General Welfare, again

I suppose it's never for the last time, eh?

Article 1, Section 8, clause 1 of the US Constitution

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. . . .

It does not actually say

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, in order to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. . . .

Nor does it say,

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States through the exercise of those powers conferred on it elsewhere in this constitution and not otherwise; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. . . .

Nor indeed does it combine both interpolations.

So perhaps the simplest reading is that this is a grant of several distinct powers, followed by a restriction on the first few.

The Congress shall have power to:

Lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,

Pay the debts of the United States,

Provide for the common defense of the United States,

And provide for the general welfare of the United States.

But all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

Nothing in the clause itself limits any of these powers in any way.

And the occurrence of the clause in a series of clauses granting powers does not in itself limit these powers, either.

A very liberal reading, yes, and not at all likely acceptable to any Republican jurist.

It is what it is.

And however this reading might have shocked some of the Founders and their generation, a reading of the Preamble makes it far less implausible, at least as regards existence of a distinct power to provide for the general welfare.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Why aren't they cited for contempt of Congress?

Because it's a Republican Congress.

'We got Bannoned': Trump aide Hope Hicks frustrates House panel on Russia

A member of the House intelligence committee said “We got Bannoned” on Tuesday, after a closed-door interview with Hope Hicks, a key aide to Donald Trump, as part of the panel’s Russia investigation.

Bloomberg reported that Denny Heck, a Washington Democrat, invoked Bannon, Trump’s former campaign manager and White House strategist, who refused to answer some questions in front of the panel.

The House is now considering whether to hold Bannon in contempt.

A Republican, Chris Stewart of Utah, said Hicks would not answer questions about events and conversations since Trump took office.

Hicks, Trump’s communications director, arrived on Capitol Hill after 10am through a rear entrance to the committee’s interview space. 

She did not answer shouted questions from reporters.

The panel is investigating contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia, as is special counsel Robert Mueller. 

Hicks has been interviewed by Mueller.

A major Republican campaign event and a big soppy kiss to the Christian right

A disgraceful abuse of office and of the nation's central political space, flouting the First Amendment imperative of separation of church and state.

At the Capitol, Tributes to the Rev. Billy Graham

Speakers included McConnell, Ryan, and Bozo.

Was there a single Democrat there?

Doing the right thing

Dick’s Sporting Goods, Major Gun Retailer, Stops Selling Assault-Style Weapons

One of the nation’s largest sports retailers, Dick’s Sporting Goods, said Wednesday morning it was immediately ending sales of all assault-style rifles in its stores.

The retailer also said that it would no longer sell high-capacity magazines and that it would not sell any gun to anyone under 21 years of age, regardless of local laws.

The announcement, made two weeks after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 students and staff members, is one of the strongest stances taken by corporate America in the national gun debate. 

It also carries symbolic weight, coming from a prominent national gun seller.

Late last week, after coming under attack on social media for their ties to the National Rifle Association, a number of major companies, including Hertz car rental, MetLife insurance and Delta Air Lines, publicly ended those relationships, issuing brief, carefully phrased statements.

But Edward Stack, the 63-year-old chief executive of Dick’s whose father founded the store in 1948, is deliberately steering his company directly into the storm, making clear that the company’s new policy was a direct response to the Florida shooting.

“When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset,” Mr. Stack said in an interview Tuesday evening. 

“We love these kids and their rallying cry, ‘enough is enough.’ It got to us.”

He added, “We’re going to take a stand and step up and tell people our view and, hopefully, bring people along into the conversation.”

Mr. Stack said he hoped that conversation would include politicians. 

As part of its stance, Dick’s is calling on elected officials to enact what it called “common sense gun reform’’ by passing laws to raise the minimum age to purchase guns to 21, to ban assault-type weapons and so-called bump stocks, and to conduct broader universal background checks that include mental-health information and previous interactions with law enforcement.

. . . .

Mr. Stack said the retailer began scouring its purchase records shortly after the identity of the suspected Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, became known. 

The company soon discovered it had legally sold a gun to Mr. Cruz in November, though it was not the gun or type of gun used in the school shooting.

“But it came to us that we could have been a part of this story,’’ he said. 

“We said, ‘We don’t want to be a part of this any longer,’” said Mr. Stack.

That decision raised rounds of discussions with top executives inside the company as well as the directors, all of whom backed the decision to take a stance, said Mr. Stack.

In N.R.A. Fight, Delta Finds There Is No Neutral Ground

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, the airline announced it was ending a promotional discount with the National Rifle Association, and suddenly found itself in the rare position of being openly dressed down — and potentially punished — by Republicans who control the statehouse.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle of Georgia, a Republican who presides over the State Senate and has received an A-plus grade from the N.R.A., joined other conservative lawmakers this week in threatening to remove a $50 million sales tax exemption on jet fuel that some hoped would encourage Delta to open even more routes — and help Atlanta attract even more national and international companies.

The conservative backlash highlighted the challenge confronting corporations around the country that are struggling to cater to both ends of America’s increasingly distant political and cultural poles.

As pressure from social media and advocacy groups has intensified, and calls for boycotts mount, more than a dozen companies have severed business ties with the N.R.A. since the massacre in Parkland, Fla. 

Just as quickly, a counteroffensive arose from gun supporters excoriating the companies for their stance, forcing business leaders to navigate the treacherous ground where social responsibility, ideology and financial impact converge.

The 2nd Amendment prohibition as an undetached consequent

I am increasingly partial to the Logic 101 reading of the 2nd Amendment, publicly endorsed by one of the Parkland high schoolers and cited by me in earlier posts.

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

The given text is equivalent to this.

Since a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

And that is equivalent to:

If a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.

Which means the 2nd Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms is expressly conditional on a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state - a condition the authors asserted was true at the time in its very text.

But for our time and for the future, what matters is not whether the condition was true in late 18th Century America, but whether it is true in our time.

The 2nd Amendment says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed if a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.

But a militia is not necessary, in our time.

The Department of Defense and the forces answering to it pretty well have the security of our free state, the United States of America, covered.

So the 2nd Amendment prohibition on infringement does not apply to our case.

Still, no court seems ever to have read it that way, no conservative court ever will, and no liberal court would risk the overwhelming wave of incredulous outrage that would ensue upon formal adoption of this reading.

We're going to have to repeal the damned thing.

