Pun Salad

Remy "examines" the TSA (not recommended for those offended by slang terms for "penis"):

You can read the lyrics at the link. And there are sublinks to explanations of some of the more obscure lyrics.

In related news, this is an actual TSA news release in its entirety: TSA detects bullets artfully concealed in diaper at LaGuardia Airport.

I will give the TSA a thumbs-up, or maybe some other upraised digit, for even a lame sense of humor.

Also of note:

• But who's keeping score? Paul Schwennesen is philosophically upbeat: When Progressives and Conservatives Compete, Agnostics Win.

  The basic problem with each side in today’s culture wars is that they know too much. Progressives self-consciously seek “progress,” (and they know what that means) and conservatives seek to “conserve” valuable forms from the past (and they, too, know what that means). The problem, of course, is that they’re both full of baloney. Neither side is inclined, shall we say, toward intellectual humility. The fact is, nobody knows precisely what “progress” should look like, nor is anyone wise enough to know precisely what traditions are worth keeping in the long run. Despite this, the majority of us non-extremists are caught out on an artificial teeter-totter of political divisiveness, struggling to stay sane in the demilitarized zone between two camps that presume to know more than we do.

  A third way (which might be termed “centrist,” or “classical liberal,” or “libertarian”) is built on a foundation that presumes there is no way to know, in advance, what exactly society should be collectively aiming for. Call us agnostics if you like, aware of, and indeed embracing our collective lack of knowledge. That’s right: no presumption of directionality either Forward (as in Hillary Clinton’s “Forward Together” campaign) or Backward (as in the “Again” in Donald Trump’s MAGA slogan). Agnostics distrust dirigiste political structures, partly out of innate cussedness, but mostly from a position of informed historical experience; it’s not at all clear to an even-headed observer that grandiose plans for the directed structuring of society have turned out very well in the past.

  This is why I'm a little leery about (specifically) some conservatives' grand schemes (usually involving tax policy) to encourage people to have kids, in order to avoid population decline.

• "With Jokes" is a good way to capture my attention. Jeff Maurer provides something sorely lacking in most discussions: The 14th Amendment Case Against Trump, But With Jokes.

  Before I dive into the case, let me be clear about my biases:

  • I think that Trump is to the American political system what Jar Jar Binks was to the Star Wars franchise. His obvious unfitness for office (Trump’s, though also Jar Jar’s) has become a secondary concern to his open hostility to small “d” democratic governance. Trump has made it very clear that he doesn’t intend to play by the rules. I fear what he might do, and I think that the “who could have foreseen this?” hand-washing from Republicans that will come after those events might drive me insane.

  • Buuuut, I also think that voters’ ability to elect whatever toxic idiot they want is a basic American right. I’m very troubled by the prospect of officials striking candidates from a ballot. That’s what happens in tin pot dictatorships; eliminating candidates for heinous crimes like fishing without a license or removing the “DO NOT REMOVE” tag from a mattress is Autocracy 101. The fact that our process would be less capricious doesn’t change the fact that voters should decide who is and isn’t fit for office.

  • Buuuuuuuuuut I also think that the law should be interpreted without consideration of political consequences. We can’t have judges saying “the law says x, but x sucks, so I’ll pretend it says y.” That’s basically what I was complaining about in the previous paragraph: judges subverting the legislative process. “Judicial activism!” isn’t just what anyone yells when a ruling goes against them; it’s a real problem.

  If you believe those three things — or even just the last two — then the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling this week creates a tough situation. The court has disqualified a major candidate for president. But the court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment may be correct. Honestly, I hoped that the ruling would be a clownish bit of judicial hackery; I hoped that I would read the court’s words and practically hear MSNBC playing in the background. But the ruling is not clownish. You may or may not find it persuasive, but there are real questions here. Below is my attempt to recount those questions and add jokes, and, as always, I must mention that I’m not a lawyer, constitutional scholar, or even a strong reader, and this entire column is being written by Chat GPT while I play Street Fighter 6.

  For the record, I think the key is something Jeff doesn't consider: The Fourteenth Amendment language disqualifies those who "engaged in insurrection".

  Engaged.

  Whether you consider January 6 to have been an "insurrection" or not, I don't think Trump "engaged" in it. He wasn't at the Capitol. And (indeed) the four Colorado Supremes seem to point to his lack of action that day as the main problem. I.e., he was disengaged.

  But I Am Not A Lawyer.

• Because of the Jewish Space Lasers, obvsly. Tevi Troy reveals Why Universities Target Jews.

  Many Jewish students, parents, and donors are rethinking their allegiance to America’s elite universities. They think that Jewish students are not welcome there.

  That message is being sent in two ways. First, these schools aren’t admitting Jewish students at the rates they once did. Harvard used to be about 20 percent Jewish; today, it’s below 9 percent. At the University of Pennsylvania, long considered one of the friendliest campuses to Jewish students, the number of observant Jews admitted has dropped by about two-thirds, from 200 in the early 2000s to about 70 today, according to Inside Higher Ed. Jewish enrollment is down across much of the Ivy League.

  Second, the Jewish kids who are admitted increasingly feel uncomfortable on campus. In a now-infamous congressional hearing, the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT struggled to say definitively whether calls for genocide violated their campus codes of conduct. Schools committed to “safe spaces” are strangely silent about anti-Semitism, and in some cases seem implicitly supportive of acts of intimidation and violent protest.

  Maybe someday we'll stop talking about Hamas Campus Cheerleaders, but today is not that day.