Category Archives: crime
Feeling the Bern in Venezuela
Hugo Chavez used to give heating oil to poor Americans through Joe Kennedy’s Citizen’s Energy Corp. Now the mayor of Caracas tweets that Venezuelans are hunting cats and dogs for dinner.
Regular blackouts shut down hospital respirators for hours in Venezuela according to the NYT. Glenn Reyonolds, at USA Today, says socialism doesn’t help poor people. It creates them.
The Bern in Venezuela
Bernie Sanders says he’s for Denmark style socialism. Danes aren’t pleased. T.D. Tuccille, in Reason, quotes Bernie Sanders giving a shoutout to Socialism’s ability to make people equally poor:
“Sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing,” Sanders told interviewers in 1985. “In other countries people don’t line up for food; the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”
The Venezuelan elite aren’t eating their pets. Chavez’s daughter is believed to have a net worth in the billions.
Brazil
The Olympics are coming to Brazil. The country is in deep recession, the water is filthy, Zika virus is rampant and the president is being impeached. President Dilma Rousseff was suspended by the Senate on Thursday.
She calls it a coup.
Guccifer
An unemployed Romanian taxi driver named Marcel Lehel Lazar goes by the handle Guccifer. In his spare time he hacks the email of famous people. In 2013 he read email sent by Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary’s home brew account. For his troubles Lazar has been arrested and extradited to the U.S.
In a recent prison interview he told Catherine Herridge, of Fox News, that he hacked Hillary’s server. “It was easy,” said Guccifer.
The thinking is if a Romanian cab driver can do it, maybe the Chinese, Russians, and others can do it too.
So, while “Lucifer in the Flesh” is out of the presidential race, Guccifer is still a factor.
Update 07/07/16:
FBI Director Comey testified to Congress today that Guccifer admitted to the FBI that he lied about hacking Hillary’s server.
Hastert Hush Money
I was wondering how it was possible that I was watching Donald Trump, the Republican “presumptive nominee” for president of the United States, giving a foreign policy speech yesterday afternoon.
Then news broke that former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert had been sentenced to fifteen months in prison and fined $250,000. He was guilty of structuring bank withdrawals to hide the fact that he was taking out millions in cash.
How is it possible that a former politician and high school wrestling coach was able to withdraw $3.5 million in cash? The former Speaker had parlayed his status as an elite Washington insider into a job as a high paid Washington lobbyist.
Hastert Hush Money
The cash was hush money Hastert paid to a former high school wrestler whom he had molested when he was his coach. The judge called him a “serial child molester.”
Here’s the story in the NY Times. Here’s a National Review story about Hastert’s rise from suburban Chicago high school teacher to Washington insider.
Siri Spy
Apple doesn’t want to let Siri spy on you.
The Guardian reports, “When Apple announced in 2014 that it would no longer be able to break into its iPhones even under a court order, law enforcement agencies reacted with rage.”
The government is citing the All Writs Act of 1789 to force Apple to write code to open the iPhone of a dead San Bernardino terrorist.
Wired quotes Nate Cardozo of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation saying,”The FBI “chose this case very carefully”. The feds want backdoors built into devices so they can access information. He thinks this is the “perfect case” to push for “backdoor” legislation.
Siri Spy
Apple says that courts recognize computer code as a form of speech. Compelling the company to make speech against its will could be a first amendment violation.
Apple asks, “what’s to prevent the government from forcing a computer company to write code to turn on the microphone, or the camera to spy on a suspect?”
Nilay Patel explains the legal case in The Verge. He thinks it will go to the Supreme Court.
