This is HUUGE! — for Perkins Coie, anyway

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The Law Firm That Laundered the Russia Hoax Has Been Stripped of Security Clearances

The law firm that produced the Steele dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign and laundered the Russia hoax against President Donald Trump during his first term no longer has access to classified or sensitive U.S. government information. 

"This is an absolute honor to sign. What they've done is just terrible. It's a weaponization, you could say weaponization against a political opponent, and it should never be allowed to happen again," Trump said before signing an executive order stripping the firm of security clearances. 

More background on Perkins Coie courtesy of RealClearInvestigations: 

Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server. After a months-long investigation, the FBI found no merit to the rumor.

The grand jury indicated in its lengthy indictment that several people were involved in the alleged conspiracy to mislead the FBI and trigger an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate -- including Sullivan, who was described by his campaign position but not identified by name.

The Clinton campaign project, these sources say, also involved compiling a "digital dossier” on several Trump campaign officials – including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page. This effort exploited highly sensitive, nonpublic Internet data related to their personal email communications and web-browsing, known as Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses.

Perkins Coie is one of the biggest of the big international law firms and has its tentacles embedded everywhere there’s a dollar to be extracted: From NYC to Silicon Valley to the mother lode of all corporate and government money, Washington. If none of its thousands of lawyers have a security clearance, there goes their lobbying and much of its corporate work and there would go the firm.

Which won’t happen, I predict. There are Perkins Coie alumni seated in federal courts around the country, and it will be a simple matter to get one of them or, really, and D.C. judge to issue a stay of Trump’s order, and then keep everything in abeyance until Democrats return to power in 2028 or even 2036.

But it’ll be fun to watch them squirm.

So crazy, it just might work; something better had

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Stephen Green has a brianstorm, and a suggestion:

An Army of DIY Drones

Sometimes a small story gives you a big idea, and today it's a report this week out of Ft. Campbell, Ky., where soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division launched a deadly new DIY project. Taking inspiration from the Russo-Ukraine War and a dash of "necessity is the mother of invention," soldiers are 3D printing their own drones.

The unit was faced with a couple of problems when it came to procuring the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) its soldiers needed to stay lethal in a combat environment increasingly dominated by tiny flying bombs and surveillance systems. 

One problem was the old Army attitude where soldiers were disciplined for losing assets, even though drones are supposed to be cheap, plentiful, and expendable. Changing a military mindset is never easy, but seeing what drones could do in the Russo-Ukraine War got the job done. 

The second problem was political, or "fiscal constraints," as the 101st's CO, Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia delicately put it. "Based off of the fact that we still don’t necessarily have a budget," he told Defense Scoop this week, "we’ve been operating under a continuing resolution [since the beginning of fiscal 2025], and there are some fiscal constraints associated with what we’ve been doing now."

That's the problem with Congress's irresponsible reliance on continuing resolutions instead of doing its actual job of producing a budget every year. Our armed forces are stuck with the same amount of money for the same items each year, regardless of what our men and women require to perform their missions.

Gen. Sylvia said, "The team went back and said, 'OK, well, if we can’t buy anymore, let’s start making our own.'" Then they did just that, courtesy of 3D printing and a small budget for off-the-shelf motors, remote controls, and the like.

Sylvia also said that the 101st spent “a bunch of money” last year to purchase just 20 or so UASs, including drones from Skydio, for a major training exercise involving the division's 2nd Brigade. Since then — and at a fraction of the cost for Pentagon-approved UASs — they've been able to 3D print more than 100 small drones.

Left unsaid: no contractors' palms were greased, no procurement officer was promised a cushy job at Lockheed after retirement, and no congresscritters were treated to steak and scotch at a D.C.-area steakhouse. Some soldiers used inexpensive gear and a little imagination to roll their own — designing cheap drones that served their needs, not some gold-plated kit that padded a contractor's bottom line. 

“What works in a lab with a very technical expert may not necessarily work with a 19-year-old soldier who’s out there in the rain and the mud. We got to figure out how do we do that. We got to get it out there quicker,” Sylvia said. It takes about 18 hours to "print" a single drone airframe, but the Army is looking into ways to speed that up.

That's the part of this little story that gave me a big idea: local fundraisers, held all across the nation, to buy 3D printers and supplies for your local Army, Air Force, Navy, or Marine unit. Active duty? Reserves? National Guard? These 3D printers are so inexpensive now that it wouldn't take much effort to cover them all.

What will they come up with? Nobody knows, and that's the whole point. But with the entire military making local decisions — fast and cheap — about each unit's actual needs, the possibilities are endless.

Sometimes stubbornness pays off; if you aren't in any particular rush to move

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40 Upland Drive, asking $5.995 million, finally has a contract after first setting a tentative toe in the sales ocean back in April 2024. In this market, that’s practically forever, yet the initial price of $6.225 million was reduced only once, by 3.7%, last September. Hey — if it works for an owner’s relocation schedule, good; even if nothing else changes, inflation will eventually make its price look reasonable.

Absolutely. Then confiscate the vehicles of the idiots who block highways and bridges

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CT police chiefs want ability to seize, sell cars involved in street takeovers

HARTFORD — New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson has a simple solution to the dangerous, unannounced, unruly masses of motor vehicle drivers and spectators that block traffic and threaten public safety: "No more cars, no more street takeovers."

That was his message to state lawmakers this week in pushing for legislation that would allow police to seize cars involved in street takeovers and sell them at auction.

"These street takeovers can happen in any town, any time of the day or night," Jacobson, speaking for the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association during a public hearing Tuesday before the legislative Public Safety & Security Committee. "They're extremely disruptive and dangerous to those on the road. These incidents have encountered mob mentality behavior from those participating in takeovers." Many of the drivers use different sets of license plates to avoid detection, he said.

While takeovers often involved hundreds of vehicles and drivers who outnumber law enforcement, Jacobson believes that seizing the vehicles, then selling them, would send an easy-to-understand consequence while giving towns and cities revenue to pay for the stepped-up enforcement.

"These investigations and the prosecution of these incidents are extremely difficult, since most, if not all of the participants are from different states and areas outside of Connecticut," Jacobson said. "The arrests we have made are from Mass, New Jersey and Connecticut. We need a penalty, which will stop these activities. There have been four shootings in New Haven related to street takeovers and we've seized three guns during arrests for street takeovers. They are setting fires in the street, throwing fireworks at police officers and jumping on police cars when the officers are outnumbered. They are taking over residential intersections as well as highway areas."

In recent months spectators were injured during a December street takeover in North Haven. Last month New Haven Police arrested a Milford woman who allegedly announced takeovers around the state on Instagram.

"When we do disband a street takeover there are hundreds of cars leaving at the same time," said Jacobson, stressing that regional efforts involved police from multiple towns and State Police, have been somewhat effective. "It takes drones, multiple officers, stop sticks, many other law enforcement efforts. We need penalties which make all these efforts worthwhile. We threw stop sticks one night and we probably stopped 50 car tires but we didn't have enough cops to make arrests, so those people drove home without tires and I think that kind of slowed them from picking New Haven as the areas because since that arrest night we haven't seen a lot of activity."

No influence left to peddle, the Notebook Kid has gone bust

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“Who knew that spending all your money on high-priced hookers and crack weren't a solid investment strategy?”

Well, That Didn’t Take Long: Hunter Biden Is Already Broke

Just weeks after Donald Trump took back the White House from Joe Biden, his formerly crack-smoking son Hunter is broke. Now, he is seeking to drop his own federal laptop hacking lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler, who exposed the contents of Hunter's infamous laptop through his Marco Polo non-profit website. 

No one wants his paintings, no one will pay to hear him, Amtrak doesn’t want him back on its board of directors, and even his cash-bearing Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian friends won’t return his calls.

Sad.

The truth will set you free: to find another job

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State Farm Fires Executive After What He Told an Undercover Reporter

Some idiot spilled the beans to an O’Keefe reporter (how does he keep finding these morons?)

A State Farm insurance executive has been fired after he blasted Los Angeles fire victims and told an undercover O’Keefe Media Group journalist that the company discriminates against white people in its hiring.

“I personally, I task my HR team, finding me… the perfect profile of the workforce of the future,” Haden Kirkpatrick, the former Vice President of Innovation and Venture Capital at State Farm, says in the recording. “I want the 2040 workforce. So go find me the demographic profile of America in 2040: more Hispanic and Latinos.”

Kirkpatrick also criticized California fire victims for their “egos building in a f***ing desert.”

OMG’s James O’Keefe summarizes the conversation:

“People want to build in areas where they want to have, like, natural areas around them for their ego. But it’s also a f*ing desert. And so, it dries out as a tinderbox.” He also acknowledged that wildfires in these areas are not surprising to insurance professionals, claiming, “Climate change is pushing these seasons.” He explained, “If you’re an insurance professional, it’s predictable.” 

Kirkpatrick also admitted that State Farm’s decision to pull out of the California insurance market was a calculated move in response to financial concerns and state regulations: “Our people look at this and say, ‘Sh*t, we’ve got, like, maybe $5 billion that we’re short if something happens.’” He revealed, “We’ll go to the Department of Insurance and say, ‘We’re overexposed here, you have to let us catch up our rate.’ And they’ll say, ‘Nah.’ And we’ll say, ‘Okay, then we are going to cancel these policies.’” 

State Farm, which previously covered over a million homeowners in California, provided insurance against fire, theft, and other damages. However, their decision to withdraw coverage has left thousands of residents without financial protection following devastating wildfires. “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” except for the Californians now facing the aftermath of destruction without insurance coverage.

