Good Monday noon, Fellow Seekers,
Tomorrow night we’ll crown two new New Hampshire Primary winners and perhaps witness the birth of a new political legend. Very likely, we’ll have our first-ever black or female New Hampshire laureate, so it’s almost guaranteed to make history. But it won’t end either nominating contest (it actually never does really […]

A magic moment was missed 87 years ago in Kurdistan. Because it was missed, there is no Kurdistan. And, you could say, because there is no Kurdistan, Turkish troops are threatening to create what would be the latest of the long list of crises imperiling the misbegotten U.S. project in Iraq.
In the past month, […]

Good Thursday morning Fellow Seekers,
Turkey is threatening serious consequences in its relations with the United States to protest a vote by the House Foreign Relations Committee declaring the slaughter of more than 1 million Armenians to be an act of genocide.
Armenian-Americans have been lobbying for years to have what happened to their ancestors during World War […]

Good Monday morning Fellow Seekers,
Martin Luther King and Christopher Columbus are the only individuals with official U.S. federal holidays named for them. Today (which is Columbus Day and the excuse for this post) is the only one named for a man who never clapped eyes on the North America, and whose actions toward the natives […]

Good Tuesday Morning, Fellow Seekers of Wisdom and Truth,
The 1957 integration crisis at Little Rock Central High School (the 50th anniversary of which is this week) contains within it a little-remembered tale of journalistic heroism.
The larger story created many heroes. If you don’t know the basics here’s the two-paragraph version followed by the forgotten tale […]

(If you’re joining us late, today is Constitution Day. The previous post asked a serious question about how the Constitution fits the exigencies of the moment. But, as promised this morning, this more frivolous post will give you a chance to test your knowledge of the history of the U.S. Constitution. A link to the answers is at […]

Good Monday morning Fellow Seekers,
(Don’t be confused by the jocular tone just below, this post poses a serious question.) 
If you don’t know what day this is, you’ve already missed the first question of the quiz I plan to post after lunch. But I’m not going to count it off your score, since this is just the warm-up.
Answer: Today […]

Good Labor Day morning Fellow Seekers,
Juan Cole, the University of Michigan historian of the Mideast and prolific blogger at Informed Comment, recently dug up what Winston Churchill, a hero of today’s neocons, thought about the British mission in Iraq at what you could call a moment comparable to today’s U.S. situation.
In case you lost track of […]

As Congress prepares for a new raft of votes on funding for Iraq, an unnamed White House official tells the Associated Press that President Bush will have to acknowledge shortly that progress in Iraq has failed to meet any of 18 benchmarks that Congress established earlier this year. The administration was always loath to commit […]