Some reactions to the Horowitz report
Ordinarily I don’t watch a lot of TV news or opinion shows. But I have a tiny TV near my computer, and every now and then I turn it on and watch cable news if something especially important is happening and I’m curious to see what people might be saying.
The day that IG Horowitz’s report came out, I watched some reaction from the right on Fox. A few people’s remarks interested me—for example, Rudy Giuliani, who has the distinction of having been the person who first recommended Comey for a government job.
His disgust builds as the interview goes on, as does Ingraham’s, and both seem sincere to me in their revulsion [NOTE: I followed the embed instructions for the video, but it’s not working for me and if it’s not working for you either, just go here to watch it]:
Both Giuliani and Ingraham are lawyers, as is Comey, and part of their disgust is about Comey’s brazen lies (or abysmal ignorance) about the law itself.
That’s how I feel, too. I still believe in the rule of law, and its violation is one of the worst things about what Comey did. Trump, a Republican president, was the target. But whoever had been the target—Republican or Democrat, right or left—what happened was profoundly dangerous stuff. Everyone in America should be upset, deeply deeply upset, about it. But the left and the MSM only seem sad that Comey and company didn’t succeed in their goals.
And Victor Davis Hanson made an observation that not many people have made, to the best of my knowledge:
The first embedded video started playing OK immediately, without any controls. Though I discovered that the arrow, home, and end keyboard keys do control it.
The VDH info (which a Neo commenter caught a couple days ago) is really dumbfounding. This is just legal trickery and subterfuge plain and simple.
From the backgrounders on the Hillary email investigation, it was said that the State Dept. considers all written reports on private meetings with heads of state (including diplomats) are to be considered classified whether marked so or not. Is the POTUS not a head of state? Doesn’t the rule make perfect sense? Should Trump issue an executive order declaring the content of all of his private meetings classified?
The first embedded video started playing by itself suddenly about five minutes after I came to the page, after I (on purpose) played the VDH video.
VDH makes an excellent point, as he usually does. Comey did something illegal and his friends covered for him, just as he covered for his preferred presidential candidate, Hillary, and for Obama, who knew about Hillary’s email dodge and did nothing.
VDH is correct- the people in charge of deciding what is or is not classified here had a huge conflict of interest, and transparently so because their decisions aligned perfectly with what was needed to let Comey skate.
The IG found that Comey violated FBI policy, not the law per se.
Giuliani (paraphrased) said that no responsible (ethical) prosecutor does the kind of entrapment Comey set up for Trump.
Obviously, then, judging from so many other cases we have read about, past and present, there are NO responsible ethical prosecutors in the US at this time.
On Neos link to VDH, very astute and informative.
This is the high school cool kids grading each others’ tests to make sure they can all go to the prom. They’d all flunk if the grading were honest. This FBI crew is a detestable bunch of stuck up immoral vicious slobs.
A bit off topic, but there was a lot of angst here yesterday over the IG report on Comey. People were worried that he would go scott free. This video of Nunes at CTH instead places it as a first step in Comey’s criminal indictment by Barr and Durham.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/08/30/devin-nunes-we-have-briefed-doj-on-eight-criminal-referrals-two-for-criminal-conspiracy/#more-169703
Manju on August 31, 2019 at 3:47 pm said:
..
The IG found that Comey violated FBI policy, not the law per se.
* * *
I read a very long discussion at Conservative Treehouse yesterday debating that exact point.
Which brings up the question of whether or not the FBI’s (or other agency’s) policy rises to the level of statutory law or not.
There is absolutely no doubt that Comey violated quite a few FBI policies, and it would be disingenuous in the extreme for him and his supporters to suggest that he didn’t know he was doing so.
We also have seen a number of cases where agency policies (some of which have gone far beyond their statutory empowerment) are used to convict plain citizens as criminals, or at least punish them to the same level without necessarily invoking criminal law.
So either way, Comey’s skating is an affront to the American public.
Regardless of whether or not Comey did anything “officially criminal” in retaining his memos and then arranging for them to be leaked to the press, as the Giuliani clip indicated, and as the IG report made clear, he DID lie both to Donald Trump and to the Congress, which may or may not be prosecutable.
Here’s the legal loop-hole that he may have exercised:
It is (so we have had hammered into us by Mueller for years) a federal crime (not “violation of policy”) to lie to federal officials, such as FBI agents.
