The guy who hacked then-VP candidate Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account was convicted Friday of 2 of the 4 charges filed against him, computer fraud and obstruction of justice. To which I say: excellent. Now, sentence him quickly, toss him in jail and let him fade into obscurity.
During the 2008 election cycle David Kendall of Tennessee hacked into Palin’s e-mail and published content from it. Various news outlets and lefty blogs tried everything they could to make this situation all about Palin herself instead of the criminal act perpetrated by Kendall but, fortunately, they failed. As I said when Kendall was convicted, this was neither a situation of a kid doing a childish prank nor was it a heroic whistle-blower trying to uncover a public official using private e-mail to hid her professional dealings away from FOIA laws. It was a man targeting an opposing political figure and dismissively breaking the law to attempt to dig up dirt. That failed on him both ways and now a jury has made it official. Good for them.
May 1st, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Crime & Punishment, Politics, Technology |
no comments
More than a year into President Obama’s administration, there are people out there who continue to say he’s not eligible to sit in the Oval Office by reason of the fact that he’s not an American citizen. They pin this entire notion on the idea that he wasn’t born here in the States and continue to seek proof of this by going after the birth records in the state of Hawaii.
Now, I understand that we should make sure that people running for office are in compliance with the law – and, in this case, the Constitution – and I don’t generally have an issue with asking to see the documentation of that compliance. Senators have to be residents of the states they intend to represent and no one would blink at someone confirming the residency requirement by checking out land records. I have, in the past, written about this matter and I do continue to believe that swiftest, surest method of killing this conspiracy theory “dead-in-its-tracks” dead would be for Obama to produce the birth certificate. Which, as I understand it, he’s done. Note that many of the right’s leading lights – virtually all of the Republican leadership, virtually all of the right’s national punditry, conservative community leaders such as Eric Erickson of RedState – have vocally denounced the “birther” movement.
That hasn’t stopped some people from continuing to demand more/better documentation. Apparently, Hawaii continues to receive requests for the birth certificate and, in accordance with the law, they respond as they must. I have some experience with requesting vital records from state agencies as I’ve been involved in genealogical research for nearly 2 decades. Most of my requests have been for people long dead. Literally every state in the Union has laws in place that deny access to the vital records of any living person by anyone except a family member, and it better be an immediate family member at that. Simply put, no citizen of the United States has any reasonable expectation of access to the vital records of another, unrelated citizen. (Law enforcement professionals excepted under very specific circumstances.) To think that one should be given such a document just by asking shows a real ignorance of the laws and, frankly, a real arrogance. To make matters worse, some of these people are sending multiple requests for the same information, again and again, even after they’ve been told, “no.”
Well, members of Hawaii’s legislature are proposing a law that would be able to classify someone as a “vexatious requester” for making the same demands after being given an official response already. Such individuals would then be 1) ignored completely for the purposes of responding to the specific request and 2) have their rights to government records restricted for 2 years.
Understandable, but a bit too heavy, I think. While such a person should still be allowed to make records requests on other matters, I do believe that once a person’s request for information has been answered – in the affirmative or the negative – the state should then be allowed to simply respond to a 2nd request with a “we already answered that” note. Further requests should be simply ignored. If the person in question wants to keep after it, they need to use a different approach, such as filing a lawsuit if they feel they have a case.
Simply put, I think the proposed law is a bit too much but I support them changing their laws to disallow people from nagging the state over this.
March 17th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Politics |
3 comments
…same as the old boss, as the lyrics go. I give you President Obama, speaking to a VFW Post in Phoenix:
“If a project doesn’t support our troops, we will not fund it,” he said to a meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix. “If a system doesn’t perform, we will terminate it. And if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with that kind of pork, I will veto it. “
That’s from this Fox News report on the pork in the defense appropriations bill signed by the President last week. How much pork? There are 1720 earmarks in that bill reportedly totaling $4.2 billion. Listed highlights:
∙$5 million for a visitors center in San Francisco
∙$23 million for indigent health care in Hawaii
∙$18 million for the Edward Kennedy Policy Institute in Massachusetts
∙$1.6 million to computerize hospital records in Oakland
∙$47 million for anti-drug training centers around the country
∙$20 million for the World War II Museum in Louisiana
∙$3.9 million grant to develop an energy-efficient solar film for buildings
∙$800,000 for minority prostate cancer research
∙$3.6 million for marijuana eradication in Kentucky
∙$2.4 million for handicap access and a sprinkler system at a community club in New York
I’m sorry, where does the military support come in from a visitor center in San Fran? From burning marijuana fields in Kentucky? And that sprinkler system in the New York community center? Perhaps any of these things are worthy projects, but how do they belong in a defense bill?
