The technical, linguistic term for it is a Gricean Implicature.1 You know, the Mafia thug walks into the store and says, “Nice place you’ve got here. Be a shame if something bad happened to it.” Or, if you prefer, U.S. House Speaker Kevin “You’ve Sold Out” McCarthy2 looks around at the U.S. economy and says,…
There was a lawyer WC knew back in the day. When you asked her a difficult question she didn’t want to answer, she’d respond, “How ’bout those Phillies?” It’s an evasion and a not very clever way of ducking an issue, attempting to change the subject. It’s now the Republican Party’s go-to solution to the…
Florida Governor Ron “Pander” DeSantis has picked a fight with the Disney Company. As Jimmy Buffet noted many years ago, “You don’t mess with the mouse in Orlando,” although he was putting words in the mouth of the fictional Skip Wylie at the time. The Disney Company employs 75,000 people in Florida, brings some 50…
An endless cold, snowy and dank April has ended. Which makes it time to have a look back with updates to earlier posts, mention of stuff that didn’t rate a post and lost opportunities for snark. Because WC spent a chunk of April is warmer climates, there is less to update and this post is…
WC wore a coat and tie most of his professional career. Perhaps in an over-reaction to that long costuming requirement, WC mostly wears shorts and a hoody these days. But occasionally Mrs. WC can persuade WC to put on slacks, a dress shirt, one of his elderly tacky ties and a blazer and pretend to…
For those who aren’t familiar with the Lincoln Assassination and its various players, Dr. Samuel Mudd was the physician who treated John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin. Booth broke his leg jumping from Lincoln’s presidential box at Ford’s Theater. It was never clear whether Mudd knew of Booth’s plans in advance, whether he was a part…
The thing to remember about the Founding Fathers is that the country they rebelled against had a state religion. That state religion served the myth of the divine right of kings, defending and justifying the British monarchy. The American Revolution was as much against the state religion as the monarchy that religion justified. The separation…
(WC’s family tree doesn’t include even a trace of Irish blood. Besides that, in law school, WC’s apartment was across the street from the biggest, loudest Irish pub in the city. So WC generally takes a pass on all things St. Patrick. You can doubtlessly find abundant Irish content elsewhere on the Web.) Yes, there…
There are folks who would argue that WC, as a lawyer, has been a criminal for decades. The public’s opinion of lawyers holds them in something considerably less than esteem. But this time, WC is deliberately setting out to violate a law, in fact, a law that hasn’t even been formally adopted yet. You see,…
The title for Worst Job in America formerly belonged to the spokesperson for the late U.S. Representative Don Young (R, Senility), whose job consisted of following Rep. Young around and “clarifying” Young’s statements; i.e., explaining Young hadn’t said what he’d actually said and if he had Young hadn’t meant it. It’s the political equivalent to…
On December 5, 1969 the Oregon Daily Emerald, the student newspaper at the University of Oregon, sent WC to cover a speech to be given by Ted Gold. Gold wasn’t well known at that point, but was a member of Students for a Democratic Society – the SDS – and a future member of the…
Even for the shortest month, February seems to have been a short month. But even with just 28 days, we’ve reached the end of them, so it’s time for WC to have a look back at stuff that didn’t get written, stuff that shouldn’t have happened and stuff involving the Magpie Principle. Rest assured, Craig,…
WC is starting a new sometime series of blog posts that ask rhetorical – and usually unanswerable – questions. When did compulsive lying about your credentials become a Republican qualification? Did it start when Donald Trump, when in one of his first public comments after being sworn in as President, claimed to have had the…
Coda: (figuratively) A conclusion (of a statement or event, for example), final portion, tail end. Wiktionary, “Coda“ The thing about Donald Trump is that it is always about Donald Trump. Not the country that, as President, he swore to defend. Not the voters who made him president. Not the political party he was supposed to lead.…
Admittedly WC is looking at this from a considerable distance. And WC is from Fairbanks, which marks WC as a rube in the minds of most Anchoragites. But, seriously, the administration of Municipality of Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson is a four alarm dumpster fire.1 Bronson was elected Mayor in 2021, defeating Assemblymember (and now state…
