Ricin letter sender caught
Daily Wire A Utah man has been charged with sending a series of letters threatening to unleash the deadly poison ricin to President Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and several other top administration officials, CNN reports.
The man, a Navy veteran, reportedly confessed to law enforcement that he sent envelopes stuffed with the threatening letters and "ground up castor beans" (which can be turned into ricin if the poison is extracted correctly) "to the president, FBI director, secretary of Defense and the chief of Naval Operations," according to the Salt Lake Tribune, but pleaded not guilty to "five counts of mailing threats to officers and employees of the US."
No mention of his political affiliation, but he has a long criminal record. I'm guessing his motivations are not political, because he is reportedly a Navy veteran and one of his targets was the SecDef and the Chief of Naval Operations. If anything, it's the last one who was likely the real target and the rest a political smokescreen to confuse things. Also, it seems like he intended to actually send poison but screwed up the manufacturing process.
The guy sent threatening letters to the governor of Utah in 2017. Let's lock him up a little longer this time, folks.
Tue Oct 30 04:31:35 CDT 2018 by TriggerFinger. Comments [Tweet]
Hamas commander killed by premature explosion in his hand
Instapundit WORKPLACE ACCIDENTS UPDATE: Hamas Commander killed at Gaza border when 'hand grenade' exploded prematurely.
His 72 virgins will be very, very disappointed.
Shots fired into Republican campaign office
National Review At least four shots were fired into a Republican campaign satellite office in Volusia County, Fla. on Sunday, police announced after a campaign volunteer reported the shooting Monday morning.
No one was injured in the shooting, which broke the front windows and displaced drywall inside the office, South Daytona police captain Mark Cheatham told the Orlando Sentinel. There were no eyewitnesses, but police are seeking surveillance footage to try and determine who is responsible.
Funny how the media are yelling about Trump inciting the Squirrel Hill murderer, which is absolutely false, while ignoring the Democrats actually committing violence.
Linux and Linus
There has been a bit of a kerfluffle recently over Linus, the creator and maintainer of the Linux kernel, adding a code of conduct to the kernel source tree and taking some time off to "work on personal issues" about how he expresses his criticism in code reviews. He's back now, and the only thing that seems different is a lack of swear words and capital letters for emphasis.
I don't see anything wrong or particularly unprofessional about either of these before/after examples.
I don't know who sold Linus on the idea that he needed professional help to express criticism without swearing and capital letters, but he paid them too much for something he didn't need. The SQLite community found a much more effective response.
Prosecutor Huber maintaining radio silence
Washington Times Roughly one year after U.S. Attorney John Huber was appointed to investigate whether accusations that the FBI and Justice Department abused their powers during the 2016 election season merit prosecution, his work remains shrouded in mystery.
Likely witnesses tell The Washington Times that they haven't heard from him, though they are eager to tell what they know.
Nor has Mr. Huber kept congressional overseers in the loop on his activities.
I can't say I'm a fan of Huber's almost complete lack of results so far.
Mon Oct 29 07:31:35 CDT 2018 by TriggerFinger. Comments [Tweet]
Oops! #MeToo strikes back
I'm not a fan of Megyn Kelly, who was recently fired by NBC for suggesting that blackface might not necessarily be offensive. But if NBC is going to fire people who hypothetically might not be offended by makeup, they are going to have to fire Kimmel and Fallon too. And Robert Downey Jr. After all, actually performing in blackface is worse than hypothetically contemplating a situation where it might not be offensive, right?
But the rule doesn't seem to apply in reverse. (And Michael Jackson is dead, so he can't be fired).
Here's the thing. People are so willing to take offense and make a stink about it on Twitter these days that it's risky to do anything like that, even when (like RDJ) you are deliberately lampshading the thing. It's just not smart to make yourself a potential target.
So while I can see situations where offense may not be intended, it's hard to avoid giving offense anyway.
A robust free speech culture would allow the market to determine whether any given portrayal is good or bad, racist or funny. Or perhaps all of the above. But we don't have a robust free speech culture at the moment. We have a culture where a (somewhat) conservative woman gets fired for advancing a hypothetical she lived through that runs against political correctness. And we're going to make the Left live up to their own rules until it hurts enough that they stop.
Austrian woman charged with insulting Islam
Free Speech in Europe is dead.
