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Photographer: Edd Allen
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Practicing Being Present :
You find relief when your pulled away from it. ( distraction ) “Just like elastic, your naturally brought back to it and so you find relief. It really is natural to be present; and the further we are pulled away from being unnatural, the stronger that elastic will pull us back. The more we live in a world of chaos the more that elastic will pull us back to search for peace. In a meaningless chaotic world this instinct for meaning will drive us ever more powerfully to seek and seek and seek until we find. Which again you see is this wonderful natural balance that is there behind the scenes, you could say it is the will of God, which maybe out of mind may be out of fashion, but it’s still there the secret power behind the scene that keeps the whole world as in the saying” “is in God’s hands.”
- John Butler - Practicing the Presence of God:: Spiritual Unfoldment
(Jim Fagiolo)
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(Robert Scott Horton)
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One of these days I'll get around to working on procrastination. Meanwhile...
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Annie Oakley's heart target, private collection,
Los Angeles, California, 2010
[Photograph: Annie Leibovitz]
[Jim Fagiolo]
* * * *
Truth’s an indefinite article.
When we live, we live for the last time, as Akhmatova says,
One the in a world of a.
—Charles Wright, from “Broken English” in Chickamauga (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995)
#Jim Fagiolo#Annie Leibovitz#Charles Wright#Akhmatova#poetry#poem#Annie Oakley#shot to the heart#heart
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[Mikhail Iossel]
“The future belongs to crowds.”
—Don DeLillo, MAO II
He was right. That future is now.
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"A Zen Master's life is one continuous mistake"
~ Dogen Zenji
I attended sesshin with Roshi Hogen, once upon a time. One of the attendees asked, "Roshi Hogen, you are the Abbott of a Buddhist monastery and took vows of celibacy - and yet you have a wife and children. How do you explain this?"
He pondered for a minute or two and then replied, "Perhaps I failed."
[Ian Sanders]
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[Art: Kasia Derwinska]
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If you have looked hard at the manner of things, if you have surveyed the troubles of our time, and cannot discover a way forward, do not despair. Do better. Grieve: mount an altar to the sensuous feelings of loss that swim through you. In the stinging fumes that redden the eyes, you might partly recover a clear vision of where to go. You might come to see that forward movement is no longer possible in these moments, and that the way to go was never forward anyway - but awk-ward: into the blackness of catacombs, into the shadows of sanctuary, into the riven cracks signed with the pen of the trickster, into the heat of compost, into the position of a prostrated man who knows that when the storm roars the thing to do is to be still. In that stillness, entire worlds churn.
~ Bayo Akomolafe
[The Cosmic Dancer]
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Poetry isn’t benign. It can break you.
For National Poetry Month:
Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods
BY TISHANI DOSHI
for Monika
Girls are coming out of the woods,
wrapped in cloaks and hoods,
carrying iron bars and candles
and a multitude of scars, collected
on acres of premature grass and city
buses, in temples and bars. Girls
are coming out of the woods
with panties tied around their lips,
making such a noise, it's impossible
to hear. Is the world speaking too?
Is it really asking, What does it mean
to give someone a proper resting? Girls are
coming out of the woods, lifting
their broken legs high, leaking secrets
from unfastened thighs, all the lies
whispered by strangers and swimming
coaches, and uncles, especially uncles,
who said spreading would be light
and easy, who put bullets in their chests
and fed their pretty faces to fire,
who sucked the mud clean
off their ribs, and decorated
their coffins with briar. Girls are coming
out of the woods, clearing the ground
to scatter their stories. Even those girls
found naked in ditches and wells,
those forgotten in neglected attics,
and buried in river beds like sediments
from a different century. They've crawled
their way out from behind curtains
of childhood, the silver-pink weight
of their bodies pushing against water,
against the sad, feathered tarnish
of remembrance. Girls are coming out
of the woods the way birds arrive
at morning windows—pecking
and humming, until all you can hear
is the smash of their miniscule hearts
against glass, the bright desperation
of sound—bashing, disappearing.
Girls are coming out of the woods.
They're coming. They're coming.
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(Art: Photograph by Maryam Zandi)
The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
~Sophie Scholl
(Source: Unclear/Consider one of Scholl's most books: At the Heart of the White Rose)
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Photograph of Salvador and Gala Dali :: Arrival in New York, 1936.....the photo has a colorized effect but I suspect it's an original, as Eastman Kodak marketed their first color film (Kodachrome) a year earlier..Such style in those days!
(Jim Fagiolo)
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“I don't do drugs. I am drugs.”
― Salvador Dali
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The diagnostic criteria for anti-social personality disorder. Keep this in mind as you watch the leading Republican candidate for the presidency out on the campaign trail.
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* * * *
Supreme Outrage!
April 26, 2024
ROBERT B. HUBBELL
The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Thursday regarding Trump's presidential immunity defense. For clarity, that defense asserts that the president is above the law and beyond the reach of US criminal statutes that otherwise apply to every American. To the shock of everyone—and no one—the reactionary majority expressed sympathy for Trump's defense. The hearing itself was a supreme outrage. While the reactionary majority may not adopt the most extreme version of Trump’s defense, they need not do so to grant Trump a victory. Indeed, they have already granted Trump most of what he asked for: a lengthy delay.
Before I review the debacle that masqueraded as a Supreme Court hearing, let’s skip to the most important part: We have a remedy; we need only be bold enough to claim it. The current court is illegitimate; we must effectively replace it by enlarging the Court to overwhelm the reactionary majority.
Is such a plan reasonable? Constitutional? Wise? Achievable? Yes! Mitch McConnell created an Orwellian rule to deny Democratic presidents the right to appoint Supreme Court justices—and then waived the novel rule as soon as it would apply to an appointment by a Republican. Three justices (at least) lack legitimacy: Gorsuch and Barrett, whose appointments were tainted by the McConnell rule, and Clarence Thomas, who should recuse himself from every case relating to Trump. In short, one-third of the Court that heard Trump's arguments on Thursday had no business presiding over Trump's immunity claim.
Expanding the Court requires only a majority vote in both chambers of Congress and the signature of the president. Those conditions are within our grasp in November 2024. When I first raised this prospect in 2018, it was met with shock and horror by readers, who protested that expanding the Court would undermine its legitimacy. Such objections seem quaint in light of the damage wrought by the Court in six short years.
As Ian Millhiser of Vox wrote today,
One takeaway from today's debacle of a Supreme Court argument is Democrats need to start seriously considering packing the Supreme Court. A Court that would allow Donald Trump to get away with trying to steal a presidential election cannot be trusted.
We have a long list of issues that should drive us to the polls in historic numbers in November. Add to that list that we are burdened with a lawless Supreme Court that cannot be trusted with our democracy or Constitution.
As noted above, the reactionary majority granted Trump a victory before the hearing began by refusing Jack Smith’s request to skip the intermediate step of an appeal to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court enhanced that victory for Trump by refusing to hear the matter on an expedited schedule. And now it appears that the Court will issue a fractured opinion on the last day possible (June 30) that will order the trial court to engage in pointless pre-trial fact-finding about the difference between “private” and “official” acts.
But most critically, the reactionary majority gave Trump a victory by dignifying ludicrous arguments that should have been rebuked and condemned the moment Trump's counsel gave them voice. In failing to reject those arguments out of hand, the reactionary majority bestowed upon them the veneer of legitimacy and respectability they do not deserve.
For example, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Trump's lawyer,
If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?
Trump's lawyer responded, “That could well be an official act [and therefore immune from prosecution]”
How did we arrive at this point? How is it possible that counsel for a former president could say with a straight face that a president can order the assassination of a political rival with impunity? How could the justices sit silently and ponder counsel’s answer instead of rising in horror and ordering the attorney out of the courtroom? They are feckless. They have abandoned the Constitution in its hour of need by failing to communicate the horror and repulsion such arguments deserve.
The reactionary majority also gave Trump a victory by refusing to acknowledge the constitutional urgency of the attempted coup and insurrection. Rather than focusing on the facts alleged in the indictment against Trump, the reactionary majority crafted ever more fanciful hypotheticals that had no bearing on the case at hand. As expressed by Professor Laurence Tribe,
Today’s SCOTUS argument was more like a hearing in Congress to design an immunity law for future presidents, with Justice Kavanaugh saying “We’re not taking about the present case” and Justice Gorsuch saying “We’re writing rules for the ages” and Justice Alito joining in.
Only Justice Jackson reminded her colleagues that deciding this case was the Court’s task and that it might not be cool to use it as a vehicle for “answering in advance all these abstract questions”!
