Brady Campaign on "Assault clips!"

"Two-piece First National, hand sewn, silk flag painted with a Federal image on one side and a state image on the other."

"God Armeth the Patriot"
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The Brady Campaign is pulling out all the stops in their campaign for Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s Magazine Ban (H.R. 308).


(Sick people using a little girl target.)

The 150th Anniversary of the Outbreak of the U.S. Civil War (sic)

Ensign of the Confederate Revenue Service

April 12 marked the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the American Civil War, when Confederates fired on U.S. troops holding Fort Sumter, in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor. Although people routinely succumb to the temptation to reduce the cause of the war to a single factor (e.g., to the slavery issue or to "states' rights"), the cause was more complex. Independent Institute Research Fellow Joseph R. Stromberg discusses one causal factor that often gets short shrift in public discourse (although he cites many historians who support his analysis): interest groups with material, rather than ideological, stakes in promoting the war.

Antislavery, Stromberg writes, "was one of many themes generally serving as the stalking horse for more practical causes." The Republican Party Platform of 1860, for example, focused less on antislavery grievances than on proposals designed to benefit northeastern financial and manufacturing interests and Midwestern and western farmers--policies that would have become harder to implement if southern states were allowed to secede. Lest he overgeneralize, Stromberg hastens to add that northern trading and manufacturing interests that bought from the suppliers of southern cotton--"the petroleum of the mid-nineteenth century," as he puts it--were aware that they would face severe disruptions if war broke out.

In a post on The Beacon, Independent Institute Research Editor Anthony Gregory argues that April 12, 1861, also marks the date of the federal government's repudiation of the Founders' vision of the American republic and the birth of Big Government. "The war ushered in federal conscription, income taxes, new departments and agencies, and the final victory of the Hamiltonians over the Jeffersonians.... Slavery could have been ended peacefully, to be sure, but ending slavery was not Lincoln's motivation in waging the war--throughout which this purely evil institution was protected by the federal government in the Union states that practiced it, and during which slaves liberated from captivity by U.S. generals were sent back to their Southern 'masters.'"

"Civil War and the American Political Economy," by Joseph R. Stromberg (The Freeman, April 2011)

"The Regime's 150th Birthday," by Anthony Gregory (The Beacon, 4/12/11)

"The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate," an Independent Policy Forum featuring Harry V. Jaffa and Thomas J. DiLorenzo (5/7/02)

"The Civil War: Liberty and American Leviathan," an Independent Policy Forum featuring Henry E. Mayer and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel (11/14/99)

"The Bloody Hinge of American History," by Robert Higgs (Liberty, May 1997)

Dallas Moses

"The USS Water Witch was a US warship. It was never a slave ship. It was captured by Confederates and one of first ones killed in this action was Dallas Moses, a black slave River pilot who fought for Confederates. Interesting, technically he would have been the only black officer in either navy as he was hired as a pilot for the CS Navy. He made a $100 a month and negotiated his own contracts. His counter part privates in USCT make $13 month. He and his wife owned a farm and had their own cleaning business.

The counter point, many of the white US navy men refused to fight, yet the black US sailors did, one being killed in defense of his ship.

Yet the modern day NAACP is "offended" by the ship he died trying to capture trying to put "history" on something that never happened. The Confederate flag never flew over a slave ship. Please NAACP tell us which flag did? (hint: nickname is "stars and strips" and has a canton of white stars on a blue field - today there are 50 stars). And he had never visited museum? How can you make such stupid comments on something you know nothing about? Agenda?"

Your servant,
Jamey B Creel

CSS Tallahassee Marine Guard
Dept of the Gulf - 2nd FL Co D Leon Rifles

Confederate Ancestors:
Duncan S & John Creel (CSMC)
Lt Preston Creel, Sgt James F Creel, Levi Creel (29th AL Co K)
George S Pickle, AE Averitt & Joshua Harris(51st GA, Co A)
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Wreck of Civil War (sic) gunboat found under mud?

".......a Confederate Navy Lt. Thomas Pelot was assigned to lead a raid to capture the ship in the early-morning darkness on June 3, 1864.

Pelot led a group of about 120 men who used small boats to slip alongside the Water Witch undetected. Their numbers gave them a healthy advantage over the ship’s crew of 65 sailors.

Taken by surprise, the Union sailors still put up a fight, engaging the Confederates in close-quarters combat with sabers and revolvers. Luther Billings, the assistant paymaster aboard the Water Witch, later estimated 40 men were killed or wounded in the raid.

The dead included Pelot, who led the assault, and Dallas Moses, a slave who was also paid a $100 monthly salary as a Confederate river pilot.

Moses piloted the lead boat in the sneak attack, and was supposed to steer the captured Water Witch back to Savannah — under the flag of the Confederate Navy."

