Today in 1967, the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” …
… which proved insufficient for the Yardbirds, which disbanded one year later:
No comments on Presty the DJ for July 7
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Can one wish a happy birthday to an entire band? If so, wish Jefferson Airplane a happy birthday:
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For some reason, online maps depicting things other than geographic features have become a popular online subject over the past few months.
Let’s start with the mother of all dialect maps:
The author of this monster divides Wisconsin into three dialectical groups — The North, North Inland and North Central. Click here for a selection of YouTube videos to bring sound to what we Wisconsinites supposedly sound like.
That may be a little dense for some readers. It’s easier to explain differences in language not only by how people pronounce words, but the words people use. That’s the idea behind these maps from North Carolina State University.
Our state’s most famous vocabulary divide is over water …
… followed closely by …
… pop vs. soda. However …
… would you believe this state is divided over pecan pie?
Here’s Steve Lovelace‘s map of the 50 states by their most prominent (according to him) corporation:
If you think about iconic brands, you could do much worse than Harley–Davidson.
Speaking of wheels, Jalopnik provides this map of the most-sold new car model:
If you think you see a lot of Ford F-150s, it’s not your imagination. (People who buy new cars often discover a lot of their own new car around. F-150 owners must be used to this by now.)
This map of Declan Cashin claims to pick a movie for each the 50 states:
Some of these are obvious — “The Blues Brothers” for Illinois, “Hoosiers” for Indiana, “The Wizard of Oz” for Kansas, “Forrest Gump” for Alabama, “Groundhog Day” for Pennsylvania, “Casino” for Nevada, and so on. (Washington’s “First Blood” was better than the other Rambo movies by an order of magnitude.) “Fargo,” despite its name, is a movie mostly set in Minnesota, not North Dakota.
What, however, is “American Movie”? The Internet Movie Database calls it a …
Documentary about an aspiring filmmaker’s attempts to finance his dream project by finally completing the low-budget horror film he abandoned years before.
This rings a bell in that I may have seen part of this on PBS. The movie’s website says (capital letters theirs):
It takes a village to make a movie, but when that village is Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin and not Hollywood, CA, the results are at times bizarre, comical, and very American. With the help of his mother, his 82-year old uncle, and local cast of hilarious and lovable characters, filmmaker Mark Borchardt fights his way through internal and external roadblocks to achieve his goal-to make his movie, his way.
Mark’s vision for his dream film is unlike most in independent filmmaking today. His inspiration comes from films as desarate as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Seventh Seal, as well as his experiences growing up amidst the grey skies, rusty cars, and ranch houses of Milwaukee’s Northwest side.
AMERICAN MOVIE is the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, AMERICAN MOVIE is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man’s quest for the American Dream.
My first thought is that I’m not sure why someone would want to chronicle his own “intense struggle” with “financial decline, and spiritual crisis.” My second thought is: This represents Wisconsin? Really? Pick one of these movies filmed in Wisconsin (yes, “American Movie” is on this list), or these movies set in Wisconsin.
Finally, here’s an interesting map, the Atlas of True Names, which has the English translations for our stew of American Indian, French and other place names.
It is ironic to be a native of Son of Combat Strength given Madison’s history of opposing “combat strength.” Fond du Lac likes to call itself “First on the Lake” instead of its more correct translation. As for Red River Land’s largest city, “Good Land” has, as you know, bad water every time the city spits out millions of “partially treated” storm water that the Deep Tunnel cannot handle. On the other hand, no more appropriate name has ever been created for Chicago.
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On this Independence Day sort-of weekend, Jalopnik answers a question that I’m sure is burning in all our brains …
These Are the Cars the Founding Fathers Would Have Driven
… complete with psychological explanations. For instance:
James Madison likely had an inferiority complex, as his health was frail, and was the smallest president, by height and by weight. He was also the president to lead America into the War of 1812. As an enemy of Britain, he had to choose something that promoted America, and would help with his inferiority complex by making him seem bigger and manlier than he was. If he didn’t drive a Ford F-150, the Shelby GT500 (or Chevrolet Camaro ZL1) would be his pick.
An even more interesting explanation is presented for Alexander Hamilton’s wheels:
“He stands at the front rank of a generation never surpassed in history, but whose countrymen seem to have never duly recognized his splendid gifts.” – James Bryce, in reference to Hamilton, who, like the Forester XT, was often never fully recognized for his many less-publicized exemplary accomplishments.
“When America ceases to remember his greatness, America will no longer be great.” – Calvin Coolidge, in reference to Hamilton. Like America’s recognition of Hamilton’s greatness, when Car Culture ceases to remember just how and why the Forester XT was awesome, then it’s no longer a true car culture.
“Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of a country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighborhood of the town. They are, upon that account, the greatest of all improvements. They encourage the cultivation of the remote, which must always be the most extensive circle of the country.” -Hamilton, on making the rural areas of the country more accessible for the masses, something Subaru is quite adept at.
“The rights of neutrality will only be respected, when they are defended by an adequate power.” – Alexander Hamilton on the Subaru XT not having any flashy exterior styling beyond a functional hoodscoop. Why does the XT have such neutral styling? Because it has enough power under the hood that it doesn’t feel it has anything to prove.
“I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.” – Hamilton, if asked to comment on Subaru’s designers.
“And it is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.” – Alexander Hamilton. I’m pretty sure this quote is stamped somewhere on the chassis of every Forester XT, Impreza Outback Sport, Baja, Brat, Justy, Legacy GT, and WRX Sportwagon.
The added benefit is that Subarus are built in Lafayette in the Northwest Territory — I mean, Indiana.
What about friends and rivals John Adams and Thomas Jefferson? An Aston Martin Vanquish and, of all things, a Citroen DS, respectively:
Adams was a key instrument in declaring independence from Great Britain, but after the war he served as a diplomat in Europe. Adams was one of the men responsible for authoring the eventual treaty between the United States and Great Britain. Therefore, it is only fitting that the would drive a British car… that was built while owned by the MOST American of companies, Ford!
As for Jefferson:
He loved French novelties!
The most exotic choice goes to my favorite Founding Father, Ben Franklin: A Facel Vega, a French-designed car powered by the first and second iterations of the Chrysler Hemi V-8:
French on the outside, American on the inside. It’s badass and I’m sure great for picking up chicks.
The first president, George Washington, is assigned a Jeep Wagoneer:
Washington was probably the wealthiest man in America in the late 18th century – his holdings would easily be worth more than $500 million today, at the low end. This car is the definition of old money landed gentry- the closest American vehicle you can get to a Range Rover, and even 20 years after the last one was built, they’re still fairly popular among upscale East Coast summer colonies like Martha’s Vineyard. This is a car for someone with a large estate that needs to occasionally travel across it for inspections or hunting, and is so wealthy and self-assured that he doesn’t need something flashy and new to prove it. I figure he would have had a Range Rover first, as any good Southerner would have been fairly pro-British before 1775, but he would have swapped it for the Jeep once war clouds started to appear.
Washington might have swapped the Range Rover for the Jeep before “war clouds started to appear” due to the lack of liability for which British cars are legendary.
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Today is the anniversary of the Beatles’ first song to reach the U.S. charts, “From Me to You.” Except it wasn’t recorded by the Beatles, it was recorded by Del Shannon:
Five years later, John Lennon sold his Rolls–Royce:
Sharing my daughter’s birthday are Smiley Lewis, who first did …
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I wasn’t going to post a blog today, but I decided to because (1) I have to work anyway (similar to business owners, I only work on days ending in Y), and (2) Independence Day is traditionally a day for baseball.
For some reason, Grantland decided to inflict the Brewers upon its readers:
If you had to boil down the entire 2013 Milwaukee Brewers season to one game, Monday’s loss to the Nationals would’ve been it. Facing one of the worst offenses in baseball, the Crew got hammered. The Nationals struck for one in the first, then five more in the third. Ron Roenicke tried to get another inning or two out of his starter, only to have the Nats go single, double, single to start the fourth. The final line for Milwaukee’s starter: three innings, nine hits, two walks, and eight runs. The Brewers went on to lose 10-5.
That loss was the Brewers’ sixth in a row, briefly dropping them to 17 games under .500. Milwaukee now owns the second-worst record and second-worst run differential in the National League, despite carrying a respectable Opening Day payroll of just less than $89 million, which ranked eighth in the league. The Brewers are on pace for their second-worst season since moving to Milwaukee in 1970. And the pitcher who got strafed for eight runs, hiking his ERA to 4.78? That was Yovani Gallardo, the team’s best piece of trade bait and thus one of the only sources of hope in what will likely end as one of the most depressing seasons in franchise history.
We know right now that the writer lacks a sense of history. Since the Brewers moved from Seattle to Milwaukee in 1970, most Brewers seasons have been “most depressing.”The Brewers did not have their first above-.500 season until 1978. The Brewers did not have their first playoff berth until 1981. The Brewers have been to the World Series exactly once, 1982, and have won 2½ division titles. On average, the Brewers get to the postseason once a decade.
You want depressing seasons? How about 1984, when the Brewers went from 87 wins the previous season to 67? Pick any season between 1993 and 2004, the best of which, 1996, ended with an 80–82 record. (In 2002, the Brewers finished 56–106.) Their all-time win–loss record translates to a 77-win season, four games under .500, a mark the Brewers have exceeded 16 times in more than 40 seasons.
This discussion begins with one of the most important front office people in the team’s history, as we are learning now:
The usual protocol when a new general manager takes over a team is for a rash of firings to ensue, so that the new guy can bring in his own handpicked favorites to run the rest of the organization. But when Doug Melvin took over as Brewers general manager in 2002, he opted not to hire a new scouting director, instead keeping Jack Zduriencik in that role. The Brewers had suffered through seven consecutive losing seasons when they handed over the keys to their scouting operation to Zduriencik following the ’99 season. This was a far cry from their glory years of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Then, the team fielded future Hall of Famers like Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. The mid-to-late ’90s, on the other hand, were the time of Scott Karl, post-injury Cal Eldred, and the ghost of Marquis Grissom. By the time Zduriencik seized the task of rebuilding the organization’s talent pool, the only 25-and-under players on the big league roster with even a hint of upside were Geoff Jenkins, Ronnie Belliard, and, if you’re feeling generous, Jeff D’Amico. This was going to take a hell of a lot of work.
One advantage the Brewers (like any consistently bad team) had was a string of high draft picks. Starting with Zduriencik’s first draft in 2000, Milwaukee picked 11th, 12th, seventh, second, fifth, fifth, 16th, and seventh through 2007. But unlike the NBA and NFL drafts, which offer much higher hit rates for high picks, baseball teams whiff all the time when given top-five and top-10 opportunities, even when given a bunch in a row. … Playing in the smallest metropolitan market in the majors and lacking major revenue streams, the Brewers would need to find, sign, and develop premium talent with all those high picks, or risk many more years of misery. …
That first year started a string of drafts that would be the envy of nearly any other team. The next season’s first-round pick, Mike Jones, never panned out; but J.J. Hardy proved to be a big score in the second round, giving the Brewers several quality seasons at shortstop before getting traded for current star center fielder Carlos Gomez. They did hit on their first-round pick in 2002, landing mega-slugger Prince Fielder seventh overall. (And though none of these players ever played a game for the Brewers, they showed a keen eye for talent in drafting Tom Wilhelmsen in the seventh round, Craig Breslow in the 26th, and Hunter Pence in the 40th.)
Rickie Weeks hasn’t quite lived up to the superstar expectations thrust on him when he went no. 2 overall in 2003, but he has been a solid regular for years in Milwaukee (second-round pick Tony Gwynn Jr. has had his uses too). Mark Rogers disappointed as the top pick in 2004, but Gallardo more than made up for it as the second-round pick, with Lorenzo Cain turning into a 17th-round steal. The next year proved to be the score of all scores. Though the 2005 draft will go down as one of the best in baseball history, no. 5 overall pick Ryan Braun has shone brighter than Justin Upton, Alex Gordon, Troy Tulowitzki, Ryan Zimmerman, Andrew McCutchen, Jay Bruce, Jacoby Ellsbury, or anyone else from that class. And in true Zduriencik-era fashion, Milwaukee landed a couple of later-round steals, too, including Andrew Bailey and Michael Brantley, with the latter later to be packaged in one of the boldest trades the team has ever made. The Brewers did fare poorly in their 2006 draft, though top pick Jeremy Jeffress would at least make his way into yet another blockbuster trade. The top pick in 2007, Matt LaPorta, has been a sub–replacement level player thus far in the majors, but he was actually the linchpin in that massive deal that included Brantley; meanwhile, third-round pick Jonathan Lucroy has emerged as a key player on the current roster. Zduriencik capped off his 10-year run by snagging Brett Lawrie and Jake Odorizzi with the 16th and 32nd overall picks in the 2008 draft, with both players ending up in major trades for veteran pitching help inside of three years. …
Those players formed the foundation for the winning teams that would follow. The Brewers extended their streak of sub-.500 seasons to 12 before finally finishing 81-81 in 2005. Then in 2008, Milwaukee snapped the second-longest playoff drought for any team, surging to 90-72 and claiming the NL wild-card spot. That ’08 team featured 24-year-olds Braun and Fielder combining for 71 home runs, with 25-year-olds Hardy and Weeks and 26-year-old Hart chipping in 58 more. Even with all that hitting talent, though, the 2008 club lacked front-line pitchers other than Ben Sheets. So on July 7 of that year, the Brewers shocked the baseball world, dealing four prospects to the Indians for CC Sabathia, three months before the defending Cy Young winner would be eligible for free agency. Sabathia was so dominant in his half a season with Milwaukee that he actually led the National League in complete games (seven) and shutouts (three) despite making just 17 regular-season starts as a Brewer. He posted a 5.1-to-1 strikeout-to-walk rate and a 1.65 ERA, propelling the Brewers into the postseason.
