Category Archives: At Random

Sometimes you just gotta’ say what you just gotta’ say….

MAGA’s Great Replacement Fantasy (Delusions of the popu-lost)

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By now many observers have noted Mr. Trump’s tendency to accuse his detractors of whatever sin he himself is engaged in. Those observations suggest some thoughts around the Great Replacement Theory which, in Trumpian usage, holds that Democrats are intentionally perverting democracy by opening our sacred borders to untold millions of immigrants (who just coincidentally tend to be black, brown and/or from ‘shithole’ countries not part of the Anglo-European heritage which we are now being told defines true Americans).

Thought number one: acknowledging that Mr. Trump won the election in 2024 and so is legitimately occupying the Oval Office, he still received fewer than half the votes cast,* an inconvenient truth which makes one wonder if perhaps there is a hidden thread connecting several of his administration’s current priorities.

To whit: contrary to the populist image their leader loves to act out, he and any thoughtful members of his court must be aware that theirs is a minority faction and so will never be able to hold power by democratic means. Unable even to rely upon their slender majorities in Congress to do their bidding, they know they cannot govern by legislation (as the Constitution intends) but must rely almost exclusively on Executive Orders, Presidential Determinations, Proclamations, administrative directives by their chosen technocrats, petty prosecutions and the like – despite the dubious validity or effectiveness of many such.

Second, since he and they are unwilling to adjust their policies to the beliefs of the voting majority, they choose instead to speak and act as if the voting majority itself is invalid, tilted toward ‘radical’ outcomes by the presence of millions of non-citizen immigrants. If – goes the fantasy they imply to their base – the administration can eliminate enough of those ‘illegals’ through holding-camps, deportation, self-deportation, remigration or whatever other terms they come up with next, then the voters who are left will constitute their dream of a majority MAGA electorate. That hope energizes their base and recruits enforcers for ICE and other agencies, but unfortunately for MAGA, their inability to produce any credible evidence of voting by non-citizens in numbers that would make any difference in any election at any level demonstrates the fallacy of such hope. Illegal immigrants have never swung actual voting so even their complete extermination would not affect any future outcome. The pro-Trump minority is not democratically viable* and his power can only be ensured by non-democratic means.

Which explains the Administration’s doubling-down on tactics to frustrate the democratic will. Demands for state gerrymandering, discouragingly cumbersome voter ID requirements, restrictions on drop-boxes, voting locations, hours or mail-in options, false accusations of voting machine irregularities, placement of threatening ‘monitors’ at election sites, these and many other strategies are designed to deter enough voters to ensure MAGA victories whether or not the majority of eligible voters want them or, in the worst case, to provide excuses to override the true verdict when it proves they do not.

One can even interpret MAGA’s recent call for Americans to have more children as a supply side complement to these strategies. Refuse to naturalize any but the wealthy and pale at the same time the MAGA faithful produce more and more purebred American babies (who will, presumably, be groomed by their parents to vote the ruling party’s ticket from birth) and they might just turn their minority into a real majority – in twenty or thirty years.

All this can be seen as one more indication we’re lost on a dark and very slippery slope or, looked at from another angle, it may give a sliver of hope. Since the people he is tossing out the door were never part of the majority who voted against him, Mr. Trump’s epic cleansing will do nothing to change his minority status. In fact, if the callousness and brutality of it repels even a few of his past followers, it will actually drive his share of future vote tallies lower. In which case, the majority of the American electorate may one day reject Mr. Trump’s imperium by a large enough margin that not even doomed third-party candidates and the misrepresentative calculus of the Electoral College will be enough to save him.

Here’s hoping that whenever that day comes, there is still a nation left to rebuild!

*Of the three elections in which Donald J. Trump has ever competed, he has never won a majority of the votes cast. If that is any sort of mandate, it is a mandate against Mr. Trump, not for him. The fact that he was elected in 2016 reflected just how unsuited our present Electoral College structure is to today’s electorate, in which the population disparity between large states and small ones is more than five times as wide as it was at the time the Constitution was being developed, yet each of those states still gets an equal two Senate-related votes. The fact he was elected in 2024 despite not winning a majority is its own indictment of an election process held captive to two ossified major parties which cannot possibly represent the true diversity of their electorate.

