How many times have Democrats told us, and told us, “no one is above the law?”  They always focused on the area above the law, because they have proved conclusively that they considered that Donald Trump was below the law, as they relentlessly tried to bankrupt him and imprison him for life.

There always are exceptions to the Democrat “no one is above the law” meme, however.  Grandmothers who walked in one door of the Capitol, and out another on January 6 were not above the law.  On the other hand, Democrats thought that George Floyd rioters who rampaged while committing arson, theft, assault and murder should be above the law.

BLM rioters who obstructed traffic, damaged property, and attacked courthouses and police stations, while stealing millions of dollars of donations were considered above the law by Democrats.

Last week, we explored Democrat support of illegal alien criminals, who the Dems are fighting to keep in the country, rather than being deported in accordance with the law.  Clearly then, they think that illegal aliens are above the law.

This week, the Dems are at it again.  They’ve added a new category of people who are above the law.  Strangely, this group consists of highly educated people who have learned so much about the laws that they are entrusted with the duty of enforcing them.  I refer to judges.

In these pages I have discussed the judges who are forsaking their oaths in attempts to usurp executive authority which they have no right to attempt to exercise.  That conduct is bad enough.  But this week we saw two examples of judges who have blatantly broken the law.

In New Mexico, a judge and his wife have been arrested on federal charges of harboring an alien.  It seems the judge and his wife were living with a number of illegal aliens, one of whom, Ortega-Lopez, is a member of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang that has been linked to human trafficking and other crimes targeting migrants, as well as money laundering, drug smuggling, kidnapping and extortion.

Ortega-Lopez had posted photos and videos on Facebook showing him at what appears to be a shooting range in Las Cruces holding handguns or assault-style rifles.  Investigators said they identified tattoos, clothing and hand gestures “commonly associated” with Tren de Aragua in photos and videos posted online by Ortega-Lopez.

The judge is now a former judge.  He and his wife are facing prison, and the illegal alien gang members will be deported, assuming the Supreme Court puts an end to the nationwide injunctions preventing the President from doing his job.

Then there is the puzzling case of Milwaukee County judge Hannah Dugan.  One moment, there she was, presiding over a domestic violence hearing, in which an illegal alien named Ruiz, with a record for violent criminal charges including strangulation and suffocation, battery, and domestic abuse, and illegally entering the US twice, was charged with assaulting his current paramour.  

The victims were present in the courtroom, hoping for justice to be done, when the judge got word that two ICE agents were in court to take Ruiz into custody.  Now, let me digress.  Judges of any political stripe do not take kindly to people, even from law enforcement, interrupting their proceedings.  I have had occasion to notify a NJ State judge that, once the case was called for arraignment, two FBI agents were going to arrest the defendant and take him to Indiana for federal prosecution. Given forewarning, there was no problem.   

But that’s not what happened in Milwaukee.  The complaint states that while the team assigned to arrest Ruiz, which included FBI and DEA agents, waited for the hearing to conclude, they were photographed by a public defender, who informed the judge’s clerk that “there appeared to be ICE agents in the hallway.”  Dugan “became visibly angry” and left the bench to confront the federal agents, according to an affidavit by a FBI special agent.

After initially demanding that the officers leave the building if they were not there for a court appearance, Dugan allegedly directed the federal agents away from her courtroom to Chief Judge Carl Ashley’s office after being shown the immigration warrant for Ruiz.

After Dugan had gone back inside, a deputy assigned to her courtroom told a member of the federal team that he had not alerted Dugan to their presence and added that the judge was “‘pushing’ Ruiz’s case through.” After Ruiz’s appearance was completed, the deputy heard Dugan “say something like, ‘Wait, come with me’” before escorting Ruiz and his attorney out of the courtroom’s “jury door” to a non-public area of the courthouse, where the chief judge had advised the feds that they could not arrest Ruiz.

The courtroom deputy had previously heard Judge Dugan direct people not to sit in the jury box because it was exclusively for the jury’s use.  According to the courtroom deputy, only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door.  Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door.  Ruiz and his lawyer made it out onto the street before the agents caught up with them, and took Ruiz into custody.

Judge Dugan was arrested on a federal warrant, and is facing up to six years in prison.  Presumably, once again, when the Supreme Court permits the Administration to do its job, Ruiz will be back in sunny Mexico, which, now that I think about it, has to be better than Milwaukee.  Paraphrasing Thomas More from A Man For All Seasons, “It profits a man nothing to violate the law for the whole world, but for Milwaukee?”

