Yearly Archives: 2026

The Chief Justice Herds the Cats

A Narrow Check on Emergency Tariffs I. The Core Ruling and Its Significance At its heart, Learning Resources v. Trump reaffirms a foundational principle: Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, only Congress can lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. The Framers, scarred by British monarchs’ arbitrary levies like the Stamp Act of 1765, deliberately vested this "power of the purse" in the legislative branch to prevent executive overreach. As James Madison warned in his speech delivered to the Virginia Ratifying Convention on June 6, 1788, diluting that authority risks "the gradual and silent encroachments of those in…

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The Economy Has Gone to the Dogs

Why Democrats Are in Trouble Last week, Rep. Ro Khanna stood on the House floor and read the names of four completely innocent New Yorkers into the Congressional Record as part of the Jeffrey Epstein files scandal. It was a self-inflicted wound. Those men had zero connection to Epstein. They were random faces from an old photo lineup. Khanna had to walk it back after the Guardian called him on it. Fast forward one week. A pro-Palestinian activist named Nerdeen Kiswani posts on X: "Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor…

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Talking the SAVE America Act Into Law

There's a Way Forward But Does Senate GOP Have the Will? Senate Majority Leader John Thune has a point when he calls floor time the coin of the realm. Every hour spent grinding through quorum calls, dilatory amendments, and endless debate is an hour not spent on confirmations, funding bills, or the next must-pass item on the calendar. It's the same scarcity that once let Al Gore extract promises of a clean vote on the 1991 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq in exchange for his support. Thune's caution is real: reviving a true talking filibuster on the SAVE…

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Building AI’s River Rouge

Factories, Financing, and Freeing Energy The column started with a single X post from @HedgieMarkets laying bare the financial engineering behind the AI boom: massive data centers funded through special purpose vehicles, off-balance-sheet debt, and leverage that would make a subprime lender blush. Meta's $27 billion Hyperion deal with Blue Owl, Oracle's $38 billion Vantage play tied to OpenAI's Stargate, xAI's $20 billion raise looping in Nvidia GPUs-these aren't just big numbers. They're bets on explosive revenues that have to show up in the next 5 to 15 years, or the whole structure risks looking like a house of cards when…

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The Irreplaceable Mentor

Why Human Experience Still Wins in the AI Era The fire's crackling low tonight, casting that warm, steady glow across the room. Blue jeans, flannel-pull up a chair-maybe a good cigar if that's your thing. We're not here for stiff lectures or casual rambles. This is just one mentor sharing what he's seen, what he's learned, and what still matters when the world changes faster than we can sometimes keep up. Let's start where this whole conversation began: that IBM announcement from Friday. A $240 billion company, the kind that's supposed to be the bellwether for where tech is headed, flips…

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Egg-Face Economists

Inflation Dips, Private Jobs Surge in Trump's Resilient Economy In my previous column, “The BLS Affordability Boost,” I laid out how the January 2026 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave working families a tangible win. Private-sector payrolls jumped 172,000-far exceeding the consensus forecast of 55,000 to 80,000-while unemployment edged down to 4.3% and average hourly earnings rose 3.7% year-over-year. For the first time in a while, wage growth outpaced the prior month's inflation reading, putting real dollars back in pockets here in Plano and across Texas. Barely three days later, the February 13 CPI release for January served…

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The BLS Affordability Boost

Unpacking the "Unexpected" January Jobs Report If you've been following the economic tea leaves like I have for over 30 years in this game, you know the drill: Wall Street "experts" cluster their forecasts like sheep, the media slaps "unexpectedly" on anything that doesn't fit their narrative, and real-world metrics get buried under a pile of revisions and spin. Today's January 2026 BLS jobs report? It's a classic case. Clocking in at +130,000 nonfarm payrolls with unemployment ticking down to 4.3%, this thing smashed the lowball consensus and kicked off the year with a bang for the Trump administration and Republicans.…

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It Was Breyer

The Dobbs Leak: A Preponderance of Evidence Points to Justice Stephen Breyer In the annals of Supreme Court scandals, few events have cast as long a shadow as the unprecedented leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. On May 2, 2022, Politico dropped the bombshell, publishing the full text of Alito's February 10 draft that would ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The fallout was immediate and seismic: protests erupted outside justices' homes, an assassination attempt targeted Justice Brett Kavanaugh, vandalism hit crisis pregnancy centers and…

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Eyes on Ossoff

The Legacy Media Misses the 2026 Pressure Cooker Late last month, the FBI executed a search warrant at Fulton County's election hub, hauling off some 700 boxes of 2020 ballots and records. It's all under the guise of probing old irregularities in Georgia's 2020 presidential and Senate races. But while the legacy media spins this as Donald Trump's endless "obsession" with relitigating 2020, they're missing the real storm brewing. The overlooked story here is the forward-looking political pressure piling up on Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) ahead of his 2026 re-election. This pressure casts a long shadow on his legitimacy and could…

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No Endless Horizons in History

Defending the Senate’s Final Brake Folks, picture this: North Dakota Highway 46 stretches arrow-straight across the Red River Valley-121 miles from Oxbow near Fargo to Streeter and beyond. Flat as a tortilla, sky swallowing the road at the horizon. On a clear day, it looks infinite, like you could floor it forever and never hit a curve. No hills, no turns, no consequences-just open prairie and the illusion that every mile forward erases the last one. That's the lie history tells when we pretend changes happen in a vacuum. The road isn't endless. Every "straight shot" decision plants seeds that sprout…

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