Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- In and from the field: a journey into the life of a 'mission-ethnographer' and his co-producers Annekie Joubert Part 1 Historic contextualisation / Lize Kriel Part 2 Corpus of Hoffmann's ethnographic articles Gerrie Grobler, Annekie Joubert, Inge Kosch Rites of passage Article 1 Engagement and marriage among the Sotho people in the Woodbush Mountains of the Transvaal = Peeletso le lenyalo Basothong ba Lebowa ba Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala (1913) -- Article 2 The initiation school of the Sotho people in the Woodbush Mountains of the Transvaal = Koma ya banna ya Basotho ba Lebowa ba Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala (1915) Folklore: stories from the Transvaal Article 3 Folktales and stories of the natives in Northern Transvaal = Dinonwane le dikanegelo tsa Basotho ba Lebowa (1915) -- Article 4 Folktales and stories of the natives in Northern Transvaal = Dinonwane le dikanegelo tsa Basotho ba Lebowa (1916) -- Article 5 Folktales and stories of the natives in Northern Transvaal Dinonwane le dikanegelo tsa Basotho ba Lebowa (1916) -- Article 6 Folktales and stories of the natives in Northern Transvaal = Dinonwane le dikanegelo tsa Basotho ba Lebowa (1916) Mother and child Article 7 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala (1928) Witchcraft, gods, prophets, spirits and totems Article 8 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala (1928/29) -- Article 9 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: totems and prohibitions = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Meano le Dikganetso (1920/31) -- Article 10 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Spirits that are with some stones and other things and witchcraft = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Moya wo o nago le maswika a mangwe le ge e le dilo tse dingwe le boloi (1931/32) -- Article 11 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: The soul in death and after death = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Moya wa motho mohlang wa lehu le ka morago ga lehu (1932) Land, laws and punishment Article 12 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Legal practices of the Northern Sotho people = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Tiriso ya melao ya Basotho ba Lebowa (1933/34) -- Article 13 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Legal practices of the Northern Sotho people = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Tiriso ya melao ya Basotho ba Lebowa (1933/34) -- Article 14 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Legal practices of the Northern Sotho people = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Tiriso ya melao ya Basotho ba Lebowa (1933/34) -- Article 15 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Legal practices of the Northern Sotho people = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Tiriso ya melao ya Basotho ba Lebowa (1933/34) People, politics and government Article 16 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Political organisation = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Peakanyo ya borerapuso (1937/38) -- Article 17 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Political organisation = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Peakanyo ya borerapuso (1937/38) -- Article 18 Sotho texts from the Woodbush Mountains in the Transvaal: Political organisation = Dingwalwa tsa Sesotho tse di tswago Dithabeng tsa Woodbush go la Transfala: Peakanyo ya borerapuso (1937/38) Home, habits and conduct Article 19 Customs and traditions of the Sotho people in Northern Transvaal = Mekgwa le botlwaelo bja Basotho ba Transfala-Lebowa (1956) -- Article 20 Customs and traditions of the Sotho people in Northern Transvaal = Mekgwa le botlwaelo bja Basotho ba Transfala-Lebowa (1956) -- Article 21 Customs and traditions of the Sotho people in Northern Transvaal = Mekgwa le botlwaelo bja Basotho ba Transfala-Lebowa (1957) -- Article 22 Customs and traditions of the Sotho people in Northern Transvaal = Mekgwa le botlwaelo bja Basotho ba Transfala-Lebowa (1957) -- Article 23 Customs and traditions of the Sotho people in Northern Transvaal = Mekgwa le botlwaelo bja Basotho ba Transfala-Lebowa (1958) -- Article 24 Customs and traditions of the Sotho people in Northern Transvaal = Mekgwa le botlwaelo bja Basotho ba Transfala-Lebowa (1958) Obituary : In remembrance of missionary C. Hoffmann (1963) E. Kahler-Meyer Part 3 Orthographic developments and grammatical observations Inge Kosch

INTRODUCTION 1 -- 1 THE ROLE OF COURTS IN THE PROTECTION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS: INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC PERSPECTIVES -- I. The Indivisibility of Human Rights -- A. Understanding Socio-economic Rights as Human Rights -- B. Two Faces of Liberty: Conflicting Ideologies of Socio-economic and Civil and Political Rights -- C. Socio-economic Rights, Resources and the Negative-Positive Dichotomy -- D. A Unified Approach to Human Rights: To 'Respect, Protect and Promote' the Rights -- E. The Normative Content of Socio-economic Rights: Programmatic Aspirations and the 'Minimum Core' -- II. The Protection of Socio-economic Rights in Domestic Courts -- A. Issues of Justiciability: Achieving Social Justice in the Round? -- i. Institutional Competencies -- ii. Welfare Politics, Courts and Conflicting Theories of Constitutional Review -- B. The Protection of Socio-economic Rights through the Traditional Canon of Civil and Political Rights -- C. The Dedicated Pursuit of Social Justice: The South African Model -- D. The Enforcement of Socio-economic Rights: Cooperative Dialogue in the South African Constitutional Court? -- III. Conclusion -- 2 THE REGIONAL PROTECTION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS: EUROPE -- I. Introduction -- II. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 1950 -- A. Background and Context: The Negative-Positive Dichotomy Revisited -- B. Incremental Development of Positive Obligations in ECHR Rights -- C. Methodological Issues: Grafting a Jurisprudence of Positive Obligations onto the ECHR Rights -- D. Reconciling the Development of Positive Obligations with the Negative Thrust of the ECHR -- E. Theoretical Justifications for Positive Obligations and the Problem of Resources -- III. The Protection of Socio-economic Rights in the ECHR -- A. Developing Core Values in the ECHR Rights -- B. Article 2: A Right to Health Treatment? -- C. Article 3: Respect for Human Dignity -- D. Article 8: Protecting Physical and Psychological Integrity -- E. Article 14: The Equal Distribution of Public Goods? -- F. Article 6: Due Process in Public Law Challenges -- IV. The Protection of Socio-economic Rights in EC -- EU Law -- A. The Development of a Doctrine of Fundamental Rights in EC -- EU Law -- B. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union -- C. The European Court of Justice (ECJ): Social Solidarity and Access to Public Services in Member States -- i. Undue Delay -- ii. Article 49 EC Treaty -- V. Conclusion -- 3 COURTS, THE UK CONSTITUTION AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998 -- I. Introduction -- II. Reading and Giving Effect to ECHR Rights in UK Courts -- A. The Background and Political Context of the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 -- B. The Purpose and Structure of the HRA -- C. General Principles of Constitutional Interpretation in the United Kingdom -- D. The Interpretation of Section 3 HRA -- E. Deference: The Boundaries of Interpretative Possibility under Section 3 HRA -- F. Section 2 HRA and the Scope of ECHR Rights: Taking Account of Strasbourg Jurisprudence -- i. Stare Decisis -- G. Section 6 HRA: The Duty of Public Authorities to Act Compatibly with the ECHR Rights -- I. Human Rights or Economic Liberalism: Contested Interpretations of Section 6(3)(b) HRA -- III. Conclusion -- 4 JUDICIAL REVIEW: DEFERENCE, RESOURCES AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT -- I. Introduction -- II. The Constitutional Foundations of Judicial Review -- A. Ultra Vires or Rights? -- B. The Reception of Human Rights in English Law prior to the HRA -- C. Resistance to Human Rights in English Administrative Law -- D. Judicial Deference, Resources and the Ultra Vires Paradigm of Review -- III. Public Law, Deference and the Human Rights Act -- A. The Limits of Judicial Intervention under Section 6 HRA -- i. Context and Proportionality: A Bright-line Division in Public Law? -- B. Justification, Transparency and Reasons to Defer -- C. Deference Embedded: The Artificial Division between Policy and Law -- D. Deference in Context: Landlord and Tenant Repossession Cases -- E. Deference, the Subject Matter of Disputes and the Nature of the Rights -- F. Democracy, Human Rights Values and the 'Unity of Public Law' -- IV. Conclusion -- 5 FROM NEED TO 'CHOICE' IN PUBLIC SERVICES: THE BOUNDARIES OF JUDICIAL INTERVENTION IN PRIORITISATION DISPUTES -- I. Introduction -- A. From Need to Choice in NHS and Public Authority Services: The Post-welfare Landscape of the United Kingdom -- II. NHS Rationing: The Role of Courts in Disputes over Access to Medical Services -- A. The Limits of Judicial Intervention in Health Care Rationing: R v Cambridge Health Authority, ex parte B (Re B) -- B. NHS Policies under Scrutiny: Legitimate Interventions in Public Administrative Law -- i. Legitimate Expectation: The Meeting of Individual Needs -- ii. Irrational Allocation Policies: Distinguishing Re B -- C. Choice, Socio-economic Entitlements and EU Law: Challenging the Status Quo -- III. Local Authority Resource Allocation Disputes -- IV. Interpreting Local Authority Statutory Duties Post-HRA -- A. Section 17 Children Act 1989: Accommodating Children and their

