Is this a racial joke (about a little girl's dog)?

I think these folks are taking this White House thing a little too literally. https://t.co/2HRPEYhoQz

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) July 21, 2019

Neal Katyal was Acting Solicitor General of United States under Barack Obama.

In the conversation at Twitter, somebody writes: "They are so white on the outside, even Arabella s dog is white. Yet they are so dark inside so dark."

That sounds tantalizingly close to the old joke, "Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read" (attributed to Groucho Marx).

Jokes have changed!

IN THE COMMENTS: gilbar asks: "I wonder what they would have complained about, if they'd gotten a black lab?"

The jokes write themselves, don't they? A black dog is the only black creature that will go anywhere near them. What did they name him, Token? Etc.

AND: I wouldn't rule out the possibility that somewhere in the process of choosing that white dog, the Kushners realized their antagonists would make racial jokes and decided that would be a plus. What kind of jerks say racial things about a little girl's dog?

And look, there's Neal Katyal, scampering right into the trap! And there's Ann Althouse, kicking him around for being so rash and out of control.

ALSO: Isn't it time we stopped calling the White House the White House? The place was called the "Executive Mansion" until the racist Theodore Roosevelt took the trouble to change the official name to "The White House." There should be a movement to change the name back to "Executive Mansion." Repaint it too — not white and not any monochrome either. I recommend earth tones.

"The [Mueller] report is unlikely to be a dictionary-thick tome, which will disappoint some observers. But such brevity is not necessarily good news for the president."

"In fact, quite the opposite," writes Neal K. Katyal (who was Obama's acting solicitor) in the NYT.

A concise Mueller report might act as a “road map” to investigation for the Democratic House of Representatives — and it might also lead to further criminal investigation by other prosecutors. A short Mueller report would mark the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.

The report is unlikely to be lengthy by design: The special counsel regulations, which I had the privilege of drafting in 1999, envision a report that is concise, “a summary” of what he found. And Mr. Mueller’s mandate is limited: to look into criminal activity and counterintelligence matters surrounding Russia and the 2016 election, as well as any obstruction of justice relating to those investigations.....

For 19 months, Mr. Trump and his team have had one target to shoot at, and that target has had limited jurisdiction. But now the investigation resembles the architecture of the internet, with many different nodes, and some of those nodes possess potentially unlimited jurisdiction....

The overlapping investigations by different entities, housed in different branches of government, spanning geography and even different governments (such as the New York attorney general’s investigation into the Trump Foundation), make it difficult for anyone, even Attorney General Barr, to end the inquiries.

I imagine the will of the people could end it, if we are basically satisfied that Mueller completed his task. All those "nodes" won't be energized if we the people aren't excited about their taking off with all their "potentially unlimited jurisdiction." The election is coming up, and the Trump opponents better concentrate on getting that right.

Want to be able to do things the easy way or not?

Tweets Alan Dershowitz this morning.

It is unconstitutional to use the 25th Amendment to circumvent impeachment provisions. The 25th can be used only if POTUS is physically or psychiatrically incapacitated. Any other use is unconstitutional. I challenge anyone to argue differently'

And here he is last night on Tucker Carlson, saying the same thing much more vehemently (replete with the word "treason"):



Meanwhile:

Trump just said; “I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.”

Whatever a national emergency may be, that’s not it.

That quote is going right in the lawsuit. https://t.co/FzwS4xIaMw

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) February 15, 2019

Want to be able to do things the easy way or not?

Yes, bypass Congress with emergency powers for the wall and the 25th am. to oust even a non-incapacitated President.

No, you have to do it the hard way, legislation to fund the wall and impeachment to oust a non-incapacitated President.

Use emergency powers for the wall, but not the 25th to oust a non-incapacitated President.

No to emergency powers for the wall, but yes to the 25th instead of impeachment.

A more subtle balancing of factors is needed, so none of the above.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Poll results:

Today's oral argument in Trump v. Hawaii — the "Muslim ban" case we now (pretty much) know Trump will win.

Here's Mark Walsh at SCOTUSblog reporting on the big oral argument on the last day of the 2017 Term — Trump v. Hawaii. I haven't read this yet, but from the short article I have read (at the NYT), I think everyone knows Trump is going to win.  I'll live-blog my reading, giving you snippets and comments.

Walsh begins with the weather — "warm but drizzly day" — and observations of who's in the gallery — Orrin Hatch and "a touch of true celebrity and talent when Lin-Manuel Miranda, the author (and original player of the title role) of the Broadway hit 'Hamilton'" and Josh Blackman (who tweets a photo of the autograph he got from Miranda on his pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution) — so this is chronological and grandiosely whimsical.

Walsh calls the argument a "fast-moving, hard-hitting hour" and clues me in that there's another post at SCOTUSblog that's the "main account" of the substance of the argument. I'll get to that. I continue with Walsh.

"Though hardly anyone appears to have noticed, the court sided with federal criminal defendants in a whopping 6 of 7 cases this term."

"As the United States moves toward consensus on matters of marriage, it is also coming together on the dangers of overcriminalization," writes Neal Katyal.

In Elonis v. United States, the court rejected a conviction for threats allegedly made on Facebook in the form of rap lyrics...  In Yates v. United States, the court curbed a massive prosecutorial overreach, ruling that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was not violated when a fisherman tossed undersized grouper overboard in an effort to skirt federal commercial fishing regulations. In Henderson v. United States, a unanimous court reversed a lower court ruling that had barred a man who could no longer possess firearms after pleading guilty to a felony from transferring his weapons to a friend.... In another unanimous case, McFadden v. the United States, the court held that defendants could not be prosecuted for dealing “controlled substance analogues” — drugs regulated as equivalent to Schedule I or II drugs — unless it could show that the person had a very high level of criminal intent and knew those drugs were illegal....

In a decision with large ramifications, the court sharply limited the use of dog sniffs at traffic stops, finding that they violated the Fourth Amendment. This decision followed the court’s unanimous Riley v. California decision last year, which barred police from searching smartphones when they arrest someone without a warrant....

So deep was the shadow cast by the social issue cases this year that virtually no one paid attention to Johnson v. United States, in which the court struck down a much-debated part of the Armed Career Criminal Act. The court concluded that a provision of the law that increased sentences for violent offenders was too vague because it didn’t let people know which crimes were covered....

 The 7th case, the one the government won, was the one you're most likely to have noticed, Glossip v. Gross, upholding the 3-drug lethal injection against a cruel-and-unusual-punishment claim.

I love the Supreme Court's emerging unanimity.

And so does former acting solicitor general Neal K. Katyal:

The justices’ ability to cross partisan divides and find common ground in their bottom-line judgment in roughly two-thirds of their cases... should remind us that even in this hyperpartisan age, there is a difference between law and politics....

This path, of trying to forge places of agreement even among people who are inclined to disagree, is the essence of what the American experiment is all about. In an era when the leadership of the House of Representatives is suing the president, when people across the aisle cannot even be in the same room with one another, the modesty and cultivated collegiality of the nine members of the Supreme Court this year remind us all that there is another way.

Do I detect a political agenda in the guise of anti-partisanship?

ADDED: The link goes to the NYT, where the editors flag reader comments they deem worthy of attention. The top editors' pick is:

"Unanimity" but at what price?
Court rulings have been less than nice,
The Koch boys must be
As proud as can be,
This "wedding" of minds? Don't throw rice!