Today -100: May 22, 1926: On the other hand, if they use a trumpet *while* writing on a slate, that would be pretty impressive

Coolidge issues an executive order allowing state, county, and municipal officers to get dual authority as federal officers (for “a nominal rate of compensation,” maybe $1 a year) with the power to cross state and county lines to enforce Prohibition laws, including in the states – New York, Maryland and Nevada – which have no prohibition enforcement laws. New York has a law which strips the salaries of state officers taking a federal appointment. This executive order reverses one issued by Grant in 1873 forbidding executive branch employees holding state offices. Much outrage is expressed, including from dry members of both parties on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on constitutional grounds (Grant’s EO was more about keeping the graft down to a dull roar). Sen. William Bruce (D-Maryland) points out that just last week Coolidge was championing states’ rights and saying that “No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction and decline.” Sen. Edwin Broussard (D-Louisiana) says compulsory enforcement in communities opposed to Prohibition is just like the Northern attitude during Reconstruction: “The president is merely invoking the policy of the North against the South with reference to slavery.” Maybe not as compelling an argument as he thinks it is.

Józef Piłsudski now says he’ll graciously permit the National Assembly to elect him president of Poland, although he claims “I don’t care to be elected president unless it is proved beyond a doubt that the great mass of the Polish people are behind me,” because nothing says I’m indifferent to power like leading a fucking coup. Also, the president is not elected by the Polish people but by the National Assembly, and some members of that body would be arrested if they showed up in Warsaw.

I’ve realized that I’m so pissed off at this coup because I’ve always resented that World War II started when Germany invaded a country with an authoritarian, anti-Semitic regime, Poland, rather than an actual democracy like, say, Czechoslovakia.

There’s a civil case running alongside the criminal trial of the Hungarians who forged French francs to fund a far-right/fascist coup. In the civil case, the Bank of France is demanding only one (1) franc... plus all the forging equipment.  Fascist leader Franz Ulain, who is the lawyer for Prince Louis Windisch-Graetz, points out that Napoleon counterfeited pounds and rubles. In the criminal case, the coupsters’ lawyers are hailing them as the greatest national heroes since Kossuth; I’m rather reminded of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch trial.

Al Jolson resigns from the Westchester Biltmore Country Club after it objected to him bringing a Jew to play golf with him.

At the House of Representatives hearings about possibly banning mediums in the District of Columbia, Anna Fletcher, wife of Sen. Duncan Upshaw Fletcher (D-Florida) testifies that she’s been an “investigator” for 25 years, has never met a dishonest medium, and received a message from her dead father written on a slate in his handwriting. Harry Houdini calls her “sincere” but denies such a thing is possible: “Every medium who uses a trumpet or writes on slates is a fraud.”

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