The Powers of a King

Conservative Review points out that yesterday was supposed to be the end of the DACA program, except that the courts have so far said that the President isn't allowed to end a program created purely by the action of the previous President.

Yet thanks to a political system that has crowned district judges the kings of our society, the very underpinnings of the self-governing nation established in the Declaration of Independence have now been abandoned. We have district judges who can unilaterally make denizens of aliens – the power of a king, according to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #69.

The relevant section of Federalist 69 is about why a president is preferable to a king.

The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for FOUR years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and HEREDITARY prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable. The one would have a QUALIFIED negative upon the acts of the legislative body; the other has an ABSOLUTE negative. The one would have a right to command the military and naval forces of the nation; the other, in addition to this right, possesses that of DECLARING war, and of RAISING and REGULATING fleets and armies by his own authority. The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature in the formation of treaties; the other is the SOLE POSSESSOR of the power of making treaties. The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices; the other is the sole author of all appointments. The one can confer no privileges whatever; the other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with all the rights incident to corporate bodies. The one can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the nation; the other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money, can authorize or prohibit the circulation of foreign coin. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church! What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.

I've highlighted three areas in which we've gone astray.

1) The Iran Deal was a treaty governing nuclear weapons that was effected without any input from the legislature -- the Corker-Cardin bill set up a means for Congress to express disapproval, but Democrats in the Senate filibustered a vote, so no vote was ever taken on approval or disapproval. The 2/3rds majority consent, required by the language of the Constitution, wasn't seriously considered as a standard the Obama administration would attempt to meet.

2) The 'denizens of aliens' was the intent of DACA. The courts are merely affirming Obama's right to rule as king, such that his successor by democratic election may not undo his fiat.

3) At this point most of the regulations on commerce originate in the executive. At some point the legislature consented to the delegation of its authority to the executive, and now most things affecting commerce that have the force of law are created undemocratically by the executive bureaucracy.

Serious problems, all, and it's just one paragraph of one of the Federalist papers.

UPDATE:

Oh, and as for the power of declaring war, Obama's actions in Libya never once passed any sort of 'by your leave' by Congress.

Mill Your Own

Reason has an interview with a guy who can help you make your own 1911s at the house.

Yankees With Guns

A good piece in the NYT, by a native of New Jersey, on why she bought a gun.

Happy National Grammar Day!

AEI econ blogger Mark J. Perry cares a lot more about this day than I do, apparently.

Some Appropriate Music for Leaving DC

Or, music for expressing one's feelings towards the governing class after a week of examining their exploits. It puts a man in a mood.



Language warning.

I'm back in the true South now, headed for home.

Jimmy Buffett Sings a Cowboy Song

And with a cowboy ...

Great Big Sea

Trekking Through DC

I'm away north for a bit, trying to wrestle with some of the things I can affect within our national government. I'll be back in a while, perhaps by the weekend.

The weird hormone argument

USA Today follows a trend I'm seeing more often in recent years, to explain human failings in terms of testosterone.  When the father is absent from the home, we're told, young men can't channel their innately destructive male hormones.  Now it seems, however, that even young women don't do well in fatherless homes, and we can hardly blame their unchanneled testosterone for that.  Nor does it make much sense to blame the testosterone of the absent father, which presumably isn't polluting the home from his new location across town or a couple of states away.

What does this leave?  The mother, who is still present?  Does she have toxic hormones?

Such a lot of silliness to avoid the idea that having both a mother and father present is a pretty good idea whenever you can pull it off, and not because of their complex chemical interactions.

Not a bad argument

The problem with twisting legal arguments into a pretzel is that that loose may come back around and kick you in the butt:

A coalition of 20 states has filed a lawsuit alleging ObamaCare is unconstitutional.

They’re claiming that since the GOP eliminated the tax penalty associated with the individual mandate, that ObamaCare itself is no longer constitutional. …

The GOP tax law “eliminated the tax penalty of the ACA, without eliminating the mandate itself. What remains, then, is the individual mandate, without any accompanying exercise of Congress’s taxing power, which the Supreme Court already held that Congress has no authority to enact,” the complaint states.

“Not only is the individual mandate now unlawful, but this core provision is not severable from the rest of the ACA—as four Justices of the Supreme Court already concluded.”

What's a guy gotta do to get arrested in Broward County?

“We’ve accomplished reducing the arrests. Now it’s ‘how do we keep that up without making the schools a more dangerous place.’"

The thing that goes down

Once again we face the spectacle of legislators writing bills about weapons they know nothing of. They may as well outlaw weapons that are scary or icky.

The problem with public-sector unions in a nutshell

From HotAir, better today than it's been lately:

The authors are correct in citing the cost of these retirement packages as a problem. It’s the primary driver which has nearly sunk New Jersey’s state government and embroiled Chris Christie throughout his entire tenure as governor. So one way to look at this (if you happen to be a liberal) is to say, as the authors do, that strong unions are able to push back against cuts to benefits.

Well, that’s a dandy solution if you happen to be one of the people receiving those benefits or planning your retirement around them. But it doesn’t do anything for the tens of millions of people in the private sector who have little chance of landing a job that offers anywhere near that level of retirement stability. It also does nothing to magically make more money appear in state and municipal budgets to cover these skyrocketing expenses. The authors attempt to claim that such expensive pension plans are justified because “many public-sector jobs offer lower salaries than their private-sector counterparts. As a result, public employees tend to have far more stable and secure retirements than similarly situated private-sector workers."

No citation is offered for this incredible claim. If you look long and hard, you can probably find a handful of cases where it’s true, but for the most part and in nearly all cases, public sector workers earn more than their private-sector counterparts. And I did offer a linked citation for that. Perhaps even more embarrassingly, it’s from… The Washington Post.

What they should have been asking was why there was never anyone at the table arguing on behalf of the taxpayers when these labor agreements were originally crafted.

"Not according to this kid . . . aaaaaaaand I trust this kid"

Deputy Scott Peterson's counsel is floating the theory that he had a good reason not to go inside the Florida school building. It's not easy to square, however, with the eye-witness testimony of a horrified student.

Note the sequence of events described by senior Brandon Huff. He told reporters that Peterson didn’t move even while other teachers were running into the building, including Aaron Feis, who lost his life shielding his students.

Now you tell us

Senate Democrats are shocked, shocked to learn that politicizing the Supreme Court may not have been an ideal strategy.

“If stare decisis means anything, it must mean that a precedent should not be overturned simply because a differently composed court emerges,” the senators wrote. “Decision-making begins to look like prize-taking when precedents are reversed as Court majorities shift.” …

Jonathan Haidt Talks about Three Hopeful Signs at Universities for 2018

Col. Schlichter and the New Rules

I like Kurt Schlichter's stuff, generally speaking. Right now he is pushing government regulation of businesses going against conservatives:

The liberal elite is using its social and cultural ties to those at the helm of big companies to essentially blacklist the NRA, and thereby the tens of millions of Americans who support gun rights. But oppression is oppression whether it’s done by a government bureaucrat or a corporate one, and our principle of non-interference in business assumes business stays out of politics. But now National, Hertz, and others are cutting ties to the NRA, and liberals are advocating banks do the same. Their intent is clear – what they can't do in politics they will simply do by not allowing the representatives of people whose politics they don't like access to the infrastructure of society. And we're not supposed to do anything about it because, you know, free enterprise and stuff.  You know, our principles.

I think he has more of a point with companies like Google. Not giving a discount to a particular group isn't the same thing as denying its members "access to the infrastructure of society." On the other hand, an algorithm that keeps traffic away from a site because Google doesn't approve of its politics kinda does, to a point. Then again, there's always Duck Duck Go.

No. They are exercising political power. We have our own political power, and we need to exercise it - ruthlessly. ... 

Ouch

"As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagel, Ya'll.

If I have had one standing criticism of the government of the Great State of Georgia, it has been the degree to which it has bent over backwards to give away the rights of citizens in favor of corporate interests. On gun rights, on religious liberty, as on many other issues, once you knew what side Coca-Cola and Delta wanted to win, you knew what the Republican government would do -- no matter what their voters wanted, and no matter which constitutional right was being undermined by the action.

Not today.

Casey Cagel for Governor.

Reversing the school-to-prison pipeline

And replacing it with a school-to-cemetery pipeline.

What they're teaching in the schools

A neighbor just told me her grandson's high school teacher is requiring the entire class to write a Congressman and demand gun control laws.  There is no leeway in the position to be adopted, the penalty being a failing grade.  I'm sorry to report that the fellow will be going along and even asked his grandmother not to complain directly to the school, for fear of retribution.  He did say he was reporting the matter to his ROTC commander, so maybe something will come of that.  Hey, I count my blessings that ROTC hasn't yet been run off the campus.

I told her the young man could at least write separately to the Congressman explaining the circumstances, so the congressional staff would know how little weight to place on the deluge of letters.  This confused her at first; wasn't the teacher in charge of the mailing?  Wouldn't she read all the letters and detect the heresy?  At last I got across the message that the student could write separately, put it in his own envelope, affix a stamp to it, and put it in the mailbox himself.  Good practice in learning how to communicate with his elected representatives.  It sounds like she needed a refresher herself.  I was very surprised how alien all this advice seemed to her.  There is a fatal passivity, though she's quite a red-meat conservative.

Trusting in Failure

The more we learn about what happened (and did not happen) in and around the recent mass murder, the more we are seeing that the institutions we erected to try and have some security simply failed to consider their primary functions in favor of more politically correct agendas, or simply exhibited cowardice.

-The School District enacted a progressive agenda to reduce the number of police interactions (arrests), which allowed the perpetrator to not be arrested and charged with assault, which would have red flagged him.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen refused to share information with State Social Services in their 2016 Investigation into the perps home.
-State Social Services failed to find anything actionable, or failed to act on actionable information in their 2016 investigation.
-The FBI failed to forward clear tips indicating a criminal threat.
-The FBI, five months earlier failed to act on an actionable criminal threat.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen was a coward, and perhaps also several other sheriff's deputies. (after watching this video- which implied that the coaches Aaron Feis, Scott Beigel, and Chris Hixon- ran past him to enter the building, while he stayed outside- I had to spend a few minutes on the heavy bag)
-Even now, it looks like the Broward Sheriff's office is in full CYA mode, rather than facing up to their apparently multiple and multi-valent failures.  I commented to someone who said that the Sheriff needed to resign that 'if this were Japan, he'd be expected to do more than that'.

So at least three government agencies failed to take actions that might have prevented this event, some of them multiple times, but rather than raising the question of what the limits of just how well the government can protect us is, we're talking about guns, which we know is an issue that isn't moving anywhere and so is only crassly being used as a political cudgel, and in many cases, people hiding behind children to do it.

What we should be talking about are things like:
-Why aren't groups like No Notoriety getting any attention?
-How making these perps infamous potentially inspires others to emulate him
-How the media can help reduce the appeal of committing these acts
-How we can hold failures of the bureaucracy to account
-How we should deal with discipline in schools
-How we should be raising our kids, and especially our boys in a society that increasingly is devoid of fathers, or even father figures, such as God the Father.
-How a culture that values fame as if it were a virtue creates a hollowness in it's people

I think most of us here are of like mind, and understand these issues, but I just wanted to lay this all out somewhere, so please forgive my indulgence.

Since we've been again made to defend our Second Amendment rights yet again instead of actually dealing with the matters at hand, how about some appropriate music:

Grand Funk Railroad's "Don't let 'em Take Your Gun" (Produced by Frank Zappa)

Ted Hawkins- The Constitution

Scandalous

According to Vice magazine,

Can you imagine that? Arming women and preachers?

Unfortunately the NRA isn't offering to put guns in their hands. They'd have to provide their own guns. The NRA is just supporting their right not to have to be disarmed and helpless.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before now, I've trained some several women to shoot for such purposes. It often occurs during or shortly after a divorce, when emotions are high on both sides. So far none of them have had to make recourse to their arms for self-defense because, as xkcd reminds us, most people aren't murderers even in moments of high emotion. However, it does sometimes happen that a former spouse tries to kill his ex-wife. It's neither unreasonable nor unwise for a woman in that position to consider arming herself, and I am happy to support it.

Would You Believe -Four- Deputies?

Just how many Deputy Sheriffs would it have taken before they got comfortable enough to do their jobs and save the lives of the children dying in front of them? We'll never know, since they apparently waited for a different department to arrive and do the job the deputies would not do.

Asked about corruption in his department, by the way, the Sheriff said, "Lions don't care about the opinions of sheep." He did not explain how he knew anything about the opinions of lions, but we can clearly rule out any direct experience. The article suggests it was from watching Game of Thrones in his leisure hours, which seems much more plausible.

“You can’t just say no to everything.”

