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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 20 minutes
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This is a Good Friday poem.  I like to read it slowly - as I read it I remember several people who were important to me.  It’s a very long poem but a holy one. It takes awhile to read it and remember the people who were important to me and how incredibly complex human beings are - how little we really know about so many people who listened to us and saved our lives.
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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 21 minutes
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via dolorosa. holy week in jerusalem.
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Overheard: at the coffee shop
Four twenty-somethings at a nearby table:
“So Good Friday is supposed to be the day he rose again?” “I think so…” “And then Sunday, like today, he dies or something right?” “I guess so…”
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How can she say Jesus was a white man when he died the blackest way possible? With his hands up, with his mother watching.
Crystal Valentine,  from “And the News Reporter Says Jesus Is White”
[Thanks oofpoetry] 
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Corps de Ballet dancer in the wings. Paris Opera Ballet.
Photo by Gilles Tapie
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[Nicolas Bruno Photography]
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“Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason.”
— Carl Jung
[Wanderings]
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"I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both."
Writer Flannery O'Connor
The Moth
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Flowers in Green Vase with Handles by Odilon Redon (1840 - 1916)
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"Personality - We have a saying, 'He stands in his own light' He can't see his real self because of his personality."
~ Kathryn Hulme
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"Ordinary man is at the mercy of his organism - at the mercy of the instinctive centre; impressions received by the senses, of appetites, inertia, disease - at the mercy of the feelings; associations connected with people and places past and present, likes and dislikes, fear and anxiety - at the mercy of the mind; imagination, day-dreaming, suggestibility."
~ A.R. Orage
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Moonset at El Prado, Taos Co, NM. Photo: Elida Hanson-Finelli (Mar 26, 2024) :: [Robert Scott Horton]
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“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.” ― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
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Il s’engendre beaucoup d’abus au monde ou, pour le dire plus hardiment, tous les abus du monde s’engendrent de ce qu’on nous apprend à craindre de faire profession de nostre ignorance, et que nous sommes tenus d’accepter tout ce que nous ne pouvons refuter. Nous parlons de toutes choses par precepte et resolution. Le stile à Romme portoit que cela mesme qu’un tesmoin deposoit pour l’avoir veu de ses yeux, et ce qu’un juge ordonnoit de sa plus certaine science, estoit conceu en cette forme de parler : Il me semble. On me faict hayr les choses vray-semblables quand on me les plante pour infallibles.
Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions. The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: “it seems to me.” They make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me as infallible.
—Michel de Montaigne, Essais, bk iii, ch xi: Des boyteux (1580). Below: inscriptions in the ceiling of the tower library at the Château de Montaigne
[Robert Scott Horton]
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
March 27, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
MAR 28, 2024
The news that NBC News reconsidered its invitation to former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel to become a paid contributor has buried the recent news about some of the other participants in Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 
Yesterday a judge in Minnesota ruled in favor of a warehouse owner who sought to evict MyPillow after it failed to pay more than $200,000 in rent. MyPillow chief executive officer Mike Lindell has complained that his company has been “decimated” by his support for Trump. His insistence—without evidence—that the 2020 presidential election was stolen has entangled him in expensive defamation lawsuits filed by voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. 
Lindell cannot pay his lawyers and claims to have “lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” but insists he is being persecuted “because you want me to shut up about [the] security of our elections.”
Also yesterday, Trump loyalist Kari Lake, who has pushed the idea that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, ran for Arizona governor in 2022, and is now running for the U.S. Senate, admitted she defamed Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer and that she acted with actual malice when she claimed he “sabotaged” the 2022 election. The request to admit to defamation came on the day that discovery, the process of sharing information about a case with each side, was to begin, suggesting that she preferred to admit wrongdoing rather than let anyone see what might be in her emails, texts, and recordings.
Arizona journalist Howard Fischer reported in the Arizona Daily Star that in a video statement, Lake said her admission did not mean she agreed she did anything wrong, although that is expressly stipulated in the court papers. She said she conceded because Richer’s lawsuit was keeping her off the campaign trail. “It’s called lawfare: weaponizing the legal system to punish, impoverish and destroy political opponents,’’ Lake said. “We’ve all seen how they’re doing it to President Trump. And here in Arizona, they’re doing the exact same thing to me.’’
One of Lake’s senior advisors said: “Kari Lake maintains she has always been truthful.” 
Also yesterday, a three-member panel of the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility began a disciplinary hearing for former Department of Justice environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was so key to Trump’s plan to get state legislatures to overturn the results of the 2020 election that Trump tried to make him attorney general.  
Clark joins Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the media blitz to argue—falsely—that the election had been stolen. Giuliani’s New York and Washington, D.C., law licenses were suspended in June 2021 after a court found that he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public at large.” He is now facing disbarment. 
Earlier this month, he said on his podcast that he expected to be disbarred because “[t]he Bar Association is going to crucify me no matter what. I will be disbarred in New York. I will be disbarred in Washington. It will have nothing to do with anything I did wrong.”
Today, after a long trial, attorney discipline judge Yvette Roland recommended that John Eastman, the lawyer who came up with the justification for using fake electors to overturn the 2020 presidential election, be disbarred. Eastman will immediately lose his license to practice law. The California Supreme Court will decide whether to disbar Eastman. 
Eastman’s lawyer said it was unfair to take Eastman’s law license because he needs to make money to fight the criminal charges against him in Georgia, where he has been indicted for his part in the effort to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election there. For his part, Eastman maintains he did nothing wrong.
In her recommendation, Judge Roland compared Eastman’s case to that of Donald Segretti, the lawyer whose efforts to guarantee President Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection included, as Roland’s recommendation noted, distributing letters that made false accusations against Nixon’s rivals (including a forged letter attributing a slur against French-Canadians to Maine senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Edmund Muskie). At the time, the court noted that Segretti was only 30, thought he was acting for Nixon, and did not act in his capacity as a lawyer. The court also emphasized that Segretti “recognized the wrongfulness of his acts, expressed regret, and cooperated with the investigating agencies.” 
In contrast, Roland wrote, “[t]he scale and egregiousness of Eastman’s unethical actions far surpasses” Segretti’s misconduct. Segretti acted outside his role as an attorney, while “Eastman’s wrongdoing was committed directly in the course and scope of his representation of President Trump and the Trump campaign.” Roland also noted that while Segretti expressed remorse and recognized his wrongdoing, Eastman has shown “an apparent inability to accept responsibility. This lack of remorse and accountability presents a significant risk that Eastman may engage in further unethical conduct, compounding the threat to the public.”  
One by one, those who worked with Trump to overturn the election are being held to account by our legal system. But still, they refuse to admit any wrongdoing. 
In that, they are following Trump.  
Despite Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order, Trump continued today to attack both Merchan and his daughter. On his social media site, Trump posted that Merchan was trying to deprive him of his “First Amendment right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement, including the fact that Crooked Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and their Hacks and Thugs are tracking and following me all across the Country, obsessively trying to persecute me, while everyone knows I have done nothing wrong!” Trump posted in great detail about the judge’s daughter, accusing her of making money by “working to ‘Get Trump,’” based on images shared by an old social media account of hers that had been hacked. 
It was President Nixon who perfected the refusal to admit wrongdoing in the face of overwhelming evidence. Even after tapes recorded in the Oval Office revealed that he had plotted with an aide to block investigations of the break-in at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel by invoking national security and Republican Party leaders told him he needed to resign, he refused to admit wrongdoing. Instead, he told the American people he was stepping down because he no longer had enough support in Congress to advance the national interest. He blamed his fall on the press, saying its “leaks and accusations and innuendo” were designed to destroy him.
Gerald R. Ford, the president who replaced Nixon, inadvertently put a rubber stamp on Nixon’s refusal to accept responsibility. Believing it was better for the country to move past the divisions of the Watergate era, Ford issued a preemptive pardon for any crimes the former president might have committed against the United States while in office. Ford maintained that the acceptance of a pardon was an admission of guilt. 
But Ford’s pardon meant Nixon never faced legal accountability for his actions. That escape allowed him to argue that a president is above the law. In a 1977 interview with British journalist David Frost, Nixon told Frost that “when the president does it…that means that it is not illegal,” by definition. 
As Nixon did, Trump has watched those who participated in his schemes pay dearly for their support, but he appears angry and confused at the idea that he himself could be held legally accountable for his behavior.
But without accountability, as Judge Roland noted, there is no incentive to stop dangerous behavior. Josh Dawsey reported last night in the Washington Post that since Trump has taken over the Republican National Committee and purged it of former employees, those interviewing for jobs are being asked if they believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Other questions, Dawsey reported, include “what applicants believe should be done on ‘election integrity’ in 2024.” 
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
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Who were the members of Rudy's BLT team? Three names right in the center: John Solomon, Devin Nunes and Ron Johnson.
[Robert Scott Horton]
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(art: Frederick Horsman Varley)
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"December days were brief and chill, The winds of March were wild and drear, And, nearing and receding still, Spring never would, we thought, be here."
~Arthur Hugh Clough
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Photo by Tim Bieber
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“As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased with the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them.”
― Wendell Berry
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the body in pain, elaine scarry
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It’s easy to identify with all the places we’ve been hurt and abandoned, but can we identify with the timeless wholeness that weathers every condition? If we can’t, we may spend this life protecting ourselves and never risk really living.
[Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei, “The Sword Disappears in the Water”]
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Medicine, Gustav Klimt, 1907
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Καὶ ποῖον, λέγει, ἀδικῶ, μὲ τὸ νὰ κρατῶ γιὰ τoν ἐαυτόν μου αὐτὰ ποῦ μου ἀνήκουν; Ποία, εἰπέ μου, εἶναι αὐτὰ ποῦ σου ἀνήκουν; Ἀπὸ ποῦ τὰ ἔλαβες, καὶ τὰ ἔφερες στὴν ζωὴν αὐτήν; Ὅπως ἀκριβῶς κάποιος ποὺ εὑρίσκει στὸ θέατρο θέση μὲ καλὴν θέαν, ἐμποδίζει ἔπειτα τοὺς εἰσερχομένους, θεωρώντας ὡς ἰδικὸ τοῦ αὐτὸ ποὺ προορίζεται γιὰ χρῆσιν κοινήν, ἔτσι εἶναι καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι. Ἀφοῦ ἐκυρίευσαν ἐκ τῶν προτέρων τα κοινὰ ἀγαθά, τὰ ἰδιοποιοῦνται ἁπλῶς ἐπειδὴ τὰ ἐπρόλαβαν. Ἐὰν ὁ καθένας ἐκρατοῦσε ἐκεῖνο ποὺ ἀρκεῖ γιὰ τὴν ἱκανοποίηση τῶν ἀναγκῶν του, καὶ ἄφηνε τὸ περίσσευμα σ’ αὐτὸν ποὺ τὸ χρειάζεται, κανεὶς δὲν θὰ ἦταν πλούσιος, ἀλλὰ καὶ κανεὶς πτωχός.
'But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need.
—St Basil the Great (Ἅγιος Βασίλειος ὁ Μέγας), καθελῶ μου τὰς ἀποθήκας (350 CE). Below: Five Fathers of the Church (in the center, St Basil the Great (Crete, c 1600))
[Robert Scott Horton]
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Baltimore Bridge collapse
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At about 1:30 this morning, local time, the Dali, a 985-foot (300 m) container ship operating under a Singapore flag, struck the steel Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, that spans the lower Patapsco River and outer Baltimore Harbor. The bridge immediately collapsed. 
Eight maintenance workers were on the bridge repairing potholes when the ship hit. Two were rescued from the water, but the other six remain missing. Search and rescue operations were complicated by twisted metal and debris from the collapsed bridge. This evening, the Coast Guard called off its search. Tomorrow morning, divers will begin recovery efforts.
It is possible there were motorists on the bridge, too, but fewer than there might otherwise have been. Crew members issued a “Mayday” call—an internationally recognized word meaning distress—that Maryland police heard. At 1:27, police radio recorded an officer saying a ship had lost control of its steering as it approached the bridge, and to stop traffic and evacuate the area. There were cars submerged in the water, but they may have belonged to the construction workers.
The loss of the bridge will tangle traffic and disrupt supply chains. Named for the Maryland lawyer who in 1814 wrote the poem that became the national anthem, the Francis Scott Key bridge carries I-695, the Baltimore Beltway, and is used by about 30,000 people a day. 
The Port of Baltimore is one of the nation’s largest shipping hubs, especially for both imports and exports of cars and light trucks. About 850,000 vehicles go through that port every year. So does more than 20% of the nation’s coal exports. In 2023 the port moved a record-breaking $80 billion worth of foreign cargo. Now the shipping lane is closed and must be cleared of debris. 
“There is no question this will be a major and protracted impact on supply chains,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said from Baltimore today.
Perhaps learning from the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, when the government response was fast but quiet and thus opened a window for right-wing complaints they weren’t doing enough, the administration was out front today. Buttigieg rushed to the scene from a trip out West, and Maryland governor Wes Moore told reporters Buttigieg had called him at 3:30 am, just two hours after the crash.  
By around 6:00 am, the National Transportation Safety Board already had a team of 24 people on the scene to launch an investigation into the cause of the collision. 
Speaking today, President Joe Biden said: “I’ve directed my team to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as…humanly possible. And we’re going to work hand in hand…to support Maryland, whatever they ask for. And we’re going to work with our partners in Congress to make sure the state gets the support it needs. It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect…the Congress to support my effort.”
Former member of President Obama’s 2012 campaign Jason Karsh noted Biden’s speech and said on social media: “[B]ecause Biden got infrastructure spending done for the first time in over a generation, and because [Pennsylvania] was able to rebuild that bridge that collapsed in record time, Dem[ocrat]s have the credibility to say things like this. Competence in government matters.”
It remains far too soon for any solid understanding of what caused the deadly crash.
Despite the impossibility of solid information in the hours immediately after the collision—or perhaps because of it—verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) began spreading conspiracy theories. They posted that the accident was linked to terrorism, Jewish people, or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. “Did anti-white business practices cause this disaster?” one posted. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote that the collision was “deliberate” and that “WW3 has already started.” 
Technology reporter Taylor Lorenz, who studies social media patterns, explained in the Washington Post that many of these accounts are “engagement farming.” This is the practice of posting extremist comments to generate attention, which can then be monetized by, for example, getting a cut of advertising that appears near those comments. Comments with heavy engagement can receive thousands of dollars. 
For a long time now, America’s political right has riled people up with wild political rhetoric to get them to buy stuff. Just today, Trump began to hawk Bibles for $59.99, plus shipping and handling, with a video message saying “Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country, and I truly believe we need to bring them back…. That’s why our country’s going haywire—we’ve lost religion in our country.” 
That system appeared to be in play as Trump supporters apparently flocked to today’s public offering of the Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind the Truth Social app, sending the stock upward 16%. That surge would value the company at more than $7 billion, although in the first nine months of last year it had only about $3 million in sales and lost nearly $50 million. Julian Klymochko, founder and CEO of Accelerate Financial Technologies, told NPR’s Rafael Nam that the $7 billion valuation “is completely detached from any sort of fundamentals.” 
Buying stock in the company is “more of a political movement or just a speculative meme stock [a stock driven by social media] that’s completely detached or unrelated to the underlying business fundamentals of Truth Social,” Klymochko said.
[LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN: Heather Cox Richardson]
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A sham case has its day in court.
March 27, 2024
ROBERT B. HUBBELL
It appears that the Supreme Court will reverse a lower court ban on mifepristone—meaning that the drug will continue to be available to women nationally. Based on the comments from the justices at Tuesday’s hearing, the only question is which rationale the Supreme Court will adopt in reversing the national ban issued by Judge Kacsmaryk in Texas. (The Supreme Court previously stayed Kacsmaryk’s national ban, pending argument and decision in the case of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine).
The outcome is hugely consequential and represents a major victory for proponents of reproductive liberty. But before discussing the merits, another consequential aspect of this decision deserves attention: The case challenging mifepristone had no business being in the federal courts, much less on the Supreme Court docket. It should have been dismissed at the outset—and the lawyers who filed the case should have been sanctioned for bringing bad-faith litigation. The legal theory on which the case stands is a sham based on lies.
An urgent question for the judiciary is how a sham case made it to the Supreme Court’s docket. The answer is that it did so because the Supreme Court continues to coddle, humor, and occasionally reward a cohort of reactionary Federalist Society judges. That cabal is intent on manipulating the judicial system to achieve policy goals that the Christian right cannot secure at the ballot box or in state and federal legislatures—the traditional democratic means of enacting policy.
As explained below, the Supreme Court should issue a sharp rebuke to Judge Kacsmaryk and the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who conspired to gin up a case where none existed by alleging imagined injuries that no person claims to have actually suffered. But, it is unthinkable that the milquetoast Chief Justice will summon the courage and leadership to issue the much-needed rebuke. Instead, Justice Roberts will ignore the elephant in the room—bad faith litigation—and thereby encourage more of it.
Such bad faith litigation is not costless. For more than a year, women, their partners, and health care providers have been unsure about the continued availability and legality of the most widely used drug for miscarriage and abortion care. That uncertainty can dissuade women and men from attempting to conceive or planning to terminate a pregnancy. It is reprehensible that a single federal judge would presume to ban a safe and effective drug that has been on the market for more than two decades because of the fabricated objections of a handful of physicians.
Such sham suits also undermine the credibility of the federal judiciary and waste scarce judicial resources—including those of the Supreme Court.
Will John Roberts rouse the Court to reprimand Kacsmaryk and the sham plaintiffs? Or will the Court reverse the ban on procedural grounds that will merely kick the can down the road, thereby encouraging Kacsmaryk to try again?
We need not waste our time hoping for John Roberts to do the right thing. That opportunity expired a decade ago with Shelby County v. Holder. Rather, we should focus on gaining control in the House and the Senate and reelecting Joe Biden. At that point, expanding the Supreme Court can be accomplished with a majority vote in Congress and the signature of the president.
The current Court is not up to the task of preserving and implementing the Constitution. We deserve a Court that is. Vote like your democracy depends on it.
Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter
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