Why the long face?

I guess these posters aren't popular.

"Obstruction"

I am trying to decide how seriously to take the obstruction of justice narrative that is being prepared on the left. I keep trying to think, 'How would I feel about this story if Barack Obama were the President who wanted his Attorney General to prevent prosecutions of crimes by his cronies?' I don't have to use my imagination very much here because, of course, that was exactly what happened with Barack Obama, his attorneys general, and his cronies.

Ultimately I think this has to be a Congressional responsibility to investigate and pursue, because the AG isn't independent enough -- and probably shouldn't be independent of the elected official over him. On the other hand, it really was maddening to see the IRS used to target conservatives, watch them destroy evidence and lie to Congress, and never face any consequences.

What's to be done about this issue? Destroying Trump doesn't fix it. Electing another Clinton sure wouldn't fix it either. It's a structural issue that I don't know that I see much way around if the Congress won't assert itself.

Where is the FBI in the Constitution?

This argument comes from a well-educated and experienced woman; nevertheless, it's very odd.

Where is my Congress? This is the urgent question posed by these outrageous attempts by the president to subvert the constitution.... Congressional Republicans who stick by Trump and protect him will be remembered as the villains of Washington’s unfolding drama. They are the ones enabling an epic White House end run around the constitution.

What does the Constitution say about the relationship between the FBI and the President? Nothing, since the Founders would never have contemplated establishing an organization like the FBI. The Constitution doesn't even mention the Attorney General, although that office is nearly contemporaneous: George Washington signed the law into effect creating the office. That law says that the President shall choose the Attorney General, provided that the Senate confirms him; it does not give the Attorney General independence from the Executive branch, nor divide his office between the Executive and the Legislature.

The FBI works for the Attorney General, who works for the President. It's an executive department, and what the Constitution actually does say about the Executive Branch is that its power is invested in a President. Though by law Presidents have to run certain appointments by the legislature, usually the Senate, that does not mean that those appointees draw their power from Article I. They're Article II officials, exercising delegated authority.

So what, exactly, is the subversion of the Constitution that is supposed to be taking place? If the legislature wants to investigate and/or impeach the President, they have Article I authority to do that. It's not obviously a power that is wisely invested in an Article II bureaucracy in any case. Nor would I want the Constitution to set up an 'independent' police agency that could not be constrained by elected officials; especially not a secret police.

The author seems to want exactly that.

As the Republicans continue their campaign to discredit the FBI, it’s important to remember a piece of history. Without Deep Throat, the Washington Post’s secret source, the Watergate scandal might never have been exposed. Deep Throat, we learned in 2012, was Mark Felt, the No2 official at the FBI.

This is meant to be the model of what right looks like? Oath-breaking leaks from the secret police, protected from accountability by un-elected journalists? Even if it happened to work out well one time, it's hardly a model I'd invest much faith in.

The budget is broke

An unusually thoughtful article about the Congressional budget process from some months back.

There's also an amusing discussion in McArdle's comment session in this week's article about the furious effort by Blue States to find a way around the tax bill's impact on their SALT deductions.  After the crowd discussed the inability of a state (unlike a city or county) to file for bankruptcy, and how you can default all you like but there's no bankruptcy court to issue an order discharging all your public and pension debt, a reader pointed out that debt arising out of an insurgency need not be honored.  That led to a discussion of the practical value of ginning up an insurgency for the purpose of obtaining debt relief.

Too Good to Check

Conservatives lean right because they're so much prettier than liberals.

The scholars said hot people lean towards the right because they grow to develop a blind spot that leads them to not see the need for more government support or aid in society - a core liberal value.

They add that attractive people don’t face the same hurdles as others as their attractiveness gains them more attention and they are more successful in social situations. Their lives are generally “easier,” the pair claim.

I mean, possibly. But I'll wager that if you study the development of conservative/liberal attitudes, a lot of it depends on personality traits that are set before attractiveness becomes a big deal -- by childhood, I mean, rather than later in life when one becomes physically mature. That's not to say that ideas don't change. We all know people who become liberal in college under the academic and social pressure; we all know people who trend conservative once they get out in the world and see how badly liberal ideas work out in practical terms. Others double down because they become attached to structures that reinforce liberal or conservative ideas.

Still, a lot of the basics are there from the beginning.

Also, I note that the researchers have a clear cognitive bias that is evident in their description of conservatives as having a 'blind spot that leads them not to see the need for more government.' That treats the need for more government as a fact, rather than an opinion. Conservatives are thus supposed to be flawed, even mentally disabled, because they cannot see a thing that is really there. They've just had it so easy that it's crippled their minds.

Is it true that the easier one's life, the more likely one is to be a conservative? Not obviously. Justice Clarence Thomas grew up in a shack insulated with newspaper, his family's sanitation being an outhouse shared with neighbors. It's not hard to name others whose conservatism arose in difficult circumstances; nor is it hard to name celebrities with easy lives who are lefties. Celebrities tend to be attractive, too; not always, but it correlates strongly.

So, my sense is that this study is probably not very valuable. It's still fun, though.

I certainly don't

Mea culpa.  I never make this connection at all:

“Few white people make the connection between their attraction to yoga and the cultural loss their ancestors and relatives experienced when they bought into white dominant culture in order to access resources,” they write.

I can't even sort the sentence out. One of the things I like best about white dominant culture is its persistent nagging to watch your pronoun precedents.

With enemies like these, who lacks friends?

The man the academic left loves to hate:

"[I]nstinctively, I knew I would like to find out about anybody described as dangerous by the trade paper of American higher education...."

Listen to the Mouse

Headline #1: "'America No Longer Matters.' Davos Isn't Worried About President Trump."

Headline #2: "Here’s How and Why Trump’s Going to Blow Up the Foundations of Davos."

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it."
-Paul-Muad'Dib
UPDATE: Headline, NYT: "Trump Arrived in Davos as a Party Wrecker. He Leaves Praised as a Pragmatist."

Good Article on the FBI

At the Hill, Sharyl Attkisson argues that it's time for some sunlight.

[T]he Department of Justice has officially warned the House Intelligence Committee not to release its memo. It's like the possible defendant in a criminal trial threatening prosecutors for having the audacity to reveal alleged evidence to the judge and jury.

This is the first time I can recall open government groups and many reporters joining in the argument to keep the information secret. They are strangely uncurious about alleged improprieties with implications of the worst kind: Stasi-like tactics used against Americans. “Don’t be irresponsible and reveal sources and methods,” they plead.

As for me? I don’t care what political stripes the alleged offenders wear or whose side they’re on.

I think they actually view a secret police targeting conservatives as highly desirable, rather than it merely being that they lack curiosity.

Finexit

A young populist candidate running for "Finland First" is worrying members of the EU.

She claims the EU has turned “Finland into its province” and has railed against the country’s political elite, who she argues do not represent the working class.

Huhtasaari has also demanded more immigration controls and has campaigned in favour of a burka ban – a far cry from Finland’s traditionally subdued politics.

I had a good friend in Finland at one time. They had, and I believe still have, mandatory military service and I knew him during his stint in their army. Their proximity to Russia makes it a wise policy to have a fully-trained militia that can be readily armed as needed.

Eight Illustrated Philosophical Thoughts

Colorful illustrations of several thought experiments. These are mostly presented for fun, with their meanings sketched rather than argued over tooth-and-knife (as is more customary among philosophers).

Friday Safety Briefing

Tell Us How You Really Feel, Mr. Sykes

[Missouri Republican U.S. Senate primary candidate Courtland Sykes] said he doesn't want his daughters to grow up to be "career obsessed banshees who forego home life ... to become nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the tops of a thousand tall buildings."

The article goes on to note that he 'faces an uphill battle' for the nomination. I'll wager.

McCarthy: Release the Memo

His argument is here.

I think this story has gone far enough that releasing the memo can't possibly be enough to resolve the deadly questions raised. We're going to need to see a lot more than that to make a judgment about whether these charges are true, or whether Republicans in Congress have been raising such explosive questions without basis. One way or the other, we need to know.

"Gang Life"

Looks like an easy win on DACA just got harder. Rubio may have internalized the message that he won't be winning any future Presidential nominations until he gets right with the base on immigration.

I wonder if the Republicans will stand firm on all the things they've now tied to a DACA fix? The wall, e-verify, an end to chain migration and also an end to the visa lottery program -- that's a lot of weight to pull. It could just be the Trump technique of making a 'big ask,' and then settling for less. I won't be surprised if e-verify is discarded, as that would be the part that would actually make it hard for corporations to hire illegals. That would drive up their labor costs, and they can't be happy about the idea.

Star Wars Fan Films

After the recent discussion of The Last Jedi, I saw that movie and then started looking for Star Wars stuff on YouTube. Something I discovered is that there are a lot of short fan-made videos out there, and some of them are fairly good, all things considered.

Of course, the classic Troops has been out for 20 years now.

But there's a lot of more recent stuff that's well-made, at least for amateurs. I kinda wish I could make something along these lines.

Here's one that's a little dark ...

Mathematics and the Battle of Clontarf

"The Brian Battle," as it was also called, was a turning point in Irish history. However, historians have long debated the exact nature of that turning point. Those with a patriotic Irish heart liked to portray it as a cleansing of Ireland by a native Irish hero, Brian Boru, who led his Irish armies to defeat the invading Vikings. That romantic reading fed the hearts of those who, likewise, wanted to cleanse Ireland of another bunch of invading Germanics.

More sober historians pointed to a lot of factionalism within the Ireland of the day, and suggested that it was probably more of a civil war in which the Vikings backed the losing side.

Now, a mathematical model suggests that the romantics were right, or at least more right than not.

To perform the study, the academics examined Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (“The War of the Irish with the Foreigners”), a chronicle from the early twelfth-century that reported on events in Ireland between 967 and 1014. They wanted to know how all the Irish and Viking characters in the text fit together in a network, monitoring whether the interactions between them were benign or hostile. They developed a mathematical measure to quantify whether hostility in the network mainly connected Irish to Irish or Irish to Vikings.

They then calculated the difference between the measure of hostilities between each type of character (Irish and Viking) and what would have been hostile interactions in the network, indiscriminate of whether characters were Irish or Viking.

A positive value of the resulting measure would signal Irish civil war and a negative number would reflect an Irish versus Viking conflict. The results gave an overall negative value suggesting that the text mainly describes an Irish against Viking conflict.

However, because the negative value was moderate (-0.32 on a scale from -088 to 1) they suggest the text does not describe a fully “clear-cut” Irish versus Viking conflict. Instead, the network portrays a complex picture of relationships and social networks of the time.

We tend to be inclined to doubt romantic opinions, but sometimes romance wins one.

Burned at Burns Night

In which Theresa May decides that Robert Burns should be treated as a symbol of enduring Union, and then mangles all the Scottish aspects.

Actually, I imagine that really did capture the spirit of the 'enduring Union' from the Scottish perspective.

An Argument on Abortion

Patrick S. Tomlinson has what he thinks is a knock-down argument in favor of abortion. In fact, it's not a particularly difficult argument to answer if you are equipped with a little Aristotle.

It's a simple scenario with two outcomes. No one ever wants to pick one, because the correct answer destroys their argument. And there IS a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question.

Here it is. You're in a fertility clinic. Why isn't important. The fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. As you run down this hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door and find a five-year-old child crying for help. They're in one corner of the room. In the other corner, you spot a frozen container labeled "1000 Viable Human Embryos." The smoke is rising. You start to choke. You know you can grab one or the other, but not both before you succumb to smoke inhalation and die, saving no one.

Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no "C." "C" means you all die.

In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question. And I never will.

Nonsense. "A" is the correct answer; but understanding why it is the correct answer shows that this argument actually tells us nothing much about abortion.

The reason "A" is the correct answer depends on the actual/potential distinction. As Aristotle explains in the Physics, potential is a kind of actuality -- he calls it 'first actuality.' A forest is potentially many houses in a way that a sand-filled desert is not, in that one could make houses out of the trees but not out of the sand. Yet you would not be surprised if someone valued one actual house, especially if it were well-made, over a forest of potential houses. The well-made house will keep him from freezing to death in a way that the potential house will not.

So you can set up a perfectly analogous story about a fire department that shows up to a fire that threatens both a well-made house, and also a nearby forest. They can stop the fire from spreading in only one direction. Does the owner prefer to protect his house, or his forest? It's going to be the same answer. What that shows is that abortion is actually irrelevant to the problem; you get the same story even if all the human lives are removed from the problem.

Tomlinson goes wrong in thinking that this means that destroying the embryos is not morally problematic. That's like arguing that it would be morally fine to set fire to the guy's forest since he cares so much more about his house.

“If they’re allowed to bully they just bully more.”

If you can believe it, that's a quotation from Samantha Power.

Kyle Smith doesn't much care for a new movie about the "Final Year" of Obama diplomacy.

Actual events don’t align with the Rhodes-Obama rhetoric. Vladimir Putin, frustratingly, keeps failing to be bent by the Arc of History (™) and doing whatever he wants, seizing Crimea and abetting Bashar al-Assad. Perhaps he notices the nonstop signaling from the White House that there’s a new sheriff in town, and said sheriff thinks crime-fighters have been way too tough on outlaws. “The error that we may have made is Putin doesn’t seem to pursue Russia’s national interests. He pursues Putin’s interests,” Rhodes says. In other words, surprise! — Putin doesn’t share a liberal American Democrat’s vision about what’s best for Russia. Only liberal American Democrats would need seven and a half years to figure this out. Power, riding in the back of a car, marvels at Russia’s naughtiness: “If they’re allowed to bully they just bully more.” Funny how that works. Kerry, after Russia breaks the ceasefire in Aleppo in 2016: “It’s just so frustrating because we really had an agreement that could have worked. And unfortunately we have some people who didn’t want to cooperate.”

So The Final Year is about the Obama Doctrine, also known as hashtag diplomacy, also known as leading from behind, also known as voting “present” — also known as hands-off. That a lot of people can get killed while you’re wringing them is the movie’s unintended lesson. Summing up, I give you none other than Samantha “Soft” Power herself, who near the end of the doc says in a moment of sudden clarity: “My world is a world where you have 65 million displaced. Yemen and Syria and Iraq, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, Central African Republic, Burundi, South Sudan, Darfur, you know, the list, Afghanistan, of course, Venezuela imploding . . . There are concerns about terrorism and there is a fear of the other and . . . all the trendlines — on democracy, right now, at least — are going in the wrong direction.”

If only she or her friends had held positions of authority, maybe they could have done something about some of that.