Atlanta, GA

January 28, 2026

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has devolved into the rogue agency its detractors warned it would become. Actually, that’s what it’s always been.

Born of the repugnant Patriot Act, it’s spent this century groping, nuking, and rummaging the persons and property of American citizens. For most of that …

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Atlanta, GA

January 14, 2026

“Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

-President Donald J. Trump, on the limits of his authority

Regular readers know I graduated (twice) from Georgia Tech. Thirty-five years ago, just after I earned my engineering degree, our football team won its fourth national champi…

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Atlanta, GA

January 4, 2026

Bright red blood that covers towns and plains
Of Kampuchea, our motherland,
Sublime blood of workers and peasants,
Sublime blood of revolutionary men and women fighters!
The blood, changing into unrelenting hatred
And resolution struggle
On 17 April, under the flag of revolution,
Frees us from slavery!

- from the national anthem of the…

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Atlanta, GA

December 16, 2025

“Just because you don’t take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

- attributed to Pericles

I’m sick of politics.

Aside from being tiresome, depressing, and degrading, it’s become unbearably acrimonious, imbecilic… and ubiquitous. It poisons everything.

In recent year…

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Atlanta, GA

October 7, 2025

Today we defer opinion to thought, and yield easy answers to hard questions.

Among countless catastrophes covid responses caused or made worse, swaths of US cities have become uninhabitable hellholes. In many places, crime has been normalized, illegal aliens have been imported, and rent-a-rioters roam the streets.

What…

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Atlanta, GA

October 1, 2025

This week epitomizes the Trump presidency.

The president posted an AI video with Senator Schumer “admitting” Democrats are widely detested, and that their base of support is primarily illegal aliens they import. Behind him, with Mariachi music playing, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries stood under a superimposed sombrero and Mexican mustache.

As with most Trump taunts, the video was derided as juvenile and beneath the “dignity of the office”. That’s good, because we shouldn’t dignify what that office has become. And our Legislative “leaders” deserve to be mocked.

Manchurian Voters

But, as always, the reaction is overdone. This is probably intentional. To condemn what Trump did, the butts of the joke amplified the farce. Jeffries held a press conference and Schumer gave a Senate speech, to let us know how offended they were (and how outraged we should be).

Not that anyone with an IQ above room temperature (Celsius) believed the video was real. It was obviously fake, because everything “Schumer” said in it was true.

Yet since this country no longer has a sense of humor or an ability to ignore childish insults, the clip incited its intended hysteria. Depending on political persuasion, it provoked ire or pride. Rather than toss tomatoes at the performers, the audience once again took aim at each other. This is no doubt what the performers wanted.

Trump casts his lines to make waves, but without disturbing the current under the surface. I’ve always been amazed how eagerly the president’s detractors take his bait. But his supporters eat it just as eagerly.

Politically, he’s done this for a decade. Professionally, he’s done it forever. None of this is new. It’s who Donald Trump has always been. But his audience always responds as if it’s the first time they’ve seen the show.

Rather than roll their eyes and move along, his targets … like Manchurian voters… reflexively become elated or enraged.

Purpose served.

The plebs fight among themselves about mean tweets, goofy memes, and silly stunts, while the objects of their anger or affection work together to rip them off.

Interchangeable Ornaments

Like a good magician, Trump knows deception requires distraction. And few are better with evocative sleights of hand.

The fake video followed an Oval Office meeting with Schumer and Jeffries, in which the president placed “Trump 2028” hats on the desk.

Like everything Trump does, this was obviously more for the cameras (i.e., us) than for his congressional guests. As with most things in politics, if we saw something, we were meant to see it.

And, once again, it worked like a charm.

The gimmick had Trump’s supporters pointing, laughing, and pumping fists. And it irritated those he wanted to annoy. That’s their fault.

Like a kid who picks on his sibling because it provokes a reaction, Trump trolls his opponents because he knows they’ll whine. Talk about wasted tears.

Hinting at a third term doesn’t make Trump a “dictator”. But it proves anyone who thinks it does is an emotional hypochondriac with misplaced priorities. Debt, war, surveillance, and biomedical control are real outrages. Yet few of Trump’s critics ever moan about those, choosing instead to fret over sideshows.

The Constitution is mostly useless and almost always unenforced. But its administrative features are still abided.

Representation is apportioned based on population. Each state has two senators. Elections are held every other year. Presidents are inaugurated January 20. And they can only serve two terms.

Trump can’t do anything about that. Without a constitutional amendment, how do the hysterics expect the president to hold power?

Do they honestly think the military complex, administrative bureaucracy, and intelligence “community” would support Trump in a coup?

These agencies have spent ten years trying to obstruct, indict, oust, or kill him. Even if they’ve co-opted him (which seems evident), there’s no need for them to want him to stay.

Why would they? Presidents are interchangeable ornaments.

The illusion of “democracy” serves the purpose of those who really run things. It allows them to control and loot while convincing the flock it’s fleecing itself. Whichever shepherd the sheep select is mostly irrelevant, but it’s best if they think he’s not one of the wolves.

Promises Made, Promises Broken

If anything, that’s what Trump has proven. He came to office pledging to undo the waste, recklessness, and cultural insanity of recent years.

