The Consequence of Matters

When the founders of the republic wrote about corruption, they worried that a leader would confuse his own interests with the nation’s. That’s precisely how Cohen describes Trump’s view of Moscow. According to Cohen, Trump had no expectation of victory in the presidential race, something that I've argued from the beginning. Instead, he treated his campaign as a giant infomercial aimed at the Russians, whose cooperation he needed for Trump Tower Moscow to proceed. He spent mon ths fawning over Vladimir Putin, publicly apologizing for the abuses of his regime and begging for improved relations, as he tried to firm up the deal. In other words, the current trajectory of American foreign policy began as an effort to make a fortune. These were real financial interests that the president lied about, blatantly and constantly. Whatever else we discover through Robert Mueller’s investigation, that’s a historic scandal in itself.

On this day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Cooper Union speech. The popular pro-slavery argument of the day argued that Congress had no right to regulate slavery in new territories. The Dred Scott case of 1857 upheld that viewpoint, maintaining that the framers of the Constitution did not intend Congress to limit slavery. Lincoln believed that decision was wrong, and he spent months before the speech researching the positions of the 39 Founding Fathers on the issue  of slavery. That evening, the great hall was filled with 1,500 New Yorkers, curious to see this candidate, a lawyer who had very little formal education, a man whom they knew something of from his series of highly publicized debates with Douglas. One eyewitness remarked: "When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall, tall, — oh, how tall! and so angular and awkward that I had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man." Once Lincoln began to speak, however, ...

Regarding the resolution to terminate Donald Trump's emergency declaration, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who serves as the ranking Republican member of the House Committee on Rules, went on National Public Radio and said he’s concerned about “the haste with which the majority is pushing this disapproval resolution through. We’ve had no time to review the bill and no committee has held a hearing or marked it up.” Here is the text of the bill in its entirety: JOINT RESOLUTIO N Relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019. Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on February 15, 2019, in Proclamation 9844 (84 Fed. Reg. 4949) is hereby terminated. How long did it take you to read that? Did you have to scratch your head over the meaning...

Christopher Marlowe was baptized in Canterbury, England, on this date in 1564. We don't really know when he was born, but probably only a day or two before. The son of a shoemaker, he was so intellectually gifted that he was accepted into Cambridge on a scholarship meant for men entering the clergy. He chose to write plays rather than pursue holy orders, and he was frequently absent, possibly because he was spying for Queen Elizabeth I, an occupation he may have held until the end of his life. He may have been posing as a Catholic to gather intelligence on any plots against the Protestant queen, of which there were a gracious plenty; he was almost denied his diploma because it was rumored he had converted to Roman Catholicism, and he was only granted his degree after the queen's Privy Council intervened on his behalf. Marlowe was one of the bad boys of the Renaissance. We don't know too much about him — even less than we know about Shakespeare, which isn't much — but...

It was on this day in 1764 that the city of St. Louis was founded on the Mississippi River. Tennessee Williams grew up in St. Louis and hated the city. He called it "that dreaded city" and "the City of St. Pollution.” Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she wrote: "The Negro section of St. Louis in the mid-thirties had all the finesse of a gold-rush town. Prohibition, gambling and their related vocations were so obviously practiced that it was hard for me to believe that they were against the law.” The British poet T.S. Eliot was actually born in St. Louis, which he left at the age of 16. He wrote later: "I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those who have not [...] the Missouri and the Mississippi have made a deeper impression on me than any other part of the world." I went to St. Louis once for a AAAS meeting. It was on a January...

Around 100 BC, the Roman Republic had become an Empire, capturing a vast swath of territory including all of north Africa aside from Eqypt, all of Canaan and Mesopotamia, much of Anatolia, all of Greece and the Balkans, all of Italy, Cisalpine Gaul and Spain. As was the practice of the time, conquering a place meant selling much of its population into slavery so Rome was suddenly awash in slaves. People who were farmers or tradesmen were put out of work by the much cheaper slave labor. Tiberius Gracchus, a plebian, got himself elected Tribune of the Plebes, an office that had been established much earlier after the Social War. Gracchus pushed a radical program of land and financial reform to help those who had lost their jobs to slaves. The patrician class was agitated by this and caused the election of competing tribunes to veto Gracchus' reforms. Gracchus responded by overruling the competing veto and vetoing the functions of government, shutting the government down. Sound...

