I first saw Bob Dylan at the Niagara Falls Convention Center in the fall of 1975 on the first half of the Rolling Thunder tour. It was great. The following spring the "Hard Rain" television special and live album were released and I was shocked- ol' Bob played new arrangements of everything, and I hated all of it.
Since then a big part of the Bob Dylan live experience has become hearing him re-work his material, frequently to the point where the songs are nearly unrecognizable, and I'm fine with that. I've also come around on the Hard Rain album- which, incidentally, Princess Diana owned. It isn't a gp-to for me, but it is an interesting document. That said, I have no itch to own a 39 disk, 371 song box set of this material.
Saxophone players discuss John Coltrane's A Love Supreme
Daniel Lanois on recording Bob Dylan. These sessions were reportedly contentious, and a lot of great material was left on the cutting room floor, but there is no question that ol' Bob was operating at the peak of his powers
Stare decisis is foundational to American jurisprudence. It is the legal system's promise that like things will be treated alike, and that outcomes will be predictable based on the law and nothing else. There is no basis, e.g. to revisit In re Humphrey's Executor, a carefully reasoned decision which examined what Congress did, why it was done that way, and what the limits of Executive power consisted of. The entire operation of the administrative state was based on Humphrey's Executor, and rejecting in now doesn't even rise to the level of bad faith. It is judicial nihilism.
Likewise Wong Kim Ark. Setting aside the plain language of the 14th Amendment (although plain language is a first principle in Constitutional and statutory construction) there is no reason that birthright citizenship needed to be revisited, but the policy beliefs of three and a half Supreme Court Justices brought us to the brink.
I have had my share of disappointing outcomes in my career as a litigator, but those were not the result of a judge making up a legal principle out of whole cloth. This Court is doing exactly that, and it sickens me
Of
course law is politics at the Supreme Court level. It can’t not be.
There will always be an extent when many of the cases the Court picks
are picked because a fistful of Justices have a policy direction in
mind. The expectation is supposed to be that there will be an opinion
explaining why the outcome is consistent with prior cases, or how it is
distinguished from them. The Justice writing is supposed to show their
work. This Court just hand waves that away, with a, “Nah, those guys was
wrong,” and a shrug.
169 at my poling place at 11:45
Sonny Rollins, famously associated with the Williamsburg Bridge, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge. I find that I've posted about him a fair bit.
