Slipping through the legal loopholes

Posted on August 20, 2026 by oddmanout215

I figured my neighbor Swamp Rabbit would flip out when he saw my new dispatch, but hey — this is the biggest political story of our era and proof of how quickly an evil fraudster can slip through loopholes in the Constitution and assume the powers of a dictator if elected president.

Sure enough, Swamp Rabbit crumpled his copy of my rant and tossed it off his front porch. “Get a grip, Odd Man. Donald Trump ain’t the only story in the world these days.”

“That’s like saying the Black Plague wasn’t the only story in the 14th century,” I said.

I showed him John Cassidy’s New Yorker piece — “A Trump Grift Too Far?” — that focuses on a Trump plan that would allow trading firms “for up to a hundred thousand dollars a month” to use his Truth Social site to access advance information about possible stock market fluctuations. You want a hot tip on Trump’s latest tariff fiasco, etc.? Pay up and it’s all yours.

Will Trump, his family and cronies get away with this pay-to-play scheme? Possibly. The MAGA Republican Congress and the Dr. Frankensteins on the Supreme Court are in the monster’s corner. Cassidy quoted the director of a watchdog group on government oversight:

[The Trump gang has] discovered the cheat code. If you don’t care about the reaction, if you don’t care about public shaming, then you can basically do anything you want, because we have this strange legal framework that basically exempts the President from the law while he’s in office.

“Enough!” Swamp Rabbit shouted. “Don’t bother me again until somebody closes them loopholes.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I said.

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It’s alive! And it’s shredding the Constitution

Posted on August 16, 2026 by oddmanout215

When will the Dr. Frankenstein clones on the U.S. Supreme Court admit they helped create a monster they can’t control?

Let’s see… In June the Court re-explained the purpose of the 14th Amendment, which states that people born in the United States, with few exceptions, are citizens by birth. But the monster, Donald Trump, countered the Court’s ruling in August by issuing executive orders that limit birthright citizenship.

Which arguably means that Trump in effect is placing himself above the judicial and legislative branches of the government and implicitly embracing the role of dictator. (See “Trump to Supreme Court: Make Me” in the Bulwark.)

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit was drunkenly indignant when I called his attention to Trump’s never-ending attack on constitutional democracy. “He can’t say ‘eff you’ to them Supremes. They’re gonna put him in his place, you watch.”

“How will they do that?” I said. “This is the same Court that decided former presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for most of the official acts they committed while president.”

Or, as Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in dissent of that 2024 ruling, official-acts immunity grants unprecedented power to “any president that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the nation.”

The irony is that Roberts and the other rightwing robe wearers seem to have thought their monster would issue executive orders to help them destroy existing laws they opposed — regarding abortion, voting rights, etc. — but wouldn’t defy them if he went rogue on their rulings and they tried to rein him in.

Footnote: I can’t see Chief Justice John Roberts getting super-excited about anything, but it’s easy to picture Justice Samuel Alito, in a white medical smock instead of black robes, shouting “It’s alive!” and “Now I know what it feels like to be God!”

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Another setback for campus free speech

Posted on August 11, 2026 by oddmanout215

“Oh no, some semi-educated college president in Florida just fired a professor for teaching an Ottessa Moshfegh story after a student complained that the story caused her ‘mild discomfort.’ Even the English teachers aren’t safe in that state.”

My crusty old neighbor Swamp Rabbit looked puzzled. “What’s an Ottessa Moshfegh?” he said.

“Ha-ha. You’re joking, right?”

He wasn’t joking. I told him Ottessa Moshfegh is an American novelist and short story writer who won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her novel Eileen and the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for her short story collection Homesick for Another World (2017). “Bettering Myself,” from Homesick, is the story that got the Florida professor axed. The first-person narrator is a young teacher in a shabby high school in New York who’s struggling to control a class full of rowdy, underperforming teenagers. She resorts to desperate measures in order to cope:

I’d buy two or three forties and a pack of cigarettes on my way home from school each afternoon and go to bed and watch Married… with Children and Sally Jessy Raphael on my small black-and-white television, drink and smoke and snooze.

“It’s a slice of life story,” I told Swamp Rabbit. “There’s no real plot. It succeeds because the writing is lively and irreverent. The title is ironic, but the teacher’s blunt self-appraisals are funny and her decision to stay on the job instead of quitting makes her almost likable in the end.”

“She don’t sound likable,” said Swamp Rabbit, who’s always ready to argue. “You can’t blame that fuddy-duddy in Florida for firing the professor. He figured the story was a bad influence on students.”

I noted that we were talking about students at a college — South Florida State College. They’re old enough to evaluate the merits of the story and its protagonist without interference from the school president, Fred Hawkins, an ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the rabid foe of campus free speech who championed Florida’s Stop WOKE Act.

The fired professor, Vinita Prabhakar, is suing Hawkins in an effort to get her job back. She taught “Bettering Myself” for years at various schools without being blindsided by some fuddy-duddy. The student at South Florida State who supposedly complained ended up participating in class discussions about the story.

Footnote: I’m not sure how to describe Moshfegh’s short story writing style — highbrow punk, maybe. Her novels My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona all made The New York Times bestseller list. I hope the Florida lawsuit results in Prabhakar getting her job back and pushes sales of Homesick for Another World through the roof.

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True colors (stroking the tyrant one last time)

Posted on August 8, 2026 by oddmanout215

These are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others. — Groucho Marx

How low can Republicans go? Look no further than Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who just delighted Donald Trump by casting the vote that ensured confirmation of the manifestly unqualified Todd Blanche as U.S. attorney general.

Cassidy hinted at paybacks this year after Trump ruined his chances for reelection by backing a senatorial candidate more to his liking. Bringing down Blanche, a corrupt and shamelessly servile Trumper (“I love you, sir”), would have been the perfect way for Cassidy to get even with Trump and redeem himself for casting the deciding vote that got Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

It was not to be. Cassidy couldn’t summon enough self-respect to do the right thing, even though he’s on his way out the door.

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit zipped open a beer and said, “Lighten up, Odd Man. Groucho would be laughing his ass off at these slimeballs.”

Both of us watch Marx Brothers movies on TCM and enjoy their crazy sendups of cranks and phonies. Mentioning the Marx Brothers today was Swamp Rabbit’s way of reminding me that Groucho would never allow frauds like Cassidy and Trump, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis to get under his skin. We should vilify them but never forget to laugh at them. Laughter is preferable to blowing a gasket.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Most of the smart people in Germany laughed at Hitler but look who got the last laugh.”

Swamp Rabbit shook his head. “The good guys got the last laugh. Hitler ended up a charred piece of meat in a backyard ditch.”

But the Blanche thing is happening now, I told him. The Justice Department will be run by a guy who’s a slave to Trump’s whims and vendettas. A guy who tried to jail James Comey because of a message on a seashell. Who worked tirelessly to suppress details of Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. Who has tried to permanently block the IRS from auditing Trump’s past tax returns. And so on.

“I still don’t get why that jellyfish Cassidy chose to disgrace himself,” I said. “He’ll be out of Congress soon and free to do what he wants.”

Swamp Rabbit chuckled. “If he’s like his scumbag colleagues, he wants to make big money as a lobbyist. Trump and his cronies will block him from that unless he kisses ass right up until he slinks out of the Senate.”

Footnote: Cassidy was a doctor — a physician — before he went into politics. And yet he would later vote to make the unhinged anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. the head of HHS. You can’t make this shit up.

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Contempt of Congress is justified in this case

Posted on August 7, 2026 by oddmanout215

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit approached me as I was writing about the know-nothings who ambushed Anthony Fauci last week at a McCarthy-esque Senate hearing that showcased their hostility to science and good sense.

“This is just a rant,” Swamp Rabbit said, reading the words on my screen. “I thought you were working on one of your fiction books that never get published.”

“The people I’m writing about here aren’t interesting enough to be fictional characters,” I replied. “They’re too ignorant and mean.”

