YOLO SCOTUS

This year's Supreme Court term ended with a string of bangers, beginning with Louisiana v. Callais where the Court held that partisan gerrymandering is Constitutionally acceptable because "vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination," cresting with Mullin v. Doe where the Court held that the Trump administration did not act from racial bias when it revoked TPS status for all covered Haitians even though the Court admitted that President Trump "broadly denigrate[d] ... Haiti ... as [a] hellish place[] in which to live" and made "some statements malign[ing] Haitians who have come to the United States," and culminating in Trump v. Barbara where the Court said that the 14th Amendment says what it says (as they said 128 years ago) so people born here are citizens but people who read cases for a living are still nervous.  Does that all make sense?  No?  Let me explain, or at least sum up. 

As I said here several times before, the Constitution says whatever five out of nine middle-aged-to-elderly judges think it says.  People don't like that, so SCOTUS typically, or at least used to, coalesce around an opinion that all nine would sign for majorly important Constitutional issues.  Cases like Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, US v. Nixon, Trump v. Anderson.  For whatever reason that didn't happen this term--everyone went all YOLO and did whatever the hell they want.  If you're interested in deep analyses go read David French in NYT or any of the myriad articles on The Bulwark and The Atlantic.  If you prefer something more passive but still insightful you can watch this.  I'm keeping it Gheorghe.

Callais will make your head spin.  Writing for the majority, Justice Alito said that states may draw congressional districts on a partisan basis without running afoul of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 despite holding in 2019 that political gerrymanders "present a 'political question' and [are thus] nonjusticiable—outside the courts' competence and therefore beyond the courts’ jurisdiction."  And they allowed Louisiana to implement their new congressional map immediately even though mail-in voting had already started and their 2007 decision in Purcell v. Gonzalez says you can't do that.  Fortunately, racial gerrymanders are still impermissible, but race is, of course, a proxy for party alignment.  There is one Black Republican senator (Tim Scott) and he is only the fourth ever.  Two of the other three (Hiram Rhodes Revels and Blanche K. Bruce) served in the 1870s back when the GOP was the party of Lincoln and the third (Edward Brooke) served on behalf of Massachusetts from 1967-1979.  According to Gemini, "There are 61 Black members serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, including two Delegates. This figure includes 57 Democrats and 4 Republicans." So if you see a Black legislator on TV, chances are greater than 90% that they're a Democrat.  And when you dilute the Democratic vote there's a good chance you're also diluting the Black vote.

Despite all that, Justice Alito remarkably thinks racism isn't that big of a deal in federal elections anymore.  Or maybe he's just racist, I don't know.  What I do know is that this Court has torn down the Voting Rights Act starting with Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and I think their mission is complete.  I'll let you form your own views on the motivations.

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Justice Alito continued to be remarkable in Mullin v. Doe, a case involving the withdrawal of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians.  This withdrawal required two things in order to be Constitutional.  First, the relevant statute required the Department of Homeland Security's Secretary to make a "determination" that conditions in Haiti no longer satisfy the statutory requirements supporting TPS.  Second, don't be racist.  I think the administration failed at both but they won because reasons.

The "determination" aspect required Kristi Noem to do some stuff that she didn't do but Alito just waived his hands at it, claiming that the statute doesn't allow courts to review the determination.  This is horseshit.  Plaintiffs weren't asking for a review of the determination's conclusion, they were asking for a review of whether Noem followed the process required to form a proper determination.  Even more ridiculous: Alito tacitly admitted that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem publicly expressed racist views towards Haitians but concluded that their statements weren't "overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications."  I guess thinly veiled racism is ok?  Racism covered up by nothing more than two pasties is just fine?  Justice Kagan called bullshit on this horseshit and spelled out some of the slurs.  I won't repeat them but you can see them on page 46 of the PDF.

I don't know how to reconcile Alito's statement that racism isn't a problem anymore in Callais with his rebuke of Trump's words in Mullin ("poverty and deprivation are no reflection on character, and there is no justification for denigrating the character of Haitians who suffer from and bear no responsibility for their country’s ills").  Or to be more succinct, how is racism a non-issue when the President of the United States says racist stuff?

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There were other cases I didn't like this term but they don't surprise me.  Brett Kavanaugh, SCOTUS's most famous girls' basketball coach, took pen in hand for West Virginia v. B.P.J., holding that West Virginia may prohibit transgender girls from playing in girls' sports leagues.  This isn't a great outcome for transgender girls but it keeps the issue with the states and that's pretty typical for a court of six Republican appointees (or at least it was back on Earth 1.0 before Trump).  Situations likely exist where transgender girls should be allowed on girls' teams (like when the girl in question used puberty blockers before puberty) but no one wants SCOTUS making those rules.  Let local leagues figure it out.  If you're looking for a silver lining, Justice Kavanaugh applied the "intermediate scrutiny" standard of review and that's good, especially for future cases involving more existential transgender issues.

It also comes as no surprise that Chief Justice Roberts wrote Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook.  Both involve separation of powers principles and a conservative hobby horse called the "unitary executive theory" which holds that the President has control over all Executive branch officials, allowing him to fire any of them at his pleasure.  If you want to learn more about the unitary executive theory (or fall asleep) you can read this (I had to read it in law school and I don't recommend it).  C.J. Roberts is a big fan, given his Reagan/Bush 41/Bush 43 origin story, so he and the five other Republican appointees decided to expand the President's power, allowing him to fire officials from independent agencies.  SCOTUS said the President couldn't do this 90 years ago in Humphrey's Executor v. United States but hey, what's precedent and stare decisis when you have a two-thirds majority on the Court!  To put a fine point on it, Roberts wrote in Slaughter "If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it." (Emphasis in original).  Importantly, Roberts wrote in Cook that this does not apply to governors of the Federal Reserve.  I don't know why and neither does Roberts or anyone else on the Supreme Court, aside from the need "for the stability and success of the U.S. and world economies."  So the unitary executive is all well and good so long as it doesn't play with the Justices' money.   

Trump is therefore free to destabilize everything else.  The silver lining here is that it's now easier to undo almost all of Trump's agency appointments in the future (assuming we ever have another fair and free election and a Democrat wins).  But as with Calais and Mullin, there are some intellectual inconsistencies.

My favorite recent case is Trump v. Barbara where six Justices held that the 14th Amendment provides birthright citizenship.  This should've been a really short opinion because this issue was decided in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.  At the oral argument, Justice Kavanaugh asked counsel for Barbara "if we did agree with you on Wong Kim Ark, that could be just a short opinion, right, that says the better reading is Respondents' reading, government doesn't ask us to overrule, affirmed?"  And that approach makes sense.  There are many different ways to interpret the law, but this Court loves originalism which is where the Justices follow what the statute's authors intended when they wrote the law.  As a result they treat the Constitution like stone tablets handed down by God and try to divine its meaning through blood sacrifice and other ritualistic undertakings.  Helpfully, Wong Kim Ark was decided only 30 years after the 14th Amendment was ratified so the Justices interpreting it knew exactly what its authors intended.  Originalism!  Just do what those guys did and knock off early.

As a practical matter, we all learned of the Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship in middle school, so again, open and shut.  I never heard anyone question it until we put this dildo back in the White House.

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The opinion is 6-3 in favor of birthright citizenship, but only five Justices based that decision on the 14th Amendment.  Kavanaugh invalided Trump's executive order in light of 8 U.S.C. §1401(a), a federal statute that implements the 14th Amendment to provide birthright citizenship.  Remarkably (I can't stop using that word!), Kavanaugh thinks that Wong Kim Ark is good law but still would've upheld the executive order under the 14th Amendment despite what he said at oral argument.  This means that only five justices think the 14th Amendment provides birthright citizenship--with one changed vote it could be taken away by a mere act of Congress (i.e., revoking 8 U.S.C. §1401(a)).  So if one of the  septuagenarians in the majority (Roberts or Sotomayor) keel over today and Trump puts Jeanine Pirro on the Court, birthright citizenship is over.  That's bonkers.

The dissents are mostly upset about the practice of "birth tourism," where foreigners travel to the US to give birth so their child will be a citizen.  I can see why this would grind a racist's gears but Gorsuch, this fucking guy.  

The Sopranos This Guy GIFfrom The Sopranos GIFs

Here's what he had to say:

Besides addressing temporary visitors, the order also denies the benefits of citizenship to children born in this country to parents who make their permanent home here, but do so in defiance of federal immigration laws. The government insists that aspect of the order can survive any possible legal challenge, too, because individuals can secure domicile in this country only if they do so in compliance with federal law. 

About that, however, I harbor doubts. Perhaps Wong Kim Ark does not squarely foreclose the government’s position. After all, that case addressed a child born to parents who lawfully resided in this country. Still, I wonder: Is a child born here to parents who have long chosen to make this Nation their permanent home not a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment solely because his parents’ presence violates statutory law? If those parents are not domiciled here, then where are they domiciled? And if the answer is nowhere, how can we reconcile that conclusion with this Court’s longstanding recognition that every person is domiciled somewhere? See Desmare v. United States, 93 U.S. 605, 610 (1877). Because the executive order is not facially invalid, these questions may not be properly before us. But their answers are undeniably important to a Nation committed to a view of citizenship open to all children born here to parents who can call this country their home.

Now is exactly the time to address this question Neil.  Everyone else did!  You should too.

How do I reconcile all this?  Easy.  The Republican appointees have interpreted Justice Robert Jackson's maxim "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final" as a call to YOLO instead of to humility, compromise and order.  They have no fucks to give.  Which I guess is a classic Republican thing.  Happy Fourth!

Uncertainty at One Bills Drive

The Buffalo Bills fired their head coach and fellow Tribesman Sean McDermott on Monday.  I don't love this move for several reasons.

First, McDermott is a good head coach.  But much like the practice of law, being an NFL head coach is all about "what have you done for me lately."  Here's how McDermott compares to the best coaches over the last four years and their career Super Bowl records with the best in yellow:

McDermott is no Andy Reid or Nick Sirianni, but he compares favorably with everyone else over the last four years.  He made the playoffs with Tyrod Taylor and Nathan Peterman as his starting QBs for god's sake!  It isn't clear that anyone could do much better.  

Second, as with anything in life, a change can make things better or worse.  It was pretty ugly before McDermott arrived at One Bills Drive going back 30 years:

That's 17 consecutive years without making the playoffs.  From an AFC East perspective they finished in last place 8 times, in the bottom two 16 times, and went 24 years without winning the division.  That was not fun.  You know what was more fun?  Ninety-eight wins, eight playoff appearances and five division titles over nine years.  Will they do as well with Brian Daboll or Mike McCarthy or Klint Kubiak or Joe Brady?  For every Marv Levy or Sean McDermott there's a Mike Mularkey or a Chan Gailey.

Third, a bunch of things outside of McDermott's control cost them this game.  

zdaughter really got into football this season and plays a lot of Madden (which involves drubbing me mercilessly and talking smack about it).  At the end of the first half with 22 seconds left she said "They should run four verticals" and I said "No, they will take a knee."  They did not take a knee, which is on McDermott, but what happened after the snap is not on McDermott.

Allen should've thrown this away, or slid, or really done anything other than carry the ball like a loaf of bread.  McDermott didn't cause that fumble, or fail to recover it, or kick the FG for Denver.

I know that zdaughter is a real Bills fan because she woke up on Sunday still pissed off about the Brandon Cooks play.

Even this guy in a Celtics shirt says the Bills got ripped off and he brings the receipts with the same fact pattern but a different outcome in the Rams/Bears game.

Real Bills fans know that it isn't fair to besmirch someone based on another person's failures.

Fourth, there's no clear choice to replace McDermott.  

The last time I did one of these posts I talked about coaches with rings, or CWR.  No coach ever won a Super Bowl with two different teams despite the fact that there have been LIX (that's 59 for you math majors) opportunities to do so.  As a result I don't want a CWR so that rules out John Harbaugh (who isn't available), Mike Tomlin (who wants to take the year off and would require sending draft picks to the Steelers), and Mike McCarthy (who doesn't get me excited and probably wants to go home to Pittsburgh anyway).

The Pegulas' goal appears to be getting to the Super Bowl ASAP.  Only seven coaches reached the Super Bowl in their first year with a team:

• Don McCafferty with the 1970 Colts.  They won.  McCafferty was the Colts' offensive backfield coach in 1969.
• Red Miller with the 1977 Broncos.  They lost.  Miller was the Patriots' OL coach in 1976 (that's a crazy career upgrade by the way).
• George Seifert with the 1989 49ers.  They won (for the second year in a row) with a stacked roster including six Pro Bowlers, three first team All Pros, and the league MVP (and at least five future Hall of Famers).  Seifert was the Niners' DC in 1988.
• Bill Callahan with the 2002 Raiders.  This team was stacked with Rich Gannon (league MVP), Jerry Rice and Tim Brown, two first team All Pros on the offensive line, Rod Woodson, Charles Woodson, Bill Romanowski, and Sam Adams (the DT not the brewer).  Callahan was the Raiders' OC in 2001 and they lost to ...
• John Gruden with the 2002 Bucs.  He was the Raiders' HC in 2001.  This defense was one of the best ever with Warren Sapp, Simeon Rice, Ronde Barber, John Lynch, Derrick Brooks, and Booger McFarland.  Sapp, Barber, Lynch and Brooks are HOFers.
• Jim Caldwell with the 2009 Colts.  They lost.  Like Seifert, he was on the team's staff the prior year (assistant HC/QB coach) and he took over a stacked roster that won it all a few years previously including seven Pro Bowlers, three first team All Pros, and the league MVP (and at least two future Hall of Famers).
• Gary Kubiak with the 2015 Broncos.  They won thanks to arguably the league's best defense featuring five Pro Bowlers and one first team All Pro.  Peyton Manning's withered husk started 9 games going 7-2, completing 59.8% of his passes for 9 TD and 17 INT.  Brock Ostweiler chipped in 5 wins, 10 TD and 6 INT along the way.  Kubiak was Baltimore's OC in 2014 and he had a history with Denver as their backup QB in the 1980s.

So what's the best comp for this Bills team?  

