The first indictment of Donald Trump has landed. Certainly there are more to
come. In the meanwhile, the indictment by the New York City grand jury and prosecutor has already created feverish media reactions and the expected bombast from the former U.S. president. What to make of it all? These thoughts come to mind.
The Media
In our digital age, the mainstream (traditional) media are also all about attracting eyeballs, most especially our television news programs. Thus, the coverage to this point–before the indictment charges are even revealed–has been, well, hysterical. It’s odd, isn’t it? Trump refers to them as the “Fake News” media, and yet he is able to play them to his advantage like a fiddle. They cannot get enough of him, his antics and his predicaments. He is addicted to their attention, and they are happy to provide it. Continue reading “Thoughts on an Indictment”
now only from one side of the political aisle? Does it matter? Does it exist?
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years apart. He went East for his high school education in private schools. She graduated from the local public high school.
track and field events, while also playing the offensive end position on two undefeated Yale football teams in 1923 and 1924. In the latter year he was named to the nation’s All-America football team and voted Yale’s best all-around athlete.
Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol has already publicized evidence of presidential crimes, the Attorney General has been silent on the status of investigations into the former president’s conduct regarding his effort to have the election of President Joe Biden overturned, which led to the insurrection at the nation’s capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Meanwhile, according to a
commonly trained that legal reasoning is a learned skill much like that in scientific work. It is based on principles of deduction, according to which judges make decisions about laws by logically figuring out how the principles established in earlier court decisions–precedents–apply to the current dispute before them. In this perspective, judicial decision-making–especially in the higher courts with the best trained lawyers–is a matter of technique.  It produces the correct legal answers based on facts and reason, free of bias and personal belief. Competent practitioners, therefore, should reach the same, right, answers.
consequential–even somewhat anodyne–meaning is that American racists are attracted to the Republican Party because it has long favored tough-on-crime policies and low taxes/small government policies, which have always translated into harsh punishments of and weak federal support for poor people, among whom minority populations figure disproportionately. This view can seem to insulate the Party itself from charges of racism and racial animus.
data, people trained in a science that has long drawn heavily on Latin words and roots, routinely mess up the use of “data.” You know what the singular word for “data” is? It is datum which, I agree, does not roll easily off the tongue. But we don’t need a single datum. We need an “are.”
swim races against other area teams, I dive into the water and swim under it, scraping the bottom of the pool. I take a snaking route and soon go right past her legs, perhaps barely brushing them with my own.  I don’t dare surface. Holding that long breath, I swim on, still snaking around the expanse of the pool bottom, until I’ve passed many other pairs of legs. I come up for air only after I am safely shrouded by the other kids’ torsos between me and her.
