Media Dullards Misrepresent Trump Tweet

Vincent J. Curtis

20 June 2017

The media today is full of humorless dullards, and none more so than among the mental 27 year-olds in the destroy Trump media.  Trump reads back to them their own anonymously sourced story that he is under and investigation, and they take it as a confirmation.  There must have been a hesitancy somewhere, however, because the news story wasn’t that “Trump is under investigation” but that “Trump confirms….”

Trump was illustrating absurdity, as is obvious if one reads the entire tweet, i.e. that he is supposedly being investigated for obstruction of justice for firing James Comey by the very guy who recommended to Trump that James Comey be fired.

These investigations are examples of Washington chasing its tail in the desire to avoid having to deal with the Trump agenda: the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, tax reform, and balancing the federal budget.  These investigations are means by which the swamp creatures resist their swamp being drained.  But it’s going to be drained.

And all the Democrats will have going into the 2018 mid-term elections is the profound stink from the drying mudflats, that they are going to blame on Trump.

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Questions for Sessions

Vincent J. Curtis

15 June 2017

Attorney-General Sessions, during your confirmation hearings you were portrayed by my Democratic colleagues as a renegade from the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.  At these present hearings the suggestion is that you were an intermediary between the Trump campaign and a Russian attempt to subvert our election.  So which is it: are you a renegade from the Klan or are you a dupe of Russian communists?

If you were a member of the Alabama Klan that would make you a Democrat, would it not?  If you were a Soviet sympathizer in the 1970s and 1980s, what with the “winter soldier” controversy, the nuclear freeze movement, the anti-SDI movement and so forth, that would make you a Democrat, would it not?

General Sessions, are you or have you ever been a Democrat?

No further questions, Mr. Chairman.

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The Ross Rifle Paradigm

Vincent J. Curtis

5 May 2017

The story of the Ross Rifle is of a great Canadian idea that turned into failure because of a lack of experience.

The Ross rifle was the brainchild of Sir Charles Ross and Sam Hughes.  Both men served in the Boer War, and came away impressed with the long range accuracy of the Mauser Model 1895.  The Boer’s Mauser outclassed the British long Lee Enfield, which sported a 30” barrel.  Ross and Hughes came away with the impression that in the next war, long-range rifle marksmanship would play a crucial role in control of the battlefield.

Ross was an excellent marksman, and he had an amateur engineer’s interest in rifle design.  A wealthy Scottish nobleman, he had money to be able to assemble a manufacturing plant that could put his engineering ideas into practice.  His big idea was to mate a straight-pull bolt action to a long, heavy barrel.  Add a sweet trigger, and kumbaya!

Ross, however, lacked the practical experience and singlemindedness of a John Moses Browning.

At the time of the Boer War, the Canadian militia was armed with the single shot .303 calibre Martini-Henry.  The Canadian government determined to re-arm the militia with bolt-action, magazine fed repeaters.  Inexplicably, the British government refused to provide a license to manufacture the Lee Enfield in Canada, and this gave Ross and Hughes their opportunity.  Ross was awarded, in 1903, a contract to supply 12,000 rifles to the Canadian government.

The Ross was always an excellent target rifle.  But like all really new systems, it had teething problems, some of which were not discovered before its first use in combat.  Outside experts had already labelled the Ross as a target rifle masquerading as a military one; but Sam Hughes disagreed and was influential enough to prevent a serious review of the Ross, one that would endanger its quality as a marksman’s rifle.  Because of Canada’s meagre defense budget, military exercises were never large or serious enough to test the Ross in realistic battlefield conditions, tests that might have forced attention to the Ross’s shortcomings.

The chronic problem of the Ross was jamming.  The Ross was chambered for match-grade Canadian ammunition, made on the small end of the .303 cartridge’s specifications.  A close-fitting chamber improved accuracy.  Hence, when the Ross was fed trooper-grade British ammunition made in a new war factory, hard extractions became inevitable.  Reaming out the chambers and drilling out the rear aperture sight for the non-marksmen did not solve the other problems of the Ross.  Engineering and metallurgical problems led to more jamming issues.  Soft steel of the interrupted thread bolt-head allowed the left rear thread to bend when struck hard against the bolt-stop.  Thus, one hard extraction kicked open led to more hard extractions, or a failure to close into battery.

