The British Parliament still has 92 unelected lawmakers who inherit seats by bloodline. They're all older white men. A new law now phases them out, for the first time in nearly 1,000 years. n.pr/415FdjL

#OTD 21 March 1804 Code Napoléon is adopted as French civil law. This rational law did away with the feudal system and is one of the most influential law codes in human history.

March 21, 1776: A patriot named Benjamin Birdsall tells the New York Committee of Safety that the southwest part of Queens County is a nest of enemies and unless corrective measures are taken, the danger will worsen. Many of the Tories sing a song called "Damnation to the Congress," he reports.

21 MARCH 1776, LONDON: “The present war is carried on contrary to the sense of the nation, by a ministerial junto … equally hostile to the rights of Englishmen, & the claims of Americans,” John Wilkes tells the House of Commons in the first speech advocating reform of Parliament.

This is a thread for lovers of elections; French politics; & French geography. Tomorrow are France's runoffs for MAYOR elections; every city choosing its mayor. It's a window into multiparty politics, shifting coalitions, & hard math, & suspense. I'll go thru the 10 biggest cities, 1 by 1.

NEW: The Trump administraiton has lost more than 7,000 immigration detention cases in recent months. Increasingly, DOJ is telling judges they have no argument to present or couldn't get facts from ICE to present in court. A look at this emerging trend. www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

Harriet Taylor Mill officially recognised as co-author of 'On Liberty'! dailynous.com/2026/03/19/o...

NEW: Oral arguments in the law firm executive order appeals at the D.C. Circuit will be at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, May 14. We do not yet know the panel (or time allotment for arguments).

acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:... Reflections on Iran Some years ago, I wrote this paper of my general observations about Iran based on my reading of English secondary sources over many years. With the caveat that I am not an Iran expert, I don't read Persian, and it needs to be updated. #iran

Good morning. U.S. District Judge April Perry just took the bench to hear from attorneys about motions recently filed in the case of the "Broadview Six" (now down to four).

Very little is known about Number Six, beyond his former life as a secret agent, but it is known that March 19th is his birthday or it was, before his identity was taken away when he arrived in The Village. Escape is impossible, but birthdays endure, even for a prisoner. #Speirgorm

Self-Portrait, 1966 https://botfrens.com/collections/19/contents/1237254

The tribes of Britain c. 540 in the time of Gildas.

suspect we might be hearing a bit more about the mountainous topography of Iran's coastline over the weeks to come

Nothing to see here, just the original enrolled act that made Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church of England (26 Hen VIII, c. 1). TNA C 65/143

Chaise à porteurs à décor de chinoiseries en laque rouge du XVIIIème siècle dans la salle d'armes du château de Cheverny.

It was AI, wasn’t it? Either that or Niall Ferguson.

"With hindsight, we can also see that had Faber and Faber accepted the book, which was an almost unmatched commercial success, it would have transformed the financial position of the firm to which Eliot was so devoted."#

Exclusive: US intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse, say sources - www.reuters.com/business/med...

BREAKING: Judge Royce Lamberth rules that the Trump admin impermissibly halted Voice of America and related broadcasting and impermissibly placed associated employees on administrative leave, orders return to work by March 23. Order: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

UPDATE: The plaintiffs filed their opposition to this DOJ admin stay request today. In addition to noting the 10-day delay, they note that there is *another* preliminary injunction similarly limiting tear gas use — and that DOJ hasn't appealed that, so an admin stay would change nothing.

Court: "Are you here for moral support? Because you're not going to speak." Off to a great start!

Note: Monday's ACIP injunction came from Judge Brian Murphy, the district court judge in Massachusetts who has been overseeing the third-country removals case (D.V.D. v. DHS).

Closing this loop: The DC Circuit today formally granted DOJ's motion to withdraw its motion to dismiss its appeals of the district court rulings in the law firm EO challenges. So, the appeals go on. Background at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com/p/doj-to-dro...

On n’avait aucun doute sur l’honneur et les convictions de Pierre-Yves serpillère

#SCOTUS just granted certiorari before judgment in *both* the Syria and Haiti Temporary Protected Status (TPS) cases—and will hear argument on the merits in April. But it *deferred* the Trump administration's stay applications in both cases, so the DHS actions in those cases remain blocked for now:

BREAKING: SCOTUS takes up cases over challenges to Sec. Noem's effort to revoke temporary protected status for Syria and Haiti. Notably, the court keeps lower court rulings blocking Noem's revocations in place for now, sets oral arguments for late April. More to come at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com

NEW: A federal judge said in an opinion issued today that the Trump administration violated the tax law “approximately 42,695 times” in turning over immigrant data to ICE

Went back to Twitter to check something and @deontologistics.bsky.social reminded me of this meme, I genuinely think the best meme to ever be produced by Philosophy Twitter.

🗳️🇫🇷 #Municipales à #Paris : voici la liste des cinq candidats qualifiés pour le second tour de l'#élection. Plus de résultats ici ➡️ https://go.france24.com/l2Y

We just got the final results in Paris. Center-left got 38%, conservatives got 25%, radical left 12%, the (sorta-right) centrists 11%, & the far-right 10%. That means all can remain in runoff. Left now favored… but if there’s consolidation on the right but not the left, it could get v tricky.

mini-thread recapping the French results today:

Here's the Friday order from Judge Burroughs (Mass.) temporarily blocking Sec. Noem's effort to end Somalia temporary protected status (TPS) designation. A proposed schedule for further briefing is due by Wednesday. Order: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Not only did DOJ dismiss two of the defendants from the Broadview protesters criminal case this past week — storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... — on Friday they also scaled back their case against the remaining people, including Kat Abughazaleh. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

There is no such thing as “scholarly writing” if you use AI glad to have saved you the trouble

In all seriousness, sincerely concerned for how Hegseth is going to mess up PME now that his gin-soaked gaze has turned upon it. Imposing political litmus tests on PME instructors - the likely plan - will meaningfully damage the institutions and thus US security in the long term.

Gallipoli sucked. It was an unmitigated disaster of a campaign. The left hand photo is Gallipoli. The right hand photo is the coastline around #Hormuz. Good luck with that @hcrichardson.bsky.social @georgetakei.bsky.social @bradleywhitford.bsky.social @kevinmkruse.bsky.social 📸 my own

That's funny, I could have sworn he said something about not needing Royal Navy vessels because the war was already won. You broke it Don, you fix it.

For more on Habermas, I recommend this:

For those of you wondering why all the nerds are pouring one out for this Habermas dude and wondering why he was so important. If you've ever heard or used the terms "public sphere" and "private sphere," you are using Habermas terms.

In 1915 Britain was at war in the Middle East. It was utterly dominant in one particular domain- the naval. Britain smelt a quick & easy victory- using their naval mastery to batter their way up the Dardanelles Straits & threaten Istanbul Instead it would be an epic of imperial hubris

The Dardanelles are open for transit, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill said. "The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is the Ottomans shooting at the fleet," he said. "It is open for transit should the Ottomans not do that."

Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. https://to.pbs.org/4bbc9gw

RIP to one of the great theorists of the twentieth century. His democratic rationalism is sorely missed today.

JUST IN: Democrats flip a seat in the New Hampshire state House. Dem Bobbi Boudman has won today’s special election, NHJournal reports. (Boudman was the Dem nominee in 2024 & lost by 14%; Trump won here by 9%.) This is Dems’ third legislative flip so far this year, after Texas and Arkansas.

RIP Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026)