Category Archives: Uncategorized

From the AL Monitor lobbying newsletter:

A bipartisan congressional committee wants to revamp lobbying disclosures “to make it easier to know who’s lobbying Congress and what they’re lobbying for.”

If your lobbyist isn’t clearly communicating with his prey targets, perhaps he should be fired.

OK, so maybe a foreign power’s project has been split among many lobbyists, making it hard to discern.

So stop listening to lobbyists.

Coruscate:

1. : to give off or reflect light in bright beams or flashes : SPARKLE
2. : to be brilliant or showy in technique or style [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in Paradise Found – Islamic Architecture and Arts, Waldemar Januszczak, a documentary which fascinated my Arts Editor.

Today SCOTUS responded to a challenge to the Indiana state law concerning abortion regulation, as WaPo notes:

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to a compromise on a restrictive Indiana abortion law that keeps the issue off its docket for now.

The court said a part of the law dealing with disposal of the “remains” of an abortion could go into effect. But it did not take up a part of the law stricken by lower courts that prohibited abortions because tests revealed an abnormality.

The court indicated it would wait for other courts to weigh in before taking up that issue.

No real answer, just putting it off. However, Justice Thomas is trying to sneak in an opinion based on a faulty understanding of the word eugenics, a word fraught with negative connotations. From the dissent section of the response:

Each of the immutable characteristics protected by this law can be known relatively early in a pregnancy, and the law prevents them from becoming the sole criterion for deciding whether the child will live or die. Put differently, this law and other laws like it promote a State’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.

A quick poke at Wikipedia to find out about eugenics:

Eugenics (/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/; from Greek εὐγενής eugenes ‘well-born’ from εὖ eu, ‘good, well’ and γένος genos, ‘race, stock, kin’)^[2][3] is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population by excluding (through a variety of morally criticized means) certain genetic groups judged to be inferior, and promoting other genetic groups judged to be superior.

The key is “... that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population …“. We’re talking about motivations here. But is that particular motivation applicable in this context?

No. In my experience, it’s a rare mother & father who are worried about improving the genetic quality of the human race. Historically, the concern is economic: Can this potential baby be supported by the family? Other motivations have also applied, such as Are we too old and Do we want this potential baby?

In order to support the eugenics charge, it would be necessary for a court to infer the motivations of a mother having an abortion, absent a clear and trustworthy statement from same. Not that we haven’t tried to do so with hate-crime legislation, or at least crept up to the precipice with such laws, but it’s still a chancy and intellectually dubious enterprise. Given the stronger likelihood that the motivation is economic or convenience, Justice Thomas’ use of the word eugenics in this discussion is ill-chosen to the point of the illicit interjection of politics and religion into the discussion.

ALL that said, there’s an important question to ask concerning freedom of choice, as illustrated by the use of sex-selected abortions in India and China. Both of these countries now have large imbalances in their young citizens as measured by sex, which has lead to unrest. What if – and it’s an unlikely if – we saw the same phenomenon in the United States? If our social harmony were roiled by the free choices of potential parents?

In this unlikely happenstance, SCOTUS could rule that the government has a compelling interest in denying abortions for sex-related reasons. Not that I’m making that argument now; I think it’s absurd, given the lack of substantial dowries in American marital rites. But it’s worth contemplating how free choice must sometimes be limited, especially when there is a valid perception that a child is more valuable as one sex than as another.

But, to return to the main point, attempting to borrow the negative connotations of a word that does not apply is a mark of intellectual dishonesty which should make further evaluation of Justice Thomas’ argument a rather fraught affair.

And for a graphic eugenics example, see The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2013).

Remember our mushroom log? We didn’t, it fell out of our mutual consciousness a few weeks back. Here’s what we found over the weekend:

It’s sort of like biological art.

At the end of The Black Raven (1943) I felt a little torn. This struck me as what might be called a “factory movie”, made purely for profit as quickly as possible, much in the same way as the famous Casablanca (1942). You might expect a standard plot, and you’d be wrong. It has stereotypes, it has bad production values (or a bad print), it has elements of noir, yet none of them really define it.