[Another way to look at it.

The 2nd Amendment says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed if a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, and asserts that such a militia is necessary.

But it does not say the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed if somewhere in the constitution it is asserted that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.

It is the actual fact of the thing that matters, not an assertion concerning the matter.

And in actual fact such a militia is not necessary.

It is more than merely arguable that it was not necessary even then.]

PS.

Some people read the Second Amendment as setting forth a conditional right, but not also asserting that the condition obtains.

They take

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

as equivalent to

If a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Of course, if that is right we end up in the same place, with an undetached consequent, given that such a militia is not necessary.

On the whole, an outstanding work

The ending is handled beautifully.

The Voyage Out.

The Mill on the Floss

Reading the introductory matter in a 1981 paperback, World Classics edition, from the Oxford University Press, I am put in mind that your true religious believer disbelieves in all Gods, gods, conceptions of God, and conceptions of gods, save his own.

It seems George Eliot, Mary Anne Evans, abandoned any style of orthodox Christianity in her early twenties for some form of Protestant religious liberalism.

She translated Strauss's Life of Jesus and Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, and the partly biographical introduction says she remained deeply religious all her life, urging people to find consolation and guidance in The Imitation of Christ.

Your true atheist rejects all gods or Gods, disbelieving in them as according to some conceptions and rejecting other conceptions as ballocks.

XIII: The Series

With season 2, this Netflix series very heavy on action and notable for the comic book stupidity of its plots, dialogue, and characters arrives at full bore anarchist crazy.

By the middle of the season the viewer begins to lose the thread, and is lost utterly in the last episodes.

Way to go, Netflix.

Why the Times is not regarded as reliably pro-Democrat. Or even reliably fair.

This article, by an appeal to a lunatic idea of how to judge a map nonpartisan and not gerrymandered, casts doubt on the new Pennsylvania map, imposed by a party line vote among the judges on the state's Supreme Court.

Democrats Did Better Than on Hundreds of Simulated Pennsylvania Maps

The title at once refers to how Democrats can expect to fare in 2018, based on the map of congressional districts decided upon by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, as compared to how they could expect to fare on other maps, and uses that expectation to undermine the claim to legitimacy of the court's map.

That is exactly the pro-Republican spin that pervades this article.

An article that legitimates as "nonpartisan" maps drawn according to a wholly spurious notion of what a fair and equitable map should look like and all but delegitimates the real issue, the only thing any sensible person - but apparently not necessarily any "expert" - would be looking at.

And that is whether the map unfairly advantages the party that draws it, or indeed any other.

That is, it is the whole point of gerrymandering, its intention and very definition, to create a map that violates this condition.

No, the weird shape of districts that sometimes results from gerrymandering, and from which the practise has its name, is not actually either its point or its meaning.

Only a child would think so and only a boob or a fraud among adults would say so.

The point is exactly to obtain for one's party a share of seats in one's state's delegation in the House of Representatives that is greater than its share of the statewide vote for members of the House.

That is what a gerrymandered map does; a gerrymandered map is a map that does that.

But the concern that a map not do that, represented in this article as concern with "partisan symmetry", the author addresses with some skepticism and in just a few lines that come only after many paragraphs suggesting that the new Pennsylvania map is in some illegitimate way not hard enough on the  Democrats, and as he persists in describing hundreds of computer generated maps that severely disadvantage the Democrats as "simulated nonpartisan congressional districts".

The seeming contradiction between the analysis based on partisan symmetry and one based on simulated nonpartisan congressional districts gets at the heart of what may be the next big debate in gerrymandering: whether nonpartisan maps should strive for partisan symmetry, or whether they should try to avoid political considerations altogether.

The question is important because both methods of analysis are routinely employed to identify Republican gerrymanders.

And it is likely to continue to be a question, because it emerges when Democrats are at a  geographic disadvantage, as they often tend to be. 

Just look at Pennsylvania. 

Democrats waste more votes than Republicans by carrying urban areas, like Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, by more lopsided margins than the Republicans carry their best areas. 

The result is that the rest of the state, and therefore the rest of its districts, tend to favor Republicans.

If one believes that partisan symmetry should be a goal in redistricting, the new map is eminently fair. 

It gives both parties a similar chance to translate their votes to seats, and makes no compromises to do so; it still admirably adheres to standard nonpartisan criteria like compactness or minimizing county splits.

Democrats Did Better Than on Hundreds of Simulated Pennsylvania Maps

The next big debate in gerrymandering may be whether nonpartisan maps should strive for partisan symmetry, or whether they should try to avoid political considerations altogether.

Pennsylvania maps drawn in the latter manner - that is to say, maps drawn according to historic and geographic considerations in a manner that intentionally sets at nothing the question whether they unfairly favor any party, which is in fact the whole and only point and defining characteristic of gerrymandering - seriously disfavor Democrats for the reason stated in the excerpt above.

For exactly that reason it is a grossly pro-Republican and partisan lie to describe such maps as in any sense or manner "nonpartisan".

And there is this.

It is important to be clear on how the respective shares of the state's total congressional vote that it is reasonable to expect the several parties to get is taken into account in determining whether the state map is fair or, on the contrary, gerrymandered, which the above article, with its blather of "partisan symmetry", is not.

It is one thing to draw districts so that no party is likely to get a bigger share of the state's house delegation than it has of the state's votes for house candidates.

That prevents gerrymandering, which aims at exactly what this criterion excludes.

It prevents any party being overrepresented, and makes the map fair.

But it is another to draw districts so that no party gets a smaller share of the state's delegation than it has of the state's votes.

It might be impossible to do that for small parties with voters scattered across the state while maintaining traditional geographical properties of districts such as contiguity.

And in abandoning that we would move away from the idea that that House members should represent actual geographic districts, at all.

And in the direction of at large membership.

Not a problem for states that have only one or only a few members.

But California, Texas, and New York?

PS.

It is crucial to be clear that if we expect our state's map to be drawn by some allegedly nonpartisan commision we need that commission to be clear what it is expected to do.

It is not expected to ignore whether a possible map, however pretty or desirable it may be relative to other criteria, will likely result in some party being overrepresented.

Nor is it to consider that possibility as merely one factor to be weighed against others, as though likely overrepresentation of a give party might be an acceptable price to pay in order that all districts have a not too unpleasant shape, for instance.

