Is John Wilkes Booth an example for Democrats?

For John, BLUF:  As we look back over the Biden Administration we see treason justified as patriotism.

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Biden's Prostate Cancer and the Tyranny of the Experts

Here is the sub-headline:

Ezekiel Emanuel is an opponent of long life. So why did he back someone so old for president?

From The Wall Strret Journal, by Reporter Allysia Finley, 25 May 2025 3:53 pm ET

And, The InstaPundit, 27 May 2025, 10:43 pm.

Margot Cleveland
@ProfMJCleveland

Same reason judges are entering orders against Trump even though they lack jurisdiction.

Rep. James Comer

@RepJamesComer
🚨 Longtime aide to former President Joe Biden admitted that White House staff felt justified doing “undemocratic things” during his term in office because they believed President Donald Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy.
https://dailycaller.com/2025/05/25/biden-aide-admits-staff-undemocratic-trump-threat-democracy/

i am combing the InstaPundit Blog Post and the Wall Street Journal article reference.  It all comes down to hating Donald Trump.

This is about Trump. No lie is too big when it comes to beating DJT.  In the minds of some Democrats, keeping JRB available was critical to saving the United States from Trump.  We are talking real TDS.  Rather than seeing that the first four years showing that Trump could function like a President, these folks doubled down on the Second Coming of Hitler.

These are people who would commit treason in the name of patriotism.  They are like John Wilkes Booth, who shouted Sic semper tyrannis (Thus Always to Tyrants), as he shot President Lincoln.  In the end Mr Booth helped slow the needed healing of this nation by almost a hundred years.

These days we have former FBI Director James Comey posting a photo of shells arranged to say 8647.  Some say it doesn't really mean that, but what was the man thinking?   They are out there.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

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Memorial Day

For John, BLUF:  Another Memorial Day, but our duty continues.

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Memorial Day

Which Used to be known as Decoration Day

Because this was the day we used to decorate the graves of Civil War Veterans.

On this day, especially, I mourn those I have know who were lost, including two roommates who were subsequently killed. One was Alan Trent, from Conneticut, my Freshman Year Roommate at the Air Force Academy. Subsequently he died flying a Close Air Support mission in South Viet-nam.  The other was my Pilot Training roommate, Aado Kommandant, from Estonia originally, who dies on his first mission out of Cam Rahn Bay, in 1966.

For almost 59 years I have been married to an Air Force widow, and have raised her two original children as my own.  He dies on a training sortie while on day 179 of a 90 day deployment to Okinawa to provide air defense while the original F-102s were deployed to Southeast Asia, for the same purpose.  His plan was never found and he was designated as missing and presumed dead.

I never met Robert Harlan, but I subsequently served with some of his friends, includin Greg Smith, Waynr Bechler and John Brennan.  I believe adopting his children gave me a special responsibility to a fellow comrade, who I never met.  But, all of us alive owe some debit to those who gave their last full measure of devotion to our Nation.

Regards  —  Cliff

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Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

For John, BLUF:  There is no free lunch, even when the Feds are paying.

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Trump’s budget threatens Mass. English learner, college transition programs

From The Boston Globe, by Reporters Christopher Huffaker and Marcela Rodrigues, 14 May 2025, 11:11 a.m

Here is the lede plus six:

NEW BEDFORD — Students at Alfred J. Gomes Elementary School didn’t hesitate when teacher Natalia Gioni asked them to sing along.

“Somos como las flores, necesitamos la lluvia y el sol,” the first-graders sang as they learned what plants need to grow and survive. Water, sunlight, and air, they told Gioni in Spanish.

As bilingualism is celebrated at the New Bedford school, superintendent Andrew O‘Leary is concerned President Trump’s proposed budget for 2026 would eliminate federal funding that supports English language acquisition programs.

The $890 million cut nationwide would translate to the loss of three or four staff members in New Bedford, where the district receives about half a million dollars for these programs.

“It would be the federal government turning its back on the community,” O‘Leary said.

