The e-mail scandal involving former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has continued to unfold, as we have been discussing. The number of classified emails have now grown to 1340. While the vast majority have low level classification, a few contained information classified at the secret level. This is not the first such allegation of someone stripping classification headers in scandal. The mishandling of classified information is a crime and the level of gross negligence in the use of the private server by Clinton is staggering. However, there has long been a good-faith debate over whether Clinton is being given a pass on a criminal investigation by the Obama Administration or whether her actions (while negligent) were not criminal in nature. A recent story could change that debate considerably if critics are proven correct. One of the emails released recently reportedly shows Clinton instructing an aide to strip off classification markings from a document and to send by unsecure means. Such an act could be charged as a criminal offense under federal classification laws. However, it is not clear that any email was sent and the Clinton staff could claim that she was referring to clearly unclassified material contained in a document. There has been a suggestion that the material in question were “talking points” that were meant to be public or were clearly unclassified. [Update: Clinton says that the email was never sent and that she trusted her aide to make the right choices on what could be sent.]
Category: Politics
There is an interesting proposed law in Missouri where lobbyists who have sex with state lawmakers or their aides would have to disclose that activity to the state ethics commission. Rep. Bart Korman wants such sexual relations to be reported as a “gift” on a monthly basis, though he is not requiring the couples to assign a dollar value on the gift. The measure addresses a real and long-standing concern about the use of sex to influence politicians. History is rife with such scandals. However, the measure would raise serious privacy and other constitutional issues.
The recent sexual assault in Cologne of women on New Year’s Eve has shocked the nation. As many as 1000 men, allegedly set upon women and made them run a gauntlet as they were grabbed, their clothes ripped, and their bodies groped. Police sources and witnesses have said that many were refugees — triggering renewed objections over a spate of rapes and assaults of women in the country attributed to recent immigrants. To make matters worse for the government, newspapers are reporting that one man told police “I am Syrian. You have to treat me kindly. Mrs Merkel invited me.” The result has been a rising tide of criticism of Merkel for her open-door policy. Yet, that criticism may now be muted by a move by the government to crackdown on anti-immigration comments as a form of “hate speech.” As we discussed today with the effort to ban Donald Trump, free speech is being rolled back in Europe under hate crime and anti-discrimination laws as an alarming rate. It is particularly worrisome when the government is under attack on an issue like immigration and responds by prosecuting people for such criticism. News reports indicate that 18 of the 31 known suspects from Cologne were asylum seekers, including “nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, an Iraqi, a Serbian, an American and two German nationals.
Continue reading “Germany Cracks Down On Anti-Immigration Speech”
We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). England is now a tragic example of how speech regulation and criminalization becomes insatiable — producing a down spiral as more and more speech is found intolerable or criminal. The most recent example is the call to ban Donald Trump from entry into the United Kingdom as someone guilty of hate speech. While I have criticized Trump’s statements about barring Muslims from entering the country, he is entitled to voice his views on immigration and participate in a debate about how we are going to handle both immigration and national security concerns. The chilling thing about this debate in Parliament is not that it will succeed in barring Trump but that it would not be in any way out of order with prior content-based sanctions.
Continue reading “Parliament To Debate Barring Donald Trump From Entry Into The United Kingdom”
We have previously followed the alarming marginal economic condition of most Americans. Another study offers another glimpse into the reality of the lives for most people struggling in this country. The study by Bankrate suggests that 63 percent of Americans say that they do not have enough money to cover a $500 car repair or $1000 hospital bill.
There was a curious moment recently in an interview with Hillary Clinton that might interest our political science and philosophy majors. Chris Matthews asked Clinton on MSNBC what a socialist is and the difference between a socialist and a Democrat. Clinton appeared unable or unwilling to answer that question. Given the fact that the Clinton campaign has referred regularly to Bernie Sanders being a socialist and distinguishing Clinton as a “progressive Democrat,” it would seem a fair question. It is not like asking for the difference between a “raven and a writing desk”, but it received the same unclear response.