On the contrary, it must see to it that the state's map does not allow overrepresentation of any single party, subject always to the higher ranking constraints first of equal representation of individual voters and second of contiguity.

Certainly, there are historical and other geometric considerations the districts may be expected to satisfy.

But they must all be subordinate to the rule that the map must not make overrepresentation likely, itself a consideration subordinated as above.

And if, to avoid that, a map must be drawn that features districts that look like salamanders kicking Donald Duck in the backside, so be it.

Among Democrats, too, party activists are more extreme than party voters

In Blow to Dianne Feinstein, California Democrats Won’t Endorse Senate Run

Too, among Democrats we increasingly hear we are supposed to oppose established leaders because they are old and have not had the courtesy to retire or die, thus removing themselves from competition for place against younger politicians who self-interestedly pretend it is a virtue to be young and a vice to be old.

Younger politicians who claim to be more activist and more leftist than the older ones, but whose leftism appears not to preclude agism.

Government lawyers lose to lawless court

Civil Rights Act Protects Gay Workers, Appeals Court Rules

A federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Monday that federal civil rights law bars employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation.

The case, which stemmed from the 2010 dismissal of a Long Island sky-diving instructor, was a setback for the Trump Justice Department, whose lawyers found themselves in the unusual position of arguing against government lawyers from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The E.E.O.C. had argued that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars workplace discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” protected gay employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

But the Trump Justice Department took the position that the law did not reach sexual orientation, and said the E.E.O.C. was “not speaking for the United States.”

The Justice Department lawyers were right.

The court disagreed.

Per the Times report, the court's reasoning was the following gibberish.

“Sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination because sexual orientation is defined by one’s sex in relation to the sex of those to whom one is attracted, making it impossible for an employer to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without taking sex into account.”

Ballocks.

The quoted portion of the Act clearly prohibits discrimination on the basis of one's sex, not one's sex life.

And not one's "gender," that imaginary thing that sexual radicals claim does not always mirror whether you have male or female sexual parts.

For the sake of an agenda with which I am wholly sympathetic, these liberal judges have failed in their republican duty to fairly and honestly construe the law, a practise that brings contempt and scorn on the courts and the ideas that they stand for the rule of law and the constitution, and that obedience to them is obedience to the rule of law and the constitution.

Thus they feed the flames of Trumpism and Trumpist authoritarianism, and encourage the already only too popular idea that if the courts can trample the rule of law and the constitution in service to their agenda then so can he in service to his.

NRA support for Trump paid for by Russians?

Did the NRA channel Russian money to trump?

For supporters, the NRA is a bulwark of patriotic Americans values, but critics are demanding a broader investigation into its ties to a Kremlin-linked banker.

A liberal group will on Monday file a request for the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to launch an investigation into whether the National Rifle Association took contributions from Russians, which were then illegally channeled to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, NPR reported.

The American Legal Democracy Fund (ALDF), a group with ties to liberal Super PAC American Bridge, plans to submit the request after McClatchy reported earlier in January that the FBI was investigating the influential gun rights lobbying group.

No public evidence that the NRA took Russian money has emerged, and spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told NPR "The National Rifle Association has not been contacted by the FBI or any other investigative body."

According to the report, the FBI is investigating whether Russian banker and NRA member Alexander Torshin channeled funds through the group to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, in breach of U.S. election laws.

A question of semantics

As is so much in propaganda.

NRA calls companies' Florida shooting boycott 'political and civic cowardice'

The National Rifle Association has criticized more than a dozen companies for choosing to sever partnerships following the shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead. 

The lobby group called such moves a “shameful display of political and civic cowardice”.

On Saturday, in similarly worded statements, the airlines Delta and United said they would end discount programs for NRA members.

The carriers joined more than a dozen businesses, including the car hire brands Hertz, Budget and Avis, the hotel chains Best Western and Wyndham Hotels and the software firms Symantec and Norton, that have ended various loyalty and discount schemes for NRA members.

In response, the NRA has taken the unusual step of attacking the businesses. 

In a statement, it said the companies had unfairly sought to “punish” its the group’s 5 million members over the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland.

“The law-abiding members of the NRA had nothing at all to do with the failure of that school’s security preparedness, the failure of America’s mental health system, the failure of the National Instant Check System or the cruel failures of both federal and local law enforcement,” the NRA said.

“Despite that, some corporations have decided to punish NRA membership in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice.”

A propos of, specifically, the complaint these companies are punishing NRA members by discontinuing their privileges, I would ask Wayne and the gang at the NRA what they think of the uses of the expressions "white privilege" and "white skin privilege" in the discourse of nonwhites, and especially blacks, about the situation of white people in by far mostly white countries, and especially in the US.

Dang

Amazon has Eyes on the Prize, a wonderful docudrama about the Civil Rights movement that I saw years ago and would love to revisit.

But it's not free with Amazon Prime.

Why the hell not?

The limits of imagination

On AM Joy, Ms. Reid and the star of Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, loved the film's depiction of an Africa technologically advanced but apparently never colonized politically or culturally.

But this alternative history is no more plausible than an imagined united, democratic, and modern India participating extensively, as it does, in the contemporary intellectual, scientific, and technological civilization of the globe, that never went through a phase of British colonialism.

No more than Roman roads without the Roman Empire, or Hadrian's Wall without Hadrian.

Gene Robinson sums it up

About the Russiagate indictments

The 13 named defendants are presumably in Russia, beyond the reach of U.S. justice. Mueller's account of what they allegedly did is simply infuriating. 

Voters who saw the Russians' Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts were led to believe they were being lobbied by their fellow citizens — not by an adversarial foreign power.

They tried to convince Muslim voters that Clinton was anti-Islam and convince anti-Muslim voters that she favored imposing sharia law. 

They tried to suppress the African-American vote with an Instagram account named "Woke Blacks" that called Clinton "the lesser of two devils" and argued "we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL." 

They purchased online ads calling Clinton "a Satan," falsely accusing her of voter fraud and claiming that "Donald Trump is the one and only (candidate) who can defend the police from terrorists."

They organized and promoted actual pro-Trump and anti-Clinton rallies in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to the indictment, and they targeted their social media campaigns at other swing states. 

To pay for all of this, they established fraudulent U.S. identities and bank accounts so that no one would know they were heeding political advice from Russians employed by "Putin's chef."

