Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here’s a puzzle for my frazzled mind:

This summer, the Georgetown Center for the Constitution will again offer its week-long “boot camp” on originalism in theory and practice, open to students from all law schools, as well as to recent law school graduates. The 2019 Summer Seminar will run from May 20-24. It features an all star roster of professors and jurists decribing the cutting edge of originalism theory, as well as how best to utilize it in practice. It includes adherents of different variations of originalism, as well as a critic of originalism. As in past years, we will visit the Supreme Court of the United States.

Students attending the Originalism Summer Seminar will receive a $2,000 award for their participation. The five-day course runs from Sunday evening, May 20 to Friday evening, May 24, 2019. Morning sessions beginning at 8:00 a.m. followed with a daily luncheon and afternoon meetings each day. A reception and dinner will be held on on May 22 and the week concludes with a farewell reception on May 24. The application season closes February 15, 2019.

Students will receive an award for participation? What, these students have to be bribed to hear the presentations? Generally, this runs the other way – you pay for your boot camp, whether it’s academic, avocational, or sports, not get paid. Makes me wonder. I hope those students can bring the proper skepticism to what appears to be a controversial theory & practice.

The smart ones will refuse the payment.

Politico reports that Sarah Huckabee Sanders thinks President Trump was God’s choice:

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said during an interview with Christian Broadcast Network News. “And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

Which reminds me of some words of support President Bush (43, not 41) received that I happened to see on TV back during his campaign – some voter said she thought that God had picked Bush to be President.

That was well before the wars and economic disaster of the Bush Administration befell us, which I suppose humiliated said voter. Or maybe not, they seem fairly immune to self-abnegation. I later opined that if God had picked Bush, he must surely hate America. And, fact is, most Republicans don’t care to mention President Bush in political conversation. Maybe they did finally pick up on the enormity of their position.

Dana Milbank is on the right track:

This makes sense, because Trump has of late been acting as if he draws his authority from the divine right of kings. He’s asserting his absolute power to act without — and often in contravention of — the Democratic House, the Republican Senate, his own intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities and diplomats, and the will of the American public.

Presidential defenders say the Sanders claim is simply a repetition of the biblical admonition that all temporal leaders are established by God. And conservative evangelicals have reason to be pleased with Trump’s judicial picks and other policies.

Right up until those judges indulge in incompetence or corruption and are ousted, or, worse, actually turn out to be good judges (such as this one) and rule against the corporatists’ and would-be theocrats’ pet positions. Then they’ll proclaim him to have fallen under the influence of Satan. Poor chap.

But I must say, as an agnostic, Sanders’ remark, her belief that she’s reading the mind of the Divine, or at least interpreting it from the “will” of the voters, is illustrative why such people should simply be laughed out of public discourse. Let me illustrate by building on Sanders’ delusion.

I believe that, given the danger our President has put his own nation in through his actions and inactions with regard to national security, environment, and political corruption, God has decided Americans must learn to appropriate judge their own government, and replace it if need be. Therefore, he willed Trump to be President against the popular vote, and is now waiting for all faithful Americans to surge forth and remove him.

Oh, and fix your damn electoral system while you’re at it. For our God believes in Democracy, and that ain’t Democracy you’re doing.

See? It’s easy. When you’re reading the mind of something that has written so many contradictory and obscure things, and he/she/it is not around to correct you, you can make up any old shit and it sounds good.

And then the zealots come popping out, and before we know it there’s a few dozen people burned at the stake and the lawn is a mess. Do you think I’m joking? Go read some English history. Some representative examples, from which the American Founding Fathers no doubt learned, are embedded in this link.

The point is that Sanders is proceeding down a path bereft of rationality. She has some facts, yeah: President Trump, “conservative judges,” policies she likes. But those don’t add up to a hill of beans until she inserts the approval of a Divine creature for which there is no known objective proof. This is doubly a problem because the human species does not share minds nor consciousness, meaning all we can do is imperfectly communicate. What does that mean?

Sanders may be lying. Or perhaps she’s had a brain malfunction and really thinks she’s talking to God. Or maybe it’s all just deduction on her part. No one can be rationally sure, except perhaps a neurologist with a blood test in hand. But while those first two points are obvious and don’t need discussion, that last one needs a bit of buffing and polishing because Sanders’ idea of the divine is necessarily dissimilar from damn near everyone else’s, and that means her deductions, which necessarily come from her assumptions about God’s mind, may not match my readers’, or her confidants, or her political opponents, or herself a week earlier.

Or mine. She sees the Divine picking Trump as the guy who makes the evangelicals happy by doing their will, regardless of how much he lies, cheats, bellows, boasts, mismanages, and misleads.

And I see Trump as the cautionary lesson, the encouragement to pay more attention to governance and less to, well, pick your favorite time-wasting hobby. Like, say, celebrity adoration. Reality TV shows. Or studying the Bible. God wants us to perform better, not have more judges of a particular bent. That’s my opinion, based on a close study of all the objective information about the Divine. (In case my reader is in doubt, that would be a grand total of none.)

And who’s right? This is the nub, so pay attention. Neither one of us is provably right, yet there are people who don’t deal well with such uncertainty, who’d love to fight the good fight without knowing just which side is the good side.

The Founding Fathers had recent instructive examples in the history of religious folks, and that’s why we’re a secular nation. That’s why the Johnson Amendment exists. I don’t care how much it galls any of the religious folk, Christian, Hindi, or what have you, the history of theocracies is poor and getting worse, and that’s because rationality is not part of the discourse.

And, yes, I’m pissed off that Sanders would display her poor judgment and ridiculous deductions in her role as a government spokesman. It’s an embarrassment. This country excels when it’s rational, and falls apart when it’s in the throes of religious sensibility.

Was that a thank you or a curse?

The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King (2017; in Norwegian, Askeladden – I Dovregubbens hall) retells a Norwegian fable with a knowing wink and nod. Myth decrees that if ever the Princess of the kingdom reaches her 18th birthday without wedding a suitor, the Troll King under the mountain will awaken and make her his bride, enslaving her and no doubt subjecting her to a variety of undescribed atrocities.

In what becomes a theme for the movie, Princess Kristin, who incidentally and rather purposely has mad knife-throwing skills, also has thoroughly modern sensibilities, not only in not taking the myth seriously, but in also refusing to wed the rather cocky Prince who presents himself as ready to take on the responsibilities of the Kingdom. Exactly why he’s a prince and wasn’t drowned somewhere along the way is not clarified.

