Kyle Sammin

@BBGreatMoments Wahoo Sam Crawford's 309 career triples.

Name a sports record that will never be broken

I almost hesitate to promote this, because it wasn't really intended to be a piece. I just sort of sat down and it came out. Maybe someone else out there has the same type of day today, and it'll speak to them. realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/…

But there is an obvious solution here: ban settlement slush funds. Don’t ban the 1776 Fund. Don’t put guardrails on it. Just ban all of them, like Republicans have been trying to do for over a decade. 7/10

@Tyler_A_Harper I read it and I agree with you. I like big beers, but I drink Miller Lite when I watch football. It's fine. I also struggle to describe the taste.

Ah it’s that time, once a quarter, where Jamelle Bouie freaks out about something I wrote on the other website. Today, he’s upset that I wrote a whimsical Memorial Day article about the virtues of Miller Lite. Will add this to my list of crimes.

@ByCarterWalker Last time I worked the polls was before the days of data sticks!

@KyleSammin I hadn’t thought you did, but yeah it can be confusing 2 days later!

Still some in Allegheny too, which the county told me was due to poll workers forgetting to remove the data sticks from the machines at the end of the night and that they would be uploaded this week. I’d suspect a similar story in Philly.

I'm mostly mad because there are blank spots on my map and I want to update it. broadandliberty.com/2026/05/20/kyl…

None of these elections are in doubt or anything, but it is crazy to me that there are still four polling places in Philly not reporting. It's been a day and a half!

Oh wow. This is such sad news. Bob Woodson did so much good work over the course of his life. May he forever rest in peace, and may the generations to come continue to learn from him.

The most striking part of this chart is how much bluer the bluest occupations are than the reddest are red. Progressives & liberals are far likelier to live in a monopartisan/monocultural bubble.

Re the NYT essay below on 18-year terms for Supreme Court Justices, I have two thoughts. First, the "Framers couldn't have foreseen this" gets the point wrong. I don't think we have reason to believe the Framers couldn't have foreseen a Justice staying on the court for many decades. As far as I can tell, no one flipped out when Chief Justice Marshall was on the Court for over 34 years, from 1801 to 1835. What the Founders couldn't have foreseen is that the Court would be as powerful as it has become in the modern era. That's the problem, I think. More broadly, I'm a huge fan of 18-year terms for Justices, but just telling the NYT audience that it could be done by regular legislation is a disservice to readers. I know some people have made the argument that such reforms wouldn't require a constitutional amendment, but the argument is not a good one. As I see it, it's the kind of argument you make when you're deeply committed to an outcome and will take anything that sounds plausible. I get that this describes a non-zero number of influential people, but that doesn't improve it as an argument. Anyway, I realize this puts us in a cruddy position. Our Republic would be much healthier with 18 year terms for Justices, and yet we can't get there without a constitutional amendment that is, as a practical matter, out of reach. But I think that's where we are. nytimes.com/2026/05/19/opi…

If you were against Obama’s third party settlement nonsense, this should outrage! “Hard-to-supervise slush funds aimed at financing well-connected political allies are exactly the sort of thing a populist presidency is supposed to end.”

Over at Substack, @JoshEakle asks: "It's 2026, and I have yet to see an anti-almond farm protest."

"What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government; they come from our creator... Is this him putting God above the Declaration of Independence?" Truly the MSNBC clip to end all MSNBC clips.

The Mangione ruling about whether the Fourth Amendment or state constitution requires suppressing part of all of the contents of the backpack is now out. Link below. A few thoughts. First, the court concludes the relevant law is the federal Fourth Amendment and the New York Constitution, even though the actions were those of Pennsylvania police in Pennsylvania. So the heightened restrictions of New York law apply to the Pennsylvania officers, even though they presumably didn't know (and maybe couldn't know) they would be governed by NY state search and seizure law. Second, the court concludes that New York search and seizure law settles what I have called the "moving property problem": If someone has a backpack, and it is moved away from a person, New York law says it can't be searched incident to arrest because the exigency is gone and the backpack is no longer in the area of the suspect's control. (See screenshot #1). Under this holding, items searched right after the arrest have to be suppressed: "Therefore, the evidence found during the search of the backpack at the McDonald's must be suppressed, including the magazine, cellphone, passport, wallet and computer chip." On the other hand, "The red notebook will not be suppressed, as the officers did not open or search it at the McDonald's." Third, the court turns to the search at the police station, where the items in the backpack were searched. This search was fine, the court says: although the search at the McDonalds can't be allowed as an incident-to-arrest search, the search at the police station was valid as an inventory search. (see screenshot #2). In particular, this allows admission of the notebook found in the backpack. Fourth, the court says that the warrant the government obtained later that today to search the backpack does not make the contents admissible under the independent source doctrine, as this wasn't an independent source. Overall, I find this reasoning a little puzzling. Beyond the part about New York law applying—a matter of the scope of NY law that I don't have a view of myself—I don't know why the inventory search doesn't make everything in the backpack inevitably discovered. If the inventory search was valid, as the court says, and they were going to inventory everything anyway and find everything anyway, then the fact that they searched the backpack at the McDonalds is irrelevant: Everything they found in the backpack was going to be discovered anyway in the inventory so it all comes in. Or at least I don't know why that wouldn't be the case. The ruling: static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/d… My article on the moving property problem in Fourth Amendment law: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

@SeanTrende I did this for Pennsylvania. It's a lot easier with the current versions. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

I had AI take a crack at it one day when I was bored. I'm down for it:

Platner suggests to NYT he only learned of Nazi-connotations of his tattoo after campaign started. I spoke in October to an acquaintance of Platner from more than a decade ago who said Platner spoke about his tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol. A second person told me that they learned of the tattoo years ago from the same person. I also reviewed a text chain between the acquaintance and another person discussing Platner’s Nazi-like tattoo several months ago, before the story became public - seemingly before he learned of it.

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Everyone knows about the PPP fraud during COVID, but this is a new one for me: