Some learn the hard way that no matter how big a bribe you pay to buy “peace” from someone whose feelings are so fragile, so easily hurt, and so shamelessly dishonorable, capitulation is not going to work. ABC did not learn that lesson easily.

First, there was the $16 million payoff to Trump for George Stephanopoulos saying that Trump had been found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll, a position approved by Judge Lewis Kaplan, noting that while New York criminal law limited rape to the insertion of a penis into a vagina, most legal definitions were broader and included the insertion of any body part, or other physical item. Stephanopoulos’ statement was not just defensible, but accurate. Still, ABC paid Trump off, believing it would buy Trump’s mercy. Continue reading →

The issue had already been decided by eight other circuits, but that’s not good enough in the very self-important Second Circuit Court of Appeals. So when the question arose in Massimino v. Benoit, it appeared that there would finally be an answer to the pressing question of whether there was a First Amendment right to record police activity and, under the specific facts of the case, the exterior of police buildings from a publicly accessible sidewalk.

The court answered the question with a resounding “yes,” even if the court simultaneously granted the officers qualified immunity because no reasonable police officer could have possibly known that there was a clearly established right to exercise free speech after the eight other circuits held exactly that. Continue reading →

Canada hates us. Our former NATO allies no longer trust us. But at least we still have our good, old, 70-year ally in the Pacific, South Korea, providing us with a home base to stand as a bulwark against Chinese and North Korean aggression, right? Oh crap.

This, apparently, popped into Trump’s head all by his lonesome. Continue reading →

It’s one thing to redecorate the Oval Office with garish gold doodads superglued to the walls and fireplace surround. It’s another to build a ballroom to rival the gaudy excesses of the Palace of Versailles, or to have gold gilt applied over statues that were intended to be bronze. Tasteless and wastefully expensive, for sure, but arguably within the constraints of the president’s aesthetic choices. After all, elect a boy from Queens as president and you get the tackiness that comes with him.

But aircraft carriers? Yes. Even aircraft carriers.

The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Continue reading →

People take social media way too seriously.

A few weeks ago I saw this young lady on one of my social media feeds in a great deal of distress over her neighbors. If her post was to be believed, some of them had recently mistaken her husband for a relative named “Kevin” who owed the family a great deal of money and hadn’t been home in a month or so. She was very irate that her husband (whose name was nothing similar to Kevin) was being called (a) Kevin, and (b) a deadbeat, so she tried to call the cops and get her neighbors to leave her alone. This didn’t really work and the irate neighbors kept coming to her yard asking for her husband to give them money.

Two days ago she posted photos of her and her husband on a date at a local crab shack. I posted underneath a picture of her husband “Kevin, is that you? Please call your sister. She really needs your support.” Continue reading →

Judge Christopher Cooper held that Congress, and only Congress, can change the name of the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center Board, comprised of Trump sycophants, cronies and, as chairman, Trump, after being forced to remove Trump’s name above that of President Kennedy, has come up with a workaround.

The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Thursday to inscribe President Trump’s name on the building beneath the main signage, according to two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings, aggressively testing a federal judge’s order.

The white marble exterior already bears the damage of a name installed and removed above that of Kennedy, but remains hidden behind a tarp to conceal the shame of failure. The next try will be below the Kennedy name, but with a twist. Continue reading →

It might seem counterintuitive, but when Congress eliminated the $200 registration fee under the 1934 National Firearms Act for the registration of suppressors and short-barreled rifles, it rendered the law unconstitutional. So held Judge Jimmy Hendrix*, and the government has not as yet appealed.

House Republicans added a provision eliminating the $200 tax on suppressors and short-barreled rifles when they passed Mr. Trump’s major spending bill last year.

That change triggered the downfall of the law, which had for 92 years required buyers of restricted arms to submit their fingerprints and seek A.T.F. approval. Gun advocacy groups quickly filed several lawsuits seeking to further weaken the law, arguing that the registration process was unconstitutional without the tax component. Continue reading →

She’s unnamed, but described in twits as being a wife, mother and born and raised “near Bailey’s Crossroads in Northern Virginia.” That didn’t stop an unnamed and masked ICE agent from pointing his weapon at her. The official DHS explanation was routine.

Under most circumstances, there would be no way to challenge this official account, even though so many of the DHS claims about ICE interactions have been proven shockingly false. But this time, the driver had a dashcam. Continue reading →

Long time readers may recall a debate I had with Elie Mystal in the early days of what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now calls “Woke 1.” This was before the murder of the George Floyd, before the riots in the street, before #MeToo, cancel culture and Defund Police. I shared many of the end goals of those who called themselves “social justice warriors,” until the name became a pejorative. as did “woke” which followed.

Throughout that period of time, I held firm to the liberal principles of free speech, due process and the presumption of innocence. That made me the enemy of the woke. Others went all in. Some no doubt believed it and embraced left wing fascism in their zeal for Utopia, while others played along, mouthing the mantra and joining the mob condemning the heretic du jour. Continue reading →

On August 9th, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigned. Heather Cox Richardson does a good job of chronicling how it came to be that a break-in at the Watergate Complex to tap the telephones of the Democratic National Committee took down a presidency. Putting aside J.D. Vance’s cynical, yet likely accurate, observation that Watergate would have been a 12-hour news story today, one key piece of the saga stands out as an apocryphal telltale of why Blanche is unfit to serve as Attorney General.

Archibald Cox, special Watergate prosecutor, learned from deputy assistant to the president Alexander Butterfield that conversations and telephone calls in the Oval Office were recorded. Oh boy. Cox, as well as Senate Watergate Committee chair Sam Ervin, wanted the tapes. Continue reading →