September 17, 2023

The Sad State of Legal Ethics in the Age of 'Get Trump'

John Eastman is a distinguished constitutional expert who had the temerity to advise Donald Trump on legal theories by which suspect electoral results in the 2020 election could be challenged.  These are perfectly valid theories, one should...

August 8, 2023

Yes, Trump Has a Right to Cameras in Court

Andrea Widburg reported recently that John Lauro, a lawyer defending Trump against the Jack Smith witch hunt, will request that cameras be allowed in the courtroom during the trial. As Widburg notes, this argument looks like a long shot, because t...

August 2, 2023

Will Chevron finally run out of gas?

The Chevron doctrine is a rule adopted by the Supreme Court in 1984.  It says that when the language of a statute is ambiguous, a court must defer to the regulatory agency's interpretation and may not substitute its own judgment. Man...

March 25, 2023

How can we deal with Putin if we don't understand him?

An axiom of any conflict situation is that, to be successful, or even to survive, one must study and understand the adversary's position. See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty: He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. ...

September 14, 2022

Attacking the Rule of Law

One of the most hallowed traditions of the U.S. republic is a commitment to the ideal of the Rule of Law.  Therefore, one of the most dystopic aspects of our current politics is that this ideal is under deliberate attack. The list of ass...

October 21, 2021

When PayPal cancels a nonprofit for saving millions of lives

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) is a group of distinguished and courageous doctors who are working to inform the public about the efficacy of early treatment of COVID, particularly with ivermectin and neutraceuticals. Withou...

October 12, 2021

Standing with John Eastman

John Eastman, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, is a distinguished constitutional scholar, as demonstrated by his insights into such legal arcana as Privileges & Immunities, the General Welfare Clause, and Separation of Powers. A decade ...

August 13, 2021

COVID vaccines: Where are the autopsies?

In a recent conversation with a retired doctor, I voiced my layman's understanding that autopsies are a great engine of medical progress, and I asked where I might find reports on autopsies of people who have died after taking COVID vaccines. ...

July 24, 2021

When leftists shun ivermectin, they show how scientifically illiterate they are

Saturday, July 24 is World Ivermectin Day, as "people of the world will come together to celebrate ivermectin for a day focused on unity, love, and gratitude for this precious gift from Mother Earth." I will be with them.  Bein...

June 16, 2021

Why do brilliant doctors and scientists toe the party line against COVID treatments?

One should believe the science, and the scientific evidence is overwhelming that ivermectin (IVM) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) are effective for preventing and treating COVID, especially when combined with other drugs. The studies supporting this ...

May 21, 2021

Don't tell Fauci: More evidence for ivermectin

Dr. Pierre Kory and his colleagues at the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) are leading an effort to assess the effectiveness of ivermectin as a prophylactic against and treatment for COVID and to communicate to the public the mounti...

January 16, 2021

Amazon Goes Mad

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." —Euripides Amazon abruptly de-platformed Parler last week, terminating its web services hosting account with a speed and lack of notice clearly designed to ruin the company. Am...

December 13, 2020

The Honor of the Legal Profession

Decades ago, when I went to law school, students were drilled about the importance of "process values" to the legal system and to society.  Citizens needed to be confident that a cause, win or lose, was heard with attention by com...

December 11, 2020

A little known clause of the Constitution has a huge bearing on the Texas election lawsuit

The papers filed by Texas and its allies in Texas v. Pennsylvania do not invoke the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government" (Art IV, Sec. 4). ...

December 10, 2020

What must our election look like to foreign observers?

An excellent source for careful commentary on Russian matters is Patrick Armstrong, a former Canadian diplomat who produces original essays, mostly for Strategic Culture (a site that may or may not be supported by the Russian government) and a biweek...

November 12, 2020

Trump's Pennsylvania complaint is brilliant

The complaint filed in Pennsylvania by the Trump campaign is a superb piece of legal craftsmanship. It was filed in federal court, not state.  The gist is that some of the state's actions, and particularly the exclusion of Republican...

