Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Our Leaders Are Hilariously Incompetent
So now Mike Pence has come forward and confessed to having classified documents in his home and has turned them over to the DoJ. The political class is a veritable clown car full of incompetents. As a reminder, presidents have the power to declassify but vice presidents do not. This is an important distinction between Trump’s (probably) faux jeopardy and the jeopardy of others.
Regular people go to no-kidding jail for what Biden and Pence have done.
Trump has, yet again, proven to be an exploding cigar in the faces of the Wile E. Coyotes of the Department of Justice. In their Ahab-like obsession to harpoon the great orange whale, they have repeatedly made themselves ridiculous.
For several years in the early 2000s, I held a top-secret security clearance. I went through the security equivalent of a proctology exam, culminating with the FBI interviewing my neighbors and acquaintances.
One of the things you are thoroughly indoctrinated with, when your clearance is granted, is the understanding that classified documents are legally radioactive. Don’t look at them unless you absolutely have to. Don’t leave them in unprotected or unauthorized locations. And if you do, you and everyone in your entire social network will be thrown in jail. (Ok, that last part about your social network I sort of made up.)
The now repeated and cavalier mishandling of classified documents by politicians just goes to show what complete knuckleheads they are, at least in Pence’s case. The repeated instances we know of with Biden suggest something rather more sinister.
To borrow from Admiral Forrestal’s famous observation, Biden’s consistent mistreatment of documents suggests something sinister in addition to his long-standing and thoroughgoing stupidity.
Published in General
All those promoting squeaky-clean Pence for 2024 just filled their pants.
Heh
Yup.
How many scores of DC politicians are spending their recent days rooting through boxes in their garages and basements?
At least every one that hopes to ever run for president.
So? Biden does that every day, sometimes more than once!
Love the Clown Car caption …. I’ll be stealing that one.
I imagine none of these out-of-office guys personally packed up their own various files and offices into the boxes. Eventually they–or more likely a scholar or researcher years down the road–will go through them, but more likely they sit for years untouched. Of course, classified documents should have been stored differently in their offices and shouldn’t have been easily swept up into the various boxes. Nonetheless, it might be worthwhile to ask who in fact packed these boxes in the first place and how classified files might have been mixed with other paperwork.
BTW, I don’t put it past a career bureaucrat deliberately doing it to Trump, given the opportunity. Call me paranoid, but that’s what an early morning raid on a former President’s residence does to a person. One thing I’m pretty certain of is that Trump did not pack up his office.
The Biden pot is getting to hot so they have to water the story down.
I had a top secret compartmentalized security clearance when I was Chief Disbursing Officer at the Department of the Treasury in the 1980’s. I was fortunate not to ever even considered taking such home because I never had to see such documents except when I was in the midst of top secret mission operations where not even my family members knew where I was, what I was doing or when I would return.
I think we handled these matters a little better back then.
Ditto. I avoided that stuff whenever possible. It was a lot of work to meet security requirements (safes, daily checklists, etc.) and my plate was already full. And the DOJ wasn’t going to look the other way if I made a mistake.
You have to check out a library book. You don’t have to check out classified documents?????
That begs two questions:
When I went through Basic Training, they had a very serious class on classified materials, need to know, and the like. That’s the impression I took away from that.
I suppose they still have those classes for regular people.
Absolutely. Secret is the new Confidential. And so forth.
That’s what I wondered too. But if there was a log, if someone shredded or burned the documents in their possession, they would have to answer for not being able to produce them.
Some, yes. Others, you just print out, or even create on your own.
Motives: How deep is the deep state? How insidious? Would Pence revealing he also has “classified stamped documents” be just a way for the deep state to water down the charges against PedoJoe? “Everybody at this level has some documents that have stamps on ’em, right?” Notabigdeal, move on, fogetaboughtit. nuttin to see here. amiright?
I wouldn’t be surprised if many people in government deal with at least some classified documents from time to time. Versus Joe Average who might go through their whole life without dealing with even ONE.
On the other hand, what I’ve heard/read is that at least some of the documents found at FJB’s various locations were supposed to have been limited to SCIFs and should never have left such facilities, not even for the VP (or P).
There must be a billion classified documents throughout our government. There are so many as to make the term meaningless. The stamp at the top of the page should defer to what is on the page. How about this: “It’s the content, dummy!”
The only thing marked “Classified” in my house is my browser history…
See, big does this wherever it goes.
That’s it exactly. That’s what’s happening.
I see Lindsay Graham has raced to a microphone to defend Biden. Perhaps that was an exchange for Biden sending 30 battle tanks to Ukraine.
Speaking of Graham, in arguing for tanks he said this was a chance for the USA to do first descent thing since WWII. That sounds like an indictment of the last 10 conflicts that Lindsay has supported escalating. South Carolina, are you still sore over that Ft. Sumter thing?
Apparently only people like me are worried about escalating this thing right up to nukes. Graham must be impervious to fallout.
So wasn’t Pence the guy that Trump installed as the person with Supreme Oversight of aspects of COVID and Operation War Speed? (Not totally sure that this is the case, and maybe he was only appointed as a figurehead.)
I think the UK got rid of their Confidential a couple years ago. After all, doesn’t (C) just mean copyright?
These revelations go to prove that there is a ruling class that makes rules with no intention of living by them.
Mike Pence was asked by the DOJ to have his lawyers search his office and home for classified information, in the hopes that they would come up dry, and could be used isolate Donald Trump so he could be targeted for prosecution.
Obama left with truckloads of documents, something like 30 million pages…Someone should double check that set too.