When I was first introduced to the Magna Carta when I was in school, it made no sense to me. I just couldn’t get my head around the idea that at one point, the King of England was literally beyond the law. Because that’s basically all that the Magna Carta says: you can’t just kill us. (“Us,” of course, being the feudal lords, not the “little” people.) This is interesting, because I often argue that today, the United States is moving toward a feudal system. But at least we have rights and no one is above the law, right? Well, maybe not.

After O. J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, many people I knew groused about how he only got off because of his million dollar legal defense. I was not a fan of Simpson, but I countered this argument. The problem was not that Simpson got a great legal defense; it was that not all defendants get that kind of legal defense. Under normal circumstances, it is the prosecution that basically has unlimited resources. It was really nice to see things evened up and that is the way it should always be.

That subject has come up again in the trial of George Zimmerman. Matt Yglesias wrote a brilliant article, What if George Zimmerman Had a Public Defender? His conclusion is that in that case, Zimmerman wouldn’t have even gone to trial. He would have done as 94% of all those with state charges have done: he would have pleaded down and taken a manslaughter charge. His point is not that justice would have been done in that case or even that it was done with his good defense. No, his point is more general about the state of our justice system.

Yglesias asks the question, “Why has no one been indicted for the financial crisis?” And the answer is basically: because those guys won’t plead. If you thought the defense that Zimmerman bought for $300,000 was good, you ought to see the kind of defense that $10 million would buy. And the truth is that our “justice” system is not set up to deal with defendants who can mount a vigorous defense. On the federal level it is even worse: 97% of the cases are pleaded.

This makes me wonder if we aren’t further toward a feudal system than I had previously thought. It isn’t that the rich can’t be convicted of crimes. It is just that the government doesn’t even much try. Our laws and institutions have grown so long in the tooth that they simply can’t handle prosecuting people who don’t lay down. And the only people who can afford to fight back are the rich. So we are left with a system where we have rights and opportunity in theory. But as a practical matter, we are no better off than we were in the 13th century.

I have a normal evolution regarding political writers. At first, I am in their thrall. Slowly, I begin to disagree with them more and more. And eventually I reach the point where they annoy me more often than not. The most recent example of this is Greg Sargent. With regards to policy, I think we very much agree. But I just can’t take his optimism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I first started noticing it with the gun control legislation but it has continued through the debt ceiling (which he claims is solved but is not) and most recently comprehensive immigration reform.

Well, I’ve started a new relationship; this time it is with the Washington Times‘ Ed Kilgore. I can’t say where our relationship will go from here, but I think we are starting at a better place. For one thing, having read him on and off for a long time, I already know that I don’t always agree with him. But when it comes to temperament, we are very much alike. For example, on the issue of filibuster reform, he has wanted to see actual reform the whole time. Early this morning, he published, May Cooler Heads Not Prevail. That was nice to read after so many liberals were gloating that Democrats got what they wanted without actually improving the broken Senate. All morning I’ve been reading slight variants on, “And if the Republicans don’t behave, the Democrats still have the nuclear option!” Yeah, but they could just fix the problem instead. As Kilgore noted, “This is not time for sticky sentimentality about the Senate’s sacred traditions, which (a) are not at all “sacred” and (b) in the case of the filibuster, have been twisted beyond recognition in the last few years.”

The last thing Kilgore wrote today was music to my ears, Uh, Yeah, This Is a Different GOP. In it, he defended himself against other liberal writers who say that he is wrong to constantly be a naysayer about these deals that the Democrats are supposedly going to get with the Republicans. I’ve been hammering this same line since last year’s election when everyone was talking about how the Republicans had to be more reasonable since they lost. How was that? The Republicans still in Congress won their election. How should Obama’s victory change the way they thought? No one really had an answer, but I still hear that kind of logic from people like Steve Benen.

Kilgore noted that the threat of losing presidential elections is not likely to change the Republican Party any time soon. He rightly noted that the anti-choice coalition in the Republican Party thinks that it is doing God’s work. Unborn children are being murdered. If you see it that way, you aren’t going to moderate your opinions for the sake of political expediency. And they are right to act as they do if that’s how they feel.[1] Kilgore completely sums up what is going on:

I would go further. The conservatives do think in terms of winning wars. Politics is not about winning elections; it is about getting your policies enacted. The greatest recent conservative victory was the presidency of Bill Clinton. The Democratic Party has done and continues to do most of the work for the conservatives. So who cares if Hillary Clinton is the next president when she is going to push policy that will be well to the right of Ronald Reagan?

I suppose what I like about Kilgore is that he is rationally cynical. This is an infinitely better position than that of the Happy Horseshit Caucus. The problem is that all the happy talk allows people to avoid the reality that we really aren’t making progress. The conservatives are still the ones framing the debate. And we have elected officials who are far more conservative than the people they supposedly serve. It is only with this recognition that we can make any real progress.

[1] It is another matter that these beliefs are based on very technical and uncompelling theological theories about the soul. I doubt one out of one hundred really understands this. So the movement as a whole is a bunch of people who have simply been told God hates it. That makes these people sheep, but not irrational.

This morning, NASA announced that another moon was discovered circling Neptune. And that’s cool. But you have to ask, “Didn’t we go there?” Indeed we did. And why didn’t we noticed it? Because it is tiny! This is Neptune’s 14th moon, and just like with each new child Michelle Duggar pops out, you have to ask why we care. At just 20 km across, this moon is roughly the size of Mars’ two spectacularly unimpressive moons. Of course, I’ve always had a problem with moons of these sizes. All planets (And moons!) have space garbage orbiting them. And this new moon—with its romantic name S/2004 N 1—would not even qualify as a significant asteroid.

I understand that this is quite a scientific accomplishment. Detecting a tiny moon orbiting a huge planet is a great accomplishment. Mark Showalter is to be congratulated. He was studying Neptune’s rings when part of it diverged. That says a lot about what a tiny object this moon is: it was obscured by Neptune’s pathetic ring system. By looking at several years of data, he was able to determine orbital parameters like the fact that it is located way out at 100,000 km from Neptune.

According to NPR, many people are are looking to name this glorified piece of space garbage. Some have even suggested that this shriveled orbital should be named—God save me!—Vulcan. Luckily, William Shatner was around to set everyone straight about how these things get named:

The fact remains, there is an endless quantity of cosmic debris floating around the solar system. People discover it all the time. The fact that one managed to get attached to Neptune is about as exciting as the next season of Dancing with the Stars. But that doesn’t mean I’m not keen to enter the name debate. My candidate: Tweety. You see, Tweety Bird is both small and annoying. Plus, Tweet Bird is one of the water deities.