Capitol Cat Census

Counting Cats in the Capitol—————————

                A cat commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

 

                It was a rainy Saturday morning so instead of sitting out on the patio with our two cats reading the newspapers as usual, we sat inside at the kitchen table. To be more precise, my wife and I sat at the table while the cats sat on the table because we have utterly failed in all attempts to train them to stay off the tables and counters. We even tried using a water pistol on them. They just shut their eyes tightly and said, “Come on, tough guy, give it your best shot. We’re not moving. We know where the food is.”

 

It was a slow news day and a column by Jo Craven Mc Ginty in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention. Ms. Mc Ginty, who writes about statistics and research, began her column by describing herself as a cat person. She said she has shared her home with as many as three house cats. That makes her an amateur cat person, as far as I’m concerned. When we lived in a larger, suburban place, we shared it with two cats, both of their litters, two dogs, two horses, two ducks, two rabbits, a lovebird and a partridge in a pear tree. (Just kidding about the partridge, but it would have been most welcome if we had a pear tree.)

 

                “Listen to this,” I said to no one in particular, “this columnist cites a 2013 report by scientists affiliated with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that outdoor cats kill an estimated 4 billion birds and 22.3 billion mammals a year in the U.S.”

 

“So what?” demanded Mimi, our short-haired cat from across the table, examining the remains of my breakfast. “That’s what cats do. Haven’t you ever watched the ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoons?”

 

“Four billion birds a year is bad enough but 22.3 mammals is just horrible,” said Mewsetta, her long-haired sister and a bird lover who wouldn’t harm a birdie if it landed on her head. “Those mammals would be rats and mice, stupid,” snapped Mimi. “I suppose you’re going to grieve over them, too. You’re such a bleeding heart liberal!”

 

“I say live and let live. Every life matters,” mewed  Mewsetta. “Gick.. gick.. gick..GAACK!” responded Mimi, now on the floor, attempting without much success to digest the remains of my breakfast.

 

“It says here,” I continued, “that estimates of the outdoor cat population in the U.S. range all the way from 20 million to 120 million. “I believe they’re called ‘feral’ cats,” said Mimi, now recovered from her gastric distress, and they’re natural predators, so did you expect them to be vegetarians? My father was a feral cat and a great hunter,” she said proudly. “My father was a Persian show cat,” purred Mewsetta smugly. “Anyway, they’re all in the country legally, aren’t they, so what’s the problem?”

 

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but Mc Ginty says a new project is underway in Washington called the D.C. Cat Count, trying to obtain an accurate count of homeless cats.”

 

“Why?” asked Mewsetta. “Are they going to build affordable housing for them?”

 

“I rather doubt that,” I responded. “I guess they just think it’s important enough to justify spending $1.5 million on a three and one-half year study to get an accurate count.”

 

“Only in Washington can they think up such ways to waste money,” snarled Mimi. “Why don’t they try to get an accurate count of how many illegal immigrants are in the country instead?”

 

“How are they going to count the cats?” asked Mewsetta. “They’re going to use cameras mounted at various locations,” I replied. “You mean they’re going to spy on them,” hissed Mimi. “I believe a better term would be surveillance, not spying,” I said. “Don’t you need a FISA warrant or something to do that?” Mimi demanded. “You’re a cat. You don’t have any constitutional right to privacy,” I answered, sagely. “That’s hateful speech,” sobbed Mewsetta.

 

“Get those cats down off the table and clean up the mess Mimi made,” interrupted my wife. “Why don’t you stop talking to yourself, finish writing your column and go outside. The rain has stopped.”

May 25, 2019

Politicizing Justice

Justice as a Political Weapon——————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                Many people of my generation long for a return to the days of cordial relations between political leaders. I have in mind the sort of relationship that existed between President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neil, two leaders with strong political differences but who treated each other with respect, cordiality and good humor. Given the bitterness and anger that pervades political discourse today,  however, I doubt that such a return to friendlier times is imminent.

 

Liberals are disposed to blame Donald Trump for this descent into ugliness while Trump supporters are quick to blame it on liberals’ refusal to accept the legitimacy of his election. There’s enough blame to go around. I wrote in 2016 and since that Trump was among the least qualified of the GOP candidates for the most powerful office in the world but he bullied and insulted his way through the nomination process and won. I said at the time that the GOP missed a golden opportunity to defeat a deeply-flawed Hillary Clinton and recapture the White House.

 

In spite of her baggage, she was heavily favored to defeat Trump. The liberal establishment considered her to be the rightful heir to the presidency. She had, after all, stood by her embattled husband through his impeachment ordeal and indiscretions and loyally served as a member of Barack Obama’s cabinet after he defeated her for the nomination in 2008 and then declined to choose her as his running mate. But wonder of wonders, Trump won, thanks probably to then-FBI director James Comey’s meddling in the 2016 election by re-opening her email investigation on the eve of the election.

