Author: Norman Leahy

Another week, another indictment of former President Donald Trump over his role in both the mob violence that rocked Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, and his actions to stop/change/interfere with the lawful counting of the Electoral College votes. The case filed in Fulton County, Georgia is probably the most ambitious of the charges brought so far. It paints Trump & Co. as a criminal organization that operated across multiple states, included several co-conspirators, and continued to operate long after Trump had left office. (RELATED: Giuliani Turns Himself In At Atlanta Jail) As The Wall Street Journal reported, this will…

More signs that it’s the summer before the official start of the presidential primary season: the appearance of stories about bad behavior, even schoolyard-level violence, among various candidates’ supporters. Case in point: a Politico story out of Iowa on how things are getting a bit testy at the state fair: DeSantis supporters scoffed as a plane flew a banner overhead reading: “Be likable, Ron!” Looking up at the sky, Matt Wells, the Washington County chair for DeSantis’ Iowa operation, muttered that “Trump people are degenerates.” The tension, at times, had a sharks and jets vibe underscored by the respective uniforms…

What the fallout might be from the recent Fitch Ratings Service downgrade of the nation’s credit from AAA to AA+ is still to be determined. But the knee-jerk reaction from the Biden administration and others was Fitch’s reasoning was suspect, its timing bizarre and its motives questionable. That’s to be expected from those whose political fortunes rely on steady flow of good news – or at least not bad news – but it’s less acceptable from those who have noted the nation’s fiscal house is a wreck, and the political class charged with fixing it is just this side of…

Among the many bad headlines for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is the one that goes to the heart of his pitch to the American people: that you’re better off now than ever before thanks to “Bidenomics.” It’s a fairly standard pitch among pols looking for a prolonged stay in office. But voters just aren’t buying it, in large part because while some broad metrics of economic activity are, indeed, better than they were a year or two ago, there’s the nagging problem that things just don’t feel better – never mind less expensive: People who fill their grocery carts…

The search for a silver bullet, wolfsbane, garlic, whatever that will put an end to former President Donald Trump’s political ambitions has reached new levels of creativity. This time, it’s a long, thoroughly researched law review article from two conservative legal scholars who conclude that Trump is constitutionally barred from ever holding office again. Prof. William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Prof. Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas School of Law write: Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids holding office by former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion. Because…

The Politico story about Team Biden’s fear of a third-party challenger “siphoning votes” they seem to believe belong to them has generated a response from Richard Winger, one of the country’s foremost authorities on ballot access and third-party politics. Winger writes that the Politico story offers “nothing new” while also entirely missing a larger, more interesting story: the decades-old practice of the major parties going out of their way to thwart and undermine third-party presidential candidacies: Supposedly neutral commentators seem to think there is nothing wrong with restricting competition. The Politico story could have mentioned that the Democratic Party has taken…

The presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is reeling from a host of self-inflicted wounds that don’t bode well for its long-term future. But there’s still time before the voting actually begins in Iowa early next year for even the most beleaguered of campaigns to get back on track (if the money holds out, of course). And to that end, Mr. DeSantis, in addition to a series of staff reductions and changes, has put his faith in an economic pitch that attempts to go beyond the mere repetition of “anti-woke.” In an op-ed for USA Today, DeSantis writes that…

Democrats are in something of a funk about Joe Biden. For an incumbent seeking reelection, his polling numbers against the extremely problematic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. aren’t exactly robust. Almost half think he’s too old for a second term. And his signature campaign issue – touting the benefits of “Bidenomics” – has landed with a sickening thud. So, surely, this means that rather than going done in history as the biggest big government success story since Franklin Roosevelt, Biden’s more likely to go the one-and-done route of Jimmy Carter, right? Maybe. The political road ahead is very long and there…

A new report from the Treasury inspector general for Tax Administration found that millions of sensitive, individual tax records have gone missing. The inspector general… …identified significant deficiencies in the IRS’s safeguarding, accounting for, and physical storage of its microfilm backup cartridges. For example, our physical inspection found empty boxes labeled as including microfilm backup cartridges with no explanation as to the location of the missing cartridges. In addition, our discussions with responsible officials at the current three Tax Processing Centers that house microfilm backup cartridges identified that required annual inventories have not been performed. And that’s just the beginning:…

There are still some surprises in politics, and some of them even turn out to be for the good. Consider a development out of Virginia, where the General Assembly “forgot” to pass legislation renewing a sales tax holiday on school supplies. As the Cardinal News reports, the three-day tax break on certain school supplies was expanded to include a host of other items, from energy-efficient appliances to “hurricane preparedness” products. In short, it became a confused, special-interest grab bag that distorted markets and, in the long run, saved no taxpayers any real money. But it did serve the audience most…