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Snippets (Tariffs and Other Stuff)

Tariffs were controversial before the Civil War. Their benefits and detriments were not equal throughout the country. Brenda Wineapple reports in The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (2019) that in 1832 the South Carolina legislature said that, if not repealed, a federal tariff was null and void and a ground for secession.

Tariffs were also controversial after the Civil War. They were the chief source of federal revenues until the early twentieth century. The issue was not whether tariffs should be applied but at what rate. As Troy Senik wrote in A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (2023), tariffs had conflicting goals. Should they only be high enough to fund government or go further to protect American industry from ruinous foreign competition? Industry was best protected when tariffs were so high that almost no foreign goods were imported, but then little revenue was collected. On the other hand, tariffs set best for funding the government did not protect industry as much as higher taxes.

Troy Senik also says that Grover Cleveland correctly saw another conflict in tariffs: They helped to raise wages in protected industries, but this gain was offset by higher prices workers had to pay for goods

Friends talk about fleeing to Canada. But what is the point if Canada becomes the 51st state?

No friend talks about fleeing to Greenland. Perhaps that will be different when Trump builds Mar-a-Lago Northeast there.

Deputy Attorney Genereal Todd Blanche said recently that the Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into a leak of “inaccurate, but nevertheless classified” intelligence about the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. It comes as a shock that anyone in the Trump administration wants to keep false information secret.

Present policies show that the Republican party has abandoned much of what Ronald Reagan stood for. Nicole Hemmer in Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s states that Reagan, fueled by anticommunism, had “a preference for more open borders and higher immigration levels, for fewer tariffs[,] a stingier social net, [as well as] a more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union.”

Under Reagan, the federal workforce grew by 200,000.

Because of tariffs, the United States has intervened militarily and politically in foreign countries. Sean Mirski in We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and Rise of the American Colossus (2023) maintains that our interventions in Latin America at the turn of 20th century and beyond were not primarily to protect American business interests but rather to keep European governments outside the hemisphere. Some Latin American countries borrowed profligately from Europe and often could not pay the money back. Under international law, the lender countries were entitled to use force to service the debts. This was often a simple procedure: Seize the customhouse and collect the tariffs. The United States was concerned about this potential European presence in the Americas and feared further that the Latin American countries would grant the Europeans concessions that would disfavor the United States. Consequently, the United States thought it was better to intervene in the debtor nations and use the customs revenues to pay the Europeans. Frequently, this was good for the invaded country since the Americans did not skim from the tariffs, or at least not as much as before, and the Latin American country often saw its revenues increase. Moreover, Europe learned that interventions in the Western Hemisphere were expensive. The European powers then often blustered about intervening to get America to do the expensive work. America soon recognized that the problems would recur unless the debtor countries became stable and lived within their means. As a result, the United States became more and more involved in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.

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Another Third Term

Their glee was evident as they promoted a third term. The conservative panel on television was positively giddy as they speculated on a fourth term. But their gaiety, I thought, should be tempered. If there can be more than two terms for Donald Trump, then there can be a third term for Barack. And Obama would present a formidable opponent.

Trump will be 82 on the next inauguration day. That is Joe Biden’s present age. Trump is an amazing physical specimen, but 82 is 82, and of course, he would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a third term. Obama, on the other hand, will be 67 on January 20, 2029.

Also consider that Obama got a majority of the votes in 2008 and won by 52.9% to 45.7%. Four years later he won by 51.1% to 47.2%. Trump in his three elections, one of which he lost, has never gotten a majority of the votes. He lost the popular vote decisively twice and won only a narrow plurality in the recent election.

We, of course, don’t know what will happen during Trump’s present term, but in considering an Obama/Trump match, let’s compare Trump’s first term with what happened under Obama.

Inflation was low under Trump for most of his term, but it was even lower with Obama even though Obama inherited the Great Recession of 2007-2009 when the GDP dropped by 4.3% and unemployment peaked at 9.5%. That recession, which was the worst since the 1930s, started under George W. Bush. It ended under President Barack Obama. Of course, under Trump we had a recession in 2020 when the unemployment rate jumped in two months from 3.5% to 14.7%. This, of course, was largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the “misery index”—the sum of unemployment and inflation rates—soared under President Trump.

When Trump took office, the cost of gasoline (“Obama’s gas prices”) was lower than the averages during the next four years.

Trump seeks to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but under Obama a system was already in place to do that. Trump scuttled that in his first term.

Trump now touts “massive” deportations of undocumented aliens, but more people were deported under Obama than have been with Trump as president.

Homelessness, which jumped under President Trump, was lower under Obama.

