Althouse

[T]he Congressional Review Act, enacted in 1996 after Republicans took power on Capitol Hill... created the process that allows Congress to upend federal rules. With little power to set the Senate agenda, Republicans regard the tactic as a handy way to score legislative victories and force Democrats to debate subjects they would rather avoid.... 

The technique... fits the Republican legislative mind-set, which tends more toward blocking policy rather than creating it. “We are built to disapprove,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota.... 

Given Congress’s constitutional authority over the District, its laws are subject to review and can be overturned. Republicans are eager to cast Democrats as soft on crime and saw the District law as a vehicle to do just that....

The president ended the suspense by announcing he would sign it, making it the first time in 30 years that a District law is set to be blocked by Congress. 

... Lightfoot belongs to a group of recently elected Black mayors of major American cities, including Eric Adams in New York, Sylvester Turner in Houston and Karen Bass in Los Angeles. In those cities, Black people are outnumbered by other nonwhite groups, and in New York City and Chicago their ranks are dwindling. Each of these four mayors was elected or re-elected around the height of two seismic cultural phenomena — Black Lives Matter and the pandemic.... 

Blow interviewed Lightfoot 4 days before the first round of the election (in which Lightfoot, with 2 candidates outpolling her, failed to advance). About Paul Vallas, the white man who came in first with 34% of the vote, she said:

“He is giving voice and platform to people who are hateful of anyone who isn’t white and Republican in our city, in our country.”

And:

“People who are not used to feeling the touch of violence, particularly people on the North Side of our city, they are buying what he’s selling.”

She's insinuating that it's racist to care too much about your own physical safety. It's obviously impolitic to say that too clearly. Blow also proceeds gently (and abstrusely!):

In this moment, when the country has still not come to grips with the wide-ranging societal trauma that the pandemic exacerbated and unleashed, mayors are being held responsible for that crime. If all politics is local, crime and safety are the most local. And when the perception of crime collides with ingrained societal concepts of race and gender, politicians, particularly Black women, can pay the price.

What's he saying other than the obvious reality that mayors are held responsible for crime? Does he really mean to say that black mayors — or women mayors — are held more responsible?

In 2021, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta chose not to seek re-election, becoming the city’s first Black mayor to serve only a single term, after wrestling with what she called the “Covid crime wave.” 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans is facing a possible recall, largely over the issue of crime in her city, and organizers said this week that they have gathered enough signatures to force a recall vote....

Yes, I think Blow means to say that people suspect that woman mayors, black mayors, and, especially, black women mayors are soft on crime. 

Such scenes would elicit disgust anywhere. But they have set off a national wave of revulsion in Japan, known for its exacting standards of both hygiene and politeness. This week, Sushiro, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain where one of the most-viewed recent videos was filmed, took the rare step of submitting a complaint to the police about a boy who licked unused cups and soy sauce bottles and touched other people’s sushi after licking his fingers.... 

The boy, whose age was not disclosed, and his parents apologized to the restaurant. But the restaurant claimed it has suffered reputational and financial damage; its stock fell by 5 percent, or nearly $125 million, after those videos went viral.... 

[T]he latest videos on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram have garnered huge social media interest....

Well, now, everyone is going to have to garner their food somewhere else.

This method of service depends on shared virtue and the virtue is gone. Social media destroyed it. A human being will now need to bring the food to the table. But there must also be video of waiters (and cooks) contaminating the food with bodily fluids.

Truly, how can you eat in a restaurant anywhere? Must we sit home — covid-style — until the robots take over? The robots will be virtuous. The conveyor belt is an incomplete robot, crudely throwing everyone's food at everyone.