Op-Ed from Zontar: when will party leaders atone?

Editors’ Note: With American democracy in the process of being demolished by a corrupt demented Russian-owned stooge and his angry sadistic Republican cadres, our media has focused on the real issue facing our polity, which is why Democrats need to atone for the 2024 campaign.  More particularly, they first were too slow to force into retirement a qualified honest leader with an impressive record of accomplishment, and then they had the nerve to nominate another qualified accomplished high-achieving candidate who happened to be a woman of color.  That's a lot to apologize for.

Just  a few examples of the pigpile:

That was the New York Times Editorial Page last week.  Auch Das Politico marschiert ein:

Here's Slate's take:

For Democrats, every day is Yom Kippur.

By amazing coincidence, the Spy Deep Space Desk just received a new transmission from the mysterious planet of Zontar, located in the Remulac galaxy millions of light years from Earth, where something vaguely similar seems to have happened millions of light years ago. As loyal readers will recall, Zontar is populated by a race of intelligent alien life forms whose communications may shed some light, however dim and distant, on the thought patterns of these bizarre creatures.  We present it to you translated from the Zontarian so that you can appreciate how strange and diverse are the beings who populate this universe and start contemplating how to bridge the cosmic divide between the way they think and the way we –  [OK, they get the setup – Ed.]

by Tess Harding
Zontarian Post Columnist

Every day brings new revelations of the Zemperor’s incompetence, criminality, and efforts to destroy the great Republic of Zontar. This torrent of disastrous news has led leading Zontarian commentators to predict that the Zenpublican Party will face an electoral catastrophe in the next election if Zenpublicans do not start apologizing for the catastrophic actions of their obviously deranged Zemperor Donald Z. Drumpf.

Zemperor Drumpf

Leading video deck personality Jake Zapper, continuing his 30-planet tour for his new book, has warned Zenpublicans that their continuing cover up of Drumpf’s obvious dementia will be a decisive issue in the 9f28 elections. “Zenpublicans are refusing to admit that Drumpf is in decline and unable to govern despite the evidence on display every day: his incoherent yo-yo’ing tariff policy, his illegal vendettas against law firms and universities he is mad at, his reliance on drug-addled billionaires, and his pardons of insurrectionists and garden-variety grifters,” Zapper said.

“For all these many omissions, Zenpublicans must atone and make amends if they have a hope of surviving the next election.”

Other leading commentators point out that Zenpublicans must confess the error of supporting Drumpf’s irrational actions which threaten hundreds of thousands of lives on Zontar and other planets.

Longtime Zenpublican consultant Zavid Azelrod said, “Zenpublicans have a lot of explaining to do to the American people. Why are they jeopardizing the health and safety of every family in the Zontar system by cutting medical research and replacing science with irrational nonsense spouted by a brainworm-demented drug addict like Bobby Zennedy?”

“Why are Zenpublicans trying to destroy the vibrant economy they inherited from Joe Ziden by imposing and lifting tariffs without any rational basis? Why are Zenpublicans on a crusade to kill American jobs by targeting America’s great universities with economic calamity? Why are Zenpublicans cutting food and health care for Zontarians to pay for tax cuts for the richest? Why are Zenpublicans trying to explode the deficit? Why are Zenpublicans undermining all efforts to prevent the calamity of galactic warming?” And I could go on,” Azelrod said.

Other Zenpublican pundits believe that their party must apologize for Drumpf’s assault on the Zontarian system of justice, once regarded as the pride of the galaxy. Longtime Zenpublican columnist Zennifer Zubin said, “Zenpublicans must take responsibility for Drumpf’s assault on the galactic rule of law. Pardoning the insurrectionists who tried to take over the Galactic Council chamber was unforgivable. Kidnapping immigrants and sending them on a one-way rocket to the Death Star with no hearing is contrary to all principles that Zenpublicans have long pretended to advocate.”

Even the normally staid New Zork Timez Editorial Board has called for Zenpublicans to apologize for failing to do anything about a multitude of Drumpf’s actions:

Galactic Council Zenpublicans must atone for their lack of oversight

Zenpublicans barely even pretend that Drumpf has the mental capacity to carry out the duties of Zemperor. From his bigoted dismissal of highly-qualified Fleet Commanders to appointing an incompetent alcoholic to lead the giant Department of Galactic Defense, Zemperor Drumpf has abandoned his duty to protect the security of our planetary system. His installation of obviously unqualified hacks, insurrectionists, and drunks to lead his Administration of Justice threatens the future of Zontar itself.

His irresponsible attacks on our vital allies in the Zurope system, and his tinny threats to conquer the ice planets of Zeenland and Zanada have only strengthened the Evil Empire and weakened Zontar.

His decision to allow a drug-demented billionaire to rampage through the Imperial Government and fire distinguished professionals in between snorts of Zadderall and Zetamine has subverted our beloved planets.

And every day brings new evidence of his unfitness, from his vidposts condemning judges who rule against his tyrannical acts, to his selling the wife of his Zombie Commander to the highest bidder like some modern-day Jabba the Hutt.  These indefensible acts deserve the condemnation of all thinking carbon-based Zenpublicans.

Sen. Zed Cruz sees nothing to worry about

Others in the media demand that Zenpublicans apologize for the rampant corruption of the Zemperor and his feckless children, Zonald and Zero. “The Zemperor’s family is making billions off of currency scams and straight up taking bribes from the families of convicted criminals and potentates from other planets who know that the Zemperor can be bought for nothing more than a tricked-out version of the Millenium Falcon,” said popular morning vidcast host Zo Zarborough. 

In a stirring editorial, the Journal of the Zontarian Medical Association told Zenpublicans “they must apologize for their relentless law on science and research that threatens to leave our galaxy vulnerable to future space-borne pandemics, not to mention zombie attacks.”  In response, Zemperor Trumpf issued an Imperial Order cutting off all contact with the Journal and giving all Journal subscribers cooties.

But some Zenpublican loyalists insist that the current furor is overblown and that most Zontarians have gotten used to their Zemperor’s forceful, rash, colorful, and outspoken ways. Said Galactic Communication Overload Zupert Zurdoch, “They’ll believe what I tell them to believe. Even though I’m 193 years old.”

So far Zenpublicans in the Galactic Council, whether from fear, stupidity, or avarice, have continued to stand by their Zemperor. Asked to respond to the calls for Zenpublicans to apologize for Drumpf’s conduct, Sen. Zed Cruz said from his beachside tiki hut on the Mezican Coast, “I see nothing. Nothing.”

Harvard to America: So long, it's been good to know you

By Yard Correspondent Larry Lowell with Canadian Correspondent Ramona Flowers

Next week as they have for the past 373 years, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, joined by the Sheriff of Middlesex County on his white charger, will celebrate Commencement.

The graduates and their families will celebrate their newfound status,  thousands of alumni will mill about trying to look like they belong, or at least remember where they are, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will address the assembled great and good.

It's usually a festive occasion but this year the joy of those involved may be tempered by the realization that unless things change, it may well be the University's last Commencement.

Not content to illegally cut off billions of federal grants to University researchers, the Trump Regime has announced that it has lawlessly terminated the ability of all of Harvard's constituent schools to enroll, and cash tuition checks from, students outside the United States.

As Harvard Magazine reports:

There were 6,793 international students enrolled at Harvard during the 2024-2025 academic year, representing 27.3 percent of the student body. The tuition and other student charges they pay are an important source of income for the University. In fiscal year 2024, student-related income (such as tuition, room, and board fees, minus University-provided financial aid) was about $1.4 billion, representing approximately 21 percent of Harvard’s total operating revenue. International students typically pay closer to the full cost of a Harvard education than students from the United States. 

Halifax has a lovely harbor [That's not Halifax – R.F.]

The ostensible excuse for terminating with immediate effect the University's ability to enroll foreign students was a hysterical word salad of overblown threats, ranging from antisemitism to supposed collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party to taking puppies out behind Harvard Stadium and shooting them (oh wait, that was Kristi).

More particularly, Harvard had the nerve to resist unlawful demands to turn over virtually all records relating to international students in violation of federal privacy and other law.  The obvious point of the records request is to give DHS's body-snatchers a road map to seizing foreign students off the streets of Cambridge as they did with now-freed Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk.  Even Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, who previously told us all to chill out because the courts will protect us, condemned the DHS special action.

Right now Harvard is fighting, filing a banger of a complaint to stop Kristi Noem from doing to the University what she did to her dog.  The lawsuit was immediately described by some juvenile Pol Potbelly cadre as “frivolous.” 

The Federal Court disagreed.   It took all of three hours to persuade Federal Judge Allison Burroughs to stop Kristi even before she could load her shotgun with arguments like this:

Yesterday, the government [revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students] via a letter that makes plain that DHS is not even pretending to follow its own regulations, either as to process or as to substance. Instead, DHS all but announced that the revocation is blatantly in retaliation for Harvard’s exercise of its academic freedom. Revoking Harvard’s certification is unlawful many times over. It is a pillar of our constitutional system that the government cannot “invok[e] legal sanctions and other means of coercion” to police private speech, especially when the government’s treatment is animated by viewpoint discrimination....The government’s effort to punish the University for its refusal to surrender its academic independence and for its perceived viewpoint is a patent violation of the First Amendment.

Motion for TRO at 10, President and Fellows of Harvard College v. DHS (May 23, 2025, No. 25-cv-11472)

But even if honest judges stop the latest outrage cold (subject of course to the delicate sensibilities of the six bent Republican Supreme Court Justices), the onslaught against Harvard and other universities will continue without surcease. Pol Potbelly’s Congressional cadres have already passed a 21% endowment tax. If enacted, Harvard would face a $850 million tax bill every year until its financial condition reaches the level of a Trump casino.

We have a simple solution for Harvard’s plight: get the hell out of Dodge and move to a place where academic freedom is protected and the climate is as miserable as it is in Cambridge. The obvious location is Canada.

Our own suggestion is to follow the example of approximately 30,000 Americans unwilling to support our American Revolution and flee to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Halifax is reputed to be a nice place and, given its history, unsurprisingly reminiscent of the Boston area:

You will feel the dynamic energy in the air as you explore every corner of the city, from a diverse food scene and innovative hubs of technology and business to exciting sports events, beach days, and coastal hikes. Halifax continues to invest in innovation and growth and has a connected and thriving business community. We’re also home to diverse groups and cultures, welcoming people of all backgrounds who want to make this region home.

With a population of over 480,000 people, Halifax is the capital city of Nova Scotia and the educational, cultural, and economic hub of Atlantic Canada. Often referred to as Canada’s “best-kept secret,” Halifax boasts a youthful spirit, rich history, and scenic waterfront.

At least that’s what the website of Dalhousie University, which until Harvard’s arrival would be the leading academic institution there, says about its hometown. And colleges never lie about the charm of the city that houses their campus. Except Yale, that is.

Put Harvard here [That's our public garden, you idiot – R.F.]

It sounds nice and we’re sure somewhere in the greater Halifax metropolis they could shoehorn Harvard in. With what’s left of the endowment Harvard could build a new Georgian-style campus that would remind everyone of Cambridge, as long as they add some incomprehensible perpetually-jammed one way streets and belching diesel buses with their emissions control systems removed.

Given the relative values of real estate in Cambridge and Halifax, Harvard should be able to finance the move just by selling its original campus off as high priced condos and adopting longtime Cambridge City Councilor Al Vellucci’s plan to transform the deserted Yard into the John Harvard Car Wash.

But really anywhere in Canada would do the job of protecting Harvard from the depredations of crooked corrupt Russian-owned sex offenders and puppy killers. Winnipeg would be another possibility, as its sub-Arctic climate would remind all Harvardians of January in Cambridge. 

We have reason to believe that the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, would support Harvard's move north.  Canada's PM is better known to the President and Fellows of Harvard College as Mark Carney '87.

To those alleging that picking up and moving the university to a different country is unwarranted and unprecedented, consider the case of Central European University, an institution founded in 1989 intended to celebrate and foster free inquiry in Budapest, Hungry.

As Hungary fell under the sway of a Fascist corrupt power-mad Russian-stooge autocrat (sound familiar?) named Victor Orban, the Hungarian dictator systematically brought all independent institutions in Hungary under his control. When CEU declined his offer it couldn’t refuse, Orban enacted a series of laws intended to strangle the University.

To survive, CEU left its Budapest home and moved to Vienna, where it thrives today. If they can do it, Harvard certainly can.

Moving to Halifax with its cash hoard safely in the Bank of Nova Scotia would also protect Harvard’s endowment from further parasitic attacks demanded by intellectual giants like Gym Jordan and Marge “Threeway” Greene.

At the rate things are going, with a coup against America led by a corrupt depraved demented criminal Russian-owned President, backed by 100% of the craven Fascists of his party serving in Congress and majorities of white voters happy to sell their legacy of freedom for anger and bigotry, we may all end up in Halifax sooner rather than later.

It might be a good time to open Elsie’s of Halifax. A country that puts mayonnaise on hamburgers would certainly enjoy roast beef with Russian dressing.

None dare call it dementia

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling with Medical Editor Vincent Boom-Batz, M.D.

It was hard to pick out the most appalling moment at the recent Nerd Prom, formally known as the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner.  

The abrupt cancellation of Amber Ruffin, whom the WHCA leadership was shocked, shocked to learn would deliver jokes about the current President and his gang of drunken corrupt lackeys, was one.  The fact that having done a s*** job of covering the ongoing coup against America and the election that made it happen, they are now preening on the red carpet like the Real Housewives of Annandale, Va., or the chummy complicity evidenced between journalists and those whom they are supposed to cover without fear or favor were other candidates.

All the cool kids were at the WH Correspondents Dinner...

But for us the nadir was a self-congratulatory address by some hack named John Thompson who told the media they should be more like him in stating plainly that President Joe Biden was not fit to serve.  You all remember the crazy senseless decisions he made as President and the times he failed to respond quickly and appropriately to a national crisis, don't you?  We sure don't.

Thompson, plugging his book about Biden's supposed mental decline, castigated the media for failing to cover Biden's alleged incompetence.  He said nothing about his opponent's fitness for office. 

Jake Tapper has also pitched in by hyping his nothingburger exposé with tidbits like Biden's advisers fearing that he might someday in his second term use a wheelchair, like his utterly incompetent predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt:

The media's supposed failure to attack Biden's fitness based on the facts that he was 82 and could get tired at the end of a day has now hardened into Conventional Wisdom, which is why that reliable geyser of such Wisdom, Jonathan Chait, passes it off in The Atlantic as it were a truth as firmly-established as Hussein's arsenal of nukes and biological weapons. That iron-clad tale was, you may recall, peddled by journalistic stalwarts like Jeffrey “Bombs Away” Goldberg, the former Iraq War shill who now runs, wait for it, The Atlantic! Spoiler alert: it was the basis for a gruesome war of choice that took 400,000 lives, and a brilliant career as a Washington savant, but it wasn't, um, true.

Chait even walks into the trap of berating supposed liberals who asked why the media wasn't reporting Trump's evident mental decline, as if asking reporters to cover an inescapable objective fact was nothing more than whiny what-aboutism.

But now that Chait has stepped on the mine, let's help him pursue his inquiry.

Wtf isn't the media covering the efflorescence of Trump's cognitive decline, on full display last year during his one tragic debate with Kamala Harris, his decision to turn a town hall into a karaoke party, or his outsourcing his great Madison Square Garden rally to neo-Nazis and bigots?  At the time, this was all reported as if it was just Trump being Trump.

But that was then.  Since the carnage and chaos of his Presidency began again on January 20, the evidence of cognitive collapse has been on display every time he opens his mouth or falls asleep at a Cabinet meeting or Papal funeral.

Here he is catching a snooze in the comfort of Mohammed bone Saw's palace: 

And here are some recent examples of nonsense, disinhibition, and other mental lapses all diagnostic of progressing dementia:

Is he President or the Roastmaster General? He hasn't a clue!

Now he's admitting he appoints randos to senior Government positions without knowing who the f*** they are:

It might be fair to argue that appointing a heroin-demented ignorant sadist to oversee Federal health policy is probative of dementia as well.

And here's one that needs no explanation:

We could go on, but here's just one more, evidencing his loss of productive vocabulary:

...but all agreed no one makes an entrance like Olivia Nuzzi

But we want to ask why the press (with the admirable exception of Aaron Rupar of Public Notice) hasn't taken any public notice of Pol Potbelly's dementia, when they could not stop rubbing out stories about Biden's supposed cognitive deficits.

A partial explanation, but not an excuse, is that unlike Biden, Pol Potbelly's cadres have steadfastly refused to leak their doubts about whether their boy is a few drumsticks short of a family bucket. 

Not a single Republican has dared to call out their Dear Leader's dementia, in part because they are don't want to undercut his program of government destruction and white supremacy, and in part because they know that he can retaliate by anointing some area stooge to crush them in the next Republican primary. 

What is harder to grasp is whey Democrats relentlessly refuse to point what would be a clear political winner for them.  If prominent Democrats like Amy “Hot Mess” Klobuchar or Chuck “Strong Questions” Schumer were to respond to the insane eructations of Pol Potbelly by citing them as evidence of mental incapacity, the press would have no choice but to report those charges, and the whiny Republican denials, thereby keeping the charge in the news.

Over time, even the professional cowards at The New York Times would have to admit that “some critics say” Trump is barking mad.  The conversation about his incompetence would pervade our political discussion, much as stupid talking points about “DEI” or “defending the border” do now.

Public opinion notices these discussions.  By the same token, the absence of any press or Democratic inquiry about the insanity of Pol Potbelly reassures the public that their Dear Leader is not in fact not strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue buck naked, his Yeti pubes sweating in the heat.

The media loves to lecture us on the vital necessity of full, if not fulsome, disclosure of any evidence of a President's cognitive decline.  But apparently that only applies if the President is Joe Biden.

Report From Washington: It's not a one-man coup

 

By Spy Washington Correspondent Nellie Bly with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

The Sunday New York Times was really bringing the fire last Sunday, marshaling almost all of its gasbags on an assault on the administration of Pol Potbelly.

