Thursday, May 5, 2022

Althouse

Althouse

"Leaks can serve a really important role in helping to correct government malfeasance, to encourage government to be careful about what it does in secret and to preserve democratic processes."

Posted: 05 May 2022 08:33 AM PDT

Said Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, author of "Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11," quoted in The Washington Post on December 6, 2012, in a column titled "Why we don't need another law against intelligence leaks" (by Leonard Downie Jr.).

And here's a CNN piece by Princeton history professor Julian Zelizer, "Why Washington is leaking like a sieve," published May 31, 2017:

Trump, who has called leaks "criminal action, a criminal act," no longer expresses the kind of sympathy for leakers that he did during the campaign, when he praised WikiLeaks for its publication of emails relating to Hillary Clinton.... 

Leaking information can be extremely dangerous to national security. It can undercut the ability of government to function, it can generate a dysfunctional culture of distrust in government, and it can put lives in danger. Yet it is important to remember that some leaks have been vital to discoveries that protected and strengthened our democracy. These were leaks that resulted from members of the government who were frustrated and frightened by what they saw happening in the halls of power. 

Most famous leak The most famous leak of all came in 1971: the Pentagon Papers.... In 2005, the Sunday Times of London published an article based on notes from a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's national security team, held before the war in Iraq, where officials were concerned that President Bush was basing the operation on faulty evidence about weapons of mass destruction.... Edward Snowden has garnered [yes, garnered] praise from many on the left and some on the right for his decision to leak the evidence that exposed a massive government surveillance program.... 

Not all leaks have been so virtuous....  

There are times when our democracy depends on leaks to learn what is going on in the inner sanctums of Washington....

None of that was about the Supreme Court, but please consider the larger picture as you analyze the leak from the Supreme Court.

I'm reading this NYT article, published today, "As Leak Theories Circulate, Supreme Court Marshal Takes Up Investigation/Not since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein refused for decades to disclose the identity of their Watergate source has Washington been as eager to unmask a leaker." 

Dan Epps, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who clerked for former Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2009 and 2010, said... "Some of [the Justices] might just be a little bit wary of subjecting their clerks and their staff to the kind of jurisdiction of somebody else who's not in their chambers.... My guess is, you know, some of them would just say, 'I will have a conversation with my clerks personally.'" ... 
"There's no criminal statute that I know of that makes this illegal — so what's the point in bringing outsiders in?" said Paul Schiff Berman, a law professor at George Washington University who served as a clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Speaking of Bob Woodward and the Supreme Court, I remember when his book "The Brethren" came out. So many revelations about the inner workings of the Court! Later, we found out that Justice Potter Stewart was the main source — the leaker. From the previous link (to Wikipedia):

The book's sources are highly critical of Burger as Chief Justice, especially in comparison to his predecessor, Earl Warren. Burger is described by other Justices as pompous, devious, and intellectually mediocre. The book is also critical at various points of William O. Douglas, who is portrayed as having gone from one of America's greatest jurists to a "nasty, petulant, prodigal child" who was overly political, and is also occasionally critical of another liberal stalwart, Thurgood Marshall, for his alleged intellectual laziness and apathy.

That's a lot more revealing than a draft of an opinion! What good did it do? What purpose was served?  

"Leaks can serve a really important role in helping to correct government malfeasance, to encourage government to be careful about what it does in secret and to preserve democratic processes."

The dress was dangerous then and it's dangerous — in a newly fussy way — now.

Posted: 05 May 2022 06:45 AM PDT

From the L.A. Times article:

"I'm frustrated because it sets back what is considered professional treatment for historic costume," says Sarah Scaturro, chief conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art and formerly a conservator at the Met's Costume Institute. "In the '80s, a bunch of costume professionals came together to state a resolution that historic costume should not be worn. So my worry is that colleagues in historic costume collections are now going to be pressured by important people to let them wear garments." 

Cara Varnell, a longtime independent art conservator specializing in historic dress, put it this way: "We just don't wear archived historic pieces...."

It's so specifically historical — connecting 2 gigantic icons on a specific occasion. It's "the most expensive dress ever sold at auction... made of a delicate fabric called souffle... stretchy and resilient when it's new, but becomes weaker and more brittle with age." And it's covered with "thousands of hand-sewn beads." So the potential for damage is immense.

You can see why Kardashian wanted to associate herself with such grandeur, but it's such a failure. The dress looks dumb on her, because her skin is a different color from the dress, so the illusion of nakedness — so mind-blowing on Marilyn in the spotlight on a dark stage — is entirely lost. 

Who owns the dress and had the power to lend it to KK? You might think the Metropolitan Museum would own it. Well, they wouldn't lend it, I presume. It belongs to the Ripley's Believe It or Not in Orlando (which paid $5 million for it)

Was the gown altered to fit KK (who is 4 inches shorter than Marilyn was)? Supposedly not. I guess KK wore tall shoes. KK also has a very different body shape. She claims to have dropped 16 pounds to squeeze into the thing and even then couldn't entirely close the zipper (note the fur jacket). She only wore the real dress for a few minutes on the red carpet, then changed to a replica dress for the rest of the evening. If there was a replica, why not only wear the replica?

I guess the controversy is part of the press KK desired. That kind of attention is not the slightest bit sexy. But publicity is publicity. It's fungible, like money... for some people.

