It's so right that it usually doesn't happen

A very nice comment about our move.

One Ostap Karmodi (whom I don't know personally) writes this very nice comment on his Russian-language Facebook page:

The Volokh Conspiracy has moved to the site of Reason Magazine. This is so right, that in life it usually doesn't happen.

??????? ???????.

Egor Perov's comment to the same post also teaches me how to say "paywall" in Russian. (They didn't have those in 1975, when I left.) It's ??????? -- which, for those, who don't read Cyrillics, is just a transliteration of "paywall." One thing I like about modern Russian is how willing Russians are to ruthlessly borrow words from other languages, changing them only to suit Russian pronunciation: practicality over purism. They're like English speakers this way.

Comments

[jst1]

Pro Russian!
You must be investigated.

Just kidding of course. I love this blog.

[Quixote]

Some of us are unfortunately less inclined to agree with Mr. Karmodi's "very nice comment," particularly in view of Professor Volokh's admitted decision to depart from Reason's famous, long-standing policy of tolerating all comments, whether or not the author of the article being commented on feels they are "on-topic" or appropriate. Volokh has already removed several of my comments, the first time ever that anyone has censored me on this site in all the five years I've been participating in discussions here.

We have other reasons as well not to feel entirely at ease about the Volokh Conspiracy's move to Reason: for example, Volokh's well-known effort to convince the Supreme Court to narrow the reach of the First Amendment in the "Stolen Valor" case, or his failure to engage with those who disagree with other conservative positions of his on First Amendment issues, such as his suggestion that only "clear" parody is entitled to constitutional protection.

Moreover, however much we agree with his position on America's leading criminal "satire" case (see the documentation at https://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/), we remain troubled by the apparent hypocrisy that taints many of his stances. Why only jail one author of inappropriately deadpan parody in New York? Surely we should expand police action in this regard; yet, we wait in vain for any comment from Volokh on this pressing matter.

[VinniUSMC]

Oh, great, it's Artie Jr. If you're trying to take over Artie's spot as the most repetitive, off-topic, broken record at the VC, you're off to a good start.

Quit crying.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Quixote should stop crying about this relatively predictable manifestation of conservative authoritarianism.

Vinni should quit whimpering about big bad Arthur Kirkland and his 'they make me feel bad and this should be my safe space' comments.

[VinniUSMC]

I'm always in a safe space. "Big bad" Artie, ha.

[Careless]

Anyone else not have a comment link on volokh conspiracy posts on mobile?

[arch1]

I haven't tried mobile, but on desktop PC w/ Google Chrome 63.0.3239.84, I see a comments link below each post only if I am zoomed out (not in, *out*) far enough to also see the right-hand column (containing TOP STORIES, MOST VISITED, etc.).

[David Matthews]

Thank you. I've been blocked from reading, and, equally bad, blocked from sharing, for a while now.

I do miss the old Volokh Conspiracy blog, where I could lurk and watch the lively interplay between actual lawyers and legal scholars.

But I'm curmudgeonly enough that I also miss "real music" and Johnny Carson.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Define "real music".

My own taste runs to classical music, particularly symphonies and other orchestral music. Though big band's not too bad. The most modern composer I really like is John Phillip Sousa. 🙂

[AJ_Liberty]

Like Dave Matthews for sure...

[Eugene Volokh]

Why miss it? We're here, and there's no reason we can't be as good as the good old days.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What is it about conservatives pining for the "good old days?" Those "good old days" were mostly illusory, unless one was white, straight, Christian, wealthy, male, intolerant, and selfish.

Just as bad: Conservatives claiming to be specially aligned with libertarians, or to be "libertarianish," or -- the apparent new formulation -- "often libertarian." In the reality-based world, genuine libertarians recognize that right-wingers' faux libertarianism generally looks like this.

[Naaman Brown]

I thought you'd dropt that "Rev." pretense.
You do have a faux right wing troll impersonation of an arrogant blue state coastie elitist down pat.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Pretense?

Your disrespect for the Congregation Of Exalted Reason is forgiven by those who prefer reason and liberty.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

OT, but am curious. have the trolls migrated here from the WaPo?

Paging Rev Arthur Kirkland. . . .

[Quixote]

They'll have a more difficult time here, because Reason (departing from its well-known, longstanding "post anything you like, no matter how preposterous" policy) has agreed to allow Eugene to remove any comments he doesn't like. He has already removed three of mine that didn't meet his standards.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Nothing says "libertarianism" like right-wing censorship, of the type typically enforced on conservative-controlled campuses. That censorship is particularly charming when conducted by right-wingers in libertarian drag. Carry on, snowflakes.

[Mr. Jwpvysig, Jr.]

Nothing says "apeshitcrazy" like the Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland either. Carry on, dickhead.

[AJ_Liberty]

Just don't say it three times....

[VinniUSMC]

Not only is the "Rev" Artie Kirkland here, but he has a troll in training named Quixote to play with.

[FlameCCT]

RAK (Royal Arse Kisser) has migrated and continues to show his/hers/its lack of logic, reason, and critical thinking while projecting said lack onto others.

[KenMitchell]

Robert Heinlein once wrote that there was no distinctly Russian word for any concept more complex than weeding the turnips. ANY word more advanced had been borrowed from the French or, more recently, the English.

[Eugene Volokh]

And the words for complex concepts in English -- where are they borrowed from? Physics? Democracy? Complex? Concept?

[TwelveInchPianist]

French, Latin, or more recently words originated in English. Like Paywall.

[DIsrobing]

Yeah, I really like the move to the new website, too.

So, at least 15 women (including several lawyers and a Federal Judge) have come forward to detail the assaults, sexual harassment, and general sleeve behavior they endured at the hands of Judge Kozinski.

His response when some of the initial reports were detailed to him by Washington Post reporters was: "If this is all they are able to dredge up after 35 years, I am not too worried."

Do you think lawyers who regularly practice in Federal Courts have any sort of ethical obligation to promote the dignity of the judiciary and help protect law clerks from assaults from federal judges?

There has not been a single word about this on this site despite the fact that Kozinski is one of the most powerful sitting judges in this country. Ignoring despicable conduct allows it to flourish.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"There has not been a single word about this on this site despite the fact that Kozinski is one of the most powerful sitting judges in this country. Ignoring despicable conduct allows it to flourish."

VC, or Reason in general?

[Careless]

Both.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Assaults? AFAIK no one has accused Kozinski of assault.

[DIsrobing]

"Another lawyer said Kozinski approached her when she was alone in a room at a legal community event around 2008 in downtown Los Angeles and ? with no warning ? gave her a bear hug and kissed her on the lips."

"A former U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge said Kozinski grabbed and squeezed each of her breasts as the two drove back from an event in Baltimore in the mid-1980s, after she had told him she did not want to stop at a motel and have sex."

So, that's assault.

And these are just the allegations known so far. Kozinski wields enormous power - as evidence by the fact that most legal blogs have been studiously silent about discussing these matters. His predatory behavior depends on and is encouraged by decades of silence.

[DIsrobing]

Oh and Kozinski's latest statement is: "Many of the things that are being said about me are simply not true, but I deeply regret that my unusual sense of humor caused offense or made anyone uncomfortable. I have always treated my male and female law clerks the same."

Yes, I am sure he kisses his male clerks on the lips and grabs their breasts, too. So it's all good.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The great "libertarian-conservative" icon, revealed to be an authority-abusing, obnoxious, character-deficient creep.

The women knew. The men likely knew, too.

Carry on, clingers. Maybe don another layer of libertarian drag to try to cover up conservatism's authoritarian core.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I used to imagine that Americans were a fearless people who weren't scared of Muslim immigrants, people pulling their pants up or reaching for their drivers licenses, or of asking their boss not to show them inappropriate images.

[DIsrobing]

This is defining deviancy down.

The idea that a it's up to a 25 year old law clerk to police the behavior of Federal Appeal Court Judge is a sad commentary on you.

Oh, and I guess gals should just just caution Kozinski before they get in a car with him "He, just so we're clear, don't grab my breasts, okay?"

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

We should encourage right-wingers to continue to express their views on treatment of women, and of gays, and of blacks, and of agnostics, and of Muslims, and of immigrants, and of Jews, and of agnostics.

