Category: FYI

Though Paul Jacob has defended Donald Trump’s attacks upon the bureaucracy and Elon Musk’s DOGE operation, as well as found a silver lining to the president’s protectionism, the reader of Common Sense can be assured that not everything the president says or does is cheered at ThisIsCommonSense​.org.

Take the new administration’s rhetoric that “we are the federal law.”

That was in response to Maine’s Democratic governor’s objection to the Trump administration’s tying federal education funding to that states with the states’ compliance with the new policy prohibiting boys and men from participating in girls’ and women’s sports even if they call themselves women and “identify” as women.

The administration is not the law. Executive powers are limited constitutionally, and if it attempts to merely dictate policy without congressional legislation, the new administration will be breaking the law, effectively going rogue.

Of course, one way or another every administration does this on some issue, and the problem of an imperial presidency is a major concern. And has been. Since the time of Andrew Jackson!

But in this case, the Maine governor may have no legal leg to stand on in objecting to the new policy — for the policy appears to be based on existing law. Elon Musk re-​tweeted this post by Sarah Parshall Perry in response:

Maine will lose in court. Title 9 protects biological women, period. In order to get $250 million in federal funding, Maine entered into a contract with the Department of Education, promising to follow that federal civil rights law. Her reliance on contrary state law will prove fatal to any continued recalcitrance.

But Mr. Musk is nevertheless prone to the kind of loose talk that the president is. Here is a quotation of Musk, courtesy of Fox News:

Mr. Musk provides us with an argument that falls apart in at least two major points:

1. The president is not the representative of the people. He is the executive of the general government. Big difference.
2. The test of a democracy is not that “the people’s will” is implemented, at least not if that will is figured to be any given policy determined by voting. One election doesn’t give any voting bloc carte blanche to do any thing it wants. Majorities have limitations, minorities still have rights, and a system of checks and balances and state limitations circumscribes what all participants do in a democracy.

Trump and Musk both talk as if they have some sort of mandate to break the law, or embody the law. But even good things, like reducing government power, must be done in the right way.

But talk about action isn’t action as such, and each act in government should be judged on its constitutional merit.

“DOGE is a temporary organization repurposed from U.S. Digital Services,” explains The Epoch Times. “Trump and Musk previewed the idea to prospective voters on the campaign trail.”

The new “department” was not created ex nihilo, but, instead, fashioned out of an existing outfit that had been established by the Obama Administration. It was actually a “Reorganization and Renaming of the United States Digital Service. The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed,” the January 20, 2025, executive order put it, “as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.”

Establishment of a Temporary Organization.  There shall be a USDS Administrator established in the Executive Office of the President who shall report to the White House Chief of Staff. There is further established within USDS, in accordance with section 3161 of title 5, United States Code, a temporary organization known as “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization”.  The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall be headed by the USDS Administrator and shall be dedicated to advancing the President’s 18-​month DOGE agenda. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026. The termination of the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall not be interpreted to imply the termination, attenuation, or amendment of any other authority or provision of this order.

Notice that this is a sunsetting operation, of limited duration. And also notice how the “Department of Government Efficiency” is contracted to DOGE (with its own history in the crypto space), which is then subsumed under the initialism of an existing organization, “United States Digital Services,” and note that many of the members of the DOGE team are proficient masters of modern technology and organizational methods — or, as The Epoch Times puts it, “Many individuals publicly associated with DOGE are very young and highly technically accomplished.” 

“Doge” was also the title of rulers of several renaissance era Italian city states, perhaps made most recently memorable in the banter of Danny Kaye in the 1955 film The Court Jester:

King Roderick: The Duke. What did the Duke do?
Hubert Hawkins: Eh … the Duke do?
Roderick: Yes. And what about the Doge?
Hawkins: Oh, the Doge! King Roderick: Eh. Well what did the Doge do?
Hawkins: The Doge do?
Roderick: Yes, the Doge do.
Hawkins: Well, uh, the Doge did what the Doge does. Eh, uh, when the Doge does his duty to the Duke, that is.
Roderick: What? What’s that?
Hawkins: Oh, it’s very simple, sire. When the Doge did his duty and the Duke didn’t, that’s when the Duchess did the dirt to the Duke with the Doge.
Roderick: Who did what to what?
Hawkins: Oh, they all did, sire. There they were in the dark; the Duke with his dagger, the Doge with his dart, Duchess with her dirk.
Roderick: Duchess with her dirk?
Hawkins: Yes! The Duchess dove at the Duke just when the Duke dove at the Doge. Now the Duke ducked, the Doge dodged, and the Duchess didn’t. So the Duke got the Duchess, the Duchess got the Doge, and the Doge got the Duke!

Extremely clever. The legal creation of the DOGE, we mean. Much more clever than renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” And to much more pointed effect.

