Category Archives: people

For They Have Sown the Wind 

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We have come within an inch—honestly, an inch—of a terrible tragedy for our country. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has brought solemn calls for reducing the toxic level of political discourse.

On the other hand, there is not-unexpected finger pointing that indicates those calls will be ignored soon.

Junior Trump said right afterward, “He will never stop fighting to save America, no matter what the radical left throws at him.”  House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, whose life was almost ended by an attack on a congressional baseball practice, said on FOX News that fears that a Trump victory in November would be a threat to America were “incendiary rhetoric” that could encourage “one person who is just unhinged to hear that and…think that’s the signal to go take somebody out.” He called on candidates to “focus on the issues that people care about.”

(“Unhinged” is the word we’ve heard most frequently applied to Trump’s speeches.)

The Daily Caller conservative website blamed “Liberal Media” for downplaying the assassination attempt at first. Columnist Harold Hutchinson accused “multiple corporate media outlets” of not reporting shots had been fired at the Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—as if reporters on the scene should have filed comprehensive stories about the incident when the first shot was fired.

(FYI:  He could have said the same thing about FOX News but conveniently didn’t. The first report on FOX news referred to “some kind of disturbance” and about a minute and a half after the shots were fired the anchor said, “This is happening quickly; we are trying to ascertain what’s happened.”)

Hutchinson and Florida Senator Marco Rubio placed media-bashing at the top of their priority list by urging readers to think reporters on the scene should know the entire story before the last shot was fired—before it was understood that the noises had, in fact, been gunfire, not fireworks.

Hutchinson noted NBC’s post on X, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after popping noises heard at his Pennsylvania rally,” and a Los Angeles Times posting, “Trump whisked off stage in Pennsylvania after loud noises rang through the crowd.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio took CNN to task when it posted on X, “JUST IN: Donald Trump is rushed offstage by Secret Service during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Follow live updates.”  He wrote on his own X account, “Really? No mention of the attempt to kill him?”  And when CNN said, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally,’ Rubio wrote, “Even in a horrifying moment such as this they just can’t help themselves.”

No, it was Marco Rubio who just couldn’t help HIMself.

Reporters on the scene, in fact, knew no more than any other observer—and there were hundreds of those, many of whom talked about the instant confusion of the moment.

The reporters reported at that instant what they KNEW.  A few chaotic seconds later, updates went out—the Secret Service had covered Trump; Trump had blood on his ear; the “pop-pop-pop” was gunfire and some people in the audience had been hit; Trump was up and being escorted to a vehicle and hustled off-site.

Bill Goodykoontz, the media critic for the Arizona Republic, commented later in the day, “Cable and broadcast outlets covered the news in remarkably similar ways…they both covered it well and, for the most part, they covered in responsibly.”

“What was perhaps even more impressive was what journalists didn’t do — they didn’t jump to conclusions, whether about exactly what happened, about Trump’s condition or about motives. Being first is important in breaking news, but not as important as being right, and most networks hewed to that Saturday.”

He also said, “Neither CNN nor Fox News jumped to irresponsible conclusions. In fact, they didn’t even call it a shooting until that could be confirmed, in a show of near-miraculous restraint.”

Fox wouldn’t put up with former Congressman Jason Chaffetz when he went off on a rant: “They tried to incarcerate him; they’ve now had an assassination attempt on the president. The temperature in this country, we all need to take a deep breath. But at the same time, you know what this country we have got to make sure that we can have free fair elections.”

Goodykoontz commented, “Whether by coincidence or wise decision-making, the network drowned him out with a replay of the incident.  Good.”

Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, reportedly on Trump’s short list as a running mate, went on X and said President Biden’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” a totally irresponsible allegation at a time when the shooter’s name was not known and, as we write this, his motivations are unknown.

Samantha Vinograd, a former Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, Threat Prevention, and Law Enforcement Policy in the Homeland Security Department told CBS’s Margaret Brennan, “It is frankly unpatriotic at this moment to be stoking the flames when we know that we are sitting on a cauldron of tensions. … The counter-terrorism officials and homeland security officials that I’ve spoken to in the last few hours are deeply concerned that this event will be used as a rallying cry to launch attacks against individuals associated with the Biden campaign and lead to broader domestic distress.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who has been an analyst on diverse media outlets, wrote for The Hill, “The assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump left a nation stunned. But the most shocking aspect was that it was not nearly as surprising as it should have been. For months, politicians, the press and pundits have escalated reckless rhetoric in this campaign on both sides.”  He called it “rage rhetoric” in castigating both the right and the left

“Rage is addictive and contagious. It is also liberating. It allows people a sense of license to take actions that would ordinarily be viewed as repulsive. As soon as Trump was elected, unhinged rage became the norm,” he said.

He spends most of his article criticizing the Left for its rhetoric, suggesting it is not reported on with the same emphasis the press gives to Trump rhetoric.  He concludes, “We have come full circle to where we began as a Republic. In the 1800 election, Federalists and Jeffersonians engaged in similar rage rhetoric.

“Federalists told citizens that, if Jefferson were elected, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”

“Jeffersonians warned that, if Adams were reelected, “chains, dungeons, transportation, and perhaps the gibbet” awaited citizens and they “would instantaneously be put to death…”

“In our current age of rage, politicians have sought to use the same anger and fear to rally support at any cost. This is the cost.”

He makes an excellent set of points that support the immediate post-shooting suggestions that it is time to tone down the rhetoric.  The question now is—who goes first?

Some readers will see the following comments as indicating a bias.  It might be so.  But as we watched the events unfold, and as we were grateful that Mr. Trump escaped with his life, we nonetheless were aware that he is the one who calls people by derogatory names, who has ridiculed in some of his speeches a disabled person, who has shown disrespect to judges and the judicial system, who continues to spout outright lies on numerous fronts, who encouraged followers to show up in Washington on January 6, 2021 with the promise that “it will be wild,” who did nothing to reduce the violence later at the Capitol by so-called “innocent tourists,” who to this day censures his own Vice-President because Mike Pence followed the Constitution, and who maintains that he, himself, is above the law—

And, God help us, we could not avoid thinking of two verses from the Bible:

Paul’s letter to the Galatians, a congregation in present Turkey, in which we find, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap.”

Or an earlier observation from the Old Testament prophet Hosea: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

Mr. Trump is not alone fulfilling these warnings but he is the most vocal representative of them.

Let us watch him as well as the people who oppose him to see if this terrible brush with tragedy really changes anything.   Or whether it’s just more post-near-apocalyptic talk.

 

The 28th Amendment

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The United States Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity has scared the bejesus out of  a lot of people on both sides of the aisle because it grants Presidents immunity from prosecution for official acts but leaves the President liable for his unofficial acts. The ruling puts the first determination of what’s official and what is not into the hands of judges hearing cases accusing former President Trump of making illegal efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 election and of taking classified documents with him when he left office—among other alleged sins. Any decisions by the judges can be appealed to the Supreme Court, further delaying any final disposition of the cases.

There are some things we haven’t heard discussed much that might backfire on Trump.

Some think the ruling means that this entire issue will dog Trump’s campaign for weeks. The public discussion of what he did or didn’t do could continue, if not increase, the uncertainty about whether his party and his voters will elect a President who also is a jailbird or, under a reasonable person’s concept of proper behavior, should be one.

