POTUS in 2016, No Lame Duck, Cure Cancer?

Posted on January 13, 2016January 13, 2016 by Denise Simon

CBS: January 12, 2016, 11:47 PM|In his final State of the Union address, President Obama announced a new national effort to find a cure for cancer and put Vice President Joe Biden, who lost his son to the disease, “in charge of Mission Control.”

State of the Union 2016 ~ Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans:

Tonight marks the eighth year I’ve come here to report on the State of the Union. And for this final one, I’m going to try to make it shorter. I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa.

I also understand that because it’s an election season, expectations for what we’ll achieve this year are low. Still, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the constructive approach you and the other leaders took at the end of last year to pass a budget and make tax cuts permanent for working families. So I hope we can work together this year on bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reform, and helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse. We just might surprise the cynics again.

But tonight, I want to go easy on the traditional list of proposals for the year ahead. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty, from helping students learn to write computer code to personalizing medical treatments for patients. And I’ll keep pushing for progress on the work that still needs doing. Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.

Who attended as the First Lady, Michelle Obama’s guests? Click here to find out. The DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz instructed several in Congress to bring a Muslim along as a guest and they did. A few of them were associated with terrorism.

The we have retired Army Colonel Allen West as he wrote his summary on the SOTU.

Townhall: My assessment is that Obama spoke much about nothing that is pertinent to where we find ourselves today in America. His defined policy objectives were criminal justice reform, heroin abuse, our immigration system (meaning amnesty for illegals), gun violence, equal pay, paid leave, and raising the minimum wage.

President Obama talked about giving everyone a “fair shot” at opportunity in a new economy. First of all, who defines what a “fair shot” is? It appears that this is just more coded language for government-guaranteed equality of outcomes. The “every kid gets a trophy mentality” is not what America is about. That ideology is what gave us Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act, and eventually, the financial crisis and meltdown. Government decided that it was their mandate to give a “fair shot” to everyone who wanted to buy a home, and it did not end well. Government works best when it creates the policies that advance individual sovereignty so individuals may pursue their own defined dreams, the pursuit of happiness. Anything else, as we have seen and as President Obama champions, is antithetical to who we are.

Somehow, President Obama failed to address the 40-year low workforce participation rate and the fact that more Americans have been dropped from the workforce under his “fair shot” policies. Obama said nothing about a national debt that threatens the future of America. The poverty and food stamp rolls have exploded in these past seven years. That is not the best of America. It is certainly not the best that we can do. We must grow this economy and we can do so, along with reforming government spending, and eliminating crony capitalism and corporate welfare.

Obama’s vision of the future is centered on an ideological agenda that puts in peril the hopes and aspirations of our children and grandchildren. They will have less economic freedom and certainly less liberty if the Islamic terrorists prevail.

I have additional concerns from President Obama’s final SOTU address. First of all, if our military was so very strong then why did we have 10 U.S. Navy Sailors detained by the Iranians because the engines on two riverine assault boats malfunctioned? That makes no real sense to me. Nor have we taken care of our Veterans. I wear a ring on my salute hand trigger finger to remind me about the 22 Veterans a day who are committing suicide in America. While we know there are problems in our VA system, no major reform has been made and many perpetrators of this heinous wrong still hold their positions.

Obama said nothing about the Taliban’s resurgence and their hold on more territory than any time since 2001. It was just last week that the Taliban had an American Special Forces team trapped in Helmand province, yet Obama cannot bring himself to refer to this as “combat.” Obama’s own former acting CIA Director Mike Morrell testified Tuesday during a House Armed Services Committee that ISIS affiliations have grown far more Al Qaeda’s and that they comprise a legitimate strategic threat to the world and our homeland. There was no mention of ISIS’ most recent attacks in Baghdad and Istanbul. Again, Obama just could not bring himself to say Islamic terrorists or jihadists. In Obama’s mind, they are just “killers and fanatics,” and shutting down GITMO will reduce their recruiting efforts. No, Mr. President, your fecklessness and exhibited weakness emboldens ISIS and their allies which are growing from Boko Haram in Nigeria to Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. Obama asked for Congress to vote on an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) but first we need a strategic plan to defeat ISIS. He could have articulated that but chose more lofty rhetoric and lecturing instead.

Russia has expanded and is in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. China is building manmade islands by destroying reef systems and landing planes on these islands. Where are the environmentalists? China is also about to open up its first military base in Africa in Djibouti, as we have announced we are departing. The Iranian nuclear deal is a failure and has only served to empower and fund the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism. Iran is now exploiting their new-found strength and becoming a regional hegemony. Hence, the very open schism between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

President Obama talks about “protecting the American people” yet we had the biggest Islamic terrorist attack since 9-11 on his watch, San Bernardino. Before that it was Ft. Hood. And in the U.S., the enemy attacks our men and women in uniform with impunity, such as at the Naval Reserve Support Facility in Chattanooga. In the last week, we have arrested former refugee ISIS supporters in Sacramento and Houston. And who can forget the video of the horrific attempt to assassinate Philadelphia Police Officer Hartnett by an admitted Islamic jihadist. The American people are kind and willing to open up our arms to embrace those fleeing persecution, such as the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Coptics, and Yazidis, but those were not mentioned by President Obama. What the American people will not allow is what is happening in Germany and the rest of Europe. We will not allow a war on our women, as we are seeing there due to a clash of civilizational values, principles, and morals.

I can only wish that President Obama saw the enemy for who it is, and not the ideologically driven “threat” of climate change. Please read his entire response here.

No Rules of Engagement Leads to U.S. Humiliation by IRGC

Posted on January 13, 2016January 13, 2016 by Denise Simon

Never fire unless fired upon, not even warning shots. It is alleged that 2 U.S. Navy ‘riverines’ had strayed into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf. Exactly how do 2 boats ‘drift’ when those waters are in fact well known to all U.S. naval vessels? Don’t believe the story…. The United States is humiliated by Iran and John Kerry says thank you. Additional statements from VP Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

In part from NYT’s: The waters in question are a frequent site of intelligence collection by the United States, Iran and many gulf countries. The American and Iranian Navies frequently encounter each other there.

The detention and release of the sailors comes at a particularly delicate moment in the tense American-Iranian relationship, just days before a nuclear deal is to be formally put in place, and under which the United States is to unfreeze about $100 billion in Iranian assets.

That step is to be made after international nuclear inspectors verify that Iran has shipped 98 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country, has disabled and removed centrifuges, and has taken a large plutonium reactor permanently offline.

Riverines are valued at $3.0 million each and are fast boats complete with very advanced communications gear and guns including .50 cal weapons.

At 12:30 PM, EST, word came into the Pentagon that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which reports directly to the Iranian mullahs had arrested 10 U.S. sailors near Farsi Island, a small island of several in the Persian Gulf. Farsi island is exclusively an IRGC base and is surrounded by mines in the water and gunboats. Drifting is the excuse but hardly likely while there were other naval vessels in those exact waters. The ten sailors were 9 males and 1 female. The female sailor was forced to cover her head.

Negotiation began as soon as the Pentagon was notified and further contacted the State Department Secretary, John Kerry and the White House situation room. The official statement was Iran was cooperating and the sailors were being treated with mercy.

In part from FreeBeacon: Iran asserts the sailors were released after the United States apologized, prompting a flurry of denials from senior Obama administration officials.

Ali Fadavi, commander of the IRGC Navy, said that Tehran had missiles locked on the United States at the time of the incident.

“They were in sight of our missiles,” Fadavi said in Persian, according to a statement carried by the IRGC’s official news outlet. “If this had happened, it would have led to their annihilation.

“We had high preparedness with coast-to-sea missiles, rocket-firing fast boats, and various capabilities,” he said. “We prevented their additional irresponsible movement with the statements we broadcasted internationally. It was proven to them that the IRGC Navy has the first and final word.”

