The Daily Parker

In one of those stopped-clock-is-correct-twice-a-day moments, the XPOTUS and I have similar assessments of former US Attorney General Bill Barr:

“Bill Barr cares more about being accepted by the corrupt Washington Media and Elite than serving the American people,” Trump wrote. “He was slow, lethargic, and I realized early on that he never had what it takes to make a great Attorney General.”

Also Barr “didn’t want to stand up to the Radical Left Democrats because he thought the repercussions to him personally, in the form of their threatened impeachment, would be too severe,” according to the former president.

“In other words, Bill Barr was a coward!” he added.

Barr didn't stand up to anyone, but otherwise, I completely agree with the XPOTUS on several points. But Barr has a shrewdness to him that will likely prevent any consequences of his behavior ever attaching to him, much like others who have held the position.

NPR's Steve Inskeep's interview of the former AG aired this morning, causing me to yell things back at the radio when Barr lied about nearly everything:

Before Trump tried to overturn the election, Barr was seen as one of his ruthless defenders, making decisions for the Justice Department that favored Trump and his allies.

He does not express regret for those decisions. He argues that too many political differences are turned into criminal investigations, which is why, he said, he personally intervened in high-profile cases during his tenure.

He dropped a charge against former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, even though Flynn himself admitted to the crime. Barr said FBI agents did not have a good reason to question him.

Then there was Trump's infamous phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In that 2019 call, Zelenskyy appealed for Javelin missiles to defend themselves against Russian tanks, weapons Ukraine now says it needs more of in its fight against the Russian invasion.

Trump asked Zelenskyy for help in digging up political dirt to use in his reelection. He urged Zelenskyy to talk with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and with Barr. Barr says he had nothing to do with it.

"It was an absurd idea and it was pursued in a farcical way," Barr said. "But at the time, I didn't think it was criminal, and I still don't think it was criminal."

Barr wants you to think of him as one of the good guys. But he worked for the XPOTUS until two weeks before Biden's inauguration, using his office to help his friends and party. This self-hagiography is the real farce.

And wasn't it just Tuesday?

I got an email from HR this morning reminding me that I'm approaching the upper limit for paid time off in my bank. I thought, what with taking half a day here and there over the past year, I might not already have almost a month of vacation to use. Cue searching on VRBO for places Cassie and I might like.

Meanwhile, back in the present:

• Satirist and frequent Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me panelist PJ O'Rourke has died at 74.
• Anne Applebaum screams in frustration about how Western diplomats keep making own-goals when dealing with Russia. TNR's Casey Michel concurs.
• The former half-term governor of Alaska presented a boring case to Judge Jed Rakoff and lost, says Erik Wemple.
• Cranky Flier outlines what a few billion dollars might do at JFK.

But back to vacation: how cute is this place?

One hundred years ago today, President Warren Harding installed a "Radio Phone" in his White House office. As the Tribune reported, "Navy radio experts commenced work to-day installing the latest scientific means of communication."

Flash forward to now:

• Margaret Talbot argues that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom nobody ever elected to public office, is playing a long game to bring her right-wing Catholic ideology into the mainstream—or, at least, to enshrine it in the law.
• Times columnist Margaret Renkl, writing from Nashville, argues that Tennessee has bigger problems than just one school board banning Maus.
• Ultra-low-cost airlines Spirit and Frontier have merged, after years of dating and several previous feints toward the altar.
• The oldest pub in the United Kingdom will close because of lost revenue during the pandemic, according to its current proprietor. The landlord hopes the pub, first opened in 793 CE, reopens soon.

And finally, Max Boot asks, why does anyone care what Ben, Jerry, Whoopi, or Joe have to say? In my conversation just now with the reader who sent me the link, I pointed out that people have had about the same reaction to every new communications technology back to the printing press. (Probably back to the stone tablet, if you really think about it.)

In no particular order:

• Dale Clevenger played French horn for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1966 to 2013. He was 81.
• Sheldon Silver went to jail for taking bribes while New York Assembly Speaker. He was 77.
• Lisa Goddard made climate predictions that came true, to the horror of everyone who denies anthropogenic climate change. She was 55.

In a tangential story, the New Yorker profiles author Kim Stanley Robinson, who has written several novels about climate change. (Robinson hasn't died, though; don't worry.)

Via Bruce Schneier, the New Jersey Superior Court has found that the NotPetya attack that disabled much of Merck's shipping network in 2017 was not an act of war by the Russian government, and therefore Merck's insurer may be on the hook for a $1.4 billion payout:

The parties disputed whether the Notpetya malware which affected Merck's computers in 2017 was an instrument of the Russian government, so that the War or Hostile Acts exclusion would apply to the loss.

The Court noted that Merck was a sophisticated and knowledgeable party, but there was no indication that the exclusion had been negotiated since it was in standard language. The Court, therefore, applied, under New Jersey law, the doctrine of construction of insurance contracts that gives prevalence to the reasonable expectations of the insured, even in exceptional circumstances when the literal meaning of the policy is plain.

The Court also noted that under New Jersey law, 'all risks' policies extended coverage to risks not usually contemplated by the parties unless a specific provision excluded the loss from coverage.

36 Group's article included the court order from December 6th. The ruling only applies to New Jersey, but I expect insurance companies will take hard looks at all of their "all risks" policies to see how much exposure they could have to another cyberattack. I suspect insurers will start demanding people protect their networks better, too, the way they have encouraged people to buy safer cars.

It might also bankrupt Ace American Insurance Co., but that won't change the follow-on effects of this ruling.

A grand jury convened by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York has indicted four Belarusian security officials for air piracy:

In response to a purported bomb threat, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Belarus’s authoritarian president, sent a fighter jet on May 23 to intercept the Ryanair Boeing 737-800 carrying some 170 passengers from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania — among them the journalist, Roman Protasevich. The forcing down of the plane and his seizure led to international outrage.

The bomb threat was a fake, orchestrated by senior Belarus officials who were seeking to detain Mr. Protasevich in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the indictment says.

The move was seen as a marker of how far Mr. Lukashenko, with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was willing to go to repress dissent in his country.

The criminal complaint acknowledges that the incident occurred "out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States," but 49 USC 46502(b)(2)(A) gives the United States jurisdiction over any unlawful seizure of an aircraft when a US national is onboard. This comes by way of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, which the US signed in September 1971 and, here's the thing, Belarus signed on December 30th of the same year.

I doubt that any of the defendants will avail themselves of the American justice system voluntarily. But the SDNY has issued arrest warrants for them, and I expect Interpol will get the warrants soon. And guess what? Belarus is a member of Interpol.

This indictment also won't bring down Lukashenko's government, especially not with Russia's dictator Vladimir Putin needing a pliant Belarus to maintain his own internal power. But the four guys who actually carried out his illegal orders might wind up leaving Belarus in someone's diplomatic bag.

UC Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Cemerinsky and UTA Law & Government professor Jeffrey Abramson try to keep a stiff upper lip when teaching in the shadow of the most partisan Supreme Court in a century:

For the first time in American history, the ideology of the justices precisely corresponds to the political party of the president who appointed them. All six conservatives were appointed by Republican presidents and all three liberals were appointed by Democratic presidents.

If students are to one day become effective litigators on constitutional rights, they will need to understand the ideologies of the justices interpreting the law. In the past, we certainly discussed the ideology of the justices with our students, but we must focus on it far more now as the ideological differences between the Republican-appointed justices and judges and those appointed by Democratic presidents are greater than they have ever been.

Second, we must remind students that there have been other bleak times in constitutional law when rights were contracted. From the 1890s until 1936, a conservative Supreme Court struck down over 200 progressive federal, state and local laws protecting workers and consumers. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the court refused to stand up to the hysteria of McCarthyism. The current court will not last forever, though it may feel like that to them.

Third, we should direct focus on other avenues for change. Students need to look more to state courts and legislatures, at least in some parts of the country, as a way to advance liberty and equality. For instance, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a law known as the “Roe Act,” protecting a woman’s right to abortion under state law, no matter what the Supreme Court decides.

In case you didn't already notice it's 1890 all over again, I suppose. I also quibble with "For the first time in American history, the ideology of the justices precisely corresponds to the political party of the president who appointed them." I believe that was also the same situation in 1790, with the first Court appointed by Washington.

The temperature at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters bottomed out at -16.5°C around 8am today, colder than any time since February 15th. It's up to -8.6°C now, with a forecast for continued wild gyrations over the next week (2°C tomorrow, -17°C on Monday, 3°C on Wednesday). Pity Cassie, who hasn't gotten nearly enough walks because of the cold, and won't next week as her day care shut down for the weekend due to sick staff.

Speaking of sick staff, New Republic asks a pointed question about the Chicago Public Schools: why should their teachers be responsible for making life normal again?

The Washinigton Post asks, what will people do with the millions of dogs they adopted when they (the people, not the dogs) go back to work?

The lawyers for Cyber Ninjas ask, who's going to pay their fees after the grift-based organization shut down abruptly?

And North Michigan Avenue asks, will any more pieces of the Hancock Center fall off the building?

And I ask, will Cassie ever let me sleep past 7am?

Just two of note. First, on this day 21 years ago, Al Gore conceded the 2000 election to George W Bush. Good thing that made almost no difference at all in world events.

Another anniversary is the one that happens every January 1st to works of art created a certain point in the past. A whole bunch of books, films, and musical compositions pass into the public domain as their copyrights expire, including:

• The Sun Also Rises and Winnie-the-Pooh, both published in 1926;
• The works of Louis Armstrong and Jim Morrison, who died in 1971 (except in the U.S.); and
• All musical recordings made before January 1, 1923.

Have fun adapting!

The temperature bottomed out last night just under -10°C, colder than any night since I adopted Cassie. (We last got that cold on February 20th.) Even now the temperature has just gone above -6°C. Though she has two fur coats on all the time, I still think keeping her outside longer than about 20 minutes would cause her some discomfort.

Add that it's Messiah week and I barely have enough free time to give her a full hour of walks today.

Meanwhile, life goes on, even if I can only get the gist of it:

• Julia Ioffe points out that Russia itself turned NATO's attention back upon it, which doesn't really help Ukraine right now.
• Jeannie Suk Gersen sees Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health as a challenge to the Supreme Court's authority.
• The XPOTUS has set up a Special Purpose Acquisition Company that Josh Marshall calls "an open invitation to foreign bribes and payoffs."
• Chicago drivers spent more time stuck in traffic than in any other major US city this year. Yay us.

Finally, journalist Allison Robicelli missed a connection at O'Hare this past weekend, and spent the wee hours exploring the empty terminals. The last time I stared down a 12-hour stay at an airport, I hopped into the Tube and spent 8 of those hours exploring the city instead, but I'm not a professional journalist.