Dixie Heritage News – Friday, October 19, 2018
Thank You Billy Reb!
SCV ATTEMPTS NEW LICENSE PLATE
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is sponsoring a proposed Texas license plate that honors Confederate soldiers to help raise money for the Sons of Confederate Veterans – reigniting a decade-old debate over establishing a novelty plate to benefit the group. The new design does not have a Confederate Flag but instead includes a rebel soldier clad in a gray Confederate uniform carrying a Texas regiment’s flag.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans is a group of about 3,200 members in Texas, according to its March application for the specialty license plate. The group estimates about 1,000 such plates would be sold in the first year. Of the $30 fee collected for specialty Texas license plates, $22 would go to the Department of Agriculture as the sponsoring agency. The department would give that money back to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in the form of grants “for supporting charitable causes and related activities,” Miller told the DMV in a letter offering to sponsor the plate.
The purpose of the special license plate is to “remember and honor our Confederate ancestors” and to make the commemorative plate available to people interested in Texas’ participation in the war, according to the application.
Kim Olson, a retired lieutenant colonel running against Miller in the November general election, said the agency should be focused on agricultural resources instead of sponsoring Confederate license plates, “We have bigger fish to fry.”
ALSO IN TEXAS
The push to rename five schools named for Confederates in the Austin, Texas school district is inching closer to reality, but some of the names will stay for now.
The majority of trustees for the Austin Independent School District “appeared to favor” renaming Zachary Taylor Fulmore Middle School and John T. Allan Elementary School during a meeting late Monday, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The schools are named after a private and an officer who fought in the Confederate Army, respectively.
Fulmore would be renamed after Sarah Beth Lively, a teacher at the school for 25 years, while Allan would be changed to honor Anita Ferrales Coy, a former principal and administrator in the district. A vote is expected to be held on the proposed new names on Oct. 29, according to the newspaper.
District officials voted to rename five schools in February but the names of three other schools originally slated for renaming will remain the same, at least for the time being.
The effort to rebrand Eastside Memorial High School at the Johnson Campus – named after Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnson has been postponed until the campus moves to another location, the newspaper reports.
A decision to rename Sidney Lanier High School will also be postponed until November after a district trustee said not enough time was given to residents to provide input on a new name of the school.
Trustee Ted Gordon said he opposed renaming John H. Reagan High School as simply Reagan High School to remove any reference to the Confederate postmaster general because the change would be merely superficial.
Costs associated with changing the name at one secondary school in the district were estimated earlier this year at $77,000, not including new sports and band uniforms, according to the newspaper.
TRUMP LEE AND A PATHETIC PILE OF SLOBBER
President Donald Trump praised Confederate general Robert E. Lee at a campaign rally in Lebanon, Ohio last week Friday night.
“So Robert E. Lee was a great general. And Abraham Lincoln developed a phobia. He couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee,” Trump said, “He was going crazy. I don’t know if you know this story. But Robert E. Lee was winning battle after battle after battle. And Abraham Lincoln came home, he said, ‘I can’t beat Robert E. Lee,'” Trump said.
“And he had all of his generals, they looked great, they were the top of their class at West Point. They were the greatest people. There’s only one problem – they didn’t know how the hell to win. They didn’t know how to fight. They didn’t know how,” he continued.
The President went on to describe how “incredible” Union commander and Ohio native Ulysses S. Grant went on to defeat Lee, and referenced Grant’s heavy drinking.
The president said that Ohio gave the U.S. a general “who was incredible, he drank a little bit too much, you know who I’m talking about. And Lincoln said, I don’t care what problem he has, you guys aren’t winning. And his name was Grant, General Grant, and he went in and he knocked the hell out of everyone…..Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” The President said.
“Rev.” Robert Lee IV, who is the sniveling cry-baby great-great-great-great-nephew of General Lee, tweeted out a video of his own after the Trump rally responding to the President: “Robert E. Lee fought for the continued enslavement of black bodies,” Lee’s effeminate great-great-great-great-nephew said in his Twitter video. “It was for states’ rights yes, but for states’ rights to own slaves.”
“He is showing us he supports an idol of white supremacy and of hatred,” Lee IV said of Trump.
The Lee IV video had accumulated over 7,000 retweets at the time of this writing.
Lee had previously criticized his ancestor when he spoke at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, calling him an “idol of white supremacy, racism and hate.”
“SOUTHERN” COUPLE IN NEW YORK HARASSED
A group of nine people, organized by Cynthia Davis, the Staten Island National Action Network coordinator, came to the small four-home offshoot of Midland Avenue last Wednesday because one of the homeowners hung two Confederate Flags outside their own home.
“It’s unacceptable. In 2018 in New York City, a person should be able to live where they live and not deal with this,” Davis said.
Mary, who is black, and Kevin, who is white, the neighbors living next door to the Flags are insisting that the Flags are a “racist” dig at their miscegenation. However, the woman who owns the Flags insists that she is not prejudiced against Mary. She said the Flags, which were used in battle during the WBTS to signify a group of southerners rebelling against tyranny, were hung by her boyfriend, “because he is into that.” She then pointed to a claim of $2,000 she won against Kevin after she was bit by the couple’s pit bull, and not the Flags, as the reason the dispute has recently flared up.
A police source confirmed multiple visits to the block to deal with disputes stemming from the “feud.” Two officers at the location last Wednesday night declined to comment on the situation, and referred us to the NYPD’s press office.
Davis said a second visit to include protestors is being planned.
SILENT SAM RESTORATION CHALLENGED
The News & Observer of Raleigh reports that the University of North Carolina Faculty Council adopted a resolution Friday calling for the statue nicknamed “Silent Sam” and its remaining stone pedestal to be removed from campus grounds.
The faculty move came hours after the university’s 225th birthday celebration. Chancellor Carol Folt used the occasion to make a public apology for the university’s connection to slavery and the oppression of blacks.
Folt and the school’s trustees have until Nov. 15 to present a plan to the statewide public university system’s governors for how they will restore the statue.
SILENT SAM VANDAL GOES FREE
In the week’s trial of a University of North Carolina student accused of vandalizing Silent Sam, the Judge has declined to punish the University graduate student who admitted to the crime in open court.
Orange County Judge Samantha Cabe noted that Maya Little had admitted to the crime on the stand and that the facts showed she was guilty of the charge of defacing a public monument. But Cabe used a North Carolina judicial maneuver known as a “continued judgment” to essentially withhold the guilty verdict because she sympathized after hearing Little’s testimony about how she struggled with the statue’s Confederate symbolism.
Judge Cabe also waived court fees and restitution. Little known fact, “Court Fees” go straight into the Judges retirement account. Because of that, Judges almost never waive them. That is why even the innocent, and those whose charges were dismissed, are still assessed “Court Fees,” or “Court Costs.”
NON-HERITAGE NEWS EFFECTING THE SOUTHLAND
President Trump isn’t stopping with Kavanaugh. He just nominated 13 More Judges.
Earlier this week the Senate confirmed twelve federal district judges and three circuit court judges (2d, 3d, and 9th Circuits) in very short order.
Senate Democrats accepted an offer Thursday from Senate Republicans to confirm 15 lifetime federal judges in exchange for the ability to go into recess through the midterms, allowing endangered Democrats to campaign.
The calculation by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his caucus was simple: That Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be able to confirm roughly 15 judges if he kept the Senate in session for the next few weeks anyway. So Democrats OK’d an offer to confirm three Circuit Court judges and 12 Circuit Court judges as the price to pay to go home for election season.
MORE JUNK AT “JUSTICE”
This past week we saw the current Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Rod Rosenstein refuse to provide Congress requested documents and refuse to speak to Congress under oath about his activities while DAG. Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson’s attorney sent Congress a letter stating that Simpson will plead the 5th rather than answer questions about his actions surrounding the Russia witch hunt. Innocent men do not hide their actions!
Once the Nov. 6 midterm elections are over, President Trump is widely expected to belatedly accept the letter of resignation tendered by Sessions in May 2017,” writes Jarrett.
“Hopefully, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will also leave the Justice Department when Sessions heads out the door,” he adds.
CHINA-COLLUSION?
FBI director Christopher Wray said Wednesday that China trumps Russia as a counterintelligence threat to the U.S.
“China in many ways represents the broadest, most complicated, most long-term counterintelligence threat we face,” Wray told the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “Russia is in many ways fighting to stay relevant after the fall of the Soviet Union. They’re fighting today’s fight. China’s is fighting tomorrow’s fight.”
SPY TRIAL
For the first time, ever, the U.S. will bring to trial a Chinese government intelligence agent accused of trying to steal trade secrets from American aviation firms. The first time ever, the feds have in custody an accused intellectual-property thief and espionage agent for the People’s Republic of China.
Lots of economic, trade and intellectual property thiefs who hail from China had been indicted in U.S. courts. Indicted and that was it. None had been nabbed, let alone tried in open court in the U.S.
WHY WE NEED THE WALL
The Honduran government called on 2,000 immigrants Tuesday to give up their trek north and return home, just hours after President Trump threatened to withhold $65 million in U.S. money if the country’s leaders don’t find a way to head off the caravan.
Honduras’s foreign ministry, in a statement reported by local news, said the caravan was being politically manipulated in order to make the country look bad, just days after leaders were in Washington promising better cooperation with the Trump administration.
But no matter what happens with this caravan, security experts say the U.S. is already being flooded with other caravans with hundreds of people on a near-daily basis, and that shows no signs of stopping.
1865-2018 – CONTINUED & FINAL THOUGHTS
by Al Benson, Jr.
Al Benson, Jr., is the Editor of the Copperhead Chronicle. In addition to writing for Southern Patriot and other publications, he is a member of the Confederate Society of America and the League of the South.
To finish my 3-part series, it should come as no surprise that Edwin M. Stanton sought to manipulate the civilian court trial of John Surratt Jr. I suppose he felt that being Secretary of War gave him certain “prerogatives” not usually available to mere mortals.
A man who was a special War Department counsel, Albert Gallatin Riddle, was tapped by Stanton to oversee the “general management of the case.” Campbell observed that: “In other words, tlhe war secretary had arranged to dictate the trial of a civilian in a civilian court, as he had dictated the trial of civilians in a military court. Assisting the prosecution, the House Judiciary Committee worked night and day on plans to remove the president, and turn over to the War Department any information its members thought would help to unseat Andrew Johnson and hang John Surratt. Looking at this whole sorry situation it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to, in the words of Patrick Henry, “smell a rat.”
Surratt’s lead attorney, Joseph Bradley knew what the game really was. He was no neophyte. Although he was a Democrat he had supported the Union, but for all that, the Lincoln administration had never been on his top ten list of favorites. Campbell has stated that: “He (Bradley) knew, as all Washington now knew, that these radicals had used perjured testimony not so much to obtain the death of an innocent woman as to ensure political control…He knew all about Lou Weichman’s false testimony in court and his retractions in private…Infuriated by the prosecution’s bland denial of War Department control, he showed malicious delight in leading unsuspecting prosecution witnesses to admit they had been examined in Judge Advocate General Holt’s office.”
A big problem for the prosecution was to show that John Surratt had been on the scene to help Booth with the Lincoln assassination and they worked mightily trying to do that. They came up with all manner of people who said they saw Booth and Surratt together in Washington on April 14th. They had an impressive list of liars to “prove” this, as well as some who were actually mistaken.
Does this sound like the current situation with Kavanaugh? People are literally coming out of the woodwork (or from under rocks) to testify that they have seen Kavanaugh falling down drunk, gang-raping girls by the score, both he and his friends. Of course the stories fail to hold up and most people called on to admit they were at these “parties” state they know nothing about them. And there is no evidence to contradict them. But as I said in an earlier article-who needs evidence in today’s atmosphere? Isn’t just making the accusation enough? And if it isn’t enough for us, then we are all racists or whatever other perjury they can dredge up for us. After all, none of these people would ever lie to us, right? Right? Don’t all answer at once!
Just as this current situation is all about keeping Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court and dragging this sorry farce on until the midterms in hopes of a Demoncratic victory so they can impeach Trump, so the Surratt situation was all about validating the guilty verdict for the Lincoln “conspirators” so Stanton and company would not look as if they had railroaded the whole thing through, and if John Surratt were not found guilty, especially after all the perjured testimony, that’s exactly what it would look like. Stanton stood to have egg on his face. The price of removing that egg was attempted military control over a trial in civil court.
But hold on, to go back to the trial of the Lincoln “conspirators” it gets worse. Campbell noted, on page 277 that: “Sunday’s newspapers carried a bombshell: the majority of Mrs. Surratt’s judges had not been convinced of her guilt. Five of her nine judges had recommended mercy for her to the president. At last, the truth was out. The source of the information was incontrovertible. The reporters had seen the official Report of the Trial of the Conspirators. More specifically, they had seen, attached to the end of the report, the half sheet of paper on which the request for mercy had been made to the president. It bore the signatures of the five judges.
The defense lawyers had not touched the report; it had not been admitted as evidence. At the end of the session Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt had come to the courtroom to retrieve the document, but the newsmen had already seen its explosive contents.” On Sunday next, the 4th of August, Andrew Johnson read in the news the commentary that blamed Mrs. Surratt’s death on him. The very next day, immediately, if not sooner, a messenger was sent to the office of Edwin Stanton, with orders to come immediately to the president, with the official trial report in hand.
The messenger carried this identical message to Mr. Stanton three separate times. After the third attempt, Stanton dispatched a ribbon clerk to the president with the report. No way was he going to face Johnson personally.
Enter again William P. Wood, former superintendent of Old Capitol Prison, who had been “a lackey to Stanton.” He showed up at the White House and spent some time with Johnson. Campbell noted that “He told the president that after Mrs. Surratt’s arrest he, Wood, had been sent to her brother, Zad Jenkins, with the promise that she would be released if she or her family gave any information about Booth’s whereabouts.” Relying on Wood’s promise, Zad gave him some information he had heard. “This tip led to Booth’s apprehension but Stanton had refused to honor his promise. Wood then tried to reach the president, but upon Stanton’s written order had been refused entry to the White House.”
Wood’s story shook Johnson up, and as Campbell noted: “Yet there before him lay the proof, the formal Brief Review of the Case which two years before had been delivered to him personally by Judge Holt. The long pages of report, convictions, statements of death warrants, all tied together will yellow linen tape. But there was something else; a half sheet of paper on which was written a recommendation for mercy for Mrs. Surratt. A black sheet of legal length paper separated it from the last page of the report…The pages were fastened together at the top and each page as read was turned back and folded under the unread portion. In that way the little half page had been hidden from sight.” Odd that Judge Holt had neglected to mention it. Odder still that it hadn’t been included in the “official publication of the trial, approved and released by Stanton, nor in the judge advocate’s annual report to the Secretary of War.” It would seem that, the way the report was presented to the president, that he never saw the clemency request-which was probably Mr. Stanton’ intention.
All this considered, Johnson wrote a letter to Stanton in which he said: “Sir: Public considerations of a high character constrain me to say that your resignation of Secretary of War will be accepted.”
Though Johnson removed Stanton, the radical Congress simply reinstated him under the Tenure of Office Act, but, thankfully, Johnson had the will to persevere-at which point Stanton simply refused to leave his office until he was removed by force. So the would-be dictator who would be president finally got his comeuppance-and Mrs. Surratt had to die so he could cover up his actions both before and after the Lincoln assassination. There are questions to this day as to his involvement in that situation.
So if you want to grasp the degree to which radicals in government usurp power to promote their own leftist agendas today, take a good look at what Edwin Stanton did in his day. Outside of the names, there is very little difference in the actions of radical leftists in and out of government. 1865 and 2018 ain’t all that much different.
STOP SEARCHING FOR “THE ONE”
by Jonathan Pokluda
Johnathan Pokluda is a Pastor in the Dallas, Texas area and a columnist for Fox News.
About once a year I’ll give a sermon about dating. And without fail, those will be the highest-attended talks of the entire year. It is the topic to talk about.
Why? Because it’s one of the biggest hopes, goals, and thrills for most single adults. But it is also the biggest source of problems. It causes the most pain, the most heartbreak, the most angst, the most longing, and the most confusion. It’s eating everyone’s lunch.
The reason that dating causes so many problems is because, by and large, we’re all really bad at it. As a society, and as a generation, we’re doing it all wrong. Fewer people are getting married. Once married, people are far more likely to divorce than in generations past. Not only are we bad at dating but we’re also rapidly getting worse. We’re not as good as our parents were, and not nearly as good as our grandparents were, despite all our seeming advancements. So where did we go wrong, and how can we make it right?
