"... attempting to prop up institutions—answering chaos with chaos is not an option—it is now amply clear that propping up institutions in response to the carnival is not enough. As Garland’s testimony Thursday morning revealed, the big lie is already going to be halfway across the world while the institutionalists are still double-knotting their loafers.
When we comforted ourselves with the bromide that boring old institutionalists and reliably respected institutions would serve to cool the fever dreams and the fearmongering that characterized every day of the Trump administration, what we forgot was that boringness and stability are no match for the show. Garland is currently attempting to restore confidence in an independent, professionalized, apolitical Department of Justice, but he is doing so in the face of claims by his opponents that the DOJ is the new KGB and that its jackbooted thugs are coming to arrest you in the dark of night for expressing peaceful opposition to a classroom curriculum.... Garland is well aware that decreasing confidence in the Justice Department is a crisis that will accelerate acts of violence and self-help. That’s why he’s trying to bore us into believing that nothing nefarious can really happen on the watch of a silver-haired man with earnest centrism. The problem is that to the bulk of the GOP, anything done to uphold the rule of law now codes as nefarious.
The trouble with boringness is that it’s boring.... But nobody craves boring sincerity anymore.... I used to believe that answering hysteria with vanilla bean–flavored institutionalism would restore confidence in institutions."
I have a lot of problems with that!
1. No one is "still double-knotting their loafers." Loafers are,
by definition,
slip-on shoes. No laces at all.
2. Vanilla is a very real, exciting, and complex flavor. I happen to have a very low sense of smell, and I test it from time to time by sniffing at the bottle of vanilla. I remember the smell, and oh, how I would love to smell it in its full-bodied beauty once again. Tears come to my eyes as I imagine that moment.
3. Nobody craves boring sincerity anymore? I do.
4. Even if people find boring to be boring, we love boringness very deeply, even if it's a don't-miss-your-water-'til-the-well-runs-dry kind of love. We hate chaos. And Lithwick's incitement to chaos is loathsome to me because I have the sense to foresee the long-term losses to a short-term fling with chaos.
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76 comments:
Institutions are partisan, ideological, intrusive, and self-serving to a more glaring and provocative way than they used to be. You can pretend that's nothing's changed, or you can blame and attack the people who point this out, or you can look at the institutions themselves, figure out how they got that way, and push back against their demands.
"the fever dreams and the fearmongering that characterized every day of the Trump administration"
Meaning, the fever dreams of the left as it fearmongered in the Russia collusion hoax ever day of the Trump administration?
"Garland is currently attempting to restore confidence in an independent, professionalized, apolitical Department of Justice"
WTF? Gaslighting is one thing, we cynical conservatives expect it, but lefties pretending to believe their own blatant BS is a bit much.
"anything done to uphold the rule of law now codes as nefarious"
What upholding the rule of law. Like, at the border?
The "apolitical DOJ" is another joke by the left. Garland is a pale version of Eric Holder, "the wingman."
Loyal Democrat writer and propagandist says:
Garland is well aware that decreasing confidence in the Justice Department is a crisis that will accelerate acts of violence and self-help. That’s why he’s trying to bore us into believing that nothing nefarious can really happen on the watch of a silver-haired man with earnest centrism. The problem is that to the bulk of the GOP, anything done to uphold the rule of law now codes as nefarious.
Horseshit.
yep - It's nefarious to show up at your kid's school board meeting with questions, or any sense of urgent outrage and a vocal backing to that outrage. You must obey the leftwing machine - or else. McAuliffe(D) let the cat out of the bag when he casually said that parents have no right to know the indoctrination they are receiving at the public school. But the real crime is pushing back..
To the collective gas-lighitng left - fellow angry leftists can riot, loot, smash and destroy for "self-help". It's all collectively condoned by the collective left.
No one is "still double-knotting their loafers."
Still a funny line, although that doesn't change the fact that Lithwick is an idiot.
Garland is not attempting to restore "confidence in an independent, professionalized, apolitical Department of Justice". At every turn he acts to inflame. Perhaps only in short-sighted desire to please the White House Leftists. But the results are that it doesn't play well in the provinces.
