Tuesday, September 30, 2025

“War Is Peace”

What a martinet.
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What Does This Mean?

Trump has the lowest approval numbers of any President in history. One year from now, the voters can put in a Congress that can rein him in, if not remove him from office. In the meantime…what? Pitchforks? Torches? Tar and feathers? What’s the plan?

How is Trump blithering idiocy entirely on an electorate who saw one guy promising to lower prices, and a black woman who started her campaign because George Clooney gave the political press permission to call Biden old and unfit? (Which more obviously applied to Trump, then and now). And they saw Kamala Harris as Biden’s economy continued, which wasn’t working for them. (Nor us Trump’s, now).This is not a Parliamentary system. Trump can’t be removed on a vote of no confidence. There really is no method to remove him before the next Presidential election. So, what, the entire country has to march five times around the White House chanting an incantation to remove the occupant? Is that our extra-constitutional recourse?

All to prove we are not as innumerate as Trump?

Get over yourself.

Trump could babble like an idiot (I mean, really babble, as I’ve seen people do. True gibberish, not just “word salad.”), and the most that could be done is the temporary appointment of the VP (whoopee!), until Trump told the Congress he was fit again. If Vance were to challenge, the issue would be resolved by Congress. The Congress already scared of Trump’s shadow. What’s that gonna do for the country’s innumeracy?

Sometimes I think everyone in the country is a child but thee and me. And then I remember it’s me; so our only hope is thee.
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Just Want To Point Out…

(As I said before) If he’d started walking the first time he said that, he’d be there by now. He’s been talking like this since he sent Marines to stand around the federal building in El “A.”  

He still hasn’t done that again in another city. In D.C., the Guard was raking leaves. It was ICE/federal law enforcement doing all the heavy lifting of harassing people. If that’s what he’s talking about, he doesn’t need the military.
Talk is cheap. And Posse Comitatus has (so far) not been repealed/overridden.

I still think Trump is a flaming Nazi gasbag, but that’s all he is.
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🎶 “Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I Love Ya, Tomorrow!”🎶

Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins: "President Trump has been the most pro-farmer president perhaps in history, but this moment of uncertainty in the farm economy is real. There are many reasons for that. Obviously, the ongoing trade discussions with China and others ... it is going to be gangbusters, but right now the farm economy is not in a good place."
Next year! Or in two years! Whenever it’s finally Trump’s economy! Whenever it’s in a good place!
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The Cheese Stands Alone.


 

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“They'd Be Democrat Things”

I’m pretty sure he means they will be Democrats by virtue of being laid off. Trump doesn’t think in terms of any strategy except to strike at his enemies. So any one laid off is a Democrat, in his eyes. 

Besides, Vought made it plain they were going to lay off people anyway. This is their way of trying to blame the Democrats for the shutdown.
Still, Trump went on to claim the United States couldn't pay for healthcare for undocumented people, which is not among the requests from Democrats, who have asked that the Medicare cuts be restored. They also want to see that subsidies given to people for healthcare through the Affordable Care Act are also renewed. The healthcare expenses will be passed on to taxpayers starting Wednesday.

Trump then rambled that Democrats lost an election because they want everyone to be transgender.
The man has a nest of spiders between his ears. Stop giving his utterances any deeper meaning. I rest my case.
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Gather The Generals, This Is Important!


 No, he really said that:
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Some People Just Can’t Read The Room

They’re all thinking they traveled 9000 miles at massive expense to listen to Trump’s regular speech to MAGA. Or the UN. Or a group of Boy Scouts. Yeah, even the “tariff shelf.” All of his latest, greatest hits. As far back as that one, too. If he’d started walking the first time he said that, he’d be there by now.
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Holee Shit!💩

 


The beginning of a 161 page ruling which finds that:

“This Court finds as fact and concludes as matter of law that Secretaries Noem and Rubio and their several agents and subordinates acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target non-citizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech," he wrote.
The court didn’t leave it at that.
"They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right."

"Moreover, the effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day," he added.

The judge addressed the "Trump brand" by quoting his wife.

“He seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead,” Young quoted.

Agreeing with the sentiment, Young noted that the president often ignored "the Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies -- all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act."

"Behold President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech -– law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the President, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism," Young added. "Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with 'retribution.'"

"It is at this juncture that the judiciary has robustly rebuffed the President and his administration."
More than Congress has done, anyway.
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Monday, September 29, 2025

Video Killed The Radio Star

And just to underline the Senator’s genius:
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Like A Slow Motion Concussion 🤕

Where is George Clooney when you need him?
Trump: "The United Nations was interesting because as you know, a few days ago they introduced me, 'ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.' I'm looking at my teleprompter and that thing was dead, stone cold dead ... I actually got good marks. Do you think Biden could've done that? I don't think so."
Followed by aspirin for your headache:🤕 
Pritzker: "In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists and protesters when unprovoked, what would we call it? If federal agents marched down busy streets harassing civilians and demanding their papers, what would we say? I don't think we'd have trouble calling it what it is: authoritarianism."
Pritzker: "People of Illinois, we need your help. Get our your cell phones, record and narrate what you see. Put it on social media. Peacefully ask for badge numbers and identification. Speak up for your neighbors. We need to let the world know that this is happening and that we won't stand for it."
And we end with a humorous anecdote. Dates are matters of opinion.
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Win-Win!

