Author Archives: Hue White

NewScientist (26 May 2018) reports on the latest synaesthesia:

A WOMAN can’t help laughing uproariously when she sees other people being tickled.

She has mirror-touch synaesthesia, a condition that makes people feel sensations on their own body when they watch other people touching things.

To see how this relates to tickling, Vilayanur Ramachandran and Claudia Sellers at the University of California, San Diego, recorded how much the woman laughed in different cases, such as when she was spontaneously tickled or when viewing funny situations.

They found that, in general, she didn’t laugh any more than a non-synaesthete. However, when watching someone else being tickled under an armpit, she burst out laughing and tried to make it stop by placing her hand under her own armpit – which seemed to help (Neurocase, doi.org/cpsb).

The spectrum of connections the human brain can experiment with can be a bit dizzying. You can call it mistakes or you can call it evolutionary dead-ends, but in the end the deviance from the neurotypical can be quite unsettling.

Here’s Deb’s new begonia after a bit of rain. I think this came out quite well for this cheapie camera.

The flash didn’t improve the picture, though.

Noting a fine point of which I was not aware, and importantly, Avi Berman remarks in Mother Jones on the real purpose of the addition to the census form asking questions about citizenship:

In March, the Trump administration added a question about US citizenship to the 2020 census for the first time since 1950, leading critics to charge that the question was a deliberate effort to reduce the response rate among immigrants and the political power of the cities and states where they live. But at a congressional hearing on Friday, another potential motive for the controversial census question was on full display: using the data to allocate political representation on the basis of the number of citizens in a district or state rather than the total population.

Such a move would mean a fundamental shift in the way representation is determined, dating back to the country’s founding, when the framers of the Constitution decided the balance of representation would take into account populations that didn’t have the full rights of citizenship, such as slaves and women. It would also significantly diminish representation for areas with large numbers of immigrants and shift political power to whiter and more Republican areas.

It is an interesting question to me; perhaps everyone else is aware of it, though. Disentangling the third-rate GOPers‘ influence from it is a bit sticky, of course, but it helps to pretend this is actually a proposal of, say, General George Washington. If such a personage would present such a proposal, how would you react to it?

My first impulse is to agree: representation is for citizens, now isn’t it? It seems commonsensical. Yet, the Founding Fathers might not agree. One of the compromises reached among them was the counting of slaves for purposes of the Census, fixed at counting each as three fifths of a free person:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

A slave is not a citizen, for a citizen is a free person, absent imprisonment for criminal activities. Yet, they were to be represented regardless.

Despite the Constitution’s apparent provision for the non-citizen, we might soberly consider reasons for or against. Occurring to me:

1. Proper assessment of the needs of a given region cannot be achieved without knowing the number of real persons consuming any Federally-provided resources. In cases of emergency, asking for proof of citizenship is both impractical and ungenerous.
2. Failing to give proper representation to those non-citizens may lead to sentiments of discontent, and while the pro side of the argument for representation for citizens only may view this as a discouragement to potential illegal immigrants, discontent in situ may result in violence perpetrated on citizens.
3. Discouraging illegal immigrants has the potential to turn away those ambitious enough to leave their home countries for the strange, new world of the United States. There is something to the idea that those willing to emigrate have qualities desirable to the United States; this xenophobic hostility does little good for natives in the long run.
4. Discouraging illegal immigrants shuts out crime. This is indisputable, but measuring this good is difficult. Is there an identification of the number of such immigrants in ratio to the total illegal immigrants? What is an acceptable percentage vs the indisputable desirable immigrants of point 3?
5. It is remarkably difficult to find reasons for the pro side of this argument beyond the problematic point 4 and the hypothetical Representation is for citizens!; indeed, I begin to suspect that the argument is little more than an empty slogan. One might argue that a naturalized citizen, through investment of the time and energy to gain citizenship, is naturally loyal to the state, but that hardly addressed the first three points.

So has SCOTUS weighed in on this debate? Avi provides an answer to that question:

Ceasing to count noncitizens, documented or undocumented, toward redistricting and reapportionment would mark a dramatic departure from longstanding democratic norms and recent Supreme Court precedent. In the 2016 case Evenwel v. Abbott, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states should draw legislative maps based on total population, not the number of citizens in a district. “It remains beyond doubt that the principle of representational equality figured prominently in the decision to count people, whether or not they qualify as voters,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a unanimous 8-0 opinion.

Unanimous, no less. It makes me wonder if the Republicans are just spinning their xenophobic wheels on this one.

Don’t fart so loud, dammit!

