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                                                                           SOTU

The moderator for the current events discussion group is a great politician. Only after flattering me about past presentations did he ask me to comment on the State of the Union Address. Ego stroked, I agreed. Only later did I realize that no one in their right mind would consent to watch the hour-and-forty-seven-minute State of the Union speech, the longest in recorded history. You had to wring hard to get a few dollops of news out of it, and the views about it are predictable.

There is little new to report. Even if you have seen only a glimpse of Trump in the last months, you had already heard, probably many times, what he said in his address to Congress. According to him, he has turned around the disastrous economy into something wonderful. The worst inflation ever that he inherited (from Biden, of course) is now just about nonexistent. Prices are falling. My attention lapsed for a moment, but he may have said that eggs in some stores are free and at most a dollar a dozen. In Oklahoma and maybe Ohio, but definitely not Oregon, if you buy two Snicker bars at the filling station, the gas is gratis. (Subsequent events make this even more unlikely.) Job creation is better than ever, and manufacturing has rebounded. GDP is astounding as are wages, and the stock market is at an all-time high. Crime, on the other hand, is as low as it was at the Creation more than six thousand years ago. We are respected around the world like never before. We are in a Golden Age, a Golden Age he said, but definitely not in the Age of Aquarius. We have ended discrimination against white Americans, especially white males, by abolishing DEI.

I don’t possibly have room even to summarize what fact-checkers had to say, but to put it kindly, most of the State of the Union was fact-and-evidence-challenged. A rule of thumb: Just because Trump says it does not make it wrong, but that is a good starting point.

And there’s more. The Supreme Court, in what Trump has called a really, really bad decision, struck down tariffs, but customs duties will be brought back, Trump said. To the surprise of many, he was restrained and did not launch the kinds of verbal attacks on the Justices that he did immediately after the tariff decision. Similarly, he did not mention the low IQs of Republicans who sometimes have not agreed with him.  He did not create demeaning nicknames for anyone.  He did, however, attack Democrats in an unprecedented way. He said: Stand if you agree that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” All Republicans got to their feet, but only a few Democrats did. He then went on to say that Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for their continuing sittingness and that they were crazy and managing to destroy the country–apparently the only time opponents were labeled demented at a State of the Union.

A State of the Union has often been an opportunity to spell out a president’s legislative priorities. There was little of that from Trump. He did propose a new retirement account and suggested that tech companies will be required to build their own power plants for AI data centers, but he did not suggest any legislation to accomplish this. He did, however, tell the legislators to stop insider congressional trading, his one policy position that seemed to have gotten bipartisan cheers. Nevertheless, there was no grand policy proposal. To the disappointment of Republicans, I’m sure, he didn’t even propose another tax cut. But he did lobby for the passage of the SAVE Act, a solution in search of a problem, that would strip states of powers to regulate elections. He said that the only way Democrats can win is to cheat. He seemed to be foreshadowing what may happen next fall: If Democrats win in the midterms, he will claim that they had to have cheated.

Perhaps the speech was as noteworthy for what was not said as much as for what was. There was no mention of ICE, Jeffrey Epstein, plans for Gaza, healthcare, social media, Melania the movie, the Board of Peace, not even the ballroom. There was almost nothing about what once consumed conservatives–our federal debt. However, he announced a new war on fraud under the generalship of JD Vance (not Musk this time) that could supposedly end federal debt. The speech, however, did raise the now standard conservative attack on transgender people, but without any explanation of how this makes life better for our populace. (And, of course, his brief comments on Iran were quickly outpaced by his war.)

This was not just a speech. There was also stagecraft. At the fifteen-minute mark, when attention had already lagged, Trump had the Olympic gold-medal winning men’s hockey team–which did have a thrilling victory–march into the congressional arena. The women’s hockey team, also thrilling victors, were not there. He certainly did not mention that the majority of America’s medals were won by women or that America failed to win the most medals.

Was this address successful? We might like to think our elections are about persuasion. Who has the better policies? Who has the better candidates? But, especially for midterms, when fewer people vote, it is about gerrymandering and about turning out the vote of your side and suppressing the vote of the other side.

While Trump may do things to suppress votes of Democrats, this speech is not one of them, and I doubt that it changed the energy levels of his supporters. Fewer people watched this year’s State of the Union than last year’s. There were no new notable quotable lines to act as battle cries. Instead, it was mostly well-worn, well-known Trumpian tropes. It was less than a week ago and is already largely forgotten. There is much more important news.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Once a month local high school kids come into my old folks home to chat with some of the residents. The students get some sort of public service credit. It’s nice; the old folks have an interaction with young kids they would not otherwise have. This month the students came in with Valentine cards they had drawn and were distributed to us. I thought that was sort of sweet until I opened mine and saw that the inscription started, “Dear Senior.”

I learned from Janice P. Nimura, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back that after Admiral Matthew Perry “opened” Japan to the West, Japan concluded that it needed to modernize, which meant adopting more Western ways. The country ended its military rule by the Shoguns in 1868. Some new leaders concluded that part of the West’s strength was educated women. Three young Japanese girls were sent to the United States to be educated similarly to American girls. After ten years, they returned to Japan, and with much difficulty they helped establish some schools for girls. The book was an interesting read about a history I knew little about.

The local library has a program starting next month for eight sessions called “Postpartum Circle,” which “navigates the adjustment to parenthood.” Sounds valuable, but I am not sure it sends the right message by being held in the Teen Room.

I bought the on-sale cookies. When I saw that the package was already opened, I asked the spouse how they were. “Tasty,” she replied. “But not very satisfying. So you have to eat a lot of them.”

I wondered as I watched the winter Olympics whether if I had lived my life isolated at the equator whether I would believe that ice is water.

A billionaire stepped down from a position “saying he had exercised ‘terrible judgment’ in keeping contact with Epstein after the financier was convicted of a sex offense in 2008.” Many other people have been ostracized for having contact with Epstein after his conviction. If these people attended parties with young teenagers after 2008 or perhaps anytime (looking at you, Mr. President), ostracism may be appropriate, or perhaps it is appropriate even if they just knew of such parties. But otherwise? Who should be shunned? All people convicted of crimes? That happens too much now and makes offenders return to society, employment, and family almost impossible. Perhaps we should shun all sex offenders, but sex offenses cover a broad swath of behaviors, from a twenty-year-old having sex with a fifteen-year-old, to exposing oneself, to collecting pornographic pictures, to brutal rapes. Should all be shunned equally? Or is it that Jeffrey Epstein should have been shunned even if the one we now ostracize did not attend the parties or know of them? We need to make distinctions. Shunning everyone convicted of a crime who has served their sentence is not good for society.

“Crime and punishment grow out of the same stem.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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I Couldn’t Understand It, and It was Dirty and Un-American

The moderator of the current events discussion group at my residence put out a request for someone to speak about Bad Bunny. I volunteered. The spouse put together a PowerPoint that had images from the Super Bowl halftime show but started with the opening segment (from YouTube) during which the Puerto Rican rapper  emerged from a sugar cane field and walked past scenes of everyday Puerto Rican life. This opening, watched by 128 million people live and many more on YouTube since, brought a smile to the spouse and me. We lived our fifty-four years in Brooklyn in neighborhoods where whites were a minority. Our first NYC neighbors were many Native Americans and Puerto Ricans. We, like Bad Bunny, regularly passed coconut water stands and shaved ice carts. A fixture at our corner bodega was middle-aged men sitting outside on milk crates playing dominoes with Puerto Rican music on the speakers. In those high crime days when we were alert to possible danger, we knew that the players, recognizing us, would come to our assistance if there was ever a problem.

I confess, however, I did not understand what Bad Bunny was singing. That’s not just because he used Spanish. I seldom understand rappers in any language–including English. Nevertheless, I could tell from the visuals and the music that he was not giving us the usual halftime show of the Las Vegas-style entertainment of a performer’s greatest hits. It was instead an ambitious, thematic presentation comprising an homage to Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, Latin America, love, family, and America. I have watched the show several times, and it is brilliant.

That sugar cane field set the tone for the rest of the thirteen minutes. Sugar is a crucial part of Puerto Rican history. When the United States took possession of Puerto Rico after the 1898 Spanish-American war, the sugar trust was one of the most powerful lobbies in this country. As part of the United States, Puerto Rico was not charged tariffs on its sugar, which allowed these American sugar companies, which everywhere exploited native workers, to expand on and dominate the island.

During the opening segment, Bad Bunny carried out of the sugar cane field an older version of a Puerto Rican flag, which some associate with the Puerto Rican independence movement. He went on to honor traditional love by giving an engagement ring to a man who immediately proposed to his girlfriend. A few moments later they got married at what was a real wedding. Apparently, the couple had asked Bad Bunny to attend their nuptials, and he responded by asking them to be married at the Super Bowl.

He also honored his own family. His mother’s name was on a jersey he wore, and his uncle’s number–when he played the game–was on the football Bad Bunny carried.

He made a personal reference when he gave a Grammy statue to a young boy. Bad Bunny recently won the most important Grammy award, given for Album of the Year, the only time an album in Spanish has won. (Its intriguing English title is “I Should Have Taken More Photos.”)

But he also referred to recent dark Puerto Rican periods when he climbed a utility pole and sang “The Blackout.” Two major hurricanes decimated the island in 2017, and power outages were widespread and lengthy. Major problems with the Puerto Rican grid continue.

Bad Bunny concluded with his only English by saying “God Bless America” and then listed every country in the Americas from Chile to Canada. A banner behind him said love could conquer hate and the football carried the message Together We Are America. (Earlier he addressed the camera—the camera work was superb throughout—and said that he was at the Super Bowl because he had believed in himself and encouraged us to believe in ourselves, too.)

There were some parts that might have seemed lewd to us old folks and other uptight people, especially in the gyrating dancing, but the choreography helped tie all the segments together. There are, however, lewder performances on TV all the time. In fact, while nothing was especially controversial in this halftime show, outrage, maybe some of it unforced, has spewed forth. Of course, our president and others have said that they could not understand him, as if they had wanted (or tried) to. These guys, unlike me, are indicating what I doubt: that on first hearing they understand rap songs in English.

Trump, while admitting that he failed to understand a word of it, reported that Bad Bunny’s halftime performance was “An affront to the greatness of the United States.” Surely a celebration of heterosexual love, marriage, family, and the culture of Puerto Rico, a part of America whose residents are American citizens, cannot be un-American. Instead, Trump (who never forgets a slight) may be remembering that Bad Bunny criticized him for the lack of humanitarian aid to the islands after the 2017 hurricanes. Moreover, Bad Bunny said he would not tour the U.S. last year because of a concern about ICE actions at his concerts. To make matters worse, Bad Bunny has been a strong supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, and a pride flag appeared in the halftime show.

Others have claimed that FCC action is necessary because of the sexually explicit lyrics, and many of Bad Bunny’s songs are, indeed, explicit. In this he is not different from other rappers who brag about their sexual prowess and encounters. (This is why I don’t rap . . . anymore.) But sources and Puerto Rican friends agree that Bad Bunny excised the sexually explicit from his songs or mumbled them so they could not be understood.

Bad Bunny has become a star not just because of sexual lyrics but also because of his musical social commentary that raises deep concerns about the problems of Puerto Rico. His guest artist, Ricky Martin, an openly gay Puerto Rican who had a number one hit at the turn of the century (“Livin’ La Vida Loca”), sang Bunny’s song titled in English “What Happened to Hawaii.” The song is a powerful, beautiful lament that cautions Puerto Rico not to become like the Pacific Island that has lost its Hawaiian culture. Part of the lyrics in English:

What Happened to Hawaii

This was a dream I had

[Verse 1]
She looks beautiful even when things sometimes go wrong.
In her eyes, a smile holds back her tears.
The foam of her shores looks like champagne.
It’s alcohol for her wounds, for dancing away the sadness.
It’s alcohol for her wounds, ’cause there’s so much to heal.
Deep in the green mountains, you can still breathe.
The clouds are closer, with God you can speak.
You hear the jíbaro crying, another one who’s left;
He didn’t want to leave to Orlando, but thе corrupt ones pushed him out.

[Pre-Chorus]
And no one knows for how long

[Chorus]
Thеy want to take my river and my beach too.
They want my neighborhood and my grandma to leave.
No, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai,
‘Cause I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii.

[Interlude]
Be careful, Luis, be careful

[Verse 2]
No one here wanted to leave, and those who left dream of returning.
If one day it’s my turn, it’s gonna hurt so much.
Another jíbara fighting, one who wouldn’t give up;
She didn’t want to leave either and on the island she stayed.

[Pre-Chorus]
And no one knows for how long

[Chorus]
They want to take my river and my beach too.
They want my neighborhood and your kids to leave.
No, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai.
‘Cause I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii.
No, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai.
‘Cause I don’t want them to do to you—

[Outro]
Lelolai, lelolai
Oh, lelolai, lelolai

Bad Bunny no doubt recognizes that while 3.2 million people live in Puerto Rico, that population has declined, and that more than 5 million people who were born on the islands, now live in one of the states.

The National Football League has also been criticized for bringing Bad Bunny to the Super Bowl. On the field, football may be a game, but for Roger Goodell, the head of the NFL, professional football is a business, and Bad Bunny was good for business.

The choice recognized the power and popularity of Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, Bad Bunny’s official name. He may be the most important musical artist today. After rising to prominence with his first record in 2016, he was the most streamed artist on Spotify, the music app, in 2020, 2021, and 2022. He was second and third in 2023 and 2024. He returned to number one last year with—wait for it–19.8 billion streams.

He was a good NFL choice because professional football wants to expand into Spanish-speaking countries, play games in Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, and, of course, make Spanish TV rights more valuable.

And the NFL recognizes the increasing importance of Spanish in this country. Forty-one million people in the United States speak Spanish as their first language and another twelve million speak it as their second language, which means one in six in this country are regular Spanish speakers.

The NFL made a sensible business decision with Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny responded with a brilliant show, a show maybe not for most of us old folks. But perhaps we can learn that there is more in life than choral music and American standards from previous generations, and there are younger people who know and appreciate things we do not.

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Snippets

At this time of year when I see a brace or a cast on a leg or a protective boot on a foot, I often comment to the misfortunate one, “Where were you skiing?” I almost always get a response, but I don’t remember anyone replying that the injury came on the slopes. Instead, someone was playing basketball or more embarrassingly, slipped off a curb. Still, I was surprised when I said “Skiing?” to the Columbia student with an extraordinarily large brace on his right leg. “No,” he replied, “Crew.” My face must have registered my puzzlement. I couldn’t imagine how one blew out a knee rowing. He continued, “I was lifting weights.”

In the slow sports seasons, I watch a few minutes of televised kennel shows. I am always surprised how many breeds of dogs are registered. I was aware of a Doberman Pinscher, but an Austrian Pinscher? How many kinds of terriers are there? Many of the dogs are beautiful, but some make me suppress a laugh, and I wonder if those breeds could be self-conscious about how they look. E.g., the Affenpinscher and the Puli. And some bring a creepy feeling, such as any hairless one. 

“The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.” Samuel Butler.

I wrote a month ago that the new year did not always start on January 1, but I have given little thought about when the day begins. For me, it is midnight, but I knew that it begins at sundown for Jewish people and for Muslims. Now I have learned from Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel that “Italians numbered the hours of the seventeenth century from one to twenty-four beginning at sunset, so that if [Galileo’s daughter] Suor Maria Celeste told her father she was ‘writing at the seventh hour,’ she meant she worked far into the night.”

“Every day cannot be a feast of lanterns.” Chinese Proverb.

Galileo may have been a mathematician, an astronomer, and a Catholic, but he also had a bit of the poet about him. Dava Sobel in Galileo’s Daughter says that he long described wine as “light held together by moisture.”

The furor over the half-time show because Bad Bunny’s songs are in Spanish seems feigned to me. I can’t be alone in not being able to understand rap lyrics no matter what language they are in.

As more and more powerful men are revealed from the Epstein files, I can’t help but think of the words from a wise man: “The sin is not in the sinning, but in being found out.”

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                                                                           DARKNESS and DAYLIGHT

It has a Victorian-era title page, which is not surprising because it lists a publication date of 1899. In differing fonts and sizes, it reads:

Darkness and Daylight in New York

Or

Lights and Shadows of New York Life

A Woman’s Pictorial Record of Gospel, Temperance, Mission, and Rescue Work “In His Name”

With Thrilling Personal Experiences by Day and Night in the Underworld of the Great Metropolis and Hundreds of Thrilling Anecdotes, Incidents, Humorous Stories, Touching Home Scenes, and Tales of Tender Pathos, Drawn from the Bright and Shady Sides of Life Among the Lowly

By Helen Campbell, City Missionary and Philanthropist

Contributions by Thomas W. Knox, Author and Journalist

Thomas Byrnes, Late Chief of New York Detective Bureau

Including an Account of Byrnes’s Thirty Years’ Experiences Written by Himself from his Private Diary

With an Introduction by Lyman Abbott, D.D.

Superbly Illustrated with Two Hundred Fifty Engravings from Special Photographs Taken from Life Expressly for this Work, Mostly by Flash-Light.

Chapter headings follow a similar pattern. For example:

“Up Slaughter Alley, or Life in a Tenement House—A Tour Through Homes of Misery, Want, and Woe—Drink’s Doings.”

“Night Mission Work—New York Streets After Dark—Rescue Work Among the Fallen and Depraved—Searching for the Lost—An All-Night’s Missionary’s Experience.”

“Lurking Place of Sin—Face to Face with Crime—Cellar Haunts and Underground Resorts of Criminals—The Touching Story of Jim, an Ex-Convict.”

I plucked the book, knowing nothing about it, from the shelves of an obscure library. Riffling through it, I immediately saw that it was superbly illustrated. I don’t know why photographs were not directly used, but the engravings made from them showing the lives and habitats of the “lowly” were outstanding. (The introduction made clear that the photographs often made by “Flashlight” were made through the use of magnesium flashes.)

