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L.L. #24, May 16 [1]

['The Geogre', 'View Profile', 'Greg Dworkin', 'Belinda Ridgewood']

Date: 2026-05-16  

[Preface:] There was no Laudable Links yesterday, as a combination of insomnia the night before and migraine headaches “obliterated” me as powerfully as B-2 bombers on an Iranian nuclear site. I.e. I have recovered.

This is Laudable Links — a curated list of stories worth reading in full at their sites of origin — which I will natter and digress around.

So, whadda we got?

Joe Patrice, at Above the Law, “DOJ Sues D.C. Bar For Holding Trump Lawyers To Ethical Rules.” Since the Bar is the last remaining oversight for DOJ attorneys, a flock of paratroopers from the knuckle sucking brigade have been dropped on the D.C. Bar Association. At Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s “Deep Links Blog,” Rindala Alajaji writes “The Science is Not Settled: How Weak Evidence is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth.” No politician can vote against age screens on social media. It’s like voting to relax the drunk driving blood alcohol level. Thing is, moral panics make for stupid reactions. Did labels on LP’s stop “death metal” or “gangster rap?” “The first convert a man makes is himself”: Harold Meyerson does not think that Donald is a bald faced liar when he says that we are living in a golden age (gold en , quotha). Instead, this is, he thinks the perceptual as well as intellectual consequence of the timid sycophants. At The American Prospect, he offers evidence for this charitable interpretation in “How Trump Can Actually Believe We’re in a Golden Age.”

Midas touched his daughter. She was golden.

What do you do with a drunken sailor Department of Justice?

Some weeks ago at Above the Law, Joe Patrice made a genuine cri de coeur that state bar associations have to discipline Department of Justice attorneys who abuse the courts and the rights of citizens. He pointed out that, if a court orders criminal contempt, it can get an outside prosecutor, but, ultimately, the Department of Justice will be able to appeal, with tax payer money, ad infinitum, where the cases eventually meet a Trump-picked appeals court (or happen to roll the dice and get 2 of 3 Trumpy judges). The inspector general system had been destroyed. The ethics officials at Justice were fired in Bondi’s first week. Trump has pardoned his most outlandish attorneys — the ones planning a coup. There is, simply put, no sanction for unprofessional and unethical behavior by Justice Department attorneys, and that means that state bar associations must be the ones to, ever so slowly, investigate and discipline these attorneys for violating their oaths.

The D.C. Bar has begun doing just that. This means that the slime mold of the DOJ is feeling the pin prick and swinging its mass around to respond.

In “DOJ Sues D.C. Bar For Holding Trump Lawyers To Ethical Rules,” Mr. Patrice tells us that

[Quote:|] the mere threat that Trump lawyers may face professional consequences for their actions prompted the Department of Justice to concoct a new rule to strip local bars of their statutory authority to regulate the ethics of government lawyers. Now, the DOJ has brought a lawsuit against the D.C. Bar to intimidate and chill any licensing authority that might consider holding government lawyers to the same standard as the rest of us. [|End Quote]

That “rule” was greeted by laughter in general, and so the slime mold has had to grab fist fulls of our money and actually launch a case against the DC Bar.

[Quote:|] The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, the D.C. Court of Appeals, and the whole District itself — essentially any entity in the capital that might be in a position to take a lawyer’s license away — on the theory that the bar disciplinary process violates the Supremacy Clause and Article II when applied to former DOJ attorneys. The nominal hook is the ongoing disciplinary proceeding against Jeff Clark, the former Assistant Attorney General whose “Georgia Proof of Concept” letter remains one of the more lurid artifacts of the post-2020 effort to nullify an election. [|End Quote]

And there it is, folks, the Trumplaw doctrine that not only is the President (or this one) immune to criminal charges, but no court can act against one of “his” attorneys without his permission. Trump is the boss of the courts AND the bar. That’s what they think the Supremacy Clause is about. It’s absolutely what they’ve said when they talk about “infringing on Article II powers.”

Who knew that presidents got to determine bar membership?

[Quote:|] The complaint’s central legal theory is that disciplining a former federal official for misconduct committed during federal service “regulates” the Executive Branch in violation of the Supremacy Clause. [|End Quote]

Huh? By setting rules in advance and then penalizing people who break their contract (oath), it is “regulating?” You see how this theory would make the President the “regulator” of the bar across the nation. If the president can keep Jeffrey Bossert Clark in good standing, then he can strip Marc Elias of his standing, too, as he argues in a federal court over “official” matters.

Of course Justice is arguing against the law. That’s the issue overall, isn’t it?

[Quote:|] The McDade-Murtha Amendment explicitly guarantees local bar authorities have jurisdiction over government lawyers committing misconduct in their borders. Beyond that, a license is not a right and a lawyer’s privilege to practice is always subject to staying within the rules of the profession.

Advice that violates ethical obligations is not legal advice. [|End Quote]

No gun crime has ever been committed by a lawful gun owner. This is because any crime makes such a person no longer a lawful gun owner. Giving advice to the President that he can select ballots is not advice. It’s conspiracy. Your lawyer telling you to layer and filter your gambling receipts so as to avoid paying taxes is giving you advice on illegal money laundering, not taxes.

[Quote:|] Where the violation itself involves lying to courts — as it will for scores of government attorneys before this is all over — it’s actually the antithesis of legal advice. If the Executive Branch wants lawyers to provide illegal advice, that’s on them. But the profession doesn’t have to let that lawyer go back to private practice as though nothing happened.[|End Quote]

The vast slime mold is moving to cover up every surface. It will make it illegal to note that it is illegal. That way, only that which is for Donald will be the law.

I remember when lowering the blood alcohol level for inebriation went to the state legislatures, and it was impossible for any member to vote against them. Similarly, amending the code to allow random roadblocks on the highways for sobriety checks. Who could vote against them? Armed police in public schools (“resource officers”)? There are things that are not necessarily good ideas but which are politically impossible to oppose.

We’re in the midst of one right now. Your state is probably debating or enacting a law that will mandate age screens for social media. The idea piggybacked over the already Texas-Missouri-Tennessee moves to age gate pornographic sites. No one can be against the age gates, and yet they are a terrible idea.

It isn’t that young kids on social media is a good idea, nor that laissez-faire world wide web has been socially good at all. It’s the gate that is a miserable idea. Will gates work to keep kids away? Will they produce the results of deeper concentration and more civil connections? Will they betray identities? Will they result in massive intrusions of AI chatbots and personalized advertising? Will the gates be invulnerable to attack?

Before a state mandates a particular solution, it needs a “yes” to every one of those questions.

Rindala Alajaji writes “The Science is Not Settled: How Weak Evidence is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth” for Electronic Frontier Foundation. It’s slightly techy, so I’ll try to be careful. Mainly, the author wants to ask, “Is this extreme solution justified by an extreme problem?”

[Quote:|] From the California State Assembly to the Massachusetts and Minnesota legislatures, a wave of bills is crashing against the digital lives of young people, with proponents of these measures framing social media access as a “public health epidemic,” or a “mental health crisis,” even though we have yet to see any of the settled science that those labels usually invoke. [|End Quote]

Is the adolescent brain being rewired by social media, smart phones, and online life to suffer more anxiety?

The author says that the science (and this is a refrain) isn’t settled. (I’m afraid that Alajaji is too dismissive of the science that suggests there is a causal link between the digital nativism and an altered brain.)

[Quote:|]Large-scale meta-analyses covering dozens of countries have failed to show a consistent, measurable association between the rollout of social media and a decline in global well-being. In reality, we are seeing a classic case of what many of our middle school science teachers warned us about: “correlation” being sold as “causation.” [|End Quote]

Certainly it’s true that there is a rush for a simple explanation — one that ignores the pandemic, economic stress, greater isolation in general, and a ripple effect of social breakdown — all of which could explain or cloud the findings of the altered adolescent brain.

[Quote:|] The current push for blanket social media bans relies almost exclusively on the work of Jonathan Haidt, particularly his book The Anxious Generation. While Haidt is an amiable and brilliant storyteller, he is not a clinical psychologist or a specialist in child development. He is a social psychologist who writes about moral psychology at a business school. Nonetheless, the book has made it to every Best Seller list, and with Haidt revered as an expert on podcasts with massive reach, like Oprah, Joe Rogan, Michelle Obama, and Trevor Noah—his message has been heard by a large subset of society, which primarily relies on: no smartphones or social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more “unsupervised, real-world independence.” [|End Quote]

Hadn’t heard of the dude, myself, but popularity is neither a reason to dismiss an account nor to credit one. What it does mean, though, is that legislators who use it as a substitute for clinical or biochemical research are neglecting their jobs. Educators who are experts will say “phone-free schools,” and educators have been split but somewhat agreeing on “more independent play” for sixty years. Thus, the narrative he created resonates.

It isn’t, though, science.

So, what does the author tell us the science does say about kids and the web? Exactly what we’ve all said since year 2000: moderation is good; addiction is bad.

[Quote:|] research has consistently disproven the oft-assumed link between social media use and poor mental health in youth, and actually indicates that moderate internet use is a net positive for teens’ development, and negative outcomes are usually due to either lack of access or excessive use. In one major study of 100,000 adolescents, a “U-shaped association emerged where moderate social media use was associated with the best well-being outcomes, while both no use and highest use were associated with poorer well-being. [|End Quote]

Now, about this article in general.

