Pun Salad

I was today years old when I learned these two words:

• Haruspicy is divination via the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry; while
• Anthropomancy is the same thing, except with sacrificed people.

Nate Silver is—let's be charitable—a notable haruspex when it comes to examining polling data, and if you want to know whether Americans approve or disapprove of Trump…

But Mr. Ramirez's cartoon was wondering about Rs and Ds generally. So we have recent polling reported by Newsweek: Republican Support Collapses Under Donald Trump. Excerpt:

And for the Democrats we have (also in Newsweek): Democrats Face 'Major Wake-up Call' as Trump Trounces Them in Polling. Excerpt:

What does it all mean? I'm self-polling and show a 50/50 tie between "I don't know" and "I don't care". How about you?

Also of note:

• Need a reason to hate Republicans? Well, it depends on your attitude toward government spending. Kim Strassel says that for many Rs, it's Spend, Baby, Spend (gifted link).

  It’s go time in Washington for the GOP reconciliation bill, as House committees this week begin to flesh out their respective pieces of a plan to cut both taxes and spending. Which means Republicans finally must grapple with an ugly truth within the party of “limited government”: Most of them don’t want to cut spending on anything.

  But it’s the cuts that must come first. Republicans have a solid idea of what needs doing in the tax realm, yet the final configuration will hinge on what they drum up in new revenue or offsets. Committees have each been assigned spending reduction targets, with an aggregate goal of at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts (over 10 years). This is paltry: Federal spending has soared more than 50% since 2019, and the pandemic emergency is long past. Democrats bet that Republicans would lack the courage to dismantle their blowouts on entitlements, infrastructure, green energy, semiconductors and the like—and the left is again showing which side is smarter at the long game.

  Kim goes on to list a number of issues where powerful Republicans are wimping out on spending cuts. Make sure you've got plenty of blood pressure meds stocked up, and check it out.

• Who do you want to play Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan in the Netflix movie? Kevin D. Williamson doesn't weigh in on that issue, but provides a title: Judge Dread.

  “I am the law!” declared Judge Dredd, the cinematic supercop played by Sylvester Stallone in the eponymous 1995 film. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan seems to have come to a similar conclusion, and she has been charged with a felony and a misdemeanor in the matter of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal immigrant who was scheduled to appear before her on domestic battery charges and whom—according to the federal police agencies today under control of people who won their positions by insisting we should not trust federal police agencies—the judge tried to help evade arrest and presumable deportation. 

  Let us assume, arguendo, that Judge Dugan does not have a special place in her heart for supposed domestic abusers. If she is, as it seems, engaged in the same proud tradition of civil disobedience as such heroes as Henry David Thoreau, then she should go to jail for it as happily as Thoreau did when he observed:

  Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable, ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her.

  As you might suspect, Kevin does not let Trump or his minions off lightly. Bottom line:

  This is, for the moment, a minor kerfuffle. But if Congress does not step up, be sure that someone will. If you think Judge Dugan is being irresponsible and reckless, then you almost certainly are not going to like who and what comes next as the lawlessness and chaos continues. Chaos begets chaos. And the hard part for honest and intelligent Americans will be that, whatever dumb and destructive excesses Trump’s opponents get up to, nobody will be able to say that they don’t have a point.

• And maybe lower education too? One thing at a time, and Dominic Pino made the easy call: Let’s Cut All Federal Funding for Higher Education.

  On today’s edition of The Editors, National Review Rhodes Fellow Dominic Pino said the administration should “treat universities like we treat churches.” This comes on the heels of President Trump’s vow to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status and the outrage from the university.

  Pino isn’t thrilled about the administration’s approach to the issue, and said it “would be on much better grounds” if it said, “‘We’re going to treat universities like we treat churches. They’re going to be tax exempt, but we’re not going to give them federal funding. And we’re going to force them to stand on their own.’”

  Probably not politically possible, but I like the libertarian take: separation of school and state.

• Do they realize how ludicrous they sound? Ashley Belanger writes at Ars Technica “Blatantly unlawful”: Trump slammed for trying to defund PBS, NPR. It's pretty much follows the usual script, but this stuck out for me:

  For example, Ed Ulman, CEO of Alaska Public Media, testified to Congress last month that his stations "provide potentially life-saving warnings and alerts that are crucial for Alaskans who face threats ranging from extreme weather to earthquakes, landslides, and even volcanoes." Some of the smallest rural stations sometimes rely on CPB for about 50 percent of their funding, NPR reported.

  Will nobody think of the Alaskans facing volcano threats? We'll have more on that after this story from All Things Considered movie reviewer Bob Mondello.

  But seriously, move the emergency warning and alert capabilities to the Department of Homeland Security.

  (By the way, Ed pulls down a cool $181,735 yearly compensation as President/CEO of the tax-exempt Alaska Public Media Inc.)

• There are many reasons: laziness, sloppiness, narcissism, … At Cato, Terence Kealey wonders: Trump’s Cuts to Federal Science Budget Are Justified, So Why Doesn't He Justify Them (Properly)?

  President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal science budgets have provoked vast alarm, yet the cuts are justified. Unfortunately, though, Trump has not justified them, at least not properly. This blog post will do so by rebutting three myths of government science funding: 1) the supposed economic benefits, 2) the supposed health benefits, and 3) the supposed technological benefits. There is little evidence to justify the claims of big benefits from government funding of science.

  It's an interesting counter to…