"If SCOTUS rules on regulation without a hearing or argument, the administration should simply ignore it and state that, in the absence of a normal process judicial review, it sees the court’s judgments as advisory but not binding."

"The court famously has no enforcement authority. It’s authority is based in acceptance of the court’s legitimacy. But it can’t do whatever the hell it wants however it wants and expect deference. [E]xecutive ought to brush off the court’s junta-like attempts to rule by edict." 

Wrote Will Wilkinson, quoted in "Reporters call for White House to 'simply ignore' Supreme Court decisions/SCOTUS ruled 5-4 on Wednesday to reinstate Trump-era rule" (Fox News).

The typical Constitutional Law casebook addresses this topic within the first 25 pages. I bantered about this subject with law students for decades. We always considered the apocryphal Andrew Jackson line — "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" — and why didn't Richard Nixon react to the Watergate tapes case by destroying the tapes?

So what's the answer, Professor Althouse? Oh, that's not how we do it.

I'm reading Megan McArdle's Twitter feed, and I'll tell you why. But first...

... there's this...

If this escalates further America should offer Taiwanese the same visa deal Britain offered Hong Kong: those who love freedom can come here and let China have the land. https://t.co/T4kFhsAaIX

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) January 23, 2021

... which I offer for discussion, not because I support radical immigration ideas. And she retweeted this, which I find fascinating:

It begins pic.twitter.com/J0ssP4VKig

— ☄ marquis de posade 🥂 LOOT CREW 🏖 (@acczibit) January 23, 2021

A new character is born into the political world. It's a costume, easily patched together, humorous and scary. We'll see how widespread that becomes. I remember some Wisconsin characters — in the 2011 Wisconsin protests — who tried something similar. Here's a photograph I took back then:

 

The reason I'm checking out McArdle's Twitter feed is that I'm reading her WaPo column, "It’s time for major institutions to make their employees get off of Twitter." She's reacting to the Will Wilkinson story. We talked about it yesterday — here. He got fired from his job at a left-liberal think tank because he tweeted "If Biden really wanted unity, he’d lynch Mike Pence." 

McArdle is friends with Wilkinson and she "admires" the Niskanen Center. She writes:

Will Wilkinson, cancelled for tweeting, "If Biden really wanted unity, he'd lynch Mike Pence."

If cancelling is something that is going to be done, why should Will Wilkinson be an exception? It's got to be that the attempted cancellation of Will Wilkinson reverses the course of cancel culture. 

I'm reading "Cancel Culture Comes for Will Wilkinson/The Niskanen Center fired a senior staffer for tweeting an offensive joke about Mike Pence, and hypocrisies abound" by Robby Soave (at Reason). 

Wilkinson apologized, describing his tweet as a lapse in judgment. "It was sharp sarcasm, but looked like a call for violence," said Wilkinson. "That's always wrong, even as a joke." ...

And thus a noted doubter [that cancel culture exists] has been canceled for a problematic tweet—ironic, but also regrettable, in my view. 

Both the Niskanen Center and The New York Times are private organizations and free to associate with whomever they wish, of course; a think tank that intends to influence public policy by lobbying legislators may find it inconvenient to employ someone who threatened violence against Mike Pence, even in jest.... 

By the way, I once did a Bloggingheads episode with Will Wilkinson, but I don't remember it, and now the video won't play. Here's the audio. It was July 2010, and the topics included: "Re: Shirley Sherrod, Ann defends taking things out of context" — remember Shirley Sherrod? — "Do we deserve to know what was on Journolist?," "Are ordinary people becoming savvier media consumers?," and "Ann’s and Will’s tips for summer road trips."  The road trips bit begins around the 1-hour mark.

What is this "old school" blogging you speak of?

An aversion to paragraph breaks? That's my first thought on looking at Will Wilkinson's post bemoaning the loss of something that once was.

Why can't I just drain a little overflow off the top of my head at any given moment and move on? Will says:

The idea that the self is an “illusion” tends to be grounded on the false assumption that if the self is anything at all, it must be a stable inward personal quiddity available to introspection. But of course there is no such thing. The Zen masters are right. 

Okay, so maybe a blog is a better representation of who you are and what life might be than any other form of expression, but Will's main problem seems to be that you can't do it right if you're doing it for money.

A personal blog, a blog that is really your own, and not a channel of the The Daily Beast or Forbes or The Washington Post or what have you, is an iterated game with the purity of non-commercial social intercourse. 

What do the Zen masters say about purity? Hei Neng said: "If you cherish the notion of purity and cling to it, you turn purity into falsehood. Purity has neither form nor shape, and when you claim an achievement by establishing a form known as purity... you are purity bound."

If you're enjoying the Althouse brand of old-school blogging, please use the Althouse Amazon Portal. Perhaps you need some quiddity. Or Zen supplies.

Will Wilkinson and I talk about Shirley Sherrod, Journolist, Top Secret America, Wikileaks, and road trips...

... on the new Bloggingheads.

The affable, stuttering skeptic and the grim, concise Jeremiah.

Will Wilkinson and Mark Kleiman are talking about anthropogenic global warming, but in this quick clip, they could almost be talking about anything. They are 2 really distinct types in the big human conversation about what is true:

"The 'Menaissance' and Its Dickscontents."

I'm linking to that for the title alone. I don't even care what Will Wilkinson has to say about — presumably — his penis. (Via Jac.)

ADDED: I finally clicked through to the article Wilkinson is talking about and it's from last year. We all talked about it a year ago. (Here's my effort.) The title reeled me in!

Why are libertarians so interested in philosophy?

Ezra Klein and Will Wilkinson talk about "liberaltarians" on BloggingHeadsTV. Ezra (the liberal) starts if off by asking Will (the libertarian) why libertarians are so interested in philosophy. Will, toward the end, tells Ezra he's trying to "open [him] up to the beauty" of the free market. Ezra -- despite a very long, chatty diavlog -- is not buying.

ADDED: I think -- after tangling with a lot of libertarians a few weeks ago -- that the reason -- excuse the expression -- the reason libertarians are so interested in philosophy is that their ideas look best in philosophical form. It's the same reason fat people wear dark clothes.