The Audacity of Jeanine Pirro

Yesterday, the Washington Post published an editorial by Washington D.C.'s Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, where she demands the elimination of various D.C. laws that provide leniency to juvenile offenders under the guise of making D.C. "safe." These include the Youth Rehabilitation Act, which suspends mandatory minimums for many crimes when the defendant is under the age of 25, and the Incarceration Reduction Amendment and Second Look Amendment Acts, which lets persons imprisoned for crimes committed while under the age of 25 to petition for resentencing after 15 years of incarceration.

I've written before about my art collection, and in particular the story of Halim Flowers (whose work in large part prompted my interest). Flowers was the beneficiary of the laws Pirro is indicting here -- he committed his crime when he was sixteen, sentenced to life in prison, but was eventually released after serving 22 years (when he was nearly forty). If Jeanine Pirro had her way, he would still be locked up, and we would have lost the beauty he has created as a sacrifice to our misplaced pride -- the arrogance to know that these children can never and will never have anything to offer society, and that we lose nothing by keeping them caged forever. Halim Flowers is testament to why laws like this must exist. 

Whenever I think about laws insisting on the lifetime incarceration of juvenile offenders, I think: would we as a society really be better off if he was still warehoused? How much else in the way of beautiful art are we depriving ourselves of by locking away so much of our human potential? Or forget art -- or business, or writing, or anything else externalized by the outside world. How much love are we giving up? How many relationships are we stymying? How many families are we poisoning? Who does this help? Perhaps there are some criminals who are truly incorrigible (though most age out of violent criminality by forty or so), but for any individual kid it's hard to imagine knowing that with so much advance confidence that one will refuse to even let the child have a chance to become a different person. Our assumptions about which children are incorrigible criminals are very often wrong, and we should have the humility to allow ourselves to be proven wrong.

The retort, of course, is the put oneself in the shoes of the victims. It's of course hard for me to imagine  a world where my wife or my son was murdered -- my brain sort of does an emergency shut-off at the thought. My best guess is that it would turn me into a broken shell of a man, and nothing would resurrect me from my nightmarish hell. It would be too cheap to say that's freeing (why bother imposing any punishment if, either way, I'll still be a broken shell of man trapped in an inescapable nightmare?) -- I certainly think I'd want the wrongdoer to be held accountable in some fashion for what they've done. But I imagine (and again, this is only imagination) that eventually, all I'd want is to not have to think about the murderer again. I don't know if I could ever forgive him. But nor would I want to expend energy hating him. The gravest injustice someone could do to me, twenty years after the fact, would be to make the murderer my mental responsibility -- whether it's the responsibility to declare "he should he go free" or the responsibility to insist "he must stay locked up." Just let me pretend that I can forget. Is that too much to ask?

What Pirro is doing here is not to the benefit of the victims or their families. They deserve better than to be pulled into this debate. The people who want leniency will urge them to show forgiveness, the people who want punitiveness will lean on them to recount their trauma. Both demands are torturous. It is an injustice on top of an injustice that we ask this of them. Just leave them alone. They've suffered enough.

Impossible questions don't yield easy answers, and I don't pretend these answers are easy. But their very impossibility makes it more essential that D.C. residents be the ones to decide for themselves -- not an outsider commissar imposed on a subjugated population deprived of its democratic rights. Jeanine Pirro does not want what's best for D.C. residents. Jeanine Pirro does not care about D.C. residents. Crime in D.C. is in fact falling (and the most prominent recent incident of mass criminality in D.C. was of course orchestrated on Trump's behalf and the site of mass pardons by Trump to inaugurate his second term), but this was never actually about what's good for one of the American colonies anyway. Jeanine Pirro is literally inventing more misery so that she can inflict more misery on the world. What a despicable human being.

One other side note: When I clicked the link to open Pirro's column, I saw with bittersweet amusement a banner informing me that my Washington Post subscription will expire in one more day (I canceled in October following their Harris non-endorsement fiasco, but I had renewed last August for a year). Even now, this is a hard moment -- I grew up with the Post, I loved it dearly, and even now I know its reporters do some great journalism. But it is, in a way, helpful to get a reminder of the feckless, Vichy nihilism that the paper now embodies (the publication of this editorial wouldn't have offended me so much if the Post hadn't just announced new ideological limits on the opinion pieces it would run -- tell me, is Pirro's lock-up-the-kids crusade in the category of "personal liberties" or "free markets"?). No principles, no values, just crass accommodation of the worst people in power. Who could really miss a newspaper like that? For that, and that alone, I'm grateful to the Post for giving me a perfect sendoff as my time as a subscriber draws to a close.

What Internet Randos Are Saying About the DC Jewish Museum Shooting

Earlier this evening, two staffers with the Israeli embassy were shot and killed while leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The event was a multifaith and multinational gathering exploring "how a coalition of organizations - from the region and for the region - are working together in response to humanitarian crises throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region." The attacker reportedly shouted "free Palestine" after committing the killings.

(Tomorrow, the Museum was scheduled to host an event on "Pride: The Policy Accomplishments of the LGBTQ+ Movement", but this doesn't seem related to that).

Whenever events like this happen to the Jewish community, I have the macabre habit of trawling through the comment sections of my favored social media outlets, looking for people to block. I say macabre, but I actually find it quite cathartic: every block is another terrible person I don't ever have to deal with. Is it an endless and Sisyphean task? Of course. But you know that story about the kid throwing starfish back into the ocean and being told "why bother -- there's so many, you'll never make a difference throwing them back one by one", and he throws another one back in and says "I made a difference to that one?" It's like that, but oppositional.

