After Barbara, Trump Signs More Birthright Citizenship EOs

Stephen Miller is nothing if not tenacious in his hatred of immigrants, his own ancestry notwithstanding. After the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s birthright citizenship Executive Order, and given the vast array of grandiose construction projects going poorly, plus that darn war that won’t go away no matter how many times Trump claims he won, and the nagging Democrat-invented “affordability” thingie, you might think that he was too busy to continue pushing the envelope on such a nonsensical cause as ending the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship that was already decided and doomed to fail.

Miller, however, won’t take the Constitution for an answer, and so Trump signed what Miller put before him. Continue reading

Don’t Abdul Me, Bro

Sure, the primary race was supposed to be a blow out, and it turned out that Abdul El-Sayed squeaked through by less than a point. But that’s little comfort. Abdul El-Sayed beat the Democratic establishment candidate, Representative Haley Stevens, in the Democratic primary for the senator from Michigan. That he didn’t win huge doesn’t change the fact that he won. Abdul won.

Michigan’s marquee race, the Democratic Senate primary, turned out to be a nail-biter Tuesday. But one thing is clear in progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s surprisingly narrow win over Rep. Haley Stevens, the choice of the old guard: The left-wing insurgency is here to stay.

The New York City win of Zohran Mamdani could be shrugged off as a local quirk. After all, Mamdani won as Mayor of New York. Hell, even Giuliani won as mayor, which tells you how easily New York voters can be led astray. But Abdul was running for Senator, and to hold the Democratic senate seat of retiring Gary Peters. If the Dems have any hope of taking the majority in the Senate, holding this seat is critical. And yet, Abdul won. Continue reading

Tuesday Talk*: Bronx Defenders Overstruck?

When three old friends, Robin Steinberg, David Feige and Dan Arshack, started Bronx Defenders, there was a deliberate intention of providing their indigent clients “holistic” services. By this, they meant that their purpose wasn’t just to beat the case, as would be the scope of ordinary criminal defense, but to help their clients become happy, successful, law-abiding citizens.

While beating the rap was their primary goal, helping clients beyond their legal problems was their ethos. It was, at the time, a novel and very progressive approach for an indigent defense organization. None of the founders remain at Bronx Defenders for various reasons, but the ethos remains. And that, apparently, has given rise to a stumbling block that has caused Bronx Defenders to lose the tune, as its staff has now been on strike for a week and its union has rejected an eminently fair proposal to settle. Continue reading

Vandals, Vandals, Vandals

There was “tremendous evidence.” Not just evidence, but “tremendous evidence.”

As it turns out, it wasn’t that “tremendous” after all.

Federal prosecutors on Friday said that contractors hired by the Trump administration had botched the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, leaving behind “widespread damage” in the pool’s new blue lining, and that the Interior Department had then falsely blamed that damage on vandals.

Continue reading

Seaton: Three Things I Thought About This Week

You can learn a surprisingly good deal about human nature watching game shows.

I recently saw an episode of Celebrity Family Feud where a team of very decidedly woke celebrities of color played a group that looked to be Travis and Jason Kelce’s extended family.

The question posed by host Steve Harvey was as follows: “We asked 100 people and the top five answers are on the board: What kind of music is played all hours of the day in hell?” Continue reading

Fauci And The Fifth

There was no doubt when Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before the Senate Committee that the Republicans had every intention of demonizing Fauci in the hope of pleasing the MAGA faithful by finding some means to put the hated Fauci in prison for, as Alabama Senator and 5th grade graduate Tommy Tuberville said, killing 9 million people. It was thus no surprise that Dr. Fauci, upon recommendation of counsel, took the Fifth, 

After Dr. Anthony S. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself at the start of a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Republicans spent the next three hours battering him with questions and allegations as he sat in silence.

Citing thousands of pages of government records, they held Dr. Fauci, the government’s top Covid adviser during the pandemic, responsible for school closures and lockdowns; accused him of enriching himself as people died; and even mocked his interactions with celebrities. Most significantly, they accused him of funding research that led to the creation of the coronavirus that causes Covid, and of lying about it under oath to Congress.

Continue reading

Who Gets Picked To Pick The Judges?

Not that she runs the show, but playing a lawyer on Sex in the City isn’t really the same as being a lawyer, or a qualification for being named to the Commission on Judicial Nominations.

And just like that… lefty actress Cynthia Nixon will get to screen and recommend candidates to serve on the state’s highest court, The Post has learned.

Nixon — who isn’t a lawyer but played one on the hit HBO show “Sex and the City” — was just appointed to serve on the Commission on Judicial Nomination by New York Chief Judge Rowan Wilson.

The commission suggests and vets potential judges to the Court of Appeals. Nixon’s appointment runs through April 30, 2030 and the position is unpaid.

Continue reading

Cornyn And Tillis Have Half A Point About Blanche

It’s unfortunately understandable that the Senate confirmed Jay Clayton as Director of National Intelligence by a 51-47 vote. After all, he wasn’t nearly as much of a mutt as most Trump appointees, and was far better than monumentally unqualified real estate nepo baby, Bill Pulte, whom Trump made Acting DNI even though the law would have the deputy assume the acting position in the absence of a confirmed nominee.

There was some concern when Clayton showed he lacked the guts to tell the truth when asked who won the 2020 election, playing the “certified” card so as not to make his patron sad. But  while he lost any hope of bipartisan support, this didn’t prove to be a game changer for Republican senators. So what if Clayton didn’t possess the qualification for the job, extensive experience in national security. The Senate has long since gotten past such trivial concerns in confirming Trump nominees. Continue reading

Tuesday Talk*: Is The Filibuster Doomed?

In his zeal to coerce the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, an ill-conceived and ill-concealed effort at voter suppression under the misguided belief that it’s the only way to assure free and fair elections, Trump has pushed Senate Majority Leader John Thune to “nuke” the filibuster so it can pass by mere majority rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster.

Continue reading