Jacob T. Levy

If that standard were applied to your countries you would be dead.

For 11+ years now, I have essentially had to witness a school of thought in the West that essentially argues that what has happened to Ukraine at Russia's hands has been earned by past sin, by excess nationalism, by all these nasty little things.

A not negligible number of people, when they think of Lithuania, think of pogroms. No one thinks that of France. Why?

for instance, banal example. obviously there is a very shameful legacy of collaboration with the Nazis during WW2 in a ton of Eastern European countries. you know where that also exists? Western Europe. but Western Europe is allowed to be defined by Other Things and we, in the eyes of many, are not

The problem is that that sounds lovely despite being evidence of an underlying apocalypse.

CAQ's constitution would gut historic protections for minorities, anglo rights group warns montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/...

UCD risks being a pawn in China’s bigger game There are worrying signs of the potential erosion of academic freedom in Ireland

. @davidfarrell-ucd.bsky.social and I wrote about this in the Irish Times four years ago warning about our university’s entanglement with China.

IMO not much has changed. If anything in many ways we’re more in on China now than we were then.

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/ucd-...

A lot of carols get really doctrinal around verse 4. It’s like:

v1 Jesus was born in winter

v2 Which makes us happy

v3 Because he reconciles us to God

v4 By uniting the divine and human natures in his person, without division and without confusion

Trump’s team expected easy wins in the streets. Instead, they’re losing in courts, getting chased out of cities, and facing organized pushback from ordinary citizens. @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social and @timmiller.bsky.social explain how public resistance is working.

it is dangerous to tell the truth to men who think they are god's gift to motorcycles

it's great how while actually quite a lot of the european left copped on to its russia blindspot since 2022, varoufakis actually radicalised into a full blown tankie simply because razem politicians dared confront him about it to his face

But that panel is an especially bad *drawing* of her. She's just Johnny with earrings!

Several Good Place callbacks on this season of Man on the Inside, but this was obviously the best one.

States Are Raking In Billions From Slot Machines on Your Phone

Bit of a narrative buster (and something that surprised me):

Sports betting on phones doesn't raise as much as allowing a full legal casino, slot machines and all, on your phone.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/u...

"Winfrey expressed remorse over the fateful night years ago when she created the TV host at Harpo Studios, telling reporters it was a hubristic desire to play the Queen of All Media that compelled her to bring Dr. Phil to life."

"My wife walks out on me"???

I'm sorry, *what*?

whaaaaaaat

stop, stop, I was already on board, no need to gild the lily

She could not resign, as she did not hold the office at all.

That trade-off reduces the other social and economic contributions women are making right now, just so they can produce future workers.”

3/3

“And even progressive pronatalism risks ratifying the notion that women’s most important contribution to solving major social problems is to birth and raise children. More children inevitably (so far) means fewer women in the workforce....

2/

What If Both Sides in the Birth Rate Debate Are Wrong? The right wants to steer women away from work and toward motherhood. The left wants to provide them with more state support so it’s easier to have children. We should refuse this choice.

newrepublic.com/article/2040...

New by UMd demographer @philipncohen.com in TNR, on the pronatalist panic. Some key lines:

"giving in to population panic and endorsing a plan to increase birth rates implicitly supports anti-immigration politics and yields ground to racist fearmongering.”

1/

na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey

Congress to withhold Pentagon travel funds until it sees boat strike videos Lawmakers quietly stuck the requirement into their must-pass annual defense policy bill.

www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Entirely appropriate to use the power of the purse to back up oversight authority, but runs into the problem that Congressional Republicans have surrendered the power of the purse to the White House already.

Trump Promises Executive Order to Block State A.I. Regulations

While the Supremacy Clause makes Congressional statutes supreme over state statutes, it makes no mention of executive memos.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/u...

The Separation of Powers (Chapter 17) - The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory - April 2025

Seems like a good day to repost my two articles on the separation of powers and the danger of executive tyranny.

two:
www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Seems like a good day to repost my two articles on the separation of powers and the danger of executive tyranny.

one: www.constitutionalstudies.ca/wp-content/u...

Chapter 4.3: Prey to the Species | Samantha Hancox-Li Get more from Samantha Hancox-Li on Patreon

one of the things i've been building towards in this section is how the economic theories of north, wallis, and weingast--especially their conception of how rents derive from exclusion and exclusion from decrease social *options*--can be used to understand patriarchy

www.patreon.com/posts/chapte...

In other words, Americans should be ashamed that a migration flow so pathetically small compared to a population of over 300 million is being used to trick them into collaborating with the destruction of their own democratic norms and institutions

By watching “Train Dreams,” which is nominated for best song, two nights ago, I just barely missed being able to say that I have seen *zero* movies nominated for any Golden Globe this year. (I exclude the “box office achievement” award.)