The recent “No Kings” demonstrations have brought to mind the last time a President truly acted like a King, and no, it was not the current occupant of the Oral Office. Rather it was President Biden who exercised the one power that is unrestricted, unpoliced, and total in the hands of the President: the power to pardon.

While all Presidents have this unique power, none in the history of the United States has pardoned his siblings, siblings-in-law, son, twenty-five hundred convicted drug convictions, and unindicted government officials for unmentioned crimes. Additionally, he overrode the federal judicial system, ignored the decisions of juries, and granted clemency to nearly every federal death row inmate. His decision was based on his personal moral view of the death penalty and went against the stated federal law. All of these actions took place just hours before he left office and in spite of a promise not to pardon his own son.

The power to pardon is not limited in the United States to the President; Governors of states also hold such power, but their power is limited by each State’s Constitution. Abuses have occurred, such as Virginia’s Governor Terry McAuliffe. In order in 2016, he allowed by fiat 206,000 convicted felons who had completed their terms to regain the ability to vote, hold public office, serve on a jury and function as a notary. There was moral outrage across the state and the state Supreme Court stated that such a blanket action was beyond the scope of his ability. In the end, the outgoing governor McAuliffe got around the state Supreme Court by issuing “individual grants of clemency.”      Finally, we have the question of should any President have so much power and what are the options for any attempt to limit his pardoning power.

The attached article gives us a fascinating look into the thinking of the Founding Fathers when they gave such unlimited power to the President. Although not in the Constitution, there were discussions as to a recourse should any President abuse his pardon power to such a degree that it went beyond all norms, and that recourse was impeachment. Yet President Biden in issuing his pardons just hours before he left office avoided even a discussion of impeachment. Imagine if a future President should decide to empty all the Federal prisons of their inmates, or “only those inmates who supported his own political party?.”  Given the actions of President Biden, we may all look with trepidation as each future President is about to leave office.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/unpardonable

Since the 1970’s, Justices for the Supreme Court have for the most part come from Ivy-League, East Coast law schools.  Justice Barrett breaks that trend ( being a native of New Orleans) and as a result, her clear writing, legal and teaching experience provides us with a clear and clean understanding of some of the key factors used in her decision making process. Her book is written in a manner that goes against the grain of the ivy league schools in that it is concise, takes on real issues and discusses the procedure, forces and philosophies which guide the decision-making process of the Court. While she provides personal background information on her life, unlike some Justices, she makes the reader understand that her rationale to reach a conclusion is not based or tainted by her personal views, but rather by understanding what the words of the Constitution mean.

It is refreshing to read her book as she clearly discusses the pros and cons of a number of issues, not only legal issues before the Court, but also the political questions facing the Court, such as the concept of Court packing, lifetime tenure, etc.  We see the actors behind the scenes such as the law clerks, the traditions of the Court that have evolved over the years, which are designed to maintain a balance of civility and professionalism even among the Justices.  Her discussions on areas such as textualism and originalism include their history and forces behind each so that everyone can understand the dynamics of each concept.

The Justice is obviously a serious scholar of the law but one which can clarify a subject in a few words where others will need much more room or confuse the issue by inserting their personal views and bias. Her love for the law and the Constitution is clear. 

During her confirmation, she withstood the slings and arrows of several Senators who attacked her over their concerns regarding health care, abortion rights, her religion and her judicial philosophy (Originalist). She withstood the fire, never once reaching or referring to any notes. The fact that she is an Originalist and would therefore not let her personal feelings impact her duties seemed to both some Senators who seem to favor an more “progressive)” attitude toward law.

 Give this read a try, especially if you wish to gain a higher regard for the Court and the Justices.

In his new book, My Fight for Canadian Health Care: A Thirty-Year Battle to Put Patients First by Dr. Brian Day, we can see the weaknesses and misdirection of a Socialized health care system that is touted as being “free.”  Of course, no rational person believes that anything that the government is involved in is “free,” especially when you realize that the average Canadian earns less than his or her counterpart in Louisiana and pays more in taxes.

Like so many other ideas, a single payer health care system sounds great in theory, but it rapidly falls apart when reality hits. Today, unless you are one of the chosen special groups (Canadian Armed Forces, RCMP, federal employees police officers and yes, prisoners), you are doomed to extended waiting periods if you need health care.

There are numerous reasons for the delays that the average Canadian faces, and here are a few as dictated by the CHA (Canadian Health Act) of 1984:

• Hospitals cannot exceed their government-stipulated budgets.
• As a result, between 1981 and 1995, surgeons at the UBC Hospital in Vancouver saw their surgical hours cut from twenty-five hours a week to five; any surgeon who exceeded those hours risked various threats including losing their “surgical privileges.”
• Medical schools have dropped admissions between 11 and 30% as it was believed that a “surplus” of doctors would increase wait times due to more individuals seeking help.