 


If you stop arresting people for drug offenses, the number of offenses goes down!

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I Guess He Changed His Mind Again

Fact check: True. Today, however:
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Is The Comey Indictment Even Valid?

Eric Siebert was elevated to interim US Attorney for EDVA on January 25, 2025, under section 546 of Title 28:
Except as provided in subsection (b), the Attorney General may appoint a United States attorney for the district in which the office of United States attorney is vacant.
Let the reader understand that what the statute says, and what the court’s say the statute says, are sometimes two different things. Because 546 goes on to say:
(c) A person appointed as United States attorney under this section may serve until the earlier of--

(1) the qualification of a United States attorney for such district appointed by the President under section 541 of this title; or

(2) the expiration of 120 days after appointment by the Attorney General under this section.
The interim can continue to serve after 120 days if the relevant district court appoints him/her to do so. That’s how Siebert was still serving when he quit/Trump fired him.

There is case law that says the appointment power of 546 is per position, not person, because otherwise the AG could avoid 541 (requiring Senate confirmation) and constantly re-appoint someone every four months for up to 8 years (or longer. GHWB carried on, in many ways, from Reagan).

The notable case law here is the matter of Alina Habba. Indictments were issued under her authority after her 120 days had expired. The courts did not affirm her, nor did the Senate. So as if the 121st day, she had no authority in that office; and the authority of the US Attorney is the authority that office wields. No US attorney, no authority.

Lindsey Halligan was appointed under 546(a). She replaced Siebert, who was also appointed under 546(a). If the case law is sound, Halligan was improperly appointed and without authority ab initio. So, the Comey indictment is invalid.
d) If an appointment expires under subsection (c)(2), the district court for such district may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled. The order of appointment by the court shall be filed with the clerk of the court.
Siebert’s appointment expired, and he was appointed by the court to serve until the vacancy was filled. He was awaiting Senate approval when he resigned. Under the case law, it would appear Trump screwed himself, and now has no choice but to allow the district court to appoint an interim, while he makes an appointment under 541. Challenging the indictment on those grounds could be a contentious issue, though, and Comey may prefer to fight this case directly, winning the benefit of double jeopardy.

Comey could challenge the indictment and force a new USA in EDVA to present charges to a new grand jury. The odds are that a court-appointed interim won’t do that*, and it would take quite a while to get someone through the Senate. The two Senators from Virginia are Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. They could block any appointment as easily as the New Jersey Democratic Senators blocked Habba. So down that path lies a very long delay in prosecution, although it might mean a long time in appeals. That’s also a delay, but it can be an expensive one.

Comey’s other options are to seek dismissal of the indictment as insufficient and groundless (basically; these are not legal terms of art), or let the government present its case, and move for a directed verdict.  The last option would invoke double jeopardy, and end the matter, at some expense to Comey. Jury trials are expensive. The other two options would allow the government to try again.

Which ever way it goes, I think it’s safe to say this case is going nowhere.


*What’s the value of presenting an invalid criminal case to the judge who appointed you?
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Idiocracy


That worked so well for him he deleted it later that same day.
 

 

Because he’s never been able to do that before (well, before the Sinister Six let him shutdown the DOE). And because that worked so well for him when Elmo and DOGE did it. And shutdowns have always been such effective political tools for the GOP.

I honestly think the GOP is getting stupider every year.
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Sunday, September 28, 2025

The People The GOP Are Afraid Of

🙀
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Changing The Facts May Change The Outcome

 I got this from Schooley:

“Am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening?”
Turns out it was a real thing.
During a Sunday morning phone interview with NBC White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, though, Trump made some remarks that seemed to indicate he might be backing off his military plan for Portland. Trump referenced a weekend conversation with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, and he alluded to being told by Kotek that the reality in Portland is different from what's being portrayed to him.

"I spoke to the governor, she was very nice," Trump said. "But I said, 'Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening? My people tell me different.' They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place...it looks like terrible."
Trump is stuck on the events in Portland from his first Administration. Which, if not a sign of dementia, is certainly a sign of obsession.
Kotek said she told Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Saturday morning that troops are not needed, and she believes Trump does not have the authority to deploy the military to Portland.

"We can manage our own local public safety needs," Kotek said. "There is no insurrection, there is no threat to national security."

