Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[darkknight9]

I'm honestly afraid to bring up anything this sensitive... it brings out the worst of the worst... but is this a fair assessment?

Joseph (Jake) Klein

It is increasingly clear that @reason must drop @VolokhC in order to maintain a libertarian foreign policy stance. Volokh’s blog has repeatedly published misinformation regarding Israel’s war crimes, written by @ProfDBernstein and others, to defend continued American intervention for Israel.

Now they are proudly endorsing blacklisting conservatives for the “crime” of being critical of America’s relationship with Israel. This is the opposite of the libertarian position, and it should not be advanced by our flagship publication.

[Kazinski]

HaHaHaHa.

Its not sensitive its ridiculous.l, if for nothing else for the proposition that Reason which has published at least 697 pieces decrying cancel culture in the last 7 years would cancel someone for their views, including the blog which probably drives at least half the trafic to this site.

[Riva]

Almost as unhinged as suggesting that the Allies were guilty of war crimes for interfering with German efforts to combat Jewish aggression. Just needs "from the river to the sea."

[John F. Carr]

He needs to make a huge donation to Reason.

[Kazinski]

HaHaHaHa.

Its not sensitive its ridiculous.l, if for nothing else for the proposition that Reason which has published at least 697 pieces decrying cancel culture in the last 7 years would cancel someone for their views, including the blog which probably drives at least half the trafic to this site.

[Kazinski]

I was thinking that the Administration's claim that they were cancelling off shore wind farm leases for National Security Reasons was suspect.

But it turns out offshore windfarms can seriously degrade radar performance. And in an age of drones and autonomous drone ships thats a real danger.

This long tweet is heavily footnoted with the studies that show irs a real concern,and creates a legitimate National Secure vulnerability.
https://x.com/i/status/2003204608714256474

[santamonica811]

Kaz,
Go with your first instinct. OF COURSE it's not the real reason the Trump administration is doing this. It's because Trump has made it one of his policies to oppose wind power and to sabotage wind power.

Yes, one can imagine some doomsday scenario, where a drone ship is piloted towards America, AND some evil genius has figured out the exact path where offshore turbines diminishes our radar, AND this means that instead of getting a 75 minute advance warning, we only get a 71 minute advance warning, AND somehow this extra 4 minutes makes all the difference in terms of blowing the ship out of the water vs having a lethal attack on The Hamptons' beachcombers. Yes, in the existential sense...it IS possible. But it's also obviously bullshit.

It's noteworthy that the ban on foreign consumer drones has now taken effect. So, for anyone who wants to buy a new DJI drone (the consumer drones that are vastly superior to anything made in America), you're out of luck. The ones you now own are grandfathered in, so we current owners are okay. Except...the ban also applies to spare parts, so we're SOL if anything breaks. Fortunately, my sister is a professor in Montreal, so I will have a workaround. But the vast majority of current drone owners are fucked. At least till 2029, when a new administration comes in. (Trump's rationale for this drone ban was . . . wait for it!!! . . . yeah; you guessed it: National security.) LOL

[Kazinski]

I was talking about a merchant ship or an autonomous drone ship launching aerial drones at critical infrastructure, military targets, or civilian targets.

And its not a question of if, its when.

I posted this story a week or two ago about Russian drones launched from merchant motherships incursions into Europe.

https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/how-seven-students-unmasked-russias-drone-motherships

Nothing to worry about there?

[DDHarriman]

You forget how these people reason:

santamonious811 beliefs = Trump * -1

No evidence or facts will move them.

[santamonica811]

DD,
You think this restriction on alternative energy came from . . . um, Biden? Obama????? A policy comes directly from the Trump administration, and you think that criticizing this policy (and criticizing Trump for enacting this policy) is an example of TDS or anti-Trump bias???!!???

You do realize that you are sounding insane? Exactly WHOM should be we criticizing in this scenario? I'm genuinely curious about your take--where do you place the blame? (Or, where do you place the credit, if you think it's a good idea?)

[DDHarriman]

OF COURSE it's not the real reason the Trump administration is doing this.

That's the INSANE part. Criticize all you want but inventing a parade of horribles for motive and then being unmoved by any counter evidence or reasoning is completely and totally insane. It has, however, become part of the Democrat brand. No matter how far into our enemies arms that drives you.

[Frank Drackman]

My "Spare Parts" are a back up Drone (Mini4K) that I've put 3 miles on (versus 90 on the first one I fly regularly)
They included a bunch of Spare Propellers, so far I've only had to replace 2 of the 8 whose tips broke off (thanks to a power line, I thought I had bought the model with "Collision Avoidance" I didn't)
It flew fine for miles with the 2 tips broken off, but while hovering it would yaw just a bit to that side. Working on getting around that pesky 400 ft Altitude limit.

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

The U.S. government is preparing to crack down on foreign-made drones, moving to prohibit the "import, sale, operation and marketing of new models of drones and drone components manufactured by foreign countries,"
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/fcc-ban-foreign-made-drones/2025/12/22/id/1239306/

[SRG2]

Why has the FCC the authority to impose such a ban?

[Life of Brian]

Treetops level, drones use wireless communications protocols such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and sometimes even cellular for control and feedback to the operator, and thus have to be FCC authorized just like any other device using those protocols.

The public notice from yesterday lists several more specific sources of authority in the second sentence.

[SRG2]

Thank you!

[Joe_dallas]

Offshore wind should be cancelled. Even adjusting for the errors in the lazards lcoe costs which understates the lcoe costs and which only measures the cost of generation, the lcoe is much higher than than most every other source of electric generation.

Lifespan is significantly overstated for offshore wind and operating and maintenance costs are understated.

[ThePublius]

Agreed. Electricity prices always go up with the inclusion of wind in the picture.

Not to mention the environmental impact. It's bad for fishing fleets. It's bad for whales. And disposal of components at end of life is an environmental disaster.

[SRG2]

When you determine the economic costs of wind, do you account for the cost of foreign policies driven by defence of oil supply?

And do you ever consider the strategic benefit of reducing dependence on foreign energy sources?

We are often informed by Trump and cultists that making the US self-sufficient or at least, less reliant on imports of strategic materials, is an inherently good thing. Why is wind energy an exception?

[Joe_dallas]

SRG2 2 hours ago
"When you determine the economic costs of wind, do you account for the cost of foreign policies driven by defence of oil supply?"

Lets make of those "implicit and Explicit" costs just like those fossil fuel subsidies that only bounce around in advocates mental delusions.

[SRG2]

Lets make of those "implicit and Explicit" costs just like those fossil fuel subsidies that only bounce around in advocates mental delusions.

Coherence requested.

[Joe_dallas]

It would require some understanding on your part of the games played with accounting for costs - both implicit and explicit costs - translated as being those costs that are real and unreal for purposes of distorting the true costs.

[SRG2]

That applies to all energy sources, of course. And I am well aware of sundry accounting and other tricks that hide the true cost, from depreciation to internal transfers, to foreign policy to pollution and its clean-up, etc.

AFAIC the real reason for opposition to renewable and alternative sources is that they're promoted by people whose politics you and your ilk do not like, and make primary energy more available in general. I do not believe for a moment that you or ThePublius or Trump would approve of renewables or alternatives even if the economics were unambifguously in favour. You'd find some rationalisation to explain why oil and coal were still to be preferred.

FWIW if what we had already were wind, hydro and solar, and good storage, so that we had a robust network, nobody in their right mind would propose coal or oil power plants. And that goes to my general heuristic for long-term investment, whether energy or CDs v. vinyl. If the tech being replaced were new, and the replacement tech were the established tech, would you switch? E.g., if we'd always had CDs and ten years ago someone invents vinyl, would people switch from CDs to vinyl?

[Joe_dallas]

SRG2
"FWIW if what we had already were wind, hydro and solar, and good storage, so that we had a robust network, nobody in their right mind would propose coal or oil power plants."

That comment highlights how poorly you and other advocates understand the costs and the engineering and production cycles of renewables.

There is a need for advocates to understand the difference between demand limited generation and supply limited generation and why those limitations matter. Renewables are supply limited generation.

Start with Mark Jacobson's supplemental tables in his 100% multiple 100% renewable studies, (tables S3 through s14 as I recall). Then take the actual capacity production on a daily basis from EIA . gov. The first thing that you will find is the required built out to cover low production periods is approx 4x of the build out using average capacity factor. The excess build out shows that the full system cost is about 3x-4x of the advertised LCOE cost numbers.

The second important fact you will find is that the so called every 30 second stress test that Jacobson proudly claims is an absolute failure, with multiple 3-4 day periods every year with 10% - 30% supply shortages. The 3 day Feb 2021 freeze fiasco in Texas would have been a 7-10 freeze fiasco across the entire north american continent with a 60+% shortage in supply.

In summary the vast majority of renewable advocates have neither done the due diligence required to make an educated assessment of renewables or are incapable of even recognizing to issues. Instead relying on talking points.

[SRG2]

That comment highlights how poorly you and other advocates understand the costs and the engineering and production cycles of renewables.

That comment highlights how intently you are wedded to your opposition. You have completely overlooked that were you to introduce fossil fuels, all the development and infrastructure costs that had taken place in the past and have now largely been amortised would be applicable now and going forward.

[Kazinski]

Since America has been a net energy exporter since 2019, defense spending on protecting oil supplies has nothing to do with domestic energy consumption.

We have other strategic reasons to defend oil supplies for the benefit of the allied producing countries, and allied consuming countries.

[Sarcastr0]

Electricity prices always go up with the inclusion of wind in the picture.

Do you have reflex to overplay your hand?

I could see transition costs, transmission infrastructure, maybe even bad policy via overly early adoption redundancy issues.

But that's going to vary depending on the ground state. And development costs should not be conflated with operating costs, especially in the long term.

Bottom line, sometimes is not the same as always.

[ThePublius]

Any costs that are passed along to rate payers are part of electricity costs, and the costs you mention are inevitably passed on to the rate payers. I can't find a single instance of electricity prices to consumers not going up with the introduction of wind.

In all cases wind is duplicative generation, as it requires conventionally powered (gas, coal, nuke) "leveling" powerplants to be usable. So now you have redundant transmission infrastructure and maintenance. Making a gas fired powerplant bigger would be vastly less expensive, short term and long term, to deploying wind and its necessary infrastructure.

"Long term" with wind is also debatable. What's long term? Gearboxes and blades need attention at 8 to 12 years. Lifetime is around 20 to 25, optimistically. Gas powerplants were planned for 25 to 30 years and routinely go for 40 to 45. And you don't require expensive ships and boats to maintain them.

As with any controversial topic, there's a lot of debate on this. Google searches yield, "no, wind is projected to lower energy costs...." Yet, in places where it's deployed, when you add up capital costs, network fees, and government subsidies, it raises electricity costs to consumers.

[Sarcastr0]

Development costs can only me amortized so much, so handwaving them into 'costs' is a reductive view that mitigates towards locking in the status quo.

In all cases wind is duplicative generation is just begging the status quo question.

"Long term" with wind is also debatable is you conflating maintenance - an operating cost - with capital outlays and development costs.

in places where it's deployed, when you add up capital costs, network fees, and government subsidies, it raises electricity costs to consumers.
A blanket statement you cannot have the knowledge to make, especially given the ignorance in large acquisition programs you evince above.

You just assert stuff you don't know. I've noticed that the liberals on here are better at staying in their lane.
What is it with MAGA people and addiction to Dunning Kruger?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"liberals on here are better at staying in their lane"

They know that scene in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" where they are going the wrong way. They don't want to kill someone.

[ThePublius]

Believe what you want, there is no cost here that's going to just be absorbed by someone without cost to the rate payers and tax payers. It's just that simple. This includes development, deployment, maintenance, generation, network, and so on.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't understand a damn thing I wrote if you believe I said anything was costless.

[ThePublius]

You're handwaving the costs away.

We already pay among the highest electricity rates in the country here in Massachusetts, and Vineyard Wind is expected, by many, to increase that, despite the B.S. from the politicians.

They talk about the generation rates, but that's not what a retail customer pays; you're charged delivery charges, which exceed the cost of your energy usage. They will bury wind infra costs in these.

[Joe_dallas]

Nobody understands a damn thing you ever write

[Sarcastr0]

Distinguishing between capital costs and operation costs is not handwaving capital costs away! It's noting that those costs are not throwing money down a hole; they come with benefits, especially over the long term.

Under your myopic thinking, capital costs, especially for new technological paradigms, are always disfavored since long-term thinking doesn't matter.

We'd have no national electrification, by your thinking. What a waste from the status quo that was working great!

[ThePublius]

We were talking about prices to the consumer. These days capital costs, grid costs, etc., are all applied to bills, raising prices.

I don't perceive the benefits from adding wind that you apparently do. We already have a good grid. What we need in the Northeast is more gas pipeline. Our brilliant governor bragged about stopping two pipeline developments in MA, and now completely denies it!

[Sarcastr0]

OK I've tried like 4 times. You're not hearing what I'm writing about capital expenditures and expense to the consumer in the long term.

And you think we have a good grid?!

No point in continuing here.

[Kazinski]

Offshore wind costs about twice as much as gas turbine production, they only way it works is with huge subsidies.

"Offshore wind is generally more expensive per kWh than onshore wind or solar but becoming competitive with or cheaper than natural gas, with costs varying widely ($70-$157/MWh or $0.07-$0.157/kWh) versus gas ($45-$74/MWh or $0.045-$0.074/kWh) in recent analyses, though subsidies heavily favor renewables, making them much cheaper in practice, with offshore wind potentially dropping to $53-$75/MWh by 2035*."

https://evworld.com/article.php?slug=is-offshore-wind-really-cheaper-than-gas-a-reality-check

* in 10 years a miracle occurs making offshore wind the same cost as gas now, when there really is no major technological breakthrough pending in the mechanical production of electricity.

[jb]

Agreed. Electricity prices always go up with the inclusion of wind in the picture.

Cite? And hopefully something other than the form of "inflation exists".

Surely the folks in North Dakota and Iowa must be waiting to hear this news, since the majority of electricity production in both states is now wind-based, and I'm guessing that's not because of ideological reasons.

[ThePublius]

North Dakota's electricity prices rose with the introduction of wind power:

"Electricity costs in North Dakota have generally risen alongside increased wind power, but attributing price hikes solely to wind is complex, as many factors (grid upgrades, other energy sources, market design) affect rates, though studies suggest wind integration can add costs while also providing cheaper energy at zero marginal cost, creating mixed effects. While wind energy is often cheap to generate, grid integration, transmission, subsidies, and other investments (like carbon capture) also influence overall costs, leading to higher bills despite wind's low operating cost."

[jb]

Right, so "inflation exists". Congratulations, by this logic all types of electricity generation increases costs.

[ThePublius]

That's not what that says.

[SRG2]

If North Dakota build new fossil fuel plants to meet rising demand for electricity (or to replace obsolete plants), will that increase or decrease electricity prices, in your opinion?

[Life of Brian]

Surely the folks in North Dakota and Iowa must be waiting to hear this news, since the majority of electricity production in both states is now wind-based

I'll in turn take a cite on North Dakota -- this source shows coal as still dominant, with wind at just over a third of production.

and I'm guessing that's not because of ideological reasons.

Correct; it's more the intersection of wind prevalence and subsidies from the magic money tree.

[jb]

I'll in turn take a cite on North Dakota -- this source shows coal as still dominant, with wind at just over a third of production.

Oops, sorry. I meant South Dakota!

https://www.keloland.com/keloland-com-original/south-dakota-ranks-2nd-in-percentage-of-wind-energy-generated-in-2023/

Correct; it's more the intersection of wind prevalence and subsidies from the magic money tree.

Indeed. It makes sense to generate wind energy where it is windy.

[Life of Brian]

Indeed. It makes sense to generate wind energy where it is windy.

It makes more sense, yes. But were we to remove the subsidy thumb on the scale I suspect it would suddenly not make much if any sense at all.

