Honest and good-hearted political representatives can disagree about policies for implementing the federal government’s responsibility to protect our safety and freedoms. But they have no excuse for allowing public officials to violate the rule of law—to violate the Constitution. Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (KY) offered articles of impeachment of the Sec of Deference Pete Hegseth for exactly such violations.
“The House voted to refer the resolution to committee, allowing Republicans to stop it from advancing during the lame-duck session. The 211-204 vote effectively punted any efforts to impeach the Pentagon chief until Democrats take back the majority.” The Hill – House Hegseth impeachment vote blocked. While all Republicans except Massie voted to send the resolution to committee, their vote succeeded “thanks largely to almost a dozen Democrats failing to show up for the early evening vote…. due to gridlock on Pennsylvania Ave., caused by a traffic accident.”
In the recent midterm elections, the voters severely punished the Republicans for Trump’s lawless corruption. Impeaching Hegseth was an opportunity for Republicans to demonstrate that they got the message. Sadly, they chose the ignore Hegseth’s lawlessness.
“At his press conference on Monday, Massie stressed that he wasn’t seeking Hegseth’s impeachment because he was bad at his job, but because he is operating in violation of the law, and he encouraged other lawmakers to read the eight articles.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘I think Pete Hegseth is effective. He’s good at his job, and so I don’t want to vote for these articles of impeachment.’ Well, the reality is, we’re not impeaching him for being bad at his job. In fact, he was very effective at killing schoolchildren in Iran,” Massie said, referring to the February 28 US strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, southern Iran, which killed at least 156 civilians, including 120 children.
“He was very effective at extrajudicial killings [bombing speed boats in the Caribbean]. There’s no argument in these impeachment articles that he’s ineffective. The argument here is that he’s broken laws and he’s violated the Constitution,” he added. The Hill
I am a classical liberal. Our country was founded and has prospered on the proposition “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We jealously guard our individual liberty. We are free to decide what we want to do and how we want to do it. This liberty is subject to two major conditions: we must live with the consequences of our choices and actions, and our actions cannot interfere with the same exercise of freedom by others.
When in 1964, at the age of 21, I voted for the first time, I was thrilled to vote for Barry Goldwater. His “Conscience of a Conservative” more or less defined my political philosophy. Ronald Reagan’s presidency that came a few years later reflected the Republican Party I believed in and supported.
When Donald Trump changed his party registration from Democrat to Republican in Sept. 2009 and was first elected President in Nov. 2016, the Republican Party I had belonged to quickly became something quite different from the one I had always supported. President Trump, an egotistical, corrupt bully, enlarged executive power freely violating norms and laws with no pushback from the Republicans in Congress. Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs indiscriminately, joined Israel in a war against Iran (after he had earlier withdrawn from the Iran deal that was preventing it from building a bomb), helped fund and arm Israel’s genocide in Gaza, imposed 43 trade deals that gave shares of American companies to the federal government, sharply reduced legal immigration despite a labor shortage, misused the Dept. of Justice and the withholding of funds to punish “his enemies,” closed the Kennedy Center when the courts wouldn’t let him put his name on it, etc. My Republican Party no longer existed. The separation of powers that our founders had wisely put in our constitution now rested only on the courts, which fortunately were doing their jobs most of the time. https://wcoats.blog/2026/04/20/trumps-record-so-far/
First-term Trump official Miles Taylor enumerated Trump atrocities as: “In less than two years, he’s nearly destroyed the U.S. Constitution. He ignored laws passed by Congress by the dozen… took a wrecking ball to agencies he had no legal authority to delete… purged the civil service… fired the watchdogs… remade the Justice Department into an instrument of revenge… ordered the prosecution of his critics by name… thumbed his nose at the courts… put troops on the streets… sent masked agents to kidnap people in the night… shipped them to foreign prisons without hearings… teased the suspension of habeas corpus rights and the invocation of the Insurrection Act… sued newspapers and threatened broadcast networks… arrested journalists… extorted law firms and universities… jailed students for what they said… and tried to literally rewrite parts of the Constitution by executive order.”
What was I and the country to do? I continued to vote for libertarian candidates, of course, but a few days ago large majorities of American voters threw out the hapless Republicans, giving Democrats a majority in both Houses of Congress. Trump’s lawlessness and bullying can now more easily be stopped. I am very relieved by this development. Trump could brag no more about sweeping into office with a huge majority (he actually received only 49.8% of the popular vote for his second term).