When Sabathia left to sign with the Yankees after the 2008 season, the Brewers’ biggest weakness was reexposed: They’d developed a passel of excellent, young position players, but few pitchers of note other than Gallardo and Manny Parra, though Parra’s ’08 campaign would prove to be the highlight of his otherwise unremarkable career. That lack of pitching talent showed the following year, when the Brewers stumbled to an 80-82 season thanks to a staff that yielded more than five runs a game. Stinging from that pitching deficit and emboldened from the success of the Sabathia trade (three great months plus a compensatory draft pick in exchange for a package that has yielded a league-average outfielder in Brantley and little else certainly qualifies as a success), the Brewers figured trading prospects for more veteran pitching help would help pry open that proverbial window for a while longer. After another losing season in 2010, they made two such deals. First, Lawrie went to Toronto for right-hander Shaun Marcum. Thirteen days later, Cain, Jeffress, Odorizzi and 24-year-old shortstop Alcides Escobar got shipped to Kansas City for another former Cy Young winner, Zack Greinke (and Yuniesky Betancourt, but for everyone’s sake, we’ll pretend that didn’t happen).
The short-term results of these two deals were outstanding. Marcum topped 200 innings for the first time in his career, producing a 3.54 ERA and 3.73 FIP. Greinke did spend time on the disabled list, but he was very good (albeit not nearly as unhittable as he’d been two years earlier), leading the majors in strikeout rate while posting a 2.98 FIP and 2.56 xFIP. This time, the Brewers trumped their 2008 result, winning a franchise-best 96 games and advancing all the way to the League Championship Series before falling to the eventual World Series champion Cardinals. With Greinke in tow for the 2012 season, the Brewers hoped to bag a better follow-up result than what they’d managed in 2009. Didn’t happen. Though they did get some surprisingly strong contributions from a couple of twentysomething pitchers (waiver claim Marco Estrada and 2009 22nd-round pick Mike Fiers), they were ultimately undone by some terrible performances by several other pitchers, including most of the bullpen, and 142⅓ nightmarish innings from a washed-up Randy Wolf. Though they enjoyed a strong closing kick to finish the season above .500, the Brewers had again failed to build on a big year.
“You can win,” Melvin said, “but the toughest part is sustaining success. You think about a year like we’re having right now; Boston had a down year last year, but they regrouped, recovered, and they’re still at a $140 million payroll [actually closer to $155 million as of Opening Day]. Smaller-market clubs can’t do that, that is not the world we live in.
“When we traded for CC, that caught everyone off guard. We got 3 million fans in 2008. Then we trade for Greinke and Marcum, and 2011 was our best year in almost 30 years. But when you make those trades, there is a cost. You say, ‘We’ll worry about it later.’ Well, ‘later’ is now.”
What later/now means to the Brewers is a collection of organizational talent that ESPN’s Keith Law ranked next-to-last in baseball before the start of this season. Leading his Brewers wrap, Law wrote: “This system has one top-100 prospect and a lot of back-end starters or probable relievers.” Cashing in a dump truck full of highly rated prospects to make go-for-it trades played a big role in downgrading Milwaukee’s farm system. But so, too, did a talent drain of another sort: an exodus of highly regarded scouts.
I compared the Packers, which have mostly been successful in player evaluation, to the Brewers here last week. After good work by Brewers scouts before the departure of Zduriencik (to become general manager in Seattle) and others, what followed?
Though drafts can take years to bear fruit, the industry consensus is that Milwaukee has fared very poorly in their drafting for the past few years, even after adjusting for the Brewers picking later than they did when the team was a perennial loser. The 26th overall pick in 2009, Indiana University pitcher Eric Arnett, isn’t going to make it to the Show. The Brewers’ top pick in 2010, right-hander Dylan Covey, was about to sign when a physical revealed he had diabetes; he went to college instead and ended up getting drafted later by the A’s. Blessed with both the 12th and 15th overall picks in 2011 after the Covey snafu, Milwaukee picked Texas right-hander Taylor Jungmann and Georgia Tech lefty Jed Bradley. With a minor league pipeline that sorely lacked upper-tier pitching talent, Jungmann and Bradley seemed like exactly what the Brewers needed, two polished college products who’d move quickly through the rotation and hopefully make an impact in the big leagues within two or three years, if everything broke right. It hasn’t worked out that way. Jungmann has been serviceable, posting a combined 3.55 ERA over the past two seasons in high Class A and Double-A ball … but with a weak strikeout rate of less than six batters per nine innings. That still beats Bradley, who posted a 5.02 ERA during that same span.
A handful of players from those drafts have made it to the majors, including Fiers, Hiram Burgos, Scooter Gennett, and Tyler Thornburg. But no one from the 2009-2011 drafts projects as an impact player of any kind, with doubts about whether any of them can even mature into an effective big league regular on a winning team — the organization’s affection for Gennett notwithstanding.
So what’s next? Trade away every good player?
“Do we take a step back [to replenish the talent pool]?” Melvin asked. “We have to realize where we are right now. If you don’t realize it, you could end up in the middle, then it becomes a four- or five-year project. If you have the patience to step back a bit, the stomach for it, it can be worth it.”
From a baseball standpoint only, Melvin’s point of view makes sense. Maybe accepting a truly lean year or two now sets the Brewers up for a quicker and more robust recovery once the pitching staff has been built back up and the team is ready to contend again. But it’s never about baseball only, not for any team, and certainly not for a revenue-limited team that’s also owned by a shrewd and aggressive owner like Mark Attanasio. The Brewers have one of the weakest local TV deals for any team. That makes the momentum in attendance and general interest that the Brewers have built up over the past few years so vital to the team’s success.
By the time Attanasio took over the team after the 2004 season, interest had hit rock bottom. The Brewers ranked 13th in the NL in attendance that year, while carrying a payroll below $28 million. Having made his money in investing, Attanasio drew on a lesson he’d learned in snatching up distressed businesses: Sometimes it’s best to wait and see what you’ve got before making any drastic changes. What he found was a team that on the major league level hadn’t yet brought those future stars to the fore, with interest in the existing players so low that the top-selling item in the fan store were plush replicas of the team’s sausage-race participants. As the top prospects began to make the big club and grow into key contributors, Attanasio had to decide how to proceed next. An avid reader who’d soaked up Moneyball soon after its release, he’d considered the A’s method of ditching players early, trading them before they could hit free agency rather than losing them for nothing more than comp picks. Instead, he settled on a different approach, one that had been made popular by John Hart and his young Indians teams in the ’90s: Sign everyone you can. The owner depended on Melvin and his staff to identify those players worth retaining; after that, Attanasio started writing checks. Over the past eight-plus years, they’ve signed Braun, Hart, Weeks, Lucroy, Gallardo, Gomez, and even Bill Hall to long-term deals, buying out their arbitration years, buying out their first couple years of potential free agency, or both.
Attanasio firmly believes that the combination of winning and building a core group of players that fans could follow for more than just a handful of years has contributed greatly to the team’s ability to draw three million fans a year (or close to it) in the smallest market in baseball. Trading away stars, or even recognizable regulars, thus gives the Brewers owner pause. In a recent meeting with Melvin and assistant GM Gord Ash, Attanasio conveyed a clear message:
“We don’t have to do anything,” he said. “We’re in a good financial position. We have a lot of good players. We have no albatross contracts. What makes the job hard is that we actually have a lot of options.” …
But behind the scenes, there’s anxiety, especially at the lower levels. A source close to the situation said some baseball ops people below the GM and assistant GM level have started preparing résumés, with the Cubs confirming they’ve received one such résumé for a job posting they put out. The Brewers have called on a tech-savvy friend of Attanasio’s son to help build a new database, with rumors that the new system might be designed to be used by a new regime and a more quantitatively inclined general manager. Melvin is the sixth-longest-tenured GM in the majors, a smart and respected baseball man who’s quick to give others such as Zduriencik credit for Milwaukee’s recent turnaround, but who deserves his own fair share of credit, too. Many of his top lieutenants are also industry veterans who’ve been with the team for a while, through bad times, then good, and now bad again.
Still, nothing lasts forever. The Brewers are losing, and with losing often comes change. Stay tuned.
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This seems appropriate to begin Independence Day:
This being Independence Day, you wouldn’t think there would be many music anniversaries today. I love this one, though: WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, Ind., celebrated the nation’s 153rd birthday by burning its transmitter to the ground.
Independence Day 1970 was not a holiday for Casey Kasem, who premiered “America’s Top 40”:
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Joseph de Maistre said “Every nation has the government it is fit for,” not, as widely misquoted, “Every nation has the government it deserves.”
Apparently the state of Illinois isn’t fit for much good government, given its elected officials’ disrespect for the Bill of Rights.
Exhibit A is U.S. Sen. Richard “Dick” Durbin (D–Illinois), who said, reports the Chicago Sun–Times:
Everyone, regardless of the mode of expression, has a constitutionally protected right to free speech. But when it comes to freedom of the press, I believe we must define a journalist and the constitutional and statutory protections those journalists should receive.