Jim Comey, by his own admission, lied to Donald Trump.
BUT
At the time of the “dossier revelation” he was talking to president-electTrump, who was not yet a federal official.*
The FBI and law enforcement in general, including prosecutors, are allowed to lie to citizens.
Therefore, no crime was committed.
Inquiring laymen want to know about the legal knots being tied here.
Whether or not there is any statutory definition of the term “federal official,” most Americans (myself included) would consider the President of the United States to be one.
Are elected officials in general, including the head of the Executive Branch, legally considered to federal officials?
Are Congress members citizens or officials?
If they ARE federal officials, the next question is:
Did Comey at any time lie to President Trump?
We know he obfuscated with Congress — but that’s in the laymen’s view.
Did his misleading answers actually consitute prosecutable lies?
*
Trump’s inauguration date was January 20, 2017.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/04/20/comeys-memos-indicate-dossier-briefing-of-trump-was-a-setup/
“Newly released memos written by former FBI director James Comey indicate that an early 2017 briefing for then-President-elect Donald Trump about the contents of an infamous dossier was held so it could be leaked to media outlets eager to report on the dossier’s allegations.”
“And Victor Davis Hanson made an observation that not many people have made, to the best of my knowledge” – Neo
VDH noted that Comey’s memoes were “classified” by the same FBI team that conducted the Trump witch hunt, so as to reduce the severity of his offense ex post facto.
I saw that mentioned yesterday at Treehouse:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/08/29/first-review-of-ig-report-on-james-comey-the-substance-within-the-report-shows-a-two-tiered-justice-system/
Relevant excerpts from the OIG report are included in the post.
Another pundit somewhere made the point that no “classification review” was needed for the memos in re the OIG determination of policy breaches, as they memorialized material that was “born classified” — being both private conversations with a President (or p-elect) and containing material related to national security aka foreign policy.
View from the Left that illustrates the can of worms that would be opened in prosecuting Comey about the Memo Mess.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-comey-email-report-really-says
Counter it with these, if you haven’t seen them yet.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/5-revealing-moments-from-fbi-director-james-comeys-congressional-testimony/
(old but note this)
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/459472-comeys-classified-misconduct-and-the-medias-flawed-coverage-of-it
https://foxbaltimore.com/news/connect-to-congress/8-things-to-know-about-the-doj-inspector-generals-report-on-james-comey
https://themarketswork.com/2019/08/30/highlights-from-the-igs-report-on-former-fbi-director-james-comey/
(continued)
As detailed in the LawFare post I linked above, the Left will argue the definition of every word in the policies, laws, interviews, IG reports, and probably press stories (which formed the basis for a great deal of the Mueller report, some of you may recall).
Including not just “is,” but also “and” and “the.”
Coincidentally, I was just reading an analysis of the parable in the New Testament about the Unjust Steward. After being fired by his master and ordered to produce his books, the steward brought in his master’s debtors and forgave them part of their debts, without disclosing that he was no longer authorized to do so.
The master, without actually approving of the steward’s underhanded shenanigans, rightly pointed out his cleverness in feathering his new nest before getting kicked out of his old one (there was some more to it*, but that’s the core of the parable itself).
Not too hard to see the parallels here.
The kicker is what follows after the parable.
Luke 16, from the Jerusalem Bible rather than the KJV (to huxley – preference noted; I have a copy for reference, but I didn’t remember JRRT was a contributor) :
https://www.catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=49&bible_chapter=16
10 Anyone who is trustworthy in little things is trustworthy in great; anyone who is dishonest in little things is dishonest in great.
* * *
*FWIW, from “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes” – the author asserts that the community ethos of the time (and still today, in Arab countries), would indeed be to admire the steward’s astuteness, because the debtors would have assumed he reduced their debts with his master’s approval, thus making him out to be a very generous lord indeed, and the master could not then repudiate the debt reductions without harm to his own reputation.
Before anyone points it out, yes I know v. 10 has general application to other people as well as Comey, but he is the insect under the microscope at the moment.
VDH and Laura are the best now that Dr. K. is gone.
As I understand it, from things Comey has said, it was Comey himself who initially decided which of the 7 memos he prepared supposedly contained “classified” information, and it was he who marked 4 of them as somehow “classified” at some level.
It was these four supposedly “classified” memos he kept in his safe at home, and it was the other 3 memos, not having any classification marks, that he leaked.
Thus, Comey prepared his clever anticipatory defense.
He could say, “see, I did not leak the material that I determined to be and marked as “classified,”” and “the material I leaked was not marked as classified, because I did not believe these 3 memos to contain any classified material.”
Then, when some of his FBI buddies got together, and ruled that the 3 leaked memos contained “classified material,” it still gave him the ability to challenge any prosecution, by arguing that while he mistakenly believed that the material he leaked was not classified, at the time he leaked the material he sincerely believed it not to be classified i.e. he just made an “honest” mistake, and not a deliberate one.
This guy is a real slippery weasel.
Aesop,
All analyses should be so logical, thorough, and straightforward. :>)))
. . .
I shall again pick one nit that to me is more of a burr under the saddle, as it indicates yet again how much we are losing to PC:
“Congress members.”
The correct term is “Congressmen.” There is nothing, NOTHING whatsoever that is unfortunate or demeaning in this standard usage. Contrary to popular but dreadfully mistaken opinion, “he,” “man,” “person,” and some other words are INCLUSIVE not EXclusive unless the context indicates that the word refers specifically to a male of the species.
“When someone is confirmed as a member of the Supreme Court, he is expected to make his judgments without regard to any political consequence.”
This is true of all members of SCOTUS, INcluding J. Ginsburg, J. Kagan, and J. Sotomayor. But if I write, “When someone is confirmed as a member of the Supreme Court, she is expected to make her judgments without regard to any political consequence,” I have specified that this applies to the female members of the Court. Says nothing at all about what’s expected of the male Justices.
“When a person is making out a budget, he needs to think first about what he must have, such as food, and only when his needs are budgeted should he consider what he’d like to have, such as a Learjet, or 16 pairs of Armani swimming trunks*, or the most expensive of gowns to wear to the Coronation Ball.”
*I have no idea what Top Designer designs men’s trunks. 😎
English does have its own logic. And I’ll note that this usage of the same word (i.e. the same symbol, written or spoken) is not exclusive to English. French has the same usage. “One [ L’on ] writing a letter may or may not include what he[ il ] really thinks of his intended recipient.”
“She” and its derivatives, and “woman” or “women,” however, are EXclusive pronouns. They are intended to specify the gender of the subject as female. “Hadassah is an association of Jewish women” informs us, among other things, that Hadassah does not include male members.
Aesop,
I need to make it clear that my remarks on English were not addressed to you personally. You are in fact my favorite commenter here (and the standards are pretty high), and you rarely make my Inner Editor so much as twitch. If I caused you any sort of distress, then I do apologize.
As for your analysis, I repeat: Good job!
Over the curse (I thought I was intending to type the word “course,” but perhaps the word I mistakenly typed—my fingers perhaps directed by my unconscious mind—is the more accurate word) of the last few years, at times I have been thinking that I must be having a bad dream, as the old order disintegrates, transmogrifies, and this country of ours careers off into nightmare territory.
The writer of a piece out today about Epstein, and the scope of his activities, accomplices, victims, the people he might have been blackmailing and the possible foreign affairs implications, the sources of his fortune, his supposed suicide, the whole range of people who would have wanted him dead, summed up that whole sordid matter.
And in doing so asked, in fact, the premier and much wider question about where we are today, and what the character of our whole situation, our world, the Reality we live in actually is; all this in one small and striking sentence, a stark and binary question i.e.
“Are we living in Disney movie or a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie?” *
* See https://kaus.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-red-pill
Manju:
I’m sure if Comey had done exactly the same thing to Obama you’d be saying exactly the same thing.
NOT.
I would. But you wouldn’t.
Comey violated the law, but the DOJ declined to prosecute because they couldn’t prove intent and they believe they have a stronger case against him on other issues.
Those interested in reading more can see this as well as reading Andrew McCarthy’s new book. Then there’s also the two tiered system of justice, based on a person’s political affiliation.
This is ominous, banana republic stuff. That Manju and the left don’t care, because it’s Trump who has been the target (based on manufactured evidence—not to mention a Russian disinformation campaign), is no surprise whatsoever.
P.S. I am quite sure that many commentators looking at the binary choice above will say, “well, we really live in a “thousand shades of gray” world.”
Unfortunately, I think that as we have become supposedly more “urbane,” supposedly more “educated” and “sophisticated,” have moved into the Roman Republic playwright Terrence’s (b. 195 B.C. -d. 159? B.C.) “nothing human is alien to me” territory, into not being so “rigid” and “intolerant” as to view things as either “Right” or “Wrong,” but rather viewing ideas and actions as being placed somewhere along that spectrum of those thousands of gradations between Right and Wrong, we have simply lost our way; we have been told that all the “smart people” have been taught, and now believe that there is no Right or Wrong, our traditional value system has collapsed and, as a result, we now get things like major political candidates advocating what is, in effect, Infanticide, and doing so in a full-throated way, with no shame or hesitation.
Snow on Pine:
I don’t buy the wider allegations.
From what I’ve read so far, the whole thing rests on nothing that I would call “evidence.” It’s a string of associations. Epstein was active in politics and in the world of the rich and famous. But that doesn’t mean those people were clients of his. The whole thing is like “meToo” run amok. And meToo had already run amok.
Actually, it is my belief and my observation that people are all too willing to believe in HUGE conspiracies of evil, often on fimsy to non-existent evidence. It’s frightening but exciting at the same time, like a movie.
The most discouraging aspect of this affair is the silence of the no-prosecute decision by William Barr. He has talked a good game but so far nothing has happened. The FISA court documents are still classified and not even leaked. Not a peep out of the prosecutor he appointed who was going to clean house.
Also, where is Chrisptopher Wray in all of this. Again not a word. Even on relatively minor matters, AFAIK Wray is still stonewalling Lindsey Graham on who ordered the swat team/commando raid on Roger Stone’s house and then had CNN on hand to video the proceedings.
As you mentioned, Neo there is still a possibility of indictments from the other IG reports if they ever come out. I have my doubts on that ever happening.
It is looking a lot like the possibility that you posted on another post that the deep state already took out the President and we are seeing the kabuki theater/boob bait for the bubbas to keep us pacified.
“. . . the silence of the no-prosecute decision . . . ”
So soon you’ve forgotten the uproar over the Mueller report’s “not exonerated” jibber-jabber? Why?
When the prosecutor decides not to indict that’s all he can ethically say. He’s got nothing else to say, and shouldn’t have.
Barr should re-classify all memos to officials and elected officials as Classified.
If Comey is indicted for anything, illegal handling of Classified memos should be included, and Comey should have to prove, in court, that the memos were not Classified. Note that other memos, those not taken by Comey, WERE Classified.
I’m so angry, and sad, and frightened about the future of America and even Civilization. Deep State criminals should not have the power which the FBI criminals so far seem to have.
sdferr wrote:
““. . . the silence of the no-prosecute decision . . . ”
So soon you’ve forgotten the uproar over the Mueller report’s “not exonerated” jibber-jabber? Why? ”
—————-
You left out my next sentence.
“He has talked a good game but so far nothing has happened.”
Barr’s actions speak volumes.
He could have overruled the “career” i.e deep state prosecutors but did not.
Bob–The picture I’m getting is of Barr and a few others of Trump’s appointees–if they are the honorable and competent men they are supposed to be–as being parachuted in, set down, alone at the top in their Departments and Agencies–as being surrounded and vastly outnumbered, and trying to accomplish what is essentially a hostile takeover of organizations in which a majority of their employees and officers are on the Left, are Trump’s enemies, and have agendas diametrically opposed to what Trump is trying to accomplish; “civil servants” who, moreover, likely have a lot of misdeeds to cover up, and a lot of their “comrades” to cover for and protect.
Thus, all the “resistance” to declassifying and producing all of the relevant documents which would identify the people involved, and testify to the steps taken to organize and prosecute the soft coup against President Trump.
Thus, all the reluctance in the DOJ and FBI to fire and/or to indict and prosecute all of the major coup members.
Barr may be in the position of a ship’s Captain who is turning the big steering wheel, pulling levers, and pushing buttons–but, to no effect–because while he is supposedly in control and can issue orders to the crew, the links between his controls and the actual engine and rudder no longer really exist, and the crew is intent on ignoring him and impeding him and his commands in any way they can.
Julie near Chicago on September 1, 2019 at 1:13 am said:
Aesop,
I need to make it clear that my remarks on English were not addressed to you
* * *
Actually, I agree with you on the historically inclusive/exclusive nature of the male/female nouns and pronouns, but over the last decade or so I’ve elected to cede that battle when it does not lead to Byzantine euphemisms. “Congress members” is a fairly simple substitution, as is “chair” and “mail carrier” etc.