He promised to end the senseless slaughter in Gaza and the ridiculous war in the Ukraine. Instead, funding has continued. If anything, it’s increased, and the killing has intensified… with the U.S. military directly involved.

Both conflicts would immediately end if the U.S. government withheld all materiel and money from the Ukraine and Israel. Instead, the Trump Administration (while characteristically speaking from each side of its mouth) has maintained (or intensified) support for each regime.

Today, for the fourth time (!) in eight months, Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House. It’s the first of the month, so maybe he decided to collect his rent in person.

A few days ago, the Prime Minister of Israel discussed the importance of Oracle (founded with funding from the CIA) buying TikTok’s US operations, and said “we need to talk to Elon” about X.

To the extent Israel retains any popular support in the U.S., it’s from older voters who are dying off. Netanyahu knows he’s lost the narrative, so wants to control platforms where his opponents can speak.

Earlier in the week, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was in the Oval Office. Like Netanyahu, he was there to be honored rather than arrested. As the president fawned in a press conference, “Albert [Bourla] has done a fantastic job with covid. He did a fantastic job with a lot of things. He’s a leader.”

With Trump’s assistance, this “leader” unleashed an experimental elixir, then worked with the government to coerce its universal consumption. Like Netanyahu, Bourla wanted to silence skeptics who dared dissent:

“There is a very small part of professionals who circulate, on purpose, misinformation so they will mislead those who have concerns. Those people are criminals.”

If those who justifiably doubted the efficacy of Pfizer’s “vaccines” are “criminals”, what does that make this guy?:

The people who pitched a fit about Jimmy Kimmel being “silenced” are suddenly indifferent about a foreign leader and a pharmaceutical CEO advocating that their critics be quieted.

They complain about Trump posting “insensitive” memes, but couldn’t care less that he fêtes such scoundrels in the White House. This is the same president who unconstitutionally imposed the largest tax increase in American history, signed a spending bill that balloons debt he promised to cut, and attacked Iran, Yemen, and Caribbean skiffs without declarations of war.

Last Laugh

Aside from some welcome pardons, abolishing USAID, and reducing illegal immigration (which are all great), most of what this administration has done could’ve occurred under its predecessor.

But even the USAID and immigration cuts are illusory or misleading. Most USAID chicanery was shifted to the State Department, where the shenanigans will be more difficult to detect. And while the immigration flow has slowed, the pipes are still in place and more are being built. As long as the UN exists, it’s just a matter of re-opening the valve.

And, despite popular perception and political showboating, illegals in the US aren’t being deported any faster than before. If anything (as usually happens when Americans are whipped into a panic), intruders will become excuses to crackdown on us, primarily thru digital and AI surveillance administered by government “partners” like Palantir.

I love that Trump openly ridicules his rivals. It’s great seeing pompous politicians taken down a peg. But public awareness needs to be brought up a notch. Amid the mockery inflation, spending, wars, and surveillance persist.

As our rulers publicly insult each other, they privately laugh at us.

JD

Atlanta, GA

September 22, 2025

Presidents often say awful things, almost as if it’s part of the job description.

Most tell us (and Congress) they’ve decided to drop bombs on some benighted land. Some warn we’re either “with us or against us”. Others that they’re “losing patience” because we won’t inject a pharmaceutical they tell us to consume.

In their own…

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Atlanta, GA

September 17, 2025

Happy “Constitution Day”! - when politicians pretend to honor a document they usually treat the way a dog greets a hydrant.

This annual observation was officially established in the 1950s, by a government that had spent several decades tearing its charter to shreds. That’s why it designated this day.

Like persuading fish they’d picked the menu on Fridays, the point of Constitution Day (the centerpiece of “Constitution Week”) is to propagandize the population (particularly schoolchildren) that they govern themselves.

On this day, the (unconstitutional) Department of Education requires all educational institutions receiving federal funds (also unconstitutional) to provide “educational programming” (interesting word choice) on the history of the American Constitution.

It’s appropriate that almost everything about “Constitution Day” is unconstitutional. Aside from administrative niceties like biennial elections, a fixed inauguration date, and two senators per state, the document it purports to honor is a dead letter.

Like a wayward spouse tailed by a private investigator, to the extent the Constitution is followed at all, it’s only to affirm its worst attributes. At least since Lincoln, with a few exceptions that prove the rule, the compact has been overtly abused or routinely ignored.

Till Roosevelt (both of them), most politicians at least paid lip service to the Constitution’s preservation. But since the New Deal and Great Society, and especially after the turn of this century, few “public servants” could care less.

Most no longer even pretend to honor the oath they took. And no one holds them to it.

It’s nice we’ve had a few impeachments. But they were mostly sideshows and stunts. None were for the real crimes in which most accusers would’ve been at least as complicit as the culprits.

Like humidity in Houston, such malfeasance has become so ubiquitous it’s no longer noteworthy. Wars are wantonly waged, the currency continually counterfeited, and restrictions arbitrarily imposed without even a cursory consideration of constitutional constraints.

Letting the Lights Go Out

The Constitution has been officially edited twenty-seven times. We’ve not had a new amendment in three decades, and the last one added was written before the first was adopted.

Some alterations were improvements and a few were inconsequential. But like burrowing barnacles on a rotting hull, many malignant accretions should be scraped away.