The media informs the public and holds government accountable. Journalists should have reasonable legal protections to do their important work. But not every blogger, tweeter or Facebook user is a “journalist.” While social media allows tens of millions of people to share information publicly, it does not entitle them to special legal protections to ignore requests for documents or information from grand juries, judges or other law enforcement personnel.
A journalist gathers information for a media outlet that disseminates the information through a broadly defined “medium” — including newspaper, nonfiction book, wire service, magazine, news website, television, radio or motion picture — for public use. This broad definition covers every form of legitimate journalism.
To those who feel politicians shouldn’t define who a journalist is, I’d remind them that they likely live in one of the 49 states, like Illinois, where elected officials have already made that decision.
To which, replies journalist/blogger James Taranto:
That goes against America’s entire constitutional tradition. In Lovell v. Griffin (1938), Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court: “The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our own history abundantly attest. The press in its connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.”
In Branzburg v. Hayes (1972), Justice Byron White reiterated the point. The court was asked to hold that the First Amendment precluded the government from requiring a reporter to testify before a grand jury about information he had gathered from confidential sources. By a 5-4 vote, the justices said no. If such a privilege were established, White wrote, “sooner or later, it would be necessary to define those categories of newsmen who qualified for the privilege, a questionable procedure in light of the traditional doctrine that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods.”
Durbin now wants to establish such a privilege by statute, so his call for limiting freedom of the press is ostensibly designed to expand it. …
We guess Durbin would regard this column as “legitimate journalism,” although we’re not exactly sure why. Is it because we write for a “newspaper,” or by that term does Durbin mean the physical object composed of paper and ink? If it’s the latter, well, at least WSJ.com is a “news website.”
But we also have an active presence on Twitter (where you should follow us if you don’t already). Are our tweets legitimate? On this point Durbin is not entirely clear. He writes: “Not every blogger, tweeter or Facebook user is a ‘journalist.’ ”
Durbin’s definition of “journalist” is both too broad and too narrow. Any literate person, for example, could plausibly claim to be working on a “nonfiction book”–if nothing else, a memoir for a vanity publisher. On the other side, isn’t Twitter a “news website”? That certainly describes the way we use it. What about Facebook? It even calls its procession of status updates the “newsfeed.”
Justice White was right four decades ago, even if his references to pamphleteers, carbon paper, mimeographs and photocomposition now seem quaint. A law granting special privileges to the press effectively gives the government the power to license the press by deciding who qualifies.
Durbin acknowledges this problem but doesn’t really grapple with its implications. For instance, he doesn’t spell out whether the protection would belong to individual journalists or only to news organizations. If the latter, then he is in a funny position for a leftist Democrat: He is claiming that a constitutional right belongs only to corporations, not individuals.
Further, a government that grants privileges also has the power to take them away. A shield law would make those designated as “legitimate journalists” beholden to powerful politicians–especially when, as today, most journalists are ideologically sympathetic to the party in power. The Durbin shield proposal looks less like real protection than a protection racket.
Well, Illinois Democrats know all about rackets.
You would think that, as a member of the party that disdains the original intent of the Founding Fathers, Durbin would grasp that the media today goes far beyond printing presses. Perhaps Dick does realize that, and is clumsily trying to eliminate those inconvenient complainers who dare to criticize a member of the world’s greatest deliberative body.
This also makes one think that a federal shield law for reporters, which the Obama administration apparently favors to protect its amen chorus, is a bad idea. The First Amendment doesn’t apply only to journalists. The First Amendment is supposed to apply to everyone. (Original intent, Dick.)
Not to be outdone, Gov. Pat Quinn has decided to defy an order from a federal judge, reports Fox News:
Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn triggered a backlash from his own party as well as the NRA on Tuesday after he unilaterally changed legislation meant to allow the carrying of concealed weapons.
In a challenge to gun-rights supporters, Quinn moved to cap the number of firearms and rounds that can be carried by Illinois residents and ban guns from any place that serves alcohol.
The move was a nod to the governor’s gun-control base as the state faces a court-ordered July 9 deadline to allow concealed-carry.
But, by using what is known as his “amendatory veto power,” Quinn could imperil the carefully crafted deal, which now heads back to the legislature.
Some lawmakers have already vowed to reject Quinn’s new provisions.
Sen. Bill Haine, a Democrat, says he hopes lawmakers will override the veto. Assistant Majority Leader John Sullivan said Quinn “ignored the will of the people.” …
Quinn, in announcing his decision to impose last-minute changes, claimed the bill had “serious flaws” that jeopardize public safety.
“Therefore I’ve used my power under the constitution of our state to make important changes, common sense changes, to protect the safety of our people,” he said.
Among those changes, he called for guns to be banned from any business where alcohol is served.
“Guns and alcohol don’t mix. And I think it’s very important that the legislature understand that message from the people of Illinois,” Quinn said.
He also added a restriction so that licensed gun owners would only be allowed to carry a single concealed gun and one ammunition clip holding up to 10 rounds.
This will be interesting to watch, given that Quinn’s “amendatory veto power” creates a law that appears to violate the Second Amendment, as duly adjudged by federal judges. Illinois was the last state that didn’t allow its citizens their Second Amendment-guaranteed rights to carry firearms in any way they like.
(Quinn, by the way, became governor upon the imprisonment of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was elected governor after Gov. George Ryan switched his home address to a federal penitentiary. Four of Quinn’s seven predecessors spent time in the Iron Bar Motel, and two others managed to convince juries that they weren’t as corrupt as the others. one of the non-imprisoned governors was a U.S. attorney and got a conviction against one of the Felonious Four before he became governor, and then after he retired became the defense attorney of another of the Felonious Four. Remember that the term “good Illinois government” is an oxymoron.)
The Chicago Tribune adds:
While the Democratic governor is within his powers to recommend changes for lawmakers to accept or reject, Quinn’s move also raises the possibility that the General Assembly could fail to agree on either option and leave Illinois with a wide-open gun law that even sponsors of the concealed carry law have sought to avoid.
The pressure now is on lawmakers to act before a July 9 deadline that a federal appellate court gave Illinois to put in place a law allowing people to carry concealed firearms. The ruled in December that Illinois must end its status as the only state in the nation with a ban on allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons in public.
Sponsoring Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, already has filed a motion to override the governor’s changes.
“A deal is a deal, we had a compromise. It’s too short of a notice now to go back on this. As you know, a week away is the deadline. These are things that if the governor was really serious about it, he would have had a member of the General Assembly running a trailer bill to make changes.”
Phelps said Quinn went beyond the “scope of the constitution” in his rewrite, saying the limit on magazines is an issue separate from concealed carry.
“This is a whole rewrite,” Phelps said. “He is nothing more than politically pandering to Chicago. He won (four) counties last time round, and one of them was Cook County and he’s pandering to them.” …
Seeking re-election in 2014, Quinn’s move to tighten the proposal is in keeping with pro-gun control stance, but it also plays well to his core Democratic constituency in the Chicago area. Yet it cuts against the governor in the vast majority of counties that voted against him throughout the state when he was elected in 2010.
Quinn already is facing new political challenges as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a longtime gun control advocate, came out today in favor of Quinn’s potential Democratic challenger, Bill Daley, the former White House chief of staff whose brother and father both served as mayors of Chicago.
The trainwreck that is Illinois state finances is not a constitutional issue, but that and Durbin’s middle finger at the First Amendment and Quinn’s ignorance of the Second Amendment all demonstrate that the misquoted version of de Maistre’s quote is actually correct — every state gets the government it deserves.
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I will be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin program Friday doing the 8 a.m. Week in Review segment. (Prerecorded Steve will also be on at 9 p.m. I think. WPR changed its schedule this week, and I’m now not sure Joy’s 8 a.m. is repeated at 9 p.m.)
Wisconsin Public Radio’s Ideas Network can be heard on WHA (970 AM) in Madison, WLBL (930 AM) in Auburndale, WHID (88.1 FM) in Green Bay, WHWC (88.3 FM) in Menomonie, WRFW (88.7 FM) in River Falls, WEPS (88.9 FM) in Elgin, Ill., WHAA (89.1 FM) in Adams, WHBM (90.3 FM) in Park Falls, WHLA (90.3 FM) in La Crosse, WRST (90.3 FM) in Oshkosh, WHAD (90.7 FM) in Delafield, W215AQ (90.9 FM) in Middleton, KUWS (91.3 FM) in Superior, WHHI (91.3 FM) in Highland, WSHS (91.7 FM) in Sheboygan, WHDI (91.9 FM) in Sister Bay, WLBL (91.9 FM) in Wausau, W275AF (102.9 FM) in Ashland, W300BM (107.9 FM) in Madison, and of course online at www.wpr.org.