The power of a story depends, to a large extent, on how much the audience buys into the story. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, through verisimilitude, magnetic characters, and sensory overload. The movie A Quiet Place (2018), however, inverts that last method to accomplish its goals. Set in roughly contemporary times, humanity is being hunted by creatures that primarily use the sense of sound for detection of their prey. This is the story of one farming family, surviving by their adherence of to their code of silence, a code that, on abuse, results in the sudden and violent death of the apostate.

This results in a movie with nearly as little dialogue as The Artist (2011), where the silence has a reason both integral to the story and as a mechanism for focusing the audience’s attention. Similarly, in this movie, the silence with which the characters must live focuses our attention on how the noise we generate that we ordinarily don’t even notice signals our location to anything that cares to listen: other humans, cats, dogs … predators. Their care to minimize their sonic signals acts to emphasize those powerful moments when a misstep puts them in mortal danger.

Or, worse, when the emergence of new life, engendering the cries of pain for us thin-hipped evolutionary trade-offs, brings on the worst.

The storytellers are wise, for the very manner in which mankind is being hunted is also used to fight back, and that cleverness, even if accidental, makes the story that much more interesting. Hearkening back to my preferred theory of story, that stories remain central to the human experience because they teach lessons of survival and success through depictions of the consequences of choices in specific situations, this story is a reminder that not all curses are unalloyed, that the sharpest spear may be turned against its wielder.

I said that stories succeed on how well they engage their audiences, and part of that engagement acts as a barrier to hide the holes that develop in most stories. A Quiet Place has one or two holes. For example, the hunters appear to have specialized completely in sonics, being completely blind, and apparently insensitive to odors. Does this make sense? Would a predator the size of a human, more or less, really be completely incapable of sensing odor or light? While not impossible, it seems highly unlikely.

My Arts Editor pointed out that another approach to the problem of sonic-oriented predators might be to go the opposite way: magnify the general sonic landscape. A wind-chime in every tree, perhaps.

But I think these are minor quibbles. If you violently hate horror movies, you won’t like this.

Otherwise, Recommended.

Erstwhile:

: in the past : formerly

• cultures, erstwhile unknown to each other —Robert Plank

[Merriam-Webster]

I happened to use it in a comment in some computer code for work today, and suddenly realized my conception of the definition of the word was a trifle foggy.

We didn’t used to have peonies in the backyard. Now we do. And they’re making a rush to invade from their current positions.

Mr. Hosta may not have a chance.

And the very next WaPo article I read has another example of the crumbling of a reputation, this time that of Larry Kudlow:

The U.S. economy has been growing close to 3 percent over the past year — a rate once thought impossible — and is on track to get even growthier in the second quarter. Business is booming as corporate spending on new capital equipment has surged in 2017 and 2018. Hiring and wages are rising, too. Household net worth has soared to an almost unimaginable level of $100 trillion.

Ummmm, no, it was never thought impossible. Here’s a chart from Trading Economics:

Clearly, 3% is good but neither great nor impossible.

Mr. Kudlow, I do hope you’re as rich as Trump likes to surround himself with, because I’m not sure anyone will wish to employ you after this.

Over the last year I’ve run across the occasional report that those who work in the current Presidential Administration have discovered that their services are not in the same demand by the private sector as those who’ve worked in previous Administrations, a puzzling occurrence given the private sector plumbs ordinarily won by those who’ve labored in the White House for previous Administrations.

Equally true is that finding quality people to work in the Administration has also been difficult. Indeed, finding someone to fill the #3 spot at the Justice Department has been impossible, no doubt since, in the event of the current #2 leaving, who would be Rod Rosenstein, the #3 would become the target of President Trump’s ire over the Mueller probe.

Like most folks, I put this down to an extraordinarily incompetent and untruthful Administration. Why take a chance on someone who works there having the same incompetence and amateurishness when there are more qualified people walking the streets? The inability of the Administration to recruit quality people, as evidenced by those put forth for confirmation, makes the fate of those already in the Administration that much more likely.

So reading WaPo’s report concerning the Administration’s claims that its tariff threats lead to the building of a new aluminum plant is more or less the death rattle of Presidential advisor Peter Navarro’s reputation for integrity:

“Just last Friday, we had a plant, a groundbreaking in Ashland, Kentucky, the heart of poverty in America in Appalachia. $1.5 billion aluminum rolling mill because of the president’s tax and tariff policy.”
–White House aide Peter Navarro, interview on Fox News, June 4, 2018

“This is a story that’s truly remarkable and Donald J. Trump has brought in tax cuts, deregulation and trade policies that are working for the American working people. And guess what, on Friday they opened a $1.5 billion groundbreaking aluminum rolling mill in Ashland, Kentucky.”
–Navarro, interview on Fox News, June 3

The Trump administration, led by the president, is quick to claim credit for good news even if its policies may have had little to do with it. So our antenna went up when we saw Navarro, the White House director of trade and industrial policy, repeatedly attribute the building of a rolling aluminum plant in Kentucky to the president’s tariff and tax policies.

