The Daily Parker

Other than getting a little rained on this morning, I've had a pretty good day. But that didn't leave a lot of time to catch up on any of these before I started a deployment just now:

• Heather Cox Richardson examines US history through the lens of a never-ending conflict between "two Americas, one based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality."
• Josh Marshall ponders the difficulty of covering the XPOTUS's increasingly ghastly behavior in the "both-sides" journalism world we inhabit.
• James Fallows zooms out to look at the framing decisions that journalists and their publishers make that inhibit our understanding of the world. Like, for example, looking at the soon-to-be 4th time Republicans in Congress have shut down the Federal government and blaming all of Washington.
• Fallows also called attention to Amna Nawaz's recent interview with authoritarian Turkish president Recep Erdogan in which she kept her cool and her focus and he...didn't.
• Speaking of the impending Republican torching of the US Government (again), Krugman looks at the two clown shows in the party, but wonders why "everyone says that with the rise of MAGA, the G.O.P. has been taken over by populists. So why is the Republican Party’s economic ideology so elitist and antipopulist?"
• The Supreme Court has once again told the Alabama legislature that it can't draw legislative maps that disenfranchise most of its black citizens. Which, given the state's history, just seems so unlike them.
• The Federal Trade Commission and 17 US States have sued Amazon for a host of antitrust violations. “A single company, Amazon, has seized control over much of the online retail economy,” said the lawsuit.
• Monica Hesse dredges all the sympathy and understanding she can muster for XPOTUS attorney Cassidy Hutchinson's memoir. NB: Hutchinson is 27, which means I am way overdue for starting my own memoir.
• Chicago Sun-Times columnist David Roeder complains that the CTA's planned Red Line extension to 130th Street doesn't take advantage of the existing commuter rail lines that already serve the far south side, but forgets (even as he acknowledges) that Metra and the CTA have entirely different missions and serve different communities. Of course we need new regional transport policies; but that doesn't mean the 130th St extension is bad.
• Software producer Signal, who make the Signal private messaging app, have said they will leave the UK if the Government passes a "safety" bill that gives GCHQ a back door into the app.
• Molly White shakes her head as the mainstream press comes to terms with something she's been saying for years now: NFTs have always been worthless. Oh, and crypto scored two $200-million thefts this week alone, which could be a new record, though this year has already seen $7.1 trillion of crypto thefts, hacks, scams, and other disasters.
• After almost 20 years and a the removal of much of an abandoned hospital in my neighboorhood, the city will finally build the park it promised in 2017.

Finally, I rarely read classical music reviews as scathing as Lawrence Johnson's evisceration of the Lyric Opera's Flying Dutchman opening night last Friday. Yikes.

Another Tuesday, another collection of head-shaking news stories one might expect in the waning days of an empire:

• Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau (Lib-Papineau, QC) formally accused the government of India of assassinating a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.
• Paul Krugman traces the road from Mitt Romney to MAGA.
• Jonathan Last accuses "Meet the Press" of acting like 2016 never happened.
• Police in Birmingham, Ala., Tased a band director for not ending the band's song a minute early as ordered. Guess what skin colors the cop and the band director had.
• Who's surprised, even a little bit, that the XPOTUS used classified documents as scrap paper?
• Tiffany Owens Reed wants to ban the car monopoly, not the cars themselves.

Closer to home, the old candy-making laboratory on the 13th floor of the historic Marshal Field building has come back to life, 24 years after the the last Frango mint was produced there. (Note to readers who speak Portuguese: no one checked a Portuguese dictionary before naming the candy.)

