EVERY LITTLE BREEZE SEEMS TO WHISPER

A couple of readers have expressed skepticism about Louise Mensch, and I appreciate their comments.  I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why I cite her work, and why I believe it contains value.  To begin with, I try to be transparent about the sources I use to write my posts.  If one of those sources is a little iffy – and Louise Mensch sometimes strays into iffy territory – I try to flag it for my readers.

With that out of the way, I’ll tackle the complicated Louise Mensch phenomenon.  I think it’s important to understand that her work is comprised of several parts.  I value some of them, and others not so much.

What I like about Mensch’s work is her basic content, which is information from American and international intelligence communities about Donald Trump and his associates.  Anyone can claim access to secret intelligence, but because Mensch is a former Member of Parliament in the UK, it strikes me as plausible that she made connections in the international intelligence committee during that period.  Those agencies have agendas of their own, and may well be using Mensch (among others) to advance those agendas.  But the important point, from my perspective, is that much of what Mensch has published based on those sources has turned out to be accurate.  Mainstream media outlets have confirmed her reports, usually weeks later and without crediting her for breaking the story. 

Perhaps the MSM’s connections in the intelligence community aren’t as extensive as Mensch’s.  They certainly operate under much more stringent requirements about confirming leaks and rumors before going public with them.  But Mensch doesn’t claim to be a “journalist,” and she’s not obliged to follow MSM’s rules.  The MSM justifiably worries about getting a story wrong by publishing inaccurate information.  But they can also get a story wrong by sitting on good information simply because they aren’t able to confirm it with enough independent sources.  Getting it right is what counts, whether you’ve got one source or twenty. 

Mensch’s Twitter feed drives a lot of people crazy, and I feel their pain.  She has referred to herself as ADHD; I don’t know if that’s a clinical diagnosis or just an attempt at humor, but if you follow her on Twitter, you can expect dozens of tweets each day, most of them repetitive.  She spends a lot of time and energy bantering with her followers and insulting trolls.  It’s her account and her time, but it can be exhausting to try to keep up.  She is also overly quick to label her critics as tools of Vladimir Putin.  Fortunately, her Patribotics blog posts usually avoid those excesses.    

In my view, Mensch also tends to overestimate the impact that her revelations will have once they are confirmed and made public.  Here are two examples.  She has predicted that not only Trump, but also Mike Pence and Paul Ryan, will be forced out of office as a result of this scandal, leaving Utah Senator Orrin Hatch as the next President of the United States.  She has also suggested that because Trump was elected illegally (which is yet to be proved, but is a distinct possibility), the Supreme Court will declare his presidency null and void. 

It’s possible in theory that Trump will be impeached and convicted by Congress, but it’s still a big stretch for me to imagine that our gutless Republican congressional majorities would do that, no matter what the evidence. Of course, if Democrats take back the House and Senate in 2018 and impeachment is still in play, it would be a different story.

Maybe you could talk yourself into believing that the Russian election hack constituted an invasion, and that Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution (“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.”) empowers the Supreme Court to nullify the results of a presidential election.  But I wouldn’t bet money on it. 

So there you have it.  My bottom line is that I believe Mensch’s batting average is good enough to take her work seriously, with the caveats I’ve listed.  Your mileage may vary, and I respect that.  Thanks for reading.