April 9, 1865, the US Civil War Ends -- April 9, 2018, New Talk of Secession Is Rampant

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS 153 YEARS OLD. And, in many ways, it is one of the most important dates in the history of the United States. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, ending the American Civil War. The details of that encounter are so riveting in the significance for the Republic, so polite in contrast to today's crudely scurrulous attacks that pass for political discussion, and so American in its concern for all Americans, that they should be the study of every American child. And, today, when secession is being tossed around as a cure-all for the deep divisions in the fabric of America, reconsidering the Civil War -- the American experiment in secession -- is something all Americans need to do. • • • HOW THE SURRENDER TOOK PLACE. Eye Witness to History describes the surrender at Appomattox : "With his army surrounded, his men weak and exhausted, Robert E. Lee realized there was little choice but to consider the surrender of his Army to General Grant. After a series of notes between the two leaders, they agreed to meet on April 9, 1865, at the house of Wilmer McLean in the village of Appomattox Courthouse. The meeting lasted approximately two and one-half hours and at its conclusion the bloodliest conflict in the nation's history neared its end." • What had precipitated General Lee's decision was a series of events : "On April 3, Richmond fell to Union troops as General Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia in retreat to the West pursued by Grant and the Army of the Potomac. A running battle ensued as each Army moved farther to the west in an effort to out flank, or prevent being out flanked by the enemy. Finally, on April 7, General Grant initiated a series of dispatches leading to a meeting between the two commanders." • Here is General Grant's note to General Lee : "General R.E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.: 5 P.M., April 7th, 1865. The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia. U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General" • The note was carried through Confederate lines to General Lee, who responded thus : "April 7th, 1865. General: I have received your note of this date. Though not entertaining the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its surrender. R.E. Lee, General." • General Grant received General Lee's message after midnight and replied early in the morning giving his terms for surrender : "April 8th, 1865. General R.E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.: Your note of last evening in reply to mine of the same date, asking the conditions on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, is just received. In reply I would say that, peace being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon, -- namely, that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet any officers you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received. U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General" • The fighting continued as the two Generals exchanged notes. As General Lee retreated further to the west, he replied to Grant's message, noting that he would not surrender the entire Army of Noethern Virginia : "April 8th, 1865. General: I received at a late hour your note of to-day. In mine of yesterday I did not intend to propose the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, but to ask the terms of your proposition. To be frank, I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this army, but, as the restoration of peace should be the sole object of all, I desired to know whether your proposals would lead to that end. I cannot, therefore, meet you with a view to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia; but as far as your proposal may affect the Confederate States forces under my command, and tend to the restoration of peace, I should be pleased to meet you at 10 A.M. to-morrow on the old state road to Richmond, between the picket-lines of the two armies. R.E. Lee, General." • General Grant replied to Lee around 5 o'clock in the morning of April 9 : "April 9th, 1865. General: Your note of yesterday is received. I have not authority to treat on the subject of peace. The meeting proposed for 10 A.M. to-day could lead to no good. I will state, however, that I am equally desirous for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying down their arms, they would hasten that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and hundreds of millions of property not yet destroyed. Seriously hoping that all our difficulties may be settled without the loss of another life, I subscribe myself, etc., U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General" • Eye Witness to History describes the meeting at Appomattox : "General Grant approached the crossroads of Appomattox Court House where he was over taken by a messenger carrying Lee's reply. "April 9th, 1865. General: I received your note of this morning on the picket-line, whither I had come to meet you and ascertain definitely what terms were embraced in your proposal of yesterday with reference to the surrender of this army. I now ask an interview, in accordance with the offer contained in your letter of yesterday, for that purpose. R.E. Lee, General." Grant immediately dismounted, sat by the road and wrote the following reply to Lee : "April 9th, 1865. General R. E. Lee Commanding C. S. Army: Your note of this date is but this moment (11:50 A.M.) received, in consequence of my having passed from the Richmond and Lynchburg road to the Farmville and Lynchburg road. I am at this writing about four miles west of Walker's Church, and