For what it’s worth, I’m quite sure that Vatican City has a lower crime rate than the United States, and that none of the Swiss Guard have murdered any protestors of late.

I’ll settle for him not asking, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

Let’s see if these are as helpful for ex-government types as they were for Bowie and Eno.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

@yaqiu.bsky.social is right, and for reasons that many of you will understand, it sets my teeth on edge.

On Lawfare Daily, @michael-feinberg.bsky.social and human rights advocate @yaqiu.bsky.social discussed the role of AI in China’s surveillance and censorship apparatus, both online and offline. youtu.be/fT_albJp40A

I try and read the children’s classics to the little guy, but when we get to this page, I can’t help but deliver a disquisition on Samuel Fuller’s filmography and the controversy over his late career movie “White Dog.”

This is obviously said with a bit of snark, but in a seriousness, I’m glad Anthropic is actually thinking about the philosophical and theological ramifications of what they’re doing, and wish their competitors were also this probing.

Given the rhetoric of so many of its supporters, I think AI falls more into the category of a graven image.

Many career public servants risked their livelihoods and reputations to speak out against what is happening to our country. It would be nice if elected officials — almost all of whom have much greater resources and security — showed a modicum of the same courage.

His show in DC will probably be my thirtieth or so time seeing him, and given the themes and purposes he’s articulated for this tour in particular, I’ve never been more excited. If we ever needed a dose of “Land of Hope and Dreams,” it’s now.

And they shut down the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and ODNI’s Foreign Malign Influence Center. And DOJ announced it was severely curtailing prosecutions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. We all now have ringside seats to see a great power self-immolate for no valid reason.

In light of recently released footage from a different shooting in Minneapolis, I’m re-upping this article.

For a variety of reasons, I avoided Coachella like the plague when I lived in Silver Lake. But this could easily convince me to now take the trip.

Only someone not from there would think Chicago winters are a big deal. Getting in out of the cold is why every single block in the city has an inviting neighborhood bar. For those on the north side, you could do worse than Simon’s Tavern for a warming glögg on a frigid evening.

When I first joined Bluesky, I, at some point, made a favorable reference to Elbridge Colby as a serious thinker, largely based on his PRC-related writings and speeches. Mea culpa.

“When he first arrived, graduate students were so eager to work with him that they had been willing to shiv one another. It was a part of his benevolence that he hadn’t required them to.” From a new story by Caleb Crain ( @calebcrain.bsky.social ).

I was quite happy to sit down with @yaqiu.bsky.social for @lawfaremedia.org and discuss an otherwise dour topic: the past, present, and future of the PRC's surveillance state.

I think that this effort, by @katherinepomps.bsky.social and @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org, will prove to be one of the more consequential analyses conducted during the first two years of this administration. Its findings are incredibly alarming, but they can be addressed.

You know, I think I’m going to exercise the Bartleby option here, and not click.

Former FBI analyst Philip Fields breaks down the numbers on DOJ’s mass exodus in Justice Connection’s latest Substack. This data-driven piece breaks down how the hollowing out of experienced DOJ staff is making the country less safe. justiceconnection.substack.com/p/by-the-num...

This ad only ran once, as a devastating attack on the perceived bellicosity of Barry Goldwater. That it is applicable now to our current political predicament is a sad reflection on the mess we’ve made for ourselves as a society.

This is the first of several PRC-related podcasts I’ve recorded over the past week or two, and touches on a topic with which I’ve long been fascinated: great power rivalries, past and present.

I know that this photo is filling everyone with hope and wonder and feelings of the sublime, but — if I’m being honest — I primarily see the final sequence of Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia.”

This debate over pushing for impeachment versus removal under the 25th Amendment is, somewhat, a distraction. Before we can rebuild the rule of law and constitutional norms, there will need to be an accounting of who destroyed them and a reckoning for those who took part.

This is from the first issue of @parisreview.bsky.social I ever owned; a friend bought it for me because of my nascent interest in espionage fiction. Every single “Art of Fiction” interview is worth reading, and contains multitudes.

Kein Scheiß, Sherlock

The little guy and I were listening to Bowie this morning, and as soon as “Modern Love” came on, I instantly felt guilty for not introducing it to him via the films of Leos Carax. Maybe when he’s two, we can just watch “Holy Motors."

Happy birthday to one of the great poets of cinema, Andrei Tarkovsky.

This is a great article for anyone interested in boxing, even if I’d rather watch a middle- or welterweight fight than two heavyweights battle it out. You’ll see more technique and strategy with the first two classes.

Let’s not conflate mainline American Protestantism — which is largely progressive — with the non-denominational variety. It’s only the latter which has become a uniquely different, and often malevolent, political force.

Eviscerating FVEYs would cripple our national security almost more than any other of the idiotic moves taken by this administration. I can’t believe we live in a world where someone with the ear of the White House is advocating this.

Best wishes for all of those preparing to mark the end of Holy Week.

This was entirely foreseeable, and many of us warned that if the Department abandoned all of its principles, the decent public servants in its ranks would abandon the Department.

This was a Herculean effort to create, and will provide real value to those following the immigration enforcement scandals and violations of law engulfing our government.

It’s still a source of disappointment when I remember that Six Flags Magic Mountain has not a single ride based on a tuberculosis sanatorium.

It’s impossible to overstate the role literature plays in my life, but this sounds like a nightmare. I mean, Truffaut’s adaptation of “Fahrenheit 451” ended with this sort of thing as a last ditch, no-other-options-available-type scenario for readers. Not everything should be done in a commune.

And Pam Bondi does not even have Wales to show for her efforts.

You lose any skills you don’t practice. Thinking is one of those skills. Do not surrender your brain to AI.

To those still in government, let this serve as a reminder that this administration will have zero loyalty to you, regardless of how many principles you compromise. If the outcome is predetermined anyway, you may as well just uphold your oath of office and be a real public servant.

It’s difficult for me to believe that any faculty from the school which conferred intellectual legitimacy on J.D. Vance and Stewart Rhodes, and one of whose professors groomed female students to dress provocatively for clerkship interviews, would ever give such advice.

Just so everyone knows, the Solicitor General straight up lied about the 1921 law review article he kept talking about. quick thread:

I’m going to send this to my friends still in the intelligence community just in case they need a good laugh. To paraphrase Neil Burnside, Mark Dubowitz has spent too much time behind a desk to comment on field matters.

I, for one, am very excited about our new DHS Secretary, and welcome our new mutant overlords.

There’s more than one reason to mark April 1st.

The author’s @nytimes.com bio says he likes to write "about the new kinds of political communities, figures, ideologies and styles that are being formed online — things that don’t fit into neat political taxonomies or historical precedents.” Really? He can’t think of any historical precedents here?

That Moyn thinks his moral reputation will fare any better than that of, say, Wurman, Barnett, or even Blackman when this is all over is (to me, at least) one of the more amazing features of this contretemps.

He was just a generation or two too late; he would’ve fit in great with Heidegger.

We should add that the only reason we’re here, though, is because a small group of scholars decided making bad faith arguments in order to please the current executive branch, and make their followers smile, was more important than having even a modicum of academic integrity.

It’s far too often forgotten that these people are powerful because we make them so. Were we not insistent on integrating their products and services into every aspect of our life, their reach and influence would be orders of magnitude smaller.