Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 15, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on Thursday, June 15, 2023, and it’s National Lobster Day.

It’s also Magna Carta Day, celebrating the document signed at Runnymede by King John and the barons on this day in 1215. This is one of four extant copies, two of which are in the British Library:

(From Wikipedia) The Magna Carta (originally known as the Charter of Liberties) of 1215, written in iron gall ink on parchment in medieval Latin, using standard abbreviations of the period, authenticated with the Great Seal of King John. The original wax seal was lost over the centuries. This document is held at the British Library and is identified as “British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106”.

In addition, it’s Global Wind Day, Native American Citizen Day, National Lobster Day, Nature Photography Day, National Electricity Day, and the best holiday of all National Beer Day, but only in the United Kingdom.  In honor of that day, reader Jez sent me a photo of him about to down a pint of my favorite of all ales: Timothy Taylor Landlord. Twice named Champion Beer of Britain by CAMRA, it is my favorite session pint, perfectly balanced. And you can’t get it in the U.S. I can taste it now just looking at it! Unlike many American ales, this one has not been hopped to death.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the June 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT beefs about the scant criminal-trial experience of Aileen Cannon, who will preside over Trump’s trial. I had already thought that she, as a Trump appointee, should recuse herself from the trial, but there’s too much fame to be gained there. And she’s never struck me as the sharpest knife in the drawer, either. From the NYT:

Aileen M. Cannon, the Federal District Court judge assigned to preside over former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, has scant experience running criminal trials, calling into question her readiness to handle what is likely to be an extraordinarily complex and high-profile courtroom clash.

Judge Cannon, 42, has been on the bench since November 2020, when Mr. Trump gave her a lifetime appointment shortly after he lost re-election. She had not previously served as any kind of judge, and because about 98 percent of federal criminal cases are resolved with plea deals, she has had only a limited opportunity to learn how to preside over a trial.

A Bloomberg Law database lists 224 criminal cases that have been assigned to her, and a New York Times review of those cases identified four that went to trial. Each was a relatively routine matter, like a felon who was charged with illegally possessing a gun. In all, the four cases added up to 14 trial days.

Fourteen trial days! Oy!  But wait–there’s more!

Judge Cannon’s suitability to handle such a high-stakes and high-profile case has already attracted scrutiny amid widespread perceptions that she demonstrated bias in the former president’s favor last year, when she oversaw a long-shot lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.’s court-approved search of his Florida home and club, Mar-a-Lago.

In that case, she shocked legal experts across the ideological divide by disrupting the investigation — including suggesting that Mr. Trump gets special protections as a former president that any other target of a search warrant would not receive — before a conservative appeals court shut her down, ruling that she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene.

. . .“She’s both an inexperienced judge and a judge who has previously indicated that she thinks the former president is subject to special rules so who knows what she will do with those issues?” said Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown University criminal law professor and former federal prosecutor.

In theory, Judge Cannon could step aside on her own for any reason, or the special counsel, Jack Smith, could ask her to do so under a federal law that says judges are supposed to recuse themselves if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” — and, if she declines, ask an appeals court to order her to recuse.

There is no sign that either of them are considering taking that step, however — or what its legal basis would be.

Well, we’re all stuck with her, and Trump is probably happy that he is. Fortunately, there will be a jury, so Cannon can’t make the finding of guilty/not guilty.

*The NYT tells you “here’s what you need to know” about the question, “What’s the next step in the Trump case?”

The case against Mr. Trump, accusing him of illegally retaining national defense documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, is the first time that federal charges have been filed against a former president. But the case’s passage through the legal system should, with any luck, proceed like other criminal matters, if against the backdrop of the political calendar.

I suppose they could have stopped the article there, but they go on:

The parties will begin a slow but steady rhythm of status conferences, meeting every couple of months in court as the government starts to provide evidence to the defense through what is known as the discovery process. That evidence will help Mr. Trump’s lawyers decide what motions they plan to file in attacking the charges against him.

Mr. Trump will also have to finalize the members of his legal team. To that end, he met privately with a handful of Florida-based lawyers at his club in Miami, Doral, on Monday night, according to a person close to him who was not authorized to speak publicly about the efforts to remake his legal team. Mr. Trump found himself needing additional lawyers after the two who had taken lead on the documents case, James Trusty and John Rowley, resigned the day after the charges were filed.

. . .For now, Mr. Trump will lean heavily on the New York lawyer who appeared with him at the arraignment, Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche is also defending Mr. Trump against criminal charges in state court in Manhattan stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.

It is unclear what role another lawyer who stood beside him, Christopher M. Kise, will have as the case goes forward. Mr. Kise was initially hired to handle a legal fight over imposing an outside arbiter to review reams of government records seized last summer during an F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.

In a brief interview after the court appearance, Mr. Kise, a former Florida solicitor general, rejected reports that Mr. Trump had struggled to find lawyers interested in working on the case.

