Events

Bruce Schneier takes apart Attorney General Bill Barr's proposal to weaken civilian computer security: The Department of Justice wants access to encrypted consumer devices but promises not to infiltrate business products or affect critical infrastructure. Yet that's not possible, because there is no longer any difference between those categories of devices. Consumer devices are critical infrastructure. They affect national security. And it would be foolish to weaken them, even at the request of law...

More stories since yesterday about how Boris Johnson wants to wreck Britain: Martha Gill: "Did Boris Johnson just break Parliament?" Conservative ministers have resigned over Johnson's power move. The Guardian calls proroguing Parliament "an affront to democracy." A cross-party group of MPs have gone to court to prevent the prorogation. And NPR reports that the pound continues to saunter vaguely downwards, with one economist predicting parity with the dollar after a hard Brexit. Fun times, fun times.

In a move that surprised almost no one but angered almost everyone, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced today that, at his request, the Queen prorogued Parliament from mid-September to October 14th: The effect of the decision will be to curtail the time MPs have to introduce legislation or other measures aimed at preventing a no-deal Brexit – and increase the pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to table a vote of no confidence next week. If Johnson lost that vote, there would then be a 14-day period in...

One of the articles I read at lunchtime concerned the president's press conference at the G7 in Biarritz, France, yesterday. It bears examining, not for anything new, but for the shift in the way journalists are describing his thought processes: Asked why he continued to falsely blame Obama for the annexation of Crimea, as he did almost a dozen times Monday, the president suggested that he knew the black journalist asking the question, Yamiche Alcindor of PBS News, had an ulterior motive. “I know you...

I'll circle back to a couple of these later today. But at the moment, I've got the following queued up for my lunch hour: The Washington Post charitably describes yesterday's press conference in France as "a glimpse into Trump's unorthodox mind." As in, he lied through the whole thing. MSNBC says the G7 as a whole (which ended in the aforementioned presser) shows that other world leaders have learned to manipulate the president pretty well. Brazil, meanwhile has become the latest country to discover...

Writer Jennifer Rubin argues that the Democratic Party needs to present the president as what he really is: After all, Trump’s most defining feature these days is a frightful, manic personality more detached from reality than ever before. We don’t need a medical diagnosis or the 25th Amendment to conclude Trump is crazy in the colloquial sense — cuckoo, nuts, non compos mentis, off his rocker, unhinged. Even Republicans who like the tax cuts or the judges at some level understand this is not normal...

Walking 26,000 steps, catching Oklahoma!, and eating pastrami and a random slice on Lexington Avenue in the last 24 hours have distracted me from posting. Regular blogging continues tomorrow. And wow, Oklahoma! was totally worth it.

In The Daily Parker's occasional series on logical fallacies, we now come to my favorite: Non sequitur "It does not follow." That is, the argument does not have anything to do with the point under discussion. Sometimes non sequiturs make you wonder about the other person's sanity. Example, in poetry: Haikus are simpleBut sometimes they don't make senseRefrigerator If you look up "non sequitur" in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, you will see this quote: "They've won five wars where the armies that...

In the articles I linked earlier today, one noted at 10th Circuit decision about so-called "faithless electors:" The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the Colorado secretary of state violated the Constitution in 2016 when he removed an elector and nullified his vote because the elector refused to cast his ballot for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote. The Electoral College system is established in the Constitution. When voters cast a ballot for president, they are...

So much to read, so much eye strain from the fluorescent lights: The federal budget deficit will hit $1 trillion in 2020, due mainly to the Republican tax cuts and spending increases. Note that Republicans have raised holy hell for smaller deficits during Democratic administrations. The 10th Circuit ruled this week that electors can vote for anyone they choose, which could have subtle effects in any presidential election. Drew Margary warns that President Trump "is not a cosmic 404 error." Brookings...