Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd, in her column on Sunday in The New York Times, entitled, “Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?” uses the  metaphor of 1950s Western movies that pitted the good guys against the bad guys. In her column, the bad guys and bullies are Donald Trump and Elon Musk.  Here is an excerpt: 

“…it’s disorienting to have the men running America, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, relish bullying people who can’t fight back and blurring lines between good and bad.

They should be working for us, but we suspect they’re working for themselves.

After Elon met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Thursday, Trump admitted that he wasn’t sure if Musk was there as a representative of the U.S. government or as an American C.E.O. “I don’t know,” he said. “They met, and I assume he wants to do business in India.”

Trump and Musk see government workers as losers for devoting themselves to public service rather than chasing dollars.

Axios called their aggressive approach “masculine maximalism.”

“Trump and Musk view masculinity quite similarly: tough-guy language, macho actions, irreverent, crude — and often unmoved by emotionalism, empathy or restraint.”

The two are freezing programs, firing federal workers en masse, ripping apart the government and decimating agencies with no precision, transparency or decency.

Republicans are cowering, and Democrats are frozen like the townsfolk in westerns when the bad guys take over.”

There is a glimmer of hope in Dowd’s conclusion:

“I hope, as President Trump and Elon Musk exercise their “masculine maximalism,” they remember the words of John Wayne in the 1972 western, “The Cowboys”: “A big mouth don’t make a big man.”

Her entire column is below.

Tony

———————

The New York Times

Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?

Feb. 15, 2025

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington

When I was a teenager, my older brother took me to see “Shane.”

I wasn’t that into westerns, and the movie just seemed to be about a little boy running after Alan Ladd in the wilderness of the Tetons, screaming “Sha-a-a-a-ne, come back!”

I came across the movie on Turner Classic Movies the other night, and this time I understood why the George Stevens film is considered one of the best of all time. (The A.F.I. ranks “Shane, come back!” as one of the 50 top movie lines of all time.)

The parable on good and bad involves a fight between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. Ladd’s Shane is on the side of the honest homesteaders — including an alluring married woman, played by Jean Arthur. Arriving in creamy fringed buckskin, he is an enigmatic golden gunslinger who goes to work as a farmhand. Jack Palance plays the malevolent hired gun imported by the brutal cattle ranchers to drive out the homesteaders. Palance is dressed in a black hat and black vest. In case you don’t get the idea, a dog skulks away as Palance enters a saloon.

It’s so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, the right thing to do versus the wrong. Law and order wasn’t a cliché or a passé principle that could be kicked aside if it interfered with baser ambitions.

The 1953 film is also a meditation on American masculinity in the wake of World War II. A real man doesn’t babble or whine or brag or take advantage. He stands up for the right thing and protects those who can’t protect themselves from bullies.

I loved seeing all those sentimental, corny ideals that America was built on, even if those ideals have often been betrayed.

So it’s disorienting to have the men running America, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, relish bullying people who can’t fight back and blurring lines between good and bad.

They should be working for us, but we suspect they’re working for themselves.

After Elon met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Thursday, Trump admitted that he wasn’t sure if Musk was there as a representative of the U.S. government or as an American C.E.O. “I don’t know,” he said. “They met, and I assume he wants to do business in India.”

Trump and Musk see government workers as losers for devoting themselves to public service rather than chasing dollars.

Axios called their aggressive approach “masculine maximalism.”

“Trump and Musk view masculinity quite similarly: tough-guy language, macho actions, irreverent, crude — and often unmoved by emotionalism, empathy or restraint.”

The two are freezing programs, firing federal workers en masse, ripping apart the government and decimating agencies with no precision, transparency or decency.

Republicans are cowering, and Democrats are frozen like the townsfolk in westerns when the bad guys take over.

Trump’s glowering mug shot even hangs outside the Oval, like an Old West “Wanted: dead or alive” poster. And Musk, giving a news conference with his son X Æ A-Xii on his shoulders, mirrored Palance with his black outfit, including a Dark MAGA hat.

It’s bizarre to have the White House accusing judges who pause Trump’s depredations for a constitutional review of provoking a constitutional crisis.

Trump and Elon are turning our values upside down. The president demands fealty, even if he is asking his followers and pawns to do something illicit or transgressive. Loyalty outweighs legality.

He immediately purged federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6-related cases. He ordered a McCarthyesque probe of thousands of F.B.I. agents who investigated a bloody sack of the U.S. Capitol that endangered police officers and lawmakers. So now the agents are the scofflaws, and the scofflaw is the dispenser of “justice”?

Trump is even making it easier for American companies to bribe foreign governments — something that’s not exactly an American ideal.

Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office was prosecuting the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, resigned on Thursday before she could be fired, after Trump’s Justice Department ordered her to drop the case against the mayor. Trump seemed willing to let Adams, his latest sycophant, off the hook if he cooperated with the administration’s deportation efforts. On Thursday, Adams granted immigration officers access to the city’s jail.

On “Fox & Friends” on Friday, Adams sat with Tom Homan, Trump’s monomaniacal border czar, who didn’t mince words.

“If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City,” Homan said. “And we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”

Sassoon is a conservative legal star with Harvard and Yale degrees who clerked for Antonin Scalia and is a contributor to the Federalist Society — and is, by the way, going through all this mishegoss with a baby due in mid-March.

She is the heroine of the story, and Adams is the miscreant. But Trump and his former lawyer, now the acting No. 2 at Justice, Emil Bove III, are trying to brand her as incompetent and insubordinate and Adams as politically persecuted (like Trump).

Six more Justice Department officials quit after Sassoon, including the lead prosecutor on the Adams case, a former Brett Kavanaugh clerk named Hagan Scotten. Scotten wrote to Bove: “If no lawyer within earshot of the president is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”

R.F.K. Jr., our new secretary of health and human services — as hard as that is to believe — is hailed by Trump as a health savior, when he’s a dire threat to America’s children with his dismissal of vaccines.

Most of the world sees Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero and Vladimir Putin as a villain. I feel queasy when I hear President Trump talking dotingly about Putin, a K.G.B.-trained thug. I’m sure that dogs skulk away from Putin as he walks by.

But Putin has made it his business to seduce the president, so the easily flattered Trump sees Zelensky as the inevitable loser in his bid to keep Ukraine intact. As the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, put it, Zelensky needs to get with it and understand “hard power realities,” like the reality that he’s not getting all of his territory back.

On Ukraine joining NATO, Trump sounds like a Putin spokesman, asserting that “Russia would never accept” that.

In a speech in Brussels on Thursday, Hegseth, said, “We can talk all we want about values. Values are important. But you can’t shoot values. You can’t shoot flags. And you can’t shoot strong speeches. There is no replacement for hard power.”

But if we lose our values and abandon what those before us have fought for, are we the same America? Our heroes preserved the Union and liberated Europe from the Nazis. We’re supposed to be the shining city on the hill. It feels as if we’re turning our country into a crass, commercial product, making it cruel, as we maximize profits.

I hope, as President Trump and Elon Musk exercise their “masculine maximalism,” they remember the words of John Wayne in the 1972 western, “The Cowboys”: “A big mouth don’t make a big man.”

Christopher Jencks in his Harvard office in 1972.  Credit…Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

I was sad to read of the passing of Christopher Jencks, a giant among sociologists doing research on education and social inequality.  I started referencing him decades ago when he followed up on James Coleman’s study (Coleman Report) on factors influencing education achievement. Jencks, in what was perhaps the most extensive study to that time (3 year longitudinal study), attempted to refine maybe even refute the Coleman Report, came to essentially the same conclusions as Coleman. In his report/book, Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (1972), he stated:

“children seem to be more influenced by what happens at home than what happens in school. They may also be more influenced by what happens on the street and by what they see on television. Everything else, the school budget, its policies, the characteristics of teachers is either secondary or completely irrelevant.”

His 1972 research in still pertinent today in 2025.

Below is an obituary that appeared in The New York Times.

May he rest in peace!

