The Kingly Pardon Power

Donald Trump is wrong to say that, as President, he has 'an absolute right' to pardon himself. That is doubly wrong. First, it is a power pertaining to a government office and not a right that is being described. Second, the power is not absolute. It is limited to cases that are not matters of impeachment.

Those are technicalities, of course, though people like me think technicalities are sometimes quite important when we are describing limits on the power of government. Trump's basic point, allowing for his penchant for vague language, is correct. The President can pardon any Federal crime, even if the crime is merely an accusation or suspicion rather than a proven fact. Here's the Constitution's language:

...he [i.e. the President] shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

There is one "except," and no other limits. It doesn't say "unless it's himself accused." It doesn't say "unless it's in his self-interest." It doesn't say anything other than what it does in fact say.

This is a power that kings used to have, and it is a tremendous power, so it's reasonable to fear that the use of it threatens to establish a king rather than a President. There are nevertheless checks on this power. If the Congress doesn't think the President is acting responsibly, they can impeach him and remove him from office. He cannot pardon himself in this case because it falls under the clear exception for impeachment cases. (The same is true if they should impeach and remove his chosen officials within the Executive branch, or the Judiciary).

If Congress does not act to do this, the People of the United States may vote to replace them. Such elections are held every two years for the entire House of Representatives, so that impeachment if not removal can be effected relatively swiftly if needed. Senators might resist the popular will, but facing the specter of a massive electoral wave in the House demanding impeachment, they are likely to act on removal.

If the People do not think that the President's use of the power of the pardon justifies such a wave to force the removal of the President, well, they are in effect signing off on the action. Under our system the People really are the sovereign that the old kings used to claim to be. They are the ones who have the final authority to approve the President's actions or not. If they do not demand his ouster, and especially if they should go on to re-elect him, all of our forms have been satisfied. The true sovereign has blessed the action.

This is a quality of democracy that most philosophers dislike very much. It has rare defenders, including British Law Lord Patrick Devlin in the last century. But in general philosophers are uncomfortable the the idea that clear violations of their preferred justice principle should go unpunished simply because the violations are popular, or simply because the violator is popular. Philosophers are of course free to make this argument to the people to try to convince them of it, but that seems like a poor solution to many of them. They know better than the common rabble, after all: what otherwise was the point of all those years of study?

The counterargument is pragmatic, and indeed the same kind of counterargument that capitalism raises in its defense against charges of injustice or of promoting inequality. Perhaps so, says the capitalist, but look how much better off we all are under this system! The alternative systems likewise claim to be organized by those who understand better, but they lead inevitably to poverty and frequently to ruin. Capitalism is wiser even when it violates justice principles, because it makes the trade based on local information about what is most needed right there by the people who really need it. It may sometimes make trades that violate principles, but the overall effect is a rising tide that lifts all boats. (And indeed, as much as capitalist globalization has done to disrupt America, it has raised boats around the world: global poverty is at an all time low.)

Similarly, here, the small-d democrat is inclined to accept the right (not power, but right) of the people to make their own decisions about what to support politically. They may sometimes make trades that the philosopher would not like and would not support, but they do it for reasons of their own that are obvious to them locally and opaque to those further away. These reasons are said to be 'racism' or 'bigotry' or 'hate,' but in fact they are simply opaque: you don't know because you aren't there, enmeshed in the life of the person making the choice. The accusation is an act of imagination, not a grasping of knowledge. That it is an act of imagination that suits one's own political interests, because it empowers elites like one's self instead of small men and women in the countryside, is reason for a true philosopher to be suspicious of it.

So it turns out that this kingly power is rooted in the plainest democracy, at least here in America. The President certainly does have the power to pardon any Federal crime with only one class of exceptions. If he does this badly and for wrong reasons, first our representatives and then we ourselves must punish it. Or, if we do not, then we must accept the responsibility for the choice. The king, after all, is ourselves.

UPDATE:

Andy McCarthy makes an allied argument.

More significantly, as I argued in Faithless Execution, we’ve become such a litigious society we fail to recognize that the Constitution mainly relies on political checks, not judicial ones. The idea is to promote liberty by putting the most important decisions in the hands of representatives who answer to the voters, not in the hands of judges who are not accountable to the public.

He goes on to criticize talk of self-pardon on other grounds.

UPDATE:

Apparently Nixon-era Federal lawyers came to the opposite conclusion, on the grounds that 'no one can be a judge in his own case.' But I think the above shows that such reasoning isn't adequate; no President does get to be the judge, finally, in these matters. By nature it appeals to the People, who are rightly sovereign.

"Traditional" Wife = "White Supremacy"

I am struck by the insistence on creating a new word to describe someone who does something that wives have traditionally, i.e. always, done. Calling them "tradwives" rather than "wives" is of a piece with the 1984 tendency to describe English Socialism as "Ingsoc," or for that matter the move to describe men as "cishet males." What we would have simply called a "wife" when I was a boy now must be described as a "cishet female tradwife," if you believe this nonsense.

Of course it is also the case that these women are white supremacists, because naturally that is the narrative to forward for the NYT. I'm sure there are white supremacist wives out there, although I imagine they are far fewer in number than the NYT imagines them to be. For every one you can find with a YouTube show that has troubling undertones, I'll bet that a fair-minded study would find ten thousand that are just really traditional wives.

Indeed, 'traditional wife' isn't an unhealthy role, and the argument that it is sort-of only for whites is not going to help other communities. Stable marriages are of great value in developing wealth across generations, as should be expected given the virtues that are needed in order to be successful at a stable marriage; and increasing wealth across generations is how you finally end the cycles of poverty and dysfunction. If anything we should be pushing people to develop the right virtues and to nurture their marriages, not trying to stigmatize a model that works for at least some subset of married couples.

UPDATE: A better invocation, although with the same social justice goals: using the Catholic act of contrition as a model for apologies.

A Victory of Sorts

Religious freedom is, and was, one of the basic liberties that America was founded to protect. Today the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the infamous "bake the cake" case, one that reasserts that religious liberty is a freedom that the government must take steps to respect.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the court did not rule on what that means. Many people think that religious liberty is just code for bigotry, and want it subordinated in every case in which religious liberty comes into conflict with things like baking cakes for gay weddings. Others think that religious liberty is a basic freedom, codified in the first amendment, and should always come out on top. The court didn't set any standard either for which should predominate, or how to adjudicate.

But that may be for the best. It leaves states free to make 50 different decisions, rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all standard on our diverse nation. I have often argued that SCOTUS's propensity for one-size solutions has been destabilizing to our nation. For that reason, I'm pleased with this decision.

Rampant Lion

The band's name is a variation of the famous formation that Robert the Bruce used at Bannockburn.

On Wild-Eyed Trump Critics

Henry Olsen writes that many critics seem to be 'gaslighting themselves,' a term I know from Tex's occasional use of it. I think that's right to a large degree: they're whipping themselves up in echo chambers on Twitter, and in societies for "Resistance" where their opinions are common to everyone. As a consequence they're reinforcing their own world view, which grows darker and more alarmed by the day. These growing fears are often unmoored from reality (See "Nazi" and "Boko Haram," immediately below).

I have been a frequent critic, through the campaign and to date. All the same, I have to say that -- on balance -- he is so far having a successful presidency. This is surprising given that he's been under serious investigation the entire time, and has run a White House and National Security Council that has been entirely too chaotic for its own good. His first Secretary of State was a disaster; his Attorney General, a source of grave disappointment even to Trump himself. All the same, he has managed to make good on strong tax cuts; a 'right to try' bill that lessens the Federal Government's sense of ownership of us even when we are in hours close to death; a gutting of many regulations, which combined with the tax cuts has spurred economic activity that President Obama thought would take 'a magic wand'; significant progress against ISIS; what looks like strong diplomatic moves on Iran and North Korea; he has obtained a number of concessions from China on economics; he has spurred a rethink of Turkey's drift into authoritarianism; he has, in short, had a few home runs and even more RBIs.

His rhetoric remains just as it always was, although some of his supporters think that is a large reason for his success. It may well be: it has been interesting watching him deploy his celebrity to smack down foes and build new alliances (e.g., the Kardashians; his pardon of a famous and mistreated black heavyweight fighter). His capacity to cause outrage frequently causes his opponents to lose the ball, running after this-or-that instead of remaining focused on opposing his policies. They have had successes in generating storms of outrage, but those do not necessarily translate into policy wins: the anti-NRA storm has not generated new Federal gun control, though it has generated many new NRA members; the current storm against border arrests may well reduce migration, just because it will send the opposing message to the one sent by the 'catch and release' policy, i.e., that bringing your kids not only won't get you automatic parole, it'll get you stress and difficulty. You may think, as many do, that stressing these families is immoral, but in effect all criminal legislation works that way. It is the fear of the penalty that makes the law effective.

As Olsen says:

Some Americans have been so disaffected by economic changes of the last decade that they see Trump’s enthusiastic embrace of American jobs for American workers as a breath of fresh air. Others find his staunch support of American security as reassuring. Trump’s proposed Muslim ban enrages many of his opponents, but the polling data suggests that this more than any other proposal is what made him president.

Others might be less enthusiastic about Trump but have good reason to think he’s doing a good job. Religiously traditional people see themselves under siege from an elite culture that holds them in contempt and have chosen to embrace the devil that backs them over the devil who does not.

Still others, many of whom are traditional business or free market conservatives, remain wary of him personally but increasingly like his policies. Indeed, there are a number of polls that show Republicans who voted for Gary Johnson to be of this view. They might prefer someone without Trump’s flaws, but faced with the evidence of a man who hasn’t screwed up and who has implemented much of their agenda they seem willing to reconsider their prior anti-Trump views.

Olsen goes on to point out that this could all turn the other way, too, if things don't continue to go Trump's way. Trump needs to gain support, not merely to rely on his existing support. But he may well, should the economy continue to boom and ordinary Americans come to see him as someone who has made their lives better. "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" was a powerful campaign slogan once. It may well be again. That depends on it being a fact that most Americans really are better off than four years since. Still, they well might be.

I think the President is open to serious criticisms even yet, but you can't make them if instead you are yelling about fascism. Just this week a new NSC appointee was described in a press outlet as a "Neo-Nazi"; Google posted search results about the California Republican Party stating that their ideology was "Nazism." Both criticisms are both ridiculous and unserious. And if you are only raising unserious criticisms, you're missing the chance to stick the guy where he's open to being stuck. More, if ordinary Americans like him and you're not careful about this language, there's a risk that you'll accidentally end up rehabilitating Nazis.

UPDATE:

Drudge provides an illustration of why some people are not so very unhappy with Donald J. Trump.

The response from critics was to complain that it was a "crime" for him to issue the information from the jobs report before it was released by the agency (which works for him). This is the kind of unhinged nonsense that is going to render criticism even of legitimate issues irrelevant. You want to jail the guy who brought us to record-low unemployment? Because he didn't follow D.C. protocol? C'mon.

Separating Children at the Border

Our nation is failing badly at our public discourse. This week has seen one of the outrage storms that are increasingly common, this time over the Trump administration's decision -- this is how it is painted -- to separate the children of immigrants from their families at the border. I have seen this compared to the Nazis taking Jewish children as a prelude to murdering them. A number of children have been 'lost' by the system; I have seen this compared to the 'lost girls' seized by Boko Haram.

This is all madness. What's really at stake is that a Federal judge on the 9th Circuit has been pressing successive administrations to obey a 1997 settlement agreement. The agreement wasn't really meant for the circumstances that have arisen since then, which has led to negative consequences when it is applied anyway. Multiple administrations have dealt with these consequences, and really the problem is that Congress needs to revisit the law. But Congress can't do that because it is too divided on what the law should be.

As a result, the real debate we are having -- apparently entirely without realizing it -- is whether justice morally requires us not to enforce Federal criminal immigration laws, in every case in which they might be enforced on migrants traveling with children they claim to be their own. There are very negative consequences to accepting that criterion as requiring the waiving of criminal sanctions, especially in that it empowers human traffickers but also in that it encourages migrants to bring children along on a very perilous journey. We really should be discussing that, and trying to decide what the right solution looks like. Instead, we're talking about Nazis and Boko Haram.

What's going on here is that there was a 1997 settlement to a 1985 dispute called the Flores Settlement Agreement. This is not a law, but it is treated by the courts as if it were a sort of contract between the government and any migrants it might arrest. The 9th Circuit Court has applied it in this way for decades. Of particular interest here, the Flores agreement requires that children who are not suspected of a crime not be detained by the government. If it happens to detain some by accident, it has to release them within 20 days. The 9th Circuit polices the government aggressively on this point.

This is why the Nazi/Boko comparisons are so silly. These children aren't being separated from their parents in order to do them some harm, but because they are receiving due process of law, aggressively policed by a court interested in protecting their rights. They're being set free, not stolen. And the reason the system is losing so many is that they're being turned over to family by preference, without checking their immigration status. When you turn over someone in the country illegally to someone already part of the migrant underground, you shouldn't be surprised when a high percentage of that group don't answer your mail or help you arrange visitation. But unlike Boko Haram, the government isn't trying to steal these kids from their families. It's trying its best to return them to their families, while prosecuting parents who have broken the law.

This prosecution is not being done maliciously either. Bringing your kids into the country illegally is a felony, "people smuggling" -- ten years per child in the Federal pen. These folks are only being charged with the misdemeanor offense of bringing themselves. The government doesn't even want to keep the parents in jail for very long. It is merely that the government knows these people are in the country illegally, and wants to hold them until it can have their asylum and deportation hearing. The Trump administration's original idea, shot down by the 9th Circuit last July, was to hold the kids with the parents. The 9th Circuit said they had to either not hold the parents ("catch and release," as this approach is sometimes called), or separate them from their children and release the children.

This process does not work perfectly. This is the same Federal government that lets Veterans, perhaps the most respected American demographic, die on waiting lists. The Federal bureaucracy can't do anything both well and quickly. Since the 9th Circuit insists it be done quickly, unsurprisingly the rapid release of the children isn't done well. That was true for the Obama administration (which is the one the report everyone is raising Cain about reports having lost all the kids), and it will be true of the Trump administration as long as we keep using this silly system. Human traffickers, an aggressive bunch, have been successful at applying for sponsorship of these children -- and getting it, because the Federal bureaucracy has 20 days from finding the kid in the desert to having to hand them over to somebody.

So, OK. Let's no do that anymore. I agree. Let's find a different system. What should it look like?

Well, let's start with the dilemma that the Flores Settlement Agreement provokes. Either you must let any migrants go if they are traveling with children they claim are their own, or you must separate them from children who probably really are theirs. Taking the second horn of the dilemma provokes the Nazi talk. But taking the first horn provides perfect cover for human traffickers traveling with child slaves who really have been stolen from their families.

The Trump administration can't do anything except choose between these horns. The 9th Circuit could do something else, but their enforcement of the Flores agreement is consistent -- I don't doubt they think they are just doing stare decisis and correctly applying existing case law. The one group of people who could fix this is Congress.

Congress could provide authority to overturn the Flores Settlement Agreement and replace it with new positive law governing the treatment of these cases. They could allow the government to hold families intercepted crossing the border together, never separating them until their asylum claims can be adjudicated and their deportation or admission arranged accordingly. During the investigation of such claims, they could sort out if it was in fact parents with children they had found crossing the border, or smugglers with slaves. In the former case, sentences can be suspended and the family can be returned to their country together. In the latter, the felony charge should be brought, and the slavers placed in prison. Then the children can be returned to their real families, who are probably desperate with terror.

In that way, you do not incentivize bringing children into danger, and you catch a very bad class of people who really are stealing children to do bad things to them. The 9th Circuit Court should respect that, given that it would be done by an act of law rather than unilaterally by an administration (whether Obama's or Trump's).

So if you're going to call your congressman to talk about this, that's what I suggest you say. But do what you want. Just please stop screaming about Nazis.

Memes

Ha.

Memorial Day Weekend

I wish you all the best on this solemn occasion. Enjoy it, though, partly in memory and in part because it's what they would have wanted.

Progress

President Trump issued three executive orders chipping away at some of the crazier aspects of the federal civil service.

The first executive order aims to strengthen accountability for federal employees and makes it easier to fire poor performers in the federal government.

The second executive order creates a federal labor relations working group to analyze union contracts with the federal government. It also makes it harder to pay federal unions to appeal firings and to lobby Congress.

The third executive order, focused on federal unions, is aimed at reducing waste and expenditures and requires federal employees to spend at least 75 percent of their time working on the job they were hired to do, as opposed to working on federal union work. It will also allow the federal government to start charging unions for office space in federal buildings.

DB: Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Spend wisely this holiday weekend.

Good Question

Noting that Philadelphia has barred Catholic Social Services from handling foster children, Bethany Mandel asks: "If the State has determined that you cannot be a foster parent if you hold these Catholic views, at what point do they determine that you are an unfit parent for holding them too?"

"Common Sense" Regulations To Prevent School Shootings

A modest proposal from the NRA.

Michael Stoner

"The original family name was Holsteiner."

Old American, however German: mentioned alongside Daniel Boone in the great old records. Johnny Cash memorialized him. If you don't know him, learn of him.

A Strange Inversion

This debate over whether or not to refer to MS 13 members as "animals" has weirdly reversed the positions of the left and right. The left has normally taken themselves to be the descendants of the heroes of the Scopes Monkey Trial, and thus has argued that it is good for us to recognize that humans are merely another kind of animal. Seeing humanity as separate or special leads to 'anthropocentric' thinking, they normally go on to argue, that blinds us to the fact that animals are much more like us that we are prepared to admit. Vegetarianism and veganism, as well as animal rights arguments, rooted in this basic approach are far more common on the left than otherwise.

The right, meanwhile, has normally advocated the orthodox Christian position that humanity is categorically different from animals: that we, alone of creation, were made in the image of God. In addition to serving to ground laws that tend to follow Christian doctrine, this tends to root right-leaning doctrines of conservation (rather than environmentalism), good husbandry (rather than veganism), and the like. The idea that man is special, and placed on earth with authority over it, arises here.

Of course these days everything is about Trump, and the fact that he said it means that one group must defend it and the other oppose it. Principled arguments are not as common as once.

An Unwise Protection

Reason magazine is correct here: this is a bad idea.

Last week the House of Representatives, by a margin of more than 10 to 1, approved a completely gratuitous, blatantly unconstitutional bill that would make assaulting a police officer a federal crime.... The Protect and Serve Act prescribes a prison sentence of up to 10 years for anyone who "knowingly assaults a law enforcement officer," thereby "causing serious bodily injury," or "attempts to do so." Such conduct is, of course, already illegal in all 50 states, and there is no reason to think local law enforcement agencies are reluctant to arrest and prosecute people guilty of it.

Nor does the problem addressed by the bill seem to be on the rise, notwithstanding all the overheated talk of a "war on cops." The number of law enforcement officers who are feloniously killed each year is small and volatile, but according to the FBI it dropped by 30 percent last year, and the average for the last 15 years (51) is lower than the average for the previous 15 (65).

In any event, the Constitution does not give Congress the authority to fight local crime.... The Protect and Serve Act explicitly allows federal prosecution of someone who is acquitted in state court, or who is convicted but receives a penalty the Justice Department deems too light....

These issues should be familiar to anyone who has followed the debate over federal prosecution of hate crimes, which occur when the victim is picked "because of" his "actual or perceived" membership in a protected group. The Senate version of the Protect and Serve Act takes that analogy and runs with it, targeting assaults and attempted assaults committed "because of the actual or perceived status of the [victim] as a law enforcement officer."

Under that bill, someone who takes a swing at a guy he mistakenly thinks is a cop has committed a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison—even if he misses.

Resisting an unlawful arrest is protected behavior, but this would seem to create a loophole that would allow them to send you down for a decade anyway. After all, you need only show that they "attempted" to cause "serious" harm, not that they actually caused any harm. Ten years for that?

Crisis in Constitutional Government

I think VDH is correct in his surmise that they simply don't see it.

While we understand those on the left refuse to believe that a constitutional “legal scholar” like Obama would even think of allowing the executive branch to go rogue, it is indeed strange that in almost every NeverTrump attack on Trump’s conduct, there is almost no recognition or indeed worry that we have been living through one of the great challenges to constitutional government in our history.

Does anyone remember that the Obama Administration allowed Lois Lerner (“Not a smidgen of corruption”) more or less to weaponize the IRS to help the Obama 2012 reelection effort? Does anyone remember Eric Holder’s surveillance of the Associated Press... the strange treatment accorded to investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson by U.S. intelligence and investigatory agencies... the Benghazi pseudo-video narrative and the strange jailing of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula...?

There's a lot more.

UPDATE:

Another article, more examples.

Enemies of the Constitution are now hiding in plain sight....

Who can forget the editorial by Georgetown Law Professor Louis Seidman in the New York Times called “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.” After all, as he put it, “a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries and knew nothing of our present situation and thought it was ok to own slaves disagreed” with what progressives want to do. This is in the New York Times by a Georgetown Law professor.

Then, getting closer to my area of expertise – election law – there was a law review article in the Stanford Law and Policy Review by an election law professor -- University of Michigan’s Ellen D. Katz -- "Democrats at DOJ: Why Partisan Use of the Voting Rights Act Might Not Be So Bad After All."

When I say they hide in plain sight, these are the things I mean.

Looking for Nessie

A new approach: looking for DNA in the environment of the loch.

2nd Look: Love and Honor in Porco Rosso

2nd Look has a reasonably good discussion of these themes in the movie. Big spoilers ahead!

Overall, I appreciate his analysis, but I do have a quibble. I question his claim, beginning around 6:05, that Porco had planned to marry Gina before the war, but decided not to because she was Austrian. He claims Miyazaki said that, and it may be true, but he doesn't give his sources.

What is stated in the movie is that Gina was married to Porco's best friend Bellini two days before Porco and Bellini were sent to the front together. Also, I haven't seen any hint that Gina is Austrian in the movie, though maybe I've missed something.

Victory

I won my election!  You may now address me as Madame Commissioner Tex99.

Porco Rosso

Tonight and again on the 23rd are your chances to see Porco Rosso on the big screen. It's about an ex-fighter pilot-turned-bounty hunter, and it takes up the themes of the brotherhood of war, honor vs. loyalty, honor vs. celebrity, Old World vs. New, genius vs. experience, and, of course, love. The early part of the movie is more for kids and is rather comic. For me it is an odd juxtaposition with the more serious themes that emerge later in the film. I guess, then, another theme would be the heart of a child vs. the heart of a combat veteran.

Being able to see it in theaters is due to the efforts of GKIDS, the distributor for some anime in the US. Last year, GKIDS sponsored Studio Ghibli Fest, which put one Studio Ghibli animated movie in theaters each month. It was apparently pretty successful, so they are doing it again this year. Studio Ghibli is Hayao Miyazaki's studio, the most famous Japanese anime studio. It created films like Totoro, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away.

If you are interested, you can see if any theaters near you are playing it by going to the Studio Ghibli Fest website, scrolling to Porco Rosso, and putting in your zip code.

Rule of law

Andrew McCarthy has written another in a series of articles digging into the bizarre misinformation campaign spinning out of the behavior of the FBI:

If you or I had set up an unauthorized private communications system for official business for the patent purpose of defeating federal record-keeping and disclosure laws; if we had retained and transmitted thousands of classified emails on this non-secure system; if we had destroyed tens of thousands of government records; if we had carried out that destruction while those records were under subpoena; if we had lied to the FBI in our interview — well, we’d be writing this column from the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth. Yet, in a feat of dizzying ratiocination, Director Comey explained that to prosecute Mrs. Clinton would be to hold her to a nitpicking, selective standard of justice not imposed on other Americans.

So it was that the New York Times, in this week’s 4,100-word exposé on the origins of the FBI’s Trump–Russia probe, recycled the theme: Government investigators were savagely public about Clinton’s trifling missteps while keeping mum about the Manchurian candidate’s treasonous conspiracy with Putin.

As we contended in rebuttal on Thursday, the Times’ facts are selective and its narrative theme of disparate treatment is hogwash: Clinton’s bid was saved, not destroyed, by Obama’s law-enforcement agencies, which tanked a criminal case on which she should have been indicted. And the hush-hush approach taken to the counterintelligence case against Donald Trump was not intended to protect the Republican candidate; it was intended to protect the Obama administration from the specter of a Watergate-level scandal had its spying on the opposition party’s presidential campaign been revealed.

But let’s put that aside. Let’s consider the disparate-treatment claim on its own terms.

Highlanders

A small piece of a bit more than seven minutes. The first song is "Atholl Highlanders."



UPDATE: Dueling Highlanders.



If you're about Franklin, NC, they are holding a "Taste of Scotland" Festival from 14-17 June. I'll be out that way.

Music for a Stormy Weekend

Ted Cruz on Hamas

Apparently he's not too impressed with the media's treatment of the latest invasion peaceful protest.

Henry Kissinger: How the Enlightenment Ends

In a thoughtful exploration of philosophy and technology, Kissinger argues that AI developers should start thinking through the philosophical questions raised by AI and that the government should start seriously thinking about AI and its possible dangers. It's difficult to excerpt because he uses the entire article to make his point, but here is his hook:

As I listened to the speaker celebrate this technical progress, my experience as a historian and occasional practicing statesman gave me pause. What would be the impact on history of self-learning machines—machines that acquired knowledge by processes particular to themselves, and applied that knowledge to ends for which there may be no category of human understanding? Would these machines learn to communicate with one another? How would choices be made among emerging options? Was it possible that human history might go the way of the Incas, faced with a Spanish culture incomprehensible and even awe-inspiring to them? Were we at the edge of a new phase of human history?

"A Terrorist Organization"

Hamas, which claims 50 of the dead from yesterday's protests in Israel, is a named Foreign Terrorist Organization -- but all the coverage I've read is treating the deaths as if they were innocent "protesters."

The NRA, on the other hand....

WSJ: NRA vs. Authoritarianism

In New York, a telling exercise of power.

War and Natural Law

Soon I’ll have the ability to engage pieces like this again. I’m looking forward to it. For now, I’ll just forward it to your attention.

Felony relo

A Seattle councilwoman wants felony charges brought against Amazon for threatening to leave town if the city taxes workers to make a dent in the affordable housing crisis.

Socialists really need to find a solution to this problem of the golden goose walking off.  Has anybody thought of putting up guard towers at the borders?

"Property can’t leave, so seize it."

Illinois flirts with the Caracas solution, a/k/a the Cuban (etc.) solution.

