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?

Interjections!

Schoolhouse Rock founder and author of many of the program's iconic tunes Bob Dorough passed away yesterday at the age of 94. In his memory, we're running a post we wrote five years ago about seeing him live, in person, and playing the hits. 

Bob Dorough is an American original. The 89 year-old jazz pianist has recorded 22 albums of his own, and worked with such legends as Miles Davis, Allen Ginsberg, and Mose Allison.

But you know him for something else, entirely.

In the early 1970s, Dorough was asked to write songs about multiplication tables for a yet-to-be-named children's program. His first effort, 'Three is a Magic Number' is now legendary, and led to dozens of other compositions that formed the basis for one of the most beloved educational entertainment icons of our time.

On Sunday evening, the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center celebrated the 40th Anniversary of Schoolhouse Rock!, which was based in large part on Dorough's work. I took my daughter, and while she loved it, I bet I enjoyed it even more. In addition to 'Three', Dorough wrote such classics as 'Conjunction Junction', 'Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here', 'The Shot Heard Round the World' and 'Electricity'. He performed several of these, then teamed with local kid-rock (definitely not Kid Rock) band Rocknocerous on the grand finale, 'Interjections'.

Did I mention that he's 89 years young? The video of the performance is 45 minutes long (and I can't figure out how to embed it), but if you let it play in background while you work, I guarantee you'll be more productive than normal. And you'll have a smile on your face.

Last Day of Summer Music Joint

School starts in my neck of the woods tomorrow. My kids have mixed emotions, in the sense that the little one is very excited to kick off 7th grade, and the older one claims to hate school (which is likely her way of expressing a bit of nervousness about her first year in high school).

They've also got increasingly mixed musical tastes (which is likely my way of expressing the need to segue to a the topic of this blog post - I'm sure you'll agree that it was a smooth transition). My high-schooler has been listening to a ton of Childish Gambino and Frank Ocean of late, while her sister is squarely in a Twenty One Pilots/Panic at the Disco phase.

Me, I've been trying to bridge the gap. And Banks and Steelz is a perfect solution. The collaboration between Interpol frontman Paul Banks and RZA dropped a single in May (which featured GTB fave Ghostface Killah), and released a studio album on Friday. The record had been in the works since 2013.

The first single, 'Giant', is, to put it simply, badass.



I'm looking forward to digging into the whole record. And uniting the warring factions in my household.