"To think, just a few short weeks ago, we were getting lectured about how unfair, sexist, and racist it was to judge a woman for expressing anger during a tennis game."

Wrote Lyssa in the comments to yesterday's post "The intemperance of the law professors' 'judicial temperament' letter."

I had to go back to see what I'd written about Serena Williams back on September 9th:

I felt that Williams was trying — very hard — to intimidate the umpire. She was actively bullying him. Hey! That reminds me of Trump. People say he's lost it and is raging when he's using a style of emotional manipulation.

As I've already written (somewhere in the Kavanaugh posts and comments) that I think Kavanaugh made a decision — after his calm, bland interview on Fox News — to allow his experience of emotion to be visible during the Senate hearing. He's getting criticized and mocked for letting emotion show, but that doesn't mean he'd have been more successful if he had maintained a stoical front.

As I said, above, about Serena Williams and Donald Trump, I think the emotion is displayed as a means to an end. The emotion isn't completely fake, but it's not out of control. There's real emotion, but it is also performed, with an idea of getting something the emoter wants. We need to be careful not to get conned, so we're right to be somewhat skeptical of those who let emotion show. But everyone's trying to get something they want, and people who suppress their emotion aren't inherently trustworthy.

Someone who truly loses control belongs in a different category. But you have to watch out for the accusation that someone has truly lost control. The accusers — like everybody else — are human beings with a will to get something they want. Sometimes their game is so obvious — like the lawprofs' "judicial temperament" gambit — that no one is fooled (though many are fooled into thinking that others will be fooled, because what they want is for those others to be fooled).

IN THE COMMENTS: Noting my statement, “But you have to watch out for the accusation that someone has truly lost control," Kevin writes: "Because those accusations are civility bullshit." Yes. Thanks for reminding me that this is the "civility bullshit" problem I've written about so many times. Calls for civility — don't get angry and emotional, speak only with cool rationality — are always bullshit. In our present-day American political discourse, it's always an effort to get your opponents to unilaterally disarm. When the tables are turned, and expressing emotion is what the people on your side are doing, you'll vaunt their passion and commitment and scorn your opponents for their bloodlessness.

ADDED: Remember when liberals thought this was exactly what was needed:

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"The reason to bring up 'Porky’s' now is the laughter — the uproarious laughter. Last week, when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was asked..."

"... what she most remembered about the night she says Brett M. Kavanaugh drunkenly assaulted her, she offered, with some quavering, that it was the laughter between Mr. Kavanaugh and his friend. She told the Senate Judiciary Committee: 'indelible in the hippocampus' — Dr. Blasey’s a professor of psychology — 'is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense," writes Wesley Morris in an article on the front page of nytimes.com right now, "In ’80s Comedies, Boys Had It Made. Girls Were the Joke."

Why talk about "Porky's" when Kavanaugh mentioned 3 movies of the time that influenced him and his friends: "Animal House," "Caddyshack," and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"? Well, it's the movie that the NYT critic Wesley Morris "suddenly found" his "mind... on a journey back to."

Morris brings up a number of other 80s movies that centered on young men: “Risky Business,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Three O’Clock High,” “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Bad Boys,” “Hot Pursuit,” “Weird Science,” “Teen Wolf,” “License to Drive.” “The Secret of My Success,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Soul Man,” “Losin’ It,” “The Last American Virgin,” “Stripes,” “Sharky’s Machine.” “Stakeout,” “Like Father, Like Son,” “Big,” “Goonies," and "Zapped."

Is there any evidence that Kavanaugh even saw these movies? Morris makes this very loose connection: "From the sounds of what Judge Kavanaugh has disclosed about his high school and college self, he seemed part of that landscape." Morris does name the 3 movies Kavanaugh mentioned, and Morris goes so far as admitting that "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (a movie made by a woman) "could be construed as feminist."

Speaking of feminism, Morris remembers "Carrie," the 1976 movie in which a high school girl, enraged when her classmates all laugh at her, uses her telekinesis to (spoiler alert) kill them all.

Morris cannot resist asserting that men are laughing at Christine Blasey Ford now!

At a rally the other day in Mississippi, the president lampooned Dr. Blasey to big cheers. Even now, men are laughing at her.

It seems to me people took Christine Blasey Ford extremely seriously. We've been talking about her for over a week, giving her the top spot in the news, after she came forward with an uncorroborated memory fragment from 1982. Kavanaugh was mocked for showing emotion in response to the ugly accusation, but Ford was held immune from comedy. Trump mocked her statements, playing up their fragmentary nature, but he didn't imitate her voice or call her names or talk about how she looked and acted. She was not mocked. "Saturday Night Live" did a 13-minute cold open about the hearing and Ford wasn't even one of the characters! Only Kavanaugh was ridiculed.

