Censoring the 911 Call.

Obama creates a mystery.   Yikes.

Peter Sage Introduction to a Guest Post:

I will be brief because the Guest Post is long.   I read with dismay the news that the Obama administration was editing out some portions of the Orlando shooter's 911 call.   If they were editing out cries or other sounds from victims I would have understood.   Their privacy was being invaded.   Or maybe there were references to specific people under terror investigation--confederates in jihad--and the Attorney General wants to keep those quiet while the undercover work continues.   OK, makes sense.

Instead, what I read creates the worst possible interpretation for the administration: they are whitewashing references to ISIS presumably so they can maintain the idea that the Orlando shooting was not part of a greater jihad attack.   This is exactly the accusation that Republicans are charging: Obama won't say "Islamic terror."   And it complements the accusation against Hillary, that she lied in saying that the Benghazi killings were due to an insulting movie rather than a jihad plot.

Republicans have raised the issue and the suspicion that Obama and Hillary Clinton have a foreign policy failure--or at least a problem--and they are hiding it.    The censoring of the 911 tapes are apparent documentation for that very charge.   

It damages Hillary.

Here is a Guest Post from Thad Guyer.   I am traveling and have limited access to photos and to the internet generally today.

Thad Guyer Guest Post:

“Orlando Terrorism Scandal and the Fourth Presidential Predictive Model”

Real Clear Politics has published a piece that we better pray does not have the legs of a White House scandal: "Partial Transcript Of Orlando 911 Calls Will Have References To Islamic Terrorism Removed” (http://goo.gl/TKTRMl).  As a First Amendment free speech lawyer, I was somewhat outraged to watch the interview video of Attorney General Loretta Lynch explaining, with vague if not lame rationalizations, why the DOJ would not release at all the 911 call recording, and would censor out from the 911 transcript any references to the ISIS. (The video of her interview on NBC with Chuck Todd is linked in the article.) 

Think about it—the AG almost casually confirmed the widespread reports that the shooter did in fact link his murders to ISIS, but still she insisted that “we” at the DOJ have decided to not let anyone hear or read those words because they would “further victimize” victims. In a nutshell, the now trite if not bizarre Democratic tirade in suppressing “hateful” or “hurtful” words will take supremacy over freedom of the press (1^st Amendment) and freedom of information (FOIA statute). Given that Lynch did not attempt to suggest any legal authority for the DOJ decision, it seems more likely that the DOJ and the White House are intent on preventing Republicans from campaigning using the official 911 shooter’s voice or words. 

This may well become a White House scandal. The censorship thus far by the mainstream media of Lynch’s censorship— i.e., censorship of censorship-- is already a media scandal in conservative outlets.  See, “Loretta Lynch: ‘Islam,’ ‘ISIS’ to be Scrubbed from Orlando 911 Tapes” (Brietbart, http://goo.gl/0lhc7T). I found NBC’s Chuck Todd failure to question Lynch about her censorship decision to be grossly unprofessional, if not being yet another incident supporting Trump’s “dishonest media” meme. Several mainstream media outlets have reported Lynch’s decision as “government to release 911 partial calls” with no mention at all to the censorship of the ISIS references.  See, “Attorney general: Government to release some 911 calls with Orlando shooter” (Washington Post, https://goo.gl/IeKQZX), and “U.S. to release partial transcripts of Florida club gunman's calls” (Reuters, http://goo.gl/eKxMxM).  The Los Angeles Times even shunned the words “partial” or “some” in its dubious headline proclaiming DOJ transparency. See, “Justice Department to release transcripts of calls with Orlando gunman”, (LA Times, http://goo.gl/5kftsS).

If the 911 ISIS redacting becomes a censorship scandal, it will probably simultaneously serve as more evidence against Obama for his ISIS foreign policy failure. If that happens, then I believe the empirical data supports the statistical near certainty of a Trump presidency.  Hopefully, the DOJ and White House will make prompt course corrections.

In two prior guest blogs, I referenced the unanimity of three of the four major political science predictive models forecasting a Trump presidency, to wit, the models of professors Helmut Norpoth (Stony Brook), Alan Abramowitz (Emory), and Ray Fair (Yale). See “Liberal Media Suppresses Trump (or Hitler) Victory Statistical Model” http://goo.gl/P8MrAO, and “Political Climate Change Deniers”, http://goo.gl/jFc39N.  The fourth model, by American University professor Alan Lichtman is more subjective and takes account of limited real time political developments which, this year at least, he says may need to await the nomination outcomes at the Democratic and Republic conventions.  But he has already stated in recent interviews that troubles loom large for Clinton under his model.  See, “This professor has predicted every presidential election since 1984. He’s still trying to figure out 2016” (Washington Post, May 12, 2016, https://goo.gl/PN5x5T), and “Keys Democrats need to unlock the White House” (The National, Apr 2, 2016, http://goo.gl/HQTJbB).  Like professors Norpoth, Abramowitz and Fair, Lichtman agrees that the avalanche of public opinion polls are irrelevant, as are the drumbeat of pundits and the policy speeches of the candidates. 

Where Lichtman is different is that he contends that the incumbent President and party can, in a fashion and to a narrow extent, shape the political phenomenon upon which at least two of his “13 predictive keys” are premised. Two critical keys which are still being formed are whether the Obama administration has or is perceived to have had (a) a second term “scandal”, and (b) any significant “foreign policy failure”.

Lichtman is not just an academic.  He also advises various Democratic party campaigns.  In a former life, I talked with him, Dick Gephart (whose candidacy was by then all but lost to Michael Dukakis), and a few political consultant friends in the Beverly Hilton bar in June1988.  All of us were in town for a wedding. We roasted Litchman for his confident prediction that Dukakis would lose to George H. W. Bush, which seemed impossible to us given our dismal views of Reagan’s second term.  We argued policy and polls with Lichtman for an hour. Indeed the New York Times had just published a poll under the headline “Poll Shows Dukakis Leads Bush; Many Reagan Backers Shift Sides” (May 17, 1988, http://goo.gl/sTqQbn). The poll reassured us Dukakis “led in all regions”, that he had “very substantial advantages over Mr. Bush among women, union members, Roman Catholics and blacks”. Best of all, the poll heralded that Republicans were abandoning Bush: “Strikingly, 28 percent of those who said they voted for President Reagan in 1984 said they preferred Mr. Dukakis over Mr. Bush this time.”

 “All irrelevant”, a young professor Lichtman smirked at us (equally young) as we swilled cocktails, and he went through his soon to be deployed-for-the-first-time “13 keys for winning the White House”. (See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Lichtman). “Polls, pundits, policy, all irrelevant” he toasted us.  What mattered, he explained, was Reagan’s White House record, not Dukakis’ gubernatorial record; and the performance of Bush and Dukakis in their respective primaries. Like 2016, the left leaning pundits and press in 1988 sold snake oil in bulk.

Wanting to believe that we write our political destinies in real time, I cling to Lichtman’s model more than the other three, since he believes that various political behaviors, not political rhetoric, can affect a couple of his 13 keys. Unfortunately, I see the Obama administration in league with its media partners, and the Democratic party, to be poised for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on the keys (a) perceived second term “scandal”, and (b) perceived significant “foreign policy failure”. On scandal, I’m focused less on possible DOJ collusion in Hillary Email-gate, and more on the patently political behavior of Attorney General Lynch in censoring ISIS references in the Orlando 911 call transcript-- and the tape entirely.  She asserts no national security reasons for the censorship, and the voice is that of the dead shooter, not a victim.  Nor does the terrorist have any privacy rights, nor criminal defenses that might be unfairly prejudiced by public opinion.

If this unvarnished censorship becomes, or is perceived as, a White House “scandal”, then it will likely support the collateral perception that Obama has indeed suffered a “significant foreign policy failure”— his failure to make any tangible gains, much less achieve victory, against ISIS. Thus, Trump may be only one or two “keys” away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Let’s hope Lynch and Obama know what they are doing in their dangerous censorship gambit to help Hillary Clinton.