-- Dr. Walter E. Williams
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"Here is some
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Rep. McCarthy's Magazine Ban--Worse Than First Imagined
"There are several methods of conflict resolution. First, there's the market mechanism -- let the highest bidder be the one who owns and decides how the land will be used. Then, there's government fiat, where the government dictates who gets to use the land for what purpose. Gifts might be the way where an owner arbitrarily chooses a recipient. Finally, violence is a way to resolve the question of who has the use rights to the coastline -- let people get weapons and physically fight it out. At this juncture, some might piously say, 'Violence is no way to resolve conflict!' The heck it isn't. The decision of who had the right to use most of the Earth's surface was settled through violence (wars). Who has the right to the income I earn is partially settled through the threats of violence. In fact, violence is such an effective means of resolving conflict that most governments want a monopoly on its use."
-- Dr. Walter E. Williams
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"Here is somemoron more on Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy's recently-introduced magazine ban legislation. I studied the bill's wording and I learned."
-- Dr. Walter E. Williams
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"Here is some
In Memoriam Aaron Zelman
"Can you imagine being a teenage boy, a pistol on your hip and a rifle slung over your shoulder, roaming the Arizona desert in the 1950s? There cannot have been a freer place on Earth in the entire history of the world. Liberty, self sustenance, curiosity, pride, loyalty, and a quiet spirituality, were in the very sunlight and air. A youth nurtured in such an environment could make one an unrepentant and irreversible freedom lover. Such, thankfully for all of us, was the case of Aaron Zelman."
Via Western Rifle Shooters Association
Bill Whittle: An Excellent Explanation Of Political Correctness
"This explains just about everything. However, the narrator did make a serious error about the cause of the War of Secession. I put a comment in regarding same. But even with that error, it is well worth the watch and explains why Obama was taken to Columbia (among other things)."
--Lady Val, SWR
Another Court Historian’s False Tariff History
"The only thing worse than a historian who calls himself a "Lincoln scholar" is a sociologist who does the same. This truth was on display recently in a January 9 Washington Post article entitled "Five Myths about Why the South Seceded" by one James W. Loewen"
On Gun Control And Violence, Dr. Ron Paul
"Also troubling are the renewed calls for stricter gun control laws, and for government to "do something" to somehow prevent similar incidents in the future. This always seems to be the knee jerk reaction to any crime committed with a gun. Nonsensical proposals to outlaw guns around federal officials and install bulletproof barriers in the congressional gallery only reinforce the growing perception that politicians view their own lives as far more important than the lives of ordinary citizens. Politicians and a complicit media have conditioned many citizens to view government as our protector, leading to more demands for government action whenever tragedies occur. But this impulse is at odds with the best American traditions of self-reliance and individualism, and it also leads to bad laws and the loss of liberty."
John Birch Alert
“The will to survive is not as important as the will to prevail... the answer to criminal aggression is retaliation.”
-- LTC John Dean "Jeff" Cooper, USMC (ret.) [1920-2006]
Quote via Western Rifle Shooters Association
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Tell Your Rep to Repeal ObamaCare!
The House of Representatives plans to vote on the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," H.R. 2, on Wednesday, January 19. This bill would repeal the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," Public Law 111-148, and the "Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010," Public Law 111-152, known collectively as ObamaCare.
A Rasmussen poll on December 26, 2010 showed that 60% of likely voters favor repeal of ObamaCare. And, for the first time, the same poll showed that a majority of voters expects ObamaCare will be repealed.
The House is expected to pass H.R. 2, but the Senate appears very unlikely to follow suit unless a huge outcry from the public changes enough minds.
We have to keep the pressure on Congress to stop ObamaCare as soon as possible for the sake of everyone's freedom and health.
Send a message to your Representative and Senators in support of repealing the entire ObamaCare law with H.R. 2.
Thanks.
Your friends at The John Birch Society
-- LTC John Dean "Jeff" Cooper, USMC (ret.) [1920-2006]
Quote via Western Rifle Shooters Association
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Tell Your Rep to Repeal ObamaCare!
