In a curiously pointless New York Times op-ed, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley writes that no American should go to bed hungry.

Congress must not let that happen. America is a great and wealthy nation, and our most important wealth is our generosity of spirit. We help those in need. We provide for the widow and the orphan. Love of neighbor is part of who we are. The Scripture’s injunction to “remember the poor” is a principle Americans have lived by. It’s time Congress does the same.

That’s about as deep as a politician proclaiming that he’s for everything good and against everything bad. Of course, it’s not as if this is a priority for the president, who is off jetting around Asia accepting flattery, gold trinkets and trying to fix problems of his own creation, rather than saving Americans from starvation while sending his buddy Milei $40 billion. “America first” might not mean what you think it means. Continue reading →

As early voting begins in New York City, the frontrunner, 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, is poised to be the next mayor of the Big Apple. Granted, his competition for the job is decidedly less than inspiring, the tainted Andrew Cuomo and the throw-away Curtis Sliwa, but still, electing a candidate who once called for defunding the police and still refuses to condemn Hamas’ October 11th attack is quite a message.

And, it’s argued, it is a message from the Democrats to America: Mamdani is our future. Not necessarily the charismatic and perpetually grinning Zohran, but the progressive wing of the Democratic Party as opposed to the old school moderate wing as reflected by Cuomo. Is this a reflection of what the future holds for Democrats? Continue reading →

For the most part, Richard Nixon excepted, presidents have understood their role to include following the law. That didn’t mean they couldn’t test the law or try to push the edges as far as they would bend, but ultimately concede that they were constrained by the law. But that, of course, doesn’t help a president to know what the law is, and where the outer perimeter lies. So the president would turn to the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department for a legal opinion when there was a question as to whether something he wanted to do (or did and got caught) was legal.

OLC is the place where water-boarding torture was rationalized as lawful. OLC said it was okay to use a drone to kill an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlacki. The thing was that OLC put its opinions into memos that provided written explanation for why something was lawful. It wasn’t so much that OLC could not be wrong, as OLC correctness could be determined and challenged. Continue reading →

Friends, I come today to introduce those of you who’ve never heard of him to Ahren Belisle.

This guy basically convinced me to give up writing dumb jokes for good.

Well, not really. But he’s incredibly funny. And he’s a nonverbal guy with cerebral palsy. And I haven’t been able to stop laughing at this guy’s sets since I found him.

So in the spirit of spreading the laughter and introducing you to a hilarious new voice in comedy I’m yielding time at the Friday Funny to Ahren Belisle.

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There is no question but that the pardon power belongs to the president, and only the president, and is unreviewable. And while I remain unconvinced that crypto-currency isn’t the modern equivalent of tulips, I have no personal feelings about Changpeng Zhao, or CZ as he’s called, the richest man in crypto, being pardoned per se. Heck, pardons are good, even bad pardons. Mercy is good. Even mistaken mercy is good.

But was this mercy?

President Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, wiping away one of the U.S. government’s most significant crackdowns on crypto crime. Continue reading →

Trump says he might give it to charity, or to the White House. Maybe. Maybe not. We might never know anything about it, from whether Trump’s Justice Department, run by Trump’s former lawyers, decided to gift him what he claims to be owed because of the “unfair” federal investigations into the Russian connections with his campaign and the raid at Mar-a-Lago after he lied about, then refused to return, secret documents which he retained and were found during the execution of a search warrant. Either way, Trump has demanded $230 million from the United States for himself.

President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

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Every lawyer accepts certain limitations on his freedom of speech when he seeks and obtains bar admission. We can’t reveal client confidences, for example, even though it would otherwise be fully within our right of free speech. These are the rules of the profession, and we accept them when we accept our ticket.

But when a lawyer in New Hampshire sent a demand letter to a putative defamation defendant, a non-lawyer, did it violate Rule 4.4(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct because it included a demand for payment of $250,000? Continue reading →

Despite efforts to denigrate it, ridicule it, mischaracterize it and reframe it, the “No Kings” march was peaceful, broad-based and huge. Whether it was 7,000,000 people as estimated can’t be said with certainty, but there were marches all over the country and they were well attended by a vast array of patriotic Americans who love their country as well as the occasional inflatable frog.

Contrary to the efforts of Republicans, it was neither hateful nor communist nor antifa and paid Soros agitators. It was as American as apple pie.

They were teachers and lawyers, military veterans and fired government employees. Children and grandmothers, students and retirees. Continue reading →

Trump says they were “narco-terrorists.” Colombia says it was a fishing boat. Trump has offered no evidence other than his say-so. Colombia had the audacity to complain. How dare they, Trump says.

President Gustavo Petro of Colombia accused the United States of murdering an innocent fisherman in an attack on a boat that the American authorities claimed had been carrying illicit drugs, prompting President Trump to declare on Sunday that he would slash assistance to Colombia, one of Washington’s top aid recipients in Latin America, and impose new tariffs on the country’s goods.

That Trump believes he can murder at will is bad enough, although for the most part the boats he’s been blowing up are from Venezuela, and everybody hates Venezuelan dictator Maduro, who should not be confused with Argentinian President Javier Milei, to whom Trump promised $40 billion (up from $20 billion) in aid provided he gets re-elected. Trump likes Milei, who likes Trump back. Continue reading →

Was George Santos, if that really is his name, really a Trump and MAGA supporter? Who would know? Given his proclivity to saying anything that serves his interests at any given moment, and given that it’s in his interest at the moment to claim to be a Trump supporter, he says he is. And for Trump, that’s good enough.

Former Representative George Santos of New York, the disgraced Republican fabulist whose lies made him an object of national scorn, was released from a federal prison on Friday night after President Trump commuted his seven-year sentence for fraud.

It’s hardly surprising that Trump commuted his sentence, and he’s hardly the first person to be pardoned or have his sentence commuted who wasn’t exactly deserving of presidential mercy. That goes for Democratic as well as Republican presidents. Remember Marc Rich (Clinton)? And then there was Crazy Joe Arpaio (Trump)? And Joe Biden’s autopen pardons on the way out the door raised serious concerns. Continue reading →