President Barack Obama has made gun control a priority in 2016 and the latest area of confrontation with Congress. There is clearly a calculation that the public will support another area of conflict between the branches and the assertion of unilateral executive power. That is what makes a recent poll so interesting. Gallup found that “gun/gun control” ranked near the bottom of concerns for most Americans. How low? Try only two percent of those polled.
Continue reading “Gallup Poll: Only Two Percent Of Americans Rank Gun Control As Major Concern”
There appears another profiling incident on an airline after an Israeli-Arab and a Palestinian were forced off an Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Tel Aviv. There was no reason given for the objections to flying with the two men other than their being Muslim or Arab. It is extraordinary that these men would have to deplane rather than those objecting take another flight but the airline insisted “safety must be first.”
Continue reading ““Safety Must Be First”: Israeli-Arab and Palestinian Forced Off Flight To Tel Aviv Due To Objections From Israeli Passengers”
With the rising tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the execution of Sheikh Nimir al-Nimir, there is a wonderfully ironic element as Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of stifling free speech by a cleric who merely disagreed with the regime. Iran of course is the government that has beaten and killed protesters calling for basic rights. We have regularly commented on Saudi Arabia’s medieval Sharia system as well as Iran’s suppression of free speech. Both countries regularly decapitate people and hang or crucify people in the name of Islamic values. Now both countries are exchanging insults about how the other is an extremist regime.
Jackson, Mississippi Councilman Kenneth Stokes has unleashed a firestorm of controversy over his call for citizens to throw bricks and bottles at police who are trying to make arrests. Stokes declared “Let’s get rocks; let’s get bricks, and let’s get bottles. And we’ll start throwing them, and then they won’t come in here anymore.” (Notably, the Jackson sheriff agreed with the Stokes in opposing car chases in the city while Stokes himself remains entirely unapologetic for calling for violence against police.)
We recently discussed the concern over the criminalization of speech in Israel. Now there is an added concern after Israel’s Education Ministry disqualified Dorit Rabinyan’s award winning “Gader Haya” (literally “Hedgegrow,” but known in English as “Borderline”)from being used in high schools. The reason? The novel describes a love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man. The Education Ministry decided that the novel threatened “the identity and the heritage of students in every sector,” and the belief that “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity.”
This story has me a bit mystified, but it promises that our steady stream of bizarre political stories will continue unabated in 2016. There is a controversy in New Hampshire where Republican Rep. Josh Moore addressed a proposed exception to nursing mothers in a bill to criminalize showing breasts in public. Moore tweeted “If it’s a woman’s natural inclination to pull her (breast) out in public, then you should have no problem with a man’s inclination to stare at it and grab it.” It was clearly meant as a joke but he was not the only one to attack a female legislator who raised the issue of criminalizing breastfeeding under the law.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
With the increasing frequency of government censorship and take-down orders blocking content hosted on web servers, a consortium of internet stakeholders has proposed to the IETF an RFC Draft (recently published) proposing a standard error response given to clients that the web page or resource sought has been blocked for legal reasons.
The proposal uses the status code 451, a reference to Ray Bradbury’s book “Fahrenheit 451”.
Continue reading “Proposal To Establish HTTP Status Code 451 For Websites Blocked By Censorship”
Russia has shown again how the dream of post-Soviet civil liberties has plummeted under the authoritarian ambitions of Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday, a Russian court sentenced a blogger to five years in jail for extremist views and advocacy. Terrorism? Religious fanaticism? No, Vadim Tyumenstev, 35, from the Siberian region of Tomsk, encouraged people to protest against corruption and high transport fares.
People across the political spectrum in Israel were disgusted recently to see others at a Jewish wedding celebrating the fire bombing of a Palestinian family and holding up a picture of 18-month-old Ali Dawabshe who was burned away in the attack. One youth was shown stabbing the picture of the baby as others danced and rejoiced. Israeli police arrested four of the men in the videotape today, though (as despicable as these extremists are) the arrests raise questions over the criminalization of speech.