The Explorers' Club, № CDXVII

Salisbury Cathedral, around which was build up the city of New Sarum (better know today as Salisbury), & home to both an original copy of the Magna Carta & the world's oldest functional clock.







Bonus! The Wikipedia's featured article of the day is First World War spy Carl Hans Lody, executed for espionage one hundred years ago to-day: Lody-link.

Liberty & Union
I am pleased by the reelection of Governors Rick Snyder (R., Michigan), Rick Scott (R., Florida), & Scott Walker (R., Wisconsin); the returned Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives; & the incoming Republican majority in the United States Senate. That said, President Obama, armed with his flagrant disregard for the checks & balances enshrined in the United States Constitution, remains a dangerous political foe; he may be more unpredictable now that he is politically isolated & his pride is wounded from the electorate's stinging rebuke. So, I caution my fellow Republicans & affiliated right-wingers against the triumphalism to which we have succumbed before. I warn us against overplaying our hand & thus playing into the hands of the Democrats. Remember always the words of Rudyard Kipling, from "If—":

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
and treat those two impostors just the same;…