Democrats Discover the Fourth Amendment, Just in Time for Ilhan Omar

Greetings from Vacationland. It's Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026, and somewhere in Wisconsin a cheese curd is already squeaking with anticipation.

My calendar says it's Grouch Day, Mushroom Day, Cheese Curd Day, Shawarma Day, Roast Pheasant Day, Real Sugar Day, Aesthetician Day, Get Smart About Credit Day, Get to Know Your Customers Day, International Credit Union Day, Global Handwashing Day, White Cane Safety Day, and Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. So wash your hands, order the shawarma with a side of curds, and grumble at your credit card statement, because today that counts as civic participation.

Before I begin, I want to note that yesterday was Charlie Kirk's birthday. I feel bad about not noting it yesterday. With everything I've been getting my head wrapped around this last week, it slipped my mind. Catherine Salgado has a piece up about it that’s worth reading. She did a better job with that than I could, anyway, so it's all good. 

Today in History:

1582: Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Poland adopt the Gregorian calendar, jumping straight from October 4 to October 15.
1783: Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier makes the first manned ascent in a tethered Montgolfier hot-air balloon in Paris. But did he wash? (Hat tip: Monty Python)
1815: Napoleon Bonaparte arrives at St. Helena to begin his final exile.
1860: Eleven-year-old Grace Bedell writes to Abraham Lincoln suggesting that he grow a beard.
1917: A French firing squad executes dancer Mata Hari for spying for Germany.
1928: The Graf Zeppelin completes its first transatlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey.
1946: Hermann Göring swallows cyanide hours before his scheduled execution at Nuremberg.
1951: CBS premieres I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
1956: IBM releases the first Fortran programming manual, giving programmers their first widely used high-level language.
1964: Moscow announces Nikita Khrushchev's ouster, handing power to Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin.
1966: President Lyndon Johnson signs the law creating the Department of Transportation, and truckers have been filling out its paperwork ever since.
1988: A hobbled Kirk Gibson limps to the plate and hits a pinch-hit, walk-off homer off Dennis Eckersley to win Game 1 of the World Series for the Dodgers.
1991: The Senate confirms Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, 52-48.
1997: NASA launches the Cassini probe toward Saturn, and British pilot Andy Green drives ThrustSSC through the sound barrier in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.
2003: China launches Shenzhou 5, and Yang Liwei becomes the country's first astronaut in orbit.

Birthdays Today include: Virgil, poet (The Aeneid); Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil); P.G. Wodehouse, humorist (The Code of the Woosters, Leave It to Psmith); Jane Darwell, actress (The Grapes of Wrath, Mary Poppins); Mervyn LeRoy, director (Little Caesar, Quo Vadis); John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (The Affluent Society); Arthur Schlesinger Jr., historian (A Thousand Days); Mario Puzo, novelist (The Godfather, The Sicilian); Lee Iacocca, auto executive (Ford Mustang, Chrysler); Barry McGuire, singer ("Eve of Destruction"); Linda Lavin, actress (Alice, Broadway Bound); Penny Marshall, actress-director (Laverne & Shirley, Big, A League of Their Own); Jim Palmer, Hall of Fame pitcher (Baltimore Orioles); Richard Carpenter, musician (Carpenters, "Close to You," "Top of the World"); Tito Jackson, guitarist (Jackson 5); Emeril Lagasse, chef (Emeril Live); Dominic West, actor (The Wire, The Crown); Ginuwine, singer ("Pony"); Keyshia Cole, singer ("Love"); and Bailee Madison, actress (Bridge to Terabithia).

If today's your birthday too, happy birthday, and you're officially excused from Grouch Day.

* * *

The loudest voices howling about Monday's raid of Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-Mogadishu) home belong to the same people who spent the late summer of 2022 cheering while FBI agents pawed through Melania Trump's underwear drawers at Mar-a-Lago. Like yesterday's column, this one comes down to a simple observation: Their principles haven't changed. Their target has.

That leaves us with the question of what they found in that raid. Oh, and of course the other question: Who got the unenviable task of going through Ilhan Omar's underwear drawer? Not sure I wanna know that one. Don't understand the reference? Keep reading. You will. 

