Very interesting, this: “Pastry mural pits bakery against New England town in free speech suit.” The article is here. But before I get into it, let me give you a memory. In the 1990s, a lot of us were talking about “devolution.” We advocated devolving power from the federal government to state and local governments. (Standard conservatism, at least at the time.) Some people refer to this as “subsidiarity.”

At The Weekly Standard, where I was then working, we had an article, which was put on the cover. I believe the cover read — playing off a song by the Beatles — “You Say You Want a Devolution?” The gist of the article was: Be careful what you wish for, because local government can be terribly petty and intrusive, hamstringing you in ways you never imagined.

The article I linked to, above, is an Associated Press report out of Conway, N.H. It begins,

Bakery owner Sean Young was thrilled when high school art students covered the big blank wall over his doorway last spring with a painting of the sun shining over a mountain range made of sprinkle-covered chocolate and strawberry donuts, a blueberry muffin, a cinnamon roll and other pastries.

The display got rave reviews, and Young looked forward to collaborating with the school on more mural projects . . .

Then?

Then the town zoning board got involved, deciding that the pastry painting was not so much art as advertising, and so could not remain as is because of its size.

Oh, geez. More:

The painting could stay right where it is if it showed actual mountains, instead of pastries suggesting mountains, or if the building wasn’t a bakery.

“They said it would be art elsewhere,” Young told The Associated Press in an interview. “It’s just not art here.”

“The town should not have the right to police art,” he said.

Again, local government — even your block association! — can be incredibly petty, intrusive, and hamstringing, can’t it?

• Tim Scott is running for president, or almost running for president, or something like that. It can be hard to tell these days. There are pre-campaign campaigns. “Exploratory runs.” What have you. In any event, here is a news story. I’ll quote.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., promised in an interview with NBC News on Friday that if elected president, he would support the “most conservative pro-life legislation” that Congress sends him, leaving open the possibility that it could be as early as six weeks but not committing to a specific time frame.

Scott, the report tells us, “declined to specify” whether he would support a “national ban,” saying, “I’m not going to deal with a bunch of hypotheticals.”

Such an interesting question: Should abortion, or abortion law, be a national matter? Or a state one? Should there be 50 different abortion laws? Should one state allow abortion on demand while another bans the practice?

An old, old question, really, involving abortion and other issues. (Slavery?)

If something is a right — how can it be denied in any state? The right to abortion? The right to life? The right to vote? The right to worship (or not worship)? As a rule, I’m a big “federalist,” thinking that 50 flowers ought to bloom. But . . .

Let me ask you: Was Eisenhower wrong to order the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, and federalize that state’s National Guard? (The word “national” is interesting.) I say no.

To be continued . . .

• Dianne Feinstein is apparently too infirm to continue doing her job as a senator from California. She has been in politics a long time: She started on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1970. She was mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988. And so on. She has always been formidable (whether you like her politics or not). Walter Mondale wanted to make her his running mate in 1984. But he thought the first woman and the first Jew on a national ticket would be too much in one go. So he went with a New York congresswoman, Geraldine Ferraro.

When to hang it up is a tricky question. A very sensitive question. Marilyn Horne, the great mezzo-soprano, had a deal with her accompanist, Martin Katz. He, and he alone, would tell her when it was time to bow out.

I knew that something was wrong with DiFi in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. She was not herself. She was out to lunch.

Again, damn sensitive. Remember what they called the Senate, when Senator Thurmond was nearing 100? “Strom’s nursing home.” (We can talk about the 2024 presidential race later. Like, every day, for months on end . . .)

• Many of us have been following the case of Mikheil Saakashvili, with revulsion. Here is a report from the Guardian’s Shaun Walker, from Tbilisi: “Gaunt and ghostly, Georgia’s jailed ex-president nears death in hospital. Mikheil Saakashvili warned of Putin’s ambitions 15 years ago. Now he tells of torture by a regime that panders to Moscow.”

• I would like to recommend, too, a piece by Alec Dent in the Dispatch: “Elon Musk’s CCP Pressure Points: Chinese government mouthpieces praise his Twitter policies just as he announces new business ventures in China.” Very problematic.

• Over the years, I have used an expression: “jes’ playin’.” Some politicians are jes’ playin’ when they say what they say. They don’t really mean it. They’re just serving up “boob bait for Bubbas,” in Senator Moynihan’s phrase. (He could do it too, in his own way, as I noted in a previous column.) You know who else jes’ plays? Media personalities, many of them. That is even worse — even worse than the pols’ duplicity.

Did you see the material in the court filings of Dominion Voting Systems?

Jeff Jackson is a new congressman from North Carolina. I thought his observation here was interesting:

• Scenes from America the Touchy, and Trigger-Happy.

Ralph Yarl, 16, went to pick up his younger brothers, as his mother had asked him to. He was supposed to go to 1100 NE 115th Terrace. By mistake, he went to 1100 NE 115th Street. The homeowner shot him.

For an article, go here.

Here is another article: “NY woman driven to wrong address fatally shot by homeowner.”

And another: “Man arrested in shooting of two Texas cheerleaders after one mistakenly got into the wrong car.”

Awful.

• Well, here is something good: “Billy Waugh, 93, ‘Godfather of the Green Berets,’ Is Dead.” I don’t mean it’s good that Mr. Waugh has died! I mean it’s good — very good — that he lived. The subheading of the obit, by Richard Sandomir of the New York Times, reads, “He was a Special Forces soldier during the Vietnam War then worked for the C.I.A., tracking Osama bin Laden in Sudan and fighting in Afghanistan after 9/11.”

Just one excerpt:

After 9/11, Mr. Waugh, who was then 71, lobbied to be sent to Afghanistan.

“Billy got a folding chair and set it up opposite the entrance to my office and told my office manager, ‘I’m going to sit here until Cofer talks to me,’” said Mr. Black, who was director of the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the time.

Eventually, they talked. Mr. Waugh was still quite fit, and the next day, Mr. Black agreed to send him to Afghanistan, reasoning that his experience in unconventional warfare might help a young commander there.

Fantastic stuff.

• There is an owl named “Flaco,” and he lives in Central Park. His whole life, he had lived in the Central Park Zoo. But “when a vandal cut the wire mesh on his enclosure on Feb. 2, the only world Flaco knew was forcibly ruptured.” I have quoted from this news article.

Flaco has survived, so far, in Central Park. Even thrived? Nature kicked in — and he began to hunt with relish.

This Eurasian eagle-owl has developed a following. People go to see him, in his favorite tree, as he wakes up — as he wakes up around twilight to begin his “day,” which is nocturnal. Here is a photo I took of some Flaco followers:

It is thrilling to see Flaco wake up. He stretches and, more thrillingly, hoots. That hooting — deep, resonant (you can almost feel physical vibrations) — is one of the most memorable things I have experienced in nature.

Wanna good shot of Flaco? This was taken by my friend Andrew Parker Thomas, a senior (near graduate) of Columbia University:

Viva Flaco, and long live you, too.

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