Brandon will pardon Hunter – after the election

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Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.

— President Joe Biden

In the most open-and-shut case since Al Capone was found guilty of failing to pay taxes on his gangster profits, a jury found Hunter Biden guilty on all three charges for lying on a gun purchase form in saying he was not addicted to drugs.

The prosecution presented a mountain of evidence that Hunter committed the crimes, while Hunter’s defense team presented barely anything to rebut that evidence or otherwise exculpate him. Their Hail Mary strategy was “jury nullification” where an unethical jury allows its passion or prejudice to set free a defendant they know to be guilty. See, Simpson, Orenthal James.

The fine-tuning to this defense was the presence of First Lady “doctor” Jill throughout the trial – once by flying Air Force Two back from France where she was tending to her incontinent husband and back again, all on taxpayer expense.

There’s more to come. Hunter is scheduled for a trial on tax evasion. That case will present an opportunity for Hunter to emulate Mr. Capone even closer. The case is for Hunter’s failure to pay taxes on the proceeds collected by the Biden family business from foreign influence-seekers. Establishing the amount of money received, retained and not reported to the IRS will entail documenting not just what the foreigners paid Hunter, but also the disbursements from Hunter to his . . . um . . . relatives who probably likewise failed to pay taxes.

Some of those relatives must be squirming.

Part of the evidence will also be the laptop from hell that one of those relatives falsely assured us was a Russian fake – an assurance that the mainstream media and the establishment intel operators bought hook, line and sinker.

Hunter’s sentencing hearing will be in a few months. He could be sentenced to as much as 25 years in prison, but is more likely to get about one year, at most. It’s unlikely that he’ll skate altogether, however. The guy will serve time – and even more time when he’s convicted in the upcoming tax case.  

Unless a relative pardons him. Both cases involve federal crimes, for which a president has pardon power.

Joe says he won’t pardon him. I’ll bet he breaks that promise after the election, win or lose. (Joe of course has the pardon power until his term is over, which is not until January 2025 even if he loses.) Parsing the quoted words above, he already seems to be signaling to Hunter that a pardon is in the works – provided Hunter doesn’t rat him out.

Joe will have a rationale for that promise-breaking. He’ll say that the cases became politicized and justice was not served and “Orange Man Bad” and, besides, “threats to democracy.”

This will be a fitting finale to the reign of the stupid crooked Bidens, and history will remember it even if the mainstream media buries it. The plagiarizing, lying, mumbling, stumbling, bumbling, influence-peddling patriarch who abolished the nation’s borders, botched Afghanistan, invited the invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas pogrom of Israel and then turned on Israel as it tried to defend itself against that invasion, revived 1980’s-style inflation, undermined America energy independence, and tried to purchase votes from youngsters with loan shifting and pot decriminalization, will pardon his felonious, crack-addicted, paternity-denying, illegal gun-toting, whore-mongering, bribe-taking, deadbeat daddying, perverted miscreant of a son.

Worst. President. In. History.

Hung jury is most likely outcome

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The travesty of a political show-trial against Donald Trump has finally been submitted to the jury of five men, five women and two lawyers in ultra-blue Manhattan.

A conviction takes unanimity. So does an acquittal. A hung jury takes only at least one dissenter.

Expect them to decide that they can’t decide. It’ll be a hung jury. Stage-rants produced by White House staff-kids (remember Biden’s weird State of the Union shout-fest?) and delivered by eighty-year-old Robert DeNiro outside the courtroom won’t change that.

The jury has already asked to hear certain testimony again. Such a request is consistent with a hung jury, not a hanging jury. One juror is saying “So and so said such and such” while another is saying “No, he didn’t!” That’s the recipe for a hung jury.

Here’s the interesting question.

The Democrats foolishly thought their persecution/prosecution of Trump would taint him. But it instead tainted them. Since the trial began, Trump’s polling numbers have gone up, not down. They’ve managed to make Donald Trump into a martyr – no small feat.

What now? If the jury is hung, Trump will appear vindicated – by a Democrat jury in a Democrat jurisdiction. If, instead, the jury hangs him, Trump’s martyr role will be solidified.

Even if it’s the latter – the jury convicts – Trump will probably receive a probation sentence and he certainly won’t be imprisoned on these ridiculous charges before the election.

On appeal, the case is likely to be thrown out, thereby achieving both results favorable to Trump – he will be a martyr for being prosecuted/persecuted and will be vindicated on appeal.

The left always overreaches. They can’t help themselves. At the core, they’re totalitarians. They don’t want to achieve policy goals. They simply want to impose their will on the rest of us.

The emperor has no clothes – and no pulse

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A 19th century Dane named Hans Christian Andersen (a fine fellow despite his hateful middle name) published a story about an emperor who was conned into buying “new clothes.”

He was told by the con men that the “new clothes” could be seen only by people who were not stupid. The reason the con men told the emperor that was because these “new clothes” he’d paid for were nonexistent.

Not willing to reveal his stupidity, the emperor pretended to see the “new clothes” presented to him. He pantomimed putting on the nonexistent “new clothes,” and then paraded about the city in them. Because the “new clothes” did not actually exist, the emperor was simply naked.

The people got conned, too. Like the emperor, they had been advised that these “new clothes” were not visible to stupid people. Therefore, they too pretended to see an emperor in new clothes, not an emperor in the buff. Like the obsequious subjects they were, they even pretended to like these “new clothes.” Maybe in their self-deceptive minds’ eyes, they did see fine new clothes.

Finally, a child wandered by. Not sophisticated in the sham, the con, the self-deception or the obsequiousness, he saw the naked emperor and exclaimed “The emperor has no clothes!”

That child’s shriek of truth broke the spell on the people who had been enthralled, entranced or enslaved into believing that the emperor had new clothes.

The emperor’s poll numbers cratered.

The emperor himself, however, was prouder than ever. He took the people’s rejection as proof that they were too stupid to see his splendiferous new clothes. And besides, he told himself, these stupid people hadn’t really turned on him – polls are always wrong.

Stupid people love me, he reassured himself.

A couple centuries later, we have another emperor. He imperiously flaunts the law, makes up self-aggrandizing stories, abolishes the nation’s border (as well as its guardrails), slurs his words, forgets how to get off the stage (literally and figuratively), refers to “insurrectionists” as “erectionists” (Soviet jewelry, anyone?), and boasts of defying Supreme Court orders (George Wallace, anyone?).

He sells political influence to foreigners to enrich his grifty family headed by a non-physician wife who wants to be called “doctor” and whose relationship with him began while she was married to someone else, brags that Bidenomics reduced inflation from 9% when he took office (while in fact it was then 1.4%), and sniffs the hair of little girls he’s never met while whispering that he has a puppy in his van to show them.  

Like that other emperor, this emperor, his crooked entourage and his delusional followers are unable or unwilling to see the true state of the man. They all imagine that his deficiencies, decrepitude and dishonesty are fine and beautiful. He, because he enjoys being emperor, and they, because this “emperor” does what they tell him to, and even does his feeble best to speak what they write.

Anyone not able to “see” this beauty of a man is a threat to democracy and must be stopped – by any means necessary, including undemocratic ones. Never mind that democracy is long dead in the realm.

We need a child to shriek “He has no clothes!” How about that carrot-topped kid?

Biden tells Black graduates that America hates Blacks, and assumes they’re stupid enough to believe him

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Joe Biden sank to a new low last week. He was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony for a Black college called Morehouse College. (Consider the irony of a serial plagiarist, story-telling fabulist, and academic cheat being a graduation speaker.)

Rather than presenting a message of hope and change, as Barack Obama did at a Morehouse graduation ceremony some years ago, Biden did a race-baiting imitation of Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. Here’s a sampling:

“You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race. It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you.

“What is democracy if black men are being killed in the street?

“What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?

I understand that Biden is running for reelection, and is badly behind – about 6-8 points behind where he was in the polls at this time in 2020 when he ultimately won by a sliver (at most).

And I understand that Biden didn’t write this speech – and he may have read it for the first time as he was reading it off the teleprompter at the ceremony.

And I understand that politicians take liberties with the truth, and Biden takes more than most because he’s been a politician for longer than most.

And I understand that, especially in election years, politicians pander to various constituencies. For example, Biden has pandered to kids who took out six-figure loans to pay for worthless degrees.

He has pandered to potheads with a promise to re-classify pot as something other than a dangerous drug even as evidence mounts that it causes schizophrenia and other permanent cognitive impairments.

