Sol Invictus Sale Takes Steroids

Let's raise some money for some good causes!

Good Evening:

Okay, folks. I know

Nate Silver

is not all that popular in some circles these days, but this is a freaking great idea, and I’m stealing it.

For the remainder of the Sol Invictus Sale on #DogShirtDaily subscriptions—which is to say, from now until the end of the year—I am donating half of the Gross Annualized Revenues from all of my remaining posts this year to charity. So, if you become a paid subscriber now, in addition to getting half off the regular price, half of the revenues you generate by signing up will go to the following charities:

• 25 percent will go to Lawfare;

• 25 percent will go to United Help Ukraine;

• 25 percent will go to Protect Democracy; and

• 25 percent will go to a cause selected by the readership—nominations for which can be left in the comments below.

As Silver did, I will post screenshots showing the value each post generates, and I will post screenshots of my contributions, so there is transparency.

So if joining the Greek Chorus was not enough incentive to sign up, if half off the regular price of a subscription was not enough, perhaps doing some good in the world will do the trick:

Or give a gift subscription:

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Today on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Eve Gaumond and I discussed our grand (but, alas, delayed) plans to subvert Sora, the newest OpenAI tool—this one for creating fake video—for our amusement. Can we get it to break its own rules? Can we get it to break the law? We’ll find out, just as soon as Eve manages to get access to the damn platform.

I also roped in the estimable John Hawkinson to explain what exactly a quantum computer is and why we should care. Then he and the estimable Joel Woodward forced me to face the question of what we’ll do when Dog Shirt TV fulfills its destiny as a fucking revolution in morning television, and, inevitably, the first Nazi shows up in the chat.

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Today On Lawfare

How Trump Will Lawfully Appoint Loyalists Without Senate Consent

Jack Goldsmith explores the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA), which will allow President-elect Donald Trump to appoint virtually any Senate-confirmable position within the executive branch on an “acting” basis. Goldsmith argues that the prospect of recess appointments is largely overblown, and that FVRA appointments represent a much more straightforward—and effective—option as Trump seeks to fill his administration with loyalists while circumventing the Senate’s advice and consent process:

I am confident the Trump team has thought through the FVRA gambit described above. The Trump administration used (or tried to circumvent) FVRA in imaginative ways, including many not mentioned here, during its first term. (For more details see chapter 13 of my book with Bob Bauer, “After Trump.”) The Trump team has been planning hard since 2021 to exploit every legal avenue for a reelected Trump to impose his will maximally throughout the executive branch.

France’s Convoluted and Contradictory ICC Immunity Position

Tyler McBrien discusses France’s rhetorical volte-face on the issue of executing International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants. McBrien considers the history of ICC arrest warrant non-compliance, pointing to France’s previous, conflicting positions on immunity as evidence of its treatment of the ICC as a “political football”:

The ICC itself will likely find that France is under a treaty obligation to arrest and surrender any individual. But unfortunately the reasoning underlying such a ruling will not necessarily resolve the question of France’s bilateral obligation to Israel. Unlike the Bashir situation, in which a UN Security Council referral arguably had the effect of vitiating immunities even for non-ICC member states who are UN members, the Netanyahu warrant presents France with a trickier situation for those who viewed the ICC as constrained by the limits of state consent.

Documents

Here’s the Office of the Inspector General’s report on whether the Justice Department violated its own policies when it obtained text and phone records of two members of Congress and 43 Congressional staffers back in 2017 and 2018, following the publication of articles in the news media that contained classified information.

And here’s the House of Representatives task force’s final report on the Butler, Pa. and West Palm Beach, Fl. assassination attempts on Donald Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign, including 11 recommendations to the United States Secret Service and Congress to prevent similar incidents in future.

Podcasts

Jack Goldsmith sits down with former Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine to talk about Fine’s new book, “Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government.” The discussion covers the history of inspectors general and early constitutional concerns about their role, Fine’s experiences at both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, the 2022 inspector general reforms, and Fine’s own proposed reforms to improve inspector general oversight:

Videos

On Dec. 12 at 3 p.m. ET, I will talk to Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson, Middle East Institute Senior Fellow Charles Lister, and Syrian pro-democracy activist Ammar Abdulhamid about Syrian rebels toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Assad fleeing to Russia, Israeli troops crossing the Israel-Syria border, and the implications of recent events in Syria for the broader region. The event will be livestreamed on YouTube and the Zoom event will be available to Lawfare material supporters.

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Tell Me Something Interesting

The New York Times has a long article today about a dispute between the Vatican and a group of excommunicated nuns in Spain, a dispute which, “has involved a search warrant for a mysterious gun — plus demons, debts, a mortgage and a manifesto in which the nuns denounced the Catholic Church.” I’m not sure the piece describes a dispute of any importance at all, but it sure is interesting.

That said, these nuns have missed a big opportunity. They insist that there has been no legitimate Pope since 1958, which is all well and good, but the only thing they’re doing about it is squatting in their convent.

Time was, if you really thought a dead Pope needed putting in his place, you’d dig up his rotting corpse and put it on trial. Admittedly, that time was the 9th century, but why break with the Vatican and call yourself a traditionalist Catholic if you’re not going to go for the really fun traditions?

Jean-Paul Laurens, “Pope Formosus and Stephen VI - The Cadaver Synod” (1870)

As Atlas Obscura recounts:

the corpse of [Pope] Formosus was dragged out, dressed in papal robes, and propped up in a chair at San Giovanni Laterano. Ironically, poor Formosus’s name means “good looking” though by then he was a horrific sight. A deacon was appointed to speak for him, but predictably didn’t say much while [Pope] Stephen [VI] screamed at the corpse. At one point in the trial an earthquake shook the basilica, damaging part of it. But even in the face of this ominous sign, Formosus was found guilty on all counts, stripped of his vestments, and had the three fingers he used for blessing on his right hand chopped off.

Stephen had him buried on an obscure plot of land, but then, thinking better of it, had him dug up one more time and tossed in the Tiber. At this point the people of Rome had just about enough of Stephen and his corpse trial. A mob threw him in prison where he was strangled in his cell. Later that year, San Giovanni Laterano was nearly destroyed by a fire as if to rid itself of the whole nasty business.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is this mussel and its colleagues, who collaborate to assess and manage water quality and prevent pollution at over 50 water treatment plants across Poland.

Julia Pełka / GRUBA KAŚKA

Also from Atlas Obscura:

Because chemical tests are contaminant-specific, it’s impossible to check the water for every possible problem before it’s piped out to the populace.

Mussels, however, aren’t picky. If something is wrong, they clam up. Their broad sensitivity and predictable response have allowed engineers to build them into a straightforward quality control system, which runs alongside other mollusk-free monitoring schemes.

Worker mussels are recruited from nearby lakes and rivers. They’re deployed in teams of eight, each equipped with a magnetic sensor that connects them to a computer system that can register whether they are open or shut. When four or more mussels close off, so does the water supply.

…

Those who work closely with the mollusks appreciate the risks they (inadvertently) take. After all, a toxic event could kill them.

Each worker mussel spends three months on duty—after that, they become too accustomed to their new surroundings and are no longer sensitive enough to properly monitor the water. For retirement, they are gently tossed back where they came from.

We should honor these hard-working mussels for their skill, devotion, and sacrifice, and I wish each and every one of them a happy retirement full of joy and quality time with their mussel grandchildren.