Articulate, Progressive Democratic New York Feminists

Regarding the fall of former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, few people are asking this question: why did the women put up with his behavior? The New Yorker described his girlfriends as “articulate, progressive Democratic feminists in their forties who live in Manhattan." 

What is it about articulate, progressive Democratic feminists that makes them accept being treated the way Eric Schneiderman treated them? We are not talking about one-night-stands. We are talking about women who sustained long term relationships. And who thought of themselves as progressive feminists.

Has their feminism denuded them of their self-respect? Did they think that he was a good catch, a rising political star, one who would provide entry into higher social circles? Did they think that they were sacrificing themselves for the cause?

The Zero Hedge blog (via Maggie’s Farm) reports that four women accused Schneiderman of:

…choking, hitting, and threatening them during brutal, alcohol-fueled sexual assaults. 

He drank excessively, took prescription anxiolytics, beat them, slapped them and threatened to kill them.

One woman explained to The New Yorker:

I would come over for dinner. An already half-empty bottle of red wine would be on the counter. He had had a head start. ‘Very stressful day,’ he would say.” Sometimes, if she didn’t drink quickly enough, she says, he would “come to me like a baby who wouldn’t eat its food, and hold the glass to my lips while holding my face, and sweetly but forcefully, like a parent, say, ‘Come on, Mimi, drink, drink, drink,’ and essentially force me - at times actually spilling it down my chin and onto my chest.” Schneiderman, she recalls, “would almost always drink two bottles of wine in a night, then bring a bottle of Scotch into the bedroom. He would get absolutely plastered five nights out of seven.” On one occasion, she recalls, “he literally fell on his face in my kitchen, straight down, like a tree falling.” Another evening, he smashed his leg against an open drawer, cutting it so badly that “there was blood all over the place.” She bandaged it, but the next day she went to his office to change the dressing, because the bleeding hadn’t stopped.

Why would  a progressive New York feminist stay with a man who treated her that way?

Another woman, Tanya Selvaratnam explained that he would slap her around.

“The slaps started after we’d gotten to know each other,” she recalls. “It was at first as if he were testing me. Then it got stronger and harder.” Selvaratnam says, “It wasn’t consensual. This wasn’t sexual playacting. This was abusive, demeaning, threatening behavior.”

And also:

When Schneiderman was violent, he often made sexual demands. “He was obsessed with having a threesome, and said it was my job to find a woman,” she says. “He said he’d have nothing to look forward to if I didn’t, and would hit me until I agreed.” (She had no intention of having a threesome.) She recalls, “Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did.” Selvaratnam, who was born in Sri Lanka, has dark skin, and she recalls that “he started calling me his ‘brown slave’ and demanding that I repeat that I was ‘his property.’ ”

Schneiderman "not only slapped her across the face, often four or five times, back and forth, with his open hand; he also spat at her and choked her. “He was cutting off my ability to breathe,” she says. Eventually, she says, “we could rarely have sex without him beating me.”

Think about it. Only on rare occasions did their sex not involve him beating her. You can ask why it took so long for her to come forth, but still, you have to wonder why she put up with it at all. How is it possible, after decades worth of denouncing male sexual predators, that these liberated women allowed themselves to be the victim of one of them. 

Who Killed Sex?

Talking a good game is not the same as playing a good game. Some people talk so much that they become all talk and no action.

If you are not a millennial, you have probably gotten the impression that the younger generation of twentysomethings does nothing but hook up and engage in raunchy, dissolute, degenerate orgies. When you are doing decadence, you might as well do it right.

After all, these people have been receiving non-stop sex education since kindergarten. They know everything there is to know about sex. Whatever they did not learn in school they learned by watching the now-ubiquitous pornography. And they talk about sex all the time. They fill the airwaves with constant discussions of everyone’s sex life. How you have sex, with whom, where and when… the least we can say is that everyone’s consciousness and awareness about sexual matters has been largely heightened.

But now, shockingly, the truth has appeared. The millennial generation is undersexed. A significant number of them is still virginal at age 26. That would be around 12%. In a prior generation the number was 5%. Then again, it is fair to note that our forebears normally married much younger than today’s young people, thus they were engaging in regular conjugal sex while in their early twenties.

Shocking, isn’t it? Our hypersexual culture, our culture of hypersexual awareness, has managed to kill sex, for a significant number of people. The London Telegraph has the story:

Millennials are waiting longer to have sex, with one in eight still virgins at 26 years old, new research has found.

