Monthly Archives: March 2018

Jason Bailey on ArtNome discusses the use of blockchains by digital artists:

There are at least four major areas where blockchain will disrupt the art market:

1. Driving digital art sales through digital scarcity
2. Democratizing fine art investment
3. Improving provenance and reducing art forgery
4. Creating a more ethical way of paying artists

…

A big problem with producing and selling digital art is how easily it can be duplicated and pirated. Once something is copied and replicated for free, the value drops and the prospect of a market disappears. For things to be of value they need to have scarcity. Blockchain helps solve this for digital artists by introducing the idea of “digital scarcity”: issuing a limited number of copies and tying them back to unique blocks proving ownership.

Some of what drives Jason’s enthusiasm are the reduction or elimination of transaction friction – i.e., fees paid to middlemen. But later in another post, he talks about the blockchain and how art native to it occurs:

CryptoArt are rare digital artworks, sometimes described as digital trading cards or “rares”, associated with unique and provably rare tokens that exist on the blockchain. The concept is based on the idea of digital scarcity, which allows you to buy, sell, and trade digital goods as if they were physical goods. This system works due to the fact that, like Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency, CryptoArt exist in limited quantity. Popular early examples include CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, Rare Pepe, CurioCards, and Dada.nyc.

While no single CryptoArtist or CryptoArtwork adheres to a single definition, I believe it is helpful to look at a series of common factors that have shaped the aesthetic and community thus far.

1.Digitally Native: For the first time, artwork can be created, editioned, bought, and sold digitally.
2.Geographically Agnostic: Empowered by the internet, artists participate from all over the world. CryptoArt is the first truly global art movement.
…
4. Pro-Artist: Blockchain platforms often take little to no commission from artists. Artists are often remunerated for every future sale of a single work.
5. Dankness: Because CryptoArt is open to everyone, judging it by traditional artistic standards kills what is great about it. Instead, it is best to judge CryptoArt by “dankness” or potency of expression and creativity.

“Art” is one of my weakest areas of understanding in contemporary society, from individual motivations to create it, onwards to the motivations of collectors, to the role it plays in society – I do understand that historically it often played roles roughly equivalent to propaganda in some part, but whether it does now I’m not so certain. In my (fragmentary) reading so far, it appears that these artists come from technical or financial backgrounds, and I wonder if that colors how they see the future of CryptoArt. On FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder has coverage of CryptoArt, ending with this somewhat cryptic conclusion:

A new order is emerging in the art world. But will it be any different than the old one? People like [John] Zettler make me think not. He and Rare Art Labs may be handling a new type of art, but what they’re doing with it is nothing new; in fact, it’s exactly what the critic Hughes warned us against: the fetishization of art’s prices and the emptying of its higher virtues. As a result, the relationship between art and the blockchain, which seems symbiotic for the moment, could soon become parasitic. Artists can only avoid the art establishment’s capitalistic maw for so long.

I can understand concern about losing the essence of art, and I also am well aware that motivations will wildly vary from individual to individual – did van Gogh hope to become rich on his art? How about Heinlein’s remark that If you ask a writer why he writes and he doesn’t say For money, he’s lying?

But artists do have to eat, too.

Here’s a view across the front yards of the neighbors.

The piles just get deeper and deeper.

Apotheosis:

• The highest point in the development of something; a culmination or climax.
  ‘his appearance as Hamlet was the apotheosis of his career’
• The elevation of someone to divine status.
  ‘death spared Pompey the task of having to account for the apotheosis of Caesar’
  [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Found in this title: “The Troubling Apotheosis of the Notorious RBG,” John O. McGinnis, Law and Liberty. I’m not sure I would have used the same word myself.

I have an interest in those odd little cases which plumb the corners of systems, so even though I’m not a lawyer or Constitutional scholar, I found this article by Michael C. Dorf on Justia Verdict to be interesting:

Last week’s ruling [Patchak v. Zinke] arose out of a dispute over a parcel of land in Michigan known as the Bradley Property, which the federal government obtained in trust for the creation of a casino to be operated by a Native tribe. The owner of a neighboring property sued the government, arguing that the acquisition was illegal. The government defended by, among other things, invoking its sovereign immunity against private lawsuits, and that issue made its way to the Supreme Court. In a 2012 case, the Court ruled that Congress had waived its sovereign immunity and that therefore the litigation could proceed.

But before plaintiff David Patchak could obtain a judgment against the government, Congress stepped in. It passed the Gun Lake Act, which states that any litigation “relating to” the Bradley Property “shall not be filed or maintained in a Federal court and shall be promptly dismissed.” Last week’s case concerned the constitutionality of that enactment.