My friend Robert Calderisi recently wrote that: “Another almost-too-saintly candidate, James Talarico, was asked whether he loved his opponent— the loathsome attorney-general of Texas impeached by his own party several years ago for corruption— and he said, ‘We are both children of God, so he is my brother, but with love comes accountability, as with a family member who wants to drive under the influence and you are obliged not to give him the keys to the car.’”
The new Congress can begin by rebuilding trust in our government. It can subpoena Trump and his officials to explain seemingly self-serving deals and disregard for the law. It can require greater transparency for government actions such as the firing of at least seventeen Inspector Generals and many top military officers all without explanation. https://wcoats.blog/2026/08/19/where-is-trump-going/
But I am a classical liberal, a traditional pre-Trump Republican. I do not like many of the policies Democrats often propose. So, it is time to shift gears and remake the case for a strong and efficient but quite limited government that will effectively defend America and my personal rights. Rather than damning our opponents as evil enemies, we must again engage them in debate over how best to establish the rules governing our interactions with our neighbors and countrymen, and fellow citizens of the world.
The United States has a large and powerful military to protect us from potential foreign invasion. It is for defense. We are also willing to aid the defense of allies as we did during World Wars I and II and the Korean war. This increases our voice in the world, i.e. it is sometimes in our interest to help friends. But for some reason we have sometimes been the aggressor as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Yugoslavia/Serbia (when I later entered Belgrade, I saw the Chines Embassy we had bombed by mistake), Libya, and Syria. These attacks did not generally serve American interests. Nor do Trump’s bullying verbal attacks on our traditional allies.
It is in America’s interest to stick to the defensive use of our military. So why does Sec. Hegseth want to change the Defense Department’s name to the Department of War? When I asked AI this question it responded that:
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump want to use the secondary title Department of War to promote a “warrior ethos” that emphasizes fighting and winning wars rather than focusing on defensive or peacekeeping roles.”
It’s one thing for this guy to blabber on as a TV personality, but quite different and very dangerous for him to lead our military. I whole heartedly support Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky’s intention to reintroduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth if Hegseth remains in his position when Congress returns to the capital following the November midterm elections.
Is it a bad thing for oil company profits to increase when oil prices jump?
A country’s economic wellbeing—its national income and standard of living—is maximized when its economic resources (capital and labor) are allocated to their most profitable uses. When that is the case, no other use of capital and labor can increase the value of total output. This includes goods produced for export in order to pay for goods and services imported.
An economy that has maximized its output in this way (allocated all its resources to their most productive uses), will suffer a drop in income if a tax causes a change in this resource allocation. As an example, consider a tax (called a tariff) on the importation of certain medicines now produced abroad. In fact, President Trump is threatening a 100% tariff on imported generic drugs, with the rate rising to 200% later, if manufacturers do not move production to the U.S. Hopefully it is obvious that if the existing allocation of resources between products and whether they are produced here or there is optimal (maximizing output), then shifting the production of the drugs now produced in India (for example) to the U.S. will result in a fall in our aggregate income. The resources devoted to producing what ever we exported (to pay for our drug imports) would have to be shifted to domestic production of the drugs now imported. We will lose the comparative advantage of the existing allocation. The reallocation will reduce overall output. In short, if the allocation was optimal to begin with, the tariff and reallocation will reduce aggregate income. It is a bad idea.
But what about the jump in oil company profits because of the Iran war induced increase in the price of oil? When resources are optimally allocated, risk-adjusted profits will be the same everywhere because resources will be moved to where profits are higher (thus lowering them) until they are the same everywhere (risk-adjusted). Oil prices have increased because of the war-related fall in the supply of crude oil. Nothing has changed in the cost of lifting and supplying existing non-war-related supplies of crude. In the real world, of course all kinds of things are changing all the time and it is very desirable for resource allocations to change as well in response. That is precisely what chasing profits does.
The increase in profits from producing the same amount crude in the U.S. from the increase in the world price of oil, creates a profit incentive to allocate more resources to finding and pumping it up. That is very desirable for easing the current supply shortage. An increase in profit is a market incentive to increase the resources devoted to producing something. It would be counterproductive to interfere with that very desirable response.
What did we gain from the Iran war and what was the cost (so far)? Why did we launch this war? What was our objective and have we achieved it?
