The greatest good for the greatest number, J. Bentham’s formula, further developed by J.S. Mill, was the core of a once in a lifetime interview of Congressman Jamie Raskin by David Remnick of The New Yorker.  Only 18 minutes, here it is.  Going in, the listener expected that center stage would be Raskin’s extraordinarily comprehensive and skillful prosecution of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.  The New Year’s Eve suicide of Raskin’s son Tommy would only be a powerful reminder of how hard Raskin’s job was and how selfless he had been to accept it. David Remnick But the historic trial, which after all was watched in whole or part by tens of millions, was merely backdrop to how three utilitarians conducted [...]

Political archaeologists will mark 2/18/2021 and Morning Joe on MSNBC as the day and place New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio entered the 2022 New York State gubernatorial primary.  Against incumbent Andrew Cuomo, should he seek a fourth term, as his father did unsuccessfully. […]

We like Wikipedia, and regularly donate to the Wikimedia Foundation in gratitude. But recently spotted its (our crowdsourced) error on the derivation of a “blowback” – assigning that to the CIA, when in fact the agency’s 20th Century spies got it from their boilers, that often exploded, spewing gas, liquid and particulate when fuel dangerously accumulated inside a furnace. […]

The first and abiding reaction to Trump Trial Two is that the only comparable experience in this life was the mid-September 2001 repetitive viewing of the towers collapsing, a place where we had once worked.  Having testified numerous times in the House and Senate, the terrorism images from 1/6/2021 are no less painful but scarier than those from 9/11/2001. Stacey Plaskett The second and ongoing reaction is also suffused with pain, at how badly many Senators are behaving in response to the superb prosecution led by heroic Representative Jamie Raskin and whose breakout star is Stacey Plaskett, the non-voting House delegate for the American Virgin Islands. While true that impeachment and trial under the Constitution is its own thing, and/so not formally governed [...]

Adam Newbold As the FBI led hunt for the 1/6/2021 Capitol insurrectionists proceeds, we daily learn that additional active or retired members of the U.S. military were among the planners, coordinators and rioters.  Last Tuesday’s poster child was a 46-year-old retired Navy Seal, Adam Newbold, photographed sitting atop a police motorcycle in front of the Capitol.  In late December Newbold posted a video warning of imminent communist takeover and on 1/12/2021 posted another “mak[ing] no apologies for being a rough man ready to do rough things in rough situations.” A similar 40 something specimen is former Marine, Dominic “Spaz” Pezzola, who was photographed smoking a cigar inside the Capitol and allegedly spoke of killing Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence and returning on 1/20/2021 [...]

The spate of resignations by high level Trump appointees at 11:59 pm of the administration’s term has been noticed and noted as tardy and hypocritical. But little attention has been paid to a more insidious form of forgetfulness. Trumpism did not spring parthenogenically from Trump’s forehead. It has been brewing and building in the ranks and party Republican since at least Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. […]

Lefties like HL are quick to condemn erosion of Jefferson’s strict wall between church and state, enshrined in absolute terminology in the first phrase of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) and usually assign all blame for that to the right.  After all it is Clarence Thomas who consistently writes and votes that any state could establish a religion, such as the Seikh Commonwealth of Virginia.  Justice Thomas points out that 1A reads “Congress shall make no law. . .” with no restriction on the states.  And it is clear that new Justice Barrett takes the most extreme and most expansive view of the free exercise clause – exempting the faithful from obeying many civil rights, public health and other generally applicable laws if those conflict with religious beliefs or impinge upon their observance.  Barret’s vote vetoed New York’s Covid emergency restrictions on the number of worshippers allowed in houses of. . . […]

The January 4 & 11, 2021 New Yorker is almost entirely devoted to a single 40 page article by Lawrence Wright aptly titled “Plague Year.”  It brought to mind two other titles, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and HL’s own 2010 and 2012 Journal of The Plague Year that enjoyed Warhol’s 15 seconds, was attacked on the Times page one by Andrew Cuomo but still got a decent review in its Sunday Book Review.  […]

The Washington Post has performed a public service by keeping count of the number of falsehoods and outright lies future inmate Donald Trump Sr. has told the American public while president: 22,000 as of last month. One lie that he told before the 2016 election, but repeated many times after was that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were celebrated by cheering crowds in Jersey City, New Jersey and that he witnessed this while watching the carnage on television.   TV, Trump’s once, current, and future predominant pastime.  That is, assuming his conduct in prison doesn’t lead to suspension of his viewing privileges. […]

Leaving aside the unanswerable of whether God is a subscriber (See HL 117) we turn to elective office transition, a subject we have not insubstantial experience with.  We chaired the transition of two different state attorneys general and one governor, all in New York.  The second of those three for A.G.-elect Eliot Spitzer in 1998 is instructive of the damage about to be inflicted on the nation.  The incumbent then, Dennis Vacco as Trump this time, refused to concede defeat and prevented the cooperation necessary for an orderly and productive transition. […]