Patchak argued that the contested provision was a thinly disguised effort by Congress to dictate the result of a pending case and thus a violation of the basic constitutional principle of separation of powers. As anyone who has seen Schoolhouse Rock knows, each branch of government serves a distinctive function. Justice Thomas quoted Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1825 statement that “the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.” Patchak argued that while the Gun Lake Act had the form of legislation, in substance it was an effort to resolve a concrete case—namely his.

Dorf is exceedingly polite, but, reading between the lines, it sounds like SCOTUS may have had a collective mental breakdown. Justices Thomas, Alito, Breyer, and Kagan took one side, while Roberts, Kennedy, and Gorsuch took another, and Ginsburg and Sotomayor “… tried to duck the question that divided their colleagues.” Just the lack of ideological alignment is enough to cross my eyes.

In the end, the weird mix of right-wingers and moderate liberals won the day with a plurality opinion, but the fact that it’s not split sharply or unanimous (or close to it) suggests to me that this is an issue which has not been fully thought out by anyone.

In the end, Dorf says the court may have been hung up on the question of how to measure the generality of a law, as I remember that Bills of Attainder are specifically forbidden in the Constitution:

These practical concerns may ultimately explain why the plurality was unwilling to treat the Gun Lake Act as the functional equivalent of a law that said “Patchak loses.” But if practical administrability was the real reason for the decision, the plurality ought to have said so. By instead paying lip service to the proposition that Congress may not enact a law directing the outcome of a particular case, while in practice allowing Congress to circumvent that principle with some minimally astute drafting, Justice Thomas endorsed an empty formalism.

Sounds exciting! And not just because of my odd taste for odd corner cases, but because sometimes odd corner cases with undesirable outcomes may signal that a detail somewhere … is wrong.

On Dorf On Law, Neil Buchanan has posted an article, “When Shouid Liberals Try to Remove Judges From the Bench?” which didn’t interest me as much as the more general question, When should judges be removed?

Obviously, initiating impeachment out of ideological pique is a non-starter. Just as judges should be beyond political ideology once they take their seats, the safety of their seats should not depend on the ideology of those who can, in certain circumstances, terminate their tenure in those seats.

It seems to me that the sober legislator has at least two recognizable concerns about any particular judge:

Are they competent to the job?

Are their mental faculties up to the job?

These two questions appear to be the same, but are not. The first questions whether they have the skills, temperament, and ability to drop the ideology and simply interpret the law once they are in the seat. The second asks whether the judge is facing a decline in faculties, whether from natural causes or damage to the brain.

The second question might be answerable through medical and psychological tests, although I can see feisty judges dodging the issue.

But what of the first? I think the chief measure of a judge who is simply incompetent is the testimony of attorneys as to his inability to manage the mechanics of the job.

And what of ideology? Simply this: if his decisions continuously are overturned by superior court judges, never to be returned to his favor, it may signal someone seriously out of step with the general judiciary. Certainly, this may signal that all of the superior judges are compromised, but the odds are against it.

The success of the strike in West Virginia may be emboldening teachers in other states, BloombergPolitics reports:

The fury among low-paid teachers that triggered a wildcat teachers’ strike in West Virginia—the longest in its history—may be spreading.

Teachers across the country may soon build on the state’s example. The Oklahoma teachers’ union said it will shut down schools within months if its demands aren’t met, and some teachers said they may strike even if a deal is reached.

“The end goal is funding for public education and our core services, and if it takes us closing down schools to do that, then we are prepared and willing to do so,” said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association. On Thursday, the OEA will announce a timetable that could culminate in a school shutdown if lawmakers don’t pass teacher raises, something the legislature hasn’t done in a decade. While some teachers may have been on the fence, said Priest, the two-week West Virginia strike “has given them an emboldened sense of purpose and a sense of power.”

That may not be enough for the rank and file. Some Oklahoma teachers are planning a wildcat strike of their own. Leaders from a dozen schools met last week to discuss such an unsanctioned walkout, and they plan to reconvene Wednesday to vote on a strike date. If the union’s plans aren’t to their liking, they may walk out, said Larry Cagle, who teaches advanced placement courses and is one of the organizers behind the independent effort. “We’re going to force this on the union and on the superintendent,”  he said. “Teachers are ready—they are chomping at the bit.”

If there’s anyone that loves education, it’s teachers. While the conservative states may fight to keep their taxes low on the backs of teachers – it’s long been an article of faith among the libertarian wing that teachers unions are evil incarnate – in the long run states with well-educated citizens are usually more prosperous, regardless of taxes.

This is the problem with trying to apply family budget principles to the budget of a state – the priorities differ to the point where parsimony in the wrong quarter can have serious, yet hard-to-trace, long-term consequences.

If you’ve been hearing rumors that Special Counsel Mueller’s legal theory is novel, let Emma Kohse and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare straighten you out:

The legal theory used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller turns out to be worth pondering in some detail, as it offers considerable insight into where he may be headed next. When news of the indictment broke, a number of commentators—including one of us—suggested that the legal theory was novel. On closer inspection, however, it doesn’t seem new. Still, the indictment is rather clever, drawing on a venerable and well-trodden theory of criminal liability in a fashion that Mueller may be able to leverage into a powerful instrument with respect to both foreign and domestic actors.

 Let’s unpack it.The indictment works like this: It is a crime to conspire to “obstruct the lawful functions of the United States government through fraud and deceit.”

Etc in some detail. Their conclusion?

Which brings us to people on this side of the Atlantic—say, people who knowingly facilitated or participated in the distribution of emails through this mechanism or people who knowingly helped guide the activities of Internet Research Agency trolls. Such people might be inside or outside of the Trump campaign or organization. Their specific activities could all be, in and of themselves, perfectly legal. It’s an interesting question whether they would even need to know their interlocutors were Russian, much less acting at the behest of a foreign intelligence actor. As we read Mueller’s theory under §371, as long as they acted knowingly to join a scheme to deceive the U.S. government to frustrate its enforcement authority and took some action in pursuit of that scheme, they too would be guilty.

To be clear, without knowing details of the conduct of any specific individual, it would be irresponsible to speculate as to how a reasonable prosecutor would evaluate that person’s conduct with respect to this particular alleged conspiracy. For present purposes, our point is twofold: Mueller’s theory involves a well-established legal doctrine that has been deployed in roughly analogous situations, and it is potentially extremely powerful.

To be clear, Emma and Benjamin have no doubt that it is a crime to frustrate the organs of government from pursuing their statutorily defined goals, and anyone knowingly doing so will be guilty and dumped in the pokey.

Including, I suspect, the President.

When you have that hankering for beef!

Some genre fusions are a little more successful than others, but The Beast Of Hollow Mountain (1956) is a shade indifferent to the entire debate. A Mexican village plays hosts to a powerful Don and his son, Enrique, the latter soon to marry the beautiful Sarita. But an Americanos, Jimmy, and his partner, Felipe, who together own a herd of cattle, also live here, and when Sarita engages in some innocent conversation with the Americanos, Enrique is enraged. Fisticuffs are not enough, and soon there are plans afoot to stampede the herd into the hills.

Meanwhile, the herd is also suffering attrition, and Jimmy and Felipe, along with their last workers, Pancho and his little boy Panchito, track down the carcasses – or, more precisely, the disarticulated heads – in the swamp that borders on Hollow Mountain. The blame falls on Enrique. Eventually, Pancho, the town drunkard, ventures into the swamp for fairly unsatisfying reasons of his own, and becomes a breakfast nugget for the … well, the storytellers were wise enough to have Pancho shoot wildly (and quite amateurishly) while screaming as a shadow pans over him. Nicely done.

But soon enough Pancho’s son bullheadedly runs away, in fact on the day of Sarita and Enrique’s marriage, and Sarita, not quite yet clasped to Enrique’s bosom (there’s a bad visual), rides in pursuit. Naturally, they soon encounter the Beast, a clay stop-motion T-Rex with a really really long tongue. After a lot of pointing and laughing and falling down and being afflicted with hiccups

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyways, Jimmy shows up after Sarita and Panchito take refuge in an abandoned house, and the Beast demonstrates its skills in disassembling stone and wood structures. Does Mr. T-Rex win an award? Noooo! Distracted by Jimmy, who nicks his snout (it’s good to see a dinosaur who’s not completely proof against six-shooters), Sarita and the kid make a break for the horses (which at this point should have been crossing the Canadian border, if they had any sense) and go for help, while Jimmy plays a little hide and seek with a dinosaur which is really awfully damn fast on his feet.

The funny things you find in a Cracker-Jack tree!

Enrique shows up, ready to pick off Jimmy, but has an unpleasant encounter with our dino. But once again, no awards for the dinosaur as Jimmy helps Enrique slip through the dinosaur’s claws. A dash to an empty tree and, for a brief moment, the dinosaur has a bit of success, with Enrique dangling in his clutches, but, damn, he must have ADD or something, because the rescuers have arrived and are busy trying to puncture that hide of his. Tossing lunch aside, he chases the rescuers, but to no effect.

Finally, Jimmy tires of the fun and lures the dino into the swamp, where it takes a bad step, forgets its swimming lessons, and drowns. The actress playing Sarita, ever the professional, hides her head in Jimmy’s bosom so the laughter doesn’t ruin the scene.

I cannot say that this cross between a romantic Western and a monster-horror story really did anything for me. The problem lies in the failure to expose some moral question for a good examination, as the best Westerns (think The Good, The Bad And The Ugly) do so well. Add in the amateuristic dinosaur and predictable and bland village conflict, and it’s a bit of a yawner until the climactic scene. The movie makers made some good decisions, such as not showing the beast until near the end, but the title gives the game away, and leaves us with nothing more than distasteful treacle.

It occurs to me that we in the uproar over President Trump’s business holdings and the Foreign Emoluments clause of the Constitution, the reverse problem has been under-emphasized. And this is the perfect time to consider it. Not sure what I mean?

Suppose President Trump really goes through with the tariffs. Things are going swimmingly, President Trump thinks, why all those arrogant foreigners are so pissed off I must have done something right!

And then comes the news … Jared Kushner comes rushing into the Oval Office with the report … that wonderful Trump Tower you built overseas, so much money invested, so wonderful, biggest in the world, going to make you so much money, Papa? Why, those damn foreigners just nationalized it!

And then the tariffs go away a day later.

See, it’s not just corruption to accept foreign emoluments. It’s also vulnerability, the possibility that a foreign power will threaten a business interest and thus modify the President’s thinking because now he’s personally threatened. This is another reason the guy in the Oval Office must shed those things that make him vulnerable.

And this should be talked about more. It’s too late for Trump, but for the future we should be clear on the stupidity of Trump for not shedding his business ties.

Another pothole for the markets is coming up as the White House economic advisor, Gary Cohn, is resigning in the wake of losing the tariff battle:

Cohn, who had been rumored just weeks ago as a potential next chief of staff, will leave the White House in the wake of his fierce disagreement with the President’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Cohn is expected to leave in the coming weeks, the White House said. …

Cohn’s resignation sounded alarm bells in establishment circles in Washington and on Wall Street, where many viewed the former Goldman Sachs executive as a steadying influence on economic policy inside the Trump White House. His departure, combined with Trump’s recent moves to recommit himself to his nationalist trade agenda, raised questions about the direction of the Trump administration and sent Dow futures plummeting 300 points.

“Wall Street won’t be happy,” said a senior Republican who has worked both at the White House and in finance. “We knew he was hanging in by a thread, but it is terrible news.” [CNN]

Kevin Drum’s graph of banking profits, indicating those onerous regulations aren’t all that onerous.

I very much doubt this will trigger any major mudslide. This isn’t like the crash during the Great Recession, as that was brought on by a basic flaw in our economic rules, and while I do have concerns with continued moves towards loosening the banking regulations, I don’t see that loosening as provocational to a major stock market crash. Yet.

I see this as understandable investor jitters, possibly compounded by algorithmic trading facing a scenario more or less unexplored and possibly even unforeseen by the authors of those algorithms. There may be some flash crashes in the coming days, some weird ups and downs, as the investment community readies itself for Cohn’s successor and how the tariffs will be handled.

Unless, of course, the tariffs aren’t implemented. Trump is trying to use them as a hammer on NAFTA, but I don’t know if Canada and Mexico are bowing to the pressure. Given the humiliating nature of this approach, they may firm their upper lips and soldier on. In fact, I expect it. Handing Trump a real victory when he uses such a crude approach would only encourage him to continue, and that is not to the long-term advantage of most nations.

Fasten your seatbelts.

Spaceweather is reporting on a problem that comes with having a star reaching a solar minimum:

THE WORSENING COSMIC RAY SITUATION: Cosmic rays are bad–and they’re getting worse. That’s the conclusion of a new paper just published in the research journal Space Weather. The authors, led by Prof. Nathan Schwadron of the University of New Hampshire, show that radiation from deep space is dangerous and intensifying faster than previously predicted.

The story begins four years ago when Schwadron and colleagues first sounded the alarm about cosmic rays. Analyzing data from the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), they found that cosmic rays in the Earth-Moon system were peaking at levels never before seen in the Space Age. The worsening radiation environment, they pointed out, was a potential peril to astronauts, curtailing how long they could safely travel through space. …

Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are a mixture of high-energy photons and sub-atomic particles accelerated toward Earth by supernova explosions and other violent events in the cosmos. Our first line of defense is the sun: The sun’s magnetic field and solar wind combine to create a porous ‘shield’ that fends off cosmic rays attempting to enter the solar system. The shielding action of the sun is strongest during Solar Maximum and weakest during Solar Minimum–hence the 11-year rhythm of the mission duration plot above.

