The American Conservative

Is there any redeeming social value to the tawdry tale of Anthony Weiner?

Only this: The nationwide revulsion at the conduct of the congressman has compelled the leadership and members of the House Democratic caucus to demand he resign immediately and cease not only distracting them from their work but stinking up their party.

Traditional morality has just been affirmed by Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats.

For consider what it was Weiner did.

He sent lewd and pornographic photos of himself to half a dozen women, including a college student, a stripper and a 17-year-old who had befriended him on Facebook. He initiated “sexting” with women who had simply expressed admiration for his politics and leadership.

On seeing a few of the photos in the tabloid press and reading of the others and Weiner’s language, the adjectives that come to mind are gross, infantile, weird, sick, suicidal. Read More…

When I first heard about the scandal involving Congressman Anthony Weiner and some inappropriate photos that were taken of his private parts, I could’ve cared less. I simply thought of Weiner as a big government liberal who was pretty much like everyone else in Washington, DC—part of the problem. If Weiner was ever voted out of office his liberal district would probably elect another candidate just like him. If he were thrown out of office for being a sexual pervert, the same sort of replacement would likely occur. Scandal or no scandal, Weiner’s ultimate fate would do little to advance the cause of limited government—so I simply didn’t care what happened to him.

Writing from South Carolina, when I first heard about the 2009 scandal involving my state’s governor, Mark Sanford, cheating on his wife with an Argentinian mistress, it immediately depressed me. In his thorough fiscal conservatism—including being a lone voice amongst governors in standing up to President Obama’s so-called “stimulus” spending—Sanford was one of the few Republicans dedicated to reining in government spending. Even before the scandal, I worried that Sanford’s successor would be just another conventional big government Republican. Post-scandal, I worried that Sanford might be forced him to resign thus making way for some handpicked GOP hack. Scandal or no scandal, Sanford’s ultimate fate concerned me precisely because I did not want to see one of the few Republicans serious about limiting government banished from the political stage. Read More…

Whenever I start to think that I’m overly cynical and paranoid about the government, I read something like this and realize that, if anything, my paranoia is completely insufficient for the off the wall schemes our government concocts.  In fact, the only thing that appears to keep government officials from engaging in Parallax View style conspiracies is their laughable incompetence. Nothing has demonstrated that more in recent years than domestic terrorism investigations. Time and again, law enforcement has proven that if given a long enough leash, they would rather pursue the make -believe terrorists they see hiding behind every protest placard than tackle the much more difficult–and real–problem of tracking people with an actual desire to harm others.

We’ve seen this type of thing before, but this farce of an investigation from Seattle really takes the cake. The Seattle Police Department in conjunction with the FBI sent an undercover agent, Bryan Van Brunt, to surveil a local after hours party hot-spot and its participants for the better part of two years. The police believed they could use the party scene to infiltrate the eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front, expose corrupt local politicians, and bust high level drug traffickers. Through sheer dumb luck, investigators managed to pop a few Honduran cocaine dealers, but they never get any crooked pols, let alone terrorists. But because they need to pin some scalps to the wall, the SPD arrest a few amateur poker players and the unfortunate Rick Wilson on unrelated gun charges. The article is long and well worth the read, but if you refuse to devote the time to this tragi-comic story, here is a key excerpt: Read More…

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg belies his elitist image, boldly demonstrating his contempt for due process will not be overawed by wealth and status:

“I think it is humiliating, but if you don’t want to do the perp walk, don’t do the crime. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that.”

And if you expect the mayor to prove your presumed crimes, consider staying out of New York. Perhaps it’s an optical illusion, but when I take a step back this “elitist” becomes a petty provincial. Mike Bloomberg in the role of redneck sheriff–and killing it! Lord, I’m ready.

“You don’t have to fake DNA — you issue a press release”.
–Spartan, David Mamet

Some of the French are angry about Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s “perp walk”:

Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry denounced “degrading images” and said France was lucky to have a law on the presumption of innocence that bars media from showing defendants in handcuffs before they are convicted.

When you’re right, you’re right. It’s time for the walk to go the way of the stocks. The practice degrades the accused (even prisoners of war are protected from this) and unfairly incriminates him in the eyes of the public–poisoning the well of his peers from which his jury is drawn. Yet we encourage it, because it’s used on high-profile suspects and for high-profile crimes. Also, human nature being what it is, we tend to presume fire where there is smoke. Legal protections for the accused are there to clear the smoke so that we can verify the fire with our own eyes. The perp walk is a fog machine, smoking up the concert stage.

And staged it is. While it gives police and prosecutors a weapon of intimidation against the accused–play ball or we’ll publicly humiliate and ruin you–this can’t explain their enthusiasm. They do it, of course, to further their careers (it doesn’t help that prosecutors and judges are elected in New York). DSK thus required the supervision of four high-ranking officers for his parading; apparently the logistics of marching a suspect some 50 feet are that great (must be the confusion of so much flash photography). In a photo I saw one appeared to be straining to maintain his tough-cop expression (adapted from television and film, no doubt) and stay in the frame at the same time.

Here they had the ultimate Great White Defendant, handcuffed behind his back (readers of Bonfire of the Vanities will recall the debate between lawyers and cops before perp-walking Sherman McCoy–did he warrant the extra humiliation of cuffing behind-the-back?), and standing in for all those never-to-be-convicted criminal bankers, for the whole of our decadent and incompetent elite. But he’s being thrown into the volcano of popular scorn by that same elite. We should throw him back.

One last conjecture on bin Laden’s demise and I’ll relent. Or not. Reports now say bin Laden, despite ample warning and a likely determination to fight to the death, was unarmed when Navy seals reached him. Why didn’t he have a gun? An iSteve reader raises an interesting possibility:

There could be a lot of reasons, but commenter Wandrin just pointed out one: If he were in prison.

I find it plausible. Pakistan needn’t reveal they have him on ice and the money keeps flowing. Of course they treat him well, refer to him as a “guest”, he has privileges; they’re sympathetic.
But they’re also thinking he might come in handy some day. One hell of a trump card.

This doesn’t imply US knowledge. What we found and raided could have been the world’s most exclusive prison–whether we know it or not.

Osama bin Laden’s fortress was heavily constructed–drone-proofed, it seems, when built in 2005. He avoided land-lines and stayed indoors. This is consistent with the need to evade the US and its technology. In contrast, his compound was very lightly guarded. This is consistent with a high degree of comfort–concerning the possibility of a ground raid.

Of course bin Laden discounted the chance of a US commando raid–anyone would have (in fact, that loud ringing you hear is the sound of the president’s giant brass b**ls clanging together as he does his victory lap). There was no need to post a useless armed contingent whose presence could only draw suspicion. If and when we came it would be via airborne munitions.

What is striking is how completely bin Laden appears to have discounted the possibility of being raided by Pakistani forces. What confidence he had in the fidelity, authority and discretion of his benefactors, whoever they are!

Steve Coll in The New Yorker blog on how Pakistan will get away with it:

Pakistan’s military and intelligence service takes risks that others would not dare take because Pakistan’s generals believe that their nuclear deterrent keeps them safe from regime change of the sort under way in Libya, and because they have discovered over the years that the rest of the world sees them as too big to fail. Unfortunately, they probably are correct in their analysis; some countries, like some investment banks, do pose systemic risks so great that they are too big to fail, and Pakistan is currently the A.I.G. of nation-states.

That’s what the FBI was asking itself in 1988. That year is not a typo. Gawker has scans of the FBI documents showing that the reputed Godfather of neo-conservatism was a person of interest in an ongoing investigation into a potential Soviet spy.

The FBI heavily redacted the documents—citing national security in many instances—so it’s difficult to make out exactly what happened. But it seems fairly clear that, sometime around May of 1988, the FBI’s counterintelligence division came to possess a notebook or address book belonging to a suspected Soviet agent. And Irving Kristol’s name was in it. That launched a five-month investigation into Kristol’s background, including criminal record checks, interviews with “assets” at the school where he taught, and eventually an interview with Kristol himself, conducted under a “pretext” so as to avoid letting him know the true nature of the investigation. This despite the fact that Kristol had already been subjected to an FBI background check in 1972, when he was considered for a job in the Nixon White House, and came up clean.

Now it would be easy to make too much of these. Soviet spooks could have easily written Kristol’s name in their notebooks to throw investigators off the scent, or just for a few late-Soviet era giggles. Kristol had been strongly identified with anti-communism for a long time by 1988. The FBI report is funny – it includes a section describing the American Enterprise Institute written as if by foreigners. It notes “AEI  employment appears to be a viable option to those having already achieved a successful career” before mentioning Robert Bork.

The writer of the FBI report seems to conclude on the basis of a Nexis review that Irving Kristol would naturally be of interest to their suspected Soviet spy, and seems to conclue that Kristol’s denial of ever meeting with him as sufficient evidence to close the investigation.  I’m not sure that would qualify even as good journalism, but it sufficed for the FBI. What a fascinating late Cold War era document.

Of course committed conspiracy theorists will make the most of this sort of thing. The John Birch Society still promote the idea that William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review was a CIA operation aimed at destroying nothing else but the John Birch Society.  This one will surely take on a life of its own as well.

Not since Leon Trotsky began publishing the secrets of the Romanov archives in 1918 has there been a more devastating leak of diplomatic documents than this week’s WikiLeaks dump.

The Romanov files contained the secret treaties the imperial Allies had signed to carve up the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman empires after a war fought “to make the world safe for democracy.”

It was to counter cynicism after revelation of these “secret treaties” that Woodrow Wilson called for “open covenants, openly arrived at.”

In 1898, a leaked document inflamed America and infuriated President McKinley, who had not wanted to go to war with Spain.

The Spanish minister in Washington, Enrique Dupuy De Lome, had written an indiscreet letter that was stolen by a sympathizer of the Cuban revolution and leaked to William Randolph Hearst’s warmongering New York Journal. In the De Lome letter, the minister had said of McKinley that he is “weak, and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a … politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.”

Six days later, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. Hearst’s Journal screamed Spanish “treachery.” And the war was on. Read More…