Take for example the letter sent to the DOJ to get them to go after the "domestic-terrorist" parents with the Patriot Act. Garland issued marching instructions to the FBI and the US Attorneys. At a minimum, the orders were formed to please the Democrat activist union teacher constituency. Proper leadership would have been to not feed the trolls. A simple letter to the FBI directing them to specifically coordinate with local law enforcement with the goal of ensuring local school board meeting riotousness was indeed local and not being coordinated across state lines.
But then, the FBI and DOJ, even when under Bill Barr dismissed obvious Atifa and BLM riotous coordination across states with documented interstate travel to engage in protests that resulted in billions of dollars of community damage.
Lithwick’s partisanship like that of all leftmediaswine is making her crazier. “Fearmongering” during the Trump Administration? Fear of what, economic prosperity, energy independence, control of illegal immigration.
Most remarkable is her assumption that any observer could fail to have noted the corruption of the DOJ/FBI and Garland’s embracing of it. Although, it is fair to assume that anyone who still takes her mostly unintelligible drivel seriously isn’t much of an observer.
Those institutions are the governmental arm of the DNC. The institutionalists are apparatchiks.
Why would she choose to compare him with Mueller? Mueller had just enough integrity left that he couldn’t fulfill their wish list of political prosecutions? Garland is enthusiastically going after innocent parents, jailing 1/6 protesters without bail even though he knows there’s no substance to the insurrection lie. Since he’s been perfectly pliable to the Crazy Left’s schemes so far why would she be foreshadowing a “vanilla” outcome? I don’t trust Dahlwick, based on past performance and her spin exhibited here. But I like the panic I see as the grandiosity of their schemes is scaled back.
According to Lithwick...
Garland is currently attempting to restore confidence in an independent, professionalized, apolitical Department of Justice...
And it's all your fault that this conflicted dissembler is failing at it very publicly!
Have I got that about right?
the grand gas-lighting /erase that the attorney general of the US called parents who step out of line - DOMESTIC TERRORISTS.
The same DOJ and left-wing attorney general refuse to call ANTIFA - what they are - actual domestic terrorists.
I hate hate hate the lazy journalist and partisen assumption that the GOP as a whole and Trump supporters in particular ar focused on outcomes (which are congruently assumed to be racist) and ignorant or hostile to process.
Which president was it that followed the process that required new regulations promulgated by the executive branch to be sent to Congress for review? Was that Obama, who signed the law establishing that process? Or was it Trump -- who might more simply have used a pen-and-phone approach to obliterate an executive branch rule he disliked?
Which party was it that improvised "solutions" to voting processes in the 2020 elections with the professed goal of allowing locked-down shut-in voters to participate, and which party insisted that the processes run according to the rules established before the game began?
"C'mon, man!"
For example she writes about “the fever dreams and the fearmongering that characterized every day of the Trump administration,” but this is a perfect description of what the DNC-Media Complex pumped out 24/7/365 for four years and they are trying so hard to continue it. The economy melting down and Biden’s absolute rejection of everything that was working well under Trump is exposing the folly and emptiness of the hollow stolen slogan Build Back Better. Nothing in their grand plans was designed to address the current pressing problems of open borders, runaway inflation, crumbling public education that doesn’t actually teach the 3Rs, supply chain broken…
Keep fucking that chicken Dahlia!
For example she writes about “the fever dreams and the fearmongering that characterized every day of the Trump administration,” but this is a perfect description of what the DNC-Media Complex pumped out 24/7/365 for four years and they are trying so hard to continue it. The economy melting down and Biden’s absolute rejection of everything that was working well under Trump is exposing the folly and emptiness of the hollow stolen slogan Build Back Better. Nothing in their grand plans was designed to address the current pressing problems of open borders, runaway inflation, crumbling public education that doesn’t actually teach the 3Rs, supply chain broken…
Keep fucking that chicken Dahlia!
