One might expect a White House Press Secretary’s first week on the job to receive media coverage mainly for the content and quality of her briefings — those being, you know, the job.

And, for a brief moment, that’s how it went for Katie Zacharia, who took the post on October 9 and delivered her first briefing on October 13 to largely negative reviews. She stumbled through a script for eight minutes, bumbled her way through three questions from friendly media outlets, then fled the podium.

OK, small sample size and new to the job, right? Give her time and see how it goes.

But no. Instead of just letting Zacharia try to (and expecting her to) improve her way to rock star status (the gold standard is the fictional CJ Cregg of The West Wing), and instead of covering the real stories she’s supposed to inform them on, the mainstream media wants to make her the story.

The question: Is (or was) Katie Zacharia an “attorney,” as US president Donald Trump called her?

The irrefutable, factually correct, answer is “who cares? In her current role, she doesn’t practice law.”

But fine, let’s dig into the matter a little further, since it’s apparently now a matter of controversy. Manufactured controversy that matters not a whit, but controversy nonetheless.

Zacharia attended, and graduated from, Pepperdine University’s Rick J. Caruso School of Law with a Juris Doctor degree.

She worked for a law firm in China for two years, and at one point her LinkedIn profile described her as “general counsel” for a California non-profit.

So yes, she does seem to have “practiced law” as a “lawyer” or “attorney,” despite having failed the California bar exam and having never received an Extra Special, Very Important Permission Slip  — a government license in the form of “admission to the bar” — to do so.

Question: While tooling down the freeway one day, you’re pulled over by a cop and it comes to light that you don’t possess a government-issued “driver’s license.” Does that mean you aren’t a “driver?”

“Admission to the bar” and other occupational licensing schemes don’t exist to distinguish “real” lawyers, doctors,  and even (in some states) hair braiders and interior decorators from “fake” ones.

Nor do they exist to “protect the public” from less qualified practitioners.

They exist to raise the incomes of people who procure those Extra Special, Very Important Permission Slips and to make it more expensive and difficult to competitively join those anointed elites.

Which is why the strongest lobbying for implementing and enforcing such schemes always comes from the existing practitioners.

If you “practice law,” you’re a “lawyer” or “attorney,” whether you have government credentials saying so or not. And to the best of my knowledge, Katie Zacharia has never falsely claimed to have such credentials.

I hope Zacharia’s clients got good work for their money, as that’s the only thing that should matter.

And I hope we can get better work from the press in deciding what’s worth “reporting” on.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On October 9, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced — during a podcast appearance rather that from a Pentagon podium — that the killing of mass shooter Nidal Hasan by military firing squad, scheduled for December 3, will be livestreamed. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public — because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

By “these types of things,” Hegseth presumably means Hasan’s murder of 13 people (including a pregnant woman) and wounding of 32 in 2009.

I’m on record as opposing capital punishment because it’s evil, cowardly, stupid, not an effective deterrent to criminal behavior, and the opposite of “limited government” (a government empowered to kill disarmed and helpless prisoners is a government beyond anything plausibly defined as limited).

In Hasan’s case, my “unlimited government” objection doesn’t apply.

As a US Army officer, Hasan “freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion” agreed to make himself subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Article 118 of the UCMJ mandates the death penalty (or imprisonment for life) for premeditated murder. Therefore, the US regime will be acting within the limits of its contract with Hasan.

I still oppose killing Hasan on the other grounds I mention, but I consider livestreaming that killing — which will happen whether I like it or not — potentially useful as a demonstration of character.

With a public execution, the US regime will join an exclusive club currently comprised of Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and the Islamic State’s notional “caliphate.”

Those aren’t the only regimes with unlimited government. They’re just the only regimes that publicly flaunt their unlimited nature by killing disarmed, helpless prisoners in full view of the serfs they rule.

I’m big on government transparency. Not on “good government” grounds, but because transparency makes it easier for people to figure out that there’s no such thing as “good” political government.

