The #DogShirt Double Feature Book Club
An idea
Good Morning:
Some people post pics of food. I prefer pics of post-eating food scraps. The plates after people have eaten are often more interesting than before. In this case, I ate with a gentleman who neatly tied off the peels from his orange slices in little bows. It was fabulous.
Today on #DogShirtDaily, the estimable Mike Feinberg and I—spurred on by the Greek Chorus—had an estimable idea: We’re creating a dog shirt book club. The concept is the following: pairing two conceptually related books, one fiction and one non-fiction, and discussing them in tandem. The estimable Carol Tsang of the Greek Chorus suggested that we start with John LeCarre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and a non-fiction book about Kim Philby—on whose betrayal Tinker Tailor is very loosely based. And this got wide approval from the Greek Chorus. So that is what we’re going to do. It also has the benefit of fitting neatly into an an area of professional expertise of Mike’s and, to a much lesser extent, of mine.
So, here you go. Our first-two book-club books:
And on the non-fiction side:
To encourage people to subscribe to #DogShirtDaily, the book club discussion will be available to paid subscribers only, so consider becoming a member of the Greek Chorus to participate.
I will of course make some audio and video content from the discussion available.
Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable
gave us an update on war zone parenting, and the estimable Mike Feinberg discussed his favorite horror movies. We also talked about Chinese economic power for a bit.The Situation
In Saturday’s “The Situation” column, I compare the conduct of Oscar Wilde and Alger Hiss—who both sued their accusers despite knowing the harmful allegations against them were true—to that of President Trump amid the Wall Street Journal’s reporting that the president sent a lewd birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.
Now President Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal alleging that the letter is a fabrication and that the Journal libeled Trump when it published a story about it, as it allegedly knew or should have known that it was false.
It is generally a bad idea—a really bad idea—to sue people for libel over allegations you know to be true.
Yesterday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Mary Ford
NRC v. Texas and Nonstatuatory Review of Executive Action
Jordan Ascher—amid the Supreme Court’s June 18 decision in Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas—argues that nonstatutory review is a meaningful tool to challenge executive action.
The Court then rejected the petitioners’ alternative argument, that they could obtain “nonstatutory ultra vires review” of the NRC’s action. What does this enigmatic phrase mean? It refers to the federal courts’ long-standing equitable authority to review executive action alleged to be unlawful (or ultra vires), even if no statute expressly authorizes judicial review (hence the term “nonstatutory”). Nonstatutory review has long been a useful means to challenge executive action—especially actions taken by the president himself. Indeed, it has been a basis for several successful challenges to some of President Trump’s most aggressive assertions of authority. Despite the Court’s rejection of the application of this doctrine in Nuclear Regulatory Commission, nonstatutory review is likely to remain a valuable tool in pending and future challenges to the administration.
The U.K.’s Decryption Order, the CLOUD Act, and Recommended Next Steps
Jennifer Daskal discusses the ongoing dispute over encryption between Apple, and the U.K., and explains how the United States can utilize the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act to push back against international decryption mandates on U.S. companies.
Instead of giving up on the CLOUD Act, the executive branch should consider future CLOUD Act agreements—albeit with provisions that make such agreements null and void if the relevant country or countries issue decryption requirements on U.S.-based companies. An EU agreement could be particularly valuable, given the pending e-Evidence Regulation, which goes into effect next year and gives EU states new authority to compel the production of data from U.S.-based providers. A U.S.-EU CLOUD Act agreement could help resolve otherwise likely legal conflicts and also ensure that this directive does not become an additional vehicle for compelling decryption.
Lessons from the Ledger
Jessica Davis explains how traditional counterterrorism financing tools can be deployed to address drug cartels and other criminal organizations recently designated by the U.S. and Canada as terrorist groups.
However, the most important lesson from more than 20 years of CTF initiatives is that disrupting the financial network of terrorist actors is a necessary but insufficient condition for success. Kinetic strikes, counter-radicalization, and even arrests and prosecutions of attackers and plotters are insufficient on their own, just as only targeting terrorist finances yields limited results. Targeting terrorist finances is critical in obtaining long-term results against terrorist groups. In fact, one of the only terrorist groups to have been successfully defeated in recent history (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) was defeated through a concerted combination of kinetic (counterinsurgency) and counterterrorist financing approaches, specifically sanctioning and network disruption. This is a critical lesson for countering the cartels: Without targeting their finances, long-term results are unlikely to be achieved against these profit-motivated organizations.
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Nick Bednar to discuss the Supreme Court’s rulings in Trump v. AFGE and McMahon v. New York, the latest in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the politicization of the Justice Department.
On Rational Security, Shane Harris, Mark Goldberg, and Alexander Ward join Scott Anderson to talk about some of the main issues surrounding this year’s Aspen security conference, including the Defense Department barring more than a dozen officials set to participate, the importance of artificial intelligence in the national security space, and more.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a fox at Grand Teton National Park which has stolen at least 32 shoes:
Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, known for its majestic mountain vistas and rich flora and fauna, has recently added another distinction of sorts: At least one wily fox there has been surreptitiously relieving campers of their shoes since mid-June.
“Wanted for grand theft footwear,” the National Park Service announced on June 26 with a poster featuring an illustration of a fox gripping a sneaker in its teeth. “Crimes: Stealing left shoes (they taste better), flip-flops and campers’ pride.”
The whimsical wanted poster, which branded the fox the Sneaker Snatcher, the Midnight Mismatcher and Swiper the Fox, was part of the park’s initial effort to warn campers that parkgoers’ shoes had been vanishing.
An accompanying poster stapled to a pole near the Lizard Creek Campground tallied 19 stolen pieces of footwear and suggested that the culprit was still on the prowl: “0 days since last fox/shoe incident.”
Tell Me Something Interesting
I (
) have been considering this resurrected cactus thing my father has going, and I think that we as a community are not taking full advantage of this comedic opportunity. I think that—if we are going to have a cactus-based fake religion—we should also have cactus-based fake heresies. Here are some suggestions for potential heresies we can use to tear this community down into irreconcilable, internecine conflict:Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
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