Fareed Zakaria: Trump uses an unprecedented eight national emergency declarations for his own end run around the constitution, the Congress, and the courts

 ... Trump has declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days, more than any other president. ...

Invoking an emergency has come to mean that the president can bypass Congress, intimidate courts, and run roughshod over normal procedures, even civil liberties. And while the current number is striking, it’s not a Trumpian innovation. Presidents have become addicted to emergency powers, unlike many other countries. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about how to declare or end an emergency. This has allowed presidents to organically assume a wide range of powers. This usually happened during wartime. ...

Today, Americans are living under dozens of ongoing national emergencies, mostly tied to foreign policy like sanctions. The oldest standing one, targeting Iran, dates back to the Carter administration. Others come from the post-9/11 era, when Congress granted the executive branch sweeping new powers, all in the name of national security. Both parties have used emergency powers to serve their broader agendas. In 2022, President Joe Biden attempted to forgive student loan debt by using an emergency authority related to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

More.

Like failing to establish a formula for the continued growth of representation, thus unwittingly concentrating power in an oligarchic Congress by default, the constitution's silence about emergencies is yet one more example of the founders' inability to imagine every which way one branch might try to exploit it, which is an increasingly pressing problem in our increasingly illiberal society.

I wrote to my Congressman John Moolenaar last week about today's continuing resolution vote

 

 He wrote back today, today!, explaining his February 25th vote for the budget framework, about which I asked nothing, mentioned nothing.

But what I did ask about went entirely unaddressed.

This is called being without representation.

What a moron.

Repealing the 22nd Amendment is a great idea, but not Republican Andy Ogles' (TN-5) idea of revising it to allow Trump a third term but not Clinton, Bush 43, nor Obama

 Constitutional amendment to allow Trump third term introduced in the House

Ogles' idea that Trump was denied the power inherent in two successive terms is an admission that the 22nd Amendment limits the power of the executive.

Is the Congress so limited? No.

Is the Judiciary so limited? No.

The 22nd Amendment is an unfair limitation on the power of the executive. 

That is why we have dueling tyrannies, one of the legislative, and one of the judicial.

The one has put us $36 trillion in debt because it has the power of the purse. The other has jammed a code down our throats from time to time because in Marbury vs. Madison the Supremes arrogated to themselves the final say on the meaning of the constitution.

The founders intended the three branches to be separate, contending, equal powers.

The 22nd Amendment prevents the executive from contending beyond two terms, and so we are condemned to focusing unnaturally on who will be president every four years, which has the ironic effect of exalting the presidency to the point that there is all this hubbub all the time about the imperial presidency when our real masters are others, a neat trick those masters work like mad to pull and pull and pull.

Term limit everybody, or term limit no one.

Joe Biden is a victim of elder abuse

Laura Rosen Cohen, parent of a special needs child in Toronto, for Newsweek here, who calls this the Abuse That Dare Not Speak Its Name:

Recent reports confirm what's obvious to everyone on the planet: President Joe Biden is a frail 81-year old who requires physiotherapy daily for his increasingly stiff gait and must wear slip proof sneakers to prevent frequent falls. Staff reportedly can only schedule important meetings for him from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, because that is when he is most lucid.

This is a pattern in keeping with many dementia patients, as are other symptoms: Rarely does a day go by without video of Biden looking completely confused. He also frequently shouts angrily at reporters and confuses things, like Mexico and Egypt, or the names of dead leaders with current ones.

It's increasingly alarming, and the general consensus in America and around the world is that Biden is both too old for the job and not well.

In most normal families, a frail 81-year-old grandfather insisting on working but showing clear signs of diminished mental capacity and repeated episodes of falling and physical fragility would be encouraged to quit, enjoy his retirement, golf and garden to his heart's content. Quit your day job, Gramps, they would rightly say. And it's not like the Biden family is strapped for cash. Aside from any potential extended family business earnings, Joe Biden himself is reported to be worth approximately $10 million.

President Joe Biden faces a clear and present physical danger to his person due to his decline. But the public spectacle of his enfeebled nature also begs a different question: Why is the First Lady not putting an end to her husband's repeated and consistent public humiliation? Why aren't his children or grandchildren doing the right thing for their loved one? ...

