GOOD: Supreme Court strikes blow against states that raise revenue by hefty fines, forfeitures.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that state governments cannot impose excessive court fees, fines and forfeitures as a means of raising money.

The decision, which united the court’s conservatives and liberals, makes clear that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “excessive fines” applies to the states.

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just back in court after lung cancer surgery, wrote the majority opinion and announced it from the bench.

“The protection against excessive fines guards against abuses of government’s punitive or criminal law-enforcement authority,” Ginsburg wrote. Quoting in part from the court’s 2010 ruling that Second Amendment gun rights apply to the states, she said, “This safeguard, we hold, is ‘fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty.'” . . .

The case came to the Supreme Court from Indiana’s highest court, which ruled that the excessive fines clause doesn’t apply to the states. It represents the latest effort to determine what portions of the Bill of Rights apply to the states.

Most rights, such as the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms for self-defense, have been extended. But the right to a unanimous jury verdict under the Sixth Amendment has not.

This is good. Interestingly, Ginsburg’s opinion cites McDonald v. Chicago, the gun-rights case applying the Second Amendment to the states, four times. Also interestingly, Gorsuch says he agrees with Thomas on incorporation via privileges and immunities, not due process. The full opinion is here.

LUKE THOMPSON: The Congresswoman Loves the Swamp. “Her Wealthy Chief of Staff used a PAC to Pay Her Boyfriend.”

A quick tour through AOC’s campaign expenditures reveals the extent to which Brand New Congress midwifed her campaign into existence, precisely as the FAQ described above would have it. But AOC’s campaign was different from the others backed by Brand New Congress PAC, and not simply because she won. Like other candidates, AOC paid Brand New Congress LLC for strategic consulting, in her case totaling $18,880.14. Unlike in the other cases, Brand New Congress PAC turned around and paid her boyfriend as a “marketing consultant”.

Indeed, while Brand New Congress PAC’s ten largest expenditures were paid to Brand New Congress LLC for “strategic consulting,” a sum that totaled $261,165.20 over the course of the campaign, its eleventh and twelfth largest expenditures were paid to Riley Roberts [AOC’s boyfriend/partner/or perhaps even husband].

Much, much more at the link.

SO WHAT, EXACTLY, IS THE MORAL COMPONENT OF #NEVERTRUMP?

See, you’re really not Solzhenitsyn here. And as far as I can tell, although NeverTrumpers talk a lot about morality and principles, their actual beef seems to be a combination of aesthetic dislike of Trump’s messaging style, and resentment that he’s not hiring them, and never will hire them. I suppose a lot of people confuse their own social standing and economic prospects with morality, but color me unpersuaded.

Perhaps in 2016 you could imagine that Trump would be such an awful President that you had a moral duty to oppose him. But in 2019, it’s obvious that that’s not the case. In fact, he’s pretty darn successful. Instead of gay concentration camps, he’s trying to end discrimination against gays worldwide. Instead of being a warmonger he’s now ending wars — and getting grief about it from NeverTrumpers. The Russia-collusion thing was always twaddle, but nobody is even pretending otherwise anymore. And Trump’s background and personal life certainly don’t stand out as compared to many other occupants of the Oval Office whom the establishment deemed entirely acceptable.

So, again, what exactly is the moral foundation of your very very moral, Solzhenitsyn-like stance?

OH: Facebook Bans Human Rights Activist for Commemorating Christians Slaughtered by ISIS.

AND YOU PROBABLY THOUGHT I WAS JOKING when I said, “but it’s problematic to go after those countries for murderous barbarism because colonialism or something.” But noooo:

Remember: If Trump does it, it must be wrong.

UPDATE:

I’M SO OLD I REMEMBER WHEN GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ACTUALLY SUPPORTED GAY RIGHTS: Trump’s Plan to Decriminalize Homosexuality Is an Old Racist Tactic.

Related: a group of  [LGBT] activists holding Palestinian flags took the stage and led a 13-minute protest for Palestinian liberation and against Zionism.  The Palestinian territories are among the most hostile places for gay people on earth.

ROGER SIMON: Proposing Ric Grenell for Our First Openly Gay President.

AT LEAST HE GOT FIRED FOR IT: Store Clerk in Kansas Curses Out MAGA Hat-Wearing 14-Year-Old.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: The Future of the Liberal Order Is Conservative.

The order is clearly worth saving, but the question is how. Keep calm and carry on, some of its defenders argue; today’s difficulties will pass, and the order is resilient enough to survive them. Others appreciate the gravity of the crisis but insist that the best response is to vigorously reaffirm the order’s virtues and confront its external challengers. Bold Churchillian moves—sending more American troops to Syria, offering Ukraine more help to kick out pro-Russian forces—would help make the liberal international order great again. Only by doubling down on the norms and institutions that made the liberal world order so successful, they say, can that order be saved.

