Pun Salad

Today's headline is Rule #13 from that Alinsky book. And sure, haven't we seen that one implemented over the past couple months?

As Mr. Ramirez portrays, however, it doesn't seem to be that effective. And the ground is coming up fast.

Jeff Maurer is a Democrat, but he's both honest and funny. And he really wants to know: What Does "Democrats Should Fight!" Mean?.

I, for one, hope the highfalutin tantrums continue, since I am not a Democrat.

And I suppose it's bad of me to recall Chuck Schumer's application of Rule #13 back in 2020: “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

(Which, by the way, drew a response from SCOTUS Chief Rebuker: John Roberts Condemns Schumer for Saying Justices ‘Will Pay the Price’ for ‘Awful Decisions’.)

Well, Chuck, you released a whirlwind yourself; it seems a postponed book tour is a relatively small price to pay. Might be more later though.

Also of note:

• I'm a sucker for headlines like this. Specifically, Shannen W. Coffin's at the NR Corner: Trump and Roberts Are Both Wrong.

  First, I don’t question the correctness of the chief’s statement. I, too, think that President Trump’s call for impeachment of Judge Boasberg is both stupid and reckless.

  It is stupid because all that Judge Boasberg has done is issue a temporary stay of deportation long enough for him to consider the merits. The case presents a complicated legal challenge to the president’s power under 200-plus-year-old statute that has only been invoked historically in wartime. That does not mean that the president’s position is entirely meritless, since the statute is meant to apply in broader circumstances than declared wars and includes a rather amorphous term “predatory incursion.”

  There are also difficult questions of whether a judge can even review the president’s determination on such a foreign policy/national security issue. But all of that said, it is, at best, a novel and difficult question and one that should not be decided in an emergency context. All Boasberg did was preserve the status quo for a few days to allow it to be considered. He made no ruling on the merits and did not order the release of the Venezuelan deportees.

  Shannen is slightly easier on Roberts: he erred in thinking his rebuke of Trump's rhetoric would turn down the heat. It, of course, did not.

• Is it just me, or is anyone else getting tired of all the "gutting"? I mean, here's a Google news-only search for gutting. Check for yourself; I wonder if the headline-writers could try coming up with alternate, less bloody, metaphors for cutting decreasing government spending?

  But Pun Salad has covered both sides of the debate on one of the now-gutless agencies: the "US Agency for Global Media", home to the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti, et al. Ilya Somin called it "awful"; Jesse Walker said, yeah, shut it down.

  Today, we link to Jeff Jacoby, who is an anti-gutter: Dictators rejoice as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe are silenced.

  Radio Free Europe and Radio Martí, as well as Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America — all overseen by the US Agency for Global Media, or USAGM — were created by Congress as a vehicle for "soft diplomacy," a way to promote freedom of speech and independent journalism for the benefit of people in countries dominated by authoritarians. For countless listeners trapped in repressive societies, the radio services have been an inestimably precious lifeline. But over the weekend they became the latest victims of President Trump's scorched-earth campaigns to eviscerate the federal bureaucracy and to penalize media outlets that don't reflect the MAGA worldview.

  On Friday night, Trump signed an executive order cutting off funding for USAGM and ordering its operations to cease "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." On Saturday, a follow-up statement attacked Voice of America as a hotbed of "radical propaganda." According to VOA director Michael Abramowitz, more than 1,300 journalists, producers, and support staff have been placed on administrative leave.

  On Friday night, Trump signed an executive order cutting off funding for USAGM and ordering its operations to cease "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." On Saturday, a follow-up statement attacked Voice of America as a hotbed of "radical propaganda." According to VOA director Michael Abramowitz, more than 1,300 journalists, producers, and support staff have been placed on administrative leave.

  Jeff's column is long on Cold War nostalgia. Let's stipulate that the radio stations really did help take down the USSR and free Eastern Europe. Are they really helping out today with the struggle against oppressive governments?

  His bottom line:

  The political labels don't matter to the despots in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. They excel at disseminating propaganda, disinformation, and lies, and they will gain the most if Trump succeeds in silencing VOA and the other stations. When news of the White House order broke, the Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza — who spent more than two years in prison for criticizing Russia's war in Ukraine — tartly observed: "One more champagne bottle opened in the Kremlin. They must be running out by now."

  With each passing week it becomes clearer that the world's liberal democracies can no longer count on the loyalty or sympathy of America's highest-ranking officials. Once Radio Martí, Radio Free Asia, and their sister stations have been gutted, what's next?

  Yes, reader: he said "gutted".

• Two down, probably 46 to go. George Will looks at A dismal scorecard after two months of the Musk-Trump administration.

  If the remaining 46 months of Donald Trump’s resurrection resemble the first two, this administration will have a remarkably high ratio of theatrical action to substantial achievement. And it will exacerbate the fiscal incontinence that is the nation’s foremost domestic crisis.

  Trump is the taunter of Canada, coveter of Greenland, threatener of Panama, re-namer of the Gulf of Mexico, scourge of paper straws and demander that Major League Baseball “get off its fat, lazy ass” and enshrine Pete Rose in Cooperstown. He fulminates about everything. (Does he even know for what he promises to pardon Rose? Tax evasion, not betting on baseball.)

  The in-your-face-all-the-time trophy goes, however, to Trump’s apprentice. The black-clad, chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk is a master of the angry adolescent’s dress and of the now-presidential penchant for vulgarity. (“LITERALLY, F--- YOUR OWN FACE!” Musk responded with a meme to an X user who annoyed him.)

  GFW notes one simple fact:

  In this fiscal year’s first five months, beginning Oct. 1, the government borrowed $1.1 trillion — almost $8 billion a day. In February, the first full month of the Musk’s government-pruning “revolution,” borrowing was $308 billion because spending was $40 billion more — a 7 percent increase — over February 2024.

  You ever feel like you are Ralphie Wiggum on the bus?

  Yeah, me too.

• And Kevin is a man of distinction. Mr. Williamson weighs in on the Khalil Kontroversy: Distinctions Are Important, Actually.

  Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian activist involved in the Columbia protests who was arrested in a Keystone Kops-level caper launched by Marco Rubio’s incompetent State Department, which proposed to revoke a student visa that Khalil doesn’t have. Khalil is, in fact, the holder of a green card, meaning that he has been given permanent resident status in the United States by the U.S. government. Which is to say, Khalil is in this country as a permanent resident thanks to a decision of the U.S. government, which, after looking back on what it had done, kind of wished it hadn’t.

  If the government had been doing its job, things might have gone differently. If, in the course of Khalil’s green-card application, the government had said: “You know, we don’t love the fact that you’re a rabble-rousing Hamas apologist, so we’re not going to give you a green card,” then that would be one thing. And that is a thing we do: We ask green-card applicants about belonging to communist or totalitarian political parties, that sort of thing. And that is appropriate. But having given Khalil a green card and then regretted it, the government has arrested Khalil—who is charged with no crime—and proposes to deport him because it doesn’t like his politics. Khalil has been targeted because he is prominent and holds views that the administration does not like—and they are not likeable views. But again, he has not been charged with a crime—much less convicted of one—nor has he been accused of any kind of violation or irregularity where his immigration status is concerned.

  We shouldn’t treat green cards as though they are Citizenship Lite. It is a permanent status, but there is more to citizenship than the legal relationship. Citizenship is supposed to mean something about a man’s relationship to the state that governs him, but the U.S. government has done much to weaken that over the years, for example by assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen whose offense was being the “Osama bin Laden of Facebook,” as people called him. The government also killed his teenage son, whose offense was being the teenage son of the “Osama bin Laden of Facebook.” The al-Awlaki precedent—and I suppose Barack Obama never bothered to think through the fact that he was setting a precedent that might be used by some future doofus with autocratic tendencies, the Benito Mussolini of Truth Social—suggests very strongly that what can be done to a green-card holder can be done to a citizen. If “enemy combatant” covers “online propagandist riding in a car with his son,” then the miasma of horsepucky that Marco Rubio et al. have belched up in the Khalil case—that his presence in the United States undermines U.S. foreign policy—can be used for pretty much anybody, including any critic of the government. I’m busy trying to undermine U.S. policy in the matter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because I believe that the Trump administration is pursuing the wrong—evil, stupid, cowardly—policy.

  It's like the University Near Here granting Chanda Prescod-Weinstein tenure: "After looking back on what it had done, kind of wished it hadn't."

• Jerry Coyne fills in the blank: "NBC News gets the        story badly wrong". With two words you might not expect: NBC News gets the woolly mammoth story badly wrong. And that story is: Science is gonna tinker with genes to bring back the woolly mammoth.

  Jerry (a biologist) takes apart the TV news report, which you can watch here. You can read his argument but the upshot is: at best, you might get "elephants in fur coats".

  Finally, in view of the futility of this project, another Colossal officer says that their endeavors have inspired children to love science, and perhaps to save the environment. That’s the Hail Mary call of a dying project. Note that they project the production of the first mammoth (again, just an “elephant in a fur coat” for 2028. Only three more years! Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to put a giant fur coat onto an Asiatic elephant and then usher several of these garbed pachyderms to the tundra?

  The furry mice they produced are cute, though.