Thursday, August 31, 2017

10 Objections to Nullification–Refuted


 

Nullification, also known as State interposition, is controversial because it challenges the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation. The argument behind nullification is that the States—as parties to the compact that created the federal government—have a right to interpret the Constitution and veto acts where the federal government exceeds its delegated power. Genuine nullification involves a State’s declaration of unconstitutionality and obstruction of that federal law within its territory.

The majority of historians and legal scholars today dismiss nullification, but they rarely engage the arguments in support of the practice. Here are 10 of their most common objections to nullification, followed by a refutation.

(1) Nullification does not work. 

Trump to bring back work requirements for Americans on welfare.......

Via Billy

 http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-let-s-get-unemployed-americans-off-the-welfare-and-back-to-work-in-their-own-country-donald-trump-151-71-64.jpg

........reversing an Obama-era policy that had encouraged states to apply for waivers that would exempt welfare recipients from needing to prove that they were either working or receiving job training.

Requiring work or job training was an integral part of the 1996 welfare reform law signed by former President Bill Clinton, The Washington Times reported.

Ohio was the only state that applied for a waiver, which was neither approved nor denied by the previous administration, according to the Associated Press. On Wednesday, the Trump administration closed the door on even the possibility the waiver would be approved by officially denying Ohio’s request, according to AP.

Southern Secession Was Lawful: Uncovering the Truth in American History

Via Mike

Southern Secession Was Lawful: Uncovering the Truth in American History


The online map for this article lists Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland as states that “did not secede” from the Union. Actually, all of them attempted to secede, but were stopped by unlawful measures or occupation by Union troops.

The Maryland Legislature was scheduled to vote on secession on September 7, 1861, but the vote was blocked by the Lincoln Administration’s arrest of pro-secession members of the Maryland Legislature.  The is covered in the Chapter, “Maryland, My Maryland,” in my book.

Nevertheless, 30,000 men from Maryland served in the Confederate Army.

The Missouri Legislature escaped capture by the Union Army and voted to secede on October 31, 1861, in Neosho, Missouri.  Their secession was recognized as lawful by the Confederate government.

A fraction of the Kentucky Legislature held a convention in Russellville, Kentucky, and voted to secede on June 16, 1861. Their secession was recognized by the Confederate government as lawful.

The 12th and 13th stars in the Confederate battle flag represented Kentucky and Missouri.

Southern Arizona and Southern New Mexico seceded on March 16, 1861, and were recognized by the CSA on February 14, 1862.

The Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indian tribes in Oklahoma seceded on various dates in 1861.

BTW, I was born in Missouri and my great grandfather served in the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry regiment (CSA) under John Hunt Morgan.

More information, especially on the early border wars between Kansas and Missouri and the war in Missouri, are covered in my book: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths, Leonard M. Scruggs, 2011.

The book may be purchased at http://www.universalmediainc.org/books.htm
and other online sources. 

                                                      ***************************


The Southern secessions of 1860 and 1861 were not only lawful but based on foundational American principles. This flies in the face of the willful ignorance of American history perpetrated by those who have a vested interest in continuing a false historical narrative of the “Civil War” and Reconstruction to achieve thoroughly un-American past and current political agendas. No reasonably informed and reputable historian believes secession was treason or that the Civil War was primarily a crusade to end slavery.

On July 4, 1776, thirteen British colonies announced their Secession from Great Britain and declared to the world their just reasons:

More @ The Tribune

Trump's border wall moves forward with prototypes

Via Billy

 https://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2017_35/2139981/170831-border-wall-graphic-ew-444p_cd30348ec417e4d62d5a0a16a4462af9.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg

The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday the winners of a contest to build prototypes for sections of President Trump's proposed border wall.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald D. Vitiello said four companies were chosen to build the prototypes, which are planned to be built in the San Diego area.
Vitiello said the prototypes are a "significant milestone" in Trump's plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

The prototypes will be built out of concrete, 18 to 30 feet high and 30 feet long. Vitiello said they would each cost between "just under $400,000 and just under $500,000."

More @ The Hill

$PLC: The Cost of Left-Wing hate

Via Peter

https://aryanskynet.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/splc-true-hate-group.jpg

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) claims to be watchdogs over “hate groups and racial extremists throughout the United States.” However, some believe the SPLC is a radical left-wing organization itself, with an extremist agenda of its own. According to a June 21, 2017 article in the Wall Street Journal, “Aided by a veneer of objectivity, the SPLC rightly condemns groups like the Ku Klux Klan and New Black Panther Party, but it has managed to blur the lines, besmirching mainstream groups like the Family Research Council, as well as people such as social scientist Charles Murray and Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islamic extremism.”

SPLC founder, attorney Morris Dees, began his career as a direct mail marketer, raising money for Jimmy Carter and George McGovern. As President of SPLC, according to attorney Gloria Browne, a former SPLC employee, “SPLC’s programs are calculated to cash in on black pain and white guilt.”

Outgoing sheriff Clarke expected to take job in Trump administration

Via Billy

David Clarke is pictured. | Getty Images

David Clarke, the controversial outgoing sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, is expected to take a job in the Trump administration, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Clarke resigned as sheriff on Thursday. A regular presence on Fox News, Clarke has become a well-known figure in conservative circles in recent years. He is also an avowed supporter of President Donald Trump, and he spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last year

.More @ Politico

Dershowitz: I'm not wrong about Mueller and Russia

Via Billy

OPINION | Dershowitz: I'm not wrong about Mueller and Russia

Brent Budowsky criticizes me for allegedly saying that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation “endangers democracy.” He quotes a story from The Hill that puts the words “endangers democracy” in quotation marks following the unquoted words, “special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

But if he had gone back to the original source, he would have seen that The Hill quoted the words “endangers democracy” completely out of context. I used these words not to describe Mueller’s investigation, but rather, in reference to the criminalization of political differences.

More @ The Hill

Report: Trump to End Obama-Era DACA Program & Zuckerberg Group: 700,000 American Job Openings If DACA Ends

 dreamer

President Donald Trump will end an Obama-created amnesty program that gave more than 850,000 young illegal aliens protected status and work permits to remain in the United States.

According to Fox News reports, the Trump Administration is set to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) this week, days before a coalition of state attorneys general said they would sue if the program was not ended by September 5:
President Trump, as early as Friday, is expected to announce plans to end the Obama administration program that gave a deportation reprieve to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants, a senior administration official told Fox News.
Trump promised to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, during the presidential campaign — but since taking office had left the door open to preserving parts of it.
According to the official, Trump is expected to announce the program’s end but will allow so-called “dreamers” currently in the program to stay in the U.S. until their work permits expire – which, for some, could be as long as two years.
More @ Breitbart
 
***************************
 
Sounds good to me.
 

James Comey started drafting statement exonerating Hillary Clinton before FBI interviewed her, aides

Via Billy

http://cdn.washingtonexaminer.biz/cache/1060x600-e0cd0e054dff08269e65699bfb0175a9.jpg

Former FBI Director James Comey started to draft a statement exonerating Hillary Clinton in the bureau's investigation into her use of a private email server before the FBI interviewed her or her key witnesses, the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday.

"Conclusion first, fact-gathering second — that's no way to run an investigation. The FBI should be held to a higher standard than that, especially in a matter of such great public interest and controversy," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a letter to the FBI.

The Judiciary Committee reviewed transcripts, which were heavily redacted, indicating Comey began drafting the exoneration statement.

Political Ignorance–Part of the new slavery

Via Billy

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81iJsasTykL._UL1500_.jpg

There a lots of “useful idiots” out there on the Left that couldn’t pour water into a teapot if they were handed a set of gilt-edged instructions along with the water. Our government education system has largely aided in their brainwashing and programming so that they think good is evil, freedom is slavery, and white is evil, even though many of them are white. They claim that fascism is a “right-wing” phenomena when any sane person recognizes that there is precious little difference between a Nazi (national socialist) and a Communist (international socialist). They are both socialists!

I just read an article this morning from Frontpage Magazine, by Matthew Vadum, dealing with Antifa, which is supposed to be an “anti-fascist” group but, in reality, acts as though they were Hitler’s brown shirts.

$outhern Poverty Law Center Transfers Millions in Cash to Offshore Entities

Via Billy


The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal, Alabama-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization that has gained prominence on the left for its "hate group" designations, pushes millions of dollars to offshore entities as part of its business dealings, records show.

Additionally, the nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to its top directors and key employees while spending little on legal services despite its stated intent of "fighting hate and bigotry" using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy.

White people, here are 10 requests from a Black Lives Matter leader

Via Nancy

 Black Lives Matter


1. White people, if you don’t have any descendants, will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably one that lives in generational poverty.

2. White people, if you’re inheriting property you intend to sell upon acceptance, give it to a black or brown family. You’re bound to make that money in some other white privileged way.

3. If you are a developer or realty owner of multi-family housing, build a sustainable complex in a black or brown blighted neighborhood and let black and brown people live in it for free.

4. White people, if you can afford to downsize, give up the home you own to a black or brown family. Preferably a family from generational poverty.

5. White people, if any of the people you intend to leave your property to are racists assholes, change the will, and will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably a family from generational poverty.

6. White people, re-budget your monthly so you can donate to black funds for land purchasing.

7. White people, especially white women (because this is yaw specialty — Nosey Jenny and Meddling Kathy), get a racist fired. Yaw know what the fuck they be saying. You are complicit when you ignore them. Get your boss fired cause they racist too.

8. Backing up No. 7, this should be easy but all those sheetless Klan, Nazi’s and Other lil’ dick-white men will all be returning to work. Get they ass fired. Call the police even: they look suspicious.

9. OK, backing up No. 8, if any white person at your work, or as you enter in spaces and you overhear a white person praising the actions from yesterday, first, get a pic. Get their name and more info. Hell, find out where they work — Get Them Fired. But certainly address them, and, if you need to, you got hands: use them.

10. Commit to two things: Fighting white supremacy where and how you can (this doesn’t mean taking up knitting, unless you’re making scarves for black and brown kids in need), and funding black and brown people and their work.

Pundits And Politicians Are Tacitly Admitting That They Lied About Russia

Via Bill

 Photo published for A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack

It has been nearly three weeks since The Nation pushed an explosive memo from the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity into mainstream consciousness with an article detailing the evidence that the DNC leaks last year could not have been the result of a Russian hack. By continuing to ignore it, the US intelligence community and all the pundits and politicians who have advanced the Russian hacking narrative are tacitly admitting that they lied.

Defense Secretary Mattis Reverses Obama Policy of Hiding Troop Numbers in Afghanistan

 FILE -- Paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team patrol a village in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, May 29, 2012. (Photo Credit: Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod)

Defense Secretary James Mattis has directed the Pentagon to reverse an Obama-era policy of hiding the real number of American troops serving in Afghanistan.

The previous administration, anxious to prove to the American people that President Obama had pulled troops from the war-torn country, consistently low-balled their reports.

Policies were implemented that prevented troops on “temporary assignment” or those involved in overlap of troop rotations from being counted.

The result? The official count of American troops in Afghanistan jumped from 8,448 to 11,000.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Muslim ‘Mediator’ Defends Gang Rape After Attack: ‘Enjoyed Like Normal Intercourse When Woman Calms’

 

Matteo Salvini, who leads Italy’s populist Northern League, has said “prison is not enough” for the perpetrators, and reiterated previous calls for migrant sex attackers to be chemically castrated.
Poland’s Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki went even further in an impassioned Twitter post, writing “for these bastards should be the death penalty, although for this particular case I would also restore torture”.

A so-called ‘cultural mediator’ at a migrant reception centre in Italy has caused outrage with his comments on rape following attacks on tourists from Poland and Peru in Rimini, Italy.

Abid Jee wrote that rape was “a worse act, but only at the beginning, when the willy goes in, then the woman becomes calm and you enjoy it like normal intercourse” on Facebook after a Polish couple and a Peruvian transsexual were attacked by four men thought to be North African migrants, according to the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) wire service.

The news agency says Jee’s post “caused a stir despite being quickly removed”, with many calling for him to be sacked.

More @ Breitbart

PC: Don't confuse me with facts and the truth about American History!

Via Billy

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/05/13/opinion/13disunion-img/13disunion-img-blog427.jpg


Some of our compatriots asked me about the removal of a statue at Randolph College in Lynchburg.
The statue was of George Morgan Jones, a founder and donator to the college.  The statue was removed because he was one of those evil Confederates.  What surprises me is that any of you are still surprised by any of this foolishness.

All this started long before Charlottesville.  At Appomattox, General Lee told the men of the Army of Northern Virginia to go home and be as good citizens as they had been soldiers.

This is exactly what they did when they rebuilt the South.   Now, the very institutions that they either founded, or resurrected from the ashes want to deny them their place of honor.

Washington and Lee University has waged a war on General R. E. Lee for more than a decade.  They have removed our flag and denied the SCV free excess to the Lee Chapel.  This same Alt-left movement wishes to deny George Washington also.  Will this university become No Name College?

