The view from the Welcome Center desk at the National Museum of the American Indian and another moving visitor request

View from the Welcome Center Desk at the Smithsonian's NMAI

Since I opened last week's post with an action photo of me and a colleague behind the desk at the Welcome Center of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), I thought that this week I'd turn the tables, so to speak, and give you a Marc's-eye view of what it looks like to be a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at the museum. But since there's more than meets the eye, I'll toss in a few words about the surrounding space and what it feels like to work there.

As you can see in the photo above, the ground floor of the NMAI is filled with graceful curves and subtle variations in lighting. Standing at the Welcome Center one looks out on the Potomac Atrium, a beautiful space for gatherings and performances, located beneath a vaulting rotunda. It's where tours of the museum originate. From my limited experience, it appears that the atrium is also a popular spot for after-hours events, like the receptions that are part and parcel with the many conferences that the city hosts.

Beyond the atrium you may be able to spot a few of the windows that make up the NMAI's main entrance. Unlike all the other museums on the National Mall whose main entrances open onto the Mall itself, the east-facing NMAI faces (or faces down) the United States Capitol directly. I've been told that this orientation is due to the fact that an east-facing entrance is a tradition in many Native cultures. I suspect that there is more going on here than just that; namely, that the museum is positioned as a sovereign Native peer to the legislative center of the American government a few blocks away.

Suffice it to say, the Potomac Atrium and the surrounding area are both stately and welcoming, a difficult effect to achieve. From the vantage point of someone working the welcome desk, it is also remarkably serene space, even when a large number of visitors are shuffling back and forth. And when things aren't that busy, I have discovered that it is a nice place for a few minutes of quiet meditation.

Best question of the day

Pipes and War Bonnets,
Agnes Looking Horse

Once again, I find myself very moved by the Native visitors who approach the desk with a request. In this case a young woman from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe wanted to locate a quilt that her grandmother had made that was part of the NMAI collection. She had a photo of the quilt and its title, "Pipes and War Bonnets."

John, my partner for that hour, quickly turned to the computer at one side of the Welcome Center desk and did a search using the collection search feature of the NMAI website. (Yes, feel free to try this at home!) His search yielded this results page which contained, among other things, the image that you see to the right.

The page indicates that the quilt's maker was Agnes Looking Horse who also went by the names Agnes Ironroad and Agnes Thunder and was a member of the Lakota tribe. Agnes was born in 1899 and lived until 1990. The NMAI acquired the quilt by way of a quit collector whose heirs sold it to the museum in 2007.

Unfortunately for the visitor, her grandmother's quilt was not on display at the NMAI in Washington or at its Manhattan counterpart. With over 1,000,000 objects in its collection, only a small fraction - around 2% - are on display in either location at any given time. The vast majority are kept in the NMAI's Cultural Resource Center in Suitland, Maryland. There are ways for interested parties to arrange to see a particular artifact, but as you can imagine, some lead time is involved.

Lots of school kids this morning

The other novelty for me this morning was the large number of school groups that arrived within an hour or so of opening at 10:00 am. I was told by my more experienced co-workers that it was a somewhat unusual number, but I was also told to expect that the number of school groups and families would be ramping up as the holidays approach. At the staff meeting this morning my boss Jose described the upcoming few weeks as being like a bunch of Black Fridays in a row, the day after Thanksgiving being an especially busy day at the NMAI and at other museums on the Mall.

I'll close by noting that the temporary closing of the renown Mitsitam Cafe for renovation (reopening in May 2024) continues to be a disappointment for many visitors. I'll also note, as I learned from Jose, if you're a teacher with, say, forty-five students in tow, it's a good idea to try to make other lunch arrangements even in the best of times.

Third shift at the National Museum of the American Indian: meet a couple of my partners

 

Me and Kyle at the NMAI Welcome Center desk
(photo credit: Michelle Kleinhans)

This post is about my third shift as a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Since things are becoming more routine, I'll be moving to occasional reports when there is something novel to share or if I decide to feature a particular part of the museum or its collection.

"Surprise" visit by Michelle

My long-time friend and partner in veganism Michelle Kleinhans dropped by the NMAI for a "surprise" visit on Wednesday morning. I say "surprise" because she had been hinting that she was going to visit and try to stump me with questions about the museum. Since Michelle is a teacher, she had the day before Thanksgiving off - my work day - which gave her an opportunity to collar me at the Welcome Center. Thanks to Michelle's visit, I have some action photos of me at work to share, like the one above.

Partners at the Welcome Center

My Wednesday shift runs for four hours from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm. The second and final shift of the day is from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. The overlap allows for a handoff of any specific information or procedures of the day. I am always paired with a partner during my shift. Sometimes it is with another volunteer, as was the case with Cindy last week. This week my partners were four members of the Visitor Information Services team, each spending an hour with me at the Welcome Center Desk. It's a nice opportunity to get to know the members of the team better this way.

Meet Kyle

My first partner of the day was Kyle. Kyle is a Visitor Information Services Floor Operations Lead at the NMAI location in Lower Manhattan, the counterpart of Jose here whom you'll meet below. He was in the DMV (a common way here to refer to the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, not to be confused with its universal meaning Department of Motor Vehicles elsewhere) to spend some Thanksgiving time with family and was taking a shift or two while he was in the area.

Kyle, who is originally from Upstate New York, was introduced at the morning staff meeting as being a member of the Onondaga Nation. I'm starting to learn that my knowledge of tribal names is not only very course-grained but also fairly out of date. The Onondaga Nation is a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which I vaguely knew as the Iroquois. (Haudenosaunee, which comprises six nations, appears to be the preferred name these days.) It's information like this that helps me appreciate part of the mission of the NMAI which is to communicate the rich diversity in the indigenous people here. Even accurate regional designations, like Iroquois, gloss over the variation in customs and history that make each tribal nation distinct.

As my friends know, I love finding out the "backstories" of the people I meet. Kyle's backstory was kicked off by my asking him how long he had been involved with the NMAI, a routine enough question to get the ball rolling I thought. His unexpected and intriguing answer, "since I was born," led to the telling of an interesting story.

It turns out that Kyle's mother was the register of the collection at the George Gustav Heye Museum of the American Indian in New York City when its vast collection of some 800,000 was being transferred to the Smithsonian under a Congressional charter executed in 1989. (The NMAI in DC did not open until 2004.) So Kyle's claim to have been involved with the museum from its - and his - start could not be more accurate. By the way, Kyle's mother continues to work with the NMAI, but at its Cultural Resource Center in Suitland, MD where around 98% of the collection is stored.

Meet Jose

One of my other partners at the desk on Wednesday happened to be my boss Jose, the Visitor Information Services Floor Operations Lead at the NMAI in DC. I met Jose for the first time at my museum-specific training about a month ago. He was an excellent instructor, and I was immediately taken by both his enthusiasm and good humor.

Jose's backstory with the NMAI is also a very deep one, although, admittedly, it would be hard to top Kyle's going back to the day he was born. Jose, who is originally from El Salvador, started working at the museum's Mitsitam Cafe when it opened in 2004. After a couple of years, he switched to Visitor Information Services where he has risen through the ranks to hold the position he does today. It's a pleasure to share part of my shift with Jose, especially since I learn a lot from seeing a real pro in action.

Questions of the week

I'll close with a couple of questions that I fielded during my shift this week. I should note that Michelle stumped me with all of her questions.

There were two requests for copies of the museum map in languages other than English and Spanish, the ones that we always have on display. One request was for a map in Thai and the other for a map in French. I was surprised when I first visited the museum and noticed that there weren't any other language options available. Other museums have them. Indeed, the welcome stations at the National Gallery of Art across the Mall offer a veritable United Nations-worth of maps to choose from.

Jose explained the situation to me. Prior to the pandemic, the NMAI offered maps in ten languages. Apparently, they're still working out changes that have happened to the floorplan since then, with the intention of returning to their full selection.

The other novel question also has to do with another historical disruption. Several visitors asked for the location of the coat check room, not surprising now that it's gotten colder. But there isn't one at the NMAI.

Most museums on the Mall have coat check rooms, consistent with the design of similar public spaces over the past century or so. Almost all of these were closed in the wake of 9/11 amid the security concerns that accompanied it. Many, but not all, have reopened since then. Yet, as Jose told me, the NMAI was being built right in the middle of the aftermath of September 11th. Its architects had concluded that a coat check room was a too-risky thing of the past and therefore deleted it from the NMAI design. So it goes.

On a related note, I noticed that this absence of a coat check room has had another consequence. In particular, I was puzzled how so many small kids, some in families with three or four children, were walking around coatless on a relatively cool November morning. Then I realized that their parents were often wearing ballooning backpacks stuffed to the gills with coats. I can see how these portable coatrooms-in-a-box might come in handy, even when a bona fide coatroom might be available.

My second day at the National Museum of the American Indian: important visitors

Flag of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians (Abyssmanx, Wikimedia Commons)

I'm following up on last week's post about my first day as a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). I'm not sure what format these posts will take - or even if they will continue - but I thought I'd include a bit more about the job itself and any special things that happened during my shift. Mostly I want readers to get an idea of what it's like to be a Welcome Center volunteer at NMAI.

Staff meeting at 9:30 am

My shift on Wednesdays starts with a meeting of Visitor Information Services (VIS) staff and volunteers in a portion of the imagiNATIONS Activity Center on the 3rd floor. The Activity Center provides young visitors a lively space with a wide variety of educational experiences. It also provides some pint-sized tables with pint-sized chairs where we can gather and learn about such things as special events scheduled for the day or rearrangements of exhibits or, say, bathroom closures. The big news of the morning was an impending visit by around three hundred members of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians tribal nation. More about that below.

VIS leads Jose and Wallace conduct the staff meeting and make a point to introduce new members of the team, like me, just starting my second week, and Cindy, who was a volunteer "floater" working at the NMAI for the first time.

My Welcome Center partner

Cindy was my partner at the Welcome Center today. Floaters are seasoned Smithsonian volunteers who have trained at a variety of museums so that they are able to pick up open shifts in the volunteer schedule according to their own availability. They aren't assigned specific days like I am, but are expected to claim one shift every week.

It was a pleasure to work with Cindy. Although she was new to NMAI as a volunteer, she was very knowledgeable about the Smithsonian. So, for example, she could answer visitor questions about transit options for getting to places on the National Mall. Spoiler alert: the answer is almost always to use the $1 DC Circulator to tame the two-mile expanse that stretches between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.

Cindy had been a long-time volunteer at the iconic Smithsonian Castle - now closed for five years for renovation - which gave her a unique perspective in visitor information services. Apparently, tourists show up on the Mall, make a beeline for the Castle and announce to the volunteers there that they are in town for a certain number of days and ask, "what should I do?" Needless to say, you really have to know a lot about a lot to help them organize their time effectively.

Questions of the day

A young man asked the question about the name of the museum - specifically the use of the term American Indian - that I had been told to anticipate. As I mentioned in my previous post, the name was adopted under the terms of the transfer of the Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation's collection to the Smithsonian Institution when the NMAI was chartered by Congress in 1989. I told the questioner that I suspected it would literally take an act of Congress to change it. I'm not sure that that is the answer he wanted to hear, but he seemed to appreciate that any change would be an uphill battle.

Another visitor asked how many Native tribes there were in this country. The answer, which I learned from my training, is that the United States government recognizes 574 tribes. (There are around 2,000 more in the western hemisphere outside the United States.) This number might seem like a bit of trivia, but it goes a long way to helping me understand why the NMAI is organized along thematic and not tribal lines.

Just as with last week, there were a number requests for help locating the Mitsitam Cafe, famous for its Native-inspired cuisine. To almost everyone's disappointment, the cafe is closed for renovation through May of next year. The coffee shop next to the Welcome Center offers a limited menu, but nothing like the real thing. It occurs to me that NMAI should have commissioned a Mitsitam Cafe food truck or two to meet the demand while the original was closed. Maybe it's not too late?

Visit by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians

As I mentioned, we were given a heads-up during the staff meeting to expect a larger number of visitors from the Poarch Band of the Creek Indians. As with so many matters of Native culture, I have to admit to being ignorant of their story. According to their website,

The Poarch Creek Indians are descendants of a segment of the original Creek Nation that once covered almost all of Alabama and Georgia. Unlike many eastern Indian tribes, the Poarch Creeks were not removed from their tribal lands and have lived together for almost 200 years in and around the reservation in Poarch, Alabama.

You can find out more about their history here.

In any event, just as the doors opened at 10:00 am, hundreds of Poarch Creek Indians streamed into the museum. Some were wearing colorful authentic dress. Many were in street clothes, more typical of rural Alabama. But everyone, as far as I could tell, was very excited to be at the museum. And it was with a lot of pride that many went immediately to locate their tribal flag which hangs with a set of Native flags on the north side of the Potomac Atrium.

The importance of the NMAI is to Native visitors is something I did not anticipate when I signed up to be a volunteer. But it is very moving to witness their enthusiasm and very gratifying to be able to help out in a small way.

My first day at the National Museum of the American Indian

National Native American Veterans Memorial, Harvey Pratt.
Photo: Alan Karchmer for NMAI.

I thought I'd use this blog post to answer a few questions about my new job as a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, NMAI for short. I've only worked one shift so far, but friends have asked me about my duties and the museum more generally, so here goes.

What is your position exactly? 

I am officially a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer, which means I help staff the Welcome Desk at the museum once a week, that's Wednesday morning for me. My basic responsibility is to greet guests and to help them have the best possible experience they can while visiting the museum by answering questions and serving as a liaison to museum staff to meet other needs such as accessibility services.

The Welcome Desk sits adjacent to the grand Potomac Atrium on the first floor of the museum which in my opinion is the most beautiful museum on the National Mall. I may describe it in more detail in a later post. Suffice it to say, it's a wonderful place to work.

Are you a docent? 

I am not a docent or any sort of museum guide. I'll have to undertake extensive training to qualify for that kind of position.

Do you have to know a lot about the museum and Native peoples for your job?

This was a concern of mine when I applied to be a volunteer back in July. It turns out that the job doesn't require any particular expertise. In addition to two orientation classes in late September and mid-October for the Smithsonian Institution itself (it includes 21 different museums!), we had a single day of museum-specific training. And much of that museum-specific time was devoted to important practical matters, like evacuation routes and procedures.

I must admit, though, that I am very glad that I visited the NMAI a number of times over the last several months. Those visits allowed me to learn about the layout of the museum and the exhibitions that it hosts. I'm glad I did. I was a lot more confident taking up a seat at the Welcome Desk for the very first time as a result.

Why is it called the Museum of the American Indian?

This much-asked question was specifically addressed in our training. The answer is pretty straightforward: when the museum was chartered by Congress in 1989 - construction was completed in 2004 - its collection was derived from over 800,000 objects assembled by George Gustav Heye (1874–1957), a New Yorker who quit Wall Street to indulge his passion for American Indian artifacts. The Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation transferred this collection to the Smithsonian with the condition that the name be retained.

Isn't that considered offensive?

One of the most important things I've learned from my visits to the NMAI and from my training is that Native peoples are diverse. One should not assume that they speak with a single voice, which is a mistake that I am inclined to make. Some may prefer the name "indigenous people" while others prefer "Native Americans," or, say, "First Nations" in Canada. I think that "American Indian" falls somewhere within this range of choices. But the real answer to this question depends very much on context and who exactly is involved in the discussion.

What was your typical interaction with visitors?

For those of you who visit museums often, you know the first thing you need when you walk in is a museum map. Not surprisingly, that's what most people who approach the Welcome Desk were looking for. As you can see here, the NMAI comprises 4 floors. Contrary to what they (or you) might expect, it is not laid out along conventional lines.

For example, there isn't an extended section for, say, pottery or beadwork or arrowheads, at least not on permanent display. Likewise, the museum is not organized according to an unfolding comprehensive historical or geographical story, although history and geography are important elements of the individual exhibits and there are Windows on Collections display cases on each floor that each feature a number of artifacts.

Instead, the NMAI is organized thematically as represented by a handful of current exhibitions like these. I think that one way to look at this is that the mission of the museum has to do more with the communication of the experience of contemporary Native peoples rather than with a presentation Native objects.

What was the most moving interaction you had on your first day?

Although the possibility was mentioned in our training, I had not expected that Native visitors or their descendants would approach the Welcome Desk several times looking for flags or artifacts relation to their tribal nations. It really helped me to appreciate how important the NMAI is to Native Americans and how proud they are to see themselves and their ancestors represented here.

Any surprises?

Although I had known that the NMAI's Mitsitam Cafe, which features the indigenous foods of the Western Hemisphere, was very popular, I had no idea that it was in itself a destination for many people visiting the National Mall. One couple approached the Welcome Desk looking for the cafe after asking for a recommendation of where to go to have lunch while they were touring the Library of Congress.

The problem is that, for the first time in 20 years, the Mitsitam Cafe is closed for renovations and will remain closed until late spring 2024. Needless to say, I had to share this disappointing news with a number of visitors. There's a coffee shop adjacent to the Welcome Desk that's able to provide a small selection of lunch items, but it can't compare to the full Mitsitam Cafe experience.

More to come

If this post turns out to be of interest to folks, I'll follow up with similar installments about the NMAI in the future.

The unexpected science subtext of George Miller's 3,000 Years of Longing

George Miller’s lavishly produced recent film, “3,000 Years of Longing,” could be described as a sort of Aladdin for adults. It is the retelling of a tale from Scheherazade’s 1,001 Arabian Nights set in our mythology-leary world. And, contrary to expectations, if one digs beneath the surface, a surprising story about science reveals itself.

That science will play a role in this reformulation is hinted at early on in the movie. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), a “narratologist” by trade, is arriving for a storytelling conference in modern day Istanbul. Her grip on reality is called into question when we watch her spy a diaphanous, gnome-like man trying to run off with her baggage cart at the airport. Unwelcome apparitions like him continue to appear, unbidden, at the conference’s keynote lecture where a distracted Alithea pauses to declare that the tales of gods and heroes of ancient times have been vanquished to the dustbin of history. According to her, scientific explanations now rule the day.

Given Alithea’s job as an expert on the art of storytelling, this declaration is a surprise. Shouldn’t she at least take some professional pride in the enduring power of ancient myth? Or maybe it’s that, as Alithea has grown older, these just-so stories have lost their appeal. Has tragedy in Alithea’s life drained the magic from her world?

Miller and his co-writer/daughter, Augusta Gore, appear to be setting us up for a tale which will pit the rationality of science against the enchantment of the supernatural. So we ready ourselves to have the hard heart of our cynical protagonist softened by an encounter with magical forces. Thankfully, the writers dodge this predictable storyline and, instead, offer us a story in which science and magic become willing collaborators.

So, when Alithea pries open an antique glass bottle purchased at the Istanbul bazaar releasing Djinn (Idris Elba), she is startled, but, surprisingly, not at all disbelieving. Alithea is not so much concerned that she may be losing her mind when Djinn appears as she is that she will, like a sucker, fall victim to his plea for her to get on with the business of making her three wishes. From experience as a scholar of storytelling, Alithea knows that giving in to this temptation will inevitably lead to a less than happy outcome, no matter how carefully she formulates the statement of her desires.

In order to dissolve Alithea’s skepticism, Djinn launches into his three-thousand-year story as a prisoner of an assortment of lamps and flasks. He describes how he came to be “incarcerated” the first time - by King Solomon, no less - as well as the relationships he has had with the mortals who liberated him after that. In the process, we discover that Djinn desperately longs for lasting freedom, and we also learn that he is capable of deep human attachments. Significantly, for our purposes, it is also revealed that Djinn is a being who is made up of electromagnetic waves. In other words,he is a creature of pure light.

Soon after, the role that light will play in the film is underscored by a set of text panels that flash across the screen briefly. This mini powerpoint presentation telegraphs a schematic history of Djinn’s universe which begins with a burst of electromagnetic waves  - let there be light! - and culminates with the emergence of biological compounds and then, presumably, Darwinian evolution. It appears that, whatever Djinn’s status as a supernatural being is, he sees himself as a participant in a world of natural phenomena. Far from being at odds with one another, in this view of the world science and magic are companionable fellow travelers.

But “3,000 Years” is not done with light yet. As Djinn tells his story, we learn that his most recent liberation, sometime in the nineteenth century it appears, was at the hands of Zefir, the young wife of a Turkish merchant. With a nod to “Faust,” Zefir wishes for all the knowledge in the world. What we see flashing across the screen as a result of her request is a high-speed montage of Zefir devouring book after book supplied by Djinn which contain the scientific findings of the age. 

Usually the graphics presented in such a montage are a mess of mathematical nonsense, a lot of random expressions yanked from a high school algebra text. But the equations that appear in the books that Zefir pours over are, in this case, the real deal. They faithfully retrace the development of the theory of electromagnetism that got underway with Michael Faraday’s experiments in the 1830s in London and culminated in the early 1860 with Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s unification of electrical and magnetic phenomena. Maxwell’s equations, as his system came to be called, was the first unified field theory of modern physics.

This sequence presents us with a tantalizing ambiguity: is Zefir simply reconstructing discoveries reported by contemporary researchers in the books Djinn has provided, or has she, in a stroke of genius, developed a theory of electromagnetic waves all on her own, beating the esteemed Maxwell to the punch? Maybe the famous handful of equations should rightfully be called Zefir’s equations?

This backstory having to do with the phenomena of electricity and magnetism continues into the final act of the film when Alithea returns to London with Djinn as her companion. Creature of light that he is, Djinn is acutely sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation that impinges on him. In fact, he is so overwhelmed by the ocean of radio waves, Wi-Fi, and wireless signals that he starts to become ill. (Admittedly, present-day Istanbul, the technological metropolis that it is, should have presented Djinn with similar problems.) Although he manages to maintain his composure in the face of this electromagnetic assault, it slowly begins taking a toll on his well-being.

At the beginning of the film Alithea telegraphs that a science vs. superstition confrontation may be in the offing. And, yes, Djinn’s composition as a creature of light, along with the electromagnetic origins of the universe, is clearly stated. Yet no review of the film that I’ve read takes note of these facts. In addition, the montage of mathematics including Maxwell’s equations streams by so quickly that it takes a trained eye - at least an eye that has been exposed to an intermediate undergraduate course in electricity and magnetism - to make sense of it. Somehow, though, I doubt that physicists were the intended audience for the film.

A possible explanation is that the writers inserted the Easter eggs having to do with electromagnetism as a message in a bottle of sorts into the encasing tale of Alithea and Djinn. And it could be that they expected the occasional viewer, like me, would pick up this bottle and rub it hard enough to have its hidden message revealed. If that is the case, then I count myself as lucky to have happened across “3,000 Years” and to discover, unexpectedly, the science story inside. Being a science nerd, a wish of mine was indeed granted.

Adding injury to insult: the negative public health implications of Republican-sponsored voter-suppression laws

There are all sorts of reasons being offered for opposing the GOP-sponsored restrictive voting legislation being enacted around the country in states like Georgia and Texas. Most of them have to do with the fact that these measures, contrary to the claims of their authors, are intended to limit access to the polls by eligible voters, in particular by voters of color. The anti-democratic intent of these laws is clear; they are little more than a sour-grapes expression by Republicans for having lost the 2020 elections fair and square and a desperate attempt to not do so again.

But little is being said about another important reason to stand against these new voting measures that aim to thwart mail-in voting, either by making getting a absentee ballots harder to get or by reducing the number of drop boxes to which to return them, or by limiting early-voting options which distribute the otherwise large pulse of election-day voters over an extended period of time. That reason is that these voter suppression laws will also put public health at greater risk.

As much as we'd like to believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is a one-off event, hopefully one we will be able place behind us soon, the fact of the matter is that it will more than likely mark the first in a series of pandemics that we will have to confront this century. This is due in part to the fact that habitat loss, either as a result of encroachment by expanding urban areas or environmental degradation, will bring wild animal populations in closer proximity to humans. The chances of the occurrence of zoonotic disease, an infection that jumps from an animal to a human, becomes more and probable. And the increasingly connected global transportation system ensures that any such spillover will spread as far and as quickly as possible.

We dodged the other coronavirus bullets of SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012 which had originated in non-human animals. And, even if it turns out that COVID-19's intrusion into the human population resulted from a laboratory accident and not direct animal to human transmission, we should in no way breathe a sigh of relief. These pathogens are coming for us. When they do, they may take the form of a more virulent version of the common cold, as has COVID-19, or a more deadly strain of the seasonal flu. In this regard, an H5N1 variant of influenza, the so-called avian flu, has been on our pandemic radar for years. It really is only a matter of time.

The emergence of a novel coronavirus in China in late 2019 and its rapid spread to other parts of the world served to remind us that these kind of pandemics can arise unexpectedly. In the case of COVID-19, its U.S. debut coincided with the run-up to the 2020 primary election season. It is useful to remember that, in a time before the virus became a political hot potato, election officials began taking steps to reduce the infection risk to voters in their respective jurisdictions. These steps were viewed as prudent public health measures plain and simple.

Notably, Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took quick action to distribute absentee (a.k.a mail-in) ballot applications to all registered voters and wisely deferred primary election dates to better get a handle on how to operate in-person voting in the midst of a pandemic. Raffensperger, in spite of the fact that he had always been aligned with elements of the state's GOP-dominated government in their efforts to limit access to voting, recognized that the grave responsibility of reducing the impact of COVID-19 on Georgians going to the polls was in his hands.

And Secretary Raffensperger was not alone in this recognition; his counterparts in both red and blue states implemented similar measures, such as allowing for no-excuse absentee ballots and increasing the number and geographical distribution of drop-boxes where they could be returned. To the extent possible, especially given the short notice, these actions reduced the health risks to voters around the country who wanted to do their civic duty by participating in all phases of the 2020 election cycle. As dozens of legal challenges would reveal later that year, these voting changes were made without degrading the integrity electoral process one iota.

So, when all was said and done, as the last of the 2020 elections trickled into early 2021 with the Georgia runoffs for U.S. Senate, many states had accomplished the unexpected: they had made voting both more accessible and safer from a public health standpoint. It will be a head-scratcher for future historians who will ponder why such significant electoral achievements were dismantled almost immediately after their unalloyed success had been widely demonstrated.

Well, I guess they won't be scratching their heads about what motivated the Republican Party to turn back expansion of voter access. Due to cultural and demographic shifts in the electorate, the survival of that party has come to depend on anti-democratic measures like political gerrymandering and creating obstacles to voting by people of color. So there won't be much puzzle to the upside the GOP saw in rescinding pandemic voting procedures to renew established efforts at voter suppression.

What future historians will find puzzling is that the public health advantages that resulted from expanded absentee- and early-voting were so soon abandoned, especially since there would be a scramble to reimplement them when the next pandemic - and there would be a next pandemic - coincided with an election cycle. At a time when state officials and legislatures should have been working to refine and standardize approaches to voting that takes public health into account, they were instead preoccupied with dismantling the small advances they had made in this regard.

If you think that we reap benefits from socially-distanced approaches to voting only in the midst of a pandemic, you may want to think again. Although the Founding Fathers may have been visionary in many regards, ignorant of the germ theory of disease, they could not have contemplated that gathering large numbers of people to vote in enclosed spaces for an extended period of time in early November was a very bad idea from a public health perspective. It is the height of flu season, a reality that will likely stay with us for years until a universal influenza vaccine is fielded and widely administered.

The seasonal flu is responsible for 10,000 - 60,000 deaths in this country every year, not to mention many tens of thousands of more cases of serious illness and the hospitalizations that result from them. Its most vulnerable target is seniors, who turn out to be not only a segment of the population who vote in disproportionately large numbers but who also traditionally provide the lion's share of the army of volunteers that make in-person voting possible. Socially distanced voting measures will not only reduce the disease burden shouldered by the elderly but also by other vulnerable populations.

Admittedly, given the numerous state party primaries and runoffs, elections in the country are held at a variety of times of year well outside of flu season. But, as the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated, you don't need cold weather to encourage the spread airborne diseases. Indeed, the prevalence of respiratory illnesses in the fall and winter have less to do with the temperature itself and more to do with the fact that cold weather tends to drive people indoors. Why give these diseases a foothold anytime of the year by forcing vulnerable people into polling places unnecessarily?

Yes, it should be enough to retain or even extend expanded mail-in and early voting options as a matter of increasing participation in our elections at all levels and all times of the year. In spite of a small number of isolated incidents of voter fraud, as dozens of legal challenges have indicated, the 2020 elections have been the most secure and the most transparent in this country's history.

The bottom line is that recently enacted voter suppression legislation is the wrong way to go. Rolling back the very measures that made voting safer during the 2020 COVID pandemic is ill-advised according to public health considerations. It is these regressive laws that should themselves be rescinded to ensure that our electoral process is not only fair but also healthy.

Honoring Elijah Cummings by not repeating a mistake made at the 2016 Democratic National Convention

I think it's fitting on the day that the great civil rights and congressional leader Elijah Cummings is laid to rest to take a look back at the disrespect he endured giving an opening speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Reflection on this cautionary tale is critical because failure to take what happened then into account at next year's convention could very well mean a continuation of the political nightmare we have been experiencing for the last three years.

The setup for this video is pretty simple. It was July 25, Day 1 of the 2016 convention. The opening speeches, as always, were intended to strike unifying themes, the kind of things upon which it was imagined all Democrats could agree.

Accordingly, Representative Cummings had prepared a speech that emphasized the the need to address environmental concerns, including global warming, while creating jobs and maintaining U.S. global economic competitiveness; the related need to provide American children with a first-class education to accomplish this economic goal; the need to protect women's access to reproductive health services; and the need to secure and extend the access to healthcare that had been made possible by President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

What's not to like, right?

Well, it wasn't easy going for Representative Cummings. From the get-go he had to contend with resounding shouts of "Stop TPP" from the crowd, in particular from a cadre of very vocal Bernie bros. The shouts were so loud that they made his remarks impossible to hear in the conventional hall itself. The audio feed from speaker's microphone is what saved Cumming's speech from being lost to history and internet streaming.

I recall this situation first hand. I had tuned in to listen to the opening day speeches because I knew that Stacey Abrams was scheduled to be making her first appearance on the national stage. I was already a big fan of Leader Abrams, as she is called, and wanted to witness what I believed would be a historical moment in her political career, one that a good year  before the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial campaign that would make her a Democratic superstar. The shouting infiltrated her later appearance as well.

I remember sharing Representative Cumming's frustration as he tried to do his assigned duty by calling Democrats together to recognize, in spite of their differences, the many things that united them in common cause. And I shared in his disappointment that his important message was drowned out by those who had much more narrowly focused agendas.

Of course, it's hard to argue with true-believers of any stripe, those people who would see a promising party platform dashed to pieces unless it included a particular plank of their own insistence. Besides, as many thought at the time, the presidential election was in the bag, so why not take the opportunity to make a lot of noise about TPP, especially given how poorly the Democratic establishment had treated then upstart contender Bernie Sanders. What harm could it possibly cause?

One of the great ironies of this situation is that, as far as my informal survey would indicate, very few people now even remember what the initials TPP stand for. It's Trans-Pacific Partnership, by the way; a trade deal approved by President Obama and backed by candidate Hillary Clinton which was anathema to Democrats who saw it, understandably, as yet another big concession to multinational corporations to the disadvantage of American consumers and working people.

However important an issue TPP was at the time, it is recalled now as a vague skirmish in a fratricidal, intra-party conflict which preceded a war that Donald Trump and the Republicans would win three months later. I should add that shouts of Stop TPP will forever remind me of the unwarranted disrespect shown to the great Elijah Cummings, a man who had committed decades of his life to improving the lot of his party and the American people.

I hope that the salience of this video from July 2016 to our particular political moment is not lost. I fear that history could very well repeat itself as some notable, perhaps long-serving, well-respected Democratic leader like Elijah Cummings tries to offer a unifying message at the 2020 Democratic National convention. My genuine expectation is that person will drowned out with shouts of one sort or the other. My money is on "Medicare for all" as the deafening shout if, say, Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg is the nominee apparent, but I imagine that there is a chant available for every variation of Democratic presidential primary outcome.

Whatever slogan the crowd is shouting  in July 2020, what they won't be hearing - or allowing others in the hall to hear - is the list of things that the opening speakers are enumerating that unite us.

These will include, but not limited to: securing and extending current access to healthcare; reestablishing and defending women's right to reproductive health services; recognizing and safeguarding the rights of LGBTQ citizens in the workplace and in our society at large; restoring the EPA to former glory with a commitment to keeping our air and water clean; rejoining the Paris Climate Accords; returning our country to a progressive tax policy designed to narrow the growing chasm of wealth that separates the very rich from the middle class and the poor in this country; preserving our national wilderness for future generations to enjoy; and addressing and correcting the crimes being committed against people of color not only on our borders but also in our own communities. The list goes on.

It would seem to me that one of the most significant ways we could honor the memory the late Elijah Cummings is to remember this stain on the 2016 Democratic National Convention and vow to not let it happen again next summer. Whatever single issues inspire us, in the final analysis we need to keep focused on the constellation of concerns that bring us together. By insisting defiantly on any one thing, we risk - once again - the possibility of losing them all.

An FAQ: Why the House should move forward with the impeachment of Donald J. Trump

My mind is made up. I think that the U.S. House of Representatives should move forward with the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. Instead of writing a long argument which no one will read, I thought I would cast my position as a long and thinly-disguised FAQ. So here goes.

Q: Isn’t impeaching Trump by the House, absent the chance of conviction on the Senate, just playing into his hands? Won’t he use a failed impeachment to mobilize his base even more in 2020?

This kind of idle speculation is brought to you by the same folks who like to get Democrats to agonize over the “electability” of their competing presidential candidates. These are the very same pundits who opined in 2015 that Jeb Bush had a lock on the Republican presidential nomination and declared that nominating Trump in 2016 would lead to the GOP’s imminent downfall as well as their embarrassing rout in the general election.

The fact of the matter is that no one knows how impeachment of Trump by the House will play out. A lot depends on how the impeachment proceedings unfold and what the related investigations reveal. To make confident predictions about this process is an act of intellectual hubris. Also, I think it’s downright silly to imagine that Trump’s base could get anymore mobilized. They are full-time, Fox-News-fueled, nut-job mobilized as it is.

In addition, few commentators appear to be considering just how mobilized the Democrats might become as a result of Trump's impeachment. Sure, they're pretty pumped up coming off a very effective mobilization that led them to victory in last year’s midterm elections, but I don’t think they are anywhere near peaking. Besides, with two dozen candidates vying for the top of the Democratic ticket in 2020, the moral clarity that could result from a thorough investigation of the high crimes and misdemeanors of Donald Trump, may just what will be needed to unite a fractured party on the run-up to the general election.

There is one other component to my political analysis that recommends pursuing impeachment. And that is it will upset DJT to no end, day in and day out, for the better part of the next year. And, lest you think that I am motivated solely by wanting to see Trump suffer as some compensense for what he has put us all through these last couple of years, I point out that a fuming Trump has turned out to be a fumbling Trump.

Yes, what has gotten us to this critical point in this sad tale of presidential misdeeds, was not the original charter of the Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation itself, it was the way that original charter resulted in Donald Trump’s becoming so unhinged that he committed serial acts of obstruction of justice. (In sports parlance, I believe that these are called “forced errors.”) If you think Robert Mueller's investigation sent Donald Trump off the deep end, imagine what a months-long, 24/7 impeachment inquiry will do. Besides, if recent experience is any guide, Trump is likely to commit new crimes that can serve as more impeachment fodder should he somehow be reelected next year.

Q: Isn’t the sole purpose of impeachment by the House the real prospect of removing the president from office as a result of conviction in the Senate? Does it make any sense to forward articles of impeachment to the Senate when it's pretty much given, at least with the information we have in hand now, that Trump will be acquitted there?

Although impeachment by the House was viewed by the framers of the constitution as the first step in a two-step process of removing a corrupt president from office, there is nothing that speaks to that being its sole purpose. The House’s job isn’t to determine whether an impeachment will succeed, its job is to act as a guardian of the American democratic system of government by uncovering and documenting crimes and misdemeanors committed by the highest office holders in the land and forwarding those determinations to the Senate for their consideration in full public view.

My last qualification, in full public view, emphasizes a central purpose of the impeachment process. The House, using investigative powers granted only to it, lays out a case that the president has committed inexcusable wrongs. Its responsibility is to make that case convincingly, not only to clarify the situation to contemporary audiences, but also to set the historical record straight. Only the House can do this.

And, although it is the case with impeachment that the House proposes and the Senate disposes, I can think of no better way of documenting the moral and political failure of a craven Republican Senate than by having them dismiss the weight of the evidence brought before them by their colleagues in the lower chamber. Another way of saying this is that House is bound to proceed with a stillborn impeachment, if only to underscore the cowardice the Senate has demonstrated the last two years.

Q: Well, even if further congressional investigations of Donald Trump are a good idea, why do they have to be conducted under the rubric of impeachment? Isn’t it sufficient to have the various House committee investigations (e.g. Intelligence Committee, Oversight Committee) move forward? Won’t they eventually have the same effect as an impeachment investigation without all the hullabaloo?

In a more perfect world - one where the executive branch was responsive to congressional requests for information and complied with congressional subpoenas - the answers to these questions would be “yes.” But we don’t live in such a world. Far from it, we live in a world whether the President of the United States has vowed to refuse to cooperate with all investigations initiated by the U.S. House of Representatives.

And how these disputes between the legislative and executive branches are worked out in the federal courts will ultimately tell the tale of this corrupt administration. Depending on whether those investigations originate in, say, the House Ways and Means Committee which is seeking Donald Trump’s tax returns from the Department of the Treasury or from a committee tasked with investigating Donald Trump’s impeachment makes all the difference.

The reason behind this difference has to do with the authority that Congress relies on in pursuing its investigations. When committees like the Ways and Means Committee undertake an investigation it has to be done in order to make laws, in other words it has to have a legislative purpose. This is the legislative authority granted to the Congress by Article I, Section I of the constitution.

Not surprisingly, objections to such committee-initiated investigations often emanate from claims that the requested information serves no legislative purpose. This is exactly what has happened with the request by Ways and Means for Trump’s tax returns. Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin contends that the request - even though it conforms with the letter of the law - is intended only to harass the president and has no legislative value. Although the committee has responded with identifiable legislative objectives associated with its request, the case will have to work its way through an appeals process which could take months or years to resolve. The same is true of other committee subpoenas, although they may thwarted by other legal claims, notably exemption due to executive privilege.

But things change qualitatively when the House investigation is being conducted as an impeachment inquiry. According to Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution:

“The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”

This power of impeachment exists outside of any legislative authority granted to the House in Article I, Section I and is so not subject to legislative-purpose scrutiny. The operative word in Clause 5 is “sole,” which indicates that the power of impeachment - and, by extension, necessary impeachment investigations - are exercised at the discretion of the House alone. Although this does not circumvent all federal court challenges raised by the executive branch to subpoenas issued as a result of an impeachment inquiry, it should expedite the consideration of any cases that arise as a result.

All said, the investigative power of a House impeachment inquiry, unlike that of legislative committee counterparts, is largely unconstrained. When you recall that the House is tasked with the impeachment of corrupt officials, the very people who would avoid investigation, this makes a lot of sense.

So here’s it is in a nutshell, my argument for the House moving forward with impeachment:

(1) Determining the political consequences of a failed impeachment of Donald Trump is a pundit's guessing game; the only thing I can say with any certainty is that the process will keep Trump rattled and making political mistakes for the foreseeable future, which I take to be a good thing.

(2) Even a stillborn impeachment will have the desired effect of launching an investigation which further documents the crimes of this president and of his administration for historical purposes; this record can be used to help lawmakers determine how to protect our democracy from such abuses in the future.

(3) Investigations by standing House committees are subject to challenges concerning the validity of their legislative purposes; a House impeachment inquiry, once constituted, will have much freer rein in subpoenaing essential information thus expediting a legal process that could otherwise take months or years.

It's all in the timing: a tale of two detonations

Athens Double-Barrelled Cannon

You might think that this double-barrelled cannon sitting next to City Hall in Athens, Georgia could be prop in some sort of misguided Civil War comedy. And, if you did, you wouldn’t be far from right. According to a plaque nearby, the cannon, the only one of its kind, was the brainchild of a Mr. John Gilleland, a private in the “Mitchell Thunderbolts,” an elite “home guard” unit of business and professional men ineligible because of age or disability for service in the Confederate army. Here I use the the words “brainchild” and “elite” quite loosely.

The double-barrel design was intended to fire simultaneously two balls connected by a chain which would “mow down the enemy somewhat as a scythe cuts wheat.” It failed for lack of a means of firing both barrels at the exact same instant. Apparently, “the lack of precise simultaneity caused uneven explosion of the propelling charges, which snapped the chain and gave each ball an erratic and unpredictable trajectory.”

My first reaction to reading this story of this unusual weapon was, “well, duh!” I ran the numbers in my head, first estimating that the velocity of a ball leaving the muzzle of a cannon was on the order of a a thousand feet per second. This meant that if the two detonations occurred even a millisecond apart, the balls would be separated by a foot when exiting the mouth of the cannon, and that separation would increase by an additional foot for each additional millisecond difference in the timing of the detonations. It’s no wonder the chain broke

It’s hard to imagine how 1860s technology, utilizing sputtering fuses and hand-packed gun power, could achieve such precise simultaneous detonations. It’s also hard for me to imagine how the “elite” men of the Mitchell Thunderbolts failed to do the simple arithmetic required to determine the feasibility of their ambitious Yankee-killer.

Oddly enough, this misadventure in weapons development brought to mind a more recent development in military technology that faced a timing challenge far more daunting than the one that faced the Mitchell Thunderbolts. Fast forward only eighty years, and a genuinely elite international team of scientists and engineers found themselves engaged in the development of the first atomic bombs as part of the American Manhattan Project.

Most popular discussion of the technological hurdles faced by J. Robert Oppenheimer and his crew based at Los Alamos centers on the difficulties in creating the necessary amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium to serve as the cores of the fission bombs they wanted to build. But there were other formidable problems, including some having to do with then as yet uninvented electronics.

In particular, design for one of the first two bombs, dubbed Fatman, employed a spherical plutonium core and required that it be compressed by an implosion that would squeeze that core to the critical density needed to initiate the sustained chain reaction that would result in the desired nuclear detonation. To accomplish this, the small plutonium core was nestled in a spherical structure whose outer layer was formed of facets of very powerful chemical explosives. For this arrangement to work, these facets — or lenses as they were called — had themselves to be detonated within a microsecond of each other.

Failure to achieve this kind of “precise simultaneity,” to borrow words from the Athens double-barreled cannon plaque, would lead to an “uneven explosion of the propelling charges.” In the case of Fatman, this would mean that the plutonium core would not be compressed uniformly to the required density and, as a result, the necessary chain reaction would be muted or, perhaps, not occur at all.

As we know from history, whether for good or ill is a matter still hotly disputed in some quarters, the Manhattan Project team succeeded in achieving the exquisite timing required for an implosion bomb.The 40,000–80,000 deaths in 1945 resulting from the detonation of such a device above the city of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9 of that year serve as lasting reminder of their tragic success.

In closing, it is interesting to note that the Athens-area Confederates failed attempt at constructing a weapon of enhanced destruction resulted in a public “object of curiosity.” More telling, as it says on the plaque, the double-barrelled cannon “performed sturdy service for many years in celebrating political victories.” Somehow the cruel madness of the Jim Crow South saw this ill-conceived cannon as something to be proud of. Go figure.

I can only hope that one day our own more successful weapons of mass destruction will be stripped on their nuclear cores and their husks distributed to city halls far and wide as objects of curiosity where they can perform sturdy service celebrating the victory of those fighting for complete nuclear disarmament.

Trump running out the clock on Congressional subpoenas: why the Supreme Court is of little help to resolve it anytime soon

As I have discussed elsewhere, one constructive side-effect of the Donald Trump administration and its abundance of deliberately orchestrated constitutional crises has been to get me to reflect on what that document says and how it works to resolve or, more aptly, to fail to resolve the aforementioned crises.

The latest of these challenges to the constitutional order has to do with the president's decision to not comply with several subpoenas issued by the U.S. House of Representatives. The first of note results from the House Ways and Means Committee demanding Trump's recent tax returns from Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. The second, emerging from investigations by the House Intelligence Committee, requires Attorney General William Barr to turn over the unredacted Mueller report. There are others.

To the extent that these disputes between the executive and the legislative branches constitute constitutional crises, a question begs be asked, "why can't these be resolved quickly with a Supreme Court decision?" Instead, we are faced with months-, perhaps years-long, litigation in the federal courts before any related case arrives at the SCOTUS doorstep. How did such an inefficient approach to a much-touted system of checks and balances come to be standard operation procedure for the federal government?

The first level of explanation lies in Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution which defines the "original jurisdiction" of the Supreme Court. Original jurisdiction, meaning the kind of cases that can go directly to the court, are pretty restricted. They are mostly limited to seldom employed disputes between representatives of foreign governments (e.g. ambassadors) and the United States and between the states themselves, the latter representing the lion's share of these original cases.

But wait, you might ask scratching your heads - as I did - why aren't disputes between the court's "co-equal" branches of government, namely between Congress and the president, included in cases that could go directly to the Supreme Court? The answer has to do with a deeper reading of Article III and the thinking that went into constructing it. It also has to do with a lie we continue to tell ourselves about the visionary system of checks and balances crafted by our constitutional founding fathers.

The lie emanates from the fact that, in many respects, the judicial branch of our government wasn't construed at first as being a co-equal branch of government at all. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton spends a fair amount of ink in Federalist Paper 81 assuring opponents of the yet-to-be-ratified constitution that the Supreme Court proposed in it would possess limited in power. He asserts that its original jurisdiction would be circumscribed, as I described above. In addition, Hamilton even goes so far as to say "there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which DIRECTLY empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution."  This latter claim may come as a shock to modern ears, as it should.

We tend to forget that Hamilton was making his case for the Supreme Court in response to anti-federalists who didn't want to see the creation of a separate judicial branch of government at all. They felt, as many others did at the time, that the legislature was the primary branch of government since it was most representative of the will of the people. (That's why it's positioned front and center as Article I in the constitution.) They did not want its power usurped by a bench of unelected judges, and they were fearful that these judges would overturn congressional acts at their discretion. Across the pond, Britain seemed to function just fine with a high court residing in the House of Lords, part of their legislature. Hamilton's task was to assuage opponents concerns about the proposed Supreme Court.

Needless to say, a lot has changed since Hamilton penned Federalist 81. As far as the Supreme Court goes, it only took a handful of years and Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion in the bedrock case of Marbury v. Madison to establish the doctrine of judicial review and so elevate the court toward the co-equal status it enjoys today. Sadly, in the intervening years, the primacy of the legislative branch - the central feature of government as imagined by the framers - has suffered depredations by the self-aggrandizing imperial presidency that we are stuck with today.

So, even though its currency has risen over the past couple of centuries, the Supreme Court is pretty much saddled with the restrictions of its original jurisdiction. This means that enforcement of congressional subpoenas directed at the administration will have to wind their way through an appeals process that begins in the federal courts. It's possible that these cases will be expedited, but in all likelihood, thanks to the reluctance on the part of the framers to position the judiciary to resolve disputes between Congress and the president, it looks like Donald Trump will be able to run out the clock on matters of accountability that are critical to our democratic form of government. So it goes.

The better angels of Robert Mueller's nature

As I scoured the Mueller Report the past couple of days for yet more evidence of presidential crimes, I found myself in the position of uncovering evidence of an unexpected glimmer of human virtue. And what struck me at first as just an interesting nuance to a complicated legal discussion now appears to me to be the pivot around which the morality tale of the entire story of the Trump administration turns.

To put things in context, we have been aware since the days of Watergate that the legal question of indicting a sitting president — and by that I mean bringing formal criminal charges — is fraught. In fact, according to Justice Department guidelines, such an indictment isn’t permitted because it would undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions. Robert Mueller, a by-the-book kind of prosecutor if there ever was one, hewed to this established policy while formulating the results of his almost two-year long investigation into Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election.

This tale of non-indictability is the beginning and end of the story in most of the news coverage of why Mueller chose not to charge President Trump with obstruction of justice for his interference with an ongoing federal investigation. But there is more to it than that.

Some coverage does go further and points out that Robert Mueller takes the opportunity in his report to refute the theory — championed by Attorney General William Barr and others — that it is indeed legally impossible for the president of the United States to obstruct justice. Good for him.

Barr’s expansive reading of executive power ignores the role that “corrupt intent” plays in determining the criminality of a presidential act. If such a twisted doctrine were upheld, it would permit, say, the president to trade get-out-of-jail pardons for cash on the barrelhead. Such a reading of the constitution, one which places any president above the law, is little more than a prescription for tyranny.

But Robert Mueller goes beyond simply adhering to Justice Department regulations concerning indictments and beyond refuting Barr’s dangerous constitutional interpretation of executive power in his treatment of the question of obstruction of justice. He could have, if had wanted to, included an opinion that the president had committed obstruction of justice even while he refrained from issuing a criminal indictment. This threading-the-needle is the path that many Trump opponents had hoped for. It was certainly at the top of my list.

So why did Mueller choose to hedge his bets and take this ambiguous path? The answer in one word is “fairness.” As the Mueller explains on page 2 of volume 2 of his report: “Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought.”

And why would it be unfair to make claims of criminal behavior absent the ability to bring formal charges? Mueller continues,

“[t]he ordinary means for an individual to respond to an accusation is through a speedy and public trial, with all the procedural protections that surround a criminal case. An individual who believes he was wrongly accused can use that process to seek to clear his name. In contrast, a prosecutor’s judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator. “

In other words, in this analysis, although the protection of the president from criminal indictment serves the constitutional purpose of allowing the executive branch to operate free from the inevitable legal entanglement that it would imply, it is, at least in Mueller’s mind, a personal disadvantage for the president in these circumstances.

Take a moment and let that sink in: Robert Mueller believes that freedom from criminal indictment can, at times, be a personal liability since it makes it impossible to defends one’s reputation against damaging charges in open court. In Mueller’s opinion, charging the president in the report, but not through due legal process, would subvert the president’s right to his clear his name of accusations leveled against him.

So, ultimately, the Special Counsel’s decision not to declare the president’s efforts at obstruction as crimes had to do with Mueller’s commitment to fairplay and to the ability of someone under legal scrutiny to defend his reputation. This was not a conclusion I expected.

There are two glaring ironies at play here. The first has to do with the fact that Robert Mueller appears to be more dedicated to Donald Trump’s ability to protect his good name than the president himself, at least in practice. It’s hard to think of any living politician more disreputable or anyone holding a position of public office who has conducted himself with such unabashed disregard to standards of moral rectitude.

The second irony in Mueller’s taking up Trump’s cause in this way is even more disturbing. While Mueller inhabits a civil world of due process in which the right of suspected criminals to defend their reputations must be preserved, Donald Trump lives in a thuggish world of brute power where adversaries are to be spared no quarter and dispatched by any means necessary, including nefarious ones.

The implication here is startling: Donald Trump has spent the better part of the last 23 months smearing the reputation of Robert Mueller with insults and baseless lies, the very Robert Mueller who, it turns out, was busy making sure that Donald Trump would not have his reputation sullied unfairly. If there is a better example of turning the other cheek in American political history, it escapes me.

All this said, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Mueller’s decision not to present clear claims of obstruction of justice in his report even in spite of his inability to indict Trump. Such declarations could have gone a long way toward helping to clarify the ongoing public debate. In addition, a forthright statement of Trump’s criminality could have provided additional impetus to the Congressional investigations underway that could have helped propel them beyond mere impeachment of the president in the House to the possibility of his conviction in the Senate.

It may very well be that Robert Mueller’s commitment to fairplay has made it more difficult to remove Donald Trump from office before his term is up. But, in any event, it has illuminated for me the central moral question presented by the Trump administration I alluded to at the start.

We are all witnesses to an unfolding battle which pits an age-old, corrupt form of politics rooted in the exercise of raw power, as exemplified by Donald Trump, against an enlightened political system committed to justice and fairplay, as exemplified by Robert Mueller.

Although I believe that Mueller’s decision to err on the side of fairness may prove to be a short-term tactical mistake, in the long run I feel that it will be seen as a turning point for distinguishing the mobster politics of Donald Trump from the legitimate exercise of political power based in law. This may very well be what, in Lincoln’s words, the better angels of our nature demand. It appears that Robert Mueller may have heard their call.

Someone is responsible for destroying American democracy and, surprise, it's not the Russians

One of my favorite science movies is Steven Soderbergh's 2011 Contagion. Not only is it smart and riveting, it also features three strong women scientists as its heroes. See the short essay I wrote to  see why I loved this film.

For those unfamiliar with it, Contagion - to the extent cinematically practical - realistically portrays the unfolding of a deadly global pandemic and the valiant efforts of scientists around the world to wrestle it to the mat.

Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control is a setting of the film. (They even participated in its production.) In the story, the director of CDC Dr. Ellis Cheever, played by Laurence Fishburne, is confronted by a U.S. government agent who suspects that the pandemic is the result of terrorists weaponizing the bird flu. To which Cheever responds, "someone doesn't have to weaponize the bird flu.The birds are doing that."