Or maybe you can.

A Philosophical Reading of Walls

I'm impressed with the thoughtfulness of this essay on wall-building as fortification technique. It contains at least two insights that are very much worth having:

1) Advances in weapons and advances in defense technology tend to mirror each other,

2) No matter what, defense in depth is necessary.

The relationship in (1) is a little more complex than the author suggests. It's not that advances in walls provoke advances in weapons, but rather that a two-way relationship exists between attack and defense. I drew up a slide to explain this for a conference once.

This was just a sketch of the issue for an academic audience; the more expert audience here will readily identify complexities I didn't bother to draw for them. The basic point is that swords got longer, and then they got shorter. Why? Well, armor got better and better for a while, meaning that it required more force to overcome. A sword is basically a lever, and the longer the lever, the greater the force at the end of the lever. Thus, longer swords.

After the advent of effective gunpowder weapons, however, armor was increasingly less effective and less present. Thus, swords got shorter again. Indeed, to a large degree they were abandoned in favor of the gunpowder weapons. They survive today as combat knives and bayonets, both normally considered last-ditch weapons whose use is preferably to be avoided in most circumstances. There is at least one example of an intentional bayonet charge from the Iraq War, as a way of attacking into an L-shaped ambush, but it isn't a go-to tactic anymore.

To return to the first article, I am impressed with the way the author treats the universals at play in defense. As he notes at the end, the question of the usefulness of walls remains up for debate. "Plato reckoned that walls encourage 'a soft habit of soul in the inhabitants, by inviting them to seek refuge within it instead of repelling the enemy.' Aristotle retorted, that not building walls was 'like desiring the country to be easy to invade.' It’s still an open argument."

If you don't use a gun, what's the bother about?

I'm gonna predict that the hoopla over the massacre now goes away, if this is true:

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The armed school resource officer assigned to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took a defensive position outside the school and did not enter the building while the shooter was killing students and teachers inside with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday.

That, I initially supposed, might have been protocol, but if this quote from the sheriff is correct, I guess not.

He said Peterson was armed, and was in uniform, and should have gone into the building during the 6-minute event, which left 17 people, most of them teenagers, dead. When asked what the deputy should have done, Israel said: “Went in and addressed the killer. Killed the killer.”

So what we have here, is a cascading failure of institutions. FBI, Sheriff's department, and likely the Federal government, due to the initiative to reduce minority teenage incarceration, the so called "school to prison pipeline" 39 visits from the cops, not a single arrest? I'm not even going to discuss the FBI, since that organization probably just needs to be disbanded at this point.

And Just Like That, The Story Changed

An officer was on the scene of last week's shooting. He hid.

But by all means, let's all disarm and trust the government to protect us and our children.

A Critique of Liberalism

This book review is encouraging that the book is worth reading; the review itself goes further than the book, into a criticism of liberalism (both classical and reform) as contrasted with Christianity. If you find the Christian account too strong, the book is probably more to your tastes. If you find the account compelling, the review will have pleased you and the book may still be of interest.

Appreciating Philosophy Degrees

An argument from Mark Cuban that such degrees will soon be worth more than computer science degrees. Advise your children accordingly.

Bee Stings

U.S.—Despite offering thousands of thoughts and prayers to the victims of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s latest flurry of moronic tweets, the nation’s religious people admitted at long last that their petitions were totally ineffective at preventing the pop astrophysicist from saying stupid things online. ... 

How Woke Are You? Take the Quiz!

For this last, the headline says about 90% of it, but I just couldn't leave it out:

Federal Government Launches GoFundMe Campaign To Pay Off $20 Trillion National Debt

Also Applies to Guns

A cartoon from xkcd implies a point that the author may or may not have intended to make.

Cross Picking

Jim Heath of the Reverend Horton Heat shows another way in which bluegrass techniques influenced rock and roll.

Graphs and Statistics

The opening graph is interesting, but it's quickly criticized in the comments for selection bias. So defenders produce other graphs -- quite a few of them -- with supporting stories.

What to believe? Well, this is one way of addressing the question.

This Law is Unjust

The law that the Special Counsel has been using to obtain guilty pleas needs to be changed. It is inhumane in the most literal sense: it is not a law that a human can be expected to obey no matter how hard that human being tries.

He lied when he said his last communication with Rick Gates was in August 2016, according to the government, when in fact in September 2016 'he spoke with both [Manafort deputy Rick] Gates and Person A' about a report and 'surreptitiously recorded the calls.'

Maybe this guy "lied" in the strict sense, intending to deceive the investigation. However, there is no possibility that I could accurately remember whether any conversation I had last fall was in August or September, let alone a conversation from a year before that. I could not expect to tell you accurately whether or not a particular conversation was the last time I had discussed it with the person I was talking to a year or more ago. The law treats any statement that turns out to be inaccurate as if it were a deliberate effort to deceive. But the human mind doesn't work that way. Every time you remember something, your brain alters the memory a bit. It is not a recording device like a video camera or a tape recorder; it is simply not reasonable to expect someone to remember details with perfect accuracy.

This law gives prosecutors incredible power, because simply by compelling testimony they can compel crimes. The only way to avoid being made into a criminal is to refuse to testify. Congress should alter this law at once to include an intent standard, so that the prosecution must prove that the intent of the accused was to deceive. If so, fine, prosecute him. An inhumane law is unjust, however, and unjust laws should be repealed or altered.

The fuel of rage

Empty private lives can make for inappropriately violent public ones.  I was struck by this comment from David Foster in a comment at his site, Chicago Boyz:

"I believe we have today in America a considerable number of people who expect to have . . . maybe not the *entire* content of their lives, but a significant and emotionally-intense portion . . . delivered by the public sphere. And it is these people who are most likely to commit political violence."

I won't quote the whole comment, which includes fascinating excerpts from Sebastian Haffner’s memoir of life in Germany between the wars.  In that period, when things began to improve, some parts of society seemed even more determined to find something wrong to be volcanically and violently opposed to--and they got their way before long.

Early voting starts tomorrow in my local county race. In trying to find out what my potential constituents want from their county government, I've been confused more than one by people who seem furious that no one is helping them, but even angrier if they are directed to volunteer aid groups, because "they don't want a handout." Others, or maybe the same people (it's slippery, what they're so angry about), are aggrieved because they're able to recover from the storm but the county won't crack down on those other guys, who leave their debris everywhere and didn't obey building codes in the first place.  Everyone wants the government to be more "accountable," but for some that seems to mean "make them cough up the recovery money we're sure they're hiding" while for others it means "punish them for being lax in law enforcement and wasting our tax money on handouts."

It makes me wonder if the key to the contradictions is the meaninglessness of private lives and the consequent need to gin up intense emotion in the public sphere. The people who got together with their neighbors to help the hardest hit and make the best of things seem to be recovering just fine, even though our local economy is still barely functioning and it remains hard to get insurance money or, if you can get the money, any contractors worth their salt who aren't too busy to start work.  The people who are still fuming with anger appear paralyzed and rootless.

The worst-struck neighborhoods have no obvious home-grown structure:  no churches, clubs, or community clean-up parties.  Part of it may be that these neighborhoods have too high a percentage of second homes and, even after six months, absentee owners.  Another part may be that over half of the homes in these areas were badly damaged, and that's too high a percentage for the rest to come together as a healing network.  When these people ask me what I'd do for them as a commissioner, I have no answer.  Can a government ever make up for a lack of local community?  I think governments do well simply to avoid the temptation to disrupt what local communities can do for themselves.

Geese and ganders

What would happen if we seriously tried to apply Robert Mueller's legal analysis to everyone who was active in the 2016 election?

Arthur the Centurion

An implausible theory, says the Spectator. But the border country hosting it certainly has an interesting history.

The debatable land in question is the thin wedge of territory between England and Scotland on the west coast which, for a period in the late Middle Ages, was officially declared as lawless by the parliaments of each country. The resulting piece of English legislation contains a quite magnificent disclaimer:

All Englishmen and Scottishmen are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy, all and every such person and persons, their bodies, property, goods and livestock… without any redress to be made for same.

As Robb comments dryly, ‘by all accounts they availed themselves of the privilege’.

It's these Border Country folk who later, following an adventure in the Stewart plantationing of Ulster, become the "Scots-Irish" so momentous in American history.

My husband's work

My husband, as I may have mentioned, spends much of his time working on Civil War games, the old-fashioned kind with paper maps and cardboard counters. I don't often understand a great deal of what goes into one of these things, so I enjoyed reading this interview with the fellow he works most closely with. As the article points out, the author tried to get an interview with Greg but was referred to his developer, Bill. Greg's clear message was, "I don't do interviews." Luckily Bill gives a great interview and understands the game design process inside and out. Bill is an interesting guy, who has come and stayed with us here twice. He and Greg stay in close contact by phone and email.


  

The Year of the Dog

My father was born in the Year of the Dog. He would have been 72. The Chinese cycle is 12 years long, so when it's your year, your age will be divisible by 12 that year.

I am a Tiger, myself.

Communist Spies in Western Governments

They're not always fake news.

Not Doing This "Debate" Today

I think we've all made up our mind about gun control, mass shootings, etc. I haven't got anything new to say on the subject, and there's no reason to repeat myself when 15 years of previous responses are available in the archives. Only tyrannies disarm their populations. Free men are the best defense of a free state. You get bad things sometimes in both free states and tyrannies, but the bad things in tyrannies are worse; and the freedom is worth defending for its own sake. I won't stop believing any of that.

Also, though, I realized as I saw this debate spiraling up again last night that the fight is really over. We won.

There are only 8 states that are not 'shall-issue' states for concealed carry permits. That means there are 42 states whose legislatures believe that the right to keep and bear arms must be respected, barring a clear and obvious disability such as a felony conviction or involuntary hospitalization for mental health reasons. It takes only 34 states to call a Constitutional Convention, and only 38 to ratify new Constitutional amendments proposed by such a convention.

They don't realize it who live in coastal enclaves, but they've lost this fight. Even if they should manage to pass a restrictive Federal law, there are enough state legislatures out there simply to remove the issue from Federal authority. "No law shall be passed by Congress respecting the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms; no Federal agency may regulate the possession of arms by citizens. All such authority is reserved to the states, or to the People."

The best presidential poll

Scott ("Dilbert") Adams argued last month that President Trump enjoys the highest presidential rating ever, using small-business optimism as a proxy: 

Big businesses can do fine with a president who promotes policies that favor big corporations, even if the rest of the country is suffering. But when small business owners are feeling good about the economy, that means the president is doing a more bottoms-up job of getting things right. President Trump has focused on bottoms-up economics from the start, meaning jobs and lessened regulations. Apparently that is working.

Louder for the people in the back

Stolen shamelessly from Ace:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2018/02/12/fisking-the-stop-telling-poor-people-to-cook-doofus-with-special-guest-my-mom/

In the article, Larry Correia (sci-fi author and pretty nice guy in person according to people I know) savagely fisks an idiot "social justice reporter" who sneers at the idea that poor people can save money and eat healthier by cooking rather than eating fast food.  Larry (quite correctly) points out that it is staggeringly obvious that this reporter has neither ever been truly poor, nor ever really had to shop in stores like Dollar General or Buy Lots (nor likely, in my opinion, would be caught dead doing so).

When I was a kid, my parents were wealthier by a good deal than my father's parents ever were, but never were sure they could afford to put shoes on all four of their children at the same time.  Fast food was a rare treat, and yet they still managed to cook meals every night of my life.  Why?  Because that was how you fed a family of six without much money.  Had they fed us fast food every night, I'm sure that they wouldn't have been able to afford shoes for us.

Personally, I'll admit, for many years I didn't want to come home after a long day's work and cook dinner, and I fully confess that it was a poor economic choice.  I have since mended my ways and my meager bank account shows the benefits of doing so.  And Larry is dead on, one doesn't need a full spice rack or vast array of utensils and pans in which to fix a good meal.  Most of my cooking is done out of my favorite skillet and using a single knife and cutting board.  And while I have a nice skillet, knife, and cutting board, I could go out to Walmart right now and purchase replacements for less than $20 (I just looked it up on the Walmart website).  That's the same cost as a two-four person dinner at most every fast food place.  So, as Larry suggested, skip a meal at KFC and have bologna sandwiches that night, and suddenly you can afford all to tools you need to cook (and yes, you can absolutely brown ground beef with no utensil other than a fork, I have done it myself).

A Good Interview

I endorse AVI's reading: this interview is worth your time.

Cascade Music

Waylon Jennings had the sound. The cascade is a bluegrass technique, though, made famous by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Here's a guy who has the sense of it.



So now that you know what to look for, here are the masters.



