April 27th is
World Tapir Day
Babe Ruth Day *
Mantanzas Mule Day
Prime Rib Day
LGBT Day of Silence *
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MORE! Walter Lantz, Coretta Scott King and Babe Ruth, click
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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
Koningsdag (King’s Day/birthday) – Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Netherlands, St. Eustatius & Saba, Sint Maarten
Store Bebedag (Great Prayer Day) – Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland
Mayotte – Abolition Day
Sierra Leone – Independence Day
Slovenia – Resistance Day
South Africa – Freedom Day
Togo – Independence Day
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On This Day in HISTORY
711 – Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula
1521 – Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed in the Philippines
1673 – Claude Gillot born, French painter, engraver and theatrical designer
The Italian Comedy: Metamorfosi D’Arlecchino by Claude Gillot
1744 – Nikolay Novikov born, Russian writer, philanthropist and social critic
1759 – Mary Wollstonecraft born, English writer and women’s rights advocate
1791 – Samuel F. B. Morse born, American inventor and artist, who invented the single wire telegraph system, and co-inventor of More Code
1820 – Herbert Spencer born, English sociologist and philosopher
1822 – Ulysses S. Grant born, commander of the Union armies during the American Civil War, and 18th U.S. President
1840 – Edward Whymper born, English artist and mountaineer; first to climb the Matterhorn
1896 – Wallace Hume Carothers born, American chemist; developed nylon
1899 – Walter Lantz born, American film animator; creator of “Woody Woodpecker”
1906 – Alice Dunnigan born, first African-American journalist accredited to cover Congress (1947); also covered the White House, Supreme Court and State Department, documented Klan actions when no “white” newspaper covered them
1912 – Zorah Sehgal born, Indian dancer, choreographer and actress; danced in Uday Shankar’s troupe, made many Bollywood films; appeared in Bend It Like Beckham at the age of 90
1922 – Sheila Scott born, English aviator who broke over 100 long-distance aviation records; first person to fly over the North Pole in a small aircraft
1923 – Betty Mae Tiger Jumper born, first woman chief of the Seminole Tribe of Florida; first Florida Seminole to learn to read and write English, and the first to graduate from high school and a nursing program; co-founder and editor of the tribe’s first newspaper, The Seminole Tribune
1927 – Coretta Scott King born, civil rights, human rights, and peace activist, a leader in struggle for racial equality and became active in the Women’s and LGBT rights movements; founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
1945 – Helen Hodgman born, Australian novelist; won the 1978 Somerset Maugham Award for Jack and Jill
1947 – Babe Ruth Day * launched as a tribute to the retired and ailing baseball star, the first play to hit 60 home runs in one season; he spoke briefly to a crowd of 60,00 fans at Yankee Stadium
1972 – Apollo 16 returned to Earth after a manned voyage to the moon
1982 – John W. Hinckley Jr. goes on trial in Washington, D.C., for shooting President Ronald Reagan, a Secret Service agent, a police officer, and nearly killing Ptrss Secretary James Brady; he will be acquitted by reason of insanity
1987 – The Justice Department bars Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the U.S., saying he aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II
1992 – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed in Belgrade by the Republic of Serbia and its lone ally, Montenegro
1992 – Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons
1992 – Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
1996 – LGBT Day of Silence * launched, a student-led vow of silence for middle schools to colleges to raise awareness of bullying’s silencing effects on LGBTQ students
2006 – Construction begins on a 1,776-foot building on the site of the World Trade
2006 – Construction begins on a 1,776-foot building on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City
2011 – President Barack Obama produces a detailed Hawaii birth certificate
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Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
When I used to attend functions of the American Constitution Society, I heard several times about the “tension between freedom and equality.” Whenever I, as a non-lawyer, argued that there was not actually any tension between freedom and equality, it was explained to me often (“lawyer-splained”) that there indeed WAS: Someone was not being “free” to discriminate. I would then launch into an attempt to explore what they thought “freedom” was. To me, freedom cannot be something that attaches to any area or phenomenon-space larger than a person. I cannot be free to punch my neighbor’s nose. My freedom consists of being able to prevent the punching of my OWN nose. Most of my conversants at these conferences thought me simplistic and intellectually inept, but to me it continued to be simple. In fact, in the Dred Scott case, there were many pro-slavery politicians pointing out that the slaverholders’ freedoms were under attack. Today’s quotes from Coretta Scott King and Mary Wollstonecraft completely express my simplistic understanding of freedom and I find it so baffling that this is not the commonly accepted definition.
Isn’t the real “tension” between freedom and anarchy? If everyone was free to follow every impulse, humanity wouldn’t last very long – or most of the other species on this planet.
I wouldn’t assume that lawyers are or should be the benchmark of what are the commonly accepted definitions of freedom or equality – they earn their livings from issues being complicated.