Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided that the killing takes place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance or assent to the adulterous connection.
Law of the State of Texas prior to 1973.
Frankly, whatever the law is anywhere now, if I were on a jury, I'd consider not convicting under these circumstances. Of course, that's exactly why I'd never be on such a jury. I probably would, but I wouldn't be keen on it.
Indeed, you have to take an oath that you'll uphold the law, and killing somebody is flat out wrong, but I'd not like that duty.
For that matter, I'd be a poor choice for a juror when an "ex" spouse killing a "new" spouse of his former spouse, as that is adultery, as divorce itself is a civil sham. Same story there. I guess I'd uphold my obligations as a juror, if I survived voir dire, which I probably wouldn't.
In some ways, the weeneyness of the current law is a shame.
Maybe the dilution of the current law is the real shame. The old law, including the "heart balm" laws, were regarded as harsh. They weren't harsh, they were realistic. The decline in realism in this area since May 9, 1960, has not bee a good thing in every conceivable way.
Rufus T. Firefly: Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot.
Duck Soup.
Trump doing is signature creepy old guy dance..
June 4, 2026
Tom Barrett of Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky crossed party lines to vote with Democrats in favor of the resolution to end the illegal assault on Iran.
The measure goes on to the Senate. We'll see what happens there, as Trump's stabbed some Senators in the back, and they're ready to gut him like a fish now.
The action of the Senators is based on conscience. I believe its the right one, but it also serves to remind us that we're now in an incredibly bad spot in regard to the war against Iran, and in the Middle East in general.
It should have been obvious to anyone that decapitating the Iranian regime would not lead to a liberal democracy. The Iranian people have no real ability to overthrow their government and when they tried before the war, after we urged it, they were mowed down. It's the IRGC that has the guns.
When the July 20 plotters mapped out their attempt to kill Hitler, in the attempt that almost worked, it involved wiping out the Nazi state. The idea wasn't just to kill Hitler, but to remove the Nazis in every form. Men like Himmler, Goebbels and Goering would have ended up against a wall had the plot succeeded. Removing those in the seat of power just opens up a vacuum for those positions to be filled. Moreover, in the Iranian case, they'd planned for such eventualities, which we should have known as prior selective US assassinations didn't change the direction of the regime at all.
Moreover, the regime has no place to go. It's not as if they can walk out of their offices retire to cabbage farms. They have to remain in power. Like the German SS in 1945, the IRGC has no place to go. It has to keep the regime in power.
All of this is obvious.
It was likewise obvious that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and that would so severely disrupt the world's petroleum supplies that it would actually boost the move to green energy, although people still have really awakened to that reality.
And it should have been obvious that those advocating for the war had ulterior agendas. Israel doesn't care about U.S. global considerations and is well aware that the U.S. is a declining power. Convincing a weak minded Trump to go to war with Iran was completely in its interest, and it doesn't care about considerations about defending Taiwan or South Korea.
Pete Hegseth and the pack of far right wing Evangelical would be Crusaders don't care what this will cost. In the view of those in that minoritarian group of American Protestants, a big war will bring on the end of the world and the return of Christ, now. They don't worry about the Just War Theory, as their convinced this is a Divinely ordained mission.
And, it's obvious right now, that the Iranian regime can in fact outwait Trump and its doing it.
The war can only come to an end in one of two ways. We quit, and leave the mess we created as it is, which is a complete and total defeat, or we undertake a largescale ground invasion. Those are the only two options.
The second one leaves open the question of should a country pursue a victory against a legitimate enemy when the war started illegally. It's only a hypothetical question, however, as Trump, who was so stupid as to believe the war would end in a few days, does not have the stomach for that. That really would cause there to be a vote on the war and he knows he'd loose it.
That means the only other option for ending the war is simply leaving, which is a complete defeat. Trump also can't bring himself to do that, as he can't stand the thought that he is what he is, a loser.
So, Trump's option will be increasingly just to ignore the war. He basically just hopes it will go away. In the meantime, like Hitler in the bunker, he plays with models of a reimagined gaudy capital city.
And increasingly look like this to the world.
June 8, 2026
Iran launched something on the order of thirty ballistic missiles on Israel today, and Israel retaliated with air strikes on Iran.
Israel also hit sites in Lebanon.
June 9, 2026
Iran shot down a U.S. helicopter, the US retaliated with airstrikes
Iran hit a U.S. airbase in eastern Jordan with ballistic missiles.
June 11, 2026
The IRGC has announced its shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.
Pete Hegseth is at Guantanamo Bay being a blowhard.
June 12, 2026
Trump claims a deal has been worked out, Iran says no final deal has been reached.
Trump claims he called off massive attacks. Iran claims it controls the Straits of Hormuz.
Frankly, Iranian state media is much more reliable than the stream of crap that comes out of the Oval Office, so we don't really know what's going on. This is the 39th time in the war that Trump has claimed a deal is close, so you have to be extremely gullible to believe what he's saying at this point. It's not even at the "trust but verify" level, so much as the distrust and see what happens in a day or two level.
June 13, 2026
Leaked details of the Trump deal with Iran show Iran pretty much prevailing in the agreement. There will be, under the agreement, 60 days in which to discuss nuclear topics, which means that if Iran chooses not to resolve them, they won't be resolved. Once the war is stopped, and it never should have started, there will be no stomach for resuming it.
June 14, 2026
In the "I'll believe it when I see it" category, a CST headline:
TRUMP: PEACE DEAL
TO BE SIGNED SUNDAY
We'll see.
cont:
Iranian sources have indicated that there is a deal immanent, and it will include:
Fully opening the Strait of Hormuz immediately
U.S. to lift naval blockade within 30 days
No new sanctions imposed while negotiations continue
The U.S. will suspend current sanctions, allowing Iranian oil to be openly sold
$25 billion in Iranian assets to be unfrozen, including direct cash transfers
Formation of an economic development and reconstruction plan
Iran agrees it will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons
Fate of the nuclear program, including stockpile of highly enriched uranium, to be negotiated and finalized within 60 days
Full sanctions relief following a final agreement in 60 days
This is an overview, so it doesn't say anything about anything else. Some of these things can just happen, but the big thing the war may have been over (it was never clear what it was over), that being the nuclear program is really vague. Nothing will mean anything unless there's a way to verify what Iran is doing.
The $25B in frozen assets is about 1/4 the total amount that's frozen, I think. That's a major concession by the United States as the assets have been frozen since 1979.
The war has been completely illegal all along. Now the question is whether the war was worth it. It really doesn't seem that this achieved anything that the Obama era agreement hadn't. It might actually achieve less.
That it's time for Trump's birthday is interesting. I suspect a bit of political theater there. His administration will be declaring it a great victory, but it's pretty clear it isn't. The Iranian regime is more hard line than it was before, and its more in control than it was before. It actually retains a significant missile inventory, and there's no reason to believe it won't resume its past behavior pretty quickly.
June 15, 2026
So it seems like a deal has been reached, but it seems that for the most part the war didn't achieve much over what Obama's had, with no illegal war.
More than that, Iran's government is now more hardline than it was before, and they'll be receiving a massive infusion of cash.
Lawyer, St. Thomas More, who was executed for his adherence to his faith.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
The Justice Department is going after James Comey for posting a photo of seashells arranged to spell "8647" on a beach somewhere, asserting it was a death threat on President Trump. Apparently this is due to the old use of the term "86" to do away with and "47" for Donald Trump's completely illegitimate but widely accepted illegal claim to be President.
It wasn't.
This prosecution will go nowhere whatsoever, but it is more evidence that everyone in the Trump Administration is essentially a fascist with no regard for reality or the rule of law right now. We are in monumentally dangerous territory. It's 1534 in the United States with Donald Trump our King Henry VIII.
And the spirt of the age has spread:
What Gray did was flat out illegal. Gray is relying, in essence, on the advice of the Attorney General and when that's a defense, the attorney client privilege is waived. The AG's office knows that, but it has to defend the privilege It's being pretty assertive about it.
Nobody is more opposed to abortion than I am. I wouldn't allow for the largely bogus "rape and incest" exceptions that many people will. But this is really beyond the Pale. Powell should be ashamed of itself for even appoint this guy to its city council.
Elsewhere, in a nation where we brought a modern justice system, it's still functioning.
Judges reject Trump push
to obtain state voter rolls
But of course our Secretary of State, Chuck "If you disagree with me you are a radical communist, fascist, monarchist, podiatrist" Gray just handed Wyoming's over.
It appears that Trump's settlement deal in his IRS suit may actually prove to be a bridge too far for Senate Republicans.
