Amazing how quickly the “party of small government” has morphed into the party of “imperiously all up in everyone’s shit all the time.”

Sam Moyn told me it’s all a big bunch of jokes we make witty points about at cocktail parties with fashy law profs. Definitely not a thing that operates in the world.

What did y'all think "unitary executive" meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

Good Christ this isn't an April fools joke. Donald Trump really thinks he has the authority to dictate any aspect of the private affairs of Americans that he pleases. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

The F-15E is a great "bomb truck" but it's the opposite of stealthy. Losing that E3 AWACS on the runway at Prince Sultan last week doesn't help, because it's systems like that which broadcast the locations of mapped passive IR sites (and sometimes they can detect the "bloom" of a missile faster).

 @timmiller.bsky.social: "If you'd asked me in 2020, who is the most likely country to be the next country to use a nuke...I would've said North Korea...maybe Pakistan... If you asked me right now...I would say probably Donald Trump is most likely to use a nuke."

Three Hundred Habeas Cases in Which the Government Has Defied Court Orders (Lawfare)

Main Link | memeorandum Permalink

My worry about the end of Pax Americana and how bad this was gonna get was actually really correct

Shawshank Redemption is the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups of candies. Both are fine but overrated.

Second US Air Force plane crashed in Persian Gulf region, New York Times reports A second ​U.S. Air ‌Force combat ​plane ​crashed in the ⁠Persian ​Gulf region ​on Friday and its ​only ​pilot was then ‌rescued, ⁠the New York ​Times ​reported, ⁠citing two ​U.S. ​officials.

Second US Air Force plane crashed in Persian Gulf region, New York Times reports reut.rs/4cngn58

It turns out that breaching the wall between church and state means that some branches of Christianity are officially elevated over others. Who could have known? When in the last 500 years could such a lesson possibly have been learned?

the problem that the corrupt clowns who are running the government are now running into is that the president is not capable of understanding when he has asked them to do something that is actually impossible

and obsequious flattery is no longer sufficient to get them out of failure to deliver

Apologies for no alt-text:

3/15/17: "Democrats' Misguided Argument Against Gorsuch

9/26/20: "Amy Coney Barrett Deserves to be on the Supreme Court

1/27/21: "No, the Supreme Court Doesn't Need Reform

8/22/21: "Kavanaugh is the Last Hope for Abortion Rights"

BREAKING: Donald Trump meets privately with Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth to assure them their jobs are secure, amidst swirling rumors that they may be the next cabinet members to be fired.

#KashPatel #PeteHegseth

Cops Arrested a Black Pastor Watering His Neighbor’s Flowers. The Alabama Supreme Court Is Fine With That The opinion in Jennings v. Smith transforms the state’s stop-and-identify law into a show-me-your-papers regime.

i just think Watering Flowers While Black should not be an arrestable offense

nor do i think this should be controversial

ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

Will only intensify speculation that Alito will retire this summer, so expect to see the circuit court judges who think they're in the running step up their audience-of-one opinion writing.

I caught a trailer for the new Harry Potter series and, aside from the JK Rowling idiocy, my first thought was -- why?

Who needs this? The fans loved the movies, right? Why redo it as a slightly shittier TV series?

Why?

Pam Bondi’s portrait already taken down at Justice Department Just a day after her firing, the former attorney general’s pictures have been taken down — and discarded in a trash bin.

America's pettiness comes from the top.

www.ms.now/news/pam-bon...

It's like approaching a chef who really loves making new dishes, watching other people enjoy them, enjoying the taste himself and saying, look, this cooking thing takes a lot of time and energy, wouldn't you rather just get your nutritional needs from this brand new Gruel Bar we're selling?

I think the reason AI propagandists are so flustered by the fact that no real writer wants to use their idiotic tools is that they themselves don't enjoy writing. They see it as a boring arduous chore to be avoided, while real writers actually enjoy writing and actually care about the quality of it.

Exactly this.

I write because the writing *itself* energizes me, and shortcuts like AI would deprive me of that payout.

I discussed some of this in a recent issue of my newsletter:

www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-215-...

NEW: Bondi's portrait already in the trash at DoJ per a photo shared with @msnowreports.bsky.social www.ms.now/news/pam-bon...

"Alligator Alcatraz"
"Court packing"
"Big government"
"Bailouts"
"Law and order"
"Tax relief"
"Fraud and waste"

Etc.
Etc.

Other choices, as always, remain readily available. We could, for example, just call concentration camps concentration camps.

Today's reminder that we are under no obligation to organize every conversation about every policy issue in American politics around the far right authoritarian party's epithets & talking points.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Nos. & BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, Petitioner, v. Miscellaneous Action No. 26-12 (JEB) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent. MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER On March 11, 2026, this Court issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order that quashed the Government’s subpoenas directed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In re Grand Jury Subpoenas, --- F. Supp. 3d ---, 2026 WL 710202 (D.D.C. Mar. 13, 2026) (opinion publicly released on March 13, 2026). The Government promptly moved for reconsideration of that decision. See ECF No. 21 (Mot. Recon.). As its cursory brief neither offers new evidence nor points to any material error, the Court will deny the Motion

BREAKING: Judge Boasberg denies DOJ's motion to reconsider his order quashing the Federal Reserve subpoenas, finding that DOJ's "cursory brief neither offers new evidence nor points to any material error."

The subpoenas remain quashed. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

apparently they've rescued one of the two crew members and the other one is still missing, so it's possible they'll avert the POW scenario this time, but chances are good this is going to keep happening! especially if they put boots on the ground!

once again they thought everything would go like venezuela forever and simply did not consider any alternative scenarios

the administration started a big boy war and was apparently completely unprepared for any of the realities of big boy war including such basics as "POWs"