Good Luck, Jamie!

A decent man who has been through a lot.  Mucho respect.

"Tuesday I thanked nurses, doctors & pharmacists at

@MedStarGUH who serve with splendid kindness—and saved my life over 5 months. I finished 6 rounds of 5-day chemo sessions—which they organized so I didn’t have to miss votes or hearings—and I rang the bell! A new chapter begins."

Tuesday I thanked nurses, doctors & pharmacists at @MedStarGUH who serve with splendid kindness—and saved my life over 5 months. I finished 6 rounds of 5-day chemo sessions—which they organized so I didn’t have to miss votes or hearings—and I rang the bell! A new chapter begins. pic.twitter.com/lAtpGyBG5b

— Jamie Raskin (@jamie_raskin) April 27, 2023\

 

 

 

News bits: The radical right movement to crush transparency; The evolving Twitterland hellscape

Clarence Thomas' failure to disclose his financial entanglements reflects his long-standing opposition to public disclosure laws. The Atlantic writes:

The justice has publicly stated that the failure to comply with the law by disclosing his financial entanglements with Crow was an unintended error, but if so, it was a mistake that is remarkably consistent with his ideological position that people who use their money and influence to steer the American political system ought to be able to do so in complete secrecy. This error was curiously convenient, in that it just happened to conceal a deep financial relationship with a very politically active right-wing donor who has bankrolled organizations that have a winning record before the Court. Perhaps more significant, Thomas’s idiosyncratic views about speech, democracy, and accountability have become more popular among the justices themselves as Republican appointments have moved the Court to the right. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write at Slate, Thomas has argued over decades that laws compelling such disclosure are unconstitutional.  

In the 2010 Citizens United decision striking down limits on corporate electioneering, Thomas was the only justice to argue that the Court “should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements,” because donors to the California anti-marriage-equality referendum Proposition 8 had been subject to threats, harassment, and verbal criticism. The first two are potentially illegal acts, and the last is a form of constitutionally protected speech. The conflation foreshadows the current right-wing discourse on free speech, the core of which is that conservatives have a right to prevent others from disassociating from them because they find their views noxious.  

Put simply, the conservative position had moved from heeding Scalia’s reminder in Doe v. Reed of the importance of transparency and civic bravery in a democracy, to embracing Thomas’s 2010 Citizens United opinion, which conflates threats, violence, and harassment with people thinking you’re a jerk.

I post this to warn about a growing sentiment among elite radical right Republicans and other right wing American extremists.* They increasingly see serious danger to their bigoted authoritarian (fascist IMO), pro-corruption and anti-democracy agenda in public disclosure laws. With that kind of an agenda, they should be concerned. Sunshine kills rot, or at least slows its spread.

Deep corruption like what Thomas operates comfortably with can be disrupted by public disclosure law. This important new front in the radical right's authoritarian war on democracy needs to be made well known to all Americans who fear for the fate of our democracy. 

* Another example of authoritarians imposing secrecy by crushing sunshine laws to hide sleaze and to deceive the public about what radicals are doing is happening in Florida (not surprisingly). There, the state legislature passed a law that shields the travel agendas of the governor's office. A news outlet in Orlando FL recently wrote: Florida Senate approves bill that shields travel records and who visits Gov. DeSantis' mansion -- The measure would create a public-records exemption for information held by law-enforcement agencies related to 'security or transportation services'. Given how broadly one can claim security or transportation services are, that covers just about everything the governor does. In other words, DeSantis has gone mostly dark to the public, but not to corrupt rich elites who always meet in secrecy, behind closed, usually guarded doors.

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Regarding the evolving Twitterlandia hellscape: The NYT writes about the toxic early aftermath of Elon Musk forcing people to pay to have their accounts verified: 

In the 24 hours after Twitter last week eliminated the blue check mark that historically served as a means of identifying public agencies, at least 11 new accounts began impersonating the Los Angeles Police Department.

More than 20 purported to be various agencies of the federal government. Someone pretending to be the mayor of New York City promised to create a Department of Traffic and Parking Enforcement and slash police funding by 70 percent.

Elon Musk’s decision to stop giving check marks to people and groups verified to be who they said were, and instead offering them to anyone who paid for one, is the latest tumult at Twitter, .... 

The changes have convulsed a platform that once seemed indispensable for following news as it broke around the world. The information on Twitter is now increasingly unreliable. Accounts that impersonate public officials, government agencies and celebrities have proliferated. So have propaganda and disinformation that threaten to further erode trust in public institutions. The consequences are only beginning to emerge.  

Some cheered the changes.

“Now you can even find me in the search,” tweeted Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, the Russian state television network that has been accused of rampant misinformation and hate speech aimed at Ukraine. She signed off the tweet by saying, “Brotherly, Elon @elonmusk, from the heart.”

Well, at least people like authoritarian thugs, liars, grifters, rabid theocrats and crackpot QAnon-level conspiracy freaks will probably be mostly OK with Musk's new and improved Twitter. 

Russian professional liar Simonyan is pleased 

with the new and improved Twitter 

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Tales from abortion wars: A WaPo opinion comments on a hearing a Senate committee held to consider real-world impacts of forced birth laws:

The most compelling and heartbreaking testimony came from Amanda Zurawski, who lives in Texas. During her prepared remarks, she explained that after sending out invitations to her baby shower she began experiencing symptoms, her membranes ruptured, and she was “told by multiple doctors that the loss of our daughter was inevitable.” However, her doctors “didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk and permit the standard health care I needed at that point — an abortion.”

Zurawski couldn’t very well drive to a “safe” state. (“Developing sepsis — which can kill quickly — in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence, and it’s not a choice we should have had to even consider.”) Instead, she had to wait — for either the fetus’s heart to stop or to get really sick. She nearly died from sepsis, which is why the standard of care in such circumstances is to perform an abortion before the woman gets very sick and risks death.

In a matter of minutes, I went from being physically healthy to developing a raging fever and dangerously low blood pressure. My husband rushed me to the hospital where we soon learned I had developed sepsis — a condition in which bacteria in the blood develops into infection, with the ability to kill in under an hour. Several hours later, after stabilizing just enough to deliver our stillborn daughter, my vitals crashed again. In the middle of the night, I was rapidly transferred to the ICU, where I would stay for three days as medical professionals battled to save my life. I spent another three days in a less critical unit of the hospital — all because I was denied access to reasonable health care due to Texas’s new abortion bans.

If she had been alone or had lacked good medical care to rescue her, she would have died.

As we all know, forced birth laws will kill some women, including even some who want a baby. That blood is on the hands of forced birthers, and if anything, whatever is left of their moral conscience (as I define it, not as forced birthers define it). 

Comments on jury duty

Sidebar at the bench

Perry: You're crazy!

Judge: I want another opinion

Perry: OK, and you're ugly too!

The case is over and verdicts were unanimous. Defendant not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of misdemeanor domestic violence, assault or battery, and not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of misdemeanor petty theft. 

This kerfuffle could have come from one of those impossibly bizarre domestic squabbles that Judge Judy decides all the time on TV. What a toxic domestic mess this couple was and still is. Married last December, marriage lasted 5 weeks then it blew up at the end of January. That was a couple of days after husband finds out his lovely bride was allegedly cheating on him with five different guys. He looked at the emails on her phone and his head exploded. That caused a serious drop in IQ and some really dumb behavior. 

The elephant in the room was the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of evidence the prosecution had to provide. The prosecuting attorney honestly believed there was plenty of evidence to convict, but it just wasn't there according to those pesky jurors.  

Did he beat her up as alleged? Maybe a little, but not by beyond a reasonable doubt. The alleged punch in the eye? The medical report said no physical damage. The eyeball photo showed no physical damage. The body bruises in the other photos were hard to see unless the lights in the courtroom got turned way down, and then by golly, there were some mild bruises sort of where the lovely bride, her sister and mom said they sort of should have been, kind of, maybe.

My contribution to the case and justice generally was me complaining to the bailiff at the first break after the prosecution started that the court room lights to too bright. Us jurors could not see what was being shown very well. After that first break, it got lots darker in the room when evidence slides were being shown. Germaine struck a huge blow for justice!! Germaine wondered why this issue had not come up in prior cases in that court room.