They don’t. They shouldn’t be there at all and the President promised on multiple occasions not to allow them – change, remember? Neither this Congress nor this President are the first to engage in serious pork-barreling. One of my major complaints with the previous administration and in the Congress elected between 2000 and 2005 was their drunken-sailor approach to the public’s money. They also weren’t the first but they sure didn’t put on any brakes in the spending, either. Obama campaigned extensively saying that was going to stop, the one and only bright spot I ever found in his rhetoric. I am hardly surprised he’s casually busted this promise, too, but I’m also not going to just dismiss it as business-as-usual. I would have hoped that his supporters wouldn’t, either, but that’s not going to happen. It’s actions like this – both the passage of this bill and the signing of it – that give rise to and fuel the Tea Party actions around the country. Perhaps this time we can get serious about throwing the bums out and start over with people for whom fiscal prudence isn’t a punch line.
January 1st, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Economy, Military, Politics |
one comment
I have to be completely honest about something that’s in the news these days that I was really planning on ignoring: I don’t really believe that President Obama was born in a foreign country. Barring real evidence to the contrary, I have no reason to doubt the word of the Vital Records folks in Hawaii who say their records show Obama was born there in 1961. And I honestly believed I was part of a firm majority of people in Virginia who felt the same.
However, word is coming out about a Public Policy Polling survey due to be released today that 41% of my fellow Virginia Republicans believe Obama wasn’t born in the US. (Really, guys? 41%?) Just 32% believe as I do that he was while 27% – almost as many of us who believe he was born in Hawaii – aren’t sure. There’s no reason to believe that these figures are somehow massively different in Virginia than they are elsewhere but even if it’s just half of that nationwide, that’s still 1 in 5 Americans with a serious doubt that the man sitting in the Oval Office is legally qualified to be there. That’s a very big deal.
I read an opinion piece by Chuck Norris yesterday and it got me thinking: if this kind of uncertainty exists why not do something about it. Norris says the same thing:
I’m writing you because this is no longer a matter merely about proving a presidential prerequisite in the Constitution. Refusing to post a copy of your original birth certificate is an unwise political and leadership decision that is enabling the birther controversy. The nation you are called to lead is experiencing a growing swell of conspirators who are convinced that you are covering up something. So why not just prove them wrong and shut them up?
To the members of Obama’s supporting team who have suddenly decided that dissent isn’t the patriotic duty they have been claiming it was for 8 years, take note that Norris explicitly states that he’s not among those who believe Obama wasn’t born in America. Read Norris’ whole article and you’ll see that he’s more concerned about the wisdom of allowing such a controversy to survive and grow when the fix for it would be simple and devastatingly quick.
But is it right and proper to be asking for that document to be released? Well, we demand that our Presidents release their medical reports. We demand to know their tax returns. We demand these things because we want to know that the man at the top is medically fit for such an office and that he’s adhering to the law in fiscal matters. The issue of whether he was born here in America isn’t academic and it’s not political, it’s a matter of Constitutional law and it’s black and white. He’s either legally permitted to run and hold the office or he’s not.
The requirements consist of him being of a certain age (35 years old or more) and that he be a native-born U.S. citizen. (A third requirement exists that he also must have lived in the US for 14 or more years but we know that’s been met by President Obama.) The only document that can conclusively prove that he meets both of the first 2 requirements is a birth certificate. That document is required for anyone so much as trying to get a drivers’ license in this country and it’s suddenly a no-no to ask that we see it when we’re confirming eligibility to be the President? Asking for documented proof of legal eligibility is not wrong and the mere asking is not traitorous regardless of the various commentary being aired – on both sides of the political aisle. I’m with Norris on this one: put up and shut them up. If this is such the non-issue it’s being claimed, then produce the document, shove it into the nearest “birther’s” face, and tell them to stick their conspiracy theories where the sun don’t shine.
Then we can get on with the rest of this business we have before us.
Update: Jonah Goldberg at The Corner has an interesting take.