Of late, anything to uphold the rule of law would be considered by the bulk of the GOP as novel. According to the leftist dems enforcement is racist, xenophobic and white supremacist. Leading the pack from the Clintons on down the executive level of successive dem politicians and their monied supporters, there has been Sodom and Gomorrah level illegalities. Hillary and Hunter alone have felony level violations that could populate a couple of penitentiaries.
Good points by AA. However, the huge blind spot in this vagina person's take is that chaos during Trump's presidency came only in part from within, and that part of the chaos wasn't worse in any important ways than other admins. It was mostly a function of being an outsider and having goals the other side doesn't want achieved. Only the outsider part is different, and that was a feature not a bug. It was necessary for his many successes.
Creating a sense of chaos was a strategy of Trump's opponents. We all know it. So I'm not sure there is anything this vagina person can say/write, short of acknowledging this fact, that will do anything but double down on damage to our society.
My God. The contortions that the brilliant minds on the left go through to continue to be considered brilliant minds on the left is astounding.
Garland may be boring, but what I gleaned from his appearance before Congress was that, like Mueller before him, and dozens of others, he is simply a liar, and a man who's captive, not to the law, but to his Party. He'd never heard of the rapes that took place in Loudon County by a faux-trans male? He simply missed that? I guess it's possible if he gets his news solely from WaPo and NYT. But he responds to a letter from an outside Democratic affiliated group by threatening use of the FBI to investigate parents concerned with their kids education?
This is not boring. This is banana republic stuff. He's a two-bit phony. He is nothing more than another lifelong bureaucrat speaking in bureaucratese and apparently that's soothing to Ms. Lithwick.
And oh, by the way, the 'fever dreams and fear-mongering that characterized every day of the Trump administration" is nothing compared to the fever dreams that came and continue to come out of the Democratic Party and their AG regularly. While our borders are open and we've got the threat of real terrorism, truckloads of fentanyl coming in to kill and addict our nation, non-citizens being shipped around to various parts of the country without being checked for covid or crime, while all this is going on, AG Garland is focused like a laser on people with right wing beliefs because White Supremacy is our major issue. Not Antifa destroying Portland. Not BLM who destroyed dozens of neighborhoods, businesses, while killing dozens.
We've got dozens of people in jail from the right, who protested on Jan 6 and managed to break some windows. They are being held without charges for months and it'll be over a year before any of them see the light of day again. But Antifa and BLM? They are approved for donations from AG Garland's Party.
He is not boring. He's shown himself to be a party hack. I remember when this was the solid moderate choice for Supreme Courty. We've already got a numb head on the Court in Sotomayor- the least impressive Justice in my lifetime. Garland should not have been there and thankfully is not.
I doubt that the institutionalists were double-knotting their loafers. Loafers don't have laces. If he's that sloppy with something that trivial, why should we think he's any more careful with anything else?
3. Nobody craves boring sincerity anymore? I do.
This is the essence of good government.
This is what everyone here is asking for.
Ann however is very bad at recognizing sincerity.
When a drama queen gets trapped in a bubble.
independent, professionalized, apolitical Department of Justice
We never had one! Did John Kennedy appoint his brother Attorney General because he wanted the Department to be independent? Nixon when he appointed John Mitchell? Ronald Reagan when he appointed Ed Meese? All presidents have wanted to have control over what is investigated, what is charged, and what is defended.
Is Lithwik so divorced from reality that she really believes what she wrote?
The gaslighting increases in direct proportion to the increasing corruption and weaponization of the government against domestic political opponents.
Boring sincerity, non-boring sincerity, heck, any sincerity at all would be welcome coming out of DC. I'm not holding my breath. That Ms. Lithwick thinks she can con us into thinking that that is what we're seeing from Merrick Garland is just another level of insincerity because surely she knows better.
Should I send a bottle of Latin American Vanilla to you, Dahlia, or both?
Merrick Garland showed exactly why it was a GREAT thing by McConnell NOT to let his nomination for the Supreme Court go through. He has no clue what is going on in the country. Clueless like Biden and the rest of the administration who was going to save us all from the evil orange man. Instead....they are fucking us over.
