In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This week's featured posts are "They Both Lost. What Now?" about the debate and "Down to the Wire" about the Supreme Court's next-to-last decisions of the term.
This week everybody was talking about the debate
That's the subject of one featured post.
One issue in this campaign is whether the country was better off four years ago. To refresh your memory, here's a meme from April, 2020.
Scott Dworkin is keeping a list of Republicans who are not supporting Trump.
It's way too soon for this kind of humor, but here's Andy Borowitz:
There are some compelling arguments for replacing Joe with Hunter. You could still use BIDEN ‘24 campaign regalia. He’s a generation younger. And the fact that he’s a convicted felon could attract Republican voters.
and the Supreme Court
Having delayed to the very end of the term, the Supreme Court is about to post its decision on Trump's immunity claim. I'll punt my analysis until next week.
Everything from last week is covered in the other featured post.
and Oklahoma
Oklahoma is suddenly a central battleground for church-and-state issues. This week saw one effort to shore up the wall between the two, and another to blow a hole in it.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court defended the wall: It ruled 6-2 that the state's charter school program can't support an openly Catholic school.
The Oklahoma state constitution has a pretty sweeping statement separating church and state:
Article 2, Section 5: No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.
Article 1, Section 5 makes that provision specific to public schools:
Provisions shall be made for the establishment and maintenance of a system of public schools, which shall be open to all the children of the state and free from sectarian control
Nonetheless, two Catholic institutions got together to create St. Isidore, which they pitched as a virtual charter school to be supported by the state. The majority opinion summarizes:
The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa applied to the Charter School Board to establish St. Isidore, a religious virtual charter school. St. Isidore does not dispute that it is a religious institution. Its purpose is “[t]o create, establish, and operate” the school as a Catholic school. Specifically, it plans to derive ‘its original characteristics and its structure as a genuine instrument of the church” and participate “in the evangelizing mission of the church."
Despite the state constitution, the Oklahoma Charter School Board accepted St. Isidore's application by a 3-2 vote, and made a contract to fund the school that would have begun today.
The argument on the other side, which a dissent spells out, is something you're likely to hear again -- possibly when the sponsoring dioceses appeal to the US Supreme Court: St. Isidore isn't a "public school" per se, it's a private organization contracting to provide a service (i.e., education) to the state. It shouldn't be banned from competing for state contracts just because it's a religious organization. It's like a Catholic hospital providing medical services to Medicare patients.
Six justices weren't impressed with that argument, mainly because of that "participate in the evangelizing mission of the church". A Catholic hospital isn't trying to make good Catholics out of its patients, but St. Isidore would be trying to make good Catholics out of its students. That may or may not be a worthy goal, but State of Oklahoma shouldn't be paying for it.
Meanwhile, the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction dropped a bomb intended to knock the wall down.
In a state board of education meeting on Thursday, state superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters announced a new memo “that every school district will adhere to, which is that every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma in accordance with our academic standards and state law”.
You can see Walters' statement in the video of the meeting. Don't be intimidated by the nearly-six-hour meeting length. Walters' comments happen early: Around the seven minute mark, he says he will challenge the Oklahoma Supreme Court's St. Isidore decision "all the way to the Supreme Court". He then goes on to make his comments about teaching the Bible in all classrooms, because of its historical significance for "the Constitution and the birth of our country". He's done by the ten-minute mark.
My comment: Christianity does have a lot of historical significance for the US, both for good and ill. But if we're going to be focusing on that in classrooms, I think we also need to teach about the constant religious strife in England during the 1600s, as Catholics, Anglicans, and dissenters (i.e., Oliver Cromwell) fought for control of the government. This was the English version of the continental Thirty Years War, in which battles between Protestants and Catholics killed millions and depopulated parts of Germany by 50% or more.
The Founders knew that history and didn't want similar wars of religion to erupt here. Hence the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which Jefferson summarized with the metaphor of a "wall of separation" between Church and State. Saying to the various denominations: "You can compete in all sorts of ways, but the government is off limits" was a very astute piece of statecraft.
In contrast to making kids learn the Bible, South Carolina has taken the opposite tack: Don't let them read anything else. The Department of Education's new regulation mandates that all books in classrooms or school libraries be "age appropriate" and not describe "sexual conduct". Any parent of public-school students can challenge up to five titles a month, and a state board is the decision-maker rather than any local authority. Those phrases sound fine, but the problem is their vagueness: Librarians who don't want to keep defending their choices to the state will self-censor all books about sexuality or race, including many that some students would benefit from reading.
For reasons no one seems to be able to explain, the legislature didn't discuss this during the standard 120-day vetting period for new regulations, so it took effect Tuesday.
And there's always Louisiana:
and you also might be interested in ...
My wife recently asked me if there was anything good happening in the world, so I pointed to this: California's shift to renewable energy is starting to show some serious results. Bill McKibben elaborates:
Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. Some afternoons, solar panels alone have produced more power than the state uses. And, at night, large utility-scale batteries that have been installed during the past few years are often the single largest source of supply to the grid—sending the excess power stored up during the afternoon back out to consumers across the state.
I mean, it's encouraging when some island in Denmark replaces fossil fuels with wind power ... but California!
Another good thing happening: Violent crime is falling. One good example comes from liberal Massachusetts.
Boston’s murder tally was already low. The city had 70 homicides in 2010 and 56 in 2020; last year, there were 37.
So far this year: 4.
Steve Bannon (a.k.a. inmate #05635-509) is supposed to start his four-month jail term for contempt of Congress today. Depending on how vindictive you're feeling at the moment, that also might lift your spirits.
Before he gets out, he'll have to stand trial on something else: defrauding contributors to the We Build the Wall campaign. Let me suggest a defense he might try: No harm was done, because people who would give to a cause like that, headed by someone like him, are so stupid they would have lost their money somehow anyway.
and let's close with something big
Depending on your mood, astronomy can either depressing or uplifting. Maybe it makes you feel insignificant, or maybe it makes your troubles seem insignificant. It's a Rorschach test.
This photo, pieced together from some number of Webb telescope images, is 340 light years across.
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