"Biden... was put on the ticket to balance the ticket, not to enhance it. Barack was against the Iraq War, he was for the Iraq War. Barack was against the crime bill, he was for the crime bill."

Said Jesse Jackson, endorsing Bernie Sanders (Real Clear Politics).

"I have this odd admiration for Evangelical voters. The pretty much sold out their ideals concerning personal morality..."

"... and supported Trump all the way. In return they received Supreme Courts justices they like, a rollback of LGBT rights, a wide expansion of government support for religion, etc.. It was a deal with the devil but for now it is paying big dividends for them. Most of the progressives I know would be horrified by such a 'sellout.' Over at The Nation all sorts of progressives are saying they will sit out the election rather than vote for Biden. Their personal moral purity counts more than winning. It is the same thing that cost Clinton in 2016. It is my biggest worry about 2020."

That's the highest-rated comment (by far) on a NYT column by David Leonhardt, "The Simple Reason the Left Won’t Stop Losing/Progressives need to care more about winning."

"This is a unique position to be in, a unique and very humbling position. I want to be an ambassador of hope."

Said Adam Castillejo, quoted in "The ‘London Patient,’ Cured of H.I.V., Reveals His Identity" (DNYUZ).

Last March, scientists announced that Mr. Castillejo, then identified only as the “London Patient,” had been cured of H.I.V. after receiving a bone-marrow transplant for his lymphoma. The donor carried a mutation that impeded the ability of H.I.V. to enter cells, so the transplant essentially replaced Mr. Castillejo’s immune system with one resistant to the virus. The approach, though effective in his case, was intended to cure his cancer and is not a practical option for the widespread curing of H.I.V. because of the risks involved.

"It’s been a spiritual exercise in letting go. You paid for season ticket on the subway, now you realize..."

"... subway travel is the surest way of getting the disease. You have a subscription to the gym, the gym is closed. So is the cinema. Your tickets for concerts and football games are useless. Your children can’t go to school. Or university. Even mass is canceled.... Two weeks ago, when the first restrictions came in — banning all kinds of gatherings and closing pubs, though not actually restricting our movement — we were sure they’d overdone it. A cafe owner in downtown Milan told me angrily that one of the best weeks of the year had been blown: carnival, Fashion Week. Hoteliers complained of 90 percent cancellations. Then we saw the number of infections shoot up.... But inevitably the virus is bringing a new awareness that we all share the same physical space, Milan, Italy. We really live here, and we sink or swim together... I sense a new spirit of unity. The fallout for the economy will be huge. But paradoxically the government is very likely to be strengthened.... One suspects that when, God willing, the emergency is over, there will be those who will not want to relinquish this newfound power and the sense of identity and responsibility it brings."

From "This Is Life Under Lockdown in Italy/Your tickets for concerts and football games are useless. Your children can’t go to school. Even mass is canceled" by Tim Parks (NYT).

"The coronavirus is putting remote work to a gigantic test, and at a totally unprecedented scale."

"Throughout China, Italy, Japan and South Korea, workers have been on lockdown. Last week, the same happened in Seattle. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google all told employees there to remain home.... In fact, remote work isn't always possible. Fewer than half could do so at least some of the time, according to one Gallup survey. Hourly workers don't get paid if they don't work, and those in retail, manufacturing, or health care usually must be physically present to work.... 'I don't believe people are as productive at home'...."

From "Laundry Between Emails: Working From Home Goes Viral In The Time Of Coronavirus" (NPR).

"A comprehensive new study from two law students at Yale shows that routinely granting argument time to the solicitor general is a recent and curious phenomenon."

"The study asks the provocative question of whether giving the solicitor general this preferred position makes any sense. 'What we’re asking for is really for the court just to apply the same standard to all amici, whether they’re from the solicitor general’s office or not,' said Darcy Covert, who conducted the study with A.J. Wang. 'In cases where the connection to the federal government is particularly tenuous and the motivation for the solicitor general entering the case may be ideological, in those cases he certainly shouldn’t be getting oral arguments.'... Starting in 1988, though, the office’s success rate started to rise, reaching almost 100 percent. From the beginning of the term that started in 2010 through the end of the one that began in 2017, the court granted just eight of 26 motions for argument time from amici other than the solicitor general, the study found. During that same time, the court granted 252 of 253 such motions from the solicitor general."

From "The Supreme Court Has a Special ‘Friend’: The Justice Department/A new study questions the court’s practice of automatically granting argument time to the solicitor general as a 'friend of the court'" by Adam Liptak (NYT).

ADDED: The occasion for paying attention to this topic seems to be the Solicitor General's argument in an abortion case last week. The NYT article begins with a statement about that case — there were 70 amici who submitted briefs in that case but only the Solicitor General got to make an oral argument to the Justices (who may delegate reading these non-party briefs to their law clerks). Later, the article notes that the federal interest in this case about the constitutionality of a state law is "not obvious." The SG only offered to provide "the federal perspective":

The motion noted that the solicitor general’s office had taken part in arguments at the last big abortion case, during the Obama administration in 2016, but it neglected to say that it had supported abortion rights in that case. In last week’s argument, Jeffrey B. Wall, a deputy solicitor general, argued in favor of a state law restricting abortions. If he was offering “the federal perspective,” that perspective had shifted with a change in administrations.

And, I suspect, the NYT perspective on routinely granting the SG oral argument time has also shifted.

It seems to me that it's much better to routinely grant the SG's request than to base the decision on which side the SG supports.

Death comes for Max von Sydow.

The great Swedish actor was 90. From the NYT obituary:

Carl Adolf von Sydow was born on April 10, 1929, in Lund, in southern Sweden.... He was said to have adopted the name Max from the star performer in a flea circus he saw while serving in the Swedish Quartermaster Corps....

For all his connection to the land of his birth and of Bergman, Sweden became distant to Mr. von Sydow.... "I have nowhere really to call home... I feel I have lost my Swedish roots. It’s funny because I’ve been working in so many places that now I feel at home in many locations. But Sweden is the only place I feel less and less at home."

Did he really name himself after a flea?! From a 2012 interview (in The Guardian):

Is it true he named himself after a flea? "Ha ha ha!" booms Von Sydow, his laugh filling the room. "Yes! Ha ha ha! During my military service, I performed a sketch in which I played a flea called Max. So when critics kept misspelling my name, I decided to change it and thought, 'Ah! Max!'"

Ah, so it was not an actual flea "in a flea circus he saw," as the New York Times put it. He himself was in a show playing a character that happened to be a flea.

A flea circus is a show on a tiny stage that has real fleas performing (or tiny imitation fleas):

The first records of flea performances were from watchmakers who were demonstrating their metalworking skills. In 1578, Mark Scaliot produced a lock and chain that were attached to a flea. The first recorded flea circus dates back to the early 1820s, when an Italian impresario called Louis Bertolotto advertised an “extraordinary exhibition of industrious fleas” on Regent Street, London. Some flea circuses persisted in very small venues in the United States as late as the 1960s....

Here's Charlie Chaplin with his flea circus in one of my all-time favorite movies — "Limelight" (which I'll put up as a meditation on death alongside "The Seventh Seal," so please make that your double feature):