Sleepless in Midland

Irony alert -- One of Beto's arrests was for climbing over a wall

Here's something no one seems to have noticed. Beto O'Rourke was arrested years ago for, get this, climbing over a wall. That's quite an irony given that Beto is sure to oppose Trump's proposed border wall.

The excerpt below from a politifact item about the O'Rourke's arrest record tells us about that wall incident, although to be fair to him, the article calls it a "fence." Beto O'Rourke arrested in 1990s for burglary and DWI:

"Some 20 years ago, I was charged with driving under the influence and, during my college years, I jumped a fence at the University of Texas at El Paso which resulted in a burglary charge," O'Rourke said. "I was not convicted of either.

"Both incidents were due to poor judgement and I have no excuse for my behavior then. However, since then, I have used my opportunities to serve my community and my state. I'm grateful for the second chance and believe that we all deserve second chances."

"We all deserve second chances." Would that include Brett Kavanaugh had he actually been guilty of the claim against him?

By the end of Tuesday we'll know whether O'Rourke could climb the wall of worry that Ted Cruz voters have about another Schumer minion in the Senate. In any event, Beto is the new poster child for an ambitious Democrat groomed by the party for higher office. We haven't heard the last from him.

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2:13 PM 11/5/2018

Alabama Supreme Court Justice calls it a logical fallacy -- fetus is living for one purpose but not for another

The problem became apparent to those of us who had never thought of it before when prosecutors began to call the killing of a fetus by someone other than his/her mother, "murder." However, it's been perfectly legal for the mother to do it herself since 1973.

An Alabama Supreme Court Justice took notice of the problem. See Alabama Justice Argues That Fetal Homicide Ruling Mandates Challenge to Roe:

According to Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, it is a “logical fallacy” for the government to consider a fetus a person when pursuing a homicide conviction, but not in the case of a woman wanting to terminate her pregnancy through an abortion.

It's not clear which of the Logical Fallacies this falls under. But there is a definite inconsistency. Perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually provide us with some logical reasoning for the contradiction, because overturning Roe v. Wade seems highly unrealistic.

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2:42 PM 10/31/2018

Khashoggi’s disappearance and the mysterious recording -- where did that recording come from?

As everyone knows by now, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and never walked out. The common wisdom tells he was murdered, and there appears to be some evidence in the form of vocal recordings. See Turks tell U.S. officials they have audio and video recordings that support conclusion Khashoggi was killed:

“The voice recording from inside the embassy lays out what happened to Jamal after he entered,” said one person with knowledge of the recording who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss highly sensitive intelligence.

“You can hear his voice and the voices of men speaking Arabic,” this person said. “You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.”

A second person briefed on the recording said men could be heard beating Khashoggi.

In the spy novels, sensitive areas are frequently swept for bugs. So if such a recording exists, how did it come about? WaPo is silent about the source of their information leading one to believe it came by way of a leak from a protected source.

Here's a conspiracy theory: a Laser Doppler vibrometer aimed at some flat surface through a window captured the sound either for the Turks or some other entity. And they sought to gain favor by leaking the information.

Here's another conspiracy theory: the noisy business aimed at the U.S. embassy in Cuba was an incompetent effort on the part of Cubans to use sophisticated spy equipment that was a little bit too sophisticated for their abilities.

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2:49 PM 10/12/2018

Gun owners, don't let your guns slip into the criminal market

Gun owners need to take care that their firearms don't get stolen. When guns are stolen, they are in the hands of criminals from the moment they are removed from the rightful owners home or vehicle. And they may ultimately end up being sold to another criminal whose intentions are more violent than burglary.

A lot of guns get stolen every year, and one loose in a vehicle is awfully easy to nab. I haven't seen statistics for Midland, TX, in a while. But in nearby Lubbock -- population 252,506 in 2015 -- "So far this year, 170 firearms have been stolen from unattended vehicles in Lubbock, and more than 350 firearms were stolen from vehicles in 2017, according to police." Source: Police stress vehicle gun thefts in Lubbock, urge responsibility.

Nationwide ATF reported that 9,062 pistols and 2,126 revolvers were stolen in 2017. Source: Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) Theft/Loss Report. Although those were totals, not just vehicle burglaries.

In any event, there are plenty of hot guns on the black market. Some of them kill, e.g., case of Kate Steinle.

Needless to say, gun owners need to tighten up the security for their weapons. A friend told me that he uses a cable lock to secure his handgun to the bracket holding the seat to the floor of his vehicle when he leaves it in the vehicle. Smart idea. A determined thief could get it, but the time involved serves as a practical deterrent.

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1:14 PM 9/17/2018

Can customers trust Wells Fargo not to replace their assets with a box full of rocks?

We'll get to that commercial in a moment, but first, every few months we see reports of some wrong doing at Wells Fargo. Here's the latest -- Wells Fargo Said to Face DOJ Probe of Wholesale-Banking Unit. This excerpt sums up the recent and current scandals:

Wells Fargo & Co. is facing a Department of Justice investigation into whether employees in the company’s wholesale-banking business improperly altered customer data, a person familiar with the matter said. ...

