Can We Just Resist the Bauble for Once?

The Justice Department Inspector General completed its review into the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and found no wrongdoing. If you're Attorney General Bill Barr, this is obviously The Wrong Answer, and by golly he's going to keep on creating new investigations until someone gives the Right One.

At which point, we all know what's going to happen, right? The newspaper headlines will blare "Justice Department: FBI Behaved Inappropriately in Trump-Russia Investigation." Trump will declare victory. The media will put on its sternest contemplation face as it ponders this new revelation. Nobody will have the guts to say it's an obvious concoction, and not worth any attention at all.

But -- futility aside -- I'll still issue my plea: Can we not? Given that we all know exactly what it is coming, why it's coming, and what it is -- can we just resist the shiny bauble? Just this once?

I know, we can't. But still ... please?

Antisemitic Hate Crime Crimes Spiked in 2017

The FBI has released its hate crimes data for 2017. Jews remain, by far, the most frequent victims of religious-based hate crimes (58% of the total, Muslims were the second-most common victims at 18.6%) -- that's been true since the FBI began recording data in 1992.

Antisemitic hate crimes also surged in 2017, rising 37% from the previous year.

It's unclear whether the FBI figures include the bomb threats that terrorized JCCs early in 2017. Some have tried to argue that these threats (which it turned out were made by an Israeli-American teenager and an African-American journalist) were not antisemitic and that it is thus misleading to include them in a list of antisemitic incidents (I argued strenuously against that position here). My guess, though, is that they were included -- if only because the Department of Justice itself made the decision to indict the Israeli-American culprit on hate crimes charges. I'm not normally one to brag about being backed by the Sessions DOJ, but ....

In any event, assuming the bomb threats were included in the figure (and accounted for 163 discrete incidents), removing them from the total would yield an increase in antisemitic incidents of about 13% -- roughly the same rate as the overall increase in hate crimes across all victim groups.