Group to honor Minn. residents of US Civil War

Shakopee, MN  "Just three years into statehood, Minnesota in 1861 was anxious to prove itself.

"Volunteers, the first of an estimated 24,000 state soldiers who would fight in the Civil War, rushed to sign up to preserve the Union by putting down secessionist Southern states.

"They fought their first battle three months after the war began. Dozens more followed, often accompanied by heavy casualties. Late one afternoon at Gettysburg, four of every five soldiers of the First Minnesota Volunteers were killed or wounded in a heroic charge that bought crucial time for the Union army to prevail in battle and, ultimately, to win the war."

Art above from Gettysburg Daily:Major General Winfield Scott Hancock on horseback in the center of the painting, directs Colonel William Colvill of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment to charge down the west slope of Cemetery Ridge towards Confederates approaching a weak point in the Union line. This image, titled “Minnesota Forward” by artist Dale Gallon is courtesy of Ms. Anne Gallon and Mr. Dale Gallon of Gallon Historical Art Inc., 9 Steinwehr Avenue, Gettysburg, PA 17325. 

Stone Sentinels; 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment  "The 1st Minnesota performed one of the most critical actions of the battle during Longstreet's Assault of July 2nd. Sickles' Corps was falling back in disarray and Longstreet's men were advancing to penetrate the center of the Union line, which had been dangerously thinned to prop up other sectors. General Hancock rode up to the 1st Minnesota, the only organized Union troops at hand, pointed at the advancing Confederates, and ordered them to "Take those colors!" Their sacrificial charge against overwhelming odds halted the Confederate advance and bought time for the Union line to reform, forcing Lee into one last desperate gamble with Pickett's Charge the next day. The survivors of the 1st Minnesota played a role in repulsing that charge as well."

This map shows the location of the videos for Union Counterattacks series. Videos #1-#13 were shown in 

our previous posts. Video #11 was taken at the monument to the 150th New York Infantry Regiment.

 Video #12 was taken at the monument to the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Brigade. Video #13 was taken 

at the Trostle Farm. Videos #s 14-16 were taken near the monument to the 1st Minnesota Regiment on

 Cemetery Ridge.

1st Minnesota monument at Gettysburg

Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Rich Goedkoop is standing by the July 2, 1863 monument to the

 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment on Cemetery Ridge. He provides some background on the regiment.

1st Minnesota Re-enactors

From the Trayvon Martin Tragedy to a National Travesty

Victor Davis Hanson The Rules of Outrage — Or Why the Trayvon Martin Tragedy Divides the Country
"In other words, we are left with the following paradoxes: the traditional civil rights industry will see the Martin case as an indictment against America, one deserving of compensatory and reparatory action from the majority, which they are prepared to oversee and adjudicate. The majority, of citizens, however, sees the current civil rights hierarchy as much of the problem with, not the solution to, the Martin tragedy. No, it is worse than that still: the Martin case has evoked renewed interest not in disproportionate rates of black crime alone, but in the civil rights leadership’s apparent lack of concern about it."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/03/29/97962

NBC....again: Trayvon Martin Tape Editing Prompts Internal Probe at NBC "The edited call, which aired on NBC’s "Today Show" on March 27, featured Zimmerman talking to a 911 dispatcher.

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black,” Zimmerman said in the edited segment.

That, it turns out, appears to be only part of the exchange. The complete exchange went like this:

Zimmerman: "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about."

Dispatcher: "OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?"

Zimmerman: "He looks black."    (Emphases added)

Hat tip to Andrew Klavan, who linked to the above post in his column today entitled, "The Truth, Crucified". The column begins: 

I’m writing this on Palm Sunday. This is the day we remember Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the crowds hailed him as the King who came in the name of the Lord. A few days later, the crowds — possibly even some of the same people — were calling for his crucifixion.

