In a blistering opinion, a Federal Court judge ruled that President Donald Trump improperly used a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS to extract personal benefits from the government and prevented the terms of a settlement agreement from taking legal effect.
71 Wyoming attorneys signed onto the letter. Lummis and Barrasso will ignore it.
August 1, 2026
Charges against an Olympic kayaker for vandalizing the reflecting pool have been dropped.
That was predictable, but what the Justice Department admitted was not. It admitted the damage was the result of "flawed installation by the contractor" as well as "the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."
Every lawyer associated with this should be dismissed and disbarred. Trump should be impeached. The victim of these false charges should sue for malicious prosecution.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office dismissed all charges against David Hearn, Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Cameron Thiers for the pool vandalization that never occured. Donald Trump had previously described these people as “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE". He's the sick deranged people, but people who aren't victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome and think he's something other than a rampaging deranged narcissist know that.
Now, even after the Toddler's tantrums, no charges are pending at all. They never should be.
Lawsuits should, and I predict will, be filed against the government over this.
August 8, 2026
The DC Circuit ordered Trump to halt his illegal ballroom construction but, in a wussy move, stayed its decision for fourteen days in order to allow Trump to appeal, which he, or rather his administration, will.
The Court, in its decision, noted:
Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.
August 11, 2026
It's not that there aren't some really issues here.
Gray violated the law on this and needs to be held fully accountable. Courts looking at this issue have uniformly supported the states that refused to provide the information.
Gray should be made to recover the information he supplied. This was illegal.
But coming when it does, it may very well be the law in a practical sense this election cycle, and impact the election. It's specifically designed to frustrate Democratic voting. However, as Amy Howe reports:
A separate ruling by the same judge, in a case filed by a different set of plaintiffs, temporarily prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from implementing one provision of the executive order anywhere in the United States. That ruling remains in effect, at least for now.
The decision is flat out wrong and the Supreme Court will regret it. The Democrats are increasingly like to win both houses of Congress this Fall and they will begin to work on major Supreme Court reform. Trump can prevent that while he's in office, but he's becoming the political kiss of death for GOP candidates and when a new Democratic President comes in, this order will come off and the Supreme Court will be radically reformed. Perhaps first up will be age limitations, likely 70 years of old, which will wipe out the conservative majority on the court.
A decision like this one will help bring about that downfall. So does stuff like this:
The mail in voting one at least has some think judicial reasoning Staying ballroom construction was the obvious choice here and the Court didn't do it. That probably signals that they'll let this insane project go forward.
One of Rasner's previous suits is in the CST today on the pending summary judgment motion.
August 31, 2026
The Supreme Court sealed its fate today in holding that the Plaintiffs in a case challenging the legality of Trump's illegal construction of a giant garden shed on White House Grounds lacked standing.
Bullshit.
Justice Roberts, who dissented in the 5 to 4 decision, noted that the construction was likely illegal. It is. This was a standing decision.
So construction will commence and may well get completed. The legality will be ruled upon in the future, and then the heaping pile of shit hopefully blown to the ground by a future administration that will rely on this decision. The Supreme Court will go to 13 members, and an age limitation will be put on the justices guaranteeing a liberal majority on the court for a century.
Back when the Rocky Mountain News was still a thing, they used to run columns by Charley Reese. I didn't always agree with them by any means, Reese was a dyed in wool Confederate Gray Southerner, but they were often quite interesting. I can recall his final column when he noted he was going to retire. On the timing he said something like "when you know, you know".
I'm at that point.
My wife, however, definitely isn't at that point for me, an ongoing source of conflict.
In Wyoming, and maybe in most places, lawyers are admitted to the bar in August for the most part. A second, smaller crops, is admitted in March or so. I was admitted in August, 36 years ago.
Back in September 2025 I started a thread about having passed the 35 year mark but never published it. I was angry about something at the time, pretty clearly, and it was a very bitter posts. I thought better of it and didn't post it, but I didn't wipe it out until recently. I reread it and then did so, even though much of what I wrote in it is still true.
All careers are individual, of course which is what makes career advice so dangerous. I've known people, for instance, who served in the military and absolutely hated it. The entire film M*A*S*H and the television series is, in no small part, based on a hatred of military service, although the book's author, a conservative, ironically did not hate his. The same is true, for what it's worth, of Catch 22. Heller actually admired the military he lampooned. Both books were hugely successful, however, as they not only tapped into the oddities of military life, but also into a hatred of it in some quarters.
In contrast, I've known people who loved it, and I myself liked it.