By engaging in fantasy rather than focusing on the facts at hand, it is inevitable that the Court will send the case back to the trial court for pre-trial fact finding—an outcome that will ensure the case will be delayed until after the election. The Court will thus deny all Americans the opportunity to cast their vote with the benefit of a jury verdict on Trump's guilt or innocence.
Justice Alito reached the pinnacle of bad faith by arguing that not granting immunity to Trump would increase the likelihood that a future president would try to stay in power. Huh? Every president before Trump relinquished power voluntarily without benefit of presidential immunity. If Trump is told he has absolute immunity and wins a second term, what motivation would he have to leave office—ever?
Alito also summited the peak of hypocrisy. In Dobbs, he wrote that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, reasoning as follows:
Constitutional analysis must begin with “the language of the instrument . . . The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion . . . .
But the Constitution make no reference to “presidential immunity.” As counsel for Jack Smith argued,
There is no immunity that is in the Constitution, unless this Court creates it today.
Do not expect blatant hypocrisy to slow Alito’s headlong embrace of presidential immunity that appears nowhere in the Constitution. Alito knows no shame in service of his reactionary agenda.
For additional discussion of the oral argument and potential outcome, see
Ian Millhiser in Vox, The Supreme Court is likely to place Donald Trump above the law in its immunity case (excellent legal summary), and
Chris Geidner at Law Dork, SCOTUS approach to Trump's immunity claim likely to delay D.C. case further (substack.com) (deep dive into argument by counsel and questions by justices).
Millhiser predicts an outcome along the following lines:
At least five of the Court’s Republicans seemed eager to, at the very least, permit Trump to delay his federal criminal trial for attempting to steal the 2020 election until after this November’s election. And the one GOP appointee who seemed to hedge the most, Chief Justice John Roberts, also seemed to think that Trump enjoys at least some immunity from criminal prosecution.
As summarized by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, The Court is Corrupt. Say It With Me. Per Marshall,
The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party . . . That’s the challenge in front of us. . . . But things become more clear-cut once we take the plunge and accept that fact.
The courts are not going to save us. The reverse is true. A significant portion of the federal judiciary has been corrupted and undermined by judges loyal to a reactionary religious and partisan agenda above all else. They view the Constitution and statutes as convenient “talking points” when they advance their agenda and disposable trifles when they do not.
Our remedy is at the ballot box. We must give Joe Biden control of Congress and a mandate to reform the federal judiciary—starting with the Supreme Court. We can achieve that goal if we are disciplined and tenacious. Put aside all disagreements and reservations to ensure Democrats win control of the executive and legislative branches in 2024. Then we can begin the long, slow work of repairing the damage inflicted in a few short years by the reactionary majority empaneled by Trump, McConnell, and The Federalist Society.
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
#Robert B. Hubbell#Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter#SCOTUS#corrupt SCOTUS#Criminal SCOTUS#presidential immunity#the US Constitution#equal under the law#rule of law
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Kevin Necessary
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
April 25, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
APR 26, 2024
“I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act,’” lawyer Marc Elias, whose firm defends democratic election laws, wrote today on social media. He added: “I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
Elias was referring to the argument of Trump’s lawyer before the Supreme Court today that it could indeed be an “official act” for which a president should be immune from criminal prosecution if “the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him.”
The Supreme Court today heard close to three hours of oral argument over Trump v. United States, which concerns former president Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal charges for “official acts”: in this case, his attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and to stay in office against the will of the voters.
That is, like the authoritarian leaders he admires, Trump tried to steal the 2020 presidential election and seize the presidency. Sometimes I worry that the enormity of that crime against our democracy is becoming normalized.
It was not normalized by grand jury members who reviewed the evidence of that effort; they indicted Trump in August 2023 on four counts. But Trump responded by claiming that a president cannot be prosecuted for official acts and that a former president cannot be prosecuted unless the House of Representatives has impeached him and the Senate convicted him.
Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife, Ginni, participated in that effort, did not recuse himself from today’s hearing, and the court did not object to his presence.
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post noted that the justices on the court seemed to be weighing “which poses the greater risk—putting a criminal president above the law or hamstringing noncriminal presidents with the risk of frivolous or vindictive prosecutions brought by their successors.”
