On April 7, 1933, Prohibition in the United States was repealed for beer of no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the XXI amendment.
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Prohibition Begins to End
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Camille Paglia
All the genres of philosophy, science, high art, athletics and politics were invented by men. But by the Promethean law of conflict and capture, woman has a right to seize what she will and vie with man on her own terms.
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, p. 9.
Is giving presidents a hard time for playing too much golf itself a pastime?
In Fahrenheit 911, filmmaker Michael Moore portrayed then-President George W. Bush, as more golfer than president — as if W. had secured the nation’s top job as a ruse to convince his wife to let him golf more.
Likewise, Republicans attacked President Barack Obama for incessantly hitting the links. In 2014, when ISIS came frighteningly close to Baghdad, Obama went golfing, causing Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank to bemoan the fact that “Obama’s golf habit needlessly hands his critics a gimme.”
An amusing website documented all of Obama’s golf outings . . . and plays audio of him pledging not to rest “until the dream of healthcare reform is finally achieved” and “until every American who is able and ready and willing to work can find a job,” etc.
Note: Obama never promised not to tee off.*
“Between 2011 and 2016,” SB-Nation reports, Donald Trump “tweeted at least 26 complaints, jokes, or scoldings about Barack Obama playing golf while president.”
Now, President Trump is getting the backswing scrutiny. While Obama didn’t golf during his first four months in office, Politico informs that Trump went golfing after two weeks and, in nine weeks, has already played a dozen rounds of golf.
Good. I wish all the politicians in Washington spent more time on the course and less “governing.”
Even more so as Republicans consider taking a mulligan on healthcare . . . and Mr. Trump invited Sen. Rand Paul to join him on the fairway.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* In the closing days of the Obama administration, Golf Digest published a story lauding Obama’s “deep commitment to supporting the golf industry.” However, the publication informed readers that, while Obama golfed more than his immediate predecessors, Presidents Clinton and Bush 43, he didn’t hit the links nearly as much as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson.
Law is order, and good law is good order.
Aristotle, Politics, Book VII, 1326a.29.
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Salt Rebel
On April 6, 1930, Mohandas K. Gandhi raised a lump of mud and salt, declaring, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.”
Thus began the Salt Satyagraha.
Yesterday, on the 49th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination,* voters in Ferguson, Missouri, passed a charter amendment requiring police to wear body cameras while on duty. The measure also provides the public access to that footage, along with reasonable rules about privacy.
In August 2014, Ferguson came to the nation’s attention — and the world’s — when a black resident was shot and killed by a white policeman. In the aftermath, the nation witnessed a militarized police response to senseless riots that destroyed 17 local businesses.
People there and across the country jumped to fact-free conclusions about who was at fault: the deceased Michael Brown or the policeman, Officer Darren Wilson.
“If there’s one thing that I think everybody in Ferguson would agree on, it’s that we’d like to have a video of what happened on Canfield Drive back in August of 2014,” remarked ballot measure proponent Nick Kasoff.** “If we had that, Ferguson wouldn’t be a hashtag. It would be just another quiet suburb of St. Louis.”
Police began wearing body cameras after the Michael Brown shooting, and the consent decree the city reached with the Department of Justice set some useful parameters. But the rules in the just-enacted charter amendment go much further to guarantee the public access to the video.
Not to mention that just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a review of all such consent decrees nationwide. Without yesterday’s victory at the ballot box, the police cams policy might simply be abandoned.
Not now. The voters have spoken, 71 to 29 percent.
Spurred by Ferguson, there’s been a ton of talk about reforming criminal justice in recent years. But I like action a whole lot better.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Yesterday also reminds me of 1984, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, because the book’s protagonist Winston Smith begins his diary on April 4, 1984.
It’s my favorite book, and has enjoyed quite a surge in sales since last November’s election. Yesterday, the movie was shown in nearly 200 theaters in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Croatia and Sweden.
** Nick Kasoff led the six-resident committee that drafted and petitioned the measure onto the city ballot, with assistance from Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe). Regular readers may remember that LIFe is where I have my day job — and that without contributions like yours, fewer successful measures like this Ferguson body camera initiative get off the ground.
More on the issue
Townhall: “Finding Ferguson”
Townhall: “First Step for Ferguson”
USA Today: “Ferguson residents push for body cameras”
Townhall: “The Citizens Are In Session”
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Our First Veto
On April 5, 1792, U.S. President George Washington exercised his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power was used in the United States.
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Camille Paglia
Modern liberalism suffers unresolved contradictions. It exalts individualism and freedom and, on its radical wing, condemns social orders as oppressive. On the other hand, it expects governments to provide materially for all, a feat manageable only by an expansion of authority and a swollen bureaucracy. In other words, liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother. Feminism has inherited these contradictions.
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, p. 3.
Last Thursday, SpaceX successfully re-used a previously flown rocket to launch a payload into orbit.
Sure, NASA had re-cycled rocket parts before. That is, the U.S. space agency had recovered spent rockets.* But those were rebuilds.
SpaceX’s most recent triumph was to launch a “stage one” rocket that had gone into space before —and returned. Last April it delivered a payload to the International Space Station and then safely touched down vertically** — just like in 1950s sci-fi!
You could see the evidence: the weathered look of the rocket fuselage.
This Falcon 9 rocket not only placed its Luxembourg-owned SES-10 into orbit last week, it then returned — again! — to its ocean “drone ship” platform.
A new age in space commerce thereby hit a new landmark.
Or would that be “spacemark”?
Re-using a rocket is like how airlines re-use jet aircraft. Less waste, expense. Making the whole industry more viable. The technology and expertise to safely land and recover the rocket is astounding.
Alas, videocasting of the most amazing part of the effort, the landing and recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket, failed — noticeable by its lack in both the live Periscope feed and the YouTube archive. But we had seen that very same rocket land last April, onto SpaceX’s charmingly named droneship, Of Course I Still Love You.
Ocean mark? Drone mark? It hit the mark, whatever you call it.
Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, had every reason to breathe a sigh of relief, as well as engage in some apt exultation, after the mission.
We can, too. Space industry privatization and progress? Actually happening.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The Space Shuttle was a different technology entirely, a re-usable spacecraft. What we are talking about today is the powerhouse stage-one booster rocket, like the old Saturn V that the Apollo program famously exploited.
** The Space Shuttle, remember, landed horizontally, like an airplane. Future re-usable manned spacecraft will no doubt do this. A private return-entry spacecraft, like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two, put into orbit by a re-usable Falcon 9 rocket, would be the next logical new achievement. Though, obviously, these are different companies with tech that is not, I think, meant to work together.
That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.
Aristotle, Politics, Book II, 1270b.39.