“A German court convicted a former Nazi camp secretary of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people during the Holocaust, in what is likely to be the last process connected to Nazi crimes against humanity in Germany,” Politico reports.
Flashback Quote of the Day
“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
— Donald Trump, on Twitter two years ago today.
New JFK Files Released
The U.S. National Archives released a new trove of files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
President Biden authorized more than 70% of the roughly 16,000 remaining files on JFK’s death to “now be released in full.”
Trump Is the New McCarthy
John White: “In many ways, the Republican Party’s history with Donald Trump harkens back to its experience with another demagogue, Joseph McCarthy.”
“For years, Republicans refrained from criticizing McCarthy for fear of alienating their most loyal supporters.”
For more, see McCarthyism in the political dictionary.
Richmond’s Last Confederate Statue Is Removed
“The last Confederate statue in Richmond was removed on Monday, and the remains beneath it of Ambrose P. Hill, the Confederate lieutenant general who was memorialized, were set to be transferred to a cemetery,” the New York Times reports.
More Than 70% Want Biden to Release JFK Documents
“More than 7 in 10 voters want President Joe Biden to honor a commitment he made last year and release the final trove of JFK assassination records on Dec. 15, according to a poll released Tuesday in coordination with a research group that sued the administration to force more document disclosure,” NBC News reports.
“About 16,000 of the most closely guarded government secrets into the assassination nearly 60 years ago still remain hidden — including 44 records that would shed light on a covert Cuba-related CIA program that involved Lee Harvey Oswald less than four months before he shot President John F. Kennedy.”
Nancy Pelosi Is the Greatest Speaker in History
Jonathan Bernstein: “Nancy Pelosi has been simply the best speaker of the House of the modern era. She is probably the best speaker in US history. It was time for her to step down from her leadership role, but it likely will be a long time before we see someone of either party master the job as well as she did.”
“Her four terms as speaker, two during unified Democratic government and two under Republican presidents and divided government, were unusually productive. During President Barack Obama’s first term, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, she steered the Affordable Care Act into law. When her party operated with a fragile majority over the last two years, she somehow again found ways to pass liberal priorities, sometimes on party-line votes and sometimes with bipartisan support.”
“None of this was assured. Unified government wasn’t nearly as productive during the tenure of Democratic Speaker Tom Foley in the 1990s or under Republicans Dennis Hastert in the 2000s or Paul Ryan in the 2010s. Presidents matter too, as does the Senate, and the speaker is only the leader of the majority party. But Pelosi proved to be a genius of process and people.”
When Women Turn Out to Vote
Heather Cox Richardson: “One hundred and fifty years ago today, American women turned out to vote in the presidential election, exercising their right to have a say in their government by choosing either Democratic candidate Horace Greeley or Republican incumbent Ulysses S. Grant.”
“Except they didn’t have that right explicitly. They were claiming it.”
Lucianne Goldberg Is Dead
“Lucianne Goldberg, a colorful, conservative literary agent who played a pivotal role in the scandal that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, died on Wednesday at her home in Weehawken, N.J.,” the New York Times reports.
“It was Ms. Goldberg who advised Linda Tripp, a Pentagon aide, to record her conversations with her young co-worker Monica Lewinsky, who as a White House intern had an affair with President Bill Clinton.”
Ash Carter Is Dead
“Ashton Carter, an academic physicist who later climbed the leadership ranks at the Pentagon, culminating in two years as secretary of defense under President Barack Obama, a position he used to further open the military to women and transgender service members, died on Monday in Boston,” the New York Times reports.
The Last Child of Enslaved Americans Has Died
Washington Post: “Growing up in the 1930s, Daniel Smith would listen to stories from his father, as young boys often do. He was not supposed to hear these stories — they were meant for his older siblings, not for a child as young as 5 or 6 — but after dinner on Saturday evenings he would sneak out of bed and listen to accounts of the ‘whipping and crying post,’ of the lynching tree and the wagon wheel.”
“These were brutally vivid stories of bondage, for his father had been born into slavery in Virginia during the Civil War and had toiled as a child laborer before making his way north to Connecticut, where the Smiths were among the only African Americans in their town.”
“Mr. Smith, who was 90 when he died Oct. 19 at a hospital in Washington, was one of the last remaining children of enslaved Black Americans, and a rare direct link to slavery in the United States.”
Group Sues Biden Over JFK Assassination Records
“The country’s largest online source of JFK assassination records is suing President Joe Biden and the National Archives to force the federal government to release all remaining documents related to the most mysterious murder of a U.S. president nearly 60 years ago,” NBC News reports.
America Is History’s Most Successful Failing State
Edward Luce: “A key sign of a fading power is its currency losing value. Britain, like ancient Rome, could tell you a thing or two about that. By this yardstick America is close to an imperial peak. The euro is too fragmented, and China’s yuan too restricted, to threaten King Dollar’s primacy. Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. Yet political science tells us that America is more divided than at any point since the eve of its civil war in the 1850s. Could it be defying the laws of historical gravity — a failing state that outshines its rivals?”
“The answer is yes, for the time being. A nation can be both rich and ungovernable for long periods. The last country anyone would compare to America is Belgium, which has been dubbed the richest “failed state” in the world. Yet US politics looks more like Belgium’s every day.”
Jim Florio Is Dead
Former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio (D), who spent 15 years in the U.S. House before he became his state’s governor in 1990, pushing through one of the strongest gun-control laws in the country but also an unprecedented tax hike that drove him from office after a single term, died on Sunday, the Washington Post reports.
The Dangerous Decade
Richard Haass: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. Those words are apocryphally attributed to the Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, referring to the rapid collapse of tsarist Russia just over 100 years ago. If he had actually said those words, Lenin might have added that there are also decades when centuries happen.”
“The world is in the midst of one such decade. As with other historical hinges, the danger today stems from a sharp decline in world order. But more than at any other recent moment, that decline threatens to become especially steep, owing to a confluence of old and new threats that have begun to intersect at a moment the United States is ill positioned to contend with them.”
21 Years
“Americans are remembering 9/11 with moments of silence, readings of victims’ names, volunteer work and other tributes 21 years after the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil,” the AP reports.
“Victims’ relatives and dignitaries will convene Sunday at the places where hijacked jets crashed on Sept. 11, 2001 — the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.”
“Other communities around the country are marking the day with candlelight vigils, interfaith services and other commemorations. Some Americans are joining in volunteer projects on a day that is federally recognized as both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.”
Out of Office But Not Out of the Woods
Tevi Troy: “The controversy surrounding the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago is not going away anytime soon. As more details come out, we know one thing for sure: If we are going to have investigations of presidents after their time in office, we are going to see more controversy about prosecutorial tactics in the years ahead.”
“In thinking about how to engage in these investigations, history, as always, is a helpful guide, as investigating an administration even after the president has left office has actually happened many times.”
Axios: Former leaders have been jailed or charged all over the world.
Low Water Levels Reveal Sunken WWII German Warships
“Europe’s worst drought in years has pushed the mighty river Danube to one of its lowest levels in almost a century, exposing the hulks of dozens of explosives-laden German warships sunk during World War Two near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo,” Reuters reports.
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