Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Senator Franken sent me his newsletter, which included the announcement that he would vote against President Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court.  The reason: the nominee’s ideology favors big business over ordinary Americans.

The press release explains:  “One of Sen. Franken’s main concerns that he said came out of the confirmation hearings is that Judge Gorsuch has a pattern of putting powerful interests, big business, and giant corporations over the safety and rights of average Americans. In one noteworthy ruling, Judge Gorsuch sided with a trucking business over an imperiled driver. In that case, the driver was stuck in below zero weather with frozen brakes and no heat. Forced to choose between freezing to death or driving an unsafe vehicle and risking public safety, he unhitched his trailer and left it behind in order to get warm. And as a result, his company fired him. When Judge Gorsuch ruled on that case, he sided with the trucking company.”

This quote either displays a shocking depth of ignorance about the American legal system, or a disgusting level of contempt for the intellectual abilities of his constituents.  I’m not sure which is worse.

The point of an impartial judiciary is that it does NOT base rulings on the people involved in the case, but on the law as written by the legislative branch of government.  To do it the other way throws us back to feudal times, when people weren’t treated equally under the law because certain favored groups had special privileges.  When the Declaration says “all men are created equal” it doesn’t mean literally equal – obviously we’re not all the same height or wear the same shoe size – it means they’ll be treated as equals for all legal purposes.  We don’t have a nobility that is exempt from the rules. 

If the law says “it’s okay to fire someone who disobeys a lawful order,” and the company gave him a lawful order to stay with the truck, then his decision to abandon the truck was a firing offense and the company was in the right.  What Senator Franken wants the court to do is re-write the law to add a section that the legislature did not include.  He wants the judge to add a section saying “unless the employee has a good reason not to obey the lawful order.” 

That is NOT the judge’s job.  The judge’s job is to say “Based on these facts and this law, this is the result.”  It might be a stupid law and therefore renders a stupid result, but that’s the legislature’s problem to fix.  The judiciary is not a super-legislature.

I will give him this: adopting Franken’s idea would cut down on a lot of litigation.  When the facts and law don’t matter, only the identity of the parties, there’s no need for a trial and witnesses.  If a property management company brought an eviction action against a single mother based on non-payment of rent, the court could immediately dismiss the case and allow her to live there for free, forever, because in Franken’s world, ordinary American trumps business.   If anybody filed a claim against an insurance company for any reason whatsoever, the claimant automatically would win because in Franken’s world, ordinary American trumps business.  Things would get trickier if a Black lesbian single mother sued a left-handed transgendered illegal immigrant because the victim ranking is constantly shifting:  who is the more victimized person and therefore the more worthy winner? 

True, there would be an economic impact as businesses went bankrupt from meritless lawsuits.  But a lot of lawyers would be freed up from litigation to engage in other worthy efforts, perhaps lobbying for stricter environmental regulations to take farmland out of production or stop the importation of oil and natural gas, things that would help save the planet so future generations of Americans could starve in the dark.

Joe Doakes

It’s good to have goals…

Remember when excessive concern about the Russians was a sign you were  a simple-minded Cold Warrior?

The good news:  There is so far zero evidence of direct Russian “hacking” of the election.  Influence, sure – but then, Obama was nobody to gripe about people influencing foreign elections.

The bad news?  They were certainly trying to sow chaos and misinformation.

The worse news?  Americans are ripe for political manipulation, and American politics is a fertile field for a seasoned chaos-monger, and our media is the problem, not the defense.

After a year of slowed activity due to Obama’s caving in to the Saudis, the rig count in North Dakota is up 40 percent since the approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  Analysts predict the count will rise another ten percent.

Not every oil company operating in the state is going to use the Dakota Access Pipeline, but they will benefit from the pipeline’s capacity anyway. It will create more capacity on existing pipelines, not to mention rail, and drive down the cost of getting Bakken oil to market overall.

The article notes that both Whiting Petroleum and Continental Resources are projecting a 20 percent increase in output this year. Neither are contracted to use DAPL, but both will benefit from it none the less.

Isn’t it amazing what the free market can do?

North Dakota’s unemployment rate, even after the “crash” caused by the slowdown in exploration (but not production), hovered a solid point below that of Minnesota’s.  That discrepancy will broaden in coming months.

…whether roads in America actually collapse.

PS:  It’s Tim Pawlenty’s fault!

Illinois enacts harsh sanctions against trafficking stolen and straw-purchased guns:

Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed legislation to dramatically increase the penalties for those caught illegally transporting guns into Illinois.

First-time offenders could face up to 20 years in prison, and repeat offenders could face up to 30 years under the new gun trafficking law, which takes effect immediately.

The governor was joined by top Republican lawmakers as he signed the measure at the Illinois State Police crime lab on the Near West Side. He said the goal is to reduce the growing epidemic of gun violence in Chicago. There already have been at least 460 homicides and more than 2,700 shootings in 2016; during all of last year, there were approximately 490 homicides, and just shy of 3,000 shootings in Chicago.

Illinois is basically doing what Obama’s useless USA Attorney for Northern Illinois was too lazy and politically-focused to do; the USA trumpeted to Chicago’s criminal underclass that sending your mom or girlfriend to Indiana to buy a Glock wasn’t worth his time.  

And you have to ask yourself – why is it that “Protect” Minnesota or Everytown for “Gun Safety” never, ever suggest measures like this, and focus exclusively on attacking, defaming and bullying the law-abiding gun owner?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The purpose of advertising is to influence behavior, we all know that.  And the more people who see the advertisement, the more potential customers whose behavior is available to be influenced.  That’s why advertisers pay millions of dollars for a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl: they know they’ll be influencing millions of potential customers with their ads.

 Which brings up the question: how long must I stare at an advertisement for it to influence me?  Does it take the full 30-seconds for the magic to work?  Could it happen more quickly?  Perhaps even unconsciously?  Does subliminal advertising work?  Lots of researchers think so.

 If they’re right, I wish they’d explain it to web designers.  I click on links because I want to read the article.  But when the web page takes forever to load, then refuses to let me click through the ad, and auto-plays videos I don’t want to see . . . I click away, having never read the article at all.  My behavior is influenced negatively.

If they’d bring up the article right away, the ads could appear in my peripheral vision while I read.  I’d actually see them, they could do their magic, my behavior would be influenced positively.  If the blog author’s article got mentioned on Instapundit, the resulting Insta-lanche would put millions of potential customers in position available to be influenced by the peripheral ads.

 Joe Doakes

Don’t look at me.  I moved my ads to the sidebar.

Purdue hires a social justice warrior to head its engineering program.  

While overt sexism and homophobia are less common than historically, they still play out in ways that are subtle and, therefore, insidious and hard to combat. How do you see this happening in the sciences, and how do you deal with it?

One of the biggest sources of sexism and homophobia is lodged in the epistemology of science. How we think, and what we think, matter in determining what we know and don’t know, and affects our workplace interactions in very negative ways. We think that we eliminate bias by keeping our “personal lives” – some aspects of ourselves – out of the lab, classroom, or office. But actually this is how we allow implicit bias to seep in and saturate everything we do, because that which is male, straight, white, able-bodied, monied, is not left behind in the practice of science and engineering – it is just so normative that lots of us don’t notice.

The story came out on Saturday.  I can only hope it’s an April Fool prank – perhaps the most insanely brillaint one o al time.  

I’m not very hopeful.

The DFL wants you to know that Senator Ron “I went to Harvard.  Did you know that?  Did you go to Harvard” Latz is all about protecting your online privacy.

Unmentioned:  Unless you’re a gun owner.   Then, he wants you to be on lists that are available to any reporter, activist, creepy stalker or burglar who wants ’em.

Latz:  supporting the right kind of privacy.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

Today on the show:

• I’ll be talking about my conversion to socialism.
• Hillary Clinton really was an amazingly qualified woman, and really won the election.
• Nobody needs a magazine of more than two rounds.
• The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence makes some excellent points, and is a model of integrity.
• Government really can decide what to do with your money better than you can.
• Mark Dayton -profile in courage.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is normally heard on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

To:  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
From:  Mitch Berg, Presbyterian peasant
Re:  False Witness

Dear ELCA,

One of your reverends is lying through her impeccable teeth:

Your reverend keeps telling black people and Muslims that the HR288, the “Self Defense Reform Act”, is a special danger to them, because, she says, it’ll allow people to shoot people who “make them feel uncomfortable”.

It’s a lie.  Nothing more – and if you take your Ten Commandments seriously, nothing less.

The Reverend has had the truth about this matter explained to her, repeatedly.  “That hoodie / disdasha / person’s skin color made me scared” is not grounds to use lethal force in self defense¹.

Ever!

She is not “mistaken”, and she certainly isn’t telling the truth.  She is not only willfully misleading people – she’s using her clerical office to lend her lies credence.

Is this the example your clergy should be setting?

Please see to this

That is all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Minneapolis is considering an ordinance requiring private landlords to accept Section 8 tenants.  This is the housing analogue of health insurance.  From the comments to the article, it appears there is much confusion about how private enterprise is affected by democratic socialism.  Let me break it down for those who need detailed explanations but have short attention spans.

 Sellers of nice things must charge enough to make a profit, else they go out of business and nobody can have nice things.  But not everybody has the same amount of money, so pricing nice things to keep the seller in business means not all customers can afford to buy nice things.  That results in unequal treatment: some get nice things and some do not. 

Unequal results are unfair.  To Liberals, this is a Law of Nature no less binding than gravity.  Society cannot tolerate unfairness.  Fairness must be imposed by making everyone equally able to afford nice things. 

 Society can achieve fairness by guaranteeing student loans, making income-adjusted forgivable loans for home ownership, subsidizing health insurance, giving away free cell phones with data plans to surf the web . . . all the nice things are then affordable by everyone, including the seller who still makes his profit.  Everyone has nice things.  Results are equal.  Life is fair.  Liberals are satisfied.

 Until it turns out that some renters can afford nice places and others cannot.  Unequal.  Unfair.  Intolerable.  Impose.  Solution: make every landlord accept Section 8.

 But Section 8 is not like the other solutions.  Section 8 is more like wage and price controls.  If you tell the seller he must accept 60% of his cost as payment in full, he cannot afford to cover his mortgage, taxes, insurance, snow plowing, yard maintenance, repairs and still have enough left over to feed himself and his family . . . he goes out of the rental business.  That’s what was happening to medical providers under Medicare, which was a big push to impose Obamacare (which is now seeing the same effect – insurance companies who can’t charge enough for their policies are dropping out of markets, which is the big push for Ryancare).  Wage and Price Controls are why Venezuelans now are starving.

 If Minneapolis adopts the proposed ordinance, some landlords will comply, some will convert their buildings to coops where members buy shares of ownership in the building to qualify for leases, and some will turn them into condos and sell the units instead of renting them.  To the extent private landlords stop renting their units, Minneapolis residents will have even less affordable rental housing than before the solution was imposed.  All renters will suffer.  But they will suffer equally, so it’s still more fair than it was.  Liberals will be satisfied. 

Liberal policies destroy Liberal values.

 Joe Doakes

Except for the whole “getting and holding power” thing.

EU top bureaucrat vows ¹ to “Break up the US” in revenge for Trump backing the Brexit.

EUROPEAN Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker this afternoon issued a jaw-dropping threat to the United States, saying he could campaign to break up the country in revenge for Donald Trump’s supportive comments about Brexit.

In an extraordinary speech the EU Commission president said he would push for Ohio and Texas to split from the rest of America if the Republican president does not change his tune and become more supportive of the EU.

Please, Herr Juncker.  Take California, New York, and DC.

[1] possibly jokingly…

Remember when loyalty oaths were a bad thing?

The Big Left in Big Academia doesn’t.

To:  The Entire Twin Cities News Media
From:  Mitch Berg, ornery peasant
Re:  The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence

Back during my brief and unlamented reporting career, I had not a few editors and producers warn me off using certain sources – the ones that had a habit of feeding them bum information.

I’m going to do the same for you today.  To wit:

On the subject of guns, the Reverend Nancy Nord Bence – the director of “Protect” Minnesota – has never made a single, substantial, original, true statement. 

Not One..

Every word in there is a key qualifier.  I don’t doubt that she makes true, substantial, original statements about other things – Lutheran theology (I’ll let you Missouri Synod people mix it up on that), her family, sports trivia, whatever.   Those are not at issue.

