Zoning Out

 

On this day – New Year’s Eve as I speak – we are compelled to think of time – not just its passage, but how it passes and how we measure it. The New Year doesn’t arrive all at once, of course, because of the Earth’s rotation, but starts in the South Pacific and gradually wraps westward until the whole world is in the same year. I often tell my friends in more easterly time zones, “This is a voice from your past,” because the New Year hasn’t arrived in my zone yet. Not exactly original, I know.

There was a period where the correct time was only what the local sundial or village square bell tower clock said it was. I read where the time zones as we know them today weren’t invented until the late 19th century, necessitated by railroad scheduling.

There are occasional quirks. Before the big ball drops at midnight in New York, the New Year has already arrived in Newfoundland, Canada, at 10:30 p.m. ET. That’s right, the Newfies are half an hour off a regular time zone. Or is it the rest of us who are off?

Then there is the contentious issue of Daylight Saving Time, a misnomer because it doesn’t save daylight at all. Essentially, the same amount of light and darkness occurs at a particular latitude in standard time as in DST, so it should probably be called Daylight Shifting Time. The Germans invented it during World War I as an energy saver. Here in the US, we used DST all year for similar reasons during World War II. Since then, Congress hasn’t been able to resist playing around with the start and end of DST.

Our incoming President said he wants a single time system all year, but apparently hasn’t said which one. So, will kids have to go to school in the dark in winter, or will the 4:45 a.m. bird (not a rooster) be waking me at 3:45 in summer? Then there are Arizona (except for the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii, which don’t have to adhere to DST. Kind of a hot mess, in my opinion.

I was always in favor of making DST permanent and letting our natural bodily rhythms ease into sunlight increases and decreases. And I love those long evenings. But it’s not quite that simple, as about 70 other countries observe two time systems and won’t change just because we do.

OK, I’m just giving myself a giant headache here, and as it’s New Year’s Eve, if I’m going to have one, it will be for other reasons. But whatever zone you’re in, Happy New Year, one and all!

They Never Promised Us a Rose Garden

 

Actually, the White House already has one of those, but I’m referencing the old country song that starts, “I beg your pardon…”

President Biden is taking heat from members of both parties for pardoning his son Hunter, who was facing prison time for buying a gun while a drug addict (he has been sober now for five years) and for failing to pay taxes (which he has since paid, with penalties). His father said before the recent election that he would not pardon his son, but afterward, changed that stand on the grounds that the legal process had been unfair.

To be honest, my first reaction was support of what the President did. “What more did he have to lose?” I thought, after his party lost the presidency in November. If there was pushback, he was apparently willing to take it.

Our Founding Fathers did not want us to have a king. That’s what the Revolution was about. But they left something in the Constitution that is a vestige of royal absolute power, the Presidential pardon. There is no requirement that a President provide a good reason for a pardon, nor any reason at all, for that matter. And such pardons are irreversible.

The pardon power doesn’t have the best reputation, as some Presidents have used it to get their cronies out of jail. Of greater concern is when a President uses the power to protect someone from future prosecution of past offenses. Biden did that for Hunter. But the most famous example involved Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, who resigned the presidency in disgrace after Watergate. President Ford said he did it because he wanted the long national nightmare, as he put it, to end after years of sensational headlines and Congressional hearings. I have always believed Ford was sincere about that, not just doing a favor for his old boss from the same party. This pardon has been and will be debated for a long time.

President-elect Trump has signaled that he plans to punish political enemies and critical journalists. Now, President Biden is considering whether to use his pardon power to protect those people. Some potential recipients don’t want a pardon, saying that to accept one admits guilt. But hey, if a pardon protected me from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend myself, I’d take one in a heartbeat.

I think many of us would agree that the Presidential pardon power shouldn’t have to be used in this way. But in recent times, we have found ourselves doing many things we shouldn’t have had to do.