Tea at Trianon: Why Biden’s Autopen Actions Are Null and Void

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 31, 2025

Why Biden’s Autopen Actions Are Null and Void

From Amuse on X:

Every executive order, pardon, or proclamation carries the force of law only because it represents the president’s own act of decision. The Framers understood this link between consent and command as the essence of executive accountability. The president may consult, deliberate, or delegate preparation of documents, but he alone must decide and affirm. His signature is not a mere formality; it is the constitutional manifestation of his will. To remove the president’s mind from the moment of authorization is to sever the act from its legitimacy.
This is precisely what the Oversight Committee’s investigation has revealed. In case after case, Biden’s aides employed an autopen to sign executive actions without any documented, written, or digital evidence showing the president’s contemporaneous consent. No secure log of approvals, no voice confirmation, no physical presence. The White House’s own counsel could not demonstrate that the president had even been briefed before some of these documents were executed. Such practices do not merely stretch the boundaries of legality, they obliterate them.
The Constitution’s Article II vests “the executive Power” in the president, not in his aides, surrogates, or a pen operated by staff. The personal nature of this power is reinforced by the presidential oath, in which the president swears to “faithfully execute the Office of President.” That oath binds the office to the individual. No device can stand in for deliberation, and no staffer can channel another man’s judgment. When the act of execution becomes automated, government itself slides toward automation, unaccountable, impersonal, and dangerously opaque. (Read more.)