The sharp rise in the number of young people waiting longer to have sex may be because of a "fear of intimacy" and the pressure of social media, according to analysts.

The Next Steps project, the brainchild of the Department for Education which is now managed by University College London, has tracked 16,000 people born in 1989-90 since they were 14.

Naturally, everyone is seriously puzzled by this phenomenon. What do the psycho professionals think? Glad you asked:

Susanna Abse, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Balint Consultancy, told the Sunday Times: "Millenials have been brought up in a culture of hypersexuality which has bred a fear of intimacy.

"The women are always up for it with beautiful hard bodies and the men have permanent erections. That is daunting to young people.

"The fear for young men is of being humiliated that they can't live up to that, plus the fear of exposure in your Facebook group."

Of course, fear of intimacy is a psycho cliché. We could all do with fewer psycho clichés. Yet, our hypersexualized culture must contribute to the fact that young people are avoiding sex. It might be because people fear exposure, but that means that they do not believe that they can trust anyone. It might mean that they fear being judged... in a culture that prides itself on being non-judgmental.

This suggests that social ties among millennials have frayed. If you cannot trust anyone, why would you ever confide in anyone, why would you ever share important information with anyone? And why would you try to perform sexually in front of someone who might well share his or her impression with the world. Certainly, social media has contributed to a culture where no one trusts anyone else… and that is bad news indeed.

Similarly, a culture of open and honest sharing, where everyone is taught to overcome their sense of shame and express their feelings to whomever, indiscriminately and promiscuously, has contributed to the current problem. Anyone who is advising people to overcome their sense of shame has contributed to our current decadent culture.

Of course, young people might reduce the threat of exposure by limiting themselves to having sex with someone they know. A hookup culture does not facilitate relationship formation.

In the past, those who sought discreet sexual encounters could drop by the nearest brothel. These institutions of ill repute offered sexual pleasure and discretion… for a price. By definition, a prostitute was not going to expose your sex life to the world. Now, of course, thanks to a porn star named Stormy Daniels, indiscretion has become the rule for women of lesser repute. Since mainstream media outlets have flooded their shows with the latest revelations from Stormy Daniels, the nation’s culture of shamelessness has taken a great leap into the void.

If you can't trust a porn star, who can you trust?

And, of course, the problem with pornography is not so much that people are comparing themselves to porn stars or even that they imagine that their sexual encounters must mimic what they see in PornHub. Another problem is that young people-- especially those of the masculine persuasion-- too often have a sex life that revolves around the self-pleasure they gain by watching porn. We have long known that being addicted to pornography, becoming a pornoholic, reduces one’s ability to respond to sexual stimuli from a potential partner. Thus, watching porn desensitizes young men to sexual stimuli. Fortunately, there is a cure. Therapists do know that pornoholics who go cold turkey on porn eventually recover their ability to respond to human partners.

The incident recalls a thought once uttered by the Bishop of Hippo—you know him as St. Augustine—around seventeen centuries ago. Before we had the internet or Facebook or even internet porn, Augustine observed that sex was better in the dark. He reasoned that since carnal relations were sinful people could more freely engage them when the lights were down and when they were not watching what they were doing. It’s amusing to think that today’s young lovers often make videos of their concupiscent exploits and that they are in the habit of exchanging pornographic images of their genitalia. It is even more amusing to think that these practices, by bringing sex into the light of day, have taught a generation of young people to avoid sexual encounters. Unfortunately, such seems to be the case.

Obviously, Augustine was not inveighing against those who have sex in the morning. When he talked about having sex in the dark he was undoubtedly thinking of consigning it to a private space. People who have sex in public, who are being scrutinized by an audience are normally not as desirous as are those who keep it private. Unless, of course, they have no shame, have taken the proper medication and are being well paid for it.

Who Is Eric Schneiderman?

We have just learned that Eric Schneiderman, New York State Attorney General, and leader of the #GetTrump movement, has resigned his office after having been accused of insalubrious, harassing behavior. Said Schneiderman, a leading light in the #MeToo movement, was hoist on his own petard.  

I will spare you the details, but will offer a direct and unambiguous answer to the question that some people have naturally been asking me. Is Eric Schneiderman a relative, near or distant, long lost or recently found? I can see why the question has arisen. After all, Schneiderman is not as common a name as Smith or Jones.

For your edification, the answer is NO. Absolutely not. None of the above. I have no relation whatever to the disgraced former attorney general, and am happier for it. 

Democrats for Trump?

I’m a sucker for the counterintuitive. Even when it’s not my own counterintuitive. Today, the counterintuitive comes from Roger Simon, via Pajamas Media.

His thesis: that Robert Mueller is destroying the Democratic Party.

It would be an irony to end all ironies. In the narrative fiction concocted by those who believe that Donald Trump is the Antichrist, Robert Mueller is the Second Coming of Christ. Given that Trump is Evil Incarnate, they expect that Mueller will save the world and allow the New Jerusalem to descend on the earth. All that needs happen is that he destroy Trump. 

It’s a simple story. You know it well. It’s Biblical prophecy, of course. And yet, many on the left seem to have taken up residence in the book of Revelation. Considering how many of them reject all organized religions, it’s yet another colossal irony.

Anyway, Mueller's proponents believe, in the depths of their souls, that the outcome is foreordained. They report breathlessly on everything the Special Counsel is doing, and read it all into their narrative. They are convinced that it’s all leading to a giant crescendo, the fall of the Antichrist. 

It has never crossed their minds that Mueller might be a clown and that his investigation, as Simon suggests, will not be saving the world. It will not even be saving the Democratic Party. It will be destroying it.

It sounds like wishful thinking, but here goes Simon:

It would probably give Robert Mueller a nervous breakdown, not to mention James Comey, Andrew McCabe and the rest of the FBI cabal, past and present, but at this point the special counsel seems to be actually causing the reelection of Donald Trump.  Most of the country, other than the greed heads in the media and extreme Democratic Party operatives, no longer gives a hoot in Hades about the "Russia Probe."  They're frustrated and sick of it.

And yet, Simon continues, Democrats have fixated on the Russia collusion narrative and the Mueller investigation… to the exclusion of all else. No one knows what they stand for, no one knows their policy agenda. All everyone knows is: obstruct Trump, attack Trump:

Like a crackhead addicted to the next puff, Democrats and their media allies have spent most of the last sixteen months fixated on whether Trump somehow, some way, colluded with Putin.  Meanwhile, a zillion issues slipped by, some important, others less so, but the Democrats barely weighed in on anything, other than to whine about Trump.

What a dumb mistake.  And it was compounded by the assumption that the public agreed with them, which was true for a while, to some extent, but has now worn surpassingly thin.  It didn't help that the tedious late-night talk show hosts and SNL comics fixated on Trump as well, creating a perfect (but utterly useless) storm.

Mueller and the FBI were the ringmasters in all this along with their media friends whom we might dub the Leak Squad (not to be confused with the Geek Squad at your local Best Buy). This "righteous circle," if we can call it that, continually convinced themselves of the goodness of their calling, when in reality it wasn't a calling at all, but a complete of waste of time and a distraction from discovering what exactly their party stood for.

In the name of democracy the Democratic Party wants to undo the last presidential election. Will the ironies never cease:

He is the man of supposed great moral rectitude who promised to rid them of the obvious injustice of the last election.  Unfortunately, Mueller turned out to be an extreme moral narcissist who, consciously or not, led the Democratic Party down a primrose path of impeachment that could never happen and would inflate (slowly, but still...) Trump's poll numbers while assuring him a second term and giving plenty of cannon fodder to Republican congressional candidates once embarrassed by the president.  Everything is ironic.  

Six months from now we will see the first test of the Simon hypothesis. For now, it does not look too good for Republicans. And yet, at some point the public is going to tire of Stormy Daniels and Russian collusion. Whether they will naturally turn to Trump remains to be seen.

Anyway, it’s worth considering that the Democratic Party, in order to attack a president it considers to be deranged is acting like it is deranged.

How Are Things in Iran?

Is Iran on the brink? The story in today’s Wall Street Journal suggests that it is moving in that direction. Most media organizations do not report on conditions in the Islamic Republic, so we ought to pay special attention to the Journal report.

It tells us that Iran is in trouble, that it is unraveling from within, and that the Islamic Republic's rulers can barely hold it together. The Obama administration threw it a lifeline by eliminating most sanctions in the nuclear deal, but the mullahs used the money to support terrorism in Lebanon and Yemen. People who are out of work and starving are not happy about the decision.

The report begins with strikes:

Teachers went on strike in central Iran’s city of Yazd. Steelworkers and hospital staff walked off the job in the southwest city of Ahvaz. Railway employees protested near Tabriz. And a bus drivers union in Tehran battled the private companies that control many city routes.