He has pandered to a few terrorist sympathizers in Michigan to keep them voting Democrat – at the expense of Israelis striving to keep their country alive against those same terrorists who threaten to re-enact Oct. 7 again and again and again until Israel is wiped off the map.

Bad as all that is – and it’s plenty bad, despicable even – this Morehead speech is a new low. For the pandering purpose of hauling some wandering Blacks back to the Democrat plantation, Biden has slandered the American people.

Blacks have to be “ten-times” better to get a fair shot? Tell that to the Asians who need a SAT score 400 points higher than Blacks to get into Harvard.

Black men are being killed in the street? Well, yes, that one is factual. But nearly all of those Black men getting killed in the street are being killed by other Black men.

To be sure, there is regrettably still some racism in America. Some of it is Black racism against whites, and some of it is white racism against Blacks. All of it is wrong.

But to tar all of white America with a false accusation of racism is unfair, unproductive, untrue, and uncivil.

Biden will do anything to win this election. Anything.

Biden’s slander of white America is matched by his contempt for Black America. He apparently thinks Black America will believe his slander of America. Recall that Biden once said of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, of all people, “They’re going to put y’all back in chains!” 

Most Blacks won’t believe this latest lie. Unlike Joe Biden, they’ve lived real lives in America. Their experience is contrary to Biden’s hate-mongering portrayal of a dystopian America.

A few Blacks will rise to the bait of Biden’s race-bait because victimhood makes a person feel noble. But most are too smart for that. Most will see it for the destructive pandering that it is.

Please go away, Mr. President. I’d take Kamala over this stupid, hateful clown.

Trump should insist that both candidates take a post-debate drug test

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Failing in his efforts to bribe or dope people into voting for him, and falling even further behind in the battleground states, a desperate Joe Biden has agreed to a high-risk gambit that must give his handlers nightmares.

He has agreed to debate Donald Trump.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Biden actually will. His word is worth nothing, as people around the country and the world will tell you – most recently the Israelis. It’s quite possible that he’ll find an excuse to back out, and it’s possible that he already has the excuse pre-planned. But the dates for the debates have been set, and the first is only six weeks away.

Biden will be energized for the debates, just as he was for his State of the Union address a few months ago. And I do mean “just as.”

The SOTU address showed semi-somnolent Joe shouting at the teleprompter like an old man shouting at a cloud. He veered off-script once and had to backtrack for days within his own party.

That was when he accidentally called illegal aliens “illegals.” There were two things bad about that. The first is that “illegals” is a term that his party has deemed offensive (even though “illegal alien” is used in many federal laws and regulations) because it accurately describes the immigration status of the person referenced.

The second thing bad about Biden’s reference is that he used “illegals” in making the point that the murder of a young woman by an illegal wasn’t such a big deal because, after all, people get murdered all the time by legal citizens too.

I’m sure that made the woman’s parents feel better.

The shouting, the gaffe and the sick trivialization of a young woman’s murder suggested to me that Biden had been drugged up. That wasn’t Joe Biden, it was Amphetamine Joe. It was Speedy Joe. It was Juiced Up Joe.

Donald Trump should condition his participation in the debates on the following.

At the conclusion of the debate, the candidates remain on stage while a simple blood draw is taken from each. The blood draw then is treated as evidence. A chain of custody is established and each candidate can have an aide accompany local law enforcement to deliver the blood draws to a local testing company. There, they can be tested for the presence of mood-altering drugs.

The people have a right to know whether the president needs drug stimulants to perform the duties of the presidency.

I expect Biden’s team to decline this condition, undoubtedly with an indignant huff. (I can imagine Biden’s press secretary with her patented “How dare you!” that she must practice in front of a mirror for those frequent occasions when a reporter dares to ask a question she doesn’t like.)

But apart from that press secretary, most Americans will see this as a reasonable condition. Biden does, indeed, behave like a man in need of drug stimulants, and at the SOTU he looked like that need had been fulfilled.

If Biden refuses the condition, as I expect he will, the people can rightly draw what the lawyers call “an adverse inference” from that refusal. A fair inference will be that he needs drug stimulants to function, and he doesn’t want us to know it.

This piece was suggested to me by an alert reader. I’ve also noticed that Jesse Watters made a passing reference to drug testing Joe Biden as part of the debates. 

