Secretary Mattis responds to an interview request from a high-school student. The interview is worth reading and more informative than much of what appears in the adult press.
(via Lex)
Trump
Seth Barrett Tillman and Josh Blackman: Yes, Trump Can Accept Gifts
The NYT elevates itself by printing an op-ed by Professors Blackman and Tillman:
The Constitution offers several remedies for a president’s improper foreign entanglements. Congress can regulate, by statute, the receipt of presents from other nations or require the president to make disclosures about his foreign commercial arrangements. Of course, as a last resort, the president can be impeached and removed from office for bribery. However, the Foreign Emoluments Clause can provide no redress in relation to a president’s foreign entanglements either in the courts or through the impeachment process, for the simple reason that the clause does not cover the president or any other elected officials.
The piece is a concise presentation of Seth’s argument about the Emoluments clause. Worth reading in full.
Seth Barrett Tillman: A Response To Jane Chong’s Reading the Office of Legal Counsel on Emoluments: Do Super-Rich Presidents Get a Pass?
Once this error is noticed, the rest of Chong’s analysis falls apart. Chong can point to other language in Hoyt using “emolument of office.” It is there, and she takes it to mean that “emolument” can be used in a context unrelated to “office” and other employment-like relationships. But she offers nothing akin to proof for that bold claim. It is conceivable that the Hoyt Court added “of office” language to “emolument” because it believed that there were “emoluments” which were unrelated to office, but it is also possible that the Hoyt Court thought all “emoluments” were tied to office-and-employment-type relationships. Without her initial misreading of Hoyt or any other substantial reason to believe the former, the rest of her analysis makes no sense.
Seth Barrett Tillman: A Response to Fonzone & Geltzer’s Can President Trump Just Leave Key Executive Branch Offices Unfilled?
In a recent post on Lawfare, Christopher Fonzone and Joshua A. Geltzer ask the question: “Is the persistent and deliberate failure to identify candidates [for appointed federal positions] not merely a sign of inept governance and deadlocked politics but also, at least in certain cases, a legal failing as well?” Their answer is basically: yes. Their position is worth pondering. I do think several of their arguments do not work, and several others are not well supported.
On and Off Balance
Here we are, a couple of days past the middle of the year, and almost eight months after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency … and I swear that the lunacy has not died down in the slightest, but is now ratcheted up to eleven, or even twelve. (Gratuitous Spinal Tap reference.) The classical five stages of grief are supposed to be denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, but it’s clear at this point that the Hillary and Bernie partisans are stuck fast at the ‘anger’ stage and appear to be egging each other into higher, farther, deeper and more intense demonstrations of denial and anger. It’s almost … well, operatic. Like a spectacular ten-car pile-up on the interstate, one can’t even look away from the spectacle especially the spectacle of establishment news media personalities and institutions losing their freaking minds over Donald Trump.