Eric Columbus

So tonight is Mardi Gras, the start of the Lunar New Year, and the start of Ramadan?

It gets even weirder. The FTC spox is attacking a decision by a Trump-appointed judge to invalidate a rule promulgated by the Biden-era FTC!

So much for claims Republicans won’t fund art.

This is performance art: Leveraging your job as state AG to get a publicly funded state university to pay you an extra $100,000/year to teach a 2-credit class called "Executive Power." Indeed.

www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

Budd Dwyer?

If memory serves, Wilson told Douthat in their recent-ish podcast that he had met Hegseth only once. Obviously I have no idea if that’s true.

What do you mean by “technically”?

It would take 15 minutes to cure this, no?

Over at Lawfare, I examine the peculiar constitutional theory undergirding OPM's final rule on Schedule Policy/Career

Jesse Jackson dies at 84

Fwiw the poll was conducted by a super PAC supporting her and didn't poll (or at least didn't release results about) Talarico
www.politico.com/newsletters/...

As an attorney with occasional experience with the Equal Time rule, I can explain what's going on here and how the FCC's Brandon Carr is leveraging his position to force late night and daytime talk show hosts to exclude Democratic candidates.

First I need to explain the Equal Time rule itself. 1/

Trump Sought Vast Budget Cuts. Congress Granted Few.

Important @tonyromm.bsky.social piece on how Congress generally did *not* enact big budget cuts. Of course, TBD

(1) whether Congress will, like last year, rescind some $$
(2) whether Trump will impound $$, and
(3) how courts would handle impoundments.

GIFT LINK:
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...

I’m sorry about that. I enjoy reading your work here.

Colbert Says CBS Pulled Guest Amid FCC Scrutiny, Posts Interview on YouTube Instead Stephen Colbert explained on Monday night’s Late Show that CBS lawyers told him “in no uncertain terms” that he could not have James Talarico, a Democratic Texas state representative currently running...

Gutsy of Colbert to tell viewers that CBS is complying in advance.

“at this point, [Carr has only] released a letter that says he’s thinking about doing away with the exception—but my network is unilaterally enforcing it as if he had."

latenighter.com/news/late-sh...

YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Rep. James Talarico On Confronting Christian Nationalism, And Strange Days In The Texas Legislatu…

Heres the interview Trump's FCC didnt want you to see on Colbert:
youtu.be/oiTJ7Pz_59A?...

those who fought against "tone-policing" basically just kept shooting themselves and their causes in the foot because the person you're calling a moron may well be a moron, but the audience that mattered was the one trying to find a side to pick, and those people were usually turned off by rudeness

agree with this (hah) but also think a particular mistake the left made for a long time online, and still makes to an extent, is failing to understand that the person whose mind you may actually change is the one reading the argument you're having, not the one you're arguing with

One-upping SNL’s “Love Toilet”
m.youtube.com/watch?v=avb1...

Army Veteran Deported Despite Pending Appeal: 'He Served This Country' “He served. He did what he was supposed to do. And now he’s not even here.”

Here’s a story about him with no paywall: www.military.com/daily-news/h...

Per WSJ reporting, Trump is lying when he plays dumb about Noem’s affair with Lewandowski. GIFT LINK:
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Fun fact about Ossoff: if elected president he would be the fourth recent president — after Clinton, George W Bush, and Obama — to begin his electoral career with a losing House bid.

My wife and I got that and by the end I think the interviewer wanted to move in with us

Trump becomes the second consecutive president whose actions a judge slammed as “Orwellian” in an opinion released on a national holiday and reported on by @joshgerstein.bsky.social. Let’s hope this decision fares better on appeal than the last one, which is here:
www.politico.com/news/2023/07...

Have you seen a link to him saying this? I suspect the tweeter made it up.

Could you provide a link to Trump saying this? I haven’t seen it; I suspect the tweeter simply made it up.

Shorter Patronis: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a mask is a good guy with a mask.

I agree no legal distinction; I was just trying to figure out whether there was a way in which that DHS spox was being truthful. (Often there isn’t!)

I for one agree that we should no longer allow people to vote wearing identity-shielding masks and otherwise refusing to say who they are at polling places.

Perhaps it’s what they mean by “church” — i.e. distinguishing between the grounds and the house of worship itself. Have they gone into the latter? I didn’t see it in the RNS pieces you linked unless I missed something.

A Day That Should Live in Infamy - UnderstandingCongress.org Five years ago today (February 13, 2021), 43 Senate Republicans voted to acquit Donald Trump of inciting the January 6 riot in his second impeachment trial, leaving the Senate short of the two-thirds ...

"Five years ago today (February 13, 2021), 43 Senate Republicans voted to acquit Donald Trump of inciting the January 6 riot in his second impeachment trial... Today, we are living with the consequences of those 43 Republican votes..." www.understandingcongress.org/a-day-that-s...