In order to escape a potential forced wedding, or any other wedding for that matter, the Princess escapes into the night, and when the King is so informed, he announces that he who returns with the Princess can have her in marriage, along with half the kingdom.

Princess Kristin has some problems controlling her horse during her escape, resulting in the young man destined to be known as the Ash Lad, Espen, being knocked off a bridge and into the river. She ends up wet behind the ears as well, and so they spend the evening drying off before a fire – before an unseen force knocks them apart.

Espen returns home to his two brothers and father, bereft of food, and they go off hunting while he is told off to watch the fire at home, and, before we know it, the house is afire, resulting in the Ash Lad appellation. Their loss of home being the end of the line, they hear from the searching Prince that the discovery of the Princess might save them, and so off go the brothers to find her.

Between forest nymphs and old witch, pond sharks and an exceedingly bad tempered troll king, the brothers find the Princess and return her for the reward they want: home & respect.

The theme of modern sensibilities intruding shows up in the treatment by the characters of the world around them. For example, the evil Prince observes that “… there are many accidents during the Royal hunt,” suggesting the Princess can be killed easily enough if she interferes with the Prince’s reign.

But hero Espen, a young man who is brave enough, but loses focus and wanders off too easily, is, well, it’s surprising he made it to adulthood. His brothers, competent at accomplishing tasks, are impatient with his behaviors, and it’s a strangely modern sensibility in a story concerning the ravages that occur when myths are defied.

And that’s one pissed-off troll king. A small mountain with a prodigious nose, trees growing out of him, and a temper to dismay even the great & heroic Prince, the troll is the shadow around the corner, the vengeance upon those whose reach exceeds their grasp, a temper to dismay even the evil Prince and his minions, the creature in violation of all norms of behavior and even of existence; that sunlight destroys him speaks to an allegory concerning how shining a light on boastfulness and arrogance will bring evil fates down upon those holding such attitudes.

In a word, he’s cool. I wish he’d had some dialog.

The dubbing I thought was excellent, although my Arts Editor disagrees, and the movie never drags. The theme that differences are not necessarily bad is at war with older themes concerning the importance of orthodoxy, and perhaps those latter lose in this movie. But it’s a fun movie, if you’re in the mood for it, so give it a go if you like fairy tales from other countries.

What say you and I dump this case and go get married, instead?

The Kennel Murder Case (1933) is a formulaic whodunit in which the dogs play only a nominal part, apportioned between the categories of romance, a quick-witted free-lance detective, slow-witted cops, and humor. Unfortunately, little time is given to actually get to know the characters, with the exception of the victim, who, it turns out, is thoroughly unlikable, leading to a veritable cavalcade of suspects parading throughout his residence. This made it hard to keep track of all the suspects, even though they had nicely thought out motives. We really didn’t care that much about them, I fear.

The print itself, viewed through Amazon Prime, was damaged and/or the film was overexposed from the get-go, and the audio was a trifle messed up as well. The romance was more or less a zero (“Really? Him??”), but the comedy left me with some gentle laughs.

But, in the end, this was something of a disappointment, just suitable for viewing while keeping my sickly Arts Editor company.

Back in 2016 I criticized Obama and the Democrats over their use of the term common sense. For me, anytime a politician advertises their solution to some problem as being common-sense, red flags are raised and that politician’s assertions should be examined with vigor and enthusiasm.

Today, newly elected Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) used that term so many times in a WaPo op-ed piece that I think my blood pressure went up ten points. It’s not that I’m against compromise, but that he misrepresents positions consistently, and hides behind common sense as if it’s an invincible barrier. In fact, it reminds me of some of the emails I’ve dissected on the blog that come from the conservative email lifeblood – they may seem reasonable, but once you start thinking for yourself, you realize this is just sophisticated bullshit. Shall we take a look? All the bolding in the quotes are my additions to remind you that Senator Scott is attempting to hide public nakedness by hiding behind the bush of common sense.

One year ago, I called on Congress to make a simple deal on immigration requiring both Republicans and Democrats to do two things — compromise and respect the wishes of the American people. This deal is so logical and so easy, even politicians in Washington should be able to grasp it. But, as the events of the past few weeks have shown, they cannot.

Democrats would have to agree with the American people that our border needs to be secure, and that we need some kind of physical barriers to secure it. It’s not complicated; it’s common sense.

Or … it’s a lie. From a recent WaPo/ABC News poll:

For every goal imputed to the wall, researchers have shown it would have little to no effect. The public doesn’t agree with Senator Scott, they agree that a wall is a waste of money. Back to the good Senator:

Republicans would have to agree with the American people that “dreamers,” kids who grew up here after being brought to the United States by their parents, must be welcomed into our society. Again, it’s common sense.

In the biz, this is known as a softball, because it’s easy to hit while not revealing anything about the folks in question. Of course, Dreamers shouldn’t be deported, because that would be cruel. Nearly no one disputes that. But the Republicans have a legitimate concern when it comes to Dreamers: if you legitimize this generation of Dreamers, what’s to keep more illegal immigrants from arriving with babes in arms and continue the drama onwards? It’s a serious question that requires far more debate than it’s received. I like the idea of figuring out what’s gone wrong in those nations from which immigrants are coming and trying to fix it, even if it means curtailing our exports to those countries. I’ve yet to see another one, and this one has the added positive that President Trump himself came up with it, as he noted in a speech to the United Nations. But does Senator Scott mention that?

Senator Scott is now trying to take advantage of that bush he’s hiding behind:

Hate is bad that way; it clouds your judgment. As former senator Alan Simpson said at the funeral for former president George H.W. Bush, “Hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in.” That’s the predicament that Democratic leaders find themselves in now. They hate President Trump so much that they cannot behave in a rational manner.

Of course, Senator Scott has no time for trying to understand the motivations of the Democrats. He’s trying to weave a story of how the Democrats are haters, and will behave irrationally because of that hatred. In fact, this article is not a missive concerning border security, that is merely a grandma’s cape he’s draped over it. This is actually the next blow in the 2020 election, wherein the Republicans will be attempting to paint the Democrats as irrational and untrustworthy.

As long time readers of this blog know, whenever the extremist/Trumpist wing of the Republicans attacks the Democrats, it’s always worth asking if the Republicans are simply projecting, attempting to divert attention from the exact same characteristic in the Republican extremists’ ranks.

In this case, the reigning example of political irrationality would be, you guessed it, President Trump.

But let’s continue mining this artful little article. Senator Scott would like to have us believe the Hispanics are in favor of the wall:

Florida is home to nearly 21 million people, more than 4 million of whom are Hispanic. They want fairness for these dreamers. But guess what else they want: a secure border. That’s right, and it’s not something you hear on the news, but it is true: Hispanics want border security.

In a post-election survey of 1,014 Hispanic voters in Florida, my campaign asked this question: Thinking about our nation’s immigration laws, do you think we need stricter or looser enforcement of these laws?

Sixty-nine percent of the respondents said we need stricter enforcement of our immigration laws, while only 29 percent preferred looser enforcement. Hispanic Americans want our borders secured.

Securing our borders with a physical barrier is not a partisan issue, it’s a common-sense issue.

And, having committed some more gross intellectual errors, Scott is hiding behind the bush again. But, at this point in the article, we’ve learned to read carefully and not skim. (You’re not skimming this blog post, are you?) Here’s what I see as errors.

First, he’s conflating a goal with a process. Stricter enforcement? Fair enough, that’s a reasonable goal. This does not imply a wall. We’ve already seen multiple researchers find that a wall would be a waste of money. Why, then, would this Hispanic population want a wall, if it’s not going to work? The poll Scott’s carefully quoting isn’t, from his own words, asking about a wall, but about stricter enforcement.

Second, he’s conflating border security with immigration laws. By most accounts, illegal immigrants arrive at ports of entry with tourist visas, and simply don’t leave when those visas expire. The wall is going to help how with this or with immigration laws in general? Let’s be clear: If there’s any effect at all, it’ll be minimal and certainly not worth either the $5.7 billion Trump wants to start the wall, nor the $25 billion he estimated to finish it, nor the $50 billion that experts say it would cost to construct the proposed wall. And then there’s the environmental issues, maintenance issues, and etc. etc.

And, third, there’s the simple intellectual dishonesty behind those couple of paragraphs. The wall, border security, and immigration law and enforcement are separate topics; indeed, they’re not even in the same category. A wall is part of border security, which in turn is a small part of immigration law and enforcement of same. Walls are simple and easy to understand, yes? But …

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.  –H. L. Mencken

In fact, I should thank Senator Scott for this article, because, as a political independent, for me it’s really crystalized the Wall as an icon for duplicity, irrationality, dishonesty, and confusion on the part of President Trump and the Republicans. Every time I see or hear anything about the wall, there’s at least one thing from those four categories present: the American populace wants it (the majority do not), it’s already being built (neither the GOP-controlled 115th Congress nor the 116 Congress, not GOP-controlled, have designated any dollars for a new wall), it’ll keep out illegal drugs (no), it’ll keep out illegal immigrants (no, and in fact the lessening of that flow of illegal immigrants may be having a negative impact on our economy), most of them are rapists (crime rates are thought to be lower than for native born Americans), they’re mostly gang members (no), the caravans would be stopped by the wall (the caravans go to the ports of entry and apply for asylum, for the most part), and add your favorite lie here. If it goes up, it may be the most shameful monument to President Trump ever built.

And now we return to Senator Scott’s op-ed, already in progress, to see the real point of his writing:

There is only one thing standing in the way of this common-sense solution for America: irrational and clouded thinking motivated by hate from Democratic leaders in Washington.

Dishonest? Sure. Senator Scott fails to represent the true reasons the Democrats, and most Americans, are against the wall. If he were interested in a good solution, he’d understand their reasoning as well as his own, represent it fairly, and then rebut it or find a good compromise position. Instead, he wants to spread the myth that the Democrats are irrational. To say that his compromise is common-sense is a failure of the intellect, and condemns his as shallow, short-sighted, and politically motivated.

Bu it doesn’t matter which party is involved, when someone starts throwing around the phrase common sense when it comes to political matters, it’s a fair bet that they’re either vastly inexperienced or entirely duplicitous. I leave it to my reader to decide which category into which Senator Scott belongs. But remember it for the future, and apply it liberally, especially when dealing with someone from your own side. Honestly telling them they’re full of crap will improve the party, not ruin it, no matter what the adherents spout to the contrary.

Oracle recently won a Federal court ruling concerning Java APIs in litigation with Google, and Ars Technica reports that Google is taking this right to SCOTUS. Why?

An application programming interface is the glue that holds complex software systems together. Until 2014, it was widely assumed that no one could use copyright law to restrict APIs’ use—a view that promoted software interoperability.

Then, in 2014, a court known as the Federal Circuit Appeals Court issued a bombshell ruling taking the opposite view. Oracle had sued Google, arguing that Google had violated Oracle’s copyright by re-implementing APIs from the Java programming language. The case has been working its way through the courts ever since, with the Federal Circuit issuing a second controversial ruling in 2018. On Thursday, Google asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit’s controversial ruling.

I had to dig around in this article and the previous one, to be sure of what’s going on here, but that second paragraph above is accurate, even if other parts of the articles obscured the issue: Oracle is suing Google for replacing Java “libraries” with their own versions, alleging that the signatures are copyrighted and may not be used in this way without Oracle’s permission. In most programming languages of any sophistication, code is chopped into pieces for easy reuse, such as “get the current time” or “calculate the tangent of x.”. As an analogy, think of meringue, which can be made in several forms, and is used in innumerable recipes. It is, in and of itself, a piece of no particular use (OK, some would disagree, but you’re just sick, sick, sick!), but in combination with other pieces, enables a delicious dessert^[1].

These “pieces” of code have what is called a “signature,” implicit or explicit, associated with them, and that signature defines how to use, call, or invoke (all meaning the same) that code. For some programmers, an “API” is both the signature and the code that implements that calculation of a tangent. (Our analogy to recipes breaks down at that point, so don’t go looking for help there.)

For other programmers, though, that signature is separate from the implementing code. You find this in languages that believe in “type checking,” which, in this regard, means double-checking that the invocation of the piece of code is correct. It’s also important in languages supporting polymorphism, which means (among other things) various pieces of code with the same name, as the decision concerning which one to invoke during execution of the code is dependent on some other factor; the signature enables the proper invocation of whichever piece of code is chosen. So it is in Java.

Now, these pieces of code are usually collected into libraries of one sort or another, and some of these libraries are dynamically linked to the programs using them – which, in English, means the library is not physically bundled with the program, but instead exists as a separate file. And here’s where Oracle is screaming bloody murder – Google has apparently been replacing Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems, the developer of Java, until they were bought by Oracle) supplied Java libraries with Google-written libraries.

So, if Oracle ultimately prevails, what does it mean?

“The Federal Circuit’s approach will upend the longstanding expectation of software developers that they are free to use existing software interfaces to build new computer programs,” Google wrote in its Thursday petition to the Supreme Court.

