Updates, Revisions, and Reconsiderations

Today, we’re re-visiting and updating a few stories Curmie has posted this calendar year.  The First Felon’s antics are too predictably heinous to bother to mention, but his minions are still fair game.

Pete Hegseth.  Back in January, Curmie wrote that “The reason not to confirm Hegseth is that he is spectacularly unqualified for the job.  It’s not all the negatives; it’s the utter absence of any positives.”  Curmie stands by that statement; certainly any competent President, even one stupid enough to have appointed him to begin with, would have fired his ass after the Enola Gay kerfuffle and especially that Signal chat business.  Still, the fact that he remains the perfect storm of arrogance and stupidity seems pretty relevant, too.

The Cortland Standard.  Back in March, Curmie mourned the demise of the daily newspaper in the small city where he went to high school.  A couple months later, on Curmie’s anniversary, as it happens, came the story that the paper had been bought out of bankruptcy and would be back in business on a Tuesday through Saturday schedule, effective May 17.  This matters little to the overwhelming majority of readers of this blog, but it may portend a trend… we can hope.

Sarah Inama.  March was also when Curmie wrote about Ms. Inama, an Idaho middle school teacher who ran afoul of racist morons school administrators for a poster that proclaimed “Everyone is welcome here.”  Yes, really.  She is now in a new district, where administrators rejected the “guidance” of the state Censor in Chief Attorney General, who asserted the poster was political and therefore prohibited; instead, they declared in a memo sent to all staff that “‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ is the law.  It is not a political statement.”  We’ll see how this all plays out.

Melissa Calhoun.  Ms. Calhoun is believed to be the first Florida teacher fired for referring to a student by their preferred name without explicit parental permission.  Curmie described her case, up to that point, in April.  She was, indeed, de facto fired for the offense of having some respect for a student.  She claims she knew the student before the stupid law went into effect and used the offending appellation out of habit, “an unfortunate oversight.”  This may or may not be true, of course.  Over the summer, there seemed to have been a settlement by which Calhoun could keep her teaching credentials for a year of probation, but the district won’t rehire her or even allow her to volunteer for this academic year.  Calhoun is apparently looking for work outside education, and there is speculation that a lawsuit may be forthcoming.

Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.  It’s unlikely we’ll ever get to the truth about what crimes KA-G may or may not have committed years ago.  As Curmie wrote in April, the first round of this ever-evolving brouhaha was about due process, period, the end.  The feds didn’t have a case, but they sent him off to a Salvadorean gulag, anyway.  The Trump administration then dawdled when SCOTUS unanimously demanded his return.  He did eventually arrive back in the US, but was almost immediately under investigation related to that traffic stop in Tennessee in 2022. 

We’re now hearing the feds claim that he was smuggling illegal aliens because he was in MS-13.  Previous attempts to show such gang membership have been laughably inept, but now there are “co-conspirators” ready to testify against him… in exchange for something, no doubt.  Anyway, now the government wants to send him off to Liberia, of all places.  And right now.  Don’t ask why, Gentle Reader, you probably don’t want to try to track the tortured logic.  The chances are pretty good that literally everyone involved in this case on either side has told at least one egregious lie.  But once again, due process is the issue. 

Boy My Greatness.  Back in September, Curmie wrote about the suppression of a student-directed production of Zoe Senese-Grossberg’s play at the University of Central Oklahoma.  The university decided to blame the utterly unwarranted censorship on the theatre department.  Curmie commented, “Gentle Reader, if you believe the decision was de facto made by the theatre department, Curmie has some ocean-front property in Kansas he’s willing to sell to you for cheap.”  No, this level of stupidity could only be perpetrated by administrators. 

UCO juniors Maggie Lawson and Liberty Welch might have been a little staggered by the abrupt (and stupid) cancellation of their play on campus, but it didn’t take them long to recover.  They told their cast that they had the option to leave because trying to produce it on their own was going to be more complicated than a production at school.  Curmie, with decades of experience in such matters, knew exactly what the response would be: “rock on, we want to do it.”

The company started a GoFundMe, hoping for $2000 but expecting “like, $200 and, like, a high five. Like, ‘you go girls!’”  They brought in just short of $10,000.  And they found a venue.  And they opened their show on October 23, two weeks after they were originally scheduled to go up at OCU.  Word is, it went well.  Of course it did.  Those extra barriers just added another layer of incentive.  Curmie is proud of those students, even if he does hope they’ll get the hell out of Oklahoma so they won’t need to go through this crap every time they want to do something more controversial than Harvey or You Can’t Take It with You.

Scams and Things That Smell Like Scams.  Curmie wrote in particular about the barrage of letters pretending to be from an insurance company with which Curmie was already affiliated (they weren’t, of course), and an ad for the UpSide app with an absurdly exaggerated claim.  Well, Curmie heard that same UpSide ad just a couple of days ago, and yes, they’re still making shit up.  He also got another scammy letter about his car insurance… and last week one about his homeowner’s insurance.  At least they’re branching out?

But the commercials for various gambling apps and “you must act now” crap aimed at folks on Medicare are getting annoyingly ubiquitous.  Back in the days when there was a functioning Consumer Protection Bureau, there’d be a chance to get the objectively false claims off the air.  The Trump administration is taking notes for their own next scam.

The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.  The good news is that none of the nine universities contacted by the DOE signed on to that absurd document.  Seven, including Curmie’s undergraduate alma mater, rejected it outright; the other two supplied comments but didn’t agree to the terms.  Another trio of universities, including Curmie’s doctoral alma mater, were contacted after the first nine schools had made their decisions.  Exactly how specific things got is unclear—university officials say they were not asked to sign the document, but made it clear they wouldn’t do so, anyway.  It remains to be seen if the Trump administration is willing to listen to what university leaders are saying or if they’ll keep up the blustering and bullying tactics.

The Short-Lived Truce in Palestine.  Last month, Curmie credited Donald Trump for his efforts in bringing about a ceasefire and prisoner exchange in the Mideast.  He did warn that “There is too much animosity, too much destruction, too much history, to be overly optimistic.”  Sometimes Curmie hates being right.  The peace lasted less than a week, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of optimism for the future, although we can but hope that Trump and others will keep trying.  At least the hostages on both sides were released…

New topic next time!

Three First Amendment Stories

There are just too many things to write about right now.  Curmie doesn’t promise FOC Steve that a piece on the bombing of those Venezuelan boats will happen, but he does intend to get to work on it soon, and that Politico article about the Young Republicans group chat—laden with about every variety of hatred, from misogyny to racism to antisemitism to homophobia and more—seems worthy of comment.

But Curmie can, as is his wont, bundle three different stories that emerged roughly simultaneously under the general heading of Censorial Asshatitude.  One of them is a little more complicated than the other two, which is to say there initially seemed to have been a little mitigation involved... key words: “initially,” “seemed,” and “a little.”  Let’s start there.

Curmie once thought about pursuing his doctorate at Indiana University, and even visited the campus.  He has a lot of friends who got their doctorates there, including one of his best friends from college, two from his first teaching gig, and two from a professional organization.  Oh, and another dear friend taught there for a decade.  Curmie is not by nature a hugger, but all six of these folks get a hug instead of a handshake if he ever sees them in person again.  So whereas he has no direct link to the university, he cares more about what happens there than he might for a similar university elsewhere.

Anyway, IU is trying to move their student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, online.  There are legitimate reasons for this, not least of them being a recognition of reality.  Curmie hasn’t read a print newspaper in years, and suspects that you might not have done so either, Gentle Reader.  All the signs suggest that print journalism will be little more than a memory by the time today’s undergraduates are ready to move into leadership positions, if not before.  In a discipline that, unlike the traditional liberal arts, really is intended to be pre-professional, gearing the operation towards an emerging future rather than a sentimentalized past makes a fair amount of sense.

But to say the administration was ham-handed in their execution would be a rather egregious understatement.  The transition to online, occasioned in part by financial concerns, has already begun, as what was once a daily paper had been printed only sporadically of late.  But as the staff was constructing an edition to be published this week, they were told… get this… not to publish any news stories, but to concentrate solely on Homecoming-related material.  A newspaper being forbidden from publishing news is, shall we say, headline-worthy.

The school’s Director of Student Media, Jim Rodenbush, objected to the move, citing the IDS’s charter: “final editorial responsibility for all content rests with the chief student editors or leaders.”  He may or may not have muttered the word “censorship” in the process.  He was, of course, fired for his efforts, because honoring agreements is so passé.  And when the student staff asked why, their entire edition was shut down.

Still, it seemed like the university had at least a whiff of a case: they pay the bills, after all.  But then the other shoe dropped.  The Federation for Individual Rights and Expression released a statement (well, technically a blog piece, but if it shows up on the website, someone in authority approved it) explaining that the real problem was that the student editors thought it worthy of publication that the university ranked 255th out of the 257 colleges and universities included in the latest of FIRE’s free speech rankings.

Apparently incapable of appreciating the irony of violating the 1st Amendment rights of a newspaper that had <checks notes> documented cases of violating 1st Amendment rights, the university administration, in the person of Dean David E. Tolchinsky, made things much, much, worse, both for the IDS and especially for the reputation of the university.  It is unclear whether Tolchinsky is a repressive jackass or simply an amoral toady who decided it was better to fire Rodenbush rather than risk losing his own, no doubt lucrative, gig.  It doesn’t matter.  He has done irreparable harm to both Indiana’s media program and the university as a whole.  He should be shit-canned.  Full stop.

Let’s stick with FIRE and a university, or in this case, a collection of universities.  This week, a federal judge David Alan Ezra issued a preliminary injunction against implementing Texas Senate Bill 2972, which just might be the stupidest piece of legislation ever passed in this state, and that is a very high hurdle, indeed.  It is nothing more or less than an attack on freedom of speech on all public university campuses in the state. 