Unfortunately, the most famous incarnation is this tune. It was composed by the masters, but ended up in a stereotype that suggested this wasn't a high form of art. It was supposed to be something some simple-minded genetic defect could do without effort.



I met James Dickey once, long ago when I was young. He was a night fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater in World War II. For that cause I will forgive him everything, even this, but bear in mind that it was a significant slander.

Watch Earl Scruggs do "Foggy Mountain," years later, with the young men and children he's taught to follow in his footsteps. He gives about 42 seconds of embarrassed introduction. You can skip it, if you don't want to hear what it meant to him to find students who really cared about his art.

Good question

Stephen Green@VodkaPundit

Is “budget” the right word when the plan is to spend all the money and then some, forever?

12:24 PM - Feb 12, 2018

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The Army Gets Back to Basics

Following a survey of commanders, the Army is re-instituting some traditional features in Basic.

The Media Loves North Korea

This is a simple product of hatred for the Trump administration, I suppose, but it has led to glowing coverage for the most tyrannical regime on earth. The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and NBC are the leading contenders for the dishonor of most devout praise.

Jeff Jacoby provides some needed bracing. Uncle Jimbo, too. Get it together, American press. The DPRK's leadership are totalitarian monsters.

Communists are the Best Catholics?

Last week we heard that the Vatican had decided to allow the Communists to appoint bishops. This week, we get these statements:

“Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese,” a senior Vatican official has said.

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, praised the Communist state as “extraordinary”, saying: “You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.

The bishop told the Spanish-language edition of Vatican Insider that in China “the economy does not dominate politics, as happens in the United States, something Americans themselves would say.”... [he] said that, as opposed to those who follow “liberal thought”, the Chinese are working for the greater good of the planet.

The Decree Against Communism is still in effect, but the drift in the direction of renouncing it seems pronounced of late.

First Things on the Alt-Right and Christianity

An interesting exploration of the philosophy behind the so-called 'alt-right.' Philosophy is an ancient discipline, and there is always more to know.

Organized Crime?

The Teamsters Union gets set to fight US immigration agents. Mostly this is within the law -- they're training to know their maximal rights in resisting warrants of various kinds -- but these numbers are striking. (Not the Teamsters. The Teamsters are not striking.)

[T]he organization — which covers a variety of fields, including airlines, truckers, dairy farmers and more — also has a sizable share of immigrant workers, roughly a third, 40,000.

After what happened to Garcia — one of many recent forced deportations — worry ran through Teamster shops, Miranda said....

Spinelli paid particular attention because many of his members — immigrants who work at a Long Island dairy farm — were profoundly shaken when federal agents raided nearly 100 7-Eleven stores last month in a search for undocumented workers.

“We deliver all the dairy to all the 7-Eleven stores in the city — you can imagine how scared some of these guys are,” he said.

Surely this is an indication that the third of Teamsters who are immigrants includes a lot of unlawful immigrants? How far can the union go in organized efforts to prevent enforcement of the law before it is a criminal conspiracy to aid and abet the violation of immigration laws? Lawyers among you are invited to reply. I assume that legal rights are legal rights no matter what, but this seems like a clear-cut case of trying to (as they say on the Left) 'obstruct justice.' I suppose it's legal to obstruct justice as long as you do no more than insist upon your rights.

And it sounds as if the law is itself a part of the conspiracy to avoid enforcement: "Employers also have the right to three days’ notice if the feds instigate what’s known as an I-9 probe — basically, a review of employees’ working papers, Cortés said."

More Bad Polling

The sample size is only 900, but these numbers suggest the narrative is slipping through the media's fingertips.

The Nation: "Intelgate"

A serious guy writing at the left-leaning Nation declares that we need a new Church committee to get to the bottom of our intelligence community's election meddling.

Polling not going well

Whoever the PR firm was that was hired to take charge of this Trump-Russia-Election-Hacking story, I think they may owe their clients a refund.  Rasmussen reports that only 42% of likely U.S. voters can be induced to say that Russia interfered in the 2016 election more than the FBI did.  34% think the FBI did more interfering, while the other 24% aren't quite sure and are waiting to see what new admissions are contained in this weekend's data dump of whatever private texts have been forensically rescued from the FBI's records-maintenance procedures after three or four minutes concentrated attention from digital experts with some actual interest in disclosure.

"A Slight Change"

The Marine Corps Times:

In a slight change to the grueling initial stage of the 13-week Infantry Officer Course, Marines will no longer be required to pass the Combat Endurance Test to move on.

The Corps has come under criticism for what some have claimed to be unnecessarily high standards to graduate from the course. To date, only one unnamed female Marine has successfully completed the entire course.

But Marine officials at Training Command contend the changes are not an effort to water down standards.... Previously it was scored as a simple pass or fail, but now the test will no longer be used to weed Marines out. The officers will continue to take a Combat Evaluation Test, but their score will be just one of many components of the course considered for a student’s overall evaluation.

Perhaps they'll introduce a personal essay, as the colleges did when they made the same move to lower their standards on test scores and grades. I imagine there are many who cannot pass the Combat Endurance Test who could write a very moving personal essay showing how much it would mean to them to become an Infantry Officer.

A Small Additional Matter

A long-time informant for both CIA and FBI Counterintelligence testifies on Uranium One.

Campbell said Russian nuclear officials “told me at various times that they expected APCO to apply a portion of the $3 million annual lobbying fee it was receiving from the Russians to provide in-kind support for the Clinton’s Global Initiative.”

“The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months,” Campbell said in the statement. “APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the US-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.”

In a statement to Fox News, though, APCO called Campbell's assertion "false and unfounded."

Maybe. Maybe we'll finally get to see what really went on with that particularly scandalous transaction. Team Trump has been called treasonous for allegedly considering dropping sanctions on Russia in order to get help from Russia; Team Clinton stands accused of selling massive quantities of American uranium to the Russians in return for cash bribes. That sounds a little worse than sanctions relief, even if all the accusations against both sides were true.

The Senate has been busy

A Senate report on the need to investigate disturbing revelations in the FBI Obamagate text traffic.  You can click on a link to the 30-page PDF report, but I call your special attention to pages 13-18, which quote extensively from the messages.  There also is an interesting discussion of why the FBI could not locate a large trove of missing messages over a period of several months, but the Senate was able to retrieve them after a couple of weeks of effort once the proper investigators were given access.

A Military Parade?

