Out of the Closet and Back to New Hampshire?

Is Souter about to retire from SCOTUS? Inquiring minds want to know!

And then as we all know there is a great deal of 3L "Talent" out there available now. So, who is to say?

Bea Arthur

R.I.P.

1922 - 2009

Is it Any Wonder We Torture?

As a society we are impervious to violence! Mr. Herbert is of course right on once again and I tie the whole "Gun Fetish" to our willingness to accept Torture and Violence as an inevitable part of our Culture.

April 25, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

A Culture Soaked in Blood

By BOB HERBERT

Guns.

Philip Markoff, a medical student, supposedly carried his semiautomatic in a hollowed-out volume of “Gray’s Anatomy.” Police believe he used it in a hotel room in Boston last week to murder Julissa Brisman, a 26-year-old woman who had advertised her services as a masseuse on Craigslist.

In Palm Harbor, Fla., a 12-year-old boy named Jacob Larson came across a gun in the family home that, according to police, his parents had forgotten they had. Jacob shot himself in the head and is in a coma, police said. Authorities believe the shooting was accidental.

There is no way to overstate the horror of gun violence in America. Roughly 16,000 to 17,000 Americans are murdered every year, and more than 12,000 of them, on average, are shot to death. This is an insanely violent society, and the worst of that violence is made insanely easy by the widespread availability of guns.

When the music producer Phil Spector decided, for whatever reason, to kill the actress, Lana Clarkson, all he had to do was reach for his gun — one of the 283 million privately owned firearms that are out there. When John Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Malvo, went on a killing spree that took 10 lives in the Washington area, the absolute least of their worries was how to get a semiautomatic rifle that fit their deadly mission.

We’re confiscating shampoo from carry-on luggage at airports while at the same time handing out high-powered weaponry to criminals and psychotics at gun shows.

There were ceremonies marking the recent 10th anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School, but very few people remember a mass murder just five months after Columbine, when a man with a semiautomatic handgun opened fire on congregants praying in a Baptist church in Fort Worth. Eight people died, including the gunman, who shot himself.

A little more than a year before the Columbine killings, two boys with high-powered rifles killed a teacher and four little girls at a school in Jonesboro, Ark. That’s not widely remembered either. When something is as pervasive as gun violence in the U.S., which is as common as baseball in the summertime, it’s very hard for individual cases to remain in the public mind.

Homicides are only a part of the story.

While more than 12,000 people are murdered with guns annually, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (using the latest available data) tells us that more than 30,000 people are killed over the course of one typical year by guns. That includes 17,000 who commit suicide, nearly 800 who are killed in accidental shootings and more than 300 killed by the police. (In many of the law enforcement shootings, the police officers are reacting to people armed with guns).

And then there are the people who are shot but don’t die. Nearly 70,000 fall into that category in a typical year, including 48,000 who are criminally attacked, 4,200 who survive a suicide attempt, more than 15,000 who are shot accidentally, and more than 1,000 — many with a gun in possession — who are shot by the police.

The medical cost of treating gunshot wounds in the U.S. is estimated to be well more than $2 billion annually. And the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy group, has noted that nonfatal gunshot wounds are the leading cause of uninsured hospital stays.

The toll on children and teenagers is particularly heartbreaking. According to the Brady Campaign, more than 3,000 kids are shot to death in a typical year. More than 1,900 are murdered, more than 800 commit suicide, about 170 are killed accidentally and 20 or so are killed by the police.

Another 17,000 are shot but survive.

I remember writing from Chicago two years ago about the nearly three dozen public school youngsters who were shot to death in a variety of circumstances around the city over the course of just one school year. Arne Duncan, who was then the chief of the Chicago schools and is now the U.S. secretary of education, said to me at the time: “That’s more than a kid every two weeks. Think about that.”

Actually, that’s our problem. We don’t really think about it. If the crime is horrible enough, we’ll go through the motions of public anguish but we never really do anything about it. Americans are as blasé as can be about this relentless slaughter that keeps the culture soaked in blood.

This blasé attitude, this willful refusal to acknowledge the scope of the horror, leaves the gun nuts free to press their crazy case for more and more guns in ever more hands. They’re committed to keeping the killing easy, and we should be committed for not stopping them.

It is all connected folks. Of course this is just my humble, and informed, opinion.

I believe that America’s “Gun Fetish” is our very own Rorschach test. So, check out Gnarls Barkley and tell me this Nation isn’t Crazy!

When Did Torture Become a “Technique?”

So that it is no longer a universally reviled and heinous crime?

The CIA inspector general in 2004 found no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any ''specific imminent attacks,'' according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

That undercuts assertions by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.

