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Sunday, January 15, 2023
Behind Biden classified-docs fiasco is the feds’ obscene abuse of ‘secrecy’
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| The Penn Biden Center held the first of the two sets of classified documents found. |
For argument’s sake, let’s assume both Biden and Trump are guilty as hell of mishandling classified documents. (Throw in Hillary Clinton for a trifecta.) The current and former president deserve the full penalty of law that they approved for other violators (some of whom have recently been sent to federal prison for mishandling documents).
But the latest scandal shows the need to puncture the iron curtain that both Republicans and Democrats dropped over the federal government.The discovery of Obama-era classified papers in multiple locations former Vice President Joe Biden used is the White House’s latest fiasco. “How could that possibly happen? How could anyone be that irresponsible?” Biden declared. Except that was him bemoaning to “60 Minutes” after the FBI found classified documents in its raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
For argument’s sake, let’s assume both Biden and Trump are guilty as hell of mishandling classified documents. (Throw in Hillary Clinton for a trifecta.) The current and former president deserve the full penalty of law that they approved for other violators (some of whom have recently been sent to federal prison for mishandling documents).
But the latest scandal shows the need to puncture the iron curtain that both Republicans and Democrats dropped over the federal government.
Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Biden ripped Donald Trump when classified documents were found in his Mar-a-Lago home.Getty Images
Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Even some Biden appointees claim to recognize the perils of the classification system. According to Politico, the Biden White House is launching a “new war on secrecy” and is especially concerned about “potentially illegal [government] activities that have been shielded from the public for...
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Biden ripped Donald Trump when classified documents were found in his Mar-a-Lago home.Getty Images
Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Even some Biden appointees claim to recognize the perils of the classification system. According to Politico, the Biden White House is launching a “new war on secrecy” and is especially concerned about “potentially illegal [government] activities that have been shielded from the public for...
The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #1264
Before You Click On The "Read More" Link,
Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.
If You are Easily Upset, Triggered Or Offended, This Is Not The Place For You.
Please Leave Silently Into The Night......
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1964
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Saturday, January 14, 2023
What Caused the Political Hysteria? Karma, Nemesis, payback . . . and all that stuff.
The Left has gone mad over Donald J. Trump—past, present, and future.
The current Democratic Party and NeverTrump “conservatives” assumed that Trump was and remains so obviously toxic that they do not have to define exactly what his evil entails.
Accordingly, they believe that any means necessary are justified to stop him. And furthermore, these zealots, when out of power, insist such extraordinary measures should not be emulated and institutionalized by their opponents, much less ever boomeranged back upon their creators.
In this context, the Republicans retaking control of the House of Representatives once again raises the question whether they should reply in kind.
Given the current investigation following the Mar-a-Lago raid, should there also be a mirror-image special prosecutor to examine President Biden’s lost stash of classified documents in his insecure office following his vice presidency?
Can House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ever be considered too inflammatory, given that his predecessor, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tore up the president’s State of the Union address on national television?
How many Democratic House members should be denied committee assignments to remind the Congress that Pelosi’s rejection of Republican nominees was a terrible precedent?
How many congressional subpoenas with threats of criminal prosecution and performance-art arrests should be issued to Democratic politicos to stop the criminalization of political differences?
In our current age, will all former president’s private homes, closets, and drawers now be subject to FBI raids to ensure that “classified” documents were not wrongly stored there?
Are Joe Biden’s current homes also a logical target, given his sloppy handling of classified foreign policy papers—eerily reminiscent of an abandoned laptop belonging to son Hunter Biden and daughter Ashley Biden’s lost diary?
Was it ever a good idea to impeach a first-term president the moment he lost his party’s majority in the House—but without any hope of a conviction in the Senate? Would such a similar impeachment send a warning to Biden to honor his oath of office and start enforcing U.S. immigration law?
Does a phone call now an impeachment make, on the grounds that Trump mixed domestic politics with foreign policy?
But was Trump’s Ukrainian call that much different from Barack Obama’s 2012 quid pro quo in Seoul, South Korea, where he asked the Russian president to convey a deal to Vladmir Putin: stay calm and give Obama space during his reelection bid while Obama in turn would be flexible on missile defense.
Putin did just that and put off invading Ukraine until Obama was reelected. And Obama made sure there was no joint missile defense projects in Eastern Europe. Was that deal in America’s interest, or Obama’s own and thus similarly impeachable?
Or consider Joe Biden mixing foreign policy and politics on the eve of the midterm elections. For example, he kept draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to dangerously low levels while begging hostile foreign dictators to...
A Top HHS Official Blocked Release of Long-Delayed Fluoride Toxicity Review, Internal Emails Reveal
Newly released emails reveal that leadership within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) acted to prevent the release of long-delayed review of fluoride’s toxicity by the National Toxicology Program (NTP).
The emails specifically claim that Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine intervened to stop the release of the NTP review, also known internally as a monograph.
An email dated June 3, 2022, shows Nicole Johnson, associate director for policy, partnerships and strategic communication in CDC’s Oral Health Division contacting Jennifer Greaser, a senior public health policy analyst in CDC’s Washington office.
Johnson states:
“The latest we heard (yesterday) is that ASH Levine has put the report on hold until further notice.”
ASH Levine refers to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine.
The emails were released as part of the ongoing legal dispute between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and plaintiffs Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network and others who are seeking an end to water fluoridation.
Throughout the historic lawsuit, the plaintiffs have argued that the practice violates the EPA’s Toxic Substances Abuse Act.
Hearings for the lawsuit began in June 2020 but were delayed for more than two years after U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen put the proceedings on hold pending the release of the NTP’s review of all of the available research on fluoride.
The NTP had previously claimed the review would be available in May 2022. However, the review has not been made public and hearings have been delayed and rescheduled as the judge awaited the NTP’s conclusions.
In late October 2022, Judge Chen ended the two-year stay on the lawsuit when he ruled that the NTP review could be viewed in its unpublished form to better inform his final decision. However, due to concerns from the EPA, Judge Chen ruled that the report could not be made public unless the NTP releases it.
On Dec. 14, 2022, the plaintiffs filed several exhibits with Judge Chen, including a redacted version of the NTP’s assessment of fluoride’s neurotoxicity and internal emails between the CDC and the NTP which were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests.
What do the #FluorideEmails reveal?
Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs, outlined the findings of the emails in several exhibits submitted to Judge Chen. “These emails confirm that the NTP considered the May 2022 monograph to be the NTP’s final report,” Connett writes.
“They also confirm that the CDC was opposed to the NTP releasing the report, and that leadership at the top levels of the Department of Health Human Services intervened to stop the report from...
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