The NYT begins to treat Donald Trump with some respect.

That's my perception, reading "In Donald Trump’s Worldview, America Comes First, and Everybody Else Pays," by David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman. This is not 100% respectful, of course, but I was struck by the seriousness of the presentation:

In Mr. Trump’s worldview, the United States has become a diluted power, and the main mechanism by which he would re-establish its central role in the world is economic bargaining. He approached almost every current international conflict through the prism of a negotiation, even when he was imprecise about the strategic goals he sought....

Mr. Trump explained his thoughts in concrete and easily digestible terms, but they appeared to reflect little consideration for potential consequences....

I thought a lot about "appeared to reflect little consideration for potential consequences." It could be that Trump is alarmingly uninterested in the details and the downsides of risks. But it could be that Trump, keyed into the task of running for office, is expressing himself aptly in the style that works — "concrete and easily digestible terms" — and simply withholding the elaboration of the problems and the risks. Perhaps he focuses on the task at hand. Right now it's getting enough Americans to vote for him, and if he's President he'll correspondingly lock into that task and do it as well as anyone.

Here's one of the most up-voted comments over there: "We can quibble about details, but this approach is long overdue. Why even have a country if its citizens are not the primary concern of those in power?" And: "Have to agree that it's time to play hardball with Saudi Arabia." And:

Bernie Sanders in Madison — after the big rally — arriving at our best restaurant, L'Etoile.

This is nice, with applause as he arrives:



The video was sent to me by someone who doesn't want to be named. I put it up on YouTube, with permission.

Here's the menu at L'Etoile. The entrance, where the clapping takes place, is for 2 restaurants. L'Etoile is the fancy side. The other restaurant is Graze, which is cheaper and more casual and doesn't take reservation. I think the clapping is coming from people waiting to get into Graze on this Saturday night.

Congratulations to Bernie Sanders for his big wins today in Washington and Alaska, and I hope he enjoyed his time in our city. (And let's see some others show up in Madison.)

The top 5 — most viewed — posts of the past week.

5. "A very long post about what Donald Trump said about libel in his interview with the Washington Post editorial board."

4. "Obama derides the 'sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist.'"

3. "WaPo seems surprised that people regard yoga in school as an Establishment Clause problem."

2. "The Washington Post reporter who — based on a single word, 'beautiful' — said Trump 'hit on' her."

1. "Somehow Trump has rigged it so that anti-Trump ads work as pro-Trump ads."

#BirdieSanders.

Yes, I've noticed this.

Reminds me of Obama and the fly.

Except the bird didn't need killing.

ADDED: I would have expected Bernie to come up with something more interesting to say. He had to imagine a different bird — a dove — and then use that bird for its stock metaphor, peace. Got to give him credit though just for being the sort of man a bird would come up to. Indicates some sort of fine gentleness of the soul. Or so I learned watching Disney movies....

Getting an abortion for what Indiana has deemed the wrong reason: the unborn has Down syndrome or some other anomaly or is not the sex or race you want.

WaPo reports.

I'd like to try to connect this to the original Roe v. Wade decision, which was resolved in favor of the woman's right to choose because of the difficulty of the question — before "viability" — of when the fetus should be considered "a person." I've never noticed anyone — other than me, making hypotheticals for law school class — proposing a law that would require the woman seeking an abortion to swear that she believes the entity she is about to destroy is not a person. But something about this new Indiana law reminds me of that hypo. The woman is ending the pregnancy because she sees the unborn not as mere abstract potential but as a person, a specific person — someone she rejects.

I presume the law would just cause abortion providers to make a statement about the law that would work as advice not to reveal the reason if you've got one of the wrong reasons. Let me look at the bill. Yes, it's directed at the provider:

Prohibits a person from performing an abortion if the person knows that the pregnant woman is seeking the abortion solely because of: (1) the race, color, national origin, ancestry, or sex of the fetus; or (2) a diagnosis or potential diagnosis of the fetus having Down syndrome or any other disability.

"Privately, and to some degree publicly, Republicans seem resigned to death in November by fire or by hanging."

"The prolonged nominating process is merely a means of determining the nature of the execution and limiting the risk to other candidates on the ballot. The normal pattern of GOP nominating contests for the past two decades is that the party endures heated primary fights between populist, evangelical and center-right candidates, only to settle on the leading establishment choice. No more...."

That's how David Axelrod puts it.

"15 ways to tell you're a Wisconsinite."

#15: "Wearing shorts on a 50-degree day with snow on the ground just feels right."

"Donald Trump may be a rat but I have no desire to copulate with him."

That's something Ted Cruz actually said. 

"Please, ladies, I don't wanna talk about the National Enquirer report. Let's talk about... Wisconsin!"

Said CNN's Kate Bolduan, trying to get control of a discussion between Amanda Carpenter (former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz) and Adriana Cohen (a Boston Herald columnist):



Did Bolduan not know she was setting this up? Carpenter was saying that the candidates should move on from the back-and-forth over their wives. Bolduan prompted Cohen, who was known to support Donald Trump, about whether it's time to move on, and Cohen dropped the bomb it's hard to believe Bolduan didn't know was coming:

“Absolutely, I think we should move on,” Cohen said, “and where we should move to is the National Enquirer story that has reported that Ted Cruz has allegedly had affairs with at least five mistresses — including, you’ve been named, Amanda... You were named, Amanda... Will you denounce this story or will you confront it?” 

Carpenter called it "tabloid trash," but I'd be suspicious if she stopped there. She does not. She also said it's all "categorically false."

By the way, where did the Cruz adultery story come from? I'm seeing that Cruz is blaming Trump, but what basis does he have for that accusation? According to sources talking to The Daily Beast, the story came from allies of Marco Rubio (but not the Rubio campaign itself).  One source, at Breitbart (which slants in favor of Trump), said that "an operative allied with Marco Rubio—but not associated with his official campaign—showed the publication a compilation video of Cruz and a woman other than his wife coming out of the Capitol Grille restaurant and a hotel on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

Every place other than The Enquirer rejected the story as too thin. I don't know the details of what was in the compilation video, but if it was the mere presence of Cruz and a woman together in a restaurant or in the public areas of a hotel, it's ridiculous to make inferences of an affair. The fact that there are 5 women underlines the weakness of the evidence. Cruz quite properly works with women, and women as well as men should be interacting with him. These rumors of affairs are not just unfair to the man, they limit the professional success of women. It's thoroughly sexist to see a woman with a man and assume they are together for the sex.

About that dog serial killer that had Marina del Rey in a panic...

... that man drowning a dog was not drowning a dog — he was washing a dog that was already dead — and the decapitated dog found in the same area was not a decapitated dog — it was the bloated corpse of a raccoon that wasn't even headless.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had offered a $20,000 reward for — as the L.A. Times puts it ungrammatically — "information on whomever was responsible for the acts of cruelty."

[A] transient came into the Marina del Rey station Thursday night looking for his dead dog The homeless man said the dog had been struck by a car and he decided to take it to the beach to wash the carcass because he wanted to stuff the animal.... The homeless man said he tied the dog’s collar to a shovel to keep the body from floating away. He did this because he said he needed to leave the beach to retrieve some of his belongings in another location. When the homeless man returned, the dog was gone.... 

Question 1: What does a homeless person do with a stuffed dog? How does he get it stuffed? In a do-it-yourself effort? Maybe he envisions the dog standing watch over him while he sleeps — something practical.  Maybe he just liked how the dog looked and it fit a general approach to finding and keeping things things in the street.

Question 2: Should the homeless man get the $20,000?

Wisconsin... we're watching...

"A photo taken of two little girls during nap time at their school is melting hearts across the Internet."

"This sweet picture was taken while the girls were taking a snooze on a mat at the Presbyterian Day School in Clarksdale, Mississippi."

So it's considered not merely acceptable but just wonderful for school officials — who, exactly? — to take a picture of little girls while they sleep and to post these pictures on the internet?

Spare me the melting-hearts sentimentality and don't make a special rule for "racial harmony." (One girl is black and the other is white.) This is an intrusion on personal privacy. Other people do not exist for your appropriation, even in propaganda for causes that good people think are good.

"Does the way the presidential campaign is being conducted make you feel as though the election process is working as it should, or not?"

Gallup asked Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Only 30% said yes, down from 46% in January. What accounts for this big drop? What do they think should have happened? Did they really find a problem with the "process" or are they just unhappy with the results?

What about Democrats and Democratic leaners? They were already low in January — at 32% — and, after dipping to 29% in February, they are back at 32%. So the question could be why were Republicans so upbeat back in January? Maybe just because they had so many options — seeming riches.

It is unclear from the data if partisans are reacting to the developments in their own party's nomination race, the other party's nomination race or both. Republicans' increasingly dour sentiments may be related to Trump -- either the increasing inevitability that he will gain his party's nomination, or the way controversial aspects of his campaign have dominated the news.... Another factor could be the increasingly contentious campaigns, particularly on the Republican side....

Crazy gun idea.

4,000+ people have signed a petition to allow guns inside the arena at the Republican National Convention.

Obama derides the "sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist."

"Oh, you know, you're a capitalist Yankee dog, and oh, you know, you're some crazy communist that's going to take away everybody's property."

Those may be "interesting intellectual arguments" — "socialist theory or capitalist theory" — but it's better to "be practical and just choose from what works."

He was speaking in Argentina, and he repeated what he'd said to President Castro in Cuba:

How could Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California system, lead by example?

The NYT reports on the incident at the University of California, Berkeley, in which the dean of the law school, Sujit Choudhry, received a confidential and mild punishment after his executive assistant, Tyann Sorrell, complained that he had sexually harassed her. Sorrell was told to look for another job, while Choudhry kept his. The dispute became public when Sorrell filed a lawsuit. 400+ alumni signed a letter calling the punishment "feeble" and "threaten[ing] to withhold future donations until he was fired."

Janet Napolitano — who was President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security from 2009 to 2013 — is the president of the University of California system. She "said she was upset that she had learned of his case from the news media barred Choudhry from campus for the rest of the term and ordered disciplinary proceedings that could ultimately result in stripping him of tenure."

Choudhry's lawyer sent a letter to Napolitano charging that he'd been deprived of due process and that the school had "lumped" his case in with other sexual harassment problems at Berkeley, making him "a scapegoat for any shortcomings, real or perceived, in the university’s handling of sexual harassment claims and related policies and procedures."

Napolitano gave an interview to the NYT, which gives us scant information about what was said. We're told "she stood by her order to keep Mr. Choudhry off campus." And we get this distanced quote: "I think our society at large has undervalued sexual harassment in the workplace...It’s gone on in many professions for decades. We are a public university, and we ought to be leading by example, not by mistake."

You want to set examples? You are the president of the system. Why hadn't you already figured out how to handle accusations of sexual harassment adequately? Why did you only hear of the case through the news reports? If you're upset about how little you yourself knew, and if the system over which you preside has been inadequate to handle complaints, what "example" should be set against yourself?

Napolitano is both too general and too specific. She says: "our society at large has undervalued sexual harassment in the workplace" when it should be "The University of California has undervalued sexual harassment." And she takes a severe action against Choudhry, but only after his case became an embarrassment to her. She says she's "leading by example," but what's the example? Undervaluing due process to deflect attention away from systemic failure?