Cruising the Web

I never had any hopes at all for a decent outcome from a summit with North Korea. The most I was expecting was that there would be some pretend deal that North Korea would renege on such as happened before with both Clinton and Bush. There was, however, a chance for a more damaging deal such as Trump pulling troops out of South Korea leading towards the North’s domination of the peninsula. They wouldn’t need to actually invade to exercise a threatening force there. With Trump’s ignorance of issues and disinclination to study and put in the long lead-up time and work such as Reagan put in before coming to agreements with Gorbachev, I had no faith in his ability to negotiate any real deal and was putting my faith in Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to restrain Trump’s eagerness for some sort of seemingly monumental deal. Those who favored such face-saving agreements were right to start talking about a Nobel Peace Prize because Trump is very attracted to such shining objects. I mean they already made a coin to commemorate the meeting. So I’m heaving sigh of relief that Trump called it off. Maybe this is just a first move and it will be back on but, for right now, it’s a relief. And, at least, we got three hostages back. But there are enough Americans in North Korea that Kim could grab more whenever he wants to yank our chain.

The National Review editors write,

It was always far-fetched that the North would be willing to give up its nuclear weapons. For Pyongyang, the value of a summit wouldn’t be the opportunity for a good-faith negotiation at the highest levels but the chance to use a superficially successful meeting to unravel the sanctions against it, the way it has in the past.

President Trump says there’s still the chance of a summit at some point. It’d be better to give up hopes for a splashy meeting and instead double down on the maximum pressure campaign. There’s still room to tighten up further by, for instance, cracking down on the regime’s illicit sources of cash and imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese entities dealing with the North. The longer-term goal would be to crack the regime, or at least its will.

It’s nice to believe that the North can be defanged easily and quickly at a headline-generating summit. But realism says otherwise. The United States shouldn’t, yet again, let the North Koreans play scorpion to our frog.

The WSJ also editorializes on why calling off the summit was the right decision.

Mr. Trump had overestimated Kim’s willingness to give up his nuclear weapons and was heading toward a summit failure.

In a letter to Kim announcing his withdrawal, Mr. Trump cited “the tremendous anger and open hostility” in Kim’s “recent statement.” But the real problem is substance, not tone. As North Korea’s recent comments made clear, the North hasn’t decided to give up its nuclear weapons. The North continues to define denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as a process of arms control that includes the departure of America’s presence in South Korea. Like his father and grandfather, Kim wants sanctions relief and other benefits in return for nuclear promises his country has never honored.

Mr. Trump agreed to the summit in part because South Korean President Moon Jae-in misrepresented the North’s position after talks with Kim’s sister at the Winter Olympics. After claiming Kim had a change of heart about nuclear weapons, Mr. Moon pursued his plan to resurrect the Sunshine Policy of appeasement toward the North that failed in the 2000s.

This created a peace euphoria in the South that pushed the Trump Administration to explore the opening to preserve the alliance. Mr. Trump was ill-advised to agree to the summit so readily and without much planning, and he compounded the error by talking up its prospects. He might have gone to a summit that gave Kim a diplomatic victory for nothing in return. But perhaps the experience has taught the President that Mr. Moon and Kim have different priorities than his goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.

Mr. Trump said the U.S. will now continue with its “maximum pressure” campaign against the North, but the international consensus will have to be revived. Even without the summit, Kim scored a major propaganda victory by playing the peacemaker. This week he invited foreign journalists to witness the closure of the North’s nuclear test site at Punggye-ri.

But this means little since new tunnels can be dug elsewhere. The North used previous negotiations as cover to continue its nuclear and missile programs in secret. Recent satellite photos show the North is building a new facility to make launchers for the Hwasong-15 intercontinental missile that can hit the U.S.

The summit planning also allowed China to repair relations with Kim and relax restrictions on border trade without diplomatic costs. Mr. Trump has criticized Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s influence because Kim took a harder line after the second recent Xi-Kim meeting. Mr. Xi publicly endorsed Kim’s position demanding phased and synchronized steps toward denuclearization. Mr. Trump will now have to consider tougher economic sanctions on Chinese firms that do business with North Korea.

Mr. Trump held out to Kim the prospect of new talks “if you change your mind.” But it will take time to repair the damage and get the maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and diplomatic pressure back on track. At least the President realized the danger and dodged a summit.

Yeah, it’s going to be hard to take the FBI’s arguments over redactions seriously after learning this.

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who was fired for lying under oath, spent $70,000 in taxpayer dollars on a conference table. The FBI also redacted the conference table’s steep price tag from documents that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee requested, in an apparent attempt to hide it from Congress.

In a letter sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed that the FBI had redacted the cost of the table from a document he and his fellow members of the committee requested to see. Grassley said many of the redactions within the documents made no sense, nor were they made to protect national security secrets.

“Congress, and the public, have a right to know how the Department spends taxpayer money,” Grassley wrote. “I am unaware of any legitimate basis on which the cost of a conference table should be redacted. Embarrassment is not a good enough reason. The manner in which some redactions have been used casts doubt on whether the remaining redactions are necessary and defensible.”

Gee, that conference table was over twice the cost of the dining room table that Ben Carson ordered. Cue the outrage…Oh, yeah, don’t expect the outrage.

David French eloquently lays forth his position on the NFL’s anthem rule.

One of the most compelling expressions of America’s constitutional values is contained in Justice Robert Jackson’s 1943 majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. At the height of World War II, two sisters, both Jehovah’s Witnesses, challenged the state’s mandate that they salute the flag in school. America was locked in a struggle for its very existence. The outcome was in doubt. National unity was essential.

But even in the darkest days of war, the court wrote liberating words that echo in legal history: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Make no mistake, I want football players to stand for the anthem. I want them to respect the flag. As a veteran of the war in Iraq, I’ve saluted that flag in foreign lands and deployed with it proudly on my uniform. But as much as I love the flag, I love liberty even more.

The N.F.L. isn’t the government. It has the ability to craft the speech rules its owners want. So does Google. So does Mozilla. So does Yale. American citizens can shame whomever they want to shame.

But what should they do? Should they use their liberty to punish dissent? Or should a free people protect a culture of freedom?

In our polarized times, I’ve adopted a simple standard, a civil liberties corollary to the golden rule: Fight for the rights of others that you would like to exercise yourself. Do you want corporations obliterating speech the state can’t touch? Do you want the price of participation in public debate to include the fear of lost livelihoods? Then, by all means, support the N.F.L. Cheer Silicon Valley’s terminations. Join the boycotts and shame campaigns. Watch this country’s culture of liberty wither in front of your eyes.

The vice president tweeted news of the N.F.L.’s new policy and called it “#Winning.” He’s dead wrong. It diminishes the marketplace of ideas. It mocks the convictions of his fellow citizens. And it divides in the name of a false, coerced uniformity. Writing in the Barnette decision, Justice Jackson wisely observed, “As governmental pressure toward unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be.”

The N.F.L. should let players kneel. If it lets them kneel, it increases immeasurably the chances that when they do rise, they will rise with respect and joy, not fear and resentment. That’s the “winning” America needs.

I agree. I don’t think that the players should kneel, but it’s their choice. It always seemed to me to be the wrong symbol for the cause they’re fighting for – stopping police violence. It was never clear what their endgame was. What would have to happen for them to stop kneeling. It would have been better to sponsor open discussions with local police. They could use their money to help pay for police body cams. Also, the problem with police violence is a local problem while the flag represents the entire country. I also object to the implication that all police departments have problems with racism and violence. Yes, there is a problem, but there are also hundreds of thousands of brave and good police officers who are out there doing a difficult and sometimes dangerous job without compensation comparable to men getting paid millions to play a game.

Rich Lowry also responds to those who are protesting.

Last year when this controversy was at its hottest, I had debates with left-wing supporters of the protesting players and would argue that disrespecting the flag wasn’t going to go over well. They would always come up with sophistical arguments about how it wasn’t really about the flag. To which I’d reply — well then, don’t make it about the flag. There are all sorts of way to express your discontent with policing in America other than disgracing your team and your league by kneeling during the National Anthem. Since the protesting players didn’t realize this or didn’t care, the NFL is going to probably going to have another season of acrimony over one of the most basic civic gestures in America. It’d be much easier for everyone to simply stand up — and if they find that hateful or untoward, grin and bear it for two minutes.

And, of course, Trump steps in and exacerbates the whole situation with his ridiculous and offensive comments that people who don’t want to stand for the anthem should leave the country. His constant insertion of himself into the issue just makes it worse as it did last year when the protests were decreasing until Trump started mouthing off about it. The NFL’s new policy plus Trump’s words will just lead players to find some other way to protest. And so we’re doomed to spending another season arguing about all this stupidity. And it will be about kneeling or not kneeling or what Trump says. If the real concern is stopping police violence, the controversy over kneeling distracts from that issue. Their chosen method of protests detracts from the cause they’re espousing. That should be what matters to the players, but it seems to have been lost.

This is interesting – PHelim McAleer points to a revelation from Morgan Spurlock that casts doubt on his cliams that eating nothing but McDOnalds for 30 days straight harmed his health.

His claims were dramatic. Before the 30-day experiment, he said, he was in a “good spot” healthwise. By the experiment’s end, he reported experiencing fatigue and shakes (trembling, not Shamrock). Most disturbing, and most widely reported, was that he had suffered liver damage. The New York Times review was headlined “You Want Liver Failure With That?” The doctor examining him during the experiment said the fast food was “pickling his liver” and that it looked like an “alcoholic’s after a binge.”

Fast-forward to December 2017, when Mr. Spurlock issued a #MeToo mea culpa titled “I Am Part of the Problem,” detailing a lifetime of sexual misdeeds. As a result, YouTube dropped its plans to screen his “Super Size Me” sequel, and other broadcasters cut ties. But overlooked in all this was a stunning admission that calls into question the veracity of the original “Super Size Me.”

After blaming his parents for his bad acts, Mr. Spurlock asked: “Is it because I’ve consistently been drinking since the age of 13? I haven’t been sober for more than a week in 30 years.”

Could this be why his liver looked like that of an alcoholic? Were those shakes symptoms of alcohol withdrawal? Mr. Spurlock’s 2017 confession contradicts what he said in his 2004 documentary. “Any alcohol use?” the doctor asks at the outset. “Now? None,” he replies. In explaining his experiment, he says: “I can only eat things that are for sale over the counter at McDonald’s—water included.”

I’m in full agreement with Jonathan S. Tobin that it’s time to stop paying ex-presidents. It’s a long way from when Harry Truman’s poor economic situation after he left the presidency led Congress to establish a generous presidential pension as well has health care and money for an office and staff and coverage of Secret Service protection.

But 60 years later, the law no longer makes sense — with the obvious exception of the need for Secret Service protection. The notion that those leaving the White House resume life as private citizens has been rendered obsolete by the celebrity culture of our age.

Ours is a very different world from the one that enabled the Trumans to take a cross-country road trip without a Secret Service entourage after he left office. Indeed, without great personal wealth to fall back on and with his honorable notions about how to conduct himself, Truman might have been our last citizen-president.

Now former presidents and their wives can count on multimillion-dollar deals on books that are ghosted for them. They can also routinely score vast sums in honorariums from corporations and institutions whose leaders want to hobnob with a former president. And, as Bill and Hillary Clinton demonstrated, they can also pose as philanthropists while living the high life by skimming money donated to faux charities created in their names.

Each ex-president also now benefits from the creation of a presidential library and museum. While originally conceived as a way to preserve their papers, these institutions have taken on a monarchic aspect. Like Egyptian pharaohs building pyramids to honor their own memory, each succeeding president’s museum is bigger and more elaborate than that of his predecessor….

Some ex-presidents have behaved more egregiously than others. The comparison between the greed and sense of entitlement of the Clintons and that of both the older and the younger President George Bush is telling. The Bushes’ more seemly patrician-like restraint after leaving office has helped rehabilitate their reputations after exiting office with low approval ratings. Looking to the future, the mind boggles at what we have to look forward to from an ex-president Donald Trump.

But what isn’t in doubt is that being an ex-president has become the best job in America.

In the 19th century, the Founders’ ideas — influenced by the ancient Roman republic — about presidents being merely “elected magistrates” whose hold on power was transitory was taken seriously. Ex-presidents returned to the status of private citizen and, without exception, left the trappings of pomp behind them.

Now former presidents are treated like dowager empresses to whom the nation owes not merely deference but a living in spite of the fact that their status as an ex-commander in chief has become an ATM machine with no withdrawal limits.

We can’t go back to that quaint and more egalitarian era. But Congress can repeal or amend the Former Presidents Act so as to end the outrageous situation in which ex-presidential families living the lifestyle of the rich and famous are also being subsidized by the taxpayers.

Now Morgan Freeman is hit with #MeToo allegations. Whoa! I didn’t see that one coming but, apparently, his behavior wasn’t that big a secret.

A young production assistant thought she had landed the job of her dreams when, in the summer of 2015, she started work on “Going In Style,” a bank heist comedy starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin.

But the job quickly devolved into several months of harassment, she told CNN. She alleges that Freeman subjected her to unwanted touching and comments about her figure and clothing on a near-daily basis. Freeman would rest his hand on her lower back or rub her lower back, she said.
In one incident, she said, Freeman “kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear.” He never successfully lifted her skirt, she said — he would touch it and try to lift it, she would move away, and then he’d try again. Eventually, she said, “Alan [Arkin] made a comment telling him to stop. Morgan got freaked out and didn’t know what to say.”

Freeman’s alleged inappropriate behavior was not limited to that one movie set, according to other sources who spoke to CNN. A woman who was a senior member of the production staff of the movie “Now You See Me” in 2012 told CNN that Freeman sexually harassed her and her female assistant on numerous occasions by making comments about their bodies.

