Will the Weiner email cache revive the investigation of the Clinton Foundation?

I'm reading "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe/Laptop may contain thousands of messages sent to or from Mrs. Clinton’s private server" by Devlin Barrett at The Wall Street Journal. This is the long piece that Drudge is linking right now with the headline — in red — "FBI FOUND 650,000 EMAILS ON LAPTOP/DOJ BLOCKED FOUNDATION PROBE."

It's that second part that interested me the most. The discovery of the Weiner cache — and isn't it huge? — has overshadowed the Podesta emails, which contained what I thought was the October surprise: Chelsea Clinton's alarm over the pay-to-play structure of the Clinton Foundation. I cannot understand why the Clinton Foundation hasn't been a much bigger issue.

And now here's the news* that the Department of Justice blocked the FBI's investigation into the Foundation.

"That gave me a strange chill up the right side of my neck. Very physical!"

I said. About this. Audio here.

FBI gets a search warrant to look at the Huma Abedin email on the Anthony Weiner computer.

NBC News reports:

The FBI already had a warrant to search Weiner's laptop, but that only applied to evidence of his allegedly illicit communications with an underage girl.

"What I have been hearing from sources on both sides of the aisle with regard to this FBI situation is that the more likely impact will be on the down-ballot races that some of the races..."

"Some of the races were already, especially on the Senate side, breaking more for Republicans than in the past and that this new is a reminder to people that they may want a check and balance and that that will help."

Said Dana Bash, the CNN chief political correspondent, on "State of the Union" this morning.

That is, those who want to keep Trump out of the White House but who also fear Hillary Clinton might — especially if they think Hillary is going to win — focus on keeping the Congress Republican in order to put a brake on her... or even — more aggressively — to set up an impeachment.

"Both campaigns live in fear of one thing: the last seven days of the election being a referendum on why they stink. "

Said Mike Murphy (the Republican strategist) on "Meet the Press" today.

And the NPR host Audie Cornish chimed in:

I think for that last few months, we've learned that any time one of them is under the spotlight, they get roughed up in the polls. They don't look good. There's never a time they're in the spotlight and people say, "Gee, I think I like that person after all."

It made me think of the line from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame": "I frighten you. I am very ugly, am I not? Do not look at me..."

"But what I'm hearing from everybody... The F.B.I. is in full revolt right now. The F.B.I. has been in full revolt since the decisions made last summer."

Said Audie Cornish on "Meet the Press" today, claiming "some sources in the F.B.I. and the former district attorney's." (Cornish is the host of NPR's "All Things Considered.")

The moderator, Chuck Todd, immediately pushed her back: "Not full revolt. There's been a lot. I mean it's--there are agents--Let's not say full revolt." Todd was very controlling of his guests today, interrupting a lot. I thought it made him seem desperate.

Cornish continued:

CORNISH: All right, a semi-full revolt. Because what I'm getting at is if Comey hadn't said what he said to Congress and the rest of the world, it would have leaked. It would have leaked. That whole building was ready to leak that they had discovered this new source with Weiner and Abedin. So, I don't think Comey had much chance [choice?] here. And I think the F.B.I. is badly divided.

I think that explains a lot about why Comey got his letter out. There was also this, from Pete Williams (the "Meet the Press" justice correspondent), who who was asked whether Comey would "provide more details before the election" (as both the Clinton and Trump campaigns have requested):

PETE WILLIAMS: [That's not going to happen] based on what I was told just in the last couple of hours. I don't think they plan to say anything further. They believe that they did the right thing by telling Congress about this development. And their logic goes something like this: that the fact of the discovery of these emails was going to leak. That if it had leaked it would come out in all sorts of different ways and be interpreted in all sorts of different ways, and that the best way to handle this was just to get out in front of it. And secondly, they thought that if they waited till after the election and then it was discovered that they had found these emails, that would play into this whole scenario about how the system is rigged.

AND: Mike Pence was also a guest on the show. (And Todd really interrupted the hell out of him, but Pence kept his relentlessly on-task, solemn demeanor.) Pence brought out a point that I hadn't seen elsewhere: "[T]he F.B.I. director is keeping his word to the Congress that if new pertinent information came forward that justified the reopening of the case, that he would alert the Congress." If that's correct, that's the answer to the question why Comey came forward when he did.

Picking up the idea that Comey was keeping his word, that he had no choice, but a duty, Todd asked: "Do you think think Director Comey has a duty, though, to share more information of what's known?" Pence, ever somber, came out with: "I think he has a duty to move forward professionally and in a timely way on this." So, basically, no, Comey doesn't need to say anything more. In fact, Pence added, why doesn't Huma Abedin just put her emails out? Why does the Hillary campaign think the missing information should come from the FBI? If they sincerely want transparency, why don't they get transparent?

At the Red Leaf Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

And, please, if you've got some shopping to do, use the Althouse Amazon Portal.

Photo taken this afternoon at Picnic Point.

Consider McMullin: "We're building something new.... And this new movement is what we need."

Text here. Excerpt:

MIKE MURPHY: All right. So, I think it's an awful choice as an anti-Trump Republican between the malevolence of Trump and the distrustworthiness of Clinton. But the practical effect if you carry Utah, and I think you might, will be to give her a big electoral advantage. Are you okay with that lesser evil winning.... if that means stopping Trump?

EVAN MCMULLIN: Everybody wants us to, to think about this election in terms of this binary choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Look, if we keep--

MIKE MURPHY: But that's the choice we have.

EVAN MCMULLIN: Well, no. If we keep casting our votes for leaders like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump because we only accept that those are the only two real options, as many would say, then we're going to get-- we're going to keep getting more Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. We need to finally take a stand in this country. Voters are sick and tired of the options they're being given by the two major parties. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump personify the leadership crisis that we're having in this country. We're standing up. We're building something new.... And this new movement is what we need.

MIKE MURPHY: So it's a vote for--the future to make a statement, although the raw politics of it are it probably helps the--...

EVAN MCMULLIN: If the race-- if the race is close, we can block them both. And if no one was doing that, we wouldn't have this chance.

The idea is that if he gets one state, Utah, and it prevents either Clinton or Trump from getting a majority of electoral votes, it will throw the election to the House, and he will be one of the options and the best solution. 

Was that a "racist" costume at the University of Wisconsin football game last night?

Here's the tweet that got it started:

At the @UWBadgers game and there is a man with a mask of President Obama and a noose. This is racism, why was this allowed into the stadium? pic.twitter.com/zKEqhdDYny

— 😏 (@woahohkatie) October 29, 2016

And I see the UW twitter feed immediately responded: "Thanks for letting us know— Can you tell us what section you took this photo in?" and "We don't support offensive image of a noose, but this is a form of free speech. Guest Services asked them to remove & they did."

And the UW quickly put out this statement:



It was the night of Freakfest, Madison's Halloween revelry downtown, and the early evening football game — a few blocks away from the Freakfest location — was part of a huge social occasion yesterday. (Meade and I holed up inside, watched the game on TV, and went to bed early as the sound of screaming revelers moved farther away from the stadium area to State Street.) So there were some costumes at the game, and as you can see from the statement, the rules were that you could wear a mask once you got inside the stadium.

I don't like depictions of lynching political figures. Here's an old post of mine expressing dismay over a sign picturing the lynching of Scott Walker. And later, I linked back to that post, saying "I said imagine how Democrats would react if Tea Partiers had... depict[ed] a Democratic Party politician as Hitler or with his head in a noose."

And I agree that there is a special problem with showing a black person with his head in a noose, given the history of lynching in America.

But take a closer look at that tweeted picture. See the hand with the peace sign? The person is facing away from the camera. The Obama mask is on the back of the head. We see the shape of a larger mask in front. And if you look closely at the pink sign, the words are Hillary Clinton's: "What difference at this point does it make?" I assume the mask on the front-side of the head depicts Hillary Clinton. And yes, poking around, I see this view of the front of the person. It is a big Hillary Clinton face, and there's another person with a big Trump mask and he's holding the other end of the rope. The rope-holding Trump is walking the noosed Hillary in the manner of Pozzo leading Lucky in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot":



I have no idea if the costumed football fans intended to allude to the Nobelist's great play in which no one gets lynched: 2 characters — Lucky and Pozzo — are connected by a noose that works as a leash, and the other 2 characters — Vladimir and Estragon — consider hanging themselves:

ESTRAGON: What about hanging ourselves?
VLADIMIR: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
ESTRAGON: (highly excited). An erection!
VLADIMIR: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
ESTRAGON: Let's hang ourselves immediately!

But I think the political theater in the football stadium was intended to express Hillary's criminality and/or Trump's use of the idea that Hillary is a criminal. It could simply be that Hillary and Trump are bound together in a horrible drama that's scaring us, Halloween style.

What, then, of the Obama mask on the back of the head? What a distraction! What does a mask on the back of the head mean? I see that a mask worn on the back of the head may be a device to ward off predators while your back is turned:

Arguing that [the Bengal tiger] only attacks people from behind, workers in the mangrove forests started wearing face masks on the backs of their heads. Thus far the trick appears to have worked.

Mandrakes, mangroves... don't think too hard. It's only Halloween. What is the meaning of the costumes? If you have a nonracist message, take the trouble to edit out the part that will allow viewers to say "That's racist" or they'll never hear whatever it is you are trying to say.

Or do you want to talk about freedom of speech law? I'll take the position that UW handled it pretty well. They conveyed the importance of free-speech values and stressed that they merely asked the person to remove the mask. They reasoned with him and he accepted their point of view — don't make other people feel afraid or disrespected — and he removed "the offensive parts of the costume." That is, he accepted the argument that parts of the costume were offensive and that it would be better not to offend. He bought what the university was selling in the marketplace of ideas. Or that's my working theory until somebody gives me reason to think he was coerced.

IN THE COMMENTS: 2 excellent corrections:

Gahrie said:

Not all lynching was racial. While the Democrats in the South did concentrate on lynching Black people during the Jim Crow era, in the Old West and historically, it was mainly White people who were lynched. 

Grimson said:

AA: 2 characters — Lucky and Pozzo — are connected by a noose that works as a leash

The text mentions only a rope, not a noose, so clearly these are not a couple of Beckett devotees.

Beckett: Enter Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo drives Lucky by means of a rope passed round his neck. . .

Thanks for both of those. Just to rebalance a little, I'll say: 1. In the mind of present-day Americans, lynching is most likely to be associated with the history of racial injustices, and 2. In the photograph of the "Godot" production I've used and in other productions I've seen pictures of, the rope was tied in the classic "hangman's noose" knot. But I can see, with further research, that the rope isn't always tied that way in productions of "Godot" and also see that in real life, nooses don't always have the "hangman's noose" knot and that a rope with a knot put around a man's neck is perhaps fairly called a noose even when the text omits that explicit characterization of the rope.

"As varied and popular as the romantic Halloween customs were, they began to lose their hold on the American public in the early 20th century."

"Women, the traditional party hosts and targets of such games, were gaining greater agency over their lives, eroding the appeal of rituals that underscored their lack of power."

Games? Games like "snap apple":

"Who's right?" — someone asked me when she saw the results of my "Who is Althouse voting for?" poll.

Here's yesterday's post with the poll, and here's how the poll results look right now:



The "Who's right?" question came over on Facebook — where I talk to a limited audience and keep the settings on private. I answered the question over there, so let me quote myself so you can read what I said:

I may not ever say. What's in it for me to say? I'm proud of myself for blogging so much without it being apparent (or without making a decision, as the case may be). Why should I spoil it with a clunky, boring announcement? You might say, these questions can't be answered without knowing what my answer would be.

And:

Note that the total of the 3 third party candidates is larger than the pro-Hillary number. By the way, I believe the reason Clinton is outpolling Trump here is that a lot of my blog readers loathe Hillary and are annoyed to think that I'll vote for her — despite all the negative blogging I've done — because I can't resist being part of the occasion of electing the first woman President — even though I've never said I'm into that and have often expressed dismay that the first woman President should be someone who leveraged her career on her husband.

"I listen to my words but they fall far below/I let my music take me where my heart wants to go..."

Just a Sunday morning song. It's what I was listening to and I found it quite beautiful. I'd appreciate it if you'd resist saying the usual things that are said against this performer.

"Half of academic papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, peer reviewers, and journal editors."

"So what’s the reason for this madness? Why does the world continue to be subjected to just under 2 million academic journal articles each year?"

Asks Daniel Lattier in "Academics Write Rubbish Nobody Reads." I believe him that few academic articles are read and that they are written for the sake of the writer's resume. But that doesn't make them "rubbish." The process of writing develops the mind, and any given academic with his mind duly developed has a shot at benefiting colleagues and students who never read a word of it. And more importantly, there's something else, something that's the flip side of a negative point Lattier makes.

Ideally, the great academic minds of a society should be put to work for the sake of building up that society and addressing its problems. Instead, most Western academics today are using their intellectual capital to answer questions that nobody’s asking on pages that nobody’s reading.

What a waste.

Oh, I don't think we really want to put academics to work building up society and addressing its problems. It might be a very good thing to contain these academic types in a place where they won't do too much damage. It may be that we have marginalized these very intelligent people who live deeply in their own minds and conjure up new ideas because it's best to keep them separated and deactivated.

No one forces anyone to go into academics, and the people who go there may know — on some level — that they don't belong in the world of business and politics, that they shouldn't have their hands directly on any levers of power. The academy is a structural safeguard. We don't lock these people up. We give them a place they can choose to go, where they will be comfortable. Don't worry too much about the waste in not using them more... not until you've calculated the waste they would cause if set free to solve our problems.

Who is Althouse voting for anyway?

Do you even know? Take your best guess. The options are in alphabetical order:

Who is Althouse voting for?

Hillary Clinton

Gary Johnson

Evan McMullin

Jill Stein

Donald Trump

 

pollcode.com free polls

How hard was it for you to guess?

It was easy.

I'm was a bit hard, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

I was just about completely guessing.

I really have no idea and I don't even know if Althouse herself knows.

 

pollcode.com free polls

October orange.

"I got a lot of respect for Jim Comey, but I don't understand this idea of dropping this bombshell which could be a big dud."

"Doing it in the last week or 10 days of a presidential election without more information, I don't think that he should because how does it inform a voter? It just invites speculation ... I would question the timing of it. It's not going to get done in a week."

Said former federal prosector Peter Zeidenberg, one of the prosecutors quoted in Politico's "Comey's disclosure shocks former prosecutors/FBI director's announcement of new evidence in the Clinton probe compounds criticism of his earlier willingness to discuss the case."