The average Canadian faced a median wait for care from a specialist of 30 weeks, and that was on top of waiting to see their primary doctor which was necessary in order to authorize seeing a specialist. In Dr. Day’s specialty, the median wait time was 57 weeks. In 2024, Canadians were on the waiting list for a total of 1.5 million procedures.

Obamacare was sold on the basis of several major lies and has warped our health care system. There is no doubt that it needs to be amended, improved, etc. but if any politician even dares to mention a single care system as an alternative, they must be tied to a chair and this book read to them at least twice.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/where-health-care-went-to-die

I have posted a number of articles and thoughts on how governments around the world are failing their citizens. One is Germany, where between the failed green movement which is driving companies and factories out of the country to the never-ending quest for money, so they are competing with illegal drug cartels to sell the worse poisons to its’ citizens. Another is France, which has allowed over seven hundred no go zones to spread throughout the land while jailing the governments’ main political opponent. Of course, we cannot forget Sweden suffering more bombings than any other country and the government allowing their country to become the rape capital of Europe. My recent posts on the car theft rings in Canada dominated by Hamas and the lack of enforcement against the Communist Chinese drug trade and money laundering are truly disturbing.

The latest insult to one’s citizens is the appointment to the position of Home Secretary, a Pakistani Muslim woman who has declared her hatred of white men, especially those who proudly wave the British flag. She is in charge of national and public security and has made it plain that any mention of “grooming gangs of Muslims,” speech about the violent history of Islam or any negative referral to Mohammed will be severely punished. It is already a crime to pray silently in set areas in the U.K. and there is no right of self-defense or anything like the U.S. First Amendment.

She talks a good talk, claiming to seek faster deportations of illegal immigrants, especially those who have committed crimes. She has said all the right things (meaning she speaks in support of the Party leader), but there do not seem to be many individuals asking her to explain her bigoted comments against whites in the past.

I have visited the U.K. numerous times over the years, and during the past ten-years I have noticed the old ways, customs and pride slipping away. I do not know if the U.K. can be saved, it certainly is not going in a positive direction. The addition of the new Home Secretary certainly does not seem to be any indication of national revival. It is too bad; it used to be a wonderful place.

The link below will provide your with the disturbing facts.

UK Gets a Muslim Terrorist Counterterrorism Minister :: Gatestone Institute

From Drugs to Cars, from Real Estate to Politicians, the drug cartels and international terrorists like Hezbollah see Canada as the land of opportunity. Is it corruption or a tactical alliance designed to keep Canada out of terrorist’s sights? But then, this is nothing new as we know that national leaders willingly make decisions everyday that are counter to the best interests of their population.

From the German decision to allow in millions of individuals whose views are diametrically opposed to the values of their citizens, to joining in a downward race to provide more powerful and destructive drugs all in the name of additional income, to the once proud home of freedom of speech, Great Britain where you cannot even pray in your own house if you are too close to an abortion clinic, to Turkey where corruption is common and acceptable until the poorly constructed buildings disintegrate during an earthquake. Somehow, we expected better of Canada, the land of “nice people,” but then maybe it is only the common man and woman who are nice while their national leaders are shallow or worse. Or our governments have just gotten too big to operate as we all hope. Maybe there are just too many forces at work, and we have lost the ability to control the behemoth we have created.

The link below takes you to an article on how Canada has become the playground of the worse of humanity.

2025 Risk Report Confirms Hezbollah Crime Networks in Canada, Echoing U.S. Warnings Ottawa Ignored: Op-Ed

Have you ever travelled anywhere in the world and discussed with a local, even if only for a minute or two, their opinion of their government? If such a conversation has taken place in what traditionally called in the past, the “free world,” I doubt if you ever heard anyone say anything positive about their government. Of course, you do not get into that type of conversation in third world countries or those countries which are ruled by authoritarians; you may get some eye rolling, but those folks know the danger of being honest.

The nearly universal dislike, distrust or plain disgust with one’s government is seen everyday and the study connected to the link below from the U.K. reflects these strong feelings. The issues which drive many of those feelings are on the whole, relatively common across much of the world; uncontrolled immigration of people who do not share the common values of the new host nation, belief in governmental inefficiency and corruption in areas such as health care, welfare, rising crime (normally tied to mass immigration), a political class which has lost touch with the electorate, etc. Finally, as we have seen in France and the U.S, individuals who threaten the status quo are subject to politically motivated investigations and even barred from participating in elections for years.

All the while, the traditional elite political class seems unable or unwilling to look at let alone implement serious policies to answer any of their publics concerns. The result is the rise of the populist right of the center and the violence of the radical left, which in turn, pulls more from the center to one side or the other out of frustration and disgust.

Thanks to faster and poorly vetted information via the internet, the old days of both sides having the luxury of time to study, analyze and believing that time will cool tempers are long gone. Love him or hate him, President Trump is echoing FDR’s efforts to offer solutions to the problems of the day. FDR believed that doing something was better than doing nothing and while his policies created problems of their own, his actions created the impression of positive action. Trump hit the floor running with a full plate of targets and policies and thus far his opponents have not found an answer that appeals to the masses. Will a European version of Trump be found and withstand the slings and arrows of the European ruling class or will the European ruling class continue with the same tired policies which have led to today’s discontent among the masses. Time will tell, but the clock is running.

https://open.substack.com/pub/morningcall/p/morning-call-shattered-trust?r=2d3pff&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The author, famous liberal attorney, and author (of over fifty books on law, legal history and legal/social commentary), is no fan of Trump. As of the book’s publication (2023) he had never voted for Trump but has been ostracized by many of his life long liberal friends and associates for his commentaries on the legal gambits by the Left over the past ten years. Disinvited by schools and groups that he has spoken before over the past forty years, he lays out the dangerous tactics of the Left as well as the Media and Academia.

Stating specific actions, he discusses how they create a danger to our Constitution and the rule of law. He criticizes both the far right and left throughout the book but focuses more on the Left who he says has shown that far from being the staunch defenders of freedom as they claim, has shown themselves to be acting strictly from political motives. He attacks the ACLU which he claims has lost its’ reputation and standing due to bowing to the demands of “diversity,” as well as the Democratic party. While he praises the base goodness of Merrick Garland and Jack Smith, he believes they have bent to political pressure in creating a double standard to justice. For example, how can Hillary Clinton, Sandy Berger and even Joe Biden criticize Donald Trump when their actions in the handling of secret documents while both in and out of office be considered as lesser than the documents at Trump’s house? He criticizes the raid for documents at Trumps house which was not of national importance as the FBI waited until two days after the authorization of the warrant (which was closer to a Bill of Attainment) to make sure that Trump was a thousand miles from his home.

The interview he has in the book with Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerry Baker lays out the dubious rational for the attacks on Trump according the legal and historical arguments and is a worth while read for both those legally versed and non-legally versed individuals. Unlike many attorneys, Dershowitz writes in a clear, concise manner which may very well explain his successful longevity as an author and legal commentator.

This is a short book (less than two-hundred pages) but it is clear that his defense of Trump is not based on the politics of Dershowitz but rather on his concern for the harm to the rule of law and the Constitution done by those on the Left who have made fundamental errors of judgement caused by their personal animas.  Perhaps the truth of his arguments is his personal cost caused by those who hailed him as long as he supported their views which were legally defensible.

Unfortunately, we tend to get our news via short, highly edited, and questionable “objective” snippets as we are on the run. The old legacy media media of NBC, CBS and ABC are widely ignored no matter how much is paid to the latest talking head. That is why an interview like the one linked here is so important.

Tom Holman is often presented as a hard talking, in your face individual who is doing the dirty job of cleaning up not only the prior Presidents’ mess, but also the mess of other Presidents. It seems that everyone agrees that we need to remove the worse of the worse criminal aliens from our midst, but for some reason there are short sighted politicians who fail to understand that their efforts to block Holman guarantees to make life harder to the “good” illegals that they say they are protecting; especially those who clean their pools, mow their laws and act as their nannies.  Never mind that those same illegals are the first to suffer at the hands of the “worse of the worse.”

This interview shows that there is so much more to Holman’s job than picking up criminal illegals. He and his ilk also rescue some of those 300,000 children who were somehow “lost” during the Biden administration. They also rescue women forced into prostitution by the criminal cartels, act with other agencies against money laundering, tax evasion, and more.

If you watch the interview, you may view the next interview by a talking head of Holman a bit differently.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? They may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought. Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find them of interest!

• Germany: the race to the bottom- For well over a thousand years, especially in the West, the concept of a social contract between the government and the governed has been developing. It has not always been perfect, but it has been a steady part of Western culture. Briefly it says that you the citizens agree to pay taxes and obey the laws, including if necessary, taking up arms to defend the state. In return, the state agrees to work to protect the citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic and to provide certain services (health inspections, a school system, fire, and police services, etc.). No government can stay in power without at least a minimal amount of support from its’ citizens.

