Heiress Apparent?

Grand Duchess Ivanka Donaldovna in Harper's Bazaar, 2007, via Time.

I never really know how serious I am talking about Emperor Trump and Grand Duchess Ivanka and so on, or when I call Ross Douthat a monarchist for that matter, but here's the Monsignor calling for Her Grace to succeed His Imperial Highness, not exactly with great enthusiasm, but remarkable equanimity, as a logical next development ("The Ivanka Way"):

in a White House where everything is inappropriate, Ivanka has been considerably less embarrassing than most, and in an administration whose populist agenda keeps misfiring, she has stayed surprisingly on target.

Trumpism as an ideology is on life support, but its 2016 success means that at some point, Trump will have a would-be ideological heir. It could be some enterprising Republican senator, some as-yet-unknown governor, even a political neophyte. Or it could be yet another celebrity with an aspirational brand, critics to her left and right, and an instinct for heterodox-but-popular ideas.

In our increasingly imperial republic, sometimes the most likely heir is already in the line of succession.

The Grand Duchess's heterodox-but-popular ideas Ross cites because they "reminded me of Ivanka’s father’s 2016 approach to many questions—the Trumpian habit of ignoring the ideological assumptions around an issue, and groping toward views that more Americans might be likely to support" are

Let justice roll down like waters

Investigation of Planned Parenthood ends up busting the video fraudsters instead! Manny Fernandez, New York Times:

HOUSTON — A grand jury here that was investigating allegations of misconduct against Planned Parenthood has instead indicted two anti-abortion activists who made videos of the organization.

In a statement, the Harris County district attorney, Devon Anderson, said Monday that the director of the Center for Medical Progress, David Daleiden, had been indicted on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to purchasing human organs.

Another center employee, Sandra Merritt, was indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record.

The Center for Medical Progress had covertly shot videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of aborted fetuses for research. Mr. Daleiden, 26, had posed as a biotechnology representative to infiltrate Planned Parenthood affiliates and surreptitiously record his attempts to procure tissue for research.

Ms. Anderson said in the statement that grand jurors had cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing. She did not specify in the statement what record or records were allegedly tampered with.

More violence: Rubio exchange, concluded (I think)

Image by Ms. Magazine.

For the record again, taking up where the Senator left off Thursday. He either is really unflinching when it comes to debate or psychologically unable to not have the last word or has way too much time on his hands, but I have to admit to being impressed how much of it he's willing to give to an insignificant leftish clown who will never vote for him.

(Not complete, and maybe not 100% coherent.)

@Yastreblyansky @NARAL Seems mostly about due process, not that he thought Hill was innocent.

— Rise for Rubio (@RiseForRubio) December 5, 2015

@RiseForRubio @NARAL Purpose of raising due process issue is to argue Hill should have been found innocent because he "saved babies".

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) December 5, 2015

What do you mean by "target"?

Image via CNN.

Well, that didn't take long. From BuzzFeed:

Zigmond Post, who told BuzzFeed News he was a neighbor of Dear’s in Hartsel, said the man once gave him anti-Obama pamphlets.

Post said he once went to Dear’s home to retrieve two dogs that had gotten loose. “We were there for a minute and the guy was already handing us anti-Obama pamphlets,” he said. According to Post, Dear said “Obama was ruining the country and needed to be impeached.”

But this certainly has no direct bearing on the question of whether Robert Dear was "targeting Planned Parenthood" when he shot his way (legally open-carrying an AK-47) into a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and killed three people and wounded many more once he got inside. Surely there are lots of Obama haters who couldn't care less about Planned Parenthood. Or used to be, anyway, before a few months ago, right? Along the lines of that guy who called them

Cheap shot: Kathryn Jean

John Seven: The Saints Of Exhalation Aspire To Preserve The Breath Of Happy Children for The (Privatized) Good Of All!

Don't hold your breath, at least if you're a saint.

No earthly exaltation is important. The only exhalation that important is that of the saints--of Heaven #homilytweet pic.twitter.com/124HLzHniB

— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) August 22, 2015

For the rest of you kids, never mind.

A very specific disgust

Statue of a crowned postman with rat, on the island of Nuncio, in the Sunless Sea video game. Via Gamepedia.

Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street Monsignor Ross Douthat, on the doctored tape falsely suggesting that the Planned Parenthood organization sells "baby parts" from aborted fetuses; false or not, the Monsignor still thinks it ought to be a "problem" for PP:

...the problem these videos create for Planned Parenthood isn’t just a generalized queasiness at surgery and blood. It’s a very specific disgust, informed by reason and experience — the reasoning that notes that it’s precisely a fetus’s humanity that makes its organs valuable, and the experience of recognizing one’s own children, on the ultrasound monitor and after, as something more than just “products of conception” or tissue for the knife.

Dear Ross,

You certainly are a dick. For my part, I prefer to stay snarky and lighthearted on this page, and people like you aren't really invited, but the smugness of that reference to being "informed by reason and experience", the language of an unluckily stupid young parish priest (I know they're not all stupid!) laying down the law in spite of the fact that he's got only the reason they gave him in seminary and no experience at all, is more than I can bear. Aren't you getting a little long in the tooth to hold on to callow as your main shtik? Years away from the chunky Reese Witherspoons and a father yourself?

Cheap shots and ancient myths

Mousepad from Zazzle.

BENGHAZI!!! smoking gun

Via email from Foreign Policy, a report from Massimo Calabresi at Time magazine: the guilty party behind the Susan Rice talking points that wrongly suggested the incident at the US consulate in Benghazi was a mob infuriated by the Innocence of Muslims home video was—wait for it—Time magazine.

And other organs of our fearless journalistic establishment (such as Al Jazeera), which is why I remember being perfectly certain that it was the story myself. That's what [jump]

National Review Safer, Still Lying, and Less Read

Wesley J. Smith, in a self-portrait revealing how deeply he identifies with fetuses, to the point of believing he looks like one.

Texas Abortion Safer, Still Legal, and More Rare

By Wesley J. Smith

That's the headline for the reproduction in National Review Online of a couple of paragraphs ripped from the Houston Chronicle noting the busting of a Houston women's health care clinic for performing abortions without admission privileges at any nearby hospital, in [jump]

Observers' paradox

Schrödinger's Cat. By Draguunthor at DeviantArt.

The tempest over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation massacre as it unfolded Thursday and Friday put me in mind of a problem on a blogospheric scale that I have meant to address for some time, the Heisenbergian way the Internet has of dealing with uncertainty—you can perceive the velocity of a story as it travels through the Tubes or its position, but not both at the same time, and the aspect you choose has an effect on what the story actually is.

The news that SGK had reversed its decision to withdraw funding for breast examinations [jump]

Race for the cure? Race for the exit!

The rule announced by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation requiring them to cut off funding to any organization that is under investigation, which applies to, out of the 2000 organizations they support, exactly one (Planned Parenthood) made me think of Alice:

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out 'Silence!' and read out from his book, 'Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.'
Everybody looked at Alice.
'I'm not a mile high,' said Alice.
'You are,' said the King.
'Nearly two miles high,' added the Queen.
'Well, I shan't go, at any rate,' said Alice: 'besides, that's not a regular rule: you invented it just now.'
'It's the oldest rule in the book,' said the King.
'Then it ought to be Number One,' said Alice.
The King turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily.

That's all I wanted to say, except for the admonition that you should not truck with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation (I always thought that was a stupidly formulated name, however worthy a person Susan G. Komen herself may have been) until they have displayed sincere contrition.

Shining Eyes and White Wrists. (Above) (1887-1893) Wu Youru. Ink on Paper. Collection of the Shanghai History Museum. From Baartquake. Most Shanghai ladies of the late 19th century were not so liberated.