The Teapot Dome Scandal

 

It’s often said that history repeats itself, and the Teapot Dome scandal from 100 years ago is one example.

I read six newspapers a day, but I have found that the best sources of news are either Heather Cox Richardson or Rachel Maddow.

Both of them have written a few books (and I have read all of them) and Heather Publishes a daily newsletter titled “Letters from an American”. You can read it for free, but an annual membership is only $50. Rochel, of course, is a long-time contributor on MSNBC, where she appears at least once a week.

According to reporting in The Ankler, Rachel was making $30 million a year from MSNBC to host the show on Monday nights, just one night a week. She has now renegotiated her salary with the network so that she will make $25 million a year for the next five years. “This is a difficult time and they needed to keep her,” one executive explained. “No one else can do what she does. You can’t build a brand like it overnight.”

Heather is currently a college professor at Boston College, but she also makes about $1,000,000 a year from her newsletter.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-26-2025

Both of them are historians, which means they can find a story from the past that directly relates to today.

The Teapot Dome scandal is one of those stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal

The Teapot Dome scandal was a political corruption scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Warren G. Harding. It centered on Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison, but no one was convicted of paying the bribes.

Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics". It permanently damaged the reputation of the Harding administration, already hurt by its handling of the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 and Harding's 1922 veto of the Bonus Bill.^{[citation needed]}

Congress subsequently passed permanent legislation granting itself subpoena power over tax records of any U.S. citizen, regardless of position. These laws are also considered to have empowered Congress generally

If you had to pick the most corrupt president, Harding would certainly be one the list, but there are a few others that would quality as well, and they can be found at the link below:

https://www.ranker.com/list/most-corrupt-presidents-us-history/melissa-sartore

For a lot of reasons, Donald Trump would likely quality as THE most corrupt, in part due to the fact that the net worth of his family has increased by $80 billion since this election in 2024.

Andrew Johnson is also on the list, and so are Richard Nixon, Andrew Jackson, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, John Quincy Adams and Ulysses Grant.

For what it is worth, though, Donald Trump is rated as THE worst president we have ever had. That rating is based on his performance during his first term – and he has gotten worse since then.

https://presidentialgreatnessproject.com/

Here is the connection from past to president:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/us/politics/tom-homan-fbi-trump.html

Tom Homan, who was later named President Trump’s border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation, according to people familiar with the case, which was later shut down by Trump administration officials.

The cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the case.

Mr. Homan’s encounter with the undercover agents, recorded on audiotape, led him to be investigated for potential bribery and other crimes, after he apparently took the money and agreed to help the agents — who were posing as businessmen — secure future government contracts related to border security, the people said.

After Mr. Trump took office this year, Justice Department officials shut down the case because of doubts about whether prosecutors could prove to a jury that Mr. Homan had agreed to do any specific acts in exchange for the money, and because he had not held an official government position at the time of the meeting with undercover agents, the people added.

One person familiar with the case said the evidence gathered had not met all the necessary elements of relevant federal crimes, while another contended that the case was effectively ended prematurely, before such additional evidence could be gathered.

Justice Department officials ultimately decided that the evidence against Mr. Homan was insufficient to support charges of wire fraud, bribery or conspiracy, the people said. Emil Bove III, a former senior Justice Department official and onetime personal attorney for Mr. Trump who is now a federal appeals court judge, expressed skepticism about the case as early as February, one person said. The existence of the investigation was reported earlier by MSNBC.

 

Joe McCarthy famous said, “if looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”

 Logically, is it looks like a bribe, it’s probably a bride. If Pam Bondi and the Justice Department were doing their jobs, Tom Homan would be going to prison.

Der Siegel warned us in 2016 that Trump was not qualified to be president – and the majority of American newspapers said the same thing.

