Isaac Laquedem

Lament for Kevin McCarthy

Kevin McCarthy's nearly nine months in office (a full term in other contexts) deserves a ballad to commemorate his service.  Isaac has written one.

 

 

Lament for Kevin McCarthy

(to the tune of “Whatever Became of Hubert?” by Tom Lehrer)
Words by Isaac Laquedem (2023)

Whatever became of Kevin?
Does anyone even know?
Once he mastered the floor, then they showed him the door
When four of his core voted “no.”

It required fifteen rounds to elect him
And only one vote to eject him.
Watch Gaetz and his pals playing games
As the GOP throws out more names

We must amend the rules, ex-Speaker
Says each Fox News reporter
Your successor’s going to be even weaker
And serve a term even shorter.

Whatever became of you, Kevin?
Do you miss being at the top?
Can you keep a straight face
When erased from your place
While you wait for Matt Gaetz
To flop?

Does McConnell look down from the Senate with glee
And gloat to his friends that “it’s NMFP”?
Do you wonder what Nancy would do?
Kevin, what happened to you?

The Laquedem Plan to Relieve Our Supreme Court Justices from the High Cost of Vacations

The recent scandalous disclosures that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia vacation not only in their 40-foot motor home but on lavish trips financed by billionaire Harlan Crow that have included flights on Mr. Crow's private jet and cruises on his 161-foot yacht were followed by the equally scandalous revelations that Justice Samuel Alito did not report his 2008 trip by private jet as the guest of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, to an Alaskan fishing resort where he stayed as the guest of real estate and mortgage servicing billionaire Robin Arkley.  The two stories brought to mind the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016 at a resort in Texas.  "Resort" is a loose term for the 30,000 acre Cibolo Creek Ranch, owned by multimillionaire John B. Poindexter.  (We can't have our justices selecting their friends only from the billionaire class.)  You can book rooms there for $500 to $1200/night, or you can come as the guest of Mr. Poindexter, as Justice Scalia did.  

It's apparent from the examples of Justices Thomas, Alito, and Scalia that the justices of our Supreme Court cannot stretch their salaries, currently $274,200/year, to cover the cost of vacations that befit their status as the nation's senior interpreters of the Constitution and the law.  It's also abhorrent that owners of large corporations with business before the Supreme Court can give the justices over-the-top vacations without the justices thinking it improper to accept the gifts.  Hence the Laquedem Plan to Relieve Our Supreme Court Justices from the High Cost of Vacations.

The LPTROSCJFTHCOV is ridiculously simple, because the mechanism to remove the taint of impropriety already exists.  It's GoFundMe.com.  Let's start a GoFundMe to raise money that the justices and their families can use to pay for their own vacations.   If a million Americans will give just $1/year each, then each justice can spend more than $1 million/year on luxury travel without having to beg for hospitality from their billionaire friends.  If Justice Thomas had $1 million to spend on his vacations, would he still hang out with Harlan Crow?  Or would he and Virginia Thomas buy a larger motor home and hire a driver?  Either way, he could escape his ethical morass.

We already provide public funds to presidential candidates.  Let's offer our Supreme Court a way to escape from the convivial clutches of the kakistocrats.

The Laquedem Plan to Improve Continuing Legal Education and Honor a Legal Leader

The Oregon State Bar requires active lawyers to take a certain amount of coursework, called "continuing legal education" or "CLE," to renew their licenses.  Members report their education every three years.  New members must take nine hours of courses on practical skills, including at least four hours on Oregon practice and procedure.  After their first reporting period, Oregon lawyers must take 45 hours of accredited CLE every three years, including at least five hours on ethics, one hour on mandatory reporting of child abuse and elder abuse, and one hour on mental health and substance abuse.  In alternate reporting periods, Oregon lawyers must also take at least three hours on programs accredited for "access to justice."  The Bar's rules define "Access to justice" education as activities that are "designed to educate attorneys to identify and eliminate from the legal profession, from the provision of legal services, and from the practice of law barriers to access to justice arising from biases against persons because of age, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender and gender identity or expression, geographic location, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, immigration status, and socioeconomic status."

Recent news stories have given Isaac the idea that the Oregon State Bar should require providers of CLE to meld practical skills with access to justice, resulting in the Laquedem Plan to Improve Continuing Legal Education and Honor a Legal Leader.  Educators could teach lawyers how to organize luxurious hunting trips, expensive vacations, and cruises on private yachts, and then how to invite judges to be their guests.  Other material would cover how to establish political organizations under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code to funnel unreported money to a judge's spouse.  And somewhere in the mix would be how to ship rare wine across state lines to judicial incumbents.

The name of this hybrid CLE credit would honor one of its most ardent practitioners.  I suggest calling it "Access to Justice Thomas."

Isaac's 2023 Tax Day reading from A.P. Herbert

Each year at tax time we divert from our support of democratic socialism to think of Sir Alan Patrick Herbert (1890-1971), the British social reformer, member of Parliament from Oxford University (there really was such a post, elected by the alumni), lover of the Thames, playwright, and under the name of A.P. Herbert, a frequent perpetrator of light verse.  Some years, this one included, the tax bite is severe enough to quote from his work.  This month's assortment of impositions is painful not so much because of the amount but by the sheer number of the incoming mosquitos, each looking to take its little bite from the Laquedem thousands under the guise of making work for the post office and the Loyal Accountant.  The outgoing checks and the upcoming ballot measure to add another tax to the menagerie have put me in mind today of this early Herbert verse: 

Well, fancy giving money to the Government!
Might as well have put it down the drain.
Fancy giving money to the Government!
Nobody will see the stuff again.
Well, they've no idea what money's for --
Ten to one they'll start another war.
I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'!
Fancy giving money to the Government!

Our genial support of the social welfare system will return on Tuesday.

Happy birthday, Professor Lehrer

Today is the 95th birthday of Tom Lehrer, who rose to fame as a singer and satirical songwriter in 1953, performed and toured for about 15 years, and then returned to academia.  Some of his songs are fossils of their era (we know what became of Hubert, and Wernher von Braun did in fact study Chinese).  Others that he wrote for the events of the 1950s and 1960s are painfully apposite to the fears of the present day, including the one linked here.  Happy birthday, sir!

 

An ode to Alex Jones's recent court losses

It was a solemn rite as e’er
Was seen by mortal man.
The celebrants, the people there,
Were all Republican.

Ed Rollins bent his grizzled head,
And Ari Fleischer too,
And one⁠—’twas Tucker, someone said,
Though no one clearly knew.

I saw the priest, white-robed and tall
Of strictly right-wing views
He was the pious man men call
To cast blessings on Fox News.

Ah, ’twas a high and holy rite
As anyone could swear.
“What does it mean?” I asked a wight
Who knelt apart in prayer.

“A mass for the repose,” he said,
“Of Alex Jones's ⁠—“What,
Is Alex Jones now dead?
’Tis sad, ’tis sad, God wot!”

“A mass”⁠—repeated he, and rose
To go and kneel among
The worshipers⁠—“for the repose
Of Alex Jones's tongue.”

-- Ambrose Bierce, brought up to date

Dinner with Robespierre, and others

You may have heard these two observations of America:

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.

            And

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Those are not quotations of today.  They come from the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who traveled around the United States in the 1830s and compiled his observations into the famous book, “Democracy in America,” published in 1835, which we all were supposed to have read in high school. 

To understand de Tocqueville, consider where he came from.  He was born only 12 years after the Reign of Terror.  The French revolution was not the stuff of history but an event that still echoed.

The French revolutionaries of 1789 liked to think that they were inspired by the American revolution of 1776.  There’s an important difference in what happened after each Revolution.  After a short-lived weak confederation, the 13 states organized a new federal government, and our basic government structure has stayed the same since.

Not so the French.  They went from the revolution of 1789 to the republic and the reign of terror of 1792, had a civil war and a counterrevolution, were displaced by Napoleon in 1799, restored the monarchy in 1814, pushed out Napoleon, got him back, pushed him out again, and got the king back – all in less than 50 years.

One of the classic "what if" questions is "If you could invite anyone in history to a dinner party, who would you ask?"

For one of my historical dinner parties I would invite the people who set de Tocqueville on his way.  The first is the person who brought about the end of the French monarchy, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794).

