The Trump Executive Order Renaming Lake Ontario Is Illegal

Trump has claimed that he can rename Lake Ontario unilaterally with an Executive Order. Google Maps is obeying it. But, of course, like so many of his other Executive Orders, this one is illegal because it contradicts a binding treaty with Canada.

Standing Law Still Broken

The U.S. law of standing basically states that even if the government or a government official is blatantly violating a law that benefits everyone, that unless someone can show how the violation of the law affects them in a way distinct from the way if affects taxpayers or voters or citizens, in general, that no one can enforce the law.

Most mainstream jurists manage to find a way to find standing in cases of clear violations of the law, but the ultraconservatives in the U.S. Supreme Court have used this doctrine to allow Trump to keep building the White House Ballroom in gross violation of the relevant law. The Chief Justice and the three liberal justices voted to prevent him from his clearly illegal actions, but were outvoted 5-4 on a standing argument.

No other sensible system of public law takes this approach. Standing was a rule invented for litigation between private parties that has never worked well in the public law setting.

The Executive-Judiciary Interface In Undermining The Rule Of Law

One of the most distinctive features of Trump 2.0 has been the breakdown of the rule of law. The administration has routinely ignored the law and settled interpretation of existing law in a wide variety of domains.

It has enacted illegal tariffs, it has denied due process to immigrants, it has deported immigrants to countries to which they have no connection, it has illegally impounded Congressionally appropriated funds, it has conducted the Iran war without complying with the war powers act, it has illegally and in violation of international law bombed suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and killed survivors of its attacks, it has unlawfully meddled in state election processes, it has fired government officials whom Congressionally enacted statutes don't allow it to fire, it has pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, it has corruptly allowed officials to benefit personally in monetary terms from their offices, it has openly admitted to denying FEMA disaster relief based upon how states have voted in recent elections, it has brought sham criminal prosecutions of political opponents, and so on.

Trump 1.0 was odious, incompetent, dishonest, and violated some political norms and legal rules, but shows much less disregard for the rule of law and for well-established political and legal norms.

What changed? How will that affect future administrations?

A lot of the change can be fairly attributed to the courts, especially lower court judges appointed by Trump and the U.S. Supreme Court, which attained a conservative majority and an ultra-conservative plurality under Trump 1.0, consistently letting Trump circumvent rulings against him personally, and against his administration, made by lower courts and non-Trump appointed judges (including many judges appointed by Republican Presidents in prior administrations).

The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions to grant Trump expansively Presidential immunity from criminal liability for his official or arguably official acts (even if they are clearly ultra vires), and to interpret the insurrection clause out of the 14th Amendment, were some of the earliest and most damaging of its steps down this path.

Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't given Trump a complete blank check in Trump 2.0 to be a dictator, largely because the non-ultra conservative justices and the liberal justices on the Court has sometimes formed coalitions to block the ultra-conservative agenda. But this hasn't been consistent enough to discourage mischief in the executive branch.

Of course, the Republican controlled Congress also hasn't pro-actively intervened, but as some justices on the Supreme Court such as Gorsuch are starting to acknowledge, while Congress has significant power to deny funds to the President, Congress has very little capacity to pro-actively contradict or restrain a President inclined to ignore it.

The relative irrelevance of Congress has also been illustrated by Trump 2.0's heavy reliance on executive orders to act, rather than Congressional legislation, despite the fact that Republicans hold majorities in both the House and the Senate, and despite the fact that past precedents have pretty well established that the filibuster in the Senate is a voluntary restraint that the Republican Senate majority has afforded to the minority, and not a legally binding barrier to action, and despite the tight hold that Trump has acquired over the Republican party, effectively turning it into a MAGA party.

So, the existence of a GOP trifecta has, in practice, been less important to the disappearance of the rule of law than judicial and especially U.S. Supreme Court, connivance in facilitating unilateral illegal actions by President Trump (in a highly partisan fashion that it did not afford to President Biden).

Indeed, if anything, the Republican majorities in Congress have been more even handed in protecting the limited rights of the minority Democrats in Congress on a non-partisan basis, than SCOTUS has been in its rulings, many of which simply can't be explained by anything but partisan bias.

Popular Things That I Don’t Like

Christmas
Easter
Christianity
Baseball
Dogs
Sitcoms
Peanut butter
Olives
Olive oil
Grass lawns
Whiskey
Gin
Muscle cars
Audience participation
Karaoke
Pro wrestling
Peppermint
Ginger beer
The movie "Remains of the Day"
Live action adaptations of animation
Country western music
Sunrises
Anchovies
Oak barrel aged wine
Adele
Talk radio
Anything midcentury modern
Texas
Multi-factor authentication
MS Word auto-formatting
Suburban street layouts
Suburban zoning
HOAs
Golf
Slot machines
Soft mattresses
Astroturf
Vinyl
Gazpacho
Iced coffee
Wheat germ
Cottage cheese
Time shares
Sequins
Guns

Quote Of The Day

If this kingdom is led by the corrupt, it will be doomed to fall.

- The Frontier Lord Begins With Zero Subjects (2026) (Episode 7).

