Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Now that Was a Week

As I sat here waiting for the beginning of Betsy DeVos's hearing for Secretary of Education, news of Obama's action commuting the sentences of Chelsea Manning and Oscar Rivera Lopez broke.

Each day more members of Congress announce they will not be attending the Dear Leader's inauguration on Friday (no Senators yet).

Last night, Rachel Maddow pointed out that around 80 members of Congress boycotted Richard Nixon's second inauguration, so there's precedent for these actions in the modern area. (This was before Watergate was a widely known thing... so I assume they were boycotting over the Vietnam War, but I don't really know.)

That was a momentous week, as pointed out today by historian Michael Beschloss on Twitter. He wrote:

Within a period of 72 hours, Nixon was reinaugurated, LBJ died, Roe v Wade decided, Vietnam settlement announced -- all 44 years ago this week.
I was 13 years old then, in 8th grade, and I don't remember any of that.

A lot can and probably will happen this week in American history. I hope we all survive it.

(Meanwhile, I'm watching Joe Lieberman and his inane grin in the DeVos hearing room.)

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