Today -100: September 26, 1917: Of impeachments and censorship

Texas Gov. James Ferguson is removed from office and barred from ever holding office in Texas in the future. Actually he resigned the night before the state senate finished impeachment procedures, evidently thinking it would protect him from the office-holding ban (it doesn’t, not that he won’t try to run for governor again next year). He is replaced by Lt. Gov. William Hobby, riding to the rescue (see what I did there?)

The postmaster general says he intends to strictly enforce the part of the Trading with the Enemy Act that allows him to ban “seditious” non-English-language newspapers from the mails. I hadn’t realized that any material he excludes from the postal system is also banned from using commercial express companies. The postmaster is also talking about censoring letters to Mexico, but not to France or Britain, where he can just rely on their censorship systems.

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