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States do have to conduct elections in accordance with the Constitution, so in that sense SCOTUS does have some jurisdiction over interpreting what that means. If the State Supreme Court overturns the election without a strong enough constitutional basis, SCOTUS can overturn their decision. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.

Hate to quibble with Ron on this one, but Trump never said he was going to hire the “most qualified” people. He said he was going to hire “only the best” people. I think we now fully understand what he meant by that.

Just checking in this morning to see whether the Islamic Republic of Iran has fallen yet. Can someone please text me when it happens? Thanks.

Your dad did. So did mine.

Feels nice to say this unironically, isn’t it?

Among other times … 😉

Looks as though Jason got a note.

This is a big reason for all the stupid distractions—it is so the abject destruction of government as a tool of the people can be replaced by government as a tool of the Trumpian oligarchy.

Either way, hubba hubba.

Again, out of thanks but THANK YOU.

I am out of thanks for the day but THANK YOU.

Do you not think this particular Court could parse the D state redistrictings and kill them off from the R state redistrictings and uphold only those? I'm not predicting they're going to do that for sure, but I will say I think they could totally do that, especially on then shadow docket, which doesn't even require shared reasoning, never mind constitutional consistency.

Out of likes today but LIKE

Man, the IRGC is killing it on social. Eight words I could never have imagined typing out in that exact order.

His keyboard to God's phone.

It's one thing to use this trope for political advantage with their rube base, and they may win a battle here and there by cynically employing it. But when they themselves believe it—IOW, when they're getting high on their own supply—they can't win the war.

True as this may be, Democrats also can't unilaterally disarm and allow themselves to get run over by an explicitly immoral and unethical opponent. Not a good place to be in as a country, but, here we are.

Exactly this. Christianity was never a live-and-let-live religion—most religions aren't—but the evangelical flavor is double that. Their idea is to control your life and, by extension, control your body in terms of labor, reproduction, and just plain fun.

I did suss out the sarcasm in your reply, but I was also feeding back in a serious way on the idea of the "second leadoff hitter" batting ninth. There are circumstances for which that might work, or at least be defensible.

As of this morning, the NL has a 80-55 against the AL in interleague play. That's the equivalent of a team playing to a 96-66 record, which is three games better than the "juggernaut" 2025 World Champs.

What got me thinking about looking him up was, I was looking at the Reference card for the 2019 Tigers, they of the 47-114 record, and Nick was literally the only position player on the team with an OPS+ over 100, and his was only 111. Man, what a slog it was to follow that team. The only thing worth talking about that year was the locked-in #1 overall pick. You can discard this if you want to count pitchers, since Gregory Soto had a 492 OPS+ and Matthew Boyd had a 167 OPS+, in two plate appearances apiece.

The “second leadoff hitter” at #9 does make sense for some situations, maybe against good starters or anticipated pitching duels, although a team probably wouldn’t want to put a remarkably better hitter #9 behind the worst hitter at #8 every game, since that would result in about 18-20 more ABs for the worst hitter (or more likely collection of worst hitters) over the course of a whole season.

Although some sabermetricians advocate very best hitter at the top, then second best second, third best third, etc., aka the cricket batting order, aka the Ohtani method. It does help that Ohtani is also fast and a good base runner, in addition to being far and away the best hitter, which makes putting him top of the order defensible even to old school guys.

That’s pretty remarkable in today’s terms, and very good even for his time.