Adam Newbold As the FBI led hunt for the 1/6/2021 Capitol insurrectionists proceeds, we daily learn that additional active or retired members of the U.S. military were among the planners, coordinators and rioters.  Last Tuesday’s poster child was a 46-year-old retired Navy Seal, Adam Newbold, photographed sitting atop a police motorcycle in front of the Capitol.  In late December Newbold posted a video warning of imminent communist takeover and on 1/12/2021 posted another “mak[ing] no apologies for being a rough man ready to do rough things in rough situations.” A similar 40 something specimen is former Marine, Dominic “Spaz” Pezzola, who was photographed smoking a cigar inside the Capitol and allegedly spoke of killing Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence and returning on 1/20/2021 [...]

The spate of resignations by high level Trump appointees at 11:59 pm of the administration’s term has been noticed and noted as tardy and hypocritical. But little attention has been paid to a more insidious form of forgetfulness. Trumpism did not spring parthenogenically from Trump’s forehead. It has been brewing and building in the ranks and party Republican since at least Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. […]

Lefties like HL are quick to condemn erosion of Jefferson’s strict wall between church and state, enshrined in absolute terminology in the first phrase of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) and usually assign all blame for that to the right.  After all it is Clarence Thomas who consistently writes and votes that any state could establish a religion, such as the Seikh Commonwealth of Virginia.  Justice Thomas points out that 1A reads “Congress shall make no law. . .” with no restriction on the states.  And it is clear that new Justice Barrett takes the most extreme and most expansive view of the free exercise clause – exempting the faithful from obeying many civil rights, public health and other generally applicable laws if those conflict with religious beliefs or impinge upon their observance.  Barret’s vote vetoed New York’s Covid emergency restrictions on the number of worshippers allowed in houses of. . . […]

The January 4 & 11, 2021 New Yorker is almost entirely devoted to a single 40 page article by Lawrence Wright aptly titled “Plague Year.”  It brought to mind two other titles, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and HL’s own 2010 and 2012 Journal of The Plague Year that enjoyed Warhol’s 15 seconds, was attacked on the Times page one by Andrew Cuomo but still got a decent review in its Sunday Book Review.  […]

The Washington Post has performed a public service by keeping count of the number of falsehoods and outright lies future inmate Donald Trump Sr. has told the American public while president: 22,000 as of last month. One lie that he told before the 2016 election, but repeated many times after was that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were celebrated by cheering crowds in Jersey City, New Jersey and that he witnessed this while watching the carnage on television.   TV, Trump’s once, current, and future predominant pastime.  That is, assuming his conduct in prison doesn’t lead to suspension of his viewing privileges. […]

Leaving aside the unanswerable of whether God is a subscriber (See HL 117) we turn to elective office transition, a subject we have not insubstantial experience with.  We chaired the transition of two different state attorneys general and one governor, all in New York.  The second of those three for A.G.-elect Eliot Spitzer in 1998 is instructive of the damage about to be inflicted on the nation.  The incumbent then, Dennis Vacco as Trump this time, refused to concede defeat and prevented the cooperation necessary for an orderly and productive transition. […]

Classic liberals of an age, and certainly of a certain age, have been voting adults during both the Nixon and Trump presidencies.  (Classic liberals always vote)  During both, the question of whether a former president should be tried, and if convicted imprisoned, was top of mind for years.  With Trump even before inauguration. […]

In a brief respite from the excessive monitoring of the most recent polls in swing states and with enough time to watch selected matches a second, and with one a third time, HL delivers its annual review of Roland Garros, the quintessential French Tennis Experience played on the red brick dust Terre Battue courts. […]

As we hold our collective breath during the last pre-judgment month, we fear many plausible terribles. Such as Trump’s self-inflicted death from Covid-19 and the “morbid obesity” that Nancy likes to mention – or Melania mercifully assisting him along the lines of a theory advanced about Warren Harding’s wife Florence in “The Strange Death of President Harding” – or Trump ordering Iran nuked as he told Rush Limbaugh he might – or the kidnap, murder and assault on a Trump-disfavored governor and state capital – or a massive spike in Covid cases resulting in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths and the suppression of conventional voting – OR any other terrible massive October surprise from Trump or the Id.  And far surpassing the mere plausibility of each such terrible scenario is the likelihood that one huge bad thing will happen. […]