I have a divided mind on this. On the one hand, as J. R. Salzman rightly points out, the main effect on the military will be having to show up at 0300 having spent a week polishing and detailing their tanks. They aren't going to appreciate the event, so it's an odd way to honor them. They'll do it, of course, because they were ordered to do it. But why impose a time-consuming and expensive detail on them that doesn't add to their war-fighting prowess?

On the other hand, I have an idea that would make it really worth doing. I would love to see the military get together with Rolling Thunder and do a combined current-service parade with veteran riders on either end of it. It would show the way that America's military serves as a thread that ties together generations, and helps to bind together our whole society.

It would still be expensive, but the detail might be counter-balanced by the opportunity to meet veterans from earlier conflicts and learn each other's stories. I think the current service personnel would value that, and would certainly benefit from the ties it would build. At the same time, such a display would make an important point about the real, deep value of military service to American civic life.

UPDATE: Sen. Rand Paul has an alternative suggestion: let's bring the troops home from Afghanistan and hold a victory parade for them.

A Mead Hall

The British National Trust has discovered a Saxon mead hall, conveniently located on property they already own.

A number of items have been found including several Roman coins, three Roman brooches, Roman pottery, a Saxon loom weight and part of a Viking stirrup mount, as well as a probable Anglo Saxon strap tag.

...And Then There Were Seven

Molly Hemingway, yesterday:

For more than year and half, the media have gone all-in on reporting every possible angle of President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia.... But as the Russian collusion story disintegrates, another interesting story ascends. Investigations by multiple congressional committees as well as an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Justice have shown irregularities in the handling of the most politically sensitive probes...

These investigations have resulted in the firing, demotion, and reassignment of at least six top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice. And all of those personnel changes were made before even the first official reports and memoranda from these investigations were made public.

Emphasis added.

Today, in the Washington Post:

A Justice Department official who helped oversee the controversial probes of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election stepped down this week.

David Laufman, an experienced federal prosecutor who in 2014 became chief of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, said farewell to colleagues Wednesday. He cited personal reasons.

Probably just a meaningless coincidence.

Politics all the way down

Is there any limit to the weaponizing of federal bureaucracies under the Obama administration?  Am I naive to believe this process reached levels not experienced under previous administrations?

Zerohedge has a horrifying summary of evidence in the FBI's possession that inexplicably had no impact on the Uranium One deal or the willingness of someone, anyone, at any time, to look honestly at what the Clinton money machine might be up to.  The story mentions reporter Michael Isakoff at one point. Isakoff is the author of the Yahoo article that, in classic circular disinformation style, was used to burnish the credibility to the Clinton/Steele dossier before the Carter Page FISA court, even though the only source of the Yahoo article was the dossier itself.

Isikoff says he was "stunned" to learn that his article was cited in the FISA warrant. We "believe" him.

The Connaught Rangers

Two songs with the same name, a proud British army song and a defiant mutineers' song.

Formed in 1881 from two older regiments, the Connaught Rangers were one of eight Irish regiments in the British army. The regiment served in the Second Boer War and World War I, and it helped suppress the Easter Uprising.

However, in 1920 nearly 90 soldiers from the regiment mutinied in protest against martial law in Ireland. In 1922, after the establishment of the Irish Free State, the regiment and five others from Ireland were disbanded. Many of the soldiers from these regiments returned to Ireland and joined the new Irish army.

The Senate piles on

No criminal indictments of FBI or DOJ personnel for lying to the FISA court, but the Senate has referred Steele himself for criminal investigation for lying to the U.S. Government.  The Senate's referral implies that Sidney Blumenthal fed the dossier's contents to the Russians in the first place.

What Wrong Looks Like

Apparently it looks like 1984 plus Han Chinese racism.

In Praise of Emotion

A new book argues that we've not been giving our feelings enough credit, or a big enough role in shaping our lives. I find the thesis shocking, but the review is glowing.

Confused? Mission accomplished.

The focus over the last couple of days has become:  did the FISA application for surveillance on Carter Page adequately disclose that the Clinton campaign bought and paid for a phony Steele dossier by mentioning in footnote somewhere that there may have been a political origin of some kind to the dossier?  As an Ace commenter put it:

Without the dossier, the case for spying on Page was "some Russians tried to get close to him and didn't." Which is pretty thin gruel. The dossier spices it up to say Trump and Russia are a thing, so it is no surprise that Page and Russians are close….

Conservative Treehouse adds an argument, based on curiously lined-up background identification facts in court filings, that Carter Page was an FBI informant in Russian spy sting operations until very shortly before he became a surveillance target himself, on the heels of developing a relationship with the Trump campaign.

It stinks to high heaven.  But as another Ace commenter put it, "Confused?  Mission accomplished."

And another, assuming the nod-nod-wink-wink in the infamous footnote was duly heard and received:

FISA Applicant: Judge, Hillary Clinton would like us to open an investigation on her opponenet in the Presidential campaign.

FISA Judge: Well, what evidence of crime do you have?

FISA Applicant: We heard from a guy, who heard from Sydney Blumenethal, who heard from....

FISA Judge: OK, that's enough. Warrant granted.

Young Dubliners

... and some Irish history in the links.

'Twas England bade our Wild Geese fly
that small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves
or the fringe of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side
or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their names we will keep where the fenians sleep
'neath the shroud of the foggy dew

The Talmadge Bridge

If you ever go to Savannah, you will see arcing across the river a mighty bridge. This bridge, the Talmadge Bridge, is named after former Democratic governor of Georgia Eugene Talmadge.

Since long before the monuments controversy, I've been expecting them to change the name. Talmadge was an important Georgia governor, to be sure. He was a fierce opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, these days considered a major saint by Democrats but in those days intensely opposed even by many fellow Democrats. He was a fierce opponent of labor unions, declaring martial law when necessary to break strikes. He was against civil rights for blacks, and deeply disturbed by the idea that whites and blacks might intermarry. Indeed, he ran his 1950 re-election campaign chiefly against miscegenation as a reason to favor segregation.

Yeah, it's been a while now I've been expecting people to look around and notice they have a big bridge named after him.

So anyway, the Girl Scouts of America have decided they'd like the bridge renamed after their founder, Juliette Gordon Lowe, who came from Savannah. Her house is a major tourist attraction.

I see no reason to oppose this change.

Asian Bee-Eating Hornets

Kind of a fun bit of reporting from Out East.

The bees also exploit a unique bit of insect anatomy: The hornet doesn’t have a heart—literally and I suppose kind of figuratively when you think about it....

The bees can't get through the hornet shells with their stingers, so they came up with a pretty nifty alternative.

