https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/us/robert-kraft-trafficking-florida.html

While the Methodist Church (my church) debates the morality of homosexuality….

«Beyond the lurid celebrity connection, however, lies the wretched story of women who police believe were brought from China under false promises of new lives and legitimate spa jobs. Instead, they found themselves trapped in the austere back rooms of strip-mall brothels — trafficking victims trapped among South Florida’s rich and famous.

“I don’t believe they were told they were going to work in massage parlors seven days a week, having unprotected sex with up to 1,000 men a year,” said Sheriff William D. Snyder of Martin County, whose office opened the investigation. “We saw them eating on hot plates in the back. There were no washing machines. They were sleeping on the massage tables.”

The women were shuttled from place to place — not only to nearby parlors but also across the state, said Sheriff Snyder. Sheriff’s deputies in Orange County, Fla., became involved in the investigation when women from the state’s Treasure Coast region were traced back to the Orlando area.

….

“I would never consider them prostitutes — it was really a rescue operation,” the sheriff said, training his anger at the men whose demand for sex kept the massage parlors in business. “The monsters are the men,” he added.

….

When social workers urge victims like that to come forward to police, they say, “‘No, you don’t understand. They’re trying to find my little sister back home. They’re trying to find my daughter,’” Ms. Cusack said.

….

That such a lucrative trafficking network existed near the ritzy enclaves of Jupiter Island, home to the likes of golfer Tiger Woods, and Palm Beach, home to President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, seemed unfathomable to some of the gawkers who posed for selfies — and in some cases cracked off-color jokes — on Friday outside the Orchids of Asia massage parlor in Jupiter, the enterprise that officials said Mr. Kraft had visited.

But Palm Beach was also the place where a well-connected billionaire financier from New York, Jeffrey E. Epstein, was accused a decade ago of molesting dozens of underage girls — some of them runaways or foster children who are vulnerable to sex trafficking.»

Power and asymmetric sexual relationships. I believe this is what got Jesus (and God) so upset.

«Sheriff’s deputies identified the spa’s owner and another nearby property under her name. They searched online forums where users posted about sex acts performed at the massage parlors. Based on the evidence they collected, they obtained a warrant to conduct surveillance.

That approach was far more labor-intensive than past investigations, in which undercover deputies would go into the parlors and arrest women for prostitution, said Sheriff Snyder, a former Republican state representative who helped write Florida’s law against human trafficking.

“I made this decision that we had enough of that: Let’s go after the traffickers,” he said. “I feel, on some level, extremely dissatisfied that I can’t do more. I know that we don’t even make a dent.”»

Sense of scale. Not even making a dent. But gay people getting married and adopting children! That’s serious.

«By then, however, some of the women they had identified as victims had been moved elsewhere. New women had taken their place.»

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/22/mark-harriss-son-irony-trumpism/

«People didn’t speak up before because they didn’t have to. Now they do. Morality does not demand that we denounce the people who raised us for supporting lower taxes on the wealthy. It might, however, demand that we denounce the people who raised us for putting children in cages, or rubbing shoulders with anti-Semites, or destroying democracy itself.»

Reuters: North Carolina judge rules voter ID, tax cap amendments unconstitutional.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-north-carolina-amendments/north-carolina-judge-rules-voter-id-tax-cap-amendments-unconstitutional-idUSKCN1QC03G?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews

Well, well, well.

http://crookedtimber.org/2019/02/20/the-historovox-complex/

Interesting thoughts. Here’s one:

«Everyone knows and cites Orwell’s famous adage: “To see what is front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Less cited is what follows: “One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it.”»

I wonder what he would have thought of blogging (without going back later and deleting embarrassing stuff).

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-was-helped-by-the-neverhillary-vote-what-does-that-mean-for-his-chances-now/

«About 74 percent of Sanders’s primary voters also voted for Clinton in November 2016. Another 2 percent didn’t vote but said on the CCES that they would have voted for Clinton if they had voted; it doesn’t seem fair to consider them anti-Clinton voters, so we won’t include them in the #NeverHillary camp. The remaining 24 percent of Sanders voters were #NeverHillary in the general election, however. Of these, about half voted for Trump, while the remaining half voted for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, another third-party candidate or didn’t vote.

…

You might be tempted to think that these #NeverHillary voters are leftists who thought Clinton was too much of pro-corporate, warmongering centrist. But relatively few of them were. Less than a fifth of them voted for Stein, for example. Instead, these voters were disproportionately likely to describe themselves as moderate or conservative. Among the 31 percent of self-described conservatives who voted for Sanders in the Democratic primaries, more than half were #NeverHillary voters, for example. A large minority of the independents and Republicans who supported Sanders were #NeverHillary voters as well.

….

In addition, some factors related to the primary calendar affected the #NeverHillary vote. After Trump won the Indiana primary, effectively wrapping up the Republican nomination, more anti-Clinton voters filtered into the Democratic primaries. And the #NeverHillary vote was lower in states where an open Republican primary or caucus was held on the same date as the Democratic one.

….

The good news for Sanders is that the states where he benefited the most from the #NeverHillary vote — especially in Appalachia and in the Interior West — have relatively low delegate tallies. So they’re places that he can potentially afford to lose.»

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/bulwarks-quest-shame-high-profile-trump-backers/583354/

«“At The Weekly Standard, we didn’t want to look like we were sniping too much at individuals … We didn’t want to waste our readers’ time worrying about various grifters. We liked to think we were publishing more important stuff.” In retrospect, Kristol conceded, “that may have been a mistake.”

….

Of course, it’s entirely possible that the current “emergency” will never end—that the Trumpification of the Republican Party outlasts Trump himself, replacing the old guard for good, and forcing the small band of bomb-lobbing Bulwarkers into permanent exile. What will happen, I wondered, if they emerge from the cave one day to discover that the war is over and they’ve lost?»

Based on my completely scientific sampling of Twitter, I think Warren might the safe harbor for liberals who don’t want to be on the Bernie train. Which might actually be a lot.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article226492265.html

Fun times at the Harris Easter dinner this year. (Mark Harris’s son is a federal prosecutor in Raleigh.)

«“I’m his dad, and I know he’s a little judgmental, and has a little taste of arrogance,” Harris said.»

https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2019/2/19/trumps-plan-decriminalize-homosexuality-old-racist-tactic

Huh. You don’t say.

«The most telling detail of NBC News’ report is that his plan centers homophobic violence in Iran, who NBC News calls the administration’s “top geopolitical foe.” The plan has reportedly been spearheaded by the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who is also the administration’s top-ranked gay official, in response to news that a young gay man was hanged in Iran recently. Grenell has had his eyes on Iran for some time and just a week ago, he was trying to get several European nations to pass sanctions on Iran, unrelated to the country’s stance on homosexuality, to no avail.

….

The truth is, this is part of an old colonialist handbook. In her essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak coined the term “White men saving brown women from brown men” to describe the racist, paternalistic process by which colonizing powers would decry the way men in power treated oppressed groups, like women, to justify attacking them. Spivak was referencing the British colonial agenda in India. But Grennell’s attack might be a case of white men trying to save brown gay men from brown straight men, to the same end.

There are several signs that this decision is denoted in a colonial sense of paternalism rather than any true altruism. According to the report, the decriminalization campaign is set to begin in Berlin where LGBTQ+ activists from across Europe will meet to hatch a plan that is “mostly concentrated in the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean.”

That sentence alone should set off several alarm bells.»

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-constitutional-protection-against-excessive-fines-applies-to-state-actions/2019/02/20/204ce0d4-3522-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html

I find these unanimous decisions just as interesting as the split ones.

«Ginsburg’s opinion makes clear that the clause applies, and that it is “incorporated” under the 14th Amendment’s due process Clause. Justices Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch agreed with the outcome, but said they would have relied on a different part of the 14th Amendment.»