The U.S. cannot stand up to Iran, according to Fadavi.

It appears our sailors were stripped of all communications gear as were the boats as the IRGC said the USS Truman, a carrier strike group was not behaving so a hostile arrest was made. John Kerry groveled, likely pledged other promises, offered profound apologies. Humiliating.

Embedded image permalink

Much more perspective from Michael Rubin:

Iran seizing sailors and the rogue delusion

AEI: There’s a common delusion out there that when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fires off ballistic missiles or kidnaps sailors it’s either hardline elements trying to embarrass moderates, or rogue actors. It may be a comforting conceit to believe that any element of the Iranian government is on “our side” but evidence suggests that at best, the Islamic Republic is playing a game of good cop-bad cop, and that outrages such as taking American sailors hostage are welcome, not rogue actions.

A riverine command boat operates during a maritime air support operations center exercise in the Arabia Gulf in this June 12, 2012 handout photo, provided by the U.S. Navy, January 12, 2016. U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters .

Let’s put aside the fact that Article 110 of the Iranian constitution (backed by practice and the statue of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) makes the Supreme Leader the “supreme commander of the armed forces” with the power to appoint and dismiss the chief of the general staff, IRGC commanders, and the commanders of the army, navy, and air force. In other words, if Supreme Leader wanted to make heads roll in response to such provocations, he could.

There’s a history here of Western diplomats excusing bad Iranian behavior out of a desire to exculpate “reformers” or to dismiss provocations as the action of rogues.

In 1989, for example, there was the Ghassemlou assassination, when Iranian officials — meeting an Iranian Kurdish leader and his aides to negotiate an end to strife between Iranian Kurds and the central government — ended up assassinating the Kurdish team at an apartment in downtown Vienna.

Then, in 1992, after the German foreign minister announced a policy to re-integrate Iran into the global community and increase trade, the Iranian government responded by assassinating another Kurdish delegation at a restaurant in Berlin.

In 1994, an Iranian terrorist team blew up the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Beginning in 2003, the IRGC (despite the promises of then UN ambassador and now Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif) began infiltrating Iraq and equipping militias to murder American soldiers.

And, finally, in 2007, there was the case of British sailors seized by the IRGC.

In each case, Western diplomats sought to deny Iranian government responsibility. What they did not realize until later was that in each case, the gunman or chief planner ended up with a promotion. Mohammad Jaafari Sahraroudi, for example, the man behind Abdol-Rahman Ghassemlou’s murder, subsequently became a brigadier-general in the Qods Force and was placed in charge of its intelligence directorate. Ahmad Vahidi, the mastermind of the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing, became President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defense minister. Hassan Kazemi Qomi, a Qods Force operating serving as ‘ambassador’ to Iraq later won promotion to the Supreme Leader’s office, and Col. Amangah, the commander of the operation that seized the British sailors, later was decorated as soldier of the year. Promotions are hardly the punishment one would expect if the Iranian behavior really was not blessed, encouraged, and supported from the very top.

It’s time to stop deluding ourselves, and to judge Iran by what its actions are rather than what we would wish them to be.

Secret Companies with Secret Objectives Near You

Posted on January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 by Denise Simon

Is the nation’s largest online retailer part of a spy network? Have you given thought to the countless databases, harvesting data, human behavior, and all the interactions you have through the internet? Is Amazon now part of a larger incubation center for the federal government? You decide.

Amazon network

Why Amazon’s Data Centers Are Hidden in US Spy Country

DefenseOne: Of all the places where Amazon operates data centers, northern Virginia is one of the most significant, in part because it’s where AWS first set up shop in 2006. It seemed appropriate that this vision quest to see The Cloud across America which began at the ostensible birthplace of the Internet should end at the place that’s often to blame when large parts of the U.S. Internet dies.

Northern Virginia is a pretty convenient place to start a cloud-services business: for reasons we’ll get into later, it’s a central region for Internet backbone. For the notoriously economical and utilitarian Amazon, this meant that it could quickly set up shop with minimal overhead in the area, leasing or buying older data centers rather than building new ones from scratch.