The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (the "Beijing Conference") was a landmark in policy terms, setting a global policy framework to advance gender equality. Ten years after Beijing, in March 2005, the UN's Commission on the Status of Women presided over an intergovernmental meeting in New York to review the progress achieved on the commitments made in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. This "Plus 10" event was decidedly low key. Its aim was not agenda setting but agenda confirming; not policy formulation, but policy affirmation. Whether it proves to be part of an ongoing worldwide movement in support of gender equality, or whether it marks the decline of that process, is a question that many in international women's movements are asking. This paper, drawing on research undertaken for the UNRISD report, Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World, reflects on the ambivalent record of progress achieved by women over the last decades and considers how the policy environment has changed over the period since the high point of the global women's movements. Drawing on a number of commonly employed indicators of "women's progress", the paper argues that the record of achievement regarding gender equality is more ambivalent, and the causal influences more diverse and less unidirectional than is sometimes assumed. It also argues that development policies have an important role to play in securing outcomes, and that the first phase of the structural reforms (dating from the early 1980s) was in many respects negative for women. In the ten years since the Beijing Conference there have been some significant shifts in international development policy along with a growing appreciation of the need to develop gender aware policies. By the end of the 1980s, "market fundamentalism" and shock therapy had lost much of their appeal, opening up a space for new ideas and approaches in development policy and practice. Growing discontent over the social effects of the reforms, as well as criticism from leading economists in the international financial institutions (IFIs) have brought about a policy shift, which is sometimes referred to as the "Post-Washington Consensus". The new policies have shown a willingness to give social and political concerns greater attention, expressed under indicative headings such as "social capital" and "good governance". Social policy and, in particular, poverty relief have moved up the scale of international priorities in the 1990s. But behind the apparent consensus forged by a shared vocabulary of "poverty" and "social protection", there are conflicting understandings of social policy based on different values, priorities, and understandings of state responsibility. There are serious concerns over whether sustainable routes out of poverty are being provided or can be provided in the absence of appropriate job creation measures and regional regeneration. Given women's greater share of responsibility for unpaid care work and their less advantageous access to cash and income-earning opportunities, the redefining of state responsibility and the greater role given to market forces is likely to impact adversely on their time and their access to social benefits. The retreat from market fundamentalism has seen a partial rehabilitation of the state as a significant actor in development, and emphasis has been placed on "good governance" through democracy, participation, decentralization and community ownership. A broad understanding of a "good governance" agenda would embrace political liberalization, participation, human rights, and address problems of social inequality as part of a fundamental commitment to democracy. Such an agenda would encompass the kinds of issues of state legitimacy, capacity and accountability that social movements and women's movements have confronted for decades. Although governance reforms can and should address issues of government legitimacy and the public participation of socially excluded groups, they have often been dominated by a much narrower preoccupation. Hence, while the recent donor attention to the question of "good governance" is to be welcomed, much depends on how it is interpreted. A great deal depends on whether the democratization of politics and the participation of marginalized social groups are seen as integral to reform objectives and are embraced in institutional change; and on whether reducing social and gender inequalities are among the core principles guiding the programme of state institutional transformation. There are aspects of the current international political climate that place limits on this occurring, namely the rise to political power of conservative forces in the US and elsewhere, and the attacks of 9/11. While the first has seen the adoption by the US of conservative policies with respect to women's reproductive and sexual rights, supported by religious forces, the latter has focused more attention and funding on "security" at the expense of development and human rights. The paper examines how this ensemble of changing international policy and political climate over the past decade has given rise to new issues and challenges for those active in global women's movements.

 

Hundreds
of millions of Indian citizens have begun to vote and they will keep doing it
for six weeks. Indian democratic elections are the most massive human
mobilizations in the world —more than any other election, war, pilgrimage,
migration movement, or world fair. There are more than one million polling
stations and even a team of elephants to carry voting machines to the Himalaya.
Unlike in many other democracies, electoral turnout in India is higher among
the poor than among the rich, among the less educated than among the graduates,
in the villages than in the cities. Since the last elections, five years ago,
women vote (a little) more than men.

The
success of democracy in India has dismissed the pessimistic auguries after the
independence and the first election in 1952. But India is not an isolated case.
Let's see the numbers. A little more than half of the world's population lives
in democracy. Let's consider that "rich" countries are those above the world
average per capita income (in purchasing power, around $ 18,000 per year), and
"poor" are those below that threshold. About half of the world population
living in democracy lives in relatively poor countries (including India, but
also Indonesia, South Africa, and others), while about half of the population
living in dictatorships lives in relatively rich countries (including China,
but also S. Arabia, Russia, and others).

Some
traditional sociologists have been puzzled by the India case because it does
not fit the classical doctrine that economic development must precede democracy:
from Seymour Lipset to Adam Przeworski, who has "repeatedly predict India as a
dictatorship" before 2030. Yet, India is not an exception or an anomaly. The
earliest modern democracies, such as Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom,
or the United States, had also enforced broad male suffrage for competitive
elections in the nineteenth century when they were fairly poor, as poor as
India was in the mid-twentieth century or as is now.

