One thing in particular troubles Volker Beck . The men who allegedly planned his murder are in prison. But the regime behind them continues to rule. "Iran has lost two tools, but that doesn't mean the plan to kill me is over," Beck told the FAZ. He is therefore currently subject to special protective measures. He admits he's "currently quite cool about it"—but only because he has become "a master of repression" over the years.

This isn't the first time Beck has had to fear for his life. The Green Party politician and president of the German-Israeli Society has received numerous death threats. Six years ago, for example, conspiracy theorist Attila Hildmann threatened him with the death penalty. But the situation has never been as threatening as it was in 2025.

Two men are alleged to have planned attacks in Germany on behalf of Tehran.  The plans reportedly targeted Beck and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. This was revealed on Thursday. The Federal Prosecutor's Office has indicted the Dane Ali S. and the Afghan Tawab M.

"No taking out the trash without the police"

According to the indictment, the Dane S. worked for the intelligence service of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He allegedly began gathering information about Beck and Schuster in early 2025. By May at the latest, he is said to have established contact with the Afghan man. The latter was allegedly prepared to provide an unknown third party with a weapon and incite him to assassinate Beck.

Beck reports that he learned of the plan last summer. He was then under particularly strict protection for six weeks. "No taking out the trash without the police. When I went out with the dog, an armored car accompanied me." His life was extremely restricted; he lived "like a caged tiger." "You can't just arrange to meet for coffee when, for security reasons, ten people have to work to make it happen."

Beck believes that Schuster was a worthwhile target also because he was less well protected than Josef Schuster, whose home and workplace had long been under security measures. Beck stated that Schuster's security "isn't yet at fortress level." Schuster and the Central Council of Jews declined to comment on the matter at this time.

The Dane S. was arrested in Denmark in June, the Afghan M. at the beginning of November. Both were extradited from Denmark to Germany and remanded in custody. S.'s arrest caused a major stir; the German Foreign Office summoned the Iranian ambassador at the time.

The suspect was under surveillance in Berlin.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Germany's domestic intelligence agency) provided information about the suspect. They had become aware of the man through a tip from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. When S. was in Berlin scouting potential targets – in addition to Beck and Schuster, a grocery store frequented by Jews was also identified as a possible target – he was placed under surveillance. This strengthened the suspicion that the suspect was not simply on a tourist itinerary.

Beck is now criticizing the German government for not taking the threat seriously enough. He refers, among other things, to a statement made by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) last autumn. In an interview with the "Bild" newspaper, Wadephul, when asked whether Germany needed Mossad, said he wouldn't put it that way. However, he did value the cooperation. Beck accuses Wadephul of "ignorance" because he "acts" as if Germany doesn't need the help of the Israeli intelligence service. "Without Israel's intelligence, I would have been dead nine months ago," Beck said.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has been warning for some time about "state terrorist activities" by Tehran in Germany. Its latest report describes a high potential for danger. "It can be assumed that the intelligence services will continue to pursue the interests of the country's leadership by all means – including acts of violence and even killings." Pro-Israel and pro-Jewish targets remain a focus. According to security sources, the risk of attacks has increased even further since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February.

So-called "disposable agents" are also possible perpetrators. They are often relatively young and willing to commit crimes for little money. Recently, there has been increasing evidence of Iranian-backed attacks in Germany and across Europe. Iranian perpetrators are suspected of being behind the bomb attack on an Israeli restaurant in Munich. In Sweden this week, a teenager was convicted of plotting to murder an Iranian researcher. The researcher is considered a supporter of the son of the last Shah. The teenager is believed to have been recruited via messaging apps.

Volker Beck is urging the German government to further restrict Iran's influence in Germany. "Germany must expel the Iranian ambassador," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. If this doesn't happen, parliament must exert pressure on the government to at least downsize the Iranian embassy. He also demands that Iranian financial structures in Germany be rigorously investigated. On Thursday, the German government expressed its "full solidarity" with Beck and Schuster. "We will not tolerate any threat to Jewish life in Germany," a spokesperson for the Foreign Office stated.

Give us your most lib takes of the week and we'll tell you why you're wrong

Following discussions between PMs Modi and Meloni, Modi emphasized an elevation of Italy and India's relationship to a "special strategic partnership" based on "co-development and co-production, while cooperation in shipping, port modernisation, logistics and the blue economy." The talks arose from frameworks discussing global conflicts and a strategic defense partnership.

In 1788, Virginia convened a convention to debate the ratification of the new U.S. Constitution, promulgated in Philadelphia the year before.

The pardon power proved to be a sticking point for some delegates. George Mason, the primary author of Virginia’s own constitution, was among those worried that the unchecked ability to unilaterally pardon criminality could lead to abuses of power. What if the president “may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself”?

James Madison acknowledged that this would be a serious abuse, but argued there was a remedy.

“There is one security in this case to which gentlemen may not have adverted,” Madison said, “if the president be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; [and] they can remove him if found guilty.” 

This episode has gathered fresh attention in the wake of the January 6 riots, and the impeachment trial it ignited. President Trump was impeached but not convicted.