September 24, 2020

Illegal aliens and the Census: Next stop — SCOTUS

The latest development in Trump's battle to limit the political influence of illegal aliens occurred on Sept 10, in a federal court in New York.  The judges declared illegal his memorandum directing the Census Bureau to provide him with...

August 4, 2020

Illegal aliens and the Census: Trump drops the other shoe

Not long ago, President Trump issued a Memorandum on Excluding Illegal Aliens from the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census.  As the title telegraphs, it directs the Department of Commerce to provide the president with the informati...

July 8, 2020

Boiling problems in western Virginia could lose Republicans a winnable state

On the evening of July 3, I watched President Trump's speech at Mt. Rushmore, a soaring defense of America and its values.  The next morning, I returned to the reality of the sad state of the Republican Party of Virginia, as exemplified...

May 15, 2020

Judge Sullivan should be careful what he asks for

The latest development in the persecution of Michael Flynn was Judge Sullivan's unusual order reacting to the DOJ motion to dismiss.  As the DOJ establishes, a decision to drop a prosecution is a prerogative of the Executive Branch, so ...

May 4, 2020

The Framing of Flynn and the Logan Act

Comments on the revelations about the FBI's effort to put Michael Flynn in a fork whereby he either admitted to a crime or lied to the agents have been vague about exactly what crime he was suspected of. The answer is a violation of the Logan ...

April 17, 2020

The Russians did it -- Revised Version

For three years, the left has been peddling the story that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in collaboration with the Trump campaign, with the ridiculous Steele Dossier cited as the proof. Now, the Party Line has shifted. The Russia...

April 1, 2020

Still alive in the coronavirus panic? Thank a worker

I just visited my local Food Lion supermarket.  A small battalion of workers was busy restocking shelves, and I thanked the manager and every other employee I found for the great job they are doing, keeping open and stocked (except for pape...

February 14, 2020

Of course Vindman deserved to be fired

During his testimony at the House impeachment hearing, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman said Oleksander Danylyuk, the chairman of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, offered him the job of Ukrainian defense minister.  Vindman tre...

November 28, 2019

Will Virginia conservatives need 2nd Amendment sanctuaries?

Virginia conservatives anticipate a spate of anti-gun legislation from a state Legislature now controlled by the swamp-dwellers in the state and federal capitals of Richmond and the D.C. suburbs. In response, a sanctuary movement is rolling along,...

November 26, 2019

Defending Myles Garrett

William Sullivan has written two columns excoriating Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett for his altercation with Pittsburgh quarterback Mason Rudolph (here and here). I have been an off-and-on Browns fan since about 1950, and I...

July 14, 2019

Trump and Barr counter-punch on the Census and illegal aliens

The term "Overton Window" describes the bounds of acceptable public discourse, the range of ideas the public is willing to consider seriously. In a news conference last Thursday, President Trump and A.G. Barr expanded the Overton Window ...

July 3, 2019

Roll Tide: Alabama versus the Census

In Department of Commerce v. New York, Chief Justice Roberts joined with the Court's four social justice warriors (Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan) in refusing to uphold the Commerce Department's decision to add a citizenship question to t...

June 11, 2019

New York Times changes its story on Russia poisoning ex-spy

"Russiagate and the missing ducks" addressed a New York Times story (April 16) about Trump's reaction to a briefing by CIA director Haspel (then the deputy) about the (alleged) Skripal poisoning in Britain. The gist of the NYT story ...

June 4, 2019

Russiagate and the missing ducks

Stephen Cohen of The Nation is consistently one of the best commentators on the Russiagate affair. He just published another excellent piece analyzing "How Did Russiagate Begin?, which canvasses some possibilities and leans toward the explana...

April 4, 2019

Mueller's Chevauchée: Burn Everyone and Everything Trump Loves

Medieval English kings were not nice people.  Edward III (1312–1377), in particular, used his son the Black Prince to wage a form of warfare called chevauchée, which consisted of killing and burning everyone and everything that...

