Thoughts On The Federal Trump Indictment: It's Shockingly Weak

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  • Two days ago (June 8) a federal grand jury in Florida, at the behest of Justice Department “special prosecutor” Jack Smith, indicted ex-President and current presidential candidate Trump over matters related to the retention of classified documents generated during his time in the White House. The full text of the indictment can be found here.

  • You might think that indictment of the currently-leading opposition candidate to the incumbent president in the upcoming election would be something reserved for a case of extraordinary significance.

  • After all, using the criminal justice system to prosecute political rivals is one of the hallmarks of the Banana Republic. Among those who have used the strategy are Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and, of course, Vladimir Putin of Russia.

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The Federal War Against Your Lifestyle

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The Revelations Of Government Censorship Keep Coming In Missouri v. Biden

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  • A little over a year ago, on May 5, 2022, two states (Missouri and Louisiana) and several individual plaintiffs filed suit against the federal government for illegally and improperly suppressing free speech on social media platforms, in violation of the First Amendment.

  • The case goes by the name Missouri v. Biden. The individual plaintiffs include, for example, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, prominent medical researchers and epidemiologists who dissented from the government’s Covid response orthodoxy and saw their speech ruthlessly suppressed as a consequence.

  • This case is probably the most important civil rights case proceeding in the federal courts today. If you get your news from such sources as the New York Times, Washington Post, or major television networks, you likely have never heard of it.

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Are There Any Democrats Left Who Are Not Fully On Board With The Agenda Of The Radical Left?

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  • A phenomenon of politics on the Left as practiced today is that new and ever more radical orthodoxies continually pop up and demand adherence from all members of the faith.

  • No longer is the common agenda just a simple commitment to more government spending to enhance perceived justice and fairness in society. Instead, a list of new demands for government actions grows ever longer and more extreme.

  • Many long-time Democrats of my acquaintance consider themselves political moderates, although generally supportive of government efforts to uplift the poor through spending and programs. But the internal councils of the Democrats are now dominated by radicals demanding complete loyalty to the full agenda.

  • Thus the question is, if you vote for any Democrat for public office, do you inevitably get someone who will go along with every single element of the most radical agenda of the Left?

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Bureaucrats Completely Incapable Of Making Reasonable Trade-Offs

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  • In economic life, trade-offs are a constant issue for everybody. Maybe you want to buy some better clothes, so you decide to economize on groceries. Or you postpone upgrading the bathroom because the kitchen needs upgrading first. Or you skip a vacation this year in order to buy a new car. Everything you buy means something else you can’t buy, so every buying decision necessarily involves trade-offs. And the same principle applies to use of your time: every hour you spend on one thing you can’t spend on something else. Learn Spanish this year, or train for the marathon — you’ll never find time for both.

  • Government faces the same necessity for trade-offs, but unfortunately is subject to bad incentives that often render the making of reasonable trade-offs next to impossible.

  • This phenomenon of inability to make remotely reasonable trade-offs has been on full display in some of the environmental news of the past couple of weeks.

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At CHECC, We're Down But Not Out!

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  • Today, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued its Judgment in the case of Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, et al. v. EPA. I am one of the lawyers for CHECC in this matter, where the Petitioners seek to have the court order EPA to reconsider its ridiculous 2009 Endangerment Finding (EF) that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare.

  • To no one’s surprise, the court dismissed our Petition. The sole ground for the dismissal was what they call “standing.” The court did not reach or discuss the merits of the Petition, namely whether data and evidence accumulated since the 2009 EF had rendered the Finding definitively false and in need of reconsideration.

  • Also today, the Supreme Court decided the case of Sackett v. EPA. The Sackett case involved a different EPA rule, called the Waters of the United States rule. Thus the two cases may seem to be unrelated. But in fact they are closely related. . . .

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