I have read 25 books about Trump, and all of them have concluded that he is more than a little crazy, and “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” provides the best summary.

https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250212863

You can argue until the cows come home about whether Trump’s cabinet is the worst we have ever had, but Pete Hegseth, Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel would certainly be on the list for “least qualified”

Part of the problem, of course, is that at least 23 people who worked for FOX “news” are now working in his administration.

https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-fox-news-personalities-serving-donald-trump-administration-2070560

For now, there is little that any of us can do to fight against the madness of the Trump administration, but the ongoing protests sweeping the country WILL make a difference – and Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air. On top of that – the midterms are actually not that far away – so be sure to vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Happy New Year" can also be celebrated by Gentiles

 

In 2025, Rosh Hosanna begins at sundown on September 22, and ends at nightfall on September 25.

Rosh Hosanna is the New Year in Judaism. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah  It is the first of the High Holy Days (‘days of Awe'), as specified by Leviticus 23:23–25, that occur in the late summer/early autumn of the Northern Hemisphere. Rosh Hashanah begins the Ten Days of Repentance culminating in Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It is followed by the Fall festival of Sukkot which ends with Shemini Atzeret in Israel and Simchat Torah everywhere else.

Rosh Hashanah is a two-day observance and celebration that begins on the first day of Tishrei, which is the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year. The holiday itself follows a lunar calendar and begins the evening prior to the first day. In contrast to the ecclesiastical lunar new year on the first day of the first month Nisan, the spring Passover month which marks Israel's exodus from Egypt, Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the civil year, according to the teachings of Judaism, and is the traditional anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman according to the Hebrew Bible, as well as the initiation of humanity's role in God's world.

The country that we now know as Israel was once known as Palestine, a name that that goes back centuries.

Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by 150 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Palestinian territories. The territories share the vast majority of their borders with Israel, with the West Bank bordering Jordan to the east and the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its de facto administrative center. Gaza was its largest city prior to evacuations in 2023.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine

 Situated at a continental crossroad, the Palestine region was ruled by various empires and experienced various demographic changes from antiquity to the modern era. It was treading ground for the Nile and Mesopotamian armies and merchants from North Africa, China and India. The region has religious significance. The ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict dates back to the rise of the Zionist movement, supported by the United Kingdom during World War I.

The war saw Britain occupying Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, where it set up Mandatory Palestine under the auspices of the League of Nations. Increased Jewish immigration led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after a proposed partitioning by the United Nations was rejected by the Palestinians and other Arab nations.

(editors note: a two-state solution was proposed in 1947 – but was rejected by the Palestinians and other Arab nations. When Israel was created in 1948, Arab countries declared war)

The 1948 Palestine war saw the forcible displacement of a majority of the Arab population, and consequently the establishment of Israel; these events are referred to by Palestinians as the Nakba ('catastrophe'). In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which had been held by Jordan and Egypt respectively.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) declared independence in 1988. In 1993, the PLO signed the Oslo Accords with Israel, creating limited PLO governance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through the Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel withdrew from Gaza in its unilateral disengagement in 2005, but the territory is still considered to be under military occupation and has been blockaded by Israel. In 2007, internal divisions between political factions led to a takeover of Gaza by Hamas. Since then, the West Bank has been governed in part by the Fatah-led PA, while the Gaza Strip has remained under the control of Hamas.

Let’s fast forward to today:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/world/europe/starmer-uk-recognize-palestinian-state.html

Britain, Canada and Australia confirmed this morning Sunday that they now formally recognize Palestinian statehood, piling pressure on Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and putting three major U.S. allies at odds with the Trump administration. As of now, 147 members of the 193-member United Nations recognize the state of Palestine. The United States and Israel are not in that group.

The seemingly coordinated announcements came on the eve of the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, at which France and Portugal are also expected to vote for recognition of Palestinian statehood.

The concerted action will deepen the diplomatic isolation of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. But so far, it has done little to curb his military campaign against Hamas, which has killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza and left much of the enclave in ruins

Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, waited to act until after President Trump’s state visit last week to Britain, during which Mr. Trump said he disagreed with the move, preferring to focus on securing the release of the hostages held by Hamas militants.

“I have a disagreement with the prime minister on that score,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference with Mr. Starmer on Thursday, although he added, “One of our few disagreements, actually.”

When Mr. Starmer announced Britain’s plans in late July, he said a final decision would hinge on multiple conditions. Israel, he said, must address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, sign up to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas to secure the release of hostages, and pursue long-term peace with the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution.

Since then, Israel has attacked Hamas leaders in Qatar, the Persian Gulf state that has been the site of cease-fire negotiations, making any agreement more elusive than ever. Far from scaling back, Israeli troops have expanded their combat operations, advancing on Gaza’s main urban center, Gaza City.

For Mr. Starmer, who worked as a human-rights lawyer before entering politics, the decision has nevertheless been an anguished balancing act. He has tried to avoid daylight between Britain and the United States on issues like trade and the war in Ukraine. But Gaza poses moral and political challenges.

 

Mr. Starmer noted that members of his extended family lived in Israel (his British-born wife, Victoria, is Jewish). “I understand, firsthand, the psychological impact” of the Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers in October 2023, he said. “So, I know exactly where I stand in relation to Hamas.”

Domestic politics played a part in Mr. Starmer’s decision as well. Pressure to do more has swelled within the ranks of his Labour Party, as well as in the broader public, as harrowing images and videos of suffering Palestinians have been broadcast online and in the news media.

“The U.K. government will hope that this buys them an extended period of quiet without having to take further moves,” said Daniel Levy, who runs the U.S./Middle East Project, a research institute in London and New York. “But if Israel’s actions continue to be as egregious, aggressive and criminal as is currently the case, then that is highly unlikely to play out.”

He and other critics fault the British government for not having done more already. Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of genocide, despite calls to do so by Labour members of Parliament and legal experts. And while it has suspended some weapons sales to Israel, it continues to supply parts for F-35 fighter jets, used by the Israeli Air Force in strikes on Gaza.

The government issued sanctions on two far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet: Itamar Ben-Gvir, the security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister. Downing Street also signaled it could arrest Mr. Netanyahu if he entered Britain, pledging to fulfill its “legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law.” The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him last November

Israel has long been the beneficiary of aid from the United States. In 2023, the only country that got more aid was Ukraine, which got $17 billion. Israel was #2, at $3 billion.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s

There are many reasons why foreign aid to other countries benefits the United States, but a full explanation of those advantages would require a few hundred pages.

For now, the move by Canada, Britain, and Australia should lead to more peace, and less genocide, to a region that has long been torn by turmoil.

On that note – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

 

 

 

Here comes the judge

 

 

The genius of the Foundling Fathers was in their design of a political system that involved checks and balances.

 

Laws are set by the legislature of both parties who try to work towards a solution that both can agree on. It’s never been a perfect system, but it is all we we’ve got.

If the president does not like their solution, the executive branch has veto power. If the legislature does not agree with the president’s veto, they can override his veto  

When the president of the United States uses a presidential veto, it doesn't necessarily mean that the bill won't become a law. The US Constitution gives Congress a means to sign a bill into law after a presidential veto has occurred. In order to overturn a presidential veto, both houses in Congress must vote to approve the bill by a two-thirds majority. In cases where a majority votes does not occur, bipartisanship — the act of finding common ground via compromise — can help override the veto by gaining a majority vote. Other alternatives include declaring a law as unconstitutional or ruling against same party affiliation.

https://www.americaexplained.org/how-does-congress-override-a-presidential-veto.htm#:~:text=In%20order%20to%20overturn%20a%20presidential%20veto%2C%20both,override%20the%20veto%20by%20gaining%20a%20majority%20vote.

On occasion, there still may be disagreement about the laws that are passed, at which point courts can get involved. Even then, though, the decisions that they arrive at are not always the last word, which is why appeals are allowed.

FDR was one of our greatest presidents, but he accomplished as much as he did by using executive orders. During his terms in office, he issued 3728 executive orders.

After a while, his opponents started to challenge some of those orders, which frustrated FDR. In order to accomplish more of what he wanted to do; he considered expanding the side of the Supreme Court

On February 5, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shocked America by introducing a plan to expand the Supreme Court, to gain favorable votes. FDR’s war on the court was short-lived, and it was defeated by a crafty Chief Justice and Roosevelt’s party members.

By 1937, Roosevelt had won a second term in office, but the makeup of a conservative-leaning Supreme Court hadn’t changed since he took office four years earlier. There were four Justices –nicknamed the “Four Horsemen”: ,” Justices George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, James McReynolds, and Willis Van Devanter—who were conservative enough that their votes against most New Deal plans were expected. A fifth justice with conservative leanings was the Chief Justice, Charles Evans Hughes, who also narrowly lost the 1916 presidential race to the Democratic incumbent, President Woodrow Wilson.

However, Hughes also had roots in the progressive wing of the Republican party. Another justice, Owen Roberts, was a Hoover appointee who also voted with the conservatives on some decisions including the significant Schechter Poultry v. United States case, which struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act.

Adding to the tension between the president and the Supreme Court were a series of decisions by the justices that halted key components of the New Deal. After his re-election, Roosevelt developed his plan to reform the court in secrecy, working with his attorney general, Homer Cummings, on a way to ensure the court would rule favorably about upcoming cases on Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act.

The plan was to pass a law—the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937—that would allow the President to appoint an additional justice for every sitting justice who was over 70 years of age, Roosevelt could add six of his own justices to the court. With two liberals already on the bench, that would put the odds in FDR’s favor.

Within five weeks of the President’s announcement, the “court-packing plan,” as it came to be known, was heading toward a dead-end in the Senate. By June 1937, the Judiciary Committee had sent a report with a negative recommendation to the full Senate. “The bill is an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country. . . .  It is essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy that the judiciary be completely independent of both the executive and legislative branches of the government,” the report read.

 https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-fdr-lost-his-brief-war-on-the-supreme-court-2

Today, our system of checks and balances no longer works as well as it should.

Whatever name you call it, Trump wants to rule as a dictator. In effect, he favors unitary rule.

Also known as a unitary government, a unitary state is a polity structured to concentrate ultimate governing power in the hands of a single national authority. It is the world’s most widely used government system; the United Nations has 193 members, of which 165 have unitary government structures. These states are usually centralized under a strong national government, but some constitutional frameworks support decentralized unitary structures. France offers a well-known example of a centralized unitary state, while the Netherlands features a decentralized style.

 

Federalism is the opposite of unitary styles of government. In federalist systems, internal political subdivisions like states and provinces retain extensive political power and sole decision-making authority over certain matters of governance. The United States, Canada, and Germany feature these structures, which have certain advantages and certain drawbacks when compared against unitary systems.

To date, Trump has ignored many court orders. In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to implement his agenda as swiftly as possible, particularly in cases involving his immigration policies and attempts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.

 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-federal-court-ruling-ignore-b2792939.html

Like FDR, Trump has tried to bend the courts to his will. To do that, he was able to appoint 3 conservative judges to the Supreme court.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-12-2025-4f6

The results were predictable.

Supporters of Trump in state legislatures also tried to tip the scales to benefit Trump.

They tarred those who questioned the administration’s economic or foreign policies as un-American—either socialists or traitors making the nation vulnerable to terrorist attacks—and set out to make sure such people could not have a voice at the polls. Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression began to shut Democratic voices out of our government, aided by a series of Supreme Court decisions. In 2010 the court opened the floodgates of corporate money into our elections to sway voters; in 2013 it gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act; in 2021 it said that election laws that affected different groups of voters unevenly were not unconstitutional. In that year, a former Republican president claimed he won the 2020 election because, all evidence to the contrary, Democratic votes were fraudulent.

