Has Social Media Finally "Jumped the Shark"?

A little more than a month ago (and before the revelation – gasp! – that Facebook was collecting data), I decided to step away from Facebook for a while. The constant bickering, negativity and outright nastiness was NOT the reason that I signed up to use Facebook to start with.

Over the years, I certainly jumped into the middle of some “heated” debates. And some of them – with people that I genuinely respect – were actually worthwhile.  But even some of those – it is difficult to really debate someone in a series of micro-essays.  Plus, points were taken out of context, or ignored, or sometimes just completely fabricated, making the conversations strained.  I “lost” several Facebook friends because of these conversations, and damaged relationships with others.

Recently, the media has been reporting on the fact that Trump (and Obama) used Facebook data for political purposes – either nefariously, or as an integral part of their political apparatus.  To this security professional, with a deep background in political science, my first thought was: how is this even news? Is that not what the political campaigns are supposed to be doing? If I were running a political campaign again, for sure I would be using any/all data available to me to promote my candidate / issue to ensure victory.

Ironically, the story was more focused around the fact that Facebook collects your data.

If the fact that Facebook collects your data, sells your data, manipulates your data, and owns your data comes as a shock to you, then we REALLY need to have a one-on-one conversation about Information Security basics.

For the cheap seats: Facebook is a data company. They take massive data stores of information and sell that information to advertisers, political campaigns, and pretty much anyone / everyone else they can to generate revenue.

THAT IS WHAT THEY DO.

If you have a problem with this idea – that a third party is taking your personal data (pictures, education, background, even location at any given time) and selling it to the highest bidder - then I highly recommend that you immediately take whatever steps necessary to delete your Facebook account (and – they just announced that even if you delete you FB account, your data may take up to 90 days to be completely purged from their systems).

I’m not quite there – yet.  I still want to be able to contact some long lost friends through Facebook if I need to, and Facebook is still the most convenient way. Besides, that was the primary reason I joined Facebook to begin with – check in on long lost friends, and the occasional puppy picture.

The Senate Filibuster of SCOTUS Nominees...

Over the coming days, you will certainly here about the "historic" "unjust" "revolutionary" "destructive" actions of Senate Republicans to follow the precedent of Harry Reid and Senate Democrats and eliminate the filibuster, this time extending it to President Trump's SCOTUS nominee.

A few points I wanted to share:

- I will be the first to say I am not wild about the evisceration of the Senate rules for partisanship. That is foolish and short sighted - it was when Reid did it, and it is the same when McConnell is going to do it.

- That said, I do not believe that President Trump could have nominated ANY conservative jurist that would have received the 60 votes necessary for cloture.  I think the Democrats are still fuming (and somewhat rightly so) that they did not get to put President Obama's nomination on the Court, so any nominee for that open seat was likely going to be met with objection (apart from one personally chosen my Sen. Schumer, which he graciously volunteered to do).

- I think that the Senate should have confirmed Merrick Garland – I said it then and I will say it now. He certainly deserved a hearing and a vote.  Unfortunately, Sen. McConnell plays a wicked hand of poker, as his political gamble could have very easily backfired for conservatives, dramatically shifting the balance of the Court for the foreseeable future (presumably, a Clinton administration would have withdrawn the Garland nomination and installed someone much more ideologically left-of-center than Garland). But, as many have said since, elections have consequences. The Republicans won, and the outrageous gamble paid off.

- I am not so naive to think that SCOTUS seats are not political or partisan - they have been since the very first nominees to the Court. But I also believe that a qualified jurist nominee should be confirmed, unless there is something so egregious that prevents the nomination. Judge Gorsuch is certainly qualified, and at least as qualified as Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. And as partisan as those nominations were (both are as left leaning as Gorsuch is to the right), neither were filibustered and both were confirmed.

- And as much as I generally disagree with the stances and politics of Sen. Michael Bennett from the great State of Colorado, I am pleased that he has decided not to join his fellow Democrats in the filibuster against a nominee from his home state. I didn’t think he had it in him, but I am proud (and pleasantly surprised) that he did.  Ironically, there are commercials running on TV that claim the exact opposite, so they need to get their facts straight.

- Lastly, I would call on those Senators planning on using the filibuster for this nominee to reconsider. It is YOU that are setting a precedent that will be impossible to walk back and change. I know that these words will not reach anyone, but I would be remiss if I did not say it.

Also, to demonstrate that I actually get news from somewhere besides Breitbart and Fox News, I wanted to share this article from The Atlantic that discusses the actual impact changing the Senate rules will have.

Buckle up – it should be an interesting few days…

The President and the SCOTUS Nominee...

Today, President Obama will nominate a person to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), filling the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  The President will be nominating Merrick Garland, the chief justice of the US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 

I am not going to go into a huge review of Garland’s resume, except to say that, regardless of his political bent, he is undoubtedly qualified to fill the open seat on the Court.

The President has performed his Constitutional obligation, and now the ball is squarely in the court (excuse the pun) of the Republican controlled Senate.  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly said that there will be no hearings for any nominee that the current President chooses, instead leaving the next President to fill the seat.  And in the truest form of irony, various conservative media outlets have produced video of President Obama and Vice President Biden recommending that exact position as Senators while George W. Bush was in office.

The larger question is: Should the Senate hold hearings and confirm the President’s nominee to the SCOTUS?

The simple answer is yes. And here’s why:

First, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

(highlights for relevance, italics for importance)

At some point, the “Advice and Consent of the Senate” clause has been bastardized to mean that the Senate gets to scrutinize every aspect of a potential Presidential nominee (and for the record – both parties are guilty of this abuse). Constitutional scholars and historians are at odds as to the meaning of the phrase, but nearly all would agree (I hope) that the Founders never envisioned the type of circus that exists now over Presidential nominations.

One could also argue that the nomination of a SCOTUS Justice is one of the most important powers that a President has, given the lifetime tenure of the appointment, to promote their ideas on government. This is not a new concept – Adams and Marshall’s plan to fill the judicial branch with Federalist judges was the first of MANY examples. There may be another discussion here about the lifetime appointment of federal judges, but what is relevant is that a SCOTUS lifetime appointment makes the nomination ever more important to the President and their values, but also to the Senate to confirm the appointment (which is a partial explanation of the rancor surrounding SCOTUS nominations).

Just because the nomination or the appointment is “high stakes” such as the SCOTUS appointment, does not grant the Senate the arbitrary purview to ignore the nomination.  

For the record – I believe that the Senate is obligated to conduct hearings on the President’s nomination.  Further, I believe that the Senate should confirm the President’s nominee, unless they find an extraordinary reason to suspect that the nominee is somehow unqualified for the position (which they will not find).  Political views or leanings are NOT grounds for finding a nominee unqualified for the position, regardless of any diametric opposition the Republicans may have to the nominee.  

My view will likely not win the day with the Republicans in the Senate – they will continue to preach their mantra and stall as long as possible. But it is not the right thing for them to do. 

White House Claims Executive Privilege...

I am generally not one of those types that believes that everything that the sitting President does has a suspicious ulterior motive. But you do have to question President Obama's latest use of executive privilege.

If you believe the White House spin department, the decisions and actions that led up to Operation Fast and Furious were all above board, and were part of a continued series of investigations (albeit an operation that put thousands of guns into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels). But today, in "the most transparent White House in history" (this quote always cracks me up), the Obama administration decided that the details surrounding the operation would be subject to executive privilege, and would not be released to the House committee investigating the operation.

I strongly believe in the idea of executive privilege (a curious concept that some political parties only believe when it suits them), so I support President Obama's use of the privilege in this case.  But it sill makes me wonder what exactly was AG Holder and the White House thinking...