Presidential liability will be awfully hard to describe but right off, the amendment should provide that no President can pardon himself for any crimes, official or unofficial.

It should begin with this concept:

The President of the United States, constitutionally, must be born in this country or an area that is considered part of the United States (overseas military bases, for example).  The President, therefore is, first of all, a citizen of a country often described as “a country of laws, not of kings.”  To suggest that a citizen elevated by fellow citizens to the most important office in the land has been given powers by those citizens that go beyond the law governing all citizens except for himself or herself is absurd.

Period.

We are wondering if the nation’s top legal scholars are starting to coalesce into a working group that will draft an amendment clearly stating that a President can be held criminally liable, even for official acts. The concern that a president could legally order the assassination of a rival, while seeming extreme, is a real concern, given Trump’s boasting.

But what about a President allowing water boarding?  Dropping atomic bombs on cities?  Freeing slaves in rebelling states?  Ordering Japanese-Americans into concentration camps without due process? Closing banks in bad economic times?  Sending federal troops to cities?

Think back to historic presidential actions—-the evacuation of Native Americans from their homelands in the east and forcing them to walk to hostile land in future Oklahoma.

Buying the entire Louisiana Territory and financing it with money borrowed from a hostile country (England) without authorization from Congress.

Congressman Joe Morelle of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, announced the day before Independence Day that he will introduce a proposed 28th Amendment “to reverse the Supreme Court’s catastrophic decision and ensure no president is above the law. This amendment will do what they failed to do—prioritize our democracy,” He continued in a statement from his office, “The Supreme Court decision will cause a seismic shift in the powers of the presidency unless we take immediate action to ensure accountability, integrity, and justice prevail.”

He sent a letter to his colleagues saying, “This amendment will do what SCOTUS failed to do—prioritize our democracy,” urging his colleagues “to stand with me on the front line to protect our democracy.”

“Immediate action,” unfortunately, is unlikely and perhaps unlikely in the hyper-partisan Congress. The House and the Senate both must approve the resolution with two-thirds votes.  If that occurs, three-fourths of the states, 38, will have to ratify the amendment before it is added to the Constitution.  The process could take years, far more years than Donald Trump will serve if he is re-elected. But the danger Congressman Morelle sees flowing from Trump is real and it is imminent and there is precedent.

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What Trump did and said after the death five years ago of George Floyd prompted the Chicago Council of Lawyers to speak out. It’s a little long but it’s important reading in today’s climate.

The United States is a Nation Ruled by Laws, Not Kings

The Rule of Law, not the rule of kings, is a founding principle of our country. It remains a core principle that defines who we are as Americans. It allows each of us to walk down a public street without fear of being grabbed, without cause, by government police and thrown into an unmarked van. It allows us to have a peaceful potluck with friends without fear that a government official will use violence against us just for getting together. It allows us to speak our mind against government policies, without worrying that those with power will use our speech as a reason to harm us…  

The Rule of Law in the United States does not begin with the President. It does not begin with any political party. It begins with Our Constitution…The President isn’t at the top. The Constitution is…

The original Constitution is mainly about one thing: power. The Constitution’s structure for our government is borne from the core principle that a single individual should not hold all power.  It divides power between three branches of government, and it further divides power between the federal government and the States, whose laws are also subject and subordinate to the Constitution…

The U.S. Supreme Court has always ruled that none of the Bill of Rights, not even the First Amendment, is unlimited. But these Court decisions recognize that the limits on our individual rights must be constructed with care and exercised in a narrow and judicious manner. In 1969, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court (Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham) held, in protecting an American citizen’s right to protest and also allowing for certain limited restrictions, that any licensing requirement for “free expression in publicly owned places” is unconstitutional if it’s not narrowly defined and objectively applied.

The Constitution, again seeking to limit federal authority, provides that each state is empowered to establish and enforce laws protecting the welfare, safety, and health of the public within its state. The power of states is reflected in the fact that most criminal law is state law; most police forces are state police forces, not federal. While there is some federal criminal law, in comparison to state criminal laws, it is narrow and constrained.  There is no federal law giving a President the right to direct federal officers to occupy a city or a state or to dominate any part of a state, on his own accord, without an invitation from a state government that is seeking help.

Federal law gives federal authorities the right to conduct some actions within states, but these authorized acts are targeted and constrained. Federal agents are authorized to protect federal properties. Federal agents are authorized to enforce federal criminal laws, such as kidnapping, bank robbery, criminal conspiracy, human trafficking, mail fraud, and other specific laws. This all fits within our established system of laws.  These laws are all tailored to fit within the bounds of our Constitution.

Federal Officers are Doing Precisely What the Constitution Prohibits

Is the President following these laws? Is he abiding his oath to serve the Constitution? What are federal officers in Portland doing? As summarized on July 17 by Charlie Warzel, an opinion writer at large for The New York Times:

Thursday night [July 16] marked the 50th consecutive night of demonstrations in Portland, Ore. The protests began after the killing of George Floyd—tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest police violence and racial injustice. Since then, the protests have grown smaller, but clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters have escalated—on July 12, videos circulated of a federal officer shooting a protester in the head with a nonlethal munition, resulting in a skull fracture. Coverage of the unrest has caught the attention of President Trump, who vowed to ‘dominate’ the protesters with federal law enforcement officers.

 The New York Times reported the story of Christopher David, a former Navy Civil Engineering Corps Officer and a 1988 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy:

“I wasn’t even paying attention to the protests at all until the feds came in,” Mr. David said. “When that video came out of those two unmarked guys in camouflage abducting people and putting them in minivans, that’s when I became aware.”

He had taken a bus to the Portland courthouse and was about to leave around 10:45 p.m. when federal officers emerged and began advancing on the protesters. He said he felt the need to ask the officers, Why were they violating their oath to the Constitution?

Instead of getting an answer on Saturday, Mr. David, a 6-foot-2, 280-pound former Navy varsity wrestler, found himself being beaten with a baton by a federal officer dressed in camouflage fatigues as another doused him with pepper spray, according to video of the encounter.

 As Mr. David noted, one widely circulated video from Portland shows a group of men in camouflage military-like uniforms emerging from a van that one might see in anywhere USA, grabbing a protester walking alone on the sidewalk, not on or next to federal property, forcing him into the van without telling him who they were or why they grabbed him, and driving away.  Another video shows federal police using tear gas and flash bangs on a single line of about two dozen mothers linked arm-to-arm, wearing bike helmets, and chanting “moms are here, Feds stay clear.”

Every Oregon official that might have authority to request help from federal officers has pleaded for the federal agents to leave. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler told NBC News that the presence of federal agents was making things worse: “…They’re not wanted here. We haven’t asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.” Oregon Governor Kate Brown asked the President directly to withdraw these agents from her state. The Washington Post reported on July 17 that the Governor said: “I told him that the federal government should remove federal officers from our streets. I said it’s like adding gasoline to a fire.” The Post also reported that Governor Brown is convinced that “‘they are not interested in problem solving,’ and this has ‘nothing to do with public safety.’”