The ease with which AWS was able to get off the ground by leasing colocation space in northern Virginia in 2006 is the same reason that US-East is the most fragile molecule of the AWS cloud: it’s old, and it’s running on old equipment in old buildings.

Or, that’s what one might conclude from spending a day driving around looking for and at these data centers. When I contacted AWS to ask specific questions about the data-center region, how they ended up there, and the process of deciding between building data centers from scratch versus leasing existing ones, they declined to comment.

The fact that northern Virginia is home to major intelligence operations and to major nodes of network infrastructure isn’t exactly a sign of government conspiracy so much as a confluence of histories (best documented by Paul Ceruzzi in his criminally under-read history Internet Alley: High Technology In Tysons Corner, 1945-2005). To explain why a region surrounded mostly by farmland and a scattering of American Civil War monuments is a central point of Internet infrastructure, we have to go back to where a lot of significant moments in Internet history take place: the Cold War.

Postwar suburbanization and the expansion of transportation networks are occasionally overlooked, but weirdly crucial facets of the military-industrial complex. While suburbs were largely marketed to the public via barely concealed racism and the appeal of manicured “natural” landscapes, suburban sprawl’s dispersal of populations also meant increased likelihood of survival in the case of nuclear attack. Highways both facilitated suburbs and supported the movement of ground troops across the continental United States, should they need to defend it (lest we forget that the legislation that funded much of the U.S. highway system was called the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956).

Unlike Google and Facebook, AWS doesn’t aggressively brand or call attention to their data centers. They absolutely don’t give tours, and their website offers only rough approximations of the locations of their data centers, which are divided into “regions.” Within a region lies at minimum two “availability zones” and within the availability zones there are a handful of data centers.

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to find the entirety of AWS’ northern Virginia footprint, but I could probably find bits and pieces of it. My itinerary was a slightly haphazard one, based on looking for anything tied to Vadata, Inc., Amazon’s subsidiary company for all things data-center-oriented.

Facebook data-center

Google’s web crawlers don’t particularly care about AWS’ preference of staying below the radar, and searching for Vadata, Inc. sometimes pulls up addresses that probably first appeared on some deeply buried municipal paperwork and were added to Google Maps by a robot. It’s also not too hard to go straight to those original municipal documents with addresses and other cool information, like fines from utility companies and documentation of tax arrangements made specifically for AWS. (Pro tip for the rookie data-center mapper: if you’re looking for the data centers of other major companies, Foursquare check-ins are also a surprisingly rich resource). My weird hack research methods returned a handful of Vadata addresses scattered throughout the area: Ashburn, Sterling, Haymarket, Manassas, Chantilly. Much more of the report is here.

Amazon’s Cloud center

CNBC: Palantir is notorious for its secrecy, and for good reason. Its software allows customers to make sense of massive amounts of sensitive data to enable fraud detection, data security, rapid health care delivery and catastrophe response.

Government agencies are big buyers of the technology. The FBI, CIA, Department of Defense and IRS have all been customers. Between 30 and 50 percent of Palantir’s business is tied to the public sector, according to people familiar with its finances. In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, was an early investor.

Annual revenue topped $1.5 billion in 2015, sources say, meaning Palantir is bigger than top publicly traded cloud software companies like Workday and ServiceNow. It has about 1,800 employees and is growing headcount 30 percent annually, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the numbers are private.

Palantir serves up free meals for employees at 542 High Street, home to its cafeteria. A red sign reading “Private Company Meal” is attached to the window, and a neon blue sign on the inside says “Hobbit House.”

Other perks, according to people with knowledge of the company’s policies, include subsidized housing for employees who live in the neighborhood and help with monthly commuter Caltrain passes for those traveling down from San Francisco or up from San Jose. Employees who drive in get complimentary parking permits.

“They’re making a commitment here,” said Cannon.