I started reading the book and found that the 450 Helen Campbell pages clearly and fluidly written and presented a view of New York City life on the eve of the twentieth century seldom presented elsewhere.

I knew nothing about the author, and only after finishing the book did I look her up. She was born in 1839 and was raised in comfort. Her father practiced law in New York City for fifty years and was involved in banking.  She married when she was twenty but got divorced. (She sometimes used the name Helen Campbell and sometimes Helen Campbell Stuart.) As a young woman, she wrote successful children’s book but soon expanded her writing horizons to the new field of home economics and conducted important studies on the conditions of women wage earners. She was a prolific and influential author but had never entered my sight before.

She drew conclusions and insights startling to the modern eye. For example:

She asserted that the Irish form the larger portion of the poor class. “They retain all the most brutal characteristics of the Irish peasant at home, but without the redeeming light-heartedness … with no capacity for enjoyment save in drink. . . . With a little added intelligence they become Socialists, doing their heartiest to ruin the institutions by which they live.”  The ethnic references dotting the book made me think about today. Should I be shocked that we still have similar comments about Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Somalis now or should I take the half-full approach and think just as the ethnic stereotypes of the past have faded, so too will the ones today?

Campbell was not alone in her ethnic concerns. The contributor Thomas W. Knox, Author and Journalist, also had his ethnic observations. He wrote that a police captain told him that the Chinese live in conditions “that would be repugnant to an American . . . and they are not over particular on the subject of ventilation. But they wash themselves oftener than do the Italians, and they shave their heads and braid their queues with a care that everybody must commend.”

He switched ethnic groups and perhaps surprisingly gave some praise: “Pawnbrokers are not all Hebrews, though the pawnbroking business is generally thought to be entirely in Hebrew hands. But whatever they may be, they are good judges of values of articles offered to them; and the man that cheats a pawnbroker must get up very early in the morning.” (I learned that even then pawnbrokers were regulated as to interest, the length goods had to be held, and the necessity for public auctions for the sale of goods.)

Campbell also had comments about gender, including, “Why girls should be less susceptible of reformation it is hard to say, save that the special sins to which they are liable are weakening to both brain and body, and thus moral fibre is lacking in greater degree than with the boy.”

Knox also had comments on reform. For example, he said that detectives report that only four in one hundred criminals ever reform. “They attribute half the criminality in the land to laziness, and the other half to immoral reading and the temptations and instructions of successful criminals.” I know that reform is still hard, but I doubt that many would attribute today’s criminality to “immoral reading,” just as I doubt that such reading caused half the criminality back then.

One of Campbell’s comments, however, certainly resonates today: “Not the least surprising experience of one who has learned to know the slums in every aspect is the flat denial of most New Yorkers that they exist save in the slightest degree.” Whether we acknowledge slums or not, few of us seek to know about the life of the lowly.

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Who Are These ICE People Anyway?

Two related but separate federal agencies are the primary enforcers of our immigration laws. One is the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) whose diverse responsibilities include the collection of import duties and the regulation of international trade. It examines people and cargo at ports of entry for such concerns as smuggling and the curtailment of the spread of harmful pests. This agency also protects and patrols our Mexican and Canadian borders. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CBP does not have primary responsibility for the enforcement of immigration laws within the country.

That falls to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), which is also part of DHS. ICE is headed by Acting Director Todd Lyons. ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2017.

ICE has two primary components: the Homeland Security Investigations Division, which is concerned with transnational crimes, and the Enforcement and Removal Operations Division, which enforces immigration laws within the country. While ICE does not patrol the border, increasingly the border patrol (CBP) has been enforcing immigration laws away from the border, including in Minneapolis.

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE became the largest, most well-funded law enforcement agency in American history.

Although for a hundred years states tried to regulate immigration, the Supreme Court in the 1870s held that immigration and naturalization were solely under federal jurisdiction. Although immigration is a federal responsibility, ICE seeks the help of states and cities in immigration enforcement. Some jurisdictions, however, are reluctant to provide that help and claim status as a “sanctuary” city. While there is no legal definition of a sanctuary city, the term usually refers to a locality that refuses to cooperate or limits its cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Moreover, the use of the term “sanctuary” is misleading. An undocumented person does not get sanctuary from immigration laws by residing in a sanctuary city. The undocumented can be deported wherever they are in this country.

ICE officials have sought local assistance in several different ways. ICE might ask cities and counties to tell ICE when the localities have encountered an undocumented immigrant. Sanctuary cities usually do not honor these requests. They don’t share their databases with the federal officials. Some localities even forbid the collection of information about immigration status.

ICE often asks to interview people in local jails. Non-sanctuary places may freely allow that. Sanctuary localities, however, may not permit it at all or allow it only if the inmates voluntarily sign a consent form informing them that they don’t have to talk to ICE and are waiving that right.

ICE also lodges requests, called administrative detainers, asking to be informed when an inmate that ICE believes is deportable is to be released from a state or local lockup. Sanctuary cities differ in their responses. Many will tell ICE about the release of someone who has been convicted of a violent offense but not otherwise. Some sanctuaries will not tell ICE about the release of any inmate.

Trump officials suggest that this non-cooperation is illegal. That is not true. No law requires states and cities to cooperate with ICE, and no law probably can require that. That conclusion is based on the 1997 Supreme Court case, Printz v. United States.

At that time a federal law required “local chief law enforcement officers” to perform background checks on prospective handgun purchasers. The Supreme Court concluded that requirement was unconstitutional given the established constitutional principle that state legislatures are not subject to federal direction. The Supreme Court extended that maxim to local law enforcement, which the Court held is also not subject to federal direction. The Constitution does not empower the federal government to compel state law enforcement officers to fulfill the national government’s federal tasks. Assuming these principles still apply, the federal government cannot commandeer localities to enforce immigration laws.

The administration and other right wingers say, however, that sanctuary cities are making their communities unsafe by not helping deportations. Conservative media often scroll names of deportees along with the heinous crimes they supposedly committed. Trump’s press secretary has averred that the sanctuary jurisdictions are endangering their citizens by giving a safe haven to dangerous criminals. Trumpian attacks on the sanctuary states and cities are, therefore, “focused on protecting American communities from criminal aliens.”

Are the ICE actions focused on dangerous criminals? A fact-checking organization says that the administration has not provided enough information to substantiate that claim. The fact checkers say that the percentage of those detained without a criminal conviction or charges doubled in 2025 to 40%. However, most of the convictions are not for violent felony offenses. The Cato Institute has looked at the records of ICE detainees and concluded that a mere 5% of them had violent felony convictions. The New York Times also concluded from similar data that 7% had violent felony convictions.

Are sanctuary cities endangering their citizenry? Sanctuary jurisdictions maintain that their lack of cooperation is not only legal but is good policy. They point out that in sanctuary cities local resources are properly allocated to local priorities, not to enforcing laws that are the responsibility of the federal government.  Sanctuary cities also maintain that they are safer because of their policies.

The jurisdictions highlight that deportation before a verdict or punishment, which often happens in non-sanctuary jurisdiction, deprives communities of the deterrence provided by the criminal justice system. Sending a person to his home country without serving a sentence here in the U.S. does not act as a deterrent to others.

The sanctuary jurisdictions also want undocumented people to feel comfortable cooperating with the local police. Without that cooperation crimes will not be reported and prosecuted. Undocumented immigrants won’t come forward to report crimes or become witnesses if, as a consequence, they will be deported.  Criminals, whether citizens or not, will go free, and the community will be more crime-ridden.

Furthermore, a city may be healthier, safer, and more community-friendly if undocumented people are reasonably comfortable interacting with government authorities — not just police, but also schools, hospitals, clinics, employment agencies, and housing authorities.

Sanctuary cities point to study after study showing that sanctuary cities are safer than other cities and that sanctuary cities have, on average, more vibrant economies than non-sanctuary jurisdictions. The Trump administration, as it often does, avoids or denies the accuracy of such studies.

Finally, is there sanctuary for the undocumented in churches and elsewhere? President Obama issued orders that protected immigrants in hospitals, churches, courtrooms, funerals, weddings, and schools. Trump reversed that order. That there was an order and that it was reversed tells us something. We may have an image of Quasimodo swinging on a Notre Dame bell rope with Esmeralda under his arm and crying “Sanctuary,” but there is no accepted American legal principle that people are free from deportation (or prosecution for crimes) because they are sheltered in a house of worship.

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First Sentences

“Charles Mitchell strode up the steps of 55 Wall Street, determined to project his usual sense of confidence and certitude.” Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—And How it Shattered a Nation.

“‘We hold these truth to be sacred. . .’ Sacred? No. That doesn’t sound right.” Walter Isaacson, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.

“Few Americans understand just how great the Great Lakes really are.” John U. Bacon, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

“The fear that gripped the world in March 2020 is not something we will soon forget.” Steven Macedo & Frances Lee, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.

“A black man in a white hat stood sleeping against a brick wall.” Michael Rips, The Golden Flea: A Story of Obsession and Collecting.