Lincoln Launches His War Against the Confederacy

Pvt. James Needham Alexander

Private James Needham Alexander enlisted on 1 February 1862 at the age of 28 for the War Between The States. As a soldier in Company A, 11th Regiment of NC Troops, he spent considerable time in the Lenoir County, NC area.

He was wounded (slight flesh wound on the left elbow and was shot in the right forefinger causing a broken bone in the finger) at Gettysburg, PA in July 1863. He was promoted to Corporal in July-August 1864. He was wounded (shot through the left thigh) at Petersburg, VA between September-October 1864 and rejoined Company A between January-February 1865.

He was paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865. On 28 June 1909, he applied for soldier’s pension and was approved. In October 1917, he applied for admission to the Home For Disabled Ex-Confederate Soldiers in Raleigh, NC and was admitted 27 November 1917. He died in Raleigh on 14 January 1918 of “Acute Uraemia” due to chronic nephritis. He was buried in the Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, NC in the Confederate Soldiers’ section.

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North Carolina retained strong Unionist sentiments until Lincoln’s provocations at Fort Sumter resulted in open warfare. Governor John W. Ellis was well aware of Constitutional limitations of presidential authority, and knew a president could not wage war against a State – an act of treason. Read more about “A State Forced Out of the Union” at the North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial website, www.ncwbts150.com.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
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Lincoln Launches His War Against the Confederacy:

“In manipulating the Fort Sumter crisis to produce that “first shot,” Abe Lincoln had followed the advice of his long-time political friend, Orville Browning, of Illinois. Lincoln had first met Browning during brief service in the Illinois Militia, when they were both chasing after Black Hawk’s Native Americans. Well-educated, Browning practiced law in Quincy, Illinois, and was a Whig politician during the years that Lincoln was active in the Whig party. Then, like Lincoln, Browning became a major figure in the founding of the Illinois Republican party in 1856.

But Browning’s instruction about manipulating the Fort Sumter crisis to produce that most valuable “first shot” had been his most fearsome influence on Lincoln. Before the inauguration, Browning had written Lincoln: “In any conflict…between the [Federal] Government and the seceding States, it is very important that the [Secessionists] shall be [perceived] as the aggressors, and that they be kept constantly and palpable [allegedly] in the wrong. The first attempt…to furnish supplies or reinforcements to Sumter will induce [a military response] by South Carolina, and then the [Federal] Government will stand justified, before the entire [Federation], in repelling the aggression, and retaking the forts.”

Later that summer Lincoln would happily tell Browning, “The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter – it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could.”

Lieutenant [Gustavus] Fox was very discouraged by his failure to resupply Fort Sumter, and would soon write Abe Lincoln a letter of apology. To Fox, Lincoln would reply: “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the [Federation] would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the results.” Having in his hand his coveted “first shot,” Abe Lincoln lost no time in launching a war against the Confederacy.

On the very next day, April 15, Lincoln issued an Executive Proclamation directing the Army and Navy to invade the Confederacy and force her States to submit to Federal authority. Lincoln cloaked his rhetoric in awkward language that avoided referring to the Confederacy by name, ignored the fact that seven States had seceded prior to his taking office, ignored Fort Sumter, alleged the existence of lawlessness and rebellion on the part of some of the people in seven States, and inferred that the northern States were somehow in harm’s way.

The Proclamation was set in legal language to circumvent the authority vested in the Federal House and Senate to declare war, and to suppress the notion that the Confederacy even existed. Instead of naming the Confederacy, he called his adversary, “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

In his proclamation Abe Lincoln had totally ignored the action of his fleet of warships and the Confederate eviction of the Federal regiment from Fort Sumter. To have done so would have required that he admit that 7 States had seceded and formed a new nation, that the States into which he was dispatching militiamen were actually members of a peaceful foreign nation.

(Abe Lincoln’s First Shot Strategy, excerpted from Bloodstains, an Epic History of the Politics that Produced the American Civil War,” Howard Ray White, 2011, pp. 38-43)

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Lincoln Launches His War Against the Confederacy

Sumner’s Fallacy of Sectional Vision

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A demagogue like Charles Sumner was no match for a statesman like Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, who corrected Sumner’s misunderstanding of New England’s slave-holding status at the time of the Revolution. After denigrating an absent Butler in the Senate in 1856, Sumner received swift punishment from the end of Preston Brook’s gutta-percha cane.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net
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Sumner’s Fallacy of Sectional Vision:

Mr. Sumner: “Sir, slavery never flourished in Massachusetts; nor did it ever prevail there at any time, even in the early Colonial days, to such a degree as to be a distinctive feature of her powerful civilization. And let me add that when this Senator (Butler) presumes to say that American Independence was won by the arms and treasure of slave-holding communities, he speaks either in irony or ignorance.”

Mr. Butler: “When the Declaration of Independence was made, was not Connecticut a slave-holding State?”

Mr. Sumner: “Not in any just sense.”

Mr. Butler: “Sir, you are not the judge of that. Was not New York a slave-holding State?”

Mr. Sumner: “Let the Senator (William Seward) from New York answer that.”

Mr. Butler: “Sir, if he answers, he will answer the truth, and perhaps it might not be exactly agreeable to you. Was not New Jersey a slave-holding State? Was not Rhode Island a slave-holding State?

Mr. Seward: “It is due the honorable gentleman from South Carolina that I should answer his question in reference to New York, since it has been referred it to me. At the time of the Revolution, every sixteenth man in the State of New York was a slave.”

Mr. Butler: “Was not New Hampshire a slave-holding State? Was not Pennsylvania a slave-holding State? Was not Delaware a slave-holding State?

Mr. Seward: “I am requested to make my answer a little more accurate, according to the truth. I understand, that at the time of the Revolution, every twelfth man in New York was a salve.”

Mr. Butler: “They can afford no refuge for historical falsehood such as the gentleman [Sumner] has committed in the fallacy of his sectional vision. I have shown that twelve of the original States were slave-holding communities. Now sir, I prove that the thirteenth, Massachusetts, was a slave-holding State before, and at the commencement of, the Revolution. As to the character of slavery in that State, that may be somewhat a different thing, which can not contradict the fact stated in the newspapers of the day, that Negroes were held, were advertised for sale, with another truth, that many were sent to other slave-holding States in the way of traffic. When slavery was abolished [in Massachusetts], many that had been slaves and might have been freemen were sold into bondage.”

Mr. Sumner: “By slave-holding States, of course, I mean States which were peculiarly, distinctively, essentially slave-holding, and not States which the holding of slaves seems to have been rather the accident of the hour, and in which all the people, or the greater part of the people, were ready to welcome emancipation.”

Mr. Butler: “Mr. President, I think the remarks of the Senator verify exactly what I said, that when he chooses to be rhetorical, it is upon an assumption of facts, upon his own construction, and by an accumulation of adjectives.”

(Extracts from the debate between Senators Charles Sumner and Andrew P. Butler in June, 1854, beginning on page 1.013 of the Appendix to the Congressional Globe, First Session, Thirty-third Congress. The Case of the South Against the North, B.F. Grady, Edwards & Broughton, 1899, 225-226)

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Sumner’s Fallacy of Sectional Vision

I Am A Free Man

"The problem with the economy is simple, whatever needed to be done to save companies from closing down has not been done. They borrowed one trillion dollars to do this via the Stimulus plan and instead of spending it, as they claimed, on "shovel-ready" jobs they spent it on bailing out city, county and state government workers. Even a cursory glance at the list of recipients of stimulus dollars shows this fact. The other beneficiaries were industries that were heavily unionized. Now, the money is gone and the benefit is non-existent.

I am against government bailouts of any industry, of the banking industry, of the auto industry, of the steel industry. I am against government subsidies of green energy industries and farming industries. Even though a bailout might have saved my company, it is better that it died. A bad economy is like a cancer, it eats away at healthy companies and will kill most of them. Bailouts and subsidies are like chemotherapy. it might make one sick, but it can give a company a fighting chance at survival. The question comes down to whether chemo should be chosen, since it is itself a poison in the body designed to kill the cancer cells it wreaks havoc on the healthy cells. It becomes a race as to which is killed first, the cancer or the body.

My company died of natural causes of a bad economy. I feel no guilt over this. I did not choose chemotherapy even though there were some opportunities to save my company by choosing government programs. There came a point where I had to face an ideological dilemma."

"This Gang of a Few Hundred, and Their Enforcers" and "Their Friends"

Via TRUTH TO POWER

DOJ Source: Gov’t Muslim ‘Outreach’ Jeopardized Active Terror Investigations

UPDATE: On the heels of last week’s article by Patrick Poole, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has sent a letter to Eric Holder this morning demanding answers as to why the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute CAIR, its co-founder Omar Ahmad, and others regarding the Holy Land Foundation case.
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The nearly six-hour interview I conducted earlier this year with a top Department of Justice official on the condition of anonymity brought forth a number of revelations about serious problems within the U.S. government’s homeland security and law enforcement community.

Via Weasel Zippers

The Ruger SR1911 (Video)

It is finally here and it is now official. Rumors has been roaming around for years that Ruger is making a 1911. These rumors started way back even before Ruger considered making one. Back in November 2009, the first discussions started among the engineers. Through extensive work and planning including 1000s of interviews through the “Voice of the Customer Program” the specification was put on paper and the project set in motion. Michael and I were down at Gunsite in December 2010 along with a handful of other representatives from the Outdoor Media and were introduced to the first production guns.

New $700K IRV Unvailed

"TAC Motors announced the launch of a military version of its Stark Jeep, the Stark IRV (Incident Response Vehicle), which will cost more than $700,000. It will feature Israeli technology monitoring and tracking. The production will continue to be made in Santa Catarina, Brazil and other military equipment will come from Israel."