Special Counsel Jack Smith accuses former President Donald Trump of causing the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot through his “lies” about the 2020 presidential election. To that end, he indicted Trump yesterday (8/01) on four federal counts — one of which carries a potential death penalty.

But Smith’s indictment itself offers nothing new. It carries same criminal charge of the second impeachment resolution against Trump, namely “incitement of insurrection,” and for which he was acquitted by the Senate.  It is barred, therefore, by the Constitution’s Double Jeopardy Clause.

The Double Jeopardy Clause, contained within the Fifth Amendment, prevents any person from being tried twice in a federal court for the same crime.  Here’s how Trump is protected by it.

The Chevron Doctrine is a rule adopted by the Supreme Court in 1984.  It says that when the language of a statute is ambiguous, a court must defer to the regulatory agency's interpretation and may not substitute its own judgment.  That is why it is also known as Chevron Deference.

Chevron  has come under mounting attack in recent years as agencies have learned to game the system and to leverage any scintilla of ambiguity into a wholesale assertion of authority.

The Supreme Court has begun saying "enough" and has developed some caveats to check this game.  For example, the newly articulated "major questions doctrine" is essentially the anti-Chevron: if an issue is big enough, then ambiguity dictates that the agency not receive deference.

But the Court has been ambivalent, sometimes applying the doctrine, sometimes finding that the relevant law is not ambiguous, and sometimes not mentioning it. (See here, pp. 24-26.)

Now the Supreme Court has agreed to address directly the issue of whether Chevron should be overruled – much like Roe v Wade. Here’s the story.

The difference between the Republican ballot operation and that of the Democrats is that the Democrats manufacture ballots, whereas Republicans only collect them.

Democrats learned early that running out of ballots to cast on election day is like running out of beer on July 4.  They took that lesson and improvised in ingenious ways.

Ballot-manufacturing appears pretty easy at first but has lots of little complexities.  Mastering those complexities gives our leftist pals unlimited numbers of ballots to handle any surging MAGA candidate.

Manufacturing ballots requires two ingredients: an address and a person.  Here’s the key: Addresses cannot be manufactured.  Voters can.

Democrats can create all the voters they want from homeless shelter lists, but they face a constraint: every voter must tie to an address.  It is this constraint — fixed addresses — that is the Achilles heel for mail-in voter fraud.

This morning (7/26), Federal Judge Maryellen Noreika refused to accept the Hunter Biden sweetheart plea deal that the Department of Justice was prepared to sign off on with no prison time and only misdemeanor charges.

So, now the parties have two weeks to satisfy the judge with a new plea agreement. No doubt, Hunter desperately wants to avoid any prison time. I don’t know if he has actually beaten his drug addiction, and with his prominence and mouth full of false teeth, he would be a target for prison brutality of the worst sort.

But the DOJ prosecutors must fear rejection of a new deal that does not include prison time and which immunizes Hunter from further prosecution, so coming to an agreement in two weeks may be difficult.

On July 13, 2023, a country western artist little known outside his genre stepped into the national spotlight when he released a video of a song that channeled the feelings of more than 100 million Americans.  Maybe a lot more.

In less than a week it was ranked #1 on iTunes and as of July 25 it is the #1 trending music video on YouTube. But you won’t see it on Country Music Television, because it’s been banned.

By now the story line is well established. Jason Aldean, 46 years old, who already had 24 number 1 hits on the US country charts, has released a music video where against a backdrop of protests and rioting, he sings “don’t try that in a small town, see how far you make it down the road…”

Reaction to Aldean’s alleged endorsement of vigilantism and allegedly coded racist undertones has been swift and unrelenting. Which is why what Aldean’s song represents, and the reason for its popularity, is much bigger than the song itself, or the artist who sings it.

Many foundational pillars of society in the United States appear to be crumbling right now before our eyes, weakened by an erosive array of social, economic and political forces.

The deterioration of traditional cultural norms and the social upheaval that’s followed — from the living room to classroom the boardroom — is no surprise to Ayn Rand scholars.

The celebrated Russian-born American author and philosopher predicted with haunting accuracy many of the nation’s current crises.

Among her observations: Government would encroach on parental rights, stifle academic and scientific research, and fuel a dangerous mentality of victimhood.

Even her biggest fans might be surprised at her prescient insight into the state of America today.