CSotD: In Dubious Battles
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This ain’t over yet. As noted before, posting the King James version of the 10 Commandments is not just bringing religion into public schools but specifically bringing in Protestantism, a message to Catholics, Jews and Muslims that their religions are not the official government- approved sects, and to non-church-goers and atheists that their families are missing something important.
It will go up the ladder ultimately to SCOTUS, and I guess we’ll see if having six Catholics out of the nine makes a difference, though that assumes they’ll actually consider it and not just rubber-stamp it in the shadow docket.
If SCOTUS somehow approves it, I expect some teachers to post other religious tracts alongside the required Protestant one. Stand by for a few unjust termination lawsuits.
BTW, a reminder that kids in school are allowed to pray in groups or to form Bible clubs as long as it is their own idea and not sponsored and encouraged by the school.
The case is not a slam-dunk.
Neither is the case of Virginia’s redistricting vote, and Varvel offers a commentary that is in opposition but basically fair, except that while a judge has shut down the move for the moment, it is still under review and far from settled.
Bennett is also fair in his summing up of the GOP response, which ignores the fact that Texas began gerrymandering at Trump’s direction and that countermeasures by California and Virginia were self-defense.
His assertion that the GOP has been knocked on its keister by the Virginia vote is a bit of overreaching. If Virginia’s redistricting stands, and California’s seems solid, they will basically set the count in the House back to where it was, and if Florida is able to gerrymander in time for the midterms, the GOP should get a gain, assuming that they carry the day in the new presumably loyalist districts.
That, at the moment, is a somewhat shaky assumption. Most projections expect Democrats to gain a majority in the House and give them at least a chance of capturing the Senate.
Meanwhile, Kelley uses the news to launch an attack on Abigail Spanberger, a rising star in the Democratic Party. The issues the judge has raised are technical and somewhat complex, but complexity rarely comes into wide distribution in partisan politics, and Kelley reduces things to a claim of dishonesty backed with ridicule.
It’s not often that Jones becomes the voice of moderation, but despite his ongoing ridicule of Trump and Miller, he gets the basic facts correct: The Virginia vote is a response, not an initiative, and one that the government hopes to squelch before it can affect the midterms.
And it’s only fair to point out that rushing to judgment is not purely a conservative tactic. Wexler has contributed one of a flood of cartoons about Kash Patel that seem more like drunk jokes than discussions of the Atlantic story and his lawsuit.
Patel is an irresistible target. While Pam Bondi infuriated the opposition by her attitude, Patel is more like Krisi Noem, drawing abuse on himself by obnoxious and questionable personal behavior. Noem flew around with her great good friend and advisor, while Patel was requisitioning government jets to go visit his GF.
Whether you can behave like that and keep your job may be secondary to the effect it has in drawing abuse from opposition commentators.
Still, the issue is not so much whether he is a drunkard but rather whether the Atlantic story was well-grounded, and it certainly appears to be, nor does the magazine intend to bend the knee and go down without a fight.
Whether he is habitually drunk or not, his lawsuit seems performatory and futile, perhaps aimed at protecting his job with a gesture to an audience of one. But he should hope to have it dismissed early, because the discovery process would do far more damage than the magazine article did.
And speaking of foolish performative actions, Wuerker notes the bizarre nature of tomorrow’s White House Concubines Association dinner, at which the guest of honor will be someone who has, as he notes, sued a number of media outlets, and has attacked the press from his first campaign. (Note: The NYTimes is a long-time no-show.)
Margaret Sullivan has an excellent take on the event, which she will not be attending, and it’s a point in her favor that she looked down on the schmoozefest well before this year’s compromised edition, in which there is no comedian because it might offend Dear Leader.
As if having Bari Weiss next to Pete Hegseth at the CBS table weren’t offensive enough.
Reporters have to get to know sources if they want to ever ask them questions they don’t want to answer. Certainly, in my reporting days, I went to a lot of events in which I schmoozed and mingled with sources.
Sometimes it genuinely was a reporting assignment, but more often it was a chance to casually hear gossip that could later be turned into a story.
People at the Chamber’s Friday wine gatherings knew I was a reporter and that nothing was ever off the record, but we all understood how the game was played, and if I wanted to do a story, I’d let them know I planned to contact them later, by which point I’d already know a fair amount.
Incidentally, going to Chamber and Realtor gatherings didn’t provide as many tips as I got from the muddy-boot guys at the Home Builders Association dinners, who knew who had a shovel in the ground and who was just blowing hot air.
And there’s nothing but hot air at the WHCA dinner. It’s not only ethically dubious to attend, and, in this year’s case, moreso, but it’s an event that publicizes the too-cozy relations that spring up in the Beltway greenhouse while real news is happening, and being gathered, out in the real world.
So skip it. And if you’re Jonesing for pointed comedy, here’s the 2006 monologue, from back when the President had a 32% approval rating, which is close enough.
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