From the left flank, Michelle Goldberg pounced:

This brutish hostility to foreigners has already changed the character of America, maybe irrevocably. And in this new America, even citizens shouldn’t count themselves safe. Trump is already talking about sending Americans to be locked up in El Salvador, far beyond the reach of our law. He’s laying siege to our universities for tolerating criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza by Americans as well as by foreign students and professors. There’s a reason Martin Niemöller’s poem is such a cliché. First they came for Khalil. They obviously weren’t going to stop there.

On the right, Weird Ross Douthat commented, unexceptionably, that tariffs were bad.

His colleague Bretbug, one of the last Republican neocon survivors of the once-mighty Hot Air Force which crashed and burned in Iraq, weighed in with a lethal strike on Pol Potbelly’s pro-Russian foreign policy:

Someone ought to tell Trump, Vance and other administration lemmings that nasty, dishonest and stupid is no way to conduct foreign policy. Since then, Russia has continued to press its barbaric attack while Ukraine fights on. All the meeting accomplished was to give America’s friends and foes a clearer sense of the dangerously self-infatuated fool in the White House.

Meanwhile in the center the heavy artillery of the anonymous Editorial Board thundered:

The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term have done more damage to American democracy than anything else since the demise of Reconstruction. Mr. Trump is attempting to create a presidency unconstrained by Congress or the courts, in which he and his appointees can override written law when they want to. It is precisely the autocratic approach that this nation’s founders sought to prevent when writing the Constitution.

Of course like good centrists they couldn’t avoid shelling their allies for being too “performative” and not reaching out to the very fine people who like it when Pol Potbelly’s campaign variety show features comics who compare Puerto Rico to a floating pile of garbage.

But let’s go back to that bit about creating a Presidency “unconstrained by Congress...”

We have a powerful Congress under the Constitution

There’s still a Congress sitting, last we looked, with both chambers dominated by slim but adequate Republican majorities. What are they doing to protect America from these outrages so eloquently set forth in the Newspaper of Record?

This week, the Senate is considering legislation to authorize a money-laundering crypto scam known as “stablecoin,” a fake crypto currency that’s supposed to maintain a stable $1 value because it’s backed by money. So why not use real money? Are there any reasons other than letting scam artists launder money without having to use a regulated banking system and bribe the President by investing in his latest, wait for it, stablecoin scheme, that is?

As usual, useless Democrats, their pockets bulging with real money from crypto finaglers, are trying to ram the legislation through while others are urging not fervent opposition, but caution.

Republicans, also smelling the real money from crypto promoters and afraid to get in the way of the Tangerine-Faced Grifter’s latest corrupt money-maker, are as usual backing the forces of greed and dishonesty.

Republican Senators are also trying to ram through the nomination of Ed Martin, an insurrectionist, election denier, and perverter of justice, to the job of US Attorney for Washington DC. Acting in that job, he has already brought the force of his office to threaten law schools, medical journals, and political activists for exercising their legal rights. This is a crime. 

This week Pol Potbelly is leaning on Republican Senators to approve this subversive nomination.

Republican tower of blubber Thom Tillis is supposedly against, but we’re waiting to hear which way performatively-moderate Susan Collins is going to jump, which is usually a function of whether her vote is needed for confirmation.

Meanwhile the Republican House, faced with the parade of horribles marshaled by The New York Times is focused on the supposed menace of anti-Semitism in colleges and universities that employ Democrats. According to The Guardian, the Republican inquisitors include a few whose Jew-loving credentials are, shall we say, open to question:

A number of Republican legislators set to grill university presidents in a congressional hearing on antisemitism this week are associated with calls for Jews to convert to Christianity, have quoted Adolf Hitler, or have reportedly threatened to burn a synagogue to the ground.

To borrow from Bobbie Fleckman, “And you don’t think that’s anti-Semitic?”

Republican funders expect to get the tax cuts they paid for

In fairness, the Republican Congressman who threatened to burn a synagogue to the ground was a Jewish Republican and it was his own synagogue. So that’s OK then and not at all a schondeh fir di Goyim.

Beyond installing corrupt insurrectionists as prosecutors and performing concern about those lovable Jews to destroy colleges they don’t like, Congressional Republicans have but one single overarching legislative goal this year: cutting rich people’s taxes permanently. The revenue loss would be made up by letting poor people starve, sicken, and die from Medicaid and food assistance cuts, and borrowing the rest.

With that vital legislative goal paramount, Republicans in Congress don’t have much time to worry about all of the terrible things so important to Times opinion columnists.

Which leads us to wonder why Republicans in Congress who have failed to thus far do even one tiny thing to protect the Constitution and the rule of law are getting a free pass from the massed gasbags at New York Times Opinion and to be fair pretty much everyplace else in the mainstream media, including the “pro-freedom” Washington Post.

There's no mystery about the motives of these soulless Republican Solons: they are craven and they are bad people.

They know that their political lives can be ended by Pol Potbelly's decision to back any nitwit in a Republican primary contest.  Never before in American history has a President been able to neuter Congressional majorities of his own party by threatening to primary them. But it’s working because they have nothing but their Trump Stamps. 

Many of them also agree with what is happening.  They never liked foreign aid, food stamps, health care for the poor, or anything that takes one dollar out of a rich white man's pocket for any purposes other than protecting the man's ill-gotten gains.  And many of them were elected only because 40 years of Republican pandering to white racists paid off across the American South, Midwest and prairie.

And yet the media, even the supposedly brave bits, can't bring themselves to state the obvious fact that all, all Republicans in Congress are either actively or by omission aiding and abetting the coup.  Here's The New Yorker on supine cowardly Republican Majority Leader John Thune:

Thune, a fourth-term senator from South Dakota, is an awkward leader for Trump’s ruthless Republican Party, in part because even Democrats invariably describe him as amiable and honest....Thune could pass for an actual movie star, with pale-blue eyes, a square jaw, and Mt. Rushmore cheekbones. Now sixty-four, he has salt-and-pepper hair that is still thick enough to part neatly on the side, and the broad shoulders, thick arms, and narrow waist of a basketball player. 

