Also on today’s menu:
The Toll Of Fighting City Hall
Hold It Just One Moment
Better To Die Young For A Cause?
“The secretary of state shall ensure that the presidential primary election be held seven or more days immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election.” That is the language the New Hampshire Senate has proposed for a constitutional amendment that would enshrine a 1949 state law in the New Hampshire constitution.
The impetus for asking New Hampshire voters to affirm its first-in-the-nation primary is the attempt by the Democratic National Committee to make South Carolina the first state to vote on who should be president. While the Granite State’s overwhelmingly white population is seen as not being reflective of the diversity of the nation’s voting population, while South Carolina has a majority black population, there also is the fact that South Carolina was the state that revived Joe Biden Jr.’s campaign for president after his poor showing in New Hampshire during the 2020 primary.
Senator Darryl Abbas of Salem, the proposal’s lead sponsor, said, “There’s absolutely no justification to take this from our state, and we should keep that tradition going and give that right to the people, and that’s what we are doing.” The senate passed the constitutional amendment concurrent resolution, 23-0, on March 30, and should the House agree, it would go before the voters for a decision.
The Toll Of Fighting City Hall
Joan Emerson, whose property had been impacted by the privatization of Punch Brook Road in Franklin when the city council granted a request by her son and daughter-in-law to discontinue that section of the Class VI highway, received partial victory when the city agreed to a mediated agreement that shortened the discontinued section to restore access to her property. She nevertheless had to file a lawsuit to get the city to back down.
The Franklin City Council had been caught in the middle of the family dispute, unaware that Joan was a surgical patient at the time of its vote to discontinue the road and had been unaware of the discussion. When she learned of the decision and asked for a rehearing where she could be present, the city refused her request.
“This took a toll on me and I sincerely hope that no other person in the city of Franklin ever has an experience like this,” she told the city council through her attorney.
Hold It Just One Moment
“An indictment is not a finding of guilt, but an independent jury’s decision, after hearing from prosecutors, that sufficient evidence exists to warrant a court trial.” That is the disclaimer that accompanies (or should accompany) news stories about people indicted by a grand jury. In America, people are innocent until proven guilty.
It is important to keep that in mind following the Manhattan grand jury’s indictment of former president Donald Trump. As Joyce Vance notes, “We don’t know what the charges are yet, because the indictment is still sealed. That’s not unusual. Typically, indictments remain sealed until a defendant is arraigned. … Be cautious of anyone who discusses either the strength or the weakness of the indictment until we know exactly what it contains — it’s tough to assess charges when you don’t know what they are.”
Media speculation has declared it to be a felony indictment, but if the charge is simply about false business record — declaring Trump’s payments to his attorney to be “legal expenses” when they actually were reimbursements for paying off a porn star — it would be a misdemeanor. “It morphs into a felony if the false entry is made to commit or conceal another crime,” Vance writes. “For the indictment to charge a felony, [Manhattan DA Alvin] Bragg must believe he has evidence to elevate the charges to felony status. There are a number of possibilities, each with its own accompanying legal issues, including tax violations or federal campaign crimes.”
What makes the indictment particularly noteworthy is that it is the first time in history that a former United States president has been indicted. While Trump is trying to portray it as a political witch hunt, the indictment did not come from Bragg himself, but from a grand jury made up of ordinary Americans. It is about justice, and holding everyone committing a crime accountable.
Better To Die Young For A Cause?
We have written before about our enigmatic former Newfound exchange student, Margarita Simonyan, who now serves as executive editor of Russia Today. Anna Ochkina, in Russian Dissent, quotes Margarita as saying, “Ten, twenty, thirty years is not such a big difference in terms of eternity; it’s not a fact that it’s better to die old and decrepit from a painful illness than young and strong for a just cause.”
Anna explains that “Propaganda does its best to promote the idea of some higher Truth, for the sake of which one can do anything, even a crime, which ceases to be a crime thanks to the service of this Truth. … Children in schools and even kindergartens, dressed in military uniforms, read poems about death for the Motherland, about glorious deeds, and terrible enemies around the Motherland. Propagandists from TV screens, numerous pro-government bloggers constantly threaten the whole world with nuclear hell, disgustingly rejoicing at missile strikes against Ukraine.”
Americans who have visited Russia come away with an impression of a population that is numbed by the world they see, where they accept whatever the state says even as they disbelieve it. “Many in Russia still remember well the end that justifies the means and know that it does not end well,” Anna writes. “But historical memory and fear only motivate the majority to even greater passivity. The Russians do not want to know anything about the war, but they never forget about it.”
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