MAKE CHECKS AND BALANCES GREAT AGAIN!!!

Boy, Holmes' bad man is really getting a workout these days.

Periodically reminding myself that things falling apart is the precondition of putting them back together. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Highly recommend this brilliant piece by @danfarbman.bsky.social Drawing on his rich knowledge of history, he he lays it out: "We have used up our inherited freedom, and if we want to live in a better world, we must build it together." It's hefty, so put on comfy jams + curl up on the couch.

Today from me over at Postcards of the Hanging it's a callback to something I wrote a while ago that feels like it might have some utility amidst...everything we're experiencing right now. Radical pragmatism, etc. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

We lost Luna (the little spoon) today. 16 years was a good run. But it breaks your heart anyways.

MAKE NOT KNOWING ABOUT STUFF GREAT AGAIN!!!

As I warned you yesterday, @hashtagblevin.bsky.social and I will occasionally be writing about stuff in a shared space. Read Ben's first post on crime, DC, and who is being kept safe from whom here. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Do you ever find yourself wondering what @danfarbman.bsky.social & I are thinking? If so, you're in luck. We have a new site. Check out the first post from Dan on crisis, pessimism, & possibility.

MAKE COLORBLIND CONSTITUTIONALISM GREAT AGAIN!!!

Reposting this link (apologies) only because I can't believe I didn't associate this image with the essay in the first instance. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Ben Levin and I have set up a place where we can, at irregular intervals, inflict our thoughts on you. My first thing there is an essay on founding moments, the 1850s, Thoreau, and the mess we're in. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Doctor I trust more than RFK Jr.

Using a former plantation converted into a brutal site of mass incarceration as an internment camp is basically a Yahtzee of the worst bits of American history, culture, and politics.

During the early white supremacist pushback against reconstruction in North Carolina, former planters demanded “relief for the east” to “liberate” eastern (and majority black) counties from the “abomination” of being policed and governed by their former slaves. This is a bad vibe to be recapturing.

As a professor of both Local Government Law and Con Law, this letter is now on all my syllabi. Excellent stuff.

In addition to everything else, this stuff with DC has made it much more likely that when the reckoning comes, DC statehood will be on the front burner.

Not really the point, and I suspect there is no test in real life, but imagining that there is, I’d looooove to see it.

It’s the old redemption playbook…we’re playing all the hits of the worst parts of American history. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This is a perfect post. (And also a perfect movie)

In addition to everything else racist and stupid about all this…these planters were eating west African food cooked by the people they enslaved.

Dick Fallon was a mentor, friend, and absolute mensch. Hard to overstate how much I owe him and how much he’ll be missed.

If you want to listen to me talk about today, the 1850s, resistance lawyering, dismay, and optimism, you can do that here. (Not sure I can stomach the sound of my own voice…) Thanks to Luke for the conversation. open.substack.com/pub/democrat...

It’s true that “America” means something more than ideals. The trouble is that without the ideals of the Declaration/14A that meaning looks pretty bad: genocide, slavery, white supremacy, extraction. It’s the ideals that undergird the aspirational story (and politics) that might redeem us.

The fact that JD Vance is a neoconfederate is depressingly unsurprising. But it’s an additional bummer that he seems to have chosen Alexander Stephens over George Fitzhugh as an intellectual guide.

Even with this massive increase in funding, the vast majority of law enforcement (and thus the state’s monopoly on the use of force) would remain under the nominal control of local governments. This is why they want a federal police force…but it’s structurally complicated.

Amid all this terrible behavior, this letter is humane, honest, and clear. Any politics that we build to push back against this stuff is best served by this kind of candor and clarity.

The Senate was one of two terrible deals made in 1787. Along with the promise to protect the foreign slave trade, the framers shielded it from future amendment because they knew it was fundamentally indefensible.

When people wring their hands about corporations leaving NYC, consider the story of Amazon’s “HQ2.” After collecting suitors and tax incentives everywhere, they chose NYC as one of two sites, not because the taxes were lower, but because the city (residents/infrastructure/etc) was so valuable.

The Senate is a very undemocratic institution.

It doesn’t look like this was a direct confrontation between LAPD and ICE (as some are suggesting), but the confrontational pose between local government (and local mega institution-Dodgers) is interesting. I expect we’ll see more and more of this.

Geduldig asserts a result that only makes sense entirely removed from real life context. (And which just happens to fail to protect subordinated people along the way). It’s the perfect totem for Roberts’s theory of the EPC.

Seems like we’re criminalizing moral resistance and aid to those subject to state violence… More shades of the 1840s and 50s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_v...

We're going to see more of this kind of confrontational federalism. It's reminiscent of the rise of northern Personal Liberty laws in the 1840s which sought to impose state due process protections as a protection against the federally sanctioned kidnapping of alleged fugitive slaves.

There is and has always been profound disagreement over what “democracy” means. The rules matter a great deal both in terms of substance and legitimacy. RCV is one (democratic) way among many of measuring preference. And it creates a specific set of strategies. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

In the 1870s, when (self-described) white supremacists were working to “redeem” North Carolina from multiracial democracy, they sought to disempower local governments to “liberate” white minorities from black judges, sheriffs, etc. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Amplifying this point. I've been noting how similar the governing philosophy of this regime is to that of the hardline slaveocrats in the 1850s who became the "founders" of the confederacy. It's not just the Civil Rights Revolution or the New Deal they want to roll back, it's the 14th Amendment.

Local government resistance (even with the complexity of police governance) is gonna be fascinating to watch.

Caning of Senator Sumner vibes today.

Tepid take: Vance is obviously right that not everyone who fought for the Confederacy was evil. But it is possible to acknowledge the complexity of human experience without reviving and celebrating (as this administration seems intent on) the hideous political project of John Calhoun and Fitzhugh.

Not at all the major thing here. But this is basically an attack on the concept of the city. Cities are pretty awesome actually—Miller should read some Iris Young and have a little think.

More evidence that this is warmed over 1850s Southern politics.

Things are complex. But the first lines of this book about democratic possibility in crisis that I bought today in Madrid are resonating hard.

The extent to which this regime appears modeled on the secessionist hardliners in the 1850s South is pretty remarkable.

In the US, we have delegated most of the state’s monopoly on the use of force to local police departments. These departments are (famously) not hugely responsive to local democratic control…but the structural posture can create pressure points in the face of federal police action. 1

"...a crisp, fresh salad..."

In the 1850s, one of the things that most inflamed Southern secessionists was when antislavery activists loudly and publicly called them out as immoral and cruel.

Kathleen has made a brave and principled decision. The Skadden Fellowship has never been pure or unproblematic, but there are some compromises that ask too much. We have to build our politics around principles—which requires principled public action like this. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Everyone should read The Marrow of Tradition right now. One of the best and most heartbreaking accounts of America and our pathologies ever written. Depressingly and persistently relevant.

This detail is truly insane. The fact that tax money is being spent on this is outlandish. The public interest entirely supplanted by private grievance, resentment, and minutiae.