. . .The one unusual aspect of Mr. Trump’s case will be its pacing.

Prosecutors working for the special counsel Jack Smith will most likely seek to drive the case forward quickly, all too aware that the prosecution is playing out as Mr. Trump pursues his presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s lawyers will surely try to slow the case down, perhaps with an eye toward dragging it out until after the 2024 election. That has been Mr. Trump’s M.O. in nearly every legal case he has faced over the years, and this one is not likely to be an exception.

What bothers me is not that this case will probably proceed slowly, but rather the possibility that even if convicted, the Trumpster won’t go to jail. For how could the Secret Service protect him there?  This is really annoying!

*This is unbelievable, but the Biden Administration has begun negotiations with Iran in a completely stupid and futile effort to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

The Biden administration has quietly restarted talks with Iran in a bid to win the release of American prisoners held by Tehran and curb the country’s growing nuclear program, people close to the discussions said.

As contacts between the two sides resumed, Washington also approved €2.5 billion, equivalent to $2.7 billion, in payments by the Iraqi government for Iranian electricity and gas imports, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The money had been frozen by U.S. economic sanctions.

After discussions started between senior U.S. and Iranian officials in New York in December, White House officials have traveled to Oman at least three times for further indirect contacts, the people said. Omani officials passed messages between the two sides.

President Biden took office pledging to revive an international nuclear pact that imposed limits on Iran’s nuclear programs in exchange for the removal of economic sanctions, before declaring in November that such a deal was dead. The U.S. withdrew from the pact under former President Donald Trump.

The latest attempt at diplomacy represents a delicate political balancing act for Biden and is focused on cooling tensions, which have soared this year as Iran has provided drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine, pushed ahead with uranium enrichment and seized oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

In exchange for a prisoner release and limits on nuclear work, Tehran is seeking billions of dollars in Iranian energy revenue trapped abroad by U.S. sanctions. Iranian officials have repeatedly tied the possible release of prisoners to winning access to $7 billion in Iranian funds held in South Korea and demanded access to billions of dollars held in Iraq for deliveries of gas and oil.

Look, this isn’t rocket science (well, it is, sort of) but it’s really just having enough neurons that there is no way in hell that Iran is giving up its nukes. Their goal is to destroy Israel (there are billboards in Iran showing missiles with the slogan “44 seconds to Tel Aviv”). If Biden thinks he can stop Iran from having nuclear weapons, he’s delusional. Even if he thinks he can slow them down for a few years, he’s delusional.

*The Washington Post explains why the U.S. and its NATO allies need Ukraine to be really, really successful in its spring offensive.

As Ukraine launches its long-awaited counteroffensive against entrenched Russian occupiers, both Kyiv and its backers are hoping for a rapid retaking of strategically significant territory. Anything less will present the United States and its allies with uncomfortable questions they are not yet prepared to answer.

With this year’s flow of billions of dollars’ worth of advanced Western weaponry to Ukraine, “everybody’s hopeful that, you know, you’d see overwhelming success,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters last week. But, he said, adding a note of caution, “I think most people have a realistic outlook on this.”

Western officials claim not to know Ukraine’s exact plans. Ideally, Pentagon officials have indicated, the Ukrainians will use their newly supplied tanks and training to cut through Russia’s land bridge between occupied eastern and southern Ukraine, or take control of the land and sea gateways to the Crimean Peninsula. Such gains would break the current narrative of a stalemate and quell any calls for reconsidering current policy.

The administration is reluctant to say what would constitute a Ukrainian success against formidable Russian defenses, but the stakes for President Biden are high.

As he heads into next year’s reelection campaign, Biden needs a major battlefield victory to show that his unqualified support for Ukraine has burnished U.S. global leadership, reinvigorated a strong foreign policy with bipartisan support and demonstrated the prudent use of American military strength abroad.

Allies in NATO and beyond have bought heavily into Biden’s case. “Let no one doubt U.S. leadership — and resources — are the decisive contribution,” visiting British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Thursday at a news conference in Washington with Biden.

Biden, Sunak and leaders of the more than 50 other countries backing Ukraine have couched their support as part of an apocalyptic battle for the future of democracy and the international rule of law against autocracy and aggression that the West cannot afford to lose.

. . .Despite a 2020 revamping of Pentagon acquisition policies “in an effort to deliver more timely and effective solutions to the warfighter,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) assessed last week in a report to Congress that the Defense Department “continues to face challenges quickly developing innovative new weapons” and meeting military demands.

A muddled outcome of limited gains in Ukraine would provide grist for all of those critiques and further cloud the already murky waters of NATO and European Union debate over future posture toward both Ukraine and Russia. A less than “overwhelming” success would probably also increase pressure in the West to push Kyiv to negotiate a territorial settlement that may not be to its liking.

In general, the article says that we’ll lose a lot of credibility if Ukraine doesn’t win, but is also pessimistic about it. This is the best defense secretary Lloyd Austin could do:

“Does that mean, you know, we’re going to expel every Russian out of every corner of Ukraine? Probably doesn’t,” he said. “But I think … it may have the opportunity to begin to change the dynamics on the battlefield, and that’s really what you’re looking for.”

That is NOT very heartening!

*Two of my partners in crime, Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman, have a new article at Heterodox STEM called “Critical Social Justice subverts scientific publishing.”

The politicization of science—the infusion of ideology into the scientific enterprise—threatens the ability of science to serve humanity. Today, the greatest such threat comes from a set of ideological viewpoints collectively referred to as Critical Social Justice (CSJ). This contribution describes how CSJ has detrimentally affected scientific publishing by means of social engineering, censorship, and the suppression of scholarship.

. . . By “politicization of science,” we mean the invasion of ideology into the scientific enterprise. Today, the greatest such threat comes from a set of ideological viewpoints collectively referred to as Critical Social Justice (CSJ) (Pluckrose and Lindsay 2020, Pluckrose 2021). But the term is a disarming euphemism; there is nothing “critical” about the movement in any positive sense, and the movement has about as much to do with social justice as Orwell’s Ministry of Love had to do with love. The ideology, with philosophical roots in Marxism, postmodernism, and their offshoots (Pluckrose and Lindsay 2020), fundamentally conflicts with the liberal Enlightenment—the foundation of humanism, democracy, and modern science—the ideas that have made the world healthier, wealthier, better educated, and in many ways more tolerant and less violent that it has ever been (Pinker 2011, 2018).

The ideological intrusion into science is affecting all areas of the scientific enterprise: education, hiring, funding, and publishing (Abbot et al. 2023, Krylov 2021: 5371, Krylov and Tanzman 2021). In what follows we will focus on one area: scientific publishing (Krylov et al. 2022: 32, Krylov et al. 2022: 12, Krylov 2022: 223, Rauch 2022, Bikfalvi 2023). We will provide concrete examples of how CSJ is affecting publishing, focusing on chemistry (Krylov’s field), and show that it is doing so by means of social engineering, censorship, and the suppression of scholarship.

Here’s just one example of the madness:

The case of James Webb illustrates that facts do not matter to the cancellation mob (Powell 2022). Webb was the head of NASA during the heroic period of the agency that culminated in sending a man to the moon. As an effective administrator and leader, Webb—according to many—deserved a fair share of the credit for the agency’s success, and, accordingly, it was decided to name the Webb space telescope after him. Unfortunately, Webb led NASA during a period when the US government discriminated against gay people. Predictably, this has led to accusations that Webb, himself, was a homophobe who discriminated against gay employees of NASA. A cancellation campaign against Webb by a Twitter outrage mob and a petition demanding that NASA rename the telescope ensued. In response, NASA conducted a formal investigation. Their conclusions, contained in an 80-page document, were that there is no evidence that Webb participated in any anti-gay discrimination nor held any homophobic views. But these findings have not shut down the cancellation mob, which continues the campaign.

A disturbing aspect of this story is how scientific publishers have reacted to the cancellation campaign. Rather than following the example of NASA leadership, which evaluated the validity of the claims of the activists before making a decision, the Royal Astronomical Society responded with the following instructions to authors: The Royal Astronomical Society “expects authors submitting scientific papers to its journals to use the JWST acronym rather than the full name of the observatory. In this case, the previous requirement for the acronym to be spelled out at first mention will not be observed” (Kahlon 2022).

That’s only one example, but it’s positively Orwellian. You can’t spell out the name, but have to use the acronym, even the first time you write it!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili remains on the beat:

Hili: There may be something over there.
A: Indeed, there is such a possibility.
In Polish:
Hili: Tam może coś być.
Ja: Faktycznie, jest taka możliwość.

And a photo of Szaron:

********************

Speaking of Trump, here’s a meme that’s going around (sent by Randy):

From Nicole:

From the Absurd Sign Project:

Not from Masih but about something she said.  Google translation:

Masih Alinejad, a human rights activist, said at the Oslo meeting that the reaction of the international community to the deprivation of Afghan women from education was not appropriate. He said: “Imagine you are not allowed to study, what will be your reaction?” “If western women are deprived of education, the world will go crazy.” afintl.com/202306135715

The West’s general ignoring of this kind of oppression, particularly by feminists, baffles me. Is it that Iran is too far away, or that Iranians, considered as “people of color,” are allowed to adhere to different cultural standards than other countries. If Israel banned women from higher education, there would be holy hell raised.

It’s hard to believe this is real, but reader Ken, who sent it, says “Propaganda much, Fox?”

From Malcom: inter-cat variation in dexterity:

I found this heartwarmer. Sound up. That baby’s head-butt looks painful!

From Luana. I guess this is legal in Canada, but “racialized women/gender minorities”? Oy!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, photos of Polish Jews being rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. One shows them being packed into railroad cars. (Enlarge photos.) Few of these would survive being gassed upon arrival.  There’s more information at this site.