Similar scenes are playing out across the state as school districts, higher education institutions, and education advocates grapple with the potential impact of billions in cuts proposed for federal funding streams ranging from schooling for migrant farmworkers and their children to programs that help high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds transition to college.

The president’s proposed budget is a wish list of sorts and is unlikely to be implemented as written. However, it emphasizes the priorities of the administration and reflects other federal actions already underway, such as the cutting in half of the Education Department workforce. Congress ultimately sets the budget, often via stopgap spending bills in recent years, but Republicans control the legislature and tend to be closely aligned with the president’s priorities.

My first question is why, with a 14 May dateline, this is the lead story in today's (Monday, 26 May) EMail of Boston Globe Hearlines?

My next question is why Massachusetts, and New Bedford, are looking for the taxpayers in Fort Yukon, Alaska, to pay for this effort.  If it is important, why not raises taxes locally (SALT) and fund it locally?

Are Citizens not aware that we have a National Debt of $36.898 Trillion.  That has come about because the People, and the elected folks in Congress, think we can spend into debt without consequences.  We can't.

We should also acknowledge that if our Commonwealth Labor Force Participation Rate was higher than 62.3, we could do more.  If we had more people working we would have more tax coming in to the towns aand the Commonwealth.  Is our Labor Force Participation Rate where it is because we lack jobs, or because we have created structural disincentives to work.  I suspect the second.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Parties, Viewed From Midtown Manhattan

For John, BLUF:  It doesn't appear that Democrats have settled on why Trump won and it it is just him.

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How Donald Trump Has Remade America’s Political Landscape

From The Old Gray Lady, by Political Correspondent Shane Goldmacher, 24 May 2025

Here is the lede plus two:

Donald J. Trump’s victory in 2024 was not an outlier.

It was the culmination of continuous gains by Republicans in much of the country each time he has run for president, a sea of red that amounts to a flashing warning sign for a Democratic Party out of power and hoping for a comeback.

The steady march to the right at the county level reveals not just the extent of the nation’s transformation in the Trump era but also the degree to which the United States now resembles two countries charging in opposite directions.

Then follows a series of charts showing the demographics and voting patterns of the various counties in these United States.  And analysis.

The article says:

Democrats are gaining ground in a small sliver of the best-educated enclaves.

Doesn't that tell you more about the elite universities than it does about America?

Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist who served as chief of staff to former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who left the party last year, is quoted, warning that such optimism was misplaced.

“Trump is the symptom, not the disease,”

And President Trump really echoes this when he says, "They aren't after me. They are after you. I am just in the way."

Some Democrats have taken comfort from how narrowly Mr. Trump won the popular vote in 2024

But, he did win the Popular Vote as well as the Electoral College.

I can remember when Democrats thought Republicans would never win the popular vote again, and tried to undermine the Constitution with some sort of workaround pact (National Popular VoteI nterstate Compact), which some in Maine are now trying to back out of.

Could it be Dems are just to old?  That is David Hogg's view.  Bernie, Pelosi, Biden, Coburn, etc.  Maybe Chuck Schumer? (Only 74).

Hat tip to my Brother, Lance.

Regards  —  Cliff

States Adrift

For John, BLUF:  This is robbing Peter to pay Paul.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Attorneys General Sue Over Access to $1 Billion in Federal School Aid

Here is the sub-headline:

The Trump administration abruptly cut states’ access to Covid pandemic funding for school programs, saying they’d had enough time to spend it.

From The Old Gray Lady, by Reporters Hurubie Meko and Troy Closson, 10 April 2025, 8:37 p.m. ET.

Here is the lede plus one:

Sixteen attorneys general and a Democratic governor sued the Trump administration on Thursday to restore access to over $1 billion in federal pandemic relief aid for schools that was recently halted, saying that the pullback could cause acute harm to students.

The suit, led by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and filed in Manhattan federal court, is one of the latest efforts by states to fight President Trump’s clawback of funding allocated to programs he does not want the government to support. The funding was part of a windfall of more than $190 billion that the U.S. Department of Education distributed to schools at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Per Wikipedia, on this day in 2023, "The World Health Organization declares the end of the COVID-19 pandemic as a global health emergency."

