TALES FROM THE ATTIC: An island I owned for awhile

Sam Smith, 1964 - There are several places in this world that I own. Not because I paid cash for them, nor because I can produce any deed to support my claim. I own these places because when I go to them no one is there. No one seemed to want them. So, until another made a claim, they were mine.

Someone has made a claim on one of my places. I only went there once, but I immediately decided that it would be mine. Now I must give it up, and I'm a little sorry. Hurricane Island lies close to the Vinalhaven, the large island that guards the entrance to Maine's Penobscot Bay. It once had a small village and a quarry.  But when I visited the island, it was empty. I climbed to the highest point of the island and, from that massive, moss-coated rock, stood a long time looking between the islands that line Hurricane Sound to the sea beyond that changed its color as it reflected the slowly descending rays of the sun.

Below, and it seemed very far below, lay the little 40-foot  cutter on which I had sailed to this place. I stared down the sheer face of the rock. The drop, as close as I could figure it, was a hundred feet almost straight down, until it met with the soft mattress laid by years of falling softwood needles, twigs, and loose bark. I would, perhaps, someday build a house here. In fact, the house was partially constructed. The rock face was as sturdy a wall as one could desire. The ground was as comfortable as the most expensive rug. Three more walls, one of them with a huge window from which to look down the sound, a roof, and the house would be complete.

I returned to the boat and told the others I wished to spend the night here. They shrugged; I gathered up my sleeping bag and returned ashore. There was much to see on my new property and little time, for we were sailing on the next morning. I walked over the land making a mental list of my assets: A huge tree that had been recently struck by lightning and was lying on the ground with a moist yellow scar running a full fifty feet along its proud, straight length. It looked brutal then, but I knew that in a few months the scar would fade from prominence as the tree died. Tough little bushes that had fought their way up through cracks in the granite. Various berries. Some were bitter and some tasted sweet, but all gave a pointilist's touch to small sections of the island. A few boards, held together by fragile and rusted nails, with a purposeless strand of wire reaching out, but finding nothing to hold to, and so ending in the grass a few feet away. A battalion of softwoods standing at attention, ready to defend the ground from the sun and the rain.

I slept on top of the rock that night, making a soft bed out of pine remnants on which to place my sleeping bag. The next morning, I awoke damp and a little cold, but very much awake. The sun had passed to the other side of the island during the night and now it was rising to my left as I looked toward the sound. I walked down to the rocks from which the water was slowly receding as it did twice each day, dropping 9 feet then returning to the same place. The boat was near. I returned to it.

We set sail, floated down the sound, then, with the sun, moved slowly to the west. That was nearly ten years ago. I never had a chance to return to Hurricane Island. I sometimes felt guilty, being an absentee landlord, but I felt sure the island was safe. Then, recently, I read a brief announcement somewhere : "Outward Bound, a system of survival schools which originated in Great Britain, will be doing preliminary work on a new school to be established on Hurricane Island, Penobscot Bay, Maine) this summer.”

Another claim had been made. I had no receipt, no deed, to show that it was still my island.  Hurricane Island could no longer be one of my places. Now it belonged to others. I’m a little sorry, but also happy, for it would be selfish to prevent others from gazing down the sound or tracing to its source the thin rivulet I had found. The new owners sounded like good people, people who would understand the reason for the island, people who would tend it, perhaps, far better than I. I have other places, but Hurricane Island was one of my favorites.

Polls

CBS POLL: Financial conditions

Via Interactive Polls

Better off: 13% Worse off: 58% The same: 29% 75% say their income isn’t keeping up with inflation —— Who does the U.S. economic system favor? The wealthy: 74% Middle class: 7% The poor: 3% — % who say the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy By Party • Republicans: 51% • Democrats: 91% • Independents: 80% — By Age • 18-29: 72% • 30-44: 76% • 45-64: 76% • 65+: 71% — By Race/Ethnicity • White: 73% • Black: 86% • Hispanic: 75%

Health

 Study Finds -  A 70-year British study found that adults who repeatedly faced financial hardship scored lower on memory and processing-speed tests by age 53, years before most people worry about cognitive decline. Decades later, brain scans showed those with a history of persistent low income had larger fluid-filled spaces in the brain, a sign of tissue shrinkage.

