Month: June 2024

This is a western green mamba. It's a cute little thing, and quite shy. But don't rile one up. They don't bite often, but when they do you'd better have your affairs in order.

A new study takes a look at prescription refills of contraceptives in the post-Dobbs era. The authors report that fills of emergency contraceptives dropped significantly in states that adopted restriction on abortion, but there was apparently no difference in fills of ordinary oral contraception:

What's peculiar here is the secular drop everywhere in oral contraception. From 2021 to 2023 fills declined overall from 6,800 to 5,000, a 26% drop. This trend is consistent throughout the entire period and has nothing to do with Dobbs. There are two interesting things here:

• Is it really true that contraceptive use dropped by 26% in only three years? Why? This doesn't jibe with other research.
• It appears that in states where abortion is easy to get, fewer women use oral contraceptives. Is this because, for some reason, they tend to use other kinds of contraception? Or is it because the easy availability of abortion makes them less likely to bother with contraception in the first place?

I'm going to tentatively put this in the "interesting if true" bucket. I'm not sure I trust these numbers, but they're interesting if true.

Based on recent Supreme Court rulings, it's not quite right anymore to say that we have a liberal bloc and a conservative bloc. We now have three blocs:

• Liberal (Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson)
• Conservative (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett)
• Ultra-conservative (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch)

The liberal and ultra-conservative wings are almost always on opposite sides in hot button cases. The entire power of the court rests now on the vibes of the three conservatives.

Here's the drop in murder rates in the largest US cities. Most of the data is through the end of March. The data from Boston comes from a New York Times story this morning.

Homicide is down almost everywhere, and in Boston it's down a phenomenal 78%.

400 terrorist illegal immigrants have been allowed into the US!

Sigh. Debate moderators are suckers for breaking news, so I suppose we'll have to waste time on this tomorrow night. The story comes from NBC News, which says this:

• The migrants are of concern because of "potential" ties to ISIS.
• What this appears to mean is that ISIS makes money by running a smuggling operation in Central Asia.
• None of the migrants seem to pose any kind of threat. They are being rounded up "out of an abundance of caution."
• Only 50 are at large. About 150 have already been arrested and the other 200 are mysteriously missing from the NBC story. Apparently (?) they've been deported or left on their own.

Bottom line: There are about 50 migrants from Central Asia roaming around the country, none of whom pose a threat. That's it.

The median price of a new house fell again last month:

The price of a new house is now below its pre-pandemic trendline and heading toward its 2020 level. It may or may not get there, depending on how the economy does, but it'll be close. When the Fed finally gets around to lowering interest rates, the real cost of buying a home will be back to normal. Gen Z take note: The housing market may seem grim now, but it won't be forever.

TIL that there's a distinction between bribes and gratuities. A bribe is something given before the fact: Here's $13,000 if you'll buy our garbage trucks. A gratuity happens after the fact: Thanks for buying our garbage trucks! Here's $13,000.

I didn't choose that example lightly. It's the background in Snyder v. United States, a case decided today by the Supreme Court. The conservative majority ruled that since a garbage truck payoff had been made after the fact, it didn't constitute corruption under federal law.

Maybe so. As they say, the law is an ass. But the Court's reasoning doesn't fill me with confidence. Brett Kavanaugh argued that federal law was too vague about what exactly was allowed and what was prohibited:

“Could students take their college professor out to Chipotle for an end-of-term celebration?” he wrote. “And if so, would it somehow become criminal to take the professor for a steak dinner? Or to treat her to a Hoosiers game?”

While “American law generally treats bribes as inherently corrupt and unlawful,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, gratuities are another matter. Some can be “problematic,” while others can be “commonplace and might be innocuous.”

He listed examples. A family tipping their mail carrier. Parents sending a gift basket to thank their child’s teacher at the end of the school year. A college dean giving a sweatshirt to a city council member who speaks at an event.

Hmmm. Let's review:

• Steak at Chipotle.
• A couple of sawbucks to your mail carrier.
• A gift basket.
• A sweatshirt.
• $13,000 in "consulting fees" to a mayor who bought garbage trucks worth $1.1 million.

One of these things is not like the other. Can you figure out which one?

Look, sometimes the law is weird and produces strange results. I get it. But surely the Court could draw some distinction about what's allowed that would be well north of sweatshirts and gift baskets. It's a matter of puzzlement to me that the Supreme Court's conservative wing keeps doing this, tightening the law over and over to make it all but impossible to convict politicians of corruption. Jokes aside, this isn't some partisan thing, after all. Republicans and Democrats both engage in plenty of corruption. So why are conservatives so eager to dismiss it?

Republicans in Congress have passed an appropriations bill that slashes funding for the Department of Justice because they're mad about its prosecution of Donald Trump. Seriously. They've also shoveled in a truckload of other ridiculous culture war proposals that won't pass but can be bragged about on Fox News. Whatevs. But I want to know what's up with this:

Republicans plan to force votes on proposals including reducing to $1 the salaries of Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, and cut off pay entirely for Antony Blinken, the secretary of state.

I know this is all for show, but why do Austin and Mayorkas get $1 and Blinken gets nothing? I thought they hated Mayorkas with the white heat of a giant sun? But he gets more lenient treatment.

What's up?

This is a blue fiesta flower happily blooming at one of our local nature preserves. I took this picture of it five years ago and it's been waiting ever since for its moment in the spotlight. It just goes to show that good things come to those who wait.

According to TheRighting, here's the year-over-year change in traffic at the top conservative news sites: