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Quote of the Month
We’re seeing more and
more citizens expressing openness to violence as more and more partisan leaders
engage in the kinds of dehumanizing rhetoric that paves the way for taking
violent action.
~Lee
Drutman, political scientist

News of the Month
The percentage of US
adults who say they feel justified to use violence to advance political goals is
rising. It’s important to note that the problem is bipartisan - and also that it
is not equally bad on both sides. The American right today has a bigger violence
problem than the American left. Of the 42 killings by political extremists last
year, right-wing extremists committed 38, according to the Anti-Defamation
League. And top Republican politicians have encouraged violence in ways no
prominent Democrat has. Former President Trump encouraged violence against
protesters at his rallies and often refused to condemn violent white-supremacist
groups. Trump referred to his political opponents as “bad people” and “the enemy
of the people.” He describes his allies as “warriors” and encourages them to
stop “fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back.”
As president of the US,
Trump told supporters the election had been stolen by the Democratic Party and
that they were being denied the power and representation they had rightfully
won. “I know your pain,” he said. “I know your hurt. We had an election that was
stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it.” More than a
dozen Republican senators, more than 100 Republican House members, and countless
conservative media figures backed Trump’s claims. If the self-styled
revolutionaries were lawless, that was because their leaders told them that the
law had already been broken, and in the most profound, irreversible way. If
their response was extreme, so too was the alleged crime. If landslide victories
can fall to Democratic chicanery, then politics collapses into meaninglessness.
How could the thieves be allowed to escape into the night, with full control of
the federal government as their prize? A majority of Republicans believe the
election was stolen, and a plurality endorse insurrection as a response.
Political scientists
emphasize that the drift toward violence is not inevitable. When political
leaders denounce violence, it often influences public opinion, research
suggests. These denouncements are especially effective when leaders - or
individuals - criticize their own side for engaging in violence. (Condemning the
other side is easy.) Yet the vast majority of elected Republican Party leaders
refuse to do this and, in fact, heap derision and threats on the few who do.
The party that aided and
abetted Trump is all the more contemptible because it fills the press with
quotes making certain that we know that it knows better. In a line that will
come to define this sordid era, a senior Republican told The Washington Post,
“What is the downside for humoring [Trump] for this little bit of time? No one
seriously thinks the results will change.” What happened on January 6th in
Washington is the downside. Millions of Americans will take you literally. They
will not know you are “humoring” the most powerful man in the world. They will
feel betrayed and desperate. Some of them will be armed. This was a convenient
fiction for the Republican Party, but it was a disastrous fantasy for the
country. And now it has collapsed. There is no real refuge from the movement
they fed. Trump’s legions are still out there, and now they are mourning a death
and feeling yet more deceived by many of their supposed allies in Washington,
who turned on them as soon as they did what they thought they had been asked to
do. The problem isn’t those who took Trump at his word from the start. It’s the
many, many elected Republicans who took him neither seriously nor literally, but
cynically. They have brought this upon themselves - and us.

Then and Now
February is Black
History Month.
February is American
Heart Month.
02/01/1861 -
Texas voted to secede from the Union.
02/01/1920 - The
Royal Canadian Mounted Police began operations.
02/01/2003 -
NASA's Columbia exploded over east Texas on reentry.
02/01/2021 -
National Freedom Day
02/01/2021 -
Imbolc (or Oimelc) begins this evening and ends tomorrow evening – Wicca, Celtic
02/02/1536 -
Pedro de Mendoza of Spain founded Buenos Aires.
02/02/1653 - New
Amsterdam - now New York - was incorporated.
02/02/1848 - The
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican War, was signed.
02/02/1971 - Idi
Amin assumed power in Uganda.
02/02/2021 -
Groundhog Day
02/02/2021 -
Setsubun (Bean Scattering) – Shinto
02/02/2021 -
Candlemas – Christian
02/03/1690 - The
colony of Massachusetts issued the first paper money in America to pay soldiers
fighting in the war against Quebec. (It probably wasn't worth much more than it
is now ... which is probably why they paid soldiers with it.)
