Two Trajectories of Registered Democrats. Our Choices Define Us.

Eric Swalwell was raised in a GOP-leaning household. His father was a police chief. As a child, Eric had Bell’s palsy and needed to wear an eye patch. He earned a Division I soccer scholarship as a goalkeeper but lost it after breaking both thumbs in separate incidents while playing keeper. Recovery was expected to sideline him for at least a season. He pivoted, earned a B.A. in government and politics from the University of Maryland, and interned for Democratic U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (who sat on the Armed Services Committee). As a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, he began serving on local commissions and the Dublin City Council before winning a House seat.

Todd Blanche is the son of a former Canadian hockey player who came to the United States on a sports scholarship and later led a religious congregation from the family basement. Blanche played basketball and baseball at Beloit College before transferring to American University in Washington, D.C., around 1994, where he earned a B.A. in political science. He worked as a paralegal at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York while attending Brooklyn Law School at night, serving as an editor of the Brooklyn Law Review. He graduated cum laude with a J.D. in 2003, then clerked for federal judges who later joined the Second Circuit. In 2006 he returned to the SDNY as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, spending eight years there, including time as co-chief of the Violent Crimes Unit. In 2016, by his own account and those of people close to him, he became emotional when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

Both men were, in different ways, positioned for further power. Their choices determined the paths that followed.

Swalwell secured a prestigious seat on the House Intelligence Committee. There he was exposed to a classic honey-trap operation involving Christine Fang (also known as “Fang Fang”), a suspected Chinese Ministry of State Security operative. Newly declassified FBI interview summaries show that Swalwell admitted in 2015 and 2016 to having “physical relations” with Fang on a “handful of occasions,” including an encounter after she showed up unannounced at his apartment while he was under the influence of Ambien. Fang also helped place interns in his office and was linked to questionable campaign contributions. Swalwell has long maintained he cut contact after an FBI briefing and that no classified information was compromised; the FBI ultimately found no basis to charge him with corruption or a quid pro quo. Yet his committee’s work was marked by highly partisan decision-making, most notably the aggressive pursuit of the Russia collusion narrative that later investigations significantly undermined. Unlike some figures associated with the January 6 Select Committee, Swalwell received no protective pardon. His career ended in 2026 amid multiple sexual misconduct allegations, including claims of assault, which he denies and which remain under investigation. He resigned from Congress and suspended a gubernatorial bid.

Blanche left government service in 2014 for private practice. He worked as counsel at WilmerHale in Manhattan, then in September 2017 became a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in its White Collar Defense and Investigations practice, remaining until 2023. Early Trump-adjacent work included successfully moving to dismiss a New York mortgage-fraud case against Paul Manafort in 2019 and representing clients such as Igor Fruman. In 2023 he left Cadwalader, founded Blanche Law, and became a lead defense attorney for Donald Trump in the New York hush-money case and the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith. Though earlier a registered Democrat, he later switched registration. This path—from working-class Colorado roots and night law school while supporting a young family, through years as a hard-charging federal prosecutor, to high-profile private defense work—produced a career defined by practical experience rather than elite pedigree or institutional loyalty.

Today one man is in disgrace; the other stands as Attorney General of the United States.

When challenged over his independence, Blanche offered a clear-eyed reply. Asked by Kristen Welker whether he could pledge that the Justice Department would “always act independently of the White House,” he answered:

“There’s a big difference between saying, ‘We will always do our job and investigate any case’ and ‘act independently of the White House.’ No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that.” He continued that if the President directed the Department to pursue violent criminals nationwide, refusing on grounds of “independence” would be an abdication. “I will act with integrity. Our prosecutors will act with integrity. We will prosecute without fear or any sort of favor.” Pressed further on whether he would refuse an unethical or illegal request, Blanche stated flatly: “The president will never ask me to do something unethical… or illegal. He never has. He never will… I swore to the Constitution of the United States.”

Swalwell’s trajectory closes with the declassified record of his own admissions regarding Fang—casual physical encounters with a suspected foreign intelligence operative while rising through the ranks of the House Intelligence Committee. Blanche’s trajectory closes with a public refusal to mouth institutional pieties that would require him to ignore the elected President’s lawful priorities.

Two men once registered as Democrats. Their choices defined them.

Airplane Safety Presages a Revolution in Car Safety

On this day in 1961, Patsy Cline recorded her signature hit “Crazy.” Only weeks earlier she had survived a near-fatal head-on car collision in Nashville, being thrown through the windshield. Broken ribs and other injuries still affected her breathing and range, yet she delivered the vocal in a single take over a pre-recorded instrumental track. The song became one of the most enduring recordings in country music.

Less than two years later, on 5 March 1963, Cline was dead at the age of 30. The small Piper PA-24 Comanche carrying her, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and pilot-manager Randy Hughes crashed near Camden, Tennessee, while returning from a benefit concert in Kansas City. Flying into deteriorating weather without an instrument rating, Hughes lost control. The crash was ruled pilot error under visual flight rules in instrument conditions. More hits followed posthumously.

Cline’s story forms part of a longer list of musicians lost to aviation accidents while travelling between performances. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died together on 3 February 1959 when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza crashed in a cornfield near Clear Lake, Iowa, in poor weather — the tragedy later called “The Day the Music Died.” Otis Redding, only 26, perished with members of his band when their plane crashed into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin, in 1967. Jim Croce died at 30 in a takeoff crash in Louisiana in 1973. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines were killed in 1977 when their Convair ran out of fuel and went down in a Mississippi swamp. Randy Rhoads, Ricky Nelson, John Denver and Aaliyah met similar fates in later decades.

Cars have claimed their own share of celebrated lives, often with less lasting public myth-making than the dramatic plane crashes.

James Dean, 24, was killed on 30 September 1955 when his Porsche 550 Spyder collided almost head-on with another vehicle near Cholame, California, while he was driving to a sports-car race. Jayne Mansfield, 34, died in the early hours of 29 June 1967 when the Buick she was travelling in struck the rear of a slow-moving tractor-trailer on a Louisiana highway; her young children, including future actress Mariska Hargitay, survived in the back seat. Grace Kelly, the Hollywood star who became Princess of Monaco, suffered a stroke while driving in 1982; her car left a mountain road and she died the following day at 52. Paul Walker, 40, was a passenger in a Porsche Carrera GT that crashed at high speed in Santa Clarita, California, in 2013 after a charity event; both he and the driver died. Anton Yelchin, 27, was fatally crushed in 2016 when his own vehicle rolled backward on a steep driveway due to a defective gear-shift design.

These losses, whether by air or by road, underline a simple statistical truth: aviation is far safer per passenger-mile than driving. Yet the absolute number of deaths and catastrophic injuries on the roads remains vastly higher. Cars do not have to stay as dangerous as they still are.

Recent technology is beginning to change the odds. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, based on vision AI trained on real-world driving behaviour rather than pre-mapped courses, has produced striking safety data. Tesla’s own large-scale telemetry reports that vehicles under FSD Supervised travel several times farther between major collisions than the U.S. average. In its first European safety report from the Netherlands, Tesla stated FSD was 3.5 times safer than manual driving; later expanded data covering more than 65 million kilometres across several countries showed the advantage rising to 5.2 times safer overall, with an even larger margin on highways.

While fully unsupervised operation is still developing and independent analyses continue to examine methodology and early robotaxi results, the supervised system’s recorded reduction in collisions is significant. Nations such as France and Germany have so far resisted broader licensing, citing safety concerns and preferring slower EU-wide processes. Domestic industry interests also play a role. Meanwhile regulations lag, and ordinary drivers and passengers — along with the occasional celebrated figure — continue to die or suffer permanent injury in accidents that better technology is already capable of reducing.

I am still Crazy for more Cline.

