Sore Feet, Happy Days by Kristof, Nicholas

ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL, Calif. -- Every spring or summer, in lieu of professional help, I ditch civilization for the therapy of the wilderness. I've just been backpacking with my 18-year-old daughter on the Pacific Crest Trail in California, abandoning our material world for an alternative reality in which the aim is to possess as little as possible -- because if you have it, you lug it.

Our lives were downsized to 10 pounds of possessions each, not counting food and water. We carried backpacks, sleeping bags, jackets, hats, a plastic groundsheet, a tarp in case of rain, a water filter and a tiny roll of duct tape for when things break.

Few problems in life cannot be solved with duct tape.

O.K., I know I'm supposed to use my column to pontificate about Donald Trump and global crises. But as summer beckons, let me commend such wilderness escapes to all of you, with your loved ones, precisely to find a brief refuge from the pressures of the world.

This isn't for everybody; astonishingly, some folks prefer beaches and clean sheets. But for me at least, a crazy jaunt in the outdoors is the perfect antidote to the absurdity of modern life.

In the 21st century, we often find ourselves spinning on the hamster wheel, nervously jockeying for status with our peers -- Is my barbecue bigger than my neighbor's? Is my car flashier? -- even as we're too busy to barbecue anything. We're like dogs chasing after our tails.

That's why I find it so cathartic to run away from home. My parents took me backpacking beginning when I was about 7, and my wife and I took our three children on overnight hikes as soon as they could toddle.

Don't tell Child Protective Services, but when my daughter was 4, I took her on an overnight trip on Oregon's Eagle Creek Trail, carrying her most of the first day on my shoulders, on top of my backpack. The next morning, I bribed her: If she would walk by herself all 13 miles back to the car, I would buy her a spectacular ice cream in the nearest town.

So we set off for the car. At every rest stop, we conjured that ice cream and how cold it would be, and, fortified, we trundled on down the trail beside glorious waterfalls. When we reached the car, we were both proud of her heroism, and she beamed tiredly as I buckled her into her car seat.

When we arrived at an ice cream shop 20 minutes later, she was fast asleep. I couldn't wake her.

Thus began our hiking partnership, sometimes undertaken with the whole family, sometimes just the two of us. At home we're all busy, but on the trail we're beyond cellphone coverage or email reach and we're stuck with each other.

So we talk. Even as we're disconnected, we reconnect. And on rest breaks and at night, camping under the stars, we read aloud to each other: On this trip, my daughter and I have been reading Adam Johnson's brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Orphan Master's Son," and talking about what it means.

No self-respecting teenage girl would normally allow her dad to read to her, but out in the wilderness, it's a bond we share.

It's true that not everybody can get time off, the cost of equipment can add up and it can be a hassle to get to and from a trail. (When I've tried hitchhiking out, drivers see a bedraggled, unshaven hobo and speed up!). Still, costs are modest: While car campgrounds often charge, backpacking in the great outdoors is almost always free. And day after day, there is simply nowhere to spend money.

I can't pretend it's glamorous. We've been scorched by the sun and chilled by rain, hail and snow. Sure, in trail conversations we bare our innermost thoughts, but we also spend plenty of time whining about blisters, rattlesnakes and 20-mile stretches without water. We curse trail designers for PUDS, or pointless ups and downs.

And let's be blunt: I stink. When you're carrying everything on your back, you don't pack any changes of clothing. We bathe our feet in creeks (hoping that anyone drinking downstream is using a water filter), and on this trip we luxuriated in the Deep Creek hot springs beside the trail. We commiserate together, and we exult together in America's cathedral of the wild, our stunning common heritage and birthright.

My daughter and I have now hiked across Washington and Oregon and hundreds of miles of California, and eventually we'll have limped the entire Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Nothing is as different from my daily life, nor as treasured, and that is why I suggest the wilderness to friends.

For members of my family at least, these spring and summer hikes are a reminder that what shapes us is not so much the possessions we acquire but the memories we accumulate, that when you scrape away the veneer, what gives life meaning is not the grandest barbecue or the sportiest car. It's each other. 

Why we pardon Thanksgiving turkeys

http://www.abajournal.com/gallery/turkey_pardons/1301

Why we pardon Thanksgiving turkeys


Origins of our modern Thanksgiving


Often we think our national traditions are older than they really are. For example, Thanksgiving. While it is true that the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag had a harvest feast at the Plymouth colony in 1621, Thanksgiving was not an annual occurence until much, much later. (And rivals for the “first” Thanksgiving held in America include celebrations by a 1541 Spanish expedition led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in the Texas panhandle; by French Huguenots near modern-day Jacksonville, Florida, in 1564; and by the Jamestown colony in 1610, according to the Library of Congress.)

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/thanksgiving/timeline/1541.html

Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, led 1,500 men in a thanksgiving celebration at the Palo Duro Canyon. Coronado's expedition traveled north from Mexico City in 1540 in search of gold. The group camped alongside the canyon, in the modern-day Texas Panhandle, for two weeks in the spring of 1541. The Texas Society Daughters of the American Colonists commemorated the event as the "first Thanksgiving" in 1959.


Why we pardon Thanksgiving turkeys


In the early years of the nation

Artist Jean Louis Gerome Ferris’ idea of what the first Thanksgiving would have looked like, painted sometime between 1900 and 1920.

Declaring a national day of thanksgiving used to be done to celebrate a specific joyful or somber event. In 1777, the Continental Congress proclaimed a national Thanksgiving after the U.S. victory over the British in the Battle of Saratoga in October.

In 1789, the year the U.S. Constitution went into effect, President George Washington declared that Nov. 26 would be a national day of thanksgiving, at the urging of the Congress. No turkeys were reported pardoned, but “President Washington later provided money, food, and beer to debtors spending the holiday in a New York City jail,” according to the Library of Congress.

Although President John Adams later followed suit by declaring other national thanksgivings, Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams declined to do so. President James Madison declared three days of national thanksgiving to mark the end of the War of 1812, but they were not held in November as we have become accustomed to; rather, they were Aug. 20, 1812, Sept. 9, 1813, and Jan. 12, 1815.

The 1815 celebration would be the last national thanksgiving for 48 years.


Why we pardon Thanksgiving turkeys


Mother of Thanksgiving

The woman we owe our modern Thanksgiving to is Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the popular 19th century magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book (and author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”) In 1846, she decided that Thanksgiving should be revived and made into an annual national holiday. She spent the next 17 years writing to state and national government officials to plead her case. (Pictured on the right is one of her letters to President Abraham Lincoln, advocating for Thanksgiving.)

Finally, in 1863, President Lincoln acquiesced. From that year forward, the United States would often celebrate Thanksgiving on a Thursday in November, though the week of the holiday shifted and it was not a fixed national holiday.


Tad Lincoln, Turkey Savior


President Lincoln was not only the founder of the modern Thanksgiving; he was also the first to pardon a turkey, as this (inset) clip printed in the Hartford Courantin 1865 attests:

“Mr Gay, of the Old Market, sent two enormous Narragansett turkeys to the President last winter. When notified of the gift, Mr. Lincoln said he hoped they were not sent alive, or he never would get a dinner from either one of them; for at Thanksgiving someone sent him a live turkey for the occasion, and Tad entered such a vehement protest against wringing his neck, that the idea of eating him was abandoned. The little fellow declared that the turkey had as good a right to live as any body, and the pampered gobbler remained in the President’s grounds.”

The Smithsonian also credits Tad Lincoln (seen at left, with his father) as the savior of the Jack, the Thanksgiving turkey.


Fit for a president


Though Tad’s turkey Jack may have escaped his rightful place on the president’s sideboard, presidents after Lincoln felt no such compunction. Turkey farmers competed on who could present the president with the best-bred and most beautifully presented turkeys. This 1921 photo shows a turkey bound for President Warren G. Harding’s table.


Making Thanksgiving a permanent holiday


President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first to establish Thanksgiving Day as a permanent federal holiday, signing a congressional bill into law on Dec. 6, 1941 which said that henceforth, the fourth Thursday in November would be a legal holiday. The legislation was drafted after FDR’s decision in 1939 to declare the third Thursday in November as Thanksgiving to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. The public uproar was so great that it was decided the date of Thanksgiving needed to be set in perpetuity.


A somber Thanksgiving


President John F. Kennedy announced that he would not eat the turkey presented to him in 1963 by the California Turkey Advisory Board, and newspapers reported that the bird had been “pardoned,” according to the Smithsonian. Tragically, the president himself never made it to Thanksgiving that year; he was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, six days before the holiday.

According to the White House blog, starting with President Richard Nixon, the turkey annually presented by the National Turkey Federation would end its days in a petting zoo rather than on a platter.


The tradition is born


It was President George H.W. Bush who performed the first turkey pardoning ceremony in 1989. “He’s been granted a presidential pardon as of right now, allowing him to live out his days on a farm not far from here,” Bush told reporters at the event, the Smithsonian says. Bush continued to pardon a turkey every year he held office, and it became a national tradition carried out by each president following him.


The turkeys today


President Barack Obama will pardon his last turkey as President of the United States on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2016. This video is from the 2015 ceremony, also attended by the First Daughters, Malia and Sasha. Turkeys “Honest” and “Abe” received reprieves from the dining table.

Letter from Attorneys Opposing Stephen Bannon's Appointment as White House Chief Strategist to the President

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/11Cs4a2NkGfv7k3ch7CqXzvUWzfg2sjZj5vbefS4oLPk/viewform?edit_requested=true

Letter from Attorneys Opposing Stephen Bannon's Appointment as White House Chief Strategist to the President

NOTE: TO SIGN THE LETTER, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM, FILL IN THE FIELDS, AND HIT SUBMIT. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CLICK THE BUTTON IN THE UPPER RIGHT REQUESTING TO EDIT THE LETTER.

[The below letter will be circulated to current and incoming members of Congress. With appropriate modifications in phrasing it will also be sent to the President-elect and his transition team. Please contact Professor Nancy Leong, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, at nleong@law.du.edu with any questions. As of 5 PM ET on 11/20/16 there are over 14,000 signatories to the letter.]

Dear [Leaders]:

We are attorneys whose political views span the ideological spectrum. We write to ask that you call upon President-Elect Trump to rescind his appointment of Stephen Bannon as White House Chief Strategist.

As attorneys, we swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. We committed to protect the institutions upon which our democracy depends. We committed to provide zealous representation for all our clients, regardless of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic.

Mr. Bannon has demonstrated his opposition to the stable, democratic form of government that our profession embraces and strives to maintain. His words could not be more clear: “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too . . . I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” This contempt for our longstanding governmental institutions has no place in a crucial leadership position.

Mr. Bannon has also enabled and promoted white supremacy. Under his leadership, Breitbart News has become what Mr. Bannon himself describes as "a platform for the alt-right" -- another term for white nationalism. Through Breitbart, Mr. Bannon has intentionally legitimized racism, anti-Semitism, and other hate-based ideologies. Such bigotry runs counter to the values enshrined in the Constitution we promised to defend. Indeed, it threatens democracy itself by undermining the equality of all citizens.

Of course we do not dispute that Mr. Bannon has the right to voice his opinions. Indeed, some of us have devoted our careers to safeguarding a robust First Amendment that protects individuals, the media, and other organizations. But these extreme and hateful views do not belong in the White House.

This is not a partisan issue. The white supremacy and political insurgency that Mr. Bannon has embraced and amplified contradicts everything we stand for as attorneys and as Americans.

President-Elect Trump has promised to be "a president for all Americans." The selection of Mr. Bannon as a key advisor communicates exactly the opposite. We call upon you to take all possible measures to ensure that Mr. Trump rescinds his appointment of Mr. Bannon.

[signatures]

Note: The signatories to this letter are speaking on their own behalf, not on the behalf of their employers or any other individual or organization.

"박대통령님..." 홍정길 남서울은혜교회 원로목사 호소문 발표

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2016/11/22/2016112202198.html

"박대통령님..." 홍정길 남서울은혜교회 원로목사 호소문 발표

김한수 기자
2016.11.22 16:23

개신교 원로 홍정길(74) 목사가 최근의 시국과 관련한 호소문을 발표했다. 홍 목사는 고(故) 옥한흠·하용조 목사, 이동원(71) 지구촌교회 원로목사와 함께 ‘복음주의 4인방’으로 불리며 한국 개신교 합리적 보수를 대표하는 목회자다.
홍 목사는 청와대와 각 언론사에 보낸 호소문에서 “평생 공개적으로 정치적 발언을 한 기억이 없다” “수많은 고심 끝에 이 글을 쓰게 됐다”며 “국가를 위한 최선의 헌신(獻身)이자 새로운 대한민국 발전의 기초가 될 것으로 믿는다”며 박근혜 대통령의 하야(下野)를 권했다.
홍 목사는 숭실대 철학과와 총신대 신학대학원을 나와 한국대학생선교회(CCC) 총무로 일했다. 1975년 서울 서초구에 남서울교회를 개척했으며 1996년 서울 강남구 수서에 발달장애인을 위한 밀알학교를 설립하고 그 강당을 일요일에만 빌려서 예배를 드리는 남서울은혜교회를 세웠다. 현재 남서울은혜교회 원로목사와 북한 어린이를 지원하는 남북나눔운동 이사장, 밀알복지재단 이사장, 기독교윤리실천운동 이사장 등을 맡고 있다. /김한수 종교전문기자

아래는 홍정길 목사 호소문 전문이다.