The problems began erupting in 2016, when regulators said the bank had opened millions of accounts without customers’ permission, leading to a public outcry and spurring additional scrutiny. Incorrect fees in the firm’s wealth-management unit and inconsistent pricing in the foreign-exchange business came next.

Last month, the bank disclosed another round of lapses, saying it faces a U.S. inquiry into its purchase of low-income housing credits and conceding it may have unnecessarily foreclosed on about 400 homeowners.

I've got an account at Wells Fargo, and other than charging a fee to get copies of the checks I write, I haven't discovered any other reason to complain. I should however, recount my experience with a dishonest Wells Fargo banker.

It happened a few years ago when I tried to redeem an inherited HH savings bond. Anyone who has redeemed one of those knows that the procedure is slightly complicated by the requirement that the bond owner's signature has to be verified with a green medallion seal which some bankers are qualified to provide.

So I asked a Wells Fargo banker to please do that, and she insisted that it was unnecessary. Any teller could notarize the signature, thus verifying it, I was told. Either the banker did not read the instructions on the back of the bond, she didn't comprehend the instructions, or she was lying. I asked if she was qualified to use the green medallion, and she said "no." Please proceed to a teller.

So I got in line to talk with a teller. The teller dutifully notarized my signature, but then she read it and understood that it required a green medallion seal which she wasn't qualified to have. I asked who there could do it, and she directed me to the banker with whom I had just talked. Turns out that banker was the only one present at time who did posses and could use the green medallion seal.

Whoa, that was the same banker who had just told me she didn't have and wasn't qualified to use the green medallion. So she clearly lied about that. However, she eventually applied the proper seal over the notary public seal. It looked awful, but I mailed it in anyway, and the government accepted it and redeemed the bond.

Anyway, this was a no-loss type of foul, and there was really nothing I wanted to do about it. The banker was motivated by laziness rather than a desire to steal.

But I've avoided dealing with Wells Fargo bankers since then. And the idea of an investment through them brings to mind the commercial in which the voice-over tells us about Wells Fargo hiding the gold in another box while handing over a box filled with rocks to the stage coach robbers. Made for a nice story, but today it's the customers, not the robbers, who have to be on alert for the box full of rocks.

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1:39 PM 9/8/2018

Ground agent could have learned to fly the Q400 in Microsoft game Flight Simulator

In many of the initial news reports about the ground agent taking off in a Bombardier Q400 at an airport near Seattle the reporters were astonished that someone without formal training could fly such a plane.

Anyone who has ever played with Microsoft's Flight Simulator computer game can tell you that there's a learning curve, but once the basics are learned, it's easy, especially if you don't bother to learn how to land. And yes, there's software for the Q400.

It will be interesting to learn what games he played on his computer once they finish a search of his living quarters.

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2:36 PM 8/13/2018

Congress members stock trading on insider info, OK. Telling family members, NOT OK.

One of the reasons congress members are so rich after retiring from government salary is because buying and selling stock with inside information of what might do to help or hurt the company is legal.

So it's always an oddity when one of them draws law enforcement scrutiny over stock trades.

Here are a couple of articles from the local morning paper -- Midland Reporter-Telegram.

 

The one about Representative Christopher Collins is labeled as an Associated Press article. And it tells the story of how he used inside information to unload shares of Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited in time to avoid a big loss. Allegedly, he shared his insider information with one or more relatives who sold too.

The other article is about Representative Mike Conaway and appears to be a press release. It tells us that while Mr. Conaway sold his stock in that same company. But no charges were brought against him because the way he did it was perfectly legal.  Presumably he didn't tell his relatives, so he got a pass.

That whole business of letting representatives use inside information in stock trades stinks to high heaven. But since they make the rules under which they operate, it's unlikely we'll see any reforms.

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2:54 PM 8/9/2018

Scary forecasts of cyberattacks

Dave Lawler and Jonathan Swan of Axios.com provide a concise roundup of chilling cyberattack forecasts in Special report: America’s greatest threat is a hurricane-force cyberattack. Bullet points:

Gen. David Petraeus, former CIA director: “What worries me most is a cyber equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction falling into the hands of extremists who would, needless to say, be very difficult to deter, given their willingness to blow themselves up on the battlefield to take us with them.”

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta says the biggest threat is "a cyberattack that could paralyze the nation," while former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says "cyberattacks on critical infrastructure from state or state-sponsored actors are the biggest threat right now.”

“The steady drumbeat of breaches in the headlines — each more fantastic than the next — may have numbed people, but everyone should care about the cyber threat," explains Lisa Monaco, homeland security adviser to Barack Obama. "First, we are all vulnerable. Second, it won’t take a cyber 9/11 to make this very real.”

“There will be tremendous media coverage and assigning of blame after there is a catastrophic attack on U.S. critical infrastructure that results in the loss of American lives,” says Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser to George W. Bush, “but we need to spend more time now covering what is at stake and the magnitude of the growing risk.”