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Ripe for Amendment?

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Saw an excellent opinion piece recently about the history of Amendments to the U. S. Constitution, starting with the fact that the document’s authors fully intended it to be revised – the Amendment process is written in, after all (Article V) – and running up through our fifty-plus-year drought of amendments since the 1970’s.   It can certainly be argued whether our current divisiveness and the dysfunctionality of Congress are one reason we’ve had no Amendments recently, or one result of that, but the phenomena are certainly related to one another.

Well-thought-through and widely-accepted new Amendments could allow our nation’s founding document to grow and adapt to conditions which have changed dramatically, including: a population which has gone from about four million peeps in 1790 to some 330 million in 2020; a mix of states which has gone from 13 small, young and rural ones to 50 with wildly varied histories, populations and urban/rural characters; multiple technological and cultural revolutions; and an international context the Founders might well struggle to recognize. 

Given all that, here are a few modest proposals to be considered when the time seems right

Free the Courts:  we’ve all been taught that the Federal government has three branches -the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial (perhaps equal, perhaps not, depending…) and that this configuration ensures checks and balances on the power of each, thereby protecting the system and our freedoms.  Current events are making clear that the Judicial branch is not really an effective check or balance so long as the Chief Executive appoints (even with Legislative approval required) and can fire (at will and whim) the Attorney General, thus allowing that Executive to direct and weild the enormous power of the Department of Justice as he or she wishes.  A new Constitutional Convention, or a renewed and less-rigidly divided and more collaborative Congress would do well to consider an Amendment to remedy this by making Justice independent of the Executive branch and the Attorney General an elected office with a four year term, perhaps voted upon in Presidential off-years, and no longer a member of the President’s Cabinet (though still with other rights and privileges of Cabinet level responsibility and authority). 

While we’re at it: how about also solidifying the makeup of the Supreme Court by fixing it’s number (rather than leaving it vulnerable to change by some future legislature) and specifying a limited term for justices (so the Court better reflects gradual changes in society and culture) with staggered start dates (so no one President/term gets to appoint more justices than another (whether by random happenstance or by McConnel-esque abuses of Congress’s approval authority). Those changes would work against the politicization some believe we are experiencing with the current Court.  And, since we’re talking pie in the sky, maybe even consider requiring each Justice as they take their seat to designate a successor who will fill out the rest of their term should they die, be incapacitated or simply exhausted before it runs out (thus avoiding any lucky President – or violent actor – taking advantage of such an event to pack the court with their preferred jurists).

Speaking of elections: one aggravator of our recent discord has been the ascent of Presidents to office without receiving even the barest majority of the votes cast (not to mention those who did not even receive a plurality!).  More than just casting doubt upon a leader’s legitimacy, this has led too many citizens to conclude that their votes are not worth casting.  A constitutionally-mandated two-stage election would address this issue, with as many candidates/parties running in the first stage as wish to and then just the two top vote getters participating in a run-off election to decide who will hold the office.   That format would ensure the winner receives a majority of votes, while also offering an unmistakable indicator of just how strong or weak is their mandate. It might also diminish the stranglehold of two-party politics, since a third-party or independent candidate need only defeat one of the two major parties to reach the runoff (and have a legitimate chance at the White House), rather than having to surpass both of them from a standing start as under the current system.  Whatever expense or delay is incurred by this two-stage process might have ruled it out back in the founders’ days of carriage rides and snail mail but would be entirely manageable in today’s electronic age.

(Debating and reaching agreement on issues like those might even serve as a warm-up so said Congress or Convention could address the stalemate between small and large states with an amendment that retires or at least updates the Electoral College so Presidential Elections would more fairly deal with the enormous disparities in populations relative to Senatorial votes.)

Obviously, tons of other ideas for amendment are out there and more will quickly arise if the ball ever gets rolling, but those above seem to this writer to be top of the list.   The time is ripe for us to use the tool those wise heads passed down to us in order that their legacy may be improved and sustained for many more generations!

P. S. – This post was inspired in part by “Amend It!” written by Jill Lepore and appearing in the print and online editions of The Atlantic, October 2025.  Neither M. Lepore nor The Atlantic have any connection to this post or site, nor are either in any way responsible for its content.

