Today -100: January 2, 1910: Of nice young fellows, shaking hands, the Dick Law, moral decay in Philadelphia, and the need for speed

Senator Col. James Gordon, the possible Lincoln conspirator, has met President Taft. “He’s a mighty nice young fellow. I like him. I felt just like putting my hand on his shoulder and calling him ‘Bill.’” So Taft can breathe a sigh of relief.

Taft has successfully met the challenge of his first New Year’s Day reception at the White House. He stood in the Blue Room and shook hands, 5,575 of them, from 11:00 to 1:55. That’s 31.8 hands per minute.

Sing Sing abandoned its New Year’s custom of giving each convict a cigar with his noonday meal. Too many prisoners now, can’t afford it.

Headline of the Day -100: “All Militia to Aid Army. Lieut. Col. Weaver Certain that States Will Accept the Dick Law.”

In Philadelphia, 1 divorce suit was filed for every 11 marriage licenses issued in 1909.

Speaking of licenses, the New York Legislature is considering requiring driving licenses. And abolishing speed limits.

Awkward

The WaPo news section reports today that since the Underpants Bomber, Michael Chertoff has been repeatedly telling the media and anyone who will listen that we need to buy lots of full-body scanners for airports, without mentioning his own financial interest – one of the Chertoff Group’s clients is Rapiscan Systems. (I assume the first syllable of Rapiscan is pronounced with a soft a as in rapid, not a hard a as in rape. If I were planning to sell scanners that pictured people naked, I’d have put some more thought into that name.)

And the WaPo op-ed page today has a piece by Michael Chertoff. Guess what he’s calling for.

Today -100: January 1, 1910: Of Martians

Astronomer Percival Lowell tells the general session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the Martians are building new canals. Wonder what they’re saying at the Martian Association for the Advancement of Science.

The hammer is his, oh, you know

Name of the Day: National Security Council Spokesman Mike Hammer (picture below). Every morning he stands in front of the mirror, flips open an imaginary badge, and says in his best Joe Friday voice, “Hammer, National Security.” (Alternatively, he may flash an imaginary badge and say, “It’s Hammer time!”, in which case he should be fired immediately.)

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A second man has plead guilty to uploading the movie “The Love Guru” to the internet before its theatrical release. Another man was previously sentenced to six months in prison. Mike Meyers remains at large.

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There’s been all this talk about how alarms should have gone off when the Underpants Bomber bought a one-way ticket with cash and had no luggage. And they probably should have, though paying in cash and buying one-way tickets are not uncommon in Africa. But what does it say about Al Qaida’s competence and resources? Could they not have sprung for a thrift store suitcase and clothing and a return ticket to make him less conspicuous and increase the chances of success?

Marya Aman

If the NYT search function is correct, today was the first time they ever wrote about Marya Aman, a little Palestinian girl, now 8, who was riding in a car blown up by the an Israeli rocket in May 2006, collateral damage in the assassination on a busy highway of an Islamic Jihad leader on his way to the hospital to see his wife, who had just given birth. Marya is now a quadriplegic, permanently confined to an Israeli hospital (she is also on a respirator). I wrote about Marya in 2007 here, here, and here, but the NYT evidently waited until it could do a sentimental moral-equivalence story about Marya’s friendship with another 8-year-old, an Israeli boy in the same hospital, brain-injured by a Hamas rocket. The Times waits until the 16th paragraph to mention the details of the Israeli attack and that her mother, brother and grandmother were also killed in the blast, and until the 17th to note that Israel tried to deport her to certain death in Gaza. It says that her father still has “no official status.” In 2007 that meant he didn’t dare risk setting foot outside the hospital for fear of being summarily deported; I can’t tell from the NYT story exactly what it means now. Questions like that might have been answered if the NYT didn’t act as if it were the only news source in the world and maybe used Teh Google. At least Marya’s younger brother, also seriously injured by the rocket, is now in the same hospital.

Today -100: December 31, 1909: Of suspicious deaths, the need for speed, and the promised land of feminism

In Britain, Earl Percy, an MP and heir of the Duke of Northumberland, has died in Paris, and the rumor is that it was in a duel, although the official cause of death is acute pleurisy.

A new speed record has been established for the monoplane: in France, Léon Delagrange flew 200 km in 152 minutes, or 48.9 miles per hour.

Mrs. Belmont has received a helpful letter suggesting that the way to win women’s suffrage is for all the women of the east to decamp to a part of the country where women already have full political and legal rights and tell their husbands to either pass a women’s franchise law or join them in Utah.

Little-known historical fact: the first woman ever elected a state senator was a Mormon plural wife in Utah, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon in 1896. One of the candidates she defeated was her husband; she was a Democratic-Populist, he was a Republican.

And that’s our last blog post from 1909!

That’ll show ‘em

Reports say Obama is planning military strikes in Yemen in retaliation for the Underpants Bomber. Personally, I am definitely in favor of a tit for tat retaliation: let’s send Joe Lieberman to Yemen and have him set his leg on fire. I say an eye for an eye, a flaming doofus for a flaming doofus.

Today -100: December 30, 1909: Of dangerous admissions, little Jew girls, canals on Mars, and zeppelins over the Arctic

NYT headline: “MRS. GAYNOR ADMITS SHE’S A SUFFRAGIST.” That “admission” is from Augusta Gaynor, wife of the mayor-elect of NYC, at a suffrage luncheon. She notes that few of the men she talks to agree with her.

Alva Belmont told the luncheon of an incident in which she telephoned a Night Court judge asking if she should send her lawyer to defend arrested striking shirtwaist-makers. He told her, “You had better save your time and money; they are nothing but little Jew girls, and their place is the workhouse.” She will hold a meeting at Carnegie Hall to protest the violation of the rights of strikers.

The British Astronomical Association weighed evidence of canals on Mars, and expressed scepticism. Well, laughter.

Prof. Hugo Hergesell of Strasbourg is talking about his and Count Zeppelin’s plans to explore the North Pole by airship.

What’s the Chinese word for irony?

China executes a mentally ill British citizen, Akmal Shaikh, for drug smuggling. The method of execution: lethal injection.

Slapped in the mouth

Quote of the Day, Foreign: Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister of Iran (which has taken to stealing the bodies of dead activists and arresting the relatives of live ones) objects to Britain praising democracy protesters: “Britain will get slapped in the mouth if it does not stop its nonsense.” (Update: The Times translates this as “receive a punch in the mouth”. We eagerly await a definitive translation – high diplomacy requires precision in its use of language.)

Quote of the Day, Domestic: Peter King (R-Under His Bed Until the Bad Men Go Away): “100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims”.

Quote of the Day, 1979 version: British official documents released under the 30 year rule show that Thatcher didn’t want her emissary to white-run Rhodesia meeting any of the nationalist opposition: “I have never done business with terrorists until they become prime ministers.” She’d have gotten along famously with Manouchehr “Slappy” Mottaki.

At Thatcher’s her first meeting with Soviet Premier Kosygin, she lectured him about the plight of Vietnamese boat people – and then did everything to prevent them being allowed into Britain, preferring white Rhodesian immigrants, white Polish immigrants, white Hungarian immigrants... She told her foreign and home secretaries that it was “quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not”. Note the telling, unnecessary use of the word “white.” Evidently she suggested to the Australian prime minister that they jointly buy an island from Indonesia or the Philippines to stick the boat people on. The idea was scotched by Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yu, who didn’t want the economic competition.

Today -100: December 29, 1909: Of women of high quality and fugitive senators

NYC Mayor McClellan’s committee on teacher pay recommends against equal pay for women teachers. They simply aren’t worth it in the free market: “the rate of pay which will attract women of high quality does not suffice to attract men of an equally high grade.”

Newly appointed senator for Mississippi James Gordon was a colonel in the Confederate army who was, for a while, believed to have been involved in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy (he was a close friend of Booth’s), and had a $10,000 reward on his head, dead or alive.

(Update: That’s no fun. The next day the NYT printed a War Dept denial that there was ever a reward offered on Gordon. Wikipedia says that while he was not, so far as we know, involved in the assassination plotting, he did discuss with Booth the possibility of kidnapping Lincoln. A United States senator, ladies and gentlemen! For two months anyway.)

Today -200: William Ewart Gladstone was born on this day in 1809.

The time for excuses is over

Oh yeah, you can tell they are totally committed to peace talks.


Ha’aretz: “Netanyahu is willing to accept the U.S. proposal to allot 24 months to talks, but doesn’t want to announce that the goal is to reach a deal by the end of that period.”

Today -100: December 28, 1909: Of recognition

Correction: the former Nicaraguan finance minister was not arrested; he actually managed to escape.

Rear Admiral Kimball, commander of the American warships docked in Nicaragua, met with President Madriz, but without recognizing him as president.

Meetings of striking shirtwaist makers voted down the agreement their leaders negotiated with the manufacturers, because it did not offer proper recognition of their union.

In another exciting post-Christmas news day, there is a front page headline about Andrew Carnegie falling on some ice.

Today -100: December 27, 1909: Of looting and strolling

Former President Zelaya seems to have left behind an empty treasury. His finance minister and his son-in-law, who helped run various state monopolies, have been arrested by order of the new president.

Also, the Tafts took a walk. Not really a big news day.

And who doesn’t like fireworks?

The health care bill does not cut off abstinence programs, although you’d think they’d appreciate being, you know, cut off.

The NYT on the latest attempt by someone to blow up a plane: “Many passengers who were farther away thought the pops were from fireworks”. Are in-flight fireworks standard on Northwest Airlines flights these days? Because that would be awesome, and well worth any minor risk involved.

Dave Barry’s year in review.

Name of the Day

The Senate confirms the first Chinese-American woman to a District Court. She was also nominated by Bill Clinton a decade ago, but was stopped by Republican obstructionism in the Senate. So congratulations, Dolly Gee.

Today -100: December 26, 1909: Of death, payment for MPs, and exile

Mark Twain’s daughter Jean died.

The House of Lords in its judicial capacity rules that it is illegal for unions to finance Labour Party MPs. MPs were not paid a salary at this time and Labour MPs, unlike those of other parties we could mention, tended not to be independently wealthy. And, um, if this needs saying, there were no Labour members of the House of Lords.

Former Nicaraguan president Zelaya goes into exile aboard a Mexican gunboat.

The pope gives tongue to a bagpipe player (not a metaphor!)

Caption con... Oh, you say you’d like a close-up?


...test.

Today -100: December 25, 1909: Of racial definitions and mince pies

Booker T. Washington has been proposing a “Negro Exposition” to mark the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1913. The NYT believes that this plan is unwise since “Few of our colored population can afford to travel” and “The assertion that any large number of influential whites in the South look upon the plan with favor lacks verification.” So it would be a financial failure and just stir up that race stuff.

In other racial news, “Dragged by Elevated Train: Man Saved from Death by a Negro Platform Porter.” The NYT felt the porter’s race significant enough to require pointing out in the headline – because heaven forfend you form an opinion of him based on his actions before you know his race. The generic “man” saved from death was of course white.

Elsewhere in the paper, on the front page in fact, is a headline, “Wanted to Wed Japanese; License Refused at New Haven to Miss Dorr and Jullen Kwan.” Kwan was a Harvard student. The reason they were refused was actually that she was too young (18), but race made the whole thing newsworthy.

Sometimes those racial distinctions were disturbingly ambiguous. The US Circuit Court in Boston had to decide whether Armenians counted as white or whether they were Asiatics and therefore excluded from seeking US citizenship. Judge Lowell ruled that there has been so much race-mixing in that part of the world over the last 2,500 years that it is impossible to tell, and admitted four Armenians to citizenship, over the objections of the federal government. Lowell notes that if you accept Hebrews as white, you have to accept Armenians.

You will be relieved to hear that the giant mince pie made it to the White House safely.

Selling human beings

Cambodia deports 20 Uighur seeking political asylum back to China; a few hours later gets $1.2b aid deal from China; denies any connection.