Deaths per capita skyrocketed when Trump was in office and had increased even before Covid. The death rate was lower under Obama, and life expectancy, which fell in this country during the Trump presidency, was longer under Obama.

Obama has spoken eloquently in favor of combating global warming. Trump has labeled climate change “a Chinese hoax.”

Murder rates increased during Trump’s first term. They declined under Obama.  

Trump said that China posed a “tremendous economic and military threat” to the United States, but on his watch, China became the EU’s largest trading partner.

Trump has voiced much anguish over our trade deficits, but those deficits were larger at the end of his first term than when he took office. 

The national debt and deficits were lower under Obama than Trump.

Opioid deaths were higher under Trump than Obama.

We could go on, but the point is to be careful what you wish for. If the conservatives gushing for another run by Trump get their desire, I will join many others by chanting, Bring Back Barack.

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Hopes and Expectations—Judicial Edition

In my last post, I indicated that I had hopes for the courts to dampen the Trumpian madness, but my hopes are tempered by the understanding that the courts, including the Supreme Court, have only infrequently been a bulwark for freedom or civil liberties, especially in times of national crises.

Take the 1857 Dred Scott case.  In this critical period of American history, the Supreme Court held that Blacks could not become American citizens. It also held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it violated the Fifth Amendment property rights of slave owners. The author of the opinion, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and other justices hoped that the decision would put to rest the country’s slavery problem. Instead, Dred Scott, which has been denounced for its racism, judicial activism, bad history, and awful legal reasoning, helped precipitate the Civil War. Many rank this as the worst decision in Supreme Court history, although its competitors are legion.

Consider “You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater.” This is often seen as a forceful defense of the First Amendment holding that the government can prohibit speech only when the words present a “clear and present danger.” However, in the 1919 case in which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the memorable phrase (Schenck v. United States), the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the convictions and jail sentences of Schenck and others for distributing fliers advocating resistance to the World War I draft. In that case free speech took a back seat to wartime fears. Only fifty years later was Schenck overruled.

The Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) upheld the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, another decision that makes the list for most atrocious. Forty years later, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned because evidence had been suppressed. In fact, intelligence agencies had shown no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as Japanese spies. Reparations were granted internees under the 1988 Civil Liberties Act. However, it took until 2018 before the Supreme Court indicated that Korematsu was no longer good law (Trump v. Hawaii). In 2023, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard definitively stated that the wartime decision had been overruled. But that case had other ramifications (see below).

Today’s times bear resemblances to what is often now called the McCarthy era, which actually began before Senator Joe McCarthy came to national prominence. During the initial stages of the destructive anti-communism movement, the Supreme Court had encouraged it by upholding convictions for membership in disfavored groups. Only after McCarthyism had been discredited, did the Supreme Court hold that people could not be imprisoned for beliefs but only for actions.

In short, the Supreme Court has an imperfect record at best for protecting freedoms, especially in the midst of crises. Even when we may think that the Court has protected us — and it has on occasion — it often has done so only after a crisis is over, and the protection matters little.

There are reasons to hope that this time the courts will be protective of the constitution and civil liberties. The current legal cases mostly remain in the lowest federal courts, and those courts seem to be performing well, seemingly attempting to come to grips with the many issues presented by the administration and holding back administrative actions that bend towards authoritarianism. There is hope, too, as cases move up to the Supreme Court. In one case that has already come before the Court, the justices refused to set aside a restraining order as Trump wanted. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority. Moreover, Roberts spoke out against the cries from Trump and Trumpistas for the impeachment of judges who have dared to cross the president. (Perhaps in spite of life tenure, some judges are intimidated by impeachment threats, and Roberts reassured such nervous Nelsons. But, since a removal from office requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which ain’t gonna happen, Roberts’s words can be seen as grandstanding.)

Nevertheless, there are reasons for Trump to see the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice as supportive of his agenda. So, for example, the attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (DEI) together with the attempt to remove American racism from the national consciousness has its support in the case striking down affirmative action at Harvard. Notably, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the Court’s opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023). Without that Supreme Court decision, we would not have the obsessive anti-DEI movement

Moreover, Roberts wrote the presidential immunity decision, which surely emboldens Trump. The Court has suggested that the president can fire anyone in the executive branch, which surely emboldens Trump. The Court has also taken steps and is expected to take more towards gutting the powers of independent agencies, which surely has emboldened Trump. Roberts wrote a decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, which emboldened conservatives to suppress voting. Roberts wrote a disturbing decision about partisan gerrymandering which acknowledged that partisan gerrymandering is really, really bad and a threat to democracy but that we shouldn’t expect the Court to offer a remedy. Just as that gerrymandering is beyond the Court’s authority according Roberts’s opinion, Trump contends that his actions affecting foreign affairs are beyond the Justices’ bailiwick.

I do have hopes that the courts will be a bulwark against the move to authoritarianism. But my hopes are tempered.

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First, Let’s Kill Not Just the Lawyers

There are over 130 lawsuits against the administration’s activities, but I want to consider three instances where there could be, but aren’t, court cases. The first happened a few months ago. Trump sued the television network ABC for libel. ABC settled the suit for millions even though knowledgeable First Amendment and media experts said that the network would have won.

Second. The Trump administration said it was stripping Columbia University of $400 million in grants but would “negotiate” about them if Columbia made various changes, including prohibiting masks at protests, adopting a definition of antisemitism, employing security guards who are authorized to make arrests, and putting a department into “academic receivership.” Columbia seemingly capitulated and agreed to the extraordinary demands of the administration, probably insuring further attacks on other universities.

Third. Trump is now also targeting law firms that, in his opinion, “engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.” He has stripped firms of security clearances and forbade their lawyers from entering government buildings, which makes it impossible to represent sundry clients. Some firms have resisted Trump’s demands, but the large and powerful Paul Weiss firm gave into them. Paul Weiss will stop diversity activities, provide $40 million of free legal services to projects that have Trump’s approval, and take on clients with a “full spectrum of political viewpoints.”

There is a common thread here. ABC, Columbia, and Paul Weiss are all private institutions. The institutions have to be concerned that they will be effectively destroyed by Trump’s actions and by additional actions Trump might take if he were defied. ABC had to be concerned that the FCC and other government agencies would make life difficult for them and their affiliates or even strip them of their licenses. Columbia gets multiples of the $400 million in federal grants and contracts, and the university had to be concerned that Trump would extend his attack on the university. Paul Weiss felt that it would lose clients and lawyers to other firms because of what Trump had done.

Trump’s retribution is frighteningly broad, and while his memory for facts may be deficient, he remembers what he perceives as slights. Years ago, for example, Trump tried to sell Columbia some Manhattan property. Eventually the university declined, apparently angering the then real estate developer. Trump wanted $400 million for the property, the amount that the federal government is now withholding from the university. Coincidence? Another example: Trump has demanded an apology from the Maine governor for some comments by her that Trump did not like. His implication is that the state of Maine will be punished if “I’m abjectly sorry” is not forthcoming. Paul Weiss was targeted not for the work it had done, but for the work of a one-time partner, Mark Pomerantz, for the Manhattan DA. That the threatened actions against the firm are only a pretext is clear. If Paul Weiss were a threat to national security and security clearances needed to be stripped to ensure our safety, nothing the firm promised to do would change that. This is not about national security; this is about retribution.

The attack on law firms, however, is not just revenge. Apparently, prestigious firms have already decided not to take on cases that challenge Trump’s policies for fear that they or their clients will become future Trump targets. Trump is trying to win or avoid court cases not through our constitutional adversary system, but by eliminating legal opponents. We are in a new and dangerous territory when the government seeks to prevent lawyers from challenging it. Trump may not be trying to kill all the lawyers, but he is trying to kill those attorneys who oppose him as well as the institutions that do.

I, like others, hope that courts will step in to stop presidential abuses, but when institutions are rightfully concerned that they are facing an existential threat, it is understandable, and to me frightening, that they conclude that they must not fight to save their lives. When they don’t mount a defense, there aren’t cases for the courts to decide. For Trump, the path is clear: If I can show an institution that I can destroy it, they will probably capitulate, and I won’t have to worry about meddlesome courts. Most of the talk about a constitutional crisis has concerned Trump’s refusing to obey court orders, but these attacks on private institutions also constitute a constitutional crisis.

We will still get legal challenges. Individuals who have been arrested, or deported, or lost their jobs have challenged and will challenge what is happening. They feel that they will in effect lose their lives unless they challenge Trump. Private institutions may have pressures to capitulate; individuals have pressures to resist. However, individuals do not have the kinds of resources of an ABC, Columbia, or big law firms to take on the government. Individuals must depend on the volunteer activities of a few lawyers or on organizations like the ACLU or similar groups to stand up to Trump. If you can, this is the time to support those who are fighting against Trump. Only then will we find out what our country actually deems legal and constitutional.

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The Covid-19 Vaccine and Transgender Sports: A (Plausible?) Trumpian Connection (guest post from the spouse)

On February 5 President Trump signed an executive order barring transgender student athletes from playing in girls’ sports. On March 19, the National Institutes of Health told grant seekers across the country to remove any reference to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications. What do these two things have to do with each other?

