Contest: How Often Do The Words Man (Men) and Woman (Women) Appear In The US Constitution?

The first contest on this blog was in July 2009.  That was a pretty passive contest.  The winner was the person who was listed as visitor #123,456.  We had one winner and some that were close.  The winner, BonzaiJay, later sent me a picture of his prizes.

The second contest was in May 2012.  That person had to guess how many dandelions were in the bag I'd collected in my front lawn.  She won a dinner at the Thai Kitchen.  But she'd moved to Juneau and I don't recall she ever collected her prize.  

So it's been ten years since I've had a contest.  This one requires more work.  Here's an intro:

The Supreme Court's majority has made a lot of noise about strictly following the original text of the US Constitution.  So I pulled up an online version of the Constitution  and searched it for some key  words.  

Reviewing the Constitution this way, it's clear that all USians should read the Constitution at least every six months, if not more frequently. [I saw someone use that term and I'm trying it out as a substitute for Americans when I only mean people in the US and not all of North, South, and Central America.  I've been using US residents, but USians is so much easier]

So to encourage you, here's the CONTEST.  

Make a copy [take a screen shot or a photo] of the chart below and fill it out.  You can just guess.  Or you can go to an online copy of the Constitution and search the terms.  There will be prizes for the top three submissions.*  You can email your answers my email address: whatdoino (at) alaska (dot) net. You can try this link but I can't make it work in my draft -  Email me. 

	In Constittuion?		How often?
	YES	NO
MAN (MEN)
WOMAN (WOMEN)
CORPORATION
INDUSTRY
PERSON
CITIZEN
LIFE
LIBERTY
ECONOMY
CAPITAL
CAPITALISM
MARKET
MARRIAGE
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
BUSINESS
TAX
VOTE
COMMERCE
BANKRUPTCY
SECURITIES
SEX
RELIGION
CHRISTIAN
WELFARE
THE PEOPLE
GOD

The more I've read about originalism or textualism, the more I'm convinced I was right from the beginning:  It's basically no more, probably less, objective than living constitutional theories. 

Meanwhile, you might want to read (or reread) my posts on Originalism:

Thursday, February 25, 2016   I Think Scalia's Originalism Is Like Intelligent Design Of Constitutional Theories

Monday, March 20, 2017    As Neil Gorsuch Takes Center Stage, What Exactly Is Originalism About?

Monday, October 12, 2020     Revisiting Originalism

*Since this contest requires some work, I'm not sure there will be that many submissions. So, the odds for those who do submit would seem pretty good.  Prizes will be determined by interests of the winner and my imagination and geography.  (Mail v. local pickup may affect size.)  

I have no idea how many people will submit, if any.  But I'll start with people who get the most correct answers.  But since you can look these answers up, there's the possibility of more than three with the same correct answers.  In that case, if someone chooses to write a few comments about what they learned from the exercise, I'll evaluate those comments. (And post them with your permission.)  If it''s a draw and there are no comments, I'll choose randomly.  

Deadline for submission:  September 21, 2022

Looking For Queen Elizabeth II In Invisible Cities

Queen Elizabeth II from
National Portrait Gallery

The news of Queen Elizabeth II's death comes as I'm reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.  Calvino's book imagines the tales that Marco Polo told Kublai Khan about the cities Polo had visited, many in Khan's empire, many not.  

Polo laments the impossibility of accurately describing these cities.  He raises questions about how to merge the past and the present,  the apparent and the invisible, the body and the soul of the cities he's visited.  Nothing is as it seems, or at least nothing of importance is.  His stories remind me of ethnographer Clifford Gertz' 'thick description".  The stories would suggest  caution taking too seriously the people explaining the meaning of Queen Elizabeth II's passing.

Let me give you an example. I also ask you to slow down.   Calvino wasted no words.  Read each word.  Maybe even read the passage twice.  

"In vain, great-hearted Kublai, shall I attempt to describe Zaira, city of high bastions.  I could tell you how many steps up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades' curves, and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs;  but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing.  The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past:  the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet;  the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession;  the height of that railing and the leap of the adutererer who climbed over it at dawn;  the tilt of the guttering and a cat's progress along it as he slips into the same window;  the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared behind the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering;  the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock.

As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands.  A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira's past.  The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the blisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls." 

Queen Elizabeth is like a Calvino city.  Her death is not simply the death of one human being. It's a death in a monarchy that goes back more than a millennium.  It's the death of the heir to an empire that ruled much of the world, claiming the riches and labor of the people who were subjects of that ruling royal family.  While Queen Elizabeth II reigned longer than any other monarch in her family, she also reigned over the sharp decline of the empire and of the family's power and scope.  

Henry VIII image Wikipedia

"Queen Elizabeth II is the Church of England chief, officially known as the Supreme Governor, and sits at the helm of a centuries-old British institution established by the monarchy. Its founder was Tudor monarch King Henry VIII, one of the country's most infamous leaders, who created the breakaway institution after turning his back on Catholicism. Centuries later, the Queen has emerged as another landmark ruler who continues to honour the former King's religious practices. But people have questioned whether the two figures who share a throne also share blood.. . 

While there is no direct line between the two, the modern royals have a distant connection to the Tudors.

They owe their existence to Queen Margaret of Scotland, grandmother of Mary Queen of Scots, and King Henry VIII's sister."  (From Express)

 Henry VIII lived from 1491 - 1547. 

What is real and what is imagination?  What is real, but incomplete?  How many Queen Elizabeth IIs are there?  The one seen by her father King George VI?  Her's sister's Elizabeth.  Her husband's.  The views of her children and grandchildren.  There's Gandhi's Queen Elizabeth. Nelson Mandela's? John F. Kennedy's? Churchill's?   Marilyn Monroe's or Elton John's? And every British subject has their own version of the Queen.  

Shakespeare wrote a plays about Henry VIII.  Netflix aired a television series about Elizabeth II.

Where lies the true Elizabeth II?  Nowhere and everywhere would be Calvino's Marco Polo's answer.  

Invisible Cities also includes descriptions of conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo.  
In this excerpt I'm only using Kublai Khan's thoughts.  For perspective, Khan lived from 1215 - 1294.  Calvino wrote about him in the 20th Century.

Kublai Khan from WikePedia

"From the high balustrade of the palace the Great Khan watches his empire grow.  First the line of the boundaries had expanded to embrace conquered territories, but the regiments' advance encountered half-deserted regions, scrubby villages of huts, marshes where the rice refused to sprout, emaciated peoples, dried rivers, reeds.  "My empire has grown too far toward the outside.  It is time,"  the Khan thought, "for it to grow within itself," and he dreamed of pomegranate groves, the fruit so ripe it burst its skin, zebus browning on the spit and dripping fat, veins of metal surfacing in landslips with glistening nuggets.  

Now many seasons of abundance have filled the granaries.  The rivers in flood have borne forests of beams to support the bronze roofs of temples and palaces.  caravans of slaves have shifted mountains of serpentine marble across the continent.  The Great Khan contemplates an empire covered with cities that weight upon the earth and upon mankind, crammed with wealth and traffic overladen with ornaments and offices, complicated with mechanisms and hierarchies, swollen, tense, ponderous.

"The empire is being crushed by its own weight," Kublai thinks, and in his dreams now cities light as kites appear, pierced cities like laces, cities transparent as mosquito netting, cities like leaves' veins, cities lined like a hand's palm, filigree cities to be seen through their opaque and fictitious thickness."

Update On My Summer Bike Ride Across Turkey Using Anchorage Bike Trails, Wanders Off Into Otter Attacks And Feeding Ducks

This summer's goal has been to bike from Istanbul to Cappadocia.  By my initial calculation, that was 750 kilometers (466 miles).  So that was my target until I found a site (Ride with gps) where people track their bike rides.  I found someone who had made my trip. Ending up in Avanos.  But he was taking a longer route - it looks like he tried to avoid the main highways that would have more traffic.  His route was a total of 889 kilometers (552 miles.)

So yesterday I got up to 751.8 kms.  Using the Ride with gps site, you can find exactly where that is. You can toggle between km and miles.  You can see the distance (and other factors) by putting the cursor along the route.  I can see I'm riding along a lake, but on the biking map there wasn't a specific place to look up.  Had to go to Google maps to find Aksaray and some pictures.  This seemed the nicest.  

Photo from Google Maps

Of course, I'm doing this along the bike trails of Anchorage - anywhere from about 6km to 20km on any given day.  To make it to Avanos, I've got about 140 kms left to go.  Cappadacio is a region of Turkey where there are lots of caves.  Here's a link to a site with a short video that gives you a sense of the other-worldly landscape of the area and some of the towns there.  

But I only have pictures of the Anchorage bike trails, but they're pretty amazing too.  So here are some from the last several days of biking mostly along Campbell Creek trails.  

Campbell Creek near Lake Otis.

Going east from here, the creek winds back and forth, leading to a series of bridges along the trail.

Much further up the creek is this bridge near Campbell Airstrip.  There is a mix of hiking, mountain biking, ski trails, and dog sled trails in this area.  

This part of the creek, and the trail, is west of Lake Otis and goes south to Taku Lake and beyond. 