Thanks for the kind words!
The problem, of course, is that the Obama administration made use of the IRS, the FBI, and the senior ranks of the Department of Justice as a political tool. Richard Nixon never got away with anything remotely like this. Partisan Democrats fancy they’re entitled to this sort of service from these agencies, just like they think they own public broadcasting and state universities.
“just like they think they own public broadcasting and state universities.”
They don’t??
Aesop,
Thanks for your reply, gracious as always. :>))
“Congress members” doesn’t work because “Congress” isn’t an adjective. “Congressional members” would be okay, but in this particular context it sounds a little strange, to my ear anyway. But “members of Congress” is both straightforward and correct, so that would be my choice.
.
I think you said you started life programming for Revell. (There’s a blast from the past!) I’ve been wondering what machines you programmed, in what languages. If you’re ever in the mood to indulge my curiosity, that is.
I worked on IBMs, ’65-’82 with breaks for nonsense like school *g* (Heh. Math may be patriarchal plot, but I loved it all the same.) 7070 (Autocoder), 7094 (Fortran IV G & H), S/370 (Assembler). Great machines and great languages. If I were to go back to work today, I’d choose one of the last two. Them was the days!
Neo, what law did the IG say he broke?
Snow on Pine: “It was these four supposedly “classified” memos he kept in his safe at home, and it was the other 3 memos, not having any classification marks, that he leaked.”
I remember people asserting on line that Comey leaked 4 memos.
And that this meant at least one leaked memo was classified. Those discussions were a long time ago … I confess to not following every detail of Comey’s leakage, but I do recall the small mathematical analysis. “If four were leaked AND there were three not classified THEN at least one classified was leaked”.
Comey leaked classified information to his lawyers, who were not security clearance holders. That’s a criminal offense. Justice appears to have declined to prosecute this relatively minor offense, since it may prosecute the whole Obama/Clinton scheme to use government powers to investigate false “collusion” charges.
Comey’s maneuver with the memos was done to provoke the appointment of a Special Prosecutor and the whole expensive, fruitless effort to “get Trump” and tear the nation apart in the process. Comey is proud of himself. He should be ashamed.
Manju:
As I wrote in my previous comment, Horowitz had originally recommended prosecution, but the DOJ declined. Also, see Hanson’s description of how the memos were essentially whitewashed after the fact. I also gave you links in that previous comment of mine.
But Comey’s violation of the law is hardly just about Horowitz’s report on this one issue of the leaked memos, which is the weakest part of the case against Comey in the legal sense (that’s supposedly why the DOJ declined to prosecute). It also has to do with the raft of information about the illegality of the FISA warrant applications. That issue has been thoroughly aired here in the past and I’m not going to waste time going over it again.
But as I’ve said earlier, Comey’s behavior was damaging and dangerous, and it would have been whether he was out to get a Republican or a Democrat. You and your colleagues would love the FBI and the DOJ to do your political bidding and don’t care how they do it as long as they’re targeting your enemies.
You and your colleagues would love the FBI and the DOJ to do your political bidding and don’t care how they do it as long as they’re targeting your enemies.
This sort of thing, the ongoing insistence that public institutions are there property, mass importation of illegal aliens, packing the voting rolls with aliens and felons, systematic vote fraud, constant lawfare, and now permission to riot given favored political factions have, in effect, ruined democratic institutions altogether. Partisan Democrats tear up the rule book, and fancy they should be able to proceed as they wish. They’re not going to like it when their enemy tears up the rule book and starts firing from the upper floors.
This happened in Spain after 1931, and dimwits like Rick Steves haven’t a clue. About 2% of Spain’s population died during the ensuing Civil War. That’s > 6 million people.
Could you provide me with a cite here please?
Manju:
It has been written about time and time again. But a little sampler is this and this, as well as this. By the time the Horowitz report came out, the DOJ had refused to prosecute, so the recommendation was moot and was not included in the Horowitz report:
Whether or not a person actually is prosecuted for a violation is a separate issue from whether that person acted lawfully.
As I’ve also said many times, Comey’s behavior was outrageous and should outrage every American. But since it’s all about politics right now, the left defends him. A dangerous precedent, but they don’t care.
