Sir Stasis, the Sturm Brightblade of Rhetoric

Not an actual fictional squire of Krynn.

[Sir Stasis, the Sturm Brightblade of Rhetoric @MikeRTrice]

Hi all,

While I may occasionally post articles here, I'm no longer actively engaging in conversations on X. Blue Sky has reached an engagement tipping point where the quality is simply superior and the following comparable.

Good luck!

[Sky Marchini @rhcm123]

has any man ever been more vindicated?

[Jeremy Konyndyk @JeremyKonyndyk]

DOGE didn't make a dent in the deficit, but it did bring back screwworm and enable a historically large new Ebola outbreak, so it's not like they didn't achieve *anything*

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.

More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.

And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.

Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.

The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.

Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.

We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.

https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl

[Josh Barro @jbarro]

The attacks on state capacity are coming home to roost

[Drew Savicki @DrewSav]

A few years ago the Supreme Court struck down Alabama's congressional district map. Tonight they have upheld the very map they struck down.

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Collins here underscoring the case for Platner, she can't give a simple "no way" to an obviously unsuitable Trump nominee — a guy who has zero qualification for the job other than his demonstrated willingness at FHFA to engage in abuses of power.

[DevilDog Diaries🇺🇲 @cjdelgross]

So what does a $3,000,000 payoff buy you?

Just weeks before the 2023 impeachment trial, a pro-Ken Paxton PAC handed Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick $3M in campaign cash and loans.

Coincidentally, Patrick and the Senate rewrote the rules to ensure Paxton walked free.

Here is how the trial was engineered from day one:

The "Wife Math" Trick

* Senator Angela Paxton (Ken’s wife) was banned from voting due to conflict of interest.
* Yet, Patrick's rules forced her to sit in the chamber during the vote anyway.
* By counting her as "present," the 2/3 conviction threshold stayed at 21 votes.
* Her silent seat mathematically functioned as an automatic "No" vote.

The 6-Month Jail Threat

* Patrick slapped an aggressive, unprecedented gag order on the entire Capitol.
* Any senator or witness who spoke out faced up to 6 months in a county jail.
* He even banned live floor debate—senators voted in total, mandated silence.

The Fifth Amendment Shield

* Impeachment is a political process, meaning defendants usually must take the stand.
* Patrick broke precedent and ruled that Paxton could skip testifying entirely.
* This completely shielded the Attorney General from hostile cross-examination.

The Hidden Charges

* The Texas House sent over 20 serious articles of impeachment.
* Senate rules immediately sliced off 4 of the most damaging felony securities fraud charges.
* The moment the rigged trial ended, those 4 remaining charges were quietly erased.

The Bottom Line
When the umpire rewrites the rulebook and banks a multimillion-dollar check from your biggest fans, the game is over before it even starts. The 2023 trial wasn't an execution of justice—it was a masterclass in institutional corruption that paved the exact runway Paxton is using to run for the U.S. Senate today.

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

Great, a totally unqualified loyalist with a record of cutting corners to help the president punish political opponents. Just the guy you want at DNI.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

Ohhhhhhh realllly

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

This is a fun story, but note that Barack Obama and Joe Biden both also had to deal with Israel’s desire to get a war with Iran going and managed to actually avoid this situation rather than just yelling on the phone.

[Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @ReichlinMelnick]

UPDATE: Dulce Diaz was in fact a U.S. citizen and the Trump admin has now acknowledged the fact and issued her a passport. Below was DHS’s angry (and utterly false) claim to the contrary.

Proof that, yes, ICE has at times detained US citizens in error.

[David French @DavidAFrench]

"Under President Trump and @SecWar Hegseth, meritocracy reigns supreme at the War Department."

This is a self-refuting sentence. There is no world in which a meritocracy yields Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

The thing you have to understand about Dave Rubin is that he doesn’t believe anything. He went from progressive to classical liberal to MAGA populist in just a few years. Every time he has to defend his views under scrutiny, he crumbles. He genuinely has no idea what he’s saying.

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

Too late. The people who advanced this prosecution have destroyed their legacies. When ordered to prosecute a political enemy for speech, the only honorable thing to do is resign. Third-world country behavior that won’t be forgotten.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

This has quietly been a miracle month in medicine.

In the last 5 weeks we’ve got news on:

- retatrutide, the triple agonist GLP-1 from Lilly, basically melting fat and body-wide inflammation at record levels
- RevMed’s new pancreatic cancer drug showing unprecedented abilities to extend life
- small trial of a one-and-done PCSK9 gene editing therapy for slashing LDL cholesterol
- Mayo’s AI-assisted radiology showing vastly improved cancer detection
- this new therapy for metastatic solid tumors

This stuff is at varying levels of evidence. Retatrutide is ~100% on its way, other stuff needs more clinical trial data. But put it together and we’re maybe on the verge of majorly reducing the mortality of heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in America.

[Luis Moreno @LuisMorenolg]

This is absolutely unintentionally (on Paxton's part) hysterical.

[Micah Erfan @micah_erfan]

Protect children. Vote Talarico.

[Jon Favreau @jonfavs]

This was my single tweet, which does not refer to you as mindless or a thug, because I believe neither of those things:

[Josh Barro @jbarro]

Like half of Sean Duffy's job is trying to shoot down asinine ideas from the Commerce, Defense and DHS secretaries (and also Elon Musk, who offered buyouts to air traffic controllers and then lied about it) https://t.co/ut5a8RlHXx

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

America’s 250th anniversary is supposed to celebrate the rejection of kings. Putting a living president’s face on a vanity $250 bill is exactly the kind of cult nonsense the Founders despised.