Here at AP, which your solitary reporter has edited for many, many years, he has never mentioned his family.

But on March 31, 2021, the Love of His Life, Mary Jane Mullarkey, died of pneumonia, end stage multiple sclerosis, and dysphagia (inability to swallow) and, following the tradition in our society, he was there as she bid farewell.

Mary was born in New London, Wisconsin, on September 28, 1943, the fourth of five children of Isabelle Steffes Mullarkey and John Clifford Mullarkey, and their only daughter. She leaves behind four brothers in Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona.

She was educated in parochial school at the Church of the Most Precious Blood in New London and at Washington High School, also in New London. We were married on July 24, 1971, at St. Patrick’s Church in Lebanon Township, Wisconsin, a lovely fieldstone church in the countryside.

In high school, she excelled in debating; and that prefigured her later outstanding service as a lawyer and, as well, her 23 years of service as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Colorado. During her last 12 years on that Court, she served with great distinction as Chief Justice, the longest serving Chief Justice in Colorado history and as Colorado’s first woman Chief Justice.

She majored in Mathematics at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, where, by report, she was so good in Math that some of her classmates avoided math classes. Then she went to Harvard Law School, a totally male bastion at the time, where she took classes including Chinese Criminal Law. Her first job as a lawyer was at the U S Department of the Interior, where she specialized, at first, in water and power law, and then as the sole Interior Department attorney working on equal employment opportunity law under Executive Orders 11246 and 11375, both issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Her work at the Interior Department occurred during the presidency of President Nixon.

We were married for nearly 50 years.

We have an outstanding son, Andrew Steffes Korson who, with his wonderful wife Emily Terhune Korson, and their two daughters, Anika Mary Korson (11) and Avery Wallace Korson (9), live in Denver.

I, your solitary reporter, spoke at her Mass of Christian Burial at Cure d’Ars Catholic Church in Denver, a predominantly African American parish, on April 13; and on April 26, my son Andrew spoke at a secular Celebration of her Life at the Denver Botanic Gardens. The host of that Celebration was Larry Theis, a longtime friend.

To honor Mary’s truly outstanding contributions to Colorado, several of her law clerks are working on a process to create a scholarship named for her, to encourage law students of diverse backgrounds, including LGTBQ people, who commit to public service. Mary always had very interesting and devoted law clerks, and diversity and commitment to public service were hallmarks of her career.

Turning now to our usual work-in-chief, we here at AP are compelled to report that the U S Senate's two stalwart Independents, Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Angus King (Maine) have broken with their own personal and political traditions by converting to the Democratic Faith.

Bernie nearly defeated former Empire State Senator and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham in 2016, in the Democratic primary; and Senator King, very popular in the only State whose name consists of only one syllable, was a popular Governor there as well. Senator King is the Junior Senator from Maine. Senator Susan Collins is a Republican, and, as many people in the US know, she and moderate to conservative Democratic senator from West Virginia, the fiercely independent Joe Manchin, have more power than most Senators because Mitch McConnell missed his bet of once again being Senate Majority Leader when Georgia went Blue in 2020 and 2021.

Back to Tom: Tom was always dependent on Mary, and it was mutual. Today, Tom is not independent, but he is doing his best to figure out what his future may be as we celebrate the birth of this exceptional nation, which began as an experiment.

Just the other day, China’s Dictator-for-Life, 习近平 (Xi Jinping), arranged a massive demonstration commemorating the founding of 中国共产党,  the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP was founded in Shanghai (which, in its profile, looks far more capitalistic than Gotham, the Windy City, or LA); and if any AP fans like good fiction, and if they have French (like your solitary reporter), they should read Andre Malraux’s classic, La Condition Humaine (Man’s Fate), which is about what happened in Shanghai in 1921.

See, Karl Marx assumed that the Proletariat would arise and overthrow capitaliist nations in industrialized Western European nations, but he got that wrong. Ask Lenin and Stalin.

Also ask 毛泽东 (Chairman Mao), the guy who led his fellow Chinese Communists on the Long March and who defeated the Kuomintang and the Japanese in 1945 and then marched into Beijing on October 1, 1949. Mao welcomed R Milhous Nixon when Tricky Dick made his history-making trip to Beijing in February 1972.

In that 1972 meeting, Nixon agreed with Mao that Taiwan is part of China.

That was a big deal.

Xi has already terrorized all the residents of Hong Kong, and he is conspicuously eager to force Taiwan’s President, Tsai Ing-wen, to abdicate and lead her nation’s people to Complete Submission to Dictator Xi.

So we dispatched our Seoul-based associate solitary reporter, Ko Il-sun, to Xi’s palatial residence.