For
about forty years after independence, when the government was dominated by the
Indian National Congress party, initially led by Jawaharlal Nehru, the
centralized and closed Indian economy grew at an often-mocked annual rate of
1%. But since the early 1990s, when it has liberalized and opened to new
technologies and globalization, India has enjoyed significant benefits from
open trade and capital inflows. Against all expectations, the Indian per capita
income at purchasing power has multiplied by five in thirty years. Precisely
because India was late in adopting more sophisticated institutions and
policies, it has been able to adapt more readily to the global economy. In
contrast to developed countries with old technologies and onerous preexisting
social arrangements, India has not had to dismantle former industrial and
bureaucratic structures that might have obstructed innovation.

Consequently,
the Indian citizens declare to prefer democracy to an authoritarian regime in a
proportion of four to one. In the most recent international poll by the Pew
Research Center, 72% of Indian citizens declare to be satisfied with the way
democracy works in their country --only after Sweden and in contrast with, for
example, 33% in the United States. (Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes
& Trends, 2024).

The Congress
Party, always led by Nehru's descendants Gandhi family, and the current incumbent
People's Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have alternated in
government seven times. The electoral system is a copy of the colonial British
tradition of single-member districts by simple plurality rule, which permits a
party with less than 40% of votes to get an absolute majority of seats in the lower
chamber of parliament. Yet, while numerous minor parties run independently, the
two larger parties run in very broad electoral coalitions: in the current
election, the incumbent BJP has formed a National Democratic Alliance with 12 mostly
state-based or ethnic parties, while the opposition Congress is running in an
India National Development Inclusive Alliance (to fit the acronym INDIA) with
23 parties, including several on the far left. Their participation in federal
politics also works as a factor of Indian union.

After
the end of the Cold War, the old Indian foreign policy of "non-alignment" was
initially replaced with one of "strategic autonomy." India remains outside the
United Nations Security Council, despite having become a nuclear power, and
outside the Group of Seven despite being the fourth democratic economy in size.
Nevertheless, India has become more dynamic in supporting the democratization
of its neighboring countries in South Asia, which is still a poorly integrated
region. It is also the oldest and most stable democracy of the so-called BRICS
group, now enlarged to nine members, and it has recently increased its
relations and deals with the United States and the European Union in a world of
fluctuating international coalitions. From a global and historical perspective,
democracy in India is already one of the most remarkable contemporary achievements
of humankind.

 Also in Spanish and Catalan in La Vanguardia:https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20240429/9605408/mayor-fiesta-democratica-mundo.html

Over the last decade, a new generation of foreign policy professionals has risen through the ranks in Washington. The post-9/11 world shaped its worldview, and despite diverse experiences and backgrounds, this cohort has developed shared values on issues ranging from global democratic norms to the need for changing the conversation on global terrorism. Many of us who belong to this cohort fundamentally believed that Washington's foreign policy institutions were evolving to be more inclusive and nuanced. But the U.S. response to the Hamas terror attack on Israel, Israel's disproportionate response, and the conversation dominating the Washington foreign policy elite, has shattered that illusion. It exposed the double standards — illustrated most vividly by the difference between discussions about the war in Ukraine and the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza — that dominate the so-called D.C. foreign policy blob.Living as a foreign policy professional in Washington over the last few months is reminiscent of what I often encounter in my home nation of Pakistan, where friends and family often tell me to speak in hushed tones in public when talking about blasphemy laws and violence against underprivileged communities.Many of us now find ourselves whispering our views on what is going on in Gaza, fearful of the impact that speaking out in public may have on our careers. One of my mentors who cut her teeth during the post-9/11 era told me to keep my head down and quietly work the system. Many of us know of examples of people who veered off the party line of commentary about Israel's attacks and found themselves shamed or, in extreme examples, fired.Things are changing, albeit slowly. Chuck Schumer's remarks on the floor of the Senate were described by Fareed Zakaria — a key establishment voice — as a "watershed moment". In addition, the Biden administration has placed sanctions on some Israeli settler outposts and increased its public criticism of the Nethanyahu government.But this is not happening because men like Biden and Schumer have somehow rediscovered their moral compass; they are in large part responding to the data which suggests that the White House's policies have put at risk Biden's reelection prospects. The growing domestic and global outcry about the civilian body count, destruction and famine in Gaza — and little prospect that Prime Minister Netanyahu is ever going to shift direction — have also contributed to the change in tone (though this has not prevented the administration from sending billions of dollars in new weapons, including 2,000-pound bombs and fighter jets, to Israel in recent days).The Biden administration may eventually abandon Nethanyahu, primarily guided by Biden's collapsing polling numbers among key constituencies. The Uncommitted Campaign, led by grassroots Arab-American organizers like Layla Elabed, has played a critical role by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of voters in places like Michigan and Minnesota.But the fear is that once the anger subsides, the current conflict winds down, and Israel elects a new leader, Washington will go back to its status quo policy of providing unconditional military aid to Israel, ignoring the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and paying lip service to a two-state solution.While things are changing, the mission to transform American foreign policy towards Israel and Palestine is only just getting started. Achieving greater influence to help shape better policies will take years, if not decades. The broader community will have to be patient, but forceful and uncompromising. It will have to work the levers of America's political system to develop a coterie of staffers on Capitol Hill, advisors in the National Security Council, and think tank scholars and academics who develop, shape, and influence American foreign policy for the better.While it is true that Joe Biden's embrace of Netanyahu's hard line government has cost him dearly, there are still things he can do to showcase that he is open to evolving his policies. To do so, Biden must not only call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, but also stop the illegal provision of offensive weapons to Israel, join the majority of the world's nations in recognizing the state of Palestine, and pursue a policy that punishes Israel for the continued expansion of settlements on Palestinian lands.Many of us who belong to this rising group of experts will not sit idly by in the face of stagnant, imbalanced U.S. foreign policy – much like our global contemporaries who reject status quo politics. The polls are now bearing this out: Americans do not approve of Israel's ongoing operations in Gaza. As a result, the Biden administration should not be supporting Israel further with weapons and military aid. President Biden and his advisors must recognize that Washington cannot continue dismissing the concerns and recommendations of their citizens and voters.

A
little-noticed act from last year has helped to facilitate Republican Gov. Jeff Landry's
request to increase efficiency in how Louisiana handles its natural resources, including
the possibility that tens of billions of dollars will be spent more wisely over
the coming decades.

The new law changed, as of last
month, the name of the Department of Energy and Natural Resources by adding the
"Energy" designation. It also added some structure to it that will provide some
guardrails for a request by executive
order Landry made last week to reorganize natural resources functions from
three separate affiliated agencies and over a dozen independent commissions
into the defined functions of the department.

This law empowers Landry to solicit changes from
the department, with the first report due at the end of the month and all
wrapped up by the end of July. Likely some legislation will come forth concerning
this for the year's regular legislative session to begin Mar. 11 and to end
Jun. 3. Likely many of the entities listed in the order will be folded into
DENR management, the new law and text of the order suggests.

Output from the reports could improve administration
in a number of ways. For example, largely useless entities like the Climate
Initiatives Task Force, which produced
little in value and mostly poor policy recommendations with little scientific
merit while heavily politicized, can
be put out of its misery welcomed by citizens and taxpayers.

Other functions could benefit from streamlining.
The entities involved are governed by boards that, at best, could be made entirely
advisory, or perhaps eliminated entirely. One of the most prominent is the State Mineral and Energy
Board, whose main functions involved leasing of state lands for oil and gas
development, transferring those leases, and managing activity on others. Most
of its 11 members are appointed by the governor with Senate confirmation (the
governor and secretary, or their designees, also are members), required only to
have some connection to the energy industry, and who serve concurrently with
the governor. It uses DENR resources to do its job.

Landry hasn't made membership changes to that, perhaps
because it may face a radical overhaul as a result of his order. The majority
of states conduct these affairs within their DENR-equivalent agencies, although
some follow Louisiana's model in having appointed boards – even as often
representatives of government agencies solely comprise or make up the majority
of members – and a very few, including the large producing states of Oklahoma
and Texas, elect members. It would make more sense for the secretary, whose
department already determines tracts to be leased or transferred and
recommended parameters pertaining to that, to decide on deals and other matters
rather than political appointees.

Yet the biggest impact to the state and its
taxpayers that could come from these changes would be the consolidation of the
Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority into DENR. At present, CPRA exists
as an arm of the Governor's
Office of Coastal Activities that provides for CPRA administrative leadership.
Its board, comprised of appointees from various statewide elected and cabinet
officers and the Legislature plus regional planning agencies, provides for the
planning and execution of the coastal master plan, last updated in 2023, and
the annual plans derived from it, along with general oversight of protection and
restoration projects undertaken through CPRA.

Unfortunately, this structure has proven itself
susceptible to an ethos of climate alarmism, as
evidenced in the last two master plans. Regrettably, in formulating funding
priorities totaling $50 billion the reports rely upon the most pessimistic scenarios
driven by alarmist-based models, not by actual science. This approach can distort
the projects chosen and their priorities, risking the spending of billions on
things low in actual priority or even unnecessary while neglecting projects with
higher real payoffs, to the detriment of industry, residents, and taxpayers.

Folding governance of CPRA into DENR certainly
could encourage following the science to a higher degree and dispensing with
politicized fad and fashion that currently influences project choice, priority,
and spending decisions, both in sorting out the annual plan and in construction
of the next master plan due by 2028. The current model with its track record of
not preventing bad assumptions behind projects forwarded to the Legislature for
funding argues that a fresh approach only can improve matters, much
as this displeases the politics-as-usual crowd.

Landry is right to pursue these reforms that promise
better performance for fewer dollars. The sooner his administration can formulate
these and the Legislature acts upon them, the better for Louisiana.

The U.S. airstrike that killed Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi, otherwise known as Abu Taqwa, and two other militiamen on Thursday has been unequivocally condemned by Iraqi leaders, starting with President Latif Rashid and Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Sudani down to every parliamentary member in range of a microphone."This is a blatant violation of Iraq's sovereignty and security," said Rashid in a post on X. "We also condemn the attacks on Iraq's Kurdistan Region. Iraq must not and will not be turned into a proxy battleground. Priority must be given to dialogue as a means to defuse tensions and find common ground.""The Iraqi armed forces hold the forces of the international coalition responsible for this attack," Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's office said in a statement, also calling a "dangerous escalation and aggression."The foreign ministry also weighed in Thursday, saying, "Iraq reserves its right to take a firm stance and take all measures that deter anyone who tries to harm its land and security forces."Abu Taqwa was an operational commander in the Iranian-backed Harakat al-Nujaba, which was designated a global terrorist organization by the Trump Administration in 2019. But it is also part of the wider Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of paramilitary organizations that are linked to the security apparatus of the Iraq government and were instrumental to the 2014-2017 campaign against Daesh (or ISIS). Abu Taqwa was the leader of a designated terrorist organization, but the implications of this attack question the very wisdom of this operation. At least six strategic consequences come to mind. Coming on the heels of a similar U.S. attack less than 10 days earlier, critics say Thursday's strike was a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and the government's authority to manage military operations within its own country. Whatever Washington says about respect for Iraq's autonomy and its relations with Baghdad, the attacks seem to suggest — at least to officials — otherwise. Second, the United States has been consistent in its messaging that it does not wish to expand the Israel-Gaza war into a regional war. The policy has been ostensibly to contain the conflict, but Thursday's operation seemed to test that goal in dangerous ways. Israel has its hands full with outside attacks from Hezbollah and the Houthis, and the logic behind provoking the Iraqi PMFs into expanding the conflict is puzzling. Third, the United States continues to operate against Daesh in Syria, but much of that operation is controlled, resourced, and resupplied from within Iraq. Separately, Washington continues a conventional train and equip security cooperation program with the Iraqi Security Forces as well as augmenting the Iraqi Security Forces with assets ranging from intelligence to air support. This attack puts that entire relationship in question and has reignited the debate over the expulsion of the U.S. forces — an issue which Sudani raised himself only a week ago.But the debate goes back to the 2020 parliament vote which took place after the assassination of Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces and a member of the Iraqi parliament. Fourth, coming one day after the four-year anniversary of the Soleimani killing and on the heels of a terrorist attack in Iran which killed over 100 civilians at a ceremony at his tomb, it is hard to imagine a worse time to execute another PMF leader. Emotions were already running high among Iraqis and Iranians, and this could easily be exploited.Fifth, the attacks intensify the risk to American diplomats, troops, and civilians in Iraq. Calls for revenge are resonating throughout the country, and it is hard to ignore the high probability that fresh retaliatory attacks will follow from Thursday's strike. In carrying out military operations within the country of an ally, decisions must be respectful of the host country and well-coordinated. Politics, public opinion, and fundamental issues such as sovereignty must be thoroughly weighed. While it may make absolute sense to "take a terrorist off the battlefield" there are deeper considerations when that "battlefield" is in the country of an ostensible ally. Washington must develop better ways of coordinating with the Iraqis ahead of these operations, especially as General Patrick Ryder, Pentagon spokesman, made it clear yesterday, that the U.S. "maintains the inherent right of self-defense if our forces are threatened." He did add that "we'll continue to communicate, as we have been all along, closely with our Iraqi partners when it comes to the safety and security of our forces in Iraq."It is hard to see how that happened in the drone strike on Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi.

Joe Biden is neither an original thinker nor a profound one. Granted, few if any figures laboring in the trenches of contemporary American politics can claim to be either. On that score, it would be unreasonable for us to hold Biden's lack of depth and originality against him. He is, after all, just an Average Joe.
Somewhat more problematic is Biden's penchant for appropriating the words of others without attribution. The habit has not enhanced his reputation. Yet to be fair, when the President recently described the United States as the "indispensable nation," he did credit the origin of that phrase to his "friend" Madeleine Albright.
Such honesty is commendable. Even so, wary Americans might find Biden's resurrection of Albright's several decades-old phrase to be more than a little troubling.
The provenance of the expression is worth noting. Speaking on national television in 1998, then Secretary of State Albright had used the occasion to articulate an Albright Doctrine of sorts. "If we have to use force," she declared with sublime confidence, "it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future."
In Albright's defense, she issued this grandiose pronouncement at a moment when American elites were enjoying a prolonged post-Cold War victory lap. In political circles, chest-thumping triumphalism had become the lingua franca. Had not the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ostensibly brought history itself to its intended conclusion? A mere decade later, had not Operation Desert Storm definitively affirmed history's verdict? By the 1990s, America was on a roll, destined, it seemed, to remain the world's number one in perpetuity.
Soon enough, however, all of this came to seem like so much hot air. First came the terrorist attacks of 9/11, with the follies of the Global War on Terrorism following in short order. The epic failure of the Afghanistan War in tandem with costly and bungled efforts to "liberate" Iraq left America's reputation for peering into the future in tatters. Sundry other missteps demolished claims that the United States possessed some special knack for anticipating what comes next. Then came the election of Donald Trump, unforeseen by those ostensibly in the know.
If remembered at all, the Albright Doctrine survived as a sort of punchline — the equivalent of "Mission Accomplished" or "We got him!"
Today the future to which Albright had confidently alluded in 1998 has become our own immediate past. Events since have brought us to where we are today. They provide a backdrop and frame of reference for the exercise of American power. That Biden has chosen our present moment to resuscitate the Albright Doctrine is, to put it mildly, disconcerting. It suggests someone badly out of touch with reality.
Albright had credited the United States with the ability to "see" and by implication to shape the future course of world history. Today, with the nation's ability to sustain its own democracy beyond the upcoming presidential election up for debate, we may question the Biden administration's ability to see beyond next Thursday.
Yet let us take Biden at his word, as a true believer in American indispensability, advised by a cadre of like minded civilian and military officials. Even today, their collective confidence in American global primacy is undiminished, as if events since 1998 either didn't happen or don't matter.
Today challenges to the nation's erstwhile indispensability premier abound: the rise of China, a stalemated conflict in Ukraine, porous borders at home, the pressing existential threat posed by climate change. Yet none poses a more urgent test than the ongoing war in Gaza. Here, more than anywhere else, events summon the United States to affirm its claim to primacy. Right now, without delay.
Doing so would mean employing U.S. power and influence to bring this wretched war to an immediate end.
As measured by actions rather than rhetorical gestures, however, the Biden administration has done just the opposite. By providing immense quantities of ordnance to one side, it ensures the war's perpetuation and facilitates the continued slaughter of noncombatants. By vetoing UN Security Council efforts to force a ceasefire, it stands virtually alone in defiance of world opinion. While American diplomats travel hither and yon, their efforts cannot be rated as other than ineffectual.
On a recent trip to the Middle East, national security adviser Jake Sullivan remarked, "We're not here to tell anybody, 'You must do X, you must do Y'." How this accords with any meaningful conception of indispensability is not clear.
My guess is that Madeleine Albright would be embarrassed. Joe Biden should be as well.

In Louisiana politics this year, perhaps the only
thing more inevitable than a Republican Jeff Landry gubernatorial victory was
the Louisiana
Supreme Court denying an appeal of lower courts' decisions rerunning the
Caddo Parish sheriff's contest. By contrast, successfully picking a winner in
the Mar. 23 faceoff is very much evitable, an exercise that will be determined
more by forces outside of the contest than the campaigning and dynamics within
the parish.

After the Nov. 18 runoff, Democrat former
Shreveport police chief and chief administrative officer Henry Whitehorn led Republican
former city councilor John Nickelson
by a single vote. However, a district court found enough irregularities under
law to order another election, and the Second Circuit agreed. This week, the Louisiana
Supreme Court ratified that with its action.

Given the undisputable proof and wording of
Louisiana law, as was the case with the appellate court. the only real question
was whether the non-Republicans on the Court would try to bring the matter to a
potential reversal. Once again, they tried. Democrat Assoc. Justice Piper Griffin
voted to hear and in a dissent
essentially repeated the same objections made by the dissenters at the
appellate level: elections with illegal ballots have these sanitized into legal
ones if the unrealistic laws in place to challenge these can't be followed. No
party Chief Justice John Weimer provided
a further rationale in his for
empowering tainted election results and dispensing with common sense by saying
procedures to overturn certified election results should be onerous, if not
unworkable, such was the sanctity of the process compared to the desirability
of judicial intervention.

Arguments which Republican Assoc. Justice James Genovese
easily slew in his concurring
opinion:

In a two-candidate race, the mere fact that one
candidate ends up with one or more votes than his opponent, without regard or
consideration given to proven fraud and unqualified voters casting ballots,
does not equate to a just and fair election under our law and jurisprudence. A
just and fair election can only be had when one candidate wins by a majority
vote of qualified electors ….… this election was not a free and fair election.
A one-vote margin of victory supported by clearly established eleven
unqualified voters cannot be said to constitute a fair election.What is fair and essential to the candidates and
the electorate, and to preserve election integrity, is to have a new runoff
election with a winner decided by qualified voters.





As clear-cut as the case for a new election was,
who will win is anything but. The date is significant in that it will coincide
with the state's presidential preference primaries, which for both parties will
come later rather than sooner in the national delegate-collection process.

This means the most
likely outcome of that process would be both nominees – almost certainly
Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and Republican
former Pres. Donald Trump –
mathematically will have been decided by then, leaving little on the ballot to
generate enthusiasm for the mass public and lowering turnout for all partisans.
The next most likely scenario is that Biden has things wrapped up, but that
Trump still hasn't sealed the deal although it may be only a matter of time.
Less likely still is neither has unassailable leads, and the least of all that
Trump has secured the nomination but Biden hasn't.

Reviewing
the general and runoff elections this fall, Nickelson did better the higher
the turnout. Reviewing those turnout figures with past Louisiana presidential preference
primary turnouts under the varying competitive environments, this means if the
GOP's nomination remains in doubt, he will have the edge; otherwise, Whitehorn
likely does, all things equal.

Money initially seems to be. Nickelson
plunked down $565,000 throughout but held only $16,000 at year's end. Whitehorn
spent only $140,000 and raised nothing after the general election, but has
$50,000 banked. Nickelson likely can outraise Whitehorn, but the latter seems
to be able to gather enough to offset the former's advantage.

Yet Whitehorn has a better rallying cry to
mobilize partisans, regardless of exogenous turnout factors or money. Look for his
campaign to trot out some version of he was robbed of a win, coupled with the
race card played in some diluted version that stands the best chance of mobilizing
his largely black voting base. Note that as soon as the news of the Court's declination
came out, he
began going very negatively against Nickelson and his supposedly favored treatment
by the courts, and earlier
he alleged, using a racial dog whistle, that prospective voters in the
runoff supporting him needed to vote "Because Your Life May Depend Upon It."

It may well work. Excepting that one scenario
where the GOP presidential nomination remains somewhat competitive, the turnout
cards are held by Whitehorn. Nickleson will have to come up with an excellent
strategy to outplay those.

More than 1200 political scientists, including some of the field's most prominent voices, are calling on President Joe Biden and other U.S. politicians to push for an "immediate ceasefire" in Gaza and an end to the Israeli blockade of the besieged strip."Only immediate ceasefire and provision of aid are adequate to prevent enormous further loss of civilian life," they argued in an open letter, noting that the conflict risks sparking a wider war in the region. "Continuation of the conflict also endangers the hostages whose safe return depends on a deescalation of hostilities.""As Israel's longtime patron and chief ally, the United States has both a special responsibility for this crisis and a special influence upon it," the letter continues. "The U.S. response to the Gaza war thus far has badly damaged its credibility and moral authority, giving rise to reasonable suspicions of U.S. proclamations about a 'rules-based international order.'"The signatories, which also include leading scholars of Middle East politics, join a growing list of academic and professional groups that have called for a ceasefire and argued that continued fighting will further deepen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where at least 13,000 people have been killed and an additional 1.7 million displaced over the past month.While polls show that a supermajority of Americans support a ceasefire, U.S. politicians have largely refused to advocate for a sustained break in hostilities, which President Joe Biden and many in Congress claim would play into Hamas's hands. "To Hamas's members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again," Biden argued in a recent op-ed for the Washington Post.The pro-ceasefire effort, which also condemns Hamas's actions, echoes a 2002 open letter in which leading political scientists urged then-President George W. Bush to stop the march toward the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In fact, the two letters share some signatories, including University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard University Professor Stephen Walt, both of whom are non-resident fellows at the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft.Other notable signers of the ceasefire letter include Margaret Levi, Jane Mansbridge, Lisa Martin, Rogers Smith, and Carol Pateman, all of whom previously served as president of the American Political Science Association, the field's leading professional group. Prominent scholars of non-state movements and peacekeeping — including James C. Scott, Page Fortna, and Melani Cammett — also endorsed the petition.This broad support from the political science community stems in part from the letter's carefully chosen wording, argues Lisa Wedeen, a professor at the University of Chicago who helped organize the petition. Wedeen told RS that the final language came a long way from the first draft, which was proposed by junior faculty and staked out a position that was unlikely to draw support from a wide swathe of political scientists."It had the advantage of offering a big tent perspective that could allow important scholars with disparate views to call resoundingly for a ceasefire," Wedeen said, adding that she is grateful to junior colleagues who agreed to tone down the language in order to build a broader coalition.Notably, the final letter says its signers "may differ about the precise outlines" of a resolution for the conflict but argues that "the crisis facing Gaza is so dire as to demand that we set aside for now any underlying disagreements about the broader conflict and register the urgent need for ceasefire and humanitarian aid."Wedeen says the letter has created an opportunity for the broader political science community to have conversations about the conflict and engage with its potential consequences. She has succeeded in persuading some colleagues to sign the letter by pointing out the "wishful thinking" of Israel's strongest backers, whose goal of completely eradicating Hamas harkens back to the U.S. "war on terror," a strategy that largely backfired against American interests.Some who refused to sign the letter argued that a "humanitarian pause" would be more appropriate than a ceasefire, while others claimed that Israel's campaign, however brutal it may be, is necessary in order to guarantee the safety of Israelis, according to Wedeen.Wedeen is pragmatic about the odds that the letter will have an impact on U.S. policy but hopeful that the initiative will bolster pro-peace efforts by "registering a kind of outrage and inducing political solidarity among other political scientists" as well as signaling to people in the Middle East that American scholars are also "outraged" at what she views as "a disproportionate response that is just ethically, unspeakably awful."

While much of the obvious has been covered in how
the ascension of Republican Speaker Mike Johnson to that post will
affect Louisiana politics, one under-the-radar aspect is how it can strengthen
the state's hand in the current legal tussle over congressional reapportionment.

Last
year, Louisiana, which has a black voting age population of just under a
third, enacted a plan that created one majority-minority district out of six.
Special interests sued, claiming that the Voting Rights Act, despite its explicit
statement that population proportions didn't have to be translated into proportions
of districts, required the state to have two M/M districts.

In a related Alabama case, the U.S. Supreme Court
elevated racial proportion to a preferred status among reapportionment criteria,
which include such things incumbent protection, continuity of representation, and
keeping communities of interest together. Using that as a precedent, an Eastern
District of Louisiana judge firstly threw out the enacted maps and secondly ordered
new ones be drawn.

The decisions were appealed to the Fifth Circuit,
which hasn't ruled on the former but placed a stay on the latter, saying the
former needed resolution first. The Supreme
Court this month backed the stay, using the Louisiana case as a potential vehicle
that gives the Court a chance to set parameters to its Alabama ruling.
Practically speaking, if the former ruling stands, then the Legislature could
deal with the latter next year during the regular session or in a special session
preceding it without judicial involvement.

Assuming the legal wrangling ends in time for the
change to occur next year, whatever the state's majoritarian branches do can
set an important precedent. The Alabama ruling instructed that preference
should be given to proportional use of race to ensure that roughly as many districts
proportional to a discrete minority group's proportion in the population should
exist to give that group a opportunity to elect a chosen candidate, but didn't
mandate that the proportional output should be constructed utilizing only M/M districts.

Thus, it left the door open for "opportunity
districts," or those where the minority population is sufficiently proportionally
large enough to elect a chosen candidate without being a majority, to be utilized
in this kind of mapping, subject to other reapportionment criteria. A subsequent
Alabama attempt that created one M/M and one district with about 40 percent black
population was found inadequate to meet the new criterion.

Louisiana might have the chance to define this
further, if it must come to that. In contrast to the Alabama case, creating two
rather than one M/M district does much greater violence to other
reapportionment criteria, so there would be more leeway to creating an opportunity
district instead. In fact, one bill offered during the 2022 First Extraordinary
Session of the Legislature, called for reapportionment purposes, SB 22 by Democrat
state Sen. Greg Tarver, did
precisely this in making the Fifth District – which in two M/M plans was made
narrowly the second M/M district – a bare majority white district with 43
percent black population.

The case for accepting this arrangement became
stronger with Johnson's ascending to the speakership, referring particularly to
incumbency protection. With Johnson now the most powerful and important official
in the House, it becomes more imperative to maintain a district in which he can
get elected.

Almost every
of over a dozen bills filed in sessions in 2022 to create two M/M districts made
for convoluted plans with these districts at 53 and 52 or 52 and 51 percent
black population and, as compared to the enacted plan
which largely mirrored existing boundaries, considerably altered Johnson's District
4 by chopping off its four southern-most parishes and instead pushing it to gobble
up six parishes to the east and part of Ouachita now in District 5. Tarver's
plan did worse, removing more southern parishes and spreading further east,
circling around Ouachita. Even so, Johnson's district is nearly a third populated
with blacks.

If the GOP legislative majority could swap some
things around with CD 5 – for example, some of St. Landry parish for all of
Grant – and work on CD 5's borders with other districts, this could push CD 5
above 40 percent black while adhering more closely to CD 4's pre-2022
boundaries and better protect Johnson. This would give the judiciary an interesting
test case as to just how much preference to give race when other traditional
factors loom large.

It may not come to this, but if it does, Johnson's
unexpected promotion may cause equally unanticipated permutations to Louisiana's
congressional maps.

Perceived lesser quality of gubernatorial candidates
except for the front runner explains why voting in Louisiana's contest for its
top job likely will decline markedly this cycle.

The latest statewide figures for registration by
party and race are Democrats at 38.7 percent, Republicans at 33.8 percent, and
others at 28.5 percent, with whites comprising 62.8 percent, blacks 31.2
percent, and others 6 percent. This contrasts with 2019 figures at the same
time of year of 42.4 percent Democrats, 31 percent Republicans, and 27.6 other/no
parties, and whites being 63.5 percent, blacks 31.3 percent, and others 5.2
percent. Reflecting the population drain throughout the two terms of Democrat
Gov. John Bel Edwards,
only 8,000 more voters were registered now than four years ago.

However, early in-person
voting was down considerably compared to 2019,
after years of increasing proportions. It was off by nearly a fifth, or 66,000.
Louisiana has had early no-excuse voting since 2008, and throughout this period
analysts have grappled with understanding year-over-year changes in numbers and
proportions in terms of whether these would predict eventual turnout and
whether any party benefitted. It has been assumed that a learning curve existed
for voters which caused largely a substitution effect; i.e., almost all early
voters would have voted on election day, but increases from similar election to
election were confounded by the learning curve of more voters realizing they
could vote and then taking advantage of voting early. But dropping off in early
voting, and considerably, unmistakably denotes a lack of enthusiasm compared to
the previous similar election, as it seems unlikely that those intending to
vote would delay deliberately their vote choice.

Compared to 2019, when Democrats were 43.8 percent,
Republicans 41.5 percent and others 14.7 percent, and whites made up 72
percent, blacks 25.4 percent, and others 2.6 percent, of early voters, in 2023
Democrats had only 40.1 percent with Republicans at 44.6 percent and others/none
at 15.3 percent with whites having 71 percent, blacks 26.1 percent, and others
2.9 percent. In raw numbers, Democrats fell nearly 30,000, less than the white
decline of 33,000 while Republicans dropped just 5,000 and blacks only 7,000.

If assuming the exact same forces at work this
upcoming governor's election as with its 2019 counterpart, back then early in-person
voting accounted for 11.5 percent of the electorate which eventually cast over
1.343 million votes or 45.9 percent of the electorate, then this year with that
early voting comprising 9.2 percent translates to only 36.7 percent turnout and
just 1.091 million cast. By contrast, 2015 saw turnout of 39.2 percent, and
2011 of 32.8 percent.

 This overview points to two factors explaining the
potential 20 percent drop in turnout. First and foremost, Democrats have a pair
of weak main candidates from which to choose. Former cabinet member Shawn Wilson is the most leftist major
candidate ever to run, even more than Edwards, which repels traditional liberal
populists that were the party's backbone for a century. And their alternative,
independent trial lawyer Hunter Lundy
who is a social conservative but who backs classic leftist redistributionist
politics, comes across as too raw and simple.

Neither candidate excites the base beyond
activists, something that manifests clearest in the statistics as a big drop in
white Democrats voting early. Even blacks, who tend to be more socially
conservative as a whole than in most states especially outside of the large
metropolitan areas, aren't excited about Wilson, the first major black
gubernatorial candidate in the state's history not competing against a major
white Democrat.

The other is the dominance of GOP Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, endorsed by most conservative
politicians and organizations and the Republican Party, and well-funded far
above other GOP alternatives. This has created the impression that he's already
won entry into the runoff, if not the race itself, which discourages casual
voters not interested much in outcomes of other offices and in particular
Republicans not enthusiastic about him but who see no viable alternative from
within the party. Even some casual voters who like Landry figure he has it in
the bag and they won't need to show up for him to win.

This makes 2023 much like 2011, when the popular
GOP incumbent Gov. Bobby Jindal so dominated the field that no quality
candidate would run against him. Then, some Republicans stayed home thinking a
general election victory was a sure thing (they were right) and Democrats
without a real candidate skipped that one (a number of Board of Elementary and
Secondary Education and state legislative contests had much higher turnouts, since
these were seen as more competitive).

If Landry doesn't win outright in the general election
– possible, but not probable – and thereby faces Wilson in the runoff, look for
a noticeable decline in that contest as well. Like it or not, competitiveness matters
in making people care about elections.

 One fact stands out in the recent Supreme Court Decision 303 Creative LLC vs. Elenis and that is that the web hosting company in question has yet to sell wedding websites (see the passage from the dissenting opinion below). There is also news that the plaintiff, Lorie Smith may have fabricated a gay couple who supposedly enquired about web hosting.  I believe that this little bit of legal trivia reveals something fundamental about our current era, it is one in which the fears and fantasies of the powerful are taken more seriously than the realities of the dispossessed. I know that they are besides the point, but I have some empirical questions about the number of people who actually hire website designers for their weddings. A quick google search suggests that there are a half dozen companies and websites that offer templates for such designs. I imagine that a personal web designer could probably do a better job at a higher price, but I do not think that we can discount the possibility that no gay couples would have ever hired her services. A fact that is relevant since her business seems to be more of religious mission than an actual company. It is possible, hypothetically, that if she started designing wedding websites she could be asked by a gay couple to design their site. What is less hypothetical, however, is what this ruling will do in terms of establishing a precedent that will allow other, more essential businesses to cite their personal religious beliefs in order to exclude and discriminate against gay and lesbian couples and individuals. Equality only works if it is applied consistently across the board, to every and all situations. Smith's imagined gay couple joins an entire rogues gallery of imagined persons, the person who pretends to be trans only to compete in women's sports, or to gain access to a women's bathroom,  the conspiracy to undertake massive voter fraud, the paid protestor, etc., all the way back to the original myth of the Reagan era, the welfare queen. All of these imaginary threats have a corresponding reality that is ignored: the violence and oppression that trans kids and adults face in our society, the disenfranchisement of poor and minorities, the homeless and hungry.  It is a bizarro world in which imagined, possible wrongs take precedence over actual harms. As Kimberlé Crenshaw says about another such inversion, protecting white kids from learning about racism, "So, white kids' feelings are more important than black kids' reality." I realize that this last example does not exactly fit the pattern above, they may indeed be real kids who are upset to learn about slavery, the holocaust, etc., (to which I reply, "good."), but it often seems that the anecdotes that make the news, the stories told in school board meetings, about the horrors of being told about kids being subject to Critical Race Theory are about as real as the litter boxes that are put out in school classrooms. These imagined fears about the harm that teaching about racism could do to white kids are weighed more heavily than the harm that racism does to black kids in our society. Harm that is well documented with such names as Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Ralph Yarl, etc. and that is just counting the kids that have been killed. There are numerous studies that show that black kids are harmed by being seen as older, more dangerous, more disruptive, etc., than their white counterparts, all of which fuels a school to prison pipeline. It is possible to think of all of this a variation of that often repeated definition of conservatism regarding in groups and out groups,  in which social space is fundamentally asymmetrical and hierachical, some our unbinded but protected and others are bound but not protected, only now the unbinding extends not only to actions and freedoms, but fantasy and the imagination as well. Politics, the realpolitik of elected officials, courts, and elections seems to be increasingly oriented to protect particular fantasies more than anything else--fantasies of american exceptionalism, of the nature of gender, race, and sexuality.  Which is to say that we need to update our theories of the social imagination to encompass the real divisions and hierarchies that define it. Some get to have their imaginations made into reality, and others can only imagine that their reality will be recognized and acknowledged by the established powers. 

