Author: A.T.

Texas quickly metes out a five-year prison term to a Black woman for (inadvertently) casting one illegal provisional ballot (that was not counted).

Trump obstructs justice, steals top-secret files, conspires to invalidate 81 million votes, fails to defend the Capitol from attack — incites that attack — and . . . nothing.

This could finally be changing.

Eastman’s likely disbarment has much bigger ramifications.

I think I’ve fixed the broken videos issue.  Young readers will not know who Johnny Carson was, let alone Merv Griffin, Tom Snyder, or Dinah Shore.  But it was fun.  (On Dinah, the guy plugging Wendy’s stock is Danny Thomas — Marlo’s dad, a Wendy’s board member and significant shareholder, which he perhaps should have disclosed; but the founder of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, so who can complain?)

[A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.]

You could read Michael Waldman’s The Second Amendment: A  Biography (“With wit and erudition, Michael Waldman tells the story of how the Amendment’s meaning was turned upside-down and inside-out.” — George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum).

Or Thom Hartmann’s Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment (“A brief but powerful analysis of a searing national crisis.” — Booklist) . . .

But if you’re a slow reader like me, you may appreciate the analysis your fellow subscriber, Jim Burt of Ft. Worth, Texas, just sent me.

(Jim had read the entire World Book Encyclopedia by the age of 8; became a 1966 Presidential Scholar out of high school; and then — yada yada yada — a successful attorney.)

I’d love to find a a day or two to read the Waldman and Hartmann books, but here’s the six-minute nutshell:

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Self-proclaimed “originalists” tend to use their alleged doctrine as a fig leaf for enacting their prejudices.  In addition to the subject of reproductive autonomy, that’s especially in evidence, it seems, with regard to the Second Amendment.  The Supreme Court actually has a set of rules for legal interpretation which enshrines a version of “originalism.”  While this interpretation manual actually departs from the traditional standard of legal interpretation concerning “originalism” – the traditional standard says that if a law appears to have meaning on its face you may not scrounge through legislative history or other “parol evidence” (outside evidence) to try to read the minds of the enactors – its item #3 says that “Every word within a statute is there for a purpose and should be given its due significance.”  With respect to the Second Amendment, this means that interpretations that don’t apply the language concerning “A well-regulated Militia” are facially invalid.  Take that, Clarence Thomas!  And if you really want to see what the Framers thought about that, we have James Madison’s notes:

Mr. MADISON. The primary object is to secure an effectual discipline of the Militia. This will no more be done if left to the States separately than the requisitions have been hitherto paid by them. The States neglect their Militia now, and the more they are consolidated into one nation, the less each will rely on its own interior provisions for its safety & the less prepare its Militia for that purpose; in like manner as the militia of a State would have been still more neglected than it has been if each County had been independently charged with the care of its Militia. The Discipline of the Militia is evidently a National concern, and ought to be provided for in the National Constitution. [Emphasis added.]

The national experience with militia in the recently concluded war for independence had been grossly unsatisfactory, with the state militias being ill-armed, ill-disciplined, and unable to stand in the line of battle.  Washington lost most of his battles (though he won the war), but most of those lost battles were lost because the militia was bloody useless.  In those days, a “well-regulated militia” needed to show up when called, carry a standard weapon which standard ammunition would fit, and be able to engage in volley fire with their fellow militiamen.  This means that they had to use and “keep” a weapon that conformed to an Army standard. And in most states every able-bodied male between 16 and 60 was considered to be in the militia, which meant in turn that when the Second Amendment refers to the “right to keep and bear arms” it confides that right to “the People”, not to “persons”.

That’s another key word in the 2nd Amendment that is defined by context in the Constitution but tends to mean something else today: “people”. Every time the word “people” appears in the Constitution, it is used as a collective noun meaning the population corporately, and in this specific context, the population incorporated as a “well-regulated militia”, which is to say under discipline and subject to such other regulations as the leadership of the militia and the political leadership above them might prescribe. “People” as used in the Constitution never means a plural noun synonymous with an unassorted number of individual persons. Where the latter is meant, the Constitution uses the word “persons” or “citizens” or “the accused”.  You might try as an exercise to find every reference to “people” in the Constitution.  It’s always used as a collective noun.

