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I decried President Trump’s endorsement of clown gubernatorial candidate Mike Lindell last week in “Put a MyPillow over it.” Running in a multicandidate primary field, according to a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, Lindell now predictably appears to have extended his lead over competitors including endorsed candidate Kendall Qualls and House Speaker Lisa Demuth. That is a shame. Lindell is a joke. I would have said that before it was reported Lindell is
I vaguely recall reading Ron Radosh’s 2021 Quileette essay “Sandinista! The US Left and Nicaragua.” However, while my attention was turned elsewhere, Nicaragua’s National Assembly amended the constitution to allow the president to run for an unlimited number of five-year terms. Given the fact that Sandinista Commie Daniel Ortega was president, that was a bad sign. As I understand the relevant developments, it got worse in 2025 when the Constitution
This graphic has been all over X for the last few days, and I have been meaning to get to it. It is similar to many other charts I have seen over the years. We all know that the cost of living has been rising, especially during the Biden administration. But many are not aware of how targeted those increasing costs actually are. Many goods and some services have gotten
When I was trying civil jury cases, the conventional wisdom was that plaintiffs wanted jurors who were mad at the world because they thought their merits had not been sufficiently rewarded. The classic plaintiff’s juror, I was told, was a guy with a PhD in comparative literature who was driving a taxi. Conversely, the ideal defense juror (I am talking about civil cases, not criminal cases) is a happy person,
In a long-overdue action, the federal government is moving to protect taxpayers against systematic fraud in California and Minnesota: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday he’s stopping more than 1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over suspected fraud. “We are not sending Medicaid dollars out the door until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately,” Kennedy said
Twenty years ago I covered Keith Ellison’s first campaign for Congress extremely closely. I talked to sources all around the United States in the course of the campaign. I have an Ellison file six inches thick deriving from my work on that campaign. Star Tribune reporter Rochelle Olson covered that campaign for the Star Tribune. Her coverage essentially performed public relations on its behalf. Her motto was not there’s no
Surely you don’t remember Charles Littlejohn. He is the guy who was nabbed for leaking the tax returns of President Trump to the New York Times. He also leaked tax information of thousands of the most successful and wealthy Americans including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett to ProPublica. He pleaded guilty to only one crime, but he committed many. Ira Stoll reports this underreported sequel for the Washington
TCM is playing Paul Simon’s film One-Trick Pony (1980) at the moment. I was one of the few who found Simon’s film to be terrific. I should probably shorten that to say I was one of the few who found his film, period. I loved it, complete with the guest appearance of the Lovin’ Spoonful. Robert Hilburn’s biography of Simon reports that Simon felt insanely guilty about the money lost
From NBC News, ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham to become 7th UK prime minister in a decade. The 7th in ten years, dating back to David Cameron in 2016. By my count, only Burnham’s immediate predecessor, Keir Starmer, took office immediately following a general election. Burnham and four others first assumed office following something like a palace coup. Until recently, Burnham was the Mayor of Manchester. A month ago,
In February, Paramount Skydance agreed with Warner Bros. Discovery to acquire that company for 111 billion. The agreement followed a convoluted battle between Paramount and Netflix to be the buyer, which Paramount ultimately won. The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice cleared the acquisition last month, finding no anticompetitive impact. The Antitrust Division is highly respected; its analyses are largely mathematical and look at the pricing implications of alleged