The problem is, as the authors note in their new paper, the shield is weakening: “Over the last decade, the solar wind has exhibited low densities and magnetic field strengths, representing anomalous states that have never been observed during the Space Age. As a result of this remarkably weak solar activity, we have also observed the highest fluxes of cosmic rays.”

Another challenge to meet. This is possibly the most intriguing part of the report:

Cosmic rays will intensify even more in the years ahead as the sun plunges toward what may be the deepest Solar Minimum in more than a century. Stay tuned for updates.

And what will that portend?

With regards to Resident Evil (2002) a reader writes:

Modern video games often have writing and design talent equivalent to movies, so I guess the cross over is perhaps somewhat less surprising than at first glance.

While it’s true I’m not a gamer, I have heard the quality has improved since the days of Zork.

For long time readers who remember Kevin Drum’s fascination with lead in the environment and how it correlates with crime, he’s popped up with some more:

Got it? Good. The upshot is that the researchers could determine lead concentration levels in Europe down to the individual year. Here they are:

Source: AGU Publications

It turns out that lead has been poisoning Europe for at least 2,000 years, with one notable exception: the few years during and after the Black Death. Apparently the plague killed off all the lead miners, and for a period of a decade or two ambient lead levels plummeted to low levels. …

Here’s my theory: Lead levels plummeted from about 1350-1370, and children born during those years entered adulthood around 1370-1390. I propose that they were smarter and more focused than your average medieval scholar, and this extra IQ boost from the plague is the real origin of the Renaissance. Generation P gave it enough of a kickstart that it then kept going of its own accord even after lead concentrations returned to their previous levels.

Fun! We have a Renaissance because all the lead miners died!

A movie based on a video game. How good can it be?

When it’s Resident Evil (2002), it’s surprisingly good. The trick is in the pacing and the context. We start off in a bioresearch lab, where a spill mysteriously occurs and the place starts to shut down. Then the elevators start malfunctioning – what’s going on?

Next thing we know a military team has invaded a large home, alarming the already confused occupants. They’re suffering from amnesia, and the team tells them they’re intelligence operatives, responsible for guarding this house. Memories are slow to return, disjoint and confusing.

All the while they and the team are heading towards The Hive, a research lab which has gone offline. What has happened? All they know is the main computer has shutdown the lab, and a rail line terminating at their house leads to the Hive.

Upon reaching the Hive, they discover the suite of labs is abandoned. There are nearly no bodies, and they decide to shutdown the mainframe, which requires the use of an EMP-like device be activated in a specific location.

But on the way there, the team suffers losses as the computer’s self-defense routines come into play, but despite their shock at the loss of their comrades, they press on, eventually reaching their target and deactivating the computer.

And out come the zombies from where they were contained. That’s the core of the movie – this is a movie about zombies in the future. In this case, they are the result of the research at the lab, a weaponized virus which kills and then reanimates the corpses. The movie becomes the Run back to the safety of the outside world! sort of movie. And it’s about the computer that killed everyone in the lab out of concern that the virus might get out into the the world.

And that mysterious bioresearch spill? That’s covered, too, most satisfyingly. And there’s just one more surprise from the labs.

We hardly get to know these characters, yet we care for them because they care for each other, which functions as a social cue for the audience to care as well. It appears to be a well-oiled team, and watching them try to hang together after losing part of the team reinforces that link.

Wisely, pauses are inserted into this breathless sprint, giving us just a moment to think about what’s happening, and try to think of what might come next – and then those expectations are confounded.

If you like being breathless, this movie may be for you. I was surprised to find myself on the edge of my seat. I won’t recommend it, but it was a heckuva lot of fun.

There’s the old bit about history repeating itself that rang at the back of my mind as I read Matt O’Brien on Wonkblog describe Venezuela’s current status:

It’s hard to think of a government that, absent a war, revolution or Stalinist-style purge, has done a worse job running its economy than Venezuela’s. Maybe the United States’ in 1929 or Zimbabwe’s in 2003. What separates Venezuela, though, is that it’s managed to combine the economic collapse of the first with the hyperinflation of the second despite the fact that it has the largest oil reserves in the world. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund estimates that, by the end of the year, Venezuela’s economy will have shrunk 38 percent since the start of 2014, and its prices will be 2,176 times higher. That’s what happens when you put incompetent cronies in charge of the state-owned oil company but keep spending money as if you’re pumping as much oil as ever. You have to print what you need instead, until eventually all this new money pushes up prices so fast that it’s difficult for any part of the economy to function. Going by black market prices, that’s translated into Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, losing 99.99 percent of its value the past six years.

For me, it’s that bit about putting incompetent cronies in charge. It feels like, oh, I don’t know, the current American distrust of experts?

And Venezuela’s the current mosquito splat against the window. Can we learn from that?

The folks at Lawfare have repeated their online poll of the trust in the various investigations currently in progress concerning the Presidential election. Here’s their result for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference:

This highlights a question in my mind – how much do people prefer data which fits to their preconceptions, and how much do they accept data which may do damage to their preferences? Given known tribal preferences, this seems to indicate the folks are not using independent data to decide if they trust Mueller’s investigation.

To be fair, it’s a little difficult to do so. One must evaluate the character of Mueller, his professional qualifications, and whether his allegiance is first to his party (Republican) – or to his country. (My own evaluation suggests his background renders him more interested in country than party.)

But to take his results – the indictments, in this case – and use that as the metric on which to evaluate his investigation’s trustworthiness, without having some omniscient data set with which to compare, is a fallacious approach – going either way. That is, if you’re evaluating Mueller based on his results, then regardless of whether or not you’re for Trump, you’re not using a good methodology.

And that’s unfortunate, because then we’re essentially at the mercy of our emotions.

Amercement:

Nor was this forgotten at the time of the Framing: Blackstone, for instance, who wrote in the 1760s and who has long been seen as immensely influential on the Framers, quoted that passage from Magna Carta alongside his discussion of the 1689 Bill of Rights, and characterized it as meaning “that no man shall have a larger amercement [i.e., fine] imposed upon him than his circumstances will bear.” Blackstone added that, even in his time, “it is never usual to assess a larger fine than a man is able to pay,” and also wrote that,

The quantum, in particular, of pecuniary fines neither can, nor ought to, be ascertained by any invariable law. The value of money itself changes from a thousand causes; and, at all events, what is ruin to one man’s fortune may be matter of indifference to another’s.

[“Should a Fine’s “Excessiveness” Turn Partly on the Defendant’s Wealth?” Eugene Volokh, The Volokh Conspiracy]

Amercement is word long out of common usage, but it amuses me.

From The New York Times:

Supporters of the tariffs have begun broadcasting televised ads in recent days during programs that Mr. Trump has been known to watch. One such ad ran on Fox News minutes before the president’s Twitter post on Thursday morning.

It’s just … pathetic. North Korea is laughing at us? EVERYONE is laughing at us. When they’re not shouting at us over the tariffs.

It’ll be interesting to see if his attempted pivot to NAFTA actually works. I rather hope that Canada and Mexico, the other two signatories, offended at his bullying ways, thumb their noses at him.

Protect Democracy has produced a report on how President Trump has attacked the American judiciary, and compares it to the tactics used in other countries which have slid significantly towards authoritarianism:

In his comments and tweets – starting during his presidential campaign, and only accelerating during his presidency – Trump has attacked federal judges personally and institutionally in ways that no president has ever even approached before.  He says he knows he’s not supposed to criticize the courts  – “I would never want to do that,” he says – then he does.  We’ve compiled this tracker outlining Trump’s longstanding assault on the courts.

It reveals the frequency with which Trump personally ridicules judges who defy him.  He calls them out by name, claims they are unfair, and declares that they are biased because of their ethnic backgrounds.

He demeans judges who rule against him and questions their authority to review executive actions.  He labels adverse judicial opinions as “ridiculous” and “disgraceful.”

He threatens judges who limit his power by saying they’ll be to blame in the case of a terrorist attack. He mocks the federal court system as inept.

And then they provide the details.

The delegitimization of the Federal judiciary is an attack on one of the three legs of the stool that is our governmental system, and should be considered by every citizen to be beyond the pale – that is, every action taken by President Trump, or other governmental officials, in retaliation against a judge who has ruled against them should be considered evidence of his failure to protect the American democracy from threats, foreign and domestic, and should be a piece of evidence in the consideration of the House when it decides whether or not to bring impeachment charges against the President.

In this perspective, Trump is the emblematic ignorant, arrogant executive. He’s spent all his life in real estate and reality shows, and believes, apparently with no supporting study, that he’s qualified to run a government without help. Trade wars are “simple to win.” And he doesn’t need a judiciary to keep him on the straight and narrow. He’s too good for that.

But it’s worth going back and looking at the hoary old analogy I drew with a stool. What happens when a three legged stool loses a leg?

It falls over.

By the same token, a democratic government without an independent judiciary is also completely unstable. It presages a descent into arbitrary chaos, for either there are no judges – or their allegiance isn’t to the law, nor even their ideologies (illicit enough itself), but to the Parties which put them in their seats – and can unseat them if they misbehave. Now application to government becomes critical for any endeavour to succeed, because those holding power in government can do anything they want.

It’s no longer a republic or a democracy.

