Here are my observations on selected items in the news.
One of three schools in Portland, Oregon that will be renamed. (Thatcher Schmid for the LA Times)
YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP – The Centennial School District in Portland, Oregon voted last week to change the names of three of their elementary schools – Lynch View, Lynch Wood, and Lynch Meadows – in response to some parents and school officials who believed “lynch” is a bleak reminder of a time in America when blacks were publicly hanged – lynched – by white mobs and the KKK. One name change document stated that “the Lynch school names have proven to be a disruption in the learning environment for our increasingly diverse student population.”
Never mind that they were originally named after pioneering berry farmers Patrick and Catherine Lynch, Irish homesteaders, who initially donated land to build a one-room school house in 1900. Officials were so pleased with that donation and a subsequent bargain land sale by the Lynches that they named the whole district Lynch, which became Centennial in 1976 when it merged with another district.
Incidentally, a survey of Lynch school alums revealed that 360 were opposed to the name changes, while just 17 favored the changes. (Rick Anderson, LA Times.com)
SUSAN RICE OFFERS ADVICE ON NORTH KOREA – Who asked her? The leftist CNN, of course. “History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea,” Rice said, “the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War.”
Surely, she realizes that was a different time with a Soviet leader in Nikita Khrushchev, who was a far cry from Kim Jung Un. Under a strategy of mutually assured destruction, neither the U.S. and Soviet Union wanted to launch nuclear weapons.
Only a national security failure like Rice would come up with a silly comparison like that. Serving as ambassador to the UN and former President Obama’s top national security advisor, Rice admitted to the failure of the Obama administration to stop North Korea from building its nuclear weapons capability. Of course, she also blamed other administrations (those of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) who were not able to stop it.
BEEN THERE DONE THAT – “Each administration,” she said, “tried a range of measures, from sanctions and pressure, cooperation with China, and other methods we shouldn’t speak about on television, to no avail.
“The fact of the matter is, that despite all of those efforts, the North Korean regime has been able to succeed in progressing with its program, both nuclear and missile,” Rice noted, “That’s a very unfortunate outcome. But we are where we are, and we now need to decide how to proceed.”
Why, despite all of her failures, including her Sunday news show lies about Benghazi, does Rice think the current administration is interested in her advice, but in a New York Times op-ed she offers that “President Trump should soften his rhetoric and accept a nuclear North Korea.”
SPEAKING OF BENGHAZI – The investigation into Hillary Clinton’s cover-up of the terrorist attack on our compound there that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including our ambassador, got a boost this week by Washington D.C. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta. The judge ordered the State Department to search the state.gov e-mail accounts of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jacob Sullivan, former aides to Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state, in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act query.
While this may finally result in more answers about the Benghazi scandal and Clinton’s involvement, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton remarked that “It is remarkable that we had to battle both the Obama and Trump administrations to break through the State Department’s Benghazi stonewall. Why are Secretary Tillerson and Attorney General Sessions wasting taxpayer dollars protecting Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration?”
THAT MAKES FOUR STONEWALLS supported by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In earlier posts, I wrote about two – the Lynch-Clinton meeting document redacting, and the failure to reveal which Obama staffers did unmasking of whom – now he’s forcing Judicial Watch to fight for the Benghazi papers. The fourth involves the protection of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and Lois Lerner, who stonewalled searches for documents covering their treatment of conservative organizations seeking tax exempt status. You may recall that Lerner took the Fifth Amendment during Congressional testimony and is now enjoying her government pension. Unbelievably, Obama-appointee Koskinen still holds down the IRS position under President Trump.
THE IRS TARGETING OF CONSERVATIVE non-profit organizations continues under the Trump administration, according to Kimberly A. Strassel of The Wall Street Journal. She recently reported that Mark Meckler, president of Citizens for Sound Government, told her that nothing has changed since Trump came into office. His organization has been funding a class action suit in Ohio federal court on behalf of groups targeted by the IRS, at a cost so far of $3 million. He’s now fighting the DOJ (Sessions) which has refused to turn over documents or make witnesses available for depositions. The Texas Patriots Tea Party continues to fight the IRS after five years of stonewalling.
ANOTHER TALE FROM THE WASHINGTON SWAMP – Most likely, you’ve never heard of Paige Herwig. She was a counsellor to former Attorney General Loretta Lynch (aka Elisabeth Carlisle) at the time Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton in her airplane, parked in Phoenix. Herwig’s name popped-up several times in the 417 pages of meeting documents recently obtained by Judicial Watch.
As often happens in “the Swamp,” bureaucrats resurface in another position. Herwig now serves as deputy general counsel for the minority (Democrats) on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she will have access to all investigative documents, including those with communications between her and her former boss, Lynch (Carlisle). Isn’t that just great?