I note that as I suppose that the law is the same way, maybe all careers are.
That aside, the law is unique and is well known for being so.
The law has an alcoholism and alcohol abuse rate that's far higher than other professions. That isn't the only abusive trait in it, however. It's estimated that something like 60% of lawyers have had in the office sexual infidelities and while I haven't tried to add up percentages, and that percentage seems high, there are indeed a lot of them. The law also has some really screwball personalities in it, although I'm at the point where I now wonder if those personalities became that way due to the law, or entered the law because of it. In my current Gen. Jones stage of life, I'm amazed by the number of burnt out husks of people who won't retire from the law as that's all they have.
I'm not the only one who's noticed that, and a recent conversation is part of what brought me back to this thread. In speaking to an opposing lawyer I've known a long time by phone, on a holiday, he brought up the very things I've noted, this included. Indeed, he noted that for a lot of people, they'd become lawyers, that's what they now were as part of their personality. That's all that's left.
That should never happen, but the law is an all consuming job.
He was actually a bit angry about it. I'm not angry, but I don't want to become one of those people. My friend noted that what he "is", is a hunter and mountain climber. What he "does" is be a lawyer. That's pretty much true for me as well, although I'd substitute outdoorsmen for climber.
He also had the observation that after working years at the law, late nights, early days, weekends, that he and his wife did things together rarely. The pressure of work brought that about. That's pretty much the same story in my own life. Another lawyer I know just had his wife of about 30 years just up and leave him, leaving him wondering why. It seems a "therapist" suggested that, and frankly I have a dim view of most therapist or counsellors, but what I suspect is that the same thing was at work. That fellow had told me not all that long, before the disaster came, that he was never going to retire, because he enjoyed the fellowship of the lawyers.
Well, nothing that we do at work is something "enjoyed" by our spouses, except for perhaps the money. If the lawyer is really one of those ones who enjoys the courtroom combat, or the intellectual challenge, the spouses don't participate in that at all.
Money can matter, however. Yet another lawyer I know, about my same age, is trying to retire but is upset as his wife just can't grasp that the funding burn rate has to stop. I think a lot of lawyers who keep on keeping on face that with a family member or perhaps themselves. From the outside, you know they'd be fine. But to them, or a loved one, the fear of no further income will just drive them into the grave, working. Fears of that type, and not my own, have kept me working for the past four years.
The law is not only an all consuming occupation, it's one that's soul destroying. Many "plaintiffs' lawyers" have really lost their humanity. Not all by any means, but quite a few. They really don't care about the people they represent in many instances. It's one of the thing that makes practicing law so dispiriting and damaging to your own soul. Most of the propaganda that lawyers and law firms of a certain type being there to help people is pure crap. They don't mean it, and everyone inside the law knows that. Simply practicing law, at some point, or perhaps more accurately being in litigation, is participating on a fraud on the public.
I'm told I'm really good at the law. If that's true it's proof you can be good at something that you really don't love. I'm beyond the point of not loving it anymore.
I entered the profession for the same reasons a lot of people do. My earlier career had not worked out and I didn't seem to have any other place to go. I had started off obtaining a very difficult science degree only to graduate into an economy where I was unemployable. This is, I'd note, more common than a person might suppose. There was no family business to step into. What I really wanted to do, and still do, wasn't open to me. Even at that, I hesitated and I chose not to enter the law school class I was admitted into. I waited a year hoping to find work, and didn't. Soldiering was the work that year. I guess I could have chosen to make that a career, and in some ways I"m surprised I didn't.
The last year of my undergraduate degree I tried switch to a different field:
I'd be offered a summer position with them, but not until years later, at which point I was already practicing law and engaged. I've posted on that before.
If 'd had my druthers, which hardly anyone does, I would have have been a rancher. I have been around agriculture which is to say that I would have ranched full time. I came close it without really realizing it after law school right as my father was looking at retiring. We came close to the two of us starting a place, and then he died. I abandoned that particular effort in order to help my mother, who had no such interest. Laster I found she was baffled why I hadn't let her know.
My wife and I have always had cattle, but it's never been a full time thing. Sometimes it's promised to almost be that, but it never has. Now I'm 63 and time has moved on. It's something I'll never recover from. It was one of the goals that kept me at my desk job, and now the goal can't be met.
Time and effort wasted.
There are some things that are quite scary about time moving on, I'll note. Fear of death is not one of them. I constantly hear that people are supposed to be afraid of death, but I've lived pretty close to death my entire life and I'm not. If death arrives before my plans play out, well, so be it. Nobody knows the day nor the hour. Momento mori.
