Stevenson’s army, September 5

This seems right for Labor Day (courtesy of @ClydeHaberman):

-WaPo has a history of the holiday — established for political, anti-union purposes. FYI, the 1894 law also set Christmas as a federal holiday for the first time.

-Some Republicans are pushing for a convention to amend the Constitution. FYI, in the 1990s we were within 1 or 2 states for a similar convention to add a balanced budget amendment. A worried Congress passed a line item veto bill — that was soon ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.  Be careful: wholesale rewrites may contain too many extreme changes, and lose, as Chile’s new constitution did this weekend.

– NYT sees lots of low tech in Russian weapons.

– DOD seems divided over Africa policy.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).