I'm having a few people over for a BBQ this evening, several of them under 10 years old, and several of them dogs. I've got about 45 minutes before I have to start cutting vegetables. Tomorrow will be a quiet day, so I'll just queue these stories up for then:

• Not a group to pass up risible hypocrisy, Alabama Republicans have defied the US Supreme Court's order that they create a second majority-Black district in the state, preferring just to shuffle the state's African Americans into a new minority districts. This leaves African Americans with 27% of the population and 14% of the Congressional representation, and the state Republican majority wishing it could just go all the way back to Jim Crow instead of this piecemeal stuff.
• Surprising no one who understood that former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) cared less about governing than about enriching his pals (and himself), the Foxconn semiconductor factory that Wisconsin residents subsidized for $3 billion has not, in fact, created 13,000 jobs yet. Probably because it doesn't exist yet, and may never.
• James Hansen, who first warned in the 1980s that human-caused climate warming had already started and would accelerate if we didn't cut greenhouse gas emissions, thinks "we are damned fools" for needing to experience it to believe it.
• The Chicago city council plans to pass legislation raising the minimum wage for tipped workers to the general minimum wage of $15.80 per hour, up from $9.48 today. This doesn't address how anyone could possibly live on $32,000 per year in Chicago, let alone $19,000 a year at the lower wage.

OK, time for a quick shower and 15 minutes of doing nothing...

The Supreme Court published its ruling in Moore v Harper today, snuffing out the Federalist Society weed-induced fantasy of the "independent state legislature theory" would remain just that—a fantasy:

[A]lthough the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to regulate federal elections, state courts can supervise the legislature’s exercise of that power. By a vote of 6-3, the court rejected the so-called “independent state legislature theory,” holding that the North Carolina Supreme Court did not violate the Constitution when it set aside a congressional map adopted by the state’s legislature.

In 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts cannot consider claims of partisan gerrymandering. But the 5-4 decision by Chief Justice John Roberts noted that states could still address partisan gerrymandering in their own laws and constitutions. In February 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court (which at the time had a 4-3 Democratic majority) ruled that the new map violated a provision in the state constitution guaranteeing free elections. The state supreme court barred the state from using the new map in the 2022 elections, and the trial court later adopted a new map, drawn by Republicans and Democrats split the state’s congressional seats 7-7.

Republican legislators came to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, challenging the state supreme court’s decision. They argued that when it set aside the legislature’s congressional map, the state court violated the “independent state legislature” theory. That theory, which the Supreme Court has never endorsed in a majority opinion, rests on two provisions of the Constitution. In Moore, the legislators point to one of those provisions, Article I’s elections clause, which provides that the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Article II’s electors clause provides that states shall appoint presidential electors for the Electoral College “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” These provisions, the theory’s proponents contend, mean that state courts lack the power to supervise how state legislatures run elections for Congress or the president – including, as in this case, the power to set aside congressional powers.

Notably, Justices Amy Comey Barrett (R) and Brett Kavanaugh (R), themselves test-tube babies of the Federalist Society judiciary pipeline, signed onto the opinion Chief Justice John Roberts (R) wrote, along with the non-partisan Justices Katanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Kavanaugh also concurred with Roberts' opinion in Allen v Milligan, sending Alabama's blatantly racist map back to Montgomery, and Monday in a similar Louisiana case.

I don't know whether Justices Gorsuch (R), Thomas (R$), and Alito (R$) dissenting from Moore surprises me or not. Those three have always believed the Republican Party is the only legitimate ruler of the United States, signing on to a series of ridiculous arguments to advance the Cause. I'm sure the Federalist Society expected Kavanaugh and Comey Barrett to follow behind them. Maybe Kavanaugh is turning Brennan?

Ha. No. But at least he hasn't chased the right-wingers over the ledge. Yet.

A plethora:

• Google has updated its satellite photos of Mariupol, clearly showing the destruction from Russia's invasion and subsequent siege.
• Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Lisa Murkowsky (R-AK) have introduced legislation to force the Supreme Court—read: Justices Thomas (R$) and Gorsuch (R)—to adopt a binding code of ethics. Presumably a Democratic bill that would actually let Congress set the Court's ethical standards will come soon.
• On Monday, the city will cut down a bur oak they estimate has lived over 250 years.
• The US Army will rename a Virginia fort after Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, replacing the name of a disgraced traitor named Robert E. Lee.
• Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose false accusation that teenager Emmett Till whistled at her resulted in her fellow racists lynching the boy, died on Tuesday at 88.
• Emma Durand-Wood discovers what many of us already knew: having a fitness tracker, and getting your steps in, makes you very aware of walkable environments.
• Nicholas Dagen Bloom's new book explains why public transit in the US has done poorly for the last 75 years (hint: racism).
• Max Holleran suggests a way to make US cities cleaner (and encourage more public transit use): make parking impossible.
• Bruce Schneier suggests a publicly-funded AI could help save democracy—or at least offset the likely harms from only having privately-owned AIs.
• Three Colorado teens face murder charges after an evening of throwing rocks from an overpass killed a 20-year-old driver.
• In a less destructive prank gone wrong, seniors at Northridge Prep, a Catholic high school in north suburban Niles, accidentally let a steer loose in the village this morning.