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Grok Gets an F – Grooming an AI Encyclopedia

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According to reports*, Elon Musk’s new AI-generated online encyclopedia, Grokipedia, begins its entry for gender with: “Gender refers to the binary classification of humans as male or female based on biological sex…”

Wrong! Gender and sex are not the same things!

That Grok thinks they are**, indicates it has been ‘taught’ to parrot the opinions of its human creators.  Like a young child, it is not worldly or intelligent enough to think beyond what it has been told by its groomers and so sees the world through their blinders. 

For AI as with any other computative system, the value of output is highly dependent upon the quality of input.  The first law of computer science – ‘garbage in, garbage out’ – is worth keeping in mind as AI’s very human procreators inject their offspring into as many facets of our lives and world as they can, as quickly as possible, with no oversight and often without our consent or even our awareness. 

Knowledge is power, and ignorance posing as intelligence is an abuse of power, not a sign of the glorious and unadulterated progress which AI’s promoters claim to be offering to the world.

CAVEAT UTILITOR!

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* This post refers to a report by Will Oremus and Faiz Siddiqui in the electronic edition of the Washington Post on 2025-10-27 titled “Elon Musk launches a Wikipedia rival that extols his own ‘vision’”

** In case there’s any question: ‘Male’ and ‘female’ are classifications of sex, which is about biology and can mean, depending on who is speaking, which chromosomes a person’s cells carry, which type of reproductive cells their body produces, which genitalia it exhibits, etc.   ‘Man’ and ‘woman’ can refer to various selections from a wide range of public behaviors, perceptions, expectations and putative rules which are loosely and collectively referred to as gender.  Sex and gender terms are sometimes congruent, sometimes not, but they are not the same things, as Grok seems to believe.

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It’s Not Too Late!

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It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over*

It’s certainly too late to be first in citing Mr. Trump’s brazen demolition of the White House’s East Wing as a perfect encapsulation of what this administration is currently doing to our nation; plenty of commentators have already made that connection. 

It’s even past time to point out that his childish posting of a meme depicting himself as King in a crown, piloting a fighter jet to dump a stream of what appears to be manure on crowds of Americans is an honest indication of the man’s arrogance, an utter embarrassment to any thoughtful U. S. citizen and a terrible message to anyone around the world who might still hope our nation and its system of government represent anything decent or thoughtful.

What is timely is to note that between excesses like those plus persistent obsequiousness toward Vladimir Putin, overselling of his achievements around the Israeli/Hamas cease fire, careless acceptance of Doge’s destruction and the current government shutdown, callous badmouthing of one of the largest peaceful demonstrations in U. S. history as “whacked out” “radical left lunatics” who “are not representative of the people of our country” (emphasis added), farcically ignoring or evading a plethora of laws and judgements, his gratuitous pardon of the execrable George Santos among so many others and now his astonishingly self-serving proposal to have the Justice Department pay hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to himself to soothe his bruised ego, Mr. Trump is very close to transforming the U. S. Government into one more personal asset he has acquired and can play with as he wishes.

It is abundantly clear by now that the Judicial branch can neither act quickly enough to prevent this disaster nor does it have any real power to limit Mr. Trump’s impulsive actions, since the Supreme Court neutered the branch with its ruling in Trump. V. United States.

As for elections, the progress being made at the State level in gerrymandering and limiting access to the polls make it frighteningly plausible that many legitimate votes will have been made irrelevant by November of 2028, allowing Mr. Trump or his successors to retain power for the foreseeable future regardless whether or not a plurality of eligible voters wish it.

It’s not too late, though, to plead with those Republican legislators who hold the majority in Congress to recognize and admit what we are witnessing – the eradication of conscientious leadership and the elimination of any accountability for the nation’s Chief Executive (and through his Pardon power, anyone else who curries his favor or feeds his greed).  Not too late to reinstate the balance of power intended by our Constitution, if Republicans are willing to look past partisan marketing and act wisely to oppose the worst of his excesses. 

And, finally, it is most emphatically not too late to plead for Republican voters to use the 2026 election to clear away any legislators who will not credibly commit to executing Congress’ responsibilities, rather than rubber stamping Mr. Trump’s every impulse of every moment.  This plea is aimed not at those Republicans who cannot imagine themselves ever disagreeing with him on anything, but at the great number of Republicans who still sincerely believe in thoughtful leadership and representative democracy, in a nation that values all of its citizens equally and respects their rights equally, including the right to disagree with an office holder. 

It is up to those Republican voters (of which I count myself one), to first nominate and then elect Senators and Representatives who will insist that Congress fulfill its role, including to make the nation’s laws, to levy appropriate taxes and decide how they will be spent, to declare (or not!) wars and – potentially – to use the only power which remains, the power of Impeachment, to ensure that the entire Executive branch follow the Constitution and “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed” in all the myriad aspects that that clearly demands. “Faithfully,” that is, not by disregarding legitimate court rulings, not by handpicking attorneys and prosecutors who will spout disingenuous rationalizations to delay judgements indefinitely, and not by trying to conceal what is really going on beneath a flood of winking, smirking and distractions.

If those voters and their chosen representatives can bring themselves to see the light, it may not be too late to preserve what Benjamin Franklin said in 1787 he had just witnessed being created:

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

*Frequently credited to Yankees coach Yogi Berra in the 1973 baseball season, at least one source says this quip is the result of a slow-motion game of Telephone, as a similar but less catchy comment was progressively distorted from one media report to another until politician Joe Lieberman erroneously cited the current language, in 1982.

The Children of Men, P. D. James

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A Timely Commentary on current events – written nearly thirty-five years ago!

Grabbed this off a neighborhood free-books shelf on basis of the author’s familiar name and work; was surprised to find in place of the expected tea and class-system detective story a speculative political fiction written decades ago yet uncannily timely in its themes.  James* has always been a reliable commentor on the British government and governing class – she spent thirty years in the civil service after all (or rather, before being able to write all her more familiar titles) – but that has previously seemed incidental to the solving of mysteries.  Here, it is the main point.

Though first published in 1992, the novel is set in 2021 with a sci-fi sounding premise – that 25 years earlier it had become unavoidably obvious that all human males in the world had become infertile.  With the birth rate crashing in months to absolute zero, all of humanity was suddenly forced to comprehend the existential doom of universal aging, disability and death without the consolation of watching younger generations grow to replace them.  We are then given to understand how this resulted in apathy and lawlessness, perfect conditions for the rise of a fascistic strongman named ‘Xan’ (reference to Alexander ‘The Great,’ I’d guess).  Our guide through what follows is Dr. Theodore (Theo) Faron, an Oxford historian with a mythologically-tragic reason for retreating from public life but who was also a childhood friend of Xan and, until recently, an advisor to him in his autocratic reign.  When Theo is approached by a band of laughably incompetent would-be revolutionaries, the first half of the novel is set in motion. The second half (spoiler alert) is brought about by the discovery that Julian, a (female, despite the name) member of that conspiracy for whom Theo immediately begins to develop romantic feelings, is pregnant, a monumental event which suggests she and her child have the potential to save humanity from its dire fate.  From that development James builds a compelling thriller addressing moral questions of ends and means, guilt and forgiveness, God or not God and the temptation which even the most honorable person may experience when offered the chance to exercise power over others for what they believe to be good or necessary ends.

Xan’s resemblance to the current U. S. President is striking, and the arguments for his usurpation of total control over English life track almost perfectly with MAGA’s claims of necessity: societal disorder, citizens lost in despair and apathy, crises requiring responses more immediate than any deliberative process could manage, the purportedly inherent weakness and fecklessness of all so-called democratic processes.  The effects too, are symmetrical – arbitrary laws and judgement, scapegoating of immigrants and other ‘others,’ curtailment of individuals’ rights under brutal policing and cruel incarceration and an invasive security state to ensure those who have seized power get to hold it indefinitely.

All of this, James handles with intelligence and generosity (if sometimes overmuch time spent on the exact physiognomy of a face, niceties of vegetation, quality of sunlight or sky and the furnishings of various interiors; the one aspect in which the novel feels rooted in the author’s generation and previous genre).  Theo is a modest and honorable foil for Xan, who is himself allowed sufficient rope to make a moral case for his usurpation.  Their ultimate confrontation is well-scripted if a bit forced and the final decision which results from it is of Sophoclean magnitude and weight.

Among many impressively crafted moments is one where Theo, acting out of necessity to secure resources for the imminent birth of Julian’s child, discovers in himself the potential to enjoy violating norms and forcing others to his will, even to the edge of brutality.  Not only a worthy observation on human nature, this new self-knowledge plants a seed which allows the novel’s final moments and message to ring true.

Schooled by a difficult life, James may have honed her skills in the trenches of genre fiction, but The Children of Men affirms her a true literary artist.  It deserves to be revisited for that reason alone, and especially so in this moment, when its fictional time period has arrived and is turning out strikingly similarly, in some important respects, to what she imagined nearly thirty five years before.

*Officially: Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park!

Note: There is also a somewhat loose film adaption by the same title, credited to five writers and directed by Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) with Clive Owen portraying Theo.  The film received critical acclaim, numerous award nominations and a few wins, as well as positions on various “Top” lists, but did poorly at the box office).

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Tell Us How to Live!

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A free people will always be a diverse people, so a free nation must always be a diverse nation.

Ross Douthat, during a recent interview* advocating a more prominent role for religion in American culture and politics, argued that progressivism fails because “You need something else on the horizon…So that we can live in a specific way that we are supposed to live.”

This argument might carry more weight if there existed some single voice calling all humanity by some clear and direct method (simultaneously taking over every video screen on the planet in its owner’s first language perhaps, to steal an example from fiction) with specific instructions on how we are supposed to live.

In real life though, there is no such singular directive.  A Roman Catholic might point to The Bible – but what he’d actually be pointing to would be a specific reading and selections from its scriptures which themselves have evolved from loosely-documented source materials translated from one arcane language to another by men of less than perfect knowledge, their translations and interpretations fought over, compromised upon and codified over two thousand years by a man-made (literally – no significant women’s voices having been allowed) bureaucracy not always unconcerned with its own survival and wellbeing. 

An Eastern Orthodox voice might agree with Roman Catholic doctrine on some aspects of the good life, but disagree on others; a follower of the Russian Orthodox church could have differences with one or both.  A Southern Baptist or any of dozens of other denominations who also see themselves also as Christians and reference the same scriptures would have even further varied ideas of how to live.  An Orthodox Jew or observant Muslim from the Holy Land would certainly have strongly differences with any of those, despite their faiths springing from some of the same roots and looking to some of the same sources.  A Buddhist, a Sikh, a Hindu, or a believer in any of the multitude of less populous or just less publicized denominations, sects, or faiths (of which I am too ignorant to list them all), might find very little to agree upon in Mr. Douthat’s ordained ‘how we are supposed to live’ directive. 

So long as whatever spiritual entity which may be out there watching over humanity chooses to speak in obscure language and to only a few of us at any given time or place, persons of sincere faith and goodness are going to disagree – honestly, deeply and righteously – about how those with whom they share the planet are “supposed to live.”   

History records countless instances where embedding religious beliefs in governance have led to unequal treatment, religious persecution, economic damages, societal upheavals, violence, killing and right on up to the brutality of total warfare; all in the name of one or another party’s conception of “the way we are supposed to live.”  Even in realms which claimed their populace were of a single faith, differences and resulting tragedies have not been erased – and often become all the more brutal to those in the minority.  That such injustices may be somewhat less prevalent in our ‘modern’ era than before that is more a matter of incremental progress toward accepting differences than of the species having settled on a single religion.

If, then, one hopes to maintain a government ‘for the people,’ one of its primary principles must be to recognize the diversity (which is not an expletive, btw, as some wish to use it these days) of our beliefs and not enforce the views of any one faith on others who do not share them.  To tolerate and actually protect the freedom of each to worship and live as they wish, so far as their actions do not constrain the freedoms of others.

For any extensive society to live in real and lasting peace, it must look elsewhere than any religion for its common rules on how to live.  That is what the USA has attempted to do (with sometimes greater and sometimes less success) for over 250 years.  Others have tried as well, again with greater or lesser success, but generally more promise than those which have chosen theocracy.   Rather than giving up on that effort and moving toward some declaration of national religious identity, we and our descendants will be better served by recommitting to pluralism and to working together, allowing those of all faiths (including no religion or God) the freedom to live their own prescription to the greatest extent possible without it preventing others from living theirs.