James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at Cornell University and former software developer, agrees with that. “The Federal Circuit’s decision threatens the continued vitality of software innovation,” he told Ars.

If APIs can be restricted by copyright, then every significant computer program could have legal landmines lurking inside of it. Grimmelmann warns that API copyrights could easily give rise to API trolls: companies that acquire the copyright to old software, then sue companies that built their software using what they assumed were open standards. API copyrights could also hamper interoperability between software platforms, as companies are forced to build their software using deliberately incompatible standards to avoid legal headaches.

It’s rather fascinating. I’ve been off working in a company-proprietary language for the last twenty years, which means I’ve not been exposed to certain industry-practices for quite a while, and thus I have little feel for how often these Java, and other language, libraries are being replaced by other suppliers^[2].

Let’s assume it’s a lot. And that Oracle wins. What’s next? Does Oracle sue the pants off everyone, not just Google? Do other library suppliers also sue?

Is it litigation central?

Well, it’s a corporate knock-down drag-out, so I suppose it’s going to depend on who has the best lobbyists in the House of Representatives, and who has bought the most Republican Senators in the Senate, because if the software industry comes to a grinding halt, some will start screaming for legal relief, and we’ll have the fun of watching a pack of lawyers-turned-legislators trying to understand the difference between a signature and the code described by that signature, and how the latter should be copyrighted, but not the signature.

Because I can’t see the shebang being excluded from the copyright laws. That’s not fair to the corporations who’ve paid for a lot of this code to be written.

Perhaps Oracle wins – and everyone walks as far away as possible from Oracle. There is definitely an inter-corporate social culture out there, and it’s possible that Oracle might find itself socially excluded, as it were. However, given that they supply the most successful database program ever as well as Java, one of the most successful languages around, it seems unlikely.

Maybe Oracle licenses companies to supply replacement libraries? Perhaps you have to exhibit a certain amount of technical competence in order to win that license? Could be a net gain for the industry?

Personally, having seen, second-hand, the Court furrow its collective brow over the measurement of gerrymandering, sorting out signatures vs code should be quite the circus for them. Google may not be looking forward to this appeal, as it may not work out for them.

¹ At this juncture, my Arts Editor is in the midst of a gagging fit. She hates meringue. That’s probably the reason I haven’t made a good lemon meringue pie in years.

² I tried Java out for two weeks when it came out. I went in excited, I came out appalled. It was just C++ in a pretty dress, and C++ was a mess. I suppose I belong in the same club as the guy who proclaimed “X Windows sucks and will be gone in two years.” (X Windows is the equivalent of the visual interface most of my readers use everyday when running Windows). Well, he was half-right – X Windows continues to trundle along, but, having programmed in it, it sucked at the time. I felt the same about Java and C++.

Actually seen in California, via WaPo:

Drakes Beach and its access road from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard are temporarily closed to all vehicle, foot and bicycle traffic due to elephant seal activity in the area.

Apparently chasing them off is a problem, as they’ve entrenched during the shutdown. But …

Source: Wikipedia

For the humans of Drakes Beach, it might not be a total surrender. Dell’Osso said staff members are exploring the possibility of offering guided tours of the Drakes Beach elephant seal colony. A similar program happens at Año Nuevo State Park. Visitors who want to see the seals at that park are encouraged to bring a warm jacket, water and sturdy walking shoes.

Perhaps this is part of the Nature push-back. Human evicted from this beach, come help us occupy it now…. Next up: Manhattan Island!

Remember my concerns over American abrogation of the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) and how it might affect international relations (link here, mitigation here)? This is all based on the premise that international relations do not happen in a vacuum, the opposite of which, on the face of it, is risible. But the recent meltdown of Venezuela under the watch of President Maduro, his continuance in office, and the recent decision by the Trump Administration to support Juan Guaido, President of the National Assembly, as the President of Venezuela without recourse to Venezuelan legalities, has suspicious leaders wondering if they’ll be next on the chopping block. Semih Idiz in AL Monitor reports on one of them, erstwhile Trump-buddy Turkish President Erdogan:

Developments in Venezuela are reverberating in Turkey, especially after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threw his weight behind the country’s embattled President Nicolas Maduro.

Erdogan feels honor bound to do so, of course. Maduro was among the first international leaders to contact him even though the two hadn’t met before and offer support against the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016. …

The fear in government circles and among the religious and nationalist supporters of Erdogan is clearly that Washington — with support from other Western democracies — could do to Turkey in the future what they are trying to do to Venezuela today.

Those who believe this are also angry with Turkish commentators who stress the mistake of standing up for Maduro and his authoritarian regime.

They are particularly furious with those who stress that the international opposition to Maduro comes mostly from the democratic world, while authoritarian countries like Russia and China are the only ones joining Turkey in supporting him.

And there’s lots more of an interesting nature at the link, but this is illustrative of how the world watches the United States, and everyone else with enough heft to interfere in other nations’ domestic affairs. I know little about the Venezuelan leader Maduro, and only a bit more about a situation in which an oil-rich country appears to have mismanaged itself into a real corner.

Erdogan I’ve watched a bit more. He appears to be attempting to transform Turkey from a secular country into an official Muslim country as a way to shore up his power base and accumulate more power personally, which according to reports is starting to corrupt the Muslims, even as they reach out for that power. I’d not weep if he were to be swept from power legally.

And I emphasize legally. Respect for the law, even in the face of suspected illegalities by authorities in the law enforcement hierarchy is important because otherwise we have the gored ox phenomenon: it may have been your opponent’s ox who was gored in today’s rioting, but next year it might be your’s.

But the moral of this particular post is that the world is watching America’s every international move in order to divine what it may do tomorrow, and our fidelity to international legal norms – or lack thereof – will have an impact on our international relations with countries which are not directly involved in those actions.

Meretricious:

1. Apparently attractive but having no real value.
   ‘meretricious souvenirs for the tourist trade’
2. archaic Relating to or characteristic of a prostitute. [Oxford Dictionaries]

Popped into my head as cool-sounding but of unknown definition, although just by sound it seems denigrative.

Conservative pundit George Will in WaPo:

When Democrats are done flirting with such insipidity [aka Beto O’Rourke], their wandering attentions can flit to a contrastingly serious candidacy, coming soon from Minnesota. The Land of 10,000 Lakes and four unsuccessful presidential candidates (Harold Stassen, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale) now has someone who could break the state’s losing streak. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is the person perhaps best equipped to send the current president packing.

Really? Hey, I love Amy as our Senator, but there are some Minnesota-specific reasons she blew out her opponent in her re-election last year, and it all starts with her public appearance. She is absolutely reflective of Minnesota introspective/passive-aggressiveness. Hell, we’re the home to a passel of generations of Finnish immigrants, who’s favorite joke is …

How do you know a Finn likes you? He’s staring at your shoes, not his own.

She’s not a polished speaker, much like our termed-out Governor (and former Senator) Dayton, neither of whom could inspire a pack of squirrels to squabble over a bunch of rotten apples, and because of that she connects with most of us Minnesotans at a subconscious level. For us, she’s the one sacrificing herself so the rest of us don’t have to. She appears to acquit herself well, hasn’t stepped in any horseshit, offended any minorities, and appears to be well on her way to a respectable, but not standout, career in the Senate, and that’s no mean thing.

But that doesn’t mean she’s Presidential timber. How is she going to connect with New Yorkers who expect and respect constant aggressiveness? With rural voters who are suspicious of the Congressional crowd because they don’t speak their language? She hasn’t yet presented that campaign-organizing Presidential goal, such as what eventually became the ACA for Obama, or the Wall for Trump, or finishing the Cold War for Reagan. While not necessary, it’s an immense help to a campaign to have that campaign point to discuss, to enlighten supporters and inflame critics.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong. But I don’t think her communications skills are up to the job, at least from what I’ve seen. Maybe she has hidden reserves. Maybe she’s been sand-bagging us all, and soon we’ll learn to fear the might of President Amy.

Nyah. She’s too mild-tempered for that.

Over the last few days there’s been work in Congress on legislation which would eliminate the requirement that Continuing Resolutions be passed by Congress, thus eliminating the entire shutdown crisis scenario. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive outfit, decided to think about it a little bit:

By allowing the government to keep operating without any action by Congress and the President, an automatic CR mechanism would significantly reduce pressure to reach agreement on full-year appropriation bills and thus would tend to prolong budgetary uncertainty. Most important, it likely would significantly increase the instances in which the previous year’s appropriation levels and priorities remain in place for a year or more while pressing, new needs go unattended and areas that no longer need as much funding are overfunded. In addition, by freezing funding at last year’s levels (as an automatic CR would likely do), it would strengthen the hand of those who want to shrink the size of government.

An automatic CR could be particularly problematic in fiscal year 2020. As explained below, it could make it more difficult to secure a sound budget agreement that sets the appropriations caps at levels sufficient to maintain progress made under the last budget agreement in a range of areas and address pressing needs, including the decennial census and the recently enacted veterans’ health legislation known as the Mission Act.

If you’re a conservative, you probably don’t care. If you’re a small-government fanatic, you may be nodding your head and smiling.

But, while I’m no games theorist, I’d like to point out that an auto-CR facility will significantly increase the complexity of the political game in Washington, D.C., and that game is already fairly complex. The danger of unintended consequences will go up, and if my conservative reader is happy today at the thought of using this auto-CR facility to simply suffocate those programs he considers superfluous, overweening, or otherwise undesirable, rest assured that progressives will have their best minds working on how to use such a facility to their advantage.

I’d not be smiling if I were on either side, and as an independent I’m not sure I like it, either.

Look, while I appreciate the deviousness of a surprise pin of a queen in chess, or a particularly deceitful toe touch in fencing, as much as the next competitor, in general I prefer a more straight-ahead approach to life. When it comes to the government, I don’t want to see oily politicians like Mulvaney hiding being some sort of auto-CR legislation in order to, say, not fund his hated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) at what others may consider to be an appropriate level. It’s. Just. Dumb.

But even more importantly, consider this. These shutdown crises are high stress situations for everyone involved, from the Federal employees and contractors who are not getting paid and trying not to be evicted or served with repossession papers, to the elected leaders who may or may not have gotten us into this mess^[1], but sure are responsible for getting us out.

And pressure situations serve to strip away artifice and obscuring tactics. They can reveal to us, the electorate, the real nature of those folks we’ve elected. And that’s important. For those of us who really want to see and understand our representatives, both Executive and Legislative, this is a good opportunity to get a peek under the business suits. During our most recent shutdown, we saw President Trump’s gross incompetency at the governance game; we saw the Congressional Republicans shuffling around impotently, unable to convince themselves to even pass legislation that they had passed in the prior Congress, just because President Trump had been literally manipulated into rejecting it, forcing a shutdown.

Not that any of this was a big surprise to regular watchers, but it’s another opportunity to confirm evaluations.

But seeing Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Schumer (D-NY) go to town on Trump and the Congressional Republicans served to give us a great view of what the Democrats can do, given an opportunity. They have a firm grip on the rules, written and unwritten, that runs American government, they held their side together, and they refused to be buffaloed by the great bully himself.

This example is why I think the auto-CR legislation, as well-meaning as it is, is short-sighted. Yes, it’s very tough on Federal employees and contractors during a shutdown, and that’s not good. But this Republic really needs budgets agreed to, appropriations negotiated, passed, and signed off, all on a regular basis. When these shutdowns occur, they can reveal to us the true nature of those who force these things upon us in a way that other events cannot. We learned that the 116th Congressional Republicans are even more subservient than the 115th Congressional Republicans, but the 116th Democrats can operate as an effective team and enforce their will, all quite lawfully and, in my view, rightfully, on the Executive. We learned Pelosi is not some shrill housewife, but a coldly effective leader with whom it’s frankly dangerous to cross blades.

And, using that information, voters can perhaps improve on their selections when the 117th Congress comes around. We saw who was effective, and who was not. The Republicans have yet another red flag waving in their faces.

¹ The most recent shutdown started during the 115th Congress, which was entirely controlled by the GOP. That Congress terminated and was replaced by the 116th this January, and is, for those hiding underneath a rock, split between the GOP controlling the Senate and the Democrats controlling the House. Therefore, the shutdown started because the 115th Congressional GOP could not nerve itself to override Trump, thus leaving the entire mess for the Democrats to clean up. I suspect this’ll turn out to have been a tactical error in retrospect, as the Democrats have every appearance of being effective, while the GOP sat around on its hands and waited for Trump to do something, and he was incapable.

Continuing the saga of Roger Stone, apparently he left quite a trail behind himself, according to Lawfare:

On Thursday, the Special Counsel’s Office filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in its case against Roger Stone seeking an exception to the Speedy Trial Act due to “voluminous and complex” evidence. According to the filing, Stone’s defense counsel does not oppose the motion.