Playing word games
Chicago Tribune "We know that doctors are not doing enough screening for STDs," said David Harvey, executive director at the National Coalition of STD Directors. The failure to screen routinely "is leading to an explosion in STD rates," he said, adding that cutbacks in funding and a lack of patient awareness about the risks make it worse.
Clayton Cramer I would think the unwillingness of men and women to keep their pants on unless in monogamous relationships is what is causing the explosion of STD rates.
Nope. The "rate" of STDs is a function of how it is measured. Lack of routine testing means people go in to a doctor and get tested when they think they might have an STD. If testing was routine (ie, everyone did it once a year routinely) then the denominator in that rate would be the entire population, rather than the people who think they might have been exposed.
Thus, lack of routine STD testing is in fact responsible for the high rate of positive STD tests.
I take no position on whether the executive director at the National Coalition of STD Directors was deliberately playing word games, but he certainly seems to have a strong incentive to push for routine STD testing.
Shutting down free speech
In a coordinated assault on free speech, Gab is being shut down by basically everyone. Gab is basically a less mature twitter without the censorship by political viewpoint; the anti-semite murderer in Pittsburgh had an account there, and this has caused Paypal, stripe, Godaddy, and joyent to shut down their services. All because a bad person had an account on their service. The bad person did not use their service to commit murder; he used their service to say things people don't like (with, in this case, good reason not to like). Because of that, millions of people will now be deplatformed and have their own free speech rights curtailed in a frenzy of collective punishment.
I'm one of them; I have an account on Gab, because Twitter has already proven it can't be trusted. That doesn't associate me with a murderous anti-semite any more than it associates people who use gmail with each other. It's a service. The service is a platform to speech. Bad people get to speak too; no one has to listen to them, but they get to speak, even if the only things they say are bad ideas and hate.
At least, that's how it is supposed to work in a society that believes in free speech. I'm not so sure about ours.
Categories 1st Amendment
Hillary is running in 2020
My rule of thumb is that if you start holding press conferences where you deny that you are running, you're running. In this case it's a horribly weak denial.
But she may find the primary contest a bit more difficult than the one she rigged against Bernie.
About that voter fraud that doesn't exist...
Fox News For example, to improve the accuracy of Georgia's records, state legislators last year required that information on a voter registration application match a "driver's license, state ID card or Social Security record." Inconsistencies can cause a voter's registration to be flagged as "pending" while the discrepancy is investigated.
As the secretary of state told radio host Erick Erickson, there are 75,000 pending voters among a record total of 7 million registered in the state. Of these, 9,224 are minors under 18; 2,935 used a fake address; 3,393 are not citizens, and 5,842 were already registered.
Of the remaining [53606] applications, 75 percent submitted erroneous Social Security information [40204]. Almost a quarter [10051] of those "sloppy forms" came from a registration effort by the New Georgia Project, a group founded in 2014 by Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor.
Abrams seems unconcerned about voter integrity, telling a crowd in Jonesboro that the "blue wave" would include "those who are documented and undocumented." She later claimed she didn't mean to imply noncitizens should actually vote.
(I added the math in brackets above).
Erroneous social security information would be a hallmark of fake IDs possessed by illegal immigrants. How many races would an extra 10,000 Dem votes swing?
There are many other examples at the link, including Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
Categories Vote Fraud
Mass shooting in Pittsburgh Synagogue
Breitbart At least 11 people are dead and others are injured, including police officers, following a Saturday morning attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, according to reports.
Reports suggest the shooting was motivated by antisemitism, but the shooter was not named Mohammed. So far, I haven't seen much more about his history or motive. Unlike most such shootings, the shooter did not commit suicide, but fought with police after they arrived and wounded several. Kudos to the police for going in hot and fast in this case, at risk to their lives.
Of course, people are already trying to blame Trump. Ugh. He's never been anti-semitic and some of his family members are Jewish.
Sat Oct 27 15:19:25 CDT 2018 by TriggerFinger. Comments [Tweet]
In other election terrorism news...
... and it's horrifying that I have to use the word "other" in the headline... a suspect has been identified in the firebombing of a GOP campaign office in Wyoming. Apparently, that bomb went off.
Arrest in the fake election bomb case
The bombs are fake, not the election. (Very few) details here.
