Category: News Feeds

Between 2013 and last year, the government held private auctions for banks and insurance firms and used a central bank overdraft facility to raise money. It often breached its borrowing limit, pushing domestic debt to more than $9 billion.

Under a staff-monitored programme with the International Monetary Fund, Harare promised to limit its reliance on the overdraft facility, and Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told business leaders earlier this month that the government had not borrowed from the central bank this year.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe invited bids for 91-day treasury bills worth 30 million Zimbabwe dollars, which would be allotted to successful bidders on Thursday.

Ncube, who is set to present a midterm budget review on Wednesday, has pledged to lower the budget deficit to below 5% of gross domestic product this year from 11.7% in 2018.

$1 = 9.1856 Zimbabwe dollars

Post published in: Business

Mnangagwa was given a mandate to rule Zimbabwe for the next five years in disputed polls last year [File: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters]

Harare, Zimbabwe – A year ago, with Zimbabwe‘s longtime ruler Robert Mugabe out of the picture, the troubled African country seemed to have taken a turn for the better.

Mugabe’s successor and the incumbent, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was speaking a new language.

Politically, he was breaking away from his predecessor’s ruinous and often autocratic past and presenting himself as a new man, re-engaging with the international community after years of diplomatic ostracisation.

A return to democracy was expected.

Economically, the 76 year old was pursuing new policies such as opening up the country for business under the “open for business” mantra. He was also looking to abandon controversial policies such as indigenisation – a law that compelled foreign investors with businesses with a net asset value of $1 to cede 51 percent equity stakes to indigenous Zimbabweans to right historical wealth imbalances.

Aided by various public relations gimmicks that won him admiration, Mnangagwa was set to succeed.

On one occasion, he stopped his presidential motorcade at a popular fast food outlet for a chicken meal. He is said to have waited in the queue like everyone else.

Mnangagwa gives his inaugural speech to thousands of people after his win in last year’s disputed polls [Aaron Ufumeli/EPA]

Fast forward a year, the hope for a new Zimbabwe has vanished. Mnangagwa has lost support and confirmed everyone’s worst fear: there is someone who can run the country worse than Mugabe.

Innocent Zhakata, a book vendor on Harare’s streets, told Al Jazeera things have gotten tougher since Mnangagwa took over.

“Life is getting tough. Prices are going up. There is no money in the economy. During Mugabe’s time, life was better. People are now realising they made a mistake [supporting the military coup that catapulted Mnangagwa to power],” Zhakata told Al Jazeera.

“In the few months we have been with these guys, things have gotten worse. Things were better. We could buy property, furniture and other things. Now, we can’t even buy clothes.”

Munyaradzi Mufambi, a 22-year-old beverage merchandiser in the capital, said the last year had been disillusioning for him.

“I am not sure about the future of our generation in light of the problems we face as a country. I wonder if I will ever be able to raise a family and provide for them adequately,” said Mufambi.

“In all fairness, I don’t know if the president has plans to fix the problems. Maybe he just hasn’t communicated these plans to the nation.”

Mufambi, like Zhakata, said the standards of living were much better under Mugabe.

“Given a choice between Mugabe and Mnangagwa, I would choose Mugabe,” said Mufambi.

“School fees was $20 in my time. A quart of beer was $2. I have to forego beer now, save money and buy essential things. I now buy second-hand clothing.”

Promises and ‘lies’

Ibbo Mandaza, a respected academic and director of a local think-tank Sapes Trust, said Mnangagwa’s first year as president had been a total failure.

“Ever since that coup in November 2017, things have actually been getting worse. It’s been worse than we expected. We are now faced with a far worse political and economic crisis characterised by power shortages, rising prices, currency crisis and fuel shortages,” Mandaza told Al Jazeera.

“What is more worrying is that whilst we are in this crisis, there is virtual absence of government intervention. One can be forgiven for thinking there is now government. At this rate, I don’t see this government getting to 2023.

“Under Mugabe, things were getting bad. It’s the same group of people essentially. It’s them and it appears it ends with them. This can’t go on forever. I am concerned with the apparent lack of an alternative political solution in this crisis to step in and help end the crisis.”

In the run-up to the elections last year, Mnangagwa promised millions of jobs, a better life, and a better Zimbabwe.

A year later, none of the promises has been delivered.

