One summer day long ago, I walked from a cluster of museums near Chicago’s South Loop southward toward McCormick Place. It’s a stretch of Lake Michigan waterfront I hadn’t previously explored on foot. Imagine my surprise to happen on the oldest outdoor artifact in the city. As best I could decipher the Italian inscription, the 2,000-year-old stone column was a gift to Chicago from Benito Mussolini. Had we and Fascist Italy once been friendly enough for gifts?

Apparently so. The Chicago World’s Fair of 1933, celebrating technological advances of the city’s first “Century of Progress,” gave Mussolini a chance to bring modern Italy out of the shadows. The futuristic Italian pavilion held hundreds of exhibits to showcase Italian technology and medicine. In July 1933, more than 100,000 spectators cheered the arrival of twenty-four seaplanes from Rome, under the command of Italian air force minister Italo Balbo. Americans welcomed the pilots as heroes.

Mussolini’s public relations coup linked modern Italy to Rome’s ancient history as the mightiest empire of its time. Chicago might boast a hundred years of progress; Italy could boast two thousand. He adopted the classic Roman fasces, a bundle thin rods tied together around an axe head for strength, as his symbol of power. The ancient column of the Balbo Monument, Mussolini’s gift to Chicago in honor of Balbo's squadron, was taken from the erstwhile port city of Ostia outside Rome.

The message was clear. Mussolini and his National Fascist Party rose up to Make Italy Great Again.

Image: Balbo Monument, Burnham Park, Chicago. Chicago Park District.

On a recent phone chat with family in California, an unknown voice told us this call was being recorded. What? Slightly spooked, we hung up and took a few minutes online to find out more. To record a call, we learned, a few states require consent from all parties. Most states, and federal law, require consent from only one party to the call. In some, being told you’re being recorded implies consent. Some require consent only in a situation with a reasonable expectation of privacy, like a personal call from home.

A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy: What a great title for a novel! The plot centers on an elected leader who wants to become a dictator while appearing to follow the law. He empowers an unelected, unconfirmed official to silence the opposition. The scheme has two prongs. One is to stir panic by firing thousands of workers in the name of eliminating waste and fraud. Positions abolished include those of watchdogs to guard against illegal or unethical action.

The other prong is to monitor personal data and communication to identify “enemies” who criticize the leader or his agenda. As monitoring grows more and more intrusive, the public is too frightened of retribution to object. By the end of the novel, when the two schemers part company, “a reasonable expectation of privacy” has lost all meaning. No reasonable person still expects any privacy whatever.

Of course, this plotline is only fiction. At least, I hope so. These days you never know.

Image: Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash.

My one college semester of constitutional law didn’t earn my highest grade. I didn’t realize we were supposed to know Supreme Court cases as well as the Constitution itself. For the judicial branch in particular, the Constitution says remarkably little. Judicial power extends to cases arising under the Constitution, federal laws, and treaties. Specifics lie mostly in cases and precedents.

The Supreme Court avoids taking sides in issues of foreign policy. It refuses some cases on technical grounds, such as who brought the case or where. On birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, for now the Court will rule only on whether a judge trying one  case can issue a nationwide injunction. If not, apparently every newborn must bring a separate lawsuit while the earlier case proceeds.

​What happens when a president disobeys a judicial order? The Supreme Court can issue injunctions, sanction officials, declare them in contempt, and impose fines or even arrest. But enforcement depends on federal marshals, who serve under the president. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, the judiciary holds neither the purse nor the sword. Its power lies entirely in an abiding respect for the rule of law, by nearly all Americans regardless of party. It’s up to us, the public, to insist our elected representatives uphold that respect.

As we all learned in high school, Congress makes laws and the president puts them into effect. The constitutional boundary between enact and implement is hazy, just as the Framers intended. They had lived under George III and didn’t want another king. They had seen the flaws of the Articles of Confederation, which created a weak Congress and no executive or judiciary at all.

The new Constitution they drafted included checks and balances among three separate branches to prevent tyranny. Congress’s power to tax and spend, by implication, allows it oversight over practically everything. In foreign affairs, the Constitution empowers Congress to declare war, regulate foreign commerce, levy tariffs, and raise, support, and regulate an army and navy.

Over the past century, power has shifted from Congress to the president. Congress hasn’t declared war since World War II; instead, it authorizes presidents to use military force against particular threats. Formal treaties have largely been replaced by executive agreements that don’t require the Senate’s advice and consent. Since the 1930s, Congress has given the president ever-growing power to set and negotiate tariffs.

Has Congress abdicated its role of oversight, checks, and balances? It repeatedly delegates authority to the executive. It leaves executive orders unchallenged. It confirms partisan nominees to head independent agencies. Congress has the means to reclaim some of the power it has ceded. Maybe someday it will have the will. 

Nearly ninety years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the president is “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations,” wielding an exclusive power “which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress but which, of course, like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.” (United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 1936).

It unnerves me to think I could be detained and deported any time someone in the executive branch, unfettered in foreign affairs, decides one of my blog posts threatens current U.S. international policy. It’s unlikely to happen soon. I am a white, straight, cis, native-English-speaking, American-born daughter of two naturalized immigrants. Still, if it can happen to one U.S. citizen or legal resident, it can happen to any of us. More likely, first I’ll lose access to email and social media on the grounds that my words endanger national security.

Under the Constitution, the president is commander in chief. It authorizes him to make treaties and appoint ambassadors, with advice and consent of the Senate. Congress may delegate other powers to him, but according to Curtiss-Wright, in international affairs he can act without delegation from Congress. The only guardrails appear to be those in the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution. May those guardrails be strong enough to save us from crashing off the cliff.

On Inauguration Day in 2025, the new president signed an executive order to suspend refugee admissions to the U.S. It allowed for exceptions by the secretaries of State and Homeland Security “so long as they determine that the entry of such aliens as refugees is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

Two-and-a-half weeks later, the White House cut off aid to South Africa to protest its land reform law and its disagreement with U.S. foreign policy. That order also stated, “the United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”

Afrikaners are descended from early Boer (Dutch for “farmer”) settlers of Cape Colony in southern Africa, founded by the Dutch East India Company in 1652. “Trekboers” migrated inland with their herds. Conflict among Afrikaners, British colonists, and the indigenous Zulu—especially after the discovery of diamonds and gold—led to creation of the apartheid Union of South Africa and eventually to democratic elections. White South Africans, the majority of whom are Afrikaners, make up 7.3 percent of the population and own three-fourths of the privately held land. More than four out of five South Africans are black.

Afrikaners don’t much threaten American security or welfare. Nor do Afghans trying to escape Taliban reprisal for helping the U.S. military, nor families from Honduras or El Salvador threatened by gang violence and extortion. What measures the national interest? Given the administration’s vehement rejection of “racial preferences,” its preference for Afrikaners over desperate fugitives fleeing for their lives is hard to explain.

Image: Trekboers making camp, aquatint by Samuel Daniell, c. 1804. 

Yellow isn’t exactly my favorite color. I might not choose it for a car, a coat, or a barn. But it’s my most personal color, and I love it for dots and accents. In my family of origin, anything that was color-coded—from croquet balls to plastic breakfast juice cups—was red for my father, green for my mother, blue for my brother, and yellow for me. I still choose Colonel Mustard in Clue, yellow tokens in Parcheesi, and yellow sticky-notes and suspension folders at my desk. Synesthesia takes hold. It feels natural that sun and stars begin with my initial, S.

Pale yellows of forsythia and daffodils bloom in the garden, and wood poppies under the trees. Male goldfinches at the feeder have traded in their winter drab for bright yellow plumage. Savoring these markers of spring (another S), I don’t like “yellow-bellied” or “yellow stripe down the back” to denote cowardice. Despite lots of speculation online, the origin of those terms is unknown. I’d rather see yellow suggest courage, like a bold dandelion pushing through a crack in the sidewalk.

My ninth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Swisher, drummed into us that courage isn’t when you’re fearless; it’s when your will is stronger than your fear. It’s spunk, spine, spirit, and strength. Its seeds can spread. A senator risks being primaried to admit, “We are all afraid.” A school risks loss of funding to defend its academic freedom. With luck the sun shines, the breeze blows, and a second dandelion pushes up. In time, brave voices could fill the streets and airwaves, the way a zillion dandelions will turn whole cow pastures yellow.

First-year medical students are said to learn the sympathetic nervous system's role in the four F’s: fear, fight, flight, and sex.

The fourth "F" wouldn’t prompt a smile in medieval England, when everyday words for body parts or functions were no big deal. Children’s reading lessons might teach arse and fart. Street names might include Shitwell Way or Pissing Alley. Centuries later, Victorians separated the acceptability of a word from its meaning. Polite society could use Latin terms like fornicate or defecate, but not the Anglo-Saxon four-letter equivalents. That taboo continues with the aid of bleeps and asterisks.

The federal government in 2025 has multiplied the number of banned and trigger words for federal documents, websites, and grant proposals (see here and here). Latin substitutes no longer help; diversity, equity, and inclusion all have Latin roots. Could schools and colleges replace DEI with “education for all” programs for similar goals? Can you do better than “child-bearing adult” in place of woman or female? Endless revisions may offer editors and creative writers a new market for their talents.

Image: Jay & Trey Cartoon Swearing.

In the 1970s and early ’80s, I was too wrapped up in work and family to pay close attention to international events. One did catch my attention: the junta in Argentina and its vicious campaign to eradicate any opposition. The junta labeled all who criticized or disagreed with it “terrorists” and justified its deeds as a war, the Guerra Sucia (“Dirty War”). Picturing the suffering of the victims and their families gave me shivers. It still does.

Paramilitary forces in plain clothes snatched targets from the street or dragged them from bed in the middle of the night. The desaparecidos (“disappeared”) included students, journalists, union members, Jews, and anyone suspected of left-wing sympathies. I doubt the state-sponsored kidnappers had warrants, identified themselves, or read captives their rights. Victims had no constitutional right to due process, free speech, or habeas corpus. Some were held in secret detention centers. Tens of thousands were never heard from again.

Mothers of desaparecidos walked in the plaza every Thursday, demanding to know what had become of their loved ones. Few others spoke or acted in protest. I don’t know how many people held back out of fear, how many gave up hope, and how many didn’t care. Only after economic collapse and defeat in the Falklands compounded dissatisfaction over lack of civil rights did the junta and its Guerra Sucia come to an end.

Of course, that was not the first or last time such horror has been inflicted in one place or another. I took comfort in knowing nothing of the sort could ever happen here.

Image: Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, December 1982.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater is a childhood treasure I forgot until last week. It tells how a small-town housepainter unexpectedly finds himself responsible for a dozen penguins sharing his home.

What could be more irresistibly cute than a penguin? Its coloring and upright posture make it resemble a miniature man in a tuxedo. It waddles and struts like a toddler pretending to be a proud gentleman. Look here for many of its enchanting behaviors in its native habitat.

Years passed before I realized penguins and polar bears never meet in the wild. Polar bears live in the Arctic North, where they rely on sea ice as a base for hunting seals. Penguins dive for fish, squid, and krill from shores nearer the South Pole, including Antarctica; the coasts of South America, Africa, and Australia; and scattered sea islands such as the Galapagos (a province of Ecuador) and the humanly uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands (external territories of Australia).

What calls to mind Mr. Popper’s Penguins lately is the penguin imagery on signs at rallies. It’s a whimsical reference to global U.S. tariffs extending even to Heard and McDonald Islands, home only to penguins, seals, and sea birds. Using good-natured humor to make a serious point promotes resilience and high spirits. What elicits more smiles than a waddling, tuxedo-clad, miniature gentleman held aloft on a stick? What could be cuter than a penguin?

Image: Photo by 66 North on Unsplash.