Yet another phrase that meant something specific in the 18th C. that it seems not to mean today is to “bear arms”. That was not synonymous in the 18th C. with “to pack heat”. Again, it meant bearing arms in a military context for a military purpose.

I’m okay with finding, per the 9th Amendment, an implied right to keep, and perhaps under some circumstances carry, a firearm for purposes of self defense. Self defense is a common law right of great antiquity, not specifically stated in the Constitution but certainly as implicit as a person’s right to bodily autonomy. It’s not an unlimited right, nor is it free from regulation, but it exists, has not been explicitly abrogated, and falls within the ambit of the 9th Amendment reserving unenumerated rights to . . . “the people”. The 2nd Amendment, though, simply was not intended to address in any way the individual right of self defense, or any other individual right.  Of course, if we’re going to start talking about “implied rights”, that’s a matter of substantive due process, like individual bodily autonomy and a right to privacy.  Hmmm.

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As I’ve written before, it’s not practical to confiscate the hundreds of millions of weapons Americans already own — almost all of them, responsibly.  No one is proposing that.

It is practical to sensibly regulate future sales of both guns and ammunition.

And to empower local communities to impose the same kind of safety measures that Wyatt Earp , et al,  imposed in the wild West.

What could be more red-blooded American than that?

Sing it with me!

HOUSKEEPING:

You may notice this page looks a little different, except for my picture, which never changes, now decades out of date.  Thanks to my trusty web mistress for conforming to the new WordPress requirements.

As I was playing with it, I noticed that the amateur videos from 1978-1987 don’t load.  We’ve grayed those links while I try to figure out some way to reinstate them without having to pay NBC, et al.

I also saw the much improved archives tab and, just for fun, went back to the very first post, back when I was paid to do them.  An Ode to ATMs.  (I found a typo and corrected it, lo these 27 years later.)

It was harmless enough so — not planning to read through all 6,815 of them, but maybe one or two more — I went on to #2, an Ode to ALMs.

“Automatic Loan Machines are the future,” I asserted, “just as Automatic Teller Machines were the future 20 years ago.”

Oops.

Then again, you get what you pay for on this site.  Thanks for your readership!

Here are 2-minute “introductory videos” from Floridians out to unseat Rick Scott:

→ Debbie Mucarsel-Powell

→ Phil Ehr

Click here to tell me which candidate you prefer — and which you think stands the better chance of winning.

Thom Hartmann may overdo it a bit on a couple of points (e.g., not sure you can blame lax anti-trust enforcement for the demise of mom-and-pop stores), but the line he draws from Nixon to Reagan to Bush to Trump — Is Trump to the GOP like a Parasitic Wasp to a Caterpillar? — strikes me as spot on.  Worth a read.

APE / AMC

So APE is now AMC, and AMC has reverse-split one for 10, closing Friday at $12.43 ($1.24 pre-split), down 68% in a week.  Those who were long APE and short AMC finally got their payday.  Those more cowardly — us! — who only bought APE, selling it last week for a double, did okay, too.

Have a great weekend!

Last night I watched a minute of Tucker Carlson’s interview with the twice-impeached, quadruply-indicted presumptive Republican nominee . . .

. . . a candidate whom Carlson has said he “hates passionately” and whom he has characterized as “a demonic force, a destroyer” . . .

. . . and though he presumably realizes that Trump holds the honor, Carlson gave him a platform to say — projecting, as he so often does — “Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of our country.”

Biden who, with his team, has led us to:

> The lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.

> Inflation lower than after 8 years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

> A current “misery index” lower than it was at the end of Eisenhower’s presidency . . . or Reagan’s, Ford’s, Carter’s,  Clinton’s, Nixon’s, Kennedy’s, Johnson’s, either Bush’s or Trump’s.

> The long-sought bipartisan infrastructure bill Trump could never achieve.

> An S&P 500 up 18% since taking office.

> Rising wages.

> A resurgence in manufacturing.

> A dramatically strengthened NATO — Russia, are you listening? — with strengthened Pacific partnerships as well.

