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The World’s Most Dysfunctional Body? Cory Booker Captures The Decline Of The US Senate

When President James Buchanan declared that the United States Senate is the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” he clearly had not envisioned Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.).

In yet another tirade on the floor, Sen. Booker attacked not just President Donald Trump but his Democratic colleagues for voting for a bipartisan bill on law enforcement.

Behind the “I am Spartacus” theatrics is a more troubling trend in the United States Senate as it devolves into a more populist, impulsive institution.

In 1872, Moncure Daniel Conway published an account of a meeting between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Jefferson questioned Washington’s support for the creation of a second or upper house in the form of the Senate. Washington asked:

“Why…did you just now pour that coffee into your saucer, before drinking?”

“To cool it,” answered Jefferson, “my throat is not made of brass.”

“Even so,” rejoined Washington, “we pour our legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

These days, it seems like legislation goes to the Senate to heat up.

The Senate is losing its constitutional and cultural moorings as the cooling saucer for our heated politics.

Instead, it is becoming more like . . . well . . . the house.

The role of the Senate is key to the Madisonian design in forcing compromise and deliberation. Senators were given longer, six-year terms to insulate them from the immediate political demands that often motivate the House.

That has changed with the 24-hour media-saturated political environment. It has changed in this age of rage.

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O’Keefe: Vera Institute Director Confesses Non-Profit ‘Tips Illegals Off’ Regarding ICE Whereabouts Using Secret “Notification Systems” In Order to “Avoid the Area”

The O’Keefe Media Group on Thursday released undercover video of the Vera Institute Director confessing the non-profit “tips illegals off” on ICE agents’ whereabouts by using secret “notification system.”

“There’s been some really great work that has been done to create [ICE] notification systems,” Santiago Mueckay, Director of Advocacy for the Vera Institute of Justice told an OMG undercover reporter.

Mueckay boasted about how the Vera Institute helps illegals evade immigration officials.

“We know which states are being targeted…If you see someone [ICE agents], you can text the group, and then it’ll go on a website… so people can avoid the area,” Mueckay said.

“We [Vera] keep track of everything that’s happening with ICE,” he said.

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Virginia City Councilman Vogler Sustained Third-Degree Burns on 63% of His Body – Suspect Admits It Was His ‘Intention to Kill’ Vogler

Danville, Virginia, City Councilman Lee Vogler was doused in gasoline and set on fire in his office on Tuesday.

According to reports, the attacker, identified as Shotsie Michael Buck Hayes, 29, of Danville, threw five gallons of gasoline on Vogler before setting him on fire.

Danville police said the attack appears to be personal and not related to Vogler’s position as a city councilman.

The Daily Mail reported that Shotsie Michael Buck Hayes’ wife filed for divorce just two weeks ago.

Showcase Magazine’s Andrew Brooks said Buck-Hayes forced his way in the magazine’s office as Vogler was visiting and poured a five-gallon container of gas on him.

“Lee attempted to flee, ran to the front of the building,” Showcase Magazine owner Andrew Brooks said in a Facebook video. “The individual followed him and set him on fire.”

Vogler was flown to the UNC burn unit in Chapel Hill, according to WSET.

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Durham Appendix: Clinton Supporters in FBI Lacked “Conclusive Irrefutable Evidence” of Russia’s Involvement of DNC Email Scandal — And Lisa Page Knew This!

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) released the Durham investigation appendix on Thursday morning.

The appendix provides further truth on the Clinton Campaign’s plan to tie Trump to Russia and the FBI’s failure to investigate.

The information released on Thursday contains previously classified information exposing a reported Clinton campaign plan to falsely tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

The appendix also includes information that Clinton supporters in the FBI (a majority of the top brass officials) lacked “conclusive irrefutable evidence” of Russia’s involvement of the DNC email scandal.

According to the Durham annex:

Clinton’s supporters in the FBI lack conclusive irrefutable evidence of the Russian Federation’s involvement in the scandal, tied to the theft of the DNC’s correspondence. In the meantime, during the launched investigation, there has been a multitude of circumstantial evidence that the alias of Guccifer 2.0 (the name of the hacker who accepted responsibility for the incident) was in fact used to cover up a special unit of the GRU of the Russian Federation Defense Ministry’s general staff.

This comes from page 7 of the report that was released today.

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Technocrat Sweep: US Health Officials, Tech Executives To Launch Data-Sharing Plan

Why would Technocrats care about your health data? When they see the public as a herd of cattle, they naturally move to “manage the herd.” RFK, Jr. earlier bragged that he wants all citizens to don wearable medical devices within four years, to collect mountains of data. This initiative is headed by AMY GLEASON, the Administrator of DOGE.

Amy Gleason worked at the predecessor of DOGE from 2018-2021 during the first Trump administration, where she played a key role on the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s data team managing critical pandemic data. She was named an Obama-era “Champion of Change” for her work in patient advocacy and precision medicine. She has emerged as a key Technocrat with her association with Elon Musk. Court records clearly show that Musk was never in charge of DOGE, but rather Amy Gleason.

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Biden Looks Completely Lost at National Bar Association Gala, Angrily Shouts, Trashes Trump, Stumbles Through Remarks

Joe Biden took the stage at the National Bar Association’s 100th annual gala in at the Hyatt in Chicago on Thursday night.

The 82-year-old looked completely lost as he arrived to the event. Biden had to be escorted to his seat.

This is one of Joe Biden’s rare public appearances since announcing he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that spread to his bones.

Biden stumbled through his remarks, heavily slurred and trashed the Trump Administration in his speech to black lawyers and judges.

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Into the Abyss: How Bad Can the Covid Vaccine Story Get?

All Brownstone readers know that the Covid vaccines should never have been mandatory and should never have been prescribed to children or pregnant women, groups for which they were not tested. All of us have been alarmed to see stories of surprisingly many sudden heart failures, turbo cancers, and failed pregnancies in the days and months following the rollout of these shots.

How bad can it be? What is the worst estimate of the impact of the Covid vaccines on the count of living humans for which there is both some degree of empirical evidence and biological plausibility? Let us look into the heart of darkness and consider the worst.

Domain 1: Worldwide Excess Deaths

The principal source for global mortality data is the United Nations World Population Prospects, which at the time of writing had not been updated with a definitive number for 2024. We therefore only use data through 2023. Below we plot the total number of deaths in the world since 1950, and add to that a projection of the 10-year trend before 2020 through to 2023 (shown in the graph below as a red line). The numbers reveal that yearly death counts change fairly smoothly over time, except when humans do something stupid like the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1962, which corresponds to the previous big spike in world deaths evident on the graph and which has been estimated to have cost the lives of around 45 million people.

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Four Injured in Another Shooting in Gun-Free Denver

The City of Denver has among the most restrictive gun laws in the state of Colorado. Colorado ranks 13th in the nation for most restrictive gun laws, and for liberty advocates, anti-gun policy is often incoherent. What are they even trying to do?

To answer that question, we found a helpful chart from Rand explaining the intention and expected outcomes of various types of gun legislation.

It’s helpful in that it explains their “logic” and pinpoints the disarmament lobby’s intentions. That being said, if we measured the impact of these policies in the states that already have them, I doubt the objectives have been achieved. Consider these stats for Colorado…

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House Committee Revives Proposal for ‘Automatic’ Draft Registration

For the second successive year, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has included an ill-considered and unworkable proposal by the Selective Service System (SSS) to try to automatically construct a database of potential draftees from other government records collected for other purposes in the House version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The proposal to try to register young men “automatically” on the basis of aggregation and (mis)matching of other poorly-suited databases collected and intended for other purposes may fit perfectly with the standard operating procedures of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has already obtained access to the Selective Service registration database for unknown purposes. But if DOGE were really concerned with ending wasteful and inefficient government programs and agencies, it would have recommended abolishing the SSS, not making an attempt to salvage it.

Ongoing passive but pervasive noncompliance makes registration or a draft unenforceable. Compliance has fallen dramatically since the start of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and there’s been even more concern among potential draftees about activation of either a general draft or a draft of health care workers since the U.S. bombing of Iran. Deployment of soldiers for immigration enforcement, transportation of deportees to overseas death camps, and policing of domestic political protests in L.A. and elsewhere has prompted another surge of concern about a possible draft and what sorts of illegal orders might be given to both draftees and enlistees.

Automatic draft registration won’t magically make the registration database accurate or complete. But it has been proposed by SSS staff — otherwise threatened with losing their jobs if the agency is shut down as a useless failure — because it would enable the agency to pretend to be ready to implement a draft on demand. And it’s supported by both Republican and Democratic hawks because it would enable them to continue to pretend that the draft is available as a fallback option, so they can plan, prepare, and commit the U.S. to endless, unlimited war(s) without having to think about whether the people are willing to fight those wars, even if they escalate.

Whether warmongers like it or not, “automatic” draft registration can’t solve the compliance problem because no other government databases have all the information needed to identify all potential draftees or determine who is and who isn’t subject to the draft or required to register.

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These Are America’s 25 Largest Private Landowners

The U.S. is known for its massive public national parks, but a handful of families and entrepreneurs also own tracts of land that would dwarf some states.

This infographic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, ranks America’s 25 largest private landowners in 2025 and shows just how concentrated ownership has become.

The data for this visualization comes from The Land Report, which annually tracks the nation’s biggest deed holders. Its 2025 investigations reveals a timber-heavy top tier, diversified ranching empires in the middle, and a sprinkling of tech titans and investors rounding out the list.

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