Did benji take his L yet on the Brennan thing?
I think so? kingv pointed out I had conflated two things and I further noted I conflated more than that and had made another error about the "term limits" on security clearances.
n this instance, I didn't get the impression that kingv was necessarily disagreeing with the broader strokes of my argument regarding the media hyperfocus on the subject as the End of The Republic considering the post I first made was me agreeing with his comments along the same lines:
While I think this is petty and dumb, it’s not really as big of a deal as a lot are wringing their hands over. It’s not like Brennan has a SIPR terminal and a scif in his basement. It’s quite likely he hasn’t interacted with ANY classified material since he left office.
Rather he was cleaning up the mistakes I had made in my extended rambling due to his experience with the process, which was appreciated as it helped me also discover the other primary error I had made. If he had further disagreement he didn't seem to think it important to bring up. As I had posted originally, Brennan or any of these guys having a security clearance or not doesn't effectively matter if they're actually leaking classified info to their new employers. It simply shifts where the crime would be taking place if such a crime was happening.
Regarding the larger picture, I don't think there's much disagreement here about the proliferation of security clearances due to the proliferation of the usage of classification on everything as others with direct experience have expressed feelings on the stupidity of it all in the past.
But, you fail to note that I should be also taking a L regarding the Manafort Defense Team strategy as I had suggested my read on it was that they were letting the prosecution fuck things up. Whereas that amazing chart that came out, along with the other pause in the case details shows that they had a deliberate strategy of introducing absurd confusion into the proceedings including during the cross. And the prosecution walked into
that, which changes the implication of the Judge's comments to rather warning the prosecution how they were so determined to present everything they had regardless of relevance that it was walking into a dual-bladed buzzsaw. I had not seen information on the defense's case other than that they didn't call any witnesses. So I had taken the implication that the prosecution was merely fucking up, not that they were fucking up and being assisted to do so by the defense's deliberate efforts at confusing the jury and cross-examining on irrelevant points so the prosecution would continue to head down those routes thinking they went somewhere.
It should not be unsurprising that I enjoy defense attorneys schemes to blow up prosecutions by basically being epic jerks in the courtroom. Even in instances where I don't care at all for the accused I find it great stuff. Manafort's obvious crimes leading to his defense team going "well, fuck it, let's get nuts" is great even if I hope they don't pull it off in the end.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Rake and The Defenders (2010 reboot) were great for actually showing this side versus the standard prosecution dominates and defense attorneys are evil dudes that proliferates in TV. (Runaway Jury and Bull are similarly fun for jury manipulation reasons, even if they're too heart string tugging horseshit at times.)
Apologies if I misread you and you're talking about a different L I need to take.
