Chaz

On Sunday, Greeks will go to the polls to vote in a crucial referendum. The politics are fraught, the media is frenzied and accusations and recriminations are already flying.

The ballot paper has attracted plenty of attention, both inside and outside of Greece. The question is detailed and, to eyes that are unaccustomed to non-Roman alphabets, impenetrable.

Some commentators have pointed out that the ‘no’ option is given first. It made me think about referenda ballots that have been decidedly imbalanced.  When with these, Greece’s ballot looks the model of democratic accountability.

1. Austrian referendum in 1938 on union with Germany

On 10 April 1938, Austrians went to the polls to decide the future of their country. At stake was whether Austria would join with Nazi Germany in a Greater German Empire.

Austria had emerged from the ruins of the Great War as a republic. The imperial heart of the Habsburg empire, Vienna, was now without both its monarchy and the bulk of its former territories and people.

The result was never really in doubt. Even so, the vote produced an eye-brow raising 99.73% support for the proposition. According to the official figures, only 11,929 people vote no (out of an electorate of 4,484,617). Did the ballot play a part?

It certainly wasn’t a subtle ballot. It uses the unmistakably Teutonic font preferred by the Nazi regime. The circle for yes is twice the size as that for no. Yes is placed in the centre, under the large rendering of Adolf Hitler. No is placed, as a seeming after thought, off to the right.

It almost certainly had no material impact on the results. Still, it was crystal clear which option the authorities wanted you to pick.

2. Italian general election in 1934

General elections are usually different from referenda. The former ask you to choose between parties seeking to fill seats in the legislature and form a government. The latter ask the electorate’s opinion of a specific question.

In Italy, the two merged into a strange election to validate an entirely fascist parliament. Voters could either vote for or against the National Fascist Party’s list. They did so by folding a decidedly unsubtle ballot paper.

On one side, the vivid green and red stripes of the Italian flag frame the large YES option. To vote yes, the card was simply folded with the colours showing. The other side was plain white, with just the text of the question and NO. To select this option, the voter folded the card to hide the flag.

This was highly symbolic and also had the impact of destroying the secret ballot. It was clear who was voting yes and who was voting no. This goes some way to explaining the official result of 99.84% in favour of the National Fascist Party.

3. Chilean national consultation in 1978

In 1978, the United Nations accused Chile of human rights violations. President Pinochet responded with a referendum to demonstrate the support he enjoyed in the country.

The question was decidedly leading:

“Given the international aggression against the government of our country, I support President Pinochet in his defense of the dignity of Chile, and I confirm again the legitimacy of the Government of the Republic in its sovereign head of the institutionalization process in the country.”

The ballot paper was even more so.

Vote yes, with the flag of Chile. Or vote no, with a black box further down the ballot paper.

4. Referendum on the future of the Soviet Union in 1991

By 1991, the Soviet Union was under considerable pressure from all sides. Pro-Soviet governments had collapsed across eastern Europe. More independent minded nationalities, such as Georgia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, were straining to secede from the Union.

The authorities decided that a popular vote would bolster the Union, and declared a referendum. It was held on 17 March 1991. The ballot paper was admirably neutral, with equal prominence given to both options.

But the question was, at best, leading:

“Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?”

Many Soviet citizens did. The result was a landslide in favour, with 77.85% voting yes. This wasn’t enough to save the USSR. Just over nine months later, the USSR was dissolved.

As I indicated in my post yesterday on Instapundit, I support Governor Nikki Haley’s initiative to remove the Confederate battle flag from government buildings. Now that we are expunging the legacy of past racism from official places of honor, we should next remove the name Woodrow Wilson from public buildings and bridges. Wilson’s racist legacy — in his official capacity as President — is undisputed. In The long-forgotten racial attitudes and policies of Woodrow Wilson, Boston University historian William R. Keylor provides a useful summary:

[On March 4th, 1913] Democrat Thomas Woodrow Wilson became the first Southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor in 1848. Washington was flooded with revelers from the Old Confederacy, whose people had long dreamed of a return to the glory days of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, when southern gentlemen ran the country. Rebel yells and the strains of “Dixie” reverberated throughout the city. The new administration brought to power a generation of political leaders from the old South who would play influential roles in Washington for generations to come.

Wilson is widely and correctly remembered — and represented in our history books — as a progressive Democrat who introduced many liberal reforms at home and fought for the extension of democratic liberties and human rights abroad. But on the issue of race his legacy was, in fact, regressive and has been largely forgotten.

Born in Virginia and raised in Georgia and South Carolina, Wilson was a loyal son of the old South who regretted the outcome of the Civil War. He used his high office to reverse some of its consequences. When he entered the White House a hundred years ago today, Washington was a rigidly segregated town — except for federal government agencies. They had been integrated during the post-war Reconstruction period, enabling African-Americans to obtain federal jobs and work side by side with whites in government agencies. Wilson promptly authorized members of his cabinet to reverse this long-standing policy of racial integration in the federal civil service.

Cabinet heads — such as his son-in-law, Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo of Tennessee – re-segregated facilities such as restrooms and cafeterias in their buildings. In some federal offices, screens were set up to separate white and black workers. African-Americans found it difficult to secure high-level civil service positions, which some had held under previous Republican administrations.

A delegation of black professionals led by Monroe Trotter, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard and Boston newspaper editor, appeared at the White House to protest the new policies. But Wilson treated them rudely and declared that “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.”

The novel “The Clansman” by Thomas Dixon – a longtime political supporter, friend and former classmate of Wilson’s at Johns Hopkins University – was published in 1905. A decade later, with Wilson in the White House, cinematographer D.W. Griffith produced a motion picture version of the book, titled “Birth of a Nation.”

With quotations from Wilson’s scholarly writings in its subtitles, the silent film denounced the Reconstruction period in the South when blacks briefly held elective office in several states. It hailed the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as a sign of southern white society’s recovery from the humiliation and suffering to which the federal government and the northern “carpetbaggers” had subjected it after its defeat in the Civil War. The film depicted African-Americans (most played by white actors in blackface) as uncouth, uncivilized rabble.

While the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People publicly denounced the movie’s blatant appeals to racial prejudice, the president organized a private screening of his friend’s film in the White House for the members of his cabinet and their families. “It is like writing history with lightning,” Wilson observed, “and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”

Here is the exchange between Wilson and Trotter:

Mr. Monroe Trotter. Mr. President, we are here to renew our protest against the segregation of colored employees in the departments of our National Government. We [had] appealed to you to undo this race segregation in accord with your duty as President and with your pre-election pledges to colored American voters. We stated that such segregation was a public humiliation and degradation, and entirely unmerited and far-reaching in its injurious effects. . . .

President Woodrow Wilson. The white people of the country, as well as I, wish to see the colored people progress, and admire the progress they have already made, and want to see them continue along independent lines. There is, however, a great prejudice against colored people. . . . It will take one hundred years to eradicate this prejudice, and we must deal with it as practical men. Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen. If your organization goes out and tells the colored people of the country that it is a humiliation, they will so regard it, but if you do not tell them so, and regard it rather as a benefit, they will regard it the same. The only harm that will come will be if you cause them to think it is a humiliation.

Mr. Monroe Trotter. It is not in accord with the known facts to claim that the segregation was started because of race friction of white and colored [federal] clerks. The indisputable facts of the situation will not permit of the claim that the segregation is due to the friction. It is untenable, in view of the established facts, to maintain that the segregation is simply to avoid race friction, for the simple reason that for fifty years white and colored clerks have been working together in peace and harmony and friendliness, doing so even through two [President Grover Cleveland] Democratic administrations. Soon after your inauguration began, segregation was drastically introduced in the Treasury and Postal departments by your appointees.

President Woodrow Wilson. If this organization is ever to have another hearing before me it must have another spokesman. Your manner offends me. . . . Your tone, with its background of passion.

Mr. Monroe Trotter. But I have no passion in me, Mr. President, you are entirely mistaken; you misinterpret my earnestness for passion.

A swell guy, eh? After resigning from the Socialist Party to support Wilson, W.E.B Dubois was appalled at Wilson’s racist policies:

President Wilson’s initial policy measures were so stridently anti-black, Du Bois felt obliged to write “Another Open Letter to Woodrow Wilson” in September 1913. Du Bois was blunt, writing that “[I]t is no exaggeration to say that every enemy of the Negro race is greatly encouraged; that every man who dreams of making the Negro race a group of menials and pariahs is alert and hopeful.” Listing the most notorious racists of the era, including “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman,** Du Bois wrote that they were undoubtedly encouraged since “not a single act” or “a single word” from Wilson “has given anyone reason” to believe that he will act positively with respect to African Americans citing the removal of several black appointees from office and the appointment of a single black whom was “such a contemptible cur, that his very nomination was an insult to every Negro in the land.” Altogether the segregationist and discriminatory policies of Wilson in his first six months alone were judged by Du Bois to be the “gravest attack on the liberties” of African Americans since Emancipation.

