Speech Tyrants Would Seek To Suppress

Yes, if I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag.  However, we have a First Amendment, which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged.  And it is addressed, in particular, to speech critical of the government.  I mean, that was the main kind of speech that tyrants would seek to suppress.

Burning the flag is a form of expression.  Speech doesn’t just mean written words or oral words.  It could be semaphore.  And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea -- "I hate the government," "the government is unjust," whatever.

-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (1936 - 2016) in an interview on Piers Morgan Live (18 July 2012), discussing his vote to protect flag burning as speech in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989) (via CNN)

Mind Modifies Body

Mind modifies body involuntarily.

-- William Godwin (1756 - 1836), English journalist and political philosopher, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 7

FEMA Katrina Declaration

TO: Members of Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, claiming an estimated 1,833 lives, leaving millions homeless, and causing approximately $161 billion in damage.  Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, but a man-made one: the inexperience of senior leaders and the profound failure by the federal government to deliver timely, unified, and effective aid to those in need left survivors to fend for themselves for days, and highlighted how Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities are disproportionally affected by disasters.  These failures prompted Congress to pass the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA), which introduced safeguards to ensure such shortcomings of disaster preparation and response would not be repeated.  However, two decades later, FEMA is enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKEMRA was designed to prevent.

1) We oppose the reduction in capability of FEMA to perform its missions. 

2) We oppose the ongoing failure to appoint a qualified FEMA administrator, as required by law. 

3) We oppose the elimination of life- and cost-saving risk reduction programs.  

4) We oppose interference with preparedness programs that build capacity for our SLTT partners. 

5) We oppose the censorship of climate science, environmental protection, and efforts to ensure all communities have access to information, resources, and support.

6) We oppose the reduction of FEMA’s disaster workforce.

The signatories of this letter are FEMA employees from across the United States who are dedicated to helping people before, during, and after disasters, and who are members of the communities we seek to support.  In addition to named signatories, we include anonymous signatories who share our concerns but choose not to identify themselves due to the culture of fear and suppression cultivated by this administration.

-- "The FEMA Katrina Declaration" (25 August 2025), four days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Sleek, Simple, Utopian

One persistent strand in utopian thinking, as we have often mentioned, is the feeling that there is some set of principles obvious enough to be accepted by all men of good will, precise enough to give unambiguous guidance in particular situations, clear enough so that all will realize its dictates, and complete enough to cover all problems which actually arise.  Since I do not assume that there are such principles, I do not presume that the political realm will whither away.  The messiness of the details of a political apparatus and the details of how it is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple utopian scheme.

-- Robert Nozick (1938 - 2002), American libertarian philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopian Means and Ends, p. 330

Carefully Nourished

With carefully nourished resentment, a man can go through his life blaming someone or something else for his failures.  This enables him to be a failure and to feel morally superior to the world at the same time.

-- Theodore Dalrymple, pen name of Anthony Daniels (11 October 1949 -), English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist, "Private Clubs and the Sour Pleasures of Resentment", The Epoch Times (19 August 2021)

And So Do All

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

-- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) "The Shadow of the Past"

All Others

"In God we trust.  All others must use data."

-- Mary Walton, The Deming Management Method (1986) Chapter 20 "Doing It with Data" p. 96

Stagflation

Mr. Trump's tariffs are now clearly fueling inflation, particularly in goods such as home appliances, cars and food.  In the first six months of the year, real (that is, inflation-adjusted) consumer spending, the main driver behind business cycles and robust economic expansion, barely grew, after rising 3 percent last year.  G.D.P. growth slowed by about half, to 1.2 percent this year from 2.5 percent last year.  When overall growth falls that sharply, the labor market tends to follow, which is precisely what happened: Job growth, at 35,000 per month on average between May and July, is dangerously close to stall speed.

While presidents always take credit for good economic news and try to deflect bad news (in this president's case, by firing the messenger who delivered it), it's often hard to link what's going on in the economy to the current administration.  Not this time.  Whether it's historically high tariffs that never quite seem to stabilize, deportations that threaten to seriously disrupt labor supply in sectors like construction and health services, or a reverse-Robin Hood, budget-busting bill that takes money away from those most likely to spend it, Mr. Trump's policies have pushed economic uncertainty to levels last seen during the onset of the pandemic.  This uncertainty has damped investment, hiring and consumption, while the tariffs increase prices.  In other words: stagflation.

-- Jared Bernstein, chair of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers from 2023 to 2025, and Ryan Cummings who served the council as an economist from 2021 to 2023, New York Times, "The Economy Is Starting to Pay for Trump’s Chaos" (10 August 2025)

They Know We Know

They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.

-- Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova (2010), Chapter 13: A Tour of Leningrad, pp 172 and 173

Up Is Down

WASHINGTON -- Total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35% from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and announced by United States Attorney Matthew M. Graves.  A breakdown of the data is available here

In addition to the overall violent crime reduction, homicides are down 32%; robberies are down 39%; armed carjackings are down 53%; assaults with a dangerous weapon are down 27% when compared with 2023 levels, with the District reporting the fewest assaults with dangerous weapons and burglaries in over 30 years.

