Unsightly Mental Blemishes

“You’ve got to get in people’s faces,” he told APTA participants. “You’ve got to go in and ask for something” — even of the “knuckledraggers that came in in the last election that hate taxes.”

– The late Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) in 2011, concerning his fellow GOPers.

Ted Gup claims that President Trump is abdicating his responsibilities:

In recent weeks, nearly all the talk in Washington centered around impeachment — would they or wouldn’t they? Now the nation faces a new worry — abdication. That’s right, the President who imagines himself a king, and expects others to treat him the same way, has declared that he will have nothing to do with Congress on infrastructure legislation — perhaps the one area where he could have won bipartisan support — so long as the Dems insist on holding him accountable. In effect, Donald Trump has announced that he has abdicated, having no longer any wish to serve. [CNN]

But I think he’s building up Trump too much, because he’s not the one with the purse strings. Congress controls the purse, and if Congress, in its two chambers, as led by Pelosi and McConnell, decide to – in this case – positively attack the infrastructure problem, they can do so – and if they have to override Trump’s veto, they can do that, too. All it takes is the realization that Trump is no political leader, and that the GOP has a governance responsibility.

Trump may look like a King to Gup. but to me he’s no more than a demented old man overwhelmed by his responsibilities.

The call of Rep Justin Amash (R-MI) to begin the impeachment process against President Trump has been joined by another GOP member, retired Rep Tom Coleman (R-MO). This is a fragment of an editorial he published in the Kansas City Star:

Because DOJ regulations put a president above the law while in office, I believe the only viable option available is for the House of Representatives, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, to open its own investigation, hold public hearings and then determine if they should pursue removal of the president through impeachment. There is a trove of evidence in the Mueller report indicating Trump has committed multiple impeachable offenses, including abuse of power and lying to the American public. Both were part of the articles of impeachment brought against President Richard Nixon. This process would allow a full public review of wrongdoing, while providing Americans an opportunity to obtain a better understanding of the consequences to our national security and the lingering threat to our democracy.

If this process leads to impeaching Trump in the House of Representatives and also results in convicting him in the Senate, his illegitimacy would survive through Vice President Mike Pence’s succession to the presidency. Because the misdeeds were conducted to assure the entire Trump-Pence ticket was elected, both former candidates — Pence as well as Trump — have been disgraced and discredited. To hand the presidency to an illegitimate vice president would be to approve and reward the wrongdoing while the lingering stench of corruption would trail any Pence administration, guaranteeing an untenable presidency. If Trump is impeached, then Pence should not be allowed to become president. The vice president should resign or be impeached as well if for no other reason that he has been the chief enabler for this illegitimate president.

Representative Coleman served in Congress 1976-1993, so he’s not part of the recent, last 20 years, surge to the right by the GOP. But he serves as yet another spotlight from that recent and authoritative past upon the corruption of the current GOP.

But he also goes further in that he calls for the impeachment of not only the President, but the Vice-President as well, in a weird echo of a long-ago (and perhaps overly dramatic, if I’m honest) post of mine.

Again, this is not a huge crack in the GOP. Rep Amash will now be facing a primary challenger for the next election. Most of the other Republicans who’ve disapproved of Trump have, understandably, left the party that they felt unwelcome in. So far, Coleman is a single dissenter, an admirable voice who examined the evidence and came to an unpopular conclusion.

And he’s worth noting for it.

Yesterday my Arts Editor and I had the pleasure of touring one of the more obscure museums in the Twin Cities, the Minnesota Museum of American Pattern Glass. This is a museum devoted to pattern or pressed glass, produced mostly in America, dating from 1890-1925.

We were fortunate in that the founder, Peter Thomas, was at the front desk and more than willing to give us a lecture on the history and physical processes behind the entire pressed glass industry, and he presented this information with copious authentic examples. My Arts Editor was fascinated and plied him with questions, most of which he was able to answer in a thorough manner.

And then he turned us loose on the collection, and it was a real pleasure to go through the museum. It’s not huge, which is something of a relief for the museum walker familiar with the monstrously large (and I say that in the most loving way possible) Minneapolis Institute of Art; the Minnesota Museum of American Pattern Glass preserves a focus on its interest, while assuring you that you’ll still be able to walk out to your car afterwards.

The displays are composed in such a manner as to emphasize the beauty of their components. A single display often includes all known information concerning the elements. Everything is clean (the cleaning of which makes me dizzy at the very thought) dazzling, and well-curated, and Peter was more than happy to answer questions that came up as we strolled along.

While I collect nothing but dust myself, we do have a couple of pieces of pressed glass (circa unknown, but we figure 1930s), and here’s a picture of one.  We’re told  that this is a cup plate, used to set one’s cup on after the cup’s saucer has been used to cool one’s tea.  This is one of a set of eight.

The Minnesota Museum of American Pattern Glass is at 15 South 1st Street, Suite A-4, Minneapolis MN,  (on the corner of Hennepin Avenue and 1st Street South).

Check the website for hours.  Hours are sharply limited, so make sure you get there on time and with time for lecture and tour, for which an hour and a half should be adequate. Parking is on the street, and, the museum, being on the ground floor of a condo highrise, has a dedicated external entry on Hennepin Avenue.

Autotrophy (plus more!):

An autotroph or primary producer, is an organism that produces complex organic compounds(such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) from simple substances present in its surroundings, generally using energy from light (photosynthesis) or inorganic chemical reactions (chemosynthesis).^[1] They are the producers in a food chain, such as plants on land or algae in water (in contrast to heterotrophs as consumers of autotrophs). [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Zombieland: The vast world of hidden microbes miles beneath your feet,” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (11 May 2019, paywall):

But by far the most common deep lifestyle is autotrophy, which means making your own food. Under the earth, microbes use the rock itself as a source of energy. Under intense heat and pressure, chemical processes generate energy-rich inorganic molecules that microbes can break down to produce energy. Collectively, these organisms are known as chemolithotrophs, which literally means “chemical rock eaters”.

I was reading Amber Phillips’ take on Memorial Day family political chat, and particularly the question of who the Democrats might want to pick to beat Trump:

This is the question Democratic voters are mulling over right now, according to Washington Post reporting. And there’s no consensus answer, at least not yet. Many are willing to sacrifice the candidate their heart wants for the candidate they think can beat Trump. But could that backfire?

Amy Walter, a political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, thinks there could be a divide between who party elites think would be electable and who the rest of the party wants. A new Pew Research survey shows base voters get more excited by minority candidates. So picking a Joe Biden or another moderate, white male, Walter writes, could depress “the very voters Democrats need to turn out if they are going to beat President Trump.”

And it occurred to me, how about Barack Obama for VP? He brings the minority element to the ticket, so you can put anyone you want in the top half of the ticket, and there’s not the least doubt in the world that he’s more than qualified for the job.

And watching the GOP wrestle with their biggest nemesis’ shocking reappearance would be immensely entertaining.

OK, so this probably wouldn’t fly, and it might even light up the GOP’s base to come out to the polls. But having competency back in the Oval Office after watching this man-child flop around for four years would certainly be a relief to serious Washington-watchers.

From the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

The en banc court stayed proceedings and certified the following question to the Montana Supreme Court:

Whether, under Montana law, dinosaur fossils constitute “minerals” for the purpose of a mineral reservation.

OK, so I’m a dinosaur geek, retired, so this is interesting all on its own. After all, a fossil is the result of bone, and sometimes flesh, being transformed into stone. Yet, the purpose of minerals within Western Civ is tangibly different from that of fossils, although I suppose one could make the case that fossils have more than a paleontological or collectors’ value.

