A taste of Adrianople

While we're all sweltering in 100-degree temperatures during this heat wave, just imagine doing the following in this heat ...

Waking up in the predawn darkness in your tent.

Having your breakfast by a fire.

Marching for the next 8 hours.

Without a break, even for lunch.

In full chain or scale armor and helmets.

And leggings.

Carrying your shield, spear and big sword.

All in this heat.

Then, after all that, you have to fight a battle in which you're outnumbered.

In this heat.

Now you have some idea of the plight of the poor Roman soldiers at the Battle of Adrianople in AD 378.

Speechless

That's all I can say about today's SCOTUS decision in IFIB v. Sibelius. For now.

Even God hates the Miami Heat

Last week, the Miami Heat (aka the al Qaida of the NBA), who were assembled via dishonesty, arrogance, tampering and collusion in violation of NBA rules, won the NBA title.

This week, Miami is being belted by a hurricane.

Do the math.

Hey, kids! Wanna kill somebody?

Then the US Supreme Court has good news for you! If you're convicted of murder, not only can you not be given the death penalty, you can't even be given life in prison without parole:

Extending its ever-evolving, and ever less coherent, Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, the Supreme Court ruled today, by a 5-4 vote in Miller v. Alabama, that it is unconstitutional to establish a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for any category of murder committed by a person younger than 18 (otherwise known, if only in this context, as a “juvenile”). The Court’s ruling—majority opinion by Justice Kagan, joined by Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor—invalidated contrary aspects of sentencing regimes established by 28 States and the federal government.
The majority declined to address the argument that the Eighth Amendment requires a categorical bar on the discretionary imposition on a juvenile of life without parole, but it volunteered that “appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty” (the death penalty already having been categorically deemed off limits) “will be uncommon.”

The emphasis is in Ed Whelan's original, but that distinction will not stand. Just watch. With Miller, SCOTUS continues down its road from the 8th Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment to the 8th Amendment prohibiting any punishment. Justice Alito's dissent is epic:
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A logic puzzle with no solution?

Remember those old logic puzzles? Where you're, like, given the characteristics of four people and left to determine which of them did what? Usually you have to use a logic grid to solve it? Well, courtesy of Brad Plumer at the Washington Post and Walter Russell Mead, we now have a logic puzzle that describes the mess in the Euro Zone:

I suppose the question is, does this logic puzzle even have a solution?

Too stupid for democracy?

There is an old saying about the Communist version of democracy: one man, one vote, one time.

I could not help but think about that saying when I read about the dissolution of the Egyptian parliament last week. The wailing and gnashing of gums was prevalent: a setback for democracy, a return to oppression.

Except the choice in Egypt seems to be oppression and ... oppression. Either oppression by the secular Egyptian military or oppression by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Barry Rubin is on it:

The Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court has just invalidated the parliamentary election there. The parliament, 75 percent of whose members were Islamists, is being dissolved. The military junta has taken over total authority. The presidential election is still scheduled for a few dozen hours from now.
In short, everything is confused and everything is a mess. All calculations are thrown to the wind. What this appears to be is a new military coup. What is the underlying theme? The armed forces concluded that an Islamist takeover was so dangerous for Egypt and for its own interests that it is better to risk civil war, a bloodbath, and tremendous unpopularity than to remain passive and turn over power. I believe this decision was made very reluctantly and not out of some lust for power by the generals. They have decided that they had no choice.

Agreed. Fortunately there have been no rumblings of a civil war yet, but better a civil war than the Muslim Brotherhood in power.
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An idea whose time is never

The latest brilliant idea out of downtown Indianapolis: privatizing the City-County Building:

It's now apparent that there is no city asset that is so sacred as to not be within the grasp of Mayor Greg Ballard's political cronies to turn into a profit center. The IBJ's Kathleen McLaughlin has a story in today's edition discussing the Ballard administration's plan to privatize the City-County Building, which is currently owned by a municipal corporation, the Indianapolis-Marion County Building Authority, and leased to city-county government for $4.85 million annually, or about $7.29 per square foot, which includes unlimited utilities. The Authority floated bonds to construct the original 28-story building in 1959 for $32 million.

According to a Request for Information put out by the City, the administration thinks it would be better for it to exercise its option to assume ownership of the building at the end of its current 10-year lease with the Authority and then privatize it rather than continuing to make low lease payments to the Authority. The administration is hoping to shift cost of future repairs to the building to a third party without increasing the city's overall costs. Anyone with common sense knows that it's impossible to turn control of the building over to a private entity, expect that private entity to make necessary repairs to a 50-year old building and lease it back to the city for no more than the paltry $7.29 per square foot the City is now paying the Authority to use the space. The City is even anticipating an upfront payment from a private real estate manager as part of the deal to spend on infrastructure improvements. Apparently the City wants us to believe it is possible to have your cake and eat it too.

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