Volume 269 | No. 22

No Kings Rallies

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from around the United States June 14th, 2025 sent to me by various friends & acquaintances proving that a significant number of Americans still care about things like democracy, the Constitution, law & justice, fairness, tolerance, decency, honesty, kindness, caring, and all the other virtues so sadly lacking in too many of those who govern our country, and in those who support them. We cannot, however, allow June 14th to be a once-and-done event.  We must find the courage to make our actions equal our words. Each time each of us has a decision to make—be it large or small, together or alone—we must try …

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Mon, July 14

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2004—The GOP tries to ban gay marriage but can’t rise to the occasion. 2000—Five tobacco companies are ordered to pay $145 billion in damages, but they wiggle off the hook. 1989—Alabama tries twice, 19 minutes apart, to electrocute Horace F. Dunkins, who’s Black and developmentally-disabled. The first try fails because the chair is wired wrong. 1981—New Hampshire businessman Max Hugel’s stint as Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA ends after 64 days due to revelations of unseemly stock market shenanigans. 1976—Persons unknown in Traves, France celebrate Bastille Day by burning the home of Nazi war criminal Joachim Peiper—while he’s in it. 1975—Boss Clarence Kelley …

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Sun, July 13

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2024—A weirdo fails to assassinate a weird presidential candidate. 1987—Senator Warren B. Rudman [R-N.H] sets Ollie North straight during the Iran-Contra hearings: “The American people have the constitutional right to be wrong.” 1977—During a heat wave and a financial crisis, with Son of Sam on the loose, lightning strikes cause a blackout in New York City. Chaos ensues. 1959—A sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in Simi Valley, Calif. has a partial meltdown, releasing 300 times more radiation than Three Mile Island—a fact kept secret for 20 years. 1956—The “Dartmouth Workshop” begins. “Artificial Intelligence” is born in N.H. What could go wrong? 1950—A B-50 Superfortress crashes in Lebanon, …

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Better Old News Than New Lies, July, 1888

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Rev. O.D. Kimball, formerly pastor of the Baptist church in Leominster, Mass., and now of the West Newton Baptist church, has left the latter place after putting a letter of resignation in the hands of church officers. He admits that he was guilty of gross immorality with five members of his church in Leominster, who were some time ago expelled from that church for making the charges. Alvin Hunnewell of Norridgewock, Me., is held for trial on a charge of poisoning his wife with “rough on rats.” Hunnewell’s son, aged eighteen years, and a young man named Chace, also partook of the poisoned food. All …

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Trump’s Secret is Hidden in Plain Sight

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To the Editor: Why do people find Trump’s behavior puzzling? The reasons for it are remarkably clear. The “stooge” strategy has been a mainstay of mafias since before the Borgias: find a prominent but indebted businessman, bail him out, own him and have him bring your agenda into the mainstream. The Russian mafia bailed Trump out of massive debts accumulated from his many failed businesses from the mid-90s through 2008, making him a mafia stooge. A mafia stooge does what his mafia boss tells him to—or else. (The “or else” is another old mafia tradition.) Since before Peter the Great, Russia’s leadership has been obsessed …

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Can the Dumb-O-Crats Be Any Dumber?

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by W.D. Ehrhart Several days after the inspiring day of No Kings rallies all over this country, in which millions of my fellow citizens took to the streets to let our government know that what is happening to this country is not okay with a whole heck of a lot of us, I learned that senior Democratic Party leaders including Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and the Clintons were stuffing their faces with caviar, Wagyu beef, and truffle agnolotti at the wedding of the son of billionaire George Soros. Wait! Really? That’s how the Democratic Party leadership spent the day? Hobnobbing with …

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