The roster is not stacked--they do have three Pro Bowlers (Allen, James Cook, Dion Dawkins) but they have no speed at receiver, the defensive line has no one fearsome (despite spending lots of draft capital there), the defensive backs are shaky (despite spending lots of draft capital there) and always injured, two of their starting OL are free agents, and they will be more than $7.6m over the cap (due in not insignificant part to Allen's $56m cap hit, up from $36m this year).

The coaching staff has talent.  Bobby Babich put together the top pass defense (despite all the injuries) but the run defense was like a sieve.  Joe Brady would maintain Tribal continuity and he assembled a top five offense three years in a row.  But neither are as seasoned as Seifert or Callahan.

The closest match I can see is the 2002 Bucs--they were very good on one side of the ball--so I'm looking for a good head coach (or coordinator with head coaching experience) who didn't break through yet.   Looking closer at history, Gruden and Kubiak were offensive coaches who won Super Bowls as head coaches with dominant defenses so maybe the Bills need to hire someone who came up as a DC like Leslie Frazier (former Bills DC), Vic Fangio, or Steve Spagnuolo, but they're old as hell, so Vance Joseph, Robert Saleh, or Brian Flores.  For shits and giggles I'll give Anthony Campanile a shoutout because Fair Lawn and Don Bosco.

Ultimately though, they will probably hire Brian Daboll because Josh Allen loves him and that's as good a reason as any.  I don't love that hire (I watched him coach a lot of bad Giants losses) but I'll hope for the best.

I am fit as a goddam fiddle, alternatively titled "The Streak Redux"

Almost four years ago I touted my Peloton purchase in a Gheorghemas post.  I have continued to use it regularly and although I haven't been able to drop my weight significantly below 169 pounds (and really, why would I want to) I am fit as a goddam fiddle.  I routinely crank out rides of 11-13 kJ per minute (Danimal scoffs at that) and work up a mighty sweat but cool down in about five minutes.  When I'm not doing rides I'm lifting weights or doing yoga.  Not heavy weights or good yoga, but I'm trying (I hate lifting weights).  If I'm away from home I'll do a run on the hotel treadmill or even outside (!) on the street.  I have convinced myself that this shit is fun, worthwhile, and too expensive to collect dust in the basement.

So thorough is this self-inflicted Jedi mind trick that yesterday I completed my 365th day in a row of doing at least one Peloton activity.  A streak, if you will.  rob's wife streaked with me.  She also participated in the ride I took to make the streak one year long. 

Some of you will remember my last streak which ran sometime during the spring semester of 1996 when I went after Buck's house record for most consecutive nights out.  This was a streak of an entirely different tone and tenor than my current health kick.  Eventually I broke the record, and when I saw Buck I told him so.  He replied "I don't remember setting a record like that" which means his streak destroyed his memory or he was full of shit when he told an impressionable freshman about his drinking exploits.

Unlike my streak of 1996, I feel no pressure with this one.  In fact I feel good!  I'm not keeping it alive just to say I did, I'm enjoying myself.  I'm sure this streak will come to an end but it won't be a relief when it does.

zdaughter's Definitive Ranking of All Eight Mission: Impossible Movies

Everyone knows it's hard for me to pass on a request, so zdaughter and I sat down (at Whitney's request) to rank all eight Mission: Impossible movies.  It went like this.

zman: My friend Whitney asked us to do something.

zdaughter: Cool, what does she want?

zman: Whitney is a man.

zdaughter: Oh Whitney, right, he has a bad tattoo doesn't he?

zman: Several of my friends do but yes, he does.  He asked us to rank all eight Mission: Impossibles.

zdaughter: Yes!  I'll get a pencil and paper!

You may recall that she thinks of herself as a Mandalorian but she's also very much Hermione Granger--she's the kid who always raises her hand for every question just to keep the class moving along because she's paying exceedingly close attention and gets bored when things bog down.  She only got one question wrong on a math test so far this year and she's still pissed about it.  This is all her mother.  Outside of class she doesn't take herself too seriously.  She gets this from me.  Here's her spring school photo, for example.

I'm telling you all this to help frame up her approach to the M:I ranking.  She loves cold blooded killers, strong female characters, fast pacing, perfectionism, and a dollop of silliness.  And she's a zperson so she has no time for schmaltz, cheese, or maudlinism.

With that, here are her rankings:

8. Mission: Impossible 2 - Remarkably, an action movie directed by John Woo with Thandie Newton as the leading lady and Dougray Scott as the main villain is a dud.  zdaughter's take: "This is so cheesy.  He has long hair and he's always tossing it around.  The fight scenes are ridiculous, he's always flipping and spinning for no reason.  It's like he's trying to fight like a Jedi but he doesn't have a lightsaber."  I agree with all of this, I'm amazed that the franchise survived this cornball schlock.

7. Mission: Impossible 3 - Remarkably, an action movie directed by J.J. Abrams with Michelle Monaghan as the leading lady and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the main villain is a dud.  I sense a trend.  zdaughter's take: "This one's corny too.  His hair is short but now he's retired?  There's no way Ethan Hunt would retire.  And of course he has to come out of retirement to save his girlfriend.  I wasn't worried when he died, I knew they would bring him back to life.  Tom Cruise isn't going to die."  I agree with all of this too.  Blowing up a Lamborghini added insult to injury.

6. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning - This is the eighth episode, currently in theaters near you.  zdaughter's take: "It's a good movie but it's too long and it's stressful.  It's a long time to be that stressed out.  Gabriel wasn't a great bad guy and it's hard to understand how the Entity works.  But there is lots of action and Grace is cool.  I wish they didn't kill [redacted]."  Grace is a thief, fyi, and zdaughter's favorite character in the franchise.  They could've lopped 45 minutes off this beast and told the exact same story.  At one point Cruise narrowly survives a crazy situation that drags on for half an hour and then he explains all the other stuff they need to do to accomplish the mission and I looked at my watch and exclaimed "Jesus Christ, we've been here for 90 minutes and they have more to do?!"  It's just too long.

5. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation - This is the fifth episode and the first one directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who directed all the subsequent episodes.  I'm surprised she has it this low but her top four are her top four and she isn't budging for anyone.  zdaughter's take: "It's a good movie but it isn't as good as the ones I like better.  I don't like the color filter."  I have to agree on the color issue.  I don't know if we had a streaming problem on Prime but the colors were way over-saturated and muddy.  But it introduces Ilsa Faust, a world-class assassin and zdaughter's second favorite character in the franchise.

4. Mission: Impossible - Fallout - This is the sixth episode and it's also surprisingly low but this is zdaughter's list and I'm not messing with it.  "This one is good.  It has Walker [Henry Cavill] and the White Widow [Vanessa Kirby] and Ethan Hunt is John Lark."  That all makes sense if you've seen the movie.  It's a banger--this would've been in my top two if I wrote the list.

3. Mission: Impossible - This is the one that started it all.  zdaughter's take: "This is the one where he drops down from the ceiling and he can't touch the floor and the rope slips and he stops an inch away from the floor.  And he jumps off a helicopter just as it explodes and it throws him onto a train."  In other words it has iconic scenes that everyone remembers.  It's the OG, the Sean Connery of the franchise.  Number three is where I would place it too.

2. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - This is the fourth episode, where the franchise turns away from the soft dreck of episodes 2 and 3 into hard espionage stories.  Sort of how the James Bond franchise did a complete tonal change when they moved from Pierce Brosnan's "Die Another Day" to Daniel Craig's "Casino Royale."  zdaughter's take: "Ethan Hunt climbs on the outside of a building like a budget Spider-Man, there's a crazy chase scene in a sandstorm, the Kremlin explodes, Hawkeye is in it too."  The Avengers crossover likely boosted this one in her eyes but I agree that it's a ton of fun.  It would've been in the top two on my list.

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - This is the seventh episode and a bit of a surprise for the top spot.  But it makes sense when you hear zdaughter's take: "It has Agent Carter [Grace is played by Hayley Atwell, who played Agent Carter which I encourage you to watch on Disney+, zdaughter highly endorses it too] but it's weird to see her not in the 1940s.  It also has Ilsa and Paris [Paris is a female killing machine].  The best part is when Agent Carter tries to drive the Fiat but can only go in circles and Paris is just sitting there like what the hell.  It's the funniest of all of them."  This is all true, this is the episode that takes itself the least seriously, that occasionally puts tongue in cheek and humanizes the characters.  For example, there's a scene where Tom Cruise kills a bunch of people (this happens often) and Hayley Atwell (who met him a few hours ago) is comically shocked speechless and Cruise has to convince her that it's all ok.  In another scene, Atwell and Cruise are handcuffed together and hilarity ensues.  Cruise later ends up staggering around Rome, handcuffed to a steering wheel.  It's the only movie where Ethan Hunt gets goofed on and it has three badass female characters who help save the world, so that's why it's zdaughter's #1.

zPSA: Donald Trump is Fucking Up

Elected Democrats have been doing a piss-poor job communicating to the American people despite the political gifts handed to them lately.  Their first instinct is always to pussy-foot around an issue, both-sides it a little bit to avoid offending anyone, and use 5,000 words when five would do.  They're also afraid of sounding crass, or being assholes, and if they ever swore it wouldn't sound authentic.

For example, Hakeem Jefferies recently offered the opinion that “Tariffs, when properly utilized, have a role to play in trying to make sure that you have a competitive environment for our workers and our businesses.  That’s not what’s going on right now. This is a reckless economic sledgehammer that Donald Trump and compliant Republicans in the Congress are taking to the economy, and the American people are being hurt enough.”

"Utilized"?  Really?  Who talks like that?  "I utilized some toilet paper to blow my nose because we're all out of Kleenex.  Good thing we had the TP otherwise I would have utilized my finger."  Sounds perfectly normal and relatable.  And more importantly, why is he providing cover for Trump's tariffs?  Why couldn't he just say "Trump's tariffs ruined the economy"?

Everyone who reads G:TB knows that I have an inordinate fondness for Cory Booker, but did he really have to talk for 25 hours to draw attention to DJ Trump's stupidity?  He couldn't boil it down to maybe 25 minutes?  Does anyone know what Booker actually said?  I don't.

Trump is fucking up and someone needs to call him out in a way that resonates with people who were stupid enough to vote for Trump in the first place.

You know what this moment calls for?  Someone who can swear and be crass authentically, for whom being an asshole comes naturally.  Like Chris Christie, only not a big fat slob who sold out to Trump and did a 180 only after being dumped from Trumpworld.

I think the Democrats need to cut an ad with someone well-known and well-respected from outside the world of politics and run it throughout the NBA playoffs.  It needs to use short, pithy sentences.  It needs to be overly reductive and devoid of nuance so that Trump and his supporters need to babble like Democrats to try to explain it away.  The ad's point needs to be clear even if you can't hear it because you're watching in a sports bar.  It should feature someone who has represented America on the world stage, who achieved major wins, and who has fucked up epically.  This person could then say "I have represented our country on the world stage.  I know a lot about winning, and I know about fucking up.  I'm here to tell you: Trump is fucking up."  And that's the theme.  Four words.  Trump is fucking up.  Bleep the "fucking" if you have to but don't blur the speaker's mouth.

Then really quickly have them say something like "The Trump tariffs tanked the stock market.  Since he took office the market is down about 9%.  That means Trump's tariffs took one out of every eleven dollars in your savings.  Trump is fucking up."  Run video of Trump talking on one side of the screen while the stock ticker plummets on the other.

They could also say "Trump promised to deport illegal aliens.  But his own lawyers admitted that they accidentally deported the wrong guy.  So the illegals are still here and the wrong guys are in El Salvador.  Trump is fucking up."  At the same time, run video of Kristi Noem rocking her ICE cap, flak vest and Daytona.

Then they conclude with "I know a lot about winning and this isn't it.  Trump is fucking up."

My first thought was Michael Phelps.  He represented the US at the Olympics, he won more than anyone ever, and he got into a bit of a jam with a bong.  So when he says "I have represented our country on the world stage.  I know a lot about winning, and I know about fucking up," the ad would run a picture of him on an Olympic podium with the flag, then a picture of him with a shitload of medals, then the photo of him and the bong.  

Everyone knows Phelps.  Many people like him, or at least respect him.  I don't think anyone hates him.  Apparently he dislikes Trump and he strikes me as having some assholery in him, but I don't know how authentically he swears.  This seems like a good option though.

My next thought was Tiger Woods.  When he says "I have represented our country on the world stage.  I know a lot about winning, and I know about fucking up," the ad would run a picture of him holding the Ryder Cup, then a bunch of iconic pictures of him with trophies and/or fist-pumping, then ... well, there are probably a lot of fucking up photos to choose from but I'll just go with his mugshot.

But Tiger is friends with Trump so he wouldn't go for this.

I was stuck after Tiger.  I ruminated and finally struck on an amazing idea.  You know who can take on a raging asshole from Queens?  Another raging asshole from Queens, one who famously swears and acts badly but won a lot and who put representing America above almost everything else. 

Like John fucking McEnroe.  Johnny Mac viewed representing the US in Davis Cup play as a holy grail and he did more for the US Davis Cup team than just about anyone.  He won 77 titles on the tour including seven majors.  And he was famously thrown out of the Australian Open for cursing out an umpire.

Everyone knows him, I think he's generally respected, and he likes to smoke weed and shit on Trump.

And he has a great story about how his father, also named John McEnroe, sent Trump a letter in 2015 and Trump thought it was from the tennis star.

Anyway, I'm sure there are plenty of other candidates to star in my PSA.  I invite you to nominate some in the comments.  But please hurry because the Democrats can't get out of their own way.

Economics and the Second Amendment - Redux 2025

I'm pulling a Grover Cleveland with one of my better G:TB posts because it's particularly relevant these days.  DJ Trump, who also pulled a Grover Cleveland, is not at all Gheorghe and does not read G:TB--if he did he would know that tariffs act as a tax and wouldn't have screwed up our 401(k)s.  I have Marls and Jamboni drafting a complaint right now, let us know if you want in.

DJ Trump recently announced that he will impose tariffs of 25% and 10% on imported steel and aluminum, respectively. The Dow dropped 350 points in response. Naturally, I plan to sue the President.

This isn't my idea--he had it first. Back in December 2017, Trump twat the following in response to a 350 point drop in the Dow:

People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused - many millions of dollars!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

I'm not sure what the exact cause of action against the President would be. Surely not negligence. If the President can't be guilty of obstructing justice how should I expect to be made whole for acts of mere Executive stupidity?

I think my best claim is infringement of my Second Amendment rights. Let me explain.

I went to arguably the most conservative law school in the country. Before classes started I was encouraged to read "Principles of Economics" by N. Gregory Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush. I actually enjoyed the book and I dredged it up for this post.

Here's how Mankiw explains tariffs:

The increased price of foreign goods under the tariff allows domestic firms to increase their price, thus resulting in overproduction. The increased price also results in underconsumption. Consumers (i.e., everyone who isn't involved with the manufacture of steel and who isn't the government) loses the benefit of quandrangle C, D, E, and F. This because the government reaps rectangle E and manufacturers take trapezoid C. If your eyes haven't glazed over at this point, you realize that the entire market--everyone involved in this situation--loses the benefit of triangles D and F. Thus triangles D and F are a deadweight loss--absent the tariff, D and F would have been consumer surplus. Instead no one had D and F. Thus the tariff acts as a tax. And these triangles are the direct result of the aforementioned overproduction/underconsumption. This jumped out at me 15 years ago. Seriously, look at my notes in the margin.

This is important because conservatives abhor deadweight loss--when Kudlow, Laffer and Moore are against an economic policy you know it isn't conservative. And if that doesn't convince you, the fact that Democrats and unions support the tariffs should.

I personally dislike the tariffs because as Mankiw explains "When a country allows trade and becomes an importer of a good, domestic consumers of the good are better off, and domestic producers of the good are worse off. Trade raises the economic well-being of a nation in the sense that the gains of the winners exceed the losses of the losses of the losers."

Does that last sentence sound familiar? It probably does. Conservatives always say that the government shouldn't pick winners and losers. Here's what Paul Ryan has to say about this:

Elites in Washington should NOT be picking winners & losers—that’s a recipe for a closed economy—for cronyism.https://t.co/AcHJfVRwTE

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) July 28, 2016

Of course, Ryan also applauded Trump's move that helped keep Carrier's plant in Wisconsin. Cronyism indeed!

Anyway, the upshot of this tariff is that it will cost more to manufacture things that are made out of steel (and aluminum). This added cost will, of course, be passed along to the consumer. So expect to see an increase in the price of appliances, silverware, steel-belted radial tires, beer cans, cans of beer, cars and car parts, BBQ grills, BBQ grilling utensils, wire, pots and pans, foil, golf clubs, patio furniture, fencing, fencing swords, plumbing supplies, building supplies, nails, screws, brads, tacks, nuts, bolts, washers, garbage cans, bicycles, ladders, window frames, and mattress springs.

And things like guns and bullet shells. The President's steel tariff is really a tax on guns and bullets, making it more expensive for me to exercise my god-given Second Amendment right to bear arms. "Shall not be infringed" goddammit! I'm suing! And while I'm at it I'm going to claw back the money I lost in my 401(k) just like Trump said I should three months ago.

Pokey LaFarge is not Sleepy LaBeef

Pokey LaFarge is a youngish guy whose music Spotify occasionally serves up to me.  His sound has evolved over the years from really old timey (like the Squirrel Nut Zippers) to old timey (like J.D. McPherson) to his latest album Rhumba Country which inspired this post.  It's not fair to say it sounds like a Beck album, because those are big shoes to fill, but like Beck he melds a bunch of different musical styles together and I dig it.

The first Pokey song I heard was End of My Rope which is one of his more moderately old timey jams from a few albums ago, Rock Bottom Rhapsody. 

Here's the title track from his first album.  You'll see what I mean about the Zippers.

He made a handful of albums with this general sound, gradually adding more background musicians and improving production quality.

Then in 2020 he released Rock Bottom Rhapsody.  I guess the pandemic gave him the opportunity to listen to music that wasn't originally recorded on a wax cylinder and he did some songs like this.

In 2021 he released In the Blossom of Their Shade, probably after listening to a few reggae and surf records.  See what I mean?

Continuing his southward musical journey, Rhumba Country includes a few Latin influenced songs.  I'm particularly fond of One You, One Me and its nominal hiphop lyrical flow at the beginning.

The rest sounds like something you would get from Dan Auerbach's solo stuff.  You know how much I enjoy pseudo-soul jams like this.

All this is a long-winded way of saying I like Pokey LaFarge's new album and encourage you to listen to it.

zbouillabiase: Political Natterings

I haven't posted anything in a long time and I don't have anything particular cogent to say, although I've seen a few interesting pieces of political news recently.

First, the New York Times and other major media outlets reported that a parasitic worm ate a portion of RFK Jr.'s brain and then died there.  Lest you assert "this is lamestream media bias against the antivaxx crowd!!" I direct you to the portion of the article that quotes deposition testimony given by RFK Jr. in which he said that doctors determined than an abnormality seen in his brain scan "was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died."  More succinctly, he testified under oath that he had a dead worm in his brain.  He further testified "I have cognitive problems, clearly," and "I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me."  In response to the article, RFK Jr. twat (xeeted?) "I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate."  So he admits the whole worm thing.  And he had mercury poisoning too, which also doesn't bode well for his overall health or his cognition.

Apparently you get worms in your brain by eating undercooked pork, which can carry tapeworms.  Typically the tapeworm larvae wind up in your intestines but sometimes they get lost and wind up in your brain.

Once there, they eat your brain but I guess that isn't what they're supposed to nosh on so they die and your body naturally walls them off, forming cysts.  Like this.

Just to be clear, you don't want that.  All this tapeworm talk reminds me of Irvine Welsh's novel Filth which is partially narrated by the main character's tapeworm.  I've been reading more of his stuff lately (once I get used to reading in a Scottish accent I keep going so I don't have to reacclimatize) and it's all good.  My two favorite recent passages are "I was differently made: at his age I had testicles as vicious and hairy as the heads of two ferrets" (from Dead Men's Trousers) and "Terry gave thanks for all those years of excessive beer-drinking and takeaways.  Without them he would have fallen to certain death.  A lesser man, body honed on exercise and diet rather than sloth, indolence and abuse would be dead by now, he reflected.  A lesser man." (from Glue).

Second, Donald Trump is running his reelection campaign like a goddamned gangster.  And I don't mean "gangster" euphemistically, I mean it literally.  He has family all over "this thing of ours."  First he installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the RNC.  This makes it easier for him to divert super PAC money to his pay legal bills.  Second, he plans on making Uday and Qusay Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump "loyalty czars" in his next administration.  This means he will only appoint and hire people who pledge complete fealty to DJ Trump.  Third, he got 18-year-old Barron Trump named as an at-large delegate for Florida in the Republican national convention.  

What do all of these people have in common?  They're family, which means they will always be loyal.  You can never lose your family.

