Eric The Blue

Justice Thomas looks forward

During their confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominees are routinely asked what they think about this issue or that case, and they routinely answer that it would be inappropriate for them to comment since, if confirmed to the Court, they might have to rule on that very question. Justice Thomas, in his confirmation hearing, sometimes followed a different strategy. When asked his opinion of Roe v Wade, he said that he couldn't comment—not because it would be inappropriate, but because he had no opinion at all. According to him, he'd never thought about it. He was then confirmed, and as a fiftyish man soon had to form his first ever opinion about the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence. It turns out that, after careful study, he regards with contempt the notion that there is a constitutional right to abortion. In the recent Dobbs case, reversing Roe and Casey, he was not content, for example, just to join the majority opinion. He said in a separate concurring opinion that the majority was correct to reverse the court's previous abortion decisions, but he wanted to go on record stating what he thinks should happen next. Here's the passage, from pages 118 and 119 in the Court's collection of the different opinions in the case, here:

The Court today declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine's application in other, specific contexts. Cases like Griswold v Connecticut (right of married persons to obtain contraceptives), Lawrence v Texas (right to engage in private, consensual sex acts), and Obergefell v Hodges (right to same sex marriage), are not at issue. . . . For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is "demonstrably erroneous," we have a duty to "correct the error" established in those precedents.

I've omitted the case citations in the text, but the phrases "demonstrably erroneous" and "correct the error" are in quotation marks because Justice Thomas is referring to previous opinions of his. It's pretty clear that the rule against indicating what you think about a question that might come before the Supreme Court evaporates once you've been confirmed to a lifetime appointment. Justice Thomas is saying, very explicitly, that he thinks the legal reasoning underlying these other precedents is "demonstrably erroneous" and that the cases should be reconsidered, in the manner of Roe and Casey. He's advertising for business from the kind of right-wing interest groups his wife often represents in her lobbying business. "Here's what I think; bring some cases, appeal them up to the Supreme Court, I'll take your side." Is there another way to understand what he's saying? 

Conservatives complain about "the swamp" in Washington but there is no swampier institution than their own Supreme Court. Its composition is determined by an actuarial lottery augmented by political machinations. The confirmation hearings are absurd charades in which the nominees lie and dissemble and a majority of senators pretend to believe them—although, I have to admit, some of the senators are so stupid that they may actually believe them. Once on the Court for life, the justices step out of their threadbare disguises and commence ruling as their political sponsors (and the rest of the sentient population) knew they would. Occasionally one of the justices expresses puzzlement, or annoyance, over why so many Americans should think they're just partisan hacks in robes. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett took her turn, Mitch McConnell was standing beside her. Maybe they want to rub our faces in it, or maybe they're so invested in the scam as to be rendered clueless about how it looks to honest people. I don't know. Barrett and two of her colleagues—that's three out of the nine, and half of the right-wing super-majority—were appointed to the Court by a traitorous coup plotter, but it's doubtful he'll ever go to prison, or even be indicted, and nothing will happen to them in any event: the fruit of the rotten tree will be lording it over us for a couple generations, assuming the country holds together that long. 

 

Prayer at the 50

Someone has aptly said that so long as there are tests in math there will be prayer in schools. But prayers concerning solutions to story problems, being by nature private and silent, do not end up the subject of First Amendment litigation. The high-school football coach leading his players in prayer at the 50-yard-line is different, though as of yesterday, according to the Supreme Court, as acceptable as a cry from the depths about algebra. The one probably unusual opinion I have about the case relates to the question of "what Jesus would say." Seriously!

One side favors the decision because people have to be free to practice their religious faith. The other side condemns it because the coach is using his position to coerce students into participating in Christian prayers at the end of a school activity. Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, says:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. . . . [Matthew 6, 5-8]

Standing on the street corner babbling like a pagan seems to me a lot like kneeling at the 50-yard-line, babbling like a football coach. The conservative justices imagine they've struck a blow for religious freedom, but they've merely given their imprimatur to shallow displays of religiosity. Sorry, Jesus says, not me. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, where there are still public schools, it's too bad that kids who want to play on the team will have to put up with this crap. 

 

Surfing

A hard day of surfing the 'Net can yield up some interesting morsels. I knew, for example, that Tony Oliva, who will be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame later this summer, had a fabulous rookie season in 1964, and that one of the categories in which he led the American League that year was total bases. Yesterday I saw that he had 374 total bases in 1964—his 217 hits included 32 homers, 9 triples, and 43 doubles. Brooks Robinson, the American Leaguer with the second most total bases in 1964, had only 319. To catch Tony, Robinson would have had to hit, for example, 28 additional doubles. The guy in third place, Harmon Killebrew, had just three fewer total bases (316) than Robinson, and that's pretty much how it goes down the line. Tony-O lapped the field. Not sure anyone ever had a better rookie year. 

In an unrelated field, the spring of 1969 was the last time a majority of justices on the Supreme Court had been appointed by a Democratic president. That's 53 years now. In that time, 17 justices have been appointed, 13 of them by Republican presidents. Over the same period, Republicans won 7 out of 13 presidential elections (and got more votes in only 5 out of the 13). On the current court, 6 of the 9 justices were appointed by Republicans even though, over the time period they were appointed, Democratic candidates won more presidential elections. Seems obvious to me that the justices should serve for a set period of time with terms expiring at regular intervals—probably one every other year, so that two new justices are appointed during each presidential term. Take it out of the hand of God (who decides when justices croak) and Mitch McConnell (who, when a justice croaks, decides whether the sitting president gets to appoint the replacement). 

 

Latin lesson

I wrote a while ago about Chuck Grassley's Twitter feed, which is enjoyable when he performs his great-grampa-in-Iowa act:

If u lost ur pet pidgin /it’s dead in front yard my Iowa farm JUST DISCOVERED here r identifiers Right leg Blue 2020/3089/AU2020/SHE ///LEFT LEG GREEN BAND NO PRINTED INFO. Sorry for bad news

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) September 19, 2020

But he's also one of a hundred US senators, and when he tweets in that capacity . . . not sure his mental acumen exceeds the average for his demographic cohort:

For many today’s decision is about far more than correcting Roe it means that the rights of the unborn are no longer in jeopardy This ruling empowers the ppl thru their elected reps to make commonsense policy decisions It takes policymaking out of the hands of unelected judges

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) June 24, 2022

Maybe he's unaware that back in the mists of time, like yesterday, some unelected judges held that the people of New York, acting through their elected representatives, could not enact "commonsense policy decisions," related to carrying guns in public, that they deemed necessary to promote safety and the general welfare. The law was adopted more than a hundred years ago.

Stare decisis must be Latin for "previously owned by an old lady who only drove back and forth from home to church and the grocery store." Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, bought the jalopy: "This decision [reversing Roe] is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon." Sucka! (She also voted to acquit Trump at his first impeachment trial, since, she said, "he's learned his lesson.") 

Polling shows that only a quarter of respondents say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the Supreme Court—a record low. I'd like a gallon freezer bag full of whatever the 25 percent is smoking. It evidently will transport you to a faraway land where the swamps smell of wisteria.  

Act now to be an American hero before the bar is raised

 

Hearing people talk about Mike Pence being an American hero put me in mind of Sam Morril's bit in the above clip. It's a great time to be a guy—the bar is so low—and an even better time to be a Republican. He went on a date and did not commit any felonies: an American hero! He was recruited to play a part in the overthrow of the government but instead he did what the Constitution required, thereby daring to disappoint the guy who tried to get him killed: another American hero! Now if only the first guy could kick his porn habit and the second would testify about what he knows. 

Mark Shields, 1937-2022

Mark Shields, who died this morning, was for years a Friday night political commentator on PBS NewsHour, formerly known as the McNeill Lehrer Report. He'd discuss the week's political news with a conservative sparring partner—earliest one I can remember was Paul Gigot, then David Gergen, and most recently David Brooks. I must have seen a thousand of these segments in the 90s and early aughts, often the midnight rerun while the effects of happy hour were starting to wear off. Today, everyone is saying what a mensch he was, and I'm sure it's true, but if you only knew him because you consumed political journalism on TV what stood out (besides the fact that I almost always agreed with him) was his wit. He once said, on live television, something like, "Regarding Chris Christie, I'm probably about the last person who should tell him to join a gym. But let me tell ya something: watching that guy get out of an SUV, it was like watching the Russians get out of Afghanistan. Took that long." 

He was an Irish Catholic, a Marine, a Notre Dame grad (major: philosophy), a sports fan (Red Sox and Georgetown basketball), smart and funny and, according to the testimony of many, kind—one thing about the Christie quip, he wasn't punching down. 

Update: I keep forgetting it's 2022. Here's the clip. It's hilarious that Rush Limbaugh fans faulted him for "mocking Christie's weight."

 

 

Bedfellows

Ann Coulter's most recent Substack post begins, "As much as I'm enjoying the January 6th committee's careful assembly of evidence proving President Trump is a douchebag, I wasn't seeing much in the way of a criminal offense until this week's underreported story about how Trump used his 'STOP THE STEAL' fundraising appeals to grift his supporters . . . ."

Not sure whether I should feel queasy or validated about agreeing with Ann Coulter on the fundamentals of Trump's character. But, regarding the former president's criminal exposure, she might want to consult with some legal beagles who are pretty sure Trump violated multiple federal statutes by, for example, pressuring Pence not to perform his constitutional duties on 6 January 2021. There is also the fact that federal judge David Carter, in an order directing Trump attorney John Eastman to turn over documents to the congressional committee investigating J6, wrote that the evidence in his records case persuaded him that Trump "more likely than not" committed crimes related to the effort to block or delay the certification of electoral votes. The grifting is actually a kind of sidelight that, however revelatory of Trump's character, seems in the scheme of things roughly analogous to another of his consiglieres, Rudy Giuliani, complaining bitterly that in fact he (Giuliani) hadn't been smashed (when advising Trump to get along with the coup). 

Coulter's article is mainly about Dinesh D'Souza's movie "2000 Mules," which I'd heard about without, however, learning any details. Apparently D'Souza obtained cell phone tracking records that either have persuaded him (if he's a moron) or given him a pretext to assert (if he's vile) that there's proof the election was stolen from Trump when, as Coulter summarizes, "2000 people delivered multiple ballots to election drop boxes in the five crucial battleground states that Trump lost.” Coulter does a decent job of dismantling this absurd claim by pointing out, among other things, that D'Souza's cell phone records do not distinguish between mailmen and "mules." She might also have mentioned that, in general, claims of suspicious doings in the battleground states should be measured against what happened in the country as a whole. I'd bet my first 20 social security checks that, had a disinterested investigator gotten cell phone records around counting stations in San Francisco and Laramie, he would have detected the same kind of "suspicious" activity that D'Souza claims to have uncovered in "the crucial battleground states." The whole bit about cell phone tracking is just meant to give a veneer of techie prestige to bullshit. Nothing was going on in the battleground states that wasn't going on in the whole country—the widely reported election results show this. Trump lost to Clinton by 2.1 percent, then to Biden by 4.5 percent. So a 2.4 percent movement away from Trump, enough to turn the narrowly decided "battlegrounds" from red to blue. Trump went backwards by two or three or four percent in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan and also by two or three or four percent in Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Virginia, both Dakotas, Tennessee, Alabama, Washington, Kentucky, Maryland, and most other states I haven't mentioned. 

But there were "mules" in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania!

Those Republicans!

• These are ideas we rejected in the bipartisan agreement on principles for gun-related legislation announced yesterday. Why? Because we knew that if they were included, the bill would not command the votes needed for passage. pic.twitter.com/dfrAWmYJM2

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 13, 2022

Earlier this week, the Republican governor of Ohio signed into law a bill reducing, to 24 from more than 700, the number of training hours needed before a teacher qualifies to carry a gun in school. It's crazy how the solution to gun violence is always more guns—as if the problem were lung cancer and the remedy to increase access to the Marlboro Red Pack.  Might a kid steal a teacher's gun and shoot him before turning it on some of his fellow scholars in fourth hour civics class? I bet something like that happens 500 times for every active shooter taken out by an armed teacher. Maybe the thinking is that since the cops won't go into an elementary school to confront an active shooter armed with an AR-15, the teachers better be armed themselves, even if they're not as well trained as the heroes in blue harassing the frantic moms who've gathered in the school parking lot. 

I'm sort of confused by the above tweet from John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas. Every single bullet point is sensible and enjoys broad public support. Is he bragging that Republicans would never allow a single one to be implemented? Or just stating the facts, Joe Friday style? But for the word "unconstitutional" in the sixth bullet, the tweet might have been composed by AOC (or me) to highlight the Republican flight from rationality on guns. Presumably, the constitutional text that grants gun owners a sacred right to be careless reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. 

Too many commas, which is only the start of the trouble, but where does it say you can keep your ARs in whatever manner you see fit? By the way, mens rea means "guilty mind": in the last bullet, Cornyn is saying that if you buy a gun for someone who could not legally buy it for himself, his Republican colleagues don't want to make it too hard to argue "I didn't know that was wrong." Tough on crime!

