What Washington Could Learn From One Man on Farnam Street

RIVA Over RINO: The Real Betrayal of Republican Values
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Dear Fellow Former Republican Voters,
There was a time when being a Republican meant something. It meant balanced budgets, not bloated
deficits masked by bluster. It meant limited government, not an executive branch that bulldozes
every institution standing in its way. It meant respecting the rule of law, not treating court orders like
suggestions and Supreme Court justices like subordinates on a payroll.
Donald Trump didn’t save the Republican Party. He hijacked it.
And his favorite weapon? The word “RINO,” short for Republican In Name Only, hurled like a
grenade at anyone who dares remember what the party once stood for. The irony is breathtaking. The
man who donated to Democrats for decades, who praised Hillary Clinton, who holds no fixed
ideology beyond self-promotion, has crowned himself the arbiter of Republican authenticity. He
doesn’t get to hand out membership cards to a party whose principles he’s never bothered to read.
I don’t believe in RINO. I believe in RIVA: Republican In Values Always.
RIVA means you honor those who served. John McCain spent five and a half years as a
prisoner of war in Vietnam, refusing early release because he wouldn’t leave his fellow
soldiers behind. Trump’s response? “I like people who weren’t captured.” Let that sink
in. That was a man with five deferments mocking a man who was tortured for his
country. McCain, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Colin Powell, and the late
George H.W. Bush, decorated veterans and public servants among them, were dismissed,
degraded, and cast out because they refused to bend the knee. Gold Star families
attacked. Generals ridiculed. The party of national defense now wages war on its own
heroes.
RIVA means you remember when Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and demanded that
walls come down, not go up. Reagan championed free trade, warning that tariffs are taxes on your
own citizens disguised as toughness. Today’s Republican Party slaps tariffs on allies and calls it
patriotism. Reagan would call it what it is: economic illiteracy wrapped in a flag.
RIVA means you remember when political opponents were adversaries, not enemies. Reagan and
Tip O’Neill fought like hell over policy, then shared a drink. They disagreed on principles, not
personal vendettas. Today, dissent within the party is met not with debate but with intimidation:
primary threats, social media mobs, and the RINO label branded on anyone who votes their
conscience.
RIVA means you understand that NATO wasn’t a protection racket; it was the greatest security
alliance in human history, built on American leadership. Our allies in Europe once looked to us as
partners and protectors. Now they draft contingency plans in case we become the threat.
RIVA means you understand that the Supreme Court is part of a co-equal branch of government, not
a rubber stamp or a team of employees who owe their boss loyalty. The judiciary exists to check
power, not serve it.
And let us address the elephant in the room that the party refuses to acknowledge: never in the
history of the Republican Party, or in the history of the American presidency, has a candidate carried
34 felony convictions into the Oval Office. Not one. Not ever. We would never allow a convicted
felon to run a prison. We wouldn’t trust one to manage a school district or oversee a police
department. But we’ll hand him the nuclear codes and the fate of 330 million Americans? What
precedent does this set? What message does it send to every child taught that character matters, that
actions have consequences, that the law applies equally to all?
The real RINOs aren’t John McCain, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, or Adam Kinzinger. The real
Republican In Name Only is the man who uses the party as a vehicle for personal power while
abandoning every value it once held sacred.
Intimidation is not leadership. Loyalty tests are not principles. And a party built on one man’s ego is
not a party at all; it’s a cult.
It’s time to stop asking who’s a “real” Republican and start asking: what do we actually stand for?
RIVA. Republican In Values Always. That’s worth fighting for.
Sincerely,
Brent Lambi

HONEST POLITICS
WITHOUT READER SUPPORT
THIS COLUMN DISAPPEARS.
Brent Lambi
THE DRUG WAR LEDGER
Trump Administration Failure at the DEA
Every Part of This Operation Has Been Placed Beyond the Reach of a Court
Four hundred tons were proven to a jury and pardoned. Two hundred twenty-seven men
were killed on evidence no American has been permitted to see. And thirteen billion dollars
in oil money was routed offshore before a creditor could ask a judge about it.
