Court Upholds Delaware’s Permanent Absentee Voting Law. Two Rethugs fail in their latest attempt to disenfranchise voters:
The Delaware Court of Chancery has upheld the state’s permanent absentee voting law, rejecting a constitutional challenge brought by two candidates seeking election to the Delaware State Senate.
On Sept. 4 it was determined that Delaware’s permanent absentee voting statute does not violate the Delaware Constitution because it does not expand the circumstances under which a voter may cast an absentee ballot.
The lawsuit was brought by state Sen. Gerald Hocker and Steven Washington, both candidates for the Delaware State Senate in the 2026 general election. They challenged Delaware code that allows certain voters to obtain permanent absentee status.
The ruling granted summary judgment to State Election Commissioner Anthony Albence and the Delaware Department of Elections and denied the motion filed by Hocker and Washington.
Hmmm, I wonder whether Julianne Murray at least got some legal fees out of this…
Our Mortal Enemy Canada Strikes Back. I’m boycotting maple syrup until the next time I have pancakes:
New Canadian tariffs targeting roughly $20 billion in U.S. imports officially snapped into place on Tuesday, the latest escalation in an increasingly costly trade war that has ensnarled two longtime allies.
The duties apply to a variety of U.S. goods, including clothing, cheese, metal parts and wood products. The approach is meant to mimic the taxes that President Trump imposed on Canada after trade talks between the two neighbors collapsed in acrimony last month.
For now, the economic effects of the tit-for-tat may be limited because the tariffs encompass only a small portion of the annual trade between the United States and Canada. The more pressing concern is a potential cycle of retaliation, one that results in even higher and more exhaustive duties that harm families and businesses on both sides of the border.
By permission of Mike Luckovich and Creators Syndicate.
660 Million Pounds Of Mystery Meat:
If you buy a T-shirt at Gap, it will have a label that tells you where it was made. That’s federal law.
The same is true for automobiles, appliances, television sets, every fresh or frozen fruit and vegetable sold at the supermarket.
Beef and pork are notable exceptions to these laws. And that may help to explain why President Trump signed a proclamation last week that will allow the duty-free importation of about 660 million pounds of inexpensive beef.
If American consumers knew where that beef was coming from, they might not want to eat it.
The cuts of meat covered by Trump’s proclamation aren’t fresh sirloins, rib eyes and filets. They’re lean beef trimmings that will be added to fattier American cuts to make ground beef. They’re small chunks of frozen meat that could have been kept in cold storage overseas for years. They are the quintessence of generic industrial meat, imported here to be subsequently processed in massive grinders that combine pieces of tens of thousands of cattle from multiple countries, mainly into fast food hamburgers.
Follow the money. If the beef doesn’t sicken you, this just might:
One of the worst food-safety scandals occurred in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of beef. In 2017, the Brazilian federal police raided nearly 200 meatpacking plants after allegations that government inspectors and politicians were being bribed to allow the sale of contaminated beef. Rotten meat treated with ascorbic acid and other chemicals to mask the contamination had been sold to hospitals and schools in Brazil and also been exported. Executives at the Brazilian company JBS, the largest beef producer in the world, later admitted to bribing inspectors.
Why did Mr. Trump come up with this scheme to import hundreds of millions of pounds of beef?
“Regime Change,” the recent book by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, contains an interesting clue: a White House meeting last November between President Trump and Joesley Batista, whose family controls JBS.
Mr. Batista had long been considered persona non grata in Washington, having been jailed in Brazil as a result of, among other things, paying $186 million in bribes to almost 2,000 politicians, including three Brazilian presidents, to obtain state financing for his family’s company. In 2019, after JBS bought several American meatpacking companies, Senator Marco Rubio and his colleague Robert Menendez deplored JBS’s “admitted criminal conduct,” its “business relationships with Venezuela’s Maduro regime, as well as its growing reliance on financing from entities aligned with the Chinese government.” The senators argued that allowing JBS to own U.S. companies could endanger America’s food supply and national security.
Mr. Batista gained the White House meeting last November, Ms. Haberman and Mr. Swan wrote, because of his friendship with Melania Trump. In addition, a JBS subsidiary had donated $5 million to Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, the largest gift from any individual or corporation. Not long afterward, JBS got approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, a privilege the company had sought for almost a decade.
After the White House meeting with Mr. Trump, Mr. Batista flew to Venezuela at Mr. Trump’s request, met with President Nicolás Maduro and urged him to resign. Mr. Batista’s unusual diplomatic endeavor did not succeed, but in July, a company owned by his family acquired a major stake in Venezuelan oil production, with the blessing of the new Trump-backed government there.
The European Union suspended imports of beef from Brazil this past Thursday because of concerns about antibiotic misuse. Mr. Trump’s proclamation facilitating beef imports from Brazil took effect the same week. Calling these facts to public view, the writer Shanley Hunt allowed that perhaps it’s just a coincidence. According to the The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump announced his intention to allow duty-free foreign beef just a day after another meeting with Mr. Batista at the White House. Perhaps that’s a coincidence, too.
And yet it’s remarkable that the livelihood of American ranchers is being shaped in private meetings between the president of the United States and a representative of Brazil’s largest exporter of beef.
Absolute corruption all the time. The scale of this is breathtaking. I may have eaten my last hamburger.
More Signs Trump May Have Started WW III:
The Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen launched a wave of attacks on Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, wounding more than 70 people and igniting fires at oil facilities and utilities in the kingdom, authorities said.
The attack was a major escalation in renewed fighting between an important U.S. ally and the Iranian proxy group. It also threatened to further destabilize a region rocked by nearly three years of wars and deliver a new blow to the global economy.
Weeks of clashes have added pressure to limited global oil supplies as the Houthis target a shipping route Saudi Arabia has used to transport oil to world markets while the Strait of Hormuz is throttled due to the U.S.-Iran war. Tuesday’s attacks hit Saudi oil facilities connected to the alternative route, the Bab el-Mandeb, a strategic waterway off the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf Aden.
The attacks ignited fires at several oil facilities and utilities in Saudi Arabia’s southern region, the kingdom’s Energy Ministry said. Operations at the oil facilities and utilities were temporarily suspended, it said.
The southern region houses major oil facilities, including a 400,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery in Jazan, which is one of Saudi Arabia’s largest. The Houthis previously attacked the Abha airport.
The ministry said firefighters were battling the fires Tuesday morning.
Al-Malki called the attacks a “serious escalation” and vowed retaliation.
At least we have the Arch to look forward to…
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