Everything’s different at the border. CBP and ICE are entrusted with keeping us safe from enemies, both foreign and domestic, at least when it comes to those who have the temerity to present themselves at a port of entry for inspection.

As many folks know, the government gets a special tool at the border. The Fourth Amendment is particularly hamstrung by federal law and regulations when it comes to “routine” searches at the border, meaning that border agents can go through your stuff without a warrant or probable cause. CBP applies this to anywhere within 100 miles of the United State’s external boundaries, and that can affect over 200 million people. For those foolish enough to live in a place like Florida, their entire home state can be a “constitution-free zone.” Continue reading →

Farah Stockman makes it abundantly clear which side she wants Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to be on, and she’s hardly shy about twisting the facts to get her there.

“I want to be right there with my fellow Democrats, oozing enthusiasm about Tim Walz and what’s the latest with the campaign,” Mr. Alawieh told me. But as he gets campaign updates, he says he is “simultaneously getting updates from my family members in Southern Lebanon who are checking in on each other because of the last bomb that dropped.”

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This may come as a surprise to those of you who remember my Friday afternoon announcements on the twitters at 5:00 pm that it was “scotch o’clock,” as I grasped my crystal tumbler of Bowmore 18, but that was typically my one drink of alcohol a week. My wayward youth being well behind me, I’m not much of a drinker anymore. An occasional glass of wine and perhaps a beer on a sultry evening, but that’s pretty much it.

So why care that there are six unknown bureaucrats in a basement boiler room at Health and Human Services about to decree that no amount of alcohol is safe? Continue reading →

At Open To Debate, the question posed was “Can Israel Make Peace with Hamas?” Given the push for a ceasefire, or a prelude to an end of the war in Gaza with or without the return of hostages, a detail given little thought by “ceasefire now” crowd, this is a very important question, one worthy of a serious and thoughtful debate. These were the sides:

Cenk Uyghur, Founder and Host of the Young Turks Network, argues “YES”

Mosab Hassan Yousef, Ex-Palestinian Militant, Former Israeli Spy, Son of Hamas Co-Founder, and Author of From Hamas to America, argues “NO”

Yousef’s argument, grounded in the reality of Hamas’ ideological hatred of Israel and Jews, based upon his personal experience as the son of Hamas’ co-founder and as a former militant, was illuminating and informative. Continue reading →

Alaska. The 49th State. The Final Frontier of the United States. A place where getting lost in nature means you quite possibly die. Yes, this was where I chose to vacation for about a week and a half.

I never said this was going to be relaxing, did I? In fact, it was a vacation with my massive 15 person family. Yes, we’re those people on vacation who gleefully take up an entire elevator or a charter bus. And we all go on vacations together. Continue reading →

It might strike some people as hypocritical that the ACLU fired its senior policy counsel, Kate Oh, for using racist language, both because the organization wants to pretend it’s a defender of free speech and because there was nothing about Oh’s language that was racist. For others of us, however, it’s comical with a twinge of irony.

A judge ruled on Wednesday that the A.C.L.U. had illegally fired an employee, Kate Oh, from her job as senior policy counsel. The group had accused her of using language that was racist and that singled out people of color in the office. Continue reading →

How long was the honeymoon going to last? This long, apparently.

Before Vice President Kamala Harris confronted pro-Palestinian and anti-Gaza-war protesters on Wednesday at a campaign rally in Detroit, she faced demands from the leaders of a group that has mobilized voters to protest the U.S. government’s support for Israel.

The founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, the group that mobilized more than 100,000 people to withhold their votes from President Biden in this year’s Michigan primary over his support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, were among those invited to welcome Ms. Harris and her new running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, to Michigan in a photo line.

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His biography is really good. History teacher. Football coach. Football coach who became the first advisor to his high school’s gay-straight alliance. National guard for 28 years. Reared in the state wise enough to make me an admiral. What’s not to like?

An Instagram account run by staffers for Rep. Summer Lee, known as “dear_white_staffers,” posted in all-caps, “WE FUCKING DID IT WE FUCKING WON LETS GO LETS GO LETS GO!!!!!”< Continue reading →

At some point later today. Democratic presidential candidate (that’s right, the vote’s been taken and the deed is done) Kamala Harris will announce her choice of running mate. It could be one of the worn list of potential vice presidents, or it could be a surprise. Who knows? More importantly, who cares? Why has the scrutiny of Harris’ VP choice engendered such vicious and critical scrutiny?

“Common wisdom” is that the person chosen will be a “signal” of what Harris’ presidency would be about, which raises two questions. First, is it a substantive signal or is it a political choice calculated to help Harris beat Trump in the general election. Continue reading →

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has a book coming out, so he’s doing what every author does to sell books and what most justices don’t to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Justice Gorsuch sat for an interview with David French. To be fair, David is a lawyer, a never-Trump conservative and deeply religious, so there was little expectation of an interview starting with “j’accuse.”

That said, it was a very interesting interview and revealed some of Gorsuch’s views that are often overlooked by pundits lambasting him for being on the wrong side of a decision. Notably, he served as a judge on the Tenth Circuit from 2006 until 2017, when he was appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court, where he was well-regarded and uncontroversial. But nothing courts hatred like an appointment by Trump, even though a dear friend to SJ, Senior District Judge John Kane, testified on then-Judge Gorsuch’s behalf at his confirmation hearing. Continue reading →