Tag Archives: news

Let Chicago destroy itself

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President Trump’s efforts to bring down crime have been successful in Washington, D.C. The rate of murder and other violent crimes is down substantially, and the rate of car-jackings is down dramatically.

Even the Democrat mayor of the city admitted that the crime rate has dropped. Oddly, however, she mumbles in the next breath that the program is “not working,” apparently to mollify national stage Democrats to whom she answers.

Such as Democrat Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. He was asked at the outset whether the initial 30-day period for the effort could be extended. His response was “f*** no!” It will be interesting to see him now choose between enabling murders and climbing down from his vulgar perch. I’m guessing he’ll choose the side of murder, and stay on his vulgar perch.

So, if it worked in D.C., why stop now? We can curtail crime and simultaneously embarrass Democrats around the country. We should next send the troops to Chicago, right? And then Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis and Portland, right?

I don’t think so. My reasons are legal, philosophical and political.

Legally, D.C. is a special case. It’s under the direct jurisdiction of the federal government (notwithstanding the limited “home rule” that Congress legislated some years ago). One federal judge has already ruled that the deployment of troops to Los Angeles to quell the illegal immigration protests was illegal. I don’t have much regard for that particular judge – the bowtie-wearing, San Francisco-residing, 83-year-old little brother of retired liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer – but it is conceivable that his big brother’s former Court will uphold his ruling.

Now the more important reasons – the moral and philosophical ones.

D.C. is the workplace and often the home of over a hundred thousand federal employees who have little choice about their workplace venue.

It’s also the face of America to millions of foreign visitors who reasonably assume that it reflects American values, just as we would assume that Paris reflects French values, London reflects English values, and Berlin reflects German values. (Each of those cities has a lower crime rate than D.C., especially in the category of violent crime.) How America presents itself to the world through its capital city is rightly a national and federal concern. How Chicago presents itself to the world is less so.

Here’s the most important point. The crime in Chicago and other major cities is largely due to ongoing choices they make in law enforcement. Recall that only five years ago, many residents of American cities were calling for the “defunding” – i.e., abolition – of city police forces. Even now, police forces are short-handed because the Democrats ruling these cities are hostile to law enforcement. They hate the cops more than they hate the criminals.

When they’re not short-changing the cops, they’re hand-tying them. Many crimes are simply not investigated or prosecuted. For example, shop-lifting has effectively been de-criminalized. If you want to get fired from your job at a local store, call the cops on a shoplifter or, worse, chase after one.

Other crimes have also been effectively de-criminalized on the grounds that too many racial minorities were being arrested for committing them.

People who commit crimes are criminals, but they aren’t stupid. They know what they can get away with, and so that’s what they do.

In short, big-city crime is a big-city choice. Specifically, it’s a choice by big city Democrats. They could decide tomorrow not to tolerate crime. So far, with the exception of the D.C. mayor who has had an epiphany on the subject, they have not decided that. We cannot coerce everyone into epiphanies.  

Finally, there’s a legitimate issue about using federal troops for routine law enforcement. From the German Gestapo of a century ago to the Mexican Federales of today, federal law enforcement in local matters has a sordid history. 

To be sure, the crime in American large cities inflicts real harm on the residents who, by and large, are not criminals of any kind. They sometimes get attacked, shot or killed and they often get their property stolen or vandalized. Even in the absence of tangible harm, they live insecure, semi-terrified lives.

But they keep electing those soft-on-crime Democrats. They are entitled to, but I say let these residents see and suffer the consequences of their choices – for years and years, if that’s what it takes.

Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago is widely seen outside of Chicago as the worst mayor in America. Even within Chicago, which is an overwhelmingly Democrat city, his approval rating this summer is down to the mid-20s. Maybe that means the Democrat residents of Chicago will throw the bum out.

But don’t count on it. Especially if he can make political hay by distracting the Democrat residents from his incompetence with a show of “standing up to” the Orange Man that they hate more than the criminals and even more than the cops.

You may ask, “What about the residents of Chicago who do want to throw the bum out? Who do want effective law enforcement? Who do want to reclaim their city from filth and crime? Who do vote with their minds and not with their tribe?”

My answer is, they have an alternative. Unlike federal employees locked into workplaces in D.C., the residents of Chicago who vote with their minds but get outvoted every time can vote with their feet.

My advice to them is to get the hell out of the failing cities. Let the failing cities burn and rot. Maybe then, and probably only then, the residents will insist on effective governance. If they don’t even then, well, at least they’ve self-concentrated in places we can watch and, if necessary, avoid or isolate.

