Numbers
Four senators.
Throwing ice
Reading the New York Times story about Brett Kavanaugh’s behavior in 1985 in a New Haven bar, how I wish that my senator had asked Kavanaugh the question I suggested: “Have you ever assaulted anyone?” I don’t think there’s much question that throwing ice in someone’s face constitutes assault, however minor. A “No” would have been perjury, no?
“I got into Yale”
Joe Pinsker, on the “I got into Yale” defense: “It should go without saying, but there are all sorts of bad actors who have attended prestigious universities.”
Kavanaugh loses the Jesuits
“For the good of the country and the future credibility of the Supreme Court in a world that is finally learning to take reports of harassment, assault and abuse seriously, it is time to find a nominee whose confirmation will not repudiate that lesson”: the Jesuit magazine America has rescinded its endorsement of Brett Kavanaugh.
“Do you think that Brett Kavanaugh is telling the truth?”
Two survivors of sexual assault, Maria Gallagher and Ana Maria Archila, confront Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ).
July 1
A compelling analysis by Philip Bump The Washington Post: “Kavanaugh is pressed on the key July 1 entry in his calendar. But only to a point.” Why couldn’t a senator have put these pieces together?
Three points that should have been made
1. It’s not a victim’s responsibility to gather and present evidence of a crime. 2. Contra Brett Kavanaugh’s breezy claims about three witnesses refuting Christine Blasey Ford’s story: For one thing, they weren’t witnesses. 3. Contra Brett Kavanaugh’s breezy claims that these (non-) witnesses have refuted Christine Blasey Ford’s story: No. Not remembering ≠ refuting.
Too many beers
Kinda seems that Kavanaugh never quite left high school. Kinda seems that he’s an angry drunk, even when sober.
Wishful thinking
I wish that every member of the United States Senate understood civic duty — and courage — as well as Christine Blasey Ford does.
The, that woman
There is more than a touch of misogynist condescension in “the woman” and “that woman.”
Megan Garber on “boys will be boys”
“In Christine Blasey Ford’s claim that a young Brett Kavanaugh compromised her autonomy in another way, another norm is being litigated: the way we talk about sexual violence. Whether such violence will be considered an outrage, or simply a sad inevitability. Whether it will be treated as morally intolerable . . . or as something that, boys being boys and men being men, just happens.”
A last word from John McCain
From a letter addressed to his “fellow Americans” : “We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.”
John McCain (1936–2018)
“We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.”
Animal crackers in the news
Nabisco’s animal crackers are now cage-free.
My two cents: a modest proposal
I’m not Catholic, not even a believer. But if were Catholic, here’s what I do: I’d put two cents in the collection plate.
Not on a first-name basis
One sign of the reality-TV-ification of everything these days is the reduction of persons in political life to first names.
Speaking for yourself
As a person wary of reducing individual identities to group labels, I think that Kwame Anthony Appiah’s essay “Go Ahead, Speak for Yourself” is worth your time.
ProPublica on shelters
Is it crimes against humanity yet?
“Thus the world was lost”
“The fact that I was not prepared to resist, in 1935, meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, like me in Germany were also unprepared, and each one of these hundreds of thousands was, like me, a man of great influence or of great potential influence. Thus the world was lost.”
Principiis obsta and finem respice
Post-WWII, a professor of philology (“Middle High German was my life”) speaks.
Trump vs. breast-feeding
“The intensity of the [Trump] administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported [the World Health Organization’s] longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.”
The Fourth
“They’re not the first to come here, strangers to the country and to English, and soon be at home.”
Five questions
The Washington Post asks “the five hardest questions in pop music.”
Another
Current events are a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Reason to hope
Michael Bechloss, historian of the American presidency, has thoughts that give me some reason to hope.
An editorial
A New York Times editorial: “Seizing Children From Parents at the Border Is Immoral. Here’s What We Can Do About It.” Have you called your representatives in Congress yet?
Cake revision
“Summa --- Laude.”
Words for the day
Mike Rawlings, the mayor of Dallas: “I renew my call for Congress and the president to take substantive action on the mass shooting epidemic in our country. History will not look kindly upon those elected officials who failed to act in the face of repeated mass murders of our children. Spare us your thoughts and prayers and do your job.”
Review: To Fight Against This Age
An alternative to this book that might lead to a better fight: Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017). Where Rob Riemen dispenses platitudes (we must “live in truth,” “create beauty,” “do what is right”), Snyder offers pragmatic advice grounded in recent history: “do not obey in advance”; “defend institutions.” That kind of advice may prove more useful than platitudes.
“Demagogues and charlatans”
Rob Riemen: “Put demagogues and charlatans in charge, use the mass media to cultivate the belief that this leader, the antipolitical politician, is the only person who can save the country — and the constitutional, democratic institutions will disappear just as quickly as the authorities become impotent because no one believes in them anymore.”