But …

But here’s the rub: Before Trump took the oath of office, the company had announced it had purchased 202 acres of industrial park land for the plant.

“As far as the original decision to build the mill, initial investigations began approximately in the last quarter of 2016, with the site and business case evaluation,” said Jaunique Sealey, Braidy’s executive vice president for business development.

Worse yet …

Since this is a rolling aluminum plant, not a smelting plant, the tariffs will actually increase the plant’s costs, as Bouchard acknowledged in a recent CNBC interview. “Our costs for an aluminum rolling mill in Ashland, Kentucky, will go up because expenditure for our prime input, prime aluminum, will go up,” he said. But he indicated the company would pass on the costs to consumers and said that overall the tariffs are a good thing because it will raise the overall price of aluminum.

Gibbs, however, noted that the tariffs will also likely increase the cost of building the plant.

And etc. So Mr. Navarro is complicit in trying to mislead the public concerning. I notice in his Wikipedia biography that he’s a professor emeritus, suggesting he’s retired, and he’s well outside the mainstream of thought in economics, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for an economist, but those who swim against the current do have to produce.

Lying through your teeth isn’t how you produce, Mr. Navarro.

And it makes his reputation much more fragile. It makes me wonder how intellectually honest he is being with himself as well as the President, although the latter is probably only minimally damaging, as the President apparently hardly ever takes any advice anyways.

The fallout from this Administration will include half a generation of potential leaders, perhaps, if we agree that Administration experience is an important part of the C.V. of a future leader.

CNN is missing any easy bet, I think, although perhaps they believe they shouldn’t be the leader in attaching an epithet to legislation. That would be too bad, because this be accurate. Their headline reads,

Trump moves pushing up Obamacare premiums for 2019

And what it should read is

Trump moves pushing up TrumpCare premiums for 2019

The moment Trump took the decision to disable the individual mandate in the ACA, that made that legislation all about him. Best to rename it to reflect reality.

And the reality is that TrumpCare premiums are going UP, UP, UP!

On Lawfare, Paul Rosenzweig opines that Special Counsel Mueller may be feeling the pressure, as Rosenzweig doesn’t see the witness tampering charge against Manafort as being compelling.

So what is going on here? Why would Mueller’s team, whose actions to date have been premised on overwhelming evidence, take this risk and go out on this evidentiary limb?

My speculation is simple: This is a sign that they are feeling pressure. Possibly from Trump. Possibly from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Possibly just from their reading of the public tea leaves. Whatever the source of the pressure, they have an increased sense of urgency to move quickly.

And that translates to the want, and need, for Manafort’s cooperation. Not later but now. And the only way to get that cooperation now is to ramp up the pressure. The motion, if successful, would put Manafort in jail sooner rather than later, at the end of what promises to be a lengthy trial. That would concentrate Manafort’s mind quite a bit—and this is the type of pressure tactic that prosecutors use all the time. So that isn’t a surprise.

What is surprising, as I have said, is how thin the factual basis appears to be for these charges. I hope that the Mueller team isn’t rushing its effort. Now is no time to panic.

An interesting insight. Or perhaps they’ve run into a wall and are looking for a way to get the next bit of information. Manafort, as campaign chairman, would certainly be a best bet, outside of going to the source of the matter, but Trump won’t talk to Mueller. Not for all the money in the world.

Comport:

v.tr.
To conduct or behave (oneself) in a particular manner: Comport yourself with dignity.

v.intr.
To agree, correspond, or harmonize: a foreign policy that comports with the principles of democracy. [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “Voters really, really want a check on Trump. This new poll confirms it,” Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, WaPo:

That 24-point edge among white college graduates is striking, and these numbers comport with the story we had been seeing before the generic ballot numbers tightened: Trump has unleashed a large backlash among college-educated whites and younger and more diverse voters — that is, on the other side of the cultural divide from the aging, blue-collar and rural whites that Trump and Republicans hope will be energized enough to allow them to hold the House. If the backlash to Trump is holding, that suggests the conventional rules may hold as well.

I’m not sure if Steve Benen is serious or not when he’s urging Congressional leaders, clearly dismayed at President Trump’s profligate use of tariffs, to pass legislation retracting the President’s authority to create tariffs:

For now, let’s put aside the oddity of hearing these two GOP leaders insist that Congress should only tackle legislation the White House is inclined to support. They didn’t seem to feel that way in the Obama era – how many dozens of votes did they hold on ACA repeal? – but let’s not dwell on recent history.

Instead, let’s remind Congress’ most powerful Republicans that the legislative branch has a remedy for dealing with a president who vetoes popular bills: lawmakers can override a veto.

Specifically on the issue of Congress, presidents, and tariffs, there’s some precedent to keep in mind: as we discussed the other day, in his final year as president, Jimmy Carter created oil tariffs, which Congress – led by a Democratic majority – quickly overturned.

There’s no reason this couldn’t happen again. It’s a matter of political will, not institutional constraints.

And in this case, the political will is pretty one-sided: Trump’s tariffs have very few proponents on Capitol Hill. Corker’s bill, or one like it, would likely pass with considerable bipartisan support. Enough to override a presidential veto? I think that’s likely, but there’s only one to find out.

So what do you say, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan? If you agree with the Corker bill on the merits, why not give it a try? What’s Trump going to do, tweet at you?

Recall that Representative Roby (R-AL), currently the owner of a 97% Trump Score, has been constantly challenged from within her own party because she withdrew her endorsement of Trump after the release of the Access Hollywood tapes. 97%, yet she’s deemed too disloyal to deserve her seat.

As former House Speaker Boehner himself observes, this is the Party of Trump. It’s no longer the Republicans, a party of principles or policies or positions. It’s all about the personality, and loyalty to same.

The Republican members of Congress are upset because of the tariffs? A whole bunch of them are staring at mid-terms and thinking about how angry the base will get if Congress removes his tariff making powers. Many of them are in unexpectedly fierce battles, and if the base walks away, they will go down to defeat before a re-energized Democratic Party and an appalled Independent and youth movements.

They. Don’t. Dare.

Let’s face it, the Republicans are a bunch of little mice, helpless to do much of anything. They brought this on themselves by letting the extremists run most of the moderates out of the party. Now it’s extremists, racists, and folks who can’t understand the meaning of compromise, howling for Trump to have his way, and if the mice get in the way, well, being tossed out of Congress may be the least of their worries.

Don’t expect the Republicans, especially McConnell, to try to face Trump down. They can’t afford it. Speaker Ryan’s temperamentally unfit to do so.

Yeah, I think Steve was just joshin’. He knows the troubles facing McConnell & Co.

Leon Sigal on 38 North is convinced the American media is misreading Kim Jong un and President Trump:

Shocked that a Trump-Kim summit meeting could soon take place? Worried that it could collapse? No wonder. You’ve been misled by coverage of U.S. diplomacy with North Korea in the news media.

For months that coverage had all but ignored the possibility of negotiation. Never mind that the Trump administration’s stated policy was “maximum pressure and engagement.” Reporters in Washington and abroad focused on any signs of political, economic, and military pressure while all but ignoring diplomatic efforts underway offstage for fifteen months. South Korean and Japanese media followed their lead.

Once the possibility of a summit meeting became obvious, the very idea became the object of withering disparagement in the U.S news media. South Korean reporting was somewhat more optimistic and Japanese reporting more ominous, reflecting the proclivities of their governments.

Certainly the verbal fireworks have been a distraction. But I wonder if Leon understands all the implications of his concluding paragraph:

Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, seem aware of the Kims’ desire to end enmity and have taken steps to address it. What better way to start than to sit down at the negotiating table with Kim Jong Un or to say, as the President has, that he is prepared to negotiate an end to the Korean war and to normalize relations – something his predecessors never did. Ultimately, he may have to find a way to forge an alliance with Pyongyang alongside the one with Seoul. How else to assure Kim that he will be secure enough to consider yielding his nuclear arms?

Normalizing relations with North Korea would require accommodation by Trump Evangelical supporters with a regime which has, by most reports, treated its citizens very poorly. That will require some tap-dancing by the Trump Administration, or we’ll discover that we’ve been misled concerning civil liberties in North Korea by successive American administrations, as well as investigative reporters.

Or we’ll discover the Evangelical segment of the United States has really descended into unexplainable moral depravity.

A reader remarks on the declining American birth rate:

Idiots who think we need to keep growing the population to keep growing the economy are just that — idiots. We do not have unlimited space, we do not have unlimited resources. There are real limits to growth and all of the effects as one approaches them are negative. Moreover, it’s not just women now have real choices. The economy was not roaring 2016, and still is not. Capitalists and the 1% are making money hand over fist once again, but the working class has never really recovered, and has really in all truth been taking it in the shorts since roughly the mid-1970s.

