40 odd years ago this summer. the weird means the way the white house announced this new policy today suggests nobody other than the president himself was particularly comfortable being associated with this decision or having his or her naum associated with it in print. when you wrap other people in schemes like this, even if they're willing to go along with it for a time, history shows that oftentimes down the road, people have regrets or they change their minds whether or not they want this to be part of their own historical record in addition to the president's. meanwhile, our best guess why they took this thing out of the desk drawer today and decided to deploy it today after kicking it around 3 1/2 weeks, our best guess because they wanted to use this to change the news narrative. they wanted to distract from something else going on in the news. there's a lot going on in the news but hard not to notice today is the day close arguments