Trump and his ilk cry foul when An unelected judge rules against them? So much better an unlected judge does than that hapless creature, the elected judge, threatened in every decision by the angry mob with its punch cards and pens! For now his future livelihood is influenced by his judgments, and so only the strong, independently wealthy judge can afford to ignore the current whimsy affecting the masses. Do you doubt this? Remember the fates of the Iowa State Supreme Court justices who ruled for gay marriage back in 2009. After an unanimous ruling for marriage equality, the three up for re-election, with no opponents, lost their re-election bids.

That makes the Judiciary a joke, and therefore the law is a joke. And if the law is a joke, that makes the Legislative Branch a joke, a pack of ineffective, feeble dogs pursuing sinecures, unable to do anything to help lead the nation.

And then the United States begins the move from first world status to second world status. Because we couldn’t look at ourselves and recognize a threat to a vital institution and forbid attacks on it.

But this doesn’t have to happen. The alarmed reader can contact their Congressional representatives and demand action. They can write the President and tell him not to deliberately weaken our government.

Because attacks on the judiciary are not attacks on this political party, or that political party.

They are attacks on all of us.

CNN is reporting that Senator Cochran (R-MS) is resigning:

Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, will leave his seat effective April 1, citing his health issues, meaning both US Senate seats in the state will be on the ballot this fall.

“I regret my health has become an ongoing challenge,” Cochran said in a statement. “I intend to fulfill my responsibilities and commitments to the people of Mississippi and the Senate through the completion of the 2018 appropriations cycle, after which I will formally retire from the U.S. Senate.”

Much like Minnesota, this puts both Senate seats up for grabs. In both cases, it means added expenses for the national organizations as they seek to protect seats they currently have.

In Minnesota’s case, Senator Amy Klobuchar is, absent a serious scandal, a safe bet to win re-election. She’s well liked in the state and has a history of public service. If she has higher ambitions, she’s not noised them about.

The Democrat currently warming former Senator Franken’s seat is Tina Smith, the former Lt. Governor appointed to the Senate by Gov. Dayton (himself a former Minnesota Senator^[1]). As of yet, I do not believe she’s had an impact on the Minnesota citizenry, but she’s already stated that she’ll be running to retain the seat in November. Whether she’ll face significant competition during the primary or from the Republicans is still to be seen. However, again absent a scandal, if the public opinion continues to run sharply against the Republicans as it does today, Senator Smith has a better than even chance of re-election.

So the pressure is on the Republicans in Mississippi. This is an additional seat that they had hoped not to have to defend this cycle, but will have to do so nonetheless. That means expense, time, and focus.

Worse yet, the other Mississippi Senator, Senator Wicker, is already facing a primary challenge from Chris McDaniels, who is busily clutching President Trump to his bosom. While McDaniels might easily switch his sights to the unoccupied seat, implicit in the challenge of McDaniels is that other far right extremists may step up to challenge for the open seat or Wicker – who I noted in my prior post regarding McDaniels has already been painted with the liberal brush, despite the fact he has a Trump score of 97%.

In other words, the flakes may be replaced with the whack-jobs. I suppose it depends on how candidates are selected in Mississippi – which happens to be primaries. Who shows up for primaries? Generally, the confirmed ideologist, although my sense is that when times seem desperate, the general voter may show up as well.

And then comes the general election. While the election for Cochran’s seat is technically a special election, the date of the election is the same as the usual mid-term elections, so the latter’s dynamic applies, not the former’s. Add in the current Democratic fervor, and it becomes a question of whether Democratic voters can push back Trump’s margin of victory in 2016 in Europe, which was nearly 18 percentage points. Picking up 10 points is not impossible – and would win them the race.

Long ways to November, a lot of time for scandal, and a lot of time to spend money defending what the Republicans probably think shouldn’t need defending. Another step on the way to rebuilding a respectable conservative party.

¹Appropos of nothing, but “Minnesota Senator” reminds me that, prior to moving to Minnesota, the Minnesota Twins were the Washington Senators.

I recall during the primaries for the Presidential nominations back in 2016, Marco Rubio’s campaign mostly stood out because he hadn’t really done anything in his political career. Voting as directed by the Party doesn’t count as doing anything, and while I dimly recall he worked on some sort of immigration legislation when he came aboard as a United States Senator, when the Party decided they didn’t like it, he didn’t stand and fight for it – he fled from it.

So, among this supposedly “deep bench” for the Republicans, he stood out mostly as the handsome fellow in a bunch of rather ugly guys.

Now, I must admit that Senator Barack Obama also didn’t have a great deal to show for his short time in the Senate seat from Illinois. But there is one key difference – he demonstrated features of leadership.