Man Of The Hour

Rep. Adam Schiff, apparently determined to do every single thing that Trump is accused of having done wrong. Colluding with Russian spies to affect US politics? The only reason he failed is that he got pranked. Exposing sensitive sources and methods to endanger US intelligence collection for partisan purposes? Included for the sole purpose of forcing the President to make redactions.

This guy is making a clear-cut case for restoring the practice of caning Congressmen.

Which campaign deserved surveillance?

This is a good timeline of the sorry affair of the Carter Page surveillance and its background.  This part jumped out at me:

[By October 2016,] the FBI is aware that the Hillary campaign paid lawyers to give money to Fusion GPS, who gave money to a foreign agent (Christopher Steele), who got information from Russian informants. Yet, the FBI counter intelligence effort was being run on the Trump campaign not the Clinton campaign.

More Bagpipes!

The WSJ asks if that's really what bagpipe bands need. "Is there such a thing as too many bagpipes? There’s a nagging suspicion, even among bagpipers, that the answer might be yes."

However, the real answer is, "No."

Tears of joy

Fun?  I'll say.  SpaceX STUCK the landings.  Their people have been shrieking with excited joy non-stop for so many minutes, I'm amazed they have voices left.  Even the East German judge gives it a 10.0.

Falcon Heavy

If you didn't watch the live video, it went well. The landing of the sideboosters is Buck Rogers stuff. Glad to see the private space program doing well, and having fun.

"An Idealist With The Scars To Prove It"

This story has everything. Puerto Rico is struck by a hurricane, and is in desperate need of food aid. FEMA issues a contract for 30 million meals to a contractor with only one person employed there, the 'minority female' owner (who is, under contracting laws, entitled to preference points in terms of contract awards for both of those statuses). She sub-contracts to a completely inadequate set of wedding caterers, who produce 50,000 of the 18.5 million meals needed at the first deadline. These meals also are not properly assembled, lacking a self-heating mechanism like an MRE's chemical heater. These have to be shipped separately.

So naturally, she's suing the government for terminating her contract.

Ms. Brown described herself in an interview as a government contractor — “almost like a broker,” she said — who does not keep employees or specialize in any field but is able to procure subcontracted work as needed, and get a cut of the money along the way. She claims a fashion line and has several self-published books, and describes herself on Twitter as “A Diva, Mogul, Author, Idealist with scars to prove it.”

After Tribute’s failure to provide the meals became clear, FEMA formally terminated the contract for cause, citing Tribute’s late delivery of approved meals. Ms. Brown is disputing the termination. On Dec. 22, she filed an appeal, arguing that the real reason FEMA canceled her contract was because the meals were packed separately from the heating pouches, not because of their late delivery. Ms. Brown claims the agency did not specify that the meals and heaters had to be together.

She is seeking a settlement of at least $70 million.

Planned Parenthood and Fusion GPS

This report comes from a clearly biased outlet, and cites only right-wing sources. On the other hand, I suppose it would be hard to find anyone critical of Planned Parenthood in the mainstream press -- especially given the particular subject of this report. So take it with salt, but see if it fits with other things you've read.

The FBI Faked A Whole Field of Forensics

So claims this article in Slate, based on another article in the Washington Post.

"The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.... Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.”

The shameful, horrifying errors were uncovered in a massive, three-year review by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project. Following revelations published in recent years, the two groups are helping the government with the country’s largest ever post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

Chillingly, as the Post continues, “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.” Of these defendants, 14 have already been executed or died in prison."

The article goes on to interview an expert who says that the problem generalizes. "Nor is the problem limited to bad hair cases—much the same type of eyeballed comparison is done on bite marks, ballistics, fibers, and even fingerprints."

I begin to see why they think we should be afraid to cross these folks.

Oh, Well, Is That All?

In an article about how California is likely to race ever-further left, given the absence of hope for Republicans in the state:

That means staking out the most liberal stance on issues such as single-payer health care in California, a highly expensive initiative that failed in the legislature last year. The push is in response to the uncertainty surrounding health-care revisions in Washington, but it is estimated to cost twice the state’s annual budget.

No, of course that's not all. That's the estimate. What was the estimate on that train project?

Getting Ahead of Ourselves

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is transforming practically every human activity: the way we make things; the way we use the resources of our planet; the way we communicate and interact with each other as humans; the way we learn; the way we work; the way we govern; and the way we do business. Its scope, speed and reach are unprecedented.

Think of it: Just 10 years ago, there was no such thing as a smartphone. Today, no one leaves home without it.

No one, that is, except that 32% of Americans didn't have smartphones in 2015, the last year for which numbers are available. That creates potential problems for models like Amazon's new checkout-free store, which requires both a smartphone and a checking account. The people who don't are of course the very people who are going to lose out in the new economy that these same companies are rushing to create.

They're aware of that, but so far their minds turn quickly to socialist solutions.

How can we secure the future of those whose jobs will be eliminated by machines? Do we need a guaranteed basic income? Should we impose taxes on software and robots? Do companies that provide global IT platforms have to comply with national rules and regulations? If so, how can they be enforced? What freedoms and rights should individuals have in the digital age?

Do you have any better answers? I'm not liking the way the discussion is shaping up. Even the list of questions sounds like a future I'd rather we could avoid.

Free Beer... Tomorrow (Or the Day After)

Bud Light is planning to offer free beer to everyone in Philadelphia during the celebratory parade on Thursday morning. Three million people are expected to attend that parade. Three million Philadelphia Eagles fans, day drinking for free on a Thursday morning.

No way that will cause problems. Good decision, everybody.

Encounters With Men

Katie Rophie has an important piece on the current moment of (especially liberal) feminine rage, which I am not going to comment on in the detail it deserves. What I am going to wonder about is how much the rage is driven by the kind of men who occupy the circles in which these women travel.

For example, Rophie cites one of the women who invited friends to an Election Night party in 2016:

While I was writing this essay, one of the anonymous emailed me a piece Donegan wrote in The New Inquiry about the devastating night of Trump’s victory. She had hosted an election gathering, and as the results came in, the men were drinking tequila out of a penis-shaped shot glass, and laughing and making jokes as the women cried and clutched one another. Instead of thinking about choosing new friends, she ends with a blanket indictment of men and a blow for the cause:

Here is what the last few days have reminded me: white men, even those on the left, are so safe, so insulated from the policies of a reactionary presidency, that many of them view politics as entertainment, a distraction without consequences, in which they get to indulge their vanity by fantasizing that they are on the side of good. . . . The morning after the election, I found the penis-shaped shot glass in my kitchen and threw it against the wall. I am not proud of this, but it felt good to destroy something a white man loved.