“In the Roaring Twenties, the famous philanderers William Randolph Hearst and Babe Ruth might have thought it, but only Henry Ford said it out loud: Housewives of America should be patient with outbreaks of marital infidelity.” Gary M. Pomeranz, The Devil’s Tickets: A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age.

“On the night the ships appeared, some fishermen were out on the ocean, working by torchlight.” Hampton Sides, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.

“The first time it happened I was in a stall in a public bathroom just off Wall Street in Manhattan.” Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.

“‘Have you ever thought what you are going to do when you get out of High School?’ asked an editorial in Rahway High’s Scarlet and Black.” Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative.

“There was a buzz of excitement when I arrived at my Harvard office at 78 Mt. Auburn Street on a June morning in 1972.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.

“Fred Rogers had given some very specific instructions to David Newell, who handled public relations for the PBS children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Maxwell King, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers.

“I like to probe the darkness at the edges of our nation’s history.” Nathaniel Philbrick, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy.

“The glass doesn’t just break, it explodes into hundreds, thousands of pieces.” Andrew McCarthy, Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.

“One of the great myths of our criminal system is that minor arrests and convictions are not especially terrible for the people who experience them.” Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment without Crime: How our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.

“The Indian Nation turnpike is a four-lane highway cutting north to south through the bottom right corner of Oklahoma.” Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land.

Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

A Liberal Who Has Been Mugged

Conservative members of Congress who recently questioned special counsel Jack Smith complained and chastised him for having spied on those members. By “spy,” they meant that Smith had gotten some of their calling records from phone companies. The documents indicated the numbers that had been called from the congressional offices, the numbers of those who had called the offices, and the duration of the calls on and around January 6, 2021. The content of those conversations was not revealed. The politicians seemed to be unaware that getting such records is routine practice in criminal investigations.

The Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizures. The Supreme Court has held that the protection applies when a person has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” The Court further held that people have such expectations in their phone conversations. Thus, the government cannot wiretap into phone calls and hear what was said unless a warrant based on probable cause has first been obtained.

When I make a phone call, I do not divulge the content of the conversation to the phone company, but I do disclose other information, such as the number I called and, for billing purposes, the duration of the call. The Supreme Court has held that I do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in this information, now often called metadata, because I know that I have given these data to the phone company. This judicial conclusion left such information outside Fourth Amendment protection.

Congress stepped in, but it was a small intercession. The new law said that a judicial order had to be obtained before getting this information, which comes from a device often call a “pen register,” which records the outgoing information of the number called, or a “trap and trace” device for recording the numbers of incoming calls. The government must now get a judicial order, but the burden is low. The government does not have to show, as it would for a search warrant, probable cause that a crime has been or is being committed. Instead, the government attorney only has to certify that the information sought is likely to be “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Such orders for this phone information are common. Tens of thousands of such orders are issued each year. I am not aware of conservative Congresspeople previously complaining about this practice. That has changed not because the conservatives have become concerned about the privacy implication of pen registers for ordinary Americans. Instead, they are concerned because they have learned that such orders have been used to get information about the their own congressional calls. As long as only others were affected, they had no concern. But when the conservatives in Congress were affected, an outcry ensued.

An old joke concludes that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. Apparently, a civil libertarian is a conservative who has been affected by a standard law enforcement investigation.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

A proposal: Denmark and Greenland should offer to cede Greenland to Trump on the condition that he live in Greenland 330 days of the year. If his control of the island is so important for America’s national security, he needs to be there and if he is patriotic, he should be willing to make that adjustment to his living conditions. If life in Greenland is going to be demanded of those staffing the military bases there, it should be good enough for the president.

An alternative proposal: Apparently, Greenland is very, very, very important to our national security, but, if we are honest, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi (and maybe Louisiana, except I like New Orleans) are not. Swap the island for those states. I know of many Americans who would be pleased if the United States did not have the burden of including Texas, Alabama, Mississippi (and maybe Louisiana, except I like New Orleans). But there will still have to be negotiations about who foots the bill for changing the few maps with Gulf of America.

I told a friend that I was concerned about an upcoming doctor’s appointment. This was not for the usual reasons, but because nurses are on strike at New York City hospitals, and my doctor has an office in a hospital. I have heard that it is chaos outside some facilities. And, I told my friend, I have never crossed a picket line. Bob said that his father told him never to cross a picket line because workers needed all the support that they could get. His mother also told him never to cross a picket line. She said, however, that is because the strikers would follow him home and break his legs. Bob said that her attitude might have come from her father. He had come penniless from Poland and had become financially successful here. His assumption became that if you were working class, it was because you were stupid or lazy or probably both.