I like sharing this quote because it applies to so many situations where people jump at dramatic explanations while overlooking the explanations that are staring them right in the face.

Take for instance the current hue and cry about Russia trying to destroy our democracy. Now, there's little doubt in my mind that Russian agents, under the direction of Vladimir Putin, have committed criminal acts in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Perhaps they're still at work trying to do the same for the upcoming midterms.

But when it comes to destroying American democracy, I take a cue from the CDC director in Contagion and say, "the Russians don't have to destroy our democracy. The Republicans are already doing that."

All the havoc wrought by Putin and his gang of twelve indicted GRU agents and their stateside colluders pales in comparison with the damage that has been done over the past decade by the combination of gerrymandering and voter suppression engineered by the GOP and their agents at all levels of government. If the democratic process dies in this country, we will have no one to blame other than the Republican Party.

The fact of the matter is that much of the Russian threat to our electoral process can be effectively addressed by securing our electoral infrastructure. My guess is that, for less than the cost of a single advanced fighter aircraft, we could put in place the digital defenses necessary to keep Russian - and other - attackers out of our ballot boxes.

I wish I could say that it was a fraction as easy to address the threat posed to our democratic system by Republicans. We will have to regain control of a number of state houses in order to reverse the gerrymandering already in place. As it stands now, with an increasingly Republican Supreme Court, overturning of the despicable Citizens United decision which elevates the rights of corporations to those of citizens in our electoral process, is a pipedream. And it looks as though hope to turn back GOP voter suppression measures targeting people of color are likewise doomed for the near future.

So, by all means, let's do the easy stuff that's required to frustrate Russian and other hackers who are trying to mess with our elections. But let's not forget that our greatest enemy when it comes to undermining democracy in this country is the Republican Party. And the only way to defeat their nefarious designs is to beat them soundly at the polls come this November. It could very well be our last chance to do so.

Why subpoenaing Trump's interpreter at Helsinki is a bad idea

I'm not a big fan of the doctrine of executive privilege which contends that a president can withhold information resulting from the internal operation of the executive branch of government. Its invocation, as Richard Nixon's effort to suppress the release of the Watergate tapes illustrates, is used more often than not to keep information critical to the functioning of our democracy from seeing the light of day.

That said, it makes sense to me that presidents should be able to engage in frank, off-the-record, private conversations with individuals, including other world leaders. I believe this because such conversations are an important way for them to explore the range of policy options, some speculative, that are part of good decision-making. Releasing a transcript or compelling testimony by third-parties would have a chilling effect on such discussions.

Of course, this note has to do with the recent demand that the interpreter present at the private conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki Monday be subpoenaed by Congress to testify about what she heard. Although a congressional committee could issue such a subpoena, it's hard for me to imagine that it would be upheld by by a federal judge when confronted with assertion of executive privilege for the reasons outlined above.

Might there be exceptions? Didn't Nixon end up having to release his tapes under threat of a subpoena after all?

I do think that there are exceptions and that they mostly have to do with demonstration of probable cause that conversation in question was implicated in the commission of a crime. In spite of the clamor about Trump being a traitor, I suspect that the standard of probable cause would be hard to meet in this instance. My guess is that most federal judges - and ultimately the Supreme Court - would see this subpoena as little more than a politically motivated fishing expedition.

And, in the usual and understandable rush to undercut Donald Trump, we should consider what would be lost if such a subpoena succeeded. Well for starters, as an article in the New York Times today points out (see "Who Heard What Trump Said to Putin? Only One Other American" in the comments), it would compromise the professional ethics of people who serve as interpreters. The likely result being that only political lackeys would be selected do a job that demands the highest level of language expertise.

More significantly, and something that appears to be lost on Trump opponents who are forever looking for new legal mechanisms to thwart his administration, it opens the door to all conversations between future presidents and world leaders where an interpreter or a notetaker is present being subject to revelation by subpoena.

For example, would we want President Elizabeth Warren's private discussions with her Chinese counterpart to always be a matter of public record? Do we really want already trigger-happy Republican congressional committee chairs - I'm looking at you Trey Gowdy - turning every trip by a Democratic president abroad into a subpoena battle?

Finally, although there's absolutely no changing their minds, Republicans are using what they see as politically motivated legal tactics to convince their base that legitimate legal process, like the Mueller investigation, are nothing more than cynical sour grapes on the part of Democratic losers. Calling for the subpoena of Trump's interpreter in Helsinki plays right into their hands.

A few cautionary words on behalf of accused Russian agent Mariia Butina

I rise to speak on behalf of - but necessarily in defense of - Mariia Butina, the Russian political science graduate student now in federal custody, standing accused of having failed to register as an agent of the Russian Federation as well as related conspiracy charges.

I am motivated less by my belief that Mariia is innocent of the charges levelled against her, than by a desire to push back against the rising tide of 21st-century red-baiting that has enveloped this country. In particular, I am troubled by the fact that the people egging this phenomenon on are blind to the kind of repercussions that may lie in store.

For those who haven't been keeping up with the details of Mariia's plight, she was arrested Monday for her failure to register as a Russian operative. The activities that she engaged in while failing to register include cozying up to the National Rifle Association in an effort to create a back channel of communications between influential Republicans, notably members of the Trump administration, and Russian counterparts.

First, it should be noted that creating a back channel of communications, in and of itself, in no way constitutes a crime. In other contexts, it goes by the name "diplomacy." But, if you're working under the direction of a foreign government, as appears to be the case with Mariia, you have to let the U.S. State Department know that that is your plan.

Of course, this kind of nuance will be lost on the American public, as the words agent and operative used to describe Mariia become interchangeable with spy. Perhaps other charges will be revealed that suggest what she did came closer to what we would label espionage, but, until they do, it's hard for me to see that Butina is guilty of endangering the national security interests of this country in any substantive way.

I should say, in my own defense here, I am well aware of the political context in which Mariia's indictment and arrest occurred. To me they were a demonstration that the National Security Division of the Justice Department, along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, had, maybe at Robert Mueller's urging, decided to fight back against Donald Trump's public disdain for U.S. intelligence agencies that he put so cravenly on display during his summit meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin earlier this week. In addition, there may be a possibility that Mariia will "turn" and provide the kind of evidence for collusion that Special Investigator Mueller is looking for.

So, you might ask, what's the harm? Butina is no ingenue and should have been aware that the job she signed up for with the Russian Federation carried with it some risks. If that's the case, her brazenness with how she conducted communications with her Russian handlers, suggests that she either did not care or had not been properly trained.

The harm lies not so much with Mariia, although having a young person sentenced to a lengthy term in a federal prison for getting in bed with the NRA hardly strikes me as fair. I would argue that having to attend two National Prayer Breakfasts in the course of her assigned duties here should constitute punishment enough. Frankly, I would prefer the slammer.

The real harm, just about to be played out in Russia, with the arrest of U.S. graduates students or American representatives of nonprofit organizations working there under the pretext that they are operating as unregistered agents of our government or some similar trumped up charge. Russia hardly needs any encouragement to imprison foreigners working there on behalf of human rights or press freedom and we have just handed them a bushelful.

If we're lucky, this exchange of pawns in our current geopolitical struggle with Russia will end with a prisoner swap involving Mariia and an American counterpart who is just now about to be arrested in Moscow or St. Petersburg. If we're not lucky, a lot of innocent people will be caught in the crossfire, and the already difficult humanitarian work in Russia will be brought to a screeching halt.

After all is said and done, although I appreciate the blow against Donald Trump that was intended by the arrest of Mariia Butina, in particular by its timing, I believe, in the greater scheme of things, it will prove to have been misguided, resulting in few tangible political benefits and, perhaps, a number of ruined lives.