It’s the most remote object in the solar system, well in to the Oort Cloud, yet photographed by satellite. It’s in the Kuiper Belt, a doughnut-shaped cloud of lumps of ice and rock left over from the creation of the solar system, that extends from approximately the orbit of Neptune out another 20 astronomical units…
WC has noticed that endorsing Donald Trump for President is dangerous. Ballotpedia tracked who emerged as Trump’s early supporters. Let’s look at the the first eight for evidence: Rep. Chris Collins (R, New York), on February 24, 2016, was the first sitting member of Congress to endorse Trump’s candidacy, saying Trump “understands the importance of American…
Commentary / Law / Trump
WC has seen the quotation attributed to lots of folks, including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, but versions of it go back much further. Prof. Jon R. Waltz, WC’s Evidence instructor, said it this way: When you have the facts, pound on the facts. When you have the law, pound on the law. When…
As WC writes this, it is snowing lightly outside. A Brown Creeper is working the spruce tree trunk just outside the window. Mountain Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches and Lesser Goldfinches are working the bird feeders, bringing flashes of color to a monochrome winter landscape. It all serves to remind WC that there is much to be…
Well, November certainly didn’t take long to blow by. It’s already time for WC’s month-end retrospective, followup and clean up. At least for a given definition of “clean up.” WC commented recently on his retirement as a lawyer. Some readers have jumped to the conlcusion that also means the retirement of this blog. No, no,…
WC has photos of other Caracara species, but they are too shabby to share. But there are many, many kinds of raptors beyond Caracaras. So, with some trepidation, WC will move to Hawks. Trepidation, because WC has friends who are quite gifted bird photographers who specialize, to some extent, on Hawks, and WC’s efforts suffer…
The voting for the coveted popular Wickersham’s Conscience Hypocrite of the Year for 2019 will happen soon. We’ve met the first nominee and the second nominee. It’s time to meet the third. U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R, Arizona) was a leader of the group of a couple dozen Republicans who, in a made to television…
Since he was just a pup, about 30-45 minutes after wolfing down a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, WC would be asleep on the couch. In the late 1970′s, a physiologist who was WC’s Thanksgiving guest explained it as a reaction to all of the tryptophan in turkey meat. Just before he dropped off to sleep. As…
As long-time readers of Wickersham’s Conscience know well, WC is a critic of the American criminal justice system and an absolute opponent of the death penalty. A set of exonerations from Maryland sadly illustrate the reasons for WC’s forcefully held views. In 1983 a 14-year old student was killed – shot – in the hallway…
(This post was inspired in part by Elise Patkotak, whose blog, Scribblings, is always worth a read.) To understand this story, WC has to try to explain his 7th Grade History teacher, Tulsa Ross. She looked to be about 90 years old. She was maybe a little over five feet tall and about two feet…
Gahan Wilson had been in poor health for some time; back in March, his son-in-law ran a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for advanced dementia care. But it’s still a blow to know he has died. The Master of the Macabre has left the building. Over a fifty year career, he was published in pretty…
T.S.O. is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. WC attended his first T.S.O. concert the other night. And it’s going to be tough to describe. A show that’s so far over the top that you can’t even see the top any more. The first third of the show was Christmas music. Christmas music as it might have been…