The Virginia Historical Society building is being used by the City of Richmond to hold it's destroy Monument Ave meetings.  This building was founded on a $100,000.00 donation from former Confederate Soldier, Charles Broadway Rouss.   Even ground zero in Charlottesville is completely Confederate connected.  The parks and statues came from donations by Paul Goodloe McIntire.  He was the son of Confederate Veteran George Malcolm McIntire.

A Black Gentleman (African American, if you prefer)  recently spoke with me about some of Charlottesville's history.  This citizen of that city informed me that among other things the McIntire family had donated quite a large sum of money to the University of Virginia Hospital.  He then posed the interesting question, that now knowing of the Confederate connection to the hospital, would any former patients want their diseases and medical conditions back? 

This is not as the media would have you believe a black and white issue.  This is all brought about by dangerous socialist who seek to destroy America.  All Americans need to come to the aide of our Country and stop this  madness now.

B. Frank Earnest, Heritage Defense Coordinator, Virginia Division, SCV

Burns Chronicles No 59 Ryan Bundy Holds the Key

 

On January 26, 2016, several people, in two private vehicles were on their way to a scheduled meeting John Day, Oregon.  While in a forested area, with extremely poor, if not non-existent, cell phone coverage, they were set upon by modern day highwaymen (highwaymen were people who stopped travelers and robbed them).  The driver and passengers of the second vehicle submitted to the demands of the heavily armed interlopers, at gunpoint, to leave the vehicle and sit on the side of the snow-covered roadway.

The driver of the second vehicle, a white pick-up truck, following the exit of one of the passengers, sped away, seeking the assistance of a peace officer, Sheriff Glenn Palmer, of Grant County, Oregon.

However, within a couple of miles they found that the highwaymen had set up a barricade across the road, barring passage.  The highwaymen, hidden behind their vehicles, began firing shots at the white truck.  This forced the truck off the road, where some rather adept driving may have saved one of the highwaymen’s life, by swerving, at the last moment.

The truck then came to a stop, and the driver, LaVoy Finicum, exited.  In the back seat were three people; Shawna Cox, Victoria Sharp, and Ryan Bundy.  Bundy sat on the left and Cox on the right.
Having already been shot at, there was concern for the safety of the party.  Finicum, in an effort to draw fire away from those still in the truck, began moving towards the rear and away from the truck.

There were lots of loud noises.  Some from 40 mm projectiles of rubber bullets and tear gas (OSP recovered 13 40 mm casings), others from flash-bang type grenades.  Included, however, were two shots that came from the left-rear of the truck.  One hit the top of the truck and one broke the driver side rear window.  The round that broke the window may well have hit the side of the truck, pressuring the window to break, and deflecting into the shoulder of Ryan Bundy.  This is the more logical explanation, as the velocity of the bullet, absent any other external resistance, should have penetrated much further than the fleshy part of Bundy’s shoulder.

CNN Reporter Exits Bubble, Discovers Just How Much Texas Hates CNN

 

 

I just walked on the tarmac to cover ' visit to Corpus and was heckled by a crowd shouting derogatory things. Unbelievable.

 Breitbart

The bubble is real. The bubble explains so much. You need not live in DC or New York or Los Angeles to be bubbled. Out here in the wilds of North Carolina, you can still lose touch. Just stay online, watch cable news and monitor Twitter. This will completely warp your view of the way things really are.

I know this because it has happened to me. But never, not once, have I ever been so bubbled that I was unaware of just how much America freakin’ hates CNN. With that in mind, try to imagine just how out-of-touch CNN correspondent Nick Valencia is:

*covers mouth to hold back burst of laughter* CNN dude is shocked to discover everyone hates CNN! *laughter bursts forth*

Awwww, is the little CNN snowflake gunna cry now?

What exactly did Valencia expect to find in, of all places, TEXAS?

Good heavens, he works for a hate network devoted to destroying everything most Texans stand for, live for, believe in and cherish: faith, family and freedom.

The last place-CNN has never even tried to disguise its unbridled hate for all things southern and Texan. CNN’s cultural supremacists are constantly smearing Christians and conservatives and southerners as backwards bigots. And everyone knows that the only reason CNN is even paying attention to a natural disaster in a Red State is in the hopes that the president they are hoping to oust through fake news will do something the leftwing network can turn into a “Katrina moment.”

Let me put it this way, Nick…

Texans don’t hate CNN.

Texans are hating CNN back.

There’s a difference.

You started it.

You built that.

Tuesday's Gone


Anarcho-Tyranny: The Corruption of Charlottesville, VA

Via Nancy


A new DeAndre Harris video has emerged which provides more context of the fight he initiated in the Charlottesville parking garage:


It has been nearly 24 hours.

I’ve never been so angry about anything in my entire life. I had to unplug from the internet after I was blinded with rage when the news broke that the Charlottesville Police had issued arrest warrants for more of our people who were defending themselves and others:
“The police arrested two men, including a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and were seeking a third in connection with violent episodes that took place at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., this month, including the beating of an African-American man that was caught on video and widely shared on social media.
The arrests came two weeks after the Aug. 12 rally, which brought hundreds of white supremacists to Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. The day was marked by skirmishes between demonstrators and counterprotesters, and a 32-year-old woman, Heather D. Heyer, was struck and killed by a car in what the authorities have called a terrorist attack.
The police were widely criticized for not doing more to stop violence throughout the morning. …”
This is outrageous.

We have already covered at length how the police took the day off in Charlottesville. They stood down and allowed violent Antifa to attack the #UniteTheRight demonstration. This was used as an excuse by Charlottesville and Gov. Terry McAuliffe to declare an illegal assembly and “state of emergency” and nullify the federal court order that had allowed #UniteTheRight to proceed in Lee Park.

American Presidents, Slavery, and the Confederacy

 

The current pogrom against Southern history and symbols ignores the influence the South and the institution of slavery had on most American presidents. American history would not be the same without it. If the current goal is to purge any reminder of slavery and the Confederacy from the public sphere, then nearly every American president would have to be withdrawn from our historical consciousness. Nineteen presidents either were slaveholders, from slaveholding families, or were married into slaveholding families:

Supreme Court asks Mississippi governor for defense of Confederate symbol on state flag

Via Billy

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/09/ole-miss-flag-640x426.jpg

Ridiculous as it was adopted in 1892.

The controversy over Confederate symbols may soon arrive at the Supreme Court, stemming from a dispute coming from Mississippi.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant's attorneys to file arguments by Sept. 28 in defense of the Confederate battle symbol on Mississippi's state flag, according to the Associated Press.

National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster: A legend or a lie?

Via Mike


Fresh on the heels of a successful offensive in Mosul, Iraq, the Iraqi military is now poised to retake Tal Afar, long a hotbed of ISIS and other insurgent activity. Before we pulled out of Iraq, Tal Afar, like Fallujah, had been the focal point of multiple large-scale, costly offensives to eject entrenched insurgents. In 2005, then-Colonel H.R. McMaster led the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) in the largest of these offensives, Operation Restoring Rights. His reputation as a brilliant military strategist rests largely on the results of that one battle. Given the widespread support for McMaster in the media and Washington establishment, it is ironic that current reporting largely fails to mention this battle or McMaster’s central role in it.

McMaster’s widely-hyped strategic acumen has been called into question by high-level military sources with personal knowledge of his conduct in the field. These sources spoke with me on condition of anonymity.

CHART: All The Things Nazis, Communists, and Antifa Share In Common

 

Brian Thomas reports that the Mayor of Berkeley Jesse Arreguin said Monday that it is time to classify Antifa as a gang, after peaceful demonstrators rallying in support of President Trump were attacked by more than 100 masked Antifa so-called activists.

A crowd that had marched peacefully throughout the day was gathered in Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Civic Center Park for their “Rally Against Hate.”
The demonstrators consistently disavowed white supremacists, Nazis, and racists, but Antifa members decided that they were fascists. The anarchist group, Antifa is aggressively anti-capitalist and believes violence is justified against any group of people they decide are fascist.

The $outhern Poverty Law Center’s blacklists must be stopped.

Via Billy

 

The ATLAH World Missionary Church is located in the heart of Harlem right off Malcolm X Boulevard. *Pastor David Manning grew up picking cotton in the segregated South. The African-American church and its pastor have had plenty of critics over the years, but none have accused them of white supremacy.

Until now.

Color of Change has rolled out its version of the Southern Poverty Law Center blacklist. The race-baiting group, co-founded by CNN’s Van Jones, put up a petition demanding that credit card companies stop taking “blood money” by “processing funds for over 100 white supremacist hate groups.”

The Color of Change list of “white supremacist hate groups” includes Pastor Manning’s black church. It also features the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Faith Freedom International, the Center for Security Policy, Jihad Watch, Act for America, the Shoebat Foundation, Stop the Islamization of the World, the American College of Pediatricians and, incidentally, Sultan Knish, my own personal blog.

More @ Front Page

*Rev. Manning On Growing Up In Red Springs, NC With... My mother went to college in Red Springs where Rev. Manning was raised. Flora Macdonald College, Red Springs + Macdonald, NC Images have to be clicked.

Single-payer healthcare isn't what the doctor ordered

Via Billy

America's doctors are warming to the idea of single-payer healthcare. A new survey from consulting firm Merritt Hawkins finds that 56 percent of doctors support a government-run system at least somewhat, with 42 percent expressing strong support. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

America's doctors are warming to the idea of single-payer healthcare. A new survey from consulting firm Merritt Hawkins finds that 56 percent of doctors support a government-run system at least somewhat, with 42 percent expressing strong support.

It's easy to see why so many doctors are fed up with the Obamacare status quo. But a federal takeover of our healthcare system isn't the answer. Indeed, if physicians understood what single-payer means for their own profession, they'd be far less eager to make the switch.

Under a single-payer system, doctors would be forced to let the government's finances, not their own medical judgment, dictate many treatment decisions.

Such ill-advised penny-pinching is routine in the United Kingdom's National Health Service. In fact, NHS organizations are now instituting so-called "lifestyle rationing" measures that delay certain surgeries for obese patients and smokers in an attempt to keep costs in check.

'Raise Your Battle Flag': How an Alabama musician came to record an alt-right anthem

Via Billy


On Aug. 5, a right-wing militia group called the Georgia III% Security Force held a Confederate rally at Stone Mountain. Members and supporters stood at the crest of the Georgia mountain known for its massive stone carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and hoisted their Rebel flags into the air.

As he drove into a parking lot just before the event, Chris Hill, the group's leader, listened to "Raise Your Battle Flag" by Celtic Confederate, a song that has become something of an anthem for him and for militias, pro-Confederate organizations and other alt-right groups across the South.

More @ AL

Russia warns Israel not to attack Iran in Syria

Via Billy


Russia warned Israel on Wednesday not to authorize an attack on Iranian military positions in Syria after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to prevent a buildup on his borders.

"If anyone in the Middle East or [an]other part of the world plans to violate international law by undermining any other country's sovereignty or territorial integrity, including any country in the Middle East or North Africa, this would be condemned," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters.

Netanyahu has warned that Iran is building military facilities in Syria. U.S. and Israeli officials have worried for years that Russia and Iran, by partnering to protect Syrian President Bashar Assad, would emerge from the conflict with long-term strategic advantages, and Lavrov's comment suggests Russia's support for Iran's consolidation of those gains.

Breitbart pounds Ryan, Romney, Rubio for not denouncing anti-fascists

Via Billy

Breitbart pounds Ryan, Romney, Rubio for not denouncing anti-fascists

Breitbart News took aim at so-called establishment Republican lawmakers Wednesday by slamming House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for not denouncing left-wing "anti-fascist" violence in a lead headline on Wednesday.

"‘Unequivocal Condemnation’: Pelosi Denounces Antifa Violence… Before GOP’s Ryan, Rubio, Romney,'" reads the Breitbart lead headline.

The criticism from the conservative publication comes after Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement Tuesday evening that so-called antifa protesters — militant far-left groups that demonstrate against neo-Nazis and white supremacists — deserve “unequivocal condemnation."

More @ The Hill

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

A Few Inconvenient Facts

Via Billy
Forwarded by James King with permission by Ralph Mills to use in article about Albany Ga. Confederate monument/statue. Ralph Mills is the Great-Great-Grandson of John G. LaRoque who was a Confederate Veteran in Company E (Albany) 4th Georgia. The man most responsible for raising funds for the Albany CSA monument/statue about 1900. This article by Mr. Mills is on the inside of the back page of the current issue of the Georgia Confederate Newspaper.
 
As a number of Southern governors, big city mayors, educators, and even some administrators of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) rapidly distance themselves from a Confederate past to fall in step with the doctrine of political correctness, there still remain a few small obstacles which must be cleared in order to rest in good conscience. What shall be done with the inconvenient facts hidden in the historical record that stand in contrast to the sanitizing and re-crafting of the national narrative?

Do the members of this unlikely alliance mentioned above merely follow the mass of uninformed public opinion – led by those with an agenda of retaliation and the revision of history – or do they stop and consider the contrary and less popular facts concerning the defining event of our nation's development, the War Between the States (1861-1865)?

The national narrative that has passed the test of modern day political correctness is that the Southern Confederacy was just fighting to defend the institution of slavery while the Union nobly fought to free those enslaved by that “rebellious” regime. If this were so, then why was slavery practiced and protected by federal law in no less than five Union states throughout the course of the war? Why would the Northern states not free THEIR slaves if this were the motivation for invading the seceding states? And why, when gaining control of Southern territory during the war, did the Union armies not free the slaves of the occupied territory, rather than forcing them to labor on Union works?

In fact, Union Gen. John C. Freemont's order freeing Missouri slaves was rapidly countermanded by Lincoln who then summarily sacked the general. Could it be that the true motive for the Northern states to invade their former Southern counterparts in 1861 was in truth derived from the very words of their president, Abraham Lincoln, when unequivocally stating that motive to be “the preservation of the Union” and NOT an interference with slavery? Indeed, no government emancipation of enslaved persons took place in the United States (North or South) until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, many months after the war ended.

If the Confederate States of America were just fighting to defend slavery, then why, when offered the Corwin Amendment's perpetual right to own slaves in the United States, did the Southern states REJECT the offer? It was, after all, a guarantee from the federal government granting the right of slave states to carry on the practice FOREVER, if they would just remain in the Union. Over 90 percent of the Confederate rank and file were NOT slave-owners, and certainly did not suffer four years of deprivation, wounds, and even death so that their agricultural competitors with slave holdings could maintain their production advantage over them. And why did tens of thousands of black Southerners, both free and slave, fight honorably in the ranks of the Confederacy, even attending reunions with their white comrades-in-arms after the war? After all, the most influential “Father of the Civil Rights Movement,” Frederick Douglass, used this unpopular truth in persuading the Lincoln government to finally allow black soldiers into the ranks of the federal armies, segregated though they were.

How can the creators of the p.c. version of the national narrative bequeath the Northern states the moral high ground while assigning the Southern states a place with the damned? And how can elected officials and so many others in roles of leadership be so easily duped? After all, the New England states built their shipping industry and much public infrastructure on the Triangular Slave Trade, hauling rum, human cargo, and sugar molasses on the three legs of the deplorable journey.

They alone must shoulder that most dishonorable distinction, while New York City was the financial capital of the cotton kingdom, a major distributor of slave labor, and the home of the 1863 draft riots (which killed scores of blacks and set fire to the Colored Orphan Asylum). And radical Northern abolitionists pumped untold thousands of dollars and arms into the perverted cause of John Brown's attempted slave revolt for use in the indiscriminate murder of Southern men, women and children, while ignoring illegal shipments of the lucrative slave trade which slipped from their own home ports.

But most condemnatory must be the dishonorable conduct of certain invading federal troops who literally raped, pillaged, murdered, and burned out the Southern populace, black and white, with the full knowledge and sometimes even under orders of their commanding officers. These despicable behaviors were repeated indiscriminately throughout the Southern states, and yet none of these officers was charged with war crimes, even those later admitting their complicity. In the Southern armies' rare incursions into Northern territory, no such atrocities were common among them. General Robert E. Lee even commanded payment to all noncombatants for any procurements made along the path of his command and strictly monitored the behaviors of his soldiers with active Provost Guards at many vulnerable properties along the march routes.

Those allying with today's Confederate-haters loosely throw about the terms “treason” and “traitors” in reference to the Southern soldier, when in fact these are the perfect descriptors of the deranged terrorist murderer (and radical abolitionist icon), John Brown, who was tried in a Court of Law and found guilty of the very crime described. However, after the war when Union radicals desired the heads of Confederate leaders in retaliation for their prosecution of the war, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase warned against such folly, fearing instead that the United States would be embarrassed by bringing Jefferson Davis and others to trial. Chase knew that these Southern leaders and their confederation of states had indeed broken no federal law, and the United States would be found culpable of indefensible actions against them.

Over the decades following the war, U.S. presidents and Congress recognized Confederate soldiers as American veterans, with equivalent benefits and status to all other U.S. veterans. So how could any modern day revisionists be given credence in their requests to remove monuments, cemetery headstones, and memorial markers for these American veterans who fought so nobly in defense of their homes and for the hope of being an independent nation (like that won by their grandfathers in the War for American Independence)? Indeed, how can we stand by in silence as our American veterans are denigrated and covered with shame undeserved?

Yet this is the case in today's politically correct world. In total disregard of inconvenient facts, the Confederate soldier's good name and memory have fallen victim to the radical adherents of political expediency and their actions of covering or ignoring these substantiated truths. And the founding fathers of our nation are the next in line to be targeted by p.c. radicals. Already several state Democratic Parties have removed the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from their traditional annual “Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner” for having had slaves in their service.

So are the anti-Confederate politicians, educators and SBC elites able in good faith to continue to run blindly over the precipice of political correctness, and in the process permanently obscure the memory of our Confederate forebears from the face of the earth? Will they remain complicit in the complete defamation of America's Confederate veterans?

Ralph West Mills
Comdr., “27th Georgia Regiment”
Camp # 1404, Gainesville, GA

Seattle Times apologizes for not knowing where Alabama, Mississippi are located

 Oops. A Seattle Times map skipped over Mississippi and moved Alabama to the west. (Twitter)

Oops. Sorry about that Mississippi.

The Seattle Times has apologized for a mistake in a map that skipped over the state of Mississippi and moved Alabama adjacent to Louisiana.

The map was tweeted out over the weekend and quickly made the rounds on social media. The map, which depicted the path of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, showed Louisiana and Arkansas with a state labeled "Alabama" directly to the east.

The omission of the Magnolia State had people crying foul.

More @ AL

Georgia lawmaker: Talk of ditching Confederate statues could cause Democrat to ‘go missing’ in the Okefenokee.

Via Billy


A Georgia Republican lawmaker warned a Democratic former colleague who criticized his support for Civil War monuments on Facebook that she won’t be “met with torches but something a lot more definitive” if she continues to call for the removal of statues in south Georgia.

State Rep. Jason Spencer, a Woodbine Republican, also wrote former state Rep. LaDawn Jones that “people in South Georgia are people of action, not drama” and suggested some who don’t understand that “will go missing in the Okefenokee.”

“Too many necks they are red around here,” he wrote. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about ’em.”

More @ AJC

Reconsidering Luther Martin

 

A review of Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet, The Life of Luther Martin, by Bill Kauffman, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008


“Happiness is preferable to the Splendour of a national Government”

 Luther Martin to the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787, Kauffman at 41

This book takes no prisoners. Nor does it gloss the favored actors. It sides with Martin’s stance at the 1787 Convention but does not disregard his faults. As for the usual suspects – Madison, Hamilton, Wilson and Morris, Washington et al  – Kauffman simply sets the record clear. The usual nomenclature is proven false. Madison was not the Father of the Constitution. He was severely blunted, just not decisively. Instead, a vaguely nationalist hybrid of Madison and Martin came about, absent all defining nomenclature, e.g. “national” or “federal”. It’s been a battle that in the countering of Time and despite Jefferson’s later intrusion, Madison has won.

The inexorable excretions of human nature in the turmoil of political and commercial battle would finally yield what Madison, Wilson, Washington and Hamilton wanted: a nationalized State dwarfing and dismissing the sovereignty of the individual States. Today’s Constitution, as it runs our government in the hands of national politicians and courts, is decisively Madison’s Constitution. His imperial twin pillars: 1) negating the sovereignty of the States and 2) negating State legislation by the national legislature (or courts, a later addendum), have come true. Only a modicum of sovereignty continues to reside in the States.

Report: Gary Cohn Does Not Regret Trashing President Trump

 WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 22: Gary Cohn, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, arrives to a swearing in ceremony of White House senior staff in the East Room of the White House on January 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. Trump today mocked protesters who gathered for large demonstrations across the U.S. and the world on Saturday to signal discontent with his leadership, but later offered a more conciliatory tone, saying he recognized such marches as a "hallmark of our democracy." (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)

 Long overdue to be fired.

National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn has no regrets about trashing President Donald Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville earlier this month.

According to a report in Politico, Cohn told “associates” that he “didn’t regret one bit having made his comments.” Cohn also reportedly complained loudly about President Trump at a dinner in a Long Island restaurant — loud enough to be overheard by others, according to the Washington Post.

Cohn, a Democrat, bought into the opposition and media line that the violent Antifa activists who attacked right-wing extremists in Charlottesville were merely “[c]tizens standing up for equality and freedom.”

He has evidently refused to reconsider his views as Antifa proudly claimed credit for the violence and launched more attacks in the days that followed, violently assaulting a group of peaceful right-wing protesters Sunday in Berkeley, California.

Nor was Cohn moved by the stirring defense offered by Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, a fellow Jew who responded to criticism by his Yale classmates with a public letter declaring that the allegations against Trump were inaccurate.

Whatever the reason for Cohn’s stubborn public opposition to the president’s words, Charlottesville was not the first time he expressed contempt for the president, whom he ostensibly serves in the public interest.

More @ Breitbart

The Truth about Charlottesville

Via Mike "Mama Grizzly Radio--the truth about Charlottesville. Two eye-witnesses and two commentators. 47 minutes. The truth on the event and issues involved are well worth listening to, if you have a little listening time. "


Vanessa Carlisle and Avialae Horton are on The Palin Update with Kevin Scholla! What really happened in Charlottesville? Don’t believe the lying media. Instead, get an eyewitness account from two courageous women who were there for it all. Carlisle and Horton weigh in on Antifa, Black Lives Matter, white supremacists, the KKK, and more. Get an exclusive take on what the politicians did and failed to do on the day Virginia turned in to a riot zone. It’s a Mama Grizzly Radio exclusive- The Truth About Charlottesville with conservative activists Vanessa Carlisle and Avialae Horton.

Be Thankful for Price Gouging in Houston

Via Cousin John


Did the hotel crew need the rooms? No. They came to “cover” the storm.

But people fleeing Hurricane Harvey were in desperate need of hotel rooms. And the news crew was complaining about paying a high price.

The news team reported on the terrible incident of gouging. But they actually demonstrate exactly why prices need to go up when demand goes up.

I wonder if they decided to bunk up together and buy fewer rooms because of the high price. After all, that is the whole point of “gouging.”

When demand shoots through the roof, the reason prices need to go up is not simply business greed. Higher prices slow demand.

One family might choose to stay with their annoying inlaws instead of getting a room. Great, one more spot for someone who doesn’t have family in the area.

Another family with three kids might decide to book only one room instead of two. Again, this helps keep rooms available for other people in need. Yes, they will have to spend a bit more, but they will have a place to sleep.

The basic economics of supply and demand is apparently something neither this news crew, nor the Texas Attorney General’s office understand.

Comment on Air Force Vet Slams Paul Ryan For Defending Antifa...

Comment by LasVegasBadger on Air Force Vet Slams Paul Ryan For Defending Antifa...

 https://i.pinimg.com/736x/be/02/e0/be02e0d301021c008fc01d3642c16620--political-system-political-memes.jpg

 Open comment to Paul Ryan

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I do not consider you to be my fellow American. You do not speak for me. I consider you and every one else, who justify the actions and goals of Antifa as now a domestic enemy. You are one of them.

The key word in the First Amendment is the word "peaceably". Antifa employs violence as a means to intimidate and subjugate those who do not share their views. The First Amendment does NOT grant a protester the right to destroy the property of others. Nor does it grant them the right to do so without consequences for their actions.

Antifa is seeking the violent overthrow of the US Government by force, to impose on the public a communist/socialist form of government that does not respect the rule of law, nor the rights of the American citizen which are given to use at birth from God. The SOLE reason for the existence of government is for the preservation and protection of those same God given rights.

By defending Antifa's actions and goals, in my humble opinion, you have violated your oath of office. Do us a service: Resign. You do not have our trust and confidence.

I care not what you say for the benefit of the talking suits and skirts. You actions have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Resign Mr. Speaker, resign. By the way, the same goes for all the other jelly fish in the Republican party. If you will not defend the principles of this country, then resign, you are of no use to us.

NC: 12 Days In September: Mark Meadows Lays Out Plan for Ambitious 'Dirty Dozen' Agenda

Via Mike


“We’re going to have to juggle [the debt ceiling, Obamacare repeal, spending bill, and tax reform] and if we don’t I can tell that really the next 12 days, and that’s all we have — 12 legislative days in September — will decide whether we’re going to remain in power as a Republican majority or not,” Meadows said in the interview with Breitbart Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle on the program. “Are we serious about getting the president’s agenda done? The next 12 days will do that. 

You mentioned a couple of those items — the debt ceiling; obviously repeal and replace Obamacare.”

Regarding Obamacare repeal and replace, Meadows said it is critical that Congress get moving on the plan as soon as possible.

“The vehicle that we have for that actually will soon expire,” Meadows said. “So if we don’t use that reconciliation instruction in the next 30 to 45 days we will have lost the opportunity to get it done with just 51 votes in the Senate. As I look at it is critical that we are ‘all hands on deck.’ But more importantly that we have a plan. I think the frustration that I have is that I see the critical deadlines that are coming up and yet I see a lot of talk but no action. I just talked to a friend. A guy by the name of Clay Tally, who really represents the typical Trump voter. He was saying, ‘You know what, I’m tired of the talk, let’s get some things done and why not support the president and make sure that we get it done.’”

Meadows said that House Speaker Paul Ryan’s efforts to stick with the bill that passed the House dealing with healthcare is dead and that Congress needs to rally around a new plan. He spoke highly of efforts by former Sen. Rick Santorum—who is working with Sen. Lindsey Grahan (R-SC) and the nation’s GOP governors on a new plan—to do just that.

Comment on The new Antifa are the old Nazis and Communists.

Comment by Badger on The new Antifa are the old Nazis and Communists


 Khmer_rouge

NAZIs are vilified and deserve to be. Yet somehow Communists that have killed millions and millions and millions more are not. Any explanation? I sure don’t have one.

Murdered by Nazis – 10,527,000

Murdered by Communists – 193,700,000



MURDERED BY NAZIs

5.1–6.0 million Jews, including 3.0–3.5 million Polish Jews

1.8 –1.9 million non-Jewish Poles (includes all those killed in executions or those that died in prisons, labor, and concentration camps, as well as civilians killed in the 1939 invasion and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising)

500,000–1.2 million Serbs killed by Croat Nazis

200,000–800,000 Roma & Sinti

200,000–300,000 people with disabilities

80,000–200,000 Freemasons [23]

100,000 communists

10,000–25,000 homosexual men

2,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses


MURDERED BY COMMUNISTS


People’s Republic of China

Body Count: 73,237,000 + 38,000,000 due to famine caused by the Great Leap Forward

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Body Count: 68,121,000

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic

Body Count: 3,284,000

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Body Count: 3,163,000

Cambodia

Body Count: 2,627,000

Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

Body Count: 1,750,000

Vietnam

Body Count: 1,670,000

People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Body Count: 1,343,610

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Body Count: 1,072,000

I stopped listing communist countries that murdered less than One Million.

Badger

***********************

A different take. 

So, how many did Communism kill?

The new Antifa are the old Nazis and Communists.

Via Billy

http://img.theepochtimes.com/n3/eet-content/uploads/2017/08/25/NYEET20170825A12_Page_1_Image_0001.jpg


In my younger years, studying world and American history in school, I used to wonder how people of those past times could have been so stupid.  How could people actually believe that Hitler was a righteous man?  How could they be convinced that Jews were evil and Nazism was good?  Germans and Japanese at that time must have been crazy.

Didn’t Americans understand that a civil war between states could lead to incredible bloodshed?  How could people who shared the same heritage and culture go at each other’s throats so readily?  It seemed like fantasy to me. 

People must have been completely different back then, much more gullible and ignorant.

How could it have been possible for Josef Stalin to starve tens of millions of Ukrainians to death with no resistance?  How could Mao, as leader of the world’s largest population, starve to death tens of millions of his own people without opposition?  It seemed impossible, almost like fiction.

After 65 years of my existence, I now realize that people have not changed.  The ignorance of man is not a fantasy, it is real and enduring.

An Open Letter to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe

Via Billy

https://jatticus.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/lee-jackson-pray.jpg?w=240

I was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Ohio. I have taught Political Science at the collegiate level in Cincinnati, been published in The Wall Street Journal and am in my 12th year of research for a forthcoming book on Columbine.

For the past seven years I have made Rockbridge County, Virginia my home. That was a dream planted in my heart as a 14-year-old boy decades ago on my first visit to the Commonwealth. I have loved this commonwealth since then and when offered a change of life, there was never a moment’s indecision where to move. Virginia first, Virginia only, Virginia last and Virginia always.

I chose Lexington for just one reason. I had no family in Virginia. I had no prospects for employment lined up in Virginia. I owned no property here. None of the factors that ordinarily move men to uproot after a lifetime in one state and move to a place where he has no ties motivated me. The one and only reason I live in Lexington, Virginia is because it is the final resting place of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson. Their lives, character, faith, integrity, honor and testimony shone so brightly a century and a half after their decease that there is no other place on the Earth I want to be but where they lived and served.

There is something deeply and morally wrong with anyone who objects to these two great Virginians---great Americans being honored by the native State for which they gave their lives, limbs and blood in selfless patriotic service. President Dwight D. Eisenhower kept Lee’s portrait in his executive office while president. Churchill extolled him as the greatest American. Ulysses S. Grant threatened to resign from the U.S. Army if Lee were tried for treason. International ships at sea flew their national colors at half-staff when Lee left this world from Lexington.

The statue that marks the grave of “Stonewall” Jackson was paid for not only by the veterans who served under him, but by financial contributions from former slaves whom he had taught to read in violation of Virginia law. In Roanoke today, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church features a stained glass window consecrated to the honor and memory of Jackson by descendants of the slaves he taught the Bible, for the chances he took on their behalf. When a Lexington local assailed Jackson for breaking the law to “teach those people”, Jackson uncharacteristically lost his temper and shouted, “If you were a Christian you would not say so!”

After the war, it was Lee who broke social convention at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church by kneeling beside a former slave who had mortified the White congregation by kneeling at the altar. Asked afterward by a bigot why a man like himself would kneel beside a former slave, Lee simply chastised him, “The ground is always level at the foot of the cross.”

And these are the men so repugnant to your modern sensibilities? This is the course so objectionable to you? This character is what is unacceptable in your enlightened times? If so, then it is you, Sir, who is the racist bigot. If their charity and kindness, their bravery in defense of the then-defenseless offends you, it only means your own character is so depraved and your own heart so darkened as to be unworthy the mention of their names.

The anniversary of the deaths of Lee and of Jackson were long commemorated in this Commonwealth by veterans of the North who were often the honored keynote speakers invited to praise the virtues of their once-foes. You were not at Manassas. You were not at Antietam. You were not at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg. But the Union soldiers who were had more wisdom, more character---were simply better men than you because they practiced forgiveness over hatred, compassion over contempt, fraternity over fractious division. They shook the physical hands that had sighted them down hot barrels and pulled triggers to kill them---they put the war behind them in their own generation and embraced their former enemies as their brother and countrymen. You, on the other hand, lack any redeeming moral character whatsoever, obsessing over political winds, polls and a personal agenda of race-baiting anarchy. More than merely unqualified for the high office you hold, you exhibit no evidence of redemptive humanity.