"Companies in the energy, financial, and other key economic sectors need to develop the capacity to share threat information in real time, and give the government the visibility and information to take action when necessary to defend us," says Matt Olsen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Frances Townsend's remark about media coverage of a catastrophic attack implies she thinks the media outlets will be spared. Interesting. Our enemies have known at least since the 1960s that the best way to defeat the U.S. is through media influence and manipulation. So she might be onto something.

In any event, it would serve the public well if those companies that rely on internet connects, and those that don't, toughen up their protections. And it goes without saying that the power grid operators should have done this already.

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10:41 AM 8/7/2018

Harassment in the workplace -- government edition

This came to us by way of Politico's Playbook the other day. And it's a jaw dropping peak into the workings of a government agency when no one is watching, except the ones afraid to speak out.

At WaPo, it's FEMA personnel chief harassed women, hired some as possible sexual partners for male employees, agency’s leader says. Excerpt:

In an interview, [FEMA Administrator William “Brock”] Long described a “toxic” environment in the human resources department under [Corey] Coleman at FEMA headquarters. Starting in 2015, investigators said, Coleman hired many men who were friends and college fraternity brothers and women he met at bars and on online dating sites. He then promoted some of them to roles throughout the agency without going through proper federal hiring channels.

Coleman then transferred some of the women in and out of departments, some to regional offices, so his friends could try to have sexual relationships with them, according to employees’ statements during interviews with investigators.

Astonishing. Mr. Coleman seemed quite comfortable with the system he set up. And that is reason to believe it wasn't an isolated situation. One has to wonder how widespread this sort of corruption is within government agencies.

Photo source.

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10:48 AM 8/1/2018

How long before self driving car gets hacked?

As we hear more and more about self driving vehicles it's tempting to get complacent and dream of the possibilities.

But it doesn't take a pessimist to imagine one negative aspect -- the possibility of remote hacking. We've already heard of vehicles being hijacked by laptop, i.e., locks and brakes disengaged without the owners' approval.

Making some computer device unhackable is probably impossible. The process can be slowed, but the risk can't be eliminated.

According to Reuters, a meeting was held in March in which Transportation Department officials met with interested individuals to compile information about self-driving vehicles in which law enforcement representatives wanted the ability to take over such a vehicle. That would be a lot safer than what they can do now to a moving vehicle.

But if law enforcement could take over an autonomous vehicle, it follows that hackers could eventually do it, too.

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1:26 PM 7/27/2018

Strzok and friends make it hard to look at that whole FBI thing dispassionately

It's hard to remain objective about Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Sometimes I have to step back from the news and question whether I'm merely getting caught up in the lynch mob atmosphere, or whether there really were some serious shenanigans going on with that whole top level FBI tilt in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump.

Peter Struzok and Lisa Page certainly don't help their cause when they play cat and mouse with Congress. For details, see the following:

US Marshals served subpoena on FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Goodlatte says, threatening to hold her in contempt; and
BREAKING: Goodlatte Says FBI's Peter Strzok Will Be Recalled For Contempt

I recall how joyous a Democrat acquaintance was when Scooter Libby was convicted. It's high time some of those nefarious FBI agents received some well deserved justice.

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3:47 PM 7/12/2018

Comey the comedian found something to be ashamed of

Former FBI Director James Comey made some colossal mistakes, and yet he profits from a book tour touting his own defense.  The joke is on the American people.

And here's an interesting take: Former FBI chief James Comey jokes that he wanted to tell custom agents he was Canadian because he's 'disgusted and ashamed of what the Trump administration is doing to immigrant children'.

He should have let his ghost writer write the jokes. Of all the things he should be ashamed of, he chose immigration. He may as well circulate Democrat talking points. He did his best to stop Trump and passed that dubious job along to others at the FBI. And now he's ashamed of the Trump administration. Boy, what comical a character.

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12:44 PM 6/24/2018

Funniest excuse for FBI spying on Trump, so far -- it was to protect him

It comes in the form of a commentary found at ChicagoTribune.com, to wit: If the FBI used an informant, it wasn't to go after Trump.

The investigation started out as a counterintelligence probe, not a criminal one. And relying on a covert source rather than a more intrusive method of gathering information suggests that the FBI may have been acting cautiously – perhaps too cautiously – to protect the campaign, not undermine it.

As a former FBI counterintelligence agent, I know what Trump apparently does not: Counterintelligence investigations have a different purpose than their criminal counterparts. Rather than trying to find evidence of a crime, the FBI's counterintelligence goal is to identify, monitor and neutralize foreign intelligence activity in the United States. In short, this entails identifying foreign intelligence officers and their network of agents; uncovering their motives and methods; and ultimately rendering their operations ineffective - either by clandestinely thwarting them (say, by feeding back misinformation or "flipping" their sources into double agents) or by exposing them.

Nice try. Comey and team Mueller, et al, have been so underhanded in this whole affair they've lost more credibility than you can rebuild with this clumsy attempt. For starters, it might help if they would quit stonewalling the documents Devin Nunes subpoenaed.

