[Red State] FBI Director Christopher Wray’s attempts to stonewall requests for agency records have become familiar.
Last summer, conservative political advocacy group Citizens United filed a FOIA request for documents that Kathleen Kavalec, who was serving as the State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary, sent to the FBI’s counter-intelligence team following a meeting with dossier author Christopher Steele in October of 2016. Kavalec had discovered a number of anomalies in Steele’s story and emailed the FBI two days later about her suspicions. The meeting took place ten days before the FBI submitted their first application to the FISA Court for a warrant to spy on Carter Page. After much pressure, Citizens United received the documents, but they were so highly redacted, they were almost useless.
The group filed a new FOIA request for less-redacted copies of the documents. This time, Wray sent attorneys to court to block it, arguing that "the FBI can’t afford to jeopardize the fragile relationships that exist between the United States and certain foreign governments." Ultimately, Citizens United received a less redacted copy.
Following the release of the Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ report last December, which as we all remember reflected poorly on the FBI, Wray told reporters, "I am ordering over 40 corrective actions to address all of those things in a way that’s robust and serious. We’re determined to learn the lessons from this report."
In January, Wray elaborated on those actions. He had distributed a video to the entire workforce and would follow up with an all-employee email. Wray said,
FBI leadership believes that the repeated messaging to its workforce of the absolute need for accuracy and completeness in all FISA applications and the implementation of corrective actions will result in a substantially renewed institutional focus on ensuring accuracy, transparency, and completeness in all FISA applications.
Wray had set a deadline of April 30 for "the completion of training, including testing to confirm that personnel understand the expectations and the materials."
#7
They might go to an old retread, Louis Freeh. You heard it here first.
I'd just as soon fire the entire 7th floor, and put someone known for taking a chainsaw for a primary reorganization tool.
Posted by: Marilyn Tojo7566 ||
05/04/2020 21:52 Comments ||
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#8
Intriguing. Louis Joseph Freeh (born January 6, 1950) is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001. Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was later appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton.[1][2] He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.
Maybe he remembers what the FBI used to be.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/04/2020 23:45 Comments ||
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[GetZone] This virus induced quarantine is beyond what any of us have ever seen. Many are unable to work let alone make a quick trip to the grocery store outside of getting essentials when needed. Not to mention the mass panic that’s gripped our nation and caused a shortage of toilet paper. If someone would have warned me of this a few months ago, I’d probably have thought them to be out of their mind. However, here we all are, ordered to stay home and deal with the craziness. Not everyone is letting this take them over in a negative way. Families are actually spending more time together and enjoying the outdoors more than they could before while still abiding to the rules of social distancing. Now is also a great time to work on the firearm necessities we never seem to find the time for with some firearm training drills. From cleaning our guns to practicing with dryfiring, now would be a great time to work on building some consistent practice habits.
#4
I put a RH nylon holster on the middle seat belt and dangled it over the edge of the seat for a direct right handed draw and acquisition to left or right door.
#6
From the headline I thought this was gonna teach me to hunt Karens.
Some states have an open season on varmints and pests. Before setting out, I recommend checking with your local department of natural resources or having a good alibi.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The Baddest Knockouts on the Planet: Mike Tyson's phenomenal power left the world in awe... from the 30-second demolition of Marvis Frazier to the brutal punches that floored Michael Spinks, here are his top 10 KOs.
[Aljazeera] Dr Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the White House coronavirus taskforce, has warned against US citizens gathering in public spaces again as the number of COVID-19 infections topped 1.1 million in the country and the death toll rose to more than 67,000 on Sunday.
Birx said massing on beaches was not safe unless people kept at least two metres (six feet) apart, and weighed in against allowing such businesses as beauty salons and spas to reopen in the first phase.
"We've made it clear that that is not a good phase one activity," she said on Fox News Sunday.
Protesters gathering, as they did last week in Michigan and other parts of the country to demonstrate against stay-at-home restrictions, pose a huge risk, she said.