Following the exposé, State Farm terminated Kirkpatrick and issued the following statement to O'Keefe:

Does anyone doubt that State Farm is enmeshed in the entire DEI scheme, including hiring and promoting? In the Peoples Republic of Cali? I don’t.

And it’s a fact that State Farm left the state after California’s insurance regulators turned down the company’s request for a rate hike sufficient to cover what everyone know will be catastrophic losses, and it’s a fact that the cost of wildfires has soared as people have spread into previously empty wildfire zones that burn regularly: Californian’s have always described their weather as divided into “drought, fire and flood seasons”, long before the global warming hoax got started.

The fact that this former executive buys into the global warming story is irrelevant: State Farm and the other property insurers in the Golden State are facing disaster, and the eco-nuts and “consumer advocates” are simply whistling past the graveyard.

That’ll work until it doesn’t.

So, question: When did NoPo gain a fancy new appellation on our Multi-List?

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I just noticed that 30 Arnold Street, which used to be described as “North of Post Road”, or “Havemeyer” or even, as deceptive as those terms were, “Old Greenwich” or “Riverside”.

Now the MLS shows it as located in a newly-coined district: something called “North Mianus” — a neighborhood with no zip code of its own, no post office, and whose former, and only claim to fame was as the site of a 1948 housing project of 800 sq.ft. “temporary” (they’re still there) homes for returning WWII veterans.

“North Mianus” didn’t exist as a separate MLS section at least as recently as 2005:

Nor in 2000. Then again, houses in the area were cheaper then, and if the new population of multi-millionaires doesn’t want to be associated with the former neighborhood comprised of grease-stained lawyers and bank vice presidents, well, who can blame them?

Inventory watch

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The Thursday open house tour list is final; three single family residences, one condo, period.

So, nothing out there. I do see that there’s a new listing in Havemeyer, 30 Arnold Street, priced at $2.895 million — sure, that seems like a suspiciously low price, but note this caveat in the note to realtors: “Freezer in lower level is excluded.”

It all makes sense now: at less than $3,000,000, you don’t just give away your most prized possession.

“My precious!”

Powerline’s John Hinderaker offers a good take on yesterday's Supreme Court decision, and what's at stake

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I was appalled by the court’s upholding of a single federal judge’s nationwide injunction against cutting off funds to USAID; appalled, and so discouraged by what’s happened to our judicial system that I lost my usual interest in commenting or even reading about politics, and wrote nothing on it yesterday. I don’t really care whether the Democrats waved pickleball paddles at he president, or were mean to a very young cancer patient: these are sideshows to the fundamental battle we’re engaged in.

Still, as John Hinderaker writes below, it’s early days: this fight has only just begun, and good things may yet be possible. Maybe.

An Opening Salvo

John Hinderaker:

“On February 13, a left-wing judge in the District of Columbia entered a temporary restraining order barring the federal government from enforcing executive orders that paused the disbursement of certain foreign aid funds. On February 25, the same judge ordered the federal government to make some of the payments that had been “paused”–namely, those to federal contractors for work that had been completed.

“The case wound up in the Supreme Court on an application by the federal government to vacate or stay the district court’s February 25 order. That application was denied earlier today, on a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Barrett joining the liberals–an alignment that we have seen in several high-profile cases. Today’s decision has generated a fair amount of comment, mostly by people who haven’t read it.

“The case, in its present posture, raises technical issues relating to federal court procedure, as well as substantive issues relating to sovereign immunity, and whether it has been waived under the Administrative Procedure Act. The majority decision–there isn’t a full-fledged opinion–resolved nothing:

Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed, and in light of the ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines. The order heretofore entered by THE CHIEF JUSTICE [an administrative stay] is vacated.

“Justice Sam Alito wrote a dissenting opinion on behalf of the four conservative justices. Finding more significance in the current proceeding, it begins:

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic “No,” but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.

Hinderaker:

“I’m not. There are major constitutional battles coming, over the separation of powers and the roles of Congress and the President in spending money. Major issues will be addressed: Does the President have the power to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated? Does the President have the power to re-allocate money appropriated by Congress among various uses or programs? If so, under what circumstances? What is the President supposed to do, for example, if he learns that a particular program is riddled with fraud?

“The Democrats’ answer to that last question is, Nothing. This is what we have seen play out in Minnesota, in the Feeding Our Future scandal. State agencies knew that the program was close to 100% a criminal fraud, yet the Tim Walz administration did nothing until the FBI finally stepped in. That is the model the Democrats would follow at the national level.

“Today’s brief encounter in the Supreme Court was the opening salvo in a long, and very important, war. I don’t think there are any tea leaves to be read from the 5-4 decision. What we hear in the background is the distant thunder of major constitutional issues that are about to be fought out.”