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3:20 PM 5/19/2018

Avoiding I.C.E. -- there's an app for that

There doesn't seem to be a shortage of deep pocket donors willing to shell out money to help thwart efforts to restrict illegal immigration or help illegals already in the U.S. to stay in the U.S.

And there's at least one app for help with that effort. From the Houston Chronicle: Undocumented immigrants turn to technology to avoid arrests:

The app, called Notifica, allows undocumented immigrants to activate a plan if they come in contact with immigration law enforcement authorities or find themselves at risk of being detained.

The users can previously prepare a set of automatic messages to alert - with one click - family members, lawyers, and others if they or someone they care about have an encounter with immigration enforcement authorities. The tool was developed last year and distributed on a small scale, and is now available for the public on Google and at Apple apps stores.

Judicial Watch digs up background on the funding. Here's their write-up: Soros-Funded Group Launches App to Help Illegal Aliens Avoid Feds. Excerpt:

The group behind the app is called United We Dream, which describes itself as the country’s largest immigrant youth-led community. The nonprofit has more than 400,000 members nationwide and claims to “embrace the common struggle of all people of color and stand up against racism, colonialism, colorism, and xenophobia.” Among its key projects is winning protections and rights for illegal immigrants, defending against deportation, obtaining education for illegal immigrants and acquiring “justice and liberation” for undocumented LGBT “immigrants and allies.” Illegal aliens encounter lots of discrimination, which creates a lot of fear, according to United We Dream. “We empower people to develop their leadership, their organizing skills, and to develop our own campaigns to fight for justice and dignity for immigrants and all people,” United We Dream states on its website, adding that this is achieved through immigrant youth-led campaigns at the local, state, and federal level.

United We Dream started as a project of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), according to records obtained by Judicial Watch. Between 2008 and 2010, NILC received $206,453 in U.S. government grants, the records show. The project funded was for “immigration-related employment discrimination public education.” Headquartered in Los Angeles, NILC was established in 1979 and is dedicated to “defending and advancing the rights of immigrants with low income.” The organization, which also has offices in Washington D.C. and Berkeley, California claims to have played a leadership role in spearheading Barack Obama’s amnesty program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which has shielded hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from deportation. “Ultimately, NILC’s goals are centered on promoting the full integration of all immigrants into U.S. society,” according to its website.

Both the NILC and its offshoot, United We Dream, get big bucks from Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF). In fact, both nonprofits list OSF as a key financial backer. In the United States Soros groups have pushed a radical agenda that includes promoting an open border with Mexico and fighting immigration enforcement efforts, fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist black separationist organizations, financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups involved in the Ferguson Missouri riots, weakening the integrity of the nation’s electoral systems, opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts and eroding 2nd Amendment protections. OSF has also funded a liberal think-tank headed by former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the scandal-ridden activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), so corrupt that Congress banned it from receiving federal funding.

The U.S. is such a free country that those who want to create chaos and disharmony are free to do so without a worry.

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1:29 PM 5/3/2018

London murder rate exceeds NYC -- two lessons: broken windows strategy works, gun laws don't

We shouldn't be amused at this, but it certainly does fly in the face of the wrong headed theory that gun bans reduce crime. Here's the story from thetimes.co.uk: London murder rate beats New York as stabbings surge. To read the whole thing it appears the reader has to register and accept cookies. But here's an excerpt from the free part:

London overtook New York in murders for the first time in modern history in February as the capital endured a dramatic surge in knife crime.

Fifteen people were murdered in the capital, against 14 in New York. Both cities have almost exactly the same population.

London murders for March are also likely to exceed or equal New York’s. By late last night there had been 22 killings in the capital, according to the Metropolitan police, against 21 in the US city.

James Q. Wilson's "broken windows" plan of policing was implemented in NYC by William Bratton and Rudy Guiliani, in the 1990s. The theory was that a neighborhood that was kept clean and maintained would be a safer neighborhood. The addition of the "stop and frisk" strategy also helped deter criminal behavior, although that program has been criticized because more minorities were arrested because of it. It's questionable whether there is actual racism involved or whether the crime rate in the subject neighborhoods is higher which would draw more scrutiny.

Nevertheless, NYC's murder rate was lower than London's due to a "dramatic surge in knife crime." Source: London murder rate beats New York as stabbings surge.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting development: De Blasio aide busted with gun in car. The director arrested is Reagan Stevens, Deputy Director of Youth and Strategic Initiative.

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2:04 PM 4/8/2018

Ted Kennedy colluded with Russia -- with Teddy in the news again this might be a good time to remember that

Kennedy got a pass from Democrats and the press and a get-out-of-jail-free card from the justice system for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. But with the movie Chappaquiddick coming out, management of the narrative has slipped out of the hands of Democrats and their friends in the media.

But the investigation into any collusion between Donald Trump and Russia goes on. So maybe this is a good time to remember when Democrats colluded with Russians. It happened in 1983 when Ted Kennedy sought a deal with Russian to get their help in defeating Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election.

