Unfortunately, while the Founding Fathers did foresee the possibility of personalistic rule, they did not expect Congress to betray the Constitution and become the willing toadies of the wannabe dictator.
– Steve Metz
 
			
			
									
			
			
	Unfortunately, while the Founding Fathers did foresee the possibility of personalistic rule, they did not expect Congress to betray the Constitution and become the willing toadies of the wannabe dictator.
– Steve Metz
Overheard: When you smear lamb’s blood above your door so J.D. Vance doesn’t visit… Assover.
Someone should ask Hegseth why F/A-18s have started identifying as submarines under his watch. Is that “warrior culture”?
Update: Third F/A-18 in the drink! “Super Hornet” to be renamed “Lemming.” More seriously, three?!? WTF?
Steve Vladeck has a summary of DOJ corruption under Trump:
There isn’t enough electronic ink to fully summarize the background of the Eric Adams saga. To make a very long story short, the 110th Mayor of the City of New York was indicted last year by federal prosecutors on one count of conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals and commit wire fraud and bribery; two counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals; and one count of soliciting and accepting a bribe. In essence, the indictment claimed that Adams received more than $100,000 worth of free plane tickets and luxury hotel stays from wealthy Turkish nationals and at least one government official over the course of a decade.
Trump’s AG, Pam Bondi, and one of here deputies, Emil Bove, are attempting to stop the prosecution. It’s a straight up quid pro quo to enlist Adams’ assistance with deportations. Towards that end, they directed the lead prosecutors in the NY US Attorney’s office – Trump appointees themselves! – to drop it. Their direction was so egregiously unlawful that the prosecutors quit:
What’s striking about this is not just how transparent what’s actually happening is; it’s Bove’s candid admission, in today’s letter, that “the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General” take precedence over a Justice Department lawyer’s oath … to the Constitution. It would be one thing if Bove argued that the President’s (or Attorney General’s) interpretation of the Constitution takes precedence over that of an Interim U.S. Attorney. But that’s not even his argument. Rather, it’s that Sassoon (who, although it shouldn’t matter, is a Republican who clerked for Justice Scalia) had no business raising to the Attorney General her view of what the law required in a case in which it conflicts with the political preferences of the President—indeed, that it was “insubordinate” for her to do so.
My original post follows below the break but Vladeck’s write-up is much better.
1992: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
2024: “It’s the revanchism, stupid.”
(I think decent odds Harris wins, but still.)
In an earlier time, this would be Zuckerberg vs Musk…
The House is controlled by a bunch of sociopaths who want to burn everything to the ground. We’re going to run up against the debt ceiling again in 2023. As it approaches, they’re going to use the threat of default to try to extort all kinds BS. The best suggestion for neutralizing the threat I’ve heard so far: Mint the Coin. The headline nails it, “The debt ceiling is an absurd problem. Only an absurd solution can save us.”
From Melanie McFarland’s, “Reality bites, so of course Generation X was always going to sell out and vote Republican“:
Halstead prophetically added: “Today’s young adults will be remembered either as a late-blooming generation that ultimately helped to revive American democracy by coalescing around a bold new political program and bringing the rest of the nation along with them, or as another silent generation that stood by as our democracy and society suffered a slow decline.”
Yes, I’m feeling particularly frustrated with my generation. Moderate Burkean conservatives we are not.