WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is ordering some of its lawyers who handle sensitive national-security matters to urgently review records from the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy that are due to be released on Tuesday, according to an email seen by Reuters.
Christopher Robinson, a National Security Division official, announced that "all" attorneys who work in the Operations Section of the Office of Intelligence are being ordered to review between 400 and 500 documents each, according to a Monday evening email seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
I honestly expected more news stories to be laughing gleefully about how Trump said something to the effect of "promises kept" about the JFK files release and... we still ain't got nothin'.
This is a major L, as the kids say, for Trump! The news should be positively crowing!
Part of holding power accountable is documenting what it says.
We are speeding toward 5PM EDT and, still, nothing's come out except for a bunch of humorous tweets showing typewritten letters allegedly from JFK announcing that he has evidence that will result in the arrest of Hillary Clinton.
Young people are more nonwhite than the overall electorate. They’re more politically disengaged than the overall electorate. But the single biggest predictor of swing from 2020 to 2024 is age. Voters under 30 supported Biden by large margins. But Donald Trump probably narrowly won 18- to 29-year-olds. That isn’t what the exit polls say. But if you look at our survey data, voter file data, and precinct-level data, that’s the picture you get.
And if you look at people under the age of 25, every single group — white, nonwhite, male or female — is considerably more conservative than their millennial counterparts. And it even seems that Donald Trump narrowly won nonwhite 18-year-old men, which is not something that has ever happened in Democratic politics before.
How in the heck would one go about turning this around?
How do you turn it around without ticking off The Groups?
I'd probably put the start of the modern version of paranoid thinking in American Politics smack dab in the middle of Prohibition when Hoover was denying the existence of the mafia and, indeed, denied its existence until the 1950s.
Well, it's like the difference between CRT (pure theory) and CRT by the time it goes through the telephone game and comes out the other side in the form of social media posts.
Critical Theory? It might be awesome if we limited the game to Bertrand Russell and thereabouts.
But anyone can play and, good lord, they do a better job of turning people off of it than their fiercest critics do.
A parallel question is "What are universities actually doing?"
How far from what we want them to be are they?
Looking at what they actually do gives us a handful of different answers... the administrators do one thing, the professors another, the TAs yet another, the librarians have their own fiefdom, and the students are as diverse as their majors.
You've got some of them getting hired as they walk off the stage and others who walk off the stage and walk across the street and join a protest demanding student loan relief.
The crazy thing is that out of all of the things that we want the University to be, one of the top three is "sustainable" and... well, whatever we have now, doesn't seem to be sustainable.
My assumption is that people mean "critical theorist" when they say "Marxist" these days.
The folks in charge of running the university have a different set of goals ("maintain endowment", "grow endowment") than the people teaching the courses ("teach math", "teach LGBTQ dance theory"), and those are different than the goals of the students themselves ("chase tail", "get good job when I graduate, I guess").
The problem is that there are a handful of really bad actors who have screwed everything up for everybody and the landscape of universities will look significantly different in a generation and in the bad direction. Smaller, fewer students, more emphasis on employment prep than life of the mind.
They sold their birthrights for a mess of pottage.
There's also the NYT and BBC but, honestly, you're not going to click on those any more than you clicked on the NPR one.
The issue isn't "is the autopen sufficient for a pardon?" because OF COURSE IT IS.
The issue of "did Biden direct these pardons personally?" is troublesome because the possibility exists that he didn't is a larger possibility than "and monkeys might fly out of my butt" due to Biden's severe cognitive decline.
"There is no reason to believe that Biden didn't know about these pardons" is a better argument when there is no reason to believe that Biden didn't know about those pardons.
Yes, but I was pointing out that he doesn’t even need to do that. Because pardons don’t even _need_ be signed. Bills need to be signed into laws, pardons do not. Just ‘granting’ them is enough. They are usually printed and signed, just like executive orders are printed and signed, but they have the exact same validity if they’re just…said.
On “The JFK Files Drop Today (Supposedly)”
I guess that this is part of it: U.S. Justice Department orders national-security lawyers to review JFK documents
Jam tomorrow.
Jam yesterday.
"
I honestly expected more news stories to be laughing gleefully about how Trump said something to the effect of "promises kept" about the JFK files release and... we still ain't got nothin'.
This is a major L, as the kids say, for Trump! The news should be positively crowing!
"
You know, I'm beginning to suspect that there's stuff in there that they actively do not want to become public.
"
5:15 PM Eastern Daylight Saving Time.
No files.
Clank.
"
Part of holding power accountable is documenting what it says.