In Ted Kennedy Secretly Asked The Soviets To Intervene In The 1984 Elections, Sean Davis at The Federalist tells the story with a quote from a Forbes article:

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. “The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.” Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. “A direct appeal … to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. … If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. … The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.”

Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time–and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

Ya gotta love that part about rigging the arrangement "to look like honest journalism." That probably would have been easy to pull off.

But with all the hysteria about Donald Trump keeping the partisan heart rate beating at such a high rate, old memories will likely stay buried.

Related:
Ted Kennedy Sent a Secret Letter to the Soviets in 1983 – Truth!;
When The Left Longed For Russian Political Interference;
Ted Kennedy Secretly Asked The Soviets To Intervene In The 1984 Elections.

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1:41 PM 4/7/2018

Although touted as a way to avoid surveillance, TOR is funded by U.S. gov

A recent address by Yasha Levine's was broadcast on C-Span 2 (Link) in which he talked about his book, "Surveillance Valley." And in it he made a revelation which may be widely known but was news to me. The famous TOR, which is touted as a network by which one can avoid surveillance, is actually funded by U.S. government agencies. Here's an excerpt from Mr. Levine's website, Fact-checking the Tor Project's government ties, to wit:

The Tor Project, a private non-profit that underpins the dark web and enjoys cult status among privacy activists, is almost 100% funded by the US government. In the process of writing my book Surveillance Valley, I was able to obtain via FOIA roughly 2,500 pages of correspondence — including strategy sessions and contracts and budgets and status updates — between the Tor Project and its main funder, a CIA spinoff now known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an agency that oversees America's foreign broadcasting operations like Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe.

I obtained the documents in 2015. By then I had already spent a couple of years doing extensive reporting on Tor's deeply conflicted ties to the regime change wing of the U.S. government. By following the money, I discovered that Tor was not grassroots. I was able to show that despite its radical anti-government cred, Tor was almost 100% funded by three U.S. national security agencies: the Navy, the State Department and the BBG. Tor was military contractor with its own government contractor number — a privatized extension of the very same government that it claimed to be fighting.

That probably caught a lot of TOR proponents off guard. More:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation held up Tor as the digital equivalent of the First Amendment. The ACLU backed it. Fight for the Future, the hip Silicon Valley activist group, declared Tor to be “NSA-proof.” Edward Snowden held it up as an example of the kind of grassroots privacy technology that could defeat government surveillance online, and told his followers to use it. Prominent award-winning journalists from Wired, Vice, The Intercept, The Guardian and Rolling Stone — including Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Andy Greenberg — all helped pump up Tor's mythical anti-state rebel status.

Even Daniel Ellsberg, the legendary whistleblower, was convinced that Tor was vital to the future of democracy. Anyone who questioned this narrative and pointed to Tor's lavish government support was attacked, ridiculed, smeared and hounded into silence. I know because that's what Tor supporters tried to do to me.

But the facts wouldn't go away.

The initial evidence that I had gathered in my reporting left little room for doubt about Tor's true nature as foreign policy weapon of the U.S. government. But the box of FOIA documents I received from the BBG took that evidence to a whole new level.

Looks like anyone thinking TOR would help avoid government surveillance is out of luck.

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1:08 PM 3/11/2018

So is this OK? FBI paying Best Buy repair guys to report kiddie porn on customers' computers

From time to time we see news about some perv getting busted on a tip from a computer repair shop where he had taken his computer for repair. The prospect of someone hired to repair a computer searching through the hard drive for something illicit is bad enough. But if this is true, they have a financial incentive to do it.

My own hard drive has several thousand photos stored in it -- all perfectly legal. That hypothetical snooping repair person would get bored fairly quickly before all those photos got a look-see. And one has to wonder where the breakeven point would be for anyone hoping to cash in on the financial reward. Nevertheless, it's troublesome that there would be an incentive for someone to actually conduct such a search. And is the reward simply for searching? Or does it depend on results?

Anyway, here's the source of that revelation: FBI's Use of Paid Best Buy Informants Goes Deeper Than We Knew. Excerpt:

The existence of the Geek Squad informants was first revealed via the prosecution of a California doctor named Mark Rettenmaier. After Rettenmaier sent his computer to Geek Squad for repair in 2011, technicians working out of a massive Kentucky repair shop discovered thousands of images depicting child abuse on Rettenmaier’s device. Court filings later revealed that there were “eight FBI informants at Geek Squad City,” and a number had received $500 to $1,000 payments in exchange for acting as confidential sources.

Here's the downside:

Moreover, the bounty the employees have been paid for locating illegal content may incentivize them to conduct searches that aren’t necessary to complete repairs. (As the EFF points out: “The image found on Rettenmaier’s hard drive was in an unallocated space, which typically requires forensic software to find.”)

Dang. Now that's intrusive.

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10:58 AM 3/8/2018

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is a rarity, thank goodness

Sheriff Israel probably had sheriff's around the nation cringing after his deputies stood around guarding the great outdoors while an armed teen shot up the inside of a school in Parkland, FL.

