Month: May 2022

Tequila Sunrise

It’s Memorial Day, and an Eagles’ song comes to mind:  Tequila Sunrise.  We had the grown kids over for smoked ribs last night, and with our amazing Margarita machine (three pitchers at once!) made a lot of good drink to go with the good food.  Thank goodness the dogs were mindful of the evening – they didn’t get up until seven this morning. 

It’s Memorial Day, and for the first time in a very long time, I actually felt like calling Mom and Dad.  I do think about them a lot, but it’s not often that I just feel like picking up the phone and talking to them.  Mom passed away in 2011, Dad in 2016, so it’s really not possible to make the call.  But we talked a lot throughout their lives, often by phone, and always on Sundays and holidays.  So there’s that “motor memory” of connecting.  

You didn’t call before nine.  By nine they were both up, at the table, drinking coffee.  Before nine they’d answer the phone, but they weren’t really ready for a conversation.  We could talk about almost anything; Mom and Dad were always involved in the world.  This morning’s conversation would have been about school shootings and politics.  Mom would be happy that I retired; she always worried that something would happen at my school and I might get hurt.

Memories

And we would have talked about Memorial Day.  It was always a day of remembrance for them.   Mom and Dad both served in World War II,  it was the seminal event in their lives.  Not only did the offer up their lives for their country, but they met, fell in love, and married all in the crucible of world conflict.  Memorial Day is not Veterans Day; it’s a time to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in their service.  But Mom and Dad lost lots of friends in their War, “the War” as they would say.  Memorial Day took them back to those times.  For them, like Dickens, it was “…The best of times, it was the worst of times”.  There was nothing worse than the losses, but there was nothing more involving, energizing, and intense than their war experiences.

“Their War” ended a whole lifetime ago, seventy-seven years.  Since then there have been American wars in Korea and Vietnam, Panama, the Balkans, Kuwait, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.  We have asked our military to defend our national interest, and they have.  And there has been political turmoil about many of those wars, turmoil that has sometimes spilled over onto those just doing their duty.  It isn’t that every war the US has fought was “righteous”, but that’s not the fault of those soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice on all those foreign fields.

So on Memorial Day, we should remember those who sacrificed in all of those wars, whether we were in favor of them or not.  

There are two memories, “stories” I would share on this Memorial Day.  

Small Town Boy

The first is about my early teaching years living in the small town of Pataskala.  As a teacher I’d hear the kids talking about the “scary old guy” who would walk the streets of the town, talking to himself.  The kids didn’t know what to do, and made up all sorts of tales about him.  

I found out the real story.  He had been a kid, just like them, in 1943 in the middle of World War II.  He graduated from high school and went into the Navy to serve his country.  And he was on board a ship when it got torpedoed in the Pacific.  We don’t know exactly what happened on that ship, but we can imagine the terror of flames and explosions.  Eventually the order was given to abandon ship, and that young man, hardly a year out of high school, went into the sea.

Hours later he was pulled from the waves, physically undamaged.  But sometime in the crisis, from the chaos on deck and into the water, he lost his mind.  It turned inside itself, and he was never the same.  High school kids sign up for the military, and they know the risks.  They might die in combat, or come home injured or even disfigured.  But they don’t think about losing themselves out there in the battle.  But that’s what happened to him.

He lived with family here in town, and every morning he’d walk the streets, talking to himself.  The local restaurants knew his story, and he had a free coffee or breakfast whenever he stopped.  He was our little town’s “memorial” to the ultimate sacrifices of war.

A New Monument

And the second is about Mom and Dad.  It was around 2007, and they had not visited the new World War II monument in Washington.  So we loaded up in my Suburban, and did the trip “overland” along US 50 to the Capital.  It would be their last time to go, and we couldn’t walk the miles we used to in DC.  But we could go to the Mall, and Mom and Dad could see the memorial to “their War”:  to them.

Mom was in a wheelchair to save her strength, and the three of us explored the beautiful columns and water features of the monument to the “Greatest Generation”.  But what really struck them were the engravings on the wall, depicting iconic images of the War.  You could not only see them, but feel them, touching the figures in the bronze pictures.  Mom cried, Dad was solemn, and folks came up and thanked them for their service.  There were others from “the War” there as well, and Mom and Dad shared “the honor” with all those other World War II vets and all that did not live to see the monument. 

I’m glad I could take them to see it.  I’m honored that I was able to share that experience with them.  And I wish I could talk  to them about it on the phone today.

This is part two of a “Sunday Story”.  There’s no politics here, just stories about our “pack” of dogs here in Pataskala.

Every heroic Marvel comics character has an “origin story”.  Some are so familiar, they are in inscribed in the national memory.  Superman arrived on earth as a baby, a refugee from the planet Krypton.  Peter Parker was a teenager bit by a radioactive spider.  Batman was the rich kid Bruce Wayne who lost his parents to criminal violence.  

My wife Jenn and I have five dogs.  They are all “rescues”, and while we don’t have all the details, they each have their own “origin story”.  And those tales aren’t just “good stories”; their “origins” often explains their behavior later in life.  

These are their stories (“Chung-Chung” from Law and Order).

Lost Pet Recovery

Last week’s story highlighted our older dogs, Buddy and Atticus.   Both of them were “rescues” from the shelter, Buddy from Licking County and Atticus from Franklin.  About six months after we adopted Atticus, my wife Jennifer became involved in finding lost dogs.  It started locally, with a German Shepard that ran away from nearby Reynoldsburg in a storm.  Jenn was able to track the dog to the very busy intersection of Beecher Road and State Route 16.  She spent days and nights staking out a humane trap, sleeping in the truck in a parking lot and hoping to see and hear the trap door slam shut.

A took more than a week, but Jenn traced the Shepard to his “safe zone”, and he finally went into the well-baited trap.  The next day the Shepard was reunited with his family.  It was during that process that she met Don Corsmeier from Lost Pet Recovery,  the leader of the volunteer group that works all over the Midwest to help owners get their dogs back.  Don is a “master trapper”, and “LPR” helps hundreds of owners each year.

Rescues

There are lots of dogs.  Some are recovered for owners.  Some are rescued from bad situations, without any apparent owners.  For those dogs, LPR does all to find out where they came from.  But sometimes there just isn’t an answer.  Maybe they are strays (like Buddy), maybe they were abandoned, or maybe there was no way to reconnect, like Atticus.  I’m sitting at my desk now, typing this story.  Atticus is in his spot under the desk (Buddy is in his spot in the bathtub).  But on the couch are Louisiana and CeCe, and next to me is Keelie.  Those three were rescued without owners.  Once they came into our house (and into our bed), they had a home, and a pack, here.

Keelie

Keelie was the first.  She was wandering in the grass on the exit ramp between I-75 and another major highway in Northern Kentucky.  Once she was safe, LPR needed some place to “foster” her, while we searched for her owners.  But the search was futile, and Keelie stayed here while they looked.  Meanwhile, she fit into our “pack” from the first minute.  Atticus found a playmate, racing each other around our fenced-in backyard.  And old Buddy was perfectly happy to have a fellow young herding dog in the house.  When the word came back that we were unable to locate an owner, everyone in this house sighed with relief.  Keelie had a new home.

She is the “mother” of the pack.  But she’s not all-accepting.  It takes a bit for Keelie to warm-up to new people.  And, not surprising consider her “origin” story, Keelie is deathly afraid of large trucks.  A walk on the street is great, until the garbage truck comes by.  Then Keelie can’t stop shaking, almost frozen in fear.  She remembers those nights beside the busy Interstate, with the trucks roaring up the exit ramp, right beside her.  

Keelie must have had puppies in her prior life.  She is the caretaker dog to everyone in the house.  When Jenn or I get sick, Keelie is the first dog to try to comfort us.  When one of the other dogs gets “in trouble”, Keelie tries to intervene to keep them “safe”.  If there’s an ear infection, she tries to fix it, a “boo-boo” from rough-housing, and she works to heal it. 

Lou 

And her biggest project was our next rescue, Louisiana.  I’ve told Lou’s origin story in great detail in earlier posts.  The short version:  LPR read about a year old (or so) puppy, left abandoned and broken in the parking lot of Louisiana State University in Baton, Rouge.  He had two broken legs and a dislocated hip, and heartworms as well.  The rescue that had him in Louisiana couldn’t afford to fix him, and he was slated for euthanasia. 

His story struck the LPR crew, and three of them, including Jenn,  jumped in a truck, drove to Baton Rouge, and brought Lou back.  The folks at Ohio State Vet Hospital put him back together, relocating his hip and putting a plate in one leg.  The other leg healed on its own.  And then Lou needed a place and time to recover.  After all of this, it shouldn’t surprise you that Jenn’s office was “the perfect” place.

In the Pack

We had every intention of just “fostering” Lou.  But his rehab went from October to February.  And then another three months were required of heartworm treatment.  By the time all of that was over, Lou was “in the pack”, fast friends with Keelie, competitive ally of Atticus, and always respectful of Buddy.  By summer, his rehabilitation went from short walks around the front yard, to chasing and running with Keelie and Atticus in the back.  

Lou is fixated on the squirrels that share the trees in back.  The squirrels are smart, they sit in the high branches and taunt him, as he shows his full recovery by leaping up at them.  But he can’t catch them, and a ground to air truce persists in our little domain.

Lou is a talker.  When he wants something, he has a nasal whine to let you know.  And when he really is annoyed, he has the “pterodactyl” noise that grabs everyone’s attention.  He’s been through a lot, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that visits to the vet are always traumatic.  All those smells, all those noises, are only reminders of pain for him.  So we have to drug him up before we go, leading to “Stoner Lou”, a flashback to the months of drugs while he recovered from surgery.  

But Lou is also a lover, a snuggler who will walk up, drop his forehead, and place his head in your lap.  He loves the attention, and makes sure he gets his share.  

Four dogs – that was certainly enough – we thought.

CeCe

But then Don rescued CeCe, a young pup, from a rain filled drain pipe over near Dayton.  LPR was unable to locate an owner, and we placed her with a family with lots of young children.  It might have been a perfect fit, but CeCe was just as wild as the three and five year old’s. Reasonably, that was too much, and Jenn and I volunteered to go pick her up and take care of her for a couple of weeks – until another foster was found.

That was May, a year ago.  While LPR searched for a perfect fit, I think they knew that CeCe was already in one.  And while Jenn and I resisted the idea of a fifth dog, “Baby Yoda CeCe puppy” (she looks a lot like the Star Wars character) grew on us, and on the rest of the pack.

Glasses

Keelie found someone to mother.  Lou had a snuggle buddy, and a lower leg chewing tormentor as well.  Atticus had one more playmate, and Buddy, well, CeCe respects his elder status.  CeCe is a puppy.  She loves to chew glasses:  reading glasses, sun glasses, and Jenn and my prescription glasses.  There isn’t an earpiece in the house without some chew marks.  We’ve learned to make sure that all eyewear are safely out of puppy reach.  

But she’s selective.  She gathers loose shoes on her “bed” in the family room, more of a collection than damage.  And when she got my wallet, she left the leather and the credit cards alone.  She carefully extracted all of the cash and chewed it into small pieces.  I got to use the phrase at a concession stand that didn’t take credit cards:  “ But my dog ate my cash!!”

She’s a snuggler as well.  In the middle of the night we often find her pressed up against one of us, sliding under the blanket, looking to stay warm.  And when she needs to go out, we often find out by a careful lick in the ear.  But when there’s thunder, she’s even closer.  In fact they all are:  memories of nights out alone, searching for shelter from the storms.

Five Dog Nights

Five dogs can be a chore.  It’s ten meals a day, twenty paws to clean when it rains, always one who needs to go out in the middle of the night.  Setting up vet visits can be high order scheduling (and financing).  And it’s difficult for Jenn and I to travel.  They “pack” can do a full day at home, some in crates and some not, but that’s about as far as we go.  We did get away last month for a weekend thanks to our son and his girlfriend, but that was our first time in over two years.