will push forward to the front for the purpose of meeting you. Notice sent to me on this road where you wish the interview to take place will meet me. U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General." The exchange of messages initated the historic meeting in the home of Wilmer McLean. Arriving at the home first, General Lee sat in a large sitting room on the first floor. General Grant arrived shortly and entered the room alone while his staff respectfully waited on the front lawn." • Generals Grant and Lee met privately before others entered the room. Eye Witness goes on : "After a short period, the staff was summoned to the room. General Horace Porter described the scene : "We entered, and found General Grant sitting at a marble-topped table in the center of the room, and Lee sitting beside a small oval table near the front window, in the corner opposite to the door by which we entered, and facing General Grant. We walked in softly and ranged ourselves quietly about the sides of the room, very much as people enter a sick-chamber when they expect to find the patient dangerously ill. The contrast between the two commanders was striking, and could not fail to attract marked attention they sat ten feet apart facing each other. General Grant, then nearly forty-three years of age, was five feet eight inches in height, with shoulders slightly stooped. His hair and full beard were a nut-brown, without a trace of gray in them. He had on a single-breasted blouse, made of dark-blue flannel, unbuttoned in front, and showing a waistcoat underneath. He wore an ordinary pair of top-boots, with his trousers inside, and was without spurs. The boots and portions of his clothes were spattered with mud. He had no sword, and a pair of shoulder-straps was all there was about him to designate his rank. In fact, aside from these, his uniform was that of a private soldier. Lee, on the other hand, was fully six feet in height, and quite erect for one of his age, for he was Grant's senior by sixteen years. His hair and full beard were silver-gray, and quite thick, except that the hair had become a little thin in the front. He wore a new uniform of Confederate gray, buttoned up to the throat, and at his side he carried a long sword of exceedingly fine workmanship, the hilt studded with jewels. His top-boots were comparatively new, and seemed to have on them some ornamental stitching of red silk. Like his uniform, they were singularly clean, and but little travel-stained. On the boots were handsome spurs, with large rowels. A felt hat, which in color matched pretty closely that of his uniform, and a pair of long buckskin gauntlets lay beside him on the table." • The discussion began : "General Grant began the conversation by saying 'I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico, when you came over from General Scott's headquarters to visit Garland's brigade, to which I then belonged. I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere.' 'Yes,' replied General Lee, 'I know I met you on that occasion, and I have often thought of it and tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never been able to recall a single feature.' The two generals talked a bit more about Mexico and moved on to a discussion of the terms of the surrender when Lee asked Grant to commit the terms to paper : 'Very well,' replied General Grant, 'I will write them out.' And calling for his manifold order-book, he opened it on the table before him and proceeded to write the terms. The leaves had been so prepared that three impressions of the writing were made. He wrote very rapidly, and did not pause until he had finished the sentence ending with 'officers appointed by me to receive them.' Then he looked toward Lee, and his eyes seemed to be resting on the handsome sword that hung at that officer's side. He said afterward that this set him to thinking that it would be an unnecessary humiliation to require officers to surrender their swords, and a great hardship to deprive them of their personal baggage and horses, and after a short pause he wrote the sentence: 'This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage.' Grant handed the document to Lee. After reviewing it, Lee informed Grant that the Cavalry men and Artillery men in the Confederate Army owned their horses and asked that they keep them. Grant agreed and Lee wrote a letter formally accepting the surrender. Lee then made his exit." • A contemporary sketch of the departure of the Generals describes it this way : "At a little before 4 o'clock General Lee shook hands with General Grant, bowed to the other officers, and with Colonel Marshall left the room. One after another we followed, and passed out to the porch. Lee signaled to his orderly to bring up his horse, and while the animal was being bridled the general stood on the lowest step and gazed sadly in the direction of the valley beyond where his army lay -- now an army of prisoners. He smote his hands together a number of times in an absent sort of way; seemed not to see the group of Union officers in the yard who rose respectfully at his approach, and appeared unconscious of everything about him. All appreciated the sadness that overwhelmed him, and he had the personal sympathy of every one who beheld him at this supreme moment of trial. The approach of his horse seemed to recall him from his reverie, and he at once mounted. General Grant now stepped down from the porch, and, moving toward him, saluted him by raising his hat. He was followed in this act of courtesy by all our officers present; Lee raised his hat respectfully, and rode off to break the sad news to the brave fellows whom he had so long commanded." • • • WHY DID THE SECESSIONIST SOUTH LOSE THE CIVIL WAR? More books