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said the 'necessary' number of troops needed that Trump referred to in his social media post is "zero."
It could also be Trump is watching the wrong news station:
Sept. 4: Fox News airs a report about the Labor Day protest with footage of 2025 protests outside ICE. Mixed in misleadingly are clips from 2020 protests. One shows a federal officer pepper spraying a person in downtown Portland. Another shows protesters burning the base of the Thompson Elk Fountain.
As we will see, protesters have been arrested, starting in June and continuing until the present; but there hasn’t been the violence seen there in 2020.

Trump has backed down from "military" to National Guard. If past is prologue, the soldiers will be raking leaves and picking up trash.

Portland and the state of Oregon have filed suit against the deployment. Unless there has been damage to federal buildings, I’m not sure protesting an ICE facility constitutes grounds to deploy the NG by POTUS. 

Oregon is in the 9th Circuit, along with California. In the Los Angeles challenge, a panel of the 9th Circuit upheld an injunction against California based, in part, on:
Defendants presented evidence of protesters’ interference with the ability of federal officers to execute the laws, including evidence that protesters threw objects at Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles, “pinned down”several Federal Protective Service officers defending federal property by throwing “concrete chunks, bottles of liquid, and other objects,” and used “large rolling commercial dumpsters as a battering ram” in an attempt to breach the parking garage of a federal building. Plaintiffs’ own submissions stated that some protesters threw objects, including Molotov cocktails, and vandalized property. According to the declarations submitted by defendants, these activities significantly impeded the ability of federal officers to execute the laws. Under a highly deferential standard of review, defendants presented facts that permitted the panel to conclude that the President had a colorable basis for invoking § 12406(3).
There have been protests and arrests in Portland, but where the protesters in LA burned cars and blocked ICE vehicles, in Portland the people who blocked one ICE vehicle, were quickly arrested.
July 4: A large protest outside the ICE facility leads to four more arrests on federal charges, bringing the number of people federal authorities have arrested to 22. Portland police monitor the protest from an airplane and bike officers remind protesters they can’t set off fireworks but don’t make any arrests as federal officers and protesters clash.

July 8: Trump’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan name-checks Portland, pledging that immigration agents would be “doubling down, tripling down” on enforcement. “I’m going to Portland,” Homan said. “I’m going out there. They are not going to bully us.”

July 11: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says anarchists and antifa-affiliated groups in Portland were publishing names, photos and personal addresses of ICE officers.

July 19: Around 60 people gathered at the ICE building and several called 911 dispatchers about an altercation with a counterprotester armed with a pepperball gun, according to 911 call records. The crowd dwindled to about 30 by around midnight. “The groups were low energy and seated quietly,” a police sergeant wrote in an email to his superiors, records show.

July 25: The first hearing begins in Multnomah County Circuit Court for a lawsuit seeking to force the city to enforce noise ordinances around the ICE building. Assistant Chief Craig Dobson testifies that federal officers are “actually instigating and causing some of the ruckus that’s occurring down there.”

Aug. 14: Multnomah County Senior Judge Ellen Rosenblum, a former Oregon attorney general, rules police aren’t required to enforce noise rules at protests outside the ICE facility.

Aug. 20: Homan visits Portland’s ICE facility. In a message posted to social media platform X, Homan says he visited to let agents “know that President Trump and I have their six” — a reference to having someone’s back.

Aug 21: A protester who was shoved from behind and tackled by federal authorities notifies the Department of Homeland Security he plans to sue, according to a copy of his tort claim notice. The protester, Daryn Herzberg, claimed that federal officers pinned him down during a protest Aug. 13 and “held him in teargas” for several minutes. Officers tackled him again three days later, he claimed, with one of them repeatedly hitting Herzberg’s face into the ground.

Aug. 26: Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer tells Trump, “I hope you will come to Portland, Oregon and crack down.”

Sept. 1: Following a large protest downtown, over 100 people march from a nearby park to the ICE building. Some protesters bring a makeshift guillotine. Federal officers deploy chemical gas and pepperballs at the crowd.
Whether these facts amount to “significantly impeding the ability of federal officers to execute the laws” may yield a different outcome without the violence reported in California. Change the facts, change the outcome, and this is not the record in California. Here, federal officers have made arrests, and controlled crowds, and executed federal law for three months, much longer than the protests lasted in LA.

But what an appellate court panel sees, depends on that panel.
I know for a fact, from talking to cities across Oregon and across the country, that if you pick up the phone and ask, “What do you need? What could be helpful?” the answer would not be the United States military.
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🌟

Is there such a thing as “low quality 24 karat gold”?

Asking for a friend who hasn’t been able to afford gold for decades. And who understands the price of gold has gone up as the world economy is affected by tariffs. That American consumers are paying.
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“Tin Soldiers And Nixon Comin’ …”

Steve Schmidt is upset:
Donald Trump seems to be agitating for an American Tiananmen Square in Portland, Oregon, where American troops open fire on American civilians with the weapons purchased by American taxpayers to defend the nation from threats to our liberty.

Heil Trump!

Trump has menaced Portland by “authorizing Full Force” with the “if necessary” caveat venomously spit as an afterthought.

Illegal orders are coming to America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from their debauched, debased, corrupt, un-American and psychologically-addled civilian chain of command. The orders will be passed down, and someone, somewhere will be expected to pull the trigger — under false pretenses — against make-believe enemies who, like the soldiers who will kill them, are America’s sons and daughters.

...

There are two words that will break America: open fire.

This is coming.

Those words will be studied for all the rest of American history. Every detail of every person’s involvement who passed them forward and down the chain of command will be known — from Trump to Hegseth and on down, all the way to the men who light up an American city on orders from their superiors to kill their fellow citizens.

It has taken a long time to get here, but here we are.

There were many exits on the long road.

None were taken.

God help America.
If those two words were spoken on the campus of Kent State on May 4. 1970, nobody heard them. But they must have been said, because shots rang out and students, “America’s sons and daughters,” died. Who is studying the Kent State shootings for the rest of American history? Who recalls it to mind 55 years later? Remembers it? Cares? Given Schmidt’s history, I’m sure had he been an adult in 1970 involved in politics, he wouldn’t have batted an eye. Although none of the students killed were involved in the protest (which was mildly disruptive, but hardly violent. The students killed just happened to be between the Guard and the protesters.), the Guard soldiers were exonerated at trial. And everybody was fine with that. Everybody who mattered. The complaints of “America’s sons and daughters” were ignored.

Trump is an obscenity, a cancer on the body politic which, I hope, is also the cure as the nation renounces him and all his works. But please quit telling me this is the worst of times and America has never seen anything like it and it’s the end of the Republic if we don’t listen to the words of these brave prophets.

Because I know enough (and it ain’t that much) about American history to know Trump is just another speed bump in the road, and that the country hasn’t really fallen that far, because it never stood as tall as the myths we tell ourselves in the first place. Hell, his threat to the people of Portland is not even an unprecedented act. Mayor Daley unleashed his police thugs on the Yippies in Chicago in ‘68, middle class kids who were, again, “America’s sons and daughters.” Funny, they aren’t remembered that way.

Yes, these are perilous times, but when are they not? The history of America, from Columbus to today, is one of brutalizing people for the benefit of others. Trump unleashing violence in Portland is just another footnote in that history book.

“History, to the defeated, may say ‘Alas,’ but cannot help or pardon.” So please stop trying to put history on your side; it just underlines that you feel powerless. You aren’t. Trump is.

In the words of Sinead O’Connor: “Fight the real power.”
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📺

I’d have paid good money to see Tapper ask Johnson about “medbeds."
MIKE JOHNSON: A grand jury voted to indict Comey. That's how our system works.

TRUMP: This looks like it was directed by the president
TAPPER: They were sent there to do crowd control. It wasn't a false flag operation
Although maybe Tapper’s saving the “madness” for his next book. In four years. 
WELKER: Do you support mass firings of federal employees if the govt shuts down?

THUNE: It doesn't have to happen

W: But would you support it?

THUNE: They're playing with fire and they know it

W: But do you support this threat by the president?

T: If you're worried about that, then let's keep the govt open
Points for trying, I guess.
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Order In The Court

 Stare decisis is not meant to be the dead hand of history weighing down the present and preventing the future from changing with circumstances.

Speaking Thursday at the Catholic University Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., Thomas argued that the Supreme Court should rethink the way law is interpreted as it relates to stare decisis, the legal doctrine that suggests courts should follow legal precedent, or prior decisions – when making rulings on similar legal matters.

"At some point we need to think about what we're doing with stare decisis," Thomas said, according to a Saturday report from ABC News. "And it's not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say 'stare decisis' and not think, turn off the brain, right?"

The Supreme Court is poised to reconvene at the beginning of October for its next term next, and may have several cases reach its desk that challenge longstanding legal precedents.
And this is the analysis of an ignorant child.
The Court is considering reviewing a lower court’s decision related to Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 ruling that permitted same-sex marriages. It’s also set to revisit a case challenging the 90-year precedent that restricts the power of the president to indiscriminately terminate federal agency staff, as well as a case that established rules around ethnicity as it relates to redistricting.

"We never go to the front [to] see who's driving the train, where it [is] going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it's an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it's a train," Thomas said.

"I don't think that I have the gospel, that any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel, and I do give perspective to the precedent. But it should; the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country, and our laws, and be based on something, not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with."
Did no one go to the “front of the train” in Kim Wong Ark? Brown v Board? Loving v Virginia (a case that particularly benefits Justice Thomas)? You get the idea.

How about the cases that used the 14th amendment to apply the “Bill of Rights” to the states, including the vaunted 2nd amendment?