> A restoration of dignity to the office of the presidency.

So why do most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track?

They believe it because . . .

. . . if they’re Trump’s 35%, that’s what he’s led them to believe.

. . . and if they’re not, they are, like me and (I’d guess) you, deeply dismayed if not downright frightened by our ever-increasing polarization and the way facts no longer seem to matter.

If Trump says he had the largest inaugural crowd in history when he plainly did not, it’s just an “alternative fact.”

If more than 1,000 former Republican and Democratic federal prosecutors say he obstructed justice, it’s a “witch hunt.”

If he summons his followers to Washington (“it will be wild”) and tells them to march down to the Capitol and “fight like hell” because the election was stolen from them, knowing that some of them are armed, and then watches for 187 minutes while they storm the Capitol and threaten to kill the Vice President before reluctantly telling them he loves them but they should go home — well, what’s wrong with that?

The entire Republican Party except for Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger just goes along with it.

Sure, he’s a liar.  Sure he’s a bully.  Sure he’s a wannabe strongman who loves Putin, Kim Jung-Un, and the Proud Boys; who flirts with fascism and kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.  But he’s their wannabe strongman!  Their retribution, no less!

This is scary stuff.  So the 65% who are not under his spell think the country’s headed in a dangerous direction, too.

The 35% and the 65% agree — just for more-or-less opposite reasons.

Yes, we have crime problems (worst in red states).  The whole country (very much including those red states) needs to do better.

Yes, we have an immigration mess (not least because the bi-partisan comprehensive immigration reform that passed the Senate 68-32 a decade ago was blocked by a Republican minority in the House; it would have passed easily if the Republicans had allowed it to come up for a vote, so they did not).  But it could be fixed if both sides would cooperate; and Biden may get that done in his second term as he got the CHIPs Act passed and Infrastructure bill passed, and the Inflation Reduction Act passed.

But in the main, this president, far from being “the worst president in history,” is shaping up to be one of the best. 

If our democracy survives, historians will surely say, almost as one: “Move over, Dubya: Trump had you beat by a mile.”

Ronan Farrow on Elon Musk in The New Yorker.

To whet your interest:

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The new space race has the potential to shape the global balance of power. Satellites enable the navigation of drones and missiles and generate imagery used for intelligence, and they are mostly under the control of private companies . . . Several officials told me that they were alarmed by NASA’s reliance on SpaceX for essential services. “There is only one thing worse than a government monopoly. And that is a private monopoly that the government is dependent on,” Bridenstine said. “I do worry that we have put all of our eggs into one basket, and it’s the SpaceX basket.”

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So much to admire about the guy, of course.  (And he may be only in the top dozen most powerful people on Earth, depending on how you count.)

But still.

BONUS

How to Decarbonize Your Home With the Inflation Reduction Act

“A practical guide to using the climate law to get cheaper solar panels, heat pumps, and more.”

. . . you’ll have the choice of watching the first Republican debate or else Trump being interviewed by Tucker Carlson.

(Details of all that here.)

Carlson, you may recall, texted colleagues such things as:

• “I hate him passionately.”
• “He’s a demonic force, a destroyer.”
• “All [his businesses] fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that.”
• “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”

For your pre-game entertainment, I commend to you 21 Minutes of Tucker Carlson on Comedy Central.

I cede the balance of my time.

So asks William Weir, who describes himself as “a life-long southerner, devout Christian, and a true conservative.”

His answer, posted August 5, may surprise you:

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No. You’re thinking of Republicans. But let’s test. I’m going to throw out some basic facts, and we’ll see who gets offended. Let’s begin.

• Over the last fifty years, every Republican President has seen a recession, while we have had only one recession begin under a Democrat, a short six month recession under Carter.

• Over the last forty years every Republican President has created a deficit at least double the previous record. Over that same time, every Democratic President (including already Biden) has cut the deficit by half or more.

• The last three Democratic Presidents (including Biden) have all seen unemployment effectively cut in half. The last two Republicans both saw it effectively double.