Tweets from Matthew. First, the morning egress of fowl:. Matthew adds, “They are netted because of the bird flu pandemic – all domesticated fowl need to be kept away from wild birds.”

Matthew says, “There’s some good snark in this thread.” And there is.

I’ll be seeing these soon in situ:

58 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Re: The Royal Astronomical Society policy on JWST: the above stated policy was an interim one, until the NASA report was made public. Their policy now is that authors can decide whether or not to expand the acronym.

    The NASA report does pretty much exonerate Webb of all charges (other than the charge of having been a white male during a time of less enlightened values, of course).

    I personally prefer such observatories to be named after scientists rather than administrators, but if astronomy’s favourite diversity hire is campaigning against it then I’ll support the naming after Webb.

    1. Aaargh! It seems a little nuts to me that defining an acronym on first use in a scientific/technical paper be optional. Without definition, how can readers be sure they are referring to additional data on the correct idea or object? Or as wikipedia calls it: “disambiguation”. I think that defining acronyms on first use was one of the first rules of technical writing impressed upon me by our NASA technical editors early in my career.

        1. As I recall, it was all, but because you piqued my curiosity, I will dig into my dust-covered box of NASA reports in the garage later today to see. Thanks Jeremy.

      2. Of course it’s absurd. But we’ve long been well into the territory of sublimating clear language for language that doesn’t cause “harm” (as defined by a committee of extremely privileged people). But I consider the fact that it has started to infect the pure sciences over the last few years to be far more concerning than when it invaded the humanities. Science is exact and requires explanations that are as clear as possible, not only to be understood by people generally, but to be built upon by others in the field (oh no, that word! I hope I didn’t cause anyone harm by using it). Plus, the more time scientists and scientific associations and societies spend on crafting new guidelines for this garbage, the less science gets done; and the more people who are focused on this garbage get into positions of influence, the less focus on science will exist. It’s truly far more insidious and damaging, with consequences much more dire, than people realize.

  2. My favourite beer is from Wadworth’s Brewery, in Devizes, Wiltshire. A seasonal winter ale called Old Timer. If you live in London you’ll be familiar with Young’s Winter Warmer, and it is similar to that (but better!) I’m afraid my school dinner money was spent in the pubs of a Wiltshire village, which wasn’t quite legal(!) but I still got three grade A’s and an S-level. As Inspector Morse said, “Beer helps me think.”

    1. I’m very partial to Black Sheep, from the Yorkshire brewery of the same name, It was founded by Paul Theakston, a scion of the family whose brewery in Masham created the legendary Theakston’s Old Peculier (sic), a strong dark ale whose name derives from the fact that the parish of Masham is a peculiar, which is to say, outside the jurisdiction of a diocese. I’ll also drink Adnam’s “Ghost Ship”, a pale ale made with Citra hops. When I’m in the United States, I’m usually in north Idaho, where I drink the many fine beers created by Laughing Dog Brewing.

  3. On this day:
    763 BC – Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.

    1215 – King John of England puts his seal to Magna Carta.

    1300 – The city of Bilbao is founded.

    1520 – Pope Leo X threatens to excommunicate Martin Luther in Exsurge Domine.

    1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

    1667 – The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.

    1752 – Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).

    1844 – Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.

    1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) of the Arlington estate (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

    1877 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy.

    1878 – Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.

    1896 – One of the deadliest tsunamis in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people.

    1919 – John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.

    1921 – Bessie Coleman earns her pilot’s license, becoming the first female pilot of African-American descent.

    1937 – A German expedition led by Karl Wien loses sixteen members in an avalanche on Nanga Parbat. It is the worst single disaster to occur on an 8000m peak.

    1970 – Charles Manson goes on trial for the Sharon Tate murders.

    1977 – After the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, the first democratic elections took place in Spain.

    1985 – Rembrandt’s painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.

    1992 – The United States Supreme Court rules in United States v. Álvarez-Machaín that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the United States for trial, without approval from those other countries.

    1996 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a powerful truck bomb in the middle of Manchester, England, devastating the city centre and injuring 200 people.

    2012 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to successfully tightrope walk directly over Niagara Falls.

    Births:
    1755 – Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, French chemist and entomologist (d. 1809).

    1843 – Edvard Grieg, Norwegian pianist and composer (d. 1907).

    1878 – Margaret Abbott, Indian-American golfer (d. 1955).

    1906 – Gordon Welchman, English-American mathematician and author (d. 1985). [During World War II, he worked at Britain’s secret decryption centre at Bletchley Park, where he was one of the most important contributors.]

    1907 – James Robertson Justice, English actor and educator (d. 1975).

    1911 – Wilbert Awdry, English author, created The Railway Series, the basis for Thomas The Tank Engine (d. 1997).

    1921 – Erroll Garner, American pianist and composer (d. 1977).

    1937 – Waylon Jennings, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2002).