This is the legal analysis of an ignorant child.

Stare decisis  creates stability, not inevitability. It is meant to be a guiding hand, not a dead one. It is meant to prevent precisely this: a Supreme Court that is large and in charge and will do just as it pleases because it won’t follow the train being driven by an orangutan. (Which is a pitiful analogy, since trains run on tracks, and what Thomas means is something more chaotic, like a bus careening down the highway. Also, I really think he needs to stay away from metaphors involving primates.) Thomas’s proposed way leads to chaos for the nation as a whole, and to the tail wagging the dog.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
Prepared Remarks for the Judicial Conference
September 16, 2025

Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts, for the invitation.

Forgive my directness here but the times are serious, as you know, our time is short. I have just five minutes and don’t want to trespass on Senator Cruz’s time.

Sometimes these days I feel as if all the foundational principles are being trampled and lost.

Often, I hear my colleagues in the House, and these are fellow Democrats, get up to protest some Executive usurpation of legislative power and they begin their lament with the plaintive cry, “We are a coequal branch of government. . .”

And I always feel they have lost the argument right there just by repeating that fifth-grade dogma.

First of all, co-equal is not even a word. It’s an embarrassing redundancy like “very unique” or “irregardless.”

But there’s a reason all legislative power is vested in the Congress and there’s a reason it’s in Article I. The Founders had a revolution against monarchy and its constant assaults on liberty. In America, the Framers determined, only the representatives of the people would have power to declare wars, pass budgets, impose taxes and tariffs, and so on. Article I is pages and pages of all the powers vested in Congress. Then you get to Article II, which is tiny. The key paragraph says a president shall be removed from office upon impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. If we are co-equal, why do we have the power to impeach, try, convict, remove and permanently disqualify the president and he doesn’t have the power to impeach, try, convict, remove and disqualify us?

The core job of the president is plain: “To Take care that the laws are faithfully executed.”

That’s it. Not abused, not thwarted, not impounded, not redirected, but faithfully executed.

A lot of the cases entering the federal courts are variations on this theme.

Here’s the remarkable thing: Americans have brought over 300 cases in federal district courts against the Administration so far for usurping legislative powers, defying federal laws, or violating the rights of the people. This summer, researchers found that plaintiffs were winning an astonishing 77% of the cases in the district courts. Moreover, they found that President Trump was losing about equally before Republican-appointed judges (72%) and Democratic-appointed judges (80%).

The numbers in the federal circuit courts of appeal are similar, with plaintiffs against the Administration winning overwhelmingly and again without a sharp partisan valence to the appeals courts’ voting. A good example is the birthright citizenship case where four district court judges, two appointed by Republican presidents and two appointed by Democratic presidents, all struck down the President’s purported negation of birthright citizenship. Then, on appeal, three circuit courts again all ruled against the Administration.

But everything is flipped when the cases come to the Supreme Court.

Over the past nine months, the Administration has introduced a long list of emergency applications, each asking the Justices to examine essential questions about executive branch powers. While there are many troubling trends in appellate litigation today, the Supreme Court’s frequent use of the so-called “Shadow Docket” to resolve these questions provokes the most concern and alarm in our Members.

Although there are undoubtedly some emergencies best handled on the Shadow Docket, the practice of regularly handing down significant decisions without the benefit of a full briefing, equal-time oral arguments, or serious judicial debate and deliberation is deeply corrosive to essential rule-of-law principles. The practice is opaque rather than transparent, inscrutable rather than accessible and cryptic rather than clearly directive. It gives the public no real guidance, leaving pundits, professors and podcasters to divine its meaning for a befuddled public.

The cumulative results of these emergency orders are giving the public heartache. Over the past nine months, the Supreme Court has decided 21 emergency applications filed by the Trump Administration. It has sided with the administration more than 90% of the time. With no written opinions to accompany these orders, the people wonder why hundreds of judges below are overwhelmingly deciding for Congress or the people but when the cases go to the Supreme Court, the Justices are overwhelmingly using the Shadow Docket to decide in favor of President Trump.

What accounts for the dramatic difference between the lower courts, where the President is losing in the overwhelming majority of cases, and the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket, where the President is winning virtually every time? Well, because the Court refuses to explain itself, we simply have no idea.
Which orangutan is driving which train?
The cognitive dissonance we experience is corrosive not only of our faith in the rule of law but our confidence in the survivability of our political institutions which depend on constitutional fidelity.

Reliance on the Shadow Docket undermines the ability of the other levels of the federal judiciary to follow precedent and correctly apply the Court’s meaning. It also undermines Congressional power to legislate within the bounds of the Constitution.

In 2021, Justice Alito chastised Congress for raising that question. He told us that “[t]he suggestion that these emergency rulings definitively decide important issues is false.” He derided the idea that emergency relief orders make precedent on the underlying substantive issue.