Unsurprisingly, the Left had a conniption fit over the judge arrests.  Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley once again proved the Left to be immune to irony.  “I couldn’t believe what I had seen and was horrified by the actions of the FBI coming onto our county courthouse grounds, literally going after a sitting judge who’s not a flight risk.”

Yeah right!  Just like 72 year old Roger Stone wasn’t a flight risk when the FBI raided his house at dawn with SWAT teams and frogmen, all one bogus charges.  Just like Peter Navarro wasn’t a flight risk, when he was arrested by a team of agents who carted him away in chains, for failing to answer a Congressional subpoena, the same offense former Attorney General, and Obama “wingman” Eric Holder committed without penalty of any kind.  And don’t even get me started on the elderly people who committed the heinous crime of praying outside abortion clinics, who were rousted out of their homes in handcuffs by teams of badge wearing thugs.

So the next time you hear any Democrat recite, “No one is above the law,” remind them of the exceptions discussed above.  And remind them that their conduct has proven that they mean “almost no one.”

In 1962, Chubby Checker had a hit song, The Limbo Rock, which celebrated the Caribbean limbo bar dance.

Every Limbo boy and girl
All around the Limbo world
Gonna do the Limbo rock
All around the Limbo clock

Jack be Limbo, Jack be quick
Jack go under Limbo stick
All around the Limbo clock
Hey, let’s do the Limbo rock, ah-ha-ha-ha-how

Limbo lower now
Limbo lower now
How low can you go?

Remember that?  Insane Democrats are now reprising the Limbo Rock lyric, “how low can you go?” with their irrational support of MS-13 gang member, domestic abuser, and suspected human trafficker Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Let’s recap.   In March, President Trump issued a proclamation which designated gangs including MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations which had made a predatory incursion into the U.S., thus making their members immediately deportable under the Enemy Aliens Act.

In mid-March, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who illegally entered the U.S. in 2011, was arrested in Maryland by ICE.  On March 15, he was one of some 250 gang members deported to El Salvador under the Enemy Alien Act.  The detainees were sent to a maximum security prison.  The Left immediately lost its mind.

Judge Boasberg, in the D.C. District, who the Supreme Court has decided had absolutely no jurisdiction, ordered the planes turned around and the violent gang members returned to the U.S.  I wish the criminals could have been dropped off at his chambers, but they already were out of U.S. airspace.

Of the 250 gang members deported, Democrats apparently have identified Abrego Garcia as the poster boy for their “Trump is Hitler” meme.   A Maryland District Court judge ordered the government to “effectuate” bringing him back.  The government appealed.  On April 8, the U.S. Supreme Court largely left the District Court order in place, after amending it to state that “effectuate” might exceed the court’s authority by interfering with the President’s foreign policy authority, and replacing “effectuate” with “facilitate.”  Nobody’s sure what that means.  The Supreme Court will revisit the issue next month.

The lying media keeps calling Abrego “a Maryland man.”  He’s not a Maryland man.  He’s a Salvadoran man who illegally entered the country.  They keep complaining that Abrego needs to have due process.  But he already got it.

In 2019, an Immigration judge found that Abrego was an illegal alien, and an MS-13 gang member, and thus doubly deportable.  Abrego appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which affirmed the lower court decision.

When he went to court, Abrego claimed that if he were sent back to El Salvador, he might face violence from a rival gang.  The logical inference is, if he was worried about violence from a rival gang in El Salvador, then he admitted he’s part of a gang himself.

Abrego’s arms and hands are covered in MS-13 gang tattoos.  The Maryland District Court judge was not impressed by this, and the lying media ignores it, but as a former head of a Prosecutor’s Gang Unit, here’s how it works.

Members of gangs such as MS-13, the Latin Kings, and the Bloods, etc., are dangerous, but not very careful about advertising their gang status.  They insist on displaying tattoos that announce their gang membership and rank.  They also insist on gathering together to take group photographs of one another, all tatted up, and throwing their respective gang signs.  Then, when arrested, they all deny being gang members.

Now, if a person engages in such behavior, he’s a gang member.  Case closed.  If he sports gang tattoos without being a member of the gang, the gang will kill him for dissing their fraternal organization.  Likewise, if he formerly was a member, and now claims to have seen he error of his ways and denounces the gang, they’ll kill him on general principles.  So effectively, his choices are to keep committing crimes in the gang, be incarcerated with the other gangsters, or death.  Abrego got what was behind door number two.