In a tone that was almost threatening Du Bois wrote the president that there exist “foolish people who think that such policy has no limit and that lynching “Jim Crowism,” segregation and insult are to be permanent institutions in America.” Pointing to the segregation in the Treasury and Post Office Departments Du Bois wrote Wilson of the “colored clerks [that] have been herded to themselves as though they were not human beings” and of the one clerk “who could not actually be segregated on account of the nature of his work” who, therefore, “had a cage built around him to separate him from his white companions of many years,” he asked President Wilson a long series of questions. “Mr. Wilson, do you know these things? Are you responsible for them? Did you advise them? Do you know that no other group of American citizens has ever been treated in this way and that no President of the United States ever dared to propose such treatment?” Like Trotter later Du Bois ends by threatening Wilson with the complete loss of black votes for any of his future electoral quests or that of his Democratic Party. Du Bois relied on questions to hammer home his point. “1. Do you want Negro votes? 2. Do you think that ‘Jim Crow’ civil service will get these votes? 3. Is your Negro policy to be dictated by Tillman and Vardaman? . . . “

(**As Justice Thomas notes, Democrat Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman of South Carolina was the author of the earliest campaign finance “reform,” the Tillman Act that barred corporations from contributing directly to federal candidates.)

In response to these outcries, in 1914, Wilson told The New York Times, “If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it.” It would be a valuable educational experience today to correct this mistake, and the historical record, by having a candid conversation about the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson. And racism was not his only sin. The Wilson administration prosecuted and jailed many antiwar activists for sedition, including Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs for having made an antiwar speech.  (Debs was later pardoned by Republican President Warren Harding.)

No doubt there are others whose names should also be expunged. But because of his record of official racism and betrayal,Wilson’s name should be first on any such list. Those who oppose its removal from government buildings should explain exactly why whatever principle of tolerance they apply to so extreme a purveyor of racist policies as Wilson should not be applied equally to memorials to other historical figures as well.

RELATED: Historian Paul Rahe on Progressive Racism:

Wilson, our first professorial president, . . . was the very model of a modern Progressive, and he was recognized as such. He prided himself on having pioneered the new science of rational administration, and he shared the conviction, dominant among his brethren, that African-Americans were racially inferior to whites. With the dictates of Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement in mind, in 1907, he campaigned in Indiana for the compulsory sterilization of criminals and the mentally retarded; and in 1911, while governor of New Jersey, he proudly signed into law just such a bill.

STILL MORE on The Menacing Mr. Wilson:

Wilson’s racist views were hardly a secret. His own published work was peppered with Lost Cause visions of a happy antebellum South. As president of Princeton, he had turned away black applicants, regarding their desire for education to be “unwarranted.” He was elected president because the 1912 campaign featured a third party, Theodore Roosevelt’s Bullmoose Party, which drew Republican votes from incumbent William Howard Taft. Wilson won a majority of votes in only one state (Arizona) outside the South.

What Wilson’s election meant to the South was “home rule;” that is, license to pursue its racial practices without concern about interference from the federal government. . . . But “home rule” was only the beginning.

UPDATE: When Will The American Political Science Association Stop Giving The Woodrow Wilson Award In Honor of Noted Racist Thomas Woodrow Wilson?

[Cross posted at Instapundit]

Prosecutor/author Vincent Bugliosi, most famous for prosecuting Charles Manson and for the true-crime book he wrote about the case afterward, “Helter Skelter,” has died at age 80. I wrote a mostly favorable review of Bugliosi’s bestselling 1996 book on the O.J. Simpson case, Outrage.

R.I.P. Vincent Bugliosi is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Journalist George Stephanopoulos and his wife, Alexandra, arrive for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, April 25, 2015. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

On Sunday, Peter Schweizer, author of the forthcoming book “Clinton Cash,” appeared on several Sunday news programs. One of Schweizer’s appearances was on ABC News’s “This Week,” hosted by George Stephanopoulos. During the interview, Stephanopoulos suggested that Schweizer’s former employers could be relevant to the credibility of his claims about alleged improprieties by Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. From the ABC News transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: As you know, the Democrats have said this is — this is an indication of your partisan interest. They say…

SCHWEIZER: Well…

STEPHANOPOULOS: — you used to work for President — President Bush as a speechwriter. You’re funded by the Koch brothers.

How do you respond to that?

SCHWEIZER: Well, George, what did I do when this book was completed?

I went to the investigative unit at “The New York Times,” the investigative unit here at ABC. I went to the investigative unit at “The Washington Post.” And I shared with them my findings, OK. These are not cupcakes. These are serious researchers and investigators.

And they are confirming what I’ve reported. So people can look at the facts . . .

Stephanopoulos’s question was standard media fare. Journalists often focus on the potential bias of the messenger instead of the content of the message. Ideally, Schweizer’s claims would stand (or fall) on the strength (or weakness) of his reporting. He has either found evidence of problematic conduct by the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation, or he hasn’t. And insofar as he makes strong claims, it’s entirely reasonable for reporters to push back with tough questions about the substance of his allegations. As Schweizer suggested, those interested in this issue should “look at the facts.”

If we are going to consider the potential conflict-of-interest or ideological motivation of a reporter, should not this apply just as much to Stephanopoulos as it does to Schweizer? If the political affiliation or alignment of Schweizer’s former employers or funders is relevant, cannot the same be said of Stephanopoulos? Should not viewers of ABC News’s “This Week” have been reminded that Stephanopoulos spent years working for the Clintons and helping to manage various scandals that arose during Bill Clinton’s campaign and first term in office? (Indeed, at one point, there were allegations Stephanopoulos personally benefited from Clinton-influenced cronyism.)

I don’t object to the content of the interview, but I find it problematic that Stephanopoulos thought it relevant to challenge Schweizer based on the identity of his former employers or funders, but did not disclose his own equal (if not greater) conflict. Older viewers may have recalled this Time magazine cover, but that was over 20 years ago. Many viewers — and voters — have no recollection of Stephanopoulos’s role as Clinton de facto spokesman. Insofar as Schweizer’s book suggests improper behavior by the Clintons, it is pointing a finger at those Stephanopoulos spent several years of his life defending.

If Schweizer’s former funders and employers are relevant to ABC News, George Stephanopoulos’s should be as well. Simple disclosure in the context of a news segment is not too much to ask.

David Petraeus, who suffered a fall worthy of a Greek tragedy when was caught leaking classified information to his biographer-girlfriend, has reached a plea deal with the feds, in the person of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina.

As of now two documents are available online. There's the Information, which is the charging document the feds use when grand jury indictment is not required or when the defendant waives that right. There's also the factual basis — the narrative of facts to which Petraeus will admit. These documents reveal that Petraeus has agreed, in advance of charges being filed, to take a misdemeanor.

Generally, poor people react and rich people are proactive. Petraeus is sophisticated and has assets; he could afford to hire lawyers to negotiate with the feds before they charged him. As a result, he was able to secure a pretty good outcome that controlled his risks. The feds let him plead, pre-indictment, to a misdemeanor charge of improper removal and retention of classified documents under 18 USC section 1924. That means even if the federal judge who sentences him goes on a rampage, he can't get more than a year in federal prison — and, given that it's a misdemeanor, will very likely get far less. The Factual Basis includes a United States Sentencing Guideline calculation in which the government and Petraeus agree he winds up at an Adjusted Offense Level of 8, which means the judge can give him straight probation.

It is very difficult to get a misdemeanor out of the feds.

Petraeus' factual basis reveals that he could have been charged with much, much worse. The statement discusses his "Black Books" containing his schedules and notes during his command in Afghanistan; those books contained "national defense information, including Top Secret/SCI code word information." (Factual Basis at paragraphs 17-18.) Petraeus, after acknowledging that "there's code word stuff in there," gave the Black Books to his biographer/girlfriend at her private residence. "The DC Private Residence was not approved for the storage of classified information," the statement notes dryly. (Factual Basis at paragraphs 22-25.) He retrieved the Black Books a few days later after she had been able to examine them, and retained them. Thereafter, when he resigned from the CIA, he signed a certification that he had no classified material in his possession, even though he had the Black Books. (Factual Basis at paragraph 27.) Later, when Petraeus consented to interviews with FBI agents¹¹ he lied to them and told them that he had never provided classified information to his biographer/girlfriend. (Factual Basis at paragraph 32.)

To federal prosecutors, that last paragraph of facts is like "Free Handjob And iPad Day" at Walt Disney World. First, you've got the repeated false statements to the government, each of which is going to generate its own charge under 18 U.S.C. 1001, which makes it illegal for you to lie to your government no matter how much your government lies to you. Then you've got the deliberate leaking of top secret/code word defense data to a biographer. An aggressive prosecutor might charge a felony under 18 U.S.C. section 793 (covering willful disclosure of national defense information) or 18 U.S.C. section 798 (covering disclosure of classified communications intelligence materials or information derived therefrom), both of which have ten-year maximum penalties. Those charges don't seem to require any intent to harm the U.S. — only disclosure of information which could harm the U.S. if distributed. Other than that? You better believe there would be a conspiracy count for Petraeus' interaction with his girlfriend.

If Petraeus were some no-name sad-sack with an underwater mortgage and no connections and no assets to hire lawyers pre-indictment, he'd almost certainly get charged a lot more aggressively than he has been. This administration has been extremely vigorous in prosecuting leakers and threatening the press.

So why is Petraeus getting off with a misdemeanor and a probable probationary sentence? Two reasons: money and power. Money lets you hire attorneys to negotiate with the feds pre-charge, to get the optimal result. Power — whether in the form of actual authority or connections to people with authority — gets you special consideration and the soft, furry side of prosecutorial discretion.