Just how voluminous is that information? From the motion:

Upon the entry of a protective order, the government intends to begin providing defense counsel with discovery. This discovery in both voluminous and complex. It is composed of multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information consisting of, among other things, FBI case reports, search warrant applications and results (e.g., Apple iCloud accounts and email accounts), bank and financial records, and the contents of numerous physical devices (e.g., cellular phones, computers, and hard drives). The communications contained in the iCloud accounts, email accounts, and physical devices span several years. The government also intends to produce to the defense the contents of physical devices recently seized from his home, apartment, and office. Those devices are currently undergoing a filter review by the FBI for potentially privileged communications.

Is it intimidation through a tsunami of information? Could be. Or it could be that Roger “Drama Queen” Stone really didn’t care about morality and is going to be getting himself quite the case of notoriety, which, given his sartorial tastes, is unsurprising. I suppose his tattoo of Richard Nixon on his backside should be a big clue.

I hope he enjoys “the pen.”

Some folks hate the word irregardless. My current linguistic hatred isn’t over a non-existent word, but rather the misuse of a word. I’ve seen this in many places, so I’m not picking on Senator Scott (R-SC). It’s from a letter to the Wall Street Journal, which Steve Benen helpfully reproduces in part:

I am saddened that in the editorial “Democrats and Racial Division” (Dec. 1) you attempt to deflect the concerns regarding Thomas Farr’s nomination to the federal bench. While you are right that his nomination should be seen through a wider lens, the solution isn’t simply to decry “racial attacks.” Instead, we should stop bringing candidates with questionable track records on race before the full Senate for a vote. […]

We must not seek to sow the seeds of discord, but rather embrace the power of unity. Simply put, if the Senate votes on a candidate that doesn’t move us in that direction, I will not support him or her. Our country deserves better.

Bold mine, to show the key word is deserves. Deserves is a reactive word, a word applied to indicate someone, or something, has performed a task at a level of excellence worthy of recognition and reward.

Mere existence doesn’t cut the butter.

One might argue that our country has achieved great things, but the fact of the matter is that this country has also performed atrocious acts. Another argument is to suggest that, as unexceptional and even guilty of atrocious acts as our country may be, the individuals nominated for the position, in this particular case, are still unworthy, but this is a denigrative act in defense of an entity which has numerous crimes to its own name, regardless of whether it has atoned. In the end, this logic, both formal and emotional, becomes too convoluted for the individual who values direct and accurate communication. In a word, this approaches baroque.

Add in the simple fact that deserves is a word that can also be used by those who feel entitled by birth in a variety of irrelevant attributes, such as sex, gender, color of skin, etc, and its misuse is not only irritating to the precision-inclined individual, but dangerous to society as a whole, since fidelity to reality is a key step in the task of survival and improvement.

I advocate a return to the recognition that country, as a whole, exists, and that its improvement is an honorable goal. If I were Senator Scott, I’d simply state that confirming a nominee who apparently holds racist views, or is willing to suspend his own good judgment to implement the noxious views of his superior, would be deleterious to the country’s moral health, and that the current President should raise his standards, for the good of the country.

For a more positive example, I give you the dubious sentiment that children deserve a good education, a sentiment I’ve seen expressed several times. Well, no, the existence of children, in and of itself, does not result in any such deduction. Reality, in and of itself, does not care. However, if we take to heart the thoroughly reasonable principle that an educated citizenry leads to a prosperous and peaceful state, then advocating that a good education for children is good for the country seems reasonable and convincing – and accurate.

Suggesting anything deserves something purely because it exists is both silly and dangerous, because it comes dangerously close to presupposing the divine, the wildcard of human existence.

My last rep, Senator Klobuchar, is not all that far behind in her answer to my suggestion for ending the shutdown. This time I don’t even get boilerplate concerning the subject, just thanks for your idea. Sort of. Not really.

Thank you for contacting me about the government shutdown. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

As you may know, an agreement has been reached between Congress and the President to reopen the federal government until February 15, which will allow furloughed federal government employees to go back to work, workers to be paid, and services to resume. Please know that I will continue to work toward finding a long-term solution as discussions continue in the Senate.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me. I continue to be humbled to be your Senator, and one of the most important parts of my job is listening to the people of Minnesota. I am here in our nation’s capital to do the public’s business. I hope you will contact me again about matters of concern to you.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator

But her punctuality isn’t too bad. I wonder if she’s going to run for President or stick with the legislating job.

Ever wonder if the Endangered Species Act works for marine mammals? OK, I hadn’t thought about it, but NewScientist’s (online only) Michael Le Page has checked into it:

The Guadalupe fur seal via Wikipedia

But no one had done an overall assessment of how well it has worked for the 60-odd marine mammals and turtles listed, including the Antillean manatee, the sei whale and Kemp’s ridley turtle. Now Abel Valdivia of the Center for Biological Diversity in California and colleagues have crunched the numbers for 31 populations of 19 different species.

The team concludes that 24 of these populations are recovering, five are stable and just two continue to decline. The recovering ones include the Guadalupe fur seal, the green sea turtle and the Pacific population of fin whales, which has increased from under 2000 to nearly 10,000. The recovering populations have all been listed as under threat for 20 years or more.

Naturally, if something works, the Trump Administration is ready to set it on fire. But if he can be removed from office in 2020, his replacement should be able to help guide any necessary refurbishments.

In case you’re not a lawyer – I’m not – and you’re wondering about the various maneuverings that go on in Court, here’s one as noted by Lawfare:

The special counsel’s office has filed a memorandum in U.S. v. Concord Management and Consulting, LLC in opposition to Concord’s motion to disclose documents identified as “sensitive” by the Special Counsel to certain Concord officiers and employees. The memo alleges that subsequent investigations into Concord have “revealed that certain non-sensitive discovery materials in the defense’s possession appear to have been altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign” apparently aimed at discrediting the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

And then the memorandum is presented verbatim. Concord is half-owned byYevgeny Prigozhin, and is associated with the Internet Research Agency, indicted nearly a year ago by Mueller.

Altering and disseminating court papers. This is the sort of thing where someone needs their head banged violently against a metal pole, but it’s just not going to happen without a militant President to do it.

Stretching reality into whatever shape is needed.

My Arts Editor insisted I watch Brazil (1985), and, besides the fact that I can’t imagine why it’s entitled Brazil, I have to say it was a fascinating look into how and whether the human mind can compartmentalize its way to sanity, as we watch terrorist attacks ignored, as best they can, by diners in restaurants and cleanup crews in government ministry buildings; men who work in government offices sharing desks through the office wall, and fighting over it, in offices a mouse might find small; and even, in the end, during the death by torture of a man who manages to soar off into a beautiful future in his mind, as even his own life is coming to an end.

