Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[ragebot]

When the going gets weird the weird get going.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-judge-orders-release-of-footage-of-pelosi-attack/ar-AA16KEEM?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8b275543758d43018b0124727526f5c8

[Nige]

Assuming it isn’t already circulating in public, it can’t be much fun for a victim of violence to have the video of it suddenly distributed everywhere, and this being high-profile and subject to weird and nasty conspiracies – well, more like fantasies – Mr Pelosi will probably want to remain offline and media-dark for a while.

[Brett Bellmore]

The funny thing is that one reporter getting fired for what turns out to have been accurate reporting. Realizing that accurate reporting can be a firing offense in the MSM does tend to invigorate conspiracy theories.

[Nige]

So did he report something before it was confirmed? That is actually bad reporting, you know.

[Krayt]

Unless they qualify it. I see reports "we cannot confirm at this time" all the time.

[Nige]

Sure, that would make a difference.

[Brett Bellmore]

Gimme a break, reporting on the basis of eye witness accounts without waiting on video is SOP across the industry.

[Nige]

Not what I asked.

[David Nieporent]

Mr Pelosi will probably want to remain offline and media-dark for a while.

He's 82; I doubt he spends lots of time on Twitter.

[Nige]

Thats the Facebook demographic - same caveat applies.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, here it is.

He doesn't exactly ask the police for help or flee his attacker. Actually, he seems to be out of it or high on something.

[Brett Bellmore]

That said, I see no basis for some of the crazier speculation. I just see an old guy drunk or high as a kite being assaulted.

[NOVA Lawyer]

"He doesn’t exactly ask the police for help or flee his attacker."

Seriously? The attacker is holding a hammer and Pelosi has his hand on it too, obviously concerned he's going to be hit with it which, in a matter of moments, he was. Pelosi has a cup of something in his hand, perhaps alcohol, so 82-year old drunk (*assumed*) guy doesn't act in precisely the way you think he should when dealing with a deranged hammer-wielding nut job. He was in the midst of a crisis, undoubtedly (and visibly) uncertain what he should do (not letting go of the hammer appearing to be his primary concern).

Anything else you see is you projecting your favorite conspiracy theory onto the scene. It's pretty clear in viewing it, he was concerned the perp was going to hit him with the hammer and he was trying to avoid that outcome. Was he supposed to let go the hammer and sprint into the officer's arms? I'm assuming he realized he'd be immediately hit in the back of the head. Which he was anyway, despite not doing anything sudden and just trying to hold the hammer.

Shorter version: You're a douche.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm a douche for noticing that he seems to be high or drunk?

I've got no conspiracy theory here. Somebody broke into his house, was holding him hostage, and attacked him when the police showed up. And his actions indicate he was flying high, but so what? It's his own house, so why not?

I mean, if he'd been sober he probably would have bolted out the door, but it's all on his attacker.

[NOVA Lawyer]

No, you’re a douche because you find it significant and lead with he doesn’t “ask the police for help or flee his attacker.” I described why he wouldn’t flee. He did ask the police for help by calling 911. If you heard that call, the dude told him not to “do anything”. So when the police come, he didn’t do anything, knowing the police knew what we know (a man he didn’t know came into the house and was threatening him) and that the police could see what you and I can see which is a younger man with a hammer and an older man holding onto the hammer. In context, its obvious he needs help and, again, the most rational explanation is he wasn’t trying to do anything sudden and expected the police to de-escalate the situation (or stop it from escalating). And, of course, as soon as someone (in this case the police) made any sort of aggressive action (“drop the hammer”) the nut job went to trying to bash his skull in.

You assume he is high or inebriated, but that’s still a stretch based on this video. It’s a short clip of a clearly frightened man who isn’t sure what to do to avoid what ultimately happened. He is holding a cup, his actions don’t seem entirely normal, but he is in a very abnormal situation. And at the end of the day, so what if he was drinking or smoking pot alone in his house and then ran into an intruder looking to kill his wife? Which you acknowledge, but then why do you keep bringing it up when it is neither established nor relevant?

That's what makes you a douche.

[ragebot]

As Brett noted the reporting so far does not pass the nine year old test. Older reporting noted there was some level of government surveillance that was suppose to be in place but seems like someone was asleep at the switch. Not to mention why was the guy breaking in the first place. I don't doubt he was a nut job but it is still hard to figure out his motive(s).

Maybe more to the point Pelosi (and his wife) are rich beyond most peeps ability to grasp. It is hard for me to understand why there was not better security if only to deal with common criminals who might just want to steal things for drug money (especially given the serious crime problems in San Francisco). Even in my relatively safe place in a much less crime ridden town a break in on this level would not come close to reaching the level this incident did. There is also the issue of Paul Pelosi having some problems with drinking (and drunk driving) that raises the issue of does he need adult supervision.

Maybe it is just a nothing burger where a drunk old man passed out and a bat shit crazy guy broke into his house and managed to go up a couple of flights of stairs, get him downstairs to the front door, and sorta control him while Pelosi was speaking to the LEOs. But at some point you have to admit too much of what we know about this makes no sense at all. But to quote by Gallagher "Living in California is like living in a bowl of granola; what ain't fruits or nuts, is flakes".

[Nick Gillespie's Jacket]

I recently discovered (thanks to the YouTube algorithm) that an elderly, retired Jacques Pépin has been making 3-5 minute videos in his kitchen, demonstrating how to make quite tasty looking/sounding dishes quickly and with just a few ingredients. Definitely worth looking them up and bookmarking ones you might want to try.

[Estragon]

JP is a national treasure.

[apedad]

I make his Brussel sprouts and bacon, and asparagus with mustard sauce often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y73w8pXtmZY

https://www.kqed.org/w/morefastfoodmyway/episode208.html

[Commenter_XY]

That asparagus recipe sounds promising...not hard, either.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"I make his Brussel sprouts and bacon,"

Why would someone do something so horrible to poor innocent bacon?

[Brett Bellmore]

Whether you like Brussel sprouts is so genetically determined, they used to use it as an informal paternity test. My family loves them.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

For the vast majority of my life I absolutely despised Brussels (not “Brussel”, they’re named for the city of Brussels) sprouts. But it turns out that was because the only way I’d eaten them growing up was when visiting my Grandmother, and she would just boil the bejeezus out of them and serve them with a little butter. Between the stench from the boiling and the fact that my grandfather referred to them as “nasty cabbages” I was thoroughly put off. In retrospect this is very disappointing, as my Grandmother was an otherwise damned good home cook, which she thankfully passed along to my mother.

Fast forward to about 10 years ago and I’m out to eat with my wife, and her entre included some oven-roasted sprouts with bacon and some other goodies, including some actual seasoning. Much to my surprise I found the aroma from them very tempting, so at my wife’s urging I tried one. It was delicious, and to this day I’m a fan. So it turned out that like so many other things, it was all about the preparation method.

[apedad]

Preheat oven to about 350.

Butterfly a chicken and flatten.

Sprinkle with favorite seasonings and olive oil (both sides).

Prepare Brussels sprouts (remove bad leaves, etc.), and drizzle with S/P and olive oil.

Place BSs in a heap in the middle of a sheet pan and place the chicken on top (make sure no BSs are sticking out since they burn easily).

Mix a package of small red potatoes (halve the large ones), and 'baby' carrots, and spread on both sides of the chicken, and also drizzle with S/P and olive oil.

Place in oven (uncovered) for about 45 minutes and start checking to ensure chicken is at 165 degrees.

Remove and enjoy!

[Commenter_XY]

Yeah, roasting Brussels sprouts really rocks.

[Jmaie]

Alternatively you can parboil the brussels sprouts for a minute then cut out the core. This allows you to separate out the individual leaves. Chop up some bacon and sauté till mostly done, throw in some chopped onion and cook until softened, add the brussels sprouts, cook until tender, salt and pepper and you’re good to go

[Sarcastr0]

Thin sliced.
Sautéed in a bit of butter
With pepper and lime juice.

Ruined me for roasted Brussels.

[Absaroka]

I concur about roasting, but it's also worth noting that they aren't your Mom's Brussels Sprouts: they have been bred to be less bitter.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Thanks...that's an interesting bit if info I didn't know about, and it may well be a large part of the puzzle in my case.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, they've done a lot of that sort of plant breeding lately. For instance, all those eggplant recipes that have you salt them down and soak them to get the bitterness out?

Forget it, eggplants today don't have any bitterness you need to get out.

[ragebot]

I am a huge sous vide fanboy and prepare brussel sprouts like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4j9K8bpnGI&t=52s

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

He is a national treasure if your nation is France.

[Davedave]

Trump-traitors hate America, who knew?

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Jack Pépin is the greatest Frenchman since Jacque Cousteau.

[Don Nico]

And he turned down JFK's offer to be the White House Executive Chef.

[Nelson]

Jacques Pépin is amazing. The guy is 87 years old and still has incredible knife skills. He often talks about growing up and how they used everything, so you will see him using every last bit of his ingredients (and often telling people how to use the scraps). Nothing is wasted.

He is a high-end fine dining chef, yet he does approachable food. He has done a bunch of PBS shows and was a close friend and collaborator of Julia Child. He is amazing.

[Nick Gillespie's Jacket]

Here’s a link to a really enjoyable (IMO) live version of a (slightly above) middle-aged Bob Dylan playing and singing Visions of Johanna, in a different tempo than the great studio version. (Also, find the YouTube video of Jerry Garcia playing/singing this song in 1995, just a few months before his death. It’s quite different and very good.) https://youtu.be/i8z7KzB16Ik

[ragebot]

Kinda shocking to hear Blondie cover a C&W song which really showcases her voice. Have to say it is one my favorite versions of Ghostriders in the Sky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt0mJDzTbyo

[Nick Gillespie's Jacket]

I was going to say thanks for not Rickrolling me, but after listening to a bit of that clip, I think it might be weirder than a Rickroll.

[Brett Bellmore]

I was weirded out enough by finding out it was originally a Burl Ives song. A guy I only associated with stop action snowmen...

Yeah, too bad about the special effects and synthesizer. Her vocals were pretty good aside from that.

The only copy I have of this song is by the Outlaws, who inexplicably omitted the last stanza.

[John F. Carr]

Roy Clark's versions starring his guitar are worth a listen.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

A lot of what Roy Clark did is worth a listen. It's a pity that he's more well-known for his stint on Hee Haw than for his guitar skills. I still re-watch various videos of him performing Malagueña to get my Flamenco fix. Charo too.

[not guilty]

Indeed. Here is a YouTube clip of Roy Clark and Joe Pass playing songs of Hank Williams, Sr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVtT2QAdhts&list=OLAK5uy_nHAxb2DTjyDSYI566iWOTRgeZzY_aATnM Well worth listening to.

[Brett Bellmore]

We do joke when her music comes up in rotation on road trips, (I've got all my albums uploaded to my car radio so we don't have to depend on reception in the mountains.) about how half her songs seem to be about stalkers.

[John F. Carr]

The synthesizer and sound effects distract from her voice.

[Dr. Ed 2]

How corrupt is the Ukraine?

Is it another South Vietnam?

[Nige]

The driving electronica is jarring, but her voice does bring it together.

[santamonica811]

I've been thinking about the documents scandal (or whatever we're calling it). Put aside the huge political angle...interesting, important, but off-topic for this thread. All I care about, here, is, "Two consecutive VPs have done this, plus one former president. (And, at this point, NO ONE would be shocked if any of the other living presidents or past VPs turned out to have improper documents buried away.) How can we prevent this from happening again in the future . . . or, at least, how can we dramatically reduce the likelihood?"

Again, put away all your partisan blinders for a few minutes. All I want to do is come up with some changes that can easily be implemented, to prevent any future Democrat/Republican prez/VP from accidentally doing this. Here are a few of my initial ideas.
a. Congress appropriates $250,000 (or whatever amount is necessary) to cover expenses.
b. In the last month of a presidency, or in the last 2 months, one or two or three people are designated as "watchdogs." They will be people with the highest security clearance, and will be selected by the party *not* in power. They will be paid out of the above funding.
c. NOTHING may be moved out of the White House without the official approval of these watchdogs. Everything that the prez/VP and their families wants moved out will be put into large or small crates and boxes. The watchdogs will look at each and every box and crate, and will seal and stamp and/or sign on this seal, after verifying "no documents at all" or "nothing classified in this box of documents."
d. People will be encouraged (or maybe mandated) to never mix documents with other things like furniture, artwork, clothing, etc, to make this watchdog process easier.

Two people could go through literally hundreds of non-document boxes in a day...it takes only a few seconds to look in a crate and say, "Okay, no documents here. [seal, sign, stamp]. On to the next box."

Frankly, it should take only a few minutes at most to go through an entire box of documents. The watchdogs aren't reading anything, after all--all they are looking for are those highly-visible cover pages. So, even if an administration has some crazy-large amount of paperwork it felt justified in removing, like 1,000 boxes of paperwork, that would take a few people only a day or two to verify.

Obviously, the above does not address at all situations where someone is intentionally taking out classified documents. But it would basically eliminate situations where they are removed due to incompetence.

Any other suggestions?
(Please, for just this thread; I don't give a crap about how sleazy Trump was, or how pathetically inept Biden/Pence was, or how sleazy those two were (if you assume intentional bad acts). Lots of other threads for that. All I want is to come up with a better system going forward, as it unfortunately appears that we can't rely on adult males not fucking up on a massive scale.

[Commenter_XY]

I like the idea, and the constructive intent; I see a potential flaw. Upon discovery of classified documents prior to moving, the POTUS can just declassify those on the spot, if s/he so wished. I do not know if that is good or bad, meaning on the spot declassification, but wanted to point that out.

For watchdogs, would senior status circuit court judges be better suited to the task?

How to reduce this problem, going forward? Maybe we need to think about what should be classified in the first place. Is the Fed gov classifying too much? I would say Yes.

[NOVA Lawyer]

"Upon discovery of classified documents prior to moving, the POTUS can just declassify those on the spot, if s/he so wished."

That's not how declassification works.

But, of course, a President could declassify something, but there would be a record of it and, so, there wouldn't be secret stashes of classified documents. Also, declassifying doesn't give the President ownership of the documents, they still belong to the government. So, the possibility that a President would declassify documents doesn't really change anything.

[Nelson]

"Also, declassifying doesn’t give the President ownership of the documents, they still belong to the government. So, the possibility that a President would declassify documents doesn’t really change anything."

This is the important part. Classified or not, those documents don't belong to the outgoing President. If they are taking them out of the White House, they are taking something that doesn't belong to them.

[Absaroka]

"If they are taking them out of the White House, they are taking something that doesn’t belong to them."

44 U.S.C. Chapter 22, § 2201

Definitions

As used in this chapter--
...
(2) The term "Presidential records" means documentary materials, ...
(B) does not include...
(iv) extra copies of documents produced only for convenience of reference, when such copies are clearly so identified.

Isn't that saying presidents can make and presumably keep copies?

[David Nieporent]

Isn’t that saying presidents can make and presumably keep copies?

Did you miss "when such copies are clearly so identified"?

[Absaroka]

"Did you miss “when such copies are clearly so identified”?"

No, in fact I quoted it 🙂

Nelson seemed to be saying presidents can't take any (non-personal) papers from the office to, for example, write their memoirs, or because they want a copy of that letter as a memento, etc. I was curious if the prohibition was actually that strong and looked up the law, and saw the quoted exception for properly marked copies, and wondered if I was reading the law correctly.

(if you are reflexively thinking I'm making a defense of Biden or Pence or Trump or someone, you are mistaken ... it just struck me as pretty strict that presidents wouldn't be able to take any copies under any circumstances)

[David Nieporent]

Fair enough. It's hard not to assume most people here have a partisan agenda.

But keep in mind that the Espionage Act as written (18 U.S.C. § 793) doesn't say anything about classified or non-classified; it applies to information relevant to national security. So the mere act of declassification would not necessarily allow a former president to take and retain copies of those documents. In particular, look at (d):

(d) Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or

And also (f):

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Those are felonies. (It was (f) that Comey investigated Hillary for, decided that she was careless but not "grossly negligent," and therefore recommended non-prosecution for.)

[Absaroka]

Sure, I was assuming unclassified (either because it already was, or outgoing POTUS goes through the appropriate process).

Like, e.g., outgoing Roosevelt[1] just wants to frame a copy of the note from Winnie saying 'Thanks, y'all really saved our bacon with Lend-Lease' or whatever for the wall in the rec room. It seemed to me that there must be some way for soon-to-be-ex-POTUS to do that.

[1]Roosevelt was pre-Presidential Records Act, and died in office, but you get the idea.

[John F. Carr]

The problem is not serious enough for the solution you propose. Informally ask outgoing presidents and vice presidents to scan through their piles of papers and segregate any classified documents, or to have somebody do it.

[ducksalad]

Yup. We're now finding out that it really is a case of "everybody does it", for decades.

The country is still here so one concludes it's not an existential threat.

[Nige]

There's one example of a guy deliberately talking documents, two examples of guys accidentally keeping stuff (absent further developments to show otherwise,) everything else seems to be things the dogs in the street know, which isn't always reliable. Not saying it won't turn out to be true, but the real extent of the problem is entirely conjectural so far.

[ducksalad]

I need to correct you here.

I see no evidence that the intention at the time of taking was different in any of the three cases. It's pretty clear they all just said my office papers are mine and took them home with careless disregard for classification. In all three cases it's a bunch of classified docs mingled with ordinary paperwork.

Of course Trump behaved differently afterward. But the obvious Occam's Razor explanation is that he's jerk who views everything as a partisan game, and believes compliance and apologies are for weakling losers and he's a winner. The people who pretended to think he took the documents as part of some complicated conspiracy to sell them to the Russians are just being theatrical.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, the obvious Occam's Razo explanation is that nobody asked Biden or Pence for anything in the first place, so they never had a chance to be dicks about it.

[Nige]

And they've still managed to avoid being dicks about it, even without being asked.

[not guilty]

The denial of a request for the return of documents can itself create additional legal peril. Per 18 U.S.C. § 793, someone who willfully retains documents relating to the national defense, which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, and who fails to deliver them on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive them is subject to up to ten years imprisonment.

In all likelihood nobody asked Biden or Pence for anything in the first place because there was no reason to think that Biden or Pence had suspect documents, unlike Trump who in January 2022 returned 15 boxes of documents not belonging to him to the National Archives. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/national-archives-says-trump-took-15-boxes-white-house-records-florida-rcna15260 That aroused suspicions that there were more documents that Trump had not returned. No such suspicions attended either Biden or Pence.

[Nige]

'that the intention at the time of taking was different'

It's hard to say what the actual intentions were in any of the three cases, nonethless as things stand, we have a small number of docs that were apparently stored where they shouldn't have been with no sign (yet) that it was done deliberately, and we have someone who packed boxes of documents on his way out.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

The country is still here so one concludes it’s not an existential threat.

Something can be a serious problem without rising to the level off "existential threat". It's also possible for something to be bad even if it has been going on for a long time without resulting in its potential consequences...yet (and that we know of).

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't think this actually covers the situation for most cases, thanks to the, " In the last month of a presidency, or in the last 2 months," clause. In Biden's case, at least, he appears to have been taking home and packing away classified documents on an ongoing basis since his Senate days. We don't know the timing for Pence, but other cases I've heard about were also on an ongoing basis.

In fact, Trump seems to have been the outlier in terms of packing stuff up as he was leaving, rather than just bringing documents home all along.

I think the solution, rather, needs to be in terms of stricter handling of the documents on a regular basis. Maybe numbered copies with a QR code on them that will cause all governmental photocopiers (And phones!) to refuse to copy and flash a red light, and RFID chips that trigger alarms at the doors?

You know, the sort of thing a layman might assume they'd already have in place if they took things seriously?

[John F. Carr]

We are talking about important people who do not appreciate the inconvenience good security brings.

Were any of these documents numbered originals that can be traced back to their origin?

[Brett Bellmore]

They're secret, so we're not allowed to know anything about them our Kirkland brand "betters" don't want us to know. And if they lie about them, we'll never know better.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What a P or VP has in his head makes this moot. Reagan went senile, imagine him talking to the press,,,

I don't think this is a big issue, but look at Pence - those were career military people who packed those docs....

[Nige]

If I had to guess I'd say that that there are overlapping areas of responsibility and authority, with whoever's in charge of the supervision of the handling and storage of classified documents having to deal with the churn of office file management - for an office-holder who can handle whatever he wants or needs at any given time and probably has time pressures causing his reading to pile up or get re-prioritised - which can get messy even in an orderly office, and stuff slips through the cracks. Trump not being much of a reader is probably why he had to hustle to box stuff up before he moved out.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

That would make it easier for historians to make sure the documents they want are in the right place...but the number of documents in physical form must be decreasing...how do you keep digital data classified and safe, and what about politicians with brains enough to remember stuff...and now they'll be able to electronically insert information into your brains, will politicians be required to leave their brains behind?

There, I think I kept it nonpartisan.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Again, you also need to cover the apparent situation of Senators absconding with classified info as well.

Some of the Biden documents were apparently from his Senate days.

[SimonP]

I actually think this whole thing is being blown out of proportion.

I think part of the dynamic that commentary is missing about the documents is that there is currently an incentive to "over-classify" everything. If you make the process of using classified documents more onerous, or penalize infractions more harshly, you'll shift the incentive to classify less frequently. Which would, in turn, make it more likely that sensitive or preferably-secret information gets out.

So the question is, what potentially harms national security more? A classification system run on the honor code, where everyone trusted with access does their best, with punishment reserved for the most egregious or intentional infractions; or a classification system that runs more tightly, with more oversight, but where some sensitive information gets out?

Trump exploited and abused the honor-based system, as he always inevitably would. But even the people I listen to, who are strongly anti-Trump, are skeptical that he took his secret documents specifically to sell or release to malefactors. (The risk from Trump stems from the fact that his indifference to the niceties of classified information is so widely known as to amount to an invitation to access poorly-custodied documents.) So even there the question of whether Trump put our national security at risk is an open question.

[OtisAH]

Once again, for the untold-thousandth time to date and one of probably dozens of times today, the issue in Turnip’s matter is his abject refusal to return the documents, including his ignoring of a subpoena, and his lying about returning all the documents over the course of the 9-12 months the feds attempted to retrieve the docs without having to get and act on a search warrant.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

That, and their "classified" status does not affect their "property of the United States" status.

There is no need to create a whole new bureaucracy around this--just make it painful to obstruct the retrieval of government property from those who are found to have absconded with it.

[ducksalad]

Great, we’re all starting to agree that the underlying offense of having the documents is minor and commonplace.

You’re effectively admitting that Trump’s real crime is failure to “respect my authority”. The documents are like speeding and his response is like one of those sovereign citizens refusing to sign the citation, defying the officer, and denying that the speed limit applies to him. And yes, it's worse than the speeding, but still not very important.

Kind of pattern over the last several years: the initial accusation is some giant threat to national security. At the end the only thing that sticks is a bunch of process crimes related to testimony, subpoenas, obstruction etc that would not have occurred at all without the BS accusations up front.

Don’t expect us to take this game too seriously.

[Sarcastr0]

his response is like one of those sovereign citizens refusing to sign the citation, defying the officer, and denying that the speed limit applies to him. And yes, it’s worse than the speeding, but still not very important.

How the heck is the President believing they are above the law unimportant?

[ducksalad]

Donald Trump is not President of the United States. He’s a pathetic has-been. Surprising you didn’t know that.

While he was president, his attitude was a serious concern, and I was concerned. Like any good libertarian, my concern is always with the miscreant currently in the Oval Office. Who, it now quite clear, also thought rules about classified documents don’t apply to him. So far he is behaving marginally better once busted, like someone reluctantly signing the traffic ticket but still muttering that it’s bullshit.

If it makes it you happy, I can list lots of "above the law" stuff Trump did that was way more concerning than the papers:
- misuse of the emergency power
- executive orders related to immigration
- misdirecting funds for a totally symbolic and useless border wall
- allowing executive agencies to issue overreaching COVID rules

[Sarcastr0]

Ex-Presidents have responsibilities.

But more than that, he remains the leader of his party and a candidate for President in next year's election.

Plus of course, serious concerns wrt past Presidents is not a 'let bygones be bygones' situation - there should be lessons learned.

This is not something to minimize.

[ducksalad]

If we’re worried about holding past presidents accountable, here are some other things that are literally 100 times more pressing than some boxes of old papers:

- an ex-President who ran torture camps
- an ex-President who had a kill list that included US citizens
- an ex-President who ordered a missile strike on a pharmaceutical plant in a country we weren’t even at war with.

And by the way, there are halfway-decent-even-if-insufficient reasons why we didn’t go after those ex-Presidents, and they apply to the current case.

[Sarcastr0]

Those are all things with national policy implications, and I suspect you know the can of worms those would open are different than the personal lawbreaking at issue here.

Plus, you're tu quoqueing.

Refusing the legitimacy of presidential records is bad; other things being bad does not make this less bad.

[ducksalad]

It's a similar can of worms in every case.

The usual reason givens for not prosecuting ex-presidents (even though the last several have deserved it, especially Bush II) is that it's a disincentive to peaceful transfer of power, and on a lesser scale, will increase polarization and cause people to view law enforcement as partisan.

And yes I know, logically people's reaction should be the opposite, but people aren't logical when it comes to politics, where (as Prof. Somin has explained many times) the rewards for being rational and informed are small and indirect.

[Sarcastr0]

No it is not a similar can of worms - the rest are all national policy we own. This is not.

[Nige]

So because he's a *has-been* he's above the law. People describe Trump in all manner of ways, but they all lead to the same conclusion: he's above the law.

[OtisAH]

I dunno, Sarc, the image of a sovereign citizen POTUS is kind of amusing. At least until we remember there are people who tried to overturn the government they were serving in at the time and are now putatively running a portion of, anyway.

[Bob from Ohio]

“You’re effectively admitting that Trump’s real crime is failure to “respect my authority”. ”

He ignored a subpoena! He lied!

All these strict law and order* liberals. Dirty Harry lives now on the modern left.

*View applies only to Donald Trump and other republicans.

[Nige]

If you say it sarcastically = he’s above the law.

No matter what they say about him, the core precept is that Trump is sacrosanct.

[David Nieporent]

Note that none of them ever characterized Bill Clinton's crimes — perjury, obstruction of justice — as "failure to respect my authority."

[Harvey Mosley]

I didn’t think they were process crimes until I was educated by the left.

It is a little bothersome that Biden, Pence, and Trump had classified documents but it’s okay for Biden and maybe Pence? Not sure about that. The left doesn’t seem to have their talking points figured out yet. I think they all should be prosecuted for the illegal handling and storage of classified documents. Maybe Pence and Biden should face less serious charges for that than Trump due to the circumstances.

Also I have to wonder why Blasey Ford is to be believed on the basis of vague recollections but not Broderick or Jones when they were able to provide specific details about the time and place of Clinton’s “process crimes”. But hey, I’m just a bitter clinger. What do I know?

[Mr. Bumble]

More than many who comment here.

[not guilty]

"It is a little bothersome that Biden, Pence, and Trump had classified documents but it’s okay for Biden and maybe Pence? Not sure about that. The left doesn’t seem to have their talking points figured out yet. I think they all should be prosecuted for the illegal handling and storage of classified documents. Maybe Pence and Biden should face less serious charges for that than Trump due to the circumstances."

As I have explained in detail elsewhere on this thread, simply having classified documents is not a criminal offense. Donald Trump committed multiple crimes in relation to the subject documents. Joe Biden and Mike Pence did not.

Harvey Mosley, if you differ, please identify (by title and section number) the statute(s) that you claim Biden and/or Pence violated.

[Nige]

'but it’s okay for Biden and maybe Pence?'

Is it because people aren't howling at the moon and attacking FBI offices and threatening civil war over the investigations that have begun into Biden and Pence that makes you thinks this?

'Maybe Pence and Biden should face less serious charges for that than Trump'

Trump is in legal jeopardy that Biden and Pence aren't not because he had the documents, but because he wouldn't give them back. Is this really so difficult to understand?

[Brett Bellmore]

Has it occurred to you that Biden and Pence had the advantage of knowing that the old rules were over, and Trump didn't, because he was the one they changed the old rules to get at?

It's like being the first person entering the speed trap, the people behind you have the advantage of seeing you pulled over, and know to slow down.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Ignoring the fact that your hero was the one who took 15 boxes, didn't return many more, lied about having more, defied a subpoena, and on various occasions is reported to have stated they were his and, essentially, fuck the government because he would do what he wanted.

No one changed the old rules to get him. Whereas most speeders were doing 45 in a 35 and the cops didn't much care, he was flying through downtown at 90 miles an hour while texting and eating a cheeseburger. Biden and Pence didn't need to be warned not to do that.

[Nige]

'Dont do what Trump does' is a handy guide but more often than not unnecessary because Trump does things nobody else would ever even think about doing, one reason for which is very few people have the fortitude or stomach to destroy the lives, careers and repuations of the people who work for and with them at the insane rate Trump does to keep himself out of jail.

[Nige]

'commonplace.'

We actually don't know that yet.

[not guilty]

"Great, we’re all starting to agree that the underlying offense of having the documents is minor and commonplace."

Merely having the documents is not an offense. Willfully and unlawfully concealing or removing them is an offense (18 U.S.C. § 2071). Willfully retaining the documents and failing to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive them is an offense (18 U.S.C. § 793(d) or (e), depending on whether the possession is lawful or unauthorized). Knowingly concealing or covering up documents object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation is an offense (18 U.S.C. § 1519). An officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States knowingly removing classified documents without authority and with the intent to retain such documents at an unauthorized location is an offense (18 U.S.C. § 1924).

[Commenter_XY]

I think part of the dynamic that commentary is missing about the documents is that there is currently an incentive to “over-classify” everything.

Totally agree. This is notably absent from a lot of commentary.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I agree as well.

And either there are no internal controls as to tracking of documents or the controls that exist are being ignored or implemented very poorly. In the case of Biden they'd been gone for 6 years and apparently nobody even knew they were missing.

Makes you wonder how many secrets have been stolen generally that we'll never find out about. This is not a reference to any politician, just a general high level comment.

[Brett Bellmore]

More than 6 years, some of them were from his Senate days.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

There is no internal control that tracks or even records classified documents across all agencies.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I agree with the conclusion regarding the tendency to over-classification, but even then the issue is with politicians assuming the authority to decide for themselves when they can just ignore classification.

[shawn_dude]

Over-classification is a thing, but it's not for the person taking the documents home to determine which of them are correctly or incorrectly classified. The rules are the rules. The correct response to an over-classified document is to have it reclassified. There's a process for that so it's not like they don't have options.

Having said that, for a sitting President, VP, or Senator with access to these documents to take them to read as "homework" is probably a productivity thing. Providing a means to do that while tracking and securing the documents is probably the best solution. Not addressing the core need will only ensure it continues to happen. This is why many of our political leaders use private email servers, insecure phones, and other services they know they shouldn't--because the government's IT infrastructure lags behind modern technical literacy and no one can be bothered to suffer through an ancient Blackberry phone. (You know it's bad when even AOL was easier to use.)

[ragebot]

While I had a top secret clearance issued as the result of my application to OCS while I was on active duty truth be told I never saw any classified documents the entire time I was in the military. But my real question is just how common are classified documents and how many folks really deal with them on a regular basis.

It seems Biden kept classified documents from his time in the Senate for God knows how many years, but my point is those were certainly not the only copies. In fact once a document is classified what is the process of making copies of it (I am talking about legit copies, not the Mission Impossible sneak in and make a copy to sell to the ChiComs) and is there any limit on how many copies can be made and who keeps track of them.

Truth be told I doubt Biden really was aware of the substance of the classified documents in the trunk of his car that date back to his days in the Senate; not even sure he knew what was in the more recent documents. Probably the same for Trump and Pence. Given the number of documents Trump had I doubt he could remember the substance of all of them.

I also wonder what would have happened if Trump (who ever) instead of taking the physical classified documents home simply scanned or took a pix of them and then created a data base of the digital documents. Seems like that would take up a lot less space and allow a quick search if the documents had key words attached (think of key words like 'stuff Hunter sold to ChiComs).

As an aside my insurance company no longer sends me a card to carry in my wallet showing my vehicles are insured, they simply tell me to put the email of my insurance coverage on my phone and show it to the LEOs if asked. That seems like a much better option than wasting space in the trunk of a car to store classified documents.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

There are already people whose job it is to manage classified documents, regardless of whom is receiving them or reviewing them.

It is clear that those people are not actually doing that job very well.

This would not be an issue if our government officials were held to the same standard of care as our military regarding classified documents.

[shawn_dude]

When was the last time you got in your boss's way and prevented them from doing what they wanted?! It's easy to say the folks managing these documents should do a better job, but they're hired by the person they're supposed to police, which creates conflicts of interest.

[Commenter_XY]

VC Conspirators, do you ever have leftover rice in a container, and you wonder whether to just toss it, or do something with it? I think I have an option for you: Brown rice pudding. Note: If it is leftover rice, I recommend a slow cooker.

https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/creamy-brown-rice-pudding/

This recipe calls for brown rice (when I eat rice, I try to eat brown rice), but it works with white rice, too. Very simple, and stupendously easy to customize. You can use almond extract in lieu of vanilla extract, or do a mix of brown sugar/white sugar, or add clove with the cinnamon (or not). Or use almond milk instead of cream, or half & half or evaporated milk.

You want to talk easy prep? Try this...How hard is it to dump everything in with your leftover rice, mix, turn slow cooker to low, remember to put the slow cooker lid back on, and then come back 3-4 hours later to a tasty dessert? Yes, it is that easy.

I don't know about you, but I look for easy stuff to prepare that doesn't generate too many dishes to wash afterward. This is especially true when things get busy at work; I just don't have time. So quick and easy is important.

Conspirators, I hope you find this useful. Bon Appetit!

[Mr. Bumble]

Can leftover crickets and meal worms be substituted for rice?

Asking for a friend.

[Commenter_XY]

No. Nor can you use mealworms (also approved by the EU for human consumption).

You actually raise an interesting point Mr. Bumble. If you buy imported food products from the EU (and I do - from Aldi, Lidl), do they now have to label it so that an American consumer knows the food they are about to eat contains ground-up bug guts, bug shit and bug carcasses. They call it insect proteins (and they are correct, there is insect protein); one might call it Insect ProteinPlus+ (you can figure out what the plus is for, lol - can I trademark this?) , or Soylent Green Lite. 🙂

[Absaroka]

"so that an American consumer knows the food they are about to eat contains ground-up bug guts, bug shit and bug carcasses. "

You might be surprised by the current limits.

[Brett Bellmore]

Not like home gardened food is lacking in that department. There were bugs in the broccoli from our garden as a kid; Practically impossible to avoid, they were the same color, and hiding inside.

Dad just said, "What's your beef? They're protein, aren't they?"

[Nige]

Dude, wash your veg.

(But I always think of that Robert Redford film where he goes undercover in the prison he's about to start running and finds a weevil in his spoonfull of food and an old lag cackles and says 'Plenty of prooo-tein!')

[Commenter_XY]

Brubaker....loved that movie.

[DWB]

My dad was an extra in that movie

[Commenter_XY]

Oh wow...how about that. Nice.

[Nige]

Cool.

[Brett Bellmore]

Caterpillars inside broccoli laugh at washing.

[Nige]

Not so funny when its gastric juices, is it caterpillar?

[David Nieporent]

just look for the hechsher. OU-B is for bugs.

[Commenter_XY]

ROTFLMAO.....now that was funny, David Nieporent.

[Brett Bellmore]

I like the idea, and was raised on rice pudding using leftover brown rice. (The only sort of rice dad would eat, so we hardly saw white rice in our house.) Alas, my wife isn't keen on rice pudding.

Usually I throw together some veggie fried rice at breakfast time.

[Moderation4ever]

My left-over rice always ends in fried rice for dinner. David Chang's bacon and kim chee fried rice is the best.

[shawn_dude]

It always depends on the amount of leftover rice, of course, but if it's not enough to make at least two good servings of dessert, I toss it into a soup. No grain goes unpunished.

[AmosArch]

What significant effects, if any, do you foresee from ChatGPT, AI art generators and development of machine learning within 20 years? Optimistic? Pessimistic? Overblown?

[Commenter_XY]

Elon Musk called it: No more homework.

(the man is brilliant)

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Some people want to call the current situation at Twitter Elon-gate, but I think that would be stretching it a bit.

[Nige]

A lot of people will get fired then rehired at lower rates for more work to manage and edit the ouput of the generators that replace them. A lot of cheap and nasty graphics will be used for posters and book covers instead of paying designers and artists. It’s such a mediocre and thuddingly anti-human way for AI to become part of society and the economy. What happened to automating mindless tasks or performing high-level functions and calculations? Nah, we’ll just use our utopian tech to fuck things up for writers and artists they way we fucked with taxi drivers and delivery people and truck drivers and warehouse workers.

[Nige]

Normally musicians are the front line of getting fucked with by business and tech, hence the adage ‘what first happens to musicians will eventually happen to everyone,’ but since they haven’t managed to get AIs to generate music anyone wants to listen to, they went for artists and writers. If AI can produce cheap creative output they'll go for taking over creative industries. Everything will be worse, but still profitable, and the only actual humans making stuff will be those already financially secure enough to do so as a hobby. That's worse case scenario, it's also possible it'll go through a boom and bust cycle like NFTs and vanish from public consciousness with dizzying speed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Musicians' customers also get screwed over by business; I owned perpetual download rights to a good deal of perfectly legit indy music on MP3.COM, and when the RIAA took it over, they deleted all content not contracted with them, without regard to whether it was legal, and without regard to MP3's existing contractual obligations.

Only reason I still have it is that I made sure to get physical copies on CD, too, not trusting 'perpetual' download rights.

[Nige]

And most music isn't bought nowadays, it's borrowed via streaming, with a pittance paid to the artist. The music is cheap, the musicians are mostly poor and the profits are huge. Maybe music will start disappearing from services the way TV streaming services went cancel-and-remove-happy, or maybe some other shoe will drop, but drop it will.

[shawn_dude]

Obviously, not having to pay an AI will lead to some disruption-based job losses. That's probably not a good thing in the short run.

My lead developer demonstrated ChatGPT as a software-writing tool that can automate some pretty menial file manipulation tasks. It can also write 95% complete software functions (requiring variable name changes and inclusion of business rules in some cases) that can speed up a variety of coding tasks. I can easily see this as elevating software development more into the architecture realm than hours of menially typing out routine code that it can sometimes become. So for at least my field, it promises to pick up some of the less interesting elements of the job.

Caveat: I'd hesitate to put critical and competitive business logic or algorithms into a publicly available search engine for anyone else to query on. Especially given that the current AI darling, ChatGPT, is partially owned by Microsoft who plans on sticking inside Bing.

[shawn_dude]

Almost in every case where new communication technology is created, there's a lot of hand-wringing about it and then the porn industry leverages it to make a ton of money before it finally gains traction in the general population.

[Nige]

Yeah, but these generators are apparently incredbly expensive to run, so we're at the disruptive phase when they burn through investment funds trying to smash their way into a market, so I think there's a lielelihood of the whole thing crashing and evaporating in some insanely accelerated tech life-cycle.

[OtisAH]

The rates for real live lawyers are about to skyrocket…

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/24/the-worlds-first-robot-lawyer-isnt-a-lawyer-and-im-not-sure-its-even-a-robot/

[ducksalad]

I see a case five years from now where there’s a college class being offered. The state is paying the university to offer it, and the students are collecting federal student loans.

But it turns out the students are all instantiations of ChatGPT. Not students using ChatGPT, but ChatGPTs that registered on their own. It turns out the professor is also another version ChatGPT. And the whole thing was organized by a higher level ChatGPT, that is collecting the state payments and the federal loans and hiding the money in a foreign account.

And there’s no person involved to arrest or charge with a crime. It’s AI all the way down.

[bernard11]

What does the AI spend the money on? A supercomputer?

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, a supercomputer, and politicians.

[ducksalad]

Kind of torn on whether AI has First Amendment rights to lobby politicians.

Leaning toward yes, since the wording is "make no law" about speech, and the text does not limit it to people.

[Sarcastr0]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB1X4o-MV6o

[DaveM]

Musicians have already been dealing with generative tools for quite some time, now: sequencers, loop machines, drum machines, pitch correction, you name it. Sad to say, all those generative tools have produced a ton lot of predictable, repetitive, low-quality music.

I anticipate the same from ChatGPT and the dozens of other generative tools just now hitting the market, especially in the visual arts. The vast bulk of our information landscape will be dominated by generated content. We will get to the point where -- just like modern pop songs -- we tune it out, it's just background.

Oddly enough, this will lead to an increased demand for genuinely original works. Flooding the market with a cheap imitation of a good only works for a time.

[Nige]

Yeah, that's kind of a middle road, but artists need to eat, and need to get paid, not many are going to be able to hang around waiting for everyone to realise how shit generated content is. Massive state funding for the arts would help, but Republicans' eyes would melt like the end of Raiders. And there's no denying even then it would be a depressing vista.

[shawn_dude]

There's an artist I read about (cannot find the link today, apologies) that composes and takes photographs then feeds them into an image AI to generate a final version (or three). I found that interesting because the original idea and composition is human but the final piece of art is constructed by software. The results are interesting, and don't always follow the original composition 100%.

[Nige]

Yeah, there are artists doing interesting things with AI, whether they'll have enough of an impact to elevate it to a new form remains to be seen. All these generators everyone's messing around with cost about a billon a year to run, so it may genuinely turn out to be a bubble.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Stanford student investigated, maybe punished for reading a book.

[John F. Carr]

I have a copy of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich with a swastika on the cover. It could form the kernel of a sociology experiment. Read it in public places and see how the public reacts.

[Nige]

It's not disaproval and opprobium you should worry about, it's if you get approving thumbs up and excited invitations to join the local Nazi book club, then you should start worrying.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Why, what's the difference?

[Nige]

I don't know about you but I have a hard line I draw between people who disapprove of swastikas and people who approve of them.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I dunno. People who dish out opprobrium to people reading "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" might have more in common with those who approve of swastikas than you think.

[Absaroka]

That strikes me as likely a pretty accurate observation.

[Nige]

If they're responding to the book itself, yes, if to the huge swastika on the cover, obviously not.

[Frank Drackman]

Got my copy confiscated crossing the Austria/Germany Border (remember European Border Crossings) in 1996, had to pay the Aviano AFB library whatever it cost.

[GreenLanternCorps]

I picked up a copy of the TSR version of SPI’s “World War II European Theater of Operations” at a Half Price Books a few years back. That version features a flaming swastika on the box art:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2447/world-war-ii-european-theater-operations

(Look in the photos section.)

Some idiot saw me carrying it and went. “That has a swastika on it!”

It’s a game about World War II!!

Good thing the idiot didn’t see my copy of “Nato, Nukes and Nazis”…

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2447/world-war-ii-european-theater-operations

[Nige]

Objecting to swastikas seems healthy to me, it isn't as if you can't just point out that it is, in fact, a game, and feel superior because you sort of tricked someone into having a perfectly normal reaction to a swastika.

[GreenLanternCorps]

I did mention it was a World War II game. Given the context of carrying a game from the shelf to the checkout. Someone acting like I had no idea what the box was, was inappropriate.

Knowing what a swastika is and it's use by Nazi Germany is healthy.
Freaking out when you see any reference to one, or any reference to Nazi Germany, particularly in a historical context is not.

I can think of any number of books, comics, games, etc. referencing World War II and Nazi Germany that feature swastikas. Until recently everybody understood the context, and nobody reacted like the person in the bookstore, or the idiot who filed the complaint about "Mein Kampf". The current atmosphere of overreaction and freaking out is not normal. People who do it need to be told this, and to chill out and carry on your lives.

The mere sight of something is not a reason to overreact.

[Nige]

Lots of people have very good reasons to react to swastikas in public places, and if they turn out to be innocuous, I'm sure it's a relief all round.

[Davedave]

The version with a totally unnecessary swastika on the cover was something to think hard about whether to buy. It was vile exploitation of horrific crimes against humanity for shock value. Why would you give your money to people like that?

[Brett Bellmore]

Never understood why that book gets treated worse than any of Marx's works. Well, no, I understand, I just don't like the reasons.

[Nige]

Marx didn't personally murder millions, and his work has some socioligical value in its class analysis, but I expect there's places you wouldn't want to be caught reading it.

[OtisAH]

Steel yourself for a deluge of spit-covered “Where’s your proof Hitler personally murdered anyone” responses.

[Brett Bellmore]

I suspect Hitler personally murdered about as many people as Stalin did. Which is to say, perhaps a few for all I know, perhaps none, but so what? Ordering people murdered matters, too. They both delegated. Massively.

I wonder if Marx's works would be considered to have some sociological value if communism had the same repute in academia that fascism has? I mean, his work didn't exactly stand the test of practical application.

[Sarcastr0]

Hitler did personally murder Hitler, so there is that.

[Frank Drackman]

but didn't asphyxiate (Not drowned, there's a difference) any secretaries, like a certain late MA Senator who's name rhymes with Dead Kennedy.

[Harvey Mosley]

There's at least a miniscule amount of good in everyone I guess.

[Nige]

Theories of fascism have sociological value in that people study them, but I doubt anyone has any particular regard for the founding texts in and of themselves. Marx gave us the language and analytical tools we’ve use to talk about class and society for over a hundred years. I’d like to think if he knew what monsters would use his work for he’d have burned the lot unpublished, but the stain is unavoidably indelible.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, you'd like to think that. I get that. Doesn't mean there's any reason to think it.

What it comes down to is that the real difference between Mein Kamp and Das Capital is Hitler breaking his pact with Stalin, so that we ended up allied with Stalin, and the commies in the US got treated with kid gloves compared to the fascists.

[Nige]

The difference between the two is that the author of one was a genocidal monster, the other was not. Pre-war US fascists flourished. Post-war there was the Red Scare, which was quite fascist in its way. Not really as cut and dried as you say.

[David Nieporent]

I suspect Hitler personally murdered about as many people as Stalin did. Which is to say, perhaps a few for all I know, perhaps none, but so what? Ordering people murdered matters, too. They both delegated. Massively.

What does any of that have to do with Marx? Marx and Stalin are, it turns out, different people.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Both Marx and Hitler gave us political systems representing oppression and death. Communists were killing long before and long after Stalin.

I doubt either Hitler or Stalin had a huge personal body count.

[David Nieporent]

I am not a fan of Marx in any respect. A terrible economist, a lousy sociologist, an anti-semite, etc. But there's no "Marx and Hitler" that "gave us political systems." Hitler was the leader of Germany. In contrast, Marx was in no way involved with the Soviet Union. He died 35 years before the Russian Revolution. Lenin and Stalin are the ones you want to put up against the wall with Hitler.

[DWB]

BULL SHIT

[David Nieporent]

Compelling and scholarly response.

[Nige]

Marx described an oppressive economic system and tried to predict its downfall or transformation, Russian communists took his work and built another, even more oppressive system with it, the whole thing is a monumental mix of crimes against humanity and sick tragedy. Marx still resonates with some people today despite Stalin because the system he described still exists. You can equate Stalin and Hitler, not Marx and Hitler.

Stalin was a some sort of spy or courier when he was young, and involved in a violent revolutionary struggle, Hitler was in the trenches during the first world war, it’s not inconceivable they have some sort of personal body count, but of course they found it much more efficient to kill people when they were in positions to delegate.

[ducksalad]

My wife's currently working on Das Kapital. It's going to be a long project, 1400 pages of densely formatted 10 pt text, and according to her very boring and repetitive.

I have neither the time nor inclination to read the whole thing. But I sampled at five different paragraphs spaced hundreds of pages apart and they seemed interchangeable.

[Reallynotbob]

Never understood why Catcher in the Rye gets treated worse than the Bible. Well, no, I understand, I just don't like the reasons.

[Krayt]

Well, we're learning the real-world books hiding in the woods from the Firemen.

[shawn_dude]

Fahrenheit 451 : Florida

[gdanning]

Why do you say that the student is being investigated? And that he might be punished? Because the article doesn’t say that, and if you had bothered to do 10 seconds of research, you would find that the process referenced in the article “is not a judicial or investigative process." https://protectedidentityharm.stanford.edu/report-incident

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

You can't be that naive. The clear purpose is to chill speech and deter actions deemed "harmful".

The form you linked to sufficiently demonstrates that this process is indeed an "investigation"--no matter how disingenuously they happen to characterise it.

[ducksalad]

Exactly....skip over any "judicial or investigative process" and jump straight to the righteous indignation and claims of threats to safety.

[TwelveInchPianist]

" if you had bothered to do 10 seconds of research, you would find that the process referenced in the article “is not a judicial or investigative process.”

I did more than 10 seconds of research. You get that the fact that they don't call it punishment has nothing to do whether or not it's punishment, right?

[shawn_dude]

The book is clearly not the only thing with its own narrative.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

"...address incidents where a student or community member feels..."

I found the problem.

[shawn_dude]

Then I'm sure you're equally unhappy with the "anti-woke" laws that ban any material that makes a person feel guilty for being a particular race and for which members of that race might have done something evil in the past?

[Reallynotbob]

That isn't what the article says. It says someone posted a photo of a student reading Mein Kampf to another student's Snapchat story. In other words, the reading isn't the problem; it's the message potentially implied by pushing the photograph to a singled-out student.

"A Protected Identity Harm report has been filed after the circulation of a Snapchat screenshot of a student reading “Mein Kampf,” the autobiographical manifesto of Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler.... The photo of the student reading the book was posted to another student’s Snapchat story Friday evening, according to a screenshot of the image obtained by The Daily."

[GreenLanternCorps]

The problem is that:

a) Someone thought somebody else reading a book was worthy on invading their privacy and taking a photo of them.
b) Their photo and the situation around it was deemed worthy
to prompt someone to file a complaint with a university.
c) The concept of a "Protected Identity Harm Report" and it being used to document reading a book.

[Reallynotbob]

A picture of a student reading an anti-semitic book, posted to a Jewish student's personal social media feed seems like it might have additional and aggressive implications, no?

[Michael P]

We need common-sense knife control laws here in the DC suburbs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/21/alan-kaufmann-stabbed-protecting-wife/

[Reallynotbob]

But... constitutional carry....

[Jerry B.]

Considering you’re more likely to be murdered with a knife than with an AR type rifle (or any rifle for that matter) one wonders why the Democrats haven’t moved to ban these dangerous weapons, or at least mandate that they be registered and kept under lock and key.

[Reallynotbob]

Make the proposal for all such dangerous weapons and let's see where it goes. You're being sarcastic, but it's a valid discussion if you mean it.

[apedad]

GOP bill would stick Congress members with veterans’ health care plan to call attention to failing VA

A Republican bill introduced this week would force members of Congress and their staff to get health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a change aimed at forcing lawmakers to recognize the longstanding problems with the VA.

House and Senate lawmakers and staff are required to get their health coverage through the Washington, D.C., health insurance exchange created under Obamacare. They get access to gold-level plans, which means they pay 20% of their health care costs while taxpayers cover 80%.

But, under legislation proposed by Rep. Warren Davidson, an Army veteran and Republican from Ohio, lawmakers and staff would receive VA care at VA facilities "as if such members and staff were veterans." Davidson says the point is to make lawmakers more aware of the problems with the VA.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-bill-would-stick-congress-veterans-health-care-plan-call-attention-failing-va
HA!

You don’t have to agree with all GOP positions but you do have to admire their pluckiness.

[Nige]

I suppose actual proposals to fix and improve the VA that would garner bipartisan support would be too much to ask for.

[Brett Bellmore]

This is a proposal to give members of Congress the incentive to do that. Did you not pick up on that?

[OtisAH]

I guess he must have missed that the same way you missed his point that proposing legislation to actually address the problems at the VA is a more productive use of time than putting up performative legislation that will allegedly promote awareness of the problems at the VA and might lead to useful legislation.

[Brett Bellmore]

Incentives are really important, OtisAH.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, you should be able to tell the difference between actual incentives and a political stunt.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, the difference is whether it actually gets passed.

[Sarcastr0]

By this dumbass logic, all laws that aren't passed are political stunts.

[Brett Bellmore]

An awful lot of them are, yes.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't disagree. But all is different than awful lot.

You're treating this stunt as legit; don't.

[OtisAH]

So the existing and known problems in the VA are not incentive enough for MAGA to propose legislation to address those problems? They’re *forced* to put on a dog and pony show first? You’d make a fine shitty legislator.

[bernard11]

MAGA doesn't do policy.

They just put up legislation that let's them go "yuk, yuk," which somehow appeals to their base.

[Nige]

We've found some virtue signalling the Brett actually likes!

[jb]

Why not both?

You could pass some meaningful reforms to the veteran's health system *and* also require that Congress uses it to make sure that they not only try and do a good job the first time but also will be encouraged to pass follow-up legislation when the first version inevitably still has at least some problems.

[shawn_dude]

Because the effort to write the "stick it to them" bill is the same as writing a "let's fix the VA" bill. Merging the two is even more work and reduces the likelihood that the VA will actually see any improvements.

As is mentioned above, this is someone trying to show how they're not a Beltway insider who, as a Beltway insider, understands the law has zero chance of success.

[Nige]

The state of the VA is incentive enough, this is just clowning around.

[Bob from Ohio]

"fix and improve the VA"

Impossible. Best to kill it.

VA hospital in Cleveland is located within a mile of both the Cleveland Clinic, a top 5 hospital, and a good university hospital. Send the vets there like regular patients at government expense. Better care and cheaper, no duplicate equipment needed.

Same with any big city. Plenty of better options rather than a duplicate and inferior system.

[apedad]

As a military veteran, I generally agree with Bob about closing VA clinics and having veterans use civilian hospitals (with some exceptions maybe for rare, military-specific, injuries [PTSD?], where there could be small, specialized clinics).

HOWEVER, there are powerful, veteran groups who are adamantly opposed to this option and want to have wide-spread, VA support for veterans.

[Bob from Ohio]

Change is bad, American Legion addition.

I agree its not going to happen. Too bad, vets would be far better off.

[Nige]

How… conservative of them.

(They might be justified in thinking that just because you burn something bad to the ground doesn't mean you can't replace it with something worse, or nothing at all.)

[Nige]

At least that would be a proposal.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

How many Republicans will vote for it?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You can't fix a socialist healthcare system like the VA.

No amount of reforms or money can fix a fundamentally bad idea.

[Reallynotbob]

VA hospitals outperform the free market hospitals, according to a Rand study. Do you want to address that data or ignore it?

https://www.rand.org/news/press/2018/04/26.html

[Bob from Ohio]

"The study did not examine issues related to accessing care in the VA health system, such as whether enrollees gain access to care in a timely manner."

Assuming one study is better than 75+ years of real life experience, the biggest VA problem was not even studied!

[Reallynotbob]

Okay, but that wasn't what BCD was arguing. He was arguing the VA is fundamentally broken. Your critique about access is fair, but not a fundamental obstacle to success.

[apedad]

Remember last Thursday (1/19), on Prof. Adler’s blog about “Trump Lawyers Sanctioned AGAIN for Frivolous Suit Against Political Opponents,” and I added a comment about, “Trump voluntarily dismisses lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James,” https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-voluntarily-dismisses-lawsuit-against-new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james?

Guess what?!?

Trump’s retreating again.

Trump Withdraws Another Case Opposing New York AG’s Fraud Probe After Brutal Sanctions Order For ‘Frivolous’ Litigation

https://lawandcrime.com/trump/trump-withdraws-another-case-opposing-new-york-ags-fraud-probe-after-brutal-sanctions-order-for-frivolous-litigation/

The first withdrawal was in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida while this one is in the Manhattan-based Second Circuit.

I guess they finally figured out when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging.

[John F. Carr]

In the Second Circuit, did James have a credible threat of sanctions to waive in return for Trump's surrender?

[apedad]

IANAL so can't quite answer; however, this withdrawal is only of Trump's claim that, ". . . the investigation was politically motivated, an allegation rejected by both the trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, and multiple federal judges whose intervention the former president sought."

[OtisAH]

Every one of his lawsuits are bunk, dummy. That’s why he’s “surrendering.”

[Ed Grinberg]

query: Let's say, hypothetically, they weren't. Wouldn't he pretty much have to "surrender" anyway?

[OtisAH]

No, he wouldn’t.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Am I the only one wary about giving the Ukrainians our tanks? Yes, they are 40 years old now, but I believe a lot is still classified. Of course, what did Brandon give to the Taliban?

I like the idea of a Pax Americana solution - we just tell both sides to END this.

[John F. Carr]

It was said during the Cold War that classification mainly kept military information away from the American people. The USSR knew most of the secrets.

This is a chance for the tanks do to what they were built to do. They may never have another chance to fight a first tier army. Losing their secrets is not likely to turn the tide of the next war. I do not predict M1 tanks fighting decisive battles in the mountains of Taiwan.

On the subject of Taiwan, press reports said a wargame showed the US would win the war at sea at the cost of a couple carriers and some supporting ships. Like one major WW2 battle. That sounds horrifying to people who don't remember real war. As a fraction of the US military capability it is small.

Also, the U.S. plans long term increases in ammunition production so we can fight a real war instead of standing around looking tough.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Tanks to Ukraine were a surprise to me. I thought the initial Russian campaign to take Kiev amounted to the equivalent of the sinking of the Hood and the Prince of Wales—an event portending the end of an era, as newer weapons and tactics turned accustomed military assets into liabilities.

I would be dismayed if my son had to go to war. If he had to serve in a tank, against an enemy with satellite and drone surveillance, and long range anti-tank missiles, I would be in despair.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Let's hope enough Russian parents feel the same way about their kids.

[bernard11]

I was not surprised at all.

There has been a lot of pressure on the Germans to send, and authorize others to send, Leopard tanks. When Scholz agreed to send them if the US sent Abrams tanks I thought it was 95+% that we would send some - as few as we could get away with.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

If you thought you saw the end of the usefulness of tanks because of Russian failures at combined arms tactics, then we can add another item to the list of things you don’t understand.

Without infantry and air support, tanks have ALWAYS been vulnerable.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Cavanaugh, vulnerable-but-useful is not the same as detriment-and-impediment. During the Normandy invasion, British forces were bottled up for weeks by hard-pressed German tank divisions, despite the fact that U.S. and British air superiority greatly hampered the tanks’ ability to maneuver during daylight.

During last summer’s Russian attempt to take Kiev, their tanks became death traps for their crews, despite no effective opposing air power. From published reports, it seems the Russian tanks were stopped by little more than satellite intelligence, on-the-ground intelligence (including from civilians), and shoulder fired weapons.

Perhaps those published reports are less than fully descriptive. If so, you might prove right, which I suppose would reinforce your sneering over-confidence. At least I understand I am commenting in the way of speculation, on the basis of inadequate information. I doubt you are notably better informed, or miraculously equipped to deliver brilliant military analysis without it.

No on will be happier than I if these late-model main battle tanks prove decisive for the Ukrainian cause. For now, I guess I am less confident than you are that will happen.

In any event, we will have to wait months to begin to find out. The U.S. has announced it will not supply Abrams tanks from current inventory. They will have to be built from scratch, together with the specialized logistical tools necessary for their support in the field. During that interval the Russians may choose to set up missile batteries which can be fired from behind Russian borders to take those tanks out in eastern Ukraine. If that worked, it would ratchet up pressure for more highly-escalatory steps from the U.S. and NATO. If that is all the tanks accomplish, it will be a mistake to have sent them.

[Absaroka]

The general consensus seems to be that the Russian formations were quite short of the infantry that you use to keep enemy infantry away from your tanks.

If you want some digestible sources, look for a couple of youtube vids (youtube ID, date, channel, title):

mUyAPQEb01Q 25Mar22 Perun 'End of the Tank?'
lI7T650RTT8 16Apr22 The Chieftain 'No, The Tank Is Not Dead?'

The tl;dr is that you need tanks today because without them you are reenacting the trench warfare of 1914. You may recall the Karkiv counteroffensive, where the Ukrainians retook much of the territory the Russians had seized in northeast Ukraine. That was a classic combined arms offensive.

Lastly, you might ask why every military in Europe is frantically buying tanks even after the Russians retreated from Kiev. One possibility, of course, is that they simply don't have your expertise in armored warfare.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Those are both good sources, as well as Rob Lee on Twitter (while that place lasts).

@RALee85

The Institute for the Study of War is also a good resource. (understandingwar.org) as well as the Royal United Services Institute.

As Absaroka mentioned above, if you don't have infantry to protect your tanks, then you're going to see a lot of dead tanks. Russia's (tactical) failure in this war has been primarily a failure of combined arms maneuvering.

It would seem Stephen, that I am in fact far better informed than you are, as are the experts in the business whom I obviously pay attention to, and you do not.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Absaroka, indeed, I do ask. Please explain why anyone would be frantic to buy a multi-million dollar, high-maintenance, main battle tank? After all, they could be frantic instead to buy a $100,000 missile which travels at Mach 1.3, has a range of more than 5 miles, does not need line-of-sight aiming to strike its target, but can use line-of-sight aiming to target effectively even individual persons, can be fired from the air (including from unmanned drones) or from the ground, and which has shown in combat that it can reliably destroy any tank in the world, including the American Abrams?

Because the answer to that lopsided cost-effectiveness conundrum is so glaringly obvious, maybe the question needs to be reframed to add interest. During the brief interval a main battle tank can be expected to survive against an enemy equipped with such missiles, what mission can it perform other than an anti-tank mission? Can you name anything to justify the logistical agony of keeping a main battle tank going until it is destroyed, and its crew is killed?

The only reasonable answer I can suppose is that the purchasers of those tanks think they will use them as aggressive weapons (or political threats) against an enemy chosen because it is incapable to mount that kind of missile defense. An unreasonable answer might be that they are under political pressure to buy pointless hardware to keep an international military-industrial complex in fine fettle. Perhaps you have some other answer worth paying attention to.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Instead of your usual bloviating bullshit, Lathrop, perhaps you should take in some of the sources which Absaroka and I have both listed.

"Why are all these countries and their defense departments buying tanks? I, the self-proclaimed expert at everything, with no military or strategic experience in my life, deem they are all stupid!"

You are an ignorant fool who doesn't even know what he doesn't know, but doesn't let that stop him from opining on anything and everything as though he's an expert.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Cavanaugh, because you are persistently rude, I am reluctant to help out while you embarrass yourself. Nevertheless, I always hope things can improve.

Everyone who reads this blog can see I do not claim any special expertise about these subjects. They can also see I asked commonsense questions based on widely available published information about weaponry, and based also on well-known recent events. In short, I asked questions of the sort any educated layman who has been paying attention might ask.

All you offered in reply was name calling, and that too is evident to everyone. Make it a point to notice, everything you write here is published world-wide, to an audience which will mostly be mystified about your display of animus. It will not improve their opinion if they conclude that you behave this way because you enjoy the agreement of others who also comment, and who share your prejudices. None of that adds substance to the discussion.

If you have substance to add, and hope to use it to critique my arguments, have at it.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Go read the sources that Absaroka and I have linked.

Do you think your question hasn't been considered by the multitude of Departments of Defense of the various countries around the world that somehow, seem to disagree with your take on the matter?

Listen to Perun and The Chieftain. Read The ISW and RUSI reports. See what those who are far better versed in this subject than you have to say on the matter.

Your question is based on ignorance. You can fix that.

[Absaroka]

"Because the answer to that lopsided cost-effectiveness conundrum is so glaringly obvious, ..."

"Everyone who reads this blog can see I do not claim any special expertise about these subjects"

Which is it?

Serious answer: We seem to have a battle of the experts here. In one corner we have the military and governments of most NATO countries, plus South Korea, etc, etc. We also have the Ukrainians, who have more real world combat experience with Javelin missiles than the rest of the world combined, and more recent experience with the full spectrum of offensive and defensive warfare that all those countries put together. And all of those still feel that tanks, and more generally combined arms operations in general, are essential for modern warfare.

In the other corner we have Stephen Lathrop, who read a couple of articles saying 'the tank is dead'.

Snark answer: Lieutenant Dunning-Kruger is walking down the trench, handing out Javelins to his platoon. He then briefs them: "OK, men. Our mission is to go over the top here and charge over the 500 yards of No Man's land into the enemy position. The enemy has laid in interlocking fire from heavy machine guns, and has artillery on call, so you're going to want to step right along". Private Kilroy asks "But LT, Javelins were great when we were sneaking through the woods hunting infantry-less tanks confined to a road. But what good are Javelins when we're running through grazing machine gun fire and airburst artillery? I always thought this kind of attack was supposed to be a carefully choreographed combined arms operation, where we combine the various capabilities of tanks, IFV's, infantry, and artillery to avoid doing human wave attacks across open ground". Lt. Dunning-Kruger replies "Didn't I explain the Javelin travels at Mach 1.3 and has a range of more than 5 miles? ...All right, men, over the top!"

[Stephen Lathrop]

Absaroka, I never mentioned Javelins. The missiles I described are Hellfires. The missiles everyone ought to be thinking about are whatever comes after Hellfires. It would be technically and practically difficult to double the defensive capacity of a modern main battle tank. It would be trivial to defeat such an effort by multiplying the capacity of tank-destroying missiles.

The immediate aftermath to Pearl Harbor was a bad time to lay down keels for new battleships, which everyone recognized. That is why during the greatest warship construction effort ever mobilized, no new battleship was begun.

On the same principle, right now looks like a bad time to build more obsolete tanks which do not survive combat against more recent technology, let alone against improved attack technology already under design. We do not need to speculate about that. We see what our own present technology does to opposing tanks. We even see that our own missile technology readily destroyed one of our own M1 Abrams tanks, in a combat case where it was targeted by accident.

Also, I did not suggest that combined warfare is not necessary, or militarily advantageous. However, practitioners of upcoming combined warfare will at least take note that heavy armored vehicles are hard to move around, hard to conceal, slow you down, impose burdensome logistical challenges, and no longer serve adequately the protective purposes they previously performed better.

In the scenario you lay out, however troublesome those other battle-fighting tactics you mention may be, tanks will not much figure. How could they, if they had been pre-targeted from a range far beyond their own reach, and promptly reduced to smoking wreckage? Our forces already do that routinely to our enemies’ tanks. We would be fools to suppose such technology will not soon become available against us. Russia’s ballyhoo of a so-called hypersonic missile seems intended to make that point.

Maybe relatively lightly armored personnel carriers can help against the machine gun fire and airbursts you mention. But light armor too presents problems.

Combatants who confront highly efficient targeting benefit by dispersal. Large vehicles of any kind encourage personnel concentrations and vehicle targeting together. Thus light armor too will suffer severely under missile attacks, launched from ranges far greater than tank artillery or machine gun fire can reach to suppress them.

Longer range conventional artillery may still have a role to play. But note that more-recent tactics for its use already must take account of a need for prompt defensive relocations after firing. Today’s conventional artillery is not well optimized for that kind of activity. If nothing else, the rate of fire suffers while the guns and crews seek new positions.

Perhaps tanks will evolve further toward becoming missile launching platforms themselves, which has already happened somewhat. That would make at least a bit more sense. But why wouldn’t foreseeable evolution in that direction lead to something almost the opposite of a modern main battle tank?

Think of a somewhat scaled-up dune buggy or all-terrain 4-wheeler, with minimal or no defensive armor. Such vehicles could be inexpensive, expendable, and achieve high speed across a wider range of terrain types than today’s tanks can utilize. Agile vehicle types could be designed to carry and launch a few missiles each, featuring greater range than even conventional artillery. Such missiles could promise extreme accuracy with very high probabilities of target destruction. They would target enemy assets over the horizon, identified mostly by unmanned aerial reconnaissance, or by satellite.

The reconnaissance activity could be re-cast too. It is currently too personnel-intensive, with too much vulnerable supportive technology, which can be targeted separately if located in the theater of operations. And that support costs a lot, even more than main battle tanks by some measures.

A useful goal would be a far larger quantity of less-expensive targeting drones, facilitating a far larger quantity of dispersed inexpensive missiles. In short, what seems needed is an approach which notes the surprisingly successful tactics Ukrainians have already improvised, pioneered, and proved workable. That approach would think carefully, then act to extend and generalize the virtues which made the Ukrainian approach work.

If you are willing to entertain a logical contradiction which nevertheless gets mirrored in present policy, a final benefit of doing it that way is that the steps taken would be recognizably defensive in character. They promise powerful defense, without much increasing any threat to invade Russia. It would be helpful if activities we encourage were hard to construe as a prelude to an offensive threat against Russia. A couple hundred NATO main battle tanks on Russia’s border—no matter how vulnerable we might understand them to be—will not encourage an end to Russian militancy. If history has taught us anything, it ought to have taught that.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

For the love of god. Educate yourself before commenting any further.

The links have been shared. You are not an expert. You refuse to fix your ignorance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMQ1F2eiHzA

If you think you know best on this matter, perhaps you should submit your ideas to the DoD, along with your credentials.

[Absaroka]

"From published reports, it seems the Russian tanks were stopped by little more than satellite intelligence, on-the-ground intelligence (including from civilians), and shoulder fired weapons."

"I never mentioned Javelins. The missiles I described are Hellfires"

Which is it?

Your 5 minutes of googling before anointing yourself as an expert should have uncovered that the Hellfire isn't shoulder fired, among other things. The missiles that the Ukrainians were using to hunt Russian tanks around Kiev were primarily Javelins and NLAWs, with a potpourri of other types. Hellfires didn't arrive until later.

Of course, that doesn't affect the underlying argument. The Ukrainians have also fired more Hellfires in the last year than the rest of the world, and they still want tanks.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Cavanaugh, yikes. That thing from Patraeus is what you think we all ought to defer to? Are you old enough to have followed Vietnam War news day by day, watched what happened, listened to the top commanders briefings, and then contemplated the final result? The similarity between that empty pap from Patraeus, and the baseless reassurances which cascaded out of Westmoreland's headquarters made my stomach turn as I listened to it.

I thought you and Absaroka must have at least something to rely on, some expert sources which provided information to refute or modify some of the many factual assertions I offered in my various comments. What did I get? Paraphrased, it was basically: OMG that 120 mm canon is really powerful! And also: The Abrams tank is the centerpiece! Everything else is there to get that tank into position to do its job!

There wasn't a syllable in what Patraeus said to modify anything I asserted in these comments. If that is your best critique, it is pitiful. Now I will take a look at Absaroka's links.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"I thought you and Absaroka must have at least something to rely on, some expert sources which provided information to refute or modify some of the many factual assertions I offered in my various comments."

I provided THREE other sources of information to make you look less the fool, above.

You ignored all three.

You have also clearly not listened to Perun’s video on the subject, or The Chieftain’s, which is what Absaroka initially suggested.

Beyond that, your 'factual assertions' are nothing more than the speculative assertions of an ignorant fool thinking that he must know better than people actually educated on the subject.

I linked the youtube video because it happened to be on my front page while I was reading your latest pitiful attempt at proving that you’re the greatest military prophet on the planet.

You are too arrogant to listen to what the experts are trying to tell you. You are too ignorant to understand the purpose of a MBT in combined arms warfare, as well as the roles of the supporting cast around them. You are too ignorant to realize that each of those supporting roles are also being supported in turn by the presence of the MBTs.

I’m really glad for you that you learned about the AGM-114 within the last few weeks. Congrats, really. If only the actual military minds around the world could see what you see, and realize that anti-tank weapons exist, right?

Now you need to realize that your military genius only exists in your head.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Absaroka, “Which is it?”

It was both, in two different comments. The first comment was about recent history in Ukraine. The second comment considered present anti-armor attack capabilities more broadly. Both comments were true and accurate. You read carelessly. The aim was to point to the crux of a problem, which is what happens as the foreseeable next generation of anti-tank missile defenses comes on line. You and Cavanaugh have both chosen to ignore that.

So, where are we? I checked both your links. Perun made more points on my side of the argument than otherwise. He did make a great show of even-handed consideration. But in the end, he boiled it down to say we will keep needing tanks because we can’t figure out what to do without them, especially on the attack—and that civilians will supply the tanks when the military—which can’t figure out what else to do—demands them. That struck me as your message too, so I am not surprised you linked to it.

Your other link started with a forthright agreement with Perun, followed by an attempt to dress up in more bureaucratic jargon a similar conclusion—that the military can’t figure out what to do if tanks won’t work anymore on the battlefield, so we are stuck with tanks. Plus, don’t worry, tanks will get better. There was some of that in there too.

I can see why you and Cavanaugh have not tried to address any of the many factual assertions I offered in my comments. Of course, I did not make those assertions without knowledge of respectable existing support for each of them. Had I found points seemingly well-made to the contrary, that would have modified what I said. And it did, when that happened. Some stuff I thought I knew turned out to be wrong, so I changed my mind. I began that comment pretty certain that even American tanks were already tactically obsolete, but learned that would probably be true for the present only if they faced American anti-tank defenses.

The problem for you two is dealing with a factually based approach to this kind of commentary, when you, for some reason I cannot fathom, prefer the facts were otherwise. So you have both been calling me stupid, while linking to ostensible experts who do not actually support the points you seem to favor—except for the one point that military experts are baffled by the ever-more-effective technical challenges to using heavy armor on the battlefield, and so will likely continue to call for continuing to use armor as its expense increases, its usefulness declines, and the crews which man the tanks die.

Maybe the military experts you regard so highly think that makes sense, if it buys time to solve the problems which baffle them now. Maybe you think that too. If so, I wish everyone would be more forthright about it, instead of pretending contrary to facts and reason that armored warfare is not already far down the road toward obsolescence, and thus a notably bad investment for the future of our nation’s defense.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

The fact that you would blatantly misrepresent the information we've provided in favor of lying is remarkable, even for you.

"So, to recap. If you want a single asset, capable of putting out the maximum possible accurate and fast firepower in all weather conditions and extended periods of time, against the widest possible array of targets, capable of defending, counter-attacking, or attacking with violence of action and speed (because you don't want to give the opposition a chance to catch its breath), and, at the same time, providing the maximum possible flexibility and survivability from anything else on the battlefield, from preparatory artillery barrages to other tanks, and if you can support the - with the infrastructure (which is expensive) which a modern tank requires, there is nothing which can replace the tank on the battlefield.

It provides an irreplaceable and necessary capability, just as the lowly infantryman who is subject to death by short stabby thing, provides an irreplaceable and necessary capability."

I believe that to be an accurate transcription from The Chieftain's video. Shame on you.

https://youtu.be/lI7T650RTT8?t=1410

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Here is yet another source for you to ignore, reluctantly claim to have watched, and then misrepresent at your convenience, Stephen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY

[David Nieporent]

You are too arrogant to listen to what the experts are trying to tell you.

That's Lathrop's middle name. Wait until he gets started on his "expertise" at copyright law, or defamation law, or the operations of the Internet, or hydrology-by-Google-earth-viewing.

[David Nieporent]

A useful goal would be a far larger quantity of less-expensive targeting drones, facilitating a far larger quantity of dispersed inexpensive missiles. In short, what seems needed is an approach which notes the surprisingly successful tactics Ukrainians have already improvised, pioneered, and proved workable. That approach would think carefully, then act to extend and generalize the virtues which made the Ukrainian approach work.

Have you considered that while drones can be very effective at blowing things up, one cannot use them to conquer and occupy territory?

[Absaroka]

Just for folks interested in the war in Ukraine, video titled 'The Facts About Giving NATO Tanks to Ukraine'. This is a naval aviator (who isn't a land warfare expert) talking to Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute, who has proved to be a very astute observer of the war over the past year. It's not mostly about tanks[1] but discussions of the possible scenarios over the next year. Mr. Bronk's observations over the last year have proved to be quite accurate.

[1]the tl;dr is that a)we should have started this a few months ago and b)the western tanks (Challenger, Abrams, Leopard) are going to be a huge logistical challenge - not just because of the multiplicity of spare parts and training etc but because Ukrainian tank transporters, bridges, etc are made to support 55 ton T-72s, not 75 ton Leopards/Abrams/Challengers.

If you're just interested in the tank bits, listen for a few minutes starting at 29:00 and 46:00.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Absaroka,

I asked myself when I saw you mention Justin, "Is that the Ward Carroll video?"

Nice taste!

[Absaroka]

"I asked myself when I saw you mention Justin, “Is that the Ward Carroll video?”"

Short of paying $$$$ to RUSI, it's the only place I have seen Mr. Bronk. If you know of other outlets for his expertise, please share...

[Stephen Lathrop]

Cavanaugh, I really ought to let you fulminate unanswered, but this cheerleading quote from your expert is so juicy I can't pass it up:

So, to recap. If you want a single asset, capable of putting out the maximum possible accurate and fast firepower in all weather conditions and extended periods of time, against the widest possible array of targets, capable of defending, counter-attacking, or attacking with violence of action and speed (because you don’t want to give the opposition a chance to catch its breath), and, at the same time, providing the maximum possible flexibility and survivability from anything else on the battlefield, from preparatory artillery barrages to other tanks, and if you can support the – with the infrastructure (which is expensive) which a modern tank requires, there is nothing which can replace the tank on the battlefield.

Note: in all weather conditions.

In that other video you guys recommended, the expert Perun speculated that maybe the biggest factor causing loss of Russian tanks in Ukraine was getting hopelessly stuck in the mud. He even included a photo of an abandoned tank, sunk deeper than the tops of its treads. He speculated about other stuff too, so don't call me a liar for citing this one and not those. Let's just say instead, "all weather except muddy weather." And maybe daylight. Since WW II and the advent of close air support, daylight and good weather have been bad news for tanks. In North Africa, and at Normandy, German tanks were rendered all but ineffective, because they could maneuver only at night. Or at least that is what Rommel was reporting at the time. One the other hand, for a while they did bottle up the British advance at Normandy.

Note: against the widest possible array of targets,

Which do not, however, encompass so many kinds of targets which threaten to destroy tanks, such as Hellfires from drones, or from manned aircraft, or Javelins fired by infantry, or just some guy with an RPG shooting down into a tank turret from an upper floor in an urban area.

That's before we get to the soon-to-come over-the-horizon anti-tank missiles, some of which will be able to strike tank targets tens, or possibly hundreds of miles away, and from sanctuaries behind national borders.

Note: and, at the same time, providing the maximum possible flexibility and survivability from anything else on the battlefield,

In a discussion about burgeoning anti-tank technology, that just begs the question. And Ukranian experience suggests it's false about, "anything else on the battlefield." Your own cited experts have a lot to say about that.

I couldn't even figure out what the quote was trying to admit with regard to expensive infrastructure. Suffice to say, those infrastructure problems are imposingly expensive, and hamper the other virtues claimed, such as speed and flexibility—as both your expert links conceded. By the way, both those experts were a hell of a lot more forthright than you are.

These responses from tank fans have been instructive. I learned that gun pedants tend also to be war hardware pedants. You guys fill up on hardware arcana, then delight in citing it as if it substituted for answering other questions you try to dodge. You also repeatedly and annoyingly accuse folks you argue against as trying to present themselves as supreme experts, when just as I do, they make a point to disavow any such expertise. You do that so often, and so persistently, that I guess I must now consider it a field mark of . . . what shall we call it? "Weapons pedantry," I guess.

What do you think you have at stake in a discussion such as this one? It seems to make you anxious and angry. You ought to act more confident. I am not trying to discredit you, just engage points I disagree with. Only you can discredit you.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You just mistook mud for weather.

It is terrain.

[Stephen Lathrop]

That’s Lathrop’s middle name. Wait until he gets started on his “expertise” at copyright law, or defamation law, or the operations of the Internet, or hydrology-by-Google-earth-viewing.

Nieporent, what are you so upset about, that you have to come back again and again with deliberate distortions.

I have questioned points about copyright law; I have never called myself expert at it. I have had a fair amount of general advice, long ago, from a defamation law expert, and a lot of day-to-day successful experience not getting sued in the newspaper business; I have never called myself an expert on defamation law. I have never even discussed much about, "the operations of the internet," about which I am largely ignorant. I leave that to others. Internet publishing is a different kettle of fish; about that I know a good deal more than you do. So what? Knowing more than you do about internet publishing hardly makes me an expert on that either.

As for Google-earth and hydrology, you omit time and again that I cited on-the-scene photos as well, of the controversial Sackett property. Your repeated omission to mention that citation—while you deride aerial photography as untoward—has been less than forthright. More generally, there is a spectacular old geology text, called, Geology Illustrated, of which I own a treasured copy. It leans heavily on photography, and in many cases on aerial photography, which it demonstrates time and again can be a superb method to accomplish geologically-related analysis and explanation. It discusses and illustrates hydrological issues as well. I know of nothing better to illustrate the practical utility of that kind of analysis. You ought to get a copy, and learn to stop making a fool of yourself by bringing that up again and again, while getting it wrong.

By the way, leaving my own mostly generalist education aside, what is this tic that so many commenters here display, to attack the notion of expertise? What makes you feel like that is a sensible thing to do?

[Absaroka]

Before you get too invested in 'tanks are useless because they can get stuck in the mud' you might look into the relative mobility in mud (...snow, pretty much every unpaved surface...) of tracked vehicles vs, well, everything else.

[David Nieporent]

I have questioned points about copyright law; I have never called myself expert at it.

You pull this sophistry all the time, including above in this thread: you pompously intone about a particular topic at great length (at great, great, great length), citing your vast experience as the authority for your words — and then when called on it, say, "I never called myself expert at it."

Yeah, in fact, you did. You may not have used the exact words, "I am an expert," but you absolutely portrayed yourself as such — including calling actual experts incorrect. Hell, I can't count the number of times you've explained that judges don't understand fair use because it doesn't match with your expertise gained from having been a newspaper publisher.

[David Nieporent]

By the way, leaving my own mostly generalist education aside, what is this tic that so many commenters here display, to attack the notion of expertise? What makes you feel like that is a sensible thing to do?

Um, what do you call your musings about the value of tanks?

That's what you're doing when you keep questioning experts based on your understanding based on, at best, personal experience, and at worst on your intuitions.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Stephen,

I said you were a liar, because the expert disagrees with your position, and his conclusion could not be in more clear opposition to your theory.

How did you summarize what Chieftain had to say?

"Your other link started with a forthright agreement with Perun, followed by an attempt to dress up in more bureaucratic jargon a similar conclusion—that the military can’t figure out what to do if tanks won’t work anymore on the battlefield, so we are stuck with tanks. Plus, don’t worry, tanks will get better. There was some of that in there too."

Is that the kind of accuracy you'd expect in your claimed publishing background? That was a blatant misrepresentation of his conclusion. A lie.

You mistook terrain, for weather. You expect anyone to think that someone who would make that mistake, somehow has insight on anti-tank weaponry that the rest of the world does not? That the experts whom you refuse to listen to do not? That all the Departments of Defense and the War College instructors all do not? You are nothing more than another person in the long line of people who have seen something new come along, and immediately declared tanks to be old news.

They've all been wrong so far, and so are you.

You do not understand combined arms warfare. You don't understand the interlocking roles that each part plays in keeping the whole safer. You don't even seem to understand that anything you complain about here - Hellfires, drones, artillery, etc., are all things that kill exposed soldiers easily.

Those weapon systems do not easily kill tanks. They can do so if allowed to get close enough, but that is the purpose of combined arms in the first place.

Good luck with your unique and revolutionary insights that the experts are too foolish to agree on with you.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Stephen,

Proper use of tanks, and proper terrain to use them in/with is critical.

If you put all your tanks on a single road that they can't get off, without surrounding infantry support, without logistical support...then yes, they become death traps. It you decide to take your tanks, and punch them down heavily urban streets, without flushing out the surrounding buildings...yes, they become death traps. That describes Kiev last year for the Russians. Other bad terrain for tanks include mountains.

If you have broad, open terrain without good cover...tanks become essential. That describes the current front. Especially with the proper infantry support.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Of course, Armchair. Proper use of battleships also depends on doctrinal assumptions. Problem is, the conditions demanded by the doctrines for battleships don't come up much anymore.

You forgot one condition which applies to your tank doctrine that will shortly be impossible to satisfy, if it is not already: the enemy must not be equipped with anything comparable to a late-model Hellfire missile.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Oyy... A Hellfire missile? Really?

OK, some education. A Hellfire is a large air to ground anti-tank missile. Typically carried by either attack helicopters or large (non-suicide, expensive) drones. It's what is commonly known as "close air support (or CAS)", and has been around for ages...since WWII. Small (non-bomber) aircraft flying to destroy enemy tanks and vehicles, and in turn being pushed back (and taking losses) from ground-based anti-aircraft weapons.

CAS didn't invalidate tanks in WWII. It didn't invalidate tanks in the Iran-Iraq war, or any of the Israeli-Arab wars, and it didn't in Gulf War 1 or 2. And it doesn't today either.

[shawn_dude]

Russia's older tank models had a well-known defect in their armor that those shoulder-fired missiles were explicitly designed to take advantage of. All assets are vulnerable in their own way which is why they're grouped and deployed in ways that reduce those risks while maximizing effectiveness. Russia's kleptocracy and its lack of an experienced NCO class gutted its effectiveness at war.

If Russia eventually wins Ukraine, it will only ratchet up the next conflict when they take Moldova and then continue to move into other former Soviet territories with NATO membership. Better to stop them in Ukraine.

[Ridgeway]

As an aside, I think you meant to reference Repulse, not Hood. Repulse was sunk along w PoW by Japanese medium bombers armed w torpedoes, shortly after Pearl Harbor. Hood was famously sunk by Bismarck in a more "old school" encounter.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Right you are. Thanks for the correction.

[David Nieporent]

In addition to what others said about Dr. Ed's comment, I'd add that sending tanks gives us a chance to learn valuable information about how those tanks perform in real world conditions.

We used to do that with Israel — its enemies like Syria and Egypt were using Soviet equipment, and Israel was using western equipment, and we were able to see the relative performance of the two types. (Spoiler alert: western equipment was better.)

[Mr. Bumble]

Sending our tanks is a bad idea and we will gain nothing as to their performance capabilities against Russian equipment.

[Armchair Lawyer]

We know how our tanks perform. See Gulf War 1 and Gulf War 2. That was against T-72s which make up the majority of "modern" Russians tanks.

[Mr. Bumble]

"I like the idea of a Pax Americana solution – we just tell both sides to END this."
With a competent administration this would be unlikely. With our current administration the chances are slim and none and Slim left town.

[Nige]

I don’t think competence has anything to do with whether Putin will stop just because someone tells him to. He was warned not to invade, he’s been told to withdraw – he does what he likes, he has nukes. There's no leverage that'll work on him if he doesn't care abut the damage he inflicts on Russia and Ukarine and Europe. He has a population that completely supports him or is utterly cowed and disheartened and complete control of state media.

[apedad]

It's a known and calculated risk that combat military equipment, e.g., tanks, planes, field communications, etc., which have some classified components will eventually fall into enemy hands.

The thinking is the item will be mostly destroyed, e.g., plane shot down, which will destroy most of the classified information.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Given the number of fully-intact Russian artillery pieces that have been captured by Ukraine because the Russians just abandoned them that thinking is ill-advised.

[apedad]

Not an Artillery guy, but it's a pretty good guess they don't contain classified components.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

That might be true, but it's irrelevant to the point...which was about the assumption that any captured military tech would be "mostly destroyed" in combat before being captured.

[dwb68]

These were used in Afghanistan and Iraq, and are also used throughout the world. Russians have already seen them, except now they get to look down the muzzle.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Yes. You're the only one.

The M1 has been around a while. Odds are Russia got their hands on at least one, in some form, at some time. A number have been lost in combat, and our allies have a number of them as well to lose.

[David Nieporent]

Plus, ordinary espionage. The Russians don't need to acquire the physical tanks to get intel on them.

[Moderation4ever]

My understanding is that tanks we send abroad are not the same as used by our military. An opponent could get the structural and engineering of a tank, but the most advanced electronics are held back.

The Russians will not come to the negotiating table unless the allied forces supporting Ukraine make it understood there is no path for victory for the Russians. The tanks are part of that message.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Particularly if Putler was counting on the West being easily divided and neutralized. Any show of unity the West can muster will send a useful message--they don't really even need to send the tanks...

[Krayt]

"Europe won't go along as they are dependent on our natural gas. Engage attack!"

EU leaders: "Not doing anything because natural gas."

EU Population: "Like hell you are. You do it!"

EU Leaders: "Ok."

China: "And the West is far too dependent on our manufacturing and chips and so ok we can attack Taiw...huh...why are they moving that manufacturing back home? Stop it!"

[Bob from Ohio]

"My understanding is that tanks we send abroad are not the same as used by our military."

Yes, the tanks being sent to Ukraine will not have all the current bells and whistles. They are not being taken from our inventory, but produced by the factory.

[shawn_dude]

There's some sort of secret sauce in our new tank armor we don't want to expose to the Russians (and Chinese and Iranians.)

[Commenter_XY]

Depends on whether it is a vital US national interest and/or the goal we (America) want to achieve. Those are two different answers.

It is not a vital US national interest to provide tanks to Ukraine. Europe should take the lead there. The US can support NATO allies quite capably with what we have. Specifically, the EU can send their Challenger and Leopard tanks (hundreds) to Poland, whose border looks pretty porous to me. This is a vital EU interest, not America. So yes...be wary, very wary about the US sending US tanks to UKR.

What's the goal? If the goal is to bleed the Russian Bear so greatly that it no longer has the military capacity to credibly threaten NATO allies, then send tanks. There are only 50 days to spring. The UKR troops need intensive training.

Two things will turn this war to UKR. One, UKR manages to cut off Crimea by dropping that bridge into the Black Sea, and drones the shit out of any ships that attempt to resupply. Two, UKR will have to inflict a significant defeat on Russia on the battlefield, and simultaneously cut off their logistics tail. I don't think they can do #2 without overt help.

When Russia realizes that China has very significant military capacity on their border, ready to rock, they will reassess their special operation in UKR.

Other: The US needs to ramp up munitions substantially.

[Bob from Ohio]

"UKR manages to cut off Crimea"

The failure to launch attacks, including commando actions, in the Crimea has been very puzzling.

[Brett Bellmore]

Perhaps they don't want to over-extend themselves.

[Commenter_XY]

Bob from Ohio, it might be that UKR just doesn't have enough troops to pull it off, and fight in the Donbas region simultaneously. It is a big lift to pull off an attack big enough to drop the bridge into the sea.

[Bob from Ohio]

I'm not referring to just the bridge nor any large scale effort. A few planes, some missiles, some special forces.

Blow up fuel depots or ammo dumps. Drop a missile into Black Sea Fleet HQ. Hit a power plant.

[Armchair Lawyer]

What you're proposing has already been done to an extent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Crimea_attacks

Hitting a "power plant" would be considered counter productive. There are more valid military targets.

[Ridgeway]

I suspect is has more to do with Ukraine viewing Crimea as part of their own territory, and thus being reluctant to inflict damage on "themselves."

[bernard11]

the EU can send their Challenger and Leopard tanks (hundreds) to Poland, whose border looks pretty porous to me. This is a vital EU interest, not America. So yes…be wary, very wary about the US sending US tanks to UKR.

They can't send Leopards if Germany says no. And Germany was saying no unless the US sent tanks.

What’s the goal?

To get Germany to send tanks.

[John F. Carr]

According to Politico, the tanks will be made to order with the lower quality export armor instead of the secret uranium armor used for domestic versions. The sole factory can build 12 tanks per month and has years of advance orders for Poland and Taiwan. (Somebody thinks there will be tank battles in the mountains of Taiwan?) "Rather than sending Ukraine tanks from its own stocks, as it has done with previous weapons, the U.S. has said it is buying the Abrams from industry, meaning they won’t arrive on the battlefield for many months, or potentially years, given industrial constraints in upgrading them." https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/26/us-sends-ukraine-advanced-abrams-tanks-00079648

If this story is accurate, the M1 will not make any real contribution to the war.

[Brett Bellmore]

"This" war. I doubt that, given recent history, Ukraine thinks that if they can just kick the Russians out, they won't be back.

But, yeah, this looks like a dishonest gesture, not an effort to actually be helpful.

[shawn_dude]

If it gets Germany to give permission to Poland to send Leopards today, then it was very helpful. (It did. So it was.) Actual tanks on the battlefield that don't have to be shipped overseas? A gift.

[Absaroka]

"If this story is accurate, the M1 will not make any real contribution to the war."

That sounds right, unfortunately. I wonder if we have offered to, say, Poland that they send all their Leopards to Ukraine and we station a US armored division in Poland to fill the gap until their M1's arrive. Or offer the same deal to Egypt or Kuwait to send some of their Abrams.

And light a fire under the Lima plant. Invoke the Defense Production Act if needed.

[Krayt]

Oops, accidentally flagged, sorry. No unflag. Someone should patent that.

[Absaroka]

FWIW, I don't think it matters - I think flagging only means some human might look at the comment to see if it is obvious spam. No harm, no foul.

[Mr. Bumble]

The Lima plant is currently making tanks the DOD doesn't want.

[Jerry B.]

“I like the idea of a Pax Americana solution – we just tell both sides to END this.”

Specifics might be needed. Who gets what? Who pays reparations for damage?

The devil’s in the details.

[Don Nico]

I am glad to see so much support for Biden's proxy war in which no American kids get sent home in a body bag.

[Nige]

Putin's proxy war, you mean. Putin started it, Putin wanted to show Europe and the US and the world he could act with impunity.

[shawn_dude]

Yeah, if we could actually do that, we could have just as easily told Russia to stay out of the Ukraine a year ago.

[apedad]

[ducksalad]

Agreed.

[Life of Brian]

My sentiments exactly.

[dwb68]

Finally, Ukraine is getting M1 Abrams and Leopard 2 Tanks. If you have never heard an M1 Abrams starting up, it sounds exactly like Russians in Ukraine shitting their pants.

Now if we could send them f16s and f18s.

[Mr. Bumble]

Do you really think a few dozen modern tanks will make much of a difference?

[dwb68]

absolutely. NATO tanks have proven to be more lethal than Russian tanks in every theater they've fought.

[John F. Carr]

They need hundreds, not dozens. A couple dozen tanks of a model they do not already use is more a burden than a help.

[Reallynotbob]

Total NATO commitment >100 tanks, I heard.

[John F. Carr]

NATO members are sending three or four different types of tanks, depending on whether you count Leopard variants as distinct. The number of each individual type is small. Ammunition is the same for all the tanks but training and spare parts are different.

[Reallynotbob]

I guess each crew just needs to know its own tank system. But overall, that sounds like a significant logistics challenge, and repair challenge.

[Mr. Bumble]

Including the use of different fuels.

[Michael P]

I'm not holding my breath for Ilya Somin to write a piece about California's new wealth and exit tax ideas in the context of foot voting -- although one would be squarely within the theoretical lines of his previous writing.

[OtisAH]

And I’m not holding my breath that you know or are able to understand anything at all about that proposal.

[Kleppe]

You seem to spend a lot of time insisting that others don't understand things. I wonder why that is.

[Jerry B.]

Probably along the lines of, “I don’t understand it, so no one else can.”

You see this a lot in the Liberal commentariat at the Washington Post.

[OtisAH]

I only say that to folks who have proven themselves over a long stretch of time to be idiots. Like Michael P. And you, iirc.

[Ed Grinberg]

Typical leftist ("progressive") thinking.

from two years ago:
Seattle’s City Council prides itself on being an early adopter of new business mandates. Seattle was the first major U.S. city to adopt a $15 minimum wage and one of the first to require businesses to provide paid sick leave. The City Council achieved another first last week, when it unanimously enacted an ordinance requiring food-delivery app companies to provide gig workers “premium pay” for deliveries in the city, on top of their usual compensation, and prohibiting the companies from raising fees or leaving the city in response, even if the new rule causes them to lose money.
source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/welcome-to-the-hotel-seattle-11592865795

[Brett Bellmore]

I wonder how they get around the "but if we leave your city we're not subject to its laws anymore" issue?

[ducksalad]

Looked at the actual text of the ordinance, the prohibition was on "reducing or modifying" service. Which technically includes reducing to zero, but one imagines their target was companies that abandoned less profitable districts of the city.

[Krychek_2]

As one who follows sovereign citizens antics for amusement, I've been watching a local home foreclosure case that has been going on for 12 years, partly because a judge made a bad ruling that needed to be appealed, but mostly because the bank's lawyers are totally and completely incomptent.

The basic facts are that a woman who believes the courts have no jurisdiction over her simply stopped paying her mortgage and then took the position that a court without jurisdiction can't take her house. She is a paralegal (!) who knows enough legal jargon and procedure that she's managed to hold off the bank for 12 years. Meanwhile, the bank's lawyers seem unable to do basic things like notice hearings. They actually had a foreclosure sale last June. She filed objections, which seven months later have yet to be heard. I'm predicting she's going to die of old age still in the house, and if I ever need to foreclose on someone, I know which firm I'm not hiring.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Originalists will of course recall (sarcasm) the Land Bank fiasco prior to the Revolution. Long story short, Samuel Adams saw his inherited estate go up for sheriff’s sale six times over the years. Each time he found some way to intimidate potential bidders legally, and prevented the sale. He also threatened the Sheriff.

That info is from a new biography, by Stacy Schiff: The Revolutionary. Schiff seems a bit too enthused about Adams to count as entirely historically objective. But the writing is terrific, and the book is loaded with important historical detail she dug out for the first time on her own. That makes the book an important historical accomplishment. Sample of Schiff’s writing, of Paul Revere:

Within days he will know he has participated in some kind of history, though he will hesitate to attach his name to it for decades and is never to know that his own will account be obliterated—the adrenaline alone enduring—by verse, leaving him trapped in tetrameter, a mythic figure, eternally jouncing his way toward Lexington.

Highly recommend this book.

[shawn_dude]

"Jouncing" +1

[Armchair Lawyer]

Seems that less sovereign citizen antics, but rather someone taking advantage of the legal system (if not the law) to keep her house without paying her mortgage.

Sounds like a California case. They are very friendly to those living in the house. It reminds me of the squatter cases, where someone just moves in to an empty house, and is able to stay there and can't be effectively removed by the law.

[Krychek_2]

I'm not a California lawyer but it's my understanding they can be removed, there are just a lot of time consuming hoops to jump through to get them out.

[Longtobefree]

MS-13 provides an effective eviction process.
They even require (I mean offer) payments over time

[Absaroka]

"As one who follows sovereign citizens antics for amusement, ..."

If you are into those, here is another one for your collection: The Red House.

[Krychek_2]

Yup, that's a good one all right.

I will point out that whenever the subject of gun rights comes up, one of the arguments made by Second Amendment absolutists is that they need lots of firepower to protect themselves from big bad government. Yet when those on the left use that same principle to occupy The Red House, well, suddenly it doesn't apply to them. Goose, gander.

[Absaroka]

Well, this particular Second Amendment advocate thinks that the Red House, the Malheur Occupation, CHOP, the Montana Freemen, the Bundy Ranch, etc are examples of crooks with guns, not people resisting tyrannical government. And I'm generally not in favor of crooks with guns.

If you want an example of 2A done right, amazon prime currently has 'Deacons for Defense' for free.

(more 'legitimate self defense' perhaps, than 'resisting government tyranny', although the local Bogolusa government might have been aligned enough with the Klan to qualify as a tyranny. They certainly ignored their duty to protect people from the Klan.)

[Krychek_2]

I don't disagree with you that the examples you gave are crooks with guns, and I would add the Black Lives Matter riots to the list just for good measure.

That said, the practical issue is that "resistance to tyrannical government" is largely in the eye of the beholder and also largely a matter of who later writes the history books. I have no doubt that both the Bundys and the BLM rioters sincerely believe themselves to be resisting tyrannical government.

[Absaroka]

Sure. '2A solutions' only work when practiced by a majority. The notion isn't that a minority with guns gets their way - it's that a minority that happens to have a monopoly on guns doesn't.

[Nige]

Think you just spotted a massive flaw in the whole thing.

[Brett Bellmore]

The founders idea on that was that you'd sort out insurrections that had popular support from ones that didn't by the outcome, but that if you made insurrection impossible, you cemented tyrants in place.

[Krychek_2]

Well, by that standard, the Bolsheviks in Russia and Mao in China had popular support because they won.

Is there any reason to believe you’ll get a better result more often from an insurrection than you will from having free elections? Because most of the stuff I’m hearing from advocates of violence on both the right and the left is that they want to have an insurrection specifically because they disapprove of election results.

[Absaroka]

"Well, by that standard, the Bolsheviks in Russia and Mao in China had popular support because they won."

They surely had more popular support than the Tsarists or Nationalists. That's why they won.

"Is there any reason to believe you’ll get a better result more often from an insurrection than you will from having free elections?"

Absolutely not! As the saying goes, it's 'Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, and Cartridge Box and **in that order**'.

"Because most of the stuff I’m hearing from advocates of violence..."

I hope you aren't confusing 'people who think the Second Amendment is important' with 'advocates of violence'. That's a yuuuge mistake, IMO.

I was an army brat; I grew up outside various army bases, where most of our neighbors were WWII and Korea vets who had stayed in. They were men who A)were well practiced and experienced at effectively using very large amounts of violence, and B)were kind, peaceful men whose most fervid wish was that they would never have to fight again. They also, generally speaking, were pretty staunch 2A supporters.

[Nige]

'A)were well practiced and experienced at effectively using very large amounts of violence, and B)were kind, peaceful men whose most fervid wish was that they would never have to fight again'

Well, okay, but that probably describes most German WW1 veterans. There's probably some huge and detailed historical study about how they interacted with and responded to Hitler's rise and the Reich, and the summary could probably be boiled down to 'it's really complicated.'

[Nige]

'I hope you aren’t confusing ‘people who think the Second Amendment is important’ with ‘advocates of violence’.'

Or 'people who think the sword of Damocles is important' with 'advocates of swords landing on Damocle's head.'

[Frank Drackman]

Over/Under on the Rev.olting Reverend Jerry Sandusky-Kirtland's "Klinger" "Betters" usage

"Klinger" 24
"Betters" 29

Taking the over on both

Frank

[apedad]

You wake up and your first thought is about Rev. Kirtland?!?

Check that....

You've been thinking (drooling?) about posting this since last Thursday.

[Mr. Bumble]

Substitute "Trump" for the Rev. Costco and your post describes you.

[Sarcastr0]

That's facts not in evidence; apedad posts about all sorts of stuff. His first post on this thread looks to be about GOP legislators.

But also Trump is kind of a big deal nationally. Thinking about him sometimes seems pretty normal.

RAK is...not that.

So your facile 'this is you but for Trump' is wrong. Though it does say a lot about what the false equivalencies box you reach for when your posting time comes.

[Harvey Mosley]

"... pretty normal.

RAK is…not that."

Sorry. I couldn't help myself.

[Frank Drackman]

Ooh what a burn! Tag Team!!

[Frank Drackman]

It's called planning ahead, Strategy, or "Playing the Long Game", if you'd grown up playing chess like me (one of the thing Roosh-a does right) you wouldn't be asking stupid questions.
It's what the Roosh-uns are doing in You-Crane and why they'll win, no matter how many M1 Abrams Senescent J promises them (wow, You-Crane will have more Tanks than the US Marine Corpse)

Frank "O-O-O"

[Nige]

The Rev is your Ukraine. What a cell phone, as the kids are wont to say.

[Ed Grinberg]

The Rev is your Ukraine.

Hmmm... The narrative in Russia is that the Ukrainian leadership are "fascists" and "Nazis." I think Arthur is a fascist / Nazi. I am not talking about the Nazis' targets -- Arthur (usually) leaves Jews alone. But he definitely exhibits the same general attitude: such-and-such are subhuman scum, who deserve whatever they get (and the sooner they get it the better).

[Nige]

Which maes you Russia in this analogy, too.

