The People's Case

(wiki commons)

Let's see if I've got this straight. I'm neither a prosecutor nor a defense lawyer nor a member of the jury. But this guy invited his followers to Washington. They were already mad because he'd told them repeatedly that the election was stolen from him, and from them.

The date was January 6th. His followers formed a ragtag army for sure, dressed in their cammies, carrying banners and flags, bullhorns, and a range of weapons including pipe bombs. They were mainly out-of-shape, older white guys looking to express their anger. 

He fed that anger, standing up in front of them and exhorting them to take back their government by force by marching on the Capitol. He said he'd be right there along side of them.

But that was just another lie. As they departed, riled up and looking for trouble, he scampered back to the safety of his heavily-armed lair to watch it all play out on TV.

He was feeling all cozy with his snack foods, as he readied himself for the show, just like we all feel before a big sports game or a favorite movie.

Meanwhile, his crowd erected a gallows outside the Capitol, then broke through police lines, kicking in doors and breaking windows, beating back the officers on duty, killing at least one, chanting "Hang Pence," "Kill Pelosi," and "Where Are They?" (The last indicating the members of Congress.)

The blood-thirsty mob was hunting for the leaders of our democratically elected government. Some wanted to capture these officials, put them on "trial," and execute them on the spot. This was not a movie and it was not a reality TV show. But it *was* a show made for TV.

Inside the chamber, the would-be victims had been hurriedly ushered from where they'd been authenticating Biden's victory to other parts of the Capitol building by the handful of a police guards not directly engaged with holding off the advancing mob.

As they cowered in fear, hearing the chaos nearby, members of Congress tried desperately to contact the man ensconced in front of his large screen TV in the White House. "Call off the mob! Send us help!" They were screeching for their lives but these messages never got through because the man instructed his aides to strictly refuse all interruptions while he watched his coveted fantasy play out on TV.

Into this national security vacuum, Vice-President Mike Pence, while himself under siege, was the one who called in the National Guard, which arrived at the last minute while the thin line of defenders held the murderous crowd at bay.

Thankfully, no lawmakers were assassinated in the end but five people died in the riot and others were injured. Weeks later, hundreds have been arrested, over 400 others are under active investigation, and the picture has become fairly clear.

What I've written above is what prosecutors know so far. 

So let me ask the big question. If you were a juror (aka a Senator) hearing this case starting February 8, how would you vote? Guilty or innocent? Shockingly, 90 percent of the GOP Senators have already announced they will acquit Trump, even before hearing any of the evidence.

So Trump is going to get away with murder like he always bragged he could do. Only this time his victim is not some guy on Fifth Avenue but our democracy itself.

***

[CORRECTION: The news flow has not lessened by 30 percent as reported yesterday. It was just a Sunday night-into-Monday morning kind of thing.]

The news:

* The Proud Boys Were Key Instigators in Capitol Riot -- The Proud Boys, a far-right group, have tried to downplay their role in the Capitol riot. An investigation shows that at many of the day’s key moments the Proud Boys were at the forefront. (WSJ)

* Making Sense of the Facebook Menace (Siva Vaidhyanathan/The New Republic) Highly recommended (DW)

* Did the Coronavirus Escape From a Lab? --"We need to stop hunting for new exotic diseases in the wild, shipping them back to laboratories, and hot-wiring their genomes to prove how dangerous to human life they might become." (Nicholson Baker/ New York) Highly recommended (DW)

 * As Virus Grows Stealthier, Vaccine Makers Reconsider Battle Plans -- Vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech effectively protect recipients. But in a worrying sign, they are slightly less effective against a variant found in South Africa. (NYT)

* Biden to limit private prisons and bolster fair housing policies (Reuters)

* Biden takes first step aimed at dismantling systemic racism with orders focused on equity (WashPo)

* U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years (Bloomberg)

* Watchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn Election -- The inquiry was announced after revelations about a plot between Donald Trump and a top former department official to promote false claims of voter fraud by replacing the acting attorney general. (NYT)

* How fast food chains failed to protect workers from COVID-19 (Lance Williams/Reveal)

* Biden struck a blow to his predecessor’s legacy of deregulation, blocking a rule from the Trump administration that would have allowed faster line speeds in poultry plants as a pandemic raged. Worker safety groups and a prominent labor union had warned that raising the line speeds would exhaust already-taxed workers and lead to more injuries and COVID-19 infections. [HuffPost]

* Major Internet outages hit the East Coast, causing issues for Verizon, Zoom, Slack, Gmail (WashPo)

* After the Capitol Was Stormed, Teachers Try Explaining History in Real Time -- Educators have turned to Shakespeare, science fiction and cat people analogies to help students understand the past weeks. (NYT)

* Google’s Future Is Artificial Intelligence. It’s Now a Management Challenge (WSJ)

* Twitter decided to ban Mike Lindell, who founded bedding company MyPillow, due to “repeated violations” of its civic integrity policy against disinformation. Lindell, a Trump supporter, has continued to insist that the presidential election was rigged even after Biden’s administration has begun. [AP]

* Biden now hopes for 1.5 million vaccinations a day, a big jump from earlier comments (WashPo)

* From the border wall with Mexico to the ban on transgender people in the military to travel prohibitions on majority-Muslim countries to the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, many of Trump’s proudest "accomplishments" have been undone in just the first days of Biden’s administration. Trump’s failure to codify policies through legislation left them vulnerable to Biden’s signature on countermanding orders. [HuffPost]

* Zappos Founder Tony Hsieh Was Found With Flammables, Drugs and Alcohol --Police find no criminality in the November fire that killed the entrepreneur, and fire officials said there were many possible causes. (WSJ) 

* It's official: no Hall of Fame candidate received the 75 percent required for election. Barry Bonds has one more chance. (Andrew Baggarly / Twitter)

* At U.N., Washington assures support for two-state solution in Middle East (Reuters)

* Changes to the tongue, the hands or the soles of the feet could give an early indication of Covid-19 infection, Spanish researchers found in a study presented on Tuesday (Jan 26). (AFP)

* Angry farmers storm India’s Red Fort in challenge to Modi (AP)

* I’ve Said Goodbye to ‘Normal.’ You Should, Too. -- Climate change is upending the world as we know it, and coping with it demands widespread, radical action.  "As the pandemic has worn on, the desire to get back to normal has increased, and I worry that the hope for radical positive change has subsided. But we must not let it dissipate. We can’t afford to. Because we won’t see “normal” again in our lifetimes. Our parents and grandparents burned normal up in their American-built cars, with their American lifestyles, their American refrigerators and American dreams." (Roy Scranton/NYT)

* Biden Sets in Motion Plan to Ban New Oil and Gas Leases on Federal Land -- The president will announce a suite of executive actions on Wednesday to combat climate change, two people familiar with his plans said, and will ask federal agencies to determine the extent of a drilling ban. (NYT)

* State lawmakers struck a long-sought deal that would extend California’s eviction moratorium until the end of June. Landlords could also get relief if they forgive back rent. [CalMatters]

* 200 Lemons, 30 Bananas: Online Shoppers Accidentally Buy Too Much (WSJ)

* California lifts major restrictions in large swaths of the state. (California Today)

* Biden to tap nurse as acting surgeon general (WashPo)

* 40% of People Report They No Longer Physically Go to Their Bank (Invisibly)

* Why Vaccines Alone Will Not End the Pandemic -- New estimates suggest the vaccine rollout is no match for the severity of the U.S. outbreak, and stricter social distancing measures are needed to reduce infections. (NYT)

* Parents of Remote Learners Have Smaller Roles in U.S. Workforce -- About 24% of parents whose children are attending school virtually aren’t working at all compared with 15% of parents whose children are attending school in person every day, according to a new survey. (WSJ)

* New India-China Border Clash Shows Simmering Tensions (NYT)

* CDC Recommends Also Wearing Face Mask On Back Of Head In Case Coronavirus Attacks From Rear (The Onion)

***

Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take, I'll be watching you
Every single day and every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay, I'll be watching you

-- The Police

Life Off and On Earth

(image; wiki commons)

Here's some good news. Since the Biden administration took over, I estimate that the daily volume of news stories we all really need to be aware of has fallen by about 33 percent. Thus, the headline summary I publish each day can be proportionately shorter.

That opens up the comparative luxury of noticing some of the longer-term advances in scientific knowledge that may soon drastically reshape our understanding of life. Later this year, for example, a powerful new telescope at the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile will begin taking pictures of everything visible in the night sky.

That may help us resolve the mystery of "Oumuamua" -- the  strange object that passed by earth in 2017 that Avi Loeb, Harvard's top astronomer argued was most probably the product of an alien civilization. This is consistent with Loeb's contention that life on earth is hardly unique in the universe but is an extremely common occurrence.

Loeb's argument is based on only on the object's strange characteristics and behavior but on the logic of pure math. He notes that that since rocky planets with liquid water and the chemistry to support life formed 13.8 billion years ago, by now billions of galaxies – each home to billions of Earth-like planets – should have formed. 

If Loeb is correct, there are literally trillions of pieces of Oumuamua-type junk surrounding us in the universe and soon we should be able to detect them. The telescope at the Vera C Rubin Observatory will be our tool for testing that hypothesis, and it goes into action sometime this year. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory>

It's difficult to imagine any bigger news story than the one that would announce "We Are Not Alone." That would make all of this political bickering we are subjected to rather petty by comparison, no?

(Note: Oumuamua is a Hawaiian word meaning  “scout” or “messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to us.”)

***

In the spirit of pettiness, it's notable that Democrats and Republicans are squabbling over how much and how soon further pandemic relief will reach us average Americans, while the logistical hurdles to getting Covid vaccines into our arms are proving daunting.

The way politicians adjust their positions based on polls has long been reprehensible, but the dance many Republican Senators are currently doing is pathetic. They claim they won't convict Trump even if they think he is guilty of inciting the January 6th Capitol mob because most Republicans still back him.

You know, I've quoted everyone from Edward R. Murrow to philosophers to country music singers about the truism that if you don't stand up for something when it matters you don't really stand for anything at all.

I would hope we all want our time here to matter. Thus all conscientious Americans need to attack the scourge of racist, extremist thinking that has infected the Republican Party. We need to band together to rid ourselves of conspiracy theories and recommit to a society guided by honest information developed by good journalists, scientists and artists.

After all, when we greet our first alien visitors, we don't want to be embarrassed by the primitive state of affairs here on little old Earth. They -- and we -- deserve much better than that.

***

The news:

 * Federal law enforcement officials are examining threats aimed at members of Congress as the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump nears, including ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol. U.S. Capitol Police and other federal law enforcement have insisted that thousands of National Guard troops remain in Washington as the Senate advances plans for the trial. [AP]

* Capitol Riot Puts Spotlight on ‘Apocalyptically Minded’ Global Far Right -- Leaderless but united by racist ideology that has been supercharged by social media, extremists have built a web of real and online connections that worry officials. (NYT)

* The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up efforts to track coronavirus mutations and keep vaccines and treatments effective against new variants until collective immunity is reached. Dr. Rochelle Walensky spoke about the rapidly evolving virus during a Fox News Sunday interview as the number of Americans known to have died has passed 417,000 dead, just over a year after the first U.S. case was documented. [Reuters]

* Britain’s Alarm Over Virus Variant Bolsters Case for Lockdown -- A warning that the variant could be deadlier is a powerful argument that Britain could be entering a severe new phase of the pandemic and that easing lockdown rules could be calamitous. (NYT)

* World’s Ice Is Melting Faster Than Ever, Scientists Say (WSJ)  Earth is losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. It’s going to get worse. (WashPo)

* Chicago teachers vote to teach from home, defying district (AP)

* Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims as president. Nearly half came in his final year. (WashPo)

* Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in his first directive since taking office, has given his senior leaders two weeks to send him reports on sexual assault prevention programs in the military, and an assessment of what has worked and what hasn’t. This fulfills a commitment Austin made to senators last week during confirmation hearings, when he vowed to immediately address the problems of sexual assault and harassment in the ranks. [AP]

* Travelers from South Africa, where a variant is spreading, barred from entering U.S. (WashPo)

* DoorDash Is Going to the Super Bowl. So Are Other Brands That Did Well During the Pandemic. (WSJ)

* Trump lawyer Giuliani faces $1.3 billion lawsuit over 'big lie' election fraud claims by Dominion Voting Systems (Reuters)

* Biden administration revives effort to put Harriet Tubman on $20 bill (WashPo)

* Four times as many jobs were lost last year due to the coronavirus pandemic as during the worst part of the global financial crisis in 2009, a U.N. report said Monday. (AP) 

* Biden lifts ban on transgender Americans in military (WashPo)

* Congress Investigating Why Capitol Dome’s Atomic Vaporizing Ray Wasn’t Deployed To Eviscerate Rioters (The Onion)

***

She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour 9:00 a.m.
And I'm gonna be high
As a kite by then

I miss the Earth so much I miss my wife
It's lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them
If you did

And all this science
I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
A rocket man
A rocket man

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time

Songwriters: Elton John / Bernie Taupin

-30-

Boycotting Extremism

 

Margaret Sullivan, who is the Washington Post's media critic, is calling for  an alternative to increased government regulation of Fox News. She argues that a pressure campaign launched by citizens could convince advertisers to abandon the network, hurting its bottom line. And as she asserts, the profit motive -- not politics -- is the only thing Fox executives really care about.

There is precedent here. As the Post reported recently, a whole host of big advertisers, including General Electric, AT&T, Comcast, Honeywell, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Verizon, have all said that said they would suspend donations to members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden as president.

And this kind of pocketbook pressure on Fox would be less intrusive on our values than new government regulation, though I still suspect greater control over the type of content that is allowed to flow over mass media outlets is going to be necessary.

One point for me to clarify is that regulation is not necessarily in conflict with the First Amendment, which does not allow seditious, traitorous, libelous or defamatory speech in any case. But the remedies when such speech appears have traditionally been lawsuits brought by the aggrieved person.

Meanwhile, consumer boycotts have long been a tool used by activists to achieve social change. We need only to think back to the salad boycott led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the early 1970s. I don't think iceberg lettuce has ever fully recovered its appeal.

In any event, Sullivan's column is a timely reminder that in a capitalist society, while our votes at the ballot box do matter, sometimes our votes with our pocketbooks can matter even more. A sustained campaign to pressure Fox's main advertisers to demand an end to the extremist content that has dominated its programming in recent years might just work.

In that context, here are the top ten Fox advertisers from the most recent report I could find (Statista, 2018) -- Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, Otezla, South Beach Diet, Smile Direct Club, GEICO, Liberty Mutual, Sleep Number, Inogen and My Pillow.

(Thanks to Margaret Sullivan and my friends Howard Kohn, Joel Kirshenbaum and Susan Zakin, who all helped with today's post.)

***

The multiple plagues -- Covid, insurrection, hate speech, economic distress, racism, wealth inequality, climate change -- require all of our energy to fight. We also need our artists at this moment and they are stepping up one by one.

Let's start with two from California:

Twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman's poem at the inauguration inspired us all.

Now comes 75-year-old John Fogerty, from Creedence Clearwater Revival fame, and his beautiful song, "Weeping in the Promised Land." (Complete lyrics below.)