The same reader continues:

I meant to mention how inaccurate or distorted the government’s employment statistics are, as well. People are a lot worse off, job-wise, than they indicate.

Which indicates either the wrong data is being collected, or the wrong statistics are being publicized.

The decision on the Masterpiece Cakeshop has come down from SCOTUS, and the decision is 7-2 in favor of the baker who won’t make a cake for a same-sex couple’s marriage celebration. As I suspected, SCOTUS paid no attention to my argument that the baker mistakenly believes a civil wedding is a religious ceremony; their decision appears to have centered on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s comments when they had denied Masterpiece’s claim. Or, as several commentators note, including Kevin Drum notes, they punted:

But it’s also incomplete. I think it’s pretty clear that the court simply didn’t want to rule at all on this subject.

Here’s the thing: this is pretty much a no-win situation for the Supreme Court. On the one hand, it involves obvious questions of free speech and freedom of association that are pretty important. They’re so important, in fact, that they apply even in cases of straight-up racism and sexism that have none of the subtleties of Masterpiece. The Augusta National Golf Club—a high-profile meeting place of the rich and famous that’s featured on network TV annually—refused to admit blacks until 1990. 1990! They refused to admit women until 2012. 2012! And that was perfectly legal. …

Kevin believes the Court will just ignore the entire issue until enough of that generation dies off that it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s really an ugly corner case in which a difficult case is made worse because it involves the arbitrary morality of a supernatural creature. That’s a real problem when trying to formulate societal logic that really works.

The ACLU lawyer, David Cole, who lost the case proclaims victory in WaPo:

The court ruled Monday in favor of the baker, but on the exceedingly narrow ground that the state civil rights commission’s consideration was biased by hostility toward religion. Importantly, the court declined to adopt the baker’s principal argument — and the only argument made by the Trump administration — that “expressive” businesses that object to gay and lesbian weddings have a First Amendment right to discriminate. On the contrary, the court reaffirmed our main point: that there is no general First Amendment exception to laws protecting LGBT customers from discrimination. …

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing the majority opinion, could not have been more clear in rejecting the argument that there is a First Amendment right to discriminate. He wrote that “it is a general rule that [religious and philosophical] objections do not allow business owners . . . to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.”

But for some nasty language by the Commission, Masterpiece would have lost.

Andy McCarthy on National Review is disappointed:

Finally, speaking of the First Amendment, this was a straightforward free-expression case, as Justice Thomas (joined by Justice Gorsuch) explained in separate opinion concurring in the judgment. A wedding cake is an implicit expression of approbation, and in Phillips’s specific vocation, a form of artistic expression. As the Court recounted, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission has on at least three occasions protected bakers who — quite understandably, and I think admirably — refused to make cakes that abominated gay couples. That is, the commissioners recognized the palpable free-speech implications. Well, the First Amendment safeguards our right to refrain from expressing not only what the government condemns but what it endorses; indeed, it is the latter that cries out for First Amendment protection.

The freedom of speech clearly embraces Phillips’s right not to be compelled to engage in patently expressive conduct endorsing gay marriage. The state could easily recognize this right without disturbing its anti-discrimination act — even neutral laws of general application must accommodate protected speech.

The Court could have resolved the case that way. But it preferred the consensus appearance of a 7–2 vote to the faithful rendering of a 5–4 decision. With due respect to my editorial colleagues, I believe the justices’ obvious reluctance to defend liberty is a setback. The implication is plain: As long as the next “civil rights commission” is fashionably demure, the next Jack Phillips will lose.

He doesn’t notice the Kennedy comment that ACLU lawyer David Cole quotes. He doesn’t wish to address the damage done to society when someone refuses to provide a service to a protected class. How would Andy feel if a cakeshop run by homosexuals refused to provide cakes to straight couples? Perhaps he’d have the same response: just move along to the next cakeshop. Given the ugliness of this situation, it may not be that awful a suggestion.

On Slate, UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler, on the other hand, rejects the interpretation of a narrow ruling based on some close readings:

Although the justices never explicitly said so, the court seems to have quietly established that business corporations have religious liberty rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution. If that is right, then Masterpiece Cakeshop could be a groundbreaking decision with profound reverberations in American law. …

Often overlooked in the controversy over the wedding cake was that the lawsuit was brought not only by the baker. It was also brought, as the name of the case indicates, by Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd., a corporation chartered under Colorado law. That corporation was one of the “people” claiming its rights were violated. And the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the baker is also a victory for the corporation—one that may enable future businesses to assert that they too have been victims of religious discrimination. .

Over and over again, corporations have won rights through Supreme Court decisions that, like Masterpiece Cakeshop, provide little or no justification for why corporations as such should be able to claim those rights. In the 1880s, the Supreme Court held that business corporations have equal protection and due process rights with no explanation; the court simply dropped a sentence in an opinion saying they did. In the 1930s, the court ruled that corporations have First Amendment press freedoms, again without offering any reasons for including corporations.

That’s just bloody unsettling. OTOH, while stare decisis is the generally accepted norm concerning SCOTUS decisions, it’s not unknown to overturn such decisions, in whole or in part. And Professor Winkler writes, perhaps unconscious of the irony,

Justice Neil Gorsuch, an avowed originalist, began his concurring opinion (in which Justice Samuel Alito joined) by calling Smith “controversial in many quarters” and citing two law review articles making forceful originalist arguments against Smith. It was a clear signal to lawyers that at least some of the justices are ready to read the First Amendment to require exemptions for businesses like the bakery here—and presumably many other businesses whose owners have religious objections to things like same-sex marriage and birth control.

I doubt an originalist could possibly make a credible argument that a corporate entity has the same rights as a human being under the Constitution, which makes Gorsuch’s concurrence in this opinion dubious – in my uneducated opinion.

Earlier in this thread, I had noted that the judiciary was nuts if they strayed into questions concerning who’s an artist and who isn’t, and Dahlia Lithwick, also on Slate, helpfully notes this is something SCOTUS appeared to be avoiding:

Consider the extraordinary fact that, as Eugene Volokh notes, a case that was initially brought as a religious-liberty challenge, then briefed and argued almost entirely on free-speech grounds, was decided Monday on religious-liberty grounds. This is likely because the court, after oral arguments, quickly realized that inserting itself into questions about whether bakers, florists, hairdressers, makeup crews, and busboys are all “artists” for First Amendment purposes might be folly. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch seem to be the only justices game to try.

Dahlia believes this is primarily about Justice Kennedy:

To the extent Masterpiece Cakeshop resolved the issue it was granted to take on—whether or not the dignitary interests of religious dissenters can override civil rights and public-accommodations laws—the rule that emerged is simply that we must speak civilly toward one another. …

But constitutionalizing major civil rights disputes based largely on who spoke more rudely to whom feels an awful lot like pandering to the Suffering Olympics discourse that serves only to convey that whoever feels the most dignitary injury will ultimately prevail. The reason the court agreed to hear Masterpiece Cakeshop in the first instance was to resolve that impasse. Rooting a decision in whose words were most hurt-y to Kennedy’s ears adds nothing but confusion.

Ouch.

There’s lots more out there. Professor Winkler leaves me quite unsettled, as loopholes like the one he thinks he sees are fodder for lawyers everywhere. Otherwise, it’s a little hard to see this as much else than kicking the can down the road, hoping time will dissolve the problem for them.

The self-pardoning tweet of President Trump has led to quite a lot of feedback from various commentators, which Jack Goldsmith helpfully collects into one post on Lawfare. Jack’s conclusion after surveying the crowd?

[Alan] Dershowitz is probably right to emphasize that in the unlikely event a president is willing to take on the political costs of self-pardoning, it is unlikely that a court will ever decide whether such a pardon is lawful. First, “a prosecutor would … have to try to prosecute the former president.” Then, “the former president would have to raise the pardon as a defense.” Finally, “the courts would have to decide whether, under our system of separation of powers, the courts have jurisdiction to review a presidential self-pardon.” Dershowitz might have also mentioned that the successor president could, without legal controversy and to alleviate doubt, pardon the self-pardoned former president.

In sum, there is no obvious right answer on the validity of self-pardons, and if Trump becomes the first president to pardon himself, a court will probably not provide an answer.

Far be it from me to disagree, but as a software engineer, this strikes me as one of those ugly corner cases which really needs a resolution, if only to make our future more predictable. Furthermore, I would hope that the judiciary would find against any such right of the President, for reasons I cited here.

The entire self-pardoning power, if permitted to exist, would be a weak ligament in the otherwise strong system of government we currently enjoy. This is not to suggest that these are not troubling times for non-Trumpists, but we’re not on the edge of armed insurrection; the resistance, outside of, perhaps, the antifa, seem dedicated to operating within the parameters of the law.

A couple of weeks ago we suffered another intrusion by Orange Kitty, the neighborhood bully, who took advantage of the moment to molest a faux-piscine member of the family:

Yep, that’s a catnip fish clutched in his avaricious paws.

Paws can be avaricious, right?