Amos Bradford runs a hotel & safehouse for criminals on New York’s Canadian border, with the help of a put-upon assistant. One stormy night, his erstwhile partner, having finally escaped jail, appears at his hotel, gun at the ready for revenge, as Bradford, aka The Raven, may have connived at his capture and conviction. Bradford and his assistant are fortunate to overwhelm the man and tie him up.

But the storm has worsened, bridges are washing out, and people are beginning to wash up at the hotel: a displaced gangster, a bank cashier with an unlikely amount of money, young Lee Winfield with her fiancee, Robert, looking to get married in Canada; and the politically connected Tim Winfield, Lee’s father, who dislikes Robert and wishes to prevent the marriage.

And then the Sheriff shows up, just in time to find Tim Winfield’s body and accuse Robert of the murder. Bradford has been dealing with a series of problems, from the former partner, now escaped from the bonds Bradford applied, to an aggressive gangster, a high maintenance bank cashier, and now bodies.

Even for a criminal safehouse keeper, it’s a bit much.

The odd part was that I sympathized with this criminal. He takes the part of Robert, accused of murder by a slack-minded Sheriff, manages a few cheap auditory shots at the Sheriff, and in the end solves the murder.

And because I enjoyed his efforts, it was quite bemusing that Bradford pays for his success with his life.

One might argue The Black Raven belongs in the category of noir, yet I find myself resisting the notion. Perhaps I found Bradford too sympathetic to fit into a canon featuring anti-heroes and supporting characters who illustrate the folly of principles and traits that essentially glorify greed and self-interest. Or perhaps the failure to linger over grisly fates didn’t convince me that this was noir.

All that said, in places The Black Raven was literally noir – the scenes in the dark of the basement were literally black, with little to go on. A budget problem? An aesthetic decision? Someone asleep at the switch? It certainly made it difficult to understand what might be going on down there.

Here it is – slightly out of focus.

“You’ve got to get in people’s faces,” he told APTA participants. “You’ve got to go in and ask for something” — even of the “knuckledraggers that came in in the last election that hate taxes.”

– The late Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) in 2011, concerning his fellow GOPers.

Ted Gup claims that President Trump is abdicating his responsibilities:

In recent weeks, nearly all the talk in Washington centered around impeachment — would they or wouldn’t they? Now the nation faces a new worry — abdication. That’s right, the President who imagines himself a king, and expects others to treat him the same way, has declared that he will have nothing to do with Congress on infrastructure legislation — perhaps the one area where he could have won bipartisan support — so long as the Dems insist on holding him accountable. In effect, Donald Trump has announced that he has abdicated, having no longer any wish to serve. [CNN]

But I think he’s building up Trump too much, because he’s not the one with the purse strings. Congress controls the purse, and if Congress, in its two chambers, as led by Pelosi and McConnell, decide to – in this case – positively attack the infrastructure problem, they can do so – and if they have to override Trump’s veto, they can do that, too. All it takes is the realization that Trump is no political leader, and that the GOP has a governance responsibility.

Trump may look like a King to Gup. but to me he’s no more than a demented old man overwhelmed by his responsibilities.

The call of Rep Justin Amash (R-MI) to begin the impeachment process against President Trump has been joined by another GOP member, retired Rep Tom Coleman (R-MO). This is a fragment of an editorial he published in the Kansas City Star:

Because DOJ regulations put a president above the law while in office, I believe the only viable option available is for the House of Representatives, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, to open its own investigation, hold public hearings and then determine if they should pursue removal of the president through impeachment. There is a trove of evidence in the Mueller report indicating Trump has committed multiple impeachable offenses, including abuse of power and lying to the American public. Both were part of the articles of impeachment brought against President Richard Nixon. This process would allow a full public review of wrongdoing, while providing Americans an opportunity to obtain a better understanding of the consequences to our national security and the lingering threat to our democracy.