[jb]

Hard to say, since basically all forms of energy have various subsidies. The OBBB just got rid of most of the wind subsidies while retaining them for various other forms of generation, though, so we'll get some pretty direct feedback on the effects of wind subsidies in the near future.

[David Nieporent]

There's a North Dakota and a South Dakota? How gullible do you think people are?

[Kazinski]

Land wind may indeed be cost competitive, but offshore wind is a completely different animal.

See my cite above.

[myself]

I guess there's no one like the government to save private firms from making bad decisions!

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's more than four minutes, but even if it wasn't, four minutes can be the difference between your family being incinerated and not...

Your call...

[Sarcastr0]

Yes this Twitter guy you found and his lit search must be the secret reason.
No confirmation bias there. And the admin not saying anything about thst is just them doing opsec. They’re so good at keeping their mouths shut after all.

Surely it’s not the obvious seeming spite and abuse of national security necessity.

You really got no critical thinking when it comes to defending Trump.

[Sarcastr0]

Kaz, does not trust any economic analysis other than his own, nor legal analysis. But here he seems to have been so trusting he not only believes a twitter dude citing stuff, he does not appear to have clicked through to the sources.
-------------
The first paper is not a paper, it is from a conference 8 years ago. And it finds the problem pretty marginal, though material. To civilian radar:

"The study found that the long-range air surveillance radars do not typically detect BIWF, which is consistent with LOS predictions however, the analysis did identify brief periods of detection. Detections by coastal radar systems outside predicted LOS may be the result of anomalous propagation, where atmospheric conditions result in signal propagation beyond the typical radar horizon. Specifically, super refraction and atmospheric ducting can cause anomalous propagation in coastal environments. Analysis of data from nearby surface weather stations did not produce any obvious patterns or anomalies during these periods. MIT LL recommends additional study in this area using radiosonde upper-air observation data to better understand and incorporate the frequency of these conditions into wind turbine–radar interference models for coastal environments. "
..
"Mitigations for land-based wind turbine impacts to air surveillance radar are currently in various stages of development, testing, and deployment. These mitigations include existing radar upgrades and infill radar systems. The radar upgrades developed to date have primarily focused on the CARSR LRR and the DASR/ASR-11 SRR. However, the ARSR-4 LRR and ASR-9 SRR are the most impacted types by future offshore wind deployment based on this analysis. Additional study is needed to determine the transferability and performance of CARSR and DASR/ASR-11 upgrades given significant architectural 7 differences between these types and the ARSR-4 and ASR-9. Low cost upgrades may be challenging given legacy hardware and processing constraints"

Citation 2 is about the working group to mitigate any issues for civilian radar, and it's success.

We wouldn't hear about actual military radar in scientific literature, but I'd bet they're doing even better.
-------------
Citation 3 does not appear in this official writeup and seems to be included in error. It is some public defender's twitter posts. Dude is pretty broad in his posts, but does retweet someone saying Trump's canceling these wind farms is bad.

[Kazinski]

Well you are right about this:
"We wouldn't hear about actual military radar in scientific literature,"

The research the Administration is relying on is classified:
"WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior announced today that it is pausing—effective immediately—the leases for all large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in the United States due to national security risks identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports. This pause will give the Department, along with the Department of War and other relevant government agencies, time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects."

[Sarcastr0]

So the unclass twitter rando you liked turned out to be kinda trash.

So here's the blind trust in the administration, despite everything.

Your critical thinking is tunable depending on what you wish to be true. It'd embarrass most posters.

And I guess you don't want this admin to be petty to point of harming Americans.

It's increasingly forcing you into some very silly takes.

[Kazinski]

I can't think of any possible harm to Americans from stopping offshore windpower farms.

So that premise is completely off.

[Kazinski]

By the way Willis isn't just a Twitter dude, he's presented papers at the AGU, published in journals, and his work is taken seriously enough to be discussed by other scientists.

For instance here is one Sr. NASA Scientist, Dr. Roy Spencer, discussing the spat Willis is having with another SR. NASA Scientist about margin of error on sea level.rise measurements.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/30/dr-roy-spencer-on-the-sea-level-spat-between-gavin-and-willis/

[Sarcastr0]

Oh, so he's a climate change denialist who posted an anti-windmill thing on twitter that was riddled with errors.

You're so easy to fool.

[loki13]

It's not just that ... it's that he wants to be fooled. They all do.

Look, it's pretty simple. Trump is so obsessively focused on windmills ... he's worse than Don Quixote. I don't think he can get through a speech without talking about windmills. It's worse than verbal tick. It's like RFK Jr.'s brain worm got lodged in Trump's head, and just keeps repeating, "Windmills, magnets, windmills, magnets..."

Every single human being living through the dumbest timeline knows Trump HATES HATES HATES windmills.

So when the Trump administration suddenly stops five major windmill developments on a completely BS pretext, you have one of two possible responses-

1. You can extend your lips to his posterior. "Of course I see your clothes. This sudden concern, that we have never had and that no other country has, must be the actual reason for this drastic action!"

2. Or ... you can understand that he is actually acting on his whims and capriciousness and his ten-years of tirades against windmills.

*shrug*

Of course, if you buy into (2), you then have to ask... if Trump is always saying that it is the Democrats' fault for killing energy products and not bringing on-line new sources of power generation in the face of rising demand, then why is he doing this when it will-

1. Kill five projects (or halt them) immediately; and
2. Ensure that further funding and planning for future projects becomes harder or impossible; and
3. Also kill the bipartisan legislation that would reduce regulation and redtape around new plants?

The reason? Because Trump doesn't care about policy, or issues. But he does hate windmills.

[Bob from Ohio]

"he does hate windmills"

As one should.

Windmills kill raptors and waste resources.

Never saw an offshore one but on shore ones are idle a lot. I pass one every day that has not run in at least a year.

You know that they cannot run when there are high winds.

[hobie]

Dear AI, does China have any [radar-busting] offshore wind farms?

"Yes, China has numerous and extensive offshore wind farms, leading the world in total installed capacity, with massive ongoing expansion, particularly in coastal provinces like Guangdong, to meet its renewable energy goals and power intensive coastal regions. They are rapidly building out their offshore wind sector, including developing the world's largest floating offshore wind farms."

There you go, Kazinski. Both armies will have equally crippled coastal defenses.

[Dr. Ed 2]

China doesn't care about losing 100K civilians here, 100K there.

We do,

[SRG2]

Hence the steps we took to minimise deaths from Covid. Oh, wait...

[Sarcastr0]

You're selling Ed short.

He's saying China doesn't care about national defense because they don't care about their citizens dying by the hundreds of thousands.

It's an amazing take.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes. China doesn't care about individual citizens. We do.

[David Nieporent]

…except women who have sex outside of marriage. Or women who refuse to have sex within marriage. They totally deserve whatever happens to them.

[hobie]

Or women in boats

[Sarcastr0]

I know it's not intuitive to you, Ed, but China cares about its national defense.

[DDHarriman]

If tariffs are truly bad, innately, why do you think thats missed by literally every country in the world that uses them?

Why do you think this hidden failure pf tariffs is so esoteric that all the world's governments and all of their economists have missed this?

Why is it so obvious to you but not all these governments?

[jb]

According to the super 4D chess crowd here, they also apparently want their electricity prices to go up, since that's what wind power does!

The Chinese don't sound like very intimidating adversaries since they don't understand military risks and they love expensive electricity. Good thing we've got Kazinski and ThePublius here in the US to help outsmart them!

[bloocow2]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/us/politics/trump-administration-ambassadors-posts.html

This isn't surprising anymore, and I don't expect to find that much sympathy here, but recalling this many career diplomats is pretty nuts to me. These are people who are professionals, who have local relationships and understand the contexts they're working in, and will carry out US policy regardless of whether they personally agree with it or not--and if they weren't comfortable with that, they would resign.

Who on earth are they going to be replaced with? Or are they just not going to be replaced...

[santamonica811]

I think you're missing the point. Trump's goal was never to replace bad career workers with better ones. It was to get rid of experienced workers, so that different agencies and areas of government would function poorly. Feeding his argument of, "Look how badly X Dept is running. Evidence that we could/should get rid of the department entirely."

As Trump's idiocy goes; it's actually a pretty clever plan. I think our govt is worse off not having a well-functioning FEMA, CDC, Dept of Ed, etc. But I admit that lots of people in this country take a different point of view. (Until a natural disaster hits their area, and they beg for federal and state aid, of course.)

[Davedave]

I think you're ascribing rational motives to Trump's behaviour, but in fact it's mere coincidence that his random action happens to come with a relatively rational explanation, rather than a sneaky plan. He isn't cunning, he's flailing around doing whatever he feels like. He resents the success of others, so he harms them.

[bloocow2]

Yeah, with Trump I don't think it goes beyond "these guys were appointed by the Biden administration, they gotta go!"

It doesn't matter if they were non-partisan appointments, it doesn't matter if they're good at their jobs, it doesn't matter if US foreign policy in the region is screwed as a result. All that matters is petty revenge.

[Armchair]

An ambassador is the personal voice of the President. Every administration has recalled and replaced ambassadors in many different countries.

[Sarcastr0]

An ambassador is the personal voice of the President.

Personal representative. Because delegation is a necessary thing that exists.
You put it in a weird and monarchical way.

Every administration has recalled and replaced ambassadors in many different countries.
Except this isn't that. Did you consider maybe you should read the article?

"There are two types of ambassadors: career diplomats and political appointees. The latter are often donors or friends of the president, and they are expected to offer their resignations at the start of a new administration. That was the case when Mr. Trump took office in January, and he immediately accepted the resignations.
However, that is not the norm for career diplomats, who often serve for years into a new administration. The Trump administration did not give a reason for the recalls and has not publicly announced them."

[bloocow2]

Yeah, that is the distinction. Career diplomats are basically public servants, who serve to enact foreign policy regardless of who is in power. And the diplomats I've met take that pretty seriously!

I'm sure the administration is allowed to recall them. But I'm not at all confident they have a good reason for doing so.

[SRG2]

Trump and the cultists don't really believe in public service. They assume that all civil servants are engaged in carrying out the policies of the president they support, and that hence it's always politics first, public service be damned.

[Armchair]

" Career diplomats are basically public servants, who serve to enact foreign policy regardless of who is in power. "

Sometimes. Sometimes they need to be corrected and that requires removal.

[Sarcastr0]

"The Trump administration did not give a reason for the recalls and has not publicly announced them."

If you read the article, you'd make up fewer excuses that turn out to be false.

[Dr. Ed 2]

DRAIN THE SWAMP!

[Commenter_XY]

Government bureaucrats are replaceable. We are talking about 30 State Department bureaucrats, it is not the end of the world. Surely, there are 30 bureaucrats somewhere within the State Department with some time on their hands.

[DDHarriman]

Have you ever seen such wailings over bureaucrats BT? It's soon Statist pathology or something? I've never seen such devotion and worship to such a horrible class of people before.

[jb]

Does this same logic apply to CEOs? Just get rid of them and replace them with random employees from elsewhere in the company with some time on their hands?

[Bob from Ohio]

The State Dept. CEO is Marc Rubio, not 30 bureaucrats.

[jb]

I'm asking why the "anyone can do anyone else's job" doesn't apply to CEOs, not asking who the CEO of the State Department is.

[Armchair]

Ambassadors are recalled all the time.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-admin-recalling-around-30-ambassadors-part-state-dept-realignment

[Commenter_XY]

The caterwauling by the Aussie is truly something to behold. I had no idea Aussies were such crybabies. I am sure he is Albanese's ideological twin.

[hobie]

- Ukraine started the war
- Get rid of VOA
- Demand an end to NATO expansion
- Decimate the diplomatic corps
- Trash Europe

No collusion to see here, folks. Move along.

[John F. Carr]

The State Department has a reputation for putting its own interests ahead of America's. I can't tell whether the removed diplomats are good people or part of the problem.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Or are they just not going to be replaced..."

Ambassadors are obsolete. It does not take 2 months to cross an ocean any more. They give speeches and go to parties, that is about it. Consular functions are the only important thing an embassy does.

Trump or Rubio just picks up a phone and calls his counterpart if there is something important to discuss. They do not have an ambassador go over to the ministry and report back except for the most minor matters.

We have THREE ambassadors in Brussels. EU, NATO and Belgium.

Its a waste of money

[Sarcastr0]

If you want someone to like you, showing up in person helps.

When that someone has authority in a nation, having them like you helps you get stuff you want done.

I know Trump and his US-as-international-mobster tactics doesn't understand this, but that doesn't mean you need to erase your own baseline understanding of human relations.

[Bob from Ohio]

"showing up in person helps"

We have airplanes now, we can send someone anywhere in the world the same day!

When we negotiated the Gaza ceasefire, we sent special envoys. People who actually had the president's ear, not Huck or our chief of mission in Qatar.

[Sarcastr0]

Special envoys for everywhere and everything?
Based in the US so they don't build relations in any sustainable way?

What a dumbass hill you've chosen to die on.

[Bob from Ohio]

No surprise you defend bureaucrats uber alles.

Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Uganda, Fiji, Laos, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Vietnam, Armenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Algeria and Egypt; Nepal, Sri Lanka; Guatemala and Suriname

Maybe 5 need any embassy at all. Some don't even need a consular office.

Embassies are obsolete and our diplomatic structure only really benefits the foreign service and Georgetown Univ.

Those are the affected countries.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm defending ambassadorships as a concept, plenty of whom are not bureaucrats.

Your contempt for other countries is your usual vice signaling. America as a chauvinist asshole...I still don't know what you get out of these performances of yours.

[Commenter_XY]

Bad vibe, huh?

[Bob from Ohio]

"plenty of whom are not bureaucrats."

Who prove my point. Big contributors and washed up pols, they bring nothing to our diplomacy. But in a different way than the foreign service, who no GOP president trusts.

No country needs most embassies. It has little to do with US other than today's new is the hook for the comment.

[Kazinski]

" regardless of whether they personally agree with it or not--and if they weren't comfortable with that, they would resign."

That's quite an assumption. And President Trump has good reason for not making it, including this behavior by the former SOS:

"US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday lambasted his predecessor, John Kerry, for meeting Iranian officials in back-channel talks and accused him of trying to undermine the Trump administration's policy toward Tehran.

"What Secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented," Pompeo told a news conference, adding that he "ought not to engage in that kind of behavior. It's inconsistent with what the foreign policy of the United States is, as directed by this president. It is beyond inappropriate."

Pompeo's crack at Kerry comes a day after President Donald Trump accused the former secretary of state of "illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime" in a late-night tweet.

"John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people," Trump said on Twitter late on Thursday.

"He told them to wait out the Trump Administration!" he said, ending his Tweet with the word "BAD!"

[Kazinski]

The EU is implementing Global Carbon Tariffs for imports into the EU, starting Jan 1, 2026 thats expected to amout to a 10-30% tax on imports depending on their carbon footprint.

They passed the regulation for this in 2023 so its not in retaliation inspired by Trump's Tariffs.

https://theconversation.com/how-europes-new-carbon-tax-on-imported-goods-will-change-global-trade-and-our-shopping-habits-270496

Don't they know tariffs are bad?

[DDHarriman]

This will be met with silence and then they will pretend this doesn't exist next time they rail about Trump's tariffs.

[santamonica811]

Again, you're generally insane. I think just about all of Trump's tariffs are bad-to-terrible. I don't know much about these EU tariffs, but my first instinct is to think that they are a bad idea . . . I oppose almost all tariffs, and I see no reason yet why I should be supporting this one.

Are you the hypocrite, who supports Trump's insane and ever-changing tariffs, just b/c they come from Trump while opposing EU tariffs? Or do you join me in criticizing both? (I don't recall you ever posting a flat-out, "I think Trump was wrong about X." comment--but it's certainly possible that you did in a thread I was not following.)

Anyway; here's a perfect time for you to do it (again?). 🙂

[Armchair]

"I think just about all of Trump's tariffs are bad-to-terrible"

Why?