About Parkland

They won’t do anything meaningful about guns until you force them to with your votes.

This time, following the Parkland, Fla., massacre, does feel different from all the other times. 

But I fear the outcome will always be the same — thoughts, prayers, furrowed brows and no real action — until the Republicans who control Congress and so many state legislatures start losing elections because of their obstinacy on gun control.

. . . .

The president and his party are not going to act, so we must.

. . . .

When we begin to insist that our elected officials support lifesaving gun-control measures, and throw them out of office if they don’t, we’ll get a ban on the mass shooter’s weapon of choice. 

We just have to care. 

And vote.

The Duce sticks his big mouth into Pennsylvania's districting fight

The Republicans demand the right to get 80 % of the seats with 50 % of the vote.

They are enraged the Democratic majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, opposed by the Republican minority, won't let them do that without a fight.

Trump Endorses G.O.P. Fight to Keep Gerrymandered Congressional Map

President Trump added his voice on Saturday to the continued conservative outcry over the court-ordered redistricting of the Pennsylvania congressional map, calling the decision “very unfair to Republicans and to our country.”

“Democrat judges have totally redrawn election lines in the great State of Pennsylvania,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. 

“This is very unfair to Republicans and to our country as a whole. Must be appealed to the United States Supreme Court ASAP!”

The Supreme Court this month denied a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to stop the state’s highest court from requiring lawmakers to redraw the map of the state’s 18 House districts. 

The new map, released by the state court this past week, effectively eliminates the Republican advantage in Pennsylvania, endangering several incumbent Republican seats and bolstering Democrat standings in two open races.

An authoritarian move in an authoritarian state

China Moves to Let Xi Stay in Power by Abolishing Term Limit

China’s Communist Party has cleared the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power, perhaps indefinitely, by announcing on Sunday that it wants to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency — a dramatic move that would mark the country’s biggest political change in decades.

The party leadership “proposed to remove the expression that the president and vice president of the People’s Republic of China ‘shall serve no more than two consecutive terms’ from the country’s Constitution,” Xinhua, the official news agency, reported.

With each term set at five years, the Constitution currently limits Mr. Xi, who became president in 2013, to 10 years in office. 

But the announcement appears to be the strongest signal yet that Mr. Xi, 64, intends to hold onto power longer than any Chinese leader in at least a generation.

“I think this is without a doubt the clearest confirmation we’ve had yet that Xi Jinping plans to stay in power much longer than we thought,” said Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics in Beijing who works for the Conference Board, which provides research for companies. 

“We should expect Xi Jinping to be the dominant political force in China for the next decade.”

The announcement also confirmed that Mr. Xi has amassed enough power to rewrite the rules that had constrained his predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, both of whom stepped down after two terms. 

Those rules were aimed at preventing the reappearance of the cult of personality that had surrounded the People’s Republic’s founding father, Mao Zedong.

Maureen Dowd really ought to chuck it and seek out a second career.

Or retire.

Is she old enough?

This snake can't shed his skin

Just being on the right side isn't enough.

A belated riposte lacks effect

Ask anyone who thinks of what he should have said when it's far too late.

Doesn't really matter if the reason for the delay is that the bugger at the time put a gag on you.

2 Weeks After Trump Blocked It, Democrats’ Rebuttal of G.O.P. Memo Is Released

The House Intelligence Committee released a redacted Democratic memorandum on Saturday countering Republican claims that top F.B.I. and Justice Department officials had abused their powers in spying on a former Trump campaign aide.

The document was intended by Democrats to offer a point-by-point refutation of what it called the “transparent” attempt by President Trump’s allies on the committee to undermine the congressional and special counsel investigations into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.

5 Takeaways From the Release of the Democratic Memo

The memo says what you knew it would and what it had to in order to rebut Republican lies.

Rich liberals step up

Celebrities donate $ 2 million for student march over gun violence

First, George and Amal Clooney pledged to donate $500,000. Then Steven Spielberg did the same. And then Oprah Winfrey did it, too.

In less than 24 hours, major celebrities have joined thousands of people all over the world to raise more than $2 million for the March For Our Lives, the upcoming gun control march being organized by the surviving students of last week’s high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The march, which will take place on Saturday, March 24 in Washington, D.C., is part of a movement started by the students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. to demand that “their lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today,” according to the event’s website.

The students’ goal is to pressure lawmakers into enacting meaningful gun control legislation.

It won't work, and that will be a learning experience for independent voters and even Republicans who think Wayne LaPierre was frothing at the mouth at CPAC and the NRA is run by mad dogs.

And for the overwhelming American majority who don't share the organization's positions on lots of sensible gun control measures, however little they may be aware of the outrageous lunacy of the leadership of America's most politically connected gun club.

They will learn that the obstruction of gun control is centered in the intransigence of the Republican Party.

While opposition is bipartisan, it is almost exclusively to be found in the GOP.

If you really want to end the control of American policy on this matter by the most fantastic nutbags on God's green Earth, you need to get the GOP out of power and keep it out.

By the way.

It's called the National Rifle Association because in its first decades it was a rifle owner's club dedicated to teaching safe use of rifles and marksmanship with them.

By the way 2.

Oprah said in an interview that she wasn't running for president and the reason she gave, though not in so many words, was that she did not feel personally up to the responsibilities of the job.

And Trump?

Did she really think she would do a worse job than him?

He has a real shot in 2020, and what if the polls showed persistently and consistently that she could beat him, but no other Democrat had much chance?

For damn sure, for me, this is a no-brainer.

I would rather take my chances with Oprah than with The Duce, by a very long way.

By the way 3.

Let's hope this whole Parkland students thing isn't a flash in the pan that has long dissipated by March 24.

Not about to forsake their Gerrymander

Another reason to hate Republicans is their totally shameless demand to be allowed to get 80% of the seats in the federal House of Representatives available to our state with only 50% of the vote.

Federal judges fast-track hearings on whether to block new Pa. congressional map, decline to immediately do so

A panel of three federal judges declined Friday to immediately block Pennsylvania’s new congressional map from taking effect, leaving it in place for now.

Ruling on a motion filed by Republicans opposed to map, the judges fast tracked a hearing on whether it should intervene in the case.

The claims of injury from the Republican lawmakers are “not so exigent as to justify” immediately blocking the map through issuing a temporary restraining order, the judges wrote, especially because they favor giving “an opportunity for all parties to be heard.”