Germany, like all other governments is constantly looking for new streams of revenue. One new stream is making cannabis legal. As usual, on paper it looked like a great idea; by making it legal, it should undercut the drug cartels and thus save money on policing. Additionally, it is a repeat business that is unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy. Never mind that modern day cannabis is basically a mutant of the cannabis which is not only stronger than the cannabis of Woodstock fame, but is know to cause mental problems, such as depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc., especially among the younger generation (up to the age of the mid-20s). So, a certain portion of our youth will face mental problems in their lives, that is just the cost of getting more taxes.

The problem is, in Germany for example, that the sale of cannabis is not creating the tax windfall that was expected. Why? One reason is that the underground economy offers a stronger version of cannabis than that offered by the government. This can be done by altering the amount of THC; in fact, the amount of THC in European cannabis is nearly double since 2013. The market responds as the legal cannabis has less THC and thus the underground economy is outperforming the legal product.

What is a government to do? They want their money. They could put an all-out effort into eliminating much of the underground economy but that would take time and money, and they have not been that successful in the past. The obvious solution to the government is to increase the THC, thus making the legal stronger so it can compete with the underground-economy product. Of course, the stronger the product, the more dangerous and damaging to the citizens who not only use the product but have to face individuals who are impacted by the stronger product. Given the long-term thinking (?) of the government, which should solve the problem, right? Not really, as all those who work the underground economy need to do is to up the amount of THC to maintain market share. This means in effect that the government, in its quest for dollars, is in a race to the bottom against the underground economy. It is a kind of, “if we cannot lick them, we can join them.”

The social contract is not what it used to be; we cannot count on the government to protect us from foreign and internal enemies. Does that mean I get a tax refund for the governments not only failure, but conscious decision to offer a product that is increasingly dangerous. (FT,  6/7-8, 2025, pp. 2)

In the past week, three Chinese students some of whom had entered the U.S. illegally and even voted in the 2024 election were caught and face Federal charges of attempting to bring in the U.S. a deadly fungus that can devastate crops such as wheat, barley, maize and rice.  They have been studying at the University of Michigan, and one has an advanced degree in plant pathogens. Some of the students have received funds from an institute partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Elsewhere, there is a growing concern over the purchase of U.S. farmland near U.S. military bases. Although the amount of land is only about 1% of our total farmland, it still amounts to nearly four hundred-thousand acres of land. While the recent military success of the Ukrainian forces against the Russian strategic bomber fleet has begun to bring concerns about the safety of our B-1 and B-2 strategic bombers, the Governor of Arizona recently vetoed a state bill restricting the purchase of land by Chinese nationals. Finally, the discovery of unlicensed Chinese labs in the U.S. who were working on dangerous work related to Covid-19 and were found to have genetically modified mice, has raised further questions of what are the intentions of Communist China.

The intentions are not a secret if anyone has read the 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, both retired Chinese colonels. Originally published by the People’s Liberation Army Literature & Arts Publishing House, it must have been approved by the Communist Party. They argue that generals such as Colin Powell and Schwarzkopf are more “traditional” and that they do not understand today’s war options. Further, for today’s war to be won, all available tools, including cyber and economic means, the use of media influence and legal manipulation (lawfare) must be used. They argue that the traditional boundaries of warfare must be “widened.”  For example, they write:

“The existence of boundaries is a prerequisite for differentiating objects from one another. In a world where all things are interdependent, the significance of boundaries is merely relative. The expression “to exceed limits” means to go beyond things which are called or understood to be boundaries. It does not matter whether they fall into the category of physical, spiritual, or technical, or if they are called “limits,” “defined limits,” constraints,” “border,” “rules,” ….” or even taboos.”  Speaking in terms of war, this could mean the boundary between the battlefield and what is not the battlefield, between what is a weapon and what is not, between soldier and noncombatants, between state and non-state or supra-state.”  (pp158) In other words, no boundaries, a concept of warfare (with both success and failure) that the West has attempted for a thousand years to change. In their concept of war, one need not worry about “terms of engagement,” for the gloves are off.

On the next page, they attempt to dress this up by referring to “going beyond the limits,” “surpassing all boundaries and conforming with the laws of victory when conducting warfare with combinations. Thus, we obtain a complete concept, a completely new method of warfare called “modified combined warfare that goes beyond limits.”

We currently have over a quarter of a million Chinese nationals in our universities. Those students are expected to report back to the homeland on research, ideas, and individuals. Those same universities have accepted billions of dollars from Chinese foundations and think tanks funded by the Chinese party and military.

There is an old saying, “forgive me my paranoia, for I know what I fear.”  We are an open, trusting society. Traditionally we have always thought the best of our fellow man as we were founded on Judeo-Christian ideals. It has been eighty years since we faced and defeated nations which believed that the ends justify the means. Perhaps eighty years is too long a time for us to put a threat in its’ proper perspective.