More on the Critical Race Theory

Breitbart  "Picture this: you are the president of a major law school. A visiting professor, assigned to teach an introductory law class, ignores the curriculum and instead usurps the class time to espouse a radical race theory he has recently developed.First-year law students, mandatorily assigned to the class, stop attending the class, moonlighting instead at other sections of the same course being taught by other professors. As an administrator, what do you do? To reasonable people, the course of action is obvious--you simply tell the visiting professor to stop it, and to stick to the curriculum. 
"But you don’t do that. Why not?
"The answer is obvious, but complex: because you know you will be called a “racist” by activists, and you will do anything to avoid that. So you try to tiptoe around the problem, and you make it worse.
"That's one legacy of racialist Derrick Bell, when he was invited to teach at the home of political correctness, Stanford Law School, in the 1980's."

To justify his race war, he argued that the existence of slavery at the time of the U.S. Constitution rendered that agreement unenforceable against blacks. He reasoned that the Constitution was fatally illegitimate, and could never be fixed--not by the Civil War or the resulting anti-slavery amendments, nor by the Civil Rights amendments. To Bell, the Constitution was merely a tool to keep the black race down--permanently. It was government of the racists, by the racists and for the racists.

And this refers to the very Constitution that President Obama swore to defend.


THE VETTING: OBAMA EMBRACES RACIALIST HARVARD PROF


"Breaking footage shows a young Barack Obama leading a protest at Harvard Law School on behalf of Prof. Derrick Bell, a radical academic tied to Jeremiah Wright. We will be releasing significant information in the coming hours."

Thomas Sowell: Back to the Future? Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce.

Thomas Sowell  "The underlying argument was similar to that in the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn: School violence can affect education, which can affect productivity, which can affect interstate commerce.

"Since virtually everything affects virtually everything else, however remotely, "interstate commerce" can justify virtually any expansion of government power, by this kind of sophistry.

....

"No doubt people who are tired or drowsy are more likely to run through a red light than people who are rested and alert. But does that mean that local governments should have the power to order people when to go to bed and when to get up, because their tiredness can have an effect on the likelihood of their driving through a red light?

"The power to regulate indirect effects is not a slippery slope. It is the disastrous loss of freedom that lies at the bottom of a slippery slope."

This argument may sound ridiculous, but we have years of examples of how this is the way liberal minds work.

The vultures circle Trayvon Martin

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/03/31/97965

Trayvon Martin Was Not Shot Because He Was Black ...

"In ways I have not seen in my forty-one years on this earth, this case -- or as it should be properly put -- the out-of-context reaction to this case has been perhaps the single most racially divisive event of my lifetime. ...More than the O.J. Simpson verdict, more than the Rodney King case, more than any other incident I can call to memory -- the drummed-up reaction -- as was on display by the sandwich ladies -- made multiple customers in the Atlanta airport's Charley's cafe (in the B terminal) physically uneasy.


George Zimmerman and the Hate Crime statute  "Furthermore, judging from their past actions and statements, the President and the Attorney General will be open to prosecuting Zimmerman. If they nonetheless decline, Zimmerman's innocence will be evident, and we will also know the names of those who turned a teenager's death into a circus. "

Boortz: "If creepers Sharpton and Jackson were really serious..." "… those two race whores would pay as much attention to the culture of urban black violence as they are to this case in Sanford, Florida." 
 Boortz also asks: Why hasn't Moonpie Muhammad been arrested?  
"Florida Code 788.01." 

Cooper interviews Muhammad

This provision of the Florida criminal code makes it a felony to “by threat, confining or abducting, or imprisoning another person against his will” in an attempt to terrorize that person."....

 "Florida Code 777.04."

This one deals with soliciting someone to violate the law. “A person who solicits another to commit an offense prohibited by law and in the course of such solicitation commands, encourages, hires, or requests another person to engage in specific conduct which would constitute such offense or an attempt to commit such offense commits the offence of criminal solicitation.”

