Sunrise — 6:18.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

The conversation at St. Peter's.

Wow, @piersmorgan , this is absolutely incredible! 🌟📸 What an iconic moment captured in such a breathtaking location—St. Peter’s Basilica is pure majesty!

The image of Trump and Zelenskyy deep in conversation is so powerful, and I can only imagine the weight of that tough… pic.twitter.com/XOHMqyvqst

— Dan Western (@westerns1978) April 26, 2025

ADDED: For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Isn't there some expression along the lines of "He would upstage the corpse at a funeral"?

(Oh! I see. The stock expression is "He could upstage the bride at her own wedding.")

IN THE COMMENTS: Hassayamper said: “I've heard ‘He's always got to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral’ to describe someone who can't resist being at the center of attention.” Yes! That’s what I was looking for. You beat Grok. 

The OED word of the day is "sonnettomaniac."

That is, a person who's crazy for sonnets.

Are words constructed out of "-maniac" really deserving of dictionary entries? Perhaps, in the case of "sonnettomaniac," it was valuable to nudge people to spell it the way it was spelled in the time when people really were sonnettomaniacs.

The OED proffers a quote from 2011: "After the decline of the previous century's 'sonnettomania,' the popularity of the sonnet would never scale such lofty heights again in the course of the twentieth century."

An update on Valerie.

You remember Valerie, the miniature dachshund who escaped into the wilds of Kangaroo Island, blogged here.

Today, I see "Valerie the dachshund rescued after 17 months in Australian wilderness/The eight-pound miniature dachshund had transformed from an 'absolute princess' into a rugged survivor" (WaPo).

I had to blog that... in case you were on tenterhooks.

What are tenterhooks anyway?

"Both Napoli and Hinman fell in love with the band after seeing them perform on the TV variety show 'Shindig!' in 1965."

"'It was the sound that drew me to them,' Napoli said. 'No one sounded like them, and I wanted to know as much as I could about them.'"

From "They spent years following the Kinks. Was this their final stop? What happens when you build your life — and your friendships — around a band that can’t keep it together forever" (WaPo)(full-access link). 

Here. I found it:

Of course, I watched that at the time. I loved the Kinks. Just turning around from my computer and not rearranging anything, I see this on my windowsill:

And I love the line "It was the sound...." I get the 60s vibration. I remember struggling to convey the meaning of "the sound" to my father when he Socratically questioned me about why the music I was listening to all the time could genuinely be considered good.

"Attorney General Pam Bondi actually seemed to lean into the idea that this was part of the larger pattern of judicial wrongs that the administration now seeks to right...."

"Appearing on Fox News, Bondi discussed the Wisconsin case and another in which a local New Mexico judge resigned after a man the government has alleged is a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was arrested at his home. But rather than just focus on those two cases, Bondi repeatedly talked as if they were part of a broader problem with the judiciary. 'What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,' Bondi said.... When Fox host John Roberts asked about the perception created by arresting judges — 'They’ll say this is a government that is expanding the powers of the Article One of the Constitution, now they’re arresting judges,' he said — Bondi didn’t dispute that. 'No one is above the law, John,' she said...."

I'm reading "Pam Bondi’s striking comments on arresting judges/Amid criticisms that the administration is intimidating judges, the attorney general didn’t exactly downplay the idea that this was part of a larger crusade against the judiciary" by Aaron Blake (in WaPo).

No one is above the law is what Trump antagonists said when the authorities arrested him. Four times.

I don't like the use of government authority as a political weapon or as a means of personal revenge, but that WaPo article doesn't get into the meat of what is alleged in the Wisconsin-judge case. Here's Pam Bondi explaining it (on ABC News):

The failure to rip a child from its mother's arms.

I'm reading "2-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Deported 'With No Meaningful Process,' Judge Suspects/A federal judge in Louisiana said the deportation of the child to Honduras with her mother, even though her father had filed an emergency petition, appeared to be 'illegal and unconstitutional'" (NYT).

“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative Trump appointee. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

Asserting that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

"She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking."

Said a statement from the family of Virginia Giuffre, quoted in "Virginia Giuffre, Epstein and Prince Andrew accuser, takes her own life/The mother of three died aged 41 in Australia, her family said" (London Times).

She was one of the first women to publicly accuse Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 in a New York detention facility awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges....

They keep using that word. Without scare quotes.

"Giuffre told the Miami Herald in 2019.... that she had confided in Epstein and Maxwell about being sexually abused as a child and running away from home. 'They seemed like nice people so I trusted them, and I told them I’d had a really hard time in my life up until then,' Giuffre said."

Meanwhile, last month, Giuffre wrote on Instagram that a school bus had hit her car and that she only had 4 days to live. Giuffre and her husband had separated and were fighting over custody of their children Christian, Noah, and Emily. 

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

So she’s like “they went that-a-way” and they actually went the other way and the feds arrest her?

I'm trying to read "The F.B.I. arrested a Wisconsin judge, Patel says, accusing her of helping an immigrant avoid detention" (NYT), which describes the incident like this:

The case appears to stem from an incident last week in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came to the courthouse seeking to apprehend an immigrant who had a misdemeanor case before Judge Dugan. The F.B.I. has been investigating whether the judge directed the defendant and his lawyer to exit her courtroom out a side door and hallway while the immigration agents were elsewhere in the building, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has reported....

UPDATE: Pam Bondi describes what happened. 

"I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tattoos. But they should have meaning. Not just that I was high watching Game of Thrones...."

"It’s a six-week healing process each time you get one removed. So each tattoo is 10 to 12 sessions. That’s 60 weeks of your life right there on just one tattoo."

Said Pete Davidson, quoted in "Pete Davidson is losing his tattoos. I removed mine — it hurt/Having spent $200,000, the comedian has described the experience as ‘horrible’. It’s not just the cost that’s painful, says Esther Walker" (London Times).

"Sensient develops its natural colors starting with the seed. It has developed a variety of beets, for instance, that are larger and more saturated in color...."

"After the produce is harvested, Sensient pulps, pulverizes and strains the purple sweet potatoes, red radishes and grapes into a rainbow of extracts, powders and liquids. The process also eliminates the flavors of most of the underlying fruits, vegetables or other plants, but not all. 'You’re never going to take the taste out of strawberry juice. It’s going to be a little acidic, a little strawberry-ish. And that works well for a strawberry flavor in a kids’ cereal.... But nobody is dying for a carrot-flavored cereal.' Even though the color... doesn’t often change the taste profile... the appearance does signal certain flavors — or intensity of flavors — to consumers.... 'If you reduce the color saturation level of a drink, your mind may tell you it’s going to taste less sweet or less sour than the original color.... Duller hues may signal that this is a duller flavor or stale for some people, while for others it may signal that it’s a more natural color, something found more in nature.'..."

From "No More [Synthetic] Food Dye in Froot Loops? Not So Fast. Companies make packaged food without synthetic dyes in other countries. But despite pressure from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the change isn’t likely to happen quickly in the United States" (NYT).

The senses are interwoven. Some of us, including me, have little or no sense of smell, and a lot of what is referred to as taste is really smell. For me, the look of a food or drink contributes a lot to the illusion of flavor. By the same token, if some orange food that used to be flavored artificially were flavored with something made from carrot that smelled a bit of carrot, I wouldn't notice that unwanted smell. But I would notice the duller orange, and that would cause it to taste less... orange. It's complicated. I feel a little sorry for the food companies that find themselves in such a predicament after spending so much time and effort working to please us with everything that is non-nutritional about food and drink. 

"I think of the [antiracist] programming as a kind of secular religion, a progressive penitence."

"The real work of advancing equality is never mentioned. One exercise that consultants recommend is for students to visit a grocery store to observe who is 'enforcing white supremacy culture.'"

Said Steve Wilson, quoted in "He’s a Foe of D.E.I. in Schools but Not a Fan of Trump’s Crusade/Steven Wilson was forced out of the charter school network he started for an essay that conflicted with antiracism initiatives. Five years later, he feels both vindicated and dismayed" (NYT).

Wilson got "canceled" in 2019: 

"When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a recent press briefing that autistic children will 'never pay taxes,' 'never hold a job,' 'never play baseball'...."

"... many people in the autism community reacted angrily. And yet I was transported back to the psychiatrist’s office and her bleak prognosis that my child might never speak again. I found myself nodding along as Mr. Kennedy spoke about the grim realities of profound autism. It’s not a position I expected to be in. I have never voted for Donald Trump. I vaccinated my children. I consider myself squarely left of center....  I have no interest in defending Mr. Kennedy.... And yet, I think his remarks echo the reality and pain of a subset of parents of children with autism who feel left out of much of the conversation around the condition. Many advocacy groups focus so much on acceptance, inclusion and celebrating neurodiversity that it can feel as if they are avoiding uncomfortable truths about children like mine...."

From "Kennedy Described My Reality" (NYT).

"One guy told me that every time he wants to buy something, he does 25 push-ups — he says it takes him out of his head and back into his body."

"And, hey, I’m not going to do that, but... [d]oing something physical, like putting on a song or getting yourself a snack or going to get a coffee, that’s all good. Text a friend or call someone. A lot of people have told me that they find their partner and have sex or get out the vibrator — which you can’t do at work, obviously, but if you’re at home, get after it. Whatever works. These are skills that you build over time...."

Said Ashlee Piper, author of "No New Things," quoted in "How I Quit Shopping" (NY Magazine).

Skills!

RFK Jr. evokes Lenny Bruce.

Getting some play on X right now is RFK Jr. saying "Thank you very much" in response to someone yelling "Fuck you!"

You can’t make this up.

While RFK Jr. was speaking about overcoming addiction and controlling anger, a protestor screamed “F*** you”—and RFK responded, “Thank you.”

RFK: “I think to myself, what should I do with this interaction? Should I pray for that person, or should I pull… pic.twitter.com/O2j07NRz3s

— End Tribalism in Politics (@EndTribalism) April 24, 2025

I'm remembering the movie "Lenny." The screenplay has Lenny Bruce (Dustin Hoffman) saying: "What's the worst thing you can say to anybody?"/"Fuck you, mister!''/"That's really weird, because if I wanted to hurt you, l should say, 'Unfuck you, mister' — because 'fuck you' is really nice, man."

I don't understand but I have crossed the line where I'm even supposed to understand new pop things.

She needs to cancel this tour before it cancels her career I’m so serious pic.twitter.com/BhIOF0sOte

— Mo (@rwylmo) April 24, 2025

I will continue to follow the waning high jinks of the pop culture figures that emerged in the 1960s. For example, The Who fired their drummer, then rehired him. If Bob Dylan says anything, I care. Meanwhile, that Katy Perry video, put up less than a day ago, has 9 million views.

The NYT is carrying on the old tradition of promoting alcohol as good for your brain.

 I was surprised to see this in the NYT: "17 Ways to Cut Your Risk of Stroke, Dementia and Depression All at Once/A new study identified overlapping factors that affect your odds of developing these brain diseases late in life":

The factors that protect against brain disease

The study, which looked at data from 59 meta-analyses, identified six factors that lower your risk of brain diseases:

Low to moderate alcohol intake (Consuming one to three drinks a day had a smaller benefit than consuming less than one drink a day.)...

So the best thing for your brain is consuming a low amount of alcohol. Second best is a moderate amount of alcohol (1 to 3 drinks a day). And third best might be no alcohol or a high amount of alcohol. We're not told.

I thought the idea that alcohol is good for your brain had been debunked, but here we have a study that "looked at data from 59 meta-analyses." Isn't that the kind of study that in the past has purported to show that alcohol is good for you and that had been debunked?

The article begins: "New research has identified 17 overlapping factors that affect your risk of stroke, dementia and late-life depression, suggesting that a number of lifestyle changes could simultaneously lower the risk of all three." I'm extremely skeptical about a study like that. 17 overlapping factors? 

"‘Mommy, the guy who’s been giving money to our school doesn’t want to give it to us anymore."

Said a little kindergarten boy, quoted in "The Zuckerbergs Founded Two Bay Area Schools. Now They’re Closing. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, opened the schools to help communities of color. Some families wonder if the shutting of the schools is related to his D.E.I. retrenchment" (NYT).

Why doesn't the guy who’s been giving money to the school not want to give it anymore? Even if Zuck has turned against DEI efforts within institutions, this is a free-standing school, located in a place where it serves underprivileged children. That sounds like a traditional charity. Why would you cut that off? The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has given only $100 million to this school over the past 4 years. What's that in the larger scheme of Zuckerberg's wealth? You're just suddenly casting out hundreds of children you've made a show of saving from the "trauma" you attributed to their status as "low-income." I'm sorry, I don't see how closing the school is worth doing. 

What is the evidence that the closure of the school represents opposition to the greater DEI agenda? I'm seeing this:

Sunrise — 5:41, 5:55.

Yes, we have to get out there awfully early this time of year to catch the sunrise. And then this morning, the sun didn't even show. 

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me..."

"... including the made-up HOAX on “Suckers and Losers” and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more 'successful' with. Jeffrey is bringing with him Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, not exactly pro-Trump writers, either, to put it mildly! The story they are writing, they have told my representatives, will be entitled, 'The Most Consequential President of this Century.' I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be 'truthful.' Are they capable of writing a fair story on 'TRUMP'? The way I look at it, what can be so bad – I WON!"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

I like this. Trump is reminding me of Bill Maher — as Maher approached his dinner with, of all people, Trump.

Except it is a bit different... and what is "a competition with myself"? Perhaps Trump is of 2 minds, one which believes Goldberg can't write a fair story and one that is allowing for the possibility. You have to go through with the meeting to find out which side of your own mind is right, and since both are you, you necessarily win. I get the sense Trump thinks his "I WON" logic is quite funny.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Tell me about the phrase "I've got half a mind to...." and compare it to the phrase "I'm of 2 minds about...." (And here's the long answer.)