Robespierre was a young lawyer, barely 30 when he led the French Convention to abolish the monarchy and not yet 35 when he persuaded the Convention to execute Louis XVI in January 1793.  He had a vision of the ideal Republic.  He prepared the very liberal constitution of 1793, but never implemented it.  He led the French toward his goal – until they saw that he was ordering the deaths of anyone who stood in his way.  Seeing their own danger, the Convention organized against him.  In July 1794 he left France the same way that King Louis had departed, head first.

Imagine that you could hear de Tocqueville interview Robespierre.  If Robespierre could rewrite history, would he have pushed Louis XVI to the guillotine?  Would he have executed hundreds of his political enemies?   Or would he listen to de Tocqueville’s recounting of American success and understand that he could have brought about the same result for France?

Every case has two sides.  If we dine with Robespierre, we will invite Louis XVI.  You may know him for marrying Marie Antoinette and how they met their end.  There’s much more to his story.

Louis XVI succeeded his father in 1775.  Louis began his reign as a reformer.  He tried to abolish serfdom.  He tried to get rid of the land tax and the labor tax.  He tried to foster religious tolerance.  On the spectrum of French kings he was a liberal and a reformer.  He supported the American revolution, but the resulting national debt combined with bad grain harvests led to the lower and middle classes becoming as unhappy with him as the aristocracy had been.  He made all sides angry.

He could not stave off the French revolution in 1789, he was arrested and deposed in 1792, and he went to the guillotine in January 1793.

We can imagine De Tocqueville, after a glass or two of a fine Bordeaux, encouraging Louis and Robespierre to argue about whether Louis could have avoided the revolution and execution.  Would Louis have gone into exile to save the lives of himself and his family?  Or would he, like a sea captain, “go down with the ship”?

I’d invite a fourth person to join us, one you’ve likely never heard of other than as the namesake of a station on the Paris Metro.  His name is Chretien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721-1794).  Why him?

The French Convention included many lawyers.  Malesherbes was one of them.  Malesherbes offered to defend Louis XVI at his trial, knowing that by defending the unpopular king he was risking his own life as a very visible royalist.  He was right - fifteen months after Louis XVI went to the guillotine, Malesherbes died the same way, together with his daughter, his granddaughter, and their husbands.  Did Malesherbes regret dying for his belief in the principle that every accused person is entitled to a defense?

I wouldn't pose the question myself, but I'd encourage Alexis de Tocqueville to ask Malesherbes, as I expect he would; de Tocqueville was his great-grandson.

A song for Rudy Giuliani and his pardon list

John Eastman, a retired law professor, told the January 6 Special Committee that he had e-mailed Rudy Giuliani shortly after the January 6 insurrection, writing "I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works."  He joins the ranks of 29 Congresspeople (only one so far has been outed) who requested pardons in the last days of the Trump administration. 

Who kept the pardon list?  Mr. Giuliani, who was President Trump's personal attorney at the time?  Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and backstage gatekeeper?  Or someone else inside the White House?  Whoever it is, it deserves a bit of verse.  This one's to the tune of "I've Got a Little List" from Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta "The Mikado":

 

If someday it should happen that a pardon must be sold,

I‘ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list

Of conspirators and plotters whose misfortunes are now told,

And who all want on my list, who all want on my list.

There’s the crazy law professor who thinks Pence can pick the Prez,

And the Congressmen and women who repeat what Eastman says,

“Ordinary tourists” who invade the House’s floor,

The folks who take them up and down the stairs the day before,

Promoters of the Big Lie – well, I’m sure you get the gist,

They all want on my list, they all want on my list.

 

Footnote for fans of Professor Eastman:  His Wikipedia entry ends with this intriguing note:

Other

On January 7, 2021, Eastman edited this Wikipedia article to portray his post-election role in a more favorable light. His editing was reverted due to conflict-of-interest rules of Wikipedia, and on January 9 he appealed on the article's talk page, where some changes were approved but others were denied.^[118]

An old Boomer's "delete" button

Last week former president Donald Trump denied the claim of reporter Maggie Haberman that he had flushed documents down a White House toilet.  Ms. Haberman makes the claim in her forthcoming book, Confidence Man, according to a report from Axios.

Mr. Trump is famous for not using e-mail and avoiding computers, both of which have more modern means of deleting unwanted information - hence the thought that inspired today's caption.

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