"It's devastatingly worrisome to me personally if they go home and infect their grandmother or their grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or a very - or an unfortunate outcome, they will feel guilty for the rest of our lives," Birx said.
#2
Amazing isn't it, how many 'public health officials' don't understand 'public'? To me it was such officials back in the 80s who decided against the opportunity to blood test everyone for AIDS/HIV and invoke the age old practice of isolation. Hundreds of thousands of deaths later, they threw out any credibility to their 'expertise'. Again, their solution is treat the entire population as one for political reasons instead of identifying specific groups and locations. Their wink at fellow health officials who write off any death they can as related to pathogen and not verify its true cause only undermines any actual scientific approach to the issue.
#4
Someone should ask her directly if the flatten the curve was a lie because it seems like the goldposts are being moved from flattening to some perfect metric of nobody sick ever.
#5
Virginia and West Virginia open no face masks. Bars open Monday night in West Virginia. People going to get smashed. Patient went to Doctors office in Maryland staff and Doctor no face mask. Nice weather and all bets off. CON virus has no hold on free spirited.
#6
This lunacy hopefully will end SOON. We've survived the Black Plague, the Spanish Flu, and other maladies (and maladies we probably didn't even know were maladies). Sure, COVID-19 is real; the response thereto was, overall, pathetic.
[American Thinker] Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently called the United States government’s coronavirus testing data "bogus" because of testing inequality and slow turnaround, with three to four days to get results.
Earlier in the week, President Trump, during a news conference, came under fire from a reporter who claimed that South Korea had tested more people per capita than the U.S. The Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who was present, defended the president, saying: "I just want to make it clear that South Korea’s testing was 11 per hundred thousand [residents], and we’re at 17 per hundred thousand." This matches the latest statistics at Worldometers, which maintains a constantly-updated database of coronavirus statistics globally, by country, down to the state level.
Seems there's not enough bad to say about testing, and Gates was out front in that effort.
The tech tycoon had previously taken a swipe at the president for publicly castigating China for its cover-up of the coronavirus. During a Sunday interview on CNN, Gates not only argued that it is not time to be questioning the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) efforts in handling the COVID-19 outbreak, but went so far as to dispel any wrongdoing by the communist regime:
"China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up. They can look back and say where they missed some things. You know, some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place, and they avoided the incredible economic pain. It’s sad that even the U.S. that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly. But it’s not time to talk about that."
President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed the CCP for its mishandling of the outbreak, criticizing the country for restricting domestic travel to slow the virus but not international travel to keep it from spreading abroad. On Thursday, Trump went so far as to indicate that China may have intentionally released the coronavirus. Based on evidence he claims to have seen, the president is now speculating that the origin of the infectious disease came from a lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak.
He said the U.S. now "is finding how it came out.... It’s a terrible thing that happened. Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose."
Besides hanging the testing deficit around Trump, Gates had also found Trump’s move to slash funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) a biased mistake:
"In the retrospective, we’ll see things that WHO could have done better, just like every actor in this whole picture. But the WHO has a strong connection with one country. That country is the United States. The number of CDC people who are there, people who used to work for the CDC, there’s no U.N. agency more connected to a country than WHO is to CDC."
WHO, an agency of the United Nations, has been criticized for its chummy relationship with the CCP, including its role in manipulating a Chinese study that claimed the coronavirus could not spread between humans.
#7
Why is this shithead considered an authority on anything
Because, like Tom Steyer, Mikey Bloomberg and the remaining Koch brother (and many more) he has "experts" who whisper what he wants to hear into his ear.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/04/2020 9:25 Comments ||
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#8
The Walton family has as big a fortune as any of these jokers. Why is it that they manage to keep their mouths shut and not pontificate about non-business matters?
We have hundreds of billionaires who have the decency and modesty to recognize that they have no expertise outside of cornering a market or exploiting globalism. It's only this handful of Little Big Men -- Mini-Mike, Christmas necktie guy, Sweater-Kermit, Soros, the Libbetrarian Kook Brothers -- only these six out of some 600 who think they're entitled to dictate public policy on anything.
#9
Wasn't it like Windows 7 and all the pirated copies being made in China was pointed out and Gates was like, "Oh that's fine. You better pay full price though."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/04/2020 12:42 Comments ||
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#11
China did a lot of things right at the beginning, You know, some countries did respond very quickly
If China hadn't responded quickly in December and January when the China virus was still vulnerable the disease could have been contained and eradicated with little effort.
The CCP's protection transformed this virus from a biological oddity into the agent of a global pandemic.
The CCP did indeed quickly come to the aid of the virus.
[Red State] There’s a basic false binary choice that some on the left have been laying out there.
Perhaps no one put it out there more bluntly, and more falsely, than New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
When asked about people who wanted to be able to go back to work in order to be able to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads, Cuomo mocked them, saying then they should become "essential workers," that the choice was between staying in and death.
That is just out and out wrong, not to mention not at all scientific.
First, given that most virus cases are mild, even if you get it, no, it’s not logical or scientific to say the choice is "death."
But secondly, and perhaps most importantly, there are ways of proceeding with caution, with attention to proper protection while letting people go back to work, letting those who are more at risk stay in, without quarantining the healthy. This is how states already are proceeding and starting to open.
The purpose of the lockdowns or stay-at-home orders originally were to prevent overwhelming of the system, it was never to guarantee that everyone stay in doors until it could be guaranteed that not one person get sick.
But it’s allowed some on the left who have no fear for their jobs to preen and act as though the folks concerned about the economy and our constitutional rights are somehow "bad" while they are "good" preventing the world from "dying."
Example: Taylor Lorenz, who works for the New York Times style, writing about technology, memes, influencers, and online culture.
by David Stockman -- If you don’t think our so-called mainstream rulers has gone off the deep end, just consider New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent menacing tweets to the orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, which has insisted on holding funerals, including one Monday for a revered 73-year old Rabbi attended by upwards of 2,000 mourners:
"Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the middle of this pandemic," the mayor said in one post. "When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus."
My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.
Well, NYC is nearly a ghost town and now its idiotic ruling pols are suggesting that, apparently, only ghosts may attend funerals without governmental permission!
But actually, this photo from the offending funeral is another picture worth a thousand words.
That’s because by now, everyone, and we mean everyone, knows that the Covid-19 strikes the elderly, the frail and the already disease-afflicted; and that these vulnerable populations need to not only "social distance", but actually stay home and keep out of harm’s way completely.
That appears to be exactly what happened at Rabbi Mertz’ funeral. If you can spot an octogenarian in this crowd, or even a grandfather, your eyesight is better than Clark Kent’s.
And besides being preponderantly way under 50-somethings, they congregated outdoors and virtually all were wearing masks. Yet claiming to speak for some latter day "Committee of Public Safety", Mayor Robespierre actually threatened to bring in the gendarmes....
....had Patient Zero (aka the Donald) not been the victim of malpractice by his doctors led by Fauci and the Scarf Lady, he might have been advised to dial in on day #1 to the heart of the Covid-threat. Namely, the 15,600 nursing homes in America, which domicile some 1.5 million residents, of which one-quarter (425,00) are over the age of 80 years.
In the case of Massachusetts, where the majority of deaths have occurred in nursing homes, the average age of Covid-deaths has been 82 years.
Needless to say, you did not need to be entombed in the infectious disease tunnel at the NIH for 52 years like Dr. Fauci, a pretentious 79-year old windbag who should have himself been put in a retirement home years ago, to realize that nursing homes are dense-packed with the frail, disease-afflicted elderly....
So rather than wipe out $4 trillion of GDP via Lockdown Nation they might have started with say $25 billion of incremental money for Medicare/Medicaid and the state public health agencies to zero-in on protecting, isolating and treating the nursing home residents.
After all, we find it easy to believe that spending $20,000 per nursing home resident might have saved or extended a lot more lives than the WHO/CDC/DR. Fauci blunderbuss assault on the entire US economy....
Needless to say, it did not take a catastrophic experiment with Lockdown Nation to figure this out. It was already known from China and the history of other coronaviruses.
If there were any reason or justice left in America, Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Lady and the whole CDC/WHO lobby that brought about this disaster would actually be headed for their own quarantine – the kind that doesn't happen at home and which can't be lifted by the whims of the Cuomo brothers or Mayor Robespierre.
[WirePoints] Over two thousand years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero devoted his life to a struggle to preserve the best of the Roman Republic — constitutional checks on power, the rule of law and, to a significant degree for the age, democracy and individual rights.
It’s all there in Cicero’s story — all of today’s battles for the same goals. Some of those battles were small and some large, some fought in court and some on the battlefield, but many were ultimately decided not by law or armies but by the power of public opinion.
And so it has been for the centuries since Cicero. A Star Wars sequel gave us a modern adage for the role of public opinion: Liberty dies with thunderous applause.
Continued on Page 49
#2
I do not know a single person in Illinois who isnt p***ed at the extension and the Governors daily preening sessions.
As usual the media is retyping the press releases and enabling this illegal lockdown.
Posted by: Titus Elmeatle8372 ||
05/04/2020 1:59 Comments ||
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#3
Illinois # of cases is raising, so the orders are obviously ignored - evolution in action?
#7
g(r)omgoru, Illinois is like many mid-western states in that there are two or three population centers. Illinois maybe has 5, if you count the Quad Cites (mostly Iowa) and Champaign–Urbana areas. The rest of the state is pretty rural and there are fair distances between the major population areas. As P2k says, one size does not fit all.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/04/2020 8:36 Comments ||
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#8
#7 I doubt lockdown is enforced in the country side.
#9
I heard yesterday about a nursing home in downstate Newton, IL (South of Charleston) which had 40 cases. Fatalities, unknown. Other than that, not much being reported.
#10
I suspect an analysis of the nursing homes with high death counts would find they are not catering to the wealthy.
My mom was in a very high priced nursing home up in the San Francisco Bay area. They locked that place down. No guests. No mingling with others. Locked in the room for your own protection. Naturally my brother and I broke her out and she's been living with me now. She was going to go insane in solitary confinement no matter how well meaning, but that facility was not going to have a single Covid death.
#13
If I provide one account from family: In one nursing home in the Midwest, all five nurses contracted CV-19. And, in one case, a nurse had to go and test herself. The company that runs the place is not only keeping things under wraps, they will not even tell relatives of the elderly who contract the virus as they are afraid they will get pulled from the nursing home, i.e., lose revenue. Sick, absolutely sick and disgusting.
#15
My mother’s retirement home went in lockdown from the outside world the first day it was announced in Ohio, then three days later stopped activities and allowing residents to come down to the dining room for meals. For the independent living residents, shopping is picked up and delivered to their rooms along with mail and meals, no socializing — including in one another's rooms. My mother, who is somehow loved by everyone, quietly wangled agreement to help the building horticulturist by taking care of the plants in the greenhouse every day, plus she makes a daily trip to the building library. I have no idea how they are handling things on the assisted living and Alzheimer floors.
A few days ago we were notified that one of the staff tested positive and was sent home, so now all staff are to be issued PPEs.
#16
Mama chose a mid-priced facility near us. The higher priced one provided grander surroundings and a much better kitchen, but the atmosphere, Mama said, was depressed rather than cheerful.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/04/2020 15:48 Comments ||
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#18
From the link at #12 - In some cases, however, nursing homes reported fewer total cases and even fewer deaths than last week, raising questions about the accuracy of the data.
Of course, you fools! It's going up, and up, and up, higher and higher! We're all gonna die!
Meanwhile, CDC data shows respiratory deaths (nationwide) peaked three weeks ago. CDC Data
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/04/2020 16:57 Comments ||
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#19
O Tempora! O Mores!
Posted by: York Harding ||
05/04/2020 18:56 Comments ||
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You are ever gallant, my dear. And I am once again shocked that some romantic female did not instantly fall in love with you and drag you off to the alter years ago or last week for saying things like that.
h/t Instapundit
[NYT] - Australia has called for an inquiry into the origin of the virus. Germany and Britain are hesitating anew about inviting in the Chinese tech giant Huawei. President Trump has blamed China for the contagion and is seeking to punish it. Some governments want to sue Beijing for damages and reparations.
Across the globe a backlash is building against China for its initial mishandling of the crisis that helped loose the coronavirus on the world, creating a deeply polarizing battle of narratives and setting back China’s ambition to fill the leadership vacuum left by the United States.
China, never receptive to outside criticism and wary of damage to its domestic control and long economic reach, has responded aggressively, combining medical aid to other countries with harsh nationalist rhetoric, and mixing demands for gratitude with economic threats.
The result has only added momentum to the blowback and the growing mistrust of China in Europe and Africa, undermining China’s desired image as a generous global actor.
...With clear encouragement from President Xi Jinping and the powerful Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, a younger generation of Chinese diplomats have been proving their loyalty with defiantly nationalist and sometimes threatening messages in the countries where they are based.
"You have a new brand of Chinese diplomats who seem to compete with each other to be more radical and eventually insulting to the country where they happen to be posted," said Francois Godement, a senior adviser for Asia at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne. "They’ve gotten into fights with every northern European country with whom they should have an interest, and they’ve alienated every one of them." Meet the new Master Race?
[AlphaNews] KARE11 meteorologist Sven Sundgaard was fired, Friday, shortly after he called conservative protesters "Nazi sympathizer gun fetishist miscreants."
Mid April, Sundgaard described protestors who oppose Governor Tim Walz's stay at home order in highly disfavorable terms via Facebook. Two days after Alpha News reported on the weatherman's now-deleted post, he was dismissed from his position "due to continued violations of KARE11's news ethics and other policies," according to the network. Really to bad, nice guy but such obvious TDS, blatant lefty bias in public got him fired? Odd considering KARE 11 in general has open bias.
While KARE 11 did not specify that Sundgaard was fired directly in relation to his anti-conservative rant, it is widely speculated that had he withheld his thoughts on the protestors, he would still have his job.
The way other "news" is covering this:
KARE 11 parts ways with Sven Sundgaard, claims ethics violations StarTribune
KARE-TV fires Sven Sundgaard over alleged news ethics violations TwinCities.com
Minnesota TV station fires weatherman for post that called lockdown protesters 'Nazi sympathizers' Mail Online
Weatherman canned after endorsing characterization of gun-toting, right-wing, pandemic skeptics as 'Nazi sympathizers' and 'miscreants' New York Daily News on MSN.com See link for his deleted posts.
#2
One Saint Paul patrolman told us about a local TV guy that was a serial shoplifter. Apparently not a very good on. The local station was reluctant to fire the prick over possible sexualty lawsuit (gay).
Would like to tell you about Sven's pet. To many off color jokes would ensue. Really to bad though, seemed like a nice guy.
#6
It was a smaller beautiful Alpine doe if I remember correctly. I worked with that breed for years in Scandia. The kids are hilarious.
Given Sven's rant I have to think everyone atwedon'tKare 11 had to know. And of course our POS fraud news here refuses to quote him regarding why he was fired.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Red State] FBI Director Christopher Wray’s attempts to stonewall requests for agency records have become familiar.
[Aljazeera] Dr Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the White House coronavirus taskforce, has warned against US citizens gathering in public spaces again as the number of COVID-19 infections topped 1.1 million in the country and the death toll rose to more than 67,000 on Sunday.
[AlphaNews] KARE11 meteorologist Sven Sundgaard was fired, Friday, shortly after he called conservative protesters "Nazi sympathizer gun fetishist miscreants."