If this process leads to impeaching Trump in the House of Representatives and also results in convicting him in the Senate, his illegitimacy would survive through Vice President Mike Pence’s succession to the presidency. Because the misdeeds were conducted to assure the entire Trump-Pence ticket was elected, both former candidates — Pence as well as Trump — have been disgraced and discredited. To hand the presidency to an illegitimate vice president would be to approve and reward the wrongdoing while the lingering stench of corruption would trail any Pence administration, guaranteeing an untenable presidency. If Trump is impeached, then Pence should not be allowed to become president. The vice president should resign or be impeached as well if for no other reason that he has been the chief enabler for this illegitimate president.

Representative Coleman served in Congress 1976-1993, so he’s not part of the recent, last 20 years, surge to the right by the GOP. But he serves as yet another spotlight from that recent and authoritative past upon the corruption of the current GOP.

But he also goes further in that he calls for the impeachment of not only the President, but the Vice-President as well, in a weird echo of a long-ago (and perhaps overly dramatic, if I’m honest) post of mine.

Again, this is not a huge crack in the GOP. Rep Amash will now be facing a primary challenger for the next election. Most of the other Republicans who’ve disapproved of Trump have, understandably, left the party that they felt unwelcome in. So far, Coleman is a single dissenter, an admirable voice who examined the evidence and came to an unpopular conclusion.

And he’s worth noting for it.

Yesterday my Arts Editor and I had the pleasure of touring one of the more obscure museums in the Twin Cities, the Minnesota Museum of American Pattern Glass. This is a museum devoted to pattern or pressed glass, produced mostly in America, dating from 1890-1925.

We were fortunate in that the founder, Peter Thomas, was at the front desk and more than willing to give us a lecture on the history and physical processes behind the entire pressed glass industry, and he presented this information with copious authentic examples. My Arts Editor was fascinated and plied him with questions, most of which he was able to answer in a thorough manner.

And then he turned us loose on the collection, and it was a real pleasure to go through the museum. It’s not huge, which is something of a relief for the museum walker familiar with the monstrously large (and I say that in the most loving way possible) Minneapolis Institute of Art; the Minnesota Museum of American Pattern Glass preserves a focus on its interest, while assuring you that you’ll still be able to walk out to your car afterwards.

The displays are composed in such a manner as to emphasize the beauty of their components. A single display often includes all known information concerning the elements. Everything is clean (the cleaning of which makes me dizzy at the very thought) dazzling, and well-curated, and Peter was more than happy to answer questions that came up as we strolled along.

While I collect nothing but dust myself, we do have a couple of pieces of pressed glass (circa unknown, but we figure 1930s), and here’s a picture of one.  We’re told  that this is a cup plate, used to set one’s cup on after the cup’s saucer has been used to cool one’s tea.  This is one of a set of eight.

The Minnesota Museum of American Pattern Glass is at 15 South 1st Street, Suite A-4, Minneapolis MN,  (on the corner of Hennepin Avenue and 1st Street South).

Check the website for hours.  Hours are sharply limited, so make sure you get there on time and with time for lecture and tour, for which an hour and a half should be adequate. Parking is on the street, and, the museum, being on the ground floor of a condo highrise, has a dedicated external entry on Hennepin Avenue.

Autotrophy (plus more!):

An autotroph or primary producer, is an organism that produces complex organic compounds(such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) from simple substances present in its surroundings, generally using energy from light (photosynthesis) or inorganic chemical reactions (chemosynthesis).^[1] They are the producers in a food chain, such as plants on land or algae in water (in contrast to heterotrophs as consumers of autotrophs). [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Zombieland: The vast world of hidden microbes miles beneath your feet,” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (11 May 2019, paywall):

But by far the most common deep lifestyle is autotrophy, which means making your own food. Under the earth, microbes use the rock itself as a source of energy. Under intense heat and pressure, chemical processes generate energy-rich inorganic molecules that microbes can break down to produce energy. Collectively, these organisms are known as chemolithotrophs, which literally means “chemical rock eaters”.

