• It’s time to start thinking about gardening. This is not just a pleasant skill that yields tomatoes. It’s a post-apocalyptic skill that is absolutely necessary. Have you ever tried just hunting and gathering? If not, don’t bother; there’s a reason we cultivated plants. Learning to garden now, when we have ample food at the grocery store (because even a lightly stocked grocery store is ample, quite frankly), is imperative. This is not a skill you can learn after the fact. The learning curve is so sharp that it requires early adoption and constant practice.

    There are lots of easy plants to grow in a new garden, and I’ll talk about them next week. This week, I want to talk about planning. First off, it’s the best part of this part of winter (the crappy, cold, damp, windy part). You get to huddle near the fireplace and look through seed catalogs (on or offline, your choice), and dream. Dreams are seeds of the mind, after all. Stage one of growing food is literally dreaming about it.

    Make a rough map of your yard. This is important because there are several issues that you need to address:

    • Where in your yard gets full sun? partial sun? no sun at all?
    • What’s the type of soil you have (sandy, rich, damp, clay, etc)? You may have to amend your soil to grow anything, so you need to know this in advance.
    • What kind of garden do you want to try (raised beds? containers? little pots? big pots? half an acre plowed by hand?), and how can you do it to best utilize the sun you get?
    • What is your Plant Hardiness Zone? Find out on the USDA website. As an example, I’m 5b, which means something. More on that later.
    • How much time do you want to spend on your garden? Remember it’s not just planting. You also have to factor in weeding, watering, fertilizing in some cases, weeding, helping plants with frames or structures, weeding…
    • What will you eat? Don’t bother growing something you know your family won’t eat unless you have a very good reason for doing so. Plant what you’ll eat.

    When you pick out your best spot (with 6+ hours of sunlight a day, if at all possible), you’ll want to sketch it out in a notebook or using a computer program. I can’t draw a straight line to save my life so I use programs online. There are several:

    (more…)

            

  • Four Steps Forward

    Yesterday was supposed to be the end of a long battle with hardware. I had used the tools at hand to modify the case to hold the motherboard correctly. All that remained was to plug it in.

    Yeah, not so much.

    Access to the lower basement is via bulkhead doors. In case you didn’t know, we had about a foot of snow with ice over the top. When I went to access the basement, it was obvious I would have to dig it out first. No big deal.

    Except the snow shovels are plastic, and they don’t bite into the ice covered snow. Plus it was freezing.

    On Thursday, I remembered I had an entrenching tool which would be perfect. Thursday, I also learned that I had a cheap knock-off of an entrenching tool. You are supposed to be able to use an entrenching tool as a pick or hoe. The metal of the pivot plates deformed under pressure.

    I got everything open. I pulled cable, ran the cable to the primary router, hooked up everything. All good.

    Having done that, it was just a question of configuring the router and turning on the new box.

    Which failed to bring up the fiber connection.

    After three hours of work, it finally came down to a bad network card. Today I’ll be putting in a new card, and we’ll see if everything “just works”.

    Kash is King

    That is one of the headlines I just read. I am extremely interested in what happens today.

    Judges Over Stepping

    There are now judges threatening the President of the United States with contempt if he doesn’t bend to their unelected will. It appears that they feel that, as a district judge, they have the authority to usurp the powers of the President.

    But Congress!

    So here’s the low down. Congress can pass whatever bills they want. The President can sign or veto those bills, creating laws.

    Those laws are in effect until they are repealed or stopped by court order.

    Consider Congress passing a bill making it illegal to misgender mentally ill people. The previous puppet signed that bill into law.

    This makes it the law of the land that you cannot say what you wish to in regard to that class of mentally ill people.

    Is this law constitutional? No, it is not. Yet, that law can be enforced until it is enjoined. There is another legal term which might be “vacator”.

    The process to remove an unconstitutional law starts with finding somebody with standing to challenge the law. From there, the case works its way through the legal system until someone wins.

