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Journalistic Ethics (Part I)
Note: This post was prompted by fellow member @bryangstephens, with whom I have had an on-going discussion spread over a vast number of unrelated threads concerning the nature of the press, the First Amendment and their role in American politics.
Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, virtually every decent-sized American city had at least two newspapers. In addition to the popular press, many communities also had papers of ethnic or racial focus. Some of those papers, such as the Pittsburgh Courier, became influential outside of their areas of ownership and became important voices nationally. The Courier’s Wendell Smith was instrumental in helping Branch Rickey break baseball’s color barrier with the elevation of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
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Roger Hugh Charles Donlon
Roger Donlon was a born warrior. The 8th of 10 children he first joined the Air Force, later studied at West Point but ended up leaving to become an Infantry Officer through OCS.
He was the first man awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for service in South Vietnam. He passed away on January 25th, just 5 days before his 90th birthday, now finally free of the Parkinson’s Disease they believe was caused by his exposure to Agent Orange.
He was buried at Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas. The family asked the public to please consider a memorial donation to the Gary Sinise Foundation.
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The Internet of Every Damn Last Thing
We had our last full house for a while this Christmas. One never knows from year-to-year where everyone will be but I do know the lad will not be home in 2024. He’ll be in the middle of his second sailing at the Academy next December.
As everyone one made their way home I was alerted to their arrival by my phone. The app that controls my wifi router would announce “A new device has joined your network.” And then every time they opened a new device: Laptop alert. iPad alert. X-box alert. Desktop alert. Smart television alert. Alert! Alert! Alert!
Get the States Out of the Primary Business
The only Congressional offices mentioned in the Constitution are the Speaker of the House, The President of the Senate (aka, the Vice-President) and the President Pro Tem. What is not mentioned is the offices that now dominate those institutions: The Majority Leaders, whose offices were established closer to the turn of the 20th Century than to the Constitutional Convention. (The House elected its first in 1899, the Senate in 1913.) In short, while political parties were probably unavoidable, they are also extra-constitutional.
In light of the arguments surrounding Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 presidential ballot we need to ask ourselves why state officials and courts feel they have the power and the right to decide such matters for the primaries. (The general election is a whole other can of worms.) The primaries are not an election, the primaries are a selection – and a selection for private organizations at that.
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Song of the Week: Silver Bells By Evans and Livingston
Ray Evans and Jay Livingston were classmates at the University of Pennsylvania and played together in a school swing band called The Continentals. In 1940 they wrote a song called “Goodbye Now” that made its way into the Olsen & Johnson review The New Hellzapoppin’ of 1941. It’s was a fairly unremarkable song and encapsulated their songwriting career as WWII came to America. They told show business “Goodbye Now” as Livingston ended up in the Army and Evans went to work in an aircraft factory.
When Livingston got back from the service, fellow songwriter Johnny Mercer encouraged them to seek employment in the motion picture industry and they managed to get a contract at Paramount. It was there that they struck it big, composing the title tune for the movie, To Each His Own. At one point in 1946, five different recordings of the song were in the Billboard Top 10 simultaneously.
Why the Colorado Decision Will Fall
In light of the decision of the Colorado State Supreme Court to remove Donald Trump from that state’s ballot in 2024, I asked our resident Professor of Law, John Yoo, which way he believed SCOTUS would rule: “I agree in toto with the expert testimony filed in the trial court by my good friend, Robert Delahunty.”
Delahunty, who served served for thirteen years in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department
of Justice, laid out three main points in opposition to the petitioner’s filing.
We Are an Unserious Nation
Only the ‘Best’
In 2016, Donald Trump promised to “only hire the best people.” By 2018, he was openly trashing most of them. What Trump demands is absolute personal loyalty. Not to the office, not to the country, but to him.
When Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds endorsed fellow governor Ron DeSantis, Trump issued a statement that said, “Two extremely disloyal people getting together is, however, a very beautiful thing to watch.” Kneel before Zod, peasants.
I Am
My religious life could broadly be interpreted as me being a Big Event Christian™. You know, that guy that shows up for all the major events such as Christmas, Easter, weddings and funerals? That’s me.
I believe in the tenets of Christianity but at the same time view myself as so fallen that I have resigned myself to the knowledge that judgment day will not be pretty. (After that will probably really suck but let’s not get too depressing, shall we?)
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Ramblings
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War. Famine. Death. Taylor Swift.