Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ask me if I care. Anyway, you’re not paying for this.
Anyway, we’re still getting rained on down here. From Arkansas all the way to Virginia, the parts of the South that are affiliated with the Appalachian Mountains have continued to experience far too much rain at one time in one place. Overall, we’ve got between 10 and 15 inches total here in Northeast Mississippi and there isn’t a county that isn’t going to have to do some sort of road work when this is all done.
It’s not quite as constant as it was earlier in the week, but it’s not really stopped. Flooding has been an issue because while the rain is receding, it really doesn’t have anywhere to go. And unfortunately, while it will be let up by Sunday we’ve still got to get there. There’ll be more rain Saturday, at least through Saturday morning, and flooding is still a worry due to how soaked and full of water the ground already is. We should be back in shape by Monday but, regardless, be careful this weekend, neighbors, and keep an eye out for flash floods.
Moving on, the big news that sprung up today was the revelation that Trump’s Department of Justice under the control of Attorney General William “The Pope” Barr gathered information on Democratic Congress critters who were involved in the investigation of the whole Russia 2016 thing. Basically, they got phone and text records from House Intelligence Committee members, particularly Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell both of California. If that wasn’t disturbing enough – remember this was when Trump was claiming the Obama Administration had been spying on him – the DOJ collected similar files for Committee members’ aids, staffers, and families, including one minor.
Yeah, that’s a bit much. Despite the outrage, though deserved, this isn’t a new thing. It’s not been unusual for a Presidential Administration to gather intelligence on their political rivals in the opposing party by using governmental agencies. It just shouldn’t be done. Maybe, the whole thing is a bit fuzzy.
You young’uns might be fuzzy on any political history before 2015, but during the Bush Jr. Administration the U.S. gleefully expanded the country’s abilities to spy on its own citizens. This was all done under the aegis of the War on Terror but it’s come in handy in other ways. What seems to be causing the most vapors is the revelation that all this metadata on the House Intelligence Committee members came from Apple, who gave it up with little question. It’s been known for at least two years that the government can crack the average iPhone will little worry since 2017 but Apple has never made any bones about how much they value user privacy.
Anyhow, Apple received a subpoena from the DOJ back in early 2018 and being a good, patriotic company, turned over metadata on the requested list of numbers. They claim they couldn’t figure who those numbers belonged to because for some reason, and they couldn’t tell the numbers’ owners until this May. The same thing happened with Microsoft but everyone knows they’re evil. Apparently, we’re still a bit naïve about Tim Cook and company. Anyway, Apple claims they didn’t know why the numbers were requested and they expect us to believe they really cared.
Politics being politics, Democrats are making noise about all this and the DOJ’s internal watchdog pledges to do some investigation behind all this. Interestingly, they’re calling on Barr and previous AG Jeff Sessions to testify on this, and Barr is trying to distance himself from The Former Guy on this whole affair. So there might be some meat to this and perhaps this is shedding some light on why current AG Merrick Garland seems to be letter Trump skate on certain things, particularly sexual assault investigations. Granted, he’s got a lot on his plate with current Republicans actively trying to make it harder to vote, but still.
Anyway. Stay dry and have a pleasant weekend.
Dear Y'all 