But on the issue of guns, gun laws, gun owners, violence statistics, then the Reverend Nord Bence and her organization have never – not once – made a single statement that is simultaneously substantial, original, and true.

She/they may have made statements that are substantial and true – like, repeating broad statistics from the Department of Justice website (before they embroider them, anyway) – but the statements aren’t original.

They may have said things that are substantial and original – like “Stand your Ground is a threat to minorities and immigrants” – but it’s not true.   It’s devoid of fact.

The Reverend may have said things that true and original – like “Ron Latz supports our agenda” – but they were not substantial contributions to the debate; they were, as lawyers say, de minimis.  

And of course, as we’ve shown in several long series of threads on the Reverend, her predecessor in the office, and their “organization”, they have a long history of saying things that are substantial but unoriginal and false; of things that are original but insubstantial and false, and of course things that are true but insubstantial and unoriginal.  That goes without saying.

But the overriding realization is that the Reverend, and her precessessor Heather Martens, and their entire organization have yet to say a single thing on Second Amendment issues hat is simultaneously all three things – original, substantial and true.

And I’ll welcome the chance to prove it to any or all of you, point by point, with or without the Reverend there to speak on her behalf. The challenge is rhetorical – she openly tells her group never to engage with dissenters, and all too many of you in the media indulge her inability to defend her largely fraudulent agenda.

But this isn’t about her.  This is about you.  You need to stop treating the Reverend and her group as a legitimate source on Second Amendment issues.

She is not.   She feeds you false information, and you – God bless you all, journos tend not to know much about the subject – run it without any serious fact-checking.

More tomorrow.

Why yes – it was ten years ago I started biking to work again.

Of course, I haven’t had ten straight years of biking.  After four years of working downtown (in easy biking distance), I followed up with a year of working someplace with a sixteen mile ride across Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Saint Louis Park and all the way to Hopkins, and then a few years where biking was just not practical.    I had a job two years ago that involved a fairly interesting ride from Saint Paul to Bloomington – but that ended after five months.

But now that I work out of my house (fingers crossed, knock wood), the time is right again.

So I got out and rode to downtown Saint Paul yesterday.

And I was surprised.  For not having ridden much in the past two years, it could have been a lot worse.  My legs actually worked the rest of the day, and when I woke up this morning.  Which was more than I could say ten years ago, when I started for the first time.

But I think I’ll give the legs a day off today…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A woman in Britain spoke an unpleasant truth: feminism has made women worse off.  It’s another example of Berg’s Law: Liberal Policies Destroy Liberal Values.

 She concentrates on the economic effect of women entering the labor force but that’s only the half of it.  Cutting everyone’s wages is bad, of course, but looking around various government offices, I don’t think that’s the worst thing.

 The worst thing is productivity dropped by half, as well.  More people doing less work for less money means work-produced-per-dollar remains constant which looks good on paper but is a massive disaster for management.   

 Focusing performance on time-on-task or units-per-hour is oppressive, patriarchal, and just plain no fun, especially with your co-worker said something that hurt your feelings so you simply can’t bear to work right now; or your kid is sick so you can’t come in today; or you’ll get to my project as soon as you finish texting your friend, or you are certain you have medical reasons why you can’t work even if the doctors are too stupid to figure it out.

 Throw in public sector unions and civil service rules making it impossible to fire slackers and you have a workforce that is hostile to the point of being unmanageable.

 Welcome to the Deep State.

 Joe Doakes

Orwell wasn’t wrong, and he wasn’t even all that far off time-wise.  He just got the degree a little off.

One of the pro-criminal, anti-liberty movement’s fondest conceits about guns is that “nobody needs more than <fill in a number> rounds of ammunition for self-defense”.

These, of course, are people whose only background in self-defense is watching “Law And Order”, where firing one or two shots sends the perps flying head-over-heels backwards.

In real life, of course, things are much foggier. The average cop fires seventeen rounds for every hit they score – which is great, if you’ve got 18 rounds and you’re only facing one perp.  And, movies notwithstanding, one shot doesn’t always take a perp down; with enough adrenaline, or drugs, perps have been known to kill the good guys even after they’ve been hit several times; it’s very rare for a shot to take someone down immediately – and adrenaline can carry someone up to the ragged edge of bleeding out.

