It was rather stunning that the New York Times put out an editorial calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race. It wasn’t at all anti-Biden, praising him for the accomplishments of his tenure, but concluded that the time has come for the good of party and country.

Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year. Continue reading →

On the one hand, there’s little doubt that the running of such a diverse and complex society as ours requires a substantial bureaucracy to make it work. On the other hand, the administrative state today is not the administrative state it was 20 years ago, and certainly not what it was in 1984, when the Supreme Court created Chevron Deference.

Our Chevron doctrine requires courts to use a two-step framework to interpret statutes administered by federal agencies. After determining that a case satisfies the various  preconditions we have set for Chevron to apply, a reviewing court must first assess “whether  Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue.” If, and only if, congressional intent is “clear,” that is the end of the inquiry. Ibid. But if the court determines that “the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue” at hand, the court must, at Chevron’s second step, defer to the agency’s interpretation if it “is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”

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This week I want to share with you an opinion I find fascinating and stupid. The case is Massey v. Jim Crockett Promotions, Inc., 400 S.E.2d 876 (1990).

The case is fascinating because it is a court case involving pro wrestling that actually made its way to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.* One can only imagine the rumblings in the heads of the justices about career paths when the record in this case hit their desks. Continue reading →

I may have mentioned this before. The alternative to bad isn’t necessarily good. It can always get worse. But President Joe Biden cannot run for re-election. Few expected that to be the takeaway from the debate, but outside of the most partisan holes of denial, last night made two things clear. Biden cannot win. Biden is no longer capable of serving as president.*

Assuming there are people around Biden who will inform him that his Waffle House assessment of his debate performance might not be accurate, what then? Continue reading →

If you think about it, elected officials are given gratuities all the time. Why do you think some people pump money into their campaign coffers? It’s to thank them, whether for doing something specifically valuable to a contributor or just being the sort of politician who will do what they want them to do. Currying favor with people who have the power to do things you want done is as American as apple pie. But that has nothing to do with the holding in Snyder v. United States, which is being roundly misstated to whip up the groundlings against the corrupt Supreme Court.

Held: Section 666 proscribes bribes to state and local officials but does not make it a crime for those officials to accept gratuities for their past acts.

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Congressman Jamaal Bowman lost to George Latimer in NY-16. Actually, Latimer crushed Bowman. People not on the left fringe of the Democratic Party see this as the ousting of one of their crazies, the sort of person who would pull a fire alarm to stall a vote, align so closely with Hamas as to compel the far left J Street to withdraw its endorsement and engage in a profanity laden tirade with AOC and Bernie Sanders at hand in the South Bronx, outside his district.

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Both President Biden and former President Trump are preparing for Thursday’s debate, though in very different ways. According to reports, Biden is at Camp David boning up on policy and practice, while Trump is at rallies and on social media making baseless pre-emptive excuses for losing, from Biden’s getting a shot in his butt to keep him standing up and cogent rather than falling asleep, to the CNN debate moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, being Trump haters.

Is there any purpose to the debate other than to see which of the candidates blows it? What do you expect to see? Policy discussions? Outrageous lies? Absurd claims? Two old men who could stroke out at any moment? Are you going to watch or get to sleep at a reasonable hour? Or is this like watching a car crash happening in slow motion, wondering who will be driving the car most at fault and waiting to see who walks away from the wreckage?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply within reason.

While the holding fit nicely into a sentence, the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision wreaked havoc on lower courts struggling to figure out how that sentence was applied.

[T]he court articulated a “text, history and tradition” test for evaluating gun restrictions in future federal cases. Under this test, gun control measures were constitutional only if the government could demonstrate those restrictions were “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” That was the most significant element of the Bruen case.

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Bail is bad. We know that because all the “abolish bail” reformers say so. They tell us that bail is just a way to oppress poor people, whose only “crime” is not having enough money to buy their way out of jail. And by definition, that makes the bail fund that buys the release of a person too poor to post bail good. Therefore, when Nancy Rommelmann argued that Rachael Abramson might still be alive if the Portland Bail Fund hadn’t paid the $2,000 needed to cover the $20,000 bail set for the release of Mohamed Adan, she was attacked.

Except Nancy Rommelmann was right. Between the threats, arrests and convictions, the evidence was overwhelming that Adan was going to kill Abramson. And after he was bailed out, he did. Continue reading →

I never thought I’d see the day when folks from the West Coast started getting the good sense  to flee that nightmarish part of the country for my beloved American South. And yet it keeps happening. It seemed to really take off during the pandemic when parts of my region embraced liberty while places like California prevented folks from eating outside unless the restaurant of their choosing had pricey outdoor air filters.

Personally, I’m not terribly thrilled at the influx of migrants to Tennessee and the surrounding states from places like California. One of the joys of country life is the lack of people. However, if you’re going to come here, I feel it incumbent upon me to provide you with some tips so some of you might learn the ropes and properly assimilate.

You’re welcome. Continue reading →