Turns out COVID doesn't know how to tell why you're in a crowd after all
Houston protestors are starting to report COVID cases now. Newsweek's approach is priceless: starting with the brave declaration of one sufferer that she doesn't regret her courageous stand for an instant, and continuing with the Houston Mayor's explanation that it's too soon to blame the protests for the new outbreak, because the Texas governor "packed people into bars and restaurants."
The only thing they left out was some sniffing over the bitter clingers who plan to attend the Bad Man's Tulsa rally.
The only thing they left out was some sniffing over the bitter clingers who plan to attend the Bad Man's Tulsa rally.
Wild Atlanta
The Atlanta police in zones 3, 4, 5, and 6 are not at work tonight. That’s the core of the city, minus only a couple of rich Republican zones in the north.
Guess we will know more tomorrow about how much the city needs them. Fire dispatch is down too, reportedly.
Guess we will know more tomorrow about how much the city needs them. Fire dispatch is down too, reportedly.
Fake News Today
Another Felony Murder Charge in Georgia
This time against the officer who killed Rayshard Brooks. I stand by my earlier assessment of felony murder as a tactic by prosecutors hoping to avoid a trial. However, there is a twist in this case. The D.A. is a Democrat in a runoff election, and thus has a powerful incentive to charge aggressively in order to ensure the Democratic primary base in that heavily-black district will vote to re-elect him.
Going for a capital charge has a potentially huge downside if the officer defends himself rather than pleading to avoid the death penalty. You almost certainly can't convict an officer who shot a suspect while carrying out an arrest against a subject who had violently resisted for the underlying felony, without which you can't convict on the capital crime either. If these elevated charges go down in court, the Atlanta Police will face another riot.
Does the jury then convict to avoid the riots, and send an officer of the law to his death? That would be unprecedented in my lifetime, but so is much that we are seeing today.
Going for a capital charge has a potentially huge downside if the officer defends himself rather than pleading to avoid the death penalty. You almost certainly can't convict an officer who shot a suspect while carrying out an arrest against a subject who had violently resisted for the underlying felony, without which you can't convict on the capital crime either. If these elevated charges go down in court, the Atlanta Police will face another riot.
Does the jury then convict to avoid the riots, and send an officer of the law to his death? That would be unprecedented in my lifetime, but so is much that we are seeing today.
Don't Know Much About History
As the comments point out, this comes on the heels of Tim Kaine declaring -- on the floor of the US Senate -- that the United States invented slavery, which is itself of a piece with the argument that the states had invented 'marriage' by passing laws to regulate the immemorial practice.
Destruction and Desecration of Statues
This is not our first rodeo, so I have a developed position on destroying statues: I'm always against it. I don't care who put the statue up, and I don't care why. Preservation of art is a worthwhile project even if only for future historians, who will want to be able to encounter the art and examine the expression of values by ancestors they no longer otherwise know how to approach. The Taliban was wrong, ISIS was wrong, and we're wrong to be doing it now.
I can appreciate efforts to 'recontextualize' statues, for example by putting up plaques that explain what you take to be the problems with their depiction. That's useful to future historians as well as current citizens, and it deepens the discussion across the generations about what the right values are.
Extreme cases may even permit the relocation of statutes from highly public places to museums or warehouses. Removing Nazi statues certainly may be justified; removing horrid modern art to make way for works of genuine beauty certainly is. Even these things should not be destroyed, though, at least not works of art that entail actual working and/or actual art.
Just as there are extreme cases that may justify removal, though, there are also paradigm cases in which desecration or destruction is especially wrong. The cause of human liberty was advanced a long way by Robert the Bruce and the Declaration of Arbroath, as has been frequently remarked here; and as far as I know, there is with the Bruce no admixture of tyranny (as there is, in the case of slave-owning, with Jefferson or Washington, two of Bruce's few near-peers in the cause of human liberty). The argument that his heart being taken on Crusade after his death was the mark of some sort of racist bias versus Muslims is ridiculous. "Race" wasn't a concept important to the 14th century; religion was, and the Muslims were waging war just as hotly on the Christians as vice versa.
It may be hard to say where to draw the line, but it wherever it is right to draw it is somewhere safely distant from Robert the Bruce.
I can appreciate efforts to 'recontextualize' statues, for example by putting up plaques that explain what you take to be the problems with their depiction. That's useful to future historians as well as current citizens, and it deepens the discussion across the generations about what the right values are.
Extreme cases may even permit the relocation of statutes from highly public places to museums or warehouses. Removing Nazi statues certainly may be justified; removing horrid modern art to make way for works of genuine beauty certainly is. Even these things should not be destroyed, though, at least not works of art that entail actual working and/or actual art.
Just as there are extreme cases that may justify removal, though, there are also paradigm cases in which desecration or destruction is especially wrong. The cause of human liberty was advanced a long way by Robert the Bruce and the Declaration of Arbroath, as has been frequently remarked here; and as far as I know, there is with the Bruce no admixture of tyranny (as there is, in the case of slave-owning, with Jefferson or Washington, two of Bruce's few near-peers in the cause of human liberty). The argument that his heart being taken on Crusade after his death was the mark of some sort of racist bias versus Muslims is ridiculous. "Race" wasn't a concept important to the 14th century; religion was, and the Muslims were waging war just as hotly on the Christians as vice versa.
It may be hard to say where to draw the line, but it wherever it is right to draw it is somewhere safely distant from Robert the Bruce.
Oh the Humanities
Trauma from George Floyd's death will result in students receiving higher grades... at Oxford.
Congratulations to West Point
They have graduated their first Sikh female cadet. Normally these “first!” stories don’t interest me, but I am glad to see the military availing itself of the opportunity represented by Sikh culture.
“My grandfather was an armor officer in the Indian army, so I grew up hearing about tanks and his recollection of fighting in the mountains of northern India," Narang told Task & Purpose. “Everything he told me grew my interest in the military … he embedded that culture of service and giving back to your country.”That is the kind of thing I wish more Americans of all stripes felt.
Treat it as an unplanned donation
Or an attack of undocumented shoppers.
Someone is going to have to sit these children down and teach them some of life's long words.
Someone is going to have to sit these children down and teach them some of life's long words.
Biological Sex & SCOTUS
Interesting logic at work here from Gorsuch.
The author of the piece has another bit of logic to advance.
"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex," Gorsuch writes. "Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."That's really plausible; the only issue is that mere statutory law should not be able to override constitutional protections for religious liberty. An Orthodox/Catholic/Muslim employer who declines to employ gays because they don't wish to provide material support their spouse is acting according to an ancient religious doctrine in each case. They're not motivated by mere animus, but by an attempt to live according to orthodoxies that are being declared illegal here -- exactly what Amendment One forbids.
The author of the piece has another bit of logic to advance.
To be clear, the court could deliver one of greatest legal protections for gay and transgender workers specifically because it acknowledges a fact deemed heretical by the most vocal woke activists: Namely that biological sex is real.
For years, the wokes have attempted to cancel everyone from right-wing trolls to liberal scientists for pointing out that biological sex is a scientific reality, one that specifically validates gay and transgender folks as a distinct class. And now the court has decided that because of that distinction, they're a protected class.... This is a victory for gay and transgender people, and hopefully one that puts to bed this hysterical canard that acknowledging the reality of biological sex is somehow hateful or dangerous toward transgender folks.
Emergency Lockdown
It is clearly a mistake to have given the government the idea that it can order people into house arrest for their own protection any time it decides to issue an emergency.
Second, what is the legal mechanism for issuing lockdown orders to the community via Twitter? All Americans do not use Twitter; I wouldn't use it myself if I weren't required to do so. It's a poisonous hole of a website that any reasonable person would be wise to avoid. If one should encounter police, could one be arrested for violating a Twitter order? Is there some other mechanism for issuing these orders? Is there an adequate lawful basis for allowing the police to constrict basic rights on their own, without consulting even the governor, let alone the legislature?
Third, I hope the bear had a nice romp through the empty town streets.
Shelter in PlaceFirst of all, black bears are really not very dangerous at all. If treated with respect, they will generally not harm anyone and will move along in their own good time.
At the request of Lower Makefield Township Police Department, all residents requested to shelter in place due to a black bear sighting. Specifically the Yardley Hunt Development residents. If sighted please call 911 immediately. The Game Commission is en route. pic.twitter.com/sFNzk80Vyt
— Lower Makefield (@LMTPD) June 14, 2020
Second, what is the legal mechanism for issuing lockdown orders to the community via Twitter? All Americans do not use Twitter; I wouldn't use it myself if I weren't required to do so. It's a poisonous hole of a website that any reasonable person would be wise to avoid. If one should encounter police, could one be arrested for violating a Twitter order? Is there some other mechanism for issuing these orders? Is there an adequate lawful basis for allowing the police to constrict basic rights on their own, without consulting even the governor, let alone the legislature?
Third, I hope the bear had a nice romp through the empty town streets.
To Be an Independent Mind in the University is Not Tolerated Today
There's an open letter going around, apparently from a professor in the history department at UC Berkeley, and it's not what you'd expect. It's a very well thought through, careful, and serious letter about the current issues of race, policing, and the black community, and I highly recommend reading it (Pastebin deleted it, but the internet is forever). As you might expect, it's not been well received by the rest of the UC Berkeley History Department, apparently:
Of course, that it wasn't well received is unsurprising, but that the *department* would openly come out and tweet a condemnation, and claim it goes against their values- without stating why or how- was a bit of an eyebrow raiser to me. It's perhaps the most anti-intellectual thing I've seen in the University wars and the shutting down of the right on campus. Typically, they do this via individual counter opinions and student uprisings, or bring in outside agitators to shut down campus speakers, or some other proxy. To have a department come out like this is a bit shocking honestly. Though the ability of anything like this to shock me diminishes by the day as we see more and more like actions.
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