Remember Bill Pulte? He was the nepo-baby who bought his way into Trump’s good graces to get a low-level, unsexy job as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which he then boot-strapped into a covert spy operation for Trump’s vengeance campaign by illegally accessing mortgage applications of Trump’s enemies to try to come up with crimes so they could be prosecuted. Aside from giving Trump money, there’s no surer way to endear oneself to Trump than being a cog in his vanity and vengeance machine. Pulte was more than happy to be such a cog.

And he’s now being rewarded for his faithfulness and faithlessness.

President Trump on Tuesday named Bill Pulte, who has pressed for investigations into the president’s foes, to serve as the acting director of national intelligence, giving him oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies.

Continue reading →

Years ago, I was interviewed by Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes. He was old by then, but he was still an animal. In the scheme of broadcast investigative journalism, there was nothing to compare to 60 Minutes, the highest rated show on CBS, airing since 1968. After Wallace retired in 2006, the newsmagazine softened. Today, it’s grown into something fat and puffy, rarely pushing as hard as it did to force the unwilling to confront their improprieties. And then there was the puff piece segment, as the Heuer stopwatch ticked to a close, to fill the dead air after the football game or golf tournament pushed it beyond its time slot.

I used to watch 60 Minutes religiously. Nowadays, I check it out first to decide whether it’s worth it, and occasionally watch one or two segments. Still, it’s disappointing when Leslie Stahl fails to follow up a non-responsive answer with the in-your-face retort. Mike Wallace never would have let that go. Continue reading →

He was rough around the edges, plain spoken and an outsider to politics. This apparently appealed to the Democratic voters in Maine, so when Graham Platner, 41, decided to run against two-time governor, Janet Mills, his campaign caught the public interest, gained momentum and ultimately forced Mills to suspend her campaign.

But Platner came with baggage of his own.

The latest furor involving Mr. Platner involves an admission that he had sent sexually explicit texts to as many as six women since he was married in 2023. His campaign previously survived uproars over a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol (he has since had it covered up) and inflammatory old Reddit posts.

Continue reading →

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is all aboard the AI train.

Artificial intelligence will almost certainly be the most transformational technology in the history of the world. It will profoundly affect the life of every man, woman and child in our country. It will bring — and is already bringing — unimaginable changes to our economy, our democracy, our emotional well-being, our environment and how we educate and raise our children. Further, there is a very real fear that as A.I. becomes smarter than humans it could eventually function independently, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

If one considers the annoyance of AI engaging in verbose responses to basic questions, mediocre creation of content or hallucination of facts the “most transformational technology in the history of the world,” then he’s got a point. But Bernie being Bernie, his concern isn’t so much about it becoming “smarter than humans,” which might not take much effort, but with a few tech titans making bank on it. Continue reading →

I love the local Memorial Day parade. I fly the flag on July 4th. I get teary-eyed at the playing of the national anthem. Much as I criticize the United States, I’m proud to be an American and thankful that of all the countries in the world, I was fortunate enough to be born here. For those reasons and more, the 250th Anniversary of the United States of America should be a day of celebration of a nation I love. And yet, much as try, I cannot find it within me, not because of my feelings about my country, but because he’s made it all about him.

AMERICA IS BACK Rally! pic.twitter.com/ZAowKERA12

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 30, 2026

Continue reading →

It’s hard to imagine that now-fired Attorney General Pam Bondi would have been any more forthcoming had she appeared for a deposition, under oath and recorded for public transparency. After her stunningly belligerent public testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, it was clear that she felt no compulsion to either answer questions or behave respectfully, mirroring her patron’s obsession with hurling infantile insults at her, and his, enemies.

But Oversight Committee chair, James Comer, decided not to bother with such details as sworn testimony or public transparency despite the subpoena he was pressured into issuing, opting instead to go with a private unsworn interview. After all, she was fired as AG, so what could she possibly have to offer with regard to what went wrong with the Epstein files release under her watch? Continue reading →

Ah, summer in East Tennessee is wondrous. Families pour into Gatlinburg and the Smoky Mountains for excursions to the National Parks, Splash Country and Dollywood. Concerts kick off in Knoxville with artists like Luke Combs selling out Neyland Stadium.

And in Pigeon Forge, shoppers comb the outlet malls for the best deals while attempting to avoid the stares of the coked-up Kangaroo Man.

Continue reading →

After the government’s raising the specter of prosecuting E. Jean Carroll, who is believed by some to have forced her evil vagina over Trump’s unwitting finger, for being unfamiliar with Reid Hoffman’s financial assistance in her lawsuit when she responded to a question in a deposition, atop the prosecutions, both failed and inchoate, of Tish, Jim, John, Adam, Jim (again), et al., Andrew Weissmann, who has now taken up residence in Michael Avenatti’s old dressing room at MSNBC, sees a problem.

In an administration where prosecutors can be counted on to proceed in good faith — and to follow the Justice Department’s own rules — cases like these should be vanishingly rare. Right now, however, we can’t bank on that. All these examples have at least a whiff of prosecutorial vindictiveness.

Wait, is he saying that the Department of Justice doesn’t carefully scan the answers to every question in every deposition in every case in search of potential perjury for prosecution, as if E. Jean Carroll is inexplicably special? Continue reading →

Orwell knew.

Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.

It was laughable when the DOGE children deleted images and information about the Enola Gay from the Department of Defense website because the algo said so, combined with the typical depth of historical knowledge of young men who go by the sobriquet “Big Balls.” Then again, it was merely the Muskrats mindless method of eradicating DEI from the government in the way coders without conscience do. If it says “gay,” it’s gone.

But what the Department of Justice just did with its mass-deletion is of another bent. Continue reading →

Years ago, some clients would show up at my office with a file filled with their legal research. It would include pages of decisions from myriad jurisdictions which bore headnotes tangentially touching upon the issues in their case, but reflected their near-total ignorance of how the law actually worked.

They would demand that I read their research, which I told them I would happily do provided they would pay me for the time spent. Or they could just let me do my job and pay for that instead. Most would pick the latter. Those who refused tended to not be the sort of clients I wanted to represent, or the sort of clients who wanted a lawyer like me. Rarely were they willing to pay me to read their work rather than merely accept their representation that it was an “easy” case and they had already done all the work. This was just as well, as I was disinclined to waste my time or charge clients for work that was unproductive. Continue reading →