    1941 – Harry Nilsson, American singer-songwriter (d. 1994).

    1943 – Johnny Hallyday, French singer and actor (d. 2017).

    1946 – Noddy Holder, English rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor.

    1946 – Demis Roussos, Egyptian-Greek singer-songwriter and bass player (d. 2015).

    1953 – Xi Jinping, Chinese engineer and politician, General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of China.

    1962 – Chris Morris, English actor, satirist, director, and producer.

    I commend my soul to any god that can find it:
    1381 – Wat Tyler, English rebel leader (b. 1341).

    1768 – James Short, Scottish mathematician and optician (b. 1710). [Almost all of Short’s telescopes were of the Gregorian form, and some of them even today retain their original high polish and sharp definition.]

    1968 – Wes Montgomery, American guitarist and songwriter (b. 1925).

    1993 – James Hunt, English racing driver and sportscaster (b. 1947).

    1996 – Ella Fitzgerald, American singer and actress (b. 1917).

    2014 – Casey Kasem, American radio host, producer, and voice actor, co-created American Top 40 (b. 1932).

    2018 – Matt “Guitar” Murphy, American Blues guitarist (b. 1929). [Associated with Memphis Slim, The Blues Brothers and Howlin’ Wolf.]

    2019 – Franco Zeffirelli, Italian film director (b. 1923).

    2023 – Wilfred Stacey Grove, English actor (b. 1931). [Dad died this morning in a hospice just outside Cambridge. He had a fascinating life although in recent years he hasn’t been able to remember much of it.]

    1. My sympathies about your dad.
      More sad news just in, Glenda Jackson died this morning as well.

          1. My sympathies, too, Jez.

            Keep in mind that old stage troupers never die; they just fade away.

    2. Best wishes to you and your family. I see he’s credited on IMDB as having been in 64 movies and TV series. Perhaps one day, when you’re ready, you can tell us all about that interesting life…

      And it was very humble of you to put him at the end of the list, just like anyone else.

  4. That headbutt by the lamb is the standard way of getting milk. I see the same hundreds of times a year in the fields around my house: no problem at all.

  5. The new paper:

    It cannot be overstated, the serious nature of seizing the means of knowledge production – of subverting (precisely put!) knowledge we did not choose to be born into – and the ontological (“what do you want to _be_ when you grow up?”) consequences thereof. And on thin justifications.

    I’m very pleased to see this paper – making _sense_ of the “fashionable nonsense” (as Sokal and Bricmont put it), divorced from empiricism but married to ontology / identity.

    As Leonard Bernstein said of Beethoven’s music, it shows something is “right” in the world.

    1. One added note:

      The exposition on the James Webb telescope, organic synthesis, and research impact suggest to me the “praxis” – “doing the work” – as a religious ritual.

      That would be one way “woke” is a genuine religion – especially making use of how “New” it sounds, when the origin and nature of it as such is elusive.

      Like “New Life” churches.

  6. It would be nice if all the legal pundits and almost lawyers on TV and articles would shut up about that equal justice under the law stuff and pretending everyone gets the same under the DOJ. It is not true and unless you have been living in a cave for many years you just cannot buy it. There are recent examples in our system where normal people have done heavy time for the removal of one classified document. Any normal person who had done even part of what Trump has been indicted for would be in jail attempting to make bail. It is nauseating. Let’s all sing the declaration of Independence and pretend Jefferson was not full of it.

    1. Perhaps, but I am willing to bet that those people were not hounded by the government for seven years in an attempt to ruin them before someone found the incriminatory document. Next thing you know, Republican candidates will start falling out of windows.

      1. Well if Tr*mp wasn’t a crook and a liar, he wouldn’t have been “hounded”. Several of his actions during his presidency rendered him unfit for office but the miserable Republicans put party before country.

        1. Actually, Jeremy, that shouldn’t be the motivation for the justice system to hound someone because some people including many foreigners think he wasn’t a suitable president and might, in the opinion of those observers, have committed crimes that should preclude his re-election so we’d better get him into jail ASAP. None of that matters. There has to be evidence that he committed an actual provable crime for him to deserve a criminal indictment. Smart criminals don’t usually just leave such evidence lying around. For whatever reason, e.g., the facts, the Dept. of Justice has not seen fit until now to obtain a federal indictment. Nothing about Jan. 6, where everyone was sure we had him this time, like so many times since Election Night 2016, produced any charges against him at all.

          The current indictment is for alleged acts that would be crimes for any private citizen and are not related directly to his time in office at all. It doesn’t allege that he stole the defence and intelligence documents as he left the White House, only that he refused to return them when the government noticed they were missing and concluded that he, a private citizen, had them, and then obstructed its lawful attempts to retrieve its property. I believe the government would have proceeded this way even if he had been a much-loved model president (like Barack Obama, say, or Jimmy Carter), who perversely wanted to hang onto documents that he had no right to as a private citizen.

