Unfortunate Headline of the Day

AP: “New High Court Era: Kagan Makes 3 Women on Bench.”

(Good article by Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick in Slate about “How the Roberts Court Disguises Its Conservatism.”)

Today -100: October 5, 1910: Of campaigns, revolutions, and gambling

Henry Stimson files a statement of expenses under the new campaign disclosure law: his campaign for the R. nomination for governor cost him $150.

But the NYT says Stimson’s campaign is doomed (spoiler alert: yes, yes it is. Doomed doomed doomed.) because many Republicans would just as soon see him lose if that would help prevent Roosevelt getting back into the White House: “Every man who has any stake in the orderly administration of the Government, in the maintenance of the integrity of the courts, every man who has respect for the country’s laws and its institutions, and who is moved to disquiet and alarm by Mr. Roosevelt’s appeals to mob passion and unreason, understands very well that this is the year to check and thwart his designs, not next year or the year after.”

In the meantime, the old governor Charles Evans Hughes is about to resign to take up his seat on the Supreme Court, so there will be a temporary governor until the end of the year, one Horace White.

A revolution has started in Portugal. Warships controlled by the rebels are bombarding Lisbon, and the king may have been captured.

One of the things NYC Mayor Gaynor finds on his return to work is that the police have been investigating the US Army Building on suspicion that it “was being conducted as a gambling house.” Evidently it wasn’t, and Gaynor has to write a letter of apology to the deputy quartermaster. What seems to have happened was that there was a gambling establishment over a saloon across the street from the Army Building and the two detectives who went to the Army Building were actually corrupt cops using the visit as a sneaky way to tip off the gambling joint that there was an investigation going on.

Today -100: October 4, 1910: Of revolting cops, and an Alabama negro in King Frederick’s court

Maryland Governor Crothers declares the Baltimore police board’s act in stationing of armed cops around hq to prevent being fired an armed revolt and an insurrection against the state, “and I shall take steps to put it down.” (What steps? There is no follow-up in the NYT in the next two weeks.)

The king and queen of Denmark entertain Booker T. Washington, the “first negro ever received at the Danish Court,” at Charlottenlund Castle. They talked about the Danish West Indies. The queen would like him to go there and apply the Tuskegee system of education.

NYC Mayor Gaynor returns to work, two months after his assassination.

Today -100: October 3, 1910: Of cops, censorship and queues

Governor Austin Crothers of Maryland is prosecuting two Baltimore police commissioners for incompetence and misconduct and trying to oust various other police officials, including the chief. But for two days the cops have been guarding police hq and the commissioner’s offices to prevent the temporary commissioners appointed by the governor taking over. Will he send the militia in?

18 leading British playwrights have penned a protest against the banning of Laurence Housman’s play about the attempt by George IV in 1820 to divorce Queen Caroline, Pains and Penalties, and a demand that there be a right of appeal against such bans. Bernard Shaw noted in the preface to his Plays Unpleasant that in 1737 Henry Fielding had “devoted his genius to the task of exposing and destroying parliamentary corruption, then at its height. Walpole, unable to govern without corruption, promptly gagged the stage by a censorship which is in full force at the present moment. Fielding, driven out of the trade of Molière and Aristophanes, took to that of Cervantes; and since then the English novel has been one of the glories of literature, whilst the English drama has been its disgrace.” The reason given by the Lord Chamberlain for the ban on Housman’s play was that it was about “a sad historical episode of comparatively recent date in the life of an unhappy lady.” Too soon? Queen Caroline had been dead for 90 years.

The former Chinese ambassador to the US is presenting the emperor with a memorial on behalf of Chinese living in the Americas asking to be allowed to stop wearing Chinese clothing and the queue (the long braid of hair).

Jerry Brown-Meg Whitman debate: The real tragedy here is Nicky

If Meg Whitman hadn’t taken such unpleasantly anti-illegal-immigrant positions, one might almost feel sorry for her. And the question she asked Jerry Brown in today’s Univision debate, “What would you have had me do?”, is actually pretty unanswerable; if she’d just kept repeating it he’d have been in an uncomfortable position. Many people find Whitman’s summary firing of Diaz after 9 years cruel and heartless to someone she claims to have considered as part of her family, but is Brown, California’s highest law-enforcement official, suggesting Whitman should have overlooked a violation of the law? Or instead that she should have checked Diaz’s documents more carefully and then reported her to the INS? Either answer would alienate a large swathe of voters. Instead, Brown responded with something about how Whitman should take responsibility and not blame everybody else, but that’s about the politics of it. What should she have done about Diaz herself?


