[ Posted Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023 – 16:16 UTC ]
While it is certainly now going to be a one-subject week, I thought it'd be worth it to take a little pause between Trump's new federal criminal indictment and his impending arrest and arraignment tomorrow to take a look into an aspect of all of this that is (at least, for the moment) being overshadowed by Trump's new felony charges: what is happening at the state level. I will admit that I am partly doing this because I had at least three-quarters of yesterday's pre-indictment article already written, and it seems a shame to just toss it out. But now I have a larger point to make about six other states as well, which I'll get to at the end.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, August 1st, 2023 – 18:04 UTC ]
It has been one of those days as a political commentator where you have to chuck out what you've been working on and start all over again. While I had three-fourths of a column written about new election-interference indictments handed down in Michigan today, late in the day (East Coast time) Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal grand jury indicted Donald Trump on four felony counts, all having to do with Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election had somehow been stolen from him.
I just finished listening to Smith give his brief statement to the press and then sat down and read all 45 pages of the indictment -- which I urge everyone to take the time to do. I will doubtlessly have much more to say about it all in the coming days, but wanted to write down a few snap reactions and then indulge in a bit of speculation -- on a mystery that will likely be solved by the rest of the political journalistic world by the time the sun goes down (if they're worth their salt at all, that is): who are the six unindicted (as of yet) co-conspirators?
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 28th, 2023 – 18:22 UTC ]
As the ghost of Richard Nixon might have warned Donald Trump: "It's not the crime, it's the cover up." While the political world was all breathlessly awaiting a new Trump indictment over the failed January 6th insurrection attempt, the special counsel surprised everyone by superseding his first indictment instead -- the one dealing with Trump's refusal to return national security documents which were not his. And it was a bombshell.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, July 27th, 2023 – 15:15 UTC ]
Forget about term limits -- what American politicians need is a mandatory retirement age. Once they hit that age, they would no longer be eligible to be elected to any federal office. This is a radical proposal that would likely require a constitutional amendment, I fully admit, but I still feel the effort would be worth it.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 21st, 2023 – 17:49 UTC ]
We do try to resist the urge (we really do!), but this week it was impossible to focus on just about anything else in politics other than the tsunami of bad legal news for Donald Trump. Remember how Trump dominated each and every news cycle for over four years? Those days are back, sadly enough, and will likely continue (at some degree of intensity or another) for the foreseeable future. He is the quintessential car wreck towards which we all must dutifully rubberneck, so here we go....
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, July 20th, 2023 – 15:34 UTC ]
Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman poet Juvenal asked the question: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" which is usually translated into English as: "Who will watch the watchmen?" When you give a group of people supreme power over others, how do you keep that power in check? It seems a fitting title today, as the Senate Judiciary Committee just passed (on a party-line vote) a bill which would require the Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, July 18th, 2023 – 16:02 UTC ]
Donald Trump might need a bigger henhouse soon, as more and more of his legal chickens keep coming home to roost. After a very long two years of a whole lot of nothing happening (at least publicly), all of a sudden there is so much prosecutorial news it's hard to even keep track of it all. So I thought it'd be worth doing a rundown of all Trump's legal woes, as things stand right now (barring any further breaking news today).
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 7th, 2023 – 16:43 UTC ]
The nation celebrated its 247th birthday this year, leaving only three more to go until the second-biggest celebration of our lifetime (as we still personally remember the ushering in the bicentennial in Washington D.C.). But since it was a short week, what with Independence Day falling on a Tuesday, we are hoping this will be a short column (for once). Well, short-ish at any rate. We are cautiously optimistic.
Cautious optimism is a good place to start, actually. We stumbled across an interesting paper from two Democratic strategists (Celinda Lake and Mike Lux) which confidently states: "All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024," and predicts that the "trifecta" of winning the House back, holding the Senate and keeping Joe Biden in the White House is well within grasp.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, July 6th, 2023 – 16:03 UTC ]
Because it is a slow political news week (and for the salacious nature of it all), the mainstream media is currently digging into every aspect of the "Cocaine Found At White House" story. News articles are being written summarizing all possible past rumors or actual instances of drug use at the White House. My favorite came at the end of a Washington Post article on this theme, under the heading: "Rocker Grace Slick." But I found their rundown of what happened awfully sparse, so as a public service today I am going to run an extended excerpt from Grace Slick's autobiography Somebody To Love, of which (of course) I have my own copy (signed and personalized, even...).
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, June 30th, 2023 – 17:14 UTC ]
It is "Supreme Court Decision Week" in the world of politics, and while a few earlier SCOTUS decisions of this term turned out surprisingly liberal, the court saved its most radically-restrictive rulings for the very end. Three big rulings this week will have the effect of: (1) removing race from college admissions processes and all but killing affirmative action, (2) halting President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program before it starts, and (3) making it allowable -- as long as you cite religious reasons -- for businesses to discriminate against and refuse to serve gay people. This was a pretty grim end to the court's legal term, obviously.
Read Complete Article »
