Cats, charts, and politics
I couldn't help myself. I had to take a quick look at the headlines to see what had happened while Air France was flying me home. Imagine my surprise when I saw this one in the Washington Post:
If we just give them another few days, they'll put together a deal for sure! Sure they will.
Home to good ol' hazy Los Angeles, that is. Perhaps tomorrow I'll check to see what I missed out on today.
This is the famous I.M. Pei pyramid, built as a new main entrance for the Louvre in 1988. You've seen it a thousand times before, so what makes my version different? First, there's the moon in the background. Second, I took the photo, not some other hack. Enjoy!
Because the Supreme Court is likely to overrule Roe v. Wade this summer, Josh Marshall says it makes sense for Democrats to turn the 2022 midterms into a referendum over abortion. But only if they can make it into a serious issue:
You can’t make an election into a referendum on an issue if you can’t point to anything winning the election would accomplish. To make the 2022 elections a referendum on Roe, Democrats have to put protecting Roe and abortion rights on the table.
Here’s one way to do that: get clear public commitments from every Senate Democrat (and candidate for Senate) not only to vote for the Roe bill in January 2023 but also to change the filibuster rules to ensure that a majority vote would actually pass [a bill protecting Roe] and send it to the White House for the president’s signature.
IANAL etc. etc., but my reading of Justice Alito's draft opinion overturning Roe made it fairly clear that it took courts firmly out of the abortion picture and placed states—and only states—in the driver's seat. In the text of the opinion there is no positive mention of the federal government having any authority over abortion. There is no mention of the Constitution giving the federal government any such authority. And there are several holdings that explicitly suggest that abortion regulations of any variety have not been federalized by the 14th Amendment.
As with many other things, the federal government would have authority over abortion in areas normally recognized as federal in nature: interstate commerce, federal funding, and so forth. But given the aggressive tone of Alito's opinion, I imagine that he expects even those exceptions to be sharply limited.
My sense is that the Court majority very clearly expects abortion to become a state issue, and only a state issue. They believe it is no more a legitimate area for federal preeminence than, say, murder, which is governed by state law unless you do something like kill a postal carrier or conspire across state lines.
Am I missing something here? Do legal scholars have a different reading of Alito's opinion than I do?
I've been yelling at CNN all evening, demanding that they stop building up fake suspense about Boris Johnson's no-confidence vote in Parliament. There was no way his party was going to chuck him out.
Which they didn't. But I admit it was closer than I counted on—though this hardly matters to a guy like BoJo. He could win by one vote and he'd declare it a massive victory and a mandate for his enduring leadership.
I'll confess something, though: I kind of enjoy watching this stuff. It comforts me slightly that there's at least one other country that's as bollixed up as we are.
CNN may be abandoning its BREAKING NEWS heritage, but this blog isn't. On Sunday I didn't have any plans and Marian was off doing some stuff I wasn't interested in, so I went out and puttered around semi-aimlessly.
But after only five minutes, I reached Madeleine and discovered that thousands of runners had invaded my neighborhood for the Paris 10K. Naturally I dropped everything and took pictures. Lots of them. Here's a runner rounding the corner at the north end of L'eglise de la Madeleine. At this point he's got one kilometer to go:
Now they've made the loop around the church and are headed for the finish line at Place de la Concorde:
Almost there!
Bravo! They've crossed the finish line. Bananas for everyone!
And medals too. Starters got handsome blue tee-shirts while finishers all got medals sponsored by Adidas:
Check out all these happy medal winners:
And there was more good news: Parisians were all so busy running that they weren't jamming up the Orangerie, even though it was the first Sunday in June and entrance was free. That meant Marian was able to stroll around in peace while I continued my puttering around the rest of the city.
SCENE 1
ACTING UNDER AN ONEROUS TESTING MANDATE FROM THEIR TYRANNICAL LEFT-WING GOVERNMENT, KEVIN AND MARIAN ENTER PHARMACIE 217 IN THE 18TH ARRONDISSEMENT OF PARIS. ALL DIALOG IS BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS.
