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Today is the anniversary of the day, in 1803, when the Supreme Court, led by John Marshall, issued their decision in Marbury v. Madison. Marbury is regarded as the single most important decision in American constitutional law. It established that the U.S. Constitution is actual law, not just a statement of political principles and ideals. It also helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the federal government.

Marbury v. Madison was the first case in which the Supreme Court struck down a federal law as unconstitutional and it is most significant for its role in establishing the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, or the power to invalidate laws as unconstitutional. As Marshall put it, “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

The power of the Supreme Court to strike down laws that it sees as unconstitutional is a foundation of our three-part government. Marbury also established that the power of judicial review covers actions by the executive branch—the President and his cabinet members. However, American courts’ power of judicial review over executive branch actions only extends to matters in which the executive has a legal duty to act or refrain from acting, and does not extend to matters that are entirely within the President’s discretion, such as whether to veto a bill or whom to appoint to an office. This power has been the basis of later important Supreme Court decisions. In its 1974 decision United States v. Nixon, for example, the Supreme Court held that President Richard Nixon had to comply with a subpoena to provide tapes of his conversations for use in a criminal trial related to the Watergate scandal, which ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation.

I expect that this will be an important principle in the next few weeks, months and years.

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Christianity???

possible copyright infringement here…

Thank you Google Translate:

Happy Valentine’s Day!

or…

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So many questions…

Here’s Whitney Houston. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS7LdU

On this day in 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition. He believed, based on his lengthy astronomical observations that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The Inquisition found that his opinions contradicted the Bible and he was ‘vehemently suspect of heresy’ and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Galileo was an astronomer, physicist and engineer. He studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and “hydrostatic balances”. He invented various military compasses. With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn’s rings, lunar craters and sunspots. He also built an early microscope.

According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo probably bears more of the responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else, and Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science. Sadly, many people today, even at the highest levels of our government, still reject science and the scientific method even though advances in science and engineering have made our modern life possible.

Cristiano Banti’s 1857 painting Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition

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Siri can be ruthless

This is why we strap it down…

speaks for itself

Unfortunate juxtaposition…

Holy Cow!

Here’s an amazing performance of Sing Sing Sing by the Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School band. Kyoto Tachibana High School is today an integrated Junior and Senior High School located in Kyoto. The school is named after the Tachibana tree which grows near the palace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=souj-xWs7xs

February 12, 1809 was the birthday of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin (and presumably a number of other people). Each of these men has had a remarkable impact on the world we live in today.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defending the nation as a constitutional union, defeating the Confederacy, playing a major role in the abolition of slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy. He was born in poverty in Kentucky and raised on the frontier. He was self-educated and became a lawyer and later a politician.

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist,^[6] widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honored by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Darwin traveled on the five-year Second Voyage of the HMS Beagle, a small ship of the British navy. The voyage was intended as a voyage of exploration and lasted five years. Darwin had kept a diary of his experiences, and combined this with details from his scientific notes as the book titled Journal and Remarks, published in 1839 as the third volume of the official account of the expedition. This travelogue and scientific journal was widely popular, and was reprinted many times with various titles and a revised second edition, becoming known as The Voyage of the Beagle. His observations during the voyage led to his understanding of evolution and he published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.

The round-the-world voyage of the Beagle, 1831–1836

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Nights in the sun…

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SIGNS!

Spring Training starts today!!!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq3hEMUeBGQ

Today is Liberation Day, a public holiday in San Marino. Its full title is the “Anniversary of the Liberation of the Republic from Alberonian occupation (1740) and the Feast of St. Agata, patron saint, along with San Marino”.

San Marino has been invaded only a few times. The first incursion came in 1503 when Cesare Borgia, known as Valentino, invaded. His plans to rule were thwarted by his death in 1507, restoring San Marino to its independent status.

Over 200 years later, it was time for an Italian cardinal called Giulio Alberoni to step up to the plate and try to subjugate San Marino. Trying to expand the Papal State’s power base in the region, Alberoni (at the ripe old age of 75) invaded San Marino on October 17th 1739. 

Unhappy with the aggressive way he was ruling the country and the whole invasion thing, the people of San Marino protested against Alberoni’s occupation and appealed to the Vatican. Messages were sent to obtain justice from Pope Clemente XII. The Pope recognized the rights of San Marino and on February 5th 1740, he restored the country’s independence.

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I prefer the square ones.

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I saw that Marianne Faithfull died a few days ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8EykQaZ8CU

On this day in 1865, the House passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery in America. The amendment read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The amendment passed 119 to 56, just barely above the necessary two-thirds majority. The amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states due to pressure on some of the ‘reconstructed’ states since the amendment had been rejected by New Jersey, Delaware, Kentucky and Mississippi.

The amendment contained a crucial exception: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

After the end of the Civil War, Many southern states created ‘black codes’ through creation of new types of offenses, especially attitudinal offenses—not showing proper respect, those types of things. New offenses like “malicious mischief” were vague, and could be a felony or misdemeanor depending on the supposed severity of behavior. These laws sent more Black people to prison than ever before, and by the late 19th century the country experienced its first “prison boom.”

States put prisoners to work through a practice called “convict-leasing,” whereby white planters and industrialists “leased” prisoners to work for them. States and private businesses made money doing this, but prisoners didn’t. This meant many Black prisoners found themselves living and working on plantations against their will and for no pay decades after the Civil War.

Like chattel slavery before it, convict-leasing was brutal and inhumane. Across the country, tens of thousands of people, overwhelmingly Black, were leased by the state to plantation owners, privately owned railroad yards, coal mines and road-building chain gangs and made to work under the whip from dawn till dusk—often as punishment for petty crimes such as vagrancy or theft.

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Something wrong here…

Uh Oh!!!!

Today is the birthday, in 1954, of Adrian Vandenburg, Dutch guitarist who was a member of Whitesnake who had the 1987 US No.1 & UK No.9 single ‘Here I Go Again’. Also a member of Manic Eden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF8RHM1OCg