I can't believe we need a Paul Engelmayer tag

This is my third Paul Engelmayer post so I created a tag for him.  To recap, he's a judge in the Southern District of New York, which is the federal district court for Manhattan.  I've described his accomplishments previously.  On Saturday he granted a temporary restraining order requested by several state Attorneys General:

enjoining the defendants [Donald Trump and Scott Bessent] during the pendency of this action from granting to political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department access to Treasury Department payment systems or any other data maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information .... 

It's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order bars appointees and employees from outside the Treasury Department--the part I bolded modifies the preceding three categories of people.  He then further clarified this statement by writing:

the defendants are (i) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations; (ii) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and (iii) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any ....

Again, it's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order only applies to people outside of Treasury, and to people inside of Treasury who haven't gone through all the vetting and training required to handle confidential information.  And if these types of people have this particular confidential information, they should destroy it.

But we live in the dumbest timeline of the MAGA cinematic universe so stupidity ensued.  DOGE's doofus overlord called for him to be impeached.  Of course, Trump offered the opinion that Engelmayer is "crazy" for temporarily restraining an unelected, unconfirmed ketamine addict working at a fictional government department from having unfettered access to the United States' money supply.

And then there's this:

Tom Cotton and Adrian Vermeule got their undergraduate and law degrees at Harvard.  JD Vance graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State and got his JD at Yale.  All three of these guys can read and understand Engelmayer's order.  

They know it doesn't bar Bessent from accessing Treasury systems unless he hasn't completed the required background checks and training, in which case it likely maintains the status quo--you can't do that job and access all the secret stuff until you've completed all the security requirements.  

And they know this isn't judicial interference, it's a TRO.  It's temporary.  This means the requesting party showed they will suffer irreparable harm so the judge made the other party pause to maintain the status quo for a few days while we figure out what the hell is going on. 

Most importantly, they know this is exactly what the judiciary is supposed to do--determine what the law says and whether any particular act conflicts with it.  It's been this way for over 200 years, we learned that in high school.

These Ivy League schmucks need to watch more Schoolhouse Rock.

Or maybe they watched it and took the circus metaphor too far by staffing the endeavor with a bunch of clowns.  

Maybe I'm the clown.  Remember when I said elections have consequences?

Copenhagen: It's More than Just Danish and Dip

If you paid close attention to the comments last week you might recall that I went to Copenhagen for a few days. At rob's insistence I've posted up this post in which I conclude that Copenhagen gets it done.

The flight from the eastern US to Copenhagen is painfully long and expensive. My pain was partially assuaged by the beautiful stewardesses on my Scandinavian Airlines flight. If you go be sure to fly SAS. Sure, one of the plane's landing sensors broke on the way there, necessitating a landing in sunny Gotesburg Sweden to get it fixed before we could land in foggy Copenhagen, and the plane that was supposed to take me home broke so thoroughly that I had to wait 2 hours for a replacement plane to arrive from China ... but the women of SAS make the risk worthwhile.

Beautiful women are a theme in Copenhagen. Even with my detour through Sweden I arrived at my hotel 5 hours before my room was ready, which gave me time to roam the streets and absorb the sights. Everyone gets around on bicycle in Copenhagen, so everyone no one is fat and all the women have toned legs. The locals are genetically blessed with flawless skin, blond hair, long legs, and straight teeth. The time spent biking in the sun gives them all a uniform tawny sheen. Remarkably, none freckles or moles, just evenly bronzed dermis all around. I got a leisurely lunch of steak and fries at an outdoor café, drinking beer in the sun and watching relentless streams of perfect blond girls pedal by. They were so abundant that you could start a Tumblr as specific as "pretty blonds with braided ponytails and blue skirts on bicycles" or "pretty girls with platinum blond hair wearing green adidas on bicycles" or "pretty girls with sandy blond hair carrying a guitar on a Cannondale" and get three entries every two minutes.

One of my colleagues noted that if he wasn't married he wouldn't leave. And I think he was serious. Another colleague immediately agreed and I guarantee that guy wasn't joking. If you know any young guys who are deciding what to do after they graduate from college, you're doing them a disservice if you don't tell them to backpack through Denmark. You have to see it to believe it. All 7's and above, and based solely on the sounds coming from the room next to mine they engage in robust and vocally demonstrative coitus. And no, I didn't take any pictures of ladies, despite rob's insistence. I'm not that creepy. Our distaff readers will also like to hear that the men in Denmark are similarly blond, tall, fit, tanned, and plentiful. I just didn't pay as much attention to them.

After the shock of the transition from the women in Newark to the women in Denmark wore off, I realized that Copenhagen felt like home. The cobblestones and bicyclists remind me of Nantucket and I wound up in a touristy area much like Downtown Crossing. Also quite Bostonian was the juxtaposition of old and new architecture with the ocean as an omnipresent backdrop:

Then I saw this:

That's right, Copenhagen has a Dubliner! I fit right in. I also fit right in because I visited in the middle of a schmuck-fest. Seriously, here's what I got with my lunch menu:

I think Copenhagen would be a better venue for a schmuck-off than a schmuck-fest, especially given the quality of the women and this "slutspurt" store:

But I'll let the Danes sort that out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many men carry dip and the breakfast pastries were outstanding. I sampled many and here's my favorite, an apricot confection coated with previously unencountered delicious seeds:

Also excellent was the smoked salmon, which I ate on multiple occasions and which was always impressive. All other foods were made out of cow and they were not as impressive.

Copenhagen was a bit lacking musically. I should have done this, at a minimum for purposes of this post, but I didn't. Instead I went to a record store where they sold actual records. The first one I saw was, natch, this:

You can take the boy out of Teaneck ... anyway, the track listing on this set is impressive:

Less impressive was the rest of the store and its inordinate focus on metal:

In case you're curious, here's the #1 album in Denmark as of last week:

I did my due diligence on Denmark in Denmark and learned that the most famous Danish musical act is ... Aqua! "Who the fuck is Aqua?" you ask! This is Aqua:



Probably not up your alley. Also from Denmark and just as unbearable: Volbeat!



I'd wager that some of you enjoyed that jam; it might even be TR's ringtone. Somewhere in the middle is up-and-comer Carpark North:



Not exactly my kind of thing but it could have some mass appeal in the bland hinterlands of northern Virginia.

If you need one more reason to go to Denmark ... they love cosplay.

So there you have it, a ringing endorsement of all things Danish from the grumpiest guy you know.

Today's NY Daily News Front Page Headline Could Be the Title of My Autobiography

Looks like Weiner lost the schmuckoff.


Got a better caption?