As a “good Christian,” your first instinct might be to go to the Bible and see what it has to say about dating. And the answer is: not much. The Bible doesn’t really talk about dating. It certainly never uses the word dating, and it rarely gives any examples that in any way resemble what we think of as dating. In fact, the clearest example of a dating relationship in the Bible is probably Samson and Delilah, and that didn’t turn out very well for anyone.
So what gives? Dating seems like a very important topic; why doesn’t the Bible talk about it more?
The reason is pretty simple: dating as we know it didn’t exist when the Bible was written. Dating is a modern invention, and has only been around about a century. God, the inventor of marriage, didn’t invent dating. And the “better” we think we are at dating, the worse we are at marriage. This doesn’t necessarily mean we need to kiss dating good-bye, but we do need to figure out how God would have us date.
The first thing we have to consider is whether the Bible’s relative lack of dating is, in itself, telling us something. It’s not like people couldn’t date back then.
They chose not to do it, or at least not to do it the way most people do today. And their results, in terms of successfully creating marriages that would last a lifetime, were far better than the results we get through dating today. You might disagree with my conclusion here, but my point is this: the modern phenomenon of dating has not made us better at marriage.
There are many reasons why our modern take on dating hasn’t been successful. In counseling hundreds of young adults (and observing thousands more) who are either single, dating, or engaged, I’ve noticed a number of common mistakes people make when dating. One common mistake is we are looking for “the one.” If you’re looking for “the one,” or your “soul mate,” and you define that as being the one person in all the world who is perfect for you, I have some bad news: they don’t exist. You’ll never find them. They’re off riding unicorns with Bigfoot.
The idea of a soul mate isn’t biblical, scientific, or logical. Fact is, there are a number of people who could make a good spouse for you, and you for them. The reason why this matters is because thinking that you do have a perfect soul mate can lead to some real problems in dating and marriage. In dating, it can keep you single far longer than you need to be – maybe forever. If you’re looking for someone who doesn’t exist, needless to say you’re going to have a really hard time finding them. It can cause you to be too picky, seeing a tiny flaw or minor difference as proof that they’re not “the one” for you.
It can also work the other way, causing you to rush into things or stay with someone longer than you should. If you become convinced that someone actually is your soul mate, then you tend to overlook red flags – even major ones. After all, you’re meant to be together, right? No, you’re not. That’s where the warnings about being “madly” in love and not listening to wise counsel come into play.
The idea of a perfect soul mate can also cause problems within marriage. It can cause people to look elsewhere when marriage gets hard, because supposedly if your spouse were “the one,” marriage wouldn’t require so much work.
No matter how awesome your spouse may be, they’re still not going to be perfect. As months and years go by, there will be times when they don’t inspire a magical feeling within you. So when you meet someone new, and different, and therefore exciting, there may be a temptation to think that this person is your soul mate. That you somehow got it wrong when you married, and you were meant to end up with this new person instead. And that’s wrong.
Here’s how you should look at this concept of there being one person in the whole world who you’re meant to be with: the person you marry is “the one” for you. But you don’t marry them because they’re “the one.” They become “the one” because you’re married to them. They’re the one you’ve committed to love for the rest of your life, and the two of you together become one (Mark 10:7-8). They are still the one when they gain weight, lose weight, lose their job, get cancer, or make mistakes. Because that’s what true love is. It’s not loving someone because they are perfect; that would be easy. It’s taking someone who is not perfect and loving them anyway, because that’s what you’ve sworn to do.
Is there someone out there more compatible with Monica (my wife) than I am? Yes! Thousands of men. I am 6’7″ and messy. She is 5’3″ and rather organized. There are ways in which we’re not an obvious match. But she’s the one because she’s the one I committed to.
If that doesn’t sound romantic to you, then you need to change your view of romance. You’ve been sold a fairy-tale, love-at-first-sight view of love and marriage. It may be cute for cartoons, but you’re an adult now, and you live in the real world. To me, it’s far more magical to be loved for who I am, flaws and all. I’m not Prince Charming. My bride, as wonderful as she is, is not perfect either. The only perfect person in all of history is Jesus, and he chose to love us – to give his life up for us – even though we are all imperfect, sinful people. He’s “The One.” And by loving each other as he loves us (1 John 4:19), my wife and I can be “the one” for each other.
This article is an excerpt from “Welcome to Adulting” by JP Pokluda, published by Baker Books, A Division of Baker Publishing Group September 2018. Available wherever books and eBooks are sold.
https://www.welcometoadultingbook.com/
WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
by Dr. Chuck Baldwin
Dr. Chuck Baldwin is a radio broadcaster, syndicated columnist, and pastor dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded. He is a former candidate for both Vice-President and President of the United States for the Constitution party.
Conservatives and Christians are wildly ecstatic that Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the newest justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. To hear all of the euphoria over Kavanaugh’s confirmation, one would think that he was heralding the Second Coming. He’s not. But his appointment does herald other things-many of them BAD.
First, let me briefly discuss the Democrat and Republican rancor that was put on public display during the confirmation hearings. As I have tried to point out to the American people over the past several decades, the entire left-right, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican paradigm is pure propaganda. It is nothing but public theater. Both parties use the “us vs. them” demagoguery as a way to keep their constituents who buy into the charade happy enough to keep electing and reelecting them to public office.
To use an analogy that many sports fans can identify with right now, the Democrat-Republican rivalry is tantamount to the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox rivalry. Each side is cheering like crazy for their team and rabidly booing the other team. But both teams are playing the same game; they are throwing and hitting the same ball; and they are running the same bases. It’s pure entertainment. And that’s what the two major parties in Washington, D.C., are doing. They root and cheer for their party and boo and hiss the other party, but they are playing the same game. It’s pure entertainment.
All of the theatrics surrounding Kavanaugh’s confirmation was nothing more than political posturing for the November elections by both parties. I promise you, had Kavanaugh been appointed by a Democrat president, the same game would have been played, except the two sides would have switched uniforms. The fix was in: Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed, and everyone inside the Beltway knew it. It was all a show, folks. Now, Republicans have a “win” in which to motivate constituents to go vote November 6, and Democrats have a “loss” in which to motivate constituents to go vote November 6.
The left-right rivalry is pure theater. It’s not about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, truth, freedom or the American way; it’s all about political power. Oh, there might be a handful of hardcore liberals and conservatives who are truly driven by ideology, but what drives the vast majority of these miscreants-otherwise known as politicians-is power: pure, unabashed, raw power.
The other thing that the Democrat-Republican phony rivalry does is obfuscate the really important developments that are taking place that neither party wants the American people to know about.
For example, while most Americans were transfixed on Brett Kavanaugh’s version of Peyton Place (did I really say that? One must be at least 50 to even remember that TV series) on CNN and FOX News, they didn’t notice that Israel manipulated the Syrian shoot-down of a Russian aircraft that took the lives of 15 Russian airmen, and in retaliation Russia delivered several S-300 missile defense systems to Syria. They didn’t notice that the GOP and Donald Trump passed a massive $854 billion spending bill that fully funds Planned Parenthood and fetal tissue research. They didn’t notice that the government’s annual spending report came out and Trump and the GOP exploded the federal deficit by over $1 trillion. I could keep going, but you get the point.
Before continuing, let me briefly digress to point out one of the most egregious hypocrisies of President Trump and Republicans in the U.S. Senate: How was it that Trump and the GOP sat back and did absolutely nothing to assist Judge Roy Moore when he was accused of decades-old sexual improprieties? Trump and the GOP left Judge Moore to be devoured by the wolves but then came to a ferocious defense, like a hornet’s nest defending its queen, when Kavanagh was accused in similar fashion. Why? Huh? Why?
And not only did the “she said, he said” circus that passed for confirmation hearings for a U.S. Supreme Court justice obfuscate serious developments on the national and international stage, it also obfuscated Brett Kavanaugh’s REAL record. Confirming (or voting for) a judge should be all about his or her fidelity to upholding the U.S. Constitution. For a judge, nothing is as important as that. And the plain truth is, Judge Kavanaugh’s report card on defending the Constitution is a big, fat “F.”
I have already pointed out in previous columns that Kavanaugh is an “enemy” of the Fourth Amendment. And that accusation is made by many legal scholars, including Judge Andrew Napolitano. Kavanaugh helped create the Patriot Act that has done more to trample the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution than any act ever passed by Congress.
Judicial Watch founder, attorney Larry Klayman, wrote this:
Judge Kavanaugh either has no respect for the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, or he was unethically attempting to curry favor with the Republican establishment, exemplified by former President George W. Bush and his administration, which Kavanaugh had worked for as staff secretary in the White House Counsel’s office. President Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney, not coincidentally, had also put in place this mass surveillance, using September 11 as the pretext.
Kavanaugh obviously understood that his aspirations to someday become a Supreme Court justice would depend on his close ties to this Republican Bush-Cheney establishment, who would someday, if the chance arose, push for his nomination. And, indeed this came to pass in the last weeks, after Kavanaugh’s mentor who he clerked for in his early career, Justice Anthony Kennedy, announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. The swamp creatures of this slimy Republican establishment . . . pushed The Donald to name Kavanaugh as the next SCOTUS justice.
But as far as most conservatives and Christians are concerned, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t exist. It is the invisible Bill in the Bill of Rights. But it’s even worse than that. Not only do most conservatives and Christians not care about defending the Fourth Amendment, they are actually some of the most radical enemies of the Fourth Amendment. No wonder they like Brett Kavanaugh so much.
The Hill reports:
President Trump said Monday that he’s directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to provide federal assistance to the city of Chicago to limit gun violence and suggested the city implement the controversial practice of “stop and frisk.”
“We want to straighten it out and straighten it out fast. There’s no reason for what’s going on there,” Trump told law enforcement officials at a convention for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Trump said he’s urging Chicago officials to “strongly consider stop and frisk.”
“It works, and it was meant for problems like Chicago,” Trump said, garnering applause from the audience.
Trump’s “stop and frisk” procedures are quintessential Police State machinations. Only anti-Constitution, rabid Police State lawyers like Rudy Giuliani support such practices.
Yet, when Trump promotes the Hitlerian/Stalinesque “stop and frisk” procedures, his law enforcement audience-comprised of many Christians and conservatives-roar their enthusiastic support.
I’m telling you again: The Fourth Amendment is dead to most Republicans, Christians and conservatives. In fact, there wasn’t a single Republican senator-not even Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning son of liberty champion Ron Paul-who even dared to broach the subject of Kavanaugh’s pathetic anti-Fourth Amendment record. The only senator from either party who called Kavanagh out for his many Police State rulings was Montana’s Democrat senator, Jon Tester.
The Hill reports:
[Montana U.S. Senator Jon] Tester focused on [Brett] Kavanaugh’s judicial record rather than sexual assault allegations made against the nominee.
Tester spoke about researching the candidate deeply, finding a few issues that he felt were disqualifying for his vote, including his involvement in mass surveillance and the Patriot Act as two issues that violate the 4th Amendment.
I am not endorsing Senator Tester, of course, but I am pointing out the fact that Tester accurately addressed the singular issue upon which any court justice (or any elected office holder, for that matter) should be primarily judged: his or her fidelity to the U.S. Constitution (albeit, I seriously doubt that Tester would have been so concerned about the Constitution had the Supreme Court nominee been appointed by a Democrat President). But all of the theatrics surrounding the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings thoroughly obfuscated this most-important issue from public debate or public attention.
Neither did Judge Kavanaugh take a position against Obamacare, but used an obscure law to turn Obama’s “healthcare” law into a government “tax” to make it more palatable. In the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein writes:
Though nobody would question his credentials, there’s fear among a subset of conservatives that as a Washington insider and former Bush administration lawyer, Kavanaugh could turn out to be overly cautious and fearful about upsetting elites, thus upholding unconstitutional laws and sustaining bad precedents.
Though Kavanaugh’s hundreds of decisions in a dozen years as an appellate judge have been broadly conservative (particularly when it comes to reining in the regulatory state), there is one decision in particular that has divided conservatives – his dissenting opinion in an Obamacare case brought to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011. This has triggered a debate over whether Kavanaugh could be another Chief Justice John Roberts, who the Right still does not forgive for upholding Obamacare.
In the Seven-Sky v. Holder case, a forerunner to the landmark Supreme Court ruling, a three judge panel decided 2-1 that Obamacare’s individual mandate was constitutional. While Kavanaugh dissented from the main opinion, he did not go as far as declaring Obamacare unconstitutional. Instead, he argued that the court was not yet in a position to hear the case, because under an arcane 19th-century law known as the Tax Anti-Injunction Act, courts could not hear challenges to a tax that had not been collected yet, and thus any decision would have to wait until 2015, when taxpayers had to file mandate penalties for the first time. In summary, Kavanaugh didn’t uphold Obamacare, but he did not take the opportunity to strike it down, either.
Furthermore, Judge Kavanaugh believes that a sitting President (ANY President) is exempt from criminal investigations and even civil suits. From Politico:
Kavanaugh’s allies note that the 2009 Minnesota Law Review article he wrote addressing such subjects advocates for a congressional statute that would exempt the president from civil suits while in office, as well as immunizing him from criminal investigation and prosecution. He does use some pretty strong language about the prospect of a criminal trial of a sitting president, saying it would “cripple the federal government”-an assessment that one could imagine leading a Supreme Court justice to step in to avert such a prospect.
Earlier in the panel discussion, helpfully preserved for eternity by C-SPAN, Kavanaugh refers to the issue as “a question that has been a lurking constitutional issue for a long time which at some point here should be resolved so we can determine whether the Congress or an independent counsel should investigate the president when his conduct is at issue.” “I tend to think it has to be the Congress,” Kavanaugh added, presaging the views he would offer in more detail in his law review article a decade or so later. Democrats are expected to press Kavanaugh hard on the topic at his confirmation hearings, arguing that Trump picked him as a kind of insurance policy against potential negative developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe.
Some scholars are of the view that a president could be indicted while in office, but could not be tried until he vacated the office, whether by impeachment, resignation or because his term expired. But the most recent Justice Department opinion, which is likely binding on Mueller’s office, says that even a sealed indictment of the president would be impermissible.
But Democrats did NOT “press Kavanaugh hard on the topic at his confirmation hearings,” did they? Instead, they focused on the accusations of sexual misconduct from over thirty years ago. Why didn’t they press Kavanaugh on his assertion that presidents are exempt from legal accountability? Because they want to reserve the same protections from criminal or civil accountability for future Democrat presidents, that’s why. Neither party in Washington, D.C., wants to be held accountable for crimes against the Constitution or other acts of illegality.
The Kavanaugh confirmation all but forever seals the deal that Robert Mueller’s investigation-or any other independent investigation against a sitting President-will never be allowed to have any teeth. And always remember that this is the same guy-Brett Kavanaugh-that helped cover up the government’s murder of Vince Foster during the administration of President Bill Clinton.
Joel Skousen wrote:
The Vince Foster cover-up wasn’t a simple case of an erroneous conclusion based upon weak evidence. This was a full blown conspiracy to intimidate witnesses that proved the official version was a lie. As Starr’s deputy, there is no way that Kavanaugh could not have known that there was a cover-up and conspiracy going on.
Kavanaugh will always be subject to the blackmail of “you knew what Starr did to Patrick Knowlton , and you went along with it.” That also implies a more lethal threat of “you know what they did to Vince Foster when he got cold feet about protecting the Clintons.”
Tim Brown wrote more about Kavanaugh’s collusion in the cover-up of Vince Foster’s murder.
And let’s not forget that Trump is personally beholden to Kavanaugh for a judicial ruling back in 2012 regarding the attempted unionization of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Again, The Hill has the story:
President Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2012 sided with the future U.S. president’s casino in a case over unionization, Bloomberg reported. Kavanaugh threw his weight behind Trump Entertainment Resorts’ successful attempt to end a unionization effort at one of its casinos six years ago.
He voted with two other Republican-nominated judges on the D.C.-based federal appeals court to set aside an order by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would have required the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in New Jersey to bargain with the United Auto Workers.
And listen to this:
Kavanaugh worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated former President Clinton. He once argued that a president could be impeached for lying to his staff or misleading the public.
He later recanted this stance after observing the discord caused by Clinton’s impeachment, saying presidents should not be indicted or distracted by investigations while holding the office.
No wonder Donald Trump wanted Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. But that’s not all. Trump has very close financial ties to retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Come to find out, Kennedy’s Deutsche Bank gave Trump over $1 billion in loans when no other bank would do so due to Trump’s numerous financial failures. It seems that Trump encouraged Kennedy to retire, promising to appoint Kennedy’s protégé, Brett Kavanaugh, to replace him. Talk about backroom deals!