Speaking of Caracas, what amazes me if that buyers are still making cash offers on real estate, and even more, that sellers are still holding out for a better price.  Let's hope they get one before cholera and cannibalism set in.

Happy Nabka Day

Seventy years after Israel had the effrontery to become a nation, seventy-three years after the Allies liberated the few remaining survivors at the concentration camps, a diseased culture still can't get over its antisemitism and do anything productive about refugees from long-lost wars.

Lessons from the NRA Convention

A guy writes who didn’t grow up around guns.

The Carter Family

Alt-Country That I Want to Like

I really like the sound of the Old 97's, but the lyrics ...

(Foul language and sexual content warnings apply, not to mention stupid drunkenness, immaturity, and word plays -- but it's Saturday. Best paired with something cheap and tasteless.)

Don't tell me you weren't warned.

CNN Report: Evil Trump Kidnaps Three People from North Korean Paradise

The Babylon Bee has them covered.

It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song

The alt-country band Old 97's used a line from that in their song "Big Brown Eyes."

The (obvious) problem with equating skin color with "priviledge"

Mild language warning, (well deserved) emotional violence against a clueless leftist:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/993513778653290497.html

Speaking of Birthdays and Events on May 8

Friedrich August von Hayek was also born on that day. Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek share a birthday. Huh.

Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, Russ Barenberg

These three musicians put out one of my favorite instrumental albums, Skip, Hop, and Wobble. There's a clear bluegrass influence, but they take it new places.

You can listen to the whole thing on YouTube, but here are the first two tunes.

Kingship in the Viking Age

An essay on whether scholars are 'reading in' Anglo-Saxon values when they study the Norse sagas.

Grim's Hall

Some of you expressed thoughts about the place, including a request for photographs. Here are a few that give the sense of the place. You can see how much it resembles what you had thought it would look like.

Dragon's breath at sunrise.

Inside the hall.

Below the waterfall.

R. L. Burnside

Marking the Day

Karl Marx's birthday (pro, con)

Robert Johnson's birthday

VE Day

Gangstagrass

Best known for the theme song to the series Justified, Gangstagrass also has a couple of albums out.

Don't call my bluff

Rookie moves from a prosecutor who's more political than prosecutorial:

Alas, figuring that he was playing with the house money, Mueller made a reckless bet: He charged not only Russian individuals but three Russian businesses. A business doesn’t have the same risks as a person. A business can’t be thrown in jail. And while members of Mueller’s prosecutorial stable have a history of putting real businesses out of business, a business that is run by a Putin crony and serves as a front for Kremlin operations is not too worried about that either.

So . . . guess what? One of those Russian businesses, Concord Management and Consulting, wants its day in court. It has retained the Washington law firm of Reed Smith, two of whose partners, Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly, have told Mueller that Concord is ready to have its trial — and by the way, let’s see all the discovery the law requires you to disclose, including all the evidence you say supports the extravagant allegations in the indictment.

Needless to say, Mueller’s team is not happy about this development since this is not a case they figured on having to prosecute to anything more than a successful press conference. So, they have sought delay on the astonishing ground that the defendant has not been properly served — notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned.

What's even funnier is that they asked for a few weeks to brief that extraordinary position.

The Steeldrivers

This might be our theme song ...

Maybe add some horses and bikes, UH-60s, claymores ... but, pretty close.

Sunday Night Movie Music Video

Haven't done this in a while, but this caught my eye yesterday. I think I own all these movies. Mifune will hold his own against anybody you care to compare him with.

All My Hope Is in Jesus

Grim’s Hall

We are moving again, which explains the recent lack of posts. This time, we are moving to a place that befits the name “Grim’s Hall.”  I’ll be another three weeks with it at least, but that’s what is keeping me away.

Samantha Fish and Some Cigar Box Blues

Elmore James (1918-1963)

"Dust My Broom" opens with one of the best-known blues riffs of all time. BB King used it later on.

James wrote "The Sky Is Crying" in 1960 or so. Stevie Ray Vaughn (1954-1990) did a good version of it.

An Interesting Take on Hume's NOFI Principle

David Hume famously argued that you cannot logically deduce an ought from an is, which principle can be abbreviated as NOFI: No Ought From Is. This seems reasonable but it potentially leaves morality in a quandary.

Some time back we discussed whether or not there could be moral facts; I thought there could be moral facts, but some here vehemently disagreed. One of the possible conclusions from NOFI is that moral facts are impossible. Maybe a moral statement like "murder is wrong" is simply cheerleading: "Yay for not murdering people!" Or maybe it is a command: "Don't murder!" But it cannot be a fact that murder is wrong because there is no way to deduce what ought not be done just from what is.

Philosopher Charles Pigden disagrees. He has a different explanation for NOFI and its implications. Since I am not a philosopher, nor do I play on one TV, it is best to read his explanation if you are interested. However, in brief, as I understand it, he uses historical evidence and reason to clarify that Hume's NOFI claim was that there was no logically valid way to derive ought from is, but that Hume left open analytically valid ways to derive morality. This, then, would leave the door open for an objective basis for morality.

As to why I am considering Hume's NOFI principle at 4:12 a.m., I will leave that to the reader's imagination, but note that champagne was involved.

Good night, all.

In the Cathedral of May

But how many months be in the year?
There are thirteen, I say;
The midsummer moon is the merryest of all
Next to the merry month of May.
IN summer time, when leaves grow green,
And flowers are fresh and gay,
Robin Hood and his merry men
Were [all] disposed to play.

Then some would leap, and some would run,
And some use artillery:
'Which of you can a good bow draw,
A good archer to be?

'Which of you can kill a buck?
Or who can kill a doe?
Or who can kill a hart of grease,
Five hundred foot him fro?




Queen Guinevere's Maying

"It's a matter of consumer perception"

Yeah, I'll say it's a matter of consumer perception.  New York restaurants are coming unspooled over the consequences of the minimum wage hikes that, in theory, both they and their fashionable patrons support 100%.  But wait, someone has to pay the higher wages.  Let's see, can we eat into restaurant profits?  Surely not.  Magically save money somewhere else?  Apparently we can't.  Well, we could charge the patrons more for the food.  How do we do that?

It's very complicated.  There are these things called menus that reveal the prices.  Suppose we change the numbers there to higher numbers?  What, and spook all the people impressing their clients and their dates by taking them to expensive fashionable restaurants?

I know, let's leave the menu prices alone and add a surcharge at the very last minute on the check, when everyone's too drunk to notice.  Because social justice for the back-of-the-house staff.

The problem is, apparently the restaurants need a city ordinance to allow them to add such a last-minute surcharge, and the city fathers aren't dumb enough to catch this hot potato when it's tossed back to them.  The patrons believe in social justice, the restaurateurs believe in social justice, and the politicians believe in social justice.  They just don't want to be blamed for it.  Thus the spectacle of restaurants running full-page ads demanding the right to impose the surcharge and blaming the city for subjecting them and their underpaid staff to financial hardship.  We want to pay the staff more!  You just won't let us, you meanies!

