A Little Patch of Land

Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (1936-2016)

It is, once again, June. In the lawfare business, it is the season for the Supreme Court to decide (and announce) it's most contentious rulings. Let the fur fly, the teeth commit to gnashing and knickers begin to knotting.

But, wait!

One need not wait for actual June to alight, gentle and warm as a morning sun. The Court released its take (Sackett v. EPA), in late May, of what "waters of the United States" means when the EPA decides that every drop of water on American soil, regardless of its nature, be pure enough to put in little plastic bottles and sell for a King's ransom.

I exaggerate, if only just. The Court granted cert - agreed to hear the case - "[T]o decide the proper test for determining whether wetlands are 'waters of the United States.'” That seems simple, right? Congress, when they wrote the Clean Water Act in 1972, clearly defined what that meant, didn't they? The last thing on God's Earth our elected representatives want, acting in the best interest of their constituents, is Americans unnecessarily pestered by bureaucrats as they go about their lives. Can you dig it?

 As Justice Alito points out, this is the Supreme Court's third try at a working definition. That is because Congress made it unlawful to discharge pollutants into "navigable waters." Okay, so far? That has constitutional implications not really addressed here (thank God). But, to muddy the... Well, the law passed by Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon ("Who?!") defines navigable waters as the "waters of the United States."

Now you see the problem.

In 2004, Michael and Chantell Sackett certainly learned about this issue when they bought property in Idaho. In an effort to build a house they filled in some marshland. "Oh, nay nay," said the EPA. That marshland is "waters of the United States" because it is near a ditch that runs into a creek that empties into Priest Lake, a bucolic and picturesque little corner of paradise. That is because the EPA viewed the Sackett Compound as "neighboring" waters covered by the CWA. With me so far? Oh - if they didn't abandon their project and restore the natural state of their lot, the EPA would fine them 40K per day.

I'm all for clean water. So, it must be said, is Justice Alito. Read his majority opinion, which begins with a valentine toward the CWA ("By all accounts, the Act has been a great success."). And if Mike and Chantell are polluting waters covered under federal law, shame on them. The question is, how are they supposed to know, if it takes three tries by the Supreme Court to figure it out? Ask the EPA? As Justice Alito patiently explains, the EPA's interpretation of its regulations has been, shall we say, elastic. That's no way to make law.

Suffice to say that more than a few of the chattering class allege that the Supreme Court has struck a blow for water pollution. The Supremes are, apparently, inviting anyone with a fancy to dump whatever is handy into  bodies of water that appear convenient. One such individual commenter, at odds with the Court, found some solace in Justice Kavanaugh's dissent.

Only, no one dissented.

Let's bullet point the more obvious observations:

*The Court's conclusion that this poor property owner's mud puddle...okay, the wetland they filled in so they could build on their property...is not "waters of the United States" was unanimous.

*Five member of the Court - I'm not a math guy, but I think that's a majority - voted to clarify a plurality decision from 17 years ago that helps along some iffy drafting on the part of Congress when they passed the initial law making water pollution a thing.

*Four members, with Justice Kavanaugh writing on their behalf, stumbled over some interesting salami-slicing. Adjacent and adjoining are two different things, he says. He votes for the former, the majority incorrectly adheres to the latter, he says. So, there. Still, the Sackett's mud puddle wasn't either and so they are okay that he can keep his land the way it is.

*Justice Thomas points out, pithily but at some length, that traditionally Congress has regulated only navigable waterways usable to transport goods under their authority to regulate interstate commerce. Since Congress cannot delegate powers it does not otherwise have, giving the EPA dominion over every molecule of H2O no matter where it falls intrudes on the prerogatives of states to govern what happens within their own borders.

No, the Supreme Court's "Conservative Majority" (whatever that means) did not vote in favor of pollution. They voted in favor of clarity in the law. It's an invitation to Congress to clean up some language in the CWA.

I like to finish some of my blogs with a joke. Get it? Congress drafting laws with clarity? Get it?

 

Light, Instead of Darkness

Luther Story, Medal of Honor recipient and American Hero.

It is sometimes called America's "Forgotten War." Others refer to it as a police action, as though the US military sent NYPD. It was very nearly WWIII. It was fought on a peninsula many could not find on a map, over far away and often inhospitable terrain, against a political ideology tied to a former ally, by a United States still war weary. More than a few scholars (I studied under one as an undergraduate) question why our country fought there in the first place.

Into that difficult, deadly war men like Luther Story were drawn. Rather than write a regurgitation of his astonishing life and heroic death, read instead the highlighted article from Fox News. In it, the writer points out that 18 year old Corporal Story fought to give the people of South Korea a chance to make for themselves a strong, vibrant and free country. He gave his life in that service, and in the service of giving his country an ally who has stood by us in times of great need.

His remains, recently identified among those returned from Korea while the war was underway, were returned to his family, and to a grateful nation. On this Memorial Day, we remember the men and women of our nation who have given their lives so that others - many others - may be free. 

Not My Circus

 

The recent pratfall by Anheuser-Busch as a result of their marketing campaign - if selling a lot less beer is considered marketing - is interesting as an intellectual exercise. Other than that, it really doesn't have much to do with me.

Give me a cold Corona long neck (with a slice of lime) or a squat Modelo Especial and I'm happy. The Bochito Mexican lager at the local pub is subtly different with every new brewing. Bud Light? Way down the list.

I thought, contemplating this blog, two things:

-This is not my circus, and these are not my monkeys. Aside from a libertarian streak a mile wide, I'm not involved in boycotting something I don't buy, and

-I should at least try a Bud Light, to see if it's even worth fighting over.

So, it's 75 degrees outside, and I'm watching the Indy 500. Race cars are wrecking, it's a beautiful day in Indianapolis and AJ Foyt is in the house. And I'm having a Bud Light. Just to see.

Hmmm. The first taste (out of the can - no cheating, here) is fine, even refreshing. There is an authentic beer flavor, the absence of a bite, and a lingering sort of heft that reminds a consumer that this is, well, beer. I can see someone tossing down one of these at a barbecue, a ball game or pulling a six pack from an icy mountain stream after a long day in the saddle. My guess is that it is also fairly uniform - I can pick up another someday and get pretty much the same result. Decent mega-beer, reasonable price, available everywhere.

So, here's a toast. The Miller Lite commercial is from a time when people drank beer because it tasted great...or was less filling. The beer people would sell you as much as you'd buy, and didn't feel compelled to call you names while you were loading up. You could go drink it wherever the mood struck, and be whomever you were while you were doing it. Nobody much cared.

I'm going to finish my beer, and maybe watch a little cricket. How's that for diversity?

Jamie Benn... Huh?

 

"Great captain, first class leader," the commenters said. "He's our captain, and we stand by him," the Dallas Stars said.

Hockey - them hockey - is an emotional game. What does "Them hockey" mean? I mean not the goalie. We're different.

The five players who don't stand in the blue paint all night. Them. The ones running around, banging into each other, jostling for position. They get angry, they get spun up... When things aren't going right, they look for a way to change the story line, change the tempo. They get frustrated (or, fustrated, or flustrated, depending on the hockey commentator) and when insanely-competitive people are involved, shit happens.

Last night, the late comers had barely gotten their beers and settled into their seats before Las Vegas went ahead. Not the kind of start the home Dallas Stars had wanted. At all.

 In the NHL, there are three ways to win play-off hockey. Be better, be luckier or be tougher. For game three (they are...were...down 2 games to their none) Dallas chose the third, coming out throwing bodies. Except - it seemed like they had no real notion how that is supposed to happen.

Early in the first shift, in the first minute of the first period of play, one of the Stars cross-checked a Las Vegas player face first into the boards. Ordinarily, that would have been penalized and the Dallas player would have visited the "Sin Bin." This being the Stanley Cup playoffs, the refs (if they even saw it) let the play go. That sets what is commonly called a "benchmark."

