About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

What Unlawful Orders ?

Posted on November 20, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

The Democrats recently trotted out six members of Congress with military or intelligence community experience to encourage soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and intelligence officials to disobey orders. Part of the oath we take is to obey the lawful orders of those appointed over us. These Dems talk about disobeying “unlawful” orders. What orders are they talking about? The military does a good job in training of explaining that if you are in combat and ordered to line up a bunch of civilians and execute them, you have a responsibility to disobey. I am unaware of any recent orders along those lines.

Are the Dems saying the B-2 pilots should have refused to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities? The refuelers should have refused to fly? The Patriot battery should have refused to shoot down Iranian missiles aimed at Israel? Those conducting attacks on drug boats should disobey? CIA analysts who discover the launch of drug boats should conceal their discoveries from superiors?

Actually, there is an historical example that could highlight this issue. During the Vietnam war Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara recommended and President Lyndon Johnson approved changing our strategic goal from win to tie. The decision occurred on November 5, 1966 and based on domestic political calculations relating to the 1968 election. The mechanism to achieve the new goal was to stop the open-ended commitment to victory and establish a troop ceiling beyond which we would not go. The administration wished to avoid mobilization or calling up the reserve and set the ceiling accordingly. The American commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, advised that while we would not be defeated with the proposed force, neither would we win and it would be a prescription for an unreasonably protracted conflict. That was good enough for the Johnson administration.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff protested the decision in a series of bureaucratic exchanges with McNamara over the months required to reach the ceiling. Finally, in August 1967, having adjusted the ceiling slightly, McNamara informed the Joint Chiefs that the discussion was over. But the Johnson administration was being criticized by Republicans for its handling of the war, and Johnson wanted to create the (false) impression that he was doing everything possible to support the commander in the field. In other words, he wanted to create a public narrative that was the exact opposite of the truth.

Having just told the Joint Chiefs that the debate concerning a troop ceiling was over, McNamara pressed the military to speed up deployments to reach the troop ceiling, without revealing to the public that there was a troop ceiling. The objective was to create the public impression that all was being done to support Westmoreland. In early September 1967, the administration asked the Joint Chiefs (a) what could be done prior to Christmas? and (b) what could be done prior to the March 12, 1968, New Hampshire presidential primary election?

One result was to accelerate the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division. In October it was determined that the division could be deployed by Christmas and, with some additional training, be employed in January. The original plan had been to deploy the division in March 1968.

Here is where I argue that there is potential for an unlawful order. It also would have been impossible for the soldiers receiving the order to know it was unlawful, though the Joint Chiefs should have known. And the administration disrupted the situation for them by coming up with a desire to increase pressure in the Northern Provinces. Let’s take a married Staff Sergeant in the 101st with two children. In the fall of 1967 he expects to go to Vietnam in March of 1968. He makes plans for his family. Where to live, schools, the car, the bank, etc. In October he discovers he is going to Vietnam before Christmas. Have his plans just been dealt a blow? Yes, but he is an Airborne soldier and is ready because his country needs him. But if we change that to, he is ready so he can help Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, is the answer the same? Should that have been a lawful order?

Johnson and McNamara were despicable. It was clear that these military decisions were being taken for crass political reasons. The fact that they put the New Hampshire primary reasoning in writing perhaps would have given cause for formal objection, but even then it was confounded with the Northern Provinces gambit. Even this disgusting example is difficult, and we only know about it because of the Pentagon Papers.

Encouraging disobedience in the military and intelligence community is a dangerous path to follow. If these six Dems had a specific order in mind, they should have said what it was. They did not and they have undermined the good order and discipline that is necessary in conflict.

Chuck Parker, American Thinker

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Michelle Obama: One of America’s most pathetic people

Posted on November 17, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

I’m probably in a minority of one, but I’ve concluded that Michelle Obama is a pitiable woman because she is incapable of happiness. Mind you, she’s not a harmless woman, because she uses her bully pulpit to spread her misery by making other people, especially women and minorities, equally dissatisfied, paranoid, and hate-filled, but there’s still something pathetic about a woman who has everything yet still sees herself as the victim.

Michelle’s latest rant was about hair. Now, I must admit to a little fellow feeling when it comes to frustration about hair. My mother had bone-straight hair, and my father had lovely ringlets. Combine the two, and you get me, with patches of hair texture across my head: I have random clumps of ringlets, curls, waves, bone straight hair, and frizz.

In my youth, I paid either to straighten or curl it to achieve a mono-texture, but eventually I stopped. Unlike Michelle, spending endless money and having an entourage of stylists isn’t in my budget or my modest lifestyle. But honestly, if I could have someone style my hair daily…I probably would, given the frustration I’ve experienced over the decades.

But for Michelle—because she’s a leftist and the personal is always political—the fact that the current style is for lustrous straight hair isn’t a personal frustration, it’s a racist outrage. And the fact that one of America’s richest women must pay if she wants—not if she’s forced to by the government, but if she wants—to have straight hair is an insult that every white woman (each of whom, apparently, is blessed with straight, shiny hair) has taken aim at Michelle’s essential blackness:

I found Michelle’s rant incredibly funny, not because she’s witty, charming, or wise, but because, if you’re watching the video, you can see that her hair is straight—a whole lot straighter than I can ever get mine without spending hundreds of dollars. Michelle could have gone for braids, an afro, or God alone knows what else, but she’s giving this harangue about the racial horrors of being forced to emulate white women’s hair…while her head is crowned with white women’s hair.

But we already know that Michelle is angry, whiny, and hypocritical. That’s not new.

What’s new is that I looked at this woman and saw not one of America’s most popular, famous people who rolls in dough and is surrounded by sycophantic adulation. Instead, I saw before me a pathetic loser. She’s a loser, of course, because gratitude is utterly foreign to her nature, which consigns her to a lifetime of misery.

Michelle cannot be happy. For her, every day is a series of insults, oppressions, and humiliations, all wrapped in a package of unfulfilled desires. What Michelle has going on in her head—something she voluntarily embraces—is a mindset I’d wish on my worst enemy, but not on anyone else.

My approach to life is endless gratitude. I am grateful that I live in what is still the greatest country in the world. My home is a happy place, and I am surrounded by good people. When I venture out of my community to shop or engage in fun activities, if I smile at people, ask them how they are, and converse with them cheerfully, they respond in kind. My children are healthy, happy, and thriving as adults. They are good people, which is probably the thing that makes me most grateful.

In my world, every day is a good day. And for that reason, even though I’m not rich and famous like Michelle Obama, even though I don’t have someone constantly taming my hair, even though I’m not out on yachts and sharing my (valuable) thoughts with the world, and even though my bank account is not even a blip compared to hers, I am an infinitely richer person than poor, frizzy-headed Michelle Obama.

Inferno: Cashless Bail and the Collapse of Justice in Allegheny County

Posted on November 17, 2025 by theartfuldilettante

I began my career with Allegheny County Pretrial Services in April 2008.

I was sworn in by a judge, issued a badge, and placed into a system built on neutrality and public safety. Our job was simple: interview defendants, verify information, review police reports, pull complete criminal histories, and present magistrates with fact-based recommendations.

We weren’t advocates for release or detention. We were there to present facts. And for a long time, the system worked because facts were the only thing that mattered.

Failures to appear happened, but they were usually honest mistakes. Multiple pending cases were rare. Dangerous charges or a dangerous record meant detention; non-violent charges meant release. Rap sheets rarely exceeded fifteen pages. By the time I left, fifty-page criminal histories had become routine.

Deputy Director Paul Larkin set the standard that kept the system stable. With decades in the courts, he understood both the law and the operational realities. If a case required a bond revocation, he supported it. If someone was held on a bad warrant, he contacted the president judge and resolved it. As long as he was there, the system functioned.

