Rampant nescience .

 Anyone in the esteemed press briefings ask Caroline about this discrepancy.

The GOP States With Guards Deployed to D.C. Have Urban Murder Rates Way Higher Than D.C.’s

Harold Meyerson — Read time: 3 minutes

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Today on TAP: New Orleans? Memphis? Baton Rouge? Jackson, Mississippi? Why aren’t their states’ Guards on patrol there?

by Harold Meyerson

August 19, 2025

3:00 PM

Under Abraham Lincoln, the armies of the Confederacy, despite strenuous efforts, never managed to take Washington, D.C. Donald Trump, by contrast, has invited in the neo-Confederates twice: once on January 6th, 2021, when a racist rabble carrying Confederate flags seized the Capitol, and now, over the past week, when National Guards chiefly from the Deep South are arriving to occupy D.C.

As the governors of South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee have now all proclaimed, crime is out of control in the nation’s capital—so sayeth Trump and hence it must be true—so they’re sending in their states’ troopers.

The irony here is that crime rates in the cities of their own states are markedly higher than they are in D.C. The murder rate in Washington, D.C., last year was 17 for every 100,000 residents.

The actual numbers, to state this gently, aren’t reflected in these governors’ pronunciamentos.

More from Harold Meyerson

In the past 24 hours, Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said he’d send 200 Mississippi Guards to D.C. because “Americans deserve a safe capital city that we can all be proud of.”

In 2024, Mississippi’s own state capital, Jackson, had the highest murder rate of any American city: 77 per 100,000, which was more than four times that in Washington, D.C.

Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said he’d send the state’s National Guard to D.C., proclaiming, “I am proud to support this mission to return safety and sanity to Washington.”

In 2024, Louisiana’s own state capital, Baton Rouge (whose U.S. House member is Speaker Mike Johnson), had a murder rate of 36 per 100,000, twice that of Washington, D.C. New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000.

Earlier today, Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee ordered the deployment of his state’s National Guard to D.C.

In 2024, Memphis had a murder rate of 48 per 100,000 residents, nearly three times the murder rate in D.C.

Last Friday, South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster ordered the deployment of 200 of his state’s National Guard to D.C.

In 2024, North Charleston had a murder rate of 26 per 100,000 residents, roughly 150 percent that of D.C.

Two Republican-controlled states outside the historic Confederacy have also ordered the deployment of their National Guards to D.C.: Ohio and West Virginia. Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine termed his decision to send his state’s Guard to D.C. “the right thing to do.”

In 2024, Cleveland had a murder rate of 29 per 100,000, well above D.C.’s rate of 17 per 100,000.

The question all these deployments raise, then, is why aren’t these states’ Guards patrolling these states’ own cities, where murder rates greatly exceed that in D.C.?

Herewith, a modest suggestion. Since we’re in the era of states deploying their Guards outside their borders, why don’t the Democratic governors of states with lower murder rates than those that have sent their Guards to D.C. thoughtfully offer their own Guards to patrol the above-listed cities’ streets?

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who presides over a state whose murder rate has hovered around 2 per 100,000 in recent years, might generously offer her state’s Guard to help out the police in Mississippi. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who presides over a state where the murder rate has been roughly 4 per 100,000 residents in recent years, might graciously make that offer to Louisiana. Govs. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Gretchen Whitmer, J.B. Pritzker, Tony Evers—all Democratic governors whose states’ murder rates are well below those of the states with Guards now deployed to D.C.—might make similar offers.

If the Republican governors who get such offers accept them, that might just indicate they have at least a scintilla of interest in crime suppression, inasmuch as they’ve termed their own cross-border deployments of the past week a means to suppress crime. If they don’t, well—draw your own conclusions.

From The American Prospect

 https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-08-19-gop-states-guards-deployed-dc-higher-urban-murder-rates/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=5%20stories%20to%20read%20this%20weekend&utm_campaign=Weekend%20Reads%2008-23-2025

Cnag Windows 11

 Here's my experience. Bought a nice almost new laptop with Windows 11 installed and a user created ("owner"). Went to connect it to my MS account but it would not allow the use of my password and required a QR code to be scanned to link to my phone to get a passkey. Did that, but it failed because it said my phone did not have a passkey. Only other alternative was fingerprint but I had not used that anywhere else so nothing to compare it to. Only options: Face, Fingerprint, PIN, Security key. Tried several ways, none worked so I went to the MS sign-in help page. Entered my email address but the response was my account had been blocked because too many sign-in attempts. Cnag (Irish for the F word) this. I'm a confirmed Linux guy and but thought it would be nice to have a Windows 11 machine around to help people. I'll leave it with "Owner" as the admin and load a Distro on as dual boot for real work. I just finished setting my cousins up with Linux Mint as their older machines couldn't install 11 and they are perfectly happy. I help all sorts of older folks around here (I'm 78) in our retirement community but there is no way I can recommend Windows 11 for them. Probably most should get a Chromebook anyway or I'll install Zorin or Mint.

Review: Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

 This is a dispiriting book. We can be so easily deceived by our leaders, not to mention the media, who themselves may have been deceived and misled.  To quote Karl Kraus: "Politicians lie to the press and then believe what they read.” *** 

  I remember my good friend, political scientist and historian, Andy, who insisted in 2020 that Biden would be a one-term president, a place-holder, if you will.  I was a supporter of Andrew Yang, who, I thought, had the only good handle on the real problems of the economy (technologies assumption of traditional manufacturing jobs – something Trump doesn’t get either) and I worried that Biden wouldn’t have a handle on them and that we needed an eight-year candidate, not an automatic lame-duck one.  Turns out  

 Jake Tapper’s book reveals things were far worse than I thought and he comes right out and blames Biden’s entourage for not revealing how bad things were until the last minute.  This prevented a healthy debate among possible candidates at least two years before the election and it would have made Trump out to be the mentally deficient one.  That horrible debate never would have happened. 

 Hah! But perhaps the real scandal is not that the family and staff hid all this deterioration from the public, but that the media was either completely incompetent or so liberal they didn't want the public to know fearing it might empower the MAGA camp. Then, of course, what they did report was labeled as "fake news” by the Biden White House.  For example:  

 The numbers were undeniable. From January 1, 2023, to April 27, Biden had only four public events before 10:00 a.m., twelve full weekends with no public events, and only twelve public events after 6:00 p.m., most of which were off camera. 

“The White House is basically hiding Biden as he auditions for another term,” Alex wrote. 

The White House denied the story. Jen O’Malley Dillon gave a one-word statement: “False.” 

The White House press team publicly labeled Alex a peddler of fake news. 

That Biden and his team knew his physical or cognitive health would be a limiting factor, not signaling that earlier effectively blocked a robust primary process. That wasn’t just a political failure; it’s a democratic one. 

 

 It was also a huge media failure as Eugene Volokh pointed out in an essay:  

 

[Journalists]  job was to dig and find out—before things became evident, not after (and indeed some indications of Biden’s decline were indeed evident for some time before the debate). Alex Thompson, the coauthor of Original Sin, elaborated on this problem: 

“I had one conversation with someone, this was after the election, while we were reporting this book, and this person said, ‘Listen, yes, we deserve blame for X, Y, Z. We were hiding him. We were.’ But this person also sort of got in my face, and they said, ‘Listen, the media deserves some blame, too.’ Like we were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin and get on,” he said. 

Thompson admitted there was truth to what the person was saying about the media and its lack of skepticism about Biden’s administration. 

“They’re just like, ‘You guys should not have believed us so easily.’ And I thought that was like a really interesting, but I also think that’s true,” he said. “I think the media, . . .  in a lot of ways, was not skeptical enough and did not remember the less[on] that, they do it to different degrees, but every White House lies.” * 

 

 But Democrats also had to share much of the blame. Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson had both complained about being shut out of the primary process by the DNC.  Dean Phillips, who was concerned about Biden’s mental deterioration and was trying to get midwestern governors to challenge Biden, decided to run himself and soon discovered numerous roadblocks created by the Democratic leadership. 

 This comment by an insider sums up my feelings: “A year later, that official told us, “I blame his inner circle, and I blame him. What utter and total hubris not to step aside and be a one-term president, as he said he would, and have an open primary when there was time to let the process play out. Even though he did so many good things for this country, I can never forgive him.””  

 According to Tapper and Thompson, in a Commonwealth Club show,** Biden never said that. It was something put out by his aides even as they knew he would be running again. During the later stages of the 2020 Democratic primary (late 2019), reports emerged that Biden told aides he might serve only one term — as a “bridge” president — and wouldn’t seek reelection in 2024. (nypost.com+politico.com) Shortly after these reports surfaced, Biden unequivocally denied that he was planning to serve just one term. Asked by reporters, he said: “No, I never have. I don’t have any plans for one term.” A campaign aide also called the one-term talk “just not true”. The whole point of the book and this interview is that we were lied to and he was hidden.  Turns out whatever bridge anyone was talking about was really a cliff. 

 *[https://balkin.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-crisis-of-media-environment.html] 

 **Interesting Commonwealth Club interview with Thompson and Tapper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuHihDaZVJY  

 ***The original quote  is „Wie kommt das überhaupt, dass Kriege entstehen? Die Diplomaten belügen einander und glauben es, wenn sie es in der Zeitung lesen.“ Die Fackel, issue No. 406 (circa 1915.  World War 1 followed shortly thereafter. Kraus was particularly disturbed by how propaganda, media complicity, and political self-delusion could spiral into catastrophe — a theme chillingly relevant in many later conflicts. 

 

 

 

History is calming Series #2: The Pendulum Swings: The Militia Acts, the Coleman Doctrine, and the Limits of Judicial Power

 

The Pendulum Swings: The Militia Acts, the Coleman Doctrine, and the Limits of Judicial Power

In times of national unrest or political fracture, the United States has often looked to its founding laws—and to the courts—for clarity. But recent events suggest a shift in how these institutions interpret their own powers, responsibilities, and boundaries. At the heart of this shift lies a renewed reliance on two long-standing principles: the President’s authority to suppress insurrection under laws like the Militia Act of 1795 and the Insurrection Act of 1807, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to resolve so-called “political questions” under what has come to be known as the Coleman Doctrine. These principles, once tools of stability, are now being repurposed in a volatile political landscape. The pendulum of constitutional interpretation is swinging again—this time in favor of executive authority and judicial abstention.

The Militia Act of 1795, passed in the early republic, granted the President power to call out the militia to suppress insurrections or enforce federal law when states were unwilling or unable to act. It was a response to early fears of domestic rebellion, such as the Whiskey Rebellion, and was later expanded by the Insurrection Act of 1807, which remains on the books today. The language of these statutes—broad and contingent—has provided presidents with legal cover for military intervention in domestic affairs. What was once intended to quell armed uprisings has, in modern times, been cited to justify federal action against protesters or resistant state authorities.

This statutory authority is not merely historical. President Donald Trump and his advisers have invoked these precedents to justify or propose the deployment of federal forces—including the National Guard and potentially even the Marines—into American cities, especially during the protests and unrest of 2020. The logic echoes that of 1795: where states fail, the federal government must step in. But the scope and intent of such interventions today are far more ambiguous, raising profound questions about federalism, civil liberties, and executive overreach.

Compounding the concern is the Supreme Court’s increasing reluctance to intervene in these disputes. The Coleman Doctrine, named after the 1939 decision in Coleman v. Miller, holds that certain constitutional issues—especially those related to the amendment process—are “political questions” best left to Congress. But the roots of this doctrine lie deeper, in cases like Luther v. Borden (1849), where the Court refused to decide which of two competing Rhode Island governments was legitimate during the Dorr Rebellion. The reasoning? It was not the role of the judiciary to determine the structure or legitimacy of state governments; that task fell to Congress and the President.

This deference has become a powerful shield for the Court to avoid wading into politically explosive territory. When Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, the judiciary largely stood aside. When states pushed constitutional boundaries, as with controversial voting laws or challenges to the 2020 election, the Court frequently declined to intervene. Under the banner of judicial restraint, the Court has signaled that some of the most pressing constitutional crises of our time are not its concern.

The result is a troubling dynamic: an empowered executive branch, drawing authority from centuries-old statutes, and a retreating judiciary, invoking doctrines like Coleman to avoid settling fundamental disputes. This dynamic shifts the constitutional balance. The original intent of laws like the Militia Act and the Insurrection Act was to ensure order when all else failed. But without judicial oversight, they risk becoming tools for executive control rather than public stability.

What we are witnessing is not a legal crisis, but a redefining of constitutional roles. The definitions are shifting: from judicial activism to abstention, from congressional leadership to paralysis, from executive enforcement to executive command. As the pendulum swings, the legal justifications remain the same—but the political consequences are radically different.

In this moment, history is not just background—it is precedent. And those precedents are being reinterpreted to fit a very different kind of America. Whether this shift stabilizes or erodes our constitutional system will depend not just on the choices of our leaders, but on the willingness of all branches to remember the purpose—not just the power—of the laws they wield.

 

Resources: For more about Baker v Carr, the case that drove one justice mad and another to write a famous dissent related to the Coleman Doctrine see 

1. Anastasia Boden, The dissent that broke a justice, SCOTUSblog (Jul. 8, 2025, 12:34 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/07/the-dissent-that-broke-a-justice/  

2.  Howe, M. D., & Bickel, A. M. (1964). The least dangerous branch: the Supreme Court at the bar of politics. Harvard Law Review, 77(3), 579. https://doi.org/10.2307/1339044

3. https://static.c-span.org/landmarkCases/pdf/Baker_Frankfurter_Dissent.pdf

4. Bickel, A. M. (1986). The least dangerous branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics. Yale University Press.

 

 

Commentary: The Sovereign Citizen Denaturalization and the Origins of the American Republic by Patrick Weil

 

Trump's threats to denaturalize and deport Musk, his erstwhile buddy provideded me with an opportunity to do a little research.  Birthright citizenship provided in the 14th Amendment was, of course, to assure that slaves became instant citizens with all its rights and privileges. Those privileges were at risk in the early 20th century.It's an often overlooked but deeply important chapter in American history—one that complicates our modern sense of what it means to be a citizen of the United States.

Today, most Americans take their citizenship for granted. They feel secure in their rights: free speech, the ability to move or marry freely, and the right to challenge their government without fear. But as historian Patrick Weil explores in The Sovereign Citizen, this sense of security is relatively recent—and historically more fragile, especially for naturalized citizens.

A turning point came with the Naturalization Act of 1906. This federal law standardized the process of becoming a citizen and created the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization to oversee it. For the first time, applicants were required to speak English, and naturalization records had to be filed uniformly and in English. While the act was intended to bring order and consistency, it also gave the federal government powerful new tools. One of these was denaturalization—the ability to revoke citizenship if it was obtained fraudulently.

Over time, that authority expanded in troubling ways. Denaturalization wasn’t limited to fraud—it came to include political affiliations deemed “un-American.” The 1909 case of Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist, marked one of the earliest and most famous uses of this power for political reasons.

Throughout the early and mid-20th century, the U.S. government used denaturalization laws as a way to police ideology. But by the 1950s and '60s, the Supreme Court began to push back. In a series of landmark cases, justices debated whether the government had the constitutional right to strip people of their citizenship so easily. After decades of legal conflict, the Warren Court finally affirmed a profound principle: that sovereignty belongs to the citizen—not the state.

Citizenship in America has not always been a stable or guaranteed status. Weil's account sheds light on how legal frameworks, political fears, and shifting notions of national loyalty have shaped—and sometimes threatened—the very idea of what it means to be American.