In the clear understanding of what counts when playing for the Cup, LV promptly shot the puck into the Dallas net. Take that. There will be plenty of time next year to settle old scores.

Something in Jamie Benn, the Dallas captain, apparently snapped.

Watch the above video. I'll be here when you get back.

Okay. Pretty grim, huh? Major penalty and a game misconduct. Before the dust settled in the first period the score was LV - 3, Dallas - 0. It might as well have been a hundred-nothing, because in the playoffs goals are extremely hard to come by.

There were additional shenanigans, including a trash-throwing exhibition by the Dallas fans toward the end of the second period straight out of 60s era hockey. There was "chirping." More cross checking. Somebody must have passed on a message from the NHL office because the third period looked like something from an old-timer's game.

So, today Mr. Benn met the press. He said the following:

"Obviously I would've liked not to fall on him, and I guess use my stick as a landing point."

You chickenshit asshole.

UPDATE: Suspended two games. The NHL didn't buy it either, Jamie.

Out There to Find

"Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it
Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth

But trust me on the sunscreen."

Wear Sunscreen, Mary Schmich (1997)

 

 The stentorian tones of a teacher, reading the names of the graduates as they filed past to receive their high school diploma, announced the name we had awaited since... Well, 2005.

Cole Matthew Greer.

We cheered, we shed a little tear. It was his moment, the culmination of a successful high school experience. He had been one of the many COVID freshmen, whose studies were interrupted just as he was finding a rhythm. He swam, and spent his senior year as a team co-captain and state tournament finalist. He was diligent, dependable, a leader.

One might tell such a man that his grandmother and I are proud, and we are. Very. One might dispense advice, hard won over the decades of lives unevenly lived. But, it is better to leave someone who has accomplished a great feat with a wish, rather than a caution.

To quote a song from a movie of our young adulthood - your life is out there to find. We hope that you will be as lucky as we are, to sit in an auditorium somewhere, beside the children you love and admire for the lives they have built, to celebrate the accomplishments of a grandchild of the caliber of yourself.

We love you.

 

I Know, Right?

 “Research is often the search for facts that support one’s prejudice(s); and the ignoring, and/or even hiding, of facts that do the opposite.”

 Mokokoma Mokhonoana, author

Human nature, right? "Confirmation bias" is what people generally do, because to do otherwise means facing outcomes that are uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough so that it's easier to twist ourselves into giant Philly pretzels than admit we are, or have been, or always were mistaken. The bigger the stage, the harder the fall.

John Durham released his report - long-awaited, overdue or a nothing-burger, depending - about the investigations begun in 2016 known colloquially as Russiagate. Briefly, the core allegation argued that then-candidate Donald Trump had colluded with, and received material assistance from Russia in his effort to win election for president. The FBI was primarily in charge of the inquiry, the authority to conduct it involving the highest levels of the organization, and the Executive Branch of government.

As has been asserted for years and confirmed by two separate investigations from within the Executive branch of government - Russiagate always was a crock. At best, it was a failure of a process of checks and balances that the FBI asserts has been addressed. At worst - FBI officials knowingly used false information produced by a political campaign, manipulating it in such as way as to make it seem legitimate, to further the interests of the Democrat candidate for president and to damage the Republican. They attempted to frame an innocent man.

John Durham has left it up to the average American to decide where they stand.

The notion that FBI agents, among the most carefully selected and highly-trained law enforcement officers in America, need procedures and safeguards to tell them not to fixate on a target, obsess over trying (here, in vain) to uncover evidence that isn't forthcoming and discount evidence that their target is innocent - to try to charge someone with crimes despite evidence they did not commit them - that's astonishing. This was not a failure of process. It was a failure of the most basic kind.

Recruits in police academies are trained to... Okay, they are browbeat at almost every turn, with the concept of objectivity. The evidence is the evidence. It leads a reasonable person to draw a conclusion. Exculpatory evidence (proof that someone is innocent) is equally as important as inculpatory evidence (proof someone is guilty). In fact, the search for exculpatory evidence should be diligent, and any that is uncovered used in the ultimate outcome determination - not just guilt or innocence, but continuing or ending an investigation.

