Pun Salad

A great article from Jacob Sullum in April's print Reason, now out from behind the semipermeable paywall: The Enduring Fight Over 'Fighting Words'. I especially enjoyed the local angle:

Jacob's article goes into detail on the history of Chaplinsky's "fighting words" case. Interesting!

Fun fact: Rochester's Central Square is about 9 crow-flies miles northwest of Pun Salad Manor. Apparently Chaplinsky thought it was the equivalent of Speakers' Corner in Westminster's Hyde Park back in 1940.

This give me a chance to point out, once again, New Hampshire's outsize influence on First Amendment SCOTUS cases. Not only Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, but also Cox v. New Hampshire, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, and Wooley v. Maynard. (Have I missed any?)

And perhaps someday, SCOTUS will weigh in on whether having incarcerated convicts at the state pen crank out license plates with the prominent "Live Free or Die" motto constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Also of note:

• OK, maybe I don't hate the MSM enough. David Harsanyi mulls our current media diet: When 'Islamophobia' Becomes a License to Lie.

  It was recently reported that the wife of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rama Duwaji, had liked Instagram posts celebrating the mass murder of over 1,200 innocent Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, and other similarly themed posts, including one calling the rape of women on that day a "hoax."

  Duwaji liked her posts before Israel had retaliated against Hamas. Not a single Israeli soldier was on Gazan soil when the future New York mayor's wife was celebrating the "collective liberation" of "Palestine" and liking posts calling for the Jews to be displaced from the "river to the sea."

  Mamdani contends his wife is a "private" person, and her bloodlust doesn't reflect his own positions. A trove of evidence strongly suggests otherwise, I'm afraid.

  Further observation:

  When the mayor stood up for his wife, The New York Times reported that "Mamdani Defends Wife Amid Criticism of Her Support for the Palestinian Cause." This is either a lie by omission or the editors believe that "Palestinian cause" entails hunting down terrified, unarmed young women and then murdering them. Considering its coverage over the years, it might well be both.

  Too bad this didn't come to light before the election. I wonder why it didn't.

• Thank Jones for high gas prices. The WSJ editorialists are Keeping Up With the Jones Act. (WSJ gifted link)

  The Trump Administration is looking for ways to mitigate rising U.S. gasoline prices caused by the war. That includes suspending the 1920 Jones Act, and ponder that irony: Because of a war, the President may suspend a law that was intended to protect national security.

  As Iran escalated its attacks on oil tankers and infrastructure in the region, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that “in the interest of national defense, the White House is considering waiving the Jones Act for a limited period of time to ensure vital energy products and agricultural necessities are flowing freely to U.S. ports.” Hear, hear.

  The law requires goods shipped between American ports to be transported on vessels that are U.S.-built, -flagged and -owned. Congress intended to boost the U.S. ship industry, but the protectionism has helped to ruin it instead. There are few Jones Act-compliant oil tankers, and they command higher shipping prices than foreign vessels.

  But… a "limited period of time"? Ack. Just kill it.

  The list of things that should be consigned to the ash heap of history grows apace: today, the "fighting words" doctrine and the Jones Act join the FCC, the Export-Import Bank, the Department of Education, DEI, … and many more.

• That's not to say that President Trump has finally unleashed his inner libertarian. Because, as Kevin D. Williamson points out: Trump Puts Midterms Above National Security.

  “In Africa,” Ernest Hemingway wrote, “a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon.” And so it goes with the Trump administration’s illegal war in Iran: In the case of tapping worldwide strategic petroleum reserves, the administration had the right idea at breakfast—don’t—and the wrong one sometime around the president’s third Diet Coke of the day.

  As one might expect, waging war in a critical chokepoint in the world’s supply of petroleum—and many other goods—has been disruptive, with oil prices spiking and consumer gasoline and diesel prices following. President Donald Trump had at first resisted calls to tap oil reserves in the United States and the other 31 members of the International Energy Agency, but then came TACO Wednesday, which follows TACO Tuesday and precedes TACO Thursday—if it is a day of the week ending in the letter “y,” then you can count on it: Trump Always Chickens Out. His resolve to hold the line on oil reserves lasted about as long as his relationship with Stormy Daniels.

  I'm sure we won't need the SPR for some, y'know, strategic purposes. Might as well use it to boost Trump's poll numbers.

• I think this is too simplistic. But it's fun to read anyway: Jeff Maurer's "Ten Years Behind" Theory.

  I’m 45, which is the first time in a person’s life when there are past events that: 1) happened when you were an adult, and 2) happened a long time ago. Age gives you perspective that you didn’t have before. Being in your 40s has pros and cons, but the pros are definitely: 1) The power to instantly end any pop culture trend just by embracing it, and 2) Perspective.

  One thing I’ve noticed in my 20-odd years of adulthood is this: Everything that happens to the Republican Party seems to happen to the Democratic Party about ten years later. I don’t chalk this up to some magical cosmic link: I chalk it up to the fact that the asteroid strike that caused the crazier species in the political ecosystem to dominate happened on the right about a decade before it happened on the left. The markers that define this pattern are vague and hard to measure — how do you determine when a movement became “influential” or when a policy has became “dumber than fuck”? — but I think if you step back far enough, a trend becomes clear. Here are events as I see them — maybe this story will seem familiar to you.

  Jeff's leadoff example is the rise, circa 1996, of alternative conservative media, e.g. Fox News. Followed (approximately) 10 years later by similar "epistemic closure" on the left, thanks to MSNBC and a host of conservatives-not-welcome social media sites.

• That was the week that was. Anyone remember that TV show besides me? Nellie Bowles composes her own news "summary" at the Free Press, and it's pretty good this weekend, writing on what the NYT headlined as: Smoking Jars of Metal. Concentrating on the media's slant on the wannabe-murderous bombers targeting an anti-Islam demonstration:

  Here’s The New York Times with a perfect headline that both downplays what happened and implies it was done by the anti-Islamic protesters:

  

  Hmm. Weird that they name Jake Lang rather than the bombers. A smoking jar was thrown in a counterprotest clash. But I’m sure it was just a mistake, right?

  Nellie has more examples. Which you should read with an unbiased mind if, for some reason, you don't hold the MSM in utter contempt.