U.S. Regains The Ability To Identify Real National Security Threats

Maybe Donald Trump is just not your type of guy, and certainly not the guy you would want to be President; but keep in mind who was the alternative.  Before these things fade into the memory hole, bring back to mind a few of the wildly incompetent policies of the previous administration.  Looking around today for a candidate as the policy of the previous administration that could be the very most wildly incompetent of all, with a very real potential to put the security of the country in serious jeopardy, my leading contender is the decision to declare "climate change" to be a top-priority national security risk.

Do you remember Obama doing that?  It wasn't that long ago.  In his second inaugural address in January 2013, Obama declared that “no challenge – no challenge – poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”  Then, over the next couple of years, he ramped up the claimed "challenge" of climate change from mere "greatest threat to future generations" to an "immediate threat to national security."  Think about that for a minute -- how would it even work?  Suppose the temperature goes up a few degrees over the next few decades.  Does it mean that we don't have an army any more?  Does it mean that our weapons won't work?  Nevertheless, in a National Security Strategy document in February 2015, the Obama administration declared climate change to be “an urgent and growing threat to our national security,”  Then in May 2015, Obama gave a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut.  Excerpt:

I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country.  And so we need to act, and we need to act now.

Supposedly, something like sea level, or maybe wildfires, or maybe floods -- all completely speculative -- would somehow make the country harder to defend.  Meanwhile, when Obama talked about "acting now," what he meant was restricting production fossil fuels in the United States.  What did he think was the fuel that powers the planes and ships and missiles, let alone powering the economy that provides all the logistical support to keep the military functioning?  As far as I could tell, he had no idea.  In the name of "national security" he would hobble and ultimately shut down our own oil and coal and gas industries, leaving us to go begging for the necessary fuel to -- where?  OPEC?  Russia?  Venezuela?  You really need to be delusional not to be able to distinguish the real national security threat here from the imaginary one.

As you probably know, in a new National Security Strategy document released yesterday President Trump reversed this ridiculous policy of President Obama.  The new document does not contain any section explicitly dealing with "climate," but it does have a section titled "Embrace Energy Dominance."  Key quote:

Access to domestic sources of clean, affordable, and reliable energy underpins a prosperous, secure, and powerful America for decades to come.  Unleashing these abundant energy resources—coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear—stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth. Our Nation must take advantage of our wealth in domestic resources and energy efficiency to promote competitiveness across our industries. . . .  Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system. U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy secu- rity interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.  The United States will continue to advance an approach that balances energy security, economic development, and environmental protection.  

Bullet dodged, at least for the moment.

Now, perhaps on reading this, you remain skeptical that hobbling U.S. fossil fuel energy production could jeopardize national security by making the U.S. dependent on the likes of OPEC or Russia for fuel needed to run the military or the economy.  If so, I would urge you to pay attention to what has just been occurring in the UK.  The UK is thought to have substantial natural gas-bearing shale formations (full extent unknown due to lack of exploration) that could be tapped to supply fuel for the country.  However, during the whole time of the shale gas revolution in the United States, the process of horizontal drilling and "fracking" for gas has been essentially shut down by regulators over concerns of environmentalists.  The first exploratory well after the moratorium finally got going just this August.  From the Financial Times, August 17:

Drilling has started on the first UK shale well for six years even as debate intensifies among geologists over how much gas is available for fracking. Cuadrilla, the company leading the push to bring US-style shale gas production to the UK, said on Thursday it had begun drilling a vertical well expected to reach 3.5km beneath its site near Blackpool, Lancashire. . . .   Fracking has been on hold in the UK since 2011 when two small earth tremors were blamed on exploratory operations by Cuadrilla at another site near Blackpool. Cuadrilla was given the go-ahead by the government last year to resume drilling, reflecting ministers’ hopes of replicating the shale revolution that has cut US gas prices and bolstered American energy security.

Lacking a home-grown, land-based gas supply from fracking, the UK has been relying on gas from the aging North Sea fields, as well as gas that comes from the Middle East and also Norway via pipelines across Europe.  Both of those sources then suddenly experienced supply disruptions in the past couple of weeks.  From the Telegraph, December 13:

Around 40pc of the UK’s domestic [natural gas] supplies have been wiped out until the new year due to the emergency shutdown of the North Sea’s Forties pipeline, operated by Ineos. Supply from Europe has also been constrained by the explosion at a hub in Austria and technical problems in the Norwegian North Sea.    

