On Wednesday, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney survived an intra-party effort to oust her from her GOP leadership position, meanwhile Republican Party Leader Kevin McCarthy decided he will not strip firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. When it comes to all the latest intra-GOP squabbles, Sarah and David have the scoop. On today’s episode, our hosts also break down the Supreme Court’s latest orders and the good, the bad, and the ugly of the impeachment briefs.
Show Notes:
-“I’m Comic Sans, Asshole” by Mike Lacher and Saturday Night Live’s Papyrus Skit.
-“U.S. Nazi hunter has one active case” by Evan Perez, Alexander Rosen, Wesley Bruer, Jeremy Moorhead, Alex Lee and Josh Gaynor in CNN.
-“Your Type May Be Ripe For Review” by Chris Mincher in the Maryland Appellate Blog.
-Rule 32. Form of Briefs, Appendices, and Other Papers.
-Democrats’ impeachment trial brief and Trump’s response to the impeachment article.
-Salinas v. United States Railroad Retirement Board, Republic of Hungary v. Rosalie Simon, Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, Wednesday’s Supreme Court orders, Howard J. Bashman’s “How Appealing” appellate litigation blog.
One last font comment:
Equity costs between $119 and $359 to license. So yes, the Fifth Circuit now requires a font -- a font NAMED EQUITY -- that costs hundreds of dollars just to install.
That perhaps tells you everything you need to know about the 21st century American legal system.
Ah, my first huge, major, epic disagreement with Sarah! This idea that journalists should alter their coverage by thinking about whether said coverage advances or inhibits their preferred political outcomes is deeply pernicious.
To argue that covering MTG is silly, pointless, and just feeds the outrage machine is fine. To say that covering her is bad because she might benefit from that coverage betrays the compact between reader and writer. We are not subscribing to The Dispatch in order to benefit or harm any given politician; we're subscribing to be informed by writers with a center-right perspective. If those writers think that MTG is relevant to the political trends they want to discuss in this country, then they should feel free to write about her even if it gets her a hypothetical $50k in campaign contributions.
One of the worst trends in journalism has been for writers to stop saying what they think is true and instead writing what is "good for the people." This happened across the conservative ecosystem with Trump; we know most of them are lying in their encomiums to Trump the Great, but they are writing that drivel to manipulate voters in a way that they think is good for Republicanism (and, in their view, the country).
Tendentious writing has practically defined mainstream coverage of COVID. To take a small example, Vox published "explainer" after "explainer" meant to "explain" why we didn't need to wear masks and why N95 masks were ineffective not because anyone with an IQ above room temperature actually believed that, but because it seemed like the right thing for the masses to hear during a time of PPE shortage.
I pay to hear what Steve, Jonah, David, Sarah, Hayley, etc. truly think---not to participate in some Straussian manipulation based on what they think is good for me or the country to hear.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but The Dispatch is speaking to a pretty politically helpless minority. What we do with what we read here probably does not affect the course of the nation.
"A state of things in which the large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the general principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters, and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world. The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are either mere conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves." ---J.S. Mill