What every last one of these people reveal is how far a bad case of narcissistic personality disorder will get you in this fucked up world we have created.

(3) Trump is showing how a truly malevolent president can break almost any clause of the constitution and get away with it, if the other branches are willing to let him. But this is the only one I hear a desire to get rid of as a result. That’s because people insufficiently value the good it does.

A few points: (1) At the state level there has been a dramatic resurgence of clemency in recent years. (2) Federally, I think eliminating or dramatically scaling back the clemency power is the insanely rare constitutional amendment that could pass 3/4ths of the states...

If you haven’t read the book Copaganda, by Alev Karakatsanis, you really should. It is all about how the media convinced the public in 2020-24 that crime had skyrocketed even though it remained extraordinarily low.

One of the best pieces of writing I’ve read this year. Thank you.

As soon as one thinks about the questions: Who would enforce it? (US DOJ? Glenn Kessler?) Using what standards? It becomes clear this idea is foolishness and a tool of authoritarianism.

I’m always haunted by the famous Billy Wilder quote about his cohort: “The optimists died in gas chambers at Auschwitz. The pessimists own swimming pools in Beverly Hills.”

Children held without *charge is uncommon. Children held in jail awaiting trial for longer than nine months – happens at least many 1000s of times per year. Probably 20,000+ times a year.

It is utterly commonplace for children in America to be jailed for years prior to trial. (And then, after trial, to face a sentence of decades in prison life and sometimes life in prison without the possibility of parole.)

It says a lot about how far to the right the Democratic Party has moved that AOC and Mamdani feel the need to use a new label to distinguish themselves.

I wouldn’t even call it socialism. Mamdani and AOC are what we used to call New Deal Democrats.