And who knows? Their proclivity toward killing one another might prove to be an unfitness in the Darwinian sense.

Yes, my advice to sane people in insane places is to move to another place. Move to Texas, move to Florida, move to Idaho. Move to Galt’s Gulch.

The policies of the left are outrageous – by design

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George Frederic Watts – Chaos

It’s now a truism that the policies of the left are widely viewed as outrageous – at least the cultural ones such as allowing male voyeurs and exhibitionists into girls’ bathrooms, discriminating to benefit favored races and sexual orientations, grabbing the guns held by hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans while simultaneously coddling criminals who will never give up theirs, and abolishing the nation’s borders.

Such issues have earned a name – the “80/20 issues” – because something near 80% of Americans oppose the left on such issues.

That 80% figure would probably be even higher if not for some Democrats whose hearts and minds are on the 80% side but whose instinctive tribalism boxes them into the 20% side just because they (correctly) see the 20% side as part of the formal Democratic Party platform.

Yet, the left seems unable to effectuate a course correction on those outrageous policies disfavored by 80% of the people.

One result is that the Democrats lose elections. Who cares about the nuances of tariffs, an issue on which reasonable persons disagree, when they’re putting boys in drag into your daughter’s bathroom at school, an issue on which reasonable persons do not?

My reaction to the Democrats’ truculence is one word: Good. I hope they stay bound to the losing side of those issues. Because I want them to keep losing elections.

But I’m left wondering: Why? Why is the left so bound to the losing side of issues that cost them elections?

I have a theory.

Recognize that the left is not like you and me. At the core, they aren’t trying to solve problems. Instead, they’re trying to provoke ordinary people. What better way to provoke ordinary people than to put messed-up teenage boys into the bathrooms of those people’s daughters?

But that, in turn, leaves a question: Why does the left want to provoke ordinary people?

Here’s where it gets sinister. They hate America. They really do, you know. Polls consistently show that the hard left feels genuine hate for America. Even mere Democrats – as opposed to hard leftists – often feel something less than love for the nation.

Thus, the left is fundamentally different than the right. On the right, neo-Nazis are loathsome and even mere right-wingers are sometimes not very appealing, but I’ve noticed that most of them do not hate America as a nation and an institution and a culture and a people.

The left’s hatred of America is the reason they seek to provoke Americans. Hatred is the mother of provocation and, ultimately, violence.

Did Hitler really want to own Russia? I doubt it. But he certainly hated Russians. He never did succeed in owning Russia – he never even reached Moscow – but his hatred of Russians succeeded in killing 20 million of them.

Do the leftists really want self-proclaimed teenage transexual peeping Toms in the girls’ bathrooms? I doubt it, but what a great way to express the hatred in their dark hearts for our nation, our culture and our people.

And in their dark minds, they hope that maybe the chaos they wreak by ritually torching age-old cultural norms will destroy that culture.

Imagine how things would have been different for Hitler if, prior to his invasion of Russia, he had demoralized them with boys in the bathrooms of Russian girls, if he had grabbed the guns of the Russian civilians, if he had abolished the Russian border, if he had fueled race wars within Russia.

The hateful left and their naive Democrat enablers are playing the long game of history, not the short game of the next election. In taking the 20% side of these issues – the side of confusion and chaos – the left will certainly lose many battles for elections, but they could well win the war against our civilization.

NPR goes down in flames

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“When Pierre goes down, he goes down in flames”

— Punch line to old aviation joke

The Republicans finally did something great that I thought they never would have the stones to do. They reduced the funding for the government-controlled media outfit called The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hallelujah!

CPB was established half a century ago with the good intention of providing television and radio services to rural America in a day long before cable TV and megawatt radio stations made television and radio ubiquitous, and long, long before the internet made them obsolete.

Fine.

Then they expanded into children’s programming like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, to give children an alternative to Saturday morning cartoons.

Fine. But notice the inevitable expansion. Taxpayer-funded enterprises have a way of doing that.

Then they expanded into cultural offerings like Masterpiece Theater and British comedy.

Not so fine. Why do the wealthy elites who watch Masterpiece Theater and British comedy (or is it “comedy”?) need taxpayer subsidies? And why do we allow cultural offerings selected by semi-government bureaucrats and apparatchiks to use taxpayer money to undermine the competing cultural offerings on commercial TV and the internet?

Then they went woke.