[Ed Grinberg]

Not unless I start bombing Arthur's house. (Which I don't want to do. Live & let live, that's what I say.)

[Nige]

It's an analogy, textual bombings will suffice.

[Jerry B.]

I vote for “clinger” because that’s my drinking game. “Clinger”. Drink!!!

[Michael P]

What would we do without antifa journalists around to CNNsplain that violence against property, such as fire-bombing a youth center, doesn't really count?

(It was also amazing chutzpah for the full-time troll to claim that the only actual violence he saw was police tackling protesters, when the reason for the confrontation was that a protester spontaneously shot an officer earlier.)

[Sarcastr0]

That does not appear to be someone working for CNN, but some random guest they have on to have spicy opinions and get engagement from rubes like yourself.

[Michael P]

https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/01/23/atlanta-journalist-discusses-his-recent-reporting-on-south-river-forest-activists is an interview with that not-so-random guest, whose Twitter bio boasts of writing for the NYT, New York magazine, Rolling Stone, and more.

Maybe you didn't understand what "antifa journalist" means, but he was on CNN because he is effectively one of the protesters and he has a background in publishing propaganda.

[Sarcastr0]

He seems like a dude with opinions you don't like, so you're blaming CNN for having him on. As though all CNN guests must have opinions you agree with.

I don't know the guy, but maybe he is a dumbass. Plenty of those on cable, dunno why you're so hot about this one.

Well I do know - you were told to get mad about this. And here you are! CNN gets clicks, you get mad...everyone wins!

[bevis the lumberjack]

Soft pedaling a guy saying that a firebomb isn’t violence as simply an opinion he doesn’t like is pretty weak. Some opinions are so obviously extreme and stupid that they don’t deserve defense. Or airtime.

A guy on Fox explaining how Trump really won 2020 isn’t an idiot spouting nonsense, he’s just a goy with an opinion you don’t like. You can’t criticize Fix for that. Right?

[Ed Grinberg]

"Soft pedaling a guy saying that a firebomb isn’t violence as simply an opinion he doesn’t like is pretty weakevil."
Our societal norms are gradually being eroded by people like Sarcastro, who minimize / whitewash / excuse violence (and lesser norm-breaking) by their side.

[Life of Brian]

SarcFrog: "What's the big deal? It's only 211 degrees in here, and that's only one degree higher than 5 minutes ago which is NOT statistically significant. Perfectly norm..... *glug*"

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, to catastrophists everyone is a boiling frog.

I actually do think there are some theses that should be off limits in public discourse. Glad to have some on the right on board! Now I hope they do twitter. And academia.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not saying anything about the guy - I don't know him, and I certainly don't trust whatever source Michael P has on what he said.

But that's immaterial to what Michael P is doing. Remember Twitter? His (and your) reasoning does not seem consistent.

A guy on Fox explaining how Trump really won 2020 isn’t an idiot spouting nonsense, he’s just a guy with an opinion you don’t like.
Um...yes?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Point is, don’t defend CNN for putting a guest on the air that says that blowing shit up is not violence. It’s stupid and harmful.

[Sarcastr0]

First, I won't take Michael at his word as to what this guy said.

Second, this is special pleading.

Third, it is hypocritical.

[bevis the lumberjack]

What is hypocritical? WTF is special pleading?

And there were plenty on the left during the BLM riots that tried to say that destroying property wasn’t violence. Many of those same people claim that mean words are violence. That’s hypocritical.

I don’t understand what you’re doing here other than just doing as hominem arguing. Do you actually think that firebombing anything is violence or don’t you? Is the concept that it isn’t violence something that a major news operation should be spreading?

[Sarcastr0]

Look at twitter and academia and the general right-wing caterwauling about free speech culture and private institutions. That is hypocritical as applied here.

You then want to talk about some leftists that I guess live in your head.
Stay on subject; this is not about whatever leftist hypocricy your bothsidesim compels you to point out.
I'm not going to engage with you on BLM protests being the same as the subsequent riots; we've gone around about that nonsense. I don't care what this guy is saying; I don't know what he's saying, in fact.

I don’t understand what you’re doing here other than just doing as hominem arguing.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm saying Michael's attack on CNN here is is hypocritical and bad. That is not an ad hominem argument.

Is the concept that it isn’t violence something that a major news operation should be spreading?
Now, this goes too far. While I do think there are boundaries to public discourse, the idea that every person CNN brings on is speaking for CNN is ridiculous.

[Nige]

I always thought they point they were making is that lives are more important than property.

[bevis the lumberjack]

CNN is giving a platform to at least one extreme nut case. CNN isn’t a sentient being that has an opinion. I’m sure you’re fine with allowing a platform to vaccine nuts and election truthers. Oh, wait, you’re not. You support the government leaning on social media companies to shut those opinions out.

And note that you will not explicitly say that blowing something up is violence.

[Sarcastr0]

Aren't you yelling that twitter is deplatforming people? What kind of line do you draw here?

2 hours ago I wrote: "I actually do think there are some theses that should be off limits in public discourse."

So maybe slow your roll in your accusations I have a double standard.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Treat everyone the same.

You say nutty righties on Twitter can be deplatformed but the CNN nutty guest is fine.

I say treat everyone the same.

[Sarcastr0]

FFS how many times have I said I don't know this guest, and it's not part of my point.

[Michael P]

It's amazing how you have no argument except denial and personal attacks -- and you're not afraid to demonstrate it.

[Sarcastr0]

Amazing you didn't pick up on the arguments I was making.

Let me repaste my comment for you:

"He seems like a dude with opinions you don’t like, so you’re blaming CNN for having him on. As though all CNN guests must have opinions you agree with.

I don’t know the guy, but maybe he is a dumbass. Plenty of those on cable, dunno why you’re so hot about this one.

Well I do know – you were told to get mad about this. And here you are! CNN gets clicks, you get mad…everyone wins!"

So tell me, how do you address my issue with your varying standards? Why angry at CNN and not twitter? Or FOX?

[Nige]

‘a protester spontaneously shot an officer earlie’

*cough*copaganda*cough*

[Bob from Ohio]

He's in the hospital.

[Nige]

Did he see some fentanyl?

[Bob from Ohio]

He was shot.

[David Nieporent]

By whom? Cops incompetently shooting each other is hardly unheard of.

[Absaroka]

The GBI is saying that the bullet that hit the officer forensically matches a gun that Mr. Teran purchased legally in 2020.

It's possible, of course, that they are making all that up out of whole cloth (and will eventually look pretty bad in court when all the evidence comes out) or that they seized the gun from Teran and then shot the officer with Teran's gun, then shot Mr. Teran with their own guns. But Occam's Razor seems to point to Mr. Teran being the shooter.

[Bob from Ohio]

You have to forgive them. Both are cop hating fanatics.

Nige is a leftist lunatic. David might be worse, a hard core libertarian.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

And Bob from Ohio is a hard-right bigot. Most bases covered.

[Nige]

I've noticed there are situations when it's okay to decry abuse of power by cops and proclaim that they are all bastards who will lie, steal and plant evidence, and situations when it isn't.

[David Nieporent]

For some people, coincidentally, it only seems to be an issue when the situation involves… wait, rhymes with Ronald Bump, right?

[Nige]

With fentanyl?

[David Nieporent]

when the reason for the confrontation was that a protester spontaneously shot an officer earlier.)

You accidentally forgot your "allegedly."

[apedad]

(Just keeping everyone up to date on the cases of America’s favorite lawyer!)

Untangling Expansive Cast of Characters in Alex Murdaugh Murder Case

South Carolina’s trial of the century begins in earnest on Wednesday (1/25) after jurors are expected to finally be seated in the double murder case against disgraced and disbarred legal scion Richard “Alex” Murdaugh, 54, who stands accused of killing his wife and youngest son in the midsummer of 2021 as a way to escape impending, cascading ruin.

While the current trial will be for the murder case, Murdaugh is also accused of 81 additional crimes, mostly of a financial nature, including insurance fraud, property fraud, money laundering, and computer fraud.

https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/live-trials-current/alex-murdaugh/untangling-expansive-cast-of-characters-in-alex-murdaugh-murder-case/

Suicide notification coming in 5…4…3…

[Longtobefree]

Suicide? I don't recall the Clintons being involved.

[Michael P]

Fortunately, Gavin Newsom is here to tell us about the danger posed to our streets by large capacity clips.

In spite of all of California's laws, you can still order those "just insane" clips over the Internet, and Walmart will ship them straight to your door. "There's just no justification" for allowing that kind of commerce in paper organization supplies. It leads to way too many dead trees in our forests, in our homes and offices, and on our streets. Their presence is only "perpetuating lunacy".

[not guilty]

District Attorney Fani Willis has told the Superior Court in Atlanta that charging decisions are imminent in regard to Donald Trump and his cohorts. https://www.reuters.com/legal/details-trumps-attempt-overturn-defeat-georgia-could-be-released-2023-01-24/ Good for her!

[not guilty]

Donald Trump's Georgia attorneys are suggesting that the fact that Trump was not called before the special grand jury indicates his innocence. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-lawyers-conclude-he-is-innocent-in-georgia-because-grand-jury-never-sought-his-testimony/ar-AA16Fpqn?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=4130ec7f05424c84867e8bbd01c485e1

A first semester law student who made such a bizarre assertion would likely receive a failing grade. Indeed, a high school civics student would as well.

[SRG]

I thought he had the best lawyers. Many people told him so.

[apedad]

No, no...

HE told people they were the best.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Soon enough, some of them won’t even be the worst lawyers . . . Because they will no longer be lawyers. At least, not for a while.

[John F. Carr]

I don't think she deserves any praise for ending the investigation this month as opposed to last month or next month. Wait and see what she says.

I predict David Shafer will be charged and Donald Trump will not be charged. One of the other fake electors will take a deal to throw Shafer under the bus.

[not guilty]

Trump's greatest area of vulnerabilty in Georgia is likely his entreaty to the Secretary of State encouraging him to find 11,780 votes.

The special grand jury appears to have investigated a conspiracy to submit the phony slate of electors including numerous actors outside of Georgia. O.C.G.A. § 17-2-2(d) provides, "If the commission of a crime under the laws of this state commenced outside the state is consummated within this state, the crime shall be considered as having been committed in the county where it is consummated." I would look for John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as the bogus, putative electors to be charged with a conspiracy offense. It is inconceivable that Trump -- for whose benefit the scam was conceived, planned and executed -- was not part of the agreement. Perhaps, as Willie Cicci said of Michael Corleone, the family had a lot of buffers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uezhB-qJqDc

[John F. Carr]

Crimes like conspiracy and fraud require proof of criminal intent. I anticipate the defense on the electoral vote conspiracy charge will be that the false document was not meant to be submitted until a legal challenge was successful, and Shafer went rogue. Trump's defense can be that he truly believed the votes were out there to be found. The prosecutor has to consider how a jury will react to these arguments. The county is one quarter Republican. An average jury will have a couple Trump voters, one of whom will think the RIGGED election was STOLEN!

[not guilty]

First semester law school stuff here. The intent required for criminal conspiracy is intent to agree with one or more other persons to accomplish an unlawful objective. Each conspirator is vicariously liable for the acts of other conspirators, and the offense is complete when one conspirator commits a single overt act in furtherance of the agreement.

Eastman, Giuliani, Chesebro and others agreed to subvert the electoral process in several states, including Georgia, by submission of bogus slates of electors. The putative electors from Pennsylvania and New Mexico qualified their submissions with the caveat that their votes should only be counted if ongoing court battles broke in favor of Trump; those from Georgia did not do so -- they fraudulently claimed to be the real McCoy.

Donald Trump expressly assented to and participated in the multi-state conspiracy to submit bogus electoral slates. The final report of the House January 6 Investigating committee states:

The evidence indicates that by December 7th or 8th, President Trump had decided to pursue the fake elector plan and was driving it. Trump Campaign Associate General Counsel Joshua Findlay was tasked by the campaign’s general counsel, Matthew Morgan, around December 7th or 8th with exploring the feasibility of assembling unrecognized slates of Trump electors in a handful of the States that President Trump had lost. Findlay told the Select Committee “it was my understanding that the President made this decision. . . .” As recounted by Findlay, Morgan conveyed that the client—President Trump—directed the campaign lawyers to “look into electors in these potential litigation States[.]”

President Trump personally called RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel days before December 14th to enlist the RNC’s assistance in the scheme. President Trump opened the call by introducing McDaniel to John Eastman, who described “the importance of the RNC helping the campaign to gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the results in any of the States.” According to
McDaniel, she called President Trump back soon after the call ended, letting him know that she agreed to his request and that some RNC staffers were already assisting.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf p. 372 [footnotes omitted].

The meeting of the Georgia fake electors in Atlanta and the submission of the fraudulent slate evince consummation of the conspiracy in Fulton County, Georgia.

[John F. Carr]

Look at the quotation, not the opinions of committee members. The Eastman quotation about "contingent electors" describes a legal plan. Trump's people needed electors ready to vote if any of the legal challenges succeeded. Had the courts intervened or had the votes been found in Georgia the electors would have had a claim of legitimacy. I have not seen evidence that Trump agreed to assist in sending electoral votes to Congress without any plausible claim of legitimacy.

The coincidence that seven states sent fake electors despite the failure of legal challenges does suggest a pro-Trump criminal conspiracy, but it doesn't prove Trump was a member of the conspiracy. Maybe, I say as a hypothetical Republican holdout on the Fulton County jury, Trump was a good man hanging out with the wrong crowd. He was misled. His people were too eager to please their leader and exceeded their authority.

[not guilty]

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. In fact, no state sent fake electors, and the pretenders in seven states damn sure did not act "by coincidence." The governors of the seven states at issue sent genuine certificates meeting the requirements of 3 U.S.C. § 6. Absent compliance with § 6, there is no “plausible claim of legitimacy” attached to the pretenders’ submissions.

Trump, Eastman and others fraudulently combined and conspired to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding of Congress. The conspiratorial objective was to obtain a second term in office for Trump, to which he was not entitled. That conspiracy is a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k). It is also racketeering activity under 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1)(B) and hence under O.C.G.A. § 16-14-3(9)(A)(xxix). The bogus “electors” who met in Atlanta and transmitted phony documentation to the National Archives were active participants in that conspiracy.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Trump’s greatest area of vulnerabilty in Georgia is likely his entreaty to the Secretary of State encouraging him to find 11,780 votes."

Well, then he shouldn't be all that vulnerable, because anybody who has read the call transcript is aware that he didn't ask the SoS to just invent votes. He asked him to look for problems, or allow his own people to look for them.

And what's wrong with doing that?

[Sarcastr0]

Brett suddenly, if briefly, loses any ability to read between the lines.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, if your case for him asking for a crime consists of reading between the lines, and ignoring the lines themselves, it's a sucky case.

[Sarcastr0]

And thus Brett reads just about all extortion prosecutions out of the criminal books.

Turns out many juries for a long time have disagreed with your 'no reading between the lines' rule!

[Nige]

'Find me some problems, or I could send people who'll find the problems for you.'

[David Nieporent]

And what’s wrong with doing that?

That they told him the problems didn't exist, and he insisted that they "find" them anyway, with "nice state you've got there" insinuations.

[Bob from Ohio]

"charging decisions are imminent"

The walls are closing in.

[bevis the lumberjack]

21st century Jim Crow is a wuss.

The University of Georgia did a survey to check how the voting experience was for Georgians in 2022 under the recent laws that, uh, drew so much attention. A couple of salient results:

Rate your overall experience voting in this election:
Excellent - white 72.7%, black 72.6%
Good - white 23.3%, black 23.6%
Poor - white 0.9%, black 0.0% (yes, 0% lol)

Was it easier, harder, or about the same to cast a ballot in 2022 compared to the 2020 election?
Harder - white 4.4%, black 6.9%
Easier - white 13.3%, black 19.6%
Same - white 80.1%, black 72.5%

For all of you Republicans out there whining about mail in voting, a whopping 5.6% of voters voted by mail.

For all of you doubters out there trying to preserve your narrative, here’s the whole damn thing:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23584107-spia-poll

All of that strum and drang kicked up by Democrats and their media lackeys about disenfranchising minority voters and Defending Democracy and the New Jim Crow was totally fabricated hyperbolic political outrage bullshit. Pissing on the memory of victims of Actual Jim Crow.

Has a single one of these chuckleheads come back to do a mea culpa? Has Biden apologized - “hey, guys, sorry about the Jim Crow thing”? Hell no. They’re off generating new bullshit-based outrage. The most ironic part of this is that these consistent purveyors of misinformation and the people who are busting their asses trying to suppress speech using battling misinformation as an excuse. It’s irony on steroids and PCP.

[ThePublius]

Excellent post, thank you. My only comment is that the mail-in ballot provisions allow for fraud, as needed. They are not always needed.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Personal experience of voting—considered in terms of short-term comparisons offered by folks who could vote—is very far from adequate critique. How, for instance, can that method accommodate critique of gerrymandering, or even the experiences of non-voters who were prevented from voting, by modern Jim Crow tactics enabled by the gutting of the Voting Rights Act? Bevis, I am disappointed that you seem eager to slide past all the issues raised by Republican political opportunism which followed immediately the Shelby County decision.

[bevis the lumberjack]

You just can’t let your narrative go, can you?

Even when it’s proven to be complete bullshit.

You’re the problem here, Lathrop. Not me.

[Commenter_XY]

You should amuse yourself, bevis the lumberjack. Don't get irritated. lathrop's posts are what I call a 'target rich environment'....so have some fun. Just be prepared for Boomer-style Walls of Text pomposity. 🙂

[Stephen Lathrop]

Commenter_XY, I make my replies target rich on purpose. I like to watch you hit yourself in the foot when you neglect to aim at any of them. Just like bevis did right above.

By the way, is, "Boomer-style," intended as a demand to abridge everything to a length that will fit in a Tweet? Seems a shame to do it that way, given that some folks still have functioning attention spans.

[bevis the lumberjack]

We neglected to aim at them for the same reason we don't shoot unicorns, Like unicorns, your points on this are complete fantasy. Republicans were going to disenfranchise black Georgians. Except that they never were going to do so and they didn't.

You simply can't admit that you were/are completely full of shit on this and take your L because you're intellectually dishonest. Fifteen paragraphs of word salad won't change that.

[Nige]

‘Except that they never were going to’

Or they failed to do so effectively, or nobody asked people who were disenfranchised and/or gerrymandered.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Commenter_XY, I make my replies target rich on purpose.

Intentional stupidity is still stupidity.

[Nige]

You're in such a rush to announce it's bullshit you don't even want to hear anything else, do you?

[ducksalad]

Are you questioning the legitimacy of the 2022 Georgia election?
If so, the Rule of Goats applies, and you are an election denier.

[Life of Brian]

Harder – white 4.4%, black 6.9% <---------------
Easier – white 13.3%, black 19.6%
Same – white 80.1%, black 72.5%

Found the disenfranchisement!

[Nige]

This is a bit like people who claim it's obvious the hole in the ozone layer was no big deal.

[jb]

Note the obvious selection bias in this survey: they only talked to people who reported that they actually voted. So anyone who was actually disenfranchised wouldn't show up in the data set.

Now it might be reasonable to infer that since people didn't generally find it much harder to vote (and in fact more people found it easier) that it's unlikely that there were a lot of people forced out of voting altogether, but this survey doesn't directly answer that question. But yes, overall it is good that it seems like Georgia seems to have had a fair and competently run election. It would be interesting to understand what factors made it easier for some people to vote and to what extent those may offset provisions or circumstances that made it harder and see if there's a good lessons for other states as well.

[DaveM]

I'm delighted to hear that mail-in voting was only done for 5.6% of the ballots. While that is fantastic news, Georgia still has a long way to go. I am of the opinion that all forms of "delivered" ballots must be no larger than the margin of a recount in order for the system to be deemed reliable.

In-person voting in whatever form -- early, election day, or provisional -- is the only way voters can be certain that their votes were accepted and counted.

[SRG]

I am of the opinion that all forms of “delivered” ballots must be no larger than the margin of a recount in order for the system to be deemed reliable.

Indeed. Your opinion is uninformed but you are entitled to it.

[David Nieporent]

I always thought the whole "Jim Crow" stuff was stupid, hyperventilating over minor changes that would not have any impact on voting.

But you understand that this poll is actually kind of crap methodology, right? You can’t ask people who voted whether they had a hard time voting. It's selection bias. You're excluding anyone who was prevented or dissuaded from voting from the survey pool.

It would be like asking all the people the firefighters rescued from a burning apartment building about their personal experience being rescued. Without knowing how many people didn't get rescued, the survey wouldn't tell you very much about firefighter performance. (Er, not that you could ask the ones who weren't rescued, but you get the point.)

[Kenneth Almquist]

The survey asked voters who voted in person how long they had to wait. Black voters reported longer wait times than white voters.

[DWB]

Democrats can't run shit ...

News a 11

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Republicans have been race-targeted for decades. Replacement to follow.

[OtisAH]

What if “same” means “as miserable as the last time”? What if “easier” means “I only waited an hour and a half, last time it was four”? What if “harder” means “I, a white person, was mildly inconvenienced, which I’ve never been before”?

But yeah, sure, this study “proves” that increased voting restrictions are no big deal.

[David Nieporent]

What if “same” means “as miserable as the last time”? What if “easier” means “I only waited an hour and a half, last time it was four”? What if “harder” means “I, a white person, was mildly inconvenienced, which I’ve never been before”?

No, you missed the absolute question about overall voting experience:

Excellent – white 72.7%, black 72.6%
Good – white 23.3%, black 23.6%

[Armchair Lawyer]

$55,000 in costs per illegal migrant. Just to house them.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/ka-ching-adams-ink-275-million-with-hotels-to-house-migrants/

[gdanning]

Only because New York law, unlike most places, requires the city to house every homeless person, and the shelters are at capacity. And btw, if they entered to seek asylum, as the article states, then by definition they are not in the country illegally.

[Ben_]

So that’s 3 reasons you don’t care that Americans are worse off, I guess.

[jb]

Usually I can kind of understand your criticism of liberal policies even if I disagree, but very curious to hear your explanation of how sheltering homeless people makes Americans worse off.

[Armchair Lawyer]

$55,000 a year, per illegal migrant, all from the US taxpayer...makes the US taxpayer worse off.

[jb]

Ah, so anything that costs money that you don't agree with is making Americans worse off. I get it. I guess Ben_'s philosophy is easy to understand after all. Presumably things that costs money that he likes are awesome for Americans, though?

[Ben_]

Spending Americans’ money on foreigners very, very obviously makes Americans worse off than we would be if we could have avoided that expense.

You can try it yourself. Throw away $55k of your own money and you will see yourself worse off.

[David Nieporent]

You do understand that they aren't "throwing away" money, right? They're spending it on stuff. That only makes Americans worse off if the stuff they get for the money is worth less than the amount spent.

[David Nieporent]

That's nothing. Louisiana taxpayers are paying $2.8 million per year to (involuntarily) house people in prison after they've served their sentences.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/us/politics/justice-department-overdetention.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

[Armchair Lawyer]

That above bit was $55,000....per person.
The actual acquisition was $275 million.

[Michael P]

Yale Law School is doubling down on opacity, speech restrictions, and misleading statements to the public. Is there any reason beyond the inmates running the asylum?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Pushback from alumni?

[Ed Grinberg]

“Is there any reason beyond the inmates running the asylum?”
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/10/07/why-a-broad-view-of-academic-freedom-is-essential/?comments=true#comment-8506704

a statement in support of any students “doxxed” at the event

Not only will we not impose any discipline on the disrupting students, we’ll also protect them from being “doxxed”!

[Moderation4ever]

Kari Lake shares something with Donald Trump, they both lost because they under performed with Republicans voters. A recent report of a new analysis (AZCentral) of the Maricopa County ballots showed that voters who voted straight Republican down ballot did not chose Lake for Governor. They voted for Hobbs, a write-in or left the race blank. The analysis projects that had Lake gotten these Republican votes she would have won election as Governor.

The truth is that Republican like everyone else has a limit for how much crazy they will accept. Neither Lake nor Trump were cheated. The simple fact is that people, including those in their party were tired of them.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Optimist.

[David Nieporent]

About a week before the election, Lake held a rally at which she ranted from the stage, "Do we have any John McCain Republicans around here? Alright, get the hell out!" (And then she called them "losers.")

They listened. And didn't vote for her.

How high do you have be on your own supply to think that actually telling members of your party you don't want their support is a good idea?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Good news for anyone who has been frustrated trying to bake pizza in an ordinary home oven, which typically cannot match the temperature (~900 F) used in a good pizza kitchen. You may know about a pizza stone, which you pre-heat and then put your pie on, to help it cook properly. Turns out making that utensil out of quarter- to half-inch steel or cast iron notably improves the result. At 550 F I can get a perfect thin crust, crisp outside, chewy inside, with an airy-thin bubbled outer ring and a bit char. Best of all, if you don't put too much water in the toppings, it comes out cracker-stiff, right to the tip of the slice.

If you go for anything thicker than quarter-inch (which I bought) be sure your oven rack (and your back) can handle the weight. One-inch thick steel or cast iron weigh about 40 lbs per square foot, and your steel needs to be larger than a foot square. Think of it as an enormous, extra-thick cast iron skillet, minus the sides and the handle.

[apedad]

Here's my cast-iron skillet pizza recipe: https://www.jennycancook.com/recipes/easy-pan-pizza/

Comes out excellent every time.

The trick is to put the pan on the stove on high for several minutes before putting it into the oven to get the bottom started.

[Life of Brian]

I'm going to have to try this. Is there much of a recovery time between cycles if you're making multiple pies?

[apedad]

Depends on your oven but I've had no problems putting one skillet in the oven one-at-a-time.

[Brett Bellmore]

For anybody interested in following that up:

1/4" x 18.5 x 23.5, $29.58 Yarde's "Drop Zone" sells cutoffs from large orders at a discount.

[bernard11]

Which item is this?

Stainless or carbon?

Thanks.

[Brett Bellmore]

Carbon, hot rolled and pickled.

[Mr. Bumble]

You guys do realize that commercial pizza ovens use a firebrick cooking surface, right? These hold the heat better than any metal surface.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, and if you want to use your oven for nothing but pizza, that IS the optimal solution.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Are you sure they use the firebrick as the cooking surface? I thought that was the structural part, to hold the heat in. More an insulator than a conductor. I think what you want under pizza crust is a massive heat sink, which is also a ready conductor, to transfer the heat it stores to the pizza. Please someone correct me if I misunderstand that.

[Brett Bellmore]

Anyway, good advice. I still recall Alton Brown noting that some people defeat the door interlock on their oven's cleaning cycle, to get hot enough to make decent pizza. "But I would never recommend that anybody do that!" he said, complete with air quotes.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Fox News analyst Gianno Caldwell says he was kicked out of a Miami cafe for discussing politics. Here, he explains to The Post how he was shocked by the intolerance.

The white woman across the restaurant was staring me down, a look of genuine disgust and disdain. It wasn’t, admittedly, the first time in my life I’d gotten this look. I wondered what, if anything, I’d done to deserve it.

I would soon learn she was the owner of the restaurant — and that she was tossing out me and my friends for my conservative beliefs.

At this point, I was completely shell-shocked. As someone who has received years of guff for being a black conservative, I could not help but wonder: Would she have done this to a white conservative?

https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/gianno-caldwell-on-being-a-back-conservative-demonized-by-liberals/

[Dr. Ed 2]

How corrupt is the Ukraine?

Is it another South Vietnam?

[Moderation4ever]

No

[M L]

It has long been described as one of the most corrupt places in the world.

The regular folk seem to have heart, though.

[Moderation4ever]

Ukraine seems to be near equivalent to many countries nearby in corruption. Better than Russia and Belarus, less than Poland. What is important is that Ukraine has been reaching to the west and that is the most likely way to lead to a less corrupt government.

[Brett Bellmore]

Just the war, itself, will tend to do that. Existential emergencies tend to have that effect, people start focusing on what really matters and steamrollering the people who don't get with the program.

[Nige]

Except that black markets thrive in war zones and people are quite rightly concerned about what will happen to the surplus weaponry when this shitshow ends. Wars never, ever made anywhere less corrupt.

[Nige]

By who? Have they met Russia?
This list has them at a position of joint 122nd, with 1st being the least (perceived) corrupt (New Zealand, fair duinkum) and 180th the most (South Sudan.)
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank
(I expected India to be much higher, but it's only at 85, good on India.)
This list agrees:
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021

[David Nieporent]

It has long been described as one of the most corrupt places in the world.

It has been described that way… by Russians and MAGA Republicans.

That's not to say that it's a good government paradise like Switzerland or something. Sure, there's corruption. The U.S. has recognized that, and has conditioned aid to them for years on progress in fighting corruption. (Insert tediously overdiscussed story about Viktor Shokin here.)

[Sarcastr0]

Law prof friend of mine tells me ALS had more positions than folks looking for prof jobs this year.

That is not common.

Should be some interesting market-driven policy shifts ahead.

[Moderation4ever]

Cleaning out drawers I found about 500 Index cards, and I am now wondering if Index cards have any use today. In my day we made flash cards for foreign language studies, notes for speeches and notes for term papers. Computers and post-its have replaced all of this. Are index cards just a remnant of the boomer generations? I am beginning to think yes.

[Brett Bellmore]

Some people use them for recipes, still.

[ducksalad]

Stiffness is just right for scooping up mouse turds, dead roaches, etc. In an emergency, usable as a spoon for salsa or hummus after the chips run out (use a different one than for the mouse turds). Card deck for blind solitaire.

[Harvey Mosley]

"...(use a different one than for the mouse turds)..." Thank you for making that clear!

[Commenter_XY]

Yes. My entire investment philosophy (and holdings) can be summarized on one index card, using just one side. And have space left over - lots of it.

[DaveM]

Fire starter

[David Nieporent]

My kids still use them at school.

Well, I should say that it's still on the supply lists; I don't know whether they actually use them.

[David Nieporent]

Kids just got home from school so I asked them. My daughter says she still uses them for flashcards.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Excellent small reflectors for tabletop product photography.

[Brett Bellmore]

Think Biden voluntarily consented to have the feds search his house? Think again: He only agreed to it because the DOJ said that they'd get a warrant if he didn't.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/politics/justice-department-biden-home-search

Incidentally, one of the emails on Hunter's laptop apparently had information that probably would not have been available publicly, and might have derived from Biden's classified documents.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/incredibly-suspicious-detailed-hunter-biden-email-raises-questions-amid-classified-docs-scandal

[John F. Carr]

I thought about the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs helps a criminal hide in a stove.

After Trump, Biden's people knew the FBI was serious.

[Brett Bellmore]

After Trump, the FBI knew that they wouldn't get away with not being serious with regards to Biden. They have to consider that sooner or later Republicans will be in charge again, and the agency is already in bad with them. They couldn't afford to dig that hole any deeper.

But part of this is that these things are actually being reported, in MSM outlets. Biden's immunity from hostile coverage has been rescinded, it really does look like the party is preparing to ease him out, and taking the shine off him is part of that.

[Nige]

I thought Biden sicced the FBI on Trump? If he can sic them on Trump presumably he can avoid siccing them on himself, if so inclined.

Who can forget the wall to wall coverage on the MSM of attempts to recover the Mar A Lago documents before the FBI raid? Relentless!

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

"Federal investigators also were prepared to seek a warrant if they did not get consent to search the Wilmington property, according to multiple sources.

The Justice Department, however, never raised the possibility of a warrant during the recent discussions, according to a law enforcement source, even though the possibility loomed if Biden’s team didn’t cooperate."

So, your own source debunks your own claim.

[not guilty]

Perhaps Brett thought no one would read the linked CNN article.

Then again, President Biden is represented by real lawyers. In that context, the threat to seek a search warrant need not be explicit. That does not detract from the fact that Biden's team is cooperating (including consenting to an extensive search).

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, Brett, that is how cooperating with law enforcement works.

Your partisanship is really eating away at some pretty basic critical thinking at this point.

[Brett Bellmore]

I guess inviting the FBI to send people over to search without a warrant doesn't count as "cooperating", then?

[not guilty]

Huh??

[not guilty]

On previous threads I have challenged Biden critics to specify what an FBI agent seeking a warrant to search Biden properties would put in a supporting affidavit to constitute probable cause. I have not yet received a satisfactory answer, so I reiterate the challenge.

What statute(s) would an agent cite as having been probably violated? What facts evince any person having acted with a culpable mental state for any such statute(s)? What facts suggest that evidence is presently located on the premises?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Now? Or before anyone was made aware that he had any documents?

Today a search warrant would be easy.

[not guilty]

As I have explained upthread, mere possession of government documents is not a crime; the relevant statutes require additional conduct, combined with the applicable showing of scienter.

You make the ipse dixit assertion that “Today a search warrant would be easy.” Do you know how to parse a statute? If not, there is no shame in admitting that. If so, tell us what statute(s) an agent seeking a warrant to search Biden’s residence would cite, and (as to each such statute) what facts evince a culpable mens rea on the part of any person. And what facts indicate that evidence of criminal conduct would today be found on the premises?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[not guilty]

Still waiting, bevis.

[MoreCurious]

You’ll get either deafening silence or moronic, nonsensical responses for the simple reason that there is no probable cause to support a search warrant of President Biden’s homes or offices. Or Pence's, for that matter.

[not guilty]

Mike Pence acted appropriately when his lawyers found classified documents at his home in Indiana. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23584921-letter-from-pence-representative-to-archives

Joe Biden also acted appropriately when his lawyers found classified documents at the Penn Biden Center, and he is continuing to cooperate with the DOJ.

If Donald Trump had acted in a similarly circumspect manner, he would not be in legal peril regarding the Mar-a-Lago documents.

[David Nieporent]

Think Biden voluntarily consented to have the feds search his house? Think again: He only agreed to it because the DOJ said that they’d get a warrant if he didn’t.

As always, Brett reads things that aren't there, while not being able to read things that are there.

That is not what the article says.

[ReaderY]

GenBioPro is suing West Virginia, claiming federal law gives it an unfettered right to send abortifacients into interstate commerce and West Virginia’s abortion restrictions should be struck down based on federal supremacy.

West Virginia should counterclaim. It should go for all the marbles and ask the court to enforce federal law by enjoining GenBioPro from sending any abortifiacients into interstate commerce. It should shut down Gen BioPro’s mail-order abortion business.

First, the Comstock Act prohibits sending abortificients to places where they are unlawful. And that’s precisely what GenBioPro concedes (jn its complaint) that it is doing. Federal law specifically protects West Virginia from actors like GenBioPro, and West Virginia is fully entitled to seek federal court’s help in enforcing the law.

The Justice Department came out with a rediculous opinion saying the Comstock Act can never be enforced because one can never be sure a person receiving the abortificient intended to use it unlawfully. GenBioPro’s own complaint contradicts, indeed belies, this absurd reading of the statute. GenBioPro fully intends the unlawful use to be made of its products. It says so. That’s why it’s suing.

The Comstock Act would only apply to states like West Virginia where abortion is illegal.

But there’s more. The FD&C Act requires all drugs to be safe in humans. Between Roe and Dobbs, it was reasonable to interpret the atatute as not prohibiting abortifacients on grounds that under Roe a fetus is metely “potential” human life. What the FDA did during this period was not illegal under the law of the time.

Dobbs, however, changed everything. Its language characterized fetuses as actual human life, not potential but actual. This gives fetuses a legal status similar to foreigners outside US territory, who similarly lack constitutional rights, but whose safety the FD&C Act has long been considered to protect. Drug companies routinely use clinical trials with patients outside the US to establish that drugs are safe. The FDA routinely considers the safety of foreigners outside US territory to be just as important as the safety of US citizens. The fact that foreigners outside US territory lack constitutional rights, and under some circumstances it’s not illegal to kill them where it would be illegal to kill US citizens, has never been considered relevant to the FD&C Act.

After Dobbs, there is no reason to treat fetuses any different from foreigners for FD&C purposes. The fact that fetuses lack constitutional rights and abortion is legal in some places and circumstances should no more matter for FD&C purposes than the fact that foreigners lack constitutional rights and killing them is legal in some circumstances matters.

The actions of the FDA were not illegal at the time because Roe was in effect. But after Dobbs, there can be no question that abortifacients are unsafe for humans. The prior approval under a different legal envitonment cannot justify flagrant violations of the FD&C Act going forward. West Virginia should ask the court to declare that GenBioPro’s entire business of interstate commerce in drugs specifically intended to be unsafe for human fetuses violates the FD&C Act’s requirement that drugs must be safe for humans.

West Virginia should ask the Court to effectuate exactly the federal supremacy GenBioPro is asking for by declaring GenBioPro’s abortifacient products unlawful and enjoining GenBioPro from introducing such drugs into interstate commerce.

[ReaderY]

Here is the Justice Department’s opinion regarding the Comstock Act.

https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/file/1560596/download

[John F. Carr]

The meaning of "safe" in federal drug approval rules needs to be uniform. It doesn't make sense for a drug to be declared safe in Virginia but not in West Virginia when the effects are the same in both states.

I could imagine a statutory compromise like the one made for California emissions. The law allows two sets of vehicle emissions standards, California and federal, an exception to most vehicle rules which are uniform. Democrats won't let that happen for abortion pills as long as they own the executive branch and think they can win administratively.

[ReaderY]

Completely agree the FD&C Act requires a uniform national interpretation. While a Comstock Act based injunction would be local to West Virginia, an FD&C Act based injunction could potentially be nationwide. As I said above, West Virginia should “go for all the marbles” and ask the court to shut down GenBioPro’s entire abortifacient business, as in violation of federal law, nationwide.

Yes, Congress could amend the statutes if it wanted to. Yes, both statutes applicability was held in abeyance between Roe and Dobbs. Yes, GenBioPro could argue they were somehow implicitly repealed. But if one takes the view they remain in force, these federal statutes do not favor GenBioPro’s position.

[David Nieporent]

This gives fetuses a legal status similar to foreigners outside US territory,

Please stop trying to make 'fetch' happen.

[ReaderY]

???

[Sarcastr0]

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stop-trying-to-make-fetch-happen

[ReaderY]

I don’t think you can dispose of the FD&C argument with a single line of snark. The FD&C Act prohibits drugs that are unsafe for humans. Not unsafe for persons, unsafe for humans. Personhood has nothing to do with it and never has (Hence the extraterritorial alien analogy). The statutory language is human, not person. Roe held fetuses are merely potential humans, meaning abortifacients don’t violate the FD&C act. But Dobbs said they are actual humans.

You’ll need a better argument than the word ‘fetch’ to claim that doesn’t change anything.

[David Nieporent]

I wasn't addressing your FD&C argument. I was addressing your repeated attempts over the years to argue that fetuses are actually like foreigners.

[ReaderY]

Appreciate your endorsement. If you had been able to think of something more coherent than attempting a distraction, doubtless you would have done it.

[ReaderY]

I mean, it’s exactly the kind of reflexive derisive response and verbal raspberry kind of comment that white men of quality a century or so ago would have given at the idea that for purposes of the constitution, black people are actually like white people, or woman are actually like men. I mean, they’re just so obviously different that it’s just gotta be a really stupid idea.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Dobbs is a minor decision. It will never reach adulthood.

[OtisAH]

Dobbs did not bestow personhood on fetuses.

[ReaderY]

But the FD&C Act doesn’t require, or even have anything to do with, personhood. That’s my whole point. The Supreme Court has never bestowed personhood on foreigners outside US territory. It repeated its refusal to do so only a couple of years ago, repeating that they don’t have personal constitutional rights. And yet the FDA has long regarded, and the FD&C Act has long been interpreted to require, treating the safety of foreigners outside US territory just like the safety of constitutional persons (folks who do have constitutional rights). That’s because the FD&C Act requires drugs to be safe in humans. Humans, not persons. And while Dobbs didn’t bestow personhood on fetuses, it did call them humans, rather than “potential” humans as Roe did.

[ReaderY]

You replied to my explanation that personhood has nothing to do with it by just saying “but, no personhood!” If I had told you Martians have nothing to do with it, a reply insisting there are no Martians would be just as on point. True, but totally irrelevant.

[Sarcastr0]

Korean War just popped off in the Truman bio. Shortly after Truman had told people America would not do a crash military increase (he changed his mind)

Seems a pretty correct choice for us to come in as opposition. Other than us staying too long and pushing too far (heckuva job, MacArthur!), I don't think the conventional wisdom regarding that war has changed much, has it?

Truman also declined to run for a third term, though he was against Presidential term limits - wanted each President to choose not to run for a third term as a test of their personal honor...different time, no doubt.

[Commenter_XY]

I always thought Truman did a decent job, foreign-policy wise. Maybe not so much domestically, but the country was recovering from the trauma of WW2. So understandable that his domestic policy was a mixed bag (also contended with an opposition Congress).

Quite colorful, too (which I admire).

[Stephen Lathrop]

Arguably, since Roosevelt's death, the nation has not got on purpose any president better than it got by happenstance with Truman. Given nearly universal low expectations for Truman, that seems remarkable.

[Sarcastr0]

Ever hired someone after scouring their resume and a practicum and letters of recommendation and an interview? After the threshold matters, the quality seems about like random chance to me.

You never know how people are till they actually do the job.

[Commenter_XY]

Yes, and I have had a couple go south, too = Ever hired someone after scouring their resume and a practicum and letters of recommendation and an interview?

You're right, they're like a box of chocolates, you don't know what you are getting.

[Sarcastr0]

To be fair, I've had them go north as well!

Below the threshold candidate, but we were desperate. Turns out to be amazing.

[Brett Bellmore]

We're getting remarkably qualified individuals as President. The problem is, the qualification we're testing them for is "Skill at running for President".

Maybe changing the laws so that wealthy people couldn't identify somebody who would be a good President, and promote them for the job, just ended up reserving it for self-promoters, who were worse?

But maybe a constitutional amendment limiting the office to people who have previously served as state Governors would be a good idea. At least they'd have demonstrated their abilities in an executive office. President isn't a starter job.

[ducksalad]

Other ideas, about as realistic as a constitutional amendment:

Go back to smoke-filled rooms to pick nominees. That system produced better candidates.

Reduce the power, perks, and prestige of the office to make it less attractive to sociopaths.

Politely implore primary voters to take their civic responsibilities more seriously.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's true that Congress has given up on originating constitutional amendments; The last one they made a serious attempt at was the DC voting amendment back in the late 70's, everything since has just been theater for the voters.

But the states have been inching closer and closer towards a constitutional convention, and I think the building pressure from Congress blocking all amendments is eventually going to get us there. Might as well have some good ones ready to go when it suddenly happens!

[Bob from Ohio]

"limiting the office to people who have previously served as state Governors would be a good idea"

Washington, Polk, Lincoln, Ike were never governors.

Wilson was one. Bill Clinton too.

[Kazinski]

I think Eisenhower was absolutely the best of the presidents since Coolidge. The progress the country made in civil rights, infrastructure (the interstate highway system), the economy, reducing the national debt/GDP ratio from 71% to 54%, and all without a lot of drama, expanding wars, power grabs like Youngstown Steel.

[Sarcastr0]

Ike is next on my list.

But probably will take a bit a breather off Presidential bios first.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not sure what I wanted him to do domestically that he didn't - some churn during demobilization was natural.
His anti-communist loyalty program was handled badly, and gave ammo to McCarthy. And he was a bit overly loyal to his staff. But that's all I've seen so far.

But the book makes a pretty good case that the job was really hard on him, even if he hid it well.

[Absaroka]

"But the book makes a pretty good case that the job was really hard on him, even if he hid it well."

I have long questioned the sanity of anyone who wants to be president. If we picked presidents like jurors, and you got the notice in the mail and didn't immediately lose your lunch, something is the matter with you. Only half kidding. A president has to make too many high stakes decisions where there isn't enough information to possibly know whether you are right for years to come.

As far as Truman/Korea - look at North and South Korea today, and realize that South Korea is free today because we have had troops there for over 70 years. I think it is a fundamentally very decent thing for America to do. We had an obvious self interest in keeping Western Europe free, but I don't think we would be materially worse off if we had abandoned Korea. But it was the right thing to do, and I'm glad we did/are doing so.

It's also interesting that, at the time, South Korea wasn't much of a democracy. We could have treated Syngman Rhee like the Shah. I'm glad we had the patience to wait things out.

I also hold the minority opinion that MacArthur was over rated, in WWII and Korea. Let the flame wars start 🙂

The biggest downside to Korea was that success there, I think, made us think we could achieve the same result in Vietnam. But that was different politics and different topography.

[Sarcastr0]

Different people are built different; I can see some folks being able to handle the chain.

As for Korea - it's more than that; Truman notes that if he lets this pass, every other country within the sphere of a more powerful Communist country will see no alternative but to knuckle under.

That was not correct in Vietnam, but history seems to have borne that out wrt Korea.

I've always learned MacArthur was more flash than substance. Though I do admire his flash!

[David Nieporent]

Truman notes that if he lets this pass, every other country within the sphere of a more powerful Communist country will see no alternative but to knuckle under.

That was not correct in Vietnam,

Well, we didn't exactly let it pass! We poured billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops into the country for a decade. There's a difference between eventually giving up and not even trying.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, the counterfactual of Vietnam of if we just let it go on is not known.

But I certainly think we did way more than we needed to for the requisite pushback on Communist imperialism-by-proxy.

[Commenter_XY]

The Inchon invasion was brilliance. It is said he was the architect of that plan. MacArthur has a very mixed record. Cold fish, from what I have read.

[Absaroka]

Feh :-).

In 1950 the US had recent history of amphibious landings out the wazoo - not just D-day and Torch and the Pacific Islands, but up and down the coast of New Guinea (under MacA's command!). Landing in a weakly held area behind the enemy's main strength was SOP.

In Korea you had the NK army front loaded down by Pusan, with their logistics running right by the coast at Seoul, weakly guarded. For a general of the time, landing there was an obvious no-brainer, tides be damned.

I freely admit, yours is the majority view, and I am a lonely contrarian voice in the wilderness 🙂

[Nige]

'heckuva job, MacArthur!'

He killed a million civilians with his bombing campaign. Okay, estimates vary, but it was definitely in the hundreds of thousands and well over a million NK civilans died in the war overall. It's still hard to get the head around.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and of course the North Koreans never killed any civilians, only combatants. Get your head around the fact that war always kills people and whether soldier or civilian they are equally dead.

[Nige]

Did I say they didn't? But MacArthur was a genocidal war criminal and helped bequeath us the North Korea we have today.

[Mr. Bumble]

How was he a "genocidal" war criminal? What other (if any) US officers would you include?

What caused the North Korea we have today was US fear of grater USSR involvement, so better to just return to the status quo of two Koreas.

[Nige]

Becauase of all the civlians who were murdered in the bombing campaign that's why. Sure, every officer involved is guilty. American fear has a lot to answer for in terms of human suffering and disastrous multi-generational consequences inflicted on countries that aren't America. (As do Chinese and Russian fears, before you ask.)

[Sarcastr0]

Nige - that was a reference; I do not in fact think MacArthur did a heckuva job.

[Nige]

I know, didn't mean to imply you did.

[ReaderY]

With all the criticism of qualified immunity, perhaps an example of why it’s sometimes justified is in order.

In the Ukraine war recently, a 20-year-old volunteer shooting instructor became involved in a fire fight after Russian soldiers burst in. He attempted to rescue someone who was shot. He screwed up, and the person died. He is being heavily criticized for getting in over his head.

No doubt he got in over his head. But when dealing with danger, sometimes one gets in over ones head and just has to deal with it. If he is punished, if would deter future people who are in over their heads from taking initiative in quick-decision, life-and-death circumstances. This is exactly the sort of situation qualified immunity is intended to cover.

https://www.businessinsider.com/some-us-volunteers-ukraine-accuse-another-being-a-war-tourist-2023-1?amp

[SRG]

I don’t know if anyone here doesn’t think it’s ever justified. But it seems that in too many cases the courts bend over backwards to find a reason why the official couldn’t have known, on occasions even extending it to people who should never be in a position to benefit from QI.

As originally intended, I think, it was to avoid second-guessing heat-of-the-moment, or at least, quick, decisions. I don’t think it was intended to cover long-term abuse.

[Harvey Mosley]

The problem with QI is that the police should be held accountable for knowing the law. Everyday hundreds or thousands of non LEOs are arrested and prosecuted for laws they didn't know or understand. By the same people who get a pass because of the fiction that they didn't have proper notice of the law or it wasn't understood.

[David Nieporent]

If the only thing QI did was say that government officials (remember that QI isn't just for police) who didn't have notice of the law weren't liable, it wouldn't be so objectionable. What's so objectionable is that courts put their thumbs on the scale in favor of cops.

For instance, it's not enough to say, "The courts have said that excessive force is unconstitutional. This was excessive force. Therefore it's unconstitutional." You have to show that courts have ruled that the specific way in which excessive force was used in that particular situation was unconstitutional.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, it's practically on a "He was on notice that beating a suspect to death with a hickory baseball bat wasn't legal, but he could hardly be expected to generalize that to a maple baseball bat." level.

[ReaderY]

Agree qualified immunity was never intended to be a reward for zero-day exploits.

[Sarcastr0]

Will Baude's Divided Argument talks about the Dobbs update...meh.

But also about this case: "Türkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States"

This bank is held by the government sufficiently to count as Turkey for legal purposes. They've also been laundering Iranian money.

Seems the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act was drafted like 'foreign sovereign nations are immune from US jurisdiction except in these exceptions' and all the exceptions are civil.

Well, the drafters seem to have forgotten criminal law was a thing, as an amicus by one of those drafters admits.
And the previous regime that the FSIA was supposed to codify also allowed some criminal prosecutions.
But the text is pretty bad news for the government.

Fun stuff!

[Absaroka]

There is a youtube channel called 'TheHistoryGuy' whose forte is short videos on a wide variety of historical trivia; it's easy to get lost in them, and I thought I'd pass it along for any history buffs.

Here is one recent example. Herbert Hoover is generally viewed as a heartless fellow because of his laissez-faire reaction to the Depression. But in WWI, he was instrumental in ... feeding Belgium. The tl;dr is that the German occupiers said it wasn't their job to feed Belgium (which imported most of its food). The Allies were blockading and wouldn't allow food to be shipped for fear the Germans would get it. Hoover was just a random engineer vacationing in London, but took on the job of building a relief agency that could import food and ensure it only went to the Belgians, doing some very nice arm twisting, etc.

In any event, like many of THG's videos, it leaves you saying 'I had no idea!'.

[Ed Grinberg]

Check out PragerU. They do history, philosophy, politics, etc. Great stuff!

[M L]

I have liked some PragerU stuff but they are neocons.

[Absaroka]

The nice thing about THG is that he is pretty careful to be apolitical, which is refreshing if you aren't an all politics all the time sort. It's just quirky oddball things.

[M L]

Sounds good to me.

[Moderation4ever]

I have never thought of President Hoover as a heartless man. From my history classes and from long dead relatives who lived during the depression I got the impression that Hoover was unable to process people's problems. Hoover was a self-made man and from his perspective people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Most historians suggest that President Roosevelt's initiative did little and that WWII really ended the depression. But Roosevelt gave people hope when they needed it, while Hoover lacked that ability to give hope. He may actually have been better at actions than in giving hope.

[Sarcastr0]

I recommend the book "The President's Club' which in it's first chapter talks about Hoover's work leveraging his business connections in Europe to make the Marshall Plan work.

[Absaroka]

Thanks, I ordered a used copy!

[bernard11]

Herbert Hoover is generally viewed as a heartless fellow because of his laissez-faire reaction to the Depression.

I don't think so. His humanitarian work is fairly well-known, and he clearly thought his approach to the Depression, however unwise, was the best policy available.

[Stephen Lathrop]

For several generations, Americans have been learning to their surprise that despite his reputation for bungling the economy at the start of the depression, Hoover had a well-deserved reputation as a brilliant administrator in other contexts.