Most of the banalities are relatively recent, like when presidents are inaugurated and how long they can “serve”. The date the term starts and how many can be fulfilled are increasingly irrelevant when every executive is essentially the same.

And our elected props are mostly ornamental anyway. The real power comes from unseen sockets. Party politics are a convenient distraction to corral popular currents into parallel circuits. But the wires are rigged so all power flows one way: from the outside in.

As the last few years regrettably illuminated, most Americans seem more than willing to let the lights go out. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments (what Jefferson called the cornerstone of the Constitution) are treated as quaint “truisms”…if they’re acknowledged at all.

Sitting presidents, members of Congress, and the media, military, and medical arms of the corporatist State unapologetically advocate restraining the First Amendment, repealing the Second, and acting as if the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth hardly exist. Almost all of them would prefer they didn’t, so they just act as if they don’t.

They clip their weak constitutional chains by claiming certain rights aren’t “absolute.” But being absolute is inherent in a right. If it isn’t absolute, it isn’t a right. Nor is anything a “right” (like such made-up “entitlements” to healthcare, education, or housing) that requires compulsion for it to be exercised.

Rights aren’t privileges. They’re natural, and innate. Government can’t grant them; it’s supposed to protect them. But its survival instinct usually impels it to strip them away.

It’s common knowledge that (and commonly cheered when) the State detains innocent people, confiscates private property, surveils communication, inflicts torture, and delays or forgoes trials in clear violation of constitutional prohibitions. It’s hardly hidden. The assailants have no shame (the characteristic of conscience that first recedes when a culture crumbles).

In fairness, this is likely because they understand their victims. To the extent Americans care about blatant encroachment on basic liberties, most are probably for it. Too many of them are.

Whether proposed legislation or (more likely) executive decrees are legally allowed is a question rarely raised. And if it is, the person asking is deemed an “extremist” wingnut warranting a dismissive wave, a condescending sneer… or a visit from the FBI.

A Swiss Army Knife

The Constitution died when it became a “living document.” It was killed by unscrupulous undertakers for whom silent homicide was good for business.

As morticians embalmed the body with “broad construction”, they claimed the old corpse couldn’t fit a modern coffin. All they can do is drive more nails. And the Fourteenth Amendment is the biggest hammer.

Not that other revisions aren’t awful. The 16^thand 17^thAmendments are abhorrent for obvious reasons, and should both be repealed. Yet there’s little doubt what they were meant to do.

Each intended to centralize power and extract wealth. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. But whereas those amendments were sledgehammers, the 14^th was initially a chisel…meant to mold rather than demolish.

It later became a pick axe, and then a Swiss Army knife. There’s now almost nothing it can’t be made to do.

The adoption process itself was fishy. Three Northern states reeled back their ratification, and only two agreed to return it. Radical Republicans imposed acceptance on Southern states as condition to “re-enter” a Union they’d clearly wanted to leave, but that the amendment’s proponents insisted they’d never left.

But its ambiguity and malleability are what make the 14th Amendment so sinister. It’s Pandora’s Box filled with cans of worms. Once pried opened by the crooked crowbars of 20^th century Courts, it in essence became the entire Constitution…the pliable cast into which we’re all poured like clay.

Its primary purpose was to make constitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which passed with an override of President Johnson’s veto. Its admirable aims were to repeal the Dred Scott decision that had denied citizenship to American blacks, and to apply the Due Process, Equal Protection, and Privileges and Immunities clauses to protect their basic rights.

From inception, the 14^th Amendment raised questions about “incorporation”…which the Supreme Court quickly answered. The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) and Plessy v Ferguson (1896) were within a few years and decades, respectively, of ratification. In both, the Court…whose members were alive when the Amendment was adopted and were well aware what it meant… adhered to what its framers intended.

Even as late as the Brown decision sixty years later, few on the Court thought the Amendment permitted what they wanted to do. Forced segregation may have been insidious. But it wasn’t unconstitutional.

In considering that case, Justice Frankfurter admitted as much. But he relied on the Amendment’s vagaries to recruit “changes in men’s feelings” as rationale for unleashing the Court. The rest of his colleagues agreed and, as Justice Robert Jackson put it, made “a judicial decision out of a political conclusion.”

By the ahistorical “incorporation” doctrine, the 14^th Amendment has been repeatedly and increasingly misappropriated by clever lawyers as a lever to insert interventionist interpretations its authors never intended. It’s since become a weapon federal judges wield to wipe out state laws (prayer, abortion, voting, affirmative action, you name it) they don’t like.

Other Amendments That Need to Go

An argument can be made that every amendment after the Thirteenth should be repealed. We won’t go that far. If presidents prefer to be inaugurated in January, that’s fine. I also have no problem with limiting them to two terms, or with an election intervening before a congressional pay increase takes effect.

Whatever.

But the rest can go. To the extent they were ever needed, they aren’t now. Most modern amendments attempted to “expand democracy”, which almost always makes things worse.

The Constitution never denied women the vote, and no state would dare rescind it now. Some might block the ballot to eighteen-year-olds, but so what? They should.

Have we taken a good gander at the average 18-year-old? And remember (to paraphrase George Carlin), half of them are dumber than that!

The rationale for the 26^th Amendment was that anyone who fights in wars should be able to vote. Fine. But the answer to that is to stop the wars, not to expand the franchise.

As to the 24th Amendment, every voter should have skin in the game. Regardless whether a poll tax should be prohibited, property ownership or proof of tax payments should be required. Anyone using a plebiscite to pick other people’s pockets should bring something to the party that he’d prefer not be pilfered.

Likewise, the provision of DC electors. Only the states should select the president. They formed the compact, they make the choice. Allotting electors to DC as “if it were a state” is like urging men to wear dresses as if they were women, or allowing girls to be “altar servers” as tho’ they could be priests.

The Constitution was ostensibly crafted to limit government and protect our rights. But that’s not quite true. It was initially established to strengthen the center while limiting its reach. Amending the Articles would’ve been a more useful mechanism. In hindsight, it would’ve been a preferable one.

But even the most ardent Federalists would be horrified by what their government has become. Long ago, their guard dog escaped its leash, and attacked its owner. Its since made a habit of mauling everyone else.

Like an elegant edifice ravaged by an interior fire, the US Constitution is a hollow shell. The exterior architecture is superficially similar to what was initially erected. But it’s a Potemkin parchment, shielding smoldering ashes left by an array of arsonists.

We only hope not to be asphyxiated by the smoke.

JD

Atlanta, GA

September 10, 2025

“Some deaths hit harder than others. This is one of them, because of how it happened.”

I agree with the sentiments of my younger son, with whom I was speaking after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

My son attends the University of Georgia, where Kirk recently visited. David didn’t attend the event, but has friends who did and kn…

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Atlanta, GA

July 11, 2025

Like a trailer park after a line of tornadoes, the landscape is littered with debris from awful presidencies. But few opportunities have been as wasted as the one Donald Trump is squandering. This shouldn’t be surprising.

Six months ago he re-entered office, bearing specific promises and broad support. The hope was that he’d learned lessons about the nature of the presidency, and about political enemies who use nefarious means to preserve their power.

What we’ve learned (again) is that Donald Trump isn’t capable of learning anything, and that many Americans aren’t either. Love him or loathe him, most insist on seeing Trump for what he isn’t.

In the minds of many, this shallow showman is either an unrivaled villain or unerring saint. Instead, he’s a fairly standard politician with boisterous style and overbearing flair.

The PT Barnum of the last half century, Trump is among the great marketers and most brash self-promoters this country has seen. Fortunately for him, plenty of suckers are born every minute. But not enough for what he tried this week.

“Someone Got to Her”

Doug Casey often quips that the economic collapse he foresees will be even worse than he thinks it will be. After watching Trump’s attempt to stifle the Epstein story, I can say the same about my expectation of government corruption.

The FBI that identified every 55 year-old grandma who was invited into the Capitol can’t find one elite client of a powerful pedophile ring.

Worse, after assuring us it had ample evidence they were primed to reveal, the “Justice” Department now disavows any knowledge of Jeffery Epstein’s Intelligence connections, insists there’s no reason to think he was murdered, and denies his child-rape racket even existed.

The latest from Attorney General Pam Bondi - who in February said she had a list of Epstein clients sitting on her desk - is that Epstein was a lone pervert who wallowed in kiddie porn… which may make Ghislaine Maxwell wonder why she’s sitting in jail.

Tom Woods recalled an interview Bondi did with Jesse Watters. Regarding the Epstein case, she asserted:

"What you're going to see, hopefully tomorrow, is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information. But, um, it's pretty sick what that man did."

Waters adds, "And he had help." Bondi answers, "He sure did."

As Woods rightly wonders, “So what happened to all that? Where are the flight logs and the names?”

In another interview, Bondi said the FBI had a “truckload of evidence”. She reiterated that “we believe in transparency and America has the right to know.”

Until, suddenly, they don’t.

In the movie, All The President’s Men, Carl Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman) is stunned that a librarian he called about CIA agent Howard Hunt checking out books completely reversed her story after she placed him on hold.

“Someone got to her”, he told Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward. Since Bondi’s confident assertions a couple months ago, that appears to have happened to the Attorney General.

Someone seems to have gotten to the president too.

Trump’s latest spin is that released files could “destroy [innocent] people”. Of course they could… if the release is done carelessly. Even if done right, it’ll bring a wave of defamation suits. But this is why the information should be vetted and verified before its unveiled.

Yet this isn’t news. It’s always been the case. Was Trump previously unaware of possible retribution, or that powerful pedophiles might disapprove being publicized? Destroying them is the whole point!

Why didn’t these scruples prevent the Administration from trumpeting its earlier assurances that it possessed flight logs and client lists, and promising to publicize them because “the American people have a right to know”?

What changed between Bondi saying the lists were on her desk and pledging to release them, to now assuring us no lists exist and acting as if only kooks would assume they did?

Lame and Pathetic

No one with an IQ above room temperature (Celsius) buys what the Administration is selling. And the people peddling it must know it elicits eye-rolls and anger. But they obviously don’t care, which is also illuminating.

How disgusting must the details be, and how serious the threats against anyone who’d expose them, for high-ranking members of the Administration to willingly crater their credibility and ravage their reputations?

Were the ridiculous stories they put out this week less to convince us that they were true than to inform the people they’re protecting that their secrets are safe with the US government? Possibly.

It’s also possible they decided this information couldn’t be revealed once they saw how bad it was. That wouldn’t be surprising.

Maybe the Administration determined, as Scott Adams surmised, that the information could jeopardize “national security” (never-mind the disturbing implications of that) or that the American people couldn’t handle the truth.

Perhaps. But then they shouldn’t have boldly promised what they weren’t prepared to deliver, while repeatedly claiming they’d seen the evidence they now say wasn’t there.

A few days ago, the president embarrassed himself by chastising a reporter who dared ask about disclosures Trump’s own team previously promised. It was a reasonable question (indeed, an obligatory one) to ask on the first opportunity since Trump’s team told us there was nothing to reveal. Aside from being lame and pathetic, Trump’s dismissive response contradicted accusatory comments he’d frequently made.

Good Guesses

During his question, the reporter asked about Epstein’s Intelligence connections. But he understated the case. He said that Trump’s former Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, who was the US Attorney in Miami who cut Epstein a plea in 2008, “allegedly” claimed Epstein worked for Intelligence agencies.

But this isn’t “alleged”.

Acosta stated in Court documents that the CIA approached Acosta and told him to back off Epstein because of his connections. Pam Bondi was a Florida prosecutor at the time and elected to Florida AG soon after so… despite her feigned ignorance this week… it’s unlikely she didn’t know this.

The question isn’t whether this one-time math teacher - who became an exclusive “hedge-fund manager” who turned down $500M accounts while living in the largest residence in Manhattan - worked with Intelligence agencies. It’s how many and which ones.

The CIA is a good guess. But Mossad is a better one. It was likely both, and maybe more.

Among Epstein’s mentors was media mogul Robert Maxwell, who had known connections to Mossad (among other intel agencies), and whose daughter now sits in prison for crimes apparently no one committed.

To borrow another famous quote from All the President’s Men, we should “follow the money”. Epstein invested in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s defense intelligence start-up, and was funded by Zionist billionaire Les Wexner… who also has Mossad links.

Coincidentally, as Trump’s Epstein about-face was underway, the current Prime Minister of Israel paid his third visit to Washington since the president took office. For a tiny country halfway around the world, that seems like a lot.

During that time, at the behest of “our greatest ally”, the US has unleashed repeated attacks on Yemen, launched a reckless strikes on Iran, and keeps funding ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. Aside from a few crony corporations and connected insiders, none of this benefits a single American.

So why does it happen? Do campaign contributions explain it? Or was there something more insidious, including “systematic blackmail” (which the Trump Administration also denies) of Epstein patrons who apparently never existed?

Maybe the “Justice” Department isn’t orchestrating a cover-up at at the behest of the Intelligence apparatus in the U.S. and Israel.

But if it were, it could hardly look any different.

JD

Atlanta, GA

March 31, 2025

Sometimes, when a pendulum swings too far, there’s an urge to replace the weight with a wrecking ball.

In some ways, that’s good. Eyesores should be demolished after over-eager architects get out of hand.

Insane and Suicidal

The Biden border policy was insane to the poin…

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Atlanta, GA

March 27, 2025

Spring in north Georgia is beautiful. The sun is out, the air is crisp. Mornings are cool, afternoons warm.

Like prairie dogs from a Dakota plain, perennial sprigs pop their heads from their holes. Around them, an armada of azaleas begin to bloom, providing protection from encroaching heat.

At first glance, they must be startled …

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Atlanta, GA

March 21, 2025

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

- George Washington

“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations. Entangling alliances with none.”

- Thomas Jefferson

Flowers bloom, pollen builds, and temperatures rise. Bees bounce from bush to blossom, as branches burs…

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Atlanta, GA

March 17, 2025

Occasionally, the Congress, courts, and chattering class get constitutional religion.

It’s instructive what convinces them to take communion or receive ashes, and how they distinguish venial slip-ups from mortal sins.

Let’s eavesdrop on their Confessional:

If an Administration suggest…

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Atlanta, GA

February 17, 2024

Today is “President’s Day”.

We can’t exalt or excoriate each executive in one missive. But you catch up on our catalogue of the worst presidents here, here, here and here… and the better ones here, here, and here.

This morning, with time being limited, we’ll confine ourself to the best of the bunch:

The most rewarding parts of many trips are those that take us off the beaten path.

We feel obligated to see the popular attractions. We do our duty, check sights off the list, then head back to the hotel bar.

But the best experiences, the ones we want to simultaneously share with others and keep to ourselves, are often the secret gems that lie beyond the pages of guidebooks, and that recuse themselves from the itineraries of tourists. They are the local dive and the neighborhood pub, where the people are real and the lies are true.

The same can be said of our presidents. The best known and most lauded are those we are required to learn about. They tend to be those who confronted (or created) a challenge, met it head on…and made it worse. For not allowing their oath of office to limit their possibilities or to constrain their “greatness”, their stories fill pages of textbooks, and their faces occupy countless frames on classroom walls.

But much as rap music fills the airwaves while Mozart languishes at lower frequencies, the redeeming presidents are usually the men the kids don’t know. These leaders knew their limits, left local concerns to local people, and respected nature enough to let it take its course.

They didn’t mistake knowledge for wisdom, or information for answers. They were wise enough to know that if there’s no solution, there’s no problem…so they didn’t go crafting the one or causing the other. They were more than willing to bask in the hidden glow of their glorious ignorance and constitutional constraints.

There weren’t many of these worthies. We’ve covered some of the better ones here, here, and here. But today we meet the best. He is, of course…

John Tyler.

When William Henry Harrison honored his office by leaving it early, John Tyler became the first Vice President to ascend the presidential chair.

When he did, the process was unclear. Was Tyler there to complete Harrison’s term? Or was he, like a compact spare, merely a temporary fix till a real replacement could be found?

Would a special election need to be held? If so, when? The Constitution wasn’t clear on this till the 25th Amendment was ratified a century and a quarter later.

Many of these “legitimacy” questions were opportunistically raised by ambitious Whigs who supported Harrison, but despised Tyler…whom they derisively called “His Accidency”. Like any incoming hangers-on, they were hungry for power and for posts.

But they’d barely begun to douse their snouts when the honey was taken away. Tyler was not about to provide a new pot. He would soon attack both Hamiltonian patronage and Jacksonian spoils.

When the new president took his chair, Harrison’s cabinet still planned to produce Tippecanoe’s play. The show would go on, with the script they’d written for the previous actor.

But Tyler planned to direct his own administration, as well as play its leading rôle. If Harrison’s stagehands disapproved, Tyler would gladly accept their resignations. And, from most of them, he did.

Simple, Straightforward, and Sound

John Tyler might have been the best president in American history. He was strong-willed, and asserted his authority. Yet he respected his limits. Where he had a part, he played it.

But he never stepped on another’s lines. His primary obligation was to defend his oath. Notwithstanding incessant political threats, he did it as well as anyone.

As a US Senator, despite enormous pressure and considerable risk to his career, Tyler voted against the outrageous “Force Bill”. This authorized Andrew Jackson to send troops into South Carolina over the state’s threat to nullify the “Tariff of Abominations” within its borders. While opposing the Second Bank of the United States, Tyler challenged Jackson’s expansion of executive power when Old Hickory tried to dissolve it.

His objectives were simple, straightforward, and sound. Like Thomas Jefferson…and all the best presidents…Tyler wanted to retire the public debt, favored a foreign policy of peaceful neutrality, wanted expenditures only for specific purposes, and insisted on a government small in size to limit its scale of corruption.

Self Respect and Moral Obligations

His constitutional principles became thorns in the side of back room deals and crony schemes. When a bill passed Congress to re-charter a Bank of the United States, Tyler vetoed it, as he had every other bank bill he’d been sent. This enraged members of the Whig Party, of which Tyler was nominally the head.

His veto message should adorn the monument he sorely lacks on the banks of the Potomac, and should be inscribed on the interior walls of the Oval Office. He reiterated his long-held opinion that Congress has no authority to charter a bank. He then emphasized his own constitutional duties, which were to protect the people from usurped power.

His oath prohibited him from signing a bill he deemed to be unconstitutional. As he explained:

“…I took an oath that I would ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ Entertaining the opinions alluded to and having taken this oath, the Senate and the country will see that I could not give my sanction to a measure of the character described without surrendering all claim to the respect of honorable men, all confidence on the part of the people, all self-respect, all regard for moral and religious obligations, without an observance of which no government can be prosperous and no people can be happy. It would be to commit a crime which I would not willfully commit to gain any earthly reward, and which would justly subject me to the ridicule and scorn of all virtuous men.”

Never mind constitutionality. When did we last have a president who cared a whit about self-respect or moral obligations?

Not only would signing this legislation be unconstitutional, it would be a crime! Quite clearly, John Tyler couldn’t live with himself if he signed unlawful laws, despite the political heat he would take for preserving his principles and those of his oath.

Value of the Veto

On Capitol Hill, the flames were rising. With only cosmetic changes, another bank bill was sent to Tyler. He again vetoed it.

The furious Whigs responded by gathering on the Capitol steps, and publicly expelling him from the party. John Tyler couldn’t have cared less. More bills came down Pennsylvania Avenue, more vetoes went back up.

Party leaders continued their efforts to isolate Tyler, who had no vice president. Thinking they would force the president to rethink his position or perhaps resign, almost the entire cabinet announced they would quit.

Tyler wished them well… and let them go. He then installed his own men, and the vetoes continued.

In another message, Tyler reaffirmed the value of the veto:

“as a great conservative principle of our system, without the exercise of which on important occasions a mere representative majority might urge the government in its legislation beyond the limits fixed by its framers, or might exert its just powers too hastily or oppressively. It is a power which should be most cautiously exerted, and perhaps never except in a case involving the public interest or one in which the oath of the president, acting under his convictions, both mental and moral, imperiously requires its exercise.”

For his veto statements alone Tyler’s face should be carved on a mountain. It’s not just the prerogative, but the duty, of a president to veto legislation if it breaches the bounds of constitutional restraint. Popular will and majority vote are irrelevant to these obligations.

Flummoxed by this brazen burst of principle, Tyler’s impetuous enemies drafted articles of impeachment…for vetoing legislation! The vote failed, but Tyler kept going. Taking up the gauntlet, he rejected tariff bills and internal improvement legislation, after the latter of which he wrote,

“At the adoption of the Constitution, each state was possessed of a separate and independent sovereignty…. The Articles of Confederation in no way affected this authority or jurisdiction, and the present Constitution, adopted for the purpose of correcting the defects which existed in the original Articles, expressly reserves to the states all powers not delegated. No such surrender of jurisdiction by the states was made to this government by any expressed grant.”

Not only would modern presidents never write things like this; they’d barely understand it. Unfortunately, most of the people who vote for them don’t either, which is one reason they get who they deserve.

A Glimmer Remains

As a young man, John Tyler joined his father to dine with Thomas Jefferson, whose philosophy stayed with him throughout his life. After he died, following the war that would kill off the original republic, the Jeffersonian principles that Tyler advocated continued to fade. Today, in a Virginia rest home, a glimmer remains. But no memories.

Until a few years ago, two of Tyler’s grandsons remained among us. One still is. After a series of strokes in the last decade, Harrison Tyler (named for the man to whom his grandfather was Vice President) has no recollection of yesterday, or of today.

But on his face, the lines tell an impressive tale…of being a generation removed from Thomas Jefferson, and of being raised in the rural hunting lodge of the best president we’ve ever had.

JD

Atlanta, GA

February 8, 2025

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Atlanta, GA

February 4, 2025

Thomas Jefferson urged peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, but entangling alliances with none.

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Atlanta, GA

February 3, 2025

“Trump Derangement Syndrome not only includes people who think he’s Hitler, but also people who think he’s Jesus.”

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Washington, D.C.

January 20, 2025

“I, John David Breen, do solemnly swear…”,

“I, John David Breen, do solemnly swear…”

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Atlanta, GA

January 17, 2025

A president usually needs to be away a while before we can digest the damage he’s done. But the outgoing executive started turning stomachs within a few weeks of arrival, and the dyspepsia persisted throughout his term.

So this morning we take our Ex-Lax, gulp our Milk of Magnesia, and try to pass the poison that’s been shoved down our throats.

More than an election is needed to relieve the blockage from whoever embalmed Joe Biden each day. The country needs an enema, and a plunger. Even in its waning days, this administration keeps trying to plug the pipes, excreting executive orders to prevent future plumbers from clearing its impediments.

Sinister and Stupid

If this wasn’t the worst presidency that didn’t invade American states or join a World War (despite its best efforts), it was clearly the most brazen and embarrassing. If it weren’t, then “Adolf Hitler” wouldn’t be returning to power.

It’s hard to believe an administration did this much damage in a single term. The incompetence and iniquity are astounding.

And it’s not as if the carnage was an accidental by-product of admirable intentions. The deprivation and destruction were proudly pronounced goals!

Politicians and bureaucrats once respected the rubes enough to at least euphemize their heinous policy or nefarious plans. This administration’s opinion of us was so low they didn’t have the decency to lie about their insidious intent.

The president scolded that he was “impatient” with us and identified millions of Americans as his enemy. We were told our medical decisions could be dictatorially decreed, that we must forgo reliable energy to calibrate “the climate”, that boondoggle subsidies would reduce inflation, that our freedom of movement could be repealed on a whim, that interminable trespassers must cross the border, that free speech was provisional, and if we resisted these perversions and privations we’d be targeted as “terrorists” and stripped of what remained of our rights.

Because of Putin.

The Biden regime was as sinister as it was stupid. Which is saying something. Thru its Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board” and overt pressure on Tech companies, it unapologetically suppressed free speech. It affirmed the Justice Department as a criminal organization, weaponizing what passed for “the law” by unleashing the FBI on political opponents.

This regime harbored dangerous ideologues indistinguishable from French Jacobins or Russian Bolsheviks. Like these evil antecedents, those choreographing our crises layered overt tyranny with juvenile insanity.

As with most presidencies, Biden’s tried to impose its will and pick our pockets. But much more so than any other, this one savored the prospect of offending nature, mocking tradition, and poking a finger in normalcy’s eye. The whack-jobs it employed not only promoted weird psychoses of “woke” ideology; they insisted we all adopt them.

A Freak Show

In fairness (and to give benefit of the doubt), this demented president often had little clue what was going on. Like a deranged Roman emperor, he was an ornamental vegetable atop a basket of fruits.

This White House was a freak-show of transvestites, “public health” charlatans, economic witch doctors, ardent abortionists, sexual deviants, climate cultists, and geopolitical imbeciles who callously tempted destruction of the world.

And they’d have us believe that those who questioned their sanity were the ones who were crazy. Using a typical tactic of totalitarian minorities, they ostracized opposition by asserting that anyone not in the “majority” (which they naturally claimed to represent) is by definition “extreme.”

Long a senatorial shill for corporate cronies who use his home state as a legal base, Joe Biden has always relished his role as reliable windsock for a lucrative breeze. But he’s always been something of a clown…the creepy sort who scares the kids.

He’s the epitome of a political hack, the type who still refers to “bipartisanship” as if it were a compliment. Yet not since Lincoln has an administration waged such unrelenting war on so many Americans.

Like most politicians…especially those whose careers have coated the capital like toxic sludge atop a polluted pond…our current president has no principles. His allegiance is to the “elite”, and to whatever will expand his power or enhance his fortune.

A College Intern

We judge presidential performance by how well executives adhere to their oath of office. The list of duties is strictly limited and precisely defined. Anything done beyond these bounds is an impeachable offense.