Yes, that's the important point: Unlike Ted Cruz, Thune's face doesn't make babies cry.

Actually, the important point is that our Constitutional system is being dismantled not just by Pol Potbelly and his raving cadres, but by every single elected Republican, including dreamboat John Thune. It’s almost like the entire Republican Party bears the blame for the chaos and carnage of the Pol Potbelly regime.

Despite their blistering fusillades last Sunday, we’d submit that the forces of The New York Times Sunday Opinion, The New Yorker, and anyone else who believes itself to be in the news business, have a long and grueling campaign ahead of them. They should saddle up.  

Yard Time: High Noon on Mass. Ave.

By Yard Correspondent Larry Lowell with intern Marissa Gunner '28

CAMBRIDGE Mass. - As Gary Cooper learned in High Noon, it’s not until the varmints ride into town guns blazing that you learn who’s willing to stand with you.

Harvard University and its President, Alan Garber ‘77 must be feeling pretty lonely on the dusty streets of Cambridge.

The assault of Pol Potbelly on the University reached a new height when PP’s cadres decided to terminate $2,000,000,000 of Federal grants to Harvard, including those awarded and underway, in mid- molecule. The toll on science, medicine and future health is incalculably bad, including cutting off research in matters of life and death like cancer treatment and research, tuberculosis, infectious disease, crippling neurological conditions like ALS, and environmental health threats.

Harvard President Alan Garber '77 is feeling lonely

The alleged basis for this train robbery is Harvard’s suppose failure to grapple with anti-Semitism, because some a**holes yelled anti-Semitic slurs at those crossing the Yard right after the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023. What constitutes an anti-Semitic slur remains open to interpretation, with some tender Semites claiming that any expression of solidarity with the plight of the over 2,000,000 Gazan civilians being systematically bombed and immiserated by the endless brutal Israeli onslaught is anti-Semitic. Others, including plenty of Jews, note that the endless war appears to be designed to accomplish two goals: saving Bibi Netanyahu’s ass from well-founded corruption charges and cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants, for which many members of the current Israeli government have long advocated. This is a war crime, by the way.

Further, the extortion letter received by Harvard (supposedly in error) demanded that Harvard remake its academic programs, its admissions standards, and its belief in once uncontroversial virtues such as diversity and inclusion to meet the demanding moral standards of a depraved sex offender who had been found liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a department store dressing room.

Harvard pointed out reasonably enough that such demands would in effect destroy the University by imposing a Cotton Mather-like regime of ideological rigidity on what is supposed to be an enterprise devoted to free inquiry (as long as the tenured faculty does not actually have to speak to grubby undergraduates)

Pot Potbelly’s mouthpieces have even said that Harvard owes the creep an apology, although for what is never stated. Some Harvard researchers have even been locked up without being accused of any crime because they did not properly declare 100 grams of dangerous frog embryos at Logan Airport. Thus promising research into the scourge of pancreatic cancer has been interrupted but at least millions of Americans will be saved from the plague of uncontrolled frog embryos that has decimated our inner cities and Appalachian hollers [Is this right, Marissa? – Ed.] [Will get back to you. Big problem set due! – Marissa].

Not content with illegally withholding earned federal research grants, others of PP’s goons have threatened Harvard illegally with loss of its tax-exempt status, a crushing blow to Harvard’s finances mostly because the rich finaglers who have previously coughed up serious money will no longer be able to deduct their contributions from their already exiguous tax obligations. We'll get back to them presently.

This mortal threat is untainted by any pretense of legality, which will not stop PP’s corrupt henchmen at the IRS from trying. Tax-exempt status is not in fact something handed out in the grace and favor of the demented tyrant; it is something to which Harvard is entitled under law. You remember law, don’t you?

Now a University with $53,000,000,000 in the bank is not without resources, and Harvard can afford to pay and has paid fancy lawyers, including former Republican mouthpieces, to state their case and even sue to stop the depredations.

That massive hoard has led some idiots to ask why Harvard can’t just replace the $2 billion in lost grants with its own money. Two rejoinders suggest themselves to even the most limited intelligence: the endowment money is mostly restricted for certain purposes and cannot simply be reallocated at President Garber’s whim (even though he is a notoriously whimsical fellow).

The second more compelling response is: why the f*** should Harvard have to replace federal money to which it is entitled? That’s not how any of this works.

But you know this. Today we want to see who is and who isn’t standing by Marshal Garber and his pitiful band of deputies as they take on the desperadoes of Merde-a-Lardo in their lonely fight for academic freedom and justice.

Some of the most notorious loudmouths amongst the alumni plutocrats so interested in purging the University of Black women and other mortal threats are conspicuous by their silence. What happened to Bill Ackman, last seen preening at the Nerd Ball as a supposed “celebrity,” with his wife, the best-selling author of Megan Markle's autobiography? Did he lose his X password?

And what of nefarious skillionaire Ken Griffin, who let it be known that he was a harsh critic of Harvard last year but now is content to hold forth on matters nearer and dearer to his wallet, like tariffs? Or Lloyd Blankfein '75, who trousered billions at Goldman Sachs and is apparently much too busy unfolding all those bills to support the college that propelled him to the heights of ill-gotten gains?

Will Marshal Alan ride off into the sunset?

Not to mention other Harvard-connected supposed champions of free speech, at least when it was threatened by the menace of wokeosity — where is Demented Alan Dershowitz? Did he forget to plug in his web camera? And great Constitutional scholar Cancun Ted Cruz?

And with the exception of the Pritzker family, we haven’t heard tickety-boo from the legions of billionaire alumni who like to throw their weight around University Hall. Their press agents will tell you that they prefer to work behind-the-scenes. That’s great, but Marshall Garber needs guns in the streets now, not craven finaglers supposed to be quietly influencing bats*** crazy weirdos like penis cosplayer Stephen Miller and Illegally Blonde Pam Bondi or carnival barkers like Linda “A1” McMahon.

Then we have a few Both-Sides middle grounders like former National Review mouthpiece David French, who regurgitates the old whines about Harvard being dominated by the hard left, by which he means people who vote Democratic.  As Harvard does not inquire of one's party affiliation in admission or faculty hiring, for reasons that must be obvious even to Mr. French, it's hard to know what he thinks Harvard can do about the political choices made by its community.  [We aren't linking to his pisspoor column for policy reasons – Ed.] 