Four years later, the Court has rapidly been reversing this position. In Trump v. Boyle, the Court cited directly to its earlier Shadow Docket decision in Trump v. Wilcox suggesting that “[a]lthough our interim orders are not conclusive as to the merits, they inform how a court should exercise its equitable discretion in like cases.”

And just a few weeks ago, Justice Gorsuch, crossed the Rubicon, admonishing a lower court judge in National Institutes of Heath v. American Public Health Assn., and writing, “[l]ower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.” He went on to say that “this Court often addresses requests for interim relief…And either way, when this Court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.”

The confusion here is evident. Orders emerging from the Shadow Docket cannot be entirely non-precedential, as Justice Alito told us, casually informative, as Chief Justice Roberts suggested, and binding precedent, as Justice Gorsuch commands. Simply put, the Court has got to pick a lane. If emergency orders are non-binding, the Court should say so. If they are precedent, then the Court should tell us that—but they should understand that the lower courts will be left to guess where the Supreme Court will land when it finally hears a case in full.

And, while the Court is silent on these matters—except to rebuke federal judges who are doing their best to interpret its orders under wildly inconsistent instructions—we should all understand the stakes. We know that threats to the security of federal judges and their families and their staff are at an all-time high. Every judge who considers a case involving the Trump Administration must be concerned, not only for the parties in his or her courtroom, but for his or her own personal safety. I hope Justice Gorsuch will consider the dangers we face before he next admonishes judges for not following the law.

Fortunately, it is within the power of the judicial branch to right the ship. Let’s get back to first principles.

The hallmark of Supreme Court decision-making requires gathering the facts, carefully interpreting the law, and producing a reasoned public opinion that lower courts can rely upon when considering future legal disputes. The lower may need to move quickly—but the Supreme Court, as the final arbiter, almost always has the benefit of time to reach reasoned opinions.

As Justice Jackson wrote in Brown v. Allen, “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.”

I thank you all for your time today.
My only comment is that Art. III is even briefer than Art. II; and it only establishes a court with the title “Supreme Court,” and generally leaves the rest to Congress. Even the appointment of judges is subject to Senatorial approval. Congress can remove federal judges; federal judges cannot remove members of Congress. “Co equal” is an idiotic fig leaf for an unconstitutional usurpation of power.

That orangutan metaphor is getting very strained. The analogy to a train is looking downright ridiculous.
That’s the reality that should now be obvious to a not particularly observant child. “Popular government,” meaning one of, by, and for the people, rests on the approval of we, the people. And we need to demand both a government responsive to us, not to one political theory or person, and, at a minimum, some constitutional amendments to repeal presidential immunity, and make clear Art. II does NOT allow for a “unitary executive.” As well as to clarify that Justices on the Supreme Court are federal judges first, and are subject to all the rules those judges work under.

Rep. Raskin politely says the Court has the power to “right the ship” they are making list to port. But if the Court won’t do it, we, the people, have to.




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Saturday, September 27, 2025

TACO 🌮

Same energy. (Carr would have to go after affiliate stations individually, in court, to even begin to cancel broadcast licenses. It would be a bootless enterprise.)
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Another Quiet Weekend

 







Well, it’s quiet there.
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While In Chicago, 🦗🦗🦗

In Chicago, protesters shut down an ICE detention center, because ICE just moved it. Trump said over and over again he was going to Chicago, but… ?

Why do I think it’s because Spokane is “remote,” at least to media centric Trump?

And will Spokane sue for the violation of Posse Comitatus? I’m sure Trump will say it’s a “national security” issue. That’s his new talisman.
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Dream Of A Radical Right Nation

 Hmmmm…

Consumers have voted with their dollars by cancelling their Hulu and Disney+ subscriptions in droves.

They’re also boycotting Nexstar and Sinclair by hitting them where it hurts: their ad dollars. On Reddit, consumers are keeping track of the companies that are advertising with their affiliates, and telling them that they will no longer do business there.

Those efforts are already having an impact on some companies.

The performing arts nonprofit Seattle Theatre Group has postponed future advertising with the Sinclair-owned station KOMO, which is based in Washington, although it currently does not have any ads running on the station.

“In response to both ABC and Sinclair's actions to limit free speech, which we do not agree with, we paused all future campaigns that we have scheduled with KOMO,” an STG spokesperson told Marketplace over email.

The STG spokesperson said that the organization “received many emails and notes from patrons and concerned individuals” from the greater Puget Sound region in Washington.

“Our decision to pause our future ads is both in response to that outreach and our own concerns with ABC and Sinclair,” the spokesperson said.

Another Washington-based company, Best Plumbing, issued a statement on its website in support of free speech after consumers began writing letters to them.

“Freedom of expression isn’t left or right. It’s not a partisan issue. People across the spectrum agree that silencing voices sets a dangerous precedent for all of us,” the statement said.

