Ad Orientem

It's time to talk about the 25th amendment.

2026-04-13T18:27:00.005-04:00

Donald Trump attacks the pope online. He claims that it was he (Trump) who got the pope elected. And then he posts an image of himself as Jesus Christ.

Mr. Trump is a pathological liar. He is the most corrupt and incompetent president in US history. He appears to be functionally illiterate. His behavior is becoming more erratic by the day. And yes, he has the nuclear launch codes.

It's time for the country to have an adult conversation about a man who is, on top of all of his other "issues," very probably mentally ill.

Hungarian Strongman Victor Orban Concedes Election

2026-04-12T15:56:00.003-04:00

After sixteen years in power, the pro-Kremlin ruler was ousted in parliamentary elections.

Christ is Risen!

2026-04-12T15:51:00.002-04:00

Reports: Pentagon officials menaced Vatican envoy over papal criticism

2026-04-09T14:54:00.001-04:00

Briefly interrupting a blog break for Holy Week to report a potentially significant development in relations between the Catholic Church and the Trump Administration.

I'm not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, as of this post the big boys in the press/media world are not reporting on the alleged incident. However, it is getting widespread coverage in what might be called the second tier of the press. Clearly there was a meeting. Why would the Vatican's envoy be summoned to the Pentagon? The Pentagon says the meeting was respectful but have offered no other details. Some reports have gone so far as to claim that the Pope has indefinitely postponed a planned trip to the US. Conspicuously, the Holy See is thus far keeping quiet.

Hmm...

Meanwhile, the Democrats...

2026-04-01T15:02:00.001-04:00

In California Democrats could lock themselves out of the ballot for the governor's race.

And in New York, they are playing dirty in the governor's race.

Ten Years Ago Donald Trump Promised to Eliminate the National Debt. It Has Doubled.

2026-03-31T19:44:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago today, Donald Trump said he would pay off the national debt in the span of just eight years.

That did not happen. Instead, the gross national debt has doubled since that day—from about $19 trillion to over $39 trillion. Much of that additional borrowing has taken place during Trump's five-plus years in the White House.

The gap between Trump's outlandish promise and the brutal fiscal reality of the past decade is not just a political gotcha. It's also an apt illustration of how far and how fast the debt has spiraled. And it's a painful reminder of a missed opportunity that Americans will be facing for a long, long time. The bill for these 10 years of fiscal profligacy will be coming due long after Trump has finally departed from the political scene.

But it's a story that starts, as everything in politics seems to these days, with Trump.

Read the rest here.

Trump is trying to play dictator with the elections

2026-03-31T19:40:00.003-04:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, a move that swiftly drew legal threats from state Democratic officials as the president demands further limitations on voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

The order, which voting law experts say violates the Constitution by attempting to seize the power to run elections from states, is the latest in a torrent of efforts from Trump to interfere with the way Americans vote based on his false allegations of fraud.

It calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state, according to the text of the executive order released Tuesday. It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list, although the president likely lacks the power to mandate what the Postal Service does.

Read the rest here.

The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree

2026-03-31T19:28:00.001-04:00

The Constitution grants sweeping pardon powers to the president, which means that public opinion has historically been the only check on that power. The risk of a backlash is the reason that presidents have waited until their last days in office to issue many pardons and commutations, especially dubious ones to family members (like Hunter Biden) or political allies (like Caspar W. Weinberger, whom George H.W. Bush pardoned). The potential for a backlash also made presidents cautious about the number of pardons they issued. They understood that there could be an outcry if somebody who received a pardon later committed a new crime. The pardon system has also relied on the decency of American presidents.

President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them. It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as “flood the zone”: Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences.

He has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts. Among those on whom he has bestowed freedom are dozens of people convicted of fraud. He has also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, who helped traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, and Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for running Silk Road, a sprawling criminal enterprise that sold drugs. There seems to be no crime too ugly for a Trump pardon.

Read the rest here.

The Economic Implications of Trump's War

2026-03-28T13:01:00.002-04:00

This is one of the best explanations I have seen for what is going on, and what might be coming down the road.

After a long and cold winter, hints of spring for conservative Catholics

2026-03-27T17:30:00.002-04:00

The excellent, and often well informed Traditionalist Catholic blog Rorate Caeli has a summary of recent moves by Pope Leo XIV in the Roman Curia. Reading the tea leaves Rorate appears to be fairly optimistic, characterizing developments as "A Return to Normalcy and Competence."

Read their report here.

Obviously, what goes on in the Catholic Church is to a certain degree not our business. On the other hand the spread of modernist nuttery within the one bastion of Western Christianity that had, ante-Francis largely resisted this malignancy, cannot be viewed as anything other than an alarming development. While I am reserving judgement on Leo, I remain hopeful that he will curb the more dangerous doctrinal and disciplinary strains of the Franciscan era.

