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11 Sep, 4 tweets, 2 min read
In her excellent biography of Nancy Reagan, @ktumulty debunks the claim that Nancy's conservative Republican stepfather Loyal Davis swayed Ronald Reagan's political views. Instead, says @ktumulty, there's only one documented instance of Davis influencing Reagan ... 1/x
@ktumulty ... in 1967, when the California legislature enacted a permissive abortion law. Governor Reagan pondered whether to sign it. Davis - by then one of the country's most eminent brain surgeons - urged that Reagan should. For that reason or others, Reagan did. 2/x
@ktumulty Davis disapproved of the New Deal, but he put on record his distaste for organized religion of any kind and his lack of faith in Christianity in particular. Politics then was different from politics now. 3/3
@ktumulty Anyway, it's a really fine biography, sympathetic but skeptical.

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More from @davidfrum

David Frum Profile picture
14 Sep
You don't need a new book to tell you that Trump tried to overturn an election and the Constitution by violence.

Or that House/Senate Republicans refused to impeach/convict him for his violent attempt.

Or that Trump is the front-runner for the GOP 2024 presidential nomination.
At this point, the news is not what Trump did in January 2021.

The news is the ever-growing number of Republicans willing to excuse, justify, exonerate, and repeat what Trump did in January 2021.
I know it's hard to keep being shocked.

But it did really actually happen that as a sitting president Donald Trump tried to overturn the US Constitution by violence.

And that a big chunk of the Congress and the country shrugged off the attempt as no big deal.
Read 4 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
12 Sep
How's the mass civil disobedience campaign against vaccine mandates going? At United Airlines, 50% of unvaccinated employees have already complied in the first 3 weeks of the 5 week grace period, according to CEO Jack Kirby. npr.org/2021/09/10/103…
How's the mass civil disobedience campaign against vaccine mandates going? At Delta Airlines, the vaccination rate has risen to 78% in just two weeks since a mandate was imposed, with no resignations, says the company's chief health officer. seattletimes.com/business/delta…
How's the mass civil disobedience campaign against vaccine mandates going? Tyson's Food imposed a mandate in August, employee vaccination rate has risen from 45% to 72% - cutting number of unvaccinated workers in half in less than a month whitehouse.gov/covidplan/
Read 17 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
6 Sep
A footnote to my @TheAtlantic on the hazards of individual gun ownership. 1/x theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
@TheAtlantic As the article details, the vast majority of American gun buyers buy their guns with a view to protecting themselves or their families. Very few entertain fantasies of waging private war on the government. They mostly buy handguns, not rifles, let alone military-style rifles. 2/x
@TheAtlantic Yet here on Twitter (and in the email I get), there is a lot of talk about the private gun as bulwark against state tyranny. If the Nazis come to power in the United States, gun carriers will mobilize to do battle for the liberties of us all. So let's talk about that idea. 3/x
Read 21 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
3 Sep
A toddler in Florida found his father's gun, then fatally shot his mother in the head as she talked to colleagues on Zoom. globalnews.ca/news/8109852/m…

Fewer than half of American gun owners consistently store all their weapons safely. theatlantic.com/magazine/ar
That happened just this past August, shortly after we finished work on my @TheAtlantic piece on guns. Also in August, a North Carolina man who had not secured his gun was fatally shot by his own two-year-old son. independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…
@TheAtlantic Just two days ago, a Minnesota man annoyed by the antics of young people in a car in the next road lane shot and killed an 18 year old boy. twincities.com/2021/09/01/st-…
Read 10 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
31 Aug
Powerful by @anneapplebaum - and I'd throw in another literary reference alongside hers to "The Scarlet Letter" 1/x
@anneapplebaum In her novella "Autres Temps," Edith Wharton tells the story of Mrs. Lidcote, who is exiled from New York's high society in disgrace because she divorced her husband sometime in the 1880s. 2/x gutenberg.org/files/24132/24…
@anneapplebaum Then history repeats itself. Sometime in the mid-1910s (the novella was published in 1916), Mrs. Lidcote's daughter Leila divorces her husband. Mrs Lidcote rushes home from European banishment to stand with her daughter against the impending social catastrophe ... 3/x
Read 9 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
28 Aug
"Parole Sirhan Sirhan? Are you crazy?"

"Look, the governor appointed you to this commission. You owe him. He's facing a tough recall election. He needs you to tee up for him an easy, crowd-pleasing, tough-on-crime VETO. So do your damn duty for your party, parole commissioner!"
For those asking, yes the governor can over-rule the commission.

And for those making the point that some members of the RFK family support the parole, I'll just note that the family member chiefly pushing it is RFK Jr. cnn.com/2021/08/27/us/…
More about RFK Jr here. Basically, you shouldn't trust him to read the time of day off a digital clock. mcgill.ca/oss/article/co…
Read 4 tweets

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