A felony conviction generally precludes getting a top secret security clearance. That doesn’t affect presidents, vice-presidents, members of Congress, or Supreme Court justices, none of whom require a clearance. As the U.S. Constitution spells out the qualifications for those offices, no criteria can be added except by constitutional amendment.

Access to classified information is still limited by “need to know,” such as membership on a relevant Senate or House committee. Sharing such information with unauthorized people is still forbidden. Staff still need clearances and must sign nondisclosure agreements.

Background checks and clearances recall the Vietnam era, when my boyfriend/husband served in the Army Security Agency. Though warned to expect an in-person visit (“Don’t say, he’s a great guy, we used to go out and steal hubcaps together”), I received a form to fill out. As I recall, it attested not only his honesty but also a lack of skeletons that might expose him to blackmail. Later, before we married, I had to list all my relatives who were not U.S. citizens. If someone ruled that Canadian aunts, uncles, and cousins posed a risk of divided loyalties, we’d face a tough decision. Losing his top secret clearance would mean a job reclassification, probably to light weapons infantry.

​As for the elected officials who don’t need clearances in the first place, tradition says their election shows voters deem them trustworthy. That’s why trust is, or should be, among the most important factors in deciding how to vote. Our national security may depend on it.

In 62 BCE, a Roman politician was accused of infiltrating a women-only festival to try to seduce Julius Caesar’s second wife, Pompeia. The politician was tried and acquitted. Caesar divorced Pompeia anyway, saying Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. Appearances matter.

Hearing this story in high school, I thought it unfair if she had done nothing wrong. No one should be punished on rumors alone. The phrase “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion” keeps coming back to me as perceptions of bias threaten the reputation of our courts. Is it fair to fault judges for the actions of their family members? Is it fair to restrict free speech or action by a private individual just because they’re married to a judge?

It's starting to fall into place for me. No one I know of proposes to limit spouses’ First Amendment rights or to hold judges responsible for how those rights are exercised. This isn’t about corruption, impropriety, or proven bias. It’s about taking seriously the provision in the U.S. Code, “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Democracy depends on trust, including trust in the rule of law free from conflict of interest. Appearances matter.

Images: (left) Pompeia, second wife of Julius Caesar, in Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum,1553; (right) United States Supreme Court, Great Hall.

The Maldives is. The Falklands are. The Netherlands is. The British Isles are. Geographical grammar is far from straightforward. While groups of physical features are plural, nations rate singular verbs. So why not a self-governing territory like the Falklands? Why plural or singular for the Azores, depending on your source? It’s a matter of emphasis and convention.

The U.S. Constitution treated the United States as plural: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies” (Article III, Section 3, italics mine). The Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 did the same: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The Civil War prompted growing treatment of the Union as grammatically singular, especially in the North. The Supreme Court retained the plural in most decisions until the turn of the century.

The nation still struggles with the perennial tenson between “United” and the plural “States.” The singular has won the grammatical contest. The practical contest between healthy pluralism and dysfunctional polarization is anybody’s guess. Many refuse to compromise. Some threaten to secede. Will we need to go back to saying, “the United States are”?

​Image: Henry Mosler (1841-1920), Betsy Ross sewing the first American flag. While possible, no credible evidence supports the legend that Ross had any role in designing the flag. 

People's lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable - deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.
                               - Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women, 1971

I never heard of the literary subgenre “Southern Ontario Gothic” before exploring obituaries of Alice Munro in May. Another Canadian author, Timothy Findley, coined the term half a century ago when an interviewer compared his fiction to writing from the American South: “Sure, it’s Southern Gothic: Southern Ontario Gothic. And that exists.” It exists in Munro, Findley, Margaret Atwood, and more.

Classic Gothic literature features crumbling castles or mansions, innocents isolated and trapped, with undercurrents of potential violence and horror. American Southern Gothic is haunted by a history of racial violence. What haunts southern Ontario?

My ancestral roots run through Ontario on both sides of the family. To me, southern Ontario culture feels as ordinary as it comes. I have to step back to grasp a sense of place distinguished by what The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature calls “the merciless forces of Perfectionism; Propriety, Presbyterianism, and Prudence.” Then I can sense the ghosts of family secrets buried deep under the kitchens of small Ontario towns.

​Image: Gothic architecture of Hillary House National Historic Site, Aurora, Ontario, built in 1862.