    The law in question violates the First Amendment. It will be struck down. How long it takes, what the inferior courts decided, and what games the state plays are all delaying tactics. The law would be struck down.

    Now consider a different bill. One that requires the President to get congressional approval to fire someone in the executive branch. The bill sounds good. It passes both houses and is signed into law by an idiot.

    You and I look at each other and yell, “That’s unconstitutional! Article II! The investment clause!”

    You rush over to the courthouse to file a suit challenging the new law. I don’t because I’m broke. You just committed to a multi-year lawyer bill.

    Once the court takes up the case, the state will step in to defend the law. The very first thing that will happen is that they will point out that you have no standing. The only person who would have standing is the President of the United States.

    This is what was done. Congress has passed several laws infringing on the authority of the President to fire people in the executive branch. Every one of those infringements is unconstitutional.

    Until Trump 1.0, this wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t an issue because the courtesy of the appointed heads of the different departments within the Executive branch submit their resignations to the new president before he takes office.

    In 2017, there were many people that should have been fired who were not. And some fought back against being fired. It made a considerable splash in the media.

    This time, Trump’s team was ready. They are fighting back. These cases are going to the Supreme Court. The only question is when the Court will rule.

    Question of the Week

    Two, actually.

    The first is what types of articles make you click off the site?

    The second is what types of articles make you want to read more or want more of?

            

  • It is difficult for me to make friends. In general, my friends have come from my place of work or from my lady introducing me to people.

    I make the effort when I’m out. I just don’t like people enough to be out and about.

    I’ve been watching the pain that Ally has been going through as she has realized that she is now right of center.

    It hurts her.

    People on the left lives in such a self – created bubble that anything that threatens that bubble is unacceptable.

    One of our acquaintances is full on TDS. At a recent event, they were going on and on about how horrible Trump is. But, they stepped way over the line when they attacked anybody who voted for him or supports him. They announced, proudly, that people who voted for, or support Trump will not be accepted around her.

    The fear that exists and the need to not offend means that nobody who disagreed with her spoke up. This was a friendly gathering. To take up arms (or words) against her would have been unacceptable. Those that don’t have TDS just grit their teeth and stay silent.

    The other day I was talking about an event in congress where a representative intentionally “misgendered” a trans person.

    For me, it was a big middle finger to the “Trans Agenda”.

    I took joy in that gesture. For Ally, my glee was hurtful to her. She still runs on emotion with a strong backdrop of facts and reasoning.

    She was also hurting because this representative had an R after her name. She would rather not support somebody who she thought was being hurtful to somebody. She felt she was being forced to support this representative because she now was a conservative.

    No, she didn’t have to support that person. This isn’t the left.

    The jackals out there are eating their own. Everyone who doesn’t agree with them is evil. Everyone who isn’t in lockstep with them is a fascist. Everyone who isn’t attacking Elon and Trump must be a NAZI.

    In a short skit I watched the other day, the person says they are leaving the Democrat party. They say how they are still the same person, but that the Democrat party no longer represents them. That they will still be friends with their former friends. That this doesn’t change anything between them, that they had been friends since kindergarten, they will be friends long into the future.

    The “democrat” responds with, “The last time I looked, I’m not friends with Nazi’s”.

            

  • It’s tough, being new to the Right. I have a lot of Left habits that need to go. I was in the process of getting rid of many of them anyhow, because they no longer served me, but it’s becoming important.

    The Left fights everything with emotion. Don’t agree with a legal standing? Cry at it. Have a problem with a cop or a sheriff? Scream and flail your arms. Care to protest oil drilling, farming methods you disagree with, or a politician’s third wife? Lay on the road and have a tantrum.  They revel in their emotions, and I struggle with it. A lot of why I moved “right of left” was because of this behavior.

    The Right tends to make claims that they’re entirely fact driven. It’s not true. A good portion of the Right seems to want to base their facts on a book written by human beings (however inspired) over a thousand years, translated (badly) many times in the interim, and tend to cherry pick the parts they want to use. While I consider the Bible to be an inspirational writing, likely inspired by the Divine, I have enough theological training to know that it wasn’t written by God (or Goddess, or whatever). It’s a great book to use as a moral compass. It has a great outline of moral and ethical laws that apply to a person individually, and specifically to the Jewish (and later the Christian) people. But it isn’t fact. It *contains* facts in some places, but it is not, itself, fact.

    That said, the Right does a much better job of putting together coherent factual arguments. They are much less likely to let emotions interfere with their stance. I don’t expect to see someone on the Right break down in cringe-worthy tears because they’re being questioned about something.

    I struggle with emotions. I am an emotional person. I grew up in a household where I was forced to sublimate any emotions I had. As a child who was being verbally and emotionally abused, I quickly learned to stifle any emotional response. When I left the house of horrors I grew up in, I decided I would never squelch my emotions again, and so I set myself up to emotionally vomit on everyone around me. While it was important that I learn to emote in a healthy fashion, that was NOT the right way to go about it.

    So when I’m talking with someone on the Right about things, and I know that I have a good argument, I sometimes lose track of the words I need. The emotions I feel are overwhelming, and I react rather than act. I have the ability to create logical arguments, but if I care about the outcome, my emotions tend to get in the way. This is an ongoing personal issue that I’ve been working on for years.

    (more…)

            

  • We’ve talked about the process of litigation in a civil suit.

    A complaint is filed. In the complaint, the plaintiffs state what they are challenging, why they believe the law supports them, what harm they are suffering, and what relief they seek.

    The facts in this case are that on Friday, February 7, 2025, Trump “fired” Dellinger. Dellinger was “Special Counsel”. Being a legal eagle, Dellinger filed suit in federal district court to stop Trump from firing him. Before the government could even respond to the filing, the court held a hearing.

    The court issued an “administrative stay” on Trump’s action. This is a made up term. A Court can issue injunctions, a TRO is a type of injunction, and they can issue judgments. They can also stay injunctions and judgments. They can’t “stay” things outside the court system.

    So “administrative stay” is actually a TRO but using language to hide the fact.

    The court’s order required the government to “recognize Dellinger as Special Counsel” and to let him back into the office. It also required the acting Special Counsel to be removed from the position.

    That TRO ran through February 13th.

    The pending TRO motion raises its share of difficulties. For one thing, it would be difficult for Dellinger to show a likelihood of success in light of Collins v. Yellen, 594 U.S. 220 (2021), and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, 591 U.S. 197 (2020), which held that Article II of the Constitution prevents Congress from restricting the President’s ability to remove officers who serve as the sole heads of agencies that wield significant executive power. For another, it would be difficult for Dellinger to show irreparable injury during whatever modest amount of time may be necessary to adjudicate an expedited motion for preliminary injunction, either to himself or to an agency that would otherwise have a presidentially designated acting head. The entry of a TRO, no less than the entry of a preliminary injunction, would require showings of both a likelihood of success on the merits and interim irreparable injury. See, e.g., 11A C. Wright, A. Miller & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2951 n.45 (3d ed.) (collecting cases). And the district court, in the order before us today, did not address likelihood of success and made only a tentative finding of possible irreparable injury.

    This is exactly right. The Winter factors order the courts to first look at the likelihood of success on the merits. The inferior courts are required to do so. If the district court judge and called this a “TRO” he would have had to use the Winter factors.

    By using a made up term for TRO, the judge attempted to avoid the clear instructions of the Supreme Court on how to decide if an injunction should be issued.

    To put this in perspective, Winter factors are to court cases what the four rules of gun safety are to gun culture. If somebody doesn’t fallow the four rules, they are at best ignorant, at worse willfully dangerous to themselves and others.

    For the court to ignore Winter factors falls into the same category as pointing a loaded pistol at your junk and seeing how fast you can take up the slack in your trigger.