This newest legal challenge to the map was filed Thursday by two state senators and eight Republican U.S. Congressmen from Pennsylvania. 

They asked the courts to consider whether the state Supreme Court, by imposing the new congressional map, violated the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause, which gives power to state legislatures to run elections.

A similar request, filed by state Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But are not state legislatures, in all they do, subject also to the state constitution?

It was for their violating that that the state Supremes stepped in.

The new map.

Elsewhere in Africa

Over 40 Should Face Trial for South Sudan Atrocities, U.N. Team Says

More than 40 senior military officers and officials in South Sudan should be prosecuted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a United Nations commission said on Friday, citing harrowing witness testimony and thousands of documents tying them to mass atrocities in the country’s four-year civil war.

Government and opposition forces had systematically butchered men, women and children, slitting throats, gouging out eyes, castrating and mutilating men and gang raping men and women on a massive scale, the commission said in a report it intends to submit next week to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“Holding those in charge in South Sudan accountable for the intentional suffering they inflict on their own people is crucial to stemming this humanitarian catastrophe,” said Andrew Clapham, a member of the commission and an international law expert.

You might not know it, but Jihad goes on

Eighteen Killed in Somalia Attacks

Two car bomb blasts in Somalia’s capital killed at least 18 people on Friday and shattered a months long period of calm in Mogadishu. 

The Shabab extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Speaking of Mussolini

Buchananist authoritarianism in Europe.

Anti-Fascist Protesters Rally in Italy as Mussolini’s Heirs Gain Ground

Under this image the Times caption says: "Members of Forza Nuova, a far-right party that marches with the straight-armed salute of Mussolini, held a banner reading 'Italy to the Italians' during a protest in Bologna this month."

The specter of Benito Mussolini returned this month in form of a poster at Piazza Venezia, the Roman square where more than 70 years ago he fired up the masses with Fascist speeches and stirred a fatal brew of Italian nationalism.

The multistory movie poster of Mussolini, a.k.a. Il Duce, head bald and arms akimbo, advertised “I’m Back,” a satirical film imagining the dictator’s return to modern-day Italy.

In many ways, the poster symbolized the debate on Mussolini — or at least the violent nationalism that fueled his rise — that has returned with force to the country as critical elections loom on March 4.

The re-emergence of extremist violence, harassment and xenophobia has gripped Italy and forced the country to reckon with the hard-right and fascist ideologies fueled by a lingering financial crisis and migration.

But it has also spurred a countermovement. 

Demonstrators marched in Rome on Saturday to stand up to fascism.

“We are here to say no to fascism and racism, which are a danger today for democracy and coexistence,” Carla Nespolo, the president of the National Association of Italian Partisans, said at the national demonstration that brought thousands to the streets under the hash tags #FascismNeverAgain and #RacismNeverAgain.

“It’s said that if you don’t know your history you are doomed to living it again. We don’t want to repeat the tragedies of fascism and Nazism,” Ms. Nespolo said. 

She added that what frightened her most was the “indifference, superficiality and ignorance” that allowed fascist ideologies to take root.

As the elections approach, politically inspired violence has become an almost daily occurrence. 

This month, a fascist extremist who carried a candle with an image of Mussolini opened fire on African immigrants in Macerata, wounding at least six people before he was arrested.

Interior Minister Marco Minniti described the shootings as an “evident display of racial hatred.”

Forza Nuova, a far-right party that marches with the straight-armed salute of Mussolini, has repeatedly clashed with the police and anti-fascist protesters.

Members of CasaPound, a political party that proudly claims to admire Mussolini, recently invaded the emergency area of a hospital in Bolzano to protest homeless people who take refuge there overnight.

. . . .

As the violence worsens, some critics have blamed Matteo Salvini, the bombastic secretary of the League party and, to a lesser extent, Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, the modern heirs of the party that rose from the ashes of Mussolini’s Fascists.

For the coming elections, Mr. Salvini and Ms. Meloni have joined former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and their coalition is leading in the polls. Mr. Berlusconi is not new to such alliances.

When he first came to power, in 1994, he governed in a coalition that included the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, or M.S.I., which was founded by Mussolini’s supporters some 50 years earlier. 

(Brothers of Italy is an offshoot of M.S.I.)

Mr. Berlusconi’s current allies promote Italian nationalism and conservatism, seeking to defend against the Islamization of Italy and banning migration from underdeveloped countries.

“There is nothing moderate about the Brothers of Italy or the League,” said Andrea Mammone, a historian at Royal Holloway at the University of London, who writes on nationalism and the far right in Italy. 

“If those aren’t extreme-right themes perpetuated by neo-fascist parties, what are?”

Mr. Salvini has said on the campaign trail that fascism had done positive things for the country, and the center-right candidate running the Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana, has said that Italy had to protect “the white race.” 

He later apologized.

These parties, critics say, are sowing the seed of subversion through their populist courtship of voters and fomenting xenophobia by spreading an anti-migrant message.

. . . .

Despite the recent violence, Ms. Nespolo, said that she doubted Italy was on its way to legitimizing fascism “because the Italian Constitution bans it.”

“Italy is not Hungary or Poland,” she added in a telephone interview before the march. 

In the other countries, she said, racist propaganda has become commonplace and a recent rally in Warsaw by far-right nationalists drew 60,000.

The National Association of Italian Partisans, known by the initials A.N.P.I. for its Italian name, has been circulating a petition to ban neo-fascist parties like CasaPound — whose leader, Simone Di Stefano, is running for prime minister — and Forza Nuova from participating in any future elections.

“They claim they aren’t fascist, they say they are Italians for Italians — but it’s just camouflage,” Ms. Nespolo said.

It is possible Ms. Nespolo uses "fascism" as emptily as the activist left typically does.

But, no, it doesn't look it.

When racist, nationalist parties in Italy openly celebrate Mussolini and use the roman salute it is certainly cause for concern.

Their enthusiasm is probably not merely for his haircut or remarkable jawline.

If those parties, at least, are not for the real thing, what are they?

What was the FBI supposed to do with this information, anyway?

Warned urgently many times about Nikolas Cruz, they at every time did nothing.

Tipster’s Warning to F.B.I. on Florida Shooting Suspect: ‘I Know He’s Going to Explode’

Over a few years there were many scary warnings from a fair number of people.

