Mike the Misinformed

Posted on by Leave a comment

Republicans scraped the bottom of the barrel last October when they elected the little-known Mike Johnson of Louisiana Speaker of the House of Representatives and second in line to the Presidency of the United States. Johnson emerged as the fourth Republican nominee in what had become a clown show of political infighting after the Republican caucus threw out Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Johnson’s election required fifteen votes.

McCarthy was voted out of the job in an extraordinary showdown, a first in U.S. history, forced by a gang of hard-right conservative Republicans. The vote threw the House and its Republican leadership into chaos. McCarthy’s crime was to have reached a bipartisan agreement with Democrats to fund the government for a brief period to prevent a shutdown.

Read more

Election 2024 and the Supremes

Posted on by One comment

I remember vividly the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). The Supremes had opined on elections many times before. But this was the first time the top court literally decided an election, stopping the ballot counting process still under way in Florida, and declaring George W. Bush the winner and 43rd President of the United States.

Moreover, it came to its decision by a party-line vote of 5 to 4. That led many to question the validity of the decision, which was based on the determination that the vote counting in Florida would violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Note I wrote “would” rather than “did”. The Bush Court apparently consulted a soothsayer and reached its conclusion based on a prediction, not an actual event. We can never know if it was right.

Read more

Charles Osgood

Posted on by Leave a comment

I heard him long before I met him. I remember sitting in the cafeteria CBS had set up in the basement of New York’s Madison Square Garden to feed the hundreds of staff members it had brought to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Believe it or not, in those days the political conventions meant something and, in part because of legal requirements, they were extensively covered by broadcasters.

Just two years out of journalism school, I had been sent by my employer, WBBM-TV, the CBS owned station in my hometown Chicago, to manage our coverage. Along with me was a terrific video crew and a wonderful reporter who needed no supervision and little assistance, and an anchorman who definitely needed both. Those are stories for another day. Today, I just want to talk about the voice.

Read more

Peter Schickele

Posted on by Leave a comment

I still remember the first time I heard the music of P.D.Q. Bach. On the program at New York’s Town Hall were the Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments and the Schleptet in E♭ major. I was immediately hooked.

Each piece was introduced by Professor Peter Schickele of the Music Pathology Department, University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Schickele claimed to have discovered the work of P.D.Q, who he described as the 21st and least of the children of the great baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Here is where things get a little dicey. J.S. Bach was certainly prolific. But he stopped at 20 children. And while there is a Hoople in North Dakota, there is no university there. I should have noted that the program listed P.D.Q.’s dates as “(1807–1742)?“

Read more

The Nuts Factor

Posted on by One comment

This is nuts. That’s all I could think as I listened to D. John Sauer, an attorney for Donald Trump, with Trump sitting in the front row of the courtroom, tell a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that it should overturn a decision of the district court and dismiss the federal indictment against Trump for crimes connected to the January 6, 2020, mob assault on Congress.

To recap, on August 1, 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four federal criminal counts after a grand jury investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6th insurrection. In October 2023, Trump claimed in the case that he had absolute immunity from prosecution for actions he took as president but Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the trial judge in the case, rejected (opinion here) Trump’s claim, finding that “neither the Constitution nor American history supported the contention that a former president enjoyed total immunity from prosecution.” Trump appealed the ruling.

Read more

GOP Clown Show Continues

Posted on by One comment

When we last visited the Clown Show, in January of 2023, we were talking about the farce the Republicans put on trying to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives. Kevin McCarthy of California finally won the post on a historic fifteenth ballot. But power really lay with roughly fifteen right-win radical Republicans, who battled McCarthy relentlessly.

I took a break from this subject as the GOP stumbled though one of the least productive House sessions on record. Now it’s time to catch up.

Read more

The Answer is Slavery

Posted on by Leave a comment

Let me give you a piece of advice. If someone asks you what caused the Civil War, the answer is “Slavery.” Do not equivocate. Do not hesitate. Do not complain about being asked a “tough” question. Just say, “Slavery”.

If you think I’ve written something like this before you are correct. The last time I was talking about three women who were in charge at three of our top universities. Today I address one woman who wishes to be in charge of the whole nation.

Read more
« Older Entries Recent Entries »