August 4th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Law, Politics |
4 comments
It was several months past the 2000 elections that I first recall noticing something I hadn’t seen in years past: a campaign bumper sticker on the car ahead of me in traffic. Now, some of those older stickers were pure hell to remove from a bumper and you could tell from the scratched-up appearance of them that the owners of the car had made a shot at getting rid of them. But this one was different. It was clear that no such attempt had been made.
Once noticed, it became impossible not to see them whenever they appeared and I was curious that I was seeing them in far greater numbers than before. There were some for Bush/Cheney here and there but it was the Gore/Liberman stickers that appeared most often. At first I simply dismissed it as evidence of a forgetful car owner. Then along came the 2004 campaign and the Gore/Liberman stickers disappeared virtually overnight, replaced by Kerry/Edwards stickers. I put a Bush/Cheney sticker on my car, too, and a sign in my yard as I recall. The day after the election, both items went into the trash, their task complete. Again, the incidence of stickers left on other cars continued to wane in the following days but they were still there.
It was a year later than I was still seeing Kerry/Edwards stickers but this time I was also paying attention to what the owners of those cars were saying when I was in earshot and to what else was on their bumpers. There were the “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kerry” stickers, ones that said “01/20/09″ referencing the date when Bush would leave office, and – most irritatingly – the ones that said “He’s not MY President!” It was in late 2005 when I saw a brand-new car, still with the temporary tags on it and less than 30 days old, with a Kerry/Edwards sticker taped to the bumper that the proof became undeniable: the sticker was still a political statement but its purpose now was to display membership in the anti-Bush set. It was a tribal marking. It was a notice to fellow Kerry supporters and a continued shaken fist to those of us who hadn’t supported Kerry. I continued to see these stickers right up through the Democratic convention this past fall. After that, they’ve disappeared, replaced with Obama’s stuff.
As I always do, I took my bumpers stickers off and took the sign down the day after the election. Both went into the trash, their task complete. Obama stickers are, of course, still rampant. You cannot drive in DC for longer than a minute without seeing one. The campaign is over, the President has been elected. The stickers are exactly what the Kerry/Edwards stickers were, albeit with a happier ending for their owners and an unhappier one for those of us who didn’t support Obama’s election. Intended or not, they’re a mocking jeer to those of us who supported the opposition and, in the spirit of the President’s call for Renewal and Reconciliation, I have suggestion and a request.
Lose the stickers.
The campaign is over, you guys won. Take the stickers off the cars. Put them into a scrapbook with pictures and news clippings so you can relive the moment in the years to come. But if you’re looking for a reconciliation and you’re really interested in having your fellow Americans work with you instead of just sullenly opposing every word you utter, how about showing a little of that vaunted compassion and not continue to toss it into our faces? Take the stickers off the cars.
Which brings me to my fellow conservatives and Republicans. Some of you still have McCain/Palin stickers on your cars and I understand completely why you do. Eight years of driving around behind cars with Gore and Kerry stickers on them, visible reminders from their owners that they weren’t one of you, might lead you to feel completely justified to return the favor. Well, it’s not helping and you’re falling into the same kind of tribalism that’s been tossed in front of you these past several years. If you’re truly a supporter of our Constitution then there’s no question Obama is, in fact, your President. The only thing you’re doing with the sticker is keeping this Hatfield and McCoy feud going and there’s no future in that. So please, lose the sticker. Take it off the car. Put it into a scrapbook with printoffs of whatever blog, newspaper or magazine you read so you can show your part in this moment in history. You should do that, in fact, so you can help avoid the characterization in years to come that anyone who didn’t support Obama was just being racist. Do it for whatever reason you like but get the stickers off the cars.
A little civility from both sides is all this would be. It’s an approach to fellow Americans that doesn’t start every conversation with a needling little barb, a personal insult flowing from a feeling of personal justification. It’s a path to getting over the differences and, perhaps, working on the commonalities.
So please, folks. Take the stickers off the cars.
January 24th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Politics, Virginia Politics |
one comment
Uh-oh.
Federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich Tuesday on charges that he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder.
Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field, according to a federal criminal complaint. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper’s editorial board who had been critical of him fired.
I’m guessing the Governor won’t be making the selection of which person gets Senator Obama’s seat in the next Congress.
