> on March 20, two days after Rubio placed Lewin atop the USAID hierarchy
> By March 26, the emails show, Lewin still hadn’t accepted the job offer, and had not filed his OF-306, the federal government's standard pre-employment background screening form; without this document, a federal agency cannot lawfully issue a final job offer or consummate an appointment
> A detailing agreement between the GSA and USAID dated February 14—two weeks after Lewin says he began at USAID—specifes that “commencement of the detail is contingent upon the Detailee’s successful adjudication and receipt of any necessary security clearances and other pre-employment screening required by USAID.
More serious issues than "HR" should have barred him from working, for at least some of the time he did.
Even if it was legal for Trump or Rubio to shut it down, they still have to do it through authorized agents and legal processes. If a "police officer" conducted a search without paperwork on file that establishes their authority to search, it would be illegal, right?
That's how it should be. But they counted on the courts being slower to catch up with stuff than that they could destroy it and by and large that proved to be correct. The checks and balances in the USA are not prepared to deal with people at this level of power that are as malicious as this. The founders more or less left that as an exercise for the future to figure out and may have presaged such a thing happening in some of their writings.
> Even if it was legal for Trump or Rubio to shut it down, they still have to do it through authorized agents and legal processes.
Yes, but the paperwork that decides who is the President or his appointee’s lawful agent is different than the civil service paperwork for employment. Lewin was appointed as an SGE. This article is about the HR details of his internal transfer into USAID. But there is no rule that says someone must be an employee of an agency to assist in shutting down the agency under delegated authority from the cabinet official that oversees the agency.
> If a "police officer" conducted a search without paperwork on file that establishes their authority to search, it would be illegal, right?
Yes. But if he was transferred within the department from vice into homicide and hadn’t done all his paperwork yet, would that be illegal? And also, doing a search is a potential impingement on individual rights. Very different from a doing an internal reorganization within a department. If a CEO pulls in someone from one department to clean house in another department, how much HR paperwork do you really need?
> they cannot unscramble the egg without starting over
I would bet they do have copies on their hard-drives (which would probably be legal for them to possess for their own use, if the originals were obtained legally), and that they could simply omit them from their next training run that they probably do at major updates anyway.
The original story about not handling criticism well was someone crying after a kind question, not merely saying something was a bridge too far. (FWIW if I saw someone cry once, I would consider it might be a one-off due to stress at home etc, not necessarily a constant personality trait I'll have to deal with regularly.)
Out of curiosity, where did he say that? FWIW I ran the first half through Pangram (truncated to use free credits) and it said 73% AI, evenly interspersed. (I have no idea how much truncation breaks their algorithm.)
There is an "about" page on their blog where author discusses extensively (probably written by AI as well) about how most of his writing is AI-written.
If you believe Amazon and trust there is no way that this IOMMU protection can be disabled or bypassed, I guess this is mitigation against some attacks. Seems like mostly just trusting the AWS brand name, which would be more trustworthy than fly-by-night providers even without IOMMU.
The "Lindsay Clancy defense", AKA not guilty by reason of insanity, has roots going back thousands of years, and was used as early as 1844 in the US in the murder trial of Abner Rogers, Jr. In 1982, John Hinckley, Jr. used it after shooting at the president. Others have used it even after the post-Hinckley reforms. Yet society hasn't crumbled.
Saying "He had no free will" doesn't mean "The state has no right to confine him away from people he might hurt."
> Saying "He had no free will" doesn't mean "The state has no right to confine him away from people he might hurt."
You get it.
Saying "he had no free will" would mean there's no basis for using incarceration for vengeance, and it ought to change how prisoners are treated. It does not take away a legitimate need to lock people who remain a threat away. Nor does it entirely take away a justification for some use of incarceration as deterrent, to the limited extent it actually works.
It just means a different calculation over how and when the harm done to those incarcerated outweigh the risks and harms to society of letting them go free, as well as a collective responsibility of society for addressing the conditions that causes these outcomes in the first place.
I can't tell if you're accusing the state of waste and bribes no matter who is at the helm. You did specifically call out socialists, but the anti-socialists aren't improving that situation either.
> buying votes with tax dollars
This was more convincing of an attack on "Socialist politicians" before Sept. 9, when Trump did it more openly than they ever have. I guess you could believe his claims it won't come from tax dollars. But if the government has $1 trillion lying around for this and chooses not to unconditionally lower taxes for everybody, is it any different?
The head of the anti-socialist, anti-wasteful-spending party is spending billions on a more impressive Air Force One, golf days, family vacations, vanity renovations, DHS ads starring a POTUS wannabe, DOGE effectively paying people not to work, etc.
Everyone is guilty of it, just generally in their own form-- partisan nonsense is largely a distraction to get people mad at the other team and not notice their allies also picking your pocket. Though sure there are some particular ways different parties divide us and pilfer, bad in their own way.
> By March 26, the emails show, Lewin still hadn’t accepted the job offer, and had not filed his OF-306, the federal government's standard pre-employment background screening form; without this document, a federal agency cannot lawfully issue a final job offer or consummate an appointment
> A detailing agreement between the GSA and USAID dated February 14—two weeks after Lewin says he began at USAID—specifes that “commencement of the detail is contingent upon the Detailee’s successful adjudication and receipt of any necessary security clearances and other pre-employment screening required by USAID.
More serious issues than "HR" should have barred him from working, for at least some of the time he did.
Even if it was legal for Trump or Rubio to shut it down, they still have to do it through authorized agents and legal processes. If a "police officer" conducted a search without paperwork on file that establishes their authority to search, it would be illegal, right?
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