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Thread: Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

  1. #451
    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    A warrant to gather evidence is issued if there is probable cause to believe a crime has or is being committed. "Probable Cause" standard more rigorous and more strictly followed for a FISA warrant than ordinary warrants, I think I have read.
    Exactly. IIUC, a warrant is given to look for specific things in specific places based on probable cause.
    Last edited by USS Utah; 02-03-2018 at 01:23 PM.
    "It'd be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view." -- Oscar Levant

  2. #452
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    Really? Two sides of the same coin again? Both attacking/politicizing the Justice Dept. and FBI like Trump and Nunes do? Do you think that maybe the White House coordinated with Nunes as it did a year ago with the "unmasking" bs? Really the same on both sides? The "other side" includes a lot of Republicans who are offended by these tactics too.

    Do you really think the FBI and Justice Dept. were trying to get Hillary elected?

    P.s. There has been speculation that Oleg Erovinkin was a source for the dossier and killed because of it, but I don't think his death has been reported as anything more than a possible link, not a definitive cause. I have never heard the figure 11.
    I don’t see the FBI and Department of Justice as one of the “sides“ in this matter. I’m talking about the public debate. On the one side I see the national Democrats, most of the mainstream news media, especially CNN, and everyone who wishes they could find a way to remove Trump from office, who believes he was not legitimately elected but was actually put in office by Russia, and so forth. On the other side I see Trump and his fans, as well as many other conservatives who are over the top in their reaction to the anti-Trumpers, and are screaming about a “deep state” conspiracy, etc. Each side demonizes the other and embraces the absolute righteousness of their own side, and that is tiresome and destructive. As for me, I see dishonesty everywhere, much of it intellectual dishonesty and much of it outright lying. I also really believe there is a lot of hysteria in the anti-Trump movement, and a lot of people who are just blind to their own blindness. I am probably a little bit that way myself, but at least I worry about it.
    Last edited by LA Ute; 02-03-2018 at 02:30 PM.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  3. #453
    Quote Originally Posted by USS Utah View Post
    I'm not a lawyer, but the Law & Order fan in me wants to say no.


    [/COLOR]
    Presuming wikipedia is correct, and we know it is never wrong, I might not be that off-base:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search...#United_States

    To obtain a search warrant, an officer must prove to a magistrate or judge that probable cause exists for the proposed search, based upon direct information (i.e., the officer's personal observation) or other reliable information. An application for a search warrant will often rely upon hearsay information, such as information obtained from a confidential informant, as long as probable cause exists based on the totality of the circumstances.

  4. #454
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I don’t see the FBI and Department of Justice as one of the “sides“ in this matter. I’m talking about the public debate. On the one side I see the national Democrats, most of the mainstream news media, especially CNN, and everyone who wishes they could find a way to remove Trump from office, who believes he was not legitimately elected but was actually put in office by Russia, and so forth. On the other side I see Trump and his fans, as well as many other conservatives who are over the top in their reaction to the anti-Trumpers, and are screaming about a “deep state” conspiracy, etc. Each side demonizes the other and embraces the absolute righteousness of their own side, and that is tiresome and destructive. As for me, I see dishonesty everywhere, much of it intellectual dishonesty and much of it outright lying. I also really believe there is a lot of hysteria in the anti-Trump movement, and a lot of people who are just blind to their own blindness. I am probably a little bit that way myself, but at least I worry about it.
    The point is not that the FBI is one of the sides, it is that one of the sides is politicizing the FBI and Justice Dept., and trying to discredit it (in part by claim that the FBI tried to help Hillary win). Do you really believe the statements from Trump (like his tweet this morning) and Nunes about the bias in the FBI? Do you agree with his attempt to discredit the FBI and Justice Dept? You are caricaturing the position of the national media and the "left" (which includes a lot of conservatives and Republicans). They want to get to the bottom of the collusion claims and the obstruction of justice claims. Do you disagree with those goals? Trump and allies are trying to derail those investigations (do you disagree with that?), and doing everything they can to prevent anybody from getting to the bottom of it. Do you not think that is happening?

    Do you think Trump is treating the FBI and justice Dept. as a president ought to?

  5. #455
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    The point is not that the FBI is one of the sides, it is that one of the sides is politicizing the FBI and Justice Dept., and trying to discredit it (in part by claim that the FBI tried to help Hillary win). Do you really believe the statements from Trump (like his tweet this morning) and Nunes about the bias in the FBI?
    I don't think you have to believe Trump to be wondering about the FBI. Like me, you're old enough to remember J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI is not above reproach and it has been known to go wrong in the past. Some of the things that have been reported about how they've behaved (including Comey's seemingly erratic behavior in 2016) are disturbing. I think about that in light of how President Obama brought a lot of Chicago-style politics with him to Washington. (Examples: his comment about the the need to "punish your enemies," for example; or the IRS scandal. That was a real one -- the final lawsuit against the IRS is just now being settled. Lois Lerner plead the 5th. And so on.) So I'm not inclined to assume pristine, honorable behavior from Obama-era public servants. I'd like to know what really happened. The FBI's OIG is investigating those matters, and I hope he issues a report soon.

    The problem for people like me is that we can't question or oppose any act or statement that's adverse to Trump without our being asked "How can you side with that man?" We're not necessarily siding with him. We are opposing or questioning Obama-Clinton style politics. That doesn't mean we are fellow-travelers with Trump.

    Do you agree with his attempt to discredit the FBI and Justice Dept?
    No. See above. I still think those agencies should be accountable for what they do, even if they do it against a jerk.

    You are caricaturing the position of the national media and the "left" (which includes a lot of conservatives and Republicans).
    Watch CNN or MSNBC for a while and tell me you really think it is a caricature.

    They want to get to the bottom of the collusion claims and the obstruction of justice claims. Do you disagree with those goals?
    Of course not, but they are doing a terrible job of being responsible, objective news organizations.

    Trump and allies are trying to derail those investigations (do you disagree with that?), and doing everything they can to prevent anybody from getting to the bottom of it. Do you not think that is happening?
    I don't agree with any effort to abuse executive power that way. Bill Clinton did it too and Democrats looked the other way.

    Do you think Trump is treating the FBI and justice Dept. as a president ought to?
    No, his behavior has been horrible in that regard. He's a horrible person in many ways.

    I think getting to the bottom of everything is critical to the country's recovery from all of this.
    Last edited by LA Ute; 02-04-2018 at 08:49 AM.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  6. #456
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I think getting to the bottom of everything is critical to the country's recovery from all of this.
    You know Adam Schiff, have said he's honest (though he's currently partisan, in his role). Schiff is saying we're not getting the full story, that the Memo is cherry-picked and omits key points that would give a more balanced picture. Do you sense his partisanship makes this message non-credible? What do you think Schiff would tell you, off the record?

    I just watched your other former colleague Hugh Hewitt on Meet the Press, essentially saying the Memo damaged the FBI, who brought this on themselves. (Sessions, for his part, says no organization is perfect, which sounds like a back-handed defense of his organization.) Do you think Hugh is also a partisan? Would Hugh agree with Schiff that we need more of the story here?

    I'm not seeing a mechanism where the public could find a consensus "bottom line", when we really, really need to find more common ground. The divisions are becoming more sharp, in an era when more & more Americans distrust institutions, whether it's leaders of the country, corporations, churches, etc.

  7. #457
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I don't think you have to believe Trump to be wondering about the FBI. Like me, you're old enough to remember J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI is not above reproach and it has been known to go wrong in the past. Some of the things that have been reported about how they've behaved (including Comey's seemingly erratic behavior in 2016) are disturbing. I think about that in light of how President Obama brought a lot of Chicago-style politics with him to Washington. (Examples: his comment about the the need to "punish your enemies," for example; or the IRS scandal. That was a real one -- the final lawsuit against the IRS is just now being settled. Lois Lerner plead the 5th. And so on.) So I'm not inclined to assume pristine, honorable behavior from Obama-era public servants. I'd like to know what really happened. The FBI's OIG is investigating those matters, and I hope he issues a report soon.

