July 2023
Race-Based Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court Conservative majority has once more overturned previous set law in its latest decisions. They seem set to take things away from people, behavior at odds with popular concerns and at odds with all of these justices declaring at their Senate hearings that they believed in leaving set law alone.
It is becoming clearer every day that the older Republican party was much less ideological than today. Once, the majority of Court decisions were made by either unanimous o more...
It is becoming clearer every day that the older Republican party was much less ideological than today. Once, the majority of Court decisions were made by either unanimous o more...
The New Anarchy (2 of 2))
Our own times seem so divided, so violent, that we cannot imagine that we experienced such political violence before. Yet we have indeed: just before the Civil War, after the failure of the Reconstruction (lynchings and attacks on Black towns), and in a series of anarchist assassinations of world leaders, starting with President William McKinley in 1901.
In 1908, an anarchist shot a Catholic priest who had just given him communion. In 1910, a dynamite attack on the Los An more...
November 2020
Six Changes to the Constitution
With the current focus on the Supreme Court and its essential role in American life, it is important to heed retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, a book published just before the disastrous 2014 election. He seemed to know what was coming.
This remarkable work notes that the Constitution has been revised only 18 times during our history, the most recent amendment introduced over to centuri more...
August 2019
The Future of Feeding the World
When our ancient ancestors gave up hunting and gathering to begin growing crops and taming livestock, our numbers grew. But even in the hunting/gathering phase, these ancestors did what no other creatures could: they tamed fire and began to cook their food.
Growing crops, a practice that began in river-watered lands (the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and China) required another innovation, replacing dependence on rainfall with irrigation. Again, population growth exploded.
more...
Growing crops, a practice that began in river-watered lands (the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and China) required another innovation, replacing dependence on rainfall with irrigation. Again, population growth exploded.
more...