The Forced Suicide Of Field Marshall Rommel, 1944

For a time, Erwin Rommel was Hitler's favorite general. Gaining prominence in 1940 as a commander of a panzer division that smashed the French defenses (see "Blitzkrieg, 1940"), Rommel went on to command the Afrika Korps where his tactical genius, ability to inspire his troops and make the best of limited resources, prompted Hitler to elevate him to the rank of Field Marshall. In 1943, Hitler placed Rommel in command of

Rommel in the African desert, 1941

fortifying the "Atlantic Wall" along the coast of France - defenses intended to repel the inevitable invasion of Europe by the Allies.

By the beginning of 1943, Rommel's faith in Germany's ability to win the war was crumbling, as was his estimation of Hitler. Touring Germany, Rommel was appalled at the devastation of the Allied bombing raids and the erosion of the peoples' morale. He also learned for the first time of the death camps, slave labor, the extermination of the Jews and the other atrocities of the Nazi regime. Rommel became convinced that victory for Germany was a lost cause and that prolonging the war would lead only to his homeland's devastation. He came in contact with members of a growing conspiracy dedicated to ousting Hitler and establishing a separate peace with the western allies.

On July 17, 1944, British aircraft strafed Rommel's staff car, severely wounding the Field Marshall. He was taken to a hospital and then to his home in Germany to convalesce. Three days later, an assassin's bomb nearly killed Hitler during a strategy meeting at his headquarters in East Prussia. In the gory reprisals that followed, some suspects implicated Rommel in the plot. Although he may not have been aware of the attempt on Hitler's life, his "defeatist" attitude was enough to warrant Hitler's wrath. The problem for Hitler was how to eliminate Germany's most popular general without revealing to the German people that he had ordered his death. The solution was to force Rommel to commit suicide and announce that his death was due to his wounds.

Death of a German Hero

Rommel's son, Manfred, was 15 years old and served as part of an antiaircraft crew near his home. On October 14th, 1944 Manfred was given leave to return to his home where his father continued to convalesce. The family was aware that Rommel was under suspicion and that his chief of staff and his commanding officer had both been executed. Manfred's account begins as he enters his home and finds his father at breakfast:

"...I arrived at Herrlingen at 7:00 a.m. My father was at breakfast. A cup was quickly brought for me and we breakfasted together, afterwards taking a stroll in the garden.

'At twelve o'clock to-day two Generals are coming to discuss my future employment,' my father started the conversation. 'So today will decide what is planned for me; whether a People's Court or a new command in the East.'

'Would you accept such a command,' I asked.

He took me by the arm, and replied: 'My dear boy, our enemy in the East is so terrible that every other consideration has to give way before it. If he succeeds in overrunning Europe, even only temporarily, it will be the end of everything which has made life appear worth living. Of course I would go.'

Shortly before twelve o'clock, my father went to his room on the first floor and changed from the brown civilian jacket which he usually wore over riding-breeches, to his Africa tunic, which was his favorite uniform on account of its open collar.

At about twelve o'clock a dark-green car with a Berlin number stopped in front of our garden gate. The only men in the house apart from my father, were Captain Aldinger [ Rommel's aide] , a badly wounded war-veteran corporal and myself. Two generals - Burgdorf, a powerful florid man, and Maisel, small and slender - alighted from the car and entered the house. They were respectful and courteous and asked my father's permission to speak to him alone. Aldinger and I left the room. 'So they are not going to arrest him,' I thought with relief, as I went upstairs to find myself a book.

A few minutes later I heard my father come upstairs and go into my mother's room. Anxious to know what was afoot, I got up and followed him. He was standing in the middle of the room, his face pale. 'Come outside with me,' he said in a tight voice. We went into my room. 'I have just had to tell your mother,' he began slowly, 'that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour.'

MORE.

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The Forced Suicide Of Field Marshall Rommel, 1944

One great thing about Texas is we kill people who need to be dead.

EVIL LEFTIST NUN AND EVIL RAPIST/MURDERER!

The comedian Ron White says, “if you kill somebody in Texas, we’ll kill you back.” Ron White must be the only performer who hasn’t had a White House gala in his honor in the Obama White House. Of course, I don’t think White raps. But Obama is pressuring Texas Governor Rick Perry to stay the execution of Mexican convicted rapist and murderer Humberto Leal Garcia who killed a 16 year old San Antonio girl 17 years ago.

