Is Barr Angling for a Supreme Court Appointment?

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Wednesday April 10, 2019 · 5:07 PM PDT

2019/04/10 · 17:07

Watching William Barr in action since being confirmed as AG has raised a continuing question in my mind. Why? He had a a stint as AG on his resume and a sufficiently good reputation, outside the intense current political struggles in Washington, to continue making a fortune in private practice, even if just in right wing and big business circles. Why would anyone in that position want to risk destruction of their reputation by being associated with the slime and muck of Trump, never mind vigorously pursuing it via a concerted audition in the form of his unsolicited 14 page letter. I had a faint hope he could have a motivation like Mattis, i.e., seeking to take on the role of the mature expert adult in the room regarding Justice policy. But seeing his slant more toward being a civil and erudite version of Roy Cohn on behalf of Trump, thereby squandering his reputation if he seeks to go back to the private sector, a light bulb turned on. He is looking for a Supreme Court appointment. Persuade me that after delivering the goods for Trump, that Trump won’t eagerly nominate him (if an opening occurs) and the Republicans in the Senate won’t ram Barr through in just a couple of weeks. Please, convince me this is far fetched fantasy. Please!

POSSIBLE RECOURSE FOR ANDREW McCABE

NewEnglandCurmudgeon

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Saturday March 17, 2018 · 7:17 PM PDT

2018/03/17 · 19:17

I would be disturbed if McCabe’s lawyers and advisors don’t already know what follows (which I first posted as a comment but feel could get wider readership as a diary). I was a bit surprised to learn that Probation Officers (and a few others) working for the U.S. Courts ARE considered law enforcement officers (LEO) eligible for retirement at minumum age of 50 with 20 years or more service in a LEO billet. Note that the U.S. Courts are in the JUDICIAL branch, a co-equal and separate entity in the Constitution and their hiring policies and procedures are NOT controlled (nor controllable) by the executive branch. I doubt McCabe could get past a suitability screening for a US Court billet if he had been charged/convicted of an actual crime, but the Judicial Branch should have autonomy to make their own suitability decision about a dismissal over a policy issue. If McCabe landed a Probation Officer job under the US Courts, he could work a few pay periods then retire. I’m sure there are an abundance of Trump detractors in the Judicial branch who would be amenable, maybe delighted, to take on McCabe, especially if he agreed to work for say a couple of years. Better yet, an attempt by Trump and company to interfere in a Judicial Branch hiring action would essentially become a constitutional separation of powers dispute with a branch that has judges who can issue show cause orders and contemp citations. I’m not sure McCabe getting hired as a Congressional staffer, by itself, will turn the magic trick for his retirement eligibility. Staffers are NOT LEO billets eligible for the earlier retirement. The legislative branch DOES have official LEO billets in the Capitol Police but more notably investigator billets in the Government Accountability Office that spend most of their time investigating Executive Branch agencies. If McCabe was working as a Congressional staffer, he might have an easier time sliding into a GAO billet covered by LEO rules, especially if the Dems retake the House or Senate.

Content of Communications Between Trump Supporters/Team and Russians is Highly Classified. WHY?

NewEnglandCurmudgeon

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Saturday February 18, 2017 · 6:46 PM PST

2017/02/18 · 18:46

1. Things legitimately get classified when they can damage the interests of the U.S. if learned by an “enemy”. Can’t possibly apply here with respect to the Russians because the Russians (including intelligence officers) were participants in the communications.

2. Things legitimately get classified (even innoccuous info) when their release can compromise the source that we hope to continue exploiting. Doesn’t apply here because the Russians are well aware western intelligence agencies constantly try (and are quite good at) intercepting and discerning the content of any and all of their communications. The Russians (as do we) assume that all communication via unencrypted EMails and phone calls are probably compromised.

3. Things legitimately get classified when their release can betray a method (like revealing we have broken a target’s best and most current encryption, e.g., WWII Enigma encoding). Doesn’t apply here because Russians already know NSA can break anything but Russia’s best military grade encryption. And if BOTH parties in these cases were making coordinated use of Russia’s best encryption, it basically proves the intent by the U.S. participants was espionage.