THE COUNTRY DID NOT ASK FOR FOOTAGE.
IT ASKED FOR CONVICTIONS.
A GOVERNMENT THAT WILL NOT LET A COURT SEE THE
EVIDENCE, THE MONEY, OR THE DEAD HAS NOT WON A WAR.
IT HAS ONLY ENDED THE TRIAL.
PROVE IT IN A COURTROOM
DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN!
START WITH THE TONNAGE,
BECAUSE THE TONNAGE IS THE
WHOLE ARGUMENT.
The Justice Department proved to a Manhattan
jury that Juan Orlando Hernández, the sitting
president of Honduras for eight of those years,
and his co-conspirators moved more than 400
tons of U.S.-bound cocaine through Honduras
between 2004 and 2022. Not alleged. Proven, in
March 2024, at the standard the Constitution
requires. In June 2024 a Republican-appointed
judge sentenced him to 45 years.
Now measure that against what this country
can actually catch. Four hundred tons is
800,000 pounds. In fiscal year 2025 the United
States Coast Guard had the single best year
in the 235-year history of the service, seizing
511,000 pounds of narcotics valued at more
than $3.8 billion. Before that, the service’s average
annual haul was roughly 167,000 pounds.
So one man’s conspiracy moved more cocaine
than the entire United States Coast
Guard seized in the best year it has ever had,
exceeding that total by more than half again.
At the Coast Guard’s own valuation, 400 tons
is worth roughly six billion dollars. It is twenty
times the MSC Gayane load: the 20 tons pulled
off a container ship in Philadelphia in 2019,
the largest cocaine seizure in the 230-year history
of U.S. Customs.
On December 1, 2025, the President pardoned
him. He walked out the same day, three days after
the pardon was announced on social media
alongside an endorsement in the Honduran
election. The Washington Post counts roughly
100 drug-related clemency grants across this
President’s two terms; in August, House Judiciary
Democrats alleged a pay-to-play clemency
market around the White House.
Four hundred tons, proven to twelve
Americans, undone by one signature.
Two hundred twenty-seven men, proven
to no one, undone by a missile.
THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION FILED
CASES. THAT IS THE COMPARISON.
Under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the
DEA ran Operation Last Mile: 1,436 investigations
from May 2022 to May 2023 against
Sinaloa and Jalisco networks inside the United
States. The result: 3,337 arrests, nearly 44
million fentanyl pills, 6,500 pounds of fentanyl
powder, 91,000 pounds of methamphetamine,
8,497 firearms, and over $100 million seized. In
April 2023 the department indicted 28 Sinaloa
members, including the leadership known as
the Chapitos. In 2023 the DEA seized 77 million
fentanyl pills and nearly 12,000 pounds of
THE DUPLICATION NOBODY VOTED FOR
Two Water Plants,
Two Fire Departments,
Two Schools
We Would Never Fund the First Two.
We Are Funding the Third.
A voucher does not move a child. It builds a second
building and bills it to your property.
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi: The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
“Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it.”
ONE SYSTEM. ONE BILL. TAUGHT WELL.
STOP PAYING TWICE AND LOWER OUR
PROPERTY TAXES.
GOOD IOWANS WANT BOTH
LOWER TAXES AND BETTER SCHOOLS.
Sources: Iowa State Auditor, ESA program report, June 17, 2026; Legislative Services Agency; Iowa Dept. of Education. The
athletics range is an estimate applying a published national 1–3 percent share of district spending to Iowa and Nebraska
totals; neither state reports athletics as a budget line.
NO TOWN BUILDS IT TWICE.
Osage does not run two water plants. Belle Plaine does not staff two fire departments. Des
Moines does not stock two city library systems. When a community needs a service, it builds
one, maintains one, and pays for one. Yet Iowa taxpayers now fund two parallel school systems
in towns like Iowa Falls that could barely carry the first. A voucher does not simply move a child.
