Richard Cook

Hah! More likely a lawyer, but I like to think so.

It's going to be so amazing being alive in 2026 because the front page will say "BREAKING Mamdani Received Free Cheese Pizza From a Local Vendor, Calls to Resign Mount" and then on page 3 you'll see "Hegseth's Pentagon Rape Dungeon Raises Legal Questions."

Three cheers for MIT. When the White House tried to buy obedience with funding strings...MIT said, “Hell No!” Merit over mandates. Freedom over control. Finally...an institution with the guts to tell power where to shove its politics.

Happy Birthday John Lennon

the #Beatles

Ranking Member Jamie Raskin Prepared Remarks for the Judicial Conference September 16, 2025 Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts, for the invitation. Forgive my directness here but the times are serious, as you know, our time is short. I have just five minutes and don't want to trespass on Senator Cruz's time. Sometimes these days I feel as if all the foundational principles are being trampled and lost. Often, I hear my colleagues in the House, and these are fellow Democrats, get up to protest some Executive usurpation of legislative power and they begin their lament with the plaintive cry, "We are a coequal branch of government..." And I always feel they have lost the argument right there just by repeating that fifth-grade dogma. First of all, co-equal is not even a word. It's an embarrassing redundancy like "very unique" or "irregardless. "

But there's a reason all legislative power is vested in the Congress and there's a reason it's in Article I. The Founders had a revolution against monarchy and its constant assaults on liberty. In America, the Framers determined, only the representatives of the people would have power to declare wars, pass budgets, impose taxes and tariffs, and so on. Article lis pages and pages of all the powers vested in Congress. Then you get to Article Il, which is tiny. The key paragraph says a president shall be removed from office upon impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. If we are co-equal, why do we have the power to impeach, try, convict, remove and permanently disqualify the president and he doesn't have the power to impeach, try, convict, remove and disqualify us? The core job of the president is plain: "To Take care that the laws are faithfully executed." That's it. Not abused, not thwarted, not impounded, not redirected, but faithfully executed. A lot of the cases entering the federal courts are variations on this theme.

Here's the remarkable thing: Americans have brought over 300 cases in federal district courts against the Administration so far for usurping legislative powers, defying federal laws, or violating the rights of the people. This summer, researchers found that plaintiffs were winning an astonishing 77% of the cases in the district courts. Moreover, they found that President Trump was losing about equally before Republican-appointed judges (72%) and Democratic-appointed judges (80%). The numbers in the federal circuit courts of appeal are similar, with plaintiffs against the Administration winning overwhelmingly and again without a sharp partisan valence to the appeals courts' voting. A good example is the birthright citizenship case where four district court judges, two appointed by Republican presidents and two appointed by Democratic presidents, all struck down the President's purported negation of birthright citizenship. Then, on appeal, three circuit courts again all ruled against the Administration. But everything is flipped when the cases come to the Supreme Court.

This rules - @raskin.house.gov straight up called out Roberts to his face.

democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center...

But what about the BEER?

I stand with PBS.

I stand with NPR.

I stand with Stephen Colbert.

I stand with Jimmy Kimmel.

I stand with the First Amendment.

PERIOD.*

*Also #ReleaseTheEPSTEIN_Files

Absolutely! We are literally in the process of suing to get the plaque hung.

It is absolutely insane to me that we're having a debate over whether or not the rightwing deploys violent rhetoric within days of a Fox News personality calling for homeless people to be killed by lethal injection. There is no excuse for this obliviousness. It's unacceptable.

A forest landscape with ferns growing in the foreground and mossy rocks and deciduous trees in the background.

I am convinced that a stay in the forest is the most effective antidote to melancholy. 💚
-Sylvain Tesson

#ForestFriday
#FernFriday
#trees #moss
#nature #ferns
#photography

Star Bassist Carol Kaye rejects Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honor One of the most in-demand session players of the 1960s, Kaye was listed alongside the late record producer Thom Bell and the late pianist Nicky Hopkins as inductees in the Musical Excellence category.

One of the most in-demand session players of the 1960s, Kaye was listed alongside the late record producer Thom Bell and the late pianist Nicky Hopkins as inductees in the Musical Excellence category.

First telling Immanuel about Hedwig's lecture about the aggressive influence of German philosophy on rock and roll titled "You, Kant, Always Get What You Want" and then he beats the shit out of me before I can show him wikipedia

Read the speech for yourself:
commencement.news.wfu.edu/2020s/c2025/...

ht: @brianstelter.bsky.social

Every day thousands of old CD racks are sent to the dump, where they are mercilessly mocked by bitter old cassette racks.

So let me get this straight, we finally get an American pope, and some of the America first crowd is mad because he cares about the poor and immigrants. Am i missing something here?

#flowers #bloom #naturephotography #photography

March 29, 2025 San Francisco Botanical Gardens
Leica M11, Leica APO Summicron 35mm F2 ASPH

Solo hiker on the West Highland Way passing Buchaille Etive Mor. Pic: Stuart Beattie

The Lone Cypress - Pebble Beach, CA

#photography
#nature

Very nice! I also enjoy close-up / macro photography.

#photography

This quote from his poem Prelude struck me as the essence of the Camino experience and I felt it was worth sharing.

...’Gather the bits of road that were
Not gravel to the traveler
But eternal lanes of joy
On which no man who walks can die.

Lately I've been thinking quite a bit about last year's walk of the Camino de Santiago (French route).

Today a friend in Ireland sent me a link to a story about the Irish writer Patrick Kavanagh. As an American with very little literary education, I'd never heard of him.

👇👇

Calm down, folks, it was just an attempted assassination of a Jewish Democratic governor and his family on the first night of Passover, it’s not like somebody spray painted a dick on a Cybertruck.

The president told a Central American dictator to build five more massive slave labor camps to hold US citizens.

The House just voted that “each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act.” A day is not a day. Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, and Franz Kafka must all be chuckling — or weeping.

In future generations, when your children and grandchildren look back on this moment, they are not going to ask about the price of eggs. They are going to ask you what you did. Not what you felt. Not what you paid. But what you did. And I want to be able to say I did everything I possibly could.

👇