This is colloquially known as justice.

Edited to add: Since I wrote this the actual plea agreement has become available. The most notable part:

8. The United States agrees not to oppose the defendant's request that the defendant receive a non-custodial sentence.

9. The parties jointly recommend the imposition of a two-year term of probation.

So, for those of your keeping score at home: Commander of U.S. Forces in a war zone provides classified documents to his biographer/lover? Misdo, two years probation. 25-year-old small-time musician sells half a pound of pot while carrying a gun? 55 years in federal prison.

A Few Comments on the David Petraeus Plea Deal: What Money And Connections Buy You © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

Marcus Valerius Martialis, Roman poet (1814). Marcus Valerius Martialis, known in English as Martial, was a Latin poet who lived in Hispania (Spain) during the 1st century AD. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

I was recently reminded of one of the Epigrams of the Roman poet Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis). It is about the lawyers of his day, but it reflects — in an exaggerated way, of course — something that some lawyers, and many law students, tend to do today in their briefs, especially briefs that deal with glamorous subjects such as constitutional law. Here is a translation I much liked, by Roger Dickinson-Brown, reprinted with permission:

There is no poison here, no rape or force –
a simple case: my neighbor stole my goats.
But my expensive lawyer will discourse
on the whole history of law. He quotes
book, precedent and chapter ‘til he’s hoarse.
Fine, noble words! But what about my goats?

Meredith (For Keats’ Sake!) also has a translation I like, and here’s one more from two centuries ago, by John Quincy Adams, himself a lawyer of some distinction. It comes from his “Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory: Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University” (more about that later), delivered when Adams was a senator; note that Adams keeps Martial’s historical references in his translation — which would have been vivid to Martial’s audience, but come across differently to us today — while Dickinson-Brown chooses to omit them:

No dagger keen, no poison’d bowl
Forms, of my suit, the constitution
‘Tis of three kids my neighbour stole
I come to court for restitution.
With thundering voice, and outstretch’d arm
my lawyer fights o’er all our battles;
Now thrills with Cannae’s dire alarms
And now of Mithridates prattles.
Oh! let thy tongue, Verboso, cease,
Which trusts in Punic faith forbids;
Let Sylla, Marius, sleep in peace;
And say — one word about my kids.

And here’s Martial’s original Latin:

Non de vi neque caede nec veneno,
Sed lis est mihi de tribus capellis:
Vicini queror has abesse furto.
Hoc iudex sibi postulat probari:
Tu Cannas Mithridaticumque bellum
Et periuria Punici furoris
Et Sullas Mariosque Muciosque
Magna voce sonas manuque tota.
Iam dic, Postume, de tribus capellis.

If this post leads some small voice inside you to occasionally say, as you’re writing or editing, “But what about my goats?,” then Martial’s life will not have been in vain.

UPDATE: Sasha points out that this is “One good contribution of Martial law.”

Sometimes the best map is no map at all.

At Prawfsblawg, legal scholar Paul Gowder has an insightful post on some of the reasons why the study of ancient Athenian democracy is relevant to modern debates about law and politics. I would add one more: the modern debate about democracy and political ignorance traces its origins to ancient debates about Athens. And the problem of public ignorance may well be worse today than it was then.

Ancient critics of Athenian democracy, such as Plato and Thucydides, argued that the state was dysfunctional because the citizens who ruled it through direct democracy were often too ignorant and irrational to make good decisions. For example, Thucydides claimed that Athens launched the disastrous Sicilian expedition, which led to the fall of the Athenian Empire, because the ignorant citizens had no idea how large and populous the island of Sicily was, and thus were easily snookered by demagoguery in favor of the ill-advised high-risk venture.

For centuries, critics of democracy pointed to Athens as a prime example of why the ignorant masses should be barred from wielding political power, especially directly. These critiques of Athens had a major impact on the American Founding Fathers. They were a key factor leading them to include a number of anti-democratic features in our Constitution.

The good news is that modern scholarship suggests that Athenian voters were more knowledgeable and did a much better job of making decisions than the longstanding conventional wisdom supposes. The bad news is that ancient Athenian citizens could avoid some of the pitfalls of ignorance in part because they had important advantages that voters in modern democracies mostly lack. Relative to modern counterparts, ancient Athenian voters dealt with a government with a much narrower range of functions, had far stronger incentives to acquire relevant knowledge, and often had direct personal experience with the most important functions of the state, which made it easier for them to assess leaders’ performance. I summarized these points in greater detail in this review essay. While ancient Athenian democracy did a better job of surmounting political ignorance than it is often given credit for, some of the reasons for its relative success should lead us to be more rather than less concerned about the enormous extent of political ignorance today. Jonathan Gruber’s assessment of the American voter may be more accurate than Thucydides’ take on ancient Athens.

It’s also worth remembering that, by modern standards, Athens was closer to being a narrow oligarchy than a democracy. Because women, slaves, and the city’s large population of resident noncitizens were excluded from the franchise, only a small fraction of the adult population actually got to participate in politics (though still a much larger one than in most other ancient states). Athens’ enemies often saw it as a nightmare of democratic egalitarianism run amok. But that was because their own oligarchies were far narrower still.

Virtually no one today would propose reintroducing ancient Athenian sexism and slavery; for good reason. Nor should we try to drastically cut back on the franchise in other ways. But the Athenian system did have the effect of limiting the franchise to people likely to have relatively high political knowledge. Among other things, the main function of the Athenian state was warfare. Most of the male citizens probably had direct personal experience of war, at a time when military strategy was much simpler than today and a low-level soldier or sailor could more easily see the big picture of what was going on. For this reason, among others, Yale historian Donald Kagan argues that Thucydides was probably wrong about the causes of the Sicilian expedition, noting that many of the voters who backed it had probably served on the previous expedition to Sicily a decade earlier, or were personally acquainted with veterans who had.

Though they made their share of ignorant and foolish mistakes, ancient Athenian voters probably knew a lot more about the Sicily and the Peloponnesian War than our voters today know about Iraq, Afghanistan and the War on Terror; or for that matter Obamacare, federal spending, and who controls which house of Congress. In that respect, the dangers of ignorance that concerned critics of ancient democracy are very much still with us today, and possibly much worse than they were 2500 years ago.

It's looking worse and worse each day for the Patriots as their latest scandal unravels.

The New England Patriots continue to come under fire for deflating footballs against the Indianapolis Colts during Sunday's AFC Championship.

The Patriots attempted to gain an advantage by slightly deflating their own balls to make it easier for Tom Brady to throw and for his receivers to catch the ball. While deflated balls wouldn't explain why the Patriots stomped the Colts by a final score of 45-7, it can't just be ignored that they broke the rules.

Now, reports have surfaced from ESPN that the Patriots were found to have used 11 deflated footballs out of their allotted 12 balls. The rule states that the footballs must inflate to between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch (PSI). The belief is that these footballs were 2 pounds per square inch under the minimum limit.

One source described the league as "disappointed ... angry ... distraught" after spending considerable time on the findings earlier Tuesday.

Part of the investigation that needs further vetting is how the 11 footballs became underinflated.

The game balls that each team received for preparation were required to be inspected and approved by referee Walt Anderson two hours and 15 minutes before kickoff, then returned to a ball attendant.

No alteration of footballs is allowed once they are approved, under league rules and regulations.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick earlier Tuesday deferred questions about the investigation, saying reporters should ask league officials. Belichick earlier said he wasn't aware there was an issue until Monday morning and promised to "cooperate fully with whatever the league wants us to, whatever questions they ask."

Belichick, of course, was fined $500,000 in 2007 for having an assistant spy on the New York Jets' defensive signals.

The NFL game operations manual calls for at least a $25,000 fine for those who alters footballs. The Patriots could also lose draft picks if found guilty.

By one estimate, “something like 86 percent of the loot that state and local law enforcement agencies receive through federal forfeitures will be unaffected by Holder’s new policy.” [Jacob Sullum, Reason; earlier] “Eric Holder’s Asset Forfeiture Decision Won’t Stop the Widespread Abuse of Police Power” [Jonathan Blanks, New Republic] “New Holder Policy Means Fewer Bal Harbours, More Motel Caswells” [Eapen Thampy, Americans for Forfeiture Reform]

Holder’s order on forfeiture reform: less than meets the eye is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

With Election Day less than a week away, campaigns efforts’ to mobilize and persuade voters all over the country are in full swing. But it is not just campaigns that are striving to influence voters’ decisions; corporations, individuals, issue-oriented organizations and unions are all weighing in on candidates and initiatives through ad buys, campaign contributions and organized grassroots efforts. While the debate about big money in politics continues, it is beyond dispute that this area of the law has changed significantly in the past decade.

Below is Part One of a primer of recent law that effects union political participation. Check out Part Two for more information about restrictions on the use of dues of workers who object to union political activity, as well as more information about disclosure requirements. Section A of this post covers recent case law regarding political expenditures made by unions and corporations. Section B covers the specific rules of the game and how unions participate financially in the political process.

     A. Unlimited Union and Corporate Political Expenditures

This section discusses how the holdings in Citizens United and Speechnow.org have combined to allow unions and corporations to make unlimited political expenditures. These holdings in turn have resulted in the birth of the infamous Super PAC.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

In its 2010 Citizens United holding, the Supreme Court struck down a decades-old federal ban on independent expenditures by corporations and unions. Citizens United allows corporations, unions and other organizations to spend unlimited sums from their own treasuries to fund political advertisements advocating for or against specific federal candidates. In doing so, the Court announced that the First Amendment does not permit a distinction between individuals and corporations when it comes to independent political expenditures. The Court upheld the financial reporting requirements for independent expenditures and electioneering communications, and the ban on corporate and union contributions to candidates.

Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission

In another 2010 case, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act that limit the contributions individuals may make to SpeechNow.org, and the contributions that SpeechNow.org may accept from individuals, violate the First Amendment. That holding was followed by the creation of a new brand of political action committee, the independent expenditure-only committee commonly called a Super PAC.

Super PACs are prohibited from directly contributing any money to political candidates or political parties. However, Super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, individuals and associations, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for, or against, political candidates. Like traditional PACs, Super PACs are legally required to report their donors to the Federal Election commission on a monthly or quarterly basis. According to OpenSecrets.org, as of October 18, 2014, 1,220 groups organized as Super PACs have reported total receipts of $462,494,032 and total independent expenditures of $235,863,403 in the 2014 cycle alone.

Citizens United and Speechnow.org taken together mean that corporations and unions can donate unlimited amounts of money to Super PACs, who can then make independent expenditures on their behalf in federal races–running ads or sending mail or communicating in other ways with messages that specifically advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate, with no restriction on sources of funds and amounts spent. The only requirements are that the organization has adhered to FEC rules in organizing and registering the PAC, and the keeping of records and timely filing of financial reports that include donor lists as well as itemized expenditures.

     B. Financial Participation of Unions in Politics

This section discusses the contribution and expenditure rules that govern union and corporation political involvement leading up to an election. The section discusses the use of political action committees that make contributions to candidate campaigns, and corporation and union use of expenditure only committees, or Super PACs, to raise and spend unlimited sums of money for political advertising for or against candidates.

How Unions Can Spend and Donate Money Within the Rules

Under the new rules, ads and mailers that are produced by unions, corporations, or Super PACs can’t be coordinated with the candidates. This rule has proved very difficult to enforce, particularly given that the agency tasked with enforcement, the Federal Election Commission or FEC, is structurally weak. The agency is “composed of commissioners whose appointments are tightly controlled by the Members of Congress and political parties they regulate, and [is] hobbled by a chronic lack of funds.” By design, the commissioners are typically deadlocked on decisions of any great significance, since the FEC is composed of six members, no more than three of whom can be members of the same political party, which has played out to mean that at any given time the agency has had three Republicans and three Democrats as commissioners.

Contributions to Candidates

Citizens United did not displace limits on direct contributions to candidate campaigns.* The federal campaign contribution rules still apply, including bans on direct “soft money” contributions from unions, corporations and other groups that require these groups to use political action committees (PACs), groups organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to defeat or elect candidates should they choose to make federal political donations. PACs must abide by the contribution limits, which allow them to give $5,000 to a candidate committee per election (primary, general, or special). PACs can also give up to $15,000 annually to any national party committee, and $5,000 annually to any other PAC. PACs themselves may receive up to $5,000 annually from any one individual, PAC, or party committee. To see a list of the top PACs giving to candidates in 2013-2014 election cycle, or in past elections, check out Open Secrets. Union PACs have contributed over $41 million to federal candidates so far in the 2014 election cycle.

Interestingly, PACs were actually of union creation, with the Congress of Industrial Organization forming the first PAC in 1944 to support the re-election of President Roosevelt. The PAC got its money from voluntary contributions from individual union members rather than union treasuries, making it compliant with the then applicable Smith Connally Act of 1943, which forbade unions from contributing to federal candidates.

Political Expenditures

Unions can now donate unlimited sums of money to Super PACs that can make expenditures on their behalf, and they have taken advantage of this right. In 2014, labor has donated $47.8 million to outside spending groups, another term for expenditure only PACs. That is a lot of money, but labor donations to outside spending groups account for less than 15 percent of donations made to such groups this cycle. Industries like Finance, Insurance and Real Estate have donated over $80 million to outside spending groups, and Ideological/Single Issue Groups have donated over $76 million. Just those two donor industries combined make up 50 percent of the money that has gone to outside spending groups so far in this election cycle. What this means is that while labor is no small fry in the outside spending game, it doesn’t come close to the magnitude of corporate spending interests and the presence they have in American campaigns.

Union New GOTV Rights

In this post-Citizens United world unions also have an increased ability to do get out the vote (GOTV) and voter education. Prior to the ruling unions were only permitted to use treasury funds to contact union members regarding participation in elections, because use of treasury fund in encouraging wider political participation would have been a violation against the ban on union independent political expenditures. But since the significant change in the legal landscape, unions can now use general treasury funds to contact nonunion voters and so can now reach out to entire neighborhoods or voter lists rather than just their membership lists.

This post has covered campaign finance and spending laws that apply equally to both unions and corporations. However, under the current state of the law, unions have additional restrictions regarding the use of treasury funds and the ways unions can raise money for political activities, restrictions that do not bind corporations. Part Two of this primer will cover these union specific restrictions and how they impact union political participation.

A couple weeks back, I wrote about how integral walking is to being human. And over the years I’ve written about the health benefits of walking, how and why you should walk barefoot, and even a definitive guide on the subject. In other words, I’m a huge proponent of walking and I think just about everyone who’s able should do more of it. But I’m not the only one that finds daily walks critical to health, energy, mental clarity and, ultimately, at least in some part, my success as a human being. Many of the most accomplished and creative people throughout history have also found walking to be an integral part of their daily routines and key to their success as artists, creators, writers, musicians, thinkers, and human beings.

Let’s look at how some of these folks used walking to improve their work:

Aristotle

Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, empiricist, and pupil to Plato, conducted his lectures while walking the grounds of his school in Athens. His followers (who quite literally followed him as he walked) were even known as the peripatetics – Greek for meandering or walking about. Ah, to witness one of history’s greatest minds utilizing the cognitive benefits of moving while thinking must have been incredible.

William Wordsworth

The poet with the most fitting surname ever, William Wordsworth walked nearly 175 thousand miles throughout his life while maintaining a prolific writing career. He managed these two seemingly opposing habits for two reasons. First, being shorter (but not necessarily easier) than novels, poems take less actual writing time to produce. Second, Wordsworth’s walking was writing, in a way. As he saw it, the act of walking was “indivisible” from the act of writing poetry. Both were rhythmic, both employed meter. He needed to walk in order to write.

Man, I feel like I’m in English lit class all over again.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens, author, social commentator, walker? Yes. After writing from 9 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon, he would go for a long walk. A 20- or 30-miler was routine for him. When Dickens couldn’t sleep at night – which was often – he’d crawl London’s streets until dawn. Dickens walked so much that his friends worried, figuring he had a mania for walking that bordered on pathology. But clearly, the walking worked; Dickens was prolific, writing more than a dozen major and well-regarded novels, several short story collections, a few plays, and even some non-fiction books.

According to the man himself, if he couldn’t walk “far and fast,” he would “explode and perish” from the psychological burden of remaining still. I bet a treadmill desk would have blown his mind (and brought us even more works). Actually, it might not have worked for him. The walking was so important for Dickens because it meant he wasn’t writing, the act of which he found quite miserable and difficult. Walking was relief. Without the walking, he’d probably have gone mad.

Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau was a famous saunterer. In the aptly titled essay “Walking,” he comments on the etymology of the word “saunter,” noting that it comes from “the idle people who roved about the country… under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” or the Holy Land. And for Thoreau, walking through nature was a kind of pilgrimage without a destination. His Holy Land was all around him. And as long as he walked, he kept discovering new temples, new places to worship.

John Muir

John Muir was a naturalist who helped preserve Yosemite, Sequoia National Park, and other wild areas from development and private interests. He wasn’t just “a” naturalist. He was the guy who climbed peaks to whoop and howl at vistas, chased waterfalls (take that, TLC), leapt “tirelessly from flower to flower,” and had an entire forest named after him. But here’s the thing about John Muir: he wasn’t whizzing around in his Prius with a “coexist” bumper sticker (nothing against either of those, by the way). He was walking, and hiking, and climbing, and traipsing through the wilds that he considered home.

It wasn’t just that walking inspired his nature writing. It’s that walking was often the only way to access the subject of his writing and passion. In that respect, walking was a utility for Muir.

Nassim Taleb

Taleb’s a contemporary writer, unlike most of these other famous walkers. You can find him trading jabs with critics on Twitter, probably in the last hour. He’s been writing about anti-fragility for many years, about how successful systems and economies and businesses must experience and be able to adequately respond to punctuated, not chronic, stresses and randomness to stay successful and robust. But it wasn’t until he started walking that he realized the same concepts applied to humans. We also need to face intermittent stressors to remain healthy, robust, and anti-fragile, and we require randomness and variation. So, for Taleb, that means some intense strength training every so often, a fair amount of relaxation, and lots and lots of aimless meandering as a foundation.

