Government effectiveness – The Optimistic Conservative

TOC Ready Room 28 December 2022: Grab bag – AZ election lawsuit; George Santos; illegal migrants

As readers have probably guessed, I’ve been taking a bit of a Christmas holiday and not posting much recently. (As an update from several weeks ago, I continue to work on an extensive article about Chinese land holdings in the U.S., and some implications for national security. That won’t be out until the New Year at this point.)

This Ready Room will be a little grab-bag of reflections on a few topics, the first of which is the Arizona judge’s ruling against gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawsuit over the conduct of the 2022 general election in Maricopa County. The evidence of irregularities is extensive, and a strong case was made that failures of preparation and operation on election day, including machines and back-up planning, ended up disenfranchising numerous voters. In the opinion of legal experts who were tracking the lawsuit and the court filings by Kari Lake, the evidence also showed an unmistakable bias in the political demographics affected by the irregularities, which were overwhelmingly Republican precincts.

I want to focus on just one aspect of the issue, however. Continue reading “TOC Ready Room 28 December 2022: Grab bag – AZ election lawsuit; George Santos; illegal migrants”

September 2021: One ping on the IP addresses of war

Shadow jousting?

In an earlier article, after John Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussmann was filed, I noted that the millions of Pentagon-held IP addresses that were turned over in January 2021 to an obscure company in Florida had reverted to Pentagon stewardship the week before news of the indictment came out.

The Sussmann indictment’s filing date with the federal court for the District of Columbia was 16 September 2021. The true-bill signature date for the grand jury foreman was also 16 September 2021. DOJ prosecutors would have presented their information to the grand jury on or before that date. (The 16th was a Thursday.)

On 10 September 2021, the Washington Post reported that the IP addresses had been turned back over to the Department of Defense on 7 September. That was the Tuesday of the week before the Sussmann indictment.

The Post cited a brief notice from DOD on the matter, which was of interest given that there was no contemporaneous Pentagon announcement back on 20 January 2021, when the IP addresses were transferred to Global Resource Systems, the company (seemingly a sole proprietorship) headquartered in Plantation, Florida. As a reminder, Continue reading “September 2021: One ping on the IP addresses of war”

FBI: Background check ‘flaw’ let Dylann Roof buy a gun

The limits of law.

Perhaps it’s technically the New York Times that’s saying a “flaw” is what allowed Roof, the Charleston church killer, to buy a gun. “Flaw” is the word used in the NYT headline. The actual communication from the FBI is summarized this way in the text:

A loophole in the system and an error by the F.B.I. allowed the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite having previously admitted to drug possession, officials said.

The “error” by the FBI stands up to scrutiny as an actual error. The “loophole” in the background check system is another story. Here’s the extended summary from NYT: Continue reading “FBI: Background check ‘flaw’ let Dylann Roof buy a gun”