Station Selected:
In substitution of the fairly routine invocation and description of significant
events on the broadcast “Day in History,” opening this time with two
landmark occurrences in recent human history—beginning with the 75 th
anniversary of the creation of the modern state of Israel (and the reactions to
it, both civilian and military, in the decades since then), followed by an analysis
of the 49-year-old decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v.
Board of Education, establishing for the first time in our nation’s history that
separate educational facilities in our nation’s public schools are inherently
unequal (and thus overtly unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment).
Turning then to no-less-significant contemporary developments at the bench
of our present High Court—including a major ruling in intellectual property
doctrines, finding that Andy Warhol did, in fact, violate the copyright in a
professional photograph of music legend Prince by transforming that image
into another artistic style for publication in the public domain. And, in
another landmark ruling, a unanimous Court concluded that neither an anti-
terrorism law nor an electronic communications statute provides a basis for
the families of victims killed in ISIS attacks in Istanbul and Paris to recover
damages against the online social media providers on whose sites various
indoctrinating messaging was placed. Then, announcements by the Justices
that, in their next term, they will be turning to disputes about the entitlement
of the Congress to information about the property interests of former
President Trump in his hotel in Washington, D.C.—along with yet another
challenge to the racial gerrymandering of state legislatures (this one, in
South Carolina) that allegedly disenfranchised voters of color.
In the wake of the decisions of last Summer by the High Court overruling
Roe v. Wade and of this past Spring addressing but not resolving the
challenge to the abortion and miscarriage drug mifepristone, a description of
the oral argument on the second of those related topics (now on remand)
before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit—all but
certainly presaging a ruling prohibiting the Food & Drug Administration
from authorizing the use of that pharmaceutical nationwide. Finally, some
outstanding discussion with broadcast callers about ethics, honesty,
consistency, and commitment to public service—as reflected in the
challenging news of our times and, in particular, the present inter-
governmental dispute about the federal debt ceiling and the current
discussion about options for invoking the obscure “public debt” provision of
the Fourteenth Amendment in (arguable if not doubtful) justification of
unilateral executive action to remedy the present governmental stalemate.