‘Whether or not a person actually is prosecuted for a violation is a separate issue from whether that person acted lawfully.” – Neo
In fact, we are still being inundated with cries from the Democrats that Trump is guilty-guilty-guilty of unlawful actions, even though Mueller & Team declined to recommend prosecution on the basis of the paltry evidence they were able to find or fabricate. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the weasel.
They could argue the same, of course: prosecute Comey, prosecute Trump.
I think that Mueller & Co. were weaseling out of recommending prosecuting Trump because the parallels to Clinton’s email non-security are just as subject to point-of-view interpretation, so that prosecuting Trump would invite the GOP to re-open the Clinton cases (which the Barr DOJ ought to do anyway, given the now yuuuuge body of evidence of FBI & DOJ malfeasance there, but won’t because the powder-keg that would ignite is huger).
Lots of interconnected spider-webs: jiggle one, jiggle all.
However, I hope that AG Barr is putting together an iron-clad prosecution against at least some of the weasels, stoats, and ferrets infesting Toad Hall.
Least weasel.
h/t Mike Doran
Julie near Chicago on September 2, 2019 at 4:59 am said:
…
I think you said you started life programming for Revell. (There’s a blast from the past!) I’ve been wondering what machines you programmed, in what languages. If you’re ever in the mood to indulge my curiosity, that is.
… If I were to go back to work today, I’d choose one of the last two. Them was the days!
* * *
Novell was the company I worked for, after a very small business right out of college, and then a very, very large one — it was “just right” – 😉
After that, some free-lance programming alternating with teaching for a couple of years in a community college.
If memory still serves for the machine names and numbers:
I started progamming my first year in college, having never even seen a computer before, but being well versed in science fiction.
We still had a home-built core-and-tube machine on campus, although it was removed that year. Fundamental computing algorithms were taught with ALGOL-something on a Burroughs 5500, and we also did a little FORTRAN IV, then moved to PL/1 when the college bought an IBM 360/370 over the summer.
I’m quite sure they got it for administrative work, and just let us students use the spare cycles, because turn-around time was so poor (which makes me much more patient than the kids lamenting that it takes so long!! for their computers to do anything!! — poor clueless babies.
We had to simulate an Assembler for our major project that year, but I didn’t work directly at that level until later.
The small business had a very small OS that was only about 1 level up from machine code, because the owner wrote it for the progammable calculators we were actually writing software for.
The very, very large business had machines that I don’t remember the name of, nor the programming language. I do remember debugging my programs line-by-line by stepping through them and reading code-lights on the front panel.
Novell also started with a proprietary language that was funny blend of BASIC and RPG II and COBOL, but we dropped that after the original founder was bought out, and now I don’t remember what we programmed in afterwards, but it worked much better.
Guess I really am getting senile — or it just wasn’t worth remembering.
Couple of other odd things while free-lancing, and then I ended up teaching COBOL, BASIC, and RPG II in a community college!
I don’t know the names of half the high-level languages people use now (including two of our own kids), but I think I have your same fondness for FORTRAN — it was so straight-forward, and worked fine for the things the hardware was able to do.
More stories later, maybe; no one else wants to listen.
Although I have passed on a few generic object lessons to the boys.
Well, one story, mostly because it emphasizes the frame of mind of programming culture back in the day, which is what I loved: solving reasonably well-defined problems with tools that did what you told them to do, once you mastered how to tell them.
When we came into our first class my second year, the prof informed us of the change in machines and languages.
“I don’t know PL/1,” he admitted freely. “Your labbies don’t know PL/1. Your first assignment is due Friday.”
My first computer language was also Fortran. I was extremely unsuccessful with Fortran, because we were using punch cards, and without exception, I would either mistype a few cards, or spill my card box, or both, on every assignment. That was in 1966-67. Then I learned something called RPG (IIRC), which was a near-machine language for an early computer made by a joint venture of Royal Typewriter and General Precision, circa 1970. Then, when my wife got her MBA in 1977-80, I had to learn a super high-level language named APL so I could teach it to her. Why MBA students had to learn a programming language was a mystery to me, since by then, everyone in business was already using spreadsheet programs like Lotus, then later Excel, to do any calculations they needed.
Ah, yes, the dreaded punch cards!
And heaven help you if you forgot to turn on the automatic sequencing before you started “writing” your program.
RPG was indeed a thing: Report Program Generator.
High-level for its time, you just had to specify fields and locations for your printouts.
