The graves are now full of the coffins of campaigns for the Democratic nomintion for POTUS in 2020 that have bitten the dust for a number of reasons. One of the most fascinating of the departed is the campaign of Marianne Williamson, a New Agey spiritualist writer and lecturer whose interest in electoral politics took everyone by surprise when she announced it, almost a year ago now. On January 28, 2019 she walked onto a stage in Beverly Hills, California to announce her candidacy and its goal, to: "engage voters in a more meaningful conversation about America, about our history, about how each of us fit into it, and how to create sustainable future." You might fairly judge from that language that it was never entirely clear that the office of the President was part of her goal. Williamson enlivened the first couple of debates, and her presence has been missed from the subsequent ones. She was the very rare intersection of two Venn diagram circles -- one might ...
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Measles cases in the United States passed 1,000 in early June. I don't know what the number is now, two months later, but passing that 1K threshold is a rare event, doing so less than half way through the year is even more remarkable. Unfortunately, one all-too-common response to this is "there's too damned much freedom!" Every state in the United States requires that children receive certain immunizations before they may be enrolled in public schools. Most states allow a religion-based exemption, and several states allow exemption on the basis of conscientious objections that may not be religious in character. The whole subject is in flux. The 2019 measles outbreak has seen a press for narrowing the range of exemptions. The issue of childhood vaccinations reached the bully pulpit of the presidential campaign when Democratic primary candidate Marianne Williamson described mandatory vaccination as "Orwellian." She compared a push to close the conscien...