Joe Jones

My 1st time in Japan, long ago, we saw this guy driving a tiny lil custom truck, singing a phrase through a loudspeaker. The melody was gentle, spiritual. We asked our translator “What’s he singing?” She said “He’s saying ‘baaaaked potaaatoooo.’ It is baked potato truck.” I think about that a lot.

This expands a similar purge recently at the Naval Academy library, in Maryland. Last month, civilian Navy officials, following orders originating from Mr. Hegseth, pulled from shelves books including one that critiqued “The Bell Curve,” a 1994 text that argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than white people. But the academy kept “The Bell Curve” itself on its shelves.

You’re allowed to argue that black people and women are genetically inferior. But you’re NOT allowed to argue they are NOT inferior because that’s divisive. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...

GHW Bush you mean…

HND is a madhouse this morning. 25 minute line for security screening. Lines out the door of every duty-free shop. Never seen it like this before.

"The heretic who showed up at the big religious gathering was awesome — lol."
(from Star Wars Celebration Japan)

A projection on the outside of the Old North Church reading "Let the WARNING ride forth ONCE MORE: TYRANNY is at OUR DOOR"

Old North Church in Boston last night on the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's ride.

One wing of the origami crane says, "1942 Never Again" with drawings of Japanese American children, and part of the body says, "Never Again is Now" with historical details written below.

The neck of the origami crane sign says "Free Them All", the tail says "Close The Camps". The other wing says "Is Now 2020", with a drawing of immigrant children separated from their families behind fencing.

One of the most incredible protest signs I've ever seen. A Japanese American woman folded a huge origami crane to honor the children of Japanese American internment camps & protest current ICE camps.

📸 permission at the Vigil to Stop ICE Expansion in Dublin, CA 4/16/25

✊🏻 NEVER AGAIN IS NOW ❤️

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear. The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.24(f) (requiring that the government prove "by a preponderance of evidence" that the alien is no longer entitled to a withholding of removal). Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or "mistakenly" deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?

"Facilitation" does not permit the admittedly erroneous deportation of an individual to the one country's prisons that the withholding order forbids and, further, to do so in disregard of a court order that the government not so subtly spurns. "Facilitation" does not sanction the abrogation of habeas corpus through the transfer of custody to foreign 3 detention centers in the manner attempted here. Allowing all this would "facilitate" foreign detention more than it would domestic return. It would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.

The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with powers come restraints. If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?* And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive's obligation to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" would lose its meaning. U.S. CONST. art. II, § 3; see also id. art. II, § 1, cl. 8.

Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph. It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.

It is an astounding opinion written by an 80-year-old, conservative Reagan appointee who — along with his former colleague, Judge J. Michael Luttig (a note that makes its own point about this moment) — once led what many considered to be the most conservative appeals court in the nation.

In fairness, USA and Russia both committed geopolitical suicide, China’s got its own problems, and a united Europe is far from a sure thing. Japan might win by default entirely by accident.

While he’s at it, Trump should officially change the name of the language from “English” to “American.”

The Asahi editorial board out with a banger yesterday.

It ends with a question every single news outlet should be asking themselves: "I wonder what's in store for us?"

the next time an originalist says anything about the Constitution, the appropriate response is:

You're implying that the Founders would support what you're doing. How do you know? Did you hold a seance? It is all well and good to think WWTFD (What would the Founders do?) but we really have no clue.

This cannot be constitutional. The idea that the American Bar Association cannot enjoy the participation of federal officials in events but the Federalist Society can is absurd.

Did she have good reasons? Probably, but it was a decision for a judge to make, not some bureaucrat at a consulate.

It’s a sad case but this woman was basically trying to commit child abduction. She needed to get full custody through the Hungarian system before taking the children across international borders.

Judge: Will the defendants please rise. [Judge explodes in a fireball like a bug hit with a magnifying glass]

Chad Opitz @chadopitz Me: Could I get a light roast, please? Barista: You look like Francis Ford Coppola if he were into plastic jug vodka instead of wine. Me: Perfect, thanks.

How a Canadian scientist and a venomous lizard helped pave the way for Ozempic - National | Globalnews.ca In 1984, Dr. Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist from the University of Toronto, discovered a hormone that helped pave the way for popular diabetes drugs such as Ozempic.

This is the most relevant article to NIH and research cuts I’ve seen.

Imagine if this was today , how many people would be saying “Why are we studying Gila Monsters and their impact on diabetes ? That’s wasted money !”

globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

US map with NH highlighted showing 277 NIH projects and $152 million in total funding.

Did some quick digging on the NIH website. NH stands to lose about $30 million this year in funding as a result of the 15% indirect spend cap. That's about 20% of the total allocated to the state.

reporter.nih.gov/search/JbRgA...

#NHPolitics

China’s stunning new campaign to turn the world against Taiwan Seventy countries have recently backed “all Chinese efforts” to take the island

“By The Economist’s count, 70 countries have now officially endorsed both China’s sovereignty over Taiwan and, just as crucially, that China is entitled to pursue “all” efforts to achieve unification, without specifying that those efforts should be peaceful”
www.economist.com/internationa...

It was better when United flew there.

His actual disclosure… I’m guessing he was charging all of his campaign expenses to a Centurion card to collect points.

His actual disclosure… I’m guessing he was charging all of his campaign expenses to a Centurion card to collect points.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE WHY PLAINTIFFS’ ATTORNEYS SHOULD NOT BE SANCTIONED OR OTHER DISCIPLINARY ACTION SHOULD NOT ISSUE

so fyi this is not a good sort of order to get. well, if you're plaintiffs' attorneys. if you're defendants' attorneys it's the best day of your life.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

LAX Star Alliance Lounge predated this, I think.

Prepping to teach Yick Wo today and came across this passage from James Bradley Thayer's "Cases on the Constitution" in 1894 (four years before Wong Kim Ark).

I always wonder about this graph because Howrah in India is supposed to get 1 million passengers a day…

What's funny is that my wife's company in Japan has been focusing on DEI efforts consistent with Japan Inc.'s reputation as woke radical Marxists

I thought I’d be in DC this morning. Instead, with DCA closed, I’m on the LIRR headed to Penn to take Amtrak…

Love these seats.