    Katsas, the Circuit Judge writing above, says that the Winter factors were not used. The District judge did a shit job. Then went on to say that this case was not ripe to be heard. That Trump needed to wait until a TRO or a preliminary injunction was issued.

    This is bogus.

    Any time a Constitutional protected right or authority is delayed, irreparable harm has been done. A right delayed is a right denied.

    The district judge has gone rogue.

    The Trump administration was having none of this. They reached out to the Supreme Court, via their emergency docket, 24A790 to vacate the district court’s order.

    So what authority did The People grant the President?

    The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. Article II, § 1, U.S. Constitution.

    The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

    He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
    — Article II, § 2, U.S. Constitution

    He is the boss of the executive branch. There doesn’t seem to be much limiting him. The limits are for Treaties, appointments of Ambassadors, public Ministers and Consuls, Supreme Court justices, and all other Officers of the United States.

    Dellinger is an officer of the United States.

    The Constitution does not explicitly lay out that the President can fire anybody. On the other hand, it has long been recognized that the authority to hire comes with the authority to fire.

    What is the argument of Dellinger as to why SCOTUS should not vacate the order? That it would be granting an exception to the general rule that TRO’s can’t be appealed.

    Amazing, the state seems to appeal any TRO that goes against them. But now TRO’s can’t be appealed?

    Dellinger has not shown he has been harmed, much less irreparably harmed. It is unlikely that he will succeed on the merits of his case. Yet, he wants to let an inferior court stop the President while the case winds its way through the halls of (in)justice.

            

  • I purchased my first motorcycle when I was in the 7th grade. It was a dirt bike, a Yamaha MX80.

    I feel in love with riding. The only issue I had was that there was no gas station on base. To get gas for my bike I would have had to walk a mile and a half from the gate to the gas station and then walk that same mile and a half back to the gate to get back on my bike.

    Or I could have ridden my bicycle to the station and back.

    The other option was that I could ride to the closest point to the gas station. There was a hole in the fence.

    So I would do that. I would take the gas tank off the bike, carry it through the hole, across the road and fill it.

    It cost $0.25 to put a gallon of gas in the tank.

    When we moved, it was a little easier to get gas. I could ride the bike across one road to get gas.

    I sold that bike when gas went over a dollar per gallon. I couldn’t afford it.

    About this time, Jimmy Carter managed to fuck over the economy to the point where there was a perceived shortage of gas.

    This caused the price of gas to go up. It leads to gas shortages and other things.

    The congress responded with exactly the wrong answer. The put a nationwide speed limit in place.

    They decided that the maximum legal speed should be 55MPH.

    Now, if you have ever lived on the East Coast, you know that the difference between 55MPH and 65MPH really doesn’t mean much. Traffic is bad. If you are lucky, you might shave 5 minutes off a two-hour trip.

    On the other hand, in the Midwest and west, the difference between 55MPH and 65 or 70 MPH can make a huge difference. The distances being traveled and the ability to maintain those speeds make it a significant difference.

    This song and the movie based on it are part of the culture of rebellion that was happening as The People pushed back against the 55MPH mandate.

    In this video, you can see that the gigantic crime The Rubber Duck committed was driving 63MPH in a 55MPH zone.

    We, The People, are pushing back. Thank goodness.

            

  • Chicken and dumplings are a staple in my house. They’re something in between a soup and a stew, and I usually get silly and call it Stoup. They’re incredibly easy to make, though it takes a bit of effort until you’ve learned the method. It’s filling, delicious, and you’ll get requests.

    Ingredients for the stoup:

    • 6 to 8 oz of uncooked chicken per person
    • enough water to cover the chicken
    • salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and rubbed sage to taste
    • 1 medium carrot, diced small
    • 1 small onion, diced small
    • 1 large rib of celery, diced small
    • a teaspoon or so of butter, margarine, or olive oil
    • white wine to deglaze the pan

    Ingredients for the dumplings:

    • 3 cups all-purpose flour
    • 1.5 teaspoons salt
    • 1 cup milk
    • 1 egg

    The chicken for this recipe can be done in two different ways. First, you can use bone-in chicken pieces and make it like “pulled chicken,” meaning you cook it, then remove it from the water and shred it up until it’s the size of bits you like. Second, you can use boneless, skinless chicken breast or thighs, in which case you’re going to cube your chicken into bite size pieces. Regardless of which method you choose to use, you should sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper, then brown it in a cast iron pan (separate from the one you’ll be making the broth in). Make sure to brown all sides, but remember it doesn’t need to be cooked through. The full cooking happens in the water.

