They will find ways to live like lords

My Sunday movie was The Sea Beast on Netflix. I became interested in it when I saw that it had been nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar. Maisie is a young black girl reading about the exploits of sea beast hunters to fellow residents at an orphanage. Her parents, like those of many of the other children, died hunting sea beasts. Maisie escapes the orphanage and stows away on the Inevitable, the famed ship of Captain Crow and first mate Jacob. The book Maisie read features the captain and his long line of ancestors who were hunters. Jacob is also in it and he was also orphaned when a beast killed his parents. Then we learn that, similar to many authoritarian societies, a great deal was built on lies and scapegoating. It is quite delicious that it’s the little black girl who confronts the king and queen. The crew of the Inevitable is multiracial – one of the top advisors to Crow is a black woman. The various crowd scenes on shore are also multiracial. That is good to see. I noticed a similarity between the primary beast in this story with the lead dragon in How to Train Your Dragon. I have no idea if the same people were involved in beast design. The IMBD trivia page for Sea Beast says this one of a few, perhaps only, animated film in which the accuracy of sailing ships is followed as closely as possible. That includes the dialogue when the captain and crew give orders. Even so, that doesn’t stop the crew from bouncing off the rigging in gravity defying acrobatics when the ship is attacked. I enjoyed this one. IMDB says a sequel is in the works. I finished the book The Sky Blues by Robbie Couch. It’s billed as a young adult romantic comedy, though isn’t all that focused on the romance and it isn’t there for the laughs. Sky is a couple months from graduating from high school in a small town on Lake Michigan an hour from Traverse City – yeah, the conservative part of the state. His mother threw him out of the house because he is gay and he’s living with Bree, his best friend, and her family. Other students know he is gay but he’s afraid of being too obvious about it. Sky has a crush on Ali Rashid, one of the few students of color in this town, and intends to make a big deal of asking him to the prom during the senior beach party in a month. A problem is Sky doesn’t know if Ali is gay. Then another student sends out a homophobic e-blast and the class president doesn’t want his senior year ruined by all the gay stuff. Sky discovers his inner strength and that many other students are on his side. Along the way he learns about the father who died when he was five. It is an enjoyable read, though perhaps I should shift to older gay characters. Three weeks have passed since I last looked at Michigan’s COVID data. I downloaded it, updated yesterday. And it’s good news! After a two month plateau the number of new cases per day has dropped by quite a bit. The peaks in the last few weeks have been 949, 1009, 783, 647, and 487. That last one, and maybe the week or two before, will likely be revised as more data is reported. Over the last four weeks the number of deaths per day has been 16 and fewer with many days in the low single digits. When I last posted two black men has been expelled from the Tennessee legislature for participating in protests for gun control legislation. Then I wrote they could be back in a matter of days. And they are back. Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community reported on Monday that Justin Jones of the Nashville area was back on Monday. The Nashville Metropolitan Council voted 36-0 to return him on an interim basis. Jones will have to run again for his seat in a special election. I had heard there was a preliminary vote to suspend the rule that a vote would not go into effect for a month – by which time the legislative season would be over. Jones then led a procession through Nashville to the Capitol, where he took the oath of office again. Jay’s post has videos. And Jones can’t be thrown out for the same offense a second time. An AP article posted to Kos reported that today the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, the Memphis area, also voted unanimously to reinstate Justin Pearson. On Tuesday a week ago, Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Sen. Chris Van Hollen, chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee in charge of the budget for the Supreme Court has started talking about telling the Supremes they must adopt a code of ethics or he’ll cut their budget. The Supremes are the only part of the judiciary that don’t have a code of ethics. Four years ago Justice Elena Kagan called on Chief Justice Roberts to develop and institute such a code. Roberts has done nothing. Gosh, now why would the Supremes need a code of ethics? I’ve written about the need for such code several times as the court proves itself more and more illegitimate. And there’s this: On Thursday, two days later, Laura Clawson of Kos reported that Justice Clarence Thomas is accused of breaking one of the few ethics laws covering the justices. A ProPublica investigation shows that for more than two decades Thomas accepted lavish vacations from billioniare Harlan Crow – and didn’t report it. The law is so lax that the law Thomas broke isn’t about going on these lavish trips. It’s that he didn’t report it. Thomas says he was being entertained by a friend, which – to a point – is allowed. But this went way beyond what is allowed. In this first post Clawson discusses how much Thomas would have had to pay if the money came from his own pocket In a second post Clawson discussed Thomas’ reply. The heat on Thomas got hot enough that he felt he had to issue a statement – I didn’t know I needed to file a report, sheesh, they’re just friends offering hospitality, but I will in the future. Clawson picks that statement apart. They’ve been friends for 25 years. And Thomas has been on the court for 30. There’s a reason Crow decided to befriend Thomas and offer him lavish vacations. Their length of friendship isn’t a valid excuse. Those “family trips” included private jets and time on a superyacht and at a private resort. Other people at that resort included Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society that was instrumental in picking judges and justices with which the nasty guy and Moscow Mitch stacked the federal courts and got a majority on the Supremes – Thomas’ conservative majority colleagues. Those at the resort were just a bunch of guys not talking about their life’s work. Accepting gifts from people without business before the court is just fine. But Crow is a longtime member of the American Enterprise Institute, a major conservative think tank that has filed many briefs with the Supremes. That private resort is Camp Topridge in the Adirondacks – a “camp” in the same way a Vanderbilt mansion is a “cottage.” It is owned by one of Crow’s corporations, so staying there isn’t accepting personal hospitality. Also frequent guests are major corporate executives, major Republican donors, and leaders of conservative think tanks. Nope, they’re not there to influence Thomas. There’s also the little detail of Crow donating a half million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by wife Ginni Thomas in 2011. That donation funded her salary. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community discussed an article in the Washingtonian that reported Crow has an extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia that he shows off to guests. Leah McElrath responded to that last bit of news by tweeting:

Welcome to the often horrifying but fairly predictable world of psychopathology. ... If this is what he is willing to show, what is he hiding? Everyone has secrets. Everyone. For most of us, secrets are relegated to our internal world. They’re parts of our psyche we never or rarely share. For a wealthy “collector” like Harlan Crow, those intrapsychic dynamics almost certainly play out with his possessions. As fascinating as Harlan Crow’s material collections are, the one that should concern us most is his collection of judges, lawmakers, academics, and media figures—many of whom are stepping forward to defend him in response to these revelations. He has clearly bought many people.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wrote about the situation for Slate. Here is a bit of what they wrote:

Before the outrage dries up, however, it is worth zeroing in on two aspects of the ProPublica report that do have lasting legal implications. First, the same people who benefited from the lax status quo continue to fight against any meaningful reforms that might curb the justices’ gravy train. Second, the rules governing Thomas’ conduct over these years, while terribly insufficient, actually did require him to disclose at least some of these extravagant gifts. The fact that he ignored the rules anyway illustrates just how difficult it will be to force the justices to obey the law: Without the strong threat of enforcement, a putative public servant like Thomas will thumb his nose at the law. ... Within the legal community, this state of affairs is all justified on the grounds that no justice can retire to become a millionaire lobbyist or general counsel (because, naturally, they must protect the seat). And so unlike regular politicians—as well as other life-tenured judges who step down to take lucrative positions in private practice—the justices are tragically trapped in jobs that don’t pay what they think they are worth. The logic that allows interested parties to buy access by funneling cash to the Supreme Court Historical Society, or judicial spouses, or to million-dollar luxury travel is seen as perfectly acceptable. Indeed, it’s somehow seen as reasonable compensation for lost opportunities—a more dignified alternative to the revolving door. And so long as we believe Supreme Court justices are quasi-monarchs who are entitled to live like lords, they will find ways to live like lords. Those who can afford to purchase their lordliness will pony up whatever it takes. And we will all say that it’s awful. Until we learn about the next one, and the next one, and the one after that.

Andy Marlette tweeted a cartoon appropriate for Easter, this past Sunday. It shows Jesus being crucified and below him are two centurions. One of them says:

Relax! He was a radical, anti-capitalist who was questioning authority & undermining law and order. We’re patriots for putting a stop to it!