Chief Justice Roberts isn’t your hired gun
Posted By: Big Bopper, 3/12/2025 7:23:23 PM
The Republican-appointed Justices on the Supreme Court are now six of the nine. Unsurprisingly, the ideological tilt of the Court is more conservative than it’s been in two or three generations. It shows. Last year, the Court took the conservative side in reducing deference to administrative agencies; deciding expansively in favor of presidential immunity (which of course benefits both liberal presidents and conservative ones, but the particular case that was decided benefited a conservative one, namely Donald Trump);
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Chief Justice Roberts isn’t your hired gun
11 replies
The Republican-appointed Justices on the Supreme Court are now six of the nine. Unsurprisingly, the ideological tilt of the Court is more conservative than it’s been in two or three generations.
It shows. Last year, the Court took the conservative side in reducing deference to administrative agencies; deciding expansively in favor of presidential immunity (which of course benefits both liberal presidents and conservative ones, but the particular case that was decided benefited a conservative one, namely Donald Trump);
One summer day in 1924, a train stopped at a station on Long Island. A man carrying a harmless-looking package ran to catch it. He struggled to board the train as it departed. One of the train employees on board reached for his hand as another on the platform gave him a boost from behind.
The package fell onto the tracks. It turned out to be a package of fireworks. The fireworks exploded.
So, the exploding fireworks injured someone, right?
Not exactly.
Have you seen the Denver restaurant scene? Me neither. It’s dead and gone.
In a one-year period, the number of restaurants in Denver declined by 183. Of all the restaurant closures in Colorado last year, 82% were in Denver – a place that has only about 12% of the population of Colorado.
Average profits at the few surviving Denver restaurants are only 3-5%. Anyone who dines out knows that this isn’t because prices are down. It’s because costs are up. Restaurant wages in Denver are up 89% since 2019.
The main reason is Denver’s minimum wage of $18.81/hour for ordinary workers and $15.79 for tipped workers. For comparison, in New York City
Trump v. Zelensky cage match: Whaaaat?
14 replies
The White House event “Trump and Zelensky Meeting Staged for Media” somehow turned into “Trump v. Zelensky Cage Match.”
How did that happen? My theory is that it wasn’t exactly an accident, but it didn’t play out the way either side intended.
Bear in mind that both leaders are experienced actors – Trump as a reality TV host and Zelensky as a stand-up comedian. (Yes, Trump really was a reality TV host!) Both saw the meeting as a stage. They intended to communicate not with one another – that could have been done better in private – but with millions of viewers.
It’s amusing to see them pose the question to themselves. It’s not really a question; rather, it’s rhetorical. Posing the question, “Why aren’t we marching in the streets?” is their way of saying that they really should be.
But even after considerable angst, self-incrimination, and rhetorical excesses about not marching, they’re still not marching.
As for why, there’s a simple answer and a complicated one. The simple answer is, because it’s cold outside.
Remember the “protest era” of the 60s and early 70s? College kids would organize protests and sometimes riots with two goals in mind:
Ending the Vietnam War (or, really, just ending the draft); and
Ending Spring finals.
Light-skinned Neanderthal Europe was conquered
by dark-skinned modern humans 40,000 years ago 8 replies
by dark-skinned modern humans 40,000 years ago 8 replies
When fossilized Neanderthals (or “Neandertals” if you prefer) were discovered in caves in Europe back in the mid-1800s, it was assumed that they were stupid, ape-like brutes. Indeed, they did possess compact, muscular bodies with short legs.
We’ve learned in the past few decades that our stereotype of Neanderthals was wrong. These were fully human creatures who hunted with spears, created art, made boats, fished, ceremonially buried their dead, and almost certainly spoke to one another. They were as advanced as any other hominid of the time period.
Trump is thinking outside the Ukrainian box
12 replies
Inside the box, and the Beltway, the thinking all along has been that we must draw a line at Ukraine, else Putin and the barbarians will soon be on the steps of Warsaw and then Berlin and Paris.
Besides, Russian aggression and aggressors are morally bad. We owe it to posterity and civilization not to crumble before them.
Those are valid points. On the other hand:
We are where we are. Where we are, is Vladimir Putin make some understandable miscalculations.
One, he miscalculated America’s willingness to support foreign countries. After all, he had witnessed Joe Biden’s Afghanistan surrender debacle.