The UN and fuzzy little foreign diplomats have made Garcia’s case a cause celebre. With that and President Obama’s pressure to spare the murderer’s life makes him dead as fried chicken. This is Texas! There is NO way Governor Perry will back down and acquiesce to the United Nations, President Obama and Mexico. You see, in Texas, we don’t like any of the three! Presidente Jorge Boosh tried the same shenanigans in 2006. Didn’t work then either!

The leftists in the UN are saying that Garcia was not made aware of his consular rights at the time of his arrest. I’m pretty sure he didn’t give that 16 year old girl her right to live and grow old either. Sucks being a murderer in Texas.

Rick Perry wants to be president. He hasn’t announced yet but he badly wants it. My best guess is he will be the next president. He will not back down and spare the life of a convicted killer. Bad for the image of a Texas governor to let foreign rapist/murderers escape what they have coming to them. Especially one who raped and killed a 16 year old girl. Perry didn’t do it for Bush, certainly won’t do it for Obama

MORE.

Grant County, Oregon: The Solution To Tyranny

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LINK

By Former Sheriff Richard Mack

On June 14, 2011, “We The People” of Grant County, Oregon, gathered together in the Union High School Gymnasium to support their Sheriff. The reason they did so, was to listen to me give my presentation on the power of sheriffs and the duty they have to uphold and defend the Constitution. But more important than coming to hear me, these good people came to express their appreciation for their sheriff. You see, their Sheriff, Glenn Palmer, actually believes it’s his job to keep his Oath of Office! He actually believes that protecting the people from the enforcement of stupid laws and out of control government officials is his responsibility. So much so that he has put himself on the line, subjected himself to the scrutiny and ridicule of the mainstream establishment, as he courageously stands against the U S Forest Service! Yes, Grant County, OR, a small county of not even 7,000 people and 5,000 square miles, has set the example for the entire country as to how we restore freedom in America! A Sheriff doing his job, keeping his oath, and with the support of the people, standing together for liberty.

This did not happen overnight. The people have long endured abusive regulations by the Forest Service. The sheriff has been been working to have the USFS curtail their whimsical enforcement for years. Lately, it has fallen on deaf ears. So he was forced to take stronger action. Finally, he wrote the Forest Service a letter. Here is the letter in its entirety:

Teresa Raaf, Supervisor

Malheur National Forest

Patterson Bridge Road

John Day, Oregon 97845

Ms. Raaf, March 31, 2011

Regarding the pending cooperative policing agreement between the US Forest Service and the Grant County Sheriff, I am advising you in writing that I will not be signing the agreement. I do not believe that it is in the best interest of the people I serve or the Grant County Sheriff’s Office to continue with the agreement.

There are several issues that I will bring to your attention that at this point I will not go into detail about.

The issues include, but are not limited to, how US Forest Service LEO’s treated citizens of this county in October and November of 2010, Travel Management Plan, illegal road closures, grazing, logging, wood permits, prescribed burns, unemployment and other socio-economic issues this community faces today. There is a general mistrust of the federal government by the people of this County, State and Nation.

You are aware that I had sent at least two requests to the US Forest Service asking for information that pertains to where the US Forest Service gets its Constitutional authority to have law enforcement officers within Grant County.

One response that I have received in writing is that their authority is given through the Cooperative Policing Agreement that this agency has signed in the past. Upon asking for clarification and a second request, the response was that I needed to check with my District Attorney. Neither response in my opinion is adequate.

Under Article 1 Section 8 of the United States Constitution, the federal government is limited in its powers and authority. Your jurisdiction as I see it is limited in nature to the Federal Building in John Day.

Within the confines of Grant County, Oregon, the duties and responsibility of law enforcement will rest with the County Sheriff and his designees.

Sincerely,

Glenn E. Palmer

Sheriff for Grant County

So, here we have a small-town sheriff standing against the Federal Government on behalf of his citizens. You know, the people the sheriff actually promised in solemn oath to protect and defend? Well, this Sheriff meant it. He takes his oath seriously and intends to keep his word. He has been ridiculed and sharply assailed for his stance. The local newspaper has been part of this criticism and some other local officials who would never have the courage to do such a thing, certainly have the courage to complain about Palmer. One such coward actually criticized the sheriff, not because he was wrong, but because his stance could cost the county federal funds! In other words, don’t stand for what’s right, do not try to keep your oath, become a political prostitute and grab the federal money! Is this not the political correctness of the day? Don’t do whatever it takes to keep your oath of office, do whatever it takes to bring in the money! Thank goodness there are those with the honor and integrity to stay out of the corrupt mainstream.

There is one other fantastic part of this entire situation. The people have taken it upon themselves to stand with their sheriff. The newspaper, The Blue Mountain Eagle, has on its June 1, 2011 issue, a full-page ad with approximately 600 names on it from citizens of Grant County. The ad has as its headline: SUPPORT OUR SHERIFF. Then the subtitle reads: The following citizens stand behind our County Sheriff Glenn Palmer, his oath of office and the constitutions.

This is an example to all Americans, to all leaders of this great country, a small county in eastern Oregon just demonstrated how we preserve our Constitutional Republic; we have sheriffs, who keep their oaths, who stand for liberty, and then you have the people, yes, how the entire Constitution starts, We The People, stand with their Sheriff!

I am honored to have seen all this in person, to have shaken the hand of this good Sheriff and his good wife, and to meet the people of this great county. I spoke to this crowd and in the middle of my presentation I announced proudly that it was an amazing experience to be in a place in America where the County Sheriff actually has the courage to just do his job! The crowd of about 500 went wild with applause, standing and cheering for several moments.

This is the answer, this is the solution. Grant County and Sheriff Palmer have shown us the way! As sheriffs and other local leaders stand for freedom, we take America back county by county and state by state! And of course, don’t forget the key ingredient, “We The People.”

- Former Sheriff Richard Mack

“Dominate. Intimidate. Control.”

The question that must be asked, of course, is who exactly is the TSA trying to target and intimidate? Not would-be terrorists, given that scattershot pat-down stings are unlikely to apprehend or deter terrorists. In light of the fact that average citizens are the ones receiving the brunt of the TSA’s efforts, it stands to reason that we’ve become public enemy number one. We are all suspects. And how does the TSA deal with perceived threats? Its motto, posted at the TSA’s air marshal training center headquarters in the wake of 9/11, is particularly telling: “Dominate. Intimidate. Control.”

Those three words effectively sum up the manner in which the government now relates to its citizens, making a travesty of every democratic ideal our representatives spout so glibly and reinforcing the specter of the police state. After all, no government that truly respects or values its citizens would subject them to such intrusive, dehumanizing, demoralizing, suspicionless searches. Yet by taking the TSA’s airport screenings nationwide with VIPR and inserting the type of abusive authoritarianism already present in airports into countless other sectors of American life, the government is expanding the physical and psychological scope of the police state apparatus.

........VIPR paves the way psychologically for the implementation of totalitarian apparatuses of control. Furthermore, by entrenching frequent, intrusive searches in the American mindset as an unquestioned component of everyday life, programs like VIPR actually serve to reduce the level of protection afforded citizens by the Constitution. And once VIPR has accrued a sufficient bureaucracy, it will be virtually impossible to eradicate.

MORE.

Via avordvet, L&P

Bounty Money to Fill New York Regiments

Americans in the South fought primarily for family, hearth and State – a contrast to those in the North who for the most part fought to maintain a territorial union and against Southern independence. Without generous bounty money for enlisting, it is clear that the latter would have avoided the blue uniform and allowed the South its liberty. From the time of the Northern draft of 1863, to the conclusion of the war, the Northern States, counties, cities and towns paid over $286 million; the Northern government itself paid out more than $300 million – and with substitute fees paid the total of all would be at least $750 million. This would have paid for the emancipation of every slave several times over, and saved the lives of a million Americans.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
========
Bounty Money to Fill New York Regiments:

“At the outbreak of the war, New York had four million people, and during the course of the war it furnished the equivalent of 400,000 three-year enlistments to the armed forces. This represented about seventeen per cent of the total northern enlistment and was in proportion to the state population. Before the war ended, 40,000 New Yorker’s gave their lives to the enterprise. It is interesting to keep in mind that thirty per cent of New York enlistees were foreign-born: 40,000 came from Ireland, 41,000 from Germany, over 12,000 from England, 12,000 were Canadian, 3600 from France, 2000 from Wales, and 2000 from Switzerland. On top of this, 5000 Negroes were in New York regiments.”

In the conscription activity of 1863, the Republican-organ Oswego (New York) Times emphasized the material benefits which would accrue to those possessing the "lucky draft numbers." A US Bounty of $102, State Bounty of $100, City Bounty of $300 (if offered as the Mayor suggested); Total of $502.00. Then one year at $13. per month, one year’s service totaling $156. “$658 or almost $2. per day! Soldiering will be the best business for the future.”

On August 4 [1863] the draft came to Oswego. While most draftees accepted the [conscription] law…the Times reported that some were applying to the British Vice Consul for papers giving them protection as aliens. A few were said to be “skedaddling” across the Canadian border. The Times noted also, that the draft had developed an extraordinary number of sharks in the area. “Several half-starved lawyers, who don’t often get any business, have been taking advantage of the anxiety of drafted men to become exempt, to charge the most exorbitant rates for their services in making out the necessary papers.”

A year later a second draft stared Oswegonians in the face. It might be avoided, of course, if the quota could be raised by enlistment; but for a time the latter lagged. Groping for a solution an imaginative group of twenty-five men sent the local recruiting agents, E.B. Burt and A.B. Getty to Newport News, Virginia, in a military district occupied by Federal troops under General Benjamin Butler, for the purpose of procuring substitutes among the freedmen; expecting, it is assumed, that they could be hired cheaply. The agents wrote that they found a few substitutes, though the place was filled with bounty-jumpers, but that General Butler had issued an order prohibiting the removal of freedmen from the district; that they would therefore try to enlist them [freedmen] as part of the Oswego quota, provided the city would pay the bounties required. The City Council quickly voted bounties up to $300, including the agents’ fees, but the project fizzled and the agents returned home empty handed. The Times writer considered this scheme quite ingenious until he discovered that Jefferson County [New York] was trying the same experiment.

As has been seen, when enlistments lagged, bounties served as a stimulant. As early as July 1862, the State was offering $50 and the County [Oswego] an additional $50, By January 1864, the County was paying $300 bounties, and by December, 1864, the sum was increased to $300 for one year, $500 for two years, and $700 for three years. Meanwhile, the Federal government had increased its offer to $300. Thus a volunteer might pick up $1000 if he had patience to wait for the installments; this, when laborers wages were about one dollar per day! To those who remained hesitant, the Mexico [New York] Independent offered the happy thought that the war would not last long, and they might never fire a gun or draw a sword.”

(New York State in the Civil War, Robert J. Rayback, New York State Historical Association, 1961, pp. 69-70; Oswego Counties Response to the Civil War, Charles M. Snyder, New York State
Historical Association, 1961, pp. 81-84)

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Bounty Money to Fill New York Regiments

Academics & Independence Day

This 1862 painting, 3rd Kentucky Infantry Regiment Recovers after Shiloh, near Corinth,
by Conrad Wise Chapman, depicts Confederate soldiers activities in camp.

======================================================

Old Virginia Blog

VERBATIM POST
===================

Last week, I posted about a recent Harvard study which claims that most 4th of July celebrations are "politically biased" events which serve to "socialize children into Republicans." Yes, this is how the elites in academia view your flag waving 4th of July celebrations. I suppose its just a matter of time before they recommend warning labels on apple pie.

Now comes another blog post at BigGovernment.com which echoes what I postulated in my post:

The general tone of the 40-page paper is that understanding the puffery and “public rituals” associated with Independence Day in America is best left to the professional social scientists who truly know such things. For example, just in case their readers might be unaware, the co-authors helpfully remind them that the academic literature defines the Fourth of July as a “day that provides a context for the celebration of an American civic religion organized around flags, parades, and the Constitution.” What a strange tribe of constitutionally-minded, Republican-leaning celebrants!

Besides offering up tendentious conclusions, an overall confusion of causation and correlation, and a strange reliance upon parade-day precipitation as an important factor in their study, the co-authors miss what much of academia today misunderstands about American patriotism. Less than preference of one political party over another, or a penchant for political pomp and circumstance, American patriotism is about the love of a country whose achievement is, as Abraham Lincoln said, “Liberty to all.”