Of course, some perps rely on the force of numbers.  “Home Invasions” are a particularly scary form of robbery, where multiple people, usually armed, storm a house simultaneously.  It’s usually pretty safe – for the robbers.   The shock and numbers usually cow the homeowner – or make resistance a short,, sharp, ugly thing.  Because when a homeowner only has six rounds, the only thing separating a living homeowner, a body on her kitchen floor and a couple of robbers high-tailing it across the lawn, and a dead  homeowner in a ransacked house, is blind luck.

We’re written before about cases where civilians – including chidlren – have used the AR15 to defend themselves against violent home invasions.

Thirty Chances At Life:  And I’m doing it again.

The Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the triple homicide in the 9100 block of South Clearview Drive.

Wagoner County deputies said at about 12:30 p.m., three masked intruders entered the home, which was occupied by a father his 23-year-old son.

Deputies said the son shot and killed the three intruders with an AR-15. Police said two of the intruders were juveniles and another was an adult.

Deputies said Elizabeth Rodriguez, 21, was arrested after authorities said she drove the three intruders to the Broken Arrow residence. Rodriguez was arrested on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree burglary.

No bond has been set for Rodriguez.

The father and son were unharmed.

As we’ve noted before in this space – the people who say there’s no legitimate self-defense use for 20+ rounds in a magazine really have only the most academic possible understanding of the topic.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A young woman who works in my building looks to be about 24 years old.  Chatty person, tell you her whole life story. Went to 2-year course for some paraprofessional thing, been working here 3 years. 

 She has student loans, of course.  She racked up credit card debt then consolidated that into another loan.  Old car was junk, bought a new one, has a car loan.  Constantly texting her friends about how tough it is, using her brand-new hand-held computer with unlimited data plan, all on convenient monthly payments.  Every month is down to the wire.  Getting married this fall, needs to save money. Moved back in with her fiancee’s parents to save on rent.  Money is tight.

 Okay, listen, I get it.  I know about stretching the budget. I worked days while I went to law school nights.  My wife and I raised three kids and that ain’t cheap.  We’ve been there.  Nothing wrong with that.

 She’s got an appointment to get Lasik surgery.  She’s tired of wearing glasses.  She wants to be to see without them.  Yes, it’s $1,000 or so but she’ll save money in the long run because she won’t be buying glasses every year.  It’s not an indulgence, it’s an investment, see?

 I bumped into her in the hall a moment ago.  She was running out to Subway to buy lunch because she doesn’t get up early enough to pack a lunch and besides, sandwiches get dried out and that’s just gross.

 Why do I feel so old, all of the sudden?

 Joe Doakes

We’ve got a generation – or part of one – that’s never really known want, and, since their Depression-era relatives are mostly gone, haven’t heard about it.

What would they know?

On the one hand, I do believe that rehabilitation makes sense; once most people get out of their 20s and 30s, the small-brain hormonal impulsiveness behind a fair portion of crime starts to fade just a bit, and long-term prisoners need something to replace that part of their lives with.

So the prison college program hignlighted on NPR earlier this week would seem to make some sense.

On the other hand, the sound bite of one of the classes:

Professor Delia Mellis teaches a modern U.S. history class and, when I arrive, 18 men dressed in green jumpsuits are discussing sexual identity politics.

“I don’t think he’s saying that; I think he’s making a distinction between it being gay acts — homosexual acts — and it being a gay identity,” one student interjects.

Mellis responds, “That’s absolutely his central idea, right?”

 

…makes it clear that retribution and revenge would seem to be part of the goal, still.

Ten years or so ago, during the heyday of the political blog, some of us – conservatives with fond memories of the punk era in music – quipped “conservatism is the new punk”.

In places like Minneapolis and Saint Paul, it’s still pretty true; conservatives and conservatism are the counterculture, the disruption, the sound of the gleeful underdog that makes the establishment froth with rage.

And life today is imitating us.

Read the rest of this entry »

The more I write this blog, the more I realize how prescient Berg’s Seventh Law is.

