Dan McLaughlin Profile picture
Senior Writer @NRO. Reaganite, Catholic, Mets fan, New Yorker, retired from lawyering. Opinions 100% my own. Not the ex-Cardinals broadcaster.
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Aug 21 10 tweets 3 min read
1. How ignorant & wrong is @stuartpstevens? Let us count the ways. To begin with, it's the law that defines crimes. It doesn't matter what the jury thinks of the facts if the judge & prosecutor are wrong about the law. 2. If he read the indictment, "statement of facts," bill of particulars, decisions by Acting Justice Merchan, & jury instructions, as I have (guess what: those are all in the public record), @stuartpstevens would know that the legal theory was bonkers as well as undisclosed in the indictment nationalreview.com/2024/02/its-no…
Jul 26 5 tweets 1 min read
Not having kids is like not serving in the military, not having been poor, not being a woman, not being religious, not having run a business, not being a doctor, lawyer, cop...you're always entitled to be heard. But you should consider that your analysis misses something others know from experience. It's un-American to say anybody doesn't get to have an opinion on any issue because of their identity or experience. But a little humility is always in order on things other people have lived through & you haven't.
May 27 8 tweets 3 min read
The question isn't who's mad, George, it's who's wrong. You're wrong. The notion that the Appeal to Heaven flag is a symbol of insurrection against Washington (as opposed to a symbol of insurrection against George III) is a post hoc partisan-hack invention. To compare it to the swastika is shameful minimization of Nazism. See below: Just consider some of the places this flag flew without controversy before May 22, 2024, when people like @gtconway3d became obligated to pretend, retroactively, that it had for years been EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE HOLOCAUST:
Apr 25 83 tweets 11 min read
Thomas: So, this presidential immunity...where does it come from in the Constitution? There he goes again asking about that pesky Constitution. Thomas asks how you tell what acts are covered; Roberts follows up asking directly about bribery for an official act. Sauer tries to separate the bribe from the official act.
Apr 24 35 tweets 4 min read
Kagan & KBJ really trying to keep Idaho's lawyer from answering any of their questions. Roberts finally asks Idaho's lawyer "could I hear your answer?" as Kagan tries to talk over him again.
Dec 1, 2023 39 tweets 4 min read
We're on. Image DeSantis leads with California running out of U-hauls for people fleeing the state, and goes hard after Newsom personally.
Nov 11, 2023 14 tweets 2 min read
Debate at #fedsoc2023 on laws regulating social media platforms. Richard Epstein making the case that "market dominance" of platforms in public speech legitimizes regulation. Epstein gets a laugh by noting the tendency of platforms like this one to decide that, say, his opinions are more dangerous than pornography. #fedsoc2023
Sep 7, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
1. LOL, this is some spin. Disney chose to file these then-much-hyped claims in federal court. Some of us have long warned that they were fatally undermined by the problems identified in the Board's state court suit.

It means the only remaining claim is vs state legislation. 2. The fact that Disney dropped all its claims against executive actions means that its sole remaining claim runs up against formidable 11th Circuit precedent, Ala. Educ. Ass'n v. Bentley (In re Hubbard), 803 F.3d 1298 (11th Cir 2015).
Jun 28, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
Of course, @JackPosobiec is wrong about the law & the facts. Trump did not declassify the documents while he was president, & could not do so in 2021-22 when he was no longer president. He's on tape acknowledging as much. @JackPosobiec As I will remind new readers, I called BS extensively on the Manhattan DA indictment. While there are ample reasons to bring skepticism to the boxes indictment, it lays out a very strong case against which Trump's legal defenses are quite flimsy. nationalreview.com/2023/06/how-to…
Jun 1, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
Ah, that special vintage of Humpty Dumpty progressive agitprop where the words are redefined & reality is precisely inverted.

They're not mad that there's a system of schools, journals, firm, and judgeships devoted to promoting an ideology, but that theirs isn't the only one. LOL, these guys don't even *have* a comprehensible theory of how to read the Constitution or statutes, but they think that asserting "we're the smart guys, actually" is a substitute for one. Also that nobody will notice them rebranding progressivism as "mainstream."
May 17, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
By the 1980s, racism wasn't gone in America, but it was finished, in the sense of broad public consensus that it was bad & should go away.