박 대통령님, 하야가 최선입니다.

이 글을 올리는 저는 은퇴한 목사로서, 정치적인 견해를 공개적으로 말해본 기억조차 없는 순수한 전도자로 평생을 산 사람입니다. 그런 제가 오늘 이렇게 글을 쓰는 것은 대통령께서 물러나신 다음 야기될 몇 가지 큰 문제가 염려가 되셔서 하야하시지 못 하겠다는 생각이 있을 것으로 여겨져 감히 글을 쓰게 되었습니다.

첫째, 이번 일로 국가의 격이 무너지는 일이 생길 염려가 있을 수 있다 생각됩니다.

저는 한국교회가 북한의 굶주린 아이들을 돕고자 시작한 ‘남북나눔운동’의 이사장으로 대북 교류 관계를 23년 동안 해 왔습니다. 이 일을 하면서 처음 북한 사람들을 접촉할 적에 그들이 체제에 대한 논쟁들을 걸어올 때가 많았습니다. 단순히 한국교회의 심부름을 하는 제게 그 시비는 늘 걸림돌이 된다는 생각을 했습니다. 그러던 어느 날 북측의 한 분이 제게 이렇게 질문해 왔습니다.
“홍목사님, 남녘이 민주화, 민주화하는데 뭐가 민주화요?”

그때 저는 깊이 생각하지 않고 한마디 했습니다.

“국가 최고 책임자라 할지라도 잘못했으면 감옥 가는 것 입니다.”

그분은 그 얘기를 듣자마자 얼굴이 굳어지고 아무 말하지 않았습니다. 그리고 그 이후 20여 년간 남북 교류 활동을 하면서 아무도 체제에 대한 논쟁을 저에게 해오지 않았습니다. 사실 이 답변은 한 터키 사람이 제 마음에 준 깊은 확신에서 비롯되었습니다. 업무 차 한국에 온 그 분과 제가 함께 식사를 하는데 공교롭게도 식사장소에서 마침 노태우 前대통령께서 감옥으로 가시는 모습이 방영되었습니다. 식사 내내 실황중계가 되자 저는 자국민으로서 너무 부끄럽고 또 창피해서 ‘당신네들이 우리나라 민주화를 위해서 6.25 때 그렇게 많은 피를 흘렸는데 아직 한국이 이 모양이어서 부끄럽고, 그 귀한 터키인들의 피 값을 제대로 살리지 못 해서 죄송하다.’ 그랬더니 그분이 제게 매우 충격적인 말을 해주었습니다.

“ 저는 지금 이 상황이 눈물 나올 정도로 부럽습니다. 국가 최고 책임자가 잘못했다고 감옥 가는 나라가 세상에 어디 있습니까? 너무 부럽습니다.”

그때 제 머릿속에 우리 나라가 세계가 부러워하는 나라가 되었다는 생각이 들어 얼마나 놀랬는지 모릅니다. 사실 이런 반응은 터키뿐 아니라, 이 사실을 들은 중국, 러시아, 심지어 미국과 영국에서도 동일하게 있었습니다.

대통령님, 안심하고 하야하셔도 됩니다. 최고 책임자가 잘못했을 적에 동일하게 법적인 제재를 받는 나라, 그것이 자유민주주의 대한민국입니다.

둘째, 아버님께서 하신 그 모든 일들이 이제는 치욕으로 바뀌고 역사 속에 묻혀버릴 수 있다는 염려가 있을 수 있습니다. 그러나 염려하지 마십시오. 역사는 반드시 시간이 지나면 바른 평가를 내립니다.

저는 4.19 때 대학교에 입학을 했고, 곧이어 5.16이 되어서 학교는 휴교령을 맞아 최루탄과 곤봉으로 점철된 대학생활을 보냈습니다. ‘박정희’ 그 이름은 제 마음속에 깊은 증오의 대상의 이름이었습니다. 당시에 저는 CCC라는 기독교학생 단체에서 젊은 학생들에게 복음을 전하는 전도자로 살면서 김준곤 목사님을 스승으로 모셨습니다.

유신 때 저는 김준곤 목사님께서 박정희 대통령과 가까운 것을 보고서 한번은 너무 가슴이 아픈 나머지 목사님에게 대들었던 기억이 있습니다.

“ 목사님, 지금 학생들이 감옥에 가고 피투성이가 되어서 고통을 받고 있습니다. 어떻게 학생들을 핍박하는 대통령을 가까이하십니까? 이러다가 학생 전도 단체인 CCC의 전도길이 막힐지도 모릅니다..”

그러자 김목사님은 조용히 이런 말을 했습니다.

“ 그분이 여러 가지 상황으로 매우 어려워서 나를 불러 자기 마음속에 있는 이야기를 갖는 시간을 요청을 했네. 나는 목회자로서 한 영혼을 향한 배려 때문에 찾아 가겠다고 했네.”
“ 왜 일본에서 버리는 공해산업인 폐기물을 한국으로 받아들입니까? 이것이 이 민족 장래를 향해서 바른 일 아니지 않습니까? 산업폐기물은 받아들이지 않아야 되는 것 아닙니까?”

그때 김준곤 목사님께서 제게 이렇게 말씀하셨습니다.
“ 홍 군, 대통령께서 내게 이렇게 말씀하셨네. ‘그 공해는 내가 다 마실 테니 우리 백성이 배만 굶지 않으면 좋겠습니다.’ 그러면서 그의 두 눈에 눈물이 맺히더군.”
제가 그 말을 듣자마자 박정희 대통령에 대해 얼어붙었던 마음이 이해하는 마음으로 바뀌기 시작했습니다.

진실은 언제나 감춰지지 않습니다. 그러니 따님 되시는 대통령께서 직접 나서셔서 아버지 명예 회복을 위해서 표면적으로 노력하는 것은 별 의미가 없다고 생각합니다.

그리스의 가장 위대한 정치가였던 페리클레스(PERIKLES)는 페르시아와의 전쟁에서 승리하고 많은 국가적인 업적을 남겼습니다. 아마 그분보다 더 위대한 정치가는 그리스 역사에 기록되어 있지 않을 것입니다. 그런 그분이지만 당시 유명인이라면 의례적이던 자신의 동상 하나 없었습니다. 주변인들이 왜 동상을 세우지 않느냐는 말을 계속할 때마다 그의 대답은 딱 하나였습니다.
“ ‘왜 이따위 사람의 동상이 세워졌는가?’라는 말을 듣기보다, ‘왜 이런 귀한 분이 동상도 없는가?’ 나는 그 후자를 택하고 싶소.”

그렇습니다. 진정한 존경은 마음에서 나오는 것이지 광화문에다가 박정희 前대통령 동상 세운다고 일어나는 것이 아닙니다. 역사는 반드시 모든 업적 평가를 정확하게 해 줄 것입니다. 그러니 안심하고 하야하십시오.

셋째, 대국민 담화 때 이렇게 말씀하셨습니다. ‘이러려고 대통령이 됐는가?’

그 탄식을 소리를 들었습니다. 대통령 취임식 때 국가를 위해 진실한 마음의 선서를 하셨을 줄 압니다. 그런데 지금은 이렇습니다. 대통령께서 지라시라고 말씀하셨던 것이 모두 현실이 되었고, 비서실장께서는 실소를 금할 수 없는 소도 웃을 일을 행하셨습니다. 이제 이 국민은 대통령의 말을 신뢰하지 않습니다. 하지만 여기서 끝내시면 안 됩니다.

글을 맺으며 역사에서 실수와 잘못을 한꺼번에 해결했던 한 사람의 이야기를 들려 드리고자 합니다. 러시아 상트 페테르부르그 에 있는 에르미타주 미술관The State Hermitage Museum에 가면 렘브란트가 그린 ‘눈이 멀게 된 삼손’이라는 큰 그림이 있습니다. 그림의 주인공인 이 삼손은 이스라엘의 민족영웅이었습니다. 그랬던 그가 여인의 유혹에 넘어져 한 순간에 큰 범죄를 행했고, 그 일로 하나님께서 그에게 주셨던 엄청난 힘을 빼앗아 가셨습니다. 결국 삼손은 원수들에게 붙잡혀가서 눈을 뽑히고 감옥에 갇혀 연자멧돌을 짐승처럼 돌려야 하는 비참한 신세로 전락했습니다. 치욕의 삶을 살던 어느 날 블레셋의 축제일에 많은 사람들이 원형경기장에 모여서 가장 무서운 원수였던 삼손을 조롱하며 즐거워했습니다. 경기장 주춧돌 위에 세워진 큰 기둥의 쇠사슬에 묶인 삼손은 마지막으로 있는 힘을 다해 힘껏 밀었습니다. 그러자 그 큰 경기장은 무너졌고 왕을 비롯한 경기장 안에 있던 모든 사람들이 죽었습니다. 이것을 성경은 삼손이 평생 전쟁터에서 죽인 적군의 수보다 그 하루에 죽인 적군의 수가 더 많았더라고 기록하고 있습니다.

박대통령님, 하야하십시오!

이 나라를 농단하고 당신을 이용하여 사리사욕을 채운 모든 사악한 세력들과 함께 무너지십시오. 이것이 대통령께서 짧은 시간에 실수를 회복하실 수 있는 최선의 길이라고 믿습니다.

유라시아의 거대한 대륙의 끝자락인 이 작은 한반도가 열강들과 공산주의의 엄청난 위세 앞에서도 오늘날까지 자유 민주주의를 발전시킬 수 있었던 첫 단추는 바로 이 말이었다고 생각됩니다.

‘ 백성이 원하면 물러나야 한다.’

국민의 마음을 우선으로 한 마디의 말과 함께 초연이 경무대를 떠난 이승만 대통령의 하야가 있었다는 사실을 오늘에야 새삼스럽게 깨닫게 됩니다. 이 일로 ‘대한민국은 민주공화국이다.’라는 헌법 제 1조를 갖게 되었습니다.

박근혜 대통령님의 하야는 최선의 헌신이자 새로운 대한민국의 발전의 기초가 될 것을 믿습니다.

The Bitter Feud Behind the Law That Could Keep Jared Kushner Out of the White House

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/1976-nepotism-law-lyndon-johnson-bobby-kennedy-trump-kushner-214465

The Bitter Feud Behind the Law That Could Keep Jared Kushner Out of the White House

By JOSH ZEITZ

November 17, 2016

"Don’t smile too much or they’ll think we’re happy about the appointment,” Senator John F. Kennedy told his younger brother, Robert. It was late 1960. Jack Kennedy, now president-elect of the United States, opened the front door of his stately home in Georgetown to inform a pack of awaiting reporters that he would name Bobby to the post of attorney general.

It was the worst-kept secret in Washington, and as the family expected, few seasoned political hands approved of the selection. “It is simply not good enough to name a bright young political manager, no matter how bright or how young or how personally loyal, to a major post in government,” the New York Times editorialized. Worse, a close associate later observed, “it was nepotism, I mean, he was the brother of the president.” Anthony Lewis, a veteran courts reporter, was “appalled … thought it was a simply awful idea.” Kennedy was “a zealot with no understanding of the terrible responsibilities of an attorney general.”

Bobby Kennedy has since become an American folk hero—the tough, crusading liberal gunned down in the prime of life. But his appointment at the age of 35 to a powerful government post—a post that he was singularly unqualified to hold—at the time struck many in Washington as irresponsible and inappropriate.

More than that, it rankled one very important person in particular—Lyndon Johnson, who loathed RFK intensely and must certainly have borne that hatred in mind when, in 1967, he signed into law a nepotism statute that, among other provisions, appeared to make it impossible for a president to appoint immediate family members to the Cabinet or, some argue, to the White House staff. (The law explicitly prevents “public officials” from promoting a “relative” "to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control.”) LBJ knew that the law would have no immediate bearing on the Kennedy family. But as one aide later noted, he “couldn’t be rational where Bobby”—whom he dubbed “that little shitass”—“was concerned.” Signing the bill must have felt good.

Almost 50 years later, it’s that law—LBJ’s sweet revenge—that could prevent President-elect Donald Trump from bringing his son-in-law and chief whisperer, Jared Kushner, to Washington as an adviser—a possibility that Trump denies, despite the flurry of leaks emanating from his unorthodox transition headquarters in Trump Tower. (Trump may still be able to grant security clearance to Kushner and rely on him as an outside adviser. But he can’t place him in the Cabinet or even, some claim, on the White House staff.)

Even if LBJ signed the law out of personal animus, there’s a reason that Congress passed it by a comfortable margin. And it’s a reason worth remembering today. Presidents enjoy enough power and access to talent without needing to resort to nepotism—and as we can see from RFK’s appointment, all family members—though personally loyal to the president—are not necessarily fit to hold high office.

Shortly after naming his brother attorney general, Jack Kennedy told family friends, in jest, that he “just wanted to give him a little legal practice before he becomes a lawyer.”

Bobby was mortified. “Jack,” he complained “you shouldn’t have said that about me.”

“Bobby, you don’t understand,” JFK explained. “You’ve got to make fun of it, you’ve got to make fun of yourself in politics.”

“You weren’t making fun of yourself,” Bobby parried. “You were making fun of me.”

It stung because it was true. At age 35, RFK had just a few years of government service under his belt; he had worked as legal counsel to two Senate committees—jobs that his father and brother had arranged for him—but otherwise claimed no qualification for the role of attorney general.

But JFK had grown to rely on Bobby—the brother who, years earlier, he had dismissed as “kind of a nasty, brutal, humorless little fellow,” “moody, taciturn, brusque, and combative”—as his campaign manager, right hand and principal sounding board. “I have now watched you Kennedy brothers for five solid years,” Connecticut Governor Abraham Ribicoff told the president-elect, “and I notice that every time you face a new crisis, you automatically turn to Bobby. You’re out of the same womb. There’s empathy. You understand one another. You’re not going to be able to be president without using Bobby all the time.”

Not everyone looked warmly on Bobby’s appointment, particularly Vice President-elect Johnson, who privately reviled him as a “snot-nosed little son of -bitch.” Their mutual enmity—almost Shakespearean in its richness and depth—would drive power dynamics in Washington for the next decade and beyond. During his tenure as Senate majority leader, LBJ had sized up RFK (who was then a lowly committee aide) as a “snot nose,” though he acknowledged that he was “bright.” Ever eager to diminish others to aggrandize himself, he would greet Bobby in the hallways as “sonny boy.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when the two men developed their all-consuming hatred for each other. It might have been in late 1959, when Jack dispatched his brother to the LBJ Ranch in Texas to determine whether Johnson intended to run for the Democratic presidential nomination the net year. In a deliberate attempt to humiliate JFK’s little brother, Johnson took him deer hunting and purposely handed him a high-caliber rifle with an especially powerful recoil. It knocked Kennedy to the ground. “Son,” Johnson said, “you’ve got to learn to handle a gun like a man.”

Or, it might have been several months later, when LBJ’s campaign spread (true) rumors that Jack Kennedy was concealing a serious illness and reminded liberal delegates to the Democratic National Convention that the candidate’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, had opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war preparedness policies in the late 1930s. “Lyndon Johnson has compared my father to the Nazis and … lied by saying my brother was dying of Addison’s disease,” Bobby complained to one of Johnson’s close aides. “You Johnson people are running a stinking damned campaign and you’ll get yours when the time comes.”

The time came soon enough. After JFK secured the nomination, Jack offered LBJ the vice presidential slot. Johnson accepted it, and then Bobby—apparently on his own authority, or because of a miscommunication—attempted to rescind it. The story leaked widely and caused Johnson considerable embarrassment, for which he never forgave RFK.

As vice president, Johnson stoically and without public complaint weathered almost three years of endless humiliation at the hand of Bobby Kennedy. Though JFK insisted that his staff members accord LBJ all of the consideration and courtesy due to the vice president, Bobby and his loyalists were uniformly dismissive and impolite. They frequently disregarded instructions that LBJ be included in key policy and security conclaves. At Cabinet and interagency meetings, Bobby took every opportunity to humiliate the vice president.

Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were rarely granted invitations to parties at Hickory Hill, Bobby’s estate in Northern Virginia and the unofficial social capital of Camelot. On those few occasions when they were included, Ethel Kennedy relegated them to her “loser’s table,” a repository for random guests of little social or political import. Hugh Sidey, a leading journalist, recalled the Johnson’s treatment at Hickory Hill as “just awful … inexcusable, really.” At one party, staff aides presented Bobby with a cloth effigy of Johnson, with pins sticking out of it. Then as now, Washington was a small town. The story got around.

Richard Goodwin, a Kennedy aide who later served as chief speechwriter in Johnson’s White House, observed that “Bobby symbolized everything Johnson hated. He became the symbol of all the things Johnson wasn’t … with these characteristics of wealth and power and ease and Eastern elegance; with Johnson always looking at himself as the guy they thought was illiterate, rude, crude. They laughed at him behind his back. I think he felt all of that.”

Johnson miserably accepted that such disgrace would be his lot in life for eight years—unless the Kennedys dumped him from the ticket in 1964, a fear that haunted him nightly. It was an open secret that Bobby coveted the 1968 nomination for himself. He was, according to all the news magazines, the “No. 2” man in Washington. “When this fellow looks at me,” said the actual No. 2 man during his tenure as vice president, “he looks at me like he’s going to look a hole right through me, like I’m a spy or something.”

In a particular moment of weakness, the vice president cornered Bobby inside the White House residence and pleaded, “I don’t understand you, Bobby. Your father likes me. Your brother likes me. But you don’t like me.Now, why? Why don’t you like me?” According to a bystander, RFK “agreed to the accuracy of all this.” It was the ultimate turn of the knife.

When, on November 22, 1963, fate reversed their fortunes, Johnson tried at first and of necessity to be gracious to the man who was now hisattorney general. He had to serve out John Kennedy’s remaining 13 months in office before he could lay claim to his own mandate. But the relationship, already bad, grew poisonous from the start. Bobby deeply resented that LBJ insisted on flying back from Dallas on Air Force One, rather than on the vice presidential plane, and he believed—though he was not entirely right—that LBJ had treated Jackie Kennedy shabbily that day. At Cabinet meetings, he would show up late and openly brood, or stare with undisguised aggression at the sight of the new president sitting in his brother’s chair.

“Our president was a gentleman and a human being,” Bobby told an interviewer in confidence, even while he still served in Johnson’s Cabinet. “This man is not. … He’s mean, bitter, vicious—an animal in many ways.”