I digress. After hearing the news, I did my perusing on Bluesky, and I have some anecdata to report.

First, a positive: Most people are reacting with what I would consider basic normalcy and decency. Just generally expressing horror and sadness or worry about how actings of political violence are only going to make a bad situation worse. Sometimes people I think exaggerate the pervasiveness of the "bad" takes on Bluesky -- and at one level I get why: if 1000 people are commenting on a political event, and 10% have a repellant take, that's simultaneously only 10% (a pretty small minority) and also that's 100 repellant comments, which can feel very overwhelming, very quickly. So while I don't begrudge anyone who can't look past the bad actors, I want to put it in some perspective. To everyone who had a normal response to a terrible tragedy: you get a sticker.

On the "bad" side, I sort the bad actors into a few groups. The number of people I saw affirmatively cheering the murders was very small. More common was either an overacted performance of yawning indifference ("huh -- anyway, did you see the Pacers game?"), or a dashed off "I'm not saying I support this..." followed by a very long "but...."

To be honest, though, none of these surprised me (either in their content or their relative numbers). The response I saw which did surprise me in terms of the frequency I encountered it was the number of people suggesting the shooting may have been a false flag, designed to justify either complete ethnic cleansing in Gaza and/or further authoritarian repression here at home. 

To be clear: I'm not including in this group people suggesting the Trump and Netanyahu administrations will attempt to exploit this shooting to further their malign agenda. That goes without saying. I'm talking about people who think the shooter was himself an Israeli operative, or otherwise acted at the behest of the Israeli government.

This is "the paranoid style", leftist version, and I was stunned at how many people seemed ready to indulge in it.  I probably shouldn't have been -- one still sees people arguing that Israel intentionally let October 7 happen (and massacred its own people) in order to justify its invasion of Gaza -- but still, it stood out. A lot of people really are prone to believing these sorts of conspiracies.

Anyway, that's my impressionistic take on what random reply-guys are saying. Mostly normal, some cheerers or apologists, and a bit more conspiracy theorists than I was comfortable seeing. Your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: One other thing I noticed -- the replies are much worse in the replies to politicians' posts (compared to news stories). Chris Van Hollen's skeet is overrun with people screaming "but you don't have a word to say about Gaza, you AIPAC-bought bastard!", which suggests they're either bots or aren't paying attention.

Even Friendly Dominance Is Still Dominance

For some reason, a slew of congressional Democrats (along with President Joe Biden), most whom purport to support DC statehood -- most of whom I think genuinely support DC statehood -- voted to overturn the DC government's recent alterations to its criminal code.

This was a foolish decision, not the least because you give the GOP and inch and it takes a mile on these things.

But in its way, it demonstrates exactly why DC needs statehood.

The simple fact is that no matter how warm or empathetic any particular national politician feels towards DC, they cannot be trusted to govern DC insofar as they are not elected by DC voters. That's the entire point of democracy -- that our representatives are chosen by us, and so gain the legitimacy to write laws on our behalf. If DC were a state then normal, local lawmaking about DC would be undertaken by politicians accountable to DC voters. That doesn't mean all their choices will be good or salutary, but DC residents have the same right to make what some might deem to be mistaken policy choices as Kentucky or Idaho or Maine voters.

And the setup that DC has now -- with putative home rule, but subject to the oversight and approval of Congress -- will never substitute for actual home rule. Even men and women who think of themselves as DC supporters, who have naught but fair-feeling towards the people of DC, will be unable to resist the allure of substituting their own judgment for those of the actual DC polity. Whether because of strong feelings on a given issue or simply the happenstance of political maneuvering, those who have the power to dominant will exercise that power.

So long as Congress has the special power to override DC home rule, it will exercise that power -- it does not ultimately matter how "friendly" the individual Senators and Representatives are. The only way to end that is to give DC true, actual homerule on the same terms as any other American jurisdiction -- that is to say, by statehood.

(And yes, the same applies for all the American colonies).

Sunrise, Sunset

The American Federation of Teachers has several hundred thousand dollars invested in Israel bonds.

It has publicly endorsed a two-state solution promising self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and rejected BDS. It has promoted its work in Israel to facilitate peace and coexistence via collaborative initiatives that bring Jews and Palestinians together, presenting them as models for similar work aiming dissipate conflict and dismantle unjust structures domestically and internationally. It has proudly hosted an Israeli MK, Stav Shaffir, at its convention to speak on politics, justice, and inequality. Its leader, Randi Weingarten, has been vocal about her passionate connection to and care for Israel, and ran on the left-wing Hatikvah slate for a position in the World Zionist Congress.

The AFT is not, of course, blindly "pro-Israel" in all things. It condemned the nation-state law, and the denial of entry visas to Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. It grouped Bibi Netanyahu in with other democratically-elected authoritarians such as Orban, Erdogan, Putin, Bolsonaro, and Modi. Sometimes, in opposing certain Israeli policies, it has collaborated with other Israeli groups, such as joining with Israeli academic and student unions to oppose a politcally-motivated "academic code of ethics".

None of this is especially noteworthy. The AFT's positions on Israel are ordinary and unremarkable -- entirely the norm in contemporary establishment liberal politics.

Today, there was a big story that the DC branch of the Sunrise Movement was withdrawing from a DC statehood rally because the sponsoring coalition, Declaration for American Democracy, includes three Jewish groups Sunrise considers to be impermissibly "Zionist": the National Coalition of Jewish Women, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and the Jewish Council of Public Affairs. Sunrise DC said it would refuse to operate in any space where such groups were included, and accordingly urged DFAD to consider expelling them from the coalition.

Others can write on the pernicious effect of drawing the exclusionary border this far -- one that would have the effect of locking out the overwhelming majority of even progressive Jewish political organizations and actors from progressive organizing. Others, too, may wish to comment on Sunrise DC's de rigueur claim that in standing up against Zionism it was standing up for "Black and Brown Jewish-Israelis" -- an assertion so far removed from the actual politics and priorities of those communities that one wonders whether Sunrise DC actually believes it or is simply engaging in reflex. And others can look at the repeated invocations of "indigenous" rights and consider my hypothesis from just the other day that "As far as Israel and Palestine are concerned 'indigenous' is where political commentators go to when they don't want to compromise a single inch but still want to appeal to some sort of putatively non-partisan moral principle."

I want to focus on something a little different, though.

The three groups Sunrise DC targets -- NCJW, RAC, and JCPA -- primarily concentrate on domestic issues. JCPA considers some amount of Israel advocacy to be a priority, the other two do not. All three, to the varying extents they do "work" on Israel, take positions that are materially indistinguishable from that of AFT. That is, they are engaged in the normal promotion of two-states, co-existence, collaboration, liberal values, and so on, that is utterly ordinary and unremarkable not just among Jewish liberals, but among liberals, period.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. The American Federation of Teachers is also a member of the Declaration for American Democracy. And yet Sunrise DC did not say -- I suspect it did not even occur to them to say -- that AFT should be expelled, or that it would not operate where AFT was present. I wager that Sunrise DC only "checked" the Jewish groups to see whether they were "problematic". The litmus test it imposes is one it imposes on Jewish groups only. Jews are the ones for whom Sunrise checks to see if they're dangerously "Zionist" in orientation, and so Jews are the ones subject to the exclusion.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so sanguine about AFT -- Randi Weingarten is prominent enough as a Jewish leader that they very easily could be the next target. But the broader point would remain: if Sunrise tried to say it would not work with all groups who have roughly the political outlook towards Israel as does the NCJW, it could not work with essentially any mainline liberal group, because the stances NCJW takes are materially identical to those taken by essentially every major liberal group, Jewish or not.  I expect that the overwhelming majority of groups in the DFAD (at least, those of any size) who have thought about Israel have thought in terms that are roughly in line with what NCJW thinks. If such an outlook is unacceptable, then all of them should be targeted for removal or ostracization.

That wouldn't be practicable of course. What is practicable and tractable is to ask the question of the Jews, specifically, and make the demand of Jewish groups, specifically. A Jewish litmus test, not a general one.

This observation is not quite the same thing as saying that Sunrise is "okay" with the sort of mainstream liberal outlook on Israel so long as its non-Jews expressing it. Even if the end goal is to demand that every group abandon this outlook, the above points about practicability and tractability can justify -- on a bloodless, purely tactical level -- a decision to focus on the Jewish groups first: a point of vulnerability, an easy place to put one's foot in the door. How often have we heard, after all, that boycotts need not and reasonably do not target everyone at once, but pick their targets at the point of maximum leverage and impact? The logic extends here too. How much should it matter that the selection criteria is "go after the Jews", if we accept for sake of argument that the reason "the Jews" were picked is not merely some unthinking atavistic hatred but makes "political" sense? The answer depends on how much you think unthinking atavistic hatred is the sine qua non of wrongful discrimination.

So is that Sunrise's end game -- it knows that lots of groups have "sinned" identically" to NCJW et al, but it is making a strategic choice to go after the Jews first? On that point, I am unsure. Is AFT not on Sunrise's hit list just out of ignorance -- they didn't bother to check? Or would it stay off the list for the time being because of the practical problems (or strategic prioritization) identified above -- limiting their test solely to Jewish groups being manageable in a way that an actual universal principle would not be? Or perhaps it is the case that the policies AFT promotes re: Israel, whether or not they're the ones Sunrise DC would choose, are within the "zone of acceptability" -- at least when non-Jews are promoting them. I suspect that they would certainly be happier if AFT, too, switched its policies to be more in line with anti-Israel maximalism. But I also suspect they'd be happy enough if the "only" practical effect of their policy is that the Jewish groups are sabotaged, and everyone else can keep on going largely how they're going. Actually changing AFT's outlook on Israel may be a happy bonus, but the primary mission objective is to kneecap the Jewish organizations, and their acting in pursuit of the latter goal far more than the former.

To some extent, I think all of this -- imagining a set of policies Sunrise DC opposes and then imagining how they're trying to alter or punish organizations for adopting them -- is giving Sunrise DC too much credit though. Why? Because I think what they actually did was not look at a bucket of policy and practices and say "we simply cannot support an organization that does this or advocates that", but rather simply check to see which (Jewish) groups had "Zionist" somewhere on their website and called it there.  And perhaps you are tempted to think that this demarcates an actual difference between NCJW and AFT -- the former will use the word "Zionist", the latter won't. I already have in my mind's eye some Jewish Currents editor frantically looking to screen grab some obscure corner of the NCJW website where they dare characterize what they do as "Zionist", in order to Silence Liberal! those who insist that NCJW's work on Israel is not remotely characterizable as oppressive or problematic.

