NPR - Republicans Vote To Silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren In Confirmation Debate
February 2, 2017
USA Today - Milo Yiannopoulous' speech at UC-Berkeley canceled as protest turns violent
Editor's Question: What agency forced these compassionate, peaceful protesters who were denouncing hate (speech) to turn into a rioting mob, looting, burning, damaging property both public and private and perpetrating violence upon police and innocent bystanders? Perhaps these college age students would benefit from opening Mr. Webster's magic book and looking up the word "peaceful". For bonus points, perhaps they could research the word "hate" and see if the definition reflects any of the actions they are so frequently wont to participate in.
Increasingly violent
protests at the University of California - Berkeley prompted officials to
cancel a speech by conservative writer and activist Milo Yiannopoulous
Wednesday night.
More than 1,500 people
gathered in front of UC Berkeley's Sproul Hall to protest Yiannopoulous, a
self-proclaimed "troll" and editor for the right-wing Breitbart News
website who was banned from Twitter for a targeted campaign against Saturday
Night Live actress Leslie Jones. Protesters held signs that read "Hate
Speech Is Not Free Speech” and pledging to shut down the event.
Violence and chaos
erupt at UC-Berkeley in protest against Milo Yiannopoulos
What began as a
peaceful demonstration devolved as the night wore on. Protesters threw smoke
bombs, knocked down barriers, set fires and started fights in the south campus
area, police said.
Police announced a
campus lockdown and ordered the crowd to disperse.
Yiannopoulos posted on
Facebook that he had been evacuated from the campus after “violent left-wing
protesters” threatened his safety.
In a subsequent
Facebook Live video, he said he was safe. He had planned to discuss cultural
appropriation — the use of elements of one cultures by members of another — in
his speech before the event was canceled.
"It’s not a
subject you would imagine would prompt the kind of violent riots you’re seeing
now seeing on every major broadcast network in United States, and it’s not
something I expected to happen tonight," he said.
He called the protests
a sign that progressives have become so "antithetical" to free speech
since President Trump's election that universities couldn't even host speakers
with divergent opinions.
UC Berkeley joins
several colleges where Yiannopoulous' speaking engagements were canceled over
protests or security concerns. In January, protesters at UC Davis broke down
the barricades and shut down Yiannopoulous' speech.
The protest appears to
have been organized by a group called “Berkeley Against Trump” and was supposed
to be peaceful, according to the group’s website — and it started off that way.
“We are here to
protest the presence of Milo in our campus, which is a public university, and
we believe that no hate speech, racism, misogyny and transphobia should be
tolerated here,” the group posted.
Hours into the
demonstration, the crowds grew rowdy. Video footage a group of people dressed
in black throwing smoke bombs and others setting a large bonfire outside the
building.
“This is what tolerance looks like at UC
Berkeley,” Mike Wright, a Berkeley College Republican member, told The San
Francisco Chronicle. Someone threw red paint on him.
Berkeley College
Republicans, a student group, was warned Tuesday that Yiannopoulos' event could
result in the targeting of undocumented students, the Chronicle reported. The
event at Berkeley was expected to kick off a campaign against “sanctuary
campuses,” universities that promise to protect students who are in the United
States illegally amid Trump's immigration crackdown.
In a statement, the
university said: “we condemn in the strongest possible terms the violence and
unlawful behavior that was on display and deeply regret that those tactics will
now overshadow the efforts to engage in legitimate and lawful protest against the
performer’s presence and perspectives.”
January 26, 2017
The Hill - Trump White House senior staff have private email accounts: report
Editor's Note: This is certainly a story worth watching, though at the moment would seem to be less than a certain portion of the country is trying to make of it. Unlike the Secretary Hillary Clinton situation where a private, unsecured server was used to conduct official government business, the individuals identified in this article were all active in the Presidential campaign and very reasonably would and should have had email accounts through the RNC. Further, they should maintain and use those accounts for any political and reelection activities not associated with the practice of governance. Should emails fail to be provided pursuant to the Disclosure Requirement legislation enacted in 2014 or mysteriously go "missing", a far more concerning situation would exist.
Additional contemporary articles: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-emails-rnc-reince-priebus-white-house-server-548191 ; https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/25/trumps-most-senior-staff-use-a-private-email-server/ ; http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/01/26/busted-trumps-top-white-house-staff-using-private-email-server/
At least four senior officials in President Trump’s White House have active accounts on a private Republican National Committee (RNC) email system, according to a new report.
Counselor Kellyanne Conway, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner — Trump's son-in-law — all have rnchq.org email accounts, Newsweek reported Wednesday.
Trump repeatedly attacked 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton last year for using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State.
Critics argue Clinton’s storage device prevented transparency and may have exposed sensitive national intelligence.
It is not clear whether or how Trump’s staff is using the RNC accounts, Newsweek reported on Wednesday, adding that the use of separate political email accounts at the White House is not illegal.
The “Disclosure Requirement for Official Business Conducted Using Electronic Messaging Accounts” stipulates that if White House staffers have already used private accounts like the RNC ones, they must copy or forward those communications into the government system within 20 days.
The law was passed in 2014 to prevent presidents from shielding communications that fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1979, Newsweek noted.
Newsweek added the rnchq.org email system caused controversy during former President George W. Bush’s administration.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) accused Bush White House staffers in 2007 of using the system to evade transparency.
The rnchq.org email system was involved in the loss of 22 million Bush administration emails, Newsweek reported, many from around the start of the Iraq War.
Former President Obama’s administration found the lost emails after private lawsuits were filed, it added.
Those messages are now in the National Archives, according to Newsweek, but remain under the national security shield and have not been seen by the public.
Washington Post - The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.
Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.
Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Kennedy will retire from the foreign service at the end of the month, officials said. The other officials could be given assignments elsewhere in the foreign service.
In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the State Department, its overseas posts and its people.
“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”
Several senior foreign service officers in the State Department’s regional bureaus have also left their posts or resigned since the election. But the emptying of leadership in the management bureaus is more disruptive because those offices need to be led by people who know the department and have experience running its complicated bureaucracies. There’s no easy way to replace that via the private sector, said Wade.
“Diplomatic security, consular affairs, there’s just not a corollary that exists outside the department, and you can least afford a learning curve in these areas where issues can quickly become matters of life and death,” he said. “The muscle memory is critical. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void. These are very difficult people to replace.”
Whether Kennedy left on his own volition or was pushed out by the incoming Trump team is a matter of dispute inside the department. Just days before he resigned, Kennedy was taking on more responsibility inside the department and working closely with the transition. His departure was a surprise to other State Department officials who were working with him.
One senior State Department official who responded to my requests for comment said that all the officials had previously submitted their letters of resignation, as was required for all positions that are appointed by the president and that require confirmation by the Senate, known as PAS positions.
“No officer accepts a PAS position with the expectation that it is unlimited. And all officers understand that the President may choose to replace them at any time,” this official said. “These officers have served admirably and well. Their departure offers a moment to consider their accomplishments and thank them for their service. These are the patterns and rhythms of the career service.”
Ambassador Richard Boucher, who served as State Department spokesman for Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, said that while there’s always a lot of turnover around the time a new administration takes office, traditionally senior officials work with the new team to see who should stay on in their roles and what other jobs might be available. But that’s not what happened this time.
The officials who manage the building and thousands of overseas diplomatic posts are charged with taking care of Americans overseas and protecting U.S. diplomats risking their lives abroad. The career foreign service officers are crucial to those functions as well as to implementing the new president’s agenda, whatever it may be, Boucher said.
“You don’t run foreign policy by making statements, you run it with thousands of people working to implement programs every day,” Boucher said. “To undercut that is to undercut the institution.”
By itself, the sudden departure of the State Department’s entire senior management team is disruptive enough. But in the context of a president who railed against the U.S. foreign policy establishment during his campaign and secretary of state with no government experience, the vacancies are much more concerning.
Tillerson’s job No. 1 must be to find qualified and experienced career officials to manage the State Department’s vital offices. His second job should be to reach out to and reassure a State Department workforce that is panicked about what the Trump administration means for them.