Finally, Trump's Veepstakes competition is well underway.  All sorts of seemingly important people are willing to debase themselves on national television for a shot at being on the ticket.  Kristi Noem shot her way out of contention, but there's still plenty of chatter around JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum, and Tim Scott.  Like I said in 2016, "he's running his campaign on some next-level reality TV competition three-steps-ahead shit."  So it won't be any of those jackals.

Trump needs to win this thing to stay out of jail, and he needs to stay in office for the full four years so he can run again in 2028.  There's only one way out of office once he's in (assuming the Big Macs don't get him in his sleep).  He's clearly unimpeachable--he literally staged a coup and suffered no consequences in the Senate.  All he has to worry about is section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which says in part:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

The key here is that the 25th Amendment can only be triggered if the VP signs on.  In order to boot the Prez, you need the Veep.  There is absolutely positively no fucking way in hell that Donald Trump is going to give anyone the opportunity to shiv him in the back unless that person is a rock-solid reliable supplicant.  And that has to be family.  Maybe Tomax or Xamot Junior or Eric, but they're both morons and The Don knows it.  I think that means Ivanka, Jared, or Kimberly Guilfoyle.  

You're probably saying "No way! No one go for want this!" to which I reply "Oh really?"  Think about all the shit DJ Trump pulled over the past 77 years.  You think the people who are willing to tolerate that won't tolerate some nepotism on the bottom of the ticket?

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You don't think DJT would love to roll out "TRUMP/TRUMP" campaign signs?

You heard it here first.  Trump/Trump or Trump/Guilfoyle 2024.

I saw The Walkmen!

I saw The Walkmen this past weekend as my first post-pandemic concert.  I've been a fan for a long time and I thought I would never get to see them because they went "on hiatus" in 2013 so I was excited for their Revenge Tour.  I got on the pre-sale list early this year.  Tickets went on sale at 10 am and when I logged in at 10:01 am (because I had a fucking Teams call) they were sold out.  Luckily they enjoyed their short tour so much that they greatly extended it and I was able to catch them at Asbury Lanes, up close and personal.  It was great.

If you aren't familiar with The Walkmen you should acquaint yourself with them.  If you're a traditionalist like me and prefer the album approach, start with "A Hundred Miles Off."  They have an early-2000s sound, jangly and indy, but also really boozy.  Lots of their songs sound drunken.  Here's a Spotify playlist based on the setlist from the show.  

I always thought these guys should be way more popular than they are, but now I realize that they need a stylist and a little more on-stage charisma to win over the masses.  They're one of those bands that you see live and you realize that it's really two guys doing all the work.  Hamilton Leithouser, the frontman, reminds me a lot of former Unit M'er Sammy the Bull in both appearance and dance moves.  Fortunately for him, he sings like someone threw Rod Stewart, Julian Casablancas, Brandon Flowers, and a fifth of gin into a blender.  The other main guy, Peter Matthew Bauer, plays just about every instrument except the drums.  Like Leithouser, he has some awkward moves.

But they fucking rocked the house.  Leithouser sang his ass off, Bauer hustled his ass off between instruments, and the other guys worked their asses off too.  Much like Prince's pants they were completely assless by the end of the show.  I was delighted to hear Little House of Savages, The Rat, Postcards from Tiny Islands, Angela Surf City, On the Water, In the New Year, Thinking of a Dream I Had and the songs from A Hundred Miles Off.  I wish they played the other songs from A Hundred Miles Off (especially Brandy Alexander, Tenley Town, Lost in Boston, Another One Goes By and Emma Get Me a Lemon), Revenge Wears No Wristwatch, and Greasy Saint.  It was $30 well spent.

So sign up for their newsletter and go see The Walkmen if they ever go on tour again.

Naked Politics

My least favorite law school class was Constitutional Law because, as I posited over a decade ago, "[a]ll that counts is what five out of nine middle-aged-to-elderly judges think."  What is constitutional one day might not be the next, simply because a president swapped in a new judge.  Similarly, what is constitutional one day might not be the next, simply because five of nine elderly judges want a different outcome.

For example, in 303 Creative LLC et al. v. Elensis et al., the Supreme Court held that a website designer does not have to design a website for a gay wedding when the designer believes that gay marriage is a sin and abetting the wedding would run counter to her Christian faith.  Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch observed:

Under Colorado’s logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same topic—no matter the underlying message—if the topic somehow implicates a customer’s statutorily protected trait. Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty. The government could require “an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a film with a Zionist message,” or “an atheist muralist to accept a commission celebrating Evangelical zeal,” so long as they would make films or murals for other members of the public with different messages. Equally, the government could force a male website designer married to another man to design websites for an organization that advocates against same-sex marriage. 

I understand what he's saying with these hypotheticals.  But does this also mean that a racist White person can refuse to make a website for an interracial wedding, effectively refusing to provide services to a Black person?  Justice Gorsuch refers to "all manner of artists"--how far does that extend?  Does the work of high-end chefs constitute art, and if so, can they refuse to provide their food to classes of people they don't like?  In other words, could a racist chef refuse to serve their food to Latinos?

Justice Sotomayor points to all of this and more in her dissent.  But the law of the land today appears to say, on First Amendment free speech grounds, that you can't force a business owner to provide "artistic" services to customers if the business owner does not agree with the content of the artistic work product.  I don't know how to reconcile that with discrimination.

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In another recent case, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court held that public and private universities cannot consider race during the admissions process.  The Court pointed to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and said that this affirmative action process was discriminatory.  Chief Justice Roberts's majority opinion interestingly says:

At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.

That's weird.  I never worked in a college admissions office, but I assume that no one other than the admissions staff reads the essays.  No one knows what any particular essay says other than the applicant and whoever reads it.  How can anyone police essay review?  Does this mean that applicants can't address their race in their essay unless they discuss "discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise"?  What does that mean?  And most importantly, doesn't this limit what the applicant can say in their essay--doesn't this restrain the applicant's speech?

Maybe not.  Perhaps the applicants can write whatever they want and it's up to the admissions staff to ignore inappropriate sentences.  But does forcing the admissions office to ignore those sentences effectively curtail the applicant's free speech?  What good is free speech if the audience isn't allowed to consider it?

More succinctly, I think Con Law is bullshit.  Sometimes free speech trumps anti-discriminatory laws, while other times anti-discriminatory laws can limit free speech.  When and how the rules apply depends on how nine old people in DC feel about the matter at hand and the outcome they desire.  Mitch McConnell's gaming of the Supreme Court confirmation process got us these decisions.  No matter what you may hear, the Supreme Court is a nakedly political body.  And as much as I approve of naked bodies, we don't need any at 1 First Street.

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Colin Allred Wants to Make Texas Blue

 Colin Allred played in 32 games for the Tennessee Inbreds Titans from 2007 to 2010, recording 46 tackles, 0 sacks and 0 interceptions.  Pro-football-reference.com gives him a career AV of 2.  

His post-football career is more impressive.  He got his JD at Berkeley then worked for Julian Castro at HUD.  Now he represents Texas's 32nd district (Dallas and some suburbs) in the US House of Representatives.  And he gives a great interview:

Now he's running to unseat Ted Cruz as the senator from Texas.

I’m running for U.S. Senate because Texans deserve a Senator whose team is Texas. Ted Cruz only cares about himself.

Join our campaign today: https://t.co/2dROrrQrPV pic.twitter.com/9iz9yu1rFb

— Colin Allred (@ColinAllredTX) May 3, 2023

And he has a convincing pitch: Ted Cruz sucks.  No one will argue with that.  

Ted Cruz beat Beto O'Rourke by 215,000 votes despite the fact that Beto said he is in favor of taking guns from people which is the least Texan thing you can say.  Seems to me that Allred only has to say "I played football at Baylor and in the NFL, and you can keep your guns" to pick up those necessary votes.  What's more Texan than that?  

I'll tell you what!  During the January 6 riots, Allred texted his wife to tell her he loves her, then took off his jacket and tie and prepared to fight the mob with a stanchion.  Ted Cruz retreated to a broom closet (and he wasn't pulling a Boris Becker, he was hiding).  Eventually he came out of the closet and went to Cancun.

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So I'm calling this race for Allred.  Of course, I'm the idiot who thought Cory Booker had a convincing presidential pitch so what do I know.  

Everything You Need to Know About Fairleigh Dickinson

You're probably suddenly aware that Fairleigh Dickinson University is a college in New Jersey with a remarkably short basketball team.  You probably don't know much more about it.  I do and I'm here to help.

Fairleigh has multiple campuses.  The "Metropolitan Campus" spans the banks of the Hackensack River, with buildings in Hackensack and Teaneck.  I find the "Metropolitan" appellation funny because neither Teaneck nor Hackensack seem metropolitan to me, but what do I know.  I grew up in both towns so FDU was always a presence in my life as a kid.  

For example, my friend's father was a professor there.  Another friend's father went there for dental school.  In fact, many of the dentists in the area went to FDU but it closed in 1990.  Now they partner with Lecom School of Dental Medicine for a BS/DDS program.

Fairleigh also has a "Florham Campus" in Madison and Florham Park, towns that neighbor my current home.  Fairleigh is still a presence in my life.

For example, we had a babysitter who went there.  She was an education major so she needed access to elementary school kids for various homework assignments, which included helping said kids with their homework.  It was a win-win.  

Our babysitter also played third base for the Florham Campus softball team.  Oddly, the Florham and Metropolitan campuses have different teams.  More oddly, Florham is DIII while Metropolitan is DI.

The Metropolitan campus's mens hoops team takes on Florida Atlantic this evening.  People across northern New Jersey will watch with great rooting interest, including zfather, FDU class of 1969.

Wikipedia says FDU is the largest private school in New Jersey and that surprises me.  But it shouldn't.  Despite being called "FD Who?" or "Fairleigh Ridiculous," Fairleigh provides higher education for a lot of kids who wouldn't have access otherwise.  According to their website, "Last year, Fairleigh Dickinson offered more than $70 million in University-funded aid; more than 94% of full-time freshmen received some form of aid."  Many of these kids are the first in their families to attend college, or wound up in the NJ area through some crazy circumstance.

Much like zfather!  He and his parents fled Hungary when Russia invaded and confiscated the family farm.  They staggered around Czechoslovakia for a year, then wound up in Flushing, Queens.  zgrandparents were fortunately educated and spoke grammatically perfect, albeit heavily accented, English.  They got good jobs and worked for the FBI on the side, infiltrating communist meetings as make-believe fellow travelers.  This allowed them to naturalize quickly and easily.  Meanwhile, zfather went to Brooklyn Tech, a public magnet school like Bronx Science or Stuyvesant with a focus on engineering.  Upon graduation he got a scholarship that allowed him to go to Queens college for three years, then Columbia for two, earning a BS and MS in five years.  For free.  Gratis.  Nada.

At the same time, zgrandparents bought a house in Emerson, NJ after saving for almost a decade.  What a country!  Unfortunately, this meant my father had to forfeit his scholarship because it was only for NYC residents.  And my grandparents wouldn't let him use his aunt's address because they feared that if anyone found out, they would all be deported.  I guess it's hard to trust the government after living through WWII and the Russian invasion.

So zfather was left without a college.  Rutgers wouldn't take him--they thought he was faking his NJ residence, and he didn't help his case when he said "Why the hell would I go to Rutgers if I lived in NYC, I would have a full scholarship to Columbia!"  So he called Fairleigh, told them his story and his SAT score, and they found money for him.  He even played on the tennis team which won some state title.

Chances are some of those short FDU cagers have a similar story.  So join me in rooting for the literal and figurative little guy this evening.

Sentence of Dave Inspires Me, Alternatively Titled "My Earliest Appearances in Court"

Dave of Sentence of Dave wrote two recent Davish posts about his son's speeding tickets and subsequent court appearance, including an aside that "Alex should be thankful that he has a supportive father who accompanied him to court" just to prove that Dave wrote it.  This inspired today's post.

Almost 30 years ago I spent a summer in the Burg living with rootsy, Nelson, and Juan Moritz on Braxton Court.  This confederacy of dunces encountered a comedy of errors including broken pipes, shower fungus, and a misunderstanding of when the co-eds from whom we sublet the place expected us to be out.  But we managed to eke out some fun along the way.

I used Hoopy's name to get a job working at the Short Stop Cafe.  I think I made it through three shifts before I was fired.  I misread the calendar and showed up for a dinner shift when I was supposed to work a lunch.  The manager said "We have a policy here, no show, no call, no job."  I replied without skipping a beat, naturally, "No shit." and handed him my apron and Shortstop polo shirt.  I'm still bad at calendars but I haven't been fired since.

I was not phased by this turn of events.  I knew I wasn't cut out for the waitering life, with its formalities and expectations like courtesy and politeness.  I was too sick and rude to wait.

Shortly afterwards, I saw a sign at Paul's Deli advertising an opening for a delivery driver.  This seemed like a good fit.  I like to drive, it involved minimal customer interaction, I got a free meal on each shift, the commute was about 250 feet, and I could smoke cigarettes on the job.  It suited my 21-year-old lifestyle to a T.

Except for the part about the cops.  Williamsburg is crawling with them.  Campus Police, Colonial Williamsburg Police, Ford's Colony Police, Kingsmill Police, Williamsburg Police, James City County Police, State Troopers, all of them looking to pull over a young guy in a Japanese car with NJ plates driving 6 to 9 MPH over the limit.  All this is to say I had a lot of interactions with the local constabulary.  In these situations I would point to the pile of pizza and sandwiches in the passenger seat, explain that I deliver for Paul's, and occasionally they would let me off with a warning.  Or they might give me a ticket for improper equipment, a misdemeanor that doesn't put points on your license.  About half the time they would give me a speeding ticket for 5-9 MPH over the limit (no matter how fast I was really going).

I couldn't afford the points and resulting insurance hike so I would put on a jacket and tie, take the ticket to court and beg the judge for mercy.  Sometimes the cop wouldn't show up so the judge had to let me go scot-free.  Other times the judge would knock the ticket down to improper equipment, maybe they liked Paul's French dip (truly a hidden gem of a sandwich).  Once I negotiated with the prosecutor before the proceedings started and walked out with improper equipment instead of speeding.

My favorite courtroom appearance, to this day, arose from such a situation.  I was driving on Route 60 towards the Outlets and the myriad hotels, motels, and mobile estates out that way.  I made this run a million times and knew every crack and pothole in the road.  I also knew where the 25 MPH zone ended and the 40 MPH zone began.  I was cruising along at about 30 MPH in the 25, and once I was within sight of the 40 MPH sign I sped up.  Almost instantly, out of a shitty little hidey-hole tucked twixt two shrubberies popped Sneaky Pete.  I looked down, saw I was doing about 37 MPH, and pulled over immediately.

Radio off, interior light on, window down, rearview tilted up so I didn't get blinded by the coplights, hands on the wheel.  A Statie rolled up, a young guy.  He gave me permission to get my documents from the glove box, asked how fast I was going, and I told him "37 MPH because I could see the 40 MPH sign" and gave him my usual song and dance about Paul's.  He appreciated my honesty so he was honest too.  "It's the end of the month and I need to make my number.  You've been straight with me so if you come to court I'll tell the judge you were cooperative so he might reduce the fine."  This is why people hate the regulatory state but I didn't get into that right then and there, instead I took what the defense gave me and checked down to "Thank you sir."  After we exchanged the relevant paperwork I went back about my business with the popcorn shrimp and hot Hollies.

For whatever reason I had to appear at the courthouse in Yorktown.  The judge was straight out of central casting, a Southern fried take-no-bullshit sumbitch like Fred Gwynne in "My Cousin Vinny" and he looked like the judge from "Air Bud."  The entire proceeding irritated him and he had complete disdain for most of the lawbreakers who came before him.  He threw the figurative book at almost everyone.  Almost.

I got there a little bit before the appointed time, and that was a stupid move--this court also has jurisdiction over maritime issues so I had to sit through an hour of boating and crabbing shenanigans.  And they really were shenanigans.  In the maritime session, a Vietnamese guy tried to fight a ticket for taking some undersized crabs.  The judge lit into him, "This is whyyyyeh we don't have enough cray-yibs innymore!  Becuz pyeople lahk yeeeew are tayehkin' unnersahzed cray-yibs en overcrabbin' the bay!"  The defendant couldn't follow what was going on and barely managed to say anything in English in response.  The judge yelled some more and hit him with a $750 fine.

Very next guy up was Jimmy Joe Jim Bob John from Croaker or Norge or whatever.  The cop explained the facts--same as the previous guy, except he had two coolers full of too-small crabs.  The defendant was incensed.  "Judge" he said, "Ah've bin crabbin the bay since ah wiz knee-hah to a grasshopper en ah've nivver bin tickitted fer sumpin lahk this!!"  I swear to god he said knee-high to a grasshopper.  The judge was suddenly accommodating and said "Sir, ah unnerstan how yew fee-yil, buuht the sitchy-ation here is bay-yid.  Pyeople are overcrabbin the bay!  An if yew keep takin 'em fore they're ole nuff tuh reeper-duce, sum day we wone have inny lift!"  Jimmy Joe Jim Bob John adjusted his mesh baseball hat, put his hands on his hips, and screwed up his face as if to say "Ah cay-yint argue with tha-yit."  The judge turned him out with a $250 fine and an admonishment to consider future generations of crabbers.

White privilege is real.

Eventually they got to the landlubber moving violations.  The defendants were called based on the cop who caught them, so that each cop worked through all his criminals in one batch, allowing him to promptly get back to eating donuts and giving himself testicular cancer with the radar gun.  The judge demolished everyone, he didn't want to hear anyone's excuses or stories about anything until a pretty little girl went to the defendant's table for a ticket written by Sneaky Pete, the same guy who wrote mine.  She was accompanied by a guy who I assumed was her father until he entered an appearance as Sam Slickness from Dewey Cheatam & Howe.  The cop explained that he pulled her over making a U-turn at a stoplight that had a "NO U-TURN" sign.  Open and shut, right?  No!  Slickness did his dizzle.

First he asked the cop if the little girl had any other moving violations on her license.  She didn't.  Then he asked if she was polite when pulled over.  She was.  Then he asked if any drugs or alcohol were involved.  They weren't.  Slickness then said "Yer onner, as you can see, li'l Suzy Sweetness nivvir did innythin lahk this before, she was pulaht to the ossifer, en there are no extenyatin circumstances with the incident.  She jus gradjeeated from Yorktown Hah School, she's about to be a frishmin at the University of Virginia, en her daddy, Poppa Sweetness, is on the town council here in Yorktown."

The judge leaned forward and grinned like the Cheshire cat.  "Li'l Suzy Sweetness, dew yew promise yer nivvir gonna do this agin?"  Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth as she coyly relied "Yessir" and batted her eyes.  "Aw-rite thin" purred the old judge, "ahm givin yew a ticket for im-proper equipmin.  Run along now, en ah don't wanna see yew in my courtroom agin," smiling the whole time.

Then they called me.

Sneaky Pete explained the facts as he recalled them and based on his notes, ending with 37 MPH in a 25.  Then I did Slickness's dizzle.

I did not know anything about precedent or stare decisis, but I figured I should say what the lawyer just said, adapting to my facts of course.  The only differences were (1) I was within sight of a sign that allowed me to do what I was doing, and (2) my daddy wasn't on the town council here in Yorktown.  I assumed there was no way he couldn't let me off if I did what the lawyer did, otherwise it would be clear that the only reason Suzy Sweetness skated was her father's position on the town council.

So I asked the cop if I had any other moving violations on my license.  I didn't (thanks to all those "improper equipment" trips to court previously).  I asked if I was polite when pulled over.  I was.  I asked if any drugs or alcohol were involved.  They weren't.  I asked if I was within sight of a 40 MPH sign when the cop hit me with the radar gun.  I was.

Then I said to the judge "Your honor, I have no other moving violations on my record, I was polite when pulled over, and there are no extenuating circumstances with the incident.  I was doing 37 MPH because I was within sight of the 40 MPH sign, and I was speeding up in anticipation of entering the 40 MPH zone.  I deliver food for Paul's Deli so I'm familiar with where the different zones begin and end.  I'm about to be a senior at the College of William & Mary, and I promise I'm never going to do this again."

The judge was livid.  He saw exactly what I was doing, and exactly why he couldn't throw the book at me.  He leaned forward and through clenched teeth asked me "Suuun, did yew say yer a stewdin ay-it the laaaw skoo-wul?"

"No sir" I replied, "I'm just an undergrad delivering pizza to pay some bills."

He could've spit nails. "Ahm fahnin yew fer im-proper equipmin, yew be-yin the im-proper equipmin!!  En ah don't ever wanna see yew in mah courtroom agin!!"  Then he banged his gavel.

Some of the poor slobs waiting their turn before this hanging judge gasped.  One or two cheered a bit, there was even a brief smattering of clapping.  I left the courtroom to pay my fine and a middle-aged woman ran after me.  She caught up to me and panted, "That was incredible, how did you do that?"  I replied "I just said what the lawyer right before me said, I figured if it worked for him it should work for me."  Stunned, she smiled and went back into the courtroom.  I like to think that everyone else followed my lead and went home with im-proper equipmin fines too.