The reason that Democrats are trying to pass an ethics code for the Supreme Court is that the court's increasing use of the shadow docket.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_docket

 The shadow docket is used when the Court believes an applicant will suffer "irreparable harm" if its request is not immediately granted. Historically, the shadow docket was rarely used for rulings of serious legal or political significance. However, since 2017, it has been increasingly used for consequential rulings, especially for requests by the Department of Justice for emergency stays of lower-court rulings. The practice has been criticized for various reasons, including for bias, lack of transparency, and lack of accountability.

Use of the shadow docket for important rulings has increased precipitously since 2017. This coincided with the first presidency of Donald Trump, when the Department of Justice sought emergency relief (generally to stay lower court rulings against its executive actions) from the Supreme Court at a far higher rate than had previous administrations, filing 41 emergency applications over Trump's four years in office (by comparison, over the prior 16 years the Obama administration and the Bush administration together filed only eight emergency applications).

Rulings made by way of the shadow docket during Trump's term included rulings over his travel ban, the diversion of military funds to the construction of the Mexico–United States border wall, the prohibition of transgender people from openly serving in the United States military, use of the federal death penalty,nd restrictions on asylum seekers from Central America. The Supreme Court granted 28 of the Trump administration's requests; in the 16 years prior, only four were granted.^[22]

Following Trump's departure from office, the Court has made rulings against the Biden administration, putting an end to a federal eviction moratorium and nullifying the White House's attempt to end the Remain in Mexico policy. The latter was decided in an order two paragraphs long. In September 2021, the shadow docket gained more prominence after the Court declined to block the Texas Heartbeat Act from being enforced and decided some technical matters concerning how it could be challenged in Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson. In 2021, both the House Judiciary Committee and its Senate counterpart held its first hearings on the practice in February and September respectively.

Coinciding with other attempts to reform the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats introduced legislation in 2024 aiming to require the Court to provide written explanations of its decision and disclose how the Justices voted.^[

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/politics/supreme-court-emergency-docket-partisan.html

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh says good judges are like good referees.

“Am I calling it the same way for labor and management, for the business and the environmental interests, for the Republican and the Democrat?” he asked at a judicial conference over the summer. “If you can’t look in the mirror and say, ‘I would do the exact same thing if the parties were flipped,’ then you’re not being a good judge, just like you wouldn’t be a good referee if you were favoring one team over the other.” A look at the court’s record in emergency rulings does not appear to reflect Justice Kavanaugh’s goal.

The link below compares the court’s ruling on Trump Versus Biden.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/politics/supreme-court-emergency-docket-partisan.html

This is apparent in the overall numbers, with the Trump administration prevailing much more often than its predecessor had — 84 percent of the time, compared with 53 percent for the Biden administration. That is perhaps unsurprising, given that the court is dominated by six Republican appointees.

Drilling down to individual justices’ votes rounds out the group portrait.

In the 17 cases in which the Biden administration sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court over four years, for instance, Justice Kavanaugh voted in its favor 41 percent of the time, according to an analysis prepared for The New York Times by Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, both of Washington University in St. Louis, and Michael J. Nelson of Penn State.

By contrast, in the 19 cases in which the court has ruled on applications from the second Trump administration, Justice Kavanaugh voted for the administration 89 percent of the time. That amounted to a 48 percentage-point gap in favor of President Trump.

The last piece of the checks and balance is Congress. However, due to the fact that neither party has a strong majority, Congress can no longer be a deterrent. For too many of the Republican party are afraid of Trump and his base. As a result, they will not do anything to oppose him. That is evidenced that they approved a number of his cabinet picks, many of whom are unqualified. Pete Hegseth and Robert F Kennedy Jr. are the most obvious, but there are others.

For now, our system of checks and balances is a cruel joke. Over time, though, that will change.

Trump’s policies are extremely unpopular with the majority of voters, and that is true of Trump himself.

The GOP is working hard to get redistricting in their favor, a process that will ultimately fail.

My final message, though, it this.

Eventually, we’ll return to a more normal government.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination  was a tragedy, but he was as responsible as anyone for spreading hate and misinformation, and removing his voice from public discourse will actually make our country safer.