There was lots of he said-she said stuff in evidence. He allegedly beat her up multiple times. She allegedly tried to strangle him in public at the JC Penny jewelry counter when the happy couple were looking to buy their wedding rings. She allegedly flew into a snit when he wanted to buy a lower cost ring and she wanted a big rock. She allegedly was falling down drunk at a night club where the lovely bride's mom and dad were to be told that the toxic couple were married. Surprise mom and dad, he's not my boyfriend, he's my husband! 

At the club that same night, the husband allegedly lost his wedding ring when he kept catching her as she was falling down due to allegedly waaaay too much alcohol in the lovely bride. The lovely bride and her mom both testified she only had one or two regular margaritas. Singles, mind you, not doubles. Allegedly.

There were some shocking gaps in the evidence. Well, shocking to me at least. One was how far from the apartment window was the car where the alleged domestic violence happened? The sister testified that she saw him hit her from that window. The question was, could she really see in that car from the apartment window? All that had to be done was effing measure the damned distance to give some idea of the distance. Instead we got incoherent blither from the judge, and one or both attorneys about how far away the car was. I had no idea and neither did any other juror. It was pure speculation. We were told that we could not speculate, so how were we to weigh the sister's assertion that she saw the defendant hit her sister? 

Another evidence gap arose from bias. The cops assumed the male was the "dominant attacker" and the female was the victim. They did not pursue the defendant's side of the story. The testimony from the husband was that he was the victim. All in all, that sounded like it might be true. Both could have been domestic abusers of each other. This truly was a toxic couple in a toxic marriage, allegedly (because the marriage certificate was not in evidence and everyone kept calling the husband the boyfriend - my God this case was confusing out the wazoo).

There were some other things in play that us jurors absolutely, positively could not speculate about in deciding, so we didn't. One was, who among the people involved in or close to this drama, were legal residents. There was very little testimony on this at all, only one comment in passing by the accused husband. Nonetheless, it was pretty clear that most everyone involved or close here were probably not US citizens and probably not legal residents. Only the lovely bride and her sister appeared to probably be US citizens. Maybe.

Four thoughts stand out:

1. Circumstantial evidence is just as good as direct evidence. The judge said so and that's that.

2. In he said-she said type criminal cases, the beyond a reasonable doubt evidence standard is a real monster. Now I see why it is so freaking hard to convict rapists, domestic violence perpetrators and the like. 

 3. I'll probably call the judge and ask him to consider putting a suggestion box in the jury deliberation rooms (that we were locked into). Some things really need to be done a lot better than they are being done. For example, when the attorneys questioned the mom (who could not speak English), the translator was translating at the same time the attorney was still talking. It was confusing as hell with two people talking two different languages at once. In my opinion, that is fubar.*

* Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition 

4. California state law forbids jurors from selling their stories for at least 90 days after the end of a trial. So sorry, I can't sell this yet, so I am just giving it away. Well, most of it. There's still a lot of bizarre that's not mentioned above.

Legal argument helps persuade jurors

News bits: Ted Cruz supported 1/6 coup attempt; Etc.

Keeping eyes 👀on rationality: The Daily Beast reports:

New Audio Shows Ted Cruz Scheming to Steal 2020 Election

The audio was from obtained by MSNBC from a cache of recordings taken by Fox whistleblower Abby Grossberg

According to the files, Cruz reportedly tried to sell his plan to Fox host and Trump ally Maria Bartiromo on Jan. 2—four days before the Capitol riot—pitching a scheme to overthrow the 2020 election by blocking the certification of Joe Biden’s win on Jan. 6, then establishing a commission to investigate the nonexistent claims of fraud which would ultimately “decide” who to inaugurate.

“As we were looking at this Jan. 6 certification, all of the options that were being discussed were problematic,” Cruz explains.

“And so I wanted to find a path that was consistent with the Constitution and the law, and that address these very real serious claims.”

Among the possibilities here, two stand out. First, Cruz was stupid and jaw droppingly naïve because he actually believed the 2020 election was stolen. Second, Cruz was a cynical, liar who pretended to care about the rule of law to maintain plausible deniability that he intended anything tyrannical, treasonous or illegal. Based on his education and experiences in schools and universities**, it is reasonable to believe that Cruz was and still is neither stupid nor naïve.

By those facts and analysis, it is most likely he was just being a cynical, treasonous liar who was looking to build and maintain plausible deniability for his treasonous, fascist intentions.

Q: Is the assertion that Cruz is a cynical, treasonous liar mostly unreasonable or mostly reasonable?

** Wikipedia: 

Ted Cruz education: Princeton, undergraduate BA, Harvard Law School JD.

For junior high school, Cruz went to Awty International School in Houston. Cruz attended two private high schools: Faith West Academy, near Katy, Texas; and Second Baptist High School in Houston, from which he graduated as valedictorian in 1988. During high school, Cruz participated in a Houston-based group known at the time as the Free Market Education Foundation, a program that taught high school students the philosophies of economists such as Milton Friedman and Frédéric Bastiat.

After high school, Cruz studied public policy at Princeton University. While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship. In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and, with his debate partner David Panton, Team of the Year by the American Parliamentary Debate Association.

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Regarding Republican deceit tactics: By now, it is undeniable that GOP elites, donors and major propagandists are disciplined, practiced and without any shred of moral qualm about routinely slathering thick gobs of dark free speech on the public. Lies, slanders, deflections, projections, unwarranted opacity and crackpot reasoning are the norm for radical right (fascist) Republican elites. Knowing that much or maybe most of the public opposes the kinds of gigantic cuts the fascist GOP wants to impose, it needs to deal with how to sell the public on things it does not want. Few or none of the cuts are in the public’s interest, so public opposition is rational. The NYT writes about GOP deceit tactics to deal with this public relations (propaganda) problem: 

Don’t Call It a ‘Cut’: G.O.P. Tries to Rebrand Its Plan to Reduce Spending

House Republicans pitched their 2011 debt limit bill aggressively, trumpeting a zeal for deep spending cuts. Their latest fiscal plan tiptoes around them, with a milder slogan to match

In 2011, as a wave of populist fervor swept through Congress, delivering a restive class of anti-spending Republicans who had no appetite for raising the debt limit, House G.O.P. leaders rallied their members around a bill with a blunt, snappy slogan: “Cut, Cap and Balance.”

But this time, in a bow to political reality and economic necessity, it is a substantial retreat from what hard-right Republicans once sought, and it carries a kinder, gentler catchphrase to match: the Limit, Save, Grow Act.

These days, Republicans have all but excised the phrase “spending cuts” from their lexicon. When Mr. McCarthy took to the House floor last week to announce the bill, he did not utter the term. Asked last week on CNBC where House Republicans planned to cut spending, Mr. McCarthy replied: “I don’t call them cuts because I call them savings.”

So, domestic spending cuts are savings, not cuts. See how fun and easy dark free speech is? As always, how effective will this softer, gentler brand of fascist deceit and manipulation be? We’ll probably find out after the 2024 elections, maybe some time sooner.

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Lawsuit watch: Devin Nunes loses his defamation lawsuit because the allegations he objected to were true. In defamation law, truth of the allegedly defamatory allegations is a valid legal defense against liability. Politico writes: 

A federal judge has thrown out libel suits former Rep. Devin Nunes and his relatives filed over a 2018 Esquire article alleging that a dairy farm owned by Nunes’ family members hired undocumented workers.

U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams ruled Tuesday that the claims at issue in writer Ryan Lizza’s story — “Devin Nunes’s Family Farm is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret” — were essentially accurate. The judge said that conclusion was fatal to the suits brought by Nunes, his relatives and the company used to operate the dairy, NuStar Farms.

“The assertion that NuStar knowingly used undocumented labor is substantially, objectively true,” wrote Williams, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.

It is good to know that this particular Trump judge as not gone fascist rogue in this lawsuit. Some of his other judges are enemies of the state, including his three Supreme Court fascists.