Similarly, insufferable Harvard faculty bloviators like Steven Pinker, having whined for the past two years about their supposed plight, have now learned that that there are worse things than hearing snarky remarks at the Faculty Club about the dumb s*** they spout.

The support of these Both Siders comes at a high price. Should Pol Potbelly’s gunmen be run out of Cambridge, not to mention Washington, these same hacks will claim to be owed a seat at the table to propound their reactionary and intolerant drivel. No dice. 

Now some have stood up, most recently a number of other universities who had been content to let Columbia twist in the wind, but have now figured out that if the Trump Regime conquers Harvard, none of them are safe.

There's one big exception: in the backwoods of New Hampshire there lives a small college known at Dartmouth.  We are told it is actually a member of the Ivy League, and considers itself to be a bastion of academic freedom and rigorous scholarship.  So of course it has thrown its support to Harvard, amirite?

According to The Boston Globe, not so much:

A Trump-friendly college?  As they say at Dartmouth on days ending in y, “Beer me!”

It's not just wilderness outposts like Dartmouth or demented loudmouths like Alan Dershowitz who have refused to join Marshall Garber's tiny band of deputies.

Consider the world of immensely rich and powerful law firms, stuffed to the gills with insufferable graduates of the Harvard Law School.  Many of them have shamefully caved to Pol Potbelly, promising hundreds of millions in pro bono time for causes congenial to the Tangerine-Faced Fascist, although whether they will actually swallow what is left of their dignity and commit to defending murderers in uniform like Derek Chauvin remains to be seen.

Those firms have leaked to the press that they did so because they were afraid that they might lose their $20 million a year corporate rainmakers and their finagling clients to other firms.  Which makes notable the courage of a few, like WilmerHale (whose predecessor firm Hale and Dorr had stood up to Joe McCarthy and Pol Potbelly's mentor Roy “I've Got a Secret” Cohn).

Their Boston rival Ropes & Gray, which boasts a lucrative roster of private equity tycoons easily equal to that of Paul Weiss or Skadden, in fact rose to the occasion and signed (but did not draft) Harvard's complaint, at some risk to its fisc.  Perhaps the fact that it has provided legal services to Harvard since the days of President Mather made it awkward for the firm to turn its back on Harvard now.

At least as of today, neither Ropes & Gray nor WilmerHale has dwindled away, which puts the greed and cowardice of their obedient rivals into sharp focus, at least among fancy law students deciding which firm to sacrifice their lives to.

But when you're up against the likes of Pot Potbelly, the entire bent Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and Pete “I'll Text You” Hegseth, Garber's posse seems overmatched, whether measured by number of available gunslingers or Jaeger Bombs.

If Harvard prevails against the heavily-armed thugs lined up against it, we wouldn't blame Alan Garber for throwing his tin badge at the feet of the alumni who abandoned Harvard in its darkest hour and riding off into the sunset.  Just not in the direction of Hanover, New Hampshire. 

UPDATE April 29 – Alan Dershowitz is silent no longer.  He apparently retrieved his phone from between the couch cushions and spoke with his usual incoherence to The Boston Globe.  We won't provide a link for his sad stupid vocalizations, in furtherance of our policy against providing a platform to dumb s***.

On the 250th Anniversary of Patriots' Day, it's the Great Writ vs. the Great S***

By Legal Correspondent Saori Shiroseki and Immigration Editor Emma Goldman
with Spy Intern Olivia Gunner in Concord, Mass.

CONCORD, Mass. (April 19) – This morning in Concord, Mass. a bunch of cosplaying nerds celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Concord and Lexington by dressing up, tootling on fifes, parading through the streets, and topping it off with glazed crullers and iced regulars at Dunkin' Donuts.

You colonials will never reach Dunkin' Donuts alive!

We've got nothing against remembering the birth of liberty in America but right now we're too busy grieving its death.  

One of the foundations of that liberty is what is referred to as the Great Writ: the writ of habeas corpus which allows anyone detained by the Government to challenge that detention in court.  

That means everyone.  Our framers thought that the writ was so important that they wrote in the Constitution that the American President, their powers carefully enumerated in Article II and constrained there and in every other word of that document, said:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. 

Article I, Section 9, Clause 2.

Terror in the apple orchards! (Snapshot via AP)

How's this cornerstone of our liberty and the rule of law doing in Pol Potbelly's reign of terror?

The jury, as they say, is still out.

We start with a brief recapitulation of one of the most notorious outrages:  last month, a law-abiding Turkish woman with legal immigration status as a graduate student at Tufts University in Medford was kidnapped on the streets of Somerville by masked agents claiming to be from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The next day, despite a Federal Court order requiring that she be kept in Massachusetts, she was shanghaied to a jail in darkest Louisiana, where she was tortured by ICE-controlled guards who refused to give her her asthma medication. Fortunately, they did not succeed in killing her.

Her sole offense, according to Pol Potbelly’s jackals, was that she once signed an editorial in the Tufts student newspaper opposing Israel’s unrelenting war in Gaza. 

Once immured in immigration jail in Louisiana her case was assigned to an immigration “judge.”  We use the quotes because despite the name, these people, who have the power to keep noncitizens locked up and eventually deported, aren't judges under Article III. They are in essence hearing officers subject to the tender mercies of their boss, Illegally Blonde Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has already s***canned 20 of them for reasons only known to her.

Feel better?

The Founders thought so little of this system that they listed it as a reason for declaring the independence of the United States:

[King George III] has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.

Republicans mistreating detainees?  Unprecedented?...

On Wednesday, that “judge” decided, solely on the basis of an op-ed Ms. Öztürk signed in a student newspaper, that she should be kept locked up.

In the land of the free, these “judges” are supposed to decide whether to keep people detained according to two legal standards: is the person a danger to public safety?  and is she a flight risk who might not show up for future hearings?  

Obviously, this woman, who has never been charged with a crime, is no threat to the safety of the good citizens of Somerville.  Nor is there any reason to think that a law-abiding graduate student, whose continued residence in the country depends on going to class, is going to be a fugitive from justice.