Men, people from working-class or lower-income childhoods, and carriers of the APOE-e4 Alzheimer's risk gene showed stronger brain changes, though these subgroup findings are still preliminary.The study only shows a link, not proof of cause, but researchers say chronic financial hardship may be a modifiable factor worth addressing for long-term brain health. 

NPR - Nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the U.S., yet only about one in eight nurses are men. The low number is still double what it was a couple of decades ago. As opportunities in traditionally male-dominated fields like manufacturing and software engineering decline, schools like the University of Alabama at Birmingham have made efforts to recruit men into nursing, a career that has emerged as a stable alternative and a reliable pathway to achieving a middle-class lifestyle.

5 experts on how to get a book published

Religion

Washington Post –  The Supreme Court agreed last month to hear a case that asks a remarkable question: Can the government require a homeowner to obtain a permit before inviting friends to his house for prayer?

Grand v. City of University Heights centers on an Orthodox Jewish minyan — a prayer quorum consisting of at least 10 adult men — but the legal principles at stake extend well beyond one faith.

The case will arrive at the court after years of neighborhood intrigue and municipal politics, where attempts to convene a minyan in a private home devolved into allegations of anti-Jewish animus, police surveillance, zoning hearings and cease and desist orders.

In January 2021, Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jewish homeowner in University Heights, Ohio, emailed roughly a dozen friends inviting them to his house for a Shabbat minyan. Soon afterward, a neighbor informed the city about Grand’s email, complaining and asking the mayor to “put a stop to this.” Under the city’s zoning ordinance, “houses of worship” require a special-use permit. Acting on the complaint, the mayor called Grand regarding what he described as an “urgent matter.” Later that day, a city official ordered Grand to “immediately cease and desist” using his home as a “place of religious assembly” until he obtained the permit.

Climate

The Guardian – Unrestrained wildfires in Spain and France have forced more than 250,000 people to flee, authorities from both countries have said, as they struggle to contain the blazes.  About 70,000 people were evacuated from central Spain, while 197,000 people fled in France, including tens of thousands from the wine region city of Bordeaux.

Spain declared a national emergency, the first time the country has ever done so over a wildfire. France’s evacuations constituted “probably” the biggest peacetime evacuation the country has ever seen, its interior minister said.

Middle East

The Guardian - The US has paused strikes on Iran for a second night as diplomatic negotiations to avoid a return to all-out war continued on Sunday.  Donald Trump is said to be weighing up diplomatic and military options in the nearly five-month-old conflict, with Benjamin Netanyahu expected to visit the White House on Tuesday. The Israeli prime minister is a vocal critic of Washington’s negotiations with Iranian leaders.

Netanyahu is under considerable political pressure to show that his military campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon have yielded results before elections scheduled for October.

….Senior officials in the Trump administration are reported to have warned the president about dwindling munitions stockpiles that could hamper a sustained military campaign in the region. The lull in fighting, which began on Friday evening, follows nearly two weeks of strikes against Iran and the collapse of a ceasefire brokered by Trump. Washington blamed Iran for strikes on US forces and allies in the region and its closure of the strait of Hormuz, a conduit for an estimated 20% of the world’s oil and gas.

Our erratic posts

Sam Smith -  Through August 2, our service may be somewhat erratic thanks to your editor’s two sons, their wives and three grandchildren showing up.  

Whatever happened to the Democrats?

Sam Smith – The thing I don’t understand about our current politics is not what’s wrong with Donald Trump, but why the Democrats are so pathetic dealing with him.

For example, over the past 90 years we have had Democratic leaders like FDR and Lyndon Johnson who poured out good legislation, while the most significant GOP presidents have been Herbert Hoover, Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan. Nearly all the positive bills has been produced by Democrats.

I suspect that part of the problem is that we don’t pay much attention to history Further, America has decayed from a time when it was seen as the decent leader of the world.