That consensus took over a century to build. Tearing it down instead of focusing on completing the job was a horrendous idea. Not a coincidence at all. The logic of the Democrats' approach to voter groups & their resentments hasn't changed a jot. They just substituted different groups with different resentments.
May 16, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
The latter part of this is just obvious nonsense. If you know any Russian history, you don't need any sympathy for Putin to know that a revanchist Russia will be paranoid about an encircling alliance in what it sees as its traditional sphere of influence. Sure, the Russian regime mistrusts the spread of liberal democracy among its neighbors. With the brief exception of a few years in the 1990s, that's been true since 1789. But if NATO transformed into an anti-Russian alliance of fascist states, Putin would still dread it.
Mar 25, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
I was watching terrorists blow up my office.

You really think you can persuade people to vote for Donald Trump by pretending that a guy who changed his whole life plan to join the military after 9/11 cares less about it than Trump? Were it me, I wouldn't be bragging about writing something this obviously self-discrediting just to try to help Trump win the nomination, then disclaiming the whole point of the ad, but I get that you have bills to pay.

Nov 29, 2022 14 tweets 5 min read
It says a lot - none good - that you see your movement as one that requires people to renounce everything they ever believed in & every principle they ever held; to don moral blinders as to every ally vs one man, & to bury one's qualms as to means, tactics, laws, norms & truth. If you're with the party that's been at war with the Constitution for a century & sees it as a musty relic of old white dudes, you're not actually interested in the Constitution as anything but a slogan with no content & no constraint on raw power.
Nov 15, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
LOL Because we don't strip pensions from military veterans over their political speech?
Nov 15, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
I grant that Lake has some genuine talent (which she squandered), but if they were exceptional candidates, they'd have won in a typically red state with a R legislature, R governors for over a decade, in a midterm with an unpopular D POTUS & a bad economy. Doug Ducey would have won those races. Mark Brnovich would have won those races. Lake & Blake lost winnable races because they were bad candidates. If the dogs won't eat the dog food, don't blame the dogs.
Nov 13, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
So, you're ready to declare the Trump GOP dead? Or you want to bury the DeSantis/Abbott/Kemp/Youngkin model, bring on more of the Masters/Oz/Mastriano model? Those are the choices. There are many fascinating questions about what happens if the GOP doesn't pick Trump in 2016, but you can't wallow in the past. That's the road not taken. The question is where you go on the choices of today, not the choices of six years ago. Image
Oct 29, 2022 34 tweets 6 min read
In Hauppauge for the DeSantis rally for Zeldin. Line to get in here is bonkers. Law enforcement supporters of Zeldin well represented here.
Sep 28, 2022 10 tweets 4 min read
1. So, @TheTattooedProf - who blocked me after somebody else cited my work in a thread - has sought to pick a fight with me via screenshotting part of my thread. This is sadly characteristic of how lefty "Twitterstorians" operate. 2. Notice: the argument is all straw-man from the outset: at no time have I claimed "that the US was an antislavery nation from the Revolution forward" or that the Constitution was "abolitionist." So far as I know, Ron DeSantis (about whom this started) has not said that either.
Sep 28, 2022 5 tweets 4 min read
DeSantis is right.

World's 1st:

-Anti-slavery society: Philadelphia, 1775
-Constitution banning slavery: Vermont, 1777
-Legislative ban on slavery: Pennsylvania, 1780.

There was only a need for a *compromise* bc 5 of the first 13 states banned slavery between 1780 & 1784. Parliament banned slavery in 1833, half a century *after* UK lost the Revolution - 50 years after bans in in VT, PA, MA, NH, CT, & RI, over 40 years after Congress banned in the Northwest Territory, & 30 years after NY & NJ banned. Popular abolition movement started here 1st.
Aug 19, 2022 8 tweets 4 min read
People who believe in nothing - such as @JimSwiftDC - live in a constant state of bafflement as to why people like me would not support a political party that aims at the destruction of everything I believe in - not just policy but the American system. overtime.thebulwark.com/p/shut-down-th… And for what? His example is Maryland. But *Democrats* don't believe that Dan Cox is a dangerous person who does things they would never do in the same shoes. If they believed that, they wouldn't have spent 50 times as much money on his ads as he did. nbcnews.com/meet-the-press…