I was referring to the eight Republicans on the Senate panel, including the libertarian kook Rand Paul and the phony tough guy Josh Hawley, who was filmed on Jan. 6, 2021, running for his life from the mob his master Donald Trump had sent to overturn the 2020 election results.

What set me off today was the panel’s vote, along party lines, to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer Covid-related questions at the hearing — questions he’s already answered many times in the past.

Earlier, I’d read an op-ed by media critic Margaret Sullivan headlined “Only in our anti-truth hellscape could Anthony Fauci become a supervillain.” The piece appeared in The Washington Post more than five years ago, before WAPO owner Jeff Bezos became a Trump toady and self-respecting writers like Sullivan left WAPO to work for media outlets that don’t push the Trump agenda.

Swamp Rabbit sat down on my front steps and sighed. “Them MAGA freaks stole Fauci’s diary and used it to make fun of him. They keep threatening to jail him. For what?”

Good question. The 85-year-old doctor has been the country’s top expert on infectious diseases since the Reagan era. He put together a program to fight AIDS that saved many millions of lives. He worked to undo the damage done by Trump, who denied the scope of the Covid-19 pandemic — it eventually killed more than a million Americans — out of fear that it would hurt his re-election chances. Meanwhile, Paul and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other high-profile troglodytes were badmouthing vaccines and pushing bizarre alternative treatments for virus victims. (Remember hydroxychloroquine?)

“Anti-truth” is the key word in Sullivan’s piece. MAGA Republicans fought to discredit and impede the mass vaccination program, even as Trump belatedly got on board with the effort to put it in motion. The rank and file fell in line behind far-right ideologues who profess to champion individual liberty, even when it’s at the expense of the public good. Vaccines are deemed poisonous by such people, as are truthtellers like Fauci, who has admitted to being taken aback by the “culture of lies” from which MAGA sprang.

“The MAGAts say it’s Fauci who’s lying,” Swamp Rabbit said. “They think Covid came out of a Chinese lab and Fauci knows all about it but won’t tell.”

“They think Obama was born in Kenya,” I replied. “That Biden stole the 2020 election. It’s like Goebbels said — if you repeat a big lie often enough, people will come to believe it.”_

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Beware the pool creature’s wrath

Posted on August 2, 2026 by oddmanout215

The creature from the green lagoon invited bad publicity in June when his minions arrested a passerby named David Hearn at the Jefferson Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C.

This week the U.S. Department of Justice — an Orwellian name if there ever was one — dropped the case against Hearn, a former Olympian who had been charged with vandalism after the pool’s poorly installed blue liner peeled and its water turned green with algae. It seems the mess was caused not by vandals but by the inept no-bid contractor hired by the lagoon creature (a.k.a. Donald Trump).

In the end, the case was so ridiculous that even Justice lawyer Jeanine Pirro, a longtime shameless Trump lackey, had to admit it was dead due to lack of evidence. Pirro must now face her master’s wrath — “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump wrote after her announcement — but Hearn is safe from persecution prosecution, at least for now.

“Trump don’t apologize and he don’t admit no wrong,” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit said after hearing the news about the pool. “That Hearn guy better lay low, and anybody else goes near that pool better watch their step.”

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Immigrants vs. the new Know Nothings

Posted on August 1, 2026 by oddmanout215

My ne’er-do-well neighbor Swamp Rabbit was annoyed. “Give it a rest, Odd Man. You just wrote about the disappearing immigrants last week. Get off your soapbox for a while.”

We were discussing an article about the MAGA mindset on immigration. About the Trump gang’s crusade to jail undocumented immigrants then toss them out of the country. About the myth that immigrants are stealing American jobs rather than taking jobs that most native-born Americans don’t want, especially in rural states.

“North Dakota has two job openings for every unemployed worker,” I said. “It would make a lot more sense to let immigrants have those jobs instead of sending them to some gulag in El Salvador.”

Swamp Rabbit stroked his feeble goatee. “I guess so, but there’s a reason them jobs don’t get filled. Nobody wants to freeze their ass off in the middle of nowhere for ten dollars an hour.”

It’s not just the Dakotas, I told him. Immigrants are being “disappeared” from Kentucky and West Virginia and other rural states that voted for Trump. Idaho, for example, where a state senator’s extreme anti-immigration stance…

“Forget them red states,” Swamp Rabbit said, interrupting my rant. “If you gotta complain, stick to what’s happenin’ right here in Philly.”

He referred me to another article, this one about an immigrant from Guinea who recently was snatched up and jailed by ICE. The man had lived in Philadelphia for 20 years, working steadily to support his family, after being granted Withholding of Removal status, which protects undocumented immigrants likely to suffer persecution if returned to their home countries. But there’s a catch — an immigrant granted withholding status can be locked up at any point if ICE decides to try to deport him to a third country.

“They’re using police state tactics,” I said, stating the obvious.

Swamp Rabbit chuckled. “ICE agents don’t care about police states. They care about meeting their arrest quotas to keep their fascist bosses happy.”

Footnote: In regard to the current war on immigrants — The two million or so Irish immigrants who arrived in America in the immediate aftermath of the potato famine in the 1840s were ostracized and persecuted by nativist “Know Nothings” (a.k.a. the American Party), who were like an early version of MAGA Republicans. But the Irish continued to come here throughout the rest of the 19th century and ultimately thrived.

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The media could help unmask ICE agents

Posted on July 27, 2026 by oddmanout215

“They wear masks, carry guns and show no identification. They grab people off the streets and whisk them away in unmarked SUVs. They stage raids on private homes and workplaces, make arrests without warrants, shoot and kill with impunity. Who are these goons?”

I was telling my neighbor Swamp Rabbit that the Trump gang wants reporters to act as if they work for ICE, not the people. It hasn’t come to that yet, but why do legitimate news organizations often soft-peddle their coverage of super-aggressive policing by federal agents?

Swamp Rabbit sipped his beer and shrugged. “That’s what happens when you elect a fascist president. Ain’t nothin’ you can do till he’s gone.”

I told him the First Amendment says we have the right to keep tabs on government officials as they interact with the public. That we should be able to monitor and record their actions with photos and videos despite the Trump gang’s contention that it’s “illegal to record videos of ICE agents.”

“The ICE and Border Patrol goons say their masks are for safety, not secrecy,” Swamp Rabbit said. “To keep them from being harassed when they grab people and make them disappear.”

“That’s lame, Swamp Rabbit. Regular cops all over the country don’t wear masks. They’re hired to be public servants.”

But then I corrected myself — this isn’t about cops, it’s about the soldiers in Trump’s private army. They’re recruited from the MAGA base by the Department of Homeland Security: 20,000 ICE agents now, and God knows how many Border Patrol officers. Their methods are beyond secretive. Reporters had to dig through government records just to get the names of the agents who fired on the two protesters who were killed last winter in Minneapolis.

What I don’t get is why the mainstream media doesn’t try to name all the federal agents who go rogue — the ones who break down doors but don’t have warrants, who make arrests based on racial profiling, who lock detainees in prisons where the food is bad and the health care inadequate.

I reminded Swamp Rabbit that agents are making questionable arrests every day, even though the great majority of their victims are law-abiding would-be Americans who happen to be brown or black. Many of the detainees are U.S. citizens. Who will identify the agents so that they might be summoned to testify against their bosses if and when the Trump regime is ousted?

He laughed. “How about them reporters who put on monkey suits and sucked up to Trump and his minions at that correspondents’ dinner last week? They could do it.”

“They’re too busy schmoozing,” I said. “They don’t want to alienate the people they’re supposed to be keeping tabs on.”

Footnote: Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark did a good job of summing up the White House correspondents’ dinner — “A stunning display of weakness. A sham in which serious journalists chose to pretend that Donald Trump is a normal political figure.”

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Update: A sneaky makeover of slavery exhibit

Posted on July 19, 2026 by oddmanout215

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. — George Orwell

“No way those Park Service goons would do their dirty work in broad daylight, in front of angry protesters and puzzled tourists. No chance they would install signs that disguise the historical record unless they could sneak up in the dark to avoid cameras.”