02/03/1913 - The
US ratified the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for a federal
income tax.
02/03/1959 - A
plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, claimed the lives of rock-and-roll stars
Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP "The Big Bopper" Richardson.
02/04/1783 -
Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colony, the
United States of America.
02/04/1789 -
Electors unanimously chose George Washington to be the first US President.
02/04/1801 - John
Marshall became chief justice of the US Supreme Court.
02/04/1861 -
Delegates from six southern states met in Montgomery AL to form the Confederate
States of America.
02/04/1962 - The
Soviet Union's news agency Pravda claimed the Russians invented baseball.
02/04/1974 -
Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia
Hearst was from her apartment in Berkeley CA.
02/05/1631 -
Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, and his wife arrived in Boston from
England.
02/05/1917 -
Congress passed, over President Wilson's veto, an immigration act severely
curtailing the influx of Asians.
02/05/1917 -
Mexico adopted its constitution.
02/05/1937 -
President Franklin Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of justices on the
Supreme Court. Critics accused Roosevelt of attempting to "pack" the high court.
02/06/1952 -
Britain's King George VI died. His daughter, Elizabeth II, succeeded him.
02/06/1959 - The
US successfully test-fired for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) from Cape Canaveral FL.
02/06/2001 -
Israel elected Ariel Sharon as prime minister in a landslide victory over Ehud
Barak.
02/07/1936 - FDR
authorized a flag for the office of the vice president.
02/07/1940 - Walt
Disney's Pinocchio had its world premiere.
02/07/1964 - The
Beatles began their first American tour, arriving in NY.
02/07/1986 -
Haitian President-for-Life Jean Claude Duvalier fled his country ending 28 years
of Duvalier rule.
02/08/1922 -
President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.
02/08/1924 - The
first execution by gas in the US took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson
City.
02/08/1978 -
Radio broadcast the deliberations of the Senate for the first time as members
opened debate on the Panama Canal treaties.
02/09/1825 - The
House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate
received a majority of the electoral votes.
02/09/1861 - The
Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America elected Jefferson
David president and Alexander Stephens vice president.
02/09/1870 - The
US Weather Bureau was established.
02/09/1943 - The
WWII battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American
victory over Japanese forces.
02/09/1950 -
Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that the State Department was riddled with
Communists.
02/09/1964 - The
Beatles made their first live American TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show
on CBS.
02/09/1971 - The
Apollo 14 returned to earth after man's third landing on the moon.
02/10/1846 -
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, began
an exodus to the west from Illinois.
02/10/1949 -
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway.
02/10/1967 - The
25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and
succession, went into effect.
02/11/1812 -
Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting law favoring his
party ... giving rise to the term "gerrymandering."
02/11/1945 - FDR,
Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin signed the Yalta agreement.
02/11/1979 -
Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran.
02/11/1983 -
Janet Reno became the first female attorney general.
02/11/1990 -
South Africa freed black activist Nelson Mandela after 27 years in captivity.
02/12/1733 -
English colonists led by James Oglethorpe founded Savannah GA.
02/12/1909 - The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded.
02/12/1915 - The
US House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.
02/12/1932 - Mrs.
Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to the US Senate.
02/12/1966 - Adam
West premiered as Batman in the US.
02/12/2021 -
Academic Freedom Day (Charles Darwin’s birthday)
02/12/2021 -
Chinese New Year
02/13/1635 -
America's oldest public school, the Boston Public Latin School, was founded.
02/13/1795 - The
University of North Carolina became the first US state university to admit
students. The first was Hinton James, who was the only student on campus for two
weeks.
02/13/1920 - The
League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.
02/13/1960 -
France exploded its first atomic bomb.
02/14/1778 - The
American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a
foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France.
