Sen. Cory Booker just finished talking for 25 hours and 5 minutes in the Senate. His theme was “I hate President Trump.” I confess, I heard 10 seconds of the speech and decided it was too stupid to listen to any more of it. The part I heard: “The President doesn’t seem to care about people who are shackled to debt!” What an astounding statement in a 25 hour rant that mostly focused on how heartless the DOGE effort to cut government waste and fraud is! Every single American is “shackled” to a $36 trillion (and growing) national debt that exploded under the last Democratic administration, and it can never be addressed as long as the attitude is “well, what’s the point of cutting just a few million (or billion) dollars?” The US pays $2.6 billion per day on interest payments for that debt and receives nothing for it

Booker began his filibuster—not to stop a bill, mind you, just to show how much his party hates Trump—by saying, “These are not normal times in our nation.” “Not normal” is one of the consultant-scripted talking points the Democrats have been using against Trump since the 2024 campaign. “And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.” Ah! The “threat to democracy” mantra from the party that inflicted a fake President and a selected-by-fiat Presidential candidate on the nation! Later, Booker used the “Constitutional crisis” cliché, without explaining exactly what it was in the Constitution his party is concerned about.

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This poster is a Harvard grad, a smart, sensitive, rational man, and a theater professional.

But look at that thing. France’s ruling party just used lawfare to ban the conservative politician polls say would be likely to win the next election. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far right, was barred from running for public office for five years following a court ruling that she “played a central role” in allowing her party to embezzle millions of euros of European Union funds. The court found that the party used European Parliament money to pay assistants to National Front members of the body for work that was unrelated to E.U. business.

That’s embezzlement in France? I wonder what they would call all of the misdirected funds DOGE has been finding. Anyway, Le Pen denies wrongdoing and says this is a politically motivated prosecution. I haven’t see the evidence, but the timing sure is suspicious. “Ms. Le Pen and the National Rally could also paint the verdict as a threat against a popular politician and party, and French democracy itself,” the Times observes. Why yes, I’d say that’s a significant possibility.

Note how the Facebook poster approves of using courts to remove political opposition, and how “rule of law’ is rapidly joining “racism,” “fascism,” “autocracy” and “white supremacy” as formerly meaningful terms that the Left has rendered meaningless by overuse. The “rule of law” was distorted beyond recognition in every one of the cases brought against Trump last year, including the non-rape conviction and the redundant “felonies” Trump was found guilty of committing in New York despite no harm being proved to any of the “victims.” Then there was the classified documents case where Trump was being prosecuted while Joe Biden wasn’t (because he was too senile to be convicted, according to the special counsel), the contrived sort-of-insurrection case, and best of all, Fani Willis using the prosecution of Trump in Fulton County to support her fling with an adulterous lawyer. Rule of law!

As the cherry on top, my friend is certain that Trump really is plotting a third term, impossible though it is. Why does my previously sane, rational friend think this way? It is because he is now the equivalent of the hysterical woman who confronts Tippi Hedren in the worst moment of “The Birds”:

Last year constituted a zenith of sorts for the exposure of National Public Radio’s flagrant partisan bias and untrustworthy reporting. Ethics Alarms discussed the developments here, here, here, here and here, among other posts. Critical essays about PBS are more spread out and less numerous on Ethics Alarms, but the conclusions have been similar.

Way back in 2011 I asked, regarding PBS, “How can otherwise intelligent and honest people continue to plead that the national budget should be squeezed one more milli-micron to broadcast junk like this? How can anyone watch such programming and argue straight-faced that PBS isn’t aimed at a narrow demographic?” Of NPR I wrote, last year, “The only people who didn’t realize that NPR has been strongly biased leftward over the last, oh, two decades or more would be those who agree with that bias, so naturally think the taxpayer funded radio network is just ‘telling it as it is.’” Remember, I was a periodic “contributor” to NPR for several years until I was blackballed because a host felt that I was defending Donald Trump. Can’t have that on NPR!

If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting isn’t finally stripped of its federal funding after last week’s hearings, I don’t know what hope there is of carrying through on any of the DOGE cuts. The usual threshold argument for keeping the progressive indoctrination and propaganda efforts of NPR and PBS in the budget is that the outlets don’t get that much money, which is idiotic logic and pure rationalization, though we are also getting the same nonsense in defense of all of Musk’s targets. The money isn’t the real issue anyway. The issue is that PBS and NPR aren’t for “all Americans,” but only for the group of Americans Joe Biden didn’t accuse of being fascists—you know, progressives and Democrats, plus those who seem like promising targets to convince that the Left’s policies, leaders, and personalities are wonderful….by any means necessary.

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