Men's Lifestyle June 18, 2026 0 Comments

Stephen Miller’s Hidden Memos Expose a Ruthless Plan to Shatter Our Constitutional Rights—What They Don’t Want You to Know!

Ever wonder what happens when the wild, wild west of American politics throws a party? Well, buckle up, because this week’s roundup from the laboratories of democracy serves up a cocktail of chaos, convictions, and the kind of crazy that makes you ask: Are we witnessing government in action or just a live-action absurdist play? From the Lone Star State’s improbable anti-sharia caucus moments (yes, really) to Idaho’s bewildering bathroom bill enforcement theories, and Alabama federal judges reportedly accepting vintage pickup trucks and yacht trips—there’s no shortage of eyebrow-raisers. Oh, and let’s not forget Oklahoma’s cozy coal kickback saga, proving that some traditions—and troubles—refuse to die quietly. Stick around as we unpack this tapestry of turmoil, where the question isn’t just what’s going down, but how we’re still standing to watch it unfold. LEARN MORE

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Out on the Weekend in the Laboratories of Democracy

(Tomorrow the shebeen will be dark in celebration of Juneteenth. Hence this weird hybrid of our usual end-of-the-week features. As part of our celebration, and in tribute to the Commonwealth’s—God save it!—own Massachusetts 54th Infantry, here is the Temporary Musical Accompaniment to this post.)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where in Paterson, that’s just the way things go.

We begin in Texas, the DARPA of terrible politics. This week they held their state Republican convention and, well, you know where that goes. From Texas Monthly:

Khaki-clad twentysomethings dole out pamphlets calling for abortion to be prosecuted as murder. Septuagenarians mingle with a candidate who wants to deport 100 million people from the U.S., mere feet from a law firm that specializes in self-defense shootings. State Supreme Court justices greet attendees between booths for the Texas secessionist movement and the anti-communist John Birch Society.

The fcking John Birch Society? What was this, an Old Timers Game for crackpots?
Anyway, as you can imagine, Muslim Republicans were not received with marching-band music.

It was there last week, on the first day of the party’s biennial convention held in downtown Houston, that three Muslim Republican delegates found themselves surrounded by fellow party members who believe Islam is a threat to America and Christianity. For nearly a half hour, a short woman in hijab begged state lawmakers to treat her religion with respect as her husband reminded them that Muslims widely condemn violence and consider Jesus a prophet.

The conversation was civil, if tense, but had seemingly little effect on the group of lawmakers and onlookers, many of them clad in maroon “Defend Texas, Defeat Sharia” hats. “Muhammad was not a prophet—he was a liar,” state Representative Brent Money, a conservative Christian and coleader of the Texas House’s new anti-sharia caucus, said at one point. As a Christ follower, Money continued, the most loving thing he could do “is to say that what you believe is a lie.” Nearby, another delegate was far less gracious, telling the Muslims to leave America entirely.

Apparently, in Texas, there is a great worry that sharia law will take over the state and enact bans on multimillion-dollar high school football stadiums or something. There’s actually an “anti-sharia caucus” in the state legislature? This is approximately as grounded in reality as an anti–Lex Salica Law caucus would be. (And where would that leave Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, eh?)

“If you and I don’t stand together and fight these radical, crazy people—the socialist-Islamic alliance—today, I can promise you that our children and our grandchildren will have to wear a hijab to go to school,” then party chair Abraham George said in his opening remarks. Later that day, as Muslim attendees confronted lawmakers about Islamophobia in the exhibit hall, another delegate told Hussein that he was not welcome in America. “I know who you people are,” the man kept saying. “I know you. I know you all.”

I spent about five minutes laughing at the idea of one day watching the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders high-kicking in their hijabs, but then I remembered that Texas has 40 electoral votes and sends 38 people to the House of Representatives, not all of whom are Joaquin Castro, and I stopped laughing. Jesus, these really are the mole people.

As long as we are touring the far frontiers of Crazyland, we might as well pop up to Idaho, where earlier this year the legislature passed a draconian burlesque of an anti-trans “bathroom bill.” A judge looked at it and asked, “How do you mooks plan to enforce this nonsense?” Unfortunately, Idaho elects enough wing nuts that there’s always one to come up with an answer that makes everything crazier. From the Idaho Capital Sun:

[Michael] Zarian, the Idaho solicitor general, suggested to the judge that enforcement of the law would be easy “because there is DNA testing.” When the judge pressed him on whether a trans person will need to consent to that testing, Zarian said not necessarily but that he doubted that people will be asked to undergo DNA testing on the spot. But [attorney Kell] Olson said DNA testing largely requires a warrant. After the hearing, ACLU of Idaho attorney Emily Croston said the state hadn’t clearly laid out how the law will be enforced. “I don’t think the state has an answer for how you identify someone’s biological sex,” Croston told reporters. “…Are we just going to look at folks as they enter a restroom and determine whether we think they look enough like a man or a woman? That’s ridiculous.”

Like that’s even a consideration anymore.

Zarian, the attorney for the state, also delved into one of the law’s exemptions that allows people to use restrooms of another sex if they are in “dire need” of going to the bathroom. Pressed by the judge, he acknowledged that it “might be difficult to prove someone had a dire need,” but he said that doesn’t prove that the law itself is vague.

Is any need to use the bathroom not dire? Questions that lawmakers never used to have to ask. Hammurabi wept.

We move along to Alabama where, according to AL.com, it’s good to be a federal judge.

Gifts of luxury travel from wealthy business leaders to Supreme Court justices have been exposed in the last several years. But other federal judges, the gifts they take and their relationships to donors have largely escaped scrutiny from the news media or the public. All federal judges are required to report financial information annually, including gifts. Most report accepting no gifts at all. Across Alabama, a dozen federal judges reported receiving gifts between 2003–2023, the records show. … In Alabama, Coogler reported accepting a vintage pickup truck, two horses and more worth a combined $75,000. And a well-connected political fixer paid for two hunting trips for Coogler. Another federal judge in Birmingham reported going on a chartered yacht trip worth $50,000. A judge in Montgomery reported receiving a total of $9,000 in travel-related gifts from a Florida-based investment company.

If you’re a federal judge—beginning salary almost $250,000 per annum—buy your own damn vintage pickup truck and kill little birdies on your own dime. Yeesh.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Trail Boss Friedman of the Algarve brings us the saga of how the administration is aiding Oklahoma in its war against those clever Chinese climate hoaxsters. From OklahomaWatch:

With help from the Trump administration, the Grand River Dam Authority shelved its plan to stop generating electricity at its last remaining coal unit in Chouteau and will instead spend millions on upgrades to keep it running for the next several years. The state-backed utility was among 12 coal-generating plants securing grants from President Donald Trump’s $500 million plan to keep the domestic coal industry afloat. Trump made the announcement June 4 from the White House. The federal Energy Department will spend $28.5 million on the upgrades at the Grand River Energy Center Unit 2, with GRDA financing another $48 million. It will modernize the coal yard and material-handling infrastructure, upgrade water and air delivery systems and improve the unit’s high-pressure boiler. “Trump is pouring tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into Oklahoma monopoly utility and shareholder pockets to prop up toxic, expensive coal technology that is on the way out,” said Ty Gorman with the Sierra Club. “Meanwhile, clean energy like solar, storage and efficiency are by far the most affordable, reliable and healthy options for customers, and they don’t send people to the hospital or lead to premature deaths like the coal plants do.”

Yes, but they’re big and they make a big, beautiful noise that makes the president feel like a big, beautiful titan. This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Now on to our regularly scheduled programming.

The Deal is done, and the cult is applying lipstick to the pig with a paint roller. Meanwhile, the president has created bipartisan amity and managed to unite the Republican party on the issue of what a sucker he is. From CBS News:

“These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social early Thursday as he returned from the G7 summit.

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy came out most strongly against the Iran deal, saying Ronald Reagan is “rolling over in his grave.”

“Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future,” Cassidy wrote on X. “Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal. Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. … Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped,” he continued. “This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

One thing I have to hand to French president Emmanuel Macron: The man is a first-class, solid-gold troll. He arranged for the president to sign the surrender document in Versailles, where the treaty ending World War I was signed on terms that virtually guaranteed that there would be a World War II. I would almost guarantee that Kaiser Don didn’t get the joke.

If there were ever any doubt that there are people in this administration who long for armbands and shiny boots, this report ought to end any speculation in that regard. From The New York Times:

Dated April 29, 2025, and stamped “confidential,” the memo was careful and lawyerly but amounted to a warning against end-running the rule of law. The subject line read: “THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS.”

Habeas corpus—the centuries-old right to force the government to justify, before a judge, why it has locked a person up—is enshrined in Article I of the Constitution. [White House staff secretary Will] Scharf’s memo, in its unassuming way, was a blinking red warning light. The second Trump White House was deliberating an explosive new claim of presidential power: the suspension of habeas rights for unauthorized immigrants.

The suspension of habeas corpus has occurred just a handful of times in U.S. history, and always under the most dire circumstances of war or invasion. Yet to a greater degree than previously known, administration officials, encouraged by Mr. Trump, actively weighed taking that step in the early months of his second term—this time to accelerate the mass deportation of immigrants in the country illegally.

And who is the brainiac behind this scheme?