If only the latter had happened, then I might have written it off as a mind descending into madness to evade the unacceptable, but as we watch the above as well as entire offices that watch old video dramas such as Casablanca when the boss isn’t watching them, and then madly working when he appears, or consider the behavior of workers who, when confronted with the mere mention of a required government form in order to enter a residence to perform repairs, retreat in terror, there comes a frisson of wonder about our own concern over rules and regulations, which run through this film much like the duct-work which impinges continually on the visuals.

The rogue, the person unimpressed with the government forms and the rules they represent, are the flies in the ointment of this bleeding wound on society, labeled terrorists for, perhaps, good reason, as the occasional wall is blown out with explosives. But then again, the Information Retrieval specialists, who operate in the broadest sense of the term, are, in their own way, government-sponsored terrorists, removing those who may add yeast to a bread that seems a trifle flat.

And on this part of the tour we’ll be inspecting a modern dental station!

But this all works, more or less, from the sordid realities of overweening bureaucracy to the hero’s night-time dreams of defeating its embodiment as a Japanese warrior, because it follows its own logic scrupulously, at least so far as I can make out, both internal to the society and how human beings would react to it, from its embrasure to its rejection. In some ways, it predicts those who would reject democracy because it leaves them naked on the beach, hungry and vulnerable. Nothing is sacred in either reality, but those in power will fight to stay in power.

And, in some ways, it’s a tabula rasa on which an observer might draw his or her own lessons about any of a multitude of subjects.

Should you see it? That depends on your tolerance for whimsy and the utter disregard for the plausibility of a social reality portrayed with one’s tongue firmly in one’s cheek. If you have a high threshold and have never seen this classic, then Recommended.

PS and the computers are utterly charming, a paean to the Art Deco movement of a century ago.

Remember Wisconsin’s hooking of a Foxconn plant? This dormant thread is suddenly interesting again because … it may not happen.

Foxconn is reconsidering plans to make advanced liquid crystal display panels at a $10 billion Wisconsin campus, and said it intends to hire mostly engineers and researchers rather than the manufacturing workforce the project originally promised.

Announced at a White House ceremony in 2017, the 20-million square foot campus marked the largest greenfield investment by a foreign-based company in U.S. history and was praised by President Donald Trump as proof of his ability to revive American manufacturing.

Foxconn, which received controversial state and local incentives for the project, initially planned to manufacture advanced large screen displays for TVs and other consumer and professional products at the facility, which is under construction. It later said it would build smaller LCD screens instead. [NBC News]

Which should be unsurprising. American labor is expensive. This is true in the absence of any other factors which would give Americans an unadulterated advantage, which is to say targeted tariffs are not the answer. Even astronomical taxes on the cheap shipping enabling cheap overseas labor to compete with expensive American labor may not be enough.

And, honestly, I have no idea what will be the answer that preserves high wages for American manufacturing employees, at least in the realm of the reasonable. Heck, even unreasonable is hard. The only one that comes to mind is a plague that kill all the non-American manufacturing employees, and that’s both repulsive and unlikely in the extreme.

So what is Foxconn considering?

“In terms of TV, we have no place in the U.S.,” he said in an interview. “We can’t compete.”

When it comes to manufacturing advanced screens for TVs, he added: “If a certain size of display has more supply, whether from China or Japan or Taiwan, we have to change, too.”

Rather than a focus on LCD manufacturing, Foxconn wants to create a “technology hub” in Wisconsin that would largely consist of research facilities along with packaging and assembly operations, Woo said. It would also produce specialized tech products for industrial, healthcare, and professional applications, he added.

Hello, knowledge workers. I doubt Foxconn‘ll ever make it to the project 13,000 workers. And that’s the real failure of the Scott Walker bribe. It’s not that it won’t recoup the bribe, because that’s not the goal – it’s great if you do, but Wisconsin’s real goal was to help the manufacturing sector. It appears this will be chalked up as another Walker failure, although he and his successors will kick dirt in the face of manufacturing employees as they wiggle around trying to take credit for getting a research campus, instead.

Joshua Howego of NewScientist (12 January 2019, paywall) reports on what may be a case of picking the wrong metric for measuring progress towards success, a problem I expect to be common as “AI”, or rule production systems, are deployed more and more:

A police force in the UK is using an algorithm to help decide which crimes are solvable and should be investigated by officers. As a result, the force trialling it now investigates roughly half as many reported assaults and public order offences.

This saves time and money, but some have raised concerns that the algorithm could bake in human biases and lead to some solvable cases being ignored. The tool is currently only used for assessing assaults and public order offences, but may be extended to other crimes in the future.

When a crime is reported to police, an officer is normally sent to the scene to find out basic facts. An arrest can be made straight away, but in the majority of cases police officers use their experience to decide whether a case is investigated further. However, due to changes in the way crimes are recorded over the past few years, police are dealing with significantly more cases.

It’s a bit of a relief that they’ve severely limited the scope.

Setting the goals of these algorithms is perhaps the most important part of the development and implementation process, isn’t it? Let’s take the above example: is our goal simply to increase our percentage of solved crimes by discarding the those crimes that are hard to solve?

What if those hard crimes were all the murders in the city?

Residents aren’t counting crimes solved, because while jaywalking, for example, has important consequences for traffic flow, people really don’t care about it as a crime, unless they’re an environmentalist who believes cars have become the illegitimate dominant life form of American cities.

If a series of high-profile murders occurs, this frightens the residents. The fact that they’re hard to solve should not militate against working them.

In the end, this is an scarce resource allocation issue, isn’t it? First we have to understand the goal of the system, which might be best stated as a calm populace. Then we have to understand what alarms residents vs what they can put up with, and we have to understand that may change over time. Only then can an  effective resource allocation system be developed. The system described above sounds a bit half-assed, doesn’t it? Or at least not based in reality.

As a guy with way too many passive interests and too little time, there’s a lot of things that might motivate me to generate a comment that don’t because because of that lack of time, and if I did, my hands might go on strike at all the typing. Into this category I can thrust the Covington Catholic students controversy. I ignored it because its initial presentation just sounded like a lot of other bigotry, and yet the details didn’t jive. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a report of some Catholic high school students, visiting Washington, DC, for the March of Life, had a confrontation with a tribal elder who was in town for Indigenous Peoples March, and has a notorious picture of a group of the kids, some in red MAGA (Trump’s slogan, Make America Great Again) hats, staring or smirking, depending on who you read or how you interpret, at the elder.

