Is There a Surgeon General in the House?

 

 

According to a recent American Medical Association study, LGBTQ people smoke cigarettes at much higher rates than their heteronormative counterparts. Now, this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. The lives of gays and trans folk can be very stressful at times, and tobacco does seem to have a calming effect on the nerves. Unfortunately, the overall impact smoking has on health--everything from emphysema to heart disease to, most notoriously, lung cancer--negates any temporary relief to the nervous system. I do wish more queer people would just kick the habit.

Now, this homophobe's recent promotion isn't bound to help matters any. In fact, I suddenly have the urge to light one up!

Born to Run

 

The Beltway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive, but Nancy Pelosi ain't one of them. After a remarkable, sometimes dangerous (for her and her family) thirty-five years in Congress, which included two stints as Speaker of the House, this is one hero stepping down from power fully intact.

This Day in History

 

On June 2, 1924, some 125,000 men, women, and children were granted United States citizenship. Why so many all at once? Did a whole fleet of immigrant ships arrive at Ellis Island? No, it turns out these folks were already here, and had been here for a long, long time:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all non citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.

Approved, June 2, 1924. June 2, 1924. [H. R. 6355.] [Public, No. 175.]

SIXTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS. Sess. I. CHS. 233. 1924.

Signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge, who as you can see got a photo op out of the whole thing. So if they weren't citizens the day before June 2, what exactly were they? Uh, foreigners. At least the separate tribes were considered foreign nations, and the members of the tribes considered citizens of those nations. And the foreign soil on which these citizens inhabited? There it gets, and remains, complicated. While according to US law the soil has always been under some sort of US jurisdiction, some sort of US sovereignty, by 1924 such foreigners lived on especially set aside tribal lands, better known as "reservations", the result of bloody wars and treaties signed to end those wars, almost always on terms favorable to the United States government. Incidentally, that 125,000 number wasn't the whole of the indigenous population. At the time there were 300,000 Indians, or if you will, Native Americans, living within the borders of the USA. 275,000 of them were already citizens, having become so by either joining the military to fight in World War I or simply by giving up tribal affiliations, and entering the American mainstream, i.e., forgoing the concept of communal ownership in favor of private property (the pretext for European excursions onto non-European lands that had been going on for centuries.) After June 2, all it took for a Native American to become nationalized was to be born on national soil. The tribal lands were still theirs, too. So, then, does that mean Indians have dual citizenship? Technically no, because they can't have their own military or their own currency. They can make their own laws on their own lands, as long as those laws don't contradict the United States Constitution. Native Americans have been known to chafe under these conditions, but not any more so, in fact maybe even less, than some present-day nonindigenous Republicans.