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Weather: Partly sunny in the morning, then clearing. Highs around 70. Northwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy in the evening, then becoming mostly clear. Lows in the mid 40s. West winds around 5 mph.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Palm Coast City Council meets in workshop at 9 a.m. at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Flagler County School Board meets at 1 p.m. in an information workshop. The board meets in the training room on the third floor of the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here.
The Flagler County School Board meets at 6 p.m. in Board Chambers on the first floor of the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here. The meeting is open to the public and includes public speaking segments.
The NAACP Flagler Branch’s General Membership Meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 North U.S. Highway 1, Palm Coast (just north of Whiteview Parkway). The meeting is open to the public, including non-members. To become a member, go here.
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club at the Flagler Beach Public Library meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
‘Crimes of the Heart’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $25. Book here. The three MaGrath sisters are back together in their hometown of Hazelhurst for the first time in a decade. Under the scorching heat of the Mississippi sun, past resentments bubble to the surface and each sister must come to terms with the consequences of her own “crimes of the heart.”
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
Palm Coast Open at the Southern Recreation Center, 1290 Belle Terre Parkway, Palm Coast:
Starting at 10:00 a.m.:
(2) Arvid NORDQUIST (SWE) vs. Matthew SEGURA (USA)
(3) Lucas RENARD (SWE) vs. (9) Spencer GRAY (USA)
(6) Raphael PEROT (FRA) vs. (14) Dylan LONG (USA)
(5) Aleksa CIRIC (SRB) vs. Sami BEN ABDENNIBI (MAR)
Henry LIEBERMAN (USA) vs. (16) Alex JONES (USA)
(7) Joao Vitor GONCALVES CEOLIN (BRA) vs. (12) Ryan HAVILAND (USA)
Oren VASSER (USA) vs. (13) Sebastian Grundtvig JORGENSEN (DEN)
(1) Justin BOULAIS (CAN) vs. (15) Facundo BERMEJO (ARG)
Not before noon
Victor LILOV (USA) vs. (2) Garrett JOHNS (USA)
Tyler STICE (USA) vs. Miles JONES (USA)
Matija PECOTIC (CRO) vs. (8) Louis TESSA (FRA)
Ronald HOHMANN (USA) vs. Matthew THOMSON (USA)
Not before 1:30pm
Lucca ACIOLY (BRA) / Joao Vitor GONCALVES CEOLIN (BRA) vs. Maxwell BENSON (USA) / Jonas
Pelle HARTENSTEIN (GER)
Aidan BOROSKO (USA) / Patrick DACIEK (USA) vs. Sathi Reddy CHIRALA (IND) / Matias Franco
DESCOTTE (ARG)
Drew VAN ORDERLAIN (USA) / Leonardo VEGA (USA) vs. Raphael PEROT (FRA) / Fabien SALLE
(FRA)
Louis VAN HERCK (LUX) / Marlon VANKAN (GER) vs. (4) Henry BARRETT (USA) / Louis WESSELS
(GER)
Notably: Richard Nixon was the wiliest of presidents since Lincoln, but with more sinister ends. Lincoln’s wiles were in service to the Union. Nixon’s were to his own power. Blacks and the counterculture had nearly kept this 43 percent president from winning in 1968. He would not let that happen again in 1972. He could not declare Blacks and hippies the enemies within. We were not yet at the point where a president, treasonous though he was, could explicitly judge treasonous swaths of the country, at least not outside of Oval Office conversations. Nixon hit on an end run worthy of John Marshall sophistry. (I am thinking of the John Marshall of Marbury v. Madison, which did to American constitutional law what Ayatollah Khomeini did to Shiitism: it invented a jurisprudence out of thin air. Nothing in Islam calls for an “Islamic Revolution” or an “Islamic Republic,” as the writer Amin Maalouf points out, making Khomeini closer to Mao than to Muhammad or any of his descendants, and Iranian Shi’ism a wholly new morphing of the old religion. John Marshall was no Mao, except to his cousin Thomas Jefferson, who thought the Constitution should be interpreted by the legislature, not the Supreme Court. Thankfully, Jefferson, usually more right than Marshall, did not prevail. But nowhere in the Constitution will you find the concept of judicial review. Marshall invented it.) Nixon declared without believing it that drug abusers were “public enemy number one.” With that, he’d criminalized two bothersome demographics while appealing to his mass of silent and supposed majoritarians itching to put Blacks and hippies in their place. The war on drugs was initially a war on Blacks and the counterculture. As for an addict, drugs were Nixon’s means to an end. We have not stopped suffering the consequences, intended and unintended, in this war that has claimed more lives than all of America’s actual wars combined.
—P.T.
Now this:
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
January 2025

Monday, Jan 13 – Monday, Oct 13
Flagler County Commission Workshop
Government Services Building

Tuesday, Jan 28
Palm Coast City Council Workshop

Tuesday, Jan 28
Flagler County School Board Information Workshop
Government Services Building

Tuesday, Jan 28
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club, at Flagler Beach Public Library
315 South 7th Street, Flagler Beach

Tuesday, Jan 28
NAACP Flagler Branch General Membership Meeting
African American Cultural Society

Tuesday, Jan 28
Flagler County School Board Meeting
Government Services Building

Tuesday, Jan 28
‘Crimes of the Heart’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre

Tuesday, Jan 28
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Cinematique of Daytona Beach

Wednesday, Jan 29
Separation Chat: Open Discussion

Wednesday, Jan 29
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group

Wednesday, Jan 29
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Public Library
No event found!
For the full calendar, go here.

American streets felt like harrowing places. A moral panic was afoot that spring concerning the drug PCP. The Washington Post said it could “turn a person into a rampaging semblance of a cornered wild animal,” and blamed it for a nonexistent local schizophrenia epidemic. Actually, the drug delivered only a slightly more intense high than marijuana. Studies proved it usually had no more lasting harm. The stories about peaceful youth become feral beasts at their first taste of the stuff were myths. Which did nothing to abate all the breathless TV news segments about “angel dust” users plucking out their own eyes and bashing in car windows.
–From Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980 (2020).
The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.
