This is probably the best and most important thing you can read on Appomattox, what happened there and what it means, amidst all that’s been published over the last week. It’s a Times oped by historian Gregory P. Downs which builds on and in some ways summarizes his recent book on the subject. The gist is that the war did not end at Appomattox. It continued in an intensive military occupation that lasted another five years and in widespread terrorist and paramilitary violence directed largely at newly emancipated free black men and women, in a pitched societal battle to enforce or turn back the results of the Civil War. This is a case where history and deceiving fable reach down into the present day. Read it.
There’s a lot of commentary this morning about the police shooting of 44 year old Eric Harris earlier this month in Oklahoma. Here’s a good introduction to it if you haven’t heard about this incident yet. I’m only going to discuss a small part of the story and it’s hardly the most disturbing or perhaps consequential part of it. But it’s the part that stands out to me the most.
The police version of events is that reserve deputy Robert Bates thought he was pulling out his taser when in fact he was pulling out his gun and shot Harris. The single shot proved fatal. This is called a “slips and capture” error in which in a high stress situation you think you’re doing one thing and accidentally do another. A few days later Bates told the paper he thought he was holding his taser when the gun discharged. The tape of the incident at at least some level supports this claim because it has Bates saying “I shot him!” and then “I’m sorry.”
Now that Hillary Clinton, former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State, has officially declared her presidential candidacy, we should note what seems likely to be an all but unprecedented aspect of this campaign. The dynamics and debates which usually play out in a presidential primary between candidates look likely to play out within the Clinton candidacy itself.
To a degree I mean within the campaign itself, with the accustomed battles between political operatives and policy advisers on her campaign over strategy and ideology. But this is not principally what I mean. I mean the Clinton candidacy as a public discussion and quasi-election among Democratic partisans nationwide. One might even say that the Clinton candidacy itself is now close to coterminous with the nominating process and even the Democratic party itself.
Newsflash: Letting a 73 year old insurance executive who donates a lot of money to the Sheriff’s department play “volunteer” cop with a loaded gun during an arrest turns out to be a really, really bad idea.
I mentioned before the crazy decision to allow a 73 year old “volunteer” member of the sheriff’s department to be involved in a suspect apprehension in which he accidentally shot and killed a man fleeing arrest when he thought he was using his taser. Here’s everything we know so far about the law enforcement killing of Eric Harris.
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein on Wednesday at 1 p.m. Eastern will join The Hive (sub req) to answer your questions about national security, including how Congress should reform NSA surveillance.
Goitein co-directs the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. Before coming to the Brennan Center, Liza served as counsel to U.S. Senator Russell Feingold, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As counsel to Sen. Feingold, Liza handled a variety of liberty and national security matters, with a particular focus on government secrecy and privacy rights.
Her writing has been featured in major newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as prominent outlets such as Roll Call, the National Law Journal, and the Huffington Post.
Feel free to drop in your questions at or before 1 p.m. on 4/15. This chat will be moderated by TPM.
Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias are arguing about the significance of the relative approval ratings of Hillary Clinton and her potential Republican opponents and also about who’s stealing each others infographics.
Indiana hires international PR firm to repair state’s image after ‘religious liberty’ law debacle.
I suspect Rubio’s cave on immigration reform will eventually be his undoing – perhaps not because he bucked the base of his party but because he bucked them and then crumbled like an old house as soon as the going got tough.
TPM Reader JC brings us his experience on the battlefield of cake morality and reminds us of a key point. While anti-gay activists have done a decent job coopting the language of ‘religious liberty’ as a synonym for prejudice against gay people, Americans – even in fairly conservative states – overwhelmingly oppose laws which give the sanction of law this kind of bigotry.
Thank you for your recent post on the cake/flowers silliness. My major question here that no one in the media seems to ask these folks is–does giving someone a generic cake or flowers mean you endorse what they use the cake and flowers for? Generally a vendor sends all their cakes out without asking or worrying about the recipients daily morality.
What makes a gay couple’s morality so important to the cake maker’s trade that they now must say No? Why is the supposed “sin” of being gay or getting married as gay citizens suddenly consequential to the the cakes moral mission? Or why does the gay factor even give the cake a moral mission?