    While you’re browning your chicken in batches, add enough water to a pot that it will cover your chicken when it’s added. It’s okay if you don’t get quite enough in the pot; you can add more after. You just want to get enough in there that you can start heating it up to a boil. As you finish browning chicken parts, put them into the water. Make sure there’s enough water to cover all the chicken completely, but not much more, and then lower it from a boil to a simmer. Add in your spices, about a teaspoon of each for now. You can add more later if needed.

    As your chicken is simmering, dice up your carrot, onion, and celery. Add a bit of fat to the pan you cooked the chicken in, and saute your vegetables until the onions are soft and beginning to clarify. Add a tablespoon or so of a dry white wine to the pan, and stir and scrape well with a wooden spoon. All of the stuff you scrape off the bottom of the pan is “fond” and it’s what makes your stoup delicious. Add the veggies and fond to your chicken and broth.

    Make your dumplings. Add the four and salt into a medium bowl. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk together your milk and egg. Add the liquid to the flour, and mix until it forms a dough. This should be a soft and relatively smooth dough, with very elastic qualities. It may be a bit sticky or tacky, but it shouldn’t stick to the counter when you’re kneading.

    Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until it’s smooth and elastic. Keeping the counter lightly floured at each stage, you should then roll out your dough so it’s as thick as you like your dumplings to be. If you like your dumplings to be fat and fluffy, you’ll want to roll them out to about a half inch thick. If you want them more like noodles (my preference), roll them to under a quarter inch, basically as smooth and thin as you can manage without the dough sticking to the counter. Cut your dumplings into strips, squares, diamonds, or really any shape you like. you can use a dough cutter, or a knife, or even a rolling pizza cutter. Use a bread scraper to lift the noodles off the counter, dust them well with more flour, and let them rest and dry a bit while the rest of the food is readied.

    When your chicken is thoroughly cooked (about an hour, or longer if you like), pull any boned parts out of the broth. Shred, if you like, and return the chicken to the broth. Bring the broth to a low but steady boil, and begin adding the dumplings to it a little at a time. I usually add about a handful of dumplings, then stir and let them begin to cook. This keeps them from sticking to one another. The flour on the outside of the dumplings will help thicken the gravy in your stoup, too. Cook the dumplings until they’re tender. This can take anywhere from five minutes to 20 minutes, depending on how thick they were rolled and how dry they were when you started. They should be solid throughout, with no doughy interior. Thin ones will taste like fresh noodles (which is essentially what they are).

    If you find that your gravy isn’t thick enough, add a little water or cold broth to a tablespoon of cornstarch, stir until well combined, and then add a bit at a time to the simmering stoup. Repeat until you reach the consistency you prefer. Add in any spices you like, and if you want a fancier look, top each bowl with a sprinkle of fresh minced parsley.

    Serve your chicken and dumplings over a pile of mashed potatoes, rice, or on their own in a bowl with a spoon.

            

  • There are a few servers that are too old. There is a need for a few more servers to get a room level redundancy. These things can be expensive.

    As I’m cheap, I’ve been using older servers that accept 3.5″ disk drives. Some except 2 drives, some 6, some could accept more, but the case doesn’t.

    The fix I chose was to move to some four bay NAS enclosures. This is a reasonable size that balances with the network I/O capability.

    These enclosures all take the Mini-ITX motherboard.

    These motherboards are nothing short of amazing. In the middle tier, they have all the things a full-size motherboard has. Some have 4 memory slots, some only 2. They come with 1, 2, 4 Ethernet ports. Some have SFP ports. Some have SATA ports. The number of SATA ports ranges from 1 to 6. Some come with PCIe slots.

    Depending on what your needs are, there is a motherboard for you.

    Since this was going to be a NAS, the motherboard I selected had to have 4 SATA ports, an NVMe slot, and SFP+.

    Yep, this exists. They don’t exist at the price point I wanted to pay. It finally clicked with me. I can just put an SFP+ PCIe card into the machine.

    Thus, I picked a motherboard with 4 SATA, 1 Ethernet, 1 USB3, 1 PCIe slot, enough memory and 2 M.2 slots.

    Some NAS enclosures do not have the opening for a PCI slot, so it was important to pick a case that had the card opening.

    When I got the enclosure I was impressed.

    It is a sturdy, thick steel case. There is no plastic on the entire thing. There are for hot swap disk bays plus mounting space for 2 2.5″ drives. Exactly what I was looking for.

    When I went to install the motherboard, I was shocked to find that the CPU cooler didn’t fit. I ordered a low profile. I’m impressed with that as well.

    I get the board mounted. It looks nice. I go to close the case and the cover won’t fit on. The cover has a folded U channel that goes over the bottom rail of the case to lock the case closed.

    The problem is that there isn’t enough space between the edge of the motherboard and the bottom rail for the U channel to fit.

    My first real use of the right-angle die grinder. I don’t have a cut-off wheel for it, so I just ground the edge away and it worked.

    Of course, I gave myself a frost burn because I was too busy to put gloves on to handle the die grinder.

    Back to the worktable, the cover now goes on. I plug a wireless USB dongle into the USB 3.0 and boot. Nothing.

    It took me a couple of days before I figured it out. The case came with no documentation. The front panel connector has both a USB 3 plug and a USB 3 plug. I plugged both in. You are only supposed to plug in one. Fixed.

    The installation happens, I’m happy. It is fast enough, it is responsive enough. I just need to get it put in place with the fiber configured.

    I take the cover off the back slot. Go to put the PCI card in.

    The (many bad words) slot does not line up with the opening in the back of the case.

    The open in the back is off by 0.8 inches.

    I consider cutting another card opening in the back. That won’t work. The card would be half out of the side of the case.

    I ordered the cutoff wheels for the die grinder, I know I’m going to need them.

    I decided to cut the back opening wider. This will leave an opening that can be taped closed on the PCI side. It allows me to use the existing slot with retaining hardware. I good idea.

    All I need to do is unscrew the standoffs, drill and tap four holes in the right place, and I’m done.

    Except… Those standoffs are pressed into place. They don’t unscrew.

    No problem. I have a set of standoffs. I’ll just cut the existing standoffs off. Drill and tap holes in the right place and use my standoffs.

    Except… My standoffs are the normal length. These standoffs are a custom length. I can’t do that.

    Tools to the rescue

    First stop, the arbor press. It is a small 2 ton press. I have no problems pushing out the standoffs. The press also removes the bulge from removing the standoffs.

    Next step, the milling machine. Using the gage pins, I found the size of the holes is 0.197-0.198. Measuring the standoffs, I get 0.208. I settled on 0.201 for the hole size. I should have gone a 64th smaller.

    There is no way to clamp this thing in the vise. I do have strap clamps. The case is quickly put into position.

    The first hold is located, then drilled. No issues.

    Except I don’t have enough travel to reach the other three holes. I reposition the case on the table and go for it.

    I go back to the arbor press to put the standoffs back in. I don’t have enough height to support the case while installing the standoffs.

    Back to the mill. Square to ends of a hunk of aluminum. Punch a 3/8in hole in it. Work on the mill vise and get the standoffs put back in place.

    In the middle of this, I have an alarm, fearing that I put the standoffs in the wrong place. I do a quick test fit and everything is perfect.

    It takes me a good hour to put the case back together with all the case mods done. It looks good. I’m happy with how it came out.

