We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.
and he concludes with this ignorant statement:
... the Constitution grants only those rights that the Supreme Court says it grants, and a new majority can and will bestow those rights, and take them away, in chilling new ways.
If the US government bestows rights, it's news to me. That turns the Constitution upside-down. The American idea is that individual freedom is a gift of God, and limited powers are given to government only to protect that freedom from threats to it. Rebels wrote the thing, rebels who believed government was a necessary evil. I do not think the youth are taught that.
The Greeks understood these things, and VDH knows the Greeks.
Bill's wife's judgement has been poor most of her life. Arrogance has been a problem too. Blind ambition. Who is she, in her own imagination? Remarkable she got as far as she did, but she did manage to leave a trail of messes and corruption behind her while becoming a mega-millionaire in selfless "public service".
Much as I detest the idea of abortion (it is killing, of course), I also detest the notion that the Constitution confers limited rights on individuals. It was not meant to do so. It was designed to confer limited powers to government.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, accused the majority of weaponizing the First Amendment — an unconscionable position for a person tasked with “faithfully and impartially” discharging the duty to protect the inherent rights of all Americans. The dissenters have perverted the intent of the Founders. It’s none of Sotomayor’s business how we use free expression. It’s her business to protect it.
The Gowdy clip is stunning. The arrogance of the bureaucrats is amazing to me. Who do they think they are? Rosenstein's smugness bugs me because he is my employee.
If Trump’s supporters are truly “a basket of deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and “irredeemable,” as Hillary Clinton described them to an LGBT crowd, is not shunning and shaming the proper way to deal with them.
There appears to be little real self-reflection in Mexico about how and why such a naturally rich country — blessed with good soil, climate, natural resources, ports, and a strategic geography — remains so dismally poor.
Another:
Mexico plays the same role with the United States that North African countries play with Europe, except in the former’s case, it has a deliberate rather than chaotic emigration policy — and uses it as direct leverage over the U.S. Mexico’s sense of immigration entitlement is predicated on the assumption that corporate America wants cheap labor, that liberal America wants voters, that identity-politics activists need constituents, that a liberal elite expresses its abstract virtue by its patronization of the Other — and that until recently most Americans were indifferent...
and one more:
There has been much wild talk of the “servitude” and “serfdom” of impoverished illegal aliens. But the real moral travesty is that Mexico’s entire foreign and economic policy is based on exporting its poor people abroad to scrimp and save cash to send home to provide the support their own government will not.
The United States has many enemies in the world, but it is hard to find one that deliberately is trying to undermine U.S. law by exporting its own citizens to change the demographic and politics of its supposed ally.
I think Trump admired Putin only for being another alpha male who puts his country's interests first. Trump relates to alpha guys, so that's his preference. He does not care for weasley boys like Justin, and that's his choice. Not many alphas in the press corps, so there's that too.
Purely by accident, I watched about 20 minutes of Trump's rally in South Carolina last night. With no notes and no prompter, the guy was a brilliant and highly amusing speaker, interacting with his audience, spewing stats and numbers constantly, and light-heartedly teasing about his opposition. All upbeat and good fun.
He was not my choice, but my choices would have lost to Hillary. As a communicator, Trump makes Reagan and Obama seem like amateurs - and he just wings it. His job seems recreational to him.
As an uncouth outsider, naturally the establishment hates him. That's why he was elected. If it turns out that Trump really is a Russian agent, I'll gladly change my mind about the whole Trump thing.
However, it appears that many US government agencies were working hard to prevent Trump a year before the election, and to undermine him afterwards. If true, it would be the biggest political scandal in US history. Seven Mysterious Preludes of the FBI's Trump-Russia Probe
Sure looks like a CIA/FBI string to me. Who arranged that?
For better or worse, Europe is no longer a world player. In visible decline, becoming a (nice, except for the immigrants) museum. Heck, we love southern France, the Cotswolds, and most of Italy.
Making 
Vacation time. 
orker: 
‘Climate Change’ Made Lobsters Awesome,