Michael Bolton & Percy Sledge -- When a man loves a woman.

Nullification and Secession: Solutions or Talking Points?

 

Many of us in the South have maintained our faith in the Constitutional right of nullification and secession despite the efforts of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets. But is the talk about nullification and secession an earnest effort to put forward solutions to an out of control, Deep State, supreme federal government or is it merely an exercise in heady political calisthenics?

I belong to the tribe that believes nullification and secession are the only real solutions to the current out of control supreme federal government. To demonstrate the validity of my belief, I will pose and answer three fundamental questions: (1) Are the concepts of state nullification and secession legitimate American political principles? (2) Is the current supreme federal government a legitimate governing authority? and (3) Would the modern-day acceptance of state nullification and secession be so unworkable that it would destroy the United States?

More @ The Abbeville Institute

The School Shootings That Weren't

How many times per year does a gun go off in an American school?

We should know. But we don't.

This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.

But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.

We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.

More @ NPR

Military hardware company swamped with orders for bulletproof schoolbags as US school term starts

Via Billy

An Israeli company that designs military-grade vests, uniforms and helmets has developed a bulletproof backpack for school students – and orders are pouring in from the US.

Masada Armour created the bag, which costs upwards of £385, ($500 )in response to the sheer number of shootings at American secondary schools in recent years.

Now, the firm says it is having to scale up production to keep up with orders from worried parents ahead of the new term.

More @ Yahoo

Judge Pirro Blasts AG Sessions: 'Resign Immediately' or 'Be a Real Attorney General'

Brexit is a 'fix' with EU certain to win negotiations, ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson warns

 

Boris Johnson has claimed Brexit negotiations are rigged, with "the inevitable outcome of a victory for the EU".

In what many in Westminster speculate as the beginning of a plot to try and oust the prime minister, the former foreign secretary insisted the UK is "lying flat on the canvas" in withdrawal talks.

He claims the UK has already issued a message of surrender over Chequers proposals to align UK standards on goods to the EU, saying Britain has "gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank".

Mr Johnson claims the negotiations are rigged.

More @ EU

Belligerent Public Enemies in a Territorial War

 

Lincoln’s unfortunate choice of a mentor on reconstruction, William Whiting of Massachusetts, below refers to the American people in the South peacefully seeking self-government as belligerent public enemies, who, when finally conquered with fire and sword, deserved no more than eternal contempt and suspicion. He further proclaims the North’s “right to hang them as murderers and pirates,” and “whatever rights are left to them besides the rights of war will be such as we choose to allow them.  He believed the Southern States had forfeited their legal status in the Union they departed, only to be dragged back in as conquered territories and a people entitled to no rights.

As far as loyal Union men of the South are concerned, and they were numerous, Lincoln refused their wise counsel to abandon Fort Sumter in early 1861 to allow time and diplomacy for the settlement of sectional differences. They, as well as former President James Buchanan, suggested calling a Constitutional Convention of the States as the proper solution for disputes. These measures would have saved a million lives, and quite possibly the Union.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.org   The Great American Political Divide

Belligerent Public Enemies in a Territorial War

“Lincoln’s plan of reconstruction was built on a concept of a wartime President’s powers so extended as to transcend the points of reference of earlier chief executives. It was military reconstruction, and it was the most direct imaginable intervention of the will of the national government into the internal structure of the State’s. In terms of power, Lincoln’s reconstruction plan was radical indeed.

The fact is that Lincoln enjoyed the services as mentor – with respect to the war-swollen power potentials of his office – of a prominent champion of Radical Republicanism, an old-line Boston abolitionist, William Whiting.

Brought into the War Department as its solicitor – primarily in order to prepare briefs that the government employed to fend off suits – in Northern States and in border areas, alleging the unconstitutionality of conscription and internal security measures – Whiting was the most learned lawyer in the United States in matters of the international laws of war.

He became the natural source of legalisms in support of the reconstruction program that the President was gradually evolving out of information he gained primarily from Army and War Department sources.

Here is Whiting’s prophetic essay of July 28, 1863, issued as a letter to the Philadelphia Union League, under the title, “The Return of the Rebellious States to the Union.” Note its harmony with the Lincoln plan as issued the following December, so far as the assumption of national powers is concerned, as well as its expression of concern with respect to the untrustworthiness of a conquered South.

“As the success of the Union cause shall become more certain and apparent to the enemy, in various localities, they will lay down their arms, and cease fighting. Their bitter and deep-rooted hatred of the Government, and of all the Northern men who are not traitors, and of all Southern men who are loyal, will still remain interwoven in every fiber of their hearts, and will be made, if possible, more intense by the humiliation of conquest and subjugation.

The foot of the conqueror planted upon their proud necks will not sweeten their tempers; and their defiant and treacherous nature will seek to revenge itself in murders, assassinations and all other underhand methods of venting a spite which they dare not manifest by open war, and in driving out of their borders all loyal men.

To suppose that a Union sentiment will remain in any considerable number of men, among a people who have strained every nerve and made every sacrifice to destroy the Union, indicates dishonesty, insanity or feebleness of intellect.

