Independence Eve

In Congress, July 1, 1776:

A resolution of the convention of Maryland, of the 28 June, was also laid before Congress and read, wherein it is resolved:

In Convention,23 June 1776.

Resolved, Unanimously, That the Instructions given by the Convention December last, (and renewed by the Convention in May,) to the Deputies of this Colony in Congress, be recalled, and the Restrictions therein contained, removed; and that the Deputies of this Colony, attending in Congress, or a Majority of them or of any three or more of them, be authorized and empowered to concur with the other United Colonies, or a Majority of them, in declaring the United Colonies free and independent States; in forming such further Compact and Confederation between them; in making foreign Alliances, and in adopting such other Measures as shall be adjudged necessary for securing the Liberties of America; and this Colony will hold itself bound, by the Resolutions of a Majority of the United Colonies, in the Premises; Provided, the sole and exclusive Right of regulating the internal Government and Police of this Colony be reserved to the People thereof.

The order of the day being read,

Resolved, That this Congress will resolve itself into a committee of the whole, to take into consideration the resolution respecting independency:

Resolved, That the Declaration be referred to said committee.

The Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole, ∥After some time,∥ the president resumed the chair. Mr. [Benjamin] Harrison reported, that the committee have had under consideration the matters referred to them, and have agreed to the resolution, which they ordered him to report, and desired him to move for leave to sit again.

The resolution agreed to by committee of the whole being read, the determination thereof was postponed, at the request of a colony, till to morrow. 

The break in between introduction of the Lee Resolution and the vote for independency allowed delegations like Maryland's to receive new instructions from their various conventions/assemblies.  F'rinstance, New Jersey's (updated on the 22nd) were read in the Congress the previous day.  New York abstained from the ostensibly unanimous resolution because they weren't authorized to vote for independence until July 9.

Maryland was a weird one because it was essentially run by extra-legal assemblies, but still had a proprietary governor until the dude boarded a boat on June 23.  And then:

On June 27 the Maryland Gazette announced that the previous day the ship Fowey carrying Maryland's last proprietary governor, Robert Eden, had "hoisted sail and went down the Bay." The same paper carried an article signed by "American," which decried the ambivalence of the Convention then sitting in Annapolis: "Is it not remarkable that a convention, composed of many of the same delegates [who opposed Governor Eden in past Assemblies] should now, without any change in their governor s conduct, express 'their real wishes for his return to resume the government of this province?' " This "American" believed the only viable course of action was a declaration of independence and a new form of government.

The next day, Friday June 28, 1776, the Convention rescinded its instructions to the Maryland congressional delegation that prohibited them from voting for independence. At nine o'clock that evening a jubilant Samuel Chase wrote John Adams: "1 shall offer no other apology for concluding than that I am this moment from our House to procure an express to follow the post with a Unan[imous] vote of our Convention for Independence. ... our people have fire if not smothered. .. .Now for a government."

There was still some politicking to be done, though, as recalled by Jefferson:

On Monday, the 1st of July, the House resolved itself into a committee of the whole, and resumed the consideration of the original motion made by the delegates of Virginia, which, being again debated through the day, was carried in the affirmative by the votes of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. 

South Carolina and Pennsylvania voted against it. Delaware had but two members present, and they were divided. The delegates from New York declared they were for it themselves, and were assured their constituents were for it; but that their instructions having been drawn near a twelvemonth before, when reconciliation was still the general object, they were enjoined by them to do nothing which should impede that object. They therefore thought themselves not justifiable in voting on either side, and asked leave to withdraw from the question; which was given them. 

The committee rose and reported their resolution to the House. Mr. Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, then requested the determination might be put off to the next day, as he believed his colleagues, though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the sake of unanimity.

Guess we'll have to wait a bit longer to learn how it all worked out.

In conclusion: real ball knowers understand that tomorrow is the Big Day, not the Fourth.

I drive a Rolls-Royce 'Cause it's good for my voice

But you won't fool the children of the revolution.

So Very Small I’m No Trouble

Vita:

When I was two feet tall

and held the hand above,

how could I know

how far that limping bond would go,

that finger-inch of love.

Eleanor Ross Taylor.

Space Is Hard

Astronauts Chris Williams and Jessica Meir completed a 7-hour, 20-minute spacewalk at 3:40 p.m. EDT today after replacing a malfunctioning wrist joint on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. More... https://t.co/KLpldoLE5U pic.twitter.com/UMR98FXghs

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) June 30, 2026

Before they could go outside:

Williams and Meir spent Monday organizing spacewalking tools and checking spacesuits inside the Quest airlock where they will exit the space station for the robotics maintenance job. Flight engineers Jack Hathaway of NASA and Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) assisted the upcoming spacewalkers with the tool work and studied the delicate maneuvers they will use to position the Canadarm2 for its repair job. 

