tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68464042024-03-19T06:41:15.133-05:00Welch's Rarebits (cont.)The Musings of an Eclectic Reader.Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.comBlogger1419125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-18805875957697603482024-03-03T16:47:00.001-06:002024-03-03T16:47:03.822-06:00Recommendation: Catcher Was a Spy, movie with Paul Rudd<p> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Looking for a good movie? Watch The Catcher was a Spy with Paul Rudd. Based on the real exploits of Moe Berg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg] a pro baseball player who spoke 10 languages, and Werner Heisenberg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg] a German Jewish physicist who won the Nobel Prize for hie development of quantum mechanics and, of course, the uncertainty principle. American intelligence was worried Heisenberg was working on an atomic bomb. Berg was sent to Germany to assassinate Heisenberg. It's a fascinating story, well acted by Rudd who had to study 5 languages in order to be able to pull off the conversations he needed to have in those languages in the film. Astonishing performance. Interesting physics, too. Read the Wikipedia articles first to be astonished by these two (three.)</span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-82804217947785087642024-02-20T14:14:00.000-06:002024-02-20T14:14:59.101-06:00Review: Hatching Twitter_ A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton<p> <span> </span><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">I like this kind of book. </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">It’s</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> an irreverent view of the geeks and misfits who created Twitter, </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">perhaps the</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> most used but least necessary software on the planet. That is, until Elon got a hold of it.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"335559731":708}" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span></p><p><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span> </span>This book was first published in 2013 and so much has changed since then. Twitter (now X, in what </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">has to</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> be the silliest of </span><span class="NormalTextRun SpellingErrorV2Themed SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-image: var(--urlSpellingErrorV2, url('data:image/svg+xml;base64,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')); background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">rebrandings</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">) has become </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">perhaps less</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> relevant than it ever was</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">. </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Musk has seen the price fall through the floor and see value evaporate. </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"201341983":0,"335551550":1,"335551620":1,"335559685":0,"335559731":708,"335559737":0,"335559738":0,"335559739":0,"335559740":276}" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span></p><p><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span> </span>Fun book if you like business origin stories, but he really needs to do a follow-up, </span><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">perhaps annually</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">. Just started </span></span><a class="Hyperlink SCXW241811443 BCX0" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200795772-extremely-hardcore?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=e7H89i3ZsQ&rank=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web", Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" target="_blank"><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;" xml:lang="EN-US">Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter</span></a><span class="TextRun EmptyTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" xml:lang="EN-US"></span><span class="LineBreakBlob BlobObject DragDrop SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: WordVisiCarriageReturn_MSFontService, Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-wrap: nowrap !important; user-select: text;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" xml:lang="EN-US">by </span><a class="Hyperlink SCXW241811443 BCX0" href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/47076911.Zo_Schiffer?from_search=true&from_srp=true" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web", Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" target="_blank"><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;" xml:lang="EN-US">Zoë Schiffer,</span></a><span class="TextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> that, so far, </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">provides</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW241811443 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> an in-depth view of Musk’s demolition of Twitter.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW241811443 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"335551550":1,"335551620":1}" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; font-family: Arial, Arial_EmbeddedFont, Arial_MSFontService, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 47px; user-select: text; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-63644047390300258872024-01-14T17:42:00.000-06:002024-01-14T17:42:05.804-06:00Review: The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War by Frederick Downs<p> <span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">The very personal story of a young lieutenant’s gradual disenchantment with the war in Vietnam. What especially comes through is the distinctness, often becoming bitterness, the soldiers feel toward the ARVN and the total lack of empathy for the “dinks.” Everything seemed </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">pointless, </span><span class="NormalTextRun ContextualSpellingAndGrammarErrorV2Themed SCXW238839368 BCX2">They</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> would spend days and weeks taking a piece of ground, taking casualties, only to pack up and leave after a period. Just as a company would become familiar with territory and feel like they are making progress, they would be relieved by a brand-new company of recruits who will have to learn their lessons all over, taking casualties in the process. In the meantime, everyone knows the one constant will be the permanence of the Vietnamese people who will be there and return to an area as soon as the Americans leave.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> </span></p><div class="WACEditing EditMode EditingSurfaceBody FireFox WACViewPanel_DisableLegacyKeyCodeAndCharCode usehover" contenteditable="false" id="WACViewPanel_ClipboardElement" spellcheck="false" style="direction: ltr; overflow: hidden; visibility: visible;" tabindex="0"><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW238839368 BCX2" style="direction: ltr;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW238839368 BCX2" lang="EN-US" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 13.3333px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">Some relevant selections:</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> </span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW238839368 BCX2" style="direction: ltr;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW238839368 BCX2" lang="EN-US" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 16px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">However, we traveled in a vacuum of understanding among the villagers and farmers because neither we nor they understood the other’s language. Whenever we found a booby trap in or near a village full of people, we were powerless to question anyone or do anything about it. We </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">couldn’t</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> take the whole village prisoner, so we were forced to vent our anger by destroying the hootch closest to the booby trap.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"201341983":0,"335551550":0,"335551620":0,"335559738":240,"335559739":240,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> </span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW238839368 BCX2" style="direction: ltr;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW238839368 BCX2" lang="EN-US" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 16px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">The American strategy was to draw them into a fight so we could use our superior firepower to destroy them. To win a battle, we had to kill them. For them to win, all they had to do was survive.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"201341983":0,"335551550":0,"335551620":0,"335559738":240,"335559739":240,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> </span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW238839368 BCX2" style="direction: ltr;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW238839368 BCX2" lang="EN-US" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 13.3333px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">*The trouble with Nam was that we </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">didn’t</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> control anything that we were not standing on at the time. Anything that moved outside our perimeters at night was fair game because the night belonged to the enemy and both sides knew it. The reality of only owning the ground you stood on meant making sure you continued to stay on that ground.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> </span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW238839368 BCX2" style="direction: ltr;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW238839368 BCX2" lang="EN-US" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 16px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">Why did we want to kill dinks? </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">After all, we</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> had been mostly law-abiding citizens back in the world and we were taught that to take another man’s life was wrong. Somehow the perspective got twisted in a war. If the government told </span><span class="NormalTextRun ContextualSpellingAndGrammarErrorV2Themed SCXW238839368 BCX2">us</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> it was </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">alright</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> and, in fact, </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">a must</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> to kill the members of another government’s people, then we had the law on our side. It turned out that most of us liked to kill other men. Some of the guys would shoot at a dink much as they would at a target. Some of the men </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">didn’t</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> like to kill a dink up close. The closer the killing, the more personal it became...</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">I </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">didn’t</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> believe in torturing or in allowing a dink to die a lingering death. In the jungle we never took prisoners if we could help it. Every day we spent in the jungle eroded a little more of our humanity away. Prisoners could escape to become our enemy again.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"201341983":0,"335551550":0,"335551620":0,"335559738":240,"335559739":240,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> </span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW238839368 BCX2" style="direction: ltr;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW238839368 BCX2" lang="EN-US" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 16px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">I stood alone on the side of the road, smoking a cigarette and thinking, </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">perhaps for</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> the first time, that we could lose this war. Standing alone under the cloudy sky, I felt alien in this land. We had just finished an operation back in the jungle and these men now were going out to a different part of the jungle to play the same deadly game of hide and </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">seek</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> with the enemy, </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">probably with</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> the same inconclusive result.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"201341983":0,"335551550":0,"335551620":0,"335559738":240,"335559739":240,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> </span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW238839368 BCX2" style="direction: ltr;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW238839368 BCX2" lang="EN-US" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 16px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 24.15px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2">Perhaps the</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW238839368 BCX2"> most authentic Vietnam War memoir I have read.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW238839368 BCX2" data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"201341983":0,"335551550":0,"335551620":0,"335559738":240,"335559739":240,"335559740":276}" style="font-family: Arial, "Arial_EmbeddedFont", "Arial_MSFontService", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 24.15px;"> <br /></span></p></div></div>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-50168977766668200922023-12-11T07:11:00.000-06:002023-12-11T07:11:12.407-06:00To Tax or Not to Tax <p> I supported Andrew Yang for president in now what seems decades ago, because he was the only candidate who recognized a fundamental economic problem we face: a declining rate of workers coupled with an increasing number of aged. His solution, outlined in the NYT in an Op-Ed is worth rereading: </p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/andrew-yang-jobs.html" target="_blank"> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/andrew-yang-jobs.html</a></p><p>As with any important social issue, there are competing views and ways to interpret data. I have links to several of them below. Note that another component of Yang's plan was a guaranteed annual income, a solution first proposed by the darling of Libertarians, Friederich Hayek, who argued it would give workers more freedom as they would no longer be tied to job and location. </p><p><a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/hayek-republican-freedom-and-the-universal-basic-income/">https://www.niskanencenter.org/hayek-republican-freedom-and-the-universal-basic-income/</a></p><p>Some additional reading:</p><p><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tax-not-the-robots/">https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tax-not-the-robots/</a></p><p><a href="https://hai.stanford.edu/news/radical-proposal-universal-basic-income-offset-job-losses-due-automation">https://hai.stanford.edu/news/radical-proposal-universal-basic-income-offset-job-losses-due-automation</a></p><p><a href="https://www.futureofworkhub.info/comment/2019/12/4/robot-tax-the-pros-and-cons-of-taxing-robotic-technology-in-the-workplace">https://www.futureofworkhub.info/comment/2019/12/4/robot-tax-the-pros-and-cons-of-taxing-robotic-technology-in-the-workplace</a></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-11583550986538506292023-11-26T06:24:00.004-06:002023-11-26T06:24:50.012-06:00Review: In Pharoah's Army by Tobias Wolff<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In this extraordinary memoir of Wolff’s Vietnam experience, there is a haunting scene that reveals the major cultural differences between the American soldiers and Vietnamese culture. Wolff was a first lieutenant (he was a special forces member) assigned as an adviser to a South Vietnamese unit. He had spent a year at language school in the United States and was fluent in Vietnamese. He and some ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) soldiers are hanging out when two of the ARVN find a small puppy wandering around. Wolff watches, annoyed, as one of the soldiers swings the puppy by a leg around his head and then ties it to a tree. Wolff wanders over and asks what they intend to name the dog. The Vietnamese laugh bemusedly at this remark, but when Wolff persists, they laugh maliciously and reply, “dog stew.” The sergeant grabs the dog and, knowing it will drive Wolff nuts, swings the puppy slowly over the fire. Wolff tries to get them to stop, knowing they are playing with his mind, but the cultural reality and his whiteness prevent his interference. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <br />Racial issues pervade the story. Wolff was attacked by a group of Vietnamese outside a bar. He keeps yelling he must be the “wrong man,” but they continue until another American steps out of the bar and the attackers realize they have the wrong person. Wolff realizes that to them all white people look the same. When he tries to explain it to his black sergeant, the sergeant understands him immediately and simply says, “You nigger.” The analogy to his experience in the United States is unmistakable. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Wolff's analysis of the Tet offensive is striking. "As a military project Tet failed; as a lesson it succeeded. The VC came into My Tho and all the other towns knowing what would happen. They knew that once they were among the people we would abandon our pretense of distinguishing between them. We would kill them all to get at one. [Iraq come to mind, anyone?:] In this way they taught the people that we did not love them and would not protect them; that for all our talk of partnership and brotherhood we disliked and mistrusted them, and that we would kill every last one of them to save our own skins. . . .They taught that lesson to the people, and also to us. At least to me."</span></div>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-60131804521134197412023-11-26T05:43:00.000-06:002023-11-26T05:43:28.129-06:00Review: Killing Zone: How and Why Pilots Die by Paul A. Craig (2nd edition)<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">I am not a pilot, but I’m interested in aviation and especially in risk and how we measure and apply risk evaluations to normal activities. This </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">book was recommended as the best comprehensive examination of risk in general aviation flying. Flying, in general, has become safer, although as Craig points out, the common trope that the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport, is true </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><i>only</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> for commercial aviation; it is definitely </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><i>not</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> true for general aviation. An analysis of comparative data reveals that general aviation is far more dangerous than driving.</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Craig exams the problems with training, unintended consequences of otherwise valuable laws and</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> regulations (e.g., the 1500 hr. minimum to be hired with the regionals placed emphasis on quantity rather than quality and meant that pilots would “bore holes in the sky” rather than seek experience with unusual conditions.) Changes in business practices </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">can also have unintended effects. When it became possible to send digital copies of checks rather than the physical checks themselves, hundreds of pilot jobs were eliminated. Those jobs had provided important experience flying in adverse weather condition</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">s and circumstances that were now much less available as a training experience. Craig points out that military pilots were flying combat missions with less than 400 hours, but were very successful because of the type of scenario training they had received.</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">The revolution o</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">f “glass cockpits” that replaced the old mechanical instruments made flying safer, but counter-intuitively, also more dangerous as pilots needed to become information managers more than “stick and rudder” pilots. There was the danger of thinking you are s</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">afer because of all the safety equipment and information overload that impinged on making the right decision. Was a pilot more likely to take off with a lower ceiling knowing he had auto-pilot and instruments that would have navigate through the weather. A</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> very recent accident I learned about * involved a very experienced pilot (17,700 hours), in a very sophisticated airplane (pressurized Centurion) who mixed bad weather with night flying and poor cockpit management (fuel exhaustion) and got himself killed.</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Craig examines the major types of G</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">A accidents and analyzes them for lessons that can be learned from each. Ultimately, however, it will be the individual pilot’s decision-making skill, knowing when not to fly, and what circumstances to avoid, that will make more of a difference, I suspect.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> One of the biggest killers is “get-thereitis” and one NTSB investigator remarked that you should only fly if you have time to spare. Craig adds to that the admonition that in addition to their pilot’</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">s license</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> and logbook, pilots should be required to have an active account with a car rental company.</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">*</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/348006</span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-35187991893249101652023-11-14T09:36:00.001-06:002023-11-14T09:38:20.308-06:00Update: Court issues a "Code of Conduct."<p> </p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Update: Court issues a "Code of Conduct."</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/11/justices-issue-official-code-of-conduct/">https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/11/justices-issue-official-code-of-conduct/</a></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;">Too little, too late. Aside from the issue of no enforcement, the idea that SCOTUS is different from lower courts, hence recusal has a more significant impact, is precisely why justices need to refuse gratutities, free vacations, jet trips, etc. from anyone, regardless of whether they might have future business before the Court. Alito presents exactly the problem. The free, horribly expensive, trips he was given by someone whose hedge fund had business before the Court, should have forced recusal by Alito. Obviously if he did, it might disadvantage the gift-giver, but<i> that's precisely why no such trips should ever be accepted. </i>When you accept the position of Supreme Court Justice you give up some benefits like travel gifts. Tough. Not giving them up just means you are willing to be bought and paid for.</p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><br /></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;">See <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6846404/1045073406008253283">https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6846404/1045073406008253283</a></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-56562786950937464972023-11-14T09:06:00.000-06:002023-11-14T09:06:29.025-06:00Some Musing on Judicial Review<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Th ability of the Supreme Court to overturn the will of a democratic majority has always been challenged by those in power. Thomas Jefferson was </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">e</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">xtremely frustrated with a court that had been populated by the Federalists, and I’m sure judicial review gave him fits. FDR’s legislative agenda was so badly mauled by an oppositional court that he tried to appoint additional justices who would see his wa</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">y. Felix Frankfurter disappoin</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ted many who had hoped his pre-Court activism would carry over to the Court. Instead he became a proponent of judicial restraint; because the Court was not answerable to anyone democratically, it should refrain from creating policy. His thinking was that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">the courts </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">can frustrate the majority by striking down legislative enact</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ments. They do so on the basis of their "own," possibly idiosyncratic,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">interpretation of the Constitution while remaining insulated </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">from the "democratic," i.e., electoral, process. Hence the judici</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ary's review power, not being genuinely democratic, should be se</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">verely limited.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">That tenuous balance between restraint and activism has been the subject of numerous articles and books all using the power of judicial review as their springboard. Alexander Bickel’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>The Least Dangerous Branch</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> (echoing Alexander Hamilton’s view of the Court’s role) was the first book I ran across years ago questioning the wisdom of judicial review. I have discovered a veritable flood of books since then.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> Bickel’s thesis was that judicial review was counter-majoritarian in a democratic society. Of course, a major danger of any democratic system is that it’s counter-minoritarian, i.e. that the majority will trump all over minority rights. (I won’t even try </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">to discuss the evil effects of slavery on our system as it relates to judicial review, except to say that it was a case where minority white power used judicial review to maintain and enhance minority white control of an ever increasing black population.) </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">There exists a popular myth that any case will be heard by the Supreme Court if it has merit. This erroneous view ignores the huge number of cases actually submitted to the Court. These are usually read by the Justices’ clerks who then make prelimina</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ry decisions and out of perhaps 9,000 submissions, only about 70 are heard each year.That they get to do that kind of winnowing (available only since 1925 when Congress told them they no longer had to hear ALL the cases)1 is already a form of policy-making</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> and an accretion of power never intended by the Framers. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The syllogistic debate over “originalism”, “textualism”, and “living constitutionalism” is merely a way of rationalizing judicial review and its inherent power. Each of those interpretations repres</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ents an explanation for the reasoning done by judges to come to a decision, a way of articulating how they came to that decision. All of those rationale’s are intended to counter the proposition of Judge Learned Hand that judicial review should be curtail</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ed</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> because it has no textual basis in the Constitution.(2) Depending on your political persuasion and wealth, judicial review could be a good or bad thing. Whether the Court should follow the winds of political change is another matter entirely. Just look at </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Roe</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Dobbs.</i></span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The major problem as I see it is the lack of clarity in the Constitution itself which forces the creation of a mechanism for interpreting it in light of changing economic and cultural environments. That we have had three Constitutions is clear: t</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">he first being the Articles of Confederation that left virtually no power in the hands of a united government; the Constitution of 1789 rectified that impotence and created a more supreme federal government; and finally the Constitution of 1868 that included t</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">he 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments which corrected several of the pro-slave deficiencies of the 1789 document and gave more administrative power to the federal government, power that the Supreme Court proceeded to take away in bits and pieces during the lat</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ter 19th century until the middle of the twentieth century when it was gradually returned. The current court is shifting the balance once again,but this time moving the power to the corporate world in opposition to the democratically elected federal world.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia Snowiss argues in her book (3) that Marshall revolutionized the understanding of judicial review which heretofore had been used exclusively to correct violations of “fundamental law” rather than “ordinary law.” Those violations “</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">could be rectified only "by electoral or other political action," or wanting these, by "revolution or the threat of revolution." </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">After Marshall, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Judicial review was no longer a last-ditch "revolutionary defense" but part of the regular business of the federal courts. The Constitution had been "legalized." </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">That the idea of judicial review was well understood, she argues, was clear, and that Marshall knew and understood it, but his purpose was to em</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">bolden and empower the Court. She fails to spend much time however, on Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which delivered the authority of review to the new Supreme Court, so an argument can be made that Marshall was simply implementing that charter.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Anti-court movements, of which the attacks on judicial review are merely a side effect, are nothing new. They arise whenever the court does something that irritates one side or another, so much of it sh</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ould be taken with that in mind. Nevertheless, the discussion bears on our relationship to democracy and the structure of our odd form of government. Keep in mind that I am not an attorney, that these reflections are based on parochial and incomplete readi</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ng of books and other sources, inspired by what I believe to be an overreach of the current court into the realm of policy-making. I come from a position of support for the Court that evolved during the sixties when it was seen as a bastion and bulwark of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">freedom for the oppressed</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> rather than a haven for the rich and powerful. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">There are ways to bring a Court to heel. Barry Friedman (4) discusses at length how political pressure was used during Reconstruction by changing the size of the court to al</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">ter its political makeup. That option would seem to be a non-starter today. Whether current corruption on the court, obvious in the actions of Justices Alito and Thomas, in particular, and calls for ethics reform will have any effect, remains to be seen.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">1, The Judiciary Act of 1925 </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">provided the justices with the sole discretion to determine their caseload</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">. In order to issue a writ of certiorari, which grants a court hearing to a case, at least four justices must agree (the “Rule of Four”). </span><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judiciary-Act" title="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judiciary-Act"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judiciary-Act</u></span></a></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">2. “The Historical Significance of Judge Learned Hand: What Endures and Why” by EdwardA. Purcell, Jr. New York Law School, 2018 </span><a href="https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2209&context=fac_articles_chapters" title="https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2209&context=fac_articles_chapters"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2209&context=fac_articles_chapters</u></span></a></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Hand gave the prestigious Holmes </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Lectures at the Harvard Law School which were immediately published </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>under the title The Bill of Rights. There, Hand issued sweeping constitutional </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>prescriptions calling for extreme limitations on the power of judicial review. </i></span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>The book embraced majoritarian principles, affirmed the policy-making </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>supremacy of the political branches, denied that judicial review had any</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>constitutional foundation, and warned incessantly of the dangers of judicial</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>subjectivity in construing vague constitutional provisions, particularly the</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Pg 862</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">3. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">JUDICIAL REVIEW AND THE LAW OF THE CONSTITUTION. By Sylvia Snowiss.• New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 1990. Pp. vii, 228. Cloth, $25.00.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">4. Friedman, B. (1998). The history of the Countermajoritarian difficulty, part one: The road to judicial supremacy. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">SSRN Electronic Journal</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">. </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.60449" title="https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.60449"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.60449</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Friedman, B. (2002). Reconstruction's political court: The history of the Countermajoritarian difficulty, part two. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">SSRN Electronic Journal</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">. </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.312023" title="https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.312023"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.312023</span></a></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-17047149782165501522023-09-23T18:12:00.000-05:002023-09-23T18:12:05.655-05:00Review: On a Wing and a Prayer by Harry Crosby<div 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style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">Crosby was one of the most experienced and best navigator’s in WW II. This is his extraordinary memoir. He reveals all his self-doub</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">ts in a most humble fashion. His superior navigating (he often ascribed it to luck, got him promoted to Group Navigator. At one point he was just one mission shy of the twenty-five needed to get sent home, when, ironically, because the horrendous loss rate</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";"> had begun to decline, the number needed was raised to thirty. The rationale for doing so was truly monstrously evil. The assumption was that given the loss rates approaching 100% over 25 missions, when loss rates dropped, the logistics of supply changed:</span></span></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">Until then, 8AF losses were about four percent per mission. Theoretically, by the time we had flown twenty-five missions, we were KIA or POW, and we had to be replaced. If we bucked the odds, we got to go home. Since the Eighth couldn’t plan on our being t</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">here we might as well not be taking up bunks and rations. Now, losses declined a little, down to about three percent, and our human logistics changed. We had to fly thirty missions”. </span></span></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">On this mission, one crew, piloted by Glenn Dye, flew their twenty-fifth. They were done. They could go home. They were the only original crew of the 100th’s original thirty-five who finished a tour. One out of thirty-five made it through a tour. And even </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">on Dye’s crew, one gunner was killed. None of the original crew all made it. That did not encourage us much.”</span></span></div><div style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">Navigators were crucial to the success, and return, of a mission. In </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">his scrapbook* on the Smithsonian website, Crosby flatly states, “From a good pilot all I expected was a good truck driver. I wanted him to shut up, drive the plane, and stay out of things and as the navigator and the bombardier took care of the mission.” </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";"> They had to rely on dead reckoning </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">and radios for navigation; all the celestial navigation skills they had been taught as school were basically useless, and their octants soon piled up in the trash.</span></span></div><div style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">Lots of interesting tidbits. My favorite was why he dec</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">ided not to bomb Bonn and picked another target. It’s in the scrapbook, if you don’t want to read the memoir. Crosby suffered from severe airsickness, common among navigators, as they spent considerable time watching the ground from low altitudes where it w</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">a</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">s always more turbulent. On one mission, they spun out of control, the pilot recovering with just two functioning engines. The plane had 1200 shell holes, 1 dead crewman, and five injured. They just made it back to England, landing on a “dummy” airfield.</span></span></div><div style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">Harmony between the Brits and Americans was problematic. So many British men were overseas, leaving the country to American males. Crosby was sent to attend a conference to di</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">scuss inter-ally relations. He found it enlightening. “All during the conference, no matter what the announced subject for discussion, we always kept returning to two knotty problems, disharmony among the Allies and too much harmony between the genders.”</span></span></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">The B-17 was known for being a tough old bird. There was always competition between B-24 and B-17 pilots on which was the better aircraft. “</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">You can still start an argument with a WWII Air Corps veteran as to which was better, the B-24 or the B-17. Because of its highly efficient Davis wing, the B-24 carried a heavier load and flew faster. However, b</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">ecause of that same slim, narrow wing, the Lib was vulnerable. Hit that wing and down went the plane. A B-17 could get its crew back on one engine. Even with half its tail torn off or with a huge, gaping hole in the wings, fuselage, or nose, a good pilot c</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">ould get his Fort and his crew back to the base.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">”</span></span></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">Regardless, the 100th was notorious for its high losses. “</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">We had too much combat exhaustion, which was what they called it when a crew member was afraid to fly and quit. We had too many midair crashes of our own planes. We had too many cases of our airmen getting i</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">nto fights at the local pubs."</span></span></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">Losses were horrendus. Crews had a 1 in 35 chance of making it back alive.</span></span></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><br /></div><div style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">A truly fascinating and humble look at what it was like to fly missions in a B-17 over Europe.</span></span></div><div style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial";">*</span><a href="https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/navigating-air/navigation-at-war/wartime-navigator/harry-crosby" title="https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/navigating-air/navigation-at-war/wartime-navigator/harry-crosby"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "Arial";"><u>https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/navigating-air/navigation-at-war/wartime-navigator/harry-crosby</u></span></a></span></div>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-10450734060082532832023-05-08T07:51:00.002-05:002023-11-14T09:34:30.313-06:00Letter to Justice Roberts (Updated 11/14/23)<p> </p><p 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style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">May 7, 2023</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Chief Justice John Roberts</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">United States Supreme Court</span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">1 First Street, NE <br /></span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Washington, DC 20543<br /></span></p><p style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Dear Justice Roberts:</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">F</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">or the past seven decades, I have revered the Court as one of the few places where civil discourse prevailed and decisions were made based on different but philosophical legal interpretations of the law; wildly disparate, perhaps, but free from non-legal i</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">nfluence.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Re</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">cent revelations concerning Justice Thomas’s substantial financial links to a man with multiple reasons to want influence over Court decisions, Justice Alito’s cozy relationship with rich influencers who want certain Court precedent overturned, not to men</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">tion your wife’s business dealings and huge income from firms who regularly appear before the Court, have challenged that naive perception. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">t’s not enough to pay lip service to judicial ethical standards. The appearance of impropriety is often more damaging than actual violation of principles, as the latter is easily discovered and punishable. As you well know, ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduc</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">t tells us that the judge must avoid such </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">appearances. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> fully understand and appreciate your wish for the Court to remain an independent branch of our government; that’s crucial to our system, but unless the Court adopts its own set of rigid ethical standards and enforces those standards, Congress will be forc</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">ed to act from a political if not moral position. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">It’s not enough to simply write a letter to Congress reiterating the importa</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">nce of judicial independence. It’s not enough to leave it up to individual justices as to when to recuse themselves. It’s not enough to expect justices to complete reporting forms properly listing their financial dealings. SCOTUS, under your leadership, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>must</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> adopt a set of rigid ethical guidelines and include an enforcement mechanism. It’s the only course to avoid a constitutional crisis or a complete destruction of trust in the Court. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">You have a choice: go down in history as a Chief who saved the Court, or a Chief who failed to act and permitted the destruction of the Court as the only remaining trustful branch of government,</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Respectfully yours,</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> </span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Eric C. Welch </span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Freeport, IL 61032<br /></span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Update: Court issues a "Code of Conduct."</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;">https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/11/justices-issue-official-code-of-conduct/</p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;">Too little, too late. Aside from the issue of no enforcement, the idea that SCOTUS is different from lower courts, hence recusal has a more significant impact, is precisely why justices need to refuse gratutities, free vacations, jet trips, etc. from anyone, regardless of whether they might have future business before the Court. Alito presents exactly the problem. The free, horribly expensive, trips he was given by someone whose hedge fund had business before the Court, should have forced recusal by Alito. Obviously if he did, it might disadvantage the gift-giver, but<i> that's precisely why no such trips should ever be accepted. </i>When you accept the position of Supreme Court Justice you give up some benefits like travel gifts. Tough. Not giving them up just means you are willing to be bought and paid for.</p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-84434717692775410902023-04-21T11:32:00.000-05:002023-04-21T11:32:30.425-05:00Review: A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey by Michael D'Antonio<p 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style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">The effect o</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">f Sputnik on the United States was electrifying. I was about 10 at the time. As it happened, we were on the 2nd and last year of our sojourn in Germany where my father was researching at the University of Heidelberg. The effect there was minimal, but from</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> what I’ve read since, everyone in the U.S. was horrified at the pity shown to the United States, now clearly in a distant 2nd place. There is no doubt it had a substantial impact on the presidential election in 1960 along with the non-existent missile gap.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">The author begins with Soviet initiatives, but most of the book, which covers but a year u</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">p through 1958, is devoted to American political in-fighting and initiatives. It was former Nazi rocket scientists like Werner Von Braun(1) and his German colleagues who created their own little enclave near Huntsville, Alabama, that gave the U.S. an edge.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Aside from the interesting technical details, D’Antonio provides a broad picture of life in the fifties and especia</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">lly the cultural changes that were wrought by enormous sums of money poured into places like Cape Canaveral and Huntsville; places that had been mere backwaters exploded into rapidly expanding subdivisions with concomitant increases in real estate values.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Sputnik </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">had enormous </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">policy and cultural implications and changes. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Soon, in the guise of protecting America from the Red Menace, every group imaginable from the NEA and National Science Foundation, to politicians who wanted more money for their districts, to weapons manufacturers, to the Air Force and Army at loggerheads </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">on which service was to control missiles, was clamoring for huge increases in the federal budget for their projects. Articles in the press naively drawing on PR the Soviets were putting out, talked about Russian nuclear trains, ships, airplanes and satelli</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">tes. So, not only was there a missile gap (ironically thanks to the U-2 Eisenhower knew this was a chimera)(2), but a science gap, and education gap, a you-name-it-gap, and anyone who suggested otherwise had to be a Commie. People who formerly had been un</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">alterably opposed to federal support for local education, now changed their tune and bellied up to the trough. Eisenhower was in a touch position. He warned of the military-industrial symbiosis, but the political pressure from both sides was just too much.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">In the meantime, rocket launches at Cape Canaveral were beset with all sorts of failures, some spectacularly public, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">others seemingly mundane. In one case, because some special paper had been loaded backwards into the printer, the results appeared to be the opposite of what was good, and the missile was destroyed fearing it would go off course or explode uncontrollably.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">PR became crucial in the battle between the Army, Air Force and later NASA for control of rocketry. Eisenhower was anxious to have civilian control of space, while the military and people like Edward Teller were anxious to dominate the Russians using military control of space. The perception was the Russians were ahead and they clearly had more powerful rockets, but that dominance vanished quickly. This was the time of Public Relations. Edward Bernays had revolutionized how we view control of consent and his book </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Crystallizing Public Opinion</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> and </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Engineering Consent</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> became bibles of the industry. I will have to read them. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">It’s astonishing today to see what they got away with in the fifties in the name of science. Project Argos, for example, exploded low-yield high altitude nuclear weapons in space to determine the effect of radiation on all sorts of things, but the main objective was to study the Christofilos Effect hoping that it would be possible to protect against a Soviet nuclear attack by exploding nuclear bombs high over the Pacific. The idea was to create a barrier of electrons that would fry the electronics of Soviet warheads and possibly also to blind Soviet radar to a U.S. counter-attack. I suppose one could argue the tests were a great success because we learned it wouldn't work. It was all terribly secret, of course.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">A truly fascinating look into the culture and history of the U.S., and to some extent Soviet, space race.</span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">(1) </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Hunt, Linda. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">. St Martins P, 1991. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">(2) </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Beschloss, M. (2016). Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 affair. Open Road Media. </span></p><p style="border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Jacobsen, Annie. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 11pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">. Little, Brown, 2014. </span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"> </p><p> </p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-55474425934057456842023-03-27T11:24:00.005-05:002023-03-27T11:39:08.925-05:00Review: Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps Fergus Fleming<p 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style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> <span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">When I was in high school many years ago, we lived for a couple of years in Neuchatel, Switzerland, in a 13-story building. On a very (very) clear day, we could see Mont Blanc far in the distance. Even at that distance, it was a majes</span><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">tic site. I like looking at mountains, but the idea of climbing would never enter my mind. The thousands who have now climbed Everest, with the help of guides to carry their bags and technology, have trivialized what once was an extraordinary accomplishment.</span></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">So it was for the Alps in the 18th and 19th centur</span><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">ies. They were considered unclimbable, harsh, and forbidding monuments to death and destruction. Avalanches regularly killed many, and the physics of glaciers were not understood. Fleming has written a detailed examination of how and why that all changed.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">It was a combination of thirst for scientific knowledge about the Alps coupled with myth that was layered with romantic views of Byron and others. Killing the Dragons refers to the legends that the Alps </span><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">were populated by Dragons. Crossing the Alps was a very hazardous undertaking because of swift changes in the weather, glacial crevasses, and falling rocks. (One avalanche sent boulders into a lake creating a tsunami of epic proportions inundating a town.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">After Mt. Blanc was climbed successfully, the story continued,</span><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> moving from dragons to a virtual advertising campaign. Much lie Everest today, climbing Mt. Blanc became the thing to do. The Alps were transformed into a thing of beauty and respite, attracting hoards of visitors, rather than something to be feared. </span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Before you know it, the Alps and Switzerland benefited from another kind of myth, that of the health giving clean air and wonderful resorts. Towns and villages that had been considered mere provinces of swine, were now sought after resorts and the Swiss, clever people they are, soon had a train (!) running up though the Matterhorn close to its summit for people like me who would rather ride than climb.*</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">It’s a fun read (I listened to the well-read audio version)</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> </span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZiyoe89rM3KB7-DyQ6tgUx7wQSL3Le23zb78qnQtfnXGXiu1uzBZQ7yFDOS3cVfenWvZwNJQvm4r2Q9w9mPU7gs0W8Kn1dMT9nFX10ghZs05K4Yvy_VOVjCpXJa0E2DoMTIMwj8T9LapC9U70TJXpk8ScJvq6_1sdaEiaP3Re04M7GGshqw/s1000/eigerwand-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="1000" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZiyoe89rM3KB7-DyQ6tgUx7wQSL3Le23zb78qnQtfnXGXiu1uzBZQ7yFDOS3cVfenWvZwNJQvm4r2Q9w9mPU7gs0W8Kn1dMT9nFX10ghZs05K4Yvy_VOVjCpXJa0E2DoMTIMwj8T9LapC9U70TJXpk8ScJvq6_1sdaEiaP3Re04M7GGshqw/s320/eigerwand-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><br /> <br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">*</span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="hgKElc"><span>The
train continues up inside the Eiger and Mönch mountains, with another 5
minute stop at the Eismeer (Ice Sea) viewing point until it reaches
Jungfraujoch, 3,454m or 11,333 feet above sea level, the highest railway
station in Europe and billed as The Top of Euro.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="hgKElc"><span></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="hgKElc"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKCiLxzQOeFjqUpEr2vXGIkLFliPb8H0OvCiGIqODsX2IGY0MefHYo_5MvWEyWFeQX6znn6W_aGk3mcpsX3sSYWLpaearnfOzCrcdzZHS00s9A8V-JxMAFm2ASE4lUI8YH0vsh43fvoP8ujFUYWG79JvDRDFAetSvPzCTvxv48J1Uj5Wb5Jg/s1280/snapshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKCiLxzQOeFjqUpEr2vXGIkLFliPb8H0OvCiGIqODsX2IGY0MefHYo_5MvWEyWFeQX6znn6W_aGk3mcpsX3sSYWLpaearnfOzCrcdzZHS00s9A8V-JxMAFm2ASE4lUI8YH0vsh43fvoP8ujFUYWG79JvDRDFAetSvPzCTvxv48J1Uj5Wb5Jg/s320/snapshot.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></span></div><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="hgKElc"><span><br /> </span></span></span><p></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: medium; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> </span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-2202600068944514282023-03-14T12:55:00.004-05:002023-03-14T12:56:44.115-05:00Review: Night Bird by Brian Freeman<p> </p><p 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style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> read the second in the Frost series first. Had I read it in order after this one, I would have noticed the psychological connection. In <i>Voice Inside,</i> Freeman’s killer was obsessed with a memory and acted on it. Memory is also a prime mover in <i>Night Bird.</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Memory is a very tricky thing as we have learned in the past few decades. I</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">t’s malleable, easily fooled, and extremely fallible. Ask an eyewitness to an accident how fast a car was going as he went through the stop sign, the witness will implant the image of a stop sign in his memory even though there may not have been one there.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Here a memory expert</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> (Francesca Stein — get it? Frankenstein) uses images to change a client’s remembrance of a traumatic experience in order to eliminate a phobia. She maintains that every time you haul up a memory from the repository in your brain you alter it in some way.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">If you are interested in how memory works and its experience in the judicial process I recommend </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">T</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>he fallibility of memory in judicial processes: Lessons from the past and their modern consequences </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Mark Howe and Laure Knott. *</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">A salient paragraph:</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>When memory serves as evidence, as it does in many civil and criminal legal proceedings, there are a number of important limitations to the veracity of that evidence. This is because memory does not provide a veridical representation of events as experi</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>enced. Rather, what gets encoded into memory is determined by what a person attends to, what they already have stored in memory, their expectations, needs and emotional state. This information is subsequently integrated (consolidated) with other informa</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>tion that has already been stored in a person's long-term, autobiographical memory. What gets retrieved later from that memory is determined by that same multitude of factors that contributed to encoding as well as what drives the recollection of the ev</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>ent. Specifically, what gets retold about an experience depends on whom one is talking to and what the purpose is of remembering that particular event (e.g., telling a friend, relaying an experience to a therapist, telling the police about an event). Mo</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>reover, what gets remembered is reconstructed from the remnants of what was originally stored; that is, what we remember is constructed from whatever remains in memory following any forgetting or interference from new experiences that may have occurred</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i> across the interval between storing and retrieving a particular experience. Because the contents of our memories for experiences involve the active manipulation (during encoding), integration with pre-existing information (during consolidation), and r</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 12pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>econstruction (during retrieval) of that information, memory is, by definition, fallible at best and unreliable at worst.</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> </p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Lots of plot summaries. No point in me adding another. I suggest reading them in order and I will certainly now move on to the 3rd.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i> *</i></span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4409058/#" title="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4409058/#"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Memory</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">.</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> 2015 Jul 4; 23(5): 633–656. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Published online 2015 Feb 23. doi: </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080%2F09658211.2015.1010709" title="https://doi.org/10.1080%2F09658211.2015.1010709"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">10.1080/09658211.2015.1010709</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4409058/" title="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4409058/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4409058/</u></span></a></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> Elizabeth Loftus gained considerable fame (and fortune) for her research into the fallibility and manipulatability (if that’s a word) of memory. </span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">https://www.amazon.com/Eyewitness-Testimony-With-preface-author/dp/0674287770/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520271440&linkCode=as2&tag=teco06-20</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_how_reliable_is_your_memory?language=en" title="https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_how_reliable_is_your_memory?language=en"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_how_reliable_is_your_memory?language=en</u></span></a></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">An interesting article on Loftus’ research and the Weins</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">tein trial. Physical evidence should always be required in any case involving memory. When you have prosecutors and victim’s rights advocates, all of whom have their own agendas, juries need to be very careful in evaluating eyewitness and memory testimony.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><a href="https://www.scribd.com/article/446066265/Expert-Testifies-About-false-Memories-In-Harvey-Weinstein-s-Trial" title="https://www.scribd.com/article/446066265/Expert-Testifies-About-false-Memories-In-Harvey-Weinstein-s-Trial"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>https://www.scribd.com/article/446066265/Expert-Testifies-About-false-Memories-In-Harvey-Weinstein-s-Trial</u></span></a></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"> </p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-59200435661426220712023-02-10T09:51:00.004-06:002023-02-10T09:58:01.711-06:00Review: Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129 by Norman Polmar, Michael White<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> "The bubble burst on Friday morning, February 7, 1975, with a front page story in the Los Angeles Times revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had salvaged a sunken Soviet missile submarine." So begins the fascinating account of the attempt to raise the K-129, a Russian submarine that had disappeared in 1968.<br /><br />The Russian submarine K-219 left its home base and then disappeared somewhere near the Hawaiian Islands. In a spectacular feat of engineering and spy craft, the Navy working with Hughes Aircraft designed a special ship, in the guise of a deep sea mining project, to retrieve the sunken Russian sub that was lying on the bottom 16,000 feet below the surface. How they did it boggles the mind. <br /><br />The K-129 was a Golf II diesel-electric sub carrying nuclear weapons. The CIA knew exactly where it sank thanks to the Halibut (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/42343">https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/42343</a>) . The CIA was anxious to get it’s hands on one of those nuclear tipped missiles and any codebooks or other secret documents that might have been on the sub. Just one problem; it sank in 16,000 feet of water. In order to help hide what they were doing, the CIA contracted with Hughes, famed for concocting bizarre schemes, to design and build the Hughes Glomar Explorer ostensibly a deep sea mining ship. The plan was to use 16,000 feet of pipe connected to an enormous grappling hook to grab the forward part of the sub and raise it into a specially designed “moon pool”, as it was called, part of the ship open to the sea, to prevent anyone from seeing what they were up to. Josh Dean*** in his book on the project described it in these terms: "Imagine standing atop the Empire State Building with an 8-foot-wide grappling hook on a 1-inch-diameter steel rope. Your task is to lower the hook to the street below, snag a compact car full of gold, and lift the car back to the top of the building. On top of that, the job has to be done without anyone noticing.”<br /><br />In a review of Polmar’s book by the Naval Historical Foundation, Captain James Bryant write that Polmar told him it was a very difficult book to write because 90% of what he knew was incorrect. “Bruce Rule** was the leading acoustic analyst for the Office of Naval Intelligence for 42 years. In May 1968, the Navy took the acoustic data and compartmentalized it so that not even the Navy’s experts could review it. Consequently, it was not until 2009 – forty-one years after the event – that Bruce’s analysis of the data from open sources determined that the K-129 was lost when two ballistic missiles’ rocket motors fired, melted the launch tubes and filled the boat with burning exhaust. This book gives details of the probable causes.”*<br /><br />Of course, the sinking gave rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories. John Craven who had been very involved with the Halibut —among others like Kenneth Sewell—came to believe that the K-129 was in the process of launching a nuclear-tipped missile against Hawaii at the time of the submarine’s “explosion” and sinking. Palomar deals with this view in Chapter 11.<br /><br />*<a href="https://www.navyhistory.org/2011/09/book-review-project-azorian-the-cia/">https://www.navyhistory.org/2011/09/book-review-project-azorian-the-cia/</a><br /><br />** Regarding Bruce Rule’s role, Mr. Role wrote a comment on the review by Capt. Bryant. I quote in full:<br /><br />In his excellent review of “Project AZORIAN, the CIA and the Raising of the K-129,” CAPT Jim Bryant discusses this writer’s analysis of acoustic detections of the loss of the K-129 first completed in 2009 because the Navy compartmentalized the acoustic data so that not even their own experts at the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) could analyze it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i><br />I thank CAPT Bryant for his acknowledgment of my analysis; however, the basic conclusion (two R-21 missiles fired within the K-129 for 96-seconds each with ignition separated by 361-seconds) was so straight-forward (obvious) that it took less than an hour to come to that conclusion.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />There were at least six acoustic analysts at ONI in 1968 who could have derived that assessment with the same facility. Such was the dark side of the Navy’s obsessive compartmentalization which prevented those involved in the approval of the AZORIAN recovery effort from knowing that the area within the K-129 from which they hoped to recovery crypto-equipment and associated documents had been exposed to 5000-degree (F) missile exhaust plumes for more than three-minutes.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Bruce Rule<br />Louisville, KY<br />14 September 2011</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Those interested in irony will find it in <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/sinking-soviet-submarine-k-219-cold-war-conspiracy-189608">https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/sinking-soviet-submarine-k-219-cold-war-conspiracy-189608</a>. Note the similarity between 129 and 219. See also In feindlichen Gewässern. Das Ende von K-219 by Peter Hutchhausen.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />***<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33864783-the-taking-of-k-129?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=f4PyDsovtq&rank=1">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33864783-the-taking-of-k-129?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=f4PyDsovtq&rank=1</a></span></div>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-18332936034581596152023-01-03T07:50:00.007-06:002023-01-03T07:55:43.609-06:00Why I love Amazon<p 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style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I know it has become fashionable of late to bash Amazon and how it has destroyed the local bookstore, that mythic center of culture in small towns. We hear how the independent bookstore (otherwise known as chain “wannabes”. Here’s why Amazon will always b</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">e better:</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-left: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-right: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-top: 6.000000000000001pt; margin: 6pt; mso-border-between: none;"> </p><ol style="padding-left: 40px;"><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I get to read what I want to read, not just what might be available in the bookstore. I don’t need recommendations from a clerk or bookstore owner who, in spite of what they would have you believe, will never understand my shifting interests. Used bookstor</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">es are even more limited; you’re only getting access to what other people and libraries didn’t want. </span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Amazon has the best of both worlds: new books and access to hundreds of used book dealers for those books that are no longer in print.</span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">E-Books. I can make the print larger, smaller, and choose fonts. I can carry around almost my entire library in my pocket. Amazon didn’t invent them, just made them inexpensive, readable, and with magnificent reading software.</span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">With its connection to Goodreads, you can connect with other innumerable other readers to discuss books and share ideas in a multitude of different groups. By not meeting face-to-face, you are forced to think about what you want to say, rather than blurtin</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">g it out to a few others, often without formulating it thoroughly.</span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I love authors. I want to support them. Amazon offers them the widest audience possible in addition to connecting with them online.in a multitude of different formats. Not to mention, Amazon offers authors the possibility of bringing back books into print </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">via on-demand publishing that means their books will never go out-of-print.</span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Customer service. Ever try returning a book to an independent bookstore? If it’s a special order (always costing more) they won’t do it, usually won't ever anyway. You can return anything to Amazon for immediate refund and they will pay the return costs.</span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Amazon is ruining small towns. Another myth. Amazon has killed off Borders and is hurting Barnes and Noble, hardly the small independent that has never been able to survive by selling only books. Coffee or tea, anyone? If anything, it’s the Post Office</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> killing off small towns. Sears and Montgomery Wards were able to destroy small town stores because the Post Office began rural delivery.</span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Another myth is that local independents support local authors. My wife is a successful children’s author, but in the beginning is was only Borders and Barnes and Noble that would even consider ordering her books and having a book signing. It’s expensive an</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">d time-consuming. Small independents don’t have the resources to do this, and they’ll usually require the author to supply the books and will take them only on consignment. Amazon at least provides a venue for unknown authors to connect with the public an</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">d they provide free webspace to promote your books. </span></p></li><li style="list-style-type: decimal;"><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 35.4331pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I read a lot and have eclectic interests. On Amazon I can find exactly what I want, without having to travel miles, spend less money, and have it in two days, (instantly in the case of e-books.) They do it better and cheaper. What’s not to love?</span></p></li></ol><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-left: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-right: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-top: 6.000000000000001pt; margin: 6pt; mso-border-between: none;"> </p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">For some reason, Americans hate successful enterprises, all the while wishing they had thought of the idea first. It may happen that Amazon, like Sears and other large enterprises will overreach and stumble (Fire phone, anyone?) and someone else with a bet</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">ter idea will come along and replace them That’s OK. If they do it better and cheaper, I’m all for it.</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-left: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-right: 6.000000000000001pt; margin-top: 6.000000000000001pt; margin: 6pt; mso-border-between: none;"> </p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 13pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">In the meantime, no one does it better than Amazon.</span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"> </p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-11248985797131792322022-12-24T16:15:00.002-06:002023-02-10T09:52:17.536-06:00Review: Takeover: How a Conservative Student Club Captured the Supreme Court by Noah Feldman<p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">In this short audiobook, based on a series of podcasts, Feldman describes th</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">e origin and impact of the Federalist Society. It arose from a feeling on the part of numerous conservative law school students that they were viewed as 2nd class lawyers and buffoons by what they considered an overwhelmingly liberal law school environment.</span></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Scalia was chosen as the groups quasi mentor because, even though he was not an academic at the time, he had “real-</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">world experience</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">” as an Assistant Attorney General. They needed information on how the system worked so they could learn how to become part of, and dominate, that system.</span></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">The appointment</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> of Alito was a direct result of the sabotage of Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The Federalist Society had been disappointed in Anthony Kennedy, not a member, and were determined to place more conservatives on the court, so they began a well-funde</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">d campaign to prevent the successful nomination of Miers to the Court. The result was that conservative presidents now felt impelled to only nominate Federalist Society members. Alito, a long-time member was the result. He satisfied their wildest dreams.</span></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Fascinating interview with Justice Sutton, Chief of the 6th Circuit with regard to the Federalist position on judicial restraint, originalism, i.e. the original meaning, and textualism. Feldman brought up B</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">ush v Gore arguing that nothing in the Court’s decision regarding due process that all the counties had to count ballots the same could ever be justified from an originalist point of view. Sutton’s response was that when originalism fails at least there </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">is a way to judge that failure, whereas without any set of principles or guidelines one has no way to judge the validity of a decision. The point of “originalism” is that it serves as a set of principles that prevent judges from doing whatever they want. </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Sutton said that if you can’t figure out what the original meaning is, you defer to the legislature and democracy.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> See also </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>Living Originalism</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Jack Balkin and</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Debt-Against-Living-Introduction-Originalism/dp/1108412165/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=" title="https://www.amazon.com/Debt-Against-Living-Introduction-Originalism/dp/1108412165/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr="><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial;"><i>A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism</i></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">by Ilam Wurman.</span></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Feldman sees fractures growing within the Society. If Gorsuch can render a decision based on tex</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">tualism in Bostock, interpreting the 1964 Civil Rights law to protect gays and transgenders from discrimination, then, as Josh Hawley (former president of the Federalist Society at Yale) said, originalism and textualism are basically dead. Clearly, the ori</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">ginal intent of the 1964 legislators did not mean “sex” to include gays and bisexuals.I think the problem for them is much deeper in that both concepts have simply been used to ground a decision they wanted personally to see. James Staab, in his excellent </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>Limits of Constraint: The Originalist Jurisprudence of Hugo Black, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">, says something similar, i.e.., if Justice Black, Scalia, and Thomas all claim to be originalists but come</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> to vary different conclusions on the same cases, then originalism is a hollow philosophy. The whole point of iroiginalism is that it would bring consistency to results, conservative, of course. Gorsuch and Roberts, Federalists both, have broken that mold.</span></span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-81788180044121947272022-12-15T21:21:00.012-06:002022-12-19T10:45:41.702-06:00Review: The Man in the Middle: The Autobiography of the World Cup Final Referee<p>In my thirties and early forties, I was a soccer referee, working my way up from kids games until I was head referee for a large AYSO organization and certified as a FIFA referee that got me doing many college games (always welcome because they paid a lot more and added travel expenses. This was around 1978-83. In today's dollars, around $500, pretty good for a young man raising a family. High school games were about a fifth of that.) <br /><br />I played soccer in high school, was mediocre at best, but really got into refereeing. I loved it. This was at a time when we used the two-man system rather than a ref and two linesmen. It’s a system that I still think has some advantages, but requires much training and teamwork on the part of the two on-the-field officials. (Remember this was some 35 years ago. That system no longer exists.) I did in fact get FIFA certified, passed all the tests, etc., etc., but never had the chance to work the middle. <br /><br />Some of my colleagues had far more presence of mind than I ever would. I remember Nels, a former Swedish ref who, after a kid kicked the ball high in the air following a call he disagreed with, just said, "If that ball comes down, you're out of the game." Or Howie, a ref I always enjoyed working with, who compassionately told a player who had just lost a front tooth after receiving a ball to the face, (we had located the tooth) to head off to the dentist. The player protested, but Howie just told him, in thirty years "you'll have forgotten this game, but if you don't get the tooth fixed, you have thirty years to regret it." <br /><br />We had a very active association that scheduled all the refs and negotiated the fees. I was lucky that I had a job from which I could take off a couple afternoons a week to drive the considerable distances to the games. <br /><br />Of course as a former ref, when I watch games now, I spend as much time watching the officials as the players. Some of them become celebrities in their own right, like Babiana Steinhaus, a first-rate woman official who was the first female ref to do the premier men’s German league games. She also, in real life, is a Police Chief Inspector. She retired from officiating in 2020, but I discovered she also married Howard Webb, a premier World Cup referee, also a policeman. Howard, as it happens, wrote this book about his career, the culmination of which was officiating at the World Cup final in 2014.<br /><br />I was surprised to learn of all the technology required of and for referees at the Premier level. Each wore a heart rate monitor that would record every five seconds and then be uploaded to the league's headquarters, where fitness experts would pass judgement on the referee's fitness. Another was the laser device that would register when a goal was scored with an audible signal to the refs earphones.<br /><br />I suspect unless you have some interest or background in soccer — it really should be called football all around the world; that other sport could be called pointy-ball or boring-ball — this book will probably not interest you. I really enjoyed it. The training program and learning experience of top-of-the-line referees is extensive, and that includes a great deal of analysis of mistakes. Webb is not afraid to discuss his blunders, and in soccer, the buck truly stops with the man in the middle.<br /> </p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-76274075171621668112022-12-11T13:50:00.002-06:002023-01-06T19:32:24.457-06:00Review: The Cycles of Constitutional Time by Jack Balkin<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Balkin looks at American history as a series of cycles resulting from four factors all related to polarization and its negative effects on our political system: a.) generations polarized by an event die off; b.) party coalitions change as they begin to fracture; c.) income inequality becomes more pronounced leading to corruption and political protests; and finally d.) immigration slows in response to events or policies and that diminishes a source of anger. <br /><br />He has identified three of these cycles that cause the rise and fall of political parties and alternate what he calls constitutional rot and renewal through its affect on the courts and constitutional interpretation.<br /><br />Race is a crucial element in the rise and fall of these cycles. Even though Balkin doesn’t explicitly use race as one of the organizing principles of the book, race is clearly a fundamental factor in all of American politics, as he acknowledged in a recent law review article. 1 Each of the cycles has deep connections to successive political struggles in the United States over race and racial equality. The coalitions that rise and fall often do so because of massive disagreements regarding slavery (before the Thirteenth Amendment) and race (after it, often intertwined with immigration.) Nothing is more polarizing than race in American society.<br /><br />The cycles are characterized by what he calls regimes, each dominated by one particular party. The dominant party may not win all the elections in a given regime, but it sets the agenda. The three he identifies are Federalists v Agrarian Republicans and Jacksonian Democrats; Republican domination during and after the Civil War; the Democratic domination during the New Deal; and the waning one we are currently in of the Reagan Republicans. <br /><br />In the first cycle, Jefferson won over John Adams only because of the 3/5ths clause (see also Garry Wills’ book)2 That clause determined the presidential winners for the next half century by giving power to the slave-holding states. Eight of the first nine presidential elections were won by candidates who were plantation owners from Virginia. As there was a requirement that Supreme Court justices had to live in the state where they rode circuit, Jacksonian Democrats made sure that a majority of the circuits were composed of slave-holding states. This, in turn, helped ensure that a majority of Justices were from slave-holding states, or were otherwise sympathetic to the interests of slavery. “The defense and expansion of slavery had become a dominant force in American politics.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />The second major regime cycle was the dominance of the Republicans (1860-1932). Again, race was crucial, as the ending of the slave-state dominance became a goal of the new regime. Initially concerned primarily with the rights of newly freed slaves, as the years wore on, the Republican regime became less concerned about racial equality and more concerned about the defense of business interests. Support for black suffrage was also undermined by white violence and terrorism so the goals of the regime changed. As the Democrats began to win more elections (1874 they won both houses) they changed state constitutions to make black voting more difficult and the Republicans interests were more focused on economic issues. Their Supreme Court emphasized the protection of capital and business, in 1888 reinforcing the idea that corporations had the same rights as persons, thus using the 14th Amendment in a way completely foreign to its creators. “These decisions reflected the evolution of the Republican regime during the Gilded Age. The Republican Party transformed from a multi-racial coalition devoted to equal rights for all citizens into a coalition primarily concerned with the protection of business interests, including the interests of railroads and other corporations.”<br />The thirties saw the rise of black migration to the north, where they could vote with less hindrance. The Depression fueled antagonism toward the moneyed classes and big business, so northern Democrats created a new regime that relied on emphasis on individual and civil rights.<br /><br /> “Political depolarization allowed cross-party alliances on different issues. But the success of the New Deal coalition always rested on a Faustian bargain concerning race. Southern and northern Democrats agreed on economic issues, but not on race. Democratic unity frayed following the election of Truman who infuriated southern Democrats with his integration of the military and other support for civil rights, so they began to flee to the Republican Party. This was deliberately accentuated by Nixon who courted southern racists. The New Deal coalition was doomed over differences in race. Even though Johnson beat Goldwater handily, he managed to win five southern states, a harbinger of the future. Opposition to desegregation, court-ordered busing and affirmative action became key issues in American politics. A racist demagogue, Alabama Governor George Wallace, managed to attract a large number of Democratic voters in the 1968 presidential election.<br /><br />The Reagan regime was formed by a coalition of Catholics, evangelicals, southern Democrats, and white voters concerned about black civil rights. They swept presidential elections for the next 20 years. Republican politicians and conservative political entrepreneurs discovered that the key to becoming the nation’s dominant party was to fight the culture wars and make issues of race, religion, morality, and culture the central focus of their campaigns. It was very effective at splitting the Democratic Party. Law and order became a euphemism for keeping the blacks in their place. For example, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority, was first drawn to the New Right not because of opposition to abortion but because the federal government refused to allow tax exemptions for private “segregation academies” that discriminated on the basis of race. Falwell’s decision to focus on abortion came in the late 1970s, well after Roe v. Wade was decided.<br /><br />Continuing the campaign, Trump found multiple ways to invoke race and racial stereotypes both during the 2016 campaign and throughout his presidency. Republican political strategies on culture and race have made Republicans increasingly a white person’s party. Moreover, the party has been losing college-educated professionals and suburbanites – who became independents or Democrats – for white working-class voters, especially in the South and rural areas. Balkin notes this is not a good strategy for a party that wants to remain in power. Indeed, “since George H.W. Bush’s victory in 1988, the Republican Party has won the popular vote for the Presidency only once, in 2004. This is not good news for a political party that wants to remain dominant.”<br /><br />This would seem to imply that the Reagan/Republican cycle is nearing an end. Not necessarily write Balkin. “In the 2020 election, however, Donald Trump attracted a slightly larger number of Black and Latino voters – particularly male voters – than he had in 2016....Trump’s modest inroads with non-white voters probably surprised Democrats, who assumed that these voters would never vote for an overt racist like Trump. But this neglects several factors. First, minority voters are not monolithic. They have conflicting and cross-cutting values, which will become ever more salient as the percentage of non-white voters in the population grows. Second, many non-white voters are culturally conservative and aspire to be prosperous members of the middle class; this may attract them to the Republican Party.” Republican talent for winning in smaller states that hold the balance in the Electoral College may also become a factor, as it did with Trump in 2016 and George Bush in 2000. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div 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style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: black;">The Founders feared despotism. Benjamin Franklin lectured his colleagues at the end of the convention: “</span><span style="color: black;">I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Desp</span><span style="color: black;">otism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” To prevent this, the Founders decided on a divided government, a separation of powers. That worked until what Belkin describes as Constitutional rot sets in. It’s characterized by </span><span style="color: black;">polarization, a lack of trust in government and fellow citizens, increased economic inequality, and failures in decision-making, a whole host of which led up to the Civil War. The Gilded Age was another example of constitutional rot with huge disparities in wealth, vast immigration, polarization, distrust in government because of policy mistakes, and violence including riots and anarchy. </span></span></span></div><div style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: black;">Belkin thinks the GOP is coming to the end its regime that began with Reagan and we’re in a situation very similar to the end of the Gilded Age. There’s a donor class of wealthy individuals who seek and gain power to enrich themselves, thereby increasing economic disparity, vast distrust in government and fellow citizens, as well as extreme polarization fueled by the mediatainment empires. As I’m writing this, Kevin McCarthy has just failed the 13th ballot for Speaker, a suitable punctuation to Belkin’s thesis.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br />Related.:<br />1. Jack M. Balkin, Race and the Cycles of Constitutional Time, 86 MO. L. REV. (2021) Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol86/iss2/6<br />2. Wills, G. (2005). Negro president: Jefferson and the slave power. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.<br />3. Conlin, M. F. (2019). The constitutional origins of the American Civil War. Cambridge University Press. <br />4. Wilentz, S. (2016). The politicians and the egalitarians: The hidden history of American politics. W. W. Norton & Company.<br />5. Balmer, Randall. " The Historian’s Pickaxe: Uncovering the Racist Origins of the Religious Right." The Changing Terrain of Religious Freedom, 2021, pp. 173-185.<br />6. Balkin, Jack M. (2019) "The Recent Unpleasantness: Understanding the Cycles of Constitutional Time," Indiana Law Journal: Vol. 94 : Iss. 1 , Article 6.. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol94/iss1/6<br /><br /></span></span></div>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-34943188650545270582022-11-30T15:21:00.007-06:002022-11-30T15:53:28.798-06:00Review: The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World By Barry Gewen How did Henry Kissinger go from being the man the Playboy Bunnies would most like to have for dinner to a man hated by both left and right; a man who became an issue in a presidential campaign forty years after he had left government. Gewen answers that question in this intellectual biography. It's fascinating.<br /><br />Kissinger was fond of citing the following story: When the nefarious Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642, Pope Urban VIII is said to have declared: “If there is a God, the Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not … well, he had a successful life.” I have never been fond of Kissinger, considering some of his policies and actions to be wrong-headed, if not criminal. That being said, Kissinger was the great realist and perhaps the most influential Secretary of State in the 20th century. How he got there is the intriguing subject of this book.<br /><br />Kissinger distrusted democracy, suggests the author, after witnessing the rise of Hitler through the democratic process. (The early section of the book details how quite precisely.) The lesson Kissinger learned from that is that democracy fails at thwarting tyranny and totalitarianism. Free speech can co-exist in a non-democratic society. He had the choice of returning to Germany following WW II but having served in the Army and achieved his American citizenship, he had been thoroughly Americanized, even coming to appreciate those from the fly-over states as being a more accurate representative of American culture. He wrote in his memoirs, “Nowhere else is there to be found the same generosity of spirit and absence of malice, as in small-town America.”<br /><br />Kissinger despised pieties, believing that, like Richelieu, chaos can be a useful instrument of policy and furtherance of goals for the nation-state. He ultimately lost his position in government by losing support of both the left and right. His mantra was simply that the end (order and stability) justified the means. National interest was paramount, and morality in its service was futile and counter-productive.<br /><br />The author goes into some detail discussing the influence of Leo Strauss, Hans Morganthau and Hannah Arendt on the politics of Kissinger. All were of German Jewish background. Arendt is best known for her seminal works on the origin of totalitarianism, a pertinent topic given that the 20th century gave rise to innumerable tyrannical isms: Communism, Nazism, Fascism, and now Islamism. All of them had seen the failure of democracy during and following the Weimar Republic and the democratic rise of Hitler. This left all of them suspicious of democracy and populism in particular. Each opposed quantification as a way of making decisions (the direct opposite of Robert McNamara.) Foreign policy and history have a subjective quality, and one needs to beware of idealism, marching into some place you don't understand even with the best intentions.