On November 19, 2021, President Joe Biden temporarily transferred his powers and duties to Vice President Kamala Harris before undergoing a colonoscopy, making her acting president from 10:10 a.m. until 11:35 a.m. This was the first time a woman held the powers and duties of the president of the United States.
Biden had a benign but pre-cancerous polyp removed from his colon during that procedure.
That’s what President Trump posted on Truth Social back during the shutdown, adding, “WE are in power, and if we did what we should be doing, it would IMMEDIATELY end this ridiculous, Country destroying ‘SHUT DOWN.’”
This was prior to Democrats, off-year election over, suddenly deciding to agree to the same deal to reopen the government that Republicans had been offering for weeks.
The 60-vote supermajority the United States Senate needs to end debate and vote on legislation is a small-r republican measure, not a small-d democratic one. Reasonable people can disagree over its merits, certainly, but I like the greater consensus it requires.
What I don’t like is that the party in control of the Senate can at any time change the filibuster rule in any way it wishes, including ending it altogether.
Rules shouldn’t be this easy to junk.
Make the Senate filibuster not just a rule, but constitutional law.
Another major matter of constitutional change is sorely needed. The stability and independence of one of the three branches of the federal government, the U.S. Supreme Court, hangs by a thread.
The number of justices, now nine, is nowhere set in the Constitution.
Congress and the White House, when held by the same political party — even short of 60 votes in the Senate, because they could simply end the filibuster — could immediately add ten new justices.
Or 20.
And then confirm all the president’s picks.
All something Democrats mused about doing years ago: packing the High Court with many new justices to magically engineer a new Democratic Party majority on the SCOTUS.
The number of justices, like the Senate’s super-majoritarian filibuster, aren’t written in stone.
But should be.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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We have not triumphed over a doctrine when we have shown its chimerical nature.
Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie du Socialisme (1896), translated as The Psychology of Socialism (1899). Passage offered here last week, but this sentence stood out. Worthy of emphasis.
November 18, 1493, Columbus caught first sight of the island now known as Puerto Rico.
Which bring me to the Epstein files — or, more accurately, those files bring me here.
“I don’t think we’ve had a scandal like this in this country,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) offered yesterday on Meet the Press, “and what we’re asking for is justice for those survivors.”
I want justice, too — that is, the prosecution of any crime grand juries honestly believe was likely committed.
By anyone! No matter how powerful that suspect might be.
On the other hand, the Epstein File Transparency Act, which will be voted on this week in the U.S. House of Representatives and for which Khanna is a primary sponsor, “would require the Justice Department to declassify and release all files pertaining to the prosecution of the late sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.”
The public has a right to know!
But does it?
And if so, does that ‘right’ mean we permit the federal Department of Justice to use prosecutorial power to grab incriminating evidence on “suspected criminals” and then weaponize and deploy that information not to prosecute a crime in a court of law, but rather to publicize the damaging dirt discovered in the court of public opinion?
From then-FBI Director James Comey’s ridiculous public preening over the non-prosecution of Hillary Clinton in 2016 to the demanded release of the Epstein files today, we must be careful the DOJ does not become an opposition research firm for the party in power, using badges and guns. Or the world’s most outrageous doxxing scheme.
Our criminal justice system should do one thing and only one thing: Prosecute crimes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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If the existence of bullshit jobs seems to defy the logic of capitalism, one possible reason for their proliferation might be that the existing system isn’t capitalism — or at least, isn’t any sort of capitalism that would be recognizable from the works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, or, for that matter, Ludwig von Mises or Milton Friedman.
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018).
The United States Congress held its first session in Washington, D.C., on November 17, 1800.
So, what’s happening with Obamacare?
President Donald Trump this week elaborated more on how he would deal with health care subsidies and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), suggesting an account for citizens where payments can be made for health-related issues. Trump wrote in a Nov. 8 post on Truth Social that Senate Republicans should direct hundreds of billions in funding away from insurance companies and into people’s accounts, allowing them to purchase their own health insurance.
“Trump Proposes ‘Trumpcare’ Alternative to Obamacare; Sec. Rollins Says SNAP Benefits to Be Restored by Monday,” NTD News at The Epoch Times (November 16, 2025).
If this sounds awfully familiar — like the gist if not the wording of Bush Era medical-financial reforms — we may have to wait and see. But Obamacare long ago betrayed its promise of reducing healthcare costs overall. Might there be hope?
There will be more to come on this, here, but for now: what has the president actually said?
It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848; 1871), Volume II, Book IV, Chapter 7.
On November 16, 1914, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opened.