It’s an important listing, a point-by-point discussion with facts we have, not what has been revealed in courts. The full thread is below, first level. There are links inside the thread you may wish to explore at “X.”
Read this thread. I would like to pose some hypothetical questions to insurrection-deniers: Is there anything Trump could have done that *would* have unambiguously constituted insurrection — anything that you’d acknowledge *does* require disqualifying him? 1/ https://t.co/9MA9IPQqmf
What if, in the runup to 1/6, Trump had explicitly told his supporters to descend on the Capitol to stop the VP and Congress from certifying the transfer of power *by any means necessary*? Well, here’s what he did do: 2/ pic.twitter.com/9sXgh3QsQL
Read this thread. I would like to pose some hypothetical questions to insurrection-deniers: Is there anything Trump could have done that *would* have unambiguously constituted insurrection — anything that you’d acknowledge *does* require disqualifying him? 1/
An additional thing that bugs me about the “it wasn’t secession so it might not be insurrection” argument (beyond the baseline definitional flaw) is that, as a matter of pure abstraction, a failed coup is worse than failed secession.
What if, in the runup to 1/6, Trump had explicitly told his supporters to descend on the Capitol to stop the VP and Congress from certifying the transfer of power *by any means necessary*? Well, here’s what he did do: 2/
What if Trump had explicitly told top DOJ officials to fabricate evidence of widespread election fraud because he needed a pretext to justify his premeditated, illegal scheme to sabotage the transfer of power? Well, here’s what he did do: 3/
What if Trump had repeatedly and explicitly told his VP to ignore the law and abuse his authority to subvert the electoral count in keeping with his premeditated scheme to sabotage the transfer of power? Well, here’s what he did do: 4/
What if Trump, as he harangued the mob on 1/6, had explicitly told them to force Pence to scuttle the transfer of power, broadcasting a message to Pence that if he failed, he’d face the mob’s fury? Well, here’s what he did say: 5/
What if, while the mob attacked the Capitol, Trump had tweeted explicit instructions that the rioters should do whatever it takes to force Pence to sabotage the transfer of power? Well, here’s what Trump did tweet — again, *while* the mob was rampaging: 6/
What if Trump, as people begged him to call off the mob, explicitly said no, because he wanted them to keep going, to intimidate the VP and Congress from certifying the transfer of power? Well, here’s what he did do: 7/
Would you really deny the sum total of those hypotheticals = insurrection? Doubtful. Yet the line between that and what Trump did do is functionally nonexistent. The case that his insurrection was ambiguous rests on a deliberately blinkered reading of uncontested facts. 8/
Here’s how the CO ruling defines the threshold for committing insurrection: “a concerted and public use of force or threat of force…to hinder or prevent the US government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power.” 9/
Insurrection-deniers should say (1) whether the CO ruling’s description of the threshold Q is a reasonable one; and if so, (2) whether Trump’s conduct meets it. If your answers are no, what *would* be disqualifying? Or is the claim that Disqualification is a dead letter? 10/
Yes, disqual could have severe consequences/enter new territory. But via
notes, the case for disqualification also rests on whether someone who so flagrantly broke their oath of office can be trusted to take the oath again. Read Parloff’s whole thread: 12/
“A construction of Section Three that would nevertheless allow a former President who broke his oath, not only to participate in the government again but to run for and hold the highest office in the land, is flatly unfaithful to the Section’s purpose.” /14
Any political discussion of this matter simply must include Trump’s current threats to *again* serially violate his oath of office and even to be a “dictator.” Are there consequences in green lighting all this? You need to weigh one set of consequences against the other. 13/13
This is a discussion for voters much more than a discussion for prosecutors and courts.
We do not need courts to tell us Trump is unqualified to be president. But we need to mark our ballots to reflect that judgment, as voters, to keep America great.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Neal Augenstein at WTOP Radio in Washington, D.C. posted this photo on Twitter: @AugensteinWTOP — Richard Collins III’s graduation gown draped over front row chairs at Bowie State University ceremony. He was murdered Saturday.
Bowie State University honored a man who should have graduated today, Richard Collins III.
Another reminder that senseless violence threatens us all, and that we must oppose all violence, regardless its origin.
If you follow my Tweets, or if you watch what I post on Facebook, you may have noticed I frequently credit editorial cartoonists with telling the truth. Cartoonists fill a critical need. I admire their work.
That’s not strong enough. I find that political cartoons offer truths, in quickly grokable form, that would remain hidden in news and commentary otherwise.
Perhaps more importantly, cartoons lampoon those who desperately, bitterly need lampooning.
Why is that important? Lampooning exposes crazy behaviors in our leaders, behaviors that if unchecked might lead a group to disaster. Or a community. Or a nation. Or a planet.
Ancient sayings, properly and improperly attributed to various sources, over a period of 500 to 1,000 years point to the importance of lampooning in correcting actions of leaders and governments. This version comes from a Sophocles play, Antigone (620-3):
For cunningly of old
was the celebrated saying revealed: evil sometimes seems good
to a man whose mind
a god leads to destruction.
Lampooning helps, illustrating perhaps with laughter where the problem lies, though it also suggests that the chief perpetrators and promulgators of the craziness may be immune from such insights, whether through laughter or any other method.
If those lampooned genuinely cannot see the humor, a greater problem is exposed. That’s the point. Expose the madness, lay it bare for all to see. Sane people will work to help the insane, and avoid leading others into that madness. Lampooning provides us a great tool to avoid disasters, if we would only look. Laughter is optional, if the message gets through.
No god and no religion can survive ridicule. No church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and live.*
We got a sharp and painful reminder of these facts yesterday, when a group of gunmen, stung by ridicule from a French satire magazine, stormed that magazine’s offices and brutally gunned down a score of people, a dozen of whom died. Their form of religious struggle appears insane to sane people, and when that is pointed out to them, they behave with more intense insanity.
To these gunman, whose existence alone is a blasphemous assault on the idea of peaceful religion, ridicule in publication was too much to take. Rather than answer with other cartoons or parody, or serious thought in print, they attempted to change the playing field’s fairness.
In doing they exposed their critics as accurate and true. Those already crazed by the gods probably have no sense of irony left, either.
This morning comes the word that Charlie Hebdo will publish next week as scheduled. Instead of the usual run of 113,000 copies, the first run will be more than a million, to meet greater demand. Stricken down by gunmen, Charlie Hebdo rises phoenix-like, with strength multiplied by more than ten.
We mourn the cartoonists and editors lost. They are martyrs in the cause of freedom and peace, and especially in the “jihad” they engage in for freedom of expression, something that we know now is not a uniquely American virtue or necessity.
Throughout history memorable phrases heralded periods of great change, when people took a stand against tyranny and violence, and stood for freedom and peace.
” . . . Freedom of speech and expression . . . Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way . . . Freedom from Want . . . Freedom from Fear. . .”
Beyond Charlie Hebdo, the world’s cartoonists and editorialists storm traditional and electronic media with support for the cartoonists. Here below are some examples, in no particular order. What other cartoons or commentary have you seen that we all should see?
Andy Marlette, cartoonist for the Pensacola News-Journal borrowed the saying from the sticker that Woody Guthrie used on his guitar, “This Machine Kills Fascists”:
Andy Marlette of the Pensacola News-Journal, borrowing from Woody Guthrie’s guitar
Pete Seeger borrowed Woody’s line, and painted on the drum head of his banjo, “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender.” Marlette also penned a piece for USA Today.
Cuban Angel Boligan (@AngelBoligan):
Cuban-born cartoonist Angel Boligan, on Charlie Hebdo
Nate Beeler’s cartoon on Charlie Hebdo, for the Columbus Dispatch
Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune:
Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune
Ricardo Sanabria in Venezuela:
Ricardo Sanabria, Venezuela
Manjool, an Indian cartoonist:
“Last message from #CharlieHebdo cartoonists to their killers. My #cartoon “
Clay Bennett at the Chattanooga, Tennessee newspapers:
Clay Bennett’s cartoon on the tragedy at Charlie Hebdo
NOT by Banksy, but by Lucille Clerc:
Cartoon circulated as by Banksy, but really by graphic designer Lucille Clerc
John Cole, Scranton Times-Tribune:
@AnnePhutto said: Je suis Charlie…my 12 year old daughter’s favorite cartoon in response to the tragedy. Cartoon by John Cole, Scranton Times-Tribune
Charlie Hebdo dead? I don’t think so.
______________
* Twain also warned against taking ridicule too far, and spoke on the difficulty of knowing, if you’re the butt of the ridicule:
Sense of ridicule is bitterer than death & more feared. — men commit suicide daily to escape it.
– Mark Twain’s Notebooks and Journals, Vol. 3, p. 346.
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
– Pudd’nhead Wilson
Politically, he’s rarely right, and he’s definitely afflicted with that virus that strikes conservatives and makes them feel that if they can cover a topic with enough words, and if there is enough snark in those words, they must be right, and everyone else is a fool for not seeing that and making them king. Or at least a local lord. You can see this on display at his blog, The House of Eratosthenes.
Morgan waded into the discussion on some of our less thoughtful U.S. Senators, who think a good reason to filibuster a bill is they can’t find their own ass with both hands a copy of the bill they just know they will oppose, before they know what’s in the bill (no bias here).
Specifically, Morgan’s defending Sen. Marc Rubio’s right not to know what’s in the compromise reached by Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, because Morgan just knows that those two libruls from those two gun-hating states have put in language on ammunition magazines that will deprive crazy shooters of their sport in shooting babies somehow might “infringe” on the actual ownership of the gun.
I answered in a previous thread — but this really should get more discussion, and perhaps if I make a post out of it, someone will discuss.
This is the post — I won’t put all of it in quotes, to make it a bit easier to read (and I may add a link here and there):
Alright. First, if you’re trying to make this look like “reasonable” or “common sense” gun “safety” legislation as they call it, it’s a good idea to stay away from this capacity-limitation stuff. To swap out a magazine — not clip — I don’t need eleven seconds, I don’t need half that. I’m not anywhere close to James Bond, or Barney in The Expendables…I merely maintain familiarity and confidence/competence with my sidearm. If I can do it in two seconds, a lot of other people can as well. So you’re counting on a payoff there that you’re not getting. The whole magazine-capacity thing is not only a distraction, it actually highlights for the benefit of the knowledgeable public which loudmouth legislators ought not to have anything to do with gun legislation, or guns either.
Helluva distraction. There’s no such proposal, but you’re so bugged about it you can’t argue straight.
Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Candidate Pat Toomey addresses protestors at the Philadelphia Tea Party on April 18, 2009. (He won) Wikipedia image
Maybe we’re being sneaky. Maybe we’re getting you all worked up over something not in the bill so you’ll have a heart attack and be unable to lobby your senators to go easy on baby killers.
Or maybe you guys can’t read. Can’t, won’t, doesn’t make much difference — you’re so sure of your position you not only damn the facts, you damn the existence of the facts and the non-existence of the hoodoos you fear.
It comes down to this: A gun has a certain number of bullets with which it can be loaded, before it becomes an instrument of death — that number is one. Whoever isn’t familiar with that, should be escorted off the range.
Think of all the gun ranges put out of business if we did that!
Of course, that is a comment on the mechanics; as far as process goes, the number is zero, since one of the basic rules of guns safety is “the gun is always loaded.”
I don’t think a crazy guy should be allowed to pump out 150 soldier-killer bullets in 5 minutes, with most of them going into the heads and faces of more than a score of 6-year-old kids. You seem to think that is such a sacred right that we . . . well, I don’t know what you propose.
You seem to think that forcing crazy men to reload is unfair. I think you’re not being fair to those six-year-old kids.
The evidence in Newtown is that the one reload he did took 11 seconds, and a teacher got 11 kids out of the school, to safety, in that time.
It took him five shots to blast through the safety lock on the door — had he been limited to five-round clips, he’d have been out of ammo in one gun just getting through the door.
I cannot imagine why you think we can’t be fair to six year old kids, but we must give crazy men more than a sporting chance to murder 20 unarmed people. I think my rights would be safer if I didn’t go with your defense of the crazy man’s rights.
Now, is it technically impossible to limit the rounds and reduce the carnage? Not according to the record.
Facts are stubborn things. That old John Adams sure got that right.
If I were Sen. Rubio, considering for the moment supporting this gun “safety” bill, and decided to read it all the way through, I’d change my mind and oppose it the first time I saw something about magazine capacity limits, because that would tell me someone wrote it without knowing anything about how guns are supposed to be treated around a public that we don’t want to be hurt by them. Which is the subject of the bill.
We know you’re not going to read the bill, just like Rubio hasn’t. He has a sort of duty to read it — but you’re so cock sure that you’re smarter than every other guy in the country and that you can see the future before God, you can’t be bothered to read even the quick summary of the bill.
It pains me when you reinforce all the stereotypes of the right-wing, can’t-tell-me-nuthin’ nuts, Morgan. If you’re going to pretend to be thoughtful, at least read the stuff, will you?
Gustave Doré drawing: Don Quijote de La Mancha and Sancho Panza, 1863 Wikipedia image
You’re so cock-sure that there would be a crazy proposal of the type you fear that you can’t be bothered to read the bill and see that there’s nothing at all like it. Worse than Don Quixote tilting at windmills, you’re shooting at windmills that are not dragons, but behind which children were playing a few minutes ago. See, Quixote was harmless with his lance. Facts again: Guns are not lances.
Second. The Constitution guarantees me certain God-given rights, which supposedly nobody can take away from me, and I wouldn’t be able to discard even if I wanted to. Conservatives and liberals would agree — with different examples in mind — that We The People have lately encountered considerable difficulty electing representatives who will truly protect these rights.
Quite to the contrary, we’ve succeeded in electing nuts who are so dedicated to protecting those rights, they’ll go overboard to be sure that anything even close to resembling a right of a white male with a gun cannot be regulated rationally. Rex Tillerson‘s right to pour oil in every backyard in Arkansas is defended, Rep. Joe Barton apologizes to the white guys who run BP for all those Cajuns’ having put their Gulf of Mexico where BP could pollute the hell out of it. A white guy wants sex, well, some women “rape easy,” “they’re just good-time-lovin’ football players and football is an American game,” and if he’s an Army or Air Force officer, his superior will dismiss the rape charges. Jeremy Dimon gets to keep his freedom, and all the money banks stole from black families put out of their homes in New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles because his bank and his cronies’ banks screwed up the mortgages.
And if you want to shoot up a theater, or a school, and kill a bunch of unarmed people — well, you know, that’s a right, right?
I cannot imagine what rights you think are not defended, for white males.
Right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Right to quiet enjoyment? Right to be free from assault and battery? Right not get life-saving and cheap medical care for your kid? Right not to have to bury your kid as child? Not all rights are enumerated rights. You seem to miss some of the more important ones, when we get right down to it.
Now, if one worries about rights for anyone of color, or rights of children to health care or education, or rights of women to fair pay — well, none of those people are mentioned in the Constitution, are they? They all look like Dred Scott, to a Congress of white males.
In view of that, I like the idea of a Senator who made up his mind to oppose a gun bill before reading all of it (your headline would imply that he hasn’t read any of it, which is not substantiated by your story).
I see no evidence Rubio wasn’t telling the truth — and Cruz is probably too stupid to understand it, so I believe him when he says he can’t even find the bill that was placed in the middle of his desk on March 22. I swear that guy puts an icepick over his left eyeball every night he can.
This would be in keeping with his oath to uphold the Constitution: If the bill has something that cannot be reconciled with the Constitution, out it goes.
There is nothing in the Constitution which says anyone has to be an inadequate anal orifice. You’re reading it wrong.
Or have you even read it? You haven’t read the gun control bill. Why should you read the Constitution?
In reality, there is nothing in the Constitution that says any Member of Congress must be a roadblock, or should be a roadblock, nor that there should be any roadblocks at all. Filibustering is not a Constitutional right — not mentioned in any way.
After all, there is a period-end-of-sentence after the word “infringed.” It doesn’t say “shall not be infringed, unless something really spiffy is written that makes the infringing seem like a swell idea.”
But, you don’t read. I forgot. As with most conservatives, you think you know what is in a text without reading it, predudging it from . . . well, prejudging it, anyway.
“Prejudge” isn’t related to “prejudice” in the conservative dictionary, anyway.
This is the way I want ALL guarantees to me, or to anybody else, to be enforced. I want my renter’s insurance to be enforced this way. I want my employment contracts to be enforced this way. It’s only fair.
Can you do what no other gun rights advocate has done, Morgan?
Tell us what infringement there would be if you had to limit your automatics, semi-automatics, or single shots, to a five-bullet magazine. How would that, in any way, infringe on your right to keep arms, or bear them?
After you stumble over that one, tell us how it affects your right at all to fill out a form that lets a gun seller figure out whether you’re being straight about not being a felon, and not being a crazy shooter, and not fronting for a crazy shooter or felon.
How does filling out a form to make sure you’re legal, infringe on your right to keep and bear arms? There’s nothing in that amendment that says you can keep your gun ownership or bearing secret — in fact, in many states, keeping a gun concealed is a crime (without a permit).
Tell us how anyone’s rights are infringed by those common sense proposals, one of which isn’t even being proposed.
If I submit a form to the Social Security Administration, or to the IRS, or to some state agency like the DMV, and the form has 88 blocks in it and I botched something somewhere around the 8th or 9th block, it would be patently absurd for me to stand there and berate the DMV clerk who rejected it with “Why didn’t you read blocks ten through eighty-eight?? What am I paying you to do with your time??”
So you won’t do that anymore? That’s good news. I hope it’s a movement, and it catches on.
Aggravating as the situation would be, such a reaction would be very silly…because once the 8th or 9th block is screwed up, it’s an invalid form, and even though blocks 10 through 88 may be loaded with wonderfully accurate information, in context it’s still a bunch of nonsense until they’re copied on to another form that has been filled out PROPERLY. So reading them would actually be an inappropriate use of that time that I bought through my tax money by paying the clerk’s salary. Well, if that’s true of clerks, it’s certainly true of Senators, who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
I don’t think that’s a good analogy. Your paying your taxes is not similar in any way your elected representatives’ lying to you about whether they read bills or not, and using the pretense that they’ve not seen what they know is in the bill, to block the majority from even debating what is the best thing for the nation.
In their constitutional duty to represent you, they don’t have the right to boldly lie about what they’re doing for demagogue points.
It’s not illegal, but it’s dishonest, disgusting, and unpatriotic. It doesn’t represent you well — at least, I don’t think that you’re so corrupt that you can only get by by lying through your teeth and making phony excuses.
Sorta like enforcement of a lease — lying through your teeth about the rent isn’t a good idea, regardless you’re the tenant or the landlord.
Why am I having to explain the above?
Because you’re trying to defend ugly skullduggery on a bill you don’t know much about?
Because you sank all of your retirement funds into a gun manufacturer, and you just realized that rational gun laws might take that gold mine away? Because you’re a conservative, and these days that means “so congenitally unable to tell the truth that, when a conservative shoots a hole-in-one on the golf course, he writes ‘0’ on the score card?”
I don’t know.
You’re doing a great job of supporting one of my pet theories, that liberals are people who haven’t actually had to deal with the bureaucracies their ideas create.
And you’re providing ample support for a couple of hypotheses I’ve wished didn’t need to be tested: One, that conservatives really DON’T know what a theory is, especially contrasted to hypotheses; two, that conservatives can’t be bothered to read the book, or the law, or the proposal, or anything else that might inform their arguments, probably out of fear they’ll realize their prejudices are wrong; three, that conservatives really like rules, out of their defense of “traditional” life and “order” — but they think the rules never apply to themselves or their supporters; and four, that the fact that the conservative position is correct should be so self-evident, no matter how half-wit or knuckleheaded the idea, that conservatives will never stoop to actually arguing the issues — keep John Walsh and Candy Lightner far away from conservatives, because they have no real defense for why we treat automobiles as more valuable than children or why we never stick to our guns about criminalizing drunk drivers who kill, especially repeatedly — and so, keep the parents of the Newtown victims far away from Washington, and demonize them as soft-on-crime, anti-patriotic, anti-Constitution liberal fuzzy heads, so we don’t have to look them in the eye and explain why we’re voting to defend the right of the idiot to shoot their children without cause, justification, warning, remorse or chance for retribution.
What’s more important, overarming people (the better to reduce the population), or keeping kids alive? (“We secretly hate children, which is why everyone of our policies is designed to make childhood difficult, cripple children educationally, mentally or physically, or kill them.”)
I do have to say though, I can see an upside to having it work the way you want…it would give me great pleasure, when I fill out a form wrong, to throw a hissy fit about “why didn’t you read the rest of my form?” But realistically, of course there’s no way it can work like that.
I thought you just had a mental burp — but now I see you’re on some tear about filling in forms incorrectly.
What difference could that possibly make?
Apparently there’s another trait of conservatives: The tendency to dissolve into irrelevant rants, instead of facing up to real problems, and making hard decisions about real solutions.
Here’s one of my nominees for the next editions of Great Speeches of the 21st Century, and Great Speeches in American History. Sen. Mike Johnston, on March 11, in the Colorado State Senate, spoke against coward, “hollow men,” who commit mass shootings, and how to protect from them:
Notes from YouTube posting:
Published on Mar 12, 2013
March 11, 2013: Sen. Mike Johnston (D-Denver) describes how gun safety legislation, particularly HB 13-1224, can make a difference.
What do you think?
Colorado State Senator Michael Johnston – Wikipedia Photo
‘Eleven kids saved in eleven seconds’ seems like a powerful argument, to me.
And this: “And so the bad news is that at that moment will be outgunned. The good news is that in America that never means we will be outfought.”
And this: “The task of taking lives, and the task of saving lives, are fundamentally different endeavors, and they require different tools.”
At about 6:04 into this, listen to Sen. Johnston talk about the “cost of living and loving is that it takes up so much space in our lives.”
President Obama visits with survivors of the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. July 22, 2012 – White House photo. Click image to go to White House site, with more information on reducing gun violence.
Yeah, I know: Someone has sent you a post on Facebook claiming there are more murders from hammers than guns, and they quote Fox.
If they’re not complete nuts, they were careful and noted it was rifles being compared, and not all guns.
Then, just to rub it in, that person who sent you the link said something like, ‘so you propose hammer control, too?’
The best debaters in college learn to listen to what their opponents say, and not what they think their opponents should have said. Good lawyers listen like that, too, in court, and in depositions.
See that last word in the headline? “Rifles.”
Yeah, it’s a limited part of the total population of guns.
Total gun deaths in 2011 were 8,583 — continuing a five-year trend downward, thanks for small blessings. Homicides only, not counting suicides — according to figures compiled by the FBI.
Did more than 8,500 people die from hammer assaults in 2011?
No, the same tally shows 496 people were murdered by use of “Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.).”
496 is 8,087 fewer than the 8,583 gun deaths. But rifles? Oh, yeah.
323 people died from rifle fire. 356 died from shotgun wounds. 6,220 died from handguns, 97 from “other guns,” and 1,587 died from gunshots where the type of gun was not recorded on the report to the FBI. Add them up, you get 8,583 dead, murdered by gunfire.
Now, the gun advocates nuts say that it’s fair to compare rifle deaths only, since only the AR-15 is being questioned, and is the target for “taking guns away.”
Reinstate and strengthen the ban on assault weapons: The shooters in Aurora and Newtown used the type of semiautomatic rifles that were the target of the assault weapons ban that was in place from 1994 to 2004. That ban was an important step, but manufacturers were able to circumvent the prohibition with cosmetic modifications to their weapons. Congress must reinstate and strengthen the prohibition on assault weapons.
And:
Limit ammunition magazines to 10 rounds: The case for prohibiting high-capacity magazines has been proven over and over; the shooters at Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, and Newtown all used magazines holding more than 10 rounds, which would have been prohibited under the 1994 law. These magazines enable any semiautomatic weapon to be used as an instrument of mass violence, yet they are once again legal and now come standard with many handguns and rifles. Congress needs to reinstate the prohibition on magazines holding more than 10 rounds.
President Obama laid out a plan that will make it substantially more difficult for people who shouldn’t have guns suitable for mass killings, to have them. More important, however, the President’s plan steps up the non-gun means available to stop mass shootings before a shooter gets to a campus armed and ready to kill.
The “discussion” will get more ugly, I predict, before it gets better.
Nelson Mandela outside of Westminster Abbey in 1962 — this trip, without permission from the South Africa government, led to his indictment and arrest.
Impressive story about the mystery of Nelson Mandela’s arrest in 1962, atThe Wall Street Journal — a story by Peter Wonacott, on December 22, 2012, page C3. After all these years, how the South African government was tipped off that Mr. Mandela would be where he was, posing as who he posed as, remains a mystery. Mandela was arrested, tried and convicted of several crimes, ultimately spending 27 years in jail, refusing to give up his cause to gain his freedom. When the system bent to his wishes, he was released from jail and elected president of his nation.
The key paragraph in the story, the point where the long arc of history was forcefully bent to justice and peace:
Mr. Mandela has described how he had hidden a loaded revolver in the car that day in 1962 but decided not to use it. Choosing not to fight his way out began a journey that would take him through prison to the presidency on a platform of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation among the nation’s races.
Increasing the number of people with an increasing number of guns, however, does not offer more opportunities to change history like that.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Many key events on November 7. November 17, 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution replaced the Kerensky government in Russia, for example. The Bolsheviks pulled Russia out of World War I, and set the nation on a course towards soviet government whose advocacy of soviet communism would be one of the major issues of the 20th century.
Let us not forget the death of Elijah Lovejoy on November 7, 1837. Lovejoy edited an abolitionist newspaper in Alton, Illinois — then a rival of St. Louis and larger than Chicago.
A pro-slavery mob murdered Lovejoy on November 7, 1837. Details from the American Memory project at the Library of Congress; all links go to the Library of Congress sources:
On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob while defending the site of his anti-slavery newspaper The Saint Louis Observer. His death both deeply affected many individuals who opposed slavery and greatly strengthened the cause of abolition.
Lovejoy, who was born on November 9, 1802, in Albion, Maine, decided to seek his fortune in the Midwest after graduating from college. Short on funds, he walked to St. Louis, Missouri, where, over time, he became editor and part-owner of The St. Louis Times. His name appeared in the Times for the first time on August 14, 1830, and for the last time—as editor—on February 18, 1832.
In 1832, caught up in the powerful religious revival movement sweeping the U.S. and its frontier territories, Lovejoy experienced a conversion, which led him to sell his interests in the paper and enroll in Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. Two years later, a group of St. Louis businessmen, who sought to start a newspaper to promote religious and moral education, recruited Lovejoy to return to the city as editor of The St. Louis Observer.
Lovejoy, supported by abolitionist friends such as Edward Beecher (the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), became ever more radical in his anti-slavery editorials. He first supported African recolonization then endorsed gradual emancipation. By 1835, he sanctioned abolition in the District of Columbia, and, by 1837, championed immediate universal emancipation.
Lovejoy’s editorials raised local ire while they increased national circulation. A group of local citizens, including the future Senator Thomas Hart Benton, declared that freedom of speech did not include the right to speak against slavery. As mob violence increased over the issue, Lovejoy, now a husband and father, decided to move his family to Alton, across the Mississippi River in the free state of Illinois.
At the time Elijah Lovejoy moved to Alton it was “a booming town.” Alton had some 2,500 residents and was considered both the rival of St. Louis and a far more important Illinois city than Chicago.
Mobs had destroyed Lovejoy’s presses on a number of occasions, but when a new press arrived in November 1837, the violence escalated. No sooner was the new press offloaded from the steamboat Missouri Fulton than a drunken mob formed and tried to set fire to the warehouse where it was stored. When Lovejoy ran out to push away a would-be-arsonist, he was shot.
Throughout the North and West, membership in anti-slavery societies increased sharply following Lovejoy’s death. Yet officials in Illinois, with one exception, made little comment. Twenty-eight year old State Representative Abraham Lincoln stated publicly:
Let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own, and his children’s liberty…Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother…in short let it become the political religion of the nation…1
Search the collection Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 on Elijah P. Lovejoy and Alton Trials to find items pertaining to the progression of the Alton riots and the death of Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy.
Learn more about the Second Great Awakening, the religious movement that swept the U.S. between the inaugurations of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. See Section VII of the online exhibition Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.
Search across the American Memory “Photos, Prints” collections on the terms Missouri and Illinois for more images. Search on the term press for images of a wide variety of printing presses more modern than those in use during the life of Elijah Lovejoy.
Search across all collections on the term press for images of a wide variety of printing presses more modern than those used during the life of Elijah Lovejoy.
Pat Bagley, the future Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune, can be so brilliant sometimes you can’t see him.
For example, what’s he talking about here? Mass murder in Norway? Debt ceiling? The Texas State Board of Education’s assault on evolution? The Texas Lege’s attack on education? Congress’s attacks on the poor and aged?
The Last Crusade - Pat Bagley for the Salt Lake Tribune
Pass the lithium: The cartoon applies to any of those issues, and all of them.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. I get e-mail from Democrats who think incest and rape victims should be protected:
Angle’s Lemons
Nevada Republican Sharron Angle might want to steer clear of radio talk shows.
Angle – who wants abortion banned under all circumstances – suggested that a 13-year-old girl who was raped by her father should just turn “a lemon situation into lemonade.” This is the same woman who suggested that getting pregnant after a rape just might be “God’s plan.”
This kind of utter disdain for the impact of rape on women’s lives simply can’t be tolerated – especially in the United States Senate.
President Obama issued a directive ordering all federal facilities to fly the national flag at half-staff from now until Veterans Day (November 11), to honor the soldiers and civilians felled at Fort Hood, Texas.
“It is an act of violence that would have been heartbreaking had it occurred anyplace in America,” Obama said. “It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background. But it’s all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims.”
The president said he met Friday with FBI Director Robert Mueller, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others to discuss their continuing investigation into the attack, which also injured at least 30.
Obama also expressed his condolences to the victims’ families and recognized those who helped the wounded after the shooting at the base’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center. The center is where soldiers go to have their teeth checked and medical records updated before deploying overseas.
“These are the men and women we honor today. These are the men and women we’ll honor on Veterans Day,” Obama said. “And these are the men and women we shall honor every day, in times of war and times of peace, so long as our nation endures.” (from the Virginian-Pilot, in Norfolk, Virginia)
AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today issued the following statement regarding the shootings at Fort Hood:
“The Texas family suffered a significant loss today with the tragedy at Fort Hood. Along with all Texans, Anita and I are keeping those affected by today’s incidents in our thoughts and prayers.
“We are deeply saddened by today’s events, but resolve to continue supporting our troops and protecting our citizens.
“To honor those who lost their lives today, I have ordered that all Texas flags be lowered to half-staff until Sunday, and ask all Texans to pray for the victims, their families and the extended Fort Hood community.”
The governor has been in contact with military and state law enforcement officials. To provide support at Fort Hood, Gov. Perry directed the deployment of a variety of state resources to the area, including Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, Texas Rangers and helicopters, to assist in securing the perimeter of the base and provide other support as necessary.
The governor’s flag order applies to all U.S. and Texas flags under the control of the state. Flags will be lowered to half-staff on the State Capitol Building, flag displays in the Capitol Complex, and upon all public buildings, grounds and facilities beginning immediately until sunset on Sunday, November 8th.
Individuals, businesses, municipalities, counties and other political subdivisions are encouraged to fly the flag at half-staff for the same length of time as a sign of respect.
At a religious service on a state college campus, a congregant violated etiquette at communion. Some reports noted that sect members bullied the congregant on the spot. The congregant fled the service, according to some reports. An advocacy group for the religious sect demanded apologies, legal action, and ostracism for the congregant. Threats of violence against the congregant started rolling in. The congregent was told he will be murdered.
A professor at a good, small midwestern state college used his pen to urge calm among the sect’s members. Threats of violence are foolish, he says. Calm down, he said.
The professor tried to put things in perspective: Threatening murder for a violation of communion etiquette is beyond the pale, one of the dangers of violent religious sects. Such actions are the opposite of American tradition.
But then the prof took a step farther: This religious sect is functioning on superstition, he said. He said the superstition can be exposed, and he would use his skeptical powers to expose the superstition, to show everyone that threats of death on such issues are unwise, unnecessary, and to be avoided.
A. He calls for an end to bullying, and urges calm.
B. He says religious wars started this way, and he urges calm.
C. He calls for an end to bullying, but urges the professor to lay off debunking the religion.
D. He calls the professor hateful, and supports the side that issued the death threats.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 