Today in Supreme Court History: September 17, 1787

9/17/1787: The Constitution is signed.

The Constitution

Happy Constitution Day!

Comments

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

You'd have thought there would have been at least a harrumph or two...

[Mr. Bumble]

...and why it that?

[Michael P]

Hostility to the Constitution? Misunderstanding of what a harrumph means? It's hard to tell.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Tsk, tsk, tsk. It's the Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles cultural reference I was going for, obviously.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Mikutaitis v. United States, 478 U.S. 1306 (decided September 17, 1986): Stevens grants stay of contempt order of witness who refused to testify in denaturalization proceeding against Nazi collaborator despite being given immunity; witness had also collaborated but had also aided Lithuanians trying to break away from the Soviet Union (our ally at the time), and argued that sealing of testimony would not protect him because he himself was in danger of being deported to the Soviet Union where he would be convicted of treason and executed; Stevens notes that whether sealing is adequate to protect witness is an open question that is subject to another pending cert application (though cert in both cases was denied the next month) (did Stevens really think there was no danger the Soviets would execute this guy if they didn’t have a transcript of his testimony? all they would need was Stevens’s own published discussion here of the facts) (unknown what happened to Mikutaitis)

[Mr. Bumble]

Takeaway: Beware of bow tie wearing Justices.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Beware of bow tie

Indeed.

(Here is another dose from that show, featuring John Entwistle and a great setlist.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

True story* - the original copy of the Constitution is printed on paper made from the tree George Washington chopped down.

*not really

[Davy C]

I hear he also used that tree to build the log cabin he was born in.

[Mr. Bumble]

Wasn't Biden born in a log cabin?

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I heard it was a Catholic log synagogue.

[Mr. Bumble]

In a black, Polish, Puerto Rican neighborhood if I remember correctly.

[defaultdotxbe]

I think Biden was born *of* a log cabin.

[Magister]

Parchment made from animal skin, and not from Paul Revere's horse.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Paul Revere *was* the horse. Ad-Rock was the rider.

[Mr. Bumble]

Will the capt's Sunday porno review feature Susanna Gibson's Chaturbate videos?

[Michael P]

Didn't you hear? Simply mentioning that she engaged in live-streamed kinky sex for money, sending video to strangers and asking for "tips" from them, is totes revenge porn.

[Nige]

I thought porn stars were cool with the family values crowd these days?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I would not call Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert porn stars.

[apedad]

You can bet money they will be soon.

[Scribe]

"Will the capt's Sunday porno review feature Susanna Gibson's Chaturbate videos?"

One can only hope.

[Mr. Bumble]

Guess the capt. took a holiday.

[Magister]

Dune 1984

I watched this again on Netflix because it is expiring soon and I was curious if it was as bad as I remembered seeing it in 1984. As it worked out, I watched about half, up to just after Paul and his mother escape being murdered and crash in the desert, and stopped because it was late. Not a terrible movie to that point, even if hard to follow if you never read the book, despite its substantial explanation. Good actors, interesting setting and events.

And it turned out to be a fortuitous place to break; the rest of the movie is quite bad. The story is completed primarily through voice over, or telepathic projections, or dreams, or visions, or perhaps occasional breaks to events happening off Arrakis that Paul may or may not be aware of. Most of the interesting characters from the first half are gone or almost entirely sidelined and they largely cease to interact, with additional Fremen characters not taking up the slack. The rest of the movie has sand worms and battles and explosions but is mostly without dramatic tension and the Harkonnens turn out to be comically feeble villains, despite a knife fight between Paul and the last of them. Paul's sister is suitably creepy but there's nothing else memorable. Did they run out of money, time, or the will to finish in any but the most trivial way? I'm still unclear if rain on Arrakis meant the extinction of sand worms, but I am unable to muster any real curiosity about it.

The more recent and better film in 2021 goes up only to joining the Fremen (a little more dramatically than the 1984 version), so it may be that its sequel will be weaker.

[NvEric]

Has the jaded populous lost the way ?
Immigration without conveying foundational standards is bad enough, but will human nature insure survival of some sort ?

Certainly this liberal notion of people self-governing will . . . .

[Mr. Bumble]

Since when did that matter to you?

[Magister]

Lynch may have just lost interest. It was notoriously difficult to adapt; Jodorowsky's Dune, although I didn't see it, was about an earlier attempt that failed. Complex sprawling book that required a longer treatment (many movies or a series), or just difficult to convey the differences from the superficial space opera setting?