    The problem for people like me is that we can't question or oppose any act or statement that's adverse to Trump without our being asked "How can you side with that man?" We're not necessarily siding with him. We are opposing or questioning Obama-Clinton style politics. That doesn't mean we are fellow-travelers with Trump.



    No. See above. I still think those agencies should be accountable for what they do, even if they do it against a jerk.



    Watch CNN or MSNBC for a while and tell me you really think it is a caricature.



    Of course not, but they are doing a terrible job of being responsible, objective news organizations.



    I don't agree with any effort to abuse executive power that way. Bill Clinton did it too and Democrats looked the other way.



    No, his behavior has been horrible in that regard. He's a horrible person in many ways.

    I think getting to the bottom of everything is critical to the country's recovery from all of this.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/o...beral-fbi.html

    LA, how do you rate your two warring side's empiricism?

  8. #458
    Interesting chat with my friend in the FBI today. He feels completely undermined by the White House and talked about how he couldn’t do his job without the people’s trust.

    The attacks by republicans are having an effect on the rank and file. He speculated, “Maybe we should all take a week off and see what they think of the FBI after that.”

    Hard not to believe that this is not a bunch of political grandstanding at great great cost.

    Innocent people wouldn’t try to undermine the investigation and want the evidence to see the light of day. Mueller could be Trump’s greatest ally of at the end he could say, “I’ve found no wrongdoing.” Even HRC got that with the whole email thing.


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  9. #459
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Columbia Journalism Review editor Kyle Pope writing at CJR.com, Jan. 22:

    “The political press corps lost its steam. Narrative has become a maligned word of late, but we find ourselves today in a news environment where the narratives are established, and the days’ Trump coverage seems largely in service of reinforcing (for the left) or debunking (the right) that narrative. We say this, the president says that, we’re at an impasse. Donald Trump called developing nations a [vulgarity], unless he didn’t, but he probably did. What do we learn? Probably that he’s a racist who lies, both of which we already knew. But that doesn’t stop us from repeating the exercise day after day; maybe this will be the thing that finally does him in.”

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  10. #460
    Five-O Diehard Ute's Avatar
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    https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/...92998734868480

    If I acted like this I would be disciplined or fired. Why does he get to do it?


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  11. #461
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    Interesting chat with my friend in the FBI today. He feels completely undermined by the White House and talked about how he couldn’t do his job without the people’s trust.

    The attacks by republicans are having an effect on the rank and file. He speculated, “Maybe we should all take a week off and see what they think of the FBI after that.”

    Hard not to believe that this is not a bunch of political grandstanding at great great cost.

    Innocent people wouldn’t try to undermine the investigation and want the evidence to see the light of day. Mueller could be Trump’s greatest ally of at the end he could say, “I’ve found no wrongdoing.” Even HRC got that with the whole email thing.
    They're attacking everybody not completely loyal to Trump as though this is an existential threat. Sessions stands by as his organization is brutally attacked by his boss.

    Meanwhile, LA Ute's former partner, Adam Schiff - who LA knows as an honest man - is being attacked today as "Washington's biggest liar and leaker": https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...cid=spartanntp

  12. #462
    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    They're attacking everybody not completely loyal to Trump as though this is an existential threat. Sessions stands by as his organization is brutally attacked by his boss.

    Meanwhile, LA Ute's former partner, Adam Schiff - who LA knows as an honest man - is being attacked today as "Washington's biggest liar and leaker": https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...cid=spartanntp
    This is a tremendous threat. Those who have supported Trump, when and if the emperor's new clothes get discovered, will go down with him. It is a sad day where loyalty to party goes before loyalty to country.

  13. #463
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Posted before the memo was released.

    https://www.justsecurity.org/51630/f...s-memo-answer/

    The questions it asks for. The results are in the link.


    1. When did the FBI open an investigation on Carter Page?
    2. Who in the DOJ conducted the Woods Procedures on the FISA application?
    3. Who was the federal judge who approved the FISA?
    4. Was the FISA warrant ever extended?
    5. Has Robert Mueller used anything derived from the FISA in his investigation?