If they had got this many complaints of sexual harassment about somebody and not looked into it the FBI would have deserved much criticism.

But sexual harassment is an actual crime.

Being a very scary guy is not.

Perhaps under the Obama rules that Trump discontinued in his early days in the Oval Office Cruz would not have been able to buy or own firearms.

But the White House isn't mentioning that when it shares out the blame, as it has done several times in the days since the shooting, to many and sundry, taking no tiniest share for itself.

Trump take blame?

Right, that'll happen.

Good Lord. Cheers to our men with brooms.

John Shuster and the U.S. Curling Team Win First Gold Medal

John Shuster, the face of American curling for the past four Winter Olympics — and all the good and bad those experiences have entailed — had a gold medal draped around his neck for the first time in his life on Saturday.

Moments before, he and his teammates had done what jubilant curlers do: They raised their brooms aloft in screaming excitement over an improbable victory.

This massive kiss to the Evangelicals' collective backside from Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell calls for a huge WTF

The Rev. Billy Graham's Casket Will 'Lie In Honor' At The Capitol

Throughout his career as a preacher, the Rev. Billy Graham's message of faith drew massive crowds of believers to tents, arenas and stadiums. 

Next week, mourners will have a final opportunity to turn out for Graham.

His casket will lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Feb. 28, and Thursday, March 1.

The public viewing for the internationally famous spiritual leader who is credited with changing the face of evangelical Christianity in America, was arranged by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. 

Both Republican leaders will deliver remarks.

This is a goddamned Republican campaign stunt.

These guys make me sick.

This seriously pisses me off.

The Planets

Hegel was assured there were seven.

Einstein rejoiced in the same nine as did I: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

And now?

Science teachers from K through 35 or so are always so completely dogmatic about whatever this years "scientific knowledge" is.

Talk about an oxymoron.

Yeah, yeah, "But it works!"

Fuck off.

What are you, some loon pragmatist?

Just So

Mrs. Thornberry, an old woman, says the odd thing is that one never felt old.

She always felt that she was 25.

I am a man of 69.

I would've said 35.

After I actually was 35, of course.

Men mature in character, as well as physically, later than women.

Chapter 24.

The Voyage Out.

PS

Manafort is 68, 69 in April, just before my wife.

He has not one gray hair.

Nor does Trump, come to that.

He is 71, 72 in June.

Right.

My hair is more salt than pepper, and my Van Dyke is whiter than that.

Indigenism

Indigenism is a hoax.

Human beings are native only to small parts of Africa.

Everywhere else they are an invasive species.

The description "Native American", like "indigenous peoples", is a politically motivated and racist hoax.

Evelyn Murgatroyd

With this character, Ms. Woolf mocks politically engaged progressives.

Evelyn is very bright, but the kind of activist who thinks a few marchers can, to reference a cause popular among marchers in Pittsburgh, "end rape and take back the night".

In another place in the book she explains that if a few smart young women went out throughout the cities of England and gave a good talking to to prostitutes on the street they could put an end to prostitution quite quickly.

Ten people who really set their minds to it can fix it all, says Evelyn.

The Voyage Out, chapter 24 (for example).

The Second Sex

De Beauvoir's title was apt.

Women are, by nature, the second sex.

Reading Woolf, The Voyage Out.

But it has nothing to do with intellectual incapacity and not much to do with other psychological differences.

It comes down mostly to differences in our bodies.

At CPAC

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, invitée d’un grand raout conservateur, divise la droite américaine

C’est un déplacement qui fait couler de l’encre sur les deux rives de l’Atlantique : Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, qui a pris sa retraite politique en mai 2017 après la défaite de sa tante Marine Le Pen au second tour de la présidentielle, se rend ce 22 février à la Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), dans le Maryland. 

L’ancienne députée Front national (FN) du Vaucluse montera à la tribune le premier jour de ce grand raout annuel des conservateurs américains, pour une prise de parole sur le thème du conservatisme sur les deux continents. 

Les organisateurs lui ont donné une place de choix : elle s’exprimera une heure après le vice-président des États-Unis, Mike Pence.

. . . .

Les boucliers se sont levés dans les rangs reaganiens dès l’annonce de son invitation, entre autres en raison de son positionnement économique. 

Jonah Goldberg, rédacteur en chef au magazine conservateur National Review, a critiqué sur Twitter une “mauvaise décision” et s’est demandé si la petite-fille du fondateur du parti d’extrême droite n’était pas simplement une “Kardashian du Front national avec un meilleur message”. 

Un autre compte conservateur, The Reagan Battalion, n’a pas hésité à la comparer à des personnalités habituellement cataloguées comme progressistes : “Marion Le Pen n’est pas une conservatrice. […] Elle est favorable aux hausses d’impôts comme [le sénateur indépendant] Bernie Sanders, étatiste comme [la sénatrice démocrate] Elizabeth Warren.”

It's all about the extent of Trumpification.

Le Washington Post va plus loin et rappelle que Donald Trump, alors en campagne, s’était désisté de son intervention à la conférence en 2016, jugeant être une figure “trop controversée”. 

“La rhétorique de Marion Maréchal-Le Pen sur l’immigration est similaire à celle de Trump mais en langage plus grossier”, estime le quotidien. 

Or, “ce qui est frappant, c’est que la même conférence où Trump pensait qu’il serait considéré comme trop extrême il y a deux ans est prête à accueillir Maréchal-Le Pen jeudi. Le changement est un autre témoignage de l’altération du Parti républicain par Donald Trump.”

'France is no longer free': Marine Le Pen's niece brings French far right to CPAC

Speaking to a crowd of conservative activists that booed every time she mentioned the European Union, Maréchal-Le Pen combined condemnation of the trans-national bloc with attacks on Muslim immigration and old fashioned social conservatism in an effort to link her political efforts against “the domination of the liberals and the socialists” with the election of Trump and the Brexit process in the United Kingdom.

Maréchal-Le Pen claimed French sovereignty was under siege. “France is no longer free today,” she proclaimed. 

“After 1500 years of existence, we now must fight for our independence.” 

She also claimed that after 40 years of mass immigration, Islamist lobbies and political correctness, France was in the process of going “from the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church to the little niece of Islam”.

The unforgettable douche-baggery of Trump

Trump Signs Bill Revoking Obama-Era Gun Checks for People With Mental Illnesses

2/28/2017

President Donald Trump quietly signed a bill into law Tuesday rolling back an Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun.

The rule, which was finalized in December, added people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database.

Had the rule fully taken effect, the Obama administration predicted it would have added about 75,000 names to that database.

President Barack Obama recommended the now-nullified regulation in a 2013 memo following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which left 20 first graders and six others dead. 

The measure sought to block some people with severe mental health problems from buying guns.

The original rule was hotly contested by gun rights advocates who said it infringed on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. 

Gun control advocates, however, praised the rule for curbing the availability of firearms to those who may not use them with the right intentions.

And now he and the NRA are looking for credit for urging action to keep guns out of these people's hands.

Really awful TV on Netflix

XIII: The Series.

Undoing Leviathan

Krugman says the GOP crazies are out to undo the social contract that, in Hobbes' view, saved us from a wretched state of nature.

Crazies including the likes of George Will, for instance.

Watch as democracy perishes

Venezuela Opposition Will Boycott Election, and Maduro Tightens His Hold

The Snake

A reading by Bozo, himself, of a bit of Nativist doggerel.

And a response by Ali Velshi that I hope doesn't get him in any was chastised by his bosses, much less fired.

Bozo and Ali, The Snake

I did a google search trying to find the poem, but it looks like it's actually a song.

On her way to work one morning

Down the path along side the lake

A tender hearted woman saw a poor half frozen snake.

His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew.

"Poor thing," she cried, "I'll take you in and I'll take care of you."

"Take me in tender woman.

"Take me in, for heaven's sake.

"Take me in, tender woman," sighed the snake.

She wrapped him up all cozy in a comforter of silk

And laid him by her fireside with some honey and some milk.

She hurried home from work that night and soon as she arrived

She found that pretty snake she'd taken to had been revived.

"Take me in, tender woman.

"Take me in, for heaven's sake.

"Take me in, tender woman," sighed the snake

She clutched him to her bosom, "You're so beautiful, " she cried.

"But if I hadn't brought you in by now you might have died."

She stroked his pretty skin again and kissed and held him tight.

Instead of saying thanks, the snake gave her a vicious bite.

"Take me in, tender woman.

"Take me in, for heaven's sake.

"Take me in, tender woman," sighed the snake.

"I saved you," cried the woman, "and you've bitten me, but why?

"You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die."

"Oh shut up, silly woman," said the reptile with a grin.

"You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in."

"Take me in, tender woman.

"Take me in, for heaven's sake.

"Take me in, tender woman, " sighed the snake.

Songwriters: Robert S. Kelly / Darian Morgan

The Snake lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Trump, in mini-Mussolini mode, attacks in all directions

He thrilled the audience at CPAC.

TV clips on MSNBC show him damning the media as corrupt liars, and daming the Democrats for not really caring about the Dreamers, transferring blame for their danger from himself to them, among many other things.

I cannot stand this vicious nincompoop, this pathological liar, or the people who love him.

I hope they never "get their America back", they never get their way, they choke on their anger and frustration.

As it said on the back window of that pickup, "Fuck Trump! And fuck you if you voted for him!"

The Duce at CPAC

President Trump told a raucous crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday that if Democrats take power in Congress in the midterm elections, they “will take away your Second Amendment.”

“Remember that they will take away those massive tax cuts and they will take away your Second Amendment,” Trump said told the staunch conservatives.

They might pass taxes to attempt to deal with the huge deficit bang Bozo and his congress have dropped on them.

Taxes he would veto or that might not get through the senate, anyway.

But that Democrats are in any numbers committed to repeal of the 2nd Amendment if false.

Most would likely vote to restore the ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and tighten up background checks.

But Trump would just veto those measures, too, if the senate didn't kill them with a filibuster.

Most would likely vote to raise the age for purchase of firearms, at least of some types, and ban aftermarket modifications to raise the rate of fire of semi-automatic rifles.

Trump and many leading GOPsters are on record supporting such things, so they might actually get through.

I think it likely the hard right loonies of the House won't let them pass in the current congress, despite the fact that Trump and even the NRA seem OK with them.

He added: “By the way, if you only had to choose one, the Second Amendment, tax cuts?”

The audience cheered louder for the Second Amendment — just days after the deadly shooting at a Florida school where 17 people were gunned down.

. . . .

“Don’t be complacent. Don’t be complacent. If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn’t believe, they’ll take away your Second Amendment, which we will never allow to happen, they’ll take away your Second Amendment.”

In his freewheeling address, Trump asked if the audience wouldn’t “mind if I go off script a bit because it’s sort of boring” and was met with more cheers.

He further stoked the crowd by bringing up Hillary Clinton as he touted his work in his first year in office.

“Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!” they chanted, echoing similar refrains from the 2016 campaign trail.

One man in the crowd yelled: “You said you would!”

. . . .

He then returned to his signature pledge to erect a “great wall” along the border with Mexico — eliciting chants of “Build that wall! Build that wall!”

The report does not say he repeated his promise that Mexico would pay for it.

. . . .

Trump also veered into religion, saying the US is a nation that worships God as he remembered the late Rev. Billy Graham.

“Our nation’s motto is ‘In God We Trust.’ This week, our nation lost an incredible leader who devoted his life to helping us understand what those words really mean. He was a leader, a great man,” Trump said.

1956.

Yes, that was when the going was good for the Christian right, the high point of Cold War Christian clericalism in America.

I suppose we should be glad he didn't return to urging police brutality, the torture of terrorists, or the murder of their families.

Consider the source

If I had had all the doubt and fear Rachel and Terence have after their engagement I would never have gone through with it.

The Voyage Out

Oh.

The source is Woolf, herself.

Dems attack, the NRA counter-attacks.

Says the Second Amendment,

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Florida high school kids are looking at the 2nd Amendment and not coming up with the regnant conservative view, the regnant view in the law, that it protects an unconditional individual right to keep and bear arms not restricted to actual service in an organized militia.

The embedded reference to militia sets out one reason those who enacted the amendment thought it good (several state constitutions that protect such a right cite this and also other reasons), but the amendment, according to the conservative and regnant reading, does not make the right in our federal constitution conditional on a well regulated militia being, in actual fact, necessary to the security of a free state.

As indeed they are not.

And neither are they sufficient.