Fortunately, Sheriff Israel is unique. Other sheriffs have taken it on themselves to distinguish themselves from him. One is Denton County, Texas, Sheriff Tracy Murphree. He sent a memo to his deputies last week reminding them what there job entails. Source: Denton County Sheriff reminds deputies: In an active shooter situation, 'we go in and do our duty'. To wit:

"We do not stage and wait for SWAT, we do not take cover in a parking lot, and we do not wait for any other agency," he wrote. "We go in and do our duty."

"All commissioned Deputies if you respond to an active shooter, you are expected to take immediate action," Murphree wrote. 

"We go in to engage and stop the shooter and save lives, ...

Any deputy who can't follow that directive should let their supervisor know so they can be reassigned, he said.

Our own sheriff in Midland County, Texas, hasn't issued a press release on this, but we do have his mission statement: "We will seek out and prosecute those who disobey the laws of our land." So we've got that going for us.

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2:14 PM 3/5/2018

Lock up the crazy people? That's not the easy solution to the mass shooter problem

Walter Williams make a strong case against the movement some years ago that closed mental hospitals and put the inmates on the street. See WILLIAMS: Another Liberal-Created Failure. Excerpt:

Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting. According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, titled "Fifty Years of Failing America's Mentally Ill," shutting down mental hospitals didn't turn out the way advocates promised. Several studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center show that untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10 percent of homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings). They are 20 percent of jail and prison inmates and more than 30 percent of the homeless.

The harm some of those people did to others was a phenomenon proponents of the plan either overlooked or knowingly downplayed. But the problem of separating the potentially dangerous from the casual crazy is a difficult one.

A guest on Sunday morning's C-Span's Washington Journal discussed this. Watch the video at Jonathan Metzl on Mental Health and Gun Violence.

He addressed this in print last year. See I’m a Psychiatrist. Making Gun Violence About Mental Health Is a Crazy Idea. Here's the key paragraph:

If there were a Propensity to Mass Violence disease, perhaps it would make a little more sense to involve psychiatrists in identifying potential mass murderers. But absent a formal means of assessing predictive violence, such as a diagnosis, mental health practitioners are often left to trust the power of their observations when asked to gauge which one of the thousands of patients they see might go on to commit a violent act such as a mass shooting. And, unfortunately, we’re not that great at it. As gun expert Jeffrey Swanson succinctly puts it when summarizing a great deal of research, “psychiatrists using clinical judgment are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.” Tragically, such knowledge is often gained only after the fact. And programs that attempt to force psychiatrists to report potential shooters—such as the one supported by Governor Cuomo in New York and similar programs in other states—often result in dramatic over-reporting of psychiatric patients, who are then added to government surveillance lists.

Dr. Metzl's article drifted into the gun control arena which included an interesting tidbit on why Americans want to own guns:

As such, I believe there are more meaningful ways for psychiatrists to help in the effort against gun violence and mass shootings: by also addressing shifting American beliefs and attitudes around guns, and about our increasingly polarized reactions to mass shootings. As but one example, in 1999, far more gun owners cited hunting, rather than self-protection, as the main reason they owned guns. By 2013, those attitudes had shifted: 48 percent said protection was the main reason to own a gun, while 32 percent pointed to hunting. The question of why Americans feel so unsafe around, and mistrustful of each other seems like a pressing one for mental health experts. Mental health expertise might also help us step back from the highly polarized conversations that emerge after mass shootings, and allow people of differing ideologies to find common ground.

(Emphasis added by me.) The non-stop media coverage of the mass shootings probably plays a large part in making Americans feel unsafe.

There's no easy answer. Attempting to disarm law abiding citizens certainly isn't one. And expecting shrinks to identify killers in advance doesn't look workable either. About the only thing left is to harden soft targets.

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11:43 AM 3/4/2018

Crestview, FL, police given authorization to stop drivers who aren't breaking law

A friend once told about a DPS officer friend of hers who on occasion would pull over a car and thank the driver for driving safely. Sounded like it was well intended but also a good way to get some innocent person's blood pressure elevated.

Anyway, along comes this link found at Liberty Pen, specifically, Police Announce Program to Illegally Stop People for ‘SAFE Driving’ & Facebook Owns Them:

Crestview, FL — In an unprecedented violation of the right of citizens to be free from unlawful search and seizure, the Crestview Police Department in Florida has announced a most insidious program. Driving safely is now a reason for cops to pull you over—under the guise that you’ll be “offered free pizza.”

Maybe that road is paved with good intentions. But it seems awfully intrusive. Furthermore, it could serve as an excuse to pull over someone overheard on an illegal wiretap. "No probable cause needed, your honor, just wanted to reward that safe driver, but he acted nervous and so I searched his vehicle."

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3:45 PM 2/27/2018

MSM, please stop giving killers the fame they seek

Those who study mass murderers tell us that one of the reasons the killers did what they did was to become famous. Just as a vandal who can't produce anything might have a sense of accomplishment by destroying someone else's work, an easy way to achieve fame is to commit some horrific crime. A loser will probably not be able to make a mark by doing something productive.

The media seems obsessed with events like the killing in Florida recently. There was non-stop coverage along with what must be obligatory -- full background, identity, and photo of the killer. Fame.

We can blame the main stream media for encouraging such behavior.

But here's one that falls on the Cook County, Illinois, jailer who released the video showing the scene described in Cook Co. jail inmates clap for suspect in cop’s fatal shooting. Way to go, jailer. Now any loser who wants to be a jailhouse hero knows how.

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2:11 PM 2/17/2018

From J. Edgar Hoover to James Comey -- things haven't changed all that much

I was searching for the famous memo from J. Edgar Hoover signed by Robert Kennedy authorizing surveillance on Martin Luther King, Jr. and found it at this CBSNews.com site: FBI director on privacy, electronic surveillance. Comey really pumped himself up. See the following excerpt:

James Comey: I believe that Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power. You cannot trust people in power. The founders knew that. That's why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest.

Scott Pelley: With regard to privacy and civil liberties, what guarantee are you willing to give to the American people?

James Comey: The promise I've tried to honor my entire career, that the rule of law and the design of the founders, right, the oversight of courts and the oversight of Congress will be at the heart of what the FBI does. The way you'd want it to be.

Sounds good, but it it's just noise.

James Comey claimed to have the Hoover memo on his desk as a reminder of what not to do. That interview was back in 2014 when Comey was comfortable as FBI Director under the Obama administration. In the interview he recounted his heroism during the Bush administration when as deputy attorney general he threatened to resign rather than allow the reauthorization of warrantless surveillance targeting foreign terrorists. Huh. I wonder what changed since then.

If there was a lesson he learned from Hoover, it was to follow the law when it's convenient. And so to obtain surveillance authority on members of the Trump team, they sought legitimacy from the FISA court. But to get the court order they had to fudge a bit with evidence. That's when they hauled out that phony Christopher Steele dossier.

Would J. Edgar Hoover have approved? Hoover would probably have kept it to himself to show to Trump when he was at his weakest.

Click on the thumbnail, above, to see an image of the infamous memo.

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10:41 AM 2/7/2018

Mueller is in a tight spot

Robert Mueller is under a tremendous amount of pressure these days. Republicans are painting him as a partisan intent on damaging the president for political reasons. It will be hard for him to refute that if it's thrown back at him at a trial.

Then there are Democrats. They have loaded all their faith onto him that he can bring down the president. He's under so much pressure he absolutely has to find something with which to charge Trump, whether it's some technicality involving some years old real estate transaction or whether it's some accidental misstatement that Mueller tries to call a "lie." If Mueller fails he'll be punished career wise once Democrats retake full control of the bureaucracy.

It's a no-win situation for Mueller.

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12:25 PM 1/15/2018

Baltimore murder rate rises -- Rosenstein pins blame on local government

It wasn't too long ago that we were hearing about the innovative ways the police in Baltimore were protecting the people and their property using such high tech features as predictive policing and stingray cell surveillance.

But all that went out the window when the Baltimore mayor cut back on policing while proudly proclaiming during rioting that “we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” Source.

Following that the cutback, when coupled with the Ferguson Effect, crime shot up. And it takes someone with the status of Rob Rosenstein to bring it home. See Baltimore leaders 'decided to cut back on policing and prosecution' before homicides surged, Rosenstein says.

Then, in 2015, “local authorities decided to try a new strategy. They decided to cut back on policing and prosecution,” he said.

“What happened next?” Rosenstein asked in prepared remarks at the American Correctional Association conference in Orlando, Fla. “Baltimore’s murder rate skyrocketed. In 2017, the murder rate was the highest in history. Hundreds of additional people lost their lives, and many hundreds more were wounded by bullets.”

Cut back on policing and the crime rate goes up. Dang. Who'da thunk it?

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1:50 PM 1/10/2018

That curious reference to an insurance policy against Trump

Just what exactly was that "insurance policy" agent Peter Strzok was referring to in his text to Lisa Page? Quoted from The FBI’s Trump ‘Insurance’:

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Mr. Strzok wrote Ms. Page in an Aug. 15, 2016 text. He added: “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

If I had to guess, I would say they are cashing in the insurance policy with the investigation that is ongoing against President Trump.

Strzok was schtupping Page. And Greg Gutfeld may have be onto something when he said something to the effect that the texts sounded like macho bravado from a guy who wanted to demonstrate to his current squeeze that he was loaded with testosterone.

Nevertheless, the texts from someone so close to the investigations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were disturbing. Reminded me of a conversation I had with a federal bureaucrat around the time George W. Bush was elected. The bureaucrat bragged that he had ways to make an agency director look bad if he wanted to. The partisanship was disturbing then, and it is now.  We can only hope that eventually the swamp will be drained of those people who can't control themselves, forget politics, and do the job they were hired to do.

Related: So, What’s This ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump That These FBI Agents Discussed In Text Messages? and
Byron York: After mysterious 'insurance policy' text, will Justice Department reveal more on FBI agent bounced from Mueller probe?

