Like many liberals and conservatives, your blogger is a longstanding and card carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union and contributor of money and sweat toward its efforts.  I constantly tell my civil liberties class how often the ACLU was and is a plaintiff (and sometimes the only one) challenging government infringement of civil liberties and civil rights protected by the United States Constitution.  That is what is generally understood, and how the ACLU has heretofore defined “civil liberties” and “civil rights” – those freedoms granted or protected in the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th and 15th, post-Civil War, constitutional amendments. […]

The reflexive but understandable assumption is that most of President Trump’s personnel moves involve partially or wholly corrupt motives. However, criticism of his recent firing of United States Attorney Preet Bharara is much ado about nothing. Indeed, most noteworthy in this departure was the posturing of the Manhattan-based head federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. [...]

President Trump’s latest puerile Twitter tantrum involves his claim that “sad” or “sick” predecessor Obama tapped Donald’s phone before he took office.  Again, this caused many to search for analogies and references in art, hi and lo, to compare with Trump’s actions and the “carnage” daily inflicted on our country by it and him. One reference that scared the bemozes out of your blogger, because it so precisely captured the look and feel not only of Trump but the finger puppets that surround, indulge and encourage him, is Twilight Zone Episode 73.  It will be familiar to many readers of an age, certain or otherwise, and also for many Gen Xers and some Millennials who saw it reprised in the 1983 T-Zone movie. […]

As the leaking leakers leaked details of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos being bullied by Jeff Sessions and President Trump to drop her opposition to the administration’s rescission of the federal directive on transgender student access to bathrooms of their choice – it conjured the image of Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” – perhaps as portrayed by Peter O’Toole – presented with the opportunity to redeem himself of a shameful past failing and to save others through an act of self-sacrifice. […]

Sticking with and doubling down on its early and repeated prediction that Donald will leave or be escorted from the White House within three years, his recent conduct makes it more likely that the end will come through operation of the twenty-fifth amendment, that in most relevant part provides: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal [...]

At the February 3rd meeting of his “so-called” economic advisory council, President Trump announced his intention “to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank” and saluted Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, saying “there’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it.” The two men met later that day.  Most [...]

The press coverage of various legal challenges to President Trump’s immigration and alien entry restrictions (“it’s not a tumor”) has increasingly focused on the judges who are adjudicating these cases in federal district courts and at the appellate level.  It’s a free country with an independent and free press – at least as of today – but this press focus [...]

Last week the New York Times published its version of a current Trump-related ubiquitous press exercise, self-consciously examining how to characterize the president's constant expression of untruths and implicitly also questioning what to call him - the one who says , honks and tweets them.  The Times has regularly and bravely published headlines and articles that say Trump "lies" and [...]