2+2=5 Director Comey loves Big Sister

In his prepared statement concluding the FBI criminal investigation, FBI Director James B. Comey states that "All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice." Director Comey explains exactly how Secretary of State Clinton engaged in "clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information" by using multiple unsecured devices: "Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain."
He also states the "vast quantities of material exposed" (over 2000 classified emails), and the efforts to obstruct justice by wiping out emails.
Director Comey sums up that "we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts."
2+2=5 Director Comey loves Big Sister.

The future of the parties, after Trump

If Trump wins, there will be the neo-Jacksonian Republicans and the corporatist Democrats.
If Hillary wins: there will be the Hillary party, and the more "progressive than Hillary party." Both will be fully devoted to the interests of the very rich, especially open borders, and will compete in Democratic primaries by seeing how many illegal immigrants than can bring to the polls. Any potentially effective conservative, Republican, or neo-Jacksonian opposition, will be destroyed by a weaponized IRS, Justice Department, EPA, OSHA, etc. Only government licensed media will be permitted, once Citizens United is reversed, Big data techniques will enable the government and their Silicon Valley allies to thought police the nation, as working stiffs will have a choice: be progressive or starve. Any facts that might embarrass those in power will scrubbed from the internet and all media.
But #NeverTrump Republicans will love Big Sister.

Prediction markets and understanding politics

A post in a closed group on Facebook suggested that we look to prediction markets for information on politics, and try to use the information they offer in the manner that business journalists use financial markets. 
     The trouble is that business journalists know as much about business as sportswriters know about sports and political journalists know about politics. Fortunately, students of politics have it easier than students of sports or business because politicians have to explain themselves to get what they want. If you want to understand Trump, the first step is to look to his own words, the second step to look to words of the politicians who are his allies, and the third to look to the words of the politicians who are his rivals and enemies.
     As for prediction markets, the efficient markets hypothesis says they integrate publicly available knowledge. That does not mean that they are accurate, just that anything more accurate is going to cost you.
     The odds on a Republican winning the Presidential election (getting a majority of the two-party vote) are about 1 in 3 at the Iowa Electronic Market .  If I know better, if I know that Trump is a virtual lock because he is the more centrist of the two candidates and because the country is generally perceived to be on the wrong track, it may be that that is because I have been studying politics for 30 years.
     Should you trust me? I have not, so far, put any money down on Trump at Iowa. But the people who bought Trump in the Republican convention market at IEM are doing well so far, as today's graph shows.

Are the prediction market odds a good guide to Trump's actual chances?  Were they a good guide to his chances the day after the Iowa caucuses?  All we can say with any degree of assurance is that they are a better guide than any other you can get for free.  
    Trusting me isn't free.

No, Trump is not a menace to the Constitution

Josh Blackman, a con law professor who supported Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, claims in the National Review that "Trump has already promised that he will knowingly break the law and violate the Constitution," because his views on constitutional matters are not exactly the same as Blackman's.  But one can be a perfectly good constitutionalist and hold the Times v. Sullivan is bad law (it is certainly inconsistent with the Founders' understanding of the relation between state libel laws and the First Amendment.) Likewise with Kelo, which simply means that judges should defer to the judgment of elected officials on what constitutes public use, And, finally on Japanese internment, to quote Judge Posner, "Korematsu was rightly decided."

      As for the rest of Blackman's complaints, no doubt President Trump will exercise his constitutional powers to try to move things his way, whether that is by executive action, speechifying, proposing legislation, or having the Trump Administration's lawyers make the appropriate arguments in the courts. Trump's promises on constitutional matters are best understood as statements of direction and principle rather than marching orders. That is how candidates in the US always talk, as if they are going to be able to by themselves what they have to move the whole apparatus of government and public opinion to accomplish.  

Wide-Awakes for Trump?

Back in the days of Lincoln when the Republican party was the party of freedom and devoted to a better life for ordinary Americans, Republicans organized a paramilitary organization called the Wide-Awakes. The mission statement of the Chicago branch of the Wide-Awakes:
1. To act as a political police.
2. To do escort duty to all prominent Republican speakers who visit our place to address our citizens.
3. To attend all public meetings in a body and see that order is kept and that the speaker and meeting is not disturbed.
4. To attend the polls and see that justice is done to every legal voter.
5. To conduct themselves in such a manner as to induce all Republicans to join them.
6. To be a body joined together in large numbers to work for the good of the Republican Ticket.
(Source: Wikipedia)

Is the American ideal "done"?

Kira Sirote asks: Is the American ideal of progress through liberty "done"? I feel like parts of American society are indeed more just and more righteous than they were 50 years ago, can that be clarified and then extended beyond its own borders?

In my view the ideal of progress is not "done" but it is in tatters.

In medicine Americans are no longer willing to pay for progress.

In race there has been steady regress since 1965.

The war on poverty made things for poor people worse.

The Universities are markedly worse at educating or encouraging freedom of research than they were in our day.

The internet mostly brings distraction.

Television (!) is the dominant medium not just of communication but of art, and for all the strengths of The Wire it is not Dostoevsky.

The US has too many rules which persuade too many people that nothing worth doing can be done anymore. The (pre-Trump) GOP was too focused on taxes, which matter little, and not focused enough on regulation, which is crushing. The Democrats think that the response to the failure of rules (i.e., the subprime crisis), is to add rules.

Trump, #NeverTrump, and 2014 might-have-beens

If the Republican House had impeached Obama over his refusal to enforce immigration law, and a majority of the Senate had voted to convict, we would at least know that the Republican establishment is on the the side of the law and the Constitution. Now what we know is they are committed to open borders and really hate Trump.