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Music critics spend considerable time listening to new recordings and reviewing them. And as wonderful as they can be, this critic has always felt that there is nothing to compare with the experience of a live performance. To be in the same hall with an orchestra is something that too many music lovers take for granted now that digital recording and cutting-edge playback technology reproduce music with astonishing fidelity to life. And between CDs and mp3 downloads, podcasts, and web radio, a vast repertoire of music is at your fingertips, whether you listen at home, in your office, or even in your automobile. Nevertheless we should never forget that even the best blow-your-socks-off orchestral recording is still but a facsimile of the orchestra itself in the flesh.
Ironically, the wealth of available recordings, not to mention broadcast programming, often skews our perceptions of what works are played more often than others. Many scores we think we've heard live, we've only heard on record. And for a variety of reasons, many familiar works are actually performed far less frequently than we think.
This season The Philadelphia Orchestra is gearing up a rich array of music that its audiences will be hearing them play for the first time in many years, if not for the first time ever. World premieres, of course, occupy a unique place, and this season Philadelphia audiences will get a jump on the rest of the musical world with several world premieres by the gifted and fascinating Jennifer Higdon. On January 10, 11, 12, and 15, the Orchestra unveils her Concerto 4-3 (i.e., a concerto for [4] three [3] string instruments and orchestra). This will be followed on January 17, 18, and 19 by the world-premiere performances of another inventive treatment of concertante form, Higdon's The Singing Rooms, for violin, chorus and orchestra.
Premieres are one matter, but what about those rarely heard or never-before heard works mentioned above? This raises the question: Why do some works wait years to be performed, and why are others, which are nominally in the core repertoire, actually performed so infrequently? In some cases, it's due to the sheer luck of the draw, and to the fact that some music directors — Christoph Eschenbach noteworthy among them — are more imaginative and creative than others and are willing to delve more deeply into the shadows of the repertoire to entice listeners with interesting novelties. In other cases, it is because certain works in a composer's oeuvre are simply overshadowed by more popular works from the same pen. Some works are very costly to produce because they demand particularly large forces, while in other cases the fashions that once made a work popular have changed over time.
It is noteworthy that two works being played by the Philadelphians for the first time this season are linked to Mexico's ancient Mayan legacy. On November 23 and 24 the dashing, young Peruvian conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya will lead Night of the Mayas by the seminal Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. Although his career was cut short by his early death, Revueltas (1899-1940) left an admirable legacy of colorful music often evocative of the rich culture of his native land. He wrote Night of the Mayas in 1939 as a score for the eponymous film — a somewhat rambling tragedy about two young Mexicans who make an attempt to live as their Mayan ancestors, in a Mayan village in the Yucatán. The posthumous four-movement concert suite, arranged by the Mexican conductor José Ives Limantour, will be performed in these concerts.
Popol vuh: The Creation of the Mayan World by the great Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) will be performed on March 27, 28, and 29 under the baton of another adventuresome podium figure, Leonard Slatkin. The vast score, framed in seven movements, was inspired by Mayan beliefs in the origins of their universe, and represents Ginastera's urge to incorporate specifically New World elements into the complex musical style that he had developed in the course of his career. He began work on Popul vuh in 1975 on commission from The Philadelphia Orchestra, but left it unfinished at his death. In common with most of Ginastera's work, the orchestration here is superb, and we can feel that the composer revels in the seemingly limitless power and subtle color of his large instrumental forces.
Another work whose rarity may surprise Philadelphia audiences is the 1926 Sinfonietta by the Moravian composer Leos Janácek (1854-1928). Written for a large, but not inordinately large orchestra, the work is certainly well represented on record. Nevertheless, the performances slated for Feb. 13, 15, 16, 17, and 19 under Charles Dutoit will be the first by the Philadelphians since 1991. It originated out of a brass band performance that Janácek heard and which moved him to write several fanfares of his own. Subsequently Janácek was invited to compose an occasional work for the opening, in Prague, of a Gymnastic Festival sponsored by the influential Czech Sokol (or Eagle) youth movement. Janácek worked up his preliminary fanfare material into a Military Sinfonietta — he later dropped "Military" from the title — dedicating the finished score to the "Czechoslovak Armed Forces." Memorable for its heroic brass fanfare motif, the Sinfonietta was intended, according to the composer to evoke "contemporary free man, his spiritual beauty and joy, his strength, courage, and determination to fight for victory."
On February 7, 8, and 9, Alan Gilbert will conduct a program featuring two rarities, Béla Bartók's Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra, featuring soloists Emanuel Ax and Yoko Nozaki, and Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 2 ("The Four Temperaments"). Bartók's Concerto is, in fact, an arrangement of one of his most frequently performed works, the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, which he had composed for the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Salzburg, and which he premiered there in 1938, playing the solo piano parts with his second wife (and former pupil) Ditta Pásztory-Bartók. He expanded this into a full concerto in 1940, and it received its world premiere two years later in London under Adrian Boult's baton. By this time the Bartóks had emigrated to New York, where the composer lived out his final years. Indeed his solo performance with his wife at the Concerto's American premiere, in January 1943 with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, proved to be Bartók's last public appearance. Thereafter the onset of leukemia took its toll.
The Nielsen performance will be another first for the Orchestra, and a surprising one, considering that it is regarded as the most popular of the composer's symphonies. The Symphony's title is derived from an old woodcut depicting the four human temperaments. The first movement (Choleric) is irascible in tone. In the second, (Phlegmatic), Nielsen musically illustrates a temperament lacking drive and will power, its thematic material seemingly rooted in place and unable to move out of its original key. The third movement (Melancholic) explores a downcast frame of mind, paralyzed by depression. But in the last (Sanguine), optimism bursts forth in a joyous rondo that culminates with a grand and grandiose martial finale.
Philadelphia Orchestra audiences may also be surprised to learn that a work by that most iconic of Americans, Leonard Bernstein, will be receiving its first performance by the Orchestra. Bernstein's Kaddish (Symphony No. 3) for speaker, chorus, and orchestra, was inspired by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and is dedicated to his memory. Kaddish takes its name from the Hebrew prayer for the dead, and in the score, Bernstein uses the prayer's haunting, traditional chant melody to express his exploration of spiritual doubt. (The Philadelphia Orchestra will present a Leonard Bernstein Festival in January and February to mark the 90th anniversary of his birth.)
Finally, two more great symphonic choral works are highly anticipated by audiences this season. On November 29, 30 (Carnegie Hall), and December 1 and 2, Simon Rattle will preside over an unjustly rare revival of Robert Schumann's secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri. Based on a touching fable in the 19th-century Irish poet Thomas Moore's Orientalist narrative Lalla Rookh, this secular oratorio of 1843 is one of Schumann's most beautiful compositions. The titular Peri, a kind of "fallen angel" in Persian and Islamic mythology, must do penance in order to regain entry to Paradise. After two attempts, which inspired Schumann to compose some of his most moving and delicate music, she succeeds, to a joyous chorus of triumph. Throughout the work Schumann's deft and colorful instrumentation is as skillful and imaginative as that of Berlioz, putting to rest any lingering notions that Schumann was a mediocre orchestrator.
No one would ever have accused Gustav Mahler of mediocre orchestration. — certainly not to his face. And on May 1, 2, 3, and 6 (at Carnegie Hall), Christoph Eschenbach will continue the Orchestra's multi-year Mahler cycle with performances of Mahler's Eighth Symphony. Popularly known as the "Symphony of a Thousand," because of its immense choral and orchestral forces, not to mention the offstage brass choirs, platoon of soloists, and a full pipe organ, this colossal work was composed between 1906 and 1907, and received its world premiere in 1910, conducted by the composer. Six years later, the Eighth was given its U.S. premiere by The Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski.
It is divided into two massive parts that attempt to encapsulate the eternal spiritual nature of mankind. The first is a setting of the medieval Latin hymn, Veni, creator spiritus, while the second part is a cantata-like setting of the final scene in Goethe's philosophical poem Faust, part two. Mahler himself characterized the finale of this symphony to his friend and champion, the conductor Willem Mengelberg: "Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound. These are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving."
To experience these rare birds of the repertoire is to experience some of the most emotionally moving of all symphonic scores.
Barrymore Laurence Scherer is a music critic for The Wall Street Journal. The American edition of his new book, A History of American Classical Music (Naxos/Sourcebooks), is being published this fall.


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Fall is the time for cooler days and night. It's also for hot latte drinks! What better way to enjoy Fall 2016 than with hot, hot deals from RepoKar.com.
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Our body is a battlefield. Millions of bacteria, both helpful and harmful, gather inside us and ruthlessly compete for space and resources. Some warriors come to the fight armed with molecular weapons. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria which can cause pneumonia and sepsis, creates toxins then catapults them like poison arrows into neighbouring enemies, such as those pictured trying to survive after this lethal injection. They even have different types of catapults for different scenarios. Understanding how these weapons fire may let us block them to prevent unwanted attacks, or turn their power against other dangerous intruders. In a new study, researchers discovered that two key factors called RsmA and AmrZ oversee the firing of all of P. aeruginosa's defences. With these triggers identified we're one step closer to a new weapon in our own arsenal for the war against bacteria at a time when alternatives to antibiotics are sorely needed.
Written by
BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences the website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biomedicine. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.
BPoD is also available in Catalan at www.bpod.cat with translations by the University of Valencia.


