Portside

“The Wars of Reconstruction” defies current trends in Reconstruction scholarship. Reconstruction’s central story, Egerton insists, takes place in the South, in the struggle of former slaves to breathe substantive meaning into the freedom they had acquired.

Two more recollections of Pete.

How Obama can save USPS and ding check-cashing joints.

The number of union members rose 162,000 in 2013, reflecting a drop of 118,000 in the public sector that was offset by a rise of 281,000 in the private sector. Expressed as a share of the workforce, the union membership rate was unchanged in 2013, at 11.3 percent. For the first time since 2008, the total number of union members in the private sector (7.3 million) was higher than the total number of workers in the public sector (7.2 million).

Coded switches to prevent the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons were finally added to the control systems of American missiles and bombers in the early 1970s. The Air Force was not pleased, and considered the new security measures to be an insult, a lack of confidence in personnel. Although the Air Force now denies this claim, according to more than one source I contacted, the code necessary to launch a missile was set to be the same at every Minuteman site: 00000000.

More strength left of the aisle could make a difference, and Europe’s future direction is indeed a weightier matter than talk show rudeness - and of a certainty it is not just baloney!