Immediately after the horrific crash between the military Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger plane in Washington, D.C., on January 29, 2025, opinions of all kinds were thrown around as high octane speculation became the order of the day.

But now, after several days, there are a few curious facts worth mentioning.

One: The helicopter was on a training mission for “continuity of government” [COG].

The story hasn’t got much play, but it’s out there, as in the Reuters article “Crashed US Army Black Hawk unit was responsible for doomsday readiness”:

The Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet in Washington on Wednesday was on a training flight along a route core to a seldom-​discussed military mission to evacuate senior officials to safety in the event of an attack on the U.S., officials say.

The military mission, known as ‘continuity of government’ and ‘continuity of operations,’ is meant to preserve the ability of the U.S. government to operate.” 

COG protocols are many and mighty peculiar, and, in case of emergency — such as war, natural disaster, civilizational collapse — are designed to kick in when disaster strikes.

They are not supposed to cause disaster themselves — though they are so murky and shrouded in hush-​hush that they sometimes cast a dubious, minatory shadow over the news.

Two: Prior to the collision, on previous nights, helicopter interference with airliner flight paths had interrupted two airliner landing attempts, which had to be re-attempted.

So it seems that the COG folks have gotten careless, and their carelessness was a known issue.

Tower management and personnel did nothing to correct it.

On Friday the FAA forbade helicopter traffic in the region.

Three: The name of the Black Hawk pilot has been withheld from the public at the request of family. Considering that President Trump himself criticized the flying of the craft, this privacy request is hardly shocking. 

All passengers and crew of the American Airlines flight died, as did the three crew members of the Black Hawk.

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UPDATE: Rumors in the press and online that the pilot was a “trans woman,” named in the press, are now reported as definitely untrue.

A private spacecraft is heading to the Moon.

It has taken pictures of “the Blue Marble,” our planet Earth. The spacecraft owned by Firefly Aerospace is called “The Blue Ghost,” and on Thursday fired thrusters that will allow the lunar lander to reach its destination in early March. 

The mission is dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” and the mission’s client is NASA.

Launched with it, from the same SpaceX rocket on January 15, 2025, is a lunar lander from Japan’s ispace, Resilience, making the launch a double shot at Earth’s satellite.

Resilience is still in orbit, and is expected to land on the Moon before July. According to Space​.com, “Resilience is packed with five science payloads. These come mainly from commercial and academic partners, while one is a micro moon rover developed by ispace’s Luxembourg-​based subsidiary that will drive the mission’s initial resource exploration activities.”

See also articles at The Epoch Times (AP) and AOL (Reuters).

Paul Jacob has been covering the advance of private spacefaring for almost as long as Common Sense with Paul Jacob has been in publication.

The official state funeral for James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th President of the United States, was held in Washington, D.C., ten days ago. Afterwards, the body of the ex-​president was transported to Plains, Georgia, for a funeral there, and internment.

What is most interesting about the Washington National Cathedral ceremony has to be the spectacle of seeing all members of that most prestigious of clubs, the Presidents’ Club gathered in one place, interacting. 

Or not.

Many have noted a surprising feature: how chummy Barack Obama and Donald Trump seemed, chatting, in apparent conviviality. It is commonplace among commenters to note, as Chase Hughes put it, that “politics is theater,” and that these players are fooling us. They get along a lot better in private, or at least when not pitching for power.

But that is not quite right. The social aspect of the event showed some huge antagonisms and insecurities, especially amongst the women. 

• Melania Trump despises most of these people.
• Karen Pence hates Trump, and doesn’t much care for Obama either.
• Hillary Clinton completely snubbed George W. Bush, seated next to her, was even cold to her own husband, and of course completely ignored Trump.
• Kamala Harris was as isolated as anyone could be — other than her own husband, who became the very model of discomfort.

What did you see? (Not Michelle Obama, who did not attend.)

Parting question: Did Obama serve as Trump’s buffer from the other members of the Club?

The re-​election of an out-​of-​office president, for the second time, brings to mind an oddity of the convention of the ordinal numbering of the United States Presidents — those under the Constitution.

George Washington was the first; John Adams the second, and so on the list runs until we get to the curious case of one man, Stephen Grover Cleveland, who is regarded as both the 22nd & 24th presidents. All because the 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison, served between his two presidencies.

Now it is happening to Donald John Trump. He is listed as the 45th president of the United States, having served from 2017 through January of 2021. Now, re-​elected after an “interregnum” of the 46th president, Joe Biden, Trump is slated to serve as the 47th president. 

It is apparent that, according to this convention, what is being ordered with numbers is the presidencies, not the presidents as such. And it is assumed that a second (or third, or fourth) term in office is the same presidency as the first term of a president, unless broken in sequence by the term of another president.

An odd convention.