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done

The Pope wants to ban all weapons. All weapons, which potentially means almost every physical object. Water is a weapon.

OK, so, the goal isn't practical. But should it at least be aspirational? After all, the Bible says something about beating swords into plowshares. On the other hand, the Bible also says something about beating plowshares into swords, and pruning hooks into spears: and "let the weak say, 'I am a warrior.'" For everything, there is a season.

As for the New Testament, Jesus came not to bring peace but a sword, and urged his disciples to buy themselves swords if they had to sell their coats.

In terms of Natural Theology, it's hard to think that God is very interested in a world without arms. Animals tend to have natural weapons better than our own for their size; and all animal life, including human beings, can only sustain itself by the consumption of other things that were once alive. If you can know something about God by knowing His works, you would have to reason that God is not opposed to violence. Violence has a purpose in God's scheme.

Banning weapons means that the strong rule over the weak; men over women; the large tribe over the small one. But God favored the David and his sling over Goliath, Judith and her sword over Holofernes, and the Jews over the Egyptians, as well as the other tribes they destroyed in the age of Joshua.

It's a strange sentiment for a Pope to express. It is out of order, as far as I can tell, with reasoned theology whether based on revelation or nature.

Iran: We Can Enrich Better Than Ever!

Somehow the fact that they've improved their enrichment capacity under the deal is meant to be a good argument for keeping the deal in place? This is not the best deal ever.

Is "Free Speech" Code for Racism and Sexism?

An argument that it is not. Some evidence:

In my estimation, few things divide the right as much as traditional gender roles. The divide is not just ideological, pitting traditionalist social conservatives against right-leaning libertarians, but also generational. As the gay marriage debate showed, a typical Baby Boomer and a typical Millennial, right or left, hold vastly different views about the shifting norms of gender and sexuality.

Polls strongly suggest that the right has achieved nothing like consensus on these issues. Of course, public-opinion data typically measure the beliefs of Americans as a whole, not those of intellectuals in particular. Still, it is telling that 55 percent of Republicans favor women taking on combat roles in the military, one of the starkest departures from traditional gender roles in our society.

Lots of other survey data reveal similar lacks of consensus.

In one survey, Pew reported, “About two-thirds of Democrats who say men and women are basically different in how they express their feelings, their approach to parenting, and their hobbies and personal interests say these differences are rooted in societal expectations. Among their Republican counterparts, about four-in-ten or fewer share those views.” In another Pew study, when Republicans were asked about changing gender roles, 36 percent said they’ve made it easier for women to lead satisfying lives, 32 percent said they’ve made it easier for parents to raise children, 53 percent said they’ve made it easier for women to succeed at work, and 26 percent said that they’ve made it easier for marriages to be successful. Twenty-six percent of Republicans said the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights.

Nevertheless, it is true (as the argument he is countering goes) that much of the effort at suppressing free speech is pointed at arguments that there are innate differences between groups. I think that the sexes are obviously, truly innately different; the real issue is what to do about it, rather than whether or not it is the case. There's a better question about what is commonly called "race," but it's hard to know what to make of it because people who set out to study it are hounded out of the academy.

Some questions are dangerous, of course, but the basic question -- are there such differences? -- is surely worth asking. Even if the answer is "yes," as it is with sex, there remains a wide open field of possible answers to the following question about what to do about those differences.

Fixes

The Clinton-appointed judge appointed a Clinton-appointed "special master" to review the President's communications with his lawyer.

Hillbilly Hip Hop?

I first heard this musical mix when I started watching Justified.

More recently, I've been listening to Crowder.

Money Laundering

Is it still a crime if you’re a Clinton?

Izzy Ezagui: An Inspiring Story

American Izzy Ezagui joined the IDF, lost an arm in a mortar attack, and, after recovering, convinced the IDF to let him return to combat.

His book is titled Disarmed.

An Interesting Analogy

It was 43 years ago that feminist British film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term male gaze in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”: “The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact.”

The neo-Expressionist Eric Fischl (while clarifying that “I don’t do nude, I do naked. Naked is psychological; it involves a much more complicated set of emotional relationships to physicality, to need, to desire, to pleasure”), believes that it’s important to analyze how the male gaze works in making art. But he’s also of the opinion that men looking at women is, to some extent, “a genetically engineered reflex for very particular reasons.” To try to make it somehow “an unnatural aspect of being a man” doesn’t make much sense, he says. “It would be the same as supposing the children of women who paint mothers and children said, ‘Stop the motherly gaze; it’s inappropriate, invasive, objectifying.’ What would the women do? They’d say, ‘It’s natural for me to look at this aspect of womanness,’ and the children would say, ‘No, you’re not treating me as though I’m separate and other.’ ” Fischl laughs.

Motherhood tends to be idealized because it is a form of service on which civilization depends, as soldiering is. The gaze of male attraction to women is not similarly idealized, but treated as selfish and offensive. On the other hand, without the male gaze there is no mothering; motherhood depends on male attraction to women, excepting relatively rare cases of medical intervention.

Interestingly to me, the consent we usually invoke to justify male attraction to a female is entirely absent in the mother/child relation. The child has no capacity to reject his mother's attention, or her mother's; similarly, the mother can impose either her motherhood or death upon the child at will until the child is born. The child's interests are not considered until birth, and even then they are legally subordinated. In that way the cases differ sharply.

Otherwise the analogy holds pretty well. Children are certainly objects of their mother's gaze, and her attention: hopefully, also of her love and affection. A man who loves a woman hopefully also gives her a kind of love and affection in addition to his gaze. If he doesn't, the problem is with the absence of the love; it is possible to be a bad mother (or father) by withholding those things, too.

H/t: Arts & Letters Daily.

Happy Birthday

My father died in 2016. This was his birthday. I don't think I noticed the first one when he was gone. I was too busy that year, finishing his business as well as my own. In fact I'm still finishing up some of his business even now, and lately I'm all but overwhelmed with my own. A man like him leaves a hole in the world. It's a deal of work to close such business. To fill the hole would be a life's work of its own.

I wish I had better words for the occasion, but I don't. I will refer you to the same essay I linked below by the picture of his father, my grandfather. It's a piece I'm glad to have written. I'm even more glad that the original was written in 2004. I had twelve years after that to try to make it right with him. I did my best.

America is a Philosophy

Here's a man from Yorkshire who'd have fit in at the Boston Tea Party. He'll be doing 8 months in prison, a fact the police celebrate in their message to the public. I have no printable response to them, but I hope that when he's done being a political prisoner he'll come home to America.

Old Cheese

This article is about the Viking-era cheese of that name, or Gamalost in the Norsk. There's also an Arabic dish whose name also translates as "old cheese," but it has very different qualities.

That Thing You All Knew Was True

The DOJ IG report found administration interference in investigations for political reasons.

For the Ladies

Some of you might prefer a firearm, but swords are an option too.

(Note the small print citation, giving credit to what I hope is the original artist. It's based on a sketch from our friends at The Art of Manliness, which you can see here.)

Slow Your Roll

Grouchy Farmers in the UK

A farmer fed up with ‘townies’ complaining about the noise and smells of the countryside has posted a sign outside his farm in a dig at sensitive city dwellers.

Stephen Nolan, 48, put up the notice after receiving consistent complaints for four years about noise from his animals.

‘This property is a farm. Farms have animals and animals make funny sounds, smell bad and have sex outdoors’, it reads.

‘Unless you can tolerate the above, don’t buy a property next to a farm.’

The cheeky missive, erected at Laneside Farm in Lancashire, has received a lot of love on social media from locals who described it as ‘hilarious’.

I'd be pretty grouchy about it too, especially the bit later on about neighbors threatening to sue if he builds a bigger stables for his horses. He has Shire horses and Clydesdales.

Angelo Codevilla: Living With Politics as War

Codevilla's article at American Greatness argues that it's too late to make peace with the Left and that a counter-march through the institutions would be pointless. He argues for creating a strong separate conservative culture that would replace the Left-dominated institutions. He talks about boycotts, state nullification of federal laws, replacing universities, etc. It's a good article, although I don't know how far I agree with it. In the very long run, pushing for more balance at currently-Left-dominated institutions may be productive.

There are some specific recommendations he makes that I'd like to post about later, but it's a good read whether I get around to that or not.

The Carlos Hathcock Method of Sighting in a Rifle

An excerpt just to get you started on a good story:

I didn’t know Carlos then and did not know of his exploits in NM and Sniper shooting. Ted talked to Carlos about it and Carlos stopped by the shop later that afternoon. Carlos looked at me and said, “So you want to sight in your rifle, eh? OK, thoroughly clean the bore and chamber. Dry the bore out with patches just before you come down to Range 4 tomorrow at noon on the 200 yard line. Have the sling on the rifle that you are going to use in hunting.” Then he went on about his business.

Jack T.

We're a bit past the Ides of March, which was his birthday, but today I came across a photo of my grandfather. He was called "Jack T." in the same way that John Wayne was "John T." in Rio Bravo -- short for "John T. Chance," in that case.

Here's what he looked like.

I also learned today that he was a soldier in his youth, which I'd never known. We found a picture of him in uniform at Ft. Oglethorpe, undated. His uniform included a 1911 Campaign Hat. I was told he'd been rejected for enlistment in WWII because he was a welder, and needed more at home -- he worked on the nuclear program at Oak Ridge in that capacity. It turns out, he must have been trying to reenlist.

The Clintons, then and now

I've been watching old "Larry Sanders Show" episodes, inspired by an enjoyable HBO restrospective of the career of the late Garry Shandling.  These shows roughly coincide with the 1990s Clinton Era, and I've been surprised by the number of casually biting hits on both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the fictional talk-show host's monologues.  Bill appears as a clownish lecher, Hillary as a mean, dangerous criminal.  One joke from last night concerned the hardships of a documentarist trying to interview employees at the White House in order to investigate rumors of a fascist atmosphere.  A telephone operator begged the interviewer to go away before someone saw them talking, because Hillary would "hurt him."  A typical monologue joke turns on Hillary's exposure to criminal prosecution, requiring no explanation for the audience.

Shandling was no right-winger; his jokes at the expense of the GOP were if anything more harsh.  It makes me realize the extraordinary--though unsuccessful--effort to rehabilitate Ms. Clinton during the Obama Era.

A Hoax Pointed at Starbucks

This is really an urban phenomenon. One thing I really hate about going to the city is all the locked bathrooms. We don't get this out in the country. People know that going to the bathroom is something human beings have to do once in a while, and that it can be rather urgent at times. Locks are unwelcome.

All the same, every city I ever go to has locked bathrooms everywhere.

I could use this moment to make one of the comments to which I am personally inclined about how living in the city is a less worthy life, but I won't do that. Instead I'll admit that cities offer some advantages in terms of access to wealth and trade, and the goods that those things can bring -- goods like theaters, orchestras, and the like. You don't find those out in the middle of the country either.

In return, however, you have to live with a lot more indignity. Cities have a high cost of living in terms of taxes, higher rent, and the like. They also cost more of your dignity. If you are going to live in easy proximity to those goods, you're going to pay for the privilege. Part of that cost is that you will be less free, treated with less respect, and subject to many more daily humiliations. That's true for everyone, though of course it is worse if you are poor.

Crossing the line

You may or may not be aware of a little controversy in Jacksonville FL recently.  This article summarized it nicely, and rather than do so here, I trust you will get the gist quickly.

The citation was probably accurate under the city code as written, wrongheaded, and it looks like that rule has been amended to allow for military flags.  But honestly, that wasn't particularly shocking to me, being just a poorly written and overly non-specific rule.  The code enforcer's treatment of a veteran in the store (not the business owner being cited, but just a customer who happened to be in the store) was outrageous, and while it crossed the line, that's not actually so much what I want to talk about.

Instead, it got me thinking.  This woman is a city employee.  A government official.  Can the government fire her for being rude?  Should the government be able to fire an employee for stating an unpopular opinion?  I go back and forth on this.  Sure, if she were a private employee, her employer could toss her out the door for bringing controversy to the business.  But the government is bound by the First Amendment in a way that private businesses are not.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if there is not some rule or regulation about representing the city in a negative light, or perhaps mistreatment of the public as being a fireable offense, and if such a rule exists, and it was a condition of her employment, controversy over... mostly.  If there is no such rule, then I don't know that she can legally be fired for being rude to a veteran.  And I don't know if she ought to be.

I am a veteran.  I can hardly think of a more grave insult you can pay to a wounded vet that "you did nothing for this country" (which is what was originally reported, but I will accept the article's interpretation that she actually said what the vet did overseas does not matter [in the context of the citation]).  But insults still are protected speech.  Oh, one may face social opprobrium for saying such a thing.  One may be ostracized and publicly shamed, and rightfully so.  But the government cannot punish someone for expressing an opinion, regardless of how unpopular it may be.  They are prohibited from doing so, and should be prohibited from doing so.  And I don't know that I want the government to start getting into the business of deciding what speech is protected, and what is not.  Because that is a VERY short slope towards the modern leftist desire to label all speech they do not like as unprotected "hate speech", and then using that to legally ban such speech.

A Chart of Old English Measurements

Pretty nifty.

A Hoard of Harald Bluetooth

A boy has made a major find:

Braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor’s hammer, rings and up to 600 chipped coins were found, including more than 100 that date back to Bluetooth’s era, when he ruled over what is now Denmark, northern Germany, southern Sweden and parts of Norway.

“This trove is the biggest single discovery of Bluetooth coins in the southern Baltic Sea region and is therefore of great significance,” the lead archaeologist, Michael Schirren, told national news agency DPA.

The oldest coin is a Damascus dirham dating to 714 while the most recent is a penny dating to 983.

The find suggests that the treasure may have been buried in the late 980s – also the period when Bluetooth was known to have fled to Pomerania, where he died in 987.

That late a date means that it would have been after Bluetooth's conversion to Christianity. Bluetooth is, of course, the king with whom the protagonists of The Long Ships feasted one memorable Yule. He is also the namesake of those "Bluetooth" devices you see everywhere; the logo is a bindrune of his initials, the runic forms of H and then B.

Purely Coincidence, Your Honor

The judge who is overseeing the dispute between Trump and his DOJ employees was Bill Clinton's second (failed) Attorney General nominee, and personally officiated at the last wedding of George Soros.

Is there anyone involved in the Mueller investigation, apparently to include the judges themselves, who isn't a member of the Clinton faction?

Kimberley Strassel on Comey

She has a series of penetrating questions of the sort that, of course, Comey has not been asked. He ought to be, though.

James Comey, Anchorman

As explained by Ron Burgundy.

The Constitution, How Does It Work?

The President is going to court to force the Department of Justice, which works for him, to take his lead on how to handle the seizure of his own attorney's papers. This is roughly like the House of Representatives suing the Senate in Federal Court because they disagree with how the Senate has handled a bill they forwarded.

What the court should say, of course, is that this is an internal Executive Branch matter over which the court has no power. Instead, they are apparently taking seriously the assumption that a court should have authority to rule over a dispute between the President and his employees in the Executive Branch.

Meanwhile, the Senate is considering a law that would give a Special Counsel recourse to the courts to sue if they are fired and get themselves reinstated. Presumably that would have to be passed into law over the President's veto, but if so it would represent a seizure of constitutional authority from the Executive by the other two branches of government.

The proposed law also seems to create the Department of Justice as a kind of independent secret police. You can see how wise this is if you substitute in the name of any other secret police: "...a [Stasi investigator] may be fired only by the [head of the Stasi], and only for good cause, like misconduct." I'm sure we all have a higher opinion of the DOJ and the FBI than we do of the Stasi or the Gestapo, but the point of constitutional limits on power is to assume that someday bad people might get in charge. Do you really want to set up a secret police that is fully independent of elected officials?

This really has turned into a constitutional crisis.

The real problem with greed

I'm often exasperated by attacks on the profit motive.  The one area where I'm willing to attack it is the action of an individual who knows what's right and what's wrong but chooses the wrong because he's paid to do it.  From a surprising source--CBS, for Pete's sake--comes this spot-on criticism of James Comey's new book "A Higher Loyalty":

As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com tweeted, it's "not particularly honorable, if you have information you believe is of immediate and vital national importance, to wait 11 months to release it until you can have a giant book launch and publicity tour." Silver—no Trump fan--calls the book "A Higher Royalty."

Truth and pity

Chesterton on virtue:

When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

Prediction is hard

Powerline chuckles at the latest strike of the "Al Gore Effect," which is the juxtaposition of record-cold temperatures in Minnesota with a "March for Science" dominated by climate alarmists. He notes, of course, that these days HotColdWetDry is as eager to explain record cold as record heat by pointing to catastrophic climate something or other. Whatever we just experienced, it was somehow linked to original climate sin. I like his conclusion: "I will be more impressed with the alarmists’ models when they predict something before it happens."

A Song For A Ceilidh

Not a bad little tune.

Separation of powers

At last, some clear thinking on the rule of law from Andrew McCarthy:

If lawmakers believe the president is abusing his power by firing good public servants arbitrarily, they can impeach the president. Or they can try to bend the president into better behavior by cutting off funding, refusing to confirm nominees, or holding oversight hearings that embarrass the administration. Congress has these powerful political tools. But it does not have legal means to usurp the president’s constitutional power. Those powers do not come from Congress. They come from Article II. The Constitution cannot be amended by a mere statute or a regulation. Congress may not enact a law that purports to place conditions on the president’s power to dismiss subordinates who exercise his powers.

Comey's goals

Per Powerline, a clip from Comey's interview with George Stephanopoulos.  Comey freely acknowledges that he never told President Trump that the Steele Dossier was funded by Clinton's campaign.  It wasn't important for Comey's goals, he says, which were simply to let Trump know that the FBI had this information. You have to admire an administrator for keeping such a tight focus on his own organization's welfare, at a time when it would have been easy to be distracted by principles of honesty or justice, or the broader good of the nation.

Comey is oddly un-self-conscious.  I have the idea that if you charged him with amorality, he wouldn't take offense but would only gaze at you in mild blankness, wondering what you were getting at.

A Kinda Frightening CIA Blunder

Christopher Harper over at Da Tech Guy lists a few CIA blunders. This one was kinda frightening to me:

My all-time favorite happened in Lebanon.

The pro-Iranian group Hezbollah identified numerous CIA operatives by staking out a Pizza Hut in Beirut. How did Hezbollah figure out that the CIA was meeting with double agents and informants at Pizza Hut? The CIA decided to use the code word “pizza” when communicating with agents.

The code literally meant to meet at a pizza joint for pizza! Ten agents had their identity revealed, and numerous other informants were discovered—some of whom were executed. The CIA was left essentially blind in Lebanon for several months, having to pull the agents out, because agents were lazy and uncreative with their tradecraft.

I don't regularly read Da Tech Guy, and I don't know if this story is true. An ABC report seems to confirm it, though.

Days of Our Lives

Does it strike anyone else as strange that we're watching a for-real national saga in which the President is being prosecuted by a man who is best friends with the star witness in the case against the President, while that star witness has just started profiting off a book tour that will be more successful insofar as the prosecution seems serious? Doesn't that seem like an ethical issue to anyone? As far as I can tell, the main concern (even among members of the President's party) is protecting the investigation.

Shifts in the Night

Is Paul Ryan's departure the end of the 'one party that acts as if it were two'? Possibly, but it'll be costly.

The Democratic party has gone hard left since the defeat of Clinton; the capacity to move hard on ideology is realized because they are at a low point in terms of holding statewide or national office. They have nothing much to lose, so they can say what they want.

Is it worth the exchange? No, in the case of the Democrats: socialism is bad. What about in the case of an America-first party?

For Douglas

Since he was so happy to hear hockey talk in the Hall, here you go.