Confidence can be useful, but “no confidence” is necessary. When it comes to voting, that is. In the U.S., voters are only given the option of choosing yes or no on some question or choosing one option from a list.…
Weak Sauce: Due Process Is No Guarantee
So, the administration and Supreme Court seem to be of the opinion that it’s OK for the State to grab [people] off the street and [do stuff] to them without a court being involved. Or even being able to intervene.…
No Sign: The Militia Movement Is Missing Their Moment Again
This has been an ongoing annoyance for me, for pretty much as long as I’ve been paying attention to U.S. politics. The U.S. militia movement is never around when they might actually be useful. Seriously, this is an active political…
Legal Bribery: Big Law Pays Protection
This particular story is getting some press, but no one’s mentioning the bribery aspect. And it’s definitely bribery. Even under the Supreme Court’s corrupt “it’s only bribery if you explicitly say so in advance” standard this is bribery. And abuse…
Libation Day: Pouring One Out For The Economy
Well, that was a thing. A very, very stupid thing. So, the new Trump tariff announcement happened. Set aside the fact that tariffs are a tax paid by purchasers of imported goods, and not (as Trump and his enablers inexplicably…
Change Is Hard: Designing A Path For Change Is Harder
Even if you ignore the “convincing everyone else to go along with it” part. Which is frankly the hardest bit. The easy part is identifying something you don’t like about the world as it is. And it’s not really that…
Hitting Escape: Like Marriages, Sometimes Countries Need To End
Situations change, people change, governments change; and now the United States is not the country they taught you that it was back in grade school civics. And it needs to just end. To be honest, the U.S. has never actually…
Look Outward And Up: Some New Role Models For Americans
It has been quite a year already, and it’s only March. We’ve got even more quite-a-year ahead of us. But these problems aren’t limited to the U.S.; most of the globe is seeing similar autocratic movements and uprisings these days.…
No Delegation: The State Should Do Its Own Work
I’m not optimistic on anything being fixable at this point, but we should still think about how to do better next time. Because there will (eventually) be a next time. And when it comes time to write the constitution for…
Authoritarians United: Most Courts Will Be Too Slow To Matter
If the police are mostly on the wrong side, then it shouldn’t be surprising that most courts will be too. It’s where their class affinities lie, after all. Judges are wealthy and, for the most part, they grew up that…