We are speeding toward 5PM EDT and, still, nothing's come out except for a bunch of humorous tweets showing typewritten letters allegedly from JFK announcing that he has evidence that will result in the arrest of Hillary Clinton.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Maybe it's in the distinction between Biden and Harris?
"Biden had skibidi rizz but Harris was skibidi Ohio so I went with Trump who was bussin fr fr"
"
This part is interesting:
How in the heck would one go about turning this around?
How do you turn it around without ticking off The Groups?
On “The JFK Files Drop Today (Supposedly)”
I'd probably put the start of the modern version of paranoid thinking in American Politics smack dab in the middle of Prohibition when Hoover was denying the existence of the mafia and, indeed, denied its existence until the 1950s.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
This link should work.
On “The JFK Files Drop Today (Supposedly)”
Oh, there's also the option of *NOTHING* new dropping. A replay of the Epstein drop from a couple of weeks ago.
If *THAT* happens, well, we'll see the craziest folks turn on Trump the way they turned on Bondi.
On “From The New York Times Editorial Board: The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education”
Rawls is like Nietzsche.
He won. He won so completely that we don't even need to read him anymore.
Only crazy people still do.
"
They get used to set and develop policy, though.
"They're difficult to master" is all well and good if it is contained in the university setting.
Once it bleeds out into management and administration, it'll have transmogrified into a status game.
Status games are a lot easier to master. Amateurs can do it.
"
We can include unintentional underemployment.
"
Well, it's like the difference between CRT (pure theory) and CRT by the time it goes through the telephone game and comes out the other side in the form of social media posts.
Critical Theory? It might be awesome if we limited the game to Bertrand Russell and thereabouts.
But anyone can play and, good lord, they do a better job of turning people off of it than their fiercest critics do.
"
A parallel question is "What are universities actually doing?"
How far from what we want them to be are they?
Looking at what they actually do gives us a handful of different answers... the administrators do one thing, the professors another, the TAs yet another, the librarians have their own fiefdom, and the students are as diverse as their majors.
You've got some of them getting hired as they walk off the stage and others who walk off the stage and walk across the street and join a protest demanding student loan relief.
The crazy thing is that out of all of the things that we want the University to be, one of the top three is "sustainable" and... well, whatever we have now, doesn't seem to be sustainable.
"
My assumption is that people mean "critical theorist" when they say "Marxist" these days.
The folks in charge of running the university have a different set of goals ("maintain endowment", "grow endowment") than the people teaching the courses ("teach math", "teach LGBTQ dance theory"), and those are different than the goals of the students themselves ("chase tail", "get good job when I graduate, I guess").
The problem is that there are a handful of really bad actors who have screwed everything up for everybody and the landscape of universities will look significantly different in a generation and in the bad direction. Smaller, fewer students, more emphasis on employment prep than life of the mind.
They sold their birthrights for a mess of pottage.
"
Joe Rogan was mocked for talking about having been prescribed Ivermectin and taking it as prescribed.
There was also a movement to have his show taken off of Spotify entirely.
He's not an academic, though.
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
Anybody could have written this essay this morning.
It takes *INSIGHT* to have written it a week ago. Well done.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Unfortunately, it's not just me choosing to have the debate. Apparently the White House press room is now involved.
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
I don't know. It is scheduled to be released on May 20th, according to Amazon. You can pre-order it here.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Okay. Not believing that that would be legit gets us to the core issue.
I don't think it'd be legit either.
I also don't think that Trump has any special knowledge about how the pardons came about.
"
Stupid enough for NPR to deal with them.
There's also the NYT and BBC but, honestly, you're not going to click on those any more than you clicked on the NPR one.
The issue isn't "is the autopen sufficient for a pardon?" because OF COURSE IT IS.
The issue of "did Biden direct these pardons personally?" is troublesome because the possibility exists that he didn't is a larger possibility than "and monkeys might fly out of my butt" due to Biden's severe cognitive decline.
"There is no reason to believe that Biden didn't know about these pardons" is a better argument when there is no reason to believe that Biden didn't know about those pardons.
"
C-SPAN reports that Trump has announced that the JFK files get released TOMORROW.
He announces lots of stuff, though.
I'll believe it when I see it.
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
Would Jake Tapper's new book count as evidence?
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Yes, but I was pointing out that he doesn’t even need to do that. Because pardons don’t even _need_ be signed. Bills need to be signed into laws, pardons do not. Just ‘granting’ them is enough. They are usually printed and signed, just like executive orders are printed and signed, but they have the exact same validity if they’re just…said.
I agree with every word you've said here.
The pardons *ARE* all listen on the official Justice.gov website. All the t's crossed and i's dotted.