The Alabama Legislature is worried about your soul.
So it is considering a bill that would hold education for ransom, slashing funding for school districts that don’t start their classroom days with a prayer.
Good bread, good meat, time’s wastin’ let’s eat.
HB231, sponsored by Pike Road GOP Rep. Reed Ingram and a host of disciples, is clear. Your students, no matter their faith, creed or lack thereof, must hear a prayer “consistent with Judeo-Christian values.”
Or risk losing 25% or their state funding. More than $63 million in Jeffco, for instance. Almost $100 million in Mobile. That’s $37 million in Madison County, and $34 million in Huntsville.
Can I get an amen?
So let’s just take a quiz. What prayers might meet that standard?
It is, of course, not as simple as all that. The bill, a constitutional amendment that would require a vote of the people, would withhold the money from school districts that show a pattern of refusing to comply. But the point is very real.
Freedom of religion in Alabama means “our way,” or to hell with you. Literally.
If this bill, this public piety for political purpose is passed, teachers should print that final prayer out and read it every single day in class.
Bow your heads and say it with me.
Oh Lord, help those men and women in the Alabama Legislature. They have taken food from the mouths of children, medicine from the sick and hope from the hopeless. They cast your people into prisons without mercy, rail against the poor and the immigrant. They have seen the sick and the hungry in their own land, and passed by on the other side of the street. They have done it in your name. Have mercy on their souls.
Amen.
Oh. P.S. Help us pass that damn test.
___________
Thanks to old friend and fellow Tuscaloosa High grad WA for sending along the article.
This is a very long article from the New York Times magazine. It takes 53 ½ minutes to read it aloud. (If you would like to hear it, go here.) In support of the thesis that is the headline of this post, the article covers a great deal of ground (geographically and historically), is well researched, and argues the case in great detail.
If you think that all US working class anti-immigrant feeling is grounded in simple racism—if you believe that the Democratic Party’s position on borders is coherent, well advised, and politically saleable—then I challenge you to read this article, consider it carefully, and articulate wherein you think it goes astray.
A central focus is the anomalous continuing political success of Denmark’s Social Democratic Party. Leonhardt writes,
Since the Social Democrats took power in 2019, they have compiled a record that resembles the wish list of a liberal American think tank. They changed pension rules to enable blue-collar workers to retire earlier than professionals. On housing, the party fought speculation by the private-equity industry by enacting the so-called Blackstone law, a reference to the giant New York-based firm that had bought beloved Copenhagen apartment buildings; the law restricts landlords from raising rents for five years after buying a property. To fight climate change, [Prime Minister] Frederiksen’s government created the world’s first carbon tax on livestockand passed a law that requires 15 percent of farmland to become natural habitat. On reproductive rights, Denmark last year expanded access to abortionthrough the first 18 weeks of pregnancy, up from 12 weeks, and allowed girls starting at age 15 to get an abortion without parental consent.
All the while, the country continues to provide its famous welfare state, which includes free education through college (including a monthly stipend of about $900 for living expenses), free medical care and substantial unemployment insurance, while nonetheless being home to globally competitive companies like Novo Nordisk, the maker of the anti-obesity drug Ozempic. In 2022, Frederiksen won a second term, defying the anti-incumbent mood that has ousted incumbent parties elsewhere since the Covid pandemic. As part of her success, she has marginalized the far right in her country.
But there is one issue on which Frederiksen and her party take a very different approach from most of the global left: immigration. Nearly a decade ago, after a surge in migration caused by wars in Libya and Syria, she and her allies changed the Social Democrats’ position to be much more restrictive. They called for lower levels of immigration, more aggressive efforts to integrate immigrants and the rapid deportation of people who enter illegally. While in power, the party has enacted these policies. Denmark continues to admit immigrants, and its population grows more diverse every year. But the changes are happening more slowly than elsewhere. …
Leftist politics depend on collective solutions in which voters feel part of a shared community or nation, [the prime minister] explained. Otherwise, they will not accept the high taxes that pay for a strong welfare state. “Being a traditional Social Democratic thinker means you cannot allow everyone who wants to join your society to come,” Frederiksen says. Otherwise, “it’s impossible to have a sustainable society, especially if you are a welfare society, as we are.” High levels of immigration can undermine this cohesion, she says, while imposing burdens on the working class that more affluent voters largely escape, such as strained benefit programs, crowded schools and increased competition for housing and blue-collar jobs. Working-class families know this from experience. Affluent leftists pretend otherwise and then lecture less privileged voters about their supposed intolerance.
