Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
It’s Saturday, a day of posting persiflage, and so I proffer another section of my life of “Coyne’s Best songs.” Remember, I’m limited to judging what I’ve heard, and here are what I consider to be. . .
The Best Country Crossover Songs
El Paso Marty Robbins
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry Hank Williams
End of the World Skeeter Davis
Crazy Patsy Cline (written by Willie Nelson)
We’ll Sing in the Sunshine Gail Garnett
Stand By Your Man Tammy Wynette
Wichita Lineman Glenn Campbell
Gentle on My Mind Glenn Campbell
Galveston Glenn Campbell
Behind Closed Doors Charlie Rich
Ruby (Don’t Take Your Love to Town) Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
Right Time of the Night Jennifer Warnes
I Will Always Love You Dolly Parton
Here You Come Again Dolly Parton
Send Me Down to Tucson Mel Tillis
I Need You LeAnn Rimes
Amy Pure Prairie League
Snowbird Anne Murray
Sixteen Tons Tennessee Ernie Ford
Now not all these songs were recorded to be “country songs,” but all of them are at least countrified—that is, in the stuyle of country music. And I love all of them. Some are now very obscure (e.g., “Send me Down to Tucson,” “Snowbird”, and of course who remembers “Sixteen Tons,” once hugely popular), but all are great music. I’ll put a few up for your listening pleasure. You are invited to note your own country crossover songs in the comments:
You’ll notice that there are three songs featuring Glenn Campbell on the list, and “Galveston” is the least popular of the three, but it’s the one that most moves me (all are wonderful). Campbell, originally a session musician in the famous “Wrecking Crew“, was a world-class guitarist, you’ll see below from his fantastic solo that starts slowly with the melody at 4:27 and then goes off into space. (For another example of his virtuosity, see the section of “Gentle on My Mind” performed live here). “Galveston” was written by Jimmy Webb and released by Campbell in 2003 after it flopped with Don Ho.
The YouTube notes:
From 2002, Glen Campbell & Steve Wariner perform “Galveston”, introduced by Brad Paisley, with video intro that includes comments by Merle Haggard, Keith Urban, Melissa Etheridge, Toby Keith, Radney
Foster, Tracy Byrd, Robert K. Oermann, and Tom Roland.
The performance starts at 2:32, but don’t miss the introductory interviews.
Oh, hell, I’ll put his “Gentle on My Mind” performance below. How many country stars can you recognize?
The inimitable Dolly Parton (“It takes a lot of money to make me look this cheap”), singing one of her more recent hits, “Here You Come Again“, written by the famous duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and released in 1977.
Another early one from Dolly, written by her and released in 1973. It was her fond farewell to Porter Wagoner, who was her mentor but was also overbearing (they were not romantically involved). A bit from Wikipedia:
Country music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton wrote the song in 1973 for her one-time partner and mentor Porter Wagoner, from whom she was separating professionally after a seven-year partnership. She recorded it in RCA Studio B in Nashville on June 12, 1973.
Author Curtis W. Ellison stated that the song “speaks about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman that does not descend into unremitting domestic turmoil, but instead envisions parting with respect – because of the initiative of the woman”. The country love track is set in a time signature of common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute. (Larghetto/Adagio) Although Parton found much success with the song, many people are unaware of its origin; during an interview, Parton’s manager Danny Nozel said that “one thing we found out from American Idol is that most people don’t know that Dolly Parton wrote [the track]”. During an interview on The Bobby Bones Show, Dolly Parton revealed that she wrote her signature song “Jolene” on the same day that she wrote “I Will Always Love You.” Parton clarified later, “I don’t really know if they were written in the same night.”
LeAnn Rimes may still be around, but she doesn’t have a high profile. Released in 2000, “I Need You” (there’s another country song with the same title) may have been the apogee of Rimes’s career, and it’s a great song. Here it is performed live on the Jay Leno Show in 2000. It may be classified as a “pop ballad,” but I’m putting it in the country crossover category become Rimes was a country singer before this came out.
“We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,” recorded by Gale Garnett in 1964, was a hit on both country-music and pop charts. Who remembers this one? It’s very bittersweet, about a woman who tells her man that they’ll have their day in the sun, but it will last only a year. This is clearly a lip-synch of the original version.
And Skeeter Davis (real name Mary Frances Penick, with a nickname that means “mosquito” in slang) singing “The End of the World” (1962). It’s another lip-synched song, but no less great for it. (Her hair is definitely country here.) She died of breast cancer at 72, performing right up to the end.
Finally, Charlie Rich singing “Behind Closed Doors” (1973), with a theme similar to “Send me Down to Tucson,” but with the latter involving two different women.
I’ve neglected songs by greats like Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, but you can check them out for yourself. Remember that Cline’s big hit “Crazy” (1961) was written by Willie Nelson, who’s still with us.
Today’s Caturday report is a bit sad in that two of the items involve moggies who died. But we all do, and sometimes we need to read about people’s reactions to moggies who have crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
The first piece comes from the NYT, and you can read it by clicking the headline or reading the free version archived here. This involved a beloved local cat called Kit Kat, who suffered a needless death from a driverless car.
A recent poster from the supervisor’s Instagram post:
An excerpt:
At Delirium, a dive bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, the décor is dark, the drinks are strong, and the emotions are raw. The punk rockers and old-school city natives here look tough, but they are in mourning.
Kit Kat used to bar-hop along the block, slinking into Delirium for company and chin rubs. Everybody knew the bodega cat, affectionately calling him the Mayor of 16th Street. Kit Kat was their “dawg,” the guys hanging out on the corner said.
But shortly before midnight on Oct. 27, the tabby was run over just outside the bar and left for dead. The culprit?
A robot taxi.
Hundreds of animals are killed by human drivers in San Francisco each year. But the death of a single cat, crushed by the back tire of a Waymo self-driving taxi, has infuriated some residents in the Mission who loved Kit Kat — and led to consternation among those who resent how automation has encroached on so many parts of society.
. . .Kit Kat’s death has sparked outrage and debate for the past three weeks in San Francisco. A feline shrine quickly emerged. Tempers flared on social media, with some bemoaning the way robot taxis had taken over the city and others wondering why there hadn’t been the same level of concern over the San Francisco pedestrians and pets killed by human drivers over the years.
You can see a picture of the shrine below, taken from Facebook;
More:
A city supervisor called for state leaders to give residents local control over self-driving taxis. And, this being San Francisco, there are now rival Kit Kat meme coins inspired by the cat’s demise.
. . . . But all of that is noise at Delirium. Kit Kat was loved there. And now he is gone.
“Kit Kat had star quality,” said Lee Ellsworth, wearing a San Francisco 49ers hat and drinking a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
. . .Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.
Jackie Fielder, a progressive San Francisco supervisor who represents the Mission District, has been among the most vocal critics. She introduced a city resolution after Kit Kat’s death that calls for the state Legislature to let voters decide if driverless cars can operate where they live. (Currently, the state regulates autonomous vehicles in California.)
“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
. . .Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”
“We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him,” Waymo said in a statement.
I think Waymo also made a donation to a cat charity, but that’s not enough. One cat is too much!
A short CNN video showing Kit Kat as well as Jackie Fielder demanding the right of community regulation of self-driving vehicles. I agree!
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Willamette Week reports on yet another semi-feral cat who is a mayor (alive this time): Nutmeg, the mayor of a part of Portland called Sellwood, Click to read:
I love how Nutmeg gets carried home every evening! An excerpt:
It’s not clear what drew Nutmeg to the Sellwood CVS. He’s a 14-year-old cat who, for most of his life, has preferred to spend as much time outside as possible. But in October or November of last year, the long-haired ginger started hanging out in the store’s parking lot. Then he figured out how the store’s automatic doors worked and wandered in.
One clue: CVS does carry some pet supplies, and John Burgon, an Executive Security guard, tells WW that Nutmeg once tore into a bag of cat treats and helped himself. He also once broke into the store’s pharmacy, though it’s unclear whether he was attempting a Drugstore Cowboy-style heist or simply exploring a potential career as a pharmacy technician, as his owner, Joe Moore, suggests.
Moore and his wife, Gabi, adopted Nutmeg a year ago after a friend had to rehome him. The cat was born under a trailer in Boone County, West Virginia, and has spent the bulk of his life in Centralia, Wash., as a mostly outdoor cat. The Moores set him up with a heated dog house in the backyard, put a collar and tag on him (along with an AirTag), and let him continue his wandering ways, though they do bring him in at night.
Store manager Mike Rogers says Nutmeg usually comes in early in the evening and hangs out until the store closes at 10. At that point, Joe Moore comes in—the store is about half a block from the Moores’ house—and carries him home.
. . .customers love him, the Moores love knowing he’s somewhere safe, and staff is delighted to have Nutmeg around, providing him with a fleece blanket and on-the-job snacks. Sometimes, Rogers says, he perches on the counter and quietly demands petting from customers.
“He’s basically become our Norm from Cheers.”
Click below go to the Facebook post:
And a video in an Instagram post; if you can’t see it, click “View this post” link to see Nutmeg in the fur:
From The Dispatch, a man says farewell to a beloved cat (article archived here):
You can see Gracie above. Here’s an excerpt, but you can read the whole elegy at the free link above:
We got Gracie almost 18 years ago from the shelter. Our daughter, then 5, wanted a kitten. We wanted a kitten. But there was a lady volunteer at the shelter who had a tip for us. People throw around the term “cat lady” a lot, but she was the real thing. I remember her sweater seemed to be on backward, and she gave the distinct impression that the shelter cats were just the surplus from the much larger supply at her house. But she was very kind. More importantly, she knew her cats. In movies, and a few TV shows, one of my favorite bit characters is the racing tout. You know, the shoeshine guy or omnipresent loiterer with a toothpick or cigarillo in his mouth and racing form in his hand who seems to know everything about every horse (“His muddah was a mudder”). That was this lady, but for cats.
She took a shine to us and said something like, “Take a look at that one. I see something special.”
She pointed to a thin gray cat, a few months out of little-kittenhood. She was regal but friendly. Lucy, my daughter, decided she was the one when another family seemed to want her, and Lucy’s jealousy told her we needed to act. We put our names down for her.
But the high-stakes world of cat adoption in the nation’s capital being what it is, we couldn’t just take the yet-to-be-named Gracie home. Because we had a dog, the people at the shelter had to be sure that, Bill Murray’s insinuations about “cats and dogs living together” aside, they would get along. They required an introduction, on the premises. So, we made an appointment and came back a few days later with Cosmo the Wonderdog. We waited in a canine-feline interaction room. They brought in Gracie. Gracie saw Cosmo, and her tail inflated tenfold. Imagine one of those shawarma cones at the gyro joint, but made of fluffy gray fur.
. . .Gracie was the friendliest cat I’ve ever known. After a brief interrogation, she would let anybody rub her belly. She insisted upon sitting on every visitor’s lap—or at least trying. Every cat sitter we’ve ever had fell in love with her, because she was so lovable.
But I know a lot of people don’t want to hear a lot of stories about a cat. Talking about your pets can be a bit like describing your dreams: It’s got to be pretty unusual to be interesting at all. And I know from experience that there are a lot of people who will say, “It’s just a cat.”
No, it’s not.
I feel a strange obligation to explain this to people who don’t get it. And there are a lot of them.
When people say, “It’s just a cat,” or “It’s only a dog,” I hear a confession that they have never loved a cat or dog, not really. Such admissions of emotional ignorance clank off my ear and pinch my heart the same way as hearing that someone’s grandmother was “just an old lady.” No, I am not saying that there’s moral equivalence between people and animals. I’m saying that the love people feel for their animals is a real form of love. The people who leap at the opportunity to take offense, or simply argue, at such comparisons miss the point entirely. They want to drag reason into a realm where reason isn’t all that useful and even less welcome. I’m fine if people think loving animals is irrational in the exact same way I’m fine with people saying loving anything or anyone is irrational. I think they’re wrong. I can give you a rational explanation, a just-so story about evolution and whatnot. The materialists will tell you that love is an evolutionary mechanism necessary for ensuring your genes pass on. Okay, fine, maybe, probably, whatever; but who cares? The only relevant fact is that we love. And so do animals.
