Saturday: Hili dialogue

June 22, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 22, 2024, cat shabbos (no turning on lights!) and National Onion Rings Day. I’d eat these instead of fries any day, but most places don’t give you very many rings in an order. This video will tell you where to get the best fast-food onion rings. (Spoiler: it’s Culver’s.)

It’s also National Chocolate Eclair Day, World Rainforest Day, Father’s Day in Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and Jersey, and Windrush Day in the UK (look it up).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*GLORY BE!  The Supreme Court has made another decision, but a sensible one—with an 8-1 vote.  Domestic abusers can be denied guns!

An 8-1 Supreme Court upheld a federal law that forbids domestic abusers from possessing guns, ruling Friday that the Second Amendment permits temporarily disarming people found to pose a threat to others.

The case was the first major test of the conservative majority’s new approach to gun rights, laid out in a 2022 opinion declaring that weapons regulations can pass muster only if they are analogous to those familiar to Americans of the founding era some 250 years ago. While some lower courts have since demanded strict analogues of 18th-century laws for modern regulations to survive constitutional scrutiny, Friday’s decision showed the justices willing to give more leeway for legislators to address gun violence today.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that while gun laws must be consistent with historical examples, it was a mistake to conclude that weapons regulations must be “trapped in amber.” For centuries, he wrote, English and American law had permitted disarming people judged as threats to public safety.

“The Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791,” Roberts wrote.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the 2022 opinion expanding Second Amendment protections, dissented. “Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue,” he said.

. . . The ruling reverses a federal appeals court in New Orleans that invalidated a 1994 federal law denying firearms to people under domestic-violence restraining orders. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reasoned that such measures were unknown in the founding era.

Yep, Thomas is an originalist, so naturally he’s the sole dissenter. But I’m heartened with Roberts’s opinion that we don’t have to go all the way back to the Founding Times to adjudicate gun rights.  I think Roberts really wants the Court to be less policitized and more sensible, but people like Thomas and Alito won’t let that happen. (I heard last night on the news that Sotomayor noted that the chances of someone living with a domestic abuser having a gun, and being killed, is five times higher than if the abuser doesn’t have a gun.

*Once again I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weeky news summary at The Free Press. This week’s column is called “TGIF: Cheap fakes.”

→ Hell yeah, Congress: The Senate just overwhelmingly approved new pro–nuclear power legislation on Tuesday, with a vote of 88–2. Who are the two? Just two senators who hate the idea of copious clean nuclear energy and want us to stay on dirty coal so that the Extinction Rebellion kids can keep protesting by gluing their hands to our commuter thoroughfares. Logical. Simple. Yes, the two holdouts are Senators Ed Markey, and—you guessed it—Bernie Sanders. But let’s focus on the bright side: our Senate just did something bipartisan, functional, and pro-progress. We love to see it.

The bill does a number of things, like streamlining the permit process, cutting costs for developers, and opening to new technology like small modular nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, protesting climate change or something, Just Stop Oil folks this week are spraying Stonehenge with orange powder. And honestly, it looks cool. Painting Stonehenge is not a bad idea. Especially if you want some angry Anglo-Saxon deity (oh my god it’s my dad! He wants to read Beowulf to you, and for you to get your elbows off the table!) to haunt you and your descendants.

And OMG:

→ Candace Owens comes out against World War II: Candace Owens, a star conservative commentator now building her own media company, argues that it was a mistake for the U.S. to enter World War II. When a journalist asks to confirm this, saying: “So, you think that America shouldn’t have gone into that second world war?” Candace replies: “Yeah, and that is a radical statement. People don’t know how to deal with that because we’ve all been so brainwashed by the school system to believe that ‘Look how great things are. . . . ’ This whole idea of international liberalism—now it’s not just about your problems, it’s about solving the world’s problems. Let’s make sure that in Pakistan there’s a trans flag waving. No.” So, England should have fallen to the Nazis. Because otherwise we get The Trans Flag. This is where the new right is at. They believe World War II was a mistake; the Nazis would have been fine controlling Europe, which is none of our business anyway; and when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor we should have said, “Thank you! Hawaii always seemed gay to us too! Men wearing necklaces made of flowers?!” Thanks for bravely saying what no one else will dare to, Candace.

