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The Politics of Federal Disaster Aid
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As we recover from the snow / freezing rain apocalypse that has hit so many states, it would be well if we looked at problems with federal emergency management and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a whole. Much has been said in the past year about the uneven…
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Something More Personal: My First Remembered Historical Event
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One of the things I loved asking my students on the first day of class was, “What is the first historical event you remember?” It introduced them to me and to the class, and allowed them to think about history in a very personal way. This was usually a question…
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Show Me the Insurrection
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Trump has backed down – for the moment – from invoking the Insurrection Act. But what is it, and how does a mish-mash of laws keep us safe? Do they prevent us from abuses by the President? The Insurrection Act was originally passed in 1807 and was signed into law…
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What is the Nobel Prize?
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The question should rather be: what are the Nobel Prizes? Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) spent his illustrious career as an industrialist (he owned some 100 factories), chemist, engineer and inventor (355 patents, listed at https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/list-of-alfred-nobels-patents/); he was particularly known for his work with the armaments industry in Sweden, Norway, greater Europe,…
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What is the Department of Homeland Security?
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Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question. The Department of Homeland Security remains one of the most complex, opaque organizations in the history of the government of the United States. Following the 9/11/2001 attacks, President George W. Bush introduced the idea of an abstruse “war on terror,” emphasizing…
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The Four Freedoms – a short primer
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Although the 1939 World’s Fair intruduced similar freedoms (religion, speech, assembly, press) as its theme, Franklin Delano Roosevelt set out the better-known Four Freedoms in his January 1941 State of the Union speech to Congress. They consisted of freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and…
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ICE and the Freedom to Dissent
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I’m continuing our discussion about ICE and their unprecedented reign of terror in our country. This time, however, I am delving into the surveillance state and how this activity translates into ICE “enforcement” actions. ICE is not the only part of the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration apparatus, but it…
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What’s the Deal With ICE?
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These days, the Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, has become an amorphous behemoth, with certain characteristics that hearken back to its original mandate – but with many more that defy easy categorization. As it was formulated, ICE was a civil…
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We Did Not Assent to This
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I might as well jump right into the mess I’m seeing around us. Murder. Troops in cities. Concentration camps. Invasion of a sovereign nation. Threatened military coups. Gaslighting. We are living in a time I never thought I would experience in our nation’s history, and it can be hard to…
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Beginning again.
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Life seems to come at me quickly these days. I never thought I would be writing blogs again, much less two at the same time. The learning curve is steep – newer, more customizable websites make life a bit more interesting than the old days of the early internet where…