End of an era at the Lawrence Journal-World.

My motto is: "Journalism will never love you back." But I can't remember a time when I didn't love news and newspapers. Still do. I love my hometown paper, the Lawrence Journal-World.

The journalists of the LJW will be moving out of their beautiful downtown space by the end of the month, opting for smaller digs in North Lawrence at an old outlet mall. I was on staff in 2001 when we moved into this office - which had previously been the city's post office.

So I'm kind of sad about the move. I worked at LJW from 2000-2007, got to be a reporter, an editor, and the paper's first blogger. We shared the digs with 6News, a local cable TV outlet. I learned how to be a TV reporter, too.

I had so much fun. I think part of it was being the right age - late 20s and early 30s - but some of it was that it was the last possible moment to be optimistic and hopeful about working for a newspaper, as opposed to grimly determined.

The Great Recession set in shortly after I left, and newspapers haven't been the same since.

The Journal-World has passed to corporate ownership. The staff is smaller. It no longer prints its own papers. Things are different. But the folks left behind are still working like hell to cover their community.

They're led by editor and publisher Chad Lawhorn, who takes his share of criticism and jokes in the community, but who has worked like hell himself to keep the paper covering important stories in the community. The city doesn't know how lucky it is to have him.

This is the point where it's tempting to mark the moment with the -30-, but the Journal-World isn't ending -- just its residence at a particular spot downtown. The journalists are still working like hell. The headlines seen here? They were produced in different locations.

So. A moment of sadness perhaps. Time to acknowledge that times change, that the industry has changed, and that you can't go home again.

It was a great place to work. But there's still work to be done. So I wish my friends and former colleagues the best of luck in their new digs. There's news to cover!

(Many thanks to the staff of the LJW for letting me visit one last time. Y'all are awesome.)

What does it mean to ‘believe women?’

"Believing women" doesn't mean we have to accept accusations as evidence. So what might it mean in real life? 

• When a woman makes an accusation, it would mean pursuing all available lines of evidence to weigh the truth of her claims. In the matter of Brett Kavanaugh's SCOTUS nomination, it would mean calling Mark Judge, Kavanaugh's buddy, to testify under penalty of perjury. So far that's not happening. That the Senate Judiciary Committee is not taking such a step suggests they don't have much interest in trying, as best as we poor humans are capable, of making a genuine attempt to determine the truth of the matter. 

• When a woman's accusation is proven, the person convicted of abusing or assaulting her will be given more than a slap-on-the-wrist punishment. 

• And women a woman says she has been traumatized by sexual assault, we don't wave our hands and tell her to toughen up instead of being such a victim. 

None of this means accepting an accusation as evidence. What it does mean is taking the accusation seriously enough to learn the truth, and taking women seriously enough to deal seriously with the men who have assaulted them. 

Given the state of our arguments over Kavanaugh — and I truly don't know if he's guilty or innocent of the allegations, though I'm inclined to believe his accuser — I'd say we're not there yet.

AmGreatness' Chris Buskirk: Proof of rape is no bar to SCOTUS

At AmGreatness, Chris Buskirk shreds all the conservatives who think maybe a proven rapist shouldn't have a seat on the Supreme Court. I'll let him speak for himself:

National Review’s Jim Geraghty not only thinks that Ford’s claims should bar Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court, but he told Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic, who wrote she believes Ford despite the lack of evidence, that “it’s hard to see how he could remain a federal judge.” David French agreed that the allegations, if proven, should “mar him for life.” National Review OnlineEditor Charles C. W. Cooke agreed, adding that he doesn’t think that makes him “irrational or a Stalinist.”

 What's interesting is that Geraghty and French have both made their condemnation of Kavanaugh conditional: He doesn't get the seat if the rape allegations are proven. But both Geraghty and French have made clear they don't think the allegations have been proven. 

Geraghty:

But we’re still a long, long way from proving either accusation. Both allegations stem from the accuser’s memory of events of 35 or 36 years ago. In both cases, the accusers say they had been drinking alcohol before the actions; in both cases, the accusers admit they cannot recall key details.

French:

No wonder the Democrats are emphasizing that the Senate isn’t a court. They’re advancing claims that so far can’t possibly meet the lowest standard of proof.

For making such claims, Buskirk paints the duo as surrender monkeys.

"Yet, these are the people who represent themselves as “true conservatives.” They’re not and it’s time for actual conservatives to realize it and ignore them. What they really are is self-righteous moralizers and anti-social prigs."

In other words: If you think a proven rapist doesn't belong on the court, but think the allegation are unproven, you're a prig. And maybe that's the stance you have to take if the president you support so ardently has a sexual history so offensive and messy that there's no real defense of it: If you're not going to hold him to any moral standards, why would you impose those standards on any other person seeking high office?

(One thing I'll say about the folks at AmGreatness — full disclosure: some key people in it were once friends of mine, but I'm afraid that day has passed — is that they're not really into coalition building. There's never a sense of "reasonable people can disagree, and here's why I disagree." If you're even a little bit not on board the Trump Train, even if there's substantial overlap in your views an goals, you're the enemy.)

If Trumpist conservatives have any values aside from keeping brown people out of the United States and owning the libs, it's difficult to discern. It's not my fight, I guess, but I prefer the self-righteous moralizers to the nihilists.

Kavanaugh's high school yearbook: A textbook case of toxic masculinity

This is awful:

Brett Kavanaugh’s page in his high school yearbook offers a glimpse of the teenage years of the man who is now President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: lots of football, plenty of drinking, parties at the beach. Among the reminiscences about sports and booze is a mysterious entry: “Renate Alumnius.” 

The word “Renate” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in a group photo of nine football players, including Judge Kavanaugh, who were described as the “Renate Alumni.” It is a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school. 

Two of Judge Kavanaugh’s classmates say the mentions of Renate were part of the football players’ unsubstantiated boasting about their conquests. 

(Snip)

“I learned about these yearbook pages only a few days ago,” Ms. Dolphin said in a statement to The New York Times. “I don’t know what ‘Renate Alumnus’ actually means. I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things, but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way. I will have no further comment.”

I don't know whether Kavanaugh is guilty or innocent of the sexual improprieties he is accused of. But I do know that this NYT story about his yearbook could be Exhibit A in a presentation of What We Mean When We Talk About Toxic Masculinity.

Listen to this:

Some of Judge Kavanaugh’s high school peers said there was a widespread culture at the time of objectifying women. 

“People claiming that they had sex with other people was not terribly unusual, and it was not terribly believable,” said William Fishburne, who was in Judge Kavanaugh’s graduating class and was a manager for the football team. “Not just Brett Kavanaugh and his particular group, but all the classmates in general. People would claim things they hadn’t done to sort of seem bigger than they were, older than they were.”

I don't think this is unusual. The "boys will be boys" defense practically writes itself. But that's why it's a problem! Letting a young woman's name be sullied for decades on the pages of a yearbook, preserved for all history, for the sake of a joke and boasting? Gross and wrong.

Brett Kavanaugh and Fox News

I wish Kavanaugh had chosen a less nakedly political outlet to do this interview. By choosing Fox News, it signals that partisanship will still be core to his identity as a judge. And it really only reaches the people inclined to support him. Our jurisprudence is screwed if federal judges, like our current president, decide they need only play to the GOP base in order to succeed.

Netflix Queue: Black Panther

Three thoughts about Black Panther after a family viewing:

* This was my second viewing - I first saw it when it was in the theaters. It was a better experience this time: I think when I originally saw it I was so primed by all the hype that it was difficult for me to enjoy the movie on its own terms. This time I just watched, and it was fun.

* The highlight of both viewings: Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger. There's something about Jordan's acting that confuses me. Often, it seems to me, his affect is sort of flat. And yet, when his characters meet their biggest challenge -- I'm thinking Creed, but also The Wire - I find myself immensely moved. I can't figure out what kind of alchemy is going on there, but maybe I don't have to.

* That said, I'm tiring out of Marvel movies. Even with Ryan Coogler in charge, the look of this movie was so much like others. Wakanda's capital city looks a lot like Asgard to me, and maybe that's just a function of CGI cartoonishness that infests every corner of the screen. I will give this movie something, though: It was about something - lots of things, actually - instead of a hunt for a McGuffin. The calories don't feel quite so empty. But that's faint praise for a movie that, for many people, looked and felt pretty important.

Regarding Melania

Dear Trump-resisting friends:

Don't let President Trump's overall awfulness bait you into silly conspiracy-mongering absent any proof.

You needn't furnish your opponents with easy ways to take swipes at your credibility. Tread carefully.

Sincerely, Joel

Yes, immigrants do democracy. (Or, why 'The Flight 93 Election' is wrong. Again.)

Remember "The Flight 93 Election?" It was the "intellectual" case for voting Trump, and one of its central conceits is that immigration is bad because brown people don't know how to do democracy.

The ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.

There's a lot to unpack there, much of it scurrilous, but you get the idea.

Anyway, Cato's David Bier ran into the same argument and makes mincemeat of it. "While immigrants do have less experience with liberal democracy than Americans do, the recent wave of immigrants actually comes from much more democratic countries than earlier waves."

He concludes:

The bottom line is that although immigrants to the United States today are less likely to have experience with liberal democracies than Americans, they are much more likely to have lived in liberal democracies than the ancestors of most Americans when they first arrived here.

Today's immigrants have more experience with self-governance than did the immigrant grandparents of today's fusty white guys. Who knew?

Where have all the teenagers in the workforce gone? (Or, how I held three jobs when I was 20.)

They're trying to get into college instead.

A recent analysis by economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that an increased emphasis on education — and getting scholarships — had contributed to the decline in working teenagers, reflecting both the rising costs of education and the low wages most people that age can earn.

When I was 16, my dad told me it was time to get an after-school job. The days of my extracurricular activities were pretty much over — no more debate, no more football for me after my sophomore year, but I did spend about 20 hours a week carrying out groceries.

My dad was operating under the assumption he'd grown up under, that getting a job as a teen is a way to learn responsibility and, not incidentally, start paying for the fact that your life is becoming real expensive. (It's not just running-around money: Have you ever paid a teen boy's car insurance?)

These days, though, such a decision might've reduced my competitiveness getting into college. I made my way through on scholarships, loans, and work — my junior year I was a resident assistant, editor of the campus paper, and still carried out groceries. I also played in the pep band and carried a full load of classes. But I think even then, I was a rarity.

Today, a lot of the work I did then would be seen as competing with my education, I think, instead of enabling it. That's unfortunate: Learning to work was pretty important for me, and having a work ethic has served me well as a freelancer. Those skills never go out of style, but we're maybe not passing them on as well.

Republicans will always have Hillary Clinton to kick around

Vox: "Eleven House Republicans — Ron DeSantis, Andy Biggs, Dave Brat, Jeff Duncan, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Jody Hice, Todd Rokita, Claudia Tenney, and Ted Yoho — have signed a joint letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling for the criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton and a variety of other Obama administration appointees, career FBI officials, and even Trump appointee Dana Boente, who is currently the FBI’s general counsel."

Two things:

• Remember when President Obama refused to prosecute Bush-era torture suspects because he wanted the country to move forward? Republicans apparently don't, or don't care.

• One nice thing about Republican administrations is that the GOP jeremiad against Hillary Clinton used to take a few months off now and again. When she ran against Obama in 2008 there were even some "strange new respect" noises from the right. Those days are over. The jeremiad is eternal now. And why not? It keeps attention off what ... the Republican administration is doing.

Tennessee: A white state punishes a black city for not honoring the heroes of racism

NPR:

The city of Memphis could lose a quarter-million dollars as punishment for removing statues of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Confederate President Jefferson Davis last year. 

The Tennessee House of Representatives voted Tuesday to strip the money from next year's state budget. The sum had been earmarked to go toward planning for Memphis' bicentennial celebrations next year.

A key thing to understand here: Memphis is 63 percent black. Tennessee is 83 percent white.

What you have here is a white state punishing a black city for not honoring the heroes of racism. Disgusting.

Not even President Trump reliably speaks for President Trump.

Two stories in the New York Times this morning highlight a problem with the Trump presidency.

Actually, it's two problems, but they're related. The first is that no one but President Trump reliably speaks for President Trump.

President Trump was watching television on Sunday when he saw Nikki R. Haley, his ambassador to the United Nations, announce that he would impose fresh sanctions on Russia. The president grew angry, according to an official informed about the moment. As far as he was concerned, he had decided no such thing. 