have been written about the Civil War than about any other period in US history. This is natural because the Civil War was not only the bloodiest American conflict, it was also the war that settled who Americans are as a nation, a war whose outcome and rhetoric have defined us forever. This makes the Civil War one to be studied and understood, not -- as the rabid Know-Nothing Progressive movement is now trying to do by hiding Confederate statues and changing place-names -- erased from America's memory. • It is a truth that has become trite from overuse, but those who do not understand history ARE doomed to repeat it. And, the secession dialogue of 2018 is in some ways a result of knowing very little about what happened after the Confederate States seceded, except that the North won. It is a mystery to me that while people talk glibly of secession being the only solution, they have shown no plan about to make secession work -- how will borders be controlled; who will be able to move and how to be in the part of the divided America they prefer; what about natural resources sharing; what will be the commercial and industrial relationship between the seceded and Union parts of America; who will control and create currencies and what central banks will exist; how will the national debt be divided among the two parts; how ill seceded states pay social security and Medicare / Medicaid now in the hands of the federal govenrment; what will the military become and who will it represent, both internally and in the world. I could write questions all day. The point is -- to secede sounds like a panacea, but in reality it would open up a long period of confusion and economic and security weakness and vulnerability exposing the US to all sorts of domestic and foreign enemies. • So, why did the Confederacy lose the Civil War. The most succinct answer came from Confederate General George Pickett who led Pickett's charge at Gettysburg : "I always thought the north had something to do with it." • Carl Zebrowski, of Civil War Times Illustrated, wrote a piece in the American History Magazine published on August 19, 1999, that tried to answer this question. He noted that General Grant said : " 'The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.' Put that way, the business of fighting and winning wars sounds simple enough. And perhaps it was simple in the mind of the man who so concisely described the complex art : General Ulysses S. Grant. After assuming command of all Union armies in March 1864, Grant crushed the Confederacy in about one year. But the American Civil War, like any war, was not simple. The North and South engaged each other for four long years. More than half a million people were killed. Families were torn apart, towns destroyed. And in the end, the South lost. For the past 130 years Americans have argued over the reasons for the Confederacy’s downfall. Diverse opinions have appeared in hundreds of books, but the numerous possibilities have never adequately been summarized and gathered together in one place. So we decided to ask ten of the country’s most respected Civil War historians: “Why did the South lose the Civil War?” Here (edited for length) are their answers." • Here is a sampling of the answers. • WILLIAM C. DAVIS, former editor of Civil War Times Illustrated and author of more than thirty books about the war, including the recent A Government of Our Own: The Making of the Confederacy said this : "Why did the South lose? When the question is asked that way, it kind of presupposes that the South lost the war all by itself and that it really could have won it. One answer is that the North won it. The South lost because the North outmanned and outclassed it at almost every point, militarily. Despite the long-held notion that the South had all of the better generals, it really had only one good army commander and that was Lee. The rest were second-raters, at best. The North, on the other hand, had the good fortune of bringing along and nurturing people like Grant, William T. Sherman, Philip Sheridan, George H. Thomas, and others. The South was way outclassed industrially. There was probably never any chance of it winning without European recognition and military aid. And we can now see in retrospect what some, like Jefferson Davis, even saw at the time, which was that there was never any real hope of Europe intervening. It just never was in England or France’s interests to get involved in a North American war that would inevitably have wound up doing great damage, especially to England’s maritime trade. Industrially the South couldn’t keep up in output and in manpower. By the end of the war, the South had, more or less, plenty of weaponry still, but it just didn’t have enough men to use the guns. I don’t agree with the theories that say the South lost because it lost its will to win....We can’t fault the Southerners for thinking at the time that they could win when we can see in retrospect that there probably never was a time when they could have. The most important things they couldn’t see was the determination of Abraham Lincoln to win, and the incredible staying power of the people of the North, who stuck by Lincoln and stuck by the war in spite of the first two years of almost unrelenting defeat. The only way the South could have won would have been for Lincoln to decide to lose. As long as Lincoln was determined to prosecute the war and as long as the North was behind him, inevitably superior manpower and resources just had to win out. The miracle is that the South held out as long as it did. That’s an incredible testament to the courage and self-sacrifice of the people of the South -- both the men in the armies and the people at home who sustained them, with nothing