Earlier this week the NFL announced that players who would be kneeling during the national anthem should instead stay in their locker rooms until the anthem is finished. President Trump chose to reject this approach, as if he had any say in the matter:

The Philadelphia Eagles Football Team was invited to the White House. Unfortunately, only a small number of players decided to come, and we canceled the event. Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!

The NFL was responding to pressure from both its fans and President Trump, and while of course this entertainment segment is dependent on its fans, it also has to have some sort of backbone or it risks becoming a sheet to the wind, to borrow from the old saying, and any sailor knows that an unsecured sail can swiftly become worthless.

This is the risk the NFL is taking as it meddles with this policy.

The NFL needs to find a way to climb out of this hole it’s dug for itself, and I suggest it show a little leadership. First, it should revert the above policy and assert the right of the players to show their dissatisfaction with the status of racial equality by kneeling during the anthem. This public activity may annoy those fans unconscious of the flawed state of affairs, but perhaps it’ll wake a few of them up.

Second, it should find a way to acknowledge the real racial disparity problems which persist in this nation. Sure, the game of football has made a number of African-Americans rich – but it’s also saddled them with brain injuries and other physical problems. The NFL is a rich organization, perhaps they should work on finding ways to help poverty-stricken African-American communities improve themselves, and publicize it.

And if Trump gets whiny about their policy, kick the asshole in the teeth. One of the great story themes of America has been telling the powerful off. The NFL is certainly powerful in its own right, but the President sees himself as some sort of national CEO. Kick him in the teeth, Commissioner Goodel.

I just received in my mail an announcement from the Democrats:

Democrat Lauren Arthur just WON her special election for the Missouri Senate, flipping a Trump-won district from red to blue!

Lauren’s win marks the 42nd time Democrats have flipped a Republican-held seat from red to blue since Trump took office. That’s historic – and it shows yet again that voters everywhere are REJECTING the GOP’s extremism, even in the heart of Trump country.

KMBC News of Missouri confirms:

How significant is this victory? It’s hard to say. In 2016 the Republicans won by about 23 points, and in 2012 by about 5 points. On the other hand, the turnout of 24,591 is less than 1/3 of a normal turnout, so that suggests the results are swayed by general voter enthusiasm. I glanced at losing candidate Corlew’s website and noted not a single mention of President Trump on the front page. My guess is that this election may have partially turned on purely local issues.

Still, a Democratic flip of a seat remains a flip and should continue the energy the Democrats will need in the midterm elections in November.

Remember Representative Martha Roby (R-AL2), who barely made it into Congress in 2016 when she dared to withdraw her support from then-candidate Trump, and then proceeded to vote 100% with his agenda – and still drew criticism and threats of another primary challenge? Well, I fear her allegiance to the extremist conservative cause isn’t as strong as it was, as FiveThirtyEight demonstrates:

Yes, she’s dropped a full 2.5 percentages points from perfection with the extremists, and that’s just not good enough – she’s being assailed by primary opponents. WaPo explains:

“I know that I back up the president, I support the president, and I will continue to do that,” [candidate Rich Hobson said].

As if she hasn’t?

A former Democrat is actually the most serious primary challenger to Roby. Former congressman Bobby Bright is running for the seat that Roby took from him in 2010, this time as a Republican. He’s also cozying up to conservatives to draw a contrast with Roby.

“I am a Republican, my philosophy is Republican, and I want to run this race as a Republican,” Bright told local TV station WTVY.

Alabama candidates who don’t get a majority of the vote must go to a runoff in July with the second-highest vote-getter. Republicans watching the race expect Roby to go to a runoff with Bright. …

Roby may well go on to win a fifth term in Congress despite her very public reprimand of the president back in 2016. But her struggles to clear Tuesday’s primary present two important lessons for Republicans in Congress right now: (1) This is Trump’s party, and (2) Beware of questioning him out loud.

Boy, say one bad thing and the Trump faithful will try to trample you underfoot. This is really an indictment of the GOP base, which has slid rightward as moderate members are ejected through the RINO mechanism or leave in sheer disgust at the membership’s behavior. The requirement and expectation of a personal loyalty, so visibly demonstrated in the Comey firing scandal in which Trump requested a pledge of loyalty from then-FBI Director Comey, is a symptom of a fundamental illness afflicting the GOP, a political immaturity in which one’s views on the challenges facing the nation, which are addressed through the formulation and application of policy views, is less important than the loyalty to the Party Leader.

That loyalty culture will, I think, make for a very brittle Party, and if Trump is ever caught committing an unforgivable act, the GOP will shatter because it’s no longer built around policy or moral positions, but rather a person. If he disappears, the consequent power struggle combined with that loyalty structure will result in a GOP in which various factions will fight for control over the base, and the base will try to pick who to be loyal to, rather than asking who has the best policies. It may shatter the GOP, or make it less effective as loyalty bonds become indestructible by anything less than death.