As for the Court orders, the President of El Salvador made clear that he is not releasing Abrego from custody, much less returning him to the U.S.  And Homeland Security has stated unequivocally that we don’t want him back, and we’re not bringing him back.

Moreover, as the Democrat poster boy for improper deportation, Abrego is not Mr. Clean.  In 2022, he was stopped by a Tennessee State Trooper, driving a vehicle owned by a convicted human trafficker from Texas to Maryland, containing 8 unidentified, undocumented men, with no luggage, and all of whom gave the Trooper the same home address.  Abrego said he was driving them to work at a construction site in Maryland.  Uh huh.

Abrego also was the subject of 2 domestic violence restraining orders, filed by his wife, who told police he was a gang member.   Now she’s expressing her remorse at his being so shockingly deported to the country of his birth.  But as I said, Abrego was the cleanest of the deportees, so the Left is stuck with him, and they’re not letting up.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Senator who’s name no one ever heard before because he’s done nothing of note, made a pilgrimage to El Salvador to “demand” his release.  Van Hollen got a meeting with a quite healthy looking Abrego.  After the meeting, Van Hollen danced around the question whether he asked Abrego if he’s a gang member, cryptically saying he already knew the answer.

Van Hollen and his fellow Democrat arsonists keep complaining that Abrego was “disappeared,” and warn that Trump is coming next for all black and other minority citizens. This is, of course, bullshit, but it’s all they’ve got, and Abrego is all they’ve got.  One must ask of Van Hollen, “how low can you go?”  And here he comes now –

Van Hollen motivated other misguided Democrats to travel to El Salvador.  House members Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon arrived last Monday, demanding a meeting with Abrego and his immediate release.  Salvadoran officials rejected their demands.

President Trump’s reaction was predictable.  “Radical Lunatic Democrats and their Comrades in the Fake News Media are falsely making Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia out to be a very sweet and innocent person, which is a total, blatant, and dangerous LIE.”  “Garcia has been found by two separate Courts to be a member of the violent, Killer gang MS-13, was in our Country illegally, and is under a Deportation Order.”

“It is despicable and unAmerican for Liberals and the Mainstream Media to hate our Country so much, and be obsessed with protecting criminals, instead of working to keep our Border, streets, and families safe.  Those lying to the American People on behalf of violent criminals have to be held responsible by the Agencies and the Courts. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

But Democrats are not listening.  Even Spartacus himself, lying fraud Senator Corey Booker, is planning an El Salvador trip.  We don’t have to ask “how low can he go?” because he’s proven his ability to go low time and time again.  Here he comes now-

Democrats don’t comprehend that their support for violent illegal alien criminals will not help bring them back to power.  The National Republican Congressional Committee has even offered to fund Democrat trips to El Salvador, so long as the Dems provide videos of their visits.  When your opponents are digging themselves a hole, keep supplying them with shovels.

Well, we certainly have had quite the interesting April so far.  April normally is a rather quiet month.  Winter is ending, Spring is beginning, baseball is back, and thoughts run to Easter, Passover and taxes.  Not so this year.

The juggernaut that is Donald Trump has changed the narrative.  Friend and foe alike are shocked, shocked to learn that Trump is doing exactly what he has been saying he would do for the past 40 years – impose higher tariffs to stop foreign countries from ripping us off on trade by imposing on the U.S. tariffs that keep our products from being sold abroad, making kickbacks to their local companies, dumping their products on our markets, and creating currency and other trade barriers to rig the system of international trade.  Maybe our trade policy made sense after World War II, but not anymore.

Unsurprisingly, the foreign thieves who have been stealing us blind for 70 years are upset that the U.S. finally is objecting to being robbed.  Wall Street is upset because it reaps profits by shamelessly investing in foreign companies that produce goods with slave and near-slave labor.  It’s just good business, you see.

Both the foreign countries and Wall Street are content to let Uncle Sucker continue to expend blood and trillions of dollars in the defense of the very nations that enjoy the security we provide, then turn around and rob us.  A simple “thank you” would have sufficed.

The Democrats are upset, because the very existence of Trump upsets those bastards.  They’re publicly denouncing the Trump tariffs, while being privately ecstatic that Trump has handed them an issue to tout.  Of course, the Democrats can profit from this issue if and only if the U.S. economy is severely damaged by Trump’s tariff plan, but that’s OK with them.