• Over the last fifty years, despite holding the Presidency for only 22 years compared to Republicans holding it 28, stock market return has been just over 100% under Republicans and just shy of 1,000% under Democrats. Over 42 million jobs have been created under Democrats compared to only 24 million under Republicans. Income growth averaged 2.2% under Democrats compared to 0.6% under Republicans. GDP growth averaged 4.1% under Democrats compared to 2.7% under Republicans.

• Going back to Truman, four of the five Presidents who have seen the largest increase in domestic oil production were Democrats (with Trump scoring the number five spot and Obama placing first). Only six Presidents over that time have seen domestic oil production fall, and five of them were Republicans.

• Since 1980, The abortion rate held steady under Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. It fell under both Clinton and Obama, and under Trump rose for the first time since the 1970’s.

• Since the Nixon Administration, 338 members of Presidential administrations have been indicted on criminal charges. Three of these were in Democratic administrations, 335 were in Republican administrations.

• In the last century, only two Presidents have lost jobs during their administrations, both Republicans (Hoover and Trump)

• Over the last 80 years, five of the six Presidents with the highest job creation were Democrats, with only Reagan making the list. (Current rankings are Clinton, Reagan, Biden, Obama, Johnson, and Carter, with Biden likely to move into second place before the end of his first term.)

• Ten of the eleven safest states in the Union are blue or lean blue with Utah the only red state. Fifteen of the sixteen least safe states are red, with Georgia being the only non-red state in that mix (and until recently we would have considered Georgia a red state). (Scores based on a combination of personal safety, road safety, financial safety, and emergency preparedness.)

• Four of the five states with the highest poverty rate are deep red (New Mexico being the only blue state). Four of the five states with the lowest poverty rates are blue or lean blue, with Utah the only red state.

• The five states with the best education are all blue. Four of the five states with the worst education are deep red, with New Mexico the only blue state.

• Four of the five states with the highest incarceration rates are deep red, with Delaware the only blue state. Four of the five with the lowest incarceration rates are blue or lean blue with North Dakota the only red state.

• The ten states with a the best healthcare are all blue. The five states with the worst healthcare are all red. In fact ten of the bottom eleven are all red with Georgia being the only exception.

• Eight of the ten states that pay the highest Federal income tax per capita are blue. (That’s per capita, so population isn’t a factor.) Eight of the ten states who rely most on Federal funding are red.

• The five states with the highest covid death rates were all red. Three of the five with the lowest death rates are blue with Alaska and Utah the only exceptions.

Okay. Those are just unbiased, easily verifiable facts. Now let’s see who gets their feelings hurt!

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Clearly, we need more conservatives like pastor Weir.

Have a great week.

The first 12 seconds, from Trump’s former press secretary, are particularly good:

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Donald Trump lives in his own reality, and he lies casually, but he’s very very good at it.  He used to teach me: “Stephanie, as long as you keep repeating something, it doesn’t matter what you say.”

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Not only is he one of just three U.S. presidents ever to have been impeached, let alone twice (with a 57-43 bipartisan majority of senators voting to convict the second time) . . . the only U.S. president ever to have been indicted, let alone four times . . . he is also the only president ever to have kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.

(And to have exchanged “love letters” with a dictator; sided with Russia over the FBI; and said, “Hitler did a lot of good things.”)

I emphasize this last point, because his instruction to  Stephanie Grisham — “Stephanie, as long as you keep repeating something, it doesn’t matter what you say” — is essentially an instruction on effectuating The Big Lie.

>> From Scientific American: Repeated exposure to implausible statements makes them feel less so.

>> From an American correspondent’s introduction to that 1941 book of speeches:

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[Hitler’s oratory] stirs hatred and feeds self-vindication, and whether on paper it bears inspection for consistency, logic or soundness is immaterial.

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>> From a French journalist’s foreword:

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To use constantly and untiringly the same arguments, and to pound into the heads of his listeners the same formulas, is part of Hitler’s oratorical technique.  . . .  [He] is past master at throwing up verbal smoke screens . . . He knows equally well the effectiveness of massive oratorical assaults that shake the nerves of his victims or opponents . . . he knows how to give pledges that will be broken later . . . he uses insults and lies in the same manner as his generals use planes and tanks to break through the respectable but often weak front of his adversaries. . . . His crudity frequently borders on downright vulgarity.

