Ronald Reagan Tag

This week, on my podcast "Women's Media Center Live with Robin Morgan," I pay tribute to a remarkable man: former President Jimmy Carter. Our conversation (listen here), originally taped in 2014, is unique for a number of reasons.

In 1923, on the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, Alice Paul introduced the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” The National Women's Party and professional women like Amelia Earhart, the great pilot, supported it. But other reformers, particularly in the labor movement, who had worked hard for protective labor laws for women, were afraid the ERA would wipe out their progress. (This could have been solved by mobilizing for the extension of protective labor laws to men – like not lifting items over a certain weight or doing especially hazardous labor — but it became a huge sticking point for those protectionists who exploited class divisions within the women's movement.) By the early 1940s, both the Democratic and Republican parties had added support of...

We're back and ready to roll! The Postal Service is the nation’s second largest civilian employer (after Walmart—another story), employing 633,108 personnel. It would rank 44th on the 2019 Fortune 500 list if it was considered a private company – which it decidedly is not: it is the only government agency mandated as a service — it's not the postal business, after all. As a government agency, it has a legal obligation to provide all the various aspects of universal service. It also has special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first class and third class mail. The Postal Inspection Service, USPIS, is one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the nation. Founded by Benjamin Franklin during the Second Continental Congress in August 1775, its mission is to protect the Postal Service, its employees...

Here we go again. Since Trump sent Tomahawk missiles at Syria on an impulse, certain pundits and some of the American public are once more re-re-re-analyzing him: maybe he's changed? maybe this was "presidential"? maybe he's growing into the job?