The problem I have with it is that no one I know believes we have a "independent, professionalized, apolitical Department of Justice". And if we have to completely tear down the bureaucracy to fix it, I am willing to do that. Undo the ability of the deep state to influence policy. Go back to the spoils system if that is what it takes, it was arguably less destructive to the Republic.
Merrick Garland can't win because he is a liar and a corrupt thug using the DOJ to protect his family business of selling racism propaganda to schools.
Merrick Garland knows exactly what happened in that case where that girl was raped by a boy pretending to be a girl in the school bathroom.
He is just a piece of shit like all the other democrats.
FOIA documents suggest Garland’s DOJ conspired to create the school board letter that branded vocal parents as potential domestic terrorists and which triggered a DOJ memo supporting that view. THAT is why Garland is rightfully distrusted and there is nothing boring about him.
Dahlia misleads here: she is suggesting the left continue its weaponizing of government against the citizenry, and that the citizenry and opposition politicos stop their agitated whining and accept this reconfiguring of institutions. Garland is no institutionalist - he just plays one in front of congressmen. He is a weapons maker, and he is remaking the DOJ into a potent weapon against the citizenry by using the DOJ for political theater, which will end in show trials and long sentences for those called the enemy. Obama's AG, Eric Holder, did the same thing even more openly but was a POC, hence immune to all criticism.
I actually think Garland is doing an OK job. He’s had a few miscues, like carrying the White House’s water on the school board letter. That was clearly an overreach for political purposes. But he’s resisted the (I imagine ungodly) pressure to charge the January 6 rioters and a bunch of Republican politicians with insurrection and seditious conspiracy, choosing instead only to bring charges supported by overwhelming evidence and clear law. In that respect, he is cut from the same cloth as Bill Barr, which I intend as high praise.
Garland is well aware that decreasing confidence in the Justice Department is a crisis that will accelerate acts of violence and self-help.
"Self-help" is now added to the list of things that are equivalent to violence?
All those books we bought back in the Seventies are as dangerous as The Anarchist's Cookbook?
That’s why he’s trying to bore us into believing that nothing nefarious can really happen on the watch of a silver-haired man with earnest centrism.
Speaking of the Seventies, wasn't the whole point of the decade? That silver-haired, mushy-mouthed Establishmentarians could be capable of evil?
That’s why he’s trying to bore us into believing that nothing nefarious can really happen on the watch of a silver-haired man with earnest centrism.
To paraphrase Angela Davis: “In a nefarious society, it is not enough to be non-nefarious, we must be anti-nefarious.”
Garland isn't up for that job. It would put him in conflict with too many in the current Administration.
The AG was asked how many of the 1.4 million illegals were being prosecuted for breaking immigration law.
He did not know.
He did not believe it was his job to address the situation.
But he also could not give any explanation why.
Is this the man whose sole job it is to uphold our laws?
I watched a lot of the house hearings a couple of days ago.
Garland came off as partisan and incompetent. He can't be as dumb as he sounds, but he sounds completely insulated in the DC bubble if what he says is remotely true.
He knew zero about important events that affect his office and role directly.
And he has serious conflicts of interest involving his son-in-law and the National School Board folks.
He needs to recuse himself from a number of things, and appoint a special prosecutor to look into the Biden crime family, especially now that we know Hunter and Joe are mixing their funds together...
This is the most corrupt and incompetent administration in history, and Garland is only enabling that...
I suspect the “double-knotting their loafers” line is an allegory for institutional stodginess double checking their boring protocols before acting. Meanwhile the fervents slip into their Adidas and are off to the races, already far ahead of the “loafers.”
OK...accepting the desire for boring for the sake of argument:
What possible reason did anyone have to believe that a Biden administration would be more boring than a second Trump administration?
"We hate chaos".
Uh, no "We" don't. Chaos is how the Universe expresses itself: the source of life and beauty. Ironically, it is the men whom embrace chaos that create the structure and appurtenances the boring bubble that hothouse flowers need to survive.
(Eaglebeak)
Perhaps she's talking about double-knotting the tassels on the loafers.
Lithwick has it wrong. Garland is attempting to politicize the DoJ. Or further politicize it. Or make its politicization proof against correction.
As Matt Gaetz might suggest.
https://gaetz.house.gov/media/in-the-news/gaetz-death-threats-surge-and-fbi-more-interested-those-against-democrats
The last NEA mag is full of poor teachers always under threat. Fortunately, they have the okay demographic to complain about. And NOW, the DoJ is happy with the situation.
The only way for hwr article to make any sense is to start with the assumption that government is all powerful with absolutwly no retraints on what it can and cannot do.
I'm sorry, but I code the letter from the National School Board Association to the Attorney General with the support of the White House as an attempt to criminalize dissent. This is supported by the nonsense about January 6 as opposed to every violent protest coming from the left. I intend to support a loud and insistent non-boring response though I much prefer politics to be boring.
Like Laurence Tribe and Trump’s lawyer John Eastman, Dahlia Lithwick believes you must destroy the institution in order to save it.
Fuck Dahlia Lithwick and fuck Merrick Garland. Both are liars.
Garland = "earnest centrist"?
That thought could only seem authentic in the echo-chamber snow globe that Dahlia inhabits without the curiosity of a goldfish trying to see beyond its tank.
“…that boringness and stability are no match for the show.”
So the Left’s attempts at trying to change our country and our way of life from top to bottom are characterized as “boringness and stability”?
Pull the other one, Lithwick.
I'm sure there's already an hundred comments in the queue making this point but re:
boring old institutionalists and reliably respected institutions would serve to cool the fever dreams and the fearmongering that characterized every day of the Trump administration
It wasn't lost on me that the "boring old institutionalists" were the ones whipping up the constant fever dreams and fearmongering about the Trump administration. Having dissipated their gravitas and credibility by working themselves into a tizzy over and over again over nothing much at all, people like Lithwick couldn't really, seriously, have thought they could suddenly put their professional faces back on and pretend they hadn't spent four years crying that the end was nigh.
All that said, Garland has been a little more of a hack than I had expected but he's just a political appointee, acting like a political appointee, which is pretty normal.
Litwick's incitement to chaos is loathsome to me because I have the sense to foresee the long-term losses to a short-term fling with chaos.
Like Harry Reid, Dahlia Lithwick is dumber than a sack of hammers: It doesn't occur to her that a Congress capable of packing the Supreme Court with three new Democratic justices is a Congress capable of packing the Supreme Court with five new Republican justices after the next election.
More civility bullshit. The Left had its hand on the dagger that murdered boring institutional civility and all the special pleading will not wash that hand clean again.
Garland is a leftwing partisan hack and a liar. He testified, under oath, that he knew nothing about the bathroom rape in Louden County and how the rape victim’s father was beaten up by the police.
How could he NOT know about that?
Garland may be, as Lithwick describes, an institutionalist, but it's the DOJ and the FBI who are instigating the chaos. The DOJ actively participated in the conspiracy to "get Trump out of there" by any means necessary. It was partially Trump's fault, since he didn't clean house upon being elected, but James Comey stabbed Trump in the back several times, all the while making noises about "serving at the pleasure of the President. Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and several bad actors carried the Russia Hoax forward for years, Comey leaked to get the Russia Commission started. FBI agents used false evidence to continue surveillance on Carter Page.
No regular citizens did that. Regular citizens were targeted by the DOJ and the FBI. Like they are being targeted now, with the FBI practically dragging right-wing groups to commit crimes the FBI then "solves." And now labelling anyone who questions a school board for attempting to teach children that skin color is the only determinant of worth in American society, that our history is only one of oppression.
They are causing the chaos they blame the people for. If Garland was a legitimate institutionalist, many heads would roll at both the DOJ and the FBI. There would be new guidelines, new policies, and recognition from the top down that they were there to enforce the law even-handedly. That one executive agency was non-partisan, at least, and they existed to protect citizens.
I don't think that will happen. I disagree with Lithwick. Garland cares less for the institution than he does for the power it affords him. And if it's the power to carry water for those who would enhance his power, even better. The institution doesn't belong to the people anymore; it belongs to the people inside it. They peer out over the barricades at their enemies: us.
Garland is currently attempting to restore confidence in an independent, professionalized, apolitical Department of Justice, but he is doing so in the face of claims by his opponents that the DOJ is the new KGB and that its jackbooted thugs are coming to arrest you in the dark of night for expressing peaceful opposition to a classroom curriculum
It's Garland's DoJ that decided to label parents as "domestic terrorists" for objecting to schools covering up the rape of girls in girls' bathrooms by boys in skirts.
It's Garland's DoJ that decided to label parents as "domestic terrorists" for objecting to schools engaging in racists indoctrination
So the loafer fits.
That’s why he’s trying to bore us into believing that nothing nefarious can really happen on the watch of a silver-haired man with earnest centrism. The problem is that to the bulk of the GOP, anything done to uphold the rule of law now codes as nefarious
Gosh, you mean like arresting violent criminals? No, the Dems are opposed to that, at least when the criminal is black
You mean like pushing people who commit perjury? No, the Dems are opposed to that when it's Democrat public officials doing the perjury.
The institutions are corrupt. Every single institution controlled by the Left is corrupt. Therefore, no honest person is currently an "institutionalist".
You disagree? Name one institution in America controlled by the Left that isn't corrupt
These rockets just don't get it. A significant minority - if not an outright majority - distrust the boring old institutionalists because the boring old institutionalists are so untrustworthy.
And I'll add, anyone who unleashes the DOJ and FBI on the parents of school children deserves our complete contempt.
I share all four of Ann’s problems with this. (Loafers:what?!)
On top of that, Garland has proven himself to be a lying apparatchik. I will long be grateful he’s not on the Supreme Court.
And he went to my high school, so it pains me to say it.
This commentary was outdated before it was published, thanks to the national school board association withdrawing its "domestic terrorist" letter. Showing poor old merrick garland to be a shallow, mean, partisan hack.
“No one is "still double-knotting their loafers." Loafers are, by definition, slip-on shoes. No laces at all.”
Yes, loafers can have laces. The laces are somewhat unnecessary, but do get in the way if they come untied, so I can see why someone might want to double-knot them.
"The problem is that to the bulk of the GOP, anything done to uphold the rule of law now codes as nefarious."
Wow! That's double-speak straight up!
I miss straight, honest answers to straight honest questions.
“Dahlia Lithwick” is —forgive me— a name that cries out for wordplay. Is she kin to Magnolia Lackwit, who should be a leading character in a failed satire from the Augustan Age? Certainly her verbal effusions qualify her for a role of that kind.
Here is a fundamental problem that we all share: we are living in different realities.
I don't read Slate, so I don't know the answer to this: was Lithwick saluting William Barr's devotion to and attempts restore the traditions of the DOJ during the Trump administration? Did she ever imply that she believed that Barr just did Trump's bidding? Was she upset by Judge Sullivan's unprecedented refusal to dismiss the case against Gen. Flynn when the DOJ withdrew the charges because of its own failure to disclose exculpatory evidence? Did Dahlia get her knickers in a twist over the antics of the FBI in its FISA operation against Carter Page? Did she have any uneasy moments over the IG's report on the FISA process and its failures? How did she feel about Peter Strzok smelling Trump voters at Walmart? How did she regard Andrew McCabe's lack of candor, with got him fired--a definite no-no in the putative traditions of the FBI?
I think I know the answers to my questions, and therefore I doubt that Dahlia Lithwick has much regard for our institutions of government. Althouse can't smell much, but Dahlia can only smell problems when the GOP is in office. She has a selective nose for chaos, doesn't she?
As to Merrick Garland, thank heaven for Mitch McConnell--he kept Garland off the Supreme Court.
If Durham comes up with a real stink bomb regarding the HRC campaign and its leadership, Garland's commitment to the center will be tested, won't it? His knuckling under to the White House regarding the National School Board Association letter makes him look like a stooge. Yesterday, the NSBA retracted its letter and apologized for issuing it. Will the US Attorneys and FBI continue their investigations of potential domestic terrorism at school board meetings across the country?
No justice, no peace. Two can play that game.
"1. No one is "still double-knotting their loafers." Loafers are, by definition, slip-on shoes. No laces at all."
You don't think that was a joke?
Two phrases come to mind as I read this excerpt:
1) Assuming facts not in evidence regarding Garland’s purpose; and
2) Horseshit, a word that seems much more derisive than bullshit and I thank Joe Rogan for putting in my obscenity rotation.
nothing nefarious can really happen on the watch of a silver-haired man with earnest centrism
Biden hasn't nominated any earnest centrists.
Centrism?!
Garland?
Please.
Note to D. Lithwick:
Avoid the plural pronoun in Opinion articles. Opinions, so it is said, are like assholes. Everybody has one and most stink.
'But then, the FBI and DOJ, even when under Bill Barr dismissed obvious Atifa and BLM riotous coordination across states with documented interstate travel to engage in protests that resulted in billions of dollars of community damage.'
Barr (among many others), was a massive disappointment.
He did nothing but sound sincere, while all the while running out the clock.
If Trump does run again, he needs to lay out a list of potential hires for key positions ahead of time.
He made far too many mistakes in the personnel department.
I'm looking for a 'take no prisoners' administration. I want to see shock and awe from the right. Actively destroy every left-wing program with extreme prejudice.
Sincerity and politics are incompatible. It's spin or be spun, and everybody has an agenda. That doesn't mean that some politicians aren't more honest than others, but if you aren't putting the best face on what you do, even when it doesn't work, you'll have a hard time in politics.
The talk about boring normality and apolitical professionalism reminds me of all those train or trolley examples used to illustrate Einstein's theories. If you are on the progressive train, like Dahlia, you don't see how politicized and partisan the trip and its destination are. It's normal to you, and not at all problematic or troubling. From the outside, you could have a clearer notion of where that train is going. When leftists were outsiders they understood that.
Douglas B. Levene said...
I actually think Garland is doing an OK job. He’s had a few miscues, like carrying the White House’s water on the school board letter. That was clearly an overreach for political purposes. But he’s resisted the (I imagine ungodly) pressure to charge the January 6 rioters and a bunch of Republican politicians with insurrection and seditious conspiracy, choosing instead only to bring charges supported by overwhelming evidence and clear law. In that respect, he is cut from the same cloth as Bill Barr, which I intend as high praise.
You're wrong.
1:If he was resisting the illegitimate Democrat "insurrection" BS, then most of them would be out on bail.
2: check ou https://shipwreckedcrew.substack.com/?sort=new
The dog has been charging people with felonies, and then accepting misdemeanor pleas. Which means, by dog rules, they are either over-charging, or else convincing a bunch of democrat judges to accept agreements that are far below the crimes they could prove.
Barr is an institutionalist hack who understand that what the democrats were doing with teh mueller "investigation" was going to come back to haunt everyone. But who also believes that FBI / DoJ criminals can not and should not be prosecuted for their crimes
And that makes him a bad human being
"“Dahlia Lithwick” is —forgive me— a name that cries out for wordplay."
An anagram generator produces:
Data Which I Kill
Aha Will Hit Dick
Halal Witch I Kid
Ann is wrong and Left Bank and Molly are correct. Loafers can indeed have laces. Some makers refer to the lace and tassled version of their loafers as ‘double-knot’.
If only there was a place to look that up and verify…
"3. Nobody craves boring sincerity anymore? I do."
Sincerity isn't boring. The only requirement for sincerity is that it be truthful.
9:42 Temujin.
nailed it.
Skippy Tisdale: thanks for sharing the miracles of digital wordplay. Frustrating to see how close it gets to “witch dick” but so it goes.
Garland is just a white wingman...
You can buy a bag of vanilla beans on ebay for $20. They are more fragrant than the extract, though the flavor is less intense when you cook with them.
Insteresting autocorrect I got hit with, turning "DoJ" into 'dog"
I wonder if the internet is saying something there
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