The Ledes

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's summer in our hemisphere, and people across Guns America have nothing to do but shoot other people.

New York Times: “A gunman deliberately started a wildfire in a rugged mountain area of Idaho and then shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another on Sunday afternoon in what the local sheriff described as a 'total ambush.' Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned, and officials later found the body of the male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone but did not release any information about his identity or motives.” A KHQ-TV (Spokane) report is here.

New York Times: “The New York City police were investigating a shooting in Manhattan on Sunday night that left two people injured steps from the Stonewall Inn, an icon of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The shooting occurred outside a nearby building in Greenwich Village at 10:15 p.m., Sgt. Matthew Forsythe of the New York Police Department said. The New York City Pride March had been held in Manhattan earlier on Sunday, and Mayor Eric Adams said on social media that the shooting happened as Pride celebrations were ending. One victim who was shot in the head was in critical condition on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said. A second victim was in stable condition after being shot in the leg, she said. No suspect had been identified. The police said it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the Pride march.”

New York Times: “A dangerous heat wave is gripping large swaths of Europe, driving temperatures far above seasonal norms and prompting widespread health and fire alerts. The extreme heat is forecast to persist into next week, with minimal relief expected overnight. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are among the nations experiencing the most severe conditions, as meteorologists warn that Europe can expect more and hotter heat waves in the future because of climate change.”

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To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:

~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.

CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~

     ~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play. 

New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts. 

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.

 

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Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Wednesday
Mar042015

The Commentariat -- SCOTUS Edition

Internal links removed.

Illustration by Dana Verkouteren for the AP.

Here's the transcript of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in King v. Burwell (pdf).

The stock market foresees a government win; hospital stocks surge on the strength of Justice Kennedy's questioning of the plaintiffs' attorney.

Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "One of the most important functions of oral argument in the Supreme Court is that it can strongly shape the next round: the private deliberations among the nine Justices as they start work on a decision. The much-awaited hearing Wednesday on the stiff new challenge to the Affordable Care Act strongly suggested that Topic A in private could well be: how bad will we make things if we rule against the government?"

Dahlia Lithwick: "... To the extent that anyone believed that Chief Justice John Roberts was the only one to watch in this appeal, this morning Kennedy gave them someone else to talk about: Kennedy."

Jeff Toobin unpacks the one substantive question Chief Justice Roberts asked & explains why it might bode well for the government. He acknowledges that neither Roberts nor Kennedy really tipped his hand, so the outcome is very much up in the air.

It's No Slam-Dunk, People. David Nather of Politico: "Still, legal experts point out that both sides got tough questions, that Chief Justice John Roberts' views are a big mystery, and that oral arguments aren't always decisive in the Supreme Court, anyway."

Daniel Strauss of TPM: "Michael Carvin, the attorney arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case, said this challenge is different because the argument against the law centers on a statute that was 'written by white women and minorities.' Carvin's comments were published in a Wall Street Journal profile of him on Tuesday, a day before oral arguments began in the King v. Burwell lawsuit." ...

     ... CW: Who could have guessed that opposition to ObamaCare is based, at least in part, on racial & gender animus? Oh, everybody who knows the entire confederate movement is based in large part on racial & gender animus. This case, like so many "controversial" subjects, gets down to a core issue of equal protection. Most of the grand old white boys know enough to use "politically correct" language like "freeeedom" & "limited government" to justify their exclusionary policy positions, but the dirty little not-so-secret is that the party of Lincoln has become a club for angry, deranged bigots. ...

... Dave Weigel: "The irony is that Carvin's joke demonstrates one of the defendants' best arguments: The people who wrote the law are still with us, and can explain what they thought. Whenever they've been asked, the Democrats (and it was all Democrats) who passed the ACA explained that the language in the bill that reserves subsidies for plans purchased 'exchange established by the state' was never meant to deny subsidies. The federal exchange was always intended as a stopgap.... New York Representative Joe Crowley, who attended Wednesday's arguments, said the same thing.... Crowley, while not a woman or minority, was in the room, looking at the justices. Calvin was arguing that the intent expressed by people like him did not matter when one read the law itself."

Dana Milbank got a bad seat at the spectacle. "The conservative majority could still knock down the law, of course, but given the ambiguity exposed Wednesday, it would now be a breathtaking surprise for the justices to cause such massive upheaval -- taking health-care immediately from 8 million and causing a death spiral for the rest of Obamacare -- based on such a slender legal reed."