Such defenders of the order tend to portray the challenge as a struggle between liberal countries trying to sustain the status quo and dissatisfied authoritarians seeking to revise it. What they miss, however, is that for the past 25 years, the international order crafted by and for liberal states has itself been profoundly revisionist, aggressively exporting democracy and expanding in both depth and breadth. The scale of the current problems means that more of the same is not viable; the best response is to make the liberal order more conservative. Instead of expanding it to new places and new domains, the United States and its partners should consolidate the gains the order has reaped.

The debate over U.S. grand strategy has traditionally been portrayed as a choice between retrenchment and ambitious expansionism. Conservatism offers a third way: it is a prudent option.

I’d like to see us return to our Whiggish roots and practice more of that traditional liberty-based liberalism. The best way to “export” western values is to practice them for all to see — that “shining city on a hill” stuff works.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CULTURE OF SEXISM EDITION: Colleges are now dominated by women, creating an ‘education gap’ afflicting men. Luckily, “gaps” are only bad when they hurt women.

KAROL MARKOWICZ: The opioid epidemic keeps killing my friends.

After the funerals, the friends and family stood around looking at the ground. We assured each other that there was nothing anybody could have done for the ­deceased. It’s true, but it’s cold comfort. We play back the last moments, the last time we spoke, our last interactions. Were there signs? Maybe. Even if we knew, what could anyone do? Addiction is a sneaky disease, and addicts can get very good at hiding the fact that they are afflicted.

The range of the afflicted has expanded. My friend was a college graduate with parents who loved her. These kinds of details shouldn’t matter when we talk about people who die young, but for so long we were able to dismiss this epidemic as something that happens to other people — the ones alone, without family, without love. The last few years have exploded this misconception. The epidemic has been moving ever closer to us all.

The wave of deaths has escalated from sad to frightening in short order.

And then this:

My ethnic community is among the hard-hit. There isn’t much ­research on drug use specifically among immigrants from the former Soviet Union living in New York. But one 2012 paper noted that substance-abuse and HIV rates among immigrants from the former Soviet Union “appear to be disproportionately high” in comparison to other immigrant groups and “possibly even native populations.”

I wonder why that is.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UF Valentine’s Day ‘Consent Fair’: ‘We all’ ‘contribute to rape culture.’

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: More McCabe book tour, WaPo lawsuit and much, much more. “I am running out of adjectives to describe McCabe. Is he brain-damaged? He believes its possible that the RUSSIANS ordered Trump to fire Comey. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

That memoir isn’t going to sell itself, Liz.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: “The President, the National Security Establishment, and Conlawprof. “If, as Bob Bauer & Andrew McCabe and others have suggested, that the FBI/DOJ are running investigations of the President based upon his exercise of lawful free speech, then Trump is obliged (under Article II) to take corrective action and to supervise his subordinates.”

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF: Socialism as a Millennial religion.

The Millennials can’t remember very much – and they don’t learn very much either. It’s easy being hot for socialism or communism when you actually have a very little idea of what it is and what it did throughout the 20th century. And the Ys have that ignorance in spades; one third of them think that George W Bush killed more people than Stalin and 42 per cent have never heard of Mao – but over 70 per cent agree with Bernie Sanders. Some research suggests that only 15 per cent actually have a correct understanding of socialism. It’s not just politics; the Millennials are the most woefully undereducated and miseducated generation in a very long time. To be fair, that’s not strictly their fault; that attaches itself again to their Boomer grandparents who have been in charge of our failing education systems during this time. Combine the modern indoctrination-cum-dumbification taking place in schools and universities with the attention span-killing impact of information technology and social media, and you have a barely literate cohort, which is simply not equipped with the necessary mental tools to learn about the real world even if they wanted to.

Any surprises that socialism is now nearly synonymous with Gen Y?

Read the whole thing. I’d just add that it’s nice having Arthur back to regular blogging.

CHANGE: Border apprehensions jump 84 percent, 606,000 expected this year.

WELL, THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS HE’S NOT ALL THAT BRIGHT:

R.I.P.: Karl Lagerfeld Horrified By Uninspired, Garish Tunnel Of Light Coming Toward Him.

GOOD GAL WITH A GUN: With 2 shots from her pistol, and prayer, 79-year-old woman holds off burglar. “‘I’m waitin’ on ya’, come on!’ she shouts from downstairs. ‘When you come down those stairs I’m gonna blow your damn brains out!'”

BILL SCHER: How Does a Straight White Male Democrat Run for President? “Very carefully.“

CNN’s demographic number cruncher Ron Brownstein noted recently that the percentage of the Democratic primary electorate who are women, nonwhite voters and—“the most liberal component” of the party—college-educated white voters are all on the rise. The 2016 Democratic primary electorate was 58 percent women, 38 percent nonwhite voters and 37 percent college-educated white voters, all numbers that could be bigger in 2020, and strongly suggest a hospitable environment for candidates who embody a diverse America.

Does this mean that Democratic Party voters are so obsessed with identity politics that they are shutting straight white men out of the party? No. Who have been the top two candidates in nearly every primary poll? Not just two straight white males, but geriatric ones: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

I had no idea that Democratic primary voters were so biased against Candidates of Color and Whatnot. Perhaps the DNC should replace all that sloppy campaigning and voting with an intersectional candidate olympics and be done with it.