It's the birthday of scientist and writer Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa, Italy (1564), who defended the scientific belief that the Earth was not the center of the Universe and was tried by the Roman Inquisition for heresy. After being prohibited from doing any more astronomy and being placed under house arrest for the rest of his life, he played a major role in inventing physics. Galileo was a mathematics professor at Padua when he first heard about a new invention from the Netherlands, the telescope. He couldn't get his hands on one to even look at, so worked out the optics on his own. He then sold it to the Doge of Venice to help him manipulate the commodities market. The Doge was able to see incoming ships before anyone else and could run down to the docks to set prices on the cargo he knew was arriving. Galileo was a very slippery character. The spyglass everyone had been talking about could magnify objects to three times their original size. The instrument Galileo...

On this day in 18856, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in the US, having been published 3 months earlier in the UK. Ernest Hemingway said that "All modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn" and hailed it as the "best book we've had." T. S. Eliot referred to is as a book that "creates its own category" and said of its protagonist "He sees the real world; and he does not judge it—he allows it to judge itself." It was the first book in American literature to be written throughout in regional, vernacular English. As such, it was banned from many libraries. One incident was recounted in a Boston newspaper: "The Concord (Mass.) Public Library committee has decided to exclude Mark Twain's latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. T...

Andrew McCabe is critical of Donald Trump. Donald Trump labels this treason. Lindsey Graham will conduct the Star Chamber trial. The bloodless coup rolls on. The Constitution is rapidly being replaced by rule by royal decree, aided and abetted by Mitch McConnell. GOP delenda est

Today is the birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus, in Royal Prussia in 1473. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was also a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money—a key concept in economics—and in 1519 he formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham's law. But he is, of course, most famous for the heliocentric model of the universe. He did NOT invent the idea, however. The idea has a long back story, beginning with Aristarchus in ancient Greece. Through some quite clever observations, mostly of eclipses and the phases of the Moon, Aristarchus created a series of ratios of the sizes of Earth, Moon and Sun. While he needed, and didn't have, an actual number to put in to work out the exact sizes (that wasn't to come until Eratosthenes paid a student to walk from Alexandria to Aswan and count how many steps it took)...

Apparently, Bernie Sanders is now considered to be the front runner. At this point, that is pure name recognition. He's still going to lose. He is too arrogant and sanctimonious. He has not demonstrated an ability to win anything other than caucuses, which means he depends on people who can afford to take several hours out of their lives to go to a place and be personally counted. That does not describe the Democratic electorate. It, in fact, filters out most of that electorate. The only question remaining is whether or not he will behave like a petulant child, as he did last time. That was disgraceful behavior and gave enough of his supporters permission to either not vote at all or actually vote for Trump to swing the election. It was his responsibility to tell the "Only you, Bernie" crowd what was at stake, repeatedly and forcefully, and he didn't. I can only assume he didn't have a problem with them voting revenge, and that, in my opinion, disqualifies hi...

On this day in 1848, the most influential political tract of all time was published. In 1848, a wave of liberal democratic revolutions spread across Europe, starting in Sicily but eventually enveloping France, the German states, Italy, Hungary, the Hapsburg Empire, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, and smaller events in a number of other nations. There were even offshoots far afield in places like Canada and South America. The aim of all of them was to overthrow hereditary monarchies and replace them with democratically elected governments. The uprisings were led by ad hoc coalitions of reformers, the middle classes and workers, which did not hold together for long. Tens of thousands of people were killed, and many more were forced into exile. Significant lasting reforms included the abolition of serfdom in Austria and Hungary, the end of absolute monarchy in Denmark, and the introduction of representative democracy in the Netherlands. But most of them fizzled due to endless a...

