Sing Along With O.J. Simpson's Stabbed in the Hearts Club Band...

It was twenty years ago today

Police chased the Bronco driving O.J.

He’s been going in and out of jail

Couldn’t sell his Heisman Trophy for bail

So may I introduce to you

The back you cheered for all those years

O.J. Simpson’s Stabbed in the Hearts Club Band

We’re O.J. Simpson’s Stabbed in the Hearts Club Band

The Juice used to be an All-Pro

We’re O.J. Simpson’s Stabbed in the Hearts Club Band

He did his running in a Bronco

O.J. Simpson’s Stabbed in, O.J. Simpson’s Stabbed in

O.J. Simpson’s Stabbed in the Hearts Club Band

It’s horrible to be here

It’s like being a Buffalo Bill

Such a huge TV audience

He’d like to take you home with him

He’d love to stab you at home

I don’t really want to stop the chase

But Marcia’s gotta prosecute the case

And O.J.’s fingers in the glove are too long

So the jury got the verdict wrong

So let me introduce to you

The one and only Orenthal James

And O.J. Simpson’s Stabbed in the Hearts Club Band

Knife...Scissors...SHEARS!

What would you do 'bout the lives led to ruin?

Would you stand up and render Guilty?

Lend me your ears and I’ll show you how wrong

You would be not to set me free

Oh, I get by with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, I won’t fry with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, gonna lie with a little help from the Dream Team

What do I do when my love’s cold awhile?

(Does it bother you that you killed her?)

How do I feel by the end of the trial?

(Where’d you like the price of your soul billed, sir?)

No, I get by with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, I won’t fry with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, gonna lie with a little help from the Dream Team

(Do you need anybody?)

I need somebody to kill

(Could it be anybody?)

My ex-wife and the waiter from Ill.

Would you believe that the glove is too tight?

Yes, I’m certain that it does not fit

Would you convict if the jury were white?

I can’t tell you but you must acquit

Oh, I get by with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, I won’t fry with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, gonna lie with a little help from the Dream Team

(Do you need anybody?)

I need somebody to kill

(Could it be anybody?)

My ex-wife and the waiter from Ill.

Oh, I get by with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, I won’t fry with a little help from the Dream Team

Mm, gonna lie with a little help from the Dream Team

Yes, I get by with a little help from the Dream Team

With a little help from the Dre-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-heem Team!

(Thanks to Drinkmore Pat for Photoshop guidance; GIF of chase copyright CNN.) 

Move Over, Grover...and Let Morgan Take Over

Grover Cleveland is well known as the only Chief Executive to serve non-consecutive terms, which he did as the 22nd president, from 1885 to 1889, and the 24th president, from 1893 to 1897.

Now, he’s got company...

In the first real blockbuster of 2013, Olympus Has Fallen, Morgan Freeman portrays Speaker of the House Allen Trumbull. When President Asher is taken hostage by North Korean terrorists and held in the bunker of the White House, Trumbull assumes the role of Acting President of the United States.*

* I do not know what happened to the Vice President that he was stepped over in the chain of succession, because I have not seen the film—although I hear the popcorn is subpar.

Freeman previously portrayed President Tom Beck in 1998’s Deep Impact.

Okay, as implied by the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and set in precedence several times since its ratification, Morgan Freeman’s term as Acting President is not recognized as a formal, “numbered” presidency—as were, of course, Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive terms—but as far as the martini-clouded judgment of Mount Drinkmore is concerned, it’s legit enough for this post.

Thus having irrefutably—straight up with one olive—established Morgan Freeman’s non-consecutive presidencies...

Sure, thanks to his presidencies being fictitious, Morgan Freeman never got bogged down in such cinematically mundane crises as tariff issues, economic panics, and thorny questions of colonial annexation—as did Grover Cleveland—but Freeman still was under tremendous pressure to remember his lines, do promotional press junkets for the movie, and keep himself from becoming obese and bushily mustachioed.

Yet Morgan Freeman’s remarkable, on-screen political achievements don’t end there: As Speaker of the House Trumbull fifteen years after he was President Beck, Freeman joins John Quincy Adams as the only former presidents to serve as members of the House of Representatives, which Quincy Adams did from 1831 to 1848.†

† A further link between the two men is that Morgan Freeman portrayed the freed slave, Theodore Joadson, in the film Amistad, which, in part, retells John Quincy Adams’ successful 1841 defense of the “mutinous” slaves aboard the Amistad. (Even further, Morgan Freeman’s surname, itself, echoes Quincy Adams’ work as an abolitionist.)

Yes, Morgan Freeman has proved himself a titan of celluloid American politics. And still at the top of his game as a busy Hollywood actor, the 76-year-old Freeman has time and opportunity to become the only former president to serve in both houses of Congress, or perhaps even serve an unprecedented third non-consecutive term as Commander-in-Chief—a landmark achievement of which Freeman’s agent will hopefully possess enough savvy to be aware.

(Image of Deep Impact copyright DreamWorks Pictures; image of Olympus Has Fallen copyright Millennium Films.)

State of Franklin, Anyone?

"Main article: List of U.S. state secession proposals

It is constitutionally possible for new states to be formed by reorganizing current states with the permission of their legislatures.

The State of Maine was part of Massachusetts

The state of West Virginia was formed during the Civil War by counties in northwestern Virginia that had remained loyal to the United States.

One proposal has been for New York City to secede from New York State (See New York City secession), which has been reciprocated by a call for Upstate New York to secede (See Upstate New York's Statehood Movement).

A similar circumstance has been proposed with the secession of Chicago from Illinois since over a half of the population of Illinois resides in the metropolitan area. A variation of this was called Chiwaukee, which would be the strip of land from Milwaukee down to Gary, Indiana.
Historically, it was possible that the counties of southern Oregon and northern California might have seceded from their respective states to form a new "State of Jefferson". Jefferson would have been the 49th state, making Alaska and Hawaii the 50th and 51st when they became states in 1959.

Also there have been brief calls for a 51st state named the State of Lincoln in 1996, 1999, and 2005. The state would be made of Eastern Washington and the Idaho Panhandle.
During the late 1700s, portions of North Carolina and Tennessee joined to form an alleged "State of Franklin" and while "lawmakers" were elected to its alleged "Legislature," Congress never admitted the "State of Franklin" into the Union.

Similar junctions have attempted to take place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which some wish to secede (sometimes along with adjoining counties of northern Wisconsin) in order to make a state called "Superior"."

(Courtesy of Wikipedia.)