Is the Crackpot of Caracas also the Cocaine King of Caracas?

IBD reports:

Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez dropped a bombshell last week when he said Zelaya, the president who was thrown out by a constitutional process June 28 after defying the law, had a little side business with the Caracas caudillo allowing cocaine to roll into Honduras from Venezuela before heading to the U.S.

"Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds . . . and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking," Ortez told CNN En Espanol. "We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it."

If Ortiz is right, the U.S. effort to restore Zelaya to power would be suicidal for U.S. efforts to destroy drug organizations south of our border. It would undercut Mexico's and Colombia's savage drug wars and give drug lords such as the Sinaloa cartel's Shorty Guzman, who has bases in Honduras, reason to strengthen operations.

It also means the U.S. must start asking questions about Chavez's role in the drug trade now that U.S.-Venezuelan diplomatic ties are being restored. Right now, it's such a hot potato that nobody in either the State Department or the Drug Enforcement Administration wants to comment on it.

Continue here.

    

On this date:

In 1608, the city of Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain.

In 1775, General George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Mass.

In 1890, Idaho became the 43rd state of the Union.

In 1898, the US Navy defeated a Spanish fleet outside Santiago Bay in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

In 1944, during World War II, Soviet forces recaptured Minsk.

In 1962, Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.

In 1971, singer Jim Morrison of The Doors died in Paris at age 27.

In 1979, Dan White, convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, was sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison. (He ended up serving five years.)

In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iran Air jetliner over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.

In 1989, a divided Supreme Court upheld abortion restrictions in the state of Missouri.

In 1999: President Bill Clinton, acting to head off potential problems with the safety of imported food, said in his weekly radio address he was ordering inspectors at American ports to brand all unsafe and rejected food products, "Refused US"

In 2004: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan won a promise from Sudan's government to send troops to stop militia violence in the Darfur region. Maria Sharapova won her first Grand Slam title by beating Serena Williams 6-1, 6-4 at Wimbledon. Former Soviet cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev died in Cheboksary, Chuvash Autonomous Republic, at age 74.

In 2008: The Pentagon announced it had extended the tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time. Venus and Serena Williams won in straight sets to set up their third all-sister Wimbledon final and seventh Grand Slam championship matchup. Larry Harmon, who turned Bozo the Clown into a show business staple, died in Los Angeles at age 83.

    

On this day in …

* 1665, England installed a municipal government in New York, formerly
the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam

* 1776, Virginia's colonial legislature became the first to adopt a Bill
of Rights

* 1898, Philippine nationalists declared independence from Spain

* 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in
Cooperstown, N.Y.

* 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was fatally shot in front of
his home in Jackson, Miss.; he was 37. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith
was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he
died in 2001.)

* 1978, David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for
each of the six "Son of Sam" .44-caliber killings that had terrified New
Yorkers

* 1981, major league baseball players began a 49-day strike over the
issue of free-agent compensation. (The season did not resume until Aug.
10.)

* 1987, President Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of
Berlin, publicly challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear
down this wall."

* 1997, the Treasury Department unveiled a new $50 bill meant to be more
counterfeit-resistant. ALSO: Baseball began interleague play, ending a
126-year tradition of separating the major leagues until the World
Series

* 1998, Space shuttle Discovery returned to Earth, bringing home the
last American to live aboard Mir and closing out three years of
U.S.-Russian cooperation aboard the aging space station

* 1999, thousands of NATO peacekeeping troops poured into Kosovo by air
and by land; but in a surprising move, a Russian armored column entered
Pristina before dawn to a heroes' welcome from Serb residents

* 2004, former President Ronald Reagan's body was sealed inside a tomb
at his presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., following a week of
mourning and remembrance by world leaders and regular Americans

* 2006, Al-Qaida in Iraq named a successor to slain leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, identified by the nom de guerre Abu Hamza al-Muhajer

* 2007, President Bush went to Capitol Hill, where he prodded Senate
Republicans to help resurrect legislation that could provide eventual
citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants

* 2008, three heavily armed robbers stole two Pablo Picasso prints, "The
Painter and the Model" and "Minotaur, Drinker and Women," from a museum
in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (The prints were later recovered.) Taiwan and
China agreed to set up permanent offices in each other's territory for
the first time in nearly six decades
 
 

    

On this day in …


* 1789, James Madison introduces 12 proposed amendments to the United
States Constitution in the United States House of Representatives; 10 of
them are ratified by the state legislatures and become the Bill of
Rights

* 1861, Tennessee seceded from the Union

* 1864, Abraham Lincoln was nominated for another term as president
during the National Union (Republican) Party's convention in Baltimore

* 1887, Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his punch card calculator

* 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt offered to act as a mediator in the
Russo-Japanese War

* 1906, Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law,
authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of
public land with historical or conservation value

* 1915, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in a
disagreement with President Wilson over U.S. handling of the sinking of
the Lusitania

* 1928, the National Revolutionary Army captures Peking, whose name is
changed to Beijing

* 1941, during World War II: Allies invade Syria and Lebanon

* 1966, a merger was announced between the National Football League and
the American Football League, to take effect in 1970

* 1968, James Earl Ray is arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King,
Jr. ALSO: The body of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy is
laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery

* 1978, a jury in Clark County, Nev., ruled the so-called "Mormon will,"
purportedly written by the late billionaire Howard Hughes, was a forgery

* 1999, the United States, Russia and six leading democracies authorized
a text calling for a peacekeeping force in Kosovo

* 2002, President Bush ended talks at Camp David with Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak; he sidestepped Arab pleas to impose a deadline for
Palestinian statehood while Mubarak defended
Yasser Arafat, ym"sh, and urging, "Give this man a chance."

* 2004, the U.N. Security Council gave unanimous approval to a
resolution endorsing the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq's new
government by the end of June. ALSO: In a celestial rarity, Venus lined
up between the sun and the Earth

* 2006, the FDA approved a vaccine against HPV, the virus that causes
cervical cancer
 
 
 

    

Nope......it'll never happen.

Whatever a well-meaning President Obama thinks, occasional American outbursts against Muslims are not analogous with the terrorism directed at Westerners or the hostility toward Christianity shown in most of the Muslim world. Try flying into Saudi Arabia with a Bible, as compared to traveling to San Francisco with a Koran. One can easily forsake Christianity; one can never safely leave Islam. European worries about headscarves are not the equivalent of the Gulf states’ harassment of practicing Christians. Sorry, they’re just not.

More excerpts from VDH today.....

Colonialism and the Cold War — both of which have now been over for decades — do not account for present Arab pathologies. The far more pernicious Baathism, Nasserism, Pan-Arabism, and Islamism were all efforts, in varying degrees, to graft ideas of European socialism and Communism onto indigenous Arab and Muslim roots.

Today, Russia and China are much harder on Muslims than is the West. (Consider Russia’s actions in Chechnya and China’s treatment of the Uighurs.) Neither country pays any attention to Muslims’ grievances, and therefore Muslims respect and fear Russia and China far more than they do the United States.

There are no Arab coffeehouse discussions today about the nearly 1 million Muslims killed over two decades by the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Russian government in Chechnya, yet there is constant haranguing over Abu Ghraib, where not a single inmate was killed by rogue American guards. In short, neither logic nor morality is in abundance on the Arab Street, and conjuring up American felonies will not change that.

Read the rest of Mr. Hanson's "The Age of Middle East Atonement."

    

On this day in …

* 70, Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in
the Siege of Jerusalem

* 1884, Civil War hero Gen. William T. Sherman refused the Republican
presidential nomination, saying, "I will not accept if nominated and
will not serve if elected."

* 1917, about 10 million American men began registering for the draft in
World War I

* 1933, the United States went off the gold standard

* 1940, during the World War II Battle of France, Germany attacked
French forces along the Somme line

* 1944, during World War II: More than 1000 British bombers drop 5,000
tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in
preparation for D-Day

* 1945, the Allied Control Council, military occupation governing body
of Germany, formally takes power

* 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave a speech at Harvard
University in which he outlined an aid program for Europe that came to
be known as "The Marshall Plan"

* 1967, Israel's Six Day War began

* 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles'
Ambassador Hotel after claiming victory in California's Democratic
presidential primary. Gunman Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a "Palestinian", was
immediately arrested

* 1975, the Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War

* 1977, the Apple II, the first practical personal computer, goes on
sale

* 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that
five homosexuals in Los Angeles had come down with a rare kind of
pneumonia; they were the first recognized cases of what later became
known as AIDS

* 1984, Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the
Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion

* 1986, a federal jury in Baltimore convicted Ronald W. Pelton of
selling secrets to the Soviet Union. (Pelton was sentenced to three life
prison terms plus 10 years.)

* 1989, the Unknown Rebel halts the progress of a column of advancing
tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

* 1997, Harold J. Nicholson, the highest ranking CIA officer ever caught
spying against his own country, was sentenced to more than 23 years in
prison for selling defense secrets to Russia after the Cold War

* 1998, a strike at a General Motors parts factory near Detroit closed
five assembly plants and idled workers nationwide; the walkout lasted
seven weeks. ALSO: Volkswagen AG won approval to buy Rolls-Royce Motor
Cars for $700 million. (However, BMW later got to purchase the
Rolls-Royce brand name and logo.)

* 2001, U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords leaves the Republican Party, an act
which shifts control of the United States Senate from the Republicans to
the Democratic Party

* 2002, a suicide bomber, a practitioner of that "religion of peace",
killed 17 Israelis on a bus. ALSO: 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart
disappeared from her Salt Lake City home. (Smart was found alive in a
Salt Lake suburb in March 2003; two people accused of abducting her have
been found mentally unfit to stand trial.) AND: Magic Johnson was
introduced as a member of the 2002 class elected to the Naismith
Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

* 2003, the United States agreed to pull its ground troops away from the
Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea. ALSO: The New York
Times' top two editors resigned in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal

* 2004, Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, died in
Los Angeles at age 93 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease

* 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for
lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation. (President Bush later
commuted the prison sentence.) ALSO: A fourth suspect in an alleged plot
to destroy New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport surrendered
to police in Trinidad

* 2008, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the reputed mastermind of the Sept. 11
attacks, told a military judge at his arraignment he welcomed the death
penalty as a way to martyrdom and ridiculed the proceedings as an
"inquisition."
 

    

On this day in …

* 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh establishes the first English colony on
Roanoke Island, old Virginia (now North Carolina)

* 1769, a transit of Venus is followed five hours later by a total solar
eclipse, the shortest such interval in history

* 1783, the Montgolfier brothers first publicly demonstrated their
hot-air balloon, which did not carry any passengers, over Annonay,
France

* 1812, following Louisiana's admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana
Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory

* 1876, an express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in
San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only
83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City

* 1878, the Ottoman Empire turned over control of Cyprus to the British

* 1896, Henry Ford made a successful pre-dawn test run of his horseless
carriage, called a "quadricycle," through the streets of Detroit

* 1912, Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to
set a minimum wage

* 1919, the U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United
States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to
the U.S. states for ratification

* 1939, during the Holocaust: The SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963
Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, United States,
after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe,
many of its passengers later died in Nazi concentration camps

* 1940, the Allied military evacuation from Dunkirk, France, ended

* 1942, the Battle of Midway began during World War II

* 1944, a hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the
German submarine U-505 – the first time a U.S. Navy vessel captured an
enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century

* 1947, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a
House-Senate conference report on the Taft-Hartley Act

* 1954, French Premier Joseph Laniel and Vietnamese Premier Buu Loc
signed treaties in Paris according "complete independence" to Vietnam

* 1973, a patent for the ATM is granted to Don Wetzel, Tom Barnes and
George Chastain

* 1989, hundreds, possibly thousands, of people died as Chinese army
troops stormed Beijing to crush a pro-democracy movement. ALSO:
Solidarity's victory in the first (somewhat) free parliamentary
elections in post-war Poland sparks off a succession of peaceful
anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, leads to the creation of
the so-called Contract Sejm and begins the Autumn of Nations

* 1997, at the Oklahoma City bombing trial, prosecutors urged the jury
to sentence Timothy McVeigh to death, calling relatives of the victims
to testify about their agonizing loss

* 1998, Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the
Oklahoma City bombing

* 1999, on the 10th anniversary of China's crackdown on the Tiananmen
Square protests, tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong held a
candlelight vigil

* 2002, President Bush said the CIA and FBI had failed to communicate
adequately before the Sept. 11 terror attacks; Congress began
extraordinary closed-door hearings into intelligence lapses

* 2003, Martha Stewart stepped down as head of her media empire, hours
after federal prosecutors in New York charged her with obstruction of
justice, conspiracy, securities fraud and lying to investigators.
(Stewart was later convicted of lying about why she'd sold her shares of
ImClone Systems stock in 2001, just before the stock price plunged.)

* 2006, Palestinian standoff intensified after Hamas rejected an
ultimatum from President Mahmoud Abbas to endorse a plan implicitly
recognizing Israel

* 2007, a federal indictment accused Lousiana Democratic Congressman
William Jefferson of receiving more than $500,000 in bribes (Jefferson
has maintained his innocence. He was defeated by Republican Joseph Cao
on December 6, 2008)
 
 

    

On this day in …

* 1779, during the American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold is
court-martialed for malfeasance

* 1794, the battle of the Glorious First of June is fought, the first
naval engagement between Britain and France during the French
Revolutionary Wars

* 1812, U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on
the United Kingdom

* 1813, James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS
Chesapeake, cries out "Don't give up the ship!"

* 1815, Napoleon swears fidelity to the Constitution of France

* 1831, James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole

* 1869, Thomas Edison receives a patent for his electric voting machine

* 1879, Napoleon Eugene, the last dynastic Bonaparte, is killed in the
Anglo-Zulu War

* 1925, Lou Gehrig plays the first game in his streak of 2,130
consecutive games; it was the longest such streak until broken by Cal
Ripken Jr. in 1995

* 1940, the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation goes out of business,
giving the City of New York full control of the subway system in the
city

* 1941, the "Farhud", a pogrom against Iraqi Jews, takes place in
Baghdad. About 180 Jews were killed and 240 injured

* 1942, during World War II: The Warsaw paper Liberty Brigade publishes
the first news of the concentration camps

* 1943, a civilian flight from Lisbon to London was shot down by the
Germans during World War II, killing all aboard, including actor Leslie
Howard

* 1958, Charles de Gaulle became premier of France, marking the
beginning of the end of the Fourth Republic

* 1962, Adolf Eichmann, ym"sh, is hanged in Israel

* 1974, the Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims is published
in the journal Emergency Medicine

* 1977, the Soviet Union formally charged Jewish human rights activist
Anatoly Shcharansky with treason. (Shcharansky was imprisoned, then
released in 1986; he's now known as Natan Sharansky)

* 1978, the first international applications under the Patent
Cooperation Treaty are filed

* 1980, CNN made its broadcast debut

* 1997, Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, was fatally burned in a
fire set by her 12-year-old grandson in her New York apartment. ALSO:
The Broadway show "Titanic" won five Tony Awards, including best
musical. AND: The Chicago Tribune published a column by Mary Schmich
which urged the graduating class of 1997, among other things, to "wear
sunscreen" (the tongue-in-cheek essay ended up being wrongly attributed
to author Kurt Vonnegut on the Internet).

* 2000, the Patent Law Treaty (PLT) is signed

* 2001, the Dolphinarium massacre: A practitioner of that "religion of
peace" kills 21 Jewish civilians at a disco in Tel Aviv

* 2002, President Bush told West Point graduates the U.S. would strike
pre-emptively against suspected terrorists if necessary to deter attacks
on Americans, saying "the war on terror will not be won on the
defensive."

* 2004, a federal judge declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
unconstitutional, saying the measure infringed on women's right to
choose. (The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in April 2007.)

* 2006, six world powers, including the U.S., agreed on a package of
incentives to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program.
ALSO: A contrite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took responsibility for
the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina

* 2007, Jack Kevorkian -- dubbed "Dr. Death" -- is released from prison
after serving eight years of his 10-25 year prison term for
second-degree murder in the 1998 death of Thomas Youk, 52, of Oakland
County, Michigan

* 2008, a fire at the backlot of Universal Studios Hollywood destroys
several icons from movies, such as Courthouse Square, the clock tower
from Back to the Future, and the King Kong exhibit on the studio tour
 
 

    

On this day in …



* 1754, in the first engagement of the war, Virginia militia under
22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeat a French
reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now
Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania

* 1774, the first Continental Congress convenes

* 1830, President Andrew Jackson signs The Indian Removal Act which
relocates Ameican Indians

* 1918, the Battle of Cantigny began during World War I as American
troops captured the French town from the Germans; the Americans were
able to resist German counterattacks in the days that followed

* 1929, the first all-color talking picture, "On with the Show," opened
in New York

* 1930, the Chrysler Building in New York City, which was the world's
tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire
State Building in 1931, officially opens

* 1936, Alan Turing submits "On Computable Numbers" for publication.

* 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington,
D.C., signaling that vehicular traffic could cross the
just-opened Golden Gate Bridge in California

* 1942, during World War II: In retaliation for the assassination of
Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis, ym"sh, in Czechoslovakia kill over 1800 people

* 1952, Memphis Kiddie Park opens in Brooklyn, Ohio. The park's Little
Dipper roller coaster would become the oldest operating steel roller
coaster in North America.

* 1984, President Reagan led a state funeral at Arlington National
Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.
(However, the remains were later identified as those of Air Force First
Lieutenant Michael J. Blassie, and were sent to St. Louis for hometown
burial.)

* 1946, Transjordan (now Jordan) became a kingdom as it proclaimed its
new monarch, King Abdullah Ibn Ul-Hussein. Think they'll be celebrating
today in Gaza and the West Bank, which was once part of the "kingdom"?
OOPS! --- now they're "Palestinians"

* 1987, Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private
plane in Moscow's Red Square

* 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton's former business partners in the
Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas
Governor Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud

* 1998, Pakistan matched India with five nuclear test blasts of its own,
raising fears of a nuclear arms race. ALSO: California astronomer Susan
Terebey announced she had photographed what may be a planet some 450
light years from Earth

* 1999, Russia's Balkan envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin met with Slobodan
Milosevic for nine hours, declaring the Yugoslav president key to a
Kosovo peace plan despite complications caused by Milosevic's indictment
for war crimes

* 2002, NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance.
ALSO: The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large ice deposits on the planet
Mars

* 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council chooses Ayad Allawi, a longtime
anti-Saddam Hussein exile, to become prime minister of Iraq's interim
government

* 2007, the United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze
with a four-hour meeting in Baghdad about Iraqi security

* 2008, the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Nepal formally
declares Nepal a republic, ending the 240-year reign of the Shah dynasty
 
 
 

    

    

On this day in …


* 1919, the NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first
transatlantic flight

* 1927, the Ford Motor Company ceases manufacturing the Ford Model T and
begins to retool plants to make Ford Model As

* 1857, Dred Scott is emancipated by the Blow family, his original
owners

* 1930, the 1,046-foot (319-meter) Chrysler Building in New York City,
the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public

* 1933, the U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the
registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission

* 1937, in California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian
traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County

* 1941, during World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
proclaims an "unlimited national emergency"

* 1965. during the Vietnam War: American warships begin the first
bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam

* 1985, in Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged
instruments of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the
Chinese in 1997

* 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Paula Jones can pursue her
lawsuit against President Bill Clinton even while he is in office

* 1998, Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years
in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the
terrorist plot

* 1999, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in
The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milosevic and four others for
war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo

* 2004, Abu Hamza al-Masri, a cleric of that "religion of peace", was
arrested in London and accused of trying to build a jihad training camp
in Oregon. (He remains in British custody despite U.S. attempts to
extradite him for trial.)
 

    

On this day in …


* 1293, an earthquake strikes Kamakura, Japan, killing about 30,000

* 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte assumes the title of King of Italy and is
crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano gothic
cathedral in Milan

* 1857, Dred Scott is emancipated by the Blow family, his original
owners

* 1868, the impeachment trial of U.S. President Andrew Johnson ends,
with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote

* 1889, the opening of the first Eiffel Tower elevator to the public

* 1896, Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones
Industrial Average

* 1908, at Masjed Soleyman, in southwest Persia (present-day Iran), the
first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights
to the resource are quickly acquired by the United Kingdom

* 1917, a powerful F4 tornado rips Mattoon, Illinois apart, killing 101
people and injuring 689. It was the world's longest-lasting tornado,
lasting for over 7 hours and traveling 293 miles, spreading death and
destruction along its path

* 1928, the first motion picture is projected publicly in Athens, Greece

* 1936, in the House of Commons of Northern Ireland, Tommy Henderson
begins speaking on the Appropriation Bill. By the time he sits down in
the early hours of the following morning, he spoke for 10 hours

* 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first
session

* 1948, the U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557 which permanently
establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States
Air Force

* 1960, U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge accused the Soviets of hiding
a microphone inside a wood carving of the Great Seal of the United
States that had been presented to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow

* 1969, Apollo 10 returns to earth after a successful eight-day test of
all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing

* 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev
signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in Moscow. (The U.S. withdrew
from the treaty in 2002.)

* 1986, the European Community adopts the European flag

* 1998, the United States Supreme Court rules that Ellis Island, the
historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of
New Jersey, not New York

* 2004, Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for
helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing

* 2006, the Java earthquake kills over 5,700 people, leaves 200,000
homeless
 

    

I can only offer my whole-hearted thanks and gratitude to those who gave their lives for their country

    

 

So I'll start off easy......

President Obama To Release Torture Photo's........Republicans, some Dhimmocrats and even Muslims cheer!

    

On this day in …


* 1807, a grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States
Aaron Burr on a charge of treason

* 1809, on the second and last day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling (near
Vienna), Napoleon is repelled by an enemy army for the first time

* 1819, the SS Savannah leaves port at Savannah, Georgia, United States,
on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
The ship arrived at Liverpool, England on June 20

* 1843, thousands of people and their cattle head west via wagon train
from Independence, Missouri to what would later become the Oregon
Territory. It is part of the Great Migration. They follow what is now
known as the Oregon Trail

* 1856, congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator
Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a
speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the
pro-slavery violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas")

* 1906, the Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for
their "Flying-Machine"

* 1939, the foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von
Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a "Pact of Steel" committing the
two countries to a military alliance

* 1947, in an effort to fight the spread of Communism, U.S. President
Harry S. Truman signs an act into law that will later be called the
Truman Doctrine. The act grants $400 million in military and economic
aid to Turkey and Greece, each battling an internal Communist movement

* 1960, an earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, now
known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, hits southern Chile. It is the
most powerful earthquake ever recorded

* 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the goals of his Great
Society social reforms to bring an "end to poverty and racial injustice"
in America

* 1968, the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard,
sank in the Atlantic Ocean. (The remains of the sub were later found on
the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.)

* 1969, the lunar module of Apollo 10 flew to within nine miles of the
moon's surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing

* 1972, President Nixon began a visit to the Soviet Union, during which
he and Kremlin leaders signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. ALSO:
the island nation of Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka

* 1979, Canadians voted in parliamentary elections that put the
Progressive Conservatives in power, ending the 11-year tenure of Prime
Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau

* 1980, Namco releases the highly influential video game Pacman

* 1990, the Windows 3.0 operating system is released by Microsoft

* 1992, after a reign lasting nearly 30 years, Johnny Carson hosted
NBC's "Tonight Show" for the last time

* 1997, in a case that drew national attention, Kelly Flinn, the Air
Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepted a
general discharge, thereby avoiding court-martial on charges of
adultery, lying and disobeying an order. ALSO: The defense began
presenting its case in the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy
McVeigh

* 1998, a federal judge rules that United States Secret Service agents
can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the scandal,
involving President Bill Clinton

* 2002, a jury in Birmingham, Ala., convicted former Ku Klux Klansman
Bobby Frank Cherry of murder in a 1963 church bombing that killed four
black girls. ALSO: The remains of Chandra Levy, the federal intern who
had disappeared more than a year earlier, were found in a Washington
park

* 2003, the U.N. Security Council gave the U.S. and Britain a mandate to
rule Iraq, ending 13 years of economic sanctions. ALSO: Annika Sorenstam
became the first woman since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945 to tee off
against the men on the pro tour, playing in the first round of the
Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas. (Sorenstam missed the cut
the next day by four shots.)