The House of Representatives plans to vote on the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," H.R. 2, on Wednesday, January 19. This bill would repeal the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," Public Law 111-148, and the "Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010," Public Law 111-152, known collectively as ObamaCare.A Rasmussen poll on December 26, 2010 showed that 60% of likely voters favor repeal of ObamaCare. And, for the first time, the same poll showed that a majority of voters expects ObamaCare will be repealed.
The House is expected to pass H.R. 2, but the Senate appears very unlikely to follow suit unless a huge outcry from the public changes enough minds.
We have to keep the pressure on Congress to stop ObamaCare as soon as possible for the sake of everyone's freedom and health.
Send a message to your Representative and Senators in support of repealing the entire ObamaCare law with H.R. 2.
Thanks.
Your friends at The John Birch Society
The Pointless College Non-Education
"You are told that to make it in life, you must go to college. You work hard to get there. You or your parents drain savings or take out huge loans to pay for it all.
And you end up learning ... not much.
A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years. Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week."
Don't Re-Authorize PATRIOT Act
"Did you hear that the PATRIOT Act is up for reauthorization? No? Well, apparently the US intelligence services can still keep a secret."
Sign our petition: HERE.
THE DETERIORATION OF VIRTUE: CONSIDERING THE STERLING CHARACTER OF ROBERT E. LEE
"It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom benevolence belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain".
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THE STERLING CHARACTER OF ROBERT E. LEE
Senator R.M.T. Hunter On Coercion And Secession
The Founders gave no authority to the federal agent created by the States to wage war upon them. Senator Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana re-spoke the words of Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention George Mason, in the US Senate on December 31, 1860: “The most jarring elements of nature, fire and water, themselves, are not more incompatible than such a mixture of civil liberty and military execution…Will not the citizens of the invaded State assist one another, till they rise as one man, and shake off the Union altogether?”
Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
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The War Between the States Sesquicentennial:
Senator R.M.T. Hunter On Coercion And Secession
“The time came, however, when the mantle of leadership that Buchanan had thrown upon himself was to pass to other shoulders; for on January 8, 1861, the President modified his original position [of having no authority to coerce a State] to permit the use of force against a State for defensive purposes. Immediately, Jefferson Davis took issue…”What power has the President to use the Army and Navy except to execute process?...Are we to have sergeants sent over the land instead of civil magistrates?...when we trace our history to its early foundation, under the first two Presidents…we find that this idea of using the Army and Navy to execute the laws at the discretion of the President, was one not entertained, still less acted upon, in any case.”
The mantle which Buchanan discarded fell upon the shoulders of [Senator] R.M.T. Hunter [of Virginia], who, on January 11, 1861, elaborately discussed the constitutional justification for the slogan of consent as an essential to the maintenance of the Union:
“I proceed then, Mr. President, to make good my proposition, that this Federal Government cannot be carried on within the limits and jurisdiction of a State, without the assent, the aid, and the sympathy of its people. In the first place, it depends on the Legislatures of the different States to elect members of this body. If a majority of the States, although they might represent a small minority of the people, were to refuse to send Senators here, your Government is gone; You have lost one of the most important arms of the system; you have no longer a Senate…Can you administer the judicial powers of this Government within a State if that State withdraws its assent and is determined to resist that administration?
Suppose a State repeals the penalties for murder as against the officers of the General Government; suppose it repeals the penalties for false imprisonment as against those officers;…if a State were to undertake to obstruct the course of Federal justice in that way, where would the remedy be found within the constitutional power of this Government? To obtain the right of exclusive legislation within the dock-yards, forts, arsenals, and other needful buildings, Congress must have, first, the consent of the States. That must be given under the Constitution. Suppose a State refuses its consent.