Laughter is an interesting topic, and I like the idea of taking "a journey back" to the 1980s and to examine how young men laughed at the expense of women, especially with the inclusion of "Carrie," the movie about a young woman committing mass murder because she was laughed at. That's a fascinating parallel to Christine Blasey Ford!

What's the right kind of laughter? And what's the right amount? If the new idea is no laughing at the expense of women, it's not going to work (as Trump obviously knows and will use against all the no-laughing! crowd).

They're all going to laugh at you!!!

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The Living Conditions of Children in France

The French government's Department of Research and Statistics has published an interactive map which shows the levels of access children in France have to childcare, health facilities and other important services.  The Living Conditions of Children in Metropolitan France map visualizes a number of different variables which allow you to compare child services across different regions of the

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The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize awarded for "efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict."

The NYT reports on the 2 winners:

Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecological surgeon... works in one of the most traumatized places in the world: the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In a bare hospital in the hills above Bukavu, where for years there was little electricity or enough anesthetic, Dr. Mukwege has performed surgery on countless women who have trudged into his hospital a few steps away from death.....

“I have seen what has been done to them. I have heard them tell me that armed attackers raped them and killed their husband, raped them and killed their children. I now understand this in a different way and my thoughts are with the women of my country who have suffered so much.”

[Nadia] Murad was abducted alongside thousands of other women and girls from the Yazidi minority when Islamic State overran her homeland in northern Iraq in 2014, and she was singled out for rape by the group, also known as ISIS.

Whereas the majority of women who escaped ISIS refused to be named, Ms. Murad insisted to reporters that she wanted to be identified and photographed. She embarked on a worldwide campaign, telling and retelling her story of suffering to the United Nations Security Council, the United States House of Representatives, Britain’s House of Commons and numerous other global bodies.

Ms. Murad has said that she was exhausted by having to repeatedly speak out, but she knew that other Yazidi women were being raped back home: “I will go back to my life when women in captivity go back to their lives, when my community has a place, when I see people accountable for their crimes.”

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The Leaflet Travel Time Plug-in

Trafford Data Lab has released an isochrone plug-in for Leaflet.js, which allows you to show travel time reachability on your interactive maps. leaflet.reachability uses the openrouteservice Isochrones API to visualize how far you can walk, cycle or drive in different periods of time on a Leaflet.js powered interactive map.

You can explore the potential of the leaflet.reachability plug-in on

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Which Countries Take the Most Refugees

Earlier this week Australian broadcaster SBS released an interactive map of migrant deaths around the world. The broadcaster has now created a map showing the countries where refugees come from and the countries where refugees end up. This new map uses data from UNHCR to visualize the number of refugees or asylum seekers living in each country and the number of refugees who have left each

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"There's so little honesty in law and politics. I sometimes feel like retreating from all of it and..."

"... reading poetry, listening to music, and painting flowers. But something holds me into this strange practice of observing and talking about it. If I'm just an observer and a writer, why don't I go find something beautiful to observe and write about?"

I wrote in the comments to "The intemperance of the law professors' 'judicial temperament' letter."

David Begley answered my question: "Go watch the Badgers destroy the Cornhuskers on Saturday. A beautiful WI win. I’m serious."

I answered: "I plan to watch the Brewers dissolve the Rockies tonight. Plus, I am eating grits this morning."



There's been much talk of beer this past week. It's easy to redirect the beer stream to baseball and the team with the beer-based name: The Brewers. In the rock-paper-scissors visualization, beer pours over rock. Beer wins! Brewers and grits. That's something beautiful in this lying, cheating world.

And by "rock," I don't mean ice. Don't put ice in your beer, and don't throw ice at anybody, unless you've got the right fun-loving, ice-throwing relationship with them.

UPDATE: The Brewers won in the bottom of the 10th inning, which is all we saw on TV. The rest of the game we heard on the car radio, as we drove home from Indianapolis, which is where I ate those grits, at a restaurant I recommend, Milktooth.

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Trust the FBI! The FBI is the expert authority! Bring in the FBI! FBI!! FBI!!... ... The FBI did it wrong!

So annoying.

They cried out over and over for the FBI. The FBI was called in because it was supposedly neutral and expert and the proper authority. Then, when they didn't like what they got, they immediately flipped to saying the FBI didn't do it right.

I've seen this kind of game play before, and I when I see it, I get out my old Russ Feingold video:



"The game's not over until we win!"

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The intemperance of the law professors' "judicial temperament" letter.

I see over 1,000 names on this anti-Kavanaugh letter, many of them names of people I know. I've been with a lot of law professors over the past 4 decades, and the best law professors I have known have routinely expressed disbelief that the judicial opinions they read state the real reasons why the judges decide the cases the way they do. And I don't believe the law professors when they say they oppose Brett Kavanaugh because they have concerns about his "judicial temperament."

From the letter, which I'm reading in the NYT:

We regret that we feel compelled to write to you, our Senators, to provide our views that at the Senate hearings on Sept. 27, Judge Brett Kavanaugh displayed a lack of judicial temperament that would be disqualifying for any court, and certainly for elevation to the highest court of this land.

The question at issue was of course painful for anyone. But Judge Kavanaugh exhibited a lack of commitment to judicious inquiry. Instead of being open to the necessary search for accuracy, Judge Kavanaugh was repeatedly aggressive with questioners.

He was confronted with devastating allegations that were vague and uncorroborated. He knows his own life, yet he was supposed to be committed to "judicious inquiry" about it?! He was supposed to be "open"?! He was supposed to act as though he were absorbing the facts for the first time, like a judge deciding a case? Who wrote this letter? Why did so many law professors sign this text?

Even in his prepared remarks, Judge Kavanaugh described the hearing as partisan, referring to it as “a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” rather than acknowledging the need for the Senate, faced with new information, to try to understand what had transpired. 

But the hearing really was partisan! Yes, the Senators were in a tough spot, since they were trying to figure out what happened, but Kavanaugh knows what he himself has done. Kavanaugh was supposed to be supportive of the predicament the Senators got themselves into and not defend himself vigorously?

He was under a vicious attack, and he knew it was unfair and cruel — unless he was lying. If he was lying, then that's why he shouldn't be on the Court. But this "judicial temperament" idea is designed to work even if he was telling the truth.

So we need to read this letter in light of the professors' intent. Imagine an innocent Kavanaugh, under an outrageous attack and subjected to a horrendous ordeal. He expresses indignation and challenges his accusers. But he was supposed to remain calm and be deferential to the Senators, and because he didn't — and for no other reason — he doesn't belong on the Court. Who believes that?!

Instead of trying to sort out with reason and care the allegations that were raised, Judge Kavanaugh responded in an intemperate, inflammatory and partial manner, as he interrupted and, at times, was discourteous to senators....

Why would Kavanaugh need to "to sort out with reason and care the allegations that were raised" — he knows what happened in his own life — and why would 1,000 law professors say that he should have?!

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"White House Finds No Support in FBI Report for Claims Against Kavanaugh/Senators are set to review the FBI’s findings Thursday."

Reports the Wall Street Journal, but I don't have a subscription, so let's move on to the NYT.

The NYT headline plays it so neutral — "White House Sends F.B.I. Interviews on Kavanaugh to Senate" — that I infer the FBI report supports Kavanaugh.

“The White House has received the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s supplemental background investigation into Judge Kavanaugh, and it is being transmitted to the Senate,” Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said in the statement, which was posted on Twitter. “This is the last addition to the most comprehensive review of a Supreme Court nominee in history, which includes extensive hearings, multiple committee interviews, over 1,200 questions for the record and over a half million pages of documents,” he added. “With this additional information, the White House is fully confident the Senate will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.”

The White House statement gave no further details about the material, but an official briefed on the F.B.I. review said the bureau contacted 10 people and interviewed nine of them. It was not clear why the 10th person was not interviewed. The White House concluded that the interviews did not corroborate sexual misconduct accusations against Judge Kavanaugh.

That last sentence meets my idea of journalism better than does the WSJ headline. We only know what the White House says, not what it really found. It could be lying. Maybe it found some support but chose to make an absolute statement.

Let's check WaPo: "In 2:30 a.m. tweets, White House says FBI report supports Kavanaugh confirmation." That's neutral, but with colorful facets — tweeting, early morning hours — that might seem to minimize the seriousness with which the White House assessed the report. A reader of headlines might picture Trump — impetuous Trump — tweeting again, but it was Raj Shah (the spokesman cited in the NYT article).

Also in WaPo  "Senate moves ahead on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination with a procedural vote expected Friday."

The Senate Judiciary Committee announced Thursday that it has received the FBI’s completed report on Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, as partisan rancor continued to grow over the scope of the investigation into sexual assault allegations that have endangered his confirmation.

In anticipation of the report’s arrival, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday night teed up a key vote to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination for Friday. Until that vote, senators will be rushing in and out of a secure facility at the Capitol to review the sensitive FBI report that the bureau has compiled, looking into allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh.

“There will be plenty of time for members to review and be briefed on this supplemental material before a Friday cloture vote,” McConnell said Wednesday night.

Good! The vote should indeed take place on Friday (unless there's something specific and substantial in the FBI report that justifies cautious delay). If there's no corroboration, I'm glad for Kavanaugh and his supporters. I'm sorry for private citizen Christine Blasey Ford if she believes what she said and that the Senate would keep her accusations private, and I'm extremely critical of the Senators who allowed her accusation to become public. They ought to have made their own attempt at corroboration — or did they try and fail? — and we should never have been subjected to this ordeal. It was a shameful display, painful for just about everyone and the pain isn't over yet.

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