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 →

There is a tendency of the unduly passionate to take the enemy of my enemy is my friend a bit too far. We saw this in the deification of Michael Avenatti, who became the darling of the woke and star of MSNBC. This happened again when Trump’s one-time fixer, former lawyer and prisoner Michael Cohen, took the witness stand against his childhood idol in the New York County criminal prosecution for the handling of Trump buying the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels, upon whom he forced himself after Melania gave birth to Barron.

Cohen portrayed himself as a reformed lying tough guy who would do anything for Trump. Cohen, reviled for being as low a POS as possible, claimed to now be telling the truth and sorry for his miscreant existence. And when Cohen called Trump a liar and a conman, the Trump-haters swooned and forgave him his trespasses. They embraced Michael Cohen, the enemy of their enemy, and welcomed him back into the fold. At least some did. Continue reading →

It was only one day ago that Trump claimed Iran, the nation with whom we’re at not-war which we already won 38 times and who is being very nice to Trump and giving him everything he wants, asked to resume talks after Trump declared the ceasefire over. Iran says it didn’t ask to resume talks, just as it disputed pretty much every word Trump tried to put into its mouth all along. Trump’s cred was not bigly.

But now there’s another threat raised by Trump, and this time it seems like the sort of threat that may well be true given that the United States assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader and much of its government. Continue reading →

Dear Democrats in Maine:

Look, we can’t sugar coat things. You guys have a problem right now, and I want to help you fix it. With Graham Planter out of the Senate race now, y’all need to find someone on the double quick to take his spot challenging Susan Collins.

Allow me to throw my name into the ring for consideration.

Now I do have some drawbacks for the spot. For one, I don’t live in Maine. Second, the one thing I really care about in Maine are lobster rolls. I do love me some lobster rolls. Continue reading →