Abandoned Entrance
Hyères, French Riviera
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Hanging around with some pillars of the community.
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Accessibility in gaming has undergone a major evolution in recent years, and on the PlayStation 5, it’s become one of … #Pillars https://gamesense.co/game/pillars/news/discuss/how-game-accessibility-pillars-are-reshaping-ps5-titlesplaystation-universe/
3 Pillars of Trump’s Power—Including Tariffs—Head to Supreme Court | TIME
President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House on August 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump’s authority on tariffs, deportations and sending the military into U.S. cities are at stake in major court cases. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)Sep 10, 2025, 4:00 AM PT
3 Pillars of Trump’s Power Are Tested, as Pivotal Cases Head to Supreme Court
By Brian Bennett, Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.
The Brief September 10, 2025
The Brief September 10, 2025
Editor’s Note: Audio on the linked article/site. Not available to embed.
In early September, President Donald Trump’s White House sent out a press release laying out ways Trump has been “delivering historic results.” It outed $158 billion in tariff revenues coming into the U.S. since Trump took office. It said that Trump’s border crackdown has led to a 97% drop in northward migration from Central America and that his use of the military for law enforcement in Washington DC is a “model” for other cities.
It was just the latest example of the Administration highlighting how Trump is following through on his campaign promises to aggressively deploy tariffs, ramp up deportations, and send the National Guard into U.S. cities. But a recent drumbeat of court rulings have called those three central actions of Trump’s presidency into question. Lower courts are repeatedly finding that Trump has exceeded his powers as President under the Constitution. In just the last two weeks, federal courts ruled that most of his tariffs are illegal, that he violated a law prohibiting the use of soldiers for law enforcement inside the U.S., and that many of his most high-profile deportations were based on a faulty reading of law.
The White House is challenging all of those decisions, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to ultimately determine if if Trump may have to rein in his efforts in those areas The high court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority thanks to the three justices Trump hand-picked during his first term, has so far taken an expansive view of Trump’s ability to act.
Here are three major actions Trump has taken that are in jeopardy and appear destined for the Supreme Court:
Issuing Tariffs
A federal court ruled in late August that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal because they were imposed without Congressional approval. But that lower court held off on enacting its order to give the Trump Administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the high court announced it was expediting the tariff case, demanding briefs from all sides from the government and the plaintiffs by Sept. 19 in order to hear in-person arguments in early November.
The case was brought by a group of small businesses that said the tariffs Trump imposed so far “amount to an average tax increase of $1,200-$2,800 per American household.” The business owners argued that issuing those tariffs were beyond the President’s powers under the Constitution. Article I of the Constitution empowered Congress to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and demands that bills for raising revenue “shall originate in the House of Representatives.” (CONTINUED)
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: 3 Pillars of Trump’s Power—Including Tariffs—Head to Supreme Court | TIME
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Pillars of Democracy, Article 4:A Free Press Isn’t a Luxury — It’s How We Govern Ourselves
Pillars of Democracy, Article 4:
A Free Press Isn’t a Luxury — It’s How We Govern Ourselves
The fourth in a six-part series examining the essential institutions that protect American democracy
The American experiment assumes the public can know what the powerful are doing in our name. That assumption only holds if reporters can dig, editors can publish, sources can speak, and readers can access the facts without fear or favor. This essay takes stock of press freedom in the United States right now, how it’s being squeezed, why that matters well beyond the newsroom, and what practical steps we can take to rebuild a culture of transparency and accountability.
What the First Amendment Protects — and What It Doesn’t
The First Amendment doesn’t create a class of “special journalists.” It creates breathing room for the public’s right to receive information and ideas, which in turn requires that reporters and publishers can gather and disseminate news. The Supreme Court has repeatedly underscored this logic.
When the government tried to stop the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, the Court refused, reaffirming the “heavy presumption” against prior restraints on publication (New York Times Co. v. United States). When Congress criminalized broad swaths of Internet speech in the 1990s, the Court struck the law down because its sweeping terms would chill lawful expression (Reno v. ACLU).
And the modern standard for defamation of public officials remains demanding by design: public figures must prove “actual malice” — the publisher knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth — so that robust, sometimes harsh scrutiny of the powerful can occur without constant fear of ruinous liability (New York Times v. Sullivan).
These cases don’t announce a press class above the law; they articulate what democracy requires from law. Still, the Constitution is a floor, not a ceiling.
Even in a system that forbids prior restraint and makes it hard to win libel suits, freedom can be eroded indirectly — through resource starvation of local news, weaponized rhetoric that paints reporters as enemies, abusive subpoenas for their notes and sources, opaque algorithms throttling distribution, or routine government foot-dragging on records that belong to the public. The next sections address those pressure points.
The Press in Practice: A Shrinking Infrastructure for Public Knowledge
You can’t have meaningful freedom of the press without viable places to practice it. The United States has watched the commercial scaffolding of local reporting weaken dramatically over two decades. In 2024 alone, Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative cataloged another sharp contraction in printed editions, newsroom jobs, and circulation, even as “bright spots” emerged among digital startups (State of Local News 2024, full PDF here).
The result is the spread of “news deserts” — communities with little or no original reporting — and “ghost papers,” publications too hollowed out to regularly scrutinize city halls, school boards, police budgets, public health systems, and local courts.
At the same time, Americans’ habits for getting news have shifted onto platforms that are not primarily civic institutions.
A majority at least sometimes gets news via social networks, with Facebook and YouTube leading and TikTok rising quickly among younger audiences (Pew Research Center, 2024 Social Media & News). This migration is not inherently bad — it can put more voices in the conversation — but it does mean that speech norms and distribution are increasingly set by private rulebooks that are optimized for engagement, not for accountability reporting.
A free press lives or dies in the dull places: the no-drama procurement meeting, the small-town court docket, the weekday afternoon school board vote. That is where money gets misspent or saved, where rights are honored or violated — and where fewer reporters now sit.
A Decade of Escalating Political Attacks — with the Presidency as Megaphone
Political criticism of coverage is normal; power always resents scrutiny. But the last decade normalized something different: the systematic delegitimization of journalism as such. Donald Trump’s years in national politics turned “fake news” into a cudgel and repeatedly labeled news organizations “the enemy of the people,” language historically used to justify repression.
Media-freedom groups have documented the pattern: Trump’s anti-press rhetoric escalated from 2015 onward, punctuated by public vows to “open up” libel laws to make it easier to sue outlets over negative coverage (CPJ analysis; Politifact and U.S. Press Freedom Tracker). The promise was performative — presidents don’t write libel law — but the point was deterrence: make aggressive reporters and their lawyers think twice.
The threats were sometimes married to proposed state action. In 2017, after NBC News aired a story he disliked, Trump mused about revoking network “licenses.” That is not how the Federal Communications Commission works — the FCC licenses individual stations, not national networks.
Then-Chair Ajit Pai publicly reminded everyone the agency “will stand for the First Amendment” and will not yank broadcast licenses because a politician dislikes content (TIME recap with 2017 Pai statement; see also Reuters and the original Press Freedom Tracker incident). Even empty threats can be costly: boards get skittish, insurers start asking questions, and outlets incur legal bills responding to spurious complaints.
More materially, the government’s investigative machinery has, at times, targeted reporters’ communications to smoke out sources. In 2021, the Washington Post and others revealed that the Justice Department had secretly obtained journalists’ records in leak probes during Trump’s first term (The Washington Post; Reporters Committee statement).
In response, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a bright-line policy in July 2021 — since codified in 2022 regulations — barring compulsory process for reporters’ records in almost all circumstances (DOJ announcement). In spring 2025, however, the Department rescinded those protections and adopted new rules that again authorize the use of subpoenas, court orders, and warrants to obtain reporters’ information in leak cases, a move widely criticized by press-freedom advocates (Federal Register rule; analysis by RCFP).
The anti-press climate filters down. Reporters Without Borders notes that the United States has seen spikes in arrests of journalists at protests — 48 in 2024, nearly 90% connected to Israel-Gaza demonstrations — and a continued rise in harassment and assault of reporters on the ground (RSF country profile; see also the Tracker’s yearly arrest analysis).
And in 2023, a small Kansas police department conducted a sweeping raid on the Marion County Record newsroom and a publisher’s home, seizing computers and phones; a former police chief was later charged over the botched operation — a reminder that local power can threaten the press just as surely as federal power can (AP coverage; Reuters).
Legal Guardrails — and Real Gaps We Haven’t Fixed
Much of our protection still rests on New York Times v. Sullivan’s actual-malice standard. That doctrine has become a political target: Trump and others have said they want it overturned or diluted, which would expose watchdog reporting to a flood of defamation suits designed to punish rather than correct. Even short of doctrinal change, powerful figures can deploy expensive litigation as a tactic. That is why state anti-SLAPP laws, which allow judges to dismiss meritless suits quickly and award fees, matter so much; the Reporters Committee tracks the patchwork and pushes for stronger laws.
A second gap is the lack of a federal “shield law” guaranteeing protection for confidential sources nationwide. Nearly every state offers some form of reporter’s privilege, but the federal government does not. The bipartisan PRESS Act would codify sensible protections against compelled disclosure of journalist communications and source identities, with narrow exceptions. It passed the House unanimously in January 2024 but stalled in the Senate (RCFP explainer; bill text at Congress.gov). While administrations can choose to exercise restraint, as DOJ did after 2021, lasting protections should not depend on who runs the executive branch.
Finally, even when the news is fully lawful to publish, the public can be kept in the dark by bureaucratic friction. The Freedom of Information Act has improved over the years, but backlogs and delay remain chronic, as the federal FOIA ombudsman and DOJ’s own reporting acknowledge (OGIS 2025 report; DOJ Chief FOIA Officer report). Transparency isn’t only a legal question; it’s a resourcing and culture question, too.
Speech in the Digital Public Square
Democratic participation now happens on privately owned platforms. That hybrid reality has produced messy doctrine. The Knight First Amendment Institute successfully argued in 2019 that President Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking critics from his Twitter account because he used it as an official channel; the Supreme Court vacated the decision as moot in 2021 after he left office, but the case forced a reckoning over public-official speech in privately governed spaces (case page; SCOTUS order). Whatever one’s view of platform power, the core democratic interest remains clear: citizens must be able to see, criticize, and organize around official actions without being silenced by either the state or opaque, inconsistent platform rules.
Europe’s Digital Services Act is one attempt to bring sunlight to platform governance. It requires a public database of “statements of reasons” for content decisions and creates channels for vetted researchers to access platform data to study systemic risks (DSA Transparency Database; researcher access under Article 40 guidance).
While the DSA applies in the EU, it points to a principle the U.S. can embrace without importing European law wholesale: the public deserves line-of-sight into how the information systems that now gate our news feeds actually work.
What Reinforcement Looks Like
If you believe freedom of the press is about more than a clause in a parchment document, then the work is simultaneously legal, cultural, financial, and civic. Congress should pass a narrowly tailored federal shield law like the PRESS Act; states without strong anti-SLAPP statutes should adopt them; legislatures should modernize open-records laws for the digital age and fund FOIA offices to actually respond. Agencies should default to proactive disclosure, not secrecy by inertia. And yes, the courts should keep Sullivan’s breathing space intact while continuing to punish truly reckless falsehoods — we can have both accountability and integrity.
But this is also a supply-side problem. Philanthropy can accelerate what the market alone won’t sustain: beat-reporting at the county level, investigative collaborations that match public-records expertise with data science, and training so smaller outlets can safely handle leaks, encryption, and legal threats.
Citizens can subscribe, donate, share, and show up at public meetings armed with facts. And everyone — left, right, and otherwise — can resist the easy serotonin hit of declaring any inconvenient story “fake.” If a claim is wrong, explain why; if it’s right but uncomfortable, insist on consequences without demonizing the act of reporting itself.
Americans Fighting for Press Freedom (Groups You Can Learn From or Support)
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) — free legal help and model briefs for journalists; deep resources on anti-SLAPP and open government. rcfp.org · PRESS Act explainer here.
Freedom of the Press Foundation — trains newsrooms on digital security and runs the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. freedom.press · Tracker: pressfreedomtracker.us.
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) — documents attacks and advocates globally; rigorous coverage of anti-press rhetoric. cpj.org · Trump rhetoric analysis here.
Poynter Institute — ethics, fact-checking, and reporting training for working journalists and the public. poynter.org.
Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) — critical reporting on journalism and transparency; coverage of nonprofit models and ethics. cjr.org.
Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia — litigates and researches free-speech issues in the digital age (including the Trump Twitter cases). knightcolumbia.org.
Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) — advocacy, ethics code, and concrete training; supports the shield-law push. spj.org.
Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) — the how-to backbone of watchdog journalism (datasets, FOIA craft, collaboratives). ire.org.
ACLU — litigates core speech and press cases; much of the Pentagon Papers lineage runs through ACLU advocacy. aclu.org/issues/free-speech.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — fights for online speech and privacy; crucial on platform “weak link” censorship and IP misuse. eff.org/issues/free-speech.
U.S. Press Freedom Tracker — nonpartisan, incident-level data on arrests, assaults, equipment seizures, subpoenas, and more. pressfreedomtracker.us.
RTDNA (Radio Television Digital News Association) — protects broadcast/digital journalists and tracks trust in local journalism. rtdna.org.
National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) — a network of state FOI groups that helps citizens and newsrooms pry loose records. nfoic.org.
International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) — training, fellowships, and safety work that benefits U.S. and global reporters alike. icfj.org.
ARTICLE 19 & Access Now — global and digital-rights advocates whose legal toolkits help protect speech at the infrastructure level. article19.org · accessnow.org.
Open Government & Transparency advocates — local/state coalitions and nonprofits that push for stronger FOI laws and practices. Start with NFOIC’s network and local groups like the D.C. Open Government Coalition. nfoic.org · dcogc.org.
Closing Thought: The Work Between the Headlines
We often talk about the free press during scandals or elections, when its value is obvious. But the more honest measure is the quiet baseline: do we still maintain the conditions that let ordinary people discover what’s happening in their town, their agency, their country?
Are we making it easier or harder for reporters to verify facts and for readers to access them? If we want the answer to be “easier,” then the steps are not mystical.
Strengthen the law. Fund the beats. Normalize transparency. Protect sources. Reward accuracy. And when politicians of any party declare that reporting itself is suspect, answer not with applause but with the stubborn insistence that a self-governing people has the right — and the duty — to know.
Editor’s Note. To reduce link rot, this article uses primary sources wherever possible (court opinions, official DOJ rules, institutional reports). For fast-evolving policies, we link to the relevant agency or organization’s overview pages.
Section Bibliography
Supreme Court & Foundational Doctrine — New York Times Co. v. United States (Pentagon Papers); New York Times v. Sullivan; Reno v. ACLU.
DOJ Media-Records Policies — July 2021 policy limiting compulsory process: DOJ press release and memo PDF here; 2022 codification: Federal Register; 2025 reversal allowing subpoenas in leak probes: Federal Register and analysis from RCFP.
Local News Collapse & Audience Shifts — Northwestern Medill’s State of Local News 2024 (full PDF here); Pew Research Center, Social Media and News Fact Sheet (2024).
Press Freedom Conditions (U.S.) — Reporters Without Borders, United States profile and 2025 Index brief; U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, incident database.
Anti-Press Rhetoric & Threats — Committee to Protect Journalists on Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric: CPJ analysis; on “opening up” libel laws: PolitiFact; FCC license threats recap & tracker entry: US Press Freedom Tracker.
Kansas Newsroom Raid — AP update on settlements: Associated Press; charging decision: Reuters.
Platforms & Transparency — EU Digital Services Act overview: European Commission; DSA Transparency Database: database.
Digital Public Forum & Public Officials’ Accounts — Knight Institute v. Trump case page: Knight First Amendment Institute; Supreme Court vacatur order (mootness): SCOTUS.
Transparency & FOIA Capacity — National Archives OGIS, 2025 Annual Report (FY 2024); DOJ Office of Information Policy, 2025 Chief FOIA Officer Report.
Who’s Defending Press Freedom — Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Freedom of the Press Foundation and U.S. Press Freedom Tracker; Committee to Protect Journalists; Poynter Institute; Columbia Journalism Review; Knight First Amendment Institute; Society of Professional Journalists; IRE; RTDNA; NFOIC; Reporters Without Borders (U.S. profile).
Supreme Court & Foundational Doctrine — New York Times Co. v. United States (Pentagon Papers); New York Times v. Sullivan; Reno v. ACLU.DOJ Media-Records Policies — July 2021 policy limiting compulsory process: DOJ press release and memo PDF here; 2022 codification: Federal Register; 2025 reversal allowing subpoenas in leak probes: Federal Register and analysis from RCFP.Local News Collapse & Audience Shifts — Northwestern Medill’s State of Local News 2024 (full PDF here); Pew Research Center, Social Media and News Fact Sheet (2024).
See the entire series: Pillars of Democracy
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Pillar Three: The Rule of Law – Safeguarding Justice in Modern America
Pillar Three: The Rule of Law – Safeguarding Justice in Modern America
The rule of law is more than a legal doctrine. It is the backbone of democracy, the invisible framework that ensures the three branches of government — legislative, executive, and judicial — work in harmony under a shared commitment: that no one is above the law. Without respect for the rule of law, democracy is nothing more than a fragile promise, vulnerable to the whims of those who would wield power.
America’s founders understood this deeply. From their debates in Philadelphia emerged a Constitution that both empowered and limited government. They created a system in which law, not personality, guides authority. Every branch was bound to follow the same rules, creating a balance meant to resist tyranny.
Historical Foundations of the Rule of Law
The Lincoln Cathedral Magna Carta, signed by King John in 2015. (Image credit: Library of Congress)The concept stretches back centuries. The Magna Carta of 1215 first declared that even the king was not above the law. That principle found new life in the American Revolution, when colonists insisted that arbitrary rule violated their rights as citizens. The U.S. Constitution enshrined this balance of powers, reinforced later by the Bill of Rights and centuries of court precedent.
From Brown v. Board of Education to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, progress in America has always come when leaders and courts reaffirmed the supremacy of law over personal power.
The Rule of Law in Modern Times
Today, the principle is under direct assault. Respect for courts, legal institutions, and independent judges has been eroded, most visibly by former president Donald Trump. His open defiance of rulings, manipulation of the Department of Justice, and attacks on judges illustrate a troubling departure from America’s democratic norms. In his second term, the problem has grown sharper: the executive branch has become not a steward of law, but a weapon against political opponents.
The Supreme Court, too, has shaken confidence. In a landmark decision granting Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts,” the Court broke faith with the very concept of equal justice. By creating a carve-out for presidential lawbreaking, the Court has itself undermined the rule of law, establishing that a president may stand above accountability. Such a ruling contradicts centuries of precedent and the Constitution’s text.
Ancient Greek Temple: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aegina,_The_Temple_of_Aphaia.jpgTen Violations of the Rule of Law under Trump, Term 2
These violations are not abstract; they are lived realities, reshaping governance and democracy. Among the most alarming:
The Consequences for Democracy
When the rule of law is weakened, democracy itself erodes. Citizens lose faith that the system is fair. Leaders exploit divisions and concentrate power. History shows how quickly democracies can crumble when legal institutions are hollowed out — Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and others. America is not immune. The erosion here is visible and accelerating.
Unchecked, these violations risk transforming the presidency into an untouchable office, severing the balance the founders fought to establish. When law is reduced to politics, freedom itself is endangered.
A Call to Renewal
Photo shows the space that the Law Library occupied in the United States Capitol from 1860 to 1950. The space was the Supreme Court Chamber, 1859-60, and before that the Senate Chamber. Samuel Morse sent his first telegram from this room on May 24, 1844. Date circa 1895. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division, under the digital ID cph.3b17241.
The rule of law must be renewed — in courts, in Congress, in executive offices, and in the conscience of the American people. Leaders must respect judicial independence, protect agencies from politicization, and reaffirm that accountability is not optional. Citizens must demand it. Without this, the pillar of law collapses, and democracy along with it.
It is not enough to hope that norms will save us. America’s survival as a democracy depends on a national recommitment to the principle that no person — not even the president — stands above the law.
Section Bibliography
This is part 3 of 6 parts. See the entire series here: https://drwebdomain.blog/pillars-of-democracy-series/
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The Constitution: Blueprint of a Nation – Pillars of Democracy
The Constitution: Blueprint of a Nation
Pillars of Democracy, Part 2 of 6
The Constitution is more than an old document locked in glass. It is the nation’s operating system, the rules by which democracy stands or falls. Written in 1787, amended, re-interpreted, and sometimes ignored, it remains the central framework of American democracy.
The Framers knew their work was imperfect. Compromises over slavery and representation haunted the text from the beginning. Women were left out entirely. Yet what made the Constitution revolutionary was its ability to adapt. Through amendment, interpretation, and public struggle, it became a living blueprint rather than a frozen artifact.
Founding Strains
The Constitution faced its first stress tests almost immediately. Federalists and Anti-Federalists sparred bitterly over how strong the central government should be. The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) pushed the limits of free speech and dissent, raising fears that the young republic was already betraying its founding promises.
This debate over liberty versus order has never gone away — it is the recurring heartbeat of American constitutional life.
Civil War and Reconstruction
No crisis tested the Constitution more than the Civil War. Could a Union built on voluntary states survive secession? Could the founding document withstand the moral weight of slavery?
The answer came in blood. In the aftermath, the Reconstruction Amendments — the 13th, 14th, and 15th — abolished slavery, redefined citizenship, and guaranteed voting rights for freedmen. These amendments expanded the Constitution’s reach dramatically, even as violent resistance and Jim Crow laws undermined them for a century.
Progressive and New Deal Battles
The late 19th and early 20th centuries brought industrialization, inequality, and social upheaval. Constitutional fights erupted over labor rights, regulation, and the scope of federal power.
