State of the Discussion

"serious adverse foreign policy consequences" could be defined as "pissing off an ally we want to maintain good relations with" in my opinion. I think this is more of a "what the gov't thinks" not what he may have done or not done.

I would argue that it is a pretty high bar to assert that Khalil being within the borders of America somehow 'compromises', which is the actual word used, US foreign policy at all, much less does it severely.

As far as I'm aware, he hasn't even been protesting about US foreign policy. At all. I'm sure he doesn't agree with it, but he hasn't been protesting that. (Not that we should accept the premise that one person protesting a policy would compromise it, it's just that isn't what he's been doing.)

He's been protesting about the investment policy of the _private_ University he attends. People may not like that, hell he might have even broken some laws, perhaps even laws he could be charged with, but in no possible manner does that compromise US foreign policy.

And he does actually have the right to challenge this in court.

Like Dark Matter says, there should be at least some consistency in this. There are people who can speak about the evils of Western imperialism in "Islamic lands" without irony but also lambast Israel for being an "evil racist ethnostate" at the same time. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that "Muslim state/lands good, Jewish state bad" unless you are an Islamic theocrat.

The other big issue is that we Jews are always taught to support this or that cause because of our history of persecution but at the same time not treated as a real minority. At best we get "well, I guess it's good that the Jews preserved their own culture" while celebrating other oppressed groups with masturbatory delight. At worse we Jews are called insular, clannish, greedy, and guilty of dual loyalty and international conspiracy for wanting the same things that other groups want.

I dunno, it seems pretty clear to me. I support the President retaliating against Perkins Coie for its misconduct against the best interest of America.

That said, I do want to elaborate a bit on the big-picture subject of the the thread, specifically a tweet-thread from a woman much more lib than me, to describe what meaningful accountability for Demos might look like.

x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1898835873338425733

That, because the essence of the Demo message last cycle was to lie to the American people, that we should demonstrate a new sense of purpose as a party and to that end we should punish the individuals most clearly responsible.

It really is a meaningful act, unlike joining in on Al Green's clownshow which Radley Balko wants. The only thing wrong with it, as Kelsey describes it, is that her case is narrowed to Biden's cognitive decline (and she only mentions political figures).

If we extend her thread to the pundit class, as well as subject matter, ie, trans, Biden-era southern border migrations, and inflation, there's a lotta lotta libs and Demos who are culpable.

It would be very difficult for the Demos to actually execute on this, but somehow if they did, it would be a number of actions where collectively the Demos could hope to be a legitimate vessel of public trust instead of what they have been.

I personally am not holding out very much hope of this, but if a lib ever says there's nothing the Demos could do, just realize that he's wrong.

Gavin Newsom hosted Charlie Kirk on the first episode of his podcast. We're coming up on episode number four and his special guest is... STEVE BANNON!

The article is basically cranks with pet theories have an advocate in the WH now.

We’re getting ever closer to saying “maybe we should have done something else” without opening with “what we did was perfectly justifiable, given the information we had at the time”.

This article doesn't seem to say what you think it says: "While the scientific community is still divided over how effective lockdowns were, those who publicly criticized the measures during the pandemic have gained the political upper hand. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, who co-authored a manifesto against lockdowns, is President Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research with a $48 billion budget. And Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has described lockdowns as an attack on the poor and middle class.

“We are long overdue for a reckoning on the lockdowns,” said Stephen Macedo, a political scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey, who co-authored a book due out later this month that calls for a national inquiry into the lockdown measures. “What’s become increasingly clear is that a lot of what we did was irrational and based on fear, and we didn’t think through the profound costs.”

The article is basically cranks with pet theories have an advocate in the WH now.

I'm willing to hold my fire until they actually vote yes, personally. If they go "no position" right up to the 11th hour and then vote no on cloture; basically a Sen. Collins stunt if they include some footsie; then I will have nothing but nice things to say about 'em.

To be slightly fair, I have seen people no position is not a yes or a no and I think most of them will vote no for cloture but we are still rudderless.

More on the law in the Khalil case. This is what a colleague believes is going to be applied. The relevant seems statute in the INA is 8 USC 1227(a)(4)(C), which allows for deportability when the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe that a noncitizen's presence or activities in the United States will have serious adverse foreign policy consequences. The requirements to prove this are not high. They are very low. The relevant decision interpreting the statute is Matter of Ruiz-Massieu, 23 I&N Dec. 833 (BIA 1999). All is required is that the Secretary of State send a letter that sets forth a "facially reasonable and bona fide basis" for a determination of adverse foreign policy consequences.

In that vein, Scott Alexander asks: What Happened To NAEP Scores?

He looks at the data and thinks it's weird in general:

I predict that what we’re seeing here is not each individual child’s learning loss multiplied across all children, but a systemic effect where something about the pandemic made schools worse - in a way that would set back even some hypothetical child who stayed in school throughout the pandemic and suffered no learning loss.

We’ll know more when we get the 2026 test results, and see scores for kids who hadn’t even started school during COVID.

The Boston Globe is running a story on the whole "lockdown" thing: ‘The lockdowns were never really effective’: New research shows COVID stay-at-home orders did more harm than good

We're getting ever closer to saying "maybe we should have done something else" without opening with "what we did was perfectly justifiable, given the information we had at the time".

I used to fly SW almost exclusively, but it's been a while since they were the cheapest, even among the major (non-discount) carriers, despite being less pleasant to fly than most others (except United; fish United). The checked bag thing was seriously the only reason to pick them much of the time. I'm flying with them next week, and wonder if I'll fly with them again for personal travel after that (the institute that flies me around for work stuff always picks them, the cheapskate).

There was an article a few weeks ago by Kevin Williamson called 'Where's the Omelet?'

https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-putin-ukraine-war/

It is mainly about Trump's foreign policy and Ukraine in particular but I think the general sentiments could be applied writ large. He is going to break a bunch of eggs with the implication that he's making an omelet (the best omelet, an omelet,
so good, people tell me there's never been one better, not in the history of our country) except that at the end there won't actually be an omlet, just a mess.

I think you're right that at this current moment there's not much the Democrats can do besides let this play out to some degree. Elections have consequences and they lost. Eventually they then have to come up with a vision about what a better future (or omelet) actually looks like, and sell it with something resembling a authenticity. For the time being it's probably too early for that. Things had to get really messed up during the Bush years before Obama calibrated a compelling counter punch. I expect this will be similar.

Yeah, I still see a certain type of liberal still using "Bernie Bros" pretty regularly. Basically the BlueSky set.

I also think the moderates and "Frontliners" (the people in tough districts who are likely to have serious GOP challengers) are doing it wrong, and I think Bernie's popularity in conservative Midwestern towns is evidence of that. What's more, I think if you ran Bernie-style (not AOC-style, but hyper-focused on economic issues) campaign in many districts currently represented by Republicans you could pick up a lot of wins.

But they're not gonna listen to me, and why should they, I won't vote for Democrats anyway. But I would like to see a viable opposition party with actual ideas.

Not surprisingly, I agree with this analysis. There are dozens of states that call themselves specifically Arab and/or Muslim complete with blasphemy laws, apostasy laws, and Sharia influencing actual law. Even for the people who don't like it, the general attitude is that there is nothing we can do about it.

Plenty of other ethnostates elsewhere in the world like Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and Thailand that put their ethnic identity front and center. Even many European states do this in hard or soft matters.

It is the one Jewish state that gets criticized by the Left a lot because the Left considers Israel de facto illegitimate. If Jews still existed in Muslim majority countries and felt alienated by Islam being front and center than the entire world would just shrug at that.

I think Koz' response is the most important here. He's all in on DJT, even to the point where he wrote an endorsement here on this site. His litany of grievances is nothing the extant Democratic party can do anything about, nor should it. I mean where do you even start with this? They're pissed off about something in Washington that seems to be only the fault of the Democratic Party.

Truth be told, if any of the economic grievances listed were sincere, the pitchforks would already be out for Trump. Perhaps unfairly, since saddling any man, Dem or Republican, with the blame for the state of the American economy is just absurd, but that's the game the American electorate plays.

Perhaps the best the Dems can do right now is play defense while the current hysteria plays itself out. Too bad there's no Joseph Welch to ask, "Have you no sense of decency?"