Elections

Human Emotions and the Nuclear Codes

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Two stories about Hillary Clinton:

1–Yossi Tzur, who lost his son, Assaf, in a terror bus bombing in Israel, described the meetings with a number of American officials  that he participated in when he came to this country as part of a delegation including other families of terror victims:

“We were welcomed with warmth, with empathy, all heard us and gave us their attention, well, almost everybody.”

Tzur went on to describe the delegation’s meeting with Rudy Giuliani. “You could feel the warmth of the man, his humanity, his care,” he wrote. “You could see tears in his eyes when he told the stories. The meeting was scheduled for an hour, it took almost two hours and then he stood with us patiently taking photos with each and every one.”

From New York, the delegation went to Washington for a series of meetings, one of them was in the Senate with NY Senator Hilary Clinton. Tzur recalled that “we arrived at her office in the Senate and were shown into a small meeting room, it could hardly fit all of us, it was dark, crowded, it didn’t even had water on the table. So we waited.

“Time went by, 15 minutes, 30, an hour. Her aides were embarrassed saying she is coming any minute now. After an hour and a half Clinton arrived.  

“She looked as us seeing the group in the room, we could see she is not really there with us, we felt she was impatient and just looking to finish it and go. We felt really uncomfortable… Even before we could speak she said, you probably want a photo, come let’s go out, leading us to the stairs. There she asked us to stand on the stairs and one of her aides took the photo. We still wanted to talk to her, people came ready to tell her their story, she didn’t intend to hear, it looked she didn’t want to hear. With inhuman coldness she went out amongst us all and disappeared in one of the corridors leaving us shocked and disappointed.”

2–Linda Tripp, White House secretary during the Bill Clinton administration, describes the reactions of Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton while watching the horrible Waco “law-enforcement operation” (in which 76 people died, including many children) unfold on television:

“A special bulletin came on [CNN] showing the atrocity at Waco and the children. And his face, his whole body slumped, and his face turned white, and he was absolutely crushed knowing, knowing the part he had played. And he had played the part at Mrs. Clinton’s direction.

Her reaction, on the other hand, was heartless. And I can only tell you what I saw.”

Indeed, it seems obvious that Hillary Clinton does not possess the normal human complement of emotional reactions, that she is cold and robotic.  Something is definitely missing there.

Democrats and their supporters keep arguing that Donald Trump must not be trusted with the nuclear codes.  In my view–if a decision for or against a nuclear launch must be made, I’d prefer it to be made by someone that can understand at a visceral level what it means for real people.  Which would not be Hillary Clinton, who really does not appear to see other human beings as anything other than tools in her unending power games.

There has been much discussion lately about whether decisions in war can be entrusted to intelligent robots.  I’d rather not see the most important military decision of all time made by a human robot.

 

Seth Barrett Tillman: Two Queries Posted on Conlawprof: Comey, Trump, and the President (with addendum)

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I got your revealed preferences right here, pal:

I am wondering if the deeply held views expressed on this list are, in fact, deeply held. Any number of people on this list have expressed the view that Trump is dangerous, and if elected, there is a reasonable likelihood that he will plunge the country into destruction. If you believe that, can you describe what you have done (if anything) to prepare should that eventuality come about? And should Trump be elected, what immediate actions will you take in consequence of those changed circumstances? [Addendum: Have you given a half, third, quarter, yea—even a tenth—of your worldly assets to Hillary Clinton, parties, and organizations dedicated to defeat Trump?] Have you moved any of your liquid assets abroad or into foreign currencies? Have you applied for academic or other positions abroad? Have you considered sending your children abroad to be educated? If you have not done anything to date, and if you don’t have any concrete extant plans to take such actions (should Trump win on November 8, 2016), then should not a detached neutral observer conclude that you do not really believe that Trump is a genuine threat? If Trump is a sociopath, should you not be doing something concrete now, other than writing words on Conlawprof and in other fora?

Good questions.

Is Hillary Clinton Directly Responsible for the Execution of Sharam Amiri?

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Sharam Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, was executed by the regime on August 3 after being convicted of providing secret information to the Americans. Sharam Amiri was also discussed in emails that were found on Hillary Clinton’s unsecured server.

Did Clinton’s negligence lead to Amiri’s execution?  Possibly not: the regime was suspicious of him for other reasons, and we don’t know for certain that the Clintonmail bathroom server was hacked by the Iranians. But discussing a foreign intelligence contact on a system that is not certified for classified information can easily lead to the deaths of American agents and other individuals, whether or not it happened in this specific case..

There is no excuse for  Vox’s flippant attitude  in referring to this matter as “Trump’s fake controversy.” If you take several passengers for a high-speed drive in your car while knowing that the brakes are bad, then you are doing a terrible thing, even if that particular ride does not end in disaster. If you feed someone a regular diet of poisons, and he is killed by someone else before the poisons have a chance to act, that does not let you off the hook. Clinton’s extreme irresponsibility may have led to Amiri’s execution or it may not; it may have led to the execution or murder of others of whom we were unaware. This case provides one more piece of evidence about Hillary’s utter lack of concern about the lives and well-being of actual, particular human beings.

Two Posts from Seth Barrett Tillman

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From President James Buchanan, Chief Justice Roger Taney, Copperheads—and the Quakers:

If our moral intuitions accord with the second view, if we credit the Quakers’ behaviour without regard to their religious inspiration, then why do our standard histories judge President James Buchanan and Chief Justice Taney so harshly?** Buchanan and Taney preferred the United States to go to pieces rather than maintaining it by war. They were unwilling to order or to support a war, and the deaths, which would undoubtedly follow. Yet very few today see Buchanan and Taney as heroes or as acting on moral principles akin to those of the Quakers. Why?

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From Law of the Clinton Candidacy (Again):

#1. If Hillary Clinton resigns as the Democratic Party’s candidate prior to the general popular election, what process does the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) use to select a new candidate?
 
[. . .]
 
#8. If President-elect Clinton were sworn in, but subsequently became incapacitated prior to her appointing any cabinet members, can the Vice President succeed her, even temporarily? See Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Section 4 (“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments … transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” (emphasis added)). Do acting heads of executive departments (i.e., senior high level civil servants not subject to presidential nomination and Senate confirmation) count for this purpose? Isn’t this a good reason for the members of President Obama’s cabinet to remain in office until their successors are actually nominated, confirmed, appointed, and sworn in?

Both posts are worth reading.