Patrick Leigh Fermor

I first read about Fermor almost a decade ago in a New Yorker piece describing him as a cross between Indiana Jones, Graham Greene, and James Bond. A British Special Operations officer, he fought in the Cretan resistance during World War 2, going undercover as a mountain shepherd and leading the successful capture of German commander General Heinrich Kreipe. But Fermor was also a serious walker. At the age of 18, after dropping out (or failing) of school and drifting somewhat aimlessly around London, he walked from western Holland clear to Istanbul over the course of a year and change. This walk transformed him from wayward youth to man, soldier, and eventual travel writer. Driving or taking the train wouldn’t have produced the same quality (man or writer), for walking allowed the total saturation of the senses and accumulation of detailed memories that informed his transformation and colored his writing.

Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard had two main pursuits: walking and writing. He wrote through the morning until noon, when he’d walk the streets of Copenhagen, mentally composing paragraphs and working through new ideas. After the walk, he was back to writing (at a standing desk, no less). The success of his thinking depended almost entirely on his walking (emphasis mine):

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

That just might be the most useful, actionable piece of advice he ever wrote.

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Famous composer Ludwig Van Beethoven typically worked from sun-up through mid afternoon, taking several breaks to “[run] out into the open” and work while walking. One biographer described these short walks as a bee swarming out to collect honey. And then, after a large midday meal, Beethoven would take a longer, more vigorous “promenade” lasting the rest of the afternoon. These walks happened regardless of the weather, for they were important for his creativity. He would carry a pen and sheets of music paper in case inspiration struck – which it often did.

As you can see, walking isn’t just putting one foot in front of the other. For some of the greatest minds in history, walking was a way to clear the brain, prevent mental breakdown, extend life, solve – or evade – problems, fully experience the world, beat insomnia, and find life purpose. If it worked for these guys, if it by many accounts made these guys, it’s probably worth a shot. Don’t you think?

Yeah, things are different. We can’t all stroll through a Viennese forest, traipse along the cobblestone streets of 19th century London, or hope to beat the Yosemite Valley crowds by a hundred years. You might have to settle for a suburban sidewalk after work, a trail along a city creek, a crowded hike on the weekend, or even a quick jaunt out of the office to the Starbucks across the street. And that’s fine. What matters is the walking.

I hope this resonates with you. All I know is I definitely feel the need to go for a walk.

Thanks for reading, everyone! How does walking figure into your life, your work, your productivity?

Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for instant access to all past, present and future episodes here.

Anyone else feel like we've created systems far more complex than we can manage? The tale of The Sorcerer's Apprentice keeps coming to mind.

— Red Team Journal (@redteamjournal) October 2, 2014

Legislative Explorer is an interactive, animated data visualization that visualizes the process of bills submitted by houses of Congress; the Senate on the left and the House of Representatives on the right.  Designed by Researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for American Politics and Public Policy, it’s a fascinating visualization that is mesmerizing to watch.

A deluge of data is challenging scientific researchers across disciplines to develop new techniques for detecting patterns in large and complex datasets. This general area of research is known as data-driven discovery, or ‘D3.’ Visualizations are a particularly important area of innovation because they help researchers to investigate complex processes at a more holistic level. The goal of Legislative Explorer is to leverage the same benefits of data-driven visualizations to advance understanding of government.

A more in-depth discussion of Legislative Explorer with multiple animations and videos is available at the Center for American Politics and Public Policy.

Anyone can use Legislative Explorer to observe large scale patterns and trends in congressional lawmaking without advanced methodological training. In addition, anyone can dive deeper into the data to further explore a pattern they’ve detected, to learn about the activities of an individual lawmaker, or to follow the progress of a specific bill. Start Exploring!

I selected the 99th Congress (1985-1986) for the screenshots, and you can see the party breakdown of both houses of Congress by their color.  Each icon represents a specific member of Congress which you can identify by hovering your mouse over the icon.  The animation will show a visual spray of bills introduced by members in both houses of Congress as party-color-coded dots that move into committees and through the steps to becoming a law.

There are a number of user-definable filters to help narrow down the visualization to a specific party, only one committee, or even just to watching a single bill move through the proces.

Here’s a quick video tutorial:

Found on FlowingData

There are a lot of recipes out there for paleo/Primal fried chicken, all of them trying to create a crispy, finger-licking good coating using various nut and coconut products. This recipe isn’t for fried chicken, per se, but after tasting it you might give up trying to coat a piece of chicken in anything other than it’s own skin again.

This is likely to be the crispiest baked chicken you’ve ever had, with skin that shatters when you bite into it. And, there’s no messy frying involved. The secret? Dredging the chicken in a mixture of egg whites, baking soda and salt, then letting the chicken air-dry overnight in the refrigerator. This genius method was perfected in Ideas in Food’s recipe for Korean-style chicken wings. The recipe here takes it one step further by not just using wings – drumsticks and thighs are just as delicious using this baking method.

This recipe also ditches the sweet and salty sauce from the original recipe and instead offers a completely Primal sauce made from coconut aminos, rice wine vinegar and toasted sesame oil. Brushing the sauce on the chicken just before it comes out of the oven makes the skin slightly less crispy, but adds lots of great flavor. The coconut amino sauce is also killer simply as a dipping sauce after the chicken is fully cooked.

This chicken is crispy, salty, sweet, totally finger-lickin’ good and totally Primal. Grab a piece right when it comes out of the oven, because it’ll barely make it to the table before it’s devoured.

Servings: 4 to 6

Time in the Kitchen: 1 hour, plus chilling the chicken overnight

Ingredients:

Idea’s In Food’s Chicken Coating:

• 3 large egg whites
• 2 teaspoons baking soda (10 ml)
• 1 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt (8.6 ml)
• 3 pounds skin on chicken wings, drumsticks and/or thighs (1.4 kg)

Coconut Aminos Dipping Sauce:

• 1/3 cup coconut aminos (80 ml)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon unseasoned rice vinegar (7.5 ml)
• 1 1/4 teaspoon toasted sesame oil (6 ml)
• 1 garlic clove, put through a press or very finely chopped
• 1 scallion, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon or more red pepper flakes or hot chili oil (optional)

Instructions:

In a large bowl whisk together the egg whites, baking soda and salt. Add the chicken and toss really well to coat. Put the chicken on a baking rack set over a rimmed baking sheet, leaving space between each piece of chicken so none of the pieces are touching. You might have to use two pans. Refrigerate, uncovered, overnight.

The next day, preheat the oven to 450 °F (232 °C).

In a small bowl, whisk together the coconut aminos, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, garlic clove, green onion and pepper flakes (if using). Split the sauce into two bowls. Use one bowl to brush the chicken during the baking process (optional) and one bowl to dip the chicken in after it’s cooked. Set both bowls aside.

Leaving the chicken on the same racks and baking sheets, put it into the oven and cook for 15 minutes. Flip the chicken over and bake for 15 minutes more. At this point the meat should be pretty much cooked – thighs and drumsticks might take longer than wings, so make sure to use a digital thermometer to make sure the temp is getting near 165 °F before brushing on the sauce.

Brush both sides of the chicken with the coconut aminos sauce. Put the chicken back in the oven, skin side up, for 10 more minutes until the skin is nicely browned and crispy.

Serve the chicken immediately with the coconut aminos dipping sauce on the side.

This chicken tastes best if eaten soon after coming out of the oven. After a few hours in the refrigerator, the skin will no longer be crispy.

Ted Frank, who formerly blogged in this space, wrote this which I thought worth passing on:

I hate to see how many on my side who are upset at Obama’s violation of the Rule of Law cheer the Bundys’ criminal contempt of a court order. The Bundys are claiming a right to graze upon federal lands without paying or consent of the landowner on the grounds that the federal government has no sovereignty over Nevada. The US BLM has taken twenty years and multiple court proceedings to kick them out, winning twice in the Ninth Circuit. In response, armed militias showed up this week to defend the Bundys, who have threatened range war. The government has temporarily caved to avoid the possibility of armed confrontation. This really isn’t a close question, and threatens to tar all small-government and Second Amendment supporters.

It has been objected that ownership of vast tracts of the American West by the federal Bureau of Land Management is a very bad idea, might have appalled many Framers and early legislators, and has been advanced into our own era through aggressive policies to curtail the participation of private users. I’m having trouble seeing the relevance of all this, however, to Bundy’s supposed right to defy multiple court orders. The federal government should not be in many different lines of business that it currently is in, but that doesn’t create a right of individual citizens to occupy federal installations for personal economic benefit despite court orders directed against them to the contrary.

Ted also calls our attention to this article by Logan Churchwell and Brandon Darby on the 20-year history of the controversy and the positions advanced by rancher Cliven Bundy to justify contempt of the court orders:

“I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada,” Bundy recently told a radio reporter. “…I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But, I don’t recognize the United States Government as even existing.”

More: A different emphasis from John Hinderaker (arguing for sympathy with Bundy while conceding the meritlessness of his legal position) and Kevin Williamson.

On the Bundy Ranch confrontation is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

One who argues that the Constitution calls for a separation of campaign and state — a principle rejecting legislative regulation of political campaigns — runs immediately into an apparent obstacle. The Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 4, specifically gives Congress the power to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections.” Correspondingly, states have broad authority to regulate elections, and the idea of separation of campaign and state is nonsense.

This is not a trivial point, for while it is true that the power to regulate campaigns could be attributed to some other part of the Constitution — the commerce clause, for example, might be deemed to cover anything remotely connected with limits on campaign contributions and spending, and Buckley v. Valeo found the power to pay for political campaigns in the “general welfare” language of the Constitution — those other powers would not override the First Amendment speech and association clauses any more than they do its free exercise and establishment clauses, and thus pose no barrier to a structural interpretation calling for a straightforward separation of campaign and state, as does a clause specifically authorizing such regulation. Moreover, the court has in fact found the power to regulate campaigns in the “Times, Places and Manner” clause.

This power to regulate elections, however, is by no means fatal to the principle of separation of campaign and state-indeed, when juxtaposed with similar but more limited language in Article II, it ultimately undermines the notion that Congress may regulate campaigns. The problem is not the Constitution, but instead the rather obvious error the courts have made in collapsing the distinction between “campaigns” and “elections.”

In ordinary, everyday parlance people do not talk as if “campaigns” and “elections” are the same thing, any more than “pregnancy” and “birth” are one and the same. People speak of the “campaign” that leads up to “election day.” Candidates crisscross the country making “campaign” stops, not “election stops.” We understand that one who “campaigns” for office may or may not be “elected” to that office, and candidates do not mistake “campaigning” for “being elected.” Merriam Webster defines “campaign” quite differently from “election,” the former being a “connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result,” the latter a “formal process by which voters make their political choices on public issues or candidates for public office.” The leading trade journal for political consultants, Campaigns & Elections, surely did not think its title was mere redundancy.

Legal statutes and texts in the 18th century frequently discussed the “time, place and manner of election.” Rob Natelson’s extensive historical research finds that these statutes encompassed the times, places and mechanics of voting, registration lists, districting, qualifications of electors and candidates, prohibitions on misconduct at the polls, and the rules of decision (i.e. plurality or majority vote). They did not encompass the conduct of the campaign preceding the election. The only state supreme court ever to probe the meaning of the phrase is that of Oregon, which, in Vannatta v. Keisling (1997), examined the language of Oregon’s 1859 constitution and determined that the “manner of regulating and conducting elections” did not encompass a political campaign, but only “those events immediately associated with the act of selecting a particular candidate or … measure. The Court noted that this also seemed to be the understanding of the Connecticut Constitution of 1818, from which Oregon drew its language.

Finally, the federal Constitution itself supports this narrow reading of “Time, Places and Manner.” For while Article I uses that full phrase, Article II provides only for the “Time of chusing” electors. Why not “place” and “manner”? Because these are specifically provided for in detailed instructions on the electoral college. If, however, “manner” was intended to include events leading up to the election–that is to say, the campaign and other events not included in the detailed instructions on operation of the Electoral College-then we would have expected the “Manner” clause to appear in Article II as well as Article I. And the brief discussion of the “Times, Places, and Manner” clause at the Constitutional Convention revolved entirely around election administration, notably the submission of false returns, the holding of elections, and limitations on who was eligible to serve.

The early Supreme Court decisions interpreting the scope of the “Times, Places and Manner” clause all dealt with issues pertaining directly to voting, not to persuading fellow citizens how to vote. Thus Smith v. United States (1857) upheld the right of Congress to mandate single member districts for the House of Representatives, and the post Civil War cases dealt with issues of eligibility to vote and ballot box stuffing, fraudulent counting of votes, and physically preventing eligible voters from voting. Likewise, through World War I, lower court decisions dealt with the mechanics of voter registration and counting ballots.

Not until the 1934 decision in Burroughs v. United States did the Supreme Court find any authority in the “Times, Places and Manner” clause to regulate pre-election campaigning. The court’s analysis consisted of little more than quoting Ex Parte Yarbrough (1884) and asserting that Yarbrough stood for the power of Congress to regulate “elections.” But Yarbrough dealt with physical attacks on voters at the polls on election day. Although Burroughs quoted Yarbrough at length for the authority of the government to regulate elections, it never considered the distinction between elections and campaigning in advance of elections. Rather, it simply transposed Yarbrough’s election day regulation to the months of campaigning preceding that election. Forty years later, in Buckley, the Court simply cited Burroughs for Congress’s “very broad authority to prevent corruption in national Presidential elections.”

In fact, outside of the realm of campaign finance cases, the court has recognized a more narrow scope of the clause. In U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, the Court noted that “the Framers understood the Elections Clause as a grant of authority to issue procedural regulations, and not as a source of power to dictate electoral outcomes, to favor or disfavor a class of candidates, or to evade important constitutional restraints.” In Cook v. Gralike, the court held that “[Manner] encompasses matters … notices, registration, the supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns.” And last term, in Arizona v. Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., Justice Clarence Thomas recognized, after a detailed historical discussion, that it is “difficult to maintain that the Times, Places and Manner Clause gives Congress power beyond regulating the casting of ballots and related activities.”

To be clear, then, a doctrine of separation of campaign and state, based on the common-sense understanding of “campaigns” as something different from “elections,” would require the court to overturn Burroughs and, with that, the implicit reliance of later cases (explicit in the case of Buckley) on that decision. But as Burroughs is unsupported by textualism, originalism, or a functional approach to the Constitution, and was adopted ipse dixit rather than through any reasoned process, it merits such reconsideration.

To beat Vladimir Putin, we’re going to need to be a little more like him.

The last two weeks have witnessed the upending of the European order and the close of the post-Cold War era. With his invasion of Crimea and the instant absorption of the strategic peninsula, Vladimir Putin has shown that he will not play by the West’s rules. The “end of history” is at an end—we’re now seeing the onset of Cold War 2.0.

What’s on the Kremlin’s mind was made clear by Putin’s fire-breathing speech to the Duma announcing the annexation of Crimea, which blended retrograde Russian nationalism with a generous helping of messianism on behalf of his fellow Slavs, alongside the KGB-speak that Putin is so fond of. If you enjoy mystical references to Orthodox saints of two millennia past accompanied by warnings about a Western fifth column and “national traitors,” this was the speech for you.

Putin confirmed the worst fears of Ukrainians who think they should have their own country. But his ambitions go well beyond Ukraine: By explicitly linking Russian ethnicity with membership in the Russian Federation, Putin has challenged the post-Soviet order writ large.

For years, I studied Russia as a counterintelligence officer for the National Security Agency, and at times I feel like I’m seeing history in reverse. The Kremlin is a fiercely revisionist power, seeking to change the status quo by various forms of force. This will soon involve NATO members in the Baltics directly, as well as Poland and Romania indirectly. Longstanding Russian acumen in what I term Special War, an amalgam of espionage, subversion and terrorism by spies and special operatives, is already known to Russia’s neighbors and can be expected to increase.

Read the rest at POLITICO Magazine…

By: SWJ Editors

“China waging ‘Three Warfares’ against United States in Asia, Pentagon says.”

Hiroshima and Nagasaki conjure images of lightening flashes and mushroom clouds; the terrifying power of atomic weapons and of once great cities reduced to smoking ash, twisted steel and molten corpses. Survival in the radioactive aftermath was, in many cases, a curse as Japan struggled to come to terms with the magnitude of the disaster. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the first choice targets. Instead, many planned for Kyoto to be incinerated. How did Kyoto escape obliteration?

On 6 August 1945, the United States Air Force unleashed the country’s latest and most powerful weapon on the unsuspecting city of Hiroshima. The world had now openly and terrifyingly entered the Atomic Age and the once thriving port was now a smouldering city of the dead and dying.

Three days later, the USAF repeated its feat with the annihilation of Nagasaki. America had comprehensively demonstrated the new and terrible power at its disposal; Japan unconditionally surrendered just six days after the destruction of Nagasaki.

The impact of the attacks was immediate and profound. Few human technological developments can match the product of the Manhattan Project for changing the rules of warfare so dramatically and so quickly. What use were tanks, armies of infantry or even air forces against such power? What defence did anyone now have against nuclear war? What guarantee was there for anyone in a world where man now had the power to destroy itself and the planet?

Those questions continue to vex world leaders discussing disarmament and a nuclear free world. How much more pressing would these discussions have been had the Americans succeeded in their original plan to bomb Kyoto instead of the secondary targets outlined above?

It is difficult to emphasise the importance of Kyoto in both Japanese national consciousness and world cultural importance. It had been the imperial capital of Japan for more than a millennia and plays a key role in maintaining traditional Japanese culture.

It is home to more than 2,000 temples – both Buddhist and Shinto and is adorned with imperial palaces, pavilions and gardens. Its royal tombs house many of the emperors of ancient Japan and its streets feature a concentration of traditional Japanese architecture that is now unique. Tourists throng to stare at traditional tea ceremonies, geishas fluttering along narrow streets or simply to admire the cherry blossom trees in beautiful bloom.

Kyoto had been identified early in the Manhattan Project as a potential target. It remained at the top of the target list well in to 1945. At the minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee held at Los Alamos on 10 – 11 May 1945, Kyoto was listed at number one – ahead of Hiroshima, Yokohama, the Kokura Arsenal and Niigata. Nagasaki was not even listed at this stage.

The Target Committee heard that: ‘This target is an urban industrial area with a population of 1,000,000. It is the former capital of Japan and many people and industries are now being moved there as other areas are being destroyed. From the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual center for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon as the gadget.’ It, along with Hiroshima, was classified as an ‘AA Target’.

The Target Committee finally decided on a list of four targets, with Kyoto topping the list. Kyoto’s primacy was partially dependent on the impact an attack would have on the Japanese psyche: ‘Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon. Hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focussing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed. The Emperor’s palace in Tokyo has a greater fame than any other target but is of least strategic value.’

So how did Kyoto go from being the main target to being spared the horror of an atomic attack? Kyoto’s fortune (and Nagasaki’s misfortune) can be attributed to one man – Henry S. Stimson, the US Secretary of War.

On 12 June 1945, Stimson asked for a list of the cities that had been selected for bombing. He immediately opposed the selection of Kyoto as the primary candidate, noting that it: ‘had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture’. The War Secretary was not merely concerned with the cultural impact of a strike – he feared the reaction from the Japanese and world opinion.

Stimson went further in protecting Kyoto – he ordered that it should not even be subject to conventional air raids. In conversations with General Arnold, the commander of the Army Air Force, Stimson: ‘told him there was one city that they must not bomb without my permission and that was Kyoto’.

Stimson’s decision making was undoubtedly influenced by two key events. The first and most often commented on is that Stimson had spent a happy honeymoon in Kyoto. It is unlikely, however, that blissful memories were enough to protect the city. More practically, he had seen the negative reaction in Germany and across the world accompanying the destruction of Dresden after a particularly heavy Allied raid and the resulting firestorm.

Finally, Stimson was an intelligent man of the world. As well as being concerned for the cultural and religious significance of Kyoto, there was a solid realpolitik foundation to his decision: ‘he felt that bombing Kyoto would increase the likelihood that Japan would be driven into Russia’s arms after the war’. In the aftermath of the Potsdam Conference and President Truman’s cooler relations with the Soviets, the last thing the Americans wanted to do was bolster the communist cause in Asia.

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Via Ken on Twitter:

Genius. Sheer genius.

I love everything about this, right down to the fine print on the website: "All audio, visual, and textual contents on this site have been granted an intellectual monopoly by the powers vested in the G-force."

"One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." – H. L. Mencken

"Enter Big G's Command Center Through the Revolving Doors on K Street" © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

It’s pretextual and cronyish in motivation, argues Jim Epstein at the Daily Beast (earlier).

Feds’ crackdown on Chinatown buses is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Vincent Hanna: Master William Pitt, the Even Younger, are you disappointed?

Pitt the Even Younger: Yes I’m horrified. I smeared my opponents, bribed the press to be on my side, and threatened to torture the electorate if we lost. I fail to see what a more decent politician would have done.

Blackadder the Third, Dish and Dishonesty

What was Britain’s most famous rotten borough? Old Sarum? This exposed hill top had just three houses and seven voters in the 1830s but sent two representatives to the House of Commons.

Or perhaps Dunwich? This formally prosperous seaside town had largely fallen beneath the churning waves of the North Sea. By the 1830s it boasted just 44 houses and 32 voters but also elected two MPs in parliamentary elections.

Personally, I’d go for Dunny-on-the-Wold, the fictional rotten borough that featured prominently in Dish and Dishonesty, the first episode of the third series of Blackadder. An election has been called, and it is vital for Blackadder’s future fortunes that the Prince Regent’s supporters do well. He intends to fix the vote in a notoriously rotten borough, explaining that:

“Dunny-on-the-Wold is a tuppenny- ha’penny place. Half an acre of sodden marshland in the Suffolk Fens with an empty town hall on it. Population: three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named Colin, and a small hen in its late forties.”

The rigged election leads to the unsurprising outcome of the constituency’s single voter casting 16,472 votes for Blackadder’s chosen candidate, Baldrick. It is revealed that Blackadder is both the constituency’s returning officer (whose predecessor died when he “accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving”) and voter (whose predecessor “accidentally brutally cut his head off while combing his hair”).

Although exaggerated for comic effect, the reality of Britain’s rotten or pocket boroughs was hardly less scandalous or absurd. Before the Great Reform Act of 1832, the development of Britain’s parliamentary system could, at its most charitable, be described as organic. To a modern eye, it exemplified the corruption of the pre-reform system.

The vast new population centres of Birmingham and Manchester had no separate representation than within the old shire counties to which they geographically belonged. Meanwhile, a decent handful of boroughs with fewer than 100 electors sent two MPs each to sit in the House of Commons. Thomas Paine succinctly explained the problem in his treatsie on Rights of Man:

“The county of York, which contains nearly a million of souls, sends two county members; and so does the county of Rutland, which contains not an hundredth part of that number. The old town of Sarum, which contains not three houses, sends two members; and the town of Manchester, which contains upward of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to send any. Is there any principle in these things?”

One of most egregious examples of the phenomena was the borough of Gatton in Surrey. It was centred on Gatton Park and had little else that warranted its royally conferred rights to send two representatives to Parliament. By 1831, Gatton’s voter roll had sunk to seven. Gatton’s notoriety came from it being bought and sold, with a phenomenal six-figure price tag for the estate mainly deriving from its parliamentary rights.

Other examples included the Isle of Wight’s Newtown, a once thriving port that had been devastated by French raids and eclipsed by the better defended Newport. By 1832, Newtown only had 23 burgesses out of a population of 68. Bramber and Steyning, in Sussex, were small villages that were so close together that they overlapped; some residents of Bramber could also vote in Steyning. Despite populations of just under two hundred each, both villages sent two MPs to Parliament.

So how had this happened? The right to send MPs to parliament was conferred on boroughs and counties. Boroughs had royal charters conferring on them a set of rights, including the right to send up to two MPs to sit in the House of Commons.

This was all fine and sensible when the cathedral city of Salisbury had been centred on the high bluffs of Old Sarum or when the port of Dunwich was second only to London in importance and was a flourishing commercial centre. But when the population of Old Sarum moved en masse down the hill to the river valley below or when the bulk of Dunwich slipped into the sea, its royally conferred rights were not removed.

Meanwhile, a process that had developed over centuries suddenly sped up as industrialisation fed the urbanisation of the country. Huge new industrial towns sprang up, many times larger in population than all but the largest enfranchised royal boroughs. Unless they were given borough status, they would enjoy none of those corporate rights and could not send their own MPs to parliament.

Whilst the rotten borough could be described as an accident of history, a pocket borough was an altogether more corrupt entity. These were boroughs that were effectively controlled by area’s largest and most important landlord. In an age of public ballots, it was a brave tenant farmer who voted against the interests of the powerful land owner. As there was no secret ballot, the landowner could and often did evict residents who did not vote for the person he wanted.

By the 1820s, the system was far from a quirky accident of British political history; it was rapidly becoming a political issue that divided the nation and threatened to destabilise the authority of Parliament.

The very words used to describe these anomalous political entities is a stark reminder of how they were viewed by many – these were the rotten, decayed, corrupt and pocket boroughs of Britain.

The pressure for reform was so great that some historians believe the Reform Act 1832 came just in time to avoid serious disturbances, even revolution, across the country.

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Amongst the seemingly essential accoutrement for a dictator is the acquisition of a short and snappy title. The trend was set by Adolf Hitler becoming der Führer – a term that literally translates as leader but which also has an almost mystic sense of being a guide. Plenty of other dictators had similar names, but few were as effective as this Germanic invention and some sound decidedly comic.

In 1934, Adolf Hitler succeeded Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg as the head of state of Germany. Hitler did not, however, assume the title of President. This was left vacant – ostensibly out of respect for von Hindenburg but also because the Chancellor wanted to remove all the trappings of the discredited Weimar Republic. Instead, Hitler became Führer und Reichskanzler.

By the time the Third Reich was firmly established, this title developed into Führer des deutschen Reiches und Volkes and by 1942 it reached an apogee of grandiosity with Führer des Großdeutschen Reiches and Führer der Nation. Whilst this was not as absurd as Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten (Greatest Military Commander of All Time), it was decidedly more expansive than a plain Mr President or Prime Minister.

Arguably, Hitler was merely copying his Italian fascist colleague. Mussolini was known as il Duce from 1925. It also means leader, but is rooted in the Latin word Dux and is therefore cognate with duke. Essentially, it wasn’t quite as naff a title as Führer, but Mussolini certainly did his best to ensure it had a faintly comical overtone.

Although Mussolini started the trend, it was the example set by Hitler that was so enthusiastically taken up by other European fascist leaders. In Spain, Francisco Franco became el Jefe – the chief, the boss or the head (as in Jefe del Estado – head of state). Over the border, Philippe Pétain took a similar title as Chef de l’État of the French State (i.e. Vichy France). Some other examples from across the Axis included:

• Poglavnik (First Person) – Ante Pavelić  – Croatian fascist leader;
• Fører  (the Leader) – Vidkun Quisling – Norwegian fascist leader
• Nemzetvezető (Leader of the Nation) – Ferenc Szálasi – Hungarian fascist leader
• Conducător (Leader) – Ion Antonescu – Rumanian fascist leader.