The liberals on the court focused on the former—after all, the case is about whether Trump should answer to criminal indictments for trying to overturn our democracy. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted: “If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
In contrast, the right-wing justices focused on the risk of vindictive prosecutions, which has been the heart of Trump’s argument for complete immunity. Trump insists that without immunity, a president will be afraid to make controversial decisions out of fear of later prosecution. Such a lack of immunity would destroy the presidency, he has argued, claiming that he is simply trying to protect the office.
And yet he is the first of 45 presidents to be charged with a crime, and no previous president made any claim of immunity.
Nonetheless, the right-wing justices made it clear they were more interested in the future than in the present. In their comments they stayed far away from Trump and focused instead on presidents in the past and the future. (Conservative judge Michael Luttig noted: “The Court and the parties discussed everything but the specific question presented.”)
Justice Neil Gorsuch said: “I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives.” Justice Samuel Alito tried to turn the argument for accountability upside down by suggesting that complete immunity would be more likely to encourage presidents to leave office, because if a president knew they could be prosecuted for crimes, they would be less likely to leave peacefully.
Indeed, Marcus wrote: “The conservative justices’ professed concerns over the implications of their rulings for imaginary future presidents, in imaginary future proceedings, seemed more important to them than bringing Trump to justice.” Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis was more concrete in his reaction; he found it “[u]nbelievable that Supreme Court justices who see forgiving student loans, mandating vaccines, and regulating climate change as a slippery slope toward tyranny were not clear-eyed on questions of whether a president could execute citizens or stage a coup without being prosecuted.”
The court’s decision will likely take weeks and thus will delay Trump’s trial for crimes committed in his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, likely until after the 2024 election. On Monday, April 22, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who served as vice chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, called out Trump’s attacks on the legal system and delays to avoid accountability. In a New York Times op-ed, Cheney reminded the justices that delay would mean that the American people would not get to hear the testimony and evidence Special Counsel Jack Smith has uncovered before the 2024 election.
“It cannot be that a president of the United States can attempt to steal an election and seize power but our justice system is incapable of bringing him to trial before the next election four years later,” she wrote.
And yet, here we are.
Voters’ right to know what a candidate for president did to overthrow the will of the people in a previous election is at stake in today’s arguments. But so is the rule of law on which our democracy stands. The rule of law means that laws are made according to established procedures rather than a leader’s dictates, and that they are reasonable. Laws are enforced equally. No one is above the law, and everyone has an obligation to obey the law.
As Justice Elena Kagan noted today: “The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to; there were immunity clauses in some state constitutions. They didn’t provide immunity to the president. And, you know—not so surprising—they were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law. Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?”
Indeed.
“[W]here, say some, is the King of America?” Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet that convinced British colonists in North America to cut ties with their king and start a new nation. “[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#corrupt SCOTUS#criminal SCOTUS#Opus Dei SCOTUS#Heather Cox Richardson#Letters From An American#Immunity#the King of America#rule of law#above the law#equal under the law#the US Constitution
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The Beatles Rocky Racoon
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The moon rises above the famous "Z" tree at Everglades National Park. Photo: Luis Forte (Apr 2024) :: Robert Scott Horton
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“What sets wilderness apart in the modern day is not that it's dangerous (it's almost certainly safer than any town or road) or that it's solitary (you can, so they say, be alone in a crowded room) or full of exotic animals (there are more at the zoo). It's that five miles out in the woods you can't buy anything.”
― Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information
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“I think people who don't know the woods very well sometimes imagine it as a kind of undifferentiated mass of greenery, an endless continuation of the wall of trees they see lining the road. And I think they wonder how it could hold anyone's interest for very long, being all so much the same. But in truth I have a list of a hundred places in my own town I haven't been yet. Quaking bogs to walk on; ponds I've never seen in the fall (I've seen them in the summer - but that's a different pond). That list gets longer every year, the more I learn, and doubtless it will grow until the day I die. So many glades; so little time.”
― Bill McKibben, Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks
#Luis Forte#Robert Scott Horton#the Everglades#Everglades national Park#quotes#Bill McKibben#wilderness
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"Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world..."
~Joanna Macy
I have used this photo a few times, it expresses so many sentiments. Thank you to this lovely woman.
[As She Is]
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"And once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you long to return."
~ Leonardo Da Vinci
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"In order to spread your wings to Heaven you must have roots that reach all the way to Hell."
~ Nietzsche
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"The love of God is the fire of Hell."
~ St Isaac the Syrian
[Thanks Ian Sanders]
lbrecht Durer
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