These were among the hundreds of recent outbreaks of labor unrest in Iran, an indication of deepening discord over the nation’s economic troubles. Workers are turning not only against their employers but also Iran’s government, piling pressure on leaders who promised but failed to deliver better times in the two years since economic sanctions were lifted in the nuclear deal.

Prices of eggs, meat and bread are rising more than 10% a year, compounding consumer woes. Unemployment is about 12%, and the Iranian rial has fallen sharply against the dollar, raising prices on imported goods and prompting a central bank intervention in April. Oil prices have risen, bringing a moment of relief, but consumers say they’ve yet to see the benefits.

Note well: hundreds of outbreaks of labor unrest.  High inflation, high unemployment, unkept promises… a formula for trouble. We know where the money is going:

Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the nuclear agreement have gone to Iran’s military involvement in Syria and support of Lebanon’s Hezbollah rather than the national economy, critics of the deal say.

It isn’t just the labor unrest. Financial institutions have failed and the economy is being seriously mismanaged:

Iran’s labor disputes are extending a panoply of protests in the Islamic Republic that stem from social, economic and political strains. In December and January, people poured onto the streets for two weeks of demonstrations, touched off by deposits lost through failed financial institutions. The protests, Iran’s largest in nearly a decade, were quashed by authorities.

Since then, women have posted videos that show them removing mandatory headscarves, a criminal offense. Defrauded depositors still air grievances, and workers have kept up demands.

The protesters believe that a corrupt political and theocratic elite is taking all the money for itself:

The simmering anger, as voiced by protesters, is stoked by the belief that a corrupt and politically empowered elite is siphoning off Iran’s wealth.

“The social gap is about to explode,” said Alireza Saghafi-Khorasani, the secretary of a labor-rights group in Iran. “There is no economic plan.”

The government, led by President Hassan Rouhani but presided over by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has had to confront the many grievances. In the sugar industry, imports of the commodity have been periodically banned.

Iran has had four decades of what is called a revolution. How has it worked out for working class Iranians? Not very well:

The financial situation of blue-collar Iranians haven’t improved much in the nearly four decades since the revolution. Urban family incomes average around $800 a month, with a minimum wage of around $200 a month.

“Where in the world is a worker whose wage is four times below the poverty line forced by the police to work?” activist Jafar Azimzadeh said in a video posted on the messaging app Telegram. “This is a crime. This is slavery.”

Monthly cash payments for consumers were cut in response to lower oil revenues before the parliament restored them in February, in the wake of protests. Many with jobs, however, remain unpaid.

And, of course, there has been a cultural rebellion, with women ripping off their headscarves… and being summarily arrested and imprisoned. We do not know why the people are rebelling now. Perhaps conditions are getting intolerably bad. Perhaps people see neighboring Muslim countries liberalizing and do not understand why they continue to be terrorized and tyrannized.

Evidently, it is an important story, well worth telling.

How FDR Betrayed European Jews

Before Barack Obama appeared on the scene American Jews worshipped at the altar of Franklin Roosevelt. They accepted him as their Messiah and believed that he showed the path to secular salvation.

When Hitler grew stronger in Europe, while the persecution and genocide of Jews proceeded apace, FDR did his best to ensure that European Jews could not resettle in the United States. While Japan was trying to find a way to resettle European Jews within the its empire, FDR was refusing to allow the St. Louis, filled with nearly a thousand Jewish refugees, to dock in America.

The Roosevelt record was abysmal, to say the least. FDR’s apologists have happily shifted the blame to Republicans, and have declared that, given the political calculus, FDR could have done no other. One might note that the silence coming from the White House must surely have influenced public opinion and that a great communicator like FDR could have at least tried to rally the nation to help save European Jews. He did not. As a moral leader, he failed miserably.

Now, thanks to an excerpt from a new book by Steven Usdin, we have a clearer idea of the answer. We know that Roosevelt was not just motivated by political expediency. His actions reflected his attitude-- which was racist and anti-Semitic.

Usdin raises the important question:

What explains FDR’s apparent indifference to the plight of the Jews? If he’d had complete freedom to act without concern for the political consequences, what would he have done?