My first reaction to this was incredulity that any men, unless out-and-proud gay men, were drinking anything "out of a penis-shaped shot glass." No way, I thought. But I have no reason to doubt the author, who almost certainly invited people of her own political leanings. These men, 'even those on the left,' must be the sort of people who do things like that. 

I assume they aren't in fact gay, since she would then think of them as threatened by Trump rather than 'safe.'  But they aren't the sort of people who actually voted for Trump: they almost certainly were 'on the left' and voted for Clinton, or she wouldn't have invited them to her party. The point is that they're so far outside of my own culture that I find their behavior unrecognizable.

Another writer produces a piece about an unexpected and unwanted encounter with an actual Trump supporter, a self-described "redneck," for which she is deeply grateful.

"Just ask any redneck like me what you can do with zip ties — well, zip ties and duct tape. You can solve almost any car problem. You’ll get home safe," he said, turning to his teenage son standing nearby. "You can say that again," his son agreed.

The whole interaction lasted 10 minutes, tops. Katherine and I made it home safely.

Our encounter changed the day for me. While I tried to dive back into my liberal podcast, my mind kept being pulled back to the gas station. I couldn’t stop thinking about the man who called himself a "redneck" who came to our rescue. I sized him up as a Trump voter, just as he likely drew inferences from my Prius and RESIST sticker. But for a moment, we were just two people and the exchange was kindness (his) and gratitude (mine).

As I drove home, I felt the full extent to which Trump has actually diminished my own desire to be kind. He is keeping me so outraged that I hold ill will toward others on a daily basis. Trump is not just ruining our nation, he is ruining me....

[M]aybe if we treat one another with the kindness and gratitude that is so absent from our president and his policies, putting our most loving selves forward, this moment can transform into something more bearable? I want to come away from the march with that simple lesson, but it begs this question: How do we hold onto the fire fueling our resistance to the cruelty Trump unleashes, but also embrace the world with love? I wish I knew.

The second encounter turns out better for everyone. The difference is not in the women, but in the kind of men. That's an important point for those of us who, though we are on the other side of this culturally and in terms of sex, want to ensure better relations between the sexes.

Are you saying you don't trust us any more?

Politico is shocked to discover that the Republican party has conservatives in it who distrust the government, even a formerly sacrosanct entity like the FBI, which previously only Democrats were smart enough to distrust:“

The attacks on the FBI are already working,” said Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer. “Regardless of what happens next, the news has now been filled with sordid accusations and stories about corrupt FBI agents, that they will sink into the minds of many Republicans and even Democrats who are paying attention. These Republican attacks can possibly achieve the same kind of effect on law enforcement institutions, as Republican attacks on the social safety net or regulations like OSHA in the eras of Reagan and Bush. In other words, nobody or nothing in government can be trusted.”

If his goal was to deride the grounds for distrust and suspicion of the political weaponization of yet one more previously respectable federal agency, then his concluding paragraph may have gone awry:

But there are profound dangers for the Republicans, too. Unlike some other quarters of the government, intelligence and law enforcement agencies have power to strike back. After all, they know the secrets, and have been known to use them. At this moment, no one knows more about what really did or didn’t happen between the Russians and the Trump campaign than the FBI agents working on Robert Mueller’s investigation. That may make the bureau a tempting target for this White House, but it makes it a formidable adversary as well.

Four Chaplins' Day

I had not heard this story before.

It’s been 75 years since the U.S. Army Transport Dorchester was hit by German submarine U-223 while transporting 902 servicemen, merchant seamen and civilian workers to Greenland. On Feb. 3, 1943. four Army chaplains on board gave their lives to save others....

The ship was hit below the water line with a torpedo, initially killing and wounding many men on board.... When they ran out of life jackets, the four chaplains removed their own and gave them away as well. As the ship sank, the chaplains could be seen, arms linked, on the deck, and heard, singing hymns and offering prayers.

Almost seven hundred men died in that one incident. We think of 'the Long War' as grinding and brutal, but as this Foreign Policy piece points out, we've had there were fewer war deaths in the first decade of the Long War than in any decade of the 20th century.

An antidote to chaos

I am loving Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life:  An Antidote to Chaos," which my lovely husband bought for me.  The summary below is cropped and summarized further from an Amazon reader review  The last three are so short because I got them out of the table of contents, not having gotten that far yet.

Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. It’s a deep instinct to size others up when looking at them to see where they fit in the social hierarchy. If you crouch forward you’re inviting more oppression from predator personalities and can get stuck in a loop that's not helping anyone.

Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. People often have self-contempt whether they realize it or not. Imagine someone you love and treat well, then treat yourself with the same respect.

Rule 3: Choose your friends carefully. Eliminate those who are hurting you. It’s not cruel, it’s sending a message that some behaviors are not to be tolerated.

Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. You only see a slice of their life, a public facet, and are blind to the problems they conceal.

Rule 5: Don't let children do things that make you dislike them. You aren't as nice as you think, and you will unconsciously take revenge on them.  Brats are like misbehaving dogs:  they never get taken off the leash to enjoy a little freedom, because they can't be trusted.

Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Start by ceasing to do one thing, anything, that you know to be wrong.

Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Meaning is how you protect yourself against the suffering that life entails. Meaning lets you know when you’re in the right place, midway between chaos and order. If you stay firmly ensconced within order, things you understand, then you can’t grow. If you stay within chaos, then you’re lost. Expediency is what you do to get yourself out of trouble here and now, but you're sacrificing the future for the present.

Rule 8: Tell the truth—or, at least, don't lie. Telling the truth can be hard in the sense that it’s often difficult to know the truth. However, we can know when we’re lying. Telling lies makes you weak. You can feel it, and others can sense it too. Meaning is associated with truth, and lying is the antithesis of meaning.

Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't. A good conversation consists of you coming out wiser than you went into it. Listen even to your enemies. They will lie about you, but they will also say true things about yourself that your friends won’t.

Rule 10: Be precise in your speech.  Don't cover things in a fog.  Face up to the real horrors of the world.

Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.  You're not supposed to remove all dangers from your kids' lives, you're supposed to be helping them become stronger.

Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. It can't hurt, and it might make you feel better.

For another perspective on the same rules, try this.  I don't think he liked the book.