So of course the “judge” sprang her, right:

Um:

“The immigration judge denied bond based on her untenable conclusion that Ms. Öztürk was both a flight risk and a danger to the community,” her lawyers wrote....“The immigration judge’s decision was based solely on the [government] memorandum, which points to no conduct of Ms. Öztürk’s except her co-authorship of an op-ed that the [government] memo asserts had ‘found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.’”

But have no fear: the Great Write will ride to her rescue:  Yesterday, the Federal District Court in Vermont, refused to dismiss her habeas petition and ordered her returned to Vermont from where the government kidnapped her in violation of an earlier court order.

The Court considered a number of statutes added by bent Republicans and clueless Democrats that strip Federal Courts of power to entertain habeas petitions from noncitizens embroiled in immigration enforcement and concluded that none of them barred a constitutional challenge to Öztürk's arrest and removal to Louisiana. 

Cue fife and drum corps.

Not so fast.  First there is no guarantee that the Pol Potbelly regime will comply with the District Court's order.  It will undoubtedly appeal on an “emergency” basis first to the Second Circuit (which will likely not entertain Illegally Blonde Pam's drivel very long) and then to the Supreme Court which will....  Your guess is as good as ours.

Even more disturbing, even if by some miracle the body-snatchers comply with the Court's orders and send her back to detention in Vermont, she will not be released.

Instead, the Government will continue removal proceedings, including as noted above, the denial of bond already decided by the immigration “judge” from the swamps.

...Well, maybe not

This time, the body snatchers will argue that Federal Court in Vermont is powerless to free her, because federal law strips real Federal Courts of authority over the detention of individuals incident to removal proceedings, like her.

Can this be true?

It can. Thanks to the wonderfully bipartisan efforts of the Clinton Administration and Newt Gingrich's bent Republican House, in 1996, the following provision was added:

“The Attorney General’s discretionary judgment regarding the application of this section shall not be subject to review. No court may set aside any action or decision by the Attorney General under this section regarding the detention of any alien or the revocation or denial of bond or parole.” [8 USC] § 1226(e).

So much for habeas review of lawless determinations to keep innocents like Öztürk from being locked up on the basis of college newspaper articles they wrote.  

But statutes purporting to prohibit resort to the Great Writ have to pass constitutional muster.  The Supreme Court, in reviewing a previous Republican administration to disappear persons into night and fog on the grounds that they were “terrorists,” said the statutory remedy must be effective:

At the outset, the Court acknowledges that the Suspension Clause does not establish an absolute right to seek the writ of  habeas corpus. The Supreme Court has held that Congress may modify or eliminate the right to seek the writ if Congress provides “a collateral remedy which is neither inadequate nor ineffective to test the legality of a person’s detention.” ... If such a substitute is crafted by Congress, courts must then determine “whether the statute stripping jurisdiction to issue the writ avoids the Suspension Clause mandate because Congress has provided adequate substitute procedures for habeas corpus.” ... (quoting Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 771 (2008)).

Ozturk v. Trump, No. 2:25-cv-374 (D. Vt. Apr. 18, 2025) (slip op. at 33-34) .

(Fun fact: over 95% of the people whom Bush and Cheney said were the world's worst terrorists have been released without any apparent harm to anyone.)

When Ms. Öztürk was denied release by that so-called judge in Louisiana on the basis of nothing but a naked assertion by the body-snatchers and her student newspaper submission, do you think she got an effective remedy which protected her constitutional rights, including her First Amendment right to free speech?

Us neither. Which is why the Vermont Court should order not only order her returned to Vermont, but release her because the immigration court was not, at least in her case, an effective alternative to habeas and thus unconstitutional under the Suspension Clause.

What the bent Supreme Court would say is anyone’s guess. All the lower courts can do is try to prop up the rule of law for as long as they can.

In the battle between The Great Writ v. The Great S***, the outcome is very much in doubt. 

If the Supreme Court eventually rubber-stamps lawless and fact-free decisions of DOJ employees in the back bayous of Louisiana, the only wispy remainder of our liberty left will be a bunch of cosplayers at the Rude Bridge advancing through the streets of Concord and Lexington until they reach the Mass. Ave. Dunkin' Donuts.

Happy Patriot's Day!  

A Passover Report from the Middle East: Bombs Away!

 

By Hebraic Affairs Editor A. Cahan with Military Editor Douglass MacArthur

With the economy and democracy itself in the United States on the verge of collapse, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with what’s going on in the rest of the world.

It’s not good.

The world has apparently forgotten that since the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023 which killed 1,139 Israelis, most civilians, and took another 250 hostage, Israel and Hamas have been embroiled in a war in Gaza that has so far killed over 50,000 Gazans, again mostly civilian, and left over 2,000,000 people homeless, traumatized, and starving.

While most living hostages have been released in exchange for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, at least 24 Israelis are thought to be still living in increasingly dire captivity. Just like the remaining civilian population of Gaza.

Gaza 2025: it's no worse than...

After the wholly-intentional collapse of the interim cease fire, Israeli forces have returned to Gaza, unleashing fresh waves of death and destruction. To give you a taste of the enormity of the violence, here’s one day’s summary of events from The Guardian:

• At least 29 Palestinians, including children, were killed on Wednesday from an Israeli strike in the Shujaiya area of Gaza City, local health authorities said. Medics said dozens of others were injured in the attack that hit a multi-floor residential building in the eastern suburb of Gaza City. They said many were still believed to be missing and trapped under the ruins of the building. The strike damaged several other houses nearby....
• The Israeli military said in a statement it struck a senior Hamas militant responsible for planning and executing attacks from Shujaiya in northern Gaza, whom it did not identify. ....The Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday that at least 1,482 Palestinians have been killed since Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on 18 March, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,846....
• United Nations (UN) secretary general António Guterres said on Tuesday that Gaza had become “a killing field” because Israel has continued to block aid, an accusation an Israeli official quickly denied, saying there was “no shortage” of aid. “More than an entire month has passed without a drop of aid into Gaza. No food. No fuel. No medicine. ...,” Guterres said in remarks to journalists. Six weeks since Israel completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, food stockpiled during a ceasefire at the start of the year has all but run out. “All basic supplies are running out,” said Juliette Touma from ....Unrwa. She said: “Every day without these basic supplies, Gaza inches closer towards very, very deep hunger.” ...
• The mother of an Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that she fears that Israel’s renewed bombardment of the territory puts his life at even greater risk. “Our children are in danger,” Herut Nimrodi told AFP during an interview. Her son, Tamir, who turned 20 in captivity, is one of 24 hostages believed to be alive, though no proof of life has been sent since his abduction. . . .