At a time when Jews were systematically being persecuted, FDR was concerned about post-war resettlement. His personal files and his correspondence expose the truth:

They make it clear that the question of where to settle the Jews had been on FDR’s mind for years. While he was uncertain about whether they would be better off on the slopes of the Andes or the savannahs of central Africa, there was one place he knew he didn’t want them: the United States of America.

Considering that the Wannsee Conference, which detailed the “final solution” to the Jewish problem occurred in January, 1942, FDR’s concern for migration seems to be slightly off kilter. Consider the “M Project” which FDR kicked off in the summer of 1942:

Among the files in Roosevelt’s safe were documents about the origins and goals of the “M Project,” a secret study he commissioned of options for post-war migration (hence “M”) of the millions of Europeans, especially Jews, expected to be displaced by the war. The President first discussed the project in the summer of 1942 with John Franklin Carter, a journalist, novelist, and former diplomat who ran an informal secret intelligence service for Roosevelt. Carter’s No. 2 was an anthropologist named Henry Field.

The people FDR chose to lead the project were clearly racists:

Roosevelt’s first choice to head the M Project was Aleš Hrdlička, curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History…. 

A prominent public intellectual who had dominated American physical anthropology for decades, Hrdlička was convinced of the superiority of the white race and obsessed with racial identity. Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack he’d written to Roosevelt expressing the view that the “less developed skulls” of Japanese were proof that they were innately warlike and had a lower level of evolutionary development than other races. The president wrote back asking whether the “Japanese problem” could be solved through mass interbreeding….

Outlining the president’s charge for the committee, Carter told Hrdlička it was expected to “formulate agreed opinions as to problems arising out of racial admixtures and to consider the scientific principles involved in the process of miscegenation as contrasted with the opposing policies of so-called ‘racialism.’ ” The instructions were consistent with views Roosevelt had expressed for decades.

Roosevelt wanted to disperse Jewish refugees around the world. He wanted above all else that they not be allowed to congregate in any single locate.

Roosevelt’s goals for the committee were consistent with the views he had expressed in 1925. He wanted it to identify “the vacant places of the earth suitable for post-war settlement” and the “type of people who could live in those places.” Initial work was to focus on South America and Central Africa. Roosevelt wanted the committee to explore questions such as the probable outcomes from mixing people from various parts of Europe with the South American “base stock.”…

Roosevelt “also pointed out,” Carter informed Hrdlička, “that while most South American countries would be glad to admit Jewish immigration, it was on the condition that the Jewish group were not localized in the cities, they want no ‘Jewish colonies,’ ‘Italian colonies,’ etc.” Keeping with this theme, the president also tasked the committee with determining how to “resettle the Jews on the land and keep them there.”

The topic had been on Roosevelt’s mind since 1938.

Bowman understood what Roosevelt was trying to achieve through the M Project. Years earlier, in November 1938, he had undertaken research for FDR about the prospects for European settlement in South America. Requesting the research, Roosevelt wrote to Bowman: “Frankly, what I am rather looking for is the possibility of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited good agricultural lands to which Jewish colonies might be sent.” Roosevelt added that “such colonies need not be large but, in all probability, should be large enough for mutual cooperation and assistance—say fifty to one hundred thousand people in a given area.”

The Holocaust was proceeding apace and FDR was telling Winston Churchill about his plans for resettling the Jews:

Settlement contingencies for a wide range of peoples were studied, but when Roosevelt described the M Project to Churchill during a lunch at the White House in May 1943, he focused on one particular group. FDR described it as a study about “the problem of working out the best way to settle the Jewish question,” Vice President Henry Wallace, who attended the meeting, recorded in his diary. The solution, which the President endorsed, “essentially is to spread the Jews thin all over the world,” rather than allow them to congregate anywhere in large numbers.

It is all beyond horrifying. But, it shows clearly that a president revered in the Jewish community was a stone-cold anti-Semite. FDR's lack of concern for the Jews who were being persecuted and annihilated in Europe—the dog that didn’t bark—is beyond deplorable. He is talking as though it is not happening, and as though the real problem was not the millions who were being killed, but the survivors. Had FDR been a Republican, his statues would have long since been pulled down and destroyed.

Rod Rosenstein's Bad Day in Court

While Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is out and about doing his sanctimonious rule-of-law tour, wherein he claims that he is basically above the law, a federal judge in Virginia threw some serious shade on Robert Muller’s investigation. You know, the one that Rosenstein is in charge of.

