Well, with incredible swiftness yesterday,  both houses of the U.S. Congress passed that controversial Epstein file release legislation . The House vote was 427 to 1.  Louisiana Republican Representative Clay Higgins cited his concern about innocent people being hurt. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brought up the bill on the floor of the Senate under a procedure called unanimous consent.  He had checked with the Republican party about this process, which allows no debate and no amendments, got concurrence and succeeded.  There was no congressional vote, so no one in the midterm election will get tainted. This measure is now on President Donald Trump's desk, and he has said he will sign it. The bill requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell no later than 30 days after the law is enacted.   T he bill gives Bondi th...

The first law of ecology is that title above, at least as written in Barry Commoner's 1971  The Closing Circle:  Nature, Man and Technology .   A  further searc h indicated that the adage is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, who died in 1519.  But there is very little to support this contention. From German  philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1769: In nature everything is connected, everything is interwoven, everything changes with everything, everything merges from one into another . Close, but what about U.S. jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who wrote: If the world is a subject for rational thought it is all of one piece; the same laws are found everywhere, and   everything is connected with everything else;   and if this is so, there is nothing mean, and nothing in which may not be seen the universal law. And there is an environmental inspiration from U.S. naturalist John Muir in 1869: When we try to pick out anything by itself, we fi...

    From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):            DAY    USA    WORLD      Brazil      India      South Africa 2020 June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21      1225      6849         571   ...

First, what happened to the predicted Red Wave?   Time  magazine called it a  Pink Splash .  The  Washington Times  said:   The Vaunted Red Wave Never Hit the Shore . In a nutshell, we won't know until tonight, or later this week, and maybe not till December, about Senate and House control. At this moment, Republicans look to be in a favorable position to run the House.  It will come down to how many Democrats can flip Republican House seats in California. Love this quote from  CalMatters: Like   Schrodinger’s Cat , the ambiguously fated feline in the physicist’s thought experiment who is both alive and dead simultaneously, California election results currently exist in a kind of quantum state of uncertainty . Turns out that this state has Election Month.  Everything is in slow motion. So when will we know for sure?  Hopefully this Friday, but it could be in December. But it doesn't really matter, for the  Senate...