The rift erupted into open conflict on Tuesday when a White House official blamed Ms. Haley’s statement about sanctions on “momentary confusion.” That prompted her to fire back, saying that she did not “get confused.” The public disagreement embarrassed Ms. Haley and reinforced questions about Mr. Trump’s foreign policy — and who speaks for his administration.

The second: Not even President Trump reliably speaks for President Trump:

After publicly flirting last week with having the United States rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Trump appeared to rebuff the idea once and for all late Tuesday.

In a Twitter post at 10:49 p.m., Mr. Trump said that although Japan and South Korea would like the United States to join the 11 other nations in the multilateral trade agreement, he had no intention of doing so. The decision put an apparent end to a meandering trade policy in which Mr. Trump pulled out of the deal in his first week in office, before suggesting last week that he was having second thoughts.

 President Trump's statements are like the weather: If you don't like them, wait five minutes. Somebody will surely argue that this is a smart way of being president — keep everybody off guard — but it isn't. "Mercurial" is interesting in TV show characters, maybe. It's bad governance.

The Sinclair video: TV journalism (almost always) isn't journalism.

By now, you've probably seen this video:

 

  Deadspin explains:

Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts.

The problem, though, isn't Sinclair-owned stations. The problem is this: TV news, for the most part, isn't news.

I spent part of my career in a combine TV-print newsroom, so I've produced my share of packages and short readers. The station I worked for was an exception to this rule — which,  I suspect, is part of why that station no longer has a newscast.

They say politics is show business for ugly people.  Well: TV news is show business for pretty people who can't act or sing.

How you can tell this is true at the national level: If cable news was news, you'd see a lot more taped pieces telling stories and explaining stories than you do. Instead, what you get is panel after panel debating the headlines and screaming about them. Check out this NYTMag story from last year for a detailed look at how making CNN isn't really any different from producing sports - which is entertainment - or, ahem, "The Apprentice."

It's different at the local level, but there's still a problem. It's long been understood that TV news focuses on crime and disaster to the exclusion of other types of news stories — "if it bleeds it leads" — and thus presents its audience with a distorted view of their communities. And they do it because it's easy:

Violent crimes such as murders, robberies, and rapes are newsworthy because of identifiable elements. These elements are ideal for the art of story telling: definable events between individuals are concrete rather than abstract; dramatic, conflict-filled and intense stories are seen as interesting; crime is seen as disrupting order and threatening the community; TV news emphasizes short, simple and verifiable stories; and crime is visual and may be easily videotaped.

Newspapers cover crime, too. But they also cover City Hall and the Planning Commission and those stories that require some level of expertise to tell and explain — stuff that's important to the community but lacking the show-biz drama or surveillance video of a robbery.

The recent assent of Sinclair changes the dynamic: Now local news doesn't even matter at a number of local stations. They're being Fox News-ified, turned into right-wing propaganda mills. That's ... not local news.

There are exceptions to all of this, of course. And when news is breaking -  the kind of stuff that has good video - TV news is a good place to in the first formative moments.

After that? There's a reason Dan Rather explained a complicated story by asking viewers to read a newspaper the next day. The problem? They probably didn't. We're a nation of people who think they're in the know, but aren't.  TV news is part of the problem.

The Taliban are using our technology. Because of course they are.

The American war in Syria may end soon. When did it start?

My last comments on the Kevin Williamson affair

Dear Atlantic: Hire David French instead

There've been debates in recent days about The Atlantic's decision to hire National Review's Kevin Williamson. Conservatives think (not without merit, I think) that every time a mainstream publication hires a conservative, liberals try to get that conservative fired.

On the other hand: Williamson is a dick. He's been a little bit racist,  a little bit snooty, and you'll forgive women for thinking his proposal to execute women who've had an abortion is-a non-starter. He's a talented provocateur, too smart and self-aware to let himself go Full-Blown Milo, but he also delights sticking a thumb in the eye of people who disagree with him.

I'm not going to say The Atlantic shouldn't hire Williamson. I will say there's a National Review voice they should've hired instead: David A. French.

There would still be complaints. Critics have long eyed his marriage with suspicion. He's religiously conservative on sexual matters. He's skeptical, even hostile to Black Lives Matter. There's not much about which I think he's right.

On the other hand, French is a writer who takes liberals and liberal arguments seriously. Which makes him a great writer for The Atlantic's audience: He's willing to explain his ideas, and why he thinks liberal ideas are wrong, and he's generally better at doing it without resorting to trollish, strawman arguments. And he's been willing to call out his side for its failures — something that might earn the trust of liberal readers.

I don't agree with French about much. A lot of liberals would no doubt protest his appointment. But he lacks Williamson's baggage, and possesses some virtues Williamson does not. If The Atlantic  is reconsidering Williamson's appointment, it could do much worse than to hire David A. French.

I'm not happy with how we debate each other these days.

Why Trumpian immigration enforcement isn't really conservative

I've heard about this before, but it still astonishes me:

Border Patrol officers are working without permission on private property and setting up checkpoints up to 100 miles away from the border under a little-known federal law that is being used more widely in the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. 

Trump administration officials defend the government’s decades-old authority to search people and property, even without a warrant, far from the border. They call it a vital part of preventing weapons, terrorists and other people from illegally entering the United States. 

An estimated 200 million Americans live within 100 miles of the border, according to the A.C.L.U. At least 11 states — mostly in the Northeast and Florida — are either entirely or almost entirely in the 100-mile radius.

Conservatives talk about liberty and rule of law a lot, but what they're doing is giving police virtually unfettered power over much of the country. At the very least, they owe an accounting of how this squares with their limited government rhetoric.

The immorality of Trumpist immigration enforcement

I've suggested before that Trumpist immigration enforcement might be an act of injustice far worse than the offense of illegal immigration. We have two more examples this week of why it might be so.

First, we have the story of Jorge Garcia, a Detroit man being deported after 30 years in the United States. He was brought to the United States when he was 10; his deportation separates him from his wife and two children, all of them U.S. citizens. Please, read his story.

 Second, we have this atrocity:

US border patrol agents are routinely sabotaging water supplies left for migrants in the Arizona desert, condemning them to death, humanitarian groups have said. Travellers attempting to cross into the US from Mexico regularly die of dehydration, as well as exposure to extreme heat or cold, so aid groups leave water bottles and emergency stocks such as blankets at points throughout the Sonoran desert. A video released by the groups showed border patrol agents kicking over water bottles and pouring away their contents. A statement from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it was aware of the footage and that it was filmed around six years ago.