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum has sued to prohibit these federal agents from making further arrests and continuing to violate the Constitutional rights of protesters and those detained. “I think every American needs to be concerned about what’s happening here in Portland. These federal agencies are operating with no transparency and against the will of just about every leader in our state,” said Rosenblum.

Federal officials claim that federal law gives their agents the authority to do what they are doing, regardless of whether proper state authorities request their presence. These claims are specious, at best. It is not even a close call…

The federal agents are not limiting their targets to the specific individuals violating federal law by damaging federal property.  They are not using their authority narrowly, when they use their weapons against mothers standing in a line chanting or when they strike and pepper spray a U.S. Navy veteran who is trying to talk with them. These federal officers are not judiciously using their authority when they grab a man walking alone on the street and take him by force into an unmarked van and drive him away to an undisclosed location – all without any probable cause or identifying themselves as federal officers.

Whatever the reason, the federal officers are making the streets of Portland more lawless, not less. These federal officers are openly and egregiously violating the rights of peaceful, law-abiding mothers, veterans, and other Americans, rather than protecting them. These federal officers are jeopardizing the safety of local law enforcement, not bolstering it…

Trump is now Primed to Attack the Rule of Law in Chicago

The President now appears to be targeting Chicago, just as he has targeted Portland – but this time, the President is not even offering the guise of protecting federal property as the reason.  The Chicago Tribune reported on July 20 that the “U.S. Department of Homeland Security is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago this week.” The paper reports that the Department has not disclosed its plan for the additional agents, and that even the Superintendent of the Chicago Police does not know why this administration is sending additional federal law enforcement.

The President has talked as recently as July 20 about sending in troops to fix the local violence problem in Chicago. It is undeniable that parts of Chicago do have a serious gun violence problem that needs to be fixed. Reasonable people have asked whether more government policing would help; other reasonable people have asked whether it might help to do policing in another way. Whatever the solution or solutions might be, the President has no legal authority —without a request from legally authorized Illinois officials—to move federal officers to Chicago for the purpose of confronting local crime issues.  Neither Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot nor Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker have requested additional federal officers for that purpose.

There have been ongoing peaceful protests on issues of anti-Black racial injustice in our town, but there has been little-to-no reported property damage from the recent demonstrations.  Further, and more to the point, we are not aware of a single report of any damage to federal properties from the recent protests…Yet, Trump has recently grouped Portland with Chicago and other American cities, such as Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York, as places of “anarchy.” For Chicago, and we expect for the other named cities too, this is less true than saying that a naked emperor is wearing the most beautiful clothes ever made from satin and silk. Chicago is dealing with modern American problems, to be sure, which now include COVID-19 – but Chicago is not a place where anarchy reigns…

Our system starts with the Rule of Law, not the rule of a king or an emperor or even a President.

President Trump and the leaders of the officers in his administration apparently have no shame. The Trump administration started to use federal agents dressed in military gear to attack peaceful, law-abiding citizens in Portland. Now, it is moving federal officers into Chicago to possibly do the same thing in our city; it is threatening to deploy more federal officers in other cities throughout America…Whatever federal agents are now doing in Portland, we do know one thing about their actions: they are not doing them in the name of the law.

Many people fear the United States Supreme Court has blown a hole in the Constitution and has given Donald Trump Carte Blanche to do anything that he wishes to do in carrying out his stated vengeance campaign.

It is beyond urgent that this hole in the Constitution be closed. It is time to create Donald Trump’s legacy—-which he will not want—-by enacting a 28th Amendment to protect all of us from someone who believes he is greater than the country he seeks to rule.

 

A Glimpse of Sacred Ground 

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Nancy and I were in our seats on our tour bus traveling through the pleasant pastures of the rural Somerset region of southwest England a few days ago,

having just left Glastonbury, believed by many to be the home of the country’s earliest church and the legendary burial place of the legendary King Arthur.  We were headed for the ancient Roman city of Bath, but hoping that perhaps the bus might stop just for a moment in a small community where ancient pre-Britons erected a stone circle contemporaneous with the better-known Stonehenge about 4,000 years ago.

Specialists in place names (the science of toponymics) suggest the name of the community conveys a sense of “mud, earth, clay, soil,” or perhaps is a reference to “earth houses” that actually are Bronze Age barrows, or burial hills.

Unfortunately, we were on a tight schedule and the bus could not stop so Nancy and I could jump out and have our pictures taken at the city limits sign reading:

PRIDDY

We have some camera shots through the bus windows as we passed by.

This is sheep country near the scenic Mendip Hills.  In 1348, the infamous Black Death that produced several plagues in England, forced the annual sheep show to be moved from what we would call the county seat of Wells, to Priddy.  It was continued until 2013 and eventually abandoned as unsustainable.

This also is holy ground, not just to those named Priddy but perhaps to all who call themselves Christian.

Archaeologists have found Roman lead ingots in the area dating to about 49 CE and others have found evidence of lead working as far back as 300 BCE.  Local legend has it that a tin trader from what we now call the Holy Land, with his young nephew, stayed at Priddy.  The trader was Joseph of Arimathea, uncle of Jesus who—legend says—traveled with him during his “lost years” in the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ life.

The legend has been memorialized by the great English poet, William Blake, who asked in his poem, “Jerusalem:”

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

 

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

 

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

 

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green & pleasant Land.

You will recognize the poem, perhaps, as the source of the title of an Academy Award-winning movie from 1981. Set to music, it is considered England’s unofficial second national anthem, often sun as one of the final numbers during the last night of the annual Promenade Concerts, held at Royal Albert Hall.

(7) BBC Proms – Hubert Parry: Jerusalem (orch. Elgar) – YouTube

There is scholarly doubt about the Jesus part of the story and it is felt that the song is based on older recorded account that Joseph of Arimathea brought Christianity to ancient Britain after the death of Jesus.

Fourteenth Century records claim the Glastonbury Abbey, now in ruins, was founded by Joseph of Arimathea.  Legend has it that Joseph brought with him the Holy Grail, the vessel used to collect Christ’s blood.

We had explored the mesmerizing ruins of Glastonbury Abbey that morning.  We explored the remains of the Roman baths in Bath and had lunch before betting back on our bus and moving on to the next destination.

The more I look at this picture, the more I want to be that person on the bench.

We did not have time to learn if anyone named Priddy still lives in the area. But we know that the first Priddy in this country came from nearby Cornwall. Captain Robert Priddy was a privateer—the owner of a boat that he used on behalf of his country to fight Pirates on the Spanish Main (an area comprising the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea), for which he received a land grand in Virginia about 1650 from Queen Elizabeth I.

So much history.  So much legend. We were immersed by it that day.  Glastonbury and Bath seized us, as evidenced by the large number of photographs we have that put us back there with arresting images. And in the midst of the record of that dramatic day are a few  hurried glimpses    of a town with our name.

That’s life, isn’t it?   A series of glimpses and then we move on to the next day, the next adventure, the next tour through life.   But at least, we were there. At least we were among the fortunate ones who have had those glimpses.

And we took a lot of pictures, even if we didn’t get one that we wish we could have—the city green that includes a view of the 13th Century Church of St. Lawrence and its medieval altar frontal.  .[

We are grateful for what we did get.  And if that’s all this lifetime afford us, being within those sacred grounds with centuries of family links will have been enough.

 

 

Before We Were What We Are

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For most of us, particularly those in mid-Missouri, the Lake of the Ozarks and all of its allure has always been here.  It’s hard to imagine when the Osage River wound through the valleys of the ancient mountains and when generations of people lived and died along its banks.  One long-ago summer night while going door-to-door selling encyclopedias in Columbia I knocked on the door of a man who had been a riverboat pilot on the Osage at a time when he could take his boat all the way to Warsaw.  It was the only door I knocked on that night because of the stories he told me. It’s a shame the young encyclopedia salesmen didn’t carry a recorder in those days.

(Actually, there wasn’t such a thing as a portable recorder, at least not one that could record a couple of hours of storytelling back then.)

Let’s go farther back, to 1931, and a time when Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor best known for Mount Rushmore, came to Jefferson City to testify in the lawsuit of the Snyder family against Union Electric.  The Snyder family owned Ha Ha Tonka, now a state park, and they charged UE had damaged the intrinsic beauty of their property to the tune of one-million dollars by building Bagnell Dam and backing up Osage River water into their area.

(Kansas City businessman Robert M. Snyder had fallen in love with the location early in the 20th Century and built the mansion. He never got to see if finished because be became one of Missouri’s first traffic fatalities, in 1906.)

Borglum came to Missouri to testify on behalf of the Snyder estate.  “My first impression of Ha Ha Tonka was that it was more like some of the ancient estates in England than anything I had seen in this country…I don’t know anything that has the dramatic possibilities and the permanent beauty that this place has,” he said when he arrived. He said the “very soul” of the place had been materially decreased by the lake.

“Gutzon Borglum, famous sculptor and connoisseur of beauty, sees a future for America’s Ozarks that is more promising than the wildest dreams of this alluring region’s inhabitants,” reported R. H. Slighton for the Jefferson City Daily Capital News on December 6.  “The people of the Ozarks, he believes, have inherited a blessing from the hand of the Creator that possesses a fabulous value.  The world as yet knows little of it, he believes, but once it is brought to their realization, and the need for what the Ozarks give increases the events that follow, he feels, will be amazing.”

Borglum “gazed out of his hotel window here one misty, wet day last week and peered into the future,” said the article.  And this is what he saw—or foresaw.

He spoke slowly, deliberately, carefully and precise.  We live in an amazing age. I can sit in my room and speak to New York, Chicago, Portland, any city in the country. I do it almost every day. What could be more amazing?  A few years ago I was driving across the country down into the Southwest. I asked along the way where the Ozarks were. ‘Oh, they’re off down that way,’ people would tell me. ‘Off there somewhere’ but no one seemed to know just where.  At. St.Louis they told me I would have to follow the highway and go around them.” 

He foresaw a time when the Ozarks would be what people were looking for.  And highways would take them there.

Where is it going? It is going away from the tenements and smoky cities.

When I started the Rushmore Memorial project in the Black Hills, I selected for my home a place about twenty-five miles from where my work would be. I did it unconsciously despite the fact that I knew I would be making from two to three tips almost every day. Now, what does that mean? With hard surfaced roads the trip is only a matter of a few minutes with an automobile. In the Ozarks, it will be the same. 

The time will come when people will be living within a fifty-mile radius of Jefferson City and drive in every day to their place of business. That time is not far off.

He thought the skyscraper was out of date. He thought people would tire of crowded cities and seek out quieter places such as the Ozarks.  He knew that “common earth, rocks, trees, and grass,” as Slighton put it, might be worth billions to the city dweller seeking relief from the dirt, smoke, and noise.  He used New York’s Central Park as an example.

Why won’t they sell it?  Because it is worth more to the people of New York City as a place just to walk through in the evening when their day’s work is done.  Borglum recalled a man the previous summer caught with a half-gallon bucket full of Central Park soil leaving the park. He told the judge he needed it for a flower in his penthouse apartment, an argument Borglum used to emphasize the human longing for an out-of-doors. Good roads, he argued, would provide an answer for that longing.

The Snyders lost their lawsuit.  Their great mansion in Camden County became a lodge where visitors could look out over the misty Ozark mountains on the other side of the dammed Osage River.  The house was gutted by a fire in 1942, its stone walls still standing reminiscent of Europe’s bombed-out churches after the Second World War.  It took three-quarters of a century before the state finally made Ha Ha Tonka a state park.

“Already the backwoods stage of the hill country is passing,” wrote Slighton in 1931.     

It’s what the whole world wants.

And what would “the whole world” do when it got to the Ozarks?  “Mr. Borglum believes the Ozarks are ideal for private estates and that before so very long they will be springing up with their private stock of game comparable to the old estates in England,” said Slighton.

We thought that mix of foreshadowing and philosophizing would be interesting to consider these nine decades later.

Forty years or so after Borglum granted that interview in the Jefferson City hotel room, one of the most passionate writers about the need to seek the out-of-doors, Edward Abbey, said in his book Desert Solitaire, “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.” But then he noted the contradiction of people seeking that “necessity” when he continued: “A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

The hard surface roads have, indeed, taken the city folks to the Ozarks in search of something basic that cannot be satisfied by the city life. But let us hope there always will be places in the Ozarks where roads don’t need to go.

(Photo Credits: Missouri State Parks, 417 Magazine (color aerial view), National Park Service–Borglum, in light suit, with son Lincoln, in tram inspecting George Washington, Edward Abbey at Arches National Monument)

King Lear and the Convicted Felon

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A Shakespearian tragedy, some are calling the Trump conviction, not noting the irony of associating someone such as our former president with the talents of a great author about whom he likely has never read, at least with any understanding or appreciation.

One definition of a literary tragedy is a work in which the main character has “a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.”

That pretty well matches the main character of the drama we are witnessing.   Unfortunately, it also describes many of his acolytes who by their support of him are becoming characters like him.

Which of Shakespeare’s 17th Century tragic characters most resemble the convicted felon/tar baby that many political hopefuls are eager to get stuck to with increased firmness—an old man who rewards those most loyal to him and in doing so is taught the hard way that rewarding loyalty has its penalties?

King Lear is the story of a old man who wants to pass on his estate to the one of his three daughters who loves him best. Two daughters tolerate him at best but flatter him to win his favor. The third daughter, the one he actually loves the most, thinks he knows the feeling is mutual and therefore doesn’t butter him up as her two sisters do.  He vainly falls for the adulation of the two, cuts out the one he loves the most, and gives his estate to the manipulative sisters. He alternates staying with the two winners who treat him badly. As he grows more addled, he is left a vagrant.  Too late he realizes his mistake in favoring the two manipulative sisters but he cannot correct it because his beloved youngest daughter dies.

One of those who stays loyal to Lear is the Earl of Gloucester, who muses in a late section of the play, “’Tis the times’ plague when mad men lead the blind.”

Writer Lawrence Noel interprets the line this way:

The time’s plague refers to it being a problem of the time or era. Referring to it as a plague suggests that it spreads widely and quickly. We might even think of it as being contagious.

Blind people relied on others for guidance, especially in unfamiliar territory. Madmen are insane and cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Putting those elements together suggests that the audience is being told that one of the problems of the time is that those who must trust others to provide them with safe passage in the world are being led by those who do not see the world clearly or in its own state of reality, even for themselves.

As an excerpt, it reflects an attitude about the nature of politics that resonates with modern readers and playgoers in that faith in the clarity of our political leaders’ vision of the world has suffered some setbacks of late. They may assure the common people that we are blind to the realities which only they can see and so we must accept their leadership if we want to go anywhere new. If the leader’s visions are distorted or unhealthy, we are likely to suffer for them.

“When mad men lead the blind.”  The line is sometimes misquoted but that’s what Shakespeare wrote.

Writer and playwright Charlotte Ahlin, who was raised by two Shakespearean actors, has written, “His plays are surprisingly (and sometimes upsettingly) still relevant to our daily lives.” Some of the reactions to the hush money verdict verify her contention.

Many of our political leaders or political leader-wannabes are (in some cases) disappointing us in accusing the Biden justice system of persecuting our former president strictly for partisan political purposes and encouraging the public to ignore that the supposedly weaponized Justice Department is prosecuting two members of Biden’s party—Senator Bob Menendez and Congressman Henry Cuellar, AND that a holdover Trump appointee in the Justice Department is prosecuting Presidential Son Hunter Biden.

The hypocrisy—-

The depth of the betrayal of their integrity—

Their lack of political courage—-

Their disregard for the title of “public servant” that they have sacrificed in pursuit of power—

are appalling.

The damage they are doing to public confidence in one of the most important institutions that define the United States as an example of a republican democracy—a trial by a jury of one’s peers—seems to mean nothing to them.  They are willing to become hostages to the political whims of a man of a kind they likely would not want their daughters to marry. They kowtow to a king who demands to be flattered.

They are gladly capitalizing on leading the blind—the people who don’t know and don’t want to think—in a concerted effort to let our former president hold on to power regardless of the damage he has openly announced he will do.

Listen again to what many of them said about him after January 6.

Listen again to what many of them said about him in their presidential primary campaigns, brief though they were.

Listen to what he has said about them or about members of their families.

Look at the list of those who he promised in 2016 to hire (only “the best people”) for his administration and count the number who have faced criminal charges/financial ruin or jail sentences for their loyalty—or who have written books exposing his machinations.

No president in all of American history has had so many books by his once-closest associates written about his personal and politica l failings.

And wonder why those who are now attacking our legal system as weaponized and corrupt feel they have to read from the script (look for words such as “witch hunt” or “banana republic”) he peddles on social media or during obsequious interviews.

And then, ask yourself this:

Have you ever served on a jury or do you know anyone who has?

This bunch is suggesting the people such as you and your friends, who assumed the responsibility as jurors in his recent trial, somehow connived with the Justice Department to politically persecute this man who has openly claimed to be above the law. Anyone who has been on a jury, or who has been called for consideration to be on a jury, should be insulted by what these bed partners of the now-convicted felon are saying.

If Donald Trump was treated unfairly in his trial, it was the fault of his attorneys and, perhaps himself; there are a lot of people who say the lawyers crafted their defense of him at least partly because of his demands.

He had his chance to claim in court what he loves to claim outside of the court. As he has in the past, he said at the start of the trial that he would love to testify.  But in the end, he chickened out. Again.  He could have told his side of the story but, as he has done in the past, he did not.

—-Because he would have had to take an oath to tell the truth and he is incapable of doing so.

His lawyers helped pick the jury. To refresh your memory, here’s the kind of people they were, thanks to a compilation by NBC News.

Juror 1: A man who lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He is married, likes to do “anything outdoorsy,” and gets news from The New York Times, Fox News and MSNBC.

Juror 2: A man who works in investment banking, follows Twitter as well as Truth Social posts from Trump and said, “I don’t have any beliefs that might prevent me from being fair or impartial.”

Juror 3: A young man who has lived in Chelsea for five years, works as an attorney in corporate law, and likes to hike and run. He gets news from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Google.

Juror 4: A man who’s a security engineer and likes woodworking and metalworking.

Juror 5: A young woman who is a Harlem resident and works as a teacher. She lives with her boyfriend, loves writing, theater and traveling. She gets news from Google and TikTok and listens to podcasts on relationships and pop culture.

Juror 6: A young woman who lives in Chelsea and works as a software engineer. She gets news from The New York Times, Google, Facebook and TikTok.

Juror 7: A man who lives on the Upper East Side and works as attorney as a civil litigator. He enjoys spending time in the outdoors and gets his news from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the Washington Post.

Juror 8: A man who’s retired but worked for a major wealth manager. He said he enjoys skiing, fly fishing and yoga.

Juror 9: A woman who is a speech therapist, gets news from CNN and likes reality TV podcasts.

Juror 10: A man who works in commerce, reads The New York Times and listens to podcasts on behavioral psychology.

Juror 11: A woman who works as a product development manager and watches late-night news and reads Google, business and fashion news.

Juror 12: A woman who is a physical therapist who likes running and tennis and listening to podcasts on sports and faith.

Alternate 1: A woman who works as an asset manager and likes to run, hang out with her friends and eat.

Pretty formidable list of persecutors who are tools of the Justice Department, don’t you think, especially since this trial was in a state court not a federal court where the Justice Department has a role?

The fact that it took this varied group only about eleven hours to unanimously convict our former president on every one of the THIRTY-FOUR charges speaks volumes for the strength of the case against him, the presentation of the evidence that supported all of those charges, and the inability of Trump and his lawyers to induce even one of the twelve to hang the jury.

There was nothing wrong with the justice system that day.

How strange it is that those sycophants, including several of our Missouri statewide candidates who also have swallowed gallons of the Trump Kool-Aid, to now expect a flawed justice system weaponized to get him and him alone to later exonerate a  president who tried during his own term to weaponize the Department of Justice.

Mad men. And some women leading “the blind,” people who don’t want to know but will blindly accept what they are told.  And the mad men are happy to lead them, happy to tell them.  And why?  Because they want power and lack the integrity to win it on their own standards.

They have, instead, attached themselves to arguably the least honest man in the country who spouts lies and lies and lies. And too many of our political leaders or leader wannabes are disgracing themselves in joining him in trying to disgrace those responsible citizens who fulfilled a sacred role in our society during his trial.

They have become dangerous in their service to an old king who thinks one-way loyalty is his privilege. They are the mad men.  We must not be blind to them.

Those who refuse to be blind can make sure they pay a price for their hypocrisy, their lack of integrity, honesty, and of courage when we vote in August and November.

 

All 34

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My God!

The enormity of a jury’s verdicts in a New York courtroom yesterday is difficult to grasp whether one is strongly anti-Trump or whether one is violently pro-Trump.  Years from now, generations unborn today will read in their history books of yesterday’s verdict as cold fact with no way to understand the depth of the national emotions triggered by a jury ruling that a former President of the United States is guilty of 34 felonies.

Thirty-four.

The number will never be the same, just as 9-11 was transformed into something beyond  a numerical value, just as 1-6 is a waymark in American history.

Some hoped the jury would issue 34 NOT guily verdicts; many—perhaps most—thought at least SOME guilty verdicts would come.   But all 34?

It is stunning.  And although there will be appeals, it seems impossible that all 34 convictions will be reversed.

Donald Trump can and will—already has—repeated his attacks on the judge, the prosecutor, the jury.

