Quarantine

The ACLU is on the job in Arizona:

On this day

In 1794, Blue Jacket, a Sahwnee War Chief, attacked Fort Recovery, a place located in present-day Ohio and then in the Northwest Territory.

In 1860, scientists debated Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in what became known as the Oxford Evolution Debate.

In 1905, Albert Einstein published his article "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") in which he introduced ideas which came to be known as the special theory of relativity.

In 1934, Adolph Hitler successfully consolidated his power by purging some of the radical elements in his movement. The purge came to be known as the Night of the Long Knives or the Röhm-Putsch.

In 1971, the state of Ohio ratified the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The Amendment lowered the voting age to eighteen.

In 1986, the Supreme Court of the United States delivered its opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186. The court ruled that the states have the authority to outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults. The Supreme Court subsequently reversed this decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).

In 1990, East and West Germany merged their economies.

On this day

In 1940, the Swiss-German painter Paul Klee died on this day in Muralto, Switzerland.

In 1941, the political activist Stokely Carmichael was born on this day in Trinidad.

In 1964, jazz saxophonist and flautist Eric Dolphy died in Berlin, West Germany.

In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States delivered its decision in Furman v. Georgia
408 U.S. 238 which identified capital punishment as "cruel and unusual." The decision generated a moratorium on executions in the United States.

In 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States delivered its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
548 U.S. 557 (.pdf).

Do you feel depressed?

If you do, it's not you…

A worried Paul Krugman issues a warning to his readers and the public at large:

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression [the two past depressions were the "Great Depression" of the 1930s and the "Long Depression" of the late 1800s]. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend's deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

Krugman thus believes the actual cause of this potential depression is the political supremacy of fiscal conservative dogma over all efforts to support demand during a time of massive and unemployment, unemployment that may be chronic. In other words, Krugman believes the deficit hawks have defeated the proponents of stimuli in their political battle over economic policy. This, he believes, is a disaster that stands as a precondition for the next global depression.

Update

Chris Hayes and Dean Baker discuss Krugman's take on the current situation:

Last updated on June 29, 2010 at 12:02 pm

Senate Republicans attempt to smear Elena Kagan

Her sin, it seems, was the time she spent as Justice Thurgood Marshall's clerk and claims him as a hero! Talking Points Memo reports:

Looks like Senate Judiciary Republicans have at least one unified talking point today: Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an "activist judge." As Elena Kagan kept on her listening face, multiple senators slammed both Marshall's judicial philosophy and her service as his clerk in the late 1980s.

Ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) criticized Kagan for having "associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to redefine the meaning of our constitution and have the result of advancing that judge's preferred social policies," citing Marshall as his son, Thurgood Marshall Jr., sat in the audience of the Judiciary Committee hearings.

In an example of how much the GOP focused on Marshall, his name came up 35 times. President Obama's name was mentioned just 14 times today.

Sessions said Kagan's reverence for Marshall "tells us much about the nominee," and he meant that more as an indictment than a compliment.

On this day

In 1577, Paul Rubens, a Flemish painter in the Baroque style, was born.

In 1703, John Wesley was born. Wesley founded the evangelical Methodist movement.

1712, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva.

In 1751, James Madison, the "father" of the American Constitution, was born at Belle Grove Plantation, Virginia.

In 1894, the United States made Labor Day (the first Monday in September) an official holiday.

In 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb and a Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife while the two were travelling over the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination by the Bosnian Serb triggered a set of cascading events which eventually produced the First World War, and thus also the history which could not have happened as it did but for that war.

In 1919, Germany and the Allied powers signed the ill-fated peace Treaty of Versailles.

In 1922, the Irish Civil War began.

In 1964, Malcolm X formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

In 1967, the State of Israel annexed East Jerusalem.

In 1969, spontaneous demonstrations erupted when the New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York City. The Stonewall Riots, as we remember the demonstrations today, became a definitive event in the Gay Rights Movement in the United States.

In 1978, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

In 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, led by L. Paul Bremer, transferred power to the Iraqi Interim Government, led by Iyad Allawi, thus nominally ending America's post-invasion governance of Iraq.

Theda Skocpol criticizes the Obama administration

Skocpol wrote:

The same old story happens again and again. Dems in the House pass reasonable legislation, and Senate Dems dicker with centrists and Republicans over "compromises," weakening the legislation step by step over many weeks, only to find zero Republican support in the end.

The public has no idea what is going on, and just blames Democrats, who appear to be in charge in DC. Now it is happening gain with vital public spending for national economy recovery — state aid, unemployment relief, and adjustments in taxes and Medicare payments. This legislation is not just important to this or that group. It matters for keeping any semblance of national economic growth going, for creating and saving hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The President, Congressional leaders, and Democrats of all stripes should be yelling day in, day out, that REPUBLICANS ARE SABOTAGING NATIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY. AND PREVENTING JOB GROWTH, JUST FOR POLITICAL ADVANTAGE. That should be the message all the time, led by the President. Stop the murky compromises and the whining about "helping the unemployed." Stop pretending this is about the deficit — nothing will hurt the deficit more than delayed economic growth. Say what it happening in terms of the national interest.

Skocpol's argument is sound enough when taken at face value. Its deeper mistake lies in her apparent belief that the politicians of the Democratic Party care about unemployment and the unemployed more than they care about the deficits and financial capital and her belief that Democratic Party politicians prefer reelection to crossing their moneyed personal and institutional supporters. With a catastrophic real (as opposed to the official) unemployment rate of approximately 20 percent, one would expect a party and a president who considered mass unemployment a problem to act decisively to resolve the problem. This has not happened, though. On the other hand, America's country debt is considered a significant problem, one that might become a pretext for the destruction of the Social Security System. I believe Obama has already made his priorities clear enough.

Another day, another promise broken

Charlie Savage, reporting for the New York Times, states that:

Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

The significance of this tactic was not lost on Glenn Greenwald, who stated:

So that appears to be a consensus: Guantanamo — the closing of which was one of Obama's central campaign promises — will still be open as of 2013, by which point many of the detainees will have been imprisoned for more than a decade without charges of any kind and without any real prospect for either due process or release, at least four of those years under a President who was elected on a commitment to close that camp and restore the rule of law. [emphasis in the original]

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Guantánamo

On this day

In 1869, the anarchist writer and activist Emma Goldman was born in Kovno in the Russian Empire, a city now called Kaunas and located in Lithuania.

In 1880, the blind and deaf Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Keller, with the assistance of Ann Sullivan, overcame her blindness and deafness. She subsequently acquired a college degree and became a prolific author, lecturer and political activist. Keller was an early feminist, a socialist and a Wobblie.

In 1905, during the Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin arrested or killed the officers commanding the ship in a mutiny which prefigured the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In 1950, the United Nations passed UNSC Resolution 83 which condemned North Korea for breaching the peace and which authorized the use of force in the defense of the Korean Republic.

In 1974, President Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union.

In 1989, the International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, adopted the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention or ILO-convention 169. The text of the document can be found here.

On this day

In 1409, the critical conflict within the Roman Catholic Church generated a second schism when the Ecumenical Council of Pisa elected Pope Alexander V. The new Pope joined Pope Benedict XIII and Pope Gregory XII as the putative leaders of the Church. The Ecumenical Council of Constance eventually resolved the schisms and elected Pope Martin V.

In 1848, the June Days Uprising against France's Second Republic came to an end when last barricade at Faubourg Saint-Antoine fell.

In 1908, Salvador Allende was born in Chile. A lifelong socialist, Allende became Chile's President in 1970. He was deposed by a coup d'état conducted by the Chilean military on September 11, 1973. The United States, led by President Richard Nixon, supported the coup.

In 1945, delegates from every one of the original member countries (sans Poland) signed the United Nations Charter in San Francisco. Poland signed later.

In 1953, members of the Politburo of the Soviet Union had Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's "Himmler" and, perhaps, his murderer, arrested. Beria led the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) at the time of his arrest.

In 1975, India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared under which she could rule by decree.

In 1975, a member of the American Indian Movement and two FBI agents died during the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation shootout. Leonard Peltier, a member of AIM, was convicted of murder in the deaths of the FBI agents. Today, however, evidence exists which suggests that Peltier did not kill the FBI agents and that he was unfairly tried and convicted.

In 2003, Strom Thurmond, a segregationist politician from South Carolina, died.