Yesterday there were lots of people fishing at Taku Lake.  I was taking a picture of three people fishing together (looked like a family) when this guy moved from the group.  If you look closely you can see the fish he just pulled out of the lake.  

Below is Goose Lake on another day in very different light.  Yellow leaves are starting to show.  This is a spot where people feed the ducks.  I stopped to take a picture and all this ducks moved in my direction looking for handouts.  Here's a link to a National Geographic website with a long explanation of why feeding bread to ducks is not good for the ducks.  Just one of many points:

“White bread in particular has no real nutritional value, so while birds may find it tasty, the danger is that they will fill up on it instead of other foods that could be more beneficial to them,” says a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

There's a lot more on the subject at the link above.

At University Lake near Alaska Pacific University, which has become a popular dog park, I found a warning for another hazard.  

It's only recently that I've become aware of river otters in Anchorage.  In August 2021 there was a report of river otters attack dogs in Anchorage.  That story made it to The Guardian in UK as well as many other news outlets.  The earliest report of aggressive river otters in Anchorage I found was 2019 which called the river otters "a new menace for Anchorage dogs."   Sea otters, in the ocean, have been here for as long as I've been in Alaska.  

Here's a picture of Taku Lake yesterday.  The 2019 otter attack was here.  I've never seen river otters in Anchorage, but I did see a beaver once at Taku.  

Shantaram Is Finally Coming

On April 27, 2007, the first paragraph of my post was:

"The book was calling to me from the cabinet in the big open breakfast room of the Chiengmai bed and breakfast. I opened the glass door and started reading the book with my breakfast. “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them.” After reading a few pages, I was done with breakfast and put it back into the glassed cabinet."

After a couple more breakfasts reading Shantaram, there was no way I could just put the book back

in the cabinet and wait until I could find my own copy.  I think I left another book in its place and then I wrote

"I’ve been living in parallel worlds - my ostensibly 'real' life and Roberts' India - almost a month now. [It's over 900 pages.] Flying back to the US from Thailand got me a long way into Roberts' world. By the time I reached LA, I needed to look it up on the internet. Was this fiction or autobiography? The morning after seeing Mira Nair’s The Namesake, I discovered Shantaram was loosely autobiographical fiction, soon to be a movie directed by Mira Nair starring Johnny Depp."

Soon.  I guess in movie making - especially big, sprawling films - 15 years is vaguely within the limits of 'soon.'  

Because Sunday there was an article in the LA Times highlighting upcoming films and series.  Shantaram was on the list.

 [Coming] Oct. 14

‘Shantaram’

Hollywood has been trying to adapt “Shantaram,” Gregory David Roberts’ sprawling, quasi-autobiographical novel about a fugitive Australian bank robber on the lam in 1980s Mumbai, for nearly two decades. First there were scrapped film adaptations starting Johnny Depp and Joel Edgerton , then Apple revived the project for television. Now, after pandemic-related delays, a showrunner change and a production relocation, a 12-episode series with “Sons of Anarchy” star Charlie Hunnam in the lead is almost here. If the finished product is half as dramatic as the show’s backstory, viewers should be riveted. > Apple TV+

— Meredith Blake

So now I have to figure out how to watch an Apple TV series.  

Did Ranked Choice Voting Cost Palin The Election?

After the election results for Alaska's ranked choice voting election to fill the remainder of US Rep Don Young, Sarah Palin blamed her loss to Mary Peltola on Ranked Choice Voting.  

“Ranked-choice voting was sold as the way to make elections better reflect the will of the people. As Alaska – and America – now sees, the exact opposite is true. The people of Alaska do not want the destructive democrat agenda to rule our land and our lives, but that’s what resulted from someone’s experiment with this new crazy, convoluted, confusing ranked-choice voting system. It’s effectively disenfranchised 60% of Alaska voters."  [From her campaign website.]

The quick answer to the title question is "No".  

Below (way below) is a video discussing this question.  I don't know who these people are - it looks like it's a podcast from The Hill.   (Biasly rates The Hill "moderate" with an ever so slight lean to the right.)  But they do more or less reflect my sense of Ranked Choice Voting.  

What they don't discuss is how getting rid of the closed Republican primary - having an open primary with all candidates and picking the top four to be in the final Ranked Choice general election.  

A closed Republican primary would have probably led to a Palin victory and two major candidates - one Republican and one Democrat (Palin and Peltola) running in the general election, with some minor third party candidates.  

