Mike Tidwell and John Barry and Katrina

I was listening to an older C-Span BookTV program--I often download the audio and it takes a while to get to them all -- that occurred after Hurricane Katrina. John Barry is the author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (My review is here) an extraordinary book, and Mike Tidwell, author of Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast that I have yet to read, but will.

The show, at the bookstore Politics and Prose in Washington, was taped not long after Katrina devastated New Orleans. Both of these authors had a great deal to say about that event and how the devastation could have been avoided. I remember there was lots of discussion at the time of the corruption of the New Orleans Levee Board, yet as Tidwell pointed out, that organization had no responsibility for the levees that failed. It was the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Government. And it must be remembered that while the hurricane was indeed strong, it was the over-topping of the Lake Ponchartrain levees and their failure (they were supposed to have been able to withstand much more than they did) that caused the disaster.

But New Orleans is sinking. It was built on the alluvial soil deposited by the Mississippi every year during its regular flooding. The New Orleans levees were built to prevent that flooding, so now New Orleans is the only U.S. city that is below sea level. Louisiana is losing 25 acres per day to erosion. Several university studies have made it clear that one solution is to rebuild the barrier islands. It could be done for $14 billion. That sounds like a hug amount, yet it was the cost of the Big Dig in Boston whose sole purpose was to speed traffic to Logan Airport and it was the cost of just six weeks in Iraq whose purpose was, well, just what was its purpose. Another $14 billion would be required to bring all the levees up to a better standard. Again, a lot of money. Yet the damage to repair New Orleans was the destruction of 300,000 homes and a cost of $125 billion of which on $80 billion was covered by insurance. So again, our failure to address infrastructure issues in this country in the face of increasing number of natural disasters, while we embark on outrageously expensive overseas ventures with little purpose or success, is nothing short of criminal. It's also symptomatic of a failed state.

Black Confederate Soldier Myth

Kevin Levin has posted the book proposal for a very interesting book due out this fall. The proposal itself makes for fascinating reading. It's available at Levin's site: http://cwmemory.com/searching-for-black-confederate-soldiers-the-civil-wars-most-persistent-myth/

Review: 38 Years a Detroit Firefighter's Story by Bob Dombrowski

A very personal memoir of the author's thirty-eight years as a Detroit firefighter, moving up through the ranks to become Chief. The gradual fall of Detroit and the terrible difficulties the firefighters were forced to endure as budget cuts and white flight (in which the firefighters themselves participated after suing for the right to live outside the city) is told quite humbly and with an undercurrent of humor. More about the politics of the department than the techniques, it was still an interesting read.

Interesting quotes: "If it is true that a nondrinker lives less than a drinker, then it is also true that a non-firefighter lives longer than a firefighter. According to the experts, firefighters have a ten-year-shorter life expectancy because of all the smoke, chemicals, and dangers they face. So firefighters should enjoy a few drinks daily. Losing seven years of your life is better than ten. Where the heck is my pea can?"

"Many injury letters started out with the words “While sliding the pole at 0735 hours, I twisted my knee” or “I twisted my ankle.” In fact, there were so many injuries while sliding down the pole at seven thirty in the morning that the Michigan Department of Safety got involved. Then somebody determined that the poles were dangerous and must be removed. This became a big argument with firefighters who loved the poles and wanted to keep them. They were a symbol of Detroit firefighting, just like the red trucks and our traditional helmets."

"Sometimes people will do things like throw out a mattress to soften their fall. And it can be dangerous for firefighters. We have had firefighters killed by jumpers landing on them."

Review: No state shall abridge the fourteenth amendment and the bill of rights by Michael Kent Curtis

The Fourteenth Amendment, the longest and most complete, is without doubt the most significant. It was an attempt by the 39th Congress to constitutionalize the Civil Rights Act of 1865 that President Andrew Johnson had vetoed, the first veto of a major piece of legislation to be overridden by Congress. The first section included four significant clauses: the Citizenship Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Privileges or Immunities Clause (note "or" not the "and" of Article IV.) Each of the clauses has had enough of an impact to be worthy of being considered a new Constitution, the third if you count the Articles of Confederation as the first.

Barron v Baltimore(1833) had applied the Bill of Rights to federal jurisdiction only. Recent scholarship, epitomized by Curtis in this book is arguing that jurisprudence since the 1870's has ignored the history of the 39th Congress discussions that, he says, clearly intended to apply to Billof Rights to the states. Certainly the text would seem to so indicate. Section 1, following the first sentence that made freed slaves citizens (thus overturning Dred Scott, begins "No state shall..." On the face of it, that would seem to be as clear an indication as of intent as possible.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court decisions, beginning with the infamous Slaughterhouse Cases, and the Cruikshank case refused to accept this and argued the due process clause still applied only to federal jurisdiction. Thus was the 14th amendment completely defanged leaving many of the Black Codes and segregation laws in place and making the Civil Rights Act of 1875 just a piece of paper. Justices Hugo Black (ironically former KKK member) and Frankfurter (former darling of the left who became a staunch advocate of judicial restraint) battled over the historical basis for the 14th. Black's dissents in cases made it clear that he believed the 14th was intended to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. Frankfurter and Charles Fairman belittled any opposition to their view that this position was nonsense. Frankfurter believed the Due Process Clause just gave the Supreme Court too much power, and I'm sure he is spinning in his grave at what was accomplished by the Warren Court that used the Due Process Clause to selectively apply much of the Bill of Rights to the states. Brown v. Board of Education, overturning the infamous Plessy decision of "separate but equal" notoriety would never have been possible without it.

Professor Curtis and others like William Crosskey challenged Frankfurter and Fairman and their view seems to have won, even though antagonism to application of the Bill of Rights under the 14th was rampant even in the eighties. Justice Clarence Thomas has taken an even more interesting approach arguing that the Due Process Clause has been used inconsistently to apply the Bill of Rights to the states and he maintains, referring to historical evidence, that the clear intent of the 39th Congress, under Bingham, Stevens, and Trumbell, and the Republican majority, was to use the Privileges or Immunities Clause to make the application. His concurrence in MacDonald lays it out very nicely.

Curtis has written an excellent summary of the history of the controversy including a thorough rebuttal to Supreme Court's jurisprudence in this regard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Curtis points out that Slave Power suppression of free speech rights, the "gag rule" for example, and the suppression of due process through the Fugitive Slave Acts, before the Civil War radicalized the Republican Party, which, thanks to secession, gave them complete control of the Senate and the House. The attempts to push slavery into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, the elimination of the Missouri Compromise, and their justifiable fear that Justice Taney might declare in the Lemmon v New York case then moving its way through the courts, that slavery could not be declared illegal in the states, all contributed to this radicalization. Clearly, their intent was to force the Bill of Rights on the states and overturn Barron (Bingham had even brought a copy of the decision to read on the floor of the House, many members not being familiar with it.

Good companion books to read with this one:

1. Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction 1863-1869 (New York: Norton, 1974)

2. Garrett Epps, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post Civil War America (New York: Henry Holt, 2013), Kindle

3. Gerard N Magliocca, American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment ([Place of publication not identified]: New York University Press, 2016), Kindle

4. Epps, Garrett, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America (New York: MacMillan, 2013) Kindle

I rarely watch TV, in fact it hasn't even been on in weeks except for one Netflix movie. This morning I was reminded why. We were staying at a hotel while visiting the kids, and I thought rather than fire up the laptop I could quickly tune in to the weather. Wrong. All I found on the morning shows -- all of them -- was incessant self-promotional babel and giggle time about the each person's silly little peccadilloes. The weather, what there was of it, scrolled across the bottom of the screen providing only the barest hint that the ice might be a problem. The narcissistic clamor was interrupted only by a multitude of commercials. Wasteland doesn't begin to describe it. And these folks make millions?