So another variegated conglomeration of perspectives and postulates from your couthy sesquipedalian. At or least I think it is.As always, I’ve included context where I thought it would help understanding the comment itself along with links to the original if you’d like to check it out. With that, here we go.
2026-03-31
[Most comments in WaPo on
SCOTUS oral arguments re Trump’s birthright citizenship order supported
the 14th Amendment being read literally. Supporting Trump, someone
wrote dismissively “Please tell me which Supreme Court case ruled where
the plaintiff’s parents were in the US illegally. This reminds me of
being told the 14th amendment case about getting Trump off ballot was a
slam dunk, only to lose 9-0.”]
I expect this will not satisfy you but US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) involved a child who was born to parents who were subjects of the Emperor of China and so had neither US citizenship nor allegiance but yes, were here legally. But his parents had no diplomatic exception (they were “not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China”), so he was “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US - interpreted to mean “required to obey US law.” So yes, the Court did rule on that very point. Thus, the Court ruled, Wong Kim Ark was a citizen by birth.
Bluntly, it’s hard to imagine a space in there where the argument “Yeah, but they were documented so that doesn’t count” would fit unless you were to argue that being undocumented means you’re not required to obey the law, an argument I doubt would find much support.
Oh, as for those “legal scholars,” a phrase I
strongly suspect was used sarcastically, you should have asked me. I
predicted it would fail, albeit on a different basis.(1)
-
[Wong Kim Ark was actually a test case. In 1884, a person named Look Tin Eli had sued the government in the US Circuit Court for the Central District of California over his citizenship. He won,
as the court affirmed that a native-born person is a US citizen
regardless of race or ancestry. Some supporters were disappointed that
the US declined to appeal because they wanted to get the matter before
SCOTUS and the case of Wong Kim Ark provided the opportunity. The Look
Tin Eli case was cited by SCOTUS in its favorable opinion.]
==
2026-04-01
There
should be a requirement that any client considering conversion
“therapy” should be given accurate information on all risks involved,
including psychological harm and increased risk of suicide, and the
success rate. Then they can make an informed decision and bluntly I
wonder how many would continue in that event.
==
Bravo to her.
I wonder if [Gov. Kris] Koback would try to dodge the whole thing by saying he doesn’t want to bring attention to a “stunt” so will do nothing because she didn’t really “use” the restroom, just went in and right out.
I doubt he’s that clever, but these kinds of laws are often passed with the idea that trans folks will simply disappear from the restrooms and there will be no consequences that might get attention or even some sympathy among the public.
==
2026-04-03
[Referring to a list of suggested responses to being challenged for using the “wrong” restroom.]
I’ve re-written this three or four times because I keep thinking it could by misunderstood. This is my last shot at this.
I doubt the situation described will arise for me (I’m cis and in a safe state) since the freakage level over transmen in restrooms seems quite muted (which I say supports my contention that a lot of this is old-fashioned, albeit an extreme form of, sexism) but if it ever did I would be the bystander.
I think in that case my first instinct would be to blurt out “Why?” and if anything about being trans figured in a response, follow with “Prove it.” That is, “put up or shut up,” intending to shield the target from the harassment. (It occurs to me now that a better response would be “And?”)
But my favorite among the proposed bystander responses is #3 - actually, forget the first part as unnecessary; just use the second.
[The whole #3 was ”Who polices other people’s restroom use? You’re being really weird right now.”]
==
2026-04-03
[The Ohio House passed a bill to outlaw drag shows. Someone argued that some provisions could make it illegal for transgender folks to appear in public.]
The bill is indeed bad and hopefully will be killed or at least significantly modified, but I have to say I think your description in some ways goes too far.
Specifically, the section on “adult cabaret performance” (lines 153-173 of the bill, found at https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/api/v2/general_assembly_136/legislation/hb249/02_PH/pdf/) repeatedly uses the terms “performance,” performers,” and “entertainers.” Applying that to “a transgender individual simply walking down the street wearing makeup” stretches the wording (the “legislative intent”) far past the breaking point.
But! That “cisgender woman playing a guitar in a park” wearing “too masculine” clothing? Oh, yeah. Just call her a performer and bang, covered by the law. Um, except wait - the section also says the performance must be “harmful to juveniles or obscene,” so just playing a guitar in a park isn’t enough, regardless of the clothing. (Yes, I looked up the definitions of “harmful to juveniles” and “obscene.” They’re all about “prurient interest” and “arousing lust.” https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2907.01)
I wholeheartedly embrace your (implied but accurate) argument that actually defining what constitutes “masculine” and “feminine” expression is a fool’s errand and I also agree that any attempt to do so, even by implication, is a threat to trans rights.
But here I’d focus on the obvious intention to ban drag shows by regarding them as de facto sexual and thus obscene. One thing I think the attempt shows is how difficult (if it’s even possible, which I very much doubt) to do that without trampling on basic rights and opening the door to “guilt by personal opinion of a cop.” Such bills can and should be rejected outright.
==
2026-04-03
Ben Meiselas reports
that in a talk at George Washington University, Karoline Leavitt told
the audience that her advice is to always be the most well-read person
in the room - then said Trump always is.
I used to call her Levity because no one should take her seriously but this goes beyond that. She is either a pathological liar or in some other way deeply mentally disturbed.
==
2026-04-03
[The Georgia legislature ended its session with all of the nearly 15 anti-trans bills having failed.]
This is excellent news and everyone involved in this achievement should savor the moment and accept congratulations.
In passing, this raises something I’ve wondered about. This isn’t the first time a state legislature has come to the end of a session with a whole bunch of anti-trans laws dying without action.
So do some of these people sometimes introduce such legislation without really caring if it passes or not, they just want to be able to use “I introduced” or “I supported” such-and-such on the campaign trail, avoiding both the possibility of being “out anti-transed” by some opponent and the stronger pushback from the other side that could arise if it actually passed?
Just speculating; as a practical matter, I doubt it makes any difference.
==
2026-04-04
[Referring to forgiving MAGAs: “My gut instinct is to NEVER forgive them for their cruelty and greed.”]
I’ll just offer a variation on what I said about this very topic several days ago on a different site.
I’m what used to be called a fallen-away Catholic. In fact, I fell so far I fell away from theism altogether. But I can remember from my Catechism what’s required for forgiveness in Confession: contrition and penance - genuine regret and a sacrifice to make up for what you did.
The penance was pretty invariably symbolic, saying some prayers and the like, but still was a necessary part of the process of forgiveness.
The same should apply here. You want me to “welcome you into our tent?” First, give me good cause to believe you sincerely regret what you’ve done. (I think of the woman in that viral clip who said she voted for the Orange Overlord three times, punctuated with “That’s on me. Obviously, I’m an idiot.”)
Second, tell me what you’ll now do to make up for - more importantly, to undo - the harm you’ve helped to cause. Note that “I’ll never vote for another Republican” is not good enough. It is not penance and will not serve the purpose any more than a convicted robber saying “I’ll never steal anything else” does not excuse them from consequences. Tell me what positive action you will take (or have taken).
Then we can talk about forgiveness.
==
2026-04-04
So Gregg Phillips, associate administrator for FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, has doubled down
on his claim of having been repeatedly teleported and connected it to
his religious beliefs, claiming that the Bible refers to being
“translated” or “transported” - that is, he got to a Waffle House
through divine intervention.
“Here’s the real question,” he said. “What’s harder to believe? That God could move in a moment during a spiritual battle, or Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is coming again?”
In other words, which is harder to believe: 1+1=5 or 2+2=pi?
==
2026-04-04
[Various extremist Xians want women to be unable to vote.]
Whenever I read about this sort of bigoted insanity presuming a Biblical basis for their anti-democratic, anti-freedom, male-supremacist crackpot notions, I recall seeing (as part of my job at the time) a marriage manual from either the late 16th or early 17th century advising that, as near as I can quote from memory, a man who marries a woman from who he can’t get advice has a fool for a wife - and she has a fool for a husband.
==
2026-04-05
[In a comment, a parent told how their trans daughter, despite having adopted a new name at school, had declined using it at home until some time later.]
I can understand how that would hurt. But I suspect there was a reason: The whole purpose of the sort of social transitioning she did at school could have well been for her a matter of, if you will, trying it on, seeing if it fits, if it feels right, “is this me.” You said it yourself: She “tried” new pronouns and a new name.
Doing it with you, OTOH, isn’t a trial or a test, it’s a conclusion. A decision. She just needed more time to make it.
So when she did come out to you, she was saying “This is who I am. I’ve decided.” By giving her that time, you did the right thing.
==
2026-04-05
My response to “Yeah, well, all
lives matter!” was to say “Yes, all lives matter. And if we actually
acted like all lives matter, it wouldn’t be necessary to say ‘Black
lives matter.’”
[I also used to say that in saying or thinking the phrase, the stress should be on the last word, not the first.]
==
2026-04-05
[“Some Democrats soften or side step trans rights. It doesn’t read as strategic. It reads as hesitation in the face of coordinated attacks.”]
“It doesn’t read as strategic. It reads as hesitation.”
More accurately, it reads as fear. The same old fear that has plagued the Democratic party for decades, the fear that the reactionaries might say something nasty about you in a campaign, so better to downplay the issue, even better to avoid mentioning it at all and be forever prepared to yield ground if it comes up. Consider it a political version of “duck and cover.”
Transgender rights are not the only example. There have been many over the years. The issue here, narrowly defined, is not trans rights but institutional cowardice, the kind of stark political cowardice that has had a major role in getting us into our current mess.
I know I have several times on this platform recalled seeing a survey from all the way back in the Gingrich era finding that people didn’t dislike Democrats for what they stood for but because they didn’t seem to stand for anything.
Well, that remains true today, as the intensity of Democrats’ active opposition to The Orange Overlord (TOO) is pretty much in inverse ratio to his favorability rating and the safer it looks politically on a given issue the more willing they are to go after him.
(I still cringe when I recall Hakeem Jeffries, around the time of the OBBB - the Obnoxious Barbarous Bigoted Bill - actually saying something to the effect that the Dems were waiting for TOO’s favorability rating to drop below 40% - in other words, when it was safe enough - promising that then, they’d really go after him. You can decide for yourself how well they followed through on that.)
I’ve said this before, perhaps even here, but I think it bears repeating. It’s not necessary for Dems to make trans rights the or even a centerpiece of their campaign, particularly as it ranks low on lists of people’s concerns and even Republicans in some polls say their party spends too much time on the issue.
What is necessary is to say clearly that you support trans rights and when challenged don’t evade and don’t back down.
And don’t settle for defense. Instead say something like “Of course I support trans rights because they are human rights. Trans folks have every bit as much right to grow and flourish, to go through their lives smoothly, without discrimination, and to be treated with respect and fairness the same as anyone else does. The really important question is why the other side is so damned focused on people’s genitalia instead of on” whatever issue or issues seem appropriate at the moment.
I’ve gone on long enough. Probably too long. So I’ll stop.
==
2026-04-06
The Pentagon has failed its department-wide financial audit eight years in a row.
Admittedly, US military operations are very complex, so clean audits are a challenge.
But if any “woke” program had a record anything like that, Faux News would be melting TV screens with the heat of its rage.
==
2026-04-06
I
was watching the live NASA coverage of the Artemis mission. As the crew
went to the Moon’s dark side (losing contact for 40 minutes) one of
them just had to invoke Jesus to say “love your neighbor,” punctuated by
ground control echoing the statement and adding “How great Thou art.”
:sigh:
==
2026-04-07
[Erin Reed demolished a study claiming to prove GAC actually harms the mental health of trans youth.]
Okay, I gotta be honest. I got as far as the percentages (the 9.8% before vs. 60.7% after) and a vibrantly bright red flag started flying.
Phrased rather more coherently than my initial response, it was “Wait - they’re comparing the mental health of folks who got and didn’t get GAC based on psychiatric visits after an initial one? But if someone was at that initial visit to obtain GAC, getting additional counseling would be a pretty normal part of the process of transitioning. Of course they’d have more visits than the general population!”
And that was before learning that they might have years of visits before they could even start actual medical transitioning (i.e. GAHT) - not to mention the history of the study author.
And this tripe got published? Just wow.
==
2026-04-07
[A
commenter responded to Megan Rapinoe saying “They lost the battle on
gay marriage” with “If they don’t lose hard enough over transgender
issues, they will level their political guns to reverse that loss.”]
“they will next level all their political guns to reverse that loss”
They already are. The “LGB without the T” folks who think they’re safe are fools.
-
2026-04-07
[They are. I do think that attacking us is distracting some of the SoCons efforts from that though...]
True enough. But the reactionaries have already legitimized the notion “transgender = drag queen = sex” and it’s not that far a reach to reprising “disgusting” descriptions of “disgusting” gay/lesbian sex of the sort I remember from not that many decades ago.
The LGB/noT crowd should remember that Martin Niemöller’s poem is not just about Germany.
THAT’S IT! SEE YA IN A WEEK OR SO!
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