As long as we are being geeky, let’s take a brief look at the SolarWinds hack, the largest and gravest breach of computer security in American history. In the Trump-fueled crises that dominate the news cycles, we’ve lost sight of an extremely serious, potentially catastrophic problem that is going to have dangerous consequences. Foreign actors,…
The thing about free speech is that it can be abused. There’s no requirement under the First Amendment that you tell the truth. Except in the most extreme circumstances, stopping free speech before it is uttered – “prior restraint” – is usually unconstitutional. But there can be consequences afterwards. False statements about a person or…
Rep. Louis Gohmert (Shawn Thew / Pool via AFP – Getty Images file) Sen. Josh Hawley (Greg Nash/Pool via AP, File) There’s “stupid.” There’s “criminal.” And then there’s U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R, Cretins) and Josh Hawley (R, Blind Amibition). Gohmert attempted to use the U.S. District Court to effect a political coup. It didn’t…
After a week of Year in Review, a month in review feels a tad redundant. But redundancy serves a purpose: it emphasizes. It reinforces. So if you needed any further education on what a ghastly experience calendar year 2020 really was, then this is your post. As always, no journalism has been committed in writing…
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 2020 and a look forward to…
The Anchorage Daily News reports that the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, Alaska’s state-owned development corporation (AIDEA), is conidering spending as much as $20 million to bid on oil leases in Trump’s hastily-organized auction of drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Can we think about this for a moment? Human-generated CO2 is…
WC admires the work of New Zealand’s Toby Morris. In 2018, Morris updated his Tower of Inequality, his graphic demonstration of the income and wealth disparities in New Zealand. WC lacks Morris’s illustration skills, so he will borrow Morris’s superb drawing and offer approximately parallel data on how the United States plays out in comparison.…
Trump and his fellow Republicans tried to cheat in the 2020 general election by purging voter rolls, imposing unnecessary voter identification requirements and closing polling places, all with the aim of suppressing votes by Democrats. It didn’t work. Trump and his clown car lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, tried to manufacture fake evidence in Ukraine against Joe…
The 11th floor of the Abbott Hall dormitory at Northwestern University Law School had a telephone booth – a closet, really – by the elevator. But calls to it were almost always from Arnie Sherman’s mother, so Arnie was the unofficial telephone answering service most evenings. But one night Arnie was at WC’s door, to…
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must…
There used to be a guy peddling scorecards outside of one of the gates at Wrigley Field. He had a nearly impenetrable southside accent as he shouted at you to buy a scorecard for the Cubs’ game. WC has adopted the guy’s sales pitch to headline the first of an interimittent series that will attempt…
Hold tight, wait ’til the party’s over Hold tight, we’re in for nasty weather There has got to be a way Burning down the house — Talking Heads, “Burning Down the House” WC doubts he is the only one who thinks he has fallen into a Talking Heads song. With no competent evidence – accusations…
WC was going to let the latest news from Wasilla pass without comment. But subsequent developments pushed WC over the top, so you get the sordid, violent tale of Gavin Christiansen. Gavin Christiansen was a a wannabe Libertarian candidate for Alaska’s State Senate Seat F, the Mat-Su Valley. He withdrew his candidacy, reportedly for “medical…
The old Jim Crow was the body of segregationist laws used largely (but not exclusively) in the Old South to suppress and disenfranchise African-Americans. The name “Jim Crow” has nothing to do with corvids; it has been traced to “Jump Jim Crow“, a song-and-dance caricature of African-American people performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice in blackface. Jim Crow laws…
Donald Trump has announced repeatedly that we have “turned the curve” in the pandemic, that cases are on the decline. The claim is patently false in fact. The only “corner” was back in September, when the incidence of new cases began a steep climb. New cases are at an all time high: 90,728 in a…
Apparently, while WC was visiting red rock country in southern Utah, the rest of you experienced a presidential debate that degenerated into a farce, Trump was infected with COVID-19 at a superspreader event, still more of California burned, there were even more Republican efforts to suppress voting and yet another hurricane or two arrived in…
WC is 70 years old, and by reason of age, if nothing else, highly interested in remedies, or at least treatments, for COVID-19. So WC was pretty intrigued when the Food & Drug Administration approved Gilead Lab’s remdesivir (the brand name is Veklury). Remdesivir is a previously developed general anti-viral. The drug was run through three…
WC’s fellow lawyer and former associate Jeff Magid posted a nice screed on Facebook recently. Jeff was kind enough to allow WC to use it for a guest post. If you’re a President who urges his chief legal officer to arrest his chief political opponent you might be an autocrat. If you’re a president who…
In the faint hope that a Trump voter might change his mind, or that one of the endangered species of undecided voters might benefit, WC, on the eve of the presidential election, will undertake to summarize how President Donald Trump has done in meeting his earlier campaign promises. In a sensible universe, that’s how a…
Thanks to some smart reporting by Juliet Eilperin and Desmond Butler at The Washington Post we now know that U.S. Geological Survey Director James G. Reilly had been suppressing a report on polar bear populations that has the potential to kill oil well drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Under pressure from the Post…
The month has gone by in a sweltering stream of election-rigging, natural and unnatural disasters, erosion of our republic and its values and a President who seems to revel in making it all worse. So, just another month of the Trump Administration. Once again, it’s time to look back at developments involving stuff that happened…
The COVID-19 pandemic is sickening tens of thousands of Americans, killing thousands of us and Americans can’t even agree to the most elementary steps to controlling the pandemic. The country has hopelessly screwed up management of the disease, and tens of thousands have died as a result. The experts in the federal government who might…
In some ways, WC felt like July would never end. The unrelenting dumpster fire of the Trump Administration made each morning a worrisome anticipation of the next God awful announcement from the Trumpster, the CDC, William Barr or worse. In another way, it flew by in a blizzard of disasters. The months between now and…
WC is convinced the Idaho Legislature, a body overwhelmingly dominated by Republicans, hates, distrusts and ignores Idaho voters. Exhibit A: The Legislature refused for years exercise the option of states to expand Medicaid coverage to make health care more widely available under the Affordable Care Act. Idaho voters went ahead and did it by the…
Old age brings perspective, WC was told. Well, WC has achieved old age, and what it has mostly brought is a sadness that so little has changed. WC will illustrate his point with some photos from another of his heroes, Margaret Bourke-White, a great photographer of the first half of the 20th Century. Here’s her…
The month June wore a face mask and passed nearly unnoticed. In other ways, in the cascade of unrelenting insanity from the White House, it seemed to go on forever. Anyway, it’s time for a look back at developments on old posts, almost posts and stuff that caught WC’s magpie sensibility. Disclaimer: No journalism was…
WC had never heard of photographer Win Mcnamee before this photo appeared in the Washington Post. His capture of the Washington, D.C. national guard members standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is among the most forceful images to come out of the protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd. The photo…
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was tried by the inquisition, charged with suspicion of heresy. He was forced to recant his theory that the Earth orbited the Sun. Catholic Church dogma said the Sun orbited the Earth. Legend has it that after he recanted, while still in the presence of the Inquisitor, he muttered, “E pur si muove“ (“And yet…
President Donald Trump has attacked the World Health Organization, accusing it of “covering up the spread of the coronavirus” and failing to “share information in a timely and transparent fashion.” He has declared he is cutting off funding for the world’s public health body in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a transparent attempt…
Lemony Snicket, for anyone who has been avoiding children’s literature the last twenty years, is the pseudonym for Daniel Handler. Snicket has written a highly successful series of thirteen children’s books with the master title, A Series of Unfortunate Events. And that describes Alaska’s economy, doesn’t it? The decline in crude oil production as Prudhoe Bay…