Amy Howe of ScotusBlog describes the arguments "in plain English."

Jonathan Cohn & Jeffrey Young of the Huffington Post highlight ten key moments in the arguments -- and one that didn't happen.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed bitterly divided during heated arguments over the fate of President Obama's health care law. As expected, the court's four liberal members voiced strong support for the administration's position. But the administration must almost certainly capture the vote of either Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. or Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to prevail. The chief justice said almost nothing." ...

... Here's the Washington Post report, by Robert Barnes. ...

... CW: Until today, I would have labeled Justice Scalia "mostly corrupt." Unless he decides for the government, I revise my observation to "completely corrupt."

Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed: "When [plaintiffs' attorney Michael] Carvin argued that there was no legislative history to support the 'death spiral' concern regarding the federal subsidy, Sotomayor shot back that it was 'the entire point of the legislation.' Kagan described the 'draconian choice' Carvin's argument would have states make, asking why the court should believe this is the most logical reading of the statute when 'it took a year and a half' for this issue to be raised."

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Obamacare is not out of the woods yet, and neither are the millions of people who will lose coverage or the thousands who will die if this case goes badly for the government. After Wednesday's argument, however, those individuals have good reason to be optimistic. At least one of the Court's Republicans appears to have come to work wearing his judicial robe, and not his partisan hat."

Mark Stern of Slate: "ObamaCare dangles by a single vote, again."

ScotusBlog will not liveblog the King v. Burwell arguments. CW: I couldn't find any other news outlet that will. If you find one, please share. The New York Times says it "will have updated coverage throughout the day," but it has no liveblog. If you want to keep checking back & don't have a Times subscription, open the front page in a private browser window. If you access more than nine stories, you'll have to close the private window & open a new one.

Hey, the NYT is liveblogging the Boston Marathon bombing trial. Weird.

The Washington Post has been deadblogging the hearing. They're posts are now (at 11:55 am ET) an hour-and-a-half behind the action. Update: the Post deadblog has been updated to cover the entire hearing.

But for a Preposition, the Case Was Lost. Post Liveblog: "11:12:Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked [Solicitor General Donald] Verrilli 11:12: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked Verrilli what seemed to be the toughest question for him to answer: Why does the law use those four words, 'established by the State,' if it meant federal exchanges could substitute? Why not say exchanges established 'in the state?'"

Here's the "first mid-argument update" from ScotusBlog. CW: I assume this means ScotusBlog will post more such updates. Kennedy sounds squishy. Update (2): The original "first mid-argument update" has been updated! Kagan seems to have got the better of the petitioners' lawyer on the "context" point. Update (3): Now the original post has been re-titled "Mid-argument updates," and there's a third update. CW: So I think it's safe to stick with the post linked at the top of this graf. Keep refreshing the page. "Kennedy ... pointed out that, under petitioners' reading, the federal government would be all but forcing states to create their own exchanges.... Justice Scalia attempted to respond on petitioners' behalf.... " Update (4): Roberts "asked no questions to the petitioners and seemed skeptical of Justice Ginsburg's efforts to question standing when the government stood up to give its case. ...

... ** Wait, Wait. There's a new blogger at ScotusBlog: Here's his first update of oral arguments. This is a different link. This post has been updated. And again at 11:33 am. "Scalia seemed to be drawing an even harder line than the petitioners." CW: Shameful asshole. ...

... Here's a new ScotusBlog post on Kennedy's concerns.

** The Wall Street Journal is liveblogging the hearing, and it is not subscriber-firewalled. Thanks to Akhilleus. It's self-refreshing. 11:28 am: Chief Justice Roberts made a little crack that suggested -- ever so obliquely -- that he might side with the plaintiffs.

Arguments are over, but the bloggers are still blogging.

Tea Leaves. Greg Sargent has some suggestions on what to look for in the conservative justices questions & comments in the oral hearing. Not that we'll know what those questions & comments were until later in the day.

Washington Post Editors: "WHEN THE Supreme Court examines the Affordable Care Act again Wednesday, it will have several logical, principled paths to avoid tearing apart a law that has slowly but surely found its footing. It should take at least one of them.... The justices need not rule based on any feared or preferred policy result. They only need to read the law reasonably."

Jeff Shesol in the New Yorker: "The Supreme Court v. Reality."

