"Hamilton" cast boos Pence

Concerning “Calls for apology after Pence booed,” Nov. 20, 2016: There is no reason to think that the political opinions of the cast of “Hamilton” should carry any more weight than a person you might pick at random from the phone book, yet they took advantage of having an audience there for an entirely different reason to issue an anti-Trump riff. To the Left everything is political, and we can’t even enjoy a play without being subjected to their insufferable sermonizing. Please.

Published in print edition of San Diego Union-Tribune, (about) Nov. 22, 2016

Michelle Obama's hopelessness

In an interview with Opray Winfrey, Michelle Obama said, "We are feeling what not having hope feels like." Really? It depends on what she means by "we." Consumer optimism is up and the stock market is roaring. She's confusing her own situation and that of the Democratic Party with the country as a whole. This is symptomatic about why Democrats are losing everywhere.

Voter fraud is rare? How do they know that?

One of the constant refrains from those who oppose voter id is that voter fraud is very rare. The trouble with that argument is: how do they know that? It is circular logic: Since without checking voter id it is ridiculously easy to vote in someone else's name, it is impossible to know how often it happens.

How did secret info get into Hillary's email?

It has been widely reported that Hillary Clinton's email server was found to have information that was considered top secret. What hasn't been reported is, nor have I seen that anyone has asked, exactly how it got there. Whoever sent it through the server had either to originate the information, which seems extremely unlikely, or to copy or transcribe the info from an existing classified document. Lifting information from a highly classified document and putting it in an unsecure email or other unsecure form is about as gross a violation of security rules as one can get. How this happened and who was responsible must be high on the list of questions the FBI is hot after.
It also seems that they probably know the answers. It should not be too hard to track down the originator of the email, or chain of emails, and the identity of the classified document from which the information was lifted.
When the answers to these questions finally come out, we may well understand all too clearly why Hillary and her staff declined to be interviewed by the IG.

Comey's deliberations

FBI Director James Comey has let it be known that he is not swayed by political issues and that his top priority is to get it right. This is laudable, but it would be a shame if he is unable to complete his investigation of Hillary Clinton's email transgressions because he's been fired by President Clinton.

Screw you, Apple

In the FBI"s fight with Apple about unlocking the dead San Bernardino terrrorist Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone, Apple has insisted that its cooperation would jeopardize the security of millions of iPhone users. This was true, Apple said, even though the software that Apple would generate could be kept within the company but might "escape" nevertheless. I've been skeptical about this because Apple has very elaborate provisions to protect its proprietary software - its "crown jewels," so to speak - and protecting the particular piece the government is asking it to generate should be no harder. In other words, if Apple is able to protect its operating systems, its life blood, from hackers, why shouldn't they be able to protect the small piece in question?
But the government announced yesterday that it may have a method for unlocking the phone without Apple's help. So Apple's concern about the millions of iPhone users - concern enough to plead Constitution issues and to defy a government order - seems rather hollow since apparently the iPhone security has already been hacked.
The irony is that we probably would never have heard of the issue if Apple hadn't made such a fuss about it. Now that they did, the whole world knows that iPhone security has been cracked.
I have felt from the beginning there was a strong element of grandstanding in Apple's position, a certain pleasure in telling the government where to put its request for cooperation. Something that it considered would play well with its customer base, about which they were probably right. Now it's blown up in their face, a certain justice prevails after all.