Maybe nothing. However, it is also possible that the Trump administration is trying to kill two birds with one stone and is using the University of Pennsylvania as its target. On the same day that the NIH promulgated its directive to remove mRNA vaccine technology from grant applications, the Trump administration “paused” $175 million in grant funding to the University of Pennsylvania. The grants are being “paused,” the administration says, over Penn’s failure to exclude the transgender student Lia Thomas from the women’s swim team. Is it a coincidence that the most notable research team in mRNA vaccine technology, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, work at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School? Oh, and by the way, in 2023 they won the Nobel Prize after their work led to saving an estimated 3 million lives from the scourges of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Whatever you may think about transgender women participating in women’s sports, it’s a very bad precedent that such an executive order pre-empted cases that were before the courts (Penn swimmers are suing the university), and it’s equally bad that Penn is being punished for a “failure” that is long past (Lia Thomas has graduated). But by targeting Penn, they are also targeting a Nobel Prize-winning team of scientists who are working on one of the most promising technologies currently available for treating dangerous viruses and cancer. One only hopes that those proposed $175 million cuts do not affect their research effort (they are heavily funded by NIH), but that remains to be seen.

Continuing my effort to explain the devastation being wreaked on American science, here is another effort to describe the incremental steps that led up to the Covid-19 vaccine and that Nobel Prize.

As before: some basic science information is worthwhile.

1) Basic molecular biology: DNA, the famous double helix, unwinds and provides a template for RNA. This is called “transcription.” RNA, which comes in both double and single strands, then codes for proteins. This is called “translation.” Proteins make up just about everything in the body…muscles, bones, nerves, everything.

2) Basic immunology: When a virus invades the human body, the immune system recognizes it, and, if we’re lucky, mounts a response to destroy it. How does it “recognize” it? Molecules (called Toll receptors) on or within immune system cells match up with certain age-old molecular patterns on pathogens. When those receptors meet their match, the cells go into action by producing antibodies and/or other components of the immune response.

3) Basic vaccine biology: The protection afforded by vaccines has been known since 1796 when Edward Jenner realized that small doses of smallpox protected people from getting the full-blown symptoms of the disease. It took another hundred years (1890) before the concept of antibodies was promulgated and another 70 years after that (1958) before the structure and function of antibodies were known. And many years after that before the understanding of the immune cascade that produces them in the first place. Understanding how vaccines work to create antibody protection has been the focus of a massive research effort ever since. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provides about $6.5 billion annually to support that research.

4) How are these things related? That’s what took some time to discover.

That DNA had something to do with heredity was discovered in the 19th century, but its structure was not known until 1953. This discovery is famously described in the book by James Watson, The Double Helix. Watson, Francis Crick, and their male collaborator (Maurice Wilkins), but not their female collaborator (Rosalind Franklin), were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. Not surprisingly, then, the 1950’s and 60’s saw an explosion of research in DNA technology leading to an understanding of protein biosynthesis as described above.

In the meantime, work on the immune system progressed apace. While it was clear from research going back 100 years that certain molecules were able to stimulate an immune reaction, the mechanism by which this occurred was largely unknown until Toll receptors were discovered in 1985. They were discovered in embryos of Drosophila, i.e., fruit flies (another Nobel Prize for the team), but their role as the triggers of immune system function did not come for another ten years. Research on these basic elements of immune system activation flourished, and by the early 2000’s, nine different Toll-like receptors had been identified, some of which recognize RNA.

The plot thickens.

So. What if you could engineer a specific RNA to enter an immune cell, translate a small portion of an ugly virus…say, the “spike” surface protein of the Covid virus…then have that surface protein expressed by a non-viral cell? Since the surface protein by itself is harmless without its viral host, such production would not constitute a full-blown viral infection. The RNA would, of course, need to be modified so that it translated the protein but didn’t cause an overwhelming inflammatory response via those pesky Toll receptors. This necessary modification was the genius of Karisó and Weissman at Penn. The modified RNA would then stimulate intracellular Toll receptors to produce a more modest immune response. Would the immune system simultaneously recognize the surface protein and the modest Toll receptor response and mount a reaction that included the production of antibodies against the surface protein? Would that be the equivalent to a vaccine against Covid-19? And the answer is…well, yes. But how to get that RNA into the cell in the first place?

Another discovery, beginning in the 1960’s, showed that tiny lipid (fatty) droplets (nanoparticles) could encapsulate molecules like RNA and “squeeze” it into cells. Hence, they provided a delivery system for the RNA. And this observer has not a single idea about how one gears up the production of this entire apparatus to enable the vaccination of millions of humans. Enter the technology of the pharmaceutical giants….way beyond the scope of this humble essay.

In short, several strands of research over many decades had to come together in order to beat the Covid virus. But questions remain. Can we use this technology to fight cancer? Autoimmune diseases? As-yet-unknown pathogens? Well, we won’t know if the Trump administration bans funding for anything smacking of the pernicious “mRNA technology.” Call your Congress person…NOW.

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First Sentences

“For most of Richard Nixon’s tenure as president, he had an insurance policy against impeachment and removal from office. Its name was Spiro Agnew.” Jeffrey Toobin, The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy.

“All children mythologize their birth.” Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale.

“The call to adventure came in libraries, in faculty offices, at campus football games.” Elyse Graham, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II.

“It’s a Saturday morning, and I’m midway through my shift at the Winter Park Public Library when I see it.” Kristin Harmel, The Book of Lost Names.

“Two things happened the year I turned eleven: my father died and I became friends with my first professional chef, a guy named Jacques. Eric Ripert, 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line.

“The staff meeting of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Egyptian Art was supposed to start at ten, which meant associate curator Charlotte Cross arrived at nine to prepare her colleagues for battle.” Fiona Davis, The Stolen Queen.

“If something begins when it acquires a name we can date the beginnings of fascism precisely.” Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism.

“You must leave as few clues as possible.” Richard Osman, We Solve Murders.

“Noon, 8 September 2021. Central Paris, Île de ka Cité, under a heavy police guard. For the first time, several hundred of us walk through the security gates which we’ll pass through every day for a year.” Emmanuel Carrère, V13: Chronicle of a Trial (Translated from the French by John Lambert).

“Secretary of War Edwin Stanton learned over the bedside of his good friend, Abraham Lincoln, and, tears spilling down his cheeks, spoke the memorable phrase: now he belongs to the angels—or the ages.” Brenda Wineapple, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation.

“On a hot afternoon in May 2016, five miles outside the young petro-city of Fort McMurry Alberta, a small wildfire flickered and ventilated, rapidly expanding its territory through a mixed forest that hadn’t seen fire in decades.” John Vaillant, Fire Weather: On the Front Line of a Burning World

“On July 28, 1915, Rear Admiral Willaim B. Caperton stood on the quarterdeck of the USS Washington with a pair of binoculars at his eyes and several questions running through his head.” Sean Mirski, We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and Rise of the American Colossus.

“When Mac was three years old and Anya was five, they watched their mother get arrested for a seatbelt violation.” Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment without Crime: How our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.

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Snippets

I watch a lot of athletics on TV, perhaps too much. This viewing includes women sports, but I am planning to give up watching women’s college basketball, volleyball, and softball. They are too dominated by transgender women to be enjoyable and safe. Or at least that is the impression I get from watching too much Fox News and listening to too many of our politicians.

We know that many must study little if Shelley is right when he said, “The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.”

With DOGE ripping apart the country, I have mentally started calling our president Donlon Trusk.

A wise person said, “It seems unreasonable, but the head never begins to swell until the mind stops growing.”

A social media post has said that the Russians recruited Donald Trump decades ago. Trump may merely be a fanboy of Vladimir Putin; however, many of Trump’s actions, including the destruction of America’s standing in the world, could come from a Putin playbook. There is more plausibility in the conspiracy theory that Trump is a Russian asset than many others that take root. Instead of a Manchurian candidate, do we have a Siberian president?

“I don’t lie. I improve on life.” (Perhaps) Josephine Baker.

I asked Murphy what he did for St. Patrick’s Day. He said, “Nothing. St. Pat’s is a day for amateurs.”

Qatar is often mentioned on TV, but it is pronounced in different ways. What is the correct way to say it?

My friendly boss with Irish roots had moved to the suburbs. He invited us to a wine tasting at his new parish church. After it ended, we retired to his new home across the street. We were joined by other Irish Americans who had been at the winetasting. As is usual when you put alcohol and Irish together, singing begins. An Irish Lullaby. Danny Boy. It was getting late. We were looking to get out of there since it was long drive home. We were about to stand up when a guitar appeared in the hands of a thin man. He looked around until the now raucous group got quiet. He started to sing. I have little familiarity with the genre, but it was an Irish protest song. He sang beautifully. If you weren’t crying by the end, you should have been.

I occasionally play Spelling Bee, an online game from the New York Times. You are to make words of at least four letters from seven letters with six arrayed in a circle around a seventh letter. Each word must contain that central letter. The game somewhere has an official word list, which I have never seen, but sometimes an entry that I know is a valid word, often a scientific or technical term, is rejected. However, on occasion I spot a word that I know does not exist, but I believe it should. For example, pignic: eating too much on the lawn.

Even though the administration is trying to tear down universities in the name of fighting antisemitism, it occurs to me that one of the flaws of the current administration is that it does not have enough Jewish people.

“He who blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.” Proverbs.

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Snippets

I often think that I get those quotidian 50/50 choices wrong more than half the time. When I try to insert the USB cable, or the polarized plug, or pull on the up/down shade cord, push or pull the door, or similar everyday tasks, I seem to get it wrong far more often than I get it right. I keep meaning to keep track for a week to see if my perception is correct, but I have so far failed to perform this crucial experiment.

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” Picasso.

There is much talk that Trump is destroying democracy, but as pointed out in Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. (2022) by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer,“Majoritarian democracy may not sound like something so unusual for an American president to embrace, but the conservative movement had treated it with suspicion for decades.” In the 1960s, conservatives said again and again that United States is a republic, not a democracy. However, Akhil Reed Amar in his essay “Founding Myths” in Kruse and Zelizer’s book maintains that at this country’s founding many Americans treated “republic” and “democracy” as broadly the same.

Often when Trump starts rambling, I think of the statement by Fran Lebowitz: “Generally speaking, it is inhumane to detain a fleeting insight.”

“Neurosis seems to be a human privilege.” Freud.

I am now so old that I regularly watch “Wheel of Fortune” and some non-sports shows on CBS.

A wise person said: “Alas! It is man’s fate to keep on growing older long after he is old enough.”

“Life should consist in at least fifty per cent pure waste of time, and the rest in doing what you please.” Isabel Patterson.

“It is not true that life is one damn thing after another—it’s one damn thing over and over.” Edna St Vincent Millay.

“The biggest problem people have is leisure. Anybody can handle a jam-packed day.” Peg Bracken.

I have finally learned that a good listener is generally thinking about something else.

I have also learned that bores are people who would rather talk about themselves when I’d much rather talk about me.

I believe in being a gentleman if Oliver Herford is right when he said, “A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.”

I believe in being on time. However: “The trouble with being punctual is that there’s nobody there to appreciate it.” Harold Rome.

I believe in love. “Love is a wonderful thing and highly desirable in marriage.” Rupert Hughes.

However: “I think unconditional love is what a mother feels for her baby, and not what you should feel for yourself.” Helen Gurley Brown.

“Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again every time a child is born.” George Bernard Shaw.

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And Now for Something Completely Small (From the Spouse)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved miniature things. Well, we all love puppies and kittens and even human babies. But I loved miniature things, like dollhouses and the things that were inside them. Now. When I was a child in the 1950’s, a dollhouse from Sears and Roebuck was a somewhat boring affair: a metal box with a slanting roof, open on one side to reveal four cubes representing four nondescript rooms (where was the bathroom?). Still. It was small, and if you could find them in Woolworth’s and your mom would let you splurge a little, tiny pieces of plastic furniture could be housed inside. I thought that was pretty satisfying until I was 9 or so.

It was around that time that I became aware of the Colleen Moore Dollhouse at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. No mere house, this. It was a mansion of a million rooms (or so it seemed), each completely furnished down to the teeny rose in a teeny vase on a delicately carved mahogany table next to a velvet-covered settee carefully placed on a tiny Persian carpet. And it had electric lighting! Electrified chandeliers, electrified wall sconces. It was a revelation.

As I gawked at this magnificence, though, the pitiful contrast to my Sears and Roebuck box became far too apparent. Knowing that something so utterly amazing existed whose elegance and detail could never be duplicated (at least, not by me) quashed my interest in dollhouses for many years thereafter.

It was a bit later in life that I marveled at the historically accurate rendering of tiny rooms at the Chicago Art Institute. Conceived by Mrs. James Ward Thorne in the mid-twentieth century, the rooms were (“painstakingly” goes without saying) constructed on a scale of one inch to one foot, and there are 68 of them! It was overwhelming to the likes of me, and similarly discouraging. This was a life’s work – and an expensive one. It would take a highly dedicated Mrs. Thorne’s full-time efforts and considerable fortune to even think of duplicating a single room. Sigh.

I most certainly should have given up this interest in miniatures. But no. At Gainesville (Florida) High School I chaired the decorations committee for the senior prom. They could not have picked a more inept leader. Being a complete dufus, I envisioned an entrance to the dance floor (the gym) that would replicate – in miniature — the Gainesville main street at the turn of the century. Low-rise buildings, gas lights, cobble-stone streets. It was a complete and utter disaster! Neither I nor anyone on my committee had a clue on how even to begin. I have mostly repressed the whole affair, but I think somebody’s mother bailed me out by providing crepe paper streamers and Kleenex roses – like any sensible prom decorating committee should have done.

But I never really gave up being enamored of small things. Even my scientific career focused on things microscopic. Nothing gave more satisfaction than to examine through a microscope cells stained to show the delicate intricacies of their inner workings.

And in the meantime, I started to collect miniature tea sets. Cheap enough and still satisfyingly small. I learned that there are small tea sets (suitable for tea time with a teddy bear), smaller tea sets (not suitable for anything, really), and teensy, tiny tea sets (designed to please people like me who have a miniature fetish and a limited budget). The smallest I own came from a gift shop at The Greenbrier. The tray upon which the tea pot, sugar, creamer and two cups in saucers sits is no more than three centimeters in diameter. I love it. All of my tiniest treasures are now displayed in a shadow box that is ill-lit. No one really notices it, but I do, and when I do, it surprises and pleases.

Not knowing much about the military nor coming from a military family, I was never as intrigued by toy soldiers, but a friend, James Hillestad, has a most extraordinary collection of toy soldiers at the Toy Soldier Museum in Cresco, PA. Here are 3,000 square feet of full-scale models with 70 authentic military uniforms. You can see the battle at Vicksburg, parade scenes of Scottish bagpipers, the military review that attended Queen Victoria on a visit to India, etc. etc. In short, hundreds of toy soldiers are on breath-taking display. Definitely worth a trip to the Poconos or go to www.the-toy-soldier.com.

Well, okay, so when I retired, I decided to give my full-time effort to building a doll house. I bought a reasonably sized, reasonably priced kit to produce a Victorian house with four rooms (one is a bathroom!) and a front porch. I put wallpaper on its walls and carpets on its floors. The bathroom has “tiles.” The outside is painted dark green with white trim. It’s furnished of course, complete with a teeny, tiny copy of Scientific American on the living room coffee table. There’s a chandelier in the dining room, but it’s not electrified, and it keeps falling down. There’s a tray of wine and fruit available to guests. I decorate the outside for Christmas with battery-powered fairy lights. I love it. And…I have gotten that Moore/Thorne impulse out of my system.

I think of this topic because I recently saw what must be one of the most amazing miniaturization projects ever! The Ringling Circus Museum in Sarasota, Florida, houses a 3,800 square foot model of a circus conceived and built by one Howard C. Tibbals. It comprises (in small part) The Big Top (with 7,000 folding chairs and five rings), the Midway complete with side shows, a multitude of train cars that carry the 500 hand-carved elephants, tigers, and horses. Horses! Hundreds of horses both for work and for performing. There are clowns putting on make-up, the cooking tent and mess tent with maybe 500 people inside, each with his own tiny plate of food, a patrons’ parking lot with old-timey model cars, a wardrobe tent with tiny sequined circus costumes pouring out of tiny circus trunks. They say there are more than 42,000 individual pieces, not including railroad ties and tent poles. A separate exhibit shows the parade pageantry of the Big Top with hundreds of elephants, acrobats, and costumed beauties. Go to the Internet and put in Howard Bros. Circus. You’ll see; it is miraculous.

So, you see, there are more people than you might think who are driven to a lifetime of miniaturization. Bless ‘em! 

Posted on by rjonakait

The Ethical Federal Prosecutor

Santa Claus, an honest lawyer, and a disgusting, dirty, smelly drunk are on the sidewalk when they each see a leather case on the sidewalk. They rush to it and get there simultaneously. It has no lock, and after a few words, they agree to open it. The case is packed with crisp, wrapped $100 bills. The look at each other, and one asks, “What should we do it with it?” Santa Claus says, “I should get it. I will use it to get even more toys for underprivileged children.” The lawyer responds, “No. I will take it and find its rightful owner for this still belongs to someone. I will go to the police and the courts. I know how to advertise for lost property. I will work hard to return it.” The drunk slurs, “Just give it to me. No one will be happier. I will use the money to stay drunk for the rest of my days and never again have to bother others asking for cash.” Who gets the money? Of course, it is the drunk because Santa Claus and the honest lawyer are mythical creatures.

That joke fits in with the many preconceptions that lawyers are without ethics, but in fact attorneys are in a profession that has some stringent ethical codes. Recent news has highlighted that.

Just last week the Supreme Court decided a death penalty case from Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Attorney General told the Court that the defendant had, in fact, been given an unfair trial because the Oklahoma trial prosecutors had not lived up to their legal and ethical duties. “Confessions of error” are highly unusual, and the Oklahoma AG took much abuse for his ethical stand. (The Supreme Court, to the surprise of many, did actually reverse the conviction.)