But twelve people, chosen in the historically-honored system of picking a jury of fellow citizens, have convincted him of 34 crimes.

What must it be like away from his normal public bluster when this  77-year old man realizes  that for the first time in his life, he has not been able to control or to ignore the responsibility for his actions?  In the privacy of his own rooms and with his own thoughts, what must this overwhelming rebuke of the way he has run his life be doing to him?  He may rage in public and in private but surely he knows, deep down, many of those he has bent to his will are now realizing his blood is in the water and they must transform themselves into sharks for their own self-preservation.

The bus is waiting.  How many of those he thought he controlled will decide it’s time he is the one thrown under it?

Much is made that he is the first president to face criminal charges and now the first to be convicted, a statement though often repeated has no practical effect.  Once just a frequently-spoken statement, now it is a statement of national tragedy.

And what shall be done with him, this man who has flouted decency, honor, and the law throughout his life of self-seeking power?

If the convictions are upheld he should go to prison, whatever form prison takes.

Prison for Donald Trump could mean being cut off from public participation in events, to being relegated to a world without spotlight, a world of tightly-scheduled activities from waking up to eating a common menu, to being isolated from public exposure, restricted perhas to a couple of rooms at Mar-a-Lago where visitors are allowed only at certain times and certain days.  His greatest punishment could be imposed insignificance in contemporary times.

Yesterday was a day that instantly became history and we knew it the second we heard of the verdicts.  For both those who hoped for a different result as well as those who hoped for the result that came, yesterday was a “My God!” day.

Today we will try to grasp what has just happened, what we have experienced. Maybe for some of us as well as for him, it might take more than just today.

 

Some Things Are Harder Than Others

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This has been a long and tiring week with a lot of travel and not enough time to meet some domestic responsibilities or compose some elegant verbiage, so we’re going to just pass along this piece of philosophy—a poster my friend Karen Burns (she and her husband Rick Gevers are my hosts on racing weekends in Indianapolis) keeps at her home office desk.

In these turbulent times, some things are harder than others.

Brian Andreas is an Iowa native author and artist.  If you want to know more about him, check Wikipedia.

And if you’re in Indianapolis, drop by the Zoo. It’s a really nice, though small, place that’s doing some interesting things. That’s where Karen works. It’s a great small zoo where I have had close encounters with a sloth, some kangaroos, some free-flying exotic birds, and where there’s a great Orangutan facility.

She gave me a t-shirt a few years ago, when the new facility opened, that proclaims humans are genetically 96.4% Orangutans.

National Geographic told me a few years ago that I also am 1.5% Neanderthal.

Such information suggests you and I should be a little less arrogant about our self-assured Homo Sapien-ness.

Sometimes it’s awfully hard to love the world we superior beings wake up to every morning. But let’s try.

This Was a Just a Farm Once. This is About What Grew There 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

This was farmland once.  Flat. Open. Three hundred-twenty acres owned by a family named Pressley. The city was five miles, a few hours’ buggy ride, to the east and south.  But then a guy named Carl Fisher showed up—this was late in 1908—and with three partners bought the place for $72,000.

In time, the railroad would bring passenger cars loaded with people to this place. In time, automobiles would navigate the muddy roads to the countryside. Eventually there would be paved streets and Pressley farm and the agricultural land around it would turn into a small town and people would build hundreds of homes and businesses and schools on farmland around the farmland where Fischer and partners James Allison, Arthur Newby and Frank Wheeler had invested an additional quarter-million pre-World War I dollars into their new business venture.

Four years after buying the Pressley farm, the four partners laid out a planned residential/industrial community that would not rely on horses and instead would emphasize the automobile.  Many of the residents would work at a chemical company and an engine manufacturing company.

They named their town for their business venture.  Speedway. It’s now a town of about 14,000 people entirely surrounded by Indianapolis, just across Indianapolis’ Sixteenth Street from the first race track in the world to bear the word “speedway” in its name.

The race track these four men built covers 253 acres, not counting the areas around the track that cover hundreds of acres more and are used for parking, camping, tail gaiting,  partying, concession stands and 14 holes of a golf course (the other four holes are on the infield).

And every May, this former farm field becomes a shrine.

Various comparisons have been made to show how massive the development of the site by Fisher and friends has become.  It’s big enough, it is said, to hold SEVENTEEN Yankee Stadiums.  It’s big enough to hold all fourteen Big Ten Football stadiums.  Put another way, says the IndyCar Series, it could hold EIGHT nationally and internationally-famous sites;

Trains no longer bring thousands of spectators to the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”  There are wide, multi-laned streets and nearby intestate highways and on a few days each year those streets and roads become huge traffic funnels pouring tens of thousands of vehicles ranging from beater cars to multi-million dollar luxury motorhomes to this 253 acres.

A crowd about forty or fifty-thousand people larger than the entire population of St. Louis descended overnight on this area, drivers and passengers often stalled in enormous traffic jams for three or four hours, the smart ones turning off their vehicle’s engines because they weren’t going to move a vehicle’s length for several long minutes.

Only a few could park inside the track.  The front yards of residential areas with their two-lane streets around the track became private rental parking areas for race fans. Huge open fields turned into parking areas by today’s Speedway owners were packed.

Knowing they would face all of this, they came.

Knowing very bad weather was moving in from the west, they came.

Knowing they might not see a race because of another storm system was behind the first one, still they came. A hundred thousand.  Then two.  Then three.  And then as many as fifty thousand more.

And then came the lightning. And the rain.

The grandstands were ordered cleared with tens of thousand of people taking refuge under the concrete floors of the giant infield front-stretch grandstands and in the tunnels under the track and other safe places.

All those people. In those crowded spaces. Many of them brought coolers full of food and drink because the race was going to be underway at lunch time.

Hungry people.

Thirsty people.

Wet people

People knowing the weather might mean no race at all that day.

And you know something?

We saw no fights.  Nobody got stabbed or shot (at least nobody that we’ve heard about in these two days after all of this).

345,000 people, one out of every one-thousand people in this entire United States, jammed into 253 acres of damp disappointment.

And nothing happened while nothing was happening.

Then it quit raining.  And the track-drying machines came out, marvelous pieces of engineering designed only to transform two and a half miles of wet asphalt into dry asphalt.

It is in situations such as this that people-watchers have a field day.

The fans looked for ways to entertain themselves before the race could start—including appropriately-attired folks rooting for children in a footrace near the souvenir stands, including a volunteer flag man at the finish line.

(The track is nicknamed “The Brickyard” because the pavement for the race for many years was millions of bricks.  Today the finish line is a yard of bricks.)

(Incidentally, the real flag man for the race, known as the Chief Starter, is Aaron Likens and he has just brought out a book called Playing in Traffic, My Journey From Autism Diagnosis to the Indy 500 Flagstand.)

Patriotism is always big at automobile races.

And coveralls with the Speedway logo accessorized with “gold” chains, again with the famous winged wheel logo that has in one form or another represented the great old track from its earliest days.

After years of personal experience people watching at the Speedway, we can note that you have seen only the most moderate of outfits typical of the events. (We’ll do a commentary on going-to-the-car-races clothing in a later entry.)

Driver Pato O’Ward, one of the young guns and one of the favorites, entertained fans by signing hats and shirts dropped from the grandstands into the garage area.

