I was distracted yesterday (lots of work), but a few thoughts about yesterday’s date are in order. I think of April 15th as Tax Day – at least in normal years; like much else it’s more complicated in 2021. But a historian like Heather Cox Richardson sees a bigger picture for April 15:

April 15 is a curiously fraught day in American history. 

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln breathed his last at 7:22 a.m., and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who adored the president, said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” 

In 1912, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 a.m. after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. 

In 1920, two security guards in Braintree, Massachusetts, were murdered on this date; Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti would be accused of the crime, convicted, and, in 1927, executed. 

In 1947, Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color line in baseball. 

And in 2013, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding 264 others.

Yikes! “All” we had yesterday was yet-another-mass-shooting and the Director of National Intelligence’s report and revelation that yes, the 2016 Trump campaign had a direct and illegal connection to Russian intelligence (via the odious and pardoned Manafort), and Russian intelligence then turned around and helped Trump win with that inside information. Sorry, Hillary. Trump and his henchmen committed treason, pure and simple. They should be in jail, but…we live in 2021 America.