Thereby fully completing its transition into the Scientific American of “news” magazines

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The ERA "ratification was a useless bit of pandering, but these two last-minute executive orders are going to cause real harm because they can’t be easily reversed

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WASHINGTON — President Biden and his aides handlers have spent their final days in office announcing 32 executive actions — on topics from immigration to offshore drilling — aimed at tying up President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

The lame-duck 82-year-old’s flurry of late moves to try to make himself a hero to Democrats and obstruct his successor’s agenda include:

Deportation protection

Granting Temporary Protected Status to almost 1 million people, meaning they are protected from deportation and entitled to work permits. The action, decreed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Jan. 10, shields 234,000 Salvadorans, 1,900 Sudanese, 104,000 Ukrainians and 600,000 Venezuelans for a period of 18 months.

Trump’s appointees at the Department of Homeland Security can move to revoke the TPS designations, but it will likely require a lengthy legal fight.

Barring off-shore drilling

Banning drilling for oil and natural gas off most of America’s coastline, done via presidential memorandum on Jan. 6. The massive new off-limits ocean zone is larger than the states of Alaska and Texas combined.

Trump pledged to “unban it immediately,” but the president-elect faces a legal hurdle due to the fact that the law Biden used, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, has no clear mechanism for future presidential reversals, meaning Congress may need to repeal Biden’s memo themselves.

Senate Democrats can block non-budget reconciliation legislation with the filibuster, which requires a 60-vote supermajority to overcome.

Old man yells at clouds

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eviction day

Three days before he’s booted out the door and 42-years after its ratification window expired, Biden attempts to adopt a constitutional amendment by fiat.

President Biden on Friday released a statement saying the Equal Rights Amendment should be considered ratified and a new addition to the U.S. Constitution.

“In keeping with my oath and duty to the Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex," he said. 

"Biden’s announcement is both cynical and irrelevant," said former Assistant U.S. attorney and Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy. "If he believed what he is saying, he would’ve said it when his administration started, not when he is on his way out the door as a failed, one-term president. 

"More importantly, the president has no constitutional role in the amendment process, so his view carries no weight."

"President Biden seems intent on moving his administration from the odious to the absurd," Jonathan Turley, Fox News contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, told Fox News Digital. "This was an embarrassingly pandering moment to the most extreme elements in his party. It is a position based on a long-rejected and frankly ridiculous foundation."

No grandstanding here, it just took him three years, three hundred sixty-two days, with time out for vacations, naps, and pudding-cup breaks, to study the issue and reach a (wrong) conclusion:

When asked about the timing of the announcement by reporters, Biden said Friday, "Because I had to get all of the facts and I contacted every constitutional scholar in the world to make sure it was the right decision."

The ERA would prohibit discrimination based on gender. It was sent to the states for ratification in 1972, with Congress setting a 1979 deadline for three-quarters of state legislatures to ratify the amendment. The deadline was later extended to 1982. 

Virginia became the last state to pass the amendment in 2020, pushing the final number of states who had passed the amendment to a total of 38. McCarthy noted that the ERA "was not ratified by the states within the statutorily allotted timeframe."

"The only way to get it into the Constitution would be to start all over again," McCarthy said. "Everybody knows this, including Biden. That is why the national archivist has not published it, nor has Biden had the temerity to try to order that that be done."

Buffoon.

UPDATE. Looking on the bright side:

Pending in North Country

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Creamer Hill Road: 81 acres (10 lots), started at $39.5 million in September 2023 and is currently priced at $24.750.

Video here.

The property has an interesting history from back when it was known as 100 Sterling Road:

To sell a house where a murder occurred, agents face unique challenges: ‘Not just economics ... It’s emotion.

GREENWICH — It’s an extraordinary estate: A 22,000-square-foot home, tucked away on a wooded 84-acre property on Sterling Road, the remote northwest corner of Greenwich near the border with Armonk, N.Y. It has a gym, a 5,000-bottle wine cellar, full-size bar, lounge and game room. The jaw-dropping list of amenities includes an indoor lap pool and an outdoor pool, tennis courts and basketball courts, a baseball diamond and organic gardens.

It’s a stunning backcountry hideaway, and one that comes with a steep, $35 million price tag.

For any property at that price point, there’s a limited pool of buyers out there. For 100 Sterling Road, in particular, the site of Greenwich’s last murder, in 2009, that pool may be even smaller.

The property was listed for sale in May on Zillow, but was taken off the market this week. It’s unclear why.

According to the Town Assessor’s office, the property was purchased in 2009 by S. Donald Sussman, a hedge fund executive, and then transferred to 100 Sterling Road LLC., the entity that is connected to another Sussman property, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

But for any property where a violent crime has occurred, like 100 Sterling Road, one question lingers when entering the real estate market: How much does the gruesome history of a home impact its market value?

Do memories fade?

Police arrived at 100 Sterling Road, on the night of Dec. 30, 2009, to find Amanda Dobrzanski dead in the an auxiliary building on the estate.

The 20-year-old recent Greenwich High School graduate’s father, Adam Dobrzanski, a live-in caretaker at the estate, was found with self-inflicted injuries, but survived and, ultimately, pleaded guilty to murder. He was sentenced to 40 years for the slaying.

The murder is one of just two occurring in Greenwich in the last dozen years. It got an abundance of local — and some national — press. And it arguably left a stain on an otherwise palatial home and extraordinary property in Greenwich’s backcountry, as similar events do on homes throughout the country.

Randall Bell, a California-based specialist in valuing properties deemed undesirable for reasons not related to the physical condition or features, has told the Los Angeles Times that properties on which a murder has occurred typically sell for a discount of between 10 percent to 15 percent on the low end, and 25 percent on the high end. They also tend to stay on the market longer.

Many variables can potentially affect the price. How long ago was the murder? Did it happen in the living quarters of the property or an auxiliary building?

“I guess it also depends on how the murder was reported,” said John Engel, co-founder of the New Canaan-based real estate group the Engel Team and chair of the New Canaan Town Council. “Was it a particularly graphic story in the papers? Did it make it to national TV?”

In Connecticut, state statute does not require a real estate agent to disclose a homicide that occurred at a property for sale, so media coverage can play a major role in alerting potential buyers.

The Dobrzanski murder did not get the same kind of national attention as, for instance, the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos, a New Canaan resident of whom the husband, Fotis Dulos, was the suspected killer. And the Dobrzanski murder and subsequent trial are both nearly a decade in the past.

“Over time memories do fade for all but the most notorious crimes,” Engel said. “Yes, they should expect a discount because some buyers draw the line and will not consider these houses at any price. It’s a much smaller buyer pool.”

…. In the case of Sterling Road, Oshrin said, there is already a small pool of buyers for a property listing at $35 million. That pool may only shrink because of what transpired there in 2009 and some may patiently wait for that number to come down.

To quote a soon-to-be-forgotten politician, "not a joke".

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There’s still some cleanup work to be done in the Republican Party. Indian drummers selected to represent Texas at the Inauguration