Posted on May 23, 2013 by Paul Mirengoff in IRS, Obama Administration Scandals

White House counsel met with top treasury lawyer three times last year after learning of IRS audit

The Daily Caller reports that White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler had three unprecedented one-on-one meetings last year with the Treasury Department’s chief lawyer, Chistopher Meade. The meetings were in September and December of 2012. Meade had known about the inspector general’s investigation of the IRS’s targeting of conservative nonprofits since at least June 2012.

According to the Daily Caller, Ruemmler had never previous met with Meade one-on-one.

Meade and Ruemmler also were involved in a larger meeting on July 2, 2012 and another one on July 17, says the Daily Caller. These meetings occurred soon after Meade became acting general counsel of the Treasury Department in June. At that time, if not before, Meade found out about the IRS audit. Meade had been at Treasury since March 2010.

Ruemmler says she didn’t learn about the audit until last month. But the timing of her meetings with Meade casts suspicion on that claim. Ordinarily, one would expect that the blockbuster IRS audit would a topic, if not Topic A, in any discussion between the top Treasury Department lawyer and the top White House lawyer.

As an aside, and for what it’s worth, let’s look more closely at these two lawyers. Ruemmler has an excellent reputation in Washington. You can get a sense of it from this Washington Post story, which includes praise not just from liberal lawyers but from John Dowd, a Republican and a partner at my former law firm.

The Washington Post isn’t above shamelessly puffing favored Washington insiders. But a friend who is a leading conservative lawyer has spoken well to me of Ruemmler.

Nonetheless, Ruemmler has some questions to answer.

Meade is a former Ivy League radical. Not there’s anything horribly wrong with that — John and I plead guilty to the same charge.

But Meade wasn’t protesting the bloody Vietnam War or racial segregation. According to the Daily Caller, Meade was arrested in February 1990 for disorderly conduct after disrupting Vice President Dan Quayle’s speech to Congressional Republicans. Meade’s beef with Quayle? The U.S. military action in Panama!

Meade was something of a Whiz Kid at Princeton. “Give me any issue,” he boasted to the school newspaper, “and I’ll tell you why we’re protesting the Bush administration’s policy on it.”

One can imagine how he feels about the Tea Party.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Obama Administration Scandals

They’re Right: Obama Is No Tricky Dick

There’s an old adage in the public relations trade that if you’re on the defensive, you’re losing the PR battle.  And so it is rather delicious to watch Obama’s defenders on the left furiously spinning that no, no—no way is any of this like Nixon!  Scott already took down Steve Chapman’s “false equivalence” column; the Washington Post editorial board—and who is more authoritative on Watergate than them??—thinks the comparison risible.  But the sober Carl Cannon finds the demurrals unconvincing and thinks the comparison fits, while Al Hunt, my museum-grade exhibit for the mediocrity of modern journalism, says Obama is “no better than Nixon” and that John Mitchell must be smirking somewhere about Eric Holder.

You can spell all this shorter: Fail!

But Bill Kristol ironically joins in the Obama-Nixon deniers by noting that indeed Obama isn’t Nixon because. . . Nixon was a far superior person and president:

I protest. Will no one stand up for Richard Nixon? Richard Nixon was a combat veteran, a staunch and brave anti-Communist, a man who took on the liberal establishment and at times his own party’s as well, a leader who often thought for himself and had the courage of his convictions, a president who assembled a first-rate Cabinet and one who—while flawed both in character and in policy judgment—usually tried to confront the real problems and deal with challenges of his times. Richard Nixon led neither the country nor his own administration from behind.

Hear, hear!  Of course, as my old mentor M. Stanton Evans liked to say, a true conservative is someone who didn’t support Nixon until after Watergate.  Or, as he claimed at the time, he called the White House in 1973 to say, “Gosh, if I’d known you guys were doing all of this neat stuff I wouldn’t have been so hard on you.”  Stan was among the conservatives who broke publicly with Nixon in 1971, saying at the time, “There’s only two things I don’t like about the Nixon administration—its domestic policy, and its foreign policy.”

But this raises a point: Prior to these scandals, unlike conservatives under Nixon, hardly anyone on the left raised his voice in opposition to things like drone warfare and Gitmo that had them marching in the streets under Bush.  Because power is more important than principle.  If Obama’s support from the left really does begin to break seriously, it will be because he threatens to take down the left’s hold on political power.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Energy Policy, Environment

Environmentalists for Nuclear Power

I’ve had occasion to write before about my enviro-dissident pals Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland (here, here, here, and here, and also in National Review), describing them on one occasion as “my existentially-challenged progressive pals.”  Well, now they’ve really done it: a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal on why environmentalists should support nuclear power.

Along the way, they really deliver some well-deserved smack on Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Bill McKibben:

The same environmental leaders point to Germany’s solar program as a model for effective action on global warming. Mr. McKibben describes Germany as “the only major country that’s really pursued renewable power at an appropriate pace” and points out that its state of Bavaria boasts more solar panels than the entire U.S. Germany’s solar panels were “enough to provide close to 50 percent of the nation’s power,” Mr. Kennedy wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times.

All of this has led many to conclude that electricity from Germany’s solar power is far cheaper than Finland’s new nuclear power will be. The opposite is the case.

The cost of building and operating the Finnish nuclear plant over the next 20 years will be $15 billion. Over that time period, the plant will generate 225 terawatt-hours (twh) of electricity at a cost of 7 cents per kilowatt hour.

Since 2000, Germany has heavily subsidized electricity production from solar panels—offering long-term contracts to producers to purchase electricity at prices substantially above wholesale rates. The resulting solar installations are expected to generate 400 twh electricity over the 20 years that the panels will receive the subsidy, at a total cost to German ratepayers of $130 billion, or 32 cents per kwh.

In short, solar electricity in Germany will cost almost five times more for every kilowatt hour of electricity it provides than Finland’s new nuclear plant.

This is all prelude to the release next month of a documentary movie entitled Pandora’s Promise, in which a number of leading environmentalists will tell how and why they have changed their mind on nuclear power.  The film played well at the Sundance Film Festival recently (I guess Robert Redford was asleep at his solar-powered switch when the application came in that day).  Here’s the trailer:

And is you have another five minutes, here’s the director Robert Stone explaining some background to the film.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Islam, Minnesota, Terrorism

Judge Davis and the Muslim-American muddle

Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States, numbering at least 25,000. If it takes a village, we have a couple.

Yet we know amazingly little about the Somali community, probably because we are afraid to ask the relevant questions. We know they are mostly Muslim — we can see the hijabs, we are familiar with the many local controversies to which their faith has given rise over the past 10 years — but are they loyal residents or citizens of the United States? In the conflict between the United States and the Islamist forces with which we are contending, whose side are they on?

The terror trial that concluded with a raft of guilty verdicts in October 2011 raised these questions and others. The two convicted defendants are women who were convicted of charges including conspiracy to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, of providing support, and of lying to the FBI. The “terrorist organization” is al Shabab, an affiliate of al Qaeda. The women were naturalized American citizens pursuing the jihad in Rochester, Minnesota.

The ringleader was not exactly remorseful after the jury returned its guilty verdicts. According to the AP, she stood before the judge and stated through an interpreter: “I am very happy.” She added that she knew she was going to heaven. As I noted last week, she may be going to heaven, but she’ll be stopping off in prison first. As for the rest of us, she advised: “You will go to hell.” Yes, ma’am, the feeling is mutual.

The investigation that resulted in the charges involved here has consumed the local FBI office for years. The investigation has previously resulted in a string of guilty pleas involving local Somali men supporting al Shabab. A subsequent case against Mahamud Said Omar in guilty verdicts in Minneapolis this past October. Investigators believe at least 21 Somali men have left Minnesota to join al Shabab. We’re a little concerned they might choose to return to Minnesota to continue the jihad.

What about the rest of the local Somali community? Members of the local Somali community materialized at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis to support the women at trial, but not because they didn’t commit the crimes charged. The members of the local Somali community appearing at the courthouse never bothered to cite any evidence of innocence. The question was beside the point. No voice expressly spoke up on behalf of law-abidingness or loyalty to the United States, and no journalist has to my knowledge explored the issue, although Peter Skerry provided some valuable background (and no comfort) in “The Muslim-American muddle.”

It’s easy to miss, but the Minnesota cases have been in the news this month as some of the Somali defendants returned to court for sentencing. The man convicted last fall appeared for sentencing last week, as did the two women.

The common thread in these cases is the presiding judge, United States District Judge Michael Davis, a man for whom I have great respect. I tried a small case before him when he was a state district court judge and John and I litigated a serious free speech case against the University of Minnesota before him in federal court. He is a fair man and a fine judge.

Last week in sentencing a Somali man who had pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government in the case of the man convicted at trial last fall, Judge Davis said: “I don’t know you. The government doesn’t know you. Your family doesn’t know you.” He obviously remains troubled by the evidence in the case.

In separate hearings for the two women last week, Judge Davis sentenced the ringleader to 20 years and her colleague to 10 years. Before sentencing the women, Judge Davis asked them if they supported jihad, suicide bombings and Sharia law. “Does she understand there are some Muslim women who wear dresses or short skirts?” Davis asked the interpreter for one of the women. As in the case involving the Somali man, Judge Davis must have been troubled by the evidence at trial. Judge Davis said the questions were aimed at determining the likelihood that the women would continue to support terrorist causes when they are released from prison.

So there is of course a sequel. CAIR promptly announced that it plans to file a complaint against Judge Davis for questioning the women on their religious beliefs and “equating mainstream Islamic principles with terrorism,” as the CAIR news release puts it. As for the relationship between “mainstream Islamic principles” and terrorism, at any rate, we’re not supposed to see it, say it, think it or act on it, lest we be stigmatized as “Islamophobic.”

