Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The US rebelled against Britain partially because the British would invade people’s homes based on warrants signed by the executive themselves, rather than by a judge approving the justification of the warrant. That’s why the Constitution has the fourth amendment. ICE tried to secretly start using monarchical British-style warrants to invade people’s homes without a real warrant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGr-yWEu0hc
“The agent’s resignation comes as the agency has undergone another purge of seasoned FBI agents across several states, multiple sources familiar with the departures told CNN. Some of the people who are being pushed out were confronted after the bureau conducted a review of the FBI’s internal messaging system and discovered instances when they made negative comments about President Donald Trump, according to the people familiar.
Some of those comments go as far back as a decade, the sources said.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fbi-agent-initially-investigated-fatal-003658751.html
“Even as the president blows up drug boats, the government routinely declines to pursue charges against smugglers nabbed by the Coast Guard.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/02/the-doj-thinks-cocaine-couriers-are-not-worth-prosecuting-trump-thinks-they-deserve-to-die/
“Hours after the Senate voted to advance the war powers resolution rebuking the White House’s current and future actions in Venezuela, President Donald Trump placed “angry” calls to each of the five Republicans who crossed the aisle, according to people with knowledge of the calls.
Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Todd Young, R-Ind., voted with Democrats to require the administration to get congressional approval for future military action in Venezuela.
Thursday’s vote was a procedural motion, and it advances the legislation to a full Senate vote that will require a simple majority.
Soon after the vote, Trump threatened each senator with primary challenges, vowing to unseat them, the people said.”
The first action in Venezuela already required Congressional authorization and was unconstitutional!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-threatened-gop-senators-voted-215718084.html
“Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as quickly as Trump prefers. The subpoena relates to his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, Powell said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” Powell said.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/federal-chair-powell-says-doj-005819943.html
The reason so many Trump prosecutions are failing to get indictments is because he is charging people with weak evidence and for political reasons.
“Grand juries have emerged as a major stumbling block for Trump’s drive to use the criminal courts to exact retribution on his perceived political foes.
Federal grand juries operate in near-total secrecy and decide whether prosecutors can bring a criminal indictment in the first place. Unlike trial juries, they don’t need to be unanimous; rather, a majority of their 16 to 23 members must agree to return an indictment. And their only job is to determine if the Justice Department has brought a plausible case — a relatively low standard which led to the cliche that prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
But in the Trump era, grand juries are no longer a rubber stamp. Instead, they’ve become a headache for prosecutors trying to advance controversial Trump policies like mass deportations and militarizing law enforcement. Dozens of recent cases in Washington, D.C., have been met with so-called “no bills” — the shorthand for a grand jury declining to return a bill of indictment. And grand juries in other jurisdictions have turned down high-profile cases that Trump has prioritized.
…
The administration also seems to be losing because it’s pushing for indictments in cases with weak evidence, and due to the unpopularity in some parts of the country of tough tactics against protesters and of policies like Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. and
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan recently marveled at the “apparent prosecutorial machinations” at work, emphasizing the “unprecedented” actions prosecutors have taken to bring cases — even when grand juries have rebuffed them.
“Most troubling, prosecutors have rushed to charge cases before properly investigating them,” the Washington-based Biden appointee lamented.
…
The Constitution’s requirement that a grand jury approve serious criminal cases was adopted as a safeguard against executive power and political prosecutions. The move stemmed from what many revolutionaries regarded as political trials instituted by British authorities.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/07/trump-grand-juries-letitia-james-comey-indictments-00713579
“The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to approve military strikes against foreign countries. Federal laws, like the War Powers Resolution, allow for unilateral executive action only in response to an imminent threat against Americans or U.S. troops. That separation of powers is fundamental to American democracy—not an optional arrangement for presidents to discard when it is politically or logistically inconvenient.
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Trump’s violation of the rule of law on Saturday morning is not without precedent. That creates some awkward considerations. Trump’s critics often want to frame him as a radical and unique threat to democracy. But, as is often the case, Trump is merely pulling levers of power that already existed. Congress shrugged off the elder Bush’s attack on Panama, which paved the way for its sequel.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/03/trump-should-have-gotten-congressional-authorization-to-strike-venezuela-and-capture-maduro/
“The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Bombing a foreign country’s capital and arresting its president are plainly acts of war that received no authorization from Congress. The Trump administration clearly seems to have violated the Constitution.
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If Vance were correct, all any president would need to do to start a war is have his Justice Department file charges against a foreign leader. That’s hardly compatible with Congress controlling the power to initiate hostilities.
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The most direct historical parallel to the Maduro operation would be the U.S. ouster of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in 1989 after he stole an election and was indicted on drug smuggling charges.
But as Ilya Somin points out, there are some important legal differences. Panamanian forces had killed a U.S. Marine in the Panama Canal Zone and captured other U.S. citizens. Also, the Panamanian government declared war on the United States.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/05/regime-changed/
“Congress is supposed to declare wars under the U.S. Constitution, and we have laws that are supposed to constrain unilateral military deployments without congressional consultation. The Trump administration has blown through both of those domestic legal prohibitions, either because it could not be bothered to get consent from Congress or it did not think it would get the votes.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/01/04/trump-venezuela-legal-fallout-column-00710331
Multiple law firms gave in to illegal, autocratic demands by the president. When it came down to it, big law firms didn’t want to risk resisting an aggressive president. Democracy is vulnerable and we won’t keep it unless people defend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8mCMe9MDpk