What Is True And What Is False About Literacy?

Jared Henderson has a thoughtful Substack post about literacy statistics and the "literacy crisis." Many statistics thrown around in the public square about this issue are misleading or ill-sourced. 

Henderson spends a lot of time revisiting his prior commentary on the issue, acknowledging that some of what he said previously was probably wrong or overstated, and sourcing the common misleading statistics. I'll skip that here.

The most essential point is that there are different levels of literacy and commonly cited statistics on point frequently don't disclose what level of literacy they are talking about. They also often cite statistics about literacy in the English language, which is appropriate for many purposes, but neglect to mention that many people in the U.S. who are not literate in English are literate in another language.

"Could not participate" is a mix of non-English language speakers, and people who have physical or cognitive disabilities too serve to interview, two very distinct populations.

Level 1 is minimal basic literacy, and about 8.1% of adults in the U.S. either could not participate in the survey or can't attain this basic level of literacy, although even some people below Level 1 literacy might be able to read a simple story to their children, recite the alphabet, or read a street sign. Many people with Level 1 literacy would struggle to graduate from high school at all.

Level 2 is the literacy level of typical non-college bound high school graduates.

Level 3 is the literacy level of a college bound high school graduate and about 57.5% of Americans have that level of literacy (other sources have put this figure as low as 46%).

Levels 4 and 5 are the literacy levels, roughly speaking, of above average college graduates and people who have graduate degrees.

An OECD report puts the United States in the middle of developed countries for literacy levels:

The United States does have a very high level of disparity between the 90th percentile and the 10th percentile in literacy (and numeracy and problem solving) compared to other developed countries, which is to say crudely that we have very literate smart people and very illiterate dumb people (using the same scale as the mean literacy levels in the chart above).

Prior to COVID, the U.S. was seeing a very gradual trend of improvement in reading and math among school children, but it took a dip (hopefully temporary and due to disrupted educational programs) in the year 2020 from which it had not yet recovered in the most recent available data.

The author describes as a separate matter the decline in the extent to which adults who used demographically used to read books do so now, but attributes this to a disinclination to read rather than a decline in the ability to read long form books. But he makes a point of distinguishing this issue from adult literacy from childhood literacy, each of which are distinct issues with distinct workable responses.

Colorado Ballot Issues In 2026

There will be up to 15 state ballot issues in November in Colorado.

Citizen initiatives that have qualified for the ballot propose changes to state law that include: 

BAD. Increased criminal penalties for the possession or sale of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. 

A LITTLE BAD. Life in prison for the human trafficking of a minor. 

BAD. A ban on transgender youth from playing on sports teams not aligned with their biological sex. 

BAD. A ban on gender-affirming surgery for people younger than 18.

Proposed constitutional changes that have qualified for the ballot include: 

BAD. A requirement that law enforcement notify federal immigration officials when an immigrant without proper legal status is charged with a violent crime. 

BAD. The establishment of a right to use natural gas for cooking and heating. 

BAD. A mandate that all taxes and fees collected for motor vehicles and gas be spent on roads.

Other measures are still awaiting final approval by the secretary of state: 

GOOD. A proposal that would move Colorado to a graduated income tax system in which high earners pay a higher tax rate, marking a big change in tax policy. 

BAD. A cap on the state’s income tax rate. 

BAD. A requirement that sales taxes on sporting goods be earmarked for conservation efforts. 

BAD. A mandate for additional voter verification for mail-in ballots. 

A LITTLE BAD. A ban on congressional redistricting outside the typical once-a-decade census cycle. 

BAD. The creation of a constitutional right to hunt and fish. 

A LITTLE BAD. A requirement that ballot questions be written at an 8th grade reading level.

GOOD. A proposal that would raise the amount of tax money the state can keep under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights — known as raising the TABOR cap — was placed on the ballot by legislators last spring. That extra money, which normally would be returned through refunds or another way, would be mandated to go to education.

World Religions In A Nutshell

About 55% of the people in the world worship the god of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims (a little less than 30% are Christian, a little less than 25% are Muslim, and about 0.2% are Jews). Jews live predominantly in the U.S. and Israel. All of these religions originated in the Middle East. 

A little less than 15% of the people in the world are Hindus. Hindus live predominantly in India.

About 4% of the people in the world are Buddhists. They live predominately in Asia.

Both Hinduism and Buddhist originated in India.

A little more than 1% of the people in the world are adherents of another religion.

About 25% of the people in the world are non-religious.

Homicide Rates Around The World

 

FWIW, the United Kingdom's homicide rates (1.17 per 100,000) are much lower than the U.S., with gun death rates that are some of the lowest in the world other than Japan (although Japan has high rates of non-gun suicides). Almost all of the excess homicides in the U.S. relative to the U.K. and Japan are committed with firearms.

Canada's homicide rates, by province, are mostly lower than comparable U.S. states, outside of its Arctic territories. 

Latin America's homicide rates are very high for the most part (mostly due to organized crime cartels using U.S. sourced guns), even though U.S. Hispanics commit crimes (including homicide) at a rate lower than native born Americans. Mexico, however, has dramatically reduced homicide rates under its current President.