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8:44 AM 12/14/2017

No tears for Slobodan Praljak who poisoned self in courtroom

The newsworthiness of the story is that he staged his suicide in the courtroom. (Dailymail.co.uk has a couple of articles about it: here and here.)

The tribunal is probably disappointing that he didn't serve his sentence -- opting for a self administered death penalty instead. But before getting upset about it, consider this. Maybe that should be an option in cases involving serious crimes.

When I was young we heard that Harakiri was a suicide ritual practiced among Japanese generals who were somehow disgraced. So maybe Praljak was guilty of cultural appropriation, too. In any event, perhaps we should welcome its comeback as a way to deal with really bad people.

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1:07 PM 11/30/2017

Predictive policing -- police efforts to predict crime work but with limits

"Predictions are tricky, especially if they are about the future." The source of that quote is unknown, but its truth is obvious.

There's a pretty good definition of Predictive Policing at this article from last year: Is Predictive Policing the Law-Enforcement Tactic of the Future?. To wit:

Known as predictive policing, the practice involves analyzing data on the time, location and nature of past crimes, along with things such as geography and the weather, to gain insight into where and when future crime is most likely to occur and try to deter it before it happens.

When police departments try to predict crime they are successful, up to a point. The mapping of crime hot spots has been around for quite a while. And police departments have used it successfully to highlight areas where more patrols might be useful.

It has been well known for years that a small number of people commit most of the crimes. Those individuals become well known to police. (The issues of race and privacy permeate the atmosphere inhabited by police and citizens, but that's a topic for another day.) The issue of what to do to actually reduce crime is an ongoing problem.

Furthermore, new influences are emerging. Shibani Mahtani updates us on a recent development in Social Media Emerges as New Frontier in Fight Against Violent Crime. (It's behind a paywall but available here for free.) There we learn that police are grappling with the influence of social media on prospective murderers. It's not a good influence. Here's an excerpt:

Facebook and other platforms have emerged as new frontiers in the fight against violent crime that continues to grip major cities.

In Chicago, which is on track to have more than 600 murders for the second year in a row, a number it had been below for over a decade prior, community leaders and police say the immediacy of these platforms has played a major role in escalating disputes, while also providing more evidence that can aid arrests and convictions.

“It pours an accelerant on what was already there,” said Eric Sussman, the first assistant state’s attorney for Chicago’s Cook County.

The Chicago Police Department and prosecutors don’t keep data on how many instances of violence were provoked by an exchange on social media, but they say anecdotally that they are seeing a rise in the number of “petty conflicts that have leapt from social media platforms to violent crimes on the street.” A Wall Street Journal tally found at least 100 cases nationally where an act of violence was streamed on just one of these platforms, Facebook Live, since it was launched in early 2016.

“Unfortunately, in too many instances, these conflicts are resolved with a gun,” said a Chicago police spokesman.

Unfortunately, like so many law enforcement innovations, use of Facebook posts is more helpful in clearing crimes than actually preventing them. There are some who might suggest custom notification with warnings to people who pop up on the list of potential criminals. But if there is a disproportionate number of minorities in that group then it becomes problematic.

In any event, that quote at the top of this post still stands. Predictions are tricky, especially if they are about the future.

negotiating the price for harassment claim

We're hearing about the $15 million paid by Congress to settle harassment claims.

Why don't any of those victims step up and talk? Their contracts not doubt say they would have to refund the money, and if there was enough money involved for any individual victim, then it might be enough to keep them quiet.

That brings to mind the old story about Winston Churchill in which he provided the punchline, "We've established what your are, we're just negotiating the price."

To be fair, at least one woman has stepped up to the challenge. See John Conyers settled complaint. Odds are that in the current atmosphere in Congress there will be moves to negate any non-disclosure provisions in those harassment settlements. So they can talk and keep the money.

Hey, there's a hashtag women should embrace: #having it both ways!

Meanwhile, there are at least two women who really, really, want to stay in the shadows: Lois Lerner and Holly Paz. Oh but of course, it's for the children.

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9:54 AM 11/21/2017

Churches in Texas are gun free zones

The cable news channels are riveted to the shootings at Sutherland Springs. See, for example, Texas town revolves around church where shooting occurred.

And while some are complaining that congregation members should have drawn their own guns to shoot back, that's mistaken.

The church congregation consisted of law abiding citizens, and therefore they obeyed the Texas law making churches gun free zones. Here's an excerpt from the License to Carry handbook:

(b) A license holder commits an offense if the license holder intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries a handgun under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, regardless of whether the handgun is concealed or carried in a shoulder or belt holster, on or about the license holder’s person:
...
(6) on the premises of a church, synagogue, or other established place of religious worship.

As the old saying goes, outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns.

The last Texas legislature had the opportunity to allow carrying in church by volunteers approved by church leadership for security. See H.B. No. 981, a bill which never made it to a vote. Hopefully, the 2019 Texas legislature can do better.

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11:59 AM 11/6/2017