The Stealth Campaign to Destroy "Liberal" Jurisprudence. Nina Martin of ProPublica: "For more than 30 years, the Federalist Society has worked behind the scenes to shape Supreme Court outcomes to a conservative agenda. In King v. Burwell, its influence could eliminate health insurance subsidies for millions of people."

Brian Beutler: "You have to be delusional or dishonest to claim that Congress imposed a huge condition on the subsidies, or that we can't know what Congress was trying to accomplish. Yet a swing justice could decide that 'by the State' does not equate to 'by the federal government on behalf of the State' -- to ignore the fuller context.... That would be a huge coup for diction scolds and people who get angry at the thought of poor people going to the doctor. It would also reflect a conscious decision to ignore the clarity of the law's purpose. If that's the thin reed on which the Supreme Court interprets Obamacare, in defiance of the democratic process that brought it into existence, something will have gone very, very wrong."

Jonathan Bernstein: "Just how stupid does Paul Ryan think we are? The Wisconsin Republican and two other House committee chairmen claim in an op-ed [Tuesday] that they are just about ready to propose an Obamacare 'off-ramp' if the Supreme Court decides in King v. Burwell to destroy the federal health-insurance markets in more than half the states.... [They give us] a 'working group' and another promise that their plan is in the mail. C'mon."

... CW: Yo, Bernstein. The Ryan, et al., op-ed is about giving the Supremes cover to gut the ACA; it's not even about fooling a gullible public.

Mitch McConnell Is Not Cooperating with the Plan. Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Senate Republican leaders wouldn't commit Tuesday to having health care legislation ready by June to avert a potential crisis if the Supreme Court wipes out Obamacare subsidies for millions of Americans.... TPM asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at his weekly Capitol press conference if the GOP would have bill ready to mitigate the potential health care crisis. The short answer: We're working on it, but won't commit to anything."

Robert Schlesinger of US News looks at all the horrible consequences of a ruling in favor of King in a column titled, "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid."

Pancakes! Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post explains King v. Burwell to homemakers: "... you shouldn't read one part of a law in isolation any more than you should read one part of a recipe -- because, just like the Joy of Cooking, the Affordable Care Act allows for substitutions." CW: Thanks, Jonathan! And thanks, Irma Rombauer!

Comments Off

Reader Comments (6)

I'm re-posting some comments from the March 4 Commentariat here. These comments relate to the King v. Burwell case.

Marie

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

WSJ is liveblogging the arguments from SCOTUS:

There's some discussion of standing... (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/04/live-blog-supreme-court-hears-king-v-burwell-health-law-case/)

RBG got right into the issue of standing. Alito, predictably, has set out his nicest tea tray with refreshments for the challengers. He's doing his best to make them feel at home and couldn't agree more with their lawyers about that nasty Obama. Kagan and Sotomayor are insisting on rationality. This won't go over well with the dwarfs...

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

Akhilleus (Unregistered) added The Commentariat -- March 4, 2015:

This is why these cases should be streamed live. Video would be nice, but I'd settle for an audio feed perhaps with a background moderator letting listeners know who is speaking. Naturally, they would never have to mention the words "Clarence Thomas" unless he keeled over, and it wouldn't be hard to pick out the haughty snark-bark of the Dark Lord, but not everyone knows what Donald Verrilli sounds like or the lawyer for the plaintiffs.

I mean, what the hell, it's only the future of the country at stake.

But no, we have to wait for reporters to dash out into the hall and jot down what's happening so they can rush back in again.

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

It sounds as if there is an ongoing willful misreading of the intent of the law as to the federal government "coercing" states who don't want healthcare for their citizens, into setting up exchanges on their own, which is completely ass backwards (the government will step in and do it). If Johnny and the dwarfs decide to use this willful ignorance as the fulcrum over which to break the back of the law, this really will be a stunning victory for "moops" logic.

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

Akhilleus (Unregistered) added The Commentariat -- March 4, 2015:

The usual 'bagger dolts are hippity-hopping around outside waving signs reading "Hands off my healthcare" to which any sensible person could respond "What healthcare, moron? Without the ACA millions would have NO healthcare." Such idiots. It looks like most of the signs have been professionally printed (a good sign of an organized demonstration, nothing grass-rootsy) which dramatically lowers the likelihood of all those embarrassingly misspelled signs like "Get a brain, moran!"

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Marvin Schwalb wrote,

Only in America. So we are having a debate over whether or not citizens are entitled to stay alive. Well some are but not everyone.

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns
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