[santamonica811]

Because (a) I think that most tariffs are a poor idea. Just in general. And (b) because Taco Trump has been wildly inconsistent with the tariffs. I can absolutely see the utility in some tariffs, done with resolve and a purpose. Trump flip-flopping on his, countless times, hurts America economically, makes America look stupid in the eyes of the entire world, etc..

If you think that Trump's tariffs have been effective and efficient this year, well . . . I guess we'll have to respectfully disagree.

[Armchair]

Europe is suffering from China shock. China is dumping products in Europe, and its destroying the EU's manufacturing.

this was bound to happen.

[Dr. Ed 2]

China is in serious economic trouble.

[Commenter_XY]

They'll find out when we mirror their rate and apply it to EU goods (esp. cars, chemicals) coming into the US.

[Armchair]

This is really aimed at China, not the US.

[Kazinski]

This is probably accounted for in the US EU trade agreement, since as I said, its been scheduled to kick in since 2023.

[hobie]

In unrelated news:

The Pentagon and A.I. Giants Have a Weakness. Both Need China’s Batteries, Badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/climate/pentagon-weapons-ai-artificial-intelligence-china-batteries.html

Looks like everyone - Europe, U.S. - wants and needs green tech. You know, the tech we're decimating out of political spite. Gold-plated, coal-powered, offshore Trump-mills just ain't gonna be as commercially popular. Better cede all this to China and do something else instead.

[Brett Bellmore]

So, the laws that saw to it we couldn't affordably manufacture these things in the US were out of political spite, not actual environmental concerns? Good to hear, then let's get rid of them.

[John F. Carr]

"EU risks slow demise of aluminium industry if carbon tax not scrapped"
"EU carbon tax changes for metals are not enough"

Good or bad? I can't tell.

[Joe_dallas]

There hasnt been a country in Europe that has had significant aluminum production for a couple of decades. China is tops and the each of the next 10 countries produces about 10% or less of what China produces. Norway is the largest producer in Europe (as of 2017 & 2022 data ) and it produces about 4% of china's production.

[Kazinski]

Axios is reporting that contrary to claims that the Administration refused to provide a response about the CECOT story, they actually provided several responses, that were not included in the piece.

https://x.com/i/status/2003253518413758834

That does seem out of character, I don't think I've seen many 'no comments' from this Administration, in fact they often talk way, way too much.

So that claim by the reporter and producer was false. No surprise there.

[Armchair]

So, the story was spiked because it was false.

Sounds like a good choice.

[Zarniwoop]

Kazinski had the integrity to identify a specific item he believes is false.

What factual elements of the story do you, Armchair, think are false? Or are you just predictably bleating “MSM bad!!1!”?

https://archive.org/details/60-minutes-inside-cecot

Also, I’ve now seen a few references to the “Bari Weissand” effect: her late-breaking interference - whether justified or not! - looks like political interference, and has by now resulted in many, many more people seeing the piece despite CBS trying to spike it.

[Armchair]

"Kazinski had the integrity to identify a specific item he believes is false."
He did

"What factual elements of the story do you, Armchair, think are false?"
I was agreeing with Kaz.

[Sarcastr0]

Sounds like you didn't think even once before your posted what you wanted to be true, as though it were established.

[David Nieporent]

So, the story was spiked because it was false.

Why are you lying? We have Barri Weiss's statement laying out her reasons for holding — not, supposedly, "spiking" — the piece, and none of them were "Because the story was false."

Also, there's some sort of weird irony in relying on anonymous sources telling Axios that they commented "on the record" on the story. If they did, why would that be off the record? Why wouldn't the people who commented on the record just… comment on the record?

[Armchair]

"not, supposedly, "spiking""

I'm just repeating the news.... Here's NPR. Perhaps you should take up you issue with word choice with them.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
SUMMERS: David, start by telling us, what is the story in question, and why did CBS' new editor-in-chief spike it?

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/22/nx-s1-5651994/bari-weiss-halts-60-minutes-story-sparking-an-outrage

[Malika la Maize]

That Xeet’s link to Axios is paywalled.

[David Nieporent]

It's not, actually; it's giveusyouremailaddresswalled.

But I'll save you the trouble; here's the entire reporting by Axios:

Between the lines: According to a source familiar with "60 Minutes" correspondence with the administration, the "60 Minutes" team reached out to press officials at the White House, State Department and DHS, all of which provided comment to CBS News.

Fischer's tweet says that these comments were "on the record," but her actual Axios post does not. But if they were on the record, where are those comments? Why would Axios report that comments exist without actually providing those comments?

[Kazinski]

It says they "reached out to press officials", that would make the response on the record.

And of course it doesn't say the "source familiar" provided the comments to Axios, only that the comments were provided.

And you are correct, it wasn't spiked, the 60 minutes team can proceed with the story if they provide some balance, it sounds like the very idea offends them.

[Sarcastr0]

Or just wait for the actual facts to come in, as they seem like they're going to.

it wasn't spiked, the 60 minutes team can proceed with the story if they provide some balance, it sounds like the very idea offends them.
And here you go again.
You've already decided on your story. Which flies in the face of every single bit of facts out there except for the sketchy premature one you can speculate into whatever you want.

You're so eager to get out ahead of every developing story - it allows you to full in the gaps and inaccuracies with what you want to be true.

[Kazinski]

That's not my story, that's Bari Weiss's story which was pretty plain in her memo.

What else needs to be developed?

The Boss gave an order, the episode leaked but I don't think that will make her change her mind. And if need be Weiss can assign another reporter and producer to finish the piece.

What are you expecting to change?

[Sarcastr0]

Her memo, which was late after she'd already spiked the story, does not wash. DMN showed why it was eyewash at best, and looked a lot more like a last-minute tossed off lie to cover up her bootlicking.
But hey, there's always suckers willing to buy anything!

There is no bothsides to noncriminals being sent to a terrible prison.

The Boss gave an order
That's not really relevant - what's relevant is fuck her for making that order. We all knew she'd be bad going in, and she's done nothing to disabuse us with this craven nonsense.

You excuse it, because you want to. You're a sucker because you would prefer that to having to deal with the facts about what you support.

[David Nieporent]

Brian Stelter reports what the White House's response was:

As "60 Minutes" finalized its "Inside CECOT" report last Thursday, CBS sent the White House a request for comment. A WH spokesperson responded within a few hours. The quote was not included in the "60" report – so, judge for yourself whether it should have been included

WH spokesperson Abigail Jackson said "60 Minutes should spend their time and energy amplifying the stories of Angel Parents, whose innocent American children have tragically been murdered by vicious illegal aliens that President Trump are removing from the country."

In other words, as expected, the White House did not provide an actual response, and 60 Minutes was right to (try to) run with the story as is, and Bari Weiss and Axios are both either dumb or dishonest.

[Commenter_XY]

Aye Me Maties...another oil tanker 'pirated' by the US Navy.

The Congress has been briefed. I do not hear a hue and cry for impeaching POTUS Trump over VEN policy (which includes snuffing out drug dealers and drug smugglers in intl waters), or even changing VEN policy (the six nutjobs don't count). Why?

What is the legal status of the oil that is seized? Does it need to be returned to VEN? Could it be re-sold, legally?

[Frank Drackman]

"Legal Status"???
The Poor Oil "Din Do Nuthin" should be used for what J-hey created it for in the first place, to go in the Crankcase/Fuel Tank of my ZO6 (OK, Dr Ed, your cue to complain that they don't have warning stickers telling you not to put Oil in the Gas Tank)

Frank

[Davedave]

Honestly, as a Trini, this Venezuela shit bothers me pretty much least out of all the things Trump has done. Maduro undoubtedly _is_ a drug-baron who has stolen a country, and he has deliberately picked a fight with Trump - plus, for once, Trump is attacking a Putin ally. The Venezuelan people deserve international help, and really, anything Trump does can't be worse for them than what Maduro's already doing.

I don't in any way condone the summary executions of drug smugglers, of course - but they are very clearly drug smugglers, not innocent fisherfolk.

[Frank Drackman]

I don't condone summary executions of drug smugglers either, I'd make them consume their product and let nature take it's course.

[Malika la Maize]

Shouldn’t that be:

I don’t condone Summary Executions of Drug Smugglers, I’d make them consume their Product and let Nature take it’s course?

Your slipping in your performance today.

[Michael P]

Are you auditioning to be an editor for the flailing New York Slimes?

[Malika la Maize]

Again, Dear Leader says Failing, not flailing. You’re going to get the Ben Shapiro treatment!

[Dr. Ed 2]

So are you Malika.

It's = "it is"

Its, the possessive form of it, does NOT have an apostrophe so as to distinguish it from it's ("it is").

[hobie]

Your take is logically inconsistent. Here we have another boat full of antisemitic terrorist contraband, and we just board it and seize it?

[loki13]

Well, the reason why you are not seeing a hue and cry about the oil tankers, as opposed to .... murdering people ... is because different things are different!

Here, let's try this to show you-

Look, the police department executed a warrant and seized a bunch on contraband that a judge authorized. I don't understand why everyone is okay with that, and yet they're unhappy that the police department also went into an apartment building and killed everyone ... and said they were allowed to do it because, in their words, "They're baddies, trust us."

Different things.

I could point you to some explainers, but it won't help. The short version is this- if there is a judicial warrant (and there appears to be), and it is the Coast Guard doing it (as it appears to be- the Navy and other armed forces can provide support, but the Coast Guard is the one with authority to carry it out), and it is a stateless vessel (I know the first one was), then whatever the policy distinctions might be, it's ... not unlawful.

If the vessel is flagged (correctly, not stateless), it's slightly more complicated, and in the ideal situation the United States would contact the flag state for authorization first.

TLDR; while I do not trust this administration to truthfully say that the night is dark, the ship seizure operations are not the same as murdering people.

[John F. Carr]

So far two tankers seized and one threatened but not seized. As long as the seizures were done pursuant to warrants I would say this is not military action within the meaning of the War Powers Act.

[John F. Carr]

I understand the oil to be contraband that is forfeit to the United States. The Panama-flagged tanker probably must be released after cargo is removed.

[Zarniwoop]

I’ve been looking, but I’m still unclear on what the basis for the seizure of the Panamanian flagged tanker was.

Reports I have seen indicate the tanker wasn’t on a U.S. sanctions list, and was headed to China. What makes the oil it was carrying “contraband”and subject to confiscation by the U.S.?

Other than raw military power, which probably gives Stephen Miller a stiffy.

[Kazinski]

We have answers, and they are good ones:

"so we now have a (partial) explanation as to how Panama allowed the US to seize a Panama-flagged tanker (Centuries).

From the brief explanation given by the Panama government in this story, it appears that Panama deleted the tanker from its registry after it loaded in Venezuela while spoofing its location. It was "not following the rules". Thus the tanker was effectively flagless and stateless after it sailed, allowing the US to intercept and interdict."

https://x.com/Michellewb_/status/2003432836645245224?s=20

That leaves a clear blueprint for more like this, can a tanker owner be sure their registered country won't throw them under the bus when the US asks or pressures them to?

Then that leaves a small universe of countries to flag their tankers that they can be sure would stand up to US pressure and are also are not under sanctions themselves.

[David Nieporent]

Then that leaves a small universe of countries to flag their tankers that they can be sure would stand up to US pressure and are also are not under sanctions themselves.

…and that Trump would not just say FYTW to and do it anyway. Not sure the list extends much past China, at this point.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Wouldn't it have the same status as a seized drug boat.

[OzzyDerKoenig]

I'd like to see 545 U.S. 1 (2005) get overruled. Been writing about it, actually, although I don't have a credential.

[Sarcastr0]

Gonzales v. Raich.

Here's an article going into the case and it's downstream the implications, as you write about it:
https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3207&context=jour_mlr

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Gonzales v. Raich, involving the Commerce Clause and distribution of marijuana, was recently discussed on this blog.

David Pozen's book The Constitution of the War on Drugs, available for free online, is quite interesting.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4692949

I think Gonzalez was rightly decided, though it is bad policy for the federal government to interfere with state experimentation in that area. Of course, many around here disagree strongly.

I also think there is a personal right to use marijuana for health reasons. Justice Tom Clark in the 1970s wrote a short article suggesting it was part of the right of privacy.

As with the medical aid in dying legislation in New York, Congress should respect that right when setting forth national policy.

It is also a rational policy to reschedule marijuana. Hopefully, this is a positive sign that the ongoing process to do so will continue:

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2025/12/22/trump-desantis-marijuana-order/87794768007/

[Brett Bellmore]

"I also think there is a personal right to use marijuana for health reasons."

I think that sort of reasoning violates the concept of "right".

A right, essentially, is some topic where YOU, personally, get to make the call. Do I want to read that book? Do I want to utter these words? Do I want to own a gun? Use marijuana?

You're the one making the call.

It contradicts the concept of a "right" to empower somebody else to decide if your reason for making the call is good enough.

[Sarcastr0]

That is neither an originalist nor a contemporary version of how legal rights work.

You sound more like the pro choice arguments went than any actual jurisprudence.

And originally...well, look at free speech and all it's exceptions assumed into place off the break.

You often go for the simple answer, but not the one that comports with history or practice.

[Magister]

You have the right to fire a gun aimed at another human being ... in self defense. And somebody else gets to decide if your reason for self defense was good enough. I have seen gun proponents respond to such judgement as completely negating the right to self defense, so maybe Brett Bellmore is joining that sort of extremism.

[DDHarriman]

Hey vaxxies, after four separate studies confirmed "the batchness" of all the harmful vaxx side effects some kind soul put up a website so you can check your batch amd preview your fate.

https://knollfrank.github.io/HowBadIsMyBatch/HowBadIsMyBatch.html

No refunds, retards.

[Frank Drackman]

Too bad they don't have one for your Tertiary Syphilis.

[SRG2]

I strongly encourage you and your fellow bigots not to get vaccinated for anything. Also, you should avoid hospitals, as they're capitalist enterprises run by Jews, often enough. You should treat yourselves with Aryan-approved homeopathic remedies, particularly for psychologically induced maladies like cancer, appendicitis and type 2 diabetes

[Brett Bellmore]

You do realize that nothing he was saying was suggesting you shouldn't get vaccinated. Rather, he was suggesting that your decision should be an educated decision.

[SRG2]

"Do your own research!"

You and I know perfectly well what he is implying. And almost without exception, the decision not to vaccinate is not an educated decision.

[Frank Drackman]

545 US 1, oh yeah, 545 US 1, I can't go a day without thinking about 545 US 1,
So what was 545 US 1???
Oh yeah, California taking People's Marriage-a-Juana-a
My Man Clarence "Frog Man" Thomas is the only current Surpreme who opined on the Case, coming down on the right of Peoples to blaze to the B-Jesus Belt with their own Ganja, but lets go to the Videotape (it was 2005)
"Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything—and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."

Frank

[hobie]

Are you feeling okay, Frankie? That was an actually relevant post.

[Frank Drackman]

You don't joke about taking a man's drugs, I mean GLAUCOMA drugs.

[DDHarriman]

We provide troops and billions of dollars annually to support a Europe that no longer exists. These sanctimonious pricks then chastise us for our free speech, want to fine our social media, and tell us what we owe them.

https://x.com/i/status/2003315403091771888

That man is a national treasure. We must protect him at all costs.

[Frank Drackman]

Yeah, riffing on Patton, if I had the Germans behind me, and the Roosh-uns (HT B. Sanders) in front of me, I'd attack in both directions.
But Europe's one of the few good Duty Stations for our Fighting Men/Women (Marines just made the Physical Requirements for Infantry "Gender Neutral" which means no Marine Infantry-women, unless you know any who can do 33 pullups)
Beats such Shitholes as Fort Jackson (Columbia SC), Fort Polk (Louisiana, it's so bad even the Louisianans won't live near it) Fort Hood (aptly named) TX,
Fort Drum (Watertown NY) isn't that bad during the 2 months of the year the Sun comes out.
But Kaiserslautern? (AKA K-town) Aviano, Vicenza??
Like the military would even take a "Man" like you (HT D. Neidermayer, Faber College ROTC Cadet Captain)

Frank

[Swede425]

Hood wasn't a bad duty station.
Austin was a little over an hour away and was a fun town to visit.
Even the hippie girls there were patriotic and friendly if you bought them a drink and conversed.
Also, you could whitetail and mule deer hunt the base past the cattle guards during season.

[Frank Drackman]

And the "All you can Eat" Buffet at the Luby's??? I hear people are dying to get in!

[David Nieporent]

Wait, Europe doesn't exist? Big If True.

[Armchair]

So, there's a proposal in the House to ban Congressional stock trading. Sounds great, no? In fact, there's a discharge petition that has a number of republicans (But not the House speaker....) signed on to it. This means even if the House speaker doesn't bring it to the floor, it can be brought up for a vote. Sounds wonderfully bipartisan!

What does Jefferies (the House minority leader) do? Instead of signing onto the discharge petition, he instead issues his "own" discharge petition. This undercuts people signing the original, and divides the efforts, helping to ensure that a majority never sign the discharge petition. Why?

1. It allows him to campaign on the issue. Can't campaign on it if the issue is already passed
2. Allows him and Pelosi to keep stock trading.

https://prospect.org/2025/12/19/jeffries-undercuts-congressional-stock-trading-ban/

This is a microcosm of what really makes me dislike politicians and certain democrats. If you oppose something...fine. But to say you support it, while simultaneously undermining real progress on it...just to keep it as an issue.

Then you're only really interested in power. Not the issue.

[santamonica811]

Armchair,
Since you've been following this closely (and I and many others have not), can you give us a summary. Did Jefferies bring up his own version because his version was better? Because the other bill had significant problems? Or was it merely, as you suggest, to sabotage any bill, in order to give Dems another issue to run on?

(I am not asking rhetorically. I could absolutely believe the latter...it's not like Republican politicians are pathetic whores and Dem politicians are reincarnations of Jed Bartlett. No one should be surprised by bad actions and bad motivations by either side.

But sometimes [okay, rarely. LOL], politicians really do oppose legislation for legitimate reasons. Is that possible in this case? )

[Michael P]

A discharge petition is just a mechanism to move a single bill out of committee to the floor. I can't think of how one discharge petition for Bill X could possibly be better than another.

https://www.congressionalinstitute.org/112th-congress-house-floor-procedures-manual/xvi-discharge-petitions/

[Brett Bellmore]

It's not so much that one discharge petition is better than another.

Imagine that some members who don't really want to have to vote on the bill would sign the discharge petition because they need to look like they support the bill. But their ideal outcome is getting to look like they're supporting it, but failing.

Then if you have TWO discharge petitions, you can tactically divide the votes between them such that, while enough people voted for A discharge petition for it to have passed, neither of the petitions got enough votes to pass. And everybody who needs to be able to say they supported the bill can, but it goes nowhere.

Same technique the Republicans used to kill the balanced budget and term limits amendments back in '95.

[Armchair]

"But sometimes [okay, rarely. LOL], politicians really do oppose legislation for legitimate reasons"

If you oppose it, I don't have a problem. That's how legislation works.

If you say you support it, but then take actions to stop it from actually passing...then I have an issue. It's dishonest.

[Frank Drackman]

What do you expect from Hakeem the (Bad) Dream Jefferson??? Seriously, every time I see his smirking mug on the TV I think that somewhere a Shoe Shine Stand is going unmanned.
(There's one lone stand in the Main Entrance (South Terminal of course, no real Southerner ever flies out of the "North" Terminal) of Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson-Zimbabwe International Airport, 90% of the time unmanned, (since 99% of todays passengers wear Shoes you don't shine)
Saw the guy there once (as you'd expect, an elderly Black Man, looked like that guy in Johnny Cougar's "Pink Houses" Music Video)
He did put a mean Shine on my Florsheims, threw him a few Extra Shekels (don't even remember what it cost, when you're rich, you don't worry about little things like how much a Shoe Shine costs)
Haven't seen him for a while, the Stand's still there, but probably going the way of Print Newspapers (Last Print edition of the Atlanta-Urinal & Constipation comes out next week)

Frank

[not guilty]

Is anyone going to call out Frank Drackman's Shoe Shine comment here as being racist? Or is that epithet reserved for those commenters here who refuse to genuflect to Clarence Thomas?

[SRG2]

We all know that Drackman is a bigot, so no new surprise here. He's the likely winner of the first VC Max Naumann award, to be announced on Dec 31.

[not guilty]

I realize that, but I find it peculiar that other commenters here, who get the vapors whenever I call out Clarence Thomas's hypocrisy, give passes to unabashed racists like Drackman, poxigah146 and DDHarriman.

[mulched]

Sorry, got him blocked. Call him out yourself, if the hypocrisy isn't too much for you.

[Bwaaah]

I think that horse already left the barn. And I believe the parlance was "Clarence Toady Thomas," i.e. that boy on the Supreme Court married to the White woman.

Frank Drackman is pretty close to what you get when you strip Not Guilty of his dress clothes, and then add in a sense of humor.

(Sorry, Frank. I was trying to dress him back up and you were the material I had to work with.)

[Bwaaah]

I take it back. No amount of gussying up will turn a Not Guilty into a Frank Drackman. Maybe you could get to some kind of a totem pole, but no Frank Drackman.

[not guilty]

To paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., it's not the color of his skin; it's the content of his lack of character.

Clarence Thomas -- the most prominent beneficiary of affirmative action in American history -- has made a cushy career out of toadying to white Republicans (first Danforth, then Reagan, then Bush I) by bashing his own kind. In the struggle for racial equality, that man is a quisling.

He has also trashed a long line of substantive due process cases -- with the notable exception of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). As with affirmative action, the man apparently thinks substantive due process is a really crappy idea for anyone whose first name is not Clarence or whose last name is not Thomas.

It is not his race that troubles me. It is his rank hypocrisy. (Emphasis on the "rank".) FWIW, I also have denounced J. Strom Thurmond's diatribes condemning miscegenation. I talk more frequently about Thomas because Thurmond is no longer in a position to do much harm.

[DDHarriman]

Get a room you homos.

No one wants to see two ugly ass Jews e-flirting with each other.

[Commenter_XY]

I think it is a terrible idea = ban stock trading for Congress-critters

As long as the trades are transparent, I don't have an issue with it. The constituents need to decide if they want the Congress-critter or not. Hell, if they are that good at stock picking, follow them. 😉

The problem with this legislation..., today it will be Congress-critters who are banned. Tomorrow it will be judges. The day after, it will be you. Your economic rights will be done away with.

[Malika la Maize]

“The day after, it will be you.”

MAGAn doesn’t get how conflict of interests work….

[David Nieporent]

You have this really weird tic of outsourcing what passes for your conscience. "I don't care if politician X does some bad thing; if the voters don't like it, they can vote against him."

[John F. Carr]

Our rights to trade stock were taken away almost a century ago. The ordinary people were limited to public companies. Only "qualified" investors could buy stock in private companies. Roughly speaking, qualified investors have a million dollars of net worth not counting their primary residence.

Trump is relaxing some rules. Retirement funds will be able to trade in private companies. I understand private equity was running out of institutional investors and needed more cash. The industry asked its buddy in the White House for a favor.

[Malika la Maize]

Reading the article one can see why Armchair is opposed to this proposal:

The new proposal differs from the bipartisan bill in one key respect: It extends the stock trading ban to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

[Mr. Bumble]

Will it (the ban), as proposed, extend to the spouses or significant others as well?

[Armchair]

It's a designed poison pill.

Rather than make progress on a real issue, drop a competing proposal up there with a poison pill. Then you can ensure neither item passes.

[Malika la Maize]

It’s poison to think Republicans can act like non-Royalists for a minute and apply the same logic to POTUS? Maybe he thinks more of his GOP colleagues than he should?

[Michael P]

"non-Royalists", lol. Remember, your side made it clear that in spite of chanting "No Kings", that wasn't what you really meant, and you're fine with literal kings.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm fine with a partial solution, even if it does shamefully leave Trump's corruption untouched.

On a separate note, Armchair's argument being not that Trump's actually much more constrained and is totally obeying the law is some shameful shit, even if I agree with him that bill should pass.

[Armchair]

"Armchair's argument being not that Trump's actually much more constrained and is totally obeying the law is some shameful shit,"

What? Wow, you just strawmanned that out of thin air

[Sarcastr0]

So you think Trump, his family and other admin members' trading is a real issue?

I think it is! You sure don't seem to care much, being laser focused on exactly 2 members of Congress.

[Armchair]

"So you think Trump, his family and other admin members' trading is a real issue?"

Keep up the strawmen.

[Sarcastr0]

This is you: "Rather than make progress on a real issue..."

This is me: "So you think Trump, his family and other admin members' trading is a real issue?"

So quit with your accusations of strawman, you're too dumb to know what that is apparently.

[Armchair]

It's a poison pill. Apparently you need a more thorough explanation of what a poison pill is.

Imagine there's a proposal that has majority support in Congress...but you don't want it to pass. What you do is you add on an amendment or a version that will be divisive. While some people may like it, it will drive other people away. In this way, you can split the supporters, lose the majority and kill the proposal.

It's the opposite of a compromise. Compromise is designed to get as many supporters as possible. But, throw on a proposal that some people are guaranteed not to like, and you can kill a proposal.

[Michael P]

You could of course quote a following paragraph as well (and indicate that you took text from an external source in the first place):

“This is exactly what Pelosi did a few years ago,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of the Project on Government Oversight, referring to the former House Speaker’s endorsement of a trading ban in 2022 that extended to the Supreme Court, also blowing up a bipartisan negotiation. “This is not only an unserious effort, it’s an attempt to undermine and kill off the only bipartisan legislative vehicle that is gaining momentum. It’s really bad faith all around.”

[Malika la Maize]

Why oppose it because it might apply to SCOTUS or POTUS? The logic is the same.

[Michael P]

SCOTUS and POTUS don't write laws about companies they trade in. The logic only looks the same to fools.

[Malika la Maize]

As any fool can see POTUS enacts policies impacting companies they trade in.

[Michael P]

Anyone who's not a fool understands the procedural and legal differences between laws, regulations, executive orders and so on. There are relatively strict rules around what the executive branch can enact. Congress is much less limited.

[Malika la Maize]

Yes, Trump’s regulatory actions and threats have particularly certainly been characterized by their strict limits! lol. Interesting to see that you’re not one of those Imperialist Administrative State MAGAns!

[David Nieporent]

There are relatively strict rules around what the executive branch can enact.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA. Yes, Trump obeys all rules about what the executive branch can do!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Alito is on the case:

https://www.newsweek.com/samuel-alito-says-supreme-court-responding-to-trump-acting-aggressively-11254734

[David Nieporent]

SCOTUS and POTUS make legally binding decisions about companies they trade in. The logic is the same.

[Michael P]

So do their executives, every judge hearing a case involving them and every regulator for their industries and workers. Try harder.

[David Nieporent]

TF? Judges are not in fact allowed to hear cases involving companies in which they own stock. Where do you loons come up with this stuff?

And their executives work for the companies, not for us, so that literally has nothing to do with anything.

[jb]

This is a pretty lame retort. SCOTUS and POTUS don't write laws, but SCOTUS they both decide whether and how those laws are enforced, SCOUTS sometimes basically makes up rules that have nothing to do with laws, and POTUS can issue executive orders that have at least as much import as laws.

A better counterargument with regards to SCOTUS at least is that unlike the President and Congress they don't get briefed on lots of sensitive information before its made public. I don't see a meaningful difference with POTUS here, but agree with Sarcrast0 that I'd rather have something than nothing here.

[jb]

"This is a microcosm of what really makes me dislike politicians and certain democrats."

Ah, so when Mike Johnson does everything in his power to block this, it's cool. But since Jeffries is a Democrat, it's bad. Got it. At least you're explicit about your partisanship.

[Armchair]

"Ah, so when Mike Johnson does everything in his power to block this,"

If a politician says they don't support it....I understand that. It's honest. You don't expect someone to support everything.

When a politician says they support it, then works to undermine it. That's dishonest.

Do you understand the difference?

[Malika la Maize]

President Donald Trump on Monday said he will oversee the development of a new class of Navy battleship — named after himself.

The move appears designed to give the nation’s stagnant shipbuilding industry a shot in the arm, but also will upend the Navy’s ship-naming norms and thrust presidential politics firmly into the program from its genesis. The announcement follows a flurry of recent actions by Trump to rebrand existing institutions to include his name, including the U.S. Institute of Peace and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/12/22/trump-battleship-golden-fleet/

[loki13]

This is stupid for so, so, so many reasons. This, right here, is why we have the old say about democracy being the worst form of government, except all the rest.

Where do we start? The easiest, of course, is to begin with the entire notion that this is a vanity project. Trump likes big! Trump likes naming stuff after himself! Trump likes things that go big boom! Also? Trump is an octogenarian, and in his mind, battleships are cool. This is why we don't have a monarchy- because capricious vanity projects that are stupid are the hallmark of monarchy and autocracies. Are we going to rename Wednesday ... Trumpsday, 'cuz it's humpday, and we all know Trump likes to get down (*redacted* from the Epstein files, but well-known to anyone paying attention).

But more importantly ... does anyone know when the last battleship was ordered? Anyone? Bueller? 1940. Why? Because we realized ... IN WORLD WAR 2 WHEN WE NEEDED FIREPOWER, that battleships were already worthless. In other words, we are nearly a century past when they were anything but a boondoggle. At the time, we quickly pivoted to carriers (because you want to project air power).*

With the advent of air power and submarines, and later missiles and now drones ... battleships make as much sense as us pivoting to chariots. Actually ... less so. Because chariots don't cost as much. What possible use-case scenario is there for a battleship?

Carry nuclear missiles? Subs do it better and aren't giant targets.
What else? Ship-to-ship combat? Anyone heard of airplanes, missiles, and drones?
There is only one (1) possible scenario- IF you want to shell a country from the sea, and use regular munitions (not guided), AND you have utter air domination already, and only want to shell the near coast, and don't have to worry about any possible threat from missiles or drones ... you're golden. But we already have a lot of things that can accomplish what we need there and don't require building friggin' battleships.

The battle between Ukraine and Russia is showing us how warfare is changing- we need to be investing in systems that allow for the flexible production of masses of cheap munitions (lots of inexpensive drones and missiles) by leveraging our tech and rebuilding industry and incentivizing new entrants into the defense industry, which has consolidated into four companies. We still use some of the higher-end systems, but to borrow a phrase from Uncle Joe... quantity has a quality of its own.

Again, this is the dumbest timeline. Starring the dumbest person, enabled by the dumbest sycophants.

*I honestly thought that the one thing everyone "knew" about Pearl Harbor is that we were lucky that the Japanese struck when our battleships were in harbor, but our aircraft carriers were at sea. Right? We all remember that, right? FFS. All of us except Trump, apparently. Wasn't that in Tora Tora Tora or something, or was it basic history that is required to be literate?

[Malika la Maize]

It’s interesting that he obsessively names everything after himself (in addition to the above, the Trump immigration card, the Trump accounts, etc.,), displaying an egoism bordering on, if not plunging with both feet into, deranged behavior. But if you point it out his supporters will charge you with derangement! These people will have their king….

[Mr. Bumble]

Just wait until he moves to have the name of the country changed to the United States of Trump.

[Bob from Ohio]

Trump States of America is better.

[Josh R]

Greatest Trumpkraine and the Donaldbas!

[Brett Bellmore]

Obviously he's a narcissist. Nobody runs for President without being a narcissist, who but a narcissist would think they were the best man for the job?

But he takes an inevitable vice to extremes.

[David Nieporent]

As usual, Brett pretends he's against some things Trump does but in reality defends Trump with his "Actually, all politicians do this."

[loki13]

"Yes, I remember when all the prior narcissist Presidents named stuff after themselves when they were in office. Just not to the extremes of Trump."

Or, you know, at all. Seriously, WTF is this, even? I'm sure someone can come up with an example ... but I honestly cannot remember a single President naming something after themselves in office. Let alone renaming every single thing they could fit in their eensy-weensy hands, including numerous things that they can't ... because they are named by statute, but the law won't stop 'em.

Also, before anyone says, "Obamacare," remember that the Democrats called it the ACA, that was a term used by the GOP for political reasons, and it's not ... actually called that (any more than the Massachusetts law was called RomneyCare). I'm thinking of Presidents who officially put their faces and names on everything (or anything) while in office other than the required things- not, for example, calling exchanging "get out of jail free" cards for Bicoins, "Trump Pardons."

[Mr. Bumble]

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" suggests that the names of things do not affect what they truly are. It emphasizes that the essence of something remains unchanged regardless of what it is called.

[David Nieporent]

but I honestly cannot remember a single President naming something after themselves in office.

What about when George Washington named a whole state after himself?

[Zarniwoop]

Heh. Well played.

[Brett Bellmore]

Man, you can't even accept my agreeing with you, unless I also assert other Presidents were totally lacking in this flaw.

"I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director."

[Sarcastr0]

“What a tool cynicism is to the corrupt, claiming the whole of the creation is broken and fraudulent, and thus we are all excused to indulge in whatever sins we wish—for what’s a little more unfairness, in this unfair world?”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

[loki13]

...whoosh.

If someone says, "Wow, I can't believe Jake murdered that guy."

And Brett says, "Well, Jake was a lax bro, and lax bros are known narcissists. He was just a more extreme example of that..."

A reasonable outside observer might ask, "What is Brett actually trying to do? Is he making an intelligent point about Jake, or is he trying to make a general point about lax bros, and thereby minimize the fact that Jake murdered a guy?"

That's an extreme, but illustrative, example.

I don't know it all, or most, President are narcissists. I do know that no President has done what Trump has done. That is the actual topic. That is either a good thing, or a bad thing. I personally think it's truly atrocious- obviously, it may not have the moral valence of just murdering people, or siccing ICE thugs on American citizens, or deploying US troops in American cities on false (aka, no) pretences ... or so many other things.

And yet, it also is so fundamentally unAmerican, because it strikes at the core of what this country believes, and what the Presidency is. It is not about the person, but about the office. We elect one of us to SERVE in the role for a limited time- not as a King, or a Monarch, but as a servant of We, The People. It is so fundamentally unAmerican that it bothers me to my core.

And it doesn't make me immediately think, "Aw, he's just a little more narcissistic than other President, but you know, goes with the territory, amirite?"

You want to say it's bad? Just do it. Not hard.

[Don Nico]

Thank you for a post of beauty. Bravo.

[Armchair]

Ironically, Loki makes the point.

A ship like this can equip a railgun. Bombarding a coast from over a hundred miles away with cheap muntiions. . Equipping a laser anti-drone system to protect it from masses of drones, with large numbers of SAMS

[Sarcastr0]

Science fiction is fun and all, but I'd be surprised if any of that tech, if it exists, is yet maintainable in salt water conditions.

[Frank Drackman]

There's a reason they call Sailors "Rust Pickers"

Frank

[ThePublius]

While the U.S. Navy rail gun development project was cancelled in 2021, anti-drone lasers certainly do exist and are deployed.

"The U.S. Navy is actively deploying laser weapons like HELIOS (High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance) and ODIN (Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy) to counter drones, offering speed-of-light engagement with low cost-per-shot, supplementing traditional defenses by blinding sensors or destroying targets. HELIOS, a multi-mission 60-120 kW system, integrates with the Aegis Combat System on destroyers like USS Preble, while ODIN focuses on dazzling enemy optics. These systems provide surveillance, sensor blinding, and kinetic effects against aerial and small surface threats, evolving naval defense with efficient, scalable directed energy."

The Navy has had lasers on ships for a long time. I took a 3 day cruise on the USS Eisenhower 12 years ago and they demonstrated the laser dazzlers used agains small boat attacks.

[Sarcastr0]

Reading between the PA pablum, supplementing traditional defenses is nice and all, but an integrated anti-drone-swarm system it is not.

We've talked about this before, but I think our military does far too much bleeding edge bang-wiz and not enough tried and true do the thing and can be maintained by with minimal training and some duct tape.

[loki13]

Fun fact- how hard is it to get a new pistol for the armed services?

Not a battleship? A PISTOL?

Well .... the military was using the Beretta M9 (also the Sig Sauer M11, but this is going to be long enough). Why the Beretta? Well, in 1979, the DoD wanted to standardize, They had a competition, and in 1980, the Baretta won. Due to ... complaints, they had another competition in 1984. The Baretta won. And in 1988. The Baretta won (the design was updated during the trials).

In 2011, we announced the competition for a new pistol.
... the deadline for solicitations was 2016.
In 2017, the XM17 and 18 (Sig Sauer) won, to be called the M17 and M18.

....the Army will have their Barettas replaced with the M17 ... in 2027.

...and the commenters here thought it was hard for THEM to buy a pistol? They've got NOTHING on the Army. Sixteen years, baby!

[Absaroka]

"....the Army will have their Barettas replaced with the M17 ... in 2027."

Maybe! The M17/18 are what Sig sells to LEOs and civvys as the P320. I'll spare everyone a long screed, but googling 'P320 uncommanded discharge' will set you up for a few days of reading.

My hunch would have the navy looking at fewer smaller targets rather than a few big targets, more submarines and submarine and surface drones and so on, but I'm no naval weaponeer. I haven't seen clueful commentary yet.

[ThePublius]

I was responding to your "I'd be surprised if any of that tech, if it exists, is yet maintainable in salt water conditions." Yes, it does exist, and it's eminently maintainable in salt water conditions.

In addition:

"...the U.S. Navy is actively developing and integrating multiple systems for drone swarm defense, combining electronic warfare (EW), kinetic interceptors (like Coyote), high-power microwaves (ExDECS), and AI for detection, aiming to provide layered protection for ships against numerous low-cost threats, notes DefenseScoop and Breaking Defense. Key efforts include deploying Coyote and Roadrunner-M interceptors on carriers, testing Epirus's ExDECS HPM system for swarms, and using AI for automated tracking, moving beyond traditional, expensive missile defenses."

[Sarcastr0]

Your original goalposts:
1. A ship like this can equip a railgun.
2. Equipping a laser anti-drone system to protect it from masses of drones

-You immediately conceded on railgun
-You pasted some public affairs stuff on how lasers aim to blind some targets, not as an independent system but as part of the Aegis System, which has been around for like 50 years.
-Now you're pasting promises about future weapon systems. Of course it includes AI, for that real fairy dust flavor.

So you've failed to establish any of your original goalposts, and seem to fall for every bit of military marketing out there.

[loki13]

Forget it, Jake. It's ThePubliustown.

Let's just ignore the fact that none of these crazy ideas ... need a battleship.

This is such a perfect example of how some people reflexively defend the craziest, most The Onion-worthy Trump gibberish, that it really should be remembered.

"Trump is totally sane about wanting to suddenly build 25 Trump Golden Battleships, because, um, AI! And SPACE! Also, he needs to design it himself. Because only Trump can design Ballrooms and Battleships!"

[Zarniwoop]

Trump's level of expertise in the field of modern naval engineering strikes me as "I watched all the episodes of 'Victory At Sea' when I was a teenager!"

Maybe with a side of "My uncle was smart, he taught at MIT, and MIT has an ocean engineering department*, so I learned a lot by osmosis-twice-removed."

*shout-out to former Course XIII, now folded in to Course 2-OE

[ThePublius]

"Sarcastr0 54 minutes ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
Your original goalposts:
1. A ship like this can equip a railgun.
2. Equipping a laser anti-drone system to protect it from masses of drones"

Except I didn't say that, Armchair did.

[Sarcastr0]

So if you didn't adopt his thesis, what in the world was your point?

I may be spikey because I read PA fluff on gee wiz tech stuff all the time, and have grown to hate it.

[ThePublius]

"So if you didn't adopt his thesis, what in the world was your point?"

As I said 2 hours ago, "I was responding to your "I'd be surprised if any of that tech, if it exists, is yet maintainable in salt water conditions." Yes, it does exist, and it's eminently maintainable in salt water conditions."

And you can't even concede or admit that you attributed a quote to me that I didn't say, and continue with your childish gotcha nonsense?

[Sarcastr0]

And said tech was:

1. A railgun.
2. A laser anti-drone system to protect it from masses of drones

For fuck's sake, TP.

you can't even concede or admit that you attributed a quote to me that I didn't say, and continue with your childish gotcha nonsense?
You took up arguing Armchair's point, from Armchair's post, which I quoted. And which you just re-upped

Fuck off with this schoolmarm pedant flouncing.
It's not an act - you really do mad at the stupidest ticky tacky shit.
Standing on ceremony no one else follows even as you post openly bigoted stuff about black people in large groups.

[ThePublius]

Here it is:

"Armchair 3 hours ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
Ironically, Loki makes the point.

A ship like this can equip a railgun. "

My first post on this topic was that the U.S. Navy had cancelled their rail gun development project in 2021.

[Sarcastr0]

So that tech does not exist? Huh, if only someone said that.

[Armchair]

Publius may not be aware, but the Japanese have fielded live fire exercises with naval railguns at sea.

This technology does exist.

[Mr. Bumble]

"This technology does exist."

...and Il douche doubles down on douchery as sure as the sun rises in the east.

[Absaroka]

FWIW, the Brits are getting ready to deploy a naval laser. It's not on a ship yet, but the buzz seems to be that the various trials make it look like a winner.

Once upon a time we licensed Bofors and Oerlikons to fill the same role, so maybe we can just buy it instead of starting a long development process. Although the Navy's recent history doesn't give one the warm fuzzies.

[Sarcastr0]

I like lasers in the lab context for imaging. I like them for etching. I like them for some imaging functions and communication in certain use-cases.

Lasers at sea? I'll believe it when it's fielded.

I'm honestly more optimistic about lasers in the air.

[Armchair]

This is just because you're ignorant.

"The High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) or Mk 5 Mod 0 HELIOS[1] is a Lockheed Martin-developed 60 kilowatt high-energy laser weapon designed to intercept combat drones, fast-attack craft, and missiles.[2] After winning the contract in 2018, the first announced installation was on USS Preble (DDG-88) in 2019.[3] By 2021 it was reportedly deployed onto an Arleigh Burke-class ship as part of its anti-air Aegis Combat System.[2][4]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Energy_Laser_with_Integrated_Optical-dazzler_and_Surveillance

[Armchair]

The technology exists. And maintains fine in salt water conditions

The Helios is a US Naval weapons system that uses a laser to destroy drones.

https://nypost.com/2025/02/04/us-news/incredible-photo-shows-us-navy-using-laser-weapon-dubbed-helios-from-warship/

The Japanese are conducting live fire tests with railguns at sea

https://www.twz.com/sea/railgun-damage-to-japanese-target-ship-seen-for-the-first-time

[hobie]

Correct. Ukraine has shown that large, lumbering military objects like tanks or ships [and now also submarines in dock!] are just hyper-expensive sitting ducks.

[Frank Drackman]

Those sitting ducks are kicking You-Crane's Ass.
Speaking of Ducks, they're my pick for the CFB Playoff.

[Dr. Ed 2]

As you may or may not know, the battleships were key support for US troops in Vietnam. The USS New Jersey was off Beruit in the '80s and they were a psychological weapon because they were firing 2000 lb shells that would make an entire block *disappear*.

The only reason the BBs were retired in the '90s -- other than peace dividend -- was the problems they were having with the old wiring, and then the fire crew incinerated in one of the turrets.

And as he is going to name the first one the USS Defiant, I don't see how they become named after him.

[Zarniwoop]

Trump really should catch up on recent Japanese battleship technology.

[loki13]

I'm still waiting on the Space Battleship Yamato!

[ThePublius]

Page not found.

[Zarniwoop]

Ope! Thanks. Looked like I fuckered up the link attempt. Apologies.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tDsQFUwhfqA/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEhCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAxMIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD&rs=AOn4CLAS_3rrGW6eMYNVKS36hJavCBt1Zw

[ThePublius]

Thanks

[Armchair]

Ironically...perhaps he has been

https://asiatimes.com/2025/11/japans-railgun-locked-and-loaded-to-kill-chinas-hypersonics/

[Armchair]

It's a decent idea. It's less a battleship, and more of a large cruiser. 30,000 tons isn't "that" big.

That's about 1/3 the size of a modern aircraft carrier, and smaller than our current amphibious assault ships. The Ticonderoga class cruisers we have are aging. The Zumwalt destroyers currently come in a 15,000 tons.

What that size allows you to do is have a massive electrical system that can effectively power the electric rail guns and laser systems. The laser systems can give you cheap, good anti-drone protection. The rail guns allow for cheap projectiles to be sent over the horizon. It provide a large, survivable ship that can go where you would rather not be exposing your aircraft carriers to.

The US Navy has been looking for a large surface combatant for a while. The Ticonderogas are showing their age. The Zumwalts...there's only 3 of them. This fills a gap.

[ThePublius]

The U.S. Navy cancelled their rail gun development program in 2021.

[Armchair]

The US Navy did stop development. The Japanese navy...did not.

There were a couple technical challenges with the US's railgun deployment. High energy costs. The barrels wore out pretty quickly.

But the Japanese learned from the US's railgun program and were able to improve upon it and fix some of the issues. They've put a railgun onto a ship ( The JS Asuka) and have successfully fired it at targets.

https://www.twz.com/sea/japanese-warship-fires-railgun-at-target-vessel-for-the-first-time

Is it a new technology in development? Sure. But it's been deployed on naval craft and fired at targets. We share plenty of military technology with the Japanese. If they develop a practical, working, naval railgun, I see no reason the US Navy can't work with them to install some on their ships.

[Zarniwoop]

USNI reports 840-880ft, comparable to the Iowas (887ft) with a similar beam (listed as 105-115ft; Panamax for Panama Canal transit is 106ft). Ford class carriers are ~1106ft long/134ft wide and are Neopanamax.

https://news.usni.org/2025/12/22/trump-unveils-new-battleship-class-proposed-uss-defiant-will-be-largest-u-s-surface-combatant-since-wwii

But DJT has always been a size queen, so not too surprising that he’s being fed “largest fighting ship ever!” and “it’s a battleship!” selling points to keep him happy.

[loki13]

"But DJT has always been a size queen"

...almost like he's making up for his very small ..... hands.

[hobie]

"The Nemi ships were two ships, of different sizes, built under the reign of the Roman emperor Caligula in the 1st century AD on Lake Nemi. Although the purpose of the ships is speculated upon, the larger ship was an elaborate floating palace, which contained quantities of marble, mosaic floors, heating and plumbing, and amenities such as baths. Both ships featured technology thought to have been developed historically later. It has been stated that the emperor was influenced by the lavish lifestyles of the Hellenistic rulers of Syracuse and Ptolemaic Egypt."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_ships

[Dr. Ed 2]

I have seen about the size of the Iowa and half the weight which means less armor. Whih makes sense, the current strategy is to destroy the incoming ordinance instead of being able to withstand the impact.

It's a weapons platform, not a battleship, and there are the size limitations of the destroyers.

The Navy has abandoned the in-close ships and I think they realize that big guns are what they need -- the ability to shell enemy ports.

And the first one will be named the USS Defiant -- not the USS Trump.

[jb]

I'm not a boat person, but aren't boat classes usually named after the first one that gets made? So how are these Trump class instead of Defiant class?

[Zarniwoop]

You are generally correct! And in a true ChristmasHoliday-type-season miracle, so is Grampa Ed! It's Trump that is being too smart for his diapers on this one.

Though I think "U.S.S. Vaporware" is probably going to be the actual name of the first ship in the class.

[hobie]

I absolutely applaud this move by the administration. These new, billion dollar, gold-plated, coal-powered Trump-mobiles will absolutely NOT look like next-level Sultan-of-Brunei-type megalomaniacal shit to American voters

[loki13]

LOL. I mean, the other hallmarks of the dumbest timeline is that he runs the Presidency like a reality show. It's all sizzle, no steak.

It's the announcement, but where is the follow through? This requires appropriations, and while Trump hasn't been shy about completely ignoring the Constitution, this is a lot (a LOT) of money.

Also? Anyone want to guess as to how long it takes to design and build an entire new class of warships? I won't spoil it for you, but it's not 1-2 years. Even assuming we could (and we can't) magically create the shipbuilding capacity for it overnight and stop everything else that we are doing.

[Zarniwoop]

Yep. I commented yesterday:

The Onion is slapping their collective forehead and saying "damn we should have thought of this!"

Back to reality: timelines for new ship designs by the USN are not fast these days.

So my prediction: the Navy will not get a keel laid before Trump leaves office.

And even if by some miracle construction starts ... the last two Iowa-class battleships were suspended before completion at the close of WWII, and finally scrapped in 1958: USS Illinois (BB-65) at about 22% complete, and USS Kentucky (BB-66) at about 72% complete.

[hobie]

Speaking of eugenics. It's not enough to make the ships; they have to be neegro and woman free as well. An entire crew of blonde, blue-eyed, white, male, Christian heterosexual loyalists with 2% body fat don't just come out of Alabama every day. We need to pass the Clone Trump Act. Set up shop on planet Kamino and incubate an entire orange clone army.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Coal can be dumped in a pile anywhere above the high tide line.
Oil can't be.

[hobie]

"Flanked by renderings of the “Trump class” battleships at sea, Trump said he would take an active role in their design"

Reminds me of when they allowed Homer to design a car. [spoiler alert...it turned out awesome]

[Ridgeway]

I am surprised nobody has mentioned the sharks with frick'n laser beams that will be part of each of these ships.

[loki13]

I admit, if Trump had actually proposed sharks with friggin' laser beams as part of his idea to waste BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars, I'd be a lot happier.

[jb]

I'm curious if any of the usual "the deficit is too big" crowd is going to weigh in here. It's quite obvious none of these ships are ever going to be built, since it will require more than four years to develop them and no one except for Trump thinks they are a good idea. So we're going to have three years* of development, probably good for a few tens of billions of dollars, that will all be thrown away as soon as there's a new President. I'm not even assuming here that the next President will be a Democrat, just that no one will need to kowtow to Trump's idiocy at that point.

* Probably less since he'll get distracted, or so we can hope

[Armchair]

" It's quite obvious none of these ships are ever going to be built,"

Ehh... I wouldn't be so sure. The US needs more surface combatants, if for no other reason that the current ones we have are at the end of their lifespan. The Ticonderoga class cruisers are the "big boys" now, and we bought 27 of those. 20 are retired, with the last group leaving service in 2027. The US Navy needs replacements for them, and this would serve that purpose.

[loki13]

In the "not shocking" department...

Trump's Department of Vengeance and Opacity released a letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar (look him up) written shortly before Epstein's death while Epstein was in the custody of, um, Trump.

The Trump/Blanche/Bondi department immediately pulled it back from the production. What did the letter say?

"Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to 'grab snatch,' whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.
Life is unfair."

Again ... I am shocked (shocked) that the same Donald J. Trump who would call New York tabloids using a pseudonym to brag about sexual conquests (including cheating), would brag that the benefit of being famous is that he could just grab woman by the pussy, who would buy a Miss Teen pageant and wander through the dressing rooms, who would talk about how fuckable his daughter was, who had multiple sexual assault allegations against him, who has multiple documented payouts to various women, and who has a documented (alleged!) history of hosting parties and having underage models brought to those parties .... the same Donald J. Trump who was a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein ...

...might not want a full and fair release of the Epstein files. SHOCKED! So much so that he installed his own criminal defense attorney as Deputy AG.

It's the famous Trump-Kennedy saying... ask not what you can do for your country, ask what this country can do for Donald J. Trump.

[Michael P]

loli13 now believes everything that Jeffrey Epstein ever wrote, natch.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I'd like to see Trump say "bleep it" and release everything -- unredacted. All the pictures of children nude or being raped, all their names and current home addresses, EVERYTHING and then when people recoil in horror, simply say "you told us we had to do it."

Has it occurred to anyone that Trump wouldn't be stupid enough to do anything with any of the EPSTEIN minors because he was in the NYC real estate business and knew how blackmail worked?

[David Nieporent]

Has it occurred to Dr. Ed that Trump is in fact stupid?

[loki13]

It hasn't even occurred to Dr. Ed that Dr. Ed is stupid ... so, no.

"One time, at Maine Band Camp, I saw a woman falsely accuse three innocent men of sexual assault. And it turned them all into Muslim Jihadists. Luckily, they didn't know to wear hunter's orange, and were killed by people who had Second Amendment Rights. Except those people were then arrested and tortured by the University of Massachusetts' police department who extradited them from Maine, because they hate good things and were ordered to do that by Senator Muskie, who was addicted to Ibogaine. I know, because I was there and I saw it all happen."

Dr. Ed, probably

[Dr. Ed 2]

Muskie left the Senate 45 years ago and died nearly 30 years ago...

[jb]

Has it occurred to anyone that Andrew wouldn't be stupid enough to do anything with any of the EPSTEIN minors because he was in the royal family and knew how blackmail worked?

[hobie]

Epstein was a fool to allow himself to be suicided. Look at what Maxwell got just to keep her yap shut. I'm frankly surprised he wasn't pardoned while being arrested in 2019. He would have been pardoned and given a cabinet position. But, oh no. He had to accidentally fall numerous times on a sharpened mortgage fraud indictment document in his cell.

[loki13]

" Look at what Maxwell got just to keep her yap shut."

I know! And we just learned that when Bannon's phone got searched (pursuant to his arrest), they found a photo of Trump and Maxwell.

...nothing to see there. Just like it was TOTALLY NORMAL when Trump's Criminal Defense Attorney asked Maxwell is Trump had anything to do with Epstein (without preparing or looking at, um, any of the multiple pieces of evidence linking them) and she was like, "Naw," and Blanche was like, "Cool, let's make you the Queen of Summer Camp! Also, make sure you submit a request for a pardon at some point, along with some Qatari money if you can, m'kay?"

[Dr. Ed 2]

Auto-erotic asphyxiation -- an accidental hanging.

I had to explain this to a UM administrator once who asked how they could have lost a student to an "accidential hanging."

[Estragon]

‘grab snatch’

JFC

[loki13]

....I mean, one thing I think of when I think of Epstein and Trump is ... classy.

[Life of Brian]

The Trump/Blanche/Bondi department immediately pulled it back from the production.

You mean this copy? Or this one?

Found them with a keyword search, even!

The degree to which you conjure up--and then loudly broadcast as truth--your own personal rendition of reality is really getting concerning.

[Sarcastr0]

This feels too on the nose.

Ima wait a couple of days to see how this pans out.

[loki13]

Fair. Anything that seems too good to be true ...

In fairness, it was part of the document collection, and was previously reported by AP (through a FOIA request to the FBI), although generally and not with the actual text.

But ...

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/justice-department-releases-card-mentioning-trump-purportedly-sent-epstein-2025-12-23/

At this point, I'll assume that it isn't a contemporaneous document from Epstein unless additional context or information emerges.

[Sarcastr0]

"He loved to 'grab snatch'" had my antennae up, but I had the timeline all messed up, and that'd be a reference to the Access Hollywood tape, not some weak attempt at a pushing a story about a pattern of behavior.

Anyhow, we'll see soon I expect.

[Malika la Maize]

Despite months of negotiations, USC and Notre Dame officials have failed to reach an agreement on playing what would be the 97th game in the series next year and are now each exploring replacement opponents for 2026, multiple sources told Yahoo Sports.

The Irish are finalizing a two-year agreement with BYU to play the Cougars in 2026-27. Next year’s game will be in October in Provo, Utah, before a return game the next season in South Bend, Indiana.

The temporary end of the USC-Notre Dame series is a jarring move and something that’s only happened once in nearly 80 years. Next year’s game would have been the 79th consecutive meeting, excluding the COVID-impacted 2020 season. The series began in 1926 and was only paused for a three-year stretch during World War II, before the arrival of the pandemic.

Steeped in great players, colorful coaches and rich tradition, the Irish and Trojans hold a pedigree unlike any in the sport’s history, as they’ve combined to win 24 national championships and 15 Heisman Trophies, and have produced more than 1,000 NFL draftees — believed to be the highest combined total of any college football rivalry series.

https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football/breaking-news/article/sources-notre-dame-usc-rivalry-series-ending-next-year-as-irish-finalize-2-year-deal-with-byu-165245493.html

[loki13]

In the quest for more and more and more money, college football is destroying the very things that make it great. The traditions and the rivalries.

I feel like college football, like a lot of things we are seeing, are providing us with real-life example of Aesop's fables. Goose, golden eggs, etc.

I am hopeful, but not confident, that at some point we will get back to having regional college football, instead of trying to extract every less dollar and turning it into a mini-NFL. The SEC is still (mostly) regional- Texas and Oklahoma feel a little weird, but still keep with the vibe. But the Big10 (which is, um, 18 teams) can't be considered "Midwest" when it includes Rutgers (???), USC/UCLA (???!!???) and Oregon (lol).

And I don't know about you, but I didn't realize that Cal and Stanford were on the Atlantic Coast.

By the way- the real issue is that these conferences are about the football, because that's where the money is. Think of the poor student athletes in the other sports who have to play conference games.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I go one step further -- higher ed is starting to implode.

[Frank Drackman]

Dr. Ed imploded years ago.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Attacking the messenger does not abate the message.

[Frank Drackman]

Go away!, I'm Bait'in

Frank

[jb]

Notre Dame in particular doing a great job of demonstrating how unimportant college football traditions are this year. Which is funny, for a university that is basically completely irrelevant nationally except for the traditions associated with its football team.

[Michael P]

Leftist cities have laws that are blatantly anti-property.

https://wjla.com/features/i-team/delinquent-tenant-denies-inspectors-access-in-battle-over-capitol-hill-apartment-vermont-senator-bernie-sanders-dc-department-of-buildings-washington-michele-watley-rich-bianco-jeffrey-levin

WASHINGTON (7News) — A lone tenant in a seven-unit Capitol Hill rental property has repeatedly denied access to inspectors from the D.C. Department of Buildings, according to a spokesperson for the agency, thwarting efforts by her landlord to bring the building into compliance and initiate eviction proceedings.

(The landlord needs a business license to initiate eviction proceedings. He needs an inspection to get a business license. The inspectors need resident permission, or an administrative search warrant, to enter. They can only get a warrant for dangerous conditions. Meanwhile, the tenant can file complaints over conditions that she caused, for example by removing smoke detectors.)

[Sarcastr0]

Leftist cities

Right there, it's clear you're unserious.

I got no idea, but you're blowing up what looks like a local dispute into some national partisan bullshit.

Here's Houston, where habitability inspections are struggling to happen at all:
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/housing/2025/11/05/535247/houston-apartments-ordinance-city-council-letitia-plummer/

MAGA cities are blatantly anti-tenant!

[Michael P]

Other leftist cities have laws very similar to DC's in this respect. And you're ignoring very real problems with the Houston proposal:

City Attorney Arturo Michel raised concerns about the lack of an appeal mechanism, which he said posed problems around enforceability, and Mayor John Whitmire called for a delay.

"The challenge is get something that’s tough enough and that actually is enforceable," Whitmire said.

You just want Houston to be as anti-property as DC and NYC.

[Sarcastr0]

I guess you missed the point in my Houston story. Because you were too lazy to click through, I guess.

The point here is that cities and states make different decisions on the balance between the interests of renters and landlords.

For you to call petty stuff like what you linked anti-property is unserious 'my policies or you hate property' nonsense.

For you to decide it's because of leftists is fucking ridiculous.

You're partisanizing everything. That's reductive and wrong, and also a perpetual anger machine that's no way to live.

No different than the idiots who blame Jews for all bad things in the world.

[Michael P]

Nobody is forcing you to listen to the facts or to face reality. That you don't want to is your problem, not mine.

[Sarcastr0]

Sorry I took away your anecdote.

Maybe read some Powerline - I'm sure they have some new rage-bait for you so you can feel more like yourself.

[Michael P]

You didn't take anything away, except a search result that you didn't read closely before pasting the link here.

[Dr. Ed 2]

see Camera v. Municipal Court...

[Bob from Ohio]

"MAGA cities are blatantly anti-tenant!"

Houston has a Democratic mayor and a 10-6 Democratic majority on council.

Sorry I took away your anecdote.

[Sarcastr0]

Someone else so partisan-brained they miss the point.

Correct, there are no MAGA cities. But also there are no leftist cities. At least not for more than an election cycle.

Municipal politics doesn't well lend itself to that level of partisanship.

I grew up in NYC; its issues are not partisan, they're dumb in different ways than that.

[Michael P]

"Someone else so partisan-brained they miss the point."

Cos clearly, there is no spectrum of policies within the Democrat party. As soon as you hit 51% Dem, your city charter is automatically replaced by the DSA model city charter, amirite?

Your accusation is merely a confession.

[loki13]

"I grew up in NYC; its issues are not partisan, they're dumb in different ways than that."

National partisan politics are all stupid in the same way; every local political situation is stupid in its own way.
-Leo Tolstoy on Fox & Friends

[Bob from Ohio]

"But also there are no leftist cities."

DC, SF, LA, Austin, Minneapolis for starters refute this. Many other examples.

[Sarcastr0]

DC's mayor is working with Trump tight now.
San Fran's mayor is currently a moderate.

I'm a NYC, CA, DCMA guy, so I can't speak to Austin or Minneapolis.

But you're already reductive and wrong a couple of times over.

[Bob from Ohio]

"moderate"

LOL By SF standards, not normal ones.

"DC's mayor is working with Trump tight now."

Sure, you can't just ignore the 1000 pound gorilla in your bedroom.

[Davedave]

Given that the Overton Window in the US has a view of Auschwitz, no, there are no 'leftist' cities in the US. The most liberal cities in the US are just slightly less far right than Adolph himself, by the standard prevailing in civilised nations.

[ThePublius]

That's ridiculous. See my reply to Sarcastr0, below.

[ThePublius]

"But also there are no leftist cities."

That's ridiculous. But don't listen to me, just search google with the string "is [nyc|denver|san francisco|austin|boston|etc.] a leftist city?"

I grew up in NYC, too, and it's very leftist, "heavily Democratic and generally considered a "blue" city with strong progressive leanings, evidenced by overwhelming Democratic voter registration and consistent voting patterns for Democratic candidates." It's been so except for the brief, very positive respite of Giuliani, if you go by mayors. I mean, NYC just elected an avowed socialist who wants to ultimate seize the means of production! You can't get much more left than that. Well, maybe Michelle Wu.

[ThePublius]

"Big cities in the U.S. tend toward the liberal side of the political spectrum, even when they’re within conservative states (residents of Austin sometimes joke that their city is “an island surrounded by Texas”). But which cities are more liberal — or conservative — than their reputations?"

From this article from the Pew Research Center (with a good chart):
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/08/08/chart-of-the-week-the-most-liberal-and-conservative-big-cities/

[Bob from Ohio]

Wu last week:

“You cannot talk about any achievement that the city of Boston has had in safety, jobs, and economic development, in education, without talking about the Somali community that has lifted our city up."

I fondly recall learning about how the Somali community threw tea into the harbor and helping trigger the Revolution.

[David Nieporent]

1. Davedave's comment is at best trolling and at worst completely ignorant. (Or maybe it's at worst trolling and at best completely ignorant; I'm not sure.) Obviously there are leftist cities in the United States.
2. That having been said, your response to him doesn't engage with his claim, which is that by European standards there are no leftist cities.

[Davedave]

1. It is neither trolling, not ignorant. You've been swimming in pigshit so long you can't smell it anymore. The furthest left positions in anything approaching mainstream US politics are somewhere to the right of the crankiest hard right fringe in civilised countries. Hell, they're to the right of any mainstream politicians even in absolutely uncivilised, notoriously racist countries like Australia or Scotland.