Where would be your court-houses, your forts, your custom-houses? Where would you have the locus in quo, from which to administer the functions and the power of this General Government? Everywhere, if they were to refuse to give you this assent, you would be under State jurisdiction; and thus it would be in the power of the State constantly to thwart, obstruct, and prevent the administration of Federal justice, or the administration of Federal power, within her limits and jurisdiction…
Sir, the only mode in which you could protect the administration of the Federal affairs and the Federal jurisdiction within the State, would be to set aside the State government by force, and to reduce it to a territorial condition; and then what would be the result? You first coerce a State because it secedes from thirty-two other members of this Confederacy; and you turn around and secede yourselves from it by reducing it from a condition of a State to the position of a Territory!”
(The South as a Conscious Minority, 1789-1861, A Study in Political Thought, Jesse T. Carpenter, New York University Press, 1930, pp. 218-219)
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Senator R.M.T. Hunter On Coercion And Secession
Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
========
The War Between the States Sesquicentennial:
Senator R.M.T. Hunter On Coercion And Secession
“The time came, however, when the mantle of leadership that Buchanan had thrown upon himself was to pass to other shoulders; for on January 8, 1861, the President modified his original position [of having no authority to coerce a State] to permit the use of force against a State for defensive purposes. Immediately, Jefferson Davis took issue…”What power has the President to use the Army and Navy except to execute process?...Are we to have sergeants sent over the land instead of civil magistrates?...when we trace our history to its early foundation, under the first two Presidents…we find that this idea of using the Army and Navy to execute the laws at the discretion of the President, was one not entertained, still less acted upon, in any case.”
The mantle which Buchanan discarded fell upon the shoulders of [Senator] R.M.T. Hunter [of Virginia], who, on January 11, 1861, elaborately discussed the constitutional justification for the slogan of consent as an essential to the maintenance of the Union:
“I proceed then, Mr. President, to make good my proposition, that this Federal Government cannot be carried on within the limits and jurisdiction of a State, without the assent, the aid, and the sympathy of its people. In the first place, it depends on the Legislatures of the different States to elect members of this body. If a majority of the States, although they might represent a small minority of the people, were to refuse to send Senators here, your Government is gone; You have lost one of the most important arms of the system; you have no longer a Senate…Can you administer the judicial powers of this Government within a State if that State withdraws its assent and is determined to resist that administration?
Suppose a State repeals the penalties for murder as against the officers of the General Government; suppose it repeals the penalties for false imprisonment as against those officers;…if a State were to undertake to obstruct the course of Federal justice in that way, where would the remedy be found within the constitutional power of this Government? To obtain the right of exclusive legislation within the dock-yards, forts, arsenals, and other needful buildings, Congress must have, first, the consent of the States. That must be given under the Constitution. Suppose a State refuses its consent.
Where would be your court-houses, your forts, your custom-houses? Where would you have the locus in quo, from which to administer the functions and the power of this General Government? Everywhere, if they were to refuse to give you this assent, you would be under State jurisdiction; and thus it would be in the power of the State constantly to thwart, obstruct, and prevent the administration of Federal justice, or the administration of Federal power, within her limits and jurisdiction…
Sir, the only mode in which you could protect the administration of the Federal affairs and the Federal jurisdiction within the State, would be to set aside the State government by force, and to reduce it to a territorial condition; and then what would be the result? You first coerce a State because it secedes from thirty-two other members of this Confederacy; and you turn around and secede yourselves from it by reducing it from a condition of a State to the position of a Territory!”
(The South as a Conscious Minority, 1789-1861, A Study in Political Thought, Jesse T. Carpenter, New York University Press, 1930, pp. 218-219)
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Senator R.M.T. Hunter On Coercion And Secession
This Week in American Military History:
W. Thomas Smith, Jr.
Jan. 17, 1781: Continental Army forces -- including infantry, cavalry, dragoons (horse-mounted infantry), and militia – under the command of Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan, clash with a better-equipped, more-experienced force of British Army regulars and Loyalists under the command of Lt. Col. Banastre “Bloody Ban” Tarleton in a sprawling pastureland known as Hannah’s Cowpens in the South Carolina upcountry.
