Happy Independence Day! Time for some, er, theory... Below is a picture I took of a flag in Rockport. Out behind that flag is the Massachusetts coastline, and out beyond that is a hell of a lot of water.

Oh man, fall 2017 was so much fun in Congress.

I always wonder in these spots if they consider just bringing the president over to the Hill and putting him in the Speaker's lobby and whipping up the votes face to to face. Has that ever happened in living memory?

Just to review a fun little Wednesday, the House came in at 9:00am, called up the rule for HR1, debated it for the customary hour, offered an amendment to it, moved the PQ successfully, adopted the amendment, and now are voting on the rule. It's now 12:54. On Thursday.

As stupid and gratuitous as last night was, there was no way of preempting it--there were no concerns that could have been anticipated or addressed in advance, because the drama and delay itself was entire point. Cycling through the stages of grief.

Good morning to all the legislative wizards in the House.

A sincere thanks is owed to all the people who make marathon/overnight sessions at the Capitol run so smoothly, from Womack in the chair to the Clerk's staff to the USCP to the reporters in the gallery. Legislative politics is often grueling, and those are the unsung heroes.

Matt Glassman The funny thing about the intercameral bitterness is that this was the rare instance where the House really won the war. They beat the senate in february where the passed a big beautiful resolution; they beat them again when they passed a bill that stayed 85% in tact. The house

Shorter letter: "The AG has concluded that the law is best read as not having any effect, because national security." We already knew this, but seeing it in black and white is still striking. Oof.

Senate GOP tactics to make 2017 tax cuts "permanent" required a nuclear move on Senate floor-- weakening authority of the parliamentarian, blowing hole in Byrd Rule, & possibly making future debt crisis more likely. New Good Authority post on fallout from the goodauthority.org/news/three-big…

My metric for William Kassouf's awfulness: he's literally the only guest in the history of the Andrew Brokos podcast that I wasn't able to finish the interview with. #LikeABoss

P(A|B) = (P(B|A)*P(A))/P(B)

A lot of poker players thinking about the Kassouf situation are under-appreciating how big a role norms play in almost all rule-bound environments. It's just not possible to cover all contingencies with written rules. 1/

Lots to unpack with the Epstein stuff, and the various underlying theories it has subsumed, but irrespective of what there might be there, you're never going to have an easy time convincing people they've been conned. The dissonance is just too great.

Good morning, Saratoga!

This Josh Chafetz draft on Chadha, the legislative veto, and Trump is excellent. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…