One has to acknowledge that Jason Bateman is consistent. Doesn't matter how you dress him up, he always sounds like Jason Bateman. Ok buddy?

"Ein Mensch zu sein bedeutet wesentlich, ein verletzlicher Risikoträger zu sein; ein mutiger Mensch zu sein bedeutet, gut darin zu sein." [Jonathan Lear, Radikale Hoffnung, Berlin, 2020, S.182]

Jonathan Lear. One of the best raconteurs in the business. May his memory be for a blessing. Below, from his book, Open Minded.

One had always wondered what it must have been like to have heard the speeches in real time.

Just released in Germany... www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFza...

The H1-B visa thing is, like everything else in the Trump administration, set up to carve up exceptions for friends and punish enemies. It’s the authoritarian thru-line that stitches everything together.

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Good thing we didn't step in it!

generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business)

The beatings will continue until morale improves

Good reminder that public/private censorship of mass media was common in the 20th century. The Hays Code, the Comics Code, blacklisting; we have been here before and arguably more oppressive in the past. It took 75 years of 1A jurisprudence to make us all believe It Can’t Happen Here. But it did.

Don't buy the canard that this is about Charlie Kirk. Abusing state power to lean on corporate leaders and get Jimmy Kimmel off the air because he told jokes about the president and made him feel bad was always the plan.

Canceling Jimmy Kimmel show is not about Charlie Kirk, just like going after universities was not about antisemitism and occupying DC was not about fighting crime.

Lenny Bruce be like...

"...you better watch your back."

Trump in July: "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

So it looks like it turns out turnabout is fair play.

Speech to text turns Ismene into mayonnaise. Be ready for it.

Judith Butler:"It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are..invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal & rising authoritarianism. It is time to resist the injustice that now threatens to be normalized" www.chronicle.com/article/when...

So it turns out Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Lindsay-Hogg are two entirely different people. So that clears up some things.

So it turns out Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Lindsay-Hogg are two entirely different people. So that clears up some things.

Götzen-Dämmerung

"It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man...I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide." —George Orwell, "A Hanging"

Over on the other site, no one is trending.

Over on the other site, no one is trending.

"It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man...I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide." —George Orwell, "A Hanging"

Just putting this here for anyone who might like to hear Bobby Kennedy's remarks to a predominantly black audience in Indianapolis on the evening of April 4, 1968, after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kW...

Be the lawyer on the tarmac in whatever part of your life and work you can be right now.

The Book of Laminations

JUST IN: Democrats have won the congressional special election in northern Virginia. AP just called the blue district for James Walkinshaw, who'll replace Democrat Gerry Connolly, who passed away this spring. (Final margin to come, but Walkinshaw up huge so far.)

This looks so good. A close look at how district judges are learning from each other in the Trump era. Bower is doing essential legal journalism.

"Accused of debasing the military by having it commit crimes and then boasting of it, Vance does not bother to deny the premise." In the Situation, @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org considers the vice president's tweets defending the targeting killing of civilian drug traffickers.

"Black Robes and White Hoods." Title for an article.

"Houston..." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/u...

Common theme of people I've interviewed recently. At universities, in research centers, in diplomacy, in the legal system, dealing with refugees or immigrants: The reality inside is much worse than you would think from the outside.

Ashe to ashes

Ticket sales at the Kennedy Center continue to plunge after Trump appointed himself chairman. Subscription revenue is down by 50% and seats are only “between 4 and 19%" full for the prestigious Stuttgart Ballet.

Kind of amazing that none of the senators felt compelled to ask him about this. It’s as if it’s just too weird to remember. youtu.be/WWaSZtQWq5A

Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

It is impossible to overstate the inanity of the vapid and stupid stunt of renaming the Defense Department, and Congress should step in and put a stop to it immediately. Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Who among us hasn't wondered? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/b...

"What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique..." —Arendt

🚨EXCLUSIVE: Federal judges tell NBC News the Supreme Court has got to do a better job of explaining emergency rulings, with frequent decisions in favor of Trump at least appearing to validate harsh criticism of the judiciary at a time of rising threats: www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...

Sonita Alizada ’23, a rapper and human rights activist, is the second Bard College Annandale student to win a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, which she begins this fall. She aims to continue her work supporting Afghan women and children by combining “academic research with practical impact.”

"What party?," President Trump asked.

BREAKING: Judge Charles Breyer finds that the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act by using the military for domestic law enforcement purpose in Los Angeles. He enjoins further violations of the Posse Comitatus Act ⬇️ storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The country is so poorly run we can’t receive packages from overseas anymore, and I’m not sure it makes the top 10 of the administration’s dumbest, unforced errors

"...to me, not to blow my own horn, but to me the song is like a Homer ballad. Much more so than `A Hard Rain.’"