Trump can't be excluded from the election on the grounds that he was an officer under the 14th Amendment.
Here:
In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that “unless a person in the service of the government . . . holds his place by virtue of an appointment . . ., he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): “The people do not vote for the ‘Officers of the United States.’ ” ...
Mr. Trump took an oath as president pursuant to Article II, not as an
officer pursuant to Article VI. Because the Insurrection Clause applies
only to those who have taken an oath “as an officer of the United
States,” he can’t be barred by that clause from serving in any capacity. ...
Even a criminal conviction wouldn’t bar him from seeking and winning the presidency. The Constitution specifies only that a person seeking that office be at least 35, a natural-born citizen and a 14-year U.S. resident. If Mr. Trump is to be kept from office, it will have to be done the old-fashioned way, the way it was done in 2020—by defeating him in an election.
The national average price of daycare and preschool services rose 6% in July from a year before, the Labor Department reported recently. That was nearly double the overall inflation rate of 3.2%, which was down from its recent peak of 9.1% in June last year. ... a mother of three living in Blaine, Minn. ... said she is paying about $2,500 a month for child care this summer.
More.
Nancy Pelosi owns the record for the four most fiscally irresponsible years in the post-war, spending 316% of tax receipts in 2020, 276% in 2021, 310% in 2009, and 296% in 2010.
Her four years as Speaker 2007-2010 averaged current expenditures as a percent of current tax receipts of 251%, highest for any Speaker ever.
S&P downgraded the debt in August 2011.
The Boehner/Ryan interregnum averaged 219%.
Pelosi's next four years as Speaker 2019-2022 averaged 252% in overspending.
Fitch has now downgraded the debt in August 2023.
Taken all together, Pelosi's Speakership produced the worst overspending in the post-war at 251% of revenues. The excess has to be borrowed, ballooning the debt.
The ratings agencies sound the alarm bells no one else will ring, but they are mocked by all the experts, whose livelihoods depend on the scam continuing.
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
-- US Constitution, Article One, Section Seven
When Trump actually finds a competent attorney, the attorney should immediately file to have the case dismissed based on the Jackson ruling of 2012.
But will he?
... The National Archives and Records Administration was never given the recordings. As Mr. Branch tells it, Mr. Clinton hid them in his sock drawer to keep them away from the public and took them with him when he left office.
My organization, Judicial Watch, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to NARA for the audiotapes. The agency responded that the tapes were Mr. Clinton’s personal records and therefore not subject to the Presidential Records Act or the Freedom of Information Act.
We sued in federal court and asked the judge to declare the audiotapes to be presidential records and, because they weren’t currently in NARA’s possession, compel the government to get them.
In defending NARA, the Justice Department argued that NARA doesn’t have “a duty to engage in a never-ending search for potential presidential records” that weren’t provided to NARA by the president at the end of his term. Nor, the department asserted, does the Presidential Records Act require NARA to appropriate potential presidential records forcibly. The government’s position was that Congress had decided that the president and the president alone decides what is a presidential record and what isn’t. He may take with him whatever records he chooses at the end of his term.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed: “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office,” she held, “it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”
Judge Jackson added that “the PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.’ . . . PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.”
I lost because Judge Jackson concluded the government’s hands were tied. Mr. Clinton took the tapes, and no one could do anything about it.
More.
A majority in Rapanos (2006) couldn’t agree on how to limit EPA’s authority over wetlands. Four Justices said the Clean Water Act’s scope extended to “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” such as oceans, rivers and lakes, and wetlands that were directly adjacent and “indistinguishable” from those waters.
However, the agencies and lower courts have adopted Justice Anthony Kennedy’s lone opinion that federal jurisdiction extends to land that has a “significant nexus” to a waterway. This test is as clear as a swamp.
While all nine Justices ruled for the Sacketts, they disagreed on the scope of federal power. The majority strips away the “significant nexus” ambiguity from Justice Kennedy’s Rapanos opinion, but reaffirms the conservative plurality’s view that a “wetland” must “be indistinguishably part of a body of water that itself constitutes ‘waters’ under the CWA.”
Ronald Reagan's worst appointment.
More.
IRS Needs a Cage, Not More Cash
As House Republicans and the White House wrangle over a debt-ceiling deal, one GOP demand ought to be nonnegotiable. A politicized Internal Revenue Service has no business keeping its untrustworthy fingers on last year’s $80 billion cash infusion.
More.
Before His Killing, Tech Executive Bob Lee Led an Underground Life of Sex and Drugs:
Mr.
Lee remained close to his wife, Krista Lee, even though they were
separated. He recently moved to Miami with his father, a widower, but
regularly returned to San Francisco to visit his two teenage children,
Dagny and Scout, named after characters in “Atlas Shrugged” and “To Kill
A Mockingbird.” The family had planned a trip together to Japan in
August.
First, Chicago.
Chicago is not the "Midwest".
