Thomas Friedman had been touting the College Board’s findings that proficiency in two codes, the U.S. Constitution and computer science, most highly correlate with success in college and career.  Reading this, and having just finished teaching a con law course at alma mater, H.L. congratulated “Pat,” a wonderful student, clearly talented in both codes. I envisioned Pat moving to Long Island City and taking one of the 25,000 jobs at Amazon’s HQ2 with an AVERAGE yearly salary of $150,000.  HL’s fondness extended beyond Pat to that Queens neighborhood, where in the 1960s his Dad owned a construction materials business.  It was next to the massive Daily News plant and from age 12 to 19, HL labored most weekends and every summer earning enough to pay [...]

Let them, who would feel justly stoned and deprived of high office for doing something as racist as Ralph Northam did 35 years ago, launch the first projectiles.  One bad part of what the press constantly refers to as “near unanimous calls for Northam to resign as Virginia’s governor” is that the virtual unanimity exists only among the talking press.  Public opinion polls reflect a significant minority (38%) wanting him not to resign.  And although Ocasio-Cortez tweets that people holding this opinion “deserve scrutiny” and H.L. hasn’t checked their closets for MAGA hats, we are pretty sure that this is not exclusively or even primarily the base Trump base.  The minority includes classic liberals who believe in the perfectibility of humans and the sort of redemption that Northam’s life in the last 35 years appears to reflect.  The same liberals opposed and helped repeal three strikes laws and those that deprived felons of the franchise after their sentences were served. […]

Before round two of shutdown/showdown begins on or about February 15, 2019, a useful exercise sponsored by H.L. and the George Santayana School of Not Failing to Learn the Lessons of History, is to list and rank the losers and winners in round one.  The press, of which this blog is only technically a member, has reached consensus that Trump was a big loser, but not the biggest. […]

Weeks earlier, H.L. planned that the “Winter Study” First Amendment Course at Williams College would end on January 25, 2019 in a crescendo.  The final class subject would be “establishment of religion” that the first amendment and Bill of Rights prohibit in their first words, expressing a novel and uniquely American liberty.  That first commandment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . .” would conclude the course.  Two classic establishment clause cases, the 2014 SCOTUS decision in Town of Greece, New York v. Galloway and the high court’s recent travel ban decision in Trump v. Hawaii would be fitting closers. […]

Contrary to conventional commentary, Nick Ayers’ refusal of Trump’s request to serve as General Kelly’s replacement as White House Chief of Staff is not rule breaking.  Steve Mnuchin and Nick Mulvaney’s rumored reluctance/refusal are, as the unwritten but unequivocal rule makes clear. […]

There are many reasons why people like Elizabeth Warren, who is whiter than Ivory Soap, and Donald Trump of German ancestry, but who claimed to be a Swede, make false claims about their ethnic, national, racial or socio-economic identities.  We all have met these people and some of us have been them.  H.L. once interviewed (for a government position) an applicant who had been the head of her law school’s Puerto Rican student association.  She was as Puerto Rican as Trump is a Rutabaga.  And for a few seconds, H.L., while an exchange student at Howard convinced himself he was black – until quickly disabused of that by his frat brothers.  What do we think when the deceivers go public and how should we evaluate whether the lie signals a serious flaw in character? […]

Nine years after Michael Jackson’s death, his testimony overwhelms the memory of his creative and performative genius.  More than his Moonwalk or Thriller video I hear him describing the refiner’s fire that forged perfection on stage, video and in recordings.  No birthdays off, no Christmases, no New Years, no time off at all from drilling – under a father/sergeant major who recognized his child’s hundred-year latent talent, that could be realized by disregarding the price to be paid. […]

This hopeless liberal’s examination of professions that best prepare people to serve as legislators and in other elected offices began when John Dunne (from Long Island not “no man is an island” Donne) once Republican majority whip in the New York Senate assigned the decline in legislative civility and productivity to not too many, but too few lawyers. He said in more productive and decorous times a majority of legislators had been attorneys, whose education and profession rewarded skill in negotiation, compromise, conciliation, conflict resolution and knowledge of the law – how to make them, change them and what the fuck they actually mean.  Dunne did not utter the expletive but went on to chronicle the growing number of doctors, farmers, dentists and astronauts in legislative chambers and the contemporaneous plummet in productivity. […]