Friday, March 20, 2026
1854 Anti-slavery activists within the Whig party opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act formed a new Republican Party; notable politicians who switched allegiance include Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison
2003 A US-led coalition launched a ground invasion of Iraq after an ultimatum for Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave Iraq expired
2018 Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with US President Donald Trump at the White House
2025 Donald Trump signed an executive order that ordered Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to start dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, which ihas beenresponsible for allocating federal funds to schools and disbursing financial aid.
In bed all day, evening, and night yesterday at the VA ER.
Text message to Sarah and Andy this morning:
Good Morning (Afternoon). This is to let you know I’m back in the VA hospital again. I came in yesterday morning for a follow up visit with the infectious disease doc who treated me for the cellulitis in my leg that had me hospitalized last Fall but ended up in the ER all day and evening. My blood pressure and heart rate were very low and I was woozy so she put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me down to the ER where I stayed till I could be admitted to the inpatient hospitt
+49 176 20023048:
How are you feeling now?
Charles Clausen:
I hit the ‘send’ button by mistake. I’m feeling OK and had a pretty good night’s sleep after going through all the rigamarole connected with being admitted as an inpatient (100 questions, physical inspections all over for open sores, etc.) and I’m hoping I’ll be discharged today, but that may be optimistic. My old body’s natural tendency to take a header is being exacerbated by a lot of dizziness, lightheadedness, and extreme fatigue from the heart failure, some anemia, and ‘bradycardia’ or slow heart rate and low diastolic BP. It sounds like some of it may be attributable to the new cardiac meds I’ve been taking but I should know more today after I talk to the docs. I’m hooked up to a Holter monitor telemetry gizmo here. Geri brought me my laptop yesterday and scolded me for not informing you guys about what was going on but I have a hard time typing messages on the dinky keyboard on my phone and couldn’t use the laptop till this morning. In any event, if and when I learned anything more definitive, I’ll let you know. For now, as usual, they are treating me very well here at the VA and I’m very thankful for them, and for you.❤️❤️
+49 176 20023048:
❤️❤️❤️
Andy Clausen:
So they’re just observing you at the moment?
Charles Clausen:
Hi, Son. I just saw your message. I’m not sure how to describe what they are doing other than a lot of testing, blood tests, cardiac behaviors, etc., and a meeting with the inpatient PT folks at some point. I spoke with a few docs yesterday in the ER, but none so far in the hospital. I think the goal is to make some changes to the fistful of meds I take each morning, especially the cardiac new ones. I’m in a great room with a great view of the Old Soldiers Home and the food is great, but I still hope to be discharged this afternoon, but I’m not betting on it.
+49 176 20023048:
Gerhard and Olga send their greetings and hope you feel better.
Charles Clausen:
I send warm greetings to them and a warm Danke for the kind wishes.
Andy Clausen:
I hope you can get outside today or tomorrow, at least. It’s warm* out there.
*for March
Charles Clausen:
I just saw the doc. She says I'll be here for the weekend and it's because of the very slow heart rate and low BP creating a big risk of falling down, bone breaks, brain bleeds, etc. She attributes it to the "beta blocker" new med that the cardiologist put me on. I just took a nice walk down a long corridor with a CNA and I'm sitting on a recliner instead of lying on the bed, which feels great. I've got my new laptop, my trusty iPhone, and a TV with CNN and the broadcast networks for my eye on the world, so I'm in great shape, feeling good and counting my many blessings.❤️❤️
Texts to Geri:
I just saw the doc. She says I'll be here for the weekend and it's because of the very slow heart rate and low BP creating a big risk of falling down, bone breaks, brain bleeds, etc. She attributes it to the "beta blocker" new med that the cardiologist put me on. I just took a nice walk down a long corridor with a CNA and I'm sitting on a recliner instead of lying on the bed, which feels great. I've got my new laptop, my trusty iPhone, and a TV with CNN and the broadcast networks for my eye on the world, so I'm in great shape, feeling good and counting my many blessings.❤️❤️
Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last. After a long chat with the young physical therapist, Gabe Sereaphin, who came to evaluate me in terms of risks and needs re my eventual discharge, and after repeating the long walk from my corner room down and around the long 7th floor corridor without incident of lightheadedness or exhaustion, he advised my nurse amna that my "bed alarm" and "chair alarm" could be removed or turned off, so I wouldn't have to call for help from the CNA or nurse every time I wanted to make a pit stop, get out of bed, or up from the chair in my room. Thank you, Lord! Those alarms made me feel like a prisoner of the bed or chair, or like a toddler needing help going potty. I admitted to Gabe that I was lobbying him for release from those alarms and thankfully, it worked.. Except for the more than 12 hours spent on the bed in the ER yesterday working on some bed sores, this hospital stay has been easier on me that my 7 day visit in late September/early October last year. The wonderful view from my expansive windows is a big help. Ditto my new computer.
My view from the Presidential Suite😇
Here's a thought that I probably ought to record. I'm a bit surprised at myself for thinking that a case can be made to going to war with Iran, not in the way Trump has done it, but if done properly. My basic disposition is to oppose offensive wars, especially wars like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I'm not generally disposed to excuse wars intended to change governning regimes or structures, especially when out real main purpose is to protect international business interests, like Standard Oil, United Fruit Company, or Chase Manhattan Bank. I believe it was wrong for the U.S., through the CIA and others, to depose Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile. I think it was wrong for the U.S. to step into France's boots in Vietnam to install and maintain a government in the South more to our liking than Ho Chi Minh's and Le Duan's. I rarely believe any government's expressed reasons for engaging in warfare against foes (defense of freedom, defense of democracy, etc.) and with Trump's "excursion" against Iran, it is especially impossible to assess his primary motivation(s) because he's offered so many: regime change, support of Iranian people, destruction of the already supposedly demolished nuclear capability, destruction of its missile stockpiles and/or missile manufacturing capacity, seizure of the almost-1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium, etc. But the fact remains that Iran's government and religious and military estaablishements are the most dangerous, criminal, and destructive forces throughout the Middle East. The list of its crimes against other nation's is long. It is not entirely strethching the truth to characterize Trump's 'excursion" as a defensive rather than aggressive exercise. At least, I think a case can be made for so justifying it, and should have been made in the halls of Congress, and on the public airways to the American people, and in the Security Council of the UN and to our allies. It shouldn't have been a private deal between Netanyahu and Trump, between Mossad and the IDF and Hegseth. I'm not sure I'm thinking very clearly on this issue, but I've never been able to reconcile war and most of Life with a rudimentary Christianity, * but it's where I am now, wondering what I really believe, and why.
* Niebuhr's An Interpretration of Christian Ethics, the chapter on "The Relevance of an Impossible Christian Ethic," and his Moral Man and Immoral Society.
Good night, and good luck. Edward R. Murrow.
From today's Wall Street Journal, "CBS News to End Storied Radio Broadcast, Lay Off 6% of Staff," by Isabella Simonetti and Joe Flint
CBS News is ending its radio service as part of broader layoffs while Editor in Chief Bari Weiss looks to reshape the storied network.
All positions on the CBS News Radio team are being eliminated and the service will end on May 22, according to an email that Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski sent to staff on Friday and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“A shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities, has made it impossible to continue the service,” the email said. “We are sharing this announcement now to fulfill our commitments to our radio partners and affiliates, which require advance notice of the service’s conclusion.”
CBS Radio rose to prominence in the early days of World War II when legendary newscaster Edward R. Murrow provided live coverage from London rooftops during Germany’s bombing raids. Many of CBS’s most well-known newscasters, including Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid, who reported on the fall of Paris in 1940 live to Americans, started on radio. Sevareid was the last American journalist in Paris before it fell to the Nazis.
Although CBS had sold its radio stations in 2017, the CBS Radio News unit still produced and syndicated content for seven hundred stations around the country. The “World News Roundup” from CBS Radio is the longest-running newscast in the country.