Militia were of little use in the French and Indian War and largely useless in the Revolution.

And when spontaneous militias attempted to resist "tyranny" by the new federal government itself, a role of militia much exalted and cherished in the ideology of American gun rights enthusiasts, in Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, they were promptly squashed by regulars.

I have heard some of the kids urge, taking the view that the amendment does only conditionally protect the right, a view to which I am sometimes partial, exactly the fact that militia are not necessary to the security of the United States, or any other free state, in our time.

Some of them approach what was once a common liberal view that it protects only the right of persons actually in service in a militia, today's militia being the National Guard, and their weapons though supplied and controlled by the Guard itself, nowadays, nevertheless being "kept and borne" within the meaning of the amendment by themselves as soldiers (militiamen).

That view is nowadays largely in retreat, having been overthrown with ridicule as indistinguishable from the claim that the Second Amendment protects, despite its words, not a right of individuals to keep and bear arms, but the right of the states to maintain the National Guards.

Wayne LaPierre on CNN just now, shedding blame at CPAC for the Florida shooting on everyone and everything but guns, Republicans, the NRA, or the 2nd Amendment, said "the elites" don't care about school safety one bit, but only want to exploit tragedy politically, their goal being to eliminate the Second Amendment so they can eliminate firearm rights, so that in the end they can eliminate all rights.

The elites hate liberty, he said, and the Democrats will impose socialism as soon as they can.

And if the Democrats regain power in Washington in 2018 or 2020 they will surely abolish the 2nd Amendment.

I am unable right now to find any news stories that quote him insisting they are out to eliminate the freedom to own guns in order to eliminate all freedoms.

And am now unsure whether he spoke in terms of rights, liberties, or freedoms.

Wayne LaPierre is as batshit crazy as Colonel Bat Guano in Doctor Strangelove.

In his mind, Bernie Sanders' plan for tuition free college in state institutions is only a millimeter from the Gulag Archipelago.

Or so he says. 

From which the Michigan Militia is supposed to save us.

Or so he says. 

If he believes what he says he is a rabid dog.

If he doesn't believe what he says he is a rabid dog.

God help us. 

These crackheads have taken over the faux conservative movement and the Republican Party. 

Trump on guns, at this moment

CNN reports he has now proposed stiffer background checks, outlawing aftermarket devices that increase rates of fire of semi-automatic rifles, and raising the minimum age for purchase of guns to 21.

Marco Rubio on TV has endorsed all three and claimed there are 60 votes in the senate for all three.

When the Congress comes back, that is.

Trump is also urging that teachers with military or police backgrounds be trained to use and authorized to carry concealed firearms against well prepared and heavily armed school shooters - a measure long urged by the NRA.

He is not favoring a ban on assault rifles or even high capacity magazines for them.

So far as I can tell, he has not crossed the NRA to date in any particular.

Personally, I favor allowing some teachers or school officials with a military or police background to voluntarily carry concealed firearms on the job provided they undergo training aimed at the special dangers of use of firearms to defend students in such chaotic conditions.

But I don't favor requiring any teacher or school official to do this and I don't think such a measure even begins to adequately address the issue of mass shootings in America.

A real danger even when trained police try to deal with an active shooter in such a setting is that an innocent person will be shot by them.

Imagine being the parent of an innocent child or the spouse of an innocent teacher shot by police responsding to a school shooting rampage.

Or of a child or spouse shot by a teacher.

Update.

A half dozen states, including California, permit teachers to carry white at school.

Not clear whether it's voluntary or limited to ex-police or ex-military, but it should be.

Other states could certainly follow suit.

Confidence

Human beings have much more reason to be confident of the sensible descriptions of things - of things in the Lebenswelt, as it were - than of their properties or composition according to natural science.

Socrates

What if Socrates was necessarily a thinking being but only contingently a human rather than a sponge, a hippopotamus, or a rat?

So he was essentially a thinking thing but only accidentally a human?

So he was substantially a thinking thing?

So Descartes and Plato were right?

He was essentially a res cogitans but only accidentally a human - isn't that something substance dualism entails?

I want my way and I don't care how I get it

One of the high school kids from Florida on MSNBC a few minutes ago angrily demanding action by Trump with an attitude that seemed just like Trump's own.

"Don't talk to me about the Congress. We know the Congress is broken. But you've got paper, you've got a pen, and you've got executive orders. Stop this."

Contempt for the constitution, for the separation of powers, for actual parties, for the choices of voters, for actual law - all of that, so characteristic of The Duce, himself, and so definitive of political authoritarianism, is really just the attitude of the pure spoiled brat.

Not a surprise, really.

Over the years, people with a political agenda have come increasingly to regard with impatience, disparagement, and open contempt a republican system that relies for its survival on the commitment of not only the classe politique but the majority of Americans to lawful, constitutional, and fair procedures.

The threat this poses to the republic is not only fed by the right.

Though that is a lie of the left.

Poland

Not everybody sees Poland's recent acts regarding the Holocaust as mere pushback against German efforts to deflect the blame onto others.

It is well known and beyond doubt that in Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere in Nazi-conquered Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism rife for centuries led to widespread, though of course far from universal, and enthusiastic popular collaboration with the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

But those recent acts reject and even criminalize accusations that the Polish state itself collaborated in the Shoah.

And having been destroyed by the Nazis in September, 1939, it truly did not.

However, they also criminalize accusations against "the Polish nation."

And that could perhaps be read by a prosecutor or a court as criminalizing even the truth that collaboration with the Nazi assault on the Jews was widespread among Poles - and sympathy for it even more popular.

Poland Digs Itself a Memory Hole

But the broader target of this piece is Poland's descent into nationalist, racist authoritarianism.

About that it is very good.

And about links with The Duce, himself, and our American white nationalism, Nativism, and approval of Bozo's thuggish authoritarianism.

Poland’s Nationalism Threatens Europe’s Values, and Cohesion

The EU has already bitten off more than it can chew, allowing membership to Eastern European states far more sympathetic to nationalist, anti-immigrant, and anti-liberal authoritarianism than to the somewhat post-nationalist, multiculturalist and secular order, built by the West, that underpins and finds expression in the legal order of the EU.

Imagine if it surrendered to Erdogan's demands and let Turkey join!

Awaken, Poland, Before It’s Too Late

A good piece by Roger Cohen.