Some of these new "UFO" videos might be unclear on what they are, but these are just very obviously balloons.

America needs proportional representation to break the two-party system. Britain needs proportional representation because the two-party system is already broken.

So @jvl.bsky.social once called this one of the most important pieces ever published at @thebulwark.com Of course, this essay is built on the preeminent work of people like @hcrichardson.bsky.social @jbf1755.bsky.social and @angiemaxwell.bsky.social But I think it is especially relevant today.

The current constitution of Virginia has been heavily amended, but it still traces its continuity and substantial parts to the validity of the 1902 constitution, which was promulgated illegally by a white supremacist convention and never ratified by popular vote as the existing procedure required.

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

This dog was a three term mayor of Whoville.

The employment decision doesn't necessarily belong in the correction note, but this should unambiguously be an on-the-spot firing offense.

Ludicrously anodyne framing from NYT here effectively launders the Trump/GOP rigging of elections and reduces it all to a simple "who's winning, who's losing" formulation. Explains a lot about why we're in our current mess.

It is still likelier than not Dems will win by enough to take the House. But if they come up short by some single-digit number of seats and it was... all this... that made the difference, that's a pretty huge leap towards full-blown legitimacy crisis territory.

Worth noting:

The only plausible state where Dems could rush a new map through now is Illinois, and it'd require canceling the primary results and scheduling a new one. Maryland is unlikely to budge and likely to lose in state court even if they did. That's it for Dem trifectas that wouldn't need a referendum.

zero respect for any of this when she had an elected office from which to act on these things and instead quit halfway through her term for no good reason

With this, Republicans are now basically guaranteed to come out ahead in mid-decade redistricting (at least for 2026). But their net gain will still be in the single digits—probably not enough to keep control of the House.

BREAKING: In a loss for Democrats, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the congressional map voters approved last month to counter GOP gerrymanders cannot go into effect. The decision overturns the will of voters for technical reasons and gives Republicans a leg up for the 2026 midterms.

The occupational self-description labels on California's ballot are always funny. Steyer is a "climate advocate." Porter is a "consumer protection advocate." Villaraigosa is a "housing affordability advocate." Becerra is a "voting rights attorney." Hilton is a "small business owner."

This should be beyond the scope of anti-discrimination law as a First Amendment matter, for the same reason anti-discrimination law can't govern casting decisions for TV and movies and such. When the product is itself speech, it's a speech right to decide who you want speaking (including editors).

Fun fact: Jacobin went bankrupt and was secretly bought by The Onion some years ago. This was the template for what they've done to InfoWars.

A reminder: polygraphs are pseudoscience woo-woo.

Not great that everyone now pretends to not know what the word "ceasefire" actually means.

The perfect American history vignette doesn't exi—

It's interesting (depressing) how Rubio's reputation as some kind of not-MAGA Republican is still sticky even when he's literally Trump's loyal secretary of state. It's as if people remember him from 2016 and nothing since. Though perhaps some of it is he's just seen as the only viable not-Vance.

This headline from Justice Roberts and the red banner of what Tennessee just did to Memphis after the SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act..

I’d add Kavanaugh’s grotesque racial profiling decision to the list. In each case the court effectively nullifies safeguards by imagining an idealized world in which the safeguard would never have been necessary in the first place.

Ahh, but the strawberries!

In suburban D.C., @townberwynheights.bsky.social have voted 76 percent in favor of exploring ranked choice voting for city council races. Voters in adjacent Greenbelt, Md. approved a proportional form of #RCV last November.

If there's any silver lining, it's that he knows he's hated.

The post-Watergate reforms didn't rely on just norms. They relied on tenure protections (such as for inspectors general) and legislative veto mechanisms, among other things. The Supreme Court then sandbagged Congress and gutted all those on bogus unitary executive grounds, as Schiff alludes to.

Handing out custom whiskey bottles as the head of an agency famously heavy on the Mormons is a pretty good bit.

Woodford Reserve, which I suppose is the best upper-middling range you can get that's still mass market enough to do something as trashy as sell custom engraved bottles

It’s obviously opinion and rhetoric, but even if you had to defend “bought” and “owned” as statements of fact, you couldn’t ask for much better evidence than Taibbi’s own text messages pleading for Musk to not cut off his revenue stream because he’d never ever criticized him.

I'm sure it's likelier this is bogus. But one downside of having such a nakedly corrupt DOJ is that even a hypothetical meritorious case is tainted. Suppose Lucas was taking bribes or whatever (again, I doubt it), it would *still* be corrupt and selective when they'd never go after a Republican.

If you want AOC, which let's be real that's who they're talking about, then the last thing she needs is to either be listening to or be seen as directed by this sort of gaggle. You'll know she's doing well when Jacobin throws a fit that she's sold out "the Left," proper noun capitalized.

Abolish your podcast in favor of that purer, more elegant, most truly ennobling format for enlightened intellectual discourse, the proper venue of the true 21st century renaissance man: a panel discussion at a conference.

RIP freud. you would’ve loved whatever this is.

Constitutional amendments aren't easy. Lots of wishlist items aren't realistically doable (and many probably shouldn't be). But there are some structural reform ideas that are worth seriously pursuing. I make the case for not completely giving up on our power to change the supreme law of the land:

look up "jurisdiction stripping" bsky.app/profile/chie...

I'm inclined to a harsher view, but not so much for parsing blame in hindsight. It's about what lessons have we learned and how are we going to do better next time, which isn't that far off. Which mostly amounts to: we must go much harder on accountability and much bigger on reconstruction reforms.

The water thing is fake. The infrasound thing is fake. Most of the other issues are at least mostly fake. The mind-losers are QAnon-level gullible but somehow even more resistant to evidence. It's great. Great epistemic environment we've got going here. Really loving it.

data centers are light industrial with a somewhat unusual externality profile- worse in some ways, better in others- and it’s absurd that people are losing their minds about them

Joining the fight against data centers by turning off replies on the discussion about how local land use disputes and AI regulation are two distinct policy issues, thus lessening the unnecessary and socially unproductive load on bluesky's server farms. I'm doing my part.

Of course it is.

Correct. An Alaska-style Top Four + RCV arrangement has some merits, though I don't think it's actually changed the outcome of any races yet. Top Two is the one idea that's abjectly worse than the traditional system. It's worth opposing anywhere it's proposed and repealing everywhere it exists.

I know there's little to no good faith to be had, but still I'm struck by how much of the GOP whataboutism sputtering about gerrymandering blithely throws in states like VT and DE, as if they can't comprehend some states only have one seat. There are actual Dem gerrymanders out there!

The sheer whiny petulance of the Alito concurrence is wildly more improper than anything Jackson said in her dissent. It's not enough to win, even when he wins he still has to be the aggrieved victim because he was criticized at all.

@reptedlieu.bsky.social is mistaken if he thinks #2 here is something you can normally get. Trump's been doling out bogus settlements to himself and his friends because he's lawless and corrupt. If you want it be generally available and realistically obtainable, Congress needs to make that a thing.

Good to see: Hakeem Jeffries announces new initiative for New York to redistrict in retaliation for ongoing GOP abuses. As I've reported (see below), getting NY to do this is a key piece in neutralizing the GOP advantage.