Rhode Island became the last of North America’s revolutionary thirteen colonies to ratify the United States Constitution, on May 29, 1790.
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The Thirteenth State
Author: Redactor
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Robert Frost
The best way out is always through.
Robert Frost, “A Servant of Servants,” North of Boston (1914).
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Exeunt the Communards
After two months of vigorous revolutionary acts — from “social democratic” reforms to public executions — the Paris Commune fell on May 28, 1871.
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Lawmaker May Vote
It was not a hard call. But it wasn’t unanimous. The United States Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to reinstate Laurel Libby’s voting rights as a Maine state representative until her lawsuit protesting the punishment of her speech is resolved.
The Court did not address her right to speak on legislation. So, while Libby is now being allowed to vote, she’s still not being allowed to speak on legislative questions.
Maine’s Democratic lawmakers had stripped Libby of her right to speak on and vote on legislation because they objected to a social media post in which Libby expressed disapproval of letting a boy participate in a girls’ track competition.
The boy’s name was already public knowledge, as I explained when I covered the story earlier this month. But the fact that Libby referred to him by name (first name) in her post was the hook on which her colleagues sought to hang her.
The dissent of one of the two dissenting Supreme Court justices, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, seems partly motivated by her view that “the case isn’t an emergency in need of Supreme Court intervention since there are no significant upcoming votes where Libby’s participation could change the outcome.”
An astonishing sentiment.
We don’t know for sure what questions might come up in the last weeks of Maine’s legislature session. In any case, the purported significance of legislative matters has no bearing on the question of the justice of simply annulling, over a political disagreement, the voters’ decision about who should represent them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Theodore Roethke
Poetry is not a mere shuffling of dead words or even a corralling of live ones.
Theodore Roethke, Poetry and Craft (1965).
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FDR Was Not Pleased
The Supreme Court of the United States unanimously declared key portions of the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional, in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (295 U.S. 495), on May 27, 1935.
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In Memory of the Fallen
Today is Memorial Day. It grew out of Decoration Day, which developed into a reconciliation memorial in the late 19th century to honor the fallen soldiers in the Civil War.
Decoration Day started in the South as Confederate Heroes Day and Confederate Decoration Day, but it almost immediately caught on in the North — one can hardly get more Yankee than the Danbury, Connecticut, avant-garde composer Charles Ives (1874-1954), whoseDecoration Day (1915-1920) tone poem (he later placed it in his Holidays Symphony as the second movement) is one of the great American orchestral classics (or so I’m told).
By 1890, every Union state had adopted a Memorial Day of some kind, under different names, not always celebrated on the date first promoted in the North, May 30. The two world wars shifted the emphasis even further to a national commemoration, and, in 1968, Congress changed the day of its observance to the last Monday in May; in 1971, Congress standardized the name as “Memorial Day.”
In 2000, Congress passed the National Moment of Remembrance Act, asking people to stop and remember at 3:00 pm. According to Statista, there have been 1,304,705 military fatalities in America’s wars. These ultimate sacrifices warrant a special day of remembrance dedicated solely to them.
Don’t we owe them our freedom? I certainly believe we owe it to the fallen to keep that freedom alive.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Shakespeare
O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (c.1604; 1623), Act 2, scene 2.
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Market Milestones
Capitalism’s 26th of May milestones:
- On May 26, 1896, Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
- The last Model T rolled off of Ford Motor Company’s assembly line on May 26th of 1927, after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.
- The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on the 26th of May, 1967.
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Senate Hearing Jabs Jab
“Just one day before the [Senate] hearing, likely for preemptive damage control purposes, the FDA quietly updated its myocarditis warning on Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines, expanding the risk category to males aged 16 to 25 and citing an incidence of 8 cases per million doses for the 2023–2024 formulations,” Nicolas Hulscher wrote on Thursday for Focal Points. “Unfortunately, no mention of death was added — despite robust, peer-reviewed autopsy evidence confirming fatal vaccine-induced myocarditis.”
Hulscher’s short article focuses on the testimony of Dr. Peter McCullough at the hearing, which was held on Wednesday.
In direct response to claims made by Senator Richard Blumenthal during the hearing that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, Dr. McCullough was unequivocal: “I don’t want America to be fooled by this hearing today thinking that the vaccines saved lives — because they didn’t.”
Dr. McCullough’s testimony was clear, data-driven, and difficult to ignore.
He made the case that public health agencies minimized known harms, failed to act on early warning signs, and still have not provided the public with full transparency.
The hearing was the first Senator Ron Johnson conducted as the new chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The senator began by asserting that the Biden administration had known about the mRNA “vaccines’” myocarditis problem early, but kept mum.
“Johnson released newly subpoenaed records exposing a detailed timeline of what officials knew and when,” The Vigilant Fox summarizes on Substack. “While Pfizer and Moderna received insider updates, doctors and citizens who raised concerns were silenced.”
In February 2021, Israeli health officials warned the CDC of “large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people” following Pfizer injections, just two and a half months after the vaccine received emergency use authorization.
By April, the CDC was already reviewing myocarditis data from Israel and the Department of Defense. But instead of alerting the public, they stayed quiet.
It now seems possible that the full truth about the coronavirus pandemic will come out, though few if any insiders are likely to be brought to justice.