The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle
Forest ranger at Yosemite National Park, explaining why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.” – @mathematicsprof –=≈=– Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. – Ambrose Bierce
by William Cooper American politics have become criminalized. A steady drum beat of words and deeds—from “lock her up” chants, to prosecutions of President Trump’s associates, to Trump pushing for Joe Biden’s indictment—has eroded the bright line between politics and the criminal law. This is deeply troubling for several reasons. First, criminalizing politics conflicts with the bedrock principle that the rule of law applies equally to all people. Entangling the passions of politics with the criminal law leads to treating people differently based on their political affiliation—instead of on their guilt or innocence. This is antithetical to even-handed justice. The examples of this criminalization are …
by Andrew Moss Though former Vice-President Joe Biden maintains a relatively stable polling lead over President Donald Trump, there’s still good reason to prepare for a contested election. For months, President Trump has generated a steady stream of disinformation about mail-in voting, falsely associating it with high levels of voter fraud, and there’s no reason to think that the disinformation campaign will end when election results start coming in on November 3rd. Fourteen states, including the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, won’t begin to authenticate, much less count, mail-in ballots until that day, and definitive election results may not be available for some time. …
To the Editor: Joe Biden has been running political ads featuring anonymous “doctors” claiming “Joe Biden has a plan” to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Really? I have yet to hear any details of this wonderful “plan” that will rid our country of this contagious virus. I have seen Joe Biden holding up a common blue surgical mask stating “wear the mask.” Sorry Joe, but the generic blue paper mask is well documented to be unprotective against viruses. A recent study even showed a group of patients with Covid-19 had overwhelmingly been wearing masks Only the N-95 mask protects against viruses and it is not being …
Dear Editor, Joe Biden says this election expresses who we are. Are we a nation that believes life is a jungle, a zero-sum game in which you eat or get eaten, dominate or be dominated, take what you can and try to prevent it from being taken? Do we believe that “America First” is the way to live in our community of nations and “me first” in our community of neighbors? Or…are we a nation that believes in cooperation, that helping each other helps us as well, that our collective well-being gives each of us a better, safer, more prosperous life? This election will express …
Dear Editor: Just had a journey down Memory Lane, reading a new book’s draft—Doris “Granny D” Haddock’s speeches, given as she walked 3,000+ miles from California to Washington, D.C., speaking for campaign finance reform when she was 89 and 90 (1999-2000). My draft is by way of group-sharing the editing task. I had assigned pages. I loved hearing Granny D again. Sentences speak to me during our election-time now: “Fairness and leadership are everything to the life of democracy” (p. 46) “Where are our leaders and our representatives at this critical moment, when the shape of our economy and our jobs are in the balance, …