The risks and effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced techniques are at the center of an increasingly heated debate over how thoroughly to investigate the CIA's secret detention and interrogation programs.

''It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program,'' Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA general counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.

'As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, `there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness,' '' Bradbury wrote, quoting the inspector general's report.

Nevertheless, Bradbury concluded in his May 2005 memos that the program had been effective, although the still-secret reports by Inspector General John Helgerson had been disseminated a full year earlier.

Helgerson also concluded that waterboarding was riskier than officials claimed and reported that the CIA's Office of Medical Services thought the risk to the health of some prisoners outweighed any potential intelligence benefit, according to the memos.

The IG's report is among several indications that the Bush administration's use of abusive interrogation methods was less productive than some former administration officials have claimed.

Even some of those in the military who developed the techniques warned that the information they produced was ''less reliable'' than that gained by traditional psychological measures.

Furthermore, using them would produce an ''intolerable public and political backlash when discovered,'' according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released Tuesday.

President Bush told a September 2006 news conference that one plot, to attack a Los Angeles office tower, was ''derailed'' in early 2002 -- before the harsh CIA interrogation measures were approved, contrary to those who claim that waterboarding revealed it.

Last December, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine that he didn't believe that intelligence gleaned from abusive interrogation techniques had disrupted any attacks on America.

The New York Times first reported Helgerson's inspector general's report in November 2005, but details of its contents have remained secret.

And here is a message the Repubs might want give to Dick Cheney: You have the Right to Remain Silent!

Earth Day!

Back in the day we drove from Massachusetts to NYC to be part of the first celebration. It was wonderful and Paul Newman was there. Now, how do I know that? Because walking through the crowd I almost knocked him over. Now I am a pretty big girl and I was even bigger, taller that is, than I am now (age and osteoporosis and all). And Mr. Newman was a pretty delicate guy. I put my arms out as it became clear that I was going to knock him over and my arms went right over his shoulders in an attempt to grab him and keep from felling him. He was so sweet and sparkling and the whitest guy I had ever seen. Along with the huge and electrified crowd it is one of the great things I will remember from April 22, 1970. So, I didn’t knock him on his behind and we both got a great laugh out it. And the environmental movement was institutionalized.

Torture.

What can one say, except that it was done in our name? I guess we now know why all those videotapes, i.e. evidence, disappeared.

Shame on all of us!

They Write Letters!

The whole Notre Dame controversy about the President is in actuality a non-controversy controversy. But that is just my humble opinion. So, that said, here are the published letters to the editor this morning.

April 19, 2009

Letters

Notre Dame and the Obama Invitation

To the Editor:

Re “Degrees of Acceptance at Notre Dame,” by Richard V. Allen (Op-Ed, April 12):

Mr. Allen argues that President Obama should not be awarded an honorary degree by Notre Dame because of his support for abortion rights. He reasons that because Catholic doctrine opposes abortion, according Mr. Obama this honor would be an implicit and hypocritical endorsement of anti-Catholic policy positions.

But Mr. Allen’s reasoning is highly suspect. He and his alma mater clearly had no such moral qualms awarding an honorary degree to George W. Bush, whose positions on pre-emptive war and the death penalty are now infamous. Catholic doctrine opposes these entities no less vociferously than it does abortion, yet Mr. Bush was apparently allowed to receive his degree without a similar protest.

As a Catholic Democrat, I supported Mr. Obama because I believed that the sum of his policy positions — ending war, fighting poverty and working for social justice — were aligned with my own values. Mr. Allen is entitled to his own opinion of Mr. Obama, and Notre Dame is free to give accolades to whomever it deems fit. But Mr. Allen would do well to apply some intellectual consistency to his arguments instead of knee-jerk, politically motivated emotionality.

Roger Shih
San Antonio, April 12, 2009

•

To the Editor:

Many American Catholics recognize that the debate over President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame is not primarily about abortion. It is about the proper place of debate and dissent within the Catholic Church.

The church hierarchy has worked for almost three decades to turn American Catholics into single-issue voters on abortion, and in the process, to reassert ecclesiastical authority over the Catholic community.

Of course, if opposition to abortion is the only nonnegotiable issue for Catholics, then the Republican Party becomes the only moral choice for Catholic voters. Together with a majority of Americans, millions of Catholic voters have rejected this simplistic perspective on the challenges facing our country.

The ethical dilemmas at the heart of the abortion debate are complex. The same is true for capital punishment, war and the myriad economic and social policies that carry life and death consequences. Notre Dame is precisely the place where these difficult conversations should be welcomed.

