My feed is generally dominated by horrible things & doom, so I'm making a conscious effort to share more enthusiasms. There are good things too!
On that note, a thread about my latest enthusiasm, the podcast .
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I discovered it via (who is married to one of the hosts, ). It's Shaw & fellow hosts, & , discussing Supreme Court stuff. I was worried it would be too technical but it is so accessible & smart & funny. Just a f'ing delight.
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Three recent episodes have been haunting me. On this one, chats about her new book on the rise of Brett Kavanaugh. Lemme just say: if you think BK's career is practically a parody of mediocre white privilege ... you don't know the half of it.
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I mean, one of the key advances in BK's career came because an older white guy liked, not his record or legal writings, but *the way he played intramural basketball*. I'm not making that up. BK is utterly undistinguished at everything except flattering the old boys network.
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Here, we find SCOTUS overruling a federal court (2/3 were judges appointed by Trump!) that had deemed Alabama in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Who wrote the laughably bad, widely mocked opinion? Brett Kavanaugh! Doing what they sent him to do.
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And then here, we find that the "nondelegation doctrine" -- which SCOTUS is about to use to dismantle the post-1930s administrative state -- is basically *made up* by cons. There's zero evidence it was ever a thing among the Founders! Amazing.
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Today's SCOTUS is a petri dish where US political dysfunctions appear in concentrated form. Mediocre men, elevated through antidemocratic means, using garbage scholarship to impose oligarchic policy that majorities have rejected...over the objections of female colleagues. Whee!
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I'm making it sound depressing, but the hosts are so sharp & funny. (And -- yell at me if you like -- the absence of overconfident white men in the hosting chair is a relief; like, ahh, we can breathe.) Highly recommend subscribing.
Thus ends Today's Enthusiasm™️.
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