A lot of leaders demonstrate their “leadership” by getting out in front of a mob that is already headed thataway and they keep going thataway. There’s something to be said for such leadership, as in it helps to have someone shepherding the mob along. But such leadership is often flawed, as the leader is really there just to collect leader points and isn’t really paying a lot of attention to whether the direction is right.

One of the attributes of a real leader is that s/he recognizes that some facet of the more general group is flawed, and they’re the ones willing to step up, recognize it, and try to fix it. This is what Obama demonstrated during the Presidential campaign against Hillary and, later, McCain. Obama had the advantage in that he was stepping into the leadership vacuum effectively left behind by the Bush Administration. He could dispute any of the leadership initiatives from Bush and come off sounding good. But he also communicated very well – one of the best orators of his generation – and he came across as very authentic, very much his own man.

Rubio, on the other hand, along with his merry band of competitors, were not walking into a leadership vacuum. There are many contextual details which can cloud this picture. But let those details go…

So here’s Rubio, hip-deep in the Parkland massacre. This is his chance to show leadership. Is he getting there? Not according to Steve Benen:

These are the kind of conditions that tend to push politicians toward action, and with this in mind, Rubio unveiled new legislation on the issue last week. “We can do this,” the GOP lawmaker said. “What happened in Parkland doesn’t have to happen again. If we can work together, put aside our differences and focus on meaningful legislation that curbs gun violence – we can make real progress.”

Those are the kind of words one might ordinarily expect from someone advocating sweeping changes to the nation’s gun laws. But there seems to be a gap between Rubio’s bold vision and Rubio’s legislation.

Eight days ago, Marco Rubio endorsed raising the age requirement for buying a rifle from 18 to 21 and voiced openness to placing limits on the size of ammunition magazines.

On Thursday, when the Republican senator from Florida unveiled his plan to address gun violence, he did not outline any specific plans on these very divisive fronts.

Why not aim higher and include some of the popular measures discussed at the recent forum? “These reforms do not enjoy the sort of widespread support in Congress that the other measures I’ve announced do,” Rubio said Thursday.

Then, Senator Rubio, if you want to sit in the Oval Office some day, stand up and tell the GOP’s position is wrong for America. Hell, the measures you talked about are fairly timid as it is. If you’re going to stand out from the crowd in 2020 – and we both know Trump won’t be running then, despite having started his campaign machine up – you’re going to have to be a real leader. Not a fake leader, but a real one.

I was somewhat surprised to read that an institution as old and cagey as the Roman Catholic Church is considering lopping off a limb with no hope of ever getting it back, according to The Guardian:

The Catholic church risks damaging its moral authority and plunging its followers into confusion if the Vatican presses ahead with an imminent deal with the Chinese government, a group of influential Catholics has warned.

Fifteen lawyers, academics and human rights activists, most based in Hong Kong, have signed an open letter to bishops across the world expressing dismay at an agreement which would involve the Vatican recognising seven bishops appointed by China’s Communist party.

The deal is aimed at restoring relations between China and the Vatican, which were cut almost 70 years ago. But the group of leading Catholics say it could create a schism in the church in China.

Giving up the authority to appoint your own management? I understand that the Vatican wants to reach out to Chinese Catholics, but this might actually alienate them, instead, if the faithful perceive the government appointed bishops as not truly Catholics.

And, more importantly, this is a dissipation of the Catholic Church’s temporal authority, since they are then meekly admitting that this could occur again in the future, and they’d once again turn turtle.

This should be an interesting story going forward.

Did I pack my clean underwear?

When a movie franchise reaches 9 movies, with more to come, the individual movies can begin to flow together and lose some of their individuality. This wasn’t really true of the Harry Potter series, as each movie seemed to explore a different theme, and the protagonists were definitely growing and changing.

But it is somewhat true of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). It’s almost a checklist. Space battle? Check. Valiant deeds? Check. Self-sacrifice? Check. Nuggets of humor? Check. And thank goodness, because otherwise this would be unbearably sober.

But there is some variance. For example, plans are made – and then go disastrously wrong, and the survivors have to find a way – sometimes a trifle ridiculously – to wriggle their way out of a corner. It lends a bit of tension to the story which is far more effective than the making and executing of desperate plans, much like episodes IV, V, and VI.

But in the end, the magnificent special effects and self-sacrifice and narrow escapes just sort of blend together. They’re fun, but they’re not particularly meaningful. Perhaps it’s the unmitigated, and thus difficult to believe, evil of the bad guys. Perhaps it’s the lack of variety in themes. Maybe it’s a lack of character development, such as the attempt by one character to chicken out – that just sort of comes out of the blue.

So, go, have fun – but you won’t really remember this one.

Just to keep her .. ah .. warm .. intimidating .. oh, I know – so she looks just like a snail!

Peeper at her morning meal.