A Mish-Mash of a Monday News Cycle

Monday was chockfull of news, most of it involving President Donald Trump, and it was a decidedly mixed bag.

Trump traveled to Utah to announce that he’s reducing the size of two national monuments in the state by a combined 1.9 million acres, which is a very big number. Some of the local Indian tribes and all of the environmental groups and a few tourism and sporting goods businesses were aghast at the reduction, but there are such sound conservatives arguments for the move that most conservatives were pleased. That’s a big chunk of Utah that was being run by the federal bureaucracy rather than Utah or Utahans, and there’s still more than an ample 1.2 million combined acres of the Bears Ears and  Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments left for the Indians and nature lovers, so we’ll give Trump a rare thumbs up.

Court challenges have already been filed, of course, but Trump’s contested restrictions on travel from some Muslim-majority countries won a victory that should cheer him. The matter is still slogging its way through the lower courts, but the Supreme Court has decided that the restrictions can be fully enforced until it eventually arrives at a final decision. For sound conservative reasons too complicated to recount here, that’s also fine with us.

The rest of the legal news, though, was more troublesome. It wouldn’t be a news day these days with some “twitter” controversy, and the latest was about Trump’s statement that he fired former national security advisor Mike Flynn because “he lied to the vice president and the FBI” about contacts with Russian officials. Flynn has recently pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and apparently because isn’t facing prosecution on several other serious charges because he’s cooperating with the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the past election, but various journalists and legal analysts found the “tweet” self-incriminating for Trump. The problem is that it implies he knew Flynn had lied to the the FBI before he asked the bureau’s director to drop the investigation — according to the sworn of testimony of the director, who was fired after he declined the arrest — and therefore bolsters a case for obstruction of justice.

The arguments raged all day on all the political shows, with plausible points made on both sides, but even if Trump’s prevail it’s still another example of how “tweeting” causes unnecessary and unhelpful controversies. Any good lawyer would tell any client that it’s best to avoid “tweeting” anything about an ongoing criminal investigation, and any good client would heed that advice, but one of the lawyers Trump hired step forward to claim that he had written the “tweet” and used the president’s account to transmit it without the president’s knowledge. Either that’s a disbarment sort of lie, which is our best guess, or it’s a glaring example of the kind of legal representation you wind up with if you have a reputation for not paying your bills in full and being a bad client, and in any case it’s not helpful.

By the end of the day Trump’s legal team was arguing that “collusion” isn’t even a crime and that a president cannot obstruct justice or be indicted on any charge, which are arguments that most presidents would prefer not to have to make. It’s true enough that the word “collusion” isn’t found in any relevant statute, but the law is rife with its synonym “conspiracy,” and if it’s not illegal for a candidate to abet a hostile foreign efforts interference in an American election most Americans are likely to conclude it should be. As is so often the case with Trump’s unprecedented presidency, there are few precedents regarding a president’s obstruction of justice or indictment on some other crime, but those few precedents are not promising. Nixon wound up resigning after a bill of impeachment charged obstruction of justice, Clinton was disbarred and disgraced and barely survived an impeachment trial on the same charge, numerous high-ranking officials of other administrations wound up doing prison time, and Nixon’s famous argument to David Frost that “It’s not illegal when the President of the United States does it” has not fared well in the court of public opinion.

Trump’s one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort was back in the news with accusations by federal prosecutors that he had violated the terms of his house arrest while awaiting trial a variety of money-laundering and tax evasion charges, which looks bad. The feds claim he was working with one of his contacts in the Russian intelligence community to pen an editorial Manafort hoped to sell defending his work on behalf of a Russia-friendly Ukrainian political party, which looks worse. Trump’s original claims that none of his people ever had anything to do with the Russians isn’t looking good these days, what with all those disclosed e-mails and revised clearance forms and corrected testimonies, and it remains to be seen if there’s a a better argument than it’s no big deal even if the worst is true.

