The Fortnightly Rant

Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, announced on Tuesday that she is sending teams of election monitors to six states this primary season, New Hampshire being one of them. The alleged purpose of this expenditure of taxpayer dollars is to “increase voter confidence.” Dhillon ought to know better. She attended college in New Hampshire, graduating in 1989. By then, Secretary of State for Life [Emeritus] Bill Gardner* had already been overseeing elections for 12 years, scrupulously enough to make Caesar’s wife look like a floozie. Gardner retired in 2022, but his successor, David Scanlan, would …

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Gracious sakes, look at the calendar! Just a week from tomorrow comes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence! My, my—how time flies when you’re publishing newspapers. Routine journalistic practice would be to honor the occasion by combing the archives and republishing bits of our reportage on that earth-shaking event. Frankly, though, our Human Resources Department has failed to provide us with sufficient editorial staff to perform such a task. Also, not to cast aspersions on Daniel Fowle, our founder and then-editor, but mid-18th century prose is an acquired taste. Instead, we’ll recommend to our readers a volume available at the Portsmouth Public Library: …

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Ice melting at the poles turns into water. Earth’s spin causes centrifugal force, sending that water towards the equator. Adding mass to that region slows the rotation of the Earth. That’s pretty straightforward. It’s basic physics. Ice Capades skaters have been demonstrating that effect for years: arms in, faster spin. Scientists recently figured out how to compare current trends with far earlier times. A newly-published paper says Earth is now slowing at an “unprecedented” rate—greater than at any time in 3.6 million years. Good luck, though, convincing your MAGA uncle that days are getting longer because of climate change. Man-made greenhouse gas emissions have the …

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We should be grateful. Despite our modest size, as the Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ we feel obligated to record, to the best of our ability, the essence of each fortnight as it passes. As everyone knows who has not yet retreated, for mental health purposes, to the wilderness or a bunker, current events have been, for the past decade or so, a constant barrage from every direction of the simply unbelievable. We are not complaining. As Hyman Roth said to Michael Corleone, “this is the business we’ve chosen.” We merely wish to establish how challenging it can be to winnow out, from this bizarre maelstrom of …

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Two weeks ago today, a person whose name has become nearly impossible to avoid spoke to a gaggle of other geriatrics at The Villages, a Golfer’s Valhalla in Florida. We refer, of course, to the President of the purportedly United States of America, who, lest we forget, inexplicably won a second term in 2024, despite having ended his terrible first term by fomenting an insurrection to overthrow an election he lost. Since the median age of the residents there is 73 years, and 97 percent of them are white, our Chief Executive must have felt right at home in this peculiar institution. For the record, …

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Two men named Thomas, born a century and a half apart, had the vision to see what this country might some day become. Thomas Morton overthrew the leaders of a group of settlers sent by Ferdinando Gorges to found the short-lived Merrymount, in what is now Quincy. Morton called himself “Mine Host,” and declared himself the equal of all the former indentured servants in the group. As long as they were able, they cohabited peacefully with the area’s indigenous people. Settlers and natives all celebrated May Day of 1627 together by dancing around a May Pole topped with a set of antlers. Such fun could …

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