Hathaway and Adenot will monitor the spacewalkers on Tuesday, help them in and out of their suits, and carefully maneuver Canadarm2 into position for repair access. All four astronauts gathered together at the end of Monday’s shift for a final procedures review and a readiness conference with specialists on the ground.

EVAs are pretty routine at this point, and never easy, but we've learned a lot about managing them since Alexei Leonov made his pioneering adventure back in '65.  Speaking of the first spacewalker, he was witness to the only deaths to happen in space (above the Kármán line) on this date in '71:

[A]s Soyuz 11 prepared for reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere I was following events closely in the bunker of a new Mission Control center in Kaliningrad, near Moscow. It was customary for the commander of the back-up crew to monitor events at this time, together with the head of the mission and the chief constructor, to maintain radio contact with the crew and to pass on any advice and necessary instructions. So I was there monitoring the control of all on-board systems in a logbook. 

As the crew went through the control of positioning the air vents located between the landing and orbital modules, I advised them to close the vents and not to forget to reopen them once the parachute had deployed. 

“Make a note of it in your logbook,” I instructed them. 

Although this deviated from the flight regulations, I had trained for a long time for the mission they were flying, and in my opinion this was the safest procedure. According to the flight program the vents were supposed to close and then open automatically once the parachute had deployed after reentry. But I believed there was a danger, if this automatic procedure was followed, that the vents might open prematurely at too high an altitude and the spacecraft depressurize. 

It seems the crew did not follow my advice. Unfortunately my intuition proved right. The pressure equalization vents did open prematurely—before the capsule reentered the Earth’s atmosphere—and the capsule depressurized. Soyuz 11 landed where expected, but when the recovery team opened its hatch they found the crew dead. Their bodies were still warm, and the recovery team tried to resuscitate them, but it was too late. According to their cardiogram records, Dobrovolsky had died two minutes after the landing capsule had depressurized, Patsayev after a hundred seconds and Volkov after only eighty seconds. 

On every mission following Soyuz 11, the flight program was changed to incorporate my advice. The vents were also redesigned. 

When the rescue forces reported that the crew were dead, I was instructed to fly to the landing site immediately with fellow cosmonaut Alexei Yeliseyev. We were appointed members of the government committee dealing with the aftermath of the disaster, and our main task was to secure the spacecraft and take photographs of the scene. It took us about three hours to reach the site, by which time the bodies of the crew had already been removed. Their blood-soaked seats, and signs that attempts had been made to resuscitate them, were the only evidence of the tragedy.

In addition to changed procedures and vents, the Soviets decided that cosmonauts would wear spacesuits on re-entry, which meant they could only support 2-person crews until the Soyuz-T was developed in the late-70s.  Space is hard.

Selah.

Jus soli

It is the first of its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history. It is a new wonder of the world. It is based upon falsehood¹ in the main as to the facts...

- Abraham Lincoln (July 10, 1858)

I'm as shocked as anybody that SCOTUS upheld - 5 to 4, which should've been 9 to zip in a rational world - the plain text and long-understood meaning of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause.  I honestly wondered if corrupt Alito would convince his fellow MAGAts that Wong Kim Ark was "wrongly decided".  Nope, corrupt Roberts apparently wanted to avoid being worse than racist Roger:

In the odious decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, this Court imposed the Southern States’ beliefs onto the Nation... Chief Justice Taney, writing for the Court, concluded that “the words ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizen[s]’” had an unexpressed (and atextual) racial component—one that excluded all those descended from slaves... Even if Massachusetts or Connecticut chose to grant citizenship to the freedmen, they still could not participate in national affairs... They were “born in the country,” Chief Justice Taney acknowledged, and thus “did owe allegiance to the Government”—the precise criteria for citizenship at common law... But they were “not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution.” ... For them, blood, not soil, was made the rule.

Good callback.  Speaking of Dred Scott, and since the Declaration of Independence is on everybody's minds:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration, for if the language, as understood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted, and instead of the sympathy of mankind to which they so confidently appealed, they would have deserved and received universal rebuke and reprobation.