 "By posting a “wanted dead or alive” poster, and by exhorting people to “capture” Zimmerman and deliver him to Moonpie’s gang, Moonpie* has violated this section of Florida law."

*"Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is an American Muslim novelist, journalist, and performance artist. His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as "one of the most necessary and, paradoxically enough, hopeful writers of Barack Obama's America.".... 

Obama's campaign takes shape on the class warfare theme

Neal Boortz: "A little fairer"  "But then he says that we should “ask some of the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.”  This implies that the wealthy currently AREN’T paying their fair share.  Too bad for Obama, this is entirely not the case …

Upper-income taxpayers have paid a growing share of the federal tax burden over the last 25 years.A 2008 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, found that the highest-earning 10% of the U.S. population paid the largest share among 24 countries examined, even after adjusting for their relatively higher incomes. “Taxation is most progressively distributed in the United States,” the OECD study concluded. Meanwhile, the percentage of U.S. households paying no federal income tax has been climbing, and reached 51% for 2009, according to a new analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The U.S. Is Now No. 1— In Corporate Tax Rates   " As the president complains once again that oil companies are getting unfair tax breaks, the U.S. passes Japan as the leader in business taxes. Workers, investors and entrepreneurs will bear the cost.

"On April 1, Japan will cut its corporate tax rate to 36.8% from 39.5%. This includes a 10% surtax that will expire in 2014. As it does, the U.S. will officially have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, with average combined federal and state profit levies of 39.2%. And, no, this is not an April Fools' joke."  Investors.com

Obama Calls for More Redistribution of Wealth, Declaring: ‘I Am My Brother’s Keeper’    Listen to pure, unadulterated demagogy: 

"In Genesis, Adam and Eve’s first-born son is Cain and their second-born son is Abel. Cain becomes a farmer and Abel becomes a shepherd. When Cain offers the fruit of his farming to God and Abel offers a lamb, God is pleased with Abel’s offering but not Cain’s. Cain then kills Abel. When God asks Cain where Abel is, Cain says: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
...."The president presented what he sees as the need to increase taxes on the rich as one half of a zero-sum game: If the rich are not taxed more, everyone else will have less."  Via Lucianne

DNC, MSM SMEAR MITT WITH DECEPTIVE EDIT 
"We knew the likes of the Washington Post and CNN would stop at nothing to keep their guy in the White House.  We're just surprised they're willing to shed their thin veneer of journalistic integrity this early in the campaign. Team Obama must really be panicking."

Gimme that old Green Religion

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/michaelramirez/

http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2012/03/energy-wait-plan-4/

Concert at Army post in NC geared toward atheists

Stars and Stripes "The Rock Beyond Belief event at Fort Bragg, organized by soldiers here two years after an evangelical Christian event at the eastern North Carolina post, is the most visible sign so far of a growing desire by military personnel with atheist or other secular beliefs to get the same recognition as their religious counterparts."
...."Fort Bragg is willing to work with organizers of any event that fits its guidelines, said Garrison Commander Col. Stephen Sicinski, who estimated that the BGEA evangelical concert generated twice as much controversy as the atheist event. As far as the Army is concerned, Siciniski said, the event isn't a bellwether of changing beliefs - it's simply another one of the community events that Bragg often hosts."  Via Politico.
Bob Dylan was right when he sang, "The Times, They are A-changin' "; I think he shouldn't have been bragging.

People listen to Professor Richard Dawkins the headline speaker at the Rock Beyond Belief

 event,   Saturday, March 31, 2012 at Fort Bragg, N.C. For the first time in history, the U.S.

military hosted an event expressly for soldiers and others who don't believe in God, 

with a gathering sort of like a county fair Saturday on the main parade ground at one of the

 world's largest Army bases. 

Breakpoint: More Human than Humanism  "We are engaging the atheists at what they seem to consider their point of strength, reason, which we actually find to be a distinct weak point for them. As we show in the e-book, reason is more at home within Christianity than atheism, and Christianity is more at home with reason."