Chicago remains firmly left-wing under new mayor Let's Go, Brandon Johnson.
It didn't just suddenly turn left this week.
The shit-hole will just get shittier under Johnson, instead of get slightly less shitty under Vallas.
As for Wisconsin, OK, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is now in the hands of four lunatic Democrat wymyn vs. three Republicans. Republican Dan Kelly was indeed resoundingly defeated, but by a nakedly partisan Democrat whose campaign may result in successful calls for her to recuse herself in certain future cases.
Abortion was indeed her campaign issue, but her main objective is rolling back former Governor Scott Walker's anti-government-union efforts.
But Kelly's defeat was a mixture of Republican stupidity combining with Democrat knavery.
Kelly was a Walker appointee, not a winner in his own right. He didn't win his seat in the first place, and he lost it in 2020. MAGA Republicans were STUPID to go with him a second time.
National Republicans: Note Well. Don't be STUPID in 2024 and go with an already defeated candidate.
And don't let Democrats select your candidate. Especially by putting him on trial.
The Wall Street Journal KNOWS Democrats spent $1 million to get the once-defeated Kelly nominated again in the primary instead of Jennifer Dorow, whose son became a political liability which unfortunately canceled her strong conservative record in the minds of enough voters.
Dorow, after all, had put away parade killer Darrell Brooks for life without parole. She is also allied with Chief Justice Clarence Thomas in her skepticism over Lawrence v Texas. But she gone.
Republicans in Missouri once let Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill select their candidate to run against her there. Now Republicans in Wisconsin have made the same stupid mistake and paid the same stupid price.
Meanwhile, Republicans more broadly in Wisconsin still firmly dominate its representation, the only state from Trump's 2016 Upper Midwest WI-MI-PA trifecta to do so.
They own the Assembly 64-35, and now the Senate 22-11. The GOP House delegation in Washington from Wisconsin is 6-2 Republican, the Senate 1-1.
Wisconsin's GOP is hardly on the ropes, but the Wall Street Journal seems to think a Wisconsin Senate going Republican 21-12 because Mequon could have just as easily narrowly voted Democrat in a special election would have been a catastrophe.
Yes, Republicans nationally would be wise politically to stand for abortion compromise where abortion absolutism would result in defeat as in Michigan, but note that Michigan's Senate and House are still only narrowly Democrat, 20-18 and 56-54. Politics is the art of the possible, but bad candidates like the Dan Kellys and Donald Trumps of the world are no longer possible.
The Wall Street Journal should just say so.
The Midwest is not going left, just anti-Trump because he did not follow through on his promises to the working class, about which The Wall Street Journal cares nothing.
And by the way, Democrats don't care either.
I hope Ohio's J. D. Vance is paying attention.
POLL: Majority oppose laws restricting drag...
But in that poll 92% were registered voters, and of those only 29% polled were Republicans when Republican votes for Congress in Election 2022 represented 50.6% of the votes cast (54.5 million) vs. 47.8% for the Democrats (51.5 million).
That's the trick with almost all polls, minimizing the size of the Republican opposition from the get-go in order to obtain a preordained result favorable to the left's side.
Same thing happened with this one from March 27th. Just 29% were Republicans.
POLL: Americans Pull Back from Values that Once Defined USA...
These information war operations wouldn't be necessary if Americans overwhelmingly agreed with the left on the issue du jour.
The initial documents, including some classified at the highest security level, were discovered in an office that didn’t open until 2018—meaning they were moved there from yet another unauthorized location and heightening the likelihood of more document finds. ... Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are handled with kid gloves. Carter Page and Donald Trump—not to mention low-profile suspects—face the bluntest federal law-enforcement tools. ... The Justice Department seems unlikely to be done bestowing conveniences on this president.
More.
DOJ and FBI are as corrupt as the day is long.
The Wall Street Journal, here:
More.
The weaker sex recommends you give in. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
That right there is the whole history of conservatism, from the advent of the Progressive Era 130 years ago until now.
Currently, Democrats are miles ahead of Republicans at targeting specific races and voters. Through mail balloting, they put those voters in the bank early. ... Republicans can complain about the current rules all they want, but what they need to do is wake up and start competing with the Democrats where they are. Otherwise, they're just leaving winnable races on the table.
Florida Republicans certainly have figured it out. In 2018 and 2020, the Democrats went into Election Day with more ballots cast than Republicans in early voting. This year, Florida Republicans flipped that on its head. Republicans in other states should take note.
-- Salena Zito, in her conclusion here
It is rude of Arizona and Nevada to keep the country waiting to know the composition of its Senate. Why, days after the election, don’t we know which party controls the House? Why can’t the late-reporting states get their act together on vote counting? It’s the increase in mail-in ballots? So what? You roll with life and adapt. Florida, which spans two time zones, reports its tallies with professionalism and dispatch.
-- Peggy Noonan, from her lede here
