Peter Norton

photo: Minab, March 2, 2026.
Foreign Press Department, Iran, via AP.

... No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

— the Secretary of Defense to 800 generals, admirals and senior officers at Marine Corps Base Quantico, September 30, 2025.

“We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. ...

The data were collected by manual counters working for the Twin City Rapid Transit Co. They were stationed in a complete perimeter around the loop, at every street intersecting with the perimeter.

Automobiles, which constituted 86.9 percent of the vehicles leaving the loop, carried 41.3 percent of the people.

On Wednesday, May 25, 1949, between 3:30 and 6:30 pm, streetcars and buses accounted for 3.7 percent of the vehicles leaving the downtown loop district in Minneapolis. They carried 48.3 percent of the people leaving the loop. Another 6.9 percent walked.

Even as the Minnesota Department of Highways was planning expressways through Minneapolis, most of the people who lived and worked there rode the streetcar, took the bus, or walked. ...

Too many sacrifice their professions for the sake of their careers. Let us celebrate those who risk their careers for the sake of their professions.

Above all, it refuses to agree that professionals can ever deny personal responsibility for their work, or that tech has its own agenda apart from the humans who develop it.

Caitlin Kalinowski sets just the example we need in tech.

Her uncompromising public resignation is diplomatic, impersonal, professional – and visible. ...

To be fair, if you set aside affordability, health, safety, energy, equity, livability, and sustainability, and pave over everything, car dependency sometimes almost works.

The International Military Tribunal prosecuted defendants for this crime under the heading “crimes against peace … for which there shall be individual responsibility.”

“A war of aggression is a crime.”

— Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States, International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg.

Streetcar service resumed in 2018. Today the Oklahoma City Streetcar serves 800 passengers per day, operating 7 streetcars along 4.8 miles of track.

Though Oklahoma City then had one quarter of its current population, the Oklahoma Railway Company served 55,000 local passengers daily, operating 129 streetcars along 140 miles of track. It also owned 34 buses. The last streetcar ran in 1947.

One hundred years ago it was hard to imagine Oklahoma City without streetcars. ...

Newsweek, May 17, 2004:

Now that the US is engaged in an unprovoked war of aggression, and the Defense Secretary has not only ridiculed restraint but promised “death and destruction” (March 4), what can we expect?

The Abu Ghraib horrors, revealed in 2004, are only the most conspicuous examples in recent history. Shall their lessons be disregarded? Are we condemned to repeat the recent past?

... and before he tried to court-martial a US senator for reminding service personnel that illegal orders are illegal (November 25), some American soldiers committed ghastly atrocities.

Long before the Secretary of Defense renounced defense in favor of war (September 5), before he told the entire US military to disregard “stupid rules of engagement” in favor of “maximum lethality” (September 30), ...

A 1926 take on 2026:
George Grosz,
“Eclipse of the Sun, or Conference at Mar-a-Lago.”

Free parking was scarce, but free advice was abundant.

In central L.A. the Los Angeles Railway served another 900,000 passengers per day along 375 miles of track.

One hundred years ago, when Los Angeles County had one seventh its current population, the Pacific Electric Railway was the largest electric interurban railroad in the world. It served 315,000 passengers a day along 1139 miles of track. It had 979 passenger cars and 3,131 freight cars.

“Without them, how would the beaches be enjoyed as they are? How otherwise would thousands each week visit the mountains, the old missions, the orange groves – the rarest charms of Southern California – that are so easily and economically reached by The Red Cars?” ...

YouTube video by McGovern Video Library One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern

The McGovern quotation is from the film “One Bright Shining Moment,” which is free online and which I recommend: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX29...

The flag is not magic.
Waving it doesn't turn betrayal into patriotism.