I was reading Amber Phillips’ take on Memorial Day family political chat, and particularly the question of who the Democrats might want to pick to beat Trump:

This is the question Democratic voters are mulling over right now, according to Washington Post reporting. And there’s no consensus answer, at least not yet. Many are willing to sacrifice the candidate their heart wants for the candidate they think can beat Trump. But could that backfire?

Amy Walter, a political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, thinks there could be a divide between who party elites think would be electable and who the rest of the party wants. A new Pew Research survey shows base voters get more excited by minority candidates. So picking a Joe Biden or another moderate, white male, Walter writes, could depress “the very voters Democrats need to turn out if they are going to beat President Trump.”

And it occurred to me, how about Barack Obama for VP? He brings the minority element to the ticket, so you can put anyone you want in the top half of the ticket, and there’s not the least doubt in the world that he’s more than qualified for the job.

And watching the GOP wrestle with their biggest nemesis’ shocking reappearance would be immensely entertaining.

OK, so this probably wouldn’t fly, and it might even light up the GOP’s base to come out to the polls. But having competency back in the Oval Office after watching this man-child flop around for four years would certainly be a relief to serious Washington-watchers.

From the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

The en banc court stayed proceedings and certified the following question to the Montana Supreme Court:

Whether, under Montana law, dinosaur fossils constitute “minerals” for the purpose of a mineral reservation.

OK, so I’m a dinosaur geek, retired, so this is interesting all on its own. After all, a fossil is the result of bone, and sometimes flesh, being transformed into stone. Yet, the purpose of minerals within Western Civ is tangibly different from that of fossils, although I suppose one could make the case that fossils have more than a paleontological or collectors’ value.

But this also reminds me of a story that my Arts Editor’s Uncle Tim was telling us at a family get-together once, and it boils down to this, homeowners: you may think when you buy your house, you own the land – but you may not own the minerals beneath it! Here’s an explanatory page on the matter, which sort of tempts me to pursue it, just to see who could force me off my land just to exploit the minerals beneath it.

Hmmmmmmm.

Our inauguratory entry is from The Volokh Conspiracy’s Short Circuit column:

Litigation financing, heartbreak, and recusal collide in this Texas-sized debacle. A litigation financing company has a stake in 21 lawsuits being litigated by a Mexican law firm. But one of the law firm’s owners is embroiled in a divorce in Texas, and his interest in the law firm is part of the marital estate. So the litigation financing company intervenes in the divorce proceeding to protect its investment in the law firm and to collect debts owing to the firm. But the lawyer the company hires to collect the soon-to-be-divorced lawyer’s debts turns out to also be law partners with the divorce court judge. Which—when uncovered—explodes the litigation financing company’s efforts to recover its investment and leaves it having wasted $2 mil in attorney fees. Yikes! But that’s just the beginning. The litigation financing company then sues the lawyer for malpractice. No, not the lawyer getting the divorce. The other one; the one it originally hired to recover its investment but who had the business relationship with the judge. And in response to the company’s suit, the lawyer commits what the Fifth Circuit later describes as a “litany of litigatory misbehavior.” Which leads to the district court’s striking the lawyers’ pleadings, entering a default judgment in favor of the litigation financing company, and awarding nearly $3 mil in damages. Fifth Circuit: The default judgment shall stand, but the district court needs to recalculate the damages award.

I get dizzy just reading it.

Early movie super hero, home from the kill.

Tarzan Of The Apes (1918) struck me more as interesting for its position as one of the earliest movies ever made than for its aesthetic values. Part of the problem may be the fragmentary nature of the print we viewed (hosted on Amazon Prime), but from what we could tell, it was virtually plot-free, Tarzan seemed to be fat in a way that would not make sense for a kid raised by apes in a jungle, and he found it necessary to (silently) thump his chest and yell after winning several fights, including one with a mangy old lion (we felt sad for the lion, but that comes with its own collection of questionable moral thoughts). Throw in a bit of racism and a dubious leading lady, and it was all, actually, quite the bloody bore.

Tarzan never really did anything for me, truth to tell.

This WaPo report is disturbing in the face of the recent spate of bad weather parts of the United States has been experiencing:

What if, suddenly, decades of progress in weather prediction was reversed and monster storms that we currently see coming for days were no longer foreseeable? The toll on life, property and the economy would be enormous. Yet the government’s science agencies say such a loss in forecast accuracy could happen if the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. wireless industry get their way.

Both the FCC and the wireless industry are racing to deploy 5G technology, which will deliver information at speeds 100 times faster than today’s mobile networks. But scientists have found this technology could interfere with critical satellite data used in weather forecasting, pitting the interests of science and safety against a pressing national priority.

The FCC and the government’s science agencies, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, have battled over this issue for several years.

Hurricane Sandy (2012)

In case it’s not clear, the sensors which measure the data in question must have a frequency on the electro-magnetic spectrum clear in order to accurately measure the phenomenon in question, which is water vapor data. As it happens, 5G technology will operate quite near that frequency if the FCC has its way.

Yet on Tuesday, CTIA, the trade group representing the U.S. wireless communications industry, unleashed a scathing rebuttal of the Jacobs’ assertion.

“It’s an absurd claim with no science behind it,” wrote Brad Gillen, CTIA’s executive vice president, in a blog post.

And this is what troubles me. This CTIA’s motivations has little to do with weather forecasting; for them, it seems probable that it’s all about the money.

Meanwhile, the government is putatively charged with our safety, and excellent weather forecasting is part of that responsibility. While many will point at various corruptions that have occurred in the past in the government, such as the alleged “capture” of the FCC by the companies it is supposed to regulate, it remains the point man on the subject in our current societal design.

So, in my mind, we need the CTIA to step back and have a neutral third party that is scientifically competent take over as their advocate, a third party whose first responsibility isn’t making money, but public safety. I think Congress may have had such an agency at one time, but the Republicans eliminated it.

In this way, CTIA isn’t required to move out of its bailiwick of making money through the provision of communications, and the government isn’t forced to give up a key responsibility to a party that doesn’t have an inherent interest in it.

While reading this WaPo article on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) earnings over her years at Harvard in terms of outside work, it suddenly occurred to me that Senator Warren might be able drag up her poll numbers through some artless nattering. First, here’s a little bit from the article:

“Elizabeth was one of the nation’s top experts on how to make sure victims hurt by bankrupt companies eventually got paid,” Warren’s website said Wednesday night. “Throughout her career, she worked to help set up trusts and other mechanisms to return $27 billion to victims and their families.”

In a separate review, The Post found that a wave of Warren’s legal work came in the early 2000s as manufacturing companies whose products contained asbestos were forced into bankruptcy by waves of personal injury claims.

A nationally recognized expert in bankruptcy law, Warren consulted for more than a dozen committees representing claimants and creditors in these cases, often in partnership with the law firm Caplin & Drysdale. …

Warren did not release details about her compensation, and that information was scant in court records. Documents reviewed by The Post showed that she made at least $462,322 from her work on 13 cases, although the total for those cases might be much higher. Warren has released only her past 10 years of tax returns, and much of her legal consulting work is not reflected in those documents.

Trustees in several asbestos cases initially objected to or raised questions about her qualifications and proposed hourly rate. In an affidavit replying to one such objection in 2001, Warren defended her expertise.

My idea is that she simply say that she’s fairly certain that she’s had a higher income than Trump. Don’t even make it a challenge, just a throw-off line that reads as a bit of ad lib. Let him find it for himself. Let him rage about it a bit, as he would with anyone who challenges him in anything.

And then tell him to prove he’s had a higher income.

Go for it, Trump-boy, she could say. But I’ll bet you won’t, because your base is addicted to the idea that you make immense amounts of money, and once they see you’re not, why, I’ll bet they’ll vote for me, instead!

It’d be at least interesting to see how he’d dance around releasing his tax returns. Each succeeding day she might mention that she’s received X e-mails from former Trump supporters who are switching their votes to Warren because she’s more successful than Trump.

That’d fry his gourd.

And he just might release his tax returns just out of spite.

TPM reports on the litigation between the notably paranoid National Rifle Association (NRA), and one of its vendors:

The National Rifle Association believes itself to be the victim of a “bitter, insidious irony,” the firearms lobby said in a new lawsuit filed Wednesday against its longtime vendor Ackerman McQueen.

The advertising firm — referred to as AMc in the suit — has allegedly been leaking documents to the press that the NRA sued last month to get ahold of in what the firearms lobby calls “a series of sordid, out-of-context ‘leaks’ engineered by AMc to harm its client.”

The NRA sued AMc in April to access documents, ostensibly to audit the pair’s relationship and to investigate allegations that the Oklahoma City-based firm was over-billing the NRA.

Now, the NRA is seeking $40 million in damages from AMc, accusing it of using the leaks to foment a coup that would have toppled longtime NRA chief Wayne LaPierre in favor of Iran-Contra notable and then-NRA president Oliver North.

“The bitter, insidious irony is that the records leaked by AMc contain some of the same information the NRA had persistently requested from AMc over the course of many months, in an effort to strengthen its own internal controls,” the gun group argues in a complaint, filed in the State of Virginia’s Alexandria circuit court.

This is the same NRA that has lived and even flourished on the nightmare that the government is coming to take everyone’s guns away for the last four decades. Now, according to this lawsuit, some other organization really is out to get them – or they have very lurid nightmares.

This could be quite entertaining, given the instability inherent in the recent claims the NRA made in the run up to the latest Presidential election – and the massive hiccup in their messaging when Trump, rather than Clinton, won. Of course, never mind that the Democrats and Obama never made a move on gun rights when they had the opportunity. Paranoia is the name of their game.

The question is whether it’s once again on massive display – or if AMc is out to really get them. The anticipation of the resolution of that question is going to kill me.

I am impressed with how quickly the Federal court system is moving to rebuff the Administration’s attempts to block House subpoenas for information from banks, as now another judge has ruled against the Administration.

With any luck the appeals courts will also move right along, and we’ll get this up to SCOTUS and see if the Court is a partisan mess – or merely interested in application of the law.

Ex parte:

In the law, ex parte is used in several contexts.

Legal Ethics

In legal ethics, ex parte refers to improper contact with a party or a judge. Ethical rules typically forbid a lawyer from contacting the judge or the opposing party without the other party’s lawyer also being present.  A breach of these rules is referred to as improper ex parte contact.

Civil Procedure

In civil procedure, ex parte is used to refer to motions for orders that can be granted without waiting for a response from the other side. Generally, these are orders that are only in place until further hearings can be held, such as a temporary restraining order.

Typically, a court will be hesitant to make an ex parte motion. This is because the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee a right to due process, and ex parte motions–due to their exclusion of one party–risk violating the excluded party’s right to due process. [Legal Information Institute / Cornell Law School]

Noted in Case No. 19-cv-01136 (APM) for the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Judge Amit Mehta:

I do, therefore, . . . solemnly protest against these proceedings of the House of Representatives, because they are in violation of the rights of the coordinate executive branch of the Government, and subversive of its constitutional independence; because they are calculated to foster a band of interested parasites and informers, ever ready, for their own advantage, to swear before ex parte committees to pretended private conversations between the President and themselves, incapable, from their nature, of being disproved; thus furnishing material for harassing him, degrading him in the eyes of the country . . .

– President James Buchanan

Buchanan, incidentally, lost his suit, a suit much like the cited case.

Who said judges can’t have fun?

Steve Benen notes that President Trump doesn’t seem to be sticking to the script when it comes to Iran, contradicting NSA Bolton and Senator Graham (R-SC):

Act III features Donald Trump contradicting his allies. When a reporter asked the president yesterday afternoon where things stand with Iran, the president replied:

“We have no indication that anything has happened or will happen. But if it does, it will be met, obviously, with great force. We’ll have no choice.”

