David > Recent Status Updates

Something else about Black: he was a constitutional originalist who believed the Constitution did _not_ protect corporations -- only people. What an idea!

Former Klansman Hugo Black ends up, as a Supreme Court justice, being "an unbending advocate of judicially mandated racial equality." Go figure.

The Supreme Court could use a Felix Frankfurter and a Brandeis nowadays.

Ginger casts a dubious eye on her Argentine host, Juan Perón.

Japanese guards were so engrossed in watching a Ginger Rogers film ("Tom, Dick and Harry") that a prisoner was able to escape.

How about that? A six-page sentence!

What a masterpiece! If only more political leaders of today knew the history of the Great Depression we might not have to repeat the economic failures.

I had no idea the dust storms were so bad. Amazing ecological catastrophe.

In 1933 California governor James Rolph enthusiastically endorsed the actions of a lynch mob!

What heroic, deadly battles labor fought in the '30s. I hope kids learn this history -- but I doubt they do.

Obama's enemies try to instill doubt about his citizenship. FDR's enemies spread rumors that he was insane.

"We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program" (FDR).

Don't you believe it when people tell you that government is the problem, not the solution: the CWA proved that the federal government can create and execute HUGE programs that benefit many, many people. Not easy, of course, but certainly possible.

Poem about the government's attack on the bonus marchers: "there's a wasteland in many a heart / That the rulers do not see: / For the searing flame of betrayal / Makes ashes of loyalty."

The top 1% are doing even better now than they were in 1929.

Uterine Flight

"her beauty was structural like a tree's, not a quality of her mind or heart."

Is the Amazon really 30 miles wide? I must have read that before it never sank in.

The Sequoiadendron giganteum might have been called the Wellingtonia gigantea or Washingtonia gigantea but for once native Americans got the credit instead of the English or Americans.

Wait a second. What's this about Monterey having a climate for bananas? Well, this _is_ in the context of discussing botanist David Douglas's poor eyesight.

In South Africa in the 1770s Dutch settlers paid natives in beads and tobacco mixed with marijuana -- the better "to keep them stupefied and unlikely to cause trouble." Good botany makes good labor relations, apparently.

The potted Cycad (Encephalartos altensteinii), brought to Kew Gardens in 1775, is the oldest potted plant in the world. (I love obscure facts like that!)

Excellent biography about a truly admirable figure.

"Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding."

What a splendid person Abigail Adams seems to have been.

I've read biographies of Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, and Washington. The only revolution figure who consistently comes out looking bad is Jefferson. But maybe when I read his biography I'll have to change my mind.

It's easy to see the appeal of the Sedition Act. Imagine if something could make the birthers shut up. But of course a law like the Sedition Act only makes everything worse.

What killed the cats of Philadelphia in July 1797?