The deal, which frankly is the epitome of corruption, would create a slush fund to pay pardoned January 6 criminals for their inconvenience in being prosecuted as traitors to their country. That's what they are, and they should not have been pardoned, but Trump sought to go one step beyond that and reward the pack of Horst Wessels. Frankly, as soon as possible, the pardons should be unrung as illegitimate (Trump isn't a legitimate President and can't pardon anyone). Anyhow, Republicans are openly balking on the slush fund, amazingly. It must be really angering constituents, or just too much to stomach.
Indeed, they not only are balking, they sidetracked the ICE funding bill, showing that they're actually willing to do something that is guaranteed to send the Orange Mussolini into a screaming fit, but the fit will pit Trump's ICE demands up against his now open and obvious corruption and the hemorrhaging of the US budget. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, as once they break with Trump, their relationship with Trump is broken, and if he doesn't come to heel, they can't.
By way of an analogous example, Massie wouldn't come to heel on the Epstein files, but he was one man. Once it's a pack, it tends to grow.
So, a match is on.
May 29, 2026
A court ruled that Trump's adding his name to the Kennedy Center was illegal and ordered it removed within two weeks.
A different judge enjoined the IRS settlement slush fund from going forward.
June 2, 2026
Trump's insurrectionist slush fund seemed to be getting questioned by the court and now the Attorney General is saying it won't occur.
While Wyoming's Congressional delegation didn't protest it, a lot of Republicans in Congress were finding it to be a bridge too far.
A Wyoming district court held that the whiney fascist crybabies leading the GOP have to follow state law and seat elected Republican precinct members, something another court did two years ago. The state central committee didn't want to do so as that keeps it from picking fascists.
It argues that its a private entity and doesn't have to follow state law. . . except of course when it comes to getting preferential places on ballots, having the state run party elections for it, and getting to pick members of certain offices when they become vacant. It's fine with all of that.
Satire aside, this would have been an opportunity for the Court to wipe all of that out, and it should have.
All they really have to do is to quit having state funded primaries.
June 15, 2026
Last Friday retired Judge Campbell struck down a series of provisions regarding abortion. There was some chance that these would survive challenge, as they did not directly restrict abortion, such as there being a time delay after seeking one, an ultrasound, etc., but he ruled that the Wyoming Supreme Court's earlier decision meant that these were in the nature of health care and could not stand.
I disagree with him on that, but given the absurd Wyoming constitutional provision on health care I've addressed here before, and the S.Ct. decision, it's an understandable result. It'll go on to be challenged at the Wyoming Supreme Court level, probably.
I keep wondering if anyone has argued the true existential aspect of the questions. I don't know if that's been done or not.
On the nature of things, one of the local news outlets has had photos of a woman protesting holding a sign that says "Forced Birth = Violence".
Almost all abortions in the US are due to people who just had sex, and then sex resulted in what it results in. That's not forced birth, that's nature. The common "well what about ten year olds" and the like brings up a case scenario that's exceedingly rare. The reply to that would be to ask that person if they're opposed to all other abortions, which they are not.
Even at that, however, killing is killing. It would be just as logical to go out and determine every living American who came about due to rape or tike and shoot them dead now. Yes, rape and incest are horrible. Murder is probably the ultimate horrible, however.
Apparently the S.Ct asked, in its opinion, why those challenging abortion in Wyoming don't seek to amend the constitution. It was a constitutional amendment that got us here, so that makes sense. So far nobody's lifted a finger to do that. The likely reason is that they know that amending the provision to allow for making abortions illegal won't pass in the state. Instead, they feel their odds are better litigating about it, or complaining about it.
On other matters, the case challenging the primary system filed by Skovgaard is a pro se case, as I suspected, meaning it has about zero chance of actually succeeding.
The United States proposed to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission a proposal for United Nations to control all nuclear weapons.
The proposal was remarkable for a number of reason, not the least of which was that it would have subjected the entire collection of the world's nations to a sort of limited central government. It also shows how liberal politics in the U.S. were at the time.
Mexico_Flag_(Cristeros).png: User:Immaculatederivative work: Jorge Compassio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Mexico enacted the Calles Law attacking the Catholic Church. Clergymen were to be punished for various crimes including wearing clerics and criticizing the government. In a little over a month the Cristero War would break out as a result.
Catholicism was, and is, strong in Mexico, although the Mexican Revolution, which saw the rise of various anti Catholic figures within it, while others remained very loyal to the Church, weakened it. Most historians do not regard the Cristero War as part of the Mexican Revolution, but I'm not most historians and I do. By the same token, the extent to which the Mexican Revolution was part of a worldwide rise of left wing insurrections is not often appreciated.
