"Years ago, while working on a story for Rolling Stone about why so few white-collar offenders went to jail..."

"I realized I needed to better understand why the criminal-justice system worked with such monstrous efficiency to put poorer people in prison. What I thought would be a short detour to tackle that question ended up consuming five years, ending in two books about structural inequities in modern policing: The Divide, and I Can’t Breathe, the story of the brutal killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island. There are obvious similarities between the Garner case and that of George Floyd. Both victims were African American men in their forties, grandfathers trying to put troubled pasts behind them. Both were approached over minor offenses.... Both Garner and Floyd died of asphyxia from being sat or knelt upon by police officers with long abuse histories. In both cases, numerous other officers and/or medical personnel refused to stop this clear abuse, or even administer aid long after the suspect had been subdued and stopped breathing.... s I learned through years of talking to brutality victims and police alike, and by following cases like Garner’s through the courts, episodes like the Floyd killing happen thanks to a variety of interlocking bureaucratic and political imperatives. The individual racism of officers (and the structural racism underpinning police departments) is clearly a major part of the picture. But there are more immediately fixable problems at play as well. Here are four troubling logistical reasons these tragedies keep recurring...."

Writes Matt Taibbi in "Why Policing Is Broken/Years of research on brutality cases shows that bad incentives in politics and city bureaucracies are major drivers of police violence" (Rolling Stone). Read the whole thing. The 4 headings are "Time Works Against Victims," "Abuse Records Are Secret," "Juking the Stats," and "‘Law and Order’ Wins Votes."

"If the Chief Justice believes his political judgment is so exquisite, I invite him to resign, travel to Iowa, and get elected. I suspect voters will find his strange views no more compelling than do the principled justices on the Court."

Just a line from Tom Cotton I wanted to memorialize, quoted at Fox News.

It's of a piece with the sort of rhetoric about judges I've been reading for the last 50 years and more. I can't remember a time when I was able to understand anything about the Supreme Court when there wasn't a notion that what they are really doing is politics. And I saw "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards when I was first learning to read — back when I had no idea what "impeach" meant (something about a peach?) or who Earl Warren was.

So it's an old, old theme. But it plays well, and I think Tom Cotton found a spiffy way to do the phrasing. Instead of calling Roberts unprincipled, he points to the other justices — "the principled justices" — and imagines them finding the Chief's "views" "strange" and uncompelling. That's a nice variation on the theme.

And you've got to give Cotton credit for complexity. He addresses the Chief Justice and invites him to do something he's obviously not going to do, though it's more realistic and respectful than the common insults that tell people to do things — like go to hell or kiss my ass — that they're not going to do. "Invite" is polite, and running for President is very grand. But the idea is that if you ran for President with your agenda, you would lose. Cotton predicts the loss in an elegant comparison of voters to "principled justices," who, he suspects, would have the same low opinion of the Chief's ideas.

Now, the so-called "principled justices" oppose the Chief because he's finding something in the law that actually belongs in the political decisionmaking process, and if the Chief were to run for President, he would be taking these ideas to the place where the "principled justices" say they belong. So if the voters rejected these ideas, it would not be for the same reason the "principled justices" rejected them.

Ah! Now, I see the little flaw in Cotton's rhetoric! The only way the voters and the so-called "principled justices" could share the same opinion of the Chief Justice's "strange views" would be if the "principled justices" were thinking in political terms — in which case, they would be no more principled than the Chief Justice.

But if Tom Cotton is reading this — hi, Tom! — I know you already know how to get off that hook. You only said the voters and the "principled justices" would find the Chief's views to be equivalently compelling. It can still be the case that these views are not compelling in court, because they are not law but merely political, and that they are not compelling in the political arena, because people just don't like them.

"The 'blue wall' is reforming in the Rust Belt."

Writes Lara M. Brown, the director of the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, in The Hill.

In 2016, President Trump broke through Hillary Clinton’s “blue wall.” He won three states that Democrats had carried since the 1980s: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin....