If they cared about American citizens they wouldn’t have sold out the U.S. to China, they wouldn’t have admitted millions of illegals, they wouldn’t be supporting criminals and opposing law enforcement, and they wouldn’t be supporting murdering Islamic terrorists.  But I digress.

And so, on April 2, Trump unleashed his reciprocal tariffs, nearly all of which were still lower than the ones our so-called allies are levying on us.  You would have thought the end of the world was nigh.

Publicly, our trading partners, who have been waging a trade war on us for 50 years, denounced the U.S. for starting a trade war.  Behind the scenes, according to Trump’s trade team, they’re saying, “OK, you got us, we never thought we could get away with it this long.”

Being pigs, the pigs on Wall Street are squealing loudly.  “How dare Trump interfere with our phony, baloney profits?  Harumpf!”  “How dare Trump temporarily derail our crooked gravy train?”  “We could have a recession, a depression, and, and, how can we entice any more unsuspecting sheep to invest their hard-earned money in an over-inflated stock market?”

The Fake News has pumped up the tariff issue, sowing panic with predictions of lost fortunes and devastated 401k accounts.  Democrats know that, in panic there is profit.  As usual, the truth lies elsewhere.

Yes, between April 2, and April 8, the Dow Jones Average fell from 42,225 to 37,645, that’s about 11%.  The Fake News, aided by the Wall Street denizens screamed that $8 trillion, or $10 trillion, or $12 trillion had disappeared, all because of Trump.  But then, on April 9, the market went from 37,000 to over 40,000 overnight, climbing 8%.  None of them said, “Great, we just got back $8.6 trillion of our paper profits.”  According to these pricks, we’re still facing Armageddon.

Don’t buy into the panic.  The market fell 11% in 6 days?  It’s not the first time.  In October 1987, the market fell 22% in one day.  We’re all still here.  And keep in mind, every other time the market fell it was because our government and the financial “experts” had seriously mishandled the economy.  We either had high unemployment, runaway inflation, or both.  The financial wizards who are now crying foul clearly don’t have clean hands.

The 2008 recession, and global financial crisis that saw numerous bank failures, the end of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG insurance, and the collapses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was caused by stupid politicians from both Parties, who empowered lending institutions to give mortgages to millions of insolvent borrowers.  The stock market fell 53% that time.  The banks and the Wall Street pigs got government bailouts, and over 8 million poor homeowners lost their homes.  And we’re still here.

Meanwhile, a virtual parade of foreign trade representatives is streaming in and out of the White House.  Some 130 nations are looking to cut deals with the U.S. to avoid high tariffs.  Even the Euro trash from the European Union are looking to deal.  China, so far, is holding firm.  Xi tried to cultivate European nations to stand with him against Trump.  They declined.  Good decision.

Eventually, the Chinese will have to agree to a deal.  I don’t know what’s holding them up, because they’ve never lived up to any agreement they’ve ever made.  We can live without most of the Chinese crap they send us.  But if 300 million Chinese get laid off, Xi quickly will become the former Chairman of the CCP.  This will work out.  I’m not sure we’ll see a Golden Age, but business should improve.

That does it for imports and exports.  Now to the deports.  Tens of thousands of illegals have, so far been rounded up for deportation.  But not without a fight.  No, not a fight from the illegals, but from District Court Judges who have somehow gotten the notion that they’re in charge of immigration decisions.

In one case, a Maryland District Judge ordered the government to return Salvadoran MS-13 gang member Abrego Garcia to the U.S., from the Salvadoran prison to which he was deported.  This case went to the Supreme Court, which ordered the government to “facilitate” his return.  Whatever that means.

AG Pam Bondi has been clear on this.  “He’s not coming back and we don’t want him back.”  Salvadoran President Bukele has said, he’s not releasing him or sending him back.  The Administration has told the District judge, in all appropriate legal language, to pound sand, pointing out that the courts have no authority to order a president to contact a foreign nation, or to control foreign policy.  The battle rages on.

Then there are the 530,000 illegals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, to whom Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden granted parole, under his executive authority.  A District judge in Massachusetts named Indira Talwani (yes, that’s the judge, not the litigant), has stayed the Trump Administration’s termination of the paroles, under the same authority Biden used to grant them.