It doesn’t sound like his behavior was as egregious as that of some of the other men who have been accused, but it does sound like his behavior was not a secret.

A young production assistant thought she had landed the job of her dreams when, in the summer of 2015, she started work on “Going In Style,” a bank heist comedy starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin.

But the job quickly devolved into several months of harassment, she told CNN. She alleges that Freeman subjected her to unwanted touching and comments about her figure and clothing on a near-daily basis. Freeman would rest his hand on her lower back or rub her lower back, she said.

In one incident, she said, Freeman “kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear.” He never successfully lifted her skirt, she said — he would touch it and try to lift it, she would move away, and then he’d try again. Eventually, she said, “Alan [Arkin] made a comment telling him to stop. Morgan got freaked out and didn’t know what to say.”
Freeman’s alleged inappropriate behavior was not limited to that one movie set, according to other sources who spoke to CNN. A woman who was a senior member of the production staff of the movie “Now You See Me” in 2012 told CNN that Freeman sexually harassed her and her female assistant on numerous occasions by making comments about their bodies.

“He did comment on our bodies… We knew that if he was coming by … not to wear any top that would show our breasts, not to wear anything that would show our bottoms, meaning not wearing clothes that [were] fitted,” she said.

At 80 years old, Freeman is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, with a movie career that spans nearly five decades. His starring roles in movies like “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Shawshank Redemption” in the late 1980s and early 1990s made him a household name. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for 2004′s “Million Dollar Baby,” and has earned four other Oscar nominations. His voiceover work has also become iconic, including his narration for the Academy Award-winning documentaries “The Long Way Home” and “March of the Penguins.”

In all, 16 people spoke to CNN about Freeman as part of this investigation, eight of whom said they were victims of what some called harassment and others called inappropriate behavior by Freeman. Eight said they witnessed Freeman’s alleged conduct. These 16 people together described a pattern of inappropriate behavior by Freeman on set, while promoting his movies and at his production company Revelations Entertainment.

Of those 16, seven people described an environment at Revelations Entertainment that included allegations of harassment or inappropriate behavior by Freeman there, with one incident allegedly witnessed by Lori McCreary, Freeman’s co-founder in the enterprise, and another in which she was the target of demeaning comments by Freeman in a public setting. One of those seven people alleged that McCreary made a discriminatory remark regarding a female candidate for a job at the Producers Guild of America, where McCreary is co-president.

Four people who worked in production capacities on movie sets with Freeman over the last ten years described him as repeatedly behaving in ways that made women feel uncomfortable at work. Two, including the production assistant on “Going in Style” whose skirt he allegedly attempted to lift, said Freeman subjected them to unwanted touching. Three said he made public comments about women’s clothing or bodies. But each of them said they didn’t report Freeman’s behavior, with most saying it was because they feared for their jobs. Instead, some of the women — both on movie sets and at Revelations — said, they came up with ways to combat the alleged harassment on their own, such as by changing the way they dressed when they knew he would be around.

CNN reached out to dozens more people who worked for or with Freeman. Some praised Freeman, saying they never witnessed any questionable behavior or that he was a consummate professional on set and in the office.

Several other times during this investigation, when a CNN reporter contacted a person who had worked with Freeman to try to ask them if they had seen or been subjected to inappropriate behavior by an actor they had worked with — not initially even naming the actor they were asking about — the person would immediately tell them they knew exactly who the reporter had in mind: Morgan Freeman. Some of those people were sources for this investigation while others declined to comment further or did not want what they said used in this story.

The pattern of behavior described by those who spoke with CNN shows another example of the systematic problems that exist in the entertainment industry. The allegations against Freeman are not about things that happened in private; they are about things that allegedly happened in public, in front of witnesses — even in front of cameras. Before #MeToo, many men in the industry could behave without fear of consequences, because many times when a powerful man did so, it was the victim who suffered repercussions.

Freeman’s response is rather underwhelming.

After this article was published, Freeman released a statement in which he said, “Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows I am not someone who would intentionally offend or knowingly make anyone feel uneasy. I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected — that was never my intent.”

That whole line of non-apology apologies saying that he’s sorry if anyone was offended is so tired. When people say that they’re not acknowledging that they did anything wrong but rather putting the onus on others if they were so misguided as to have felt uncomfortable by whatever innocuous behavior he may have demonstrated.

Gee, it’s almost as if Hollywood stars aren’t the moral arbiters of decent behavior that they aspire to be.

I’m off this afternoon to drive with my Quiz Bowl team to Atlanta to compete in the national championships there over