Six reactionaries will make sure Trump is not disqualified from the 2024 election under the Fourteenth Amendment
Two legal scholars have made a robust case (http://deliverypdf.ssrn.com) for using Section 3 of the 14TH Amendment to disqualify Trump from the 2024 election: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, […]
Jack Goldsmith applies for a job by waffling on prosecuting Trump: An exchange
I recently struggled to understand this Jack Goldsmith piece about prosecuting Trump for January 6. The piece is exasperating in its fatuous logic and weak-kneed “analysis”. I asked a former law partner — a former prosecutor and experienced litigator — to check my math. My view Goldsmith sets the scene by referring to “the Biden […]
And the rest of the world watches: Part 2
Why do the countries with the means to compel a change in Israel’s course — a course Western leaders routinely describe as counter-productive to peace and even contrary to Israel’s long-term interest — limit their role to hand-wringing? Is their helplessness feigned or real? There are four elements that maintain the status quo, variously playing […]
The self-styled “civilized” world continues to watch, bemused: Part 1
If the demographic curve’s against you, resort to more direct means of righting the imbalance. Always ready to off Arabs, Netanyahu decided, to the cheers of his countrymen, that it was time for another round, this time through an assault on the refugee camp in Jenin (northern Israel), a squalid place since 1953. But for […]
Stefanik and Greene: Queens of fiction, not legislators
Two Republican stalwarts have introduced House resolutions to expunge the Trump impeachments. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s version deals with December 2019 (Impeachment 1), Elise Stefanik’s with January 2021 (Impeachment 2). Although mere expressions of sentiment, not legislation, in our hyper-ventilating age obsessed with feelings and much as non-Republican critics mock them as yet more exercises in […]
Trump didn’t “mishandle;” he stole.
Hyperventilation over Trump’s indictment gives us the latest example of how media pervert language. Almost universally, headlines refer to his being charged with “mishandling classified documents”. This mischaracterizes what he’s done, and it’s not clear why media — versus Trump voters and his acolytes in Congress — want to sugar-coat the offense. “Mishandle” means, Oops; […]
MTG: Even a pox on humanity can offer benefits.
Hard to imagine that someone who contributes less than zero to humanity has done something useful. But Marjorie Taylor Greene — enamored of the public attention that finally has come her way after nearly 50 years’ obscure existence in central Georgia — has done it. She has proposed to divorce red states from blue states. […]
The 11th Circuit panel missed the chance to highlight Trump’s obstruction of DOJ’s criminal investigation.
The Mar-a-Lago documents case has been briefed and argued; all we need now is a decision from the 11th Circuit to undo the nonsense generated by Judge Cannon so that DOJ can proceed with its prosecution of Trump for pilfering government documents, including highly classified ones. In the recent oral argument, the misleadingly named Trump lawyer, Trusty, […]
Even civic decay is Hillary’s fault?
Yet another both-sides-do-it claim: “MAGA faithful have taken election denial to the extreme, but both parties have nurtured the problem for decades.” Seriously? Democrats’ assertion — backed by facts in the Mueller Report — that Russia interfered in the 2016 to help Trump is characterized, bizarrely, as the equivalent of some 70 post-2020 lawsuits challenging […]
Trump: 7 Crimes and 73 Years
People who loathe Trump ask: Why hasn’t DOJ indicted Trump yet. Isn’t there a mountain of evidence proving guilt? The absence of an indictment is seen as Garlandian cowardice, typical liberal squishiness and the misplaced impulse not to offend Republicans. (Newsflash to Garland critics: He probably knows that you can’t offend something that, by definition, […]
Cannon fires another judicial salute in gratitude to Trump.
To recap: On August 8, 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant and lawfully removed from Trump’s possession stuff that doesn’t belong to him. He ran to Judge Cannon, an appointee of his, and got her to appoint a Special Master to scour that stuff for things that the FBI shouldn’t see/have or should return […]
Unrecognizable Russia
(By MH, guest contributor) We Russophiles, we lucky few who have experienced Russia in depth, over the years, repeatedly, without the language as a barrier, know how wonderful it can be, with, on a personal level, unequalled hospitality, and with, on a cultural level, unrivalled refinement and professionalism. I dare say for us, but certainly […]
Judges, too, have career aspirations.
DOJ has rightly appealed Trumper Judge Cannon’s incoherent Order in favor of Trump in his manufactured dispute over government-owned [sic] documents the FBI retrieved from his home. In normal (read, non-Trump-related) circumstances, the qualification of Cannon as a “Trumper” judge would be inappropriate and (probably) unjust. But her decision, including its hints of the resentment […]
Why is ignorance preferred?
The United States of Ignorance continues to thrive. The volume of sludge produced and consumed by the minute may have something to do with that. It’s the downside to the First Amendment which, for more than 200 years, has remained mute on what would be a most useful precondition: thine opinion on important public matters […]
Corrupt or Dim? You choose.
Give Judge Cannon credit for boldness in so transparently lending Trump, bestower of her sinecure, a hand with his most recent legal troubles related to pilfering government documents. Of course, that credit may be undue, a mistaken assumption of cleverness that doesn’t really exist. The casual observer faces the usual struggle: is he witness to […]