Inside the White House, Mr. Miller, the influential deputy chief of staff, saw an opening for an idea he had raised previously: What if Mr. Trump simply claimed the power to suspend habeas corpus? Then the locked-up immigrants would be blocked from receiving hearings or even from seeking court orders to prevent their removal from the country. This was an opportunity for Mr. Trump not only to speed up deportations, but also to assert vastly expanded power over a legal system that was getting in his way.

This is pure fascism, and it’s instinctual in Stephen Miller, who remains the untrammeled id of the entire administration. There’s more, too.

Suspending habeas corpus was one of two radical ideas Mr. Miller had been pushing that alarmed Mr. Scharf. The other was invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to enforce the law on American streets as protests grew against deportation sweeps.

Miller is eager to combat not genuine threats to the government but any semblance of opposition, including any opposition from coequal branches of the government he purportedly serves. He’s got a pliant, nasty, half-gone president through whom he can act. And he’s not alone.

In the case of the Insurrection Act, Vice President JD Vance pushed to invoke it just days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minnesota critical care nurse who was protesting the administration’s immigration policies.

Vance would advise human sacrifice if it were to further his career prospect, but it’s Miller who is the real power behind the president’s imperial fantasies.

When it came to suspending habeas corpus, one of the most powerful constitutional protections of individual rights, Mr. Miller was in effect encouraging something Mr. Trump had long dreamed of: bypassing judges in deportation cases. The president was interested. He asked advisers about Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas rights during the Civil War. Mr. Miller directed the Justice Department to study the issue.

Lincoln, of course, did not act unilaterally. Congress passed a bill allowing him to do it. And, in any case, Lincoln was facing an actual—and, up to that point, very successful—army of rebellion. Comparing poor people stumbling through the desert to the Army of Northern Virginia almost makes me wonder about the massive disrespect this holds for Robert E. Lee. (I said “almost.”) Miller intended to corrupt the language for the purposes of corrupting the Constitution.

“The Constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Mr. Miller said. “So it’s an option we are actively looking at.” Mr. Miller was intentional about his choice of words. The president had been trying to recast the immigration surge across the southern border during the Biden years as an invasion by enemy forces—a highly dubious claim intended to unlock extraordinary powers, intended only for wartime, to repel the migrants. Mr. Miller kept using the word “invasion” even after border crossings had fallen to multidecade lows.

To say nothing of his describing the Great Writ as a “privilege.” The man is a ghoul.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: ”Hollywood” (The Crusaders): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 1915, are some of the survivors from the torpedoed Lusitania arriving back in London. As it happens, this is the 120th anniversary of the great ship’s launch. One thing I did not know was that, in 1910, the ship was struck by a rogue 75-foot wave that damaged its bridge and forecastle. I also did not know that the wreckage was found as long ago as 1935. History is so cool.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Archaeology News:

Archaeologists working at Walīla, the medieval city built on the site of ancient Volubilis in Morocco, have identified a carved stone game board inside a public bathhouse dating to the early Islamic period. The find offers rare evidence of leisure activities in North Africa between the late eighth and tenth centuries CE. The board was carved into the upper step of a cold-water pool within a hammam constructed during the Idrisid period.

Researchers believe the design matches a strategy game known today as tāb or sīg, which is still played in parts of North Africa and the Middle East. If this interpretation is correct, the board represents the earliest known evidence of the game in North Africa. Board games appear often in medieval Arabic literature, showing their place in daily life. Archaeological evidence for gaming in early Islamic societies has received far less attention. One reason is that most carved game boards are difficult to date. Many were etched onto buildings and pavements used for centuries, making their age uncertain.

The question I have: Have they also found small stone carvings of top hats and little shoes? And if anyone wants to carve a giant Monopoly board onto the side of the JPMorgan Chase headquarters, I’m all in for that.

Hey, SciNews, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Kryptohadros kallaiae roamed our planet during the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period, about 70 million years. This dinosaur was a type of hadrosauroid, which is a group of herbivorous ornithischians that included the famous duck-billed dinosaurs and their close relatives. … The skeleton of Kryptohadros kallaiae is partial, comprising a skull, rib fragments, tail vertebrae and a partial hindlimb. Yet even this fragmentary material was enough to distinguish the new species from every other known dinosaurs, most importantly from Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus, the duck-billed dinosaur with which it had been confused for over a century. The discovery shows that at least two closely related duck-billed dinosaurs inhabited the region during the Late Cretaceous.

This latest dino was found in the Carpathians. I wonder if someone notified Frau Blücher (horses whinny).

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people, and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the victims and their families of the shootings in Wilmington, Delaware, and Kansas City, and for the families and victims of the mass shooting in Midland, Texas, and for the brilliant journalists of The Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and for all the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornadoes in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, a particularly brutal flu, and the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Harlem, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.