“The idea is that it’s physically locked down and there’s no way you can take information out.” -Avivah Litan, Gartner analyst

For Palantir to stay, it has no choice but to spread out. Only one building in downtown Palo Alto even tops 100,000 square feet, and last year city officials limited total annual development in the commercial districts to 50,000 square feet.

There’s another benefit to having a disparate campus. In doing highly classified work for government agencies, some contracts require the use of particular types of units called Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIFs.

Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst with Gartner, says qualities of a SCIF building include advanced biometrics for security, walls that are impenetrable by radio waves and heavily protected storage of both physical items and digital data.

“They have to make the walls so that no signals can be transmitted out of those walls,” said Litan, who is based in Washington, D.C. “The idea is that it’s physically locked down and there’s no way you can take information out.”

Having entirely separate facilities makes it easier to clear that hurdle, but even so, the vast majority of Palantir’s offices aren’t SCIFs. Read the full summary here.

Benghazi: Gen. Hamm DID Offer up SoF from Croatia

Posted on January 11, 2016January 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

Where is the AAR? (After Action Report)?

The Pentagon will not give up this report, could it be the White House has embargoed the report from all evidence and FOIA requests?

Yet, Barack Obama refused permission. No one was provided approval to seek host country landing privileges for FEST team personnel to arrive. Crickets by the National Security Council, Barack Obama and Leon Panetta caused the death of 4 and life changing injuries to many others. The Tripoli FEST team was stopped as well.

Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST)

The Foreign Emergency Support Team is the United States Government’s only interagency, on-call, short-notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide. Led and trained by the Operations Directorate of the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, it assists U.S. missions and host governments in responding quickly and effectively to terrorist attacks. The FEST, which has deployed to over 20 countries since its inception in 1986, leaves for an incident site within four hours of notification, providing the fastest assistance possible.

The FEST provides round-the-clock advice and assistance to Ambassadors and foreign governments facing crisis. The Team is comprised of seasoned experts from the Department of State, FBI, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the Intelligence Community. Once on the scene, FEST members help Ambassadors assess the emergency, advise on how best to respond, and assist in managing consequent operations. FEST provides:

Seasoned crisis management expertise
Time-sensitive information and intelligence
Planning for contingency operations
Hostage negotiating expertise
Reach-back to Washington agencies

FEST is under the direction of the State Department:

FEST was created to provide coordination and assistance to U.S. personnel and host nations in the event of an attack against American personnel and/or property over-seas. Whenever deployed, it is directed by the chief of mission, who is the leading representative of the U.S. president in a host nation (usually, but not always, this is an ambassador). Its efforts are coordinated by the Department of State, working through the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

In crisis situations, FEST has the mission of advising, assisting, assessing, and coordinating. It provides the chief of mission, incident managers, and leaders of the host government with direction concerning Washington’s response to a terrorist attack. FEST personnel are prepared to work around the clock in crisis and consequence management, communication augmentation, and other specialized tasks as directed. During the 1998 bombings in Africa, teams focused on restoring communications, ensuring security, and coordinating the flow of assistance to the embassies and personnel.

Need more proof that Hillary, Barack, Leon, Denis and Jeremy all left people to die in Benghazi?

There is this timeline which could offer some clues to accuracy, excuses or more.

Huma Abedin’s Emails are Next Up

Posted on January 11, 2016January 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

State Department to release Huma Abedin email trove

Politico: The State Department has agreed to process for public release an archive of 29,000 pages of emails longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin sent or received on a private account while working as deputy chief of staff to Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Abedin turned over the collection of emails to State last year at the agency’s request following the controversy over the disclosure of Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email account while secretary of state. Unlike Clinton, Abedin had an official email account, but she was among senior officials asked to provide any work-related messages in their personal accounts after State officials became concerned that the agency did not have copies of all the official records it should.

State has been releasing portions of Clinton’s email trove on a monthly basis in connection with a court order, a process that is expected to conclude Jan. 29. That process has led to release of some emails Clinton and Abedin exchanged.