“He lied. We thought industries were going to open and new jobs created. He lied. None of the things he promised have been delivered,” Zhakata, who was laid off from one of the country’s largest bakery, Lobels, pointed out.

Not many citizens will vent their anger in public.

Some said Mnangagwa is far more brutal than Mugabe and an even worse dictator.

In January, five months after being sworn in as the country’s third president, more than 17 unarmed people were shot and killed by the military for protesting against high fuel prices.

Scores were wounded or arrested. Mugabe had generally been seen as a dictator, but he had never unleashed soldiers on protesters.

Zimbabweans stand behind a burning barricade during protests against high fuel prices [Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters]

The US imposed sanctions as a result, saying they would only be removed if Harare showed commitment and political will to return to democracy through fostering the rule of law and holding credible elections, among other key reforms.

Just this week, Defence and War Veterans deputy minister Victor Matemadanda told a Zimbabwe National Liberation War Collaborators conference in Gweru the army would crush any protests.

“The law says police must use minimum force when dealing with riotous people during demonstrations,” he said.

“I do not know the level of the said minimum force. But if they fail to handle the demonstrations, the constitution says they must invite the military,” Matemadanda added.

Opposition MDC National Youth Assembly spokesperson Steven Chuma said Mnangagwa’s short reign has been a disaster.

“It’s crystal clear that Mnangagwa has failed. Never in the history of Africa has any president failed in one year as he has failed.”

Clampdown on dissent

Mnangagwa’s pledge to break with his predecessor’s past autocratic policies and tactics, and introduce far-reaching reforms in the realms of business and safeguarding fundamental rights, has so far been a pipe dream for many Zimbabweans.

Since the beginning of the year, there has been a clampdown on activists and opposition figures.

In the past few months, the government has seemingly targeted civil society activists and workers.

State security agents arrested seven activists between May 20 and 27 at Harare’s Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport on their return from a workshop in the Maldives.

Job Sikhala, deputy chair for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was arrested last month on charges of attempting to subvert Mnangagwa’s government.

The basis of Sikhala’s arrest was a video that circulated on social media in which he appears to be telling supporters at a rally: “We are going to take the fight to the doorsteps of Emmerson Mnangagwa. We are going to overthrow him before 2023 – that is not a joke.”

What political reforms?

Mnangagwa has also not instituted reforms to laws seen to be unconstitutional such as the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and Security Act.

The two laws were seen as an attack on fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and association.

Analysts say apart from his heavy-handedness and autocratic tactics, his short rule is one fraught with numerous failures.

The economy is on its knees. Inflation is ravaging. General hardships are the order of the day.

Power shortages have hit industry hard. Currency confidence is at its lowest.

A spokesman for the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), Simon Khaya Moyo, said Mnangagwa fared pretty fairly given the myriad of challenges he faced, such as the drought and the impact it was having on the economy.

Moyo added that the government had instituted fiscal reforms that are bearing fruit as evidenced by the fiscal discipline within all government departments as well as the budget surplus.

He added that the drought affected power generation in the country.

“The water level at Kariba dam is at 24 percent of required capacity. This has affected power generation. That is not something we have control over. But we are working to resolve this issue,” said Moyo.

“It’s been difficult for the people because of inflation. We want our people to have a good life as enunciated in our election manifesto. All the people of Zimbabwe should be well taken care of without bias and favour. It’s every citizen’s right. That is what we want for our people.”

Economic losses were estimated at more than $1 billion across the affected countries – Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. However, the devastating impacts of such disasters – especially for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and small states in Africa – tend to be deeper and more far-reaching than initial reports would indicate.

The consensus among scientists is that extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, cyclones and landslides, are now occurring with increased frequency and greater intensity. There are long term consequences such as desertification, erosion of arable land, and changes in ecological balance, which can prove difficult to reverse. As a result of climate change, there is a heightened risk that while vulnerable Commonwealth states are recovering from one natural disaster, another will strike.

For instance, Mozambique was still reeling from the impact of Cyclone Idai in March when Cyclone Kenneth – the strongest in the country’s history – bore down barely six weeks later. In fact, there have been no fewer than 13 emergency events in Mozambique since 2015 (mirrored by 12 in neighbouring Malawi). Indeed, 109 disasters recorded in the country over the past 50 years have incurred more than $1.15 billion in economic damage.

Statistics such as these demonstrate the vital importance for all our member countries of planning long term strategies to manage disaster risks and of building resilience through disaster preparedness, as was acknowledged by Commonwealth Heads of Government when they met in 2018.

