My running joke is that soccer (futball for you purists) is the favorite sport of people who feel baseball is too exciting. I don’t hate soccer. I just don’t like it, care about it or watch it. You are welcome to disagree. Many do, and that’s great too. But the international governing body of soccer, Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA as its commonly, known, has long been seen as a shady, borderline corrupt, association.

This was true even before FIFA invented a Peace Prize to give to Trump when he was sad not to have won the Nobel, to place alongside the trophy he glommed and the medal he pocketed. FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, is nothing if not pragmatic. He knows where his tongue must be stuck to get what he wants. Continue reading →

I remember well thinking as a child how fortunate I was to have been born in America. And I was, I’ve traveled extensively and love many other places, but America is my home. It has been very, very good to me, and I deeply appreciate all it has given me. I love America.

That the United States should be in such turmoil at this time, the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, is both troubling and understandable. Never has the integrity of the nation been under such stress, being pulled apart by the venal and ignorant radicals on the right and left. But that’s the nature of a free nation, that people are free to make choices, even if their choices are poor or corrupt. And we are free to make other choices, whether to stop the venal or ignorant or to stand up for the founding principles that have served to make this great nation what it is today. Continue reading →

Squandering public money on vanity projects, from a ballroom to an Arch, is bad enough, but at the very least it’s obvious. We know the monies are being spent. We know there are other things the money could be spent on. We know a choice was made and we can either be for it, against it, or ignore it. But there is a significant difference in kind when resources are diverted from their integral purpose to unadulterated vanity out of public view.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assigning an army of 260 investigative analysts to a “priority” investigation related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., a reflection of President Trump’s ongoing push to prove his baseless claims that the 2020 election there was rigged.

The effort is outlined in an internal memo obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by a person familiar with the investigation. The memo says that the surge is part of a “priority” effort by Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I. The analysts will work to complete “approximately 708 records checks,” according to the memo. The type of records being checked is unknown.

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Over the years, I’ve decried efforts to redefine words and concepts in order to horseshoe current ideological shifts onto long-settled concepts. These ranged from the meaning of rape to the meaning of sex. It’s not a matter of whether these shifts were good policy, or desirable outcomes per se. They may well be, or not. That’s a separate debate. What mattered was that these were not what these words or concepts meant when they were used in the Constitution or laws. This was not our law, whether you liked it or not.

When Trump signed his Day One Executive Order redefining birthright citizenship, it received near-universal ridicule. Outside of a handful of radicals, it was a laughable effort to change what was unquestionably settled law as to the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. To add insult to injury, Trump tried to change it by presidential fiat, the absolute dopiest mechanism for trying to ram a spurious reinvention of the meaning of birthright citizenship down the throats of America. It was considered a joke, as was he for, inter alia, signing it. Continue reading →

It’s not that government by unaccountable bureaucracy is acceptable. It’s not, and over the years, as federal administrative agencies have been captured by the very people they were created to regulate, strayed from their legislated purpose into politicized realms to pursue ideological goals far beyond anything Congress authorized and grew into untouchable fiefdoms of their own that sneered at the idea that either court or public could hamper their total control over some niche of American society, it became clear that something had to change.

The first change was the Loper Bright decision, ending Chevron Deference. The next change was Trump v. Slaughter, holding that the president, as executive under Article II of the Constitution, had the inherent authority despite whatever limitations were crafted by Congress in the creation of a board, agency or commission to dictate who could hold a position in the Executive Branch. Continue reading →

Contrary to the fevered dreams of the woke, everything isn’t racism. That doesn’t mean, however, that a particular thing that the government does isn’t racist. Distinguishing between the two matters, the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe fails miserably to accomplish this critical task.

This case involves a challenge to the Trump Administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants in the US. TPS status protects from deportation migrants who entered the US from countries where conditions such as war, violence, or natural disaster make it dangerous for them to return home.

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He passed the audition, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, conflicted as he is between his criminal client and the nation he would putatively serve, awaits his confirmation hearing to replace the fired Pam Bondi who failed to successfully indict and prosecute Trump’s enemies. But then, it would ordinarily be expected that the auditioning attorney general would comply with the law. When it came to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Blanche just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“The Attorney General does not respond substantively to any of these arguments,” Sullivan, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, wrote in the opinion. “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”

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Not to insult feral cats, but it’s not easy to get more than 100 judges to agree on anything. It’s something of an occupational hazard. Yet, former California Superior Court Judge Brett Alldredge has been part of a group of former judges, the Retired Judges Initiative, standing together to uphold the rule of law and judicial independence. Judge Alldredge was kind enough to send over their efforts. They call it the Wall of Justice.

The accompanying press release fleshes out their goals. Continue reading →

There were only two candidates on the primary ballot on Tuesday, one of whom was Tommy Suozzi, the former Nassau County Supervisor who served in the House until he ran against Kathy Hochul for governor. He lost that primary, while an unknown Republican took his former House seat. That was George Santos, a lying fabulist who was expelled from the House in short order, criminally convicted and then had his sentence commuted by Trump after he expressed his undying devotion.

Suozzi, who is what he calls a pragmatic Democrat, won the primary. He’s a liberal, not a progressive. While I don’t agree with him about everything, I appreciate his refusal to succumb to the progressive ideology, standing his ground rather than going along. It’s probably the most important thing a politician can do, stand for something. It was rare before. It’s exceptionally rare now. Continue reading →

I am not a loyal viewer of The View. Indeed, what little I’ve seen of The View makes me want to watch Pickleball TV or Velocity MotorTrend Turbo. Others, however, disagree and watch five women (nary a man) regularly prove that one can hold strong opinions about politics and law without having any corresponding knowledge of politics or law. This has made Trump angry, which in turn means that Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr mad.

The regulatory filing marked the latest stage in a confrontation between the broadcasting networks and Carr, who has used his tenure atop the nominally independent FCC to wage a series of fights against perceived foes of President Donald Trump.

In this case, the dispute involves Carr’s efforts to wield a decades-old “equal time” rule to demand that broadcast talk shows such as ABC’s “The View” offer equal time to both parties when interviewing political candidates. Such shows had previously relied on the FCC’s exemption for what it calls “bona fide” news interviews — but now, their ability to air those interviews is in doubt, ABC wrote.

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