Finally, as we approach the 50th anniversary of Gary Gygax creating Dungeons & Dragons, Christopher Borrelli suggests putting a statue of him up in downtown Lake Geneva. I concur. Or, since he spent the first seven years of his life just a few blocks away from where I'm sitting right now (on Kenmore near Wrigley Field), why not put one there, too? (One of my favorite memories from childhood is playing 5 minutes of AD&D with Gygax as DM.)

Perhaps the first day of spring brings encourages some spring cleaning? Or at least, revisiting stories of the recent and more distant past:

• The Navy has revisited how it names ships, deciding that naming United States vessels after events or people from a failed rebellion doesn't quite work. As a consequence, the guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG-62, named after a Confederate victory) will become the USS Robert Smalls, named after the former slave who stole the CSS Planter right from Charleston Harbor in 1862.
• Author John Scalzi revisited whether to stay on Twitter, given its "hot racist right-wing trash" owner, and decides why not? It's not like Musk will ever benefit financially from the app.
• Charles Blow revisited the (long overdue) defenestration of cartoonist Scott Adams, deciding it doesn't matter whether Adams was lazy or stupid, throwing him out the window was appropriate.
• Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul revisited the Equal Rights Amendment, but the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decided yesterday not to.
• WBEZ revisited the only other two Chicago Mayors who lost their re-election bids in the past century, Michael Bilandic and Jane Byrne.
• A group of US intelligence agencies revisited Havana Syndrome, without finding sufficient evidence to blame either an adversary government or an energy weapon.

Finally, here's a delightful clip of US Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) patiently explaining to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and her banana-republican party the difference between an adjective and a noun:

Newspapers around the country finally chucked "Dilbert" into the bin after the cartoon's creator, Scott Adams, gave them the excuse:

Newspapers across the United States have pulled Scott Adams’s long-running “Dilbert” comic strip after the cartoonist called Black Americans a “hate group” and said White people should “get the hell away from” them.

The Washington Post, the USA Today network of hundreds of newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times and other publications announced they would stop publishing “Dilbert” after Adams’s racist rant on YouTube on Wednesday. Asked on Saturday how many newspapers still carried the strip — a workplace satire he created in 1989 — Adams told The Post: “By Monday, around zero.”

Adams, 65, also blamed Black people for not “focusing on education” during the show and said, “I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens.”

I say "excuse" because (a) Adams has said a lot worse, and (b) "Dilbert" hasn't been funny for at least ten years. I stopped reading the strip about five years ago after (a) Adams said a lot worse and (b) it stopped being funny. Why his comments last week tipped the scales, I have no idea. But you only have to go back to the 2016 Presidential Campaign, with Adams calling the XPOTUS a "genius hypnotist" and praising his persuasive abilities the way Father Coughlin praised Goebbels.

So, for whatever reason, American newspapers have finally got shot of this boring, unfunny asshole. Only the timing was unpredictable.

The other "makes sense if you think about it" story concerns the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. I've visited the place; it's really creepy. But aside from the Treaty Village at Panmunjom, it's a five-kilometer strip of land with exactly zero humans in it. Yet NBC News seemed surprised that it has become a de facto wildlife refuge:

Golden eagles, goats and wild cats are among the 6,168 wildlife species were found in new street view images released by Google this week which offer a rare glimpses into life behind the civilian control line.

Away from landmines buried beneath the border zone’s soil, otters and endangered Manchurian trout swim freely in the Imjin river which flows from North to South Korea.

And animals such as long-tailed mountain goats, classified as endangered by South Korea’s environment ministry, can be spotted in the rocky terrain of the Taebaek mountains.

