The Launchpad

Category: Politics

  • Forts and Senators

    On Thursday, Donald Trump went to the Home of the Airborne- Fort (Roland Bragg (ex-Liberty, ex-(Braxton) Bragg) to gawk at a staged demonstration by the 82nd and other attached forces and give a typical Trump-rally speech. Normally, Presidential appearances at bases are at least somewhat discrete, with the caveat that Presidents of both parties have…

  • Slave Catchers

    -Summary compiled by Google’s AI. I’m a huge proponent of learning from history. There ain’t much truly new under the sun, just new expressions thereof. With that being said, let’s dive into a bit of America’s real history. European settlement of the Americas has always been fueled by human exploitation. When Columbus and Cortez arrived…

  • Injunctions

    This month, the U.S. Supreme Court took on the question of nationwide injunctions. In this case (as I discussed in my earlier post), the precipitating case was in regards to an injunction levied in the matter of birthright citizenship, but the question becomes much wider. In the American legal system and government, the injunction has…

  • Birthrights

    On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or…

  • Emoluments

    In old-timey English speak, “Emoluments” refers to “a salary, fee, or profit from office.” Salary for the President is pretty easy to figure out- $400,000 a year, plus a $50,000 annual expense account; so in a 4-year term, he’s making $1.6 million dollars gross, plus a generous pension. Not chump change, but to be honest,…

  • Gun Control

    You’d think the Democratic Party would learn. After getting shellacked at the ballot box in 2022 and 2024 and whiffing a highly consequential election by “nominating” the ultimate protected hire, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) has picked up Don Quixote’s lance and gone for his latest tilt at the windmill…gun control. So, first, let’s be…

  • H.R. 867

    There’s a lot of chaos that came up over the weekend, and in any ordinary circumstance, I’d be chewing through some easy fodder like Trump’s unhinged “100% tariff on foreign films to SAVE HOLLYWOOD” or re-prisoning Alcatraz Island, but there’s more important things happening under the surface and they don’t involve the White House at…

  • Malmedy, My Lai, Rafah…

    War is nothing new to humanity. War is brutal and violent and gory and is prone to excess in all fields; and civilians always suffer. Romans raped the women of Carthage, Goths slaughtered Roman children, the Celts habitually tortured captives, the Aztecs spent prisoners-of-war to make sure the sun would continue to rise. Americans are…

  • “No”

    Last Friday (3/28/2025), Vice-President J.D. Vance and his wife Usha travelled to Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule AFB) in northern Greenland as part of a truncated tour to the Danish territory that had initially included a day in the capital city of Nuuk and cultural episodes. This was initially billed as a friendly visit to…

  • DEI

    Immediately after winning confirmation as the Secretary of Defense, controversial former Fox News host and National Guard veteran Pete Hegseth went to war…on the military’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The problem, as Republicans define it, is that efforts to promote diversity suppress merit-based promotions and ultimately allows persons who are unfit to serve into…