According to Judge Talwani, one president can let them in, but another president can’t throw them out.  Can’t wait to hear the explanation of that one.  Then again, all 530,000 don’t live in Massachusetts, so, as the Supreme Court recently explained to District judges, she has no jurisdiction over this entire crowd of wretched refuse.

And against this backdrop, Democrats keep backing the wrong side of the issue, siding with illegal aliens over American citizens every time.  Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who had nothing to say when an illegal alien criminal murdered Maryland mother of five Rachel Morin, has announced he’s going to El Salvador to get Abrego Garcia out of prison.  You just can’t make this crap up.

Even after the November election losses, Democrats insist on opposing every attempt to make Americans safer.  As a recent U.S. president is fond of saying, “So sad.”

The term “loyal opposition” was coined in 18th Century Great Britain to describe the Party out of power in the Parliament.  The idea was that the out-of-power Party, although thoroughly opposed to many of the policies of the ruling Party, could hold the government accountable while still respecting the legitimacy of the State.  The point was that, despite their differences, both Parties shared a commitment to the nation’s stability.

The notion of a loyal opposition once prevailed in our country as well.  The Parties often disagreed on policy, but remained dedicated to national stability, and the legitimacy of the State never was questioned.  This was especially the case when it came to foreign policy, where the maxim was that “politics stops at the water’s edge.”

There is no better example of that maxim at work than in the lead up to World War II.  FDR’s attempts to rearm America, institute a draft, and provide war materiel to Great Britain were strenuously opposed by isolationist factions in both Parties.  But once the bombs started falling on Pearl Harbor, the America First Committee dissolved overnight, and every elected official stood behind FDR.

In today’s America, we no longer have a loyal opposition.  The Democrats don’t accept the legitimacy of our government, so loyalty doesn’t exist.  And to hear them talk, we really no longer even have an opposition.  They’re opposed to everything that the Trump Administration is doing, to be sure, but they offer no alternative.  They have no opposing view, and no alternative policies to offer.  All they offer America is “resistance.”

Left-wing organizations declared their resistance to Trump on November 6, but the movement took some time to get itself going.  Perhaps they were confused by memories of Al Sharpton’s now famous advice, “But resist we much.  We must, and we will much- about that- be committed.”  Huh?

They took a while to build up steam.  The ever-irritating Whoopi Goldberg tried to help it along.  “Remember, the resistance is real.  You’re not alone.”  Then, lying fraud Senator Corey Booker completed a pointless 25 hour harangue on the floor of the Senate, which I suppose was intended to cement his claim to be a leader of the Democrat Party.  It didn’t work.

So the Dems moved on to last weekend’s nation-wide Hands Off protests.  The question was “hands off what?”  As best I could tell, the protestors were demanding that the Trump Administration keep its hands off Medicare and Social Security.  If that was their cause they needn’t have bothered, since those programs are not now, nor have they ever been at risk.

As with most things Democrat, the protests were stirred up by the chronic and habitual lies of the Left.  “Trump will do away with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”  No he won’t be cutting those programs, nor will Elon Musk and DOGE be cutting anyone’s benefits.  As Trump and Musk have said repeatedly, the reduction of waste, fraud, and abuse will permit benefits to increase.

Another hallmark of the protests was the makeup of the crowds.  The protestors were by and large middle-aged to elderly white folk who were taking a break from composting and making their own sandals, assisted by the usual scruffy-looking 20-somethings, who are required to go outside to protest every week or so, to give their parents a chance to go into the basement to clean the crumbs out of the seams of their gaming chairs.

The protestors are the same people who rallied to Save the Whales, then rallied to Save the Planet by building windmills that killed the whales, then rallied to require all cars to be electric, and now are busy fire-bombing Tesla dealerships to destroy electric cars.  Fickle, aren’t they?

The point is that the protests were largely pointless.  The problem for the Democrats is that they have no identifiable leader.  Bernie the Bolshevik Sanders and AOC are traveling the country on their “oppose the oligarchs tour.”  Bernie is railing against “billionaire oligarchs,” which ignores the fact that nearly all the billionaires are funding his Party.

Failed Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz is making a bid to be the Democrat Leader.  He’s offering himself as the unlikely poster-boy for masculinity, but remains the same hapless boob he was during the election campaign.  And Walz isn’t suggesting that Democrat policies need to change.  He’s said, “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values.  One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

Neighborliness?  Like the friendly neighbors who massacred untold millions in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea … need I go on?  No.  Tim Walz is not the answer.