Everyone knew CPR was woke, and then a long-time editor wrote a piece for The Free Press (you should check out TFP, by the way) that amounted to a full blown exposé. He revealed their conscious attempt to bury the Hunter laptop story, to trumpet the false Russian collusion story, to dismiss the lab-origins of COVID, and so on. NPR had become a Democratic government mouthpiece.

He reported that at the headquarters of their radio arm, NPR, there were 87 registered Democrats and 0 Republicans. Unsurprisingly, Democrats were staunch supporters of NPR, and vice versa. Republicans, not so much.

For that exposé, NPR suspended the editor temporarily and ostracized him permanently. Consider the Pravda-esk irony that a government organization charged with reporting news punishes an employee for doing exactly that, because the particular news he dares to report is that the organization is biased in reporting the news. He ultimately resigned.

This week, the Republican Senate voted to claw back about a billion dollars in taxpayer-money allocated to CPB over the next two years. All Democrats voted against the claw-back. Two purported Republicans joined them, but the measure passed the Senate and later passed the House. It’s now on President Trump’s desk for signature.

So, what will happen? CPB and its labyrinth of entities have always simultaneously maintained that (1) they receive hardly any taxpayer money, and (2) taking away their taxpayer money will cripple them.

Both are lies. They do receive a lot of taxpayer money – a billion dollars over two years isn’t chicken feed – and they will not be crippled by losing it. If nothing else, the Democratic National Committee will toss them a few hundred million, directly or laundered through George Soros and his minions.

The CEO of NPR had a few choice words:


“I’m so done with late-stage capitalism.”
“America is addicted to white supremacy.”
“White silence is complicity.”
“I’m grateful those who have pointed out my phrasing could be understood as trans-erasure.”
“Horses inspire awe and foster a sense of identity. More kids should have access to these incredible animals. But most horse spaces are white spaces.”
“I know that hysteric, white woman voice. I was taught to do it. I’ve done it. That’s whiteness”
“What is the deranged racist sociopath ranting about today? I truly don’t understand.”
“Donald Trump is a racist.”

Oops, those are her tweets over the years. Gee, how could anyone accuse them of bias?

Mamdani terrifies the Democrats

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After losing to the one guy they were certain they could beat, Democrats are making a show of puzzling over how to win elections.

It’s not really much of a puzzle. They simply need to get on the right side of some easy 80/20 issues. Like illegal immigration. Like men competing in women’s sports. Like catching and punishing criminals. Like the First Amendment. Like disclaiming Marxism.

Why can’t the Democrats see this?

Well, they can. Democrats are just pretending they can’t because they don’t want to alienate . . .  Democrats.

Do the math. If only 20% of voters are on the liberal side of an issue, and essentially all of those 20% are Democrats, and registered Democrats comprise about 37% of the voters (the other 63% being Republicans and Independents), that means that, among Democrats, about 54% are on the 20 side of those 80/20 issues. (54% of the 37% of voters who are registered Democrats equals about 20% of the total voters.)

Most Democrat politicians can do this math. And so, they understand that getting on the winning side of these 80/20 issues would cost them over half of registered Democrats – the kind that vote, donate money, speak out, and get CNN spots.

Even the Democrats who can’t do this math (here’s looking at you, AOC) can sense it from their interactions with their base, which is about the only kind of interactions they have with the public.

One solution is for Democrats to trick their base into believing they are still on the 20 side of these 80/20 issues while actually migrating to the 80 side in order to get some of the 80 side voters.

But it’s hard for politicians to trick their base. That’s because the base tends to be passionate and aware. Moderates, on the other hand, are easier to trick. Moderates are moderates because they aren’t paying much attention.

So, what do you do if you’re a Democrat?

You trick the people who can be tricked – the moderates. You put on an insincere, hand-wringing act pretending that you’re considering switching to the 80 side on the 80/20 issues, all while winking and nodding to your hard-left base to tell them you’re really not.

But now the jig is up. Zohran Kwame Mamdani (if you’re a Republican, you couldn’t wish for a better name for him) has put the Democrats on the spot.

He wants government-owned grocery stores because he thinks (or just believes) they’ll be less expensive and more equitable. He wants government control over rent and real estate prices. He wants government-paid public transportation. He wants government child care. He wants, well, you get the picture.

He has lots of wants, and he wants those wants to be satisfied by the government.

Except the police. His only want from the police is that they cease to exist.  