[M L]

Last week I posted this 4 minute Tucker Carlson bit about Richard Nixon and tangentially, the assassination of JFK. Several commenters suggested it was lies, but declined to specify what the lies were or anything false in the video.

Obviously, there are some wild overarching implications that one might argue are false, or a lie, or simply not supported by a preponderance of the evidence. I’m sure there is a lot to it, and countless books written about it, and apparently a trickle of relevant government disclosures even recently. I know next to nothing about the topic, and I’m personally not old enough to remember any presidency before HW Bush. Although, it seems some 80%+ of Americans have typically believed that some conspiracy was behind the assassination of JFK, especially those old enough to be more familiar with it.

But I’m wondering if any of the specific information/statements in the video are false, as opposed to the obvious implications being made.

https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1616248246938271744

[grb]

Full Disclosure : I won’t listen to even four minutes of Carlson, so I didn’t. However a quick search brought this TC claim : Richard Nixon “was removed for questioning the deep state”

Are you aware how mind-numbingly stupid that is? You’d need a list several arms-lengths long to catalogue all the laws broken by Nixon’s White House. It would include massive amounts of money laundering and obstruction of justice on a grand scale. Here’s my favorite Nixon story : He wanted papers thought locked in a safe at the Brookings Institute. So his merry band of crooks, thugs and enforcers proposed this to RMN : They’d firebomb the building and steal the documents in the resulting mayhem. Nixon approved, and is heard on tape saying “blow the safe!” like some demented James Cagney hood. Only the panicked objections of another aide stopped the scheme. Please do yourself a favor and read a book about Watergate. No one should be Tucker Carlson’s patsy on that subject. It’s not a good look.

Likewise his drivel on JFK’s assassination. I just read a T.C. article on that subject and it’s the same bullshit we’ve heard these last sixty years. Bring up one (dubious) factoid and supposedly all other documented facts are supposed to disappear. There is a towering mountain of evidence that Oswald killed Kennedy alone, but Carlson completely ignores that to scam the chumps. Try “Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK” by Gerald Posner to see how the reality-based universe tallies JFK’s murder.

When I was a little kid, I loved reading about mysterious events and otherworldly theories. One of those was the baffling disappearance of five torpedo bombers flying over the Caribbean. (yeah, I’m old enuff to have grown-up during the Bermuda Triangle Era). I read one account that had me gasping in awe at the sheer mystery of it. Then I read another account full of dry documented fact that drained all that mystery away, replacing it with an easily-followed tale of tragic error. Even as a small child, that made a impression. Truth usually has a different texture than sketchy flim-flam from a huckster.

[M L]

"this TC claim : Richard Nixon “was removed for questioning the deep state”"

I stopped reading there. No, this isn't one of the claims being made that I am asking about.

[grb]

Fair enough. I made the mistake of assuming the ludicrous Nixon claim that popped-up with a quick TC search would be yours. Silly me; no doubt Tucker has new bullshit to peddle to his dupe audience every day of the week.

So I abandoned my (overly) dainty principles and clicked your link. Guess what? Mind. Numbing. Stupidity.

There is a clear narrative trail from the initial Watergate crime that pulled-out a loose thread, and the exposure of crime after crime after crime that led to his resignation. None of those crimes had anything to do with Kennedy’s death. Money laundering on the scale of a drug lord had nothing to do with the assassination. A massive coverup that permeated every corner of the executive branch, from Attorney General to RMN’s private secretary, had nothing to do with JFK in Dallas. The civil right’s violations that included burglary, wiretapping, and even a scheme of arson (see above – if ya got the stones) had nothing to do with JFK.

Likewise the events leading to Nixon’s ruin. Where was the CIA’s involvement in that? In the capture of the Watergate burglars? In the unraveling of CREEP’s finances? In Nixon’s own panicked Saturday Night Massacre, or the public disclosure of the tape system, or embarrassing story to explain why some tapes were erased?

Your mind has to be really worm-ridden with conspiratorial gibberish to see secret “Deep State” machinations behind any of that. All normal people saw was a huge criminal organization slowly unravel….

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Fair enough. I made the mistake of assuming

You make that mistake a lot...almost pathologically. The fact that you still haven't learned to stop making that mistake should be cause for some self-reflection.

[grb]

No; I don’t. I very rarely mistake the substance of the right-wing screeds I demolish. Given they’re usually cartoon-grade, it’s hard to mistake their substance. Hell, they rarely have any substance at all.

Please note: After mistakenly eviscerating the wrong ML claim, I corrected my mistake by eviscerating the right ML claim. And I’m perfectly willing to perform the same service for you, Wuz! You peddle a lot of childish slop in this forum too.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

"Nuh-uh! I'm brilliant!!"

[Nige]

Wow, Wuz, you're so good at engaging with the substantive topic at hand!

[grb]

WuzYoungOnceToo : “Nuh-uh! I’m brilliant!!”

Only by contrast......

[grb]

Particularly funny was the claim the CIA "had thus infiltrated the burglary team". Golly, but doesn't that sound impressive! But then you look up the biographical details of the team and find a bunch of losers, hangers-on & second-rate figures that barely had any connection to the CIA even when that connection was active. A less impressive "infiltration team" one couldn't imagine, particular since this tawdry group of low-life criminals scooped-up by the White House just did what Nixon's closest aides told them to do.

But - hey - why focus on details of brainless Stupid when the big picture is such a obvious juicy target? If Nixon did know the CIA (or space aliens) killed JFK - against the massive evidence Oswald acted alone - then how did any event of Watergate prevent him from spilling the beans? Hell, I'd think a Nixon disgraced, forgotten & forlorn would be even more eager to let the secret out. I'm just not getting how the Deep State (1) managed to trick Dick into criminality on an operatic scale, (2) then magically stage-managed his bungling blunder-fest downfall, (3) and did so to (magically) glue his lips together so he never pronounced his (magical) secret knowledge.

Or maybe Nixon didn't know more about JFK than found in his other rants about Jews, intellectuals, Ivy Leaguers, commies, blacks, He was a lying, venal, foul-mouthed, paranoid conspiracy addict. Why build jokey theories about the Deep State out of a throwaway Nixon rant?

[David Nieporent]

I stopped reading there. No, this isn’t one of the claims being made that I am asking about.

Well, I don't know how anyone can know what you were asking about, but it's absolutely one of the claims in the Carlson video you linked last week.

[DaveM]

I heard Tucker's monologue on Nixon and the Deep State, too, and I wasn't terribly impressed. There were a couple of interesting coincidences and a whole lot of clearly unjustified hiding behind national security. Given what we know from the Twitter Files and the COVID debacle, it's easy to see how one could believe that the Deep State was trying to force Nixon out. Clearly, it's not very hard to misuse the powers of the federal government.

But I lived through those times, and Nixon was SUCH a bad apple, all on his own.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Why are conservatives defending Nixon? Yeah he hated communism but so did LBJ. Nixon (and GHWB for that matter) would be moderate liberals in this time. At best they’d be considered RINOs. Think Romney.

One of my earliest memories is when JFK was shot. They had Oswald dead to rights. His gun, his workplace, a floor he was working on, and a shooter that looked very much like him. And he showed clear consciousness of guilt starting immediately after the shooting. Did he collude with anyone? Probably not, but we’ll never be certain.

[grb]

DaveM : “Given what we know from the Twitter Files and the COVID debacle, it’s easy to see how one could believe that the Deep State was trying to force Nixon out”

No. It isn’t easy at all. The “Twitter Files” have proved next to nothing to anyone not entertained by gorging on his own spleen. Let’s do a summary of the “Twitter Files” to celebrate just how little is there, focusing on the Laptop Boondoggle.

(1) The FBI was concerned about Russian interference and disinformation in the 2020 election. This was because Russia was interfering and spreading disinformation.

(2) Many people were wary of the Hunter Biden laptop story because (a) its origin story was a joke (the Blind Trump Fanatic Computer Repairman), (b) people knew Giuliani & his two hood henchmen – Fruman & Parnas – had been rooting thru the Ukrainian sewers for two full years trying to find Hunter dirt. They’d negotiated with oligarchs under U.S. indictment. They’d bargained with figures disgraced and discredited across the entire western world. At one point the CIA warned Trump that Rudy had been recorded talking with Russian spies in his search for Biden kompromat. Then Giuliani shows up with his miracle laptop in the eleventh hour & the story how he got it smelled like fish left out in the hot August sun. Go figure.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/cia-other-spy-agencies-told-white-house-about-rudy-giuliani-n1243718

(3) So people were cautious. In Twitter’s case, overcautious (by their own admission). But every single detail on the laptop was still covered in hundreds of stories found in newspapers, radio, television and the internet. There wasn’t a single laptop fact that wasn’t covered ad nauseum in soul-deadening detail, over and over and over again before the election.

(4) And Twitter’s self-admitted over-caution was their own right to make. It helps not to forget that.

How ANYBODY could take that nothing story about a nothing story (because the laptop produced scandal like a damp squib) and imagine it some “deep state” horror tale, God alone only knows.

(As for the “Covid debacle”, I’ve got a late night of work in front of me & don’t have the stomach to deal with whatever nonsense you’re promoting)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Since the laptop was real in the end, I wonder how all those government agencies were so wrong

Weird.

[David Nieporent]

You've seen this alleged laptop?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

haha yeah, nothing's real unless the State tells me it is!

[David Nieporent]

Is that a "no"?

[Nige]

Only things Rudy Giuliani tells you about are real.

[Nige]

The laptop was not proved 'real.' Some of the emails were confirmed as originating with Hunter Biden. Not the same thing at all, given the circumstances.

[David Nieporent]

Indeed, the computer forensics people that the WaPo (and/or NYT, I forget) hired to examine the files¹ who said that some of the emails were genuine also said that some of the files had been created and/or altered after Hunter Biden allegedly left the machine at the repair shop.

¹Not a laptop. Nobody has seen the alleged laptop itself other than perhaps the computer repair shop guy.

[Brett Bellmore]

Maybe you mean this forensic examination? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-data-analysis/

Nah, probably not: They looked at a copy of the drive that came direct from the repair shop, and showed no signs at all of tampering.

Perhaps you're talking about this one:

https://cyberscoop.com/hunter-biden-emails-possible-tampering-trump-allies/

There they did find slight alterations on a tiny fraction of the content, but generally nothing of much consequence, and it was only a minute fraction of the data, and not the worst of it. This was looking at copies that had passed through multiple hands.

[David Nieporent]

There they did find slight alterations on a tiny fraction of the content,

LOL. "Some of the stuff is genuine, most of it can't be authenticated, and some is indisputably forged" does not make a credible body of evidence.

And, no, I wasn't talking about that one. As I said, I was talking about The Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/

[David Nieporent]

But every single detail on the laptop was still covered in hundreds of stories found in newspapers, radio, television and the internet. There wasn’t a single laptop fact that wasn’t covered ad nauseum in soul-deadening detail, over and over and over again before the election.

Indeed, Twitter's decision essentially Barbara Streisanded the thing.

[Brett Bellmore]

And yet polls after the election showed that enough people HAD been kept in the dark to throw the election to Biden. Censorship doesn't have to be 100% effective to get the job done.

[Sarcastr0]

Holy fuck, you are arguing that twitter shutting down that one NY Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop was the but-for cause of Trump losing in 2020?

Incredible.

[Brett Bellmore]

Admittedly, the polling has to do with a whole range of stories the media were suppressing, not just the laptop. But yeah, you'd probably be halfway through Trump's 2nd term if the media hadn't had Biden's back. Biden voters were systematically ignorant of a whole range of suppressed news about him.

[apedad]

Man, it must absolutely suck to be on the losing side.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, yeah.

It's not like the left did it all on their own, though. Republicans have known for decades now that the media were turning into an unofficial PR firm for the Democratic party, and did they ever lift a finger to do anything about it? Nope.

So they got what they deserved, I just hate getting it with them.

[Nige]

‘That 0.05% that actually Streisaned the whole thing really undercut our ratfuck!’

[Bob from Ohio]

"Dan Bilefsky@DanBilefsky
A glimmering female sculpture channeling Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been installed atop an influential New York appellate courthouse. The artist, @shahziasikander, told me it was an urgent form of “resistance” as female reproductive rights were under siege:" [NY Times story link]

Anyone see the golden idol? Opinions?

[M L]

Awful. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/01/24/multimedia/24courtsculpture7-bkcf/24courtsculpture7-bkcf-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

[Bob from Ohio]

"Awful."

Its perfect.

Ruthie as a demon, horns on her head and snakes for arms.

This is from an admirer too!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

More proof that the author of the book Return of the Gods might be on to something.

[Ben_]

When the GOP decides to join in the fun of tearing down monuments, put this one at the top of the list.

Ripping down monuments is completely ok according to Democrats.

[SRG]

Context matters.

[Ben_]

When the GOP tears this one down it will be in the "context" of Democrats deciding it’s totally acceptable to tear stuff down.

[Nige]

I honestly doubt you guys have the gumption to succesfully tear a statue down.

[SRG]

It depends on the "stuff". When Saddam's statue was pulled down, did you condemn that? I strongly doubt it. How about pulling down statues of Hitler or Stalin? Allow your cellphone's predictive text to fill in the sentence "these are totally different instances because...."

[DaveM]

A Hydra-armed, female Moloch in bronze, with goat horns. The only thing missing is a fire pit.

[Life of Brian]

It really does feel like an exquisitely calibrated troll. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind that truly knew and respected RBG that would think it was a good idea to connect her to something this grotesque and garish.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

See: Chicago MLK Memorial

[Sarcastr0]

LoB the art critic is so good, he can criticize art on behalf of other people as well!

[Life of Brian]

Gingerly tiptoeing back from Sarcville to the real world, since I DON'T claim to be a rarified fart-sniffing "art critic" or feebly defer to those who are out of fear that I won't be considered sufficiently sophisticated, I'm free to candidly observe that the emperor has no clothes.

[Sarcastr0]

Speak more for all people in their right mind.

[Life of Brian]

Preference cascades are a thing.

[Nige]

So it embodies and mocks the fear and contempt of men confronted with female empowerment. Not mad about the statue itself, but the concept is strong.

[Mr. Bumble]

Open Thread Thursday:
Answering your questions and solving the world's problems one comment at a time.

[Vandalia]

I still can't wrap my head around the concept of "harmless error": It seems to be the judicial equivalent of "qualified immunity."

It is amazing that appellate courts freely admit that no judge can conduct a trial without making a serious error, but at the same time harshly punish citizens who make a harmless mistake on a form that no one even knew existed.

See, for example, the Reason article, https://reason.com/2023/01/23/supreme-court-declines-case-challenging-excessive-irs-penalties/

Perhaps juries should be instructed that they can acquit solely on the basis that the alleged criminal behavior was "harmless."

[Krayt]

Headline: Eggs $18 a dozen!

Kroger.com: $5.49. Oops, that’s 18. 12 are $3.59

Worst case scenario: Here’s a snooty brand of free-range blue eggs from an award-winning named breed. $8.49.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Kroger.com: $5.49. Oops, that’s 18. 12 are $3.59

My back yard: About $2.50/doz. (Representing the total estimated cost of feed, which has increased quite a bit over the past couple of years, water and upkeep on the coops and run.)

[Life of Brian]

I think we're on the trailing edge of the bubble at this point and it's never as bad as the bloodbath headline make out, but there definitely was one. The brand/grade we usually buy went from less than $4/dozen a few months ago to well over $5, when there were any on the shelves. Back down in the mid 4s now.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Costco's eggs have been relatively steady, approximating five dollars for two dozen. I consider that a bargain.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Gay vegans don't eat bio-eggs, they eat plant based "eggs".

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If you hate gays, vegans, Jews, and science . . . the Republican Party wants you to run for governor of North Carolina!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Oh noes, the Jews and Libs at the NYT don't like a Republican! I'm so shocked!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

These are your people, Volokh Conspirators. For shame.

[Life of Brian]

And here the part I didn't find particularly plausible was the high-society, rare craft beer collector, I've-got-my-own-luthier-on-tap Rev. Artie would somehow sully himself by entering a big box discount store with the rest of the unwashed masses.

[TW]

I just found that Phineas and Ferb is coming back after eight years of being off the air and Disney has ordered 40 episodes. Now if we could just convince HBO Max to dump Velma and bring back the Venture Bros.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's terrifying to think what today's Disney might do to Phineas and Ferb.

[SRG]

Tomorrow being Holocaust Remembrance Day, I thought I should post one brief but grim anecdote, about children in Birkenau. There were around 300 at the time,

https://www.holocaust.cz/en/history/people/alfred-fredy-hirsch-2/

[In Birkenau] In late 1943 and early 1944 the children also rehearsed and performed a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was attended by SS men, including Dr. Mengele, who applauded the children enthusiastically, had them sit on his knee and asked them to call him Uncle.

Almost all of these children were later gassed.

One of my great uncles – who my mother was particularly fond of – was on this transport:http://www.convoi73.org/indexa1.html

Other more distant relations just disappeared without trace.

FWIW my mother, who is still hale and hearty at 92, was born in Munich. She and her parents got out in 1939, accidentally ending up in England, because they couldn’t get transport to the US, for which they had visas. She is one of the last few people alive to have seen the entire Nazi High Command in person – they paraded near the block of flats where my mother lived and a neighbour held my mother up so she could see them all – Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, etc.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Have you been to Auschwitz/Birkenau? My wife and went. Most everyone knows about it in an intellectual sense, but being there leads to real comprehension of the scale of it and the degree of the cruelty. Very sobering. I’m a cynical quiet smartassed engineer in my 60s and several times I had to struggle to hold back tears.

We loved Krakow though.

[SRG]

I've not been. I'm going to Poland at the end of March but won't have time to visit.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It’s worth the trip but if you’re somewhere else then you can’t do everything. We enjoyed our time in Poland. The Poles seem to be genuinely nice people.

[SRG]

I went to Katowice in about 1999 and on the drive in from the airport I saw that the main artery into the city was Dzerzhinsky Street. I said to my Polish hosts, the only Dzerzhinsky I know of is Felix, who founded the KGB and they said, yes, that's who it's named after...

[bevis the lumberjack]

The Poles were double hosed. Five years of oppressive Nazis followed by 45 years of oppressive Communists. 50 years of bullshit.

I read a book about WW2 a while back and apparently there was a squadron of Polish aviators that got out when Poland fell and made it to London so they happily fought alongside the RAF. By reputation they were the smartest, toughest squadron in the force. Super motivated of course. And very popular with the British ladies.

As to that street name, which I’m not even going to try to type, I know he was a local boy that accomplished something big and all, but I’m surprised it hasn’t been changed.

[SRG]

I think they later renamed it, but I was surprised they'd retained it for so long.

Yes, the Polish pilots had a great reputation within the RAF.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

How stupid is Arkansas Gov. (and Ouachita Baptist graduate) Sarah Huckabee Sanders?

How misinformed are rural Americans?

They are this ignorant.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Speaking of ignorant, you're linking to an article about culture by Paul Krugman.

lol

[Dan Schiavetta]

Krugman's argument is, as usual, factual.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

And the Volokh Conspirators and their fans hate him for it.

[SRG]

Well, Kruggles has fucked up from time to time, and some of his econ predictions have been way off the mark, though that's an occupational hazard. But in general, yes.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Krugman’s argument is, as usual, factual."

As a first approximation, he's an idiot whose fame lies in saying things the media would like to repeat, and never being held accountable when he turned out to be wrong.

[bernard11]

Oh fuck you Brett.

You don't even have any basis for evaluating how smart Krugman is. And he'splenty smart.

And are his facts wrong, or are you just doing a random smear?

[SRG]

Of the facts he cites in his article - e.g. concerning agricultural subsidies, or general Federal inflows, which are wrong? Or does the fact that Krugman is a liberal economist mean that even if the facts are right, they must be ignored in favour of alternative facts?

[bernard11]

Durham.

[SRG]

I'm shocked, shocked.

It also makes one appreciate how egregious Trump's actions were after the election that even that John-Goodman-looking mother-fucker Barr couldn't stay with the ship.

[Voize]

Kevin McCarthy is setting a precedent that members who are responsible for impeaching a President are to be banned permanently from committee assignments if the Senate doesn't convict.

McCarthy has been lukewarm for some time about impeaching Biden, but this development will reduce the likelihood to virtually zero unless McCarthy plans to quit the House afterward.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, that's not remotely what's going on here.

First, Pelosi broke the couple hundred year old precedent that the minority party got to pick its own committee members, period, end of story. She was warned that there would be repercussions the next time Republicans controlled the House, and here they are.

But, second, Schiff and Swalwell weren't arbitrarily picked as the fall guys. Neither ought to be anywhere near classified information.

Swalwell was literally banging a Chinese spy. Schiff used his position on the intelligence committee to lie to the public about secret testimony. So they were picked for good reason.

But McCarthy isn't breaking any precedent here, Pelosi already left it shattered on the floor, McCarthy merely declined to piece it back together for the Democrats' benefit.

[SRG]

BTW do you approve of McCarthy putting "George Santos" on any committee?

[David Nieporent]

Swalwell was literally banging a Chinese spy.

This is a complete and utter lie.

[Voize]

I'm not sure why you would think pettiness is a better look, but I agree the real reason he is going through with this is revenge. Greene and Gosar's revenge, to be precise. He promised this to them as retaliation for when they were stripped of committee assignments in 2021, by resolutions that got 2 Republican votes against Gosar and 11 against Greene.

But McCarthy doesn't admit he is acting out of spite, he claims to have principles. He claims Swalwell is a security risk, saying in a press briefing "If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee". What we know is that Swalwell cut off all contact with Christine Fang 8 years ago after the FBI warned him about her, and despite McCarthy's claims that Swalwell "cannot get a security clearance in the private sector" there is no reason to believe he has been or would be denied. Swalwell claims Devin Nunes, who chaired the Intel committee at the time, was briefed and took no action, a statement Nunes has not denied.

It is ironic that McCarthy lies about Swalwell based on access to classified information because that's what he accuses Schiff of doing when he failed to toe the MAGA line about collusion with Russia. His other claim, that Schiff lied about not knowing the identity of the Ukraine whistleblower, doesn't hold up either and even if it did, who cares? The only "principle" at work here is that an impeachment that isn't sustained must be a lie, and those responsible should be punished, and that is a principle that will backfire on McCarthy.

[not guilty]

The Colorado Court of Appeals has opined that the refusal of Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop to bake a pink cake with blue frosting, ordered by a transgender customer and intended to celebrate her birthday and gender transition, is not speech protected by the First Amendment. https://adfmedialegalfiles.blob.core.windows.net/files/MasterpieceScardinaAppealsCourtDecision.pdf

Makes sense to me.

[Life of Brian]

As I expect you know, this true gem of a plaintiff has been actively seeking to put Jack Phillips out of business for about 10 years now. He offered to get involved in the original Craig/Mullins litigation, and has been harassing Phillips ever since.

Among other lovely examples, he himself testified in the hearing for this case that he had previously asked Phillips to make him a cake showing Satan smoking a joint -- not of course that he wanted one, but just to try to force a legal dispute. And the opening paragraph of the opinion you linked shows exactly the same deliberate in-your-face approach:

The customer requested a custom pink
cake with blue frosting. The shop indicated it could make the cake
as requested. The customer then told the shop’s employees that the
cake was intended to celebrate her birthday and her identity as a
transgender woman. Upon learning this additional information, the
shop refused to sell the cake to the customer.

Scardina could have had the cake. Scardina didn't want the cake. Scardina wanted to get one over on Jack Phillips. Now this solitary individual with a huge axe to grind is likely going to take up more scarce Supreme Court bandwidth, so that Jack Phillips may yet again have a small chance of running his business in peace.

[not guilty]

Do you surmise that you somehow have a point? A defendant in civil litigation is not entitled to a friendly plaintiff. (Especially an unreconstructed bigot defendant.)

[David Nieporent]

No, but he's entitled to a legitimate plaintiff. By way of analogy, think of "coming to the nuisance" in tort law.

[not guilty]

Where's the beef? Some cursory research indicates that in Colorado a plaintiff has standing if he or she has an injury in fact and that injury is to a legally protected interest. Durdin v. Cheyenne Mountain Bank, 98 P.3d 899, 902 (Colo.App. 2004). The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act creates a legally protected interest, and a denial of service based upon a putative customer's transgender status constitutes an injury in fact. The Court of Appeals here observed (¶53) that "No party contests that Scardina and this transaction fall within the protections of CADA."

[David Nieporent]

I mean, Colorado isn't bound by Article III; it can do what it wants with regard to standing. It can deputize anyone to file a suit over these practices (a la Texas's abortion bounty law), if it wants. But assuming it hasn't, a plaintiff should not be said to have suffered an injury in fact unless the plaintiff is a bona fide potential customer. A person who doesn't actually want to patronize the business hasn't suffered an injury.

[not guilty]

I didn’t cite federal law; I deliberately cited a Colorado decision which allows for standing broader than federal standing law under Article III (no redressability prong). The Colorado Supreme Court has opined:

Colorado has a tradition of conferring standing to a wide class of plaintiffs. In addition to the traditional legal controversies, our trial courts frequently decide general complaints challenging the legality of government activities and other cases involving intangible harm.

Ainscough v. Owens, 90 P.3d 851, 853 (Colo. 2004). The injury in fact prong requires “a concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues that parties argue to the courts.” Id., at 856, quoting City of Greenwood Village v. Petitioners for Proposed City of Centennial, 3 P.3d 427, 437 (Colo. 2000). The Ainscough court elaborated:

The injury may be tangible, such as physical damage or economic harm; however, it may also be intangible, such as aesthetic issues or the deprivation of civil liberties. Cloverleaf Kennel Club, Inc. v. Colo. Racing Comm’n, 620 P.2d 1051, 1058 (Colo. 1980). Deprivations of many legally created rights, although themselves intangible, are nevertheless injuries-in-fact.

Id., at 856 [emphasis added]. Surely you don’t claim that Autumn Scardina and Jack Phillips lack “a concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues.”

[jb]

Honestly, both of these people seem pretty awful at this point.

Yes, Scardina is just using the legal system to harass Masterpiece Cake at this point, perhaps a bit similar to a serial ADA plaintiff.

