Friday, June 29, 2018




Videos
unknown.jpg

Maxwell School of Syracuse...
YouTube - Mar 8, 2016
unknown_1.jpg

JBS
YouTube - Feb 7, 2017
unknown_2.jpg

IU Maurer
YouTube - Mar 14, 2014
unknown_3.jpg

TheJerusalemCenter
YouTube - Sep 7, 2016
unknown_4.jpg

Kohelet Forum Office
YouTube - Jun 29, 2016
unknown_5.jpg

PressTV
YouTube - Jun 5, 2016
unknown_6.jpg

TheJerusalemCenter
YouTube - Apr 14, 2016
unknown_7.jpg

NYS of mind
YouTube - Feb 25, 2017
unknown_8.jpg

TAMUBushSchool
YouTube - Mar 29, 2018
unknown_9.jpg

Maoz Israel
YouTube - Aug 12, 2015



  1. Cached
16 hours ago - Maxwell School of Syracuse University. 1.8K subscribers. International Law Issues in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, with Eugene Kontorovich.

  1. Cached
Eugene Kontorovich teaches at Northwestern University School of Law, and is a senior ... He is a leading expert on the legal issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and has ... His scholarship has been cited in pathbreaking international law cases ...


  1. Cached
  2. Similar
Professor Eugene Kontorovich teaches at Northwestern University School of Law . He specializes in ... International Law · Legal Issues in Arab-Israeli conflict ...


  1. Cached
Apr 8, 2018 - Professor Eugene Kontorovich is the head of the international law department ... Israel was created, like most countries, after a successful war where no one ... The Palestinians have the right to vote in Palestinian elections, and self- government. ... However, all of their foreign policies and defense issues are ...

  1. Cached
Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at Northwestern Law whose research spans the fields of constitutional law, international law, and law and economics. He has  ...

  1. Cached
  2. Similar
Mar 11, 2016 - Now, Northwestern University Professor of Law Eugene Kontorovich, ... International Law Issues in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, with Eugene ...

  1. Cached
Eugene Kontorovich 22 Kislev 5777 | 22 December 2016. The proposed “ Regulation Bill” raises the legal issues within Israeli and International Law regarding ...
International Law Expert: UN's Obsession With Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Robs it of Ability to Deal With More Serious Problems (INTERVIEW) ... Dr. Eugene Kontorovich — a professor at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law and ...

  1. Similar
By Eugene Kontorovich March 10, 2016 Email the author ... about the extent of Israel's borders by examining the standard international-law rule used to determine the borders of newly ... He also writes and lectures frequently about the Arab-Israel conflict. .... A state-by-state look at where Generation Y stands on the big issues.



Wednesday, June 27, 2018

GAO Decision Threatens US Military Dominance; Reject It


Bill Greenwalt Breaking Defense 6-27-18

https://breakingdefense.com/2018/06/gao-decision-threatens-us-military-dominance-reject-it/?utm_campaign=Breaking%20News&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=64065746&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--WtSokWHu7Qc8mbSgB0OMM-kr_n1f77j6aFuki-Scg0DfZJMFsNzl_t5iUoHyvNHyCmAAItysswM3AidZjorA1Qukazg&_hsmi=64065746

Bill Greenwalt is sort of the Pied Piper of military acquisition policy. Where he leads, others often follow. After he wrote a series of op-eds for Breaking Defense recommending major changes to the Pentagon's acquisition system, Sen. John McCain lured Bill back to his old job at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Greenwalt rewrote the laws, shaking up Defense Department acquisition. Bill is back, pointing to new acquisition problems, this latest one with his former employer -- the Government Accountability Office. It's a doozy, as you'll see.  Read on! The Editor.

It hasn’t attracted much attention but a seemingly minor quasi-judicial ruling is a prime example of how our acquisition system serves as a means to self-inflicted unilateral disarmament.

Unless senior leadership in the Defense Department acts in the next few weeks, this Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) protest decision in favor of Oracle and against the Army and Transportation Command will ensure that China will dominate the future military application of quantum computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data analytics, biotechnology, robotics and autonomous operations. Even before the recent GAO ruling the odds were daunting that the Pentagon could pursue the right policies to compete and win in what is now the arms race of the 21st century. Unless the Defense Department engages, those odds just got perilously worse.

Why would such a seemingly mundane judgment have such a wide-ranging impact? In one fell swoop, this decision kills DoD’s ability to access Silicon Valley and the rest of leading edge commercial innovators in the US and the free world. While it may not be obvious to many, the only way for the U.S. to compete with China in the next decade will be to harness the engineering talent and the lead that the commercial market currently has in emerging technologies. To understand the significance of this, note that six out of the eight technologies identified in the National Defense Strategy as vital to future national security are being led by the commercial marketplace. To provide for its security the U.S. needs to find a way to partner and contract with commercial companies that until now would not work with the Pentagon because of its massive compliance requirements, its excruciatingly slow acquisition and contracting processes and the way it treats intellectual property.

OTAs (Other Transactions Authority) are currently the only way to remove the barriers necessary to get these non-traditional sources of innovation to do business with the military. Properly constructed, OTAs help speed up the process, respect a company’s IP through negotiation rather than regulatory fiat, and result in contracting under commercial terms and conditions. Any CEO of an advanced commercial technology company understands all too clearly that contracting with the U.S. military in any fashion besides an OTA probably jeopardizes his or her company’s culture and technologies. It is no coincidence that Elon Musk’s SpaceX would not exist without NASA’s aggressive use of OTA authority embedded in the Space Act of 1958. The expansion of OTA and Experimental Authorities was one of the centerpieces of the recent McCain acquisition reforms designed to explicitly meet the threats posed by China and Russia. By expanding OTAs at the Defense Department to correspond to the authorities of the Space Act, Congress opened the door to the creation of hundreds of new SpaceX’s to disrupt the defense market by bringing in new competition and innovation. This, because of GAO’s intervention, will likely no longer happen.

The implications of the GAO’s ruling are massive. it essentially overturns the benefit of every ongoing OTA conducted to date by declaring all production OTAs based on these efforts cannot move forward. This is outrageous. The law and DoD’s policy are clear that all OTA’s that were awarded under competitive procedures are eligible to continue on to production. The OTA award in question that GAO based its judgment on originally had 21 bidders. If that doesn’t meet the statutory criteria then nothing will.

Even worse, GAO now gives anyone, including parties that have never bid on the original OTA, the ability to slow down and stop future OTAs through the protest process. The protester, Oracle, was not even among the original 21 bidders and yet GAO still decided to rule on the case. Finally, GAO through this decision has inserted itself to be the sole ruler on when a prototype is complete and when, if ever, it can transition to production. Never mind that the warfighter decides as in the case in question that a capability developed under an OTA prototype has proved itself and is worth buying quickly to save lives or provide a military advantage, GAO believes only its lawyers are the ones competent enough to do that.

Without the benefits of OTAs it now makes no sense for a Silicon Valley firm to want to partner with the DOD under current circumstances. The only way forward based on the GAO ruling is to prepare to litigate one’s way through a legal morass and hire an army of Washington consultants and lawyers to navigate through a constantly changing compliance process. Even if OTAs are somehow able to survive in a more limited form, GAO by establishing a newfound protest jurisdiction will ensure that OTAs will become more like the traditional contracting process through a death by a thousand cuts review process. GAO through its protest review of the traditional acquisition system has no shortage of blame for the inadequacies of the current process and the national security risk is it will use the same criteria to judge OTAs as it now does with traditional contracts. This type of review will be the death knell of acquisition reform and the only real winners here are China and Russia.

What can be done to alleviate this catastrophic decision by GAO? The Trump Administration can first of all reject the ruling. GAO’s protest decisions if mandatory would be essentially unconstitutional, as they would constitute a legislative veto over the executive branch. The legal fiction to get around this situation is to make GAO’s decisions advisory and non-legally binding, but with reporting requirements to Congress when a decision is not acted upon. While rarely done, DoD should ignore this decision. This could risk some congressional handwringing and possible intervention — especially if the sponsor of the protest continues to spend millions of dollars on a lobbying and legal effort to eradicate OTAs — but it is better to have that discussion and debate with Congress than to accept this fait accompli. The question of Oracle’s motive in this area is probably the subject of an entirely different column, but as a one-time member of the innovative Silicon Valley club, suffice it to say the company seems to have seriously lost its way. It no longer is acting as the innovator it once was nor is it serving the interests of the United States with its actions.