There’s also that Southern Gothic novel of Senatorial race down in Alabama, where Republican nominee and quite credibly accused child molester Ray Moore is running against some got-durned liberal, and of course Trump was part of that story. He’s now fully in support of the Republican nominee and credibly accused child molester, whereas previously he had only been fully against the got-durned liberal, and much of the Republican establishment has meekly backed away from its previous criticisms and will even be sending some campaign ad money through the party’s congressional committee. This comes on a day when one of Moore’s accusers offered proof that Moore did at least know her, despite his denial, and another woman came forward to accuse Trump of forcing unwanted kisses on her, just as he boasted about frequently doing on that “Access Hollywood” case. All charges are open to argument, as always, but it’s not helpful.

Oh, there’s also that tax bill Trump might yet get to sign soon. All the details still have to be worked out in a conference committee, but already it’s clearly another mixed bag of news and too complicated to explain here.

— Bud Norman

On “Tweeting” and Terrorism

The good people of Great Britain suffered another horrific terror attack by radical Muslims over the weekend, the third in as many months, and the best thing America could do about it was to offer our sympathy and full support and try to discern whatever lessons might be learned. For at least a respectful moment or two, it was probably best advised to avoid any disrespectful “tweets” about it.

President Donald Trump did “tweet” to the British people his sympathy and promise of our country’s full support, with his apparent sincerity emphasized by many capital letters, but that came in the midst of a “Twitter” storm that wound up needlessly antagonizing many of them. He made some good points, too, but he didn’t make the complicated arguments very well in his allotted 140 characters. All in all, it was another argument for someone in the “deep state” to revoke the presidential “Twitter” account.

Which is a shame, because for all his faults Trump does seem to be one of the rare world leaders who somehow grasps some of the more obvious lessons to be learned from Britain’s heartbreaking situation. All of the recent attacks were clearly motivated by an Islamic ideology that has been a persistent if not always dominant force in the Muslim world for the past 1500 years so, and would not have occurred if Britain hadn’t unwisely decided to start allowing mass immigration from the Muslim world some 60 years ago, and there’s no compelling reason that America should repeat the mistake. Britain has also clearly erred by not insisting that its Muslim citizens and residents adhere to established western values and find some peaceable and productive role among it, and say what you will about Trump at least he also doesn’t fall for that multi-cultural and morally-relativist blather. Had Trump merely “tweeted” his sympathy and support, and otherwise stayed out of the way while the rest of the world absorbed the obvious lessons, he might have won a rare news cycle.

Instead, Trump “tweeted” some invitations to losing arguments. He renewed a long-standing “Twitter” feud with the Mayor of London, a fellow with the telling name of Sadiq Kahn, charging that “At 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!” London’s Mayor is usually one of those multi-cultural and morally-relativist blatherers, as far as we’re concerned, but in this case he’d called all the local constabulary’s literal big guns in response to the situation, and that was what he was actually telling his fellow Londoners to not be alarmed about. Most Londoners, if not most Americans, scored that a win for the multi-cultural and morally-relativist weenie. Trump hasn’t yet gotten around to getting an ambassador to the United Kingdom confirmed in the Republican-controlled congress, so even the Obama-holdover acting ambassador wound up siding with the Mayor, which is probably just as well for Anglo-American relations.

Trump’s reasonable resistance to mass Muslim immigration included an arguably unreasonable campaign promise to ban any Muslim whatsoever from entering the country, which for the coming months has his arguably reasonable restriction on travel from six certain countries all tied up in court, so of course he “tweeted” about that. None of the perpetrators of any of the recent British terror attacks would have been affected by Trump’s proposed travel restrictions, of course, and have no no bearing on the legal merits of the case, and Trump probably should have let his lawyers make the arguments.