And for the pro-life Christians and conservatives who believe that Kavanaugh is going to help overturn Roe v Wade, they are living in a fantasy world. NPR reports: Republican Sen. Susan Collins says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh told her he views the landmark abortion rights ruling Roe v. Wade as “settled law.” That assurance, made during a Tuesday morning meeting in the Maine senator’s office that lasted more than two hours, likely goes a long way toward securing a key vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Collins supports abortion rights and made sure to point out she viewed the 1973 decision as “settled law” in her initial reaction to the news that abortion rights swing vote Anthony Kennedy was retiring from the Supreme Court.
“We talked about whether he considered Roe to be settled law,” Collins told reporters after the meeting. “He said that he agreed with what Justice Roberts said at his nomination hearing, at which he said that it was settled law.”
I realize that many conservatives and Christians have been bamboozled into believing that Donald Trump is some kind of superhero who is engaged in a deep, gallant conspiracy with other covert superheroes to dismantle the Deep State, but it’s all an illusion. Trump is not a superhero working to dismantle the Deep State. He himself is a Deep State toady; and so is Brett Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh will indeed make some conservative rulings as a Supreme Court justice. That by itself is no indication that Kavanaugh is not a compromised shill for the Deep State. Many big-government Deep State toadies are known as “conservatives.” In fact, “conservatives” are often the first ones to trample the Fourth Amendment and facilitate America’s burgeoning Police State. And given Kavanaugh’s track record, he is the perfect “conservative” to continue the Deep State’s assault on our Fourth Amendment liberties.
Believe me, what you don’t know about Brett Kavanaugh can and will hurt you.
The Old South’s Poor Whites
by Michael Martin
Michael Martin is a teacher, writer, and historian with experience working in both public and private schools. He is the author of Southern Grit published by Shotwell.
There was a time, before universal white male suffrage and the closing of the frontier, when the poor whites of the South were considered shiftless and without caste. If we were to look at the South as a hierarchical system, it could be argued that the poor whites were a kind of pariah. There’s a common misconception that all whites during the antebellum period had an equal standing economically and socially.
The Old South was a complex society, not just a place comprised merely of free whites and enslaved blacks. There were indentured servants, African slaves, Native Americans, poor white yeoman farmers, and a wealthier landowning aristocracy. Some of the first colonies were owned by wealthy English barons (like the Lords Proprietors in Carolina) and after the Revolution, most states had property requirements that kept the poor whites from voting.
Most people look at the South as a society that had slaves at the bottom, with all the whites having a higher social standing. But it must be remembered that Europeans initially brought Africans to America, and “Southern” people were a distinct group that developed over time, alongside and combined with this African population. There have always been poor and toiling people of all races, and some Southern writers have even argued that the early planting classes weakened the white backcountry populations economically. W.J. Cash described the poor whites of the backcountry as:
“…those who had been driven back farthest – back to the red hills and the sandlands and the pine barrens and the swamps – to all the marginal lands of the South; those who, because of the poorness of the soil on which they dwelt or the great inaccessibility of markets, were, as a group, most completely barred off from escape or economic and social advance. They were the people to whom the term ‘cracker’ properly applied – the ‘white-trash’ and ‘po’ buckra'”
“Po’ buckra” was Gullah for “poor white man.” If we were to look at history from this perspective, it could be argued that these poorest of whites were of a different stock than planting families and hierarchically just as low (if not lower than) black slaves in the Old South. The physical differences of these backcountry folk was noted by Timothy Flint, who in 1816 wrote recollections from traveling down the Mississippi and noted that the poor whites in the region “claim to be the genuine and original breed, compounded of the horse, alligator, and snapping turtle.” These whites lived on a diet that primarily consisted of corn pone and the flesh of razorback hogs, were reputed to eat dirt from time to time (a practice still found in some rural Southern communities today), and often suffered from nutritional diseases.
Bertram Wyatt-Brown noted that poor whites in the Old South were subjected to “the ancient prejudice against menials, swineherds, peddlers, and beggars.” Some examples of this prejudice include William Perkins, an English divine, who wrote in 1632 that poor whites were “as rotten legs and arms that drop from the body.”
Another man named Daniel R. Hundley wondered if the hog-raising, hill folk of the South were a result of bad genetics and asked “…who ever yet saw an athletic, healthy human being, standing six feet in his stockings, who was the offspring of runtish forefathers, or wheezy, asthmatic, and consumptive parents?”
One of the finest literary examples of this kind of poor white can be found in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck’s alcoholic father, Pap, had “long and tangled and greasy” hair that draped over his eyes like vines. Pap also wore rags for clothes and his skin was described as “not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl – a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.” Clearly, even whites were not afraid to point out the “white trash” within their own communities.
Another example can be found in A.B. Longstreet’s story “The Fight” in his book Georgia Scenes. One character in the story was named Ransy Sniffle, a young man from Richmond who lived to fight and was raised on copious amounts of red clay and blackberries. Longstreet described this character by saying “His shoulders were fleshless and elevated; his head large and flat; his neck slim and translucent; and his arms, hands, fingers, and feet were lengthened out of all proportion to the rest of his frame. His joints were large and his limbs small; and as for flesh, he could not, with propriety, be said to have any. Those parts which nature usually supplies with the most of this article – the calves of the legs, for example – presented in him the appearance of so many well-drawn blisters.” The story goes on to describe a brawl between two backcountry legends that resulted in one man losing an ear and a large piece of his left cheek, while the other man lost about a third of his nose and his face was swelled to the point of being unrecognizable.
BACKCOUNTRY VIOLENCE
The bloody scene Longstreet described was an all too common occurrence in the backcountry. While some consider the South to have been paternalistic and genteel, this treatment rarely branched out to the poor whites beyond the plantation. The planter class was refined and cavalier, while the poor folk had virtually nothing but their whiteness, perhaps a small patch of corn, and their fighting ability to be proud of. This is why “rough and tumble” brawling (complete with eye-gouging, scratching, and even biting) was a popular pastime in the backcountry.
Timothy Flint’s Recollections reinforced the existence of this mindset by saying “…according to their definition, the question about the ‘best’ man had been reduced to actual demonstration. I found, on farther inquiry, that the ‘best’ man was understood to be the best fighter, he who had beaten, or, in the Kentucky phrase, had ‘whipped’ all the rest.” In other words, societal standing in the backcountry was predicated on how a man could handle himself in a fight.
In 1807, an English traveler named Charles William Johnson published a book titled The Stranger in America, which described this backcountry violence in explicit detail. Traveling through Georgia, Johnson witnessed an eye gouging match and found the fighters “fast clinched by the hair, and their thumbs endeavoring to force a passage into each other’s eyes; while several of the bystanders were betting upon the first eye to be turned out of its socket.” One of the combatants, a Carolinian named John Butler, had his eye gouged out by a Georgian and after the match ended, Johnson stated the “The savage crowd applauded, while sick with horror, we galloped away form the infernal scene…the first eye was for the honor of the state to which they respectively belonged.”
Johnson also described some local fighters and explained that these “rough and tumble” matches included the use of teeth, feet, scratching, and biting. One man named John Stanley, of North Carolina, was described as having sharpened his teeth with a file and bragged about the noses and ears he had bitten off, as well as cheeks he tore apart. Another man named Thomas Penrise, also from North Carolina, was defending himself from a group of sailors when he gouged out three eyes, bit off an ear, and tore some cheeks before retreating.
Unlike today, there was not always a consequence for this type of lawlessness. In fact, courts at the time tended to pursue crimes against property more vigorously than these instances of violence. One man named Jarvis Lucas was beaten by three men who bit, gouged, and kicked him repeatedly. At the trial for this assault in a Carolina court of justice, the three attackers received a small fine only as the punishment. Charles Johnson closed his description of this poor white violence with the following thoughts:
“The lower classes in this gouging, biting, kicking country, are the most abject that, perhaps, ever peopled a Christian land. They live in the woods and desarts [sic] and many of them cultivate no more land than will raise them corn and cabbages, which with fish, and occasionally a piece of pickled pork or bacon, are their constant food…Their habitations are more wretched than can be conceived; the huts of the poor of Ireland, or even the meanest Indian wig-wam, displaying more ingenuity and greater industry. They are constructed of pine trees, cut in lengths of ten or fifteen feet, and piled up in a square, without any other workmanship than a notch at the end of each log, to keep them in contact…Amid these accumulated miseries, the inhabitants of log-houses are extremely tenacious of the rights and liberties of republicanism.”
One explanation for this predisposition to violence might be, as David Hackett Fischer argued in Albion’s Seed, that the backcountry was filled with small family farms that flourished independently alongside abundant sources of water. Fischer pointed out that the condition these families lived in “encouraged a sense of stubborn autonomy” and that they were a people who came looking for material betterment, not to build a city on a hill. Impermanent homes of clay and daub were often thrown up as emigrants poured into these Southern highlands and quickly formed a strong sense of individual sovereignty. The overall mindset of how justice, violence, and retaliation intertwined in the region might be best reflected in Andrew Jackson, whose mother once advised him to “…never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself.” In most cases, backcountry men tended to view themselves as the sheriff of their own property and affairs.
The most shocking account of violence in Albion’s Seed was of Russell Bean, the first white child born to permanent settlers in what is now Tennessee. Bean’s life was filled with violence and he was found guilty of beating and kicking the wife of a neighbor in 1789. In 1801, Bean travelled to New Orleans and came home to discover his wife had given birth to a child out of wedlock. Bean took the child and cut off the ears to mark it and distinguish it from his own children. After being found guilty of maiming an infant, Bean was sentenced to be branded with the letter M on his hand. Once his hand was free, Bean bit out the brand with his teeth, and “spat the charred and bleeding flesh defiantly on the courtroom floor.”
Fischer also showed that backcountry violence occurred as a result of bandits and border raiders. One example can be found in 1767, when Carolina newspapers reported that robbers captured a man named Davis and tortured him in his own home with hot irons until he revealed where his hidden money was. The robbers then burned his farm for amusement and left Davis tied up to watch all of the flames. These criminals were known to mutilate victims for sport and sometimes worked in family groups. In response to this violence, the Regulator movement formed to bring people some kind of vigilante justice.
THE MYTH OF WHITE PRIVILEGE
The Southern backcountry was rife with violence, poverty, and even nakedness. While most people associate the South with plantations, honor, and acts like the pistol duel, there were thousands of whites in the South’s backcountry that equated honor with hand-to-hand combat skills and barely subsisted on tiny farm plots. When Reverend Charles Woodmason traveled through the Carolina backcountry in the 1760s, he noted that whites were living in conditions worse than Native Americans, were scantily clad, had a poor diet, and that entire families lived in one room shacks with dirt floors.
In the wake of pervasive myths like “white privilege,” it’s interesting to note that so many whites lived in groveling conditions and were literally described as savages not long ago. And there are still massive numbers of poor whites today. Just in 2015 the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) documented that there are more whites on food stamps than any other race, by a large margin. The history of the poor whites in the South shows that this poverty not some new trend, but a problem that has always been around since the founding.