Then there were reports that a group of people who call themselves Black Hebrew Israelites might have been involved, an interview with the elder that seemed a little odd, and a couple of days later, one of my favorite writers, Andrew Sullivan, has his own analysis of the incident. He reports on his viewing of the YouTube videos:

What I saw was extraordinary bigotry, threats of violence, hideous misogyny, disgusting racism, foul homophobia, and anti-Catholicism — not by the demonized schoolboys, but by grown men with a bullhorn, a small group of self-styled Black Hebrew Israelites. They’re a fringe sect — but an extremely aggressive one — known for inflammatory bigotry in public. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated them a hate group: “strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic.” They scream abuse at gays, women, white people, Jews, interracial couples, in the crudest of language. In their public display of bigotry, they’re at the same level as the Westboro Baptist sect: shockingly obscene. They were the instigators of the entire affair.

Which I had not noted in any previous reports, but then I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. But then this:

And yet the elite media seemed eager to downplay their role, referring to them only in passing, noting briefly that they were known to be anti-Semitic and anti-gay. After several days, the New York Times ran a news analysis on the group by John Eligon that reads like a press release from the sect: “They shout, use blunt and sometimes offensive language, and gamely engage in arguments aimed at drawing listeners near.” He notes that “they group people based on what they call nations, believing that there are 12 tribes among God’s chosen people. White people are not among those tribes, they believe, and will therefore be servants when Christ returns to Earth.” Nothing to see here, folks. Just a bunch of people preaching the enslavement of another race in public on speakers in the most inflammatory language imaginable.

Andrew then gives a number of their somewhat insulting, somewhat incomprehensible examples of racism and misogyny. No doubt my persistent agnosticism leaves me incapable of being properly outraged.

Christine Semba barely mentions the Black Hebrew Israelites in taking this opportunity to discuss the old Japanese movie Rashomon (1950), and how its engagement with the slippery concept of truth is mirrored in this incident.

Did Nathan Phillips, the 64-year-old Omaha elder, spark the confrontation by walking toward the Covington Catholic High School teens? Were those teens — especially 16-year old Nicholas Sandmann, who in videos is seen staring Phillips down, refusing to move — disrespectful, possibly even racist? Was this a case of the “liberal news media” rushing to destroy young people’s reputations, or of conservatives attempting to reframe reprehensible behavior into martyrdom?

“Rashomon on the Mall,” pundits have dubbed it: a far less exalted version, as befitting our far less exalted times. Yet Kurosawa’s film is celebrated for its investigation of deeper questions than most of our Twitter debates have touched on so far.

Erick Erickson of the far-right, Christian site The Resurgent has only pity:

I’ve mentioned how the Republican Party will, and is, ripping itself to pieces through the purification ritual known as RINO, that is, ejecting a member because they are Republican In Name Only. However, that tendency also will increasingly inflict external damage to itself, as we see in this news report from AZ Central:

Kelli Ward, the bomb-throwing [metaphorically speaking! HW] conservative former state senator and loyalist to President Donald Trump, upended the race to lead the Arizona Republican Party by beating the establishment favorite and incumbent GOP chairman, Jonathan Lines.

In doing so, Republicans from across the state on Saturday chose a more right-wing vision headed into the 2020 election cycle where Arizona is poised to reach battleground status.

The election could have far-reaching implications for how the party messages to voters and how it spends money on races.

As the general electorate of Arizona drifts toward the center, as exemplified by the victory of Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the race for seat of retiring Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) at the mid-terms, the Arizona Republicans, blind to the political landscape, continue flying along to the rightward extremes.

I see this as another step in the trip to rebuilding the GOP – by first self-flooding it with an explosive element (Ward), which will not lead to the victory they may envision. Political extremity and purity in that extremity are not the recipe for turning lead into gold – only for tying that lead weight to the ankle and throwing them into the lake.

On Lawfare Chuck Rosenberg notes that Roger Stone, recently arrested by the FBI and charged with lying to Congress, among other things, and he notes that Stone, who many on the right want to excuse for his boyish enthusiasm, appears to be fairly bloody-minded about his enthusiasm:

Stone was also charged with witness tampering, a crime that strikes at the heart of the judicial process. There are numerous allegations in the indictment of Stone urging others to lie. Those urgings clearly run afoul of the witness tampering statute. And, if that’s all there was to it, a summons might be the way to go.

But there is a more compelling reason to arrest him. The devil is in the details. Read, for instance, page 20 of the indictment, where prosecutors note that Stone emailed one witness and called him a “rat” and a “stoolie” and threatened to take that witness’s dog away from him. In another email that same day to that same witness, according to the indictment, Stone wrote “I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].”

Law enforcement simply does not hand a summons to someone who threatens to kill a witness and trust that person to act responsibly with it.  No conscientious prosecutor would think a summons appropriate there, or think that a threat to kill a witness is simply what targets of grand jury investigations routinely do.

That’s why the FBI showed up at 6am and took him away in handcuffs, like any common alleged criminal threatening violence.

But it’s important to note that Process crimes is a phrase which functions as a smokescreen, an obscure and unintelligible phrase unless you’re one of the initiate – and then, because you’re not a lawyer, but just someone who’s being spoon-fed some info, you get to feel elite while actually misunderstanding the character of the crime.

Rosenberg does not go too far when he states that “… witness tampering strikes at the heart of the judicial process.” Sure, it’s not murder, rape, extortion, or blackmail. Nor is it child-molestation, arson, or fraud.

But it is the crime that enables all those others, isn’t it? Think about it. Our judicial process, at it’s best, and it often is, depends on the testimony of witnesses. They can be wrong, confused, or otherwise limited, but the fact remains that, without a witness, many and even most crimes cannot be prosecuted.

When some right-wing pundit insists Stone’s only been charged with process crimes, that it’s hardly a crime at all, be careful about swallowing the bait. Witness tampering can easily be the attempt to close the gateway to extremely serious crimes, and that makes witness-tampering as serious as the crimes Stone is trying to obscure.

This one could have been entitled “The Woman Of Many Absurd Hats.” It would have been a better title.

If you’re looking for a tidy little sports drama, It Happened In Flatbush (1942) might be up your alley. A retired baseball player, notorious for botching the play that could have won his Brooklyn team the pennant, has been coaching in the minor leagues in obscurity for seven years since, and now he’s being called up to the big leagues in the manager’s role. But if he’s going to help his old Brooklyn team win, he has to romance the team owner into upgrading the team, calm the family waters, and get over his own crisis of self-confidence. It’s one of those tight & tidy dramas emblematic of the era, and if it doesn’t blow your socks off, it also doesn’t disappoint.

Discover lists the weirdest objects in the Universe. #2 is …

The Black Widow Pulsar