Yet the men who framed this declaration were great men -- high in literary acquirements, high in their sense of honor, and incapable of asserting principles inconsistent with those on which they were acting. They perfectly understood the meaning of the language they used, and how it would be understood by others, and they knew that it would not in any part of the civilized world be supposed to embrace the negro race, which, by common consent, had been excluded from civilized Governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery.

I mean...the thing is, Taney wasn't entirely wrong.  Most of the Founders were hypocritical pieces of shit, so he was just acknowledging what righteous Patriots like Tom Paine called out during the Revolution:

With what consistency, or decency they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without any pretense of authority, or claim upon them?

Anyway, Happy 250th birthday, America; at least the rule of law still kinda sorta means something...

Selah.

1 - The falsehood Honest Abe was referring to was Dred Scott's premise that "the right of property in a slave" is enshrined in the Constitution (5th Lincoln-Douglas debate, October 7, 1858).  A little bit later, BTW, he essentially notes that elections have consequences.

PS - Couch fucker echoes Lincoln.

Is it ever gonna be enough?

More and more, more and more, more and more.

Охола грешка

A Conceited Mistake:

Once upon a time there was a mistake
So silly so small
That no one would even have noticed it

It couldn't bear
To see itself to hear of itself

It invented all manner of things
Just to prove
that it didn't really exist

It invented space
To put its proofs in
And time to keep its proofs
And the world to see its proofs

All it invented
Was not so silly
Nor so small
But was of course mistaken

Could it have been otherwise

Vasko Popa.

Floor Wax, Dessert Topping

Liberals say that Trump has ruined the 250th anniversary of our democracy. They're wrong—Trump has ruined the 250th anniversary of our republic.

— NYTPitchbot (@DougJBalloon) June 29, 2026

I think it's important to start with 'republic' bc the Framers cite Monty (e.g., Federalist 47), the Guarantee clause (ArtIVsec4), Ben Franklin ("a Republic if you can not fuck it up"), etc. https://t.co/zxank3ua5k

— NTodd - Antifa IT Support 🇺🇦🐸 (@ntoddpax) June 28, 2026

Saw the Pitchbot's post today, and while I'm not gonna recapitulate everything, I did want to capture my little threaded response to Machine Pun Kelly (who is not wrong per se).

The bottom line, as usual, is that 'democracy' and 'republic' are not mutually exclusive.  MPK argues from the former, but I think the latter is a more correct starting point, as I lay out sparsely on Twitter.

When the We're A Republic crowd gets going, it's in large part because the word 'democracy' does not appear in the Constitution (you know how they are about that), and the Framers really disliked like one flavor of it (direct "mob rule" democracy, as opposed to our representative form).  From where I sit, everything thus devolves from Montesquieu's distinctions.

Either way, we're both, duh.  Anybody who says otherwise is an aristocrat, and if they're MAGA, that really means a monarchist (ironic, perhaps, given the election of 1800).

Selah.

Look out, honey, 'cause I'm using technology

Ain't got time to make no apology.

Who You Are Is Beautiful and Amazing

Gay Pride Weekend, S.F., 1992:

I forgot how lush and electrified

it was with you. The shaggy

fragrant zaps continually passing

back and forth, my fingertip

to your clavicle, or your wrist

rubbing mine to share gardenia

oil. We so purred like dragonflies

we kept the mosquitoes away

and the conversation was heavy,

mother-lacerated childhoods

and the sad way we'd both

been both ignored and touched

badly. Knowing that being

fierce and proud and out and

loud was just a bright new way

to be needy. Please listen to me, oh

what a buzz! you're the only one

I can tell. Even with no secret,

I could come close to your ear

with my mouth and that was

ecstasy, too. We barely touched

each other, we didn't have to

speak. The love we made leapt

to life like a cat in the space

between us (if there ever was

space between us), and looked

back at us through fog. Sure,

this was San Francisco, it was

often hard to see. But fog always

burned off, too, so we watched

this creature to see if it knew

what it was doing. It didn't.

Brenda Shaughnessy.

With Heaviest Sound, the Giant Monster Fell

Since JQA's come up again, here's his speech on July 4, 1821:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. 

She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. 

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of Freedom and Independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Another weird instance where you'd think the America First gang would celebrate what John Quincy said, but don't for some reason.  And this is the dude who gave Monroe his Doctrine!

Selah.

Love Is Love

Living right on the parade route was pretty convenient.  Happy Pride! (2019)

I can read your palm like a tattoo

I hear the ghosts still bickering in you.

Float On

blessing the boats:

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back     may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

Lucille Clifton.