Fortunately for him, Whitman’s politics are solidly anti-immigrant, opposing a path to legalization and telling an illegal immigrant Fresno State student at the debate that she shouldn’t have been given a university space that could have gone to a citizen, so Whitman couldn’t ask Brown how you act humanely in the light of inhumane laws, and she did in fact maintain the I’m-the-real-victim-here stance. She suggested that Diaz had been brainwashed by Brown’s henchmen: “The Nicky I saw at the press conference three days ago was not the Nicky that I knew for nine years. And you know what my first clue was? She kept referring to me as Ms. Whitman. For the nine years she worked for me she called me Meg and I called her Nicky.” Hmm, I wonder what could have changed that? Follow the clues, Meg.

By contrast, Whitman repeatedly referred to her summarily dismissed employee as Nicky.

Whitman suggested that the person who really exploited Nicky Diaz is Jerry Brown: “You put her out there. You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions.” Oh, so very self-aware. “The real tragedy here is Nicky. After Nov. 2, no one’s going to be watching out for Nicky Diaz.” What’s stopping you from hiring her the best immigration lawyer in the state, Meg?

Whitman said, “I cannot win the governor’s race without the Latino vote,” so, um, good luck with that.

Asked to list three of their opponent’s positive traits, Whitman could only come up with two for Brown (he cares about California and has had a long career in public service) before resorting to, “And I really like his choice of wife.”


I don’t believe she answered the question about when she would take the polygraph she offered a few days to take. Steve Lopez of the LAT has already lined up a guy to do it.

(My post on the previous debate here.)

Today -100: October 2, 1910: Of dynamite, cholera, spectacular prances, souls, and diplodocuses

Today’s (-100) NYT includes some of the blurriest scans I’ve seen yet, some of it quite unreadable. Sigh.

Still, things were much worse at the LA Times, where dynamite exploded in the LAT building, setting off a fire in nearby ink barrels which engulfed the building and killed 21 people (the lack of fire escapes didn’t help).


Another bomb exploded at the home of the paper’s proprietor, Gen. Harrison Gray Otis (who was not home), who had been waging a vicious war against unions in southern California in general and unions at the Times in particular. The LAT put out a single-page edition a few hours after the fire, screaming for revenge. Its headline: “Unionist Bombs Wreck the Times; Many Seriously Injured.” That it was unionists who planted the dynamite was only conjecture at that point. But (spoiler alert) true. There was a big trial, with Clarence Darrow defending the McNamara brothers, and then himself for supposedly bribing jurors.

There’s a Wikipedia page on the bombing and trial, and books, including one I’ve read and can recommend, Geoffrey Cowan, The People v. Clarence Darrow.

Two planes hit each other in Milan in the first-ever mid-air collision. I believe both pilots survived.

France is pissed off at Italy, as well they might be, for concealing the outbreak of cholera in Naples.

Election cycles really were shorter back then. John Dix, who just received the surprise nomination to be governor of NY, has decided – with the election just five weeks away – to have a vacation before he begins campaigning. “Regarding his campaign plans Mr. Dix remarked: ‘There will be no spectacular prance about the State.’” Fun fact about Dix and vacations (and I’ll save you some anxiety and just tell you now that he will in fact be the next governor): in 1912 he was scheduled to take one aboard the second voyage of the Titanic, had there been one).

Thomas Edison says that there is no such thing as the human soul. So that settles that. Scientifically.

Speaking of science, Charles Brooks, the African explorer, wants the British government to fund an expedition into the Rhodesia swamps, because he hears tell that there are dinosaurs there, possibly diplodocus, beside which an elephant “looks like a small cat.” Also there’s a race of copper-colored people. And, um, unicorns. And, er, dragons.

Confidence man

Silvio Berlusconi wins another vote of confidence.


He followed it up with a speech to the Italian Senate in which he took credit for persuading Bush to bail out the banks, persuading Obama to negotiate a nuclear treaty with Russia, and persuading Putin not to conquer Georgia in 2008, thus saving President Saakashvili being “hanged from the highest tree.”

Caption contest!

Today -100: October 1, 1910: It’s Icicle-Dix in NY

The under-emotional Barack Obama figure of his day? Henry Stimson says, “I want to overcome the impression which I am told is current among newspapermen that I am an icicle. I am not an icicle.” He says the impression arose because the public has hitherto only known him as a US district attorney.

And the vote (of Tammany Boss Charles Murphy) is in: the Democratic nominee for governor of New York is one John Alden Dix, nephew of a previous governor and Civil War general of the same name. Like Stimson, he’s pretty obscure and has never held elective office, though he did run for lt. governor in 1908 (the term for state offices like governor was two years). Dix had to have his arm twisted to run, and his wife pleaded with him in tears not to.

Here’s how it worked at the D. party convention: yesterday I said that there were 14 named candidates for governor. But then Boss Murphy made his choice of Dix and the others all dropped out except for one joker, Congressman William Salzer, who insisted his name be put forward and lost 434 to 16. Murphy’s choices for all the other offices were put through “by acclamation.” Oddly enough, one plank in the party platform is direct primary elections.

Artist Winslow Homer dies.

Today -100: September 30, 1910: Of four hundred and fifty sad-eyed men

The NYT today is officially the gossipy mother of every Republican politician, with headlines such as “GAYNOR BUSY ON ’PHONE.; Talks the Whole Evening, Perhaps to Somebody in Rochester” and “Roosevelt Early to Bed.”

The prosecution of Oklahoma Governor Haskell for fraud in the purchase of federal lands is dropped abruptly. A recent circuit court ruling had created a statute of limitations of only three years, and this particular criminal enterprise began in 1902.

The New York Democratic convention has opened, under the firm control of Tammany Hall. “The convention session meant nothing. The real convention was in Mr. [Boss Charles] Murphy’s room at the Whitcomb”. While “Four hundred and fifty sad-eyed men [were] wondering whom they were to nominate for Governor of New York”, Murphy has yet to decide which of 14 possible candidates will run in the elections – which are just 5½ weeks away. NYC’s assassinated-but-not-dead-yet Mayor Gaynor, now almost recovered enough to return to work, is the only really popular choice and therefore Murphy’s, despite his independence from Tammany control, but he has said in a public letter that he definitely absolutely does not want it and would not accept the nomination.

Today -100: September 29, 1910: Of Stimson and fallen kings

Very much under Roosevelt’s direction (for example he, rather than the delegates as custom dictated, named committee members), the NY Republican convention nominates Henry L. Stimson (yes, the later secretary of war under Taft, secretary of state under Hoover and secretary of war again under FDR) for governor (you’ll recall that the popular Republican governor Charles Evans Hughes is heading for the Supreme Court in a few days). The NYT criticizes TR for “advocating direct nominations in the forenoon and dictating nominations in the afternoon”. They kind of have a point.

Headline of the Day -100: “King Had to Fall Down.” Italian King Victor Emmanuel was inspecting planes at an aerodrome when someone who didn’t see him started up a plane, which started towards the monarch. He and the Count of Milan had to throw themselves to the ground; the plane just cleared them.

California gubernatorial debate: They’re fooling around with a lot of fat

The first debate between eMeg and former Governor Moonbeam took place at UC Davis (Motto: Come for the dachshund races, stay for the, er...) tonight.

Whitman says putting Brown in charge of the budget is “like putting Count Dracula in charge of the blood bank.” Which was an old, unfunny joke when Dracula was still alive (1431–1476).

She sort of looks like a crucifix here, no?
Brown says “we’re all going to have to sacrifice.” Meaning college students and young people who won’t be able to afford to be college students because he’ll be increasing state university fees. “But I’d say those at the top, those at the commanding heights of our economy, should tuck in their belts first.” Tuck their belts into what? Does Jerry Brown not know how belts work?

Brown was asked if he’d run for president again: “if I were younger you know I would.” So he’s saying he’s too old to be president but not too old to be governor.

My prostate is like this big
Brown went on and on (as old guys will do) about why it’d be good to have an old guy as governor: “If everybody in state service worked as long as I have, the pension system would be overfunded by 50 percent, OK, and work until 72. By the way, if you elect me governor, I will not collect until I’m 76. And by my second term, I’ll be 80. So I’m the best pension buy California has ever seen.” I believe that’s his new motto.

Brown says he’d be more effective than the last time he was governor because he’s married now: “I come home at night. I don’t try to close down the bars in Sacramento like I used to do when I was governor of California.” At his age, he closes down the early bird specials.

Brown: “I pledge to the people of this state I will faithfully carry out our law on executions and I’ll do it with compassion but I’ll do it with great fidelity to the rule of law.” “Compassionate” executions. Must be what they taught him at that Jesuit seminary.

By the way, as attorney general Brown is desperately trying to get an execution under his belt, or whatever he uses to hold up his pants, before the election, but a federal judge halted Thursday’s scheduled execution because he’s not convinced that the lethal injection chemicals wouldn’t allow the executee to feel great pain while being paralyzed so it wouldn’t show. And all of the state’s sodium thiopental reaches its expiration date Friday.

Whitman attacked him for appointing Rose Bird to the state supreme court and said: “Jerry has a long, 40-year record of being quite liberal on crime.” And he once shot a guy, just to watch him die.

Brown: “We can cut. They’re fooling around with a lot of fat.” Boy, that’s an image I did not need in my head.

Jazz hands!
Whitman: “No company should put a call center in Phoenix, Arizona, they should put it in Fresno or Stockton.” The, um, call-out to Fresno is because last week she said Fresno “looks like Detroit. It’s awful.” Which is something we can all agree on. I believe that’s actually the city motto.

Whitman on not voting for all those decades: “I apologize to everyone in California.”

Whitman: “I don’t think you can buy elections. I think Californians are too smart.” She means that unions can’t buy elections, not that ultra-rich dilettantes can’t buy elections.

Whitman: “This state is in an enormous mess.” I believe that’s actually the new state motto.

Jazz hands!

No Apology Out of Butt

Follow-up: Last Tuesday our Headline of the Day (from the BBC) was “England Demand Apology From Butt.” Today: “Butt Makes No Apology to England.”

Today -100: September 28, 1910: Of cholera and conventions

100,000 of “the better classes” have fled the cholera outbreak in Naples.

The NY Republican Party convention votes Roosevelt in as temporary chairman, defeating VP Sherman, overturning a decision made at an advance committee meeting in August, from which several members had stayed away because they were told nothing important was going to happen. But the indirect primaries spoke (how it worked was that New York Republicans voted for delegates to this convention; the convention will choose the candidates for governor, congress, etc; one of the planks Roosevelt wants is direct primaries, but the convention is still divided on that issue), and progressive delegates outnumber Old Guard ones (567-445 on the chairman vote). Therefore, in the NYT’s words, “the Old Guard turned its State Convention over to Theodore Roosevelt this afternoon, body, soul, and breeches.” Oh, it’s that sort of convention.

TR’s speech called for a “war against dishonesty.”

Today -100: September 27, 1910: Everyone loves a parade

Oklahoma Gov. Charles Haskell (the new state’s first governor) is on trial for conspiracy to defraud the government in the sale of Creek Indian land, which he and his associates bought under false names for next to nothing.

The New York Republican convention opens tomorrow. TR is there, and Vice President Sherman, and everyone is in a spectacularly nasty mood. Fun.

On the corner of 3rd Avenue and 137th Street in NYC, a recently released mental patient, “wearing a black slouch hat bound around with a tasseled cord of gilt braid,” ordered some little boys to “fall in.” They did and so began a parade that grew continually, more boys joining it as it marched up the street. A cop commanded the leader to follow him to the police station. “Only if my regiment follows me,” he said, and so they did, though when they arrived at the station house, the killjoy cop dispersed the regiment.

Today -100: September 26, 1910: Of cholera

Officials in Naples, Italy finally admit that there is cholera in the city. One case. In fact, 80 have died of the disease.

Of course he did

Thomas Friedman column: “I was recently at a Washington Nationals baseball game. While waiting for a hot dog, I overheard the conversation behind me...”

You won’t have Balls to kick around anymore

Not that it matters, since Blair and Brown have made Labour unelectable for a generation, but the Labour leadership contest took place today at the Labour Party conference. To the disappointment of every British headline writer, Ed Balls was eliminated in the third round of voting, but Ed Miliband was finally able to vanquish his older brother David, who was ahead of him in votes in each of the first three rounds. Awkward!

“You’re Fredo.” “No, you’re Fredo.”

This blog predicted David Miliband’s failure two years ago when he was photographed with a banana.



Ed Miliband is 40, has only been in Parliament five years. Like many European politicians, he is not married to his partner, with whom he has a child. When do you suppose that will be possible in puritan America?

Nov. 2010 California proposition recommendations

(Update: results added, in purple. Will add exact numbers when available.)

Prop. 19. Legalizes marijuana for those 21 and older. Well, you’re either in favor of legalization or you aren’t, and if you consider marijuana more harmless than, say, tequila, and legalization a good way to bring revenue to state and local governments, redirect police and prison resources to real criminals, and strike at the power of the cartels and gangs, then Prop. 19 is a start. That said, implementation will be a mess, not only because pot will still be illegal at the federal level but also because Prop. 19 won’t really kill the illegal drug trade: people under 21 will still be buying, and the local governments that have put so many obstacles in the path of medical marijuana certainly won’t be more welcoming to recreational use, which means they either won’t permit commercial production and distribution or they’ll put such high taxes on it that people will continue going to the same old dealers.

The No ballot pamphlet argument suggests that 19 will increase car accidents because it sets no standards for determining when someone is driving under the influence of marijuana. Hey, district attorneys who wrote that argument, I’m pretty sure those would be exactly the same standards as we use right now.

Vote yes on 19, dudes, and stock up on some munchies.

Loses (54%), because the olds out-voted the yoots. It'll be interesting to see if this is one of those social issues that trends permissive over time, like gay marriage, or if people will always get wary of the demon weed when they get older.

---

Props. 20 & 27. Redistricting. Again. And we have competing “evil twin” props.

Prop. 20 would give the job of drawing Congressional districts to the citizens’ commission created by Prop. 11 in 2008. I was against that one at the time because it created an insanely convoluted system to select a bunch of anonymous, unaccountable individuals to perform one of the most vital tasks in our democracy and for having quotas based on political party, thus “enshrin[ing] the two parties at the heart of the redistricting process... trying to pre-determine the outcomes of elections.” Click here for my 2008 argument against Prop. 11, which applies doubly to this extension of its reach. The commission is still in the process of being selected by state auditors, using who knows what criteria, so it’s too early to say what sort of a job they’ll do, although we do know that most of the volunteers were white.

The requirement that districts not break up “communities of interest,” which is defined as “shared interests... common to an urban area, a rural area, an industrial area, or an agricultural area, and those common to areas in which the people share similar living standards, use the same transportation facilities, have similar work opportunities,” would ensure that this all winds up in the courts, since class-segregated Congressional districts arguably violate the 14th Amendment even if class didn’t function as a proxy for race, which it does.

No on 20.

Wins easily (61.5%).

---

Prop. 21. An $18 surcharge on non-commercial vehicles to support state parks and beaches; free admission to parks for the owners of those vehicles. On principle, I dislike hypothecated taxes, where a tax on one thing is dedicated to some unrelated purpose. The appropriate car tax and the appropriate budget for state parks are unrelated to each other and should be decided by – don’t laugh – the Legislature. Such decisions are kind of what they’re there for (in case you were wondering what they’re there for)(I know I was). Moreover, heavy users of the parks should not be subsidized, eliminating higher admission charges during peak times would create over-crowding, and state services should be supported by the progressive income tax so that the rich pay their fair share. Please lobby your legislators to do that, but vote no on 21.

Loses big time (57.8%). Not a good year to be asking voters to reach into their pockets.

---

Prop. 22 bans the state government “borrowing” money from local governments and transportation projects. The No argument suggests alarmingly that this would cause schools to close and then burn down because all the fire departments would be closed, or something like that, because the budget process is so messed up it can’t function without stealing from local governments. Fix the broken budget process; don’t bankrupt the cities. Yes on 22.

Yes, 60.8%.

---

Prop. 23 suspends air pollution and greenhouse gas laws when the state unemployment rate is over 5.5%. So Valero and Tesoro, the primary funders of this prop (which paid that young women who tried to get me to sign the petition for this prop by claiming it did the exact opposite), wants to close down its California refineries and import dirtier gasoline made in states with less stringent air pollution laws. It’s about the most greedy corporate-backed proposition I’ve seen since... that PG&E one in June. It would make pollution worse and do nothing to decrease unemployment. (Note to the Calif. secretary of state: the Yes argument shouldn’t have been allowed to use the false term “global warming tax.”) Vote No. And boycott Valero.

No, 61%. Valero et al thought they could convince people environmental regs cost them their jobs, the people just saw greedy polluters.

---

Prop. 24 changes the way large multi-state businesses are taxed, closing recently created loopholes. Yes.

Loses big, 58.5%. Voters see a confusing technical prop, they vote no on general principles.

---

Prop. 25 changes the current 2/3 vote required in the Legislature to pass a budget to a simple majority. But retains 2/3 for taxes, which I guess is the only way this thing could get passed, but which would therefore be only a partial fix for the broken budgetary system, leaving it hostage to a minority, which would still be encouraged in their obstructionism. Still, I would have supported it as a half-way measure, but they just had to add that childish faux-populist bit taking away the pay and travel & living expenses of every legislator each day the budget is late. That is precisely the same thing, morally speaking, as offering legislators a bribe in a brown paper bag in a parking garage: it is an economic incentive to vote a certain way. Any politician this would work on is not worthy of holding public office. It would put a coercive weapon in the hands of obstructionist wealthy legislators to use against any of their brethren who might actually need their pay. Do we really want to drive out of politics everyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire? I would love to change the 2/3 provision, but the pay-docking provision is a deal-breaker. No.

Yes, by a healthy margin (54.8%), which rather surprises me, especially with all the lying about it really being about raising taxes.

---

Prop. 26. State fees would require a 2/3 vote in the Legislature, and local ones would require 2/3 in a referendum. Evidently some people think California doesn’t have enough gridlock in the Legislature now, that the budget process runs just too smoothly, so let’s require a 2/3 vote to, for example, raise entrance fees at state parks or increase restaurant inspection fees to keep up with costs, and let’s require expensive local elections on charging fees to businesses that sell alcohol. Mostly, though, this is really about the fees paid by businesses to pay for, for example, cleaning up pollution or oil spills they cause (Chevron is the largest funder of the pro-26 campaign). Those businesses hope that if they yell TAX TAX TAX loud enough, voters will be scared that there’s a conspiracy to subject them to “hidden taxes” if 26 isn’t passed. No on 26, another step in making California completely ungovernable.

Yes, 52.6%. When they saw which way the wind was blowing on 23, the oil companies switched their money into promoting this one, with commercials that were at the very least deceptive. We'll come to regret this (while at the same time somehow absolving ourselves of all responsibility for having voted for it)

---

Prop. 27. Redistricting. If both 27 and 20 win, only the one with the most votes goes into effect. 27 repeals 2008’s Prop. 11, abolishing the citizens’ commission, making the Legislature again responsible for drawing up districts for all offices, and putting the maps up to the voters.

The authors decided to go all budget-populist and laughably call 27 the “Financial Accountability in Redistricting (FAIR!) Act,” focusing on 27’s least important provision, which restricts the money spent on the redistricting process to $2.5 million, which 1) saves a couple million dollars, big deal, 2) is too little for a fairly complex enterprise, 3) will be more than made up for by the cost of putting the maps on the ballot.

Okay, I hate the Prop. 11 citizens commission and want it killed, but I have some major problems with 27: 1) That $2.5m limit. 2) Districts are supposed to be contiguous and not divide cities or those darned “communities of interest” (here not defined at all), but are also supposed to contain precisely the same number of voters, literally deviating by no more than 1 voter, which is silly. 3) It’s pretty much up to the Legislature (I checked the prop’s language) whether there will be separate referenda for the congressional, state senate, assembly and board of equalization districts or whether it’ll be just one combined referendum. Since the referendum is the only check on gerrymandering by the Legislature, this is not a minor detail. 4) There is nothing in the prop about what happens if the voters reject a map. 5) I can’t tell when the referendum(s) are supposed to be held, but I’m assuming it would have to be in November 2011, a low-turnout off-year election, to be ready in time for 2012.

I’m conflicted. I would like the ill-conceived citizens’ commission abolished, but this is a pretty flawed alternative. On balance I’ll probably vote yes on 27, but I won’t be very happy about it.

No, 59.7%. No one trusts legislators to draw their own districts, and the whole thing felt like a sneaky trick.

---

Comments, questions, rebuttals, praise, ill-informed abuse, mockery of the California initiative process, and votes on which prop is the most cynical abuse of the process are welcome in comments.

Negative impact

Military censors pictures of American soldiers (the ones about to be court-martialed for the sport-killing of Afghans) posing with dead Afghans, holding up their heads. A colonel seems to think it would have a “negative impact on the reputation of the armed forces.”

Today -100: September 25, 1910: Of exiles, sensation-seeking, and pet moo-cows

Nicaragua’s Estrada government (that’s the general, who is now president, not his brother, who was president for a few days last month; there were I believe 2 different presidents in between) sticks a bunch of the opposition Liberals on a ship bound for Panama.

TR will be in St Louis at the time of an air meet, but declined an offer to go up in a plane, suggesting that he might be accused of sensation-seeking.

In an interview, Woodrow Wilson accuses the Republicans of using the tariff “less and less as a means of protection – more and more as a means of patronage,” behind which trusts have conspired to raise prices.

Headline of the Day -100: “Will Take Cow to Taft.” The person who will take the cow to Taft is Jim Torrey, an 8th (!) cousin of Taft’s, and the cow is named Pauline Wayne, who will replace the Taft family’s late, lamented pet cow Mooley.