How about some more Paul Revere trivia?

It is said that Paul Revere absent-mindedly forgot his spurs and sent his faithful dog trotting home with a note pinned to his collar. A few minutes later the dog returned. The note was gone, and a pair of spurs was in its place.

As Fischer adds, “The reader may judge the truth of this legend.”

The horse Revere rode that night was Brown Beauty, a mare belonging to Charlestown resident John Larkin.

Revere, upon arriving in Lexington, did not say, “The British are coming!” as we all learned. Most people residing in America thought of themselves as British too.

What he said was, “The Regulars are coming out!”

Source: David Hackett Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride.

What’s best for the “family”

Billmon at Whiskey Bar has been on a roll today on the Roberts nomination and the “liberal disease,” including this:

The Dems don’t want to be like Fredo — weak, insecure and eager to earn the good will of people who are inevitably going to be enemies of “the family.” (That’s where too many of them are at now.)

They shouldn’t be like Sonny — impulsive, emotional and a few quarts short of a full crankcase. Shrub is like that and it’s usually what gets him into trouble. (”Bring ‘em on!”)

The Dems need to try to be more like Michael — cool, analytical and totally pragmatic. “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”

Sometimes that means ordering a hit, sometimes it means biding your time. Sometimes it means striking with everything you’ve got — e.g. the “baptism” scene.

See also here, here and here.

Factoids of the day

Paul Revere had 16 children (eight each with two wives) and, though only six lived beyond early adulthood, he had at least 52 grandchildren. So many Sweeties!

And for all you “freedom fries” people, consider that the father of ultimate American patriot Paul Revere was named Apollos Rivoire. He came to Massachusetts from France as a 13-year-old. Rivoire changed his name to Revere, as his son put it, “on account that the bumpkins pronouce it easier.”

Source: David Hackett Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride.

Questions for Roberts

Some well-considered questions for Supreme Court nominee Roberts suggested by the Christian Science Monitor:

Senators shouldn’t put Roberts in the position of dodging questions because they may pertain to future cases. But they can get to his judicial approach and other issues by questioning along these lines:

• Point to a few instances when you’ve had to put aside strong personal views - either in your White House work or your two years on the bench - to argue or judge a case.

• As the definition of rights - in education, the workplace, family planning, etc. - has expanded in US history, has it been better for state and federal legislators or for the courts to bring those to citizens?

• Even if a decision is based clearly on the Constitution, should a justice also weigh the consequences of that decision on broader society?

• Should the Constitution be a flexible document whose interpretation changes with the times?

• Public approval of the Supreme Court has eroded over the years. What should be done to reverse that slide?

• Name three books that would give Americans a better understanding of the role of the courts, especially the Supreme Court, in a democracy.

Pushing the pendulum too far?

In light of the Roberts nomination, and the assumption that Roberts would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade, FunctionalAmbivalent argues this could be a good thing for liberals. The public, FA argues, is so overwhelmingly pro-choice (despite the noise to the contrary) that once The Court rules against it, the reaction and outrage will throw the Republican rascals out.

If that happens millions of people who have ignored abortion as an issue because it’s protected by The Court will be activated in a way they’ve never been activated before. You want a glimpse of what might happen? Consider the issue of property rights and eminent domain. …

One Supreme Court decision and Hey, Presto! The middle class is storming state capitals, scaring the shit out of politicians and demanding the kind of protection that, only a few days before, they had assumed they had from the courts.

Imagine, if you will, the effect it would have on politics if the court tossed Roe.

Go read FA’s whole posting.

Earth is not enough for Google

Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites

Making Your Own Coffee-Table Book

The Mossberg Solution reviews photo-book applications. The essential findings (but check out the whole column):

Using about 40 of the same digital photographs each time, we created photo books using MyPublisher BookMaker, Apple’s iPhoto, Shutterfly and Kodak EasyShare Gallery. Each book had the same photo on the cover, and we chose classic black leather for each cover, except for the Apple book, where we used black linen because leather isn’t offered.

Each company’s book costs about the same — $30 for a hardcover with up to 10 double-sided pages, and $40 with a leather cover. Additional pages cost a dollar in iPhoto and Shutterfly, $1.49 for MyPublisher BookMaker and $1.99 with Kodak Gallery.

Our tests produced a split verdict. We preferred both the creation process and the finished books from MyPublisher and Apple over the newer, Web-based entries from Shutterfly and Kodak. While we found Apple’s software for designing the books to be the best, we preferred the finished product received from MyPublisher to the book we got from Apple, even though they were both produced on MyPublisher’s equipment.

Too darn hot

Last night was the warmest night ever in Albuquerque according to John Fleck, who covers these kinds of things for The Albuquerque Journal and blogs about them.

That is, the low of 73°F was the highest low ever, breaking a record set in 1925.

Albuquerque has not had one day with a below-average temperature in more than five weeks.

Roberts to Overturn Marbury v. Madison?

Joel Achenbach takes the long view on the Roberts’ nomination:

Nowhere in the Constitution, as I recall from the time I glanced at it in the Rotunda of the National Archives, does it say that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter of the aforesaid Constitution. That’s something John Marshall invented, to vex Jefferson. The Supreme Court has been on the road to extreme activism since that gloomy day in 1803. The Roberts Court will let the president decide the important Constitutional questions, such as how many terms he should serve (two being laughably too few), and who should be his successor. Bush clearly cut a deal with Roberts: “I’ll give you a lifetime appointment if you give me one too.” The one thing that most bugs the Bush clan is that their hereditary monarchy has not yet been officially established as a matter of United States law. And Dubya is surrounded by advisers who think we need to roll back everything to roughly 1787, and then keep going, until we reach the Holy Grail of extreme conservatives: Overturning the Magna Carta.

Not one public school degree among them

Rehnquist — Stanford/Stanford (law degree)
Stevens — Chicago/Northwestern
O’Connor — Stanford/Stanford
Scalia — Georgetown/Harvard
Kennedy — Stanford/Harvard
Souter — Harvard/Harvard
Thomas — Holy Cross/Yale
Ginsberg — Cornell/Columbia
Breyer — Stanford/Harvard

Roberts — Harvard/Harvard

Best line of the day, so far

“This thing has more voices than Linda Blair in full antichrist mode.”

— Dan Neil on the “deep whirring, warbles and roars” of the Ferrari F-30 Spider, price, as tested: $212,000.

Cormac McCarthy …

is 72 today. The Writer’s Almanac has an excellent little bio.

And there’s this from the Cormac McCarthy web site —

Critics have compared Cormac McCarthy’s nightmarish yet beautifully written adventure masterpiece, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, with the best works of Dante, Poe, De Sade, Melville, Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and William Styron. The critic Harold Bloom, among others, has declared it one of the greatest novels of the Twentieth Century, and perhaps the greatest by a living American writer. Critics cite its magnificent language, its uncompromising representation of a crucial period of American history, and its unapologetic, bleak vision of the inevitability of suffering and violence.

Critics haven’t been so lavish in their praise of McCarthy’s new novel, No Country for Old Men. See, for example, this review, which appeared in The New York Times.

Hitler assassination attempt

Sixty-one years ago today, German military officers failed in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb in a briefcase. Four were killed but Hitler, though wounded, was saved by the heavy wooden table on which he was reviewing maps. This from the BBC —

Adolf Hitler has escaped death after a bomb exploded at 1242 local time at his headquarters in Rastenberg, East Prussia.

The German News Agency broke the news from Hitler’s headquarters, known as the “wolf’s lair”, his command post for the Eastern Front.

A senior officer, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, has been blamed for planting the bomb at a meeting at which Hitler and other senior members of the General Staff were present.

Hitler has sustained minor burns and concussion but, according to the news agency, managed to keep his appointment with Italian leader Benito Mussolini.

…

Von Stauffenberg was arrested the same day and shot. The rest of the conspirators were tried and hanged or offered the chance to commit suicide.

Eight of those executed were hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks and their executions filmed and shown to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.

Man Walks on Moon

It was, of course, on this date 36 years ago that man first walked on the moon. Here’s The New York Times report (from July 21, 1969).

Anne Marbury Hutchinson

On July 20, 1591, Anne Marbury was baptized in Alford, England. America’s first female religious leader, Anne Marbury Hutchinson was the daughter of an outspoken clergyman silenced for criticizing the Church of England. Better educated than most men of the day, she spent her youth immersed in her father’s library.

At twenty-one, Anne Marbury married Will Hutchinson and began bearing the first of their fifteen children. She became an adherent of the preaching and teachings of John Cotton, a Puritan minister who left England for America. In 1634, the Hutchinson family followed Cotton to New England.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Anne began meeting with other women for prayer and religious discussion. Her charisma and intelligence also drew men, including ministers and magistrates, to her gatherings. Soon, she surpassed even Cotton in her emphasis on the individual’s relationship with God, stressing personal revelation over institutionalized observances. By 1637, Hutchinson’s views challenged religious orthodoxy, while her growing power as a female spiritual leader threatened established gender roles.

Called before the General Court of Massachusetts in November 1637, Hutchinson ably defended herself against charges she defamed the colony’s ministers. Her extensive knowledge of Scripture allowed Hutchinson to debate her position on equal ground with her accusers. Yet, her eloquence and intelligence merely rankled judges, who were offended that a woman dared teach and lead men.

After two days on the stand, Hutchinson claimed direct revelation from God. As a result, Puritan authorities banished her from the colony on theological grounds. Refusing to recant, Hutchinson accepted exile and migrated with her family to Roger Williams’ colony of Rhode Island. After her husband died Hutchinson moved to Dutch territory (to an area now known as Co-op City along New York’s Hutchinson River Parkway). There Hutchinson and all but one of her children were killed by Wampage Indians [1643]. “Proud Jezebel has at last been cast down,” wrote Hutchinson’s nemesis, Puritan minister and Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop.

Library of Congress