In the first case, a family is destroyed and disrupted — no doubt causing ripple effects in the community — because a man was born on one side of the border but, through circumstances not of his making, lived on this side of the border. As best I can tell, his actual presence in the country was doing nobody harm. Which means the greater harm is done by deporting him.

In the second case, people are being condemned to death and suffering to thwart the possibility of them being on the wrong side of the line.
 

 My friends in favor of immigration restrictions believe that a country has a right to make rules about who gets to come in and who doesn't. They are correct. But that doesn't make these kinds of enforcement actions moral. We're condemning people to death for, in essence, not following bureaucratic rules. We're destroying families whose only offense was actually committed by an older generation — unless, of course, you want to start making the case that 10-year-olds are in control of where older relatives take them.

 That is wrong. It is a sin. It is a sin being carried out in our name.

Henry Olsen's conservative lesson that liberals should hear

I've made little secret of my disdain for the Trump-loving website American Greatness. Part of this, I guess, is personal: I know a couple of the people who run the site and, until about a year ago, thought that though they were conservative, they'd still avoid Trumpian nonsense. That was wrong. I'm still working that out.

But it's also the case that I think 99 percent of what happens at AmGreatness is mean-spirited and unreflective, so sure of itself and its own rightness, yet small in soul and generosity. "Greatness" seems to be defined almost as its inverse. I'm not a conservative, but I don't think that has to define conservatism or my friends. Yet, for the moment, it does.

One other problem: The central conceit of American Greatness, to my mind, is that "saving America" means an end to politics. Progressives are always plotting to destroy the country — as are NeverTrump conservatives and Mitch McConnell, apparently. And in a way, this makes sense: The surest route for people to back a clear charlatan like Donald Trump is to convince oneself that America is perpetually on the brink. One outcome of this: Writers at the sight veer, from time to time, into pondering how to make liberal criticism of Donald Trump punishable by law. In any case, the language of the typical AmGreatness article is one of preparing for Civil War.

AmGreatness also seems unable to define America in ways that include people of color to any significant degree.

An exception to all of this is the writings of Henry Olsen. He's a a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative. But his appearance at the site gives me hope, because he's counseling his Trump-loving fellows to, uh, maybe ease up on the war talk. Here's an excerpt from his latest that I think my left-of-center friends could well afford to hear:

There are many Americans who do not see our politics as a fight between good and evil. Their votes will determine which side, progressives or conservatives, wins the conflict. If we are in a Flight 93 moment, if we do need to fight to preserve American ideals, then it behooves conservatives to try to attract those people’s votes rather than to denigrate them as “squishes” or as other sorts of undesirables whose company we deign to keep. That requires more than shouting our own principles more loudly and more clearly. It means speaking in such a way that can appeal to these voters and invite them to be a part of our coalition. 

That does not mean abandoning principle. It does mean understanding how to talk with and attract people who do not necessarily share your core premises. That in turn requires some degree of toleration, some degree of kindness, some degree of inclusion. Is your neighbor who thinks abortion ought to be legal in the first trimester but not thereafter, your enemy or a potential ally? Is your co-worker who thinks everyone should have decent health coverage but doesn’t think the government should run the health care system a squish or a potential convert? These are the questions I want us to ask and answer, as I think these are the questions that answering can help determine victory or defeat.

Emphasis added. Olsen's clearly speaking to conservatives here, but again, liberals might consider what he says here.

Since the moment Donald Trump won, the sense I've heard from my lefty friends regarding anybody who voted for him boils down to: "Fuck 'em."  I get the impulse, but ultimately think it's wrong-headed. Why? Well, for one thing, we share a country with these folks: If we're not going to actually go to war with them, we need to figure out how to live with them. But also: We live in a democratic republic. To take power back means winning elections. That means it behooves liberals to try to attract those people’s votes rather than to denigrate them as “deplorables,” or writing them off altogether.

That does not mean abandoning principle. It really does not mean silently nodding along when your neighbor says racist things, in hopes you can still grab their vote. But as Olsen says: It does mean understanding how to talk with and attract people who do not necessarily share your core premises. That in turn requires some degree of toleration, some degree of kindness, some degree of inclusion.

I'd rather attempt that than live in a country where roughly half of us would be happy, more or less, to see the other half silenced — or even die. The task of winning minds is hard. Very hard. But it's the worthy way. I'm glad somebody on the Trumpist side seems to think so, too.

The 'other' Ferguson effect

Jesse Singal at NYMag says the murder rate is going up, for whites and blacks, for different reasons. And the researcher he talks to endorses a "Ferguson effect," but different from how it's usually defined. There's a crisis of police legitimacy that is enabling the bad guys.

The Ferguson effect is a thoroughly politicized concept at this point, because it contains an implicit rebuke of the protests that exploded in the wakes of the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and other young black boys and men who have been unjustly killed by police. The thinking goes that all those angry, loud protesters are making it harder for police to do their jobs. 

But there’s another way of looking at this: It could be the case that yes, deteriorating relationships between communities and the police are helping drive the increased homicide rate, but that things go in the other direction. That is, some communities have come to view the police with such profound anger and fear that their members are less likely to seek out the assistance of law enforcement, and this is making it easier for people to get away with murder.

So how do we know which Ferguson effect might be causing the spike in murders?

A rather ingenious study lead-authored by Matthew Desmond, a MacArthur-winning sociologist at Harvard (and the author of the truly excellent 2016 book Evicted), lends some solid support to this hypothesis. As I explained in a study write-up, Desmond and his colleagues obtained detailed emergency-call data from the city of Milwaukee, and showed that after a horrific, high-profile event in which a group of police brutally assaulted a young black man, 911 calls appeared to be significantly depressed in black neighborhoods relative to what Desmond and his colleagues’ number-crunching suggests they should have been.

We need for the police to be seen as legitimate enforcers of law in the communities where they serve. It matters. But that legitimacy earned, and easily forfeit.

The other takeaway: White on white crime is a BIG driver of the rising murder rate.

Rosenfeld and his co-authors explain that increases in the white homicide and homicide-victimization rates are a big part of the story here — “the growth in the non-Hispanic white victimization rate was greater than in any year since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.” In fact, according to some calculations Rosenfeld ran for me, the increase in the white murder rate drove a large chunk of the overall increase. “If white homicides had not increased from 2014 to 2016, the 2016 homicide rate would have dropped from 5.3 per 100,000 population [in 2016] to 4.8 per 100,000, 9.4% lower [than the actual rate],” he said in an email, meaning the overall trend would look quite different and less worrying.

