In the end, at least voters administered justice to Samantha Steele
A Cook County judge let her walk on a DUI charge, but the public had already rendered its verdict
5-7-2026
This week:
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
Good Sports — Time to watch the NBA again!
Green Light — Angine de Poitrine
Surprise! A Cook County judge gives a Cook County elected official an enormous break
The evidence that Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele was driving drunk on Nov. 10, 2024, looked airtight.
She crashed a borrowed car she was driving into two parked vehicles on Ashland Avenue.
The first bystander on the scene testified that Steele was “defensive and aggressive” when he went to the scene of the crash, and that he noticed her car smelled of alcohol and that she had not shifted her car into park.
She was slurring her words and swaying when speaking to arresting officers, who testified they smelled alcohol on her breath and that she had “red, bloodshot, glassy eyes” and appeared “confused” and “disoriented” on the scene.
She had an opened but corked bottle of wine next to her in the car.
She refused to take field sobriety tests (as was her right).
She was disrespectful to the officers on the scene of the crash, which prosecutors argued was a sign of impairment.
The emergency room doctor who treated her when she asked to be taken to the hospital testified she appeared to be intoxicated and that she refused a physical exam, a blood draw and examination of her pupils.
And then there’s the police body camera video
Yet Steele was acquitted Tuesday of drunk driving after a two-day trial. From the Tribune:
While Cook County prosecutors established a “suspicion” of impairment, Judge Donald Suriano said they failed to definitively prove Steele was under the influence of alcohol when she crashed a friend’s car into two parked vehicles … (and) did not show “obvious signs of impairment,” Suriano said.
Suriano retired in 2016 and was recalled to the bench by the Illinois Supreme Court last December for a one-year appointment to help alleviate a shortage of judges.
His message to drunk drivers is don’t cooperate with police and don’t submit to sobriety tests of any sort.
His message to police officers in Cook County is don’t bother arresting or even writing up openly intoxicated motorists if they refuse testing. Soft-headed judges will just let them off.
In an interview with WGN-TV’s Tahman Bradley posted Wednesday, Steele said she wasn’t drinking that night:
I had a pituitary tumor. It’s a tumor that sits on your pituitary gland and mine was large enough that it was hitting my optical nerve which affected by peripheral vision. And also, I’m a bad driver, just to be clear with that. … The bottle of wine was sealed, per Illinois law. I had been at a restaurant earlier that day at 1 p.m. for brunch with some friends, and when I drink non-organic wine I always get headaches. And so I had to buy the bottle because they don’t sell this by the glass.
I’m just an old English major, but it seems to me that someone who hasn’t been drinking would demand field sobriety and blood tests when pinched on suspicion of DUI, would call doctors to the witness stand to testify about the existence and effects of her pituitary tumor, and would testify in court to this story, not save it for a TV journalist.
The Steele case and the case of Alfonso Talley, who allegedly murdered a Chicago cop last month after Cook County Circuit Court Judge John Lyke Jr. decided in December to release him on home monitoring because he wasn’t a danger to the community despite a long record of predatory violence, remind me of an old joke.
A man, let’s call him Stanley, suspected his wife was having an affair and so hired a private detective to follow her one night. The detective returned with a report.
“She went to a bar and met up with a man,” he said. “They had several drinks and were slow dancing for about an hour. I followed them from the bar to a motel at the edge of town, where they checked in. I was able to watch them through the window of their room. They were embracing. Then they turned off the lights and shut the curtains. That’s all I saw.”
Stanley frowned. “Hmm,” he said. “Always the element of doubt.”
Stanley could be a judge in Cook County!
After the verdict, Steele released a statement saying that she was “pleased that justice prevailed today.”
I, however, am among those pleased that justice actually prevailed on March 17, when Democratic primary voters rejected Steele’s bid for another term, supporting her challenger Elizabeth Nicholson in a 62% to 38% landslide.
Last week’s winning quip
I’m at the age where I know more medications mentioned on “The Pitt” than I do musical guests on “Saturday Night Live.” — erik.hernandez78 (on Threads)
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
News & Views
News: Mayor Brandon Johnson heads to Springfield in a last-ditch effort to keep the Bears in Chicago
View: It’s a very long shot and risks making Johnson look feckless. It appears the Bears are now considering only Arlington Heights and Hammond, Indiana, for their next stadium, so if he were to succeed in derailing the megaprojects bill designed to boost the Arlington Heights effort, then find a way to entice the Bears into staying, it would be a legendary triumph. But coming up empty after making such an overt effort would simply further weaken him.
News: Republicans propose $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to secure Trump ballroom
View: Psyche! Donald Trump repeatedly pledged that his vanity ballroom annex to the White House would be privately funded and not cost taxpayers a dime, but of course he was lying again.
News: “Mexico to Have Universal Access to Health Services By 2027”
View: But in the richest country in the world, half a million people a year file for bankruptcy due to medical debt, and tens of millions are drowning in it.
News: Ask.com, formerly AskJeeves, shuts down
View: I had no idea that ask.com was still operating — I thought that, like AltaVista, HotBot, Lycos, AllTheWeb, Excite, etc. it had ended up in the dustbin of internet history. Yahoo!, once the biggest name in web crawling, is now mostly powered by Bing, as is AOL Search. Google remains the big dog — used for roughly 90% of traditional queries — but AI platforms, which explore many corners of the web in various ways, look likely to become the engines of choice for those seeking information online.
Land of Linkin’
“In praise of gratitude.” Columnist Les Jacobson of the Evanston Roundtable lists 47 things he’s grateful for. Somewhat timely, as mid-May is generally recognized as halfway to Thanksgiving.
On Saturday, United States Postal Service letter carriers will be collecting nonperishable food items left by mailboxes and at post offices for the annual “Stamp Out Hunger” food drive.
This week marks the debut of “Daybreak,” a free weekday morning newsletter from States Newsroom that rounds up key news developments in the states and puts them in a national context. You can subscribe here.
On this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, Brandon Pope, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams. We had a difference of opinion about the opening of the Obama Center (I was the skeptic) and ran through many of the news stories of the day. Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720. Look for the YouTube version that will be posted later in the week.
From the Picayune Plus:
Should time spent on pretrial home electronic monitoring count as time spent in jail when it comes to sentencing? Read the argument and take the poll.
At dinner at an Indian restaurant, my wife and I heard 40 straight minutes of a Hare Krishna song, causing me to ask, “Whatever became of Hare Krishnas?”
Squaring up the news
This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:
■ WBEZ’s Chip Mitchell: When immigration agents arrested a Chicago mother, a stranger stepped in to care for her three kids.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: Two motions in the government’s lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center show “the government’s indictment is in trouble.”
■ The New York Times (gift link): The pope had to call customer service, but “Spoiler alert: There was no miracle.”
■ Politico IDs a couple of fresh contenders for Chicago’s top job, up for election in nine months.
■ Your Local Epidemiologist: “Regardless of what happens in courts, American women have access to the same lesser-known option that changed everything in Brazil. Most don’t know it exists.”
■ The American Prospect expects Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman to “go full Benedict Arnold” and turn Republican—because his support for Trump has doomed any 2028 reelection campaign as a Democrat.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich asks: “What kind of shithole country wastes a billion taxpayer dollars on a gaudy Epstein Dance Hall?”
■ “To Tell the Truth: The Future of Local Media”: That’s the title of a discussion your Square publisher will moderate Saturday afternoon—free tickets for which you can register in advance. On the panel, among others: Journalists with Axios and Block Club. Also: Refreshments!
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Media notes
Tribune newsroom wins a Pulitzer Prize. Sun-Times pretends it didn’t happen.
Here is a gift link to “64 days in Chicago: The story of Operation Midway Blitz,” which the Tribune referred to as “the capstone piece” of its coverage of the incursion of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents here last fall.
The main writer of that story, Andrew Carter, came to the paper a little more than a year ago and is a particularly impressive stylist.
