President Obama’s Many Moods

From the Arizona Daily Star:

March 31, 1968 – President Lyndon Johnson Opts Not to Seek Re-election

NPR has a very good 5 minute program produced in 2008 on the 40th anniversary of President Johnson’s stunning announcement that he would not seek another term in office. As NPR producer John McDonough observed, “nobody saw it coming.” You can learn more about it, and also hear the president make his historic statement here. [...]

Review of “Callisto” by Torsten Krol

Callisto is the story of Odell Deefus, a Forrest Gump type fellow whose life turns out more like you would expect for someone “who’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.” Instead of the fairy tale cascade of happy accidents that happened to Gump, for Deefus there is instead a nightmarish spiral of darkly evil [...]

March 29, 1937: The Switch in Time That Saved Nine: West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish

March 29, 1937 is the date the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (300 U.S. 379), in which it upheld the constitutional validity of Washington state’s minimum wage statute, and by implication, much more of the New Deal. The five to four decision reflected an unexpected shift in [...]

Sunday Salon – Review of “Is God a Mathematician?” by Mario Livio

Mario Livio observes the fascinating patterns of coincidences and constants in mathematics and considers the question that has bedeviled philosophers from Plato to the present: is the mathematical world we perceive a preexisting entity that can be “discovered” by humans (i.e., is it how God or nature organizes the world?) or instead, is it simply [...]

Zombie Chicken Award

I received the Zombie Chicken Award from Alyce of At Home With Books. Thank you so much Alyce for your kindness! The Award comes with the following description:”The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken – excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a [...]

Review of “The Last Song Dogs” by Sinclair Browning

What is more fun than a mystery set in your own hometown? (It helps to have more than one “home” town too – the possible pool of fun mysteries is broadened considerably!) The Last Song Dogs takes place in Tucson, Arizona, where Trade Ellis, “part Apache, part cowgirl” works as a rancher and private investigator. [...]

Review of “Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil” by Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber begins his book with the observation that legal scholars almost universally proclaim that the Dred Scott decision was wrong. To the contrary, Graber argues that “the result in Dred Scott v. Sandford may have been constitutionally correct….” (For an analysis of this decision, see our previous post here.) The consensus that it was [...]

Giveaway of “The Turnaround” by George Pelecanos

UPDATE:*******contest now closed******* Check for the winners here. The Hachette Book Group has generously offered to give away 5 copies of the new crime novel by George Pelecanos. (Winners are restricted to residents of the US and Canada and Hachette cannot mail to PO Boxes.) Who is George Pelecanos? If you haven’t read his books, [...]

March 26, 1962 – The U.S. Supreme Court Decides Baker v. Carr

Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case which decided that federal courts had the power to rule on the constitutionality of reapportionment plans and decisions (that is, changes in the boundaries of voting districts) made by state governments. This case is one of the most cited in [...]