Alarming news from Finland

2026-03-27T12:33:00.007-04:00

The Supreme Court of Finland on Thursday (March 26) found a former government minister guilty of “hate speech” for her biblical views on marriage following two prior acquittals by lower courts.

In a 3-2 decision, the court ruled against Päivi Räsänen for expressing her beliefs on marriage and sexual ethics in a 20-year-old church pamphlet. The court also criminally convicted Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing the 2004 pamphlet, according to legal rights group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.

The court levied fines of several thousand euros on both Räsänen and Pohjola and ordered the removal and destruction of the impugned statements. Räsänen has been sentenced to a fine equivalent to 20 days’ wages (in her case, 1,800 euros) and she will also have to pay her own legal costs, according to Evangelical Focus. Pohjola was also given a 20-day fine, and his publishing house, Finnish Lutheran Foundation, must pay a fine of 5,000 euros.

The convictions were based on “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group,” the court ruled.

Read the rest here.

cf: This

On a positive note; summer is coming

2026-03-27T12:23:00.003-04:00

From here.

At CPAC a Generational Divide Over Iran

2026-03-27T11:22:00.004-04:00

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — A generational divide over the Iran war surfaced Thursday between older attendees and their political heirs at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, as the group’s leaders pleaded for unity in a challenging midterm election year for Republicans.

Younger conservatives spoke of disappointment and even “betrayal” over President Donald Trump’s launch of strikes against Iran, saying in interviews with The Associated Press that the president’s actions run counter to his many pledges to oppose foreign entanglements.

Meanwhile, older conservatives were looking past Trump’s campaign criticism of military action to topple foreign regimes, arguing the war in Iran is a pragmatic act forced by threats to the United States.

The bright dividing line emerged in conversations with a dozen participants on either end of the age spectrum who gathered for the annual meeting of conservatives, being held outside Dallas. That split could reflect flagging enthusiasm for Trump among some younger voters, a potentially troubling sign for Republicans heading into midterm elections and for the conservative movement as it looks to build beyond Trump’s tenure.

“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America-first policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” said Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”

Read the rest here.

Illegal Immigration and Crime

2026-03-27T11:05:00.004-04:00

What the stats actually say.

US Shipbuilding and the Jones Act

2026-03-27T10:52:00.002-04:00

Last month, I had the chance to sit down with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for a piece on the moribund state of US commercial shipbuilding. That story, “Turning the Ship Around,” aired last weekend, and having now seen it, I’d like to offer a few thoughts.

The segment opens with Stahl describing the US commercial shipbuilding industry as “nearly extinct.” The numbers back her up. As she points out, US shipyards produce around three ships per year. That’s less than what South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha produces in a month. But even that may be too charitable. Three is the US average over the last 25 years. This decade, US shipyards are on track to average roughly one per year.

But that’s just oceangoing cargo ships. Widening the aperture to include other vessel types does little to improve the picture. The most recent data show that the United States, the world’s second-largest manufacturing country, accounts for just 0.04 percent of global commercial shipbuilding output—good enough for 19th place. Over the past decade, the US has averaged 0.24 percent of global output. And it’s trending down.

South Korean firm Hanwha, however, says it will reverse the matter. According to the CEO of its Philly Shipyard, which the company purchased in 2024 for $100 million, the yard is set to transform into a 21st-century enterprise...

Read the rest here.

A war of regression: How Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran

2026-03-27T10:31:00.008-04:00

Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m a day, Washington is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.

Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way the US demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, Washington is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow, with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq.

This regression is proving to be perplexing for the American high command. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, recently said that “the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping”, but this was not quite right. Iran has not been shooting at shipping that much in recent weeks. Instead, it is the fear of Iran shooting at shipping that is scaring off insurers and tanker owners.

Still worse from the US perspective, Iran has set up a waterside stall whereby prime ministers and tanker owners can bargain with the Iranian navy over the toll they are willing to pay for their tankers to be given “free passage”. Iran plans to turn the strait into a money spinner, just as Egypt charges for access to the Suez canal. By some calculations, given the massive scale of the traffic that passes through the strait each year, Iran could raise $80bn a year. If a law currently being rushed through the Iranian parliament passes, tankers carrying oil from favoured non-hostile nations such as India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and China will be waved through or offered cheaper rates.

Little wonder Trump is thrashing around. The US along with Israel continues to bomb Iran, but he has now twice put back the date of threatened strikes on Iran’s civilian power stations – an action that would constitute a war crime. He continues to insist Iran has been defeated and yet Iran continues to behave as if it is not.

Read the rest here.

Trump 24-karat gold coin approved by hand-picked federal panel

2026-03-24T16:35:00.003-04:00

A commemorative gold coin bearing the image of US President Donald Trump has been approved by a federal arts commission.