When Judge T. S. Ellis (no relation to T. S. Eliot) suggested yesterday that the Special Counsel had largely overstepped his mandate to investigate Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election, he was suggesting that the man who was overseeing the investigation, that would be Mr. Rosenstein, had allowed it to spin out of control.

In the case before the court, Mueller was trying to prosecute Paul Manafort for crimes that had been committed a decade before the election. As Judge Ellis noted, the only purpose of the prosecution was to turn Manafort against President Trump.

In attempting to justify the expanded scope of the investigation, the attorney representing the Special Counsel’s office, Michael Dreeben argued that Rosenstein had modified his instructions in order to allow—after the fact—the Manafort indictment. Which makes Rosenstein look like a flunky whose concern for the rule of law was expanded to comprise anything that Mueller wanted to do.

Dreeden had not made the modification available to the court. At one point, Judge Ellis mused about why Rosenstein had not recused himself from the case. Given that Rosenstein had filed one FISA surveillance application and had written a memo recommending that James Comey be fired as FBI director, he is certainly compromised. A fair-minded DAG would have long since recused himself.

Whatever you think the issue is, it’s not the rule of law.

Here are a couple of accounts of yesterday’s courtroom fireworks, the first from the Wall Street Journal, the second from the New York. By my lights the Times account is more comprehensive, and occupies more important space. Score one for the Times.

The Journal writes:

A federal judge Friday questioned Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s authority to bring tax and bank-fraud charges unrelated to the 2016 election against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Judge T.S. Ellis suggested the charges before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia were just part of the Mueller team’s designs to pressure Mr. Manafort into giving up information on President Donald Trump or others in the campaign.

“The vernacular is ‘to sing,’” Judge Ellis said, adding that he had “been here a long time” and likening the strategy to prosecuting a drug case for higher-value information.

It continues:

When Michael Dreeben from the special counsel’s office said the allegations in the Virginia case were covered by the scope of the initial appointment of Mr. Mueller, Judge Ellis retorted, “The scope covers bank fraud from 2005?”

“How does this have anything to do with the campaign?” Judge Ellis asked. After Mr. Dreeben said Mr. Manafort had been in touch with Russia-affiliated people in Ukraine, the judge admonished the prosecutor, saying “You’re running away from my question.”

Of course, it has nothing to do with investigating the campaign. It is all about the #GetTrump movement.

The New York Times tells it this way:

A federal judge in Virginia sharply challenged on Friday the special counsel’s case against Paul Manafort, suggesting that prosecutors had pursued fraud charges in hopes of gaining evidence that might incriminate President Trump or even topple him from office.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Judge T. S. Ellis III said during a court hearing in Alexandria. “You really care about getting information that Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever.”

As for the rule of law, the Special Counsel’s office has really been acting with what the judge called “unfettered power.” Prof. Alan Dershowitz has often expressed his concern over this issue, and especially over the fact that a man who is facing a lifetime in jail has a very good motive to tell the Special Counsel exactly what he wants to hear—even if he has to make it up. To imagine that people are always going to be truthful under such circumstances is naïve.

The Times continues:

“I don’t see what relation this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” he said, according to a transcript of the hourlong hearing on a defense motion to dismiss the charges. He added, “What we don’t want in this country is we don’t want anyone with unfettered power.”

The judge also pointed out that if the charges against Manafort had nothing to do with the election campaign, why were they not referred to a federal prosecutor… as Mueller had done with charges against Michael Cohen.

But he questioned why the special counsel’s team had pursued the charges against Mr. Manafort when it had referred allegations about the president’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

“Why in New York did you feel it wasn’t necessary to keep that, but it is necessary to keep this?” he asked. “I don’t see the difference.”

All reports on this colloquy emphasize that the judge’s questions do not necessarily foreshadow his decision. And yet, they do point out that Mr. Rosenstein has not really been overseeing the investigation and has not respected the rule of law. He would do himself a big favor if he shut up. He would do himself a bigger favor if he recused himself from the case. Other than that, his are surely firing offenses. In making the rounds to defend himself, Rosenstein is merely laying down a predicate for using his eventual firing as ammunition against Trump.

Finally, American Greatness reports on the judge’s demand to see an unredacted version of the Rosenstein memo that expanded Mueller’s authority:

When prosecutors tried to explain that the unredacted version would divulge sensitive national security and counterintelligence information, Ellis accused the Justice Department of “not really telling the truth,” and mocked Mueller’s lawyer for “we said this was what [the] investigation was about, but we are not bound by it and we were lying.”