LABOR's Forum on COLLISION COURSE

I'm grateful to LABOR: STUDIES IN WORKING-CLASS HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS for organizing a Bookmark forum on Collision Course.  In that forum, I was honored to have my book discussed by four smart and knowledgeable people: Jack Metzgar, whose own book on the 1959 steel strike is one of the best ruminations ever written about a strike; Liesl Orenic, a fellow laborer in the vineyards of aviation labor history, from whose work I have learned so much; Rosemary Feurer, whose book Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 demonstrated a keen understanding of internal labor dynamics of the sort that I wrote about; and Dave Sapadin, a former air traffic controller who lived through some of the events in the book.  LABOR Online, the blog of the Labor and Working Class History Association has posted the contributions to this forum this week along with an introduction by Rosemary.  You can find it here.

F. Lee Bailey Back in the News

The attorney F. Lee Bailey, who played a crucial role in forming and building the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) during the years 1968-1970, was back in the news this week.  Bailey, who has relocated to Maine, sought admission to the bar there (he had been disbarred in Massachusetts and Florida in the early 2000s).  Bailey passed the Maine bar exam last year (I last spoke with him when he was studying for that exam), but this week it became public that the State of Maine Board of Bar Examiners ruled on his application and voted 5-4 to reject it.  The majority ruled that "Mr. Bailey has not met his burden of demonstrating by clear and convincing evidence that he possesses the requisite good character and fitness necessary for admission to the Maine Bar."  For more on this story, check this in the Lewiston Auburn Sun-Journal.