The young people are watching. The Republican-conservative brand will be stained with bigotry and backwardness for at least a generation, and our society will continue to be improved by liberals, libertarians, moderates, and RINOs.

[MatthewSlyfield]

My only issue with the move is that the Reason comment system doesn't like long words, which makes it almost impossible to post links.

[Careless]

It's almost impossible to HTML? The internet is doomed!

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

You get around that by using HTML. Here is a link to your comment (found from the '#' after the date and time). Look at the page source for the format; the only real trickery is when you want actual "" to show. (I won't know if I got those right until I hit SUBMIT; the previews don't always handle some stuff correctly.)

[Doug Huffman]

A gift of seasonal music, the greatest Nutcracker Suite Ballet and Orchestra recorded and videoed is the
1989 Bolshoi Ballet starring Natalya Arkhipova and Irek Mukhamedov.

It is on YouTube conveniently catalogued as Bolsoi

[Doug Huffman]

My special characters pointing out the misspelling *B*O*L*S*O*I* were cutoff! The YT file spec is
O U g Y q c a g m z g

[Xanthro]

Well, I'm glad the ridiculous paywall has come down by this move. Had the money gone to this blog, that would have been acceptable, but I'm not paying the Washington Post anything. The only decent thing on the Washington Post was this blog.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The beauty of a free country is that fringe elements are able to reject mainstream, professional journalism and to enjoy the content of FreeRepublic, Breitbart, Instapundit, Gateway Pundit, the Volokh Conspiracy, NewsMax, RedState, and Stormfront instead.

[santamonica811]

Is "Spaseeba balshoieh" the common way to say it? My (extraordinarily limited) experience is seeing 'Balshoieh spaceeba."

(Oddly, the OP was allowed to post using Cyrillic but we hoi polloi are not (when I did try, and hit 'send,' I got a warning/error message, saying that we are limited to using English. . . well, limited to using letters found in the English alphabet.

Given that this allows me to post in English, Italian, limited French, Spanish, German, Vietnamese, etc.; I wonder why the Reason website has chosen to censor posters in this way. To avoid spam-bots? Some other reason????

[Eugene Volokh]

Well, recall that my Russian is basically the Russian I've heard in one family, with a smattering of occasional conversations with others; I'm not the best expert on what is most idiomatic. But my sense is that both "Spasibo bolshoye" and "Bolshoye spasibo" are pretty common: In general, in Russian one has considerable latitude to play with word order, and while some word orders come across as placing the emphasis on a different word than others, in this instance both come across pretty much the same way.

[Michael Cook]

Nothing helped me with my haphazardly updated lifelong attempt to get by (not master) the Russian yazik as finally obtaining a recent dictionary of Russian profanity and slang words. In my travels in Russia I grew tired of being told that I sounded like a professor whose first language was Swedish reading an archaic Russian Bible.

[PeteRR]

I felt the same when Pierce Brosnan finally got to play James Bond.

[Soronel Haetir]

My speech synthesizer says that close to "pi-eval", I hope it's getting the syllable break wrong.

[Dan Schiavetta]

"how willing Russians are to ruthlessly borrow words from other languages, changing them only to suit Russian pronunciation: practicality over purism. They're like English speakers this way."

Actually they're NOT like English speakers. Hear of the recent coo detah in Zimbabwe?

We DON'T change to suit our pronunciation. We should be more like the Russians. Change
"coup d'etat" to "coo detah"? It seems ridiculous to us but the Russians would do it and it's just good sense.

[Eugene Volokh]

I meant changing to suit Russian phonemes, rather than how Russian spelling is pronounced; English generally likewise changes borrowings to suit English phonemes. (Hard to avoid that.)

Now it's true that borrowings into Russian tend not to track foreign spelling. But that's partly because Russian is pretty rigidly phonetically spelled (not completely rigidly, but close to it), and partly because Russian tends to borrow from languages that have a different alphabet, so transliteration is required in any event.

[Dan Schiavetta]

OK.

Though one reason English is such a disaster phonetically is because we borrow foreign words and don't change the spelling. A vicious cycle.

[kramartini]

Hear! Hear!

WaPo just felt wrong, whereas Reason is undoubtedly the perfect fit!