...."That illustrates what happens when one removes soul from the human equation: The rest of human life tends to disappear along with it. Daniel Dennett takes it that consciousness is an illusion. Love is strictly a neurochemical thing. Jerry Coyne, again, would say that every behavior, every feeling, is a neurochemical thing. Peter Singer says it is wrong—“speciesist,” he calls it—to regard humans as essentially unique and different from animals. This leads us to an irony equal to that of atheists camping upon “reason.” Many atheistic groups go by the name “humanist,” yet theirs is a doctrine that strips the humanness out of being human."  Tom Gilson, The Colson Center

On National Security

"We chatted over the weekend with Mieke Eoyang, director of the national security program at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. The organization last month released the findings (http://bit.ly/H7EgXp) of a series of focus groups it held with swing voters in Ohio and Florida."
Here is an excerpt of what they wrote:

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/03/30/97963

National Security Focus Group Report  "There are a few cautionary notes for the president. Some participants give all the credit for the bin Laden raid to the Navy SEALs and broader U.S. military. Others say
Obama is simply capitalizing on the security capabilities built up by George W. Bush
and other Republicans before him. These are minority views, but there is a risk of going
too far in taking credit and sounding boastful."

The Democratic Security Image Still Stuck in the Past
"Obama’s solid standing on national security, however, has not yet rubbed off much
on the image of the Democratic Party. These swing voters see Democrats in much
different terms than the president—and trust them less on national security than the
Republicans.
"What we hear in these groups is remarkably close to what we found in a 2008 set
of focus groups on these issues: Democrats too often are weak, indecisive, afraid to
use force; lack grounding in military matters; rely excessively on diplomatic solutions;
respond too quickly to public pressure; and defer too
readily to the party’s liberal base."....

"While the swing voters in this year’s focus groups trust Democrats more on issues like diplomacy and boosting America’s global image, they trust Republicans more on “hard security” topics like “the effective use of military force,” “preventing terrorist attacks here in the U.S.,” “capturing, interrogating, trying, and imprisoning terrorists,” “intelligence and spying,” and “dealing with dangerous nuclear regimes like North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan.”
"Their comments show that the roots of this image problem are decades old. “There
have been a couple of Democratic administrations that screwed up military-wise,” reflects
an Ohio man. “Jimmy Carter tried to rescue some people and then the other guy,
Clinton, he threw some bombs down somewhere and that didn’t go too well either.” "
Via Politico

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Biden downplays Russian threat: ‘This is not 1956′  "He acts like he thinks the Cold War is still on, Russia is still our major adversary. I don’t know where he has been. I mean, we have disagreements with Russia, but they’re united with us on Iran. The only way we’re getting one of only two ways we’re getting material into Afghanistan to our troops is through Russia. They’re working closely with us. They have just said to Europe, if there is an oil shutdown in any way in the Gulf, they’ll consider increasing oil supplies to Europe. That’s not — this is not 1956.” "


New Poll Shows Egyptians Now Prefer Iran to US as Strategic Partner   "Gee, who could have predicted this? 
"Earlier this month outside the US Embassy in Cairo Egyptian Presidential Candidate Tawfiq Okasha called for the expulsion of US Ambassador Anne Patterson, the “enemy of humanity” who “bathes in a sea of the blood of others.”   
"The crowd loved it."


U.S. Intel Undermined by Iraq, Obama  "Much of Sunday’s New York Times story by James Risen suggests that U.S. intelligence analysts are overcompensating for their past failures on Iraqi WMDs by minimizing the risk of Iranian WMDs in the future. The upshot is that the Israelis might be right to distrust President Obama’s “we can wait until the very last minute” reassurances on Iranian weaponization, as politicized and skittish U.S. intelligence evaluations might miss that signal."
...."It’s getting easier and easier to understand why the Israelis don’t take those arguments seriously, and why they’re nervous that some in the U.S. intelligence community seem to."

It’s Not Just the Mandate: ObamaCare’s Other Infringements- The bill seizes liberty from doctors and insurance firms, too.

 PJ Media  "Of course, such “unexpected” cost overruns are nothing new for government programs. When Medicare was passed in 1965, it was predicted to cost $12 billion by 1990. In reality, it cost a whopping $110 billion, almost 10 times more than predicted.
"But the escalating economic costs of ObamaCare will pale in comparison to the escalating losses of freedom."

• Doctors must purchase and use expensive electronic medical record systems.
• Doctors must electronically record certain patient data such as ethnicity, BMI (body mass index), blood pressure, and smoking status — and turn over patient data to the government upon request.

• Doctors treating Medicare patients must practice according to government “quality” guidelines or face economic penalties.

• Insurance companies must offer numerous “free” benefits, including various preventive health services, birth control, and coverage of “children” up to age 26.

• Insurers may not raise their rates to cover these new expenses unless the government agrees those rate increases are “reasonable.”
• An Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) of unelected bureaucrats will set prices for Medicare services that will lead to de facto rationing.  

"The administrative costs associated with complying with these regulations will accelerate the trend of doctors leaving traditional private practice. Instead, doctors will increasingly work for large Accountable Care Organizations where they’ll practice according to government protocols, with their compliance monitored by the mandatory electronic medical records. "
....The Supreme Court may or may not decide to overturn ObamaCare. I hope it does. But if it doesn’t, Americans will still have one last opportunity to overturn ObamaCare at the ballot box this fall: elect politicians committed to repeal.

Paul Hsieh, MD, is a member of the Colorado chapter of Docs4PatientCare (www.Docs4PatientCare.org) and co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (www.WeStandFIRM.org).

Two by Victor Davis Hanson: "The Strange Case of Trayvon Martin" and "Obama’s Demagoguery"

Our national healer

Victor Davis Hanson   "We have reached the nadir when the civil-rights community decries the release of further pertinent information about Mr. Martin as gratuitously defaming the deceased — with the implicit understanding that incomplete and leaked information so far has been welcomed if it reflected poorly on the alleged perpetrator."
....
"The president cannot explain by which criteria he chooses to weigh in on controversial local issues, since to do so by definition makes them “teachable moments” and thus prompts the question: why this case (e.g., or a Gates or Fluke incident), and not others? Fairly or not, by now the president, through his past selective editorializing, has lost a great deal of credibility as a national healer."


Obama’s Demagoguery  "The reactions to the presidential editorializing were predictable. Liberals applauded Obama for his public stand on behalf of feminists, while conservatives countered that he was selective in his outrage and more an opportunistic partisan than an opponent of crude speech aimed at women. The president had succeeded once more in polarizing rather than uniting the nation."

In another vein: Obama says he isn't promoting class warfare  "Obama and his team have been framing the issue as one of essential fairness — where Americans who have done well need to give back a little more."

More surprises found in Obamacare bill

Rick Moran over at American Thinker:  "This discovery by GOP staffers in the senate deals with the long term costs of Obamacare. And what they found was chilling."

"The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected," said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republicans' budget chief in the Senate."The bill has to be removed from the books because we don't have the money," he said.   Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republicans' budget chief in the Senate.

"I might also point out that all this extra spending we've been finding in Obamacare comes before any of the hundreds - perhaps thousands - of new regulations are promulgated that will implement the more than 100 boards, commissions, and panels that will oversee the massive program. Those regulations will have the force of law and will likely add huge costs to health care providers and patients."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's Shocking Ignorance "The percentage of American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and were turned away because the parent didn't have insurance is exactly zero. 
"No person, whether American or not, is ever turned away from an emergency room for lack of health insurance. Ever. 
"This simply does not happen."
Bear in mind, the source of her information is not from real research but  -we must assume- Democrat sources. TD

http://www.worldmag.com/editorialcartoons/