Eve Tushnet
Vanquished in life, his death By beauty made amends: The passing of his breath Won his defeated ends. —whole thing Read more
Vanquished in life, his death By beauty made amends: The passing of his breath Won his defeated ends. —whole thing Read more
posts: …Guilty or innocent, the urge to intervene in the lives of those we shovel into the criminal justice system has proven almost irresistible to politicians over the years. So despite the fact that the most effective method of ensuring that people return to court is to just release them with nothing more than a friendly reminder of their court dates via calls or text messages, the city has already made clear that it will aim to create a “pretrial-services... Read more
at Respectful Conversations: I loved a lot of things about Justin’s first contribution to this discussion. I’m going to give a kind of slantwise rather than head-on response. First I want to highlight the areas where he is modeling the way this conversation should go. Then I do want to suggest a way in which his approach is still too much shaped by contemporary American culture. And finally I will offer a different angle from which to approach the question.... Read more
at Overlawyered: Has anyone noted that the “Ferguson syndrome” of ruinously escalating fines for petty violations [covered widely in the liberal press, and here previously], and Oregon’s ordering of a couple to pay $135,000 for not complying with a request to bake a cake (being covered at AP, widely in the conservative press, and here previously, with related], might actually amount in part to the same issue? more–excellent last line. Read more
(yes, I am reading a Point Horror ’80s paperback about a 976 teen talk line. My summer is going great) Robbie started over to the Chevy and Mark, relieved, climbed into the Jeep. He’d been hoping for a four-wheel drive for his mother to get to work in the winter, but hadn’t figured he had much chance of finding one in their price range. But if there was any hope of getting either of these cars, he wanted the Jeep.... Read more
for The American Interest: “Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History,” on exhibit at the National Archives through January 10, is a lot like a 2 a.m. barroom yarn: rambling, studded with odd and fascinating moments, but lacking the one thing that might make it all make sense. … “Spirited Republic” is organized mostly-chronologically. The opening sections make creative use of the archival material to tell the story of alcohol’s role in early American civic history: A reproduction of George Caleb... Read more
Just really important for people who care about this stuff. Also adds some complexity to Wesley Hill’s (quite good) post about Christian sexual ethics and “dazzling the pagan eye“–there’s a lot of suffering, confusion, loss, anger, and frustration that comes with Christian sexual discipline (even if you don’t accept e.g. the Catholic teaching on contraception). That can be dazzling in its own way–e.g. you might see our solidarity in different forms of suffering, or in the way we wrestle with... Read more
Over the holiday weekend I read through pretty much the entire Mockingbird archive of posts tagged “David Foster Wallace.” Meanwhile I’m reading The Idiot for the third time (and finally retaining something other than the “worst thing you ever did” party game, I hope…) and slowly gnawing through Игрок (The Gambler) in Russian class. If you ever want to notice how super-contemptuous (презрительнейший! чрезвычайно презрительнейший!) both of these writers can get about everybody in the entire world, I highly recommend... Read more
for your contempt -> dehumanization file I guess: Just months after Baltimore resident Freddie Gray was fatally injured while being transported in the back of a police van, city officials are investigating a photograph of a sign inside the rear door of a similar transport vehicle that reads, “Enjoy your ride, cuz we sure will,” CNN reports. more Read more
This was the year, at five or six, that I learned the meaning of “reverence,” which, as I understand it, is the natural attitude to take toward magical, unverifiable phenomena, the same way that “respect” and “obedience” describe the attitude one takes toward observable physical phenomena, such as gravity or money. —whole story; rings interestingly against the passage from Infinite Jest about the Sergeant-at-Arms Read more
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