Sunrise — 6:18.

"According to FIRE Campus Advocacy Rights Director Alex Morey, under the First Amendment, Chemerinsky’s 3L dinner is considered a limited public forum..."

"... in which the government, or individual or group in charge of the forum, can open up the forum for speech in any way they decide. Morey said Chemerinsky and his wife, Catherine Fisk, opened up a forum and were able to determine its limits in the case of the 3L dinner.... 'This is a situation where students have to recognize that yes, they have First Amendment rights, but they also know those rights come with certain specific limitations,' Morey said... 'Schools should exact some kind of punishment on students who engage in misconduct, but I think that some level of understanding can be given when students are trying to exercise their First Amendment rights in good faith but are still learning how to do so,' Morey said. 'It’s a delicate balance, but we hope Berkeley can figure out the right way to find that balance.'"

From "FIRE calls Chemerinsky 3L dinner limited public forum, says free speech has limitations" (The Daily Californian/Berkeley's News)

"The black-clad man, stabbing wildly, had 27 seconds alone with him. That is long enough, Rushdie points out, to read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets..."

"... including his favorite, No. 130.... Rushdie is initially held together by staples. His ruined eye bulged out of its socket and hung down his face 'like a large soft-boiled egg.' He spends time on ventilators.... No one will permit him to look in a mirror. Mentally, he tortures himself. Why had he not defended himself? Was it that he was 75 and his attacker 24? 'On some days I’m embarrassed, even ashamed, by my failure to try to fight back,' he writes. 'On other days I tell myself not to be stupid, what do I imagine I could have done? This is as close to understanding my inaction as I’ve been able to get: The targets of violence experience a crisis in their understanding of the real.'..."

Writes Dwight Garner, in "Salman Rushdie Reflects on His Stabbing in a New Memoir/'Knife' is an account of the writer’s brush with death in 2022, and the long recovery that followed" (NYT).

"Right now, Steinglass, the prosecutor, is doing a lengthy recounting of Trump's comments on the infamous Access Hollywood tape."

"There is no new information there, but Trump is listening as his own words about grabbing women’s genitals are recounted.... Trump, listening to a tape of himself from fall 2016 in which he says no one has more respect for women than he, mouths: 'True.'"

I'm following "Live Updates: Trump Trial Poised to Begin, a Criminal Case Without Precedent/Jury selection is set to start as Donald J. Trump faces charges he faked business records to cover up a sex scandal before winning the presidency. The judge declined Mr. Trump’s request to recuse himself" (NYT).

They chant it before they know what it means. Then someone asks what it means. And they chant it again when they know what it means.

Anti-war activists in Chicago learn to chant “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” in Farsi.

Read more from The FP’s @Olivia_Reingold: https://t.co/1jMM5ydhpp pic.twitter.com/z7T9AKNrF9

— The Free Press (@TheFP) April 14, 2024

The linked Free Press article is "American Anti-War Activists Cheer for Iran’s War/At a left-wing conference in Chicago, activists believe Iran is 'part of the arc of resistance because the enemies are Israel and the USA.'"

"Unlike nearly every other state, New York does not allow cameras in the courtroom and also prohibits audio recordings..."

"... of witness testimony and other proceedings.... In an era when even the U.S. Supreme Court streams live audio of oral arguments, New York is way behind the times; the official court rules for coverage of People v. Trump allows for about 60 journalists (including two sketch artists) to witness the proceedings with 'no video, no photographs, no audio recording.'... In New Yor​​k — again, in a departure from the federal system and every other state — official rules state that transcripts of what gets said in court must be purchased from the court stenographers who have the job of recording, on a specialized keyboard, every word, action, and ruling in criminal cases." 

From "Free the Trump Trial Transcripts/The New York court system’s maddening lack of transparency is about to be a national embarrassment" (New York Magazine).

"Trainers are good for one thing only: running in the forest or perhaps on a beach."

"If you must wear them, you should wear old-fashioned tennis shoes or topsiders. Anyway, I am thrilled people will stop wearing them all the time — visually I find them clumpy and heavy.... The feet should be light and beautifully dressed, not burdened with these visually heavy trainers. Lightness and comfort have always been essential in my design process. My shoes have old-fashioned values that are not impacted by the constant moves in fashion. I can’t wait to see a new era of well-dressed men."

Said the shoemaker Manolo Blahnik, quoted in "How Instagram made brogues fashionable again/The classic leather shoe is making a comeback, aided by social media and vintage resale sites" (London Times).

Do you think these kids today are returning to non-sneaker shoes?

Do you know why the British call sneakers "trainers," and why Americans call sneakers "sneakers"? If it's that the British are more about athletic training and the Americans are more about not making noise — sneaking up on people — then why is that? Americans attempted to shift from "sneakers" to "running shoes," but that failed, didn't it? We've established our preference for sneakiness over athletics.

Sunrise — 6:14, 6:19, 6:19, 6:23.

"Maleness did not appeal to me at all, with its acrid musk, its stubble, its needful dangling genitalia, its oafishness and clumsiness, its sense of mission and conquest, its resemblance to the aspects of myself I most despised."

Writes Lucy Sante, formerly Luc Sante, quoted in "How Lucy Sante Became the Person She Feared/In her memoir of transitioning in her sixties, the writer assesses the cost of suppressing her identity for decades" (The New Yorker).

Also: "I created a male persona that was saturnine, cerebral, a bit remote, a bit owlish, possibly ‘quirky,’ coming close to asexual despite my best intentions."

The article is by Emily Witt, who says:

"Me, as a New Yorker I can’t judge him for who he is. Basically, I can only judge him by the way he carries himself, especially in the White House."

"I liked the way he handled himself in the White House, and I think he brung America back to its feet. … I like him. I agree in everything that he has said, because what he said is true. It has to be true. It can’t be false, because if it’s false and he can be brung up on charges."

Said one man, asked "What do you think of Donald Trump?," quoted in "COULD YOU JUDGE TRUMP IMPARTIALLY?/Here is what 12 New Yorkers said" (The Washington Post)(free access link).

That was a 64-year-old hospital worker who lives in East Harlem.

By contrast, a 71-year-old retired woman, asked if she could be impartial if she were a juror, said "Listen, I can’t stand Donald Trump, so I guess the answer is no. I mean, he’s as crooked as you can find in a person."

Cartoon life.

"The Biden administration, hoping to avoid a wider war in the Middle East, is advising Israel that it does not necessarily need to fire back at Iran..."

"... U.S. officials said. They said that its successful defense proved Israel’s ability to protect itself along with its American allies. As people gathered in Tehran to celebrate, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said that the attack was a direct response to the April 1 strike, and that 'the matter can be deemed concluded.' But it said that if Israel struck back, 'Iran’s response will be considerably more severe.'..."

The NYT reports.

So, the only response to an attack should be the defense against the attack. Where is the deterrent? Just in the humiliation of showing that, so far, the attacking has failed? The message would seem to be: Attack all you want, but your attacks will be ineffective. Is that a desirable stasis?

"Even 30-mile-an-hour wind gusts whipping down from the nearby Poconos couldn’t move the bubble of Donald Trump-scented awe and alternative reality ..."

"... that descended on this hilltop village for about eight hours on Saturday.... This Schnecksville extravaganza was the fourth Trump rally in the Mid-Atlantic that I’d attended since 2016. I go largely because I think the media still fails to understand America’s most important story of the last 10 years. U.S. democracy is staring out into the abyss not so much because of the narcissistic bluster of one alleged billionaire ex-president, but because of the people with fleece hoodies over their MAGA hats who spent hours in an April windstorm to see him.... So who are these people? A new best-selling book blames Trump’s unshakable popularity on 'White Rural Rage' and that is something you might expect to see here in Schnecksville, where the urbane Eastern Seaboard melts into live-bait shops, Baptist churches and red-brick 19th-century homes. The only problem is that almost everyone I met scoffed at their Green Acres stereotype...."

Writes Will Bunch, in "'Trumpstock' brings peace, unity and a ton of disinformation to Schnecksville/Fierce mountain winds in Lehigh County couldn't move the bubble of misinformation surrounding the throng at a Trump rally" (Philadelphia Inquirer). 

Here's video of that Trump's rally:

 

Trump: "This is a hell of a rally. I just heard there are 42,000. You know we expected maybe — because it's freezing, right, it's freezing. I'm freezing my ass off up here. At least they could have given me a little bit of a heater underneath this. They gave me nothing! See, they take advantage — my own people take advantage of me. They gave me nothing. But... you know we expected maybe 10,000 people. We have 42,000 people tonight. 42,000. As far as the eye can see. I wish the I wish the fake news media would turn those camera look at all those cameras. Wow wow wow wow...."

"Record-level migration has brought record-breaking death to Maverick County, a border community that is ground zero..."

"... in the feud between Texas and the Biden administration over migration. Whereas in a typical month years ago, officials here might have recovered one or two bodies from the river, more recently they have handled that amount in a single day.... First responders have run out of body bags and burial plots.... On certain days the turbid water is only knee-deep. But a dam upriver periodically releases water, changing the depth. Smooth rocks beneath the surface make it hard to find a grip. And a powerful undercurrent can drown even the strongest. Videos on social media showing migrants easily crossing lure many into a false sense of comfort....."

From "'WHERE DO WE PUT THE BODIES?’/Migration’s human toll overwhelms a border county in Texas" (WaPo).

Can't we use the torture devices in the best order?

"Why did this seamy Trump trial have to be the first?" Ruth Marcus complains, in The Washington Post.

Can't we conduct this persecution in a sequence most effective in shaping the emotions of the electorate?

Don't you hate when you're using the courts to destroy a man and the courts interpose their own ways of doing things and interfere with efficient destruction?

"When he was first running, I was, like, what is this guy even yapping about? Like, what is he even saying?"

"Like, he’s saying all the wrong things. But to be honest, if you look deep into his personality, he actually cares about the country. You know at first I didn’t like it. But sometimes we need that type of person in our lives."

Said a 23-year-old self-described former "Trump hater" named Maya Garcia, quoted in "Four Years Out, Some Voters Look Back at Trump’s Presidency More Positively/A new poll by The New York Times and Siena College finds that voters think highly of the former president’s record on the economy, but memories of his divisiveness largely remain intact" (NYT)

I'm giving this my "Trump derangement syndrome" tag because of the Trump hating that existed in the past and may be healing to the point of not being derangement anymore. Even if you think it was never derangement, it is still the topic under discussion, and that's my tag for the topic.

By the way, this is one of the many articles about Trump that uses the shibboleth "chaotic." The second sentence begins, "While the memories of Mr. Trump’s tumultuous and chaotic administration have not significantly faded...."

Another article I read this morning, at CNN, began: "While many Democrats still consider former President Donald Trump to be about pure chaotic improvisation and impulse, they should consider that his campaign team has put together a very clear roadmap as to how they intend to work different institutions to their advantage...."

Much of what Trump offers to do is about restoring order. Those of us who care about order are warned away from him. He embodies chaos. That's a longstanding message. See, e.g., "Donald Trump: Chaotic and Wrong." His antagonists rely on it heavily, but what they don't do is demonstrate that they can deliver order.