It’s about the science of anxiety and depression. It isn’t about intellectual development or educational achievement. It isn’t about interpersonal connectivity. It’s interesting.

That said, the problem with age gating laws around the country is beside the point of their need and justification — it’s the myriad horrors of the age detection and storage systems. These “gates” can be used for control of populations at least as easily as they can screening children. But that’s another topic for another sleepless night.

Before we talked about “the bubble” and “the echo chamber,” I remember hearing about “the Pauline Kael effect.” She said that she knew only one person who had voted for Nixon, so his landslide victory in 1972 was hard for her to believe. It was like Karl Rove on CNN denying President Obama’s second win by saying, “We have the math!” but much more innocent.

Harold Meyerson thinks that there is another effect, and it’s not quite the Emperor with new clothes. Let’s call it the Red Queen Effect. In “How Trump Can Actually Believe We’re in a Golden Age,” the explanation is that all of those with a perception of the reality of American life have had the Ichabod Crane treatment.

When, on Tuesday, Donald told reporters, “Truly, I believe we’re in a golden age right now,” it takes serious nuts or nuttiness. (I note that Donald does not have gold. He has golden. It’s the difference between ice cream and ice milk, between champagne and bubbling wine.)

[Quote:|] The public seems to know, and care, that the inflation rate last month reached 3.8 percent, that gas prices were continuing to spike, and that Trump’s still largely unexplained war on Iran was responsible for the soaring cost of gas. But Trump appears as oblivious to and dismissive of public opinion as he is to basic economic reality. Asked at that same Tuesday meeting with reporters if Americans’ current financial difficulties were prompting him to reach a settlement that would wrap up the Iran war, he answered, “Not even a little bit.” [|End Quote]

I have no desire to be fair to a man who is unfair in every deal he strikes and who even makes the air crooked around him when he speaks, but, if I did wish to be, I would point out that he said he did not think about or care about our cost of living and dying even a little bit as a reason to end his war of aggression against a sovereign state. The American people aren’t the boss of him!

(And yet he seems to think he’ll “win” election again. You’d chortle if you didn’t thow up.)

It’s oblivious, grinning, glaring suicide.

[Quote:|] it’s actually part of a pattern of affronting the American public on a range of issues, so much so that it has substantially eroded his support among non-MAGA Republicans and even threatens to weaken at least a smidgen of his support within his MAGA base. More amazing still, the Republican Congress persists in backing and bolstering the most mentally addled of his obsessions. [|End Quote]

Mr. Meyerson is right: Donald is more consistent on insulting the American people than anything in his career. He is loud and proud in telling his voters, and definitely “his” Congress, to shut the hell up because the Dow’s at $50,000 and there are mergers galore. And how about that $10,000,000,000 of YOUR MONEY he’s going to stuff in his clown pants because he’s upset that an IRS contractor, who is already in prison, leaked his taxes? Doing this is begging for a revolt. Every day that there isn’t one only confirms his contempt and reassures him that he can come out on television and shoot a Fox News reporter and “not lose any votes.”

Mr. Meyerson’s explanation isn’t quite enough for me.

[Quote:|] Trump’s mental landscape has been shrinking. His chief financial supporters now are drawn from Silicon Valley and Wall Street centimillionaires and billionaires. . . As for Trump’s own staffers and appointees, they know that bringing him bad news or contradicting the rosy scenarios he’s conjured from thin air would be a bad career move. As for Republican elected officials, having just seen Indiana state legislators defeated in Republican primaries for having opposed Trump’s push to get Indiana redistricted, they still cower in fear of Trump’s wrath. [|End Quote]

I understand this critique. It’s correct, of course, but it gives Donald too much credit as an active force.

His is a mind in decline, and yet he has managers who, like a YouTube or Instagram algorithm, have figured out what gets him to “adhere” and “engage,” and they narrow his “feed,” narrow it more, narrow it still more. It’s likely that Donald himself was not involved in the Indiana case.

Chief among the adhesion and engagement buttons on Donald’s brain is, as it has ever been, “mymoney.” He is unaware of laws, intolerant of restriction, and disconnected from the meaning of money. Instead, he believes that net worth is personal worth. He is not as worthy a person as Jeff Bezos until he can get the ten billion from the Treasury, not as valuable a human as Musk until he can name more tacky crap after himself.

And then there is the other button: rage. He becomes an important person instead of a second son when he fires people. Any and all who tell him things that distract from “mymoney” are no longer within earshot. He is the Red Queen, but not as sane or smart.

[Conclusion:] The EFF piece wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, but it is laudable all the same, and we should be skeptical of moral panics. Otherwise, although I’m sure these weren’t worth waiting for, I hope they haven’t disappointed.

[END]
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