Time to crank up the vast reserves of solar panels?  No, dummy, those don't work in the winter.  Wind turbines also have zero ability to step up in an emergency.  The first result of the supply disruptions was a huge spike in natural gas prices in the UK:

[R]ocketing demand in Europe [has driven] the price for gas delivered to the UK to more than $10 per million British thermal units.

For comparison, a representative recent spot price in the U.S. was $2.84 per million BTUs.  But you've got to get your energy somewhere.  So who will sell you gas at a gouging price when you are desperate?  The answer, of course, is Russia:

Britain has emerged as the unlikely first recipient of gas from a sanctioned Russian project after fears of a winter supply crisis drove prices close to five year highs. . . .  Now a deal has been struck to bring the debut cargo from Yamal to the Isle of Grain import terminal via a specially built ice-breaking tanker by the end of the month.

The Telegraph includes this picture of a smiling Vladimir Putin:

It's really hard to believe how dumb these people are to have put themselves in this position.  But then, when they make their decisions, they do it against the backdrop of the U.S. military shield, let alone of the frack-happy U.S. as an alternative emergency supplier when Russia puts on the squeeze.  But if we had shut down our fracking over concerns about "climate change," we would have been dependent on OPEC and Russia like Europe and the UK are now.  Who would have been our emergency supplier when those guys decided to put on the squeeze?  And, rest assured, Hillary, following in Obama's footsteps, would have enthusiastically put the country in this position.  

How To Spin The Most Extreme Corruption To Make It Seem OK

The recently departed Bill O'Reilly would often call his TV show the "no spin zone."  It was a good effort on his part, but I would say that almost everything that comes out of a human being's mouth is spin of one sort or another.  That's particularly true in matters that relate to a person justifying his own conduct.  Even the biggest crooks in the world always have a narrative going on in their heads to excuse what they are doing as being perfectly OK. 

As an extreme example of this phenomenon, consider the lead headline in yesterday's New York Times:  "Russia-Trump Tie Was Big Concern Of Ex-C.I.A. Chief."  In the on-line version the headline is "Ex-C.I.A. Chief Reveals Mounting Concern Over Trump Campaign and Russia."

Nice try.  Here's my alternative headline for the same article:  "Ex C.I.A. Chief Brennan Offers Preposterous 'Russia' Cover Story To Excuse Blatantly Illegal Government Spying On Trump Campaign."  My alternative headline is just the other "spin."  

The gist of the article is that Brennan supposedly initiated use of CIA and FBI resources to snoop on the Trump campaign because of what he says was "concern" about contacts between that campaign and Russia.  Excerpts:

 John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, described on Tuesday a nerve-fraying few months last year as American authorities realized that the presidential election was under attack and feared that Donald J. Trump’s campaign might be aiding that fight. . . .  “I know what the Russians try to do,” Mr. Brennan said. “They try to suborn individuals and try to get individuals, including U.S. individuals, to act on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly.” . . .  [I]ntelligence agencies are unanimous in their belief that Russia directly interfered in the election. . . .    

One thing I've learned from 40 years in the litigation business is this:  there's no definitively disproving what a person says about what is going on in his own head.  "I think," "I believe," "I concluded," "I was concerned," and so forth are all ultimately non-disprovable.  On the other hand, we are entitled to apply our common sense to the situation to see if such justifications are credible.

Let me start with this:  The citizens of the United States have given truly awesome powers to federal government law enforcement and intelligence agencies for one and only one reason, which is to keep the people safe.  For that purpose, and that purpose alone, we have acquiesced in the creation of the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, with their enormous and frightening investigatory and surveillance powers.  The single biggest corruption in which these agencies can engage is the use of their powers to interfere in the election process, and thus to disadvantage one side of the political divide in favor of the other.  The use of the investigative and surveillance powers of the CIA/NSA/FBI by government officials as a weapon against political adversaries is a far, far, far worse corruption than, say, merely taking a bribe, no matter how large;  and is a far, far, far worse corruption that merely embezzling millions, or even billions, of dollars from the government's coffers.  Misuse of the investigatory and surveillance powers against political adversaries goes to the very integrity of the democratic process, and indeed to the right to control the investigatory agencies themselves.

