As a Personal Note: Need to Read More of This Montesquieu Guy

For all that I've read about the foundations of the American political experiment that is our Constitution... why is it only NOW am I hearing about this guy? Robert A Ballingall over at Crooks & Liars wrote a big article on Montesquieu's contributions to the Founders' political philosophy:

How are people in the U.S. to make sense of these trends? As Americans celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, how faithful is the U.S. today to its founding principles? I’m a political philosophy scholar who studies constitutional government. In my view, an especially helpful approach to answering such questions is to revisit the towering but neglected influence of the French philosopher Montesquieu on the founding of this country...

On the separation of powers, Montesquieu was, in James Madison’s words, “the oracle who is always consulted and cited.” Of all authors cited in political writings published by Americans between 1760 and 1805, none was more frequently mentioned. He loomed so large that “American republican ideologues could recite the central points of Montesquieu’s doctrine as if it had been a catechism,” according to historian Forrest McDonald.

Montesquieu was especially celebrated for his account of how and why political power needs to be separated into branches. But behind this now familiar idea was another that is less remembered: Montesquieu’s theory of liberty inspired the founders’ own understandings of this core concept of American politics...

For all that I've been told about Locke, and Mill, and that other guy, nobody's talked about Montesquieu until now.

Dammit now I got more homework to finish.

Mueller Testimony Before Congress: The Circus Cover Up

So... I got a little distracted from reading the Mueller Report like I promised. Work's been crazy, real-life distractions aplenty. I got as far as the first full page of redactions and refused to find out how many times the phrase "trump conspired with Russians to hack the elections" fit inside the void.

As a result, I'm not fully briefing myself on the report's contents as of today, when Mueller is expected to testify before Congress about his findings.

I don't have high hopes today will end well (by that I mean "trump getting charged on his counts of Obstruction and getting campaign aid from a foreign power").

A lot of what happens today depends on what Mueller actually says. Despite AG Barr's assertions that he can control what Mueller can answer, the former special prosecutor can say whatever he feels is not covered by the "matters of ongoing harm" regarding active investigations.

The most likely things Mueller will cover are the most obvious ones: That Russia actively attempted - and in some cases succeeded - to interfere with our country's 2016 election cycle. I fully expect Mueller will spend much of his presentation making the case for Congress to pass stricter laws against foreign meddling and to make more concerted efforts to protect our voting methods.

Whether or not trump committed crimes like Obstruction, Mueller still hasn't come out and simply said so: He keeps saying "Well Congress needs to act on that" and leaves it up in the air. I wonder how many Democratic congresscritters are going to try to get him on record saying "Yes, trump committed Obstruction (more than once), and yes this requires Congress to at least begin impeachment proceedings right now."

That's when the circus part of the testimony will kick in, because the Republican congresscritters will do everything in their power to block those questions and answers with every sleazy distraction in the book.

It's already a given - considering how they acted to Michael Cohen's post-guilty-plea testimony - that the likes of Jim Jordan and other Republicans will debunk Mueller based not on the evidence but on Fox Not-News talking points. The expectations are high that they'll try to accuse Hillary of being more involved with Russian tricks, or throw out conspiracy stories about "Deep State" sabotage on trump's campaign. There will be - guaranteed - a major attack on two of Mueller's investigators who were caught Tweeting against trump, as though that compromised the entire Mueller investigation (hint: those two didn't).

The Republican offensive against Mueller will be offensive, no doubt. Mueller's integrity will be mocked and slimed. They'll try to pressure the special prosecutor into unleashing a rageful retort, something they hope will cause a gaffe and discredit the whole investigation.

The best hope I have in that situation is that Mueller remains calm and focused - as a Marine, he's likely to do so - and stays on message. I also hope that during their attempts to discredit Mueller, the damned Republicans indict themselves. If any of the congresscritters makes an open case to have the Mueller Report unredacted, that would be nice (and also a hilarious self-own).

I just won't be watching today.

I'm still busy at work.

A Slight Glitch In the Mueller Reading

Well I said I was going to read the Mueller Report, right?

I went and downloaded a free copy to my B&N Nook a couple nights ago, yep.

And... it's in a PDF format that doesn't zoom in very well. When I try to enlarge to read, the page freezes up. It's gotten quite vexing.


via GIPHY


So I am looking at two options. One: read it off a regular computer where the PDF enlarge function won't vex me. Two: pay actual money for an ebook copy that might have better enlarge function.

I'll report back shortly.

They Redacted the Table of Contents?

Okay, I took a few minutes last night to begin reading the Mueller Report, and as a librarian my first horror was finding the chapter titles in the Table of Contents itself redacted.

Harm To Ongoing Matter is already a twitter meme.

Seriously? This is how bad it's going to get?

And there's a chapter about "Possible 1030 Violation By Personal Privacy" listed. I'm sorry, but we're talking about someone violating computer fraud laws and we ought to know who that is. If it's not an "Ongoing Matter" which seems to be the main reason for a lot of these redactions, and it's not a liable matter, this is a person whose name NEEDS TO BE referred to either Congress or a DoJ prosecutor's office for charges.

Release the unredacted Mueller Report to Congress. Damn you, Barr.

The Redacted Mueller Report

Well, it's out. The Twitterverse has been afire since Barr dropped it, with a lot of comments here and there. For the sake of keeping it simple I'm just going to log to my main blog source Balloon Juice starting with Betty Cracker's early take and you can go down the rabbit hole from there.

Oh what the hell I'll add Emptywheel too, with a link to the excoriation of Barr's conduct covering up for trump.

For my part... I've been busy at work today so I'm going to make an effort to read the Searchable PDF version of the Report (follow that link yourself). I want to get my own understanding of what's in there and avoid relying too much on everyone else's interpretations of what happens from here.

...

"That's GUILTY! GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!" - unabashedly stealing from "Doonesbury"

Reading The Beast of Political Thought

Also known as "oh no, we got a homework assignment on Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan."

Ta-Nehisi Coates, boss of bosses, has decreed that the Lost Battalion of the Horde should read Leviathan next as our social project of the season.  Hobbes is in the grouping of must-read political thinkers as Locke and Rousseau: Leviathan is spoken of as the serious tract on politics compared to the borderline satire of Machiavelli's Prince.

That said, as a librarian I heartily recommend everyone wanting to keep up with TNC's reading project to ask your local library for a copy of Leviathan for check out.  Better still, for those of you with ereader devices or a budding ebook collection should visit Project Gutenberg and download an ebook copy (most ereader formats available)!

To the bookshelves, Horde!