March 17

 After a day of mixed precipitation we have sun today. It is a bit too cool (not yet 40F) to do anything outside. Watching the Weather Channel and the damage from the storms that passed through over the weekend. As far as I know right now we haven't had much damage here but southern Indiana had several tornadoes.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Stray thought: since Inauguration Day a theme in the slightly left leaning press has when we might actually have a Constitutional crisis. The question surfaced when Trump on his whim closed USAID which had been established by congressional legislation. As his administration threatens other agencies and tries to bring independent parts of the government (i.e., Department of Justice) under the control of the Executive. It has come up again with current tussle between the Judiciary and Executive over the "deportation" of alleged Venezuelan gang members allegedly in the U.S. illegally to El Salvador after a judge ordered a stay of deportations under the "Alien Enemies" law from the 1790s. I put DEPORTATION in quotes because from reports the proper word might be "kidnaping," I use the word ALLEGED and ALLEGEDLY because NO PROOF has been offered and no court has rendered judgement. So far the "experts" say it isn't really a Constitutional crisis because the Administration is in court arguing the details of timing--whether the order came before or after the deportees arrived in El Salvador to a beautifully stage reception. In Robert Heinlein's novel I WILL FEAR NO EVIL Jake Solomon and Eunice Branca where he says that the U.S. has, over its history, been a constitutional republic, a limited democracy, an almost universal democracy, and an oligarchy--without ever changing its Constitution. Are we there yet?

Another stray though: the 1798 law Trump used was supposed to be a "war time" measure. As far as I know we aren't actually at war with any country. But since Lyndon Johnson declared a "war" on poverty we have used the term more and more loosely. We haven't been in a declared war against an enemy country since World War II.