The company also wrote, “We will review pending contracts and upcoming campaigns to ensure our advertising continues to align with both our business goals and the values of transparency and fairness our customers expect.”

Marketplace reached out to Nexstar and Sinclair for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

Broadcasters face increasing competition from streaming services, and this decision isn’t helping.

“We are in an era of cord-cutting, where consumers are already turning away from local television. Broadcast stations simply don’t have the same captive audiences they once did. For affiliates, that makes reputational missteps riskier — they can’t afford to give viewers or advertisers another reason to disengage when both groups are already drifting away,” said Stacy Jones, CEO of the marketing agency Hollywood Branded.

Media buyers, or the ones who buy ad space, take note when consumer boycotts target advertisers.

“Media buyers flag the stations, track coverage, and weigh whether a controversy could stick. Even if dollars don’t pull right away, you’ll see brands get cautious with renewals or shift toward safer placements,” Jones said.
I’m sure the more immediate threats of preemption fees weighed on the decision makers at Nexstar and Sinclair. But these are the actions of private companies reacting to what they see as threats to free speech. This is not a small thing, even if it did not weigh as heavily in the balance.

This is the “grassroots” speaking up for conventional values in a very unconventional case. People with access to the media, both in government and in business, tried to make the murder of Charlie Kirk a turning point issue. But this was not the death of George Floyd, or Medgar Evers. Some wanted to use it for fundamental change; but the majority didn’t. That majority pressured Disney; but they also reacted directly against the actions of the people who cancelled a TV show basically to show they could. Nexstar and Sinclair tried to flex their power. People with the real power, people at the grassroots level, flexed back. And they won.

Did those complaints and challenges affect Nexstar and Sinclair’s actions, too? Does it matter? The fact that other companies with business relationships to the two affiliate owners responded and defended the popular concept of free speech is what matters. 

It’s not just Trump’s popularity and approval that’s melting away. His entire agenda is toxic, turning septic.

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Friday, September 26, 2025

🤡🚕

Ryan Goodman has the receipts, too.
With ABC News reporting Count 1 in Comey Indictment is about Comey allegedly authorizing Daniel Richman (not McCabe) to be anonymous source to media.

A problem for DOJ is Comey can claim Senator Cruz's poorly worded question conflated it with McCabe, so he thought was answering about McCabe.

2/2 Based on the FBI Arctic Haze Investigation, will be important to see if DOJ has specific evidence that Comey authorized Richman to be anonymous source.

And how they deal with this: "Richman claimed Comey never asked him to talk to the media."
Politico points out several reasons why the case against Comey will probably fall apart. It’s not a legal analysis, but it’s interesting.

The first reason is a defense of vindictive prose:
In the days leading up to the indictment — with the statute of limitations looming — Trump engineered the ouster of the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who is believed to have recommended against charging Comey. Trump then pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to install Halligan — Trump’s own former personal lawyer — in the job. And crucially, the president explicitly linked the moves to his desire to see Comey, and other adversaries, face criminal charges.
Then there’s the problem of the statute of limitations. The charge of perjury rests on testimony Comey gave in 2020, regarding his testimony in 2017. The statute of limitations allows five years to prosecute perjury to Congress; so the prosecutors have to use the 2020 testimony for this case. That’s the problem, though:
During the hearing in question, in a response to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Comey stated: “I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.” That was a reference to an earlier hearing, in which Comey told Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that he had not authorized anyone at the FBI to speak anonymously to the press about the Trump-Russia investigation or about a separate investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email for State Department business.

Some Trump supporters have argued that Comey lied when he said he stood by the earlier testimony, because they believe Comey did authorize his deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe, to leak information about the Clinton probe to the Wall Street Journal. Comey and McCabe have provided differing accounts of a conversation the two men had on the day after the Journal published a story on the probe, although there’s no indication McCabe has ever claimed he got advance permission from Comey for any leak.

Complicating the matter, Cruz’s question to Comey during the 2020 hearing was ambiguous: Cruz apparently misquoted Grassley and asked Comey about “the Clinton administration.” Cruz seems to have meant to refer to an FBI probe into the Clinton Foundation. And at the 2017 hearing, Grassley was focused on the higher-profile investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Now, the indictment is spare to the point of obtuse. Comey, it alleges, committed perjury in testifying to Congress, but what he said, and why it is perjury, goes unexplained and unfounded. This is where “Richman” comes in.
There were also reports Friday that the disclosure prosecutors contend Comey falsely denied didn’t come from McCabe at all, but from a longtime friend of Comey, Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman. However, Cruz’s question to Comey was about an authorization to “someone else at the FBI.” Richman was an official adviser to Comey for the FBI, but whether a full-time law professor could be considered to be “at the FBI” is open to debate.

Years before the Cruz questioning, Comey acknowledged that after he was fired by Trump he released some memos about his dealings with Trump to the press through Richman. But it seems implausible that leak is what the false-statement charge is about because Comey made that acknowledgment at a nationally televised Senate hearing in 2017.
Again, it’s gotta be 2020, because 2017 is too long ago. But there’s grasping at straws, and then there’s “Richman."
Prosecutors can face professional sanctions — including disbarment — for bringing a case without a valid basis. A trio of former White House ethics lawyers who have been persistent Trump critics pressed the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on Friday to investigate Halligan’s unexpected appointment on the eve of the Comey indictment.
I think “sanctions” here would mean Halligan losing her license in federal district court. Pretty rough for a USA who can’t sign pleadings in that district.

Basically, this is an uphill fight with a prosecutor who doesn’t know how to prosecute, in an office where none of the lawyers would sign off on this indictment (and so appear in court for the case), based on an indictment so lacking in evidence as to rest in nine, and a case desperately cobbled together to avoid the statute of limitations; but which also cuts out any real chance of a conviction (if there ever was one)..
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💩

The mind reels with sarcastic replies.

And then realizes that would only elevate this to the level of deserving a response.

It doesn’t deserve being noticed. I do hope he gets Halligan to make that argument to the jury, though. 😈
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Same As It Ever Was

 It was movies. And then it was radio. And then it was TV. Greetings from the TV Grneration. 👋 Then it was the internet. Now…

It’s almost amusing to see somebody “discover” something that’s been true for generations, and decide it’s just leapt full grown from the brow of Zeus. Although, as the Great Silkie of Schulz Skerry tells the mother of his child, this new creation is not comely.

You don’t even have to know anything about the last 100 years in America. Teach freshman English for a semester. The first time I did (in graduate school), I assigned a Woody Allen essay about revolutions. The shortest essay in the textbook, and basically a page and a half of one-liners. They loathed it, because the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution meant nothing to them. Not. One. Thing. I assigned it because getting them to read (and learn from) the essays in the textbook was almost impossible.

Years later I was teaching freshman English again, and by contrast with my students 4 decades earlier, these almost uniformly didn’t read at all, and didn’t want to. Their knowledge of what I considered cultural touchstones (Romeo and Juliet, etc.) were all but unknown to them. And getting them to read? At all?

Well, frankly, it wasn’t that much worse than the mass of students in my high school. My friends read, as I did. But almost nobody else I knew, or knew of, did. Or if they did, they didn’t really want anyone to know it.

So forget blaming the phones, or technology in any form. Blame inertia. Blame disinterest. Understand that most people, like electricity, seek the path of least resistance. Compared to some of my oldest friends, I still do.

So it goes.
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Charlie Kirk Is Dead

And his martyrdom is over.
TL;dr?

ABC and Disney reminded Sinclair that they can charge Sinclair a preemption fee each time they don't run Kimmel, and can run Kimmel on a different station in that market, and if it's a long-term problem they can cancel affiliations

Super Bowl, ABC, 16 months from now
Follow the money.
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If You’re Taking Medical Advice From DJT

You’re probably already injecting bleach anyway,, I don’t know what to tell you.

The only hope here is that fewer people read TS than read Twitter.

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What The Comey Case Is For

So interesting to hear @LindseyGrahamSC frame the Comey case as being about the Trump Russia investigation, when actually it’s about whether Comey lied about authorizing someone to leak about another matter entirely. For MAGA, these charges are a way to punish Comey for alleged wrongdoing in the Russia investigation, despite the fact that he was cleared in that matter first by an inspector general and then by a Trump-appointed special counsel.
(And Graham is now officially beyond “useless as tits on a boar hog.”). (Graham resents Cruz getting all the attention.) (What the Comey case really is.) Popehat:
/2 In my view a vindictive prosecution motion would be the best vehicle because the lack of evidence could be a factor in the court’s assessment of whether the case is driven by animus.

If Andrew McCarthy and I agree your case sucks, it really sucks.
(Nailing down the coffin lid.⚰️)
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Inherit The Wind Between Trump’s Ears

A Senate with a sense of humor would approve her, just to watch that happen.
Consider this.

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is only interim USA in EDVA, which means she can only keep that job 120 days.

The Comey case won't go to trial in that time--the McIver case only JUST got thru her selective prosecution motion.

No one else wants anything to do with this prosecution.

So in 4 months, DOJ is going to have to find some way to keep Lindsey on OR find someone else to take her dogshit case (if a judge doesn't dismiss it first).
Comey could ask for a quick trial, but “quick” would still depend on the court’s docket. 

I do wonder what poor schmuck will take this turkey to trial. I’m pretty sure it won’t be Halligan. Reports are she gave the judge the indictments on two charges, and the true no bill on the third, which is the kind of mistake a lawyer who just passed the bar (and had no business being in court) might do.

She signed the indictment, but does she want to try the case? She’ll make Habba look like Clarence Darrow
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