Would Peltola have been able to defeat Palin in that sort of general election?  We won't know.  But we do know that half of Begich's second votes went to either Peltola or no one.  Here's what it looked like on the Alaska Elections website:

click on images to enlarge

So it could well be that Peltola may have pulled out the victory under the old system.  Lots of Alaska remember how Palin quit being governor after only finishing part of the term.  Many also remember the issues with the Palin's oldest son over slashing school bus tires and opening his senior year in Michigan, and the giant brawl involving the Palin family and a Wasilla party.  

And long time Alaska Republicans remember how she publicly called out the GOP Party Chair for having a conflict of interest as a member of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission while, as GOP chair, soliciting donations from the oil companies the commission regulated.  

The benefit of Ranked Choice Voting, as they say in the video, is that you can vote for candidates that aren't likely to win without throwing away your vote, because you pick the one you like the most and then the next one, and if you like, the ones after that.  If you first choice loses, your second choice candidate (gets your vote instead.)

The Republicans - Begich and Palin - fought with each other in this campaign.  Ranked Choice Voting with an open primary means you can't alienate too many voters and it, theoretically, eliminates the extreme candidates who would win in a closed primary.  

There's also an interesting NYTimes article on this for those who can get past the paywall.  It looks at how Alaska got ranked choice voting and highlights Katherine Gehl who has devoted herself to the idea.  It mentions that an initiative in Missouri didn't get enough votes, but one in Nevada this year did.  Also interesting the Marc Elias who has been fighting hard with lawsuits against GOP attempts to deny that Biden won the election, worked hard against the Ranked Choice Initiative in Nevada.  Elias is a smart guy so I need to understand his opposition better. 

Also, a reminder for non-Alaskans, August 16 was also the primary election for the actual (not just the remaining months of Young's seat) Alaska House race.  Here's a list of the candidates, their vote tallies, and red marks the four top candidate who go on to the general election in November.

Tara Sweeney is both a Republican AND an Alaska Native Woman.  She is more aligned with oil interests.  I suspect that Alaska Natives will give Peltola their second vote if they vote first for Sweeney.  Will the Republicans come up with a more cooperative strategy and direct their voters to cast their next votes for the other Republicans?  Will it matter?  

Peltola has now gotten much more name recognition and more people have seen her.  She's so much more humble than the two candidates she beat in the Special Election, and unlike Palin, she speaks in whole sentences and in a calm tone.  Unless someone gets 50% + one vote on the first ballot, we won't know for two weeks, when all the ballots are in.  But if someone gets 48% in the first round and the others are much further back, that should be a good indicator too.  

When Will Alaska Supreme Court Issue Its Full Redistricting Ruling? [UPDATED 9/1 and 9/4/22]

 Wait, what?  I thought they ruled a long time ago?

Yes, they made a couple of rulings.  First they issued a decision on March 25, 2022 when the Redistricting Board appealed Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews' decision. They agreed with him on some things (particularly his calling the Eagle River Senate seats gerrymandering) but not on others (Matthews' ruling against the Board regarding the Skagway appeal and they also ruled against taking Cantwell out of the Denali Borough.  

Then after the Board addressed those issues, their decision was again appealed, Judge Thomas Matthews ruled again, and on May 24, 2022 the Supreme Court removed their temporary stay on Judge Matthews' order to the Board.  

BUT, these were short decisions that briefly summarized what they decided the Board needed to do.  These were NOT decisions that explained their decisions.  

Why do they need to explain their decisions?

The reasoning behind their decisions will help guide future Boards when they make their future redistricting maps.  If they do it clearly, these will be useful guidelines as the next Board grapples with what they can and can't do.  

Some things the Court ought to answer:

1.  Explain what appears to some as a contradiction between past rulings that said everything within a Borough boundary is considered Socio-Economically Integrated and their finding this time that Senate pairings in Anchorage were political gerrymandering.  Those two findings are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but since the Board's attorney's mantra was "everything within a Borough is SEI" the Board majority seemed to think that then they could pair any two contiguous house districts within the Municipality of Anchorage, and it would be fine. (Contiguity being the main legal criterion for a Senate pairing.)  Aren't things like race, economics, political leanings part of Socio-Economic Integration? Why then are factors like race, economics, and political leanings  within a single Municipality  indicators of political gerrymandering?  That needs to be explained.  And maybe the past rulings about everything in a Borough being SEI should be adjusted to reflect the differences within a Borough as populous as the Municipality of Anchorage.  Here's a post I did looking at past rulings about SEI.

[UPDATED Sept 4, 2022:  Maybe this is better focused:  I'd like to see the Court explain how they differentiate the criteria used to determine political gerrymandering and the criteria used for Socio-Economic Integration (SEI).  If Marcum hadn't mentioned that ER would have gotten an extra Senate seat, would the other characteristics of the two paired house districts been irrelevant?  At one point in the Supreme Court hearing there's a discussion between Board attorney Singer and Supreme Court Justice Warren Matthews [not to be confused with Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews or Board attorney Matthew Singer] on terms like 'communities of interest,' and 'equal protection.'  It would be nice if they could explain clearly the different concepts that Attorney Singer discussed and how the Court distinguishes between the idea that a Borough is SEI, but, as Justice Matthews pointed out, there are differences in communities of interest within the Borough of Anchorage.]

2. Address the issue of geographic contiguity.  While the House districts paired in the revised map were technically contiguous, the borders that were touching were in unpopulated and roadless mountain areas.  While that 'connected' the two districts physically, the communities in those two districts were geographically far apart (relative to the population of Anchorage) and not really sensible political units. 

"Auto-contiguity" came up as a concept.  That 'auto' refers to cars - can you drive from one part of the district to another without leaving the district?  This was an issue in the Valdez/Mat-Su case and in the Eagle River Senate pairings. 

 I understand that being contiguous in large, roadless rural districts will sometimes require those rural Senate seats to have much less ideal connections between communities.  But in urban areas where there is much greater population density, it seems more than reasonable to consider contiguity as a continuum from "more to less," than an "either/or, yes/no," evaluation.  It was clear that the Board majority paired HD 22 and HD 9 with such an unusable border for political reasons.  The Hickel Decision tell us that

"In addition to preventing gerrymandering, the requirement that districts be composed of relatively integrated socio-economic areas helps to ensure that a voter is not denied his or her right to an equally powerful vote."

In urban areas, extreme contiguity such as we had, should also be an indicator of possible gerrymandering,  particularly when much more natural contiguity alternatives are available.  

3.  Explain why the Supreme Court disagreed with Judge Matthews' finding that the Board needed to pay more attention to public testimony in the Skagway case.  Did they disagree with his reasoning on the Board's need to justify why they were making a decision that was contrary to the overwhelming public testimony?  As I understand it, they basically said, it didn't matter since the district met the criteria for a district.  

4.  There was a request from Calista plaintiffs that ANCSA boundaries be found acceptable as local boundaries for the Board to use making their maps.  This makes some sense in situations where those boundaries connect villages (water districts, schools, roads).  But the for-profit Native corporations are just that: profit making corporations that have a lot of power.  We wouldn't want corporations, say like Conoco or Monsanto, to have their own corporate political districts.  I think the Native Corporations have the burden of proof here that they are sufficiently different, in ways that matter to elections, that it would be okay.  

5.  Also on hold has been the decision about whether the Board has to pay attorney fees for the Girdwood plaintiffs. 

Does it matter when the court rules?

1. There are several factors to consider in answering that question. 
1. How urgent is the answer?
1. Elections
1. The Board got out its initial brief decision out in time to have an interim map for the 2022 election.  So they took care of the most urgent issue.
2. The 2024 election is two years away.  Candidates need to decide if they are going to run well before that.  
1. All of the state House districts are settled.  The court has pretty much closed off any changes to them.
2. There are only, potentially, two to four Senate seats that could be changed when the Board meets again to decide to just use the 2022 interim map for the rest of the decade, or if they try to tinker with the Senate seats in north/east Anchorage some more. So, at most, less than a handful of Senators might have their districts changed.  AND the voters in those districts will also be affected.  
2. The Board
1. There are still five Board members who have to meet at least one more time to decide on a permanent map for the rest of the decade.  These are people who, mostly, have full time jobs.  The longer it takes for the decision to come out, the greater the chances someone might no longer be available to serve.
2. Board staff is, as I understand it, down to one person - Peter Torkelson.  He needs to be considering his next job and if something good were offered, he'd probably have lots of reasons to take it.
3. I originally wrote here, last night, that Board space was still rented and they need to dispose of the equipment and furniture they have.  But this morning I got an email saying that the Board had closed down its office at the University Center and most of its furnishings and equipment have been returned to the state surplus office where they got it.  But they do have laptops and data stored at a secure site.  
3. The Court's time limits for decisions
1. Six Months Rule
1. "A salary disbursement may not be issued to a superior court judge until the judge has filed with the state officer designated to issue salary disbursements an affidavit that no matter referred to the judge for opinion or decision has been uncompleted or undecided by the judge for a period of more than six months." 
2. Six Months Rule and the Supreme Court
1. "For the Alaska Supreme Court, the six-month rule starts to run when the case is taken under advisement by the five members of the court. In order to be under advisement, the case must be ready to be decided by the court. Normally, the date the case is taken under advisement is the date of oral argument or the court's conference on the case if no oral argument is requested, although on occasion that date may be different in the event of requested supplemental briefing, reassignment to another justice, or other events that affect the date when the case is ready to be decided by the court. Once the case has been assigned to an individual justice to write the opinion, or in the words of the statute, has been "referred to the justice for opinion” (which cannot happen until the court has discussed the case after oral argument and knows which justices are in the majority), that justice has six months to complete the draft opinion and circulate it for voting by the rest of the court. This is the portion of the opinion that is within the control of the individual justice. Draft opinions are usually issued much more quickly than six months, in most cases within 90 days of the case being taken under advisement. Once all voting is complete by all individual justices, all voting suggestions have been incorporated during the reconciliation process, and any separate opinions have been prepared and voted upon, the draft is ready to be proofread and prepared for publication. About 75% of all Supreme Court appeals are published within nine months from the date they were taken under advisement."
2. The Appellate Clerk added these caveats by email:  "The six-month rule applies in the appellate courts, but perhaps not the way you would think.  The six month clock resets each time a new draft is circulated, including draft concurrences or dissents.  I cannot give you an estimate on when this opinion will be issued."  and in response to my question whether it had been assigned to a judge and to whom:                             "Yes, the case has been assigned, but no, I cannot reveal to whom."

