Dear Mr. Mayor, When we purchased our house last summer, we discovered that it was part of a tract of land subject to a racist covenant. It seems that Paulina Kirst, who accumulated some Rancho La Cañada land from the Lantermans around…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – “Separate but Equal” was made the law of the land in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy boarded a car of the East Louisiana Railroad…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – If you think the gays have it bad, did you know that England’s 1688 Bill of Rights prohibits heirs to the British throne from marrying a Catholic? As recently as 1978, the queen’s cousin Prince Michael of Kent…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – It was 1963 – just 45 years ago today – that Governor George Wallace stood in a campus doorway while attempting to exclude two black students from the University of Alabama. Telling people that they’re too dumb to…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – Do you think civil rights should be decided by an emotional popular vote, or by the ultimate popular vote, the Constitution? Every human rights victory we hold dear (like suffrage, apartheid, the United Nations and slavery) was installed…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – When President Gerald R. Ford was running for his first term in congress in 1948, he delayed his marriage to Elizabeth Warren until after the election because he was worried that voters would punish him for marrying a…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – After the news hit that Barack Obama is a distant cousin of Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt’s girlfriend, Angelina Jolie, I was reminded of what Brad Pitt told Esquire Magazine in September, 2006:…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – Marriage sure has gone through a lot of changes in the past centuries. A girl’s father used to decide who his daughter would marry. Then there were bans on interfaith and interracial marriages. Nowadays, almost everybody can choose…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – The latest installment of the CBS reality show Big Brother has a new twist. Eight couples are bonded together in the Big Brother house as “soul mates” based on personality matching performed before the show. In addition to…Read More »
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger – The greatest complement, it is said, is to be copied. By that measure, Maryland has given us a great big hug. The Maryland State Senator from Prince George’s County, Gwendolyn T. Britt, was arrested in 1960 for riding…Read More »