  14. #464
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    .......It is a sad day where loyalty to party goes before loyalty to country.
    Even George Washington wrote about this and expressed his concerns. It began with the founding of the country and has been present ever since. Not sure what makes you believe this is a new phenomena, but, we've survived far worse that whatever Trump has been doing. Some perspective on this presidency is badly needed.
    “Children and dogs are as necessary to the welfare of the country as Wall Street and the railroads.” -- Harry S. Truman

    "You never soar so high as when you stoop down to help a child or an animal." -- Jewish Proverb

    "Three-time Pro Bowler Eric Weddle the most versatile, and maybe most intelligent, safety in the game." -- SI, 9/7/15, p. 107.

  15. #465
    Five-O Diehard Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mUUser View Post
    Even George Washington wrote about this and expressed his concerns. It began with the founding of the country and has been present ever since. Not sure what makes you believe this is a new phenomena, but, we've survived far worse that whatever Trump has been doing. Some perspective on this presidency is badly needed.
    Well, if perspective is needed, POTUS could be leading the way.

    Instead he’s intent on making it worse. Today’s episode? Democrats who didn’t clap for him at the state of the union are treasonous


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  16. #466
    Quote Originally Posted by mUUser View Post
    Even George Washington wrote about this and expressed his concerns. It began with the founding of the country and has been present ever since. Not sure what makes you believe this is a new phenomena, but, we've survived far worse that whatever Trump has been doing. Some perspective on this presidency is badly needed.
    I didn't say it was a new phenomenon, rather that it is a sad day. It is. I'm curious who you feel has been a worse president than Trump. Nixon may have been a crook, but not incompetent. We are in uncharted territory.

  17. #467
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Maybe this will add some perspective. It did for me:

    Polarization Is an Old American Story

    Gordon Wood, the noted historian of early America, says Adams’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans were far more divided than today’s political parties.


    By Jason Willick

    Feb. 2, 2018 6:22 p.m. ET276 COMMENTS

    Providence, R.I.

    He’s been called the “dean of 18th-century American historians,” but Gordon Wood’s biggest claim to fame is that Matt Damon once mentioned him in a movie. In a barroom scene from 1997’s “Good Will Hunting,” a haughty Harvard grad student bloviates in a bid to impress two women. Mr. Damon’s character, a working-class prodigy, cuts him down to size: “Next year, you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the prerevolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.”

    Mr. Wood says a student told him about the mention immediately after the film’s Cambridge, Mass., premiere. But he is fond of pointing out that he isn’t the historian Mr. Damon’s character most admires: “If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn’s ‘People’s History of the United States,’ ” Mr. Damon says in another scene. “That book will really knock you on your ass.”

    And the truth is that today the pompous grad student would be likelier to quote Zinn’s progressive indictment of America than Mr. Wood’s work. “I’m considered on the wrong side,” Mr. Wood, energetic and alert at 84, tells me over lunch at the faculty club of Brown University, where he is a professor emeritus. “American history is now a tale of oppression and woe. And if you don’t say that . . .” he trails off.

    Mr. Wood graduated from Tufts in 1955, served in the U.S. Air Force in Japan—“I was lucky, I was between two wars”—and enrolled in Harvard’s graduate history program in 1958. He had hoped to study with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. , but the latter was gearing up for the Kennedy presidential campaign. Mr. Wood enrolled in a seminar with Bernard Bailyn, a just-tenured early-American historian, and never looked back.

    Over six decades of work on the colonial period, the Revolution and the Founding, Mr. Wood has accumulated virtually every award available to historians—the Bancroft Prize for “The Creation of the American Republic,” a Pulitzer for “The Radicalism of the American Revolution,” and the National Humanities Medal, which President Obama presented him in 2010.

    But as his star rose, his field suffered an extended decline amid the late-20th-century backlash against “dead white males.” Experts on revolutionary politics retired and weren’t replaced. Social history—“bottom up” accounts of marginalized groups—gained prestige. The New York Times reported in 2016 that in the previous decade universities posted only 15 new tenure-track openings for American political historians of any kind.

    “I understand what they’re doing, and it’s important,” Mr. Wood says of the social historians. “We know more about slavery than we ever did.” But he argues the academic literature has grown unbalanced, neglecting crucial questions, including about the political divisions that shaped the early republic. “It’s not that they’re wrong about the killing of the Indians and slavery, but there are other things that happened too, and it’s a question of which ones do you emphasize.”

    He describes the attitude of some of these scholars: “I want to show how bad things were so people will wake up and do something about the present.” Many Americans tune out instead. Weary of “one tale of oppression after another,” they turn to popular historians, many of whom have no formal training in history.

    Meanwhile, many scholars retreat further into narrow subspecialties and esoteric jargon. These days, he says, professional history is “almost like a science” in that the work is unintelligible to laymen. But whereas “physicists can show us what they’ve done” by engineering real-world applications, historians’ work must stand on its own. They have a responsibility to make it vivid and meaningful for the broader public.

    What happens when they abdicate this responsibility? For one thing, a lack of historical perspective can lead to apocalyptic thinking about the present. “History is consoling in that sense,” Mr. Wood says. “It takes you off the roller-coaster of emotions that this is the best of times or the worst of times.”

    His latest book, “Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, ” provides an illustration. The antagonism between Adams’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1790s was far more fundamental, and therefore more threatening, than American partisanship today: “I think we’re going to survive easily,” Mr. Wood says.

    By contrast, Adams, Jefferson and their coalitions came close to killing the republic in its cradle. They disagreed on as fundamental a question as whether the new republic should be democratic. Jefferson had a romantic faith in democracy and the wisdom of ordinary people; Adams predicted that “democracy will infallibly destroy all civilization.”

    Jefferson’s view was partly self-serving. “The leadership of the Republican Party, which is the popular party, is Southern slaveholders,” Mr. Wood says. “They don’t fear the people,” because the gentry-aristocracy effectively controlled electoral outcomes. Jefferson was akin to today’s “limousine liberal” in that he was insulated from the policies he promoted. (Eventually, his ideas would prove potent in arguing against slavery.) Meanwhile, Adams’s Federalists “are coming from New England, where you have far more egalitarian societies, far more democratic societies,” he says. “But for that very reason, the leaders are more scared of populism, of democracy.”

    That may make Adams sound like a member of today’s “establishment.” Yet some of his other ideas would be more amenable to populists like Donald Trump. Adams said to Jefferson, in Mr. Wood’s paraphrase: “You fear the ‘one’ of monarch, I fear the ‘few,’ meaning the aristocrats.” Adams argued that domination by oligarchs was a grave threat to liberty. “It’s his way of justifying the strong executive who will act as a check on the few,” Mr. Wood says. Adams wanted the executive to have some of the powers of the Crown.


    That was anathema to Jefferson, whose life mission was “the elimination of monarchy, and all that it implies, which is hereditary rule, hierarchy and corruption.” He saw around him “a world of privilege in which ordinary people are abused. . . . From our point of view, he’s very sympathetic because he’s destroying that world,” Mr. Wood says.


    The Federalists feared that Jefferson’s leveling vision would prove destructive to mediating institutions. Mr. Wood cites a recent book by political scientist Patrick Deneen, “Why Liberalism Failed,” which argues that the West’s commitment to individual autonomy—in both markets and culture—has undermined communal connections, leaving people lonely and isolated. That’s what the Federalists feared—“this awful kind of world, where the individual is alone and without any kind of connections with anyone.”


    Another Jefferson-Adams disagreement that still resonates is what we now call “American exceptionalism”—the idea that “we’ve transcended the usual definition of a nation, and that we had a special responsibility in the world to promote our way of life.” Jefferson strongly believed it. He thought that “war is caused by monarchs” and “republics are naturally pacific,” so peace would follow if the American model were adopted everywhere. In that sense, he sounded very much like today’s liberal internationalists and neoconservatives. To Adams, meanwhile, America was “just as sinful, just as corrupt as other nations”—a view both Presidents Trump and Obama have sometimes echoed in different ways.