4. And if the content of leaked material was classified because it could be damaging if learned by foreign powers OTHER THAN RUSSIA, the American paricipants (who were not Government officials engaged in official Government business at the time) are guilty of espionage for unauthorized disclosure of information they had no legal right to possess or disclose.

So, even if one concedes the leaked info was officially classified by the U.S. Government, given the conditions stated in #1 through #3 above, exactly what serious harm to the national interest, if any at all, has resulted from its release? Alternatively, if the recent leakers of the intercepts are guilty of illegally damaging the interests of the U.S. under the conditions of #4 above, when will the original participants in the intercepted communications be arrested and tried for betraying sensitive state secrets to the Russians.

The Community Reinvestment Act Smoking (NERF) Gun

NewEnglandCurmudgeon

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Tuesday February 12, 2013 · 7:01 PM PST

2013/02/12 · 19:01

I just stumbled across a relatively new swath of right wing postings about how the Federal Government used the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to "force" so many financial institutions into making risky loans. I actually went to this Department of Justice posting of an opinion issued to the Comptroller of the Currency by Bill Clinton's Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger on 15 December 1994. The most instructive excerpt is:

We believe that Congress has plainly spoken on the question of what enforcement tools are available to the agencies under the CRA. The CRA provides for enforcement only in the application context, requiring that the agencies shall take an institution's record of meeting the credit needs of its community into account when evaluating that institution's application for a deposit facility. Congress specified only this one enforcement mechanism in the CRA, and we do not believe it is permissible for the agencies to employ other enforcement mechanisms, on the authority of the CRA, in the absence of some basis in the text of the statute. Agencies may act only pursuant to delegations of power that are explicit or can fairly be implied from the statutory scheme. See Railway Labor Executives Ass'n v. National Mediation Bd., 29 F.3d 655, 670-71 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (en banc).
The CRA contains no express directive for the agencies to use any other modes of enforcement, much less such coercive enforcement as cease-and-desist orders and monetary penalties, and there is no basis for inferring such authority from any provision in the statute.

Footnote 7 is even more illuminating as to the nearly complete impotence of the CRA to "force" anybody to do anything.

The case law recognizes that while the agencies are authorized to refuse to approve applications from financial institutions that do not meet the credit needs of their communities, they are not required to do so. In one case that involved a challenge to an agency's approval of an institution's application to open a branch office, the court refused to invalidate the approval on the grounds that the agency and the requesting institution had allegedly failed to comply with the requirements of the CRA. Corning Sav. & Loan Ass'n v. Federal Home Loan Bank Bd., 571 F. Supp. 396 (E.D. Ark. 1983), aff'd, 736 F.2d 479 (8th Cir. 1984). The court stated that "[t]he CRA itself does not provide for any sanctions for an unsatisfactory record, nor does it even define what an unsatisfactory record would be. The CRA merely requires that the Board assess an institution's community credit record and consider that record when evaluating branch applications."

Go to the link and read the entire text for yourself. If you are persuaded that the CRA enforcement mechanisms described made it the incredibly powerful blunt force instrument the right wingers contend, maybe you will support my idea. Modeled on the draconian punishment threat of the CRA, lets revise drug trafficking laws to eliminate criminal sanctions and even civil fines and penalties. If caught, just empower the police to deny drug dealers any ability to expand their business, take on new customers, or merge with other dealers. Obviously, if like the banks, they were denied the ability to do any of those things, they would be compelled to just pack it in and give up. Hell, the CRA sanctions were so scary that financial institutions not even covered by the CRA were intimidated and fell in line.

Idea to Relegate Filibusters to Only the Most Important Issues

NewEnglandCurmudgeon

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Saturday December 29, 2012 · 7:15 PM PST

2012/12/29 · 19:15

Just wanted to float an idea for a halfway measure for filibuster reform that might be workable. Senators could invoke a filibuster pretty much as they can currently but the Senator in question would move to a status functionally equivalent to holding the floor and talking on the specific issue. If the Senate moved on to other business (immediately, or after some grace period, e.g., 3, 5, 7 , or 14 days), the Senator in question could be counted as present/nonvoting for rollcall votes but otherwise treated as if they were committed to physically holding the floor in another location. Except for the specific action they were filibustering, they would be ineligible to vote, speak on the floor, participate in committee meetings, or even be recognized on the floor (except for motions on the item they were filibustering). The reform could be further augmented by allowing cloture to be invoked by any vote that satisfied the two conditions: (1) pro-cloture votes gained a plurality AND (2) the votes to SUSTAIN the filibuster failed to gain 40. Obviously, one party would have to target their filibuster invocations very carefully because their voting ranks to sustain multiple filibusters, and for any other business, could be depleted very quickly.

Scott Brown: Release the Details Of Your Mysterious Reinstatement Back Into the National Guard

NewEnglandCurmudgeon

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Monday September 24, 2012 · 9:18 PM PDT

2012/09/24 · 21:18

I have reached my fill of Scott Brown's ads calling for Elizabeth Warren to have her various college employers release her hiring records. Brown himself has an item in his National Guard record that raises a comparable issue of favoritism and possibly even political intervention. After being involuntarily retired from the Massachusetts National Guard in June 2005 (see page 100 of this link) he was mysteriously reinstated. My Google searches for "wartime extension boards" for the National Guard came up empty. That does not necessarily prove anything but if Scott Brown will call for release of the records surrounding his reinstatement (probably involving something the Guard calls a "Selective Retention Board"), we can resolve if he has benefited from the kind of special treatment he has tried to tie to Elizabeth Warren. After he was unexpectedly reinstated, Brown was promoted twice, received a Commendation medal for a speech, and was reassigned to a billet in the Pentagon (in Virginia) for the Maryland National Guard. If he tops out at his current rank of Colonel, he should be eligible for a retirement pension somewhere in the range of $15,000-$20,000/year, all without ever having been deployed or called up a single time.

You can read my older diary for lots more detail surrounding this issue.

Contrast Brown's treatment with this story about an involuntarily separated guard member who went on to serve 8 years in the Army reserve, including a year in Iraq, who did not have any success in getting back into the National Guard.

Did Scott Brown Deserve an Army Commendation Medal for a Speech and a Photo-Op?

NewEnglandCurmudgeon

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Monday July 02, 2012 · 7:13 AM PDT

2012/07/02 · 07:13

Yes, you read that right, Brown was awarded the 16th highest in the precedence of 43 medals in the Army's hierarchy for a speech he made at the Northeast Regional Jag On-site Conference. The National Guard records that Scott Brown released, which were posted online (see page 70), show that he was awarded an Army Commendation medal for that speech, which he gave in March 2010. See Section 3-17 of this PDF at an Army web site to judge for yourself how closely the award of this medal met the Army's own standards. Supporters of Scott Brown are continuing to make a major issue of whether Elizabeth Warren might have gained advantage from claiming a minuscule bit of native-American heritage, though no one has produced any evidence to show that Warren actually received any favorable treatment. In the case of Brown, if you make a careful and informed read through the links and references below the fold, there are a number of items, in addition to the medal, suggestive of special treatment and favoritism on the part of the National Guard. The records show that Brown's unusual reinstatement into the Guard and subsequent promotion occurred after he became a Massachusetts state senator. He was awarded the Army Commendation medal, promoted again, and assigned to a billet at the very top of the National Guard's headquarters bureaucracy in the Pentagon after being elected a U.S. Senator. The records provide no evidence that Brown had any role in requesting special treatment, but even if that treatment only accrued to Brown as an unrequested gratuity, it raises an important question about whether the Guard acts strictly on merit or gives weight to currying favor with influential politicians by various means, including prominently citing their legislative positions in official service records provided to promotion boards for use in deliberation.

Details below the fold.

Please note, the specialized navigator window on the site where Brown's military records are posted does not consistently land on the page numbers referenced. You may need to check a page just before or just after the ones listed to find the page with the actual content being referenced. You also might want to keep the first instance of the links that reference page numbers open in another tab and just enter different numbers in the field to change the page being viewed. Follow this link and scroll to bottom for an alternative path to view the records.

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