Then there’s AOC.  She fancies herself the leader of the Democrats.  But her leadership begins and ends with hatred of Donald Trump.  She criticized Democrats who said the were resigned to a second Trump term, “If you’re a senior Democrat that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism.”

There’s that word again.  Fascism.  It means government control of everything.  Business, speech, life itself.  And Democrats fail to see that they are the true fascists.  So AOC is not the leader the Democrats are waiting for.  She’s simply a reflection of their psychosis.

But what about the new darling of the Democrat Party, Jasmine Crockett?  She’s a Texas Congresswoman who has taken to saying the most appalling things.  She’s from the insult wing of the Democrat Party.  She’s called wheelchair bound Texas Governor Greg Abbott “hot wheels.”  She hails from the so-called Progressive Party that labels any dissent as racism, yet consistently spews stone-cold racism.

Remember the Democrats claim that Trump would outlaw inter-racial marriage?  Here’s Jasmine, on Republican Byron Donalds, “The fact that you’re sitting around talking about ‘life was better under Jim Crow,’ like, is this because you don’t understand history?  Or literally it’s because you married a White woman and so you think that whitewashed you?” “I feel like they give [Donalds] his talking points and he’s like, ‘Yes, massa. I got it.'”  Progressive, huh?

It gets worse.  Here’s Jasmine on immigration.  “So I had to go around the country and educate people about what immigrants do for this country, or the fact we are a country of immigrants.”  The fact is ain’t none of y’all trying to go and farm right now.”  “OK, I’m lying?” “You’re not, you’re not. We done picking cotton. We are. You can’t pay us enough to find a plantation.”  Yeah, except for the Democrat Plantation they’ve been toiling on for decades.

And like too many Democrats nowadays, Jasmine is perfectly comfortable with using violence to accomplish her ends.  A majority of Democrats say murdering Trump would be justified.  After all, he is Hitler according to them.  Jasmine doesn’t disagree.  She has said Ted Cruz should be “knocked over the head.” And she wants Elon Musk to be “taken down.”  And she has said Democrats need to be “OK with punching.”

Too many Democrats agree with Jasmine.  They’re mindset is, if you can’t outvote them, then sue them, fire bomb them or kill them.  This is not a loyal opposition.  This not resistance.  It’s sedition.

Democrats have no leader, no plan, and no shame.  They have devolved into a violent hate group, fed by lies, promoting no improvements, and signifying nothing.  Let’s hope they keep up the bad work.

Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)  has been hard at work since January 20.  Surprising no one, the Democrats are screaming bloody murder.  The purpose of DOGE is to ferret out government waste, fraud and abuse in order to reduce the cost of a federal government which has ballooned to an extent never envisioned by our Founders.  You would have thought that our government officials would be working toward that goal anyway, but they’re not.

I mean, they always talked a good game.  Thomas Jefferson said, “The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”  But that was a long time ago, and anyway, he owned slaves, so that must be wrong.   Grover Cleveland said, “Public service is a public trust.”  But now, nobody trusts the government.  More recently, President Eisenhower promised an administration “clean as a hound’s tooth.”  But that’s hard to do when every other elected official is a horse’s ass.

Democrats are against any attempt to improve the system.  Their counterpoint to the DOGE actions is their go-to tactic – lying.  According to NPR, one of the agencies on the DOGE hit list, “So far, the Trump administration has not shown clear evidence of fraud.”  Democrat politicians have attacked Elon Musk as “incompetent.”  Attorneys General from 14 states are suing to block DOGE from accessing federal data.  If there’s no fraud, and the DOGE boys are incompetent anyway, why would they do that?

It turns out they’re doing that because the entirety of the federal government IS A FRAUD.  The federal government, which currently is spending some $7 trillion a year is a model of inefficiency.  580 federal agencies are spending your tax dollars.  And DOGE revealed that all the money they’re spending comes out of one Treasury bank account.  Isn’t that efficient?  No.  You see, all the agencies do is tell Treasury to pay, and Treasury pays, no questions asked, and no verification required.  For everything.  Payroll, Social Security payments, Medicare and Medicade payments, contracts, grants, you name it.

But the agencies must be verifying the legitimacy of the claims before telling Treasury to pay, right?  Ah, it turns out they’re not.  Are they corrupt?  Possibly.  Lazy?  Some might be.  But here’s the latest news from DOGE.  Even if these bureaucrats all are perfectly honest public servants, they can’t verify the claims even it they want to.

