Andy Craig

@andycraig.bsky.social

56731 Followers 983 Following

@theunpopulist.net Election law and policy, liberalism and democracy, and occasional pugs.

sea lion. crescent city CA
my 6’’4’ husband standing next to a fallen redwood. it is taller.
very large trees (CA redwoods)
Smith River CA
sunset over harbor crescent city CA
seals in harbor at sunset
“Big Tree” giant redwood
arch rock OR
OR coast
Sisters Rocks, OR
Humbug Mountain, OR coast
Oregon coast
Face Rock; Oregon coast
cliff overlooking Pacific ocean, Oregon
Sunset over Cape Kiwanda, OR
pug with plaid bowtie
pen accurately labeled “I stole this from the Watergate Hotel.”
pile of cuddling pugs asleep
How will voting work at the convention? Voting will be conducted in rounds until one candidate reaches a majority. The five candidates receiving the highest number of votes in the first round will advance to the second round. Each subsequent round will eliminate the lowest vote-getter until one candidate is chosen.
Nixon smiling and waving V-signs as he gets on Marine One to depart the White House for the last time, trying to pretend he isn't leaving in total disgrace.
In the end, “good DOGE” isn’t just a poor choice of metaphor. It illustrates how difficult it can be to maintain clarity that rebuilding bolder, better, and differently must be accomplished through a renewal of democratic principles that govern the rights of all citizens. The experience of liberalism after illiberalism in other parts of the world reminds us of windows of opportunity but also that moving fast must happen through democratic institutions, not around them. Otherwise, it may not last.
The fountain, as seen in May by a Daily Beast reporter and her dog, whose color the fountain would later adopt. The Daily Beast/Farrah Tomazin
papal conclave
The ceremonial post of deputy president pro tempore was created for Hubert Humphrey, a former vice president, in 1977 following his losing bid to become the Senate majority leader.[24] The Senate resolution creating the position stated that any former president or former vice president serving in the Senate would be entitled to this position. However, since Humphrey, none has served.[8] George J. Mitchell was elected deputy president pro tempore in 1987, because of the illness of president pro tempore John C. Stennis, similar to Metcalf's earlier designation as permanent acting president pro tempore. The office has remained vacant since 1989 and no senator other than Humphrey and Mitchell has held it since its creation
Freedom 250 @Freedom250 UPDATE: The shelter at the IRS is at capacity. Please shelter in any of the other listed locations. Stay tuned for updates.
Conservative pundits in particular are fond of defending the Supreme Court by talking about how it does not do everything Trump asks, and often lavish their favorite justices with praise for serving as models of judicial independence. Which, sure, it is true that Trump’s win rate is not literally 100 percent. But year after year and on issue after issue, the Court has been awfully comfortable giving him a whole lot. Most importantly, it always makes clear to him that when he comes back and asks for more, he is sure to have a friendly audience.
two pugs, one extremely upside down
Moonies cult mass wedding ceremony in a stadium
Two pugs both playing tug of war with the same toy a person is holding
There will be, as there should be, much debate over the details. This is healthy and necessary. There will be no philosopher king decreeing the new system from on high. It’s up to us, and all the messy, frustrating democratic process that entails. But the essential goal is one we have in common, and the worst thing we could do is walk away from the task, surrendering to a nihilistic sense of futility. None of this will be easy to get right, and working out the answers is itself part of the job, not a box to check beforehand. But the ideas are not lacking. Reformers across the spectrum have spent years proposing and contesting fixes like these. We are working to document and hash them out here, our own modest contribution to the Reconstruction Agenda, as are many others. The problem was never a shortage of proposals. It is the slow, contentious work of arguing them out and agreeing on enough to act. That is where the real danger lies. Not in another strongman immediately seizing the wreckage, but in the opposite. A victorious coalition splinters the moment the pressure is off, turns to infighting and the settling of scores, and lets the chance slip by. That is exactly how the old machinery slides back into place: not because anyone chooses it, but because reversion is the path of least resistance when no one can agree on anything better. Structural reform is hardest to agree on once the emergency has passed, when everyone is exhausted and eager to get back to normalcy. That fractious aftermath is where high-minded ideals about building a new order for the ages usually go to die. The Founders did their building in the thick of exactly that kind of squabbling, and so did the Reconstruction Congress. Both forged enough consensus, through all the rancor, to build something better than what fell. We will get the same narrow opening before long, and likely only briefly. The goal has been on the page for 250 years, in the oft-forgotten half-sentence we rarely finish. On …
When the danger passes, as one-man cults of personality eventually do, the reflex will be to exhale and put the old machinery back. That would be a mistake. Removing the man does not repair what produced him. To rebuild the system unchanged is to choose the arrangement that had major vulnerabilities. On this quarter-millennium anniversary, the Declaration presents us with the same questions its authors grappled with in the years that followed 1776. What principles? That public power is held in trust, not as personal property. That no office sits above the law. That legitimacy flows from the broad consent of the governed, not from a faction clever enough to game the system. That government must be truly representative of the people, in all their diversity of beliefs and interests. Why did the old order fail? Here we have to be honest about what broke. The presidency, swollen past the point any oath can restrain. The limitations that turned out to be mere customs, easily discarded. An electoral system which pitted us into “the alternate domination of one faction over another,” as Washington put it in his farewell warning. And what better arrangement? Here is the difficult task of both finding the right answers and building consensus. An executive that can be checked in fact—and not only on paper. Real accountability to the rule of law. The three branches of government put into their proper places, where nobody holds unchecked power. Elections that convey the will of the people in all its nuances and contradictions, neither empowering nor suppressing any particular factions with unrepresentative results. A system that encourages the give and take of coalitions and compromise, rather than perpetually entrenching a broken and unpopular two-party binary. Finding the forms most likely, in the Declaration’s words, to secure the ends the whole thing exists for: our future safety and happiness.
This is the part revolutions usually get wrong. France went from storming the Bastille to crowning Napoleon within a generation. Russia traded the czars for totalitarianism. England overthrew the Stuarts, then restored them, then overthrew them again. Hatred of a despot can unite a people, but deciding what to erect in his place divides them. And that decision, not the toppling, is what tells you whether the whole thing was worth it. The Founders did not make that mistake, though they made plenty of others. Independence was declared in a single afternoon in 1776. Building a lasting government to replace British rule took 13 more years, half of them after the war had ended. The new system was not up and running until 1789, when a president was inaugurated and the First Congress met under the newly ratified Constitution. The interval was no triumphal procession. It was a slog of state constitutions drafted and discarded, of riots and tumults, of the Articles of Confederation failing in slow motion. The Constitutional Convention’s draft was useless until it had been carried back into the states and argued through, ratified against serious and able opposition. The work was the arguing. It was a fight over what principles a government should rest on and how to arrange its powers. Nor did they get it all right. They built a presidency several of them feared. In Philadelphia, Edmund Randolph called it the “foetus of monarchy,” and Charles Pinckney warned it would become a monarchy “of the worst kind, to wit an elective one.” They were overruled, in part because George Washington sat in the room and everyone assumed the office was being cut to his measure.
We all know the famous opening lines. All men created equal. Unalienable rights. Consent of the governed. But these are just the first half of a sentence, albeit a run-on sentence. The conclusion of that sentence is just as important, and far less familiar. When a government becomes destructive of those ends, the Declaration proclaims, the people may alter or abolish it, “to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” That clause is easy to miss, sitting where it does. Ahead of it are the lines we read aloud every Fourth of July. Behind it comes the indictment of George III: the subversion of fundamental rights, the standing armies kept among us in peacetime, the military set above the civil power, the judges made dependent on his will alone, et cetera. We have had grim reason to quote that list of late, under a president who seems to treat it like a to-do list, with uncanny precision sometimes. The creed and the charges both get their due. The instruction between them does not, but it should. It is the most practical part of the document, declared to simultaneously be a “right” and a “duty.” The Declaration is not content to justify tearing a bad government down. It assigns a second and harder task: to build a better one, deliberately, on chosen principles and in a considered form. Overthrowing the old is the easy part, building something new is the real difficulty.
https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2013/11/the-last-men-of-the-revolution/
Franklins and Adams review Jefferson's draft with him looking dejected. HBO's John Adams
Lee Resolution, adopted July 2 1776 Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
rebel tears union soldier meme
angry Groundskeeper Willie
linuscatt · 1d ago I worked at Smithsonian, specifically raising money for 250th. What I want people to know is we secured millions of private philanthropy to host a month long Folklife Festival on the mall, "The Festival of Festivals". Was going to feature well known festivals, think Burning Man, Farm Aid, Grand Ole Oprey etc. as well as smaller local and regional festivals from across the U.S. and territories. Goal was to feature truly the best and most beautiful creative expression in music, dance, arts and craft traditions, food, community etc. Can't name names but plan was to have headliners every night for free concerts.... Think the types of names who might be affiliated with the aforementioned large festivals. Stars were willing to perform because was under banner of Smithsonian. It had to all be scrapped bc the administration would not release permits to host on the mall. The money went elsewhere, but our nation was robbed of what would have been a once in a generation cultural moment.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
pug
Mike Collins ad w/ Trump and Biden touting he has laws signed by both and then him standing around with some cops and "hardworking. bipartisan. results"
FACTS 21. In early December of 2016, Tuberville abruptly resigned as the head football coach at the University of Cincinnati when his imminent firing was widely rumored following a disappointing 4-8 record, including five straight losses to end the season. 22. As many new retirees do, Tuberville promptly moved to Florida.