Former President Donald Trump is now selling Bibles for $59.99, inscribed with the phrase "God Bless the USA" and accompanied by copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. But he's not the first U.S. ex-president to sell Bibles for his own purposes. After leaving office, Thomas Jefferson put together "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” which was a private exercise undertaken to make sense of Jesus's teachings. The Miami Herald contrasts the two books, saying of Trump's Bible: “The use of flag imagery and political texts in conjunction with the bible suggests a dangerous politicization of Christianity and religion more broadly — the exact phenomenon that Jefferson feared.”
Like Donald #Trump, scandal followed Richard #Nixon throughout his political career.
Like Trump, Nixon positioned himself as the defender of the common person against the political elite.
Like Trump, Nixon made expansive claims of immunity.
And, like Trump, Nixon always managed to claw his way back into the political forefront.
West Virginia and Georgia are eyeing laws that would allow criminal charges against school librarians for distributing books that contain "obscene matter." This material often includes books on gender identity and sexual orientation. Axios has created this @Flipboard Storyboard, which also includes information on proposed book bans in Oregon, Florida and Texas.
If you're not familiar with the story about the last time a presidential candidate completely and self-servingly sabotaged a major American foreign policy priority to boost his chances of election, I offer you this one about Richard Nixon and LBJ's peace talks in Viet Nam in 1968. Spoiler alert: the bad guy gets away with it in the end.
I finished How to Hide an Empire and I didn't think I could be more disgusted with the U.S., but I am. And I even already knew a lot of what was in the book.
What did the Founders mean by calling America’s self-government an “experiment?”
“The human-made nature of our institutions has always been a source of both hope and anxiety,” writes Thomas Coens of University of Tennessee.
“Hope that America could break the shackles of old-world oppression and make the world anew; anxiety that the improvisational nature of democracy leaves it vulnerable to anarchy and subversion.”
#RomancingTheVote, a genre romance authors-let effort that raised over US$750,000 for the 2020 and 2022 elections, mostly through silent auctions and funneling donations to Democratic candidates.
They're ramping up their efforts again, but since Xitter is, well, shitty, you can sign up for email notices here: https://forms.gle/h4yHf8VKQmsGaNQS8
Reminder: #RomancingTheVote is back! You can register to receive notifications when the auction starts (or to donate items/help) by filling a simple google form.
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A 1950 poster shows Superman – a refugee from another planet and a character created by two Jewish immigrants to the U.S. – teaching this lesson to school kids. #USPolitics
This week on The Boomerang. My interview for Foreword Reviews with historian Gary Scott Smith of Grove City College about his book on how Hillary Rodham Clinton's Methodist faith has informed her politics. Enjoy!
The U.S. Supreme Court takes up #gerrymandering again this year – looking in particular about how a judge can tell if South Carolina’s new map was done to unconstitutionally dilute Black voting power, or primarily to dilute Democrats’ voting power, which would be legal.
Last term’s decisions upholding the Voting Rights Act don’t apply or offer many clues.
On Nov. 27, 1978, the late Dianne Feinstein, then the 45-year-old president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and two-time failed mayoral candidate called a press conference to announce her retirement.
That afternoon, a supervisor killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
Feinstein handled the moment with poise, and went on to serve 9 years as mayor and 3 decades in the U.S. Senate.