 

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way and the liberal establishment’s initial disbelief turned to rage. First they blamed it on the electoral college system. When that excuse failed to gain traction, they turned to the Russian-Trump campaign collusion theory. The 22-month Mueller investigation was supposed to provide proof of that theory. But it did not, leaving Democrats again in disbelief and disarray, split over whether to pursue impeachment anyway, presumably based on the president’s personality, communications style, manners and past business dealings, or to focus on trying to find a nominee for the fast-approaching 2020 campaign among the score of candidates who might somehow be able to beat Trump, an incumbent presiding over a booming economy with the lowest unemployment rate in half a century and a productivity growth rate currently at 3.7%.

 

Enter William Barr as their next target. Finally, the nation has an attorney general who seems able to act as one after the likes of Jeff Sessions, who passed on his main responsibility, Loretta Lynch, who allowed her authority to be usurped by Comey when he ruled out prosecuting Clinton for security violations that would have gotten anyone else fired and possibly imprisoned and Eric Holder, who campaign unashamedly for Obama’s re-election. Robert Mueller punted the issue of possible obstruction of justice to the attorney general and Mr. Barr promptly determined that the evidence didn’t support any.

 

But Mr. Barr went much further. He told Congress that he intends to find out more about the origins of the Mueller investigation and how a FISA warrant was obtained to spy on American citizens and the Trump campaign. That’s very bad news for Democrats. There are numerous investigations into these matters ongoing and Mr. Barr wants answers. Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is under investigation for lying to federal investigators and former counsel James Baker for leaks to the media. A U.S. attorney is investigating FBI surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page. There are several criminal congressional investigations ongoing regarding the Steele dossier and one by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz into possible FBI abuses of the FISA process. The broader question is whether government and party officials used the intelligence and federal investigation process as a political weapon and whether FBI officials used their awesome power for political purposes.

 

Mr. Barr has raised issues that could prove more than just embarrassing to those being investigated but could result in criminal indictments. “We have to stop using the criminal justice system as a political weapon,” Mr. Barr told Congress. Apparently, he suspects that Democrats did just that, which explains why they are feverishly trying to discredit the tenacious attorney general. The first step in that process, of course, is to call him a liar.

May 21, 2019

More Musings on Mueller

Mulling Over the Mueller Report————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                The most notable finding of the 22-month Mueller investigation was a non-finding. The investigators, after an intense search, found no evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 election. But nearly as notable was its failure to determine why, in the absence of any credible evidence of Trump-Russian collusion, the investigation was initiated in the first place.

 

Such an effort presumably would have focused on the discredited Steele dossier compiled by a retired foreign spy which was supposed to contain damaging information on Donald Trump which he couldn’t verify, obtained from anonymous Russian sources and financed by the Clinton campaign. Investigators might have questioned how this dossier came to be used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign and why the FISA judge was not informed of its funding source. They might then have concluded that there was indeed evidence of collusion with the Russians, but not on the part of the Trump campaign.

 

But all this was conspicuously absent from this supposedly exhaustive investigation as was an examination of the behavior of then-FBI Director James Comey in influencing the election by re-opening the Clinton email investigation on the eve of the election and then exceeding his authority by ruling out prosecuting her. Since these investigators were empowered to proceed wherever the facts led them, why didn’t they proceed in this obvious direction? Attorney General William Barr wants answers to these and similar questions and so should the American people. For asking these questions which beg for answers and for not finding evidence of obstruction of justice, Barr is being accused by liberals of acting as Trump’s lawyer and defender. That’s rich, considering that there was no crime requiring justice to be served and also considering the performance of Barrack Obama’s attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. Holder unabashedly campaigned for Obama’s re-election and reportedly bragged of having his back.

 

The investigation made much of the fact that the Russians meddled in the election but we already knew that. What we don’t know is what the Obama Administration did about it or did to prevent it in the first place. FBI and other intelligence sources warned about it but what did they do or fail to do to prevent it? Most experts agree that Russian meddling, which apparently consisted mainly of posting fake news on social media, did not affect the election outcome. Most Americans, hopefully, are smart enough not to believe everything they see on social media. If not, we’re in real trouble.

 

The Mueller report contained unflattering information regarding Trump’s behavior and leadership style. But we already knew all that, too. He is probably the most embarrassingly transparent president in history but Americans elected him anyway and I respect their choice even though I didn’t vote for him. Why can’t all the Democrat candidates respect the voters’ choice? If one of them wins, I’m certain they will expect everyone to respect the voters’ choice.

 

Although it vindicated the president of collusion, I nevertheless believe that this special counsel investigation should never have been initiated in the absence of credible evidence that a crime had even been committed. In retrospect it did more harm than good. It added to our divisions and was a major distraction from the business of government. But given that it happened, Robert Mueller was the wrong choice to head it in spite of his reputation as a thorough investigator. He avoided any serious examination of the role that FBI leadership at high levels might have played in influencing an election and in expressing anti-Trump bias. He staffed the effort with some persons who clearly displayed such bias. The Peter Strzok-Lisa Page email exchange alone raised questions of objectivity which tainted the investigation. Mr. Mueller headed the FBI for 12 years and there was at least the possibility of a conflict of interest.

 

The American people deserve answers to questions regarding the origins of this investigation that never should have happened and Democrats need to finally get over their obsession with delegitimizing the 2016 election and focus on what they have to offer in 2020 beside free stuff for everyone.

May 5, 2019