<br /><br />Kissinger’s role under Nixon was surprising, given Nixon’s constant belittling of Jews and overt anti-Semitism. So many in both parties feared Nixon’s irascible temper and general craziness, they saw Kissinger as a temperate restraint on Nixon. He was the ultimate realist, believing power should be used in the service of the nation, and he initially opposed MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) arguing that the Russians would be emboldened by the policy as they could never believe the West would initiate its own destruction. His preference was for tactical nuclear weapons, and it was important the enemy believed the U.S. would use them. That was the only realistic self-defense strategy.<br /><br />A very readable and intriguing book.Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-17278996140451375692022-11-01T08:15:00.005-05:002022-11-22T12:18:23.116-06:00Packing the Court: Some Musings<p class="a-spacing-none a-text-normal" id="title" style="text-align: left;"> I am reading James MacGregor Burns' <i><span class="a-size-extra-large" id="productTitle">Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court. </span></i></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you are worried about current trends in politics, this will calm you. We’ve been there before. The battle between the Court, Executive, and Legislature began with Marshall’s court; unenumerated rights and processes were at the forefront of debates constantly in the early 19th century, the decisions in Marbury (judicial review) and McCullough (national bank) plus numerous others also illustrate the battle over national v. state rights; extreme partisanship; the division of the country by sectional and class interests, east v. west, industrial and financial v. agricultural and rural; and not the least, the Electoral College and election of the President with the election of 1800, and 1824 (</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">John Quincy Adin ams defeated Andrew Jackson in 1824 by garnering more votes in the House of Representatives, even though Jackson originally received more popular and electoral votes.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">) And so it goes, with only the personalities changing. The issues have never been resolved.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">The book’s title is perhaps misleading. When we think of "packing the court" FDR's attempt to add justices to the court immediately springs to mind, yet ever since Marshall's Marbury decision that shifted an enormous amount of power to the court with judicial review, presidents have used politic</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">al cronyism to add their political adherents to the court. Some one-term presidents, like Trump, have been very fortunate to be able to change the balance of the court in their favor by adding numerous justices that favor their political view. Unt</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">il Trump, Ronald Reagan had appointed the most justices. William Harrison, Andrew Johnson, Zachary Taylor and Jimmy Carter, all had none. Washington (obviously) and FDR each had eight, so FDR got to pack the court anyway, given his many terms in office. </span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I won't go on about the validity of Marshall's decision even though one would think that "originalists" would be appalled by judicial review as it was certainly unenumerated, but it does make one stop and pause to realize that unelected judges can have an </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">enormous influence on the direction of the country for many years, an influence even contrary to those in elected office.</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">FDR was appalled by judicial review. During a radio talk in 1937 he referred to <i>Marbury v Madison</i>. The power to declare a law unconstitutional was nowhere in the Constitution, he remarked, and, in fact, Justice Bushrod Washngton almost admitted as much just a little later when he argued the Court should "presume in favor of [a law's] validity until its violation of the Constitution is proved beyond all reasonable doubt. "The Court", Roosevelt continued, " has beem acting not as a judicial body, but as a policy-making body."<br /></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">I was surprised to learn that following the failure of the Jefferson administration to impeach Pickering and Chase in their effort to get rid of Federalist judges, Marshall was so terrified of the prospect of impeachment that he wrote a friend proposing to</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> mollify the Republicans by giving Congress in concert with the president the right to overturn decisions of the Supreme Court</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">. </span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">The antagonism toward a court that is of opposite political bent probably began with Thomas Jefferson following the packing of the court with Federalists by John Adams. Jefferson wrote Spencer Roane (a vigorous opponent of Marshall’s nationalism and an advocate of slavery, who, ironically, came close to being chosen as Chief Justice in place of Marshall, an appointment that would have drastically changed the nature of the court in the United States):</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral la</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>w. My construction of the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its a</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>ction; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal. I will explain myself by examples, which, having occurred while I was in office, are better known to me, and the principles which governed them.</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>*</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">Ultimately, I think Joshua Braver has it right in his article on court-packing:</span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Whether court-packing </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>continues to be a live political option will depend on the vagaries of politics.</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i> </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Unless dispelled, however, the common historical narrative will continue to lie</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i> </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>like a half-buried loaded gun, ready to be unearthed whenever the Supreme </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Court threatens the agenda of a new or realigned political party.</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i> </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>.... Rather </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>than colonize and infiltrate the Court, Congress curbed it and forced it to re</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>treat through targeted and reversible measures, </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">such as jurisdiction-stripping.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> [my emphasis] </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>That kind of retaliation against the Court is the “hallowed American political</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i> </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>tradition.” </i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Today, liberal democracy is on the decline, and court-packing has helped</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>push it there. New times demand reformulations of old theories that encourage</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>resistance against courts. One response is a knee-jerk reaction that goes to the</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>opposite extreme and accepts judicial supremacy. But this hermetic sealing off</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>of politics from law would be just as much a break with American tradition as</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>court-packing. Going forward, the question is not how to shut down the fierce</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>and inevitable conflict between the elected branches and the Supreme Court,</i></span></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; mso-border-between: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>but how to manage it. **</i></span></p><p style="border: medium none; line-height: 27.5pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 3.7500000000000004pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin: 0pt 3.75pt 0pt 36pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -36pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">**Braver, Joshua. "Court-Packing: An American Tradition?" </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"><i>Boston College Law Review</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">, vol. 61, no. 8, 24 Nov. 2020, pp. 2749-2808. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. </span><a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/361263545.pdf" title="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/361263545.pdf"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/361263545.pdf</u></span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;"> </span></p><p style="border: medium none; line-height: 27.5pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 3.7500000000000004pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin: 0pt 3.75pt 0pt 36pt; mso-border-between: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none; mso-border-left-alt: none; mso-border-right-alt: none; mso-border-top-alt: none; text-indent: -36pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">*</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">"Article 1, Section 8, Clause 18: Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane." Electronic Resources from the University of Chicago Press Books Division, press-pubs. </span><a href="http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_18s16.html" title="http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_18s16.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_18s16.html</u></span></a></p><p style="border-bottom: none; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; border: medium none; line-height: 27.5pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 3.7500000000000004pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin: 0pt 3.75pt 0pt 36pt; mso-border-between: none; text-indent: -36pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #000000;">For more information on Spence Roane (whom I had never heard of) see </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Roane" title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Roane"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Carlito'; font-size: 14pt; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0563c1;"><u>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Roane</u></span></a></p><p class="a-spacing-none a-text-normal" id="title" style="text-align: left;"><i><span class="a-size-extra-large" id="productTitle"> </span></i><i><span class="a-size-extra-large" id="productTitle"></span></i></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-76247857741933250102022-09-01T06:44:00.008-05:002022-09-01T06:44:55.051-05:00The Deserter and the General's Daughter by Nelson DeMille<p><span style="font-family: Roboto;"><i>The General's Daughter</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Roboto;">"As a CID warrant officer, Brenner had to play many roles. "I was a cook and a chemical weapons officer, which, in the army, are the same thing." That sets the tone for this book. I had seen the movie with John Travolta, who did a great job, and this is one of those rarities where the movie and book complement each other very well. The movie captures the spirit of the book.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Roboto;">It's rare that I give a novel 5 stars. I usually reserve that many for important works of non-fiction. I make an exception for this novel. Aside from Brenner's wise-cracking, always enjoyable, the book has an intriguing mystery, a thorough investigation, lots of suspects, and even a bit of romance. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Roboto;">This is one of those books which some of the more puritanical among us will complain is unnecessarily graphic. I disagree. The novel is about honor, disgrace, writing past wrongs, a whole panoply of emotional responses and how they affect us. The scenes are incredibly uncomfortable and necessarily so because they pull the reader into the moral quagmire faced by the participants. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Roboto;">I listened to it as an audiobook read by Scott brick who is the perfect narrator for this title.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 12pt;"><i>The Deserter</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 12pt;">I worry when established writers take their protagonists out of the country. Usually, I suspect it is because they want to be able to write off a trip to some country they've always had a hankering to visit so they do in order to collect local color for the book. But Venezuela? Why would anyone want to go to a country on the verge of ruin and chaos -- at least that's the way it's described in this extended travelogue.</span></p><p class="zw-paragraph" data-line-height="1.2" data-margin-bottom="0pt" data-textformat="{"type":"text"}" data_styles="{"type":"text"}" style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0pt;"><span class="EOP"> </span><span style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 12pt;">Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, both CID officers, (think Paul Brenner and Cynthia Sunhill from the General's Daughter with whom they bear striking similarities in looks and speech) need to go undercover to Venezuela to bring back a Captain Kyle Mercer who deserted his unit and committed some heinous crimes in Afghanistan. He has now been seen by a less than reliable witness in Venezuela in a brothel for underage girls in the slums of Caracas. Clearly, the Army has way, way too much money if it were to indulge in such a risky venture, kidnap (or kill) this guy Mercer.</span></p><p class="zw-paragraph" data-line-height="1.2" data-margin-bottom="0pt" data-textformat="{"type":"text"}" data_styles="{"type":"text"}" style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0pt;"><span class="EOP"> </span></p><p class="zw-paragraph" data-line-height="1.2" data-margin-bottom="0pt" data-textformat="{"type":"text"}" data_styles="{"type":"text"}" style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 12pt;">I really admire many things about Venezuela, the foremost being the conductor Dudamel and the truly magnificent Youth orchestra and high school music programs. That is not the country of this book and I found the plot to be a mish-mash of plot holes. I did like the Paul Brenner-like banter of the thinly disguised Brodie. Why invent a new character when you already had one on the books? (Perhaps because he wrote this with his son, Alex DeMille, another puzzler, the way to get his son a head start in the writier's market.)</span></p><p class="zw-paragraph" data-line-height="1.2" data-margin-bottom="0pt" data-textformat="{"type":"text"}" data_styles="{"type":"text"}" style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0pt;"><span class="EOP"> </span></p><p class="zw-paragraph" data-line-height="1.2" data-margin-bottom="0pt" data-textformat="{"type":"text"}" data_styles="{"type":"text"}" style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 12pt;">I have read (or listened to) several DeMille and enjoyed the Brenner and Corey characters. I was disappointed in this one and certainly won't read the The Cuban Affair, which other readers have described as being similar in its travelogue nature. I enjoy reading the history and current affairs of other countries be they failed or successful; I also enjoy a good mystery/thriller/police procedural like the General's Daughter (5 stars); I do not enjoy one that succeeds at neither. </span></p><p class="zw-paragraph" data-line-height="1.2" data-margin-bottom="0pt" data-textformat="{"type":"text"}" data_styles="{"type":"text"}" style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0pt;"><span class="EOP"> </span></p><p class="zw-paragraph" data-line-height="1.2" data-margin-bottom="0pt" data-textformat="{"type":"text"}" data_styles="{"type":"text"}" style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-42874804129194238672022-08-23T15:33:00.000-05:002022-08-23T15:33:21.123-05:00The Ninth Amendment v Substantive Due Process and rights.<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> My Goodreads friend Alan Johnson, author of several very interesting books has been writing lately on the use of the Ninth Amendment as a better way to protect unenumerate rights, which, after all, is what the ninth is all about.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>I quote from a passage he posted to Goodreads that I find particularly enlightening and look forward to a book I hope he writes.</i></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">During the last couple of days, I have been studying the <i>Dobbs</i> decision and planning an essay on it with the working title “Originalism Gone Wild: A Critical Analysis of <i>Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</i>
(U.S. 2022).” The joint dissenting opinion of Justices Breyer,
Sotomayor, and Kagan is one of the most brilliant and beautiful judicial
opinions I have ever read. (I was a practicing lawyer for more than
three decades, focusing especially on constitutional and public law
litigation.) This dissenting opinion eviscerates originalism and offers a
clear and compelling alternative mode of constitutional analysis. As
did I in <i>The Electoral College</i>, 137–39, they rely, in part, on Chief Justice John Marshall’s analysis in <i>McColloch v. Maryland</i>,
17 U.S. 316 (1819). I will elaborate on such matters in my forthcoming
paper, which I will post on academia.edu and link in the present
Goodreads topic.<br /><br /><i>Dobbs</i> and most of U.S. constitutional
jurisprudence have studiously avoided the Ninth Amendment. I find it
interesting that your proposed constitutional amendments <b>replace</b>
the language of the Ninth Amendment with new substantive constitutional
provisions. It is an interesting question whether it is advisable to
delete the original language of the Ninth Amendment. In law school
(1977), I wrote an 81-page paper titled “The Ninth Amendment as a
Constitutional Reference of Individual Rights.” I will never publish
that paper, because I now disagree with some of its positions and
applications. However, the historical background of the Ninth Amendment
is very interesting. In particular, it is highly questionable whether
the Supreme Court’s substantive due process theory, based on the liberty
component of the Fourteenth Amendment (or the liberty component of the
Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause in cases involving federal
legislation or executive action) is sound. And it is substantive due
process—which Justice Scalia once called (not without reason) an
“oxymoron”—that the <i>Dobbs</i> majority, especially Justice Thomas,
wishes to cast into oblivion, together with constitutional protections
regarding privacy, contraception, and same-sex marriage. A much sounder
analysis, in my view, is to base these constitutional rights on the
Ninth Amendment, as Madison and other of the Framers arguably intended.
