The dirty truth.

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Friday to alter the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, reverting to the agency’s former namesake, Fox News Digital has learned. Both Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have recently indicated they want to change the name of the agency. It […]

Ben's starting to get the hang of 'Battlefield 6'

I Went to Prison So You Won’t Have To By Peter Navarro Skyhorse Publishing, 384 pages, $32.99 It’s absurd, bordering on hilarious, to watch the Left, personified by morons like Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson or temporary Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, screech about the efforts by the Trump administration to return law and order to city streets their party wilfully abandoned to criminals. Even the “intellectual” set among the Democrat Party is in on the action, caterwauling about supposed “fascism” as President Trump mulls the use of National Guardsmen to enforce the rule of law on cities like Chicago and New Orleans, following a wildly successful application of force to put a stop to the pre-existing mayhem in Washington, D.C. (RELATED: ‘Fascist’ Is the Dumbest Political Insult in the World Today) These people don’t have a leg to stand on. And we don’t have to listen to their bad-faith preenings about Trump’s executive overreach. (RELATED: The Eisenhower Precedent: Is Trump Justified in Deploying the National Guard to Chicago?) Not after what they put us through for the four years of the Biden administration. Case in point: Peter Navarro, and what he had to endure at the hands of these rotten bastards. Navarro’s new book, I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To, isn’t just a prison diary; it’s a constitutional brief wrapped in a love story and a battle plan. Above all, it’s a case study in how “lawfare” erodes the separation of powers by hollowing out executive privilege — which is one of the safeguards we at The American Spectator have defended since the founding of this august publication. (RELATED: James Comey Warns GOP — For Something Dems Did?) Navarro’s narrative, complete with a foreword from Stephen K. Bannon, traces the arc he experienced from subpoena to strip search to a razor-wired yard — while arguing that if the Bennie Thompsons and Adam Schiffs of Capitol Hill can force senior presidential advisers to testify about their work for a president, the presidency itself is diminished. (RELATED: Leaking From Anti-Trumpers, It’s as Shocking as Gambling in Casablanca) As is the very law and order, they’re not-so-quietly insulting as they whine about its imposition in the cities they control. The book’s first contribution is evidentiary. In an on-the-record press conference delivered before he reported to FCI Miami recounted in I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To, Navarro lays out the constitutional issues: the historic treatment of senior White House advisers as the president’s “alter egos,” the presumptive protection of presidential decision-making, and the need for candid deliberation unchilled by compulsory congressional interrogation. Navarro casts his prosecution as a first-of-its-kind break with longstanding Department of Justice practice. Whether readers agree with every inference, the record he recites — and includes at length — matters. His second contribution is doctrinal. Congress, he contends, sought to punish where it is only empowered to legislate. In fighting his battle, Navarro marshaled Office of Legal Counsel opinions, the Kellyanne Conway testimonial-immunity episode, and the long history of executive communications privilege — from Washington’s Jay Treaty letter to modern OLC analyses — to argue Congress cannot compel senior advisers to testify about their official duties without obliterating the executive function. Navarro’s account of the J6 Committee’s composition, mandate, and methods strongly carries an important theme: Congress, he contends, sought to punish where it is only empowered to legislate. Again, readers can test the argument against primary sources — Navarro quotes them, footnotes them, and stitches them into a coherent legal theory. (RELATED: Jack Smith Shamelessly Withholds Evidence) Which Democrats perhaps should read and memorize, in the event that the current Republican majority on the Hill decides to play the same game the former majority did with Navarro and Bannon. What makes I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To distinctive for readers of this column is its insistence that process is substance. Navarro is most persuasive when he exposes the unintended consequences of procedural shortcuts: an appeals panel drawing that raises eyebrows; the refusal, in his telling, to pursue the “less burdensome alternative” of negotiating privilege questions with the former president; and the now-familiar practice of criminalizing interbranch disputes rather than resolving them in the “hurly-burly” of politics. Mar-A-Lago raid, anyone? Whether you view these as cumulative irregularities or as routine D.C. hardball, the episode is a warning: executive privilege atrophies not in grand precedents but in a thousand skirmishes. The prison chapters — often funny, sometimes harrowing — are not digressions. They translate abstract constitutional stakes into lived consequences. Navarro describes the Potemkin cleanup before his arrival, commissary price gouging he says functions as an inmate tax, and the Special Investigative Squad raids that smashed fixtures and morale. You do not have to share his politics to feel the absurdity when a prison dentist recommends Walgreens for sunscreen — “Yeah, Doc, but how do I do that? I’m in prison.” The tonal shift — from theory to gallows humor — keeps the book readable and human. For American Spectator readers familiar with Humphrey’s Executor and separation-of-powers jurisprudence, the book raises three questions you’ll want to debate: (1) Is testimonial immunity for senior aides constitutionally required — or a prudential executive construction? (2) When Congress wields subpoenas against executive officials, where is the line between oversight and punishment? (3) If a sitting president can nullify a predecessor’s privilege assertion, what remains of confidential presidential deliberation? Navarro answers all three in the direction of robust executive privilege; critics will counter with oversight necessity. The book’s merit is that it gives you the record and the vocabulary to argue either side. I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To is thus not only a gripping memoir, but also a constitutional warning shot. It chronicles not just one man’s prosecution but a structural temptation: use criminal process to replay political fights. In an age when “checks and balances” are invoked reflexively, Navarro reminds readers that checks without boundaries are not balances at all. However you assess his case, you’ll close the book convinced that the healthier path runs through negotiated accommodations, not indictments — and that the doctrine of executive privilege, rightly understood, protects not a man but a branch. Of course, this might not be a very persuasive argument in modern times. After all, we now have a Democrat Party that prefers to be solicitous of street criminals and Venezuelan dope dealers rather than calm negotiation with Donald Trump or any activist Republicans at all. The book nonetheless makes an argument for sanity along these lines, and a cogent one. For those reasons, I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To deserves an engaged, if sometimes even skeptical, reading by anyone who cares about the presidency as an institution. Or law and order as a concept. READ MORE from Scott McKay: They Don’t Really Want To Stand Behind Lisa Cook, Do They? Last Year It Was Kamala, This Year It’s… Arch Manning? Five Quick Things: A Glorious Revolution Across the Pond?

Lorne Michaels announced a major cast shakeup for the 51st season of Saturday Night Live. Michael Longfellow, Emil Wakim, Heidi Gardner, and Devon Walker head for the exits. And some equally anonymous comedians, to include Tommy Brennan, Ben Marshall, Jeremy Culhane, and Veronika Slowikowska, take their place. That four-out-the-door-replaced-by-four-more trade does not make for the shakeup. Kam Patterson does. Patterson looks like Eddie Murphy and sounds like Redd Foxx. Patterson arrives as the first Kill Tony golden ticket winner to join the Not Ready for Primetime Players. Patterson looks like Eddie Murphy and sounds like Redd Foxx. He is not the funniest Kill Tony alum. He does exude more star power (and that blindingly bright aura, rather than his physical appearance, is what really resembles a young Eddie Murphy) than any name to come out of Tony Hinchcliffe’s bucket. (RELATED: The Estonian ‘Killer’) And the biggest names in the history of Saturday Night Live — think Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Chris Farley — were usually not the funniest performers in their casts. They were the ones the cameras loved the most. This guy looks like a star. Beyond this, ratings dictated this unexpected yet “duh” move. Shane Gillis, not a Kill Tony creation but certainly in its orbit, jacked up the ratings in his appearances on the program in recent years. It made sense to snatch someone from that same world of comedians who pull a crowd without the benefit of television or mainstream media attention. (RELATED: Shane Gillis Made SNL About Funny — And Progressives Hate Him for It) Johnny Carson once acted as the gatekeeper for stand-up comedians. And Lorne Michaels once mined improvisational talent from The Groundlings and Second City. (RELATED: Politically Incorrect Comedy Still Survives) Patterson gained a following through a more democratic venue: YouTube. Kill Tony, a sort of samizdat showcase for comedians without filter, paradoxically gained popularity as cancel culture gained power. Tony Hinchcliffe, who you may recall from jokes about Puerto Rico being a garbage dump and immigrants eating cats at a Trump rally last fall, randomly (supposedly) picks from a pool of aspiring comedians. The rules give them about a minute to “kill” — i.e., induce hysterical laughter — Tony. (RELATED: In Defense of Tony Hinchcliffe) Most fail to do so in this Gong Show meets American Idol meets Make Me Laugh internet phenomenon. And laughs, if not the intentional ones sought by the wannabes, often greet the failures, too. Patterson — and Ari Matti, Fiona Cauley, and David Lucas, to name a few — succeeded. Every few weeks, some unknown comic becomes as famous as the Unknown Comic. Anything goes. Whites joke about Asians. Asians joke about blacks. A handicapped guy jokes about Big Bird. And this Belgian guy jokes about himself. Audiences flock to all that and not the bowling-bumpers-up, boring comedy of late-night television. And now, finally, Saturday Night Live acknowledges that audiences increasingly flock to — shhhh — Kill Tony for laughs. SNL infamously fired Shane Gillis for past edgy humor before he ever appeared on the program. He became more successful than anyone on the show in recent years. Although cops in the United Kingdom recently detained comedian Graham Linehan for trans tweets, that cancel-culture, hall-monitor mentality no longer prevails in the United States. So, SNL did not hire Patterson to fire Patterson. But it occasionally buries very funny people (Gilbert Gottfried and Sarah Silverman come to mind) by limiting their time in sketches. That would be stupid to do to Patterson. But so much that makes it to air on SNL is stupid and politically motivated. A new audience likely joins the dwindling one to watch Patterson. If they Gilbert Gottfried Kam Patterson, then that new audience soon dwindles, too. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: Marc Maron, Chief of the Joke Police Finding the Lost Papers of the Conservative Movement One Nobelist Attacks Two Nobelists As Racists

Trump wants to send the National Guard into a city out of control, with anarchists setting fire to cars, smashing store windows, setting fires everywhere, and local judges supplied with stacks of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. In the past, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson sent in the National Guard and were praised as civil rights heroes. It goes to the courts because the city mayors and state governors do not want crime controlled if the images of their cities and states on fire will make Trump look weak. So they look for an Obama or Biden judge, like in Boston. The judges rule: Illegal! Unconstitutional! Fascist! (RELATED: The Eisenhower Precedent: Is Trump Justified in Deploying the National Guard to Chicago?) He wants to impose tariffs. For decades since World War II, the whole world has played America for suckers and tariffed us. One-way tariffs. And tariffs come in many forms, some overt and some subtle. For example, a country may not compel an American manufacturer to pay a tariff surcharge outright but instead limit the amount of products it may sell abroad. Or it may force the Americans to take in a local partner to share in the profits. Or it may tinker with their local currency, making their products cheaper and ours more expensive. Or they may impose California-like restrictions on the products that make the American product non-compliant with that country’s cockamamie “environmental” rules. So Trump finally straightens out the playing field. He imposes tariffs. The experts warned that Trump’s tariffs would cause prices to explode, setting off an unstoppable inflation. Foreign companies would increase their prices, forcing American consumers essentially to pay their tariffs for them. American companies would take advantage of those foreign price increases by increasing their own prices just to profit more. All a fair guess. But that has not happened so far. It turns out that the foreign companies have been cheating us so badly for so long that, even with the tariffs, they make plenty of profit and don’t want to upset the apple cart. So we have not had mega inflation so far anyway, but it turns out that the new tariffs will be bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into America’s coffers over the next decade, like a trillion. (RELATED: New Study Shows Trump Might Be Right on Tariffs) Of course, if this great development came from Trump, it was going to be challenged in court before a hand-picked Obama judge or a newer Biden judge, ideally in Boston if not in San Francisco or thereabouts. Judgment rendered: Illegal! Unconstitutional! Fascist! (RELATED: Shooting Blanks From the Bench) He hits racist and antisemitic universities, steeped in DEI and tricks to camouflage their DEI, and steeped in antisemitism and tricks to cover their antisemitism. He withholds federal grants, demands compliance with civil rights laws. They go to court and file before a Biden or Obama judge, ideally in Boston or San Francisco or thereabouts. The honorable judges contemplate and render judgment: Illegal! Unconstitutional! Fascist! (RELATED: DOJ Targets GWU, UCLA, Settles With Columbia and Brown for Antisemitism Claims) Twice a week, or thrice — sometimes even quadrice — the day’s news includes a report of some Trump initiative stopped temporarily by a judge finding that his executive order is Illegal! Unconstitutional! Fascist! This goes on and on and on. He tries to deport illegal aliens. The law explicitly says they do not belong here and may — and should — be expelled unless they follow specific steps aimed at proving to an immigration judge that they truly face persecution specifically based on one of five specific categories: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Poverty is not enough. Being in a crime-ridden country, dominated by drug lords, does not fall into the list. The Democrats and their allies go to an Obama-Biden judge, the judge studies the matter, and rules: Illegal! Unconstitutional! Fascist! Twice a week, or thrice — sometimes even quadrice — the day’s news includes a report of some Trump initiative stopped temporarily by a judge finding that his executive order is Illegal! Unconstitutional! Fascist! It is crazy. The deeper shame of it is that a democracy depends on law and order, and on justice and equity (not “DEI Equity” but real equity of justice). It is a foundation of all civilization. The Bible commands it in an extraordinary linguistic format: “Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof — Justice, Justice, Shall You Pursue.” Deuteronomy 16:20. The Bible expands and expounds: “You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that your G-d is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just.” Id. 16:18-19. Maybe it always has been this way, with judges (except for Sotomayor and Jackson) knowing the actual law very well but choosing, nevertheless, to contort the straightforward law into their personal value system. One can look back over the years and see that judges leaned as they did. The difference back then was — or seemingly was — that judges did their best to fit their predispositions into the law as it truly was. They pushed envelopes and their personal preferences came out, but there may have been a bit of honesty, too, where a judge essentially would say, “I know how I personally come out on this one, and I wish so hard I could rule my way. But, doggone it, the law is so clear to me that it goes the other way that I am stuck ruling against my preferences.” I see that sometimes in Justice Amy Coney Barrett — even in Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — who sometimes frustrate me enormously, and they obviously frustrate President Trump a million times more, but they seem to be trying to be truly honest and call it as it is.  Fortunately, after some initially bumpy Barrett opinions, we are beginning to see that she fundamentally is a deep conservative and usually reads the law as conservatives typically do. By contrast, Sotomayor and Jackson are not of that ilk. They are fakers. (RELATED: Bolts From the Blue: Thomas Sowell and the Court) Jackson is an outright cheater and liar. Come on, that’s not a political insult; it’s just what it is. She was asked to define the difference between a man and a woman, and she said she could not. She obviously was lying shamelessly in public. How was that not a lie? Biden named her because she was a woman and Black. Come on, everyone — on both sides — knows that. Of course, she knows what a woman is and how that differs from a man. But she lied in public, brazenly, and she then began a public career of lying on matters of the law. She sees a case, decides the DEI/Woke angle, and she barely even tries to make her opinion sound like she is basing it on precedent. Both she and Sotomayor are like that. I have often written in the past on these pages that Sotomayor’s academic record in law school was pathetic. She was not among the “Best and the Brightest” of our judiciary. This is not taking a potshot. It simply is. Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard — an over-the-top woke leftist — wrote that in a letter to Obama: “Bluntly put, she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is.” Case closed. So we come back to the regular weekly, daily reports of Obama Judges, Biden Judges, and sometimes a Clinton Judge slamming down a Trump initiative as Illegal! Unconstitutional! Fascist! Whenever you read that Trump’s executive order has been stopped, copy and paste the judge’s name in the “news” article, and then Google that name with the word “Wikipedia” added (e.g., “Allison D. Burroughs Wikipedia”). Go into the judge’s Wikipedia page and scroll down to the section titled “Federal Judicial Service.” (The same section appears for all federal judges.) And there you will see something like: “On July 31, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Burroughs to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.” That’s all you need to know. Either the Obama Judge’s ruling will be reversed in three to six months by the circuit court of appeals or in six to nine months by the U.S. Supreme Court. It happens over and over again. It is a game. It slows down the change the American people voted for, but as long as Trump acts fast and issues scores and scores of executive orders in his first months, the agenda will have smooth sailing for the next three years. The real trick will be to elect a MAGA successor for the next two terms, as happened when Ronald Reagan won two straight terms and then First Bush a term. It takes a dozen years — three consecutive terms — to clean up the mess, but that also means holding the Senate and being smart. Rule wisely. No “bridges to nowhere.” Keep the border tight. Keep the economy humming. Keep the social revolution on track with a return to normalcy, an end to government funding of “gender affirming care,” and teaching radical woke theory and sexual perversity to kids in school. Bush blew it, but Republicans today would not as readily nominate a McCain-Romney RINO as successor. There are so many good choices out there: JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, many others. We have never had a bench like this, just in case there is no Trump 28. We know what the lower court Obama-Biden Judges would say to that, but… READ MORE from Dov Fischer: So Let’s Say Israel Agrees to Full Withdrawal and All Hamas’s Demands A Guide to Socialism for Ivy League Transgender Climate Racial Studies Majors Tucker and Candace Put America Second — and Their Hate First Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. To be invited to attend his three weekly Zoom classes, send a request to rabbi@yioc.org.

by Michael Snyder, End Of The American Dream: A very dangerous geopolitical chess match is playing out right in front of our eyes.  As I discussed yesterday, France and Saudi Arabia will co-chair “the Conference on the Two-State Solution” at the United Nations on September 22nd.  The goal of this conference is to create an unstoppable […]

by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute: “The world will soon understand nothing can stop what is coming.”—President Trump Donald Trump has always been a master of imagery. From his red MAGA hats to his choreographed rallies, he understands the language of spectacle. Now he has discovered the perfect propaganda machine: AI-generated images. AI allows the creation of […]