They affirmed their commitment to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction – the international agreement for mobilising governments, private sector and other stakeholders to reduce risks and build resilience. By doing so, our leaders acknowledged that rather than merely responding after disaster strikes, it is more cost-effective and prudent to invest beforehand in prevention, protection and preparation.

Yet disaster risk reduction remains a relatively low priority for international development finance. Apart from the costs of post-disaster reconstruction and response, of every $100 spent on international aid in the past two decades, only 40 cents have been spent on pre-disaster risk management.

Moreover, the field of disaster risk finance is complex and evolving, making it even harder for small states and LDCs to tap into the limited funding available. Information is fragmented, and donors and lenders often have widely varying procedures and requirements that need to be navigated in order to unlock finance.

Bringing clarity to disaster risk finance

To tackle these impediments, and to help create a more streamlined and integrated approach to accessing funds, the Commonwealth will soon be launching a new disaster risk finance portal. This web-based platform, designed to make it easier for capacity-constrained governments to gain access to the funding they so urgently need, will be ready for preview when our annual Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting, convenes in Washington DC this October with Cyprus in the chair.

As well as helping governments to find what disaster finance instruments are available, the portal will assist them with identifying those that are most suited to their particular needs and circumstances. A one-stop-shop, with information collated from a range of sources and clearly presented, will save governments time and effort, and help them to make more informed decisions on disaster preparedness and response.

The theme for our Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting – Avoiding Debt Crises – also strikes a chord, as disasters push many countries into taking on emergency loans to rebuild and recover. For most low and middle-income countries, such public debt easily becomes unsustainable, and makes them vulnerable to the additional high risk of debt distress.

The Commonwealth has an impressive record of successful advocacy to bring to international attention the difficulties associated with managing debt issues – and of offering practical solutions. Last month, we launched Commonwealth Meridian, our state-of-the-art sovereign debt management software. It builds on the successes of the Commonwealth Debt Recording and Management System (CS-DRMS) which over recent years has been used by more than 100 agencies – including the finance ministries, treasuries and central banks of 60 countries – to manage more than $2.5 trillion of public debt.

This complements the work of the Commonwealth Finance Access Hub set up in 2016 to help small and vulnerable states make successful funding applications for projects that will help them adapt to climate change and mitigate its impact. To date, the hub has helped countries gain access to $25.3 million, with a further $367.4 million in the pipeline. It does so by embedding long term specialists within ministries to provide expert advice and to build local capacity for the longer term.

Tools such as these, together with many other projects and programmes and advocacy strategies, are components in a suite of support offered by the Commonwealth collectively so that all our members are better equipped and ready to cope with disasters, including those related to climate change.

Our combined Commonwealth purpose is to reduce the number of people being pushed into poverty and food insecurity by recurring natural disasters, and whose opportunities to share the benefits of inclusive and sustainable progress are impaired when economic growth falters. Where the planning and wherewithal to assist people with recovery from trauma and to rebuild their lives is lacking, community cohesion and nation-building can also be severely compromised and set back. Without sustained action to mitigate risks and build resilience, hopes of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 are slender.

By mobilising multilateral action, particularly in support of those who are marginalised or more vulnerable, with the stronger working alongside the less secure, we are able to build defences against disaster which may be needed by any of us at any time. So the Commonwealth shines as a beacon of hope for a more harmonious world, and for cooperation to sustain the health and well-being of our planet.

Post published in: Featured

With two nights of the most recent Democratic debates this week, elections and campaigns are definitely the topic on everyone’s mind (or maybe that’s just my D.C., inside the beltway bubble). All of the recent attention to elections reminded me that copyright issues in political campaigns frequently arise. For example, a candidate might want to use a clip of an opponent in a campaign ad to criticize his or her opponent. Campaign rallies, as well as TV and radio ads, frequently use copyrighted music. Print ads might use copyrighted logos or images.

Here are five examples of copyright and campaign stories from recent years.

Mitt Romney Ad Pulled from YouTube – During the 2012 elections, Mitt Romney’s campaign was unhappy with President Barack Obama’s campaign ad that used Romney’s singing of “America the Beautiful.” Romney, unfortunately, appears to be a bit tone deaf and the political attack ad exploits his lack of singing talents. In retaliation, Romney’s campaign created its own attack ad of President Obama singing “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green. BMG Rights Management, which owns the rights to “Let’s Stay Together,” had Romney’s ad pulled from YouTube due to copyright infringement. The video was restored on the YouTube platform several days later, perhaps because of the outcry that Romney’s use was fair use.

Copyright Litigation Over “Hope” Poster of Obama – The iconic poster of Obama in the 2008 election, tinted with red and blue, with the word “HOPE” emblazoned on the bottom was the subject of copyright litigation between Shepard Fairey and the Associated Press. Fairey based his graphic poster on a photo that had been taking by the Associated Press at a 2006 event and argued that his use was a transformative fair use. The Associated Press disagreed, claiming that Fairey infringed copyright. Ultimately, the case settled in 2011. Of course, in true transformative fashion, that “Hope” poster has been replicated, transformed, and changed dozens of times. Just do a Google image search for “Obama hope poster” and see all the variations — with and without Obama — that have been created.

Obama’s “Bad News” Ad Taken Down – In 2008, the Obama campaign created a video that used archival footage of Tom Brokaw and Keith Olbermann to create a fake newscast and deliver the “bad news” that his opponent, Senator John McCain, had been elected president. NBC, displeased with the ad, asserted copyright infringement and issued a takedown notice. YouTube removed the video, which the Obama campaign had hoped would help “get out the vote.” Indeed, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown process has been frequently criticized because of the tendency to take material down immediately, which can have serious consequences for elections.

Fox News Sends Cease-and-Desist to McCain Campaign for Use of 19-Second Debate Clip – In the run up to the 2008 presidential election, Senator McCain used 19 seconds of a 90-minute debate sponsored by Fox News in a campaign ad. While the McCain campaign asserted that the use was a fair use, Fox argued that the commercial nature precluded fair use. The video ended up going viral online, though its initial intended use was for television spots. Subsequently, Fox News sent cease-and-desist letters to all candidates using footage from the network.

R.E.M. Objects to Use of Music in Trump Campaign – Musical artists objecting to the use of their songs in campaign rallies and ads is nothing new and any number of examples could have occupied this spot. Aerosmith and Neil Young both objected to use by the Trump campaign in 2016, issuing cease-and-desist letters. Tom Petty, Survivor, Twisted Sister, Silversun Pickups, and Dropkick Murphys are just a few examples of artists who objected to 2012 campaigns using their music. R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe’s statement is the one that stands out for me, however, due to the colorful and pointed language: “Go fuck yourselves, the lot of you — you sad, attention-grabbing, power-hungry little men. Do not use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign.” Typically, the artists are not objecting to the use of their music generally, but object to being associated with a particular candidate or campaign — at times they turn to copyright to try and prevent the use of their songs. Of course, in many cases, their cease-and-desist letters simply raise publicity and let the general public know that the particular band or artist does not want to be associated with the candidate. Typically, campaigns using various venues for their rallies and events, such as arenas or convention centers, pick songs that are licensed by the venue covering various rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. However, in some cases, the campaigns have to secure the licenses themselves because the licensing agreements with the venues may exclude use for campaign events.

Krista L. Cox is a policy attorney who has spent her career working for non-profit organizations and associations. She has expertise in copyright, patent, and intellectual property enforcement law, as well as international trade. She currently works for a non-profit member association advocating for balanced copyright. You can reach her at kristay@gmail.com.

Today is the final day of the July 2018 administration of the bar exam, and come 5 p.m., there will be nothing left for would-be lawyers to do but await their pass/fail fates. Here are some things to distract recent test-takers while they play the months-long waiting game and make other members of the legal profession chuckle as they take in the schadenfreude: a collection of this summer’s bar exam horror stories.

As Above the Law readers know all too well, there are numerous ways the biggest exam of law school graduates’ lives can get screwed up. Take, for example, what happened during the MBE at testing centers in Minnesota and D.C. earlier this week:

• Minnesota bar examinee here: in one of the exam rooms we had some sort of news/talk radio audio piped in through the commercial speakers (it’s held at an event center) off-and-on for several minutes during the exam. I imagine several enraged people have already contacted you with tips about this.

• The MN bar had sports talk radio coming over the PA for the first 10-15 minutes of the MBE this morning. Great trying to take the most important exam of my life with that distraction.

• In my afternoon session in D.C., the proctor gave my room a 30 minute warning when we had 45 minutes, then proceeded to call time 15 minutes early. When that happened, I, as well as several other examinees, told the proctor we believed that was incorrect. She did not believe us initially, and had to consult with the other proctor in the hallway. In the meantime, we were instructed to put pencils down. When the proctor finally realized her mistake, several minutes had elapsed, and no examinees were given back that missed time. And that’s not even the full of it! Proctors allowed examinees to leave in the last 30 minutes, chatted with each other, and walked in and out of the room pretty much nonstop.

That must have been incredibly annoying, but at least you know your Scantron sheets were in the right hands when they were collected after the exam. What if you uploaded your essays to ExamSoft and they just disappeared without a trace into the wilds of the internet? That’s what seems to have happened to this test-taker in California:

Twice they tell you at the exam that if you don’t “upload” your answers by August 1, you will lose ten points on each essay you did not upload. If they don’t get it in two weeks, you get zero on the test. So, on Tuesday night I uploaded my bar exam answers. The software company (ExamSoft) who receives it sends you an email that says, “For additional confirmation of your upload, visit your personal account page. To do so, log in to your institution’s portal and select ‘History.’” So I get on my personal California Bar web page and there is (a) No “History” I can select, and (b) No notice that they ever received my bar exam answers. So, I called the California Bar and the lady had no idea what I was talking about. She says they do not ever acknowledge whether they receive an exam and it goes directly to the people who grade you. So, now I get to lose sleep about this until November.

That’s certainly going to be an excruciating wait, but perhaps what was even more excruciating for one test-taker was the thought that he wouldn’t even be able to make it to the exam thanks to a series of canceled flights. Check out this disastrous story:

The day (Monday) started out pretty normal. I got to the Champaign, IL airport, which is very small, for my connecting flight to Chicago about an hour before the flight was set to take off. A few delays later and rescheduling to a later connection to that was to arrive in Buffalo around 5 pm, my flight to Chicago was cancelled. Well crap… so I quickly got on the phone with the firm I’m starting at in the fall to ask if they would reimburse a cab to Chicago to catch my connection. They said of course, so I jumped in a cab and got some studying done. About an hour from O’Hare I heard a large bang… the cab had a flat tire.

So now I’m stuck on the side of the highway trying to get an Uber. Uber isn’t too crazy about side of the highway pick-ups, so after about 30 minutes standing in the rain, my Uber was finally able to find me. An hour later I’m standing in the security line at O’Hare, thankfully in time to make my connection. My phone buzzes. Flight to Buffalo canceled.

I call the airline to find a way to Buffalo. They ask if I want a flight leaving around 9 p.m., getting in at 11:30. After asking if I can get on another airline, this wonderful airline (bless their heart) says because my delay was not over 24 hours they cannot put me on another airline. Sooo I take the flight and proceed to ask a gate agent, “No b.s., will this flight make it to Buffalo so I can take the bar in the morning?” She looks at the radar, looks at me… “Errr if I were you, I would go get a rental car.”

I’m faced with a split second decision, get a car now to get there ASAP and drive or risk it with the flight. Thankfully, my wonderful girlfriend was about 45 minutes from O’Hare and offered to drive me and I picked the rental car for the peace of mind. She drove me all night and I got about two hours of sleep in the car and I arrived in Buffalo around 4 a.m., just in time to sleep a little before my 7 a.m. alarm. My girlfriend (the real MVP) drove straight to the airport for her 5 a.m. flight back to Illinois to meet the movers before our move to Brooklyn.

The adrenaline kept me going and surviving on day one. Day two felt like a breeze after that.

Holy crap, after all of that insanity, we sincerely hope this guy passes the test!

Last, but certainly not least, we’ve got a happy little story from Arizona, where someone’s spouse surprised her after the exam with a mariachi band:

Congratulations to everyone who finished the July 2019 administration of the bar exam. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for you!

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

President Trump promised during his 2016 presidential campaign that his administration would build a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border but, until recently, Democrats have successfully blocked funding for the project meant to thwart illegal immigrants from entering the country unchecked.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador in Zimbabwe approved a different kind of border wall to be built in the southern Africa nation with U.S.’ funding. The U.S. Ambassadors’ Fund for Cultural Preservation granted $475,000 to the Great Zimbabwe Museum to make repairs to the border wall of an 11th century stone fortress that surrounds the ruins of an ancient city.

“All this is funded under the fund from the U.S. ambassador,” Lovemore Nyandima, a regional director for the Great Zimbabwe Museum told Bloomberg.

Great Zimbabwe was the capital city of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe that reigned over the ancestors of the modern-day Shona ethnic group, Bloomberg reported. The wall surrounding the city today is overrun with an invasive weed from the West Indies known as lantana camara.

The grant will fund efforts to prevent the weed from growing through the wall, destroying the stones. A system will be installed in late August or September to help detect shifts in the ancient stones, Nyandima told Bloomberg.

Back in the U.S., the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration last Friday in lifting a freeze backed by a lower court that had halted plans to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for border wall construction. The decision, which split the bench along ideological lines, allows the administration to move ahead with plans to use military funds to replace existing fencing in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

Post published in: Featured

Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe represents a safe Republican district where he routinely cruises to victory with margins approaching 50 percent. This might explain how he got away with telling a pile of whoppers about his time in the U.S. Attorney’s Office — with no real opponent, there was no one to check. But politics ain’t beanbag, and now that Trump has nominated Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coates as the Director of National Intelligence, the media is starting to dig.

Even before the revelations about Ratcliffe’s history of exaggerations, he was already facing criticism for his thin national security résumé.

Previous DNIs had significant military, foreign relations, and intelligence experience under their belts. But Trump, who describes the intelligence agencies as having “run amok,” clearly values Ratcliffe’s full-throated attacks on the very intelligence apparatus he’s nominated to supervise.

On March 24, Ratcliffe told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, “Think about that, a dossier funded by the Democrats, peddled through the Obama intelligence community, falsely verified by the Obama Justice Department, then sold to the American people by those very same elected Democrats and willing folks in the media,” perpetuating the lie that Christopher Steele’s dossier was the basis for the entire Russia investigation, and thus the Mueller report is somehow fruit of the poison tree.

So, aside from his time as mayor of the Texas town of Heath, population 7,000, what national security experience does Ratcliffe bring to the table? Well, in 2004, President Bush appointed him Chief of Anti-Terrorism and National Security for the Eastern District of Texas. Which sounds highly impressive, and, indeed, his House website boasts that the Congressman “put terrorists in prison.” But as the New York Times points out, the only terrorism prosecution during Ratcliffe’s tenure appears to have been an Iraq-war veteran with PTSD charged with building a pipe bomb.

Ratcliffe has faced repeated criticism for overstating his role in the prosecution of a domestic group accused of funding Hamas bombers. A 2015 press release posted on his House website says, “When serving by special appointment in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, he convicted individuals who were funneling money to Hamas behind the front of a charitable organization.” Except the Holy Land Foundation prosecution took place in the Northern District of Texas, and Ratcliffe’s sole contribution appears to have been a retrospective examination of what went wrong with the first disastrous prosecution which resulted in an embarrassing mistrial. (The defendants were later convicted on retrial.) So, no, the Congressman did not “convict” anyone in this case.

Finally, Ratcliffe’s official bio claims that he “arrested 300 illegal aliens in a single day.” No doubt this is intended to evoke images of a steely-eyed lawman slapping the cuffs on criminal after criminal with his own giant hands. But Ratcliffe would have had to be able to bend the space time continuum to be present for simultaneous raids on Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plants in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas, and West Virginia. The number of people he arrested was actually … ZERO. But we’re sure the hatred for undocumented immigrants is real.

In normal times, these false claims might sink a nominee. But these are not normal times. The Times reports that Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr privately counseled the White House against nominating someone who has  already politicized the process by accusing the intelligence community of “spying” on Trump’s campaign. And Ratcliffe’s thin CV isn’t helping, either. But now that the nomination is official, Burr has changed his tune and pledged to support Trump’s guy. So, barring any major scandal breaking, it’s a safe bet Ratcliffe can scrounge up 50 votes.

No doubt Susan Collins will express concern, John Kennedy will play the maverick for a hot second, Martha McSally will truly wrestle with her decision, Mitt Romney will give it serious consideration, and then they’ll all vote “yes.” Third verse, same as the first.

Trump’s Pick for Top Intelligence Post Overstated Parts of His Biography [New York Times]
Trump’s Pick for Intelligence Director Misrepresented Role in Anti-Terror Case [ABC News]
Ratcliffe Questioned Intelligence Community’s Role in Russia Investigation [CNN]
Trump’s Nominee to Lead America’s Intelligence Agencies Has an Unusually Thin Résumé [Washington Post]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.