It’s no secret that I detest Donald Trump, but I’ve been trying to move anti-Trump content off of this, my main blog. Today, however, I had things to say that are not bog standard TDS, including, believe it, or not, exonerating him of criming by one of the most outrageous middle-fingers he’s raised to the nation and crediting his crassness with bringing a legal theory from the vapor down to the ground.
There oughta be a law
The administration has recently been running “public service announcements” that tout the president’s achievements. They have the look and feel of campaign ads—but they’ve been paid for with government funds. In fact, one of the “public service announcements” is a repurposed 2024 Trump campaign ad. If Joe Biden had done this in 2024, Republicans would have screamed about it. These ads should be clearly illegal, but alas, they are not.
Those arguing these ads are illegal cannot point to a simple federal statute prohibiting officeholders from running ads designed to influence an election paid for with government money, because there isn’t one.
There is a legal saying that “the law isn’t made until first it’s broken.” No prior President has been so contemptuous of his oath of office and of behavioral norms that he would run “grand exalted leader demigod” ads at government expense. But Orange Sauron, like honey badger, don’t care. [UPDATE: Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer think it is a crime already without any new law or revision of old law.]
Such norm-shattering has born some fruit in court, too. No prior President was so contemptuous of norms as to fire the heads of agencies created by Congress that were supposed to have some expertise, and continuity, beyond the power-grabbing grasp of a president who prefered lackeys at the heads of agencies. And so, we now have seen vindicated the “Unitary Executive Theory” (put simply, there’s only three branches of the U.S. Government, and Congress doesn’t execute the laws, so agencies are under the head of the Executive branch) that had been floating in theoretical ether for a fairly long time, untested by norm-breakers.
Denying the Faith
[Jack] Smith himself praised GOP witnesses to the 2020 coup plot who helped him build a case against the president. That was an opportunity for congressional Republicans to distinguish their party from its leader, something they’d reeeeeally like to do before voting begins. But they declined, and honestly, I understand why: Some beliefs, like the alleged illegitimacy of Smith’s prosecution, are so central in the modern right-wing catechism that to deny them is to deny the faith itself.
You can’t be a Christian without accepting Christ’s divinity, and you can’t be a Trumpist without believing that Trump’s obvious, overt criminality is some sort of Democratic “hoax.”
Nick Catoggio, Up Schmitt Creek
Tipping her hand
Chief Justice John Roberts has accomplished so much of his agenda that it’s not easy, as he begins his 22nd Supreme Court term, to think of what unfinished business might remain.
Linda Greenhouse, New York Times
One of the things I don’t like about Linda Greenhouse’s Supreme Court commentary is right there under your nose: since when do Justices, even Chief Justices, have “agendas”?
Elsewhere in Tipsyworld
What makes Sauron evil is not that he has a ring of power, but that he, like Saruman, has a mind comprised only of metal and gears and is concerned only with domination and his own Ring is inherently constrained by his own hatred and vanity.
Jake Meador. Let him who has ears to hear, hear.
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on my favorite no-algorithm social medium.
