Book Recommendation

I spent bits and pieces of the past two months reading a Civil War history book......'Field of Blood' by Joanne B. Freeman, 480 pages.

First, she lays out the whole period of 1830s to 1860, in magnificent detail and you get a great feel for DC, and how things were crumbling.

For a high school kid (11th to 12th grade), I'd probably make it mandatory reading and it really sets up the nation and how it'll fall apart for the Civil War to occur.

The second thing, as 1860 comes around, it's common knowledge that EVERY SINGLE House and Senate member were packing a pistol, or had one in their desk in the Capital building.

The threat of a conflict starting there....on the House floor?  It came down on several occasions where enough was said, and threats made.....that the war could have easily erupted there, and a hundred House members could have been shot dead over an entire evening by gunfire.

If you've ever had questions over the Civil War and how things leading up to 1860 never made sense in high school or college, or via the stupid video lessons.....I'd recommend this book. 

The 'Einstein-Insanity' Style of Impeachment

It's a term that I heard this morning and you have to sit and ponder upon it for a while. 

In this type of impeachment situation.....you go through the same processes.....doing the same thing, and in each single case, you expect a different outcome in the end. 

It'd be like a group of eighth-grade kids in the school lab, with the five ingredients for some lab experiment, and they go down the list of processes, to discover each day for two weeks.....you can only have the same outcome, unless you radically changed the procedures, or added a sixth ingredient, or deducted one ingredient. 

It's a bit comical, but readily fits into the mess we have today.