It's hard to avoid the thought we're entering an ugly era.

No, the New York Times isn't normalizing Nazis.

Yes, this story could be better — for it to have some meaning, we'd get some insight as to why Tony Hovater became a Holocaust-denying Nazi sympathizer. But the critics go further, saying that the story "normalizes" Nazis.

I dunno. Not sure how you can read this and think "gosh, that's normal":

Or this:

It's true, the story doesn't spend a lot of time screaming "this is bad!" But I suspect that's because the NYT editors know their audience probably doesn't include a lot of Nazi sympathizers, or even many folks who are Nazi agnostic.

When bad cops get fired and rehired

Great Washington Post piece about Gene Gibbons, a lawyer with remarkable success in getting bad cops rehired by the same police departments that deemed them unfit for duty. The un-shocking thing? He's from Philadelphia. His origin story is a little bit unexpected, though.

For Gibbons, an affable, barrel-chested man, the path to becoming an advocate for embattled police officers began when he was a teen growing up outside Philadelphia in the early 1980s. 

Then 16, Gibbons was driving home in the family station wagon when a Philadelphia police officer pulled him over. Gibbons sat quietly while the officer ran his license. When he returned, the boy asked the officer why he had been stopped. Gibbons said the officer abruptly punched him in the face and told him to go home.

“I was stewing mad,” he said. “The police had tremendous power.”

So, naturally, he made a career of ... enabling those abuses of power. Huh.

Anyway, there are lots of examples in the story of officers who had long documented patterns of bad behavior who got their jobs back anyway. Important thing to note: The examples are from Florida, which is renowned for its "sunshine" laws. In most states, police unions have persuaded legislatures to close such records to the public, making it very difficult for the public to know about problems in their local department. Police, who keep the rest of us accountable to the law, are practically immune to any such accountability themselves.

The book I'm most thankful for in 2017

Buzzfeed checks in with writers to find out which books they're most thankful for.

First, I'm thankful to be back in the book-reading business in a serious way. I had a nasal reconstruction surgery this year that largely alleviated some sleep deprivation issued I'd had in recent years. I'm able to concentrate on an enjoy long-form reading again.

Second: The book I'm thankful for this year is Alan Jacobs' "How to Think."

Here's what I wrote on Facebook after completing it:

Finished reading Alan Jacobs' "How to Think" after two days. It's that good (and also that slim - about 160 pages). I want to sit with it a couple of days before writing about it more, but it gets at some thoughts I've had since the Trump Election and how I've tried - with varying degrees of success (and by "varying," I mean outright failure at times) - not to write off people with whom I have disagreements. 

Mostly it boils down to: They are human. With different journeys than I have. If I had made their journey, maybe I'd think the way they think. And having made my own journey, I might be blind sometimes - almost assuredly am - to errors in my own thinking. 

This doesn't mean I'm wrong or my Trump Voter friends are right, nor does it mean there is no truth to strive for - no right or wrong - but it does mean we are occasionally limited in our capacity to know it. And knowing those limits, it's good open our ears to people who think differently: We may never change our minds about anything, but to be somewhat open to the possibility is to be alive and self-aware and striving to be bigger and better than you are. 

That's my hope, anyway.

I'm currently reading Stephen L. Carter's "Civility." It shares some themes with Jacobs' book. I'll share more in the near future.

Why are Dems opposed to Trump's tax reform bill?

The Weekly Standard seems genuinely mystified.

Bringing U.S. corporate taxation in line with that of our global peers will spur the sort of broad-based growth that the Obama administration’s central planners could never achieve and that will benefit middle-income families quite as much as “the wealthy.” 

Ahem.

The first question was straightforward. Would they agree that if the US passed a tax bill “similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate,” GDP would be “substantially higher a decade from now”? Of the 42 economists polled, only one thought the Republican bill would boost the economy. The plurality said it wouldn’t, and the remainder were uncertain or didn’t answer.

Back to the Standard:

But the House bill, at least, contains some needed simplification: It cuts the number of brackets from seven to four, abolishes the estate tax, and gets rid of arbitrary breaks for such things as medical expenses, student-loan interest, and rehabilitating a historic home.

So. The promise of economic growth seems like a promise that might not materialize for the middle class or anybody else — but the loss of "arbitrary breaks" that help the middle class, for medical expenses and student loan interest — are pretty clear. The payoff may not come, but the sacrifice definitely will. This isn't that confusing.

No nondisclosure agreement for Congressional misconduct settlements

Probably the first time I've ever agreed with Andrew McCarthy:

Our public officials are supposed to be accountable and transparent, especially when they are expending public money. It is thus outrageous that Congress has made this cozy arrangement to sweep under the rug malfeasance by members of the club. There is no legal or policy reason to refrain from legislation that would out the lawmakers involved in misconduct settlements — regardless of the type of misconduct (I wouldn’t limit it to sexual episodes). 

Donald Trump's race problem

Donald Trump's supporters really want the public not to think he's racist, Vox reports, but Trump himself isn't really helping the cause.

Even before Wednesday morning, Trump’s blows to Lynch and Ball fit into an ongoing pattern of the president’s use of sports and the behavior of athletes of color as a battlefield for a culture war waged on behalf of his supporters. In Trump’s envisioning, black athletes are showing contempt for the country through displays of blatant disrespect and lack of explicit gratitude, a framing that his critics have called out for being little more than a thinly veiled racial dog whistle, one that is rooted in Trump’s troubled history on racial issues.

Understand, it's not just that Trump criticizes black athletes. Remember, he's refused to condemn folks like David Duke or the Charlottesville white supremacist marchers — or done so in a belated, churlish, "fine folks on both sides" way. The combination of who he criticizes and who he refuses to criticize seem pretty telling. All the excuse-making by his conservative media allies can't really cover that up. 

Common sense gun control

I have a friend who says there's no such thing as "common sense gun control." Maybe if we just did the little things:

Tens of thousands of people wanted by law enforcement officials have been removed this year from the FBI criminal background check database that prohibits fugitives from justice from buying guns. 

The names were taken out after the FBI in February changed its legal interpretation of “fugitive from justice” to say it pertains only to wanted people who have crossed state lines. 

What that means is that those fugitives who were previously prohibited under federal law from purchasing firearms can now buy them, unless barred for other reasons.