* 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs said personal data, including
Social Security numbers of 26.5 million U.S. veterans, was stolen from a
VA employee after he took the information home without authorization.
ALSO: Seven-year-old Braxton Bilbrey of Arizona swam from Alcatraz
Island to San Francisco in 47 minutes

* 2007, British prosecutors accused former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi of
murder in the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. (Russia,
however, has refused to extradite Lugovoi.)

* 2008, a Texas appeals court said the state had no right to take more
than 400 children from a polygamist sect's ranch. (After the Texas
Supreme Court upheld the ruling, the children were returned to their
parents.)
 

    

On this day in …


* 1789, President-elect Washington and his wife moved into the first
executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York

* 1896, the Vitascope system for projecting movies onto a screen was
publicly demonstrated in New York City

* 1954, Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit the first of his record
755 major-league home runs, in a game against the St. Louis
Cardinals. (The Braves won, 7-5)

* 1968, student protesters began occupying buildings on the campus of
Columbia University in New York; police put down the protests a week
later

* 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York
Senator Robert F. Kennedy. (The sentence was later reduced to life
imprisonment.)

* 1985, the Coca-Cola Company announced it was changing the secret
flavor formula for Coke (negative public reaction forced the company to
resume selling the original version).

* 1988, a federal ban on smoking during domestic airline flights of two
hours or less went into effect

* 1998, James Earl Ray, who'd confessed to assassinating the Reverend
Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and then insisted he'd been
framed, died at a Nashville hospital at age 70

* 2004, President George W. Bush eased Reagan-era sanctions against
Libya in return for Moammar Gadhafi's giving up weapons of mass
destruction

* 2008, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that police have the
power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an
arrest that turns out to have violated state law
 

    

On this day in …


* 1509, England's King Henry VII died; he was succeeded by his
17-year-old son, Henry VIII

* 1789, John Adams was sworn in as the first vice president of the
United States

* 1898, the U.S. Congress, on April 25, recognizes that a state of war
exists between the United States and Spain as of this date

* 1922, the first Aggie Muster is held as a remembrance for fellow
Aggies who had died in the previous year

* 1836, an army of Texans led by Sam Houston defeated the Mexicans at
San Jacinto, assuring Texas independence

* 1945, during World War II: The Soviet Union forces south of Berlin at
Zossen attack the German High Command headquarters

* 1952, Secretary's Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first
celebrated

* 1962, the Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens. It is
the first World's Fair in the United States since World War II

* 1967, a few days before the general election in Greece, Colonel George
Papadopoulos leads a coup d'etat, establishing a military regime that
lasts for seven years

* 1975, during the Vietnam War: President of South Vietnam Nguyen Van
Thieu flees Saigon, as Xuan Loc, the last South Vietnamese outpost
blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls

* 1982, Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers becomes the first
pitcher to record 300 saves

* 1989, in Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square
to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang

* 1994, the first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by
astronomer Alexander Wolszczan

* 2008, the United States Air Force retires the F-117 Nighthawk. ALSO:
Gas prices jumped to a record $3.50 a gallon in the U.S.

    

On this day in …

* 1657, freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam
(later, New York City)

* 1775, during the American Revolutionary War: The siege of Boston
begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord

* 1792, France declares war on Austria, the beginning of French
Revolutionary Wars

* 1812, the fourth vice president of the United States, George Clinton,
died in Washington at age 72, becoming the first vice president to die
while in office

* 1862, the first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur and
Claude Bernard

* 1918, Manfred von Richthofen, the German fighter pilot known as the
Red Baron and the most successful flying ace of World War I, shoots down
his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death
the following day

* 1926, Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process
to add sound to film

* 1945, during World War II, allied forces took control of the German
cities of Nuremberg and Stuttgart

* 1949, scientists at the Mayo Clinic announced they'd succeeded in
synthesizing a hormone found to be useful in treating rheumatoid
arthritis; the substance was named "cortisone"

* 1961, the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US troops against
Cuba

* 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board
of Education, unanimously upheld the use of busing to achieve racial
desegregation in schools

* 1972, the manned lunar module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon

* 1986, Michael Jordan sets all-time record for points in an NBA playoff
game with 63 against the Boston Celtics. ALSO: Pianist Vladimir Horowitz
performed in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years

* 1998, German terrorist group Red Army Faction announces their
dissolution after 28 years

* 1999, the Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide
 

    

On this day in …

* 1796, the first elephant ever seen in the United States arrives fromIndia

* 1870, Metropolitan Museum of Art, located on the eastern edge ofCentral Park, along what is known as Museum Mile in Manhattan, isfounded. (The original museum opened in 1872.)

* 1902, James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming * 1941, pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed

* 1943, during World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polishprisoners of war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn' Forest Massacreis announced, alienating the Western Allies, the Polish government inexile in London, from the Soviet Union

* 1943, The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth. ALSO: James Boarman, FredHunter, Harold Brest and Floyd G. Hamilton take part in an Alcatrazescape attempt. Boarman was killed and his body was never recovered. Theothers were all recaptured, although Hamilton spent two days freezing ina small cave before climbing back into the industries building, where hewas discovered by correctional officers

* 1944, diplomatic relations between New Zealand and the Soviet Unionare established

* 1945, German troops kill more than 1,000 political and militaryprisoners in Gardelegen, Germany

* 1948, The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewishdoctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and aBritish soldier are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.They praised Allah before committing the murders

* 1974, Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft)launches the U.S.'s first commercial geosynchronous communicationssatellite, Westar 1

* 1986, Pope John Paul II visited the Great Synagogue of Rome in thefirst recorded papal visit of its kind to a Jewish house of worship

* 1992, the Great Chicago Flood took place as the city's century-oldtunnel system and adjacent basements filled with water from the ChicagoRiver

* 1997, Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win golf's MastersTournament

* 1999, right-to-die advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian was sentenced inPontiac, Mich., to 10 to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder inthe lethal injection of a Lou Gehrig's disease patient. (Kevorkian endedup serving eight years.)

* 2004, Barry Bonds hit his 661st homer, passing Willie Mays to takesole possession of third place on baseball's career list

    

Sacre bleu!

The French have rescued their hostages from a band of brazen, African Muslim pirates while the American Navy seems helpless and confused.


Never again will Americans be able to ridicule the French in military matters. The gallant spirit of the Foreign Legion seems to be alive and well in Paris; the philosophy of appeasement, in Washington.

The appeaser-in-chief, Barack Hussein Obama, appears unmoved by the crisis, which is one of three American hostage situations currently playing out across the globe. That must be a record for a sitting President. The other outrages involve journalists: two American reporters held in North Korea, one Iranian-American freelance reporter held in Iran.

Obama seems distracted and indifferent, irritated by the intrusion of real-world tests so early in his tenure. An apt word, tenure; the President lectures the public like a second-rate academician or a community organizer, both of which he has been. (He also taught law for a while; but he clearly could never have succeeded as a litigator.)

His deafening silence on the crisis has naturally been praised by an adoring liberal media for whom American military might--and American power and alleged "arrogance," for which Obama has publicly apologized--are the main threats to world peace (apart from Israel's military might and willingness to use it).

Fact is, Obama is more likely to appoint a commission to study the root causes of piracy, or order the State Department to bring the pirates and their families to America for resettlement and retraining, than end the menace of piracy.

The nauseating spectacle is enough to make every patriotic American and every veteran of a foreign war thoroughly seasick.


The Times' article is must-reading. Click here to read it.

Be sure, too, to click here to read about Obama's apology to the pirates. It's a satirical piece, of course; but at the rate things are going, Presidential understanding of impoverished Somali fisherman forced into piracy by an uncaring West ... well ... it's only a matter of time....

 NOTE: The indomitable Atlas Shrugs is featuring an in-depth overview of Obama's submission to tyranny and "emasculation of America."