John Cassidy at the New Yorker:

Around 4:30 P.M. Eastern time on Saturday, the San Antonio Express-News broke the news of the death of Antonin Scalia, the conservative Supreme Court Justice. Within a few hours, the Republican Party had placed itself on a trajectory that, if isn’t reversed, could throw the Presidential election to the Democrats.

In apparent contravention of precedent and the U.S. Constitution, the leader of the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, said that President Obama shouldn’t be allowed to name a replacement for Scalia. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said in a statement posted on his Facebook page. “Therefore, this vacancy

A United Nations Population Fund report finds that more than half of teenage girls in Pakistan think men get to beat up women if they’re married to them. The Independent reports:

Refusing sex was just one of the reasons girls aged between 15 and 19 believed a husband would be justified in beating his wife, while more than 30 per cent of girls of the same age had already experienced physical or sexual violence in Pakistan.

The web of beliefs that must underlie that one is so depressing – that men own women, that marriage is the ownership of a woman (or women) by a man, that women are passive objects meant to be owned by men, that women … Read the rest

The Republicans have been stonewalling lower court judges. Politico last July:

The GOP-controlled Senate is on track this year to confirm the fewest judges since 1969, a dramatic escalation of the long-running partisan feud over the ideological makeup of federal courts.

The standoff, if it continues through the 2016 elections as expected, could diminish the stamp that President Barack Obama leaves on the judiciary — a less conspicuous but critical part of his legacy. Practically, the makeup of lower-level courts could directly affect a number of Obama’s policies expected to face legal challenges from conservatives.

They’ve been breaking the government, in short.

Republicans appear willing to absorb criticism that they’re interfering with the prerogative of a president to pick

Already.

Republicans Vow to Block Obama Replacing Scalia on High Court

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to block President Barack Obama in his remaining months in office from replacing Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, a direct challenge to the White House that is certain to roil the 2016 presidential campaign.

“The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement shortly after Scalia’s death was made public. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

That’s a ludicrous thing to say. We don’t have a direct voice, we have the indirect voice of voting for a presidential candidate. … Read the rest

Good teachers? We don’t need no stinkin’ good teachers.

Tom Porton is used to drama: Since arriving at James Monroe High School as an English teacher 45 years ago, he has taught and staged plays. Outside, in the Bronx River neighborhood where the school is, there was plenty of drama in the 1980s, when AIDS and crack ravaged the area. His response then was to establish a group of peer educators who worked with Montefiore Medical Center to teach teenagers about H.I.V. prevention. His efforts earned him awards, including recognition from the City Council and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and led to his induction into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.

So therefore … Read the rest

Among the things people shouldn’t waste their time doing: fretting about festivals and celebrations that come from other cultures and therefore are not local and Authentic. That’s especially true for government officials, and even more so when their fretting intensifies into forbidding.

The president of Pakistan for instance:

Pakistan’s president has denounced St Valentine’s Day, saying the festival has no connection with Pakistani culture and should be avoided.

President Mamnoon Hussain told students that it was a Western tradition and conflicted with Muslim culture.

So what? We can learn from each other’s cultures. I find over-the-top commercial Valentine stuff rather silly, but that’s just me. Let’s have celebrations of everything. It was Darwin day yesterday; maybe today could be birdwatching … Read the rest

Now that’s how Malheur is supposed to be occupied.

The same day four final holdouts ended the armed occupation of a remote wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon, a new occupation was just getting underway.

According to two decades’ worth of federal data, Feb. 11 is, on average, the earliest date migrating tundra swans begin appearing at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, exiting the Pacific Flyway to rest in the vast wetlands of the high desert oasis.

Northern pintails have probably already arrived. Red-winged blackbirds, too. This weekend, expect snow geese, then killdeer and sandhill cranes. They will keep coming deep into May – fresh wing beats descending unarmed and unintimidated.

And not talking about freedom while stealing public land … Read the rest

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Peter Walker is reporting from the no-longer-stolen Malheur NWR. He was allowed in with the journalists today and posted a bunch of photos. This one coupled with his commentary is very striking.

Peter Walker

An example of how things have changed. When I visited the refuge during the occupation, there were always armed militants in this fire tower. They watched everything and had their long guns ready. It was unnerving. Now it’s a fire tower again and getting near it doesn’t give me a sense of deep anxiety. An example of things getting back to some sanity.

Can you imagine? That’s a public facility, and that structure is a fire tower – for spotting wild fires. Armed men who … Read the rest

The Guardian posted this video by Julie Bindel yesterday. It’s had 2.5 million views already.

 … Read the rest

It’s a specialty gallery.

Oenotrian’s Virginia:

David Richards’s Merlyn:

If you have any tilted cats you would like to add to the gallery, send them.

New: Peter Nothnagle’s Gus sharpening his claws:

latsot’s Fortran:

Rich Roberts’s Sugar:

iknklast’s Sir Winston and Mr Murphy:

Minnie The Finn’s Shiftie:

Josh Spokes’s Shredder:

… Read the rest

One of those items that could be true or could just be something someone claimed. David Bernstein has an “o tempora o mores” piece at The Volokh Conspiracy at the Washington Post (too many levels already and I’m not even finished yet) which refers back to an earlier piece at the same place, both describing a thing that seems to be just a “she said” thing.

From the first one, the January 26 one:

Consider the following incidents described below that have reached my inbox or social media accounts over the past two weeks or so:

…

2. Anti-Israel sentiment at that most progressive of colleges, Oberlin, is bleeding into anti-Semitism (or maybe anti-Israel sentiment is simply providing a