Bosses, Machines, and Urban Voters

Originally published in 1986. Political machines, and the bosses who ran them, are largely a relic of the nineteenth century. A prominent feature in nineteenth-century urban politics, political machines mobilized urban voters by providing services in exchange for voters' support of a party or candidate. Allswang examines four machines and five urban bosses over the course of a century. He argues that efforts to extract a meaningful general theory from the American experience of political machines are difficult given the particularity of each city's history. A city's composition largely determined the character of its political machines. Furthermore, while political machines are often regarded as nondemocratic and corrupt, Allswang discusses the strengths of the urban machine approach—chief among those being its ability to organize voters around specific issues

Sierra County Advocate, 06-28-1895

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/sc_advocate_news/1461/thumbnail.jp

Stolen Happiness

The wrongful arrest and conviction of Fernando Bermudez demonstrates the American criminal justice system being forced to correct itself, despite public faith in jury trials, because Mr. Bermudez fought to exonerate himself after losing ten appeals. Mr. Bermudez’s essay entails his over eighteen-year wrongful incarceration in New York until proven “actually innocent” in 2009. This essay urges reform and accountability of mistaken eyewitness identification, perjured testimony, and police and prosecutorial misconduct as factors that began Mr. Bermudez’s ordeal in 1991. In particular, this essay examines how race, rushed judgment, and profit may have contributed to Mr. Bermudez’s ordeal while aiming to prevent the overall public safety and human rights problem of the innocent in prison and mass incarceration

Secret War in the South: the Covert Center in Algiers and British and American Intelligence in the Western Mediterranean 1941-1944

This study concerns the activities of the British and American intelligence hub that developed in Algiers during the Second World War. From 1941, when the first US intelligence agents arrived in the area, until late 1944, when the Anglo-American clandestine contingent largely departed to follow the Allied armies on their advance into the Axis heartland, the city served as a regional headquarters in the secret war against Hitler. At a whitewashed villa above the harbor, and a former holiday resort west of the city, hundreds of British and American agents learned clandestine tradecraft until they were prepared for insertion into fascist Europe. Those that remained behind helped support their comrades by monitoring enciphered requests for supplies through wireless telegraphy (W/T), and dispatching arms, cash and other necessities to the anti-Fascist Resistance.In its broad outlines, the history of the secret British and American networks based in Algiers may seem familiar. Since the mid-1960s scholars have chronicled the exploits of Allied agents behind enemy lines during the Second World War; with the cycle of fiftieth and sixtieth anniversary commemorations over the last fifteen years, a popular audience for the work has developed. The exploits of the Algiers agents, even if compelling in individual terms, might be dismissed as insignificant within a larger historical context. But this would be a mistake. An investigation of the secret war conducted from Algiers offers new perspectives on three issues of scholarly concern: the utility of intelligence in war, the role of intelligence agencies in the so-called 'special relationship' between Britain and the United States, and the use and abuse of clandestine information and special operations by Allied leaders.A regional approach, which allows for comparative analysis, is what makes examining the secret war from Algiers worthwhile and revelatory. By 1944, Allied intelligence networks with command and logistics bases in Algiers extended throughout the western Mediterranean, and had substantial presences in Italy and southern France. Additionally Spain, where Allied policymakers prohibited most clandestine activity to avoid driving Franco into the arms of the Axis, became involved as a smuggling conduit to agents in the south of France. These secret campaigns utilized similar doctrine and tactics - sometimes even the same men and women - but achieved divergent results. Algiers-based intelligence networks active in France emerged from the War covered in glory, but in Italy the same tactics were relatively ineffectual. Understanding this discrepancy helps illuminate both the power and the limitations of the secret world. It suggests how, when and where intelligence was an effective tool - and why it sometimes was ineffective or a liability.A regional history of wartime intelligence also provides a new perspective on friction between Britain and the United States. The close, mutually dependent but competitive relationship that developed during the War between the two Allies is exposed, blemishes and all, by their secret interactions. Examining the success or failure of their cooperative intelligence enterprises across the Algiers region shows how important, and how difficult, inter-Allied comity was to achieve. The competitive aspect of the 'special relationship' exacerbated institutional infighting involving the Anglo-American intelligence agencies. This, in turn, sometimes led to the employment of clandestine assets in inappropriate situations, where parochial national or agency concerns and bureaucratic point scoring were the objective, rather than the good of the war effort. In other situations, where necessity or the cosmopolitan outlook of certain leaders intervened, these tendencies were suppressed and cooperative intelligence ventures were both possible and effective. For the most part, however, integrated British-American clandestine projects in the Algiers region were driven by military imperatives, rather than a sense of congruent interest.The third and final theme that this study addresses is the use and misuse of intelligence by Allied leaders. Here there is a focus on both the makers of British and American policy, and the heads of the clandestine agencies. Secret information is not collected, analyzed, and acted upon by machines, but by men and women with their own personal and political agendas. Nor are covert operations commissioned in a vacuum. During the Second World War, policymakers and agency heads each had their own, occasionally incongruent goals. When government policy was contradicted by intelligence, leaders were free to ignore or selectively interpret the available information. Absent specific guidance from their political or military leaders, agency heads also chose to emphasize - or deemphasize - certain subjects or operations. Comparing how these decisions and interactions played out in Italy and France allows for new insights

A Commander\u27s Power, A Civilian\u27s Reason: Justice Jackson\u27s Korematsu Dissent

Robert Houghwout Jackson was a justice of the United States Supreme Court during the years of World War II. This article considers his great but potentially perplexing December 1944 dissent in Korematsu v. United States, in which he refused to join the Court majority that proclaimed the constitutionality of military orders excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast of the United States during the War years. This article considers Justice Jackson\u27s Korematsu dissent in full. It was and is, contrary to some of the criticisms it has received over the past 60 years, a coherent position. Jackson\u27s dissent is also biographical and, to that extent, deeply and personally pragmatic. It emanated in part from his outlook and upbringing as quintessentially a rural American civilian who viewed life as pacific and individually autonomous, and who saw our law as most workable in such times of peace and unthreatening personal freedom. It was grounded as well in his very special, direct, and formative experiences with executive power. Jackson\u27s Korematsu dissent also fit into his general view of people and power and into what he saw throughout his life as the idea of law itself: it is the codified product of human beings struggling, by employing their rational and selfless capacities, to impose some limits on what they and their governments otherwise could perpetrate with the vast powers they possess. Justice Jackson\u27s dissent in Korematsu v. United States merits its very high place in both the American legal and the human canons

Spartan Daily, October 31, 1963

Volume 51, Issue 32https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/4505/thumbnail.jp

The Oxford Democrat : Vol. 70. No.37 - September 15, 1903

https://digitalmaine.com/oxford_democrat/1557/thumbnail.jp

Albuquerque Morning Journal, 12-12-1921

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/abq_mj_news/1412/thumbnail.jp