Celebrated today as the Battle of Cowpens, the engagement ends in a decisive victory for Morgan – who defeats Tarleton in a classic double-envelopment – and a near-irrevocable loss of men, equipment, and reputation for the infamous Tarleton and his “British Legion.”
The Shattered Glass: On Lee's Birthday, 2011
"It is not even the Lee of Gettysburg who moves us today, the Lee who would meet Pickett after it was over, all over, and say only: "All this has been my fault." Politic leaders, with one eye on winning the next election and the other on writing their memoirs, don't say such things now. Nor did they then. Only Lee took responsibility. Only Lee did not write his memoirs.
It is not the storybook Lee who stills us this day every year, but the man who inspired the stories. Not the marble man on the pedestal, the sculpted Lee of statuary and a thousand Confederate Memorial Day speeches, but the solitary, singular Lee -- the Lee who would follow wherever Duty led. And we in turn would follow him. Because he was: Lee. And still is."
The Shattered Glass: On Lee's Birthday, 2011No Walmart On Hallowed Ground!
| Speak out against a Walmart on Hallowed Ground |
 |
| Wilderness Battlefield in Orange County, Virginia. Help us convince Walmart to relocate their proposed Superstore. |
We need your help TODAY to turn the tide in our favor in the fight against Walmart to save our hallowed Civil War battleground. Sign our petition to US Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner NOW urging them to ask Walmart to relocate away from historic Wilderness Battlefield.
Time is running out.
We have been fighting for years to protect the hallowed ground of Wilderness, but with a court trial to decide major issues in the case starting on January 25th – just 7 days from today – we are at a critical juncture.
United States Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner are champions of historic preservation and their leadership in support of Wilderness Battlefield could make the difference in finding a win-win solution.
Construction of a Walmart store, within the boundaries of Wilderness Battlefield and just across the road from Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park in Orange County, Virginia, would irrevocably harm the battlefield, degrade the visitor’s experience of the National Park, and open the flood gates for large-scale commercial development.
Please sign our petition to Senators Webb and Warner TODAY as we urge them to ask Walmart to relocate its Superstore to an alternative site away from the battlefield – one that still meets their business needs but is more respectful of our Civil War history.
With your help, we can win the fight to save an important part of America’s heritage.
Thank you for your support.
Via Ann, Belle Grove
Opening Shot On ObamaCare Scheduled for Wednesday
-- First volley in what will be a long battle
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://gunowners.org
The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to hold its first vote on repealing the anti-gun ObamaCare law this Wednesday.
Good for them!
As GOA has pointed out for more than a year, ObamaCare will allow the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to troll the federal health records database in an effort to disarm hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Americans.
Even after the forced adoption of language to take care of SOME of the anti-gun problems with the bill, ObamaCare still does not prevent the government from using health records to place people on the FBI gun prohibition list (the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS).
But, some would protest, ObamaCare does not explicitly mention firearms or background checks.
Well, neither did ObamaCare explicitly give Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the ability to promulgate rules to regulate insurance premiums. But she did.
Neither did it give HHS the ability to implement the deleted "death panel" language. But they did, until public outrage forced them to retreat.
Neither does any statutory law authorize the BATFE to use the Mexico drug cartel violence problem to require U.S. gun dealers to report the names of persons making purchases of more than one rifle. But they have.
So the question is this: How much do you want to bet that Barack Obama, and his anti-gun appointees, will not use every tool at their disposal to go after the Second Amendment community?
Gun Owners of America has reviewed the two-paragraph repeal bill, sponsored by new Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and it is perfect.
Please urge your Congressman to support H.R. 2, officially entitled "A bill to repeal the job-killing health care law," and to speak in favor of its passage.
But, even more important, tell your Congressman that this is just the beginning!
Already, the far left is engaging in the sleazy tactics that got this "Obamination" passed in the first place.
"Repeal would increase the debt," they say. BUT, if you eliminate the Bernie Madoff-style accounting, repeal would actually cut $700 billion from the national debt.
"It's just for show, it will be vetoed by Obama anyway," they say. BUT, many times congressmen have gone against their own party's president to override a veto -- when the American people demand it.
