This Really Annoys People. Yes it Does. Oh Yes, It Does.

Farhad Manjoo at Slate:

Last month, Gawker published a series of messages that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had once written to a 19-year-old girl he’d become infatuated with. Gawker called the e-mails “creepy,” “lovesick,” and “stalkery”; I’d add overwrought, self-important, and dorky. (“Our intimacy seems like the memory of a strange dream to me,” went a typical line.) Still, given all we’ve heard about Assange’s puffed-up personality, the substance of his e-mail was pretty unsurprising. What really surprised me was his typography.

Here’s a fellow who’s been using computers since at least the mid-1980s, a guy whose globetrotting tech-wizardry has come to symbolize all that’s revolutionary about the digital age. Yet when he sits down to type, Julian Assange reverts to an antiquated habit that would not have been out of place in the secretarial pools of the 1950s: He uses two spaces after every period. Which—for the record—is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.

Oh, Assange is by no means alone. Two-spacers are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste. You’d expect, for instance, that anyone savvy enough to read Slate would know the proper rules of typing, but you’d be wrong; every third e-mail I get from readers includes the two-space error. (In editing letters for “Dear Farhad,” my occasional tech-advice column, I’ve removed enough extra spaces to fill my forthcoming volume of melancholy epic poetry, The Emptiness Within.) The public relations profession is similarly ignorant; I’ve received press releases and correspondence from the biggest companies in the world that are riddled with extra spaces. Some of my best friends are irredeemable two spacers, too, and even my wife has been known to use an unnecessary extra space every now and then (though she points out that she does so only when writing to other two-spacers, just to make them happy).

What galls me about two-spacers isn’t just their numbers. It’s their certainty that they’re right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the “correct” number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space—but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two. Others explained they mostly used a single space but felt guilty for violating the two-space “rule.” Still others said they used two spaces all the time, and they were thrilled to be so proper. When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong—that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space—the table balked. “Who says two spaces is wrong?” they wanted to know.

Typographers, that’s who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually. James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing. Hundreds of years ago some typesetters would end sentences with a double space, others would use a single space, and a few renegades would use three or four spaces. Inconsistency reigned in all facets of written communication; there were few conventions regarding spelling, punctuation, character design, and ways to add emphasis to type. But as typesetting became more widespread, its practitioners began to adopt best practices. Felici writes that typesetters in Europe began to settle on a single space around the early 20^th century. America followed soon after.

Tom Lee:

I’m sorry, but no. It’s a lousy polemic. Here’s its structure:

1. SEO-friendly statement of controversy
2. Presentation of opinion A. Assertion that people who hold it are rubes.
3. Presentation of opinion B. Invocation of authority.
4. History lesson! Discussion of old technology; no mention of enforcement of author’s preferred orthodoxy by newer technology (e.g. HTML rendering multiple spaces as one)
5. Rumination on beauty. Grecian urns, etc.

For now let’s ignore the ignore the bullying nature of this argument (it should be obvious to anyone that those of us who believe in two spaces are a minority that’s relentlessly and mercilessly persecuted by the bloodthirsty masses, both through jeremiads like Manjoo’s and through the technological eradication of our ability to express our beliefs). Which of the points in the above argument are rhetorically meaningful?

Only point 3 really carries any weight with me. I’ll take Manjoo’s word that all typographers like a single space between sentences. I’m actually pretty sympathetic to arguments from authority, being the big-state-loving paternalist that I am. But, with apologies to friends and colleagues of mine who care passionately about this stuff, I lost my patience with the typographically-obsessed community when they started trying to get me to pay attention to which sans-serif fonts were being used anachronistically on Mad Men.

I love you guys, but you’re crazy. On questions of aesthetic preference there’s no particular reason that normal people should listen to a bunch of geeky obsessives who spend orders of magnitude more time on these issues than average. It’s like how you probably shouldn’t listen to me when I tell you not to use .doc files or that you might want to consider a digital audio player with Ogg Vorbis support. I strongly believe those things, but even I know they’re pointless and arbitrary for everyone who doesn’t consider “Save As…” an opportunity for political action.