And therefore, if the officials of any of those agencies have used any of their powers to investigate or surveil the campaign of a political adversary, they had better have a damned, damned, damned solid basis for it.  And by a damned, damned, damned solid basis, I do not mean self-serving assertions of mere "suspicion" or "concern."  Anybody can assert "suspicion" and/or "concern" at any time they feel like it, for little or even no reason.  It's the ultimate non-falsifiable baloney.  If these enormously powerful agencies are going to engage in activities at this level of irresistible temptation of extreme corruption, they'd better have extremely specific facts indicating an extremely specific crime being committed.  This is no trivial matter.  If the CIA and the FBI and the NSA can invoke their frightening powers on the basis of a mere claim some kind of vague "suspicion" or "concern," and thereby launch an investigation of the political adversaries in the midst of a presidential campaign, then nothing about our political system is safe.  They can always claim "suspicion" or "concern."  If those are the criteria, you can be one hundred percent certain -- as certain as the night follows the day -- that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies will always be misusing their powers to interfere in every political contest of any consequence in this country at all times.  The temptation is just too strong.  It's the very definition of evil.

And let's be clear about one more thing:  this is a completely partisan issue.  The employees of the federal government in the Washington area -- and that includes the principal staffs of the CIA, FBI and NSA -- consist of ninety plus percent partisan Democrats.  If they can get away with using their investigatory and surveillance powers on the basis of self-serving statements of "suspicion" and/or "concern" to investigate and surveil politicians in political campaigns, then those powers will always be used to advantage the Democrats and disadvantage the Republicans.  That applies irrespective of which party may happen to be "in power" in the presidency or Congress at some moment in time.

So what did Brennan offer in the way of the "damned, damned, damned solid basis" to justify his conduct?  In a word, nothing.  Here's a longer Brennan quote, this time from Byron York in the Washington Examiner:

"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign," Brennan testified. "I know what the Russians try to do. They try to suborn individuals and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly. And I was worried by a number of the contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons. . . .  

Brennan claims to have learned that there were "contacts and interactions" between members of the Trump campaign and Russian representatives, and, supposedly, he "know[s] what [they] try to do."  So?  His statement is just another way of saying that he had and has nothing whatsoever in the way of specific facts as to actual wrongdoing.  There is absolutely nothing illegal about members of the Trump campaign having "contacts" or "interactions" with representatives of Russia.  Without doubt, representatives of the Trump campaign had "contacts and interactions" with representatives of at least 30 or 40 of the important countries in the world.  That's an important part of the job of a campaign, to be ready to run the foreign policy of the United States in the event that their candidate wins.  For that matter, representatives of the Clinton campaign, with one hundred percent certainty, did the same.  Go further:  suppose that members of the Trump campaign actually "colluded" with representatives of Russia to figure out ways to try to defeat Hillary.  That is not illegal, let alone criminal!  Kudos to (otherwise partisan Democrat) Alan Dershowitz for making this obvious point in multiple forums over the past several days, for example here.  Is he the only Democrat left in America for whom civil liberties and the integrity of our democracy are more important than momentary partisan advantage?

So which is the worse problem:  (1) that Russia may have been "colluding" with one of the campaigns to disadvantage the other, or (2) that the CIA, FBI and NSA were working to help one campaign against the other, including by using their investigatory and surveillance powers?  It's not even close.  Russia has no ability to launch criminal probes in the United States.  Russia has no ability to threaten prosecution in the United States.  Russia has no ability to sweep up emails and financial records in secret in the United States and use them to prosecute political adversaries.  Russia has little to no ability to utter "leaks" to a friendly press to advance its political objectives.

But nevertheless the Trump/Russia story rolls on every day in the New York Times, Washington Post, et al.   

This Russia Thing Can't Really Get Any Weirder -- Can It?

Back in 2000, when the close election result in Florida provoked a flurry of lawsuits seeking either to force or to halt repeated ballot recounts, I noted a phenomenon which on reflection is not really that remarkable.  The phenomenon was that I could not find a single person whose view of the legal merits of the lawsuits did not align with that person's desire as to which candidate should win the election.  If somebody wanted Gore to win, somehow that person would have a carefully thought-out view of every technical issue of Florida election law, and that view somehow aligned perfectly with the views of Gore's legal team.  Same for the views of Bush supporters with those of the Bush legal team.

We are now more than six months into the weird "Russia hacked the election" obsession -- or maybe it's the "Trump is a puppet of Putin" obsession.  I first wrote about the Democrat media's weird Trump/Russia obsession back on March 2 here, noting then the total absence in the plethora of breathless news coverage on the subject of any evidence of wrongdoing with respect to Russia on the part of Trump or his campaign.  Meanwhile I had actually seen an appearance of Julian Assange on the Fox News Hannity program on January 3 where Assange had stated it was "1000 percent" that the source for the leaked DNC and Podesta emails was "not the Russian government" and "not a state party."  OK, maybe Assange was not telling the truth; but I couldn't think of any good reason why he might have gone on national TV to tell this particular lie about this particular subject.  After all, he could have just not said anything.  

On the day of my March 2 post, the particular cause of the hyperventilating of the moment seemed to have reached yet another new low.  That day's "revelation" was that Jeff Sessions had spoken briefly with Russian ambassador Kislyak, in full hearing of dozens of people, in a public auditorium, immediately after speaking on a panel sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, where Kislyak had been in the audience.  The New York Times editorialized "Jeff Sessions Needs to Go," and called the revelation a "bombshell."  

Then, last month, I got the crazy idea that this weird obsession would all just fade away after UN Ambassador Niki Haley had taken a hard stance with respect to Russia, and then Trump had fired off that barrage of Tomahawk missiles to punish Russia ally Syria.  Seemed logical, but boy, was I wrong!  Instead, a new angle to the Trump/Russia story gets cooked up at least once per week to keep the thing alive.  Last week, of course, it was the Comey firing -- "obstruction of justice" according to various media sources like Vanity Fair (headline:  "Will Comeygate Lead To Impeachment?").  (Andrew McCarthy at NRO has a good laugh over the "idiocy" of throwing around the charge of "obstruction," when the most serious allegation at issue -- "collusion" between Russia and the Trump campaign -- is completely evidence-free and isn't even a crime.) 

Yet this week we have topped even that piece of idiocy.  Of course, it's the lead story on the front page today of both the Washington Post and the New York Times ("Trump Revealed Highly Classified Information to Russia").  Dozens of other "mainstream" sources have picked up the story.  The Post had the story first, of course attributing it to "current and former U.S. officials," aka anonymous leakers.  According to the Post article, the particular subject of the disclosure of classified information was "an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft."

But wait a minute!  Isn't the President specifically allowed to reveal classified information to other countries if he wants to?  Indeed, isn't that the very essence of being given the authority (by the Constitution!) to conduct the foreign policy of the United States?  Of course the President has that authority!  I would have said that the whole idea behind collecting classified information in the first place is to assist the President in conducting the foreign policy of the United States in whatever manner as he may see fit in his discretion.  And, while Russia and the U.S. may be geopolitical rivals on many subjects, the two countries certainly share an interest in preventing having their aircraft blown up by ISIS terrorists. (Recall that an ISIS bomb blew up a Russian aircraft over Egypt back in December 2015.)  Why wouldn't the President and senior Russian officials discuss this subject when they have one of their infrequent chances to meet?  And why wouldn't they share information to help each other prevent future attacks?

So what is it about this story that makes it news at all, let alone front page news?  The Post does not claim that Trump did not have the authority to disclose the information -- and indeed grudgingly concedes that fact.  Instead they breathlessly suggest that Trump went too far in his revelation, or gave up information that may have compromised a U.S. intelligence source.  But of course, they do not provide enough information for you to evaluate whether that is true or not.  Guess what?  It's in the nature of having elected a guy as President that you have to trust his judgment on these subjects.  I'm guessing that the Washington Post and New York Times do not trust Donald Trump's judgment.  But then, "We Don't Trust Donald Trump's Judgment" would not have made for a very good front page headline.

Meanwhile, Fox News today leads with a story relevant to this same "Trump/Russia" issue, but the story could not be more different.  The headline is "Seth Rich, slain DNC staffer, had contact with WikiLeaks, say multiple sources."   If you don't recall the name, Seth Rich was a tech guy who worked for the DNC and was murdered on a street near his home in a nice section of Washington (Bloomingdale) on July 10, 2016:

The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, investigative sources told Fox News.

The DC police have called Rich's murder a "botched robbery" -- a narrative that is rather undermined by the fact that nothing on Rich was stolen, including his wallet, cell phone, watch, and a necklace.  And also by the fact that he was shot from behind.  Fox News had previously gotten information that Rich had provided DNC information to WikiLeaks from a guy named Rod Wheeler, a former DC homicide detective and Fox News contributor who had been hired on behalf of the Rich family to investigate the unsolved matter.  Now Fox says they have another source who confirms the same information.  The new source is identified as a "federal investigator" who "requested anonymity."  (Can't say I blame the fellow in requesting anonymity, given that one guy who knew too much in this matter has already been bumped off.)