2. It says a lot about the effects of paddling in the pool of pig poo that you, who apparently consider yourself liberal, civilised, and opposed to racism - and indeed are, compared to the effluent you float amongst - made the _unbelievably_ racist assumption that I could only have meant Europe when I spoke of civilised nations. It was literally unimaginable to you that someone might speak of countries where people with funny coloured skins live as civilised.

I was speaking before only of the Overton window, but your entire weltanschauung is every bit as perverted as your country's political sense of what is normal.

[David Nieporent]

1. It is neither trolling, not ignorant. You've been swimming in pigshit so long you can't smell it anymore. The furthest left positions in anything approaching mainstream US politics are somewhere to the right of the crankiest hard right fringe in civilised countries. Hell, they're to the right of any mainstream politicians even in absolutely uncivilised, notoriously racist countries like Australia or Scotland.

Pro tip: doubling down on trolling/ignorance does not make you look less trollish/ignorant.

And doing the coy thing where you insinuate I misinterpreted you but without actually saying what you meant puts a thumb on the "troll" side of the scale.

[Davedave]

That was a simple statement of fact. You're really not all that different to Ed and Frank and co, even if we credit you with trying your damnedest to be as different as possible, because you have no referents for a normal that hasn't been poisoned by people like them.

In the leftmost cities in the US, there are mainstream politicians considered centrist who opposed ideas that even hard-right politicians in civilised countries wouldn't dare argue with, like having the basic human decency to take steps to prevent homeless people dying of cold in winter.

"doing the coy thing where you insinuate I misinterpreted you but without actually saying what you meant"

I haven't been obscure. There was no hidden meaning in my words. I said 'civilised' and meant 'civilised'. It entirely proves my point that you can't even imagine a non-obscure meaning of the term that isn't 'white people'. You haven't, I note, even attempted to defend your extraordinarily racist oopsie, but nor have you acknowledged and apologised for it. You seem to think I set up some sort of trap for you, but it's all you.

[David Nieporent]

In the leftmost cities in the US, there are mainstream politicians considered centrist who opposed ideas that even hard-right politicians in civilised countries wouldn't dare argue with, like having the basic human decency to take steps to prevent homeless people dying of cold in winter.

So you're trying to shift the meter from trolling to just plain ignorance. Not very convincingly, though.

Also, European isn't a race.

[hobie]

Is there any city in America that is a MAGA city? I'd need to know so we can compare.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Lack of a smoke detector is a textbook "dangerous condition."

A competent city government, which DC isn't, would merely cite the tenant's own complaint of no smoke detector as the grounds for an administrative warrant.

This is all Camera v. Municipal Court which was decided by the Warren Court if I remember correctly....

[Frank Drackman]

It's the District of Colored People, what do you expect?

[Malika la Maize]

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) said Sunday that they will seek to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress for not releasing more documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Khanna and Massie wrote legislation that passed Congress nearly unanimously and was signed by President Donald Trump last month requiring the Justice Department to release a trove of Epstein files in its possession within 30 days. The agency has released more than 100,000 pages of images and documents so far, some of which have been heavily redacted.

“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” Massie said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in an appearance with Khanna. “Ro Khanna and I are talking about and drafting that right now.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/12/21/epstein-files-photo-bondi-justice-department/

[Dr. Ed 2]

OK, simply release everything, no matter how harmful to the victims, and tell them to call Masse and Khanna when they freak out.

[MarkJawz]

So now not only are AI data centers driving up electricity costs, they're also driving up RAM and hard drive costs.

How much longer is society going to tolerate negative externalities from this crap all to benefit the top half a percent of Americans, if that?

[John F. Carr]

The average American won't connect a $100 rise in the price of a PC to AI companies.

[MarkJawz]

Probably true.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It was the first tech crash that dropped the price of a computer from $4000 to $400, it was all the dark fiber that made long distance essentially free, and when (not if) AI crashes, these memory factories are going to have a fire sale.

[Bwaaah]

"all to benefit the top half a percent of Americans, if that?"

Yeah. I mean, like so few people benefit from the services of Amazon, or Microsoft, or Google, or Facebook. What kind of people are they, anyway?

[MarkJawz]

You're a special kind of stupid if you think that BigTech does anything it does to benefit the American people, as opposed to their respective shareholders.

Leaving aside the anti-competitive conduct that they engage in, most of the AI crap they're pushing on us to increase their advertising revenue, not to make our lives better.

[David Nieporent]

You're a special kind of stupid if you think that BigTech does anything it does to benefit the American people, as opposed to their respective shareholders.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

[ThePublius]

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

- Adam Smith

(FIFY)

[Bwaaah]

And so, owing to nobody's benevolence, we have the benefit of meat, of beer, of bread.

[MarkJawz]

The difference is the butcher, brewer and baker are providing something that the consumer wants.

That isn't true of most of big tech.

[David Nieporent]

It's like the old joke: "The food here is terrible. " " And such small portions, too."

[Bwaaah]

Oh. I was only speaking of how consumers benefit from the services of those producers. I said nothing of those companies' motives, which I presume to be pursuit of profit, not "benefit to American people."

But you inject that notion of benevolence...is that your hope? For benevolence from profit-making corporations? That, to me, would indeed be a special kind of stupid, like the kind I often see in young people who haven't yet grasped the intransigence of human instinct. I also see it in old socialists; they're like young people who never learn.

[jb]

These aren't really externalities, since the tech companies also have to pay the higher prices for things. Just good ol' supply and demand!

[MarkJawz]

Except they can easily afford to do so because of their monopoly positions.

[jb]

First, ability to afford paying for something has no bearing on whether or not its an externality.

Second, which of the companies you're talking about have monopolies?

[MarkJawz]

Google, for one. The courts have already ruled that to be the case.

[jb]

The "for one" is doing a lot of work here. Are OpenAI or Anthropic monopolies? I hear tell they're building a lot of AI data centers.

P.S. Still not externalities anyway.

[John F. Carr]

Bloomberg Law observes that challenges to NLRB orders can be heard in any circuit in which the company does business. One lawyer commented: "Larger companies that don’t have a place of business in the Fifth Circuit may want to consider opening one, because that could open doors if they’re anticipating labor law issues." The NLRB faces a hostile reception in the Fifth Circuit these days. Traditionally the standard of review of NLRB orders is "the company always loses."

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/employers-fight-nlrb-rulings-with-fifth-circuit-forum-shopping

[John F. Carr]

In other NLRB news, the agency has an employer-friendly quorum thanks to a party-line vote in the Senate last week.

[loki13]

Things I have been thinking about today- the utter corruption of the Supreme Court's unitary executive theory. Why? Because it's a partisan myth, crafted in stupidity, with absurd results, and the current SCOTUS is using it for no reason other than as one of a series of cases (such as Trump v. United States) to empower an imperial presidency.

Why? I think back to two of the most important separation of power cases- Chadha (1983) and Clinton v. NY (1998). They don't seem to have much in common, but the "true core" of them is twofold- separation of powers, and the concept of "accountability."

Most of you should know Chadha. That is the case that got rid of the legislative veto; in effect, it was a proto-unitary executive theory case from the knuckleheads that would bring you the full version later, but would also wail about "unaccountable" agencies. In effect, it basically meant that once Congress delegated authority to an agency, it was delegated. Period. No legislative check (veto) remained. That was a very ... Reagan-era case. If you know what I mean.

Then we had Clinton. We had Congress allowing the President to "line-item veto" parts of appropriation bills. Now, that could have been awesome ... think about what it might have done with the friggin' debt! But the Court said ... nope. It must always be all-or-nothing. Can't do that. Because accountability.

Why are those cases on my mind now? Other than thinking that Clinton v. NY was the road not taken w/r/t the debt? Because look at what the Supreme Court is doing now. Sure, Congress has made itself small in a lot of ways, but SCOTUS is doing its best to kick it into submission.

No legislative veto. The President can do whatever he wants with agencies. They can't be independent in any way, even if Congress delegated its authority for them to be independent. And now, with the cases percolating through, SCOTUS is effectively taking away the power of the purse, the power to create and define (and even name) agencies, and the power to choose how money is spent, if it is spent, or where it is spent.

And the last part gets me back to the legislative veto. When a Democratic President, through legislation by Congress, asserted the power to not spend money... nope. But a GOP Unitary Executive? They can do what they want. Spend money not appropriated by Congress, and ... not spend money despite specific appropriations. Who needs a line-item veto when you have a unitary executive.

This is the root of the problem; the development of ahistorical and atextual doctrines that are deployed without concern for either the wisdom of those who came before, the text of the documents that govern the nation, or the real-world effects it has on the country.

Combine this with what appears to be, now, a historical practice dating back more than forty years to aggrandize powers to the executive branch when held by one party, and zealously police those powers when held by the other party, and it's difficult to view this as ... calling balls and strikes.

IMO.

That said, I do think that Congressional dysfunction leads to executive overreach- but this process has been sped up by SCOTUS. It's hard to say whether these factors are more responsible for what we are seeing than the basic structural issues with our system of governance*, but they don't help.

*As I've pointed out many times before, the reason that new countries don't adopt the US system is because countries that use our system are notoriously unstable (bicameral legislature + separately elected executive) and I'd argue that the only reason we haven't been is a strong culture of civics and norms, combined with traditionally weak "partisanship" have allowed it to function.

[jb]

I was also thinking about the line item veto when SCOTUS was overturning every district court decision that prevented Trump from just ignoring spending requirements from Congress.

Apparently it's not okay for Congress to explicitly allow the President to decide which of the things they want to spend money on he agrees with, but it's totally cool if he just decides to do it of his own initiative. Say what you will for the Constitutional foundations for various left-leaning interpretive approaches, at least it felt like they were mostly consistent in terms of principles rather than Presidents.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Chadha was 6-3 in its breadth, with Powell concurring on a narrower ground (noting he was worried about how far the opinion went), with Justice Byron White having a strong dissent.*

White included a long footnote showing the different views on legislative vetoes, including a citation to an article by Prof. Scalia (not a fan). Rehnquist also had a dissent.

White had some interesting moments. He also pushed back on the big campaign finance ruling.

Our 18th-century Constitution has some problems, even with amendments and text that leaves open flexibility. Scholarship shows that legislative delegation was in place since the Founding. It is also sound as a matter of general constitutional practice.

Nonetheless, a 21st-century Constitution would have a clearer statement on what is allowed.

Regardless, when a political matter such as this divides so many scholars, was in place for a long time, and so on, it is dubious for the Supreme Court to strike it down. The political branches generally provide an appropriate avenue there.

This is a major problem with the Roberts Court's executive removal decisions. It's one thing to point to standard theories about the need for the courts to protect individual rights.

The structure of the federal government is not the same thing, and the courts arrogating power in this area away from Congress (elected by the people, however imperfectly) is problematic.

==

* The line veto decision was also a divided vote. O'Connor, Scalia, and Breyer dissented. Breyer, not surprisingly, was also supportive of legislative vetoes.

[Sarcastr0]

America either goes down the tubes, with all it's promise, or we will be doing some radical reforms to the system that allowed Trump to do what he's done.

Amending the Constitution to overturn Chadha would be good - get stuff back to Congress' side of things.

Line item veto would be nice as well.

I'm fine with the EC, though some might want to deal with it.

Long but actual term limits for Justices would be a welcome change.

I'd do something about Buckley v. Valeo, and something about Shelby County as well.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"I'm fine with the EC, though some might want to deal with it."

I'm not. But at the very least, I think it is problematic that millions of American citizens in the territories are left out.

[Mr. Bumble]

"...that millions of American citizens in the territories are left out."
Millions? How many millions?

[David Nieporent]

Well, over 3 million in Puerto Rico.

[Bob from Ohio]

"America either goes down the tubes, with all it's promise, or we will be doing some radical reforms to the system"

Neither will happen.

[Sarcastr0]

And if it does, you're way to cool and edgy to give a care.

[John F. Carr]

A writing program at Metropolitan State University of Denver declared that standard American English is a white supremacist social construct that doesn't really exist. The policy was softened after people who are not progressive university professors noticed it. Now the policy is "We challenge the notion of standard English as the only correct expressive form, rather we recognize and value a number of Englishes."

Today I learned there is a school named Metropolitan State University of Denver.

[loki13]

"Today I learned there is a school named Metropolitan State University of Denver."

Lol. If you look long enough and hard enough, you'll find something at some college/university, somewhere, that will be outrageously stupid.

Thing is, I actually do understand what might have been driving the idea behind it- well, two things. First is that language is prescriptive, not descriptive. Language is always changing. SIX SEVEN! Or, if you prefer, what is hip is cool is rad is hot is lit is fire.

Second is that there are, in fact, a variety of "Englishes," and that those varieties often can reify existing class structures. We try to ignore that, but it's very true - the UK is well aware of it, but we are here as well. And many of us will "code switch" depending on who we are talking to- I don't speak the same in court as I do when I am getting together with my old high school friends.

That said ... while I can understand where this is coming from, this is so very, very dumb. Mostly because a lot of white supremacists don't speak SAE 'cuz they are dumb as a box of rocks.

[loki13]

"First is that language is prescriptive, not descriptive."

Just saw that.... meant the reverse. I type quickly and have typos (as I am sure many of you are fond of point out) but that's the exact opposite of what I meant.

[Frank Drackman]

Knew a Marine Officer who went to Ball State University (always thought it must be in "Ball" but it's named after the "Ball Brothers")
He always joked he want to "Ball U"
Get it? Ball U?

Frank

[MoreCurious]

Very clever Frank. Do you have any sophmoric jokes about Intercourse or Bird-in-Hand, both in Lancaster County, Pa.?

[Sarcastr0]

So they took down the website, but archive.is has a version:
https://archive.is/18xl4

It is indeed pretty silly stuff. Some of it is okay - keeping students where they are, teaching how code-switching works though examples...but plenty of it is sophistry at best and insisting on undirected teaching goals at worst.

But as loki noted, the fact that the right had to reach down into the Metropolitan State University of Denver might show you that this problem that MAGA claims is endemic is actually quite rare.

[not guilty]

The New York Times reports:

John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, sought on Monday to prevent the Justice Department from steering a sprawling investigation into political adversaries of President Trump to a judge in Florida who issued rulings favorable to Mr. Trump during his classified documents case.

The request, addressed to Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, was extraordinary. It would be highly unusual for a chief judge to block a colleague from overseeing an investigation. But a lawyer for Mr. Brennan argued that under the circumstances, she had the authority and a duty to do so.

In a 16-page letter, the lawyer, Kenneth L. Wainstein, asserted that the Justice Department, in what he portrayed as a violation of prosecutorial ethics, appeared to be planning to “manipulate grand jury and case assignment procedures” to put the investigation into Mr. Trump’s perceived foes under Judge Aileen M. Cannon.

Citing a pattern of the judge’s rulings in the documents case as indicating bias, Mr. Wainstein wrote, “We urge your honor to exercise your supervisory authority as chief judge to ensure the United States attorney does not steer this matter to the Fort Pierce division and to the courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/us/politics/trump-doj-investigation-judge-cannon-brennan-cia.html

The full text of the letter is here: https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2025-12/BrennanAltongaLetter12-22-25.pdf

It is a mystery as to why John Brennan's conduct during 2017 regarding events that occurred during 2016 is being investigated in the Southern District of Florida. AP reports:

It remains unclear what specific allegations of criminal conduct are being examined by prosecutors in Florida. But the subpoenas issued last month to Brennan and other former law enforcement and intelligence officials sought documents related to the preparation of the Obama administration’s intelligence community assessment, made public in January 2017, that detailed how Russia waged a covert influence campaign to help Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

https://apnews.com/article/brennan-cia-trump-russia-justice-department-cannon-8272c2270987315fb39190a20d43dba0

[John F. Carr]

There are recognized legal remedies for the kind of abuses alleged in the letter. It starts off by citing precedent allowing injunctions against grand jury abuses. It cites the prosecution against John Gotti, which was transferred to New York after being improperly brought in Florida. And the rules of criminal procedure allow pretrial dismissal for prosecutorial misconduct. But this letter isn't a motion or independent action. I don't see how the chief judge can openly act on this extraordinary request. To do so would invite a flood of email from every worried litigant. The law pretends that reversal on appeal is an adequate remedy for years of unjustified prosecution.

