Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall opens with an observation that should send chills down the spines of those of us who remember how the public bought into such flagrantly unconstitutional legal maneuvers as civil asset forfeiture weaseled its way into acceptability. When imposed, the marketing pitch was that it would only be used “to take the profit out of crime” for drug kingpins and mobsters.

Who doesn’t hate drug kingpins and mobsters? Who doesn’t want to take the profit out of crime? And so Americans shut their eyes and believed it when they were told it would never happen to them, never be abused, never be used to take cash from travelers. After all, we weren’t drug kingpins or mobsters. We now know better. Continue reading →

Today is the midterm midterm election day, when judges in Pennsylvania, governors in New Jersey and Virginia, mayor in New York City and a referendum in California, are on the ballot. What, if anything, will it mean?

Usually, elections that don’t involve federal positions don’t garner much interest and attention, but today’s election is being touted as a referendum on Donald Trump’s first year in office. The New Jersey gubernatorial election pits a third timer Trump sycophant against a lackluster Democrat whose foremost claim to the office is that she flew helicopters in the Navy. The Virginia Democrat is tainted by the attorney general candidate’s text messages about killing the children of his opponent, which she failed to condemn, while the Republican opponent is just plain wacky. Continue reading →

Trump says his administration is the most transparent ever, which of course doesn’t make it so or true, but he’s got a point at least with one very significant aspect.

If there is a word that describes the second Trump administration, it’s brazen. While I certainly hold open the possibility that dark deeds are being done in secret, one thing that is remarkable is how open and obvious he is with his self-dealing.

David French goes through the litany of deeds in which Trump has, and continues, to engage, which in any other world would be damningly corrupt, ending in impeachment, prosecution or at minimum, denigration by his party and supporters. And yet, the MAGA faithful and Republicans in Congress don’t seem to be mildly miffed, no less outraged. Continue reading →

There are a number of issues raised by Trump’s demolishing the hundred-year-old East Wing of the White House and building the world’s largest catering hall, to be known as the Trump Ballroom, whether or not the Trump name is chiseled into the limestone in very large letters. But the purported virtue, that it won’t be built with taxpayer dollars but with donations, raises an issue itself.

Why, one might wonder, would anyone want to donate a few mil to the cause? Because they love America? Perhaps. Because they love Trump? Maybe. Or it could be that they want to buy Trumps favor or buy off Trump’s anger. We’ve already seen corporations settle frivolous claims by Trump personally that put huge sums in Trump’s pocket when the corps need government approval for their deals. We’ve already seen Trump demand retribution against his “enemies,” to those who refuse to bend to his will. Trump has hardly been shy about favoring those who buy his love and using the power of government to damage those who make him angry or sad. Continue reading →

A senior at Livingston Manor High School posted a picture of himself lying on the ground next to a car with another student kneeling on his neck, giving the thumbs up. The picture was taken off school grounds and outside school hours. It did not go over well.

The context of the picture is significant: The day Leroy and his friends took and posted the picture, a jury had just begun to deliberate in the highly publicized trial of Derek Chauvin, a Minnesota police officer, for the murder of George Floyd. The picture is undeniably reminiscent of footage of Chauvin next to a police car kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, killing him. The other students involved in the picture—the student who took the picture (Student B) and the student posing with his knee on Leroy’s neck (Student A)—both acknowledge this resemblance, and Student A testified the resemblance was intentional.

The school punished Leroy, asserting that the image, which Leroy left up for about seven minutes but was captured by another student and left up for about seven months, cause substantial disruption. Continue reading →

The official explanation for the government, by Jonathan Hornok, chief of the criminal division of the DC U.S. attorney’s office, withdrawing the sentencing memo for Taylor Taranto was that it had been “entered in error.” That is a lie.

In their sentencing papers, Mr. Valdivia and Mr. White wrote that Mr. Taranto had been among the “mob of rioters” on Jan. 6 and that he had promoted conspiracy theories concerning the attack. Mr. Taranto was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct for his role in the Capitol attack, but those charges were dismissed as part of the blanket clemency that President Trump granted to all of the nearly 1,600 people accused of taking part in the riot.

In an extraordinary move, the Justice Department withdrew the sentencing papers on Wednesday afternoon, noting in a federal court database that they had been “entered in error.” Hours later, new sentencing papers were submitted that kept the same recommendation for a 27-month sentence but expunged all references to Jan. 6.

Continue reading →

Chaired by Kentucky Republican James Comer, the House Oversight Committee released a 100-page report entitled “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House.” It did not speak well of Joe Biden’s mental acuity toward the end of his presidency.

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released its long-anticipated investigative report on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s cognitive condition, accusing his inner circle of concealing a mental decline and claiming, without evidence, that he was so impaired that he could not make his own decisions.

The 100-page report, entitled “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House,” concludes that many of the executive actions Mr. Biden took, including pardons of his family, should be considered “void” because there is no record that he made the decisions himself.

The issuance of pardons is one of the preclusive acts of the presidency. For better or worse, the Constitution gives the president the sole power to grant pardons as he sees fit. Continue reading →

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 →