Liesl Haas
San Jose, Cost Rica, April 12, 2009

The writer is a member of the Notre Dame class of 1990.

•

To the Editor:

Reflecting on the University of Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Obama to speak at commencement and to award him an honorary degree, Richard V. Allen contends that the university should not award the president an honorary degree since his stance on abortion contradicts the Catholic Church’s views.

Yet surely Mr. Allen realizes that at that same commencement, degrees will be awarded to hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of graduating students whose views on abortion and other issues, like gay rights, are not in accord with those of the university and the Catholic Church.

Awarding a degree — whether earned as a student or given as an honorarium — should not have to be predicated on total agreement with the church or the university. Congratulations to Notre Dame for this decision; I hope that it will not be rescinded.

Joan Cichalski
Little Silver, N.J., April 13, 2009

•

To the Editor:

In noting that Notre Dame University awarded an honorary degree to Ronald Reagan, Richard V. Allen completely undermines his contention that Barack Obama should not receive a similar honor. President Reagan was not in sync with several of the church’s strongly held positions: opposing the death penalty, the importance of helping the poor and advancing the basic rights of workers.

It would be a huge mistake for Notre Dame, or any Catholic school, to restrict itself to awarding honorary degrees only to those who agree with the church’s position on one issue, whatever that issue may be. My wife, my daughter and I all hold degrees from Notre Dame, and unless it is to be a “university” in name only, it must certainly have the freedom to honor a president with whom there is some disagreement, whether it is Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama.

John M. O’Connor
Montclair, N.J., April 12, 2009

•

To the Editor:

Next the traditionalists will want to vet the orthodoxy of Notre Dame’s quarterbacks. Well, maybe not if we’re 11 to zip and U.S.C. is coming to town.

George Oser
Houston, April 13, 2009

The writer is a member of the Notre Dame class of 1958.

So exactly how many abortions did President Obama personally approve as opposed to the number of executions that President Bush approved and endorsed (152)?

Just asking!

Ravi Batra: He Saw It Coming.

And this isn’t the NYC Ravi Batra. This is the scholar.

He isn’t the only one raising the Productivity v. Wage issue in the Supply v. Demand argument. His voice is so clear and logical that I don’t know why more in this administration don’t get it. And like I said he is not the only one. Prof. Wolff does a really good job of laying it out as well.

Like I keep on saying: it is important to listen to those who were right, not those who have been so wrong so often!

Jonathan Mann: An Interesting Guy

Imagine a song a day. I love the Intertubes. Here he is with and on Shuster:

On Roubini:

On the Subprime Mortgage Crisis:

And Jon Stewart:

Check out his other videos and songs you won’t be sorry.

Personal Shit Impeding Blogging!

Hopefully I will be able to overcome it. All humans are fallible and some of us get sucked into the vortex of other’s problems. Maybe we can all work it out.

Keep in mind that no one knows who is swimming naked until the tide rolls out. And the tide is rolling out everywhere these days.

Greenwald and Goodman on Moyers

Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman were awarded the first Izzy Awards named for I.F. Stone. The very Reverend Bill Moyers interviews them and it is wonderful (a word I use much too often.) Also check out William Black’s interview. The Lord loves the Reverend Moyers and his choice of discussions as we all should.

Wow, Iowa!

Those crazy Left-Wingers in the Midwest have really gotten out of control, don’t you know. Activist Judges and all I guess. The country needs to get past its homophobia, etc.

What is next Pestilence?

I, Too, Want Revenge.

I know that speaks poorly of me, but then I am not a saint, not close. The Wood Memorial at Aqueduct is the final prep for the Derby. I was unable to attend this year’s Wood as I usually do attend (to celebrate my birthday) and have for so many years, that said I am ecstatic that the colt is named "I Want Revenge." Call me bad.

Here is the article and check out the other possibilities.

It is now on to the Triple Crown and the Derby is the start. Hopefully I get to once again go to the Belmont Stakes, my favorite Race Card, with finish line seats.

Thank You Senator Webb

From his website on the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009.

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

I would go farther and say that our “system” of “Criminal Justice” is an international disgrace. But that is just me.

Also don’t we already know what is wrong and how to fix it? I would have thought that Prohibition would have taught us some lessons, etc. But then I also thought that the S&L Crisis would have taught us something and I also thought that the meltdown of LTMC would have taught us something and I really thought that the “Great Depression” would have taught us something. But it appears that I have been wrong over and over again.

So, I guess a Commission is better than nothing (see: 911 Commission) and at least he is taking this “national disgrace” seriously and hopefully it will not be a whitewash like that other Commission.

So, thank you Senator Webb for putting this situation front and center at the very least.

The Tears in or Tears of the Right.

Charles Blow has been paying attention to the “rhetoric” of the Far Right and is getting very worried. As well he should. It is reminiscent to me of the Right-Wing’s reaction to the Civil Rights Movement from back in the day. So, once again they are coming out of the woodwork and on the MSM to boot. That the MSM doesn’t call them out on it because they are obsessed with being “Fair and Balanced” is unconscionable.

Pitchforks and Pistols

By CHARLES M. BLOW

Lately I’ve been consuming as much conservative media as possible (interspersed with shots of Pepto-Bismol) to get a better sense of the mind and mood of the right. My read: They’re apocalyptic. They feel isolated, angry, betrayed and besieged. And some of their “leaders” seem to be trying to mold them into militias.

At first, it was entertaining — just harmless, hotheaded expostulation. Of course, there were the garbled facts, twisted logic and veiled hate speech. But what did I expect, fair and balanced? It was like walking through an ideological house of mirrors. The distortions can be mildly amusing at first, but if I stay too long it makes me sick.

But, it’s not all just harmless talk. For some, their disaffection has hardened into something more dark and dangerous. They’re talking about a revolution.

Some simply lace their unscrupulous screeds with loaded language about the fall of the Republic. We have to “rise up” and “take back our country.” Others have been much more explicit.

For example, Chuck Norris, the preeminent black belt and prospective Red Shirt, wrote earlier this month on the conservative blog WorldNetDaily: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, imagining herself as some sort of Delacroixian Liberty from the Land of the Lakes, urged her fellow Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous,” ready to bust caps over cap-and-trade, I presume.

And between his tears, Glenn Beck, the self-professed “rodeo clown,” keeps warning of an impending insurrection by saying that he believes that we are heading for “depression” and “revolution” and then gaming out that revolution on his show last month. “Think the unthinkable” he said. Indeed.

All this talk of revolution is revolting, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

As the comedian Bill Maher pointed out, strong language can poison weak minds, as it did in the case of Timothy McVeigh. (We sometimes forget that not all dangerous men are trained by Al Qaeda.)

At the same time, the unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms. According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.

Coincidence? Maybe. Just posturing? Hopefully. But it all gives me a really bad feeling. (Where’s that Pepto-Bismol?!)

Colbert did a takedown of Beck the other night and it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious.

The “Rhetoric” is getting out of hand and Faux News is being exposed for what it is by having Beck as a staple of its programming.

Once Again the MSM Doesn’t Get It!

And of course it was a DFH (or mentionable member of the group) who pointed this out. The point is that having Andrea Mitchell sub for Rachel Maddow April 2nd was like having Cheney sub for Obama.

No Sh*t. What a mistake.

Thank you Molly!

Is it Just Me?

Or does Obama look “Bushed?”

He is looking mighty stressed to me (look at .51.)

I Guess that Some Folks aren’t all that Happy!

The G20 get together is going to be extremely stressful. The agreements of the G20 nations on what needs to be done and assuaging the many political differences of these countries and their varying political positions is probably not going to happen in London.

LONDON (Reuters) - Riot police staged baton charges to try to disperse several hundred protesters gathered around the Bank of England in the heart of London's financial center on Wednesday after a day of protest against the G20 summit.

Demonstrators had earlier attacked a nearby branch of Royal Bank of Scotland in protest against a system they said had robbed the poor to benefit the rich. Hundreds of protesters converged on the bank, shattering three windows.

Rescued by the government in October, RBS and former boss Fred Goodwin, who controversially refused to give up a pension award of 700,000 ($1 million), became lightning rods for public anger in Britain over banker excess blamed for the crisis.

The protests were timed to coincide with a G20 meeting of the world's leading and emerging economies.

Protesters hurled paint bombs and bottles, chanting: "Our streets! Our banks!"

RBS said in a statement it was "aware of the violence" outside its branch and "had already taken the precautionary step" of closing central city of London branches.

As dusk fell, police charged against a hard core of anti-capitalist demonstrators in an attempt to disperse them before nightfall. Bottles flew through the air toward police lines and police on horseback stood by ready to intervene.

Some protesters set fire to an effigy of a banker hanging from a lamppost.

Police brought out dogs as they tried to channel the few hundred remaining protesters through the narrow streets surrounding the classical, stone-clad Bank of England.

Police said 32 protesters had been arrested by early evening and at least one officer was taken to hospital for treatment.Some 4,000 protesters had thronged outside the central bank, and a Gucci store nearby was closed and its windows emptied.

Demonstrations were planned for Thursday at the venue in east London where world leaders will discuss plans to fight the financial crisis, police said.

The mood could be changing. I could be wrong but I’m not thinking so.

Torture the Torturers

If I were these enabling guys I wouldn’t vacation in Spain, or leave the U.S. anytime soon as the trend may spread. And frankly any small inconvenience and/or discomfort for these guys is for me at best too little and too late.

Criminal proceedings have begun in Spain against six senior officials in the Bush administration for the use of torture against detainees in Guantánamo Bay. Baltasar Garzón, the counter-terrorism judge whose prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet led to his arrest in Britain in 1998, has referred the case to the chief prosecutor before deciding whether to proceed.

The case is bound to threaten Spain's relations with the new administration in Washington, but Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four lawyers who wrote the lawsuit, said the prosecutor would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.

"The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people," Boyé told the Observer. "This case will go ahead. It will be against the law not to go ahead."

The officials named in the case include the most senior legal minds in the Bush administration. They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon's general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers.

Court documents say that, without their legal advice in a series of internal administration memos, "it would have been impossible to structure a legal framework that supported what happened [in Guantánamo]".

Boyé predicted that Garzón would issue subpoenas in the next two weeks, summoning the six former officials to present evidence: "If I were them, I would search for a good lawyer."

If Garzón decided to go further and issued arrest warrants against the six, it would mean they would risk detention and extradition if they travelled outside the US. It would also present President Barack Obama with a serious dilemma. He would have either to open proceedings against the accused or tackle an extradition request from Spain.

Obama administration officials have confirmed that they believe torture was committed by American interrogators. The president has not ruled out a criminal inquiry, but has signaled he is reluctant to do so for political reasons.

"Obviously we're going to be looking at past practices, and I don't believe that anybody is above the law," Obama said in January. "But my orientation's going to be to move forward."

Philippe Sands, whose book Torture Team first made the case against the Bush lawyers and which Boyé said was instrumental in formulating the Spanish case, said yesterday: "What this does is force the Obama administration to come to terms with the fact that torture has happened and to decide, sooner rather than later, whether it is going to criminally investigate. If it decides not to investigate, then inevitably the Garzón investigation, and no doubt many others, will be given the green light."

It is good to see that someone, somewhere, is taking International Law seriously. We can only hope that our Government will do so as well and sooner rather than later.

No “Black Swan” Here!

Everyone talks about how this current economic meltdown is a “Black Swan,” well Ian Welsh isn’t buying it. And I must say as one who has been following Roubini, Krugman, Baker, etc. for years I am not buying it either. Taleb’s “Black Swan” theory could apply to the stupid and greedy architects of the problem but not those who were actually paying attention. They predicted it and outlined what was happening.

I have become increasingly concerned that some in the Obama administration are treating this economic crisis as a Black Swan event. Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term to describe an event that is very rare, random and unpredictable. The imporant thing about Black Swans is that, because they are random and unpredictable, you can’t stop them from happening; you can only create your systems able to handle Black Swans if they occur. For example, a flu pandemic that kills tens of millions might be a Black Swan, and it’s one that we’re completely unprepared for, as we don’t have the excess medical capacity to handle it.

The most recent event which made me think of Black Swans is the news thatnew SEC Chair Mary Schapiro doesn’t plan on reforming ratings agencies. Now, ratings agencies were one of the key actors in this mess—they certified mortgage backed securities and other toxic derivatives as AAA quality. If they had not done so, almost no one would have bought them.

The ratings agencies are paid by the companies whose securities they rate. I trust you see the problem.

If you think that the current economic crisis is just random, a once in a century disaster (or at least once every few decades), then you won’t think making major changes is necessary. Get through the problem, go back to how you were doing things before, and everything will be fine.

But, of course, the economic and financial crisis unfolding right now was not random. This crisis was predicted by multiple people, and it was predicted because of policy steps taken by government and widely-known private actions.

Read the rest and reset and reboot your thinking.

Overcoming Katrina?

Will we? I don’t think we will, nor should we. That said, many of the Diaspora that resulted from this tragedy in NOLA are doing their best. And to that end one of my cohorts D’Ann Penner and her co-author Keith C. Ferdinand have documented many of these efforts and struggles.

Their book Overcoming Katrina is both devastating and inspiring at the same time. The forward by former President Jimmy Carter is indeed a tribute to the importance of their effort in recording the narratives of many of this dispersed Community. I cried, laughed and was infected with a positive vision of the future (and Lord knows we could all use that now.)

Get a hold of it now as it is in its third printing since the beginning of March and is flying off the shelves as we speak. If you care about the future of this country you do not want to miss this most recent and relevant part of our country’s history and values. It provides a mirror look into our collective souls and future.

I highly recommend it.