So if you're accused of murder but haven't crossed state lines: Congratulations?

How to survive your relatives' politics at Thanksgiving

Maybe stay home this year?

We returned to Kansas last year after eight years in Philadelphia, in part to be closer to our retirement-age parents. But one thing we discovered during our years in exile is that we don't mind the occasional holiday with just the three of us — me, my wife, and my son — to hang out.

So we're skipping broader festivities this year. We'll go see everybody at Christmas, but this year's Thanksgiving is about putting on a low-maintenance stew in the Crock Pot, watching a bunch of movies, and simply hanging out. We love our families, let there be no doubt. But sometimes the best way to holiday is to hibernate.

Me @TheWeek: We need to do a better job welcoming Republicans to the anti-Trump resistance

Why can't liberals take yes for an answer?

"We cannot loudly and publicly say, 'Where in the hell are the Republicans who are willing to call out Trump?' then boo them when they do so," writer/activist Shaun King said Tuesday on Twitter. "When people you don't like do the right thing, the important thing, even if they've been enemies before, that's progress." 

We don't have to forget that John McCain is overly hawkish, or that Bob Corker wanted to be Trump's secretary of state, or that George W. Bush was a historically awful president. But right now, the priority for lefties should be to contain and eventually end Donald Trump's presidency. They shouldn't be so eager to turn away allies. Liberals must learn to take "yes" for an answer.

Read it all! 

My passion for "A Prayer for Owen Meany."

Sometimes, things come into your life through serendipity.

How I ended up reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" was this: After I graduated from college in 1995, I moved to Southeast Kansas to take a job at a small-town daily newspaper. One of my best friends from college, Brent Graber, was taking a gap year before grad school, so he moved in with me.

That probably saved my life. I was so alone, otherwise.

In any case, Brent enjoyed going to estate sales an picking up stuff cheap. And one time he picked up the "Owen" at such a sale.

When we were at home in the evenings, he read passages to me, laughing with delight. So when he finished, I picked it up and read it. And was smitten.

The first time I read "Owen Meany," I loved it because it was hilarious.

The second time I read "Owen Meany," I loved it because it let me know in a keen way that faith and doubt, that sacredness and profanity, often coexist.

The third time I read "Owen Meany," I closed the book, then handed it to the barista in the coffee shop where I was sitting and urged her to read it.

The fourth time I read "Owen Meany," the rage over 1980s politics seemed a bit dated — but I saw more of myself in the middle-aged narrator's disillusionment.

Will there be a fifth time? I don't know. Some books accompany you all the way through life, though. "Owen," for me, is one of them.

How I got cut from jury duty

I spent parts of two days in a Douglas County District Court last week, undergoing the tedious process of jury selection for a criminal trial. I'm pretty sure I know why I got cut, and I'm still a little bothered by it.

If you've never been through the jury selection process, it can be a pretty intense thing — the prosecuting and defense attorneys each have a crack at the jury pool, asking hours of questions designed to elicit your biases, and to send you home if your biases are too overt. Lots of personal information gets shared, sometimes tears are shed, and it's all a very intense way to spend time with a few dozen strangers.

It's also, less obviously, a preparation for trial and the types of arguments that both sides will make. The lawyers, in picking a jury, are walking a tricky line: They want to get rid of overtly biased jurors so that they can conform to fair trial rules — but they also want to pick jurors who might be amenable to the arguments. So, not too biased but biased enough.

Which, I guess, is where I come in.

My passion for U2's "Rattle and Hum"

The first album I was ever intimate with was U2's "Rattle and Hum."

By intimate, I don't mean "liked" or "loved." What I mean is this: The cassette tape was a constant presence in my stereo for the better part of a year in the late 1980s. I played it in the car, I played it in my room, I played it over and over and over again, singing along with — emulating — Bono's wails and snarls over and over again so much that even now, 30 years later, I can still perform much of the album if it suddenly appears on a sound system within earshot. Like Bono, I no longer hit the high notes quite so effortlessly, and the Gospel version of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" resonates now, in my forties, in ways it didn't when I was a teenager. But still.

It may seem odd that "Rattle and Hum" inspired this passion in me; it was U2's prior album, "The Joshua Tree," that launched the band into the pantheon of rock gods, and the follow-up live album — if I remember correctly — was judged a lesser effort. But you don't fully decide what music you find or finds you, especially in rural Kansas in the late 1980s, and the album's release in 1988 coincided with my sophomore year of high school. I was ready to be smitten with so much about life, and musically, "Rattle and Hum" immediately became what I loved most.

It's possible the competition wasn't really there. Again, I lived in rural Kansas during the pre-Internet age. It's possible I might've heard of bands like, say, the Pixies, and I remember a skater friend had a copy of an early Red Hot Chili Peppers, but my high school years were dominated by hair metal, Young MC, and this new guy named Garth Brooks. Later, I would envy friends who spent those same years listening to the Smiths. I'd never heard of them.

Next to "Cherry Pie," U2 seemed deep and authentic and they sang in overt ways about Christian concepts that, at the time, I'd only heard from Christian bands. At the time, too, Bono's perpetual smug righteousness - a trait he's carried forth into late middle-age - wore much better when he was in his 20s and I, a teen, was finding what I cared about. Yeah! Killing Martin Luther King Jr. was wrong! Apartheid is bad! Albert Goldman is an unethical book writer!

Some of the causes have aged better than others.

Two other good memories of the album: My senior year in college, taking a long road trip with my college band, and singing the album at the top of my lungs with Mike Yutzy. And a group of friends "borrowing" the college's digital projector to show the concert movie of the same name on the side of a dormitory.

I put the album on over the weekend for a short roadtrip — "Rattle ahd Hum's" running time being equivalent to about the length of a quick turnpike run between Emporia and Lawrence, Kansas. When "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" ended, my son offered a slow, sarcastic golf clap.

Punk.

I guess my passions won't be his, which is fine. I won't be 15 again, which is mostly good. But it was good to rediscover the album, to rediscover my Bono impression. I still haven't found what I'm looking for, either, but "Rattle and Hum" puts me a little closer to locating it.

Are college kids the biggest threat to free speech?