Note the modifier “political.”

Political government is the opposite of self-government. It’s a claimed monopoly on the use of force by an organization that, absent public acceptance of a bunch of weasel wording, would otherwise be seen as (and actually is) an organized crime syndicate.

The US government killing Hasan is no different in principle than the Gambino crime family’s killing of Thomas DeSimone, sentenced to death for killing  “made man” William Bentvena (both killings are portrayed, using other names, in the film Goodfellas).

Like DeSimone, Hasan’s offense wasn’t that he gunned down a bunch of people. It was that he gunned down the “wrong” people. If he’d killed a bunch of Iraqis or Afghans, he’d more likely have received a medal than a death sentence.

If the US regime is going to kill Hasan (and it almost certainly will), I favor making a public spectacle of it. “The people” who supposedly consent to be governed, and who buy the bullets and pay the salaries of the firing squad, should be shown what they’re getting for their money and what club “their” government belongs to.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Donor Eric Deters describes a “pay to play” arrangement with US president Donald Trump’s friends/family circle in which he fully participated until one member of that circle — Kimberly Guilfoyle, US ambassador to Greece and former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. — took things $100,000 too far.

According to the New York Times, Deters claims he “paid $300,000 to Ms. Guilfoyle, $200,000 to Donald Trump Jr. and $100,000 to Eric Trump to speak at [Patriots Day Freedom Fest] events between 2021 and 2024.”

Deters apparently thought he was buying influence, or at least access, not just cheesy campaign speeches, with that money.

In particular, he says, he asked Guilfoyle to help him resolve an IRS “issue,” and get the US Department of Justice to demand extradition of a doctor from Pakistan over botched spinal surgeries (he represented the alleged victims in litigation).

He didn’t feel like he was getting his money’s worth — and stopped coughing up when, he says, Guilfoyle wanted him to wire another $100,000 directly to American Express to cover her credit card tab in a way that wouldn’t show up as a payment to her.

That last part seems to have been important.  Deters shared screen shots with the Times of alleged text messages asking him to move their communications to the encrypted messaging app Signal, and for Deters to “stop papering all these things.” Presumably “papering” is shorthand for creating a chain of communications that can be discovered. Why the secrecy? Another supposed text: “You’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship.”

American media are, of course, reporting the matter as a “scandal.”

I don’t see it that way, at least if we define “scandal” as (per Dictionary.com) “damage to reputation; public disgrace” or “defamatory talk; malicious gossip.”

It seems to me that, in order for something to qualify as a “scandal,” it has to allege conduct that’s corrupt beyond the ordinary or expected.

The only thing extraordinary or unexpected about the self-enriching conduct of the Trump crime family is that, for the most part, it’s all done right out in the open. From cryptocurrency scams to insider trading to sweetheart contracts, the Donald and his offspring operate their corruption machine in a refreshingly transparent manner. They don’t care if you notice, and don’t consider such things worth the minimal effort of manufacturing plausible cover stories for.

Guilfoyle’s alleged conduct is  more typical of how the American political class usually works. Nancy Pelosi’s unusually astute stock trades. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas’s billionaire litigant funded RVs and vacations. Elizabeth Warren’s strangely big book advances. When payola can’t be completely hidden, there’s at least a cover story to distract and confuse the onlookers.

Perhaps today’s Republicans are dogs compared to modern Democratic cats: Both animals will happily take a dump on your lawn, but only one can be bothered to cover it up.

Which tracks with Guilfoyle’s background: Until the early 2000s, she moved in Democratic Party circles. Before she was engaged to Donald Trump, Jr., she was married to then San Francisco County Supervisor (now California governor) Gavin Newsom. “Train up a child in the way he should go,” Proverbs 22:6 tells us, “and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Or, more plainly, old habits are hard to break.

Even if the allegations are true, this isn’t a “scandal.” It’s just business as usual.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY