Art Maven Roundup

All of the sudden, I've been on an art kick. The below image is a silkscreen I recently purchased from DC-based artist Halim Flowers. Flowers was convicted of felony murder as a juvenile and sentenced to two life terms. He was released after serving 22 years following statutory reforms aimed a juvenile offenders who had received life sentences, and now is showing in galleries around the world.

Pictured: "Audacity to Love (IP) (Blue)" by Halim Flowers. The colors are meant to be reminiscent of the Israeli and Palestinian flags (blue and white, and red, white, and green).

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Trump continues to show his contempt for American Jews, saying any Jew who doesn't support him "hates their religion" (and Israel).

An in-depth story about a White supremacist who was elected to city council in Enid, Oklahoma, and the recall campaign to try and remove him.

Given the well-covered softness in Biden's support in the Muslim community, it seems suicidal to me for Democrats to give into the repulsive Islamophobic attacks holding up the confirmation of Third Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Adeel Mangi (the story indicates that Biden has remained rock-solid in backing his confirmation, but there may be some misgivings in the Senate Democratic caucus).

Writing on the sudden "heterodox" support for revisionist accounts justifying George Floyd's murder, Radley Balko flags what has been obvious for a long time: as much as this cadre likes to bleat about respecting truth, free-thinking, and rationality, it is as if not more beholden to ideologically-convenient narratives at the expense of reality. Pretty much everyone on the internet has been sharing this with their own story of the alt-center blowing past truth in order to push conservative grievance politics; mine was watching them stand in unblinking support of a hit piece on California's Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum even after it was revealed the author completely fabricated the inclusion of a seemingly-damning antisemitic quote.

Interesting retrospective on the Israeli Black Panthers in JTA.

The Supreme Court's frosty reception to the contention that government officials privately lobbying social media companies to take down misinformation is a First Amendment violation is the latest suggestion that the Court is finally losing patience with the regular drumbeat of insane legal theories emanating out of hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit.

Cannibalistic Precedent-Eating Leopards

There's a darkly amusing pattern that emerges during periods of Republican governance. As a general rule, Republicans support deregulating any arena to enable maximum exploitation and abuse of vulnerable people. In particular cases, though, individual Republicans might have personal reasons for opposing such exploitation and abuse. They have a niece who is diabetic, so they support limiting the price of insulin, or they have a sibling who is disabled, so they support expanding anti-discrimination protections for the disabled, or they have a parent with cancer, so they support enhanced government funding for cancer research, or they have a friend who died of gun violence, so they support reasonable gun control regulations.

The problem, though, is that while each Republicans has their personal exception, they don't have the same exceptions. So for each exception, the Republican is left alone with only Democrats backing his initiative, and is shocked and dismayed that his colleagues could be so heartless as to not even support insulin price limits/disability protections/cancer research/gun control. They then dutifully return back to the Republican mass and vote against their colleagues' exceptions, in accordance with the general rule, and so none of the exceptions ever pass. Rinse, wash, repeat forever.

One suspects we're about to see a similar dynamic on the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative supermajority that is out to draw blood. For the most part, the six right-wing votes are aligned -- like all Republicans, they are eager to jump on any opportunity to hurt the vulnerable and historically marginalized. But on individual issues, there may be an exception for a particular Justice. And that Justice will make a plea for his or her colleagues to slow down, to respect precedent, to here make an exception to the general principle of "the Constitution means what the founding fathers Texas GOP platform committee says it means". And the colleagues will say "LOL no, get bent," and the typical 6-3 decision will just be a 5-4 decision instead.

Like with congressional Republicans, the "exceptional" justice will rotate depending on the issue. On abortion recently, it was Chief Justice Roberts, whose opinions in Dobbs and Jackson were summarily ignored by his colleagues. Today, it was Justice Gorsuch on Indian law, as the Supreme Court in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, over a passionate Gorsuch dissent, radically undermined tribal sovereignty and cut off a signature Gorsuch opinion from just a few years back (McGirt v. Oklahoma) at the knees.

McGirt was a 5-4 opinion which held that much of Oklahoma remained tribal land, and that therefore under longstanding Court precedent the state of Oklahoma lacks criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed by Indians in those areas. Many of us, myself included, wondered whether McGirt would survive the new regime on the Court (nobody really knew Barrett's position on Indian Law issues). But boy were we thinking too small. The Court did not overrule McGirt, it overruled Worcester v. Georgia, the famous case that respected Cherokee tribal autonomy against attempts by Georgia (with a healthy assist from Andrew Jackson) to obliterate the tribe. Nixing Worcester was not to my knowledge on anyone's radar screen. But the YOLO Court must have asked itself why it should settle for overruling a case from 2020 when you can take down a seminal Indian Law case from 1830 and neuter the 2020 one in the process? Now states presumptively have criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed by Indians on tribal land, undoing nearly two centuries of law and precedent that respected tribal sovereignty in this area.

Justice Gorsuch's dissent is quite strong -- and, in fairness, this is an area where he's been consistently excellent on. But I can't help but feel like it is one big cry about precedent-eating leopards eating his precedent, when he himself is part of the same pack of precedent-eating leopards. Yes, they're cannibalistic precedent-eating leopards and they're coming for you too. You'll do the same to one of them shortly. What sympathy do you expect here?

This teeny, tiny bit of schadenfreude is the only bright spot in yet another grim day from the Supreme Court, which just is bestowing horror after horror upon the American people.

Sunday Roundup: Jan. 25, 2015

Just because I'm a big Jewish media star doesn't mean that I don't have time for the little people my loyal readers. Here are some stories I've found interesting that have crossed my browser.

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A powerful story about a lesbian couple in Oklahoma planning their (suddenly legalized) wedding.

I honestly have no idea how someone who presumably identifies as a progressive can write this without it being immediately, blaring, obvious that it is identical to conservative mockery/dismissal of racism claims. Someone get the author a copy of Darren Lenard Hutchinson's Racial Exhaustion, stat.

Interesting piece (to me, at least!) by David Roberts on the proposed Exelon/Pepco merger.

An Israeli Druze student was beaten by a Jewish mob who overheard him speaking Arabic. The student, who recently finished his service in the IDF, had been posted at the Presidential Residence and received a call of support from Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

As much as "WhatAboutTheMenz" annoys me, no Ruby Tuesday's, you can't just restrict posted bartender positions to women.

Westboro Protests Jews

The Westboro Baptist Church is at it again, this time protesting in front of a University of Oklahoma Jewish organization. The message is that Jews are responsible for killing Christ (like the blood libel, an oldie but goodie). Like when the WBC came to Chicago, the targeted groups asked that a counter-protest not be waged, in order to deprive the WBC of publicity.

Nonetheless, some folks couldn't help themselves and came out anyway. And for whatever reason, I, softie that I am, was touched by this woman:

“I know we were asked to not come out today, but I wanted them to see that we really do care about our Jewish community,” said Kara Joy McKee, OU alumnus. “We love our Jews. We love our everybodys.”

It really did make me feel warm inside. Thanks, Kara.

Y'all Shall Not Kill

I'm converting to Oklahomaism!

Via Steve Benen's TWIG.

Boren Won't Endorse Obama

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), one of the more conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, has announced he will not be endorsing Barack Obama for President, claiming that he needs to represent the views of his conservative Oklahoma district. In doing so, he repeated the silliness that Obama is "the most liberal senator" -- then immediately waffled on his own position by saying he'd vote for Obama at the convention because "this is an important time for our country."

Look, I can understand certain Congressfolk withholding their endorsement due to political pressures (though for advice on how to do without feeding GOP talking points, see how Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL) did it in the same article). But I frankly think Rep. Boren is miscalculating his own district. Obama has over-performed in plains states. It'd be one thing if this was in Appalachia, which has shown itself to be uniquely hostile to the Illinois Senator. But there is little indication that middle America will be particularly ill-disposed to Obama this year. If anything, Obama is supposed to help us down-ticket in that region.

Proud Labels

I've noted that Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe (R) is crazy before, and so this really shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, but still--creepy.:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) got the crowd cheering early in the day. "I have been called - my kids are all aware of this - dumb, crazy man, science abuser, Holocaust denier, villain of the month, hate-filled, warmonger, Neanderthal, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun," he announced. "And I can just tell you that I wear some of those titles proudly."

Umm...sure. Which titles? Let's test them out:

James Inhofe: Dumb.

James Inhofe: Crazy man.

James Inhofe: Science abuser.

James Inhofe: Holocaust denier.

James Inhofe: Villain of the month.

James Inhofe: Hate-filled.

James Inhofe: Warmonger.

James Inhofe: Neanderthal.

James Inhofe: Genghis Khan.

James Inhofe: Attila the Hun.

You know what? Let him pick three out of that list, and "wear them with pride" if he'd like. I think "crazy man," "science abuser," and "hate-filled" are the top candidates.

Via Steve Benen