Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Trump Selects Pence for VP

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According to media reports, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (R) has selected Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) to be his vice presidential running mate.

Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2012 and is serving his first term. He previously served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Indiana’s second (2001-2003) and sixth (2003-2013) congressional districts. He is generally considered to be a staunch conservative and has been associated with the ‘Tea Party’ movement within the Republican Party.

Although CBS News, Roll Call, and the New York Times have all indicated that Pence is the VP pick, the Trump campaign itself has not confirmed those reports and seemingly intends to move forward with a previously scheduled vice presidential announcement tomorrow morning. The Indianapolis Star also confirmed that Pence has dropped his reelection bid in Indiana and will join the Trump presidential campaign.

Trump and Pence are expected to be formally nominated by the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention, which will be held next week (July 18-21) in Cleveland, Ohio.

Announcing Website 25

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I’m proud to announce the launch of a new major revision to Off on a Tangent, bringing the site to version 25.0.

This new version is much leaner and meaner and is built on modern web technologies. The size of each page-load is reduced, as are the number of graphics and other ‘overhead’ items. It includes a modernized custom WordPress theme based on Underscores and also utilizes the jQuery and Bootstrap frameworks. I’ve phased-out the jQuery UI framework I was using previously. Additionally, Off on a Tangent now fully supports high-DPI screens like Apple’s Retina and Microsoft’s PixelSense displays.

If you see any issues please contact me. Read on for a detailed list of what’s changed, what’s new, and what’s improved!

Read more . . .

No Charges in Clinton Email Case

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Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey (R) today announced that his agency will not recommend any charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) following an investigation of her email practices.

The FBI determined that Hillary Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified emails, and that it is possible that “hostile actors” gained access to a private server that contained at least 110 classified messages. Comey acknowledged that there is evidence that crimes may have been committed, saying, “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

During her time as secretary of state, Clinton and her aides conducted government business on a private email server, a direct violation of numerous laws and regulations regarding record-keeping and transparency and the handling of classified material. Other federal officials who were similarly careless, intentionally or not, have not fared as well as Clinton. Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden is currently under indictment (and exiled in Russia) for copying classified material to his private equipment, even though he did so in order to publicize the NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance programs. And General David Petraeus was famously prosecuted in 2015 for sharing some classified material with his mistress.

Although no charges will be filed, Clinton’s actions raise serious questions about her judgment and her willingness to comply with regulations that govern official government communication.

Fear Mongers and the ‘Brexit’

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Flag of the U.K.
Flag of the U.K.

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you might think that the apocalypse is upon us. The recent referendum vote by the people of the United Kingdom (U.K.) to leave the European Union (E.U.) is just one of the latest signs.

The fear-mongers are in full-swing telling us that the ‘Brexit’ will destroy the economies of the U.K. and E.U., that millions of immigrants and workers abroad will be rounded up and sent home, that trade will grind to a halt, and a new world war will break out. Young Britons, the majority of whom wanted to stay in the E.U., are accusing their elders of destroying their futures in the name of racism and antiquated notions of national pride.

Of course none of this is true . . . but what does the truth have to do with anything these days?

It is true that the ‘Brexit’ may have negative consequences for the U.K. and the remaining nations of the E.U., although even that much is not guaranteed. It may, on the contrary, have a number of benefits—not least of which being that the people of the U.K. will get to manage their own affairs through their own democratic processes. National self-determination, in and of itself, is a valuable end. Indeed, that principle is supposedly affirmed by all members of the United Nations (U.N.).

Read more . . .

Clinton Now the Presumptive Democratic Nominee

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) is now the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee. After a hard-fought primary campaign against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Clinton cinched the nomination as delegates were awarded from the weekend primaries in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. According to the Associated Press, Clinton has earned the necessary 2,383 majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, however that number includes a survey of ‘superdelegates’ that Off on a Tangent cannot independently verify.

Clinton served as a law professor in Fayetteville, Arkansas, before her husband, former President Bill Clinton (D), was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976. The couple then moved to Little Rock and Hillary took a position at the Rose Law Firm and later became a partner. She also served on a number of boards, including six years on the Board of Directors of the Arkansas-based retail giant WalMart.

Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978 and served two years before being defeated in a reelection campaign. He was elected again in 1982, and this time held the office until his resignation in 1992. He was elected President of the United States in 1992 and served two terms. Hillary, in her role as First Lady of Arkansas and then First Lady of the United States, became more and more politically involved during this period. Most notably, she was heavily involved in an ill-fated health care reform effort that was abandoned in 1994 after it failed to gain the support of the Democratic majorities in Congress.

As Bill Clinton prepared to leave the White House, Hillary embarked on a campaign to become a U.S. Senator from New York. She was elected in 2000, and then reelected to a second term in 2006. She ran for the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States in 2008, but lost to now-President Barack Obama (D). After Obama was elected, he nominated his erstwhile opponent to be his Secretary of State. Clinton served in that role until her resignation in 2013. Clinton is currently under federal investigation for using an insecure private email server for official Department of State business during her time as Secretary of State, an arrangement that likely violated federal open-records and security-classification laws.

If elected in November, Hillary Clinton would be the first woman, and the first spouse of a former president, to serve as President of the United States.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.