The Blaisdell Blog

  This column about Memorial Day was written when we had a real President in the Oval Office.   It assumed we had a President who knew how and when to make an executive decision and had advisors around him who could offer competent advice to temper that President’s decisions.   Unfortunately, Trump makes his best guess about how to structure his day while moving his bowels at 3:00 a.m.—hopefully upon his gold toilet.   [Note to self: do not EVER touch Trump’s iphone!] So, keeping in mind that all genuine and serious Presidential decisions must be put on hold for the next 4 years, I offer up my column to honor those who fought and died for a much better America than Trump envisions.            Memorial Day is the day we honor those who died while serving in our nation’s armed forces.   The numbers of those honorees are staggering.      Civil War:        ...

  Getting rich is not what the Presidency is about.   It was never supposed to be about personal enrichment.   The Presidency, indeed, all levels of political office were supposed to be about service.   They were also supposed to be temporary.   Our founding fathers always envisioned two of our three co-equal branches of government to be places where men of good will would temporarily put their own lives and fortunes on hold while they served the common good, and then return to private life, poorer in the pocket, but richer in the soul.   But the best intentions also need laws to stiffen our all-to-human spines.               The Foreign Emoluments Clause, part of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts, emoluments, titles, or offices from foreign governments or kings without congressional consent. This clause aims to prevent for...

                 I will never be elected mother of the year, but God knows I tried.              Not all Mother’s Day stories are sweet and loving.   More than once, mothering meant I had to come at the task from a slant.   But before you judge, hear my story, and then deal with me as you will.             My daughter has a soft heart especially where lost or abandoned animals are concerned.   None of this served her well when she accepted a new job several states away from where she lived.   She was going to have to make a move on the run and a call to her mother was the first task on her “to do” list.     I was there in three days.   But, at no time in this Norman Rockwell picture of mother-daughter bonding, did I anticipate the crime that I was about to by commit.   ...

  On April 12, 1861, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, beginning the American Civil War.   Three months earlier, Benito Juarez had been elected President of Mexico.   Like Lincoln, Juarez inherited a country with serious, perhaps fatal, problems.   In Juarez’s case, however, the problems were primarily external. In 1861, Mexico was a country in financial ruin.   It owed money to all of the major European powers and, smelling blood in the water, they were circling the drowning nation.   When Juarez defaulted on the loans France, Britain and Spain all sent their ships into the harbor of Veracruz to wrest something, anything, of value from the destitute government.   Britain and Spain were satisfied with negotiated settlements but France’s Napoleon III saw a chance to claim some semblance of imperial grandeur by annexing Mexico.    Napoleon III (nephew of the great Bonaparte) was certain h...