Your proposed constitutional amendments attempt to codify such
substantive rights (clearly in order to avoid any future textual or
originalist attack on them). That is all to the good. But the problem,
as Madison recognized, is to avoid the legal maxim of <i>expressio unius est exclusio alterius</i>
(“the expression of one is the exclusion of others”)—the principle of
construction that, for many centuries, has been applied to statutory and
contractual interpretation by British and U.S. courts. This is exactly
the reason why Madison proposed the language that became the Ninth
Amendment. I will develop these ideas further in my forthcoming paper as
well as in the third book, <i>Reason and Human Government</i>, of my
philosophical trilogy on free will, ethics, and political philosophy.
The paper will be completed sometime in the next week or two. The book
will require at least another year or two to prepare; it will cover many
other things in addition to constitutional interpretation.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Alan E. Johnson, author of <i>The Electoral College: Failures of Original Intent and Proposed Constitutional and Statutory Changes for Direct Popular Vote, 2nd Edition, The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience, and Reason and Human Ethics</i><br /><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-44797880538990127372022-08-16T12:25:00.004-05:002022-08-16T12:34:53.903-05:00"Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death"<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;">That phrase, attributed to Patrick Henry in a speech before the Second Virginia Convention, credits himwith swinging the delegates to supporting the revolution by providing troops. Too bad it only applied to white colonials.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;">Henry in his attack on ratification of the Constitution adopted a very different tone with regard to slaves who most definitely were to be given the choice of liberty or death (well, death maybe.) Robin Einhorn examined the documents and records** of the history of the ratification in an enlightening article.* Henry was adamantly opposed to ratification on several grounds. He thought it too democratic for one, as it would institute majority rule at the national level. He also was afraid of what the national government could do to abolish slavery. "They're coming to take your niggers," was his cry.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;">Even though he decried slavery as an evil, its abolition should never happen as it was so tied to the economics of the south. </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 279.399px; top: 708.798px; transform: scaleX(0.877958);">:"We ought to possess them in the </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 165.599px; top: 728.798px; transform: scaleX(0.853654);">manner we have inherited them from our ancestors, as their manumission </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 165.799px; top: 748.598px; transform: scaleX(0.881869);">is incompatible with the felicity of the country." The "felicity"of owning should not be subject to the will of the majority because not everyone understood the importance of owning slaves, the decision "</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> should not</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 166.198px; top: 807.398px; transform: scaleX(0.845331);"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>be "in the hands of those who have no similarity of situation with </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 166.198px; top: 827.398px; transform: scaleX(1.00365);">us."</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 166.198px; top: 827.398px; transform: scaleX(1.00365);">His attitude was interesting in that the Constitution's compromises heavily favored that "peculiar institution." The Fugitive slave clause was a gift to slave-holding states. Protection of property was paramount and the slave-holding states had a decided advantage in Congress thanks to the 3/5ths rule.<br /></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 166.198px; top: 827.398px; transform: scaleX(1.00365);">Einhorn proposes that even though many historians saw politics as encompassing both national and state ideals, the interests of southern slave-holding states differed radically from those where slavery was not present. A national government with majority rule could easily overwhelm the interests of slave-holding states. It was much like the argument for maintaining and arming state militias in the 2nd Amendment. The southern states desperately feared slave uprisings and didn't trust a national army to protect them. In time of war, white southern males could be called upon to serve and that would leave their plantations without supervision.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 166.198px; top: 827.398px; transform: scaleX(1.00365);">Taxation on the national level was also a fear. Henry argued a majoritarian national government could impose "ruinous" taxation on southern plantation leading to the necessity of manumitting or selling slaves to pay the taxes. Even though it was never levied, the $10 tax on imported slaves before 1808 when the trade could be prohibited, displayed the dangers of a national government. </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 164.8px; top: 277.798px; transform: scaleX(0.899672);">"Those feeble ten," he lamented, "cannot prevent the</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 164.299px; top: 297.998px; transform: scaleX(0.87674);">passing the most oppressive tax law." (He meant the 10 representatives Virginia would have in Congress even with the 3/5ths Clause. Henry was not impressed by the direct tax clause that apportioned tax based on population, which Federalists argued would prevent such a broad tax.)</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 580.197px; top: 537.999px; transform: scaleX(0.913054);">"The oppression </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 165.397px; top: 562.999px; transform: scaleX(0.866679);">arising from taxation,"he explained,"is not from the amount but, from the </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 165.197px; top: 579.598px; transform: scaleX(0.873571);">mode." The direct tax clause governed only the amount of Virginia's total </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 164.797px; top: 599.798px; transform: scaleX(0.879842);">tax liability, "yet the proportion </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 397.997px; top: 599.398px; transform: scaleX(0.867909);">of Virginia being once fixed, might be laid </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 165.197px; top: 620.199px; transform: scaleX(0.865635);">on blacks and blacks only. For the mode of raising the proportion of each</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 165.797px; top: 640.598px; transform: scaleX(0.875858);"> State being to be directed by Congress, they might make slaves the sole </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 165.397px; top: 664.999px; transform: scaleX(0.884648);">object to raise it of." </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 165.397px; top: 664.999px; transform: scaleX(0.884648);"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-b5ae580d-7fff-2cd8-d00d-c913752060e6" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Einhorn has written a fascinating analysis of the economic arguments made by Henry and his supporters against ratification. His analysis also sheds light on Madison's famous piece in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Federalist Papers </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">regarding factions and the advantages of a larger republic in protecting property. . In a large republic, a majority sharing any "passion or interest"can "be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression." In the United States, as Madison famously wrote in Federalist 51, society "will be broken into so many parts,interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority." Little did he know...</span></b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 18.3333px; left: 164.299px; top: 297.998px; transform: scaleX(0.87674);"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">*<span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 83.3333px; top: 225.161px; transform: scaleX(1.03341);">Society for Historians of the Early American Republic</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 83.3333px; top: 309.731px; transform: scaleX(1.07548);">"Patrick Henry's Case against the Constitution: The Structural Problem with Slavery"</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 83.3333px; top: 329.731px; transform: scaleX(1.08521);">Author(s): Robin L. Einhorn</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 83.3333px; top: 349.731px; transform: scaleX(0.979759);">Source:<i> </i></span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 152.934px; top: 349.427px; transform: scaleX(1.0971);"><i>Journal of the Early Republic</i>,</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 430.025px; top: 349.427px;"> </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 437.167px; top: 349.731px; transform: scaleX(1.07644);">Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 549-573</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 83.3333px; top: 369.731px; transform: scaleX(1.08904);">Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 83.3333px; top: 389.731px; transform: scaleX(1.07428);">Early American Republic <a href=" http://www.jstor.org/stable/3124758" target="_blank"> </a></span><a href=" http://www.jstor.org/stable/3124758" target="_blank"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 184.973px; top: 409.731px;"> </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 192.123px; top: 409.731px; transform: scaleX(0.868968);">http://www.jstor.org/stable/3124758</span></a></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span style="font-size: small;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 192.123px; top: 409.731px; transform: scaleX(0.868968);">**</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="left: 192.123px; top: 409.731px; transform: scaleX(0.868968);"><span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 15px; left: 166.998px; top: 928.271px; transform: scaleX(0.892002);">The Documentary </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 15px; left: 365.198px; top: 928.671px; transform: scaleX(0.883881);">History of the Ratification of the Constitution,</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 15px; left: 638.498px; top: 926.571px; transform: scaleX(0.899004);">(vols. 9-10,</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-size: 15px; left: 166.798px; top: 945.071px; transform: scaleX(0.88464);">Madison, WI, 1990, 1993)</span></span> </span></span></span></span></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-88284492028489663262022-07-03T10:52:00.000-05:002022-07-03T10:52:33.677-05:00Review: Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 by John Ferling<p>Anyone who believes we are in a period of unprecedented partisanship should read this book. I have always found history to be calming because it's obvious humans have changed little and the issues and enmities repeatedly appear with only minor adulteration. The issue of whether we should have more or less government that we argue about today was a battle royale among the Founders. Adams, Hamilton, and Washington, all having seen the powerlessness and inefficiency of the colonies acting independently in the fight against the King, and then in the Articles of Confederation, America's first Constitution, wanted a stronger, national government that could better defend against outside interests. Jefferson and Madison, romantics both, believed less government was always better. Sound familiar?</p><p>The seeds of that dispute lay with disagreements much earlier. Spain was willing to make considerable concessions regarding land if ownership of west Florida and New Orleans could be decided and traffic on the Mississippi ceased. Southern states were furious, while northern ones didn't care and the issue was never resolved, but a failure to have a national policy rankled. Couple that with the inability to get colonies to pay their share to support the troops, who were starving at Valley Forge while monarchists partied in Philadelphia, and you had more impetus for a stronger, more national government. That resulted in the 2nd Constitution of 1789 unfortunately delivering more land mines (the 3/5ths clause and support for slavery) leading to the Civil War. The battles between Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson in the Cabinet presaged the election of 1800, a democratic debacle. Each side mobilized its own social media, buying newspapers which were partisan rags.</p><p>The campaign was ugly. War service of the candidates was an issue then as now, with opponents reminding the electorate (white property owners only then) that Thomas Jefferson had sat out the revolution at home in Monticello. Thomas Jefferson had hired James Callender, a British immigrant to write anti-Adams essays. "Calumny dripped from Callender's pen." Jefferson bankrolled many anti-Adams journalists. He unsparingly "flayed Washington," who, he claimed, had wanted to be a dictator, called Hamilton the "Judas Iscariot of our country," and called Adams a war monger and "poor old man who is in his dotage." The Federalists under Adams were no better. Callender was arrested and charged under the Alien and Sedition Acts -- and we thought the USA Patriot Act was bad -- passed during the Adams' administration. Callender later turned on Jefferson when he was not awarded a plum political post in addition to his monetary rewards. He then went on the dig up the story of Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemmings, a charge that seems now not to have been true, the DNA evidence being somewhat inconclusive given the number of other Jefferson males in the area, although I suppose the jury is still out in some minds. But I digress, the only point being that campaigns in the early 18th century were often more bitter than those today.</p><p>Thomas Jefferson had hired James Callender, a British immigrant to write anti-Adams essays. "Calumny dripped from Callender's pen." Jefferson bankrolled many anti-Adams journalists. He unsparingly "flayed Washington," who, he claimed, had wanted to be a dictator, called Hamilton the "Judas Iscariot of our country," and called Adams a war monger and "poor old man who is in his dotage." The Federalists under Adams were no better. Callender was arrested and charged under the Alien and Sedition Acts -- and we thought the USA Patriot Act was bad -- passed during the Adams' administration. Callender later turned on Jefferson when he was not awarded a plum political post in addition to his monetary rewards. He then went on the dig up the story of Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemmings, a charge that seems now not to have been true, the DNA evidence being somewhat inconclusive given the number of other Jefferson males in the area, although I suppose the jury is still out in some minds. But I digress, the only point being that campaigns in the early 18th century were often more bitter than those today.</p><p>Hamilton doesn't come off as well as he did in Ferling's earlier books; Jefferson and Adams better. Hamilton is portrayed as power hungry and responsible for the ostensible sins of the Adams administration such as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Personally, I admire Adams for his peacefully relinquishing power -- I believe the first instance in history a leader stepped down from power without some kind of violence -- but Hamilton is getting a bad rap. His emphasis on honoring the debts and fiscal stability was very important. You have to feel sorry for Adams, sandwiched between Hamilton and Jefferson.</p><p>Adams was chained to the Alien and Sedition Acts which were wildly unpopular, especially following the arrest and imprisonment of Callender for his calumnious broadsides against the Federalists (which eponymous society today appears to have completely abandoned.) Republican (same problem -- it's certainly ironic that the name became associated with abolitionism several decades later even if the pro-slave party of Jefferson and Madison became just the Democratic Party) papers sprang up all over supported by wealthy landowners and even in one case by a corporation that sold shares for just that purpose. Their rhetoric was bitter: The Aurora called Washington's Farewell Address the "loathings of a sick mind," asked whether he was "an impostor or an apostate" and accused him of being traitorous, like Benedict Arnold. Adams was but "old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled and toothless" and, "like polluted water to be cast out the back door, "a repulsive pedant...a gross hypocrite".