Author: NewMexiKen

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.

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.

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.

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

Technical difficulties

Everything NewMexiKen did today related to blogging software turned into a crisis. When all was said and done, the site was right back where I began and I was relieved to do that.

If anyone knows how to migrate to Word Press or some other CMS while maintaining the validity of nearly 5,800 Movable Type links, I’d like to hear from them.

Tiger Woods: Two views

Well, so much for NewMexiKen’s attempt at initiating a discussion about Tiger Woods. One comment. (Thank you, Emily.)

Here are excerpts from contrasting opinions by sportswriters — both columns merit reading in full.

First, John Feinstein:

Woods already holds many records. One of them, which is unofficial, is that he has been fined for using profanity publicly more than any player in history. While using profanity in the crucible of competition is hardly a great crime, it is indicative of Woods’s attitude that, rather than try to curb his use of language, he has complained that he is being treated unfairly since there are always microphones following him when he plays. Last month, during the U.S. Open, Woods missed a putt and childishly dragged his putter across the green, damaging it as he did so. When he was asked about the incident later, he shrugged and said, “I was frustrated,” (no apology) as if he was the only player among 156 dealing with frustration. In recent years he has allowed his caddie, Steve Williams, to frequently treat spectators and members of the media rudely, not only defending him but also appearing to sanction his misbehavior.

Woods is extremely popular with the golfing public, in part because of his extraordinary play and in part because of a carefully crafted image built around a series of commercials that show him to be a funny and friendly guy. Sadly, that’s not the Woods most people encounter. He is the master of the TV sound bite, but he rarely shares any of his real thoughts with the public.

Second, Michael Wilbon:

Feinstein criticizes Woods for not trying to curb his language, which can get pretty foul when he misses a putt or hits a bad shot, just like most of us. And because Feinstein is a golf historian, I know he knows that Nicklaus, whom he justifiably praises to the high heavens, could have cursed up a storm if he wanted in 1962 or thereabouts without it reaching the television because he wasn’t followed everywhere with sound men holding frighteningly high-tech boom microphones so close they can pick up the sound of his stomach churning. So, apparently, to Feinstein and Plaschke (and I know they are joined by a great many) it’s not enough to win major championships, to win so much and with such style it revolutionizes the entire game and elevates the profile of the profession — no, he’s got to smile the way they want him to smile, accept only as much money from Coke and Nike as they want him to accept.

They both say he isn’t beloved, which to me is clearly ignoring mountains of evidence to the contrary. They and lots of others may not find Tiger beloved. But millions of people, perhaps people who don’t register with Plaschke and Feinstein, adore Tiger.

…

Tiger may not strike you (or them) as a typical black man in America because his mother is Thai and he’s rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams. But Tiger, as he explained the day we talked, knows his father Earl played baseball at Kansas State but couldn’t stay with the team when it traveled to Norman, Okla., because the hotel was “whites only.” Tiger was called “nigger” at the Navy golf club when he was a little kid.

On his first day of kindergarten at a school where he was the only child of color, Tiger was confronted by a group of sixth-graders who tied him to a tree and spray painted “Nigger” on him and threw rocks at him. I bring this up because the things that shaped Tiger Woods, that cross his mind, that make him angry when he wakes up, didn’t shape Nicklaus or Ernie Els or Phil Mickelson or Colin Montgomerie, or for that matter, Feinstein or Plaschke.

He doesn’t need to wave like Jack or be like Jack. Tiger Woods is 29, a champion already and an icon. Can you imagine how the game of golf would be reduced without him?

The Bill Plaschke column mentioned by Wilbon: He’s Too Good to Be Truly Loved, and That’s Too Bad.

Potomac-Basin Indigenous Persons trademark back in court

Friday, an appellate court put new life into the legal challenge to the trademark of the Washington professional football team. According to The Washington Post:

The appellate ruling hinged on the question of whether the Native Americans waited too long to file their challenge. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled in October 2003 that the seven plaintiffs had no standing to complain because they did not formally object until 25 years had elapsed since the date of the first trademark.

But the appellate judges found that one plaintiff still could have standing because he was only 1 year old in 1967. They sent the case back to Kollar-Kotelly for review.

NewMexiKen has long thought the Washington football franchise was insensitive about this; even more I think they are being financially short-sighted. If they change their name, alas every item of merchandise with the current logo will sell in an instant to collectors. Then, all the fans will rush to get current with the new name and the new merchandise will have a boom.

Do the right thing and make a fortune. This is a no-brainer. But then the owner of the team is a no-brainer in many ways, too.

Constitution Day

Tucked into a massive appropriations bill approved without fanfare late last year by Congress is the requirement that every one of the estimated 1.8 million federal employees in the executive branch receive “educational and training” materials about the charter on Constitution Day, a holiday celebrating the Sept. 17, 1787, signing that is so obscure that it, unlike Arbor Day, is left off many calendars.

That’s not all: The law requires every school that receives federal funds — including universities — to show students a program on the Constitution, though it does not specify a particular one. The demand has proved unpopular with educators, who say that they don’t like the federal government telling them what to teach and that it doesn’t make the best educational sense to teach something as important as the Constitution out of context.

“We already cover the Constitution up, down and around,” said August Frattali, principal of Rachel Carson Middle School in Fairfax County. But, he chuckled, “I’m going to follow the mandates. I don’t want to get fired.”

The Washington Post

Daylight-saving Time

Congress appears poised to extend U.S. daylight-saving time for two months, starting it earlier, on the first Sunday in March, and ending it later, on the last Sunday of November. …

Assuming the president signs the bill, the measure would take effect immediately, extending the current daylight-saving time by one month this fall.

Daylight-saving time, by requiring everyone to shift their clocks forward one hour, extends the hours of available daylight deeper into the evenings. Polls show that daylight-saving time is popular. And it has been a hallmark of summer nights, allowing families and businesses to extend their activities later — with less need for artificial light. Currently, daylight-saving time begins at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of April and ends at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October.

Wall Street Journal via Pittsbugh Post-Gazette

Here’s Jay

• Thank you for coming out on the hottest day of the year so far. It was 107 today. People are sweating like Michael Jackson looking at pictures of Harry Potter.
• President Bush did not name a Supreme Court nominee over the weekend. Well sure between “Harry Potter” and “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory,” where do we find the time?
• President Bush welcomed the Prime Minister of India to the White House today. Bush said, “While you’re here can you look at my computer for a second?”

Science scholars found to have entered the U.S. illegally as children now face deportation

The federal officer standing over Yuliana Huicochea fired off a question that no one had asked the high school honor student before: What was her immigration status?

Huicochea knew that her parents had brought her to the United States when she was 4 years old. She experienced an all-American childhood in Phoenix, excelling in public schools, eating at IHOP, watching “Law and Order” and dreaming of becoming an attorney.

But in June 2002, when Huicochea was 17, she and some classmates had gone to a national science competition in Buffalo, N.Y. As a treat, their teachers took them to Niagara Falls on the Canadian border — where immigration officials caught up with them.

After nine hours of detention, Huicochea found out the answer to the agent’s question. She and three of her classmates, who had come to the U.S. between ages 2 and 7, were illegal immigrants. The federal government sent them back to Phoenix for deportation hearings, which have dragged on for three years.

…

The four students and their classmates met after school to build a solar-powered boat and gave up their Saturdays to test it on lakes in the Phoenix suburbs. It won a regional contest, and the group flew to Buffalo for the national finals that June.

Two teachers who were escorting the students had planned a side trip to Niagara Falls during their down time. At the visitors’ center, one teacher asked if student IDs would be enough to allow them to cross to the Canadian side to get a better view of the cascades.

But immigration officials at the center spotted the students waiting outside and detained them. They told the youths during interrogation that they stood out because they were Latino.

“It was the same questions over and over again,” recalled Luis Nava. “Where did I cross? I said, ‘Man, I was like 2. I have no idea.’ ”

Los Angeles Times

Millions of people illegally in this country; why hassle these four?

In smarts, she’s a perfect 10

Sitting down for a personal meeting with Bill Gates this week, 10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn’t hire people her age.

Under the circumstances, the question wasn’t so unreasonable.

Arfa, a promising software programmer from Faisalabad, Pakistan, is believed to be the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world.

The Seattle Times

Gee, I hope The Sweeties aren’t being slackers.