Departments

;

Cliopatria

  • Oct 6, 2005

    Math and Unicorns

    by Cliopatria

    On the day before school started this September, I got a haircut, something I’ve probably done on or around the day before school started for the last thirty years. But as I’ve just moved to a new city, I didn’t have a regular place to go. It is no doubt a sign of my advancing years, and my imminent ejection from the coveted “white males aged 18-34” demographic, that this year I sacrificed hipness for familiarity by going to a national hair-cutting chain.

    The woman cutting my hair
  • Oct 5, 2005

    Alonzo Hamby on Truman's Crony Picks for the Supreme Court

    by Cliopatria

    Is W the first president to want to put a crony on the Supreme Court? No, of course not.

    The last president to do so was LBJ, who put his old pal Abe Fortas on the Court.

    But the modern record-holder in this regard was probably Harry Truman.

    On Richard jensen's conservative list, CNET, Alonzo Hamby, fellow POTUS member, reviewed Truman's lamentable record, starting with the appointment of Chief Justice Vinson:

    As for Chie
  • Oct 5, 2005

    "Season of mists. . . ."

    by Cliopatria

    Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
    Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
    I loved Keats poem “To Autumn” the first time I ran across it. In my hot Texas upbringing, it suggested that there was a paradise out there somewhere.

    Well, we’ve gotten mists in Wisconsin. Also hail a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday in a four hour period I literally dumped over 100 buckets of water from my sump to m

  • Oct 5, 2005

    The Politics of Katrina

    by Cliopatria

    Last week, Roll Callpublished a piece on the"political storm" brewing in LA following Katrina. The most immediate effect appears to be in the Third District, one of the few in the nation to shift from GOP to Dem control in the 2004 elections. Republican state Sen. Craig Romero, the likely challenger to Congressman Charlie Melancon, traveled to Washington a week after Katrina hit, handing out demographic analyses sugg
  • Oct 5, 2005

    The Miers Nomination

    by Cliopatria

    Randy Barnett,"Cronyism," Wall Street Journal, 4 October. In re: Harriet Miers, Barnett asks:"What would Alexander Hamilton do?" The contrast of her legal experience with that of John Roberts is dramatic. In 20 years of private and public legal practice, he argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court. At Is That
  • Oct 4, 2005

    UFT, Ferrer, and the PSC

    by Cliopatria

    Another setback for the floundering Ferrer campaign this morning, as the city's largest teachers' union, the UFT, reached a contract settlement with the Bloomberg administration. With the deal, the UFT almost certainly will remain neutral for the mayoral contest.

    The settlement represents a slightly more lucrative package than that recommended several weeks back by an arbitrator, but follows the arbitrator's f

  • Oct 4, 2005

    Raiding the Times

    by Cliopatria

    Sometimes the New York Times is still worth reading, for an historian. Like today:

    • The end of an era: Mongolia's coal-fired steam-powered train line is converting to diesel. My father's an old steam train buff and model railroader...
      There's many, many little children who'll never thrill to the choo-choo sound,
      If they don't put me back upon the railroad and let me keep on chugging a
  • Oct 4, 2005

    Documenting Vernon Johns

    by Cliopatria

    I've mentioned from time to time that my primary research interest these days is preparation of a critical edition of the essays, sermons, and speeches of Vernon Johns. Most people don't know who he is, much less why one would want to do such a thing. I'm doing it because Johns was a legendary figure in the circle of Martin Luther King and the others at his Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Just after King was assassinated in Memphis, a reporter interviewing his best friend, Ralph Aberna
  • Oct 4, 2005

    Clinton Revisionism on Iraq and WMD

    by Cliopatria

    Last week, former President Bill Clinton told his staffer-turned-ABC talking head George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. government had "no evidence that there was any weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq]." And Clinton has the gall to accuse Bush of lying?

    Here's Clinton on July 22, 2003, on Larry King Live: "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for." And in October 2003, some six months after the war en
  • Oct 3, 2005

    Timothy B. Tyson: Review of Jesse Helms's Here's Where I Stand

    by Cliopatria

    Timothy B. Tyson won a 2005 Southern Book Award for his history of a racial murder in Oxford, Blood Done Sign My Name.

    Jesse Helms has led a remarkable life. The son of a small town lawman, he became the second most politically influential North Carolinian of his generation. His five bruising races for U.S. Senate attracted intense national interest; his 30-year legislative career earned him international fame. His slashing style and amazing money machine virtually reinvented
  • Oct 3, 2005

    On Ignoring Your Readers

    by Cliopatria

    I'm hesitant to correct my fellow History News Network blogger, Tom Reeves. The last time I did it, blog warfare broke out at HNN. Not that Tom fired any shots, but his pedagones went all profarchy ‘n triggeritchy on me. Anyway, Tom's wrong again. Consider this in his recent post about David McCullough:"The author clearly ranks among our finest American historians. (One thinks of Allan Nevins, Perry Mi
  • Oct 2, 2005

    The PSC Strikes Out

    by Cliopatria

    Last Thursday night, I attended a mass rally organized by CUNY’s faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC). The event was designed to build support for a strike vote, which the union is expected to schedule sometime after November 3. (Strikes by public employee unions are illegal under New York state law.) Though most of the meeting consisted of speeches from PSC president Barbara Bowen or heads of other unions, the PSC invited three me
  • Oct 2, 2005

    Elephant

    by Cliopatria

    One of the more puzzling things about the current discourse on academic freedom is that it exists in an oddly rarefied atmosphere--to be precise, the higher reaches of the Carnegie Category Definitions. Yes, people occasionally notice that the world does not begin and end with Research I and II universities, but even so, the conversation tends to default to a research university"norm." The problem
  • Oct 1, 2005

    Iraq and Vietnam, the Anti-War Movements

    by Cliopatria

    Mr. Johnson is a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

    It seems to me that the differences between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq far outweigh the similarities. But it’s still useful to think of comparisons between the two. To date, there’s been a considerable difference between the two movements opposing the administration’s policy. On the one hand, public opinion has consolidated remarkably quickly