</p><p>Read this with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38857641?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1">America Afire Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800.</a> There were times when listening to this book was like listening to news programs today. Virginia threatening to secede if Jefferson was not elected, militias formed to storm the Capitol if their candidate was not elected, Jefferson warning that he couldn't control his supporters, extreme politicking and horse trading, and this was just the third election in the nation's history. I think a good case could be made that the 1789 constitution was certainly not worth much and a civil war just a few decades later adds credence to this view. Given the number of times in our history when the winner of the popular vote did not become president, I wonder if it isn't time to dump a system that didn't even work from the start. The story of the friendship and then enmity between these two giants is well known, but Ferling has written a very readable account that sets the scene well.</p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6846404.post-85566732020350296132022-06-27T12:47:00.001-05:002022-06-27T12:47:44.331-05:00"The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War"<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> Eisenhower warned of a "military industrial complex". Shortly thereafter a "missile gap" with the Soviet Union was discovered and the Kennedy administration poured money into resolving that gap which it was discovered later never existed. That series of coincidental events has repeated itself for the past seven decades. Whenever the increase in military spending falls to just 5% some external threat will be discovered that requires an immediate spending increase in order to maintain our national security. Alexander Cockburn in his article, "The Military Industrial Virus"** documents the virtual sine wave of military spending increase as a result of some imagine external threat every time spending reaches the magic floor of 5% annual increases. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">We have become immune to military excess. Remember the kerfuffle over the $640 toilet seat? It cause quite a stir at the time, yet in 2018 it was revealed that the Air Force was now paying $10,000 for a toilet seat <i>cover</i> and there was nary a ripple of protest. When asked to explain, an Air Force official justified the cost because it was required to save "the manufacturer from 'losing revenue and profit.'"</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So now we have really expensive weapons and the evidence is accumulating they don't work very well and the money spent comes at the expense of training and maintenance. Mines are an inexpensive yet devastating threat to American warships but the Navy has only 11 dilapidated minesweepers of which only three are allocated to the Middle East where Iran has thousands that could be laid in the Straits of Hormuz through which a large portion of the world's oil supply must travel. The Navy is said to rely on the MH-53E mine search and destroy helicopter that has proven to be the most dangerous machine for those who fly them, killing 132 crewmen in some 58 crashes since their introduction in 1980. They are the most dangerous aircraft in the military's arsenal, just not for the enemy. The Osprey follows close behind. The new multi-billion dollar Littoral ships, nicknamed "little crappy ships" by the crew that was supposed to be able to sweep for mines has yet to get that equipment working. New helmets worn by soldiers in Afghanistan and Ira have been shown to cause <i>more</i> damage to solder's brains from explosions rather than less. And the F-35 that saw its first combat operations 17 years after the program was initiated could make only one sortie per plane every three days because of maintenance and cost issues. The Pentagon's former chief testing official said they would not have survived combat without protection from other planes. They are so expensive only a small portion of the original order could be purchased.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 140px; top: 174.274px; transform: scaleX(1.0415);">Has it helped?<i> Indeed, we have become a fearful nation, a bunkered nation, bogged</i></span><i><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 200.934px; transform: scaleX(1.09826);">down in never-ending wars abroad accompanied by shrinking civil </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 227.594px; transform: scaleX(1.03541);">liberties at home. We now spend almost as much on defense as the rest </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 254.254px; transform: scaleX(1.10514);">of the world combined, yet the sinews of our supporting economy, </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 280.914px; transform: scaleX(1.09593);">particularly the all-important manufacturing sector, are weakening</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 307.574px; transform: scaleX(1.1203);">at an alarming rate, threatening the existence of the high-income, </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);">middle-class consumer society we built after World War II.</span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"> </span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);">That quote is from an essay by Franklin Spinney*** that he wrote after he retired entitled "The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War"* in which he argues that the current war-centric foreign policy has placed Congress and the White in a straitjacket with regard to military funding which has made the control much less safe. The end of the Cold War, rather than producing a "peace dividend" had precisely the opposite effect. The military bureaucracy, politicians, and business interests had become so intermingled and dependent on one another that cutting back on defense expenditures would ha e caused massive disruptions to the economy. Even Bernie Sanders, for example, who fought against the F-35, was more than happy to approve their purchase when assured some would be based in Vermont. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);">The corruption of the system affects the military as well. While Seventh Fleet ships were colliding with civilian tankers and freighters, killing several seamen, the admirals, many of them senior, were being bought off with prostitutes and money to have the ships serviced by "Fat" Leonard's shipyards. So far, sixteen admirals have been found guilty of bribery and fraud. Twelve more await trial. Politicians of both parties will do anything to get parts for new weapons manufactured in their districts, so contracts are spread around the country to make sure of political support. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"> </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 676.66px; top: 488.095px; transform: scaleX(0.992269);"><span class="highlight selected appended">The beauty</span> of the system lies in</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 659.993px; top: 506.429px; transform: scaleX(0.927793);"> its self-reinforcing nature. Huge cost </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 659.993px; top: 524.762px; transform: scaleX(0.925909);">overruns on these contracts not only </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 659.993px; top: 543.095px; transform: scaleX(1.04959);">secure a handsome profit for the </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 659.993px; top: 561.429px; transform: scaleX(1.00039);">contractor, but also guarantee that </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 659.993px; top: 579.762px; transform: scaleX(1.03576);">the number of weapons acquired </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 659.993px; top: 598.095px; transform: scaleX(1.05411);">always falls short of the number </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);">originally requested... These bureaucratic belief systems slowly insinuated themselves deeply and almost invisibly into a domestic political economy that nurtures financial-political factions of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC). The result is a voracious appetite for money that is sustained by a self-serving flood of ideological propaganda, cloaked by a stifling climate of excessive secrecy. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us to guard against the corrosive danger of exactly this in his 1961 farewell address.2 He was ignored, and today, fifty years later, the domestic political imperative to steadily increase the money flowing into the MICC reaches into every corner of our society. It distorts and debases our economy, our politics, our universities and schools, our media, our think tanks, and our research labs, just as Eisenhower predicted it would. </span></span></i><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);">[p.57]</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 20px; left: 120px; top: 253.207px; transform: scaleX(0.87587);"></span></span></span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);">Continuous small wars (or the threat of them) are essential to the MICC. Those companies are usually not in a position to convert their business to civilian use. Having been tied to the military procurement system that virtually guarantees them a profit, moving into the civilian realm would require expertise in marketing and dealing with competition they're simply not prepared for. It's much easier and rewarding to simply have a Congressman in the pocket and a system that feels constantly under threat. Congressional and bureaucratic staff who deal with procurement of weapons systems are virtually guaranteed a job at one of the big military conglomerates at substantial salaries when they decide to leave government. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);">We have fallen into the trap of believing that ever-increasing complexity and complicated technology is the answer to military success, yet we have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam and Afghanistan nor the Soviet experience there that showed how simple local forces can beat better technology. It does not appear we have learned the lessons of the Millenium 2002 War Games in which a vastly inferior force in Iran destroyed an American naval battle group. "</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050607; font-family: georgia, "palatino linotype", "book antiqua", palatino, "times new roman", Times, serif; letter-spacing: 0.2px;">“The impact of the [opposing force’s] ability to render a U.S. carrier battle group — the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy — militarily worthless stunned most of the MC ’02 participants.” It was all over in ten minutes.</span><span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px;">**** "</span>The dogmatic belief that greater weapons-system complexity and,
even worse, greater organizational complexity enhance combat effectiveness is at the epicenter of the belief system sustaining the MICC." After a seventy-nine day bombing campaign in Kosovo (a tiny country with an economy smaller than Fairfax County, Virginia) the Serbs left. Sophisticated radar of the US planes was defeated by microwave ovens used to decoy expensive homing missiles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; left: 120px; top: 334.234px; transform: scaleX(1.08353);"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 641.66px; top: 616.429px; transform: scaleX(0.972387);">Fans of Reagan continue to brag how he caused the decline of the USSR, mostly by forcing them into an unsustainable weapons development and purchase cycle that corrupted and bankrupted them. Should we fail to rein in the MICC, I fear we will follow them down the same path? </span></span></span></div><p><br /></p><p>*<a href="https://www3.nd.edu/~druccio/Spinney.pdf">https://www3.nd.edu/~druccio/Spinney.pdf</a></p><p>**<a href="https://archive.harpers.org/2019/06/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2019-06-0087519.pdf">https://archive.harpers.org/2019/06/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2019-06-0087519.pdf</a></p><p>***I<span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 388.222px; top: 1111.43px; transform: scaleX(1.01013);">n 1983, Franklin <span class="highlight selected appended">Spinn</span>ey, was "a thirty-</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 388.222px; top: 1129.76px; transform: scaleX(0.94937);">seven-year-old analyst in the Pen</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 388.222px; top: 1148.1px; transform: scaleX(0.948312);">tagon’s Office of Program Analysis </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 359.172px; top: 1166.43px; transform: scaleX(1.02229);">and Evaluation, who testified to Congress </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 359.172px; top: 1184.76px; transform: scaleX(0.94889);">that the cost of the ever-more complex </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 103.095px; transform: scaleX(0.984324);">weapons that the military insisted on </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 121.429px; transform: scaleX(0.949687);">buying always grew many times faster </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 139.762px; transform: scaleX(1.06146);">than the overall defense budget. In </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 158.095px; transform: scaleX(0.979504);">consequence, planes, ships, and tanks </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 176.429px; transform: scaleX(1.00263);">were never replaced on a one-to-one </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 194.762px; transform: scaleX(1.00131);">basis, which in turn ensured that the </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 213.095px; transform: scaleX(1.04609);">armed forces got smaller and older. </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 231.429px; transform: scaleX(0.97956);">Planes, for instance, were kept in ser</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 249.762px; transform: scaleX(1.06166);">vice for longer periods of time and </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 268.095px; transform: scaleX(0.992851);">were maintained in poor states of re</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 286.429px; transform: scaleX(1.0372);">pair owing to their increasing com</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 304.762px; transform: scaleX(1.04859);">plexity. As to be expected, the high </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 323.095px; transform: scaleX(1.02705);">command did not react favorably to </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 341.429px; transform: scaleX(1.1218);">these home truths. They allowed </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 359.762px; transform: scaleX(1.0283);">Spinney to keep his job, but stopped </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 378.095px; transform: scaleX(1.09027);">assigning him anything of impor</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 396.429px; transform: scaleX(1.00646);">tance. He spent the rest of his career </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 650.006px; top: 414.762px; transform: scaleX(1.00855);">ensconced in a Pentagon office at the </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 668.339px; top: 433.095px; transform: scaleX(0.968034);">heart of the military-industrial ma</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 668.339px; top: 451.429px; transform: scaleX(1.04346);">chine, pondering and probing its </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 668.339px; top: 469.762px; transform: scaleX(1.025);">institutional personality."</span></p><p><span dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.6667px; left: 668.339px; top: 469.762px; transform: scaleX(1.025);">****<a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/millennium-challenge-iran-destroyed-america-war-game-197261">https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/millennium-challenge-iran-destroyed-america-war-game-197261</a> and <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/">https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/</a></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Welch's Rarebitshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183345901778644627noreply@blogger.com0