"Landing a joke is difficult in a world where we have lost the shared context on which to build a punch line."

"A few months back, Cummings tried out some jokes about Kamala Harris looking drunk; no one had seen the videos to which she was referring. Onstage in this San Francisco suburb, she feels out the audience’s tolerance for mocking their own kind. A 'hot lesbian chick' in the front, she discovers, works at Tesla. 'You do?' says Cummings. 'Really? And he hasn’t asked you to have …' She gestures toward the hot lesbian, pauses for laughter. 'Is that hurtful? Are all the girls kind of like … "Did you get asked?"' The crowd is rolling. Oh, she thinks. They’re okay with this. 'What would you do if he was like, "Hey, you want this …?" He’d be like, "Here’s my sperm." Does he throw it this way?' she asks, throwing up a Nazi salute."

From "Whitney Cummings Finds Her People/The comedian’s politics has changed. So has her audience" (NY Magazine).

How Michelle Obama reminded me of Jordan Peterson.

I'd just listened to Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan's podcast. I blogged about some of it, here, yesterday. Peterson was criticizing woman who fail to develop beyond their natural, instinctive empathy. Let me give you a bit more of what he said:

"I've been lecturing to people for a long time about how to conduct themselves in life so they don't become a tyrant or a handmaiden to the tyrants, a silent handmaiden to the tyrants, let's say.... Because women are more agreeable, they're more prone to manipulation by psychopaths because their primary ethos is nurturing. For a naive woman, every victim is a baby...."

Now, you may find it odd, but I hear echoes of that as I am listening to Michelle Obama in "You Need to Learn to Say No (Even to an Inauguration)," the new episode of her podcast.

I know, your first inclination may be to mock the "poor me" aspect of this. She doesn't have a thing to wear... to the Inauguration. And not having a thing to wear, for her, means instructing her team of clothing wranglers to avoid readying the appropriate outfit, which they otherwise actively assemble for every possible occasion that might pop up (or "pop off"). She is not like other women. Very funny. But true! So work past that instinct to mock. I want you to think about how she is confessing to the agreeableness vulnerability that Jordan Peterson sees in women.

Michelle says:

"A new straight-studies course treats male-female partnerships as the real deviance."

Subheadline for a New York Magazine article titled, "If Hetero Relationships Are So Bad, Why Do Women Go Back for More?" The teaser title on the front page is "Do Straight Women Really Exist?" The author of the article is Jessica Bennett.

“In this class, we’re going to flip the script,” [said sociologist Jane Ward to her students on the first day of class]. “It’s going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.”...

Flipping the script is a good approach to studying the topic, and the topic is worthy of study. However, I don't like being directed to "worry" or "feel sympathy" or "be allies." I'd look at the subject head on. But neutrality is cruel, and women want to present as empathetic. 

The online world seems to get weirder and more retrograde about heterosexuality every day. Idealized masculinity has become more aggressive, more jacked up, and also more high maintenance... while femininity gets ever “softer,” more nurturing and domestic, and somehow still more sexy....

Sunrise — 6:04, 6:04, 6:05, 6;06.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Five years ago, meat hit a wall. Plant-based burgers were catching on, and the amount of meat the average American ate..."

"... per year started to wane. By 2022, it was down to 264 pounds — a drop of 10 pounds in two years. Editors at the recipe website Epicurious announced in 2021 that beef would be banished from all future content, citing its contribution to greenhouse-gas emissions. That same year, the chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park in New York City — considered one of the world’s top restaurants — retooled his $335 tasting menu to eliminate animal products. Restaurants of all sorts added vegetarian dishes for environment- and health-minded diners. Meat’s rebound surprised researchers.... The research showed that nearly 98 percent of households buy meat and 73 percent consider it a healthy choice, up 10 percent since 2020."

From "Meat Is Back, on Plates and in Politics/After years in which 'plant-based' was the mantra, meat once again dominates the national conversation about dinner" (NYT).

"By dint of his down-home edginess and comfort with slick filth, Von somewhat overlaps with the rest of the manosphere."

"What sets him apart is that he is not particularly cowed by fame or wisdom or authority or aggression. He blends curiosity with humility, and treats his guests as conveyors of mystical information.... His naïveté is both honest and strategic, a carefully laid roadblock protecting Von and forcing everyone else to move at his unlikely rhythm.... In almost every episode, there comes a moment when Von’s guest stumps him. It’s never a gotcha, and the topic is rarely something terribly obscure.... Some recent examples: Mitchell-Lama housing, the Kurds, who wrote the song 'This Land Is Your Land,' misandry.... He can sometimes free-fall into inventive left-field phrasing that achieves a sort of bliss. He said he once saw the boxer Evander Holyfield eating, putting French fries in his 'Panamouth Canal.' Kissing someone with lip filler is 'like trying to eat two shrimps that won’t give up.' Nudity is 'the Lord’s matte finish.'"

From "Theo Von Dismantles the Interview Show/The comedian and podcaster is one of the defining conversationalists of media’s new MAGA-friendly mainstream. But he can be harder to pin down, politically and culturally, than his bro-cast peers" (NYT).

Something I learned: Theo Von's full name is Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III.

"The left is full of empathic people. Right. And so those who parasitize empathy have a field day on the left...."

"The ethic is pretty straightforward. Anything that cries is a baby, it's like, no, some things that cry are monsters....Well, let, let's take the case of Nicola Sturgeon. The, the Scottish Prime Minister, the previous Scottish Prime Minister. Any man who wants to can be a woman. It's like, okay, any man, you mean any man? Do you? Yeah. Ha! Have you encountered the nightmare men? Oh, they don't exist. They're all victims. Yeah. You just bloody well wait till you encounter one. You'll change your story very rapidly. Yeah. And for the, for the naive and sheltered empaths of the radical left, they're either psychopaths, so they're wolves in sheep clothing, or they're people so that are so naive that the, the — what would you say? — Red Riding Hood's grandmother can definitely have his way with.... There are no shortage of naive people who've never really encountered a monster and have no imagination for it.... And they're, and they're very good at crying like infants... And then the mothers, the naive mothers come flooding out...."

Said Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan's podcast. Scroll to 02:30:52 for the part I excerpted.

 

"Many gums are made using plastics like polyethylene and polyvinyl acetate... This helps give gum its elasticity...."

"The new study suggests that most of these plastics are released from gum within several minutes, so if you tend to spit out gum and start a new piece as soon as it loses its flavor, it may be better to stick with the same piece for as long as you can."

The NYT doesn't seem to concerned about ingesting plastic in this article, "Is It Bad to Chew Gum All Day? Here’s what to consider before you pop in that second (or third or fourth) piece."

I'd say yes, it's bad. Obviously. But what do I know. There are some gums without plastic. See "I Tried 6 Non-Toxic Gum Brands With Safe, Plastic-Free Ingredients" (The Green Choice).

I tried one of them one time. It was terrible. And expensive.

"I’ve seen a plane taxiing down the runway and the people looking out and seeing me with a bird. They’re like, ‘What’s that? What are you doing?"

Said Norman Smith, quoted in "The 'owl man' is busy at Boston Logan airport/Norman Smith has trapped and released more than 900 Arctic raptors for the safety of the birds and the planes" (WaPo)(free-access link, because of all the owl pics).

With the congested airspace and constant rumble of jets, the airport is hardly a tranquil bird sanctuary. But Smith said the terrain resembles the Arctic tundra. It’s open, flat and barren, with water on three sides and plenty to eat, including waterfowl and small mammals....

“The importance of Norm coming in is that he helps us take out a significant threat to aviation safety, which is a large, dense-bodied bird on the airfield,” said Jeff Turner, the airport facilities supervisor....

I liked that phrase "dense-bodied bird." Googled it and found only one other iteration: "Think Turkeys Aren't Tough?" on Archery Forum ("i've had more broadhead damage caused and no pass through situations on turkeys than deer or bear. I've had 95 ke setups not pass through. They are a dense bodied bird).

"There was a time last summer when the Democratic Party was cool."

"Kamala Harris had just stepped in as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the waning days of Brat summer. She went on the popular podcast 'Call Her Daddy.' Tim Walz’s outdoorsy drip led to a Chappell Roan-inspired camo trucker hat. The memes were flowing, and the party’s mood was high...."

That's the beginning of a NYT article called "What Is 'Dark Woke'? Democrats are trying out a new attitude. It’s provocative, edgy and perilously toeing the line of not being too offensive." The author is Jack Crosbie.

How painfully embarrassing to remember things that were painfully embarrassing at the time. But the media tried to palm it off as "cool" last summer... back when they were pretending America would vicariously appreciate Kamala's "joy." I'd have thought no one would be so cruel as to bring up "Brat summer" again. It was so insanely delusional. And that is not cool. 

But let's keep reading.

With Donald J. Trump back in the White House.... so-called masculine energy... seems like the dominant [culture].... As liberals try to get their groove back...

Ugh. 

... some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric... “Dark woke.”

Is this like "Dark Brandon"? Why, yes it is: 

"We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Trump Says Undocumented Immigrants Shouldn’t Get Trials Before Deportation/The president claimed that countries were sending their prisoners to the United States and that he needed to bypass the constitutional demands of due process to expel them quickly" (NYT).

The sub-headline bothers me because it equates "due process" with a full-scale trial. The question is what process is due. I don't think Trump is saying that rights need to be bypassed:

“I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” Mr. Trump said. “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.”

That can be heard as a component of the argument that courts should find the process that's due is something much faster and simpler than a trial. I would like to hear Trump say that rights are important but, in this case, the due process right should be interpreted narrowly. But at least he's not saying Rights! I don't care rights! 

At the Tuesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

"A university dedicated to free thought should know better. The First Amendment draws a clear line..."

"... between unprotected 'true threats' and core political speech. Speech is only a true threat when it demonstrates a serious, specific, and imminent intent to commit unlawful violence against a particular individual or group. That’s a high bar — and for good reason. It’s meant to protect public debate, especially about uncomfortable topics. Advocacy for violence, no matter how disturbing, remains protected unless it crosses that line. Decker’s essay never comes close. It’s abstract, hypothetical, and lacks any indication of intent to commit violence. Asking about the moral propriety of force is philosophy, not a true threat...."

From "George Mason University calls cops on student for article criticizing Trump/GMU student Nicholas Decker’s Substack essay 'When Must We Kill Them?' earned him a visit from the Secret Service" (FIRE).

"Jury Rules Against Palin in Libel Case Against The New York Times."

The NYT reports.

Ms. Palin sued The Times in 2017 after the newspaper published — and then swiftly corrected and apologized for — an editorial that wrongly suggested that she had incited a deadly shooting in Arizona years earlier.

The case became a bellwether for battles over press freedoms and media bias in the Trump era, with Ms. Palin’s lawyers saying they hoped to use it to attack a decades-old Supreme Court precedent that makes it harder for public figures to sue news outlets for defamation....

During the trial, Ms. Palin told the jury that the editorial “kicked the oomph” right out of her, damaging her reputation. She said it had ignited another round of criticism of her years after the map was first distributed.

"The plaintiffs here are not asking the school to change its curriculum. They’re just saying, ‘Look, we want out.’ Why isn’t that feasible? What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this?"

Said Justice Alito, quoted in "Justices Seem Set to Allow Opt-Outs From L.G.B.T.Q. Stories in Schools/In a lively and sometimes heated argument, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared poised to rule for parents with religious objections to storybooks with gay and transgender characters" (NYT).

Here's the transcript of the oral argument.

"Larry David had one of the stupidest op-eds in today's New York Times in which he compares Bill Maher having dinner with Donald Trump with having dinner with Adolf Hitler."

"Um, you know, Larry David, that's a form of Holocaust denial. Comparing Trump to Hitler is a form of Holocaust denial because Trump didn't have gas chambers, he didn't have shooting squads, he didn't take babies, and throw them into ovens, and if you're making a comparison what you're saying is Hitler didn't have any of those things either. So shame — shame — on you Larry David. You know, we used to be friends, boy. No more. And the one thing: about Larry David he stopped being funny, I don't laugh at his jokes anymore because I know they're not jokes. That's who he really is, so they're not jokes...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, trashing Larry David's trashing of Bill Maher's dining with Trump.

Here's David's NYT op-ed "My Dinner With Adolf" — free-access link — which begins:

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side....

Read the whole thing. I gave you the free link. Now, I do think what Larry wrote there is funny. It just violates a rule of taste: You shouldn't compare anything to the Holocaust. 

We can talk about why that rule fell out of fashion. But whether Larry David is violating a strict and important rule or just going with the flow of the current taste within his hyper-elite stratum of society is a separate question from whether it's funny.

He's got the touch.

J.D. Vance:

Do you picture the desk jobs of others like this?

I think this is, essentially, how Elon Musk pictures 90% of the federal workforce:

Beware the panicans and the entryists.

I'm reading "How Trump Worship Took Hold in Washington/The President is at the center of a brazenly transactional ecosystem that rewards flattery and lockstep loyalty," by Antonia Hitchens, in The New Yorker:

Jack Posobiec, a maga operative and podcaster, emerged as a primary enforcer. “Crush panicans, destroy panicans, deport panicans, roundhouse kick a panican into the concrete, slam dunk a panican into a trash can, banish filthy panicans,” he tweeted, to his 3.1 million followers....

The tone of that tweet. It rang in my head like the voice of Divine:

"Panicans," by the way, is a portmanteau of "panic" and — not pelicans — "Americans."

Back to The New Yorker. Hitchens writes:

"Perhaps the biggest shot in the arm for the fetal-personhood movement came in the form of an executive order ostensibly unrelated to abortion..."

"... one with an especially unwieldy and Orwellian name: Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. The order proclaims, with unwarranted confidence, that '"Female" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. "Male" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.'... At this year’s March for Life rally... Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House... brought up Trump’s executive order early in his speech: 'I don’t know if you saw his executive order on gender, but it defines life as beginning at conception, rather than birth.' Johnson put invisible air quotes around 'gender,' but he came down hard on the word 'conception,' jabbing one finger in the air as he said it. The crowd cheered. Ideas have consequences."

Writes Margaret Talbot, in "Does a Fetus Have Constitutional Rights? After Dobbs, fetal personhood has become the anti-abortion movement’s new objective" (The New Yorker).

At the Trout Lily Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

"The passport policy does indeed impose a special disadvantage on the plaintiffs due to their sex and the court therefore concludes that it discriminates on the basis of sex."

Wrote Judge Julia E. Kobick, quoted in "Judge Rules Against Trump Administration on Passport Changes/A group of transgender plaintiffs sued President Trump and the State Department over a new rule prohibiting passports from including a gender different from the sex listed on an original birth certificate" (NYT).

President Trump is really into this coloring.

President @realDonaldTrump coloring with the kids at the White House Easter Egg Roll!

“I’m really into this!” pic.twitter.com/VKOK0h2Jcm

— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) April 21, 2025

Twinspeak.

NEW: Australian identical twins speak in sync after witnessing an armed carjacking incident in Queensland, Australia.

This is hands down a top 5 interview of all time.

The twins, Bridgette Powers and Paula Powers, explained how their mom came face to face with a… pic.twitter.com/qvbOxK2Vyf

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 21, 2025

"But it’s not just the song’s universal applicability that feels important right now. It’s also Dylan’s sneering, taunting tone."

"You could hear that same tone — a kind of sarcastic contempt, directed at an unnamed 'you' — 15 years ago in Lady Gaga’s anthems of alienated love and today in Kendrick Lamar’s diss tracks. ('Your lil’ memes is losin’ steam, they figured you out.') I sense the same spirit, too, behind television shows like 'The White Lotus,' where almost everyone is morally repulsive but no one knows it, or (if they suspect it) has any idea what to do about it...."

Writes Sebastian Smee, in "The uncanny Bob Dylan song that inaugurated an era of dread/Dylan is the Picasso of popular music. His ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ speaks more powerfully to what it feels like to be alive in 2025 than anything I can think of" (WaP0)(free-access link).

I wasn't going to read this article, because I didn't need The Washington Post to help me understand a song I've been listening to — very attentively — for 60 years.

But then I saw that it was written by Sebastian Smee, so I read it.

The NYT notices that Kamala Harris was protected from needing to state an opinion on the trans-athlete issue.

The observation is hidden away near the end of "How the War Over Trans Athletes Tore a Volleyball Team Apart.Blaire Fleming was a little-known college player. Then she suddenly became a symbol of injustice — to both sides of the controversy."

It's written like this, as if it was just a fluke that Harris never had to face this difficult, divisive question:

Following Biden’s exit from the presidential race last July, Kamala Harris seemed willing to address the trans-athlete issue. According to three people familiar with Harris’s campaign strategy, the campaign expected that the moderators would ask Harris about transgender children in sports during her September debate with Trump. The answer Harris’s advisers prepared for her, according to a person familiar with her campaign strategy, emphasized that trans children should be made to feel welcome in their schools but also acknowledged the concerns of parents whose kids, especially older ones, play competitive sports and want to make sure the competition is fair. But no one ever asked her, and the candidate didn’t bring it up on her own.

Oh? She "seemed willing"? I think if "no one ever asked her," it was because she never answered questions from the kind of people who would ask, and though she barely answered any substantive questions at any point, she only exposed herself to questions from interviewers who wanted to help her. So I don't think she "seemed willing" to address the issue! That she had an answer worked out, in case the question ever slipped through, proves virtually nothing, but I can imagine her circling around the abstract platitudes of making everyone feel welcome and simultaneously ensuring the competition is fair. The prepared answer is as puzzling as no answer at all.

On the topic of what actually is fair, I found this interesting material in the middle of the article:

"I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100 percent of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and surrender of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners you hold."

Wrote El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, on X, addressing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, quoted in the NYT.

Among the political prisoners in Venezuela named in Mr. Bukele’s post were several people detained by the Maduro government in a crackdown last year. He also said that as part of the swap, he would require Mr. Maduro to release “nearly 50 detained citizens of other nationalities,” including Americans. As of last month, at least 68 foreign passport holders were wrongfully imprisoned in Venezuela, according to a Venezuelan watchdog group, Foro Penal.... 

“Unlike you, who holds political prisoners,” Mr. Bukele wrote, “we do not have political prisoners. All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained as part of an operation against gangs like Tren de Aragua in the United States.” 

"That branch in the water looks like some creature rising from the lake and reaching for the shore...."

Said Rusty in the comments to last night's café. He was looking at the sunrise photo I'd taken that morning.

And Meade had made a similar comment about the previous morning's sunrise photo. He commented pictorially, by text, picking out the detail...

... with the caption "The Easter Bunny."

It made me wonder — what are the horror stories involving rabbits?

"Ex beauty pageant competitor wants to decide what is and isn’t appropriate for the Smithsonian."

"Great — if the administration is going to embrace stupid, it might as well go all the way. Just another incompetent boob doing a job they aren’t qualified for and they’ve no business doing. There are some parts of American history I don’t like — that doesn’t mean I get to pretend they didn’t happen or demand they be stricken from museums and textbooks. It’s how most of us learn. And if we actually learn the lessons our ancestors taught us, we don’t do those things again. Unless you are a Republican — then you embrace the wrongs of the past. And btw — art can make people feel uncomfortable sometimes — it’s supposed to evoke feeling!"

A comment, over at The Washington Post, on an article titled "She told Trump the Smithsonian needs changing. He’s ordered her to do it. Who is Lindsey Halligan, the attorney assigned to help remove 'improper ideology' from a major cultural institution?" (free-access link).

"As a boy, he was intelligent, deeply religious and loved to dance the tango."

"When he was 16, Jorge was rushing to meet friends but paused at the Basilica of St. Joseph in Buenos Aires, feeling an urge to go inside. In the sanctuary, it felt as though 'someone grabbed me from inside,' he said, adding, 'Right there I knew I had to be a priest.'... Francis died on Monday at 7:35 a.m., less than a day after blessing the faithful who had gathered for an Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square. He appeared on a balcony on Sunday, looking frail, and after blessing the crowd, he deferred to a Vatican aide to address the crowd on his behalf...."

From the NYT obituary for Pope Francis.

There's also this: "Francis repeatedly sought to stand up to nationalism. During the U.S. presidential election, he suggested that Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, was 'not Christian' because of his preference for building walls rather than bridges. Mr. Trump responded: 'For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian.'"

ADDED: Francis had seemed to be doing better but perhaps he was only determined — massively determined — to make a strong showing for Easter (and to target the United States for criticism over its treatment of migrants):

Easter sunrise — 6:13.

Please feel free to write about what you like in the comments.

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics…”

“… who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing -- But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

An Easter message. From Donald Trump.

ADDED: Trump took a similar approach to Easter last year:

"Do you think, do you think... when you don your tinfoil hat and and velcro, the chinstrap... that this is a grand plan to destroy civilization?"

Joe Rogan asks Tim Dillon:

Dillon says he doesn't know if there's "a grand plan," but, he says, there are "two things that are happening simultaneously." First, there are "people that believe in like nothing," "like empty suit Gavin Newsom types." And second, there are "the craziest people in the world that somehow have gotten hold of a ton of money and a ton of influence on social media." It's a terribly destructive combination:

"I am happy to have dual citizenship, with access to all 27 EU countries. If the next president is cut from the same cloth as Trump..."

"... I will conclude the dream is over, and it's time to go. This country had so much promise."

So writes a commenter at "Want to leave the U.S. for good? How to get dual citizenship. Depending on your ancestry, you could get a second passport and live abroad" (WaPo).

That's a free-access link, so you can see all the other comments that display a shocking thinness of love for one's native land. Imagine being born in the United States of America, then leaving in a huff and running off to a non-place called "all 27 EU countries." Where's the love?!

If you really hate what the President is doing, what good is it to remove yourself and observe from afar? Presumably, you hate him because of what he is doing to hundreds of millions of people, who will remain where they are, victims of his (as you see it) evildoing? Your leaving the premises does absolutely nothing to help. Why would it matter where you are? 

"Vance in Rome trying to meet the Pope? What a theatrical performance. Hypocrite. Viper."

That's the 3rd most highly rated comment at the WaPo article "Vance meets with pope as Francis’s Easter message decries ‘logic of fear’/The visit at the Vatican brought together the ailing head of the Catholic church and a high-profile convert who has criticized the pope’s social teachings."

Second most highly rated comment: "I’m surprised Vance didn’t burst into flames."

Most highly rated: "Vance is just one of many fake religious politicians. They run around boasting of their faith, but practice none of the Christian values Jesus and the bible preached."

And here's the "logic of fear" statement in the Pope's Easter message: "How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants. I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death."