Besides the obvious agenda in "studies" like this, what truly amazes me is academics making the ridiculous assumption that they themselves believe their cloak of "scholarship" actually hides their agenda when they put out these silly studies. Of course, this agenda hiding is obvious to most and also extends into many other areas - Civil War studies for example. As Eugene Genovese so aptly put it:

. . . American history has largely become a plaything for canting ideologues . . . Our times call for a correct ideological line, which at its increasingly popular extreme regards the Old South as a rehearsal for Nazi Germany and calls for eradication of all traces of the conservative voices that have loomed so large in Southern history.

It is quite easy to connect the dots. The attitude is systemic. Case in point: let us not forget Professor David Blight's Freudian slip last year when writing about Virginia Governor McDonnell's Confederate History Month proclamation. Blight lamented:

Why doesn't the Confederacy just fade away? Is it because we are irresistibly fascinated by catastrophic loss? Or is it something else? Is it because the Confederacy is to this day the greatest conservative resistance to federal authority in American history?

As Genovese points out, the "canting ideologues" of historical interpretation today are really more about using their "analysis" to eradicate conservative voices. (Same issue with the ongoing criticism leveled at the Tea Party.) Just as the Harvard study wrings its hands over 4th of July celebrations ostensibly promoting conservative Republican values in children, others in academia would have conservative resistance, and its Southern voices to, "just fade away."

Graham's Vietnam tour of pirates, prison among the Hmong

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........We almost made it to Laos that night, but as we drew near, the brush line above the shore was suddenly peppered with what looked like flickering white stars as the Pathet Lao covered us with machinegun fire. I lost all my cameras in the escape over the side and clawing for depth in the blackness, the sound of bullets ripping the water around us like steel guitar strings snapping.

By the time I made it back up to the surface and saw them still firing at one of the other long boats, slowly spinning like a propeller because of a dead Hmong slumped over the tiller of its idling motor, I had drifted clear. That’s when I heard the low pleas for help from a young 13-year-old I had earlier befriended. When I got to him, I tried to keep his head out of water, and that’s when I realized one of the bullets had unzipped the front of him. Gingerly trying to keep more of his entrails from spilling out, I swam with him back to Thailand.

Further help came in the form of a truck sent out from a Hmong resistance safe house near Ban Vinai, a refugee camp from where most of Hmong refugees from Laos were processed to such places as Minnesota, Michigan and the fertile farmlands of California. After the ride to the camp, a relief agency doctor was called to the family’s home. But, the boy didn’t make it.

Gaining a reputation as a photojournalist willing to take on extreme risk in order to get a story, a month later I was invited by a British actor-turned treasure hunter on an expedition to an island off the west of coast of Vietnam, forbidden to all but Soviet Bloc advisors, and loyal communist Vietnamese. French colonials had named the island as Iles des Pirates, Pirates Islands. Whether we found treasure or not didn’t matter, just the fact someone was going into an area of Vietnam no other American journalist had been permitted since 1975 was enough for me. And, perhaps, I could get some information on MIAs Gritz had not been able to in Laos.

As it turned out, I ended up listed as MIA by the US Department of State, and reported by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as KIA by Thai pirates, though Hanoi knew full well I was being tortured and interrogated at the Kien Giang Provincial Prison.

MORE.
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Graham's Vietnam tour of pirates, prison among the Hmong

U.S. Officials Behind 'Fast and Furious' Gun Sales Should Be Tried in Mexico

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars

While the investigation continues into the U.S. operation that helped send thousands of guns south of the border, Mexican lawmakers say they'll press for extradition and prosecution in Mexico of American officials who authorized and ran the operation.

"I obviously feel violated. I feel my country's sovereignty was violated," Mexico Sen. Rene Arce Islas told Fox News. "They should be tried in the United States and the Mexican government should also demand that they also be tried in Mexico since the incidents took place here. There should be trials in both places."

Arce is chairman of Mexico's Commission for National Security, a congressional panel similar to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

His point of view is shared by many Mexican politicians, including Sen. Santiago Creel, a former Interior Minister and the likely presidential nominee next year of the National Action Party to succeed Felipe Calderone, also of PAN.

"I think we should at least try to prove that what happened in Mexico must be sanctioned by Mexican laws and under our sovereignty," Creel told us. "What can't happen is that this now ends on an administrative sanction, or a resignation. No, no, no. Human lives were lost here. A decision was made to carry out an operation that brought very high risk to human lives."

MORE.

Our Corrupt Government

California Tree of Liberty
=========================

Quartzsite, AZ - The Mayor is challenged under a recall election beginning next month. Accusations have been made. The city council is persecuting the Mayor for giving the people a voice. The Chief of Police is also involved in the scandal.

Jennifer Jones is given the floor at a city council meeting open to the public. While she is speaking the council realizes she's about to air their dirty laundry and quickly beckons their henchman to cart her off.

The Mayor steps in and says Jones has been recognized to speak and has not violated the council's rules, but the council ignores him and has the woman removed even as the Mayor continues to contest. The police officers ignore the Mayor of the city and remove the woman. It's obvious who those cops work for, and it's not the people.

Police Misconduct NewsFeed Weekend Recap 07-02-11 to 07-04-11

Injustice Everywhere

VERBATIM POST
===================

By David, on July 4th, 2011

Here are the 18 reports of police misconduct tracked in our National Police Misconduct News Feed for this Independence Day weekend of July 2 through July 4, 2011:

• Los Angeles County CA makes a tentative $500k settlement offer to the family of a teen who was fatally shot by a deputy in an incident where two different videos contradicted his version of events at two different points. [0] http://lat.ms/kX0h1o

• Moreno Valley CA & Riverside Co CA lose a wrongful arrest and excessive force lawsuit for $325k to a man claiming he was beaten into unconsciousness during a racial profiling traffic stop [3] http://bit.ly/izM19q

• 10-12 New York NY cops are accused of excessive force for allegedly beating a man & macing an entire family over what started as a littering citation [3] http://bit.ly/mrfA6m

• Chattanooga TN Housing Authority settles suit on unspecified terms to a woman claiming a cop slapped her for calling 911 on him when she witnessed a rough encounter between the officer and a teen. [3] http://bit.ly/iBDwlL

• Parker FL police are being sued by a man claiming a cop who shouldn’t have been hired after he was fired from his previous deputy job for lying to judge had falsely arrested him on three different occasions. [3] http://bit.ly/kKOAna

• A Miami Beach FL cop is accused of drinking on duty with another cop before he injured three people when he ran into a couple while joyriding on a departmental ATV with a female passenger. Recent reports citing interviews with witnesses indicate he begged people not to report him before he fled the scene without checking on the injured victims. [0] http://bit.ly/mzOsl6

• Memphis TN cop was arrested on aggravated assault charges for allegedly pointing gun at her husband’s face during a domestic dispute [0] http://bit.ly/jYkGoV

• Another Memphis TN cop was also arrested on aggravated assault charges for allegedly pulling her gun during an off duty road rage incident [0] http://bit.ly/m8Hqwl

• Greenwich Twp NJ cop sues that department claiming he was fired for investigating the possible cover up of a Pohatcong cop’s DUI accident [4] http://bit.ly/mIoiXt

• Monterey County CA sheriff is sued by an ex-deputy claiming retaliation & obstruction involving that sheriff’s son’s drug arrest [3] http://bit.ly/jKQBBW

• Oregon state trooper has harassment charges dismissed in a settlement agreement by paying $11,500 to victim [0] http://bit.ly/kOD4eb

• Boynton Beach FL cop arrested by feds on methamphetamine trafficking charges involving “large amount of drugs” [0] http://bit.ly/mDYiAD

• 3 San Diego CA sex crimes unit detectives accused of sexual harassment & retaliation against female cops [3] http://bit.ly/mBYAte

• New Orleans LA police cmdr reassigned while investigated over alleged unspecified racially inappropriate orders [2] http://bit.ly/leP7QI

• Austin TX cop was arrested for boating while intoxicated after his passenger allegedly broke into a home to make a sandwich when the homeowner called police to report it. [0] http://bit.ly/ihTP1I

• Philadelphia PA cop pleads guilty to drunk driving charge in a crash that crushed a trooper’s legs between 2 cars [0] http://cbsloc.al/mUhhxX

• South Carolina state trooper gets time served in a guilty plea to a driving while intoxicated charge [0] http://bit.ly/mLKXBH

• Los Angeles CA police department’s “conditional official reprimand” policy that replaces disciplinary actions with warnings is drawing criticism because officers aren’t being disciplined regularly even after their first free pass warning. [0] http://lat.ms/jbGDqV

That’s it for this weekend, stay free out there!