Nor should we assume that just because typographers believe earnestly in the single space that their belief is held entirely in good faith. They’re drunk on the awesome power of their proportional fonts, and sure of the cosmic import of the minuscule kerning decisions that it is their lonely duty to make. Of course they don’t want lowly typists exercising their opinions about letter spacing. Those people aren’t qualified to have opinions!

Shani O. Hilton:

I thought Manjoo’s argument was weak, for many of the reasons Tom mentions, but that doesn’t change facts. Here’s a little-known law of graphic design:

The number of people wishing to fit a document onto the same or fewer number of pages as a previous edition of said document, despite the new draft being longer than the previous edition, is directly proportional to the number of people who turn in said document to their graphic designer with double spaces after every period.

Okay, maybe I made that up. But real talk: Double spaces are bad.

Megan McArdle:

Let me just add: if you’re spending time worrying over whether my emails contain one or two spaces, you need to ask them to let you out of the asylum more often so you can pursue a more interesting hobby.  I double space after sentences because I learned to type on a manual typewriter, and it’s not worth the effort to retrain myself.  Even if typographers groan every time they open one of my missives.

Nicholas Jackson at The Atlantic

Paul Waldman at Tapped:

As Manjoo explains, there are still teachers out there infecting students’ minds with the idea that they should put two spaces after a period. Why? Because that’s the way they learned. And I did too, when I took a typing class in 1985. But now we have computers, and fonts that use proportional spacing, which makes two spaces after a period look wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

We’re never going to maintain our global dominance if people keep doing this. You think that 10-year-old kid in Shanghai is being taught to put two spaces after a period? No way.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Morphs Into Barry! Barry! Barry!

Julie Mason at The Washington Examiner:

President Obama is going to New Jersey this week for remarks on the economy, with a little detour to NYC for a DNC fundraiser and a taping of “The View.” It’s his third appearance on the show, but the first of any sitting president — on any daytime talk show.

From the ABC release:

President Obama’s interview, scheduled to tape on Wednesday, July 28th, will touch on topics including his administration’s accomplishments, jobs, the economy, the Gulf oil spill, and family life inside the White House.

Sigh. Really? Is daytime talk a realm that really needed conquering by a U.S. president? Yes, the president should be seen, and certainly “The View” has its moments — they do try to be topical. But this feels like a potentially high ick-factor scenario.

Among other things, it’s very pandering, and there’s a great potential for embarrassment, on all sides. Are they going to tell him how handsome he is and then Elizabeth Hasselbeck launches into him on national security?

Shani O. Hilton at Tapped:

Obama, who released a new National HIV/AIDS strategy last month, has a chance to shift the heat to the show’s hosts. When comedian D.L. Hughley visited the show in late June, he and host Sherri Shepherd had a “hot topics” discussion that touched on the prevalence of HIV and AIDS among black Americans.

Hughley said, “When you look at the prevalence of HIV in the African American community, it’s primarily young women getting it from men on the ‘down low.'” Shepherd added: “[HIV/AIDS] is so big in the black community with women because they’re having unprotected sex with men who have been having sex with … with men.”

But as Jorge Rivas at Colorlines magazine noted, that’s simply not true. Not only has the “down low” myth been debunked time and time again, it’s a dangerous idea that deflects attention from the real issues around the high rate of HIV and AIDS among black women. Unprotected heterosexual sex, and limited access to STD prevention and safe-sex tools, plus a lack of health care and regular screenings are the major contributing factors.

No one at The View bothered to correct Shepherd or Hughley. After GLAAD placed an ad in Variety magazine pointing out the misinformation being spread on the widely watched show and calling for a retraction, ABC non-responded, saying: “A guest moderator on the show expressed his interpretation of data about one way the virus can be transmitted. The topic of HIV/AIDS has been raised many times over the show’s 13 years, with many voices and opinions contributing to a conversation that we expect to continue as long as The View is on the air.”

Clearly, ABC was trying to couch Hughley’s statement as opinion. But when ill-informed opinions like Hughley’s and Shepherd’s are given air on a nationally syndicated show, there’s little reason for viewers to think those opinions aren’t fact. This is dangerous, if not deadly, because a clear public understanding of the factors that contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS is crucial to containing the epidemic. And while it’s doubtful that Obama will directly address the HIV/AIDS mythology being shared on The View, for the sake of building stronger support for his initiative, he should.

Matt Lewis at Politics Daily:

News that President Obama was set to appear on ABC’s “The View” on Thursday — the first time a sitting U.S. president will appear on a daytime talk show — has been met with predicable concerns about the dignity of the presidency.

(During the 2008 campaign, Obama and John McCain both appeared on the program.)

But while you might expect Republicans to be critical of the president’s appearance on the show, even some of Obama’s fellow Democrats are skeptical.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”‘ Tuesday (video below), Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) was less than confident that Obama was making the right move. As Rendell said:

I think there are some shows . . . I wouldn’t put him on ‘Jerry Springer’ either, right? . . . It is different, a little bit. But look, I think the president of the United States has to go on serious shows. And ‘The View’ is — you can make a case that ‘The View’ is a serious show — but also rocks and rolls a little bit. I’m not sure he has to go on ‘The View’ to be open to questions.

Meredith Jessup at Townhall:

Who says President Obama doesn’t transcend petty political differences?  He is uniting people like never before… against him.

In the latest case of individuals putting politics aside to bash Obama, Pat Buchanan–who disagrees with most everything the president does–and Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., appeared on MSNBC yesterday and came to one sound conclusion: Obama should not go on “The View”:

Rendell: I think there’s got to be a little bit of dignity to the presidency.

Mika Brzezinski: What are you saying, Ed?

Willie Geist: What a horrible insult to “The View.”

Rendell: I think there are some shows I wouldn’t put him on, “Jerry Springer,” too, right? … I think the president of the United States has to go on serious shows. And “The View” is, you can make a case that it’s a serious show, but it also rocks and rolls a little bit. I’m not sure he has to go on “The View” to be open to questions.

TV Newser reports that Obama will be taping his guest appearance with Babs Walters & her motley crew tomorrow for the show that will air Thursday.

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:

Barack Obama will skip the Boy Scout 100 year Anniversary Jamboree…

Instead he will travel to New York City to appear on “The View.”

Maybe they’ll call him “sexy” again?

Wonkette:

President Barack Obama will do just about anything to avoid his most important duties in office, which involve, as Chuck Norris pointed out, doing Boy Scout stuff. The latest chapter in Obama’s conspiracy against America’s boy industry is that he’s now blaming his absence at this year’s Jamboree on a scheduling conflict: He is taping The View on Wednesday. Why does Obama continue to disrespect our brave children in uniform?

Housewives can vote, you see, whereas Boy Scouts cannot — even though these costumed boy-children must collect the Democracy Badge, the Electioneering Badge, the First-Past-the-Post Badge, the Gerrymandering Badge, the Proportional Representation Badge, the Instant-Runoff-Voting Badge, the Shooing Away Black Panthers Badge and the Nixon Honor Badge to become an Eagle Scout.

Thus, the leader of the free world will chat with a handful of quasi-celebrities about lady stuff (like their periods, probably), instead of doing his real job, which is hanging out with eight-year-olds and teaching them how to build a campfire.

Old School Technology Meets New School Technology

Pia Ringheim Jensen at The Daily Beast:

On June 17, at 5 p.m., the parking lot outside the Draper, Utah, prison building where Ronnie Lee Gardner is scheduled to be executed by firing squad was already full of media trucks. The only people who could get close to the building were approved members of the media, including a reporter from The Daily Beast. No protesters were in evidence.

Inside a large media room, TV cameras were set up and journalists took their seats, positioning laptops on the desks in front of them and watching TV news for updates on the execution that’s still planned for shortly after midnight. It will be the first execution performed by firing squad in this new permanent chamber, 20 feet by 24 feet and fitted with curtains to cover the bulletproof windows between the chamber and the adjacent witness rooms.

Gardner has the right to invite up to five witnesses, but it wasn’t known if he had asked for any.

We were told that the prisoner seemed calm and relaxed. He had been sleeping, reading Divine Justice and watching a movie, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He had been fasting since his last meal yesterday. He has the right to visit with clergy, but had not requested any.

Joe Gandelman at Moderate Voice:

As ABC News reports, witnesses gave accounts of their reaction to it that were not always quite the same. Here are a few press reports.

The Salt Lake Tribune:

Five shots.

Four bullets.

With two loud bangs in quick succession, Ronnie Lee Gardner’s quarter century on Utah’s death row ended.

At 17 minutes past midnight Friday, Utah Department of Corrections officials confirmed the death of a man whose life was defined by sex abuse, drug addiction, poverty, criminality and murder.

But in the final hours of his life, friends and family members said, Gardner was at peace.

And in his final minutes, witnesses said, the calm, condemned man exchanged private words with Utah’s prison chief before being strapped to the execution chair and asked if he had any final words.

“I do not. No,” he said.

Ahood was pulled over his head. An executioner counted back from five. The shots rang out.

If the man known as one of Utah’s most notorious criminals was a monster, family members said, it was only as a result of his abusive upbringing. And Gardner’s appellate attorneys long had argued that if his jurors had known more about his childhood, they would have sentenced him to life in prison, instead of death.

The paper also had this eyewitness account from Nate Carlisle:

Ronnie Lee Gardner’s head, covered by a black hood, remained upright.

His body sat straight in the chair to which it was strapped.

As my eyes traveled down Gardner’s left arm, past his dark blue jumpsuit, I saw his pale white skin appear below his elbow. Half a faded blue tattoo, some kind of diamond shape, stuck out from the restraint around his wrist.

At the bottom of his restraint, I focused on his fist. Gardner died much the way he lived — with a clenched fist.

Yes, this was my first time witnessing an execution. I have been amazed at how many people asked me that.

Firing four bullets into a man’s chest is, by definition, violent. If it can also be clinical and sterile, then that also happened in this execution.

AND further down, after the hood is placed over Gardner’s head:

I watched Gardner. As the seconds passed, I grew anxious. I pivoted my eyes away from Gardner toward the slits.

… I heard “boom boom.” The sounds were as close together as you could spew them from your mouth.

My eyes darted back to Gardner and to his chest. The target, perfect just a second earlier, had three holes. The largest hole was in the top half of the circle and toward Gardner’s left side. It may have been where two bullets entered Gardner.

Below that hole, still inside the circle, was a smaller hole. Outside the circle, in the bottom right of the target, was a third hole. Each hole had a black outline. Utah Department of Corrections Director Tom Patterson would say later the target was fastened to the jump suit by Velcro and that may account for the black outline.

….I saw Gardner move his left arm. He pushed it forward about 2 inches against the restraints. In that same motion, he closed his hand and made a fist.

Then it happened in reverse. Gardner’s hand loosened, his arm bent at the elbow, straightened again and the fist returned. At the time, I interpreted this as Gardner suffering — clenching his fist in an effort to fight the pain.

….The next movement I saw from Gardner came from beneath his hood. I could see the bottom of his throat and it rippled as though Gardner moved his jaw.

..I squinted my eyes, looking for blood. I saw none through the holes in Gardner’s chest. None spilled on the floor. The jump suit slightly darkened around his waist and it appeared that’s where blood was pooling. But I never saw a drop

.
When an official checked to see if Garnder was alive, Carlisle could get a glimpse of the prisoner’s face:”His mouth was agape. His face was even whiter than it was before the hood covered him.”

Brad Hirschfield at The Huffington Post:

Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed at approximately 12:05 AM at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Draper, Utah. And even more than other death penalty cases, this one stirred strong emotion because it was carried out by firing squad. At Mr. Gardner’s request, he was strapped to a chair and shot by a team of five executioners, four of whose rifles contained live ammunition.

While I’m opposed to the death penalty, once the citizens of a state have agreed to permit it, I am entirely supportive of implementing it by firing squad. In fact, as long as it is limited to cases in which the convicted felon elects that method, I think it’s actually a good way to go.

How can someone opposed to the death penalty make such a claim? While done with a heavy heart, it’s a matter of honesty and clarity about the brutality of taking another human being’s life, even if that person “deserves” it.

If citizens really long for the death of another human being, then let it be as messy and horrible as taking a life really is. And if doing so bothers us, perhaps we shouldn’t be executing the person at all!

Robin Wauters at Tech Crunch:

A sign of the times, although many may find it distasteful, or much worse: Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff used a mobile Twitter client to send out a tweet announcing the impending execution by firing squad of convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner.

As the BBC notes, quite a modern way to announce a very old-fashioned death.

In total, the AG sent out 3 tweets about the event from his iPhone only a couple of hours ago, the most recent one an all-too-familiar (on Twitter) self-promoting one.

1) A solemn day. Barring a stay by Sup Ct, & with my final nod, Utah will use most extreme power & execute a killer. Mourn his victims. Justice

2) I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner’s execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims.

3) We will be streaming live my press conference as soon as I’m told Gardner is dead. Watch it at http://www.attorneygeneral.Utah.gov/live.html

James Joyner:

Rather in poor taste, no?

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review:

Any time you are tempted to think, “Surely nobody would have the bad taste and lack of sense to do that?” remember that the answer is always no.

Radley Balko at Reason:

Old school justice meets social networking.

[…]

What, no Twitpics of the body?

Elizabeth Allen at Mashable:

Were these tweets really necessary? For the most part, the 140-character messages about death, devoid of any emotion, did not sit well with many Twitter users.

A Twitter user named diptychal tweeted: “@MarkShurtleff’s tweet will probably go down in history as the dumbest most disgusting use of Twitter ever.” Another user, named drhonk, simply tweeted: “What a way to announce someone’s execution … twitter .. geez.”

The incident raises an interesting question. Is Twitter really appropriate in every occasion, even one as serious as an execution? What do you think, should Mark Shurtleff have tweeted about it? Voice your opinion in the comments.

Shani O. Hilton at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ place:

I admit that part of my issue with this is that I think that capital punishment is generally indefensible. But more than that, tweeting about someone’s death—even the death of a convicted murderer—strikes me as callous and not fitting for the gravity of the situation. It would be different if, say, he had tweeted a link to a press release. But to send out a message about the end of someone’s life so cavalierly. It boggles.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan

Some Say Gutted, Some Say Pruned

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog:

More than four decades after the Supreme Court ordered police to warn suspects about their rights before questioning them, the actual day-to-day practice has not turned out to be a simple ritual under clear ground rules.  Encounters in interrogation rooms still and often are a test of wills, with detectives trying to get answers and suspects trying to avoid talking themselves into deeper trouble.  As a result, the Court often has had to reinterpret its 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona.  It did so again on Tuesday, and this time the result decisively tilted the warnings procedure toward the police.

By a 5-4 vote, the Court for the first time made two things clear about Miranda rights: first, if a suspect does not want to talk to police — that is, to invoke a right to silence — he must say so, with a clear statement because it is not enough to sit silently or to remain uncooperative, even through a long session; and, second, if the suspect finally answers a suggestive question with a one-word response that amounts to a confession, that, by itself, will be understood as a waiver of the right to silence and the statement can be used as evidence.  Police need not obtain an explicit waiver of that right. The net practical effect is likely to be that police, in the face of a suspect’s continued silence after being given Miranda warnings, can continue to question him, even for a couple of hours, in hopes eventually of getting him to confess.

Those two declarations emerged in Berghuis v. Thompkins (08-1470), a Michigan drive-by shooting case.  Van Chester Thompkins, Jr., of Southfield, Mich., was convicted of murder, assault, and several firearm charges, and is serving life in prison without parole.  On Tuesday, the Court ruled that his Miranda rights had not been violated, and thus reaffirmed his conviction and sentence.  (In a separate part of the ruling, the Court also rejected a claim that his defense lawyer was ineffective in failing to seek a jury instruction to limit the damaging testimony of another man involved in the crime.)