Every monument to a Confederate Virginian is a war memorial to an American veteran. It has been the mark of manhood and civility and longstanding American tradition to leave politics out of the way we honor our veterans. They fought the battles; we did not. They shed the blood; we did not. They reconciled with their enemies; we did not. They were tried on the battlefield and tried by a jury of their peers in the only court of public opinion that mattered: their own generation---the generation that knew the issues, heard the speeches, read the papers, pulled the triggers and took the trenches. The battlefield determined the issues and the veterans pardoned their enemies. End of subject. It is not for children born a hundred and fifty years later to readjudicate the past and expose to double jeopardy men their own contemporaries exonerated.

It is the height of arrogance to suppose that you know more about these men and their times than their even contemporaries. The command of God remains, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.” That divine command is unambiguous and apolitical. It is to God you will assuredly answer for its violation. Make no mistake, as Claudius realized in Hamlet, “In the corrupted currents of this world, offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice, and oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law. But ’tis not so above. There is no shuffling. There the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults”.

There will be no alibis before the judgment bar of God. You will pull no song-and-dance, no shady backroom deals, no political payola. Almighty God will not be fooled nor bought nor charmed. Naked in the full bloom of your monstrous sin, you will stand exposed, every fault, before His avenging eye. No excuses. No patter and spiel. No schmoozing this time. To God you will answer for the slander and libel of His servants.

Meanwhile, in the unlikely event that your parents were not the abject failures your embarrassing course of conduct appears to suggest, I ask you to reconsider the wrong-headed evil you have proposed. If you find it impossible to respect your elders, attempt at least to revere your betters. The destruction of Virginia’s monuments to her war dead is sacrilege and those who urge and execute it are nothing more than cemetery vandals. There is no honor in this course of wanton destruction and, morally, you equate yourself with ISIS which shares your contempt for actual culture, something you both so manifestly lack. It is more than history, more than art. When you pursue this thing, you diminish the honor of these heroes not one bit. You only emphasize by contrast how puny and insignificant by contrast you are. You reveal how painfully short of their measure you fall.

And it is that that galls you, isn’t it? You despise good men because their virtue condemns your depravity. You know you lack their character, their courage, their integrity, their stature. You know that if you served 50 terms, you will never amount to 1/100th of the men they were. You have wasted your entire life in selfish ambition and here, at your age, you haven’t amounted to anything but a common street hooligan, the shame of your family name. Those proud of you love evil itself.

No matter. No one will remember you in any 150 years. Nothing you do can make anything like the mark these great Virginians made on history’s ledger. You are doomed to the political graveyard of insignificant bureaucrats who lined their pockets, sold out daily and slaved away in tireless service to pointless mediocrity. Just being you another day is your own punishment and yet you still face God for what you propose to do as well. Something is deeply, horribly wrong with your soul, Sir. And you know it. So does all Virginia.

If you suppose brass and marble are the only media in which their immortal valor is inscribed, you are as limited in intellect and character as I suspect. Men like Lee and Jackson, for just two, reach good men at the heart; something you won’t even comprehend, much less ever do. No one, of course, respects you and who, pray tell, could love you? Just asking is to snicker. There is nothing important about you, “Man, proud man, dress'd in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—his glassy essence—like an angry ape”. Still, you might prolong your useless career by imitating conscience, but you have hitherto, year after year, crime after crime, failed to generate the least flicker of that vain hope.

Still, your lascivious ambition, that crying ache for power and meaning that keeps you awake on your bed at night, might reckon (for all the wrong reasons, as usual) that just perhaps doing the right thing---doing, for once, the hard thing---just might work as policy. Relax, you wouldn’t have to actually care or be right; nothing so unthinkable as all that. You would only have to play the empty part of doing the right thing as if you did have any sense. No inner reform or spiritual growth necessary, just the usual outward show you’ve performed your whole life long. Going through external motions, as ever. You know: SHOWTIME…again!

You could still wring your hands and knit your brow and pretend to care and squeak through the polls but yet accidentally do the actually moral thing for a change. Just to see how it feels. Leave the monuments alone. Muster the courage to…to…do nothing---something you’re usually proficient at. You can prate about how awful those good men were and how terrible their splendid monuments are---no one pays any attention to what you say anyway---and then resume your strong point: noisy inaction. You’ve done nothing so long this one should be easy for a pro like you. Just leave the status quo in place. Don’t worry, no one will accuse you of virtue. Have they ever?

If there were any glimmer of character down in that empty suit anywhere you might even work up the decency to strengthen the existing laws protecting Virginia’s veterans’ memorials. I no more expect it than I expect the shore to drown the sea, but miracles have happened. And God has often worked His wonders with clay as useless as yourself. Perhaps you had a loving grandmother who instilled in you something worthwhile after all a very long time ago. Evidently not. But maybe. Maybe somewhere down deep inside in a secret spot you can yet prove useful in this world by surprising everyone with an honorable act. Just one.

I have strived to be civil, but you do not make it easy. Smearing reputations, slandering saints and tearing down what better men raised has zero to do with love, unity, tolerance, acceptance, diversity and coexistence. It’s just the usual political spoils game, playing one race/class/group against another to score a win at any cost. The mean, petty loathing of Virginia’s first string heroes outs you as a raging hypocrite just as you were trying to pass for intelligent. What a piece of work.

I can’t pretend anything could ever make me vote for you. Nothing can. So there’s no political leverage I can exert here, to be frank. You could do the right thing here and I would still know it was the exception, done for some underhanded criminal motive as always. Let’s not pretend. But I would thank you for it. Because, in the end, it’s actions that count. Whether you do the right thing for the right motive is between you and God. (No, not “your God”; THE God. Get off that lame routine) Whether you do it at all is where my interest ends. Just leave the statues, graves, monuments and memorials right where the grown-ups put them, Terry. Just fool around doing nothing, you know, like back at Georgetown. Easy. That’s all I ask. And about the most anybody expects of you. Aren’t you tired yet of just being the same old failure and lurching from bungled debacle to bungled debacle? Why not shock the world: open a book, educate yourself and do something less horrible than usual. Resign, even, and leave Virginians to govern Virginia. What a concept. Shouldn’t you be ruining Syracuse instead of Richmond?

With all due respect,
Sherwin W. Dillar