An even bolder and more highly recommended move by the Trump Administration would be to reject the right of GAO to review any OTA in the future. During debates on expanding OTAs, Congress did not consider nor grant GAO any role in overseeing OTAs, which is why this GAO action is so monumental. GAO has usurped greater power over the acquisition system and the negative consequences of this should be checked.d

To address any legitimate concerns that OTAs might be misused, the Pentagon should consider setting up a very streamlined disputes mechanism to review their uses and to listen to contractor concerns about either the process or better alternatives.

Finally, the Defense Department must fix so-called commercial item contracting, dealt with in FAR Part 12. This is something the department should have done long ago. By failing to implement the commercial reform laws passed on the 2016-2018 NDAAs, Pentagon innovators have been forced to use OTAs in cases where a reformed FAR Part 12 contract could work just as well. By not acting on authority given them by Congress to remove the barriers to FAR Part 12 contracting that have arisen in the last decade, the department risks using OTAs in the wrong situation. That could provide openings to roll back reforms by special interests that prefer the status quo.This should be fixed immediately.

Finally at GAO, the Comptroller General should get involved and review the implications of this cloud decision. When the protest division of GAO ignores the law and makes procurement policy with profound national security implications, GAO’s leadership should review it and act. Until America’s national security situation improves, the ability to use OTAs to experiment with new technologies and acquisition approaches and processes to access new sources of innovation should not be limited.


Bill Greenwalt, a defense consultant and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, was the acquisition policy staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee for almost a decade and served almost three years as deputy undersecretary of Defense for industrial base policy.

Saturday, June 23, 2018

Decoding Trump

Donald Trump and the stability of the loyalty of his followers has been perplexing to the left who claim that Trump lies and exaggerates about everything.

The left points to the Access Hollywood tapes and to Stormy Daniels and appeals to evangelicals  [and to other moral thinking people] to abandon Donald Trump on moral grounds.

Some analytical observers believe that Trumps  "stable support" is because Donald'Trump supporters take everything  that Donald Trump says figuratively ,while Donald Trump’s detractors take everything that Donald says absolutely literally. Donald Trump  supporters  state that Donald Trump should be evaluated not on what he says but on what they believe are his very substantial accomplishments.

Also, some Donald Trump supporters state that on the little stuff, Donald Trump fabricates but on the big stuff Donald Trump tells more truth than the New York Times.

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) who  was not a Trump supporter predicted in advance, that Trump would win. Adams also predicted the various stages that the anti-Trumpers and the never-Trumpers would go through after the election.   

On November 24, 2017 Scott  Adams joined Dave Rubin to discuss his newest book “Win Bigly” about how Donald Trump used the power of persuasion to win the election, Trumps negotiating strategies and tactics, the trend of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ the crumbling mainstream media, the Trump/Russia controversy, his predictions for future candidates and the future of Trump, and more.  The interview, below is slightly more than one hour. I found my time well spent watching it ……and would like to share it with you.

Scott Adams and Dave Rubin: Trump’s Persuasion and Presidency (Full Interview)  Published on Nov 24, 2017  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWA5pOmSDgQ      1hour, 2 minutes

As part of their counter arguments,Trump supporters point to the sexual scandals and misdeeds of Ted Kennedy and of previous Democratic presidential administrations. These include:

FDR  longtime mistress Lucy Page Mercer Rutherfurd

JFK  John F. Kennedy was in constant scandal about his relationships with a number of women,from White House secretaries to supermodel Marilyn Monroe .Mistress Mimi Alford wrote a book detailing how as a White House secretary she went from virgin to being seduced on Jackie Kennedy's bed by JFK  to being passed around as a White House plaything.

Ted Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick incident .The late night accident was caused  by Sen. Ted Kennedy's negligence, and resulted in the death of his 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne,  who was  trapped inside the vehicle for hours  and eventually drowned while Ted Kennedy failed to report the accident and failed to summon prompt aid to rescue Mary Jo.

Lyndon Johnson While the Vietnam War was controversial during his presidency, it wasn’t until after Lyndon Johnson left office that the true level of controversy was revealed. The Pentagon Papers were splashed across the front page of the New York Times, indicating that the president had systematically lied to the American people about American involvement and actions in the Southeast Asian region.


Bill Clinton has been publicly accused of sexual misconduct by three women: Juanita Broadrick accuses Clinton of raping her in 1978; Kathleen Willey accuses Clinton of groping her without consent in 1993; and Paula Jones accuses Clinton of exposing himself to her in 1991 and sexually harassing her. In addition to the three allegations of sexual misconduct, many other women claim to have had consensual adulterous liaisons with Clinton. Of all the allegations made against him regarding his sexual history, Clinton has only admitted extramarital relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers.


Barack Obama  scandals and deceptions.

JCPOA-  Iranian  nuclear deal [ The Iran nuclear deal was pushed with lies and media manipulation. Ben Rhodes echo chamber as reported in the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html  ]

Operation Fast and Furious program to use American gun dealers and straw purchasers to arm Mexican drug lords.Eric Holder held in contempt of Congress.  

ObamaCare was sold on false pretenses by people who knew it wasn’t going to work the way they promised.[if you like your doctor you will keep your doctor, if you like your medical plan you will keep your medical plan.  Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare architect, says system 'working as designed’ … law passed on 'stupidity of the American voter  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-thanks-to-jonathan-gruber-for-revealing-obamacare-deception/2014/11/17/356514b2-6e72-11e4-893f-86bd390a3340_story.html?utm_term=.75790ab902f7    ] 

IRS scandal: The selective targeting of conservative groups by a politicized Internal Revenue Service .

Benghazi:  the Obama administration’s story for the first few weeks after the attack was false, and they knew it was false. 





.




Wednesday, June 13, 2018

These threatened actions by Deputy AG Rosenstein against Congressmen and Congressional staffers offer more proof of an internal Department of Justice / FBI conspiracy than  does  any of the  evidence presented by Robert Mueller against Paul Manafort  alleging that Manafort  attempted to obstruct justice by influencing witnesses in the "Russian probe". MIL-ED



Deputy AG Rosenstein Threatened To Investigate GOP Lawmakers and Staff

Matt Vespa  6-13-18

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/06/12/reports-deputy-ag-rosenstein-threatened-to-turn-tables-on-investigating-gop-lawm-n2490055?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=


 UPDATE: He's Launching •  Internal Probe

UPDATE: CNN is reporting that things have escalated in the conflict between Congress and the DOJ. Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein is preparing to launch an internal investigation into the staffers who allege that he threatened to subpoena their records should he be held in contempt of Congress. House Republicans have grown increasingly impatient over the DOJ’s lethargic pace in disclosing documents relating to inquiries into the Trump-Russia investigation. The DOJ has denied that Rosenstein threatened anyone:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's ongoing battle with House Republicans reached new heights Tuesday, as the No. 2 senior leader of the Justice Department plans to call on the House to investigate its own committee staff.

Rosenstein has butted heads with House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes for months over a subpoena for documents related to the Russia investigation, but the battle spilled out into public view Tuesday after Fox News reported staff on the committee felt "personally attacked" at a meeting with Rosenstein in January.

Justice Department officials dispute the recounting of the closed-door meeting detailed in the story, and Rosenstein plans to "request that the House general counsel conduct an internal investigation of these Congressional staffers' conduct" when he returns from a foreign trip this week, DOJ said.

"The Deputy Attorney General never threatened anyone in the room with a criminal investigation," a Justice Department official said. "The FBI Director, the senior career ethics adviser for the Department, and the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs who were all present at this meeting are all quite clear that the characterization of events laid out here is false.

***

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly threatened to subpoena the emails and phone records of investigating GOP lawmakers and their staffs in a tense meeting last January. It’s been described as a personal attack in the mini-war between Congress and the Department of Justice, which has been accused of either stonewalling or dragging their feet when it comes to document disclosures. The DOJ denied the account, saying Rosenstein was merely outlining his right to defend himself if Congress tried to hold him in contempt (via Fox News):


Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to “subpoena” emails, phone records and other documents from lawmakers and staff on a Republican-led House committee during a tense meeting earlier this year, according to emails reviewed by Fox News documenting the encounter and reflecting what aides described as a "personal attack."

The emails memorialized a January 2018 closed-door meeting involving senior FBI and Justice Department officials as well as members of the House Intelligence Committee. The account claimed Rosenstein threatened to turn the tables on the committee's inquiries regarding the Russia probe. 