And if there’s one certainty in the Middle East, tomorrow will be worse.

Without justifying or excusing the horrific October 7 attack (unlike some of our former friends), we focus today on the continuing carnage and destruction being carried out by Israel Defense Forces at the direction of President for Life Bibi “Melech” Netanyahu and with the connivance of US President Pol Potbelly, whose sadistic love of pain and torment is too well known to require extensive recapitulation. Just ask E. Jean Carroll.

As the Guardian summary notes, Israel has been blocking all humanitarian aid, including stuff like food, from entering Gaza for over a month to put pressure on Hamas. Israel claims that this is no biggie because Gaza has plenty of food and Hamas is stealing it anyway.

The aid organizations on the ground report hunger and scarcity. And if Hamas is stealing the food, then blocking aid won’t put pressure on them, will it? It will just increase suffering and starvation.

If the starvation and bombing weren’t bad and illegal enough, Israel is continuing to order hundreds of thousands of Gazans to leave what's left of their homes again and again supposedly to help them hunt down Hamas, an activity they have not succeeded at over the past 18 months.

The Israelis claim that Hamas embeds itself with the civilian population, which to the Israeli apparently justifies any level of violence in Gaza no matter how many civilians die. How it justifies attacking marked ambulances with lights flashing is another question that has given even Israel pause.

The endless assault on civilians has many Israelis, including veterans of its air force, wondering if the purpose of these attacks is actually to destroy Hamas, a legitimate military target, or something else:

And the hostages themselves:

The go-back-to-Gaza gibe demonstrates that the hostage-based justification for endless war is but a pretext.  Many fear that Israel’s real goal is to force the civilian population of Gaza to leave, although they have no place to go. This goal is shared by the corrupt demented Russian-owned stooge currently serving as President of the United States:

Mr. Netanyahu and his government say they are serious about [Trump’s] idea but emphasize that they are speaking about facilitating the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians, in an apparent attempt to avoid any suggestion of ethnic cleansing. Critics say that it would hardly be voluntary if Gazans left, regardless, given that so many of their homes have been smashed to rubble.

Those critics, always carping about something.

While Israelis robustly debate the value of continued civilian carnage in Gaza, American Jews are supposed to fall into line and parrot only extremist Likud talking points.

The chief rabbi of the large mainstream Conservative synagogue in St. Louis, B’nai Amoona, has said “there do not appear to be any ‘innocent civilians’ in Gaza.”

There also does not appear to be any connection between this monstrous rationalization for indifference to civilian death and suffering and Jewish values. That didn't seem to bother his devout halachic congregants much:

But the incident also reveals the extent to which remarks like Abraham’s have become accepted in the range of Jewish discourse. B’nai Amoona’s president backed the rabbi publicly and in a message to congregants, and while Abraham took down the post at the president’s behest, he did not disavow its contents in subsequent statements to the congregation and to the Forward. 

A slightly more sophisticated apologia for depraved indifference to the lives of Gazans civilians comes from those of the Jewish persuasion arguing that what Israel is doing is no worse than what we did to Germany in World War II:when our bombs (and British ones) killed and injured plenty of German civilians.  A column by the reliably-loathsome Bretbug in The New York Times last year argued that we should not worry about the death toll of Gaza civilians because, as with the bombings of World War II, the underlying conflict was “existential.”

...the bombing of Dresden!  So that's OK then!

That's not how the international law of war works.  But without even comparing and contrasting the bombing campaigns of the U.S. and Britain in World War II and that of Israel in Gaza today, we have to raise one simple question:  What the f*** difference does it make?

We can debate similarities and differences between historical events.  We can even point out that after V-E Day America reconstituted Germany as an independent state, without any American settlers stealing German land.  We can also point out that no one has ever asserted that Roosevelt prolonged World War II to remain in power and avoid punishment for his many crimes.  And as others have said, if the best defense of Israel's campaign in Gaza is that it is no worse than Dresden, that's not too terrific.

But it is no answer to Israel's callous indifference to civilian life as evidenced by its endless and brutal war on Gaza that maybe it resembles the Punic War.  Israel's brutal, if not sadistic, conduct has to be judged on the basis of our current understanding of law and morality, including the postwar Geneva Conventions on the rights of noncombatants.

The reality is that Israel's indifference, and that of American Jewish leaders, to the suffering of Gaza's civilians is both immoral and contrary to Jewish law and values, according to the liberal Zionist group J Street:

We strongly oppose the decision by Prime Minister Netanyahu to reignite this horrific war. This decision flies in the face of pleas from freed Israeli hostages, families of those still held in Gaza and top Israeli security experts. It will put every remaining hostage’s life at risk while thrusting families in Gaza back into the crossfire of a brutal war which has killed far too many.

Endless war and an endless siege will not be effective in freeing the hostages or making Israel safer. Every day, renewed fighting puts more lives in danger, empowers extremists and isolates Israel further from global support – including among Jews worldwide. 

But you don't have to take it from a liberal Jewish lobbying group. There's higher authority, as some of you may have heard last night at Seder:

Our rabbis taught: When the Egyptian armies were drowning in the sea, the Heavenly Hosts broke out in songs of jubilation.  God silenced them and said, “My creatures are perishing and you sing praises?”....Our rabbis taught: God is urgent about justice, for upon justice the world depends....

CCAR Passover Haggadah at 48-49 (quoting Talmud).

And those Egyptians were armed combatants, not mothers and babies crushed under hundreds of tons of rubble. 

The resumed brutal war in Gaza is existential all right: it is a war over the existence of Judaism as a moral force in the world.

The battle is not going well.