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Coronavirus: Events may be cancelled and venues closed at short notice, you are advised to check on their websites before making a trip.
Eat, drink and be merry in a responsible, socially distanced fashion this December.
Hampton Court Palace courtyards and East Front gardens will be transformed into a food-lover's Christmas wonderland, over two December weekends, at the Festive Fayre 2020.
Soak up the atmosphere and spirit of the season with sing-along festive classics from the East Front Bandstand and indulge in delicious street food with warming festive drinks.
Browse a selection of unique gift stalls, perfect for that foodie Christmas treat or gorgeous special present.
With everything from Christmas pudding to sausages, and brownies to churros, our hand-picked artisan producers and companies are guaranteed to delight even the most committed foodie.
Entry to the Festive Fayre is included in the admission ticket to Hampton Court Palace (members go free).
Cost: £24.50
Contact and Booking Details
More information at this website.
Reserve tickets at this website2020-12-13 10:00 2020-12-13 10:00 Europe/London Festive Fayre at Hampton Court Palace Hampton Court Palace courtyards and East Front gardens will be transformed into a food-lover's Christmas wonderland. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/calendar/2020/12/13/festive-fayre-at-hampton-court-palace-245658 Hampton Court Palace,Hampton Court Way,East Molesey,London
See more events today, tomorrow or rest of this month
Hampton Court Palace,
East Molesey,


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Castleford Tigers: Danny Orr, Ryan Sheridan and Ben Cooper sign new deals
Last updated on .From the section Rugby League
Castleford Tigers have given new deals to coaches Danny Orr, Ryan Sheridan and Ben Cooper to keep them at the Super League leaders until the end of 2020.
Assistant coach Orr, 39, has been in the Cas backroom team since his retirement as a player in 2012.
Sheridan, 42, also assistant coach, previously worked alongside Tigers head coach Daryl Powell at Featherstone.
Head of strength and conditioning Cooper follows head physio Matty Crowther in penning a new contract.
Powell said: "I'm absolutely delighted that our coaching staff have agreed to extend their stay at the club.
"I believe we have a staff that is second to none, we have worked exceptionally hard as a coaching group to build a culture and an identity as a team, and I am so pleased that Danny, Ryan and Ben will continue their journey with myself and the club as we seek to do special things at the Tigers."


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Grant Holloway goes No.3 all-time in 60m hurdles, while Laura Weightman impresses in Trafford and Abigail Pawlett breaks British U17 pentathlon record
Our separate reports on the Inter-Counties Championships and GB World Cross trials in Loughborough can be found here (men's events) and here (women's events).
Read about the wins by Mo Farah and Charlotte Purdue at The Vitality Big Half in London here, while a round-up report on British Masters Indoor Championships action at Lee Valley is here.
Here we highlight other top recent results from the world of the sport.
NCAA Indoor Championships, Birmingham, Alabama, March 8-9
On a busy weekend, Grant Holloway broke the 32-year-old North American indoor 60m hurdles record with a time of 7.35 to also move to third on the world indoor all-time list behind only Britain's Colin Jackson (7.30) and Cuba's Dayron Robles (7.33).
Holloway wasn't only contesting one event, however, and he also won the 60m in 6.50, finished third in the long jump with 7.95m and ran 46.00 for his 4x400m leg.
Second in the 60m hurdles was Daniel Roberts and his time of 7.41 puts him joint 15th on the world indoor all-time list.
No. 3 All-time WORLD ✅
FACILITY RECORD ✅ pic.twitter.com/vxtnBRBETc
— NCAA Track & Field (@NCAATrackField) March 9, 2019
Further quick times were set in the 400m as Tyrell Richard put himself at No.5 on the world indoor all-time list with 44.82.
Kahmari Montgomery was second in 45.03, Wil London third in 45.16 and Quincy Hall fourth in 45.25.
Armand Duplantis won the pole vault with 5.83m before three attempts at a collegiate record height of 5.94m.
Britain's Jacob Fincham-Dukes just missed out on a long jump medal as he leapt 7.94m to finish fourth, just 1cm off the podium and 3cm off gold.
In the DII Indoor Championships in Pittsburg, GB's Thomas Staines won the 800m in 1:48.64.
Copa Cuba meeting, Havana, March 10
Cuba's world indoor long jump champion Juan Miguel Echevarria soared out to a mark of 8.92m – the longest leap under any conditions in almost 24 years – but it was assisted by an illegal 3.3m/s wind.
That performance came from his first attempt and he later had discomfort in his foot and withdrew as a precaution.
Trafford 10km, Manchester, March 10
Battling strong winds and rain, Laura Weightman clocked 31:59 in just her second ever road 10km for a PB which puts her 12th on the UK all-time list.
Triathlete Beth Potter also impressed with a PB of 32:03 in second, equalling her best time for the distance on the track to move to No.13 UK all-time.
Delighted to run a big 10km PB of 31:59 for the win at Trafford 10km today. @beth_potter running an equal track PB just behind in 32:03! #leeds pic.twitter.com/yOUelBIQLc
— Laura Weightman (@LauraWeightman) March 10, 2019
Bart van Nunen of Netherlands won the men's race in 29:26.
Inverness Half Marathon, March 10
Robbie Simpson won in 66:15 in cold and wet conditions, while Liz Abbott claimed the women's title in a PB of 76:52.
European Throwing Cup, Samorin, Slovakia, March 9-10
France's Quentin Bigot won the hammer with a world-leading 78.14m, while Tatsiana Khaladovich beat Christin Hussong to win the javelin – a world-leading 65.89m to 65.47m.
Hanna Malyshik retained her hammer title as she threw a world lead of 74.95m for victory.
Britain's Phoebe Dowson and Amy Holder placed first and second in the 'B' discus competition, throwing 53.31m and 52.43m respectively.
Taylor Campbell was fourth in the 'B' hammer with 72.25m, while Harry Hughes was fifth in the under-23 javelin with 74.54m.
England Athletics Indoor U15 & U17 Combined Events Championships, Sheffield, March 9-10
Abigail Pawlett scored 4036 points to break the British under-17 pentathlon record, with 8.64 in the hurdles, a 1.71m high jump, 12.39m shot put, 5.83m long jump and 2:29.69 800m.
Sammy Ball broke the under-15 boys' pentathlon championship best with 3176 points, while Murray Fotheringham went to second on the UK indoor all-time list after winning the under-17 heptathlon with 4967 points.
The under-15 girls' pentathlon was won by Erin Lobley with 3518 points.
Huawei Roma-Ostia Half Marathon, March 10
Israel's Lonah Chemtai Salpeter and Ethiopia's Guye Adola claimed victory, clocking 66:40 and 60:17 respectively.
USA 15km Championships, Jacksonville March 9
Shadrack Kipchirchir won in 43:41, one second ahead of Leonard Korir. Erika Kemp claimed the women's title in 50:54 ahead of Bethany Sachtleben with 51:08.
Paris Half Marathon, France, March 10
Kenya's Nancy Kiprop ran 69:12 and Eritrea's Hizkel Tewelde 64:20 to win the half-marathon.
» Further coverage and results in the March 14 edition of AW
» For more on the latest athletics news, athletics events coverage and athletics updates, check out the AW homepage and our social media channels on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram


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Friday, February 24, 2012
Carrie Underwood's New Single "Good Girl" Now Available on iTunes, Joins Twitter - February 24, 2012
here and also of the fan club page here.There is also news today that Carrie has joined the world of Twitter. So, go over to Twitter and give her a warm welcome. Her name is @carrieunderwood. It is going to be a very exciting year for Carrie fans with many more announcements still to come including a video premiere and a tour.
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Five years after opening a brewery at their serene monastery in the hills of Spencer, the Trappist monks are working on opening a tasting room.
"Yes, we're working on a tasting room. We have a few legal hoops to negotiate first, so be patient," the brewery posted on its Facebook page this morning.
The monks of St. Joseph's Abbey have a long tradition making and selling jams, jellies and preserves stemming back to the 1950s to support the monastery. But in 2014, the monks decided to branch out into a new industry that could provide for the monastery through the 21st Century -- beer.
One of only 12 Trappist breweries in the world and the only one outside of Europe, Spencer Brewery has been successful. The brewery recently announced it has partnered with Mariner Beverages to bring their beers to Maine starting in September.
But currently, if you want to get in to see the operation, you've got to mark your calendar and be patient. The brewery has held once-a-year open house events to allow the public in. The most recent one in June attracted 6,000 visitors in one day, according to the Boston Business Journal.
That could all change now that Spencer Brewery has announced it is exploring opening a tasting room to allow the public to sip its libations at the brewery itself.
"We need to respond to this, find a way to do a tasting room at the monastery, so what we do once a year we could do weekend by weekend on a smaller scale to grow this connection with the brand," Father Isaac Keeley, director of Spencer Brewery told Boston Business Journal. "That's the core of the idea."
The brewery has plans to continue to grow. The brewery has the capacity to produce 10,000 barrels of beer a year. It produced 4,000 barrels in 2016 and 4,500 barrels last year. About 40 percent of the brewery's beer was exported to Europe.
But there is a hurdle the monks must clear to build a tasting room. Although Father Isaac Keeley, director of Spencer Brewery, told Boston Business Journal the monastery likely has the funds to construct the tasting room, the problem is where to put it. The brewery is located well inside the monastery in order to be officially recognized as a Trappist brewery. Accommodating the public there would be problematic.
Keeley told the Journal the monks have explored putting the tasting room down by the gift shop near Route 31, but it is unclear whether having a tasting room that far away from the brewery operation can still fall under the same license.
In 2016, Nashoba Valley Winery faced a legal challenge at its winery and restaurant when after 16 years, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission told the winery that its license that covered selling its wines on the "premises" did not include its restaurant since it was in a different building. The news attracted media attention and the winery got the support of Gov. Charlie Baker, who backed a legislative fix that allowed the winery to continue to both manufacture and sell its wine at the winery.
For the Spencer Brewery, Keeley said the brand is connected to the story of the monks. And getting people closer to that is a key strategy.
"(The taproom) is our understanding of what it will take to grow the brand," he said.
Keeley previously told MassLive that the brewery blends well with life at the monastery.
"It's compatible with monastic life. There is a quiet and contemplative side," said Keeley. "We see this as our industry for this century."


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Click here for 50% off tickets to see Sondheim Unplugged.
A celebrated New York event since 2010, the Bistro Award-winning series that celebrates Stephen Sondheim and his legendary career comes to the stage at 54 Below. Sondheim Unplugged features some of Broadway and cabaret's most dynamic voices, accompanied solely by piano, singing numbers from A Little Night Music, Company, Into the Woods, Follies, Passion, Dick Tracy and more. Past special guests have included actors who originated roles in Sondheim's musicals, including Len Cariou, Victoria Mallory, Chip Zien and Donna McKechnie, so you never know who might drop in. Series creator Phil Geoffrey Bond hosts the show, and in between numbers shares Sondheim facts, history and related theatrical lore.
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Choosing A Side
I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney and counselor at law to the best of my knowledge and ability.
— California Attorney's Oath of Office; see California Business & Professions Code § 6067
December 1, 1994, was a very proud day for me. On that day, I stood up before a judge in a courtroom in what then was known as the Central Courthouse of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, raised my right hand, and recited those words. I meant what I said, and thought I was following through by working in impact litigation doing Constitutional test cases — trying to expand the limits of individual rights as against the government.
Many people have recited similar oaths. Many other attorneys, of course. Men and women who join the military. People who take important governmental offices. Not for nothing are these various oaths phrased in the form of promising to support, protect, and/or defend the Constitution. Not a "people," for we are a nation made up of many people. Not even a "nation," for we are federalized and have not to this day fully settled the notion of whether we are one polity or many. Most certainly not to a personal sovereign. Kings, even kings that are effectively subordinate to democratic institutions, are not for us.
We are, instead, a nation of laws. Our loyalty and honor is pledged to the law — for the Constitution is first and foremost a law, the supreme law of the land.
It was the proudest day of my young life and if asked or required to do so again, I would freely and gladly recite those words once more in a setting of similar solemnity, formality, and import. But today, I'd better appreciate what it means, having reflected on the realities of fulfilling our Constitutional promises to ourselves frequently and with the benefit of experience actually trying to do it right. As I'll explain in a little while, I wish that others in our political and legal system had engaged in similar sorts of reflection. Had they, perhaps I'd not be so disgusted with them today.
[I]t is necessary to balance "the liberty of the individual" and "the demands of an organized society".
Youngblood v. Romero (1982) 457 U.S. 307, 320 (quoting Harlan, J., dissenting in Poe v. Ullman (1961) 367 U.S. 497, 542).
Rights under our system of laws are not absolute. They often clash with one another, they often clash with the asserted powers of government. This is why we have a hierarchy of laws, to determine if one law conflicts with another. If one law conflicts with a different law on a superior place in the hierarchy, the superior law prevails and to the extent the inferior law conflicts with it, it is a nullity. That is the essence of what Constitutional law is: the Constitution is the highest law of the land, and therefore no other law may contradict it.
The way we have worked out to do this is through the process of judicial review. This, itself, is superficially controversial as some people maintain that judicial review constitutes a sort of usurpation of the legislative power by the courts. I disagree, but need not join that field of battle here. It's how we've done things since 1803 and pretty much every ideological grouping of people in existence is happy enough to go along with this when the result favors their own preferred political agenda.
To reach a lawyer's understanding of what it is to "support" the Constitution, one must of necessity undertake a bit of legal education. A deliberate, careful, logical, and literal examination of a sentence in the Constitution reveals, quickly, a substantial zone of ambiguity. Let's take a right we all at least superficially agree is a cherished, important,and universal one: free speech. To really understand what the right of free speech means in American Constitutional Law is simply not a possible with a reading of the text of the First Amendment alone. All that tells us is that Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech.
Well, what exactly is that right? Can anyone say whatever they want, anywhere, any time, in any context? No, and indeed the that the answer to that question is no is sufficiently well-known as to not be the particular demesne of lawyers who immerse themselves in Constitutional law, even if the particulars of what sorts of restrictions are Constitutionally permissible are complex and arcane. We know, for instance, that Congress (and by extension of the Fourteenth Amendment, the several states) may impose reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech. You can speak in public, but maybe you can only do so during daylight hours so people can get some sleep. Maybe you can only amplify your voice to a certain point so that others may go about their day in peace. You cannot defame someone free of penalty, nor advocate the violent overthrow of the government, nor incite a riot.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment II
This sentence, for better or worse, is part of the supreme law of the land. It is part of that instrument to which I have sworn support. The support of a lawyer for such a concept is distinctive: lawyers are uniquely trained in the parsing, analysis, and understanding of laws.
For a rather long period of time, the Second Amendment quoted above went unanalyzed in any substantial way. There were until recently in our history but few people who presented legal disputes that called these words of our highest law into question, few people for whom varying reasonable interpretations of those words mattered. History happened and for the most part, our courts did not address the role of weapons within it. Little surprise, then, that weapons are an integral part of our culture.
The citizen militias of the Revolutionary and Federal eras were the principal instruments of our national defense during the first two generations of our national independence. We were a frontier nation, expanding our borders aggressively (and not without stain to our national honor in the way that we did it) necessitating self-sufficiency for individuals living far away from our urbanized eastern seaboard. We've been a nation of hunters and a nation at at least low levels of war for most of our existence. And though we have never stopped debating the efficacy and wisdom of this social experiment, our modern, urbanized nation deploys the dissemination of personal firearms as a check against the spread of crime.
Not until eight years ago, after I'd already sworn my oath as an attorney, did the United States Supreme Court tackle the interpretation and application of the Second Amendment in any meaningful, comprehensive, and authoritative way until the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) 554 U.S. 570. It's one of the very best majority opinions the late Justice Antonin Scalia ever wrote, for the depth of its historical and legal research, especially into difficult pre-Revolutionary British common law. I quote extensively here from the majority opinion here, omitting the internal citations:
Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. … [T]he majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. … [N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. … We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms … the sorts of weapons protected were those "in common use at the time." … We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of "dangerous and unusual weapons."
* * *
In sum, we hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.
* * *
We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns… . But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.
This amplifies the point I made in the previous section that Constitutional rights are important and to be afforded deference, but even in the mind of arch-conservative Antonin Scalia, the individual right explicated by the Second Amendment is not absolute. It is for the political process, then, to find a way to marry the exercise of that individual right into an ordered and lawful, but nevertheless free, society.
When I refer to "reasonable restrictions" on the Second Amendment right, I refer to the sorts of time, place, and manner of usage restrictions, the type-of-weapon restrictions, the sale and licensure restrictions, the restrictions on access to weapons to the mentally ill and those with criminal histories. In other words,
- Some kinds of weapons are not within the right to keep and bear arms at all (although we know handguns are within the protected category).
- Laws restricting how you carry a weapon do not by definition prevent you from owning or peacefully using one.
- Laws restricting where weapons might be — not in government buildings, not near schools, etc. — do not restrict your right to bear arms.
- Felons and the mentally ill do not have the right to keep and bear arms.
- You can be lawfully required to get a license, post a bond, pass a test, and register your ownership of the firearm as conditions of selling one or acquiring one.
The last quoted sentence from Heller, however, makes it clear that this a right we are talking about, not a privilege and not a license and not something to be taken lightly simply because its exercise is unpopular (with some people). As a right, it puts certain kinds of activity out of the reach and power of the government.
It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.
In the late 1970's, American Neo-Nazis wanted to march in a parade in Skokie, Illinois, one of Chicago's suburbs. Skokie was then, and I think it is now, a city with a large Jewish population. Why did they want to do this? "To be assholes" has always seemed about as full and complete an answer as is necessary.
The city resisted granting the Neo-Nazis a parade permit, officially citing threats to public safety that would inevitably result from the planned activity but its politicians wasted no effort to conceal their loud and strenuous disapproval of the Nazis' message of white supremacy. As is well-known in the lore taught to law schools, typically in Constitutional Law class, the American Civil Liberties Union made what for its leaders was at once a painful and uncomfortable choice, and also an easy one. The ACLU describes the situation thus:
The notoriety of the case caused some ACLU members to resign, but to many others the case has come to represent the ACLU's unwavering commitment to principle. In fact, many of the laws the ACLU cited to defend the group's right to free speech and assembly were the same laws it had invoked during the Civil Rights era, when Southern cities tried to shut down civil rights marches with similar claims about the violence and disruption the protests would cause.
This rather understates the reaction to the decision to take on the case and litigate in favor of the Nazis' First Amendment rights to have a parade like other, more respectable groups. I had the great privilege as a young lawyer of working directly with the chief litigator of the ACLU Legal Foundation of Southern California, who had himself been a young lawyer while all of this was going on. The ACLU had then, as it does now, attracted funding from a variety of sources most of them well to the political left. Many of the people who were writing checks to the ACLU in the late 1970's were themselves Holocaust survivors or had close family members who were. Supporting Nazis was intolerable to them, even if legally the Nazis were in the right. To hear my mentor tell it, national lay membership in the organization dropped by an amount approaching 50%, and funding dropped by more than that. Quite literally, the survival of the organization was at stake.
Also as is well-known, the ACLU prevailed, in National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977) 432 U.S. 43. The principal litigator, Burton Joseph, pushed to take the case and made absolutely clear his contempt for the Nazis' message at the same time he advocated for the government to let them deliver it. It took a while to attract the donors and the members back, but in the long run that case did the organization a world of good: it demonstrated that the ACLU is not always going to take the left-wing side of things, that it will stand on principle against its own members' preferences and even against its own interests if need be. Civil rights really are for everyone, even people you don't like. Maybe even especially for people you don't like. If you are only willing to stand up and support someone else's civil rights when you like the result, it's difficult to say that what you're really supporting is the right or the result. The true measure of whether you support a civil right on its own merit is when you support someone else's right to do a particular thing that you would rather that person not do.
I've got several other personal and political issues with the ACLU which keep me from wanting to join them (specifically, I think it intervenes in electoral politics too much), but the Skokie case stands out as the organization's finest hour for precisely this reason. It's a model of legal heroism. We'd all do well to look at it and emulate Burton Joseph in at least this respect: they were willing to stand up for the civil rights of pretty much the most odious people around. They weren't in it because they wanted the Nazis to have a parade. They were in it because freedom of speech meant something to them. They made good on their oaths.
The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!
— Kurt Tucholsky, German satirist, 1925 (often misattributed to Josef Stalin)
A search of our database reveals that the earliest post on this website is dated January 20, 2009.
Since that date, the number of headline-grabbing heartbreaking mass shootings that have occurred is, sadly, legion. Many times, including the most recent attack in Orlando, we've paused our writing about other issues and reflected and mourned and sometimes had nothing much to say and other times vented focused anger at the events.
Here's the significant mass shootings that I can remember since the date of our earliest post here, with an assist from the Los Angeles Times because, like me, there have been so many you've likely forgotten about some of them in the meantime. I'd say don't be ashamed, but maybe we should be ashamed of that state of affairs.
Some disclaimers: I include information about the nature of the attackers and the weapons used because these are frequent points of discussion following these events, which dovetail to become relevant to my ultimate point for this post. Also intending no disrespect to the slain and their families, I have generally included the shooter in the count of the dead when the shooter was killed during the shooting or its immediate aftermath, whether by law enforcement or by suicide. For our purposes here, a death is a death. Finally, I also don't purport that these are the only "mass shootings" that have taken place since 2009, and how exactly one defines the term "mass shooting" is far from a settled matter. I'm not entirely sure how the Los Angeles Times picked these, but I think it's at least six victims from a single sequence of violent activity.
|Type of Attacker
|June 12, 2016
|Orlando, Florida
|Married but separated male, Muslim US Citizen, "inspired" by Islamist groups.
|Sig Sauer MCX, a semi-automatic rifle.
|December 2, 2015
|San Bernardino, California
|Married Couple, Muslim US Citizen and Pakistani citizen with green card, "inspired" by Islamist groups.
|Multiple semi-automatic pistols and rifles.
|November 29, 2015
|Colorado Springs, Colorado
|Divorced male, evangelical Christian US Citizen, likely selected victim at Planned Parenthood clinic motivated by anti-abortion beliefs.
|"AK-47 style" semi-automatic rifle.
|October 1, 2015
|Roseburg, Oregon
|Single male, secular US citizen, thought to have white supremacist affiliations.
|Multiple handguns.
|July 16, 2015
|Chattanooga, Tennessee
|Single male, Muslim naturalized US Citizen, "inspired" by Islamist groups.
|Semi-automatic rifle (again, identified as "AK-47 style") and 9mm handgun. 12-gague shotgun recovered from shooter but unused in attacks.
|June 18, 2015
|Charleston, South Carolina
|Single white male, Christian US Citizen, "inspired" by white supremacist propaganda
|Glock 41 .45 caliber handgun.
|May 23, 2014
|Isla Vista, California
|Single white male, Christian US Citizen
|Glock 34 handgun, Sig Sauer P225 handgun, knife, automobile
|April 2, 2014
|Fort Hood, Texas
|Married white male U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico, Christian
|.45 caliber M&P semi-automatic handgun
|September 16, 2013
|Washington, D.C. Navy Shipyard
|Single black male US Citizen, lapsed Christian studied Buddhism
|12-gauge shotgun, 9mm semi-automatic handgun.
|June 7, 2013
|Santa Monica, California
|Single male Lebanese-American, Christian (suicide note disclaimed religious motives)
|AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
|December 14, 2012
|Newtown, Connecticut
|Single white male, Christian
|Bushmaster XM 14-E2S .223 semi-automatic rifle.
|October 21, 2012
|Brookfield, Wisconsin
|Married black male Jamaican national with green card, Christian
|Glock .40 semi-automatic handgun.
|September 28, 2012
|Minneapolis, Minnesota
|Single male U.S. Citizen, Christian
|Glock 9mm semi-automatic handgun.
|August 5, 2012
|Oak Creek, Wisconsin
|Single white male U.S. Citizen, Christian (victims were all at Sikh temple, shooter had ties to white supremacist groups)
|Springfield XD(M) semi-automatic pistol.
|July 20, 2012
|Aurora, Colorado
|Single white male U.S. citizen, religion unclear at time of attack but converted to Islam after apprehension
|Smith & Wesson M&P-15 semi-automatic rifle, 12-gauge shotgun, Glock 22 .40 caliber handgun.
|April 2, 2012
|Oakland, California
|Single male Korean-born naturalized U.S. citizen, presumed Christian
|.45 caliber handgun, style of firing mechanism not reported.
|October 12, 2011
|Seal Beach, California
|Divorced white male U.S. citizen, religion uncertain
|9mm semi-automatic handgun, .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun, .44 magnum revolver handgun.
|January 8, 2011
|Tuscon, Arizona
|Single white male U.S. citizen, atheist, targeted U.S. Congresswoman and U.S. District Judge
|9x19mm semi-automatic Glock handgun.
|August 3, 2010
|Manchester, Connecticut
|Single black male U.S. citizen, religion uncertain
|Ruger SR9 semi-automatic handgun.
|February 12, 2010
|Huntsville, Alabama
|Married female U.S. Citizen, evangelical Christian
|9mm semi-automatic handgun.
|November 5, 2009
|Fort Hood, Texas
|Single male U.S. Muslim Citizen of Palestinian descent (held rank of Major in US Army at time of shooting) exposed to and debatably inspired by Islamist groups
|FN "five-seven" semi-automatic handgun.
|April 3, 2009
|Binghamton, New York
|Divorced male naturalized U.S. citizen of Chinese-Vietnamese origin, religion uncertain
|9mm semi-automatic handgun, .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun.
If in this dreadful catalogue you wish to discern a pattern of shooters and weapons, I defy you to do better than "almost all the shooters are men" and "most of the weapons have semi-automatic firing mechanisms." Indeed, if we were to look at the weapons used, I'd hazard an approximation that more handguns than rifles were employed by these shooters. Beyond that, I don't see any particular pattern of ethnicity, religion, or race. The shooters look to me like a cross-section of men in America as a whole.
One thing that I can't really quantify, even in a binary way, is how many of these shooters were mentally ill. Lots, I'm willing to bet, but in some cases the shooters are now dead and thus beyond diagnosis, and in other cases it's not clear the degree to which actual mental illness as opposed to a buildup of stressors contributed to these murderers' rampages. I'm not the first person to note that both our government and our culture are really not good at dealing with mental health issues. But I'll also say that if you think you're immune from them, or the people who live and work in your community are not going to suffer from them, you're indulging in a profound delusion.
Nevertheless, the body count grows over time, and all the gun deaths cumulatively stop being tragedies, and start becoming statistics.
There may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality when legislation appears on its face to be within a specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of the first ten amendments, which are deemed equally specific when held to be embraced within the Fourteenth.
United States v. Carolene Products Co., (1938) 304 U.S. 144, 155 & fn. 4.
So we've established that a) Constitutional rights are very important, b) gun ownership is a Constitutional right held by all citizens exercised by very large numbers of Americans with no problems at all, c) a small number of people really shouldn't have access to guns but do, contributing to hundreds of not thousands of preventable deaths. Presumably, then, we will look to the government to regulate the exercise of this Constitutional right in such a way as to minimize the risks we all must suffer.
Laws regulating, controlling, or otherwise burdening the exercise of rights set out in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, as noted in the famous Carolene Products footnote four above, are subject to two kinds of protections. One applies to generalized rules, and is called the "strict scrutiny test." The other applies to direct actions with respect to specific individuals, and is called "due process."
If the government is going to make a rule, a regulation, a law, which prospectively affects everyone's ability to do something, and that "something" is significantly related to an activity protected by the Bill of Rights, it must meet the "strict scrutiny" test.
There are two parts to the test:
- The governmental restriction of the fundamental right must be aimed at fulfilling a compelling governmental interest. "Compelling" is compared to other, less critical sorts of adjectives in different contexts; it is more than "important" and much more than "legitimate."
- The governmental action must be narrowly-tailored, meaning that it must restrict the exercise of the individual right no more than is necessary to achieve the compelling governmental objective. The danger to the government here is overbreadth — if the effects of the policy restrict the exercise of individual rights in a way that does not fulfill the governmental interest, then it is not narrowly-tailored. Alternatively phrased, the governmental action must be the least restrictive means available.
In the context of a gun regulation, then, the proponent of a law restricting someone's ability to buy, own, or make a gun available for use needs to prove that the law in question meets this test. The first prong seems pretty easy. It's very difficult to say that protecting human life is somehow not a compelling governmental interest. I find it well nigh impossible after having spent the time to put together that awful chart.
So the legal action is going to be in the narrow tailoring, the least restrictive means prong. How will you restrict the rights of Dangerous Dude to get a firearm while allowing me, Trustworthy Law-Abiding Guy, to get one? How can you know, in advance, whether Burt Likko is a Dangerous Dude or a Trustworthy Law-Abiding Guy? The list of things that Justice Scalia broke out as appropriate arenas for reasonable restrictions in the Heller opinion are going to be the Constitutionally safest germs of ideas.
As you develop those ideas, bear in mind: Where and when will Burt Likko encounter these safeguards? How much time, and how much money, and how much bureaucratic effort, and how much intrusion on personal privacy, is it fair to make a Trustworthy Law-Abiding Guy navigate to exercise his right to keep and bear arms? Remember, the resulting system must be designed to restrict the rights of all those Trustworthy Law-Abiding Guys and Gals as little as possible, while still effectively filtering out the Dangerous Dudes and Dudettes.
That's if you're engaged in prospective, generalized policy, something we might call "rulemaking." But there's another way you might go. Maybe you're thinking, "Hey, check out that Burt Likko. I think he's a Dangerous Dude. Maybe he used to be a Trustworthy Law-Abiding Guy, but not anymore. Let's make sure he can't buy a gun, and if he has one, let's find a way to take it away from him." All you need is some neutral, otherwise-constitutional rule that lets you specifically apply, or "enforce," your policy against me.
On the enforcement side, you can take away my rights and liberties — if you provide me with due process. Both the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment are explicit that a person shall not be deprived of a liberty interest without due process of law. What does this mean? In essence, here are the things that it boils down to:
- Advance notice of the charge against, and typically of the penalties if the charge is proven.
- An opportunity to present evidence relevant to the charge and question witnesses and evidence offered against me.
- The ability to be represented and assisted by an attorney.
- A fair hearing on the merits, before an impartial decision-maker, within a reasonable amount of time.
- Often, but not always, a presumption of innocence and the burden of persuasion resting with the proponent of the restriction on my liberty.
Now, you might be able to prove that for a short time, I have to be relieved of my liberty interest because the danger is just too great. Restraining orders are the way that is typically done in my world. Restraining orders are temporary, and usually of short duration; there must be another hearing after I've had a reasonable chance to gather evidence and present my side of the story to see if that restraining order will remain in place.
Think about the most obvious sort of restriction on liberty: imprisonment. You can arrest and jail me for a short time, for some good reasons. I'm a flight risk. I'm dangerous. You need to gather information from my person. But you can't keep me in prison for a very long amount of time, and indeed have to offer me reasonable bail. I get an arraignment, which tells me what the charges against me are. I get to hire a lawyer. That lawyer gets to cross-examine witnesses and go issue subpoenas to get favorable evidence. There's an argument before a neutral court. And the prosecution has the burden of proof.
This is really important stuff. Due process is pretty much the whole reason we had the Revolution against Britain way back when. It is the fundamental mechanism protecting against the arbitrary exercise of power by the government. Inescapably, then, if we are going to take away the ability of a particular individual to exercise a fundamental right, we must afford due process to that person.
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
If the very public, very heart-rending deaths I listed in section V represent but one-tenth of one percent of the gun deaths in the United States, 1 surely something needs to be done. Surely, something is wrong with our society having so many guns, everywhere, owned by so many people! For solutions to this problem, we look to our policymakers. What we see is this:
In the late morning hours of June 22, 2016, about a half dozen members of the House of Representatives, led by Democrat John Lewis of Georgia, and Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, grew frustrated at Republican refusal to schedule a House vote on a bill called the Collins Amendment. This was a law proposed by Susan Collins, a Republican Senator from Maine, mirroring a policy proposal by presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the wake of the recent Orlando nightclub shootings. Specifically, Clinton proposed, and Collins would have legislated, that if a person were on the "No Fly List," or the "Terrorist Watch List," you would not be allowed to buy a gun. Informally it's referred to as "No Fly, No Buy."
Now, as I understand it, the Senate had been considering the Collins Amendment when Senator John McCain initiated a filibuster of the law. On June 22, a cloture motion failed, so the Collins Amendment was already a dead letter before anyone took the floor for Representative Lewis' sit-in. That understanding may be flawed, so feel free to correct me if you have other information about what was going on in the Senate.
Ultimately about sixty Democratic lawmakers, including some Senators, sat down on the floor in the well of the House, or near it. I don't know if any Republicans joined them, although Senator Collins herself might have. They wound up sitting there for about twenty-six hours before Speaker Ryan got an adjournment through despite the legislators' repeated tweeting of pictures of themselves with the hashtag #NoVoteNoBreak.
It ultimately got pretty raucous. Republican leadership ordered the C-SPAN cameras turned off; Democrats responded by broadcasting their sit-in on Periscope. In theory, the leadership could have cut off the wi-fi, but didn't. Following patterns set by the Senate during live speaking filibusters, staffers brought in food and blankets and pillows, and the number of Democrats refusing to conduct business grew. Well, sort of — they seemed to come to order for the Pledge of Allegiance and the invocation and some votes actually got through on other needful areas of legislative activity, like funding Zika virus interdiction and funding the Veteran's Affairs Department, but the Democrats used paper voting to slow business down. Republicans and Democrats confronted one another; Louie Gohmert got into a shouting match with some of his Democratic counterparts about the responsibility of "radical Islam" for the gun violence; Don Young was just plain ornery and there was some shoving and shouting. Meanwhile, led by Lewis, the Democrats sang "We Shall Overcome" and called out the names of victims of the Orlando shooting.
Eventually, Speaker Ryan got an adjournment through all the noise and chaos, and one by one everyone went home. Congressman Lewis was the last to go.
Well, it was fine political theater. There was yelling, there was singing, there was pizza, there was name-calling and some tough-guy posturing on both sides. Gratefully, Speaker Ryan found a way to not physically eject a genuine civil rights hero from the floor of the Congress. And a lot of Democrats raised quite a bit of campaign money and I bet a lot of Republicans will wind up doing the same.
If you're on the "No-Fly list," no one tells you this. There are private entities that purport to know who's on the list and who isn't, but they don't. The government keeps the names on that list secret. Maybe for a good reason, maybe not. If you somehow find out you're on the "No-Fly list," there does not seem to be any sort of mechanism by which you can get off it. Being on the "No-Fly list" restricts your ability to, as it sounds like, fly on an airplane and therefore it restricts your ability to travel freely from one state of the Union to another. This, by the way, is another fundamental Constitutional right, just like free speech, gun ownership, and due process. These three things are all the subject of at least three pending legal challenges, two of which are being quarterbacked by lawyers from the ACLU.
The Collins Amendment would piggyback another restriction on another Constitutional right on this already highly-questionable governmental practice. For this, Democrats have invoked some of their most sacred imagery and history.
Republicans and conservatives, many of whom until about Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. eastern time had made substantial political investments in things like demands that the government prevent Muslims from building houses of worship at their own expense on land that they own, who fearmongered their constituents with claims of incipient Sharia law in hotbeds of Muslim activism like Oklahoma, whose presumptive Presidential candidate has made a centerpiece policy platform of excluding Muslims (whether citizens or not) from entering the country; and who continue to lecture the rest of us on the moral imperative to physically torture Muslims suddenly began asking things like:
My rep steps up to join the battle to deprive minority immigrants of their Constitutional rights. @KurtSchlichter https://t.co/i83qHVz5Pa
— Dirk Deardorff (@dwdeardorff) June 22, 2016
and pointing out irrelevancies:
So there's silly political theater going on all around. Meanwhile, both the NRA and the ACLU opposed the Collins Amendment, which tells you something about just how Constitutionally questionable it really is.
It disgusts me, seeing our leaders and thinkers claim to be advocates of the public interest and the Constitution and really all that's happening is grandstanding on social media. I suppose we could demand that our legislators act like grownups, but all available evidence is that this simply isn't going to happen. Put me on record for a big ol' BSDI on that one.
I'm left fantasizing about what responsible legislators might do. It's a very difficult logical problem, how to square protecting the legitimate rights of law-abiding citizens with the need to protect against deadly gun violence.
Taking the Constitution seriously means admitting that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to privately own guns. We can't do something like what Australia did here. Nor can we get around the fact that people can get guns legally, easily, with no red flags going up, and then when their personal psychological circumstances change, a very small number of them are going to do things like what quite a lot of the shooters chronicled above did. Many more will find specific victims and many more will try to suicide.
As it is, I don't see any choice for us, under our current laws, but to simply accept this and live with it. All of these things are crimes, of course, but simply making something illegal doesn't mean it isn't going to happen. Same-sex sexual encounters were once illegal. Drugs are still mostly illegal. And so is gun violence.
There are things on the Heller list of "reasonable restrictions" that we might try but haven't. Requiring guns to be stored in safes at gun clubs, like they do in Switzerland, is one idea that I've heard and maybe it might help. Not sure if that would fly, but no one's put it to the test. Not sure if it would work either, but again it's something of a guess. Thing is, unless there's a good and easy-to-spot reason to keep someone from buying a gun, our existing laws simply require that we not put really heavy, onerous restrictions on the ability of a person to get a gun. 99.9% of the time, that's not a problem at all. It's that .1% of the time that we're worried about. The price that .1% extracts is so very much to bear.
If you're really serious about reducing gun violence and you want to respect the Constitution, I'm afraid you're going to have to do the hardest job of all. You need to amend the Constitution. And you need to do it in a way that respects the fact that a very high percentage of people really do own guns completely responsibly and peacefully. But no one is attempting this in any serious way so far as I can tell. For all his truly admirable history and good intentions, I don't see Representative Lewis offering any amendments or repeals to this portion of the Constitution. I seem him leading what amounts to a meaningless political stunt, obviously futile from the start, that does not address the basic problem written into the law. Nor am I the only person, even on these pages, thoroughly unimpressed with this demonstration.
On the other side of the aisle, I don't see a lot of good faith interest in trying to find ways to do things that the Constitution does allow to identify that .1% and keep them from murdering people. When the NRA opposes pre-purchase background checks, it's difficult to take their claim to want to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys seriously. I don't want to see the Second Amendment changed to really change anything for people who aren't ever going to be problems with their guns. But if we're going to move forward, we need to step beyond arguments about semantics and find a way to cut through the legal conundrum, in a way that is fair to a broad range of people of different interests and backgrounds.
Holy crap, we're going to have actually talk to and listen to one another.
It's so easy to despair here. No one seems to care about facts. No one seems to care about the law. Sloganeering is fun. Dialogue is boring and compromise is icky. Everyone is willing to wave around the Constitution when it seems to support their side; but when it gets in the way, it's suddenly an irrelevancy. That sickens me.
Something needs to change. Amend the Constitution? Well, why not? We haven't done it all in a generation and we haven't meaningfully done it since I was an infant. Ultimately those who would use the law to reduce gun violence need to come to grips that there are such things as gun ownership rights — and those who want to exercise those rights need to come to grips with the fact that the law in its current form is not working for us, and we all need to do so in a way that respects the Constitutional process that we all claim to buy into.
Image by Program Executive Office Soldier
- Adding up the list, I find 239 dead and 249 grievously injured people. We can see that the CDC reports that there were 33,636 gun deaths (including suicides) in 2015, and "only" 40 of them appear on the heart-rending chart above.