So, when will the ruling come out?

Well, if the clerk can't give me an estimate, it's probably foolhardy for me to try.  But I can at least look at some of the timelines involved.

1.  The Court lifted the stay on Judge Matthews' order on May 24, 2022.  Six months (if this went without the caveats listed above) would be November 24, 2022.  Nine months would be February 24, 2023.  

2.  But we don't know when:

    a.  the Justices met to have their conference on the case

    b.  when they assigned it to a justice to write up

    c.  how many 'resets' the clock had because of the need to rewrite the draft.

Will the Board end up making any changes after the decision comes out?

In the best case scenario the maps won't change any more.  I say this because:

1.  The Court could decide the current map will become the permanent map until 2030.

2.  The Court could give it back to the Board.

3.  There isn't much room to change anything; at most two or three Senate seats

4.  The political gains the Board majority sought with the Eagle River Senate seats are not really within reach anymore, so they would seem to have no motive to change anything, unless it was simply to have the last word.

[UPDATE: September 1, 2022:  Let me add 5 to reiterate that the most important part of the Supreme Court decision will be the reasoning behind the decision.  This is for the next Redistricting Boards 2030, 2040.  They don't want to rush this.  They want it to be as clear as possible.  So I'm guessing they'll take as long as they reasonably can until the justices are comfortable with the language.]

If the Court has decided that the final decision will be to make the interim map, permanent, then they would see no urgency in this case compared to other cases they are working on.  

Or if they give the final decision back to the Board, but with language that makes it practically impossible to do anything but make the interim plan permanent, there would, again, be no urgency.

The only real urgency then would be to let the Board officially wrap up loose ends and close down.  

So, I would guess we won't see a decision until after the six month mark from the last Court ruling  which would be late November,  but probably by the nine month mark in February 2023.  Sort of like having a baby.

Just Mushrooms

 A month of rain means lots of mushrooms.  This was all one bike ride with two stops to explore all the fungi..

 

This last one is a coral fungus.  Looking at my mushroom book, it looks most like a cauliflower fungus, but the range doesn't say it lives this far north.  Also says that r. strasberri is a northern species that is similar.  These coral fungus are listed as 'choice' in the edible category.  Not sure how I'd cook them.  And since I'm not sure what it is, not planning to go back and get some.  

The Trump Tipping Point - Stolen Documents Turn The Tide

During Watergate, it wasn't clear whether  Nixon would be able to ride things out or not until the Senate Watergate Committee played the secret tapes Nixon recorded in the Oval Office.  That was the turning point.  The point when Nixon supporters stopped supporting Nixon.  

Trump supporters are a different breed. Some will never stop supporting him, or at least the idea of Trump.  But lots of Republican politicians only support Trump because they fear losing 'his base' and his support at election time.  Others also fear the damaging information Trump has on them.  

But the top secret documents - their existence and the realization of what Trump likely plans to do with them, or already has done with them - feel to me like the turning point.  Even if Republican politicians don't publicly voice their opposition, the public, combined with the wave of energized pro-choice voters, will make their opinion known in November.  

But I want to remind folks that with Watergate, resolution didn't happen quickly.

Back in May I compared the January 6 hearings to the Watergate hearings, which I listened to/watched live at the time.  I also tried to put the timing from the Watergate Break-in to Nixon's resignation into perspective.  From that post: 

• The break-in occurred May 28, 1972 (50 years ago).  
• Nixon was reelected in November 1972
• Alexander Butterfield testified about the existence of the White House tapes  before the Watergate Committee on July 16, 1973.
• Nixon resigned August 9, 1974.