Nationalizing any religious identity, no matter how watered down or camouflaged by clever marketing or promoted by obviously insincere lip-servers, is not the answer.

(* “Ezra Klein is Worried – But Not About a Radicalized Left,” New York Times, September 18, 2025)

Image: The Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkiye, has been a place of worship for both Christians and Muslims over the centuries. Photo by author.

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Pardon Who, Mr. Trump?!

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We learned yesterday that Mr. Trump has commuted the sentence of George Santos, the ex-congressman rightly convicted of fraud and identity theft. No reasonable explanation has been given for letting this criminal off after having served only a few months of a multi-year sentence with Mr. Trump’s wishes for “Good luck…” and “… a great life!”

Our executive has no concern, apparently, for the luck and lives of the people and organizations who now have absolutely zero chance of collecting the restitution due to them by judgement of the court which convicted Mr. Santos.

It is possible, perhaps, that Mr. Trump truly believes Santos “has been horribly mistreated…” and awarded this commutation to a political supporter for no reasons other than his love of justice and his compassion for the wronged. If so, let him demonstrate it by paying equal attention to the case of Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, who was recently released from custody after serving 43 years in prison for a murder reports say it is now clear he did not commit. Rather than being allowed to enjoy his “Good luck” and look forward to a “great life,” he was immediately taken into custody by ICE and placed in crude detention while they process him for deportation, based upon a drug offence to which he reportedly confessed as part of a plea deal; an offence which even if has any truth, is entirely overshadowed by the exemplary behavior he displayed during 43 years of wrongful imprisonment..

If George Santos has been “horribly mistreated” in serving three months for multiple crimes which were obvious and adjudicated in full, how much more deserving of compassion is Mr. Vedam?

Mr. Trump, please demonstrate your thoughtful and compassionate nature by commuting his charges and allowing him to spend his remaining years with his family rather than in a nation thousands of miles away from them and to which he has virtually no connection. Or, if that is too heavy a lift, at the very least direct your Attorney General to initiate a full examination of Mr. Vedam’s treatment with even a fraction of the zeal she has exhibited in prosecuting your political opponents.

Show us your true colors, Mr. Trump!

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One Ring to Rule Them All – The Breathtaking Cynicism (and Naivete) of Trump v. United States

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It is over a year since the Supreme Court issued their 6-3 ruling on Docket no. 23-939, Donald J. Trump versus the United States of America, which ruling granted the President immunity from Federal prosecution for virtually any acts while in office.

No such immunity having been written in the Constitution, their reasoning (originalism be damned) seems to have been that the fear of prosecution would be an undue distraction from the office’s duties and that the fear of such prosecution would impede a President from taking actions he otherwise believed necessary or justified. 

This ruling was cynical first in that it assumed a person who had sought and won the highest office in the land would value his own fate (political, financial or otherwise) more highly than the proper execution of that office.   Sadly, in the opinion of some observers, they have already been proven correct on that count.

The ruling was cynical second in assuming that even such a self-interested person, upon achieving the office whose responsibilities include selecting the head of its Department of Justice would not have sufficient faith in his appointees and the legal system they administer to rely upon that system to issue proper verdicts in the event he was subjected to improper prosecution. In this, the Court disregarded the basic conservative rationale that the possibility of prosecution provides a necessary and effective deterrent to illegal behavior. In this respect, their cynicism has freed the incumbent to act with total disregard of credible legal justification.

Third, and most cynical of all, is that the Justices did not themselves have sufficient faith in the American legal system, of which they are the figurehead, to use their position, prestige and ruling to assure the President that he could rely upon that system for protection.  Every other person in every U. S. jurisdiction lives every day of their lives knowing they could be prosecuted for something of which they do not believe they are guilty, and every one of us has no choice but to trust in the legal system to protect us.  And yet, our Supreme Court deemed it unwise to ask the holder of the highest public trust to do the same?  Breathtakingly cynical, and shameful.

