In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The National Review continues to be solidly NeverTrump, and it's brought out an old NeverTrump stalwart , Andrew McCarthy, to, prognosticate on the Iowa outcome: . . . I took in a wide array of television and web coverage of former president Trump’s 30-point win in the Iowa caucuses last night. What I found most curious was the Trump crowd’s crowing that Democrats woke up this morning to the news that their plan has failed — because, the irrational exuberance goes, Trump looks strong while Biden is floundering. This misapprehends the Democrats’ plan, which, in fact, continues to be working to perfection. The plan was built on the four indictments and sundry civil suits, all brought by Democratic partisans (led by the Biden Justice Department). The point of the lawfare siege, which is the target of Trump’s constant ire and is thus scoffed at by his fans as ineffective partisanship, was to get Trump nominated. In that sense, the siege has been effective beyond the Democrats’ ...

There were several articles last week that noted the White House has changed tactics for Joe's 2024 campaign appearances, minimizing situations where he appears on stage to avoid scenes where he wanders around looking for the exit and switching to the low stairs for Air Force One to reduce the potential for stumbles and falls. The formal on-stage events are to be replaced by smaller gatherings in places like retail stores that give the impression of spontaneity, but of course, any such venues must be thoroughly vetted and precisely scheduled both by Joe's handlers and the Secret Service. As of this past weekend, the shift doesn't seem to have worked out as hoped. In Emmaus, PA on Friday and in Philadelphia yesterday, we saw a new aspect to Joe's appearances: the aimless departures trying to find the exit offstage have been replaced by a vacant expression that suggests he may not be fully aware of his surroundings, or he may be heavily medicated. At about 2:20 in the...

An interview with Leon Panetta , who had been Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and Barack Obama's Defense Secretary, in yesterday's Politico confirms my surmise about the state of Joe Biden's cabinet: There’s been a gradual deterioration here with regards to the role of the Cabinet. Because so much authority is centralized in the White House these days, the Cabinet really only comes together usually for a press briefing by the president. Normally, what should be the case is there’s a secretary to the Cabinet, and there should be regular meetings with the Cabinet to not only inform them about issues going on but also to stay in touch with them, so that they feel like they’re part of the team. As that relationship generally has been strained in the last number of years, I think everybody kind of operates on their own. You saw a little bit of that happen here. To reword this slightly, it seems like what Panetta, who's had plenty of high-level experience in gove...

The biggest issue that's struck me about the Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ICU kerfuffle is that he didn't show up for work for almost two weeks, and nobody noticed. I simply don't know how you get around that. This normally doesn't happen at lower levels, at least when I was working, although COVID's lasting effect may have changed some things -- but even there, the current consensus seems to be that "working from home" hasn't worked out, and employers have reimposed some level of required attendance. And of course, there were and are some jobs for which you simply have to show up. You can't drive a bus and work from home. This might even apply to a job like US Secretary of Defense, who is in the military chain of command. Even in the December holiday period, issues like Ukraine, Gaza, and Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping didn't go away. But the Secretary was gone, nobody noticed, and nobody knew why. Beyond that, his deputy, who would ...

The big thing that struck me yesterday about Jack Smith's petition to the Supreme Court for a near-immediate ruling on Trump's presidential immunity was its apparent urgency, and I posited that there must be someone in the background (for convenience, a lizard person) who's able to prod Mr Smith into that level of haste. As I said, this plays into the Trump team's Chicago Seven strategy of forcing hasty actions on the judge and prosecution that play out badly in front of the public and eventually result in appellate reversals. Oddly enough, Larry Johnson at the Gateway Pundit may have an explanation. But keeping him in context, he's the same Larry Johnson who, as a PBS News Hour talking head a generation ago, discounted Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden as terrorist threats, something that's hurt his credibility ever since, although more recently, he's been an important contrarian voice on the Ukraine war who's proven correct on that issue so far. Here...

All I can conclude is some very serious lizard people have told Jack Smith that Trump's DC trial must start on March 4, or else . Alan Dershowitz hasn't commented on Smith's move to take Trump's appeal based on presidential immunity directly to the Supreme Court, but Dershowitz has already noted that Trump's strategy is essentially the same as the Chicago Seven defense: force the judge and prosecutors into errors the defense can get reversed on appeal. The stakes are high: The outcome of this fight may determine whether Trump faces any of his four pending criminal trials in 2024. His other three remain in flux or unscheduled. And if the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court consider the former president’s immunity claims on their typical timelines, that may force Chutkan to slow down her own. While lawyers from special counsel Jack Smith’s team pleaded with Chutkan not to alter the March 4 date, they appeared to concede that Trump’s defense wo...

It dawned on me in the middle of last night that normally, for the person indicted, a federal indictment is never a surprise. I did a quick search and discovered that pre-indictment is a legal specialty. For instance, at the Hedding Law Firm , which specializes in federal criminal defense, If you feel that you are under investigation by the feds, you definitely want to get an attorney involved with your case immediately. Never a good idea to try to handle it yourself. Now's not the time to pinch pennies and not hire an attorney immediately. Basically, pre-indictment intervention has to do with before the feds indict you, which is their filing document where they're filing criminal federal charges against you. You can intervene and you can use an attorney to either investigate the case to show that you're innocent or to investigate the case to try to get information on your behalf to either mitigate or reduce the charges. We must assume that Hunter hired Abbe Lowe...