Friday, September 23, 1774. The York Tea Party.

Tea brought into the harbor at York harbor was seized by men dressed as Native Americans from the vessel that brought it in, but it was not destroyed.  Indeed, the protest having been made, the tea was quietly returned.

Last edition:

Thursday, September 22, 1774. ""it always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have."

Labels: 1770s, 1774, Abagail Adams, American Colonial Militia, Ethnicities, John Adams, Racism, Slavery

Friday September 5, 1924. Back in the US.

The three surviving U.S. Army aircraft attempting to fly around the world,  the Chicago, New Orleans and Boston, reentered U.S. airspace near Brunswick Maine in a dense fog.

President Coolidge gave a press conference.

Press Conference, September 5, 1924

Last edition:

Wednesday. September 3, 1924. The massacre at Taif.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Ikhwan, Kingdom of Hejaz, Saudi Arabia, Second Saudi-Hashemite War, Sultanate of Nejd

The Post Insurrection. Part VIII. The tangled web edition.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Sir Walter Scott, Marmion.

January 3, 2024.

Donald Trump's is appealing the ruling of the Secretary of State that Trump cannot stand for election under the 14th Amendment.

January 4, 2024

Trump is now appealing the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court that he cannot be on Colorado's ballot as he's an insurrectionist. The state's GOP had already filed an appeal.

More properly, this is a petition. The U.S. Supreme Court does not have to take the matter up.

January 6, 2024

The current docket at the Supreme Court on the Trump v. Colorado case:

Jan 03 2024	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due February 5, 2024)
	PetitionCertificate of Word CountProof of Service
Jan 03 2024	Brief amici curiae of Senator Steve Daines & National Republican Senatorial Committee filed. VIDED.
	Main DocumentProof of ServiceCertificate of Word Count
Jan 04 2024	Letter from counsel for respondent Colorado Republican State Central Committee filed.
	Main Document
Jan 04 2024	Brief in response to the petition for a writ of certiorari of respondent Norma Anderson, et al. filed.
	Main DocumentOtherCertificate of Word CountProof of Service
Jan 05 2024	Petition GRANTED. The case is set for oral argument on Thursday, February 8, 2024. Petitioner’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support or in support of neither party, are to be filed on or before Thursday, January 18, 2024. Respondents’ briefs on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support, are to be filed on or before Wednesday, January 31, 2024. The reply brief, if any, is to be filed on or before 5 p.m., Monday, February 5 2024.
Jan 05 2024	Amicus brief of Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee submitted.
	Main DocumentCertificate of Word CountProof of Service
Jan 05 2024	Amicus brief of States of Indiana, West Virginia, 25 Other States, and the Arizona Legislature submitted.
	Main DocumentCertificate of Word CountProof of Service

January 9, 2024

An actual exchange in a Federal Appellate Court where Trump's claims for immunity were heard today.

Judge:  "I asked you a yes or no question. Could a president who ordered S.E.A.L. Team 6 to assassinate a political rival (and is) not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?"

Trump attorney says "qualified yes -- if he is impeached and convicted first."

The entire qualified immunity argument is legally infirm in the first place and needs to go.  This will probably help make it go.  Apparently, the judges weren't impressed with Trump's lawyer's arguments at all.

January 19, 2024

A court in Oregon determined Trump can remain on the ballot there.

Trump's lawyers filed their briefs in the Supreme Court case on the 14th Amendment yesterday.

January 27, 2024

E. Jean Carroll was awarded $83.3M in her defamation case against Donald Trump.

This will be appealed and it's likely that it'll actually not be paid in that amount.

February 6, 2024

No immunity.

Of course, who really thought there was?

Unfortunately, the delay in issuing the opinion has resulted in the postponement of the trial originally scheduled for March.

Cont:

Matt Gaetz and Elise Stephanik have co-sponsored a resolution that Donald Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States on January 6, something that clear is an attempt to address the 14th Amendment in that insurrection may be excused under it.

Having said that, a resolution that it didn't occur will not excuse it, and this will not get through the Senate.

February 8, 2024

Based on today's oral arguments, it appears likely that the Supreme Court is not going to disqualify Donald Trump under the 14th Amendment.

February 13, 2024

Defendant Trump is seeking a delay in his election interference trial, hoping to push it past the election, when he'll next hope that he can avoid it while President.

February 16, 2024

Nor really related to the other post insurrection legal woes that Donald Trump faces, his trial related to Stormy Daniel's hush money is set to commence on March 25.

In a more decent era, his payment to Daniels for sex would have ended his political career, but we obviously no longer live in a decent era.

In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testified regarding her relationship with the prosecutor assigned in the Georgia RICO action.

In another matter which is tangentially related to Trump's legal woes, House Republican effort to impeach Biden, which are monumentally improper, took a blow when Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant was charged with fabricating a bribery scheme involving President Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian company, which is what the attempt to impeach him is based on, other than on a desire for revenge.

Cont:

Trump has been found liable in New York in the civil fraud trial in the amount of $364,000,000 and is barred from doing business in New York for three years.

February 23, 2024

Trump's daughter-in-law who is campaigning for appointment to the RNC declared that Republican voters would likely welcome using RNC funds to support his legal battles.

I'd strongly question if this was legal, and frankly it likely opens the RNC up, in my view, to a Rico charge.

February 29, 2024

A Court in Illinois has ruled that Trump is banned from the Illinois ballot under the 14th Amendment, but stayed her decision until Friday in order to give him time to appeal.

The United States Supreme Court will take up Trump's immunity appeal, which will further delay his January 6 trial.  

At this point, I think it highly unlikely that the January 6 trial will be heard this year, which means that it likely won't be heard until 2028, which is s true injustice.

March 4, 2024

And now the Supreme Court has ruled. Trump stays on the ballot, insurrection notwithstanding.

The basis is that Congress hasn't enacted a law to enforce the 14th Amendment and the Court finds it not be a self enacting statute

Secretary of State Gray chimed in:

Secretary Gray Applauds Supreme Court Decision Keeping Trump on Ballot in 2024

     CHEYENNE, WY – On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a unanimous decision reversing the Colorado Supreme Court’s December ruling to remove Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray previously filed an Amicus Curiae brief with the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing that the Supreme Court should reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Donald Trump from the ballot under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. Secretary Gray’s brief argued that Trump did not engage in an insurrection or rebellion, nor give aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States.

     “I am extremely pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision reversing the Colorado Supreme Court’s repugnant ruling,” Secretary Gray said in a statement. “As Wyoming’s chief election officer, I filed an Amicus brief in January asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Colorado’s outrageously wrong and unprecedented decision. For this, I have been repeatedly attacked by the radical left-wing media, and even members of the Legislature, for my efforts to ensure that Trump will be on the ballot. Today’s unanimous decision keeping Trump on the ballot marks vindication for the truth and for liberty. As Secretary of State, I will continue to fight to ensure the People of Wyoming can choose who to elect for themselves.”

Last Prior Edition:

The Post Insurrection. Part VII. The Insurrectionist.

Related Threads:

Involvement.

Blog Mirror: What Trump's lawyer was really advocating

The 2023 "Off Year" Election.

October 2, 2023.

Some states, albeit not Wyoming, are having elections this November.  

And some of them will have interesting topics on their ballots.  We start with this one, a Texas right to farm act, that will be on the ballot in Texas.

Texans to Vote on Right to Farm Constitutional Amendment November 7

November 8, 2023

Following the trend of voting to make Americans even more intoxicated and dim than they already are, Ohio voted to legalize recreational marijuana.  It also voted in favor of opening up abortion, unfortunately.

Houston is going to have a mayoral runoff.

cont:

Democrats gained control of both houses of the Virginia legislature.

Republicans only barely held the House of Delegates before this, but this can legitimately be regarded as another example of the Trump GOP losing power in an election.

Democrats took the Governor's race in Kentucky.

None of this may be dramatic, but the GOP has a demographic problem, and Trump isn't helping it.  Therefore, ironically, there's a fairly good chance that he'll be elected as the next President, but the House and the Senate will go Democratic.

cont:

Democrats won big in New Jersey.

For some reason, apparently it was thought they would not, which is odd.

November 9, 2023

Regarding ballot initiatives in Maine; Maine passed a resolution prohibiting election funding by foreign governments, including entities with partial foreign government ownership or control.