But there’s always joy and excitement when we come home.  There’s the surprise “snuggle” in the middle of the day and the happy racing in the backyard on a sunny summer afternoon. And there’s the quiet calm, even in the storm, in our king sized bed when everyone’s found their place.   

And that’s the story of our five dog pack.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22

Pro-Choice

I am pro-choice, and always have been.  My thought process is pretty simple.  I’m a man, and I can’t put myself in the place of a woman who has to make the decision to have an abortion or not.  And, while I understand and appreciate that different folks have differing views on the beginning of life; that moment is an ethical/religious decision.  What is the belief of one person is not the belief of another.  And like all religious tenets, I don’t have the right to force my religious view onto anyone else.  That’s what pro-choice has always been about – the choice that others get to make, not that I or other “old white men” get to decide.

And I have always understood how folks get to be “pro-life”, or at least “pro-birth”.  I worked for a Democratic United States Congressman who was “pro-life”.  It was back in the 1970’s, and the partisan line that now divides Republicans and Democrats over this issue wasn’t delineated yet.  It was perfectly acceptable for  Democratic operatives in the office to be pro-choice, while the “boss” was pro-life.  The Congressman was deeply religious, an Irish Roman Catholic from the West side of Cincinnati, and he listened to his faith leaders. 

Pro-Life

But I do make a distinction between “pro-birth” and “pro-life”.  My Congressman was truly “pro-life”.  He was opposed to abortion, but in favor of early childhood care, Head Start programs, aid to women and children, and all the other issues that improved the lives of those children who came into the world, wanted or not.  He was “pro-life”.

But there are many today who are “pro-birth”.  They don’t want abortion, but they are unwilling to “pay the cost” of sustaining the lives they demand come into the world.  In Oklahoma, in Texas, and in all of the states that are moving to end abortion, they are doing nothing; nothing to care for the mothers that are forced into full-term pregnancy, or the children they are mandating to term.  That’s not their problem.  They are taking all of the credit for ending abortion, but none of the responsibility for what happens thereafter.

Pro-life means for life, not just for birth.  

We are two days after the latest massacre, of children, in the United States.  This is a uniquely American problem, a toxic mix of our culture, our politics, and the economics of gun manufacturing.  There are now nineteen more children who will not see a full-term life.  

Pro-Birth

Texas Governor Greg Abbott determined to place the blame on the lack of mental health facilities in Uvalde. He invoked the inevitability of a “madman with a gun”, a Satan-incarnate as inexorable and unforeseeable as the tornado.  Candidate for Texas Governor Beto O’Rourke interrupted the Governor’s press conference yesterday, to raise a “pro-life” point.  He called Abbott out – placing the blame on laws that allowed an eighteen year-old shooter easy access to semi-automatic rifles and ammunition.  It was an ugly but necessary encounter (CNN).  

The insurmountable grief of the tragedy feels like it should be beyond politics.  But, of course, it’s not.  The absolute failure of our government to protect us from these continuing tragedies can’t be ignored, and more importantly, should not be deflected as just “evil” or “inevitable” or a failure in mental health.  Every country has mental health issues, but only one country has this plague of mass shootings.  Governor Greg Abbott has done nothing but encourage Texans to buy more guns, bigger guns, guns with all the “bells and whistles”.  He can’t deflect from his own words and actions, and Beto had the courage to call him to task.

Butcher’s Bill

Abbott and his Texas cohorts claim to be “pro-life”.  But their actions are obvious.  They are “pro-birth”, demanding that their own religious views be followed by others.  But they aren’t pro-life.  It they were, they’d look at their own state: mass shootings in Uvalde, El Paso, Midland-Odessa, Sutherland Springs and Santa Fe High School.  The butcher’s bill in just Governor Abbott’s term is 87 dead in mass killings (Texas Tribune).   If they were pro-life, they’d do something about it and take action to literally stop the bleeding.

They would follow the basic founding rights of America:  the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  For 87 people in Governor Abbott’s term, and so many more, those rights were denied by a man with a gun.

They aren’t pro-life at all.

Old Sayings

There’s an old saying, “It’s as American as apple pie”.  That’s usually a good thing:  fireworks on the Fourth of July, family around the table for Thanksgiving dinner, flags at veteran’s graves on Memorial Day.  We Americans are proud of who we are, and the traditions we’ve created.  We believe in our nation, our “exceptionalism”, and the goodness of Americans despite the current political divisions.

But there’s definitely one thing that’s as “American as apple pie” that we should be ashamed of.  That’s mass shootings, now just ten days after the shootings in Buffalo.  Twenty-one victims, nineteen of them children, killed in Uvalde, Texas.  It’s as American as apple pie.

Thoughts and Prayers

The police were there as the shootings were occurring, just like they were in Buffalo and so many other mass shootings in the United States.  But the damage was already done, the children dead, the shooter “in charge”.  This is not a “police response” issue.  They can’t get there fast enough.  In Buffalo it was near a minute, sixty seconds.  But ten were still dead.  At Uvalde, the school resource officer was there, with his fellow officers right behind. The “good guys with the guns” just aren’t fast enough.

The word is already going forth from politicians:  sending thoughts and prayers, heartfelt sorrow.  And many are saying, “it’s not the time to discuss change”.  To quote the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas kids from Parkland, I call “BS”.  Politicians are elected to solve problems, and make our world safer.  For God’s sake, is there anything more basic than protecting our lives from absolute random violence, and even more protecting our children.

Awash in Guns

But we haven’t.  Schools have tried since Columbine back in 1999, and even before.  But there is no protection, no fortification, no counseling, that can keep mass shooters away from our school, our church, our grocery store.  This is not a world problem.  When you hear folks talking about “helping the mentally ill”, that too is a “BS” answer.  Every nation has mentally ill people, but not every nation, in fact, not any modern nation has the level of mass shootings as the United States.  Not even close.  This is not a mental problem, this is a gun problem.

We are a nation awash in weapons.  There are 120.5 guns for every 100 Americans.  There are so many guns, that “legal sales” regulations would only begin to resolve the problem.  The “black market” for guns is so big, it drives criminal activity.  If you have a pistol, I’ll get an automatic pistol.  If you have an automatic pistol, I’ll find a semi-automatic rifle.  You wear Kevlar, I’ll find “cop-killer” bullets.  

Solutions

Other nations have faced this crisis and solved it.  In 1996, a shooter killed sixteen children in Scotland.  The United Kingdom changed their laws, restricted weapons.  When six died in a mass shooting in 2021, it was the first in a decade.

In 1996 Australia had a mass shooting in Tasmania, killing thirty-five people with a semi-automatic rifle.  They banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and they instituted tough background checks. Since then there have been sixteen mass shootings in Australia.  In the United States, there have been thousands.  For a world comparison of school shootings – check this inter-active map.  The United States is, by several orders of magnitude, the worst.

Our Choice

Some Americans have made a choice.   They look at the 2^nd Amendment, and determine that it is the right of every American, no matter their mental state or intent, to own a high capacity weapon.  They have written off all possibility of controlling the weapons, claiming that “people kill people, not guns”.  But, if you look at the rest of the world, that simple “spin phrase” is not valid.  People kill people, but America have provided them with the most advanced tools to use in the process.   So Americans are choosing to live in a country where nineteen young lives can be snuffed out in an instant.

Supreme Court Justice Jackson once wrote, “…the Constitution is not a suicide pact”.  He recognized that an absolutist view of any part of the Constitution (in that case, the First Amendment) was never the intent of the Founding Fathers.  But it seems we are determined to commit suicide:  with guns.

Twenty-seven school shootings this year (NPR). Two hundred mass shootings (four or more shot or killed, excluding the shooter) already this year.  

It’s as American as apple pie.

My Constitution

My Denison University major was “self-designed”:  a Bachelors of Arts in “American Political Studies”.  Instead of the usual thirty-six hours or forty hours of classes (nine or ten classes) I had a whopping ninety hours in my major (I graduated in four years with 136 hours).  I studied politics, American and world history, geography and sociology in preparation for a life in politics.  And I even spent an entire semester in Washington DC taking courses and working in the Congress, and another whole semester as a professional campaigner.  

I took that knowledge and ultimately decided against a political career.  Instead, I taught Social Studies to middle school and high school kids for twenty-eight years.  Everything I learned at Denison, and in a semester of Law School at the University of Cincinnati, and in earning a Masters of Education degree at Ashland University; was aimed at getting more knowledge to take into the classroom (and onto the athletic fields).   

All of that to say that I am highly familiar with the Constitution of the United States.  It’s not just something I learned in high school and college.  It’s a document that I taught, year in-and-out, for two score and eight years.  

Suffrage

I listen over and over to the claim by many Republicans that the 2020 election was somehow stolen. And even those Republicans who courageously stood against the former President and said it wasn’t, still support laws that would make it more difficult to vote. This all after the 2020 election, where more Americans voted than ever before, a full two-thirds of those eligible. And they voted in spite of the pandemic.

There are several Amendments impacting the “right to vote”. The 15^th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to every race, and the 19^th Amendment added every sex. The 23^rd Amendment gave the citizens of Washington, DC the right to vote and the 24^th prevented paying taxes to vote. The 26^th lowered the voting age to eighteen.

Less directly, the 14^th Amendment guarantees that every citizen is a citizen of their own state as well, with all the rights and privileges. Those rights and privileges cannot be taken away without due process of law, and they must be applied equally to all citizens. Certainly, one of those rights is the right to vote.

Electing the President

But when you look at how the President of the United States is chosen, the infamous “Electoral College”, there’s not a mention as to how states choose their electors. In the original Constitution, Article 2, section 1 states that the electors for President will be chosen in a process determined by the State’s legislature. When the process was re-written after the election of 1800, the 12^th Amendment mentioned the electors of each state, but made no mention of how those electors are chosen.

So on that basis, perhaps the former President’s supporters aren’t wrong. If the Constitution doesn’t guarantee citizens the “right” to vote for Presidential electors, then the entire “Green Bay Sweep” plan of January 2021 might have been, legal. That plan and other actions tried to get Donald Trump re-elected even after the votes were counted . The goal was to get the state legislatures to ignore the counted vote of their state, and chose to give the electors to the candidate who lost instead of the one who won.

So, is there a part of the Constitution of the United States that guarantees a citizen’s right to vote for President of the United States? 

Sort of.

The Twenty-Fourth

The Twenty-Fourth Amendment banned laws that forced voters to pay a fee (or tax) to cast their ballot.  That was the purpose of the Amendment, ratified in 1964. It guarantees voting wouldn’t be restricted by an ability to pay.  The actual amendment states:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

24th Amendment – US Constitution

The wording is clear.  The 24^th asserts that citizens have a “right” to vote for “…electors for President or Vice President”, and that right cannot be denied for failure to pay a tax.  So if citizens have right to vote for electors, and it’s written into the US Constitution, then that means something.

It means an action of a State Legislature to take that right away would be un-Constitutional.  Or that to encourage state legislatures to ignore the votes, the “will of the people”, would also be un-Constitutional.  And while committing an un-Constitutional act is not (surprisingly) a crime, it definitely cannot have the force of law. 

For an un-Constitutional act to be a crime, there must be “enabling legislation” passed with criminal penalties. The 18^th Amendment banned intoxicating alcohol in the country, but it was a law passed by Congress, the Volstead Act, that prohibited its manufacture and sale, and created criminal penalties for doing so. 

Law Debate

My Constitutional scholar friends will say, “But the 24^th Amendment clearly is meant to ban poll taxes, not to guarantee a right to vote for Presidential electors”.  But as we all know, the language of the Constitutional Amendments cannot be simply ignored, can it?  I mean, look at the 2^nd Amendment, which clearly defines that: 

A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of the free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. 

2nd Amendment – US Constitution

Does the 24^th Amendment say you can take away the right to vote for Presidential electors for other reasons, just not by charging a tax to vote?  That is not what the Amendment intended.  The Amendment states as a right of citizens:  the right to vote for Electors for President and Vice President.  The State Legislatures cannot just ignore that, nor can the Federal Courts of the United States, and certainly not the US Congress.

Oh wait: the Courts have absolutely disconnected the “well-regulated militia” part from the “keep and bear arms” part of the 2nd Amendment. They have re-defined the “militia” as every able-bodied citizen. That “disarms” it from “modifying” the “right to bear”. But they don’t ignore it.

The 24th makes all of the different state actions to ignore the peoples’ votes, un-Constitutional. Voting for Presidential Electors is a Constitutional right; and it’s our right. It’s right there in black and white.

Now all we have to do is fight to keep it.

Car Wreck

We’ve all been there.  You’re traveling northbound on I-71 from Cincinnati to Columbus, when, all of a sudden, traffic comes to a crawl.  You check all of your travel “media” to see what’s going on, but there are no reports available.  Should I be in the left lane, the right lane, which line should I choose?  And finally, after twenty minutes of crawling along, playing with the radio and watching the “lane-switchers” trying to get ahead – you finally see what’s going on.

There’s a semi on its side – but it’s on the southbound side of the highway.  There are no obstructions on the northbound side, just “rubber-neckers” slowing down to see the crash.  We could be on I-270 headed for home already.  But everyone needs to look, to see what happened, to analyze the accident pattern and hypothesize the cause.  We all want to watch.

If it Bleeds, It Leads

It’s frustrating to listen to the media discuss the 2022 primaries.  The Democratic candidates are generally considered an after-thought.  Sure, Tim Ryan was a shoe-in in Ohio, and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania had a stroke to make his Senate race a little more interesting, but there really isn’t much coverage of what the Democrats are saying or doing or how they’re voting.

And why is that?

Former President Donald Trump was not much good at governing, but he does have one “super-power” as a politician.  He is able to take “all the air out of the room”.  When Trump gets involved, he makes himself the center of attention, even when he isn’t the one running for office.  We see it time and time again.  Ohio’s Republican Senate primary had multiple candidates, with all but one trying to prove how “Trumpy” they were.  But the real question here in Ohio was, who would Trump himself support.  The winner, both with Trump and in the balloting:  venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance.  

Media coverage wasn’t really about parsing the differences between Vance and former State Treasurer Mandel, or Matt Dolan or Jane Timkin.  It was all about which candidate would receive the anointment of the former President, and whether that would be enough to push him (or her) over the top.  It was.

Pennsylvania

The same kind of thing happened in Pennsylvania.  Dr. Mehmet Oz didn’t even live in Pennsylvania until a year ago.  His primary qualification for the US Senate is that he played a doctor on TV ( and actually is one).  The question in his campaign for the Republican Senate nomination should have been whether a “carpet-bagging” TV star was better qualified to run for Senate than Washington, Pennsylvania born and former Under-Secretary of Treasury David McCormick.

But that issue wasn’t really mentioned.  What was the “critical” point, leading to a near-tie in the Pennsylvania Republican vote?  Would the former “Apprentice” star endorse the TV Doctor?  When Trump did, it put Oz in the hunt for the primary win. Those votes are still be counted.

In Georgia, the Governor’s race should be a pitched fight between former Senator David Perdue and the incumbent Brian Kemp.  Instead, the race is about Trump backing a “loser” in Perdue, and former Vice President Mike Pence jumping on the Kemp bandwagon to “differentiate” himself from the former President.  

Rubber Necks

We are watching the cars wreck.  The media is focused on Trump’s influence.  The Democrats are waiting in the wings.  They have strong candidates in Stacey Abrams and John Fetterman and Tim Ryan, even though “history” shows us that the mid-term elections almost always go against the sitting President’s party.  

Some analysts are making a big deal about Republican versus Democratic turnout in the primaries.  “Republicans are motivated to vote, while Democrats are disappointed and disinterested” they claim.  But there is another way to look at this.  Democrats have many single strong candidates in play.  Whether it was Tim Ryan and Nan Whaley in Ohio, or John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, or Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock in Georgia.  And Dems weren’t waiting for a “canonization” from Mara Lago, or even from the White House. 

The media recognizes a good car wreck when they see one.  And we Dems are all “rubber-necking” as the Republican Party continues to carene into a Trumpian nightmare.  The question is, will we drive to the polls in November and make a difference, or get stuck watching the wreck?

This is part one of a “Sunday Story”.  There’s no politics here, just stories about our “pack” of dogs here in Pataskala.

Marvel Comics

Every heroic Marvel comics character has an “origin story”.  Some are so familiar, they are in inscribed in the national memory.  Superman arrived on earth as a baby, a refugee from the planet Krypton.  Peter Parker was a teenager bit by a radioactive spider.  Batman was the rich kid Bruce Wayne who lost his parents to criminal violence.  

My wife Jenn and I have five dogs.  They are all “rescues”, and while we don’t have all the details, they each have their own “origin story”.  And those tales aren’t just “good stories”; their “origins” often explains their behavior later in life.  

These are their stories (“Chung-Chung” from Law and Order).

Buddy

Buddy is our oldest, somewhere around ten years old (as a rescue, your never quite sure).  When we got him, they said he was a three-month old puppy, but an examination of his teeth showed him to be closer to a year-old.  But he was small, so the “puppy” image was still there.  

We got Buddy from the local shelter.  He had already “failed” in another home.  He was definitely a “nipper”, not serious bites, but constant nips.  And when he arrived at our home, I wasn’t sure it was going to work here either.  He bonded with Jenn (literally in the car on the way home from the shelter) but for a while he wasn’t quite so sure of me.  We worked a lot on the nipping, and  Buddy began to settle in. 

But he really didn’t feel a part of our “pack” (we had two other dogs at the time) until one night, we let him sleep with the rest of us in bed instead of in his crate.  Overnight, his attitude completely changed, and it has stayed that way ever since.  There’s something in the “acceptance” of sleeping in bed with us, that seems to make all the difference to these dogs, all lost or rejected by others.  (Now with five dogs, we have a king-sized bed!). 

Clues and Miracles

We don’t know Buddy’s exact origin story, but there were some behaviors that gave us clues.  Buddy loves women, but he isn’t so sure of men, particularly men with hats and definitely men with sunglasses.  Make that hat a hardhat, and Buddy is definitely not a happy guy.  And Buddy cannot stand “beeps”, on phones, on TV, and most importantly, the backup signal on trucks and machinery.  Was Buddy found on a construction site, with hard-hatted workers and moving equipment?

What we do know is Buddy seeks shelter when he’s scared.  His two “safety zones”:  underneath our platform bed, and in the bathtub.  It doesn’t takes much to send him there, a truck on the street, or a TV commercial with beeps.  And when we have guests at the house, Buddy will often hit the bathtub, often to the surprise of those later using the facility!

Buddy is a medical miracle.  In 2016 he developed a lump on his throat, that turned out to be lymphoma.  In dogs, even with surgery, his life expectancy was no more than two years.  But the good folks led by oncologist Dr. Erin Malone at Med Vet in Worthington, removed the tumor, and Buddy went on an experimental chemo-therapy for eleven months.  He not only survived, he thrived.  Now more than six years later, he’s a fat and happy senior citizen.  He loves cheese, carrots, and whatever else he can get.  And he’s a great “bar dog”, happy to sit under a table without attention:  as long as a few spare French fries make it his way from time to time.

Northeast Rescue

We lost Buddy’s pack-mates, including his close friend and “mentor”, our amazing Yellow Lab, Dash.  Dash was an “old soul”, who showed Buddy the ropes of living in the Dahlman household.  When Dash suddenly died (cancer as well) Buddy was alone, and sad.

Jenn and I went to Florida for the winter, and Buddy was a great “camper” dog.  And we decided that one dog was just fine for us.  But when we got back home, the spirit and scent of Dash was still in the house, and Buddy seemed sad once again.  So we took it as a sign when a dog that looked almost exactly like Dash appeared on the euthanasia list of the Franklin County Shelter.

Shelters have an incredibly tough job.  Dogs arrive in all kinds physical and psychological conditions.  With limited budgets, there’s only so much the shelter can afford to do to help each dog, and sometimes the compassionate thing is to euthanize them.  This dog had severe ear infections that looked like they would require expensive surgery.  The Shelter wouldn’t adopt him out, but they would allow him to be taken by a Lab Rescue.  Otherwise – the Shelter couldn’t afford him.

So we became a “branch” of the Northeast Ohio Lab Rescue (with their permission, of course)  – and went and got our new guy.  The two year-old Lab was already named with the “dignified” moniker of Atticus so  we started  him as “Atticus Finch Dahlman”.   We took him to our wonderful vet here in Pataskala, Dr. Hickin, who diagnosed his ear issues as food allergies.  Atticus went on a diet of salmon and sweet potatoes (you can buy that), and his ears, itching, and hearing all improved immensely.  Soon, he too joined us in bed, and we had another Lab in the house.

Atticus

But we also discovered that while Dash had a “deep soul”, Atticus had a “screw loose”.  He was renamed “Atticus Baddicus Dahlman”; if there was trouble to be found, he could find it.  Atticus was incredibly anxious, and had serious separation issues.  While he’s better, now four years later, still if we leave the house for a few hours then come back in time for dog-dinner, he’s still too upset to eat.  He wants to – but he just can’t.

Unlike Buddy, Atticus wasn’t a good traveler.  It took him hours and miles to settle in the car, and he never really got used to the camper.  While he did spend several weeks on the road with us in Florida, in the end it was never a great fit for him. 

Old Memories

And we discovered quirks with Atticus that gave clues to his “origin” story.  Whenever Atticus gets anxious or excited, he spins in narrow circles.  Our best guess:  he was crated in a small cage, and the only motion he could make was tight circles within the walls.  And Atticus had scars along the bridge of his nose and is very “reactive” to chain link or slat fences.  Did he stick his nose through the cage, causing the scars?  And finally, Atticus is a wonderful dog, but reacts badly to being cornered, under a table, or between barriers.  Whatever caused that, it’s a memory he can’t get rid of.

Atticus in now five years old, approaching middle-age.  His life, and Buddy’s, dramatically changed during the Covid pandemic.  Not only did we stop traveling,  but both Jenn and I were in the house most of the time.  And our “pack” of two grew, as we gained three more “rescues”, all first as “foster dogs”.  But we (mostly me) are really failed foster parents. Once a dog is in our pack, it’s hard to let them go.

But that’s next week’s story.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22

Who Replaces What

“Replacement Theory” is the idea that those “liberal, progressive, socialist Democrats” (like me) want to bring People of Color into the United States in order to replace those “original” white people living here now.  By bringing in People of Color, either legally or illegally across the southern border, “them Democrats” are trying to “win”, because Peoples of Color will vote for them instead of Republicans.  

“Replacement Theory” is being pushed by the right-wing media, particularly Tucker Carlson on Fox News.   It amplifies the whole “threat at the border” routine, the idea that thousands, perhaps millions of Central Americans are poised to overrun the United States, taking all the jobs, and then “outvoting” the “original white” Americans.  It might seem laughable, like the non-existent “migrant caravans” that showed up only during elections, but it became deadly serious last weekend in Buffalo, New York. Ten people of color were shot down in the grocery store for being “replacements”.

Just because:  unless you can claim to be a Native American, there “ain’t no” original white Americans.  We are all descended from migrants:  mine came from Alsace, France in the 1870’s (they were Jewish, too), and London England in 1946.  So the very idea of being an “original white” American doesn’t really work.  And if there’s some sub-definition of “original”, like someone who immigrated in the early 1800’s, well that would disqualify most white Americans today as well.

And “Replacement Theory” is coupled with more “traditional” anti-Semitism.  People of Color are at the border, but Jews are somehow orchestrating this.  That’s how we ended up with Charlottesville and the Nazi-like torchlight march of sports-shirt and khaki clad men yelling “Jews will not replace us”, or the “Camp Auschwitz” T-Shirt at the Insurrection.

Theorem One

So here’s a Government teacher doing simple math.  This sounds like one of those “theorems” I vaguely remember from junior year geometry. (What I really remember is my teacher, Mr. Parker, dipping his fingers in the chalk tray, then licking them clean).  

1. People of Color tend to vote Democrat
2. If there are more people of Color, then there would be more Democrats
3. Democrats are in favor of more migrants coming to the United States
4. Migrants are mostly People of Color
5. Therefore, more migrants means that there will be more Democrats.

Of course there’s one major flaw in the logic between ‘D’ and ‘E’.  Migrants, legal or illegal, are not citizens of the United States.   They can’t vote.  (Of course, then you throw in the “Big Lie” of election fraud, saying that migrants are voting to “fix” that problem).

Theorem Two

1. There are migrants illegally crossing the Southern Border
2. Illegal migrants are coming to the United States to look for work
3. Illegal migrants take jobs that don’t pay as well
4. Therefore, Illegal migrants are taking jobs from “Legal Americans”. 

A, B, and C are definitely valid.  Most migrants (legal or illegal) do take jobs that don’t pay as well.  But the unemployment rate in the United States is just over three percent, as low as it’s been for years.  And there’s an obvious shortage of workers at the lowest wage levels.  In restaurants, the lawn service industry and other low-wage service jobs, you constantly hear the refrain, “There’s not enough workers, no one wants to work”.  But if that were true, why would the unemployment rate be so low?

And, by the way, if you need more workers – there’s thousands waiting right across the Southern border, ready to come to America to fulfill their dreams.  American citizens aren’t being “replaced” on the job market.  There is a labor shortage in the United States, which has allowed many Americans to take better paying jobs. Where’s the kid flipping burgers for $10/hour at McDonalds now?  She’s at Amazon, making $17/hour “fulfilling” orders.

Entitlement

So what’s really going on that causing people, particularly white males, to fall for this “Replacement Theory” nonsense?  There are two root causes to this.  The first is the loss of white “entitlement”.  

White entitlement was the “American Way” through the mid-1960’s.  White boys got into college, white men got the management jobs, white men were Mayors and  Congressmen and Governors.  It wasn’t just People of Color who were denied the opportunities, it was most women as well.

Then things began to change.  The Civil Rights movement drew attention to the fact that Black people were denied educational opportunities because of their race and the women’s right’s movement made the same claim.  So instead of white men getting ninety percent of the enrollment in colleges and jobs in business, the “opportunity pool” was divvied up among different categories.  Now white men (and boys)  competed with Black men and boys, and white women and girls, and all the other categories of human backgrounds.

And for some of those white men, it just wasn’t “fair”.  Their fathers and their older brothers got their “ticket” (schools, jobs) so much easier.  And instead of rising to the competition, some just took the loss, and looked to blame someone else.  They placed that blame on the someone else that “replaced” them.

History

The second cause is a false sense of history.  This is American education’s fault to some extent.  A traditional high school history can make it seem like there were only white men influencing the course of the United States since the Mayflower landed at Plymouth (but not on the “rock”).  That’s not a valid premise:  women, People of Color, Jews, Native Americans all played a vital role in American development.  But if you’re not taught that, there’s no reason for you to think differently.  And that creates another false sense of entitlement, as if “white men” were the only ones who earned the right to be “Americans”. 

That’s what makes the current nonsense over “Critical Race Theory” so dangerous.  It’s being used to literally “white-wash” school curriculums, so that the “white man’s place” in American history is secured.  It simply prolongs the false sense of “entitlement”.

A Truth

America is changing.  Within the next decade, the majority of the United States will not be “white”.  White people will still be the biggest racial group, but they will no longer be more than fifty percent.  We, the People of the United States, are becoming more diverse.  We are Black, we are Asian, we are Pacific Islanders, we are Latino, we are Hispanic, we are Islamic, we are Jewish, and we are White.  And like a lot of our kids today, many of us are mixes of many of those races and cultures.

And that truth can’t be changed.  It can only be denied, by those who are trying to keep old, unfair, and undemocratic ways alive.

Big Lies

To get people to believe propaganda, you get a “believable” lie, and you tell it over and over again with absolute sincerity.  It’s what the Nazi’s did so effectively in Germany, it’s what Orwell wrote about in 1984, and it’s what Putin’s trying to do in Russia now about his disaster in Ukraine.   The United States is not immune to big lies.  

We are living in an age of Big Lies today.  There’s the named “Big Lie”, that the election of 2020 was somehow stolen by the Democrats.  More than thirty million Americans BELIEVE that it’s true.  There’s the “Big Lie” of the so-called Critical Race Theory crisis.  There’s this Big Lie” of Replacement Theory.  And there’s the old lies of anti-Semitism – that’s somehow Jews really run the world.  

All of these would be laughable if they didn’t have such serious consequences for America.  Democracy depends on an educated electorate.  It’s why the Founding Fathers provided for public education even before the Constitution was written.  But educated means understanding reality, not seeing things through the prism of lies.  If we allow those lies to replace the truth, the loss of our Democracy may be the true “replacement”.

History Teacher

I grew up steeped in the history of World War II.  My parents were both veterans of the war, from two different armies.  Dad was a Warrant Officer in the United States Army, Mom a member of the British Special Operations Executive, Churchill’s “private spies”.   My parents old friends were World War II veterans as well. The after-dinner conversations often wandered back to those times.  

It’s no wonder I grew up to be a history teacher.  I was learning history from the very beginning.  I always took a special interest in World War II: the clear black and white contrast of Fascism versus Democracy, the sudden failure to the onslaught of attack, and the long struggle to a final victory.  It was personal –  the Nazi’s dropped bombs on my Mom. She hid in a “Morrison Shelter”, a metal box in the dining room. My grandparents and Mom climbed into it when the sirens went off.  In the daytime there was a cloth over it – it served as the dining room table.

And of course, but for World War II, I wouldn’t exist.  My parents fell in love in London, in the middle of the war, as the bombs fell.  

Staying Neutral

One of the fascinations of the War was how nations responded, first to the threat of Fascism, and then to the reality of war.  The United States, for example, tried to “hide” behind its oceans.  It wasn’t until the Japanese reached out to attack at Pearl Harbor, that the final decision was made to enter the conflict.  It was over two years after the Germans crossed the Polish border to begin their war of conquest. 

There were two nations in Europe that managed to maintain neutrality in this existential struggle between good and evil.  Switzerland was able to hide within its mountains.  It was obvious that to conquer the Swiss would require enormous effort tactically, and the Swiss were able to maintain their neutral position despite being positioned between Germany and Italy.  The world needed some piece of neutral ground, where the two sides could brush against each other without weaponry.  And the Swiss were also adept at finding ways to profit from their position.

Sweden

Sweden was in an even more perilous position. Just a short distance across the Baltic Sea from Germany itself, the Swedes were ultimately surrounded by German allies. The Germans conquered Norway, Denmark and Poland. And then there was Finland. We’ll come back to that later.

Sweden is the home to Alfred Nobel. He is the chemist who invented dynamite and the compounds that base almost all modern explosives.  Nobel saw his creations as benefits to modern engineering.  But they also developed into weapons of war, the modern explosives in bombs and artillery shells and even the powder that fired the bullets.  In realization of this, Nobel left his considerable fortune to the establishment of peace, what we call the Nobel Peace Prize.  

The Swedes took that same attitude, determined to maintain their non-combative status through two World Wars.  But they weren’t pacifists; the Swedish Army is well trained to protect their own nation.  Sweden didn’t “take a side” in World War II, and maintained its precarious position even as Germany swept through their neighbors.

Winter War

But Finland had a different enemy. As the Germans attacked Poland at the beginning of the War, the Soviets launched a counter-attack, seizing the Eastern part of Poland as a buffer against Nazi aggression.  And the Soviets also attacked into Finland, the “Winter War”.  Like the Ukrainians today, the Finns were able to hold off the Soviet Army for months, losing significant portions of their Eastern border, but preventing a Soviet takeover.  It wasn’t until the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union itself, that the Russian pressure on Finland relaxed.

The ancient proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” directly applied to the Finnish situation.  For them, the invaders of World War II were Soviets, not Nazis.  So Finland loosely allied themselves with the Germans.  At the end of the war, when Berlin fell and Nazism was crushed, the victorious Allies recognized their dilemma, and didn’t punish Finland as a nation.  

Armed for Peace

Throughout the Cold War era both Sweden and Finland maintained their neutrality.  Finland still had an eight hundred mile border with the Soviet Union, and Sweden (not far from the Soviet border as well) saw no reason to enter the positioning between the Soviet bloc and the US led  NATO alliance.  While they both joined in the European Union, they stayed out of the Cold War struggles.  

But it was not a neutrality of weakness.  The Swedes developed one of the best Air Forces in the world, while the Finns, still cognizant of the Russian threat, has one of the most effective artillery capabilities.  They were neutral, but armed and ready.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, both the Swedes and the Finns compared positively with  remaining Russian forces.  There was no need to change their longstanding tradition of not taking a side.  But recognizing a growing Russian threat,  Swedish and Finnish forces trained alongside NATO units, so that if cooperation was needed, they were prepared.  And this week, the nations of Sweden and Finland asked for formal membership in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the world’s largest military alliance.  

Putin’s Bad Day

Vladimir Putin didn’t like that Ukraine was not part of Russia’s economic and political sphere of influence.  So he launched an invasion of Ukraine, hoping to quickly topple the government.  But like Finland in the Winter War, the Ukrainians are surprising the Russians and the world by stopping and even driving the Russian Army back.

Putin seems determined to rebuild the old Soviet Union as a new “Greater Russia”.  That expansion directly threatens Finland again, but also Sweden as nearby Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are “under the Russian gun”.   Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all members of NATO, as are Poland and Hungary.  To rebuild Russian hegemony, Russia will have to directly attack NATO nations. That will trigger Article Five of the NATO agreement:  an attack on one NATO nation is an attack on all.

Putin’s dream is in direct conflict with NATO.  His goal is to take away the self-determination of the nations of the old Soviet Union, and more.  Now Sweden and Finland have formally requested to join in defending the world from his aggression.  

It’s a good day for NATO, and a very bad day for Vladimir Putin.

Patriotism

I am an American patriot.  I believe in America, that it can be Reagan’s “Shining city on a hill”; the hope of the world.  I know: “American Exceptionalism”, the idea America is different than any other country established on earth, is “out of style”. But I still think it’s true.  America is exceptional in its dreams and its goals, if not in its current actions.  We are a nation dedicated to becoming “…a more Perfect Union”, aware of our flaws and the failures, but working to improve both.

But right now, in this particular moment of American history, we are in a toxic mix of extremism, frustration, tailored personal communication, and advanced weaponry.  And we are paying the price for that mix, almost daily.

Common Message 

First there is the “fuel”.  Americans no longer hear a common message of information.  The days of “Huntley-Brinkley or Cronkite or Jennings” are far behind us.  Even those names don’t resonate to the majority of the American people anymore.  There was once a time where we all received a similar message about what was going on in the world.  We had a common source of knowledge, what today would be called “mainstream media”.  And while that corporate media sometimes succumbed to government messaging, it could be critical as well.  The 1960’s; with the triple crises of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal, taught us that.

America changed because we all received the images of the attack on the marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge.  We all saw the tragedy of the children killed in the church bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  We all watched as the bodies of the four civil rights volunteers were uncovered at the dam.  It was a common message:  America needed to change.  

We changed when we saw the carnage in Vietnam, for no gain.  And we changed when the criminality of the Presidency was revealed, bit by bit, over two years of televised hearings.  

Fuel

But today, we have such a multiplicity of information sources, that almost any event is subject to under-cutting and re-interpretation.  Ten were killed at a supermarket this weekend, shot down by a crazed eighteen year-old filled with hate for Black people.  Most folks see that as terrible.  But there is a place in the “internet” where his actions are heroic, calling “the revolution” where “whites” will “re-take” America.  Even some major “news” networks are whispering the need for “action”.  “We (whites) are being replaced, and something must be done”, they say.  

Was the January 6^th attack on the Capitol an Insurrection, or just a “demonstration” that got out of hand? Despite the pandemic, was the election of 2020 the most successful in American history in terms of percentage of Americans voting, or was it stolen?  Are Democrats just folks with different views than Republicans, or are they (we) all pedophiles?  It all depends where you get your information.  It’s the gasoline spreading on the floor, the fumes seeping into every crevice of American political life.  All it needs – is a match.

And Fire

And then there is the fire.  We are a nation awash in weapons.  There are over twenty million semi-automatic rifles in our country.  There are  120.5 guns to every 100 Americans (BBC).  This weekend alone there were four “mass shootings”: in Buffalo at a super-market, in Milwaukee near the NBA playoff game, in Houston at a flea market, and in a California church.  

They all had different reasons, but there is a common theme – guns.  America has a “gun” culture, that not only accepts guns for hunting and sport, but as a weapon of personal protection, and now, one for “political” change.  The old arguments against guns were based on crime, “if you ban guns only criminals will have them”.  But now, the gun argument is about government.  For many, guns are now “protection” against a perceived over-reaching federal government.  The Second Amendment is now another form of “political speech”. A concealed gun under a jacket no longer even requires a license here in Ohio.  What are my political views:  look under my lapel and see.

Good Guy

We do not control mass shootings: in schools, in churches, in crowds and in places where folks are doing their grocery shopping.   We cannot armor our institutions enough to prevent the overwhelming tide of weaponry from seeping in.  Aaron Salter, the heroic retired police officer who charged into the line-of-fire in Buffalo did exactly what we expected him to do.  He was the “first man in”, part of the “defense” strategy we all know about mass shootings.  The first officer on the scene goes in to engage the shooter, to refocus him from killing his victims to defending himself from police.

Retired Officer Salter was the security guard at the “Tops” Super-Market.  He was outside the store when the gunman started, and could easily have walked away.  He did not, and certainly saved lives as he gave his own.  But his bullets didn’t penetrate the body armor of the well prepared shooter.  Salter was the “good guy with the gun”.  He valiant efforts, his sacrifice, wasn’t enough to stop the carnage.

More Perfect

America will have to “live with” this time of risk.  As a child, I hid under desks and in the hallways from atomic bombs.  That didn’t happen.  But our children today have a much better chance of hiding in the corner or the closet of a classroom, or under the racks in the bread aisle, or under the seats in the movie theatre, because of a mass shooter.   We drill them on what to do, but we really can do nothing to keep it from happening.  And that’s not a question of doing, it’s a question will, a will to take action.  America won’t.

We have a long way to perfection.  And we aren’t getting any closer by allowing our nation to remain a shooting gallery, and sending gallant officers to their deaths.  The fuel continues to spread, and the match is already lit.  How much has to burn is America’s choice.

Forms of Protest

In this nation, there are four levels of political protest.  The first, oratorical and written “speech”, was exactly what the authors of the Bill of Rights wished to protect.  Free speech in writing is steeped in American protest history; from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to the abolitionist newspapers of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.  And free speech in oratory is also part of the American protest tradition, from Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty, or give me death”, to Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream”. 

The second, mass protest, is also an American tradition, as American as the American revolution itself.  Mass protests of taxes in Boston led to the Boston Massacre.  There have been “marches on”  Washington for labor, for veterans, for civil rights, and against wars and political changes.  While they sometimes degenerate into riots, like the labor protest that became the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in 1886, they all began as peaceful demonstrations of mass protest.

Both of those forms of protest were clearly envisioned in the First Amendment.  “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Against the Law

Civil disobedience, the intentional act of breaking a law in order to demonstrate its inequity, is not a “free speech” right.  That’s what makes it so powerful.  When a young John Lewis joined the “Freedom Riders” to take integrated public transportation into segregated southern bus stations, he knew he was breaking “the law”.  There was no “Constitutional protection” for that, just the moral authority of demonstrating how unfair Jim Crow laws were.  “Good Trouble”, as Lewis called it, was risky.  It put the protestors in open defiance of the authorities, and, after arrest, in total control of those same authorities.

And the fourth level of protest is violence.  That sadly is also an American tradition. The Whiskey Rebellion, where tax collectors were tarred and feathered (stripped, burned in hot tar, then covered with feathers) happened in the first years of the Washington Administration.  The President nationalized the state militias and marched them towards Western Pennsylvania, but the rebellion petered out before a set battle was fought.

Burn Baby, Burn

John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was protesting slavery.  The historic view of Brown himself has gone from a crazy radical villain to a hero as Americans look back on enslavement in our past.  Radicals against the Vietnam war burned ROTC buildings on college campuses and protests that became riots were common in the late 1960’s.  And of course, the Capitol was defiled on January 6^th.  

In our form of political democracy, we legally protect the right to disagree – to an extent.  

The laws are in juxtaposition:  the First Amendment versus the government duty to maintain “law and order”.  The right to assemble is guaranteed, but so is the “right” to travel on the roads, without thousands of marchers in the streets.  Truckers can “convoy” in protest, but they can’t block commerce.  Protest outside of the Federal Court House in Portland are legal, but don’t burn it down. 

Laws and Norms

But the United States has also had “norms”; rules that apply but are not codified into law.  Martin Luther King Jr was held in jail multiple times.  The “authorities” had total control of him.  But he remained unharmed there, instead killed by an assassin’s bullet on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis.  

Even politicians had “norms”.  President Adams truly thought Thomas Jefferson was the worst person to become President in 1801.  Yet he still turned the government over to him on inauguration day, and left early to his home in Braintree.  Even as the nation divided after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1861, the Congress, with many soon to be Confederates participating, still certified his electoral vote.  

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas demands that Federal police arrest protestors outside of the homes of Supreme Court Justices.  But that same Senator cheered on protestors outside of the homes of county board of elections officials who refused to change the vote in 2020.  Perhaps the “norm” once was that officials got “privacy” at home, but it was never the law.  

Senator Rand Paul used his authority as a single Senator to personally stop aid to Ukraine in their battle against Russian aggression.  It was the “norm” that US internal political dissension stopped “at the shoreline”. But even though the vast majority of his own political party voted for the aid, Paul used his authority to delay its passage.

The End of Norms

We are a nation of laws, and a nation of “norms”.  And we have depended on those unwritten norms to take us through some of our most perilous times.  

But recently, the Republican Party has been totally open about breaking norms, without breaking laws.  And the Democratic Party continues to be reticent to break similar norms.  In the language of war, it’s an asymmetric fight, with the Republicans using weapons the Democrats refuse to employ.  So it’s disingenuous to hear the cries of Cotton about the “unfairness” of protests, when he and his party has so often used them in the recent past.  

It puts Democrats in a strange position.  President Biden was elected to “return the nation to normalcy”.  It’s why Biden was chosen out of the variety of Democratic candidates for President, and it’s why he won millions of votes more than Trump.  The nation wanted to go back to normal.  But, to paraphrase Patrick Henry, “There is no normalcy.  The war has already begun”.   Because there are no longer a set of common norms, only the laws.  

And our laws are not enough to keep our national traditions intact.  That’s the dilemma Democrats are facing today.  There is intense pressure to “even up” the “war”, and employ the same kinds of “norm-breaking” actions that the Republicans have used so effectively.  Breaking the filibuster, or putting additional Justices on the Supreme Court, would be two of those. 

Knife to a Gunfight

But other Democrats argue that each time one more norm is broken, the United States moves farther from its traditions, and becomes a nation without norms, without normal.   

On any given day, I find myself on either side of that argument.  On the one hand, Democrats are “bringing a knife to a gunfight” on so many levels.  We cannot achieve what we believe without change, and the weapons on the battlefield of ideas have radically changed.  How can we not attack the norms that keep our nation from realizing the dream of full democratic representation, and full personal freedom.

And yet the vast majority of our nation wants things “back to normal”.  And the “norms” are what normal is.  

I do not believe the United States can be a nation of laws without norms.  But the norms are changing: we Democrats better figure out how to keep up with that.  Because it we don’t, someone else will re-write the norms into something that resembles the early 1950’s.  

And the struggle to overcome that may require more than our Republic can bear.

Getting Old

“I was coaching in the Ohio Capital Conference before you were born”.  

I did NOT say that to the young assistant coach from a school across town.  He was letting me know how the Ohio Capital Conference, the “OCC”, considered the premier conference in the state, runs their track meet.  I was officiating the pole vault, and needed two workers to help put the bar up.  He was making sure I knew that it wasn’t his problem. He needed the kids he had for his “hurdle crew”.  

I didn’t tell him that I was the meet manager for OCC Championship track and cross country meets for more than a decade.  I didn’t tell him that my own track teams won four OCC Championships.  And I didn’t tell him I was in the OCC Hall of Fame.  

I must be getting old.

At least that’s what some of the coaches in the pole vault competition said.  

Championship Week

This is the first championship week of May, and over four days I will officiate eight pole vault competitions.  Each takes a few hours, and the athletes and coaches are all fired up.  For some of the kids it’s their chance to “win the Conference” and to prepare for the State qualifying meets starting next week.  And for some, it’s their last competition of the season, the last chance to clear that “goal height” they been shooting for all year.  For the coaches – it’s their chance to show how much progress they’ve made this year.  And, of course, to score points for their team, to try to win their own team OCC Championship.

That energy can be infectious, and I find myself slipping back into coaching mode.  That’s not a “good thing”: as the official I need to take a calm, passive role. No one in my forty years of coaching  ever called me calm or passive.   My place now though, is, “Here’s the rules, here’s how we are getting this event done, Good Luck”.  I want the vaulters, already hyped by the meet and their cranked-up coaches, not to be distracted by me.

So I’m not quite halfway through the eight meet blitz, and I need to do a little better with the “calm, dispassionate” official thing.  There was one competition on Wednesday, two on Thursday, two more tonight  (Friday), and the final three on Saturday.  I find that when I start to get a little tired, I start to fall back into old habits.   I’m going to be a lot more tired before this stretch is over – so here on Friday morning I’m “re-grouping” a little bit.

Fair

Officiating is all about being “fair”.  But it’s also all about being organized.  There are lots of “pieces” that fall into a good pole vault competition, and any failure of one piece can create a lot of problems.  And there’ always pressure:  pressure on the kids to perform, pressure on the coaches (some I taught to vault) to succeed.  And there’s the pressure on the “workers” to get everything right, every vault.  

But there’s also drudgery.  The “kids” (or adults) who put the bar up and place it in the right place, do it over and over and over.  A “big” competition might have over 150 attempts.  That’s 150 times of putting the bar up, and placing the sliding standards to the personal preference of the vaulter, in the hot sun, without checking a cell phone.  It’s easy to lose focus.

I might stand on the runway calling out the order and whether a vault is good or not, but it’s those workers setting the bar and standards that make the event go – or not.  They are my “team” for the meet, and our “championship” is to run a fair and efficient competition.  And if we can have a little fun along the way – that’s fine too.

I did get my two workers for the pole vault yesterday.  And we completed two good competitions.  Time to get ready for the Licking County League tonight, and more OCC tomorrow.   Looking forward to being fair and dispassionate.

Just Tell Me

Folks who know me well; my family, my colleagues, my former students and athletes all know one thing about me. If you tell me you’re going to do something – then do it.  I’m one who needs an affirmative, “yes” or “no”.  I don’t deal well with maybes, and even worse, saying “yes” if you really meant “no”.  That’s where I get, well, annoyed.

I need to hear the “truth”, not what we all wish was the truth.

I think the nation would appreciate the same.

Edge of Power

Joe Biden, 46th President of the United States, was elected to the Presidency with a seven million vote margin over Donald Trump.  He won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, more than the amount that Trump declared was a “landslide” over Hillary Clinton.   But we all know the inside number:  45,000.  Flip 45,000 votes within three states, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin; and Trump wins.

Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives.  Nancy Pelosi remained the Speaker of the House.  But the 2018 margin of 232 Democrats to 197 Republicans slipped to 222 to 213.  A change of five more seats, and the Republicans would be in control (and maybe Kevin McCarthy would become the Speaker, a job he has sold his honor and his soul for). 

Democrats gained control of the Senate, by the grace of God and the good people of Georgia, who sent two Democrats to Washington in a January runoff election.  But the control is as marginal as it could possibly be:  fifty Democrats to fifty Republicans, with the Democratic Vice President breaking the ties in favor of her party.  And what we discovered is how “empowering” that margin has been to the Kyrsten Simena’s and  Joe Manchin’s of the Senate.  They (and every other Democrat) individually hold the “keys to legislation”, enabled by Republicans who refuse to do anything other than block all Democratic proposals.

It’s a “Democratic Government”, but truly one on the “edge” of power.  

On the Record

No one knows that better than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.  This week he is putting the Women’s Health Protection Act back on the floor, a bill that, for the first time, would put the Roe v Wade “pro-choice” rights into Federal law.  We know that there are 49 Democrats who will vote in favor.  We know there are 48 Republicans opposed.  And we know that, unless Sinema and Manchin change their minds, Democrats will not break the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes for passage.   So even if Schumer gets 52 votes (unlikely) he still will fall 8 votes short.

I understand why he’s going through this Sisyphean process, voting on legislation doomed to fail.  He did the same with the Voting Rights Acts.  With the Supreme Court likely to overturn Roe, Schumer wants every Senator, and particularly every Senator up for re-election, on the record as either for or against a woman’s right to make their own choices about their own body.  It’s all about the 2022 election, not creating laws to protect the people of the United States.

Let’s not pretend it’s something else.

No Fixes

President Biden gave a speech about the economy yesterday.  He acknowledged that inflation was the biggest issue in American economic life, despite the low unemployment rate and rising wages.  And he says he’s going to try to “fix it”.  But the President knows, and so do the American people, that most of the factors causing inflation are out of his hands.  The ultimate “fix” for inflation is time:  time to straighten out the Covid damaged supply system, time to end the war in Ukraine, and time deal with corporate profit-taking.

What the President did do is contrast how Republicans, led by Senate Campaign Chairman Rick Scott, would “fix” inflation.  Scott promises a tax increase on most Americans, taking the “inflation causing” dollars out of our pockets, and giving it to the government.  And that might fix inflation:  if people had less money, they can’t buy things.  But I’m not sure that it’s good for the American people, or a way to win votes.

When Biden called Scott out on this, the Senator from Florida’s response was to call the President, “incoherent, incapacitated and confused”.  I guess when you don’t have a “coherent” answer, insults are the best you can do.

President Biden can’t promise to “fix” inflation.  Schumer can’t promise to “fix” Roe, or voting rights.  Democrats with marginal power, can only offer marginal solutions.  So they should tell the American people that truth, and ask for more support for Democratic candidates to give them more Congressional votes.  That’s the only way to “fix” this problem.  

The American people can handle the truth.

VE Day

Yesterday was May 9th.  On the Western calendar, May 9th doesn’t have a great deal of significance.  It is the day after May 8th, celebrated in the West as “V-E Day”, Victory in Europe Day.  It marks the defeat of Nazism, and the surrender of Germany to end World War II in Europe.  May 8th was not the end of the war.  The world was still at war in 1945, in the Pacific  against the Japanese Empire. It was apparent by that May that Japanese defeat was inevitable. But as we gained victory over Germany, Allied forces were desperately trying to gain control of the island of Okinawa.  It was the last of the “island hopping” campaigns.  The next step was the invasion of Japan itself.

But May 9th is a significant holiday in one country.  In Russia, it is simply called “Victory Day”.  It is a day of huge military marches across Red Square, the wide plaza outside of the capital building, the Kremlin.  Russian leaders still pack the risers on top of the Kremlin wall, showing their “proximity to power” by literally standing shoulder to shoulder with the President.  And while it has always been a demonstration of raw military might, it also is the Russian day of commemoration.  Almost 17 million citizens of the Soviet Union died in World War II, fifteen percent of the population.  They sacrificed to stop the German invasions of their nation.

Mariupol

Many observers, this writer included, thought that May 9th would have a particular significance this year. Putin’s miscalculation in Ukraine is becoming more apparent by the day.  What he thought was going to be a quick strike, decapitating the Ukrainian leadership and taking the capital Kyiv, has dragged out into a World War II style fight in the streets and fields of Eastern Ukraine.  Putin was clearly hoping for some victory to celebrate.  

The obvious target was Mariupol, where the Russians have been fighting for months.  The port city stands between the two previously Russian “occupied” zones of Ukraine, the Eastern Provinces of the Donbas, and Crimea.  It has been bombed since the Russian invasion began in March, and the civilian population of 450,000 has dwindled to under 100,000.  Many have escaped to unoccupied Ukraine.  Some were shipped by the Russians to Russian cities, and their fate remains unknown.  And many thousands are dead, casualties of Russian aggression.

The city has been destroyed.  But the Ukrainian Army made a stand at a massive steel factory in the town, using the tunnels under the two square mile facility as protection from Russian bombs.   Perhaps a thousand or more troops are still there, denying Russia control of the destroyed city.  Putin cannot claim victory there, even for “Victory Day”.

Conscripts

In fact, in his Victory Day speech, Putin could only call for increased conscription of Russian men.  His “two-week” war, now in a third month, has sapped almost all of the Russian ready fighting forces, leaving the rest of the vast nation militarily weakened.  And while Russian propaganda is still touting the importance of stopping “Nazis” in Ukraine, the reality of a long, ugly, and deadly war is seeping through to the Russian people. 

Russia is bombing civilian targets throughout Ukraine.  In the port city of Odesa in the Black Sea, a shopping mall was targeted yesterday.  What was once a Russian military campaign is turning into a terror effort against Ukrainian civilians.  The mass graves outside of Mariupol and other towns are further evidence of that.

What Next?

But Ukraine holds on, standing on the support of the West.  What the Russians destroy, NATO replaces.  After two months of fighting, the Ukrainian Army is better supplied than it was before the war.  And that’s not just from NATO.  Ukrainians have captured a lot of equipment from the Russian Army itself.    

What’s left for Vladimir Putin?  He can hope that Western leaders grow weary of the economic consequences of his war.  Gas prices throughout the world are up, and that has political consequences in democracies.  That’s a recurring theme in American social media, placing the rise squarely on the shoulders of President Biden, instead of where it belongs, on Putin.  And while that complicates the American mid-term elections in November, Biden has made it clear that the United States will “stay the course” of supporting Ukraine.  

So the war will continue.  Ukraine will fight to hold territory, and make captured territory impossible to control.  And Vladimir Putin is caught in a box – there is no path to his next “Victory Day”.  

The danger:  no one knows what a “cornered” Putin will do.

Ukraine Crisis

• No Victory Day – 5/10/22
• Desperate Moves – 4/27/22
• This is the Time – 4/20/22
• The Winning Message – 4/18/22
• Victory Day – 4/12/22
• Chapter Two – 4/11/22
• Zelenskyy’s Choice – 3/31/22
• The Gaffe – 3/28/22
• Putin’s Choice – 3/27/22
• Far Away From the Front – 3/20/22
• The Next Step – 3/17/22
• Thinking the Unthinkable – 3/14/22
• Russian Oil – 3/11/22
• Kyiv’s Choice – 3/8/22
• The Logic of Madness – 3/7/22
• Lights Out – 3/6/22
• Ante Up – 3/3/22
• State of the Union  3/2/22
• The Guns of March 3/1/22
• Sanctions 2/26/22
• What Happens Next 2/24/22
• The Games Begin  2/22/22
• Talking with a Friend 2/18/22
• Trip Wire 2/2/22
• On the Brink 1/23/22
• The Ukrainian Dilemma 12/5/19

Group Project

As a student, I hated “group” projects.  We always got a “group” grade, so if you were worried about your grades, you did all the work in the project.  Those students who weren’t concerned, didn’t bother to work.  In a four-person group, there was always the “idea” person, the “I’ll be secretary” person, the “go for the ride” person, and then one person is did all the real work.  

This wasn’t always true. Sometimes I got in groups that really took off, with everyone contributing, but that was more in college than public school.  When I was teaching, I also assigned “group” projects, but I always included an individual grade as well.  Sure your group could get an “A”, but I monitored what was going on in the group.  If you were going “for the ride” your grade would reflect that too.

Structure

When you think of the Supreme Court, think of a nine-person “group project”.  It’s more like the college groups, and all nine are “idea” people trying to get their point across.  So here’s how the Court is structured to get all that done.

For the Court to even listen to arguments on most issues, four Justices must agree to “hear” the case.  At that point, the attorneys on both sides prepare  to make their “case” to all nine Justices. bThey prepare written briefs, sometimes running to hundreds of pages, and oral presentations to the Court.  They have  thirty minutes to make their point, but that time period is always interrupted by questions by the various Justices.  Sometimes the questions are real inquiries about the law, or the thinking behind the case.  Sometimes the questions are directed to making other Justices think about a particular position.  And sometimes a Justice is looking to highlight a particularly weak position taken by the attorney.

In addition, the Court receives “Amicus Curiae” briefs, “friends of the Court” who weigh in on one side or the other.  These are parties with interests in the outcome of the case. They are given the opportunity to put their legal “two-cents” into the discussion.  

Preliminary Decision

The day or so after oral arguments, the nine Justices meet to take a preliminary vote on the case.  This is NOT a final decision, but does determine which Justice will have the opportunity to try to write a first draft majority decision for the case.  The Justice who writes the decision determinesthe law of the United States. It establishes precedence for the legal system. 

So the Justices vote, with a 5 to 4 majority controlling the decision.  If John Roberts, the Chief Justice, is in the majority, then he can determine who writes the opinion.  It can be himself, or one of the other four or more Justices in the majority.  If Roberts is in the minority, then the Senior Justice on the majority determines who writes the “first draft” of thedecision.  

We know that the Dobbs Mississippi abortion law case was heard in December, and the preliminary vote was:  Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett to uphold the Mississippi law and overturn Roe v Wade: and Roberts, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan to uphold Roe (in some form or other).  Since Roberts was in the minority, he did not get to assign the opinion.  Justice Clarence Thomas did – and he assigned it to Justice Samuel Alito.

The Process – Part One

Justice Alito gets the “duty” of writing an opinion that the majority will agree to.  That’s an important distinction – Alito can’t just write anything he wants to be law. He wants five Justices to agree to each point of his opinion.  They don’t have to.  They can agree with Alito’s conclusions – the decision itself – but write their own opinions about how they got there.  That’s important to the law.  If there’s a single opinion that all five (or more) Justices sign onto, then the law is clear about how to apply that decision to other cases.

But if the majority is split in its reasoning – with some Justices agreeing to some points but not others and writing their own opinions – concurring opinions – then the decision doesn’t have the same impact on the law.  It decides the one case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but isn’t as easily applied to other cases.

Justice Alito’s ultimate goal was to have at least five Justices “sign-on” to his opinion.  

A Supreme Court Justice’s office is like a small law firm.  There is the Justice him or herself, then there are four “clerks”.  The clerks are brilliant lawyers themselves, and the Justice assigns a clerk (or more) to write the opinion.  Then the office collaborates on what they wrote, a “group project” with the Justice, of course, having the final say.  That writing process goes on for months.

In the Dobbs case, it went on for over two months, from the time Alito was assigned the case, until the “first draft” came out in early February.  

The Process – Part Two

Once the “first draft” is finalized in Alito’s office, it is then circulated to the rest of the Justices.  Those that voted in the majority at the preliminary conference might sign on.  Or they might suggest changes that they need in order to sign on. Or they might decide that they cannot sign onto to Alito’s draft, and instead start the writing process in their own offices, with their own clerks.

And the Justices in the minority, can start writing their “dissents”, explaining why the reasoning in the Alito opinion is wrong.  Dissents aren’t “legal” in the sense that they become part of the law.  But dissents do become the basis for later attempts to overturn the Alito decision.  If, for example, four Justices sign onto a dissent, then future attorneys arguing in front of the Court know where to begin trying to change the impact of Alito’s decision.

This is also where the “bargaining” in the Court begins.  In a 5 to 4 preliminary vote, it might be possible for the “4” to shave off one of the “5” and flip the decision.  That’s what Chief Justice Roberts (supposedly) is trying to do in this case.  So a Roberts’ “dissent” to Alito’s decision might be close enough for one of the “5” to switch, making Roberts’ “dissent” become the majority decision.  

And this is all done “on paper”.  There are no “group discussions”, just binders of papers going back and forth between the Justices’ offices, trying to persuade a colleague to take a different position.  

The Process – Part Three

This goes on for every case the Court determines after hearing arguments.  We know what the process is, but we never, ever, get to see the process as it’s happening.  When the United States Supreme Court announces a decision, it’s always unknown until the actual announcement is made.  At that moment, the written decision (and all of the concurrent and dissenting opinions) are published and handed out to the world.  That’s why the “breaking news” of a Supreme Court decision always includes reporters skimming through stacks of paper, trying to find the nuances of the determination, and the dissents.

And that’s what so different about this case.  In a decision where the Court is on the cusp of overturning fifty years of precedent, and take away a Court granted Constitutional “right” to privacy and control of what happens to your body, someone leaked the Alito draft to the world.

Benefits

Who would benefit from the Supreme Court process becoming a public spectacle?  Well, certainly those who are pro-choice might benefit, as they marshal their supporters in righteous outrage over the loss of a half-century of personal rights.  Perhaps enough public pressure can be exerted that one of the “5” can be persuaded to “flip”.  Demonstrators in front of Justice Kavanaugh’s home certainly hope so.

But there are benefits for the pro-life side as well.  They can claim that a pro-choice proponent released the internal document to the world, violating the sanctity of the Court process.  They can demand that the “5” hold their position, and not knuckle under to the “public pressure”.  Of course, that’s exactly what they want those Justices to do, knuckle under to pressure from the pro-life side, not the pro-choice side.

Chief Justice Roberts declared that the Court will proceed with the process, and reach a final decision for the end-of-term June announcements.  But it’s possible that the Court itself is thrown into such disarray from this complete exposure, that they buy some time by delaying the decision, or even calling for a re-hearing of the case in the fall.  But “buying time” will only be buying an increase in public pressure from all sides of the argument.

One thing we know for sure.  If the Alito opinion becomes the law of the land, the public disruption will make this crisis look puny.  And if the Court rules in some other way, the specter of public and political pressure influencing “the law” will muddy the Court’s reputation, and the law.  

Maybe that’s already happened.

This is another in the “Sunday Story” series. There’s no deep political meaning here, just a story about – surprise – track meets!!

Track Meets

Citius, Altius, Fortius  is the Olympic Motto:  Faster, Higher, Stronger. It’s the ultimate goal of every athlete.  And the competition is twofold.  Sure there’s the others in the race or event; trying to win-out over all.  But just as importantly, there’s the “race” against yourself.  To go Faster, Higher, Stronger than you’ve ever been before. That’s just as important in athletics, and in life.

When I picture track and field meets, I start with a scene from a 1981 movie about the ‘24 Paris Olympic Games, Chariots of Fire (need a Chariots of Fire song fix – click here).  Young men, training on the beach, smiling joyfully as they run along the shore, the townspeople looking on curiously. (Beach running, while romanticized in the movie, is actually really hard work).  

Or it’s a “summer” track meet:  the bright sunshine in a blue sky as athletes compete on a red track, giving their-all to succeed.  The “senior” officials in their summer uniforms, solemnly intoning the order of competition, and impartially calling “misses” and “makes”. Kids laughing in the stands in tank tops and “short-shorts”; parents worrying about hydration and sunburn.  Coaches holding schedules, already two hours off, trying to get athletes prepared to compete.

Ohio Track

I’ve been involved with track and field for fifty-five years, since I first read about Jesse Owens, and dug holes for my starting “blocks” in our back yard in Kettering, Ohio.  I ran track for ten years, then coached it for another forty.  Now I’m a “senior”; officiating track meets, occasionally firing the gun as the starter, but more often calling the “misses and makes” as a field event official.  I’ve worked fifteen track meets so far this season, just about halfway through my spring schedule of competitions.  And so far, there’s been two meets that fit the “summer” track meet mold.

Track and field in Ohio is wholly different than the image of the summer meets.  We start track in March, and if we wait for that perfect day to run, we wouldn’t have many competitions.  So far, I’ve officiated in sleet, snow, ice, rain, rain, rain, wind, and the two meets where I got a good sunburn.  But that’s all right; it’s the nature of Ohio track and field.  Sure there’s “citius, altius, fortius”, but the nature of our state throws in a whole other set of challenges:  “patientia, perseverantia, salvos”;  endurance, perseverance, survival.  

Old Coaches

Last night is a good example.  I got the opportunity to officiate at the Larkin/Crosten Invitational, held at Upper Arlington High School in Columbus.  First, it was an honor to be asked to officiate there. While I didn’t know Mr. Larkin, I certainly knew Marv Crosten, the co-honoree of the meet.  Marv was that dominant, tough, crusty old coach at Upper Arlington when I was a young coach at Watkins right about when the movie Chariots of Fire came out.  As hard as an “exterior” as Marv had though, he was a man dedicated to the kids of track and field, both at Upper Arlington, and throughout Ohio.

I had the chance to work with him in the District Coaches Association.  I was President of the group in 1985-86, but I soon found that while I might be President, Marv Crosten was “in charge”.  He taught me about the “politics” of track and field, and was a mentor as well as an example.  He was one of the “legendary” coaches of the day – like Ed Rarey at Gahanna, and Les Eisenhart at Thomas Worthington.  They were scary guys to this young coach, but they were always willing to give advice and help, even to a “competitor”.  Officiating at a meet with his name on it is a big deal for me.    

Rain Meet

It was pouring down rain when I arrived at the track, and I was checking my phone to see if there was a message cancelling the meet.  The weather wasn’t going to be much better through the evening, though thunderstorms weren’t an issue.  Thunder and lightning stops a track meet; rain (and snow and sleet) are “inconvenient”.  Back in the “Crosten and Rarey” days we’d never think of cancelling a meet for rain, but in the modern era of track and field it happens.  I’m not sure if the kids or coaches are “softer”, or maybe just “smarter”. 

But the folks at Upper Arlington were channeling Marv last night, so on we went.  I was charged with officiating the high jump, which can be an iffy event in the rain.  As long as the athletes don’t slip on takeoff, it’s safe, and on the brand new track surface there wasn’t a problem.  But there is the issue of landing in a foam pad mat, which is just a giant sponge.  When the kids cleared the bar and hit the foam, the water literally sprayed over their whole body.  The air temperature was in the low sixties, but it was still quite a shock on landing.

Dissolving Results

And the other technical issue for me was how to keep the “statistics” of the event.  Writing on paper with pencil in the pouring rain is a difficult exercise:  you’ve got to keep the paper dry.  Otherwise, it dissolves as you write or turn the page, and you lose all record of the event.  I have a “nifty” clipboard with a clear plastic cover that helps, but with enough rain it’s almost impossible to keep the forms dry.  And once they’re soaked, you’re in trouble.

In my coaching years I also was the meet manager of a lot of track meets, and ran into the “rain soaked results” problem quite often.  After a particularly miserable experience one Saturday, we went out for dinner and a few beers.  The conversation turned to how to best preserve the results so we could score the meet.  Someone mentioned that what we really needed was “waterproof paper”.  

Now that just sounded silly, like “dehydrated water”.  But I decided to look it up on the internet.  And there it was:  waterproof paper, one brand called “Rite in the Rain”.  You could purchase a variety of products; no need to deal with the “toilet paper” effect of rain on high jump or discus results anymore.   In our meets at Watkins, we just printed all of our meet documents on that paper.  It cost more than common paper, but in Ohio, why take the chance?  And, I later realized, we never told our officials about it. We just put it out there.  They never realized that the paper was different; they just never had the problem of “dissolving” results anymore.

Perseverantia

But other folks don’t know about waterproof paper – so as an official I bring my own.  And in this modern age of online meet entries and results, I can usually print off my own field event sheets before I even arrive at the meet.  It saved me last night at Upper Arlington, and we managed to get through both the boys and girls competition.  

The jumping wasn’t as “altius” as it would have been on the perfect day.  But what the athletes did learn was “perseverantia”, perseverance.  They learned how to focus beyond the elements, and onto what they came to do.  The lesson of last night’s high jump, was to perform even when it’s hard, even when everything isn’t exactly “right”.  

I think Marv would have approved.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22

Results Are In

Ohio has voted – at least for the moment.  Due to re-districting manipulations, we still have to choose the party candidates for state Senate and House.  But, our political “clubs” have chosen the other candidates.   The good news for Democrats – Nan Whaley, former Dayton Mayor won the nomination for Governor, and Congressman Tim Ryan for Senate.  (I saw Ryan yesterday on Morning Joe.  He’s pumped, and he’s channeling Zelenskyy in an olive-drab T-shirt!!).  

But that’s not all the good news.  The Republican “club” narrowly picked “Hillbilly Elegy” author and investment manager JD Vance to run against Ryan for Senate.   Republicans had choices; including some “normal” middle of the road candidates, like Jane Timken or Matt Dolan.  Or they could have picked a perennial candidate remodeled as “Pro-God, Pro-Guns, and Pro-Trump” Josh Mandel. Or the guy that Mandel went “chest-to-belly” with on a live state wide debate, Mike Gibbons.  Instead, they went for Donald Trump’s personally anointed choice “JP Mandel” (Vance).  

In the general election, He’ll give away the “middle ground” to the T-Shirt clad, working class, “it’s all about China” Ryan.  It won’t be easy – Ohio never is for a Democrat.  But if Sherrod Brown can win in Ohio against Mandel, then Tim Ryan has a good shot against “Elegy Boy”.  It’s a great matchup for the Dems. (By the way, read the book or watch the movie, “Hillbilly Elegy”.  It’s a good story.  Then watch JD Vance live.  I guarantee you’ll be disappointed). 

Old School

Republican sanity made a comeback though, with the re-nomination of Governor Mike DeWine to run for a second term.  DeWine is “old-school” Republican (and old aged at 75), once a US Senator and State Attorney General.  And, from my side of the fence, he did a pretty good job handling the Covid crisis, in spite of a legislature that wanted to be maskless and packed together.  DeWine knew when to fight, and also to when give up before the Legislature eviscerated his authority.  His one flaw: he let Ohio Public Health Director Amy Acton take all the heat when the pressure was on, and let her fall on her sword for him.

There’s not too much more I like about DeWine.  Under his leadership, Republicans took $60 million in bribes from First Energy, resulting in the state picking up a multi-billion dollar invoice for the old First Energy nuclear reactors.  DeWine turned on his loyal Sheriffs Association friends when he supported unlimited and unlicensed conceal/carry.  And DeWine was first in line for restrictive abortion legislation, all of which is likely to go into effect when the Supreme Court kills the Roe decision.

Residual Anger

Against DeWine is Nan Whaley, the forty-six year old former Mayor of Dayton.  She made a strong positive impression on the state, leading Dayton through the mass shooting in 2019, and doing a good job of revitalizing a city that lost most of its key industries in the 1990’s.  Whaley is personable, progressive, and primed to be Ohio first woman governor.

DeWine should command in the race, but the far-right is still angry:  about masks, about restrictions, about zoom learning and vaccination and testing requirements.  So it remains to be seen how many of those folks will step aside from the DeWine race.  It’s not that they’ll vote for Whaley instead, but they might just overlook the Governor’s race all together.  If the “Trump voters” refuse to vote for DeWine, that’ll hurt.  And if the Tim Ryan race draws a big traditional Democratic turnout, and Roe hits the suburban “swing districts” both  Ryan and Whaley have a shot.

Magenta

It’s Ohio, a state that twice voted for Barack Obama, then voted twice for Donald Trump.  Every statewide office is held by  Republicans but one, Sherrod Brown in the US Senate.  If Florida is purple, just barely Republican by a percent or two, then Ohio is “magenta” (thanks to the old Crayola Box of my childhood) – almost red, but not quite.  There still is a chance for Democrats in Ohio, but it needs to be a “perfect storm”. 

The Democrats run the cities:  Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, Toledo, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati.  But the Republicans own the suburbs outside of the cities, and the vast tracks of farmlands in between.  The current balance leans Republican.  But suburban cracks are appearing, particularly in the exploding housing developments around Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus.  The “soccer families” didn’t like Donald Trump, and some slipped towards the Democratic side.

Will the looming Roe crisis drive them further Blue?  And while JD Vance’s endorsement by Trump will help in the farmlands, and Appalachian Ohio is drawn to his story (and there’s lots of that, almost of quarter of the state), those might not be so helpful in Centerville (Dayton) or Lewis Center (Columbus).  

Deep Red

I live in “deep Red” Ohio here in Pataskala.  Trump flags are almost as numerous as “Old Glory”.  So while I can read the statistics about the state, it’s hard to be too optimistic.  We still have to whisper our political conversations in the local restaurants.  But there’s always hope too.  My Ohio is definitely “Trump Country”, but beneath that is a deep vein of common sense.  Maybe that will finally come through – this time.

Cincinnati

I was a young political operative back in 1981, enrolled in the University of Cincinnati Law School, and the  manager of a Cincinnati City Council campaign.  I’d go to Law School in the morning, study for a couple hours, then campaign until midnight or so.  I got a few hours’ sleep, then another study session from four am until it was time to go to class.  

Like most Council campaigns at the time, we were running on a shoe string budget. We tried to make up for our lack of funding by hard work, yard signs, knocking on doors, and being almost everywhere in the City where people gathered.  I think our total budget was about $15000. It all went into “the litt”, the slick brochure we handed out to everyone, and, of course, the yard signs.

Just a few years before, abortion was only one issue out of many in a political campaign.   When I worked for the Carter/Mondale campaign in the fall of 1976, my direct boss was against abortions. That was not in line with the Democratic platform.  But he was a through-and-through Democrat, and had no problem with that difference over a single issue.  Overall, he believed in the Democratic Party.  

And when I worked in Washington for the local Democratic Congressman, he was a “Pro-Life” Democrat. He even introduced a “Right-to-Life” Constitutional Amendment on the floor of the House (though it didn’t go anywhere). Pro-Life or Pro-Choice was not the defining issue in political parties.

Litmus Test

But just five years later, abortion became a “litmus test” of political party. Roe was nine years old, and the City of Cincinnati provided health services for women.  That made abortion a direct issue for a Council candidate.  My candidate was a woman. She wasn’t personally “in favor” of abortions, but deeply believed that women should have the choice to make up their own minds.  

That was a dangerous position to hold.  The west side of Cincinnati was an original hotbed of anti-abortion activity. They were led by a founding member of the “Right to Life” movement, John Wilke.  He took an absolute position:  no matter what else a candidate was for or against, either they were “Pro-Life”, or Wilke and his followers were utterly opposed to them.

The problem was that the “pro-choice” movement at the time was almost as “pure”.  Either you were “pro-abortion” or they stood against you as well.  So honest answers from my candidate satisfied no one, even though she was “pro-choice”, but not “pro-abortion”.  

We ended up thirteenth in the race, with the top nine vote getters gaining Council seats.  My candidate continued as an amazing school teacher, and later earned several elective offices in Cincinnati and Hamilton County.  I decided that I’d rather teach and coach than do politics and law, and went onto my forty-year career.

Guerilla War

And the battle between the “Pro-Choice” and “Pro-Life” continued, like a festering guerrilla rebellion that had no end.  “Pro-Life” became embedded in more conservative Christian churches (and the Roman Catholic Church) and the political parties became aligned by their stand on abortion.  But it wasn’t until the mid-1990’s that the Christian Right made their “deal” with the Republican Party.  

The deal was simple:  the Christian Right would support the Republican Party, as  long as Republican politicians and Presidents promised to appoint anti-Roe Justices to the Supreme Court.  Many of these Christians also believed in Christ’s dedication to the poor and vulnerable, a view often supported in law by Democrats more than Republicans.  But the one-issue “Pro-Life” focus dominated, and made “strange bedfellows” of the church and some Republican politicians.

It’s the only way that the “moral” Christian-right could support the immoral Donald Trump.  Trump became the immoral “vessel” for their “moral” view, and it was Mitch McConnell who “sealed the deal”.  McConnell, with the backing and vetting of the Federalist Society, was able to guarantee that Republican Justice nominees to the Supreme Court were “Pro-Life”. 

And it was the “McConnell Maneuver” that prevented Barack Obama from putting Merrick Garland on the Court, then rammed Amy Coney Barrett through the Senate in Trump’s last days. He locked in three appointments for the “vessel”, guaranteeing the current six to three conservative majority on the Court.  Regardless what they said in hearings or private meetings with Senators, the vetting was correct.  Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett lied when they said the Roe decision was “stare decisis”.  They were “Pro-Life” judges, dedicated to ending Roe.  And now will have their say.

Victory

This is what the Christian Right worked for since the 1990’s.  And it’s not just ending Roe  they’re after.  The next phase will be a nationwide ban on all abortions.  And there’s also ending same sex marriages, and controlling private bedroom behavior.  The leaked Alito opinion over-turning Roe and Casey creates an entire legal basis for overturning Obergefell (gay marriage), and Griswold (contraception). 

It denies there is a right to “privacy” in the Constitution, as seen in the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.  It takes the Constitutional “right” to private human behavior, and puts all of that behavior back in the legislative arena, where it was in the 1950’s and before. 

The deal is done.  The fifty year war against Roe is no longer an undercover “guerilla” war; it is out in full, bloody view.  And if the “Five” on the Supreme Court are done with Roe and the rest, then it’s up to the legislatures to take charge.  Democrats in Congress can enshrine the “privacy rights” in law, if only they can find a majority to get it done.

The Democrats already are desperate to motivate their supporters.  With Trump off the ballot, and the post-Covid economic boom fueling inflation, Dems need something to get voters to the polls.  

They’ve got it now.   

A Break

I’ve been away from “Our America” for four days – the longest  “dry spell” as I’ve taken from writing for the past four years.  It was a wonderful vacation on the Atlantic Shore of Florida, our first time away together without “the pack” (the dogs) since February of 2020.  Jenn and I got suitably sunburnt, drank (several) wonderful Mojitos at pool side, and revisited old haunts from our camping days.  And we slept, a lot.  We owe a special thank you to our son and his girlfriend, who offered to take care of five dogs for a long weekend.  I hope the task wasn’t too arduous. 

Beach vacations are nothing without a good book, and I’m deep into Congressman Jamie Raskin’s Unthinkable.  The title represents two separate events entangled in Raskin’s life:  the suicide of his brilliant twenty-five year old son, Tommy, on New Year’s Eve of 2020; and the January 6th Insurrection a week later. As he wrote about it: he was a father who lost his son, and a Congressman, an American and a Constitutional scholar, who faced losing his country.  

Congressman Raskin was appointed by Nancy Pelosi to lead the second impeachment of Donald Trump, just a week after he buried his son.   While I’m a little more than halfway through the story, Jamie Raskin brings a true immediacy to the Constitutional crisis they faced in Donald Trump.  With heart shattered by his son’s death, Raskin turned to fix a Nation shattered on the Capitol steps and hallways.

Florida, Florida, Florida

And while it’s been well over a year since the Insurrection and the second impeachment of Donald Trump, I can’t help but think that Jamie Raskin’s work, and our own, is far from being over.

As I traveled in Florida, and prepared to return to vote today in Ohio, our Nation is in the same place it was on January 5th, before the violence in Washington and the threat of a coup d’état by the President of the United States himself.  Trump is still trying to “pull the strings” to invert the “Big Lie” into his “Big Comeback”, even if he can’t seem to remember which Ohio Senate Primary candidate he endorsed (was that JD Mandel or Josh Vance?)

What was determined by then Attorney General Bill Barr and over sixty judges to be untrue, or as Barr then said, “bull-shit”; is now Republican orthodoxy.  Even candidates who spent 2020 defending the electoral system, like Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, now echo cries for better “election security”.  

In Florida Ron DeSantis plans on being “Trump 2.0”, a smarter Harvard-educated Trump, appealing to the worst instincts of his constituency to gin up votes.  He’s expanded the “Big Lie” from elections to the “Critical Race Theory” hoax in the classroom, and to homophobic and transphobic fears.  And, sadly it’s working, at least so far.  He leads former Democratic Governor Charlie Crist by eight percent in current polls, a landslide in Florida’s taut political world.  DeSantis wants a big win to thrust him into the 2024 Presidential fray, with or without Trump.

Angels

I fear for our Nation.  I fear Donald Trump has unleashed the “worse angels” of America’s character.  And while I’m fond of Martin Luther King’s favorite expression:  “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”, for the first time in my life I’m not sure we’ll “bend towards justice” anytime soon, maybe not in my lifetime.

What kind of society are we that we allow our government to attack the most vulnerable in the “name” of getting votes? For the first time in American history, we are allowing rights to be taken away, from women, based on economic standing.  We are regressing back to an ugly past, not progressing towards a moral future.   

The Insurrection is going on today.  The January 6th Committee will not be presenting history to us as they bring the story of conspiracy and violence to light next month. They will be holding up a mirror to our present.  

All of this sounds hopeless, like I found my answer in the bottom of an empty mojito glass alongside the squeezed lime peel.   That’s not the case.  Because in Florida, the home of DeSantis, we also found many folks living a diverse and exciting life.  We found lots of kindness and care, whether gay or straight, black or white or Latina, young or old.  There were hundreds marching in protest against DeSantis’s ploys, in Melbourne, the heart of “Red Florida”.  We honked as we drove past the marchers, they cheered us as we cheered them.  They are still here, as they are in all of America.

The Work Goes On

Senator Edward Kennedy quoted Lord Tennyson in his final speech as a Presidential candidate in 1980.  He said:

We must gird ourselves for the “long fight”, taking heart from those who are giving their actual lives for freedom in places like Ukraine.  If we do not fight for our own progress, our own freedoms, we concede to the undercurrents that have always been a sad part of American life, the “worse angels”.  

We need to listen to our better angels, who tell us that America will not give up so easily.  As Lincoln said it:

 You can fool all of the people some of the time, and

  You can fool some of the people all of the time,

  But you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time.

Our fellow Americans won’t be fooled all of the time, not by the “Big Lie”, nor “Critical Race Theory”, nor all of the other propaganda and falsehoods.  We will find a way to “bend” to justice, even if it takes a long time. And it’s time we got on with the bending – because, “The work goes on, and the dream shall never die”.

Back to it.