And I gotta say, that fellow Bright who is considered Roby’s biggest challenger sounds like a real third-rater. Shifting from Democrat to Trump-lover, for that’s what it means to be in the GOP these days, is a long ways to go, even for a conservative Democrat. If I met him, the first thing going through my mind would be “power-addict, watch out!”

My Arts Editor pointed out last night that in order to accept a pardon, someone must be found guilty and accept that they are guilty. Naturally, this leads to the observation that, apropos the hubbub over Trump claiming he can pardon himself, it would be an admission of guilt.

And then think of President Ford’s pre-emptive pardoning of former President Nixon. Applied in the current context, pre-emptive pardoning would be an admission of future guilt for those Trump might pardon.

And then, he might even pre-emptively pardon himself.

Image: From the University of Washington’s production of Julius Caesar

It’s a two-edged sword, isn’t it? Does he immunize himself from all federal criminal prosecutions, daring his base to support him even as a future criminal? Indeed, this would be an admission of future guilt. He would be giving himself effective absolute power (at least until his subordinates refuse to do his bidding), since Congress doesn’t dare to impeach him. Both wings are controlled by blind Trump partisans, if not directly, then indirectly, and so Trump remains safe from that threat. However, his base, while able to give GOP elected officials pause, is not large enough to support him in office without help; he requires the support of independents, and most of them, already rejecting his use of the Presidential office, would be even more repulsed by this naked grab for power and immunity.

It’s madness like this that makes Trump’s claim so ludicrous. I have no idea how SCOTUS might rule if asked, but, to me, hypothetical scenarios like this make the self-pardon claim a bad joke.

From USA Today:

A Kentucky high school student wanted to share some words of wisdom with his graduating class, but there was a twist that no one saw coming.

“This is the part of my speech where I share some inspirational quotes I found on Google,” said Bell County High School valedictorian Ben Bowling in his speech. ” ‘Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.’ — Donald J. Trump.”

The crowd burst into applause.

“Just kidding,” Bowling said. “That was Barack Obama.”

The 18-year-old valedictorian said the crowd quickly went silent.

But I had the poor taste to start laughing. Bowling wants to study medicine, but I think he should go into stand-up comedy as well.

The decline mentioned in the previous post on this thread continues, according to WaPo‘s Pat Dvorak:

The American birthrate is sinking: 3.8 million babies were born last year — the lowest number in three decades and down 2 percent from 2016, according to a new report by the National Center for Health Statistics.

It’s a decline that is alarming demographers and social scientists — many of them men who chart womb activity like the consumer price index or manufactured-goods sales.

If this keeps up, they fret, we may become like Japan, where adult diapers outsell baby diapers.

Babymaking dropped in the 2008 recession and kept sliding. That makes sense to the charts-and-graphs people. But by 2016, the economy was roaring, business was booming and experts kept wondering when, exactly, women were going to crank the baby factories back up.

Pat thinks she knows the answer:

Here’s the answer: choices. For the first time in human history, women truly have them. A lot of women don’t feel pressured to have kids they don’t want.

“I think there is far more permission to choose a child-free life than there ever has been,” Davidman said. “There’s so much out there to help child-free women feel good about themselves, to not feel shamed.”

It’s not childless. It’s #ChildFree.

“The child-free movement is very much linked to women having more choices,” said Amy Blackstone, a sociology professor at the University of Maine who staged a decidedly nontraditional shower (It’s a . . . Blog!) when she launched her journal of her child-free life with her husband.

I wonder, though. How we might measure this in objective terms? Well, we could ask how many women are turning to artificial insemination techniques in order to become pregnant. Actually, the question would have to be more subtle in order to mitigate unrelated factors such as choosing later in life to have childen, but, still, that information would tell us if this is really a result of it being a choice increasingly made in the negative by potential parents, if the artificial insemination approaches are dropping, or if something more biological is happening, if artificial insemination is going up. The latter might indicate the biosphere is becoming less suited to human occupancy, suggesting befoulment by humanity is not conducive to continued existence. Unfortunately, a five minute search yielded little more than this 2014 NPR article which suggested that the number of IVF births is climbing. Hardly a definitive answer.

On our trip to Stockholm, WI, we ran across one of our favorite plants, which we call ‘everted lungs,’ and bought a couple.

In nearby Pepin, where we had an excellent lunch at the Harbor View Cafe (now for sale), we also encountered this interesting … gutter.