Don’t ask. Really, just don’t.

Name of the Day: One of the witnesses at today’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell hearings: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Roughead.

Today -100: December 2, 1910: Of senators

Massachusetts Governor-Elect Eugene Foss has embarked on a campaign to derail Senator Henry Cabot Lodge being re-elected. It’s worth spending a little time on it as a window into the rhetoric and reality of representative democracy in 1910. In those pre-17th Amendment days of indirect election of US senators, Foss’s campaign was also necessarily indirect, attempting to raise enough public ire to pressure the Legislature, but having to do so right after a new Legislature was elected, when that pressure would be least effective.

Foss gave an anti-Lodge speech to a meeting following a torchlight procession in Provincetown. He insisted that the November election which elected him and overthrew the incumbent Republican governor was also a “vote of censure” on Lodge, who should have responded by standing down. Instead, “Working in silence and secrecy he resorts to his self-constituted political machine, the machine which has dominated Massachusetts politically for years. He is seeking the counsels of those whom he serves, the privileged interests, and ignores the verdict of the people. He has never mingled with the people or worked shoulder to shoulder with them. He has never been a vital part of the industrial life of the Commonwealth.”

Foss attacks Lodge for sponsoring, early in his career, the failed Force Bill, “a measure that causes every honest man to blush.” The Force Bill was an attempt to federalize the running of elections in the South, to prevent African-American disfranchisement (and also ensure Republican dominance there). Lodge has also opposed federal income tax and favored high tariffs. “I fail to find in Sen. Lodge’s record any vote in favor of the rights of the people, or any championship of the people. So far as the people are concerned his legislative record is a blank.”

But there is no insurgent movement in the Republican Party in Massachusetts as there is in other states because “Sen. Lodge and his machine have strangled every Progressive who showed his head.” “This campaign marks the beginning of the end of Senator Lodge. I say it is the end because he cannot maintain by methods of secrecy, sinister influence, and wire-pulling the leadership of his party. The day of these things has gone by. He declines to come out into the open, and for this reason, if for no other, he is doomed. He is fighting secretly through his machine”.

A NYT editorial on NY’s selection of a senator urges Democrats to defy the attempt of Tammany’s Boss Murphy to railroad his choice through the Legislature, to make their views known by speaking or writing to their state legislators, writing letters to the editor, speaking to their neighbors, holding mass meetings, etc. What the Times doesn’t want, though, is direct primaries, calling them “a first-rate device for strengthening the hands of the bosses”, who “know how to get out their vote”. (The selection of the next New York senator ground the business of the Legislature to a halt during 2½ months of caucus fights, backroom deals that fell through, and 60 ballots of the Democratic caucus.)

The mayor of Fort Worth calls Andrew Carnegie “misguided” for building libraries, because only the rich go to libraries, forcing the poor have to pay taxes to support them. Texas, ladies and gentlemen, Texas!

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your legislative branch

Grumpy the Clown passes literacy test, may take his seat in the Brazilian Congress.

Too... many... easy... jokes... brain... shutting... down........

Today -100: December 1, 1910: Of banned operas, choppers, and fires

First Chicago, now Cleveland: Strauss’s Salome banned. The St Louis police chief says he will have to see it for himself to judge whether it should be banned, but since only one performance is scheduled there, the opera will go on.

Thomas Edison has invented some sort of flying machine. He mentions in passing that he has an old patent, but doesn’t want to talk about it or develop it, and says he has no real interest in airplanes. The machine “consists of a basket hung on a vertical shaft, on the upper end of which revolve box kites or some other form of aeroplanes, at sufficient speed to lift the whole affair.” Er, that’s a helicopter. Edison invented the helicopter, but wasn’t interested in aviation, so he didn’t develop it.

Gov-Elect Woodrow Wilson suggests that the next president should be Ohio’s Governor Judson Harmon.

A house fire in Des Moines at midnight. An old woman appeals for someone to save her trunk. One bystander volunteers to go in. Firemen try to stop him, but he goes in anyway, and drags it to safety. That bystander: Governor Beryl Carroll, who’s probably being so brave to make up for having a girl’s name. (No, I don’t know what was in the trunk.)

Today -100: November 30, 1910: Of head scenes and polar expeditions

The Chicago Opera Company refuses to perform Strauss’s opera Salome after the police order them to censor the “offensive” features, especially the “head scene.”

Capt. Scott’s expedition starts for the Antarctic.

Camp, you say? That reminds me of something, but what? Concentrate... concentrate...

Consecutive stories in the Independent:

# Israel to build giant detention camp for migrants
# Israel tries to clean up its image abroad

Today -100: November 29, 1910: Of elections

The British Parliament is dissolved, with the second general election of the year to be held in December. It will be fought largely on the issue of the legislative veto of the (overwhelmingly Tory) House of Lords. The king has promised Prime Minister Asquith that if the Liberals win another election and the Lords remain stubborn, he will name as many new peers as are needed to pass the veto – and it could be hundreds. But Asquith is not allowed to tell the public this because of the traditional secrecy of communications between prime ministers and monarchs.

Ireland is also an important election issue, with the Liberals promising Home Rule and the Tories – most of whom call themselves Unionists precisely to highlight this – promising to continue ruling Ireland from London. We’re just beginning to see the notion of a divided Ireland emerge as a response to the imminence of Home Rule. A meeting of delegates from Ulster adopts a resolution to refuse to pay any taxes or obey any laws passed by a parliament in Dublin. It also plans to set up an Ulster militia and purchase arms. (I suspect their definition of Ulster is 9 counties, rather than the 6 that wound up being excluded from the Republic of Ireland).

Oh noez! Responsible, accountable, and open government is in trouble!

According to the White House, the latest WikiLeaks doc dump “runs counter” to the goal, which President Obama completely and entirely supports, of “responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world”. Huh. Must be the kind of responsible, accountable, open government that requires lots of secrets.

WikiLeaks has also “put at risk... the cause of human rights”. Um, how do you figure that?

Today -100: November 28, 1910: Of hot sweeties

The strike by the NYC vendors of hot sweet potatoes (“hot sweeties,” in the vernacular) has failed. Many of them will now sell baked apples instead.

Speaking of hot sweeties, a NYT editorial suggests that the British judge who presided over trials of suffragettes last week missed an opportunity to sentence them to something more creative than “40 shillings or a fortnight,” “which matches ill with the innovation presented to the contemplation of the world by the spectacle of a lady kicking a Cabinet Minister’s shins. ... Possibly a clue might be found in the ladies’ ambition to be treated as men. Why not grant their heart’s desire? Why not cut their hair short, for example... Since the ladies kick, why not apparel them for the pastime? That is to say, why not put brogans on them, and trouserettes? Then they might be provided with a ticket of leave good as long as they wore their new clothes.” Somehow I don’t think they’re taking the women’s suffrage movement very seriously.

Today -100: November 27, 1910: Of lumber slaves, fires, planes and cigar lighters

In France, a sailor charged with deserting his ship in Portland, Oregon proves that he had been drugged and put to work as a slave in a lumber camp in Oregon for several months.

24 women and girls are killed in a fire in a four-story building in Newark, NJ, which housed a gas lamp factory on the 3rd floor (where the fire started), a couple of paper box factories below that, and the Wolff Muslin Undergarment Company on the 4th floor, from which came most of the dead. One of the two fire escapes, all NJ law required on the 150-foot-long building, was blocked by flames. Many of the factory workers jumped as the flames reached them, only to be impaled on the spikes of a gate.

A newspaper in Virginia arranges for a plane to fly over the Virginia State Penitentiary, so the lifers can see a plane for the first time. They were suitably awe-struck.

Tourist advice: if you are traveling in France in 1910, be aware that pocket cigar lighters are illegal, because they infringe on the match monopoly, an important source of government revenue.

Good enough for Afghanistan

As of today, we have been in Afghanistan for as long as the Soviets were. USA! USA! USA! Proudly capturing Osama bin Laden for 9 years, 50 days.



David Petraeus says the goal is to ensure that Afghanistan “is never again a sanctuary to al-Qaida or other transnational extremists,” which we will do by “help[ing] Afghanistan develop the ability to secure and govern itself. Now not to the levels of Switzerland in 10 years or less, but to a level that is good enough for Afghanistan.” Dare to dream, general, dare to dream.

Today -100: November 26, 1910: Of those who have become mannish in their ways

Cardinal Gibbons (only the second Catholic cardinal from the United States) tells girl students at St Catherine’s Normal School not to follow women’s suffragists or, as he calls them, “those who have become mannish in their ways and who fight for a place in politics.” Because “The place for the woman is in...” wait for it... “the home.”

An elephant named Queen, of the Frank A. Robbins Circus, is executed with cyanide after having trampled her keeper (she also killed a little girl, but that was some years ago). Queen was supposedly 87 (that would be really old for an elephant, but not impossible).

Giving thanks

for the Tom DeLay money-laundering conviction. I’m sure the footage of the verdict being announced will be played on tv every Thanksgiving. “It’s a Tom DeLay guilty verdict, Charlie Brown!” Snoopy dance, everybody!

The White House turkeys were named Apple and Cider. CAPTION CONTEST!

“Live long and prosper”

Today -100: November 25, 1910: Of men on horseback and creeps united

Apropos of Taft’s visit to Panama, the NYT notes that it’s not especially healthy for the canal workers because “Only brown men and black ones can really live in the tropics. The white man can rule there, but if he stays too long he invariably either dies or degenerates.”

Madero’s statement says that as soon as Mexico City and half the states have been liberated, he will organize new elections.

The NYT reports a rumor that Madero was seriously wounded in the fighting. Or possibly just fell off his horse.

Another NYT Index Typo: “SPECIAL SERVICES FOR THANKSGIVING; All Creeps Unite in Praise for the Benefits of the Last Year.” Creeds; all creeds unite. And yes, the distinction is often a subtle one.

Today -100: November 24, 1910: Has the Mexican Revolution been completely repressed?

Francisco Madero declares himself “President of the Provisional Government of Mexico,” and orders his followers not to attack Americans or banks. Madero’s brother Gustavo arrives in Washington to deny that the rebellion is anti-American.

However, the Mexican foreign minister tells the NYT that the revolt has been “completely repressed.”

Massachusetts Governor-elect Foss changes tack, appealing to Henry Cabot Lodge to agree that no decision on the senatorship be made by the Legislature and that a new law be enacted for direct election of senators.

I submit to you that your empire is illogical

In 2002, it came out that despite the fact that the one thing that was always mentioned about Mullah Omar every time his name came up in news stories was that he was deficient in the eye department to the tune of one, the wanted pictures of him which the CIA had been dropping all over Afghanistan were of someone with two eyes. As I wrote at the time, “In the kingdom of the American intelligence community, the one-eyed man is king.”

Clearly the “Taliban leader” we have been negotiating with (and paying off) is not the “imposter” he is depicted as, but works for that alternate-reality Taliban’s Two-Eyed Mullah Omar. Expect to see McCain and Lieberman on the talk shows this Sunday calling for a preemptive strike on the Mirror Universe, before it’s too late.

Unfortunately Phrased Headline of the Day

“Pope Softens Stance on Condoms” (AP). That does tend to happen at his age.

Today -100: November 23, 1910: Of demented creatures, the Mexican Revolution, and lunacy commissions

British suffragettes “assaulted” Prime Minister Asquith, the NYT says, and threw stones at the houses of Asquith, Churchill, and other Cabinet members. As contemptuously condescending as the NYT’s reporter was, that of the London Times was worse: “The rioters yesterday appeared to have lost all control of themselves. Some shrieked, some laughed hysterically, and all fought with a dogged but aimless pertinacity. Some of the rioters appeared to be quite young girls, who must have been the victims of hysteria rather than of deep conviction. ... The women behaved like demented creatures, and it was evident that their conduct completely alienated the sympathy of the crowd.”


There are revolts and fighting between rebels and the army throughout Mexico, and signs of serious division within the army. A document was supposedly found in some revolutionary’s house detailing a plan to to dynamite the building of the newspaper El Imparcial and to assassinate many government officials and display their bodies suspended from electric-light wires. President Díaz would be spared because of his past services to the country.

Headline of the Day -100: “Lunacy Commission Takes Up Food Theft.”

Awkwardly Phrased Headline of the Day

From an op-ed piece in The Guardian: “The Pope’s Shift on Condoms Is the Thin End of the Wedge.”

Today -100: November 22, 1910: Of senators, Jim Crow, assassinations, revolutions, and new constitutions

Unlike Foss in Massachusetts (see yesterday), NY Governor-Elect Dix says he will leave the matter of electing a US senator entirely up to the Legislature, and won’t even express a preference.

Democrats on the Baltimore City Council are moving towards adopting an ordinance for residential racial segregation. A committee report says “No fault is found with the negroes’ ambitions, but the committee feels that Baltimoreans will be criminally negligent as to their future happiness if they suffer the negroes’ ambitions to go unchecked. The existence of such an ambition is a constant menace to the social quietude and property values of every white neighborhood in Baltimore.” To quote Jimmy McNulty, “What the fuck is wrong with this city?”

The editor of the Kentucky newspaper Appeal to Reason is sentenced to 6 months in federal prison and a $1,000 fine for mailing envelopes on which was printed “$1,000 reward will be paid to any person who kidnaps ex-Governor Taylor and returns him to the Kentucky authorities,” which the jury considered defamatory and threatening. The NYT doesn’t explain, but this is about the 1900 assassination of Gov. William Goebel, which I mentioned on the 18th when another of the (alleged) conspirators was elected to Congress. William Taylor was initially declared the winner of the 1899 elections but served only 50 days before the legislature reversed the results (there was so much corruption and partisan maneuvering I really don’t know who actually won the election). So the assassination was a subtle means of keeping Taylor in office, but didn’t work and Goebel was inaugurated before dying of his wounds. When the indictments started coming down, Taylor fled to Indiana, whose governor refused to extradite him. Thus the reward for Taylor’s return to Kentucky (in 1909, after the reward announcement, Taylor was pardoned by another Republican governor).

Old Mexico: Rebels capture the town of Gomez Palacio. 300 Federal troops evidently go over to their side. Francisco Madero has crossed into Mexico from the US.

New Mexico: The constitutional convention has finished its work. Hispanics, suspicious of the Federal enabling act requirement that all state officers and legislators must speak English, demanded equality before the law. So provisions ban any distinction based on inability to speak English for jury duty, the franchise or other officials not covered by the Federal act and also ban separate schools for whites and Hispanics.