But this also reminds me of a story that my Arts Editor’s Uncle Tim was telling us at a family get-together once, and it boils down to this, homeowners: you may think when you buy your house, you own the land – but you may not own the minerals beneath it! Here’s an explanatory page on the matter, which sort of tempts me to pursue it, just to see who could force me off my land just to exploit the minerals beneath it.

Hmmmmmmm.

Our inauguratory entry is from The Volokh Conspiracy’s Short Circuit column:

Litigation financing, heartbreak, and recusal collide in this Texas-sized debacle. A litigation financing company has a stake in 21 lawsuits being litigated by a Mexican law firm. But one of the law firm’s owners is embroiled in a divorce in Texas, and his interest in the law firm is part of the marital estate. So the litigation financing company intervenes in the divorce proceeding to protect its investment in the law firm and to collect debts owing to the firm. But the lawyer the company hires to collect the soon-to-be-divorced lawyer’s debts turns out to also be law partners with the divorce court judge. Which—when uncovered—explodes the litigation financing company’s efforts to recover its investment and leaves it having wasted $2 mil in attorney fees. Yikes! But that’s just the beginning. The litigation financing company then sues the lawyer for malpractice. No, not the lawyer getting the divorce. The other one; the one it originally hired to recover its investment but who had the business relationship with the judge. And in response to the company’s suit, the lawyer commits what the Fifth Circuit later describes as a “litany of litigatory misbehavior.” Which leads to the district court’s striking the lawyers’ pleadings, entering a default judgment in favor of the litigation financing company, and awarding nearly $3 mil in damages. Fifth Circuit: The default judgment shall stand, but the district court needs to recalculate the damages award.

I get dizzy just reading it.

Early movie super hero, home from the kill.

Tarzan Of The Apes (1918) struck me more as interesting for its position as one of the earliest movies ever made than for its aesthetic values. Part of the problem may be the fragmentary nature of the print we viewed (hosted on Amazon Prime), but from what we could tell, it was virtually plot-free, Tarzan seemed to be fat in a way that would not make sense for a kid raised by apes in a jungle, and he found it necessary to (silently) thump his chest and yell after winning several fights, including one with a mangy old lion (we felt sad for the lion, but that comes with its own collection of questionable moral thoughts). Throw in a bit of racism and a dubious leading lady, and it was all, actually, quite the bloody bore.

Tarzan never really did anything for me, truth to tell.

This WaPo report is disturbing in the face of the recent spate of bad weather parts of the United States has been experiencing:

What if, suddenly, decades of progress in weather prediction was reversed and monster storms that we currently see coming for days were no longer foreseeable? The toll on life, property and the economy would be enormous. Yet the government’s science agencies say such a loss in forecast accuracy could happen if the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. wireless industry get their way.

Both the FCC and the wireless industry are racing to deploy 5G technology, which will deliver information at speeds 100 times faster than today’s mobile networks. But scientists have found this technology could interfere with critical satellite data used in weather forecasting, pitting the interests of science and safety against a pressing national priority.

The FCC and the government’s science agencies, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, have battled over this issue for several years.

Hurricane Sandy (2012)

In case it’s not clear, the sensors which measure the data in question must have a frequency on the electro-magnetic spectrum clear in order to accurately measure the phenomenon in question, which is water vapor data. As it happens, 5G technology will operate quite near that frequency if the FCC has its way.

Yet on Tuesday, CTIA, the trade group representing the U.S. wireless communications industry, unleashed a scathing rebuttal of the Jacobs’ assertion.

“It’s an absurd claim with no science behind it,” wrote Brad Gillen, CTIA’s executive vice president, in a blog post.

And this is what troubles me. This CTIA’s motivations has little to do with weather forecasting; for them, it seems probable that it’s all about the money.

Meanwhile, the government is putatively charged with our safety, and excellent weather forecasting is part of that responsibility. While many will point at various corruptions that have occurred in the past in the government, such as the alleged “capture” of the FCC by the companies it is supposed to regulate, it remains the point man on the subject in our current societal design.

So, in my mind, we need the CTIA to step back and have a neutral third party that is scientifically competent take over as their advocate, a third party whose first responsibility isn’t making money, but public safety. I think Congress may have had such an agency at one time, but the Republicans eliminated it.

In this way, CTIA isn’t required to move out of its bailiwick of making money through the provision of communications, and the government isn’t forced to give up a key responsibility to a party that doesn’t have an inherent interest in it.

While reading this WaPo article on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) earnings over her years at Harvard in terms of outside work, it suddenly occurred to me that Senator Warren might be able drag up her poll numbers through some artless nattering. First, here’s a little bit from the article:

“Elizabeth was one of the nation’s top experts on how to make sure victims hurt by bankrupt companies eventually got paid,” Warren’s website said Wednesday night. “Throughout her career, she worked to help set up trusts and other mechanisms to return $27 billion to victims and their families.”

In a separate review, The Post found that a wave of Warren’s legal work came in the early 2000s as manufacturing companies whose products contained asbestos were forced into bankruptcy by waves of personal injury claims.

A nationally recognized expert in bankruptcy law, Warren consulted for more than a dozen committees representing claimants and creditors in these cases, often in partnership with the law firm Caplin & Drysdale. …

Warren did not release details about her compensation, and that information was scant in court records. Documents reviewed by The Post showed that she made at least $462,322 from her work on 13 cases, although the total for those cases might be much higher. Warren has released only her past 10 years of tax returns, and much of her legal consulting work is not reflected in those documents.

Trustees in several asbestos cases initially objected to or raised questions about her qualifications and proposed hourly rate. In an affidavit replying to one such objection in 2001, Warren defended her expertise.

My idea is that she simply say that she’s fairly certain that she’s had a higher income than Trump. Don’t even make it a challenge, just a throw-off line that reads as a bit of ad lib. Let him find it for himself. Let him rage about it a bit, as he would with anyone who challenges him in anything.

And then tell him to prove he’s had a higher income.

Go for it, Trump-boy, she could say. But I’ll bet you won’t, because your base is addicted to the idea that you make immense amounts of money, and once they see you’re not, why, I’ll bet they’ll vote for me, instead!

It’d be at least interesting to see how he’d dance around releasing his tax returns. Each succeeding day she might mention that she’s received X e-mails from former Trump supporters who are switching their votes to Warren because she’s more successful than Trump.

That’d fry his gourd.

And he just might release his tax returns just out of spite.

TPM reports on the litigation between the notably paranoid National Rifle Association (NRA), and one of its vendors:

The National Rifle Association believes itself to be the victim of a “bitter, insidious irony,” the firearms lobby said in a new lawsuit filed Wednesday against its longtime vendor Ackerman McQueen.

The advertising firm — referred to as AMc in the suit — has allegedly been leaking documents to the press that the NRA sued last month to get ahold of in what the firearms lobby calls “a series of sordid, out-of-context ‘leaks’ engineered by AMc to harm its client.”

The NRA sued AMc in April to access documents, ostensibly to audit the pair’s relationship and to investigate allegations that the Oklahoma City-based firm was over-billing the NRA.

Now, the NRA is seeking $40 million in damages from AMc, accusing it of using the leaks to foment a coup that would have toppled longtime NRA chief Wayne LaPierre in favor of Iran-Contra notable and then-NRA president Oliver North.

“The bitter, insidious irony is that the records leaked by AMc contain some of the same information the NRA had persistently requested from AMc over the course of many months, in an effort to strengthen its own internal controls,” the gun group argues in a complaint, filed in the State of Virginia’s Alexandria circuit court.

This is the same NRA that has lived and even flourished on the nightmare that the government is coming to take everyone’s guns away for the last four decades. Now, according to this lawsuit, some other organization really is out to get them – or they have very lurid nightmares.

