Events

UC Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Cemerinsky and UTA Law & Government professor Jeffrey Abramson try to keep a stiff upper lip when teaching in the shadow of the most partisan Supreme Court in a century: For the first time in American history, the ideology of the justices precisely corresponds to the political party of the president who appointed them. All six conservatives were appointed by Republican presidents and all three liberals were appointed by Democratic presidents. If students are to one day...

Three items: James Fallows reminds us that the US Senate filibuster "is a perversion of the Constitution," that "enables the very paralysis the founders were desperate to avoid," among other things. (He also links to an essay by former US Senator Al Franken (D-MN) about how cynical the filibuster has become.) Jacob Rosenberg brings together workers' own stories about how they got fed up, illustrating how "the big quit" happened. Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon has had enough of the...

It turns out, 2021 wasn't the hottest on record for the planet, nor were the most records set, nor was Arctic sea ice at its lowest level, or rainfall at its highest. But 2021 was the 7th year of a 7-year run of the hottest years ever: In 2021, global temperatures were between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average, according to new data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Berkeley Earth. Despite a La Niña weather pattern in...

In his final novel, Friday (1986), Robert Heinlein spoke through an atavistic character to warn America of its impending doom: Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. ... It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start...

I note with some amusement an email I just received from the Chicago Tribune: Yes, I subscribed all the way back in 1960, more than a decade before I was born. Thanks for remembering!

NPR's Steve Inskeep worked for six years to land a 15-minute interview with the XPOTUS, and yet no one felt any shock or surprise when it ended abruptly: Trump and his team have repeatedly declined interviews with NPR until Tuesday, when he called in from his home in Florida. It was scheduled for 15 minutes, but lasted just over nine. After being pressed about his repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election, Trump abruptly ended the interview. When pressed, it was excuse after excuse — it was...

The pilot of a Cessna 172H that crash-landed near Burbank, Calif., earlier this week survived with non-life-threatening injuries, but he came uncomfortably close to a really bad landing—and they most assuredly cannot use the plane again: LAPD officers pulled an injured pilot from a crashed Cessna 172 moments before it was struck and destroyed by a commuter train. Mark Jenkins, the 70-year-old pilot, was pulled from the wreckage of the aircraft after he crash landed on railroad tracks near Whiteman...

The temperature bottomed out at -14.4°C around 1:30 am, and has climbed ever so slowly since then to -0.3°: Will we get above freezing? The forecast says yes, any moment now. But the sun will set in about 5 minutes. Anyway, a guy can dream, right? Meanwhile, Chicago's teachers and schools have agreed to let the kids back tomorrow, even as the mayor herself tested positive for Covid. And the Art Institute's workforce has formed a union, which will operate under AFSCME. And that's not all: It turns out...

Today's temperatures have hovered around -9°C, with a forecast of bottoming out around -18°C tomorrow morning. But hey, at least the sun is out, right? Meanwhile, in the rest of the world: James Fallows, himself a former speechwriter for President Carter, annotates President Biden's speech from last week. Politics is about power, not about kvetching, says Ezra Klein. US Senator Joe Manchin (D?-WV) has gotten caught between the mine owners who own him and the mine workers who vote for him. Crain's...

I managed to acquire a few bruises last night walking Cassie. I'm fine; she's fine; but my left hand and elbow are a bit sore. Yesterday continued our really strange week as the repeating 96-hour cycle of cold and thaw continued: Starting around 4pm, the warm front pushed just enough moisture ahead of itself to give Chicago a fine mist that instantly coated everything. Even though the air got above freezing later on, the sidewalks did not. Result: most of them got a perfectly smooth, nearly invisible...