Jack Smith Ain’t Cannon Fodder
Jack Smith Ain’t Cannon Fodder
Plus: America Deserves Answers. The Afghanistan War Commission Has a Chance to Give Them.
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BILL KRISTOL & ANDREW EGGER: Did Kamala Do What She Had To?
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KIM WEHLE: Jack Smith Ain’t Cannon Fodder
ON MONDAY, SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH filed an appeal of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s outright dismissal of the classified documents case filed against Donald Trump in Florida. That case was widely perceived as the strongest of the four criminal indictments against Trump (the others being the January 6th indictment filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., the election-fraud case filed in state court in Georgia, and the Manhattan hush money case that produced a criminal conviction on 34 charges in June). Last month, Cannon tossed out the indictment on foundational grounds, declaring Smith himself an unconstitutional actor, as if everything he touches is worthless as a matter of law. The appeal signals that the Justice Department is not going to tolerate Smith getting “fired” this way.
NICOLE BIBBINS SEDACA: When Everything Is a Threat to Democracy, Nothing Is
AS THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE HEATS UP, both major parties have claimed that American democracy is being attacked and undermined, and each side points to the other as the perpetrator. Most of the electorate seems to agree. A March poll sponsored by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service found that 81 percent of American voters believe democracy is threatened, with Republicans and Democrats each citing extremists in the opposite party as the source of the threat.
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Margaret Hoover: Kamala, the Real Apprentice [YouTube]
The Secret Show: The Things We Think But Do Not Say 🔐
Across the Movie Aisle: Looking Back on 'Obamacore'
Beg to Differ: The New Kamala Harris
George Conway Explains it All (to Sarah Longwell): Jack Smith's New Indictment is Big Trouble for Trump [YouTube]
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SONNY BUNCH: In Review: ‘Strange Darling’ and ‘Between the Temples’
In a tongue-in-cheek tweet the other day, Variety suggested Deadpool and Wolverine will hit number one at the weekend box office again “due to the sheer lack of compelling options.” One-half of this tweet is true: Deadpool and Wolverine is likely to reign at the box office this week. The other half? About there being no compelling options? I’m gonna have to go ahead and sort of disagree with you there.
WILL SELBER: America Deserves Answers. The Afghanistan War Commission Has a Chance to Give Them.
WHEN I WENT TO AFGHANISTAN for the first time in 2008, I never thought that sixteen years later I would be sitting in the back row of a meeting of a commission designed to study the war that forever scarred me. Yet that’s where I found myself in July, eighteen days after my official retirement from the Air Force.
Congress created the Afghanistan War Commission to “conduct a comprehensive review of key decisions related to U.S. military, intelligence, foreign assistance, and diplomatic involvement in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021.” When I entered the conference room at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national headquarters for the commission’s first public meeting, I was ushered into the back row with the press. I had never sat with the press before, so I didn’t know if there was a secret handshake or something. When I introduced myself to a “fellow” reporter and gave her my background, she looked a bit puzzled and said, “Wow, so you’re like watching your life’s work get dissected in front of your eyes?”
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Friday! I hope you have a restful, meaningful and fun Labor Day. Overtime will be off on Monday, returning Tuesday. We hope to have baseball and airplanes, lots of airplanes, on our weekend docket. As such, today’s Overtime is a little shorter than usual.
Amtrak across America… with the internet’s favorite Canadian stealth camping YouTuber, Steve Wallis.
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss… go for the jugular, and good for them.
As a young Afghan interpreter, he helped a US officer… Then he needed help getting out. Nice to see USA Today cover our friend and former colleague Will Selber.
A Blue Jackets tragedy… Columbus Blue Jackets' Johnny Gaudreau, brother Matthew Gaudreau killed by alleged drunk driver while biking (Yahoo Sports).
Everyone’s talking about the Kamala interview… But JD Vance also went on CNN, and it did not go well for him.
Tim Walz, governor and gamer, once owned a Sega Dreamcast... Here’s what happened to it. (Star Tribune)
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.