Did you miss the holiday?

By the time many people get around to reading this post, May 1 will already be over, and with it will have passed their opportunity to celebrate Law Day. In case you were unaware, every May 1 is Law Day in the U.S.A. ever since the Eisenhower administration. Ike hoped that public events would honor the country's commitment to the rule of law, but he might have had better luck if he hadn't scheduled commemorations for the same date as International Workers' Day. Law Day is pretty obviously intended as an alternative to demonstrations of working-class, organized-labor solidarity, and while we don't see much of those, either, these days, at least over here, I haven't noticed any Law Day parades in, well, my entire lifetime. As a patriotic holiday, it's had no better success than Loyalty Day, which today also happens to be, as mandated back in the 1920s.

The impression I get is that the only special occasion anyone acknowledges today is the fifth anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" landing of President Bush on the Abraham Lincoln to mark the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq. This milestone might be appropriately observed by reflecting on the fact that American fatalities in that country surged during the last month to the highest tally since September 2007. You can draw your own conclusions.