During the New Deal, the Supreme Court initially struck down Franklin Roosevelt’s programs as unconstitutional. Only after fierce conflict did the Court shift, allowing broader federal authority to respond to national crisis. That moment reshaped constitutional interpretation and left an enduring legacy on how government addresses economic security.
Civil Rights and Equal Protection
For decades, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) had entrenched racial segregation under the guise of “separate but equal.” The Constitution seemed powerless against injustice. But in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court reversed course, declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
Brown became a beacon — not just a legal ruling, but a moral turning point. It showed how constitutional meaning could evolve, even after generations of resistance.
Rule of Law and Executive Power
The Constitution has repeatedly faced moments where presidential power threatened to overwhelm the system.
In Watergate, President Nixon claimed near-absolute executive privilege. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected that view in United States v. Nixon (1974), forcing release of the tapes and proving that no leader is above the law.
That principle remains vital today. The balance between executive power and accountability is one of the Constitution’s most fragile edges.
Contested Elections
Democracy depends on trust in constitutional processes. In Bush v. Gore (2000), the Supreme Court’s intervention to stop Florida recounts highlighted how deeply divided constitutional interpretation could be. The 2020 election once again tested whether the Constitution could withstand misinformation, legal challenges, and pressure on state and federal institutions.
The document survived — but not without scars to public faith.
Amendments that Reshaped Democracy
Each amendment was not only a legal change, but a reflection of democratic growth.
Originalism vs. Living Constitution
Today, debate rages between those who see the Constitution as “fixed” — only interpretable through the framers’ intent — and those who argue it must evolve with society. This philosophical battle plays out in every Supreme Court nomination, every landmark ruling, and every national argument about rights.
Both camps claim fidelity to democracy. Both shape the pillar’s future.
The Constitution in Our Time
Modern crises raise new questions:
These aren’t academic hypotheticals. They are the pressing tests of whether the Constitution still holds us together.
Reflections…
The Constitution is both fragile and resilient. Fragile, because it bends under pressure, its meaning shifting with courts and politics. Resilient, because through civil war, depression, scandal, and upheaval, Americans have kept returning to it as the shared foundation of democracy.
It will not survive on autopilot. Each generation must decide again to honor it, amend it, and live under it. If we give up on that choice, this pillar crumbles — and democracy falls with it.
Section Bibliography
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https://www.fromoldbooks.org/Smith-GothicArchitecture/pages/231-the-alcazar-at-toledo/
The Alcázar in Toledo was a palace in Roman times, made into a fortress in the 10th century. It was restored in the 16th century; Juan de Herrera designed the South Façade and the monumental staircase, and perhaps more, between 1571 and 1585. This #engraving is from before it was rebuilt after the civil war.
A great job with scale & perspective.
#vintageArt #fobo #gothicArchitecture #arches #Spain #palace #pillars #columns #blackAndWhite #GIMp #Gimp_3 #GIMP3
"A Beacon in the Night" by Elizabeth Gadd
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#iceland #self #portrait #beach #black #sand #pillars #basalt #volcanic #reynisfjara #flickr #thingsdavidlikes
Jack Garratt releases new single ‘Higher’ taken from his forthcoming studio album 'Pillars' - #jackgarrattmusic @jackgarratt #Pillars
Read the full article here: https://ift.tt/sjIyWJn
More at Music-News.com
#Beautiful #Old #Albury #Station by Kaye Menner #Photography Wide variety #Prints & lovely #Products at:
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![This is the very long and beautiful undercover platform at Albury Station, Victoria, Australia. I believe it is the longest undercover platform in the Southern Hemisphere. The Italian design and architecture make this a worthwhile visit and a walk along the long platform to view its Victorian design. I also have a photo of the front of the Albury Station building in my gallery "Buildings".
THE FINE ART AMERICA LOGO WILL NOT APPEAR ON PURCHASED PRINTS OR PRODUCTS.
By Kaye Menner Photography
https://kaye-menner.pixels.com/featured/beautiful-old-albury-station-by-kaye-menner-kaye-menner.html
[From Wikipedia]
Albury railway station is located on the New South Wales/Victorian border city of Albury. Designed and constructed under the supervision of John Whitton, it opened on 26 February 1882, replacing a temporary structure, which opened on 3 February 1881, when the Main South line was extended from Gerogery.](https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/665/051/700/916/576/original/dd5459dfc8b27ddf.jpeg)
