Burning Flags Does or Does Not Constitute Speech?
A man in Iowa is sentenced to 16 years for burning the LGBT "Rainbow" flag.
She Needs to Know the Parameters
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has chosen to withhold her caucus' Articles of Impeachment, as some of you may have heard, until whenever. I've suggested elsewhere that by doing so, she's exonerating Trump by confessing that her caucus has no case to present for trial.
However, Pelosi has provided arationalization rationale:
The next thing for us will be when we see the process that is set forth in the Senate. Then, we’ll know the number of monitors that we may have to go forward.
Of course, she doesn't need that for this. She can appoint the entire Republican caucus as monitors: our Constitution doesn't specify the number, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, I suspect, doesn't care.
Eric Hines
However, Pelosi has provided a
The next thing for us will be when we see the process that is set forth in the Senate. Then, we’ll know the number of monitors that we may have to go forward.
Of course, she doesn't need that for this. She can appoint the entire Republican caucus as monitors: our Constitution doesn't specify the number, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, I suspect, doesn't care.
Eric Hines
An American Mass Grave
I don't generally watch television; haven't for years and years. On my last trip to DC, however, I stayed with some friends who do watch TV on a daily basis. They were watching a show called Watchmen, which I recognized from having encountered the comic book as a teenager. I couldn't remember the first thing about the plot of the story or the characters. As a consequence, the show was almost as fresh to me as if I'd never heard of it at all. (On balance I rather enjoyed the first few episodes, which was all I saw. I liked the habit of never explaining anything, but leaving it to the viewer to figure out what on earth is going on with a setting that is so similar to our own, yet so substantially different. It was intellectually engaging.)
The show begins with a dramatization of a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Archæologists have just uncovered a mass grave associated with that riot.
The story is worth reading both because we have a duty to know and remember things like this from American history, and also as a warning about our own political moment. Racial tensions are not as high as in 1919, thank goodness, but other tensions are getting there.
The show begins with a dramatization of a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Archæologists have just uncovered a mass grave associated with that riot.
The story is worth reading both because we have a duty to know and remember things like this from American history, and also as a warning about our own political moment. Racial tensions are not as high as in 1919, thank goodness, but other tensions are getting there.
“They had created the most successful Black-owned business district in the country,” Brown tells TIME. “Booker T. Washington, when he visited initially referred to it as the ‘Negro Wall Street of America,’ and it later took on the moniker ‘Black Wall Street.'”
There were several hundred businesses in Greenwood — hotels, restaurants, beauty parlors, “everything you can think of,” Brown adds. “There was a sense of self-sufficiency.”
But Greenwood wasn’t immune to the racial violence that plagued much of the era. More than two dozen race riots had broken out throughout the country In 1919 — which meant mobs of white people attacking black neighborhoods, according to Ellsworth. Oklahoma was starting to see a rise in membership to the KKK.
Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old black shoe shiner, used an elevator to go up to a segregated bathroom on May 30, 1921. In the elevator was Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white woman and elevator operator. Whether or not the two knew each other is uncertain, but it is believed that Rowland tripped entering the elevator and caught himself on Page’s arm, and she let out a scream. An onlooker who heard the scream summoned the police, believing Page had been the victim of an attempted sexual assault. No record exists that Page said anything about a sexual assault to the police, according to Ellsworth’s report, but Rowland was arrested the next day.
An angry crowd of white people began to gather in front of the court house holding Rowland, calling for him to be turned over to them. The sheriff set up a row of armed guards to protect the building. Then a group of about 25 armed black veterans of World War I showed up, ready to protect Rowland. The mob of white people had grown to an estimated thousand by that evening. Some attempted to break into a local armory for weapons.
Tensions increased through the night and the white mob continued to grow. At about 10 p.m. a group of armed black men made their way to the court house, offering help to authorities. Then one white man approached a black World War I veteran and tried to take away his gun. When the gun went off, the race riot began.
Equality and Consent
Ashe Schow is right about this proposal.
Ultimately NY is proposing a standard that will hold that women cannot consent after a few drinks, while a man could after the same number. It’s none of the state’s business whether a woman chooses to consent after a couple of beers, as long as she did in fact consent. To say otherwise is, as Ms. Schow says, infantalizing to women. It treats their sexuality as once again a matter for a paternalistic state’s oversight.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) proposed legislation on Tuesday that would close what he called a “loophole” in rape law.Formally this retains equality under the law, because it says “someone” rather than “a woman.” Pragmatically it establishes an unequal standard both because it intends to affect women differently from men, but also because alcohol itself affects women differently from men. Women get drunk on less, faster, and suffer more physically (including long term effects like liver damage).
Cuomo claimed that prosecutors cannot bring rape charges against an accused person if an accuser voluntarily consumes alcohol. Cuomo’s proposal would change the state’s definition of those who cannot legally consent to sexual activity to include someone who is conscious but allegedly too drunk to consent. Keen observers will notice how vague the idea of being “too drunk to consent” may be.
Ultimately NY is proposing a standard that will hold that women cannot consent after a few drinks, while a man could after the same number. It’s none of the state’s business whether a woman chooses to consent after a couple of beers, as long as she did in fact consent. To say otherwise is, as Ms. Schow says, infantalizing to women. It treats their sexuality as once again a matter for a paternalistic state’s oversight.
If She Could Only Be Like This All The Time
Tulsi:
I could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.
Anti-labor laws
Strange how often "labor laws" kills jobs, but hey, it's California. We'd rather you had no job than a job we don't like!
Obamacare unconstitutional?
The Fifth Circuit has just ruled that the ACA individual mandate is unconstitutional, now that there's no longer a tax we can pretend to justify it with. They remanded the case back down to the district court to take a stab at deciding whether the whole act must fall with the individual mandate, or can be severed.
Do-Onething Congress
Do you think that, now that this ridiculous political theater is finally nearly over, the House might actually get something besides impeachment done?
Oh, no, of course not. They’re going on holiday.
Oh, no, of course not. They’re going on holiday.
Oops
Gig workers “protect” themselves by legislation, get fired in droves.
Vox Media is laying off hundreds of freelance writers and editors due to a new California law that was sold as a way to protect the state's contingent workforce. That law, AB5, was adopted in September. To comply, New York-based Vox Media would have had to reclassify many of the freelancers it uses for sports platform SB Nation as full-time staff.
Instead, the company decided to cancel the contracts of some 200 or so freelancers....
Vox Media's flagship publication, Vox, previously called the California legislation "a victory for workers everywhere."
The OSS And Modernist Design
Oh, dear.
Propaganda played a crucial role during World War II, with the O.S.S. leading efforts to demoralize the enemy and encourage resistance in Axis-controlled countries. They created a stamp bearing the face of Hitler rendered as a skull, produced radio broadcasts in German, spread pamphlets announcing a German general’s resignation and made films for new military recruits, such as the Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck’s circa 1943 “Organization of the Army,” which was commissioned by General George C. Marshall. Through its manipulation of the art of information, the agency helped shape the look and philosophy of American imperialism. In doing so, the O.S.S. assembled a concentration of acumen and talent that rivaled those of the iconic schools and institutes that propagated design in the 20th century. It was the Bauhaus, but for war....Utopian it may have been, but the Bauhaus school fostered the ugliest sort of design anyone ever invented. I'd hope the OSS merited a better comparison than that.
...the utopian ideas swirling around the Bauhaus in 1920s Germany positing that design should reflect a society at its most efficient and egalitarian — modern industrial design had a revolutionary mission. Design was art in everyday life. It could have universal applications.
Respect Your Elders
It’s rare for a generation gap to work like this, in which only one’s own generation and older is suspicious of you. Voter over 50 remember the Cold War, though. They remember the USSR.
It's a bad idea to infuriate a federal judge
They'll take you at your word on a lot of things if you keep your nose clean. But you really don't want to make one think you've been lying to her.
Sad News From Savannah
The venerable and excellent Kevin Barry's Irish Pub is closing forever. I do not know if I will ever return to Savannah if Kevin Barry's isn't there to draw me. Back before we were married, and when we were newly so, my wife and I spent many wonderful evenings there listening to Harry O'Donoghue play in the music room. Upstairs, the "Hall of Heroes" is a regular hangout for 75th Rangers and 160th SOAR folks from nearby Hunter Army Airfield, and has the most moving tributes to fallen soldiers. The loss of this establishment is one of those incalculable ones; Savannah has plenty of bars, and even plenty of pubs, but there isn't another Kevin Barry's in the world.
Kevin Barry's has featured occasionally here at Grim's Hall, as here. The song named after the boy that the pub is also named after inspired my effort at writing a poem for the late Lance Corporal Ian Malone.
Kevin Barry's has featured occasionally here at Grim's Hall, as here. The song named after the boy that the pub is also named after inspired my effort at writing a poem for the late Lance Corporal Ian Malone.
Grim Will Want to See This!
According to America's Paper of Record:
The accompanying photo ... um, won't scar you too much.
LOS ANGELES, CA—Classic historical drama film Braveheart is receiving a reboot by Paramount Pictures next year, this time with an all-female cast.
Lena Dunham will play the starring role of Willow Wallace, a "fierce Scottish she-warrior who don't need no man."
Co-stars include Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, and Beyonce ...
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