In 2016, that changed. National organizations were pushing rapid decarceration, and the Arnold Foundation’s Public Safety Assessment — the PSA — arrived in our office. Paul warned it would dismantle the safeguards pretrial relied on. The tool ignored violent charges, violent histories, multiple pending cases, outstanding warrants, probation or parole status, and repeated failures to appear. It made release the default. Before he could stop it, Paul died at forty-eight. With him gone, internal resistance disappeared.

After his death, our director approved the PSA and promoted a close friend as deputy director. She rushed a full computer overhaul despite warnings it wasn’t ready. Reports printed at 150 pages. Charges scrambled. Dates disappeared. Recommendations were distorted. When the system stabilized, the real impact became clear: dangerous defendants who once received bonds were now funneled into non-monetary release — including individuals charged with homicide.

What the public never knew is why.

The PSA was adopted in exchange for millions in grant funding from foundations aligned with national decarceration efforts, including Arnold, Heinz, and MacArthur.

Pretrial’s funding increased as the jail population dropped, turning release decisions into a performance metric. One supervisor — responsible for override decisions — also held the title of Jail Population Control Manager, a position dependent on lowering jail numbers. We were civilian court employees, yet a decarceration-driven role tied to financial incentives was embedded inside pretrial. Under this structure, charges, criminal histories, and patterns of violence no longer determined release. Funding did.

The consequences were immediate.

Defendants accumulated case after case with no intervention. One man with six open gun and aggravated assault cases was released every time. On his seventh arrest, he murdered a stranger walking up the street in broad daylight. Investigators requested overrides in his earlier cases. Every request was denied.

The same pattern appeared across cases. A woman raped while unloading groceries. A deaf woman sexually assaulted. A drug dealer firing military-style weapons during a shootout with her child beside her. Under the prior system, these defendants would have received bonds. Under the PSA, release was recommended, and overrides were rejected.

Pressure also came from outside. One morning, public defenders entered our jail office demanding access to pretrial computers. When questioned, our director denied authorizing it. When they returned the next day, they stated she had sent them. Their goal was to ensure magistrates followed pretrial’s recommendations. And if a magistrate didn’t, an internal unit — the Arnold unit — voided the magistrate’s order the next business day and secured the defendant’s release.

Elected magistrates never knew their decisions were being reversed behind the scenes.

Between 2016 and 2022, nearly $20 million in foundation funding flowed into pretrial under “reform.”

None of it improved safety or operations. Our jail office had leaks, mold, collapsing ceilings, and malfunctioning HVAC. Computers failed constantly. When hazards were reported — including sections of ceiling falling during shifts — administration dismissed the concerns and labeled employees as troublemakers. Basic needs went unmet to the point that staff purchased their own chairs, keyboards, and cleaning supplies. There were no upgrades, no staffing increases, and no operational investment. The funding disappeared inside administrative channels without transparency or public audits.

By 2022, the system had collapsed. Dangerous individuals were repeatedly released. Victims were sidelined. Investigators’ warnings carried no weight.

I stayed until one case made remaining impossible. During a family biking event downtown, a mother sat at a traffic light with her baby in the backseat and her boyfriend — a gang member — beside her. Rivals recognized him, made a U-turn, and opened fire. The mother survived. The boyfriend survived. The baby did not. At least one shooter was out on pretrial release with open cases. Overrides had been denied. The PSA recommended release.

I resigned on July 29, 2022. The only communication I received from my bosses was a letter threatening to dock my final paycheck unless I returned my badge, an expired can of mace, and a pair of unused handcuffs. This came from the same leadership that had accepted nearly $20 million in foundation funding with no transparent accounting of where it went. I promptly responded with one sentence: “If you want money for those items, get it from the millions you took in exchange for public safety and human lives.”

Kelly Rae Robertson is a former Allegheny County Pretrial Services investigator with fourteen and a half years in the Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania. She is now a nationally published writer and criminal-justice whistleblower focusing on systemic failure, public safety, and government accountability.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License

Related Topics: Justice