Ward on Words

Apparently Donald Trump, for whatever reason, has been gifting members of his cabinet with Florsheim shoes, and instead of asking for the sizes of everyone's feet, he's guessing. He likes to trust his gut, apparently, in times of war and in times of shoe shopping.  Anyway, though the war with Iran is in full swing, Trump still has time to look at the footwear of his lackeys and decide they need new shoes. Some, according to the Guardian , "snipe about having to wear middling footwear instead of their upmarket favorites."  Sadly for the lackeys, Trump's gut seems to be wrong when guessing the size of the shoes for his men beside him. He seems to prefer buying them larger than needed, perhaps to go with his larger-than-life personality. Here is an image of Marco Rubio in the gifted shoes - you'll see a lot of space between his heel and the heel of the shoe: Image from The Guardian  The gifting of the shoes has been covered in multiple media outlets: Vogue, Wall...

The rapid collapse of American constitutional order has been shocking to witness. Trump's authoritarian dreams have been nearly realized. His goals are aided and abetted by a corrupt SCOTUS, led by the spin-meister Roberts, a man whose legacy will be the destruction of the Constitution he swore to uphold. No one in his party seems to want to defend the Constitution and instead will do and say anything to get on TV to defend Trump.  With DOGE, he sent a wrecking ball through multiple government agencies. He unconstitutionally slashed funds allocated by Congress for cancer research, medical breakthroughs, historical accounts, the National Parks. Elon Musk, a foreign citizen from South Africa with billions in US contracts propping up his failing businesses, made off like a bandit with our private data.  ICE violence against civilians  Trump has unleashed a masked, armed and unregulated militia upon blue states. In Chicago, ICE/Border Patrol agents dropped from helicopters on...

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am merely a voter and in no way a constitutional scholar. I write these observations as an observer, a citizen and a voter (who also follows AP Style.)  We've seen this year that SCOTUS can act swiftly to allow Trump unchecked powers. They've used the shadow docket to give the president the power to halt payments that have been funded by acts of Congress (Trump constitutionally does not have power of the purse, but that seems unimportant to SCOTUS.)  Another unsigned SCOTUS shadow docket ruling – Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo –  has allowed Trump to round up people based on looks and skin color. Brett Kavanaugh included a brief concurrence outlining why he thinks it's okay for ICE to consider race and skin color as evidence of a crime , which ignores the 4th amendment, designed to protect people from unreasonable searches and seizures. Here is the language of the 4th amendment:   " The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers...