Friday, March 15, 2024
In bed at 9, awake and up at 2:52. Let Lilly out. 35°, high of 46°, mostly sunny day ahead, wind 13 mph, 4-15/23, 1.1" of rain in the last 24 hours Sunrise at 7:02 at 92°E, sunset at 6:58 at 269°W, 11+56.
Treadmill; pain. The thumb restrictor helped last night though the thumb/wrist/forearm pain is present after waking up. The VA hand specialist said my wrist is quite a mess from the long-term arthritis at the base of the thrum. The shoulder pain and ROM are moderate. Phonzo really worked it over yesterday and started me using an exercise band in addition to the 3 stretches. Acupuncture for my shoulder this morning. Getting dressed, brushing teeth, and applying deodorant, all are all painful.
Painful acupuncture. I had quite a bit of pain during this morning's acupuncture session, enough that I came close to signaling the therapist to come back into the room and remove the needles. I 'toughed it out' until she did come back in and remove the needles but she said that 'dull, deep aching pain' is not unusual for orthopedic problems. She inserted another needle in my left lower leg and manipulated it, which itself was painful. She continued until I was able to move my left arm, not on its own strength, but by supporting and pulling it with my right arm. It was a disconcerting experience and I wonder about continuing the process though I will probably attend at least one more session. It was another disappointment, along with the ineffective cortisone injection. I wondered whether I should avoid driving home on the freeway afterward, but I managed to do so. Was I unwise to try?
Supreme Betrayal: A requiem for Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is an article today in The Atlantic by J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe, two respected constitutional scholars, one on the Right, the other on the Left.
The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson.
In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. Despite disagreement within the Court that led to a 5–4 split among the justices over momentous but tangential issues that it had no need to reach in order to resolve the controversy before it, the Court was disappointingly unanimous in permitting oath-breaking insurrectionists, including former President Donald Trump, to return to power. In doing so, all nine justices denied “We the People” the very power that those who wrote and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment presciently secured to us to save the republic from future insurrectionists—reflecting a lesson hard-learned from the devastation wrought by the Civil War.
What ought to have been, as a matter of the Constitution’s design and purpose, the climax of the struggle for the survival of America’s democracy and the rule of law instead turned out to be its nadir, delivered by a Court unwilling to perform its duty to interpret the Constitution as written. Desperate to assuage the growing sense that it is but a political instrument, the Court instead cemented that image into history. It did so at what could be the most perilous constitutional and political moment in our country’s history, when the nation and the Constitution needed the Court most—to adjudicate not the politics of law, but the law of the politics that is poisoning the lifeblood of America.
“The words of a president matter,” Biden has said more than once.
. . . but Biden’s lack of attention to delivery was apparent as he meandered into asides such as this one on the importance of infrastructure: “You know, I was — when I was doing the Recovery Act in our last administration — Obama-Biden — I was in Pittsburgh — excuse me, in Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania, in a small town. And in the process, I looked at a bridge, and they couldn’t — their fire department was on one side of the bridge, and, literally, from here to that holding tank outside here, was — on the other side there was a shopping center and a school. Well, guess what? Their fire — you couldn’t get across the bridge.”
I suppose all of us, or at least most of us, engage in such a stream-of-consciousness word salad on occasion. I occasionally do so in writing in this journal. But most American presidents don't. Most heads of state don't. I suspect that most lawyers don't., especially when speaking as the main attraction at a public gathering with cameras and voice recorders trained on them. And I know there are a good number of people who have difficulty finishing a sentence or a thought. They often or perhaps even usually jump from thought to thought before completing a single one of them. But again, most American presidents and heads of state don't do this. Joe Biden does. Indeed, so does Donald Trump from time to time. Biden's inarticulateness is usually attributed to his lifetime challenge with stuttering but I wonder if this is true. Biden has been in public office since 1970, a U.S. senator from 1973 until 2009 when he became Vice President of the United States for the next 8 years. He has had more than half a century to discipline his speaking style, yet he has not done so. Why? Much of the time, all he has to do is to speak less, speak carefully and thoughtfully, more slowly, but he seems incapable of disciplining himself, despite his years under a spotlight. Plus, he often speaks falsely or at least inaccurately or unwisely, as the nation's premier gaffemeister. Why? Because he stuttered as a kid and occasionally still stutters? I suspect there is more to it than that and that we wouldn't like that "more" in him that accounts for it.
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