More familiar is the situation of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Last fall Adams was charged by the federal government with various corrupt acts. The case was proceeding to trial when the new Justice Department dismissed the charges indicating that Adams could more effectively carry out Trump’s immigration mandates if Adams did not have to stand trial. They dismissed the case “without prejudice,” meaning that they could bring back the charges later if they so chose. This, of course, “incentivized” Adams to do the bidding of the Trump administration. The apparent quid pro quo looked unethical to many. At least eight Justice Department attorneys did what they thought was ethically demanded of them: They resigned.

More recently, Ed Martin, the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, demoted seven or eight experienced Assistant U.S. Attorneys who were involved in January 6 prosecutions. Martin defended the demotions by saying that each U.S. attorney “must assess the needs of the office to achieve the goals set forth by the President and the Attorney General.” Martin cited nothing to indicate that the attorneys had or were performing poorly. Instead, the demotions clearly seemed a retribution for actions taken when Trump was not president. The goal seemed to humiliate the prosecutors for performing their jobs ethically. They are now restricted to handling matters normally given to fledgling attorneys starting out in the office. It seems that the acting U.S. attorney hopes that such a demotion will cause them to quit. This action has raised questions about Ed Martin’s ethics.

These actions highlight the unusual role that attorneys and especially prosecutors have in our federal government. More than a few “distinguished” conservative commentators have said that the Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys must follow the president’s directions “because they work for the president.” That’s just not true. Neither an Attorney General nor other federal officials work for the president. He does not pay them, and no one in the government openly pledges fealty to the president. To take office, an attorney general and other federal officials must vow: “I do solemnly swear [or affirm] that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The oath is to the Constitution not to a person, not even to a president.

Even though the Attorney General, U.S. Attorneys, and other federal officials are supposed to work for all of us (we do pay their salaries after all) and not for the president alone, the lines of authority are muddled. The president does have a power akin to an employer; he can remove an attorney general, a U.S. Attorney, a Secretary of State, and other federal officers. Furthermore, in the legal area, since the president has been given the constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. . . ,” he can set the priorities and policies for the Department of Justice and the Attorney General. Of course, if what is commanded is unconstitutional, the AG or the US. Attorneys cannot — consistent with their oath of office — carry out the command. On the other hand, even if the directive is deemed constitutional but unwise, the AG can be expected to be removed if she does not comply with presidential wishes.

The president can then seek a new attorney general, presumably after vetting the candidate on the contested issue, but that also is complicated. The Constitution does not give the president the power to appoint any Attorney General he wants. Instead, it says that the president “shall nominate” candidates to be federal officials. The Constitution goes on to say, “and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint” the Attorney General and other federal officials. The appointment power is a joint one of both president and the Senate. The Constitution does not constrain the Senate in how it should use its power. It is only a norm or a convention that the Senate gives great deference to the presidential nominations.

Thus, the Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys inhabit a strange territory filled with inconsistencies. The president can set criminal justice policies broadly or for individual cases. He can remove those who do not follow his directives. Nevertheless, they do not work for him. They serve the country and its Constitution. He does not have the sole power to replace them. Rather, he holds that authority jointly with the Senate.

Something similar can be said for other federal officials. If the Secretary of State does not carry out the president’s wishes, he can be replaced, but the situation for prosecutors is even more complicated. They are members of the bar, and the legal profession has ethical codes that lawyers are supposed to follow if they are going to continue in the profession. The bar can take their law licenses or otherwise discipline lawyers who don’t follow the ethical rules. That happened to some lawyers for unethical conduct in pushing the claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.” Some were disbarred; some had their licenses suspended.

All lawyers in addition to the duties of their job owe a duty to the justice system. For most attorneys, this boils down to zealously advocating for their clients in an honest fashion. For prosecutors, however, it is different. They do not have a client in the traditional sense and their ethical duties include, but do not stop at, being a zealous advocate. Incorporating the language of the Supreme Court, the American Bar Association has said: “The prosecutor is an administrator of justice, a zealous advocate, and an officer of the court. The prosecutor’s office should exercise sound discretion and independent judgment in the performance of the prosecution function. . . . The duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict.”

Federal prosecutors are, thus, in a strange role. The president can set prosecutorial priorities. They don’t work for the president, but he can fire them. On the other hand, they are to use “independent judgment,” “seek justice,” and use “sound discretion” and not just follow orders. Their ethical path is a difficult one, and not all have followed it. What is clear, however, is that the path can’t be trod if fealty to a person is primary and working for justice with independent judgment is set aside.