BALLOT ISSUES: Maine’s secretary of state ruled yesterday that Donald Trump cannot be on the Republican primary ballot because he was a party to the January 6^th insurrection and the 14^thAmendment says he cannot hold office again.

  “I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” said Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat. “I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

  Her decision follows a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court saying Trump cannot be on the ballot in that state.  A spokesman for the Trump campaign claimed that both the Maine and Colorado rulings were “partisan election interference efforts” that were “a hostile assault on American democracy.”

THE LOST CAUSE: Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley spent yesterday climbing out of the political hole she jumped into during a New Hampshire appearance Wednesday night.

   Asked Wednesday by a member of her audience what was the cause of the Civil War, Haley said, “I think the cause of the civil war was basically how the government was gonna run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.” She said, “It always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are.” What she did not say was that the right and freedom the southern states fought for was to own slaves. 

 Haley has had difficulty separating herself from defenders of the southern cause. For years while she was governor of South Carolina, she defended flying the Confederate battle flag over the state capitol.

  Haley’s questioner then expressed dismay that in the year 2023 her answer did not include the word “slavery.”  Haley replied with an expression of confusion, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”

  Yesterday Haley backed up saying, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery, we know that.” But then in an appeal to the anti-government crowd in the Republican Party and southern voters who can’t let go of “The Lost Cause,” she went on to say, “It was also more than that, it was about the freedoms of every individual it was about the role of government.”

  And the role of the federal government in the Civil War was to maintain majority rule, abolish slavery, and establish those freedoms for people with black skin. 

THE WAR ZONE: Russia unleashed its biggest air attack on Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion nearly two years ago. The Ukrainian military says an unprecedented number of drones and missiles were fired at targets across the country, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens more.

 Explosions were reported in the capital Kyiv, as well as at a maternity hospital in the central city of Dnipro, the eastern city of Kharkiv, the southeastern port of Odesa, and the western city of Lviv, far from the frontlines. “It’s been a long time since we have seen so many enemy targets on our monitors in all regions and all directions,” Yurii Ihnat, Ukraine’s air force spokesman, told national television. “Everything was being fired.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Gaston Glock, the Austrian engineer who invented the ubiquitous Glock pistol used by both cops and criminals around the world, has died at age 94.

  Glock’s semi-automatic is clip fed with a capacity of up to18 rounds before re-loading. In 2017 the Glock was estimated to have 65 percent of the US market for handguns and the reclusive inventor’s fortune grew to $1.1 billion.

  We can’t do better than Robert D. McFadden, who wrote in The NY Times: “The Glock is almost everywhere: fired in massacres and shootouts, glamorized in Hollywood movies, featured in television dramas, jammed into the belts of killers and thugs, worn by two-thirds of America’s police officers and the security forces of at least 48 countries. Its praises are sung by gangsta rappers, its silhouette is posted at airports, and it is a focus of gun-control debates.”

THE SPIN RACK: Over the objections of some family members, the house in which four University of Idaho students were murdered last year was torn down yesterday. Some family members wanted the house saved in the event that a criminal jury might need to visit it, but prosecutors say that wouldn’t be necessary.  — A woman serving five years for setting fire to an abortion clinic in Wyoming last year has been ordered to pay $300,000 restitution to the clinic and its insurance company. — Two statues that were part of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” in a Jacksonville, Florida park have been removed. The statues were installed in 1915 as part of the “Lost Cause” movement (see Nikki Haley above) that tried to re-write the Civil war as being about states’ rights. — Actor Pierce Brosnan faces federal charges for walking in off-limits thermal areas in Yellowstone National Park. — Giant waves from a Pacific storm are pounding the entire west coast presenting a danger to the curious and sometimes flooding streets in low-lying areas.

BELOW THE FOLD: The International Chess Federation fined 23-year-old Dutch chess player Anna-Maja Kazarian 100 Euros, about $111, for wearing her plaid, canvas Burberry sneakers while she played. The federation’s dress code says players must “dress to impress” to promote a “good and positive image of chess.”