WC grew up during the Cold War, and the Berlin Wall was as much a part of WC’s childhood as the “duck and cover” drills where we cowered from possible atomic bomb attacks under our grade school desks. The Berlin Wall, surrounding West Berlin and isolating it from the surrounding Communist East Germany was actually…
WC regards Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R, Lunacy) as a media whore. A media whore is someone who will do or say anything, no matter how outrageous, to get attention from the national media and social media. Outrageous conduct is a media whore’s norm, because the media will always react to outrageous behavior. WC can…
There’s something about humans, and Americans in particular, that yearns for simplicity, for good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats, where you can always tell your friends from your enemies, and right from wrong. The chart at the top of this post, from Slate magazine back in July 2014, demonstrates that despite…
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy isn’t just stupid, although he has long since retired the Sean Parnell Award for Pig-headed Ignorance. He’s also corrupt, in the sense that even when he knows something is illegal, he’ll proceed with it and defend it. While pretty much everything about his disastrous terms in office has demonstrated both the…
It’s April 15. Tax Day. There’s nothing funny about it, although the late Jeff MacNelly’s great cartoon from 48 (!) years ago comes pretty close. It’s worth close study. A federal individual tax return is like a colonoscopy: nauseating, painful, tedious, highly invasive and disgusting. Except that when a colonoscopy is over, it’s over. When…
WC genuinely does not understand the attraction that Donald Trump holds for a substantial portion of the American electorate. The Christianists have long since abandoned any critical thinking skills, but even so someone who is the utter antithesis of everything Jesus told them to do, everything the Bible extols, wouldn’t seem to have any attraction…
Rep. Mike SimpsonU.S. House of Representatives 2084 Rayburn HOBWashington, DC 20515 Re: Your Letter to the EPA and Electric Vehicles Dear Rep. Simpson: I have before me your March 3, 2024 email, boasting of your harsh criticism of President Biden’s efforts to wean American drivers from gasoline-powered vehicles. Before addressing that letter, I want to…
After the Dems impeached Donald Trump twice, both times with absolutely damning evidence, the Republicans were desperate to return the favor, and searched desperately for any reasonable excuse to impeach Biden. In May 2023, U.S. Rep. James R. Comer (R, Kentucky), Chair of the House Oversight Committee, picked up rumors of an FBI source with…
The 2015 Paris Agreement, in an effort to avoid the worst of anthropogenic climate change, set a goal of capping post-industrial warming to 1.5° C, or about 2.7° F. It’s increasingly clear we are not going to meet that target. While collectively humankind is making progress at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that progress is too…
WC received an email from U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson (R, Idaho) recently, boasting that he had co-sponsored a bill to “repeal the unfair Death Tax.” Quoting from the press release, you can see that he seems to be pretty worked up about it. The unfair Death Tax crushes Idaho family farms, ranches, and businesses,” said Rep.…
In some cultures, septic tanks are still used for human waste. Eventually they fill up. Then they have to be emptied. In England, in the 1700s, the septic tanks were called dunnikins or dunnykins (back then, spelling was optional). The guys who cleaned them out were called dunnikin divers. It seems like the perfect metaphor…
In what passes for tradition here at Wickersham’s Conscience, we spend the last week of each year thinking about the year that is ending, and making our wishes for the coming year. This blog post is firmly in that tradition: a look back at the kidney stone that was 2023 and a look forward to…
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson568 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Dear Speaker Johnson: WC notes that, as Speaker, you have brought to the floor of the House and adopted a resolution to investigate impeachment of President Joe Biden. WC thinks you recognize that there’s no evidence – none, zilch – linking the President to…
As far as WC can tell, the issue first came up in the context of coal. The coal mining industry trumpeted coal as the “cheapest form of energy.” As WC has pointed here at Wickersham’s Conscience, when the true cost of coal – mining it, transporting it, burning it, dealing with the coal ash –…
The Matanuska-Susitna Borough held its off-year election for the three borough assembly seat that were up for grabs. That’s three-sevenths of the seven total assembly members. And a bond issue totaling $38 million, adding to the $208 million in existing debt. A total of 9.53% of the registered voters in the Borough turned out to…