It duplicates the building, the boiler, the roof and the gymnasium. The public school’s fixed costs
do not shrink when a student leaves; the heating bill and the bond payment stay exactly where
they were. That is capital outlay charged twice to the same property owner.
WHAT IT COST.
Iowa’s voucher program cost an estimated $329.6 million in fiscal 2026. The State Auditor found
that 78.5 percent of recipients were already enrolled in private school, representing roughly
$258.7 million to underwrite tuition that families were already paying themselves. That is not
opportunity created. That is a bill transferred. Private schools are fine institutions, and parents
are free to choose them. They should not have access to public tax dollars to do it.
AND THE ENTERTAINMENT BUDGET.
National estimates put school athletics at 1 to 3 percent of district spending. Across Iowa and
Nebraska, that would amount to somewhere between $285 and $425 million a year in coaching
stipends, activity travel and fuel, referees, equipment, insurance, grounds crews and swimming
pools. Neither state publishes the figure as a line item. That silence is itself the story. Nobody is
banning a ball. Towns, churches, clubs and Legion posts ran youth sports for a century without a
school board. Let boosters buy the trophies. Let the district buy the teacher.
TEACH THE ARITHMETIC.
We tell our children to balance a checkbook, live inside a budget, and never buy the same thing
twice. Then we hand them a state that does the opposite and call it choice. Fund reading, writing
and arithmetic first, then welding, wiring, plumbing, diesel, nursing and bookkeeping. Teach
skills that make a mortgage payment the first Monday after graduation.

THE RED SCARE RERUN
They Cry
“Communist.”
Look Who Rolled Out the Red Carpet.
A party with no plan for your grocery bill has found
one word for November. In my opinion, it is
pointing at the wrong address.
THE WEDDING GIFT. Now follow the money. ProPublica reports that Umar
Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, paid hundreds of thousands
of dollars toward Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding celebrations: a
private island, the fireworks, the works. The family calls it a gift from a friend.
Ukraine calls him sanctioned.
“They warn you about the red menace.
Then they roll out the red carpet.”
THE RED CARPET. Who laid an actual red carpet in Anchorage for Vladimir
Putin, a former KGB officer wanted by the International Criminal Court for the
deportation of Ukrainian children? Donald Trump.
Who keeps pressing Ukraine, the country that was invaded, to take a deal with
the country that invaded it? Donald Trump.
Who now blames your diesel prices on Ukraine for hitting Russian refineries
rather than on Moscow for starting the war? Donald Trump.
This is a man who said he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love.” Senators who once
built careers standing up to Moscow now stand behind him and point at a thirtyfour-
year-old city councilman.
THE HONEST PART. Democratic socialists did win primaries this year, and
some planks of their platform deserve hard debate. Democrats are not communists.
Neither, strictly, is Putin: his Russia is an authoritarian oil kleptocracy, not
a Marxist state. No one has shown that the wedding money bought a policy, and
the President says his pressure on Kyiv is about ending a war. Readers should
weigh all of it. But a party that shouts “communist” while its leader hosts Moscow’s
strongman has forfeited the right to be taken seriously on the subject.
THE BALLOT QUESTION. Every Republican on your November ballot should
answer one question on the record: Will you condemn a Putin-connected oligarch
paying for the President’s son’s wedding, yes or no? If they cannot say it,
they have told you who they answer to.
Sources: ProPublica; Axios; NBC News; The New York Times; NPR; The Hill; MS NOW.
THE CARPET Anchorage, Aug. 15, 2025: red carpet for Putin
THE WEDDING Putin-tied oligarch paid for an island and fireworks
THE WAR Kyiv pressed to take a deal with its invader
THE DIESEL Prices blamed on Ukraine’s refinery strikes
PYONGYANG On Kim: “We fell in love”
THE STOCKS ~30 federal equity stakes, incl. ~10% of Intel
WHO IS CLOSER TO MOSCOW?