NOVEMBER, 2002…

Ten years ago — 2002 — right about now: 70,000 free copies of the 56-page Arthur Magazine No. 1 somehow hit the streets across North America.

Thank you to everyone who helped get this train rolling.

Thank you, publisher Laris Kreslins and art director W.T. Nelson. Thank you, adfellow Jamie Fraser.

Thank you, senior advisors Mark Lewman, Paul Cullum and Shawn Mortensen (RIP).

Thank you, contributors Paul Moody, Byron Coley and Thurston Moore, Geoff Mcfetridge, Spike Jonze, Neil Hamburger, David Berman, Ian Svenonius, Dame Darcy, Eddie Dean, Joe Carducci, Camille Rose Garcia, Jason Amos, Joseph Durwin, Daniel Pinchbeck, Alan Moore, Pat Graham, Dave Brooks, Steve Giberson, Mike Castillo and John Henry Childs.

Thank you, all the agents in our improvised guerrilla distribution network across the continent.

Thank you, all the entities that spent money to advertise in our untested pages.

Thank you to everyone thanked on Page 3 of the mag: Brendan Newman, Kreslins Family, Oma, Kristaps, Gary Hustwit, Chris Ronis, Kate Sawai, Janis Sils, Bernadette Napoleon, Vineta Plume, Fred Cisterna, Richard Grijalva, Ned Milligan, Lizzy Klein, Robin Adams, Jack Mendelsohn, John Shimkonis, Prolific, Chris Young, Ed Halter, Mike Galinsky, Jim Higgins, Plexifilm Family, Alie Robotos, Domainistudios, Fistfulayen, Natalie and Zach, Janitor Sunny Side Up, Yasmin Khan, Rachel Stratton, Lady Montford, John Coulthart, Henry Childs and Joshua Sindell.

Thank you, Sue Carpenter.

Thank you, Darcey Leonard.

Thank you, John Payne and Andrew Male.

Thank you, Robin Turner.

Thank you to the bands that played Arthur’s launch party at Spaceland in Silver Lake (thank you, Jennifer Tefft): Fatso Jetson, Chuck Dukowski Sextet… I’m not sure who else.

Thank you, Matt Luem.

Thank you, Steve Appleford, for being a real journalist.

Thank you to everyone who played a role who I’ve forgotten or neglected to post here. (Please be in touch!)

And thank you to everyone who found the magazine, picked it and read it.

We’re coming back.

Ronald Dworkin in NYRB on the presidential election and the fate of the Supreme Court

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/08/election-2

The election of Mitt Romney and a Republican Congress could well be a catastrophe for both economic stability and social justice.

The catastrophe might very likely be prolonged, for decades, by Romney appointments to the Supreme Court. Four of the Court’s nine justices—including two of its four moderates—are well into their seventies, and the odds that the next president will have a dramatic and enduring effect on the Court’s composition are strong, particularly if, following established Republican tradition, he appoints justices young enough to stay in power long after the political climate that produced their appointments has disappeared.

The great danger of a strengthened radical right-wing court is sufficiently demonstrated by the rain of legally indefensible and politically retrograde 5–4 decisions in recent years, including Bush v. Gore, which cursed us with George W. Bush, Gonzales v. Carhart, which sustained a cruel federal law outlawing “partial-birth” abortions, Seattle School District and Jefferson County Board of Education, which overturned voluntary, modest, and effective programs aimed at increasing racial diversity in public schools, and the infamous Citizens United ruling that corporations have all the First Amendment rights of real people so that they have an unlimited right to spend their corporate treasuries on television ads opposing candidates whose policies they think against their financial interest.