No. But I think Atrios is missing something with this:

The obsession of our pundit class with elite college generally, and specifically the idea that lefty college kids are the greatest threat to free speech ever known to man, is completely bizarre. I know that sometimes well-meaning college kids can be dumb. They are 19! They also don't have any power. Sure everybody can have a bit of power over someone or something for a moment, but structurally...college kids have no power. Even Harvard kids. The $30 billion endowment has power.

Our pundits punched hippies when they were in college (show me where the hippie hurt you, Jon) and they can't stop punching them now. It's so weird.

I suppose I'm one of the hippie punchers in this scenario. But here's the thing: College is a place one goes to learn habits of mind and habits of how to act on the ideas of what your mind generates. The students in college will, in not too long, be the folks running our offices and our states and our nation, and if they're developing censorious habits of mind that they'll take forward with them into that future, that is of concern.

That's to say nothing of that fact that colleges are supposed to be the areas of our society where inquiry and expression is most free. "Academic freedom" has covered a multitude of sins over the years - and rightfully so. When those zones of freedom become clogged by the censorious instinct, it leaves the rest of us with a reduced chance to fight for expression.

Is it important compared to President Trump threatening to investigate the press? Probably not. But it still matters, and remains worthy of comment.

Is late night supposed to be fair and balanced?

I understand that late night talk shows are more overtly political — liberal, really — than they were two or three years ago. Still, I find it kind of odd that there seems to be a real push for both "balance" and comprehensiveness of coverage, mostly from the right.

This is becoming a regular thing:

Discussions of balance and story choice make sense where the news media — especially media that presents itself as attempting objectivity —are concerned. But these are comedy shows, and most comedy has a point of view. Do they owe the audience (or a portion of the audience) to address certain topics?

This isn't a defense of Harvey Weinstein. I just think this "make jokes about Harvey" push from the right is based on expectations that folks on the right don't get to have. Fair and balanced is for news — maybe — but it's a silly, unrealistic expectation for a comedy routine.

Maybe the New York Times really does have it in for Hillary Clinton

Great piece by the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein's decades-long pattern of sexual harassment, but the Times makes one editorial choice I find weird and even a little upsetting.

It uses this picture with the story:

It's worth noting, of course, that Weinstein is connected to and moves among powerful figures. Yet this photo feels ... unnecessary. It's not the picture of Clinton with him that bothers me. It's the picture of Clinton laying her hands on Weinstein, who we are learning in this story is a serial sexual harasser. The combination of the two factors makes the picture look like something that it's not.

I'm not one to obsess about the Times and its treatment of Clinton. I think her emails and Clinton Foundation practices were fair game for inquiry - and hell, I supported her during the primary season. This feels unnecessary, though. A little bit like piling on. Ick.

21 things I think about guns.

I believe that guns are tools made for the explicit purpose of killing.

I think that sometimes, unfortunately, killing is necessary.

I think that even when necessary, killing is morally fraught and not to be entered into lightly.

I think the act of owning a gun is a signal to the world you have determined you can trustworthily decide when killing is correct. I think that’s … kind of extraordinary. I think I do not possess that sensibility myself.

I think that even if I wanted to make gun ownership illegal, it would be impossible to do, politically, in America.

I think I grew up in Kansas, around good people who possessed guns safely and with respect for life.

I think I lived eight years in Philadelphia, around good people who feared for their lives because of guns.

So.

I think that firearms education - like the hunter safety classes of my Kansas youth - should be available wherever access to guns is available.

Which is to say, just about everywhere.

I think that the right to bear arms is not completely unfettered, because no right is.

I think part of the anguish about the gun debate, on one side, is a fear that government is going to come and take everybody’s guns away.

I think part of the anguish about the gun debate, on the other side, is that that fear seems to block even modest and incremental regulations that might create more safety for Americans at large.

I think, for example, that there are many obstacles to passing laws that require owners to report missing and stolen guns. Even though this seems to be the very essence of responsible gun ownership, and even though one study indicates eight in 10 gun crimes are committed using guns that were illegally possessed by somebody other than the other.

I think one could pass a law like that, make America a little safer, and nobody’s legitimately obtained gun would’ve been seized by the government. So I think I don’t understand why the opposition to something like that is reasonable.

I think that mass killings like the one in Las Vegas weirdly work for the NRA types, because they can challenge any reasonable regulation offered afterward with: “How does this stop (insert mass killing here)?”

And I think a sufficient answer should be: “We don’t know that it would. But here’s the reasoning this regulation might reduce killings overall.”

I think people who offer such regulations should be prepared to discuss that reasoning in detail.

Finally, I think the NRA is not magic. They spend a lot, yes, but not infinitely on lobbying and political contributions. They’re effective because they have a committed constituency - one, by the way, that isn’t necessarily reflective of the broader gun-owning population. The NRA wins because the NRA’s membership cares more than you do. They’re working even when gun regulations aren’t a top-line issue in our societal debate. They stay committed even during the fallow times. So if you want to do something, you are going to have to care more and organize your friends to care more.

I think that will be hard.

I think, ultimately, there’s room in this country for both gun ownership and a smarter regime of gun regulation.

But I think I don’t know if we’ll ever see it.

The difference between guns and climate change

It seems to me that when liberals draw on particularized knowledge (say, of science) to make the case for certain policies (say, regarding climate change), they're accused of pointy-headedness, tyranny by bureaucracy, and general elitism.

When conservatives draw on particularized knowledge - such as with guns - they're more "in touch with the people" and keepin' it real. This, coincidentally, lets them try to shut down conversations about gun regulations because folks on the left lack a certain expertise regarding the details of the issue. 

A bit of an epistemic closure problem I'm not sure how to resolve, except to note the hypocrisy.

 Anyway, one doesn't have to have particularized knowledge of guns or how they work, specifically, to note that just one man killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 more in just a matter of minutes the other night, nor to sense that perhaps something's amiss in our governance that apparently gathering the tools to commit massacre was done so easily.

Arguing, purposefully but respectfully

Two pieces in the aftermath of the Las Vegas aftermath that I want to highlight, because they're so gentle and humane without being wishy-washy.

The first is from David French at National Review. His conservatism - his social conservatism, especially - is not mine. But I very much appreciate how he decided to respond to Jimmy Kimmel's response to Las Vegas: Not with demonizing or mockery, like so many conservatives did, but with a dose of understanding. The title of the post is "Jimmy Kimmel is sincerely wrong about guns," and that may tell you as much as anything about the tone.

