The Senate: easily distracted by shiny toys

There was a closed-door briefing for US senators about NSA spying. Only 47 attended because it was the weekend. Well, it was Thursday afternoon, but that evidently counts as the weekend in Washington.

Here’s what Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said afterwards: “We were given some very specific and helpful information about how these programs have helped keep the American people safe. I can’t imagine any United States senator sitting through a briefing like we just had and not feeling thankful for the efforts that NSA and others put forth.”

I’m reminded of the chapter on Congressional oversight of intelligence matters in Victor Marchetti and John Marks’ The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974):

A more current example of the CIA's evasive tactics occurred in 1966 when the Senate appropriations subcommittee was thought to have some hard questions to ask about the growing costs of technical espionage programs. DCI Helms responded to the senatorial interest by bringing with him the CIA's Deputy Director for Science & Technology, Dr. Albert D. "Bud" Wheelon, who loaded himself up with a bag full of spy gadgets-a camera hidden in a tobacco pouch, a radio transmitter hidden in false teeth, a tape recorder in a cigarette case, and so on. This equipment did not even come from Wheelan's part of the agency but was manufactured by the Clandestine Services; if, however, the Senators wanted to talk about "technical" matters, Helms and his assistant were perfectly willing to distract them with James Bond-type equipment.

Wheelon started to discuss the technical collection programs, but as he talked he let the Senators inspect the gadgets. Predictably, the discussion soon turned to the spy paraphernalia. One persistent Senator asked two questions about the new and expensive technical collection systems the CIA was then putting into operation, but Wheelon deftly turned the subject back to the gadgets. When the Senator asked his question a third time, Chairman Russell told him to hold his inquiry until the CIA men were finished. But the Senators became so enthralled with the equipment before them that no more questions were asked.

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Today -100: June 15, 1913: Of death trains, congos and funerals

Tabloid-Type Headline of the Day That’s Actually in the New York Times -100: “Saw Death Train Riddle Coal Camp.” Testimony at the Senate hearing on the West Virginia strikes: in February, mineowners used an armored car with a mounted Gatling gun to attack a tent camp of striking miners and their families. After the first salvo, mineowner Quinn Morton reportedly ordered that the train be backed up for another round. The miners called the train the Death Special, owners called it the Bull Moose train.

The Congo Reform Association in London closes its doors, because evidently the Belgian Congo is now reformed and is no longer quite so Heart of Darknessy.

The Women’s Social and Political Union hold a funeral procession for Emily Wilding Davison. Emmeline Pankhurst, out of prison on license under the Cat and Mouse Act, is arrested as she attempts to leave her sickbed to attend, and is dragged back to prison. The choice of the Metropolitan Police to use mounted police to keep the procession from reaching Piccadilly Circus is perhaps a little lacking in taste.

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Today -100: June 14, 1913: Of suffrage, reigns of terror, and white sex

The US Senate’s Committee on Woman Suffrage reports favorably to the whole Senate for a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage.

The US Senate committee investigating martial law in West Virginia hears from former Gov. William Glasscock, who declared that martial law. He says there was a “reign of terror” and that murders were going unprosecuted. He says the mine guards were a major problem, as well as the strikers, so he, um, got the mines to hire militiamen.

NYT Index Typo of the Day -100: “White Sex Get Disputed Player.”

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Today -100: June 13, 1913: Of blazing biplanes, and coal wars

Headline of the Day -100: “Dies in Blazing Biplane.” That’s 275 deaths since the beginning of heavier-than-air travel, although the NYT still considers them enough of a novelty to report on every one.

West Virginia Gov. Henry Hatfield refuses to submit the records of the courts-martial used against striking coal miners to the Senate committee. He says releasing the records would be “prejudicial to the public peace.” He does end martial law in the coal districts, after four months. Judge Advocate General George Wallace of the Military Commission tells the Senate that the Constitution was suspended by the governor and that “in a theatre of war the Commander in Chief of the forces [Gov. Hatfield] makes the law.” So the Commission could have sentenced people to death without any actual statutory law.

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Today -100: June 12, 1913: Of women’s suffrage, states of actual warfare, assassination, and flour

The Illinois Legislature passes a bill giving women the vote, but only for presidential and some local offices, not for Congress, the state Legislature, or governor. That makes it the 10th suffrage state, the first east of the Mississippi.

The LAT claims that the passage of women’s suffrage in Illinois is down to Katherine Riley having refused to set a date for marriage with Ill. House Speaker William McKinley until it passed.

A committee of the US Senate investigates the use of military courts to convict strikers in West Virginia. Members of the Military Committee that had exercised martial law testify that the coal strike was “a state of actual warfare” and that therefore the Constitution was suspended and they could impose sentences of any length they chose, without regard to those set out in civil law. Which they did.

Turkey’s grand vizier is assassinated, as was the custom.

A male supporter of women’s suffrage throws a bag of flour at Prime Minister Asquith in Parliament, misses.

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Today -100: June 11, 1913: Of press regulation and Balkan wars

The Supreme Court rules that the law requiring newspapers to name their owners, editors, stockholders etc and to clearly label anything written in exchange for money (including editorials) as advertisement in order to be allowed to go through the mails at the periodical rate is constitutional because it wasn’t an infringement of freedom of the press but a mere postal regulation.

The Second Balkan War won’t officially begin for a few days, but they’re definitely killing each other. That’s Greece and Serbia on one side, Bulgaria on the other, over the spoils of the First Balkan War. Serbs forces are demanding that the Bulgarians evacuate Volodan or it will bombard Istip (Štip); these are probably actual places that actually exist.

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Today -100: June 10, 1913: Rum and dope did this

Headline of the Day -100: “Guns Drive Gypsies Off.” Atlantic City cops and a posse chase off a band of gypsies, driving them into the woods where they belong.

Least Believable Headline of the Day -100: “Union Miners Glad They Are Indicted.” 19 United Mine Workers officials, by a federal grand jury in West Virginia, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for conspiracy in restraint of trade or something like that.

The US government files suit to dissolve the Eastman Kodak Company for violations of the Anti-Trust Act.

Nathaniel Green, a negro who assaulted a white woman, is hanged, the first execution for such an offense in the District of Columbia. Woodrow Wilson refused clemency. Green’s supposed last words: “Rum and dope did this. I hope I’ll be an example to the other men of my race.”

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Today -100: June 9, 1913: She died for women

In the London civil trial of Women’s Social and Political Union leaders being sued by shop owners whose windows were broken by militants in 1912, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (who has since been thrown out of the WSPU) says, “The holes in those broken windows were mouths calling attention to the wrongs of hundreds of thousands of wives and mothers.”

Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette who interrupted the Derby, dies. Christabel Pankhurst writes “Miss Davison died for women. She did this to call attention to their wrongs and to win them votes. The Government’s refusal to grant the vote drove her to make her protest.”

After a case of smallpox is discovered in a negro Baptist church in D.C., the police surround the church and the parishioners are forcibly vaccinated (except those who had escaped through windows).

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Profound Thought of the Day

Mosques in Britain are advised to install panic alarms and safe rooms. Isn’t that all a mosque – or any church – is? a safe room with panic alarms.

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Today -100: June 8, 1913: Kaiser Wilhelm, he kept us out of war

To celebrate Kaiser Wilhelm’s 25 years on the throne, the NYT Sunday magazine has several articles about what a great keeper of the peace he is.

Almroth Wright, the British doctor last seen here writing a letter to the London Times about the hysteria underlying the women’s suffrage movement, now has a book on the subject, The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage. The NYT sends a reporter round to talk to him. Wright suggests that giving the vote to women is rather like the Americans giving negroes rights, which they “jolly well wished they hadn’t.” In both cases, there are some very intelligent individuals, but negroes and women in general are stupider than whites and men, Wright says.

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I don’t welcome leaks

Today Obama tried to talk about ObamaCare, but all anyone wanted to talk about was ObamaSpy.

ARE YOU CALLING ME BORING? “When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls.”

This “metadata doesn’t count” argument reminds me of my personal definition of torture: if it can make a fanatical terrorist betray his compatriots and his ideals, that is if it works, it’s torture. In the same way, if the information that they’re collecting is worth collecting, it’s not an insignificant intrusion on our privacy.

WHAT OBAMA TOTALLY WELCOMES: “I welcome this debate. And I think it’s healthy for our democracy.” That’s why the entire apparatus of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and half a dozen agencies you’ve never heard of are trying to track down the leaker: to give him or her a medal for services to the health of democracy.

WHAT OBAMA FINDS INTERESTING: “And I think it’s interesting that there are some folks on the left but also some folks on the right who are now worried about it who weren’t very worried about it when there was a Republican president.” Name me some folks on the left who are worried about this who weren’t worried about it under Bush. Name me two.

OO, THERE’S A TRADEOFF! WHAT’D WE GET? WHAT’D WE GET? WAS IT A PUPPY? “But I think it’s important for everybody to understand -- and I think the American people understand -- that there are some tradeoffs involved.” Of course the American people didn’t trade our privacy rights, you traded them for us, in secret.

MODEST ENCROACHMENTS R US: “But my assessment and my team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. And the modest encroachments on the privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration without a name attached and not looking at content, that on net, it was worth us doing.” I’ll bet Obama thought good and hard for maybe up to five minutes about this one.

WHAT OBAMA DOESN’T WELCOME: “I don’t welcome leaks, because there’s a reason why these programs are classified.” Yes, so that we don’t know what you’re up to. That’s definitely a reason.

SOMEHOW: “I think that there is a suggestion that somehow any classified program is a ‘secret’ program, which means it’s somehow suspicious.” Classified: “adjective. Formally assigned by a government to one of several levels of sensitivity, usually (in English) top secret, secret, confidential”. And yes, secret programs are inherently suspicious.

PRESUMABLY: “And if, in fact, there was -- there were abuses taking place, presumably those members of Congress could raise those issues very aggressively. They’re empowered to do so.” Raise them where, raise them how?

ALTHOUGH WE DO HAVE COPIES OF THEIR TEXTS. ALL THEIR TEXTS: “We also have federal judges that we put in place who are not subject to political pressure.”

YES IT IS: “That’s not to suggest that you just say, trust me; we’re doing the right thing; we know who the bad guys are.”

I KNOW I FEEL SAFER WITH DIANNE FEINSTEIN AND LINDSAY GRAHAM AND THE FISA COURT ON THE CASE: “And the reason that’s not how it works is because we’ve got congressional oversight and judicial oversight.”

YOU SAID IT, NOT ME: “And if people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

VERY SERIOUSLY: “But my observation is, is that the people who are involved in America’s national security, they take this work very seriously. They cherish our Constitution. The last thing they’d be doing is taking programs like this to listen to somebody’s phone calls.” This paragraph only works on people who know nothing whatsoever about the history of the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

“And by the way, with respect to my concerns about privacy issues, I will leave this office at some point, sometime in the last -- next three and a half years”. Is he so unsure about when he’s leaving office because he thinks he’ll impeached? “...and after that, I will be a private citizen. And I suspect that, on a list of people who might be targeted so that somebody could read their emails or listen to their phone calls, I’d probably be pretty high on that list.” Why? You’ll be painting pictures of yourself in the bathtub just like Bush does.

BY WHICH I MEAN PROSTITUTES: “But I know that the people who are involved in these programs, they operate like professionals.”

YOU CAN COMPLAIN: “And in the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amuck...” and we’ll be listening in and taking notes “...but when you actually look at the details, then I think we’ve struck the right balance.”

Whenever Obama talks about “balance,” someone gets fucked. Sometimes, everyone gets fucked.

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Today -100: June 7, 1913: Of lobbies

Congress has been discussing tariffs, specifically what items should and should not be subject to them. President Wilson has been denouncing the “lobby” in favor of retaining protectionist tariffs on various products, so the Republicans are threatening to have the Senate Investigating Committee look into the lobbying by Wilson himself to pressure Democratic senators into voting for free trade items, because Wilson talking about the lobby was in fact lobbying, and oh kill me.

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Today -100: June 6, 1913: Of unpunished militants, wrecked aeroplanes, and loony cardinals

Three good candidates for Headline of the Day -100 today.

First headline: “Derby Militant May Go Unpunished.” Unless you count fatal wounds from a horse falling on her.

Second: “Skirt Wrecks Aeroplane.”

Third: “CARDINAL LOSES HIS MIND.; Vives y Tuto Thinks He Is Pope and Orders Liberals Exterminated.”

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Today -100: June 5, 1913: A Day at the Races

Emily Wilding Davison, a suffragette of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with a long history of activism, including 8 imprisonments, 7 hunger strikes and 49 forcible feedings, attempted to disrupt the Derby by grabbing the reins of a horse (the king’s horse Anmer as it happened), or possibly she thought all the horses were past and intended to unfurl a women’s suffrage banner, which she had wrapped around her body under her coat, or attach it to the horse. Her intentions have been debated up to the present – there was a documentary on British tv examining the question just last week (and a note to that program’s presenter Clare Balding, who kept referring to the “hidden history” of the suffrage movement: not to be a snitch, but I can tell you exactly where it’s hiding: in the many books on the subject you never bothered to read) – but it was widely assumed at the time that she’d deliberately killed herself. The horse is fine (finished the race sans jockey, second to last), the jockey Herbert Jones is injured but not too seriously, Emily is rather badly trampled, and will die in a few days.



You can find newsreel footage of the incident on YouTube, if you’re into that sort of thing. They certainly were into that sort of thing in England: by the end of day the film had already been shown at the Palace Theatre.

There is a problem when real news happens at sporting events: the news gets written by sports reporters. The sports reporter from the London Times notes that the Derby was marked by two events, 1) the intrusion of a suffragette onto the track, and 2) the (unrelated) disqualification of the favorite, for deliberately bumping other horses, so that the winner was a horse whose odds had been 100:1. And it’s pretty clear which of those events the reporter considered more important. But the Times’ editorial
isn’t much better: “The desperate act of a woman who rushed from the rails on to the course as the horses swept round Tattenham Corner, apparently from some mad notion that she could spoil the race, will impress the general public even more, perhaps, than the disqualification of the winner.” Perhaps! Perhaps!! It continues: “She did not interfere with the race, but she nearly killed a jockey as well as herself, and she brought down a valuable horse.” The Evening Standard wrote: “It is highly characteristic of suffragette militancy that an attempt should be made to introduce a note of tragedy into a day of festival.”



The queen sent a telegram to the jockey in hospital: “Queen Alexandra was very sorry indeed to read of your sad accident caused through the abominable conduct of a brutal lunatic woman.” Jones will ride the winning horse in the Derby in 1919.

The WSPU will elevate Davison to martyrdom, which implies that her death was intentional (and not just the WSPU; the Free Church Suffrage Times proclaimed that never before Emily Wilding Davison had anyone died for the freedom of women: “Something new is with us, the love of women for women, and of this new passion, Miss Davison’s death is the supreme expression, and perhaps, the price.”). Whether her intentions really included the ultimate self-sacrifice or not, there was an ecological niche open in the movement for a martyr, and she filled it nicely. A quicky biography of Davison by Gertrude Colmore repeatedly compares her to Joan of Arc (the suffragettes loved them some Joan of Arc). The June 13th issue of The Suffragette says that Davison’s death “has fired the imagination and touched the heart of the people” and Christabel Pankhurst calls the death “A wonderful act of faith!” adding, “It is only men and women of superhuman generosity and courage who can die for those unseen, unheard, unknown.”



The National American Woman’s Suffrage Association announces that it will begin electoral work in support of pro-suffrage candidates in every Congressional district. This is a (somewhat controversial) move away from the old state-by-state suffrage strategy and towards a federal constitutional amendment. The work will be done by the NAWSA’s Congressional Union, under the leadership of Alice Paul, which will soon split off from the more conservative NAWSA.

The controller of the Treasury tells Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo that he can’t have a government-paid-for automobile.

There’s a fight in the Hungarian Parliament after Prime Minister von Lukacs is declared guilty of misappropriating government funds for party purposes. “During the uproar that followed an opposition Deputy ex-Premier Count Khuen-Héderváry von Hédervár, was knocked down with two blows of his sword by the Captain of the guard, who afterward asserted his right as an officer to knock down any one who insulted him, as the Count had done, by shouting ‘Fie!’ at him three times.”

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Preachers of hate

Here’s what happened in the Mother of Parliaments yesterday:

1) David Cameron bragged about keeping “preachers of hate,” by which he meant Muslim preachers of hate, out of the UK, and spoke of the need to “drain the swamps” of “violent extremists.”

2) Meanwhile, in the House of Lords, aka the swamp of sleepy extremists, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was speaking forcefully against gay marriage.

Welby actually talked about “category errors” by supporters of gay marriage, who, he says, are “failing to understand that two things may be equal but different.” Wow, separate but equal.

By the way, you know how Dan Savage gave a new meaning to the word “Santorum”? Well Just In Welby already sounds kinda...

He said that gay marriage is “an awkward shape, with same-gender and different-gender categories scrunched into it, neither fitting well.” Kinky.

The other chief opponent of the same-sex marriage bill in the Lords is named Lord Dear, because of course he is.

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Today -100: June 4, 1913: Of vetoes, hostility to government, and gypsies

NY Gov. Sulzer uses his line-item veto to eliminate programs and posts favored by opponents of his plan for direct primary elections, because Bill Sulzer is all about winning friends and influencing people.

In other actions, Sulzer signs into law a bill creating a colored battalion of the National Guard in NY City, which the black community had been asking for for 20 years but which the Guard leadership opposed.

Alexander Scott, the managing editor of the socialist Passaic Weekly Issue, is found guilty by a Paterson jury of publishing an editorial advocating “hostility to government,” which was made a crime in New Jersey after the McKinley assassination. The editorial (rightly) accused the Paterson police chief of running amok during the silk strike at the behest of the owners and attacking “defenseless workers like a bunch of drunken Cossacks”. He will be sentenced to a prison term of one to fifteen years.

You know, the NYT is not what you’d call pro-IWW, but it seems to have quoted just about every word of that illegal-in-New-Jersey editorial.

An editor who does rather better for himself is Richard Metcalfe, editor of William Jennings Bryan’s Commoner, who is appointed governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

The NYT says that it’s “probably a wild generalization” that Gypsies steal children (there was a scare in Pennsylvania when a three-year-old boy briefly disappeared just after a band of gypsies was seen passing through).

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Effectively serving

John McCain on Face the Nation suggested that Eric Holder should ask himself if he is “really able to effectively” do his job, because John McCain is not big on either irony or self-awareness.

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Today -100: June 3, 1913: Of poets laureate and bigamists

Alfred Austin, the British Poet Laureate, dies. If you’ve never heard of him, it’s probably because he was kind of crap.

Headline of the Day -100: “Bigamist a Murderer.” I suspect this story is false, since I can’t find another reference to it, but here goes: a Belgian dude, Georges Brény, was told that his wife died on the Titanic, so he married another woman. Finding out that his wife had survived, he shot his second wife dead, tried to shoot himself, failed, tried to hang himself, failed.

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Today -100: June 2, 1913: Of harassment, numerous and insidious lobbies, ritual murders, and Jack the Ripper

Almost-War Headline of the Day -100: “Bulgars Harass Greeks.” Show us on the map of Salonika where Bulgaria touched you.

Elsewhere, the prime ministers of Bulgaria and Serbia meet to try to prevent a new war.

Since President Wilson claimed that there is a “numerous and insidious lobby” against tariff reduction, a sub-committee of the Senate Judiciary committee will investigate the matter, requiring every member of the Senate to answer questions under oath, to recount every conversation they had about tariffs with persons with financial interests in them, to detail any of their own financial interests that might be affected by tariffs, etc (a later article suggests that this is a scheme to get those financial details so that objections can be made to individual senators voting on particular tariffs that affect them personally, but this scheme, if it exists, is based on a misreading of Senate rules, which do not prevent such votes). It is unclear whether Wilson will testify (he won’t). The next 6 days will see much debate over the precise meaning of the words lobby and lobbyist.

The Russian Ministry of Justice plans to put a Jew on trial for ritual-murdering a Christian boy in Kiev in 1911 (I had thought this was settled when the boy’s step-father was arrested).

Sir Melville Macnaghten, retired head of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department, says he knows who Jack the Ripper was but he won’t tell. Also, that Jack committed suicide.

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Today -100: June 1, 1913: 6¢

Theodore Roosevelt wins his libel case after a week-long trial/circus. The newspaper proprietor he was suing went on the stand and apologized, saying he only believed that TR was a drunk because so many people said he was, but he hasn’t been able to find any proof of it and so is now convinced that TR isn’t a lush after all. Roosevelt then asked to be awarded only nominal damages, which in Michigan is 6¢.

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