CLERK: Bonjour.
KEVIN: Bonjour! Do you offer rapid COVID-19 tests for travel?
CLERK: Yes indeed. Just scan this QCR code with your phone and then follow the links and answer all the questions.
TEN MINUTES LATER
KEVIN: Whew. I think I got all that right.
CLERK: Fine. Now step into this room. The pharmacist will perform the test.
SCENE 2
KEVIN: Wow, you sure jammed that swab pretty far into my brain.
PHARMACIST: Ha ha. I did, didn't I? Anyway, your results will be emailed to you in 30 minutes.
KEVIN: Can I get a printed copy instead?
PHARMACIST: No, that's no longer allowed. But don't worry. The email will have a link that you follow, and then you just scan a QCR code, answer some questions, follow a few more links, and everything will turn out fine. It's all in French, but you should have no trouble with it.
KEVIN: Um...
PHARMACIST: Don't you trust me?
KEVIN: Oh, I trust you, I just don't trust cell phones.
SCENE 3 — 30 MINUTES LATER
KEVIN: We're back for our COVID results.
PHARMACIST. Good, good. Now click here...
PHARMACIST TAKES CELL PHONE AND BEGINS TAPPING AWAY WITH INCREASING FRUSTRATION.
PHARMACIST: There seems to be an error. This happens sometimes with countries that are far away, like America.
KEVIN: Oh.
PHARMACIST: Don't worry. Everything will be fine. I'll print out forms for both of you.
TEN MINUTES AND MANY QUESTIONS LATER EMANATING FROM A BACK ROOM:
PHARMACIST: Is that January 10th or October 1st?
MARIAN: January 10th.
PHARMACIST: All set! Here are your test certificates.
KEVIN: Merci.
END
A bipartisan group of senators is currently negotiating a possible response to the Uvalde massacre that would include:
Do you see why I'm so skeptical about addressing gun regulation in any serious way? The impact of these two things would be close to zero even if they passed, and the likelihood of them getting ten Republican votes to break a filibuster is probably also close to zero. In a nutshell, let's just say that I don't put any stock into Sen. Chris Murphy's optimism:
"I’ve never been part of conversations that are this serious and this thoughtful before, and I know all the Republicans and Democrats who are at the table are there with total sincerity to get an agreement."
Sure. I await with bated breath the alleged seriousness of Republican negotiators. Prove me wrong, Chris.
I have been diligently looking for cats in Paris but with no success. I haven't spotted even a cat in a window.
But! This morning, while we were waiting for one of those one-hour Seine boat tours, I was watching a couple of dogs play with each other in the Square du Vert-Galant. The little bulldog, in particular, wanted to roll and roll and roll and then play with the other dog and then roll some more. He acted just like a cat, so I decided he deserved honorary feline-hood.
Next week will feature the long-awaited return of actual biological cats Hilbert and Charlie.
I understand if you're a little jaded about the January 6 insurrection. I mean, we've already seen more than enough evidence that Republicans were initially appalled by the whole thing and only later decided to pretend it was a big nothingburger that Democrats were ginning up for partisan reasons.
But CNN has gotten hold of a couple thousand text messages sent to Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff at the time, and they make for some dispiriting reading:
"He's got to condem (sic) this shit. Asap," Donald Trump Jr. texted at 2:53 p.m.
"POTUS needs to calm this shit down," GOP Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina wrote at 3:04 p.m.
"TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!" former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus messaged at 3:09 p.m.
"POTUS should go on air and defuse this. Extremely important," Tom Price, former Trump health and human services secretary and a former GOP representative from Georgia, texted at 3:13 p.m.
"Fix this now," wrote GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas at 3:15 p.m.
There's much more at the link, including the fact that nearly everyone who texted Meadows (a) thinks Trump could have stopped the rioters, and (b) stands by what they said in real time. The whole piece is worth a read, even if it's just for the entertainment value because you've already heard enough about what happened that day.