To get back at it, Home World was released on March 15th! It is Book IX and the penultimate book of the series (with the possibility of some one-off books in the future). Book X (currently untitled) will come out later this year to wrap it up. As the title suggests, our heroes are back here! As the jacket blurb notes, just a quick trip back home to wrap up all affairs…but things go wrong.

Its a fun one, guys! You’ll especially enjoy the time frame it happens and some side comments about America and the world. I thoroughly enjoyed putting part of the action in Arizona; with a character met there being based on an X friend who’s a rancher and author out in that State, though as with all characters, also a mash up of two or more people.

The JFK docs were released – no, we’re not going to find the plan by the CIA to kill him. That was never going to be in there. But this doesn’t mean we’re not finding things. Steve Portnoy did some reading:

So, the CIA noted that Oswald met with Cubans and Russians two months before Dallas. And then failed to note this little fact to the Secret Service/FBI when they knew Oswald was in Dallas when Kennedy was scheduled to be there. This is very much shades of Butler, PA. Had the CIA advised the Secret Service that a Dallas resident (and had been since June of 1962) has serious Commie connections, then it would have been natural for the Secret Service (and/or FBI) to keep tabs on him during JFK’s visit. Like maybe figuring out that he worked at a place which had a field of fire into the path the President would be taking through Dallas. And then for 60 years the CIA demanded that this be kept secret.

Pro tip: if you don’t want people to believe conspiracy theories, the first rule is to not lie by omission.

Do keep in mind that you don’t have to do something to cause an event…you can often cause the event by not doing things. You know, like not having an officer on the roof with a clear line of sight to the Presidential podium.

Malicious or incompetent? That is the unknown thing – and likely can’t be known at this point as nearly everyone involved in dead; and likely didn’t write it down…or destroyed ages ago the documents which would give us an answer. And the jokester gives us the best word on it:

I do apologize for the vulgar language…but its appropriate here. The fundamental problem here, as I’ve been noting for a while, is government secrecy. That somehow the government has got the idea that they are allowed to hide things from the people…as if we are serfs and they are masters. It isn’t supposed to work like that. What started as operational security concerns (Grant being furious at newspapers for basically writing his battle plans into the newspapers) has morphed into the government carefully doling out information which doesn’t tell us what the government actually did. If Oswald was just a lone nut then we, the people, did need to know how this lone nut was able to get into position to fire three rounds at the most powerful man in the world. The government hid that from us. Quite diligently. Because a lot of them would have been hung out to dry whether it was conspiracy or incompetence.

Trump is still holding back on a showdown with the Judiciary. The deportations to El Salvador are called “too late, judge”; implying that if the judge had ruled prior to the planes leaving our airspace, the deportations wouldn’t have happened. Roberts rose to the defense of his judges and that made them go totally insane…now basically ruling that Trump can’t be President without their permission. It is absurd…and it isn’t actually stopping anything. And Trump is just giving them enough rope to hang themselves.

In any battle between the elected and the un-elected, the elected is going to win. Simple as: the people will always favor those who they voted for. Trump is likely just waiting for his best moment to strike…when it all piles up as idiotically (and it is; high and deep!) that he can be the reasonable one defending Constitutional norms.

It must be kept in mind that the Judiciary has no method of enforcing its rulings. In that, only the Executive can enforce. The unwritten rule since Marbury is Executive acquiescence – though Biden’s refusal to obey the Court on student loans ended that precedent (to no Leftwing complaints, of course). And on the whole the Marbury precedent has been good – healthy. But it isn’t so much any longer. This is mostly because the Courts are intervening in areas which have no Federal or Constitutional scope. It has happened before, of course. Dred Scott was an egregious example of the Court getting involved in something it shouldn’t have – at that time, the legality of slavery was up to the States but the Court decided without any Constitutional authority to decree that Missouri’s slavery laws were valid in Wisconsin. It was an absurdity. But for the most part, the Court remained reticent and only acted when it was something crucial.

We can pick a case to say this is when the Great Departure happened but I’ll settle on Roe – that horrible poison in our body politic. Abortion was largely unknown (and mostly impractical) at the time the Constitution was adopted. No provision in that document in any way relates to how medical practices are to be regulated, nothing in there defines when a human being is endowed with their rights, no clause says a person has a right to an action which requires the assistance of at least one other person. Given all this, it all fell under the 9th and 10th Amendments…it was a matter for the States or the people to decide. If you wanted to make it a Federal issue, you’d have to amend the Constitution. And, by and large, the people and the States were dealing with it – badly in my view as abortion was legalized in State after State but this is how it works and I could have no complaint about the process much as I dislike the result. Whammo: here comes the Supreme Court to invent out of whole cloth a “right to privacy” which means we can’t regulate abortion at the State level. It wasn’t just a stupid ruling – it was an evil ruling. It cut at the very heart of the American system of government. Until Hobbs, it essentially removed the American people from any say in the matter. Since then, its just been one bad, wicked decision after another and now we have the Courts completely out of control trying to insert a “but, Trump” exception to Article II. It has to stop. It will be stopped. Only question is whether Roberts will call off the dogs or if Trump will start to openly defy the Courts.