If I’m reading correctly, Texas just invaded Illinois, and Walter Cronkite just turned over in his grave.

@fredkatz.bsky.social taking some heat from Thibs today.

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03... This particular tariff won’t affect me. In the Trump economy, I can’t afford wine regardless. As for the promised boon to American wineries, I wonder who will pick the grapes. Former air-traffic controllers and vaccine scientists?

Street art (sidewalk watermark, actually)

The Sopranos, which premiered in 1999, captures the despair that made people vulnerable to MAGA. In episode 1 Tony says: "It's good to be in something from the ground floor. And I came too late for that, I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over."

Urgently needed: a new incarnation of the Highlander Folk School and someone like its founder, Myles Horton, to lead it. Highlander was crucial for Septima Clark, ML King Jr., Rosa Parks, and many other heroes. Who wants to step up? Who is ready to contribute?

The Opposition needs to get its own house in order. Milquetoast patricians must cede congressional leadership to Warnock, Warren, Whitehouse, Murphy, Schatz, AOC and Raskin. Frame every issue in the Preamble's terms. The same strong voices every day. Coordinated messages. Constitutional Patriots.

Trump, his cabinet, and the Republicans in Congress swore to uphold the Constitution and are now openly assaulting it. Its flaws (an unrepresentative Senate and Electoral College, an unaccountable Supreme Court, etc.) make it hard to defend, but that is every citizen's solemn duty.

Philippic 6: "You [citizens] all have one...object, to avert from the republic the attacks of Marcus Antonius, to quench his frenzy, to crush his audacity....Matters have been brought to the utmost crisis; the issue is liberty."

On Caesar: "Having for many years aimed at being a king, he...accomplished what he intended. He had conciliated the ignorant multitude by presents...and bound his own party to him by rewards.... He had already brought a free city, partly by fear, partly by patience, into a habit of slavery."

Against Catiline: "Shame on the age and on its principles! ...[This man] is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think that we are doing our duty to the republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks."

Against Verres: "Today the eyes of the world are upon us, waiting to see how far the conduct of each of us will be marked by obedience to conscience and observance of the law....This man's case will determine whether...the condemnation of a very guilty and very rich man can possibly occur."

VP Vance appeals to the authority of Harvard Law Professor A. Vermeule when defending the executive's defiance of court rulings. Vermeule's legal theory is supposedly inspired by a Ciceronian ideal of the common good. Have these guys read Cicero on Verres, Catiline, Caesar, and Antony?

RIP David Lynch

Best half of the year for NYK.

Netflix doc on Miyazaki coming on December 6

R. Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, a beautiful, haunting movie, is streaming on the Criterion Channel.