The 24-karat gold coin is intended to mark America's 250th birthday this 4 July and portrays Trump with his fists pressed against a desk.

After a presentation by the US Mint, the US Commission of Fine Arts voted unanimously to approve the design, despite questions over its legality.

Federal law does not allow a living president to appear on US currency. But the coin is being issued in accordance with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's authority and discretion to mint and issue proof gold coins.

Bessent is expected to order the coin to be struck once the US Mint produces final dimensions.

The commission's vice-chairman, James McCrery, said: "I motion to approve this [coin] as presented, and with the strong encouragement that you make it as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter."

For comparison, a US quarter dollar is less than an inch wide. Trump last year fired the Commission of Fine Arts' members, replacing them with allies.

Read the rest here.

The Shocking State of Britain's Navy 2026

2026-03-22T13:29:36.662-04:00

Underestimating the Potential Energy Shock

2026-03-19T17:48:00.000-04:00

It is hard to decide which is the bigger disaster: the unfolding car crash in the global gas market or the mounting danger that entire countries will run out of oil.

The benchmark TTF contract for gas in Europe was €29 (£25) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in mid-February. Bank of America says it could reach €500 this winter if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for 10 weeks, as it may well do.

That would blow through the record high seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amount to a full-blown economic emergency for Europe, the UK, Japan, South Korea and South Asia.

The picture is dramatically worse after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, adding upstream gas and oil infrastructure to the menu of targets on both sides of the Gulf.

Iran’s missile retaliation on Qatar’s Ras Laffan has inflicted serious damage to the giant complex, which alone produces a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).

It will be months before shipments start again. Qatar Energy says 17pc of production is lost for three to five years. It will have to declare force majeure on LNG supplies to Italy, Korea, China and Belgium.

It is just as bad for oil. The paper market that we all follow does not capture the drama. Physical deliveries are under far greater stress than Brent futures, at about $113, would suggest.

Actual barrels of the Dubai basket and Oman’s Murban are fetching close to $170 a barrel as Asian refiners scramble to buy anything they can. Jet fuel deliveries have hit $210 in Rotterdam and $240 in Singapore.

Kurt Barrow, the vice-president of oil at S&P Global Energy, says it may become physically impossible to obtain supplies. “If the Strait stays closed for two months, you’ll have plants without feedstock and we’ll get real rationing. We’ll have panic buying and hoarding,” he said.

“This is the largest supply disruption ever. Net, we’re around 15 million barrels a day (b/d) short in the market. Crude gets the headline but the actual impact is further downstream in refined products, diesel, jet, fuel or naphtha. There are 68 refineries in the war zone.”

Read the rest here.

Wealth Taxes & Flight... It's Complicated

2026-03-19T15:41:00.000-04:00

This is a very good examination of a hot button topic.

Early Color Film Footage from the 1930s Including Pan Am Flying Boats

2026-03-19T14:45:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile...

2026-03-18T14:18:00.000-04:00

Trump threatens to cut off HIV medication to Zambia unless they cede mineral rights to the US

Trump says he thinks he will have the ‘honor’ of ‘taking Cuba’

Two from CATO

2026-03-17T18:20:00.000-04:00

5 Reasons the US Should Not Spend Another Penny on the War with Iran

FCC Threats and the Fog of War: The Government Cannot Be the Arbiter of Truth

Quote of the day...

2026-03-17T17:27:00.003-04:00

“You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.”

- US Federal District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi to the US Prosecutor 3/16/2026

Anarchists, Political Violence, and Legal Isonomia

2026-03-17T17:05:00.000-04:00

The anarchist as a figure in crime is distinct. His goals are not financial, and the terrorist acts committed under the heading of anarchism have ranged from assassinations of public figures to bombings of random civilians. He has also slid far enough into history to seem quaint, or vaguely romantic, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century.

The anarchist “movement” (if we could apply such a concept to a decentralized group) was the beginning of modern global terrorism. The idea that killing, bombing, were a tactic to bring adversaries to the negotiating table, in the age of mass media, was a novel concept, in the late nineteenth century. It would be a model followed by various political sects to come. But anarchists did not want negotiations.

Their nihilism marks them out against groups like the Fenians (roughly contemporary, and operating mostly in Britain, with some activities in North America), who had a clear political goal. The Fenians wanted Ireland to be independent from Britain. Whether one agreed with their tactics, the motive was coherent (if alarming to the British authorities).

Meanwhile, the anarchists (unlike socialists) tended to offer vague ideals as their results. They did not participate in elections or seek to gain support through normal political means. “Burn it all down” was their message. One that was resonant for disaffected young men - as it always has been. There’s a reason terrorist groups and street gangs alike all recruit from this particular demographic.

Read the rest here.