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Sound like anyone we know?

How else to explain all the good people who believe Trump is the victim of a witch hunt?

One of those good people — Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, as it happens — reads this column daily; and, daily, sends refutation or taunt.

Yesterday, he sent this clip about remarks made by a former white Christian nationalist Trump appointee (whom Trump subsequently pardoned), blaming Jews for their deportations to the concentration camps. 

My reader called it a reason to question Trump’s judgment (ya think?), “however, nothing Trump did compares to the Biden crime family bribe-taking, Afghanistan debacle and cutting down the oil production that created the 9% inflation.”

I pointed out all the obvious things anyone on “our side” would.

>> That leaving Afghanistan by May, 2021, was a deal TRUMP had committed the U.S. to and that — though it certainly could have gone better — it might not have been an easy thing for the military to execute even if Trump had still been in charge. 

>> That attributing the spike in global inflation to Biden’s restrictions on future oil exploration — rather than to pent-up COVID demand, supply chain problems, and Russia’s  invasion of Iraq — made no sense.

>> And that the “Biden crime family” consisted of one community college professor not known for her lavish lifestyle; one former drug and alcohol abuser who shamelessly traded on his father’s name; and the Amtrak-riding kingpin himself, on whom Trump — with all the powers of the presidency and, presumably, Russia’s intelligence service — had been unable to pin any crime.

Much like the much-anticipated Durham report that flopped — but unlike the much-anticipated Mueller report that turned up what more than 1,000 former Republican and Democratic federal prosecutors deem to have been multiple felonies — all Trump’s efforts, and those of now-Special Counsel David Weiss, have failed to reveal anything of note the President has done.

(Ah, retorted my reader, “Garland appointed the fox, David Weiss, to guard the hen house and YOU don’t see any corruption?”  I pointed out that TRUMP appointed David Weiss in 2018 and Garland let him stay and continue his investigation.  And that when Weiss recently asked for the extra powers of a special counsel, Garland granted them.  Would my reader have felt Garland was less corrupt, I asked, if he had replaced Trump’s guy with a Biden appointee?  Less suspect if he had refused the Trump appointee’s request for extra powers?  To which my reader replied — and I quote — “George Washington appointed Benedict Arnold.  History is replete with despicable traitors.”)

I know what you’re thinking: “Why do you even bother?”

And I generally don’t — it’s quicksand. 

Millions of misinformed people like my reader are certain that Marxists like me and Joe Biden are out to ruin America with all this bipartisan infrastructure, record-low unemployment, renewed manufacturing base, affordable health care, and, of course, our plan to give women and parents the right to make difficult health care choices with their doctors.

They have drunk the Kool-Aid.

All this against the background of . . . what does any of it have to do with Trump, anyway?

If evidence emerges that Joe Biden is a crime family boss (or Tom Hanks, a serial killer), the same Justice Department memo that shielded Trump from prosecution while in office would shield Joe (though not Tom).  But once out, that evidence should be presented to a grand jury — or four, if warranted — and the process be allowed to take its course.

As is now finally happening with Trump.

The difference being that, where Biden in such circumstances would conduct himself with decorum, Trump is making veiled threats to witnesses, jurors, and poll workers and leading his followers to make explicit threats — very much as a crime family boss would.*

Let us hope that those witnesses, jurors, and poll workers find the courage not to cave (because our democracy hangs by a thread); and that you, dear reader, have a great weekend.

* Bolded links, like this one, are by way of recommendation — items I think you might want to read or watch.  Light-face links are just by way of substantiation — in case you want to know what something is based on, or who someone is, etc..

. . . and desperately need to be reformed (if you ask me).

An enforceable code of ethics for the  Supreme Court for obvious starters, but it’s way more than that.

Six years ago, a woman walking in Central Park was almost killed a falling tree.  A settlement — $5.5 million — was reached last month, and it cost her $1 million in legal fees to reach it. (The defendants doubtless had big legal fees, as well.)  Is this really the best system for settling such cases?  Six years?

