CARTOON OF THE DAY:

DEMOCRATS: Remember your mantra.

I’m special.
I’m uniquely blessed with moral insights from somewhere – definitely not God.
I’m right.
And everyone else is wrong.

And please. Please! Don't change.

M*A*S*H progressive role model Maj. Frank Burns: "Individuality is fine, as long as we all do it together."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:



There used to be a whole genre of science fiction about the equivalent of 'sanctuary cities' where those who could not, or would not, be subject to civil laws and norms were sent to live sans any government intervention. Heinlein's "Coventry" is one such example.

In seeking to deny any federal funding to sanctuary cities and states (e.g., California) it appears President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have read Heinlein.

THE RAW STORY reported "5 psychiatrists this week gathered at a conference at Yale to sound the alarm on what they believe is President Donald Trump’s 'dangerous mental illness'."

I'm reminded of something I learned in college many years ago: people go into psychiatry in order to understand their own neuroses. Most fail.

ON THE MESSAGE BOARD at the local church: "This too shall pass - maybe a little like a kidney stone - but it shall pass."

HERE'S ANOTHER in my spring leaf watch posts:

We're on our 3rd inch of rain today, so it's a rather gray, but green, day. The leaves have finally begun to arrive in force. Here's last week's photo for comparison, and though there's no blue sky today the greens are dramatic. The ferns along the retaining wall and ground cover over the slope of the hill have literally burst out of the ground and the trees have begun to throttle up leaf production.

By next week it should be almost summer. About time, too.

A FINAL THOUGHT on Earth Day dopery.

PUNCH: UC Berkeley cancels Ann Coulter speech.

COUNTERPUNCH: UC Berkeley students threaten to sue to restore Coulter's visit.

EARTH DAY HORROR: Bill Nye upset CNN's panel included somebody who disagrees with him.

How does that old lawyer witticism go? Something akin to "When the facts support you, argue the facts; when they don't, pound the table."

THE NEW YORKER has Trump Derangement Syndrome.

We owe it to our country and to our sanity to go on a case-by-case basis, empirically evaluating each action as it takes place, and refusing to succumb to the urge to turn politics into a series of set responses—exactly the habit, after all, that we so often deplore in Trump and the people around him.

Which is exactly what Adam Gopnik does in the linked article.

NEW YORK TIMES: [FBI Director James] Comey went public about Emailgate partly because he didn’t trust Loretta Lynch to be impartial. Read it all and make up your own mind, but I think Comey was left hanging in the wind by the Obama administration and he did the best he could: lay out the facts and let the American voters decide.

They did.