Trump also injected the domestic gun rights debate into the issue, noting that the attacks were carried out with cars and knives, but we wish he hadn’t. We’re staunch advocates of gun rights, and in the context of our domestic politics we well understand the argument that killers won’t be deterred by the lack of handgun, and that their potential victims should be free to defend themselves by any means, but Trump simply handed the gun-grabbers the argument that the terrorists wouldn’t have been more lethal if they had access to the weapons that Britain’s extraordinarily restrictive laws seem to effectively ban. A well-armed citizenry might have limited the carnage of firearm-bearing terrorists, but an efficient police and a stiff-upper-lip citizenry that retaliated against the knife-weilding terrorists with nearby beer bottles also limited the carnage, so it’s an inopportune time to bring all that up.

There’s a British parliamentary election coming up that will also choose a new Prime Minister and cabinet, but we’re pleased Trump seems to have somehow not weighed directly in that. From our prospective from across the pond and another half-continent away, we’re rooting for the Tory incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May, who seems to have absorbed all the obvious lessons, and we expect that despite their awkward relationship Trump has the same preference. Trump is not very popular in Great Britain, though, and probably less so after his latest “tweet” storm, so we expect she appreciates the silence.

Trump’s supporters should hope for some more of it, too.

— Bud Norman

A Controversy Made to Executive Order

President Donald Trump’s executive order imposing temporary restrictions on admitting visitors and immigrants from certain certain Middle Eastern countries has kicked up quite a fuss, of course, and so far both he and his most fervent critics are looking rather foolish.

Most of the loud and anguished outrage of the left is against the very idea of imposing even temporary restrictions on admitting visitors and immigrants from any country, which is exactly the sort of leftist nonsense that got Trump elected. The arguments for unfettered immigration from countries where the more troublesome interpretations of Islam prevail are increasingly hard to make with each passing terror attack here and in Europe, and were soundly rejected in favor of Trump’s slightly less crazy rhetoric about “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what’s going on,” yet the respectable press and the rest of the loony left continues to embarrass itself in the effort. The executive order is far less sweeping than the campaign promise, and Trump seems to expect that we’ll figure out what’s going on well enough to let it lapse in a mere 120 days, and although the countries on Trump’s list conspicuously don’t include some terror-prone countries where he still has business holdings it’s also the same list the Obama administration used for its “no fly” restrictions that also restricted some innocent American citizens, and Trump is still allowing 50,000 refugees, which is less than what Obama had ordered for this year but about as much as he welcomed in while still in office, yet the left is once again invoking the Statue of Liberty and seemingly sympathetic asylum-seekers and still thinking it has a winning political issue.

Trump is unlikely to make the argument that his grand gesture isn’t really such a big deal, or that Obama wasn’t the open borders fanatic that everyone on both sides thought, but so far he’s done a surprisingly good job of not making it all about Islam. He rightly notes that past policies had admitted relatively few Christian refugees from Syria, where they were targeted for genocide, and with a similar concern for Bahais and Sikhs and other persecuted minorities the policy adheres to the unassailable and quite religiously-neutral logic of aiding those most in need, and we expect his clipped “tweets” will be more persuasive than our paraphrasing. We hope he’ll also reverse that Obama executive order that reversed the longstanding policy regarding Cuban refugees, which has resulted in several brave asylum-seekers that the left doesn’t care about being sent back to the cruelty of their homeland’s communist government, and that the left embarrasses itself trying to argue that at the same time they’re telling all those sob stories about brave asylum-seekers from the Middle East.