    The most poignant comparison, however, is the bitterness of the divide. For much of the 1790s, neither Adams’s Federalists nor Jefferson’s Republicans “accepted the legitimacy of the other,” Mr. Wood says. “And of course, the Federalists never thought that they were a party. They were the government,” and Jefferson’s Republicans a malignant faction trying to take the government down. The Republicans, for their part, “thought that the Federalists were turning us into a monarchy and reversing the American Revolution.”

    We hear plenty of similarly apocalyptic rhetoric today, but much of it is cynical and self-consciously exaggerated. What was striking about the 1790s, Mr. Wood emphasizes, is the extent to which each party sincerely believed the other posed an existential threat.


    The differences came to a head as Americans split over the French Revolution, which Jefferson saw as vindicating his idea of human liberation and Adams as confirming his fears about how a society might be rent apart. The Federalists alleged Republican collusion with France—and unlike today’s skirmishes over Russian meddling, there was then an acute fear of invasion and mass defection. There was organized violence in Philadelphia, the capital, which to Federalists “seemed to be dominated by all these Frenchmen.” The terrified Federalist Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts to suppress dissent. “We came close to a civil war in 1798,” Wood says. “It didn’t happen, and therefore historians don’t take it seriously.”


    Adding to the chaos were Alexander Hamilton’s imperial designs. “Hamilton is full of visions of what he’s going to do with this army,” Mr. Wood says. He’s going to “go into Mexico maybe, and he’s going to ally with some of
    the leaders in South America” in a grand anti-French alliance. In a swipe at popular history, Mr. Wood says the “Hamilton” musical offers a “distorted” picture of a man who was really an antiliberal “Napoleonic figure”:
    “Things might have gotten to a point where Hamilton actually sends an army into Virginia,” the Republican stronghold.


    In the campaign of 1800, Adams’s allies viewed Jefferson much the way opponents saw Donald Trump 216 years later—“stirring up trouble” and “destroying legitimate leaders.” Jefferson won, and Adams declined to attend his successor’s inauguration. The transfer of power was so momentous that Jefferson called it “the Revolution of 1800.” At that point, Mr. Wood observes, the Federalists “assume that he’ll fail so badly that they’ll be back into power before long.” They assumed wrong—the Federalists never won the presidency again and faded altogether by 1820.


    Mr. Wood has written that most of the Founders “who lived on into the early decades of the nineteenth century expressed anxiety over what they had wrought.” Federalists rued the excesses of democracy, which undermined their aspirations for classical deliberative politics. “People began saying, look, if I don’t have people of my own kind in the government, I don’t feel confident,” Mr. Wood says. “You don’t trust people who aren’t like you, and that’s what feeds the anti-elitism,” which today takes the forms of populism and identity politics.


    As for the Republicans, the federal government grew beyond anything they imagined. Today, limited government is associated with conservatism, “whereas in the late 18th century, it’s the radical position.” Jefferson believed a strong state would exacerbate unearned privilege and lead to monarchy. Yet America’s sprawling government today—the welfare state at home and military abroad—largely exists to promote Jeffersonian values of equality and American exceptionalism.


    The ways in which both Adams’s and Jefferson’s visions have been frustrated illustrates one of Mr. Wood’s broad insights about the value of history. “History is a conservative discipline in that the one lesson that comes out of it is, nothing ever works out the way you think it’s going to,” he says. “That’s why Nietzsche said if you want to be a man on horseback, forget history, because it’ll stifle you—you’ll get full of doubts.”


    History could teach today’s partisans on both sides that their ideas are less radical than they think, that the American republic is stronger than they fear, and that the nation’s divisions are more surmountable than they imagine. At a time when serious historians are proving less and less capable of reaching the wider public, Americans could do worse than to regurgitate lessons from Gordon Wood.

    Mr. Willick is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

    Appeared in the February 3, 2018, print edition.
    Last edited by LA Ute; 02-05-2018 at 06:24 PM.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  18. #468
    I saw Darkest Hour a few weeks ago, and on Saturday I watched on DVD, for the second time, a 2002 Churchill movie called The Gathering Storm -- an HBO production featuring Albert Finney as Winston -- which is some ways was a prequel to Darkest Hour in that it covered Winnie's wilderness period in the 1930s. One thing that stands out in both movies is that Churchill could be self-absorbed, and had some other quirks which bothered many of his contemporaries. But when the crisis came, the man who had pushed for Gallipoli and fell from grace during the Great War, and who alienated so many in the 1920s and 1930s, became Sir Winston Churchill, one of the great men of history. Some people really do rise to the challenge when the hour comes, while others demonstrate themselves to be men with feet of clay, including some we expected to be great.

    When Trump entered office I was in a wait and see mode. Unfortunately, he has not risen to the challenge and it seems unlikely that he ever will.

    Who was worse? James Buchanan comes to mind.
    "It'd be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view." -- Oscar Levant

  19. #469
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    "’Trump torque’ is pulling on everyone in the news business, in all directions. His critics are often overheated and refuse to admit accomplishments or unprofessional hits. His defenders almost scream best-case scenarios that are ludicrous and ignore his errors, missteps and misstatements. It's harder and harder to keep this torque from twisting every single story in one direction or another.

    “It shouldn't operate anywhere but especially not in the area of national security. The non-disclosure of a material fact in an application for a FISA warrant — its minimization, indeed one could argue its camouflaging — is a very big deal and its provenance should be thoroughly investigated. It threatens to undermine every warrant submitted to a FISA court.

    “It's not about President Trump, or shouldn't be. It's about when American courts approve surveillance of Americans. And that's every American's concern.”

    Hugh Hewitt in the WaPo.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/ampht...mpression=true


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    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  20. #470
    Do we actually know that happened though? U-Ute posted an article about all that goes into making a FISA request and that it would take the FBI, the DOJ and a rotating district court judge to all participate. Additionally they would need to prove that they were making progress to have it extended beyond 3 months, which apparently happened multiple times now.

    Devin Nunes admitted he has never read the FISA requests and also refused to say if he worked with the White House to author the memo. I remind people to watch Bill Cosby’s response when asked if he had drugged and raped women. He dances around the question with a long and rambling explanation. An innocent person simply says, “Absolutely not.” The same could be said for Nunes answer on whether he worked with the White House on it.

    I agree with Hugh Hewitt, if those things happened then we ought to know and fix it, but that is true about a lot of things right now and I’d expect those crying for this vehemently to do the same for the Mueller investigation.

    So release the Democratic rebuttal memo and appoint a special counsel to investigate whether this happened. Something tells me that won’t happen because they know the answer.

    As a public we have a right to know and so both sides should stop their political tactics and let people do their jobs.


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  21. #471
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Well this could get interesting.

    Federal judge who Donald Trump disparaged as 'Mexican' set to preside over US-Mexico border wall case

    District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was targeted by the President while he was the judge of a class-action lawsuit against the President’s now-defunct Trump University, will on Friday hear the case brought by the state of California, some environmental groups and representative Raul Grijalva, Arizona. It challenges waivers that were given to the federal branch more than 10 years ago to bypass some federal and state laws for border security.

  22. #472

    Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

    Trump has requested that the Pentagon throw him a big toy parade. Fun!

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    Last edited by Dwight Schr-Ute; 02-06-2018 at 05:24 PM.

  23. #473
    Five-O Diehard Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dwight Schr-Ute View Post
    Trump has requested that the Pentagon throw him a big toy parade. Fun!

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    But don’t ask to find medical care.....


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  24. #474
    Quote Originally Posted by Diehard Ute View Post
    But don’t ask to find medical care.....


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    Or even a damn budget to fund the military for more than a month at a time.


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  25. #475
    Quote Originally Posted by Dwight Schr-Ute View Post
    Trump has requested that the Pentagon throw him a big toy parade. Fun!
    Awash in extra cash flow after tax reform, maybe there will be "Show America's Bigger Button" fund, and this will be considered a campaign event and won't impact the budget.

    Unrelated to the military parade or the federal budget or anything Trump, one of my work colleagues is from an aviation family, her brother was a low-level airline pilot (hated it, low pay, etc) and then tired of being a corporate pilot because he was being run ragged.

    He decided to create his own company, catering to new owners of private jets. It turns out a lot of newly wealthy people decide they need a jet, write a big check for one, then have absolutely no idea what to do next - how to find a pilot, maintenance requirements, etc.

    Business is booming.

  26. #476
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    After listening to a little news on the radio, I think the word “bombshell” should be banned for the remainder of this entire affair.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  27. #477
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    After listening to a little news on the radio, I think the word “bombshell” should be banned for the remainder of this entire affair.
    Speaking of which, re your accusation that Obama brought "Chicago style politics" to the White House

    1. Obama said "punish your enemies" by voting. He was telling people to GOTV. Obama later said he should have referred to opponents rather than enemies, but seriously?

    2. the IRS scandal was a real, but it was not intended to and not linked to Obama's statement re "punish your enemies." False linkage there. The IRSA targeted a lot of 501c4 groups, liberal as well as tea party (though not as many).

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/u...democrats.html

  28. #478
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    Speaking of which, re your accusation that Obama brought "Chicago style politics" to the White House

    1. Obama said "punish your enemies" by voting. He was telling people to GOTV. Obama later said he should have referred to opponents rather than enemies, but seriously?

    2. the IRS scandal was a real, but it was not intended to and not linked to Obama's statement re "punish your enemies." False linkage there. The IRSA targeted a lot of 501c4 groups, liberal as well as tea party (though not as many).

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/u...democrats.html
    I will believe until my dying day that the Obama Administration was imbued with the gestalt of Chicago-style politics, through and through. Not to the level of corruption, for the most part (Fast and Furious and the IRS scandal come to mind) but as a general guiding philosophy and attitude. Remember when he told the GOP leadership "I won," as a not-so-subtle means of telling them to shut up and take their medicine.

    Look, I have friends who live in Chicago who learned not to make their political affiliation clear unless they were Democrats, or the trees on their street would not be trimmed. Other friends who donated to Rahm Emanuel (His Honor) got quick responses to everything from trash pickup to snow removal. It's just the Chicago Way. That's where Pres. Obama came of age politically. It's no surprise that he adopted a philosophy that is at least influenced by that. Remember how he got elected to the Senate? His campaign got hold of some juicy court records from his opponent's divorce. Hardball. The smooth-talking, urbane sophistication did a great job of masking that, but he's a tough guy. You don't get elected to anything in Chicago if you're not a tough person.
    Last edited by LA Ute; 02-07-2018 at 10:37 PM.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  29. #479
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    The Journal’s Julie Bykowicz reported this week that the Pentagon is beginning to plan the big military parade ordered up by the president. He saw one in France during his state visit in July and liked it a lot. So we should have one too, perhaps on July 4, to honor the military.

    It is a ridiculous and embarrassing idea. If you want to show respect for the military make the Veterans Affairs Department work. A big, pointless, militarist display with gleaming weapons and shining tanks is so . . . Soviet. What do you gain from showing off your weaponry? What are we celebrating—that we have nukes? That we have to have them is a tragedy.

    “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”

    I see a line of thinking among those normally critical of the president that the idea’s a ten-strike: The people will love it, what’s wrong with it, who doesn’t like a parade?

    But I think people will see right through it.

    If there’s a parade that purports to honor our military men and women, they will go. But they’re not stupid, they’ll know what it is. It is Trump being Trump, and obsessing the nation. It’s bread and circuses.

    And it is not like us, at least the old and honored us.
    Well said.

    I Love a Parade, but Not This One

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-love-...one-1518135401

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  30. #480
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    Well said.

    I Love a Parade, but Not This One

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-love-...one-1518135401
    It is a little tragic and a little bit hilarious that this guy is our president.

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