UPDATE: More details here. The name of the alleged bomber is Cesar Sayoc Jr, and he apparently lived in a van covered with pro-Trump stickers. This gives us three possibilities.
He knew he would be caught, and wanted to get caught, and the van is part of the plan
He really is a Trump supporter and/or lunatic; living in a van covered in political stickers does not suggest mental stability
They got the wrong guy (accidentally or on purpose)
Points in favor of the third option are that they found him really fast for a guy with no fixed address living in a van, reportedly already had him under surveillance, and odds of a guy named Cesar supporting Trump are low (but not absurdly low; I think about 30%?). Points against are that they supposedly have both fingerprints and DNA evidence.
I hope they got the right guy.
UPDATE: Crazy is looking more likely. A Filipino with a history of (non-political) bomb threats and other violent crime, pretending to be a Native American, who has worked as a male stripper. His mom, a Democrat, says he suffers from mental illness.
That said, this is Broward County. You may remember them from the Parkland shooting. Their local police do not inspire confidence in either their competence or their commitment to justice. And I still don't get why anyone, crazy or not, would send "bombs" that won't actually blow up unless they expected to get caught.
On the one hand he has a conviction for bomb threats. But those ... well, read the link. He didn't mail bombs to anyone, he talked tough and made vague bomb threats while disputing a bill against a power company in 2002. That would be on his police record and show up if someone was doing record searches looking for a patsy to blame.
If this guy is the guy who sent the fake bombs, it wouldn't surprise me if he had someone "helping" him like the FBI has been known to "help" people who want to be terrorists. Usually the FBI steps in before bombs get mailed, but it sure would be useful to the Democrats this election if they didn't.
PJMedia Wray: "We're still trying to determine if the devices were functional... They did contain energetic material, which, if subjected to the right combination of heat or shock or friction could be dangerous to the public. "
The ones we have seen pictured were wired to electrical timers. That's not heat, shock, or friction. I remain convinced they were not meant to go off.
UPDATE: If the man was arrested in Florida, how were some of the packages hand delivered? I was wondering this myself. Lots we don't know yet I would think.
UPDATE: Why yes, I have noticed the media covering this differently than they covered the Bernie supporter who shot up a Republican baseball practice.
UPDATE: Devices are incendiary, not explosive, meaning they burn if ignited. Like pretty much any finely powdered material.
UPDATE: Some things still don't make sense about this.
Fri Oct 26 12:36:48 CDT 2018 by TriggerFinger. Comments [Tweet]
Why is Session's DOJ trying to cover up Fast and Furious?
Courthouse News A federal judge tore into the government Monday for trying to vacate court orders that denied privilege over records on the botched gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious.
"The fact that this unique dispute involving the production of a specific set of records … has been resolved does not diminish the importance of the fundamental legal questions that arose along the way," U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote. "And the parties have not articulated any reason why the court's opinions on those broad subjects – which were shaped by its consideration of the thorough briefing and skilled argument by both sides – should simply evaporate."
Together with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which initiated the underlying lawsuit, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had fought to vacate orders in the case from 2014 and 2016 on the basis that the dispute has been mooted in March by a settlement.
Either DOJ officials are doing this without properly informing Sessions, or Sessions is now complicit in the Fast and Furious coverup.
Arkansas Dem will not be seated on the Supreme Court
He jumped up on a stage and intimidated his female opponent, including physical contact. There's video.
It's not something I'd file assault charges over, but it's clearly unwanted touching, and his body language is definitely intimidating rather than conversational.
And an election is more like a job interview than a trial... or a confirmation hearing, even.
Categories Kavanaugh
Why does it matter which side sent the fake bombs?
Roger Simon But back to my opening paragraph. In a rational world, this does not matter. Certainly whoever is responsible for this heinous activity should be taken off the streets for life as soon possible for the protection of the public. But their identity and motivation mean very little ultimately. Quite simply, whatever "side" they're on or think they're on -- they're nuts.
In a giant country like ours, simple math tells us there always will be a percentage of truly aberrant individuals on all sides ready to act out. The politically correct thing to say is we should "cool our jets." But, in truth, even if the rhetoric dies down, even if Schumer and Pelosi find it in their hearts to forgive Donald Trump (not likely) or Donald promises to throw away his iPhone, forego Twitter, and invite Rosie O'Donnell to have her wedding free of charge at Mar-a-Lago, it will not change. Such disturbed people will always exist. The Unabomber pre-dated all the contemporary online noise. There's no way around this behavior unless we start controlling our DNA, not an appealing prospect, except perhaps to the late Margaret Sanger.
Under normal circumstances I might agree with this analysis. But we're looking at a political environment where, during the last election, we had literal riots on the streets instigated by one side, and government officials abusing intelligence and surveillance authority to influence the election. When those riots and abuses failed to win the election, the same side moved immediately to institute a coup by any means they could come up with, and failed again. Their tactics then shifted to more riots, another coup attempt in the form of a special counsel, resistance by government employees to duly elected officials exercising their ordinary legal authority, and then to literal mobs hounding their political opponents in restaurants, in elevators, even in their homes. And now, when all of the above appear to have failed and the GOP's Jobs Not Mobs message appears to be resonating, we have a veritable flood of fake attacks on left-wing political figures and financiers.
The key word there is fake.
Someone who was nuts wouldn't put together fake bombs. They would put together real ones. Maybe they wouldn't work as intended, but they would be real, and they would be intended to harm.
These? They were fake, they were intended to be discovered and publicized, and they were deliberately harmless. That makes them the product of a political actor seeking a political impact, not a lunatic trying to harm people because his brain doesn't work correctly.
That doesn't mean he's necessarily completely rational, but he's rational enough for this to be a political stunt rather than an actual murder attempt.
UPDATE: They arrested someone who seems pretty nuts.
How Russian Collusion led to SpyGate
Sharyll Attkisson provides an update. There's a comprehensive list of people who were fired, resigned, demoted, or reassigned. Some of those names haven't gotten much media attention yet.
Senator Grassley sends criminal referral of Avenatti, Swetnick
Conservative Treehouse Today Senator Chuck Grassley has sent Attorney General Jeff Sessions an extensive 29-page criminal referral (full pdf below) requesting an investigation of sketchy Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick and her Creepy Porn Lawyer, Michael Avenatti.
Chairman Grassley outlines three potential violations: (1) Providing False Statements; (2) Obstructing Congressional Investigations; and (3) Mueller and Rosenstein's favorite DOJ charge: "Conspiracy"
This is over the Kavanaugh hearing gang rape accusation.
Star-Telegram A Fort Worth woman recently indicted on voter fraud charges paid others involved in the scheme with funds provided by a former Tarrant County Democratic Party leader, court documents filed this week say.
After learning about a state investigation, Leticia Sanchez — one of four women arrested and indicted on voter fraud charges — allegedly directed her daughter to send a text message to others in the scheme, urging them not to cooperate with investigators, state officials say.
The allegations are made in the state's notice of intent to introduce evidence in Sanchez's criminal case, where state officials say she was among those who collaborated to vote for certain down-ballot candidates with a number of north side residents' mail-in ballots.
The notice, filed Tuesday, states that Sanchez engaged in organized criminal activity in collaboration with her three co-defendants; Stuart Clegg, a former executive director for the Tarrant County Democratic Party; and others.
It also includes allegations that Sanchez faxed applications for mail-in ballots — many obtained fraudulently — using a fax machine belonging to former Fort Worth councilman Sal Espino. The notice does not implicate Espino as being part of the scheme.
The quote is big because it's ALL important. Note the key points:
An organized scheme with multiple people involved
Mail-in ballots to evade voter ID requirements (Texas)
People were paid to participate...
... with Democrat Party funds
Involvement of at least one high level Democrat Party official
Potential involvement of an elected official (mentioned, not indicted)
two dozen felony counts of voter fraud
Abuse of elderly and/or incapacitated voters by lying or intimidation
Two wrongs
On one side of the facts, Dem candidate Andrew Gillum accepted show tickets from people he thought were developers in what sounds like a classic political bribery sting by the FBI. On the other side, the FBI in Washington DC was recently dinged by their Inspector General for accepting gifts of show tickets, sporting event tickets, meal tickets, and so on from reporters in return for leaks.
Two wrongs don't make a right. They are both wrong.
Thu Oct 25 05:04:49 CDT 2018 by TriggerFinger. Comments [Tweet]
Trump and his phones
The Hill U.S. spy agencies have determined that Russia and China are eavesdropping on President Trump's personal phone calls in order to gain information that they can use to influence American policy, according to a New York Times report.