CAIR itself has been aptly described by Daniel Pipes as Islamists fooling the establishment. It’s an establishment of which Judge Davis appears no longer to be a member in good standing.

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Paul Mirengoff in IRS, Obama Administration Scandals

Did Lois Lerner waive her Fifth Amendment protection?

William Taylor III, the lawyer Lois Lerner selected to represent her before the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, is part of a firm that’s about as tight with the Obama administration as it could be. According to Washingtonian Magazine, the firm, a boutique litigation shop called Zuckerman Spaeder, has sent a higher percentage of partners into the Obama administration than any other law firm.

But did Lerner’s lawyer do her a disservice today by having her make an opening statement in which she denied all wrongdoing? Rep. Trey Gowdy certainly thought so. He argued that, by denying any wrongdoing, Lerner waived her right to assert the Fifth Amendment. The theory is that a witness cannot affirmatively assert her innocence and then dodge examination about that assertion through a privilege claim.

Committee chairman Issa says he’s looking into the question of whether Lerner’s assertion of her innocence, coupled with her authentication of certain documents, constitutes a waiver. If Issa and committee counsel conclude that it does, he presumably will recall Lerner as a witness.

But Lerner’s denial of guilt was extremely general. It involved no statements about specific facts. In that sense, it seemed more analogous to a plea of “not guilty” (though there are no pleas at a congressional committee hearing) than to substantive testimony.

Does this mean that she didn’t waive the Fifth Amendment after all? To me, it seems like a close question.

That’s also the conclusion reached by Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy. Kerr contacted a list of criminal procedure professors that, he says, includes some serious Fifth Amendment experts. The result?

Opinions were somewhat mixed, but I think it’s fair to say that the bulk of responders thought that Lerner had not actually testified because she gave no statements about the facts of what happened. If that view is right, Lerner successfully invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and cannot be called again. But this was not a unanimous view, it was not based on the full transcript, and there are no cases that seem to be directly on point.

Since the question is unsettled and probably close, it seems to me that Lerner was not well-served today by her counsel, however well-connected to the Obama administration it may be.

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in Media, Obama Administration Scandals

Investigate reporters, but only when there’s something to investigate

The emerging conservative line on the Obama administration’s aggressive investigations of journalists is that national security leaks should be dealt with by going after the leaker, not the reporter. I’ve heard this line from a number of conservative commentators, most notably Karl Rove.

I couldn’t disagree more. Reporters are not above the law. And, as John has explained, the law (per the Espionage Act, 18 US Code Section 793) prohibits the publication of classified information where such publication will damage the United States. Here is the relevant language:

Whoever, lawfully having possession of…information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates…the same to any person not entitled to receive it…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years or both.

Moreover, it makes no sense to enforce this law exclusively by investigating the leakers. Reporters violate the law in the open by publishing stories. Leakers violate the law behind closed doors by talking to reporters.

Good reporters don’t reveal confidential sources. Typically, therefore, investigating the reporter will be the only practical way to investigate the leaker.

The problem with the Obama Justice Department’s investigation of AP and Fox News’ James Rosen is not that reporters are being investigated aggressively. The problem is that the case that these reporters damaged American interests through their reporting seems thin to non-existent.

The temptation when yet another Obama administration scandal erupts is to reach for the nearest available argument with which to cast the administration in the worst possible light. But the temptation should be resisted if it entails making bad arguments, especially when the bad arguments display an insufficient regard for our national security.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Islam, Terrorism

The Great Liberal Death Wish, London Edition

There’s an old saying in journalism—a story just “too good to check out.”  You can tell the media’s bias not only from what they won’t check out, but what they won’t even consider checking out, let alone reporting.

News item: a deranged young man, James Holmes, shoots up a Denver theater last summer killing 12, and ABC News’s Brian Ross goes on the air to note that there’s a “James Holmes” affiliated with a Tea Party group in the area.  Didn’t bother to check it out; it was too good not to rush to broadcast.  Turns out there was no connection.

News item: following the bombing of the Boston marathon, a host of left-leaning media types hoped it would turn out to be a “white American” and not a Muslim extremist.  NPR’s Diana Temple-Raston speculated on air that it was likely right-wing extremists behind the bombing because it was Hitler’s birthday that week, and Hitler’s birthday is “big” for the right.

News item: Terrorists behead a British soldier in broad daylight, and then proclaim to bystanders that “They won’t stop fighting until you leave us alone.”  And on the network news broadcasts I took in tonight I did not hear the word “Islamic” mentioned once in connection to the story, which even Janet Napolitano can’t spin into something other than terrorism.  Wouldn’t want to “speculate,” as Brian Ross might put it.  Despicable.  The media, that is.  Another example of Malcolm Muggeridge’s “Great Liberal Death Wish” in action.  Among the British papers, it seems only the Daily Mail and Daily Star are calling it plainly:

Click to enlarge

P.S.? Leave us alone?  Might be more reasonable if they said that in the countries they came from, instead in of one of ours.