This could be quite entertaining, given the instability inherent in the recent claims the NRA made in the run up to the latest Presidential election – and the massive hiccup in their messaging when Trump, rather than Clinton, won. Of course, never mind that the Democrats and Obama never made a move on gun rights when they had the opportunity. Paranoia is the name of their game.

The question is whether it’s once again on massive display – or if AMc is out to really get them. The anticipation of the resolution of that question is going to kill me.

I am impressed with how quickly the Federal court system is moving to rebuff the Administration’s attempts to block House subpoenas for information from banks, as now another judge has ruled against the Administration.

With any luck the appeals courts will also move right along, and we’ll get this up to SCOTUS and see if the Court is a partisan mess – or merely interested in application of the law.

Ex parte:

In the law, ex parte is used in several contexts.

Legal Ethics

In legal ethics, ex parte refers to improper contact with a party or a judge. Ethical rules typically forbid a lawyer from contacting the judge or the opposing party without the other party’s lawyer also being present.  A breach of these rules is referred to as improper ex parte contact.

Civil Procedure

In civil procedure, ex parte is used to refer to motions for orders that can be granted without waiting for a response from the other side. Generally, these are orders that are only in place until further hearings can be held, such as a temporary restraining order.

Typically, a court will be hesitant to make an ex parte motion. This is because the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee a right to due process, and ex parte motions–due to their exclusion of one party–risk violating the excluded party’s right to due process. [Legal Information Institute / Cornell Law School]

Noted in Case No. 19-cv-01136 (APM) for the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Judge Amit Mehta:

I do, therefore, . . . solemnly protest against these proceedings of the House of Representatives, because they are in violation of the rights of the coordinate executive branch of the Government, and subversive of its constitutional independence; because they are calculated to foster a band of interested parasites and informers, ever ready, for their own advantage, to swear before ex parte committees to pretended private conversations between the President and themselves, incapable, from their nature, of being disproved; thus furnishing material for harassing him, degrading him in the eyes of the country . . .

– President James Buchanan

Buchanan, incidentally, lost his suit, a suit much like the cited case.

Who said judges can’t have fun?

Steve Benen notes that President Trump doesn’t seem to be sticking to the script when it comes to Iran, contradicting NSA Bolton and Senator Graham (R-SC):

Act III features Donald Trump contradicting his allies. When a reporter asked the president yesterday afternoon where things stand with Iran, the president replied:

“We have no indication that anything has happened or will happen. But if it does, it will be met, obviously, with great force. We’ll have no choice.”

The key part of that answer, of course, was the presidential assertion that U.S. officials “have no indication that anything has happened or will happen.” That was a far cry from Lindsey Graham’s assertion, made just hours earlier after hearing from John Bolton, “It is clear that over the last several weeks Iran has attacked pipelines and ships of other nations and created threat streams against American interests in Iraq.”

The only real conclusion to draw is that President Trump is a demented old man who can’t keep up a good lie. Why the Republicans continue to rally around him is the real continuing mystery.

To my thesis that populist movements are a magnet for the power and wealth hungry:

Turns out Russian collusion isn’t a “witch hunt hoax” after all. At least not in Austria.

The country’s government collapsed on Saturday after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he was pulling the plug on his ruling coalition after just 17 months in office.

We’re all here to audition for the same part.

There’s Always A Woman (1938) presents a murder mystery as a race between a man and his wife. Ex Assistant District Attorney Bill Reardon is giving up on the private detective racket, much to his wife Sally’s dismay. Moments after he walks out the door of his office to beg for his old job back, a client walks in on Sally, who represents herself as an employee, ready to take on the new job from the lady in expensive pearls who’s worrying about her husband’s predilections in relation to an old girlfriend.

Soon enough, there’s a body, and it’s up the Reardons, individually, to solve the case. Several twists to the narrative lead us down the paths of passion and avarice, from a particularly well done police interrogation scene to the penthouse of the wealthy and desperate, from getting sloshed while on a very public stakeout to arranging for one’s spouse to be photographed half-naked.

