Since Marbury v. Madison, judicial review has been a bedrock principle of American constitutional jurisprudence. Some don’t care for it, given that it presents a limitation on the authority of the president to do whatever he pleases, and yet it has served this nation well. You would think a Yale Law grad would recognize this, even if it meant he had nothing to say in defense of his boss whose knowledge and grasp of law, governance and Constitution ranged from none to none. You would be wrong.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Judge Engelmayor’s TRO: Just The Law
If one were to believe the voices of outrage on the twitters, Southern District of New York Judge Paul Engelmayor just stopped Treasury Secretary Scott Bressent from being allowed into his own computer system, from overseeing his own department’s payment system. The alternative to losing one’s head is reading the decision, but too few are sufficiently interested in thinking to be bothered. I am not.
The States contend that this policy, inter alia, violates the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. §§ 551 et seq., in multiple respects; exceeds the statutory authority of the Department of the Treasury; violates the separation of powers doctrine; and violates the Take Care Clause of the United States Constitution.
Satan’s Request
I received an email from Satan yesterday evening challenging me to post today about Trump’s revocation of Biden’s security clearance. On the one hand, it was just another in a series of petty moves by a puny man as retribution against those who hurt his feelings. On the other hand, it’s inconsequential, as the limited utility of a former president maintaining his security clearance and getting occasional briefings only applies under normal circumstances, where a current president seeks the advice of a predecessor in office or uses a former president as an envoy for foreign affairs.
Trump won’t be asking anything of Biden, so there will be no need for Biden to be kept up to date during Trump’s term. Maybe the next president will seek Biden’s help. He or she can restore Biden’s security clearance then. Sure, there’s the irony that Trump will give access to state secrets to unvetted kids in Musk’s wake, but that’s a different issue. It’s just a slap in the face of a former president by a current president who uses power as payback like a butthurt child. Continue reading
Seaton: Cassidy v. DOGE
Cassidy, boyo, the drink’s finally gotten yeh.
The Irish doorman of the Grassy Knoll Pub had no other explanation for what had to be the hallucination of four men in Hawaiian shirts colorfully decorated with the heads of Shiba Inu dogs wearing sunglasses. They’d emerged from a very official looking black Suburban which said “Department of Government Efficiency” in gold lettering.
And one of the hallucinations was now talking to Cassidy. Continue reading
Security and DEI At The CIA
There is no indication that Trump has a firm grasp on security, either its means or purpose, and consequently doesn’t take it seriously. Even so, a demand that the CIA send over a list of its new hires over the past two years by unsecured email would seem too stupid for even the most fanatic DOGEBoy. Not so, apparently.
The C.I.A. sent an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order from President Trump to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries. Continue reading
A Faithful Application Of An Untrustworthy Decision
It wasn’t Judge Carleton Reeves’ of the Southern District of Mississippi first rodeo. He’s made clear his views that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision is an unworkable mess, and that neither judges nor lawyers are in any position to provide meaningful answers to Justice Clarence Thomas’ mandate that only “dangerous and unusual” guns as understood from an originalist perspective are prohibited under the Second Amendment.
But Judge Reeves, for better or worse, did a judge’s duty and applied the law as best he could, holding that Justin Brown’s possession of a machinegun in his home was protected under the Second Amendment. Continue reading
Trump’s Riviera
Not satisfied with making enemies of our neighbors to the north and south, not to mention Europe, Trump stunned even his own staff* with a proposal he’s been thinking about for a month or two that has now alienated him from even his Saudi pals. He proposed that the Palestinians be relocated to Egypt and Jordan while the United States seized control of Gaza.
Mr. Trump’s announcement that he intends to seize control of Gaza, displace the Palestinian population and turn the coastal enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East” was the kind of thing he might have said to get a rise on “The Howard Stern Show” a decade or two ago. Provocative, intriguing, outlandish, outrageous — and not at all presidential. Continue reading
The Crime Of Naming Musk’s Kiddies
It was said so often as to lose any seriousness, as Trump accused his myriad enemies of having committed some unstated crime and should be punished, the punishment ranging from prison to death. In other news, randos on twitter constantly claim some act, whether innocuous or constitutionally protected, is a crime, throwing in acronyms like RICO or the dreaded HIPPA (yes, it’s HIPAA, but that’s part of the joke. Get it?).
But yesterday, the shadow president raised the stakes after Wired posted an article naming six of Musk’s best and brightest.
Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.
The New Joke Of Confidentiality
It was bad enough when Trump, without prior warning, decided to let the Russian foreign minister and ambassador into the Oval Office, where he gave them highly classified information because it seemed like a good idea to him at the time. And then there were the classified documents he showed off at Mar-a-lago, because what ex-president doesn’t want to be the cool kid to randos?
So, Trumpy excuses aside, it might be said that Trump doesn’t take state secrets seriously, and if it doesn’t seem to be a problem to him, given his deep and broad grasp of government functioning and in-depth understanding the threats facing the nation from countries with adverse interests, why should anyone be concerned that he’s handing over national and personal confidential information without any consideration of who gets to see it? Continue reading
How Much Will Republican Senators Swallow?
During the confirmation hearing of K$H Patel, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy questioned whether Patel would be party to Trump’s “retribution” tour.
During Mr. Patel’s testimony on Thursday, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told Mr. Patel that lawmakers would hold him accountable if he tried to exact revenge at the F.B.I., saying two wrongs did not make a right.
“And there have been and may still be some bad people there, and you’ve got to find out who the bad people are and get rid of them, in accordance with due process and the rule of law,” Mr. Kennedy said. “And then you’ve got to lift up the good people. Don’t go over there and burn that place down. Go over there and make it better.”