This issue follows the last issue by only one day because I felt there were some interesting and timely matters I want to discuss. If you missed Issue 6 or any others, go back and read them.
I want to acknowledge my one loyal reader who confesses to actually reading my blogs. Thank you Paula G. You are truly brave.
January 30 was Fred Korematsu Day. What? Who? Mr. Korematsu was an American of Japanese decent who was caught up in President Roosevelt’s executive order following Pearl Harbor that all of Japanese decent, whether American citizens or not, go to internment camps. Mr. Korematsu was born in the U.S. and had never been to Japan but he was physically Japanese.
The use of the words “internment camps” was, in my view, to make the order more palatable because the camps were nothing more than concentration camps. As an aside, the U.S. government suppressed from the court a study that showed there was not one single instance of disloyalty by any American of Japanese decent living in the U.S. whether or not a citizen. More aside: not one German or Italian was interned.
Mr. Korematsu resisted. He was arrested, tried and convicted of failing to obey a military order. He was placed on five years probation. The conviction was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1944 decision. In 2018, in the case “Trump v. Hawaii”, the U.S. Supreme Court distinguished the Korematsu case from the Trump case in issue and said that Korematsu was wrong when it was decided and is wrong now. Unfortunately Mr. Korematsu died before he was able to enjoy the acknowledgment of the error.
So next year on January 30 celebrate a brave man, Fred Korematsu.
Didja know that at any given time there are six Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobiles driving around the United States?
Didja know that 2020 will be the first time Hispanics will make up the largest minority voting block?
Didja know that a $10,000 investment in Warren Buffet in 1962 would be worth more than $298 million today.
In 1986 the Philippine Supreme Court heard the case of 26 people who had been acquitted of the murder of Benigno Aquino. The prosecution had appealed the acquittal. In arguing the case before the appellate court the defendants claimed a new trial would amount to double jeopardy, a rule that states no person may be tried twice for the same crime. (The rule against double jeopardy is also in the U.S. Constitution.) An investigation by a fact-finding commission had revealed that the trial was a charade and the verdict of acquittal was rigged by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.
In granting a new trial the court described the trial: “ . . . The sham trial, a mock trial, the no trial of the century and . . . the predetermined judgment of acquittal is unlawful and void.”
At this point I direct your attention to the Senate trial of T-rump and its pre-determined outcome. . . Hmmm!
I leave you with two thoughts:
The first: Today, 02/02/2020 is a rare eight-digit palindrome. A Palindrome is a number, word, or sentence that reads the same backwards. The last number palindrome was 11/11/1111. For math majors this was 909 years ago. The next one is 12/12/2121, one-hundred and one years from now. Today is also the 33rd day of the year which will be followed by 333 more days.
The second is, as usual, the warning: sleep with one eye open. T-rump is still President.