But what has moved on is the opportunity to complete a bunch of things I used to do and be engaged in before I started practicing law. That must show something about my own character, as other lawyers take long vacations and the like, but I don't really seem capable of devoting time to vocations and avocations. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which is which. The interest in those pursuits remains, however.
Gone is interest in the law itself. I'm not interested nor fascinated in it. I never loved it in the first place, but I have had over the years a reputation as being a legal scholar. I still get calls from various lawyers about legal situations which are rare or difficult. The difference is that I no longer find them interesting at all.
At one time, seeing as I was a lawyer, I really wanted to be a judge, which is a position for legal scholars, and I've applied within our system a bunch of times, and been encouraged to do so by judges. Now I'm too old, as mandatory retirement is at age 70 and the committee isn't going to appoint somebody at age 63 for a single term. Or I suppose not. To my surprise, they recently almost in fact did that in a district in which very few people were applying for the position. The past two Governors and the Judicial Nominating Committee have pretty much wrecked the process for successful lawyers, so applications are way down.
Indeed, one of my frustrations with the practice of law has been watching the decline of the judicial nominating system, which has grown much more political over the last few decades. When I started out you could really see why various judges got appointed to their positions. When Matt Mead became Governor, however, he had an agenda of appointing women and that's what he was going to do. That was a politically motivated bias and it meant if there was a man up for the same position, he wasn't getting it.
Governor Gordon has had a very strong bias towards prosecutors, although there are some exceptions.
The oncoming Governor, Barlow, will be interesting to watch in this regard. He's a professional himself (veterinarian) and perhaps he'll take a more informed and balanced view.
Anyhow, after 36 years of this, it's time to move on, so I'm moving on. I'll complete this year, but I'm not starting another one.
Indeed, on the topic, I'm capable of reading the signs. The American dream is that you live to age 100 and die in your sleep. You probably aren't going to.
Over the last couple of years I've watched some of the lawyers who are older than me decline pretty seriously in some ways. And I'm declining too. I had colon surgery out of the blue, something that probably could have been averted if I'd had regular colon checkups like you are supposed to. Going through that process I ended up having an odd thing on my thyroid discovered. Half my thyroid ended up coming out, although I probably could have avoided that if I was willing to risk it being nothing, which didn't seem to be a solid risk at the time. Now I have to take pills every day for the first time in my life.
A year ago the eye doctor noted something peculiar in my eye. Last week, on my follow up exam, it was clear it was a tiny cataract It's not a problem yet, but it probably will be in "ten years". I'm young for a cataract, but it's due to an injury.
I've endured a lot of injuries over the years.
I'm considerably more tired than I used to be, and my physical stamina, still pretty good, has declined. I could probably address this as people ought to at my age by exercise, but my schedule is incredibly burdened.
I don't handle stress anywhere near as good as I used to, however, and stress is a killer.
So, in four months, I'm done.
The big challenge now is letting everyone know, and getting my wife to accept it. That part isn't going to be easy at all.
It's not going to be easy as at least my long suffering spouse doesn't want to believe I'm at this point. I've been mentioning it, but when retirement comes up, it's always "you can't". Retirement is, she suggests, a year further in the future than I imagine it.
A year isn't much, but it's a year. I hear all the time that somebody retired and then died, as if retirement killed them. Really, they just hang on too long.
And again, that hanging on is a funny thing. I've watched one lawyer who has no family (divorced) and who has no faith keep on going to work. I guess it's his identify . I mentioned retiring to him once and he scoffed, saying "good luck". Of course, I don't have to pay alimony and I don't take expensive trips.
I've also watched a couple of very ill lawyers hang on after their illness set in. It provided a distraction I guess. Indeed, on the very odd occasion I mention this to anyone people always suggest a law job I could take in retirement, which isn't what I have in mind at all.
In contrast, one lawyer who experienced a health care scare recently, one year younger than me told me that next year was definitely the date. When I expressed doubt, the reply was "watch me".
What you are supposed to say, like Edith Piaf, is that you have no regrets about your career as a lawyer.
I can't say that.
I probably should feel that way. Just yesterday, once again, thinking over the past 36 years I came to the conclusion that with the box I was in, I did the only thing I could do. True or not, and it's probably true, hindsight being 20/20, I'd have avoided the law like the plague if I'd known what it was like. As noted above, I'm sure there are people who look back and say they loved every second of it.
I'm not one of them.
To compound things, I've been in litigation the entire time. That was a mistake, as I'm not well suited for it internally. I'm an introvert and I don't like being in extroverted situations. I just couldn't find a way out of it.
Well, anyhow, page one of the concluding chapter.
So now, I have to start informing people. This isn't going to be fun at all, but knowing myself, if I don't, it won't become real.
I've never liked doing trials. Some lawyers claim to love them, and I suppose they do. There's something in their personalities, a defect really, which requires them to test their wits against other people. Most lawyers don't like doing them, and most of the lawyers who say they do, are lying.
Like baseball players before a game, most lawyers have some sort of ritual before they try a case. At one time, as late as the early 90s, that ritual for quite a few involved heavy drinking. I don't think that's the case so much anymore. Frankly, while conservatives are all worked up about it in some quarters, I think that's one of the things that the massive introduction of women into the law changed, and for the better.
When I get close to trials, I usually rewatch The Wild Bunch. I know that's odd, but I love that movie and I find it very engaging. Part of the reason that I watch it in this context is that the protagonists in the move are basically all mercenaries of a sort. Yes, I know that they're criminals, but still. And there's not one redeeming person in their whole contest.
Everyone who likes movies is familiar with the famous concluding gunbattle of the movie. But that's not the last scene. Former gang member turned bounty hunter Deke Thornton is waiting outside the town gate as evening arrives, having sent the dead bodies of the gang back with the other bounty hunters. Elderly gang member Skyes rides up with Mexican Indians and the following exchange occurs.
Sykes: I didn't expect to find you here.
Deke Thornton: Why not? I sent them back. That's all I said I'd do.
Sykes: They didn't get very far.
Deke Thornton: I figured.
Sykes: What are your plans, now?
Deke Thornton: Drift around down here. Try to stay out of jail.
Sykes: Well, me and the boys got some work to do. You want to come with us? It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.
That's how I feel about things. I intend to hunt, fish, work cattle, write and put in a garden.
But even if I only do a faction of that stuff, it'll be okay.
Trump's endorsement again turned out to be a predicator that the endorsed candidate would go down in well deserved flames as Péter Magyar defeated the illiberal democrat darling of the far right Viktor Orbán.
Also a figure of the Hungarian right, and in fact once an Orbán protege, he is a sign that even in a country that's be converted into the model of an illiberal democracy and hence adored by the Heritage Foundation set, a corrupt autocrat can come down. He's also a sign that support by Trump means nothing in much of the world, and is becoming meaningless in the United States.
Orbán, who is not insane as Trump is much of the time, does deserve credit for conceding defeat.
April 14, 2026
Canadian liberals gained a majority in the Canadian parliament through by elections yesterday.
While less clear, the Donald Trump Effect, i.e., repulsion over his vile politics, is moving everything to the left that's associated with him.
June 22, 2026
Colombian Trump backed right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella narrowly won Colombia's presidential election, apparently.
August 31, 2026
Icelandic voters rejected a proposal to negotiate with the EU for admittance.
Popular 1970s television series Alice premiered on CBS. Based on the 1974 film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, it ran for nine seasons.
Linda Lavin starred as Alice in a role that I always thought was depressing, although the series itself is very 1970s. The 1970s featured a lot of dispiriting dramas in its second half.
The series played a role in the childhood of my wife, providing a role character which she acted out with her grandfather, taking orders as if she was a waitress.
Hiroshima by John Hershey, latter a bestselling book, appeared in The New Yorker.
Hersey is a legendary writer and was one of the first practitioners of "New Journalism" in which writing techniques from novels were adopted for non fiction. Hiroshima is regarded by some as the finest work of journalism of the 20th Century.
Coming out so soon after the dropping of the bomb, the work demonstrates the extent to which people were already questioning the immorality of its use.
Hershey was a friend of Ralph Ellison. There were some truly excellent writers of this era. His works include A Bell for Adano, The War Lover, and Blues. He died in 1993 at age 78. Hiroshima is his best known work.
The monstrosity of the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki can hardly be overstated.
The Soviet Union and Afghan government signed a Pact of Neutrality and Non-Aggression.
General Yang Sen seized the SS Wanhsien for a second time in a week, and captured a second ship. The HMS Cockchafer lacked sufficient bluejackets to intervene, so it radioed for help.
The general would subsequently join the Kuomintang that year and side with Chiang Kai-shek following the latters expulsion of the Communists. He became a figure in the Nationalist Chinese Army and ended up in exile in Taiwan.
He was also an avid mountaineer.
A polygamist, he had 22 daughters and 21 sons born between 1912 and 1960. He died in 1977 at age 93.
Shakeups were occuring in Greece due to the recent overthrowal of the military government there, including the sacking of the Army Chief of Staff, Major General Ptolemaios Sarigiannis.
He was imprisoned by the Germans during World War Two and served a role in the post war Greek government.
Dutch aviator and inventor Anthony Fokker made his first flight.
Federal troops surrounded Cuautla, Morelos.
Zapata, now being sought for arrest, fled to the countryside.
Civil War era general Benjamin Grierson, who later organized the African American 10th Cavalry Regiment, died at age 85. At that time, about him, it was stated:
The only White officer who supports the unit is Regimental Commanding Officer Colonel Benjamin Grierson. Ostracized by other officers for his enthusiastic command of the African-American troops, Grierson believes in the abilities, dedication, and record of performance of the Buffalo Soldiers and declines offers to lead at any other post. General Pike offers to relieve Grierson 'of this self-imposed exile and have him commanding a real cavalry regiment within a month,' but Grierson refuses.
The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey ceased to exist due to being broken up under the Sherman Antitrust Act, a statutes which should be widely applied to our economy today.
Long marches in frequent rain-storms, with cold nights and heavy dews, made things very hard. The soldiers had little hope of success. There was only enough coffee for about five days. Bread and salt would last less than two days. No one knew how far it was to the Black Hills. Our Native American scouts, who knew the land, left to deliver messages. Under these bad conditions, the soldiers moved south on September 6. They marched 30 miles over rough land. They camped by bad water holes with no wood for fires. On September 7, they marched another 30 miles over similar land. The camp was just as bad. Many soldiers were sick or hurt. They had to use nine stretchers. Many horses were left behind. Men kept struggling into camp until 10 P.M. On this day, the men started killing abandoned horses for food. Sick and tired infantrymen were carried on mules. But only a few who needed help could be carried.
Dr. Bennett A. Clements, surgeon with Crook.
Muster roles and what they revealed for Co. K, 2nd Cav, on this day:
If it is, it should be blown down by a sane incoming administration as soon as possible, along with however much of the stupid ballroom as has been constructed.
King Donny sent the fearsome Scott Bessent out to cause the Iranians to quiver in their boots, announcing that the US would inflict an "Economic D-Day" on Iran.
Except the US is going to exempt China, meaning that Operation Economic Outcast was stillborn from the very beginning.
The US is moving its ambassadors back to the Middle East, however, which suggests it either naively thinks this will work, or that it's just going to give up.
This post, by the way, is the first one that I've ever had Bessent's name as a label, which surprises me. He's been mentioned before, but I've never put in a label.
One thing I've thought about doing is posting how he's sort of uniquely a symbol of hypocrisy in the Trump Administration, or maybe in MAGA. MAGA proclaims loudly that it's for "Christian" values by which it means far right Evangelical values.
Christianity pretty clearly holds that homosexual sex is a mortal sin. St. Paul was blunt about it. And yet Bessent is a homosexual in a homosexual union in which two children are being raised. Most actual Christians of any type would question this, and if Evangelical Christians are to be believed, they find it completely abhorrent.
But then, by the same token, having an alleged president who is a serial polygamist, a special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, whatever that is, who seemed to be having an affair while in her earlier role and whose husband was wearing giant fake boobs in internet photos, etc. etc., is pretty odd too.
Indeed, it's impossible to reconcile.
Mind you, I'm not saying that a homosexual, including one who is in a homosexual union, cannot be an effective Secretary of the Treasury. I'm saying you can't have an implied policy that everyone who isn't, white, straight, and sympathetic to far right Evangelicalism isn't a real American and still have a homosexual as one of your primary cabinet members and really mean any of that.
Making it all the more odd, Bessent is one of those cabinet members who has in recent months been dragged out to try to explain away whatever brain fart the Trump has uttered.
That feature of this administration has been there all along. Whereas for a transportation issue you might, in normal times, get a Transportation official, in this administration you might very well end up getting the Chief Chef of the White House to address it. And people appear and then disappear in that role pretty rapidly. Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, regularly was being hauled out to address the Press on all sorts of things for awhile, right up until he said that Biden was validly elected to the Oval Office.
Goodbye Chris.
Anyhow, there's something extra weird about Bessent, who always seems extremely nervous, being hauled out to address the Press on the war while we have Pete "High T" Hegseth in charge of the "War Department". Hegseth definitely fits into the far right Evangelical mold and is loud about it, while also being loud about the services being for manly men.
Well, anyhow. So much for Operation Economic Outcast.