text:
James Mackay Hut Heaphy Track.
Image: Jonty Crane | Creative Commons
Located in Kahurangi National Park in the Nelson/Tasman region
It's situated on the edge of Mackay Downs in low forest and has distant views of the Tasman Sea and Heaphy River mouth, 15 km to the west and 750 m below.
All huts on the Heaphy Track have heating, either long drop or flush toilets supplied with toilet paper, and cold running water.
The James Mackay Hut is a new facility that opened in October 2014. It has gas cooking facilities, sinks with cold running water inside the hut, lighting, heating, individual bunk rooms with bunks and mattresses and flush toilets attached to the hut. You'll need to bring your own cooking utensils and sleeping bag as these are not supplied.
There are no showers in any of the huts.
Hut rangers move between huts in the summer. As well as checking bookings, they are able to provide information about the track and weather.
James Mackay Hut is on the Heaphy Track.
NZTopo50 map sheet: BP22
Grid/NZTM2000 coordinates: E1534044, N5473583
New Zealand citizens, those ordinarily resident in New Zealand*:
International visitors:
* New Zealand rates:
Book online or contact Whakatū/Nelson Visitor Centre for more information.
|Whakatū / Nelson Visitor Centre
|+64 3 546 9339
|+64 4 471 1117
Millers Acre/Taha o te Awa
79 Trafalgar Street
Nelson 7010
|Postal Address:
Private Bag 5
Nelson 7042
|Full office details


text:
Added by Sarah Brady on April 29, 2010 at 4:03pm — No Comments
Added by Jeanine Metts on April 29, 2010 at 1:14pm — 3 Comments
No pain no gain?
In the world of auctions it is just the opposite…Continue
Added by Mary Ellen Wilson on April 28, 2010 at 5:53pm — No Comments
Just waated to let MASS MLSPIN realtors know ....I learned today that Multiple Listing Services in Mass (MLSPIN) no longer allows the wording subj. to 3rd party approval on commission, conditions and terms.
They state that if you offer a specific amount on the comssiion section then that is what the other agent gets paid. So, if you offer3 % to buyer agent and the demand letter only pays out 2.5 then you take the hit on your commission. Apparently, this was…Continue
Added by Cidalia Mendonca Matukas on April 26, 2010 at 7:43pm — 4 Comments
Added by Mike Linkenauger on April 24, 2010 at 6:00pm — 2 Comments
Here is what you must do to begin the process:
Contact your lender to see if they are an approved VA Servicer, Loss Mitigation lender or contact the VA regional office servicing your loan directly.
Fill out a financial status report . ( form provided by your l...ender or the VA )
Complete a letter of request.
Complete a Compromise Agreement Sale Application. You can get this…
Added by Cecilia Rodriguez on April 23, 2010 at 3:42am — 2 Comments
Here is a summary of the proposed short sale changes:
Remember I am condensing here and pointing out what migth be important to you the homeowner.
I Hope this helps you understand more about the new HAFA Program, I know that it is confusing, I try my best to make it easier.
If you dont need any help, but you know somebody in your family , friend, co worker that is facing foreclosure please…
Added by Cecilia Rodriguez on April 22, 2010 at 11:52am — No Comments
Added by Noel Herrington on April 19, 2010 at 5:43pm — 5 Comments
The Treasury Department guidelines and forms, updated on March 26, 2010, do not apply to loans owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
Those enterprises will issue their own HAFA guidance and…Continue
Added by Cecilia Rodriguez on April 19, 2010 at 3:46am — 1 Comment
Added by natalie poteete on April 16, 2010 at 11:55am — 18 Comments
Have a condo listed in a newer complex. Short Sale. Everything is running smoothly until another agent
calls me who has a listing in the same complex.
She was asking me if I heard of new FHA Guidelines that won't approve loans in neighborhoods where more than 15% of the neighborhood is in default of paying their HOA/Condo dues.
This is new to me since I have closed 2 other units in the same complex in the last 2 months.
I called a lender that I use and he…Continue
Added by Benjamin S. Lehrman on April 16, 2010 at 7:27am — 4 Comments
provided by…
Added by steve vennemann on April 14, 2010 at 11:22am — No Comments
Added by steve vennemann on April 14, 2010 at 11:14am — No Comments
The worst thing a homeowner can do when facing foreclosure is nothing. Homeowners behind on their mortgage go through a range of emotions, shame is one of them. There is nothing shameful about falling on hard times; it can happen to anyone.
It's not realistic to suffer a change in your situation such as a divorce or death of a spouse, job loss, or illness/injury and expect everything else in your life to remain untouched. The best thing to do when you're behind is to seek…Continue
Added by Tish Thompson on April 11, 2010 at 4:00pm — No Comments
Added by Teri Jo Fox on April 1, 2010 at 9:05am — 2 Comments


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Imagine running a business knowing that a consequence of your profiting, is that you are killing and debilitating millions of people, including many of your customers!
Posts published by "Adrian Bright"
Adrian is a City & Guilds automotive technology graduate and served a 5 year Ford apprenticeship.
He worked his way up to a top auto racing team building F2 and F5000 cars - that company later became Roger Penske's UK Indy-car factory.
Adrian formed Adrian Bright Powerboat Engineering which he succesfuly ran in the United Kingdom before relocating to the Gold Coast in Australia.
He has engineered, raced and scruitineered offshore boats over a 40 year period.
It's one thing to come up with an initiative, It's quite another to put it into action!
I guess I have previously spelt out much of the circumstance which, in my opinion, brought about the demise of true offshore powerboat racing internationally.
Airlie Race Week – and this time it's bigger than ever - coincidentally, August also means Cowes Week in the UK – an equally significant sail-fest!
This discussion follows a series of articles examining the evolution and issues in offshore powerboat racing and questioning its future. It concluded that the conceptual notion of the sport as a true offshore challenge has eroded as the 'speed' element usurped every other quality.
The story so far, is the recognition that offshore powerboat racing, globally, has degenerated. This has occurred as individual nations, promotors, clubs and factions created alternatives to the original UIM Class structure template.
My thanks again to the editor for his comments and support – and publishing my posts here on Powerboat Racing World. There have been plenty of 'Likes', supportive comments and some great 'Message' communications and again, my thanks to all who have taken an interest, it's very encouraging to know there are many in the offshore community who do 'get it'!
My two preceding posts examined the rise and fall of offshore powerboat racing and suggest its amateur status is a significant factor.


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High school athletics value more evident now that it's gone
The ballparks are silent at the moment as scholastic competition has been shut down for the balance of the spring, so far. Often in the absence of an activity, it serves us well to consider the impact and vitality of that activity.
High school athletics value more evident now that it's gone
The ballparks are silent at the moment as scholastic competition has been shut down for the balance of the spring, so far. Often in the absence of an activity, it serves us well to consider the impact and vitality of that activity.
A rough count of the 2019-20 high school athletic rosters reveals about 540 Alba-Golden, Mineola and Quitman roster spots were filled by local athletes this school year. Although that number does not account for those students who played multiple sports, it is still impressive to consider. Throughout the school year, 540 individuals wore the jerseys of the three schools in athletic competition.
Viewed from this perspective, the importance of athletics in area schools is monumental. With the large number of participants, it is of little wonder why schools invest so heavily in athletic programs.
The objective is simple: to build productive members of society.
As Drew Webster, athletic director at Alba-Golden school described, "We want our kids to be great husbands, wives, fathers and mothers. We want our kids to be able to handle the highs and lows of life and always be positive, contributing members to the community."
Mineola Athletic Director Luke Blackwell added, "The ultimate goal of our athletic program is to teach kids to be successful in life outside of high school."
The sports available in local high schools are then simply different mechanisms to teach those traits and share in the experiences, which will give youngsters the best possible chances for life success.
The array of sports is impressive: football, volleyball, cross-country, soccer, basketball, powerlifting, softball, baseball, track, golf and tennis. Most of the sports feature varsity and junior varsity squads.
Managing an athletic program creates many requirements. Building a coaching staff, maintaining facilities and equipment, establishing policies, codifying expectations and requirements are just a few of the responsibilities of athletic directors. It is essential for those leading the program to never forget the reason it all exists.
As Webster stated, "Despite the many hats we wear, we are here for the kids."
Blackwell describes creating a culture that allows kids to grow, learn and be successful.
"Surrounding our kids with men and women of high character who consistently exhibit strong positives examples to our kids through their words and actions," is a mainstay of the Mineola program, related Blackwell.
There are many paths to success and many characteristics on which to build a program.
For the Panthers of Alba-Golden, the young student-athletes are indoctrinated into the concepts of accountability, character and roles. Young Yellowjacket athletes will become very familiar with the mantra of effort, attitude and toughness.
Both coaches shared amazing examples of young people who have demonstrated superior qualities of perseverance and humility in the course of their high school athletic careers. Whether it was a promising athlete who fought back twice from major injury to become a symbol of achievement or an athlete who overcame physical impairments to be among the best in the state, the power of athletics is boundless. The impact of their athletes on the two head coaches was obvious and heartfelt.
"We have chosen this road (as coaches) to impact and influence our kids through athletics," summarized Webster. He related how athletics provide purpose in young people's lives and often becomes a very real family to many young people.
Blackwell concurred, remarking, "You never know what single event or series of events may change a kid's life!"
Often the achievements of local athletes leave spectators in awe. The emotional rollercoaster of high school competition can awaken emotional reactions.
We share in the wins and defeats of our children, and are reminded thereby of our humanity.
For those having grown up in East Texas, high school sports was always a part, a big part, of the natural environment. We likely never considered the passing seasons without it. A pause without the sights and sounds of sports may give us all time to reflect on the impact we have over each other, especially young people, in a trying time.


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Printing Services FAQs: What Are the Steps to Print a Large Order?
Print solutions are some of the best ways to get visibility for your business or brand. The modern consumer has become so inundated with digital advertising that they scroll through countless images without ever acknowledging them. Flyers, magazines, and catalogs provide a pleasing tactile and sensory experience that drives potential clients to your service. With modern technology, your print solutions expert can help you go from concept to production with a quick turnaround and very affordable costs on a large print order.
What Goes In To A Large Print Order?
There are many considerations that go into a large print campaign, and your print solutions expert will help with guidance, recommendations, and quality control. Time is always a factor with any print campaign, but it is equally important that the final printed product be the perfect representation of your creative concept.
Once you get started with a quote for your printing project, your print solutions expert will be able to make suggestions to help you get the most out of your order. Here are some considerations to keep in mind as you begin.
Set a Budget for the Order
It is always prudent to have a budget in mind before you begin a project. The budget will help guide many of the printing choices you make down the road, including things like quantity, paper quality, and distribution.
A budget allows you to maintain perspective on the importance of your printing project within the larger context of your other business needs. How your general budget estimate compares to your quote will help you determine if you need to reevaluate your campaign.
Estimate Quantity
The number of people you wish to reach with your print order will affect many of your printing choices. Providing an accurate quantity estimate during the early stages of your preparation will help your print solutions expert give you an accurate quote and set a timeline to ensure your order is delivered when and where you need it.
Have a Target Date
The more your print solutions experts know about your campaign, the better equipped they will be to meet your expectations. Modern machines can print as many as 10,000,000 flyers per hour, so there can be a very fast turnaround on even huge orders. However, preparing graphics, proofing images, and binding can all be time-consuming. A target date helps establish a work schedule that will ensure maximum quality and efficiency.
What Print Size Do You Prefer?
The type of campaign you wish to run will determine your print size. A simple flyer is the simplest printing project and can include graphics on one or both sides. Magazines and catalogs are slightly more complicated and can include a variety of binding options, and proper preparation and quality control prior to going to press are critical for magazines and catalogs.
Your printing project can be smaller than a postcard or larger than a movie poster. Postcard-sized flyers are ideal for placing on display near cash registers, while poster-sized flyers can attract attention from a distance. If you are uncertain of the ideal size for your campaign, make an estimate when you apply for a quote and then request the suggestion of your customer service representative.
What Paper Stock Do You Prefer?
The paper stock determines how the finished printed object feels in your hand. Postcards are heavier and more durable, while thinner print material is more vulnerable to getting torn in the wind.
However, choosing thin material lowers your transportation and mailing costs, and flyers displayed in magazines or store windows are protected from the elements. If you are printing a magazine or catalog, you will need to select thinner stock for folding and binding purposes.
Consider the Finish
You will be able to choose from matte, glossy, or no finish. Glossy finish has the wet look you see on magazine covers. In addition to providing extra strength to the paper, the glossy finish helps enhance the look of graphics or photos. A matte finish also helps strengthen your final product and results in an attractive look ideal for text.
No finish can be a highly economical option that allows you to provide a maximum amount of information at a minimal cost. You also can combine finishes by using a glossy page over a no-finish interior for the best of both worlds.
Get a Quote
Once you have finished the initial stages of brainstorming your campaign, you can provide the information to your print solutions expert. Next, a customer service representative will get in touch with you and provide you with a quote.
Your customer service representative will be able to offer you guidance as to where you can reduce costs or what upgrades can result in a far superior final product. Your customer service representative will be a tremendous resource to ensuring your print project is completed as planned.
Verify Graphics Parameters
It is important that you know the exact size requirements for the graphics you submit for your project. Most printing services require a designated cut zone that cannot contain critical information. Your customer service representative should be able to provide you with a template that will help ensure your graphics conform to the printing requirements of your specialist and that there is no risk of important information getting lost in the cutting process.
Finalize Graphics and Approve Proof
There can be some variation with how colors are displayed on computer monitors, so it is always important to go through a proofing stage. The proofing stage gives you and your customer service representative the opportunity to identify any remaining issues before you go to press. When you are printing a magazine or catalog, the proofing stage allows you to verify that the pages of your catalog will be presented in the proper orientation and order.
You can often choose between a physical or digital proof, and sometimes it's prudent to do both. It is often the case that examining a proof allows you to identify errors you've missed on the digital version. By the time your project is at the proof stage, you should feel absolute confidence that the final product will meet your expectations.
Distribution Preferences
Most printers offer distribution as part of their basic services. Utilizing a distribution service directly from your printer saves you from having to pay for the product to be shipped to you before you pay again to distribute the product. You can either provide your own mailing list or take advantage of smart mail marketing strategies that help you target the optimal individuals to receive your printed material.
The Right Choice for Large Scale Printing
Printing a large order can seem like a big and stressful project, but with the right print solutions expert, you'll find the process is streamlined and easy. Once you have established your campaign parameters, you can request a quote and begin to get a better idea as to the printing choices that best suit your needs and budget.
Your friendly customer service representative will provide you with insight and suggestions and even serve as a final quality control resource to ensure your final result meets and exceeds your expectations. If you have a large print project, request a quote from Dollco Printing today.
With the highest volume printers in Canada, Dollco can take the time to ensure every step of your project is completed to perfection and still have time to produce the highest quality prints to meet your deadline. The superior technology and experience of Dollco Printing should be your first choice for all your print solutions.
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Ratcheting Pruners make Light work of Heavy Tasks.
It does not matter if you have one small hydrangea bush or a yard full of garden beds. At some point, you will need to remove some dead growth, overgrown branches or untidy flowers from your garden shrubs and plants. And some of those branches will be thick. There are so many pruners on the market. I have a basket full of them. Some work better than others, and some I can't live without. One of my favorite pair of pruners for heavier garden work is my ratcheting pruners.
Why use ratcheting pruners?
As I have aged, I have found that I have less strength in my hands. Most pruners will work for me for lightweight tasks. But a pair of very sharp scissors or regular pruners will also do those jobs with ease. There are times when the branches are thicker, and normal pruners just won't cut through the branch easily. I hate having to trudge back to the shed to get loppers, and this is when I just love my ratcheting pruners.
Ratcheting pruners are a similar size to bypass pruners so I can carry them around with me. But they are sort of like bypass pruners on steroids. They can easily cut through branches up to 1″ thick with ease. No struggling to cut a thick stem or having to make a series of small cuts to get through the branch. Even if age is not a problem, any gardener will like to use a tool that makes gardening chores easier.
Ratcheting pruners are considered anvil pruners. This means that they have one sharp blade and one flat, blade that does not cut, but acts like a blacksmith's anvil. As you squeeze the handles, the sharp blade comes down on the branch you wish to cut and the anvil holds the branch in place so that the cut can be made. This action is much like a blacksmith who places something on an anvil and uses a hammer to reshape or flatten the object.This is why ratcheting branches work so well for larger branches. I'm amazed at their quality and their ease of use. It got me asking myself, based on my experience, "what makes a great set of ratcheting pruners?" Lots of features come into play but, for me, these are the important ones.
1. Design. A design that reduces wrist strain and requires less pressure to close and to operate. A pair of pruners that has a design that makes using them easy is high on my list of must have features. Being able to trim thick branches on a holly bush is a cinch if you use a pair of Ratcheting pruners.2. Sharp Blades. A good set of ratcheting pruners will have blades that are sharp and will stay sharp. I especially love pruners with high carbon steel blades.
3. A good Guarantee. I don't know about you, but I am tired of buying pruning tools that won't work after a few months of use, or break from use. A good guarantee gives peace of mind. You will know that, if anything goes wrong, you will be able to get a repair or a replacement pair during the guarantee period. Look for a guarantee of at least several years.4. Coated Blades. Look for a pair of ratcheting pruners that have coated blades. This will make brush cutting easier.
5. Size of branch that can be cut. Be sure to see what diameter of branch that the ratcheting pruners you are considering will cut. Good ones will cut at least 3/4″ in diameter. Each spring spend time pruning forsythia bushes. Some of the canes are very large and racheting pruners come in handy for these.6. Handle style. Some ratcheting pruners have ergonomic designs and others are shaped more like bypass pruners. My hands often slip on normal double handled pruners, so I like a pair which has an ergonomic design and finger grip.
Uses for Ratcheting Pruners.
This type of pruner is not a one size fits all pruner. There are times when you do not want to use them. They are best saved for heavier pruning jobs where the branches are thicker. They are not recommended for roses, since they can crush the stem which might allow infection to set in. They are also not recommended for lightweight pruning. Any good bypass pruners will do this type of job. These are for heavy duty jobs. Also, for branches larger than 1″, loppers are a better choice.
A good pair of high quality ratcheting pruners is an excellent pick for you if you have a lot of heavy pruning to do and when you want a sturdy tool that can be put to the test. These pruners are a godsend for gardeners that have arthritis, or for those gardeners who have a large amount of flowering shrubs that need to be trimmed every year.
Is there a pair of ratcheting pruners in your tool kit? If you want to make light work of some of your heavier gardening tasks, perhaps it is time to add a pair. You can get details on ratcheting pruners on Amazon. (affiliate link)
Note: I received a pair of these ratcheting pruners for free, in exchange for mentioning them in this blog post. I only recommend products that I feel will be of good use to my readers. I highly recommend these to anyone who has strength problems in their hands, or wants to make pruning chores easier.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Please note that I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."


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"Well, I was doing carnival shows in the midwest – The Amazing Floating Kenny – when a Sony representative found me. We got to talking and one thing led to another, and suddenly I was the face of their budget-friendly a7 III."Q: That's awesome. Did you get to use the camera much while shooting images for the marketing campaign?
"Oh yeah, the camera's awesome. And its light weight is great for me, personally. I tried shooting with a traditional DSLR, but it made levitating really difficult. With an a7 III, I can float anywhere I please."Q: Isn't it kind of odd that Sony didn't go all out in featuring your special abilities in the campain? I mean, being able to levitate is pretty rare.
"Yeah, I thought their choice of a brick wall was kind of odd. I mean, I can float over difficult terrain, the kind you see in those captivating sunrise mountain images. But Sony wanted an urban theme. Go figure."We wish Kenny the best of luck in his endeavors and look forward to seeing more (or, rather the same amount) of him as Sony releases future mirrorless cameras.
by Erin BabnikRead the entire article on the Canon Digital Learning Center.
There is a lot of truth to the old idea that we tend to see the world in terms of what we know about it. If we know that a location offers a photogenic vista to the north, then it can be easy to overlook the wonderfully gnarled trees to the south. Similarly, the compositions that photographers see most easily are usually those that fit well within the average field of view of two human eyes at a standing height—it's the way of seeing that we know best. With only a little shifting or focusing, our eyes at that height can take in scenes that fall within the range of a 24-105mm lens quite nicely, and it is no wonder that focal lengths in this range are most traditional for landscape photography. Nonetheless, compositions that fall well outside these limits have the potential to evoke the more abstract qualities of human perception, such as the ability of our brains to combine certain visual stimuli and to isolate others. For the photographer who would like to emphasize the 'mind's eye,' extreme focal lengths have a lot to offer.
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Begins Friday, Nov. 16, Pyramid Hill, Hamilton
Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park will be transformed into a wintery canvas of moving lights, projected images and whimsical animations for the holiday season.
The 16th annual version of Holiday Lights on the Hill invites guests to enjoy the custom work of Brave Berlin, the wizards behind Lumenocity and Blink. Their custom animation feature will highlight the show.
"The holidays are such a magical time of year, and we felt we could bring to life iconic memories … using our creative projection methods to tell those stories," said Steve McGowan of Brave Berlin.
Cost is $20 per carload Monday through Thursday and $25 per carload Friday through Sunday. Admission for Pyramid Hill members is $15 every night. Runs through Jan 1.


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Our team is proud to be participating in the inaugural St. Jude IRONMAN 70.3 Memphis as St. Jude Heroes! We're fundraising while we train for the race so we can make a difference in the lives of kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Help us in the fight against childhood cancer and other deadly diseases.
Did you know:
Join our team and help us reach our fundraising goal for the kids and families at St. Jude!


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Saturday, September 1 – guest of Relativity at the Cannon River Winery 2-5 Sunday, September 2 – toe tappin' tunes at Captain's Lakeside Grill, Isanti, MN. Music 2-5 Friday, September 7 – Private Party Saturday, September 8 – guest of Relativity at the Marina Lodge in Fairmont, MN. Music 7-11
Mark Allen – Red Rock Center – Fairmont, MN. – August 23
08.19.2018 Leave a Comment
Red Rock Center in Fairmont, MN hosting – Wine & Chocolate – Arts and Music. 4:30-7pm with live music 5-7.
Mark Allen – The Marina Lodge, Fairmont, MN.
08.30.2017 Leave a Comment
There's a plan for you on Saturday, September 1 and it's joining Mark Allen at The Marina Lodge. He'll hit the first cord at 7:30.
Mark Allen – The Marina Lodge, Fairmont, MN
05.2.2017 Leave a Comment
From Northern Minnesota on Friday to Southern Minnesota on Saturday! Mark is on a cross-MN trip and landing at the Marina Lodge on Saturday, May 13 and taking the stage at 7:30pm. Stop by and listen in to all your favorite songs including Mark Allen's original music! Come early and stay late. http://www.themarinalodge.com/


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Once again the courts have agreed Addison Lee drivers are legally entitled to workers' rights such as the national minimum wage and holiday pay rights.
On 14 November 2018, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) rejected Addison Lee's arguments that their drivers are self-employed contractors running their own businesses. The EAT confirmed the Employment Tribunal's decision that the true nature of the relationship is that Addison Lee drivers work for Addison Lee – agreeing with the original Employment Tribunal decision last year.
The ruling will mean thousands of Addison Lee drivers are legally entitled to receive the National Minimum Wage and holiday pay.
GMB has won similar victories against Uber and Hermes. Sue Harris, GMB Legal Director, said: "This is another huge win for GMB over bogus self-employment.
"Once again the courts have agreed Addison Lee drivers are legally entitled to workers' rights such as the national minimum wage and holiday pay rights.
"Other employers should take note – GMB will not stop pursuing these exploitative companies on behalf of our members."
Michaell Lange, one of the drivers who have brought claims against Addison Lee, said: "We decided to bring this claim in 2016 because we wanted Addison Lee to treat drivers fairly; we are happy that the decision that we were workers for Addison Lee has been upheld.
"We now urge Addison Lee to do the decent thing and stop denying its workforce of over 4000 drivers their rights."
Liana Wood, solicitor at Leigh Day who represents the drivers on behalf of GMB, said: "We are very pleased that the EAT has rejected Addison Lee's appeal.
"It is clear that Addison Lee's business model of providing a fleet of highly trained, regulated drivers is incompatible with their arguments that drivers are not workers who are entitled to workers' fundamental rights.
"We hope that Addison Lee will accept this decision; drivers shouldn't have to continue to work very long hours, often in excess of 60 hours per week, to earn just enough to meet their basic living costs."
* GMB union https://www.gmb.org.uk/


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William W. Beadell
Anyone who has ever benefited from the "want ads"—the classified section of the newspaper—can thank William W. Beadell, the dynamic newspaper editor/publisher who originated them. Beadell, who was deafened at age 11, was respected for his integrity—promoting truthful journalism, honest business dealings with advertisers and newsboys, treating his employees with consideration, and his absolute dedication to his work. During his long career, he edited and published several newspapers, the most influential being the weekly Observer of Arlington, New Jersey, where he established the "Classified Page." Beadell was fearless, too; he didn't hesitate to publish articles criticizing unethical practices by corporations that also happened to be the Observer's advertising clients. He fought discrimination against deaf automobile drivers and helped safeguard their rights.
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