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013 — just another day in a constitutional republic of limited government by citizen representatives:
First thing in the morning, Gregory Roseman, Deputy Director of Acquisitions (whatever that means), became the second IRS official to take the Fifth Amendment, after he was questioned about awarding the largest contract in IRS history, totaling some half a billion dollars, to his close friend Braulio Castillo, who qualified under a federal “set aside” program favoring disadvantaged groups — in this case, disabled veterans. For the purposes of federal contracting, Mr. Castillo is a “disabled veteran” because he twisted his ankle during a football game at the U.S. Military Academy prep school 27 years ago. How he overcame this crippling disability to win a half-billion-dollar IRS contract is the heartwarming stuff of an inspiring Lifetime TV movie.
Later in the day, Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota and alleged author of the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the immigration bill, went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and, in a remarkable interview, revealed to the world that he had absolutely no idea what was in the legislation he “wrote.” …
So Senator Hoeven and 67 other senators went ahead the following day and approved the usual bazillion-page we-have-to-pass-it-to-find-out-what’s-in-it omnibus bill, cooked up in the backrooms, released late on a Friday afternoon and passed in nothing flat after Harry Reid decreed there’s no need for further debate — not that anything recognizable to any genuine legislature as “debate” ever occurs in “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Say what you like about George III, but the Tea Act was about tea. The so-called comprehensive immigration reform is so comprehensive it includes special deals for Nevada casinos and the recategorization of the Alaskan fish-processing industry as a “cultural exchange” program, because the more leaping salmon we have the harder it is for Mexicans to get across the Bering Strait. While we’re bringing millions of Undocumented-Americans “out of the shadows,” why don’t we try bringing Washington’s decadent and diseased law-making out of the shadows?
Just when you thought the day couldn’t get any more momentous, the Supreme Court weighed in on same-sex marriage. When less advanced societies wish to introduce gay marriage, the people’s elected representatives assemble in parliament and pass a law. That’s how they did it in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, etc. But one shudders to contemplate what would result were the legislative class to attempt “comprehensive marriage reform,” complete with tax breaks for Maine lobstermen’s au pairs and the hiring of 20,000 new IRS agents to verify business expenses for page boys from disparate-impact groups. So instead it fell to five out of nine judges, which means it fell to Anthony Kennedy, because he’s the guy who swings both ways. Thus, Supreme Intergalactic Emperor Anthony gets to decide the issue for 300 million people.
As Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben so famously says in every remake, with great power comes great responsibility. Having assumed the power to redefine a societal institution that predates the United States by thousands of years, Emperor Tony the All-Wise had the responsibility at least to work up the semblance of a legal argument. Instead, he struck down the Defense of Marriage Act on the grounds that those responsible for it were motivated by an “improper animus” against a “politically unpopular group” they wished to “disparage,” “demean,” and “humiliate” as “unworthy.” What stump-toothed knuckle-dragging inbred swamp-dwellers from which hellish Bible Belt redoubt would do such a thing? Well, fortunately, we have their names on the record: The DOMA legislators who were driven by their need to “harm” gay people include notorious homophobe Democrats Chuck Schumer, Pat Leahy, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, and the virulent anti-gay hater who signed it into law, Bill Clinton. …
In his dissent, Justice Scalia wrote that “to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions.” Indeed. With this judgment, America’s constitutional court demeans and humiliates only its own. Of all the local variations through which same-sex marriage has been legalized in the last decade, mostly legislative (France, Iceland) but occasionally judicial (Canada, South Africa), the United States is unique in its inability to jump on the Western world’s bandwagon du jour without first declaring its current vice president, president pro tem of the Senate, majority leader, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, and prospective first First Gentleman raging gay-bashers. As the Paula Deens of orientation, maybe they should all be canceled.There is something deeply weird, not to say grubby and dishonest, about this. In its imputation of motive to those who disagree with it, this opinion is more disreputable than Roe v. Wade — and with potentially unbounded application. To return to the immigration bill, and all its assurances that those amnestied will “go to the end of the line” and have to wait longer for full-blown green cards and longer still for citizenship, do you seriously think any of that hooey will survive its first encounter with a federal judge? In much of the Southwest, you’d have jurisdictions with a majority of Hispanic residents living under an elderly, disproportionately white voting roll. You can cut-and-paste Kennedy’s guff about “improper animus” toward “a group of people” straight into the first immigration appeal, and a thousand more. And that’s supposing the administrative agencies pay any attention to the “safeguards” in the first place.
As I say, just another day in the life of the republic: a corrupt bureaucracy dispensing federal gravy to favored clients; a pseudo-legislature passing bills unread by the people’s representatives and uncomprehended by the men who claim to have written them; and a co-regency of jurists torturing an 18th-century document in order to justify what other countries are at least honest enough to recognize as an unprecedented novelty. Whether or not, per Scalia, we should “condemn” the United States Constitution, it might be time to put the poor wee thing out of its misery.
More general thoughts on Independence Day can be read here.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 