Given that Israel lacks a formal constitution — its idealistic 1948 Declaration of Independence and a series of easily amended “basic laws” are no substitute — and that the same coalition controls the government and the parliament, [we are seeing] a near-Putinization of what has until now been a liberal democracy for 75 years. Netanyahu would effectively control all three branches of government.

This reflects a vulgar view of democracy as amounting to a tyranny of the majority, wildly out of sync with the American system of checks and balances on top of guarantees for each citizen secured by the Bill of Rights.

… Israel is by now on the threshold of dictatorship. Yet we are optimistic, because the massive resistance movement that has arisen in Israel, with hundreds of grass-roots organizations working together and more being created by the day, shows that President Herzog was actually right. It shows that after years of indifference and fence-sitting, the liberal-democratic camp understands that it needs to fight for its freedom and the future of Israel as a liberal democracy, in a determined manner and for the longer term.

Yup.

But I think we’re winning it.

[Jon Gabriel recently wrote:] ‘The Arizona GOP had less than $50,000 in cash reserves as of March 31. That’s not much money to fund crucial expenses such as rent, payroll, and campaign operations. Four years earlier, it had close to $770,000….  The party blew $300,000 on ‘legal consulting,’ much of which focused on overturning Trump’s 2020 defeat. All they have to show for it are a Democratic governor and U.S. Senate delegation... If they [Republican party bosses] waste their money on Cyber Ninjas and futile lawsuits, they can’t be shocked when donations dry up…‘

From 1995 until 2019, Arizona boasted not one, but two Republican senators. What is more, from 1991 until 2023, Republicans held the governorship for all but six years. And before 2020, the last time a Democrat won the state’s presidential election was 1996… [T]he shift toward electing Democrats has little to do with the notion that the state has somehow turned blue. It has much more to do with candidate quality and incompetent management by the state’s Republican Party… At one speech in 2022, [Kari] Lake literally told John McCain supporters to “get the hell out.” That didn’t work out so well for her—or Republicans.

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Sweet, sweet words to UD‘s deep blue ears.

(UD thanks Al.)

Expect [,post-affirmative action on campus,] more antiracist action plans, more vaporous decolonization, more mandated training, more huckster consultants, more vacuous reports, more administrators whose jobs no one can explain, more sleazy land acknowledgments (“Sorry I stole your house!”), more performative white self-flagellation, more tokenization of minority faculty members.

The second most radical option would be for the Ivy League to abolish what is called “ALDC” — athletics, legacy, dean’s list and children of faculty and staff. Forty-three per cent of Harvard’s intake come from one of these groups. The first, athletics, includes sports that can only be learned by the privileged, such as lacrosse, sailing and rowing. The generous athletics intake by universities is why so many recent admission corruption scandals, such as the FBI’s Varsity Blues sting operation, involved athletics directors. Contrary to popular opinion, most athletics scholars are not black basketball players. Sixty-five per cent are white. 

This is in the Financial Times, all of whose readers, one assumes, passionately disagree with these options.

And then there’s the author, Edward Luce himself!

If the California bar court finds [John] Eastman culpable of the alleged violations, it can then recommend to the California Supreme Court that Eastman’s law license be suspended or revoked. The outcome of this proceeding is surely of less importance to Eastman than his likely forthcoming indictments in Atlanta and Washington as a Trump co-conspirator.

Women’s rights. Democrats seem rather fired up about them. That’s because the Supreme Court took important women’s rights away.

We’ve already seen this fervency play out in various states. We’ll see much, much more.

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According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 62 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, [which represents] the high-water mark for legal abortion in Pew’s polling, which dates back to 2007.

… Gallup — which has some of the longest trendlines when it comes to issues like abortion — asked Americans to choose between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” after asking about views on the legality of abortion. They found these numbers to be higher than any other annual recording dating back to 1996: 52 percent picked “pro-choice” this May and 55 percent picked “pro-choice” last May…

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month found that nearly three-in-four Americans, 72 percent, think abortion pills should be legal in all or most cases. 

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Of course, none of this bothers the Catho-Falangists (‘Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.’) or the Pencerian Evangelicals, since these sects possess divine moral truth and will happily shove no abortion/no porn/no contraception/forced reproduction onto the American population whether we like it or not. But it turns out that Americans are pretty ornery about people trying to destroy their basic liberties; and since current attacks blatantly go after American women‘s liberties, we can now watch in real time as American women rear up to become a most fearsome voting bloc.

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Another poll.

Details here.

It’s the rare academic who sees his research implemented on a grand scale right in front of his eyes; and on Jan. 6 John Eastman’s mind must have been racing – as a mob enabled by his, er, bullshit attacked the Capitol – at the thought of the massive raise his university would be giving him to reward his remarkable research productivity. He imagined the school’s admiring pr write-up: “The John Eastman Theory of Vice-Presidential Powers is now routinely taught in jurisprudence classes across the nation, and indeed across the world.” Jacob could call it bullshit all he liked, but the shattered windows and bloodied police just down the street signaled a hugely important turn in human history, and he, John Eastman, had single-handedly made it happen. Forget his dinky academic gig – we’re looking at Attorney General… Supreme Court Justice…

As the mad Constitution-bomber’s disbarment proceeding gets underway today, let us recall exactly what he said about overthrowing the Republic.

One charge alleges Eastman violated California Business and Professions Code Section 6068(a), failure to support the US Constitution and laws. 

I assume the proceeding is private; here’s hoping we have access one way or another to testimony.

This is the nature of bathrooms: They are inherently intimate and embarrassing places. I have always regarded the human acts that occur behind their doors to be the great equalizer, a moment of parity for our species. There, every king and queen, every president, every rock star, every billionaire who has been to space and the rest of us mere mortals behave in the exact same, unspeakably disgusting human way. They are one of the places we are most vulnerable; this is why so many of them have locks. The chandelier hanging in [Donald] Trump’s toilet was his dynasty in a microcosm: something opulent and gaudy, a caricature of wealth that screamed for our attention, while hoping we would not notice any potentially dirty deeds happening below.

As long as fools like the people who used to run Hamline University are around, we will need to keep worrying about assholes like DeSantis running the country. Places like Hamline write his The Woke are Destroying Us scripts for him.

The now-deposed prez of that school – taking a page from the idiots at Oberlin – reflexively attacked a professor for showing students images of Mohammed. A theocrat in the class squawked; the school verbally attacked/fired/ruined the career of the prof; the rest of us, who understand democracy, rose up as one and made all the idiots go away; and now it’s all over but the school-crushing legal settlements (Oberlin’s attack on an innocent party cost it thirty six mill).

The AAUP really went after them. Good.

Commencement at MAGA takeover site New College, Florida will be… interesting. Student response to having a MAGA maniac shoved down their throats as speaker has been to organize an altogether alternative event.

Students seem to have hoped for $20,000 or so in donations toward renting a space, catering, etc., but in only a few days the number has zoomed to over $122,000 (note that I have to keep changing this number; nothing like theocrat bullies to get the bucks flowing), so they are now collecting not just for the event but for other fuck DeSantis activities.

UD donated $100… I can’t think of a purer act of local democratic/intellectual resistance than this ingenious counter-staging. Here’s hoping the representative from Hillsdale College will be speaking his lies into a void.

Or, even better, to a bused-in crowd of not-yet-jailed January 6 insurgents who will hoot and holler throughout, and then – cuz it’s a college – set all the school’s books aflame in an enormous bonfire.