Thorny, who is not especially Scandinavian

  My English Cocker Spaniel

  cannot be presented to il-

  lustrate this announcement

  of his attaining the age of

  6 months, today, because he

  is out of groom at the mom-

  ent. We were just about to

  tidy him up when it became

  known that he had totalled

  a second pair of topsiders,

  as I was digging out a cita-

  tion for our Court's latest

  parody of jurisprudence. Let

  this be a lesson to us all:

  do not blog unshod, at least

  about our liberties; and do

  comb out your dog from time

  to time. You might unearth

  a shoelace in his masquerade.

  Thorny, for his part, is not

  entirely unscandinavian, be-

  ing descended from some Nor-

  wegians on his father's side.

  English dogs do get around.

Saturday commute lxxxiii: to the land of adorable distinctions

Back again, to that world
that it's not safe for us
to understand, our arcane
Court declared this week,
compulsory self-incrimina-
tion is perfectly darling
and OK and all right when
one is not actually under
arrest. As Justice Breyer
put it in dissent, a def-
endant can enjoy a choice
of how he wishes his Con-
stitutional right to be
trampled, by coercion of
words or by silence. Mind
you, the Court discovered
a most disarmingly lovely,
nay delectable distinction
in a human right, invent-
ing regeneration in a man
himself, between his null
and native liberty and that
blossoming of right which
flows from being arrested.
Little Sammy Alito has been
at his forge, Alberich in-
carnate in his counterfeit.

And just as we had heard,
the compiling of our data
is so innocent.

Where does a snarky, got-
cha casuistry come from,
need anyone ask, this de-
generate delight in false
distinctions, that carves
a path for oppression at
all costs? 

Salinas v. Texas
June 17, 2013

Leonard W. Levy
Origins of the
  Fifth Amendment
op. cit.

Some days I think I will not think about the Roberts Court

   

  
  Some days I think

  I will ignore be-
  ing the plaything
  of casuists cons-
  truing my humani-
  ty. Some days I'm
  therefore lacking
  all humanity.
  

Against pockets

On the whole I look upon our

hand-held devices as giving

aid and comfort to the prac-

tice of investigating one's 

pants for what one might do.

With inventions of so many

pockets, is there too little

alarm anymore, at this reli-

ance upon one's equipment as

the scope of one's contempla-

tions? We need hardly ask,

which came first, the pocket

or the six-gun, to assess an

illusion of empowerment in

portability. (Equally trou-

bling, but for another time,

is a corollary Barbour's Law,

after the witty haberdasher

from South Shields, whose

coats of many pockets simply

mandate that one's Beretta

must always be found in the

last one searched). The car-

rying about with oneself of

even the most infinite array

of "apps," defense du jour

against nakedness in coffee

houses, is likeliest, then,

to cultivate the smugness of

Onan at the expense of, hey,

experience. I'm not apologet-

ic to wonder, if this is not

intended.

Syllabus

    .. The coming rain

    for rain. The boy to laugh and make

    me chase him from the garden. The garden

    for the moon to find. This land for work

    which makes us whole, which holds for us

    the days and holds away the dark.

    

Since Hesiod at least, you were

about to say, poets have been

writing about our experience with

the land, and in this time, there

has been abundant opportunity for

the germination of cliché. It does

not seem that Nathaniel Perry has

conspicuously new things to report

on this relationship, but for one

who abides with a bit of it around

him, a consciousness of participat-

ing in our long extraction from it

leads to a gathering kind of awe.

And for this it is agreeable, for

there to be those who can puncture

it, with imagery of immediate reli-

ability. There are lines in the po-

em extracted here, which I'm reluc-

tant to spill, so sure am I of the

pleasure of making their discovery

in the old-fashioned way. But it

may do no harm, to cite a further

tool from his kit, which is basic

to the necessary accident of stum-
bling upon irreducible experience.

    A pen-knife for a splinter.

    

Nathaniel Perry

Nine Acres

  Tools

  [fragment]

op. cit.

Gerhard Richter

Unidentified canvas

  [fragment]

On a seasonal prevalence of unjust enrichment

  His summer job of

  washing cars gave

  Gérard the clear-

  est impression of

  how the larger de-

  nominations flour-

  ish with sunshine,

  with almost no ex-

  pectation of being

  changed.