“The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients? Will that really happen?” a Fox News host asked US Attorney General Pam Bondi on February 21, 2025. “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi replied.

On July 8, Bondi’s department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation released an unsigned memo claiming that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.'”

Something of a bombshell, but the shell carried two bigger payloads inside.

First: “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Second: “[N]o further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

Bondi defended the “no further disclosures” decision (while also trying to explain missing time from video covering Epstein’s cell at the time he allegedly killed himself)  at a cabinet meeting because most or all of the unreleased evidence supposedly consists of child pornography. Not child pornography of Epstein or his “clients” sexually abusing minors, just stuff he downloaded.

Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

And yet the UK’s Prince Andrew settled a lawsuit (reputedly for $16.9 million) with one of Epstein’s victims, who claims that Epstein delivered her into Andrew’s clutches for sex while she was a minor.

And Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell sits in prison, sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and conspiracy.

And records HAVE been released including the names of many prominent individuals — including one Donald J. Trump — who flew on Epstein’s private plane (“The Lolita Express”), in some cases to and from his private island where lavish “sex parties” were allegedly held.

There may or may not be a piece of paper somewhere labeled “my client list, signed, Jeffrey Epstein,” but no “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties?” If that’s a joke, it’s not funny. But it isn’t a joke. It’s a lie. Period.

Who were Epstein’s accomplices in crime? We may never know.

But the US Department of Justice knows, and would rather keep that information to itself than tell the rest of us about it.

Now, I’m not saying Donald Trump’s name would appear on a list of those who provably had sex with minors courtesy of Epstein’s trafficking operation. Given his known history and predilections, and his long public friendship with Epstein, it wouldn’t surprise me, but hey, maybe not.

Trump’s own name wouldn’t have to be on that list to make him want to quash the matter, though. A number of prominent, wealthy, and powerful people have already been shown, beyond doubt, to have associated with Epstein.

Some of those prominent, wealthy, and powerful people have already been publicly accused of taking part in, and advantage of, his depredations.

Any or all of those prominent, wealthy, and powerful people are well-positioned to bludgeon Trump with threats, buy his favors with inducements, or become useful targets for extortion by a president who regularly, even openly, engages in that practice.

We may not know the reasons for this blatant cover-up, but we all know that’s exactly what’s going on here.

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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As I write this, the known death toll of floods in Texas stands at 104, including dozens of children from summer camps dotting the affected area. That number will likely increase.

It’s a terrible thing, and naturally many of us not caught in the middle of it would like to assign blame.

“Key roles at local offices of the National Weather Service, in particular, went unfilled as the floods hit,” the New York Times reports. US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) wants “an investigation into the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service (NWS) stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding.” US Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) cites “consequences to Trump’s brainless attacks on public workers, like meteorologists.”

But let’s be real here. No, US president Donald Trump and his administration are not to blame for it — and I say that as someone possessed of an ingrained “blame government first” mentality in general and a strong dislike for Trump in particular.

Trump’s not responsible for the weather, and to the extent that federal agencies are responsible for accurately forecasting that weather and warning the public of dangerous situations (they shouldn’t be, but they are), they did exactly that.

According to an ABC News timeline:

The National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office issued its first flood watch at 1:18pm on July 3.

That evening at 6:10pm, the Weather Prediction Center warned of severe thunderstorms in the affected area.

At 1:14am on July 4, flash flood warnings  with a “considerable” damage tag — automatically triggered alerts on weather radios and mobile devices. Those warnings were upgraded at 3:35am and 4:03am.

At 4:35am — nearly 16 hours after the first watches and three hours after the emergency warnings — started going out, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office reported the first observed flooding.

By 7am, evacuations were under way.

It’s important, at this point, to assure you that I’m not trying to SHIFT blame to the victims. There are many reasons other than negligence why those alerts might have been missed, or why those who received them took action that seemed sufficient, but turned out not to be, to save their own lives and  others’.

But while we could (and probably will) see failures and foul-ups in the post-flood response from FEMA et al.,  and while we can (and definitely will) argue incessantly about various things Trump and his team do, this particular tragedy didn’t result from failures of the government systems in place to warn us of impending disaster.

Trying to get politicians and the politically involved to not “play politics” with every bad thing may be a fool’s errand, but it’s always worth condemning when it happens.

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

“A government burdens the religious exercise of parents,”  Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito writes on behalf of the court’s majority in Mahmoud v. Taylor, “when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.”

Consequently, the court ruled, the Montgomery County, Maryland “Public” School System must allow parents to “opt out” of sending their children to classes in which “LGBTQ+-inclusive” stories are read and discussed if those parents claim their religious beliefs, and their “right to direct the religious upbringing of their children,” go against having their children exposed to that content.

I’m personally both “LGBTQ+-positive” AND in favor of the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children — not just where religion is concerned but in every respect that doesn’t constitute physical abuse or neglect.

I have to disagree, however, with fellow libertarian writer James Bovard, who claims that, with its ruling, “SCOTUS Strikes a Blow against Public School Indoctrination of Young Children.” Indoctrination is baked in to “public” education. The court simply weighed in on one particular aspect of that indoctrination while going out of its way to preclude the correct solution for indoctrination in general.

“It is no answer,” the case syllabus claims, “that parents remain free to place their children in private school or to educate them at home. Public education is a public benefit, and the government cannot ‘condition’ its ‘availability’ on parents’ willingness to accept a burden on their religious exercise. … Moreover, given that education is compulsory in Maryland, the parents are not being asked simply to forgo a public benefit. They have an obligation — enforceable by fine or imprisonment — to send their children to public school unless they find an adequate substitute they can afford.”

So:

We’re going to set up a system.

We’re going to make you pay for that system.

We’re going to force you to put your kids into that system unless you can ALSO afford to pay for an alternative system.

But then we’re going to allow a heckler’s veto on anything in that system that anyone with the money and friends to get a case before the Supreme Court may happen to dislike.

Because the thing they dislike, THAT’s the problem.

No, the system is the problem.

The right to direct the upbringing of one’s children entails the obligation to bear the costs of bringing up one’s children.

The system itself violates parents’ rights to direct the upbringing of their children AND forces them to bear the costs of that violation, making them less able to afford the costs of whatever upbringing they might prefer.

So long as “public” education — education funded by compulsory taxation — exists, parents will be “burdened” by that system’s “indoctrination” of their children in various ways.

There’s one, and only one, way to solve the problem of school “indoctrination” that this or that sub-set of parents may dislike: Separation of school and state.

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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