The White House announced on Christmas Eve President Joe Biden signed a bill officially designating the bald eagle as the national bird.

The bill, signed Monday after being passed unanimously by Congress, amends Title 36 of the United States Code, officially appointing the predator one of the country’s national symbols.

Congress passed the bill unanimously.

SENATE PASSES BILL TO STOP SHUTDOWN, SENDING IT TO PRESIDENT BIDEN’S DESK

The bald eagle, which has been featured on the Great Seal of the United States since 1782 and has its own holiday and protection act, was never technically assigned the title of “national bird.”

BIDEN ADMIN OFFICIALS NOTICED STAMINA ISSUES IN PRESIDENT’S FIRST FEW MONTHS IN OFFICE: REPORT

It was, however, designated as the national emblem by the U.S. Congress in 1782, according to USA.gov. In addition to its appearance on the Great Seal, it is featured on official documents, the presidential flag, military insignia, and currency.

The bald eagle is a bird of prey found in North America.  (Adventure_Photo)

A document previously published by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to VA.gov improperly noted the bird as the national bird.

“Thank you to Senators Klobuchar, Lummis, Mullin and Smith, and Representatives Finstad, Craig and Emmer for their leadership,” the White House wrote in a statement Tuesday announcing the signing of the bill.

In the wake of a successful effort to kill a year-end spending bill and replace it with more limited legislation to keep the government open, Elon Musk declared victory last week on X (formerly Twitter), the social media platform he owns:

“Your actions turned a bill that weighed pounds into a bill that weighed ounces!” he crowed. “You are the media now. VOX POPULI VOX DEI.”

The stopgap funding measure will largely delay major spending decisions until after Donald Trump’s inauguration, keep the government open through the holidays and at least temporarily delay the most indefensible spending that was crammed into the scale-tipping bill. But those who believe the indefensible spending won’t end up back in the budget are endearingly optimistic.

The most interesting political takeaway from the drama is that the Republican Party now has two masters with different goals. Musk’s stated mission was to impose fiscal restraint and greater efficiency on government (though his unstated motives are a matter of speculation). Trump’s objective was to avoid the hassles of a debate over raising the government borrowing limit early in his term, freeing him to rack up more debt through spending and tax cuts.

Based purely on the political result, Musk won and Trump lost. Although the bill does spend less than the earlier version, it does not raise the debt ceiling.

A case can be made for both goals. I think Musk is indisputably correct about the need to cut spending. And although I don’t want Trump to be able to amass more debt, fights over the borrowing limit are reckless because they put the full faith and credit of the United States in doubt. The challenge for Republican legislators is that they are caught between the agendas of two figures who are very popular on the right, and those agendas — and perhaps others — are in conflict.

We’ll have to wait to see how the politics play out. In the meantime, I also want to address the more philosophical problems with Musk’s position.

First of all, literally weighing the value or profligacy of a piece of legislation by the ounce, as Musk proposes, is not exactly logical. The National Industrial Recovery Act — the foundational legislation of the New Deal — comes in at an economical 18 pages, but that hardly gives one a sense of its massive impact on the economy.

Then there’s the idea that Musk’s minor budget victory proves his X followers are “the media now.” Huh?

The standard conservative complaint about traditional media is that they mislead the public in the service of an ideological or self-serving agenda. But Musk rallied his virtual mob with a host of false claims about the bigger-spending bill. Now he is suggesting that misleading the public in the service of the agenda of the owner of a media platform is a glorious triumph. It’s certainly a triumph for if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them hypocrisy.

Lastly, Musk’s oft-repeated motto “Vox populi, vox dei” — “The voice of the people is the voice of God” — is theological nonsense. Its use by British Whigs to challenge monarchical power in the 18th century was politically defensible, but it doesn’t take a divinity degree to understand that, taken literally, the phrase argues that God is subservient to the passions and vicissitudes of public opinion. It’s very difficult to find anything in the Old or New Testament to back up that idea.

If a poll were all it took to change God’s mind, Sodom and Gomorrah would have been fine, Noah wouldn’t have needed a boat and Jesus wouldn’t have had to ask God to “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

One of the earliest mentions of the Latin phrase is found in the writings of Alcuin of York, an advisor to Charlemagne. Alcuin told the first holy Roman emperor to ignore such declarations of public godliness “since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”

Musk started using the phrase “Vox populi, vox dei” to validate the verdicts of his own Twitter polls. When users voted to reinstate Trump’s account two years ago, Musk declared that the result he clearly wanted amounted to a divine statement. We can only guess what this says about Musk’s God complex and its compatibility with his role as Trump’s Alcuin.

But my main objection to Musk’s assertion is that it’s a dangerous lie. The idea that the largest mob has God on its side is even more pernicious than the notion that legislation should be measured in pounds.

@JonahDispatch

Two San Fernando Valley men, who were sentenced to death over a decade ago for killing five people, had their sentences commuted to life in prison on Monday by President Biden.

In 2007, Iouri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas were sentenced to death after they were convicted of murdering five people in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Prosecutors said the pair dumped the bodies in a remote Northern California reservoir.

Mikhel and Kadamovas were among 37 criminals whose death sentences Biden commuted to life without parole. Biden didn’t commute the sentences of three other men on federal death row convicted of mass murder and terrorism: Robert Bowers, convicted of the 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, S.C.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement. “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

Mikhel and Kadamovas, Soviet-born immigrants, hatched the kidnapping plot while working at an aquarium store on Ventura Boulevard. They kidnapped five people over a four-month period starting in 2001.

They lured their victims with offers of business deals and demanded more than $5.5 million from the victims’ family members. They received more than $1 million in ransom but killed their victims by strangulation anyway.

The pair drove to the New Melones reservoir near Yosemite to dump the bodies.

Their victims were Nick Kharabadze, 29, of Woodland Hills; Alexander Umansky, 35, of Sherman Oaks; Rita Pekler, 39, of West Hollywood; George Safiev, 37, of Beverly Hills; and Meyer Muscatel, 58, of Sherman Oaks.

Once behind bars, Mikhel hatched several escape plans, including a scheme to use bolt cutters, a pepper shaker, a rake and fence cutters to break out of a detention center in San Bernardino and make a getaway with Kadamovas on motorcycles. But a letter that detailed the plot was found in a trash can by a guard and the plan was foiled.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to expand the death penalty to “drug dealers and human traffickers.” During Trump’s first term, 13 inmates were put to death on federal death row, restarting federal executions after about 20 years.

During the end of his first term in office, Trump commuted the sentences of 70 people and pardoned 73 others, including former campaign and White House advisor Stephen K. Bannon, who was charged with federal fraud and money laundering in a scheme to defraud supporters of building a border wall with Mexico.