You probably know, Gentle Reader, that Curmie is now retired from a public university in Texas, so he’s got a stake in this one even if only indirectly.  The bill expressly defines “expressive activity” as “any speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment…” and includes “assemblies, protests, speeches, the distribution of written material, the carrying of signs, and the circulation of petitions.”  It then proceeds to “prohibit” “expressive activities on campus between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.”  Inviting speakers to campus or using any form of sound amplification or percussive instruments during the last two weeks of a semester is also verboten.  (There goes that orchestra concert…)

Most of the rest of the bill suggests, legitimately, that reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions are appropriate, and that “disrupting the functioning of the institution” cannot be countenanced.  Not so, however, for the items mentioned in Curmie’s previous paragraph.  Those activities are outlawed whether or not they cause even the slightest ripple of disruption.

Curmie has reminded his readers repeatedly that he is not a lawyer… but the folks at FIRE are, and they point out that the bill would allow, even demand, that universities “punish everything from wearing a T-shirt with a message, to writing an op-ed, to playing music — even worship.”  FIRE Senior Attorney Adam Steinbaugh argues that “Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation.”  FIRE’s clients in bringing the suit to challenge the law range from the Fellowship of Christian University Students (FOCUS) at UT-Dallas to the Texas Society of Unconventional Drummers at UT-Austin.

Actually interfering with the functioning of the university, even to the extent of making too much noise in the dorm when others are trying to study or sleep, is one thing, but this stuff is ridiculous.  More significantly, this law begs for selective enforcement.  One can easily imagine that campus police would agree that wearing a MAGA cap on the daily 7:00 a.m. jog should be allowed, but that a “Black Lives Matter” shirt shouldn’t be (or vice versa).  Curmie directed more than one show that didn’t end before 10:00.  Should the last 20 minutes of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 comedy The Servant of Two Masters be suppressed?  It’s certainly expressive speech, and you could call the audience an “assembly.”

Fact is, we could go on forever listing even a portion of the perfectly reasonable and unobtrusive expression that the bill would prohibit.  Let’s face it, whoever wrote this nonsense, or even voted for it, would come in third in a battle of wits with a tire iron and a dead armadillo.

Certainly it’s a good thing that Judge Ezra blocked the law from going into effect, noting that “The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10:00 p.m.”  (Curmie loves that line.)  But whereas an injunction is welcome, that doesn’t mean that the law has actually been overturned.  That is, of course, the consummation devoutly to be wished.  In a perfect world, of course, the court costs involved would be borne not by the state treasury, but shared by every idiot legislator who voted for this manifestly unconstitutional tripe.

But if SB2972 is notable primarily for its stupidity, Pete Hegseth’s latest attempt at controlling press coverage of the Pentagon is considerably more troubling.  The policy would require prior approval from the Pentagon before publishing anything related to their activity, even unclassified information.  As is a running theme through this essay, Curmie turns to FIRE for their take. 

They note an attempt by Trumpian acolytes to frame this censorship as protecting national security.  Hegseth writes: “There is a critical distinction between lawfully requesting information from the government and actively soliciting or encouraging government employees to break the law. The First Amendment does not permit journalists to solicit government employees to violate the law by providing confidential government information.”

The only problem with that statement is: that’s bullshit.  Actually, the First Amendment does permit journalists to do that, as FIRE’s Adam Goldstein writes, “The First Amendment has limited enumerated exceptions, such as speech that is defamatory, speech that would inspire imminent lawless action, and obscenity. ‘Asking a question where the answer might be classified’ isn’t on the list, and reporting on national security matters is protected speech.”

It’s a truism among lawyers (at least the TV versions of lawyers) that you should never ask a question of a witness in a trial unless you already know the answer.  Reporters work differently: they’re trying to ascertain the facts, not to advance a client’s interests.  Here’s Goldstein again: “While a journalist might reasonably infer that the United States is engaging in some activity that falls into the sensitive or classified categories, they don’t have any power to determine what answer they actually receive.”

In other words, perhaps Hegseth should concentrate on finding Pentagon staffers who will STFU if it’s appropriate to do so.  Faced with a question that might lead to divulging classified information, an employee might reasonably respond “no comment” or “I’m not in a position to answer that question.”  Lying shouldn’t be an option; neither should revealing classified, or perhaps even sensitive, information.  That doesn’t seem too difficult to Curmie.  Does it to you, Gentle Reader?

As Goldstein writes, the new policy shifts the blame to the press if some staffer says something they shouldn’t.  It also turns the Pentagon into a propaganda machine, cheerfully censoring anything that might be embarrassing.  Not “classified.”  Not “sensitive.”  Embarrassing.

As is well known by now, reporters from every news agency except OANN (and anyone who gets their news there is by definition beyond hope) turned in their badges and, as seen in the photo above, walked out en masse rather than be subject to absurd and unconstitutional restrictions.  There is, of course, a desperate attempt by the Trumpian minions to frame this as a partisan issue.  Nope.  True, the usual suspects—the AP, CNN, the New York Times, etc.—all refused to submit to the new rules. 

But so did Fox News, Newsmax, the Wall Street Journal, Military Times, The Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner, and the Washington Times.  That’s a pretty healthy list of right-leaning outlets that want their reporters to be journalists rather than propagandists.  Curmie respects these agencies for their integrity on this issue, even if on few others.  It’s harder to do the right thing when “your side” expects you to do otherwise.  So, kudos to them.

None of these three stories has run its course.  IU may or may not find its way back to obeying the Constitution.  A preliminary injunction is not the same as declaring a law unconstitutional.  The elaborate game of chicken at the Pentagon is likely to go on for a while.  These cases, like so many in other areas, show signs of authoritarianism but also signs of resistance, integrity, and hope.  We’ll lose some skirmishes along the way, no doubt.  But these are battles worth fighting, and Curmie (not known for his naïveté) cannot but believe we’ll ultimately emerge battered but triumphant.  We’re the ones who really want to make America great again.  Let’s do that.

Four Stories about Libraries

Curmie confesses that he didn’t have libraries and librarians figuring particularly prominently on his Apocalyptic Bingo card.  He should have known better, but to be honest he thought that even the blustering buffoon occupying the White House would show a little restraint.  Of course, 47 is so far round the bend into incoherence that he makes Joe Biden look like Socrates, Cicero, Abraham Lincoln, Patrick Pearse, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr. rolled into one.  Curmie may get around to writing about the folks actually calling the shots, but that will come at a later date, if indeed at all.

There are four very different stories involving libraries on Curmie’s mind at the moment.  They all involve some combination of censorship, incompetence, and a particularly noxious blend of racism, sexism, and xenophobia.  Curmie hastens to note that actual librarians are never the bad guys in these scenaria.  At worst, those folks might be too unwilling to risk their livelihoods by refusing to accommodate absurd demands from “superiors.”  At best, they almost literally man the barricades against authoritarian idiots.

Library Story #1: Back in late March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who turns out to be even less qualified than Curmie believed when his confirmation was still pending, ordered the Naval Academy’s library to eliminate any books that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion viewpoints.  Some 900 books were “reviewed,” and 400 were indeed removed.

This silliness (or it would be silliness if the effects weren’t so real) is even worse than the crap we’ve seen in schools in Florida, Utah, Kansas, and elsewhere.  At least there, the censorship was at the public school level where there is at least the whiff of validity to the plaintive cries of “think of the children.”  The examples linked above, of course, are just about book bans; there are plenty of other variations on the general theme of what can’t be said in a classroom (a student’s preferred name, for example) or, God forbid, shown on a stage (too many examples to mention).

But there are no little kids at the Naval Academy.  Its library should reflect its status as a respected institution of higher learning.  Every major book on whatever topic, from whatever culture or era, should be there.  Indeed, as the saying goes, “a truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”  Having a book on a library shelf is not an endorsement of its ideas.  Indeed, it’s vital that we understand the arguments of those with whom we disagree: otherwise, it’s impossible to effectively critique that reasoning.

And that means there should be a copy of The Prince, and Leviathan, and Das Kapital, and (wait for it…) Mein Kampf on those shelves.  And it sure as hell means that there ought to be at least some representation of more recent works by the likes of Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

None of this is to suggest that these books should necessarily be required reading, or that a decision not to buy a particular volume is inherently problematic.  Removing already purchased books for no reason other than the capricious political predilections of a government official, however, is a little too far down the road to the scenario described in a not-so-coincidentally frequently banned book, Fahrenheit 451, for Curmie’s taste.  Book-burners, literal or metaphoric, are never, and Curmie does mean never, the good guys.

Library Story #2: Speaking of book-burners… in April, a man checked out a total of 100 books over two trips to the public library in Beachwood, Ohio.  (That’s a little over a half hour away from the library where Curmie’s sister-in-law worked for over 40 years.)  The books were about black and Jewish history and LGBTQ+ education.  He then apparently burned them all in what he called a “cleansing,” posting a video to the Gab.com social media site, which is described by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism as “an online hub for extremist and conspiratorial content” frequented by “conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of militias and influential figures among the alt right.”

That’s disturbing enough, but it appears that the library is powerless to do much until the books are overdue, and even then the punishment may be simply to pay the cost of the books, which is listed at approximately $1700.  That figure seems quite low to Curmie.  Might it be the original cost, or perhaps a “used copy” cost?  It’s difficult to imagine that new replacement copies would cost less than $17 apiece. 

Moreover, whereas the guy had to have a name and address associated with his library card (the library seems to think they can send him a bill), he is “unidentified” according to news reports, and there seems to be little interest on the part of the police to make this a criminal case.  It might be turned over to the city prosecutor for a civil case.

