Month: April 2025

Today the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the administration to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from that hellish prison in El Salvador. To me this was the single most hopeful piece of news that has come down the pike in quite a while.

Thomas Jefferson pointed out that the writ of habeas corpus is one of the fundamental guarantees of human rights necessary for a free society. If a government can simply be disappear an individual from society with no due process, then freedom is illusory.

In particular, if Garcia can be permanently disappeared into an El Salvadorian hellhole due to an “administrative error”, with the explanation that the U.S. has no jurisdiction to extract him, then you and I can also be permanently disappeared. The exact same legal justification would apply.

So the line in the sand that was drawn today by SCOTUS was a crucial one. You and I, and the entire population of the U.S., just dodged a very large and dangerous bullet.

Today is Tom Lehrer’s birthday. The great man, who is still with us, turns 97 today.

In honor of his birthday I read the Wikipedia article about him. Which is where I learned that he has made all of his recordings freely available, and you can download them all from his website.

So I downloaded them all from his website. And of course I immediately proceeded to listen to The Elements, which made me very, very happy.

Lehrer once famously said “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.” I wonder what he must think of the current state of our Union.

I have the NY Times app on my phone. Every time I pick up my phone, I see an alert that says “Breaking news…”

These days I am afraid to click on the link. With each new day, the “breaking news” is more horrifying than the day before.

The bad news is that this administration seems to be hellbent on utterly destroying everything that was good about the United States. In the process, they seem to be trying to also destroy the highly interconnected economy of the entire world.

The good news is that it doesn’t look as though they will succeed in destroying the world’s economy — this debacle is shaping up to be our very own version of Brexit. When this all shakes out, the other nations of the world will just work around us and continue trading with each other.

Alas, the phrase “breaking news” seems to be particularly apt these days. Unfortunately, it is our nation’s economy that is being broken.

Suppose somebody made an unsubstantiated accusation that Elon Musk is a terrorist, and therefore a threat to the USA. Based on that accusation, and the incriminating fact that Musk has been spotted wearing the jerseys of his two favorite NFL teams — the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles — suppose ICE promptly puts him on a plane without due process, and he ends up trapped in one of those prison hellholes in El Salvador where they routinely torture people.

Which, as we know, is what the U.S. government does these days in such circumstances.

So here’s my question: When the government claims that it was all an administrative error, but that it no longer has any jurisdiction over Musk, since he is now in the custody of the sovereign government of El Salvador, what happens next? Does Musk just rot in a prison hellhole for the rest of his life?

Based on what we know right now, that would be the most likely outcome. And if that happens, who will end up running Tesla, X and DOGE?

At last, something that Americans can agree on. When somebody attacks this beautiful country, it’s wonderful to see how we can come together to defend it.

We have already seen that our current president values holding onto power above anything else. It is clear from his recent actions that he cares not at all about either the health, safety and economic well-being of Americans nor about the freedom to express opposing ideas that until recently was largely taken for granted in the U.S.

It’s also obvious by now that the upcoming midterm election will result in Republicans losing their majority in the House. As we saw in Wisconsin, anger will now drive Democratic voter turnout to consistently surpass Republican turnout.

Which means that the only play left for this rogue president and his enablers is to scuttle the midterm elections. So the important question now is this: What pretext will he use for declaring martial law between now and November 2026?

And here is the logical follow-on question: Given what’s at stake, what can patriotic Americans do to counter that move?

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Microsoft. Far from the behemoth that it is today, it started out as just two guys creating a partnership in Alberquerque, New Mexico.

I wonder how many stories we could tell about the humble origins of mighty corporations. For example, The Walt Disney Company started out as a ragtag little independent animation house in Kansas City, as a partnership between Ub Iwerks and some other young fellow.

I am watching my favorite TV show yet again. This is my fifth time through the entire series, and it gets better each time.

I am in the middle of Season 1, Episode 3, and one of my favorite lines was just spoken:

“First vampires, now witches. No wonder you can still afford a house in Sunnydale.”

How can you not love such a show?

An NYU film student asked me today what I thought about making movies for VR. I’ve seen a fair number of VR movies, and I’ve made some myself, so I guess I’m qualified to answer.

My opinion, after seeing (and taking part in) the past decade or so of experimentation in this area, is that it’s not a very good idea. Not that I have anything against VR.

In fact, I think VR is awesome, and there is a lot of amazing content out there. But I’ve reached the conclusion that the frame, the proscenium, whatever you want to call it, is essential for good storytelling.

A good filmmaker will make powerful use of that frame, to focus the attention of the audience, to create dramatic tension, and to define the world that contains the action. If you lose that rectangle, you are losing one of the most powerful and effective tools of visual storytelling.

So while I love VR, I don’t think it’s the future of movies. And that’s what I told the student.

I had an unsettling thought today.

I realized that if you were to say “Wow, it’s as though The Onion has become a documentary,” everybody would know exactly what you were talking about.

That’s not a good thing.