It is true, after all, that at least among left-of-center "pro-Israel" folk, "Zionist" is a term mostly restricted to the Jews. Take two Democrats with identical, AFT/NCJW-style views on Israel, one Jewish and one not, and the former is going to be far more likely to characterize herself as "Zionist" than the latter, even though they advocate for the exact same things and have the exact same vision of what justice and equality look like in Israel and in Palestine. But if that is the case, and the distinction is purely terminological, and the difference between who uses that word lies overwhelmingly along the dimension of "Jewish" versus "non-Jewish", then using that as the demarcation point between acceptable and unacceptable reduces into different standards for Jews and non-Jews -- right back to where we started. Be embarrassed, those of you who clung to the idea that this makes out a neutral distinction.

In any event. What Sunrise DC is doing is targeting Jewish groups for especial scrutiny and exclusion as Jewish groups. That it does so while nominally accepting other Jewish groups is immaterial -- it is the heightened scrutiny, not the conceptual possibility of clearing the bar, that is the problem. And it is not correct to say that Sunrise DC's selection criteria is neutral -- it isn't; the reasons these groups are targeted is not because their policy outlook on Israel is wrong in a way that other mainline liberal groups avoid, they are targeted because they have the "wrong" outlook and they're Jewish -- the conditions are jointly necessary, neither is sufficient on its own.

This is antisemitism. I hope it is recognized as such.

I'll end on a very small hopeful note. They are many differences between the situation of Jews in Democratic Party politics compared to Jews in UK Labour. But one major one is that there are simply more of us, who have been doing this for a very long time, and are deeply embedded in the fabric of the entire liberal political apparatus at every level. Groups like the NCJW and the RAC have been building out connections and coalitions and relationships across the liberal political space since well before the Sunrise DC activists were a twinkle in anyone's eye. We have the high ground, in more ways than one. And if a few political performance artists think we'll be dislodged that easily, they are in for an awakening.

A Quick, Sad Vignette on American Gun Violence

There was a shooting tonight outside Nationals Park, in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Washington, DC.

When I first starting hearing about this, I quickly googled "Navy Yard shooting" in hopes of getting more information. 

Most of the hits were about a mass shooting event in 2013, where twelve people plus the gunman were killed.

So I got more specific: "Navy Yard shooting 2021".

The search returned results about a shooting that occurred this past February.

I tried one more time: "Navy Yard shooting 2021 Nationals stadium". And that finally gave me results about the events of this evening.

It took me three tries to successfully narrow down to tonight's Navy Yard shooting. Because there were so many other Navy Yard shootings to choose from.

We cannot go on like this.

UPDATE: 

An eight year old girl who was at the game answers a reporter who asks how she was feeling: "It was my 2nd shooting, so I was kind of prepared. I’m always expecting something to happen." 

Democrats for More Democrats

One of my favorite social campaign slogans of all time is "Neighbors for more neighbors" -- the mantra of supporters of upzoning in Minneapolis-St. Paul. And to co-opt it, Democrats should support policies that create more Democrats.

At one level, that's obvious; at another, it's obscure. What does it mean for a policy to "create" more Democrats? It'd be nice if "good policy that makes people's lives better" had a direct connection to getting more votes, but I'm dubious. Typically, the process through which people become members of a political party is a little less straightforward -- working through cultural affinity and other group dynamics as much if not more so than policy preferences. And on the other side, we should not support a policy that's objectively unethical just because it might redound to the transient political advantage of the Democratic Party. All politics is, in a sense, a trade-off between what's right and what's expedient, but the very best political moves -- the true no-brainers -- are those which are both right and expedient. What we'd want, then, are policies that are both (a) objectively good and (b) are likely to inject more Democratic voters into the polity. 

Statehood for DC (and the other colonies) is an obvious one -- it rectifies a clear injustice of areas under permanent American jurisdiction which lack political representation, and most of the relevant places are strongly blue-leaning (at "worst", places like Puerto Rico are swingy) and so would add more Democrats into American politics.

Immigration reform is, potentially, another. Again, it is correct on the ethics, but it also is likely that many (not all) of the immigrant populations will be inclined to vote blue -- particularly if Republicans insist on declaring loudly and consistently that the immigrants aren't welcome here. Accelerating paths to citizenship -- basically, creating a fatter spigot of naturalized U.S. citizens -- will likely yield more Democratic voters.

A less obvious play is policies which enhance college accessibility ("free college" or related programs), resulting in more Americans getting college-educated. The big story in American voter behavior over the past decade is that partisanship is now sorted almost entirely along the dimension of education -- higher-education cohorts voting blue, lower-education cohorts voting red (this holds even accounting for differences in wealth -- high-ed/low-income voters are still blue, high-income/low-ed voters are still red). 

Does this mean that, if more Americans go to college, they'll come out Democrats? Not necessarily -- it could be that "people who are Democrats are more inclined to go to college" rather than "going to college makes people more inclined to become a Democrat" -- if that's the case, then adding new college attendees won't change the underlying partisan composition of the electorate. But I'm inclined to think that the causal arrow does flow in the direction of "college attendance --> Democrat" rather than vice versa. One hint that this is right is that we're seeing a big shift in voting patterns from college-educated voters who are long-since removed from college, which seems more compatible with college attendance --> Democrat than Democrat --> college attendance.

But what makes the pattern work? It's not because lefty professors are successfully indoctrinating students (as we often remark, we can't even get them to read the syllabus!). In part, it may be that college exposes students to people from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences than might otherwise be the case; that horizon-broadening experience fits better with political progressivism. But right now, I think the larger answer is simply a form of cultural affinity (or, to be a little cruder, tribalism): college-educated persons now are far more likely to be liberals than not, and that very consensus makes it more likely that each marginal member of the college-educated cohort will also be liberal (the same is true for non-college educated voters, but in reverse). People tend to adopt the politics of their surrounding community; if their community is fellow college-educated persons, they'll trend towards the predominant views of that set.

What this means is that if Democrats make a big push to increase the number of Americans who get college degrees, it is likely that the result will be more Democratic voters. It's not going to be everyone, of course. But I suspect if one randomly assigned a sample of Americans who were not planning to attend college into two groups -- one sent to college, one not -- the former would in four years have more Democratic voters than the latter.

It's good to give representation to places under American sovereignty. It's good to welcome immigrants who want to make their home here into the fabric of America. And it's good to increase college accessibility and affordability for Americans of all backgrounds. But each of these policies, in addition to their moral goods, may have the additional happy consequence of creating more Democratic voters. Democrats for more Democrats, please.

DC Statehood Is Not Going To "Backfire"

Noah Feldman has a truly idiotic -- and I don't say that lightly, but it's bad -- column arguing against DC statehood because it might "backfire" against Democrats by increasing partisan polarization. Others have done the requisite line-by-line refutation. I'll just reiterate my earlier observation that one of the virtues of DC statehood is that, in comparison to other forms of political "hardball" by congressional Democrats, it is relatively immune from partisan retaliation. What are Republicans going to do -- add Wyoming as a state? It's already a state! As it happens, for oh-so-mysterious-reasons there aren't a bunch of non-voting disenfranchised American territories overwhelmingly populated by White folk lying around that Republicans could give statehood too the next time they win back control of Congress. 

No Retaliation for DC Statehood

A DC statehood bill has officially been introduced in the Senate.

I've been a big proponent of DC statehood for some time now. And one thing I really like about it as a political play is that it is (a) morally correct (obviously DC residents should have representation in Congress), (b) politically advantageous (it's two safe Democratic seats), and (c) immune from direct retaliation. You're usually lucky to get even two, let alone all three. Compare court packing: it'd be politically advantageous for Democrats to add more justices to the Supreme Court, and it's perhaps arguably morally justified, but it's also easily open to retaliation -- the next time the GOP controls Congress, they'll just add even more seats to re-pack the judiciary.

But DC statehood is relatively immune to that sort of tit-for-tat. I can imagine the conversation:

"You're only adding DC as a state to secure two new Democratic senators! Well if you do that, the next time we're in power we'll add two new states with safe Republican majorities!"

"Oh? Are there non-state territories under permanent American dominion that are overwhelming made up of conservative White people?" 

"..." 

"Yeah. Funny, that."

Packing Preparation

I continue to think that adding more states is more likely to occur during the next Democratic administration compared to adding more Supreme Court Justices. But it will be controversial, and, following Machiavelli, anything especially controversial should be done at the very outset of one's tenure as a ruler.* What that means is we want any new state admissions to be part of H.R. 1 (which most people already expect to be a voting rights bill). And in particular, we want the new states set to be added to be ready to go on inauguration day.

This is especially important if we want to extend statehood beyond the most obvious candidate, D.C.. Puerto Rico is a complicated case because statehood has been actively debated there and remains controversial. But there seems to be relatively little discussion of statehood for other American territories, such as Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands. Yet if those territories also were ready to announce, on day one of a Biden administration, that they were applying for statehood, it would be much easier to roll them into a larger bill than trying to mobilize them on the fly.

*  Machiavelli also suggests delegating the task to an underling and then, once it's complete, executing him in a high-profile fashion. Not all of his advice is applicable to the modern day.

ZoomZoom Roundup

I just finished my first week teaching over Zoom (undergraduate Constitutional Law). So far, it's going decently well I think -- considerably more interactive than I had anticipated, which is a good thing. But it does take a fair amount of concentration to keep my eyes on the ball for two consecutive hours. Thank god for breakout rooms (just remember to unmute yourself when you bring people back....).

* * *

British voters think Keir Starmer's competence contrasts nicely with Boris Johnson's ineptitude. Amazing what having a leader who isn't a widely-reviled extremist can do for a left-wing party.

When it comes to whether "Jews are indigenous to Israel", I'm less interested in the tiresome Twitter brouhaha than I am in this really thoughtful essay on the subject in Tikkun Magazine.

Long interview with Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe on occasion of his retirement. Come for the stories of him growing up in Shanghai as a Jewish refugee, stay for the tale of how the Supreme Court Justices determined whether movies were "obscene".

A very interesting article by Roseanna Summers in the Yale Law Journal asking what everyday people think counts as "consent".

I'd much rather focus on Zach Banner than on DeSean Jackson, if it's all the same to you.

We could have beaten coronavirus, but unfortunately one of our two political parties has turned into a death cult. July is going to be rough.

Word is that Washington's football team soon won't be named after a racial slur.

Booing Trump in Washington: The Appearance isn't the Reality, But the Reality May Become the Appearance

Many of you saw that President Trump, who attended Game Five of the World Series in Washington yesterday, was roundly and loudly booed.

When the president was announced on the public address system after the third inning as part of a tribute to veterans, the crowd roared into sustained booing — hitting almost 100 decibels. Chants of “Lock him up” and “Impeach Trump” then broke out at Nationals Park, where a sellout crowd was watching the game between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros. 

For many of the folks on my Twitter feed, this was not just a feel-good moment (though it was). It was also highly symbolic -- proof that the President is weak, that he has lost the support of the people, and that maybe his grip on the GOP in the Senate might weaken just enough to make impeachment actually viable.

I remain skeptical. Partially, that's because I don't think congressional Republicans are responsive to anything remotely resembling "the popular will" at this point. But partially, it's because I know the demographics of the areas surrounding Washington DC. Below are the 2016 electoral margins of DC and surrounding counties (all went for Hillary Clinton):

Washington (DC): 91/4
Montgomery County (MD): 75/19
Prince George's County (MD): 88/8
Fairfax County (VA): 64/29
Arlington County (VA): 76/17
Alexandria City (VA): 76/18

This is an area of the country where (to its credit!) Trump has always been despised. And if anything relatively wealthy suburban professional counties have gotten even more sour on Trump since 2016, and I'd suspect relatively wealthy suburban professional counties surrounding DC to be "even more so" on that front. So it maybe doesn't tell us that much about the views of America as a whole if a stadium full of fans from places like DC, Montgomery County, and Fairfax loudly booed Donald Trump.

But if one is looking for a silver lining, here it is: it might not have to.

The appearance of widespread revulsion at Donald Trump doesn't match a reality where Americans, as a whole, are very different from DC metro residents, specifically.

But it is also the case that, as a matter of psychology, the appearance of widespread revulsion at Donald Trump can help move the needle on the reality, even in circumstances where that appearance is in many ways an artifact of local demographics.

Most people don't know the particular political orientation of the metro DC area. Most people just see a crowd full of regular Joes and Josettes who roundly despite the President, and take that as a data point that the President is despised by many, many regular folks. And we know in politics that people often follow herds -- the political positions they take are constrained by the set of political positions they know to be acceptable. Trump appearing weak can easily cascade into Trump being weak. And given that Trump really is weak -- perhaps not as overwhelmingly disliked as he would be at National Park, but certainly sporting consistently mediocre poll ratings -- a high-profile, high-salience event where Americans seemed to unite around thinking Trump is awful may well actually do real political work. Even if the appearance mostly is artificial.

First on the Agenda: Statehood for the Colonies

Sometimes, the moral thing to do conflicts with the expedient thing to do. That's a hard position to be in.

Sometimes, though, the moral thing to do is also the expedient thing to do. That's a really easy thing to do.

Statehood for American colonies -- that is, all the places under permanent American jurisdiction that lack full voting rights in Congress (most people think of DC and Puerto Rico, but I'm a hardliner: statehood for Guam!) -- is the latter case. It is clearly and incontestably a moral obligation -- a democracy cannot permanently deprive persons under its dominion of representation -- and it is also likely to result in a bunch more Democrats, particularly in a Senate that is right now geographically-skewed in favor of a population minority. Indeed, Mitch McConnell was "admirably" forthright in admitting that this was pretty much the only reason Republicans oppose statehood -- it'd result in new Democratic Senators.

Of course, that's actually an exaggeration -- Puerto Rico's current non-voting member of Congress is a Republican. So it's entirely plausible that the GOP could compete in Puerto Rico, if they cared to try.

But even if they couldn't -- and there's something embarrassing about the speed at which Republicans race to concede that they think there's no chance they could ever appeal to a non-White voter -- it wouldn't change anything. Democrats struggle to get elected in Wyoming, which is unfortunate, but I admit it never occurred to me that as a consequence we should try to deprive Wyoming of electoral representation. And I'm so old, I remember when the Senate was defended based on the need for "geographic diversity" and "protecting the minority" -- rationales which if anything underscore the necessity of giving Puerto Rico (and Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa....) representation in that august body.

End of the Year Roundup

I know what you're thinking: It's not the "end of the year". The end of the year was almost a week ago!

But Blogger thinks you're wrong. If you look at the right-hand column of archived posts, it counts anything written from the week of December 30 through January 6 as being written in 2018.

And there's more: In both 2016 and 2017, I apparently wrote exactly 229 post. This post? This one right here? This should be post number ... 230.

That's right: an overtime victory for 2018's productivity.

* * *

Israel has officially announced it will seek $250 billion dollars in compensation from other Middle Eastern countries who expelled their Jewish populations in the wake of Israel's independence.

Good to see D.C. statehood get more traction in the House.

Five Jewish teenagers were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the stone-throwing death of a Palestinian woman. Cases of Jewish terrorism targeting Palestinians tripled in 2018.

This feels like something the Joker would do: colorful balloons carry explosives sent from Gaza into Israel (the bomb was safely defused with no injuries).

Meanwhile, here in Berkeley, a man has been arrested after bringing a fake bomb covered with antisemitic writing into our campus police department.

Tyler Cowen: speech regulation policies on private media platforms (like Facebook or Twitter) can be scalable, efficient, and consistent -- pick two. Put differently: a small website can efficiently manage a consistent moderation policy. But a large website (like Twitter) must either invest tremendous sums into moderation (far more than is cost-effective) or settle for a patchwork and inconsistently applied system that's largely ineffective and makes everyone angry.

UPDATE: Oh dang -- joke's on me! Apparently, today counts as the first day of 2019. Which means that 2018 -- like 2017 and 2016 -- will go down as having exactly 229 posts written.

That's kind of cool in its own right. I guess.

A D.C. Statehood Dilemma (and a Solution)

D.C. should be a state. I find that indisputable, on the same basis by which I find intolerable the existence of any territory permanently governed by the US which nonetheless lacks full voting rights in the US. That covers D.C. as well as Puerto Rico, and also the U.S. Virgin Islands and several of our Pacific island territories. Each should be, or be part of, a state.

But D.C. it seems has a particular problem associated with its statehood, centering around two constitutional clauses: Article I, Section 8, clause 17 and the Twenty-Third Amendment.

The first is the one that enabled the establishment of D.C. in the first place: it gives Congress the power to "exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States."