He let slip – nah, he bragged – that the government should seize control over “the means of production.” It’s not clear where he learned that phrase, but it was in fact coined by Karl Marx.

He’s an actual, registered socialist. And he’s not a European-style one. He’s more like a Cuban-style one or Venezuelan-style one or Soviet Union-style one.

Democrats, who have crept, slouched, and sometimes flown toward socialism like bats into hell over the last 25 years since Bill Clinton left office, are mortified. Not because Mamdani favors socialism – they all do – but because he says it out loud.

By saying it out loud, Mamdani smokes out those fellow Democrats. They have to either agree or disagree. They can no longer pretend moderation in order to garner votes from unengaged moderates while winking and nodding to their hard-left base.

Mamdani is forcing socialist Democrats into the thing that socialists abhor most – honesty.

He’s currently the favorite to be elected. The result will be a disaster for New York City. But it will also be a disaster for the Democrats. I’m willing to accept both disasters if it’s a package deal.

Cat fight at the Supreme Court!

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Girls don’t usually fight. There are sound reasons for this – reasons of general decorum, biology, hormones, jewelry, dresses and hairdos. 

But when they do, boy oh boy, it can be a doozy. It happened yesterday at the Supreme Court.

The case was an appeal of a district court order issuing a “universal injunction” against President Trump’s executive order seeking to abolish “birthright citizenship.”

Birthright citizenship is the kind you get if you’re born in America even if your parents are here illegally. The 14th Amendment seems to provide for it, although there is a non-frivolous argument that it does not.

A universal injunction is one that binds the enjoined party even against persons not involved in the lawsuit.

The district court judge in this case found Trump’s executive order against birthright citizenship to be in violation of the 14th Amendment, and issued an injunction forbidding its enforcement against the plaintiff in the case.

Here’s where it gets dicey. The judge’s injunction applied not just for the benefit of the named plaintiff, but for the benefit of all other people in the country even though they weren’t parties to the case. It was a universal injunction.

Trump appealed the universal injunction on two grounds: (1) you should not get citizenship merely by being born in America if your mother was here illegally – in other words, the 14th Amendment does not provide for birthright citizenship – and (2) the universal injunction barring enforcement of the executive order even against people who were not parties to the case was an unconstitutional overreach by the judge.

The Supreme Court heard the latter argument on universal injunctions, and reserved the substantive birthright citizenship issue for another day.

It was a typical 6-3 political decision, meaning the six Republican-appointed Justices beat the three Democrat-appointed ones. (Elections have consequences, as President Obama once pointed out.)

The opinion for the Court was by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She walked through the history of universal injunctions, noting that they scarcely existed until recent times.

Now that they do exist, they are prone to abuse. A political plaintiff can choose to file his suit in a district that is notoriously favorable to his politics. Then he gets a favorable decision – typically without even a trial but instead on a preliminary basis – that applies for the benefit of all potential plaintiffs everywhere.

In theory, the district court’s decision could be reversed after a trial, but that’s years away, and, in reality, the trial decision from the same judge will be the same anyway. (On many of these issues, there’s no right to a jury trial.)

It’s actually even worse than that. Say for a moment that the plaintiff somehow loses his bid for a universal preliminary injunction in a favorable district. There’s nothing to stop another plaintiff from filing the same suit in a different favorable district. If the second plaintiff wins in that second case in that second district, he can expect to get the universal preliminary injunction that the first plaintiff was denied.

The defendant – the government in this case – is thus not only required to win in one district favorable to the other side, but is required to win every case in every district where every plaintiff files. One loss, and all are lost.

Weirdly, the universal preliminary injunction obtained by the second plaintiff – or third or fourth – who prevailed could even have the effect of reversing the loss by all earlier plaintiffs. The earlier, losing plaintiffs wind up getting unlimited bites at the apple by enjoying the repeated re-litigation of the matter by later plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court via yesterday’s opinion by Justice Barrett finally put a stop to routinely issued universal injunctions. Trump is doing well at the Supreme Court, and this was his biggest win. Our system in largely working.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Issued a peptic dissenting opinion. You’ll recall Jackson. She is the woman who was asked at her Senate confirmation hearing, “Can you define the word ‘woman’?”

It was obviously a gotcha question which Jackson wanted to avoid answering. A smart and articulate woman — not too much to ask for in a Supreme Court Justice — could have dodged the question with a little BS such as, “Well, that word is used in many different ways, Senator. There’s a biological way, a social way, a behavioral way, a gender way, and . . . blah blah blah . . . mumble mumble . . . ”

Instead, Jackson gave the Republicans a sound bite for the ages: “I can’t . . . Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”

Bob Dylan said you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. He never met Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Questioner: Can you tell me which way the wind blows, Ms. Jackson?

Jackson: I can’t. I’m not a weatherman.

In another recent dissent by Jackson (thankfully, she appears to specialize in dissents) she lamented that the Supreme Court’s decision “comes at a reputational cost for this Court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests.”

Say what? A Justice of the Supreme Court is openly worrying, or pretending to, that their decisions might be viewed as sympathetic to “corporate interests”?

First, the Court is supposed to apply the law to the facts, public perception be damned. Second, the allusion to “corporate interests” is amateur activism. Is the Court supposed to disfavor corporations? What about large partnerships? What about LLCs? Non-governmental organizations? Charitable foundations? Sole proprietorships?

Is the law different depending on the choice of entity that one party made when they set up their organization?

Back to yesterday’s universal injunction case. Jackson’s dissent warned that the decision was “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

That’s a serious allegation. Her allegation is that the Supreme Court whose job is to interpret the law is threatening its very existence.

I have three responses to Jackson’s allegation. One, yawn. Two, notice how people who aren’t very smart like to use the phrase “existential threat” as if it makes them a French philosopher or something. Three, if abolishing universal injunctions threatens the rule of law, then how did the rule of law survive for two centuries without them?

Justice Barrett in response wrote that Jackson’s dissent “is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.” She observed that Jackson “decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

Barrett wasn’t done: “Observing the limits on judicial authority – including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789 – is required by a judge’s oath.”

Finally came Barrett’s knockout punch: “Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘Everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ That goes for judges too.”

In the cloistered confines of the Supreme Court, that constitutes a beating. Jackson was rightly condemned in a written opinion joined by six of the Justices for advocating a position contrary to two centuries of precedent and the Constitution itself, endorsing an imperial judiciary, violating the judge’s oath, and refusing to be bound by law even as she wildly accuses the Court of threatening the very existence of law.

Justice Barrett as the author of that take-down put to rest any doubts. She’s all woman, and she’s got a pair.

CNN publishes a stolen, inaccurate report in an effort to help Iran

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CNN last week got their hands on a classified document stolen from the National Security Agency. That’s a felony punishable by ten years in prison, by the way.

The stolen document guessed that the efforts by Israel and America to neutralize Iran’s nuclear weapon program had set back the program by only “a few months.”

CNN and the rest of the media cabal could hardly contain their glee. They celebrated the failure of America and Israel.

Hardly mentioned in CNN’s report was that the document itself noted that its conclusions were merely “preliminary” and were expressed with only “low confidence.” 

This week, a more considered report was published by the Institute for Science and International Security (which, ironically, has been going by the acronym ISIS since long before the ISIS terrorists came around).

ISIS – the good one – is a non-partisan think tank and investigatory group. If anything, it might lean a bit to the left, as its financial supporters include left-leaning organizations such as the McArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on ISIS’s findings. (The Journal’s report is behind their paywall here, but you can click into ISIS’s underlying report here.)

ISIS concluded that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been “effectively destroyed.”

That conclusion is supported in their report by extensive review and detailed analysis of the attacks and the videos, aided by intimate knowledge of the layouts of the Iranian facilities and interviews with international inspectors of those facilities.  

In some particulars, the ISIS report shows that the stolen preliminary report as characterized by CNN is simply wrong on the facts about what facilities were attacked, and how.

Apart from CNN, everyone else knows that the Iranian program has been hit very hard. The Israelis concluded that the Israeli and American efforts have set the Iranian program back “many years.” The U.S. Director of National Security, a dove who downplayed Iran’s nuclear ambitions a few months ago, reported yesterday that the Iranian facilities have been “destroyed.” President Trump himself reported last week that the facilities have been “obliterated.”

The head of the CIA said yesterday that Iran’s program had been “severely damaged” and would require “several years” to rebuild. Even the head of the nuclear watchdog at the U.N. – not exactly an Israel fan club – reported that the damage had to be “very significant” in view of the “the explosive payload utilized and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges.” Well, duh.

Meanwhile, Iran has congratulated itself on its “decisive victory.” The Ayatollah proclaimed that Israel has “almost collapsed and been crushed” and America has been delivered “a slap in the face.”

CNN has not gone that far, yet. But as of this writing, the stolen, erroneous NSA preliminary report is still on CNN’s website – with little of the contradictory reports mentioned.  

