The recently revived Committee for the First Amendment, begun in 1947, during the era of anti-communist hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, took the struggle against censorship to the belly of the beast, Washington, D.C. There, original committee member Henry Fonda’s daughter Jane Fonda, along with folksinger Joan Baez, singer and actor Billy Porter, and other free speech champions took to the streets in protest.

I stumbled across Howie's wild and free-roaming blog, DWT, with its intriguing offerings on everything under the political sun. A slow writer, I was stunned at how Howie fired words like a Gatling gun, one topic falling after another. When I reached out to him pitching a piece promoting Bernie in the 2016 primaries, Howie was welcoming. For better or worse, his encouragement was what got me scribbling on politics again, which I will always appreciate. Even better, Howie allowed me to murder the elements of style. No prosecutions thus far.

This real-world event draws striking parallels to the 2024 Oscar-winning film Conclave, which dramatizes the secretive process of selecting a new pope, prompting comparisons between fact and fiction.