Biden bribes and dopes youngsters into voting for someone quadruple their age and half their cognition

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Joe Biden is doing poorly with Blacks, Hispanics, men (at least the ones with balls), and young people.

This is unusual. Democrats have long suffered from a gender gap where they are unable to get their proportionate share of male votes, but Biden is doing much worse than usual with Blacks, Hispanics and young people. Polls show his support with each is down double digits from recent years.

With young people, it’s worse than that – it appears likely that a majority of 18–30-year-olds may vote against him. He’s not exactly an inspirational figure with the aviator glasses, sneakers, hair plugs, stumbling gait, bumbling words, and luminescent teeth caps.

His failure to light their fire might also have to do with their ability to do arithmetic. Even a product of the nation’s failing schools can calculate that when his next term is up, Biden will be 86 – about quadruple their age.

Most Americans at age 86 are either in physical decline, emotional instability, reduced cognition, or death. Biden exhibits at least three of those conditions.

Biden – through his campaign staff, since Biden himself seems barely conscious of such things these days – has strategies for managing the youngsters. They decided some time ago to purchase their votes by forgiving their student loans. More precisely, their loans would be transferred away from the former students and onto the American taxpayers.

In effect, Biden offered to bribe a particular constituency with money taken from the rest of us. Just call him Joe Bribe-‘em.

The Supreme Court said Biden didn’t have the authority to do that. In response, Biden boasted that he plans to do it, anyway. “The Rule of Law” is apparently more a guide than a rule, at least for Democrats in an election year.

But even cash has not pulled the wayward youngsters back into the Democrat tent. Biden’s handlers are now teeing up Plan B.

Plan B is to re-classify marijuana as a less-dangerous drug. If he can’t bribe young people into voting for him, Biden will dope them into it.

The Biden campaign figures there are votes to be gotten here. A recent survey showed that nearly a third of Americans 19-30 had used marijuana in the previous 30 days. That’s triple the number that had used cigarettes.

Re-classifying marijuana gets their vote, the Biden campaign theorizes, because it endorses their lifestyle. It panders to them.

It also encourages others to adopt that same lifestyle. What better way to make people forget about the Afghanistan surrender, illegal immigration, inflation, housing costs, and the Biden Family Business, than to get them high?

This move to endorse pot comes at a time when the dangers of pot are increasingly apparent to scientists. About 30% of pot users have a “use disorder.” That compares to about 13% of alcohol drinkers.

That’s not surprising. People use pot for the specific purpose of getting high, while people more often use alcohol because they like the taste of wine and liquor.

The effect of a pot high is much different than the effect of an alcohol buzz. Alcohol is metabolized and eliminated from the body within a few hours, while the active ingredient in pot gets concentrated for days or longer in the white fat cells of the brain.

It does damage there. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week explains that a recent Danish study concluded that 30% of schizophrenia is caused by pot. Frequent pot use is associated with violence, birth defects, ADHD, and cognitive dysfunction.

Biden’s campaign is of course aware of this. But they are willing to compromise the health of people if that’s what’s necessary to get their votes.

It almost makes me miss the old days when the Dems earned votes fair and square by letting the voters first die of natural causes.

Will the terrorist sympathizers be awarded honorary PhDs?

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For months, “mostly peaceful” protesters have harassed and harangued Jewish students at what used to be our best universities, all on the grounds that, this time, Jews on the other side of the world are defending themselves against barbarians right out of the 11th century.

The protesters’ mini-pogroms are not retribution for the Jewish students’ support of Israel – the protesters have no idea of whether those Jewish students support Israel or not – but are retribution for Jews being Jewish. This has happened before.

The protesters set up tents in the university commons, with all the deliberate connotations of military encampments. I remember when tents were set up in the woods, but now tents are a symbol and reality of anti-Americanism. You got a gripe? Get a tent. Put it up in the park and poop in the gutter.

That’ll convince everyone that you’re right. Or it will at least convince yourself that you’re a victim, which in today’s so-called society is better than being right.

When not pooping in the gutter, the dirty miscreant quasi-military university tent campers chanted antisemitic slogans at Jews as they made their way to class, and anyone else unfortunate enough to happen by.

Meanwhile, they demanded that the universities make meaningless gestures amounting to a statement that when light-skinned people defend themselves against dark-skinned terrorists, or any other circumstance involving light-skinned people and dark-skinned people, the former are oppressors and the latter are oppressed.

The faculty were not exactly the grown-ups in the tent. Some joined the terrorists sympathizers and became terrorists sympathizers themselves. Others expressed sympathy for the terrorist sympathizers. Sympathy is almost as good as victimhood nowadays, and requires just as little effort.

Some of the terrorism majors demanded room service – breakfast in bed in their tents. They complained that it was inhumane for the university to deny them food and drink during their trespass. They opined that it might even be a breach of contract. After all, they or their dark money sponsors had paid good money for a dormitory meal plan, right?

They expressly compared themselves to the protesters at Kent State. Being denied breakfast in your tent bed isn’t exactly like being shot, but it’s a start – and a lot less painful.

The Democrats initially applauded all this as an exercise of “free speech,” which is what Democrats call an insurrection when it’s committed by Democrats. President-ish Joe Biden had a “fine-people-on-both-sides” moment where he mumbled that both sides were right or perhaps both sides were wrong and in any event there are fine voters of both sides . . . and . . . look, a squirrel!

Then he fell down.

OK, he didn’t fall down that time but his poll numbers did. In all the battleground states, he’s now trailing a guy who’s been indicted 847 times, most recently for paying off a blackmailing slut but failing to use campaign money to do so.  

The terrorist sympathizers and their terrorist sympathizer sympathizers not only got away with all this, but seemed to be having a splendid time of it until those election polls woke up the “woke” Democrats and the barbarians burst the gate at the Columbia Dean’s Office. Setting up tents in the commons to threaten the extermination of the Jews while simultaneously accusing them of genocide is one thing, but setting up a tent in the Dean’s Office and driving down the approval ratings of a Democrat president in an election year is something altogether worse.

So, Columbia finally sent in the newly un-defunded cops. It took the cops just a few minutes to clear the grounds, reclaim the Dean’s Office for the absent Dean, and replace the Palestinian flag with Old Glory.

The usual suspects have already announced that in five years the terrorists, their terrorist sympathizers and the terrorist sympathizer sympathizers will be seen as courageous and sympathetic heroes. Whenever the left loses an argument, you see, they revert to boasting that they’re nonetheless on the right side of history.

Uh huh. Sort of like the Soviet Union in 1917. Or Fidel Castro in 1959. Or Pol Pot in 1976. Or the BLM riots of 2020. Or the defunding of police departments in 2021. Or Oregon’s legalization of hard drugs in 2022. Or genital mutilation of children and cross-dressing men competing as women in 2023.

On the other hand, bear in mind that history is written by historians – mainly university professors. It is indeed possible that history as written by those historians will heroize the terrorist sympathizers, even if the rest of us see them for the spoiled, foreign-funded, violent, antisemitic and anti-American anarchists that they are.  

They probably won’t be awarded honorary PhDs, but I wouldn’t rule it out. That’s a measure of how far the left has taken America down.

I’m rooting for the protesters

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At places we used to call institutions of higher learning, ignorant kids who don’t know any better and their ignorant professors who should, but also don’t, are trespassing in support of the raping, beheading, kidnapping, burning alive hostage takers of Hamas.

It’s a revolting scene. Even in Nazi Germany they tried to hide their atrocities. In contrast, Hamas posts them on the internet, and their sympathizers at American universities embrace both the terrorists and their terror like the latest hula hoop fad. (Watch out, trannies, you’re so-o-o-o 2023. And watch out, BLM, you’re so-o-o-o 2021.)

Much as these terror-sympathizers disgust me, and much as I’m rooting against the terrorists with whom they sympathize, and much as I’m rooting for the Israelis in their existential struggle to survive, I hope the university protests continue.

Here’s why.

Because the protests are revealing the rot in American universities. The system that used to be the envy of the world – the best and brightest everywhere came here to learn – has strangled under the stultifying, anti-intellectual yoke of DEI, wokeism, anti-merit, one-party rule that is delivered by greedy, wasteful, heavy-handed, over-numerous, group-thinking bureaucrats.

College tuition has gone up at double the rate of inflation for as long as I can remember. Students pay far more than ever before, even after adjusting for inflation, and get far less. At Columbia, tuition alone is $67,000 a year. Nobody gets charged the sticker price, of course, except the Jews.

American parents and their kids can now plainly see what many of us have known for years. Unless you want to be a doctor or lawyer, college is a monumental waste of time and money. It’s a scam.

Good careers are available without a college degree. In Switzerland – which is not exactly a banana republic – only a third of kids go to college. The rest find interesting work as electricians, carpenters, programmers and tradesmen. They make a good living at those professions, and are not looked down upon. They’re respected, they’re happy, and they’re debt-free.

Here in America, the industrial-education complex contrived to convince the people that they’re losers unless they spend a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless degree. And they convinced voters to support that scam with taxpayer dollars, and, now, to use taxpayer dollars to forgive outlandish unpaid loans to the foolish people who were scammed.

These protests offer a moment to reconsider all this destruction and waste. Barack Obama in a different context called such moments “teaching moments.”

Speaking of whom, here’s an added benefit to the protests: they’re embarrassing to the Democrats. Most Democrats know that the Hamas terrorists are worse than animals, but they are reluctant to say so because the Hamas supporters are mainly Democrats. These protests pressure the Democrats to take a side, publicly.

Because Mr. Biden knows there are voters on both sides, he has tried to side with both. That doesn’t work for long in wartime.

The Supreme Court is likely to uphold immunity for Trump

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Immunity for actions in the executive branch of government is a long-standing tradition in democratic government.

Police officers have typically enjoyed immunity so long as their action is a colorable exercise of their authority. Likewise, officials in administrative agencies cannot be sued for their official actions – you can’t bring criminal charges against an FDA official on the grounds your daughter was denied a life-saving drug that the official refused to approve.

You can’t charge a governor with manslaughter on the grounds that there was a traffic accident because he neglected to close a highway during a snowstorm or that an ambulance was unable to reach a hospital because he neglected to re-open one.

The general rule, with limited exceptions, is that government officials acting in an official capacity are immune from criminal prosecution – even if their actions were mistaken or negligent.

This rule extends to the presidency. President Biden cannot be criminally prosecuted for his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of dozens of Americans and hundreds of Afghans. He cannot be prosecuted for refusing to enforce the immigration laws, thereby encouraging an invasion of illegal immigrants including drug dealers and murderers.

He cannot even be prosecuted for twisting or ignoring the law in support of his political allies.

The system is not powerless in these circumstances. We have the remedy of impeachment. That extreme remedy is seldom invoked, and that’s the way it should be. We also have the remedy of voting the bastards out.

The immunity rule is necessary. Without it, each time power shifts between parties – Democrat to Republican or the other way around – there would be a bloodbath. The newly empowered party would exact revenge on the newly out-of-power party. That’s what they used to do in the banana republics and in the Reign of Terror. Losing your seat could mean losing your head.

In America, we’ve lately seen hints of this natural tendency toward retribution against political enemies.

Trump won election in 2016 against all odds and against all the political establishment. In response, they began an unprecedented campaign of retribution even before they finally ousted him from office in the next election: Two bogus exercises of the extreme remedy of impeachment, a collusion of media and establishment lies about Russian collusion, a multiyear investigation that turned up nothing.

When the establishment finally regained power by beating Trump in 2020, they began criminally prosecuting him for his acts in office, timed to come to a head just before the next election where he hopes to reclaim that office.

One of those prosecutions is a joke, namely the Manhattan Project where a stupid political hack of a District Attorney hopes to gloriously nuke Trump’s campaign with a criminal charge that is as bogus as it is convoluted (which may well produce a jury conviction in ultra-Blue Manhattan, but will surely be overturned on appeal).

The more serious case is the one charging Trump with various vague infractions for what he did and failed to do on and around Jan. 6 before his term expired.

Although I voted for Trump twice, and probably will a third time, Trump’s actions then were deplorable. He should have asked the hooligans to stand down immediately.

Instead, he watched on TV as the protest morphed into, briefly, a riot and take-over of the storied place where the people’s representatives meet, debate and vote on legislation. And instead, he asked his Vice President to block the election outcome by refusing to perform a perfunctory act in connection with the Electoral College. 

Was Trump wrong? Was he foolish? Was he dangerous?

Yes, yes, and yes.

But was he outside his official capacity as President?

No. What he did and didn’t do was a colorable, if mistaken, foolish and dangerous, exercise of official discretion.

“No man is above the law,” preach the prosecutors/persecutors when they demand their pound of flesh.

That’s a catchy phrase. It’s often invoked in hypotheticals. For example, what if a president were to order the CIA to assassinate a political rival? What if the president were to shoplift an ice cream cone?

Those examples are easy. There’s no immunity because the act has nothing to do with official duties.

A more interesting example is, what if a president orders the assassination of a foreign leader – as Barack Obama ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden?

Recall that bin Laden was unarmed. It was the middle of the night. It was in his home. He was shot in the head. His body was dumped at sea.

I personally think bin Laden deserved all that and more, but I can see his family’s objections that ordering the assassination of an unarmed non-combatant at his home in the middle of the night was outside the official duties of President Obama. An argument could be made (not a very good one, in my opinion) that the assassination was a war crime or even murder.

I contend that even if that act was indeed a war crime or even murder, it was not outside the official duties of President Obama.

The Supreme Court heard arguments on the immunity issue in the Trump case last week. A majority of the Court seemed to recognize that some presidential immunity is necessary in order for American government to function.

That much is easy. It’s easy to recognize that some presidential immunity is necessary. The hard task is to draw the line. The Court cannot be expected to draw thousands of lines to address thousands of different circumstances. A general rule is required.

I expect the general rule to be along the lines of “there’s immunity if the act is arguably within the scope of the office.” In Trump’s case, it was – at least arguably.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

How long before they chant “Gas the Jews”?

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First, let me apologize to my Jewish readers. I realize that hearing those three words must be painful. Many of you have parents or grandparents whose friends or family were gruesomely murdered in that very manner.

The reason I use those words is that today in the year 2024 we are closer to such horror than we’ve been for 80 years, and we must not pretend otherwise. The Jewish nation that promised “never again” is being explicitly threatened with “again.”

This moment comes in the wake of the atrocious murdering, raping, beheading, burning alive and hostage-taking committed by Palestinians against civilian men, women and children playing peacefully on a pretty fall day in Israel last Oct. 7. The Palestinians since then have rejected numerous proposals for a cease fire in exchange for the hostages they took, apparently because they’ve already tortured, raped, beheaded, burned and, finally, murdered those hostages.

Alive, the hostages would have been more useful to Hamas. Dead, the hostages are no longer hostages, but just bodies. But, alas, the Palestinians’ temptation to torture, rape, behead, burn and murder was apparently irresistible to them.

Such depravity is consistent with the Palestinians’ broader conundrum. Israel has repeatedly offered them land for a Palestinian state if only they would agree to peace. But they don’t want peace; what they want is the eradication of the Jewish state and the Jews. Their ambitions for a nation are hostage to their hatred of Jews.

If these so-called people had been around at the time of Solomon (they weren’t) they would have wanted the baby cut in half.

These bloody terrorists have found recruits in naïve young American students. These kids don’t know what Hamas is, don’t know the history of the Jews, have scarcely heard of the Holocaust, and when they chant “From the River to the Sea” they don’t know what river they’re chanting about nor what sea.

As for their sloganeering that the Jews are committing genocide in seeking to prevent yet another pogrom by an outfit that just committed one and promises another, well, excuse me but there’s something obscene about accusing the Jews – the Jews! – of genocide.

These protesting students are foolish, ignorant, useful idiots looking to be cool.

They’re too young to falsely claim they were at Woodstock, as their grandparents falsely claim. But it’s not too late to support people with darkish skin and to persecute people with lightish skin.

Their notion of data-gathering is to notice that most Israelis have lighter skin than most Palestinians, and so the Israelis must be wrong and the Palestinians must be right.

With that, it’s . . . to the barricades! (Their own grandchildren will be so proud of them – this is their Woodstock!) At our once-great universities and elsewhere, they skip classes (it’s spring, after all) to chant:

“Burn Tel Aviv to the ground”

“Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too!”

“Death to Israel”

“Death to America”

“We are Hamas”

“Hitler was Right”

To answer my own question in the headline, the chant “Gas the Jews” has already been used by a mob in Sydney, Australia – not exactly a sister city of Auschwitz. This same hatred is increasingly evident in places that in the past have made easy boasts about their tolerance and anti-bigotry, such as Boston, New York, Berkeley and Ann Arbor.   

It will soon be in Peoria. Let’s be ready this time.