Tony

The New York Times

Christopher Jencks, a Shaper of Views on Economic Inequality, Dies at 88

His clear prose, illuminating data and novel arguments, transformed debates around issues like public education and welfare reform

By Clay Risen

Feb. 12, 2025

Christopher Jencks, a highly regarded sociologist who helped transform public and expert opinion on complex policy issues like homelessness, income inequality and racial gaps in standardized testing, died on Saturday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 88.

His wife, the political scientist Jane Mansbridge, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Mr. Jencks had an unconventional background for an academic social scientist: He had an undergraduate degree in English literature, followed by a stint as an opinion journalist, and despite holding an endowed chair in sociology at Harvard, he never earned a doctorate.

If anything, that background seemed to help him. In books and articles, he wrote clear, concise sentences backed by finely honed data, presenting arguments that cut to the quick of policy debates, often in novel ways that defied traditional left-right divisions.

His 1994 book, “The Homeless,” is a case in point. In a mere 176 pages, including endnotes, he offered a dramatically lower estimate of the country’s homeless population than what was assumed at the time: less than 300,000, versus the accepted estimate of up to 3 million, a number, he said, that had been inflated to draw attention to the issue.

He then walked through the reasons homelessness was rising — including cuts to social services and the closing of mental institutions — following this explanation with a suite of often surprising prescriptions, including bringing back “Skid Row” neighborhoods.

In a 1972 report, Mr. Jencks and seven associates at Harvard found that education reform was limited in what it could do to reduce inequality.

Mr. Jencks also proved refreshingly willing to change his mind when the situation changed. By the 1990s, he had shifted his position on education somewhat; as manufacturing jobs declined and the demand for skilled workers grew, the benefits of education, he said, had become more pronounced.

Though he joined Harvard as a lecturer in 1967 and spent the rest of his career in academia, he kept a foothold in journalism. In 1973, he helped found Working Papers for a New Society, a wonky periodical dedicated to sifting through the successes and failures of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.

In 1990, he and several other journalistically inclined social scientists founded The American Prospect, a left-of-center magazine; with Kathryn Edin, he wrote one of its first feature articles.

That article, “The Real Welfare Problem,” was vintage Jencks. It grew out of an observation by Dr. Edin, who had been his graduate student, about the large number of aid recipients who worked under the table to make ends meet.

As the writers showed through meticulous analysis, the problem was not greedy welfare cheats but a pernicious aspect of the system: It paid too little, and cut that support further as soon as people looked for other means of income. That insight did much to frame the debate over welfare reform in the 1990s.

“Most people assume that low benefits just force recipients to live frugally,” they wrote. “But low benefits have another, more sinister effect that neither conservatives nor liberals like to acknowledge: they force most welfare recipients to lie and cheat in order to survive.”

Christopher Jencks was born on Oct. 22, 1936, in Baltimore. His parents initially chose to forgo a middle name for him, then changed their minds and gave him “Sandys,” a pluralized version of a childhood nickname.

His father, Francis, was an architect, and his mother, Elizabeth (Pleasants) Jencks, oversaw the household. The Jencks were wealthy, and Christopher was educated at expensive private schools, including Phillips Exeter, from which he graduated in 1954.

He earned an English degree from Harvard in 1958 and a master’s degree in human development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1959.

Moving to Washington, he wrote for and helped edit The New Republic and was a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank.

His first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to Dr. Mansbridge, whom he married in 1976, he is survived by their son, Nat; their grandson; and a brother, Stephen.

Mr. Jencks moved to Northwestern University in 1979 and returned to Harvard in 1996. He retired in 2016.

Though he retained a willingness to buck liberal orthodoxies where the data demanded it, Mr. Jencks remained at heart a believer in the need for large-scale government interventions to alleviate inequality.

He insisted that, in the main, the War on Poverty had worked, even as many liberals in the 1980s and ’90s were turning against such programs.

The problem, he said, was one of perception: People expected wealth-transfer programs, like Medicaid and Aid to Families With Dependent Children, to solve a host of social ills, not just eliminate income disparities — something they were unable to do.

“The remedies for crime and family breakdown lie much deeper, requiring changes in the fundamental character of our society, not just a few innovative government programs,” Mr. Jencks said in a 1996 speech at the American Enterprise Institute. “But that is a story for another time.”

Dear Commons Community,

Today we honor and remember our presidents especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln who led our country during perilous times.

We hope and pray that our current president does not have to lead us in perilous times again!

Tony

Danielle Sassoon. Photo: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg News

Dear Commons Community,

The Wall Street Journal has a scathing editorial this morning on the way Trump and the DOJ have handled dropping charges against  NYC Mayor Carl Adams.  It skewers both while praising the integrity of prosecutor Danielle Sassoon for resigning her position rather than dismissing charges against Adams as demanded by acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove.  Here is an excerpt:

“Sassoon’s memo to Ms. Bondi explained in detail that the prosecution wasn’t a case of weaponized politics and why it is improper to dismiss a case based on a quid pro quo for policy cooperation by Mr. Adams. “Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged,” Ms. Sassoon wrote, “I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations.”

If the meeting with the AG didn’t take place, Ms. Sassoon said she’d resign. This is how a public official is supposed to behave when disagreeing on policy or ethical principle. If you can’t in good conscience follow instructions, you should offer to resign so your bosses can do what they want.

…

But Mr. Bove didn’t leave it there. He responded with a blistering letter to Ms. Sassoon that threatened her career and those of assistant U.S. Attorneys who worked on the Adams case. “The [assistant U.S. Attorneys] principally responsible for this case are being placed on off-duty, administrative leave pending investigations by the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, both of which will also evaluate your conduct,” Mr. Bove wrote.

An investigation because she resigned on principle? Really?”

The entire editorial is below.

It aptly describes how low the DOJ under Trump and Bove can go!

Tony

———————————————————————————-

The Wall Street Journal

The Trump Trial of Danielle Sassoon

The young prosecutor behaved well in resigning, not so her bosses at the Justice Department.

By The Editorial Board

Updated Feb. 14, 2025 9:50 pm ET

The resignations of prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York this week are playing in the press as typical “resistance” to Donald Trump. They’re far from that, and the real story speaks well of the prosecutors but sends a rotten message to any lawyer who might want to join the Trump Administration.

The story begins with the memo this week by acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove instructing the Southern District to drop criminal charges without prejudice against New York Mayor Eric Adams. The memo cited two grounds for dismissal: The prosecution was an example of lawfare because Mr. Adams had criticized President Biden’s immigration policies, and Mr. Trump needs Mr. Adams to help on immigration enforcement.

***

The Trump transition had recently made Danielle Sassoon the acting U.S. Attorney until Mr. Trump’s nominee is confirmed. But Ms. Sassoon had watched the prosecution of Mr. Adams and didn’t agree with the Bove memo. We know from sources close to her that she agonized over how to respond. She decided to send a memo to newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi explaining her views, and seeking a meeting to discuss the matter.

Ms. Sassoon is a member of the Federalist Society and clerked for two conservative pillars of the judiciary, Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. She led the prosecution of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and is a rising star in conservative legal circles.

Her memo to Ms. Bondi explained in detail that the prosecution wasn’t a case of weaponized politics and why it is improper to dismiss a case based on a quid pro quo for policy cooperation by Mr. Adams. “Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged,” Ms. Sassoon wrote, “I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations.”

If the meeting with the AG didn’t take place, Ms. Sassoon said she’d resign. This is how a public official is supposed to behave when disagreeing on policy or ethical principle. If you can’t in good conscience follow instructions, you should offer to resign so your bosses can do what they want.

That’s where this should have ended. We should add that we believe Mr. Trump, as the President who supervises the Justice Department, has the right to order a prosecution dismissed. If he thinks cooperation on immigration matters more than fighting political corruption, he can make that call, however unwise.

But Mr. Bove didn’t leave it there. He responded with a blistering letter to Ms. Sassoon that threatened her career and those of assistant U.S. Attorneys who worked on the Adams case. “The [assistant U.S. Attorneys] principally responsible for this case are being placed on off-duty, administrative leave pending investigations by the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, both of which will also evaluate your conduct,” Mr. Bove wrote.

An investigation because she resigned on principle? Really?

One of the assistant attorneys who worked the Adams case, Hagan Scotten, responded with his own resignation letter to Mr. Bove: “No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”

Mr. Scotten is a Special Forces veteran and winner of two bronze stars who clerked for then Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court.

***

None of this reflects well on the Bondi Justice Department. Rather than accept a meeting with the leader of the most important U.S. Attorney’s office, the new AG passed the buck to her acting deputy. That deputy then showed awful political judgment in a scorched-earth letter that turned an internal debate into a damaging spectacle.

The Trump Administration is acting on its belief in the unitary executive that enforces discipline across the executive branch, and we sympathize with that goal. But one argument against the unitary executive is that there is no check on corruption. The Adams case, with its tolerance of alleged corruption, isn’t a good look to persuade judges ruling on its executive actions.

Worse is the lesson for Administration lawyers. The message is that rather than exercise individual legal judgment, they’d simply better salute without cavil—or else the Administration will ruin their reputations.

Mr. Trump was saved many times in his first term by lawyers willing to tell him when he was wrong. Let’s hope the trial of Danielle Sassoon isn’t the model for the next four years.

Dear Commons Community,

Laura Manzano, a food stylist, recipe developer, and writer living in Brooklyn, New York, has an article in martha stewart describing pasta al dente and the right way to prepare it.  I  cook  pasta on a regular basis (it is my favorite food), Manzano’s advice is right-on especially her advice about taste testing:

“…The best way to ensure perfectly al dente pasta is to set a timer for a few minutes before the lower end of the recommended cooking range for the type of pasta you are cooking. Handal sees guidelines for cooking times as “merely that—guides to follow to give you a general time reference,” He says the foolproof way is to taste, and taste and taste again, as one minute or even 30 seconds can mean the difference between al dente and mushy pasta.”

I would also add that pasta should be eaten slowly with a spoon and fork for the long thin varieties.

Below is Manzano’s entire article.

Tony

——————————————————————————————

Why Italians Always Cook Pasta al Dente—and the Right Way to Do It!

Laura Manzano

February 15, 2025 at 11:15 AM

When it comes to preparing something as straightforward as pasta—a food consisting of only three ingredients—every detail matters, especially how you cook it. Achieving that perfect al dente pasta, where each piece is tender yet still slightly chewy, isn’t just about upholding Italian tradition—it makes the pasta taste better. But what does al dente mean, and how can one achieve this gold standard? We spoke to a chef and cooking teacher to learn more, including how to avoid overcooking pasta and a foolproof method for cooking it to al dente. Whether you’re preparing pasta for a dinner party, bringing it to a picnic, or just making a quick weeknight meal for yourself, mastering the art of al dente is one of those small yet significant techniques that will make all the difference for this foundational ingredient.

What Does al Dente Mean?

Often, in a recipe or on the side of a box of pasta, you’ll see the phrase al dente. It’s an Italian expression that translates literally as “to the tooth.” When used in the context of cooking, it describes a food that is cooked until it is tender but still slightly firm or chewy when bitten. Cooking something al dente means you’ve achieved that perfect zone of doneness, right in between crunchy and mushy. The phrase is most often used with pasta but sometimes for rice, other grains, or vegetables.

Why Pasta Should Not Be Overcooked

Cooking pasta al dente doesn’t just offer a better textural experience; it also helps pasta to better hold its shape and absorb sauces. “When pasta is overcooked, starches break down completely, resulting in a pasta that is soft and soggy,” says Michael Handal, chef at the Institute of Culinary Education’s New York City campus. “Texture, taste, nutritional value, and appearance are all impacted as a result.”

Pasta cooked al dente has a lower glycemic index than overcooked pasta, Handal says, preventing rapid blood sugar spikes. Not only that, but eating al dente pasta rather than overcooked pasta improves digestion, provides extra nutrients, and satiety may even be achieved sooner in the meal.

How to Cook al Dente Pasta

To prepare pasta to perfect al dente, no matter the size or shape, whether fresh or dried, these few basic steps are essential:

• Use a large pot of boiling/simmering water. A standard 8-quart pot is ideal, even for a small amount of pasta. This ensures the pasta has space to move about freely, the most necessary factor for even cooking.
• For both fresh and dried pasta, be sure to salt your water well, “just to the point where it might be considered over-salted,” says Handal. He recommends tasting a spoonful of the pasta water to be sure.
• Do not add oil to your pasta water. Handal says it is unnecessary. It remains on the surface of the water and does not mix with or coat the pieces of pasta.
• Do not rinse cooked pasta, says Handal, Especially if it is to be combined immediately with a sauce. Rinsing strips the pasta of its starchy coating that makes for a luxurious and velvety final product when tossed vigorously with a sauce.The two exceptions to the no-rinsing rule? If it will be used later on and reheated, or if preparing a cold pasta salad.

How to Test if Pasta Is al Dente

Timing: The best way to ensure perfectly al dente past is to set a timer for a few minutes before the lower end of the recommended cooking range for the type of pasta you are cooking. Handal sees guidelines for cooking times as “merely that—guides to follow to give you a general time reference,” He says the foolproof way is to taste, and taste and taste again, as one minute or even 30 seconds can mean the difference between al dente and mushy pasta.

Testing: There are many factors that impact the cooking time of pasta: both the quantity and the quality of the pasta being cooked, the shape of the pasta, the volume of water in the pot, the size of the pot, the degree to which the pasta water is simmering or boiling, and more. “Tasting along the way allows you to actually “feel” (taste and mouthfeel) how cooked pasta really is and allows you to adjust your cooking time accordingly,” Handal says.

His suggestion for perfecting this step? Practice, practice, practice! “Each time you cook pasta, take the time to become familiar with the degree of doneness you find the most appealing, and strive to reach that level every time you have the opportunity to cook a fresh or dried pasta,” he says.

DOJ Attorney Danielle Sassoon

Dear Commons Community,

In response to a federal order to drop criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, seven people, including the acting chief, a deputy assistant attorney general and three deputy chiefs have resigned from the Department of Justice.

Adams was accused in November 2023, of accepting over $100,000 in travel perks from Turkish nationals in exchange for expediting Manhattan’s Turkish consulate’s opening.

In September last year, under President Joe Biden, a federal grand jury announced they would be indicting the mayor, a move Adams believes was politically motivated due to his outspoken opposition to housing migrant asylum seekers in New York City.

On Feb. 10, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to drop Adams’ corruption charges.

To drop the charges, two attorneys at the U.S. Attorney office for the Southern District of New York must sign the motion, per CNBC.

One resignation, announced in a letter to newly-sworn in U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, from attorney Danielle Sassoon, said the government did not have a “valid basis to seek dismissal” of Adams’ charges.

The resignation was accepted by Bove in a letter released by The New York Times. Bove wrote, “This decision is based on your choice to continue pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case.”

“You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice by suggesting that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General,” Bove wrote.

As an aside, Sassoon, who clerked for the late conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and is a member of the right-leaning Federalist Society, was appointed by Trump0.

Another resignation letter came from an assistant U.S. attorney in Sassoon’s office, Hagan Scotten.

He ended his resignation letting by saying, “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”

Adams maintains he did not accept bribes from Turkey and was never offered a trade of authority for the dismissal of his criminal charges.

What an embarrassment Adams and Bove are for an honest judicial system.

Tony

Roger Wicker

Dear Commons Community,

Republican Senator Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee thinks Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a “rookie mistake” earlier this week when he undercut Ukraine’s bargaining position with Russia before peace talks have even started.

In an address to NATO in Brussels Wednesday, Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host with no prior experience implementing defense policy, said it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to expect a return to its prewar borders or to join NATO. 

Hegseth also sharply criticized America’s closest military allies and said NATO wouldn’t rescue a European nation if it’s attacked by Russia.  As reported by The Huffington Post.

“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told Politico in an interview at the Munich Security Conference Friday, referring to Carlson’s inexplicable infatuation with Moscow.

Wicker said he was “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments, adding, “Everybody knows … you don’t say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t agree to.”