Or chatting with fans—

But the intense work paid off on the track.  The asphalt turned a lighter gray and it was time to go racing, time for 32 men and one woman to hurtle at 230 miles an hour into a near-flat left turn, the first of 800 left turns they would make before the finish, fighting to get through each of those turns ahead of the other cars.

The skies remained grey; although the weather outlook brightened; maybe the entire race could be run before the next storm.  Time to roll out the cars In the end, only one car would complete the challenge of making those 800 left turns ahead of all others in one of the most dramatic races in the 108-year history of the Indianapolis 500.

Time on the grid for a few moments with family—Josef Newgarden showed his two-year old son, Kota, the “office” where he would spend the next three hours or so defending his championship of the 500.

The race lasted one minute and eleven seconds short of three hours  and featured 49 lead changes among 18 drivers, more than half of the starting field, the last lead change coming time when Kota’s dad broke O’Ward’s heart by passing him on the outside of the next-to last turn and holding on to the finish.

It’s Newgarden’s second straight 500 win, both coming with a last lap pass—his victim last year was the 2022 winner, Marcus Ericsson—who had held off a last lap charge from O’Ward that year.

O’Ward remained slumped in his car for a time after the finish, his helmet still on, admitting later, “It was wet in there.”

Newgarden is the sixth driver to win two of these races in a row.  He will try in 2025 to become the first to do a threepeat.

Helio Castroneves almost did it after winning the race in his first two years and finishing second in 2003.  Al Unser Senior also finished second after winning in 1970-71.

Bill Vukovich came with eight laps of winning in 1952 before a part of his steering failed, returned to win in ’52 and ’53 and died while leading on the 57th lap of the 1955 race.

Wilbur Shaw came close to winning not three but FIVE straight.  He won in 1937, was second in 1938, won the next two years and crashed while leading with 48 laps to go in 1941. That was the year a fire roared through the garage area.  It is believed some of the water used to fight the fire washed chalked words “use last’ from an out-of-balance wheel that collapsed, causing his wreck.

But we’ll have to wait a year to see how that pans out.

Thousands of fans remained in the stands as evening clouds thickened and the light grew dimmer while Newgarden and his wife took the traditional victory lap in the pace car then kissed the bricks and went on to celebrate until the late hours.

Newgarden’s victory was worth almost $4.3 million of the nearly $18.5 million in prize money. O’Ward got more than one million for being second.

Thousands of the fans were deadlocked for hours in their parking lots as traffic oozed  back to the nearby interstates or moved through downtown Indianapolis.  This reporter’s car didn’t turn a wheel for more than three hours in the parking lot and was another hour, at least, before getting to his overnight accommodations—with a stop at a gas station because he was down to his last thirty miles of reserve fuel and would have run out had he not shut off his engine for at least 45 minutes of the three hours it took to get to his parking space in the morning and never firing it up again until seeing other cars start to move.

By Monday evening the former farm field was quiet and empty, except for volunteers earning money for their groups by picking up tons and tons of trash left behind by the one-out-of-one-thousand Americans who found themselves packed into those 253 acres where one of the nation’s greatest holidays was celebrated.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR star Kyle Larson left Indianapolis as the race’s Rookie of the Year but disappointed with his 18th place finish.  Larson was among the five fastest qualifiers in his first IndyCar ride, and was running sixth when he drove too fast into the pits with seventy laps left. He had to do a drive-through penalty that set him too far back too late in the race to recover all the positions he had lost.

Still, he was only 9.4846 seconds behind Newgarden at the end of the 500 miles and averaged 167.6 mph. Newgarden averaged 167.8.

Larson had planned to run the 500 and then jet to Charlotte for NASCAR’s 600-mile traditional Memorial Day race. But bad weather, including rain and lightning, caused NASCAR to decide to end the race after 249 of 400 scheduled laps with Christopher Bell declared the winner.  Brad Keselowski racked up another second-place finish, his third runner-up finish of the year.  Larson had arrived at the Charlotte Speedway in  uniform and helmet on just as the race was stopped because of rain.  NASCAR determined restarting the race would make it end at about 3 a.m., Monday, at best and decided to call it a night. Larson never got to turn a lap for the second half of his “double.”

But there is next year.  The deal between Hendrick Motorsports and McLaren racing in IndyCar us a two-year contract.

0-0-0

After the Charlotte race, former NASCAR champion Tony Stewart and his partner, Gene Haas, announced they would be shutting down their team at the end of the year.  Stewart-Haas fields four cars in the series this year but will sell all four of its franchises for several million dollars.  The team has two championships and 69 victories. Stewart is driving a full National Hot Rod Association schedule (His wife is an NHRA competitor) and Haas wants more time to spend with his Formula 1 team.

(FORMULA 1)—The Grand Prix of Monaco is the third major race held on America’s Memorial Day Weekend.  Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc became the first Monaco native to win there.

Now the stick and ball sports that usually lead these entries;

(MIZ)—The Missouri Women’s softball team lost the last game of the super regional tournament to Duke Sunday. Duke goes to the world series. The Tigers come home with a 48-14 season record. (ZOU)

(BASEBALL)—The Cardinals are heating up as the warmer weather settles in.  They won 8 of their last ten after Sunday’s weekend wrap up and had moved in top third place and were only one game under .500.  Sonny Gray is up to 7-2 now.

The Royals continue to be the prime candidate for comeback team of the year and were 13 games above .500 before last night’s game against the Twins. The Royals didn’t get their 34th win last year until August.

The Royals had not had an American League Player of the Week since Vinnie Pasquantino in August, two years ago.  Bobby Witt broke that dry spell last week when he went 10 for 26 in six games with four homers and 11 RBIs. One of those homers was his longest ever, 468 feet.

(HAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks  dropped to 6-3 last weekend as the Arlington Renegades turned three interceptions and two fumbles into a 36-22 victory.  The ‘Hawks are still in the running for the top playoff spot in the XFL Division, though.

Quarterback A. J. McCarron missed his second game because of a bum ankle. He’s considered day-to-day.

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

A “Day” in the Life of the Senate

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This Senate Journal for Monday, May 13, 2024 also is the journal for Tuesday and Wednesday because of a record filibuster, led by Democrats demanding so-called “ballot candy” be removed from a resolution saying no constitutional amendment could be adopted unless it carried in a majority of the state’s eight congressional districts, even if the overall vote was favorable. Democrats, already opposed to the resolution, objected to language added by the House duplicating existing law but making the proposal more appealing to the public—the “ballot candy” opponents wanted removed.

This might be dry reading to those who are not as immersed in state government as your obedient servant has been for most of his life.  We are doing this to place these events in a better record than the Senate Journal provides.

The journal for the “day” that turned into the “fifty-hour filibuster” led by the ten Democrats in the 34-member Senate is covered on pages 1059-1061 of the daily journal (the daily journals are compiled at the end of the session into one large volume, thus these page numbers pick up with the journal page number of the preceding day).  The rest of “Monday’s” journal is made up of messages from the House telling the Senate it has approved its own bills, has changed Senate bills and needs Senate approval of the changes, requests for conference committees to work out differences between the two chambers on various bills, and other routine legislative business.