“I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,” the federal investigator told Fox News. . . .  The federal investigator, who requested anonymity, said 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between Democratic National Committee leaders, spanning from January 2015 through late May 2016, were transferred from Rich to MacFadyen [of WikiLeaks] before May 21.

Well, that would certainly explain where WikiLeaks got all the DNC emails showing the collusion between DNC and the Hillary campaign to obstruct the ability of Bernie Sanders to advance in the primaries.  What, it wasn't collusion between Trump and the Russians?  The Fox story is sourced to two different eye witnesses, albeit one of them anonymous, who state exactly what they have seen.  And then there's the small matter of the highly convenient murder.  How about this from Wheeler:

“My investigation shows someone within the D.C. government, Democratic National Committee or Clinton team is blocking the murder investigation from going forward,” Wheeler told Fox News. “That is unfortunate. Seth Rich’s murder is unsolved as a result of that.”

So is this story news?  It is at Fox.  Also at the Washington Examiner, ZeroHedge, the New York Post, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and plenty of others -- conservative sources all.  I can't seem to find anything about this at the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc., etc. Funny, isn't it?  They are too busy hyperventilating about our President making use of classified information to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.

Reasonable Inferences About The Weird Obsession With Russia

Just over a month ago (March 2), I first posed the question "What Is With This Weird Obsession With Russia?"   I followed up three weeks later with "The Weird Obsession With Russia Just Won't Go Away."  Now we're up to April 7.  The weird obsession is still out there.  It's time to draw some obvious inferences.

I start from this very simple proposition:  The sad truth is that all humans are imperfect.  Corollary:  Very few human beings, and maybe none, given political power and control of the apparatus of government, can resist the temptation to misuse the powers of the state to advance themselves and disadvantage their opponents politically.  When the government's powers can be used in secret, the temptation becomes close to irresistible.  

The question of the day is, did members of the Obama administration, during the time of the recent election campaign and transition, misuse the surveillance powers of the NSA and FBI to gather information on Donald Trump and his associates for political purposes?  We know that various conversations of Trump and associates with representatives of foreign powers have been recorded, "unmasked" (in the euphemism of the day), and the substance provided to at least the National Security Advisor during the recent campaign and transition.  Is it a reasonable inference that these disclosures were completely innocent and without political purpose or use?  

I'll start be reprising a post that I wrote way back in June 2013, titled "Yes, Universal Government Snooping Is A Problem."  The occasion for the post was an article in the Wall Street Journal on June 8 of that year reporting on revelations of the essentially universal data collection on everyone all the time which had then recently been undertaken by the NSA.  The same article also reported on President Obama's defense of same.  According to the article, Obama on June 7, 2013 had asserted that the data collection involved only "modest encroachments" on privacy, and moreover had been "vetted" by Congress and the courts.  What could go wrong?  My take at the time:

[T]here are very serious problems with the government monitoring all the activities of everyone all the time.  The main one is, they are just not capable of resisting the temptation to misuse the information for political advantage.  And make no mistake, the information is highly valuable for political purposes. . . .  

Are there examples of top political actors using the powers of their position to spy on their adversaries?  Well, just in what is well known, there was the massive and systematic use by President Lyndon Johnson of the FBI and CIA to spy on the Goldwater campaign:

It was a political scandal of unprecedented proportions: the deliberate, systematic, and illegal misuse of the FBI and the CIA by the White House in a presidential campaign. The massive black-bag operations, bordering on the unconstitutional and therefore calling for impeachment, were personally approved by the president. They included planting a CIA spy in his opponent's campaign committee, wiretaps on his opponent's top political aides, illegal FBI checks, and the bugging of his opponent's campaign airplane.  The president? Lyndon B. Johnson. The target? Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate.

Or how about President Nixon's attempted use of the IRS to gather potentially damaging information on his opponents (unfortunately for Nixon, the IRS was not disposed to go along):

During Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, the president's White House counsel, John Dean, met withthe head of the Internal Revenue Service, Johnnie Mac Walters, and presented him with an envelope. Inside was a list of approximately 200 names -- the names of Nixon's political enemies and with it came the understanding that the IRS begin investigating the "enemies list" and perhaps start sending some people to jail.

Obviously, this is not a partisan issue.  But, you say, the saintly and haloed Obama would never stoop to such wrongdoing?  Actually, we know very well that that is not true -- the Obama IRS scandal being only the most prominent of several examples.  (And, unlike the case of Nixon, the IRS, consisting almost entirely of partisan Democrats, was only too happy to help Obama try to hobble his opponents.)

Also going to the question of reasonable inferences to be drawn is the timing of emergence of the "Russia collusion" stories.  Do you remember when these stories about Trump's alleged collusion with Russia started to come out?  Looking around today, here's what I learn:  the earliest story I can find on the subject is this one from Franklin Foer of Slate on October 31, 2016.  That's just about one week before the election.  The story contains lots of speculation, and exactly zero hard information.  All of its sources are explicitly anonymous.  ("I communicated extensively with Tea Leaves and two of his closest collaborators, who also spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, since they work for firms trusted by corporations and law enforcement to analyze sensitive data.")  

The obvious inference is that surveillance of Trump and his associates went on throughout the campaign as part of a completely political operation to help defeat the adversary.  It's just in the nature of the very most powerful human instincts and incentives that that is what has occurred.  And the Russia thing?  I mean, in the off chance that Trump might win, the existence of the surveillance would inevitably come out.  A cover story was needed, and it had to surface before the election because it wouldn't be believable if it only emerged after the surveillance had been discovered and publicized.

It's a pretty good cover story, too.  I'll bet it polled well!  And here's something I have learned from a life in the litigation business:  it's impossible to prove that someone is lying when he is talking about his own motive.  If the question is "Did you shoot the deceased?" and you answer "No," that can be rather definitively disproved by a video showing you pulling the trigger and the deceased dropping to the ground.  But there can be twenty true answers to the question of "why" you did something.  "Why did you go to New York?"  "Because I like New York."  "Because my sister lives there."  "To look for a job."  "To see Central Park."  "To visit the Manhattan Contrarian."  "To kill the deceased."  They could all be true at the same time!  Or some could be true and some not.  Suppose you answered "Going to see Central Park was no part of the reason I went to New York," but actually it was the main reason that you went.  "Sure I happened to be in Central Park, but I was only there on my way to visit the Manhattan Contrarian."  How is anybody going to definitively prove you wrong?

So Susan Rice has been quoted as saying:  “The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That’s absolutely false."  Do you believe her?  For reasons given, there is no way to disprove the statement definitively.  How you view her statement likely turns on how plausible you find the "Russia collusion" narrative, versus what you think of the ability of the Obamanauts to resist the temptation to misuse their governmental powers.  A few months into the "Russia collusion" thing with no evidence of any kind to support it -- and lots of reasons to think it's preposterous -- I'm not giving it much weight.  You may disagree.  But I point out that it would be completely normal for a presidential campaign and/or transition team, during the course of the campaign or transition or both, to:

• reach out to and speak to representatives of significant foreign countries to hear their perspective on significant issues affecting the two countries; or
• float ideas for changes in policy with respect to a given country with its representatives and get an indication of how the country might react to those changes.

Indeed, it would be incompetent for a campaign and/or transition team not to do these things with respect to the major countries on the international stage.  Do we think, for example, that some members of the Trump transition teams may have discussed with representatives of the UK the implications of the Brexit vote for the two countries' relations, and how our trade agreements might need to be restructured to deal with that situation?  How could they not have?

In other words, the fact that representatives of a campaign or of a transition are having discussions with representatives of foreign powers is completely normal and provides absolutely no basis for the NSA or FBI of the incumbent administration to make transcripts of the conversations involving an adversary's campaign and bring the substance of those discussions and the names of the participants to the attention of the President and the National Security Advisor.

The very, very, very strongest temptation pulling on a President is the temptation to use the secret powers of state surveillance to disadvantage his political adversaries.  This temptation is so powerful that it might well even have enabled the Obama team to convince themselves that they weren't doing anything wrong in surveilling the other side's campaign.

One final thing:  the story that "we had to surveil our political opponent because he might have been colluding with the Russians" will be equally available for every other politician in power going forward.  Hey, it worked for Obama!  For future presidents who want to try to use this line, I do recommend that you also follow Obama's example and first get a few well-placed articles like that Slate thing out there before the evidence of the surveillance itself starts coming out.