All friends of liberty must oppose ObamaCare with the same zeal and determination that Obama/Pelosi/Reid used to pass it.
Gun Owners of America will be tracking this vote and it will be used for the 2012 GOA Congressional Rating.
Action: Contact your Representative and urge him or her to vote FOR the ObamaCare repeal. Click over to the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center to send a pre-written message, or one of your own.
Lincoln And Fort Sumter
"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785
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--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785
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Southrons,
We have a brand new remastered DVD entitled “The Ideological Use of Slavery in American Liberalism,” by distinguished professor, Dr. Don Livingston, on our website. This is an extremely important talk because, thus far in the Sesquicentennial, all we have heard about is slavery slavery slavery.
Dr. Livingston discusses how the left USES slavery for its own political benefit. He calls the notion that the North invaded the South to free the slaves, “an absurdity.” Please visit www.BonnieBluePublishing.com for a picture, 10-minute video clip and Dr. Livingston’s bio.
The Charleston Post and Courier, in its “Charleston at War” segment Sunday, January 9, 2011, gave a PATHETIC one-sided presentation of the issues leading up to the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
It is utterly incredible that writer Brian Hicks could have left out Lincoln’s hostile and well-publicized naval flotilla loaded with troops and arms steaming fast for Fort Sumter during the most critical hour in American history. That action by Lincoln is the reason the Confederates demanded surrender. Everybody on both sides knew that reinforcing the fort meant war.
Brian Hicks mentions none of this.
Lincoln’s own commander in Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson, clearly blamed Lincoln for starting the war. When Anderson found out an attempt was going to be made to reinforce the fort, he wrote back to Lincoln and Secretary of State Cameron a letter that included:
. . . a movement made now when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country. . . . We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. . . .
Alexander Stephens wrote that the one who strikes the first blow is not the one who starts a fight.
The one who starts a fight is the one who makes the first blow necessary.
Brian Hicks, in his pseudo-history, has denied his readers extremely important and well-known details that indict Lincoln and the North as the perpetrators of the war.
The one who starts a fight is the one who makes the first blow necessary.
Brian Hicks, in his pseudo-history, has denied his readers extremely important and well-known details that indict Lincoln and the North as the perpetrators of the war.
It is a HUGE part of the Fort Sumter story to know about Lincoln’s reinforcement attempt because that’s what set everything in motion. The Confederates demanded surrender because Lincoln’s hostile naval flotilla was steaming fast to Charleston.
But Hicks wants you to believe that Southerners acted in a vacuum. He writes, “The South had declared war.”
Southerners deserve to have the entire story told, not a propagandist piece of half-history from Charleston’s newspaper.
It’s too bad Hicks constantly leaves out or distorts critical facts. His street-level descriptions are good, even exciting at times, but his segment on Fort Sumter is garbage. It is not history, and it is certainly not the truth of what happened in April, 1861.
And so, in Brian Hicks’s honor, we are reprinting the best piece ever written on Fort Sumter: “Lincoln and Fort Sumter.” It was published in August, 1937, in Volume 3, Issue 3 of The Journal of Southern History, pages 259-288, written by Charles W. Ramsdell. This brilliant treatise is well-thought-of, even today, and often cited.
Please visit our website at www.BonnieBluePublishing.com for information on Dr. Livingston’s fabulous DVD, and to get the rest of the Fort Sumter story that Brian Hicks and the Post and Courier deliberately left out.
Magna est veritas et praevalebit!
(Great is truth and it will prevail!)
Gene Kizer
Producer
P.O. Box 13012
SHOT Show Sneak Peek – Media Day At The Range
"Every year, the day before SHOT Show, several industry manufacturers gather at a remote range near the show to demonstrate some of the new stuff they have coming out that year. It gives you a chance to go shoot the guns that everyone else will only be able to handle at the show, and just about everyone in the firearms media makes it a point to be at “media day” before SHOT. Here are some of the highlights I found today at the range"