          You actually undermine your own case by saying that Trump deserved to be hounded until the government got something on him because he was such a terrible president. The voters have already punished him for that. If they want to forgive him, that’s on them. The only reason he must be prosecuted is that there is evidence (finally!, you can say) sketched out in the indictment that he committed a federal crime while a private citizen.

          Gleeful fantasies of his being held in solitary for life, or let loose in the exercise yard to be roughed up by all and sundry are just schadenfreude.

          1. That sure is a lot of argument for someone who does not deserve it. Maybe you should get a job on Fox. I don’t believe Jeremy was having fantasies as you describe. Maybe from afar he has been following the news on this guy or even his history long before he went to Washington. Just to keep it simple as I can — remember the phrase from John Kennedy, Ask not what your country can do for your but what you can do for your country. Trump is the opposite of that.

      2. Oh the heartfelt hyperbole.

        If “Republican candidates will start falling out of windows” it will be other bottom feeding Republicans doing the pushing.

  8. “1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) of the Arlington estate (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.”

    Wikipedia has it wrong again. The Arlington Estate upon which the famous cemetery now exists was never owned by Robert E. Lee. Rather, it was owned by his wife, Mary Custis Lee, who inherited it from her father, G.W.P. Custis when he died in 1857. Lee was the executor of Custis’s will and had a large say in how the estate was run, but title stayed with his wife. Encyclopedia Virginia puts it this way:

    “Arlington encompassed 1,100 acres, where Custis-owned slaves cultivated crops including corn and wheat. After the 1857 death of his father-in-law, Lee took over management of the estate, which his wife had inherited. It was a time of frustration for some slaves, who had anticipated freedom at the death of G. W. P. Custis. Lee, dealing with a complex will and large residual debt, called it ‘an unpleasant legacy,’ and did not formally free the Custis slaves until January 1863.”

    https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/arlington-house/

    Although this error can be called minor, it should caution us that Wikipedia is not an infallible source of information.

    1. But in those days was it not true that what your wife owned was yours. In any case he kind of lost it as soon as he selected state over country as did most other West Pointers who went south with their loyalty. I think making it a Northern cemetary was fitting tribute.

    2. As so often, the main Wikipedia article is accurate but the summary on the date page isn’t. I’ve edited the June 15 list now, so hopefully it will reflect the facts in future.

  9. Fortunately, there will be a jury, so [Judge Aileen] Cannon can’t make the finding of guilty/not guilty.

    A federal trial judge does have the authority, under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29, to enter a judgment of acquittal in a criminal defendant’s favor at the close of the prosecution’s case, or at the close of all the evidence, or even after the jury has returned a guilty verdict. The standard for doing so is extremely high — a finding that no rational jury could return a guilty verdict on the evidence presented. If the prosecution introduces at trial the evidence spelled out in the indictment, it is all but unimaginable that a trial judge could find the standard for a judgment of acquittal met in the Trump documents case.

    Judge Cannon’s participation is, I think, the biggest wild card in this prosecution. Cannon appears to have the intellectual firepower to be a federal district judge. (She graduated magna cum laude from the U Michigan law school. She clerked for a federal judge after law school. She was an associate at a big, white-shoe law firm for three or four years. And she spent six or seven years as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of Florida federal prosecutor’s office, some of that time in the major-crimes division.)

    But it seems to me Judge Cannon lacks experience, seasoning, and a certain worldliness. She was appointed to the federal bench (her first experience as a judge) very young, at age 39. Lawyers tend to gain a lost of experience in their 40s and 50s; it’s generally when they begin to handle more complex cases and to take a leadership role in multi-defendant cases. (It used to be, a generation or two ago, that most federal judges were first appointed in their 50s. In those days, a federal judgeship was seen as the culmination of a distinguished legal career. Judges would spend 10 or 15 years after their appointment in activity duty on the court, then another 5 or 10 on “senior status,” taking a reduced number of cases. With the increasing politicization of the federal judiciary, however, presidents tend to appoint judges ever younger, so as to leave a legacy that will last generations after they leave office.)

    Judge Cannon also suffers from one other disability in this regard, I think. The SD Fla has five divisions. The main division is in Miami, where eight of the 15 judges on active duty sit. There are two other fulltime divisions with multiple judges — Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Traditionally, the other two divisions — Ft. Pierce in the north and Key West in the south operated as “satellite” courthouses, without fulltime federal judges. (Judges from the other divisions would rotate to the satellite divisions a few times a year, to hear pending motions and to preside over trials.)

    Judge Cannon is the first federal judge appointed to sit fulltime in the Ft. Pierce division; she sits there all by herself. As a former law clerk for a federal judge, I can tell you that a sort informal mentoring relationship tends to develop between newly appointed judges and those with more experience. In multi-judge divisions. The judges tend to eat lunch together at least once a week, and some dine together every day. Other federal judges are really the only people that a federal judge can meaningfully discuss his or her work with. If a judge issues a ruling far out of the mainstream — or if a judge begins to develop a reputation for, say, having a nasty demeanor on the bench — the other judges in a division will tend to have a private word about it with him or her. Sitting alone in Ft. Pierce, Judge Cannon lacks this resource.

    Despite Judge Cannon’s strange, legally unjustified rulings in the earlier Trump search warrant litigation, which resulted in a very conservative panel of the 11th Circuit (including two Trump appointees) essentially showing her the back of their hand, I am willing to indulge the presumption that she is acting in good faith. (It has been my experience and observation that federal judges tend to have loyalty to the judicial and political philosophies that earned them their nominations, but that they have no personal loyalty to the president who appointed them. This is the purpose of Article III of the US constitution granting them a lifetime appointment.)

    Not knowing Judge Cannon personally, I can only guess at what her reaction to drawing the assignment to preside over the Trump documents case might be. It may be that she’s very much looking forward to climbing back in the saddle so as to rehabilitate her reputation. (If this is the case, she may get right back to issuing pro-Trump decisions. But I think — or at least hope — that her reaction would be instead to bend over backwards to call all the issues straight down the middle without favoritism.) Or it may be that Judge Cannon is feeling gun shy and would like nothing more than to have this bitter cup pass from her lips — to find a way to recuse herself so as to avoid any further embarrassment in the harsh glare of the spotlight that is the Trump documents case.

    Still, either way, the Trump documents case will be one of the most historical and important trials in the nation’s history. I think that the national interest would best be served were the trial to be presided over by a judge with more experience and seasoning and moxie.

    (I apologize in advance for the length of this comment, but hope that some here might find this analysis helpful.)

    1. 3rd paragraph: Autocorrect typo? “lawyers tend to gain a lost of experience”. Do you mean a lot of experience?

      Please do not apologize on length. As a reader, I always appreciate and look forward to your knowledgeable comments, Ken. And this is a very interesting write-up on the judge and the social circumstances on courts.

    3. Is it true that as federal judge, Cannon would have the power to sentence Trump to a very limited time of probation with no supervision even if he were found guilty on all counts?

      1. Determination of a defendant’s sentence in a federal case begins with an accurate calculation of the applicable federal sentencing guidelines. When the guidelines were first enacted by congress effective 1987, their application was mandatory. But in the 2005 case United States v. Booker, a badly (and strangely) fractured SCOTUS decided that application of the guidelines should be deemed discretionary. This means that a sentencing judge is fee to vary a sentence upward or downward from the range set by the guidelines as the court deems the circumstances dictate.

        I should think that, were Trump to be convicted on all or most of the counts in the documents case indictment, he would be looking at a sentencing guidelines range somewhere north of 10 years. It would be unusual in the extreme for a trial court to grant a variance from a range that high to mere probation or house arrest.

        Still, how to handle Trump and his Secret Service detail after a conviction presents a potential nightmare scenario.

        1. I would think protecting him behind bars would be much easier than in freedom now. It is primarily shift work and he would be in a plush crowbar hotel. The cost of protecting him and the family over the past several years would wipe out the budget of many small countries. The cost he stuck the government for on the golf courses and in Florida was a crime in itself. Charging the govt. for golf cart fees at his courses and hotel rates. Always making money off of us.

    4. I always appreciate when you give us the benefit of your experience and insight on legal matters like this, Ken. Thank you.

    5. Please don’t apologize for the length of your comment. This was fascinating, and we’re lucky to have you as a commenter 🙂

    6. As a foreigner, I agree that this is probably the most important trial you have ever done, because of the necessary and unavoidable fact that the justice system is prosecuting a declared candidate for the opposition to the party of the administration that oversees the justice system. (I may be saying that wrong. I am trying to say that I don’t believe it is politically motivated or influenced but some obviously will insist it is even if they themselves don’t believe it is. Hence the possibility for conflict.

      I’m glad the indictment focuses on actions that occurred while Mr. Trump was a private citizen. That helps rebut the claim that he is being punished for escaping conviction on the two impeachments, for example.

      I reiterate that foreigners can help by not taking too much morbid delight in the proceedings. It is all very sad when you think about it.

    7. Interesting analyses that somewhat eases my apprehension of this judge. Thanks, Ken.

    8. Ken, while we have you: What do you think of the standing and discovery issues I’ve previously raised regarding diversity statements required by public universities?

      If you haven’t seen those comments, I’ll try to give you a brief summary. In your opinion, what would most likely be the requirement for standing? Why did the guy in California not at least apply for the job with either a diversity statement that read something like “I do not believe diversity statements are legal under the Firsf Amendment and refuse to engage in compelled speech,” or “I do not think diversity statements are a proper tool for measuring the qualifications of a prospective professor.” Wouldn’t having actually applied and been rejected give him a far better chance at clearing the standing threshold, even without direct evidence (e.g. an email explicitly mentioning the statement) that it was his diversity statement that led to his rejection? And, if even applying and being rejected without a school outright saying that the reason for rejection was the diversity statement or relative lack thereof, how can anyone clear standing so a case can actually get to discovery and hopefully expose emails and other forms of communication in which in which a school’s administration made explicit that an application was dismissed because of the diversity statement issue?

