May
6
2026

But He is the Nitwit-in-Chief

At Reason, Jacob Sullum explains Why the Courts Will 86 the Flagrantly Unconstitutional Charges Against James Comey.

Is it plausible that James Comey, a former federal prosecutor, deputy attorney general, and FBI director, publicly threatened to murder President Donald Trump? No, it is not. But that is what W. Ellis Boyle, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, claims in an indictment filed on April 28.

That improbable allegation is based on a picture that Comey posted on Instagram in May 2025 while vacationing in North Carolina. Captioned "cool shell formation on my beach walk," the photograph showed seashells arranged in the sand to form the message "86 47." According to the indictment, those four digits constituted two federal felonies, each punishable by up to five years in prison. The charges include one count under 18 USC 871, which applies to someone who "knowingly and willfully" threatens to "take the life of" or "inflict bodily harm upon" the president, and one count under 18 USC 875(c), which criminalizes interstate communications that threaten to "injure the person of another."

Even the most charitable interpretation would score this as a waste of time, government resources, and taxpayer money.

But I'm in no mood to be charitable this morning, and I'll kick it up a notch: it's an obvious (and yet another) violation of the presidential oath of office, which is pretty simple: a pledge to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Impeachable.

Also of note:

  • And also impeachable… Jeffrey Blehar observes the obvious: Trump’s ‘Terminated’ Iran War Doesn’t Look It.

    Heads up folks, did you know that the Iran war is apparently over? Yes, on May 1 Trump sent a letter to Congress officially declaring the war “terminated.” On what grounds? Why the cease-fire, old chap, that’s what ended the war! More to the point, the war is now being declared “terminated” because time ran out for Donald Trump under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which requires the president to terminate any military action within 60 days of beginning it, absent congressional approval.

    Perhaps Trump thought it wouldn’t take more than two months to remake the Middle East in his own image via aerial bombing campaign. So now the administration is arguing that the clock either paused on April 7 (when the cease-fire was nominally put into effect) or has stopped altogether, and it can simply be reset to zero if bombings resume. Lawmakers — Republicans as well as Democrats — are obviously displeased about this, but then again, it’s not as if lawmakers can force the Pentagon to withdraw the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier group from the Arabian Sea right now, either. So the war is (1) already over; (2) liable to resume at any moment.

    Let’s set aside the twist — there might be a winning argument to be made at SCOTUS that the War Powers Act is an unconstitutional restriction of executive warmaking powers under Article II of the Constitution — because Trump isn’t making that argument right now either. He is instead claiming to be acting in accordance with the statute, by recourse to insultingly obvious semantic tricks.

    I'm a fan of blowing up Iranian bad guys, but I'm also a fan of the Constitution. And I'm not a fan of "insultingly obvious semantic tricks."

  • A surprisingly poor article in the WSJ. I occasionally make the totally obvious points about my g-g-g-generation:

    1. People try to put us down.
    2. Just because we get around.

    But according to a WSJ news article, we are disappointing some by failing to die before we get old: The Great $110 Trillion Wealth Transfer Won’t Happen Any Time Soon. (WSJ gifted link)

    Older Americans are sitting on $110 trillion of wealth. Their heirs might not get it anytime soon.

    Financial advisory firms like to talk about a looming event called “the great wealth transfer,” where the huge and very wealthy baby-boomer generation dies off and their children inherit their money.

    But the process may be more of a slow drip than a sudden windfall. The two generations that hold the most wealth are baby boomers, who are between age 61 and 80, and Gen X, who are between 45 and 61.

    Executive summary: We boomers have a lot of investments that have done well lately; We spend money on longevity treatments; Some of us are getting "windfalls" from our parents; Some of us just leave our wealth to our spouses when we finally kick the bucket; And…

    But the article quotes an "expert" making a point you don't need to be an expert to make:

    “There’s no world in which a great wealth transfer does not happen. It’s just math,” said John Sabelhaus, a Brookings Institution economist and former Federal Reserve official who studies wealth. But, he adds, “There is a world in which it’s misunderstood.”

    The misunderstanding is never made exactly clear, but it seems to boil down to: the Boomers aren't dying as fast as some (unnamed) people expected. "It's just math", but nobody said the kids were that good at math.

    So: sorry, youngsters. You'll have to wait.

  • Moral panic, anyone? Or just a power grab? At FIRE, John Coleman looks at The quiet push to control AI speech.

    Recent reports suggest the Trump administration is now considering new oversight for advanced AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Few details have been finalized, but officials are reportedly discussing an executive order to create a government–industry working group. Another idea under consideration is a process for reviewing models before or around their release.

    As these talks move forward, they risk setting a troubling precedent for free expression.

    So, who do you trust? Boy, that's a toughie.

    I think the closer question is; who do I distrust more? Right at the top of my list: Republicans, Democrats, and government bureaucrats.