Precision Weapon Portfolio Engagement & Dispersion

Link

Pickett's Charge

Pickett's Charge

=====================

Human Events

July 3, 1863: Day Three of the Battle of Gettysburg: Confederate Maj. Gen. George Pickett leads his ill-fated division against Union Army forces under the command of Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock positioned on Cemetery Ridge. Said to be “the highwater mark of the Confederacy,” Pickett’s charge will fail.

Gen. Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia, had ordered the charge. Lee’s subordinate corps commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, had argued against such a charge. But following Lee’s orders, Longstreet directed Pickett to attack.

Years later, Pickett will be asked why his attack failed. His reply: “I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”

That Uncivil War

VERBATIM POST
=================

July 4, 2011

That Uncivil War

Posted by Charles Burris on July 4, 2011 01:29 PM

James M. McPherson, America's foremost historian of the modern "neoabolitionist" school, reviews five new volumes on that most American of uncivil conflicts, the war that destroyed the republic in the name of saving it. Included among this selection is David Goldfield's magisterial America Aflame: How the Civil War Created A Nation. McPherson is not pleased with the anti-war "revisionism" of Goldfield's sweeping endeavor, and takes him to task for his scholarly attempt to demonstrate that Lincoln's "cruel and senseless war" against the Confederacy was unnecessary and motivated by more than the lofty motives ascribed to it by his apologists such as himself.

Goldfield places his interpretation in the tradition known as “revisionism” after a school of historians in the 1930s and 1940s. The revisionists denied that sectional differences between North and South were genuinely divisive. Disparities that existed did not have to lead to war; they could have, and should have, been accommodated peacefully within the political system. But self-serving politicians—a “blundering generation,” as one revisionist historian described them—whipped up passions in North and South for partisan purposes. The most guilty were antislavery radicals, even moderates like Lincoln, who harped on the evils of slavery and expressed a determination to rein in what they called the Slave Power. Their rhetoric goaded the South into a defensive response that finally caused Southern states to secede to get rid of these self-righteous Yankee zealots.

Although not as stark in his presentation of a similar thesis, Goldfield makes clear his conviction that the war should have been avoided. His villains, however, are not self-serving and blundering politicians, but “the invasion of evangelical Christianity into the political debate as an especially toxic factor in limiting the options of political leaders.” The “elevation of political issues into moral causes,” especially antislavery, “poisoned the democratic process.”

I have commented upon Goldfield's undertaking in a previous LRC blog. I simply add that his work has met my highest expectations, and its powerful narrative content and style is truly Rothbardian in scope.

(Thanks to Walter E. Grinder)

Via Bazz

North Carolina Legislature Update: Political death sentences

League of the South News Service

5 July 2011

---

Raleigh and Capitol Hill are abuzz this week after the Republican General Assembly released the new Congressional districts map. These maps are a political death sentence for Brad Miller, Larry Kissell, and Heath Shuler.

Mike McIntyre is also marginally threatened thanks to certain Democratic strongholds being ceded to other districts. For North Carolinians this is a strong opportunity for new leadership as we continue to see the wreckage that Washington DC has wrought about our state and the South.

In the districts currently held by Miller, Kissell, and Shuler, the primaries are currently wide open. All three have a more suburban to rural makeup, with areas relatively unaffected by the influx of Northern immigrants. All three districts have also been devastated by the policies coming out of Washington. Once proud bastions of manufacturing are now economic ghost towns, hoping for a Walmart to set up shop.

It is in these areas that constitutional conservative candidates, with populist economic messages on trade, have the potential to score big in the Republican primary. The time is now for people to rally around such a candidate to get our message out.
Carlton Huffman

I Will Be No Party to Such Wicked Violations to the Constitution

MORE
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Via Cousin John

Repost: Good Ole' Boys Like Me

Or "Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning."
a


Good Ole' Boys Like Me