After Wikipedia: On March 5, 1770, British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. British troops had been stationed in the Province to support crown-appointed officials and to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. Amid tense relations between the civilians and the soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry and verbally abused him. He was eventually supported by seven additional soldiers, led by Captain Thomas Preston, who were hit by clubs, stones, and snowballs. Eventually, one soldier fired, prompting the others to fire without an order by Preston. The gunfire instantly killed three people and wounded eight others, two of whom later died of their wounds.

How long will we wait in hope that the nameless, faceless, badgeless (police?, soldiers, ...?) now being deployed in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere by the Trump administration as a show of force against our own people will not ultimately act the same way? What infantry captain or local Führer will order his troops to fire on their fellow citizens? Will they obey him or the law and their conscience? What will we do then?

Perhaps someone will inform us of the moral difference between the images below.

The greater issue in the current debate about the Supreme Court is not the validity of charges against Brett Kavanaugh. It is rather the deviation of the McConnell Senate from established practice.

First, there is no hurry. After the death of Justice Scalia, no hearing on a new associate justice was held for several months for purely political reasons. A delay in consenting to a nomination will have essentially no effect on American jurisprudence. I am unaware of any life and death issues awaiting the Court when it reconvenes in October that cannot be adjudicated by eight justices. The Chief Justice is able to defer action and manage the docket to bring cases before the bench as he pleases.

Second, seven of the nine justices are over 60; three are over 75, so it is likely that the President will have other opportunities to nominate justices. We should not be surprised when he nominates conservatives. Elections have consequences.

Third, should the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh be unproven, he could be renominated at any time. The rejection of a nomination does not prevent the President from renominating that person to the Court or any other position at a later time. It would probably be a foolish move, but reflect on the past 18 months. That means that if Mr. Kavanaugh is as good a jurist as the President and other supporters assert, we might be blessed with the sunshine of his rulings and opinions later rather than sooner.

All that cannot, of course, diminish the scorn toward Sen. Crassly (misspelling intentional) and his confrères stemming from their asinine and condescending behavior of the past few days. Once again, the sequel to Profiles in Courage will remain unwritten.

Here I sit wondering whether my surgery scheduled for Monday and Tuesday will be paid for by Medicare. Asked all involved.

Answer: No one knows, not providers, not Medicare, not my Congressman, no one. Certainly not tea-partiers, who don't care a whit for ordinary people.

Supposedly those fools got elected regarding concerns over money. Surprise! They're wolves in sheep's clothing wanting the same right-wing crapola that would have been perfectly acceptable to the old John Birchers.

Planned Parenthood funding is a ruse. It has nothing to do with saving money. It has nothing to do with abortions, which are already prohibited as a use of government funds. It's about getting know-nothings in charge of the government; to be precise, white, male, Christian know-nothings who watched TV westerns as boys and are longing for the 19th Century or at best Leave it to Beaver.

Graphic shows a Tea Party vanguard bearing their traditional symbol. Are you thrilled or horrified?

RC

Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, and yours is a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local sports reporter, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.


(From the mailbag. -Ed.)

The MC city government reports that Verizon and its subcontractors are back in Mill Creek to install additional fiber optic lines around the city. The Huckleberry neighborhood is currently under construction, with Fairway, Brighton, Red Cedar, Cottonwood, and Vine Maple to follow in the near future. The tentative schedule is for construction of the "backbone" of the fiber optic network to be completed in early 2009. Next month City staff will be bringing a franchise agreement for Verizon television service to the City Council for review.

We note that full service to individual households is still in the future. Citizens should be prepared to comment on the nature of TV service. In the past the populace has been inclined to accept the offerings of service providers, which tend to lag far behind the state of the art, to include redundand programming and to assert benefits to the city that are of dubious value. One hopes the Council will do a better job of educating itself on technical and programming options than has been evident in the past.

Julie Muhlstein mounts a solid defense of student press independence in a recent Everett Herald article. She says that Cascade High and its principal stepped over the line when suspending a student editor for a minor infraction.

Muhlstein's Herald Article

In the wake of recent clashes between students and school personnel here in the Everett school district, the larger community needs to give extra thought to how we can better assimilate an increasingly diverse population.

After a fight involving Hispanic schoolgirls at Everett High School, according to a Seattle Times report by Lynn Thompson "Latino parents accused the district of overreacting and questioned whether police would have been called if the girls had been white. They also asked for a meeting with district Superintendent Carol Whitehead. ...(who) declined to meet with them, citing confidentiality of student records."

Sound familiar? It does to Latino parents, who perceive such responses as bureaucratic obfuscation designed more to protect the school staff than to solve an apparent problem.

Continues...

This story in the Seattle Times inspired this post