December 9th, 2008
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Crime & Punishment, Politics |
3 comments
Over at the Heritage Foundation’s blog, The Foundry:
The liberal political establishment is always expressing its concern over the possible “disenfranchisement” of voters (claims that almost always turn out to be completely exaggerated), but their concerns seem to disappear when the disenfranchised are military voters. How else can one explain the almost total lack of interest expressed over the pending disenfranchisement of possibly thousands of overseas voters in Virginia, mostly military personnel?
Not good, fellow Virginians, not good at all.
December 4th, 2008
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Military, Politics, Virginia Politics |
no comments
No doubt brought to you by the same people who put up that idiotic “We’re sorry” web site after the 2004 elections, there’s a site up that’s calling itself “from52to48withlove.” And no, it’s not some internet porn site. This is a string of pictures people have taken showing “the 52″ – that’s the 52% of Americans who voted for Obama – holding up signs imploring “the 48″ – that’s the 48% of us who voted for McCain – to reach out across the aisle and work together under the new administration.
My first thought? Yeah? Where were you guys in 2000 and 2004 when I was getting called “dumb” on magazine covers? Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee and Pajamas Media had a similar reaction:
How wonderful that you want to reach out now, after the last eight years.
You do remember the last eight years, right?
You lost in Florida. Remember how you reacted? “Selected, not elected,” and “Not my President” were the order of the day. But that was just the beginning. You kept nursing your grudge, cultivating it, stocking it, and formed insular, community-based realities to echo and increase your hysteria.
That budding insanity you reveled in helped lead to ever-more vicious rants and vitriol, of course, including the “Chimperor” angle, where the lesser accomplished of you bashed the President’s intellect, and later, of course, the frothing “Bushilter” and “Darth Cheney” rants.
Perhaps even worse, you let your contempt for President Bush and Vice President Cheney spread to hate those who put their lives on the line to serve this nation in your defense.
Mr. Owens says it quite well and I agree with his assessment at the end of the article. While there are pictures allegedly from “a 48″ to “the 52″ the site is clearly intended to be messages from the supporters of the winner to their opponents. I’ve run into the kind of attitude on display at the site in many, many places over the past few days, some just as an observer and some directed right at me. One of those used the same phrase I see in a few of these pictures: “I promise to listen to your points.” In reply I asked, point blank, why I would believe that promise after the last 8 years. I’ve asked in return why they are expecting we who supported McCain to behave differently than they did after their candidates lost to President Bush. Their response has been illuminating.
“Well,” they generally say, “we’ve got to break this cycle and start working together.” Fascinating that they only hold that opinion when it’s their side in control.
So, to the 52 I have a reply. Want me to believe you mean it? Prove it. Let’s see you really offer support and compromise and act like you give more than a passing fart about what concerns me. I’m not holding out much hope, but I’ll give you the shot at proving your intentions. Just never lose sight of who acted like the hysterical crybabies in the first place and never assume I’m motivated the same way.
November 11th, 2008
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Politics |
no comments
It’s been noted that during the recent campaign Obama managed to get himself into trouble more often than not when he was forced into speaking impromtu. It hasn’t even been a week and we’re seeing that the trend is going to continue, if not worsen.
President-elect Obama called Nancy Reagan on Friday to apologize for joking that she held seances in the White House.
At a news conference in Chicago, Obama said he had spoken with all the living presidents as he prepares to take office in January. Then he smiled and said, “I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances.”
Smooth one, Senator. Never mind that it wasn’t Nancy Reagan who ever did anything even remotely characterized as a “seance.” That was Hillary Clinton.
The realization that he’d managed to carelessly insult someone respected by a significant chunk of the American populace caused his handlers some serious heartburn, no doubt, and prompted the phone call apology. It’s a bad omen, however, of things to come. There are people in the world for whom a hasty phone call will not suffice to remove a careless insult. There are nations on Earth that won’t so easily forgive such a slight. Obama’s managed to get himself into the big leagues and specifically into a spot where there’s nothing to hide his record behind. A string of thoughtless remarks followed by an endless stream of “Oh, gee, I’m sorry”‘s will get old to foreign nations pretty quickly and it’ll just make Obama – and America by association – look bumbling and foolish.
Not the change we were hoping for.
November 8th, 2008
Posted by
ricjames |
2008 Presidential Race, Politics |
no comments
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