 I have often struggled with my Jewish identity since I don't believe in any of the religious stuff, but I am aware that identity is socially constructed--it is not just up to me but to society to shape who I am, what groups I belong to, what groups I don't belong to.  That if a Nazi party were to come into power where I live, I would be targeted for execution whether I am a believer or not.So, when I see tweets like this:Republican Jewish Coalition Blasts Gosar Over Staffer's Ties To White Supremacist: Fuentes Has 'No Place' In Congress https://t.co/3YrAoPleEw via @TPM— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 17, 2023

I realize that I am a better Jew than some.  How so?  Rule #1 of post-World War II Judiasm is Never Again!  That is, we must work to make sure nothing like the Holocaust happens again.  Yet there are Jews who have other priorities.  I have often wondered how an LGBTQ+ person could be a Republican, a Log Cabin Republican, can stay in a party that targets them as a dangerous other--a groomer, a pedophile--to be ostracized and targeted for violence.  But I am not a part of that community, so I guess I can't really judge.  I am Jewish by descent, which is good enough to get me killed in Nazi Germany and targeted in 21st century Charlottesville.  So, I am beyond bewildered by "Republican Jews."  How can they support a party that is inciting violence against a variety of minorities?  Maybe they think that these white supremacists, these misogynists are not likely to target Jews?  Well, again, Never Again starts with that famous statement by Martin Niemöller who said First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.A movement of hate does not really discriminate--the resentment politics will ultimately target women, racial minorities, Indigenous people, LGBTQ+, and, yes, Jews.  So, thinking one is safe because a movement is targeting, say, Muslims, is foolish in the extreme.  Indeed, some of these folks are so ignorant they may attack the wrong people because they cannot tell a Sikh from a Muslim.Maybe the Republican Jews think they can change their party to make it either tolerant or more selective?  That is the height of arrogance and also ignorant of history.  These Republican Jews are useful idiots who allow the white supremacists, the far right reactionaries that now dominate the party to claim that they are not these things because some of their "friends" are Jews.  That's right, these Jews are not only not helping, they are actually harming by giving cover, aid, and comfort to those that want them dead.Maybe they care more about tax cuts?  Or about support for Israel even as the party only supports Israel to please the evangelicals, who see Jews as a means to an end--that a Jewish state controlling Jerusalem is a necessary step towards the End of Days.  Oh, and what happens when all the good Christians are sent to heaven on that day?  Nothing good.Maybe they think that Trump can't be an anti-semite because his daughter married a Jew and he has Jewish grandkids?  Um, have they met Trump?  Yes, he claims to be a philo-semite, but most folks who claim such again see Jews as a means to an end, that their positive views about Jews are all the stereotypes, that Jews are only focused on Israel and not other stuff, like democracy, liberalism, etc.So, when I see Republican Jews, I think those who have joined the Leopard Face Eating Party--what do they expect but to ultimately be a victim of those that they support?  Again, to put it as simply as I can, they are giving aid and comfort to those who seem them as less than, to those who would go along with or enthusiastically support depriving Jews (and other folks) of their rights and send them off to camps.  So, I may be a lousy Jew, but I do remember one of the most consistent lessons of Hebrew school: Never Again.  These Republican Jews?  Either forgot or are selling out everyone else for their own narrow self-interests.

USA NewsJosep M. Colomer: "I see in the US a certain nostalgia for the Cold War"Oliver Thansan 18 April 2023 Tuesday I do not understand that now the correspondents rotate every three or four years. It takes much longer to understand a country", says Josep M. Colomer, who has lived and studied US politics for almost half his life, where he is a professor of political science at Georgetown University. The Catalan professor, author of numerous books on political institutions and electoral processes, publishes Political polarization in the United States (Ed. Debate), where he maintains that original sin lies in his institutions.What impact can the impeachment of Donald Trump have on the polarization of the US?Trump has at least four pending cases and this one that has started is the weakest. He could be charged with trying to rig the elections and even with an attempted coup. In his first reaction in New York he said there would be "death and destruction" if he was charged, and then nothing happened, four clowns in the street. If he continues like this, I think he may end up very touched, although he could even show up from jail.At the moment it seems that the Republicans support him.There are many people in the party who think that Trump is no longer a good candidate, but the elections are a year and a half away and anything can happen. I do not rule out that there is another conservative candidate that divides the vote. And if he is not chosen, surely he will present himself under the initials of MAGA (make America great again), which he already uses in his acts. I see the problem more in the Democrats. Joe Biden will almost certainly run, but he is very old. They will need a good vice-presidential candidate; Kamala Harris has not lived up to it. But there are many unknowns.He claims that the main factor polarizing the US is its own institutions.The creation of the US is an unprecedented initiative, and I think they paid for the hazing. They made a couple of mistakes that have had consequences until today. The first was to miscopy the British Constitution. An executive president elected separately from the legislative Congress makes it difficult for them to agree. The other mistake was that they thought there would be no parties, but after the first five presidents the party elections began, which were the origin of a conflict that has lasted until now. In the 19th century, the level of conflict was brutal, civil war included. But from World War II and up to the cold war there was internal peace and collaboration. Especially since there was an outside enemy. When this was over, all the internal problems that had not been resolved began to emerge, because the institutional system does not allow for effective legislation. Now there is an overflowing agenda: the health system, the role of families in education, immigration control, racial tensions, gender, gun control... Polarization is back to the way it was in the 19th century.This system also favors the election of radical presidents.In the primaries a small proportion of the people vote, the most motivated, and therefore the most extremist. This means that in the primaries the candidates have to be more radical. But right now Biden would have an advantage, because he doesn't need primaries. If Trump is a candidate, I don't imagine that whoever didn't vote for him in 2020 can vote for him now. The result will depend on whether the Democrats manage to mobilize their voters. Trump will get fewer votes than last time.Obama was the last president to have members of the other party in his cabinet. Why hasn't it happened again?It was a legacy of the cold war. The Secretary of Defense and some others used to be from the other party. Trump breaks with it. But Biden hasn't either; the collaboration between the two parties no longer exists. Trump was the first president in a long time not to start a new war, which didn't help him much; he caused the internal agenda to explode and he was blown away. Now I see a certain nostalgia for the cold war.Has the foreign policy sideline strategy backfired for you?Completely. The public agenda is broader and more difficult to manage than ever. The government is overwhelmed.The Pentagon leaks suggest a culture war point. It does not seem that Biden's return abroad with Ukraine has united the citizens.There was already a Wikileaks and a Snowden, and they weren't a big international conspiracy. I don't think what happened is going to have a direct political impact against Biden.