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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   38168 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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I stand by my previous sentiments:

One thing that really helps keep it this way is the illegibility of whether there's anything substantively relevant in the documents. My prior is that most classified documents are wildly overclassified and that nothing much would happen if they were handled carelessly and illegally. When I hear that Biden and Trump have handled them carelessly and illegally, my first instinct is to ask, "OK, but does anyone actually care and was there anything actually important there?". That the answer tends to be, "can't tell you, it's top secret" allows people to form more or less whatever ideas they'd like about how important the documents actually are.

...

Nonetheless, I still conclude that I would not like officious bureaucrats to have meaningful leverage over Presidents on the matter of classified documents (even if they tell me that they're actually DOCUMENTS rather than any mere documents). Additionally, I will see little or no legible difference between officious bureaucrats panicking and asserting such authority over Presidents and bad actors in the bureaucracy asserting such authority for the sole purpose of power.

Perhaps the claim that it's related to national defense will result in the prosecution attempting to actually establish that there was something there that anyone should actually care about, but I expect to be pretty disappointed.

(p.16) A plan of attack on a foreign country (from press reports Iran)

(p. 17) A classified map related to an ongoing military operation

(p. 28) A Top Secret//SI document concerning the military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States, with handwritten annotation in black marker.~~ disclose in any manner at will

(p. 29) A top secret document from June 2020 concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign country.

(p. 29) A top secret document concerning military attacks by a foreign country

(p. 30) A top secret document from November 2017 concerning military capabilities of a foreign country.

(p. 33) A top secret document from Oct 15 2019 concerning military activity in a foreign country.

every single one of these is information the executive is free to disclose in any manner at will

A shame he isn't the executive anymore.

he was, and that makes all the difference. it's what makes the list, especially its framing, meaningless bullshit. "in any manner" includes "sending it to maralago and forgetting about it until biden was sworn in, at which point the materials automatically became declassified"

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