But for all the fun, there’s an undercurrent of domestic violence running through this flick which left us a little uncomfortable. True, no actual swings occur, but, at least in this respect, the film has not aged well. If you’re capable of ignoring that undercurrent, this is all in good fun, with some snappy dialog and a smack upside the head for the cops, but if you can’t, you might want to give this a skip.

This wouldn’t happen to be your glass slipper, would it?

When it comes to The Late Edwina Black (1951), a good idea, proven by its later use by Alfred Hitchcock in an award-winning film, has its promise ruined by a poor script. As the film opens, we learn Mrs. Black has died, informed of the long-anticipated tragedy by her long time nurse, Ellen, who uses the moment to lash out at Mr. Black’s secretary, Elizabeth, for some obscure offense. Gregory Black, Edwina’s husband, is informed as well, to which he responds with a subdued sense of doom.

Quickly, we learn that Gregory and Elizabeth have been carrying on during the illness of Edwina, much to grievance of Ellen. But their plan to leave on a vacation together, during which they’ll marry, is soon foiled when Inspector Martin of the police shows up: Edwina’s corpse is full of arsenic, and he’s suspicious of the lot of them.

Soon enough, everyone is sniping at everyone, their suspicions mutual and emotionally devastating; even the Inspector gets a few delicious shots in. All of this is the lead up to the second poisoning, that of Elizabeth, who ends up collapsed in bed. But the big reveal is on its way, and we’re wondering not whether there’s a big vacation coming, but if the would-be lovers can even stand the sight of each other, regardless of their relationship to guilt. Did he? Did she? Will they? What are these remarks about last night and passion and all that sort of thing in a movie of this age, anyways?

While the tension could have been delicious, the role of Elizabeth is ridiculously sloppy. She’s emotional, suspicious, vulnerable, accusatory, passionate, and nearly dead from poison – and that’s all in a sixty second span. The result is not sympathy, but a feeling of disgust in the audience. Gregory’s actions are also questionable, as we never get any sense of his emotional relationship to his ex-wife.

The problem with a plot such as this is that the characters must be strictly believable. The plot must withhold information from the audience, while keeping the apparent character reactions believable, and that’s no mean feat. This story doesn’t really achieve it, and while I appreciated the climax, the rough climb up the mountain more or less ruined it for me.

But as a predecessor to Hitchcock’s masterpiece, which shall remain nameless, it’s still interesting to see the difference between this flawed effort and Hitchcock’s more successful result.

For a few days, the apple trees are beautiful.

Oh, yes, we did have to hire some guards. They claim they’ve found invading shrimp in the garden.

Megan McArdle in the pages of WaPo argued a couple of days ago that Roe v Wade should never have been even on the SCOTUS docket:

But by the 1970s, the court was, one suspects, a little drunk on the moral and legal triumph of those earlier cases. The justices were now going well beyond the words in the law books and into the unwritten law of what used to be called “enlightened opinion.” In 1972, they abolished the death penalty in all 50 states, even though the Constitution clearly contemplates government-administered capital punishment.

The following year, the justices gave the country a new right to abortion. The right is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, but had apparently been lurking there undetected for the better part of two centuries before the justices finally coaxed it into the open. From this era dates the solemn invocations of “settled law” issued by “the highest court in the land.” …

The benefit of going the judicial route is that you can occasionally achieve outcomes you could never obtain through legislatures; that is how America, a center-right nation, got one of the most liberal abortion regimes in the world. The problem with going the judicial route is that it short-circuits public debate and forces the opposition to take radical action — like, say, a decades-long project to fill the courts with right-leaning judges — to amend that “settled law.”

And I thought, Well, maybe. She ascribes directly to Roe v Wade the attempted packing of various courts with conservatives, the absolutist decisions on gun rights, and much other conservative legal activity to that decision. However, it seems to me that the conservative side of the political spectrum simply was waiting for something to seize on in order to build a coherent voting bloc, and abortion was simply one of the many subjects. Absolutist positions on when something is human, on gun rights, on anything that could be subjected to a religionist analysis. Roe v Wade was a public search for justice within a system that didn’t really acknowledge the realities of women and child-bearing, and McArdle’s arguments didn’t really convince me.

Then, also in WaPo, Professor Carliss Chatman indulged in the time honored and important exercise of pushing an initial assertion to its logical – and absurd – consequences. This particular conclusion caught my eye:

When states define natural personhood with the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade, they are inadvertently creating a system with two-tiered fetal citizenship. This is because Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey create a federal floor for access to the right to choose — a rule that some ability to abort a fetus exists in the United States. If these cases are overturned, that eliminates only the federal right to abortion access. Overturning Roe would not prohibit a state from continuing to allow access. In a post-Roe world, in states like New York that ensure the right to choose through their constitutions and statutes, citizenship will begin at birth. In states that move the line to define life as beginning as early as conception, personhood and citizenship will begin as soon as a woman knows she is pregnant.

Trying to define citizenship and personhood based on the laws of each state creates some far-fetched and even ridiculous scenarios. If we follow that logic, we’ll tie our Constitution into a knot no court can untangle.

And, although Professor Chatman doesn’t mention it, this becomes a complete refutation of McArdle’s contentions, because without Roe v Wade we run the exact risk Chatman describes. This is not a local issue, as Federal benefits generally apply nation-wide (with some exceptions). Or, as Chatman succinctly puts it, we’ll tie our Constitution into a knot no court can untangle.

And it’s why, if & when SCOTUS gets the test case the anti-Roe supporters so generally want, it should be rejected. Not 5-4, with Roberts providing the surprise vote for rejection. It should be 9-0, with Thomas scolding the anti-Roe supporters for endangering the nation.

And read Chatman’s article. It’s fun.

We recently finished binge-watching the five and a half seasons of the television series Grimm (2011-2017), a series crossing the genres of crime-fighting and fantasy, the latter embodied, though not defined, in the mythical creatures borrowed from the Grimm mythos, and seasoned with a sometimes subtle sense of word play and humor. To the latter, the very first episode introduces us to the concept of a creature called a Grimm, and includes an encounter with a creature called … wait for it … a Grim Reaper.

Yeah, we were hooked fairly fast. Good actors, good stories that often use their exotic foundations to work on current issues, and a sense of fun. Midway through, my Arts Editor and I looked at each other and said It’s crack cocaine. And then watched the next episode.

I write all this to both recommend the series, if you have room in your mind for structured fantasy that nevertheless acknowledges there’s more out there than written down in the series’ story books, and to explain the lack of Belated Movie Reviews of late.

Enjoy!

CNN is reporting on a new call for impeachment of both Trump and AG Barr:

Michigan GOP Rep. Justin Amash said Saturday he had concluded President Donald Trump committed “impeachable conduct” and accused Attorney General William Barr of intentionally misleading the public.

Amash’s comments recommending Congress pursue obstruction of justice charges against Trump were the first instance of a sitting Republican in Congress calling for Trump’s impeachment.

Despite being a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, Amash appears to have a handle on how our form of government should work:

“Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch’s jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our Constitution,” Amash tweeted. “When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law — the foundation of liberty — crumbles.”

The call of a single Republican Representative for impeachment is not enough to impress me that the GOP is all set to give Trump the heave-ho and then reform itself. The fact of the matter is that too many groups are getting what they want from Trump, and therefore will ignore what would be normally unacceptable. This ranges from the Evangelicals trading their souls for anti-abortion SCOTUS justices to all-fire conservatives getting any lawyer with a conservative credential nominated to the bench, regardless of their true qualities, or even, inexplicably, the chance they’ll rule against the conservative doctrine, all while Trump pushes other awful policies, such as the tariff wars.

The unsuppressable revulsion of a single Republican Rep just doesn’t do it.

If he’s followed by a dozen more, then the game may be changing. I don’t expect it to happen, but that’s what it would take.

My guess is that the Michigan GOP and the national GOP will expel him, and he’ll become an Independent, since I don’t see a Tea Party member joining up with the Democrats.

But at least he can sleep a little easier at night.

He’s not entirely pleased with the weather.

However, if you sit completely still, he may not notice and eat you.

(Courtesy Arts Editor)

The chair of the Senate Intel Committee, Richard Burr (R-NC), upset his own party several days ago by having a subpoena served on Donald Trump, Jr., as reported by Axios:

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to answer questions about his previous testimony before Senate investigators in relation to the Russia investigation, sources with direct knowledge told Axios.

Why it matters: It’s the first congressional subpoena — that we know about — of one of President Trump’s children. The subpoena sets up a fight that’s unprecedented in the Trump era: A Republican committee chair pit against the Republican president’s eldest son.

Facially, this is the sort of activity that I’d expect a mature legislator and chair of an Intel committee to undertake: pursue information concerning questions validly raised about the last Presidential election. As readers who are paying attention are aware, this is not something the Republican Party favors, as most of them, with a few exceptions, have circled the wagons around the President and his many scandals.

But is there something under the surface? I have no inside information concerning Burr or the committee, but I can imagine this is simply a head-feint by the Senator, trying to bring a shred of legitimacy to a Party which has notably lost such claims over the last ten years – or twenty, if one goes back to the beginning of the Bush Presidency. But what then to make of the advice of Senate Judiciary Chairperson Lindsey Graham (R-SC)?

The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee encouraged Donald Trump Jr. to invoke his right against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee if he complies with the panel’s subpoena for a second closed-door interview.

“You just show up and plead the Fifth and it’s over with,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Monday, adding that Trump Jr.’s lawyer would “have to be an idiot” to let him testify again.

“This whole thing is nuts,” Graham continued. “To me, it’s over.”

Graham’s comments, which come just a day after he said on Fox News that Trump Jr. should ignore the summons, could serve as a temporary off-ramp in the standoff between the Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and GOP senators either aligned with the president or up for reelection in 2020. It is also a remarkable display of one Republican Senate panel chairman undercutting another’s work by dispensing free legal advice to a witness in an ongoing investigation — and reflects a greater GOP divide about whether the Senate should hold Trump Jr. in contempt if he continues to flout the Intelligence Committee’s subpoena. [WaPo]

Frankly, speaking as a non-lawyer, this is the advice of an idiot. The moment Trump, Jr. “pleads the Fifth,” he’s signaling that, yes, some sort of scandal and corruption did occur, and it’s the responsibility of the committee to then continue the questioning and the investigation. Graham’s advice would work against Graham’s putative goal, which is to signal that the entire investigation into the Trump Campaign is over.

Of course, Senator Graham has been notable for his story arc in the Trump political era, from expressing loathing for candidate Trump, to becoming his apparent water-boy in the Senate, reportedly because his entire purpose is to get re-elected – and without a solid pro-Trump record, he might be in trouble. But his support has been nearly comedic in its expression, screaming threats at the House of Representatives of what he might do as the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee if they follow through on their plan to investigate the President (they did), ending with this rather ridiculous advice to Trump, Jr.

Is he overacting to get the crowd’s attention? Remember the lesson of Representative Roby (R-AL), who nearly lost her seat because of her disdain concerning Trump’s morals, despite having a near perfect record of legislative loyalty to Trump? I have to wonder if Graham decided it was safer if he acted like a lunatic than a sane human being. It doesn’t look good on his record, but it may guarantee him re-election next year.

But this advice to Trump, Jr., could be a subtle attack on the Trump family by Graham, giving bad advice under the smoke-screen of loyalty to the President. I don’t actually think Graham is this daring, but it’s not an impossible maneuver on his part.

Yep, Burr’s action in issuing the subpoena could lead to some unexpected drama in the coming days or weeks.