There is some good news coming out of this, though.  There’s a good deal of indignation on the part of the locals.  More importantly, there’s some action.  The Interfaith Group Against Hate describes itself as “a coalition led by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian congregations in solidarity with community partners united by the belief that we must confront white supremacy and create a society where people of all races and religions thrive together.” 

They’ve promised to collect and donate “1000 new books lifting up Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ+ voices.”  As of this writing, they’re up to 100 and counting.  Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk from Congregation Mishkan Or summed up the group’s response: “Whoever perpetuated the idea that you can burn us out of Cleveland, deport us out of Cleveland and deny our ideas and oppress us and frighten us to the corner… they picked the wrong community!”

And that, Gentle Reader, is how you do that.

Library Story #3: For a primer on how not to do that, we turn to Columbia University.  Columbia has been apparently rudderless for some time, somehow managing to suppress protected speech while simultaneously failing to take action against students (and others) who actually were breaking the law in pro-Palestinian protests dating all the way back to the Hamas attack in October of ’23.

The university leadership, and Curmie uses that term rather loosely, has spent most of this calendar year academic year groveling and capitulating to Trumpian bellicosity.  It has done them precisely zero good.  Worse, they’ve picked up on the recklessness and lack of concern for things like due process that have become the signature characteristic of the 47 regime.

Earlier this month, students at Columbia and its affiliate Barnard College occupied a reading room at the Butler Library as a response to Israel’s acceleration of attacks on Gaza.  This was, apparently, a violation of the university’s “time, place, and manner” restrictions.  Curmie has no opinion on whether those regulations are reasonable; such a consideration is irrelevant to the point to be made here.

Anyway, there were dozens of arrests.  Curmie isn’t going to comment on them, either.  Rather, he’s going to concentrate on the university’s actions, which included suspending a host of students, including at least four student journalists who were merely covering the protest and at least two who were simply studying in a different part of the library.  And that’s not just the affected students who are saying that; Columbia and Barnard de facto admitted as much by lifting those suspensions, all the while threatening the possibility of future sanctions.

Let’s get a couple of things established up front.  1). Criticism of a foreign government is protected speech, and criticism of Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic.  2).  Chanting “from the river to the sea” and similar slogans is not inherently illegal (irrespective of the claims of Trump and Rubio), but doing so in that place at that time (especially during finals!) may well be.  3).  Actual threats, violence, and vandalism are indeed subject to both criminal prosecution and sanctions, such as suspension, imposed by the university; actions have consequences.

The suspensions were effective immediately, meal cards were voided, and students were given 48 hours to vacate campus housing.  Is this an appropriate punishment for students willfully participating in a protest they knew to be a violation of the university’s code of conduct?  Sure.  But.  (Insert tired joke about a “big but” here.)  That’s a reasonable response after due process.  This wasn’t quite as bad as some of ICE’s kidnappings, but the “guilty until proven innocent” (“…and even then we won’t necessarily concede”) attitude is pretty similar.

Most if not all of the readers of this blog have undergone a finals week at a college or university.  Not the least stressful moments in your life, Curmie suspects.  So add to that not merely the threat of suspension, but a suspension per se and expulsion from your dorm room.  How the hell is any student supposed to be able to perform at their best under those circumstances? 

Apparently, the administration promised even those who really did participate in the protest they’d get due process should any disciplinary proceedings be undertaken.  They lied.  (Of course.)  And for at least several of those suspended, the “crime” in question turns out to be… not being able to leave the library when a bunch of people you don’t know block the exit.  Oh, and being brown-skinned and having a name like Samra Roosa, whose tale is told in the story in The Intercept, linked above.  Mustn’t forget that part. 

By the way, if you’re smart enough to get into Columbia or Barnard, you’re unlikely to be an intellectual pushover.  Here’s Ms. Roosa’s statement:

This accusation has caused me significant emotional distress and disrupted my ability to complete my final assignments. As a Muslim woman, I feel that Barnard has repeatedly failed to create a safe and supportive environment for students like myself. It is unacceptable for the College to claim inclusivity while subjecting students of color to racial profiling and false accusations.

This description, unlike those of too many students (and others) who seek victimhood as a substitute for accomplishment, rings true. 

As might be expected, the Trump administration’s task force on antisemitism (there is, of course, no such program to address Islamophobia) praised Columbia president Claire Shipman, despite (because of?) the obvious sloppiness and lack of anything approaching due process.  But, of course, the fact that the majority of the students suspended by Columbia/Barnard probably deserved it doesn’t change the fact that the administration acted too hastily and with little or no concern for the guilt or innocence of the individual students. 

Curmie has to agree with the assessment of Joseph Howley of Columbia’s Classics faculty: “Hasty punishments and violations of due process are exactly what we would expect when we allow our disciplinary and public safety policies to be dictated by political forces that value repression more than our community’s well-being.”

