A (very) quick take on Andrew Cuomo

Margaret Chase Smith, Kamala Harris, and the very long road to the White House — In what might be the most honest assessment of political odds ever given by a presidential candidate, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine opened her historic bid for the 1964 Republican nomination by acknowledging she would surely lose. Which is why she had to run. “This argument contends that I…

Path-breaking, doomed, and just a little bit racist — On October 10, 1866, an extraordinary announcement appeared in the New York City papers: “TO THE ELECTORS OF THE EIGHTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT” Although, by the constitution of the State of New York, woman is denied the elective franchise, yet she is eligible to office; therefore I present myself to you…

Mary Trump’s new book exposes the “toxic positivity” driving Donald Trump’s deadly mishandling of the pandemic — In her new bestseller, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, Mary Trump shares a story about patriarch Fred Trump’s handling of a tenant complaint about lack of heat in their Trump-owned Brooklyn apartment. In her telling, after the tenant let the landlord…

Military leaders in World War I turned to Confederate names to reduce sectional friction In August 1918, the Daily News of Greensboro, North Carolina reported on the new Army base under construction near Fayetteville: it was going to be designated as “Camp Bragg.” The officer in charge of naming the…

or, “Anatomy of a Blog Post Gone Wrong” Less then six weeks ago, I penned a long post on how the Democratic convention was almost certainly going to be brokered, with one usually-reliable predictor — the Washington & Lee University annual Mock Convention — showing a Bernie Sanders win on…

Keeping a record of your experience of life during the pandemic could help you and future historians — With millions of schoolchildren suddenly finding themselves facing an indefinite period of homeschooling — and tens of thousands of teachers suddenly trying to come up with new lesson plans — historian and educator Kevin Levin has a suggestion. “Ask/require your students to keep a daily journal during the next few…

Why one small Italian town is the “healthiest place in Europe” — The small village of Vò, Italy, about an hour west of Venice, is now the “healthiest place in Italy,” thanks to an almost accidental epidemiological experiment. On February 22, when there were only two verified cases of COVID-19 in town, researchers decided to test all 3,000 residents, whether they were…

Spokesperson said firing longtime columnist and Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll was a “business decision” — A spokesperson for Hearst, parent company of Elle Magazine, told the New York Times on Friday that the firing of longtime advice columnist and Donald Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll was “a business decision and had nothing to do with politics.” The statement came after days of questions over whether…

Elle’s longtime advice columnist axed weeks after she filed suit against Trump, new court documents show — Writer E. Jean Carroll wrote yesterday on Twitter that she had been fired from Elle, where she had spent 26 years penning her popular advice column, “Ask E. Jean.” “Because Trump ridiculed my reputation, laughed at my looks, & dragged me through the mud, after 26 years, ELLE fired me,”…