For the past year, I've been following Fogerty as he releases YouTube videos of musical jams with his children under the name "Fogerty's Factory." They are a joy to see, one family singing together to try and make the world a better place.

Oh yeah, one of these days, I hope someone will take me out to the site of one my favorite old-time CCR songs, "Lodi"...

The headlines:

* Pennsylvania Lawmaker Played Key Role in Trump’s Plot to Oust Acting Attorney General -- The congressman’s involvement underlined how far the former president was willing to go to overturn the election, and Democratic lawmakers have begun calling for investigations into those efforts. (NYT)

* Capitol attack expected to spur crackdown on domestic extremists -- The Jan. 6 attack showed that violent extremism is not a threat exclusively imported from foreign shores. Law enforcement and security officials, experts say, will face significant legal, political and cultural hurdles to battle a disease that seems to have taken hold in the nation’s nervous system. (WashPo)

*  U.S. carrier group enters South China Sea amid Taiwan tensions (Reuters)

* 38 Capitol Police officers test positive for Covid-19 after Capitol riot (CNN)

* In France, growing alarm over students’ well-being as pandemic pushes some to the brink (WashPo)

* Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen (NYT)

* Biden faces a tougher task than any president but Lincoln (WashPo)

* Pro-Navalny Protests Sweep Russia in Challenge to Putin -- The protests moved across time zones and more than 3,000 people were arrested in at least 109 cities, signaling widespread fatigue with the corruption-plagued political order presided over by President Vladimir V. Putin. (NYT)

* Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Sunday he has tested positive for COVID-19 and that the symptoms are mild. (AP)

* Young people join protests in Russia (NHK)

* Baseball’s Hall of Fame Vote Becomes a Test of ‘Character Clause’ -- No one may be inducted this year. (WSJ)

* Every Cabinet job is about climate change now (WashPo) * White House expected to lift transgender ban in military as early as Monday (CNN) * Barred From U.S. Under Trump, Muslims Exult in Biden’s Open Door (NYT) * New Report Finds Computers Actually Outpaced Human Intelligence Back With Commodore 64 (The Onion)

***

Big news around here is I had my first haircut since long before the pandemic yesterday, courtesy of my 9-year-old granddaughter, Sophia. It had been well below my shoulders in length; now I'm more suited for prime time should anyone from central casting call.

Water in new well been poisoned with lie
Weeping in the Promised Land
Satan's dark angels are falling from the sky
Weeping in the Promised Land
Children of God, he turns into stone
Sick and the weak, he dancing on their bones
Pharaoh shouting down the medicine man
Weeping in the Promised Land

Forked-tongued pharaoh, behold he comes to speak
Weeping in the Promised Land
Hissing and spewing, it's power that he seeks
Weeping in the Promised Land
With dread in their eyes, all the nurses are crying
So much sorrow, so much dying
Pharaoh keep a-preaching but he never had a plan
Weeping in the Promised Land
Weeping in the Promised Land

You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land
You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land

Pharaoh's army knocking on the door
Weeping in the Promised Land
Shoot you in your bed just like they done before
Weeping in the Promised Land
Out in the street, on your neck with a knee
All the people are crying your last words, "I can't breathe"
And a white judge say, "There been no crime here today"
Weeping in the Promised Land
Weeping in the Promised Land

You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land
You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land

Well, we're weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land
Yeah, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land

-- John Fogerty

Watch the video: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ODrkRdwb3k>

-30-

Day of ReckonIng

 

photo: Edward R. Murrow (wiki commons)

Today, our focus is on journalist Ti-Hua Chang's article  

<https://billmoyers.com/story/sometimes-to-tell-the-truth-you-have-to-take-a-stand/> 

entitled "Sometimes to Tell the Truth, You Have to Take a Stand."