Maybe there is a way to quietly grant relief with plausible deniability and without violating ethical rules.

[loki13]

I agree with what you wrote.

It's really hard, because the entire system is built on the presumption of regularity for good reason. But for that, criminal procedure (which can already be gummed up quite a bit) would slow to a crawl as every action would be subject to a multitude of collateral attacks.

...and yet, the presumption of regularity is being destroyed by Trump's DOJ. Not just in the high profile cases ... in the bread and butter cases as well.

[not guilty]

"Maybe there is a way to quietly grant relief with plausible deniability and without violating ethical rules."

I don't see the letter as requesting any specific act to be taken by the Chief Judge of the district court. It is a more generalized, prophylactic request for administrative action to prevent prosecutorial abuses.

A presumption of regularity ordinarily attaches to prosecutorial decisions, but this presumption is conditioned upon the existence of probable cause. "In the ordinary case, 'so long as the prosecutor has probable cause to believe that the accused committed an offense defined by statute, the decision whether or not to prosecute, and what charge to file or bring before a grand jury, generally rests entirely in his discretion.' " United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 464 (1996), quoting Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U. S. 357, 364 (1978).

This is hardly the ordinary case, as counsel for Mr. Brennan acknowledges. Prosecutors appear to be inquiring into conduct without a nexus to the Southern District of Florida, as to which prosecution is plainly time barred according to 18 U.S.C. § 3282. The circumstances outlined in defense counsel's letter strongly suggest a bad faith effort by prosecutors to steer this case to the court of a black robed Trump whore.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The presumption of regularity is just that. A presumption.

It supposedly has a check against abuse.

[Bob from Ohio]

Today In History@URDailyHistory
6h
23 Dec 1783: General George #Washington resigns his commission as commander-in-chief in the Continental #Army. Doing so, he reaffirms his belief in civilian control of the #military. He returns to his home in Mount Vernon, #Virginia on #Christmas Day. #ad https://amzn.to/37H4TIy

A milestone event in US and world history. Revolutionary military leader giving up his power voluntarily is very, very rare.

Then he voluntarily gave up the presidency.

A giant.

[Sarcastr0]

I also fund this moment in American history important and moving.

The virtues and political moral philosophy it illustrates are 180-degrees the opposite of MAGA's concentration of power in the executive.

[Bob from Ohio]

TRUMP! MAGA!

You are increasingly deranged.

[Sarcastr0]

I explained myself.

[Bwaaah]

You wouldn't want a compliment about George Washington to go unchallenged.

[hobie]

Learn from it.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Happy Festivus to all those who celebrate.

[Frank Drackman]

I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

According to his disclosure, the Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General stated in a meeting that if courts attempted to stop the removals, DOJ would need to consider telling the courts, “Fuck you” and ignore any court order.

Huh. I wonder where the PADAG is these days. Oh. That doesn't sound good.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.215.0.pdf

[Zarniwoop]

Well dang ... that opinion will surely get some MAGA panties collectively bunched.

The jurisdictional issues are indeed complex, but the court having continued habeas jurisdiction due to ongoing collateral consequences seems like a plausible application of cited precedents.

Once the wailing and gnashing of teeth subsides, I welcome legal thoughts that are a bit more cogent than "nuh-uh, Trump and ICE Barbie can do whatever they want! Leftist/commie/tranny judge!!1!"

[David Nieporent]

More government lying and beclowning itself in the Abrego Garcia case:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/22/more-stumbles-by-feds-mar-kilmar-abrego-garcia-deportation-case-00703947

They falsely wrote that an order was ex parte when it wasn't. They falsely said that an order of removal was final when it wasn't.

Today's sacrificial lamb was Ernesto Molina, rather than Drew Ensign, meaning the poor guy had to come up with this:

“I imagine it is possible … that order was improvident,” Molina said, acknowledging that language in the notice “could cause the court confusion.”

“It may have been done in a manner that was not farsighted and did not have the information it needed,” Molina added. “The officer did the best he or she could at the time. Events did overtake that.”

and

“Everybody signed it and it’s flat wrong,” the judge complained of the government’s submission. “I’m growing beyond impatient with this happening. I want to know who wrote that and I want to know why all the four lawyers who were signatories to that thought it was a good idea.”

“You had all night to tell me why the petitioner was wrong,” she continued. “This was an emergency of your making.”

Molina conceded that the claim was inaccurate and said he’d comply with the judge’s request for a written explanation of the error.

[David Nieporent]

To quote loki: they lie and they lie and they lie.

[Zarniwoop]

I still can't some up with a decent explanation for the govt's behavior other than performative cruelty. And I remain curious which Trump lackey is the driving force here; I doubt Trump is the one personally refusing to take the "win" of deportation.

Abrego did not speak to reporters, but his attorneys emphasized in and out of court that their client remains willing to go to Costa Rica if the administration will drop the criminal case pending against him.

“If he was allowed to sort of choose his path, he would have been in Costa Rica months ago,” Abrego lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told reporters after the hearing. “We don’t consider it justice that he’d be in Costa Rica. Justice would be that he remained here in Maryland … but an acceptable resolution at this point is the resolution that he’s fighting for, which is the ability to take the Costa Rican government up on their offer of refugee status.”

“It’s actually the federal government that’s keeping him here in the United States right now,” the attorney said.

[jb]

The amount of federal resources the US government is putting in to not deport this guy to Costa Rica is really impressive.

[David Nieporent]

Trump is certainly capable of cruelty on his own, but he usually lacks the attention span for this sustained level of it. It's very likely Stephen Miller.

[Davedave]

"I still can't some up with a decent explanation for the govt's behavior other than performative cruelty"

You're here discussing some dreadful, but ultimately largely inconsequential minor abuses, and not talking about the fact that everyone knows Trump is a paid Russian agent, FFS.

[loki13]

Speaking of they lie, they lie, they lie...

In the OTHER Abrego Garcia case (you know, the one that the DOJ created out of whole cloth to try to send him to prison with made-up facts that they broadcast everywhere so people like XY could breathlessly keep defaming repeating them long after they were shown to be false)...

We have multiple issues. The two of note-

1. The Court has ordered the government to respond to a motion for sanctions; specifically, the Court ordered that the Government stop creating unfavorable publicity about Garcia (especially given that the facts they were using weren't, um, true ... also, not supposed to do that with ongoing criminal proceedgins) and make sure that they abided by the order. Of course, they didn't. Specifically (but not exclusively) Bovino. OOPS! Can't wait to see them try to explain that. Probably in a sealed document claiming that it was privileged, or some nonsense.

2. Also, the Court has said that its order from earlier will be unsealed on December 30. All we know about it is from an earlier filing that accidentally referenced one finding. What was the finding? That the government's position ... that there were no directions or interference from upper levels of the DOJ and therefore that prosecution of Garcia was just the independent judgment of the prosecutor, was lie- communications show that it was, at all times, directed by the AG's office. And that the DOJ has been fighting (using BS claims of privilege and filing under seal) to keep that lie from being discovered.

Again- they lie, they lie, they lie.

[M L]

Looks like George "I am Antifa" Conway got on the Ozempic. Unfortunately it's not so easy to shake "repulsive fatass" from your personality.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/12/22/never-trumper-george-conway-files-to-run-for-congress-in-new-york-as-a-democrat/

[Bob from Ohio]

In local news, breaking and entering suspect released due to weak judge and a "we pay your bail" non profit murders man.

https://www.cleveland19.com/2025/12/17/murder-suspect-released-bond-paid-by-nonprofit-before-fatal-rta-shooting-records/

[M L]

Here's the folks responsible for the bail project, for directing thank you letters from the community.

https://bailproject.org/vision/#leadership

[David Nieporent]

Weak? What judge would not grant bail to someone accused of breaking and entering? You understand that bail is supposed to be the norm, right?

[Bob from Ohio]

"norm"

He has 7 prior felony convictions including B & E, Burglary and assaulting a police officer. I just checked the clerk docket. He is 25.

He should have been in prison already, not released on a small bail.

[ThePublius]

It wasn't just B&E, it was "... for felony crimes (Burglary, Drug Possession, Possessing Criminal Tools, and Having Weapons While Under Disability)."

"Donnie Allen had been arrested 10 times since 2019, including four incidents at RTA stations."

https://www.cleveland19.com/2025/12/17/murder-suspect-released-bond-paid-by-nonprofit-before-fatal-rta-shooting-records/

But in retrospect it's now evident he shouldn't have been released on bail, eh? Or else his victim would still be alive.

[Bob from Ohio]

"in retrospect"

It was evident when the judge set the bail.

[David Nieporent]

It was not. Before December 14, when he allegedly killed this guy, he was nothing more than a petty criminal. I repeat: bail is the norm.

[Bob from Ohio]

"petty criminal."

7+ felony convictions* in 6 years. Multiple crimes of violence.

You are really helping to give libertarians the reputation they enjoy!

*7 cases, some have multiple convictions.

[David Nieporent]

No, not multiple crimes of violence. Where are you getting that from?

[David Nieporent]

But in retrospect it's now evident he shouldn't have been released on bail, eh?

I mean, in retrospect kicking Hitler's mother in the stomach really hard in early 1889 would've been totally justified. But that's not normally the way one judges actions.

[ThePublius]

Well, might I suggest that a guy with 7 prior convictions and 10 arrest in the last 6 years just might be a danger to the public, and shouldn't be bailed out so cheaply?

[Bob from Ohio]

He should have been in prison. So its not just this judge, its the other ones who slapped his wrist repeatedly.

Typical for Cuyahoga County but still maddening.

[David Nieporent]

Whether he's a danger to the public — as opposed to an annoyance — depends on what those arrests/convictions were for. As far as I can tell from a quick search, they were all nonviolent before this.

[ThePublius]

Where are you getting that from?

- 2024: Two counts of attempted burglary, assault on a peace officer, obstructing official business, resisting arrest and drug possession

- 2022: Burglary

- 2021: Burglary

- 2019: Two counts of burglary and one count of criminal damaging

Assault on a peace officer is a violent offense.

Why are you defending this guy? Just because you don't want to agree with me, or acknowledge anything I post?

Maybe you can have him stay at your house instead of jail.

[David Nieporent]

I'm not "defending this guy." To the extent I'm defending anybody (I'm not), it's the judge.

Oh, and free legal media literacy tip: "Assault on a peace officer," like "resisting arrest" (which is also there), is one of the fake crimes they pile on when a suspect is uncooperative during an arrest. If it were an actual assault on a cop, he'd never have gotten bail.

[jb]

It seems like "assault on a peace officer" is usually the charge they stick on you after they beat the crap out of you and need to justify it somehow.

Having said that, I get the instinct of these "we will pay your bail" organizations, but I'm not sure that people with a bunch of felony convictions in a relatively short time span are the ones they should be trying to make sure they can go about their regular lives.

[hobie]

Indictments against Donald Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictments_against_Donald_Trump

You want the convictions link as well?

"just might be a danger to the public"

[ThePublius]

You're such a dope!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Or at least have a "dangerousness hearing", whatever that is.

[hobie]

We let people out on bail all the time for fraud or election stealing, who just turn around and start murdering people. We give pardons to violent cop beaters who go on to reoffend. Such is the system we have.

[MarkJawz]

This is the solution to that problem.

https://ibb.co/G4bKYPKL

[ThePublius]

"Democratic Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said on Monday that Somalis are to thank for “every achievement” that the city has ever had.

Somalis have gained national attention after several were charged with stealing over $1 billion from Minnesota’s social programs, including those intended to feed poor children. Wu claimed that the Somalians are responsible for every positive thing that has happened in Boston.

“You cannot talk about any achievement that the city of Boston has had in safety, jobs, and economic development, in education, without talking about the Somali community that has lifted our city up. We are proud and we are grateful for our Somali community and for our Somali American neighbors. Boston and the country are clear that hate has no place in our society,” Wu said.

“We will use every attack to actually strengthen and expand the services available, to empower and work alongside our community members who are already doing so much good in the world and setting the example for the rest of the country,” Wu continued."

This is the most insane thing she has ever said.

https://dailycaller.com/2025/12/23/boston-mayor-michelle-wu-somalis/

[hobie]

Taking billions in funds intended to feed poor people is indeed reprehensible. Good to see you and Tucker have gone woke, Publius. Although it took you long enough. We've been talking about this very shit here for ages!

Also, for those above the age of five, it's clear the mayor is claiming that Somalis are a part of the general tapestry of immigrants that bring benefit to Boston. I guess your MAGA-Goggles direct light differently into your eyeballs.

[DDHarriman]

Woke is what facilitated all this fraud.

That and Democrat ideology and governing philosophy.

[ThePublius]

So, you're saying that we can't take Wu's comments at face value, we have to somehow interpret them? You're the one wearing the goggles, woke goggles, I'm afraid.

[hobie]

So you don't like a firehose of lies coming out of a politician's mouth, eh?

[MarkJawz]

In my experience, Asians hate blacks, but they'll pretend to be their friends in order to focus their energy on the real people they hate, Whitey.

[Armchair]

Remind me to thank the Somalis for driving out the British in 1775/1776.

[David Nieporent]

I'm pretty sure everyone who participated in that is long dead.

[John F. Carr]

I think this is the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mz299fdhbk.

[John F. Carr]

Thomas Massie is threatening to hold Pam Bondi in contempt until he is satisfied with the released Epstein files. How many divisions does the Congressman have? Trump has a lot.

If he gets his hands on her, her people can ask for a writ of habeas corpus to test the legality of her detention. That hearing would be fun to watch. "Now the Justice Department supports a liberal application of habeas? Anyway, I have a free spot on my calendar in 2027 to hear arguments."

[OpinionsVary]

Importantly, this would be inherent contempt, rather than statutory contempt, which hasn't been used in a long time. I think everyone knows Trump would just ignore a contempt citation if Congress tried to hold her in statutory contempt. Just wouldn't prosecute. So Congress has to fall back on inherent contempt. That's when the Sergeant-at-Arms drags you before one of the chambers, the chamber holds a trial and then can hold you in inherent contempt - which means they can direct a punishment. Typically a few days locked up.

This also raised the unanswered question: can inherent contempt be pardoned by the POTUS? Statutory contempt is clearly an offence against the united states (and so can be) but is inherent contempt or is it an offence against congress superficially?

[John F. Carr]

Congress would argue that she is being held on a form of civil, coercive contempt and she will be released as soon as the complete files are released. Civil contempt can not be pardoned.

[Zarniwoop]

Welp, S.Ct. rules DJT can't get a stay on order prevent deployment of National Guard to Illinois:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a443_ba7d.pdf

Should get a separate VC post soon, one hopes.

[David Nieporent]

Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas dissent. Tantrum from Rivabot in 3, 2, 1…

[John F. Carr]

The Supreme Court refused to allow Trump to deploy the National Guard in Chicago. Six justices (apparently) concluded that the "unable to execute the laws" clause allows the
National Guard to supplement the regular military and not civilian law enforcement.

Alito and Thomas dissented on the grounds that no party had advanced the decisive argument. Gorsuch thought the issue unsuitable for decision on an application for a stay.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/12/supreme-court-rejects-trumps-effort-to-deploy-national-guard-in-illinois/

[David Nieporent]

I expect authoritarianism from Alito/Thomas. Gorsuch's position was really infuriating. The party seeking the stay is the one that carries the burden of proof. Gorsuch's "the record is too thin, and the procedural posture is too rushed, so we can't possibly rule against Trump" is just bizarroworld logic.

[hobie]

I don't know why Alito votes the way he does. Unlike Harlan Thomas, he hasn't provably taken money for votes