Pun Salad

Veronique de Rugy asks our Relevant Question du Jour. How would Milton Friedman do DOGE?. (See today's headline for the answer.)

Vero worries that DOGE has a distracting motive of "rooting out leftist culture politics". While that's all in good fun, pwning the progs, it should be at most a side effect in working toward the main downsizing goal.

But probably more important is the method: using raw "unitary" executive power, in Constitutionally dubious ways, to blow up departments and agencies Congress has authorized. Many of those efforts won't survive legal challenges, and will turn out to have been a waste of time.

And the cuts that do survive legal challenge can, and will, easily be undone by the next Democrat in the White House. And that Democrat will gleefully use whatever powers Trump/Musk have arrogated to the Executive Branch to expand state power.

(And I hear you progressives out there laughing: "You say that like it's a bad thing!")

Also of note:

• Are you now, or have you ever been… We've been seeing it a lot lately: one set of partisans eagerly using tactics they once deplored when the other side used them. Jonathan Turley highlights another example: “Which Country is he Loyal to?”: Democrats Go Full McCarthy in Attacks on Musk.

  This month, 75 years ago, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc.) gave his infamous speech denouncing disloyal Americans working at the highest levels of our government. It was the defining moment for what became known as McCarthyism, which attacked citizens as dangerous and disloyal influences in government.

  Some of us have criticized the rising “rage rhetoric” for years, including that of President Trump and Democratic leaders, denouncing opponents as traitors and enemies of the state.

  In the 2024 election, the traditional red state-blue state firewalls again collapsed, as they had in 2016. The response among Democrats has been to unleash a type of new Red Scare, questioning the loyalty of those who are supporting or working with the Trump administration in carrying out his promised reforms.

  Elon Musk is the designated disloyal American for many on the left. That rage has reached virtual hysteria on ABC’s “The View.” This is the same show before the election on which hosts warned that, if Trump were elected, journalists and homosexuals would be rounded up and “disappeared.”

  Click through and read on for the funny bit: apparently ABC has its lawyers watching "The View" in real time, in order to notify the show's harridans that they need to quickly walk back any assertions that might cause legal problems for the network.

• Promise kept. Katherine Mangu-Ward's lead editorial in April's print Reason is out from behind the paywall, and she reveals The Case Against Ross Ulbricht Was About Government Power.

  "I've had my youth, and I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age. Please leave a small light at the end of the tunnel." In 2015, with his sentencing hearing looming, Ross Ulbricht begged for a glimmer of hope. Today, at age 40, he is free.

  On January 21, one day into his second term, President Donald Trump granted a full pardon to Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road online marketplace. He was 11 years into a double life sentence without the possibility of parole after being convicted on charges connected to commerce on the dark web platform, including drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering. Notably, he was not convicted of actually selling drugs himself.

  By punishing Ulbricht as if he personally distributed narcotics, the government set a dangerous precedent for internet platforms and personal liability in the digital age. Pressure to hold platform operators liable for everything from misinformation to sex work has grown in the past decade as Ulbricht and his supporters—especially those in the libertarian and cryptocurrency communities—fought for his freedom. Ulbricht has long served as a warning, a caged canary in the coal mine.

  KMW notes that serious charges about attempting to murder witnesses against Ulbricht were filed, they were quietly dropped after his conviction on lesser, non-violent charges.

  So Trump did a good thing. But…

• Let's not forget Trump's a lying coward. Steve Hayes has a take on that Oval Office meeting: Zelensky Never Had a Chance.

  When Volodomyr Zelensky arrived at the White House for his high-stakes meeting Friday, Donald Trump offered a sarcastic welcome. “How are you? You’re all dressed up today,” Trump said. “How are you, Mr. President?” Zelensky responded. Trump turned to the cameras. “He’s all dressed up today,” he said, with a wry smile, before leading Zelensky into the Oval Office. 

  Nineteen minutes into the meeting, after mostly pleasant statements from the two leaders, Brian Glenn, a reporter with the Trump-boosting Real America’s Voice cable network, who is also Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend, attacked Zelensky for his attire.

  “Why don’t you wear a suit?” Glenn asked. “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit.”

  Vice President J.D. Vance, sitting a few feet from Zelensky, laughed at the question and smiled broadly as Glenn continued to berate the Ukrainian leader. “Do you own a suit?” he continued. “A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the dignity of this office.”

  […]

  A White House offended by his clothing is a White House looking to be offended. (Zelensky, who has consistently worn military garb at meetings with world leaders and even while addressing the United Nations over the past three years, says he dresses the way he does in solidarity with the soldiers fighting on behalf of his country.)

  Shortly after Vance laughed along at the dressing down of Zelensky, the vice president indignantly accused the Ukrainian leader of ingratitude. “Have you said thank you once in this entire meeting?” In fact, Zelensky hadn’t said thank you once—he’d said it three times. But Vance missed these expressions of gratitude because he wasn’t expecting to hear them. It was a classic case of selective perception and motivated reasoning—consuming information in a way that aligns with your preconceptions—and it arose again and again throughout the meeting. 

  If Zelensky is to be faulted, it's that he failed to handle this obvious bad-faith setup.

• Worried that Auric Goldfinger snuck in? Axios has an informative article involving the latest lunatic conspiracy theory: What to know about Fort Knox's gold depository that Musk wants audited. Many fun facts, including:

  The fortified vaults have been the subject of swirling skepticism and shrouded by secrecy for decades. No visitors are permitted in the facility, and its doors have only opened to unauthorized personnel a handful of times.

  • This week, Trump and Elon Musk, who oversees the administration's unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, seemed to lean into long-held conspiracy theories about whether the government was being truthful about the amount of gold in the vault.
  • "All the gold is present and accounted for," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told talk show host Dan O'Donnell in an exclusive interview Wednesday, emphasizing that an audit is conducted every year (though it's often said a full audit has not been done in decades).

  Fort Knox's dirty origin story: it was constructed to hold the gold that FDR executive-ordered private citizens to surrender to the government (at a government-set price). Arguably more dictatorial than anything Trump has done. Or (I hope) has even contemplated doing.

Recently on the book blog:

I'm hooked on Kate Atkinson's sleuth series featuring Jackson Brodie; this is number six. (My reports here, here, here, here, and here.) I think it's safe to say this book differs somewhat from previous entries, which were occasionally funny, but mostly grim. This one is pretty hilarious in spots, and the grimness is turned down quite a bit. The word "farce" appears a couple times in the text, and that's kind of appropriate.

A brief opening scene teases the "Murder Mystery Weekend" held in "Burton Makepeace", a decrepit English manor house; think "Downton Abbey", where things have gone to seed in the modern age. Brodie's there with his unwilling partner from a previous book, Reggie. But why?

Flash back a bit: Private eye Brodie is hired to track down a stolen painting, a portrait of a lady with a pine marten on her lap. (Brodie thinks of it as "Woman With Weasel".) This was apparently an occasional theme in Renaissance art; you can look up Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, for one example. It turns out the most likely theft suspect is a mysterious servant who disappeared along with the painting. And it also turns out there have been similar-MO thefts over the years.

There are multiple POVs, as usual with Atkinson; there's a village vicar who's lost his voice. And a veteran who's lost his leg. They all find their way to the manor in the middle of a nasty blizzard, and get caught up with the ramshackle "murder mystery" play being put on by an indifferent bunch of actors. And there's an actual murder victim along the way.

At more than a few spots in the book, Atkinson's colorful prose put me in mind of good old Raymond Chandler; would it be totally crazy for the Chandler estate to commission Kate to write a Philip Marlowe mystery? Then on the back cover I read a blurb from the WaPo, referring to a previous book as "Raymond Chandler meets Jane Austen", so I guess not totally crazy.