In 1996, I put Prop 202 on the California ballot to encourage “early settlements.”  It was endorsed by the business community and conservatives like Robert Bork; but also by two former deans of Harvard Law School, Derek Bok and Erwin Griswold, former ACLU President Norman Dorsen, and even a former president of the American College of Trial Lawyers, Leon Silverman.

It came really close — 48.79% of the vote!

I called California’s then-Secretary of State, Bill Jones.

“All I need,” I told him over and over for an hour, “is for you to find . . .”

No, wait; wrong fantasy.  I didn’t call him; I admitted defeat.

But I still believe something like Prop 202 makes sense — a way to give both sides an incentive to settle more quickly.

I just finished listening to Big Sugar, a riveting nine-part podcast about a 15-year legal battle that the plaintiffs quickly won — $51 million — but that Big Sugar ultimately won.  If you listen, I doubt you’ll think justice was done.  (Interesting sidenote: the same scientists paid to say there’s no link between sugar and diabetes morphed into the scientists who found no linkage between smoking and cancer or fossil fuels and climate change.  But I digress.)

It reminded me of ParkerVision’s 13-year battle with Qualcomm, where a jury awarded PRKR $173 million in 2011, but where, so far, the company has received nothing.  And may well never.

It reminded me also of its recent suit against Intel, where a jury could well have awarded more than $250 million — which the judge could then have trebled — but where, for reasons hard to fathom, the jury was not given a chance to hear the case.  Instead, the judge more or less forced ParkerVision to settle for $25 million.

Maybe 20 years from now there will be a podcast about that one.

(I still have a huge number of shares, and there’s some possibility of upside from today’s dime a share — hey, 20 cents would be a double!  A buck someday would be a home run!  But I’m no longer holding my breath.  The justice system crushed us.)

The big frustration, though, 10 billion times as important as ParkerVision, is how hard it has been, first, to impeach Trump — don’t read the Mueller report or credit the view of more than 1,000 former Republican and Democratic prosecutors, just take his word for it — and, now, how hard it’s been to pursue the indictments.

We all watched him urge his followers to come to DC — “it will be wild” — and exhort them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” knowing many were armed . . . we all watched them storm the Capitol . . . he watched them storm the Capitol . . . for 187 minutes before he reluctantly called them off . . . we have all heard his call to Georgia’s secretary of state.

Why does it take years and years to investigate and adjudicate?

Why not quick justice for the really obvious pieces and then a succession of “superseding indictments” as the full scope of the conspiracy becomes better and better known?

I’m not an expert, but I can’t believe this is the best we can do.

Grrrrrr.

Five facts about the indictments.

1. Biden didn’t indict Trump, four different grand juries did.  “The reason we HAVE grand juries is to make sure no one gets indicted out of a personal vendetta.”
2. This isn’t about “free speech,” it’s about what he did.
3. It doesn’t matter whether Trump believed the election was stolen.
4. Trump has been given deference most other criminal defendants never would.
5. It’s not political: Trump was in legal trouble long before politics.

See if you agree.

Separate from his potential criminal liability, to be decided by juries, there’s Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Is he Constitutionally disqualified serving a second term, regardless?

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Two conservative law professors active in the Federalist Society argue that the original meaning of the 14th Amendment makes Donald Trump ineligible to hold government office.

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The Federalist Society is no friend of the Democrats, as you know.  Yet these guys deeply researched the question and reached  four firm conclusions:

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First, Section Three remains an enforceable part of the Constitution, not limited to the Civil War, and not effectively repealed by nineteenth century amnesty legislation.

Second, Section Three is self-executing, operating as an immediate disqualification from office, without the need for additional action by Congress. It can and should be enforced by every official, state or federal, who judges qualifications.

Third, to the extent of any conflict with prior constitutional rules, Section Three repeals, supersedes, or simply satisfies them. This includes the rules against bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, the Due Process Clause, and even the free speech principles of the First Amendment.

Fourth, Section Three covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support as “aid or comfort.”

It covers a broad range of former offices, including the Presidency. And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.

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Here are the twists and turns of what needs to happen to get this decided by the Supreme Court — pronto. 

There’s no time to lose.

BONUS

The 10 Best Investing Books of All Time — allegedly.