These events just plodded along.  Here's a detailed timeline.  

My point was that these things take time and that it was never certain that Nixon would actually be ensnared in the scandal.  Until he was.

In hindsight, it appears that the country's mood changed when we learned that the White House taped all the Oval Office conversations.  It was clear that once we heard the tapes, we'd know who had been telling the truth and who had been lying, about what Nixon knew and when he knew it.  (And the president lying to the American public mattered back then.)

And when the Watergate committee started playing the  tapes live on national television, those who were supporting Nixon knew the jig was up.  But if you look at the timeline, it was over a year between the public revelation of the existence of the tapes and Nixon's resignation.  

The Tweet below is the kind of indication I'm talking about in terms of people's understanding of the seriousness of the classified documents in Trump's possession.

God. This is awful. He has betrayed our country in the worst way imaginable.

— RSMe (@7104child) August 27, 2022

For tens of millions, there were enough infractions to impeach, prosecute, and imprison Trump long ago.  But for other United States citizens, treason is the unforgivable transgression.

This Tweet suggests to me thatt the revelations in the last ten days tip the scales.  People are beginning to realize that not only did he illegally take all these documents, but that these highly secret documents have lots of information that could jeopardize US national security.  

Despite what we already know about Trump, the Tweeter is only now having his real Aha moment.

It's starting to sink in that Trump not only was probably planning to use these documents to raise funds, but that there is a good chance he's already shared some/much of the information to foreign nations that are not particularly friendly to the US. 

People have asked why would Saudi Arabia 'invest" $2 billion in Jared Kushner's investment company.  The documents give us a plausible explanation.  And now there's a timeline that shows Trump talked to Putin, then asked for list of top spies, and then US experiences big loss of informants.

Known Timeline:

1. 7/31/2019: Trump spoke with Putin (NYT)

2. 8/3/2019: Trump issued a request for a list of top US spies (The Daily Beast)

3. 10/5/2021: "CIA Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants". (NYT)

4. 8/26/2022: Documents at MAL Could Compromise Human Intel (NYT) 1/5 pic.twitter.com/rqNqRZUQL2

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) August 27, 2022

We don't know yet whether these killings of US confidential informants happened because Trump provided the documents to some foreign government(s), but even if he didn't, his possession of these documents is more than serious.  And there is no evidence that Trump has any moral principle other than "me, me, me."

This is not another scandal that should get a -gate tagged onto the end.  This is SO MUCH BIGGER than Watergate.  This will require a whole new vocabulary to do it justice.  Benedict Arnold and Judas will be replaced by Trump when people want to accuse someone of treason.

But don't hold your breath for Trump to be indicted, let alone tried, or even put into prison.  It will still take a while, if it happens at all.

Nixon saved the country a lot of time and grief by resigning.  As vain as Nixon was, he was a great president in comparison to Trump.  Under his watch we got things like The Freedom Of Information Act, The Privacy Act, and a slew of environmental laws like the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Act.  And Nixon unlocked the door between China and the United States.  Mind you, I thought then and do now, that he was a vile man and did great harm to the US (think prolonging the Vietnam War among other things).  But he understood history and had enough sense of honor to not wish to be an impeached president.  So he resigned.

Trump, as he has done with every disagreement he's been involved in over his adult lifetime, is going to stall, threaten, counter attack, drag out, and everything else he can think of to tire out his opponents.  But it appears that he's now having trouble hiring a decent attorney.

The tides do seem to be turning.  Trump is scrambling but there isn't much firm footing under him.  And while the people who continue to answer his text exhortations to send him money will probably put up Trump figurines and candles in their homes, his less cultish supporters are going to have to figure out how to shift alliances.

But I expect there won't be any indictments until after the November midterm elections.  Then there will be fights over how to try an ex-president, how to get a fair jury, whether trying him will enrage his base (as if they could get more self-righteously enraged) and whether NOT trying him would enrage the rest of the country.  

We've got at least a year or more of this drama.  How will all this affect Trump's health?  His dad lived to 93, but was a much thinner man with a lot less stress.  And the Trump cultists will continue to work out their own personal social and mental problems by worshipping their fallen hero.  

So, while we're at a big turning point in the Trump saga, it's going to take a while yet.  And if Republicans win the House and/or Senate, it's going to take even longer.  If the Kansas abortion vote wasn't a fluke, and the same forces vote for Democrats in November, then it will move along faster.  

The Alaska Redistricting Board's Dramatic Pleas For Military Voters And JBER's 3.5% Voter Turnout [Updated 8/31/22]

The Republican majority of the Alaska Redistricting Board created elaborate stories to justify pairing a Muldoon house district with Eagle River.  When that was rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court, they made even more passionate pleas to keep JBER with Chugiak in a state senate district.   It was mostly about the military connections,  and how the holy soldiers would be deprived of their representation if paired with the unholy (read: Democratic) downtown. 

Simpson:  "The most partisan is the proposed pairing of JBER and downtown.  This would diminish the voice of our valued military personal.  I can’t accept that.  I will vote for 3B."

Simpson: "I find the pairing of 23 and 24 ER and Chugiak the more compelling solution.  Pairing JBER with downtown overlooks a conflict of interest and opens us to a challenge to that constituency.  Chugiak has developed as a bedroom community for the military families.  They send their kids to middle school and high school there.  That testimony was compelling to that pairing."

Marcum:  "I’m very uncomfortable with Option 2 because it moves JBER and links it with D17.  It makes the least sense for any possible pairings.  Downtown is the arts and tourism, not what makes up JBER.  It is used to wake up the military community.  Choosing option 2 is an intentional intent to break up that natural pairing.  JBER should be with Chugiak" [note, these were my notes and I suspect I missed some words, but I did get the tone and intent correct.] 

Marcum:  "I would like say on behalf of our military.  Implications for military will be major.  Dominated by downtown voters.  JBER voice will be lost.  Ironic that those who have sacrificed the most."

You can see each of them and Member Binkley on the video on this blog post.   

[UPDATED August 31, 2022:  I knew I had their comments and my responses somewhere, but couldn't find them when I wrote this.  They're in this post - at the end.  My comments are in red which should make that section easier to find.]

So, let's look at that lost voice.  .   Here are the results from House District 18 for August 16 primary election.  Those brave soldiers barely whispered

 

Note that the JBER precinct has 7,528 registered voters out of 12,157 voters total.  That means they comprise about 60% of the voters in the district.  Yet only 277 JBER precinct voters actually voted out of 1184 total votes.  Although they are 60% of the total voters, they were only 23% of the people who actually voted.  The State's chart shows that only 3.68% of JBER voters voted!

The military tend not to vote.  All the candidates with parts of their district on base know this.  The fact that campaigning on base is difficult - candidates aren't allowed to go door to door for example - doesn't bother candidates too much because the military tend not to vote in large numbers.  Particularly for state offices.  (I haven't found the precinct by precinct stats for the US Senate or House races which might have gotten a slightly higher percent of JBER voters.)

So all the theatrics by Budd Simpson, Bethany Marcum, and to a lesser extent John Binkley about how JBER needed to be paired with Chugiak so they could be fairly represented and not, God forbid, with downtown, was just that - an act to capture one more Republican state senate seat.  

Fortunately, the Alaska Supreme Court saw through the dramatics, thanks, in large part to minority Redistricting Board members Melanie Bahnke and Nicole Borromeo.  

Anchorage's Refugee Farm Market - Great Fresh Produce And More

 Catholic Social Services has a host of programs to help various communities.  RAIS - Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services - is focused on new refugees coming to Anchorage.  They help them get housing, English lessons, jobs, into school, and other help as needed.  One of the most visible activities is the Grow North Farm, on 

Mt. View between Bragaw and Airport Heights.  

As you can see from the sign, they are open weekday afternoons from 4-7pm.  

The growing season seems to be in its prime now.  These are pictures from Thursday when I went to pick up my CSA box.  CSA is Community Supported Agriculture.  Community members subscribe to get weekly produce boxes.  Details vary from program to program, but the RAIS program pick up is on Thursdays.  But there are lots of vegetables for anyone to buy, even without a CSA subscription.  

                                                                               

The vegetables on sale are picked that day.  

A number of the refugees are from African countries such as Somalia and Congo and Ethiopia and they are growing greens they know from home.  We got sorrel and dodo in a recent box.  Fortunately RAIS also has a cookbook with recipes for some of the produce that are not usually available in Anchorage.  

                  

I was told these were pickled radishes. There are other goodies available from different vendors - spices, sweets, and other surprises.  

Potatoes.

The vendors get the benefit of tents and umbrellas which they have definitely needed in August.  

There's also a food truck and every Thursday there's a dinner offering from a different culture.  This Burmese coconut chicken soup was great.  And last week we go an Arabic rice dish that had a wonderful sauce.  

Getting to meet the folks who grow and sell the food is a big part of attraction of this market.  We've got fascinating neighbors here in Anchorage with lots to teach us.  

This is a summer only market.  It's scheduled go through the end of September.