March 9, 2019

Steele and Skripal: A Unified Theory

The Steele dossier is the collection of gossip and fantasy about Donald Trump, put together by former Brit MI6 operative Christopher Steele during 2016 on the dime of the Democratic Party.  It triggered the Russian collusion investigation o...

January 15, 2019

There's More to Russia than Meets the Eye

While I have only a concerned citizen's knowledge of foreign affairs, I am baffled by the hysterical Russophobia of the MSM and the Democratic Party since the 2016 election. As far as I can tell, there should be no real issues between Russia a...

June 22, 2018

Virginia in the Balance

Going into last week’s primary, Virginia Republicans had three appealing candidates for the right to challenge Democrat Tim Kaine for the Senate. Few substantive differences divided them -- all are “drain-the-swamp” Trump supporters...

November 14, 2017

How to tell if the Washington Post has it right on Roy Moore

In assessing the reliability of the Washington Post's allegations against Judge Roy Moore, it is fair to ask whether the Post or its reporters have any skin in the game.  That is, will they suffer significantly if the story turns out to be f...

October 20, 2017

Guess who runs the Motion Picture Association of America in the Weinstein era

It seems as though everyone and his publicist is commenting on Harvey Weinstein and the Hollywood sex culture, but there is an interesting exception: the Motion Picture Association of America.  The scandal is not noted on its blog, nor in its ne...

September 6, 2017

Sarah Palin and the New York Times: The Next Chapter

As expected by the bien-pensants of the mainstream media, a New York federal district judge dismissed Sarah Palin's libel suit against the New York Times. The decision reached what is, for the Progressive media, a politically correct result, w...

August 20, 2017

What do you mean, 'Marxists'?

A continuing source of amazement is the depiction of the left and its social justice warriors as "Marxists." However wrongheaded in theory and tragic in practice, Marxism placed great emphasis on work.  Indeed, its basis is that val...

January 18, 2017

Keep on tweeting, Trump

Trump's aggressive tweeting has the twits in the MSM in a bit of a snit. "Undignified," say the MSM newsies, and "another attack on the media," and "no way to challenge factual inaccuracies."  How, they fret,...

October 23, 2016

How government rigs elections

The Manhattan Contrarian ranks at the top of my list of perceptive bloggers. He specializes in elegant analyses of dysfunctional NYC policies on welfare and housing, but he adds excellent forays into national politics. One of his best is "...

August 16, 2016

Let's Assume Trump Is Shrewd and Disciplined, Principled and Patriotic

As a Ted Cruz supporter, I embraced the standard conservative depiction of Donald Trump as a megalomaniacal buffoon, lacking in principle, prone to shooting his mouth off, barely Republican and not at all conservative. The problem with this view i...

April 10, 2016

Evenwel v Abbott: A Good Day for Democracy

In Evenwel v Abbott, the recent Texas legislative apportionment case, the plaintiffs argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that the boundaries of legislative districts be drawn so as to equalize numbers of CVAPs (...

January 27, 2016

Cruz the Moderate

After reading once again that Ted Cruz is too extreme to be elected president, I went to his website to determine wherein lies this purported extremism. The bottom line is that Cruz’s positions are merely good common sense. In fact, they rep...

January 2, 2016

Harvard Bows to Its Masters

The latest grievance of social justice warriors at Harvard is to the use of the title “House Master” to describe those people who are in charge of the residential and educational facilities called “Houses”. In their view, t...

November 28, 2015

The Syrian Refugee Program Has the Hallmarks of the Obama Style

President Obama’s directive that the U.S. admit 10,000 Syrian refugees as a humanitarian measure has many hallmarks of his governing style: it lacks a proper legal basis; it will harm rather than help its purported beneficiaries; it will underm...

November 14, 2014

Mary Landrieu and Miguel Estrada: Memory Time

Current news reports say that Harry Reid will allow a vote on the Keystone Pipeline so that Mary Landrieu can register her support, and thus improve her chances in the December Senate election in Louisiana, even as the Democratic majority votes it do...

July 1, 2014

The Tea Party's Alamo?

