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The Supreme Court’s Bar Membership Is Not “Shrouded in Secrecy.”

The Georgetown Policy Review published an essay by Henry Baumgarten titled, “Open the Bar: Toward Greater Supreme Court Transparency.” It begins:

The United States Supreme Court conceals the names of lawyers that belong to the Supreme Court Bar. This lack of transparency is unusual and raises multiple concerns. If the Supreme Court fails to follow the example set by courts across the country and publicize its bar membership, then Congress ought to intervene.

Later, the essay concludes, “For the time being, the Supreme Court Bar’s membership remains shrouded in secrecy.”

Hardly. The Supreme Court publishes the name of every member admitted, as well as the name of every member who is subject to discipline. Where is this information recorded? Most people, and perhaps the author of the essay, are unaware of the Journal of the Supreme Court. It is published annually, and posted on the Court’s web site.

For example, turn to page 649 of the October 2015 Journal. You will find the notation of my admission to the Supreme Court bar. (Zubik v. Burwell was argued that day).

The Journal also indicates all members who are disbarred.

True enough, the Supreme Court does not have a searchable database of all members. And there is no easy way to determine whether members have passed away. But it is simply not true that the membership of the Court is “shrouded in secrecy.”

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The Supreme Court’s Bar Membership Is Not “Shrouded in Secrecy.”

The Georgetown Policy Review published an essay by Henry Baumgarten titled, “Open the Bar: Toward Greater Supreme Court Transparency.” It begins:

The United States Supreme Court conceals the names of lawyers that belong to the Supreme Court Bar. This lack of transparency is unusual and raises multiple concerns. If the Supreme Court fails to follow the example set by courts across the country and publicize its bar membership, then Congress ought to intervene.

Later, the essay concludes, “For the time being, the Supreme Court Bar’s membership remains shrouded in secrecy.”

Hardly. The Supreme Court publishes the name of every member admitted, as well as the name of every member who is subject to discipline. Where is this information recorded? Most people, and perhaps the author of the essay, are unaware of the Journal of the Supreme Court. It is published annually, and posted on the Court’s web site.

For example, turn to page 649 of the October 2015 Journal. You will find the notation of my admission to the Supreme Court bar. (Zubik v. Burwell was argued that day).

The Journal also indicates all members who are disbarred.

True enough, the Supreme Court does not have a searchable database of all members. And there is no easy way to determine whether members have passed away. But it is simply not true that the membership of the Court is “shrouded in secrecy.”

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President Obama’s Memoir Includes Virtually Nothing About the Supreme Court

I purchased the kindle of President Obama’s new memoir, A Promised Land. As part of research for my own book project, I searched for several key words. “Court,” “Justice,” and the names of each member of the Court. I was struck by how little Obama focused on the judiciary in his 750-page memoir. There was very, very little to find. Nothing on NFIB v. Sebelius and Chief Justice Roberts. Nothing on Citizens United. Nothing on Shelby County. Nothing on Obergefell. Nothing on Windsor. Nothing about DACA or DAPA.

What was there?

Two sentences on Justice Alito’s Ledbetter decision:

As discrimination cases go, it should have been a slam dunk, but in 2007, defying all common sense, the Supreme Court had disallowed the lawsuit. According to Justice Samuel Alito, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act required Ledbetter to have filed her claim within 180 days of when the discrimination first occurred—in other words, six months after she received her first paycheck, and many years before she actually discovered the pay disparity.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 234). Crown. Kindle Edition.

We learn that Justice Souter called Obama in April 2009 to announce his retirement:

THE SECOND TURN of events was an opportunity rather than a crisis. At the end of April, Supreme Court justice David Souter called to tell me he was retiring from the bench, giving me my first chance to fill a seat on the highest court in the land.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 387). Crown. Kindle Edition.

Obama confirmed that Kagan and Wood were on the short-list for the Souter seat, but Sotomayor won out.

The short list included former Harvard Law School dean and current solicitor general Elena Kagan and Seventh Circuit appellate judge Diane Wood, both first-rate legal scholars whom I knew from my time teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. But as I read through the fat briefing books my team had prepared on each candidate, it was someone I’d never met, Second Circuit appellate judge Sonia Sotomayor, who most piqued my interest.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 389). Crown. Kindle Edition.

I think this barb at the “legal priesthood” is a not-so-subtle rebuke of Laurence Tribe.

Sotomayor graduated from Yale Law School and went on to do standout work as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which helped catapult her to the federal bench. Over the course of nearly seventeen years as a judge, she’d developed a reputation for thoroughness, fairness, and restraint, ultimately leading the American Bar Association to give her its highest rating. Still, when word leaked that Sotomayor was among the finalists I was considering, some in the legal priesthood suggested that her credentials were inferior to those of Kagan or Wood, and a number of left-leaning interest groups questioned whether she had the intellectual heft to go toe-to-toe with conservative ideologues like Justice Antonin Scalia.

Maybe because of my own background in legal and academic circles—where I’d met my share of highly credentialed, high-IQ morons and had witnessed firsthand the tendency to move the goalposts when it came to promoting women and people of color—I was quick to dismiss such concerns. Not only were Judge Sotomayor’s academic credentials outstanding, but I understood the kind of intelligence, grit, and adaptability required of someone of her background to get to where she was.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (pp. 389-390). Crown. Kindle Edition.

And Obama devoted one whole sentence about selecting Kagan to fill the Stevens seat:

Along with the usual terrorist threat briefings, strategy sessions with my economic team, and a slew of ceremonial duties, I interviewed candidates for a Supreme Court seat that had opened up after Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement in early April. I settled on the brilliant young solicitor general and former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan, who, like Justice Sotomayor, would emerge from the Senate hearings relatively unscathed and be confirmed a few months later.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 566). Crown. Kindle Edition.

Brilliant and young. Only two adjectives to spare.

President Trump’s tenure was largely defined by the Supreme Court. For President Obama, the Supreme Court was an afterthought.

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President Obama’s Memoir Includes Virtually Nothing About the Supreme Court

I purchased the kindle of President Obama’s new memoir, A Promised Land. As part of research for my own book project, I searched for several key words. “Court,” “Justice,” and the names of each member of the Court. I was struck by how little Obama focused on the judiciary in his 750-page memoir. There was very, very little to find. Nothing on NFIB v. Sebelius and Chief Justice Roberts. Nothing on Citizens United. Nothing on Shelby County. Nothing on Obergefell. Nothing on Windsor. Nothing about DACA or DAPA.

What was there?

Two sentences on Justice Alito’s Ledbetter decision:

As discrimination cases go, it should have been a slam dunk, but in 2007, defying all common sense, the Supreme Court had disallowed the lawsuit. According to Justice Samuel Alito, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act required Ledbetter to have filed her claim within 180 days of when the discrimination first occurred—in other words, six months after she received her first paycheck, and many years before she actually discovered the pay disparity.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 234). Crown. Kindle Edition.

We learn that Justice Souter called Obama in April 2009 to announce his retirement:

THE SECOND TURN of events was an opportunity rather than a crisis. At the end of April, Supreme Court justice David Souter called to tell me he was retiring from the bench, giving me my first chance to fill a seat on the highest court in the land.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 387). Crown. Kindle Edition.

Obama confirmed that Kagan and Wood were on the short-list for the Souter seat, but Sotomayor won out.

The short list included former Harvard Law School dean and current solicitor general Elena Kagan and Seventh Circuit appellate judge Diane Wood, both first-rate legal scholars whom I knew from my time teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. But as I read through the fat briefing books my team had prepared on each candidate, it was someone I’d never met, Second Circuit appellate judge Sonia Sotomayor, who most piqued my interest.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 389). Crown. Kindle Edition.

I think this barb at the “legal priesthood” is a not-so-subtle rebuke of Laurence Tribe.

Sotomayor graduated from Yale Law School and went on to do standout work as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which helped catapult her to the federal bench. Over the course of nearly seventeen years as a judge, she’d developed a reputation for thoroughness, fairness, and restraint, ultimately leading the American Bar Association to give her its highest rating. Still, when word leaked that Sotomayor was among the finalists I was considering, some in the legal priesthood suggested that her credentials were inferior to those of Kagan or Wood, and a number of left-leaning interest groups questioned whether she had the intellectual heft to go toe-to-toe with conservative ideologues like Justice Antonin Scalia.

Maybe because of my own background in legal and academic circles—where I’d met my share of highly credentialed, high-IQ morons and had witnessed firsthand the tendency to move the goalposts when it came to promoting women and people of color—I was quick to dismiss such concerns. Not only were Judge Sotomayor’s academic credentials outstanding, but I understood the kind of intelligence, grit, and adaptability required of someone of her background to get to where she was.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (pp. 389-390). Crown. Kindle Edition.

And Obama devoted one whole sentence about selecting Kagan to fill the Stevens seat:

Along with the usual terrorist threat briefings, strategy sessions with my economic team, and a slew of ceremonial duties, I interviewed candidates for a Supreme Court seat that had opened up after Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement in early April. I settled on the brilliant young solicitor general and former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan, who, like Justice Sotomayor, would emerge from the Senate hearings relatively unscathed and be confirmed a few months later.

Obama, Barack. A Promised Land (p. 566). Crown. Kindle Edition.

Brilliant and young. Only two adjectives to spare.

President Trump’s tenure was largely defined by the Supreme Court. For President Obama, the Supreme Court was an afterthought.

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Joe Biden Should Think Twice About Cracking Down on Meat-Processing Plants

meatplant

President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will likely ramp up regulation of meatpackers after Covid-19 outbreaks spread through many of the nation’s biggest processing plants, USA Today reported this week. While these facilities have not managed COVID-19 well, any new regulations will likely have unintended consequences.

As I explained in a May article on COVID-19 outbreaks at meat processing plants, these facilities necessarily require “hundreds of employees to stand elbow-to-elbow while working at breakneck speed.” Social distancing? Not a chance. The sheer number of people working quickly and closely together is what likely turned these processing plants into daily superspreader events. Plants were forced to close temporarily after thousands of workers were sickened. Hundreds of those workers died.

The USA Today report says OSHA, the federal agency charged with regulating workplace safety, refused or failed to enforce its own guidelines to protect these meat-plant workers during the pandemic. And it suggests Biden will use a “heavier hand” to regulate the industry.

While the piece notes Biden has so far offered no specifics about any plans to increase plant regulations, it points to prior Biden critiques of the Trump administration’s handling of plant worker safety during the pandemic, and calls for new workplace standards, hiring more OSHA inspectors, and requiring employers to ensure workers are socially distanced and provided with masks and other health and safety tools. 

While some of those changes could happen quickly, one expert cited in the USA Today piece says implementing such wholesale changes would require “major legislation” to be passed. That’s unlikely.

Whether or not the Biden administration’s nebulous plans ultimately coalesce, I see at least three ways any such plans may cause workers to lose their jobs.

First, whichever rules the Biden administration might impose, if they reduce worker density at meat plants that are already operating at capacity, then there simply won’t be room—or jobs—for all of the workers that currently staff these plants. 

That’s because meatpacking plants are designed to maximize output while complying with existing rules. Changing the rules means changing the plants. That’s not easy.

“Please understand, processing plants were no more designed to operate in a pandemic than hospitals were designed to produce pork,” meat processing giant Smithfield wrote in a public communication this past summer. “In other words, for better or worse, our plants are what they are. Four walls, engineered design, efficient use of space, etc. Spread out? OK. Where?”

That’s not just some industry doublespeak. Douglas Trout, a Centers for Disease Control expert who focuses on workplace health and safety, told the industry publication Meatingplace recently he saw “no reason, necessarily, to have the occupational safety and health controls to prevent person-to-person spread of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 prior to this epidemic.”

If decreased worker density becomes mandatory, the industry will need to build new plants to meet demand. But building dozens or more new plants won’t happen anytime soon. The biggest plants cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Even a slightly smaller plant can cost tens of millions of dollars.

That’s why these same processing plants may just decide it’s cheaper, safer, and more efficient to replace most of their workers in their existing facilities with computer software and hardware.

Even before the pandemic, the news was rife with stories about a coming wave of meat-plant automation. Automated meat processing has the ability to make safer the dangerous business of cutting up livestock. And automation is more efficient.

But these reports have only grown in number since the pandemic ripped through the nation’s largest processing plants. Meat plants that are using artificial intelligence have seen “remarkable advancements” in productivity. And highly automated plants, unsurprisingly, have had far fewer Covid-19 outbreaks among workers.

Robots can’t do everything humans can do in a processing plant yet. But they can perform some key processing and packaging tasks, VentureBeat reported in August, and they can also “scan, weigh, and measure carcasses to eviscerate them ‘intelligently,’ with the more sophisticated models planning blade trajectories for cutting, separating meat from carcasses and boning them out.“

Hopes and fears that robots and other automated systems will replace meat-industry workers are no pipe dream. Consider, for example, that the push for a $15 minimum wage is spurring the fast-food industry to replace human workers with cheaper automation.

Third, if one or more of the Covid-19 vaccines are successful—as I hope they will be soon—then any rules the Biden administration might draft could become moot by the time they take force. That doesn’t mean, mind you, that any such rules would be scrapped. That would leave meat processors to comply with rules that—even if, charitably, they made sense at the time they were adopted—are costly, overbearing, and outdated. Frankly, though, such a situation would make those rules almost exactly like a lot of other meat regulations.

I’m one of the many people who noted during the pandemic that no worker’s life, at any point in a supply chain, is worth sacrificing for a hamburger. I stand by that. But are those same workers’ jobs worth sacrificing?

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Joe Biden Should Think Twice About Cracking Down on Meat-Processing Plants

meatplant

President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will likely ramp up regulation of meatpackers after Covid-19 outbreaks spread through many of the nation’s biggest processing plants, USA Today reported this week. While these facilities have not managed COVID-19 well, any new regulations will likely have unintended consequences.

As I explained in a May article on COVID-19 outbreaks at meat processing plants, these facilities necessarily require “hundreds of employees to stand elbow-to-elbow while working at breakneck speed.” Social distancing? Not a chance. The sheer number of people working quickly and closely together is what likely turned these processing plants into daily superspreader events. Plants were forced to close temporarily after thousands of workers were sickened. Hundreds of those workers died.

The USA Today report says OSHA, the federal agency charged with regulating workplace safety, refused or failed to enforce its own guidelines to protect these meat-plant workers during the pandemic. And it suggests Biden will use a “heavier hand” to regulate the industry.

While the piece notes Biden has so far offered no specifics about any plans to increase plant regulations, it points to prior Biden critiques of the Trump administration’s handling of plant worker safety during the pandemic, and calls for new workplace standards, hiring more OSHA inspectors, and requiring employers to ensure workers are socially distanced and provided with masks and other health and safety tools. 

While some of those changes could happen quickly, one expert cited in the USA Today piece says implementing such wholesale changes would require “major legislation” to be passed. That’s unlikely.

Whether or not the Biden administration’s nebulous plans ultimately coalesce, I see at least three ways any such plans may cause workers to lose their jobs.

First, whichever rules the Biden administration might impose, if they reduce worker density at meat plants that are already operating at capacity, then there simply won’t be room—or jobs—for all of the workers that currently staff these plants. 

That’s because meatpacking plants are designed to maximize output while complying with existing rules. Changing the rules means changing the plants. That’s not easy.

“Please understand, processing plants were no more designed to operate in a pandemic than hospitals were designed to produce pork,” meat processing giant Smithfield wrote in a public communication this past summer. “In other words, for better or worse, our plants are what they are. Four walls, engineered design, efficient use of space, etc. Spread out? OK. Where?”

That’s not just some industry doublespeak. Douglas Trout, a Centers for Disease Control expert who focuses on workplace health and safety, told the industry publication Meatingplace recently he saw “no reason, necessarily, to have the occupational safety and health controls to prevent person-to-person spread of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 prior to this epidemic.”

If decreased worker density becomes mandatory, the industry will need to build new plants to meet demand. But building dozens or more new plants won’t happen anytime soon. The biggest plants cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Even a slightly smaller plant can cost tens of millions of dollars.

That’s why these same processing plants may just decide it’s cheaper, safer, and more efficient to replace most of their workers in their existing facilities with computer software and hardware.

Even before the pandemic, the news was rife with stories about a coming wave of meat-plant automation. Automated meat processing has the ability to make safer the dangerous business of cutting up livestock. And automation is more efficient.

But these reports have only grown in number since the pandemic ripped through the nation’s largest processing plants. Meat plants that are using artificial intelligence have seen “remarkable advancements” in productivity. And highly automated plants, unsurprisingly, have had far fewer Covid-19 outbreaks among workers.

Robots can’t do everything humans can do in a processing plant yet. But they can perform some key processing and packaging tasks, VentureBeat reported in August, and they can also “scan, weigh, and measure carcasses to eviscerate them ‘intelligently,’ with the more sophisticated models planning blade trajectories for cutting, separating meat from carcasses and boning them out.“

Hopes and fears that robots and other automated systems will replace meat-industry workers are no pipe dream. Consider, for example, that the push for a $15 minimum wage is spurring the fast-food industry to replace human workers with cheaper automation.

Third, if one or more of the Covid-19 vaccines are successful—as I hope they will be soon—then any rules the Biden administration might draft could become moot by the time they take force. That doesn’t mean, mind you, that any such rules would be scrapped. That would leave meat processors to comply with rules that—even if, charitably, they made sense at the time they were adopted—are costly, overbearing, and outdated. Frankly, though, such a situation would make those rules almost exactly like a lot of other meat regulations.

I’m one of the many people who noted during the pandemic that no worker’s life, at any point in a supply chain, is worth sacrificing for a hamburger. I stand by that. But are those same workers’ jobs worth sacrificing?

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Pandemic Rules Are Only for the Little People 

topicspoiltics

The defining moment in the “rules for thee but not for me” ethos of the ruling class during the COVID-19 pandemic may have come when Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist behind Britain’s lockdown policy, met with his married girlfriend in defiance of the restrictions he promoted. Eager to threaten the common people with penalties if they failed to socially distance, he saw no reason to inconvenience himself the same way—although at least he conceded that propriety required him to resign his government post when the trysts were discovered in May.

“He has peculiarly breached his own guidelines, and for an intelligent man I find that very hard to believe,” marveled Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a prominent member of the ruling Conservative Party. “It risks undermining the Government’s lockdown message.”

Well, yes. But like all too many officials, Ferguson obviously never thought he’d be caught violating rules that he’d never intended be applied to himself. As we’ve since learned, Ferguson’s above-the-law attitude is common among those who feel entitled to write regulations and impose penalties on others for violating them.

That attitude is obvious in Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose wife and daughter visited properties in Florida and Wisconsin even as he ordered state residents to stay at home except for “essential” activities. “My official duties have nothing to do with my family,” Pritzker huffed when a reporter called him out about his family’s wanderings. “So I’m not going to answer that question. It’s inappropriate, and I find it reprehensible.”

Reprehensible might more accurately describe government officials who penalize the common folk for behavior in which they themselves indulge. The word also could be applied to officials and hangers-on who try to leverage their positions for special advantage.

That appears to be what motivated Marc Mallory, husband of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in the lead-up to Memorial Day weekend. After his wife eased some of the travel restrictions she had imposed on state residents, Mallory invoked his political connections in a failed effort to get his boat in the water ahead of everybody else.

“He jokingly asked if being married to me might move him up,” Whitmer conceded after the offended marina owner described the incident, which he found less than humorous, on social media. “He regrets it,” she added. “I wish it wouldn’t have happened.” She did not clarify whether it was the power play or the marina owner’s public complaint.

For Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, the it moment was a hearty meal at a Maryland restaurant while indoor dining in his own city remained forbidden by his order. “I know some are upset that I dined indoors at a restaurant in Maryland yesterday,” Kenney sniffed on Twitter in August. “I felt the risk was low because the county I visited has had fewer than 800 COVID-19 cases, compared to over 33,000 cases in Philadelphia. Regardless, I understand the frustration.”

A few days later, Eater Philadelphia published a long but incomplete list of restaurants that had permanently closed their doors because of the COVID-19 lockdown. The former owners of those businesses undoubtedly have plenty of frustration to share with the mayor.

“It was clearly a setup,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) complained after a salon owner released video footage of the powerful lawmaker, maskless and getting her hair done, in defiance of the rules in San Francisco. “I take responsibility for falling for a setup by a neighborhood salon I’ve gone to for many years.”