The spreadsheets built on the idea; I have no clue what actually went on in their black boxes.
Academia back in the day was usually teaching what businesses were doing, so we were always behind. Now, however, I think it goes the other way, for some aspects of IT, but not for all.
Now, of course, everyone knows that RPG stands for Role Playing Game.
Maybe there is some synergy in the definitions, as reports were part of our office roles, and there were usually a lot of head games going on among the suits.
NOTE FOR NEO:
The video link to Rudy’s interview autostarts everytime I post a new comment.
That’s kind of expected these days (although most of what you embed does not).
However, today, when I opened your blog “homepage” to read your new posts, it also started playing! I actually had both of them going at once for a few minutes until I got them sorted out and quashed.
The embed may need to be disabled or something.
Best regards – you know how much I love your blog!
AF
Neo, I’m looking for confirmation that “Horowitz had originally recommended prosecution”. If this has indeed been “written about time and time again” please provide something other than an opinion piece written my John Solomon.
“…opinion piece…”
Here’s another:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/09/03/what_to_expect_when_youre_expecting_fisa_abuse_141157.html
File under: Patience, my son. Patience….”
Aesop, thanks for your reply! You’ve certainly had a varied career, which sounds as if it had considerable interesting periods. (I think most careers also have periods where the careerist considers the advisability of murdering all of his or her colleagues at every level above his or her own, and some cases his or her peers as well.)
NOvell, not REvell. Well, I got the “vell” part right, so at least there’s that. :>(
You speak of having debugged by watching the red lights on the panel. My then-future husband paid part of his college expenses by working as a part-time lab-rat, which included doing something like that on the early IBM machines. Ca. 1962-64 or thereabouts. We were engaged at the time, and we 3rd-year ladies living in the dorms were allowed two 3 o’clocks per quarter. Guess how I got to spend mine. 😆
(Some things never change…. I have a great snapshot of the Young Miss, age about 7, where she was sitting in front of the HP green-screen that my Honey had in his lab, with a big grin plastered onto her face. We used to take his, and our, supper to him at work quite often. We ate in between talking computers, etc. At that point he was an actual full-time scientist at Argonne. For “full-time,” read appx. 26 hrs/da. It’s not only graduate students and medical residents who get the great hours! Almost all of his colleagues had similar schedules. Anyway, the three of us had a lot of fun together around 8 p.m., though it wasn’t your traditional family sit-down supper.)
My own debugging was done by playing computer with the accordion-page program printouts and a pencil. I was very good at it (she said modestly), and I loved it. My own work was always somewhere in administrative file-maintenance, programming from scratch and debugging other people’s foul programs. *g*
As for COBOL, the less said the better. What a waste of time! I ended up trying to write Fortran programs in COBOL, so to speak. Which would have been OK — nobody was holding a gun to my head to make sure every instruction was a 3000-page article — except that COBOL lacked the very thing that made made Fortran so powerful: The ability to get at the machine. (And, of course, Fortran’s sleekness and elegance.) The 7094 was a huge machine, 64K !!! (just like our 2nd home computer, the Commodore C-64), but even so space could get tight. But I had the good fortune to do my first Fortran programming under two wonderful people whom Columbia had swiped from IBM, and they quickly passed on the tricks that allow you to re-allocate your storage space from right within your Fortran program, and otherwise to tinker with the actual bits so as to make the machine sit up and do tricks. It was wonderful.
I have a pretty good opinion of Basic, based on my inextensive use of it on the C-64 and then the Mac Plus. Peek and Poke … you can (or could) get at the machine. I thought it had the same straightforward quality as Fortran, and really wasn’t all that different.
Was your programming mostly at the engineering or the CAD-CAM end? In the end, I never did any of that. Nothing involving math qua math. But aside from Office Politics (with which the Great Frog hath decided to plague us all, I think), I loved the work I was doing.
And I have to say the Columbia gig was great. The bosses were both sweethearts, terrific, and bright as blazes, and we were pretty much all happy campers. (I’d cut my teeth working on the 7074 at Time, Inc., about which the less said the better).
Anyway, it really is good to reminisce a bit with you about the Good Old Days, some of which really were!
And I wish you (and everyone else here) Happy Wednesday.
Yoo hoo! Manju!
Is the WaPo good enough for you?:
Neo:
Manju is in counsel with the crickets on this (IG Horowitz).