David Johnson

Is this the most expensive grocery store in New York? Meadow Lane is attracting massive queues and selling out of pricey stock, including $15 chicken nuggets, since it opened this month. But who can afford to shop there?

I'm as happy as anyone to dunk on WSJ, but I think people are confusing Costco rotisserie chicken prices with the Meadow Lane rotisserie chicken prices www.thetimes.com/us/news-toda...

Watch as a massive crack forms in the ice on Lake Erie.

An impressive view captured by GOES-19 earlier on Sunday.

Anyone asked Mike Johnson about it yet? Maybe he's seen it this time.

Also known as gross abuse of the y-axis.

Maybe some qualification would be useful there. Local control can promote civic virtue and is certainly important as a firewall as you note. Historically, it also gave us poll taxes until the mid-60s along with other unvirtuous things until federal law stopped them. Local control has its own issues.

Consciousness of Guilt: An Opaque and Secret Memorandum with Threats of Reprisal 13. Despite the May 12 Memo being addressed to “All ICE Personnel,” in practice the memorandum has only been distributed to select DHS and ICE officials. Furthermore, our clients have been told that the May 12 Memo must be treated with unusually strict access control for a document without any confidentiality markings. 14. To wit: one of our clients was allowed to view the memorandum only in the presence of their supervisor. They were handed the Memorandum, allowed a few minutes to review it without the ability to take notes, and were directed to hand it back. They were also informed that another employee had been reassigned for contradicting a supervisor about a different ICE policy. Our client understood their supervisor shared this piece of information as a warning that expressing disagreement with the new arrest policy could result in adverse career consequences. 15. Together, our clients are aware of multiple DHS employees who faced retaliation for expressing their concerns and/or disagreement with the May 12 Memo’s policy change, likely constituting prohibited personnel practices. One client is aware of a seasoned government instructor, tasked with teaching this new doctrine, who chose to resign rather than be forced to teach what they understood to be unlawful.

In a sign of how explosive ICE knew this secret memo would be, one whistleblower says he was only allowed to read the memo and was barred from taking written notes, and warned that employees had been punished for disagreeing.

At least one ICE instructor resigned rather than teach the illegal memo!

Text quoting Leviathan, Item 6 of Chapter 18 regarding the rights of the sovereign. Description truncated for length. The Soveraigne Is Judge Of What Is Necessary For The Peace And Defence Of His Subjects And because the End of this Institution, is the Peace and Defence of them all; and whosoever has right to the End, has right to the Means; it belongeth of Right, to whatsoever Man, or Assembly that hath the Soveraignty, to be Judge both of the meanes of Peace and Defence; and also of the hindrances, and disturbances of the same; and to do whatsoever he shall think necessary to be done, both beforehand, for the preserving of Peace and Security, by prevention of discord at home and Hostility from abroad; and, when Peace and Security are lost, for the recovery of the same. And therefore, And Judge Of What Doctrines Are Fit To Be Taught Them Sixtly, it is annexed to the Soveraignty, to be Judge of what Opinions and Doctrines are averse, and what conducing to Peace; and consequently, on what occasions, how farre, and what, men are to be trusted withall, in speaking to Multitudes of people; and who shall examine the Doctrines of all bookes before they be published. For the Actions of men proceed from their Opinions; and in the wel governing of Opinions, consisteth the well governing of mens Actions, in order to their Peace, and Concord. And though in matter of Doctrine, nothing ought to be regarded but the Truth; yet this is not repugnant to regulating of the same by Peace. For Doctrine Repugnant to Peace, can no more be True, than Peace and Concord can be against the Law of Nature. It is true, that in a Common-wealth, where by the negligence, or unskilfullnesse of Governours, and Teachers, false Doctrines are by time generally received; the contrary Truths may be generally offensive; Yet the most sudden, and rough busling in of a new Truth, that can be, does never breake the Peace, but onely somtimes awake the Warre. For those men that are so remissely governed, that…

My understanding of this is that Hobbes gave the sovereign the power to decide what is necessary to protect a society, & the sovereign's judgment in this regard can't be questioned. Trump thinks he is protecting society. If he were sovereign in a Hobbesian world, his belief couldn't be questioned.

