Special Sol Invictus Sale on #DogShirtDaily Subscriptions

May the sun go forever unconquered

Good Evening:

By Mark Landon, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=145812381

From now until the end of the year, in observance of the festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (The Feast of the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun), I am slashing the price of #DogShirtDaily subscriptions in half.

That’s right. In half.

You can get access to all #DogShirtDaily content, including the daily link to that allows you to be part of the much-envied Greek Chorus—now called the Collegium—on #DogShirtTV, for only $35 for the next year.

What’s more, you can also give a special Sol Invictus gift subscription to a victim of your choice for the same low, low price:

Unlike the sun, may it go forever unconquered, this deal does end at the end of the year.

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Today on #DogShirtTV, I started out the morning by boldly declaring the end of tech problems, and then hung around while our guest, the extremely estimable former president of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves, was unable to get into the studio. Ah, hubris!

When he finally got on the show with us, Toomas told us about attitudes in Eastern Europe towards Russia, NATO, Trump, and the US. He also talked about Estonia’s continuing experiment with electronic government. Here’s the show:

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Today on Lawfare

The Pardon is About More Than Hunter Biden

Quinta Jurecic discusses President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter. Jurecic—rather than weighing the moral justifications of the decision—argues that the controversy illustrates the unchecked influence presidents can wield through the pardon power, revealing the risk of comprehensive abuse:

I will leave it to others to weigh the wisdom or morality of Biden’s actions. Here, I’m more interested in examining what this pardon, and the pardon power more generally, says about those aspects of the legal system that are most vulnerable to misuse by an incoming president who has promised to do all he can to harass his enemies. I’m not persuaded by the widespread argument that the Hunter Biden pardon will somehow give Trump greater leeway in abusing the pardon power for his own purposes; Trump was already going to do whatever he liked. The implications run far deeper than that. They speak to aspects of the legal system that depend irreducibly on the good judgment of those in power, at a moment when the people about to come into power have given no indication that they possess such judgment.

Trump v. United States and the Limits of Separation of Powers Formalism

Shalev Roisman analyzes “separation of powers formalism,” the legal vision of separation of powers held by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Roisman suggests that the justices made a fatal mistake in their reasoning in Trump v. United States, failing to convincingly justify their privileging the power of the president over that of Congress:

I do not believe that the Supreme Court has an answer to why this should be so. This is because its ostensible method—of resolving disputes using rules derived from the original meaning of the Constitution—is not up to the task of resolving such hard cases. Given that these are the hard cases that formalism is tasked with resolving, this limitation ought to be fatal. It is time to abandon the method. And perhaps the egregiousness of the errors in the Court’s reasoning in Trump v. United States might provide the impetus to do so.

Podcasts

Anastasiia Lapatina sat down with Mary Sarotte to discuss Ukraine’s chances of a long sought-after future within NATO in the wake of Russia’s invasion and occupation of much of its territory.

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Burnt Offering: Chad Chronister

Following the burnt offering the other day of Matt Gaetz, the gods demanded a more pleasing sacrifice. President-elect Trump gamely offered up next a man named Chad Chronister.

According to the New York Times, Trump chose Chronister, a long-time Florida sheriff, to be head of the DEA. Chronister has no international law enforcement experience, and no apparent qualifications to run a major federal law enforcement agency other than being married to the daughter of a noted Trump donor. Yesterday, he withdrew from consideration as a nominee, citing “the gravity of this very important responsibility.”

I suspect the odor of this burnt offering will not satiate the gods either.

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Tell Me Something Interesting

Consider the balaclava. It’s cold out. You might be considering wearing one. I actually recommended one the other day to the estimable Scott R. Anderson, who was contemplating riding his bicycle to work in this cold-snap that has struck Washington.

But if a head-sized sock with a grudging slit for your eyes is exactly what you need right now, have you ever wondered where the name “balaclava” comes from?

All things come back to Ukraine.

Balaclava used to be a town in Crimea, outside Sevastopol, which has since grown to encompass Balaclava as a district. Ok, so the balaclava comes from Balaclava? Well no. The balaclava is a British invention, as it turns out.

According to Richard Rutt’s invaluable work “A History of Handknitting” (invaluable, that is, if you’re into handknitting or Crimean geography), the British fucked up their supply lines during the Crimean War so thoroughly that the British troops in Crimea had to appeal to civilians back home for warm clothing. Part of the response to that appeal was a shipment of handknitted “helmets,” which were then worn during the October 1854 Battle of Balaclava, and thus came to be known as “Balaclava helmets,” and eventually, just “balaclavas.”

This story has an amusing coda: In 1899, during the Second Boer War, the British public was once more fired up with passion to support the troops. A British contemporary source quoted by Rutt recalls that:

cargoes of khaki socks, scarves, kneecaps, and balaclava helmets were soon being despatched to the front.… the veldt was strewn with these votive offerings, which, though kindly meant, were less in demand in the South African climate than they had been in the frozen trenches before Sebastopol.

As I say, invaluable.

So wear a balaclava this winter. And think of Ukraine.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the Green Thorntail hummingbird, a South American beast with an average weight of 3 grams. Today’s runner-up is the yellow-bellied beast appearing at the end of the video, which earns an honorable mention for being called a “bananaquit.” Yes, that’s really the name of a bird. Video from nataliliv: