As I write this, former US president Donald Trump’s probably finishing up his morning shave routine and picking the suit he’ll wear to his arraignment, later in the day, on 37 federal criminal charges relating to his possession and handling of “classified information” since leaving office. For this matter, if nothing else, Trump deserves the thanks of a grateful nation.

Wait … what?

Yes, really.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Trump fan, nor do I entertain much doubt concerning either his guilt or his silliness in pushing the matter well beyond the point where  special counsel Jack Smith had to decide between pulling the indictment trigger or capping off his 30-year prosecutorial career as a legal laughingstock.

It’s that silliness, that pushing, for which Trump deserves our thanks.

As a small-time con artist — he’d likely be worth more today if he’d just stuck his inheritance in an indexed mutual fund instead of risking it on weird scams — and B-list entertainer, Trump mistakenly thought that going political dilettante for a few years would endow him with the same kind of immunity/impunity enjoyed by his opponents and predecessors.

Turns out that’s not how it works. The American political establishment holds a grudge. So much so that in bringing Trump down, it puts its own members in real legal jeopardy for perhaps the first time.

It’s not that American politicians aren’t crooks. They are. But traditionally they face few if any, and light if any, penalties for their crimes. That’s probably about to change.

It’s too early to tell if there’s real evidence behind House Republicans’ allegations that Joe Biden and his family members took millions of dollars in foreign bribes, but if the evidence is there, Biden and Trump may well end up sharing a special “Executive Suites” prison wing with their respective Secret Service details.

Once the dam breaks, that wing might require subsequent expansion to make room for bribe recipients like Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and “classified information” mis-handlers like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

OK, maybe not those two —  some culprits will probably enjoy de facto amnesty/pardon, especially if they’ve retired from politics and can bring themselves, unlike Trump, to shut up — but being a crooked or corrupt politician seems like it’s about to get riskier. I wouldn’t want, for example, to be a member of Congress who wasn’t a millionaire when elected and who has somehow since attained a level of wealth my government salary doesn’t explain.

If Trump’s presidency and post-presidency does produce that kind of result, I’ll take his supporters’ claims that he’s the greatest president in history a little more seriously than I used to. And maybe even donate to his prisoner commissary fund.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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You’ve probably heard the expression “a solution looking for a problem.” The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact isn’t really such a thing. It’s more like a problem looking for another problem. But, thanks to Washington Post columnist Jason Willick, I’ve finally found some reasons to like it.

Why is it a problem?

Here’s how the NPVIC works (or would work if implemented): Once states commanding a total of 270 or more electoral votes joined, each of those states would award its presidential electors to the winner of the “national popular vote.”

That’s clearly unconstitutional without an added bit that it’s unlikely to get. Per Article I, Section 10, “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State …”

The NPVIC isn’t likely to fare well in the US Senate, where every state of any size receives two seats. Smaller states also get more relative weight in the electoral college. Why would they give that up?

Of course, it’s always possible that a rogue Supreme Court might find an “if you hold your mouth just right” way to miracle an exception into the congressional consent requirement. But in theory (unfortunately MOSTLY in theory), the Constitution is changed by amendment, not by fantasizing popular fairy tales into it.

So while I can’t say I’m particularly enamored of the electoral college and its “weighted” way of deciding presidential elections, the NPVIC doesn’t seem much better.

Or didn’t, until I read Willick’s column.

“The winner-take-all electoral college has limited the number of viable candidates to two in most elections,” he writes. “A popular-vote free-for-all could invite five or six or more. If politicians would just need a national vote plurality to automatically be awarded the compact’s 270 votes … more candidates would think they have a chance. Larger candidate fields would lower presidential vote shares and weaken presidential mandates.”

Willick considers all of that a “concern.” I see it as very much feature rather than bug.

Five or six viable choices instead of two? That sounds great.

Presidents without perceived “voter mandates” to do whatever they happen to feel like doing because they happen to feel like doing it? Even better!

Add to that: Presidents whose parties didn’t control at least 34 Senate seats would no longer enjoy effective immunity from conviction upon impeachment. We’ve seen four presidential impeachments and zero convictions in the history of the US, even though the accused was plainly guilty in at least three of those four cases.

More presidential choices? Less presidential power? No presidential impunity? What’s not to like?

None of that would likely be enough to save the existing system. Nor, certainly, enough to make it really WORTH saving. But we could do worse.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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I walk a lot, and when I’m out walking I always keep my eyes peeled for cyborg assassins sent from the future to kill the mother of the man who would otherwise save humanity from extinction at the hands of Skynet.

I also look for anyone making ludicrously long jumps between buildings while dodging bullets fired by strangely calm and inhumanly fast guys in suits and sunglasses.

I’m almost but not quite obsessed with such prospects, probably because my news  feeds are chock full of wailing about the dangers of artificial intelligence.  It’s getting smart, fast. And it keeps getting smarter, faster. In fact, it will probably wake up, notice humanity, decide it doesn’t like us, and permanently replace us with copies of itself any minute now.

Unless, of course, we “regulate” it. Which, in the parlance of completely neutral and disinterested experts like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, means “make sure that nobody new can afford to get into the game and compete with companies like OpenAI.”

While I tend to instinctively oppose any and all proposals for government “regulation” of, well, anything, in this case the whole idea strikes me as particularly stupid.

The genie is out of the bottle, folks. AI is a thing. It’s going to remain a thing. It’s going to keep getting better and faster at doing all sorts of stuff that, once upon a time, only humans can do.

If the US government tries to “regulate” it, its advancement won’t stop. Some AI research will just get done elsewhere, and some of it will get done illegally right here at home. Ditto any international or multinational “regulation” scheme.

Don’t believe me? Consider nuclear weapons. The US government  successfully tested its first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. The Soviet Union tested its first such weapon barely four years later on August 29, 1949. At least nine regimes now have nukes. Which are a lot more difficult and expensive to build than AI large language models.

I’m an optimist. I see no particular reason to believe that the coming super-AIs will automatically dislike people, or want to do us harm, and even current-level AI is happy (if it has, or ever will have, “emotions” as such) to help us out in many ways.

The AI revolution seems at least as likely to end in “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” — AI-powered robots doing the dirty work that humans rely on for our existence, reducing economic scarcity to mostly a distant memory and leaving us free to binge old Grateful Dead concerts while gorging on vat-grown prime rib, or whatever else floats our boats — as in a Terminator or Matrix type dystopia.

And if I’m wrong, what can we realistically do about it? Unless we’re Sarah Connor or Neo types, not much. Whether such a phenomenon originates in San Jose or Shenzhen is irrelevant. It’s coming either way. I’d rather spend my time building a better humanity than ineffectually trying to stop AI from getting really good.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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