French:

Humanity has struggled to neutralize evil men for millennia. For millennia, we have failed. It doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to try. It doesn’t mean that we close ourselves off to innovative solutions and new ideas. It does mean, however, that even the best of intentions and the most genuine of monologues have to be exposed to the cold light of law, reason, and facts. Sincerity only makes misinformation more dangerous. Kimmel is misleading Americans, and when he misleads, he’s not acting as a “moral authority,” he’s clouding the debate. 

I don't agree with all of French's conclusions in the post, but he treats Kimmel like a person who was sincerely sad about the massacre, sincerely looking for solutions, but lays out his disagreement.

Similarly, some thoughts from Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic.

But I try to avoid expressing anger at any honest reaction in such moments, keeping in mind that we all bear tragedy differently; and that among the dead in Las Vegas and the heroes who shielded the living were people who would have reacted in all those ways had the atrocity happened someplace else. I try to be forgiving even of ghastly jokes or callous comments, because many are much better than what they say when suddenly subject to horrors that can scarcely be conceived; insofar as they behave badly, it is rooted in the trauma of helplessly watching the terrible specter of worldly evil. 

We’re stuck together in this era of connectedness; we’ll react to many future tragedies together: mass shootings, natural disasters, mass casualty accidents, terrorist attacks, even wars. Human difference ensures that many will have different notions of how one ought to react, and that some will behave badly by most of those standards. To be forgiving of others while trying to be constructive is our charge.

We will always have disagreements. Some of them may well nigh be impossible to resolve. And tone-policing can be a way of blocking justice, admittedly. But maybe one solution to all our woes is to treat our neighbors in a neighborly fashion - to treat them, no matter how much we disagree, as people with sets of hopes and fears and ways of seeing the world that feel legitimate to them. This is harder to do in some cases than others, and God knows I fall short. But anger gave us Trumpism, which begat anger. French and Friedersdorf offer an example of breaking the cycle.

Me @PennLive: Dreamers should vote Republican

Mighta had my tongue in cheek on this one, but the underlying point is real: One reason Republicans don't like immigration is that it makes new Democrats. So....

If you want this GOP-held Congress to pass a "Dream Act" that saves you from deportation and maybe even provides a pathway to citizenship for you, try this: Promise to vote Republican. 

No, really. 

Republicans believe that immigrants are destined to become Democrats. And when there's a choice between being fair to minorities or winning elections, Republicans go with winning elections every time.

Me @TheWeek: Why Trump's aides are so openly trashing him

Rhymes with "shmistery":

Yes, history is always watching the White House. But given the disruption Trump caused by being elected, and his inability to let a week go by without distraction and controversy, it seems likely that this administration will get the treatment more than most — that, like the Nixon administration, which practically created its own cottage industry in publishing, it will be dissected by historians, journalists, and writers for decades to come. 

There will be heroes and villains in those stories. And surely, lots of people working for President Trump have already decided that they don't want to be seen as the villains. So how can they prevent it?

Death of football watch

New Jersey high school disbands football team - The Washington Post:



'via Blog this'

Trump's Tweets, Part II

Twitter is never going to suspend the Twitter account of POTUS, ever, ever, ever.

Trump's tweets

I'm off Twitter, but President Trump's tweets remain ubiquitous.

Doesn't that mean Trump willingly had, as an advisor, a man he considers a ripoff artist?

Goodbye, Channel 6: (Journalism will never love you back)

Channel 6 in Lawrence, Kansas airs its last newscast tonight. Once upon a time, I had the privilege of trying to become a TV reporter while still writing for print; I spent my 30th birthday ad-libbing crazy stuff on live TV because the city commission election results were very, very, very late coming in. And some of you may remember the time I went to Columbia MO dressed in KU gear to get on-camera reaction in advance of a "Border War" basketball game.

You hear me say journalism will never love you. It won't. I thought at the time we were building something new, something that might survive the then-nascent turmoil of the business. Wrong. So many things I've tried to build during my career have disappeared. Poof. And I cannot lie: That hurts. A lot. My ego wants a legacy, and it's hard to leave a legacy in institutions that no longer exist.

But what would I have done differently?

Truth is, I enjoyed the hell out of being a jackass on Channel 6. I loved being a blogger at Lawrence.com. I am grateful for the stories that I've done and things I've seen that helped make somebody's life a little safer, or helped misunderstood people tell their story. I've loved the simple act of telling a community about itself.

So. I'm grieving a bit the loss of Channel 6. There will be fresh losses to grieve, no doubt, in the not-too-distant future. This is what love is, I guess: Opening yourself up to the possibility that it won't end well, all for the sake of how good it feels when it's good.

Me @TheWeek: The culture wars are all Trump has left

The culture wars are all Trump has left:

Trump can't pass a health-care bill (at least so far). Getting a tax cut looks like it might be tricky. The wall he promised looks no closer to reality than it did six months ago. There are real questions these days about whether Republicans are capable of governance. 

In that climate, all Trump and the Republicans will have left are identity politics and the culture wars. It's why Trump — after promising to be a president who would protect LGBTQ rights — came out against them. It's why he spent a Tuesday night speech describing the crimes of illegal immigrants in torture-porn detail. 

And it's the reason conservatives are cheering the prospect of Kid Rock making a Senate run against Stabenow; policy, these days, matters to them much less than all the "real America" virtue signalling that the entertainer provides. For Trump Republicans, that posturing is all that seems to really matter.

Jerry Moran: Bad cop

For 20 years or more, I've been used to thinking of Jerry Moran as the "good cop" in a state full of bad cops. Some of that's personal: He's got a background among Kansas Mennonites, like I do, and I was predisposed to the tribe, I guess. When I'd encountered him in a professional setting, he was far more congenial than, say, Pat Roberts, whose good humor leaves a sour aftertaste.

But after his vote today to proceed on a Senate healthcare bill that doesn't exist, I must finally concede: He is a congenial coward. The Hamlet act he pulls is a way of luring moderates and the occasional liberal (guilty!) to his side even as he votes conservative when push comes to shove.

This is possibly purely a fault of my own interpretation: Moran has never claimed to be anything but conservative. But his unwillingness to commit until very late on controversial issues — the characteristic that defines his political career — fooled me into thinking maybe it was possible to peel him away on the occasional issue of importance. The "good cop" is only the good cop until the interrogation is over and the episode is concluding ... and, suddenly, you realize he was on the bad cop's side all along.

Whatever. It's late now. But he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt from this constituent ever again.