The Supreme Court has unanimously ended, at long last, a long standing abomination in law enforcement -- civil asset forfeiture. Here’s how it works: Prosecutors accuse an individual of a crime, then seize assets that have some tenuous connection to the alleged offense. The individual need not be convicted or even charged with an actual crime, and her assets are seized through a civil proceeding, which lacks the due process safeguards of a criminal trial. Law enforcement can seize money or property, including one’s home, business, or vehicle. It gets to keep the profits, creating a perverse incentive that encourages police abuses. Flush with money, they can now purchase all sorts of military gear to make their dicks bigger. Because the standards are so loose, people with little to no involvement in criminal activity often get caught up in civil asset forfeiture. For instance, South Carolina police tried to seize an elderly woman’s home because drug deals occurred on the property—ev...

Dramatic events in North Carolina today. There will be a new election in the NC 9th district. Yesterday, Mark Harris', the Republican candidate, son and an attorney testified that he had told his father not to hire McCrae Dowless, warned him that what Dowless was doing was illegal. Also, he testified that Dowless was hired by the campaign through a third party to keep the relationship secret. Why did the son say all this? Because he's disgusted with the way this country has devolved into an undemocratic, win at all costs, polity. Today, after a lunchtime conference with his lawyers, Harris told the court that he had made some "misstatements," pleaded that he recently had two strokes, and ended his legal action. NC 9 will now have a new election. Harris was asked if he would run in the new election. He didn't answer, and his wife said "we'll see." Several observations. 1. Harris is a Southern Baptist minister. Apparently, what Jesus would do is...

Donald Trump on the events in North Carolina: "Well, I condemn any election fraud. And when I look at what’s happened in California with the votes, when I look at what happened — as you know, there was just a case where they found a million fraudulent votes — when I look at what’s happened in Texas, when I look at that catastrophe that took place in Florida, where the Republican candidates kept getting less and less and less and less. Fortunately, Rick Scott and Ron ended up winning their election, but it was disgraceful when it happened there. I condemn any voter fraud of any kind whether it’s Democrat or Republican. But when you look at some of the things that happened in California in particular. When you look at what’s happened in Texas with all of those votes that they recently found were not exactly properly done. I condemn all of it, and that includes North Carolina — if anything, I guess they’re going to be doing a final report. But I’d like to see the final report....

Almost two decades ago, Utah, of all places, set itself the ambitious goal of ending chronic homelessness. That's Utah, the home of Orrin Hatch. They did this by the most obvious possible expedient -- give them homes. Called Homes First, it reduced the chronic homeless population by 91%. In fact, giving housing to the homeless is cheaper than keeping them on the streets and dealing with the subsequent problems. Some early research on this produced truly mind-boggling results like a Central Florida Commission on Homelessness study indicating that the region was spending about triple on policing homeless people’s nonviolent rule-breaking as it would cost to get each homeless person a house and a caseworker. More recent, somewhat more careful studies, were a bit less enthusiastic about the cost-saving potential but still highly positive. A 2017 RAND Corporation analysis of the Housing for Health program in LA County concluded that the county saved about 20 percent by putti...

Almost two decades ago, Utah, of all places, set itself the ambitious goal of ending chronic homelessness. That's Utah, the home of Orrin Hatch. They did this by the most obvious possible expedient -- give them homes. Called Homes First, it reduced the chronic homeless population by 91%. In fact, giving housing to the homeless is cheaper than keeping them on the streets and dealing with the subsequent problems. Some early research on this produced truly mind-boggling results like a Central Florida Commission on Homelessness study indicating that the region was spending about triple on policing homeless people’s nonviolent rule-breaking as it would cost to get each homeless person a house and a caseworker. More recent, somewhat more careful studies, were a bit less enthusiastic about the cost-saving potential but still highly positive. A 2017 RAND Corporation analysis of the Housing for Health program in LA County concluded that the county saved about 20 percent by putti...

Taking hipster to a whole new level.

Today is the birthday of the author and illustrator Edward Gorey, born in Chicago, 1925. His stepmother was the woman playing the guitar during the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca. The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham Book Mart, with launching Gorey's career: "it became the central clearing house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store's gallery and eventually turning him into an international celebrity." Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following.[7] He made a notable impact on the world of theater with his designs for the 1977 Broadway revival of Dracula, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design. In 1980, Gorey became particularly well known for his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! ...