After months of refusing demands to turn over her personal email server, Hillary Clinton has agreed to do so. The server will be turned over to the Justice Department as part of the investigation into her use of a private email account as Secretary of State. It was also disclosed that at least two emails on the unsecured server were classified “Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information” — one of the government’s highest classifications. Some of the information is reportedly linked to NSA/satellite intelligence and the Inspector General says that there was material that was classified at the time it was sent over the unsecured server.
Category: Media
For centuries, anthropologists will debate what caused the world to give the Kardashians millions for just being the Kardashians. No observable talent. No particular skill set. Just being wildly materialistic and superficial people. One person who does not appear particularly interested in exploring such anthropological questions is Good Day Orlando anchor John Brown who walked off his live program rather than participate in another Kardashian story. In the video below, Brown can be heard arguing about the value of the story of how Kylie Jenner has named a new pet bunny Bruce.
China remains one of the world’s most repressive regimes in the denial of free speech, association, and other basic rights in the “People’s Paradise.” The latest target of the government is music. The regime has posted a list of 120 tunes that can no longer be played in the country as harmful to “public morality.” Obviously, even the censors manning “Great Firewall of China” may have a hard time keeping music from the masses.
Continue reading “China Bans 120 Tunes as Harmful to “Public Morality” and Social Stability”
While the word “alien” is still used by the federal government and a wide variety of legal material to describe someone who is neither born nor naturalized in a country, California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 432 this week to ban the use of the term. The bill was introduced by State Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) not only remove the term from all government documents but also removed the state’s preference for hiring U.S. citizens on public works projects during periods of unemployment.
Continue reading “California Officially Bans Use Of The Word “Alien” In Government Documents”
Michigan State Representative Todd Courser has an alleged bizarre way of spinning scandal. The conservative Republican ran on a religious right affiliation and was reportedly about to be implicated in an affair with another conservative lawmaker. According to a transcript released by Detroit News was to instruct his aide to implicate him in a sex scandal with a male prostitute. That’s right, it is better to be caught with a male prostitute than a fellow Republican legislator. It could be all part of Courser’s belief in what he calls “God inspired encouragers.”
There is a controversy in Japan that may rekindle questions about the increasing claims of trademarks and copyrighted material. Belgian designer Olivier Debie has accused Japanese designer Kenjiro Sano of stealing the basic design of his emblem for a Belgian theater as the official logo for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. There is no question that the letter has similar geometric elements, but it is also true that Sano’s design is indicative of the minimalist tradition of Japanese art. To claim all future minimalist representations of an “T” raises the same concerns as common words or images being declared private property. By the way, I like the Sano design and I think it captures the character of the host nation and its artistic traditions.
Continue reading “Japanese Olympic Logo Designer Accused Of Plagiarism By Belgian Designer”
There is a relatively rare case developing in Connecticut where Professor Minati Roychoudhuri, 62, has been charged with making a false police report after charging that she was racially profiled by a police officer. A review of the dash cam video contradicted factual assertions made by Roychoudhuri in her sworn statement.
The controversy over the use of a private server by Hillary Clinton has deepened with the classification of an addition 41 messages by the State Department. While Clinton has insisted that there was nothing classified on her email system and that any dispute is just a bureaucratic squabble “between agencies” the classification of many of these emails is no surprise to many of us who regularly deal with classified material. The classification of these emails will likely reignite demands for Clinton to turn over the server and raise the question of those thousands of emails that Clinton’s aides unilaterally deleted before turning over emails to the government. The classification level however of most of these messages are at the lowest level of such designations.
Continue reading “State Department Classifies Dozens of Additional Clinton Emails”
The alleged unlawful killing of two lions by two separate American doctors has caused an international outcry and demands for extradition to Zimbabwe for prosecution. (here and here). However, one American woman is using the controversies to taunt animal lovers and apparently drive up traffic on her Facebook site. Sabrina Corgatelli is believed to come from Boise, Idaho and is reportedly a university accountant at Idaho State University who also runs a clothing company called Racks and Ridges. She teased those objecting to the illegal hunts by saying “To all the haters. Stay tuned, you’re gonna have so much more to be pissed off about.” She then posted various photos from the “trip of a lifetime” posing with the corpses of a giraffe, warthog, kudu and impala during a trip to South Africa. To be sure to ignite those grieving over the death of Cecil the Lion, Corgatelli posted a series of pictures with such notes as “All you haters, This is for you!! Have a great day, cuz I know I will!!’
Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, stabbed six marchers in the annual Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. What is equally disturbing is that Schlissel was just released after serving 10 years for stabbing participants in the Gay Pride Parade in 2005. Schlissel immediately demanded a court held in accordance with Jewish law, a request which was denied.
Continue reading “Ultra Orthodox Man Stabs Six At Jerusalem Gay Rights Parade”
The Obama Administration has been accused by public interest groups of being one of the most hostile administration toward whistleblowers since the Nixon Administration. Not only whistleblowers but reporters have been subject to abusive investigations and crackdowns under President Obama. Now, that record has taken an even more dangerous turn. The Justice Department is facing bipartisan criticism after it moved to restrict access of inspectors general to documents needed to ferret out corrupt and abusive practices. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued a controversial 68-page memo that says that the department’s inspector general would be required to get permission from the agencies it is investigating to obtain wire taps, grand jury testimonies, and credit information.
Continue reading “Obama Administration Moves To Sharply Curtail Authority Of Government Watchdogs”
Despite the determination of investigators at the State Department and intelligence agencies that Hillary Clinton did use her personal email system to handle confirmed classified information (and potentially compromised “hundreds of classified emails”), Clinton dismissed such allegations and assured the public that it is “pretty clear” that there was no classified information on her personal email system — a system that she used rather than the secure State Department system.
In a major development on the Clinton email scandal, the New York Times is reporting that the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether there was mishandling of classified information by Hillary Clinton using a personal email account while secretary of state. While the newspaper referred to the action as a criminal referral, the Administration quickly moved to counter the story and insist that it is not technically a criminal referral. We have previously discussed this story and the insistence of Clinton that she did nothing wrong in maintaining a private email system and that none of the emails were classified. I disagreed with both premises as well as expressed great skepticism over Clinton’s insistence that she was really not trying to control her emails and insulate them from review but rather simply did not want to carry around two phones. According to the New York Times, investigators believe that Clinton’s email archive contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.” Nevertheless, the Justice Department appears to be moving to counter any expectation of a criminal investigation against the former Secretary of State under Obama. We have previously discussed the special treatment historically given powerful figures in violating national security rules or practices.
Police in New York have arrested Zvi Shor, 64, the founder of the National Children’s Leukemia Foundation (NCLF). He is accused of a truly despicable fraud. The New York Attorney General’s office alleges that roughly 83 percent of the nearly $10 million that the NCLF raised from 2009 to 2013 was paid to professional fundraisers and less than one percent— $57,541— went to direct assistance for leukemia patients. Shor, whose son died of leukemia, has previously been accused of fraud. He was convicted of felony bank fraud in the Eastern District of New York in 1999.
I have been a critic of aspects of the case against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich, 58, was convicted of 18 counts of corruption and given a 14-year sentence. The most problematic charge in my view concerned Blagojevich’s wheeling and dealing for the appointment of a successor to fill the 2008 vacant U.S. Senate seat of then-President-Elect Barack Obama. Now a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has overturned five of the counts specifically dealing with that vacancy controversy.
Continue reading “Seventh Circuit Overturns Five Counts From Blagojevich Conviction”