[N]ow, less than four years later, all three of those states have shifted again and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is leading Trump....

According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of the exit polls, [Hillary Clinton] earned only 37 percent of the white Catholic vote.... As poorly as Clinton did, the largest percentage point decrease for a Democratic candidate occurred between 2008 and 2012, which suggests that white Catholics had “soured” on Obama’s presidency before Trump declared for the presidency. Clinton should have seen this coming...

While it remains unlikely that Biden, a Catholic, will be able to pull a majority of white Catholics towards the Democratic Party in November, were he to garner 45 percent of their votes, it seems likely that Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will again be colored blue....

The wall that Trump may have erected by November is not along the country’s southern border, but a blue one across the Rust Belt.

First, "were he to garner 45 percent of their votes" — I just have to note the use of that word, "garner."

Second, I've said it before, and sometimes I think I'm the only one who feels this way, but "Rust Belt" is an offensive term. On November 9, 2016, I wrote:

Suddenly, the place where I live isn't called the "Blue Wall" or the "Fire Wall" anymore. It's: "Rust Belt."

When we ceased to operate to generate power for the Democratic Party, it was back to the old insult.

If you call us the "Rust Belt," you are saying our time has passed, that we once prospered because there was manufacturing, but it's gone and it's not coming back. That's not what Donald Trump said to us when he campaigned through the Midwest in 2016. Where is the optimism?

"White fragility is the sort of powerful notion that, once articulated, becomes easily recognizable and widely applicable.... But stare at it a little longer..."

"... and one realizes how slippery it is, too. As defined by [author of 'White Fragility' Robin] DiAngelo, white fragility is irrefutable; any alternative perspective or counterargument is defeated by the concept itself. Either white people admit their inherent and unending racism and vow to work on their white fragility, in which case DiAngelo was correct in her assessment, or they resist such categorizations or question the interpretation of a particular incident, in which case they are only proving her point. Any dissent from 'White Fragility' is itself white fragility. From such circular logic do thought leaders and bestsellers arise. This book exists for white readers. 'I am white and am addressing a common white dynamic,' DiAngelo explains. 'I am mainly writing to a white audience; when I use the terms us and we, I am referring to the white collective.' It is always a collective, because DiAngelo regards individualism as an insidious ideology. 'White people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy,' DiAngelo writes, a system 'we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves.'... Progressive whites, those who consider themselves attuned to racial justice, are not exempt from DiAngelo’s analysis. If anything, they are more susceptible to it. 'I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color,' she writes. '[T]o the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived...'... It is a bleak view, one in which all political and moral beliefs are reduced to posturing and hypocrisy...."

Writes Carlos Lozada in "White fragility is real. But ‘White Fragility’ is flawed," reviewing the book "WHITE FRAGILITY: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism" in The Washington Post.

"America must seize on the moment and I truly believe — as I actually told the VP last night when I called him — that I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket."

Said Amy Klobuchar, who says she called Biden on Wednesday to tell him she was withdrawing from competition for the VP slot, NBC News reports.

I think we all already knew her chance was blown:

In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s killing, Klobuchar’s time as chief prosecutor for Hennepin County came back under scrutiny, specifically the lack of prosecutions she pursued in cases of police brutality....

Asked if those questions about her past record on police brutality would have made it harder for her in the role of vice presidential nominee, Klobuchar said Thursday: "I think I could've functioned fine and there's a lot of untruths out there about my record and now is not the time to debate those."

So what I hear in her effort at a high-minded statement is an undercutting of the other women who are in the running. First, Elizabeth Warren — who is not a woman of color except in her memory of younger days when family lore and a desire to identify were enough. Why step on her chances, Amy? Second, all the various black women who are in the running. Amy is ensuring that when one of them is picked, everyone will believe they were picked because of their race.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about anything you want.

Meade took this picture of me looking at the sunrise at 5:24.

And let me remind you about the Althouse Portal to Amazon.

I told you I was going to do something today that I've never done before.

I shot a gun!