From a NYTimes article and JD Vance speech the US budgetary cost of our illegal attack on Iran was about $150 billion. This year’s conflict cost five to six thousand lives. This does not include the economic cost to the world from oil shortages and food shortages expected from the shortage of fertilizer, etc. NYTimes – Iran war costs
In evaluating what we gained from the war it is hard to know whether to treat the negative outcome as a negative gain or an additional cost. Prior to this war the Straits of Hormuz were open and passage was free. While Iran seems to have agreed to reopen them, they have now clearly demonstrated the potential to close them or charge for passage as potential future choke points. While Iran may be giving up its financing of friends in the neighborhood (Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen), and this would be an import gain, it has established its military strength to defend itself while the US has demonstrated its vulnerability.
More importantly, Iran is now judged by many to be more likely to build an atomic bomb. The Iran Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -JCPOA) negotiated by the Obama administration, which insured that Iran would not do so for at least ten years, was overturned during the first Trump administration. Hopefully such assurances can be reestablished during the 60 day negotiations still ahead. Though such a bomb would violate Islamic doctrine, the need for such protection has been greatly increased by US/Israel aggressions. But the MOU agreed to this week provides no assurance that a new agreement would be any better than the one Trump killed in May 2018. The Washington Post’s careful analysis suggests that it is not promising that a new agreement will be any better than the old one: Trump condemned Obama’s Iran deal-here’s how his own compares
In an interview at the opening of his Presidential Library in Chicago, former President Obama stated that: “it feels like we are back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little worse off…” The Hill-Obama on Trump Iran war Obama’s assessment was not including the costs of the war noted above.
US support of Israel has been very costly. Virtually the whole amaworld, other than the US, has condemned Israel’s behavior in recent years. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza alone since the Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas that killed 1,200, is hard to estimate in part because so many remain buried under the rubble. As reported in an interesting effort to estimate deaths, over half of those killed were women and children, Ralph Nadar stated that: “The recent report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to a consensus of 680,000 deaths. Fatalities by Israel-vast Gaza genocide-deliberately undercounted These deaths don’t include those in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, which continue to this day despite a so-called cease fire.
More broadly the damage to America’s reputation because of our support of Israel’s bloody attacks of its Palestinian, Lebanon, and Syrian neighbors has been further increased by its illegal attacks on Iran. Our rapid decline continues.
According to Ian Bremmer: “The cease-fire does not mark the end of this chapter of conflict and regional division in the Middle East; it is instead driving a geopolitical realignment along new fault lines.
“More outcomes? A more polarized and fractured Middle East. Iran in a stronger strategic position. And American partners shaken by erratic and unpredictable conduct.
“The war has accelerated the collapse of the US-anchored order that held the Middle East together for decades. That arrangement kept oil flowing, rival powers out of the region, and Washington the broker of everything that mattered – from Iranian containment to the more recent Arab-Israeli normalization process. It was already fraying before the fighting started. The war broke it.” Linkedin – What actually mattered
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 Cuban military downing of two civilian planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which killed four people (including three U.S. citizens).Since September 2, 2025, the U.S. military has attacked suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific 59 times, killing 196 people. Shouldn’t we be indicting Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, for murder?
“According to President Donald Trump’s mysterious math, that means this campaign of carnage has prevented around 1.5 million drug-related deaths in the United States—more than 20 times the total number recorded in the year before Trump started treating suspected cocaine smugglers as ‘combatants’ who can be killed at will, from a distance and in cold blood.
“Back on planet Earth, there is no reason to think the boat strikes have prevented any deaths at all. That could only happen if blowing up smugglers—as opposed to the previous practice of intercepting them, arresting them, and seizing their cargo, which Trump says was ‘totally ineffective’—reduced the supply of cocaine available to American consumers. Given more than a century of failed attempts to ‘stop the flow’ of illegal intoxicants, that never seemed likely. And nearly nine months after Trump launched his new, deadlier version of the war on drugs, there is no evidence that it is more effective than the traditional tactics he derides as insufficiently homicidal.” Jacob Sullum, “Blowing up boats hasn’t slowed cocaine traffic to U.S.”
Should we care about such a double standard? Yes. What we are doing is not only illegal but also immoral. Hopefully we aspire to behave morally because we aspire to be moral people. But there is a practical self-interest in playing by the rules as well.
We could often get our way simply because we are the strongest guy on the block. President Trump seems to like being a bully. However, pushing others around has a cost. The better we can live up to the high principles upon which our nation was founded, the more respect we will receive from others (nations and people). One of those important principles is adhering to the rule of law. Such respect means that others will cooperate with us more easily (at lower cost to us).
International norms and conventions generally serve the interests of all who have agreed to them. Win, win. When we violate them, the world pays a cost and so do we.
Last night we finished the three-episode 2022 History Channel mini-series on Abraham Lincoln. Thank you Jim Bailey for recommending it. In addition to the character acting, the story was narrated by Barack Obama: (former U.S. President); Catherine Clinton (Historian); Christy S. Coleman (Historical Consultant); Allen C. Guelzo (Lincoln Scholar); Harold Holzer (Lincoln Scholar); Caroline Janney (Civil War Historian); Edna Greene Medford (Historian); General Stanley A. McChrystal (Retired U.S. Army General).
There was so much about Lincoln and his struggles and wisdom in reuniting the American union that I had not known. That history was masterfully presented in this series. Most Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861 to preserve their right to own slaves. To reunite the union Lincoln launched a war with the south that eventually killed 620,000 to 700,000 American’s. In the midst of this war Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared that all enslaved people in Confederate states still in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”.
When Robert E Lee surrendered his troops, thus ending the war, Lincoln allowed members of the Confederate Army to return home and to their farms without punishment. In today’s environment it is hard to imagine such generous treatment of one’s enemies. But Lincoln had the wisdom, integrity, and kindness of heart to understand that reuniting the union required mutual acceptance of one’s previous enemies.
Lincoln’s tragic assassination by John Wilkes Booth shortly after his re-election deprived the South of his wisdom during the Reconstruction period that followed the war.
We have now completed all eight seasons of Homeland. After my review of the first two seasons my old U of Chicago friend and fellow libertarian, Joe Cobb, said that we would like the rest of it as well. He was correct. The story continued to confront the main characters with excruciating choices with more plot twists than I could keep track of. Would you take steps to save the life of a friend that could result in the deaths of several thousand—or the reverse.
But what I want to share with you here is how eerily like today the early 2000s were. We were fighting with Iran, then Iraq. Forever wars our current President promised to end (remember that?). Not only did the struggles being portrayed seem like today but reviewing my email and news flashes during our breaks between episodes seemed like a continuation of the TV series. It was really weird. Homeland moves into my list of all-time favorite series, which includes The Wire, The Jewel in the Crown, and Breaking Bad.
My apology for my lazy note on Homeland. It deserves much more so here goes.
The series, which ran for eight years from 2011-2020, centers on Carrie Matheson, a CIA officer with bipolar disorder and for its first two years (all we have watched so far) the Marine scout Nick Brody. Nick was captured in Iraq and held prisoner for eight years before returning to his wife and two kids. In the last few years of his captivity Nick was befriended by Abu Nazir a leader of al-Qaeda and charged with teaching Nazir’s son English. Nick adopts Islam and when an American drone attack kills Abu Nazir’s son, to whom Nick has become very attached, Nick agrees to work with Nazir against US interests. Nick returns home as a war hero, is elected to Congress and groomed to run as VP in the current VPs upcoming presidential campaign. Carrie correctly suspects that Nick has been turned by Nazir and sets out to expose him (or exploit his new position in the US government). Complicated enough?
Virtually every character, Carrie, Nick, Nick’s wife and son and daughter and his best friend (who fell in love with Nick’s wife during his absence and assumed death) as well as Carrie’s CIA colleagues, struggle with conflicting loyalties. Nick loves America and his family but hates what it has done (convincingly denounced as terrorism by Abu Nazir) and cooperates with Nazir in punishing it. The VP Nick expects to run with gave the orders for the drone attack that killed Nazir’s son. Each character is complex, which complex histories. Each side rightly sees the other as terrorists. The show is full of twists and turns and surprises. It is fantastic.
We watched and greatly enjoyed all ten seasons of Grantchester, built around the Clergymen of a British small town church and highly recommend it.
But we currently just finished watching the first of 8 seasons of Homeland and intend to watch the rest. It’s another CIA spy series build around a very talented but super intense bipolar female CIA analyst who drives everyone nuts but whose input they always want. It is a complex and fascinating story of an American marine who was captured and imprisoned for eight years in Bagdad and turned by his captures to work for our Islamic enemy but also loves the family he returned to after his eight years of imprisonment.
“The realism (Gansa consulted intel officers and diplomats) gave it serious weight. It racked up 6 Emmys and 7 Golden Globes, and even politicians like Obama openly praised it.
“If you’ve never watched it — or want to revisit peak paranoia TV — now’s the time. It’s smart, tense, messy, and still hits uncomfortably close to home.”
The series started in 2011 but often feels like it is depicting life today (war with Iran etc). Ito and I take a break after each episode during which I check email and the latest news on Trump/Bibi’s war in Iran and related events. It is truly weird. Going back and forth fifteen years as if they are the same. I highly recommend this.
