The Post-Partisan Emporium

  La France en Feu! A flaming tour through le quatorzième siècle Librarian of Celaeno It all began with a curse . . . King Philippe IV  Le Bel  (the beautiful) was said by contemporaries to be less a man than a statue, with a face- and heart- of marble. The driving purpose of his life was the centralization of power in France, efficiency, order, and rationalization of law. But achieving this would mean war and wars were (and are) expensive. Squeezing his population would only yield so much before it would become counterproductive and destabilizing. Philippe needed to get creative. Ladies? Ripping off the Jews and exiling them was the obvious first step, but Philippe was committed to more comprehensive fiscal reforms to complement his political plans. The Church owned an enormous amount of land in France, the revenues from which were controlled by the pope in Rome. Philippe got into it with Boniface VIII, who in response to their spiraling conflict  advanced the then-...

  Chop the trees, ration the cars Irina Slav That we live in strange times has, I believe, been established beyond the shadow of a doubt. What was once hard fact is now open to interpretation if not outright rejected as fact, which is how we get statements, made in all seriousness, that some trees may benefit from carbon dioxide. The post-truth flood, however, is still gaining momentum. “The wildfires that ripped through Canada's boreal forest last year produced more carbon emissions than the burning of fossil fuels in all but three countries, a new study has found,” leads  a story by CBC  that podcast partner Tammy Nemeth shared with me a few days ago. The study in question was  led by  “a carbon cycle scientist with expertise in data assimilation. His work has improved approaches for estimating sources and sinks of CO2 derived from atmospheric CO2 observations, leading to insights into linkages between the carbon cycle, climate, and extreme events.” He  d...

  Invasion Of The Water Snatchers Texas ranchers are fighting “green” hydrogen projects. “It’s a ridiculous amount of water.” Sister Mary Grace and Sister Mary Michael, outside the  Carmelite Monastery of Our Lady of Grace , on August 15, 2024. Photo by author. Drought has hit Schleicher County hard. Lots of the stock tanks are dry. The only plants that appear to be thriving on this part of the Edwards Plateau are scrawny mesquite trees and the ever-present prickly pear cactus. As we turned onto County Road 339, the clouds of dust from the unpaved road were so thick that I slowed down to assure there was at least 100 yards between my vehicle and the tailgate of Ray and Sandra Pfeuffer’s pickup. It was the afternoon of August 15. The dashboard in our 4Runner showed the outside temperature was 103 F. The sun was relentless. There was almost no wind. A bare handful of clouds dotted the sky. The Pfeuffers, who raise goats and cattle on a 3,300-acre ranch about a dozen miles southe...

  On Being a "Threat to Democracy" Power to The People? Donald Jeffries Merriam-Webster defines “democracy” as: “a: Government by the people  especially   :  rule of the majority,  b:  a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.” Well, that sounds good. Do we have a rule of the majority? The majority of Americans, after all, about eighty percent of them, are losing in this rigged economy, and living paycheck to paycheck at best. I don’t think they’re “ruling” anything. We all (well, some of us) know that the 10th Amendment to the Constitution clearly states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Again, sounds good. But when’s the last time you heard about one of our tyrannical judges ...