History

With Steve Jobs' retirement announcement, a lot is being said about his tremendous successes. But he had a lot of spectacular failures, too, like the Apple I and Lisa. We could learn something by concentrating on those:

A lot of stories are moving now trying to glean lessons from the terrible stage accident that killed five and injured more than 40 at the State Fair. If there is one, perhaps it is in these remarks by Gov. Mitch Daniels:

I apologize for calling all those who collaborated on getting Elian Gonzales back to Cuba liberal, thug-loving morons. That kid has it made now:

Blogger extraordinaire Alan Vanneman points to this article from The New York Times about how the tyrannical government of Cuba is finally allowing its prisoner-citizens to see Beatles cover bands only about 45 years after Beatlemania has bitten the dust:

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I may have been premature to praise Texas Gov. and likely presidential candidate Rick Perry for his commitment to the 10th Amendment and federalism. He and several other Republican candidates speak a good 10th Amendment game, but when "there is a conflict between state sovereignty and conservative policies, their reverence for the 10th Amendment abruptly goes by the wayside."

Yeah, well, they've been lamenting "the death of rural America" for 50 years:

Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the nation's population, the lowest ever.

The Sunday Journal Gazette ran an interesting piece by syndicated columnist Margaret Carlson about the proliferation of pledges being shoved under candidates' waiting pens by special-interest groups. She dwells mostly on conservative pledges -- no new taxes, no to abortion, no to gay marriage; but she does briefly acknowledge that liberal groups have them, too -- the pro-choice pledge, for example.

Happy Flag Day:

One big reason the Civil War sesquicentennial is getting so much enthusiastic attention is the monumental PBS series 20 years ago in which Ken Burns, aided principally by Shelby Foote, managed to "take a knotty and complex history of violence, racial conflict, and disunion and turn it into a compelling drama of national unity." (George Will gushed that the series was a"masterpiece of national memory. Our Iliad has found its Homer.")

Today is the 67th anniversary of D-Day:

Indiana got screwed. Under the original provisions of the Northwest Ordinance, Illinois would have had a boundary tangent to the southern tip of Lake Michigan, giving the state no Lake Michigan shoreline.