The Crime of Killing Marcus Agrippa Postumus

Marcus Agrippa Postumus was the actual grandson of Augustus. Born in 12 BC after his father, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, had already died, he received the name Postumus for that reason. Augustus later adopted him, making the young man both biological grandson and legal son. Ancient writers painted him in dark colours—brutish, fierce, uncultivated—yet recorded no clear crime that justified his fate. He was simply inconvenient.

In AD 6 Augustus banished him, first to Surrentum and then under permanent military guard to the island of Planasia. Shortly after Augustus died on 19 August AD 14, Postumus was killed by his own guards. Tacitus called it the first crime of the new principate. It would not be the last under Tiberius. The question remains: why? One persistent suggestion is that the killing satisfied Livia, who wanted her son Tiberius on the throne without a blood rival who still carried the direct descent of Augustus. By then the succession had already been settled in Tiberius’s favour, yet Postumus’s continued existence was treated as a residual threat that needed removing.

Not every potential rival was disposed of so cleanly. Caligula and Nero—direct descendants of Mark Antony through his daughters with Octavia—were shepherded toward the throne. Antony himself had taken his own life in 30 BC after Actium, an act that may have been intended, among other things, to shield what remained of his family from further official vengeance. His bloodline, however, survived and eventually wore the purple. Nero reached the throne with the energetic help of his mother, Agrippina the Younger, only to have her killed later. Caligula, by contrast, is said to have tried to protect his own mother, Agrippina the Elder, though ultimately in vain.

Maternal ambition in dynastic politics is an old and recurring pattern. The historical record offers many clear examples of mothers who worked, sometimes ruthlessly, to place or keep a son in power:

• Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII of England, spent decades advancing her son’s distant Lancastrian claim during the Wars of the Roses. She forged alliances, raised support and money for his invasion, and helped secure the victory at Bosworth in 1485 that founded the Tudor dynasty.
• Agrippina the Younger, great-granddaughter of Augustus, married her uncle Claudius, secured the adoption of her son Nero over Claudius’s biological son Britannicus, and is accused by ancient sources of poisoning Claudius so that Nero could succeed. She dominated the early years of his reign before their relationship collapsed and he ordered her death.
• Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, vigorously promoted her son’s position as heir to Philip II. After Philip’s assassination she moved quickly to eliminate rivals and continued to intervene forcefully on behalf of Alexander’s line after his death.
• Bathsheba, in the biblical account of 1 Kings 1–2, intervened with the aging David when Adonijah moved to claim the throne. Working with the prophet Nathan, she reminded the king of a promised succession for Solomon and secured his anointing.
• Catherine de’ Medici, after the death of Henry II, became the dominant political force during the reigns of her three successive sons amid the French Wars of Religion, serving as regent and using every available instrument to keep the Valois dynasty on the throne.
• Empress Matilda, daughter and designated heir of Henry I, fought the long civil war known as the Anarchy. Though she never fully secured the crown for herself, her persistence forced recognition of her son Henry as Stephen’s heir; he succeeded as Henry II and founded the Angevin Empire.

Other notable cases include Galla Placidia as active regent for Valentinian III; Julia Soaemias (with her mother Julia Maesa) engineering the rise of Elagabalus; Yolande of Aragon protecting and advancing the claims of the future Charles VII during the Hundred Years’ War; and Töregene Khatun manoeuvring as regent to secure the election of her son Güyük as Great Khan of the Mongol Empire.

These women operated in very different cultures and centuries, yet the pattern is consistent: kinship, regency rights, claims of legitimacy, strategic alliances, and, when necessary, the removal of rivals. Primary sources are frequently hostile or propagandistic toward ambitious royal women, so modern readers must treat them critically. Still, the political agency these mothers exercised is unmistakable.

The killing of Agrippa Postumus sits at one end of this spectrum—the quiet elimination of a inconvenient blood heir so that another mother’s son could rule without challenge. At the other end stand the mothers who actively engineered their sons’ rise, sometimes only to be destroyed by the very power they had created. Dynastic politics has never been a gentle business, and maternal ambition has often been one of its sharpest instruments.