Regardless of how you felt about Mike Pence’s term as vice president, his refusal to throw out an election for the presidency despite having no authority to do so saved the nation from a constitutional crisis. It was an act of integrity, of bravery, in the face of a president who happily watched as insurrectionists tried to find Pence to place him on a gallows. But that was a presidential election. As David French explains, the same rules do not apply to elections for the House of Representatives.

That’s exactly why we have to be creative now, to see around the corners into the possible future abuses of the law, and I’m worried that a largely forgotten constitutional provision (combined with a relatively vague federal statute) provides House Republicans a legal loophole to abuse — with no one clearly ready (or willing) to assume Pence’s role as the guarantor of American democracy. Continue reading →

Only 50 years too late, the Supreme Court has granted a petition for certiorari to consider whether the asset forfeiture of a $95,000 plane is excessive for transporting beer to a dry village in Alaska. 

In an orders list, the Court granted the petition of Ken Jouppi, a retired 82-year-old Alaskan bush pilot who argues that the seizure of his $95,000 Cessna U206D is an excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment.

Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2012 when Alaska state troopers searched his plane before takeoff and discovered that a passenger was attempting to bring several cases of beer to a “dry” village where alcohol is prohibited. (Jouppi was only culpable for a single six-pack of Budweiser that troopers said was in plain sight.) Continue reading →

Much has been made of people in the military, White House, and even the guy running the teleprompter making a quick buck off their inside knowledge in the prediction markets. In some instances, particularly when not a blood or marital relation to the president, using inside information to make money has been frowned upon. But then, it wasn’t officially sanctioned, with the boss getting his taste.

Truth Social, the Trumpian version of twitter which is mostly owned by Trump, has decided that if others are going to monetize inside knowledge, why shouldn’t Trump. After all, is he not the mother lode of inside information, prime for market manipulation even by a twit with ALL CAPS and misspellings by such matters as the on again, off again, war-not-war? Sure, the United States is burning through billions, but why should that mean the president can’t enjoy a few bucks off the grift? Continue reading →

To hear Todd Blanche talk about it, he’s just a foot soldier in Trump’s army, doing as Trump commands. The problem is that ICE and CBP agents, like the FBI and ultimately the DoJ, are also Trump’s minions, subject to executive policies and goals, foremost of which is the removal of as many non-citizens, plus a few who are citizens, as possible by any means possible. And if a few people, regardless of citizenship, get killed by ICE along the way, so what? You can’t make a deportation omelet without breaking a few eggs.

So it should come as no surprise that the FBI made it official by putting into writing that it will no longer investigate killings by their fellow minions, ICE agents, regardless of whether they’re righteous shoots or plain old murder. Continue reading →

The reviews came in. Trump proclaimed his big speech to be a huge hit, “Great reviews on speech last night. Big audience.” Fox News made no mention of the speech whatsoever during its three hours of broadcasting the following morning, after announcing immediately after the speech that they were unable to independently verify the truthfulness of anything Trump said. Pretty much everyone else was far less kind, ranging from debunking the lies to calling it typical Trump delusional unproven garbage.

But what really angered Trump was that no network carried the speech in its entirety, and two networks, ABC and NBC, didn’t carry it at all. How dare they not broadcast the president’s very important speech. When Trump talks, it’s their duty to air it, or else. Continue reading →

Friends, it’s a slow week in Northeast Tennessee. I’m writing to you on what’s turned into the first day of my upcoming ten day “staycation,” where Dr. S, I and the kids do something that we’ve wanted to do for a very long time: sit on our asses and binge watch all the best offerings our TV can muster.

Not that we couldn’t do this some other week, I suppose. One of Dr. S’s most valued colleagues is taking a trip with her family to some place called Banff in Canada. I don’t know much about Banff other than the photos I’ve seen look really beautiful and I hope she has a fantastic time.

Personally, I wouldn’t visit Canada anytime soon. They’re hostile to folks like me up in the Great White North: assholes who love central air and cable television. Canadians focus too much on things like niceness, politeness and maple syrup. Continue reading →

I first heard from Skink, no radical lunatic leftist he, that he was outraged by his weasel Congressman, Greg Steube.

A pal died Tuesday night–Jay Steele, a DJ in my town. The admin and HMS are outraged Jay ordered ICE to release a Cuban hijacker, who was being held after he did 22 years, but no country would take him.

Today, after Wikipedia updated to show Jay’s death, a nitwit local congressman filed to impeach my dead pal.

Senior District Judge Jay Steele passed on July 14. You could love him or hate him, but either way, most decent people do not speak ill of the dead. Indeed, when an icon of the right was killed, people were outraged that left wing voices applauded his demise. I was outraged. The same, unfortunately, was not true after the passing of Robert Mueller, when our president twitted “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” Graciousness was never Trump’s style. Continue reading →

Is the job of a cabinet member to advise a president on the propriety and lawfulness of a policy or course of action, or to be fawning sycophant who does whatever he’s told to do without regard to whether it’s unlawful, dangerous or counterproductive? In another time, the answer would obviously be the former. But during their confirmation hearings, neither Todd Blanche nor Jay Clayton, nominated to be the Director of National Intelligence where the stunningly unqualified Bill Pulte sits in the chair, made clear that their duty is to do as they’re told no matter what.

PADILLA: Do you personally believe that someone who forcibly entered the Capitol and assaulted law enforcement should be rewarded with taxpayer money?

BLANCHE: I can’t answer yes or no pic.twitter.com/Gdo8LWa00P

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2026

Continue reading →

Humility prevents me from saying I called it, but I called it. To be fair, it wasn’t hard to do, even if many did not. The Trump v. IRS suit “settlement” was nothing more than a scheme to law-wash Trump using taxpayer monies as a giveaway to his devoted militia, who are likely to be useful come next November, and to himself and his posterity  It was obvious from the outset, and the fact that they even screwed it up with a day-late settlement agreement that was never provided to the court, and then a day-even-later immunity conference that couldn’t even be bothered to be fashioned as if a settlement.

The whole sham was under the auspices of then auditioning Attorney General, Todd Blanche. The immunity gambit was signed by one, and only one, person at the Department of Justice. That too was Todd Blanche. Continue reading →

It may never be known whether Trump assumed that conventional bombing of Iran would produce a Venezuela-like outcome, with the regime collapsing and agreeing to do Trump’s bidding, or not. But what has become overwhelmingly clear, long before Trump’s surrender to Iran, was that there was no consideration of what Iran would do with the Strait of Hormuz or Plan B strategy if the regime survived.

Perhaps it would have gone smoother had Trump focused on a goal in advance of an unlawful war rather than throw things against the wall and see what would stick, thereby being able to sell the war to Americans as worth the cost, in terms of lives and money. It surely would have gone better had Trump not blathered about how we won, we decimated Iran (as opposed to obliterated their nuclear program a few months earlier), how Iran was nice to him and agreed to everything he wanted. And oh yeah, how he was in control of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical international waterway that was open to all before he started the war and was now closed, whether by Iran, the United States or both. Continue reading →