President Elon Musk and his figurehead Donald Trump inched closer to a constitutional crisis (once again) last week. It still hasn't been fully resolved, so we've all got more of this to look forward to next week as well.

Trump invoked a law from the 1700s this week which would allow him personally to determine who gets deported. No due process, no hearing before a judge -- none of that. Just Trump deciding: "I don't like this guy, let's kick him out." The Alien Enemies Act is only supposed to apply when the United States is at war with another nation, and has only been used three times -- the most recent being the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. But as far as Trump is concerned, it doesn't matter than we aren't at war, he just doesn't want to deal with the courts at all.

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Judicial independence is under attack in America right now. The president and his supporters are calling for impeaching judges -- not for any "high crimes and misdemeanors," but instead for issuing rulings they don't like. And today, in a remarkable "be careful what you wish for" moment, a Republican senator has announced he will introduce a bill to restrict federal district judges from making any rulings that apply nationwide. This is somewhat amusing, seeing as how Republicans use this tactic all the time when there is a Democrat in the White House.

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It's hard to feel sorry for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. After he and his fellow conservatives on the court ruled last year that presidents could essentially do whatever they felt like, with no fears of ever being legally held to account for any of it, Roberts is now shocked -- shocked! -- that President Donald Trump does not have sufficient respect for the judicial system. This isn't wholly a problem that Roberts created, but he certainly contributed to it in a big way.

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Happy St. Patrick's Day to all!

First, let's just quickly check the weather report from the Emerald Isle, shall we?

(Heh.)

But surprisingly enough, the country that caught my eye this particular Paddy's Day wasn't Ye Ould Sod, but instead our neighbor to the north. And it wasn't the fine stout product from Sir Arthur Guinness that intrigued my beer-loving sensibilities this year, but instead... Moosehead?

That's right. Moosehead beer (lager, actually, if you want to be pedantic). From Canada.

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As is now the new normal, there were so many things happening in the political world this week it is hard to keep track of them all. But what is currently in the center ring is the vote happening in the Senate on the continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year.

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Senate Democrats are currently trapped between a rock and a hard place. They face a lose-lose situation, so it's no wonder they haven't figured out a viable path forward yet. Anything they do, at this point, is going to disappoint the voters in their base in one way or another (which is really just the natural result of being in the minority in both houses of Congress and not holding the Oval Office).

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Program Note: Today is the final day I was too preoccupied with real-life stuff to write a new column (new columns will resume tomorrow), so I conclude my little look back at the COVID pandemic with a much later article than the last two. I wrote this before we were all completely out of the woods (pandemic-wise), mostly because I was exasperated with the silliness of the baby boomers dictating to all following generations: "You shall be known by a single letter" (which wasn't true at the time, for most of us), and also with the silliness of merely drawing an arbitrary line on a calendar and declaring "This generation will end at this year, and the next generation shall begin here!" To me, a "generation" implies a shared event or a shared perspective that is outwardly defined (such as the post-World War II baby boom), and not by an arbitrary division of years.

In any case, the term still hasn't caught on (at least, that I am aware of), so maybe I'm still just trying to (pun intended) make it "go viral." So here is my rare foray into sociology (or whatever you want to call it), just in the hopes that people start using it one day.

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The administration of President Donald Trump is showing us all, in real time, how not to tackle a widespread medical crisis. Because things are moving so quickly, though, it's tough to tell how much of their woefully inadequate response has been the fault of Donald Trump himself, Trump's scorn for experts of any type who know more things than he does (a category which includes many people, for obvious reasons), or Trump's advisors and aides who have been put in charge of a massive problem but whose main worry seems to be not ever contradicting Trump in public (no matter how wrong Trump gets things). It all adds up to making a bad situation much worse, which is precisely where we find ourselves now. Decisions are made for political reasons, or -- worse -- to avoid making Trump himself look bad in any way. This has shattered the confidence of the stock market, as evidenced by today's record-busting 3,000-point drop. The more time goes by, the more Trump's inadequacies are becoming impossible to ignore, even by his staunchest supporters. Donald Trump, quite obviously, does not have a clue what to do next, is instead out there blatantly lying about the situation on a daily basis, and we're all going to suffer as a direct result. No wonder the market's tanking.

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Roman Emperor Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned. It's a myth. Violins (or "fiddles") wouldn't exist for another 1,500 years or so, making the very concept impossible. That's not to say Nero might not have blatantly ignored a flaming crisis, of course, it's just quibbling about the literal meaning of the maxim. Now, American Emperor-With-No-Clothes Donald Trump didn't fiddle while the country was hit by a pandemic, either. Instead, he played golf. Twice. That's right -- in the midst of a huge crisis, Trump spent the entire weekend playing golf.

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While the biggest political spectacle of the week was the president's big speech to Congress, the biggest political news of the week was actually the American economy reacting to Donald Trump's on-again-off-again, now-you-see-them-now-you-don't tariffs. The whiplash began at the start of the week and hasn't fully subsided yet. Taken together with all of Trump's other disruptive wrecking balls, economists are now starting to talk about the possibility of an upcoming "Trump recession."

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