Confederate Christmas

 

It was Thursday, Christmas day of 1862, and the guns at Fredericksburg had fallen silent just ten days before with over ten thousand Union soldiers of the Army of the Potomac and half that number of Confederates from the Army of Northern Virginia lying dead or wounded beyond the city. That night, a twenty-one year old cannoneer from Richmond, Lieutenant William Gordon McCabe, sat in his bivouac penning some lines of verse . . . a poem in which he took a bit of literary license, as the weather that December in Virginia was unseasonably warm and would become even warmer the following month when the retreating Union Army virtually sank in a sea of melting mire during its humiliating “mud march” northward. The following poem was soon published in a number of Southern newspapers, such as Richmond’s “Southern Literary Messenger.”

More @ The Abbeville Institute

The North Did Not Go to War to End Slavery by Gene Kizer, Jr.

 

If they had, they would have started by passing a constitution amendment abolishing slavery. They did the opposite. They overwhelmingly passed the Corwin Amendment, which left black people in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress. This alone proves, unequivocally, that the North did not go to war to end slavery or free the slaves.

(This post is Chapter Two of my book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument., available on this website)

The North does not get to redefine, in the middle of the war, its reason for going to war. What the North proclaimed in the beginning, stands, as its reason for going to war -- and it is unchangeable.

War measures halfway through the war, such as the Emancipation Proclamation that freed no slaves (and prevented close to a million slaves from achieving their freedom), have nothing to do with why the North went to war in the first place.

More @ Charleston Athenaeum Press

Brennan: Trump Plays to a ‘Very Debased Group of People’

 Breitbart

Former CIA Director John Brennan Thursday on MSNBC accused President Donald Trump of playing to a “very debased” group of people.

Discussing Trump’s comments on Roger Stone today at a prison graduation ceremony in Las Vegas, Brennan said, “He’s clearly giving every indication he wants to act like a mob boss. And he’s going to try to take care of him and his soldiers.”

He continued, “It’s outrageous he would try to make any moral equivalency between someone like Roger Stone who the judge said has trampled the law and public servants like James Comey and others who really tried their best. You can question their decisions and judgments but really were trying to carry out their duties responsibly and with integrity.”

He added, “There were people in that audience that unfortunately I did hear laughter at the things he was saying about these individuals and talking about Peter Struck and Lisa Page and others. I mean, he just plays to this very debased group of people who are listening to what he is saying in terms of just trashing good public servants and defending people like Roger Stone? I mean, give me a break.”

Empowered Trump Loyalist Asks for List of Never Trumpers in the President’s Cabinet

Breitbart

John McEntee, the new head of President Donald Trump’s Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), asked White House staff to list “anti-Trump” political appointees in the administration.

McEntee met with White House cabinet liaisons on Thursday to request a list, according to three sources familiar with the meeting who spoke to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.

Trump enters the next phase of his presidency determined to root out disloyalty in the administration, and McEntee’s return demonstrates his commitment to the task.

McEntee is now in charge of political appointments to the administration, and the president has empowered him to remove the Trump appointees who are blocking his agenda and even working against him.

Fired and escorted off the premises at the command of former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in 2018, McEntee, Trump’s former body man, has returned to the Trump White House as the head of the PPO.

Trump considers McEntee one of the “originals” — the small band of people who worked with the president in the private sector and in the early days of his campaign.

Other “originals” include Hope Hicks, who also recently returned to the White House, and Dan Scavino, the president’s adviser and social media director.

The news has delighted Trump loyalists in Washington, DC, who are already celebrating the president’s decision to appoint U.S. Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell as the Acting Director of National Intelligence and the news that Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood resigned Wednesday at Trump’s request.

“Johnny is the ultimate Trump loyalist and exactly the kind of guy, if you support the president’s agenda, that you want to serve in that position,” former White House aide Cliff Simms said to Breitbart News. “This is a huge win for the MAGA movement to have him in that job.”

The Democrats' Predicament

Via Billy

Many have noted the dilemma the socialists -- er, I mean the Democrats -- are in over the prospect of Sen. Bernie Sanders winning their nomination. If nominated, they're running a socialist. If not, their base will be out of sorts.

It's time for a reckoning. The Democratic Party is going to have to be honest with itself -- and the American voters -- sooner or later. It is already mostly socialist. But is it ready to embrace the label?

While a majority of Democrats now have a favorable view of socialism (just think about that for a second), a majority of Americans do not, though the gap is shrinking thanks to liberal academia, Hollywood and Democratic propaganda.

More @ Townhall

Roger Stone judge's bias may have jeopardized entire trial: former Democratic Party lawyer

Via Billy

Former Democratic Party lawyer David Schoen suggested that the U.S. District Judge who sentenced former Trump associate Roger Stone to 40 months in prison may have jeopardized the trial by injecting her own personal bias into the proceedings.

"You were there... yesterday," said Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano to Schoen on Fox Nation's "Liberty File" on Friday. "You've followed the case as closely as anybody not involved in the trial."

"Did you detect animosity on the part of the judge towards the person of Roger Stone?" the judge asked.

"I was shocked with some of the things she said," claimed Schoen. "She was very angry. She's very smart and she knows how to make her record. But she kept on making political statements while disclaiming that this case is not at all about politics."

More @ Fox

No casket, no cost: Tennesseans go back to 'natural' burial

Via Leslie 

 

An east Tennessee burial preserve goes back to the basics by offering a "simpler, more natural" way of burying the dead -- no casket, no embalming and no cost.

In 2007, Bill Nickle, the founder of Narrow Ridge Center, a nonprofit organization established to teach sustainability, set aside five acres of land in Washburn for a natural burial preserve.

Five years later, Tennessee established Narrow Ridge as a community cemetery, and it has operated as such ever since. It's not like most cemeteries out there. It's a "green" cemetery, which its operators say means people buried there can't be embalmed or placed in a casket.

"When people died, they had home funerals and buried them within 26-36 hours and in a natural way," Bill Nickle told WVLT. "There was no embalming. There was no metal casket, no concrete vaults, and that was the way it was."

More @ WITN