. . . and the sad farewell. Pay attention to the Jewish expression, one that I love, and is really the only thing you can say as condolence if you don’t believe in God (and many who do believe say it anyway):
This has been a horrible week in a pretty horrible year. My daughter loved her girl more than anything. I love Lucy more than anything. The pain she went through as we ran out of medical options for Gracie and had not only to say goodbye to Gracie but to be the facilitator of her passing and the end of her suffering was indescribable. Lucy’s pain multiplied my sorrow at losing this wonderful creature who served as a center of gravity in my family. They say you’re only as happy as your least happy child. Well, Lucy’s the only child I have, and so her misery is my own. As a dad, I take some solace in the fact that Lucy will learn important things from all of this, but those lessons are learned over time. This has been some terrible quality time, but it will improve as it melts into quantity time.
One of the best expressions the Jews have given the world is “May their memory be a blessing.” Having lost so many people, and so many animals, I’ve come to have a deep appreciation for this simple condolence. It’s partly why I unapologetically talk about my parents and brother so often. It honors them and my debts to them. But more than that, it brings joy. It keeps them alive in the only way possible in this life. It demonstrates that even when family members depart, the family endures and carries their indelible imprint. Amid all the crying these last few days, we’ve already started telling stories about Gracie and sharing pictures of her. Because her memory is a blessing, not just because we loved this silly creature, but because our family formed in so many ways around her. And family is a blessing, one of the only real ones in life.
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Lagniappe: A moggyt photobomb
The man wanted to record the romantic moments he was dancing with his wife, but an uninvited guest joined in. pic.twitter.com/bSjHXygRxs
We have yet another batch of photos, this time from reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
During the recent bout of cold weather, I made a short trip to the New Jersey shore—Barnegat Light, a location known for wintering sea ducks. Most of the time it is a great place to see birds (and often harbor seals), but this time, with temperatures around 5°F and an exposed jetty blasted by incessant wind, animals were few and far between. Standing with the sun behind you—the usual orientation for decent photographs—meant exposing your face to the arctic wind, something tolerable only for a few seconds at a time. In these conditions I didn’t stay long, so what I have is a small set of photographs that could be titled: How birds survive bitterly cold weather.
American Herring Gulls (Larus smithsonianus). The sitting bird found a fish (in the lower right corner), but it was completely frozen, and even a perpetually hungry gull couldn’t swallow it. Instead, it was using it as “bait” to lure what I imagine is a female (judging by her slightly smaller size). Gulls normally defend their food aggressively, but they may share it with potential mates as the breeding season approaches. Note that the vocalizing gull is squatting to hide its bare feet and is facing into the wind—both strategies to minimize heat loss:
Barnegat Light lighthouse, built in 1859 and still functional. Note the frozen brackish water at the rock jetty, the result of prolonged low temperatures—a rare sight in New Jersey:
Distant Red‑breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator). The second part of its scientific name refers to its serrated bill. This is a diving duck, so as long as some water remains open it should have access to food. The problem was that the channel was almost frozen solid near the jetty, where the shallow water normally suits these ducks best. In the center of the channel the water was full of drifting ice, and it was there—in deeper water, where catching fish is harder—that this bird had to feed:
A flock of ducks, probably Greater Scaup (Aythya marila). Many birds in the flock were airborne, likely migrating locally in search of warmer weather and ice‑free water. None landed on the ice floes:
A Long‑tailed Duck (Clangula hyemalis) resting on a drifting ice floe and trying to limit heat loss by turning its body into the numbing wind. This one is probably an immature male: it has extensive white plumage but has not yet developed the long tail feathers. Like mergansers and scaup, it is a diving duck that prefers relatively shallow water to the open ocean:
Wintering birds near the lighthouse, likely Yellow‑rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata). Despite the meaning of the first part of their scientific name (“insect eater”), they are unique among warblers in being able to survive harsh winters by feeding on berries. These birds were staying close to a pine–juniper thicket rich in waxy fruit. It is a small bird, as you can judge by the one perched on an average pinecone. They were puffing up their feathers to maximize insulation and staying low to the ground in sunny spots. This reduced wind exposure somewhat, but even so, with temperatures well below freezing, heat loss for such a small animal must have been substantial:
Another warbler, probably a female or a transitional male:
A large flock of American Robins (Turdus migratorius) near the parking lot. In New Jersey they are “migratorius” only in the sense that they vacate inland areas and winter closer to the barrier islands. This bird also puffs up its feathers considerably, appearing plumper than it really is:
All freshwater sources were frozen. Gulls could drink brackish water, but for songbirds it was a difficult time. A male robin began eating chunks of ice from a nearby snow pile. This is a last resort for birds—usually even in winter some freshwater is available, but not in this weather. Eating snow and ice carries an energy penalty because melting ice requires heat, which birds must then replace by finding more food:
Another wintering songbird, a common year‑round resident, the White‑throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). It was searching for anything edible in a snow‑and‑dirt pile left by a snowplow. After spending a little over an hour on the seashore, my face was numb and I retreated to my car. The birds stayed—they were far better prepared to brave the cold than a hairless ape:
Welcome to CaturSaturday, February 21, 2026, and Boiled Peanuts Day. If you ever see them for sale, as I did ion 2013 at this stand near Warm Springs, Georgia, buy them. They are terrific, especially when hot. (Note that they use immature peanuts.)
Thirteen months into President Donald Trump’s second term, a growing majority of Americans have soured on his handling of immigration, with 58 percent saying he has gone too far deporting undocumented immigrants, a rise of eight points since last fall, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The survey finds that a slightly higher number, 62 percent, oppose the aggressive tactics of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a result that comes after federal immigration personnel shot and killed two U.S. citizensin Minneapolis last month. More than half the public is “upset” or “angry” about enforcement operations in that city.
Here’s the poll as shown in the Post. As usual, there’s a huge partisan divide, but Independents are getting upset, and, overall, the “too fars” have risen 10-15% among “all Americans” or “independents”. Trump can still enforce the law without these egregious extremes, and he should listen to Americans as a whole rather than Republicans (of course he won’t)
Trump’s approval rating on one of his signature campaign issues has eroded steadily over the past year, falling to 40 percent in the latest poll, down10 pointsfrom a year ago, when half the country approved of his handling of immigration. The president receives higher marks — 47 percent approval — for his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, specifically. Illegal border crossings rose dramatically during the Biden administration but dropped sharply in Trump’s first year
The widespread negative views of Trump’s immigration crackdown underscore a stark political reality ahead of his State of the Union address next week. Once a pillar in the president’s efforts to build a larger electoral coalition in 2024, immigration may no longer be a reliable bulwark for GOP lawmakers, who are increasingly worried about their chances of maintaining full control of Congress in the midterm elections this fall.
At the same time, half of the nearly 2,600 Americans surveyed in mid-February said they support federal efforts to deport all of the estimated 14 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States —a figure that is almost identical to the 51 percent who supported doing so a year ago. And the public opposes abolishing ICE by a margin of 50 percent to 37 percent.
It’s not the deportation of illegals that is becoming unpopular, but how it’s being done. The first requirement is that cases have to be verified by an immigration judge. We’ll see what the Congress does with the bill affecting Homeland Security. It won’t formally defund ICE, of course, but could make the agents behave more responsibly.
Job candidates required to describe how they would advance “decolonization.” A video that suggests starting meetings by identifying oneself as a “settler” on unceded native lands. A political scientist who says he was instructed to teach game theory “from an Indigenous perspective.”
Each, a practice at the University of British Columbia, is now evidence in a lawsuit brought against the school by a group of professors who claim such social-justice efforts violate a provincial law requiring universities to stay out of politics.
The suit, filed last spring and currently under review by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, has set off a major legal and cultural battle at one of Canada’s top universities, in which each side accuses the other of trying to push an activist political agenda in the name of free speech.
The case underscores how Trump-era opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts has spread north to Canada. But more than a snow-covered battlefield in the culture war, the suit raises important questions about when public speech in a democratic society is political.
The professors who petitioned the court say the university’s measures promote a campus culture that punishes contrarian ideas and pressures academics to endorse progressive political positions with which they may disagree. They seek to ban the university from a broad range of actions that include requiring job applicants to commit to diversity principles; and the making of so-called land acknowledgments, ceremonial statements which often precede public events and that note Canada is the ancestral land of Indigenous people.
The professors’ case hinges on a decades-old provincial law, called the University Act, which mandates that universities be “nonsectarian and nonpolitical in principle.” But the law does little to clarify the bigger question before the court: What counts as political?
“In recent years, university administrators have given in to the calls to take political positions,” said Josh Dehaas, a lawyer for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a libertarian organization, who is representing the professors suing the university. “In this particular era, the pressure they have given into is often progressive causes.” Before 2020, he added, an accomplished academic did not need “to commit to D.E.I. principles to become a professor at U.B.C.”
The four professors who brought the lawsuit declined to speak on the record while the case is under review by the court.
In a brief submitted to the court, the university argued the professors have not shown proof of harm to their careers or liberties, and denied that either land acknowledgments or D.E.I. policies constitute “political activity” under the law.
Well, that last bit depends on whether ideological activities, which DEI measures and land acknowledgments clearly are (they’re banned at the University of Chicago), count as political activities. I predict the plaintiffs will lose on the grounds that they don’t have standing (is that a thing in Canada?). That is, they haven’t shown personal damages to themselves. But at least at the University of Chicago all these activities are not permitted since they count as violations of institutional neutrality.
* Three articles from the NYT about the new ballroom that’s supposedly going to replace the already-demolished East Wing of the White House. And oy, vey!—look at the titles.
An arts commission stacked with President Trump’s allies approved his $400 million ballroom on Thursday, bypassing the normal review process and fast-tracking the vote on a project that would transform the profile of the White House.
The vote came even as the panel’s longtime secretary — one of the only people involved who was not appointed by Mr. Trump — described mass opposition to the project, saying he had received more than 2,000 messages from across the country in one week.
The Commission of Fine Arts had been expected to hold only a preliminary vote on Thursday, but the panel chose to push forward and give its final approval ahead of schedule. Mr. Trump wants to have the ballroom built and open to guests within a year and a half.
You can see the newest plans at the second link above
In an earlier design released by Shalom Baranes — the new architect hired by Mr. Trump in December — the east and south porticoes each had a triangular pediment. The one on the south portico has been removed in the latest plan.
But the pediment on the east portico (not shown in the view above) remains and its height is about four feet taller than the roof of the executive residence. Critics have said the design would dwarf the existing White House.
. . . These are the first renderings that include details about a garden that would replace the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which was demolished with the old East Wing
Finally, the number and design of the arched windows on the new “wing” have changed. You can see the changes if you subscribe to the Post, or see them at the free archived page here.
As for the new golf course, it will be a luxury course that will replace the cheap public golf course on an island with both a nice park and the Jefferson Memorial. Here’s what’s there now:
It’s a neat place. There are hundreds of cherry blossom trees, a road for cycling that wraps around the perimeter of the island, and a primo picnic area at its eastern tip. Most of the park is taken up by an affordable golf course that has been there in some form since the beginning. The course, East Potomac Golf Links, is a bit shabby, but the prices are unbeatable: $42 for 18 holes.
This will be replaced by a much more expensive course, I think, and sue me if it won’t have Trump’s name on it. I am not sure if what he’s doing there is even legal. The plans:
“We’re going to make it a beautiful, world-class, U.S. Open-caliber course,” Mr. Trump said when asked about this last month. “Ideally, we’re going to have major tournaments there and everything else. It’s going to bring a lot of business into Washington.”