Despite his hatred of Johnson, Bobby was eager to reclaim the Kennedy family’s power base and made overtures for the vice presidential spot in 1964. When LBJ turned him down, Bobby resigned his post and ran for the Senate in New York. It proved a tougher race than anyone expected. In the closing days, RFK had to swallow his pride and ask the president—who was then riding high and on his way to a landslide victory against GOP nominee Barry Goldwater—to campaign with him in the Empire State. LBJ agreed. The photographs show a very glum Senate candidate hating every minute of their joint appearance.

In the coming years, even at the height of his power, LBJ feared that his one-time tormenter would tack to the left and challenge him for the presidency in 1968. He worried that the Kennedys might seek to launch a dynasty that lasted into the 1970s and beyond: first Jack, then Bobby, then younger brother Teddy. Goodwin thought that the president was “always afraid of Bobby. It was more than hatred. It was fear.”

In 1967, LBJ signed the law that would bar future presidents from naming their brother to the Cabinet. The anti-nepotism law was a rider to a bill that established salary rates for postal workers and other government employees. The Iowa congressman who introduced the nepotism provision later claimed that it was not inspired with RFK in mind, and indeed, it covered broader categories of public employees. But it was widely assumed at the time and now by historians that Johnson requested the rider, and it soon acquired the popular moniker, “the RFK bill.” Johnson’s morbid obsession with the Kennedys was so all-encompassing that it’s not hard to believe that he was motivated in part by a desire to stop their dynastic trajectory in its tracks.

However personal his motivations, LBJ had other reasons to be wary of RFK’s appointment. Historians are divided as to whether Robert Kennedy was a strong attorney general or presidential counselor. During his tenure the Department of Justice undertook vigorous prosecution of organized crime and launched a small, but inventive pilot initiative to combat juvenile delinquency—an initiative that later influenced components of LBJ’s War on Poverty.

But on the central issue of his time—civil rights—he was at best a temporizer.

When in 1961, Freedom Riders tested a ruling by the Interstate Commerce Commission that barred segregation in bus terminals serving interstate routes, RFK at first tried to persuade civil rights leaders to abandon their campaign. When white civilians and law enforcement officials in Alabama massacred two busloads of riders (and burned one of the buses), the Justice Department quietly cut a deal whereby a new contingent of activists was escorted to the state line unharmed, and then placed under arrest for violating Mississippi’s segregation ordinances.

Though in later years, as a senator, Bobby proved a stalwart supporter of civil rights, as attorney general he allowed Southern authorities to flout federal authority and often expressed as much frustration with demonstrators as with white officials in the South. He did so out of political expediency (RFK was loath to lose the Solid South in 1964); a commitment to federalism (he believed that the constitution limited his scope of action); and moral failure (civil rights was simply not an issue that he’d had to confront in his 35 years).

A hard-line anti-Communist, Bobby also authorized FBI wiretaps against Martin Luther King Jr. He did so on the advice of J. Edgar Hoover, who claimed that MLK associated with communist organizers. Though the Kennedys harbored no illusions about Hoover’s personal and political motives, RFK armed him with the ability to surveil and later blackmail a Nobel Prize laureate. It was not a proud moment in the history of the FBI or the Justice Department.

Jared Kushner is approximately the same age that Bobby Kennedy was in 1960. He brings less government experience, not more, to the table.

But it’s not just a matter of experience. It’s a matter of propriety. When JFK first appointed his brother, the New York Times remarked that Bobby was a “political manager”—the Justice Department, it argued, “ought to be kept completely out of the political realm.” Just as it was wrong to install a political operative in the attorney general’s seat, it’s wrong to invite the president’s son-in-law into the West Wing, in whatever capacity. He and his wife cannot be disinterested stewards of the president-elect’s business empire—and their own—while enjoying sway over government officials and agencies and receiving classified information that could inform their commercial activities.

Donald Trump enters the White House with a very thin mandate. If his victory in the Electoral College tells us anything, it’s that many Americans are tired of living in a system that they regard as “rigged,” in which elite families subsume an outsized share of power and profit. If it was true of the Kennedys in 1960, or of the Bushes and Clintons in 2016, it must surely be true of the Trumps in 2017.

Josh Zeitz has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University and Princeton University and is the author of Lincoln’s Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln's Image. He is currently writing a book on the making of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Follow him @joshuamzeitz.

Jon Stewart: “I don’t believe we are a fundamentally different country today than we were two weeks ago,”

Jon Stewart slams liberal ‘hypocrisy’ for branding Trump voters racist

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/17/jon-stewart-slams-liberal-hypocrisy-for-branding-d/

By Jessica Chasmar - The Washington Times - Thursday, November 17, 2016

Former talk show host Jon Stewart slammed the “hypocrisy” of the left for supposedly rejecting stereotypes while painting Donald Trump voters as racist.

Mr. Stewart, former host of “The Daily Show,” sat down with CBS’ Charlie Rose in an interview aired Thursday to discuss his new book, “An Oral History” and weigh in on Donald Trump’s stunning Election Day victory.

“I thought Donald Trump disqualified himself at numerous points,” Mr. Stewart said. “But there is now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric.

“Like, there are guys in my neighborhood that I love, that I respect, that I think have incredible qualities who are not afraid of Mexicans, and not afraid of Muslims, and not afraid of blacks. They’re afraid of their insurance premiums,” he continued. “In the liberal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. Don’t look as Muslims as a monolith. They are the individuals and it would be ignorance. But everybody who voted for Trump is a monolith, is a racist. That hypocrisy is also real in our country.”

Mr. Stewart said Mr. Trump’s win was a not only a reaction to Democratic leadership, but to the Republican establishment.

“He’s not a Republican, he is a repudiation of Republicans,” he said. “But they will reap the benefit of his victory, in all of their cynicism and all of their — I will guarantee you Republicans are going to come to Jesus now about the power of government.”

Mr. Stewart, a liberal, appeared optimistic about the future of the country, calling America “exceptional” for its constant fight against “thousands of years of human behavior and history.”

“I don’t believe we are a fundamentally different country today than we were two weeks ago,” he said. “The same country with all its grace and flaws, and volatility, and insecurity, and strength, and resilience exists today as existed two weeks ago. The same country that elected Donald Trump elected Barack Obama.”



https://www.yahoo.com/news/jon-stewart-nobody-asked-donald-trump-what-makes-america-great-165854259.html

Jon Stewart: ‘Nobody asked Donald Trump what makes America great’

Dylan Stableford, Senior editor

November 17, 2016

While plenty of questions were raised about Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, Jon Stewart says there was at least one question that was never posed to the Republican nominee.