    Today is search day. I have to find the 8 meter OM-4 fiber for this NAS, and I have to find the box of screws that came with the case for the hard drives. Once I have those, this can go into production.

    I know what to look for on NAS cases. I’ll be building out a few more of these boxes over the coming months. First to replace two boxes which are too old. One for the redundancy.

    The world will be good, or I’ll punch it again and again until it is good.

    P.S. This is filler, the article about Trump’s win in the D.C. District court was taking to long.

            

  • A hearing was held on Friday. I expect the judge to issue an order regarding the Preliminary Injunction on Monday.

    The TRO expired on Friday, so the judge will either issue an order regarding the case. If she is going to go rogue, she will want to have that done on Monday to stop the President from doing his duty. If she wants to respect the constitution, she will issue an order denying the preliminary injunction.

    In my businesses, I sometimes had a bookkeeper. She would receive the bills, make entries in the books, then bring me checks to sign to pay those bills.

    I could also tell her to issue a check to somebody or some business. It was never her job to tell me not to pay that person, nor to verify if that entity was supposed to get the money. It was my job to make sure that when I told her to pay an entity, that entity should be paid, and how much.

    She was supposed to tell me “no”, only if it would run afoul of the law or if we didn’t have the cash for it. If it meant we would be short later, she still did it.

    The Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS) is that bookkeeper for the Federal Government. They are tasked with making payments. They are not tasked with verifying that the payment should be made.

    The decision to make a payment comes from other entities within the bureaucracy.

    A federal agency will develop, certify, and send a “payment file” to BFS through the Secure Payment System (SPS) with instructions on who is to be paid, when, and how much.
    —State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-01144, slip op. at 6 (S.D.N.Y.)

    These payment files are checked against a list of “don’t pay”. If the recipient of the payment is on any of those lists, the payment is held. The agency that sent the payment file is responsible for determining if the payment is proper.

    In the best of worlds, this would mean that no payments went to bad actors.

    Now consider the case of the President issuing an Executive Order stopping payments to purple people eaters. There are dozens of agencies that send money to purple people eaters. All of those agencies are responsible for stopping payment files from going through to pay purple people eaters.

    The BFS receives a payment file to send a payment to a PPE. If that PPE is not on the do not pay list, they will send the payment to that PPE. If the PPE is on a no pay list, the payment is held and the agency is informed.

    If that agency sends back “pay it”, the BFS pays it. And the PPE gets money, regardless of what the President ordered.

    When the bureaucracy is working with the President, every agency would have heard the “stop payments to PPEs” and would have done so. Any payment files that were already sent might be called back or stopped. If the BFS flags a payment as going to a PPE, everybody says “good job”.

    If the bureaucracy is at odds with the President, they ignore the EO and do whatever the hell they want. If BFS flags any payments, they just order them paid.

    If some agencies are attempting to obey the President, there can still be others that are not.

    Worse, in many cases, contracts are let and budgeted. Some low level GS-2 with TDS can order a payment on a contract they control, and it just gets paid. Even if all of his bosses have told him “no”.

    The President has ordered that no more payments to PPEs be made. To make this happen, he can either send people who are willing to obey him to every agency and every desk where somebody can send a payment to a PPE.

    Or, he can send a few people to the BFS, and they can analyze each payment file as it comes in, check to see if it is a PPE payment.

    Watching the bookkeepers doesn’t mean that the bookkeepers are doing something “wrong”, it is just the proper chock point in the flow of money.

    The argument being made by these former treasury officials is that “career officials” are non-partisan and can be trusted to do the right thing.

    For decades, BFS has been staffed by nonpartisan career employees led by nonpartisan career official…

    There appears to be a claim without evidence that these workers are nonpartisan. At least they left off the “nonpartisan” when describing the fiscal assistant secretary, their boss.

    They claim that all these nonpartisan career employees have undergone a security screening. Screening is one of those weasel words we see people use when they want the reader to think one thing when it isn’t true.