Such titles were not reserved for the ultra-right. In the USSR, Josef Stalin was known as the Vozhd (the leader). This was reserved compared to the array of ludicrously grandiloquent titles that he accumulated. He became the “Coryphaeus of Science”, “Father of Nations”, “Brilliant Genius of Humanity”, “Great Architect of Communism” and the “Gardener of Human Happiness”.

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Ah, sleep: is there anything quite like it? So easily discarded and discounted when nighttime attractions present themselves and yet so dearly missed and pined after the next morning. You’ve heard me say it enough, so I’ll keep it short. A good night’s sleep is the foundation for a healthy, happy, productive existence. Good sleep keeps us lean and thinking clearly. And without good, regular sleep, we just go through life in a scattered daze, everything foggy, slightly confusing, and less enjoyable. We’re not really ourselves if we haven’t slept. We desperately need a good night’s sleep, every night.

So how do you get one? What would a day of optimal sleep promotion look like?

Let’s start from the beginning. Let’s start with the morning.

Early Morning

Use a dawn simulator alarm clock. These are alarms with lamps that slowly and gradually brighten as your wake time approaches. It’s not the same as having the majestic sunrise beam into your room and very soul, but these contraptions have been shown to improve sleep quality. Another advantage: waking up won’t be so jarring.

When you wake up, get up. Do not hit snooze, sleep for five minutes, hit it again, sleep for five more, and keep doing that until you can will yourself to rise and stumble off to begin your day. You may think you’re effectively chipping away at sleep debt with those little bits and pieces of “sleep,” but you’re really just fragmenting your sleep (PDF), which leads to “sleepiness-related daytime impairment,” compulsory afternoon caffeine infusions, and less productivity. If you hit snooze today, you’ll probably end up sleeping badly enough to have to hit it again tomorrow.

Upon getting up, you expose yourself to bright light. Ideally, this is the sun. If it’s still dark out, you can use the brightest artificial light you have. 10,000 lux lamps are best (and in fact are used to effectively treat Seasonal Affective Disorder), but anything is better than no light at all. Our bodies, brains, and biological clocks expect bright light during the day, and meeting those expectations has been shown to improve sleep (as well as alertness and productivity during the day), even if the light is artificial.

Before “the day” starts, you get some physical activity. Go for a short walk (great way to get some light, too!) with the dog, do a light stretching or movement routine for five minutes, have sex, dance to your morning playlist as you get ready for work, roughhouse with your kids, swing a light kettlebell for a few minutes, read your email on the treadmill, ride your bike around the block, whatever. You don’t even have to work up a sweat or anything if you don’t want to. Just move a little. There’s some evidence (albeit uneven) that morning activity can improve sleep later on that night.

Brew your coffee, tea, or legal stimulant-containing beverage now if you’re going to have any today. Caffeine has a half life of up to six hours, so having that Americano after lunch could disrupt your sleep tonight.

If you eat breakfast, eat a good portion of animal. Meat (and not just turkey) is a good source of the amino acid tryptophan, and high-tryptophan breakfasts have been shown to improve sleep quality. Steak, eggs, and whey protein, anyone?

If you don’t typically eat breakfast, you probably don’t need to start. Intermittent fasting can also improve sleep. If your sleep is suffering, you might want to try the meat breakfast, though.

Mid-Morning

Work hard, be proactive, and stay focused. Getting as much work done as you can before noon will take the mental load off the rest of your day, allowing you to relax a bit. Procrastination will only make you stressed out, and stress is the enemy of good sleep.

While you’re working, take a minute to install f.lux on your computer. F.lux is a free program that changes your computer’s color spectrum automatically according to the time of day. When it’s dark out, an f.lux-enabled computer gives off very little sleep-disrupting blue light.

Last call for caffeine. If you do go for coffee, grab a cup of good green tea to go with it; green tea contains L-theanine, which can partially counteract the sleep disturbances caused by caffeine. Primal Calm also contains L-theanine, as well as other stress-modulating ingredients, so that’s another option.

Midday

Sometime after lunch, meditate for twenty minutes. Several studies have shown that meditation practice can improve sleep, including cyclic meditation (a kind of yoga-meditation fusion) and mindfulness meditation. There’s even evidence that meditation can decrease the amount of sleep you need to function.

When and if you nap, do it closer to midday than to your bedtime. A nap taken too close to nighttime can interfere with your sleep.

Go for a barefoot stroll in the grass, dirt, sand, or the natural surface of your choice. Even a quick walk on the lawn outside the office works. Though earthing is controversial, its proponents may be overstating its benefits, and the studies connecting it to better sleep may not be the best-designed, who doesn’t feel better and more relaxed after letting the leaves of grass trace their way between your toes, feeling the cool damp earth underneath, or tromping an uneven unsteady path through soft white sand? It certainly doesn’t hurt.

Early Evening

If you plan on drinking, do so around this time. Alcohol too close to bed – even just a couple glasses of wine – can impact sleep. You’ll sleep, but it’ll be poor quality sleep fraught with frequent disturbances. This validates both happy hours and day drinking, in a way.

Eat most of your carbs at dinner. A recent study showed that eating carbs, even high-glycemic ones, at the last meal shortened the sleep onset. In other words, packing your carbs into dinner can help you fall asleep faster.

Eat animal fat and/or olive oil at dinner (and lunch, and breakfast). Both animal fat like lard or beef fat and olive oil (or macadamia nuts, for that matter) are excellent sources of oleic acid, a precursor to the sleep-inducing oleamide.

Dim the lights when darkness falls. If it’s dark outside, your body needs to start winding down, and excessive artificial lighting will get in the way of that.

Turn off the screens an hour or two before bed. Smartphones, laptops, computers, TVs, tablets – they all emit melatonin-disrupting blue light directly into our staring, transfixed eyeballs. If you miss the entertainment factor, play board games. Heck, start a board game night and invite people over.

Use blue blocking goggles after dark. These, coupled with the f.lux you installed earlier, should block out the harmful blue light when you need (or “need”) to use electronics. I like this pair, while this pair fits over glasses.

Bedtime

Drink some bone broth, eat some gelatin, or take glycine. All of those things either contain or are glycine, an amino acid with sleep promoting effects.

Clear your mind. Meditation can work here, again, or you could make a to-do list for the following day so that you don’t lie awake obsessing over everything.

Rub your body down with magnesium oil or lotion. I go for the softest areas, like under my arms or along my rib cage. If it stings, you know it’s working. Bonus: it gives you (or me, at least) really cool, really vivid dreams. Some people are paradoxical responders who actually sleep worse on this stuff, just so you’re aware.

Read some dense fiction in bed, in actual physical book form (nothing against ebooks at any other time, but they represent a light source that can disrupt sleep). Don’t read easily digestible stuff like an old John le Carre spy novel. Instead, go for something like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian that has you parsing paragraph-long sentences. Great book, but you’ll be asleep in no time.

Eliminate, remove, or cover up any sources of light in your bedroom, even the tiny blinking ones. Black-out blinds over your windows, duct tape over your blinking lights, and towels under doors may be warranted to achieve true darkness.

Use white/brown noise or nature sounds before bed. Falling rain is a good sound to fall asleep to, as are the somewhat haunting but eerily beautiful whale songs.

Guided meditation can help you get to sleep. Search iTunes for “guided meditation” and a bunch of podcasts will pop up. Just don your blue blocking goggles before using your phone to play one.

Take a tablespoon of honey, preferably raw, right before bed. Seth Roberts has shown through rigorous self-experimentation how it might very well improve sleep, perhaps by keeping liver glycogen full.

Middle of the Night

Improve your aim and reduce your reliance on lights. If you get up in the night to urinate, don’t flip on every light as you pass them. Most people can adjust to the darkness if they let themselves.

Don’t check your email just because you woke up. It’s not that important (if it were, they’d call), and whatever you read is only going to keep you up. Also, blue light!

General Advice

Make sure to eat enough salt throughout the day, since a depletion of bodily sodium stores can trigger overtraining-like symptoms, raise blood pressure, and impair the quality of your sleep. I won’t give an absolute amount, because that will differ based on size, activity level, stress, and many other factors. Just salt your food until it tastes good. So much for total salt avoidance, eh?

Exercise regularly. Regular exercisers report getting better sleep than people who don’t exercise at all, even on the same number of hours. In people with sleep disorders like insomnia, exercise can make things worse in the short term or have no effect at all. Working out once probably won’t help once. It’s over the long term (4 months) that exercise can improve sleep quality in insomnia patients. Exercise also increases sleep quality in sleep apnea patients.

Exercising at night is generally fine. Get it in whenever you can fit it. However, really intense pulse-pounding glycolytic work an hour before bed (like Crossfit or HIIT) might impact your sleep onset, simply because your cortisol is momentarily elevated. Proper cool downs should help get you back to baseline, as should food and a cold shower.

Align your life schedule with your chronotype. This isn’t possible for everyone to do perfectly – we all have to pay the bills, and that often means working on someone else’s schedule – but even small strides in the general direction of our genetic chronotype can help.

Obviously, not everyone needs to do or try every suggestion on here. I just combed through the research and put everything out on the table so you could pick and choose and experiment to see what works and what doesn’t. We’re all different.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Let me know what works for you and what does not work. I can always use better sleep, so I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for new tips.