      Thanks in advance for any help. Please feel free to ignore this if you lack the time and/or interest to respond!

      1. Sorry, buddy, but I’m gonna have to take a pass on this one, since jurisdictional issues regarding standing in civil cases are a bit beyond my field of expertise (such as it is).

        1. No problem. Better a man who admits his inexperience than gives a pretense of expertise!

  11. > From the Auschwitz Memorial, photos of Polish Jews being rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. One shows them being packed into railroad cars. (Enlarge photos.) Few of these would survive being gassed upon arrival.

    The accompanying tweet describes Auschwitz as “newly established.” Upon its creation it was a concentration and work camp, not yet an extermination camp. The first experiments with mass extermination via poison gas at Auschwitz were conducted (on Soviet prisoners of war and ill prisoners) in September 1941.

    While many of those depicted in the photos would not survive their time in the camp, they would not have been gassed upon arrival. The following quote by the head of Archives of the Auschwitz Museum is from the linked article on the Auschwitz Memorial site:

    > “None of these men, who on the early morning of 14 June 1940, marched under a heavily armed German escort to the railway station in Tarnów, knew the purpose of their journey. Many of them would never return to their loved ones. Many of them miraculously survived the Second World War after enduring long sufferings in Auschwitz and other camps,” he said.

    The Auschwitz Memorial has an excellent podcast, [On Auschwitz](https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/on-auschwitz-auschwitz-memorial-podcast-series,1484.html), that provides a detailed history and examination of the camp’s operation.

  12. The money spent by the U.S. and NATO countries is money well spent regardless of how well it turns out. The cause could not be more just and the self interest for all concerned is great. The United States has not spilled out defense money any better since Korea. It is a nice change.

  13. Putin said a few days ago that Russia was running short on drones. Good thing we just gave Iran nearly $3 billion to fund more drones and terrorist groups like Hezbollah, for absolutely nothing in return! Now that’s some next-level negotiation.

    Come on, Joe…

  14. Let’s set aside Hillary and the stories about top secret documents on unclassified servers (the setting up of which was clearly intended to avoid accountability under FOIA). And we can set aside the stories about BleachBit and hammers taken to electronic devices. We’ll even set aside reports that Hillary directed staff to simply cut off the classified headers on the documents so that they looked unclassified. (Not sure what that would do about the paragraph classification markings, but whatever.)

    What about these other officials:

    John Deutch, former director of the CIA, had agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of working on hundreds of highly-classified documents at home while using an unclassified computer that had an unsecured internet connection. The agreement specified there was to be no jail time. In any case, he was pardoned by Clinton. He did lose his security clearance.

    Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, literally stole classified materials from the national archive. (Stuffed them down his pants, didn’t he?) Misdemeanor. Jail time: none.

    David Petraeus was guilty of unauthorized retention and storage of top secret documents. He also lied to the FBI during the investigation. (His mistress had a clearance, so that piece doesn’t bother me too much.) Misdemeanor. Jail time: none.

    General James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, pleaded guilty to a felony count of releasing to journalists extraordinarily sensitive and highly-classified information about joint Israeli-US operations against Iranian nuclear capacity. Cartwright also lied to the FBI. Felony: DOJ sought prison time. Jail time: none. Pardoned by Obama.

    President Bill Clinton. Lest we forget that other high-ranking official who had a penchant for lying, under oath (what is that called?). He did see a five-year suspension of a law license that he never intended to use.

    There has long been a double-standard in how classified breaches and lying to investigators are treated. You have “justice” for the high ranking and then accountability for everyone else. It’s the way of the world, I suppose. But I am curious what drives the desire for jail time for Trump. Is it justice? Or is it Trump?

    For what it’s worth, I would have pursued the same penalties against all of the above as any one of them in their official capacities would have pursued against a civilian GS-9 or army captain or other similarly low-ranking person who was guilty of such offenses.

  15. Aside from Uncle Joe trying to cozy up to the Iranians right now, it’s not permissible to criticize Islam or any Islamic society these days. That’s why the signs posted a while ago in Massachusetts saying, “Islam Is RIGHT About Women” caused so much consternation. No one would criticize the statement!

    That might change, though, according to Sarah Haider, an ex-Muslim who is (or at least to be) prominent in the atheist community. See
    https://sarahhaider.substack.com/p/muslim-christian-alliance-against .
    What is significant is not so much the protests in Montgomery County (which is not far from me and is an absolute Woke sh*th*le), but her thoughts about “MINO”s and a possible change in Leftist attitudes.

    Haidar is quite pessimistic on her substack and I have to agree with that assessment.

Comments are closed.