Because the House of Representatives’ rules limit debate time, filibusters do not occur there.  But the Senate has no such restrictions and a parliamentary procedure called “moving the previous question,” which—if approved—immediately ends debate and calls for a vote, is seldom used.

Because the journal is a record of actions, not a by-word recording of the debates, the only indication that a filibuster occurred is the listings of the names of those who presided over the chamber at various times. The number of names is an indication of the extensive length of the filibuster.  The fact that there are no journals for Tuesday and Wednesday is another indication.

Legislative “days” are not calendar or clock-determined.  A legislative day ends with adjournment. In this case, a “Monday” lasted until Wednesday on the calendar while, for journal purposes, the legislative day was still Monday.  Adjournment in this case did not occur until some Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats in sending the bill back to the House with a request for a conference.  The House on Thursday rejected the Senate’s request, telling the Senate to pass the House Committee Substitute.   Senate leadership knew that the minority Democrats would resume their filibuster if the bill was returned to the floor unchanged and would run out the clock at 6 p.m. on calendar Friday.  Because there was no use spending the last day of the session in a filibuster, the Senate adjourned after a ten-minute session Friday.

We have consulted the Senate archived recording of this long “Monday” to ascertain the exact amount of time the filibuster consumed.  We have done this because this event was unprecedented in Missouri legislative history and smashed a previous unprecedented 41-hour filibuster a few days earlier by the right-wing Senate Freedom Caucus.

Monday, May 13, 2024:   Sponsor Mary Elizabeth Coleman moved that the Senate adopt House Committee Substitute for Senate Substitute Number 4 for Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Joint Resolutions 74, 48, 59, 61, and 83.  That sounds complicated but it represents the path the bill had taken to that point.

There were five similar resolutions on this issue filed in the Senate.  A Senate Committee combined those resolutions into one but not before the entire Senate had debated the bill and three substitute versions were voted down, leaving the fourth that gained enough voter for passage.

The amended and combined Senate resolution went to the House where a House Committee substituted its version. The House passed the revised bill.  The changes had to be approved by the Senate before the proposition could be put on a statewide ballot.

Monday, May 13 was the first day of the last week of the 2024 legislative session. Democrats, outnumbered more than 2-1, knew the clock was their greatest friend when it came to getting this proposition changed or killed.  They launched a filibuster that blocked a vote that surely would have sent the issue to the November ballot.

Our legislature records its debates and archives them.  We went to the May 10 audio journal and tracked how much time was spent on this bill in each day.  The Senate archive recording resets to 0:00 at the end of each 24 hours.

Day One, Monday, May 13.

0:00:00—The Senate begins its “day” with a prayer from Reverend Stephen George.

0:04:52—Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman moves Senate approval of  HCS/SS4/SCS/SJR 74, 48, 59, 61 and 83.

0:06:15—Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo makes substitute motion to send the bill back to the House and to ask for a conference committee to work out the differences between the House version, which had “ballot candy” added to it, and the Sente version.  This is the beginning of the filibuster.

“Monday” part one (Monday-Tuesday on the traditional calendar): 24 hours, of which 23 hours, 53 minutes and 45 seconds were spent filibustering the resolution. Running filibuster time: 23:53:45.

“Monday” part two (Tuesday-Wednesday on the traditional calendar): all 24 hours were involved in the filibuster. Running filibuster time: 47:53:45

“Monday” part three (Wednesday on the traditional calendar); 02:15:36  Roll call vote begins.  Roll call results announced: 02:18:06. The motion to send bill back to the House passed 18-13, with eight Republicans crossing party lines. The filibuster is official ended.

02:24:41: The Senate adjourns until Thursday morning.  “Monday,” the longest known “day” in Missouri Senate history, has finally come to an end.

Total filibuster time: 50:11:51

Total time of “Monday, May 10, 2024” in the Missouri Senate: 50:24:41.

Miserable, Just Miserable

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The Missouri Constitution establishes a definite date each year for adjournment of the Missouri General Assembly.  This was one of those years when adjournment couldn’t happen soon enough.

This miserable session will be remembered as the session that a handful of Republican senators calling themselves the Freedom Caucus ran into the ground because a majority of their party didn’t buy their demands.  They accused the majority of their majority party of being RINOS, a nickname our former president likes to apply to any Republican who does not love him. There is considerable reason to consider far-out clusters such as this as the real Republicans in Name Only.

This will be remembered as the Session of the Filibuster.  The Freedom Caucus kicked off the session with a lengthy discussion of Senate procedure, filibustered for eleven hours trying to force colleagues to act quickly on bills making it harder for citizens to create laws through initiative petition. That led President Pro Team Caleb Rowden to strip four members of the Freedom Caucus of their committee chairmanships and (this seemed to be the most terrible punishment to some of them) took away their parking spaces in the Capitol basement.  Senators Bill Eigel, the ringleader of the caucus, Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Andrew Koenig lost their prestigious positions, after which Eigel stopped action in the Senate for four more hours so he could question several Senators who seemed to support Rowden’s action.

Rowden calculated in late January that the Senate had been in floor session for 17 hours and 52 minutes in 2024. He said the Freedom Caucus had filibustered “things of no consequence whatsoever relative to a piece of policy” for 16 hours and 45 minutes of that time.

And it only got worse. But in the end, the filibuster bit the Freedom Caucus—uh—in the end.

As the session reached May and the crucial last couple of weeks, including the week in which the state budget had to be approved, the caucus stopped things cold for 41 hours—believed to be the longest filibuster in Missouri legislative history—because its priorities were not THE priority of Senate leadership.

But that filibuster record was to be broken in the final week when Democrats and some Republicans fed up with the Freedom Caucus’s behavior got in the way of final approval of the resolution changing the way the state constitution can be changed. Those who had lived by the filibuster died by the filibuster.

The final filibuster lasted FIFTY hours and change. It succeeded where the Freedom Caucus belligerency failed. The Freedom Caucus’ bull-in-a-china shop philosophy of government was repudiated by a Senate that seemed to, in this case at least, rediscovered bipartisanship. But the damage done by this group could not be reversed.

The 2024 legislative session was the least productive in modern memory—or even ancient memory, for that matter.  Only 28 non-budget bills were passed.

That beats the record of 31 in the 2020 session.  But remember, that was the Pandemic Session when the legislature did not meet for several days then operated on a limited basis for several other days.

Eigel disavowed responsibility for that miserable record.  “A lot of bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the people standing behind me,” he said in a post-session Freedom Caucus press conference. His words probably didn’t carry any water with Senators and Representatives who had worked hard and conscientiously on bills that would have done GOOD things only to see them disappear into the ongoing mud fight in the Senate led by Eigel and his band.

Eigel has dreams of becoming Governor.  Denny Hoskins thinks he’d be a peachy Secretary of State. Andrew Koenig thinks being State Treasurer would be wonderful. Rick Brattin just hopes to get elected to another term in the Senate.

There are some folks who have watched them this year who hope they still don’t have parking places in Jefferson City in 2025.

The 50-hour filibuster deserves a closer look. We’ve taken that look to establish the exact length of it so that future observers will know when they have witnessed an even more regrettable example.

Incidentally, it is believed the longest filibuster by one person in Missouri history was Senator Matt Bartle’s futile effort to block some gubernatorial appointments in 2007. He held the floor for seventeen hours.