Library Story #4:  A little over a fortnight ago, the White House, to quote the CNN article, “notified Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden that she was removed from her position.”  There was no immediate explanation, but Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Bullshit Barbie) later responded to a reporter’s question by asserting that “there were quite concerning things she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI, and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”

Blessed Athena, tell Curmie where to begin!  With the very questionable assertion that the Executive Branch has any damned business making any decisions whatsoever about the Library of Congress without legislative approval?  With the fact that every book published in the country is housed in the Library (provided only that a copy is sent there), so the content is irrelevant?  With the lack of specificity with respect to the “DEI” allegations, which likely wouldn’t stand up to even casual scrutiny?  With the fact that the Library of Congress is a research library, not a lending library, and you have to be over 16 to even get through the door?  This administration can’t even be bothered to make their lies plausible.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argues the firing is, “a disgrace and the latest in his [Trump’s] ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock.”  That seems a little foam-flecked for Curmie’s taste, but he does strongly suspect that the real reason for Hayden’s dismissal (that’s a photo of her at the top of the page) had a lot to do with her surplus of melanin and X-chromosomes. 

Well, on second thought, not necessarily.  Perhaps she was terminated, as was Shira Perlmutter a couple of days later from her position as the Registrar of Copyrights: because they were impediments to what Congressman Joe Morelle describes as “a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. It is surely no coincidence [Trump] acted less than a day after [Perlmutter] refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

So maybe Trump was acting as a grifter rather than a bigot, which, of course, would make everything all better, right?  Curmie will let you decide, Gentle Reader.

But here, too, there’s some good news.  After appointing his personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, who, needless to say, has literally no relevant experience for the job, as the new Librarian if Congress, 47 then appointed a couple more DOJ minions, Paul Perkins and Brian Nieves.  Perkins was to take over for Perlmutter, Nieves was to be Blanche’s deputy.  But when they showed up to work, they “were not allowed into offices.” Curmie can’t find a follow-up, or even determine if Perkins and Nieves were shown the door by staffers—you know, actual librarians—or by Capitol Police.

This is likely a blip in the seemingly inexorable and not-so-gradual take-over by Demented Don, (F)Elon, and their cabal of billionaire cronies and sycophantic underlings of literally every vestige of independent thought, Constitutional protections, or a meritocracy.  There is not a Republican in Congress with the patriotism, courage, or common decency to stand in Trump’s way when it really matters.  When the closest thing to a principled conservative in DC is Amy Coney Barrett, the future does not look bright. 

The damage that has already been done will take decades to fix, even if the process can start soon after the 2026 elections.  But the American Dream is not dead yet, and for at least one shining moment, the anti-intellectuals, authoritarians, and plutocrats were held at bay.  It’s not a lot, but it’s something.

Signaling Incompetence

Trying to keep up with the latest developments in the recent national security fuck-up for the ages is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose.  There are new revelations—or suspected revelations, at the very least—appearing at an alarming rate.

What we know at this point is troubling enough.  A host of the people who are charged with defending the country proved themselves to be not merely “not ready for the big leagues” (hey, baseball season is upon us; gotta show some respect), but probably not worthy of sitting on the bench for the high school JV team. 

We know that this collection of absurdly unqualified hacks defied Pentagon regulations and used a commercial product, Signal, to plan an imminent attack on Houthi forces in Yemen.  We know that somehow Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, got added to the group chat by Mike Waltz, the national security advisor (!). 

We know that there was concern, probably more than mere concern, that Russia and perhaps China could hack Signal virtually at will.  So why use it?  The most likely reason is that messages there disappear without a trace after 30 days.  Shades of the self-destructing tapes on the old “Mission: Impossible” series.  Alas, there was no Jim Phelps or Rollin Hand or Cinnamon Carter in this group: just a gaggle of boneheads getting off on causing the deaths of a few dozen people, a couple of whom might even be considered enemies.  Note: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not included.  Neither was POTUS.  Is Curmie the only one who thinks that’s odd?

There are other possibilities, of course, but all are ultimately worse than concluding that everyone included in that chat is an idiot.  What if this was a variation on a game of chicken: who can flout the laws and national security the most?  What if they wanted the allegedly top secret discussion to be hacked?  Curmie isn’t saying, as has been alleged, that President Trump and Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard are Russian assets, but as someone (Curmie regrets that he forgets who) wondered, what would they do differently if they were?

Mistakes do happen, so perhaps Mike Waltz is just sloppy, as opposed to utterly incompetent.  Curmie remembers asking a student why he hadn’t sent a required email.  The student responded that he had done so, and included a copy of his message… which had been sent to someone in a totally different part of campus.  Ah, but his name was pretty close to Curmie’s, and the student looked online instead of on the course syllabus for my e-address.  Thing is, though, matters of national security are of somewhat greater importance than asking for an extension on a due date or whatever it was.  And blunders of this magnitude are—or should be—firing offenses, irrespective of circumstances.

There’s one other possibility, and this would also account for why Goldberg was in on the chat: it was a clumsy attempt at a trap.  Bait him into releasing the information before the raid, and now he’s guilty of a serious federal crime.  Of course, Goldberg is neither an idiot nor a felon—a description that doesn’t apply to many of those we assume were the intended participants in that chat—so he waited until the strike was over before releasing his initial story. 

