June 30, 2008
On this day in 1865, a military tribunal convicted seven men and a woman involved in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Four of the eight were later hanged by the U.S. Army at the Washington Navy Yard.
On the other hand, today they are not considered to be good enough for jihadis captured in the field while violating the Geneva Convention's rules for combatants.
And remember -- these folks were all US citizens apprehended, held, tried and executed withing the continental United States.
Thanks for the reminder, Michael -- and I loved your book.
Posted by: Greg at
09:39 AM
| Comments (24)
| Add Comment
Post contains 117 words, total size 1 kb.
June 12, 2008
Twenty-one years ago today, President Reagan gave one of the great speeches against tyranny and oppression. In it, he offered one of the great calls for freedom -- "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
I'd thought to post the speech in its entirety -- but as a student and teacher of history, this video so moved me that I decided to share it instead.
Two-and-a-half years later, the gates were open and the wall began to fall.
Let freedom ring.
More at Grand Old Partisan, Soccer Dad
Posted by: Greg at
12:12 AM
| Comments (29)
| Add Comment
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.
)), 
((, 
D, June 11, 2008
Archaeologists in Jordan have discovered a cave underneath one of the world's oldest churches and say it may have been an even more ancient site of Christian worship. But outside experts expressed caution about the claim.Archaeologist Abdel-Qader al-Housan, head of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, said this week that the cave was unearthed in the northern Jordanian city of Rihab after three months of excavation and shows evidence of early Christian rituals.
The cave is under St. George's Church, which some believe was built in the year 230, though the date is widely disputed. That would make it one of the oldest churches in the world, along with one unearthed in the Jordanian southern port of Aqaba in 1998 and another in Israel discovered in 2005.
Al-Housan said there was evidence that the underground cave was used as a church by 70 disciples of Jesus in the first century after Christ's death, which would make it the oldest Christian site of worship in the world.
He described a circular worship area with stone seats separated from a living area that had a long tunnel leading to a source of water. He said the early Christians hid there from persecution.
A mosaic inscription on the floor of the later church of St. George above refers to "the 70 beloved by God and the divine" who founded the worship there.
There are those who doubt this find -- and I am not ready to support the claim myself. It is virtually inconceivable that the mosaics would date to the first century (the 70 likely would have been a group fleeing from either the persecution of early Christians described in Acts or the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD -- not individuals with the wealth and/or skills to create the mosaics), and so it is more likely that the inscription refers to a legend in the community about the historical use of the cave. Absent some more solid archaeological evidence, I think it is impossible to sustain the claim it makes as fact.
Posted by: Greg at
11:56 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 381 words, total size 2 kb.
June 06, 2008
A general speaks to his troops before the greatest battle of the war.
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Supreme Commander
Allied Expeditionary Force
A President informs a nation -- and offers a prayer for the troops in the field.
O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
President of the United States
And forty years later, another president paid tribute to those who fought and died -- and to those who fought and lived as well. It remains the most beautiful of spoken tributes to the heroes of Operation Overlord.
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
Ronald Wilson Reagan
President of the United States
Today, sixty-four years later, our troops are again in the field in another Great Crusade against another unholy enemy, an enemy no less opposed to the freedom that marks our nation and our civilization out from theirs than were the forces of totalitarianism which bathed Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific in blood. American troops again come not as conquerors, but seekers of liberty for the oppressed and security for a free world. May they be inspired by the example of the men who braved the fire in landing craft as they stormed the beaches of Normandy, and by those who parachuted behind enemy lines. And may the American people recover that sense of purpose that led our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents on the home front to support the efforts of those troops with prayer and sacrifice.
Other Remembrances At Done With Mirrors, Flopping Aces, Dave in Texas, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin
OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, A NEWT ONE- NATIONAL EMERGENCY, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary's Thoughts, Shadowscope, Leaning Straight Up, Cao's Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Allie is Wired, Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, , and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Posted by: Greg at
05:59 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 739 words, total size 7 kb.
June 05, 2008
Bobby Kennedy, perhaps the most accomplished and competent of the Kennedy brothers, was laid down by a man who today can only be described as a Palestinian terrorist.
Let us not forget the day.
Posted by: Greg at
05:04 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 51 words, total size 1 kb.