Remember when the left had their intestines tied in a knot over people open-carrying guns?

Then Trump got elected – and the rules have changed:

So I headed straight to the Capitol, but the pro-Trump event was petering out. One of the cops present told me that the MAGA march consisted of a group of about 100.

However, across the street, on the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza-side of 17th Avenue were the left-wingers, some of them masking their faces, some not. Many of them were armed with long guns. You know, just like the “patriot” groups.

How thoughtful – they even wore brown shirts.

While I was taking photographs of them, a woman approached me and told me that the group would not be granting interviews. She gave me a flier with a statement from something called the “Redneck Revolt,” which according to the flier aims to “put the RED back in redneck.”

Yep.  There’s video.

Mark my words:  when the left says they’re worried about violence, what they’re really worried about is someone beating them to it.

As this is being published, there’s a hearing going on down at the State Office Building.

With that in mind, let’s run down the current situation for the two Second Amendment bills we’ve been following:

Deadlines And Commitments:  As of today:

• “Constitutional Carry” is pretty much dead for this session; House Public Safety passed it, but it never went to the floor, since the Senate never passed a companion bill.  It’s not been added to the House version of the Public Safety omnibus bill, since the Senate isn’t adding it.  It’s effectively over – for now.
• The Self Defense Reform bill – which, in cases of otherwise-legal self-defense, would take away a county-prosecutor’s discretion to try to send you to jail for not running as fast and as far as he thinks you should – looks like it’s in the same situation.

But it’s not.  Not quite.

Stay with me, here.

The Long Game:  At the hearings  House Public Safety Committee is going to be voting on Representative Nash’s Self-Defense Reform bill.

After which it will go to the floor for a vote.

You might way “What’s the point?  There’s no Senate companion!   It’s dead!”

And you’d be right.  For this session.

Here’s the deal; if it passes from the floor this session – the first of the biennium – it remains passed for the next session.  We don’t need to pass it in the House again for two more years, if needed.

This means we’ll have ten months to pressure the Senate into listening to the real will of the people.

What this mean:  Your job – our job – is, if not crystal clear, at least vital:

• Today – as in, today – call the members of the House Public Safety Committee.   Tell them this needs to pass.
• Before The Bill Comes To The Floor (and I’ll let you know when it does):    Call your representative.  Tell them you will not be amused if HF 238 isn’t passed.
• Before the next session:  Get on the horn with your Senator.  Their leadership just missed a golden opportunity to score a win with three whole years before their next election.  They can still do it with two years of cushion.  Don’t blow it.

Let’s get on this.

Some believe that liberals have no princples; that it’s all about power.

Well, some liberal have some principles, it’s true, and some of them aren’t about getting and keeping power.

But as Jonah Goldberg points out, it’d be a mistake to think that liberals aren’t constitutional originalists, as seen during the Gorsuch hearings (I’ll add the emphasis):

After noting a bunch of court cases that reaffirmed Roe, Feinstein went on to make an additional point: “Importantly, the dozens of cases affirming Roe are not only about precedent, they are also about a woman’s fundamental and constitutional rights.”

I’m a bit fuzzy about what she sees as the distinction between fundamental and constitutional rights, but that doesn’t matter. Clearly her bedrock belief is that the process of constitutional evolution stopped with Roe v. Wade. One might say that instead of being a 1789 originalist, she’s an originalist of 1973.

As Bill Clinton said to the intern after sitting on the couch and patting his lap, do you see what I’m getting at?

To borrow a phrase from Michelle Obama, today’s liberals weren’t really proud of America until then…

To:  The Star/Tribune
From:  Mitch Berg, Deplorable Peasant
Re:  You’re Not Even Trying To Deny It Anymore, Are You?

Dear Strib:

I’ll take the headline of this piece as a tacit – and, let’s be honest, redundant – admission that your paper isn’t so much a “journalistic” endeavor as a PR arm for the DFL.     You’re taking run of the mill dissent, and romanticizing it (using a term that should never, ever be “romanticized”).

I could say more – but that’d be pretty much bouncing the rubble, wouldn’t it?

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy) explains why climate science doesn’t persuade him so far. 

He’ll never do lunch with NPR people again.