[ Posted Friday, February 16th, 2024 – 18:04 UTC ]
That headline comes from the end of an aphorism that goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks: "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." Today, the wheels of justice just ground out a penalty of $355 million for Donald Trump, for committing serial fraud in his New York businesses -- which we certainly found to be an "exceedingly fine" result of the case (an "exceedingly fine fine," maybe?). The $355 million can now be added to the $88 million Trump is already on the hook for, after losing two other civil cases (the defamation cases brought by E. Jean Carroll). Plus, in today's ruling, two of Trump's children were fined $4 million each, as well as a $1 million fine for another member of the Trump Organization (making it a $364 million penalty, in all). This was the capstone to a week watching the slow grind of multiple court cases Trump is currently ensnared in, so we thought it was an appropriate place to start our column this week.
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[ Posted Thursday, February 15th, 2024 – 16:58 UTC ]
Donald Trump will finally be forced to sit in a courtroom to answer criminal charges against him in a trial before a jury of his peers. This trial will begin on March 25th, the judge overseeing the case ruled today. This was the originally-scheduled date for the courtroom drama to begin, which Trump's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to push back as far as they possibly could. The judge just flat-out rejected their pleas for delay, so jury selection will begin late next month.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 13th, 2024 – 16:28 UTC ]
As I write this, there may or may not be a second impeachment vote happening later today in the House of Representatives. Republicans tried to impeach the secretary of the Department of Homeland Defense last week and suffered a rather embarrassing loss, so one would assume that this time around the speaker will do a better job of counting noses before the vote takes place -- and also that this time the vote won't happen if Republicans don't have enough. As we saw last week, the difference of one vote can indeed be critical in such a closely-divided House.
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[ Posted Friday, February 9th, 2024 – 19:29 UTC ]
This was a very bad week for Republicans in Congress, pretty much all around. The Speaker of the House proved incapable of counting votes and thus saw two big defeats on the floor, and over in the Senate the Republicans cut off their noses (elephant trunks?) to spite their faces in a spectacular turnaround from their own basic bargaining position. GOP incompetence was on display on both sides of the Capitol, to put it bluntly.
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[ Posted Thursday, February 8th, 2024 – 15:55 UTC ]
Donald Trump is, without doubt, the leader of the Republican Party right now. He is cruising to the Republican presidential nomination and the party's base has rallied around him almost to the exclusion of all others. But below the level of Trump, there is a growing leadership vacuum in the party, as everyone scrambles to bend whichever way the Trump winds happen to be blowing at that particular moment, while still attempting to hold the party together. This lack of secondary leadership came to the fore this week in three notable ways.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 6th, 2024 – 17:12 UTC ]
Donald Trump is still not king. That's the upshot of today's ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, when stripped of all the legalese. He did not enjoy some divine right to do whatever he pleased while he was president, and he does not have some "Get Out Of Jail Free" card to use now that he is not president anymore. We are a country of laws, and everyone -- up to and including current and former presidents -- must obey them or ultimately have to face the consequences in a courtroom.
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[ Posted Friday, February 2nd, 2024 – 18:46 UTC ]
New monthly employment numbers were released today showing a surprisingly-high 353,000 new jobs were created in January. The stock market is currently setting new all-time highs. The American economy has recovered from COVID far faster and far better than all other major countries, in fact. Inflation has come back down, gasoline prices are down, and wages are up (growing faster than inflation). Signups for Obamacare hit another record this year (outpacing last year's record by five million!) and America has the lowest uninsured rate in history. Domestic oil production is also setting records. So what are conservatives obsessed with in reaction to all this good news? Taylor Swift. No, really....
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 31st, 2024 – 16:35 UTC ]
House Republicans moved a big step closer to one of their goals today, as they voted on articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Two articles of impeachment passed the relevant House committee on a party-line vote, and the full House could vote on the matter within days. This will fulfill a longstanding desire of the House Republicans to impeach somebody (anybody!) in Joe Biden's administration, and can be seen as a trial run for their real goal of impeaching Biden himself. This is all a purely political exercise, but that's certainly not going to stop them. The Republicans simply have no grounds for impeaching either one, but why let a little thing called the U.S. Constitution get in the way of their fun?
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[ Posted Friday, January 12th, 2024 – 18:50 UTC ]
It is shocking (it always is), but here we are on the brink of the 2024 presidential election cycle's official start. The Iowa caucuses will be held Monday. Most of us, thankfully, will have a few more months to go before being faced with the prospect of going to the polls for our state's primary, when (hopefully) the weather will be a lot better than it is predicted to be in the Hawkeye State three days from now. They may be heading to their polls in the midst of a blizzard, with the temperature forecast to be: "Oh CRAP it is cold!" with windchill factors being as low as: "I can't feel my toes... or my face... just leave me here in this snowbank for the wolves to find...."
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 9th, 2024 – 16:40 UTC ]
Donald Trump has long believed that because he was president, he was constitutionally allowed to do anything he pleased, without any possibility of ever having to answer for any of it in any way. He explicitly stated this belief while he was president and he has claimed the same sweeping immunity ever since he left office as well. He truly believes that somewhere in the Constitution is a clause that essentially bestows the divine right of kings upon the U.S. president. A president's actions can never be challenged in court because of this supposed loophole, in other words (according to Trump).
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