Comey Violated Policy, Dorian on the Way
Friday, August 30, 2019
Vol. 8, No. 230
Comey gave one memo to a person who then leaked it to TheNY Times with the intent of getting the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate. “Comey violated F.B.I. policy and the requirements of his F.B.I. employment agreement when he chose this path,” the report said.
Part of the issue was whether the memos were Comey’s private property or that they belonged to the FBI. The IG sided with the FBI.
The President quickly wrote on Twitter, “Perhaps never in the history of our Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector General’s Report. He should be ashamed of himself!”
Oh, let’s see if anyone else in American history is more thoroughly disgraced. Hmmm … Benedict Arnold; Tokyo Rose; The Rosenbergs?
This morning Trump was claiming victimhood. “The disastrous IG Report on James Comey shows, in the strongest of terms, how unfairly I, and tens of millions of great people who support me, were treated. Our rights and liberties were illegally stripped away by this dishonest fool. We should be given our stolen time back?”
Stormy Weather:Florida residents are stocking up on food and water and battening down the hatches. Hurricane Dorian is now on schedule to hit Florida sometime Monday afternoon and it could be a Category 4 when it gets there.
This morning Dorian was north of the Dominican Republic beginning to make a left turn toward Florida.
Political Climate:In its continuing efforts to roll back climate protections, the Trump administration is proposing to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change.
Trump has rolled back at least 84 climate and pollution regulations. He has sought to open millions of acres of public land and water to oil and gas drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He’s pushing to open Alaska’s Tsongas National Forest to logging.
The EPA nowproposes to eliminate requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines, and storage facilities. It will also reopen the question of whether the EPA even has legal authority to regulate methane.
What’s odd is that major energy companies are against doing this. It’s like the car companies that won’t lower their emissions standards to the Trump level.
The Thought Police:A 17-year-old Harvard student from Lebanon travelling to Boston for his freshman year was stopped and sent home from Boston’s Logan Airport by Customs and Border Protection agents who examined the student’s laptop and didn’t like the social media posts of his friends.
Ismail B. Ajjawi, of Tyre, Lebanon, who is Palestinian, told The Harvard Crimsonthat his phone and laptop were searched and that an agent yelled at him and “said she found people posting political points of view that oppose the U.S. on my friend list.”
Ajjawi said he told the agent that he should not be held responsible for the posts of people he knows. “I responded that I have no business with such posts and that I didn’t like, share or comment on them.”
The News Roundup:Facing protests and political pressure after shutting down Parliament to engineer an exit from the European Union, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, promised to make a better effort to reach an exit agreement with EU bosses in Brussels. —“Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek says he’s done with chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer and getting better. — Triple A says deaths from running red lights have reached a 10 year high. Drivers blowing through red lights killed 939 people in 2017, a 31 percent increase from a low of 715 people killed in 2009.
The Trumpster Fire: President Trump has authorized creation of a “Space Command” to defend America in what he calls “the next war-fighting domain.” He described the command as a precursor to the Space Force, a sixth branch of the military that he wants Congress to create. — Trump’s personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout, the President’s gatekeeper since before he took office, resigned yesterday after the revelation that she shared private information about the Trump family during a dinner with reporters staying near the President’s Bedminster, NY resort. The NY Timesattributed the news to someone “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House personnel issues.” So, someone leaked about the leaker.
The Obit Page:James Leavelle, the big detective in a light-colored suit and white Stetson who was escorting Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby, died yesterday at a hospital in Denver at age 99.
The shooting happened two days after the assassination of President John Kennedy. The picture of the shooting of the suspect became almost as iconic as photos of the Kennedy assassination itself. Oswald’s face is in a twisted grimace of pain and Leavelle looks stunned and shocked.
Leavelle later said he saw Ruby coming but didn’t have enough time to fully react. “He had a pistol by his side, I saw out of the corner of my eye,” Leavelle said. “I jerked back on Oswald to get him behind me. I had my hand through his belt. All I succeeded in doing, I turned him so instead of dead center the bullet hit four inches to the left of his navel and two inches above.”
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