Horse hypocrisy.

Posted: 05 May 2022 08:20 AM PDT

Has the Court's Dobbs draft shifted the press and other partisans back to saying "women," or is "pregnant people" still something they feel disciplined to say?

Posted: 05 May 2022 05:48 AM PDT

The Star Tribune has a column (by lawprof Laura Hermer) titled "Pregnant people have rights. Products of conception don't. The leaked Dobbs draft opinion gets fetal rights backward." The text uses the phrase "pregnant person" 5 times and there's also one "person who gave birth" and 5 appearances. 

The word "women" does show up once at the very beginning and once at the very end — in the phrase "women's rights." If you want strong political speech on this issue, you need to say "women's rights." You invite ridicule — even if we stifle our urge to ridicule outside of the confines of our head — if you decorously substitute "pregnant people's rights."

At USA Today, there's "People of color, the poor and other marginalized people to bear the brunt if Roe v. Wade is overturned" by Nada Hassanein. Wouldn't it be stronger to write "Women of color, the poor and other marginalized women"? 

We're told: "If Roe is overturned, people may travel hundreds of miles to get to states where abortions are still allowed. Young and low-income people, who are disproportionately of color, may not be able to afford the cost of travel." Wouldn't "women" generate more empathy? But "people" is used to remember to be empathetic to trans people. 

Anyway, the word "woman" is also used repeatedly in that article, including to refer to the as-yet-not-renamed National Women's Law Center. 

The Washington Post has "Roe to be decided in one of the worst cities to be Black and pregnant/The stakes are not evenly spread across people who become pregnant, and if the Supreme Court justices need a reminder of that, they don't have to look far" (by Theresa Vargas). The article does use the word "women" many times, along with many appearances of "people." We're told the Court's "mulling over what protections pregnant people deserve" is occurring in a geographic location where "almost all the pregnant people dying are Black." There's a quote from a report that says "Black birthing people constitute roughly half of all births in DC." (As if the "birthing people" are the "births"!) 

There are a lot of pieces about the Dobbs draft in The Washington Post, but only one other uses "pregnant people": "Meet the Reddit 'Aunties' covertly helping people get abortions/The Reddit group offers a glimpse into a post-Roe era where people resort to informal networks to assist those locked out of an abortion" (by Pranshu Verma). This one is very intent on saying "people" and not "women." "People" appears 18 times and the only appearance of the word "women" (there's no "woman") is in a caption under a photo of a clinic that has the word "Women's" in its name. 

Meanwhile, in the NYT, the phrase "pregnant people" has only appeared once since the draft leaked (and there's no example of "pregnant person"). It's in a new column by Emily Bazelon, "Beware the Feminism of Justice Alito." 

So that's a little evidence that the "pregnant people" nicety is getting nixed.

I can't check every elite publication for the absence of "pregnant people" — not if I want to write in this form called blog — but I did check one more, which I regard as an exemplar of liberal elitism, The New Yorker. It has not printed "pregnant people" since last November, in "If Roe v. Wade Goes, What Next?" (by David Remnick). 

I'll stop here, so I can post, but I'll be looking at this issue.

"Shy."

Posted: 05 May 2022 04:19 AM PDT

Twitter pushes 2 tweets — from people I don't follow and not retweeted by anyone I follow — that have nothing in common — ostensibly — except the old-timey use of "shy." I felt inspired to make a screenshot of this juxtaposition:

 

Here's the Cure tweet.

Here's the WOW tweet.

Where did this use of "shy" come from?

The OED traces it back to Old English, with the meaning "Easily frightened or startled." The adjectival use of the word is much older than its use as a noun or verb. The most common use of the adjective, to mean "sensitively timid; retiring or reserved from diffidence; bashful" goes back to the 1600s. But what about this use that we're seeing in those 2 tweets, which I consider old-timey?

That use — which means short (of) or lacking — was originally betting slang. The oldest appearance in print is an 1895 dictionary definition: "Having a less amount of money at stake than is called for by the rules of the game; short; as, to be shy a dollar in the pool."

There's also:

a1904 A. Adams Log of Cowboy ix. 132 I ordered Joe to tie his [the ox's] mate behind the trail wagon and pull out one ox shy. 

1975 [Rex] Stout Family Affair (1976) iv. 46 I merely thought some women were a little shy on brains, present company not excepted.

Now, of course, I'm old, so I have an old person's view of what seems old-timey. Maybe the kids today are using "shy" in that old-fashioned way and it seems fresh to them.

"Misdemeanors are being treated like felonies."

Posted: 05 May 2022 02:54 AM PDT

At the Sunrise Café...

Posted: 04 May 2022 05:31 PM PDT

IMG_0183 

... you can write about whatever you want.

I've made 7 selections from TikTok for you today. Let me know what you like best.

Posted: 04 May 2022 05:26 PM PDT

1. A teacher rates the insults he received from students today.

2. An impersonation of Amber Heard.

3. How America pictures a workday in Finland.

4. How Finland pictures a workday in America.

5. Follow the simple instructions and you, kids, can make a nice image of a horse.

6. The first half of the show was fashion for adults, the second half the toy version of those things.

7. Office jobs are kind of fake jobs, aren't they?
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