Jeff 🏳️‍🌈
LightNews LightNews
tinmanic.bsky.social
Jeff 🏳️‍🌈
@tinmanic.bsky.social
900 followers 140 following 4.2K posts
NYC gay guy, legal editor, history buff, crossword nerd, Disney geek, ex-lawyer. There's almost always a book I'm reading. Married to https://bsky.app/profile/hitormiss.org.

tinmanic.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
tinmanic.bsky.social
Here is how long it has been since I last went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: Danny Cooksey of Diff'rent Strokes was in it.
photo of Danny Cooksey as a kid
November 25, 2025 at 5:54 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Basically the judge said that she was going to restore the status quo that existed before the indictment was issued. So, in theory a validly appointed US attorney could file a valid indictment.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
November 24, 2025 at 9:22 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Nobody told me this weekend’s NYT has Puzzlemania!
Cover of Puzzlemania section of NYT
November 22, 2025 at 8:23 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Saw this cool suitcase at the airport today.
A suitcase covered with a National Geographic map
November 22, 2025 at 1:04 AM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Alas poor Yor-brick
Lego Hamlet holding a Lego skull
November 20, 2025 at 1:50 AM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Also I love that legal writers cite EVERYTHING
November 19, 2025 at 11:21 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
i ain't reading all that i'm happy for u tho or sorry that happened
November 19, 2025 at 11:18 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
I'm reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey, about astronauts on the space station. There are passages that talk about the view of Earth at night so I looked up some images. The difference between North and South Korea is stark.

earth.google.com/web/data=MkE...

More:
www.38north.org/2023/04/a-fr...
view of N & S Korea at night from space: N is almost totally dark compared to S
November 19, 2025 at 11:09 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
We got up way early for a flight to the Caribbean this morning and I had no idea our ride was going to be so special
Uber notification: SANTA will pick you up for your 4:25 AM ride
November 16, 2025 at 10:36 AM
tinmanic.bsky.social
For those who don't know, this is very high praise indeed.

uvamagazine.org/articles/a_p...
“My view is simple,” said John C. Jeffries Jr. (Law ’73), a former dean of UVA’s law school who had served on the search committee that recommended Ryan and then as an adviser to him. “I’ve been here 50 years and I think he’s the best president of the university I’ve ever seen.
November 14, 2025 at 9:17 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Beginning of Jim Ryan's letter, which is amazing in itself.

drive.google.com/file/d/1Is6x...
November 14, 2025 Dear Faculty Senators, Yesterday, I received a forwarded copy of Rachel Sheridan’s accounting of my resignation. I have also seen a letter from Governor Youngkin to Governor-Elect Spanberger, which also touches on the subject of my resignation. I am sharing my own account, which you will see differs in significant parts from the account of Rector Sheridan and Governor Youngkin. The document I am sharing is not a direct response to or a point-by- point rebuttal of the letters from Rector Sheridan and Governor Youngkin. There will be time for that later, if need be. This is instead a document that I put together over the summer, so I would have a record of the events while they were fresh in my mind. I was never sure if I would release it publicly, but I thought there might be a legislative hearing or inquiry that would require me to respond, and I wanted to make sure my memories were freshly recorded. In light of Rector Sheridan’s letter, as well as the Governor’s, which I do not think present an accurate accounting of my resignation, I am sending my document to all of you now. I am sorry for the slight
November 14, 2025 at 8:19 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
"...I asked what else the Board would be willing to give away to avoid a potentially expensive fight with the federal government—raising examples like cancelling the basketball program. Rachel responded by saying that was 'such a law professor question,' which was not meant as a compliment."
Pressure from Board Members and A Lawyer Over the course of the ten days between my lunch with Paul and my resignation, I had several conversations with Rachel and Paul. I again indicated my willingness to resign if it was in the best interests of UVA but raised a number of objections, mostly having to do with academic freedom and the independence of the Board to hire and fire the President. At one point I asked what else the Board would be willing to give away to avoid a potentially expensive fight with the federal government—raising examples like cancelling the basketball program. Rachel responded by saying that was “such a law professor question,” which was not meant as a compliment. I was trying to get them, with little success, to appreciate the value of the principles at stake and the cost of sacrificing them, even if that cost couldn’t be easily quantified.
November 14, 2025 at 8:18 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
This appears at the end of the article, which tracks.
Jacob Bernstein reports on power and privilege for the Style section.
November 14, 2025 at 6:37 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Replacing Lyonne with Dinklage is not remotely the same thing as these examples

deadline.com/2025/11/peac...
Long term, Johnson’s hope is for the franchise to evolve with a new actor to play the lead character every two years. First up is Dinklage, the Game of Thrones star most recently seen in the films Wicked and Roofman.. Series have replaced leads in the same character since Bewitched swapped Darin Stevens mid-run, and more recent examples include The Crown and Dr. Who.
November 13, 2025 at 5:59 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
photo of Cliff Clavin on Final Jeopardy with the answer "Who are 3 people who've never been in my kitchen?" and the wager "$22,000 Big Ones!"
November 12, 2025 at 10:26 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
I would not consider Ordinary People an uplifting movie
Pope Leo Shares His Favorite Movies Ahead of Vatican Event The list leans heavily on uplifting classics. On Tuesday, Variety posted a video of Pope Leo sharing his four favorite movies of all time: Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), starring Jimmy Stewart; Robert Wise’s “The Sound of Music” (1965), starring Julie Andrews; Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” (1980), starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore; and Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful” (1997).
November 12, 2025 at 2:14 AM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Oh my gosh, Buckeye by Patrick Ryan is an astonishingly beautiful novel. I fell in love with these characters living out their lives through the middle decades of the 20th century in Ohio.
Buckeye book cover image
November 11, 2025 at 4:56 AM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Is this like that Alias episode where Michael and Sydney go to a fake American town in Russia?
The family sold their land in Texas and found a village in Istra, a settlement just outside Moscow that's run by Tim Kirby, a pro-Russia online influencer and American expat living in Moscow who is sponsored by the Kremlin-controlled TV network Russia Today. According to their YouTube channel, the Huffmans were the first to move to the American village, nicknamed "Big Water." On the village's website, photos show a settlement that doesn't look much different from a new-build suburb you might see in the Houston or Dallas area, featuring rows of white and gray modern-style homes with floor-to-ceiling windows. Air conditioning costs extra, however.
November 10, 2025 at 10:05 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
From the 6th Circuit earlier this year:

"When... Moore remarked that [Kim] Davis had likely given marriage licenses to 'murderer[s], rapists, and people who have done all kinds of horrible things,' Davis responded, "that was fine because they were straight.'"
law.justia.com/cases/federa...
Plaintiffs-Appellees David Moore and David Ermold are one such couple. On July 6, 2015, ten days after the Supreme Court published Obergefell, Moore and Ermold, who had been in a relationship for nineteen years, visited the Rowan County Clerk’s office seeking a marriage license. Davis refused to issue one, stating that she was acting “under God’s authority.” Id. at 739. Davis advised Plaintiffs to obtain a marriage license from a clerk’s office in another county. When Plaintiff Moore remarked that Davis had likely given marriage licenses to “murderer[s], rapists, and people who have done all kinds of horrible things,” Davis responded, “that was fine because they were straight.” R. 169, PID 2785–86.
November 10, 2025 at 4:35 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
I wrote this on Facebook exactly a year ago today, a few days after the 2024 election.
I’ve seen a few people on here who are scared that marriage equality might be at risk, given the election results. While I understand the fear and the worry - and the feeling that nothing seems certain in so many areas of life these days - I really do think marriage equality is safe. There are several buffers protecting it. (1) Public approval of marriage equality has increased over the years and is close to 70%. This is not like abortion rights, which had a huge political movement fighting against it for 50 years. There is not a mass movement against marriage equality. And unlike abortion - where, even though I support one side, I can understand the arguments on the other side - more and more people see that marriage equality hurts nobody. (2) The Supreme Court would have to overturn its 2015 Obergefell decision, and that won't happen. In the current Supreme Court, the three liberals, plus at least Roberts and Gorsuch, wouldn’t do it. In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), Gorsuch surprisingly wrote an opinion stating that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is a form of sex discrimination, which traditionally has a lot of constitutional protection. (It was a case about Title VII, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment.) He didn't have to decide the case that way, but he did. And Roberts joined his opinion. Bostock was about the text of a statute, not about the Constitution, but the same argument would seem to apply. It’s true that Roberts dissented from Obergefell in 2015, and he’s done some shitty things lately, but he did not join the Dobbs majority in overturning Roe v. Wade, and the Bostock decision gives me hope that he and Gorsuch would leave Obergefell alone. (3) Even if the worst happened and Obergefell *were* overturned, the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) - which relies on the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution and was passed into law in 2022 with more than 60 votes in the Senate, including 12 Republ…
November 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Fun times at the Kennedy Center, it seems

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...
Relations between the old guard and the new are sometimes awkward. “I cannot express how unfriendly and unprofessional they were,” said Mallory Miller, 39, who was also fired from the dance department in August. “They just didn’t speak to us. They would walk by us in the hallway and not even look at us.” She recalled an early interaction she had with Ryan Hamilton, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully in Nevada last year for a seat on the Clark County Commission. Now he’s in charge of some programming staff members at the Kennedy Center. After watching a Cuban dance company perform, Ms. Miller recounted, “he said, ‘Wow, they’re so talented they could be on a cruise ship.’” “Even to this day,” she said, “I cannot decide if he was mocking us or complimenting us.” Mr. Hamilton declined to comment.
November 7, 2025 at 6:45 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Just watched a 1987 Halloween episode of Newhart with Dick Loudon reluctantly dressed as the Tin Man.
Bob Newhart as Dick Loudon as the Tin Man
November 7, 2025 at 2:18 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
Good stuff from Paul Krugman about yesterday, and how out of touch the GOP is.

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/which-part...
The 2024 election was mainly about economics. There was a big runup in prices in 2021-22, as the world economy, recovering from Covid, experienced a lot of supply-chain bottlenecks. This price surge, coming after decades of low inflation, upset voters. Biden administration officials could and did point out that it was a one-time price hike, that inflation — the rate of change of prices — fell rapidly from its 2022 peak, and was back to more or less normal levels by 2024. They could also point out that America’s inflation experience was very similar to the experiences of other nations, e.g. in Europe, indicating that global factors rather than Democratic policies were the main culprit. But voters were unmoved by these arguments, if they heard about them at all. What they did hear was Donald Trump promising not just to reduce inflation but to bring prices way back down. And many of them believed him. Of course, Trump didn’t have a plan, or even a concept of a plan, about how to accomplish this. Instead he imposed tariffs and began deporting immigrant workers, both of which raised prices.
November 5, 2025 at 9:01 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
This is forgetting that Ed Koch pretended to date Bess Myerson for a while.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/n...
Mamdani’s Beard Gives Him Another Mayoral Milestone New York has not had a bearded mayor since 1913. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s beard marks him as a millennial with a mandate to shake up the system.
November 5, 2025 at 8:34 PM
tinmanic.bsky.social
They are putting up scaffolding on the building behind us on literally the exact same wall where they took down scaffolding a month ago.

Dear Zohran, please make things like this stop happening
Photo of workmen putting up scaffolding on the exterior wall of an apartment building
November 5, 2025 at 2:35 PM