In the 18th and 19th centuries, with no real U.S. standing army, asking Congress to approve a war also meant asking it to fund one. Now that presidents get the funding anyway, and there are no real consequences for not getting approval, it’s not surprising that Trump doesn’t care.
I wrote about this last week. Congress’s power of the purse is the ultimate check on executive war powers, and Congress has chosen to fund a massive standing military force that can topple countries in a matter of days.
Schladow is wrong about the constitutional language, but she’s right about how this works today in practical terms.
I never put this together before, but does Congress have to appropriate each time to refill it?
A standing ovation for Ondrej Satoria at the Tokyo Dome after pitching 4.2 scoreless innings against Japan:
Marching orders are given. "That school had it coming." See it parroted by influencers and media outlets.
Not only should we not give Saudi Arabia a real defense pact like they want, we should revoke the MNNA status that Trump gave them last year and distance ourselves from a corrupt, bloody regime.
This has been de facto U.S. policy for at least 40 years. The real issue, in Graham’s eyes, is that Riyadh and the other Gulf monarchies are mooching off of the U.S. defense umbrella while committing nothing themselves.
lol Witt just did it again, unreal player
Smoltz is all of us in this clip.
Paul Skenes getting to play with an actual good baseball team is like seeing a shelter dog find its forever home.
A Noem aide spent $3 million on pickup trucks emblazoned with the ICE name & logo, which ICE agents -- notoriously averse to advertising their presence -- will not drive, so they're just sitting in a lot, useless. The contract went to a Trump donor who owns a regional Chevy dealership.
100%. I admit I was skeptical of introducing a romantic storyline for her, but I thought she handled it very well.
The Sophie/Benedict jail confession scene is the best payoff in the series and they didn’t understand it at all. Too many changes/tweaks for the sake of changes.
The new Bridgerton season was an improvement over the last one, but I wish the producers/writers had a better appreciation for the emotional beats and pacing of the books.
I wish the interviewer had asked about the MTG team explicitly saying they wouldn’t be doing a Harry Potter set the other day. I’ve wondered how much of that decision came from internal resistance.
I’m a little surprised they didn’t extend it westward to go by the Washington Monument and the WH.
I think I would’ve preferred a bigger track here. This is going to be so disruptive for DC traffic that week that you might as well go all in on it.
![Bypassing juries, trials, and the reasonable doubt standard in this way may hold some obvious advantages for prosecutors. But whether this arrangement can be squared
with the Constitution is another thing. Under the Sixth
Amendment, this Court has held, “[o]ther than the fact of a
prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a
crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be
submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000) (emphasis added); see also Erlinger v. United States, 602 U. S. 821,
833 (2024); United States v. Haymond, 588 U. S. 634, 644
(2019) (plurality opinion) (collecting cases). The Court’s
failure to grant review to address whether what happened
to Mr. Burnett complies with that Sixth Amendment rule is
unfortunate. I can only hope we will take up another case
like his soon—and that, in the meantime, lower courts will
more carefully consider the Sixth Amendment’s application
in this context. Respectfully, I dissent](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6h7b2i6ttw3l4t7pvbvxdith/bafkreiepnaurpafoja6ygfye5iqqyipoxc7qgzghd7pgeudgalaaiu2ao4)
Bypassing juries, trials, and the reasonable doubt standard in this way may hold some obvious advantages for prosecutors. But whether this arrangement can be squared with the Constitution is another thing. Under the Sixth Amendment, this Court has held, “[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000) (emphasis added); see also Erlinger v. United States, 602 U. S. 821, 833 (2024); United States v. Haymond, 588 U. S. 634, 644 (2019) (plurality opinion) (collecting cases). The Court’s failure to grant review to address whether what happened to Mr. Burnett complies with that Sixth Amendment rule is unfortunate. I can only hope we will take up another case like his soon—and that, in the meantime, lower courts will more carefully consider the Sixth Amendment’s application in this context. Respectfully, I dissent
Gorsuch dissents from the Supreme Court's refusal to consider whether a judge (not a jury) can extend a person's prison sentence by finding, by a preponderance of evidence (not beyond reasonable doubt), that he violated supervised release. (I agree with Gorsuch.) www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
The data economy has made us dumber in ways that also make us vulnerable to authoritarian takover. We are have become both cynical and gullible in the sense we think we are too jaded be fooled and as a result are tricked more easily www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Watching CNBC for the first time since the last market crash and I’m actually digging their minimalist redesign? It makes sense when you’re throwing this many numbers at me.
Things look grim in the markets right now, but at least the U.S. economy wasn’t already being propped up by a massive speculative AI bubble that is highly sensitive to rising energy costs.
Nominating a liberal to replace Alito
“Can the President Artificially Cap Oil Industry Revenue By EO,” the greatest QP in the history of the shadow docket, locked by Chief Justice John Roberts after 12,239 pages of heated dissents,
I’m so sorry. All my love to you and Elizabeth and the kids.
been thinking a lot about the minicontroversy about him wearing this hat during the dignified transfer ceremony and i have concluded he thinks it's his more formal hat
Texas A&M is gonna be the first team where every player has a mech suit
One thing Trump has done is imbue one of his core beliefs into government practice: frivolous legal actions are powerful.
Threaten to sue someone. Actually sue them! He did this a lot as a businessman. Now DOJ does it. Does not matter if they lose - the legal hassles imposed are the punishment.
DOJ’s conviction rate (not counting plea deals) in normal times is north of 90 percent. A stunning and humiliating series of failures.