The paper wrote that “more than 75 Tribune reporters, photographers, senior editors, copy editors, audience engagement editors, page designers and editorial board members contributed” to the effort that won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for local reporting Monday. And though it was very impressive and worthy work, even many at the Tribune would agree that other local media shops did great work on this topic as well.
It was odd, then, that neither the Sun-Times nor Block Club Chicago has mentioned the Pulitzer Prizes this week, even though Evanston-based author Daniel Kraus won the fiction award and both publications reported enthusiastically two years ago when two Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organizations and local author Jonathan Eig won Pulitzers.
I thought we were past the days when competition inspired such pettiness (the days when at the Tribune, I would dryly refer to the Sun-Times as “a local English-language tabloid”).
Guess not.
Wrong takeaway
Reader Jay G. writes:
While it’s wonderful that the Trib won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Operation Midway Blitz, I fear it will send the wrong message to the private equity/hedge fund crowd such as Alden Global Capital, which owns the Tribune: “See, we can pare reporting staff to the bone and virtually empty our newsrooms, and still be a great newspaper.” This is exactly the wrong message.
RIP Nicole Hollander
Nicole Hollander, 86, who wrote the syndicated comic strip “Sylvia” until 2012, died April 23 in Chicago. Tribune obituary (gift link); Sun-Times obituary; New York Times obituary (gift link). Her work appeared in both local newspapers at different times.
“The Associated Press is planning to cut dozens of positions as part of a broader restructuring of the media company”
The AP is just the latest in a slew of media companies to make major reductions to the workforce as consumers turn to different platforms for information and commentary about the world.
Get your fucking hand out of my face!
MAGA-friendly panelist Scott Jennings, 48, lost his cool last Thursday when debating 23-year-old liberal wunderkind Adam Mockler on “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip.” He barked, “Get your fucking hand out of my face!” after Mockler pointed out that Jennings’ predictions about the war against Iran had proved faulty:
Columnist Tom Jones at Poynter was disapproving:
While there’s nothing wrong with healthy debate about the latest political and world topics, this show often feels toxic. Part of that toxicity comes from putting commentators from each end of the political spectrum next to one another and having them discuss polarizing issues.
Theoretically, it could be productive, a good exercise in fostering needed conversation between people who don’t agree in these divisive times.
But, too often, you have to ask if the panelists are open to hearing the other side. And, at the end of the day (and this show is on at the end of the day), viewers have come to expect some nastiness that brushes up against the line of acceptability.
But last week, that distant line was crossed. … Jennings’ aggressive, foul-mouthed remark is unacceptable on a national network news program. Heck, it’s unacceptable in any workplace. But CNN, and this show in particular, create the environment for this kind of behavior.
I agree with Jones that seating political adversaries shoulder to shoulder invites trouble. But otherwise, I enjoy heated disputes and don’t even mind the occasional swear words. I’m among those who liked “Crossfire,” the oft-criticized debate program on CNN that pitted advocates against one another and let the sparks fly. Too often the politesse and groupthink of cable news talk shows is dull and nearly useless. It’s important to see how contrasting views are tested.
“Insiders & seasoned pros say (CBS News under Bari Weiss) is a train wreck, calamity, crisis, sinking ship & disaster.”
Former WGN-TV News director Jennifer Schulze reports on the chaos:
Seven months after a partisan newsletter editor with zero broadcast experience was handed the top job at CBS News, you might not be surprised to learn that the legendary news network is flailing. … The network’s credibility is suffering with the right wing content shift and 24/7 chaos, top talent is leaving or being pushed out the door as political litmus tests are becoming the norm and the audience is fleeing. The CBS Morning News “saw its lowest-rated April on record” and the network’s marquee evening newscast has hit new lows “not seen in this century.”
Why are advertisers buying time at the beginning of podcasts?
