Semi-retired law professor. Legal historian. Champion of causes that ought not to be lost, but for the moment seem to be.
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Fair question, which is why I add qualifier, "if one had the votes" - by which I meant both House & Senate. A very doubtful proposition. Still, Kennedy is sui generis in danger he poses to us all & future generations. And politically, even Rs might have trouble voting to keep him. Quien sabe?
2/2 RFK Jr is so dangerous that I think one could articulate a reasonable constitutional theory based on US judicial impeachment precedent & prior English practice. But distinguishing him from, say A. Mayorkas, starts to become question of degree, not kind. Worth a try if one had votes. But hard.
1/2 Very tricky to impeach cabinet officer for executing presidential policy, however dreadful or even deadly. What is "high crime or misdemeanor"? As I've written & testified for yrs, crime is not necessary, but RFK's mad behavior isn't direct assault on constitutional order like Trump I & II.
No notes
Both true, I fear.
After long hesitation, I cancelled my WaPo subscription over this. While news division remains strong, opinion page has become pablum mixed w/ Trumpist apologetics. Newspaper that genuflects to authoritarians in & out of nat'l government is no longer an institution I can support financially.
2/2 to national government, especially one controlled by unapologetic authoritarians, is no longer an institution I can support with my money. I mourn the loss of the old Post, since Watergate a pillar of the American free press. I hope it can somehow regain its spine & thus its stature.
1/2After long hesitation, I cancelled my Wash Post subscription today. Firing of Karen Attiah for some pretty anodyne posts here abt Kirk death was last straw. While news division remains valuable, opinion page has become pablum mixed w/ Trumpist apologetics. A newspaper that reflexively genuflects
Cartoon by @macltoons.bsky.social.
No idea really. I think most serious thinkers about all this recognize that detailed discussion of systemic remedies is premature. The precondition for any systemic change is Democratic control of WH & both houses of Congress. One shld plan for that eventuality, but it cld be years or never.
There is a throughline between Texas A&M's embarrassing response to a student's complaint and a certain newspaper's "who's to say who signed it" article. www.pbump.net/o/the-climat...
2/2 And if White House gets to pick the "expert," you can virtually guarantee that s/he will find that signature on card is forgery or that comparison is "inconclusive." This is classic Trumpian diversion.
1/2 As someone who has used handwriting experts in trials, I note that honest handwriting "experts" are VERY unlikely to be able to form conclusive opinion in case w/ one very short questioned sample where, if it were fake, someone was carefully & consciously trying to imitate another's handwriting.
2/2 Would expansion provoke retaliatory expansion the next time Rs had trifecta? Almost certainly. But the risks of that cycle now seem to me less dire than risk of allowing rulings of this majority to cripple American government for generations.
1/2Until this yr, I resisted expansion. But this ct is so compromised -whether by overt political partisanship or near-religious attachment to its ideological & methodological commitments is immaterial - and its decisions are so fatal to constitutional order that I now think expansion is only remedy
With every day that passes it becomes clearer that J. Jackson was right in saying that only SCOTUS rules are that there are no rules except that T administration always wins. Only possible solution is Dem trifecta in 2028 and immediate expansion of SCOTUS. Otherwise this is forever.
I disagree. To be what Vance now publicly is required that he be the same before. There was no transformation. No "conscious decision" to change. No person who was of genuinely good character in the first place could have made such a decision. This is mere exposure of the rot there all along.
I disagree. To be what Vance now publicly is required that he be the same before. There was no transformation. No "conscious decision" to change. No person who was of genuinely good character in the first place could have made such a decision. This is mere exposure of the rot there all along.
Most troubling part of story, if true, is not killing civilians who might have been NK soldiers. Scary part is how obscenely risky this was: risk of capture & of grounding US nuclear sub in shallow waters near NK coast. Either wld have provoked major crisis. To plant listening device. Cowboys...
The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.