The second gives that territory  -- "[t]he District constituting the seat of Government of the United States" -- electoral votes "equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State", provided that it cannot be more than the least populous state (which is to say, it can't be more than Wyoming's three). That last proviso has been moot since the Amendment's adoption, since D.C. would only be entitled to three electoral votes anyway.

These two clauses together pose a problem.

Because Article I, Section 8, clause 17 gives Congress superior power to exercise legislation over the "District" which is the "Seat of Government", one could not form a state -- or at least, a state whose statehood is equal to that of California or Arizona -- in that "District". An important part of making D.C. a state is precisely that it gets the same authority to govern its own affairs just like any other state (no more Mayor Franks!). And of course, if the state of D.C. does grow populous enough, then it should be able to gain its rightful proportion of electoral votes.

So D.C., the state, has to be a separate entity from the constitutionally-described "Seat of Government" "District". On its own, that's easily surmountable: Congress shrinks this "District" (whose area only has a maximum, not a minimum) to the barest possible limits -- probably the White House, Capitol, Supreme Court, and National Mall -- and then grants statehood to the remainder (another possibility is to retrocede the territory back to Maryland -- but the below problem still applies)

But the problem is that in that world, the 23rd Amendment remains in play, and that rump "District" -- which (hopefully) has no people in it -- still is entitled to the amount of electoral votes it would be entitled to were it a state.

How many electoral votes is that, and how do they get appointed? Well, that depends on how many "Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State". One answer is zero: since nobody lives there, it would get no congressional representation at all. But that doesn't actually track the constitutional text: Article I, Section 3, clause 1 gives each state two Senators, period, without respect to population. And while Article I, Section 2, clause 3 does apportion congressional representatives be population, it also guarantees that every "state" shall receive at least one representative.

So now we have a problem: even after D.C. statehood, there still will likely be a rump "Seat of Government" that has no people but three electoral votes. What to do? I see two possible solutions:

1. Have no "Seat of Government". The Constitution permits the establishment of this Seat of Government, but it doesn't require it. Moreover, the same provision which permits Congress to establish a seat of government also allows it to exercise authority over places "purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings." So Congress could "purchase" the White House from D.C. for a nominal fee, at which point it is a federal building (like a fort) but still in the state of D.C. (rather than the Seat of Government).
2. Allocate the "Seat of Government's" electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The Twenty-Third Amendment guarantees the Seat of Government three electoral votes, but it also specifies that these electoral votes shall be appointed "in such manner as the Congress may direct". So Congress could "direct" that they appointed really any way it likes, but the most natural choice is to whichever candidate receives the most votes nationwide. This would have the additional salutary effect of -- in a very slight way -- giving meaning to the national majority in Presidential elections, which (as 2000 and 2016 have painfully shown) currently has no weight whatsoever.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Part XLIV/Rate That Apology, Part 8: DC Weather Edition

It's another two-fer!

Yesterday, two separate people texted me asking if I'd see the D.C. Councilman, Trayon White Sr., who blamed the Rothschild's for manipulating the weather in Washington and causing recent snowstorms. And I'm like -- dammit, I just wanted to enjoy my weekend. But alas:

“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he says. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.” 

Okay, first of all, as a long-time resident of the DC metro area, I can attest that I don't care one bit about snowfall -- the weather pattern that's worth developing a conspiracy over is our 95 degree/9000% humidity summers. That's hell on earth. Second, I don't think we've had a weather-related entry in this series since Jews created the tsunami that hit the Fukushima reactor in Japan, so way to give us a throw-back!

Anyway, because I'm old and slow and can't respond to things how I used to, I wasn't able to blog on this until after Councilman White issued his apology.



I actually really like this one. Let me explain why.

The first reason I like it is based on something perhaps not evident in the four corners of the apology itself, but which I've confirmed from other sources: White took it upon himself to reach out to Jews United for Justice (a DC-area Jewish group) to ask them what he had done wrong and how he should make amends. Now, just to be clear, this is not an "I-have-Jewish-friends" defense (that's bad). It wasn't even "after Jews reached out to me, I realized I was wrong" (better). It's "after realizing I hurt them, I took it upon myself to take the initiative and reach out to Jews to figure out what I should do better" (best).

But the bigger reason I like it is that it commits to the idea that White needs to learn. Yes, we can roll our eyes at the prospect that someone is utterly unaware of how "Rothschild" stands in for antisemitic conspiracies. But even if they somehow managed to be ignorant on the subject, that's no excuse unless it's coupled with a recognition that one clearly needs to learn more if one is to be a good ally to Jews. And that's what this apology does quite well. It speaks of how JUFJ is "helping me to understand," and that he is "committed to figuring out ways [to] continue to be allies with them." It doesn't claim that he's already exemplary on the subject, and that the video was some inexplicable blurt that shouldn't sully an otherwise perfect record. The contrast to, say, the Harvard Law Student who gave a decent apology for allegedly inadvertent antisemitism but didn't indicate that he thought he had more to learn on the subject is striking, and cuts strongly in White's favor.

One thing that it is often hard to remember for for those of us committed to fighting antisemitism is that our end-goal isn't to fight antisemitism, it's to beat it. And one corollary of that goal, then, is that any campaign against antisemitism worth its salt has to account for -- indeed, actively desire -- the possibility that some people who said or believe genuinely antisemitic things will, at some later date, change their minds. Put another way, we have to have strategies through which, when encountering antisemitism, we actually change minds. Naz Shah is a great example of how much power can emerge when this works.

I'm not saying that Councilor White has earned his stripes yet. That remains to be seen based on what he does going forward; one apology (even a genuine one) issued in the moment will not and should not suffice.

But it's a start. And as a start, it's a pretty good.

Grade: 9/10.

Because We Can

I'm a big proponent of D.C. statehood, in part because I'm a local but mostly as part of a larger commitment to ensuring that all American citizens on American territory have the same democratic and self-governance rights as any one else. Washington's unique position, unfortunately, makes it a particularly tempting target for meddling congresscritters who have objections to how the city's denizens want to run their own affairs. The latest skirmish in this never-ending debate is over marijuana, where a contingent of Republicans wants to block a recent decriminalization law passed in the District:

The situation leaves Republicans in an awkward position — not only contradicting their long-standing philosophical views that the federal government shouldn't meddle in local affairs....

Hey, hey, Politico. This is a serious issue. No need for mockery.

That being said, it is incredible that these GOPers feel no need to even play lip-service to the ideal. Here's Maryland Rep. Andy Harris:

“That’s the way the Constitution was written,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said in an interview Wednesday. “If they don’t like that oversight, move outside of the federal district to one of the 50 states that is not covered by the jurisdiction of Congress as a whole.”

Haha! Being able to control local politics is a privilege for other people. Way to show 'em, Andy! Who else is adopting the "because we can!" line?

“They may have a say, but not the complete say,” argued Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, referring to voters in D.C.
Conservative Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, said this when asked about reining in D.C. pot laws: “It’s a constitutional responsibility.”

“Washington, D.C. has a lot to offer,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “Recreational marijuana shouldn't be one of them.”

“Congress oversees the D.C. spending, and that was an item that we felt was appropriate,” said Rogers, whose Eastern Kentucky district has had its own problems with prescription drug abuse over the years.

Asked about interfering on a matter enacted by a huge majority of voters, Rogers said: “I’ll refer to my previous answer.”

To be sure, other congressional Republicans (e.g., Rand Paul, Dana Rohrabacher) The thing about principles is that they aren't worth much if you only adhere to them when you have to. If you actually believe in them, then you follow them even when given the option not. For example, I don't refrain from murdering folks because there are laws forbidding it -- I actually genuinely believe in the principle that murder is wrong. As for Andy Harris, well, I wouldn't plan a trip to Yellowstone with him is all I'm saying.

UPDATE: DC residents have begun flooding Rep. Harris' phones. And while some of them are complaining about the marijuana business, others have just accepted Rep. Harris' stewardship and want him to fix other things. You know, trash, parking tickets -- the sort of local issues that apparently can't be left to folks not living in one of the 50 states. I have to say, this is by far my favorite mode of DC political protest.

March on Washington

Governor O'Malley announces that Maryland will take back what's rightfully ours. Next stop, Delaware.

Followers

One of the nice things about being a politics junkie in DC is that everyone else is a politics junkie too. Even the muggers:

An attempted mugging on Capitol Hill was thwarted Monday night by a quick-thinking victim — one who apparently keeps an eye on national security news.

The victim was walking home to her Capitol Hill townhouse when she was violently confronted by a man in the dark, grassy area between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Heritage Foundation.

The assailant grabbed the victim's arm and demanded her wallet and phone. "I said the first thing I could think of," the victim, who asked to remain nameless, told the Washington Examiner.

The victim, who weighs a petite 95 pounds, explained to the assailant she was an intern with the National Security Agency. As an intern, she said, she had no cash to fork over (she is actually a staffer at a D.C. nonprofit, and in fact did have cash on her).

[...]

The victim elaborated further, warning the would-be mugger that the phone she held in her hand — complete with a pink-and-blue Lilly Pulitzer case — would be tracked by the NSA if she were to turn it over.

"I told him that the NSA could track the phone within minutes, and it could cause possible problems for him," the victim recounted.

The NSA has been in the spotlight this year due to controversial and far-reaching intelligence-gathering programs it had kept hidden from public knowledge.

Perhaps wary of just how far the NSA would go to keep its assets safe, the assailant just "looked at me and ran away," the victim said.

Well played. And good on the criminal too, for staying abreast of the news.

Roadspierre

Well this will certainly brighten the grim DC mood:

On October 11th, a group of right-wing truckers is planning to drive to DC to shut down the major commuter highway that circles the city. They’ll continue to block traffic, they say, until they see the arrest of elected officials who have “violated their oath of office.”

Organizers of the event, which is titled “Truckers Ride for the Constitution,” say they are fed up with a variety of headaches caused by the government: Fuel efficiency standards enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, Obamacare, state and local laws over idling their trucks, and “insurance companies purportedly requiring technological updates,” according to US News and World Report.

They say that to demonstrate against violations of the constitution, they plan to circle interstate 495 — known widely as the beltway — and not allow through any traffic. If police try to stop them, they’ll park their trucks right on the highway.

Originally, reports from US News and World Report indicated the truckers were looking to impeach President Obama. But Earl Conlon, an organizer of the event, told US News, “We’re not asking for impeachment, we’re asking for the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office.” These include House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), both for purportedly arming al Qaeda linked Syrian rebels.

Oh joy. But wait! I take the Communist Socialist Metro for my commute! Joke's on them!

Greetings from (near) the District!

Happy Labor Day! We're in DC (well, technically Bethesda), staying at my parents house for the next few days as the moving truck catches up. But soon we'll be moving into our DC (well, technically Arlington) apartment. This, of course, is the first time I've really "lived" in the DC area (not counting some stints of summer employment) since I left for college. I'm very excited.