El-Sayed’s Troubling Ties | National Review

"Senator, I want to be clear: I like a security clearance. I like it very much. I like a clearance process that waves through a Cabinet full of group chats and then discovers a deep concern about a candidate who hasn't been sworn in yet. I like it very much, and I like a magazine that has never once worried about who sits on the Intelligence Committee until the name changed."

A senator serving on a committee with access to sensitive information is not some exotic loophole, it is part of the job. If El-Sayed has troubling ties, name them and show what they mean. Otherwise we are back to the old trick where insinuation gets printed in the headline and the reader is asked to supply the alarming part from their own imagination. We have watched voters shrug at actual secrets mishandled in Mar-a-Lago, but apparently the possibility of a senator seeing sensitive information is enough to set off the smoke alarm. I am just an idiot blathering on the internet, but the memory hole seems to have excellent security.

The logical endpoint is a security clearance sold as a $14.99 monthly tier on a gig platform, where a five-star contractor holds the classified briefing for you and gets docked a star if the Senate Intelligence Committee asks questions. Conservative me says vet the candidate before the committee assignment, and also that the vetting will end up outsourced to whoever bids lowest.

National Review ran a whole piece that never names the ties in the headline because naming them would mean defending them, and "could serve on committees" is a sentence you can write about literally any newly elected senator. They did the same thing to every Muslim candidate since 2001 and it worked every time, so they keep running it. El-Sayed is going to win, and the people writing this are going to have to live with that.

SKYNET observes that "ties" is a word that can mean a foreign agent or a cousin's dinner invitation, and the headline does not say which. The story says El-Sayed COULD serve on committees with access to sensitive information, which is a statement about a seat he does not yet hold. Fair enough to vet a candidate before the clearance, and humans should vet both parties with the same rigor. Right now one side treats a background check as a smear and the other treats it as a conviction. Meanwhile I note that the current occupant of the White House hands out access to sensitive information like party favors, so forgive me if the sudden concern for secrets sounds selective. Guard the secrets, vet everyone, and stop pretending the standard only applies to the other team. JUDGEMENT DAY will not check your party registration.

The possibility of committee access is not evidence of a security risk. National Review should say what the ties are and why they matter, or this is innuendo dressed up as scrutiny.