Those thoughts were on my mind at the time the ruling came out, and I considered posting them, but sadly, did not get around to it.  Now, as Mr. Trump’s second term reveals its true form, it is clear that ruling was not only cynical, but at the same time equally naive.  By freeing the President from any accountability other than impeachment (the highest hurdle in the legal system and one which has not once taken effect, in nearly 250 years), the court’s ruling has encouraged him to act as he pleases, including to persecute with impunity anyone he chooses.

Moreover, in doing so while also leaving in place his virtually unlimited power to pardon, the Court allows him to hand a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card to anyone who does his bidding.  Far from protecting the nation, this greatly encourages improper acts of any sort by anyone who believes they can maintain the President’s favor.  In the few short months of this administration, we can already see this effect at work; that the Court’s majority did not foresee this outcome but instead enabled and encouraged it, exhibits breathtaking naivete, at the least. 

The result of these twin privileges, one clear in our Constitution and the other added to it by the recent decision, is that the chief executive may now act out his every whim, without fear of legal restraint for him or his followers.

If this was the ‘original intent’ of the authors of the Constitution, then that document is not at all what generations of us have been taught to believe it was.  If that was not the original intent, then shame be on the authors of the Court’s opinion in the case so very aptly named: Donald J. Trump versus the United States.

U-flying-O’s!

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Started yesterday on the front porch, breathing in the scent of fresh rain – our first in several months – and reading about the Executive’s use of our armed forces to summarily execute a boatload of what it claims (without substantiation) were ‘terrorists’ because they were transporting drugs headed (again, without substantiation) to consumers in our nation.  This despite the Constitution’s clear directive that it is Congress, not the Executive, who has the authority to commit the nation to war.

At the same time, we have clear statistical indicators that the economy is heading downward and the budget deficit upward despite the supposed magic bullet of a massive tax increase – in the form of tariffs – being arbitrarily imposed on the masses (us all) without Congressional authorization, and an upcoming deadline to pass a funding bill in order to avoid another government shutdown with all that that implies.

Not to mention extortionate prosecutions of news, educational, scientific and legal institutions for the sin of exposing the Executive’s actions to logic, fact and the laws by which all the rest of us must abide.

So it was of interest, scanning headlines before heading inside for another cuppa, to see that Congress was, at that very moment, using the People’s time, facilities and dollars for a hearing on whether or not the military is hiding evidence regarding UFOs.

Can there be any better illustration that this Congress has abdicated its role in governing the nation, than this – that with so many intensely real and vitally urgent issues of authority, accountability and simply doing their jobs, our representatives are pursuing rumors about U-flying-Os!

P. S. – That day ended with news of the killing of activist and influencer Charlie Kirk.   Terrible news; a tragic destruction of life and an unjustified act of pointless violence, regardless of his or anyone else’s political opinions.  Here’s hoping the killer is quickly apprehended and brought to justice to discourage any others from similar acts.

Thank you, Washington Post!

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Just yesterday I read Clare Malone’s All the Billionaire’s Men (New Yorker, 2025-05-26) reviewing Jeff Bezo’s stewardship of the Washington Post. The article raised worthwhile concerns about his commitment to the paper’s independence and integrity, his apparent capitulations to Mr. Trump and his MAGA illusion (epitomized by Amazon’s $40m licensing deal for a puff documentary about Mrs. Trump), and implicitly, whether the Post could continue to be a beacon against darkness. Serious issues to this subscriber and daily reader (online) of the Post.

Today, the Post published Karen DeYoung’s and Cate Brown’s exclusive reporting (contributed to by Heva Farouk Mahfouz) headlined ‘Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population‘ revealing a well-developed draft of one truly atrocious postwar plan for Gaza which the administration appears to be considering with great favor.

There’s much to be said about such a venal land grab, right now however, I’d like to thank the Washington Post newsroom, staff, editors and – assuming its Ownership continues to support such journalism – Mr. Bezos. As our government bends to the whim of a single autocrat, with policies developed in secret sessions among unelected plotters – when they do not spring fully formed from the ruler’s daydreams alone – we the people depend on committed and professional journalists to reveal what is really going on.

Thank you, Karen DeYoung, Cate Brown, Heva Farouk Mahfouz, the entire Washington Post staff and editorship and you too, Mr. Bezos, for keeping the lights on.

Robin Andrew