That would involve demolishing the adjacent park and replacing it with a course that would cost hundreds of dollars to play. And no, it may not be legal, but it’s already a fait accompli as debris is dumped all over the island.
*Daily college Jew-dissing. This one comes from Haverford College in the eponymous Philadelphia town, and was reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer. The excuse: an Israeli reporter was supposed to speak. (h/t Ginger K.)
During a talkby an Israeli journalist at Haverford College earlier this month, a group of about a dozen masked people sat and stood in the audience.
At one point, one of them began shouting through a bullhorn, “Death to IOF,” or Israeli Occupying Forces, a name critics use to refer to Israel Defense Forces,and “Shame,” according to a video of the incident and people who attended the event. The protesters’ faces were covered by masks or keffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian identity.
“When Gaza has burned, you will all burn, too,” the protester shouted at the audience of about 180 people, many of them members of the local Jewish community, according to another video viewed by The Inquirer.
An audience member grabbed at the bullhorn and appeared to make contact with the protester as the protester yelled in his face, according to a video. The college’s campus safety personnel ejected both the bullhorn user and the audience member and has since banned both from campus, college officials said, noting that neither is an employee, student, or alumnus of Haverford.
The event sparked renewed charges of antisemitism on the highly selective liberal arts campus, which already is under scrutiny by a Republican-led congressional committee for its handling of antisemitism complaints and is the subject of an open investigation by the U.S. Department of Education.
It will also lead to changes in Haverford’s policies. In a message to the campus after the event, president Wendy Raymond — who faced intense questioning from the congressional committee about the school’s response to antisemitism last year — said “shouting down a speaker whom one does not agree with is never acceptable and stands outside of our shared community values.”
College officials acknowledged that Haverford needs to upgrade its event policies andsaid changes would be rolled out no later than after spring break.
Some people who attended the event to hear journalist Haviv Rettig Gur said they were afraid because they did not know who the masked attendees were or what they had in their belongings, and in light of recent mass violence at Jewish events around the world.
Click on the screenshot below to see the screaming, unhinged (and, of course, masked) student on Instagram. You can see a different but equally disgusting video embedded in the Inquirer article. (Sound up, but not too loud!) Finally, you can hear the professor in the class talking sternly to the protestors here. Finally, if you want to write to President Raymond, her email is publicly available here. I’m writing to her in a minute.
*Finally, in Chicago news, a local man filed a lawsuit against Buffalo Wild Wings, arguing that their menu item “boneless chicken wings” was deceptive, as the “boneless wings” were not wings at all, but just breast meat formed into winglike shapes. To me that’s deception, but a federal judge said that the term was okay. Here’s an ABC news clip in which both reporters make as many jokes about chicken wings as possible:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej finishes Hili’s thought:
Hili: If we weigh it all… Andrzej: Then the outcome could truly surprise us.
In Polish:
Hili: Jeśli zważymy wszystko…
Ja: To wynik może nas bardzo zdziwić.
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From CinEmma, presumably photographed on Valentine’s Day:
From Masih, an ineffably sad post showing a ten-year-old boy whose mom was killed by Iranian cops:
“I wanted to become a police officer… but the police shot and killed my mom, I don’t want to be a police anymore…..My mom is dead. One bullet, and my whole life collapsed.”
These are the words of 10-year-old Ilya, standing at his mother’s grave on her 40th day in Iran and his… pic.twitter.com/JRUFyxW2j7
If public schools are going to be this explicitly political, they cannot be surprised when legislators treat them as such and start targeting their funding. https://t.co/lKd7CuREkZ
Lordy be, now we have Trump attacking the conservative Supreme Court because it struck down the tariffs he imposed on nearly every country. I am delighted for two reasons. First, because I always said that if anybody is going to stop Trump, it wound have to be the courts, who have now demonstrated some rare unanimity against his nonsense. It heartens me that the Court, right-wing as it is, can still be rational. Second, I have also argued (along with all rational economists) that tariffs are never good, and in the end it is the consumers who suffer.
The 3 dissenters in the vote were Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, with the last two predictable.