When these were fixed, the Ross, with a 30.5” heavy barrel, was heavier, unbalanced, and longer than the British SMLE Mk III, with its shorter 25” barrel.  But after shortening the heavy barrel by 5”, the Ross became balanced, and lighter, and handier than the Lee Enfield.  By this time, however, the damage was done; the Ross’s battlefield reputation was in ruins.  Only the snipers stuck with the Ross.

If the Ross of mid-1916 had been the Ross of mid-1914, Canadian infanteers would have carried the Ross rifle all through World War I, World War II, and Korea.  But because of lack of experience, numerous little problems became show-stoppers, until the damage was done.

America’s experience with the revolutionary M-16 was not unlike Canada’s with the Ross.  What was fine in America turned out in Vietnam to be problematic.  But America stuck with the M-16 and overcame its problems; and now an M-16 design has served as the American infantry rifle for longer than anything else since the revolution.

Canada is preparing to spend $26 billion or more on a new navy.  The plan is to build the ships in Canada.  Whatever experience and institutional memory Canada had in building warships disappeared decades ago, through lack of work.  Canada is in the same position with respect to warships that she was with the Ross infantry rifle.  Canadian draftsmen can draw anything you ask for; and workman can build anything drawn for them.  But is a combination of great ideas going to work in actual war?  What are the hidden pitfalls that have to be looked out for?  Lacking experience, neither our shipbuilders nor our naval architects can know.

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A version of this article appears in Esprit de Corps magazine Vol 24 Issue 5.

Questions for Comey

Vincent J. Curtis

8 June 2017

These are some questions I would like to have put to James Comey:

For what branch of government does the FBI Work?

Okay, the Executive Branch.  Who is the head of the Executive Branch?

Okay, the President.  Are you aware that the oath of the president includes that the laws be faithfully executed, and that this places him above you in terms of law enforcement?

The authority to investigate that you exercise is an executive authority, isn’t it?  The president’s authority as the head of the executive branch?

The president was elected to carry out certain political reforms that he campaigned on, did he not?

So, when he came to you and said that this Washington investigation was causing problems for him and the implementation of his program, can you not see his frustration?

Mr. Trump was elected to drain the Washington swamp, and here is a Washington-centric matter – allegations of collusion with Russia, and baseless accusation of his guilt in it – can you not see his perspective, that this is the swamp’s way of resisting being drained?

Why did you not accede to Mr. Trump’s request that it be released that he personally was not under investigation?  Did you not do something similar in respect of Hillary Clinton?

In your role, you sometimes have given the president advice.  Has he no right to give you advice?  Does the president the authority to direct you to investigate something?  Does that not include the authority to have you cease investigating something?

What is more important to you: your reputation or the success of your country?

I get the business of the FBI Director being like Caesar’s wife in respect of reputation, but in the rough-and-tumble of Washington politics, can you see how maintaining the image of Caesar’s wife can interfere with a just-elected president being stymied in moving on his agenda, and therefore the success of the country?

If it was chilling to pass on to your investigators that the president wanted the Flynn matter dropped, why do you say that your actual firing would not deter them in perusing the Flynn matter?

 You announced to the world that your investigation of Hillary Clinton was complete, and that you would not be pursuing charges, and yet you wouldn’t announce to the world that Donald Trump was not under investigation of any kind.  Why the difference?

The appearance of the “Russia Investigation” seems to break down into two parts.  The first is what Russian agents did to spoof, queer, mess with, and otherwise influence the election, and the second is coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian agents and that larger campaign to influence the election.  Have you any evidence that Mr. Trump authorized or himself engaged in such collusion?  Is it your opinion that Mr. Trump is his own man, or is he owned by the Russians?  Is there anybody in a position of giving advice to Mr. Trump who is in the pocket of the Russians?  If so, who are they?

When asked about it, you have said it is not for you to say what you think about President Trump having engaged in obstruction of justice in regards to the Flynn request, but you have also asserted that FBI agents have a moral if not legal obligation to report a crime, and especially a felony.  Did you report that President Trump may have engaged in felonious obstruction of justice to the Justice Department?  If not, why not?

Why did you loyally go along with A-G Loretta Lynch’s request to call the Hillary investigation “a matter” terms that tracked Democrat election rhetoric, but reacted with horror at meeting with the new president and deny that you would serve him loyally?  In fact, you didn’t trust Mr. Trump from the moment you met him, did you?  So, why wouldn’t he enquire as to your loyalty?  Especially in view of the leaking and the nature of those leaks?

You said you kept notes of meetings with President Trump because you did not trust him and you thought he would lie.  After the blissfully honest days of the Obama Administration, in which you kept no notes, why did you continue in your job as Director of the FBI under Trump, a man you did not trust?  Could that feeling of mistrust not spark a feeling of mistrust on Trump’s part towards you?

Following Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Chuck Schumer’s warning against dissing the intelligence services, why is it that the only thing about the Trump investigation that didn’t leak out was that Trump is not and never was the subject of a counterintelligence or criminal investigation?

You had your memos to self leaked in order to force the appointment of a special council.  Why did you not force the same in respect of the Hillary Clinton investigation?

The investigative fury that has been launched against Donald Trump has been slipping.  First, it was collusion between his campaign and the Russians, and that has now gone by the boards.  Then, it moved to the transition period, when Jared Kushner set out to create a back-channel communications with the Russians.  That this became an issue proves that there was no collusion during the campaign, because those channels would already have been created by collusion during the campaign.  The Kushner thing turns into nothing because the establishment of back-channels is routine in the conduct of modern diplomacy.  So, then it was the Flynn matter and his conversation with the Russian ambassador that was misrepresented to Vice-President Pence.  Since Flynn was fired, all that is left is an accusation of obstruction of justice by Trump’s asking Comey to let the Flynn matter drop, and this occurred after Trump had assumed office.

The pattern here is of Washington engaging in its chasing of the tail in order to thwart Donald Trump is carrying out his election mandate to drain the swamp, to repeal and replace Obamacare, to implement tax reform, and to build a wall.  No wonder a New York businessman has so little patience with the ways of Washington, something he was elected to change.  The swamp is doing everything to avoid being drained.

And that is what all this furious investigation is about: the swamp doing what it can to resist being drained by this man whom they despise.

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The 2 Percent Problem

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Apr 2017

When NATO foreign ministers gather around the conference table to grouse about their problem with 2 percent, they aren’t talking about American beer.  They are talking about the sober promises their countries made to each other several years ago.  At the NATO meeting in Brussels on March 31, the new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told members that he wanted to see each country’s plan to raise their defence expenditures to 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the next meeting, scheduled for the end of April.

Presently, only five NATO countries are fulfilling that commitment: the US, UK, Greece, Poland, and Latvia.  Canadian defense expenditure presently hovers around 1 percent of GDP.

All this is taking place in an atmosphere of confusion and consternation at the new Trump administration.  During the election campaign, Donald Trump criticized the usefulness of a NATO that paid no attention to the problem of international terrorism and terrorist states, while at the same time he appeared to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Trump’s appearing to cozy up to Putin gave legs to the story that Trump was in Putin’s pocket somehow.  Even now, the Democrats in Washington are pushing the line that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian regime to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton.

Because most of the media are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, they are missing the fact that is Donald Trump is working the Russian problem from both ends.

Trump is giving Vladimir Putin every reason to relax tensions between Russia and the NATO countries that became acute after Russia annexed the Crimea, and then sent proxies into eastern Ukraine to end the sovereignty Kiev de facto and de jure exercised over that region.  Russian control over eastern Ukraine gives Russia a land bridge to Crimea, with its famous port and the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, Sevastopol.

Czarist Russia seized the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire in the 1783 and held it after the Crimean War of 1854-56.  In 1954, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred ownership of Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.  Ukraine kept it after it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Near the end of Obama administration, Russia began to exert pressure on NATO members Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, the so-called Baltic states.  These are geographically small countries with small populations; they lie on the extremity of the NATO region but are adjacent to Russia.  These countries were once part of the Czarist Russian Empire, and were incorporated into the Soviet Union after 1945.  These countries gained their independence from Russia after the communist revolution of 1917, and again after the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989.

At the same time that Trump is giving Putin the chance to relax tensions without embarrassment to either side, he is demanding of NATO countries to step up their defense expenditures to the levels that they promised when east-west tensions were not as great.  Thus if Putin finally concludes that he is wasting his time with Trump, he will be confronted by a stronger NATO.  Not just a NATO strong in virtue of the military power of the United States, but of every other NATO member as well.

Not only will the Baltic States themselves be harder nuts to crack, but Germany, an old Russian antagonist, will be better positioned to step in and hold the line without requiring the full commitment of the United States military, which may take a few weeks before it gets fully deployed in Europe.  If Germany stands as a guarantor of NATO security in the short run, a Russian intervention into the Baltic States may be solvable by diplomacy before the situation escalates out of control.

If the United States pulls out of NATO, these European countries are going to have to dramatically increase the defense expenditures anyhow, in order to deal with the Russian threat on their own.  So, spending more on defense in in the cards.

Luckily for Canadian diplomacy, it has the resources of Esprit de Corps magazine behind it.  In the February issue, the Canadian plan for meeting the 2 percent threshold was laid out.  The plan calls for capital expenditures over four years that will require ten years to fully implement, but meets the criterion of 2 percent for the duration of the first Trump term.  Essentially, the plan calls for the recapitalization of the Canadian Armed Forces with the equipment it is going to need anyhow for the next twenty to forty years.  Not one thin dime needs to be spent from the operating budget of DND to pay for one new soldier, sailor, or airman over four years.

If the Canadian government follows the Esprit de Corps defense plan, it will not only find itself in the good graces of the Trump administration, but leave a legacy of military preparedness.

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A version of this piece appeared in the Vol 24, Issue 4 edition of Esprit de Corps magazine.

I Can’t Believe You Asked That, Chris

Vincent J. Curtis

22 May 2017

Washington is so weird.  They just don’t get Trump at all; and by implication, they just don’t get middle America at all, either.

On Fox News Sunday yesterday, host Chris Wallace demonstrated in an interview with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just how certain the Washington swamp is in its own judgement.  In the questions below (edited somewhat to highlight the point being made) Wallace asserts his judgement and the judgement of the Washington swamp in the manner in which he puts his questions to Tillerson.  The questions and the manner in which they were formulated show just how incredulous Wallace is at what the Trump administration does.  They don’t understand Trump at all.

In the course of asking Tillerson about the just concluded summit with Arab leaders in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wallace played clips of Trump during the election campaign calling out Islam for its violence and radicalism.

WALLACE:…….Mr. Secretary, President Trump is urging Muslim leaders to join the, quote, "battle between good and evil". He’s opening a center against extremism today. Muslim leaders are pledging to cut off funding to radicals.

But the question I have is, is this just talk?

Regrettably, Tillerson did not begin his answer with, “Yes, Chris.  This is all just talk.”  However, Tillerson is a diplomat and gave a serious, diplomatic answer to Wallace’s challenging question.

Wallace was not satisfied:

WALLACE: Given that past rhetoric, why should Muslim leaders trust Mr. Trump now? And on the other hand, if the president is so concerned about human rights, why isn’t he talking about it publicly this weekend?

Wallace is substituting his judgement on diplomacy for those who are responsible for the administration of American foreign policy.  Never mind the plain evidence that Arab leaders are placing a great deal of hope in Trump.

When Tillerson turned aside Wallace’s challenge again and answered a question about the purpose of this particular meeting, Wallace was not satisfied:

WALLACE: But -- but, sir, I’ve seen a draft of the president’s speech, the big speech this afternoon. Not a mention of human rights, not a mention of women’s rights. You say he wants to speak concretely and frankly about these things -- he’s not doing that today.

Tillerson’s answer below ought to have been understood by even the dullest interviewer:

TILLERSON: But, you know, the primary reason we’re here today is to confront this threat of terrorism. If we do not defeat Daesh, if we do not defeat these forces of evil, there will be no conditions under which we can even hope to improve the human rights for all of the people in the region.

Wallace did not understand it, and turned to another topic in the formulaic manner of a television interview:

WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, you were in the Oval Office when the president met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on May 10th, and according to the official summary, the president told Lavrov: I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I face great pressure because of Russia, that’s taken off.

My question to you, sir, as someone who was in that meeting -- was he telling the Russians that firing Comey was taking off legal and political pressure?

TILLERSON: Chris, that’s not my -- my interpretation, certainly, of the conversation. [This ought to have tipped off Wallace that maybe the unnamed source who read something to the New York Times maybe didn’t have it quite right.]   And I think what the president was trying to convey to the Russians is, look, I’m not going to be distracted by this -- all these issues that are here at home, they -- that, you know, affect us domestically. I’m not going to let that distract from our efforts to see if we can engage with you, engage with Russia, and identify areas where we might be able to work together. The president I think reemphasized the message to the Russians that the relationship is at a low point and we need to change that, we need to both work towards trying to improve that.

So I think the point he was making is I’m not going to be distracted by those things that are happening here at home, nor let them get in the way of the important work of engaging Russia to see what can be done to improve this relationship.

Tillerson gave an excellent explanation of what transpired between Trump and Lavrov, and its diplomatic purpose.  Nevertheless, Wallace bulls ahead with the received Washington swamp interpretation:

WALLACE: But, sir, he seemed to be saying that firing Comey would help remove one of the distractions.

TILLERSON: I -- Chris, I just didn’t -- my takeaway from that conversation was not that point at all. I think, again, the president was simply saying to the Russians these issues at home are not going to get in the way of my effort and the effort of my government to see if we can find a way to move this relationship forward.

WALLACE: You said this week in Washington that you don’t think that foreign leaders around the world care about what’s going on in Washington with regard to the president. Here you are.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TILLERSON: I think the people in the rest of the world take -- do not have the time to pay attention to what’s happening domestically here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: I have to ask you, Mr. Secretary, do you really believe that? Because I got to tell you that ambassadors that I talk to here in Washington are deeply concerned with the investigation into the president and question, wonder, whether it’s going to somehow prevent the U.S. from meeting its challenges around the world.

Again Tillerson passed up the opportunity to say to Wallace, “No Chris, I really don’t believe that.  I just said it to throw you guys a screwball.”  But here again, Wallace is throwing the Washington swamp interpretation at Tillerson and not listening to what Tillerson is saying to him.  Tillerson gave another diplomatic and correct answer, and then Wallace formulaically moved to more pleasant discussion.

The Washington swamp believe they know better, and aren’t prepared to listen and learn.  They are way too comfortable in their opinions and worldview, and much of what Trump does is outside their realm of understanding and experience.

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Sally Yates: In over her Head

Vincent J. Curtis

16 May 2017

Sally Yates is a do-gooding busy-body who never wonders whether what she is doing might be wrong.  Yates was in over her head in the position of (Acting) Attorney General while Senator Jeff Sessions was being delayed in his confirmation by Senate Democrats.

Yates is famous for three things: that she brought up the issue of Lt-Gen Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor, having allegedly lied about the contents of a conversation he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; for refusing to defend in court Trump’s first Executive Order concerning refugees, as was her responsibility to do; and then she failed to honorably resign in protest over an Executive Order, but instead engaged in insubordination towards the new president.

Now a couple of weeks ago, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) under the aegis of the sub-committee on Crime and Terrorism of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held hearings that featured retired Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Sally Yates.  It was in the course of her testimony that the inadequacies of Yates became manifest.

Both Clapper and Yates declared under oath before the committee that they were not the source of the leak that revealed an apparent discrepancy between what Lt-Gen Flynn told Vice-President Mike Pence about his December 29^th, 2016 discussion with Ambassador Kislyak and what Pence was saying to the public about it.  Yates, apparently, had been circulated the transcript of that conversation which had been intercepted by the National Security Agency and in which Flynn’s name was “unmasked.” 

Normally, conversations of this type would have identified Flynn as “American No. 1”; but through the diligence of Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Trump official’s names were being routinely unmasked in Rice’s vain search for evidence that would embarrass the incoming administration.  To ensure that embarrassing information leaked to the media, President Obama authorized wide circulation throughout the intelligence community of information of this type.

Having read the transcript, and in her breathy style of outrage, Yates testified that Mike Flynn had lied to Mike Pence, and that made Flynn a security risk.  So, she decided to report her thinking to White House Council Don McGahn.  Playing devil’s advocate, McGahn inquired as to the Department of Justice’s interest in the matter: what does it matter to Justice that one White House official lies to another White House official?  Yates replied in her characteristic breathy manner that it was the Vice-President that was being lied to.  Since the Russians undoubtedly have a transcript of their own, they could hold that as blackmail over Mike Flynn.  With the Vice-President saying one thing, and an alleged Russian transcript saying another, somebody could get mighty embarrassed, she feared.  Flynn was therefore subject to blackmail, she argued.

McGahn appeared unmoved, but pressure was building in the media concerning Flynn’s conversation and Flynn eventually resigned.

In this matter, Yates was raising matters of concern that were outside her domain of responsibility and expertise.  That Flynn would be subject to blackmail on account of some theoretical conditions that were not yet prevalent is not her judgement to make.  Nevertheless, being the good girl-scout she is, Yates got herself all exercised over Mike Flynn, with who knows what consequences among those around her.

The second realm of inquiry of Sally Yates concerned her refusal to defend in court Trump’s Executive Order concerning refugees from six countries.  As a result, the EO went undefended and was stayed.  The EO had been vetted for form and legality by the Office of Legal Council, a department of subject matter experts within the Department of Justice.  Thus, Sally Yates’s own experts held that the EO was at least legal and constitutional, and certainly arguable in court.

Yates disagreed.  She believed that looking beyond “the face of the order” there was a violation of the constitution concerning religious discrimination.  She held that because Trump had said certain things on the campaign trail, they must be read into the EO.  This sort of reasoning, called “legislative history,” is a school of legal thinking that the late Justice Antonin Scalia warned against.  This is how Sally Yates’s reasoning is refuted easily:

The law only has a “face.”  What is written on the page is what the law is.  If on the campaign trail Donald Trump promised to do ‘A’ and in issuing the Executive Order, he orders that ‘B’ be done, then ‘B’ is what is actually ordered, not ‘A’  Trump may have an issue with his supporters, but not with the lawyers, who have been ordered to do ‘B’.  Yates argues that, no, that ‘B’ on the page ought to be read as ‘A’ because that is what Trump allegedly promised on the campaign.  ‘B’ is ‘A’ according to Yates because Trump said he would do ‘A’, not ‘B’.

Clearly this form of reasoning cannot long stand scrutiny, but Yates clearly believed it in this case.  If a court reads ‘B’ on the page, it cannot rightfully rule on anything other than that ‘B’ on the page.  If a court rules against ‘B’ on the basis that the page really contains ‘A’ then you have to wonder at the sanity of the judge.

The second fallacy Yates labored under concerned the constitutionality of discriminating on the basis of religion.  Yates believed that the EO was intended to exclude Muslims from immigrating to America, despite the fact that the EO referred to countries and not religions, nor that about fifty other Muslim majority countries were not on the list.  Anyhow, Yates feels that these refugees had rights under the Constitution not to be discriminated against on the basis of their religion.

Here is how Yates is easily refuted again:  Only American citizens living in America enjoy the full panoply of rights in America.  Aliens resident in America enjoy some, but not all legal rights.  Aliens have a right of due process, not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, and so forth.  They do not have a right to vote, or to keep and bear arms, for example.  Aliens not resident in the United States have no legal rights at all under the Constitution because they are not Americans and, not being present in US territory, they are not subject to US law or to the jurisdiction of US courts.  This reasoning is not hard to follow, but Yates didn’t follow it.

Yates decided that her reasoning was superior to those of her subject matter experts, and on the basis of her fallacious reasoning refuted above she then declined to defend the EO in court, though there was a case to be made and decided - by judges.

Now we come to her third, and for her legal career, fatal mistake.  She ought to have informed President Trump of her feelings and resigned.  That was the proper, honorable, and righteous thing to do.  But she did not. Instead she preened the entire weekend about her defiance of Trump, basking in the glow of favorable media attention; and he fired her for insubordination, as he ought.

Clearly, Yates was in way over her head as (acting) Attorney-General.  She was incompetent, misguided, and entirely at sea as to her responsibilities.  Now, she is a Democrat heroine.

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