It’s also interesting to note that the various denials that the chat contained classified information work in some ways to Goldberg’s favor.  On the one hand, if that wasn’t classified information, it sure as hell should have been, so Hegseth et al. look like the inept buffoons they are.  But if that information really had been classified, then the government could claim that Goldberg released classified documents: a serious federal offense.  But all the players insist that there was nothing classified there, so they’re the first witnesses for the defense should a prosecution be threatened.

We also know that the chat included all sorts of details about the planned raid: times, places, ordinance, even the name of a covert CIA operative.  We therefore know that at least three of the members of that chat—Secretary of Defense Hegseth, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and Gabbard—have already lied to Congress about what was contained in those communications. 

Oh, and FBI Director Kash Patel wasn’t in on the group chat, but he couldn’t let other people have all the fun, so he lied to Congress, too.  These are facts, not opinions or even interpretations.  Those folks knowingly and intentionally lied, going all in on what turned out to be a losing hand: betting that Goldberg wouldn’t release a transcript. 

Interestingly, if the Trumpsters just acknowledged their mistake, apologized profusely, swore off Signal (and meant it), promised it wouldn’t happen again, etc., Goldberg might just have taken the journalistic win and called it good.  But, as egotistical bullies generally do, they accused him of lying.  So he felt compelled to prove that he wasn’t.  And… boom.

Of course, none of the insiders were quite as ostentatiously mendacious as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (a.k.a. Bullshit Barbie), but it’s her job to lie, and Curmie supposes that it’s ultimately a good thing that she’s so horrible at it that no one with an IQ above room temperature could possibly believe anything she says. 

The best she could come up with was proclaiming that The Atlantic had “admitted” that there weren’t “war plans” in the conversation.  That’s because the headline accompanying the release of some of the transcript referred to “attack plans.”  Seriously, that’s the argument.  When you’re desperate enough, you say some pretty strange things, especially if you’re a not terribly bright spokesperson for a narcissistic administration run by someone given to both delusions and prevarication.

Technically, it’s true that there weren’t “war plans,” as there’s no declaration of war.  There wasn’t for what we all refer to as the Vietnam War, either, but anyone who transmitted plans for a raid on Hanoi over an insecure line would have been court-martialed or worse.  But Curmie digresses.

What matters here is not the fuck-up itself, or, rather, not just the fuck-up itself, but the aftermath.  There is no doubt that literally everyone who participated in that chat prior to the attack (except Goldberg, of course) should be out of a job immediately: Vance impeached, the others fired.  Oh, and for the MAGA folks who are screaming about Hilary Clinton’s private server: yes, she should have been fired, too.  Willfully disobeying rules when lives are at stake: inexcusable.  End of discussion. 

Oh, and also on the probably-should-be-fired list is Katie Arrington, the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Cybersecurity and Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Defense.  (Good Lord, what a title!)  She is apparently responsible for not merely allowing Signal to be installed on government devices, but insisting on it.  To be fair, it appears that she may have been referring only to unclassified communications: hence the “probably” in the first sentence of this paragraph.  

There have been murmurs, but little more than that, by a handful of Republican pols that perhaps this level of incompetence (or worse) should not go unpunished.  Curmie awaits the chorus of these faux patriots demanding accountability.  He fears there will be a rather long wait.

(You will note, Gentle Reader, that Curmie has not followed his usual practice of providing links in the foregoing commentary.  Instead, he suggests a few suggestions for further reading (he warns you, it’s a rabbit hole): a précis of relevant DoD regulations, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News (!) outlining some of the semantics concerning terms like “war plans” and “classified,” Jeffrey Goldberg saying in a interview that the CIA Director (!) put the name of a covert agent into an insecure chat, a Google Threat Intelligence Group post from February describing Signal as a “high-value target for adversaries seeking to intercept sensitive information,” the NSA policy on the use of Signal, Fred Wellman on Arrington’s role in all this, a report in Der Spiegel that contact data including the mobile phone numbers and even passwords of Waltz, Gabbard, and Hegseth are freely available on the internet, 10-year veteran Andrew Mercado’s take on accountability, and one of the incomparable Heather Cox Richardson’s essays on this whole business.  There’s more, of course, but perhaps you might have a life to lead…)

Why Should Pete Hegseth Not Be Confirmed?

Pete Hegseth looking combative

As a career educator, Curmie offers a couple of hints to help you answer the question posed in the title of this essay. 

Hint #1: It has little if anything to do with politics.  We expect Presidents (and Presidents-elect) to nominate people who agree with them on relevant issues.  Except in extreme cases (an anti-vax wackadoodle and a snake-oil salesman nominated for health-related positions, for example), the fact that a Senator would do things differently is, or at least should be, pretty much irrelevant.

Hint #2: It has little to do with what too many Democrats see as their best strategy, i.e., impugning his character.  He’s a mendacious asshole.  So what?  If the country cared about that stuff, the guy who nominated him wouldn’t have received a single electoral vote.  You and I may care, Gentle Reader, but having a twice-divorced, drunken, philandering, possible rapist in charge of the military seems just fine to a lot of folks.  Besides, all that stuff is out in the open now, so it’s not like some foreign power could use revelations of that behavior in some sort of blackmail attempt, right?

Hint #3: It doesn’t have lot to do with his alleged mismanagement of, and subsequent firing by, two non-profit advocacy groups, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.  (You’d think these folks could get a little more imaginative with their titles, wouldn’t you, Gentle Reader?)

OK, one more hint: The reason not to confirm Pete Hegseth is precisely the reason Republicans support him.

I’m sure you’ve got this figured out by now, Gentle Reader.  The reason not to confirm Hegseth is that he is spectacularly unqualified for the job.  It’s not all the negatives; it’s the utter absence of any positives.  There are, no doubt, some hard-core Republicans who would be great at the job.  But they won’t get nominated because they might be under the impression that as, say, career officers at the top ranks of their military branch, they might actually know more about their job than the blustering buffoon in the White House does.  Can’t have that, can we?

Curmie’s disdain for politicians in general has only grown over the past few days.  Senator Kaine can’t think of a better reason to oppose Hegseth than marital infidelity.  Senator Warren did a little better, quoting him directly about his assertions that keeping women out of combat positions was a matter of “standards.”  But, alas, is too often the case (e.g., Representative Stefanik a little over a year ago), this was more an opportunity to show off for the cameras than ask any real questions.  

The grand prize, however, goes to Senator Schmitt, who seems to think that Hegseth’s very lack of qualifications for the job is his greatest credential.  Oh, and yes, Gentle Reader, Schmitt is also the guy who provided some visual aids for his partisan posturing testimony questions… you know, the one decrying lowered standards while misspelling the word “military.”  Standards!

The one breath of hope is that the questioning of Senator Duckworth might be recognized.  Hegseth whiffed on a number of her questions (good summary here), but here’s the sequence that stands out in Curmie’s mind:

Duckworth: Can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations?  And how many nations are in ASEAN, by the way?

Hegseth:  I couldn’t tell the exact number [Duckworth talks over him here.  Kinda classless, but…], but I know we have allies in South Korea and Japan, and in Aukus with Australia.  We’re trying to work on submarines with them…

Duckworth: Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN.

OK, asking how many nations are in ASEAN is a bit of a gotcha question, and Duckworth could certainly be accused of disrespecting the nominee.  Still, knowing who is in ASEAN and what kinds of alliances the US has with even one of them doesn’t seem out of line.  For the record, Gentle Reader, those nations are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. An 11th country, East Timor, is set to join soon.  There’s a good summary of why we, and particularly why a Secretary of Defense, should care, here.

Look, Curmie couldn’t have answered that question, either, and the chances are that neither could you, Gentle Reader.  But we’re not candidates for a high-ranking cabinet position where you need to know that stuff.  If Curmie couldn’t tell you the fundamental difference between Greek and Roman theatre architecture, or describe the signature event that happened at the Slavianski Bazaar, or identify at least one of the founders of the Group Theatre, he might be a reasonably intelligent adult, but he couldn’t call himself a theatre historian. 

Similarly, Mr. Hegseth can also be intelligent, well-educated, and even worldly.  But if he takes three shots at naming an ASEAN country and is wrong every time, he’s not a legitimate candidate to be Secretary of Defense.  Senator Duckworth’s claim that he is “absolutely clueless” may be a bit harsh, but given the responsibilities of the job, it’s not inaccurate.  She describes her own thought process thusly: “Over and over again, he said, ‘Oh, I’m not that experienced, but I'm going to hire people smarter than myself to do this.’  And that the whole day, I was thinking, ‘Then why don't we just hire somebody smarter than you for the job?’”

That seems reasonable.  Curmie is reasonably intelligent and well-educated; he has never cheated on his wife, was never drunk on the job, was never accused of rape.  He’d still be an awful Secretary of Defense.  So would Pete Hegseth, even if all those allegations against him are false.  Literally his only credential is that he is ideologically and temperamentally aligned with the soon-to-be Commander-in-Chief.  At least in the abstract, that’s a good thing, but it isn’t enough.  (For the record, Curmie actually agrees with some of Hegseth’s ideas… not many, but some.)

There are plenty of conservative men and women who have run large operations (not with an annual budget of over $800,000,000,000, but large), who have more than a passing understanding of the way the military operates at the upper levels, who understand international relations at least as well as the average undergraduate political science major.  Pete Hegseth is not among them.

He should not be confirmed, but he probably will be.  That’s because the GOP holds a slight majority in the Senate, and the average Republican pol is more interested in fellating (hopefully only metaphorically) Mr. Trump and thereby avoiding (for the moment) a primary challenge than in actually protecting the country.  Sad, but true.

Curmie, alas, is usually right about such predictions, but he’s not infallible.  He’d dearly love to be wrong this time.