Some might ask why any of this still matters. Mueller considered himself to be bound by Justice Department policy against the indictment of sitting presidents, so the special counsel would not have charged Trump anyway. But as Mueller’s report notes, no Justice Department policy precludes the indictment of a former president after he leaves office. The federal statute of limitations on obstruction of justice is five years, so even if the current attorney general believes that Trump has been exonerated, his successor in a subsequent administration may reach a contrary conclusion.

Here at Long Now, we often like to tell the story – or perhaps better said, legend – of the oak beams at New College in Oxford. First told to Stewart Brand by anthropologist Gregory Bateson, this short and simple story epitomizes the tremendous value we can reap from some long-term thinking.

Despite what the name may suggest, New College is one of Oxford’s oldest. Founded in 01379, at its heart lies a dining hall that features expansive oak beams across its ceiling. About a century ago, an entomologist discovered that the beams were infested with beetles and would need replacing. The College agonized over where they might find oaks of sufficient size and quality to make new beams. Then, as Stewart Brand recounts,

One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be some worthy oaks on the College lands. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country which are run by a college Forester. They called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him if there were any oaks for possible use.

He pulled his forelock and said, “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.”

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years saying “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.”

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — More than a million high-capacity ammunition magazines flooded into California during a one-week window created when a federal judge temporarily threw out the state's ban, gun owners' groups estimated Thursday.

(snip)

The magazines aren't tracked. But there are plenty of anecdotal indications that the floodgates briefly opened when U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez overturned the state's nearly 20-year-old ban late last month.

The judge halted sales a week later, but ruled that those who bought the magazines can legally own them while the state appeals his ruling.

(snip)

"Everything was all sold out. I basically took whatever I could get," said Chris Puehse, who owns Foothill Ammo in Shingle Springs, east of Sacramento.

He fielded dozens of telephone calls while buyers stacked up 20 deep in his one-man store to buy the hundreds of magazines that arrived in two shipments last week. He had just six left by the time Benitez reinstated the ban last Friday.

"People loved it. It was like we were out of prison and were not treated like bastard stepchildren of the country anymore," he said.

Thirty-round magazines for military-style rifles, handgun magazines holding 17 to 20 bullets, all selling for less than $30 each — "they disappeared," Puehse said. "They wanted to grab more than I let them, otherwise they would have been gone even faster than a few hours."

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra warned hours before Benitez again halted sales that California was in danger of becoming "the wild, wild West for high-capacity magazines."

(snip)

Staff attorneys with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco said they've seen no evidence to back up the million-magazine estimate, and said gun rights organizations have a vested interest in inflating the number of law-abiding owners.

"They have a very specific purpose and intent here to try to set up for the court that these are devices that are very commonly used and possessed" and therefore should not be banned again, said California legislative affairs director Ari Freilich.