If insisting on keeping a frail and doddering senior in the White House (or any job for that matter), exposing him to daily physical risk, demanding he perform tasks beyond his mental and physical capacity or stamina and world ridicule isn't elder abuse, what is? Are there any adults in the Biden family "room" who will finally call a lid not just on the President's repeated public humiliations but on his tenure writ large?

The leader of the free world is now an actual physical representation of the decline of American power and the American Republic. The President's diminished capacity is being willfully and purposely ignored by those closest to him, something that is very well-appreciated by America's enemies. As a result, the world is in chaos.

The White Nation picks up the torch of the Congressional Black Caucasians against Gavin Two-Faced Newsom

Why Barbara Lee Should Be a Senator

John Nichols, The Nation

 

The governor signaled that, while he was committed to naming a woman of color, he didn’t want to give Lee the advantage of appointed incumbency. This was a new standard, developed by Newsom since his last appointment of a senator in 2021, when he chose Alex Padilla to replace newly elected Vice President Kamala Harris. As an appointed incumbent, Padilla ran for and easily won a full term in 2022. This time, Newsom said, he wanted to make an “interim appointment”—indicating an apparent preference for a caretaker senator who would merely finish out Feinstein’s term and then leave the Senate.

It was an absurd calculus, offering the prospect of a brief rather than ongoing expansion of representation for Black women in the Senate, and Lee called him out for it. The representative said in a statement, “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election.”

 

AOC epitomizes the tyrannical legislative branch, halting the growth of representation, term-limiting the president but not themselves, and now seeking to subdue the judiciary

 

AOC: Supreme Court Needs Oversight From Congress To Preserve Legitimacy, "Impeachment On The Table"

Criminal head of the FBI James Comey withheld evidence of Hillary plot against Trump from his own FBI agents investigating Trump

 They all knew, except the agents. Hillary Clinton continues to be the worst person in the whole world, and all her patsies the dumbest.

What did Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey know about Russia-collusion — and when did they know it? John Durham dropped a bombshell in his testimony today at House Oversight, which will go on for at least a couple of hours or more, but this part wasn’t the bombshell. In his special-counsel report, Durham had already revealed that CIA Director John Brennan briefed these four in August 2016 that Hillary Clinton planned to paint Donald Trump as linked to Russian intelligence, presumably to shift attention away from her own e-mail scandal.

That briefing resulted in a “referral memorandum,” and one of its recipients was then-FBI director James Comey. Oversight chair Jim Jordan asks Durham whether Comey ever bothered to share that with the agents assigned to the newly launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane or ever presented to the FISA court when applications were made for domestic surveillance of Trump campaign officials. Nope, Durham says, and explains how he found that out . . .

. . . the director of the FBI knowingly withheld evidence pertinent to an FBI investigation. That resulted not just in errors made by the agents conducting the investigation that might have resulted ending what turned out to be a witch hunt, but also contributed to misrepresentations to the FISA court about the nature of the evidence they used to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign figures. ...

Comey knew it, but made sure the agents assigned to the case did not. So did Obama, Lynch, and Biden. And yet all of these officeholders lied publicly about the nature of the rumors and innuendo consistently for months.

More.

C'mon, man, The Wall Street Journal doesn't really believe "The Left Wins Big in Midwest"

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.

 

You first, assholes

 Dems introduce bill to enact term limits for Supreme Court... 

A "political" Supreme Court which is "balanced" is wishy washy precisely because it is a function of an Executive branch hamstrung by the 22nd Amendment

  This never occurs to Hugo for some reason.

A Court system which depends on the transient figure of the president for its existence can hardly be anything but political. That's where the fetish for political balance on the Court comes from. It is simply an extension of the overweening impulse to limit the Executive power. And it's not a coincidence that the loudest voices for it come from the Legislative. It's an expression of their tyranny over everything.

Of course the Supreme Court is a political institution.

It is appointed by an elected president, and confirmed by an elected Senate. But it is the two term limit which sharpens its tip, raising the stakes over every appointment.

