public office over a social media comment blaming Jews for an anti-Semitic shooting, a local member of Sharpton's National Action Network said Terrell's critics should "shut their mouths," according to a report by NJ.com.
"How dare they speak out against someone saying how they feel. She said nothing wrong. Everything she said is the truth. So where is this anti-Semitism coming in? I am not getting it," Carolyn Oliver Fair, the executive director of the North Jersey chapter of the National Action Network, said.
[PJ] - By 2017 it was obvious that the 20th-century institutions were reeling under the impact of the information revolution. The old hierarchies and the authority they had wielded from prestige, authority and celebrity were, if not in a state of collapse, at least badly degraded. The leak of secrets showed how incompetent and mendacious the elites were and the MeToo and Jeffrey Epstein affairs demonstrated how venal.
The last redoubt of establishment legitimacy rested on the claim that it was democratic, protected individual rights against the power of the police; kept the secrets of the ordinary people from any would-be STASI and that the Will of the People as expressed through the ballot box was supreme.
Now, even this last claim has collapsed. For nearly four years both sides of the populist divide have been exerting every effort to convince the publics both foreign and domestic that the executive branch is working for the KGB or that the past administration's stay-behinds in Congress are embarked upon a coup d'etat against the Constitution. The public is watching a double-feature showing the Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, each side depicting the other in the worst possible light.
...As Andy McCarthy put it, "if it can be done to Trump, it can be done to the next president and the next and the next. ... And now, each party’s base will demand that it be done. If each side doesn’t impeach the enemy’s president, it will mean their partisans in the House aren’t trying hard enough."
...The current challenge is less to limit damage to the status quo ante than to find some trajectory that will eventually increase the chances of reaching a new consensus way of routinely changing political leadership. In other words, finding an off-ramp from the highway to hell. The key to achieving this may lie in changing the management of official secrets. The information revolution that made it nearly impossible for individuals to protect their privacy has also made it impossible for authority to be founded on trust.
#1
The author had me nodding along until this cloosterfook of a sentence:
The current challenge is less to limit damage to the status quo ante than to find some trajectory that will eventually increase the chances of reaching a new consensus way of routinely changing political leadership.
Is he applying for a government grant?
Any idea what he means to say, in plain English?
#3
The public is watching a double-feature showing The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, each side depicting the other in the worst possible light.
...Don't entirely agree with the TFA, but that part is spot on.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/21/2019 8:01 Comments ||
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#4
Any idea what he means to say, in plain English?
The Rubes are onto us and we need to find a new scam, mate!
#6
The old does not work anymore. It can't be trusted as it is part of the Deepstate and Democratic Party. Ivey sent an email to Podesta on 3-13-16 (Wikileaks) that tells what they think of Trump prior to the election. The fact that Hillary is a weak candidate is discussed and the need to keep the public uninformed and compliant:
From Bill Ivey
From:bi@globalculturalstrategies.com
To: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2016-03-13 17:06
Subject: From Bill Ivey
Dear John:
Well, we all thought the big problem for our US democracy was Citizens
United/Koch Brothers big money in politics. Silly us; turns out that money
isn't all that important if you can conflate entertainment with the
electoral process. Trump masters TV, TV so-called news picks up and repeats
and repeats to death this opinionated blowhard and his hairbrained ideas,
free-floating discontent attaches to a seeming strongman and we're off and
running. JFK, Jr would be delighted by all this as his "George" magazine saw
celebrity politics coming. The magazine struggled as it was ahead of its
time but now looks prescient. George, of course, played the development
pretty lightly, basically for charm and gossip, like People, but what we are
dealing with now is dead serious. How does this get handled in the general?
Secretary Clinton is not an entertainer, and not a celebrity in the Trump,
Kardashian mold; what can she do to offset this? I'm certain the
poll-directed insiders are sure things will default to policy as soon as the
conventions are over, but I think not. And as I've mentioned, we've all
been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire
to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains
strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands
some serious, serious thinking - and not just poll driven,
demographically-inspired messaging.
How are those elitist attitudes working out? Certainly, this is not good for America. Without an honest press and media, the voter is in the dark and uninformed. Yes, the MSM has let up down bigly.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.