15 states with multiple districts that are rated "poor" (gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistrictin...); of those, 4 advantage Democrats, 11 advantage Republicans, including massive Florida and Texas. 2/2 (deleted and replaced post where I did the math wrong)

Afraid that until/unless there evolves a national standard on districting, it is a necessity that left-leaning states gerrymander as aggressively as right-leaning ones. I say it that way bc it seems left-leaners overall less gerrymandered (OH tried but the amendment was end-ran). 1/2

ICE Is Imposing Autocracy in Minnesota The state has become Trump's most radical experiment with militarized government.

"This is wrong. And every American whose capacity for moral judgment has not been addled by partisan derangement should recognize it....Probable cause, rights of accused, the need for search warrants, due process of any kind—ICE is proceeding as if such restrictions on gov't power no longer exist."

Opinion | This Is the Only Card Trump Can Play

wrote about the occupation in minnesota with a closing note on how the white house has exactly one tactic — repression with goons — but no particular strategy for dealing with entrenched resistance. gift link.

Trump says 8 European countries will be charged a 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland President Donald Trump says he'll charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European countries because of opposition to U.S. control of Greenland.

This, more than anything yet, is the end of trust between Europe and the US. Sanctions for opposing US conquest of territory governed by a European ally. apnews.com/article/denm...

Measurehead would approve, certainly.

Bah, 10 years old, not 8.

I don't think I suggested that it was a revelation (even the linked article is itself 8 years old, and the specific behavior was commented on more contemporaneously, too). That it was common, however, doesn't make it less wrong, and it still goes to your point that some things are always wrong.

With this kind of public response from the WH across multiple occasions, it's easy to guess what the private behavior would have been like whenever it was discussed in the WH. It is hard to imagine the deaths of any other group of Americans being treated so glibly by a senior WH official.

The Reagan Administration’s Unearthed Response to the AIDS Crisis Is Chilling A new short film, When AIDS Was Funny, unearths never-before-heard audio reaction to the escalating AIDS crisis.

In the spirit of some things always being wrong, the behavior of Speakes matters. Others in the press corps also acted contemptibly, but the literal voice of the WH responding to the deaths of Americans with mockery and jokes is always wrong. www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11...

The logic there is fine. I'm more stuck by related point that GWB/Cheney are now cast as moderate. They were much more to the right than the constant triangulation of Clinton/Gore or Obama/Biden allowed them to be to the left. Such R. party leaders were less extreme, but hardly "moderate" pre-2016.

Great White Fleet - Wikipedia

I suppose calling it a new Great White Fleet could have been seen as too on-the-nose (but that also assumes someone in the WH knows their history, so maybe not) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_W...

And when this is the sort of obvious idiocy that they program into Grok, how can you ever trust that there are not also more subtle efforts to color the responses that it gives? No one should ever trust any response it provides.

Mandatory repost of anything with The Thick of It

The most important issue.

It would be nice to see some expansion on this, as it is otherwise an extremely facile approach to AI that I wouldn't have expected of you.

Yo dog, I heard you like hallucinated citations, so we put hallucinated citations in your response regarding hallucinated citations so you can show cause while you show cause.
iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewD...

How does this standard apply to Justices Alito and Thomas and their spouses?

So glad that peace is restored

at this rate I estimate that by next March we will be getting six hundred page judicial opinions that resemble House of Leaves

Levels of strategic ignorance and blindness not commonly encountered in a Secretary of State.

This speech is such an extraordinary combination of lies, delusions, narcissism, hatefulness, ignorance and lunacy that it could have been given by no other person than the president of the United States. It could well be the low point of US public diplomacy in our history.

Given all the others, Powell is perhaps the only one that was/is not a net negative for the country...