During his bellicose address to the nation, Trump announced that he is sending every member of the United States military a check in the amount of $1776 as a “warrior dividend.” While most of us don’t have any particular problem with giving our military a bonus payment, per se, this payment raises a host of issues, not the least of which is why is he doing this?

President Donald Trump’s promise Wednesday to pay troops a “warrior dividend” bonus is actually a military housing stipend already approved by Congress, and not a generous new White House program.

The rebrand, confirmed by a senior administration official and two congressional officials, follows a pattern for the president, who has previously claimed credit for routine military pay increases that weren’t his doing.

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Ka$h Patel’s firing of “disloyal” FBI agents have given rise to a number of potential claims for wrongful discharge, but the former agents suing in Does v. Patel aren’t the one who were canned for doing their jobs in investigating Trump or the J6 insurrectionists, but the agents who took a knee after the killing of George Floyd.

The lawsuit says the agents were assigned to patrol the nation’s capital during a period of civil unrest prompted by Floyd’s death. Lacking protective gear or extensive training in crowd control, the agents became outnumbered by hostile crowds they encountered and decided to kneel to the ground in hopes of defusing the tension, the lawsuit said. The tactic worked, the lawsuit asserts — the crowds dispersed, no shots were fired and the agents “saved American lives” that day.

For Patel, however, this was deemed political expression, agents who chose sympathy with the protesters in conflict with Trump administration’s animosity toward the protests. For that, they were fired. Continue reading →

It’s not a ruling, as there is no majority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in its Commonwealth v. Kurtz opinion saying so, but that’s only because the fourth vote held it unnecessary to reach the question. The point, nonetheless, is clear. While the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States may have carved out a narrow exception to the Third Party Doctrine for cellphones, as a theoretical body part to which people have no real option to possess at all times and thus compelled to provide information to third-party providers, Google search is a voluntary act for which no warrant is needed.

In the case, the police were trying to find out who committed a sexual assault of a person known in the opinion by her initials, “K.M.” Police figured that whoever committed this crime may have googled K.M.’s name or address before committing the crime.  Investigators obtained what is known as a “reverse keyword search warrant,” asking for Google to hand over the I.P. address of whoever may have googled the name or address of the victim shortly before the crime.  Google responded that someone at a particular I.P. address had conducted two searches for K.M.’s address a few hours before the attack.  The I.P. address was in use at the home of the defendant, Kurtz.  The police had not suspected Kurtz in the crime, but they started to watch Kurtz closely, obtained a DNA sample, and found a DNA match from the crime.

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Upon learning that Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, were murdered, President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, immediately reacted by posting on Truth Social.

Needless to say, the Reiner’s murder had nothing to do with Trump. It had nothing to do with TDS. It had nothing to do with driving “people CRAZY” with his “raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,” curiously written in the third person. But the impetuous Trump couldn’t wait until there was more information and, instead, leapt to the assumption that Reiner’s murder was all about him. Continue reading →

As the levers of government were handed off to the guy who paid for Trump’s campaign and his adorable muskrats, Big Balls and all. the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, did the very best it could to achieve its ambitious goals. Now that it no longer exists and nobody talks about it, except perhaps the former federal employees with glowing performance reviews who were fired by terse emails written by twelve-year-olds who almost made it through their sophomore year of college, how did it do?

As the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) transitioned from internet meme to real-life government reform effort, the agency claimed it would achieve many far-reaching, seemingly improbable goals.

It was going to slash $2 trillion in federal spending, eliminate burdensome and unconstitutional regulations, upgrade the federal government’s “tech stack,” evict the woke deep state, and, time permitting, balance the budget. Continue reading →

Some states put limits on the number of times a case may be presented to a grand jury. Some require judicial approval before resubmission. But in the federal system, there are no legal limits, per se, to the number of times a prosecutor can present and represent a case to grand juries until he gets the ham sandwich indicted. The only prerequisite for resubmission is set forth in the Justice Department Manual.

Approval Required Prior to Resubmission of Same Matter to Grand Jury: Once a grand jury returns a no-bill or otherwise acts on the merits in declining to return an indictment, the same matter ( i.e., the same transaction or event and the same putative defendant) should not be presented to another grand jury or resubmitted to the same grand jury without first securing the approval of the responsible United States Attorney.

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Prefatory note: Yep. I think I’ve officially lost it.—CLS

‘Twas the night before Christmas, in Mud Lick so still

Sheriff Roy Templeton locked up every grill

Tyrone’s on vacation, thank God—he’s dim as a drill.

The station was quiet, Just two drunks in a cell Continue reading →

It’s bad enough that FIFA plans to charge up to $700 for the $21 tickets that United States officials said would be offered when they bid for he World Cup. Of course, they didn’t know then that they would have to invent a FIFA Peace Prize for the sad Donald Trump, who already glommed the gold trophy when it was brought to the Oval Office to be shown him. “I’m keeping it,” he muttered, because it was gold.

But another part of the gig was that the World Cup for soccer, a sport for people who find baseball too fast paced, would bring in a bunch of touristas, as would the Los Angeles summer Olympics. That would be atop the normal tourists that come to visit the United States in the usual course. They fill hotel rooms, dine at restaurants and buy tchotchkes. They provide jobs and revenue. Unlike tariffs, tourists are a huge boon for the economy. Continue reading →

Being neither for nor against Charlie Kirk, only because I never followed Kirk and knew nothing about him or his positions, I had nothing to contribute after his assassination beyond the fact that no one should be harmed, no less killed, for their political views. It’s beyond ironic, then, that 20-year combat veteran turned Tennessee public employee was fired hours after making a comment in reply to a friend’s Facebook post.

Was Charlie Kirk a white supremacist? It’s irrelevant. Would you have written this reply? It’s irrelevant. Do you think Monica Meeks’ reply was terrible? It’s irrelevant. Monica Meeks has a right to express her opinion, right or wrong, offensive or not. And yet, she was fired from her job with the State of Tennessee. Continue reading →

For many of us, the reaction to an image of a transgender female (a biological male, as the Fifth Circuit notes, lest anyone be confused) washing her hands at the sink in a woman’s rest room would be a shrug. Regardless of our feelings about the new rules for transgender people, this just isn’t worthy of much outrage. For Travis County District Attorney, José Garza, it’s worthy of an investigation toward a felony prosecution. The Fifth Circuit agrees.

In May 2023, Evans attended a debate in the Texas House of Representatives at the Texas Capitol about gender reassignment treatment for children. When she visited the women’s restroom, Evans encountered a transgender (biologically male) politician whom she later confronted. After returning to her seat in the Capitol gallery, one of Evans’s seatmates showed her that someone from their group had posted a photo of the politician washing their hands in the women’s restroom on Facebook. Evans tweeted the photo with a caption indicating she believed the politician should not have used the women’s restroom. Continue reading →