I was burdening my neighbor Swamp Rabbit with my thoughts about the recent nocturnal raid on the President’s House site in Independence National Historical Park. Informational panels pried from the walls by Park Service employees in January were replaced by panels that present a kinder, gentler picture of slavery in Philadelphia. Details about the nine enslaved people George Washington kept at the house were altered.

“I figured it would end like this,” I said. “The thought police can be sneaky when they put their minds to it.”

Swamp Rabbit shrugged. “Why you so obsessed with this story, Odd Man? You fixin’ to go on ‘Finding Your Roots?’ You ain’t even Black.”

This is about everybody’s roots, I told him. The war on national park exhibits that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” is part of the Trump administration’s campaign to undermine free speech and other ideals embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which were both drawn up in Philly.

“The house site is only a few miles from where we live,” I reminded him. “What’s happening here isn’t much different from Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on Russian protesters or Xi Jinping’s outlawing of free speech in Hong Kong.”

Swamp Rabbit shrugged again. “What you expect? Them’s two of Trump’s heroes.”

Security cameras have been installed. Black-clad federal cops are now chasing or arresting anyone who tries to protest the changes at the site. Screens showing videos about slavery were shut down. A panel headlined “The Dirty Business of Slavery” has been replaced by the blandly worded “Celebrating Independence Throughout the Years.”

“They should call it the ‘Celebrating the Fascist Attack on Democracy in America,'” I said.

Footnote: The city of Philadelphia will continue to fight changes to the slavery exhibit in court, as will the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, the activists’ organization that made the original exhibit possible.

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Bastille Day was not like the 4th of July

Posted on July 16, 2026 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit raised a toast to his TV screen during a news feature about Bastille Day celebrations in France. “The Frenchies are really whooping it up,” he said. “This is their version of the Fourth of July.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Bastille Day started a revolution that was a lot bloodier than ours.”

In fact, the American Revolution was a polite changing of the guard compared to the revolution in France that began on July14, 1789 and didn’t really end for a quarter-century. The American Revolution was about casting off British rule — British taxes, especially — but most Americans were otherwise content with the status quo. The French Revolution was about casting off everything – the monarchy, the landed gentry, the social order, the Catholic Church — and it led to factional warfare. Thousands of heads rolled, and the victims included many leaders of the uprising.

“I can’t picture that French dust-up being bloodier than ours,” Swamp Rabbit joked. “Unless they were in a food fight. They’re real serious about their cuisine.”

I scowled at him. “They were in a food fight. Their revolution was bloodier than ours because they were hungrier than us. The have-nots couldn’t get any bread, and the king and queen were too dumb or arrogant to do anything about it. Let them eat cake.”

It was more complicated than that, of course. The Americans rose up against what they thought of as a foreign government. There was an ocean between them and Britain. They just wanted the Brits to leave them alone. The French rose against their own government, which couldn’t afford to make reforms, partly because it had helped finance the American Revolution in order to undermine Britain.

The revolutionaries adopted the slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity” but didn’t live up to it for long. They made a commitment to the rights of man, just like the Americans, but they suffered through some oppressive regimes afterwards. Their current government is facing a major threat from neofascists and other extreme right-wingers. Last year, the International Federation for Human Rights warned that France is in danger of “dropping out of democracy.”

“They ain’t the only ones,” Swamp Rabbit said without going into the precarious state of democracy in America 250 years after Independence Day.

“It’s easy to start something,” he added. “But you never know where it’s gonna end, do you?”

Footnote: I miss Philadelphia’s annual Bastille Day celebration at Eastern State Penitentiary, which was discontinued years ago. It used to end with hundreds of “Krimpets” being thrown from the prison walls as a Marie Antoinette stand-in shouted “Let them eat Tastykakes.”

Another: Those of you who still read books might enjoy the passages about the French Revolution in Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence. The book weighs a ton, but the prose is breezy and elegant.

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