A wise person said, “A man never realizes the blessing of being born poor, till he gets over it.”

The college football star after his team’s victory said that all glory for the win went to the Lord. Just once I would like to hear a football player say, “I was playing a great game until God made me fumble.”

Posted on by rjonakait

Where Are the Conservatives Who Cared About Free Speech?

Acquaintances of mine railed against President Biden’s attempts to get social media to take down posts of misinformation and disinformation. They maintained that this was government coercion, in effect, telling citizens what could be published. Free speech was under a dangerous assault, they said. Where are these conservatives now when free speech is being assaulted regularly on many, many fronts?

Examples are legion. The administration has been trying to dictate to universities the viewpoints faculty hires should have and what they should teach. They want them disciplined for disapproved teachings. Law firms have been punished because of the people whom lawyers have represented. Negative comments about Charlie Kirk are apparently not allowed. Speaking in favor of diversity can lead to the end of a government career or the withdrawal of a research grant. Lawful residents are locked up–even deported–for their views. The government seeks to punish congressional representatives for repeating a basic legal principle. And this is only a fraction of the actions that have subverted free speech. But my supposed free speech-loving companions remain silent. I expect that their silence will continue even in the face of a memo to all federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies dropped by Attorney General Pam Bondi on December 4, 2025, which came to light weeks later.

In the memo Bondi says she is outlining federal law enforcement priorities to support President Trump’s call to root out domestic terrorism. The AG maintains that “many of these domestic terrorists and domestic terrorist organizations are united by an anti-fascist platform. . . . This ideology that paints legitimate government authority and traditional conservative viewpoints as ‘fascist’ connects a recent string of political violence.” (If the left is using the “fascist” label, it is only following the right. In 2023, Time wrote, “Among Trump and his allies, the ‘fascist’ label has been growing in popularity.”)

Bondi’s claim is, putting it charitably, weakly sourced. For example, a claim that “anti-fascists violently rioted on UC Berkeley’s campus in 2017” [emphasis added] footnotes a 2019 news report headlined “Scattered Violence Erupts at Large, Left-Wing Berkley (sic) Rally.” Besides getting the date wrong, she equates “scattered violence” at a large rally with terrorism. Trump and his appointee maintain that lefties are the problem for mass, terroristic violence in this country even though study after study, including one posted on the FBI website (but now archived) have concluded that disproportionately right wingers have been the cause of such violence in this century.

Bondi continues, “Particularly dangerous are those acts committed by violent extremist groups that threaten both citizens’ safety and our country’s ability to self-govern. These domestic terrorists use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States  Government; hostility toward traditional views on family, religion, and morality; and an elevation of violence to achieve policy outcomes, such as political assassinations. [Federal law enforcement] shall prioritize the investigation of such conduct.” Law enforcement, Bondi said, should identify not only those who participate in such events but also “those who organize or financially sponsor those participants.”

There are some–shall we say–definitional problems. Define, e.g., “radical gender ideology.” What is an “extreme” view of mass migration? Does a traditional view on family oppose divorce? Why is anti-Christianity included but not antisemitism? If I don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, am I anti-Christian? If I think CEOs get paid too much, am I anti-capitalist? I can argue that traditional moral values both favor and oppose the death penalty. Can it be both? A traditional view of religion is that churches are greedy. May I hold that opinion and start an anti-clerical movement? The January 6 protestors tried to prevent the legal transfer of power through violence. Wasn’t that anti-Americanism deserving prioritization?

She seems to have overlooked a salient fact: “Political and social agendas” and “views,” whether extreme or not, are expressions protected under the First Amendment. Yet this concern got a mere footnote in the memo: “The United States Government does not investigate, collect, or maintain information on U.S. persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. No investigation may be opened based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of rights secured by the Constitution.” Notice, however, the qualifier “solely,” which eviscerates the apparent qualifications of the footnote. No government official will claim an investigation or collection of information is based “solely” on monitoring constitutionally protected activities. Some other justification will always be conjured up. Thus, the First Amendment will be trampled.

Shouldn’t anyone who uses illegal violence or threat of violence be prosecuted? Why “prioritize” those who hold such views and not everyone who uses illegal violence and threats of violence? Surely it is designed to suppress dissent so that those in power can stay in power.

And not for the first time I wonder where the principled conservatives are. Those who complained when the Biden administration tried to get social media companies to remove misinformation should be screaming now. The Trumpian actions impeding free speech are dangerously far-reaching. The Bondi directive is another clear example. And yet, my conservative acquaintances are silent.