Why do the media (with the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal in this case) distort or even lie about facts, to make Iran look good and strong and make America look bad and weak?

The federal judiciary still works

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You’ll recall that a federal judge in California ruled against Trump in the dispute over his use of the National Guard to protect federal buildings in Los Angeles from rioters who demand a permanent open border.

That judge happened to be the 83-year-old semi-retired little brother of 86-year-old liberal retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Big Brother must have been so proud.

First, a word about federal judges that most people are not aware of. Federal judges can go on “Senior Status” as they get old. That means they get full pay and benefits including perks such as secretaries, beautiful offices, and young and attractive law school graduates to do their research and listen to their genuflections.

Oh, and a palatial courtroom for their exclusive use (though it sits empty 90% of the time), a fancy black robe, and a guy to shout “ALL RISE” when they walk in. (You’re supposed to remain standing until the judge mutters, “Be seated.” That’s one of many, many things they don’t teach in law school, but you quickly learn it on the job.)

These Senior Status judges are expected to do a bit of work. But only as much work as they feel like doing. They can work 35 hours a week, or 15.  Unlike ordinary judges, they can turn down any case. The cases they turn down go back into the hopper to be assigned randomly to another judge.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that most federal cases are very boring matters. Senior Status judges turn them down left and right.

Did I mention that they get full pay, benefits and perks fit for a king including a guy to shout “ALL RISE”?

It’s a good gig. So much so that in the federal district covering Colorado, for example, 9 of the 17 judges have elected “Senior Status.” In other words, over half of the federal District Court judges in Colorado are part-time but receiving full pay, benefits and perks.

There was a day when federal District Court judges didn’t exploit Senior Status. After all, they had to share the elevator and lunchroom with full-time colleagues who were tasked with the boring cases that the Seniors had turned down. And they were cognizant of the financial burden they and their entourage and appurtenances imposed on taxpayers.

That day seems to have passed.

Back to California. The Little Brother who ruled against Trump in the federal District Court there has been on “Senior Status” for the last 14 years. As a Senior Status judge, Little Brother could have turned down this case. He didn’t. He took it, heard it, and issued a decision against Trump.

Ah, but not all is lost. Even this case is not lost. The Trump administration appealed Little Brother’s order. Unfortunately, the appeals court covering Little Brother’s district court is the liberal Ninth Circuit. But fortunately, the liberal Ninth Circuit overturned Little Brother’s order. Trump won his appeal.

Appeals are heard by a three-judge panel of appellate judges selected at random from the sitting judges of that circuit. Trump was very lucky in that two of the three were Trump appointees. Before you conclude that the fix was in for Trump, be aware that the third was a Biden appointee and he, too, ruled in favor of Trump.

The decision was not a close call. The appellate judges noted that the President does not have wholly unfettered authority to call out the National Guard – there are statutes limiting that – but in general the President is entitled to some deference.

In this particular case, there was rioting in the streets. That’s enough.

The case now could be re-heard by the Ninth Circuit in an “en banc” hearing of 11 appellate judges randomly selected from the 29 active appellate judges in the Circuit.

Then, or even before then, the losing party can appeal to the Supreme Court where six of the nine Justices are Republican appointees. It’s likely that Trump will win there.

Apart from the merits or demerits of this particular case, here’s the point I want to make. The American federal judiciary still works.

It’s true that some of the judges don’t work as well, or as hard, as they could, or they should, but as a general rule they do indeed work in every sense of the word. Virtually all of them are very bright men and women with outstanding credentials, though some are too old for the job.

One more related point. The inflammatory allegation that federal court judges are “bought off” or otherwise corrupt is utterly unsubstantiated and, in my personal experience, unfounded. Despite the abuse of Senior Status, and despite the age-related limitations of some judges, never once in my career did I see the slightest evidence of corruption in any of them.

Justice Breyer’s Little Brother may be an ideologue, and that’s bad, but there’s no evidence that he’s corrupt. There’s a remedy when a judge is an ideologue. It’s called an appeal. It works.

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

Trump is not a fascist . . . but . . .

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At the outset, let me state my bona fides. I voted for Trump three times. I publicly supported his candidacy back when the media deemed him and his supporters like me stupid racists.

That was back when “Trump is literally Hitler” was the meme of the moment amongst the kind of people who don’t know the meaning of Hitler and don’t know the meaning of “literally.” Which is to say, most of the current mainstream media.