The Pine Tree Power Company initiative decisively failed.

A right to repair initiative requiring vehicle manufacturers to provide access to vehicle on board diagnostic systems to owners and repair facilities passed.

An attempt to allow out of states to gather initiative signatures failed.

Texas, not too surprisingly, had a bunch of initiatives on its ballot.  Some of interest here:

A right to farm, ranch, harvest timber, practice horticulture and engage in wildlife management was added to the State Constitution.  The vote was overwhelmingly in favor.

Voters authorized an ad valorem tax exemption on medical and biomedical equipment.

An effort to raise judicial retirement age from 75 to 79 (what the heck?) failed, thank goodness.

A resolution to prohibit a tax on net wealth passed.

The Steer. 1942.

 Annual agricultural show at the state experimental farm at Presque Isle, Maine. Prizewinning "baby beef", raised by a daughter of a Farm Security Administration client.

March 25, 1941. Yugoslavia signs the Tripartite Pact

Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact over the opposition of his ward, King Peter II.  Paul was his cousin.  Peter was 17 years old.

King Peter II in 1944 in the uniform of an RAF officer.

Paul didn't sign it because he was a Nazi sympathizer, but due to realpolitik.  Indeed, Yugoslavia was a constitutional democracy and its parliament had ratified entering the agreement a few days earlier.  Yugoslavia had faced a German ultimatum to throw in with Germany or face invasion.  Given that, the country had sought British assurance that the British would supply forces to aid it, but that request was unrealistic in context and while the British urged Yugoslavia not to enter into the agreement, it was in no position to supply troops to the country.

On the same day street demonstrations broke out in Belgrade against the Axis, giving an interesting example of average people demonstrating against the Nazis prior to being occupied by them.  Of course, Yugoslavians were well aware that joining the Tripartite Pact meant going to war, and war with Germany, even if that war was not yet as wide as it would become.

Indeed, in that context the calculations of the Yugoslavian government made some sense. At the time, the war in the area was with Greece, and while the Yugoslavs  had no desire to fight in Greece, that being in the Axis would soon mean war with the Soviet Union could only be guessed at.

Except, oddly enough, it didn't mean war with Greece.  Prince Paul and Hitler had agreed to a secret protocol allowing Germany to transport troops across Yugoslavia for their anticipated assault on Greece while allowing Greece to remain neutral in that conflict.  Yugoslavia would be complicit in Greece's subrogation, but it wouldn't have to fire a shot itself.  The country could hope, therefore, that Germany wouldn't drag it into a wider war, and it could hope that the war would have some unforeseen negotiated conclusion that wouldn't damage its interest.

More on this can be read here:

Today in World War II History—March 25, 1941

A severe snowstorm hit Maine on this day in 1941:

25 March 1941 Maine Snowstorm

July 3, 1920. Gorgas and Georgism

Portland, Maine.  Fire Department No. 1.  July 3, 1920.

Portland, Maine, Fire Department, #2, July 3, 1920

The Surgeon General of the U.S. Army during World War One died on this day in 1920.  He was 65 years old.

William C. Gorgas.

Gorgas was an interesting character.  The son of a northern born Confederate Civil War officer, he had joined the Army as a physician in 1880.  In the Army, he'd become a specialist in tropical diseases, surviving a bout with yellow fever himself.  

His experiences in tropical areas lead him to become a Georgist, a fairly difficult to grasp economic theory which holds that a "Land Value Tax" is somehow the cure for all of society's ills.  The theory had some well known adherents, including Winston Churchill and William F. Buckley.

Connecticut College, July 3, 1920

Gorgas was 65 when he died.  He fits into a certain pattern for men who have endured the stress of command in war. They die soon after the conflicts have concluded.  An examination of the lives of officers from the Civil War, World War One, and World War Two, pretty clearly demonstrate that trend.

May 24, 1920. Gatherings.

On this day in 1920 the Mexican Congress was ordered to assemble on the question of who would be the country's provisional president.  After three rounds of voting, Aldolfo de la Huerta was chosen for the role.

De la Huerta

On the same day the body of the assassinated Carranza was taken to Mexico City. When his train arrived there fourteen aids of his who accompanied the body were arrested and put in a military prison for holding.

As the contest in Mexico concluded one round, a law was signed in New York that brought about a limit to the number of rounds in prize fighting and which further established weight classifications.  Named after its sponsor, the Walker Law is regarded as having revolutionized boxing.

Jimmy Walker, then a New York state senator.  He'd later be Governor of New York from 1926 to 1932, before resigning in a patronage scandal.

And in Brightwood Maine, an Old Maids Club met at a church.

What exactly such a gathering met in this context isn't clear.

103rd U.S. Infantry, drill field, Camp Bartlett, Westfield, Maine., September 12, 1917

103d Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army (Maine National Guard)

Sunday, September 27, 1914. Cossack barbarity.

German forces forced back the French around the River Somme near Albert.

Belgian volunteers encountered German troops at Buggenhout, but retreated in the end to Mol.

The Russians forced back the Germans at Osowiec Fortress.

Cossacks attacked Jewish residents in Lwów, causing 40 civilian casualties.

Last edition:

Saturday, September 26, 1914. FTC created.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Battle of Buggenhout, Belgian Army, Commentary, Federal Trade Commission, German Army, Namibia, Populism, South African Army, World War One

Tuesday, February 24, 1914. Villa, Ulster Unionist, the doomed Canadian Arctic Expedition and Joshua Chamberlin.

Pancho Villa refused to delivery the body of William S. Benton to US and British authorities but stated he's allow relatives to visit his burial site, escorted.

The Ulster Unionist Party distributed posters addressing concerns about the Ulster Volunteer Force attempting to assure that it was formed solely due to its disputes with London, which probably wasn't particularly comforting.

Captain Robert Barrett led the last survivors from the Canadian Arctic Expedition's Shipwreck Camp to Wrangel Island, leaving a note on their whereabouts in a copper drum in case the icebound camp drifted into an area where it could be found.

Robert Peary, meanwhile, speculated in the press that the Canadian expedition had set up camp near the Alaskan coastline.

Famous Maine commander Joshua Chamberlain, who won a Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg, died at age 85.

He had gone on to serve as the Governor of Maine.

While famous for his role in the Civil War, he had started off his adult life with the intent of becoming a Congregationalist minister, which was his mother's desire.  His father had hoped for a military career for him.  Marrying in 1855, he took up a career as a teacher before the Civil War.  He of course served notably in the Civil War.  After the war he served four one year terms as Governor of Maine (what a horrific though to have to run a campaign every year), resumed teaching at the university level, practiced law, and engaged in various business activities.

Friday, April 23, 1909. Lethal politics in Kentucky.

William S. Taylor

Governor of Kentucky, Augustus E. Willson, pardoned former Governor of Kentucky, William S. Taylor for assessor to the murder, which he denied, of William Goebel, who had been declared to be the lawful winner of the 1899 gubernatorial election.

Augustus E. Willson.

Very MAGAesque.

Taylor had taken up residence in another state, where he practiced law, and he rarely returned to Kentucky.

The horrors taking place in Turkey were noted.

The Acting Secretary of State to Ambassador Reid.

Department of State,

Washington, April 23, 1909.

Referring to department’s telegram of the 18th, Mr. Wilson asks if a fleet adequate for the protection of foreign life has been sent to the disturbed regions in Turkey, and if American citizens are in jeopardy whether we can rely upon the doing of all that is feasible for their protection. Says, in view of the humanitarian concern felt by the President and because of the distressed interest of naturalized Armenians in the United States, the department would be glad to learn if possible what is being done under the Berlin act to check the massacre of Armenians in Turkey. Quotes telegram of this date from Turkey.

Gimbels signed a 105-year lease for property at New York Herald Square.  This provided for $60,000,000 in rent until 2014.

The 1909 Benavente earthquake in the Santarém District of the Central Region, Portugal. Sixty people were killed in the incident.

Child labor was photographed in Lewiston, Maine.

It shows, I guess, why quite a few World War One veterans, in reality, didn't think the war was all that bad.  Daily life was already really rough.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, April 18, 1909. St. Joan d'Arc beatified.

1400s, 1412, 1430s, 1431, 1900s, 1909, baseball, Catholic, France, Missour (St. Louis), religion, Sports, St. Joan d'Arc, St. Louis Missouri