tbentley.com

Teen charged with attempted murder after turning self into Richland County Sheriff

—The State, Columbia, SC

“Voter fraud is rampant” — it’s the hoariest claim of proponents of voter-ID laws, and the most untrue. As the evidence has shown over and over and over and over and over, there is no voter-impersonation fraud — the only type of fraud that such laws purport to combat.

In 2014, Justin Levitt, an election-law scholar at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, catalogued every instance of voter-impersonation fraud he could find in any election since 2000 — not just prosecutions, but even vaguely credible allegations. He found 31 — over a period in which Americans cast about 1 billion votes in federal, state and local elections.

NYTimes

Supreme Court Nominees Confirmed in Last Year of Term, 20th Century

date of vacancy        date of nomination        Nominee/        Confirmed            President
——————————————————————————————————————–
October 14, 1911    March 13, 1912            Mahlon Pitney        March 18, 1912      Taft

January 2, 1916         January 28, 1916        Louis Brandeis        June 1, 1916       Wilson

June 10, 1916        July 14, 1916             John Clarke        July 24, 1916                    Wilson

January 12, 1932    February 15, 1932        Benjamin Cardozo    February 24, 1932   Hoover

November 16, 1939    January 4, 1940            Frank Murphy         January 16, 1940  Roosevelt

(ret. Nov. 1987)        November 30, 1987         Anthony Kennedy    February 3, 1988   Reagan

Scotusblog

The “pro-business” model of capitalism is broken — and getting worse, author and activist Les Leopold tells Salon

An excellent article on the authoritarian impulse, in Vox:

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism

CREMONCELLO RECIPE

2 cups grain alcohol, such as Everclear

3 unblemished lemons’ zest

1 quart plus ¼ cup 2% milk
(for limocello, use water in place of milk;

3 ½ cups sugar

Wash lemons thoroughly. Thinly peel, making sure to get only the yellow and none of the white

In large glass container, marinate the lemon peel in alcohol for 48 hours. Strain liquid and discard peel.

In medium sauce pan, boil milk (or water) and add sugar, stirring until dissolved (basically, you’re making a simple syrup). Cool. Add lemon-infused alcohol.

Allow to age for at least a month; if making cremoncello, refrigerate.

Store in refrigerator and serve chilled.

–

“South Carolina still has laws that criminalize committing adultery, premarital sex and seducing a woman with the promise of marriage. The state also bans working on Sundays, playing pinball under age 18 and challenging someone to a duel.”

I think this is the Toshio who was at the Congregational Church in Des Plaines, Illinois, when I was working after school as a janitor’s assistant:

Obituary

“I do believe think there have been some very good Republican presidential candidates this year…”

–Arthur Brookes in the New York Times

America’s unlearned lesson: the forgotten truth about why we invaded Iraq

by Max Fisher on February 16, 2016

“The war would still have cost some 4,500 American lives and well over 100,000 Iraqi lives. It would still have destabilized Iraq, opened up the country for violent extremism, and contributed directly to the rise of ISIS. And it would still have been launched in pursuit of an ideological mission that turned out to be dangerously misguided….

Abstract and radical neoconservative ideas that had developed during the Clinton years, bouncing around a tiny echo chamber of like-minded idealists who had little desire to challenge one another, had suddenly and with no real public debate become the basis of a war that would quickly cost many thousands of lives.

But those ideas are still very much a part of America’s foreign policy discourse, and some day, even as soon as this January, their adherents could return to the White House.”