Devin and his cow

Even crackpots fear The Devin

Respecting The Devin

Science: Reality, including humans, may be a hologram projection

For a general audience 

An unproven but now accepted possibility is that our perception of a 3 dimensional spatial reality, length, width, depth) (plus the non-spatial time dimension) arises from a 2 dimensional universe (just length and width in curved space). In other words, we and what we perceive as the universe might be a holographic projection of a 2 dimensional reality. This idea arose about 25 years ago.

The hologram hypothesis was applied to concerns that when matter got sucked into black holes, the information inherent in the matter was lost by being crushed into oblivion by gravity. Information here means everything needed to be known to perfectly reassemble the exact thing that fell into the black hole, including the exact location of every single atom in the thing. One hypothesis arose that as matter fell in, all of its information content was conserved at the black hole’s event horizon. Once this understanding arose, it was immediately obvious that it could apply to the entire universe. That led to the thought that actual reality is two dimensional and the geometry of space is curved instead of flat. 

At present, existing data says the geometry of space in our universe is flat . This is different from saying space is not flat because it has three dimensions, length, width, and depth.  

Flat space geometry means Ω0 = 1 in the image below

The mind blower here is about geometry, not spatial dimensions or time. The geometry of space could look like one of these:

The Goldilocks scenario for our universe, Ω0 = 1, is the most plausible based on current data. Most cosmological evidence points to the universe’s density as being just right — the equivalent of around six protons per 1.3 cubic yards — and that it expands in every direction without curving positively or negatively. In other words, the universe is flat. (Perhaps this will come as some consolation to anyone, i.e., flat Earthers, disappointed by Earth’s roundness.)

The mind blower analogy

Start walking along the edges of a room square room until you get back to your starting place. It takes four 90 degree turns to get back to start. That is flat space, i.e., Euclidean geometry. But in a universe where Ω0 < 1 (gravity eventually pulls all matter in the universe back into a single point), space is curved into a sphere. Start walking from a point on the equator of Earth to the North Pole, turn 90 degrees and walk back to the equator, and then turn 90 degrees again and walk back to the starting point. Only three 90 degree turns were needed to get back to start. That is curved space. 😵‍💫😶‍🌫️

Researchers still cannot prove that there is a 2 dimensional universe and what we perceive is a 4 dimensional projection via quantum entanglement. Physicists and cosmologists are still trying to figure out experiments that would prove or disprove the hologram hypothesis. 

Wikipedia: The holographic principle is an axiom in string theories and a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region, such as a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon [e.g., a black hole’s event horizon].

Germaine’s warranty is void 

if this hologram sticker is removed

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For science wonks

dS (de Stitter space) = our 4-D (four dimensional) universe (length, width, depth, time)

CFT (conformal field theory) = 2-D (or other dimensional) space where angles between lines and curves are always preserved (at least length and width)

Scientific American writes:

A quarter of a century ago a conjecture shook the world of theoretical physics. It had the aura of revelation. “At first, we had a magical statement ... almost out of nowhere,” says Mark Van Raamsdonk, a theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia. The idea, put forth by Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., suggested something profound: that our universe could be a hologram. Much like a 3-D hologram emerges from the information encoded on a 2-D surface, our universe’s 4-D spacetime could be a holographic projection of a lower-dimensional reality.

How could a theory that included gravity be the same as a theory that had no place for gravity? How could they describe the same universe? But the duality has largely held up. In essence, it argues that we can understand what happens inside a volume of spacetime that has gravity by studying the quantum-mechanical behavior of particles and fields at that volume’s surface, using a theory with one less dimension, one in which gravity plays no role.

.... spacetime may not be fundamental—it may be something that emerges from quantum entanglement in a lower-dimensional system. These advances all involve the theoretically plausible spacetime of anti–de Sitter space, which is not the de Sitter space that describes our universe. But physicists are optimistic that they’ll one day arrive at a duality that works for both. If that were to happen, it could lead to a theory of quantum gravity, which would combine Einstein’s general relativity with quantum mechanics. It would also imply that our universe is in truth a hologram.

