Pun Salad

We're seeing competing charges of Calvinball flung back and forth! Here's Jonathan Turley with one I find credible: The Judicial Calvinball of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In the interests of equal time—I might as well do that every so often— TechDirt's Mike Masnick was more inspired than aghast: Justice Jackson Correctly Defines The John Roberts Supreme Court As The Calvinball Court

For a more balanced take, see SCOTUSblog.

I admit that I'm averse to the notion that a single District judge in Massachusetts can direct that hundreds of millions in taxpayer money must keep flowing to NIH's DEI grantees.

But I am not a lawyer, and, barring supernatural methods, we have no answer to the question: "What would Antonin Scalia do?" Other than emit a chuckle at the Calvinball reference.

And (holy moley) it's coming up on thirty years since Bill Watterson closed up his comic strip. And it's still a cultural icon.

Also of note:

• Imagine me standing in the rain, yelling "Stella!" Stella Artois, that is. Eric Boehm is upset (and so am I) that Trump's new trade 'deal' with the E.U. leaves out beer, wine, booze.

  Americans who enjoy German lagers, Belgian saisons, and Czech pilsners will get no relief from the higher tariffs that President Donald Trump has poured on their favorite brews.

  The framework of a much-anticipated trade deal between the United States and the European Union was made public on Thursday. The deal locks in the 15 percent tariffs that Trump has imposed on most European goods imported into the U.S., but it also serves as a promise from the Trump administration not to target European goods with product-specific tariffs that could be announced in the coming weeks or months—including potentially huge new tariffs on pharmaceuticals, something the White House has been teasing for months. The deal also creates a pathway for the United States to reduce its tariffs on European cars to the 15 percent threshold, once the E.U. reduces some of its own tariffs on American industrial goods.

  The written agreement seems to solidify the handshake deal struck in late July, though it is still "not a legally enforceable pact," but rather a step towards one, as The New York Times noted.

  But for alcohol-related businesses and booze-loving consumers on both sides of the Atlantic, the "deal" seems more like a buzzkill.

  Seriously, I pretty much stick to Sam Adams these days, as American as beer comes.

• Like an iceberg, there's a lot of it you don't see. But it's still dangerous, as Dominic Pino points out: The Hidden Damage from Tariffs.

  Tariffs are a particularly destructive form of taxation that distorts market efficiency, raises prices, and reduces output. As you’ve no doubt heard many times by this point in Donald “Tariff Man” Trump’s presidency, economic theory demonstrates each of these effects clearly.

  But maybe you think economists don’t know what they’re talking about and all those supply-and-demand graphs are witchcraft. What nonmarket reasons are there to oppose tariffs?

  For one, they feed the swamp. Tariffs are a full-employment program for Washington attorneys and lobbyists. Analysis of lobbying disclosure forms by Advancing American Freedom (AAF) found that spending on tariff lobbying surged from $1.3 million in the second quarter of last year to $8.8 million in the second quarter of this year. That’s on top of $4.9 million in spending on tariff lobbying in the first quarter of this year, suggesting that more people are realizing that lobbying can pay off.

  There's more, I hope you can read it, but I'm out of NR gifted links for the month.

• I have at least one big one. Jeff Jacoby says The convictions that count are the ones that sometimes sting.

  JONAH GOLDBERG, the columnist and conservative intellectual, recently published an essay about America's complicated relationship with freedom. Writing in The Dispatch, he argued that most Americans are libertarian only when it comes to freedoms they personally prize and are often content to let government regulate or prohibit freedoms they don't value — or don't want others to have. This selective consistency feeds today's partisan hypocrisy, with both left and right defending liberty or state intrusion depending on who's in power.

  From there he built to a larger point — that beneath the rivalry between red and blue, America's real exceptionalism lies in its culture: a deeply ingrained instinct for individual rights, autonomy, and resistance to government meddling. That common instinct, which Goldberg calls "American groundwater," runs deeper than our politics, and those politics would be healthier if more of us could train ourselves to see fellow Americans — even those with opposing views — as part of the same liberty-valuing culture.

  I bring up Goldberg's essay not only to recommend it but also because I was struck by the question with which he introduced it: "What principle do you hold," he challenged his readers, "that is against your self-interest or political desires?"

  OK, here's mine: We need to get Federal spending in line with revenue. This will require decreases in entitlement spending, mostly Social Security and Medicare. And that, realistically, will involve some means-tested haircuts to the well-off.

  And that would be me.

  How about you, reader? Any response to Jonah's challenge?

• Squandering their credibility. Allysia Finley takes on The Doctors Who Cry ‘Science’. (WSJ gifted link)

  Third Way, an organization that describes itself as championing “moderate” ideas on the “center left,” posted a memo Friday titled “Was It Something I Said?” It advised Democrats to avoid such terms as “housing insecurity,” “triggering,” “pregnant people” and “minoritized communities.” Such language makes Democrats sound “superior, haughty and arrogant.”

  Perhaps because they are. In Third Way’s view, Democrats’ problem isn’t that they think they’re more enlightened than ordinary Americans and want to force their ideology on those who disagree. It’s that they’re too obvious about it. Such condescension isn’t confined to cultural issues. It’s pervasive in the scientific realm.

  Liberals and medical advocacy organization often use such imperious terms as “pro-science,” “science says” or “consensus shows” when the science is murky or conflicted at best. What they are really saying is: We believe this, and therefore it is so.

  Allysia goes on to cite examples of the American Medical Association pushing left-wing ideology under the aegis of, yes, "science".

  That Third Way memo is here. I performed an experiment: asking Google for occurrences of "minoritized communities" at the University Near Here. Seven results! Example, from the heady days of 2022:

  I am in the beginning stages of a research project that will examine inclusion and belonging in public sector workplaces for marginalized and minoritized communities (specifically for black and brown people, LGBTQIA, women, elderly, immigrants, refugees, and lower socio-economic groups). The research seeks to identify and discuss ways to move beyond implicit and explicit conflicts and resistance to foster inclusion and a sense of belonging.

  I really like that "specifically", immediately followed by a totally non-specific laundry list.

Recently on the book blog: