Rational Left
Center-left academic type. Generally pissed about the state of the world but I know none of our endless crises are actually new because I'm a historian.
Joined Oct 2021
If a restaurant considers its dishes "expressive" and "original content" (in itself an entirely defensible position), can they now refuse service to groups the chef objects to on personal religious grounds?
Conservatives are objecting "Oh, it's very limited! Just creative speech!" But where does creative speech end? Where's the line?
You can be quite confident that if a Republican president had enacted the same policy, the same R justices would have upheld it as entirely within executive authority.
And that's the mess of this court in a nutshell.
Conservatives were quick to point out yesterday that a majority of voters support ending racial preferences in school admissions.
Well, today's "actually, discrimination is dandy if we like it!" ruling?
Not so much.
SCOTUS yesterday: "The 14th amendment prohibits all discrimination based on group."
SCOTUS today: "Discrimination against a group we don't like is absolutely fine when based on the religion we favor."
So what happens when a business refuses services for an interracial marriage and claims religious objections? Does the court uphold that too? What about when a doctor refuses care to a gay or trans person on "religious grounds" and lets them die?
Where is the line, according to the court?
The MAGA loons who own Kevin McCarthy's balls are pushing the idea that Biden staged the Wagner coup attempt to distract from... well, take your pick: Durham, the Hunter "whistleblowers," the "bribery document."
And since they do own McCarthy, this lunacy isn't far from being R orthodoxy.
They still claim to be the party of Lincoln.
Quite. We're going to get a lot of "Putin is stronger than ever!" pundit hot takes, but he's not looking very strong.
You have to ask, WTF is wrong with some people?
Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation. (Reconstructed from phonetic spellings, period rhyme schemes, and other evidence.)
It doesn't sound like John Gielgud. (That familiar upper crust British accent emerged in the later 18th century.)
Be warned: it strikes the modern ear a bit oddly.
If Nixon hadn't been pardoned, he would have been prosecuted. This bizarre idea that holding a former president subject to the law is somehow an abuse of power would have been nixed then and there.
Ford was a good man. His motives were good. He genuinely believed he was doing the right thing for the country. But the consequences of his well-intentioned pardon have not been good for the country.
A favorite quotation which just may bear on my refusal to pretend I'm sorry that a deeply vile and influential bigot has died:
"The thing I find hardest to tolerate is hypocrisy, especially when it takes the form of a sentimental regard for the dead just because they *are* dead. To hear some people talk, you'd think dying was limited to the chosen few."
So Licht is out at CNN.
But does it actually matter in practical terms?
He didn't come up with the Fox Lite approach on his own. Zaslav and the corporate owners wanted that - they still seem to think it can woo over Fox viewers.
If the owners think "coddling MAGA = objectivity" is the way to go and that Licht just sold it badly, CNN's collapsing trajectory won't shift.
The allegation that Comer is an alien infiltrator sent to harvest our brains and eyeballs has not been disproven either.
"Magadonian" sounds like an extinct giant ground sloth.
The Bard posted this yesterday when the Twitter "event" was announced... and my was it prescient.
If DeSantis were capable of acting like an actual human being, he'd do another launch event and make a big joke out of tonight's technical fiasco (which, after all, mainly reflects on Musk).
But I don't think he's ever shown the faintest sign of being capable of humor.
(The fiasco of having antisemitic lowlifes as his surrogates and being unable to answer questions with anything other than "WOKENESS IS BAD!!!" is wholly on Ron.)
I don't know who runs the Shakespeare account, but their ability to find quotes on short notice that nail the latest headline is quite something.
Rational Left
Center-left academic type. Generally pissed about the state of the world but I know none of our endless crises are actually new because I'm a historian.
Joined Oct 2021