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, joined by the Court’s four most conservative members, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a strongly-worded dissent, accusing the majority of deciding the case more sweepingly than it needed to do and of carrying out “a substantial retreat from the protection” given by the Miranda decision.

Kent Scheidegger:

The Miranda rule remains intact in that the police must warn suspects of their rights and that an invocation of those rights by the suspect requires the police to stop questioning. Today’s decision involves what is needed to establish whether a suspect invoked or waived his rights.

To invoke the right to remain silent such that the police must stop, the suspect must say so expressly and unambiguously. On the other hand, a waiver of rights may be inferred from the facts that the suspect received the warnings, understood his rights, and responded to questions anyway.

The rule really in the Constitution, forbidding compelled statements, remains in force, of course. Today’s decision places limits on an entirely artificial rule grafted onto the Constitution by the Supreme Court. It is entirely appropriate that artificial rules be strictly limited, if they are not to be abandoned altogether.

Shani O. Hilton at Spencer Ackerman’s place:

In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote that this decision “turns Miranda upside down.” And I admit, that was my first reaction, too.

But how did this case even get to the Supreme Court in the first place? It strikes me as completely laughable that someone can ask that a statement given during an interrogation be thrown out on the grounds that they didn’t talk for the first few minutes of being questioned. It should be as simple as: you have a right to remain silent, so long as you remain silent. That is, if you start talking, you’re no longer exercising that right.

Setting that aside, however, maybe the court’s decision isn’t that terrible. I think my initial reaction was out of worry that suspects may not know that they have to say something. But this ruling has the potential to clear up any ambiguity about the “remaining silent” clause. I was talking to a friend, and he noted that if the Miranda language were modified to include something along the lines of “you have to actively assert your right to remain silent,” it could be okay. Then cops, prosecutors, and suspects are all protected.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline

Tom Maguire:

The story does include this:

Van Chester Thompkins was arrested for murder in 2001 and interrogated by police for three hours. At the beginning, Thompkins was read his Miranda rights and said he understood.

The officers in the room said Thompkins said little during the interrogation, occasionally answering ”yes,” ”no,” ”I don’t know,” nodding his head and making eye contact as his responses. But when one of the officers asked him if he prayed for forgiveness for ”shooting that boy down,” Thompkins said, ”Yes.”

He was convicted, but on appeal he wanted that statement thrown out because he said he invoked his Miranda rights by being uncommunicative with the interrogating officers.

If the police felt the suspect was not being utterly unresponsive, then one can see why they would continue the interrogation.  Near-silence is not silence.

And I guess there could be a real problem with implementing a rule that equated silence with an assertion of the right to end the interrogation.  Would ten seconds of sullen silence be enough?  One minute?  Ten minutes?  When does the clock start, and who plays scorekeeper?

Scott Lemieux at Tapped:

While this outcome is unsurprising, there are a couple of implications worth noting. First, there was some concern that despite a generally liberal record, Sotomayor might lean excessively toward the state in civil-liberties issues. While today’s case doesn’t in itself prove that these concerns were unfounded — Breyer, the liberal justice most likely to defect on civil-liberties issues, joined her dissent — her strongly worded dissent is, at a minimum, a very encouraging sign.

And second, to return to another of my hobbyhorses, this proves that the much-touted “minimalism” of Alito and Roberts makes very little difference in terms of the bottom-line outcomes of cases. First of all, like Citizens United, this case shows that their minimalism is highly selective; when necessary to reach conservative outcomes Alito and Roberts are perfectly happy to write or join opinions that go well beyond what’s necessary to decide a particular case. And, second, “minimalist” refusals to overturn precedents may mean much less than they seem at first glance. It’s true that Miranda has been re-affirmed, but like a lot of other Warren and early Burger Court precedents, it has also been steadily drained of most of its bite. What matters is not so much whether or not precedents are explicitly overruled; it’s whether they’re actually applied in cases going forward.