“Nobody asked Donald Trump what makes America great,” Stewart told Charlie Rose in an interview that aired on “CBS This Morning” on Thursday. “What are the metrics? Because it seems like from listening to him, the metrics are that it’s a competition. And I think what many would say is what makes us great is — America is an anomaly in the world.”

The former “Daily Show” host, who left the Comedy Central show last year, said Trump’s candidacy “has animated that thought: that a multiethnic democracy, a multicultural democracy is impossible. And that is what America by its founding, and constitutionally, is.”

Stewart, who made a few surprise appearances on stage and on television but was largely absent during 2016 election, said he “thought Donald Trump disqualified himself at numerous points” during the race. But the comedian also cautioned against painting Trump’s supporters with a broad brush.

“There is now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric,” Stewart said. “Like, there are guys in my neighborhood that I love, that I respect, that I think have incredible qualities who are not afraid of Mexicans, and not afraid of Muslims, and not afraid of blacks. They’re afraid of their insurance premiums. In the liberal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. Don’t look at Muslims as a monolith. They are individuals, and it would be ignorance. But everybody who voted for Trump is a monolith, is a racist. That hypocrisy is also real in our country.”

Trump, Stewart argued, isn’t even a Republican: He’s a “repudiation of Republicans.”

“Donald Trump is a reaction not just to Democrats, to Republicans,” he said. “They’re not draining the swamp. [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell and [House Speaker Paul] Ryan, those guys are the swamp. And what they decided to do was, ‘I’m going to make sure government doesn’t work and then I’m going to use its lack of working as evidence of it.”

JPMorgan Chase to Pay $264 Million to Settle Foreign Bribery Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/business/dealbook/jpmorgan-chase-to-pay-264-million-to-settle-foreign-bribery-charges.html?emc=edit_th_20161118&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923&_r=0

JPMorgan Chase to Pay $264 Million to Settle Foreign Bribery Case

By BEN PROTESS and ALEXANDRA STEVENSON
Nov. 17, 2016

Vying for lucrative deals in China, JPMorgan Chase deployed all the usual wining-and-dining tactics that big banks use to woo clients. JPMorgan, federal authorities now say, also had ways of sweetening the deal that crossed a legal line.

Federal prosecutors and regulators announced on Thursday a settlement of roughly $264 million with the bank and its Hong Kong subsidiary, accusing them of a vast foreign bribery scheme that may have spread to a number of Wall Street banks.

The case centered on JPMorgan’s hiring practices in China, where it hired the children of Chinese leaders to win business in the fast-growing nation. Some of the well-connected candidates were unqualified, the authorities said, and often “performed ancillary work” — telltale signs of hidden bribery.

The case could lay the groundwork for the authorities to pursue penalties against other big banks as well. Banks including HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have hinted that they face investigations into their hiring practices in China as part of a larger sweep by the agency that began in 2013.

“We do not expect this to be the last action resulting from that sweep,” Andrew J. Ceresney, the head of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told reporters on Thursday.

It is unclear what will happen to the investigation under the president-elect, Donald. J. Trump. Mr. Ceresney and other officials who led the investigation are expected to leave the government in the coming weeks.

In the investigation of JPMorgan, it was not immediately apparent whether the bank would be accused of carrying out a quid pro quo arrangement, an issue at the heart of whether JPMorgan violated United States law governing foreign bribery.

The bank argued that the hiring of well-connected employees was routine in China, and that its own hires fell into a gray area of foreign bribery laws.

But the prosecutors and regulators say that as JPMorgan hired more and more candidates based on referrals from Chinese leaders, senior bankers in several instances explicitly tied those jobs or internships to securing deals with Chinese government-run companies.

To be hired, a referred candidate had to have, in the bank’s own words, a “directly attributable linkage to business opportunity,” a scheme that enabled the company to win or retain business resulting in more than $100 million in revenue for the bank or its affiliates, prosecutors and regulators said.

“The common refrain that this is simply how business is done overseas is no defense,” said Robert L. Capers, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, whose office helped lead the criminal investigation into the bank. “This is no longer business as usual; it is corruption.”

Still, the authorities acknowledged that JPMorgan cooperated extensively with the investigation and they lowered the penalty accordingly. The bank, the authorities stated, also disciplined nearly two dozen employees and “took significant employment action” that led to the departure of six employees who participated in the misconduct.

“We’re pleased that our cooperation was acknowledged,” a JPMorgan spokesman, Brian Marchiony, said in a statement. “The conduct was unacceptable.”

“We stopped the hiring program in 2013 and took action against the individuals involved,” Mr. Marchiony added. “We have also made improvements to our hiring procedures and reinforced the high standards of conduct expected of our people.”

When the China hiring investigation first came to light in a front-page article in The New York Times three years ago, it topped a growing list of regulatory problems at the bank. In addition to the $6 billion so-called London whale trading scandal, the bank reached a $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over its sale of mortgage securities in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The settlement in the China hiring case puts to rest one of JPMorgan’s last big regulatory headaches.

For all the scrutiny of big banks, no top bankers have gone to jail since the financial crisis — an absence that has drawn much criticism and public debate.

Even President-elect Donald J. Trump joined the chorus of critics this year during his campaign, saying bankers should “absolutely” go to jail if they had done something “purposely illegal.”

The foreign bribery case against JPMorgan will not alleviate those concerns.

The United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington imposed a $72 million penalty on the bank but did not charge any of the bankers who doled out the jobs, though the investigation is ongoing.

The bank itself also secured a moral victory by avoiding criminal charges, and instead negotiated a rare nonprosecution agreement.

The S.E.C. will assess the largest punishment, about $130 million of the overall $264 million settlement, while the Fed will impose a roughly $62 million penalty.

JPMorgan competed with other big global banks to secure lucrative assignments in China as state-controlled companies were selecting banks to help them go public. And at one point, some JPMorgan bankers concluded that they needed to escalate their hiring to better compete with their rivals.

“We lost a deal to DB today because they got chairman’s daughter work for them this summer,” one JPMorgan investment banking executive remarked to colleagues, using the initials for Deutsche Bank.

Another JPMorgan managing director in Asia wrote that bank needed to ramp up its client referral program, adding that people thought the other banks “are doing a much better job.” It was later decided that referrals by so-called decision makers — Chinese clients who had the ability to influence a deal — would receive priority.

JPMorgan’s hiring effort, known within the bank as the Sons and Daughters program, began a decade ago. Initially, the program sought to prevent violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the law that underpins the case against JPMorgan and essentially bans United States companies from giving “anything of value” to a foreign official to win “an improper advantage” in retaining business.

But as the bank faced increased competition, and it expanded the program in 2009, senior JPMorgan bankers “institutionalized” the hiring, federal authorities say.

They explicitly tied those jobs or internships to securing deals with Chinese government-run companies, the prosecutors and regulators say, using them as “a tool to influence senior officials.”

“The so-called Sons and Daughters program was nothing more than bribery by another name,” Leslie R. Caldwell, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement.

Over a seven-year period, JPMorgan hired about 200 interns and full-time employees at the request of clients, potential clients and foreign government officials, authorities say. Around half of these candidates were referred by government officials at Chinese state-owned companies and government agencies. JPMorgan’s executives in Asia then used their connections with these government agencies to help the company and clients navigate tangled regulatory landscapes.

In late 2010, a JPMorgan employee in Hong Kong created a spreadsheet that tracked hires to specific clients. The spreadsheet included a column for the amount of revenue attributable to the hire.

Many of the job candidates were unqualified, the authorities said, but JPMorgan hired them anyway.

There was the hire whose productivity was described as “photocopier” level, and the son of a powerful executive who had a Wharton degree but a “not very impressive, poor G.P.A.” and had both an “attitude issue” and a “napping problem.”

Then there was the son of a Chinese official who did “very, very poorly” in his interviews but still secured a position in New York only to be transferred again. A JPMorgan banker later reported that the hire “sent out an e-mail (which he inadvertently copied to an H.R. person), where he made some inappropriate sexual remarks.” Ultimately, his peers described him as “immature, irresponsible and unreliable,” but he kept his job.

The internal cost of the Sons and Daughters program would later be chalked up to “a marketing expense,” prosecutors and regulators said. When JPMorgan executives in New York complained, executives in Asia would step in. On at least one occasion, the Asia unit created a position in New York and diverted some of its budget to pay the candidates.

Kara Brockmeyer, the head of the S.E.C.’s foreign bribery unit, noted that the bank’s “internal controls were so weak that not a single referral hire request was denied.”

The bank’s internal emails also show reluctance to hire well-connected candidates unless doing so would definitely lead JPMorgan to win business.

In one email, bankers discussed the possibility of honoring a hiring request from a senior executive of a private Chinese manufacturing company that was preparing an initial public offering of stock. When the offering was postponed and one of the bankers inquired whether it was worth hiring the person, a JPMorgan executive in Hong Kong responded: “I am supportive of bringing her on board given what’s at stake,” while adding, “How do you get the best quid pro quo from the relationship upon confirmation of the offer?”

A banker responded: “The client has communicated clearly the quid pro quo on this hire.” The company ultimately chose JPMorgan to work on the offering.

The Unknown Unknowns, Nov 14, 2016

http://opiniojuris.org/2016/11/14/digesting-trump/

The Unknown Unknowns

by Deborah Pearlstein

While I would like to be able to offer some meaningful insight into what we might expect from the foreign policy of Donald Trump, I don’t think it’s possible to overstate at this stage the depth of current uncertainty surrounding what he will actually do. Part of this uncertainty is a function of his preternatural ability to take every position on every topic. (Latest case in point: After Trump repeatedly criticized NATO as overpriced and obsolete over the course of his campaign, we learned from President Obama today that Trump assured the President in their oval office meeting that “there is no weakening” in America’s commitment “toward maintaining a strong and robust NATO alliance.”) Another part of the uncertainty flows from the apparent depth of Trump’s own ignorance of the possibilities of the executive branch. (Again only the most recent example, the Sunday Wall Street Journal reported of Trump’s meeting with President Obama: “Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope [of the duties of running the country], said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.”)

And then there is the scope and strength of the federal bureaucracy – the career professional staffs of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, the intelligence agencies, and more – who, to judge by both newspaper reporting and my entirely non-scientific and idiosyncratic Facebook feed, are grappling mightily with whether to stay or go in the face of extraordinary new leadership. As U.S. Presidents have found time and again (and as I’ve written about in the context of the military in particular, e.g., here), this apparatus makes it difficult sharply to turn the ship of state even with the clearest of intentions and the greatest of bureaucratic skill. There is little indication (as yet) that the incoming administration has either. This is hardly intended to offer comfort or reassurance; I am incapable of greeting with anything but dread the election of a President who has, for example, openly advocated policies that would violate the law – including torturing prisoners with waterboarding “and a lot worse,” and killing the families of those he thinks threaten the United States. It is intended as a check on my own worst speculative instincts. And as a plea to those who are part of that apparatus to start out, at least, by trying to stay.

[Fitbit] D.C. residents lost the most sleep of anyone in nation the night of the presidential election

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/dc-residents-lost-the-most-sleep-of-anyone-in-nation-the-night-of-the-presidential-election-study-shows/2016/11/14/bf147d80-aa9b-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html

D.C. residents lost the most sleep of anyone in nation the night of the presidential election, study shows

By Keith L. Alexander November 14 at 5:48 PM

If it seemed as if Washington-area residents were stumbling around like the walking dead the day after last week’s presidential election, it may be because they stayed up late waiting for results and awoke early the next day.

According to the folks at Fitbit Inc., the maker of the wrist-worn, wireless fitness trackers, residents of the nation’s capital lost more sleep the night of Nov. 8 than people elsewhere in the country. D.C. residents who wore Fitbits logged 49.75 fewer minutes of shut-eye than on a typical night — far above the national average of 29.62 minutes of lost sleep.

Fitbit said Monday that researchers reviewed a sampling of its 10 million users across the nation to see how sleep patterns were affected by the wait to see whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton would emerge as the nation’s 45th president.

What the Fitbit could not tell was whether anxiety, excitement or other emotions played into the sleeplessness. The devices use heart rates to tell whether a user is slumbering.

“Was it excitement, stress? That’s not known, but we were surprised and impressed to see such a change in sleep in a typical day,” said Karla Gleichauf, Fitbit research data analyst.

In addition, Virginia and Maryland ranked among the top 10 sleep-deprived states.

Virginia residents came in fourth with about 40.03 minutes of lost sleep, and Maryland residents came in 10th with 36.93 minutes. Other East Coast states, including New York, Florida and Massachusetts, were in the top 10. Alabama and Arkansas also made the list.

Researchers at the San Francisco-based company said this presidential election night marked the greatest sleep-loss numbers since it began tracking patterns in 2009, two years after the company was founded. The second-biggest loss of sleep for users was the night of Super Bowl 50 in January, when average users lost about eight minutes of sleep.