Sweden has something quite similar, primarily for sports equipment. You can go to your local outlet and borrow bikes, skis, fishing poles, backpacks, soccer balls, you name it. All for free. It's terrific. Much to be said for democratic socialism.
1/ I worked at DoD. I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be "murder" or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable. Read expert analysis by @bcfinucane.bsky.social⤵️
This was, per govt, a go-fast drug smuggling boat. We've been catching them in Caribbean & prosecuting occupants for decades. Done it myself. Designating every dude in go-fast boat full of cocaine a "terrorist" & then saying, "Oops, hard to catch," is just excuse for extrajudicial murder.
I was AUSA in Miami & prosecuted cases involving boats just like this. Using video just like this. Unless occupants opened fire on US military or law enforcement vessel, hard to see how this isn't murder. Wld be happy to hear from anyone w/ specialized knowledge of maritime law w/ contrary view.
Understand what gov't is claiming right to do. Take away the "alleged." Assume US military stops vessel & finds drugs aboard. If what US did w/ moving boat is legal, then it would be equally legal to line up crew of stopped boat, shoot them all in head, then blow up boat. For drug crime. No.
I was AUSA in Miami & prosecuted cases involving boats just like this. Using video just like this. Unless occupants opened fire on US military or law enforcement vessel, hard to see how this isn't murder. Wld be happy to hear from anyone w/ specialized knowledge of maritime law w/ contrary view.
Puzzled abt "born-again Christian" thing. Romney is lifelong Mormon. Also, he was only Republican Senator to vote to convict Trump in 1st impeachment trial. First Senator to vote agnst president of own party in US history. He's conservative, business friendly Repub. You bet. but man has a spine.
I hope you understand that if you show up at a hospital with an infection no one has ever seen before that the US had somewhere you could call. That place would answer, offer testing you can’t get anywhere else and come visit you to solve if necessary.
Fifty-one of the 85 Federalist papers were written by a guy born in Nevis.
More troublesome than the demand is that YouTube complied. Other than the general timidity now rampant among most media outlets, what possible rationale could the company offer?
Moreover, as was true between WWI and WWII, between Mexican War and Civil War promotion was excruciatingly slow. To denigrate Lee's military skills because he was only a colonel in 1861 would require saying the same of Eisenhower, who was only a major in Jan 1941.
PS Also, business about Lee never reaching rank higher than colonel is just tendentious. He had been commandant of West Point & was so highly thought of that at outset of war he was offered command of Union forces. Lee's eternal shame is that he not only declined offer but fought against the Union.
BREAKING: Social Security Administration chief data officer and whistle-blower Charles Borges has resigned after bombshell report that SSA put highly-sensitive data at risk. He sent out an email to colleagues moments ago. Here is the text of his email shared with me:
4/4 While Lost Cause mythologizers did seize on him as their ideal cavalier, Lee (tho he had contemporary critics) was genuinely revered by his men & feared by Union during war. AGAIN: Lee shouldn't be at West Point because he was a traitor who fought for evil cause, not due to his generalship.
3/4 especially during his two invasions of the North. But he was often good in the attack, and rather better in defense. He nearly bled the Union to death in the unending series of battles from Wilderness to Petersburg. A less determined pair than Lincoln & Grant might have quit & sued for peace.
2/4 require a long bloody attritional slugging match. And he had the temperament - and Lincoln's political backing - to keep slugging until South defeated. In that sense, he more than Lee understood the war he was fighting. But Lee was no slouch. Most of his errors were in excessive aggression...
1/4Let's not overdo revisionism. I'm huge admirer of Grant, as man & general. He understood advantages afforded him by larger manpower reservoir, vastly bigger industrial base & superior rail & river transport system. He also understood that, given limits of contemporary weaponry, winning would..
Yeah, but see concurrence of Trump-appointed Judge Lagoa and, though result is same, you enter alternative factual universe. Also, Lagoa wld like to see NYT v Sullivan overturned & openly lobbies for that outcome. Because the majority opinion turns on FL state law, SCOTUS may be uninterested, but..
2/2 subordinates to stop worrying about what Lee wld do & start thinking about what they should do. Lee should be deplored, not because he was bad or even mediocre general, but because he betrayed his oath to United States & led an army that fought to destroy the country and maintain human slavery.
1/2 Denigrating Lee's military talents is both fruitless & beside pnt. Lee made mistakes, but w/out him Confederacy would have been defeated far more quickly. He was not only revered by his own men but so feared by Union that when Grant took over Army of Potomac he had to admonish his new...
As long as guns are easily available to crazy people, mass killings directed at so-called soft targets will continue. This is a fact. Countries where it's more difficult for crazy people to obtain guns have less shootings. This is also a fact. Do with these facts as you will.
This isn't just a political claim, it's an empirical one. If "the problem is not guns" then we shouldn't see any correlation between gun ownership and oh wait platform.vox.com/wp-content/u...
Not a civ pro guy & this is uncharted territory, so I'm unsure.
1) judicially-imposed requirement that president articulate to ct nature of alleged "cause" for firing. To allow ct to decide if right TYPE/DEGREE of misconduct has been alleged. 2) require EVIDENCE proving "cause" exists 3) set burden of proof 4) decide if presidential evidence met burden.
Remember when COVID vaccines were first available? Remember how they saved lives and helped us move toward normalcy? Remember how relieved and grateful we were? Remember how amazing our healthcare workers were? Remember how science rescued us?
In which I express some doubt that Trump will try to use military in big blue cities (like St Louis and Kansas City) in deep red states (like Missouri). www.kansascity.com/news/politic...
Blue books can help solve cheating-on-tests challenge posed by AI. In-class short essays also help w/ that + forcing students to articulate ideas in their own words. What I most grieve is that AI may kill long-form take home essays. To learn to write well & at length is to learn to think.
Thx to Lou Jacobson of Politifact for including me in this explainer on the effort to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook. www.politifact.com/article/2025...
On effort to fire Fed member Cook 'for cause' - "Unless judges are willing to impose some minimal process, some standard of misconduct seriousness, and some evidentiary standard, the ‘for cause’ requirement becomes illusory," Bowman said. www.politifact.com/article/2025...
Very true. But problem is that, as I know from personal experience, non-urban Fox News consumers have long since been brainwashed into believing every big city is a violent hellhole. They really believe this stuff, and have for years.
3 no-true-bills is utterly unheard of. But even more revealing of what DC's USAO has now become is fact that, despite three failures showing they have a garbage case, they are so determined to charge this woman that they direct-file a misdemeanor information requiring no citizen ratification.
Once again raising question of who DOJ is getting to write this junk. In my time in DOJ, I would have been embarrassed (to say the very least) if anyone in any office in which I served tried to base the dangerousness prong of a pretrial detention request on something this silly.
"Whatever comes of the FBI raid on Bolton, legally speaking, there is a certain awful predictability to it," writes @sbg1.bsky.social. "In his first months back in office, Trump has made clear that his vengeful threats were not simply campaign-season bluster." www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...
1/ Judge in Habba ruling "Manipulation of official appointments had long been one of the American revolutionary generation’s greatest grievances against executive power, because the power of appointment to offices was deemed 'the most insidious and powerful weapon of eighteenth century despotism'"
May this portion of the dissent by Ketanji Brown Jackson haunt John Roberts forever and be the final word on his tenure as Chief Justice.
3/3 change in balance of SCOTUS. Only plainly constitutional means of doing that is court expansion. Could it be coupled w/ reform of nomination process, e.g. giving each president or presidential term a set number of nominations, or some variant of that idea? Sure. But court expansion is a must.
2/3 The current math is merciless. The unitary executive, Republican partisan camp has 6, 2 of whom are likely to resign in time to be replaced by Trump. The other side has 3. Any real progress on restoring constitutional normality & fair democratic process depends on near-immediate post-2028 ...
