Today -100: January 9, 1911: Of senators and remembering the Maine

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote this week for a constitutional amendment for the popular election of US senators. Opponents may try to derail it by setting qualifications for electors or having the federal government oversee the elections, which would be opposed by Southern Democrats as potentially giving the vote to black people. But the Committee is expected instead to allow the states to set qualifications by making electors for Senate the same as for the lower house of the state legislatures (which is what the 17th Amendment says).

The WaPo reports that the Department of War has concluded that the Maine blew up in 1898 because of an internal explosion, not a Spanish torpedo. So, um, whoops.