“The DAG [Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein] criticized the Committee for sending our requests in writing and was further critical of the Committee’s request to have DOJ/FBI do the same when responding,” the committee's then-senior counsel for counterterrorism Kash Patel wrote to the House Office of General Counsel. “Going so far as to say that if the Committee likes being litigators, then ‘we [DOJ] too [are] litigators, and we will subpoena your records and your emails,’ referring to HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and Congress overall.”

A second House committee staffer at the meeting backed up Patel’s account, writing: “Let me just add that watching the Deputy Attorney General launch a sustained personal attack against a congressional staffer in retaliation for vigorous oversight was astonishing and disheartening. ... Also, having the nation’s #1 (for these matters) law enforcement officer threaten to 'subpoena your calls and emails' was downright chilling.”

The committee staffer noted that Rosenstein’s comment could be interpreted as meaning the department would “vigorously defend a contempt action" -- which might be expected. But the staffer continued, "I also read it as a not-so-veiled threat to unleash the full prosecutorial power of the state against us.”  

[…]

A DOJ official told Fox News that Rosenstein “never threatened anyone in the room with a criminal investigation.” The official said the department and bureau officials in the room “are all quite clear that the characterization of events laid out here is false,” adding that Rosenstein was responding to a threat of contempt.  

“The Deputy Attorney General was making the point—after being threatened with contempt — that as an American citizen charged with the offense of contempt of Congress, he would have the right to defend himself, including requesting production of relevant emails and text messages and calling them as witnesses to demonstrate that their allegations are false,” the official said. “That is why he put them on notice to retain relevant emails and text messages, and he hopes they did so. (We have no process to obtain such records without congressional approval.)”

Whatever the case it captures the tension between the DOJ and Congress. In April, DOJ finally turned over the two-page memothat supposedly formed the basis for the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, but only after Congress threatened Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray with impeachment. The conflict over the disclosure of documents relating to the Russia investigation is ongoing, however. 


Saturday, June 9, 2018



Just who is behind the policing of our thought online?

 Pamela Geller, June 8, 2018

https://gellerreport.com/2018/06/geller-internet-thought-police.html/

An article, “What the Red Pill Means for Radicals,” published on June 7 in the ironically named publication Fair Observer might have passed unnoticed as yet another uninformed, biased and ideologically motivated attack on all who ever get labeled “extremists.” The piece is so riddled with non-sequiturs and wild generalizations that it seems almost cruel to rip it to shreds.

But the author is Bharath Ganesh. A little online research reveals that Ganesh is currently working at the Oxford Internet Institute — at the esteemed Oxford University — on a research project funded by the European Union to devise ways to disrupt the “far right” online. The project in question is under the banner of the Vox-Pol Network of Excellence, which “is designed to comprehensively research, analyse, debate, and critique issues surrounding violent online political extremism (VOPE).”

This research group is only interested in violent extremism – according to their website. “The qualifier ‘violent’ is therefore employed here to describe VOX-Pol’s interest, which is in those that employ or advocate physical violence against other individuals and groups to forward their political objectives. The extremist nature of the politics in which VOX-Pol is interested is thus not decided upon by project participants, but by the decision of those involved in particular types of politics to advocate or employ violence to advance their goals.”

Note the claims – utterly disingenuous, as it turns out – that the labeling of certain people or groups as “violent extremists” is entirely due to their own behavior; in other words, don’t worry, folks, it’s all scientifically objective.

This research is being used to advise companies who host online platforms, such as Facebook, as well as governments, on how to stamp out online radicalization – using strategies such as working out ways of preventing people from seeing material posted that is deemed unsuitable in some way, or offering them alternative “nice” things to look at. This is a seriously important issue. The people and political powers behind such initiatives are manipulating behavior online and literally controlling how people think and get information. They are the appointed guardians of the online hoi polloi.

But who guards the guardians?

For if Dr. Ganesh is in charge, we have some very worrying questions to ask. One could start from the observation that the article is certainly not an academic piece, and gives no concrete evidence for any of the sweeping claims it makes about the so-called “alt-right” and the “manosphere”; nor does it, as any academic should do, attempt to test ideas and consider alternative explanations. (Oddly enough, this makes it rather like the groups it claims to criticize.)

And the label of “violent extremist” turns out to be used very generously. Ganesh makes wild leaps and inferences. He talks of Darren Osborne, the perpetrator of the vehicular attack on Finsbury Park Mosque. This was a heinous crime, and should rightly be condemned. But why did Osborne do this, according to Ganesh? The attack “was executed after he had become indignant after watching a BBC broadcast on child sexual exploitation and turned to social media to make sense of it. He found a narrative from British counter-jihad groups closely aligned with the alt-right, such as Britain First and the founder of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson.” The British counter-jihad movement is thus swept into the same group of violent extremists as Osborne, because Ganesh “knows” they encouraged him.

The BBC broadcast was the drama based on real life, Three Girls, which showed real-life events of three of the (very many) victims of the Rochdale Muslim rape gangs. Ganesh somehow knows precisely what went on in Osborne’s mind. Rather than thinking that it was outrage at the behavior of the gangs of Muslim men of Pakistani background who abused the girls portrayed in Three Girls that caused Osborne to lose his mind and commit his terrible crime, Ganesh blames Obsorne’s act on the likes of Tommy Robinson. Yet Robinson explicitly fights AGAINST political violence. What “narrative from British counter-jihad groups” can one find which suggests driving vehicles into innocent Muslims standing outside a mosque? I’m sure if there was any, Ganesh would, as a researcher at an elite institution, be able to find it. But there is none offered – only surmise and Ganesh’s mindreading techniques. I suppose if you’re paid to fight online extremism, you’d better find it, or you’re out of a job and short of academic publication.

We have also the ridiculous idea that Tommy Robinson is “alt-right.” He, in fact, describes himself as a centrist – he’s said he agrees with Labour on some things, the Tories on other things, and he left the EDL precisely because he didn’t like the infiltration by the far right. He shows no hint of racism or of white supremacism.

The writer of this shoddy article is working at one of the most elite universities in the world, on research funded by the European Union, and giving advice based on this sloppy thinking to those who are in charge of manipulating and policing the communications and information we have online.

We have to ask. Is it simply a coincidence that Tommy Robinson is now in prison, and that a “researcher” who presents such a misleading account of Robinson is currently actively engaged in consultation with Oxford University and the European Union in advising how to disrupt Robinson’s activities, reinforcing the lies and misrepresentations about him to those in power?

There’s more. Bharath Ganesh’s profile tells us this: “During his Ph.D., Bharath was also a Senior Researcher at Tell MAMA, a national project dedicated to mapping and monitoring anti-Muslim hate in the United Kingdom. He has given evidence in the Houses of Parliament on governance, extremism, gender, and hate crime and authored a number of reports in this area.”

Is it simply a coincidence that this “researcher,” prior to coming to Oxford University, worked for Tell Mama, that factory for the production of bogus claims about Islamophobia?

Who runs the Internet runs the world. Is this a partnership between Europe’s governments, the Internet giants, and Islamic influence?

CHART FROM ANOTHER SOURCE

Screen Shot 2018-06-09 at 8.01.02 PM.png

A Democrat Dissents on the Mueller Probe
Jason Willick  Wall Street Journal June 8, 2018 

Mark Penn helped design the Clinton campaign against Ken Starr. He says he’s being consistent.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-democrat-dissents-on-the-mueller-probe-1528497640?mod=itp&mod=djemITP_h



President Trump opened the week in a typical fashion, angrily denouncing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But Mr. Trump appealed to an unlikely authority: Mark Penn, the Democratic pollster who guided President Clinton through his second-term scandals and then served as chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr. Penn, now a lecturer at Harvard and a private-equity investor, has condemned the Mueller probe both on television and in columns for the Hill newspaper. These broadsides have turned heads in Washington, especially among fellow Democratic political professionals, who accuse him of selling out. Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide Philippe Reines told the New York Times that Mr. Penn is “making a play for something.” Top Obama adviser David Axelrod charged on Twitter that Mr. Penn’s “reemergence as Mueller-basher seems less like courageous truthtelling than cynical opportunism.”

Mr. Penn says it is his detractors who are putting political interest over principle. “There were not enough Republicans who came out in ’98 against the process,” he tells me, “and there are not enough Democrats who are coming out against the process now.”

By “the process” Mr. Penn means the use of legal tools to settle political differences, a phenomenon he sees as getting worse. “If all politics, even after elections, becomes the politics of personal destruction and destroying our opponents rather than fighting for the next election,” he asks, “what will be left of an ideas-based democracy?”

Mr. Penn helped design what he calls Team Clinton’s “aggressive campaign” against the Kenneth Starr investigation. That inquiry originated with suspicions about the Clintons ’ Arkansas land dealings and culminated with Mr. Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice in testimony arising from a sexual-harassment lawsuit. Mr. Penn sees strong similarities between then and now: “In 1998, the country was being torn apart in an investigation that had gone on for many years and then had segued into some other area, after having really not found anything in the areas in which it was set up.”

The process has intensified this time, as Mr. Trump takes on a more personal role than Mr. Clinton did. Mr. Penn also highlights the involvement of Mr. Obama’s former law-enforcement and intelligence chiefs, including Jim Comey, Jim Clapper and John Brennan. “It’s not unprecedented for a president to criticize an independent or special counsel,” he says. “It is unprecedented for people like Comey, Clapper and Brennan to go out and become full-bore political figures on the talk show circuit blasting the president as though they are pundits and not intelligence professionals.”

In addition to corroding “ideas-based” politics, Mr. Penn believes special-counsel investigations can push administration policy toward the extremes. He is credited with helping nudge Mr. Clinton into the political center in the mid-1990s. But in 1998, he says, Mr. Clinton had to retreat leftward to keep his party united behind him: “Those were the votes for acquittal in impeachment.”

Could the threat from the Russia probe force Mr. Trump to lean more heavily on his populist base? Mr. Penn is certain it already has affected the administration’s calculus on foreign policy. “If the idea was to use Russia as a fulcrum against Iran and China, that policy got blown up,” he says. “It’s not irrational policy,” but “the investigation made it impossible.”

The overarching problem, Mr. Penn contends, is that when law-enforcement agencies conduct “impeachment investigations,” it creates “a separation of powers problem.” He therefore recommends undertaking such probes “only when things are on the surest of grounds.”

Absent a smoking gun, in other words, Congress should take the investigative lead. But what if the political system is so polarized, as now, that lawmakers would be reluctant to challenge a president of their own party? “Elections come around every two years in this country,” he says. While lawyers often view the legal process as the key to accountability, Mr. Penn, a pollster, has a sunny optimism in the ability of the electorate to play that role.

He insists he has been consistent on this point, and there’s a paper trail to prove it. As a college sophomore in 1973, amid the Watergate scandal but before the release of President Nixon’s incriminating White House tapes, Mr. Penn wrote in the Harvard Crimson that the special prosecutor was a “ ‘quasi-constitutional’ mechanism” and that impeachment efforts should proceed with caution.

Critics may object that Mr. Penn has not been a Democrat in good standing for some time. He co-wrote an op-ed last summer urging the party to “move to the center” on cultural issues and focus on defending the Affordable Care Act. He says this advice is “as valid, if not more valid” today, and he hopes Democrats in 2020 pick a moderate nominee who will lead in that direction. He rejects the view that Democrats can win back power by doubling down on their current coalition. “I don’t think it’s possible for the Democratic Party to become a majority party without winning back the working class,” Mr. Penn says, “and continuing to make advancements in the suburbs and particularly with independent women.”

Mr. Penn cites the GOP’s choice of Mitt Romney in 2012 as evidence that a party can moderate. “I don’t think anybody expected during the peak times of the tea party that the Republicans would nominate people like Romney, ” he says. With the right standard-bearer, moving to the center “is a process Democrats could well undertake.”

Is Mr. Penn’s polemical anti-Mueller commentary a sign that he has been seduced by the GOP? No, he insists: Republicans also show no sign of occupying the middle ground that Mr. Clinton once did. But perhaps Mr. Penn’s policy instincts and his hostility to special counsels are related. If politics is a process of messy compromise through which ideas are recontested every two years, then it makes sense to respect election results and meet voters where they are. On the other hand, if the aim of politics is a decisive ideological triumph, then it makes sense to double down on your existing base and support any means, including criminal investigations, to force rivals out of power.

Mr. Penn’s rhetoric on Mr. Mueller has been excessive, but perhaps his views simply reflect a more pragmatic approach to politics—an approach that, alas, may be out of date.


Mr. Willick is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.