1/3 Term limits? How? Constitution gives fedl judges tenure during good behavior, ie for life. One could try to legislate system that shuffled SCOTUS justices off to lower cts after term certain, but constitutionality of that system would be judged by...SCOTUS. Any bet on how they'd rule?
A beautiful stormbeach Goniatite fossil, polished by Atlantic waves. County Clare, Ireland.
Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."
I've read many articles debunking the supposed link between vaccines and autism, but this might be the best one. @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social uses excellent graphics to clearly break down the deceptive tactics behind the myth, helping readers recognize flawed scientific reasoning when they see it.
UK privatization of its wonderful national rail system is up there w/ Brexit & degradation of NHS as country's 3 biggest own-goals. When I first went there almost 50 yrs ago, rail system was inexpensive, reliable & reached virtually every hamlet in the country. It's now none of those things.
I very much hope next time Ds have control over Cong & POTUS they do NOT follow MAGA lead. Their very tricky task will be to hold Trumpists who broke law accountable, remove MAGA acolytes from fedl govt & institute structural reforms without becoming the thing they despise. Being good guys is hard
An excellent letter. Well worth a read. As a legal historian, I'm especially tickled by the reference to the undeniable fact that it was the intransigence of colonial Boston in the face of royal & parliamentary overreach that precipitated the first clashes of the American Revolution.
That is, I think, the plan of many close to Trump. As for rest of Rs, 2 other factors at work. First, they aren't thinking beyond current moment, which requires mute cowering acquiescence to stay in office. Second, perversely they rely on Ds, as rule of law party, to keep playing by old rules.
"As flaccid as a boned fish, Donald Trump crumpled quicker than even Vladimir Putin probably anticipated," George F. Will writes. wapo.st/3HrXW2F
Washington's homicide rate is the 11th highest among large US cities, but eight of the 10 with higher rates are in red states — Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio and Louisiana. Trump has not sent National Guard to any of them. @russcontreras.bsky.social www.axios.com/2025/08/15/h...
Excellent scholarly analysis by @andrewkent.bsky.social of Trump's invocation of Alien Enemies Act. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Good. But have you filed an action asking that a court order you to be admitted, as required by the statute? If not, why not?
One takes the pt...but good chunk of population believes Dem-ruled cities are festering Gehennas of crime & Ivy League is, if not anti-semitic, a snotty pesthole of wokeness. BECAUSE they believe that stuff, they find autocratic responses unobjectionable. So perhaps one must rebut misperceptions.
can't claim expertise in comparative constitutional history beyond perhaps UK, and then only up to about 1787.
Leaving aside wartimes, first 6 mos of FDR's first term, perhaps. But those changes were made in tandem w Congress & employing constitutional processes in service of genuine popular mandate arising from real economic crisis. Nothing like what's going on now has ever happened before...in US.
Precisely. Not saying the performance won't work. Particularly in media environment in which verified facts don't reach most of population. And which sources of fact we could previously have relied upon are on the verge of being corrupted. We are in a very bad way.
2/2 & demonstration of power. Worrisome part is not short-term effect on city life, but normalization of Trump's personal command of civil law enforcement & use of military units for prohibited law enforcement purposes. Once guys w/ guns get used to doing this stuff, bad things can happen.
1/2 At one level, Trump's DC deployment of fed law enforcemnt & Nat Grd to fight street crime is just performative nonsense. Fed agents & Nat Grd r not only not trained to do ordinary crim law work. But they will have essentially zero effect. Point therefore is not crime reduction, but photo ops ...
First three assertions were true in the before times. But not true now unless other institutions can make them true. Which seems increasingly unlikely.
Renewables will be the world’s top power source next year, but America won’t be competitive because of Trump/fossil fuel corruption. Consumer utility costs will be higher, and America will be less innovative.
A laugh. Area around Capitol is one of safest places in US. To east Cap Hill neighborhood is all families kids & dogs. To south Navy Yard is stadiums+fancy condos & eateries. To west is museums and Mall. To NW, gov't & private offices, fancy condos & eateries. And hot & cold running cops everywhere.