Two years ago.  And various States have not yet spent all the money they were given to help cope with the COVID-19 Pandemic?  Why have those States, such as New York, been so negligent in meeting the needs of their children.

And, per the Debt Clock, as of 1429 Eastern Time today our Nation Debt was $36,811,822,327,728.  That is $36.8 Trillion Dollars.  And it is going up about $29 Billion a week.

I can understand New York Attorney General Letitia James not graspinng the seriousness of the situation.  But the others?  Surely they can't all be that near sighted!

At some point that great American financial streucture will collapse and we will all, except maybe for the bureaucrats, be reduced to poverty.  That would not be good.  The Academics would all point to the Greek Financial Crisis of 2008.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Trump the Monarch

For John, BLUF:  I don't think President Trump wishes to be a Monarch or Dictator, but I do think he is tired of a huge bureaucracy, and Judiciary, standing between him and what he was elected to do.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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These Thinkers Set the Stage for Trump the All-Powerful

From The Old Gray Lady, by Professor Damon Linker♠, 4 May 2025.

Here is the lede plus three:

With a blitz of moves in his 100 days in office, President Trump has sought to greatly enlarge executive power.  The typical explanation is that he’s following and expanding a legal idea devised by conservatives during the Reagan administration, the unitary executive theory.

It’s not even close.  Mr. Trump has gone beyond that or any other mainstream notion.  Instead, members of his administration justify Mr. Trump’s instinctual attraction to power by reaching for a longer tradition of right-wing thought that favors explicitly monarchical and even dictatorial rule.

Those arguments — imported from Europe and translated to the American context — have risen to greater prominence now than at any time since the 1930s.

Mr. Trump’s first months back in office have provided a sort of experiment in applying these radical ideas.  The alarming results show why no one in American history, up until now, has attempted to put them into practice — and why they present an urgent threat to the nation.

Since the 1930s?  Is the author saying that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a right wing nut case?  It would seem so.

As an aside, I would note that if the Federal Bureaucracy and the Media had not messed with the Election in 2020, suppressing the Hunter Biden Laptop (From Hell), Mr Trump would currently be enjoying his retirement in Mara Lago.  Instead, they enforce a sabbatical on him, giving him time to study what he had done wrong in his first term.  And, he learned.

And he wrote:

Here you can see why, for instance, Mr. Trump fired inspectors general at more than a dozen federal agencies, despite law requiring the president to give Congress 30 days notice of, and provide cause for, his intent to dismiss them.

Actually, I don’t.  I think that he should have used the regular process.  Could he have ’suspended” them while he waited the 30 days?  I would think so.

Then:

You can also see why Mr. Trump rejects the very idea of a person or office in the executive branch being independent of his will.

I agree.  If you are an official in the Executive branch, then you are an extension of the President.  If you don’t work for the President, who do you work for?  Who is your manager, and who is your manager’s manager?

As to:

He thinks he has unlimited enforcement discretion, allowing him to choose not to enforce duly enacted legislation, as he has done with the law banning TikTok.

How is he different from President Joseph R Biden?  President Biden ignored laws to allow millions of immigrants into the nation without any due process.  You can call them undocumented, but that just puts emphasis on the lack of following the law, as enacted by the Congress.

But, at the end:

The best way to mitigate that risk is to insist that presidents accept the constraints of ruling within a constitutional order defined by the separation of powers.  And the only way to ensure they will accept such limits may be to demand that those who seek the nation’s highest office display an understanding of those limits and accept them as a necessary bulwark against tyranny.

Multiple guess test or essay test?

When I think of the National Socialist era in German politics I think of the authors Karl Binding (jurist) and Alfred Hoche (psychiatrist) and their 1920 Book, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life.  Yes, I think the Socialism was bad.  And the aggressive foreign policy was bad.  But the worst of it was marrying Eugenics they picked up from us with the ideas of Binding and Hoche, leading, through euthanasia of “worthless eaters" to the Death Camps.

Hat tip to my Middle Brother.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Damon Linker is a senior lecturer in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center. He writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground.