Month: July 2020

Florida, Man ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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On a day with record numbers of Covid-19 diagnoses, Disney World is reopening.

Seriously, Florida must be proof of Weisshaupt’s dictum, “I firmly believe that if you can’t fool all of the people all of the time you should start breeding them for stupidity.”

The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, a Magic Kingdom hair salon where little girls get styled like Disney princesses, remained closed this weekend. Buzz Lightyear was only able to wave from a distance. Parades and fireworks? Scratched.

And the coronavirus continued its rampage through Florida, with officials reporting more than 15,000 new infections on Sunday, a daily record for any state, including New York.

None of which stopped Sonya Little and thousands of other theme park fans from turning out — in masks in the scorching Florida heat — for the reopening of Walt Disney World. After closing in March because of the pandemic, the mega-resort near Orlando began tossing confetti again at 9 a.m. on Saturday. Two of its four major parks, the Magic Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom, welcomed back a limited number of temperature-checked visitors, with some attractions and character interactions unavailable as safety precautions. Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios were set to reopen on Wednesday.

………

To safely reopen, however, the Magic Kingdom had to allow some of the grimness of pandemic life to puncture the utopian fantasy. To ward off germs, Disney now leaves rows of seats empty on rides like Pirates of the Caribbean. Employees constantly disinfect ride vehicles and lap bars. Face masks are mandatory, and, for some visitors, the coverings quickly grew wet with sweat.

Am I the only one to think that the is completely bat-sh%$ insane?

This Happened to Me

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When I was 19, I was feeling out of it, and had extremely swollen lymph-nodes.

I went to my college health services, and they said that it was nothing to worry about, it was just allergies. (It was fairly classic mononucleosis symptoms, which is one thing that college health services should catch, but they didn’t)

8 months later, and my pre-employment physical, ironically at a hospital working with blood samples, they detected that my eosinophil count was through the roof, and after a number of tests, they determined that I had hepatitis.

I was in treatment for about 3 years afterwards, first with steroids, and then immune suppressants. (My liver numbers have been good for about 35 years)

If they hadn’t caught it, I would probably been in liver failure in a decade, because I was otherwise asymptomatic. (Well, I did lose some weight, see this picture from my employee ID at New England Medical Center)


My Best Picture Ever

Well, now the Washington Post has taken a look at college health centers, and found a profoundly troubling standard of care:

After days of sharp pain shooting up her left abdomen, Rose Wong hobbled from her history class to the student health center at Duke University.

A nurse pressed on the 20-year-old’s belly and told her it felt like gas. Wong questioned the diagnosis but said the nurse dismissed her doubts and sent her to the campus pharmacy to pick up Gas-X that afternoon in February 2019.

The next morning, Wong doubled over in pain, and a roommate drove her to a nearby emergency room in Durham, N.C. In the hospital, doctors discovered her condition was far more serious: Her left kidney had a massive hemorrhage. The bleeding, she later learned, was caused by a cancerous tumor that required surgery and chemotherapy and forced her to miss an entire school year.

Wong said she worries that when she returns to the Duke campus next month, the university and its medical clinic will be incapable of keeping her and 15,500 other Duke students healthy and safe in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

Except for the severity of the actual condition, this exactly mirrors my experience.

………

Wong’s misdiagnosis at Duke is among the scores of problems documented by The Washington Post at college health centers nationwide. As millions go back to school during the pandemic, the ability of campus health services to safeguard and care for students will be tested as never before — and many colleges appear unprepared for the challenge.

To assess the landscape of student health services at roughly 1,700 four-year residential campuses, The Post interviewed more than 200 students, parents and health officials and examined thousands of pages of medical records and court documents and 5,500 reviews of student health centers posted on Google.

College students reported they commonly waited days or weeks for appointments and were routinely provided lackluster care. Dozens of students ended up hospitalized — and some near death — for mistakes they said were made at on-campus clinics, including misdiagnosed cases of appendicitis at Kansas State University and meningitis at the University of Arkansas.

………

Student health centers are akin to the Wild West of medical care. There are no national regulations, and most are not licensed by states. Only about 220 campus medical clinics of the thousands nationwide are accredited by outside health organizations as meeting best practices, according to a Post analysis. In one case, Georgetown University stated on its website that its student health center was accredited but removed the claim after being asked about it by reporters.

Georgetown lied about the accreditation of its health services?

Georgetown?

University leaders are publicly lobbying for federal protections from coronavirus-related lawsuits when they reopen, arguing that costly litigation would take away from already scarce resources needed to support students.

College health officials, meanwhile, are privately discussing insufficient stockpiles of personal protective equipment, inadequate access to coronavirus testing on campus and a short supply of rooms to quarantine students, according to interviews, emails and presentations reviewed by The Post.

………

In an email last year, the chief executive of the American College Health Association cautioned members about sharing information with The Post and referenced its reporting about a viral outbreak at the University of Maryland. The association later said the message was sent to inform colleges and took no position on whether universities should comply with the requests.

This is what comes from running colleges like business, and hiring legions of overpaid management types to run them.

Bullsh%$

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The good folks at WeWork are predicting that they will be profitable by 2021.

Given the fact that they no longer have a nearly unlimited access to capital, and that there are already dozens, of companies providing exactly the same service, and they think that somehow or other they are going to be fabulously profitable.

They are just looking for their next bunch of marks to fleece:

WeWork is on track to have positive cash flow in 2021, a year ahead of schedule, after it cut its workforce by more than 8,000 people, renegotiated leases and sold off assets, its executive chairman said.

Marcelo Claure said in an interview that the SoftBank-backed office space provider had seen strong demand for its flexible work spaces since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

In February, Mr Claure set a target of reaching operating profitability by the end of next year and he said WeWork remains on track to meet it.

The New York-based company, which aborted its hotly anticipated initial public offering last year, has moved aggressively to reduce its cash burn and shed costs. It has slashed its workforce from a high of 14,000 last year to 5,600 people, a figure that has not been previously disclosed.

“Everybody thought WeWork was mission impossible. [That we had] zero chance. And now, a year from now, you are going to see WeWork to basically be a profitable venture with an incredible diversity of assets,” said Mr Claure.

Seriously, why haven’t there been prosecutions over that sh%$?

The Washington Heffalumps?

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The big news out of Washington, DC today is that the Washington Redskins are finally going to change their name.

As a fan, I’ll adjust, and I wholeheartedly endorse the change.

It turns out that Dan Snyder’s (יש”ו) promise to keep the name forever really meant, only until it was not profitable, as Eugene Robinson so pithily noted.

I want them to be called the Hefalumps, but my reader(s) can suggest an alternate name.

When You Know That Twice as Much Time Was Spent on the Subhed as Was Spent on the Story

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OK, you are covering a story about Amazon banning TikTok from work devices

An Email Banning Our Staff from Using Tiktok? Haha, Funny Story about That, We Didn’t Mean It – Amazon, and it sounds like a classic story from The Register, and you see the sub-headline, and it reads, “Shock TikTok block clocked, unblocked as poppycock amid media aftershock.”

You immediately know that whatever the rest of the story is about, most of the effort went into that sub-hed.

I’m actually fine with that, because this is beautiful.

Linkage

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Found in a Pastafarian group, and let us say, Ramen.

Police Lying Again

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State bail reform and coronavirus-related releases from city jails are not driving this year’s surge in shootings, the NYPD’s own data shows — despite the insistence of department brass to the contrary.

“It’s bail reform. It’s COVID. It’s emptying out prisons,” Commissioner Dermot Shea — who’s credited with developing the department’s data-driven policing model — said as he attempted last week to explain the troubling rise in gun violence across the city.

While the surge in gunplay is undeniable, a Post analysis of department data found that most people released under the criminal justice reforms or amid the pandemic had no known ties to the bloodshed — with criminal justice experts saying the cops should focus on the flow of illegal guns into the city instead of playing the “blame game.”

………

In fact, just 91 of the approximately 11,000 people sprung from Rikers Island under the initiative — or 0.8 percent — have been found to be anywhere near a shooting this year, the figures show.

And more than half of those 91 are not accused of any wrongdoing, with the department describing 25 as “victims” and another 24 as “witnesses” — on the grounds that the mere presence of criminal justice reform beneficiaries is leading to shootings.

………

The known connection between those released with the coronavirus bearing down on the city and the spike in shootings was even more tenuous.

While about 275 of the approximately 2,500 Rikers Island inmates sprung to reduce crowding amid the pandemic had been rearrested as of mid-June, the NYPD said Tuesday that only nine — or 0.3 percent — had been linked to shootings.

One has been arrested, and two are described as persons of interest, while three are victims and three are witnesses.

Despite what the numbers show, NYPD brass have repeatedly drawn a line between the releases and the gunplay.

………

A criminal justice expert was unsurprised to learn that there was no significant link between bail reform and the outburst of gun violence.

“There’s a blame game going on and I don’t think it’s helpful,” said Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission. “I think it would be helpful if the NYPD put [out] a clear report explaining why they think the uptick in shootings is linked to bail reform.”

Rule 1 of cops talking about policing is that cops lie.

Rule 2 of cops talking about policing is see rule 1.

H/t Atrios.

Stating the Obvious

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Notwithstanding her fund raising prowess, and her ability to manage her caucus, Nancy Pelosi has neither the vision nor inclination to translate her abilities into meaningful policy. (The link is a must-read review of a biography of the Speaker of the House.  It’s also a good read,

Simply put, when the Democrats have power, they need more than to clap sarcastically.

If the Democratic Party is to succeed in the long term, policy, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will have to stand for real policy.

Pelosi’s devotion to hack careerism is a detriment to the party and to the nation.

Another Example of Misaligned Incentives in Policing

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The New York Police department is seeing a surge in retirement requests as a result of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests, but this is not because the cops are feeling “under seige”, but because their pensions are dictated by their pay in their final year, and so the explosion in overtime leads to an explosion in the pensions.

This is completely f%$#ed up.

First, including overtime in determining a pension is just insane, and second, it creates an incentive for cops with one foot out the door to pack on the overtime.

This means that you have senior officers on the job who are so fatigued that they are not thinking straight.

This is incredibly bad policy:

New York’s Finest are putting in for retirement faster than the NYPD can handle — while citing a lack of respect and the loss of overtime pay, The Post has learned.

A surge of city cops filing papers during the past week more than quadrupled last year’s number — as the city grapples with a surge of shootings — and the stampede caused a bottleneck that’s forcing others to delay putting in their papers, officials and sources said.

………

Sources also said the flood of overtime tied to last month’s protests — which will boost pension payouts for eligible retirees — and the expected loss of overtime due to the recent $1 billion cut to the NYPD’s budget were also factors.

“This is the best time to leave,” one cop said.

“You’ve padded the numbers as high as you can pad them.”

Another cop noted, “When they cut the OT, a lot of people were done.”

………

A Brooklyn cop said the NYPD was facing a “perfect storm,” noting that “cops made the most overtime they will for a long time — at least until next year” and citing rumors that “grade promotions” for detectives and “special assignment money” for sergeants and lieutenants will be canceled. 

It being a New York Post story, they bury the lede, that cops are trying to cash in on an extraordinary level of overtime that they have received recently, and they completely ignore the policy implications.

Every time I look into police union contracts, I am horrified at what I see.

And Here We See the Apotheosis of My Prior Two Posts

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Breonna Taylor’s shooting was the result of a Louisville police department operation to clear out a block in western Louisville that was part of a major gentrification makeover, according to attorneys representing the slain 26-year-old’s family.

Lawyers for Taylor’s family allege in court documents filed in Jefferson Circuit Court Sunday that a police squad — named Place-Based Investigations — had “deliberately misled” narcotics detectives to target a home on Elliott Avenue, leading them to believe they were after some of the city’s largest violent crime and drug rings.

The complaint — which amends an earlier lawsuit filed by Taylor’s mother against the three Louisville officers who fired their weapons into Taylor’s home — claims Taylor was caught up in a case that was less about a drug house on Elliott Avenue and more about speeding up the city’s multi-million dollar Vision Russell development plan.

………

Accusations contained in lawsuits do not constitute evidence in a court of law and represent only one side of the argument.

………

“Breonna’s home should never have had police there in the first place,” the attorneys wrote in the filing. “When the layers are peeled back, the origin of Breonna’s home being raided by police starts with a political need to clear out a street for a large real estate development project and finishes with a newly formed, rogue police unit violating all levels of policy, protocol and policing standards.

“Breonna’s death was the culmination of radical political and police conduct.”

It appears that the Mayor and the police were a part of a conspiracy to drive out black residents to created a gentrified neighborhood.

I think that the technical term is “Ethnic Cleansing.”

Speaking the Truth

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The former Mayor of Minneapolis reveals a dirty secret of wypipo, that police brutality against minorities is actually an unspoken desired outcome for most of the white community:

Democrats have largely led big and midsize cities for much of the past half-century. Yet the gaps in socioeconomic outcomes between white people and people of color are by several measures at their worst in the richest, bluest cities of the United States.

How could this be? Because high-profile cultural conservatives ask this question so disingenuously, white liberals have generally brushed aside this reality rather than grappled with its urgency. There’s now a danger that this sidestepping will continue, even after a national evaluation of racism since the brutal police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

As the mayor of Minneapolis from 2014 to 2018, as a Minneapolis City Council member from 2006 until 2014 and as a white Democrat, I can say this: White liberals, despite believing we are saying and doing the right things, have resisted the systemic changes our cities have needed for decades. We have mostly settled for illusions of change, like testing pilot programs and funding volunteer opportunities.

These efforts make us feel better about racism, but fundamentally change little for the communities of color whose disadvantages often come from the hoarding of advantage by mostly white neighborhoods.

In Minneapolis, the white liberals I represented as a Council member and mayor were very supportive of summer jobs programs that benefited young people of color. I also saw them fight every proposal to fundamentally change how we provide education to those same young people. They applauded restoring funding for the rental assistance hotline. They also signed petitions and brought lawsuits against sweeping reform to zoning laws that would promote housing affordability and integration.

Nowhere is this dynamic of preserving white comfort at the expense of others more visible than in policing. Whether we know it or not, white liberal people in blue cities implicitly ask police officers to politely stand guard in predominantly white parts of town (where the downside of bad policing is usually inconvenience) and to aggressively patrol the parts of town where people of color live — where the consequences of bad policing are fear, violent abuse, mass incarceration and, far too often, death.

Police brutality and racism is not a bug in much of America, it is a highly desired feature, as are disparities in education, the provision of public services, and segregated neighborhoods.

Leaked Surveys Reveal Problematic Culture in Law Enforcement Courses

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about Blueleaks, a massive collection of lawe enforcement documents that were released by DDoSecrets.

Well, we now have the first big reveal of this cache of documents, and it’s significant.

It appears that instructors at one of the largest law enforcement training programs are open and virulent bigots.

If anyone suggests to you that there are only a few “bad apples”, you need to remind them that the trainers,Derek Chauvin comes to mind, are among the most bigoted and most dismissive of civil rights and basic human decency:

In early September 2017, the Midwest Counterdrug Training Center (MCTC) hosted a course on “narcoterrorism.” By most accounts, it was a helpful few days of lessons on the drug trade and criminal organizations, led by an instructor with years of law enforcement experience.

In surveys, some later praised it as a “wake-up call,” a course with “virtually no room for improvement.”

………

And then, there was this: “I don’t know where to start – as someone who has worked full-time counter-terrorism for the past six years, this course was a complete disappointment. The instruction was long on rants and short on any actual substance. Any substantive material was outdated (some of it more than 20 years old). Much of the material taught is publicly available ‘conspiracy’ theory that has been disproved through investigation.”

The respondent continued, “While the instructor was open about his ‘anti-PC’ beliefs – this is the only time I have ever heard the [N-word] repeatedly used by instructors and students.”

The written review ended with a warning to the MCTC leadership.

“This is a time bomb – if anyone were to record [the teacher’s] rants and leak them to the media your whole program would go down in flames.”

While the “teacher’s rants” were not leaked, this response was, as part of the BlueLeaks hack in June. It’s one of the thousands of surveys filled out following MCTC law enforcement training offered throughout the past decade.

Funded by the Department of Defense and administered by the Iowa National Guard Counterdrug Task Force, the Center has trained “over 190,000 local, tribal, state, and federal law enforcement officers, military members, and prevention and treatment professionals,” according to its website.

………

While thousands responded favorably these courses over the past 10 years, the negative reviews call into question the culture of the organization, in which instructors saying racial slurs or homophobic jokes would still be rated highly by the majority of survey participants.

Some, including the instructor described above, continued to teach for years, despite being flagged repeatedly. According to additional surveys, the above teacher was still leading MCTC courses as recently as March 2020.

………

“Asking students if they ‘were the pitcher or catcher’ may be funny to some but is asking for a lawsuit in front of the wrong audience. Asking if they were going to ‘spit or swallow’ was a similar inappropriate question, as well as referring to the black male in the class as ‘brotha’ multiple times when it was obvious he was uncomfortable with it. Joking about sex assault cases is probably not the best idea considering someone may know a victim.”

………

“If a camera was placed in the room he would be on national news for his statements and views. This course was labeled for ‘drugs’ and just about every example referred to sex,” cautioned another reviewer.

Still, surveys from 2019 show that instructor was still brought back for additional courses.

………

The spread of biased, outdated, or debunked information was another leading concern. The majority of these complaints were leveled at the same instructors identified above for offensive language.

“Many media sources were slightly outdated and notoriously biased,” wrote one commenter in 2015. “Some of the sources used were blatant political rhetoric.”

………

Multiple responders—even those who otherwise ranked the courses favorably—noted a lack of sources outside of Fox News and a lack of examples or trends less than three decades old.

………

Others criticized the actual course material and practical law enforcement learnings offered. A 2013 student mentioned their instructor, “suggested [criminal] subjects not be given a break to get a drink and use the restroom after several hours, which may be considered a civil rights violation.”

………

Numerous comments in this vein referred back to the “reputation of MCTC,” and fears that instructors like these would “degrade” its status or that of other law enforcement departments.

“I found myself embarrassed to admit being part of the National Guard during this class due to instructor’s association with a National Guard affiliated course,” read one 2018 response.

………

“He flat out said in class that he lied all the time in court to cover his partner’s asses. He said multiple times a badge and being a cop means ‘you can do whatever the f%$# you want.’”

Why this is not a lede for every law enforcement section of every paper in the United States is beyond me.

Of Course He Did

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Donald Trump just commuted Roger Stone’s sentence.

While this is clearly within his power, this is a plenary power of the Presidency, it is also clear that this is an attempt to cover up Trump wrongdoing, so it is obstruction of justice by Trump, even if it would be almost impossible to prove.

I really want this motherf%$#er to spend the rest of his life in prison:

Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser who was to spend three years and four months in jail for crimes related to the Russia investigation.

 In a statement released on Friday evening, the White House denounced the prosecution of Stone on charges stemming from “the Russia Hoax” investigation. “Roger Stone has already suffered greatly,” the statement reads. “He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”

………

The commutation does not erase Stone’s felony convictions the way a pardon would, but it allows Stone to avoid setting foot in prison for his crimes.

………

While not unexpected, Trump’s move to spare Stone from prison will only increase alarm among critics concerned that the Trump administration has interfered with the justice system in order to shield the president and his friends.

Unfortunately, if Zombie-Obama Biden wins in November, he’s likely not to pursue any of the credible allegations of corruption from this administration, because of that whole, “Looking forward, not back,” bullsh%$.

Tweet of the Day

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In the future, definitions in @Dictionarycom are going to need to include what “essential worker” came to mean during the COVID crisis.

You were essential, but your health, your income, your life, your safety net, and your well being turns out are “not as essential.” 2/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) July 7, 2020

The whole Twitter thread is worth a read.

It tersely (Twitter, you know) documents how the weakest, poorest, and most vulnerable are being made to bear the burden of dealing with a pandemic than the rich, who have looted the sh%$ out of this crisis.

It’s why I want the Guillotine concession when the revolution comes.

A Win for Justice and Transparency

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The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that, notwithstanding a contract with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, state law prohibits the destruction of police disciplinary records, so this contract provision is unenforceable.

In response, I expect the police to ignore the law and destroy the records anyway, because, for them, laws are only for other people:

Chicago police misconduct records that are more than five years old will remain available to the public, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday, turning away an attempt by the city’s police union to have them destroyed as a matter of course.

The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police had sued, contending that such records should be eliminated after five years under the city’s police collective bargaining agreement. A court arbitrator had called for the city and the FOP to come to an agreement on the issue, but the city had successfully challenged that decision at the appellate level.

The state’s high court found 6-1 that the arbitration outcome violated clear public policy in the state’s Local Records Act, siding with City Hall.

“In sum, we find there is a ‘well-defined and dominant’ public policy rooted in state law concerning the procedures for the proper retention and destruction of government records,” the majority wrote.

………

FOP President John Catanzara on Thursday said he “couldn’t be more disappointed” with the court’s decision, and said he is instructing the union’s lawyers to see if there is a way to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It goes against every ounce of logic there is,” Catanzara said. “The contractual rights that were in our collective bargaining agreement for the better part of four decades were set in stone.”

And that provision was probably illegal that whole time, so Mr. Catanzara can go Cheney himself.

Provisions like this has allowed cops to literally get away with murder for years.

Gee, You Think?

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The director of the Tulsa health department is saying that Donald Trump’s damp squib of a rally probably led to a surge in Covid-19 cases.

Well, color me completely not surprised:

President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa that drew thousands of people in late June, along with large protests that accompanied it, “likely contributed” to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday.

 Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday.

 Although the Health Department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dart said those large gatherings “more than likely” contributed to the spike.

 “In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots,” Dart said.

As the saying goes, “バカにつける薬はない”.*

*Pronounced in Japanese,”baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

OK, This is Not What I Expected

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The Supreme Court just ruled that about ½ of Oklahoma remains an Indian reservation, and so sovereign land, at least to the degree that reservations are sovereign in the United States:

The first thing we learned this morning with the announcement of the decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma was that Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t manage to be in the majority in every single 5-4 decision this term. Today, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for a majority of five (joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan), with Roberts writing for the four dissenters and Justice Clarence Thomas appending a brief solo dissent to assert that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear this case at all.

The court held today that land in northeastern Oklahoma reserved for the Creek Nation since the 19th century remains a reservation for the purpose of a federal statute that gives the federal government exclusive jurisdiction to commit certain major crimes committed by “[a]ny Indian” in “the Indian country.” The court’s holding means that state courts in Oklahoma had no jurisdiction to convict petitioner Jimcy McGirt, who is an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, of three serious sexual offenses that took place on the reservation.

The decision is a stunning reaffirmance of the nation’s obligations to Native Americans. It confirms the existence of the largest tract of reservation land in the country, about 19 million acres encompassing the entire eastern half of Oklahoma. The court took almost two full terms to decide this question. It first heard oral argument in a predecessor case, Sharp v Murphy (in which Gorsuch was recused), in the fall of 2018, before restoring Murphy to the calendar this term and then, instead of hearing re-argument, granting and hearing oral argument in May on the same question in McGirt (in which Gorsuch could participate). (In a one-sentence, unsigned opinion, the court today also disposed of Murphy, ruling in favor of inmate Patrick Murphy “for the reasons stated in” McGirt.) In substance, the court “hold[s] the government to its word,” reaffirming the continuing existence of the reservations that the federal government promised to the Five Civilized Tribes in the 1830s to persuade them to give up their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama and walk along the Trail of Tears to the lands at issue.

As Indian law cases go, the dispute in this one is easy to understand: whether the land once granted to the Creek Nation as a reservation retains that status. The majority of five says that it does, because Congress has not adopted any single statute that explicitly terminates that status; the dissenters say that it does not, reasoning that the total body of congressional intrusions in the area, culminating in the development of eastern Oklahoma as a predominantly non-Native American area, adequately illustrates Congress’ intent to disestablish the reservation.

Gee, what happened to strict constructionism there?  

Gorsuch begins by documenting the clarity of the historical record establishing the creation of the Creek reservation: a series of treaties and statutes that, among other things “solemnly guarantied” the land to the tribe, “forever set apart as a home for said Creek Nation,” “no portion [of which] shall ever be embraced or included within … any Territory or State.”

………

For Gorsuch, though, the allotment process sheds no light on the outcome of the case: “For years, States have sought to suggest that allotments automatically ended reservations, and for years courts have rejected the argument.” Rather, “this Court has explained repeatedly that Congress does not disestablish a reservation simply by allowing the transfer of individual plots.” Gorsuch acknowledges that the proponents of allotment hoped that, after the land was parceled out, the reservations eventually would be abolished, but he concludes that “to equate allotment with disestablishment would confuse the first step of a march with arrival at its destination.”

Finding allotment insufficient to show disestablishment, Gorsuch turns next to the many “other ways Congress intruded on the Creek’s promised right to self-governance.” He discusses those at some length, but, as with allotment, his overarching view is that the various “laws represented serious blows to the Creek … [b]ut, just as plainly, … left the Tribe with significant sovereign functions over the lands in question.”

………

There is a notable symmetry in the articulation of a strong voice in support of Native Americans by the only justice with roots in the western part of the nation. Observers of the court know that it frequently has given short shrift to the promises and obligations that Congress has undertaken for Native Americans, and that a decision so firmly vitalizing the nation’s obligations to Native Americans does not come along every year. It will be interesting to watch in the years to come to see whether Gorsuch continues to stake out an interest in the topic.

I do not know what this means from a functional perspective, except that members of the various tribes encompassed by the reservation will not have to be prosecuted in a federal court.

However, there might be significant changes in the regulatory and tax regimes as a result of this, as well as potential renegotiation of energy leases in the area.