The Court has become more political precisely because the political power of the Executive which appoints it has been limited. It's how the wronged Executive manages to live on, long after he has been forced from the scene. He routinely runs for office partly on the promise to partisans that he will make the right appointments to the bench.

If the Framers had intended the Executive to be hamstrung in this way while the other two branches were not, they would have said so. 

The people have the right to elect whomever to the presidency as often as they wish, just as they have the right to return Nancy Pelosi to the US House year after year. They also have the right to get rid of the bum if they don't like his appointments. Anything less gives too much power to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, and to the judges he leaves behind.

The way to improve constancy of meaning on the Court and consistency in the rule of law is to improve both in the Executive.

We aren't going to be saved by a Court which has temporarily recovered its senses. They could just as well lose them again. And they'll also still be there, long after the president who appointed them is gone.

Who checks the Court? 

More representation for the people does not equal "bigger government and more politicians"

The last thing most Americans want is a bigger government and more politicians, yet the solution to the zero-sum redistricting game is to create more seats for the House of Representatives.

More.

The founders of this country wanted representation to GROW with population. The original formula, never ratified, would have entitled every 50,000 Americans to one representative in the House. You know, one who might actually know who the hell you are and what you think, elected by funds raised from you and not from special interests a thousand miles away?

Mostly Republicans stopped this constitutional process in 1929 by act of Congress, fixing representation at 435 in the US House. But the impulse to Congressional supremacy over the other branches of government has ever been bipartisan.

Now, the "ideal" House district represents 761,000 people. All it takes is an oligarchy of 218 to decide the fate of hundreds of millions, whose leader is a shadow president popularly known as The Speaker of the House who can serve year upon year while the real president is limited to two terms.

Such an awful outcome was never intended by the framers.

The resulting system has turned politics into a binary pressure cooker without a relief valve, threatening to explode in another civil war at any moment, if contemporary doom and gloom political rhetoric on the extremes of both sides is to be believed. 

In fact thousands upon thousands of Congressional staffers and lobbyists run everything and write the legislation, not the people through their elected representatives.

Politics is a fact of life. Aristotle taught us that man is a political animal.

Denying that fact is the surest route to the barbarism of civil war, or the present system of legislative tyranny which has saddled the American people with $30 trillion of debt. 

A bigger House is actually a smaller government where you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Australians lose their minds, news stories can't make up theirs about meaning of election

CNN: It was a stop global warming election.

The UK Express: It was a republican election to throw off the monarchy and give Australia's 2% indigenous population representation in parliament.

AP Obama: There was no clear majority as votes for "fringe parties and independents ... increases the likelihood of a hung parliament and a minority government." Counting may take another two weeks.

The Sydney Morning Herald: Labor is 4 seats short of a majority with 14 seats still to call, only 71% counted.

Joe Biden's Jul 23 phone call with Afghan President Ghani shows him unfit to be Commander in Chief, but not for the reason being trotted out

Everyone on the right is fixated on Joe Biden encouraging Ghani to paint a rosier picture to the press about the progress of the war in exchange for "aid".

In other words, Joe was trying to bribe Ghani to lie. The scenario is very reminiscent of VP Joe Biden's intimidation of the Ukrainians involving his threat to withhold US aid unless they fired a prosecutor who was looking into the Ukrainian activities of Biden's son, Hunter.

But this framing is a diversion, and a misrepresentation.

The call, to the extent Reuters has reported on it, shows Ghani reciting a litany of woe to Joe Biden about how catastrophe is imminent.

In what world does it make sense for Joe to respond to that with the offer of "aid" to a man who is clearly convinced that the end is nigh? Ghani was reciting that litany because everything was falling apart precisely because of the American pull-out. Just three weeks prior the US pulled out of Bagram in the dead of night Jul 2, from which point everything began to cascade out of control.

Ghani had to find what he was hearing from Biden incredible, in particular the promise of "continued close air support".

But close air support had already been withdrawn from Jul 2. It wasn't "continuing". It had already ended weeks prior. That was the problem, AND BIDEN DIDN'T KNOW IT. And even if he once knew it because his generals and advisers told him, HE FORGOT IT. Biden is behaving in the call as if he has resources at his command which are no longer there.

Imagine being Ghani having to deal with such unreality coming out of the mouth of the American president.

