Legalities

The White House recently sent out a directive requiring organizations that get money from the Federal Government to scrub their websites of any reference to such terms as “diversity”, “equity” and “inclusion”. Some Universities and other organizations have responded by rushing to follow that directive.

But here’s the problem. If organizations follow those directives, they may be breaking the law.

The executive branch of the government does not have the right to create laws. That right is reserved for Congress.

And the executive branch does is not who decides how to interpret the law. That right is reserved for the courts.

So if the executive branch issues some random directive — say, requiring every American citizen to go next door and shoot their neighbor in the name of national security — you can’t immediately know whether following that directive is a legal act.

Suppose you respond by going next door, pointing a gun at your neighbor’s head, and pulling the trigger. According to the executive branch which issued that directive, you were simply being a patriotic American, and in fact were upholding national security.

But the courts may end up deciding that half of Americans murdering the other half is not a legal act. In which case your patriotic act of obedience to the executive branch was a crime.

This would be the case even if you point out, as per the White House directive, that you were simply acting in the name of national security.

The principle is the same when it comes to scrubbing words from websites just because the White House doesn’t like them. No matter what you claim to be your motive, the courts may end up deciding that you were simply breaking the law.

Heroes and villains

I think we are seeing that one of the tactics of our rogue administration is to confuse everyone by trying to convince us that heroes are villains, and villains are heroes. In the last day or so, we have seen at least two clear examples of this.

On the one hand, all mention of transgender rights has been scrubbed from the Government’s page honoring the Stonewall Uprising. This is part of the Creep’s agenda of trying to “disappear” transgender individuals, the way this country once upon a time tried to disappear gay people, and at various times before that Jews, Chinese, Irish or Italian immigrants and free blacks.

The reality is that the true heroes of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising were transgender individuals. They were the first to fight back, and they were the first who had the courage to stand up to tyranny.

If you are Jewish, or gay, or black, or from any other group that has felt what it is like to be “disappeared” in this country, you might want to take a moment and give thanks to those brave people. Sooner or later, this administration will get around to going after you, and those are the heroes you can look toward for inspiration when you need to fight back.

Meanwhile, our Vice President just gave a speech in Germany calling for the Nazis to once again take over that country. The sheer offensiveness of such an act has left Germans reeling in disbelief. Essentially, he tried to gaslight an entire country into recasting their worst historical villains as heroes.

So you can see the method here. Find someone who was truly heroic, and call them a villain. Meanwhile, find the worst villains you can, and call them heroes.

Hopefully everyone will becom so confused that you can then get away with anything.

Cancer, part 2

One of the first things that a cancer does when it invades a body is knock out the immune system. The most effective cancers knock out your white blood cells and the entire apparatus of fighting disease early on.

What we are watching right now is roughly the same. It’s no coincidence that DOGE went after the consumer protection bureau early on.

Of course the federal ethical watchdogs needed to be dismissed. And then there is the large scale firing of any employees in the executive branch who might be capable of raising the alarm when the very cell walls that allow our political organism to function are under attack.

What we are witnessing right now is the political version of a rapid spread of cancer. We may beat it in time, but by then the body may be too weak to ever really recover.

Cancer, part 1

The more I think about it, the more compelling the parallels become. The state of our nation right now is analogous to the state a body that has contracted cancer.

There is much to say on this topic. So I think it would be best to say it in parts.

More tomorrow.

Two birthdays

I find it to be a delightful coincidence that two of the individuals who brought us into the modern world were born on the same day — February 12, 1809.

It could be argued that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln together encompass a transition to our modern way of thinking. The former used science to help us understand and accept that humans are part of the natural world. The latter used politics to help us understand and accept that all humans are entitled to equal opportunity.

How odd that we are suddenly in a time in the U.S. when both science and the right to equal opportunity are being attacked. I wonder what old Charles and Abe would have made of these shenanigans.

I wonder

I wonder, when we look back at this crazy time in U.S. history, how we will describe it. As far as I know, this is the only time in our nation’s 240 year history when an administration tried to simply dismantle the checks and balances that make this a functioning democracy.

Nixon and FDR both tried to push the bounds of executive privilege. But at the end of the day they both did so within a fundamental understanding that ours is a three-part government, where the power of each part is necessary to balance the power of the other two.

That doesn’t seem to be what is happening here. At least right now this feels like an existential threat to the very structure of our system of government.

Let us hope it doesn’t turn out that way.

Stop the steel!

This week the current inhabitant of the White House decided to involve the entire world in a trade war with China. Because China exports lots of steel and aluminum, the U.S. has just imposed a 25% tariff on imports of those materials from any country, just to make sure they don’t sneak past our borders through a secondary market.

These days the U.S. only produces about 5% of the world’s steel, but the White House wants to be nice to the Pittsburgh steel lobby, so as not to lose precious Republican votes in Pennsylvania. But as you may already know, an import tariff is essentially a way to tax the U.S. consumer.

Americans can soon expect to pay more for any product or service that requires steel or aluminum, including cars, houses, flights, hand tools, cooking utensils, medical equipment, and a long long list of other items. If you are planning to buy a home or a car, you might want to prepare yourself for sticker shock.

This might have been his plan all along. For the last four years we all thought he was saying “Stop the steal!”. But maybe the man is just bad at spelling.

After all, on the same day, he ordered the U.S. mint to stop producing pennies. And if there’s one thing we know about him, it’s that nothing he says ever makes a lot of cents.

A true patriot

How do you know when somebody is a true patriot? There are times when it gets easier to decide, and this is one of those times.

Just today, the Creep in the White House excoriated the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson, calling him “incompetent” and demanding he be fired. Mr. Robinson’s crime? He simply wrote a column that pointed out the truth.

Specifically, Robinson wrote that top Republican senators should be ashamed of themselves for simply rolling over for the confirmation of one incompetent Cabinet pick after another, as well as standing by as DOGE demolished our standing around the world.

After the Creep and his fellow travelers are thrown out of office, we will all look around and assess the damage. And we will ask ourselves who rolled over and who fought back.

And Eugene Robinson will be able to say that he stood up for the dignity and principles of the United States of America. This latest attack by you-know-who will be all the proof needed to show that Robinson is a true patriot.

Hay King

Last night I saw the episode of The Office where Dwight Schrute needs to decide which adorable little kid visiting his hay-themed amusement park should become Hay King. Instead he chooses himself.

It’s one of those embarrassing moments when someone’s narcissism is so overt and unchecked that you want to look away but cannot. The sort of thing that would never actually happen in real life.

Except that it just did.

By coincidence, on the very same day the current inhabitant of the White House was also crowning himself Hay King. In particular, he was offended that he had been criticized some previous award winners at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

So he responded in the most ridiculous way possible: He declared that he would fire the current Kennedy Center board Chair and install himself as Chairman.

Now I can’t get the picture out of my head: This ridiculous figure, sitting on the nearest hay bale, proudly wearing his crown of straw. And never understanding that finding dumb ways to make people fear you is not the same as commanding respect.

The best response

I was excited yesterday to realize that it was Rick Astley’s birthday. So I jumped at the chance to celebrate his special day on this blog in the most appropriate way.

I realize that some readers might not have appreciated the gesture, or the way that it may have sort of snuck up on them.

But perhaps the best response in such situations is exactly how you shouldn’t respond when creepy authoritarians are trying to destroy your democracy from within.

Just roll with it.