I agree that change in SCOTUS' direction is essential. Even if Cong were to get its act together, current 6-justice majority would likely try to gut much resulting legislation. Which is why, after opposing notion for yrs, I now think adding justices to court & reforming apptmnt process essential.
3/3 two branches resumed behaving the way they were designed to behave - and generally did for the first two centuries of US history, then they would quickly cut the presidency back down to its proper size. Question is whether reformation of SCOTUS and Congress is any longer possible.
2/3 ...gerrymanders. And if Congress reformed itself to restore its constitutional role - thru expansion, election of House in competitive districts or proportionally, by restoring control of legis process to committees, etc - as well as rediscovering institutional self-respect. In short, if other
1/3 But how did presidency GET too powerful? Primarily because other 2 branches of fed'l gov't have allowed it to become so. If SCOTUS were to reverse its string of unitary executive opinions, its absurd conflation of corps w/ people and money w/ speech, & its refusal to bar extreme partisan...
The road to authoritarianism is littered with people telling you you’re overreacting.
A divine hymn for our Almighty Economy Lord 🙏
Please, please, please let this be true. And let the lackeys comply. Nixon redux here we come!
One possible distinction being that in 1938 the other European powers confronting Hitler went along with the betrayal. The Czechs had no option but to assent. Whatever Trump may "agree" to with Putin, Ukraine can continue its fight so long as the EU & NATO countries (less the US) stand firm.
I'd disagree only to extent that transformation of FBI into agent of presidential malice & caprice is only possible because of parallel transformation of DOJ with same object. FBI is part of DOJ & subordinate to Attorney General. All this is on Pam Bondi and the other Trump sycophants running DOJ.
Accelerating radicalism of Trump Admin & MAGA in states is scary not only for itself & not only because it's behavior of people who don't plan to yield power. Worse, more awful stuff they do, more they will fear justice if they lose power. Which = increased readiness to commit any crime to keep it.
A government-sanctioned "truth arbiter" will soon arrive at CBS. Their role will be to ensure that journalists do not criticize this Administration or express views that conflict with its agenda. This is a betrayal—not just of journalistic independence, but of the public trust. 🧵
7/7 determines under Article I the "manner" in which a Census is to be conducted. To change so fundamental an aspect of census as who is to be counted would require, at minimum, legislation. But since issue turns on meaning of constitutional term "persons," SCOTUS decision probably also required.
6/7 I.e., the original Framers insisted that even slaves count for census purposes, even though those slaves were not and could not be citizens and, if imported after the early 1800s were, in law, illegally present. In addition, as noted, it is Congress that ...
5/7 per Article I & the 14th Amendment Sect 2 - on the "whole number of persons in each State." Whether the person is citizen, alien w/ legal residency, or alien w/ no legal status should not matter. As an aside, infamous 3/5 clause in the original constitution adds weight to this argument. ...
4/7 there were to be an early census, Congress would have to pass a law amending 13 USC 141 authorizing such an out-of-cycle census and setting its terms. As for excluding illegal aliens from census, either early or in 2030, that's very probly unconstitutional. Apportionment is to be based -
3/7 taking it in 13 USC sec 141 www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/... Among other things, that statute says the census shall be taken on April 1 of every tenth year after 1980. Thus, president cannot declare out-of-cycle census for redistricting purposes or set its terms himself. If...
2/7 census must be "WITHIN every subsequent term of ten years." In addition, per Art I, a constitutional census must be conducted "in such manner as they [Congress] shall by law direct." Congress has directed the taking of a decennial census for apportionment purposes & the date and manner of ...
1/7 Thx to Lou Jacobson of Politifact for including me in explainer on Trump's call for new census (either early one or one excluding undocumented aliens or both). To expand on Lou's piece: Per US Const Art I, beginning 3 yrs after 1st congress, each new ... www.politifact.com/article/2025...