“Mr. Chairman,” Ko began, “how soon do you plan to drop more than a few of your nukes onto Taipei?”

“Go away.”

“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I will, but can you tell our worldwide readership of Apocryphal Press about your intentions with respect to Singapore, where Chinese is one of the recognized languages?”

“Get out of here, you pest, but I know that though you are Korean, you are also a close personal friend of President Biden.”

“Don’t you dare say a word, but I am both the Emperor of China in modern garb, as well as a true imperialist.”

“I’m actually a capitalist and if you tell anyone what I just said I’m going to send you to one of my my re-education camps with the Uyghers in Xinjiang.”

“But since you asked, on behalf of your apocryphal newspaper, eventually I will send as many of my warships to Singapore as I feel like it, and then see what Singapore’s President, Halimah Yacob, has to say."

"By the way, Mr. Ko, speaking of Yacob, have you seen the gorgeous French-Swiss actress, Irene Jacob, in the art movie Red? If so, please ask your friend President Biden to introduce her to me.”

Bill Cosby walked today from a prison in Pennsylvania.

Rummy (twice Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) died today at his his home in Taos. He was 88.

Cosby, who used to be “America’s Dad,” teleported himself to Rummy’s bedside seconds before Rummy died. Our DC-based associate solitary reporter, Keith Coleman, was with Cosby, whispering into his ear what not to do the first time he looked at an attractive woman.

As was scrupulously reported today by NPR, Rummy, the Architect of the Lie that was the justification for the Iraq War, as well as being the Architect of the forever war in Afghanistan, was arrogant and hated the press.

As Cosby kissed Rummy on his nose earlier today, he whispered, “Hey Rummy, you coulda done what I did! How come you never?”

It’s a real shame that the news these days is so boring.

For example, in today’s Times, we learned that when Donald Trump still had a place to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he was ready to invoke the Insurrection Act, not to falsely justify the Insurrection he caused on January 6, but rather to quell Antifa-type protests: read all about it at "Trump Aides Prepared Insurrection Act Order During Debate Over Protests,"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/us/politics/trump-insurrection-act-protests.html?referringSource=articleShare.

No doubt all AP fans would agree that that is a really boring report not even worth paying attention to.

So we asked our always available associate solitary reporter, Johanna Jones, who is with Trump 24-7 at Mar-a-Lago or Bedminister, or wherever else he all by his lonesome chooses to be, to tell us what really happened when his aides unscrupulously vetted a draft Executive Order by which he would unconstitutionally invoke his ability to, as Disrupter-in-Chief, tell his Pentagon to bring tanks and whatever else was needed to destroy any protest-oriented organization, such as Antifa.

This is what Jones told us in a concise text only five minutes ago:

“SR,” she began, “Donny Boy told me that he was all set to sign that Executive Order, but his Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, and his then Acting Defense Secretry, Chris Miler, told him that if he were to sign it, they would immediately take action to prevent him from doing what he wanted to do, namely, to destroy the country forever unless, like a little boy pouting whenever he is thwarted, he got his way.

And the way to prevent that apocalypse that would be for Meadows and Miller to command DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to send in her best police officer, Michael Fanone, who was seriously injured by Trump’s Oath Keepers during the January 6 Insurrection, to save the day. See "Officer Injured in Capitol Riot Asks McCarthy to Disavow Lies About It,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/us/kevin-mccarthy-capitol-riot-officer.html?referringSource=articleShare.

And that what would happen next is that Officer Fanone, who is now fully restored to perfect health, would immediately put Trump in handcuffs, with numerous other DC police officers, and take him immediately to the DC Jail, where he would be required to stay until at least a month after President Biden is sworn into to his second term on January 20, 2025.

There are several Second Amendment groups in these here United Staes.

The largest one is the National Rifle Association, led by Wayne LaPierre.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the NRA on August 6, and her suit is guaranteed to be successful, according to our Chief Investigative Reporter, associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman.

LaPierre tried unsuccessfully to take the gun-toting NRA into bankruptcy to avoid AG James’ suit, but a bankruptcy judge in Texas nixed that as a sham.

Today, fulfilling a campaign promise, President Biden announced several very important executive actions which he is taking in his attempt to curb the widespread gun violence which has increased dramatically in the last several years, notably going after gun dealers who dodge the ATF's enforcement efforts

(https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/23/biden-crack-down-illegal-guns-495751).

When the secretive LaPierre was told by his minions about Biden’s announcement, he collapsed in his gargantuan office.

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta was with LaPierre’s numerous physicians, according to Sherman, and he said that LaPierre will be in the ICU for weeks, if not months.