    When I purchase a firearm, I fill out a 4473 and a “background check” is performed. This is a type of “security screening”. Having undergone a “thorough security screening” does not mean that this person has a clearance. If they had clearances, the brief would have said they have clearances.

    This is intended to make it seem that the DOGE team’s actual clearances are not as thorough or complete as the BFS security screening. The reality is that any real clearance is likely better than the screenings these people got.

    There is more, I’ll leave you with Grok’s explanation, it isn’t bad.

    The document you’ve uploaded is a legal brief titled “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE FORMER TREASURY DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION” in a case before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Case No. 25-CV-01144). Here’s a detailed explanation:
    Case Overview
    • Parties Involved: The State of New York and others are the plaintiffs, suing Donald J. Trump, in his official capacity as President, and others as defendants.
    • Context: The case revolves around actions by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, which has been granted access to the Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) payment systems within the U.S. Department of Treasury. This access is controversial and forms the basis of the legal challenge.
    Amici Curiae (Friends of the Court)
    • Interest: The brief is submitted by former Treasury officials who have extensive experience with the BFS payment systems. They argue that their expertise provides valuable insight into the potential risks of the situation.
    • Purpose: Their brief supports the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, which is a court order to stop an action temporarily until the case is decided.
    Summary of Argument
    • Background: The brief outlines how DOGE, under Musk’s leadership, sought access to BFS systems, which manage federal payments, after resistance from career Treasury officials. This access was purportedly to cut federal spending by stopping certain payments.
    • Concerns: The amici express significant concerns regarding:
      • Political Interference: The risk of politically motivated decisions to withhold payments to entities or individuals based on policy disagreements.
      • Cybersecurity and Privacy: The potential for breaches involving sensitive personal and financial data.
      • Operational Risks: The danger of disrupting the payment system, which could delay or halt critical payments like Social Security.
    Detailed Argument
    I. Role of BFS
    • Functions: BFS is responsible for disbursing federal payments, processing about 1.3 billion transactions annually, and managing sensitive information like Social Security Numbers and bank details.
    • Process: Agencies certify payment files which BFS then processes, ensuring funds go to the right recipients without determining eligibility, which is the agencies’ role.
    II. Risks of DOGE Access
    • Illegal Withholding: DOGE could illegally block payments based on political motives, bypassing the usual checks by career civil servants.
    • Data Security: Access by DOGE personnel could compromise sensitive data, leading to privacy issues or misuse of information for competitive advantage.
    • Operational Security: There’s a risk of system vulnerabilities due to inadequate vetting or training of DOGE personnel, increasing chances of cyber threats.
    • System Integrity: Even without malicious intent, changes or interference could disrupt the timely processing of payments, impacting trust and reliability.
    III. Limitations of “Read-Only” Access
    • Ineffectiveness: Even limited access could enable DOGE to influence payment decisions through existing personnel, posing similar risks as full access.
    Conclusion
    • The amici argue that the access granted to DOGE officials poses significant risks to the integrity of federal payment systems, advocating for the court to grant the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent further access or misuse.
    Key Points:
    • Legal Implications: The brief highlights potential violations of law, like illegal impoundment, where funds are withheld contrary to congressional intent.
    • Historical Context: It underscores the traditional non-political management of BFS by career officials, contrasting this with the current political oversight.
    • Public Trust: The integrity of payment systems is crucial for public trust and the functioning of government programs.
    This brief is a call for judicial intervention to preserve the non-political, secure, and reliable operation of federal payment systems against what the amici perceive as inappropriate political interference.

    — Grok

            

  • Not what I intended to write about. The Court has surprised me, again.

    Snope and Ocean State Tactical are both distributed for the conference of 2/21/2025.

    We will near nothing about these cases before then.

    This puts these cases on track for arguments in the new term. Those oral arguments could be as early as October. If the cases are heard in October, we could have an opinion by December.

    We didn’t lose this one, the Court took a time out.