Who doesn’t love a good sense of humor? Wit, however, has a lot to do with intelligence. Since the latter quality is scarce in public life, so is humor. It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything like Donald Trump’s sense of humor in our flaccid politics. These two anti-Jeb Bush ads kill it—and are certainly not good for poor Jeb’s moribund political campaign.
Watch:
Jeb For All Your Sleeping Needs.
AND:
Canada, Economy, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Labor, Republicans
Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker is an equal opportunity fencer. Reflexive, laboring to show he does not discriminate against Mexico, Walker showed himself to be a bit of a bumpkin. As follows:
Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker has called building a wall along the border between the US and Canada a “legitimate issue”.
Illegal immigration and the security of the southern border with Mexico have been major issues in the Republican race for president, but the northern border has not been discussed.
Mr Walker made the comments in response to a question from a NBC News reporter.
“That is a legitimate issue for us to look at,” he said on Sunday.
Does the US have a problem with a deluge of illegal immigrants pouring over the Canadian border? No. Canada is a high-wage area. The US is a high-wage area. Latin America is a low-wage area. Migratory pressure, Mr.Walker, flows from low-wage to high-wage regions.
“Do we believe in the gene thing?” Donald Trump asked the crowd that assembled to hear him speak in Mobile, Alabama, Friday. He was touting his genetic lineage; says he comes from a family of high-achievers.
Wow. Hasn’t the guy received any briefings on the prevailing Cultural Marxism (also known as political correctness), in the country he seeks to lead? The nature-nurture debate has been settled politically. Many co-opted scientists have even seconded the politicians. Trump ought to know that according to this orthodoxy, were it not for largely exogenous circumstances, all human beings would be capable of the same accomplishments. (NOT) No such thing as general intelligence.
One things is clear. Low-energy Trump is not. (The way Trump keeps referring to poor Jeb Bush as a low-energy candidate is hilarious.)
Homeland Security, Intelligence, libertarianism, Regulation, Ron Paul, Terrorism, The State
Sen. Rand Paul went astray. His rousing remarks against the renewal of the PATRIOT Act were softened by a call for “the hiring of a 1,000 more FBI agents.” “We need more FBI analysts analyzing data,” said Paul.
Moreover, and as reported at Target Liberty, it is the legal opinion of Judge Andrew Napolitano “that the US government is lying to the American people with the claim that the mass surveillance would be suspended upon the expiration of the PATRIOT Act provision used to justify the mass surveillance program.”
Essentially, the Patriot Act will be revamped, only to reemerge as the USA FREEDOM Act.
Napolitano states:There are two other provisions in the law that the NSA relies on which will cause it to continue to spy on Americans even if section 215 of the PATRIOT Act does expire. One of those is a section of the FISA law called section 702, and one of them is a still-existing executive order signed by President George W. Bush in the fall or 2001, which has not been tinkered with, interfered with, or rescinded.
By Robert Wenzel’s telling, the “best analysis of the Patriot Act renewal and the USA Freedom Act” comes courtesy of “Glenn Greenwald in discussion with Jameel Jaffer, the Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU,” at The Intercept.
The question of whether “the sunset of Section 215 will be a meaningful step towards reform” is especially informative:
GREENWALD: That’s what I was going to ask next, actually.
JAFFER: That’s a good question. The problem –
GREENWALD: Let me just interject there: the argument that people make, and I’m sympathetic to it, which isn’t the same thing as saying I agree with it, is how significant would it really be?
The NSA has all of these other authorities. They can cite executive orders and other things, on top of which they’ve done a really good job of co-opting laws in the past. We had this FISA law that said you can’t eavesdrop on Americans’ communications without a warrant, and they did it anyway.
They invented this incredibly radical interpretation of the Patriot Act – of 215 – that says “This lets us collect everything we want,” and that was the interpretation the Second Circuit, ten years later, rejected, finally, just a couple of weeks ago.
So given how adept they are at kind of co-opting the process to do what they want – the other authorities – and their propensity to circumvent the law or even break it to do what they want, how significant would it really be?