Today in Trump's America: A Quick Survey (Update)

There's just so much.

First, from the top attorney for Trump's re-election campaign, the Gospel according to your favorite theocrat (pick one -- they'ar all over the place in this regime):

The notion that the United States observes a separation of church and state is a lie, according to President Donald Trump’s senior campaign legal adviser.

“The left is going to tell you there’s this separation of church and state, and that’s just nowhere in the Constitution, nowhere in American law,” Jenna Ellis declared Monday evening during a Zoom event hosted by Asian Pacific Americans for Trump. “That’s nothing that our founding principles ever, uh, derived whatsoever.”

There's more at the link. Via Joe.My.God., who also has some of Ellis' past statements about gay people, just in case you were wondering.

Next up, Trump's Pentagon, which claims that American citizens are the "adversaries":

A new mandatory Pentagon training course aimed at preventing leaks refers to protesters and journalists as "adversaries" in a fictional scenario designed toteach Defense Department personnel how to better protect sensitive information.

The new course was recently launched as part of Defense Secretary Mark Esper's effort to improve "operational security," or OPSEC, and clamp down on leaks. The training materials are public and include a video message from Esper, as well as a July 20 memo outlining his concerns about operational security and directing all DoD personnel — military, civilian and on-site contractors — to take the course within the next 60 days.

The DoD spokesman gives a nice rationale for use of the term, but it still reveals a mindset that's pretty dismal.

Again, vie Joe.My.God.

And from Glorious Leader himself, a little racism to wash it down:

...Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020

There's more. I may update this one.

Update: Trump doesn't think he has to abide by Supreme Court decisions:

President Donald Trump though acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf (photo) will sidestep a Supreme Court ruling and move to drastically limit access to and limit the protections of the Obama-era program known as DACA.

The administration believes DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is still illegal, NBC News reports. Acting Secretary Wolf on Tuesday announced he will not accept any new applicants to the program that protects undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country as children.

Nice elections you have there -- be a shame if anything happened to them:

The Trump administration is planning to keep federal agents in Portland, Oregon, through at least mid-October, according to an internal email obtained by CNN.

Portland has been the site of ongoing protests for more than 50 days that have turned violent, sparking outrage among local officials who have faulted the federal presence for aggravating the situation on the ground.
But as protests persist, Customs and Border Protection -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- is laying the groundwork for continued presence in the city on a rotational basis to relieve those agents who have been in Portland and who may be deployed in the near future.

At least mid-October? Like, into early November? And if it looks like it's working in Portland ("working" being a matter of viewpoint), why not try it in other cities?

About Those "Violent, Left-Wing Extremists"

Can you say "bullshit"?

A man seen breaking windows in a viral video of Minneapolis protests is suspected to be a known member of a white supremacist group, cops have alleged in a search warrant affidavit. The man in question, Mitchell Carlson, has not been charged with a crime.

The video, filmed on May 27, showed a man dressed in all black methodically smashing windows of an AutoZone in Minneapolis during racial justice protests over the police killing of George Floyd. The man also spray painted “free shit for everyone zone” on the building’s doors. The man appeared to be dressed as an anti-fascist, but was eyed as a possible infiltrator or “outside agitator” when protesters tried to question him over his activities. He became known as “Umbrella Man” on social media alongside debunked theories that he was a police officer attempting to discredit the protests.

Now, in a search warrant affidavit first reported by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, police say they have received a tip that the man is Mitchell Carlson, “a full‐fledged member of the Hell’s Angels” and “a known associate of the Aryan Cowboys. The Aryan Cowboys are a known prison gang out of Minnesota and Kentucky.”

Via Joe.My.God.

And as for who started the violence, note this via Digby:

The New York Times reports today on how these troops were the instigators of the violence:

After flooding the streets around the federal courthouse in Portland with tear gas during Friday’s early morning hours, dozens of federal officers in camouflage and tactical gear stood in formation around the front of the building.

Then, as one protester blared a soundtrack of “The Imperial March,” the officers started advancing. Through the acrid haze, they continued to fire flash grenades and welt-inducing marble-size balls filled with caustic chemicals. They moved down Main Street and continued up the hill, where one of the agents announced over a loudspeaker: “This is an unlawful assembly.”

By the time the security forces halted their advance, the federal courthouse they had been sent to protect was out of sight — two blocks behind them. Eight weeks after the death of George Floyd, here’s a look at why longstanding protests in the city have recently intensified.

The aggressive incursion of federal officers into Portland has been stretching the legal limits of federal law enforcement, as agents with batons and riot gear range deep into the streets of a city whose leadership has made it clear they are not welcome…

Digby concludes with this warning:

I think we all knew on some level the moment they named the agency the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security, that we were building an internal police force. And if you build it, they will use it. They’re using it.

Remember, these troops were sent in by the man who had peaceful protesters teargassed so he could have a photo op holding a Bible upside-down in front of a church he doesn't attend.

Footnote: I saw a statement by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot that there is evidence that the looting on the South Side and in the suburbs during the first demonstrations was planned. You can bet it wasn't planned by BLM.

How to Turn a Demonstration Into a Broad-Based Movement (Updated)

Send in your brown shirts. Trump really screwed up this one:

First there was a Wall of Moms united to protect the peaceful Black Lives Matters protesters in Portland. The footage was absolutely amazing.

Now there is a "Wall of Vets" providing further backup. The group of military veterans joined the Moms and other groups on Friday night, standing united and in full force with signs showing support for the BLM movement. These veterans ranged in age from 20's to senior citizens to disabled.

This is what it's like in Portland, as of last night:

Portland right now. Stunning. pic.twitter.com/g2U5B8aFI3

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) July 25, 2020

Those are not Proud Boys with tiki torches. Those are the good guys.

A short history:

Feds started abducting protesters and a wall of moms formed.

They gassed the moms, so dads brought leaf blowers.

They beat a Navy veteran who just wanted to speak with them, then a wall of vets came together.

They attacked volunteer medics, so nurses showed up in scrubs. https://t.co/cQBCjojxq2

— ACLU (@ACLU) July 25, 2020

And he wants to try the same thing in Chicago?

Update:

Via Digby, an article on a very interesting survey done in early June. This paragraph is pretty revealing:

The reasons persuadables moved from opposing to supporting the protests, Prull said, can mostly be attributed to the demonstrations growing and becoming largely peaceful by their second week, with human stories of everyday police brutality saturating the media environment. Trump’s strongman performance on June 1 did almost nothing to turn public opinion against the demonstrations. Instead it likely backfired. “Between those two dates, the big driver that I see is the protests becoming larger and even more peaceful each day,” Prull told me. “The story was being told by people who are being hurt by police every day, and the empathy with that, and frankly the reasonableness of that, was breaking through. And then the president tear-gassing protestors outside the White House lawn, I think, was a nontrivial part of this. You had the draconian response of the government, and then the protests just seemed even more reasonable when it was a bunch of regular people being tear-gassed in the middle of Washington D.C. for the sake of a photo op.”

Trump is playing to maybe 30% of the populace -- the same 30% that's been against everything since Independence. (They were probably against independence, as well.) The rest of the country is leaving him behind.

What's New at Green Man Review

It's Sunday again, and we've got more reviews -- as always:

Some things Tempest, A Worm In An Apple, a potato salad recipe, a new Le Guin story and other High Summer matters

Hop on over -- you'll notice the theme running through this edition, I'm sure.

Trump's War on America Continues (Updated)

But received a setback this week:

Federal police are now under a court order not to arrest or assault journalists and legal observers for doing their jobs, after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Thursday that the government said it would appeal.

“An open government has been a hallmark of our democracy since our nation’s founding,” U.S. District Judge Michael Simon wrote Thursday, citing precedent from the Ninth Circuit case Leigh v. Salazar. “When wrongdoing is underway, officials have great incentive to blindfold the watchful eyes of the fourth estate. The free press is the guardian of the public’s interests and the independent judiciary is the guardian of the free press.”

To that hallmark, he added: “This lawsuit tests whether these principles are merely hollow words.”

The government is claiming that "the chaotic atmosphere of Portland’s protests is too “volatile and dangerous” for federal police to differentiate between journalists and protesters accused of breaking the law." Somehow, that argument rings hollow:

Attorney Matthew Borden told Judge Simon at Thursday’s hearing that federal police had mounted “incredible and despicable attacks” against journalists and legal observers. “A 70-year-old man marked ‘press’ from head to toe. Multiple attacks on a 17-year-old girl who stood far from the front. They shot Jungho Kim right in the press pass [with less lethal munitions] and Lewis Rolland a dozen times in the back when he was standing under a streetlight so police could see the big block letters saying he was press.

“These are not accidents,” Borden continued. “These are not inadvertent shots. These are trained marksmen and these are the actions of a tyrant. They do not have a place in Portland, Oregon and they do not have a place under the First Amendment. If you do not have the press reporting on events first-hand, then you only have the version put forth by the government. And that’s what you have under a totalitarian state.”

A number of commentators are characterizing this as an attack on the free press. Well, yes -- but it's also a direct attack on the First Amendment and the Constitution as a whole.

This is Trump all the way: he doesn't like democracy. He likes strongmen and dictators -- look who among world leaders he considers admirable: Putin, Erdogan, Duterte, Kim Jong-Un, Jair Bolsdonaro. He wants to be just like them.

We'll see if this order holds -- Trump's minions will appeal, and Moscow Mitch has been concentrating on stacking the courts rather than actually legislating. One can only hope that there will be something to salvage come January.

Via Joe.My.God.

Update:

Digby has a post on the plans to deploy brown shirts to other major cities, with reports of what's been happening most recently in Portland. Trump's comments are revealing.

Critter Chronicles: The Nightly Chorus

If I were living in, say, the mountains of North Carolina, I would probably be talking about frogs. Whoever first started the rumor of the peace and quiet of the country was never in the Appalachians at night.

However, I live in Chicago, where, among other things, we have cicadas, the seventeen-year variety and the annual variety. I was stuck last evening, just before sunset, by how incredibly loud they can be. We have a lot of big old trees in my neighborhood, and once they've hatched in the spring and early summer and molted into their adult forms, the singing starts. They can be deafening.

Here's a short course on cicadas -- it's geared toward school kids, but Jeff the Nature Guy relates a couple of things I didn't know.

His cicadas are very quiet. If you're outside in my neighborhood in the evening in summer -- well, they're loud.

What's New at Green Man Review

In spite of heat, storms, and pandemics, you can rely on us to come up with good stuff every week:

Oliver Cromwell, Harry Dresden, Animated Charlie Daniels, Dick Grayson Redux, Flash Girls, the Ultimate G&T, Lockdown Blahs,and more

You know the drill -- scoot on over and enjoy.

Hypocrite du Jour

This gem is from the acting head of DHS:

Our men and women in uniform are patriots. We will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch. pic.twitter.com/kG8w8kyw9E

— Acting Secretary Chad Wolf (@DHS_Wolf) July 17, 2020

He's referring to the BLM protesters in Portland, OR, where Bill Barr's gestapo is picking people off the streets without identifying themselves, and mostly without cause.

He goes on:

Here is what I saw in Portland yesterday. pic.twitter.com/B0xvTTYvIj

— Acting Secretary Chad Wolf (@DHS_Wolf) July 17, 2020

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country:

More than a dozen members of the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Movement (NSM), many of them armed, marched on Williamsport, Pennsylvania on Saturday and held a rally in the city’s Brandon Park.

Because these are very fine people.

Can you say "Heil,Trump!"?

Today's Must-Read: Nice Democracy You've Got There (Update)

or had. It's no exaggeration to say that Trump and the Republicans are aiming toward a fascist state. There's a lot of commentary that this is Trump showing he's a strong leader to energize his base because he's worried about the election. That's probably part of it, but the larger picture is that this is the next step in the Republican agenda: permanent rule, by whatever means necessary.

This story's been all over the place, but Digby has a good overview:

Trump has been saying over and over again since George Floyd was murdered, “if cities won’t deal with protesters, I will.” Bill Barr declared war on “Antifa” and blamed it for the violence and looting in the early days of the protests.

Guess what? They meant it.

The post is mostly a series of tweets, with videos, showing what's going on in Portland, OR. It's not pretty. And it's a blatant violation of Constitutional rights:

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That's the beginning of an opinion piece by Ruth Marcus at WaPo. It's behind a paywall, but Digby quotes it extensively.

There will be lawsuits, but given that the Supreme Court has already upheld a poll tax and blown a "religious freedom" hole in anti-discrimination laws. Just think of the fun Kavanaugh et al. will have with the right to assemble.

Update: Here's a follow-up story via Joe.My.God.:

The US Attorney for the Oregon District today requested an investigation into the masked, camouflaged federal authorities without identification badges who are arresting protesters in Portland. The request is aimed specifically at DHS personnel who have been captured on various videos arresting protesters and putting them in unmarked SUVs.

DHS is the last agency to be investigating -- well, the DHS. This goes back to AG Barr and Trump. This is the authoritarian secret police in action, courtesy of Barr.

And if you thought it was just Portland -- well, no:

Nonetheless, the administration has made it clear it intends to take these tactics nationwide. When asked about the arrests in Portland, Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli told NPR that “this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we're responsible for around the country.”

That's from this article by Heather Cox Richardson. (With thanks to commenter coram nobis.)

And a coda:

You think not?

Antidote: Hey, Those Are Mine!

Via Digby:

This cat discovering that it has ears is absolutely the best thing I will see today. pic.twitter.com/SDx80QOnAI

— Amanda (@Pandamoanimum) July 16, 2020

In Memoriam: John Lewis

Who died yesterday at age 80.

Representative John Lewis, a son of sharecroppers and an apostle of nonviolence who was bloodied at Selma and across the Jim Crow South in the historic struggle for racial equality, and who then carried a mantle of moral authority into Congress, died on Friday. He was 80.

His death was confirmed in a statement by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Lewis, of Georgia, announced on Dec. 29 that he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and vowed to fight it with the same passion with which he had battled racial injustice. “I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life,” he said.

On the front lines of the bloody campaign to end Jim Crow laws, with blows to his body and a fractured skull to prove it, Mr. Lewis was a valiant stalwart of the civil rights movement and the last surviving speaker at the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

I really don't have much to add, except that we need more like him.

Via Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Critter Chronicles: Squirrels and Rabbits

For some reason, I haven't been seeing squirrels in the park in the section between Foster and Melrose, where I've seen as many as a dozen and a half as I go by on the bus. I suspect it's because there are a lot more people in that part of the park than is normal -- or a lot more dogs being exercised. That section is normally pretty much people-free, but I guess a lot of people are still not working and the weather's been mostly pleasant, if somewhat hotter than usual. Maybe the squirrels are self-quarantining.

On the other hand, I've recently seen hordes of rabbits in the neighborhood -- well, four. The most I've ever seen at once before is three; it's usually one or two. I suspect these may be a litter that's all grown up and out exploring the world -- they seem rather playful, chasing each other around then stopping to crop the grass.

I haven't seen many rabbits at the Zoo or in the park around the Zoo lately. I don't know if they're just not coming out or if the Zoo staff have made an effort to thin the population. There used to be quite a few in the Zoo proper. I once saw a rabbit feeding at the base of a shrub at the south entrance; a squirrel was foraging on the other side of the shrub, and, inevitably, they ran into each other. The squirrel levitated about three feet, and the rabbit just disappeared -- they can move really fast when necessary. It was one of those moments.

Suhnap! of the Day

Betsy de Vos, who, like so many -- most -- of Trump's appointees, was intended to dismantle the department she was put in charge of, has pretty much stayed under the radar. Then she made the mistake of giving an interview. Ayana Pressley's reaction sort of sums up the general feeling:

.@BetsyDeVosED you have no plan. Teachers, kids and parents are fearing for their lives. You point to a private sector that has put profits over people and claimed the lives of thousands of essential workers. I wouldn’t trust you to care for a house plant let alone my child. https://t.co/Qs0Z7gCnMo

— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) July 12, 2020

Via Digby.

Karen of the Week

This one is almost beyond belief. From TMZ:

A radio host in New Hampshire went on a vile, racist tirade against a group of workers doing their job, because they dared to speak Spanish.

It's almost unbelievable ... Dianna Ploss saw the workers who were doing landscaping in downtown Nashua, and she just went nuts, screaming, "It's America. Speak English!"

Her ignorance is breathtaking ... she assumes they're working for the State of New Hampshire, as if that would justify her comments. For the record, there's no law in New Hampshire that we found prohibiting people from speaking languages other than English.

They correct her, saying they are a private company, but she's not deterred, hurling insults and making ridiculous demands.

An African-American man who happened to witness her tirade comes by and confronts her, and she barks back, "Because he's a black man. He's gonna protect the brown man from this white woman." Afterward, she posted on her Facebook page, "I'm not backing down."

There you have it -- all the arrogance and self-importance of right-wing so-called "Americans". I suppose it never occurred to her that it's none of her business what language people are speaking among themselves. And don't ignore the overt racism.

She wouldn't last two minutes in my neighborhood, where there's a taqueria on every corner, a corner store that advertises "Productos Latinos", even an apothecary that offers "Los remedios de la abuela". Oh, and there's an Eritrian restaurant a couple blocks down the street. And at the intersection where I change buses, you can hear Spanish, Russian, at least one Indian language, a couple of African languages, Arabic, Vietnamese, and who knows what else.

And somehow, we all get along fine. But then, we're a bunch of liberals here.

(My Lithuanian grandmother never did get a good handle on English; family get-togethers were always in Lithuanian; my generation never knew what the adults were saying, because none of us speak Lithuanian. Wonder how this Karen would have reacted to that.)

Oh, and according to an update at TMZ, she's been fired from her radio gig.

There's video at the link, which I can't embed. It's pretty appalling.

Via Joe.My.God., who has more background and a larger-format video.

Tweet du Jour

With thanks to commenter Joe Schmo at Joe.My.God.:

What's New at Green Man Review

It's that time again, and we're here with all sorts of neat stuff:

Lots of Mysteries, ‘Clue’ the Movie — and the Comic — Music, Traditional and Not So Traditional, Homemade Pot Pie, and more

And it's all right here waiting for you.

The Weather Forecast for Chicago

The National Weather Service says, and I quote:

This Afternoon: Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a steady temperature around 78. East wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

It is currently 95 degrees at O'Hare, there are a few wispy clouds that wouldn't dream of making rain, and the wind, what there is of it, is mostly from the south.

Sign du Jour

Sign in the window of Chicago Bagel Authority on Belmont Avenue:

With thanks to commenter fuzzybits at Joe.My.God.

Tweet du Jour

With thanks to commenter jixter at Joe.My.God.:

Thank God the 132,000 dead aren't embryos. The Republicans would be outraged.

— Sveta for Democracy 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@SlavicLady88) July 5, 2020

What's New at Green Man Review

Lots of things, as you might imagine. Our header is pretty brief, and doesn't really give much of a hint as to what's in this edition, so you'll just have to pop over and see for yourself.

Today's Must-Read: Are We Great Yet?

I fan across this article by Robin Wright late yesterday. It's rather sobering. Wright starts off with a history of the Statue of Liberty -- not what you may have learned in school. Farther along, this struck me:

On the eve of America’s anniversary—our two hundred and forty-fourth—much of the world believes that the country is racist, battered and bruised. “Europe has long been suspicious—even jealous—of the way America has been able to pursue national wealth and power despite its deep social inequities,” Robin Niblett, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, in London, told me. “When you take the Acela and pass through the poorest areas of Baltimore, you can’t believe you’re looking at part of the United States. There’s always been this sense of an underlying flaw in the U.S. system that it was getting away with—that somehow America was keeping just one step ahead of the grim reaper.”

The flaw, he said, is reflected in the American obsession with the stock market as the barometer of national health—economically, politically, socially. The reaction to Floyd’s murder exposed the deep injustices in the American economic model, as well as in the police and judicial systems, Niblett said. Europeans, he added, are no longer so envious.

The Trump Administration’s ineptitude in handling the covid-19 crisis, as well as the President’s disdain for longstanding allies and international treaties, have compounded the damage to America’s image. A second poll, released last week by the European Council on Foreign Relations, reported that public perceptions of the United States are increasingly negative in virtually all of the European nations surveyed. In France, the country that backed the American Revolution and later donated the Statue of Liberty, forty-six per cent of the people polled said that their opinion of the U.S. has “worsened a lot.” The proportion of respondents who still view America as a key ally is “vanishingly small”—as low as six per cent in Italy.

As I was reading this I kept hearing echoes of Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again". It occurred to me that greatness is not a quality one assumes for oneself -- it is a quality that is recognized by others. In that context, Trump and his enablers have taken what was once America's greatness and flushed it down the toilet. It will take a massive, sustained effort to regain that -- if we can.

Read the whole thing. Wright also notes the role of capitalism in the current state of affairs, which is itself an eye-opener.

Via Digby.

Today in Blatant Hypocrisy

And who but Tony Perkins, who is still bent out of shape by the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Here's the whole diatribe, via Joe.My.God.:

The Fourth of July is a time of national celebration and commemoration. We rejoice in our liberty and remember those who won our freedoms and have preserved them at great cost. Yet underlying these things is a foundation that must remain strong for “liberty and justice for all” to mean anything.

It’s the rule of law. Law that is fair and impartial, consistent and understandable. Without allegiance to the rule of law, we become a nation where those in power can do what they want without accountability. And in this 244th year of our independence, I fear we are on the brink of that happening.

Last month, the court ruled in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that the 1964 Civil Rights Act opposing discrimination based on the biological sex of an individual now must mean that “discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote these words, even acknowledges in his decision that the meaning of “sex” in 1964 was not even vaguely connected to homosexuality or transgenderism. In his words, the court “proceeds on the assumption that ‘sex’,” in 1964, referred “only to biological distinctions between male and female.”

America has never been a perfect nation and never will be. But with all our problems, we have made tremendous progress in securing the God-given rights we too often take for granted.

But the exercise of those rights will be increasingly diminished and put in jeopardy if Congress refuses to safeguard them and, instead, allows the Supreme Court to rule however its justices prefer, regardless of the text of the Constitution and the law itself.

I don't know if I have the fortitude this morning to dissect this drivel. Let me just note, as a foundation, that, as usual, Perkins is speaking in code. In this case,"liberty and justice for all": given Perkins' record, we can safely assume that "all" is code for "white, heterosexual Christian men".

And of course, the rest of it bears that out, since it's Perkins' usual attack on gay and trans people, this tine hinging on the meaning of "sex". Perkins, of course, would like us to believe that we live in a world in which nothing changes, or should: attitudes remain carved in stone, and language always means what he thinks it should mean.

And of course, the real world isn't like that. Take, for example, attitudes toward same-sex marriage, one of Perkink's favorite bêtes noires. Pew Research has an instructive article about the change in attitudes on this subject over the past twenty years or so:

One caveat on this: this only notes changes over the past twenty years or so, during the time same-sex marriage was becoming a hot-button issue. It's worth noting that in the period covered by this chart, marriage was already being legalized in various jurisdictions, including the Netherlands (2001), Belgium and several Canadian provinces (2003), and by 2005 was legal in Canada nationally, as well as Spain -- and Massachusetts. If we went back another twenty years, the shift would be much more dramatic.

Perkin's major beef (this time) is with the Court's interpretation of the word "sex" as denoting a protected class in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He maintains that Congress intended it to mean biological sex and nothing more. (And have you noticed the reverence with which the evangelicals regard biological sex?) The Obama administration, which first included gay and trans people in the definition of sex discrimination, quite rightly interpreted "sex" to include characteristics normally associated with one sex or the other. Thus, if you can't fire a woman for marrying a man, you can't fire a man for doing the same. This is the reasoning that Justice Gorsuch included in his opinion. Does anyone think that the meaning hasn't changed in 56 years, with the progress made in gay rights and now being made in trans rights? Only Perkins and his ilk, apparently.

At any rate, that's the story on the latest bullshit from Perkins, one of the most mendacious people in the public sphere. I guess he needs money.

Critter Chronicles: Encounters with Rabbits

So, I saw one of our neighborhood rabbits this morning. He/she crossed the street to the bushes in our parkway, then hopped into the yard. As I came in the gate, he was sitting there on the sidewalk; we looked at each other for a while, then he sat up and washed his face. After another couple of minutes, he hopped toward me -- in stages -- and eventually, after many pauses, hopped past me and out the gate, then hopped down the middle of the sidewalk to the neighbor's yard.

I don't know if our rabbits are somewhat tame, or just used to people -- I suspect they don't get a lot of harassment, in spite of the number of dogs in the neighborhood. Maybe he just sensed, somehow, that I wasn't going to eat him.



Side note: I've been noticing a lot of very small dogs in the park. I mean really tiny. I've never noticed that before.

Culture Break: The Danish String Quartet: The Dromer

I don't know if I've posted this one before; it's one of my favorite cuts from their album Last Leaf, a collection of traditional tunes arranged for string quartet.

I reviewed the album here.