02/14/1918 - Tarzan
of the Apes was released for the first time. There were a number of protests
since people reasoned that Tarzan was living in sin with Jane without the
benefit of matrimony.
02/14/1920 - The
League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago.
02/14/1931 - The
movie Dracula was released, with Bela Lugosi as the Count.
02/14/1945 -
Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador joined the UN.
02/14/1989 -
Iran's Ayatollah put out a $1 million bounty for Salman Rushdie, the author of
The Satanic Verses, considered blasphemous by members of the Islamic
community.
02/14/2021 -
Valentine's Day
02/15/1564 -
Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.
02/15/1764 - The
city of St. Louis was established.
02/15/1879 -
President Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before
the Supreme Court.
02/15/1898 - The
US battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more
than 260 crew members and bringing the US closer to war with Spain.
02/15/1950 -
Disney released the movie Cinderella.
02/15/1989 - The
Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after
more than nine years of military intervention.
02/15/2021 -
Susan B. Anthony Day
02/15/2021 -
Presidents Day
02/15/2021 -
Parinirvana – Buddhist
02/16/1959 -
Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
02/16/1968 -
Haleyville AL began the first 911 emergency telephone system in the nation.
02/16/2021 -
Vasant Panchami – Hindu
02/16/2021 -
Mardi Gras / Carnival / Fat Tuesday / Shrove Tuesday
02/17/1801 - The
House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and
Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president and Burr vice president.
02/17/1817 - A
street in Baltimore became the first lit with gas from America's first gas
company.
02/17/1897 - The
forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, was founded in
Washington.
02/17/1947 - The
Voice of American began broadcasting to the Soviet Union.
02/17/1964 - The
Supreme Court ruled that congressional districts within each state had to be
roughly equal in population.
02/17/2021 - Ash
Wednesday, Beginning of Lent – Christian
02/18/1861 - The
Confederate States of America swore in Jefferson Davis as president.
02/18/1885 - Mark
Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published for the first time.
02/18/1930 - The
ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto, was discovered.
02/18/1985 -
Jonathan Isaac Horsky Glenn was born in Mansfield OH.
02/19/1846 - The
Texas state government was formally installed in Austin.
02/19/1942 -
President Roosevelt signed an executive order giving the military the authority
to relocate and intern Japanese-Americans as well as Japanese nationals living
in the US.
02/19/1945 - The
Marines landed on Iwo Jima.
02/20/1792 -
President Washington signed an act creating the US Post Office.
02/20/1809 - The
Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government is greater than that of
any individual state. (It's been downhill ever since.)
02/20/1839 -
Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.
02/20/1962 -
Astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, flying aboard
Friendship Seven.
02/21/1878 - The
first telephone directory was issued.
02/21/1965 -
Former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was shot to death in New York.
02/21/1972 -
President Nixon began his historic visit to China.
02/22/1819 -
Spain ceded Florida to the US.
02/22/1879 -
Frank Woolworth opened a 5-cent store in Utica NY.
02/22/1924 -
Calvin Coolidge delivered the first presidential radio broadcast from the White
House.
02/22/1935 - It
became illegal for airplanes to fly over the White House.
02/22/1980 - The
US Olympic hockey team upset the Soviets 4-3 and went on to win the gold medal.
02/23/1836 - The
siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio.
02/23/1945 - US
Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi where they raised the American
flag.
02/23/1997 -
Scientists in Scotland announced they had succeeded in cloning an adult sheep
producing a lamb named Dolly.
02/23/2021 - The
State of the Union Address (tentative date)
02/24/1868 - The
House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson following his
attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The Senate acquitted him.
02/24/1903 - The
US signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
02/24/1920 - A
fledgling German political party - the Nazi Party - held its first meeting in
Munich. Its chief spokesman was Adolf Hitler.
02/24/1942 - The
Voice of America went on the air for the first time.
02/24/1980 - The
US hockey team defeated Finland, 4-2, to clinch the gold medal at the Winter
Olympic Games.
02/24/2021 -
National Adjunct Walkout/Action Day (#NAWD) ... Adjuncts are often referred to
as the Wal-Mart workers of academia (although let the record show that Wal-Mart,
at least, is raising its employees’ wages).
02/25/1570 - Pope
Pius V excommunicated England's Queen Elizabeth I.
02/25/1793 - The
department heads of the US government met with President Washington in the first
Cabinet meeting.
02/25/1836 -
Inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver.
02/25/1913 -
Secretary of State Philander C. Knox declared the 16th amendment ratified,
allowing Congress to levy and collect income taxes.
02/25/2021 -
Norriture Rituelle des sources tęt d' l'eau – Vodun
02/25/2021 - The
Jewish festival of Purim (Feast of Lots) begins at sunset and ends tomorrow
evening – Judaism
02/26/1919 -
Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
02/26/1940 - The
US Air Defense Command was created.
02/26/1951 - The
US ratified 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two
terms of office.
02/26/1952 -
Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed its own
atomic bomb.
02/26/1993 - A
bomb built by a group of Islamic extremists exploded in the parking garage of
NY's World Trade Center, killing 6 people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
02/26/2021 -
Magha Puja / Sangha Day – Buddhist
02/27/1801 - The
District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.
02/27/1922 - The
Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that
guaranteed the right of women to vote.
02/28/1827 - The
first US railroad chartered to carry passengers and freight, the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad Company, was incorporated.
02/28/1854 -
Around 50 people opposed to slavery met at a schoolhouse in Ripon WI, to call
for a new political organization. The group would later take the name of the
Republican Party.
02/28/1863 -
President Lincoln signed the first military draft law in the US. Rich people
could opt out if they paid $300.
02/28/1953 -
Scientists James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double-helix structure
of DNA.
02/28/1979 - Mr.
Ed, TV's talking horse, died.
02/28/2021 -
Peace Corps Week begins
02/29/1504 -
Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West,
used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into
providing food for his crew.


Online Resource Links
How Wobbly Is Our Democracy?
What ISIS Really Wants: The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths.
It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is
a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy
and for how to stop it |
ISIS
Claims Responsibility, Calling Paris Attacks First of the Storm |
Syria Iraq: The Islamic State Militant Group
| Isis:
The Inside Story |
Frontline: The Rise of ISIS |
Council on Foreign Relations: A Primer on ISIS
|
Cracks in ISIS Are Becoming More Clear
|
How ISIS’ Attacks Harm the Middle East
|
Timeline: the Rise, Spread and Fall of the Islamic State
What it’s like to live on $2 a day in the United States (PDF)
Check out
Today's Front Pages. Each day, you can see the front pages of more than 800
newspapers from around the world in their original, unedited form.
Whether or not you noticed, the earth's population passed 7 billion a while back.
You might enjoy NPR's wonderful video,
Visualizing How a Population Grows to 7 Billion.
Check out the St. Louis Fed's presentation
The Financial Crisis: What Happened?. The original video is no longer available
but you can view the power point presentation.
Want to take a survey but not sure how many responses to collect? This
Survey Calculator gives you the number for any given population size and desired
confidence level. A reverse calculator lets you enter characteristics of an existing
survey and gives the confidence interval (±X%) to apply to the results. The Survey
System site, sponsored by a survey software company, also gives clear explanations
of statistical significance, survey design and related concepts. Also check out
20 Questions a Journalist (and You, too!) Should Ask About Poll Results.
PBS's
30 Second Candidate allows you to view more political ads than you ever knew
existed. Choose the Historical Timeline link to see how political ads have changed
over the years. Start with the infamous
Daisy Ad that Lyndon Johnson used against Barry Goldwater. Click on Watch
Johnson ads. Then click on either the QuickTime link or the Real Video link
next to Daisy.
Check out
Political Compass. The site does a good job of explaining political ideologies
(although with definitions different from those I use) and gives you a chance to
discover your own political philosophy.
Law Library of Congress: North Korea: Collection of links to websites on North
Korean government, politics and law. Includes legal guides, country studies and
links to constitutions and branches of government (where available).
Council on Foreign Relations: North Korea: Background, articles and opinion
pieces about North Korea government and politics. Many of the articles focus on
North Korea's nuclear program. From the Council on Foreign Relations, "an independent
membership organization and a nonpartisan think tank and publisher."
State of the Union (SOTU): The site uses an interactive timeline to provide
a visual representation of prominent words in presidential State of the Union addresses
by displaying significant words as "determined by comparing how frequently the word
occurs in the document to how frequently it appears throughout the entire body of
SOTU addresses." The Appendices section describes the statistical methods
used. Also includes the full text of addresses.
Small Town Papers: This site provides access
to scanned images of recent issues of dozens of small town newspapers from throughout
the United States. Newspapers are updated periodically, 2-3 weeks after publication.
The site also includes a searchable archive (of articles, photos and advertisements),
which covers different periods for each paper, some as far back as the 1890s. Access
to the archives requires free registration.
This website serves as a centralized location to learn about the
Congressional Research Service and search for CRS
reports that have been released to the public by members of Congress. (CRS Reports
do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report.) Features a
searchable database with more than 8,000 reports, a list of recently released reports,
other collections of CRS reports and a FAQ about CRS.
Stem Cell Research: See the official NIH resource for
Stem Cell Research. In 2005, NOVA aired an overview of
The Stem Cell Issue.
Instances of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 - 2020: This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its
armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or
for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older
lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past US military ventures
abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted.
Government
Product Recalls
Homeland Security Knowledge
Base
If you're worried about retirement, try some of the following sites.
IRS Tax Information for Retirement Plans
Social Security Retirement Planner
Retirement Planning Resources from Smart Money
Keeping the Shi'ites Straight Based on the opinion
that no story has been more confusing for the Western news media to cover in postwar
Iraq than the politics of the country's Shi'ite majority, this article provides
a basic outline of Shi'ite religious history. Discusses the Sadr family (Muhammad
Baqir as-Sadr, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and Muqtada as-Sadr), Muhammad
Baqir al-Hakim and other figures.
This commercial site presents brief information about dozens of
Black Inventors from the United States. Some entries
include portraits and images. Also includes a searchable timeline covering 1721-1988.
Does not include bibliographic information.
Annenberg Political Fact Check: This site describes
itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit, consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce
the level of deception and confusion in US politics. The site provides original
articles, with summaries and sources, analyzing factual accuracy in TV ads, debates,
speeches, interviews and news releases. Searchable. From the Annenberg Public Policy
Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
White House Tapes: The President Calling: Three
of America's most compelling presidents -- Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon -- bugged
their White House offices and tapped their telephones. In this documentary project,
American Radio Works eavesdrops on presidential telephone calls to hear how each
man used one-on-one politics to shape history. Includes audio, a transcript of the
documentary and background information on each president and the tapes.
The State of State and Local Finances: New studies afford a state-by-state
or city-by-city analysis of fiscal well being.
The Year of Living Dangerously: While leaders in a growing number of states
appear to believe they're serving the public good by squeezing government dry, there's
little question that minimizing management carries a host of dangers that directly
affect the lives of citizens.
Government Debt by Country Map: Shows countries' general government gross
debt as a percentage of GDP in 2012.
First Amendment Library: Provides info on Supreme
Court First Amendment jurisprudence, including rulings, arguments, briefs,
historical material, commentary and press coverage.


Community Service
If you need a presentation or workshop for your group,
use this
Community link
or the link at the top of the page.
The link will take you to a list of the topics I currently have available.
To schedule a date or for more information, feel free to contact me at
dramyglenn@gmail.com
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