Wolves roamed Colorado for millions of years. At the end of the last ice age, they managed to survive the mass extinctions of megafauna such as mammoths, mastodons, sabertooth tigers, giant cave bears, and huge sloths, an extinction event that was probably caused in part by the arrival of humans from Asia at about the same time.
Until the much later arrival of Europeans, those early Americans were living in the stone age. Their weapons were stone-tipped spears and arrows. They didn’t even have horses. But they hunted in a way that was deadly to large herding animals and the predators of the herds: They used fire.
In determining citizenship, the United States has a very unusual approach. You’re a citizen if you were born here. (You’re also a citizen if you were born abroad under certain circumstances, but that’s a different issue.)
That’s a bit crazy, because it means that if a woman (aren’t you glad we don’t have to refer to them as “child-birthing persons” anymore?) makes it into the United States, legally or illegally, in time to give birth – right on the north bank of the Rio Grande, for example – her baby is an American citizen.
The mother doesn’t magically become an American citizen by giving birth in America,
The Trump-is-Hitler crowd dismisses the 77 million Americans who elected Donald Trump to the Presidency, for the second time, as a cult.
They aren’t suggesting that these 77 million people are a cult because they were opposed to another four years of Joe Biden’s drooling corruption. Rather, they’re suggesting that these people are card-carrying, Kool Aid-drinking Trump worshippers.
Let’s put this in context. One of the defining characteristics of cults is that they idolize a charismatic, authoritarian leader. Such leaders get away with a lot.
“Hitler” was their favorite. Trump was “just like Hitler,” they warned us. Forget about the fact that Trump has close relatives who are Jewish and was a staunch supporter of Israel in his first term – and also before and after.
And forget the fact that it’s the Democrats who proudly exhibit sympathy for barbarians who mass-murder, mass-behead and mass-rape the Jews.
Democrats’ proof that Trump was Hitler despite the facts we are supposed to forget was that Trump wanted to disallow the illegal immigration of Latinos into America, just like Hitler wanted to disallow the illegal immigration of Jews into Germany.
Er, no, that’s not it.
Anywaaaaay, you get the point.
Was Michelle Obama a DEI bride?
15 replies
I have nothing against Michelle. The media tells us that she’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s accomplished, and I’m sure she’s charming. As her husband said about Hillary Clinton, she’s “likable enough.”
OK, I’ll admit that I didn’t particularly like her comment that the first time she was proud of America was the night Barack was elected. Surely there was a time in her first 45 years before then that she felt some pride in America. How about when the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team beat the Russians? How about when we put a man on the Moon? How about when we passed the Civil Rights Acts?
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Democratic strategist James Carville declared Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Story” that the Trump administration was “in total meltdown.”
Carville said, “Total meltdown!’
Carville said, “I think people are afraid to death. They see markets collapsing! They see people calling Mark Kelly a traitor. They see disorder everywhere. You know, Trump was going to bring the price of eggs down from day one.”
He continued, “We can’t call the Enola Gay, the Enola Gay. I mean, what’s coming out of Washington would scare the living bejesus out of anybody, independent, Republican or Democrat. This administration is in total meltdown, in total collapse.”
Judge orders 6 agencies to rehire fired
federal probationary workers after "unlawful" terminations 27 replies
federal probationary workers after "unlawful" terminations 27 replies
Washington — A federal judge in California ordered six federal agencies to reinstate probationary employees who were fired last month, finding that their terminations by the Office of Personnel Management were unlawful.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco handed down his order in a challenge brought by a group of unions against the Trump administration from the bench. He said that neither OPM nor its Acting Director Charles Ezell had the authority to direct the terminations across agencies.
The order extends relief to fired workers at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury.
"It is a sad, sad day when our government would fire some good employee
SAUGATUCK, Mich. — Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is set to announce that he will not seek an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, a move that leaves the door wide open for him to seek a much bigger role as his party’s next presidential nominee. Since his role in the Biden administration ended in late January, Buttigieg has spent months considering his next move, including a serious look at the unexpectedly open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, where he relocated in recent years. But many prominent allies he consulted believed he could not realistically pursue the Senate seat while
A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém. It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people - including world leaders - at the conference in November. The state government touts the highway's "sustainable" credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact. The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.
Dem Governors Get Strategy for National
Guard Deployment, Executive Orders to
Resist Trump 20 replies
Guard Deployment, Executive Orders to
Resist Trump 20 replies
Democrat governors have a “resistance” playbook created for them that includes draft executive orders to defy the administration’s immigration policies as well as instructions on deploying the National Guard.
The Governors Action Alliance, a Democrat organization that founded the group Governors Safeguarding Democracy, provided such guidance to the staffs of Democrat governors across the country after the election of President Donald Trump.
The 126 pages of the playbook—including emails, talking points, and a “Firewalling for Freedom – Template Gubernatorial Executive Order”—were obtained in a public records request from the office of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro by the private nonprofit watchdog group Government Accountability and Oversight
American Federation of Teachers honcho Randi Weingarten’s sudden outrage over Team Trump’s plan to abolish the federal Department of Education is simply about losing her own power and influence — not any risk to the kids.
America’s “competitors — and adversaries — are no doubt cheering President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education,” Weingarten asserts in an MSNBC column, pretending the DOE “helps give all children in the United States access to the great public school education they deserve.” [snip]
“A gutted department would mean fewer teachers, more crowded classrooms and increased mental health and behavioral challenges for students,” she lies.
President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the agency overseeing Medicare should divest financial ties to healthcare and pharmaceutical companies that could benefit from his policy decisions, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Wednesday.
Television personality and surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz is scheduled to appear on Friday before the Senate Finance Committee, on which Warren sits. The panel will hold a confirmation hearing for his nomination to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a wide-reaching agency with annual spending of $2.6 trillion.
In a letter addressed to him seen by Reuters, Warren called on Oz to divest from his financial holdings related to industries regulated by the agency
Tim Walz Barrels Toward 2028 With Deranged
Trump Rant, Manages to Expose Himself
in the Process 18 replies
Trump Rant, Manages to Expose Himself
in the Process 18 replies
If failed vice-presidential candidate and current Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) made his intention to run in 2028 any clearer, it'd require him to rip his shirt off and paint it on his chest. He's clearly working toward a presidential run after faceplanting with Kamala Harris, and his strategy appears to be shouting and screaming his way to the nomination.
I'm less than convinced that will pay off for him, but here we go. America's finger-wagger-in-chief is on the case of Department of Education cuts, and he's furious at President Donald Trump about it.
The Trump administration has ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pause federal funds to the University of Maine System (UMS) over the state’s refusal to protect women’s sports.
The UMS holds a network of eight public colleges in Maine—the state’s “largest educational enterprise,” according to the UMS website, with an annual enrollment of nearly 30,000 students.
As Breitbart News reported last month, the president signed an executive order to “re-write federal Title IX education rules to withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender athletes to play as females.”
The 36 million who watched President Donald Trump's address to Congress also watched as Congressional Black Caucus member, Rep. Al Green, shook his cane and shouted at the president.
When he refused to desist, Speaker Mike Johnson ordered him removed from the chamber.
Two days later, in a bipartisan vote, the House censured Green.
The Congressional Black Caucus stood in firm support of Green's actions and, in their own move to disrupt, CBC members sang "We Shall Overcome," an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, as Johnson read the censure on the House floor. When they refused to stop disrupting, the Speaker gaveled the session to recess.
It's not widely known, but over HALF of
Columba University's enrollment is now
foreign students 16 replies
Columba University's enrollment is now
foreign students 16 replies
It's not widely known, but over HALF of Columba University's enrollment is now foreign students. Some of them are people like Mahmoud Khalil, who spent all his time agitating in support of Hamas terrorists. But if you dig deeper, the true story is even more appalling: Columbia is using the prestige of its elite undergraduate school to bring in thousands of mediocre foreigners who want a Columbia degree in computer science, engineering, or a similar field. Columbia admits them because they pay full-freight tuition, boosting their bottom line while glutting the American job market and lowering wages for STEM workers.
Walt Disney studio chiefs might be feeling their own brand of flop sweat, as one indicator after another piles up that that company's $300 million bet on a live-action "Snow White" is going down faster than the Titanic if the iceberg had been armed with torpedoes and antiship missiles.
The Mouse House "won’t be rolling out a robust red carpet like it usually does" for a big-budget premiere next week, Variety reported Tuesday. Instead of a parade of movie stars and celebrities vying for attention on the red carpet and all the attendant big media names, the "Snow White" premiere