June 03, 2008
![olympicsboycotttank[1].jpg](http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/images/olympicsboycotttank[1].jpg)
This one is important to note -- especially in light of the upcoming Beijing Olympics. On this day in 1989, the oppressors of the people of the People's Republic of China crushed the voice of the people when they called for democratic reform in Red China.
![c2s5[1].jpg](http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/images/c2s5[1].jpg)
![tiananmen-square-hero[1].jpg](http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/images/tiananmen-square-hero[1].jpg)
![bj10[1].jpg](http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/images/bj10[1].jpg)
Some still suffer for their heroism.
China is still holding about 130 activists from the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Human Rights Watch said, calling on the government to free them on the 19th anniversary of the crackdown that falls today.China should honor its pledge to improve human rights by releasing the prisoners before the Beijing Olympics in August when the square will be used for functions, the New York-based group said.
China tightened security at Tiananmen Square, authorizing police to randomly search visitors, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported last month. ``Security around Tiananmen is very important and has great international influence,'' it cited Zhang Peili, an official at the municipal government law office, as saying at the time.
Chinese soldiers, backed by tanks, killed an estimated 2,000 pro-democracy activists in and around Tiananmen Square and in other Chinese cities on June 3-4, according to Human Rights Watch. The death toll included Chinese citizens who massed in Beijing streets to stop the army reaching the square, it said.
We must never forget the sacrifices of these heroic young people who stood up against one of the most oppressive regime of our times.
Soccer Dad supplies this video that documents the evil committed by the Red Chinese dictators in Tiananmen Square nineteen years ago.
Posted by: Greg at
01:56 AM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 267 words, total size 3 kb.
June 01, 2008
At the beginning of our great countryÂ’s history my ancestors were counted as only 2/3 of a person....
Well, not exactly -- in reality it was 3/5 of a person, and only for purposes of representation in Congress.
Interestingly enough, I wrote about this very topic earlier this evening in response to one of my students in my college-level American Government class.
There is this popular notion that the Three-Fifths Compromise means that blacks were three-fifths of a human being. However, if you go back and read it in the Constitution, it deals with a very different issue -- should property be counted for purposes of representation and taxation.The Northern delegates argued no -- that if slaves were chattel, then they should no more be counted for purposes of representation that cows, pigs, or chickens were. Their goal was to see to it that slave-owners, who acted in violation of the principles of liberty and equality by holding slaves, did not also do violence to the principle of self-government by gaining extra representation by counting those who would not EVER have a voice in government. In short, they were
operating on the principle that those who were entitled to neither liberty, equality, nor self-government under the laws of those states that recognized slavery (northern and southern -- slavery was legal in at least 10 of the 13 states at this time, though more prevalent in the South) should not be included in the total inhabitants of the state who would be represented in Congress.The Southern delegates, on the other hand, took a pointedly different tack -- they were more than willing to count slaves as their equal in terms of being numerically represented in Congress, even as they denied them liberty, equality, and self-government.
It is really easy (and popular) to condemn the Three-Fifths Compromise today, with the benefit of 221 years of hindsight. After all, that extra representation that the slave-holding aristocracy of the South gained enabled the region's "peculiar institution" to continue for at least three decades beyond what it would have if the Northern delegates had prevailed -- and during that time the forces of slavocracy were able to foist the Missouri Compromise on the nation, along with the Kansas-Nebraska Act and various Fugitive Slave Laws, not to mention the infamous Gag Rule that for a decade forbade Congress to even consider the issues of abolition and emancipation by consigning citizen petitions on those subjects to oblivion without hearing in violation of the First Amendment right of the people to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
However, you got to the meat of the issue in your last sentence -- a majority of those who met in Philadelphia in 1787 recognized that the nation needed to replace the Articles of Confederation with something that created a more functional national government. And so they compromised on the issue, leaving it to future generations to deal with a question they could not.
Consider this, my friends -- without the Three-Fifths Compromise, there would have likely been no Constitution. Not only that, but very possibly the government of the Articles of Confederation would have collapsed within a few years, and with it the fledgling United States of America. for all that it was a compromise with evil (one for which this nation has paid dearly in every generation), are not we and the world better off for it having been made in order to preserve America as one nation?
Posted by: Greg at
04:19 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 657 words, total size 4 kb.
59 queries taking 0.2229 seconds, 209 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