They aren't tough on Trump's crimes, either: the officially-approved, Republican response to the findings of the January 6 committee, as revealed so far in two televised hearings, is ho-hum, nothing to see, nothing new, back to the sit-coms and soaps. I suppose one rejoinder might be that they're saying they already knew Trump was a bowl full of fecal matter, but he's their bowl full so how can they be disgusted? But a better one would be that it's just false to say the committee hasn't revealed anything new. From a New York Times story on yesterday's hearing:

Investigators went further on Monday, detailing how the Trump campaign and its Republican allies used claims of a rigged election that they knew were false to mislead small donors and raise as much as $250 million for an entity they called the Official Election Defense Fund, which top campaign aides testified never existed. . . .

Money ostensibly raised to "stop the steal" instead went to Mr. Trump and his allies, including, the investigation found, $1 million for a charitable foundation run by Mark Meadows, his chief of staff; $1 million to a political group run by several of his former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump's immigration agenda;  more than $200,000 to Trump hotels; and $5 million to Event Strategies Inc., which ran the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol riot.

Aides said Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Mr. Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., was paid $60,000 to speak at that event, a speech that lasted less than three minutes.

Junior must really be into Kim because she got only around $150,000 less than the sum funneled to the entire hotel side of the kingdom. Another Times article speculates that the revelation has the potential to peel away the part of Trump's base that might resent having been bilked and milked, but that's a pipe dream ignoring social science research into the psychology of marks. Grifting is lucrative partly because the victims tend not to complain. It's so humiliating to admit you fell for it that, rather than face facts, you might gob spit on them and take a leap of faith into the maw of the grifter. 

At a music recital

Found out today that I'm the kind of person who, at a kids' music recital, will hope in my soul that some of them will screw up so that my kid won't feel too bad about it when she does, too. I've heard her practice, and I know she gets nervous. Then in the event she does well enough and I feel morally responsible for the tribulations of those who had a worse time. One boy stopped playing and studied his music for several silent seconds before he turned to the audience and, smiling broadly, announced: "I got lost." Apparently I took it harder than he did. 

My daughter's virtuoso performance begins at about 47:55 in the above video. Wish I could direct you to the fellow who confessed to being lost. I think maybe the comic relief was edited out.

Here's what the violin students may aspire to:

 

 

Talking myself off the ledge

Last night I was driving somewhere, Twins game on the radio—they're playing the Yankees, who have a win percentage so far of .714, the best in baseball—when a Twin hit a ball to right field. Don't know exactly what happened but whatever it was caused broadcaster Dan Gladden to exclaim, "Stanton cannot play outfield!" Before leaving to run errands, I'd been watching on TV when the Twins scored the first runs of the game after Stanton ran back on a deep fly, then decided to play it off the wall, which he did—after the ball had landed at the base of the fence. Gladden's declaration came after he subsequently turned another fly out into another double. Before I got back home, he made yet another bad play (according to Gladden).

My intention is not to pick on Stanton but just to point out to the anti-fans in my life that no team is without flaws. By "anti-fan" I mean people who, told that the Twins are doing "pretty good," or that Buxton had two more extra base hits yesterday, reply

When did they last win a playoff game?

or

He just came off an 0-for-30 streak, plus he's always injured.

Yes, I read about these issues in the Strib. But the Yankees, who are on pace to win more than 110 games, play a right fielder who might as well use a metal glove, and have you ever wondered when the Seattle Mariners last won a playoff game? Or consider the Los Angeles Angels. They have Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, probably the two best players in baseball. A couple years ago, they spent a sum of money that would be regarded as nontrivial by the main sponsor of the Saudi golf league in order to sign a 3rd baseman, Anthony Rendon, who is currently batting .242 (and not playing on account of a balky wrist). Trout got a hit the other day that ended an 0-for-26 drought. Their current record is 27-31. They've lost 13 games in a row and just fired their manager. Their last season with a winning record was 2015. 

I'm mainly trying to talk myself out of a tendency I know I have—dwelling obsessively on the Twins' weaknesses, about which I'm intimately familiar since I follow them every day, and unthinkingly thinking that life must be perfect for the fans of other teams. It's not even perfect for Yankee fans, and maybe there's a life lesson here hidden in plain sight. Everyone knows what they're up against, but it's not like the rest of human experience is accurately reflected on Instagram. For that, we have literature—John Cheever's fantastical, enormous radio, for example, and I like too this poem by Thomas Hardy.

Twins in May (and early June)

The Twins were 18-12 in May, which raised their record for the season to 30-21. It's beginning to look like they may be the best team in baseball's worst division: they're the only AL Central member with a winning record, and the five teams in the division (Twins, White Sox, Guardians, Tigers, and Royals) have a dismal 61-85 record when not playing among themselves. Now, a few days into June, the Twins stand 17-10 against divisional foes and 15-14 in all other games. Everyone thinks the Sox are the team to fear. We'll see. They've been disappointing so far, and a case can be made that 50 or more games is enough of a sample to indicate what the other 110 are apt to be like. 

The Twins would be better than 17-10 within their division if, as May changed to June, they had not lost four of five games to the lowly Tigers in Detroit. Besides losing, the team was filling its roster with minor-league call-ups as first this regular and then that one had to be placed on either the injured list or the Covid list. Then, to make matters worse, the schedule called for them to travel from Detroit to Toronto for three games against the Blue Jays, and to enter Canada you have to show you've been vaccinated. It thus came to light that four Twins—right fielder Max Kepler and relief pitchers Caleb Thielbar, Emilio Pagan, and Trevor Megill—have declined to be vaccinated and had to be placed on the inactive list, thereby depleting further an already thin roster. In addition, Alex Kirilloff, who had been rehabbing in the minors from an injury, was not recalled. Since he would have been an obvious weekend replacement for Kepler, it seems likely he isn't vaccinated, either. 

Well, around 30 percent of the country is nuts, so why wouldn't a baseball team have a few kooks? It's sort of interesting to find out who they are, however. With the Twins, anyway, it seems to be the Caucasian God-Squaders who lead the way.  I'm a little mystified about the connection between religious faith, of a fundamentalist flavor, and opposition to the Covid vaccines, especially since submitting yourself to a shot is so easy and would help your team. To refuse seems selfish, a trait not generally included on lists of the Christian virtues. The culture wars come to baseball. 

Though it technically belongs to the June summary, I'm clearly a little late with May's and can therefore report that what looked like an imminent collapse coming out of Detroit took a more favorable turn in Toronto, where the Twins won two out of three over the weekend. After scoring a total of two runs in the last three games of the Detroit series, the Twins scored 17 times in the two wins against the Jays, who had won eight in a row before Minnesota limped into town.

On Friday, the Twins started one Chi Chi Gonzalez, a 30-year-old journeyman, mostly in the minor leagues, though with enough big-league experience to have compiled a 9-23 career mark with an ERA of around five-and-a-half and a WHIP of around one-and-a-half. He lasted three innings, allowing three runs, but was backed up by six innings of no-hit [sic] relief provided by five different members of the severely depleted bullpen. Meanwhile, the batters knocked five balls out of the park and the Twins won 9-3.

After getting trounced on Saturday, the Twins won the rubber game of the series yesterday, 8-6. Luis Arraez had four singles and a walk in five plate appearances, and the Twins collected a season-high 16 hits, including a 2-run homer by Gary Sanchez in the 8th inning, but it was the play of shortstop Jermaine Palacios that caught my eye. He's one of the call-ups, a beneficiary of shortstops Carlos Correa (Covid) and Royce Lewis (banged up knee) being unable to play. I understand that many consider Palacios to be the best fielding shortstop in the Twins organization, but he hasn't shown he can hit: so far this year, in 163 plate appearances with the Triple-A St. Paul Saints, he had an OPS of .701, which is only average. Yesterday, after the Twins scored three times in the top of the first, the Jays lead-off batter homered, and two of the next three hitters walked. The next guy hit a hard grounder that looked like a sure hit, but Palacios dove to his left, speared it, and from his belly flipped to Polanco at second, who completed an inning-ending double play. Without that fielding gem, eight runs might not have been enough. Palacios later drove in a run with a single and had a sacrifice bunt. It was his seventh game in the majors. If he forgets a single detail, it could only mean that he plays in at least 700 more. 

The Yankees are next, starting tomorrow at Target Field. They have baseball's best record, and not just by a little, but you never know what's going to happen.

I've been driving around with a fellow Twins nut, watching their minor league teams play. Executive summary:

Des Moines is a nice town, but the ballpark is only average. Wichita is sort of a dump, but the ballpark is beautiful. Buying cocktails at either park is not recommended: price is exorbitant and I can only assume that alcohol would be detected by sophisticated scientific instruments. I'm a little disappointed by the greeting from my dog after our first ever time apart. It was muted, as if happiness to see me was at war with resentment over having been abandoned in the first place. We may have trust issues going forward.