After Wicker’s comments gained traction Friday, Hegseth reversed his own reversal, telling reporters he “stands by the comments [he] made on that first day in the Ukraine Contact Group.”

President Donald Trump has broadcast a particular chumminess with Putin, but Wicker called the Russian authoritarian a “war criminal who needs to be in prison for the rest of his life.”

“There are good guys and bad guys in this war, and the Russians are the bad guys,” he added. “They invaded, contrary to almost every international law, and they should be defeated.”

Wicker and his fellow Republicans confirmed this “rookie”.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In an effort to align with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that terminated diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives across the federal government, the Army and Navy took down web pages that highlighted the history and myriad contributions of female soldiers and sailors.

While webpages on the history of female service remains intact on the U.S. Army Reserve website, the Army’s link to its “Women in Army History” page was taken down.  

Similarly, last week, a page devoted to women’s service in the U.S. Navy, as well as a page entitled “Navy Women of Courage and Intelligence,” was removed by the Navy History and Heritage Command, replaced by a “page not found” message.  As reported by Military Times.

“We are working to fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives,” Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Ivester, a spokesman for the command, told Military Times.

In regards to the Navy History and Heritage Command website, the process of revising and reuploading the sub-landing pages regarding diversity, women and Black service members is ongoing but, according to Lt. Cmdr. Lauren Chatmas, a Navy spokesperson, will eventually all be back online, in accordance with Trump’s directives.

“Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) is in the process of reviewing and updating their online content to ensure compliance with directives outlined in Executive Orders issued by the President,” Chatmas told Military Times. “As this alignment systematically occurs, content will be available in the Heritage section of NHHC’s website. The Navy is executing and implementing the directives with professionalism, efficiency, and in full alignment with national security objectives.”

Elsewhere across Navy websites, some pages remain intact, including a “Women in the Navy” landing page.

Last Tuesday, the web page for the U.S. Army Women’s Museum at Fort Gregg-Adams in Hopewell, Virginia — the only museum in the world dedicated to “preserving and sharing the history of the contributions of women to the Army” — was removed, showing an error message. Since Friday afternoon, however, the webpage has since been restored, and the museum is operating at its normal hours.

Other government entities, such as the National Park Service, Library of Congress, the National Archives and the Smithsonian, have so far eschewed removing their history landing pages regarding women in uniform.

On Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order deeming that “influential institutions, including the Federal Government … have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.”

The order left many of the branches scrambling to halt DEI programming, with the Air Force pulling a basic military training course on Jan. 23 that included videos on the Tuskegee Airmen and Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, before reinstating it after initial outcry.

On the eve of Black History Month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared “Identity Months” dead at the Defense Department and “that DoD Components and Military Departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, including National African American/Black History Month, Women’s History Month … Pride Month” among others.

As the proud father of a daughter who is an Iraq War veteran, it is disgusting that someone like Trump would provide even an inkling of the idea that the contributions of women in the military should be negated.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is providing a table of the first wave of reconceived Carnegie classifications.  The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education, which manage the classifications, posted the new college research designations yesterday.

There are now three possible research categories that colleges can fall under:

• Research 1: Very High Spending and Doctorate Production (187 institutions): Institutions that, on average in a single year, spend at least $50 million on research and development and award at least 70 research doctorates.
• Research 2: High Spending and Doctorate Production (139 institutions): Institutions that, on average in a single year, spend at least $5 million on research and development and award at least 20 research doctorates.
• Research Colleges and Universities (218 institutions): Institutions not on one of the above lists that, on average in a single year, award at least $2.5 million on research and development.

The third category, “Research Colleges and Universities,” is new, and allows for institutions that conduct some research to get a research designation even if they don’t offer doctorates, which wasn’t possible in past Carnegie classifications. It also allows for tribal colleges to get a research designation. In the past, “tribal college” and the “R1” and “R2″ categories were mutually exclusive. The change is intended to “shed light on institutions that have engaged in research but historically haven’t been recognized for it,” Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said in a statement.

Over all, the Carnegie Classification’s managers hoped both to acknowledge the research that happens at non-doctoral universities, and to make research intensity less central to a college’s identity, as they told The Chronicle previously.

