Yesterday I completed a game of Baldur’s Gate 3 at the Tactician level of difficulty, the second highest supported. According to the developers, Larian Studios, only 5% of players accomplish that. I have no plans to play at the highest level of difficulty, something only a very small number of players have completed successfully. It’s a game not a death march.

I’ve been playing BG3 off and on since it was introduced in pre-release. It is an excellent role-playing game—possibly the best. Pre-release consisted of the first chapter only and I played to the end of the chapter multiple times, at least once for every character class (wizard, rogue, ranger, cleric, etc.). Since the game went into general release in 2023, I have played it through multiple times.

By far the most fun playthrough was as something called “Dark Urge”, a creature subject to and occasionally overwhelmed by violent urges to perform evil deeds. I have a limitation. I cannot satisfactorily roleplay as an actually evil character so my Dark Urge was actively trying to fight his evil nature, something I found very close to home. The ending of that playthrough was very satisfying.

The limitation restricts my ability to play as what are called “origin characters”, pre-built characters with substantial back stories and distinct goals. The origin characters with good orientations are the Gale (wizard), Wyll (warlock), and Karlach (barbarian). I’ve played as Gale; in the game I am just beginning I am Wyll. I have only completed the prologue but I’ve found it very immersing.

I think the editors of the Wall Street Journal have the issue of the Milwaukee judge arrested for aiding an illegal immigrant to avoid arrest correct:

Every dispute between the Trump Administration and the judiciary these days becomes a political morality play about a looming “constitutional crisis.” But the facts of each case matter, and most of the time they don’t support the crisis narrative.

That’s the way it looks to us so far in the case of last week’s arrest by federal agents of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping an illegal migrant evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Judge Dugan was charged with obstructing a federal proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent an arrest. A federal magistrate found probable cause for the arrest upon reviewing a 13-page criminal complaint.

The alleged facts as laid out in the complaint by FBI special agent Lindsay Schloemer don’t look good for the judge.

but I do disagree with one particular. We do have a crisis. It’s just not that crisis.

Judges should decide cases based on the text of the law, precedent, and the common law—another way of saying “precedent”—rather than deciding them based on their own politics or ideological preferences. There are far too many judges who want to be legislators rather than judges.

Somewhat against my better judgment I watched ABC journalist Terry Moran’s interview of President Trump on the occasion of the 100th day of his second term in office last night. It wasn’t quite as combative as I expected although I thought that Mr. Trump was primed for a combative interview. I don’t think that Mr. Moran was quite as oppositional as Mr. Trump seemed to think.

I don’t think I heard anything new. President Trump continues to think that the 2020 election was unfairly “stolen” from him. He thinks that the tariffs he’s imposing will be effective with fewer adverse consequences than I do.

I’d be interested in other people’s reactions.

George Friedman weighs in on the attempts to negotiate an end to the conflict produced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

The war isn’t exactly over because the fighting continues. However, unless the Russian army suddenly evolves into a more effective force, or unless the U.S. or Europe sends massive forces to drive Russia out, the lines on the map are more or less fixed. The new borders are a reality. And everyone needs to accept those realities if they want peace talks to succeed. There are other demands the Europeans can make that Russia will not accept – which shows them to be more honorable than the Americans, who just want the war to end and to do business with a weakened Russia – and there are other issues that can be negotiated. Some of these, such as the size of the Ukrainian military, can and will likely be ignored.

There is one last dimension to be considered. Russia is a nuclear power, and during the Cold War, Russia and the U.S. took every precaution to avoid posing a profound threat to each other. They dueled in the so-called Third World, but aside from the Cuban missile crisis, they never threatened to put each other in an untenable position out of fear of a desperate nuclear response. Eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula are simply not worth going to the brink, as we used to say in the Cold War.

In the 1970s, the U.S. negotiated endlessly with North Vietnam over a war it long knew it could not win. The U.S. has learned from that, I think, that diplomatic pride is not worth the cost of lives. Russia cannot occupy Ukraine, Ukraine cannot force the Russians out, and the negotiations must acknowledge as much. Putin will say he does not need peace, and Europe will be outraged that America admits the inadmissible – that the war is over. But this is all posturing. Those who want the war to continue unless their terms are met are bluffing a busted flush. The war is over, except for the killing.

I disagree with Mr. Friedman only on some particulars. I don’t believe that Russia’s objective was to conquer Ukraine. I believe it was to subordinate Ukraine and, failing that, to, in John Mearsheimer’s words, “wreck it”. I also think that Ukraine’s objective has not just been to retain all of its pre-2014 territory but to create an ethnic state where there has never been one.

As I have said before I think the United States should continue to provide military aid to Ukraine with the objectives of preventing Russia from winning outright and providing Ukraine with the strongest foreseeable position for negotiations. If our European allies are dissatisfied with U. S. objectives, they should send their own troops to fight against the Russians.

I will readily admit that I have never really understood my parents’ finances. 65 years ago our family income was around $17,000—a tidy sum at that time. It put us in the top 5% of households. Digging into their tax returns (they saved everything) I saw that nearly 20% of their income came from rents and dividends. That’s quite a bit of dividend income. The balance came from my dad’s law practice.

Adding to the confusion I have learned that my parents regularly got lines of credit with their bank, secured by the properties and equities they owned, something like a home equity line of credit today. I assume that was their strategy for maintaining liquidity for their ordinary expenses back in those days when credit cards were not nearly as omnipresent as they are today.

One thing I learned about which I had not been aware was that my dad continued his grandfather’s dairy business for more than 20 years after his father and grandfather’s deaths. My grandfather, then my great-grandfather died within months of each other.

The other story the Sunday “talking heads” programs were talking about was the arrest of Milwaukee judge Hannah Dugan by the Department of Justice. Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward report at Reuters:

WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) – U.S. officials arrested a Wisconsin judge on Friday and charged her with helping a man in her court briefly evade immigration authorities in an escalating dispute between President Donald Trump’s administration and local officials over immigration enforcement.

In a criminal complaint, the U.S. Justice Department said Hannah Dugan, a Milwaukee County circuit judge, hindered the immigration agents who showed up to arrest the man without a judicial warrant outside her courtroom on April 18, and that she tried to help him evade arrest by allowing him to exit through a jury door. Agents arrested the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, outside the courthouse after he left with his lawyer.

Although he thought the DoJ’s arrest of Judge Dugan excessively harsh, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had a succinct reaction to the arrest: “What was she thinking?”

Not cooperating with federal officials is one thing but actively impeding them is something else again. IMO it was not a smart move and the reaction of the DoJ undoubtedly was, to quote Voltaire, to encourage the others.

The editors of the Washington Post are dissatisfied with the peace plan the Trump Administration has been promoting to end Russia’s war against Ukraine:

The Russian military’s deadly missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian civilians on Thursday were brazen — even to President Donald Trump, who has been pushing Ukraine to accept a peace deal favorable to Russia. “Vladimir, STOP!” Trump warned President Vladimir Putin in a social media post.

This should help the U.S. president see why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not want to discuss any peace deal until Russia stops bombarding his country. More important, Trump should reconsider the uneven proposal that he has demanded Zelensky accept. As it stands, the deal would largely reward Putin for his unprovoked war against a smaller neighbor. The battle lines would be frozen in place, meaning Russia would keep control of the nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory it seized with its February 2022 invasion — though Ukraine would not formally cede sovereignty. What’s more, the United States would implicitly recognize Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, although Ukraine would not have to do so. Though it’s true that Ukraine should be expected to consider such terms, Russia — the aggressor in this conflict — also needs to make concessions.

They propose their alternative:

In a more perfect world, Trump would then demand that Putin restore Ukraine’s pre-2022 borders by withdrawing Russian troops, end support for the separatist militias operating in Ukraine’s eastern regions, agree to a European military force for monitoring compliance in Ukraine’s border regions, disavow any further territorial claims on Ukraine, agree to pay reparations for the damage to Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, and immediately return all prisoners of war and the Ukrainian children who were illegally abducted into Russia.

Trump could promise that, once all these steps were taken and verified, the United States would begin talks on easing some of the sanctions crippling the Russian economy. This sanctions relief would come in phases, and sanctions would return in the event that Russia violated any part of the peace deal. The International Criminal Court might be persuaded to suspend its indictment of Putin if the Ukrainian children were returned. The United States, Ukraine and Russia could begin talks about the future status of Crimea.

which they concede is a non-starter for Russia.

I would ask the editors a series of questions:

• Is Ukraine in a stronger position now than it was last year at this time?
• Was Ukraine in a stronger position in April 2023 than it was in April 2024?
• Was Ukraine in a stronger position in April 2022 than it was in April 2023?

which I would answer “no”, “no”, and “yes”, respectively. April 2022 was the time of the so-called “Istanbul Communiqué”. In that communiqué US, Ukrainian, and Russian negotiators came up with a framework for negotiations to end the war. They were that Ukraine could apply for EU membership, maintain neutrality, limit the size of its military forces, end its attempts to join NATO, forbid foreign military bases, and Western countries (including the US and UK) would act as guarantors of the agreement. Ultimately, the US and UK persuaded Ukraine to reject the deal. Since then things have only gotten worse for Ukraine.

Although I believe the US should continue to offer military aid to Ukraine, I would suggest that at this point it is very unlikely that Ukraine will be in a better bargaining position in April 2026 than it is now. I would also suggest that Russians’ willingness to put up with a poor economy and with military losses should not be underestimated. Russia has had a lousy economy for most of the last 200 years and the Russians are no strangers to casualties in war (6 million military casualties in World War II, 2 million World War I, 70,000 in the Russo-Japanese War, .5 million in the Crimean War, .5 million in Napoleon’s invasion)

What the US should not do is offer troops. Every wargaming of US-Russian direct conflict has resulted in a nuclear exchange and nuclear war would be disastrous not just for Russia and the United States but for Ukraine as well (Ukraine would likely be the first target).

I’m curious as to why no one is proposing that other countries, say, Poland or the UK provide troops in the war? Are they afraid that would provoke the Russians into using nuclear weapons as much as would the direct involvement of the United States?

In the absence of that I sincerely wish that the WaPo’s editors would offer their plans for concluding the war other than the one they acknowledge is a non-starter.

With the death of Pope Francis, I have lived through seven papacies (Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis). The next will be my eighth.

I thought that Francis was a very good man but, honestly, not the right pope for the times.

The Church is going through significant challenges at present. In the developed world the pews are empty or, at least, emptying. That is not new. When I worked in Germany nearly 50 years ago the only people attending Mass were a handful of old women and me. And that was in a traditionally Catholic part of Germany.

Here in the United States many Catholics are leaving the Church. In some cases they feel they were driven away by a hierarchy too eager to defend priests for their abusive activity. In other cases Americans are disheartened because they see the Church as too conservative; in others they see it as too liberal.

The Church is being persecuted in China and Africa. Francis’s strategy for China was accommodation which I doubt was the right one.

I suspect the next pope will be Italian, a reversion to mean. We’ll see.

The Sunday “talking heads” programs seemed to have settled on the story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia as the most significant of the day with ABC, CBS, and NBC all featuring stories that in one way or another connected to it. To my eye the facts of the case appear to be:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran national
He has resided in Maryland for the last 14 years
He has never requested asylum
He has a family in Maryland
The Trump Administration deported him to El Salvador where he was incarcerated with MS-13 gang members
The Trump Administration says their action was under the Alien Enemies Act
The Trump Administration says Mr. Abrego Garcia was departed to El Salvador via “administrative error”
The Supreme Court has gently rebuked BOTH the district court judge who ordered the Trump Administration to return Abrego Garcia to the United States and the Trump Administration, requesting the Trump Administration “facilitate” his return

The contested facts of the case appear to be

Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13
His wife filed a protective order against him for domestic violence

It has also been asserted that he has engaged in human trafficking.

The BBC summary of the facts of the case confirm all of the above.

There are several things that irritate me about the ABC, CBS, and NBC coverage of the story. First, there appears to be an implicit assumption that there is a generalized right immigration where no such right exists. Second, the words “due process” are frequently thrown around without acknowledging that there is no unitary due process but, rather, due process can be a lot of different things under different circumstances. It seems to be used synonymously with “individualized hearing” but not only is that not the definition of due process but Congress can change what the due process in different cases pretty much at will.

Nate Silver provides a pretty good commentary on the matter.

I honestly don’t understand why Democrats are pursuing this so assiduously. To my eye it appears to be a losing issue. Mr. Abrego Garcia is unlikely to be allowed to remain in the United States even if he is returned from El Salvador for an individualized hearing.