It was probably okay to complain about the weather in the first month of 2023. To use a technical term, it sucked. Not that it did or will make any difference. Whatever the weather, it’s time for the monthly look back at stuff WC has written about, not written about or failed to notice earlier.…
One of the more troubling aspects of the political right’s recent actions is its war against citizens. WC will draw on three specific examples from his former home state of Alaska, but the same case can be shown for other states where the political right has control of the government. The Two Rivers Fire DistrictAs…
Idaho voters selected Raúl Labrador as the next state attorney general. Labrador, a singularly ineffective former Congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate, ran for state attorney general as a stepping stone for another run at the governorship. Or maybe he’s just polishing his resumé. In his campaign, he spoke only in generalities, although he wears his…
In a sad, sick way, George Santos is understandable. He’s an abject failure as a human being, a former call center employee for the Dish Network, former employee of a Ponzi scheme operator, living in his mother’s basement, a college drop out and a deadbeat. So Santos invented an imaginary version of himself, a guy…
The media was shocked – shocked! – to learn that pretty much everything about Representative-elect George Santos was a lie. But WC thinks that George Santos is merely the logical extension of a Republican Party increasingly removed from reality. Let’s consider the record. We had a Republican U.S. President who, according to the Washington Post’s…
As most readers know, WC has very, very low expectation of American politicians. Most of them, Republicans, Democrats and Independents, have as their first principle getting re-elected, seeing everything else as a means to that end. There’s a spectrum, of course. At one end you have the Lauren Broberts of the nation, whose only principle…
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 2022 and a look forward to…
The Alaska Republican Party Central Committee met earlier this month, the first meeting since the November 2022 election. We don’t know what they had for dessert, but we know what the main entrée was: crow. Great big servings of crow. Mmm. Tastes just like chicken.1 You see, the Alaska Republican Party Central Committee had censured…
Anyone who has lived in Alaska for very long knows that those poor folks in Arkansas get confused about the official abbreviation for their state and the official abbreviation for Alaska. All those “As,” Ks” and “Ss,” WC supposes. Of course, Arkansas is “AR,” and Alaska is “AK.” That kind of confusion is the only…
This post is dedicated to WC’s birding buddy, D.H., America’s Tallest Birder. He used to be a Republican, but folks like this have changed his mind. WC wrote this post back in June but held off posting it. Greene appears to be an attention-seeker, inclined to say outrageous, over the top things about political issues…
Alaska has brought off its first, full general election using the ranked voting system adopted by citizen initiative back in 2020. WC has some thoughts. For good and sufficient reasons, WC doesn’t write much about The Quitter, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. But WC will make a small exception here and note that Palin has…
The song was a big hit for the late Johnny Mercer in 1944, and has been covered by a long, long list of other musicians since, ranging from The Andrews Sisters to Dave Van Ronk. Mercer is responsible for the lyrics; the melody is by Harold Arlen. It’s one of those hopelessly optimistic, bouncy tunes that…
Get out and vote today, if you haven’t already. If you don’t, you are giving the 40-50% of voters who do vote in mid-term elections an out-sized amount of influence. Don’t argue that your vote won’t make a difference; races are sometimes decided by a mere handful of votes. Don’t be intimidated by firearm-packing “poll…
When WC was a first year law student, our Civil Procedure professor took us on a field trip to the Cook County Courthouse.1 Even fifty years later, three parts of that experience are still vivid in WC’s memory. First, we watched as a geezer stuck his head out of the closed courtroom doors and asked…
As WC struggles with a sugar-induced, post-Hallowe’en hangover, it’s time to have a look back at the spooky events of the last thirty-one days. As ever: (1) the Magpie Principle strictly applies, and (2) no journalism has been committed in this blog post. Wasilla’s neo-Nazi legislator, David Eastman, faces trial on his (dis)qualification for the…
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