[I]n this unpredictable era of reproductive health care in the U.S., Maryland is about as safe a place an abortion provider can be.

UD has always been rather proud to be a Marylander, but never so much as now, when the gulf between Tommy Tuberville and Jamie Raskin states has never been wider.

… are part of the pleasure of gardening.

What a distinction for Harvard, which gets a prominent mention every time Alan Dershowitz steps in another pile of shit, that he’s now been sanctioned for his involvement in Lake’s frivolous, time-wasting, and destructive suit against the integrity of Arizona’s electoral system. Hard to think of a more embarrassing old fart than Harvard’s highest-profile emeritus.

Only twenty years old, she was found unresponsive in an off-campus house.

Police have ruled out anything suspicious, which leaves

1. suicide
2. overdose
3. underlying, previously unknown, health issue.

Background on NMSU.

… on which Raskin and a co-signer of the letter sit. They call for an investigation into how it came to be that the committee chair brought disgrace and embarrassment to the committee by enthusiastically sponsoring a witness/whistleblower who turns out to be a career criminal on the lam from the cops.

We are concerned that an official committee of the House of Representatives has been manipulated by an apparent con man who, while a fugitive from justice, attempted to fortify his defense by laundering unfounded and potentially false allegations through Congress. Although [Gal] Luft has been on the run for months, you touted him as a ‘potential witness’ and even prepared to interview him as part of your investigation. As recently as Friday, you described Mr. Luft as ‘a very credible witness’ about matters relating to the President’s son’s financial dealings with Chinese companies.’ … [We ask that you] immediately initiate an investigation into whether the Committee may have been unwittingly duped by Mr. Luft in furtherance of the Chinese Communist Party’s interests [he’s an unregistered agent!], as well as any potentially false statements made by Mr. Luft to Members of Congress or congressional staff.

INTERVIEWER

But why would a novelist want to deprive himself of the right to express his philosophy overtly and assertively in his novel?

KUNDERA

Because he has none! People often talk about Chekhov’s philosophy, or Kafka’s, or Musil’s. But just try to find a coherent philosophy in their writings! Even when they express their ideas in their notebooks, the ideas amount to intellectual exercises, playing with paradoxes, or improvisations rather than to assertions of a philosophy. And philosophers who write novels are nothing but pseudonovelists who use the form of the novel in order to illustrate their ideas. Neither Voltaire nor Camus ever discovered “that which the novel alone can discover.” …

[M]y intention is to give [philosophical] reflections a playful, ironic, provocative, experimental, or questioning tone. All of part six of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (“The Grand March”) is an essay on kitsch which expounds one main thesis: kitsch is the absolute denial of the existence of shit. This meditation on kitsch is of vital importance to me. It is based on a great deal of thought, experience, study, and even passion. Yet the tone is never serious; it is provocative. This essay is unthinkable outside of the novel, it is a purely novelistic meditation…

My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form. Nor is this purely an artistic ambition. The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas (those that occur in our beds as well as those that we play out on the great stage of History) and their awful insignificance. We experience the unbearable lightness of being.

No, not languages. You’re a smart kid from Nowheresville who got into Harvard. You’re totally able to learn languages.

What you need to learn is languidity. Someone needs to demonstrate to you how to be swish, posh, and highborn, even though you went to public school in Akron. You will not get taken on at Cravath Swain if you can’t learn languid.

Languid is Algernon in Earnest; languid is George in Who’s Afraid; languid is Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, and Lady Utterwood in Heartbreak.

Languid in the real world is Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, and Lady Emily Lennox. All of these are your models. Or, you know.

***********************

As pointed out by a number of defenders of legacy admissions, the overarching value in your going to Harvard among America’s aristocrats is that by watching them at close daily quarters you can learn how to throw off Akron and assume Cambridge (either England or America). You can learn to absorb upper class attributes, primary among them a steady unflappable sangfroid.

You come from the jumpy world that supplies COPS footage. You are going to need to scrub all of that and calm way the hell down.

A fellowship year in England will further refine your languidity and is highly recommended.

All of this does indeed constitute one of the few reasonable defenses of legacy admits you’ll encounter: Without a critical mass of uppers at the Ivies, America’s middles will have a harder time getting to the top.

… Charles William Eliot, who was president of Harvard from … 1869 to 1909? Forty years???

******************

In a 1904 letter to a friend, Eliot wrote:

I am inclined to think that you would be more tolerant than I of the presence of stupid sons of the rich...

*******************

Not a peep all this time from the far more tolerant subsequent presidents…

We sure the fuck did.

[Gal Luft] was arrested in Cyprus in February on charges of willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”), arms trafficking, Iranian sanctions violations, and making false statements to federal agents.

He’s currently on the run.

**************************

Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson claimed on Sunday, before the release of the indictment, that authorities had arrested Luft “to silence him,” and called for the fugitive to be granted immunity. 

You tell ’em, Ron!

First there was an update on frat life there:

[M]ultiple individuals reported they were drugged at an AEPi house event, and according to the Saturday notice, another individual reported they were drugged at an SAE house event… The University suspended [SAE] in April 2017 after a report that four women were drugged at the house that January. Despite the report, the chapter faced no disciplinary action from NU, and returned to campus on probation in 2018 after completing a one-year suspension. 

That’s from a 2021 article about a large student demonstration in front of SAE, along with calls to shut down NU’s long-lurid Greek system.

Most recently, there are the school’s closely-associated sports teams:

A former Northwestern player said the alleged hazing acts that took place within the football program were “egregious and vile and inhumane behavior.” …

If a player was selected for “running,” … they would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin “dry-humping” the victim in a dark locker room...

[A] Daily Northwestern article also mentioned other allegations of hazing rituals, including a practice where freshmen had to duplicate a snap from the center to the quarterback while both players were naked. It also cited a second player who noted the existence of the ritual.

[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.

*******************

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

… is a very good photographer.

Two items of interest:

1. Governor DeSantis has announced his first foreign policy measure if he gains the White House:

“I will immediately cut off all recognition of/cooperation with Latvia, which has just elected its first admitted homosexual president. Bad enough that this person is known to be an ‘ardent’ supporter of Ukraine; he adds insult to injury by poisoning the minds of our children with woke ideology. With friends like these, America doesn’t need enemies.”

2. Yale University has issued its first statement about its practice of favoring legacy applicants:

“Ron DeSantis was one of our few non-legacy admits his year at Yale. We’ll stick with legacies.”