William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, had moved to New York City in 1902. A year earlier in a short story, Porter coined the phrase “banana republic” to describe a fictional Central American nation called Costaragua. In 1904,… Read More ›
VOTING RIGHTS
News Flash: GOP Favors Early Voting
Editors’ Note: Excerpted from Cardinal News, October 22, 2021, https://cardinalnews.org/2021/10/22/why-republicans-are-now-pushing-early-voting/. By Dwayne Yancey Democrats have generally been the ones pushing for, and embracing, early voting. Donald Trump spent much of 2020 railing against early voting, particularly voting by mail (something… Read More ›
Beyond Our Border
WISCONSIN The pandemic about the 2020 election results infecting politicos in some states has not reached the proportions or depths of COVID. However, as the pandemic that has consumed over 700,000 lives is deadly to humans, the election fraud virus… Read More ›
The Road Ahead
It appears that the Virginia Redistricting Commission (VRC) will not meet its timeline to produce a set of electoral maps establishing new boundaries that are supposed to endure until the next census in 2030, in effect, a 10-year legacy. The… Read More ›
Beyond Our Border
TEXAS The Lone Star State has been, over recent months, at the forefront of national news ignoring mask and vaccine warnings, banning abortion accessibility, and crimping voting rights. As voluminous as national attention has been on Texas, not every resident… Read More ›
Gerry’s Salamander
It’s been more than 200 years since the first sighting of the salamander in Massachusetts in 1812, foisted upon the public by Elbridge Gerry. Over those two centuries, the creature has consumed or created countless millions of useless votes by… Read More ›
Beer Talk
The beer talk at your local watering hole often involves a type of intellectual, lubricated theorizing that, upon examination, fails to persuade. But it may be entertaining. Sometimes the practicalities of life foretell the fate of such theories, seemingly secure… Read More ›
The Plantation Myth
One of the more pernicious memes propagated by apologists for slavery is that of the placid plantation populated by enslaved people enjoying their lives in an agrarian paradise. Amplified by countless historians and… Read More ›