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Spoken by the Wizard, played by Frank Morgan, in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, after Dorothy’s dog, Toto, has pulled back the curtain concealing the Wizard. Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor has a problem, a lot of problems, actually. He’s in charge of law…
Trump and his campaign are cheering the decision by Colorado Superior Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace finding that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment doesn’t bar Trump from being a candidate for President. The MAGA folks might want to re-think that. Readers may recall that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted after the…
WC has always had mixed feelings about the late President Lyndon B. Johnson. But WC was in Johnson City, Texas for a wedding, and paid a visit to the LBJ Ranch National Historic Park that’s a few miles away. It seems like a good time to re-examine Johnson and his legacy. Johnson’s family had deep…
WC received the following email from Congressman Mike Simpston (R, Loaded Questions) recently: Where to begin? As carbon dioxide and methane – the products and by-products of fossil fuels – increasingly cook our planet, including the State of Idaho, Rep. Simpson is worried about creating more domestic fossil fuel production? In fact, President Biden’s energy…
Kenneth Chesebro isn’t just a felon; he’s a puzzle. Most of his legal career, he worked for and on liberal causes. Since graduating from Harvard Law School – he was a classmate of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan and novelist and commentator Jeffrey Toobin – he’s been closely affiliated with Lawrence Tribe for more…
WC’s Constitutional Law professor, Anthony D’Amato, wasn’t very good. He was focused to the point of obsession on legal challenges to the Vietnam War, and the entire two semester course was distorted by that focus. The legal challenges, by the way, were entirely unsuccessful. But in introducing the parts of the course dealing with…
Is WC the only one who feels like he is living in an Americanized version of Marat/Sade? Wait, you say, what is Marat/Sade? It’s an extraordinary 1964 play called, in its full name, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis…
A superseding indictment has been issued against Rep. George Santos (R, Sociopaths), the utterly unscrupulous congressman for the clueless voters of Queens and Long Island. Sure, an indictment is merely an accusation, and Rep. Santos is entitled to the presumption of innocence until a jury concludes otherwise. But this pathological liar stretches that requirement to…
WC has had low regard for Mike Dunleavy since he was a noisy, ignorant and unthinking junior state senator representing Wasilla in the Alaska Legislature. Today, as a second term state governor he remains noisy, ignorant and unthinking. WC’s regard for Dunleavy is even lower, if that’s possible. Dunleavy’s latest stunt was to endorse the…
The dog days of August are mercifully behind us, as August ends with a super, blue moon. It’s true that the heat in southwestern Idaho isn’t completely letting up yet, but presumably it will eventually. It’s time for a look back at the month, the blog posts that need followup, some things that didn’t make…
Former U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador (R, Useless), failed gubernatorial candidate and recently elected state attorney general ran on a platform of litigating against the liberals. Of course, liberals are in short supply, maybe even an endangered species in Idaho or Labrador wouldn’t have been elected. But Labrador, who is obviously more interested in grinding axes…
WC has written here before about the BUCIP1 that is the wild horse population in the West. WC and Mrs. WC recently spent some time in the South Steens Herd range and had a chance to seee what, if anything, had changed since our first visit in 2018. The answer? Not much. The South Steens…
The Chair of the Idaho Republican Party is a woman named Dorothy Moon. Moon is a former state legislator who ran in 2022 to be Idaho Secretary of State, with the stated goal of fixing elections. She lost. Republican voters rejected Moon’s extreme far right brand of politics. Despite that repudiation, Moon was chosen as…
The Honorable Lisa MurkowskiUnited States Senate522 Hart Senate Office BuildingWashington, DC 20510 Re: Orcas, King Salmon and the Four Lower Snake River Dams Dear Senator Murkowski: WC acknowledges that, after some 61 years in Bethel and Fairbanks, he is no longer a resident of Alaska. But there’s an important issue in Idaho, WC’s adopted state,…
With much ballyhoo and hype, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy signed into law the bill he pushed through the state legislature creating a carbon credit system in Alaska. It was sold as a way for Alaska to make some easy money, selling carbon offsets to oil companies to allow them to make nice in reducing emissions…
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