#643 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday April 25)
Good morning,
Another potpourri…
TUCKER CARLSON AND DON LEMON
Two mainstays of late-night television “journalism” were shown the door on Monday. Don Lemon was dismissed from CNN, presumably because of his anti-female rants. More important, and of greater impact on our national dialog, the serial liar and conspiracy theorist, Tucker Carlson, has been fired by Fox News. Could it be because of his telling lies when he knew what he was reporting was patently false? Certainly, his emails confessing to such deplorable behavior had to have contributed to his demise. While I am confident Fox will move another, equally vociferous voice of conservative angst to his time slot, perhaps this person will at least meet the relatively low bar of attempting to tell the truth.
There should be consequences for lying. For all the minimum sentencing guidelines for people who commit crimes much smaller than Mr. Carlson’s, at least there is something of a consequence for him.
Last week, Fox settled one of several lawsuits regarding its defamation of Dominion Voting Systems and other voting systems. Carlson knew all the claims were false, and disparaged the claims and those making them in many emails to colleagues. Yet he kept going, riling up his audience (and contributing in part to the virulence of the January 6th insurrection). Carlson, who urged the network to report falsehoods because that’s what Mr. Trump’s minions wanted to hear, has now received his comeuppance. As Mr. Carlson rides off to the sunset of his life at Fox as a fighter against immigrants, liberals, the “deep state” and those “seeking to replace” real Americans, he will find another home on an even more disreputable network. And so it goes.
WHY WE CAN’T HAVE JUDGES APPOINTED PROMPTLY
We suffer from mediocrity in the federal judiciary and unconscionable delays in the appointment of judges due to the “blue slip” tradition, whereby a senator from the state of an appointee can effectively kill an appointment. We also find ourselves with political operatives choosing the forum to file a suit based upon the prevailing politics of the state. Here is Jeremy Rosen’s view on this:
“The federal judiciary benefits from having diverse voices… Texas senators have been republican for 30 years so have made it almost impossible for there to be any liberal district court appointments in Texas. Likewise, California has had two democratic senators for 30 years so there are almost no conservative district judges in California. This distorts what should otherwise be a reasonably distributed set of conservative and liberal judges and encourages forum shopping. That is why all of the anti-Trump litigation was filed in California and why all the anti-Biden litigation is filed in Texas. It isn’t healthy. I’m giving a talk next week where my thesis is that Kamala Harris and Josh Hawley (as just two examples of many) are basically the same – nasty and unpleasant ideologues who have politicized the courts to the detriment of the rule of law and the fair administration of justice.”
RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT
In this era when religious views are taking increasing importance in the way the Supreme Court views the world, including with respect to abortion and public prayer, Justices Alito, Thomas and others might do well to read the words of Thomas Jefferson:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802
GREAT BASEBALL STORIES:
There is a long history of “personalities” in baseball. One doesn’t hear nearly as many amusing stories about quaint heroes and goats in other sports. For some reason, baseball lends itself to interesting characters and seemingly ridiculous stories. Here’s a great summary of the hopelessly average—yet amusing—Choo Choo Coleman, from Mark DiMaria:
“...this small catcher ironically was known as a speedster, hence his nickname -- although that talent was somewhat wasted as he was rarely on base, with his lifetime average clinging tenuously to the famous "Mendoza Line" of .200. Like those of Yogi Berra (another former Met player and manager), some of the Choo Choo stories may be apocryphal, but they are all amusing. He was remembered in part for being unable to remember the names of any of this teammates, calling them all "Bub" or their number. Choo Choo once signaled to Marvelous Marv at first base for a pick-off play, Marv missed the signal and the ball sailed past his head as he looked the other way, and Choo Choo was assessed an error -- for bad judgment in signaling to Marv in the first place. And perhaps the most famous one, of Ralph Kiner (the legendary Pirates slugger and later long-time Mets broadcaster) interviewing Coleman in 1962, and asking, "What’s your wife’s name, and what’s she like?," to which Choo-Choo replied, "Her name is Mrs. Coleman — and she likes me, Bub."
Have a good day,
Glenn