Here's what we do know as of last night. On October 12, Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a court-authorized search warrant at Omar's home in Washington. The Justice Department confirmed the warrant but didn't name her, and reporting from Fox News ties the probe to alleged fraud in her immigration paperwork, an allegation Omar denies. CNN watched agents carry boxes out of the house. Border czar Tom Homan had already confirmed a criminal investigation last month.

Our Dave Manney points out that one of the things they nicked was her phone and its data. He also points out that investigations on her have been going on since before Joe Biden shuffled off to the Ice Cream shop in a place called Political, Oblivion.

A judge signed off. Agents showed up. They left with evidence. That's how a search warrant works, and four years ago Democrats assured us it was the system working beautifully.

Now? Omar's office calls it an "unprecedented escalation." House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his leadership team issued a joint statement fretting about the "corrupt weaponization of the federal government." Somewhere a cable-news panel just rediscovered the phrase "chilling effect," dusted it off, and booked three former prosecutors to say it slowly.

Unprecedented? Let that one marinate. I mean, they keep using that word; I don’t think it means what they think it means. We both know why. 

In August 2022, the FBI raided the private residence of a former president of the United States — the man who'd go on to win the next election — over a dispute about paperwork the National Archives wanted back. The case built on that raid didn't exactly age well: A federal judge tossed it entirely in July 2024. Along the way, agents went through his wife's closets (prompting my question above). Democrats didn't call that an escalation. Oh, no. They solemnly called it accountability. Oh, they LOVED that word for a while. They printed "no one is above the law" on everything short of a special collection of commemorative plates to be sold on street corners where "No Kings" protesters would be driving their mobility scooters past.

I remember that summer well. The same pundits now reaching for the smelling salts over Omar went on air nightly to explain why the Fourth Amendment didn't cover a Republican's underwear drawer. Los Angeles Times' Robin Abcarian even ran a column shrugging off strangers rifling through the former first lady's unmentionables as simply "the price" of marrying the wrong man. Try running that column about Omar this week and see how long the author keeps a job. Or a head, for that matter. It'll be interesting to see if Abcarian even mentions this one. Somehow, I doubt she will.

Recommended: DJT Dead Jihadi Television

Anyone who asked why agents needed to inventory Melania's lingerie got labeled a MAGA conspiracy nut. Due process, we learned, belonged to people who deserved it, and Democrats reserved the right to decide who deserved it. Once again, the double standard looks strikingly like the one I pointed out yesterday. Same playbook, different jersey.

So forgive me if the newfound reverence for privacy ain’t cuttin’ it. The left doesn't object to enforcement. It objects to enforcement aimed at its own people. That distinction tells you everything about how it views the law: a weapon to aim, never a standard to meet. (Gee, seems to me I said something about that, too.)

Understand clearly what the Omar defenders ask of us. We're supposed to believe that a sitting member of Congress should enjoy protection a former president didn't. We're supposed to believe that a federal judge who signed a warrant for Donald Trump's home exercised sound judgment, while a federal judge who signed one for Omar's home must have joined a MAGA plot. We're supposed to forget everything Democrats said in 2022.

Spoiler alert: We won't.

The usual disclaimer applies here: None of this means that Omar committed a crime. She hasn't faced charges, and she deserves the same presumption of innocence every American gets — including the one Democrats spent four years trying to prosecute into oblivion, with Omar cheering from the front row. If the evidence doesn't hold up, the case should collapse, and I'll say so. From where I sit, that's a HUGE if, and a bet I wouldn't make.

Either way, far as I can see, the people screaming loudest today forfeited their standing to lecture anyone about political prosecutions. They wrote the playbook. They celebrated every chapter. They just never imagined someone else might apply it to them.  They're not understanding that fine point; it shows us that for all their chanting abort it, they are clueless about how actual democracy (small d) and rule of law actually work.  Clearly they're not about saving democracy... just Democrats.

Thought for the Day: Pope Gregory erased 10 days by decree in 1582, and it’s still holding up better than most things Washington has decreed since.

VIP members: Your voice matters. It's time to make use of it in the comments.

Take care, gang. Great of you to stop by. Let's do it again tomorrow. 

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