The American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation plan to release new classifications for every college — not just those that conduct research — in April 2025. In the new core classifications, colleges will be sorted by “characteristics including the types of degrees they award, the fields of study in which students receive their degree, and the size of the institution,” according to a release accompanying the new research listings.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading a third novel by Ronald H. Balson entitled, The Girl from Berlin, written in 2018.  This is the third book by Balson that I have read during the winter intersession.  He has a formula that captivates the reader and uses a modern day trial investigation to unravel a mystery that took place during the 1930s and 1940s in Europe.  This story is based in Germany and Italy and focuses on the life of an aged Italian woman (Gabrielle) who is about to lose her home and villa in Tuscany in 2017 to a German-owned corporation.  Gabrielle’s attorney, Catherine Lockhart,  and private investigator husband, Liam Taggart, are employed to reveal events that took place eighty years ago to determine who are the rightful owners of the property. There is lots of intrigue and Nazi cruelty in the story.

If you are a mystery fan and at all interested in World War II, the Holocaust, and the Nazi era, I highly recommend The Girl from Berlin.

Below is a brief review and summary that appeared in Class and the City.

Tony

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Class and the City

January 2, 2019

Book Review – The Girl From Berlin by Ronald H. Balson

It’s a little bit tricky – maneuvering crying on your commute into the city because you’ve reached the point where the book you’re reading has had one too many parallels to contemporary times and none of the characters deserve the violent endings they inevitably receive. Of course, when you embark on reading historical fiction about WWII and the Holocaust, happy endings are not to be expected. Yet in this story, Ronald Balson is able to weave in a few necessary plot development surprises.

The book begins with an Alfa Romeo driving through the gorgeous hills of Tuscany – my mother’s dream – in modern times. This is before we get into the book within the book that takes us back into the confusion and total hell of the Holocaust. I haven’t read any of Balson’s first four books (yet!) but I understand that he writes a series that features lawyer Catherine Lockhart and her husband, Liam. Similar to the way Fredrick Backman writes his stories, they are not sequels and prequels to one another, but instead just hold the same two crime solving characters like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, who are apt to pop up in any story to take charge of an unfortunate situation.

In this book, I was thrilled to see that three of the main characters were female. That Balson, a practicing lawyer himself, wrote from the perspective of two female lawyers, who had men as their sidekicks. It was a nice surprise to have a book written by a man where powerful women were at the forefront and their husbands were able to pleasantly support them in their professional endeavors. It is these characters and the characters of the story from the past that make the book truly spectacular. The character development is phenomenal and the way Balson is able to portray the lasting affects of trauma was so creative. The premise of the story is that an eighty-something year old woman in Pienza is about to be evicted from her villa and vineyard due to confusing property title records, after charges were pressed by a major wine manufacturer. The woman, Gabrielle, is unable to speak about her past due to traumatic events and instead shares copies of an unpublished manuscript with her new lawyer, Catherine Lockhart. By reading through the manuscript and following the clues it leads her to, Lockhart and her husband are able to realize discrepancies in the property records surrounding the villa and nearby properties. It’s perhaps the most frightening aspect of all, when you realize that the Holocaust was a reality not too long ago.

This book is a must-read, for the clever story crafting and interesting characters and the mysteries they carry with them. But not only for these purposes. In today’s political climate there are many seriously stomach-flipping parallels occurring with what took place in Germany in the early 1900’s. I was on the NJ transit entering the tunnel heading into New York Penn Station when I read on page 66 that Hitler had promised to “Make Germany Great Again.” My stomach entirely turned on itself and I started to feel bile coming up through my throat. These are not coincidences. Just like it’s not a coincidence that earlier last month Trump announced that he was trying to modify citizenship rights so that not everyone born in the United States should be considered a citizen anymore. Perhaps the one difference between the present United States and Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s is that the US has a democracy and constitution. And though the democracy part seems to be easily manipulated by foreign powers and complying social media networks, it does still give me the smallest piece of mind that the Democrats just took back the majority in the House.

Politics aside, do yourself a favor and read this captivating book. Who knows, you might learn a little something too.

Stay Classy, xx.