Politics

Mayor Eric Adams has found himself stuck between a Texas rock and a New York hard place as thousands of illegal immigrants have been bused to the Big Apple by Lone Star State Governor Gregg Abbott in recent months. Now, a decades-old New York City policy called “right to shelter” has Adams's hands tied as he tries to find beds for the city’s new arrivals. The result is a crisis for the homeless shelter system, mostly of the city’s own making. This week, as Gotham began turning away dozens of homeless New Yorkers from its facilities, the Adams administration suggested it was time to revisit the “right to shelter” policy, which guarantees a bed to anyone in New York City who wants one.

As the midterms quickly approach, both sides of the aisle are ramping up their grandstanding. And while the results of the November elections are still anyone’s guess, the results of another race are becoming clear: the left is losing the battle of theatrics. To make matters worse, the right is just starting to get the hang of it. Recently, Florida governor Ron DeSantis decided to send two planes full of illegal aliens to the beautiful, beautiful-people-filled island of Martha’s Vineyard. Not to be outdone, Texas governor Greg Abbott sent two buses of illegal aliens to Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence in Washington, DC.

If politics makes strange bedfellows, defending free speech sends one down some equally odd paths. The First Amendment and laws protecting speech exist for every thing that can be said, but end up being tested at the margins of what society tolerates in the name of free speech. A recent case in Hawaii, involving a car license plate, is a perfect example. Like most states, Hawaii issues specialty/vanity license plates where the owner can chose his own letters or numbers. The only restrictions are that the letters/numbers not be "misleading" or "publicly objectionable." Otherwise pick your combination, pay the fee, and you have your unique license plate, such as LUV YOU. That was the plan of Edward Odquina, who runs a web site named www.fckblm.

I first met Ken Starr in 1989. I was a Wall Street Journal editorial writer who was invited to speak at a conference held by the Federalist Society’s chapter at Cornell University. I met two very impressive people that day. One was Leonard Leo, the head of the Cornell Federalist Society. Only twenty-four, it was clear he had a natural genius for organizing, planning and networking. As the later head of the Federalist Society, he turned it into the premier farm team for conservative lawyers who wanted to become judges. In 2020, then-CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told a group of lawyers that Leo had played a major role in the selection of a majority of the Supreme Court.

In a primetime television address on September 1, President Joe Biden declared that a large share of the nation’s voters threatened the “very soul of America.” This creepy, unprecedented presidential alert opened the midterm elections, which are now going into their mail-in phase. Waving his arms, the presidential simulacrum barked imprecations at teleprompters. His spooky, dark, red-and-blue tableau with stiff Marines in parade dress was ominous and intentionally staged. To hear a president talk and act this way was one of the political shocks of a lifetime. Make America Great Again Republicans, it was indicated, constituted an enemy within, Merrick Garland’s domestic terrorists writ large. Be very afraid.

On July 28, 1932, the United States military attacked its own veterans. The desperate former soldiers, who had survived the horrors of World War One, had dug in for months in Washington, DC to get the bonuses that had been promised to them by Uncle Sam. Yet instead of paying the money they were entitled to, the Hoover administration dispatched General Douglas McArthur, who led against them four troops of cavalry, four companies of infantry, a machine gun squadron, and six tanks. Ninety years after the infamous attack on the Bonus Marchers, dozens of veterans camped out on the steps of the Capitol building for several days. These veterans were not routed, thankfully.

The appointment of a special master is usually a case of much ado about nothing. Except with Donald Trump and his war with the Department of Justice, there is never "nothing." A special master is an independent party appointed by the court, in this instance to “review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege.” In other words, the master will look at the pile of documents and other items seized from Mar-a-Lago by the DOJ under its search warrant and decide which ones they can keep to review and use in their prosecution and which ones are not allowed based on the limits of the warrants and privilege.

California has gone full pagan — it lives and dies by the weather. Over the last few days, the state’s power grid has groaned under the strain of a massive heatwave. Combine that with a hydropower-sapping drought and you’ve got a recipe for blackouts. While major weather events pose challenges for any electricity system, California’s has become uniquely vulnerable to blackouts thanks to an over-investment in weather-dependent wind and solar. Every night during the heatwave, solar experiences its scheduled defeat at the hands of sunset and Californians are left praying for the wind to blow and and the imports to flow.