For the record, Trump is not Hitler, not literally or metaphorically, nor is he a fascist.

Contrary to popular belief engendered by the lamestream media, the word “fascist” does not mean “Republican.” Nor does it mean “very conservative.” In fact, Republicans and other politically conservative people are nothing like fascists at all.

Fascism is notoriously difficult to define, perhaps because it is used as an epithet by the ignorant more than as a descriptor by the educated. But most would say it involves a tendency toward, or actual exercise of, strong autocratic or dictatorial control. It also frequently involves forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

OK, let’s look at President Trump.

He’s missing the race component. Indeed, many of his political appointments have been racial or ethnic minorities.

Some people would say, “Oh, but those minorities don’t count because they’re conservatives.” To those people, I have a question: So, who’s the bigot here when you’re the one willing to deny the color of a person’s skin because he lacks the “correct” viewpoints?

The nationalistic component is a closer call. Trump shows little interest in invading Poland or France, but does seem to hanker for a little elbow room up north in Greenland and Canada. Still, forcible conquest doesn’t appear to be on his radar. (But what exactly is the purpose of his conquistador callings?)

As for a belief in a natural social hierarchy . . . gimme a break, the guy’s a real estate developer. If there were a natural social hierarchy, real estate developers would be at the bottom.

Here’s the component that worries me: He doesn’t suffer disagreement lightly.

It would be one thing if Trump shot down disagreement with brilliant argument and nuanced analysis. In doing that, my favorite commentator on the conservative side – or any side, for that matter – was William F. Buckley. He won arguments in such eloquent, understated style that the people he persuaded to his side left thinking they had agreed with him all along.

Trump, not so much. If you agree with him at the outset, he’ll draw cheers from you. But that’s not a persuader; that’s a cheerleader.

As for those who disagree with him, he quickly escalates – or, rather, gutter-stoops – to name-calling, arm-twisting and outright bullying.

There’s a place for that tactic, to be sure. Army boot camp comes to mind.

In politics and people, however, such an approach tends to backfire. You can bully people only so far, and you can’t bully strong people at all.

Moreover, the bullying itself can backfire. For example, how is Vladimir Putin supposed to back down once Trump tells him to? Even the girly-men at Harvard have stood their ground (sort of) once Trump publicly told them to take a knee. The first rule of effective bullying is to do it in private where the object of your bullying doesn’t need to save face.

But this self-pleasing bullying, this autocratic nature, is in Donald Trump’s DNA. Recall that this man took time away from making billions in order to be on a stupid TV reality show where he gloried in screaming “You’re fired!”

The most recent “You’re fired” moment came this week when Trump lashed out at some judges – one of which he appointed – for striking down his tariff program as non-enabled by the laws he’s citing. The judges may or may not be right, but it’s a matter that will be decided by the Supreme Court on appeal, as it should be, not by playground bullies. Meanwhile, calling the judge names is not an effective strategy for a litigant.

The judges that disagree with him are reinforced in their disagreement when he tries to bully them. They have lifetime tenure and no fear of Trump. And the judges who agree with him, give pause. What self-respecting judge (and judges have a lot of self-respect) wants to be known as a Trump toady?

Oh yeah, the Supreme Court. He lashes out at them, too, though he appointed three of the nine. And he lashes out at the conservative Federalist Society for helping him choose the judges he lashes out at. I’m sure he’s just one lash away from lashing out at the people who helped him choose the Federalist Society to help him choose the judges.

Maybe all this plays well with a certain component of the base, and so it’s all clever triangulation by Trump. More likely, it seems to me, he just has the nature of an authoritarian bully.

It’s his greatest weakness. And I will not be voting for him a fourth time.

But he’s not Hitler!

To generate book sales, the former Director of the FBI advocates 86’ing the President

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James Comey has a book coming out, so he’s looking for attention. He got it.

He posted on Instagram a photo of shells on the beach arranged in the numbers “86 47,” the last two numbers being a little separate and bigger than the first two so as to differentiate them. His accompanying comment was:

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

In case you were born yesterday, the number “86” is slang for terminating a person or thing. If a gangster talks about “86’ing” you, you’re toast. The number “47” of course corresponds to President Trump as the 47th President.

Comey got the attention he sought, and then some. Then he deleted the Instagram post, and put up a new post “explaining” that:

“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Wait a minute. In his first post, Comey pretends that the numbers were merely a “cool shell formation” while they were obviously much more than that; they were the numbers “86” and “47.”

So why did he pretend they were just a shell formation in the first post?

In his second message, he contradicts his first in admitting that he was aware it was a “political message” but contends he was not aware that it was a violent one. Really? This is the former Director of the FBI.

Then what did he think it meant? He never says.

The Secret Service charged with protecting the President takes seriously threats to his safety. The latest reports are that they’ve interviewed Comey.

That presents a problem for Comey. It appears likely that Comey himself arranged the shells on the beach. If he maintained his story that he simply stumbled across them, he was probably lying.

Such a lie could be uncovered by the contents of his phone. Multiple pictures of his “shell formation” could be on his phone showing various iterations until he settled on the one he liked.

Such a lie to the Secret Service investigators would constitute perjury, as Comey well knows – since he put people in jail for that.

On the other hand, if he told the truth to investigators, he revealed himself for what he apparently is: A former Director of the FBI who is willing to encourage harm to the President in order to sell books.

In today’s sordid world, it will probably indeed work to sell books. Fellow travelers on the left will buy his book with no intention of reading it, just to support his advocacy of violence. After all, they’ve normalized calls for political assassination, as we saw when they lionized a maniac who murdered a health insurance CEO on the street.

And it may work to accomplish more, too. It may work to achieve its stated goal of 86’ing the President. These are dangerous times, and this sick former FBI Director isn’t helping matters.

The only hotness in Hogg is that he’ll soon be bacon

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The Democrat who goes by the initials AOC is the hottest Democrat in Congress. I know that’s a low bar, but still.

It’s the main reason Democrats like her. Be honest: Who would you like to share a voting booth with – AOC or Nancy Pelosi? And then there’s also the possibility of voting from home . . . .

I’ll admit it’s a bit creepy to see Her Hotness and 163-year-old Bernie Sanders together on a stage performing Dem-porn acts such as “the rich don’t pay taxes” and “Republicans are a threat to Democracy” before at least one of them gets driven to one of Bernie’s mansions.

But in creepy cradle-robbing and grave-robbing stunts, they have nothing on the Republicans. Have you seen Bill Belichick’s new 24-year-old girlfriend? (I thought the guy was just a great football coach. Turns out, he’s a god!)

And then there’s a new kid on the block named David Hogg. He’s a hero because he was at school one day when a nutcase went ballistic with a gun.

Hogg saved several students. Well, no, he didn’t.

Hogg disarmed the gunman. Well, no he didn’t.

Hogg went to confront the gunman. Well, no he didn’t.

Hogg hid in a closet. Yes, he did.

Hogg has made a living selling the day he hid in a closet. His pitch is that we should ban guns. Forget about police protection in the schools. Forget about mental health issues. Forget about arming the teachers. No, we should ban guns.

Because then, the gunmen couldn’t get a gun legally at a gun store, and they’d have to get them illegally instead. They’d have to get one or more of the 400 million that are in circulation in America.

Democrats love this pitch. Not because it would reduce gun violence – remember the 400 million guns already out there?

No, Dems love the pitch for two reasons. One, it punishes gun owners, and they hate gun owners. Or at least they think they do. They forget that most gun owners are not pickup-drivin’ beer-drinkin’ tobacky-chewin’ GOP-votin’ rednecks. Most don’t drop their drawers or even their g’s. Most are people like you and me. Well, at least me.

Two, banning guns makes Dems feel virtuous. It means they’re doing something and, more importantly, it means they can say they’re doing something. In the world of Democrats, it doesn’t matter if what you do is effective. It only matters that you do it and talk about doing it.

Hogg rode this pitch all the way to the Democrat National Committee Vice Chairmanship. (I won’t make a comment about the Chairman of Vice, not with Belichick on the page.) Hogg became a male AOC. White smoke rose from the DNC office, and it wasn’t because they were burning emails. They all but christened him “His Hotness.”

Then he started saying some things apart from his DNC-approved gun-taking pitch. He suggested that the old Democrats should retire to make way for young ones. He himself, coincidentally, happens to be a young one.

But not all old Democrats should retire, he said. Only the powerless ones he thought he could risk offending. That wouldn’t include 85-year-old Nancy. She’s fine, he assured us. Really not even old!

He miscalculated. Turns out, the old powerless ones he said should retire do, in fact, have some power.

Hogg is now being ousted from his Chairman of Vice position. He’s cooked. He’s fried. He’s bacon.

But he’s still got his gun-taking schtick. Expect more books and speeches.