One indication of the change in our national perspective is the recent rise of “socialism” as a presumably positive term. Democrats traditionally avoided that word and little of what they accomplished was labelled with it. My father was on the staff of the New Deal and  he never mentioned socialism. Until recently the positive changes were credited to liberalism. Now,  the Democratic Socialists of America, for example, has more than 250 offices in 40 states.

Although I have no problem with socialistic legislation if it improves life, but in America it should be credited instead to the Democratic Party tradition.  Trump has destroyed the Republican Party and he should not be allowed to kill the Democrats as well.

Climate

The Guardian - About 70 million people in the US are set to face excessive heat advisories as dangerously hot temperatures scorch much of the country’s southern and central states.  The third major “heat dome” event to hit the US in the past month is gathering strength over the weekend, spanning a vast swathe of the country, from the Gulf of Mexico coast to the Great Plains and the midwest. 

Temperatures of 95-105F (35-40C) are expected, with some areas of the south-western US desert potentially reaching 120F (48C). The elevated heat is expected to linger into the coming week, held in place by the heat dome, which is when a high-pressure atmospheric system acts as a sort of lid, trapping heat in place over a region for days or even weeks.

Inside Climate News -   After 13 years, Texas and New Mexico have finally reached a settlement in a Supreme Court case over Rio Grande water management. Now comes the hard part.

Texas sued New Mexico in 2013, arguing that its upstream neighbor was hogging water on the river that millions depend on for irrigation and drinking water. The settlement requires New Mexico to reduce the amount of water drawn from wells that deplete the flow of Rio Grande water to Texas.

The agreement also introduces a new accounting method to determine how much water New Mexico owes Texas. And for the first time, the volume of water flowing into Texas will be measured at the state line. Compliance will cost New Mexico upward of $150 million. If the state fails to meet the settlement’s requirements, it could face harsh penalties or another taxing lawsuit.

New Mexico officials hope that buying water rights from farmers and shutting off their wells will be enough to comply. But if climate change continues to drive drier conditions in the Rio Grande basin, those initial voluntary measures will likely fall short. The state expects to have 25 percent less water in 50 years because of rising temperatures.

If New Mexico has to make further reductions to water use, the possibility of mandatory water cuts looms over the region. Behind closed doors, major water users, including farmers and the city of Las Cruces, are negotiating contingency plans. The Lower Rio Grande in New Mexico shows how difficult it will be to fairly reduce water use among farmers, industry and residents as the climate gets hotter and drier.

NY Times - Fast-moving wildfires in France and Spain have forced nearly 300,000 people to evacuate or shelter at home as of Saturday, as blazes moved closer to major cities like Bordeaux and Madrid during the peak of the summer holiday season. In France, the authorities have ordered the evacuation of around 197,000 people from the Gironde and Landes regions in the country’s southwest, where the fires have burned through an area about three times the size of Paris.

Appeals court rejects Trump bid to curb mail-in voting in 23 states

The Guardian - A federal appeals court on Saturday declined to allow Donald Trump’s administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting before the November elections that ?will decide control of Congress.

The Boston-based first US circuit court  of appeals rejected the administration’s request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on 25 June from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president’s order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to ?pause the US district judge Indira Talwani’s ruling while it pursues an appeal, the Department of Justice argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump’s directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature.  The appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, rejected that argument

Polls

Donald Trump

NY Times -   When the Trump administration canceled more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era federal grants for clean energy projects in October, it framed the move as an urgent corrective to protect taxpayer funds from waste.  But it wasn’t true.

In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.

The admission showed how President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term. Far from rooting out the sort of misspending that Mr. Trump sees as rife in Washington, the White House has instead sought to leverage the budget as a tool to assist its allies — or as a cudgel to hurt the president’s foes.

NBC News - President Donald Trump ordered that “warning” signs be placed in front of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to inform visitors of the “inaccurate information presented in the Museum.” The directive is the latest front in the president’s bid to gain control over the institution.

Alternet  - President Donald Trump does not appear to be the entertainer he once was, reports CNN’s Brian Stelter.  The president’s insult-laden speech drew mostly stunned silence from the audience as he attacked a bunch of journalists at the pared-down recap of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday.

“Trump bombed at the ... Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it,” reports Stelter. “But no. Even the president’s jokes about his bad jokes fell flat, and he was widely ridiculed for the comedy routine afterward.”

In a “rambling hour-long speech,” Stelter said Trump insulted journalists by name, “repurposed old nicknames for political opponents, made a strange number of fat jokes that weren’t funny at all, and sounded mad at his unnamed writers for giving him weak material to work with.”

“Does anyone understand this stuff?” he said at one point during the razzball speech. The answer, said Stelter, was “generally no. But more than anything, the speech was just … boring.” ….Many journalists refused to attend, and the dinner was a small-scale redo of the April 26 black-tie affair that got called off after a gunman tried to rush into the ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel, so Trump joked about bullet proof vests and how attendees hid under their tables while his staff bravely stood on tables and directed crowds.

Ecology

 The Roadless Rule has been in place for nearly two decades and keep millions of acres of national forests intact — but now, the Trump administration wants to trade our beloved public lands for expanded logging, new road construction, and increased industrial activity in some of our nation's most ecologically important forests.

Gas prices

Independence Journal-   U.S. gas prices have jumped to their highest levels in nearly four years as the Iran war drives crude oil above $100 a barrel.  Attacks, shipping threats, and closures near the Strait of Hormuz are squeezing global supply and pushing pump prices sharply higher.

AAA data show average U.S. gasoline prices up roughly a dollar a gallon since before the conflict, with many states now well over $4. Economists warn the surge will raise inflation and household costs, while analysts say the crisis exposes America’s ongoing energy vulnerability.

Maine's Troy Jackson picked to against Susan Collins

The Hill -  Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson formally clinched the Democratic nod to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in November, giving the party just 100 days to quickly turn the tides in the must-win race.

Jackson handily won on Saturday with 566 votes during the Democratic nomination convention in Bangor, Maine. His only challenger, biopharmaceutical executive Saundra Pelletier, nabbed the remaining five votes.

….Democrats in the state largely consolidated around the former state senator ahead of the convention to replace scandal-ridden Graham Platner, who exited the race earlier this month. The contest, which Decision Desk HQ and Cook Political Report rate as a toss-up, could prove decisive in the party’s chances of clinching the upper chamber this fall

Rural folk have shorter lifespans

 Nautilus - People who live in rural parts of the United States have significantly shorter lifespans compared to those in urban areas.  In fact, rural working age adults (aged 25 to 54) are 43 percent more likely to die from natural causes than those who live in cities, according to data from 2019. The gap has widened from a 9 percent difference in mortality when the trend first emerged three decades ago. Now a new study in the journal Economics & Human Biology is attempting to unravel the multifarious causes. 

Todd Blanche

POGO- Todd Blanche, acting attorney general of the Department of Justice (DOJ), had his confirmation hearing last week to take on the role permanently. You deserve an attorney general who answers to the Constitution — not one who prioritizes loyalty to the president. Blanche was a personal lawyer to the president, defending him in several criminal cases. As deputy and acting attorney general, his continuing fealty to the president has shown itself in his actions and even in his words. Todd Blanche seems to think the role of attorney general is no different than being the president’s personal lawyer, and we cannot have that. The Senate Judiciary Committee is currently set to vote on Blanche’s nomination in the coming week. We have a few days to change the outcome.

• Blanche is responsible for creating the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund for the president as part of a settlement on the Trump v. IRS case. He also intended to give the president and his family sweeping immunity from audits of their past taxes. Just last week, a federal judge recommended disciplinary actions against him over the case.

The case for publicly funded art

In These Times -  Beyond jobs and entertainment, decades of research links arts education in public schools to better outcomes in literacy, critical thinking and social-emotional development. When we defund the arts, we don’t just lose performances and exhibitions— we lose one of the primary means by which we understand each other. The arts are how a culture makes sense of itself.

….Arts and cultural industries contributed $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2023, about 4.2% of GDP, and employed nearly 5.4 million workers. Meanwhile, the National Endowment for the Arts has been shrinking for decades. Adjusted for inflation, the NEA’s budget has dropped from roughly $592 million in 1980 to $207 million today. In 2025, the Trump administration proposed eliminating it entirely and canceled hundreds of active grants overnight via email. The private sector won’t fill the gap on its own, which is why federal support is so important: Every dollar the NEA puts out is matched 9-to-1 by nongovernment funds. Everybody wins.

 

World's most dangerous cities

Compare the Market Australia has analysed the figures for cities across America and the world, as rated by users online based on crime levels, to see which are the most dangerous cities. The main takeaways were:

Memphis was ranked the most dangerous in the US.

Detroit was ranked second, while Baltimore was third.

Irvine had the biggest increase in crime concern scores, followed by Raleigh and Portland.

The index consisted of user-submitted crime ratings over the last seven-and-a-half years, spanning 411 cities across the globe.

Donald Trump: A few facts

Debrina Elkins -  Ladies & Gentlemen; Please meet the President of the United States:

·       Flew on Epstein’s plane at least seven times. Just friends, I guess.
·       Pleaded the Fifth more than 400 times in a single deposition. Nothing says “innocent” like refusing to answer a single question about your own business.
·       34 felony convictions. A record most people would call disqualifying.
·       91 criminal charges.
·       Accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 26 women. But sure, tell me again how he’s a great guy.
·       6 corporate bankruptcies. The self proclaimed greatest businessman alive somehow keeps running out of money.
·       5 draft deferments. Funny how the toughest guy in the room never actually showed up for duty.
·       4 criminal indictments. ..
·       2 impeachments. A club of exactly one president.
·       2 of his own companies convicted of criminal tax fraud. Convicted. Not accused. Convicted.
·       1 fake university shut down. 1 fake charity shut down.
·       Paid 25 million dollars to settle the Trump University fraud lawsuit because scamming people who believed in you costs money eventually.
·       Ordered to pay 5 million dollars in the first E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict, then hit with 83.3 million more in the second.
·       Ordered to pay 2 million dollars for looting his own so called charity.
·       Stealing from a charity with his own name on it.
·       Found liable for business fraud and originally slapped with a penalty topping 450 million dollars, later thrown out on appeal while the fraud finding itself stuck to him anyway.
·       First president in modern history to increase the deficit every single year of a full term.
·       Kept the debt to GDP ratio above 100 percent for his entire first term.
·       Presided over the largest single day point drop in Dow Jones history at the time.
·       Set the record for the longest government shutdown in US history in his first term at 35 days, then couldn’t resist beating his own miserable record in his second term with a 43 day shutdown, followed by yet another shutdown just months later. Encore nobody asked for.
·       Added roughly 2.25 trillion dollars to the national debt in his first year back in office alone, pushing the debt past 39 trillion dollars.
·       Pushed through the largest defense budget increase since World War Two while the debt kept climbing anyway.
·       Purged more than 300,000 federal employees in his first year back.
·       Pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 Capitol rioters on his very first day back in office, including Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy.
·       At least 40 of those pardoned rioters have already been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for new crimes since walking free.
·       His family’s crypto ventures, including a meme coin and World Liberty Financial, pulled in more than 1.4 billion dollars in disclosed earnings while he sat in the Oval Office.
·       Sent the National Guard into American cities at a cost of nearly 500 million taxpayer dollars in 2025 alone.
·       His own tariffs are projected to cost the average American household more than 2,500 dollars this year.

Polls

InteractivePolls

Newsom: 20% (-4) Ossoff: 16% (+11) AOC: 14% (+4) Harris: 7% (-1) Buttigieg: 5% Shapiro: 5% Beshear: 2% Kelly: 2%

Meanwhile. . .

Daily Boulder - Trump’s DOJ forced to withdraw subpoenas of NYT reporters after judge threatens sanctions over botched legal work

Artificial intelliegence sites using up water and electirity

Bold Front News -   As artificial intelligence booms, giant data centers are starting to compete with American families for basic things like water, power, and land right in their own backyards.  Data centers can use as much water and electricity as small cities, straining local systems. Communities across the country are pushing back as bills, noise, and land impacts pile up. Debate over who pays the true cost of AI is uniting skeptics of big government and big tech.

Trump adds lots more tariffs

The Hill -  President Trump will impose double-digit tariffs on imports from 60 countries over forced labor violations, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced Thursday. The action will cover 99.4 percent of U.S. imports and apply to Washington’s top trading partners, according to a fact sheet released by his office.

The tariffs are being brought under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which Trump has been using to implement tariffs after the Supreme Court ruled against his “liberation day” tariffs earlier this year. The new levies, which go into effect at midnight Friday, will replace tariffs that Trump imposed under Section 122 of the trade law earlier this year following that decision as they were set to expire…

Ten percent tariffs will be implemented on countries that have made commitments to adopt and enforce forced labor import prohibitions, while countries that have not enacted a forced labor import prohibition will be hit with a 12.5 percent tariff.

Health

NY Times -  A large outbreak of cyclosporiasis associated with iceberg lettuce has been linked to another four states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 1,947 people have become ill and 98 have been hospitalized in the outbreak, which has expanded to include Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia were already part of the outbreak.

The Food and Drug Administration has linked the infections to iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms and grown in central Mexico. On July 17, Taylor Farms recalled bagged iceberg lettuce sold in 27 states (including the nine states in the outbreak). The recalled lettuce was sent to restaurants, retail stores and food service distributors including Taco Bell and Walmart, but Taylor Farms has not provided clear information about exactly where the products were sold or served, and which specific products were affected.

The news comes as federal officials investigate other cyclospora outbreaks and illnesses across the country, which they say are unrelated to this outbreak. On Thursday, the F.D.A. announced a new outbreak with 72 cases, but did not identify the location or the potential source.

NY Times -  The United States has now recorded more cases of measles in 2026 than in any other year since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, a grim sign that the country may be headed toward a new era in which the disease regularly sickens thousands every year. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.

Immigration agenets

Daily Beast -    Federal immigration agents have faced a record number of sex crime charges since President Donald Trump returned to office. The Ohio Immigrant Alliance study, titled They Walk Among Us, logged 59 ICE and Border Patrol officers charged or convicted of sexual or violent offenses since 2006, the Daily Beast’s investigative Substack PunchUp reports. Sex crime allegations accounted for 50 of them, and 37 involved child victims. Of those cases, 25 date from 2025 and 2026 alone. The previous highest annual peak was six, in 2020—another Trump year. “These are not people who should be given guns and free rein,” said Lynn Tramonte, the alliance’s executive director, who wrote the report.

Middle East

The Constitutional Insider -   Officials report dozens of deaths in Iran and strikes across several provinces, while Iran and its allies claim major U.S. casualties and drone losses. The Pentagon says the goal is to “degrade” Iran’s military, but it has released no public proof that these strikes are truly reducing Iran’s ability to fight.  Conflicting statements about nuclear sites and battlefield losses deepen public doubts about whether leaders are being honest and strategic.

Constitution Center -  The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 specifically lists as a power of Congress the power “to declare War,” which unquestionably gives the legislature the power to initiate hostilities. The extent to which this clause limits the President’s ability to use military force without Congress’s affirmative approval remains highly contested. 

Most people agree, at minimum, that the Declare War Clause grants Congress an exclusive power. That is, Presidents cannot, on their own authority, declare war. Although it is somewhat more contested among scholars and commentators, most people also agree that Presidents cannot initiate wars on their own authority (a minority argues that Presidents may initiate uses of force without formally declaring war and that  Congress’s exclusive power to “declare war” refers only to issuing a formal proclamation).

 In the early post-ratification period, the clause’s limit on presidential warmaking was read broadly. Many key founders, including Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and James Madison, referred to the clause’s importance as a limit on presidential power. In the nation’s early conflicts, Congress’s approval was thought necessary – not only for the War of 1812, for which Congress issued a formal declaration, but also for lesser uses of force including the Quasi-War with France in 1798, conflicts with the Barbary States of Tripoli and Algiers, and conflicts with Native American tribes on the Western frontier (all of which were approved by Congress, albeit without formal declarations).  MORE

Tales from the Attic: Lou Stovall

 

Sam Smith.2017  - One of the saddest parts of your editor's departure from Cleveland Park was that I wouldn't be living next to Lou and Di Stovall anymore, which had gotten to be a 28 year habit for me. Lou and Di are both artists but they also serve as the magnetic north of the neighborhood. Follow a compass and that's where you'll end up. Our friendship has endured even though Lou no longer asks my advice on art. That ended after I wandered into his studio while he was working on a print of a seascape and he recklessly asked me what I thought of it. I pointed to an empty piece of sky and suggested that a plane towing a banner would look nice there.

I did get into one of his prints, though. Outside his house one day, he explained that he was working on some prints for the Equal Opportunities Commission and needed some quotes to use on them. "Got any quotes, Sam?" he asked. "Look Lou," I said, "writers write things and then they get quoted; they don't just write quotes." But for him, I thought of one anyway and he used it: "God is an equal opportunity employer."

Lou and Di provided the neighborhood young with counsel, refuge, their own box of art supplies in the studio, laughs, food, and a badminton court. Back when the street wasn't as busy as it now, Lou painted home plate in the middle of it for whiffle ball, the required afternoon activity for anyone between the ages of 6 and 16. Since there weren't enough kids to staff two full teams, every game involved innumerable "ghost men," imaginary creatures whose precise accomplishments and locations at any given moment were a matter of endless, loud debate after every play. Among other services, Lou and Di provided advice on anger management. One year, though, four of Sidwell Friend's starting nine were graduates of the Newark Street field of screams.

Some years later, Lou and Di's own son went to Sidwell and, faced with having both Chelsea Clinton and Al Gore Jr as schoolmates, rebelled in one of the few ways available to a 7th grader under such circumstances: he became a Republican. This revolt, mercifully brief, included playing golf and arranging to have me sent a membership in the GOP Gold Club complete with a welcoming letter from Haley Barber, as well posting a Dole-Kemp sign in his bedroom that looked directly down into our living room.

Lou and I conspired on a number of matters, including one of the city's first neighborhood crime watches. Lou designed the signs and hosted meetings, while I served as crime statistician. Some of the watch's efforts didn't work out all that well. At one meeting, the late Bishop John Walker complained that a wanted poster drawn by a neighbor seemed racist to him. I told John that he just didn't understand the difference between racism and bad art. John, bishop of the Washington National Cathedral, had a sense of humor good enough that Lou once loudly told him one of my recently transmitted jokes, from one crowded Giant food checkout line across to another, and John had the grace to laugh. The joke was that Moses had come down from the Mount and told the people, "I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is I've talked him down from 100 to ten. The bad news is that adultery is still one of them."

On another occasion, someone called the police around ten pm to complain about someone shining flashlights into their house. It was the neighborhood watch on patrol, albeit a bit counterproductively. Then, on a pleasant Saturday afternoon, the alarm went off at the house on the other side of ours. The police responded, with Lou and I there to assist. Noting that the kitchen window was unlocked, the officer pulled his revolver and announced, with what struck me as excessive import and hubris, "Stand back, I'm going in." He opened the window and crawled through, waving his revolver. A few minutes later, he reappeared, announcing with even great import, "Stand back, this could be dangerous." In his right hand he still held his revolver, but in his left was a saucepan out of which all the water had boiled, leaving only one perilously overheated egg.

On another occasion, I returned to find Lou in his front yard. "Doesn't that car look like the one they're looking for in that rape case?" he asked, pointing to a decrepit vehicle up the street. We went to take a look, nodded thoughtfully at the decrepit contents, and then returned to call the police. Afterwards, we stayed on the sidewalk talking for about twenty minutes, until Lou said, "Let's go take another look." After our inspection, we returned to Lou's fence and our conversations. Some while later, Lou said, "Where are those cops? I think I'll call again." When he returned outside, he reported that the officer on duty had told him, "We have the car under surveillance, sir, but it doesn't help much if citizens keep looking in the window. Which one are you, the big white guy or the little short bald black guy?"

"I resent that," said Lou. Replied the officer, "We're paid to be observant."

Elections

Democratic Secretaries of State -  Trump's administration has been demanding that states hand over personal voter data – driver's license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, private information on millions of Americans.  Every single Democratic Secretary of State refused. The administration took them to court and lost over a dozen times…and counting. So now the administration is threatening prison time.