The oddest headline reaction to the Cochran win in Mississippi was on a story in The Hill: “The Tea Party’s Alamo?” It came from a statement by Steve LaTourette, “former Ohio Republican congressman who is currently presiden...

May 29, 2014

Ben Bernanke's Speeches: At Least One Business Is Prospering

Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, according to the New York Times, has developed a brisk business in performing at small dinner parties for “bankers, hedge fund billionaires and leaders of industry” at $200,000-$400,000 a pop. ...

April 21, 2014

<em>Commentary</em> and Sarah Palin

A prominent member of the Republican establishment has decided once again to damn Sarah Palin with faint praise. In a recent column on Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Jonathan Tobin says: “there is little doubt about the reality of another wa...

April 2, 2014

The IRS and the Tea Parties: Should You File That Form?

As the scandal over the proposed IRS rules attacking citizen activists grows, the administration digs in.  It is a good bet that the rules will be finalized soon, though perhaps the IRS will rethink some of the most blatantly unconstitutional se...

February 20, 2014

House of Cards: Reality TV

Were I in charge of grand strategy for the Tea Party, I would have one particular pipedream. In it, I would create a popular TV program depicting Washington politicians as a lying, thieving, corrupt, cynical bunch of egomaniacs, concerned solel...

February 6, 2014

John Roberts as Statesman

In The Ghost and John Roberts and The Roberts Trap is Sprung, Bill Dunne addresses the possibility that Chief Justice Roberts was influenced by high-level political considerations when he cast the deciding vote to uphold ObamaCare. As Dunne says, had...

January 17, 2014

Opposition Research in Virginia

Republican Establishment pillar Ed Gillespie has announced for the 2014 Virginia Senate race, against incumbent Democrat Mark Warner. The opposition research is already starting. A click of the mouse and one learns that Gillespie has supported an in...

January 14, 2013

Advice on the Second Amendment

Pravda, Guns & America (AT, Jan. 11) quoted a Russian who advises: Americans: Never Give Up Your Guns, citing the bloody and tragic result of the Communists' confiscation of arms after they came to power in 1917. The quotation has been echoing ar...

September 23, 2012

What Republicans Must Do

Anyone who has not seen Steve Flesher's What Romney Must Do should read it immediately. His major point is that the Republicans make a huge mistake by insulting "the 47%." Sure, there are welfare queens who barter food stamps for color TVs, serial co...

September 13, 2012

The government share of the economy and the tipping point

Hard as it may be to credit, Steve McCann's fine How the Financial Collapse Would Happen in an Obama Second Term is overly optimistic. Steve puts US government spending at all levels as over 40% of our GDP, slated soon to go up to 46%. This is correc...

August 11, 2012

Political Legitimacy and the Special Interest State

The current state of American politics is even worse than most people want to admit. Commentary from both ends of the political spectrum assumes that we are in a debate over the scope and function of government. Should we have a welfare state in whic...

July 4, 2012

ObamaCare: Tax versus Penalty

At a program on ObamaCare last Monday, Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute made a crucial point about how the comedy of mendacity called ObamaCare will unfold. After an initial phase-in period, the "tax", as we now know it to be, for not buying...

June 26, 2012

All Right, Have It Your Way - It's a Living Constitution

For the past thirty years, conservatives and progressives have debated a fundamental question about interpreting the U.S.  Constitution.  Conservatives hew to the doctrine of originalism -- that judges must seek the original meanings of the...

May 5, 2012

EPA: Crucifixion as usual

An EPA regional director recently talked of the utility of "crucifying" oil and gas producers, apparently without much concern for whether they were actually violating any law. The Administrator quickly stated that this was not agency policy, and the...

November 23, 2011

Good Luck With That Operation

So the government is going to run the health care system? Last week, a friend in DC was having some interior painting done, and needed to get street parking permits for the workers, since she lives in an area where only residents can park longer than...

November 9, 2009

The Measure of Virtue

Anthony Daniels has a superb piece in the November edition of New Criterion that reviews the evidence that the intellectuals of the 1930s were fully informed about the nature of the Soviet regime and its deliberate creation of famine and starvation. ...