HCR on Donald J. Trump v. United States

Heather Cox Richardson, in the July 1 installment of Letters from an American :

At his confirmation hearing in 2005, now–Chief Justice John Roberts said: “I believe that no one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes.”

In his 2006 confirmation hearings, Samuel Alito said: “There is nothing that is more important for our republic than the rule of law. No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.”

And in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate: “No one’s above the law in the United States, that’s a foundational principle…. We’re all equal before the law…. The foundation of our Constitution was that … the presidency would not be a monarchy…. [T]he president is not above the law, no one is above the law.”

Now they have changed that foundational principle for a man who, according to White House officials during his term, called for the execution of people who upset him and who has vowed to exact vengeance on those he now thinks have wronged him.

Geoffrey Pullum explains it all

Geoffrey Pullum has a new book, The Truth About English Grammar. From a Guardian review:

Pullum constantly insists that all modern lexicographers, as well as all grammarians not called Pullum, are wrong about everything, which lends his book a slightly crazed tone of “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying dictionaries?”

Related posts
Pullum on Strunk and White : Pullum on Strunk and White and adjectives and adverbs : Pullum and the passive voice : More on Pullum, Strunk, and White : Pullum on On Writing Well

[Tooting my horn: Pullum on Strunk and White is one of the most widely read posts in these pages.]

Music, worsening

Too easy to make and too easy to consume: Rick Beato explains “The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse.”

Thanks, Elaine and Kirsten.

Drawing cloth and clothing

[“Figuring It Out.” Zippy, July 2, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Zippy is all about cloth and clothing and the work of the “fine artist.” Bill Griffith is of course an artist and cartoonist both.

As you may know, there are entire books about how to draw folds in fabric. For instance. And if I remember correctly, Terry Zwigoff’s documentary Crumb has a scene with Robert Crumb talking about drawing folds.

Synchronicity: there’s folding to be done in today’s Zits.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Of presidents and kings

From Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent:

Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Korematsu v. United States , 323 U. S. 214, 246 (1944) (Jackson, J., dissenting). The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.

Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

From Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent:

For my part, I simply cannot abide the majority’s senseless discarding of a model of accountability for criminal acts that treats every citizen of this country as being equally subject to the law — as the Rule of Law requires. That core principle has long prevented our Nation from devolving into despotism. Yet the Court now opts to let down the guardrails of the law for one extremely powerful category of citizen: any future President who has the will to flout Congress’s established boundaries.

In short, America has traditionally relied on the law to keep its Presidents in line. Starting today, however, Americans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted to promote individual and collective security will operate asspeedbumps to Presidential action or reaction. Once self-regulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a President have to be let go and which can be redressed as impermissible. So, ultimately, this Court itself will decide whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of criminality emanates from the Oval Office in the future. The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious.

Context: “Supreme Court Says Trump Is Partly Shielded From Prosecution” (The New York Times, gift link). The opinion and the dissents are here.

Crazy weather

We watched some local news last night, and I ended up transcribing some of the weatherman’s patter:

“Grab them shades on the way out the door. Precip cast? Fuggedaboudit! I mean, we still need a tall drink of water. I just ain’t happening tonight nor tomorrow.”

[The suspect is a white male, late fifties or early sixties, tall, wearing a toupee, glasses, tight-fitting sport jacket, and sneakers.]

Generative AI, trust, and distrust

At Inside Higher Ed, Jacob Riyeff writes about generative AI and its effect on teacher-student relationships. What breaks his heart, he says, are the ways in which AI makes it difficult for him to trust his students:

I assume students don’t think about their unattributed use of chat bots as affecting a personal relationship. But those of us who actually still believe in the edifying power of higher education can’t see the relationship between instructors and students as one of instrumental exchange — products (assignments filled out) for payments (grades). Or as one of mechanical input and output. In the classroom, in office hours, and in conferences, there is (can be) a genuine mutual sharing between persons if we strive for it, if we foster dialogue and sharing of perspectives in our common scrutinizing of reality and pursuit of truth. And the making and assessing of assignments is (can be) an extension of that relationship’s mutual sharing. But to engage in that scrutiny and that pursuit in common, the relationship between instructor and student requires integrity — that is, both parties need to be honest in their communications with one another.

Exactly. Passing off someone else’s (or, now, something else’s) work as one’s own violates the trust between teacher and student.

Riyeff says that for now, he expects to continue having versions of the following exchange with his students:

Student: Why can’t I just use a chat bot to write this essay?

Me: Because I don’t care about what OpenAI’s products can do. I care about what you’re thinking.

Related reading
All OCA AI posts (Pinboard)

[Off the bot!]

Apples?

[70 East 102nd Street, Manhatttan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click the second image for a much larger view and some choice details.]

The vagaries of the archives: that first photograph, an outtake, misidentifies the lot number. I’m not sure how I found my way to the second photograph. I just traipsed the streets.

What’s that stand of apples doing there? Or are they tomatoes? Or plums? Did the photographer put the stand there for fun? Perhaps at the grocer’s request? I would like to know if the stand appears in a photograph from the opposite side of the street, but photographs from this street are few.

Golden Bantam is a variety of corn. I can find no evidence that it was ever a name for an apple (or tomato, or plum). The mystery deepens.

I chose these photographs for the fruit, but when I checked Google Maps, I realized that I know this location, at Park Avenue and 102nd Street, from a movie and from life.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, turned out to be far easier than I thought it would be. Lots of fine clues and unexpected answers, and two fairly ridiculous answers. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, four letters, “Intriguing development.” The wording carries a lot of weight.

5-D, six letters, “Swing shifts?” Nicely done.

18-A, ten letters, “What Hemingway got for his WWll reporting.” Something to know that I did not know.

14-A, fourteen letters, “It has its ups and downs.” ROLLERCOASTER comes up, or down, short.

24-A, six letters, “Quick glances.” Easier to see than I expected.

28-D, four letters, “May day nickname.” It’s not a nickname for a day in May. The intersection of 28-D and 40-A is for me the low point of the puzzle.

36-A, fifteen letters, “Synthesizer’s hard rock.” See? Unexpected.

37-D, eight letters, “‘Smells Like a Man, Man’ sloganeer.” Or at least a man of a certain age?

38-D, eight letters, “Somewhat sticky.” I don’t think there’s any redeeming this word.

40-A, five letters, “Sort of gray.” Okay, it’s a word, but still. A change of one letter would make 28-D and 40-A better players in this puzzle.

45-A, six letters, “Where Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress.” Yes, I read lots of seventeenth-century prose in grad school.

50-D, four letters, “Makeup, e.g.” Clever.

My favorite in this puzzle, because it’s just so strange: 55-A, ten letters, “Trouble spots on radar.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Martin Mull (1943–2024)

“The comedic actor, musician and artist who gained widespread attention in the 1970s in shows such as Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Fernwood 2-Night ”: The New York Times has an obituary. The Fernwood episode with Tom Waits is not to be missed.

[The correct styling: Fernwood 2 Night.]