Maybe it was a setup—the salon owner is an open critic of Pelosi and of pandemic restrictions. But a setup would be possible only because the owner could correctly assume the House speaker wouldn’t flinch at violating widely publicized restrictions.

As we’ve seen time and again, such hypocrisy is common. We’re expected to suffer discomfort, economic pain, and emotional distress or else pay fines and even serve jail time. Government officials, meanwhile, take offense when called out for violating the standards they created.

The pandemic will eventually pass, but it will leave behind our memories of arrogant authorities who consider themselves above the concerns of the common people. Long after the virus is gone, those memories should stay with us as a vaccine against future trust in agents of the state.

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Pandemic Rules Are Only for the Little People 

topicspoiltics

The defining moment in the “rules for thee but not for me” ethos of the ruling class during the COVID-19 pandemic may have come when Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist behind Britain’s lockdown policy, met with his married girlfriend in defiance of the restrictions he promoted. Eager to threaten the common people with penalties if they failed to socially distance, he saw no reason to inconvenience himself the same way—although at least he conceded that propriety required him to resign his government post when the trysts were discovered in May.

“He has peculiarly breached his own guidelines, and for an intelligent man I find that very hard to believe,” marveled Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a prominent member of the ruling Conservative Party. “It risks undermining the Government’s lockdown message.”

Well, yes. But like all too many officials, Ferguson obviously never thought he’d be caught violating rules that he’d never intended be applied to himself. As we’ve since learned, Ferguson’s above-the-law attitude is common among those who feel entitled to write regulations and impose penalties on others for violating them.

That attitude is obvious in Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose wife and daughter visited properties in Florida and Wisconsin even as he ordered state residents to stay at home except for “essential” activities. “My official duties have nothing to do with my family,” Pritzker huffed when a reporter called him out about his family’s wanderings. “So I’m not going to answer that question. It’s inappropriate, and I find it reprehensible.”

Reprehensible might more accurately describe government officials who penalize the common folk for behavior in which they themselves indulge. The word also could be applied to officials and hangers-on who try to leverage their positions for special advantage.

That appears to be what motivated Marc Mallory, husband of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in the lead-up to Memorial Day weekend. After his wife eased some of the travel restrictions she had imposed on state residents, Mallory invoked his political connections in a failed effort to get his boat in the water ahead of everybody else.

“He jokingly asked if being married to me might move him up,” Whitmer conceded after the offended marina owner described the incident, which he found less than humorous, on social media. “He regrets it,” she added. “I wish it wouldn’t have happened.” She did not clarify whether it was the power play or the marina owner’s public complaint.

For Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, the it moment was a hearty meal at a Maryland restaurant while indoor dining in his own city remained forbidden by his order. “I know some are upset that I dined indoors at a restaurant in Maryland yesterday,” Kenney sniffed on Twitter in August. “I felt the risk was low because the county I visited has had fewer than 800 COVID-19 cases, compared to over 33,000 cases in Philadelphia. Regardless, I understand the frustration.”

A few days later, Eater Philadelphia published a long but incomplete list of restaurants that had permanently closed their doors because of the COVID-19 lockdown. The former owners of those businesses undoubtedly have plenty of frustration to share with the mayor.

“It was clearly a setup,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) complained after a salon owner released video footage of the powerful lawmaker, maskless and getting her hair done, in defiance of the rules in San Francisco. “I take responsibility for falling for a setup by a neighborhood salon I’ve gone to for many years.”

Maybe it was a setup—the salon owner is an open critic of Pelosi and of pandemic restrictions. But a setup would be possible only because the owner could correctly assume the House speaker wouldn’t flinch at violating widely publicized restrictions.

As we’ve seen time and again, such hypocrisy is common. We’re expected to suffer discomfort, economic pain, and emotional distress or else pay fines and even serve jail time. Government officials, meanwhile, take offense when called out for violating the standards they created.

The pandemic will eventually pass, but it will leave behind our memories of arrogant authorities who consider themselves above the concerns of the common people. Long after the virus is gone, those memories should stay with us as a vaccine against future trust in agents of the state.

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