This was brought to my attention by my old friend Bruce Koon; we go back to the earliest days of the web, when we were two of the small group of traditional media execs who had made the jump to what at the time was called "new media." 

Chang, who has had his own storied career, compares the present moment for journalists with  Edward R. Murrow's takedown of the demagogic Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. 

Following Murrow's lead, he says now is the time for journalists to speak out against the authoritarian threat represented by Trumpism and the white extremism that has brought our democracy to its greatest crisis in modern times. 

That this places journalists is the difficult position of abandoning neutrality and objectivity is what makes this such a terrible conundrum. As I've argued in recent days, by abandoning news standards and turning to advocacy, the cable news networks have opened themselves to government regulation, which is true.

But a companion truth is that if the journalists working there remained silent, they would find themselves complicit in an attempt to destroy our democratic system of government.

Nobody ever said this would be easy, or that the consequences might not be painful for those who do take a stand. They are caught between the ethics of our profession and being on the right side of history.

And remaining silent will take a toll too. It all comes home on the day of reckoning.

***

The impeachment drama playing out in slow motion in Washington D.C. will be fascinating test of whether bipartisan politics can accomplish what is in the best interests of both parties. Privately, most Republicans in Congress know that Trump as a viable leader is dead, though his base of support in their party remains strong for now.

There if the trial that begins in the Senate were held today, he would be acquitted, as the requisite 67 votes to convict simply are not yet there. There are 50 Democratic votes and perhaps a handful of GOP Senators would vote with them today.

But over the next two weeks, many more details about Trump's actions to try and overturn the results of the election and incite the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6th are going to come into view.

As this happens, it is conceivable that Republican support for Trump may erode, making a vote to convict him more palatable to those who are on the fence over what to do. Reports are surfacing daily that his most rapid conspiracy theorist followers are confused and in disarray.

Plus Trump himself has been stripped of his Twitter account, so he is relatively silent and therefore powerless to further incite his base. 

Again, if the vote was today he would be acquitted.  But by somewhere around mid-February, after a highly publicized trial?

***

The headlines:

* Biden Signs Orders to Expand Food Stamps and Raise Wages, but Says Economy Needs More Help -- The president called it an “economic imperative” to provide more aid for millions of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet as the virus exacts a bruising toll. (NYT)

* Senate reaches deal to start Trump’s trial Feb. 9 (WashPo)

* IOC plans to vaccinate every Olympic athlete to save Tokyo games (Telegraph)

* Restoring Environmental Rules Rolled Back by Trump Could Take Years -- President Biden has promised to reinstate more than 100 rules and regulations aimed at environmental protection that his predecessor rolled back. It won’t happen overnight. (NYT)

* Democrats are mulling whether they can use the 14th Amendment to prevent former Trump from ever holding office again. The discussions are in the early stages — and top members of the Senate caucus aren’t yet convinced it’s a viable remedy — but senators are exploring their options as they plot a strategy after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. (The Hill)

* Biden administration weighs turning over Trump tax returns to House Democrats (WashPo)

* More than 150 National Guard in Washington for inauguration test positive for coronavirus (Reuters)

* The heads of three federally funded international broadcasters were abruptly fired late Friday as the Biden administration completed a house-cleaning of Donald Trump-appointees at the U.S. Agency for Global Media. (AP)

* More than 2,700 arrested at widespread Russian protests in support of opposition leader Navalny  (WashPo)

* The Justice Department revealed new charges against a Texas man who allegedly participated in the Capitol attack and posted online death threats against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a US Capitol Police officer. (CNN)

* Chinese aircraft enter Taiwan’s air defence zone (The Guardian)

* Harvard’s top astronomer says our solar system may be teeming with alien technology -- Avi Loeb spent his career searching for evidence of alien life. When he found it, the scientific community refused to believe him. (NewStatesman)

***

Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today
Is a day of reckoning.
Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay
It's Independence Day.

-- songwriter: Gretchen Peters/ singer: Martina McBride

-30-