If true, and not BS to sway the elections, even leaking that this happens and that we know that is happens is a serious national security issue. And no, it's not "whistleblowing"; Trump isn't running for election this cycle. And I remember when Obama wouldn't give up his iPhone, and insisted that his presidential daily brief be delivered by a custom-built iPad app.
And don't forget that the NSA and FBI have also been evesdropping on Trump in exactly the same way since before the election. Why should he take their warnings about China more seriously?
The Hill Trump has three iPhones, none of which are completely secure. Two of them have been made more secure by the National Security Agency, but the third iPhone is no different than any other personal cell phone, the Times reported.
Oh, so two of them have been secured? It's just the one that isn't? I rather imagine the President can tell the difference between those three phones, and when he should be using a SCIF instead. So how is this anything other than an unauthorized illegal leak of damaging national security information touching on the sources and methods the FBI is usually so keen to protect?
Look, I'm not saying this is necessarily a good decision by Trump, if it is even true, but leaking it to harm Trump does nothing to improve the situation.
But the real interesting question is: why now?
I think this is someone preparing the battleground for something we'll see later this week in an official document. Something like confirmation that Chinese hackers received every single email sent or received via Hillary Clinton's email server in real time. But that's just a guess.
Here's another guess. Rosenstein refused to testify to Congress as planned because he learned he was going to be asked about this, and delayed the testimony so he could leak this and other "preparations" ahead of time.
UPDATE: Trump's defense.
About those H1B immigrants with vital technical skills
PJMedia A pro-ISIS media group issued an online threat against an FBI special agent-in-charge over the arrest of one of their American members on a charge of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization.
Ashraf Al Safoo, 34, of Chicago made his first court appearance on Friday and is scheduled to appear for a detention hearing on Thursday. At the time of his arrest he worked as a web developer for BlueBolt Solutions, a Chicago software company; his LinkedIn profile said he specializes in Microsoft technologies.
Al Safoo is a member of Khattab Media Foundation, which disseminates propaganda and recruitment materials on behalf of ISIS including posters, videos and articles released on sites including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Note: I don't actually know that Ashraf Al Safoo is here on an H1B visa. But what are the odds? He could also be here illegally, I suppose.
Schiff calls for moar russia!
CNN Politics If Democrats take back the House, the Intelligence Committee will investigate questions involving Russian money laundering and President Donald Trump's businesses, Rep. Adam Schiff of California said on Tuesday.
Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" that Russian money laundering is one area he wants to probe tied to Russia's 2016 election interference. Schiff said it's one issue where he didn't know whether special counsel Robert Mueller had been given authority to look into the matter.
Yeah, vote Dem if you want more nonsense investigations into Russian collusion that didn't actually happen. Apparently paying Mueller millions for years to turn up jack and shit wasn't enough for Schiff, whose hands are dirty in the FISA abuse that is central to Spygate.
Papadopoulos told FBI informant there was no Russian collusion
PJMedia For months, Republicans have been claiming that classified documents revealed exculpatory evidence that should have been included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Carter Page -- and now The Hill's John Solomon has the scoop.
In mid-September of 2016, weeks after the Russia counterintelligence probe was launched, then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an FBI informant there was no collusion going on between the campaign and Russia that he knew of, and that such activity would be "treasonous."
Papadopoulos told Solomon that he made the comments to London-based professor and FBI informant Stefan Halper.
"He was there to probe me on the behest of somebody else," Papadopoulos said. "He said something along the lines of, 'Oh, it's great that Russia is helping you and your campaign, right George?'"
Papadopoulos said Halper also suggested the Trump campaign was involved in the hacking and release of Hillary Clinton's emails that summer. "I think I told him something along the lines of, 'I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What you are talking about is treason. And I have nothing to do with that, so stop bothering me about it,'" Papadopoulos recalled.
If that's an accurate characterization, it's one hell of a leading question. And leaving that information out of the FISA warrant ("We had our informant talk to one of their guys and he denied it completely!") would be a significant violence of procedure at the FISA court. Even worse, since this was the same guy they had previously asked Mifsud to approach and plant the Russian collusion story.
Are there any tapes of this conversation that corroborate this description of it? I hope they are somewhere secure, with logs of who accesses them.
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