That was a mistake in my opinion. But I’m not here to relitigate it. I want to be forward-looking.

The British statesman Edmund Burke famously argued that one of the “fundamental rules” of a decent society was that “no man should be judge in his own cause.”

For the Founders, this insight informed the logic of the entire constitutional project. Burke’s observation was so universally agreed upon it often came up—sometimes without attribution— in debates at the Constitutional and ratifying conventions.

Madison invokes the idea in Federalist 10, in the context of faction and the need to have separation of powers. “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” 

Alexander Hamilton cites it in Federalist 80 as the reason why federal courts should adjudicate disagreements between states—it was assumed that state judges might be biased toward their own side of the dispute.

This idea lurks behind all of Congress’ powers and responsibilities, including advice and consent, the sole authority to tax and spend, the power to declare war, and, of course, impeachment. Presidents are not arbitrary rulers. They are stewards, with defined and limited powers.

On Monday, President Trump settled a $10 billion lawsuit brought by himself. In his first term, Trump’s tax returns were illegally leaked. When Trump returned to the presidency, he filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service. So, as a constitutional matter, Trump is suing the executive branch he runs for a crime committed by the IRS back when he ran it in his first term.

Realizing that the courts might find this too cute to countenance, the Justice Department and IRS—both, again, run by Trump—compromised by creating a $1,776,000,000 fund (that “1776” before all the zeros is a play on the country’s 250^(th) birthday) that Trump will control. Its primary function would be to compensate the January 6 rioters, all of whom he has already pardoned.

 On Tuesday, the DOJ announced that Trump, his family and business will be functionally exempt from IRS audits or prosecutions from any past tax returns, literally placing him above the law.

The president recently said that if China invades Taiwan, he alone will determine whether the U.S. will defend Taiwan. “Me. I’m the only person,” who decides. Last summer, Trump told The Atlantic that the difference between his first term and his second was that he didn’t have anyone in his administration to hinder him. This time, “I run the country and the world.” Congress and the courts don’t enter into it.

After Trump unilaterally replaced at gunpoint the president of Venezuela with a pliant satrap, without the approval of Congress, the New York Times asked if there were any limits on his will: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

I began with a discussion of the pardon power and impeachment for a reason. Contrary to thousands of hours of impeachment legal punditry going back to the Nixon administration, a president doesn’t have to commit a crime to be impeached. As Hamilton writes in Federalist 65, impeachment involves “the misconduct of public men” and “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Impeachments are “POLITICAL” (Hamilton’s all-caps) because they injure “society itself.”

It may, in fact, be legal for the president to be the judge in his own cause and create a taxpayer-financed slush fund for him to reward cronies and henchmen on a whim. It is already clear that presidents can launch wars without Congress or the courts unduly getting in the way. But I struggle to think of hypothetical scenarios that would be more likely to arouse in Madison and his contemporaries the—now misplaced—reassurance that impeachment was an available remedy.

Philadelphia voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure Tuesday that paves the way for the nation’s first operational, city-run savings program for workers. Employees at businesses that don’t offer retirement benefits will be automatically enrolled in IRAs set up by the city, with a small percentage of their paychecks deducted into the accounts every month. The program is voluntary. 17 states—but not Pennsylvania—have passed laws creating similar auto-IRA systems.

Ebola is too deadly to become a global pandemic but the religious communities in which it keeps arising makes for a nightmare scenario every time. This is such a grotesque killer that needs to be destroyed.

We're announcing a new FREE custom flair for experts, specialists and/or the hyperfixated!

Do you know a while lot about subfield of any discipline? If so, you may qualify for this flair. Expertise can range from a PhD in modern art to a deep understand on Ghanaian politics to a lifelong interest in WWII battleships to a commercial lender.

Simply comment below or send a mod mail.

Using either your post history or another private means of verification, mods will consider your expertise and add it to your existing flair.

.

This is commentary on commentary on commentary, but hear me out. Palantir CEO Alex Karp wrote a book calling for a union of the state and the software industry, and Tanner Greer wrote a review of the book, arguing that these tech billionaires should model themselves on Gilded Age ""Eastern Establishment," the industrialists and Northeastern politicians who drove America's industrial rise between 1860 and 1930 by fusing economic, political, and cultural power. So *this* commentary, by the Niskanen Center's Geoff Kabaservice, argues that the those industrialists are no heroes. The tech billionaires went from countercultural rebels to powerful elites, and have no sense of responsibility.

The better model, Kabaservice argues, is the "second establishment" of roughly 1940 to 1970. This generation of elites had a sense of responsiblity because they lived the values its predecessors only preached: bipartisan public service over partisan loyalty, real meritocracy in elite universities, acceptance of progressive taxation and regulation, and broad investment in education, science, and infrastructure. This, he argues, is what helped the US win the Cold War. He also warns that if tech keeps cozying up to one political party instead of staying above the fray, it invites a brutal backlash when the other side regains power.

We all have the same thing we just want to put on paper

Time to keep your damn lib takes out of the brief

Remember when the populists were wrong about x, y, x? They are currently wrong about a, b, c.

Let's dunk on 'em here.