Meanwhile, who’s Candace Owens’ new best friend, coming on the show to commiserate? None other than Briahna Joy Gray, the former press secretary for Bernie Sanders. It was inevitable they would find each other. All my favorites eventually do.

→ We must ban women from museums, out of respect: Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum has recently shelved some items away from public view in line with new policies that prioritize “cultural safety.” Hmm, what does that mean? Well, one such item is a mask made by the Igbo people of Nigeria that is not available for viewing in person or online and has been given the label must not be seen by women. I’m totally serious. See, the culture in which it was created forbade women from seeing it. It was used in male-only masquerade rituals. And that must be respected! Interesting. Well, there’s a lot of art made by devout Catholics for Catholic churches now in big museums. I don’t know if those artists would approve of, let’s say, gays on a fun date popping by to see that art after brunch. Should we hide it from the gays? I would argue most art in most museums was made by people who would be pretty pissed off by me looking at it, which is why I honor those cultures by never going to museums.

*After nine months, the University of Southern California (USC) dropped its inquiry into the nefarious behavior of a professor who called Hamas what they are: “murderers.”

In the weeks after Hamas attacked Israel in October, a confrontation between a Jewish USC professor and a group of pro-Palestinian students went viral and triggered a storm of controversy on campus.

Economics professor John Strauss told students — who were calling for a ceasefire and commemorating Palestinians slain in the war — “Hamas are murderers,” adding, “That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.”

Video of Strauss’ remarks spread rapidly online and led to a petition calling for the professor’s termination. More than 10 students also filed complaints against Strauss, accusing him of engaging in discrimination, harassment and fostering an unsafe environment.

This week, that long-running inquiry came to an end.

USC administrators informed Strauss on Tuesday that the case against him was closed, the complaints by students would be dismissed and that he will face no formal discipline, according to the professor and his attorney.

“I’m relieved,” Strauss said in a phone interview. “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been fully exonerated and they’re not doing anything to punish me, and it’s over.”

His lawyer, Samantha Harris, said she was “frustrated that it took seven months to reach an obvious conclusion” that Strauss did not engage in harassment or discrimination.

“I’m nonetheless pleased that they reached the correct result,” Harris said.

Strauss meant HAMAS, not Palestinians, but this is free speech, not harassment.  Here’s the incident for which Strauss was put on administrative leave:

*Speaking of dropping charges, the Manhattan D.A. has decided to drop charges against 46 pro-Palestinian protestors arrested for criminal trespass after barricading themselves in an academic building.  (h/t Mayaan)

Dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters arrested in April after occupying and barricading a building at Columbia University in New York City had all criminal charges against them dropped on Thursday, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing.

The hearing at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse came seven weeks after Columbia administrators called in hundreds of armed and heavily armored police officers to the university’s campus in a high-profile law-enforcement response that was broadcast live on national news channels.

Police arrested 46 protesters who had barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall, and cleared a weeks-old tent encampment on a nearby Columbia lawn that has inspired similar pro-Palestinian protests at universities around the world. At least nine of the 46 protesters arrested sustained injuries beyond minor scrapes and bruises, according to medical records, photographs shared by protesters, and interviews.

All 46 protesters, who were arrested on the night of April 30 about 20 hours after taking over the academic building, were initially charged with trespass in the third degree, a misdemeanor.

Stephen Millan, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told the court on Thursday his office would not prosecute 30 protesters who were Columbia students at the time of the arrest, nor two who were Columbia employees, citing prosecutorial discretion and lack of evidence. A case against another student was dismissed earlier in the month.

What about the others?

Millan said protesters wore masks and covered surveillance cameras, and there was insufficient evidence to show that any individual defendant damaged property or injured anyone. No police officers were injured during the arrests, the prosecutor noted. None of the arrested students had any prior criminal history, and all were facing disciplinary proceedings, including suspensions and expulsions, by Columbia.

The district attorney’s office proposed the 13 accept an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, a provision in New York law that if accepted means the case against a defendant will be dropped and sealed in six months if they are not arrested for another offense in the interim.

All 13 rejected the offer through their lawyers, who are seeking to have those cases dismissed. The 13 are due to return to court on July 25, by which date prosecutors must decide if they are willing to proceed to a trial over the trespass charges. Another arrested protester accepted the offer earlier in June.
One other guy is going to get prosecuted because he “is charged with criminal mischief and arson for setting an Israeli flag alight prior to the takeover and for damaging a police surveillance camera in jail.”  If I were the 13 offered the adjournment-in-contemplation-of-dismissal deal, I’d take it.  But this is what I mean by lack of disciplinary action being taken against pro-Palestinian protestors: a judicial lassitude that only heartens protesters to further break the law. Time after time—and this has happened with those arrested for a sit-in at the University of Chicago—prosecutors drop charges.  Now I don’t know if the Chicago students will face university discipline, but I sure hope the Columbia students do. (Chances are they won’t.)

*Over at the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan, for some reason, declares that he has a problem with IVF (in vitro fertilization). That surprised me, so I read on. . .

So why do I find myself balking at some aspects of in vitro fertilization, or IVF?

The subject is fresh again. Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled in February that IVF was illegal under a 1872 state law that allowed parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child. The Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution opposing IVF last week, after which the Senate Democrats tried and failed to advance a bill protecting IVF access. The Democrats are politically smart on this: IVF remains hugely popular — on right and left, and it’s a better wedge issue than even abortion. Last month, a Pew survey found 70 percent support for the view that having access to IVF is a good thing; and even 60 percent of pro-lifers support access to IVF. It is, after all, an attempt to bring new life into the world, rather than to destroy it. Last week, Gallup found that 82 percent support the morality of IVF.

So why has it always made me queasy? It is not because I believe, as the Catholic Church teaches, that every child must be conceived through the sexual intercourse of a married couple, and that anything else is a violation of God’s law:

.. .The Alabama ruling focuses on the critical fact that in order to maximize the chances of just one successful human baby, you need to create multiple embryos to beat the high odds of reproductive failure. And once you’ve succeeded in implanting one future baby, you are inevitably left with the “spare” embryos, which you can then choose to freeze for future use, or donate to someone else, or — in the delicate language deployed in most medical descriptions — “discard”.

Money quote from the decision:

The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the Act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children — that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed. Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.

The law banning abortion, in other words, also directly bans IVF for the exact same reasons. An embryo is an embryo; and all embryos are human persons, however they were conceived. I suppose you can bash the justices for this kind of judicial activism. But what choice did they have, given the law they were interpreting?

. . .A typical procedure might yield just one viable embryo from, say, 12 in vitro; or it might, in very rare cases, yield 12. But in almost every case, a handful of human embryos is left over.

And that’s the rub for me. In many cases, you’re creating new lives only to destroy them as waste. In many others, you don’t destroy them; you merely use them to beat the odds. They are quite simply a means to an end, violating a basic norm of inviolable human dignity. And these “means” are your own offspring. IVF literally requires a mother to play Sophie’s Choice several times over.

In the end, Sullivan considers IVF “wrong” because it involves the discarding of “future human beings.”  What he means is frozen embryos:  frozen, fertilized eggs that have grown in a Petri dish for about a week before they’re frozen.  They are not sentient, have no nervous system, and could become human beings only if they’re implanted in a woman. And because that won’t happen, Sullivan will deny all woman the right to have a child through IVF. He says the decision wasn’t easy for him, and I believe it. But would he make that decision if he weren’t a Catholic?

Of course I disagree with him, but if you think that a small ball of non-sentient cells has the same moral rights as a living human being, then you must believe in a soul; otherwise you’d find killing a fertilized redwood seed equivalent to cutting down a giant redwood. In other words, you’d have to labor under the delusions of religion. I, for one, would rather see a person be produced via IVF (and yes, with frozen embryos on the side) than have would-be and loving parents go childless.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are coming inside. . . well, at least Szaron appears to be:

A: Are you coming in or not?
Hili: We are considering it.
In Polish:
Ja: Wchodzicie, czy nie?
Hili: Rozważamy to.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Things With Faces:

From The English Language Police (a great group for pedants):

From Masih: another woman dragged away by the Iranian morality police for not properly covering her hair. Can this regime persist forever?

From Pinkah: The Atlantic goes after Harvard’s dean Bobo, who wants to censor faculty (article archived here):

From Malgorzata, who says, “a very-difficult-to-watch short interview will one of the female hostages – exchanged a few months ago for murderers”:

It this kosher? I suppose it is if you’re half asleep.

From Barry. who says “That buffalo isn’t fooling around.” Indeed, but I hope the big cat survived.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was thirteen.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, still on hols.  In the first one, remember that Matthew is biased, but 100 pounds seems a bit chintzy!

Great magic!

23 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  2. A few days ago I took the time to read the Hamas Charter. Very interesting.

    USC would surely know that the professor they were investigating was just stating a fact, if only they had gone to the source document. You would think that someone in a university setting would be capable of doing that.

    It reminds me of all the BS which surrounds the causes of the American Civil War. All you have to do is go to the declarations of secession (or just the first one, from South Carolina) to find, in writing, the MAIN cause of defending slavery.

    I also think that all those women protesting for Palestine at universities should be required to read the Hamas Charter. The document is fairly dripping with misogyny. They can even see the real-life result by observing the treatment of women in Afghanistan and Iran.

    L

  3. “..but 100 pounds seems a bit chintzy!”

    Given the date it was pretty fine as a pay rise. My mother’s annual pay was £75, my father’s something like £200 – if you were on a grand a year you were doing just fine; our first non-council family house was £1,800 and required a mortgage though by the time I bought mine 10 years later I had to pay £6,800 for a much smaller house and had to save for the £800 deposit.

    Ah, inflation.

  4. I can’t get over a name like “Bobo.” Every time I read it I feel like it’s a derisive nickname. Dean “Bobo”. /snigger.

    I love a good quick-change act. She was terrific.

  5. The Pitt Rivers Museum says the mask has never been on display and no one has been denied access to it. IDK if their level of control is the norm.
    “Some collections and imagery of them are not appropriate for general public access online, and in this case, direct contact with the museum staff is encouraged to discuss the research need to consult them.”
    Their image search offers optional cultural context messages and allows users to blur offending images.

    https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/24395523.pitt-rivers-museum-hides-african-mask-cultural-safety/

    1. If their plan is to keep the mask hidden away forever because it’s supposedly inappopriate for public viewing, then they might as well send it back to Africa.

      1. Great idea. That will clear more space in the museums for things that schoolchildren actually want to look at: armour, swords, guns, and dinosaurs.

        1. And animals and mummies and gems! I almost cannot imagine childhood without the Field Museum.

  6. “IVF literally requires a mother to play Sophie’s Choice several times over.” What an idiotic statement. Comparing a microscopic clump of cells to a living child is abhorrent. Who would want to watch that movie, or read that book? “Oh, I started to weep when the mother chose the one embryo and not the other three! Woe is me!!! The pathos!!! The Tragedy!!!”

    For people like Sullivan, I’ll just say this: don’t like IVF? Don’t do IVF. Simple.

    1. I quite enjoy the noise Team Zygote make pursuant to their anti-IVF campaign.

      It is illustrative of the nonsense that people need to vote against in November.
      Unlike Israel, Ukraine or many other issues… politically reproductive health can actually move the needle on elections. Women recoil in horror from the pro-life agenda and anti-IVF is a logical extension of that.

      So I lean in: “Tell me more about how you actually believe a clump of cells is human and will enforce this stuff if you win…. go on please…”

      It is win for “our” side.

      D.A.
      NYC
      https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/

  8. I’m sure Sullivan is aware that a lot of fertilized eggs don’t implant, so, why Catholics have sex anyway? Those discarded lives don’t count?

  9. Sullivan is being perverse here and should learn a little more developmental biology. It is estimated that as many as one third of all human fertilized eggs (embryos or more accurately, blastocysts) never implant and therefore are eliminated invisibly with a woman’s period. As Sam Harris rightly stated “Nature is the most prolific abortionist of all” or if you like, God designed it this way such that the wanton destruction of billions of ensoulled embryos would die unnecessarily like this. Where’s the tragedy Andrew? Why is this a moral outrage?

    I could have 10,000 such embryos from an IVF clinic in my palm (invisibly) right now, clap my hands together killing them all, and to everyone looking on, nothing would’ve happened. Literally nothing because these microscopic embryos are beneath our notice and hundreds of times smaller than the unnoticed single ant that every one of us most certainly stepped on yesterday without breaking a stride. On the Christian account, I would be the most prolific mass murderer in the history of the US and should be imprisoned for life after clapping my hands together. Based on what? Where’s the evidence? Does he realize how insane that sounds?

    Let me be a little generous here. It does bother me that abortion is used too frequently as a form of birth control when there are so many effective pregnancy prevention options available. That is just being irresposible with the consequences of sex in my opinion and knowing how psychologically difficult miscarriage and even abortion can be for many women, I find it distasteful that so many couples would act irresponsibly, necessitating the need for many repeat abortions. Surely there are some avoidable, potentially negative consequences to a woman’s body or psychology by doing this.

    On the other hand, I do not think this issue is that complex. Days old embryos are human cells but not human people with nervous systems. But after weeks and certainly months, the stakes get raised enormously so ending an unwanted pregnancy as early is possible IS the moral thing to do. We know this. It’s the same reason that a walnut is not a full-fledged walnut tree. I can crack open walnuts for a snack like it’s nothing but if I took an axe to a grown walnut tree to chop it down, everyone would rightly feel conflicted about why I was doing it or why it was necessary. But if I eat a bag of walnuts, by Sullivan’s logic I would guilty of deforestation. Ummm, no.

    1. It’s curious to me that not even the Pope ever mentions the unknown siblings that most of us are going to meet in Heaven. Shouldn’t Catholic kids learn and think about this? It’s good news, after all.

      1. Not really. We don’t know what we’re missing because it’s hard to know and have a relationship with somone you’ve never met.

        I wonder if by Catholic lights, an IVF clinic is rather like Purgatory, a temporary waystation of all those young souls just waiting to be reunited with the Almighty Father. But those all too human Catholics decided to jettison Purgatory so presumably the Big Man was cool with it. If they can so cavalierly dispense with Purgatory, they should have little compunction about transferring a bunch of vials containing unwanted nanohuman embryos from liquid nitrogen into the autoclave, right?

    2. Why does it bother you that abortion is used “too” frequently as birth control? If it doesn’t bother the women doing it, why should you care? The women who are psychologically scarred by abortion are presumably the ones having them. If it bothers them that much they can simply not have any more. But if women are psychologically scarred by other women having abortions, (one other interpretation of what you said), especially of female fetuses, how is that any more their business than it is of the Pope’s? And if it is their business, why can’t it also be the business of the Legislature?

      Yes, insurance-paid abortion imposes a cost on the system but it is cheaper for the woman than paying for contraception out of pocket. And even at 10 times the price, abortion is still a good deal for society even if you contend that its benefits in preventing the birth of criminals have been debunked. In asking women to accept more responsibility for the consequences of sex: — “I’d better not have non-marital sex anymore because no method is perfect and I absolutely can not afford to get pregnant or un-pregnant again” — you would have to change the incentive structure of society. You can’t leave the incentives as they are and expect women to work against their own incentive-driven interests.

      2. “If it doesn’t bother the women doing it, why should you care?”
        For the same reason that you have an opinion on the matter.

        …“it is cheaper for the woman than paying for contraception out of pocket.”
        I don’t think condoms, spermicide, IUDs, or the pill are as expensive as bringing an unwanted child into the world or abortion. Not free though so I get it. So you’re just defending perverse incentives but not that prevention is better than abortion/adoption/foster care. It would be good if birth control was free or covered by insurance. I’m pro-abortion, just admitting that it’s unfortunate that it’s used so often as it promotes irresposible behavior.

        It’s not women accepting more responsibility, just responsibility for their actions (and their partners too). Birth control does fail and every woman should get a pass to end a pregnancy in such circumstances. With the repeal of abortion in some states, it’s become a wakeup call for so many women of all socioeconomic conditions to do what? Right, act responsibly and take precautions.

  10. An award for courage is due Markey and Sanders for opposing nuclear power…let Nellie be notified that she is encouraging the most dangerous technology and most dangerous energy source available. Spouting the lies of the pro nuke promoters gives us a closer look at the hidden politics of Free Thought, which mimics closely that of the nuke nuts who know nothing about the technology or economics of this inherently dangerous technology that belongs outside our universe, not in our backyards. Amazing after all these decades that no one has actually done their homework on it! Wonder why…..they must have been brainwashed by the mendacious nuke nitwits who lie as they breathe.

  11. I think you are doing Andrew Sullivan a dis-service. He says he thinks IVF is morally very questionable and he thinks in the end it’s wrong, but nowhere does he advocate for banning it, which is what your text seems to be implying.

    This distinction between “I think this behavior is wrong” and “I think this behavior should be illegal” is commonly elided by many people, but I believe Andrew Sullivan in fact has a very clear distinction between the two.

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