So now Trump is frothing at the mouth at the court he though he could count on. And it is the Court of Last Resort. Though he swears he will find a way to circumvent this ruling, I do not think he will. Click below to read, or find the article archived here.
At last, some happy political news. An excerpt, and note that the Chief Justice wrote the opinion, as he can reserve that right for himself:
A Supreme Court decision on Friday striking down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs dealt a major blow to his economic agenda and brought new uncertainty to global markets struggling to adapt to his whipsawing trade policies.
The court, in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner last year. The ruling prompted a defiant response from the president: In a news conference at the White House, he vowed to restore tariffs using other authority and excoriated the justices who had ruled against him as “fools and lap dogs.”
The ruling threw into doubt a series of trade deals with countries around the world that the administration struck in recent months, and left unclear whether U.S. companies or consumers would be able to reclaim some of the more than $200 billion in fees the federal government has collected since the start of last year. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh warned in a dissent that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”
Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the 1977 emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that statute did not. The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda.
A small but vocal group of Republicans in Congress joined Democrats in celebrating the court’s ruling, reflecting frustration that their branch of government has ceded its authority over trade matters to the White House. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and former longtime party leader, said the ruling left “no room for doubt” that Mr. Trump’s circumventing of Congress was “illegal.”
Trump learned the bad news at a meeting in the White House, when an aide passed him a note as he was answering questions:
The ruling, Mr. Trump said, was a “disgrace.” Speaking to a crowd of governors, cabinet officials and White House aides, the president lashed out at the court but insisted that he had a contingency plan.
He took one more question from Gov. Josh Stein of North Carolina, a Democrat, about hurricane assistance, but then ended the meeting early. He wanted to work on his response to the ruling, he said.
For Mr. Trump, the Supreme Court decision was not just a political setback, but a personal one. He has promoted tariffs for decades, and has claimed that his sweeping levies resuscitated the economy and revived American manufacturing.
“Tariff is my favorite word in the whole dictionary,” he said Thursday at an event in Rome, Ga.
Data released on Thursday showed Mr. Trump’s tariffs were not having the effect he had promised they would. U.S. imports grew last year, and the trade deficit in goods hit a record high. U.S. manufacturers have also cut more than 80,000 jobs in the past year.
The administration does have other laws it can rely on to try to re-enact the tariffs, but those laws have procedural constraints and might not allow tariffs as expansive as those struck down by the court.
The emergency-economic law invoked by Trump “was designed to address national security concerns and so was designed for flexibility and speed,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term. “Other statutory authorities are not as flexible.”
The president could also seek explicit authorization from Congress to reimpose the sweeping tariffs, though that route appears politically unlikely.
Here Mo puts on a burqa and asserts that he’s a woman because he feels like one. Of course this panel is triggering for “progressives,” and, though the strip is six years old and recycled, the artist says this:
A Friday Flashback from almost exactly six years ago. Lost a couple of patrons that day. Let’s see if it happens again.
The other day I wrote about a course in “Liberatory Violence” given by U of C professor Alireza Doostdar, a course that seemed to me to be (while probably not violating academic freedom) designed to propagandize students—largely against Israel. (Doostdar has a long history of anti-Israeli activism, and is director of our Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion.) While I can’t say that the course should be deep-sixed, I can say that it’s likely to promote hatred of Jews and Israel, which Doostdar sees as guilty of “Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.” Ah, three big lies in one sentence!
Scholasticide in and Beyond Palestine
Jodi Byrd (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Alireza Doostdar (Divinity School), Eve Ewing (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Darryl Li (Anthropology)
Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this project will use a mixed-methods approach in undertaking empirical research and comparative analysis to investigate “scholasticide” as a critical category for political and historical analysis. In addition to the resident research team, the project will involve a sequence of virtual visiting fellows.
This is another way to use College money to do down Israel, and this I object to. Believe me, if there were a similar project designed to investigate “genocide by Palestinian terror groups,” it would not only not get funded, but would raise an ruckus. This one has elicited nary a peep. I’m wondering whether the University of Chicago even thinks about the optics of giving money for a project like this.