Anti Catholic elements in Mexico had existed since at least the mid 19th Century, and interestingly reflected similar movements in Europe, which itself shows the extent to which those revolutions in the country in the mid 19th Century reflected how close Mexico was to Europe in comparison to the United States. For all his faults, Porfirio Díaz, who came from a devout Catholic family and who had originally intended to be a Priest, seemingly put those stresses behind the country, but they revived during the Mexican Revolution. Madero was not a practicing Catholic, which in some ways made him an odd leader for the Revolution. Zapata, while he certainly strayed in regard to sexual morality (he had a least fifteen children, but only two by his wife Josefa "La Generala" Espejo Merino, was Catholic. Other figures were most definitely not practicing Catholics and some were anti Catholic within Madero's ranks. In Baja California, American and foreign Wobblies tried to estaliblish an Anarch Socialist state.
Had Madero, who was not a practicing Catholic, but who was egalitarian in nature, survived, Mexico would not have taken the giant left word lurch it did.
Brazil announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations.
The 1876 Republican National Convention convened in Cincinnati, Ohio. Candidates for the office of President, in light of President Grant's decision not to run for a third term, were: Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, Former Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine, Treasury Secretary Benjamin Bristow of Kentucky, Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, Governor John F. Hartranft of Pennsylvania and Postmaster General Marshall Jewell of Connecticut.
Grant remained a highly popular figure, both nationally and internationally, but his administration had been scandal plagued, Democrats had gained in the mid term election, and the country was tragically wearing out on Reconstruction. The latter was not the fault of Grant, as had Andrew Johnson supported it immediately after the Civil War it would have stood to be more effective.
Exports of petroleum products and capital goods jumped to record highs reducing the U.S. trade deficit.
The capital goods item is interesting and I haven't seen it explained. That is a positive trend, if sustainable. The oil exportation one is not as it depletes a diminishing resource at the expense of U.S. consumers. A lot of it seems to be related to AI exports, which isn't necessarily good, aircraft production, and war related purchases. If all that is correct, it won't be sustainable at the current levels, probably.
Screwworms have reappeared in Texas after a sixty year hiatus. The Trump administration is blaming the Biden Administration, as that's its default thing to do, but the Trumpistas lifted protections that were in place and allowed importation of Mexican cattle via ports in a probable attempt to lower beef prices. This is likely to have the opposite effect. It's a more likely cause, although there were concerns about animals moving across the border illegally during the Biden Administration.
Mexico itself was screwworm free as of 1991. Somehow that got reversed one way or another, and now the problem is back. Given that, it probably was coming back no matter what. It is a major crisis.
Nobody has cited the weather, but it is spread by a fly, and that may very well have resulted to the spread of the flies range.
Inflation is up to 4.2%.
cont:
Reporter: Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning?
Trump: No, I love it. I love the inflation.
Johnson is already saying that's not what he meant.
$100 when this bond was issued had the spending power of $1,892.16 today.
How did the U.S. pay off much of the debt from the Second World War and the Cold War?
It inflated the economy out of it.
Let me note something here right from the onset. I think Donald Trump is suffering from dementia in a major way and doesn't come up with plans for anything on his own, very often. Put another way, I think he's a puppet at this stage, pulled by National Conservative and Populist strings, the two not being the same.
Which brings me to this.
What if, behind the scenes, somebody on the NatCon end has come up with the plan to inflate the economy and steal as much of the petroleum oil belonging to Venezuela and Iran as possible.
It'd be way sinister, and evil, and destroy the lives and savings of many, but it might work.
But it'll be devastating to individuals.
Here's how it might works.
Raise tariffs to the point where domestic production actually is increased. That would make everything much more expensive, and hence inflation would result. Putting US oil increasingly on the global market would do the same, as that only happens when the price of oil is high. The value of the debt would decrease as the value of money would decrease.
Crazy?
Well, that's similar to what was done with the World War Two and Cold War debt.
The problem is, of course, that living in inflationary times is devastating to individuals, which is why it can't be, and never has been, done openly.
NatCons, however, may very well like this idea, if they can pull it off. At the end of it the thesis would be that government spending would be brought under control, the national debt greatly reduced, and domestic production realty increased. All of which would be for those who economically survived the ten to twenty year period it'd take to pull it off.
Which many would not.
And it might not work at all. Indeed, it would only work if it was accompanied by high employment, which often high inflation operates against. That's why the increased domestic production would be necessary.
NatCons are a really different group and they've operated in this administration very much in the shadows, which doesn't mean they aren't operating.