The FBI claims that it now has in place guardrails to keep it from happening again. Really? An FBI agent needs a rule to tell them not to use ginned-up "evidence" to obtain FISA warrants meant to eavesdrop on the Republican candidate for president? 

I'd love to hear what those guardrails are. The supervisory agent in charge of the investigation said publicly he "knew" Mr. Trump was guilty of collusion because of the agent's years of counter-intel experience. Really? It is obvious that the law enforcement principals in this melodrama, saving for later those who acted with actual malice, desperately wanted these allegations to be true, refusing to even consider that contrary evidence might exist, let alone going to look for it. They refused to discount their "feelings" when it became painfully obvious that the only evidence of collusion was made up.

If the evidence had been strong, a rookie cop would reach the same conclusion as a seasoned FBI agent. If the evidence was thin (an assessment apparently reached by British intel agents familiar with the facts) no amount of "counter-intel experience" can redeem it. That's not what happened.

One sees this from time to time from all levels of law enforcement. A recent investigation revealed (as one example) that a Fort Collins officer had skewed evidence while arresting a number of suspected DUI drivers. One supposes that he "knew" they were drunk, even if sufficient objective evidence was missing.

Solutions? Some are howling for accountability, and that may be part of it. The involved law enforcement and other federal agencies must reassert the long-held belief that to be trusted, one must be trustworthy. Not perfect. Just consistently striving to be worthy. All of the buzz words, the reconstituted programs, guardrails to keep arrogant upper level FBI supervisors honest...none of that matters if the basic process of compiling lawfully-collected evidence and evaluating it objectively is ignored because we all "know" the suspect is guilty.

No one is immune from human frailty. The question is, how did people this frail end up running the FBI?

Grateful

My guess is that most of the folks who read Bikecopblog, be it regularly or sporadically, pay nearly no attention to the visit counter and are even less interested in the metrics of where the visitors are from, how they found BCB, what they read and how long they stayed. I'm mostly concerned... Marketing not being my strong suit.

This morning the clock passed one hundred seventy thousand. Not that there have been one hundred seventy thousand distinct visitors. For all I know, one hundred loyal readers have visited seventy thousand times each. And, if everyone who visited bought a book it would mean that I'd be doing this blog from a beach somewhere. I did receive my latest - very modest but non-zero - royalty check this weekend. That's right, me and Stevie, professional writers. Steve. You know, Stephen King?

Nevertheless - writers write so readers can read. Thank you for reading.

Mostly, I'm Sad For You

 

One TikToker revealed she worked at American restaurant Mission BBQ and had to stand for the anthem every day. "I hated it there so much," she complained. Another agreed saying she hadn't been back to that restaurant after experiencing the same thing.

Fox News, "People Standing for National Anthem Horrifies Progressives in Viral Video," May 2, 2023

Somebody call the Waaaaaaam-bulance.

It is circa 2014 and my daughter and her family live in the Baltimore suburb of Perry Hall. I have been dispatched to pick up lunch at Mission BBQ. Being an aficionado of smoked meats, robust sides and all that surround them, we've been here before and scoped things out. Their food is fantastic, but...

Around me as I wait - pictures of veterans, the young men and women smiling broadly for whatever camera had been pointed at them. Some of them had, no doubt, passed long before old age crept up. Perhaps more than a few had died wearing those uniforms, in whatever far away land to which our country had sent them.

There were patches. Oh, my were there patches. There were patches indicating rank, patches of military units. Dozens of patches from police and fire departments around the country. Patches from organizational subsets - SWAT, EMS, high angle rescue. Rockers for patches for airborne, for motorcycle patrol, for aviation. Hundreds of them.

There were bunker coats and fire helmets, military uniforms and police SWAT body armor carriers. There was--

And then, everything stopped. We were invited to stand, to remove our caps and our National Anthem was played. In that place surrounded by symbols of service and sacrifice, by photos of men and women who had served, it seemed entirely appropriate.

I wonder how awfully empty a person must be, that in a place dedicated to honoring the sacrifice of others on our behalf, a place producing some of the finest of the bbq genre, there would be room to hate.

Around Cape Horn

 Go my way, and I'll be good to you.

Gordon Lightfoot, "Go My Way," Summer Side of Life, (1971)

"Person on the street interviews" are an iffy proposition, at best. Recently, individuals (or small groups, to make the answers attainable) were asked who was the first person to walk on the Moon. No one gave the right answer, but the most common wrong answer was Lance Armstrong. But, I would venture to say that if the question was posed simply: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," 90% of subjects would blurt "Gordon Lightfoot!"

Gordon Lightfoot was born nearly eighty-five years ago in Orillia, Ontario, Canada. At that time the town's population was not yet ten thousand. He began performing at age four, singing over the intercom system at his elementary school. After high school he lived briefly in Los Angeles, but returned to Ontario and lived there for the rest of his life.

The string of Lightfoot songs spans nearly seven decades, with his most memorable (the ones that made the music charts) coming in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. "If You Could Read My Mind" still gets airtime on mainstream FM stations, "Sundown" a staple of legacy channels (I refuse to call them oldies stations) and even now someone occasionally covers "Carefree Highway."

The depth of his work, of wanderlust and the accompanying loneliness, of whimsical children's characters and the inescapable memories of lost love are where any Lightfoot fan goes for his best work. "Mother of a Miner's Child" speaks of the rigors, and rewards, of loving a hard-working man. "Bells of the Evening" contains the line I'm caught by the minstrel's misfortune, of being forever displaced. "Song for a Winter's Night," covered by other artists repeatedly, paints the subtle portrait of a man sitting on a cold night, smoking a cigarette, finishing a drink (whiskey, more than likely) and rereading a letter - searching for between-the-line meanings - he had received from a love so far away. He played "Alberta Bound" at the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.

November 1977, my then-girlfriend and I (she is the answer to the question "Jim, what brought you to Colorado?") attend Mr. Lightfoot's concert at the Denver Arena. He plays many of the old favorites, but sprinkled here and there material from an album that would be three years in the works - his Dream Street Rose. He begins a spirited sea song as only Gordon Lightfoot might:

All around old Cape Horn
Ships of the line, ships of the morn
Some who wish they'd never been born
They are the ghosts of Cape Horn

It is a brighter song than the lyrics suggest, it's tempo and reliance on a picked guitar carrying the listener along merrily. It's a beautifully-crafted piece, full of the sailor's love of the sea, the freshness of an ocean breeze. He sets it all up with, discordantly in a minor key:

See them all in sad repair
Demons dance everywhere
Southern gales, tattered sails
And none to tell the tales

And then he stops. It isn't exactly a pause so much as a long moment for an audience to contemplate where Mr. Lightfoot's genius has taken them. Within the venue there is total, absolute silence, as though at a request for the memory of the lost. Finally, the gathered at the point of emotional collapse, he makes his point.

Come all of you rustic old sea dogs
Who follow the bright Southern Cross
You were rounding the Horn
In the eye of a storm
When you lost her one day
And you read all your letters
From oceans away
Then you took them to the bottom of the sea

It was breathtaking, to be there to experience it. My relationship with a crucial person in my growth as an adult was waning (by the time he returned to Denver in 1983 I had married someone else, and we'd had a daughter) but it was something special we would always share.

Gordon Lightfoot, proudly Canadian, gifted in the manner of a painter or poet passing through, wrote the soundtrack for many of us who lost and then found. Writing this, I remember him not as the author of disaster songs (his own formulation - "I often wondered if disaster was a noun, or an adjective.") but of those very human emotions that make finding, and holding onto, the love of one's life that much more gratifying. He wasn't responsible for the outcome. All he did was lend a few carefully-crafted words that helped me understand how fortunate I was.

For that, I am forever grateful. May he be forever at peace.