Even with such a half-assed measure and overwrought response and all the compelling arguments on his side, Trump has somehow managed to misplay such a winning hand. The executive order was apparently written by some high-ranking political staffers without any help from the high-ranking appointees who actually knew how to go about doing such sensible things, which is already a popular administration storyline in the press, and the result was predictably messy. Some specific language about immediate implementation meant that some green-card-holding people who had done nothing wrong wound up in airport hell as they made long-planned trips that concluded just after the order was signed, which led to some great sob stories for the press, some Middle Easterners who had bravely volunteered their help to to the American military during its recent activities in the Middle East were also affected, which also makes for a hell of a story, and all sorts of embarrassing clarifications and other retreats ensued. The exclusion from the list of all those Islamist countries where Trump still has business holdings will also be an ongoing controversy, even if it is the same list the reputedly open borders fanatic Obama used for his “no fly” list, and for the next 120 days or until our representatives figure out what’s going on there should be plenty of arguments that spring from this sort of fuss. Already Trump has fired an acting Attorney General left over from the Obama administration who objected, and it looks like he’ll have to fire a lot of other State Department employees who also object to his half-assed and almost Obama-esque measures, and the press will treat it like Nixon firing Archibald Cox, if Trump remembers that, and although his fans will love the familiar “you’re fired” shtick we’ll only be on his side until that inevitable “Saturday Night Massacre” when he fires the people insisting on the law.

We hope it all works out, but we expect that Trump and his most fervent critics and all the rest of us will wind up looking rather foolish.

— Bud Norman

Ebola, Zombies, Government, and Other Things to Worry About

Having survived the outbreaks of Bird Flu and Swine Flu and Mad Cow Disease and the entire menagerie of epidemics that were supposed to have decimated the world’s population by now, we’ve not yet been panicked by the recent news of the spread of the Ebola virus. Having watched the government’s inept responses to other crises over the past several years, however, we are starting to get at least a bit nervous.

We had always regarded the Ebola virus as one of those unfortunate phenomena that seem to inflict only Africa, but now it has come to the quintessentially American city of Dallas. It flew in on a jetliner from Liberia, hitching a ride on an infected passenger from that stricken country, and now it is feared that as many as 100 Americans have come in contact. Each of those has presumably come in contact with another 100 or so people, who in turn would have come in contract with another 100, and although the risk of transmission is said to be remote in every case the extrapolation is still unsettling. Whatever degree of risk is entailed, it could have been eliminated entirely by the sorts of travel restrictions that such countries as Great Britain and France have instituted, which shakes one faith that a governmental and medical system which declined to take such measures to deal will be able to effectively deal with the consequences of not doing so.

The extraordinary amount of press coverage devoted to the disease has already revealed several instances where the most up-to-date protocols for dealing with the disease with have not been followed, including an unpleasant account the infected patient’s vomit being cleaned off a sidewalk by power hoses that no doubt sent dangerous bacteria flying off into the atmosphere, and one shudders to think what mistakes might come next. So far as we can tell the government decided not restrict flights from infected countries partly because that had been a Bush administration idea, and partly because it was thought that discriminating on the basis of a deadly disease might offend African sensibilities. Such pointless political considerations are likely to override medical necessity again in the coming days, if the government’s recent history of border security and presidential security are any guide, it does not inspire confidence.

American troops have been deployed to Africa to fight the Ebola virus, as if it were the sort of enemy that can be vanquished by military might, and for the usual rationale that it’s better to fight abroad rather than at home. Letting the disease fly into the homeland at the same time seems rather odd, though, and we hope this policy will soon be rescinded. A more discriminatory policy regarding who gets into the country even without the Ebola virus would also be welcomed, for medical and national security and economic and cultural reasons, but that seems too much to hope for.

The situation has already prompted the survivalists to take precautions beyond their usual paranoid preparedness, and the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan is predictably blaming it all on a white supremacist conspiracy to kill black people which is currently being carried out by the first black president, although it was apparently launched at some nonexistent point in history when Henry Kissinger was serving as Secretary of State to President George H.W. Bush, but we’re remaining relatively calm. We’re counting on those reportedly low transmissions rates, though, and not the government. There have been strange accounts of Ebola victims awakening from the dead, and we note proudly that this is  “Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness Month” here in Kansas, but otherwise the government doesn’t seem ready for the coming challenges.

— Bud Norman