But first, some news of the day. The  New York Times  this morning had some nice history of gerrymandering, which is what Democrats in California pulled off on election day this week with Proposition 50. Lawmakers realized in the 19th century that they could increase their party’s political power by redrawing legislative districts. The term of art is   gerrymandering , named after the map for the Massachusetts State Senate drawn under Gov. Elbridge Gerry. (One district looked like a salamander. Get it?) Typically, legislators gerrymander once a decade, after the census. Today, gerrymandering is a weapon of constant political warfare. State legislators, both red and blue, are furiously redrawing congressional maps in a quest to control the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections. The skirmishing began in August, when Trump persuaded Texas lawmakers to redraw congressional districts, which will probably let them send five more Republicans to Congress....

 A week ago, my posting was:       NOSTALGIA TUESDAY:  My First  Huffington Post  Article I talked about the beginning of the  Huffington Post  and my first contribution on 29May2008 to, in those early days, still a fledging web newspaper:       Well, Barack, We have a Problem ...  The problem, I thought, was the horrendous size of our national defense budget, but the opportunity Barrack Obama had to combat peak oil and remediate global warming by transferring funds into these programs.  Better to save humanity by taking care of these problems instead of escalating the potential of war and a nuclear winter. But he first had to beat Hillary for the Democratic nomination, then, as it later turned out, Republican John McCain for the presidency. Three months later on 10August2008, with the presidential election still about three months away, I followed up with: Why Do We Spend So Much On National Security? Let me see now,...

On Tuesdays, this blog site reaches back to the past and brings back an old posting to review and update.  I wrote more than a hundred articles for the  Huffington Post , so I won't be doing this for all of them.  Over the coming Tuesdays I'll pick the most relevant ones only. First of all, what is  The Huffington Post ? In May ,  celebrated  20 years of groundbreaking digital-first journalism . The  Huffington Post  was founded in May of 2005 by Arianna Huffington and others as a progressive alternative to conservative news websites, such as the  Drudge Report . In the early days, most of the news reports for the  Huffington Pos t came from unpaid bloggers like me.  I don't quite remember how I got recruited, but my contributions began in 2008.   SIMPLE SOLUTION ESSAYS  is a compilation of the first 75 papers. The company was acquired by AOL in 2011 for $313 million. Also in 2011,  Jonathan Tasini on behalf of b...