The key part of that answer, of course, was the presidential assertion that U.S. officials “have no indication that anything has happened or will happen.” That was a far cry from Lindsey Graham’s assertion, made just hours earlier after hearing from John Bolton, “It is clear that over the last several weeks Iran has attacked pipelines and ships of other nations and created threat streams against American interests in Iraq.”

The only real conclusion to draw is that President Trump is a demented old man who can’t keep up a good lie. Why the Republicans continue to rally around him is the real continuing mystery.

To my thesis that populist movements are a magnet for the power and wealth hungry:

Turns out Russian collusion isn’t a “witch hunt hoax” after all. At least not in Austria.

The country’s government collapsed on Saturday after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he was pulling the plug on his ruling coalition after just 17 months in office.

We’re all here to audition for the same part.

There’s Always A Woman (1938) presents a murder mystery as a race between a man and his wife. Ex Assistant District Attorney Bill Reardon is giving up on the private detective racket, much to his wife Sally’s dismay. Moments after he walks out the door of his office to beg for his old job back, a client walks in on Sally, who represents herself as an employee, ready to take on the new job from the lady in expensive pearls who’s worrying about her husband’s predilections in relation to an old girlfriend.

Soon enough, there’s a body, and it’s up the Reardons, individually, to solve the case. Several twists to the narrative lead us down the paths of passion and avarice, from a particularly well done police interrogation scene to the penthouse of the wealthy and desperate, from getting sloshed while on a very public stakeout to arranging for one’s spouse to be photographed half-naked.

But for all the fun, there’s an undercurrent of domestic violence running through this flick which left us a little uncomfortable. True, no actual swings occur, but, at least in this respect, the film has not aged well. If you’re capable of ignoring that undercurrent, this is all in good fun, with some snappy dialog and a smack upside the head for the cops, but if you can’t, you might want to give this a skip.

This wouldn’t happen to be your glass slipper, would it?

When it comes to The Late Edwina Black (1951), a good idea, proven by its later use by Alfred Hitchcock in an award-winning film, has its promise ruined by a poor script. As the film opens, we learn Mrs. Black has died, informed of the long-anticipated tragedy by her long time nurse, Ellen, who uses the moment to lash out at Mr. Black’s secretary, Elizabeth, for some obscure offense. Gregory Black, Edwina’s husband, is informed as well, to which he responds with a subdued sense of doom.

Quickly, we learn that Gregory and Elizabeth have been carrying on during the illness of Edwina, much to grievance of Ellen. But their plan to leave on a vacation together, during which they’ll marry, is soon foiled when Inspector Martin of the police shows up: Edwina’s corpse is full of arsenic, and he’s suspicious of the lot of them.

Soon enough, everyone is sniping at everyone, their suspicions mutual and emotionally devastating; even the Inspector gets a few delicious shots in. All of this is the lead up to the second poisoning, that of Elizabeth, who ends up collapsed in bed. But the big reveal is on its way, and we’re wondering not whether there’s a big vacation coming, but if the would-be lovers can even stand the sight of each other, regardless of their relationship to guilt. Did he? Did she? Will they? What are these remarks about last night and passion and all that sort of thing in a movie of this age, anyways?

While the tension could have been delicious, the role of Elizabeth is ridiculously sloppy. She’s emotional, suspicious, vulnerable, accusatory, passionate, and nearly dead from poison – and that’s all in a sixty second span. The result is not sympathy, but a feeling of disgust in the audience. Gregory’s actions are also questionable, as we never get any sense of his emotional relationship to his ex-wife.

The problem with a plot such as this is that the characters must be strictly believable. The plot must withhold information from the audience, while keeping the apparent character reactions believable, and that’s no mean feat. This story doesn’t really achieve it, and while I appreciated the climax, the rough climb up the mountain more or less ruined it for me.

But as a predecessor to Hitchcock’s masterpiece, which shall remain nameless, it’s still interesting to see the difference between this flawed effort and Hitchcock’s more successful result.

For a few days, the apple trees are beautiful.

Oh, yes, we did have to hire some guards. They claim they’ve found invading shrimp in the garden.