By the time of the call, Jul 23, the US withdrawal was already more than 95% complete according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, as reported by CNBC on Jul 21:

At the Pentagon on Wednesday, the nation’s highest military officer told reporters that the U.S. has completed more than 95% of the herculean task of withdrawing from Afghanistan.

“The sheer volume of movement involved in this operation has been extraordinary,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, adding that the U.S. conducted more than 980 airlifts of cargo in less than three months.

“Furthermore, all the military operating bases, outside of Kabul, have been fully transferred to the Afghan Ministry of Defense and the Afghan security forces.”

Joe Biden was in no position to act as Commander in Chief in Afghanistan on Jul 23 because there was nothing left to command. In truth, he hasn't been fit since before the election, during which he campaigned from the safety of a bunker, protected by the media in the tank for him.

His unfitness for the duties of the office is self-evident to anyone paying attention day to day, except that everyone pretends not to see.

They just smile and pass.

But Ghani didn't pretend. He prepared himself an out. That's why he escaped and is alive today and living in the UAE.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, is living in la la land.

Hillsdale College professor is hopeful because Roman Catholicism dominates the intellectual wings of modern conservatism and nationalism

I'm hopeful because 72 million Americans sided against Joe Biden.

From "A Review of Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History by Gillis J. Harp (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019)", here :

Still, perhaps there is more reason to hope than Harp lets on. Neither Modern Conservatism nor the new nationalism shows signs of a distinctly Protestant political perspective. To the extent either one has a political theology, it is dominated by Roman Catholics, who occupy the lion’s share of both movements’ intellectual wings.

Yeah, sure, buddy, it wasn't Catholic priests who used their pulpits to call the men to arms in the revolution against the English king. It wasn't Catholic priests who then doffed their robes and grabbed their rifles and joined them in the field. It was Presbyterians.

Joe Biden, a Catholic, preaches a return to normalcy, which amounts to acquiescence to the status quo of liberal dominance of most American institutions. That is the default position of Catholicism, acquiescence to authority, submission to hierarchy, rule by elites. By definition they'll revolt against nothing and adapt themselves to every nutty innovation which comes along in the spirit of taxation without representation.

The Loyalists have made a comeback, largely on the backs of Catholic immigrants to the United States since 1850.

Is anyone surprised they are for open borders, mass immigration, and globalism, especially if it augments their dominance in America?

Donald Trump, in his feeble way, was a resounding No to all this.

We're still out here.

Hey Bernie, it's been an oligarchy since 1929, a legislative oligarchy, when you assholes stopped growth of representation in the US House

330,000,000/50,000 = 6,600 members of the US House, not 435.

Article the first. ....  After the first enumeration required by the first Article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which, the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

The idiots at Vox don't know that the constitution specifies a minimum congressional district size of 30,000

Here:

"Literally nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from admitting the Obama family’s personal DC residence as a state — a state which would then be entitled to two senators, one member of the House, and exactly as much say on whether the Constitution should be amended as the entire state of Texas."

Article I, Section 2.3:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative;

You can't have two per thirty thousand, that is, one per fifteen thousand, let alone one representative for just four people.

It doesn't occur to the idiots at Vox, nor Harvard Law whence the idea comes, that the main problem with the federal government is that the US House concentrated power in its hands decades ago by stopping the growth of representation. It's been on a spending spree ever since, picking the taxpayers' pockets.

Why do you think we have a $23 trillion debt?

Giving Obama his own representative just makes the Obama family more like Wyoming, our least populous state, which already has too much representation relative to California according to these liberals.

The feds grabbed this power by fixing the number of representatives at 435 way back in 1929, contrary to the intent of the constitution, which required a census every ten years in order to add representatives to the US House as the country grew in size. The original First Amendment to the constitution would have fixed the formula at one per fifty thousand, giving us over 6,000 representatives by today. It failed ratification by just one vote. The bastards finally realized this loophole in 1929 and pulled a power play.

Yes, maybe some mega states like California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio should be carved up to add states to the union and increase representation that way. Northern Californians and Southern Illinoisans already feel this way.

But carving up DC into a bunch of states? Really? It has about 705,000 residents total, less than the current average size of one US congressional district. If it were a state, the most representatives it should have today would be fourteen, but under the current way it's done, just one.

And the Obama family doesn't get its own private Representative to the US House, not while we're alive anyway. He got to be president for eight years. He can cast his useless vote now like everyone else.

What a farce is Vox. 

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issues rare public order rebuking FBI misconduct, acknowledges Americans cannot trust the FBI

This order responds to reports that personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI's case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page. When FBI personnel mislead NSD in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC. ... The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above. The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.

Read the whole thing here.

Joe Biden has been lying for a decade that a drunk driver killed his first wife and child

Police determined that Biden’s first wife drove into the path of Dunn’s tractor-trailer, possibly because her head was turned and she didn’t see the oncoming truck. Dunn, who overturned his rig while swerving to avoid a collision, ran to the wrecked car and was the first to render assistance. Police filed no charges against Dunn, who at that time lived in North East, Md. with his wife, Ruby, and their seven children. Biden has been alluding to alcohol being involved in the crash for nearly a decade. During a speech in 2001, Biden told an audience at University of Delaware that a drunken driver crashed into his family. He told a similar story during a public appearance in 2007. More recently, the vice presidential candidate’s misrepresentation of Dunn has found its way into major newspapers, including the New York Times. It also has been repeated on radio and on television by major news journalists, including CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric.

At least he didn't say she was killed because she was pregnant.

More here.

Robin Munro: The Tiananmen massacre was not primarily of the students, rather the workers, not in the Square but citywide in Beijing

Remembering Tiananmen Square:

Western criticisms based on a false version of the clearing of Tiananmen Square have handed the butchers of Beijing needless propaganda victories in the U.N. and elsewhere. ... By May 17, the sight of as many as 2,000 idealistic young students collapsing from heat and starvation brought more than a million ordinary Beijing citizens into the square in a moving display of human solidarity. “The students speak on behalf of all of us,” they would tell any foreigner who cared to listen. 

Having been passive spectators, the laobaixing now began to act as a bastion of active support for the students, bringing food and other supplies to the square on a round-the-clock basis. This specter of emerging cross-class solidarity led directly to the authorities’ decision to impose martial law in Beijing on May 20. ...

Action groups formed spontaneously throughout Beijing. ... The laobaixing were now in a posture of peaceful, nonviolent but direct confrontation with the government and army, and similar “turmoil”—to use the party’s term—rapidly emerged in dozens of other cities. Moreover, the laobaixing were beginning to articulate their own grievances. ...

However, the birth of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation a few days after the abortive imposition of martial law posed a much greater threat. That is because this group, headquartered in a couple of scruffy tents in the northwest corner of Tiananmen Square, raised an issue that had been taboo in China since 1949: the right of workers to engage in independent labor organization and self-representation. Such a demand struck at the very core of the Chinese Communist state, for the party’s main claim to legitimacy is that it rules in the name and interests of the “laboring masses.” Although its active membership remained relatively small, its formal membership soared during the first few days of June, reaching a peak of more than 10,000 enrollments after three of its leaders were secretly arrested on May 29.

Autonomous workers’ groups quickly sprang up in most of China’s major cities. This was the “cancer cell” that the authorities had feared from the outset would appear if legal recognition were ever to be conferred on the student organizations. In the government’s eyes, if the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, erected in the square at the end of May, represented the arrogant defiance of the students and the symbolic intrusion of “bourgeois liberalism” and “Western subversion” into the sacred heart of Communist rule, the crude red-and-black banner of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation, not a hundred yards away from the goddess, represented the terrifying power of the workers awakened.

Both had to be crushed, and the rapidly defecting party apparatus had to be frightened and shocked back into line.

Well, well, well, Justin Amash hung out to dry by the billionaire DeVos family, concerned MI-03 not getting representation

DeVos family of Michigan ends support for Amash:

A family spokesperson added that the family had made the decision to cut ties with Amash before his controversial tweets suggesting Trump should be impeached.

“Family members have expressed increasingly concerns about a lack of representation for their district, the third congressional, and I would say an inability to advance efforts connected to important policy matters," the spokesperson told the newspaper