“There is a price to pay when too many people enter your society,” Frederiksen told me. “Those who pay the highest price of this, it’s the working class or lower class in the society. It is not — let me be totally direct — it’s not the rich people. It is not those of us with good salaries, good jobs.” She kept coming back to the idea that the Social Democrats did not change their position for tactical reasons; they did so on principle. They believe that high immigration helps cause economic inequality and that progressives should care above all about improving life for the most vulnerable members of their own society. The party’s position on migration “is not an outlier,” she told me. “It is something we do because we actually believe in it.”
In many ways, as of the last week in February, it feels as if we are all taking a trip on the Titanic, fast approaching that iceberg. Take for example the New York Times piece from today. I don’t disagree with a word in it.
Our situation is dire, in so many ways that it’s difficult to count all of them. But … I really hope you can spare a few minutes to watch Rick Wilson’s video, to supply some needed perspective.
And permit me to supplement Wilson’s take in the following way. Begin with several things we know for sure, or at least to a very high level of confidence, about how events are going to evolve over the next few weeks.
Five Things We Know for Sure, or at Least to a High Level of Confidence
1. Trump, Elon Musk, and their henchmen remain high on their own supply. In very important ways, they literally do not know what they are doing. In many ways, they don’t know the harm they are causing (or are about to cause) in the lives of their own supporters. In many ways, they have a fundamental misperception of public opinion. (Yeah, lot of that going around.)
2. Trump and his crew will continue to wreck the federal government, which will produce ever increasing levels of mayhem.
3. Trump and his crew will do jack shit to combat inflation, in violation of the one campaign promise that put him over the top in 2024.
4. The process of wrecking the federal government will culminate—in maybe a month, or it could be sooner—in a true constitutional crisis, where Trump openly defies the Supreme Court.
5. Any of several pending foreign policy crises will ripen into disaster. In particular, just as Biden had his Afghanistan moment, so Trump is probably going to have his Ukraine moment.
Now, Let Us Hazard a Cautious Prediction
Here is the prediction:
While we cannot predict the outcome when all of these situations ripen into disaster at more or less the same time, we can say with some confidence that the five trends will interact with each other.
To take an example: The number of people who might be willing, in good times, to acquiesce in Trump’s overthrow of the rule of law is smaller than the number of people who will cheer when he defies the Supreme Court at the same time that he is royally screwing over the folks who voted for him. And, at the same time, selling out America’s allies and cheering on a Russian invasion.
Danielle Sassoon, Esq., a graduate of Harvard College and of Yale Law School, a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, a continuing member in good standing of the Federalist Society, and—for a few weeks, following Trump’s inauguration—temporary chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, has resigned. She took this action because she could not, in good conscience, obey her masters’ orders to go into court and ask for dismissal of the criminal case against Eric Adams, in circumstances where there was no proper legal basis for making such a request.
Her resignation letter of February 12, addressed to Attorney General Bondi, spends 7½ pages explaining the baselessness of the position she had been ordered to advocate to the courts. The letter concludes thusly,
I Cannot in Good Faith Request the Contemplated Dismissal
Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations. As Justice Robert Jackson explained, “the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when heacts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.” The Federal Prosecutor, 24 J. Am. Jud. Soc’y 18 (“This authority has been granted by people who really wanted the right thing done—wanted crime eliminated—but also wanted the best in our American traditions preserved.”). I understand my duty as a prosecutor to mean enforcing the law impartially, and that includes prosecuting a validly returned indictment regardless whether its dismissal would be politically advantageous, to the defendant or to those who appointed me. A federal prosecutor “is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all.” Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935).
For the reasons explained above, I do not believe there are reasonable arguments in support of a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss a case that is well supported by the evidence and the law. I understand that Mr. Bove disagrees,and I am mindful of your recent order reiterating prosecutors’ duty to make good-faith arguments in support of the Executive Branch’s positions. See Feb. 5, 2025 Mem. “General Policy Regarding Zealous Advocacy on Behalf of the United States.” But because I do not see any good-faith basis for the proposed position, I cannot make sucharguments consistent with my duty of candor. N.Y.R.P.C. 3.3; id. cmt. 2 (“A lawyer acting as an advocate in an adjudicative proceeding has an obligation to present the client’s case with persuasive force. Performance of thatduty while maintaining confidences of the client, however, is qualified by the advocate’s duty of candor to the tribunal.”).
In particular, the rationale given by Mr. Bove—an exchange between a criminal defendant and the Department of Justice akin to the Bout exchange with Russia—is, as explained above, a bargain that a prosecutor should not make. Moreover, dismissing without prejudice and with the express option of again indicting Adams in the future creates obvious ethical problems, by implicitly threatening future prosecution if Adams’s cooperation with enforcing the immigration laws proves unsatisfactory to the Department. See In re Christoff, 690 N.E.2d 1135 (Ind. 1997) (disciplining prosecutor for threatening to renew a dormant criminal investigation against a potentialcandidate for public office in order to dissuade the candidate from running); Bruce A.Green & Rebecca Roiphe, Who Should Police Politicization of the DOJ?, 35 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y671, 681 (2021) (noting that the Arizona Supreme Court disbarred the elected chief prosecutor of Maricopa County,Arizona, and his deputy, in part, for misusing their power to advance the chief prosecutor’s partisan political interests). Finally, given the highly generalized accusations of weaponization, weighed against the strength of theevidence against Adams, a court will likely question whether that basis is pretextual. See, e.g., United States v. Greater Blouse, Skirt & Neckwear Contractors, 228 F. Supp. 483, 487 (S.D.N.Y. 1964) (courts “should be satisfiedthat the reasons advanced for the proposed dismissal are substantial and the real grounds upon which the application is based”).
I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seemingcollaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal. Mr. Bove admonished me to be mindful of my obligation to zealously defend the interests of the United States and to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Administration. I hope you share my view that soliciting andconsidering the concerns of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case serves rather than hinders that goal, and that we can find time to meet.
In the event you are unwilling to meet or to reconsider the directive in light of the problems raised by Mr. Bove’s memo, I am prepared to offer my resignation. It has been, and continues to be, my honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.
Very truly yours,
DANIELLE R. SASSOON
United States Attorney Southern District of NewYork
You know what they say: You can always tell a Harvard man—but you can’t tell him much.
Michael Sandel, a political philosopher and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard, has a whole lot to say about the root causes of working class resentment in the United States.
I want to take issue with one implication found in the Guardian piece quoted in my most recent post, Rage in the Rust Belt.
The author implies that the good folks in the Rust Belt are thinking in zero sum terms: if Blacks or Gays are getting some benefit, that must mean that good old working class white people like me are being deprived of that benefit. In other words, there’s only so much to go around, and if your tribe is getting more, that necessarily means my tribe is getting less.
Now, I am sure that a lot of working class white folks do feel exactly that way. And I am sure that Orange Jesus and his supporters and enablers have done everything they can to whip up such zero sum thinking.
But … but … but …
As a matter of fact, and as a matter of logic, it’s entirely possible that you can legitimately complain of being “left behind” without thinking, fallaciously, that the reason you were “left behind” is that someone else got a benefit.
In other words, resentful thinking—a sense that you’re being treated unfairly—is not the same thing as zero sum thinking.
Zero sum thinkers are likely to be resentful, but not all resentful folks think in zero sum terms.
I found this three-year-old video from the Noo Yak Times insightful and profound.
Blue states—defined as those states, like California and Illinois, that have Democratic governors and Democrats in control of the Legislature—are not voting their stated values.
The presenter addresses housing, taxation, and education, and demonstrates how blue state governments are systematically screwing the lower and middle class.
Please understand the point I am trying to make, however imperfectly I am making the point. The point is NOT that anyone should lash himself with a whip for the sin of “hypocrisy.” (If you feel you have been hypocritical, and if you think that self-flagellation would do you good, then go ahead. Please don’t let me stop you. But that’s not the point here.)
The point IS that
we blue folk, collectively, are not (for whatever reason) acting and voting the values we claim to hold, and that
the situation is unsustainable, and that,
unless we are prepared to live in a fascist state, the economic concerns of the lower and middle class have got to be addressed, and that right soon.
After the episode shown above, Mika—obviously prompted by the back office—came on to clarify that Trump was not criminally convicted of rape, he was found civilly liable for “sexual abuse” as “sexual abuse” is defined in New York state law. Judge Lewis Kaplan noted that what the jury found that Trump did would be called “rape” in jurisdictions other than the state of New York.
This is the same issue involved in the infamous Trump v. ABC News settlement. Mika and her back office were right to make the clarification and avoid giving Trump a stick with which to beat her over the head. Debating the fine points about New York’s narrow definition of “rape” is not the hill to die on.
Facing MAGA 