On the other hand, if you're willing to make a specific cake for a customer and the only reason you WON'T do it is because the customer is transgender and/or trying to celebrate an event you don't agree with, you're a pretty terrible person. I've had some empathy for Phillips up 'til this point, but lost a lot of it with this summary.

[Brett Bellmore]

There's deliberately messing with other people horrible, and there's not wanting to do things you find objectionable 'horrible', and they're not remotely the same. The plaintiff here is clearly the aggressor.

[Life of Brian]

and the only reason you WON’T do it is because the customer is transgender and/or trying to celebrate an event you don’t agree with

I think with this case, intentionally or no, Scardina made it crystal-clear that a) this had nothing to do with Scardina being transgender and is in fact consistent with Jack Phillips' long-stated and never-rebutted practice of serving all people that come in the door, save a carve-out for custom requests that run counter to his (hopefully what we can all agree by now are sincerely-held) religious convictions, and b) this wasn't Scardina "trying to celebrate an event" but deliberately making Phillips aware of the event knowing that Phillips would feel like he was participating in the celebration.

[not guilty]

So what if the transgender customer had an agenda? I recall from law school that the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine protects the rights of a plaintiff whose pre-existing fragility makes them particularly susceptible to injury. A retail merchant takes his customers as he finds them.

[not guilty]

I must admit, though, that if I were LGBT, I would hesitate to purchase a food product from someone who loathes my very existence.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think you misunderstand the situation. Scardina wasn't shopping for a cake. He was shopping for a lawsuit.

[Life of Brian]

After the last 2-3 years of history with NG, I'm content that he really doesn't misunderstand that at all. He's just doing his typical tunnel-vision "statute SAYS" routine to try to justify why that's ok.

[not guilty]

No, I don’t misunderstand it at all. Jack Phillips has finally been assessed a penalty for his conscious and deliberate civil disobedience. He tried to rationalize his bigoted conduct by constructing a façade of a free speech argument. The Court of Appeals didn’t buy it.

As Groucho Marx observed, time wounds all heels. (But still, he didn't bake the damn cake.)

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, they finally, rather than just going to somebody who DID want to bake their cake, nailed him. “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”; The motto of every righteous cause ever, right?

You may find his refusal distasteful, but I find his being hounded this way obscene. These clowns were fully entitled to only give their business to gay proprietors if they wanted, and I expect they probably joyfully discriminate in that manner whenever they can.

But let anybody else claim that liberty, and they must be crushed.

[Life of Brian]

We've known where the Court of Appeals has stood on the broader issue for some time now. That they would bend over backwards helping a too-clever plaintiff thread the needle against Phillips yet again is of no particular surprise. And given the ultimate outcome the last time, it's not clear why you'd see this as a good time to start dancing in the end zone.

[not guilty]

Jack Phillips has every right in the world to engage in civil disobedience. He is wrong, though, to claim that that should be consequence free. (And again, he never baked the damn cake.)

To my knowledge, no appellate court has held that cake baking is speech protected by the First Amendment. (SCOTUS in 2018 notably declined to reach that issue.) Accordingly, a merchant's refusal to bake a cake is not protected by the compelled speech doctrine in the face of a state anti-discrimination regulation.

[Brett Bellmore]

The question isn't whether deciding you don't want to sell somebody a cake should be consequence free. I don't care if people decide to boycott his bakery over this.

It's whether it should be legal consequence free. And I think it should be.

That asshole Scardina is perfectly free to only buy cakes from gay bakers, if she so desires. Why the hell shouldn't bakers have the same liberty? Market transactions should be voluntary on BOTH ends!

We're not talking about somebody stranded in a town during a blizzard. We're talking about an asshole who made it her life's goal to punish Philips for WrongThink.

Screw her, figuratively speaking. She's an asshole, and the legal system should treat her as one.

[Life of Brian]

I recall from law school that the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine protects the rights of a plaintiff whose pre-existing fragility makes them particularly susceptible to injury.

LOL. If the eggshell skull rule had ever been extended to apply to a plaintiff's hurt feewings, the entire legal system would have collapsed into a singularity by now from the sheer overload.

[bernard11]

Jack Phillips’ long-stated and never-rebutted practice of serving all people that come in the door, save a carve-out for custom requests that run counter to his (hopefully what we can all agree by now are sincerely-held) religious convictions, and b) this wasn’t Scardina “trying to celebrate an event” but deliberately making Phillips aware of the event.

This is the part I don't understand. Last time around the argument was that the wedding cake was not a standard off-the-shelf cake, but, because he was asked for some custom design, required him to express approval of something that went against his religious beliefs.

But this cake doesn't do that. It's "custom," in the sense that Scardina was specifying the color, but there doesn't seem to be any message of approval. If there were such a message implicit in the cake itself Phillips himself didn't get it, since he was going to bake it until he learned what it was for.

[not guilty]

FWIW, Justice Kennedy wrote that Jack Phillips told Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, “I’ll make your birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies and brownies, I just don’t make cakes for same sex weddings." Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___, ___ (2018).

Perhaps Autumn Scardina was merely trying to show that Phillips is full of shit.

[Life of Brian]

Justice Kennedy wrote that Jack Phillips told Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, “I’ll make your birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies and brownies, I just don’t make cakes for same sex weddings.”

I looked through that list several times for the words "transgender identity celebration cake," but apparently my bad-faith spectacles are on the fritz and I just can't make it out.

[not guilty]

Under CADA, gays and transgendered people are both beneficiaries of the public accommodations provisions. Autumn Scardina sought to purchase a birthday cake. Jack Phillips was fine with her purchase until his agent learned she was a transgender woman and proud of her transition.

[Life of Brian]

Autumn Scardina sought to purchase a birthday cake.

Nope. Had Scardina said "this cake is to celebrate my birthday" and then STFU, Phillips would have made the cake. You know that, and you also know full well that was not the end of the sentence.

That's the last bad-faith distortion I'll entertain in this discussion. You wouldn't need to resort to that sort of tactic if you had a defensible position.

[Life of Brian]

Last time around the argument was that the wedding cake was not a standard off-the-shelf cake, but, because he was asked for some custom design, required him to express approval of something that went against his religious beliefs.

This case doesn't seem inconsistent with the first case at all. The common thread is Phillips being asked to make a non-commodity product for an event that runs counter to his beliefs.

Had Scadina simply ordered the cake as specified and then STFU, Phillips would have delivered it. I don't think anyone (Scadina included) would contest that.

The same thing probably would have been true for Craig and Mullins, but there the product was coupled to the purpose to the point where it was nearly inevitable that it would come up.

Here, Scadina deliberately (you might say gleefully) went out of his way to force the issue by first ordering a generic-sounding cake with no indication of its purpose, getting the commitment, and then deliberately and gratuitiously bringing up its intended purpose to no end whatsoever other than to make sure Phillips knew that.

The goal was not to get the cake, but to force Phillips to make the cake with knowledge that he was doing so in support of something counter to his beliefs.

It's a disgustingly cynically engineered test case.

[not guilty]

Do you claim it was "a disgustingly cynically engineered test case" when the Kansas plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), sought to enroll their children in whites only public schools?

[Life of Brian]

Now you're trying to salvage the situation by playing the "RAY-cist" card -- and not even in a particularly clever way.

Again, if this is really the best you can do, it may be time to rethink things.

[not guilty]

I am old enough to remember seeing "white only" signs during childhood. Today's anti-LGBT crowd may not (yet) have turned dogs or fire hoses on anyone, but the difference in hatemongering is one of degree rather than of kind.

It's all about having a disfavored class of people to look down on. As then-Senator Lyndon Johnson remarked to Bill Moyers, "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/11/13/what-a-real-president-was-like/d483c1be-d0da-43b7-bde6-04e10106ff6c/

[David Nieporent]

Since they actually wanted to attend said public schools, no. It wasn't a test case; it was an actual case.

[not guilty]

The Court of Appeals opinion recites (¶56) that Phillips “stated he would make the cake if he did not know why the cake was being used, and, most critically, Phillips acknowledged that a pink cake with blue frosting ‘has no intrinsic meaning and does not express any message.’”

Perhaps Phillips would have been better off to candidly declare that his refusal to bake the cake was First Amendment protected communicative conduct — a celebration of anti-LGBT bigotry. His problem there is the recognition by SCOTUS that a state’s commitment to eliminating discrimination and assuring its citizens equal access to publicly available goods and services is a compelling state interest of the highest order, unrelated to the suppression of expression. Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 624 (1984).

[Life of Brian]

Overlooking your snark, I’ll gently point out that the reasoning in this opinion suffers from the same fundamental flaw as the original case: Phillips would have refused to knowingly make a cake that would be used to celebrate a same sex and/or gender dysphoria celebration, regardless of the gender, sexual orientation, or degree of gender dysphoria of the purchaser. Likewise, he would have (and indisputably has) freely sold to all comers products not known to him to be involved in such celebrations. The Court of Appeals played the exact same shell game as before by conflating the purchaser and the purchase.

[not guilty]

Uh, anti-discrimination public accommodations provisions typically are enacted for the benefit of putative patrons. Merchants and service providers have no need of them.

[Life of Brian]

I don't know what point you thought you were responding to here, but it wasn't one I made. The plaintiff here was just as free as any other patron to buy any tangible product Phillips was willing to make, and Phillips would have refused to make for any patron the product requested by the plaintiff here. There's no discrimination based on any particular characteristic of the patron.

[not guilty]

"There’s no discrimination based on any particular characteristic of the patron."

Is that as true as everything else you have said, LoB?

[Life of Brian]

If you don't understand my argument, it's ok to say that and I'm happy to clarify. But based on your crop-quote and confrontational question, my money is on you understanding it just fine and just not having a cogent response.

[not guilty]

I understand your argument well. It can be distilled to its essence:

Bigotry now!
Bigotry tomorrow!!
Bigotry forever!!!

(To George Wallace's credit, he eventually repented of his racism.)

[Life of Brian]

Yeah, you're just flailing at this point. Best get back to your comfort zone of cutting and pasting statutes and grinding through the elements like a robot.

[not guilty]

Southern folk wisdom teaches that the hit dog hollers.

[not guilty]

The State Bar of California yesterday filed notice of disciplinary charges against John Eastman for, among other things, his conduct in seeking to prevent certification of the electoral vote in Congress following the 2020 election. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23587647-sbc-23-o-30029-notice-of-disciplinary-charges-against-john-eastman The disciplinary complaint specifically avers (¶32(c)) that "Respondent participated in numerous overt acts in furtherance of a shared plan with Trump and others to pressure Pence to, without legal or factual support, reject the electoral votes of certain states or delay the electoral count, and thereby dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371."

It's about damn time.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Where on Earth could he find a character reference these days?

[not guilty]

Well, Eastman now has an additional bargaining chip in negotiating with prosecutors -- the voluntary surrender of his law license. (It worked for then-President Clinton when negotiating with Kenneth Starr's successor, Robert Ray.)

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, sure, but does Eastman have an extensive set of blackmail files, and a demonstrated willingness to use them? That was a real life saver for Clinton, after all.

[not guilty]

What do you suppose Bill Clinton had on Robert Ray?

He did pretty well -- trading an asset he no longer needed (his Arkansas license) for an agreement for the government not to prosecute him. It is not as if he had planned to return to the practice of law.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, I have a pretty good idea what he had on Dennis Hastert, but I'm not the one with the blackmail files. I don't know that he had dirt on Ray, perhaps just dirt on too many other influential people.

It's hardly news that guys with blackmail files on 'important' people get special treatment. Sometimes it goes from "left alone" special to "murdered in your cell with the camera out of commission" special, but either way, special.

[not guilty]

I doubt that anyone in Washington had the goods on Hastert before Bill Clinton left office.

Do you claim that anyone else was pulling Robert Ray's strings to cut Clinton a break? If so, based on what facts?

[Brett Bellmore]

LOL! Yeah, total secret.

[bernard11]

So the Republicans elected Hastert Speaker despite knowing about his "problems?"

That would be an uncommonly stupid thing to do.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm not saying everybody knew about it. But I doubt it was a total secret, either.

[David Nieporent]

Oh, I'm pretty sure nobody knew it, because it's something only in your head.

[David Nieporent]

Brett still can't figure out that Donald Trump orchestrated the attack on the Capitol despite telling people they needed to fight to stop the election from being stolen. Nor can he figure out whether Barack Obama was born in the U.S. But he knows for sure about completely imaginary blackmail.

[David Nieporent]

So, showing the insanity of the MAGA movement:

Ronna "Don't call me Romney" McDaniel beat Harmeet Dhillon and MyPillowMan for the RNC chair election, 111-51-4. (Lee Zeldin got one vote.) Twitter is filled with tantrums from MAGA people that the election must have been stolen.

Separately, Twitter is also filled with tantrums from MAGA people that the GOP committee people voted for McDaniel. MAGA represents a fundamental rejection of democracy; they think any election they don't win is inherently illegitimate. I'm not talking about disappointment that their preferred candidate lost; that's normal. I'm talking about the notion that if someone they disapprove of wins an election, this means the system is broken and must be burned to the ground.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't know about MAGA people. I just thought she shouldn't get the job on the basis of lousy performance at it. She's the sort of RNC chair who prioritizes suppressing intra-party rivals over winning elections. And sees an impending wave election as a chance to conduct a purge with relatively limited consequences.

[Nige]

Who cares about McDaniels, we're taking about a growing movement amongst Republicans to reject election outcomes they don't like out of hand.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Tell us who the Trump-supporting cop was who stole your girl/boyfriend.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Some guy named Diogenes gave me a lamp with which I can look for a decent political party.

I'm sure to find one any day now, and you'll be the first to know.

[Moderation4ever]

The easy way to answer your question is to look at the fringes in both parties and assume that their positions are wrong. Maybe not wrong but simply taken to far from a logical conclusion.

Most Americans are in the center and want a government that works quietly in the background to make our lives better. A government that does the minimum necessary, but one that does that minimum well.

[Sarcastr0]

I have my opinion, but I'm sure a bunch of them are wrong, so in general I want a healthy opposition party to push good ideas even if I don't like 'em. A reactionary party whose main thing is reflexive opposition does not supply that.

As to your main question:
Gun restrictions are tilting and windmills, and the policy benefits are unproven. Though we could talk about registration.

Landlords are good, actually, and their perspectives should be at the table in property regulations; there is a reflexive dislike of landlords that is myopic. (No, I am not and never plan to be a landlord)

Republicans are right about the inflation of educational costs being a big issue, partially caused by the current subsidized educational loan regime. Though their solutions tend to be more about hostility to educational institutions than actually addressing the issue.

Republicans like technical schools - 2 year degrees to enter the manufacturing workforce. I think that's right, and our educational ecosystem should not neglect these institutions.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I'm guessing Democrats will learn to regret their extreme intolerance.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/gianno-caldwell-on-being-a-back-conservative-demonized-by-liberals/

[Stephen Lathrop]

Queen, your choices are good ones.

Better still would be review of the tenor and tactics of Democratic Party leadership. At least as far back as the Clinton administration the Ds decided to throw overboard the economic interests of ordinary Americans, and join the Rs to chase big bucks contributors. A lot of Ds reasoned that pro-grass-roots advocacy wasn't needed anymore, because identity politics and demographic change would substitute. The Ds have been struggling ever since, and mostly it has been a losing struggle, in a battle they should have won easily.

Biggest political disappointment of my lifetime. Every other left-leaning agenda item has been held hostage to that blunder. I am aghast whenever I hear Pelosi lauded as a brilliant Speaker of the House. Seems like it would be simple to ask, "During that interval, has the Democratic Party advanced to dominance, or declined to precarity? Has Republican Party craziness been checked, or has it been empowered?"

That is why I may "lean Democrat," as you say, but have never been a Democrat. Institutionally, for decades, I have been more an anti-Democrat.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Queen, you left from your critique the required mention of Libertarians. They are right, point-by-point, in detail, about any number of critiques of major party policies. They are wrong to suppose they have any clue how to govern.

Libertarians have no theory of government. They reject the very notion of sovereignty, except among a few of the crankiest, who suppose personal sovereignty for everyone is a possibility, instead of a contradiction in terms. That dooms libertarians to perpetual irrelevance, except insofar as they persuade others that this or that proposed reform is something those others ought to pursue.

[bernard11]

I think rent control, which pops up around here every now and then, is a terrible idea.

I think the Kelo decision was terrible, (though I actually think eminent domain abuse is a bipartisan practice.)

Speech codes and the like are are wildly overdone.

[Kazinski]

Well the Laffler curve isn't any more controversial among economists than Price Elasticity of Demand.

The controversial part is setting the level of the curve.

The 1990' luxury tax was a clear illustration of the concept, when taxes are too high taxes it suppresses economic activity reducing government revenue:

"In November 1991, The United States Congress enacted a luxury tax and was signed by President George H. W. Bush. The goal of the tax was to generate additional revenues to reduce the federal budget deficit. This tax was levied on material goods such as watches, expensive furs, boats, yachts, private jet planes, jewelry and expensive cars. Congress enacted a 10 percent luxury surcharge tax on boats over $100,000, cars over $30,000, aircraft over $250,000, and furs and jewelry over $10,000. The federal government estimated that it would raise $9 billion in excess revenues over the following five-year period. However, only two years after its imposition, in August 1993, at the behest of the luxury yacht industry, President Bill Clinton and Congress eliminated the "luxury tax" citing a loss in jobs."

[DaveM]

Both parties are wrong on the scope of the federal government. We are doing much more harm than good by over-reliance on this system. There are so many other way to solve our problems. I take as an immediate example Title IX, which is so bloated and complex that it's like using a Zeppelin to push an elevator button.

[jb]

I lean pretty strongly Democrat, but I think the Republican criticism that white liberals are often more interested in virtue signaling than making life meaningfully better for marginalized populations in America has a fair amount of truth to it.

Housing policy is an area where red states clearly have it right: low barriers to entry for the creation of new housing would be much better than anything going on in the blue states, and the amount of misery inflicted on poor people as a result is tremendously antithetical to stated Democratic values. Reflexive opposition to charter schools is another example given how terrible the state-provided product is in low income, non-white areas.

Also: Public sector labor unions are probably bad on balance. If we think the right policy is for the government to treat its employees reasonably, we can elect leaders who will make that happen, but unions often end up allowing government entities to operate counter to the interest of its constituents. (See, e.g., police unions protecting all sorts of misconduct, and teacher's unions preventing kids from going back to school during Covid for far longer than it was reasonable to do so.). Overall, we would probably be better off with a lot more private sector union members and a lot fewer in the public sector.

[Moderation4ever]

If man bites dog is a story, so is dog shoots man. Loaded gun, safety off in a car, what could happen? Again the 2nd amendment gives every person the right to have a gun. It does not say they are smart enough to use it safely.

[John F. Carr]

A weird news story from the 2000s had a man shooting puppies until one of them shot back.

[OtisAH]

MAGA likes tech schools like they like anything else that isn’t white Christian minority rule, the policies and laws that get them there, and funneling wealth to the wealthy.

Rhetorically, and rhetorically only.

[gdanning]

I don't know how much Republicans like tech schools. Eg: They don't seem particularly eager to expand access to community colleges, which offer tons of tech training.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Gun restrictions are tilting and windmills, and the policy benefits are unproven. Though we could talk about registration."

Windmills reluctant to provide senile old men with map detailing locations of windmills, news at 11.

Sure, let's talk about registration: My position is that it has proven to have negligible utility for any purpose save gun confiscation, and since it has generally been advocated by people who are gun confiscation adjacent, if not open advocates of same, screw that.

[Ed Grinberg]

there is a reflexive dislike of landlords

On the left. Along with a reflexive dislike of business owners, people who actually work for a living, people who're law-abiding, etc., etc.

[Sarcastr0]

MAGA is pure reactionary; no value there at all. That's why I'm sticking to the GOP writ larger.

[Frank Drackman]

From 50+ years of watching Adam 12/Dragnet/Miami Vice/TJ Hooker/"COPS"/"Live PD"(Floyd George's been dead for awhile, can they bring this show back??)/Law & Order/Goodfellas/

prettty sure the Cops tell peoples this, Miranda something or other,

Frank "nobody saw nuttin!"

[David Nieporent]

Yep; I think we discuss that pretty regularly here: Don't. Talk. To. Cops.

It's psychologically understandable why people do, but it's intellectually very very stupid. And professionally, as a lawyer (who isn't a prosecutor), very very frustrating.

[Stephen Lathrop]

M4E, Sounds like you want the Eisenhower administration back, or at least Eisenhower’s self-image of that administration. I did not like Ike at the time. Experience has made him look better by comparison. But can you explain how political positions you describe as, “at the fringes,” now, could have been closer to the center under Eisenhower? The left wing of the Republican Party currently advocates for positions so far right that Eisenhower said they would doom anyone who advocated them never to be heard from again.

I am not a fan of the current vogue for redefining the political spectrum anew, continuously, without regard for history.

[Ed Grinberg]

Most Americans...want...[a] government that does the minimum necessary

Well, I do. But no, I don't think most Americans agree with me. Unfortunately.

[Sarcastr0]

I can tell you that at least in Congress they are supportive, specifically of manufacturing institutes.

But yeah, support seems weak; more a fad of the moment than some deep principle or ideal.

[Sarcastr0]

You suck at red teaming.

[Ed Grinberg]

This restaurant owner would likely strongly oppose any attempt to change the law to allow business owners to serve whoever they like (and refuse to serve anyone they don't like, for any reason). Isn't it odd?

[Nige]

Wait'll she finds out about how Democrats of any colour get demonised by Republicans. I'd single out women of any colour getting it even worse, but that's true across the political spectrum, unfortunately, because men suck.

[OtisAH]

“Son, uh, there ain’t no GOP no more.”

-Sgt. Hulka

https://youtu.be/lYodLUtySHk

[John F. Carr]

The law in these cases is weird. In my state, and I think this was the common law rule, the statute of limitations to recover stolen property starts running when the property is exhibited to the public. But Nazi loot is subject to different rules. It is not unconditionally the property of the pre-Nazi owners but it can be reclaimed on more generous terms.

[Gasman]

Unwinding the deal though is problematic.
Let's say your grandparents did not find a willing buyer at full price(by your 2023 standards), and at the time declined to sell at 1938 market price which you considered to have been under 'duress'.
Grandparents die at the hands of Germans, your parents are never born, your legal case never occurs.

[Brett Bellmore]

Government is all around nasty, (Even if the Godfather does occasionally crack down on criminals who invade his turf, and help out the occasional widow.) and libertarian theory doesn't actually allow for any realistic form of government, if pursued consistently.

At the same time, government is an unavoidable evil under current conditions.

Libertarians have a hard time dealing with that contradiction, but other theories of governance 'deal' with it by turning a blind eye to how fundamentally nasty government is. Which is scarcely much of an improvement: Evils you won't acknowledge, you won't avoid.

But admitting that something is genuinely evil, and doing it anyway because the alternatives are actually worse, is a very difficult thing to do, psychologically, and it's hardly shocking that so many people resolve the conflict by denying the evil.

[Stephen Lathrop]

. . . but other theories of governance ‘deal’ with it by turning a blind eye to how fundamentally nasty government is.

Actually, this nation's radical experiment—the invention of joint popular sovereignty to merge the interests of sovereign power and citizens' rights—was not a blind eye. It was an on-target solution— imperfect, but the best ever devised—which changed customary governance practices for the better throughout the world.

[Moderation4ever]

There were certainly people at the fringes during the Eisenhower administration, but they had less influence. Today a person can set themselves up using social media, raise money, and get attention. The current media environment has exponentially raised the ability to get a message out. Part of the problem is that to get fresh media territory you are always moving to the fringe. The center to that fringe is covered and no longer fertile for exploitation.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, I actually agree with that: The founders were quite realistic about how nasty government was, and so they wrapped it up in fetters. It's mostly subsequent generations which have forgotten.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Eisenhower appears to have been a largely passive coward with respect to the rampant bigotry that stained the country during his watch. He largely appeased the southern racists, acting relatively weakly and solely when his hand was forced.

[jb]

The European examples of widespread gun ownership do require registration but also have have low gun crime rates. Seems like maybe a model worth emulating?

[SRG]

No, because Europeans are foreigners and so it doesn't count.

[Nige]

Europeans don't have the same weird fetishism about them. I mean, I'm sure some do because of American cultural dominance, but most treat it as a kind of fevered fantasy that's enjoyable, as in the form of a dumb action film, but with no place in the real world.

[SRG]

The right doesn't much like people who work for a living when they're employees, and certainly seem to approve of criminals when they're "our guys".

[jb]

Rent control on its own is pretty obviously a terrible idea.

I see the argument for limited rent control (on existing but not new units, to start with) combined with aggressive efforts to create new housing can be a way to mitigate some of the worst effects of both housing scarcity and gentrification while working on the underlying problems. It will be interesting to see how Oregon's housing policy actually plays out in practice.

[Harvey Mosley]

JB, I wish more people on both sides would make comments like that. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are evil. Some people are who might belong to either party. Some people from the other side take those examples and use them to represent their "enemies". Sadly, I am guilty of that at times myself. I will try to be better. Thank you.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"He" finds. Not she. Stop false gendering people.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Yeah, something about that story doesn't track....

A gay couple finds a supposed "deal" to file electronic taxes at $55...and decides to drive more than an hour, (each way, so 2 hours total), skipping all the dozens of accountants closer...only to take a picture of a sign and turn home? But remember to send in their picture to a national news site?

The cost in gas alone would've make such a deal not worth it. Besides turbo tax, and any number of other options.

Instead, it sounds like the couple was shopping for outrage.

[Nige]

Oops. I stand corrected.

[not guilty]

In fairness, I would not call ordering troops from the 101st Airborne Division to ensure desegregation in Little Rock relatively weak.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

One of the problems with the heirs’ case is that this isn’t Nazi loot, exactly. Adler sold the painting (for well under market value, apparently) to a dealer for cash to use to escape the Nazis, and the dealer at some point donated the painting to the Guggenheim. I have no idea how the law would apply to this situation, since the painting was legally sold, albeit under conditions of duress.