-- Department of Justice press release from U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia, "Violent Crime in D.C. Hits 30 Year Low" (3 January 2025) h/t JSA

Constitutional Harms

For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities.

And not just any constitutional violation.  The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives.  In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.  These gerrymanders enabled politicians to entrench themselves in office as against voters' preferences.  They promoted partisanship above respect for the popular will.  They encouraged a politics of polarization and dysfunction.  If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government.

And checking them is not beyond the courts.  The majority's abdication comes just when courts across the country, including those below, have coalesced around manageable judicial standards to resolve partisan gerrymandering claims.  Those standards satisfy the majority's own benchmarks.  They do not require -- indeed, they do not permit -- courts to rely on their own ideas of electoral fairness, whether proportional representation or any other.  And they limit courts to correcting only egregious gerrymanders, so judges do not become omnipresent players in the political process.  But yes, the standards used here do allow -- as well they should -- judicial intervention in the worst-of-the-worst cases of democratic subversion, causing blatant constitutional harms.  In other words, they allow courts to undo partisan gerrymanders of the kind we face today from North Carolina and Maryland.  In giving such gerrymanders a pass from judicial review, the majority goes tragically wrong.

-- Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, dissenting in Rucho v Common Cause (27 June 2019) in which they anticipated the escalating gerrymanders attempted by Texas and threatened by California this year

The Basic Right

In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless.  It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."

-- President Lyndon B. Johnson, remarks in the Capitol Rotunda at the Signing of the Voting Rights Act (6 August 1965, 60 years ago today), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965. Volume II, entry 394, pp. 811-815

In Related News

Trump just took his attack on reality to a different level, by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Why?  Because he did not like the job numbers her agency produced.

In related news, we just saw the last credible BLS data for the rest of the Trump administration.

-- Don Moynihan, Professor of Public Policy at University of Michigan, "Trump Shoots the Messenger", at Moynihan's Can We Still Govern? Substack (1 August 2025)

We Know It Not

To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth.  Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats -- we know it not.

-- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983), American writer on social and political philosophy, The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955) Section 59

Horrific

It's the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.

But a Jewish U.S. Representative calling for the continued starvation of innocent people and children is disgraceful. 

His awful statement will actually cause more antisemitism.

-- Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), in an X post condemning Representative Randy Fine (R-FL), who earlier tweeted "Release the hostages.  Until then, starve away." (28 July 2025)

Few Doubts

Lion had few doubts about his actions.  As he had said on more than one occasion, "I may be wrong, but I am never in doubt."

-- Sheri Stewart Tepper (1929 - 2016), author of science fiction, horror, and mystery novels, Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore (1985) Chapter 10 (p. 162)

RIP Tom Lehrer

Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media.  What we have now -- to quote myself at my most pretentious -- is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.  For example, the freedom (hooray!) to say almost anything you want on television about society's problems has been co-opted (alas!) by the freedom to talk instead about flatulence, orgasms, genitalia, masturbation, etc., etc., and to replace real comment with pop-culture references and so-called "adult" language.  Irreverence is easy -- what's hard is wit.

-- Thomas Andrew Lehrer (9 April 1928 - 26 July 2025), American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician, On the current state of satire, in Rhino Records online chat (17 June 1997)

Opposed By Watchful Men

I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear.  Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears so much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs.  The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

-- Elwyn Brooks (E.B.) White (1899 - 1985), American essayist, columnist, poet, and editor, best known today for his work in a writers' guide, The Elements of Style, and for three children's books: Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan, generally regarded as classics, Letter to the New York Herald Tribune (29 November 1947)

Affirmed

Article II of the Constitution establishes the scope of presidential powers.  The President has the power to issue executive orders if they "stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself," on matters that fall within that scope established by Article II.  But one power that the President was not granted, by Article II or by any other source, is the power to modify or change any clause of the United States Constitution.  Perhaps the Executive Branch, recognizing that it could not change the Constitution, phrased its Executive Order in terms of a strained and novel interpretation of the Constitution. 

The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order's proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional.  We fully agree.  The Defendants' proposed interpretation of the Citizenship Clause relies on a network of inferences that are unmoored from the accepted legal principles of 1868.  This runs the risk of "‘extrapolat[ing]' from the Constitution's text and history ‘the values behind [that right], and then ... enforc[ing] its guarantees only to the extent they serve those underlying values.'"  We reject this approach because it is contrary to the express language of the Citizenship Clause, the reasoning of Wong Kim Ark, Executive Branch practice for the past 125 years, the legislative history to the extent that should be considered, and because it is contrary to justice.

-- Majority opinion of a 3-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth District, affirming a lower court injunction against President Trump's executive order denying citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants (23 July 2025)

Human Material

Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material.  It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.

-- Czesław Miłosz (1911 - 2004), Polish poet and essayist, 1980 Nobel laureate in Literature, The Captive Mind (1953) translated by Jane Zielonko (1990)