We all know how bad we are; but it needs much encouragement to persuade some of us to believe that we can really be any better.
Francis Marion Crawford, The Novel: What It Is (1893), p. 77.
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F. Marion Crawford
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Warfare & Peace on Christmas
A series of unofficial truces occurred across the Western Front to celebrate Christmas in 1914. The image, at top, illustrates the event: “British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches” with a sub caption explaining “Saxons and Anglo-Saxons fraternising on the field of battle at the season of peace and goodwill: Officers and men from the German and British trenches meet and greet one another — A German officer photographing a group of foes and friends.” Originally published in The Illustrated London News, January 9, 1915.
On Christmas Day in 1776, George Washington and the Continental Army crossed the Delaware River at night to attack, the next day, the Hessian forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey.
United States President Andrew Johnson granted an unconditional pardon to all Confederate veterans on Christmas Day in 1868.
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F. Marion Crawford
With most men who have moulded, hacked, and chiselled the world into history, to think has been to act.
Francis Marion Crawford, The Novel: What It Is (1893), p. 93.
On December 24, 1973, the District of Columbia Home Rule Act was passed, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to elect their own local government.
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Kamala Harris
You know, every election cycle we talk about ‘this is the most election of our lifetime’ — Lawrence, this one is.
Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, talking to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday’s Last Word.
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A Resignation
On December 23, 1783, George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.
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Theft Thwarts Thieves
It happens plenty in fiction.
Thieves or ex-thieves like John Robie (“To Catch a Thief”), Alexander Mundy (“It Takes a Thief”), and Slippery Jim DiGriz (The Stainless Steel Rat) are among the many beloved reformed or semi-reformed criminals who thwart the criminality of others.
It happens in real life too. Con artist Frank Abagnale eventually taught people how to spot fraud (though apparently still committing it in his memoir Catch Me If You Can). Former black-hat hacker Kevin Mitnick taught people how to protect themselves from hacking and social engineering.
The role of criminals stopping criminals can also be played entirely accidentally.
Last Saturday, three armed men robbed a business called Hi Lo Check Cashing out in Commerce City, Colorado.
“In an unexpected and ironic twist,” says a Facebook post by the Commerce Police Department, “as the trio was robbing the business . . . a fourth criminal stole their getaway vehicle . . . which may have already been stolen.
Police are seeking the third robber and the car thief. I guess they may offer a curt “Thanks” to the latter bad guy just before jailing him.
The Goddess Fortuity won’t always intervene thus. And we don’t want to people to start stealing cars on the off chance that one of their thefts will foil some other theft.
On the other hand, it would be criminal to decline any strokes of crime-stopping luck that come our way, since the politicians and prosecutors aren’t really doing it for us these days.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Theodore Parker
Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.
Theodore Parker, A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (1842).
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For a Red Christmas
On December 22, 1989, Communist President of Romania Nicolae Ceaușescu was overthrown by Ion Iliescu after days of bloody confrontations. The deposed dictator and his wife fled Bucharest with a helicopter as protesters erupted in cheers.
The couple was quickly caught and, on Christmas day, tried by a military tribunal and executed by firing squad.
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Voting Unbound, Democracy Unhinged
In our nation’s capital, local voting rights are expanding and metastasizing so fast it is hard to keep up.
Exhibit A, a 12-1 vote of the City Council last year, telling the world: It is absolutely crucial to our democracy that China’s ambassador to the United States be given the same vote on who should be mayor, council member, or decide ballot measures, that any American citizen living in the District of Columbia would be entitled.
Hey, let’s not disenfranchise the spies working out of the Russian embassy, either. Let ’em all vote!
After all, they pay taxes. Might have their kids in the schools.
In the country illegally? Fuhgeddaboudit! You can vote in DC. In fact, if an invading army took Washington by military force, and then held it for 30 days, the enemy soldiers could legally vote themselves into office.
If only this were hyperbole!
A year ago, all the Republicans — along with 1 in 5 Democrats — in the U.S. House voted to nix the District’s crazy foreign citizen voting plan, as is Congress’s constitutional authority. But the Democrat-controlled Senate refuses to act.
Last week, Abel Amene, whose Ethiopian family was granted asylum more than 20 years ago, became the first non-citizen to be elected to a D.C. office. Abel won one of nearly 300 seats on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, where the average district contains roughly 2,000 residents.
My only question: why hasn’t he become a citizen?
While the ANC has absolutely no power whatsoever, it is likely that its commissioner, Vanessa Rubio, lusts for more power and authority. Earlier this week she was fined $500 for voting twice in the 2020 election — once in Maryland and another time in Washington, D.C.
She originally told authorities she did not recall voting twice. Later she suggested that because D.C. isn’t a state, voting there didn’t count . . . as if everyone gets one vote in Washington and another where they actually live.
Rubio’s 2020 fraud reminds us that not every vote should count.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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