Under this president, the entire Constitution was under attack. His administration treated each amendment as if it were a college intern at a congressional cocktail party.

The regime claimed to respect the First Amendment, while imploring its social media wing-men to wantonly violate it. The Second, Ninth, and Tenth were subjected to unapologetic assault, while the Fourth was molested by dictatorial decrees that routine transactions be monitored and novel pharmaceuticals coerced into every American arm.

The Biden Administration waged these wars since it came to office. Its first year was essentially a relentless onslaught against anyone questioning the absurd propaganda that face coverings, physical separation, and compulsory injections were essential to “defeat Covid” and lead a normal life.

In prepared speeches and off-the-cuff remarks, the president vilified those who dared make health decisions of which his handlers and sponsors disapproved. In an appalling address dripping with authoritarian condescension, he relinquished all constitutional pretense by ordering businesses of a certain size to require employees consume designated drugs.

The Supreme Court eventually reversed this odious outrage, but much damage was done. Millions either succumbed to medication they didn’t want, or sacrificed careers that they did.

As usual, the perpetrators suffered nothing, aside from being told they’d gone too far. No criminal charges or victim compensation would be forthcoming. It was like a thief being told to stop stealing, while being able to keep what he’d already taken.

Chancellor Sutler

But the robbery continued. Last year US government debt crested $36 trillion. Those drinks weren’t all on Biden’s tab. Several drunken spendthrifts preceded him to the bar.

The bill was “only” $6T when GW Bush entered office, doubled during his term, and then doubled again under Obama. Trump added the same debt in half the time, setting a dubious standard his successor seemed determined to exceed.

Boondoggles and giveaways like the CHIPS Act, Student Debt “forgiveness”, the Orwellian “Inflation Reduction Act”, the “migrant” invasion, and the Ukrainian laundromat perpetuated and exaggerated economic problems the government previously caused.

And while the regime spent unprecedented amounts of other Americans’ money, it deprived them of essentials by wasting wealth to impede Putin, pummel the Palestinians, and control “the climate.”

And they wondered why the plebs were upset?

As a good leader does, President Biden occasionally decided to address their concerns. In typical fashion, he did so by denouncing them.

A couple years ago, the president went to the place where sovereign states declared independence from a central authority. Outside the building where secession was proclaimed, Joe Biden personified why our ancestors resorted to that remedy.

He had the ring of a demented monarch denouncing his rivals. “MAGA Republicans” were the new “unvaccinated”: the latest enemy to replace the previous demon. They were veritable “traitors” and a threat to “democracy”, a term that’s rarely defined but that we’re supposed to assume is a secular sacrament.

Like Chancellor Sutler framed by praetorian guards, he declared war on millions of Americans who dared disagree with him. In essence, the “War on Terror” was turned inward. To help fight it, Biden beefed up the FBI, and hired more new IRS agents than there are soldiers in the British Army.

The Usual Suspects

As he invited civil war and economic collapse at home, he tempted nuclear conflict abroad. When temperatures fell across Europe, the US government turned up the heat. After provoking a Russian invasion of America’s Ukrainian satrapy, the Biden Administration did all it could to prolong the war. And to widen it.

The following winter, as fuel prices soared and the air began to chill, protests proliferated around Europe. When the weather is nice and pantries are full, self-righteous virtue is a luxury the economically illiterate can afford to indulge.

But when days shorten, snow falls, and food runs low, appetite for suicidal sanctions seems to weaken. To keep it from being satiated, terrorists blew up the feeding tubes.

You’d have to be a blithering idiot not to suspect the culprits worked for the Biden Administration. Biden warned that “we’d bring an end to” the Nord Stream pipeline if Russia invaded the Ukraine, and his Secretary of State celebrated “the tremendous opportunity” presented after the conduit was destroyed.

The usual suspects claimed (preposterously) that the Russians did it, which means the usual suspects are likely guilty. Russia had no incentive to destroy its own infrastructure, which it could simply have shut down to exercise leverage. After the pipe was blown up, that leverage was gone.

So too were many reasons for Europeans to abandon sanctions on Russia. This also benefited US LNG producers who could replace some of the lost gas with more expensive and cumbersome supplies from the states. That this reduced gas available to Americans is a consideration the administration made clear was not its concern.

What should be a concern is imbecilic escalation toward nuclear war. Not only did the Biden Administration do nothing to prevent such a catastrophe, it wantonly encouraged that unspeakable eventuality.

Bees in a Hive

Notwithstanding any Biden family money that flowed thru the Ukraine, this isn’t about a particular presidential puppet…whether in Washington or Kiev. It’s about the permanent State that pulls the strings.

It’s not the president who runs the show. After it became obvious to everyone that the current marionette was non compos mentis, this could no longer be camouflaged by Party bosses who’d orchestrated the charade.

These puppeteers aren’t “conspirators” in the “smoke-filled room” sense. They’re more like bees in a hive. They have inherent common interests, and act on mutual instinct.

They needn’t formally “agree” on what must be done any more than a pack of wolves decides it should devour a flock of sheep. Their only debates are how best to fleece the flock, and consume the carcasses. If they get their way, there’ll be plenty of them.

Of Biden, Barack Obama famously warned “not to underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up”. Upon surveying the carnage as the curtain closes, it seems impossible to have done anything else.

JD