The idea took some time to sink in. “There were hundreds, thousands of papers, just checking [the duality] because at first, it [seemed] so ridiculous that some nongravitational quantum theory could actually just be the same thing as a gravitational theory,” theoretical physicist Mark Van Raamsdonk says. But AdS (anti-de Sitter space )/CFT (conformal field theory) held up to scrutiny, and soon theorists were using it to answer some confounding questions.

The connection between entanglement entropy in the CFT and the geometry of spacetime in the AdS led to another important result—the notion that spacetime on the AdS side emerges from quantum entanglement on the CFT side, not just in black holes but throughout the universe. The idea is best understood by analogy. Think of a very dilute gas of water molecules. Physicists can’t describe this system using the equations of hydrodynamics because the dilute gas does not behave like a liquid. But suppose the water molecules condense into a pool of liquid water. Now those very same molecules are subject to the laws of hydrodynamics. “You could ask, originally, where was that hydrodynamics? It just wasn’t relevant,” Van Raamsdonk says. 

Something similar happens in AdS/CFT. On the CFT side, you can start with quantum subsystems—smaller subsets of the overall system you’re describing—each with fields and particles, without any entanglement. In the equivalent AdS description, you’d have a system with no spacetime. Without spacetime, Einstein’s general relativity isn’t relevant .... But when the entanglement on the CFT side starts increasing, the entanglement entropy of the quantum subsystems begins to correspond to patches of spacetime that emerge in the AdS description. These patches are physically disconnected from each other. Going from patch A to patch B isn’t possible without leaving both A and B; however, each individual patch can be described using general relativity.

Now, increase the entanglement of the quantum subsystems in the CFT even more, and something intriguing happens in the AdS: the patches of spacetime begin connecting. Eventually you end up with a contiguous volume of spacetime. “When you have the right pattern of entanglement, you start to get a spacetime on the other side,” Van Raamsdonk says. “It’s almost like the spacetime is a geometrical representation of the entanglement. Take away all the entanglement, and then you just eliminate the spacetime.” Engelhardt agrees: “Entanglement between quantum systems is important for the existence and emergence of spacetime.” The duality suggested that the spacetime of our physical universe might simply be an emergent property of some underlying, entangled part of nature.

Van Raamsdonk credits the AdS/CFT correspondence for making physicists question the very nature of spacetime. If spacetime emerges from the degree and nature of entanglement in a lower-dimensional quantum system, it means that the quantum system is more “real” than the spacetime we live in, in much the same way that a 2-D postcard is more real than the 3-D hologram it creates. “That [space itself and the geometry of space] should have something to do with quantum mechanics is just really shocking,” he says. 

 

Climate change legal development

In what is a real surprise, the Republican Supreme Court has allowed American cities to sue major polluters like oil companies for climate change damages in state courts. I did not expect this. The polluters have been fighting this for years. The Guardian writes:

‘Like a dam breaking’: experts hail decision to let US climate lawsuits advance

Cities bringing climate litigation against oil majors welcome US supreme court’s decision to rebuff appeal to move cases to federal courts

The decision, climate experts and advocates said, felt “like a dam breaking” after years of legal delays to the growing wave of climate lawsuits facing major oil companies.

Without weighing in on the merits of the cases, the supreme court on Monday rebuffed an appeal by major oil companies that want to face the litigation in federal courts, rather than in state courts, which are seen as more favorable to plaintiffs [cities].

ExxonMobil Corp, Suncor Energy Inc and Chevron Corp had asked for the change of venue in lawsuits by the state of Rhode Island and municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, California and Hawaii.

Six years have passed since the first climate cases were filed in the US, and courts have not yet heard the merits of the cases as fossil fuel companies have succeeded in delaying them. In March, the Biden administration had argued that the cases belonged in state court, marking a reversal of the position taken by the Trump administration when the supreme court last considered the issue.

Maybe this will mark a shift in the balance of power in America's climate change wars. Up to now, the polluters had all the power by corrupting the federal government in their favor. The next key questions to be answered are whether (i) the polluters will be found liable in state courts, and (ii) state court verdicts will be upheld after the polluters appeal to the rigidly pro-capitalism and pro-pollution Republican Supreme Court.

This just might turn out to be a game-changer.