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Sat, July 31

2001—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sends a memo to Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith: “We ought to have on our radar screen oil—Venezuela, the Caucasus, Indonesia—anywhere we think it may exist and how it fits into our strategies.” 1999—Eugene Shoemaker becomes the first Earthling to have his cremated remains interred on the moon. 1996—Gerald Ford and George H.[H.] Walker Bush uphold the dignity of their former office by speaking for pay before followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. 1974—Richard Nixon’s former advisor John Ehrlichman gets a free five-year stay at a felons’ country club. 1972—Tom Eagleton withdraws his candidacy; the public is shocked. 1971—The …

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Sununu Signs Memory Hole Into Law

Dear Sir: There has been a great deal of debate and confusion regarding the prohibition of teaching of so-called “divisive concepts” by schools, state agencies and state contractors. The “divisive concepts” teaching prohibition was included in the budget trailer bill (HB 2) signed by Governor Sununu. In an attempt to clarify and provide guidance to educators, state agencies and contractors, Frank Edelblut, Commissioner Department of Education, Ahni Malachi, Executive Director Commission for Human Rights, and John Farnella, Attorney General, recently issued guidance on how to implement this new “Anti-discrimination” law. The guidance explains what schools, public employers and government programs are prohibited from teaching, training …

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It’s Time Capsule Time

Considering the circumstances, we have decided to craft this Rant as a time capsule, intended to give readers in the distant future  a fuller sense of how the world in which they live came to be created. That may seem an excessively hubristic undertaking, even for this boastful age. On the other hand, perhaps there is no need to apologize. We are, after all, the Nation’s Oldest Newspaper.™ That unique characteristic doesn’t just invite, it requires us to imagine the otherwise unlikely survival of this flimsy bit of newsprint. Let us travel, then, into the future: here we are, face to face with…dwindling bands of …

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The Grand Inquisitor’s Mistress

On July 12th, Judi Hershman posted an extraordinary 2,600-word document on Medium. In it, the self-described “former professional partisan” laments what she accurately calls, “our country’s biggest existential crisis since the Civil War.” It has come about, she writes, because “too many people like me stuck our heads in the sand, swallowed our doubts, [and] let the unacceptable slide, [having] convinced ourselves it was in the interest of the greater good….” Hershman attained this perspective, she says, through a long and close association with one of the most influential unelected figures in the Republican power structure. That emminent personage was Kenneth Starr: Grand Inquisitor during …

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Military Justice

To the Editor: In a July 7th report on the PBS Newshour the following statistics for sexual assault in the military were given. “Approximately 20,000 U.S. military members are sexually assaulted annually. But only 7,816 reported those cases, and only in 350 cases were perpetrators charged with a crime.” The report added that 64 percent of those who reported assaults faced retaliation. Clearly, the system is not working when only five percent of those accused of assault face charges and 64 percent of the victims face retaliation. One major problem is the victim has to report the assault to their commanding officer who, in most …

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