Stephen West

The People of These United States Are the Rightful Masters of both Congresses and Courts, Not to Overthrow the Constitution, but to Over-throw the Men Who Pervert that Constitution

and if you prefer your Lincoln unbearded

"The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to over-throw the Constitution, but to over-throw the men who pervert that Constitution"

the inscribed quotation comes from a speech Lincoln delivered at Cincinnati, Ohio, in Sept. 1859

Lithograph of Abraham Lincoln. based generally on the 1860 Mathew Brady portrait, but Lincoln has a beard. He stands, with his left hand on the spine of a book resting on a table. It bears the quotation "The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to over-throw the Constitution, but to over-throw the men who pervert that Constitution" from https://www.loc.gov/item/2008680376/

relevant

‘I did not vote for this’: Thousands of public comments slam Trump’s ballroom A Post analysis of submitted comments found more than 97 percent were critical of the planned 90,000-square-foot addition. The White House has defended it as necessary.

The National Capital Planning Commission invited public comment on Donald Trump's ballroom.

They received more than 35,000. And 97% are negative.

Ambition cannot be assumed to counter-act ambition.

I am going to put together a newsletter post about the Ballroom, the arch, the firesale of federal buildings, what NCPC is and why it’s helpless, etc.

Is there anything you want me to cover?

Yes! I made a similar point a couple months back. The productive struggle is the point.

Image submitted to the ncpc criticizing Donald Trump's demolition of the East Wing. It is labeled at the top current resident wrecks havoc on the people's house Below that are four boxes. One reads pretentious remake of Oval Office and has an arrow pointing to a second that reads demolition of East Wing, which has an arrow pointing to a third reading paved over Rose Garden, which has an arrow pointing to a 4th which reads large needless flag poles

this comment seems to sum it up pretty well

NCPC Home Page The National Capital Planning Commission is the federal government's planning agency for the National Capital Region. The Commission works with federal agencies as it seeks to preserve and enhance the...

The Commission meets today to review White House plans for the ballroom.

You can live stream it here.

(The meeting begins at 10am, but discussion of the ballroom won't begin until at least 1pm, the NCPC says)

‘I did not vote for this’: Thousands of public comments slam Trump’s ballroom A Post analysis of submitted comments found more than 97 percent were critical of the planned 90,000-square-foot addition. The White House has defended it as necessary.

The National Capital Planning Commission invited public comment on Donald Trump's ballroom.

They received more than 35,000. And 97% are negative.

Grammarly Is Offering ‘Expert’ AI Reviews From Your Favorite Authors—Dead or Alive The tool, offered by the recently-rebranded company Superhuman, gives feedback based on the work of famous dead and living writers—without their permission.

Once a simple proofreading tool, Grammarly is now bristling with AI features and a suite of "expert" agents based on the works of real authors. But the company doesn't ask permission and in some cases offers feedback from virtual versions of dead writers—including one historian who died in January.

My grandma said that grandpa # 1 was also at points a sharecropper and a worker on an (unspecified) New Deal jobs program.

Which, as she explained in the 1990s, is why she would vote Democratic (if she thought women should vote, which she didn't) - "because Roosevelt gave my husband a job."

a wage worker at an iron works and a gas station operator

FBI relocation forcing National Children's Museum out of the Reagan Building

Justice Dept., Under Pressure From Trump, Fails to Build Autopen Case Against Biden

Another swing and miss for the Queen of Box Wine:

The most famous line from Lincoln's second inaugural address is also probably the most misunderstood: "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

I'm a fan of Frederick Douglass's gloss on it.

Billy Yank & Johnny Reb Letters For the past sixteen years following my retirement, I have dedicated myself to the transcription of letters—encompassing thousands of Civil War era correspondence and diaries that have remained unp…

Some of the most engrossing 19th century prose I know of can be found on a website run by a retiree who has spent the last 16 years transcribing thousands of letters, almost all of them in private hands, written by Civil War soldiers. billyyankjohnnyreb.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/l... #19thCentury

The most famous line from Lincoln's second inaugural address is also probably the most misunderstood: "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

I'm a fan of Frederick Douglass's gloss on it.

"All knew that this interest [slavery] was somehow the cause of the war."

That's a very Lincolnian line, combining certainty - "all knew" - and uncertainty - slavery "somehow" caused the war.

AI Translations Are Adding ‘Hallucinations’ to Wikipedia Articles AI translated articles swapped sources or added unsourced sentences with no explanation, while others added paragraphs sourced from completely unrelated material.

NEW: Wikipedia editors have implemented new policies and restricted a number of contributors who were paid to use AI to translate existing Wikipedia articles into other languages after they discovered these AI translations added AI “hallucinations,” or errors, to the resulting article.

"delivered"

“The Voice of the Institute announces that the Meriden, CT, Young Men’s Institute will be publishing a paper that is “entirely original, racy, and well filled,—devoted to the interests of Meriden, the welfare of the young, and “the great principles of ‘93.”

Have any #skystorians come across the phrase “principles of ‘93?” An 1854 announcement for a Connecticut Young Men’s Institute newspaper described it as devoted to those principles. Is it Jeffersonianism?

"It's a very odd kind of speech to hear from a president, of all people." @jamellebouie.net on Lincoln's Second Inaugural address

Part 1 of this @thisdaypod.com's great discussion of Lincoln's greatest speech

Lincoln's Second Inaugural w/ Jamelle Bouie (1865) [Part 1] Podcast Episode · This Day · March 3 · 41m

My sense of the discourse is that everyone on this site recognizes that @jamellebouie.net is a very smart, funny, good-natured thinker. Well, good news, he's our guest on @thisdaypod.com to talk about Lincoln's Second Inaugural. Part one is up in the feed now! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

okay, Ill bite.
What do you think the point of reading for and writing a literature review is? The process of reading and writing is crucial for THINKING. Your ideas are shaped by all of this, offloading it to gAI, no matter how "good" you think gAI is at it defeats the purpose entirely.

"Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. We can't take it anymore."

Donald Trump, Feb. 24, 2026, State of the Union Address

the context, for people who are sticklers for that kind of thing

quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/li...

snip from the print edition of the collected works of abraham lincoln at the top is the date June 9, 1860 the main text reads: "right, but I do not wish to be 'diddled!['] Please do what you do quietly, having no fuss about it. [3] Yours very truly A. Lincoln

Abe Lincoln as you've never heard him before

Opinion | No Empire. No Kings.

Gift link to Beinart's op-ed, which is very much worth reading.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/o...

What the National Park Service Has Flagged Thus Far. It's Much Worse Than I Thought. Note: This is a long post.

I spent hours looking through hundreds of files of materials that have been flagged for review by National Park Service sites around the country. Here is just a small sample of what I found. #NationalParks 🗃️ open.substack.com/pub/kevinmle...