The Feds are paying $100 million a year for internet technology, to keep 50 year old computer systems running.  Crazy right?  But it gets worse.  They’re running 700 different antiquated IT systems that are incapable of communicating with one another.

Maybe that’s how, in a country where 310 million people are eligible for benefits, 398 million people are receiving checks.  Not evidence of fraud?  Maybe that’s how we could have Social Security payments being made to 16 million people between with reported ages of between 110 and 369.  Social Security personnel reported this in 2008.  Nothing ever was done about it.  At the average Social Security level, that’s $380 billion a year, but not evidence of fraud?  Maybe that’s why 75% of illegal aliens are receiving Social Security benefits.  But nothing to see here, right?

And hey, you know what?  Maybe that’s why the SBA made loans totaling $300 million to children under age 11, and another $300 million to people supposedly over age 115.  You see, once presented with a loan application bearing a supposedly “active” Social Security number, SBA couldn’t find out that one borrower was 9 months old, and another was going into business at 115.  But I’m sure there must be an innocent explanation for all this, right?

The DOGE boys found out that 40% of the calls to Social Security offices to change the direct deposit accounts of recipients were fraudulent.  Social Security employees told them this fact, but I guess that’s really not evidence, right?

And some agencies don’t even have computers.  Federal pension records are kept in 22,000 file cabinets inside a limestone mine in Pennsylvania.  When the Trump Administration offered early retirements to thousands of employees, it was told that no more than 8,000 retirements could be processed per month.  The government has been planning to do something about this for years.  Members of DOGE are digitizing decades of records in a matter of months.

The goal of DOGE is to cut spending by a trillion dollars by eliminating fraud, waste and abuse.  Democrats object.  Once again they have selective amnesia.  President Clinton fired 426,000 employees.  No one complained.  To date, DOGE is responsible for firing 0.015% of 2 million employees, and we’re told the government has been “gutted.”

Then there’s duplication of effort.  The NIH has 27 Chief Information Officers at 27 centers.  But the researchers don’t have the capability of sharing their findings with other scientists.  The IRS has 14,000 employees whose only job is to issue laptops and phones to IRS employees.  If each issued 2 a day, they could service the entire agency in a month.  There are 4.6 million active credit cards for the 2 million employees.  The cards rang up $40 billion in charges last year.  No one can say for sure where all the cards are.

The sad state in which the Trump Administration found our federal government was one in which a government that takes it upon itself to audit the financial practices of private industry cannot pass an audit of its own finances.  Without the improvements being implemented by DOGE, our government will become insolvent and no legitimate employee, recipient or creditor will be paid.

The current system is unsustainable, but Democrats object to any cuts, modernization, or transparency.  They don’t want the poor taxpayers to be able to look behind the curtain.  I wonder why?  And it’s really not just the Democrats.  Republicans are equally to blame.  A large majority of our elected officials prefer to run the government under the trip to Disney World philosophy.  They figure that the reason they’re going to Washington is not to save money, but to spend money.

This idiocy cannot continue, however changing the system will be a daunting problem.  For too long, our elected officials have regarded the federal treasury as their own bottomless piggy bank.  They’re addicted to spending.

I made that observation nearly 25 years ago.  In the very first installment of FRANK ON FRIDAY, on August 11, 2014, I wrote about The Junkie State.  The piece quoted a former drug addict who described the conduct of addicts.  “They always ask you for money.”  “They always lie.”  “They promise to go to rehab, but the drug makes them feel too good.”

Those observations are equally applicable to our government.  It constantly asks you for money.  “The rich need to pay their fair share.”  It lies constantly.  “The Affordable Care Act.”  “The Inflation Reduction Act.”  “Elect us or democracy ends.”  And it always promises you it will reform.  “The era of big government is over.”  But it never changes.

Addicts rarely change unless they’re forced to do so.  Over the years, I’ve listened to countless addicts, facing the prospect of prison, swear to judges that this time they’ll change, if you give them only one more chance.

In 2014, I wrote that our government needs an intervention.  Maybe DOGE is that intervention.  But I’m not hopeful because I’m not naive.  The drug addict is at the mercy of the court.  The Congressional addicts can ignore the DOGE improvements and go back on the road to ruin.  I hope I’m wrong.