Beware of committing yourselves to the fatal doctrine of recognizing the existence, in the Union, of States which have been declared by the President’s proclamation to be in rebellion. For, by this new device of the enemy – this new version of the poisonous State rights doctrine – the Secessionists will be able to get back by fraud what they failed to get by fighting. Do not permit them, without proper safeguards, to resume in your counsels, in the Senate and in the House, the power which their treason has stripped from them.

Do not allow old States, with their Constitutions still unaltered, to resume State powers.

The rebellious districts contain ten times as many traitors as loyal men. The traitors will have a vast majority of the votes. Clothed with State rights under our Constitution, they will crush out every Union man by the irresistible power of their legislation. If you would be true to the Union men of the South, you must not bind them hand and foot, and deliver them to their bitterest enemies.

Having set up a government for themselves . . . they were no longer mere insurgents and rebels, but became a belligerent public enemy. The war was no longer against “certain persons” in the rebellious States. It became a territorial war; that is to say, a war by all persons situated in the belligerent territory against the United States.”

(The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction: 1861-1870, Harold M. Hyman, Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1967, excerpts pp. 91-95)

Declassified Docs Reveal How Pentagon Aimed to Nuke USSR and China Into Oblivion

Via Billy

 

Plans for a nuclear war devised by the US Army in the 1960s considered decimating the Soviet Union and China by destroying their industrial potential and wiping out the bulk of their populations, newly declassified documents show.

A review of the US general nuclear war plan by the Joint Staff in 1964, which was recently published by George Washington University’s National Security Archive project, shows how the Pentagon studied options “to destroy the USSR and China as viable societies.”

 More @ LRC

Fashion Notes: Melania Trump’s 15 Hottest White Looks for Labor Dayy

 

The old saying “You can’t wear white after Labor Day” is a fashion rule that is long gone to the history books, rightfully ditched by First Lady Melania Trump.

In celebration of Labor Day, Breitbart News has compiled Mrs. Trump’s hottest and most fashion-forward moments in white. For this Slovenian-born model, a White House wardrobe of white stilettos, suits, dresses, and even hats(!) is always in style.

More @ Breitbart

Lincoln Facilitates Western Virginia Secession

In James Randall’s “Civil War and Reconstruction” of 1937 (DC Heath & Company), he writes that “In tracing the formation of West Virginia, the historian finds it necessary to go behind the printed histories, most of which follow a definite pattern and justify every step of the new-state movement as a triumph of Unionism and a vindication of popular rule . . . [but] the masses of archival and manuscript material that have come down to us reveal irregularities and extra-legal processes of such a nature that traditional conclusions will have to be abandoned.”

Randall writes further that “It is probable that, had war not supplied the impulse, no dismemberment of the State would have occurred,” and that a so-called ordinance from Wheeling on August 20, 1861, “was in reality the work of an active but limited group of seperationists in the counties near Pennsylvania and Maryland.” As the secessionists drew a map of their new “State,” the people within “had no opportunity, county by county, to determine whether they would adhere to Virginia, or join the new commonwealth” (pp. 329-330)

It is worth noting that the United States Constitution which Virginia ratified, stipulates in Article IV, Section 3: “. . . no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State . . . without the Consent of the Legislature of the State concerned . . .”
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.org  The Great American Political Divide

Lincoln Facilitates Western Virginia Secession

“Lincoln was not opposed to secession if it served his political purposes. This fact is proven when he orchestrated the secession of western Virginia from the rest of the State and set up a puppet government of the new State of West Virginia, in Alexandria, Virginia, right across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

His own attorney General, Edward Bates, believed that this act was unconstitutional, arguing the obvious – that States must first exist before being accepted into the Union. Neither the president or Congress had the constitutional authority to create States, for a truly free State can only be created by its people.

This was another patently undemocratic or dictatorial act that, once again, Lincoln rationalized in the name of “saving democracy.” Lincoln ignored the arguments of his attorney general as well as the words of the Constitution, but benefited in 1864 by additional electoral votes and congressional representation that was completely controlled by the Republican party in Washington, not the people of western Virginia.

Interestingly, the legislation establishing West Virginia allowed for the people of the new State to vote on a gradual emancipation program. This was Stephen Douglas’s position in the Lincoln-Douglas debates – that the new territories should be permitted to vote on whether or not they wanted slavery.”

(The Real Lincoln, A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and an Unnecessary War, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Forum, 2002, excerpts pp. 148-149)

"Your daughter is raped and murdered and you take the side of the criminal?"

Via David

 

We used to be told that conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality. The problem is that the propaganda and the brainwashing of the left has become so intensive, so pervasive, that "mugging" has no effect. Liberals can be assaulted again and again by reality, but will still hold true to whatever has been programmed into them by primary and secondary schools, by the media, by popular culture, by universities and by their peers.

Take the case of Mollie Tibbetts, the young girl who was brutally murdered by an illegal alien.

More @ American Thinker

Liberal Jews, the Party despises you

Via David

What has contaminated so many young American minds? And Jewish liberal ones? 

 

What is this mysterious potent virus that has contaminated the minds of ordinary Americans to make them turn into mindless haters of all things revolving around their own America, their nation?

• Sitting, kneeling, doing everything but show respect for the National Anthem and our flag.
• Schools teaching our kids that America has a shameful history.
• Major politicians representing the Left Half of our citizenry knowingly putting down our nation.
• Andy-Boy Cuomo, the governor of the great state of New York demeaning our nation by stating to the world that our country is not and never was great.

Why then did his grandfather come to this country as a legal, documented immigrant and have both his son and grandson rise to be national figures and even Andy-Boy himself, to have a good shot at running for president?

Obama, who started this whole "Hate America" madness had a visiting African student studying in this country as his father.

More @ Israel Nation

Assad has won the war’: French foreign minister makes Syria admission

 

 ‘Butcher’ no more? Assad in charge of Syria good for our security, says Israeli defense minister

 *************************

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has admitted Bashar Assad has won the war in Syria. However, he was quick to hit out at the Syrian leader, accusing him of failing to “win the peace” in the war-torn country.

“Assad won the war. But he hasn’t won the peace,” Le Drian said, speaking to France-Inter radio on Sunday. France’s top diplomat stressed that Paris is currently “looking for a solution [to the Syrian crisis] with Russia and Turkey.”

The minister also noted that in the event of a large operation in Idlib province, the scale of the catastrophe in Aleppo may be overshadowed. Parts of Aleppo held by militants and terrorist groups were freed by the Syrian army back in December 2016, with massive evacuations of civilians – and later jihadists – negotiated and carried out with Russia’s help. However, the city’s rapid reconstruction was mostly ignored by the Western media.

More @ RT

GOHMERT: The Process For Removing Bad Bureaucrats Is Nearly Impossible

When Hurricane Harvey crashed onto Texas shores, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) worked tirelessly to come to our citizens’ aid. Unfortunately, in the months since then, information has been released regarding a top FEMA official who abused his position to harass co-workers and create inappropriate environments.

According to numerous reports, FEMA personnel chief, Corey Coleman, fostered a culture of widespread sexual harassment during his time with the agency. This case makes clear that while a majority of civil servants are working tirelessly for the American people, a few bad actors can corrupt an entire agency.

More @ The Daily Caller

Blacks have killed one white South African farmer every five days so far this year

 

An ex-Israeli special forces member is teaching farmers self-defence and weapons techniques in case they are targeted.

President Trump was not wrong about the South African land-grab, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), a liberal think tank. SAIRR said that the Trump had exposed the “damage” the policy was doing.

He did not, however, expose the extent of the damage. Nor the intent.

More @ The Daily Caller

Congress waits, waits, waits for Sally Yates documents

Via David

"When a holdover appointee uses that position to sabotage the incoming administration over policy differences, future administrations will be more likely to fire previous political appointees on day one, potentially leading to more dangerously rocky transitions. These stunts have consequences."

Obama appointee Sally Yates was acting attorney general under President Trump for just 10 days — from Jan. 20, 2017 until Jan. 30, 2017 — but by any measure they were consequential days. Even now, two issues from Yates' brief tenure are still of interest to congressional investigators. One was the series of events that led Yates, in charge of the Justice Department, to reject the president's executive order temporarily suspending the admittance into the United States of people from some Muslim nations. The second is Yates' role in the FBI's questioning, apparently on dubious premises, the president's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, four days into the new administration — questioning that ultimately led to Flynn's guilty plea in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Both are matters of great public significance and interest — and on both, the Justice Department is refusing to allow the Senate Judiciary Committee access to documents from Yates' time in office.

More @ Washington Examiner

The Thompson Submachine Gun – From Chicago Streets to European Battlefields

I had to leave one in Saigon but didn't know it's history

The war in Europe had less than a week to go before it finally sputtered and died. Everybody on both sides knew it was over. An American Infantry unit drew up into defensive positions short of a German river to wait it out. Nobody much wanted to be the last casualty of the Second World War in Europe.

The mission was to snatch German prisoners for interrogation. At least that was the briefing. The real mission was to let a new Lieutenant lead a combat patrol before the war ended. It was felt that he would need the experience if he hoped to be successful in an Army full of combat veterans.

More @ Guns America

Oh, the irony....:)

Via Billy

Apple, Google, et al. strike a blow against the college cartel

Via Billy

Some of America’s biggest companies have stopped requiring college degrees for many entry- and mid-level jobs. Others should follow suit.

 Earlier this month, the job-search site Glassdoor compiled a list of 15 major companies that no longer require applicants for certain posts to have a college degree. The list included an array of entry- and mid-level jobs —everything from barista to “Apple Genius” to “senior manager of finance” — at such corporate giants as Apple, Google, Bank of America, Penguin Random House, Home Depot, Costco, Whole Foods, and Starbucks. Glassdoor lauded these firms for opening new pathways to success and recognizing “that book smarts don’t necessarily equal strong work ethic, grit and talent.” CNBC and Axios provided similar, approving coverage.

More @ AEI

Freedom Dispenser

Via Billy via WRSA