So, that's cool. A lot cooler than a washed-up, right-wing cartoonist losing his syndication deal.

As a bonus, here's Panmunjom, from about 10 meters from the North Korean border:

The Tweet I highlighted earlier has this context behind it:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson turned the favored tactic of her right-wing peers on its head Tuesday, advancing an originalist argument to support protections for racial minorities. 

She made the comments during oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan, a case that gives the conservative majority the opportunity to gut the Voting Rights Act even further.

She read out a quote from the legislator who introduced the [14th] amendment, and went on to explain that the 14th Amendment was enacted to give a constitutional foundation to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that was “designed to make people who had less opportunity and less rights equal to white citizens.”

Josh Marshall loves it:

It is such a breath of fresh air, seeing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson say from the bench what the 14th Amendment actually says. “It’s not a race-blind remedy,” she says, in something of an understatement. But we can actually go well beyond this since so much of modern jurisprudence, mostly but not only from the right, is based not only on ignoring the context and plain text of the 14th Amendment but pretending that the real Constitution — albeit with some additions and fresh paint jobs — is the one finalized in the first Congress as the first ten amendments. The Civil War amendments are not only not race-blind. They reflect a larger realization and aim: that the whole state thing just hadn’t worked out.

It would be possible to argue that 150+ years since the passage of the Civil War amendments represents a cooling of the ambitions of the statecraft of the 14th Amendment and an effort to work out some equitable balance between localism and national power. There’s some truth to that. But that’s not an argument available to anyone who argues for originalism. With that you have to go back to what the Reconstruction Congress thought they were doing. And what they were trying to do was quite radical in the context of the 80 preceding years of American national history — indeed, quite radical in some ways in relation to today.

Will this cause the "originalists" on the Court any hesitation before finding against Black voters through tortured, motivated, ahistorical reasoning? Of course not. But the more the centrist Justices call out the three Trump appointees and Thomas for their partisan hackery, the more likely we will see some real court reform.

Just a few before I take a brick to my laptop for taking a damned half-hour to reformat a JSON file:

• The King has a long history of meddling in architecture and urban planning, with the divisive planned community of Poundbury, Dorset, his largest project to date.
• Meanwhile, in the US, architect Adam Paul Susaneck argues that cities need to remove highways that segregate communities. (Plus they're ugly and they cause the traffic they're built to alleviate, but that's another argument.)
• The Queen's death has gotten a lot of people's Irish up over the colonial history she oversaw as monarch. (I even decided to pause someone on Facebook for a month for dancing on her grave.)
• Developers found three time capsules while redeveloping Chicago's Tribune Tower this past year, one of which apparently contained a ball from the 1919 World Series.
• In a case that will make school administrators think thrice about joining student protests, Oberlin College in Ohio has agreed to pay a local bakery $37 million after a jury found the college had endorsed students labeling the bakery "racist."

Oh, good. My laptop has finished parsing the file. (In fairness it's 400,000 lines of JSON, but still, that's only 22 megabytes uncompressed.) I will now continue with my coding.

Today I learned about the Zoot Suit Riots that began 79 years ago today in Los Angeles. Wow, humans suck.

In other revelations:

• Service and restaurant workers in Chicago have accelerated their pushes for unionization after their bosses showed just how much they valued their workers during the pandemic. Funny how that works.
• The President can't do much about global food and gasoline prices, but voters will probably blame him anyway come November.
• I agree with Josh Marshall that preserving the current state of abortion rights through Federal legislation is the correct, and small-c conservative thing to do.
• Republican candidates for Illinois Governor held a debate yesterday in which they all blamed everything except their own party's fellatio of the gun industry for the violence in Chicago. None of them acknowledged that gun violence is now the leading cause of death in the US for children.
• The GOP's inability to have a serious conversation about guns comes against the backdrop of a mass shooting every week this year. After all, it's easier to regulate guns than to remove the brains of teenage boys.
• Boeing CEO David Calhoun explained to Crain's Chicago Business why the company is leaving Chicago.

Finally, it's 22°C and sunny outside, which mitigates against me staying in my office much longer...