If you have never heard of Carl Schmitt, you've missed the glue that holds all the Administration's actions together. Schmitt was Germany's leading jurist in the 20s and 30s. As professor of jurisprudence he wrote political theory attacking liberal parliamentary democracy. Those books are the blueprint of the new America.
Since Friday the 13th high heat and smoke keep us inside
I apologize for not getting this bit of news out until now when it is no longer new. Texas's lawsuit against New Mexico for allowing groundwater wells in our area to syphon off water in the Rio Grande that belongs to Texas may end in a settlement.
Continuing my thoughts on equitable justice, I ask why our national business/government is so intent on stonewalling the courts in a few deportation cases. What's the big deal? Why don't they just bring these few individuals that were wrongly deported back? My answer leads to other issues of equity.
Our president's Big Beautiful Bill hides a small passage which makes contempt of court decisions of federal courts completely meaningless. To explain the importance of this new rule, I go back to my earlier discussion of justice and focus on the type of justice called "equity." It's a big deal.
Yesterday, Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, reported that two Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza. That makes eight soldiers killed in the last two months. I try to think about what that means, especially since now that the military situation in Gaza gets less and less coverage in the media.
Trump supporters say his policies may hurt in the short-term but will bring jobs and economic security to the country. I respond to this in three ways: an AI generated meme traveling around the world, a poem ("Arbeit macht frei"), and a historical note on the poem's title.
What is justice? And, why should justice matter? When a government becomes a business for making money, is there any reason for it to be concerned with justice? Is the disappearance of justice both as an idea and as a political structure the sign of the end of government?
This is a very, very short sermon. The subject is immigration. The text is Matthew ii, 13-15. It ends with a call to action.
Our President has created a "sovereign wealth fund," which considers all government holdings as assets, investments for return of capital. This business enterprise immediately turns the federal holdings from their original purpose of public service into assets to be used to make money. Public land is now an asset.
I link to an informative article on the Presidential order outlawing the siloing of personal data by various governmental agencies. Around this news, I weave comments on the kind of thinking that leads to this prohibition and what that tells us about our loss of a government.
It's business as usual in this country. Since the country is now a business, we look at how planning is a necessary part of any business, and we conclude that what looks like chaos is actually planned (as Secretary Kennedy claimed), visionary, even with a 20% error rate.
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