Wed, April 8

2018—Fox “News” accidentally broadcasts a graphic showing results of a poll: Fox is the least-trusted network. 1984—R. Nixon gripes, “It’s the media’s responsibility to examine the President with a microscope…but when they use a proctoscope, it’s going too far.” 1974—Hank Aaron breaks Ruth’s homer record; death threats ensue. 1970—Defying bosses and their own leaders, Teamsters go on a wildcat strike. After 12 weeks it pays off big. 1956—USMC recruits are marched into a Parris Island swamp for disciplinary purposes. Six of them drown. 1952—With the steel industry adamantly opposing wage increases, Truman orders its nationalization. 1947—Frederick von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, et al. …

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Tues, April 7

2003—U.S. troops take Baghdad. It is a great victory. 2003—SCOTUS reduces the Exxon Valdez settlement by 99% because punitive damages violate Exxon’s rights. 1990—Once and future Bush appointee John Poindexter is found guilty of multiple Iran/Contra felonies; he later wriggles free on appeal. 1972—With a toy grenade and empty pistol, ’Nam vet Richard McCoy, Jr. hijacks a 727, then parachutes out the back with $500K. McCoy, a National Guard chopper pilot, is arrested days later while searching for himself. 1970—California’s Governor Reagan announces his highly nuanced position on student demonstrations: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.” 1967—In Palo Alto, Robert Jones …

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Mon, April 6

2016—For each of the 29 miners killed in his explosive death trap, coal mine owner Don Blankenship is sentenced to serve 12.5 days in jail. 2013—Vince McMahon’s Hall of Fame for fake wrestlers inducts fake businessman Donald J. Trump. 2009—A year before it blows up, BP’s Deepwater Horizon gets relief from oppressive federal over-regulation. 1992—Donald E. Harding gasps, moans, and makes obscene hand gestures for five minutes before dying in Arizona’s gas chamber. 1977—“If the president does it,” Richard Nixon tells David Frost, “that means it’s not illegal.” 1968—Bobby Hutton, 17, shirtless, hands up, surrenders. Oakland cops shoot him 10 times—he’s a Panther. 1967—Knocked overboard …

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Sun, April 5

2018—Revealed: a 30-year old report showing Shell knew in 1981 that burning oil was wrecking the climate. 2014—Jack Kimball, ex-Chairman of N.H.’s GOP, calls upon Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio to put President Obama “in an orange suit…and drag his butt out of that White House.” 2010—W.Va.’s non-union Upper Big Branch coal mine explodes, killing 29 miners. After a year in prison, its owner, Don Blankenship, will run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican. 1995—Sen. Bob Smith [R-N.H.] presciently asks, “How do you stop an elephant if it goes berserk on the grounds of the Capitol?” Alas, his motion to ban pachyderms is defeated. 1967—In …

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Sat, April 4

1989—In her Porsche, reaching for her cellphone while speeding to the bank she owns, Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton hits and kills Oleta Hardin, a 50 year-old Arkansas cannery worker. Walton is not charged. 1984—Congress nixes Contra funding. President Reagan sells arms to the Ayatollah to make up the difference. 1975—Operation Babylift begins with a C-5A flight out of Tan Son Nhut. It crashes into a nearby rice paddy killing 154, including 78 kids. 1970—On the National Mall, 50,000 followers of a radio televangelist hold a “March for Victory,” protesting the Vietnamization of the Vietnam War. 1968—Martin Luther King, Jr. is murdered in Memphis, perhaps by …

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My father, the KC-135, and me

by Ed Palm If you have been keeping up with the war news, you know that our first major setback was the crash of a KC-135 jet tanker, killing all of the six crew members aboard. Not to make light of that tragedy, but the airplane itself—the KC-135—has long held a special place in my heart. It was on a KC-135 that I once chanced to have an impromptu flying lesson. In July of 1966, my absentee Air Force officer father invited me up to his duty station at the time—the K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He wanted me to get …

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