I automatically hit the 30-second forward skip several times on nearly every podcast I listen to now to avoid the inevitable string of commercials that precede the actual content. In the case of “The Meidas Touch,” one of my favorite lefty shows, there can be more than five minutes of come-ons before the host begins his Trump bashing.
I’m glad for this front-loading since it makes for a less interrupted listening experience. And I understand that dropping the commercials before the show makes for an easier editing experience for producers. But I’ve got to wonder if these “pre-roll” advertisers are getting their money’s worth.
Nine years ago, the Podcast Insider blog reported:
Sponsors tend to prefer mid-roll placement – defined as occurring somewhere within the middle 50% of a program, or at least 25% from either end. “The listener is typically engaged in an activity and won’t get out their phone to forward through the ad,” (Heather Osgood, CEO of True Native Media) explains. “Pricing for mid-roll is typically the highest priced ad spot within a program, while end-roll spots are the least desirable because someone can easily turn off the episode and doesn’t have any incentive to listen to an ad at the end of the program.”
That said, just because a listener hears an ad or hasn’t shut off an episode yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is paying attention. And it’s hard to find data that draws a clear correlation between the placement of an ad and how likely the audience is to engage with the sponsor or make a purchase.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Gene Weingarten on the indictment of James Comey for posting a photo of seashells and stones spelling out “86-47” — The indictment will be thrown out because of its palpable lack of merit and — with luck and through gumption — the presiding judge will issue a show-cause order for the government attorneys bringing this case to explain why they should not be charged with malicious prosecution and disbarred. It won’t matter. Trump will then get his servile minions at DOJ to re-re-indict Comey — say, on the grounds that his last name sounds like “Commie,” or that he is a mafia assassin because his full name, first middle and last, anagrams to “Jersey mob iceman.” Trump is that filled with bile. He’s that evil. He’s that scared. He’s that stupid. He’s that nuts.
Interim U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking about voter ID proposals and showing us that he must not get out much — Every time you walk into a restaurant or a club, you have to show ID. How about you have to show your ID to vote?
Robert Hubbell — The indictment of Comey for posting an Instagram picture with “86 47” is a bad-faith action by every DOJ attorney who signed or filed the indictment or approved the effort to secure it. The relevant bar associations should immediately open disciplinary investigations into each attorney.
Former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene relating a text she says Donald Trump sent her when she complained to him that she and her family were getting death threats because she was advocating for release of the Trump-Epstein files: Donald Trump proceeded to tell me that it was my fault, that I deserve it. If my son gets killed, I deserve it, because I was a traitor to him.
Mehdi Hasan — If Trump says we must invade Iran, MAGA supports it. If Trump says we must not invade Iran, MAGA supports it. If tomorrow, Trump says tariffs are bad, MAGA supports it. Tariffs are good? MAGA supports it. This is a cult. And when Trump says, “I decide what MAGA is,” that's one of the rare moments in the day when he's not lying. It’s true. Donald Trump decides what MAGA is. There's no consistent philosophy.
Harvard historian Jill Lepore on the editing of the Declaration of Independence— Congress’s biggest change was to eliminate a paragraph that blamed George III for the institution of human bondage from which Jefferson’s own wealth was derived, and that charged the King with having “waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life … liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating … carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither,” and with having defeated the colonists’ “every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” If included, this passage would have been the twenty-eighth grievance, and the longest in the document. Jefferson maintained that the deletion was made at the behest of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia; historians have suggested that it was necessary because the passage was so patently hypocritical as to be embarrassing.
Philip Bump — In Dec 2021, Nicole Saphier , a Fox contributor now tapped as Trump's surgeon general nominee, argued that "it is time to move forward and allow this mild infection to circulate so we can continue to build that hybrid immunity." 250,000 Americans died of covid in 2022.
U.S. Sen Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. — Universal school vouchers have been a bad deal for education in Arizona. They drain resources from public schools and leave working families and kids with disabilities behind. That’s why I’m fighting to repeal Republicans’ new national school voucher program. … Most of the voucher money goes to people who already had their kids in private school. Eighty percent.
Jake Vig — Why is anyone still talking about the Iran war, a war the U.S. won about six weeks ago? Stop living in the past man.
Bibi’s alarms have been going off for more than 30 years
Here are some of the warnings Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has issued over the years: From this video and this video.
2025 — If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be within a few months.
2018 — They have the wherewithal, the stored up, preserved knowledge, to make a bomb very quickly if they wanted to do it.
2015 — Iran is so dangerous, weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.
2012 — They’re very close. They’re six months away from being about 90% of having the enriched uranium for an atom bomb.
2009 — Iran is one or two years away from being capable of developing nuclear weapons.
2006 — Iran is gearing up to have to produce 25 bombs — atomic bombs — a year, 250 bombs in a decade.
1996 — Ladies and gentlemen, time is running out
1995 — Iran will be capable of producing, alone without importing anything, nuclear bombs within three to five years
1992 — Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb.
How’s that makey-greaty stuff workin’ out for ya?
“Millions of Americans appear to be dropping Obamacare coverage in the months since Congress failed to extend the generous subsidies that had become a defining feature of the Affordable Care Act.” (New York Times gift link)
Trump quote: “Our economy is roaring and factory construction is way up. Consumer confidence is way up.”
The data:
Factory construction
Palm Beach County commissioners approved a trademark deal with one of Donald Trump’s family companies to rename the county’s airport after the president in a 4-3 vote Tuesday, with one Democrat backing the plan.
The agreement gives Trump extra power over how his name is used in the airport rebranding, including giving him veto power over how his image and biographical information is used in marketing materials. It also requires airport stores to source airport-branded merchandise from retailers Trump’s companies choose.
Historian and author of the “Letters from an American” Substack Heather Cox Richardson:
As Trump’s popularity has sunk to new lows, he has renewed his efforts to remake Washington, D.C., into a monument to himself, almost as if he is trying to anticipate history by making future Americans think that he must have been great because of all the tributes to him in the capital. Part of that effort has been his decision to paint the reflecting pool bright blue, like a swimming pool, at a cost of about $2 million in taxpayer money.
The New Republic: RFK Jr. Makes It Easier for Kids to Get Skin Cancer
Against the advice of dermatologists everywhere, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has cleared a path for children to keep getting their fix at tanning beds across the United States. … The wellness conspiracist withdrew a proposed Food and Drug Administration rule earlier this year that would have curbed access to the carcinogenic, cancer-causing machines for anyone under the age of 18.
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest:
Anyone can vote in the contest, but to have it delivered fresh to your email inbox each Tuesday morning along with the rest of the Picayune Plus, to participate in the comment forums and to ease your conscience, you can become a paid supporter:
The new nominees for Quip of the Week/Dad jokes edition
It’s been a while since I posted a series of clean, groanworthy dad quips for the contest. As usual, I do not attribute them as I find that puns, in particular, are so often stolen on social media that it’s hard to credit a source with any accuracy. If you’re lucky, it will be a while until the next one. Meantime, I’ll wager you’ll soon be telling some of these against your better judgment:
Someone ripped the fifth month out of my new calendar. I’m dismayed.
A woman fainted and fell onto the baggage carousel at the airport. But she’s slowly coming around now.
What’s the difference between Dubai and Abu Dhabi? The people in Dubai don’t like “The Flintstones,” but people in Abu Dhabi do.
I saw a CraigsList ad that said, “Radio for sale, volume stuck at 10.” I said to myself, “Man, that’s a deal I can’t turn down.”
I’m sorry to hear your uncle was run over by a boat in Venice. My gondolences.
OK, I’ll bite. Why does everyone keep asking if I’m a zombie?
Today I gave my dead batteries away. They were free of charge.
It’s inappropriate to make a ‘dad joke’ if you’re not a dad. It’s a faux pa.
The elevator had a sign that said “Out of Order.” The floor numbers were 10, 7, 4, 8, 1, 3, 12, 6, 2, 11, 5, 9.
I’m going to have to return the camouflage jacket I bought last week. I just can’t see myself wearing it.
Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
Good Sports
At last the NBA playoffs are here
In part because the Bulls were again so mediocre and in part because I don’t subscribe to Chicago Sports Network (formerly NBC Sports Chicago) that carries most Bulls games, I didn’t watch even a moment of the 81-game NBA regular season. The first three quarters of many games feels like just so much ground pawing, as does the entire season during which just a third of teams are eliminated from postseason play.
But I’m glued to the playoffs now, where every game matters and the talent level is astounding, though it continues to annoy me when certain games are streamed on Peacock and Amazon Prime, even though I subscribe to both services. For those games, I prefer to go to YouTube the next day and watch the 10-minute recap versions.
I don’t even care that much which team wins, but close games with seasons on the line? I’m there!
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that, with only rare exceptions, can be enjoyed at home.
This is a little off brand for me, but I’m recommending at least one listen to Angine de Poitrine, a microtonal math rock duo out of Quebec that performs in polka-dot disguise under assumed names and has recently gone viral with the highly unusual yet somehow catchy music like this:
"Microtonal” refers to the use notes found in between the 12 standard intervals of the conventional octave — witness all the extra frets on the fingerboard of the guitar/bassists double-necked instrument.
“Math rock” is a style of progressive/indie rock that uses complex rhythmic patterns and unusual, shifting time signatures that require such precision that some have said performing it requires attention to detail similar to the attention demanded of mathematicians.
And no, I didn’t know this before this week.
Angine de Poitrine translates to “chest pain,” and their costumed anonymity recalls Daft Punk, the now-defunct French electronic music duo who got their start in the 1990s.
Substacker Steve Pratt writes:
Angine de Poitrine formed in Saguenay, Quebec in 2019, and the two musicians have been playing together since they were young teenagers. Just watch the video and you will instantly know that this is not a joke—there are some crazy musical chops on display here. Their debut album, Vol. 1, was released in 2024 and last year, they were named Artist of the Year at Quebec’s GAMIQ independent music awards.
Why do they wear masks and the polka-dots? Apparently, it was creativity born out of necessity. They were told they couldn’t perform twice at the same venue under the same name, so the duo played one show as themselves and another disguised as Angine de Poitrine. The audience went bananas for polka dots and they never went back. …
They are so specific, so unusual, and so committed to their aesthetic that they are impossible to ignore.
My first impression was “What is this? What am I watching right now?” And I had to keep watching to figure out how it played out. And even though I’ve never heard anything like it before, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the music.
The total commitment to doing something weird and distinct makes them feel almost alien compared to the rest of the music ecosystem.
Our brains love novelty. And when we find it, we want to tell other people about it. “Have you seen that new two-person band from Quebec that wears masks and dresses in polka-dots?”
It makes us feel cool when we’re the ones telling other people know about something cool.
Random thought: “Cool” is a slang term that never seems to go out of style or feel dated. Unlike, say, “groovy,” “phat,” “tubular” or “boss.”
I gave a green light to Angine de Poitrine on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Marj Halperin gave a green light to “On the Calculation of Volume,” a seven-volume novel by Danish author Solvej Balle and host John Williams gave a yellow light to “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”
Info
I am a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. I began publishing the Picayune Sentinel on Sept. 9, 2021, roughly two and a half months after I took a buyout from the newspaper. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise. Browse and search back issues here.
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Thanks for reading!
We have seen the confluence of two forces: the corrupt racist from Queens and his followers and the the long march of Republicans, kick started by the "sainted" Reagan, to reverse the Confederacy's defeat. The confluence has culminated in the reversal of the Second Reconstruction. The Confederate states, facilitated by Alito and other subversives, have raced to eliminate Black Southern representatives from Congress and will move to eliminate Blacks from local governments. The racist Hegseth has acted to slow and cancel the tremendous anti-racist gains of the US armed forces. Jim Crow is strutting toward victory. What hath the Trump voters wrought?
NBA Playoffs are the best. Makes up for a long slog of a regular season.