At a court hearing in September, a Justice Department attorney said State had no plans to process for release all of the emails submitted by Abedin and other top aides such as Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan.

However, a legal filing Monday in a lawsuit brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch indicated State has acceded to a request to process all the emails Abedin turned over, except for news articles and summaries.

“The parties have agreed that State will produce to Judicial Watch responsive, nonexempt records from within the recently received documents, excluding news clippings/briefings contained therein,” said the court filing (posted here).

The schedule the two sides agreed to has the disclosure of the records overlapping significantly with Clinton’s presidential campaign and will have the State Department ramping up release of Abedin’s private emails just as the agency winds down its disclosure of Clinton’s messages.

The agency has agreed to begin turning Abedin’s personal-account emails over to Judicial Watch in March at a rate of at least 400 pages a month, with releases complete by April 2017. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell adopted the proposed schedule as an order later Monday.

“This is just an orderly way of getting these records, subject to court oversight,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in an interview Monday. “This is a review of each of those documents.”

In all the cases, the former officials or their lawyers selected the potential federal records from among the broader set of personal and work-related officials in the private accounts.

Fitton said the group wants to check Abedin’s messages against Clinton’s to see if the former secretary’s aide may have deemed some emails to be official that Clinton did not turn over to State.

“Obviously, she was as close an aide as you could have had to Mrs. Clinton. If Mrs. Clinton didn’t keep records she should have or destroyed or deleted them, maybe we can find them through Ms. Abedin. And Ms. Abedin’s activities are also controversial,” the conservative activist said.

An attorney for Abedin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. *** But more about Huma’s lawyer….Miguel Rodriguez……

Breitbart: Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s lawyer for the email investigation has a glaring conflict-of-interest in the case: he was an Obama administration “point person” on Benghazi who dealt with classified information and exchanged redacted emails with Hillary Clinton.

Miguel Rodriguez of the Washington law firm Bryan Cave is part of Abedin’s big-money legal team and is already handling communications with the government on her behalf during the scandal.

But Rodriguez brings some personal baggage to his role as Abedin’s counsel, as first noted by blogger Ron Brynaert.

Before joining Bryan Cave, Rodriguez served as deputy assistant secretary at Hillary Clinton’s State Department; then he was President Obama’s legislative director, where he became a “point person” on the administration’s Benghazi response.

“Once the attack piqued the interests of lawmakers, there were dozens of hearings, some of them classified,” the Washington Post reported in March 2013. “Senators and representatives had reports to review and questions they wanted answered about Benghazi. With the integrity and reputations of both Obama and Clinton on the line, Rodriguez emerged as a behind-the-scenes point person, colleagues said.”

Hillary Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines told the Post that “Miguel was not just in the thick of it; he was at the forefront of it. It was just an around-the-clock effort, and we leaned on Miguel as if he never left State.”

On October 28, 2010, Rodriguez pinged Abedin on a group email with subject line “Baby,” which Abedin forwarded to Hillary with the line “Fyi.” That entire email was completely redacted in the State Department’s ongoing release of some Clinton emails.

Rodriguez advised top Clinton staffer Jacob Sullivan in July 2010 on a hearing chaired by Sen. Bob Menendez regarding the Libyan “Lockerbie Bomber,” and Sullivan forwarded Rodriguez’s advice to Clinton.

“I asked who they think Menendez might want to call as a witness. They said Tony Blair. I laughed. They didn’t,” Rodriguez wrote.

Rodriguez offered advice to a Clinton State Department spokesman in a November 24, 2009 email that was forwarded directly to Clinton through her top aide Cheryl Mills.

“Our nominations wallah — perhaps you have met him already, Miguel Rodriguez — agrees with my gut that, if you are announced before the trip next week, you should probably send someone else in your place,” State Department official Matthew Rooney wrote to former Clinton State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. “Even though your day job gives you every reason to go, as soon as you are public you want to avoid any gesture that a Senator could interpret as presuming advice and consent.”

A representative for Rodriguez at Bryan Cave did not provide a comment for this report.