but continuing and expanding destruction all around them. The South lost the war because the North and Abraham Lincoln were determined to win it." • ROBERT KRICK, historian and author of ten books about the war, said this : "The South lost because it had inferior resources in every aspect of military personnel and equipment. That’s an old-fashioned answer. Lots of people will be scornful of it. But a ratio of twenty-one million to seven million in population comes out the same any way you look at it....Give Abraham Lincoln seven million men and give Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee twenty-one million, and cognitive dissonance doesn’t matter, European recognition doesn’t matter, the Emancipation Proclamation and its ripple effect don’t matter. Twenty-one to seven is a very different thing than seven to twenty-one." • BRIAN POHANKA, consultant for the weekly series “Civil War Journal” on the Arts and Entertainment network, on-set history advisor for the movie Gettysburg, a staff writer and researcher for Time-Life Books’ The Civil War series, and a founder of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, said : "The South certainly did not lose for any lack of idealism, or dedication to its cause or beliefs, or bravery and skill on the battlefield. In those virtues the Confederate soldier was unexcelled, and it’s my belief that man-for-man there was no finer army in the history of America than the Army of Northern Virginia. But of course the factors that enter into the South’s ultimate defeat are those things that you hear time and time again, and with a great amount of validity : the North’s industrial base; the North’s manpower resources; the fact that foreign recognition was denied the Confederacy. In time these things would tell on the battlefield....The North was able to bring its industry and its manpower to bear in such a way that eventually, through sheer numerical and material advantage, it gained and maintained the upper hand. That’s when you get into the whole truly tragic sense of the Lost Cause, because those men knew their cause was lost, they knew there was really no way they could possibly win, and yet they fought on with tremendous bravery and dedication. And that’s, I think, one of the reasons why the Civil War was such a poignant and even heart-wrenching time. Whether or not you agree with the Confederacy or with the justness of its cause, there’s no way that you can question the idealism and the courage, the bravery, the dedication, the devotion of its soldiers -- that they believed what they were fighting for was right. Even while it was happening, men like Union officer Joshua Chamberlain -- who did all that he could to defeat the Confederacy -- could not help but admire the dedication of those soldiers." • NOAH ANDRE TRUDEAU, author of three books about the war’s final year, including Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War (April-June 1865), wrote : "One main reason why the South lost (and this may seem offbeat because it flies in the face of the common wisdom) is that the South lacked the moral center that the North had in this conflict. Robert Kirby in his book on Florida’s Edward Kirby Smith and the Trans-Mississippi suggests that the South’s morale began to disintegrate in the Trans-Mississippi in about 1862. The North had a fairly simple message that was binding it together, and that message was that the Union, the idea of Union, was important, and probably after 1863 you could add the crusade against slavery to that. Ask the question, “What was the South fighting for; what was the Southern way of life that they were trying to protect?” and you will find that Southerners in Arkansas had a very different answer from Southerners in Georgia or Southerners in Virginia. And what you increasingly find as the war continued is that the dialogue got more and more confused. And you actually had state governors such as Joe Brown in Georgia identifying the needs of Georgia as being paramount and starting to withhold resources from the Confederacy and just protecting the basic infrastructure of the Georgia state government over the Confederacy. In the North you certainly had dialogue and debate on the war aims, but losing the Union was never really a part of that discussion. Preserving the Union was always the constant. So, one key reason the South lost is that as time went on and the war got serious, Southerners began losing faith in the cause because it really did not speak to them directly." • JAMES M. MCPHERSON, professor of history at Princeton University and author of nine books about the Civil War, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom, wrote : "Historians have offered several explanations for the Confederate defeat in the Civil War. First, the North had a superiority in numbers and resource -- but superiority did not bring victory to the British Empire in its war against the American colonies that were fighting for their independence in 1776, nor did it bring victory to the United States in its war against North Vietnam in the 1960s and ’70s. While Northern superiority in numbers and resources was a necessary condition for Union victory, it is not a sufficient explanation for that victory. Neither are the internal divisions within the Confederacy sufficient explanation for its defeat, because the North also suffered sharp internal divisions between those who supported a war for the abolition of slavery and those who resisted it, between Republicans and Democrats, between Unionists and Copperheads. And, in fact, the North probably suffered from greater internal disunity than the Confederacy. Superior leadership is a possible explanation for Union victory....By the latter half of the war, Northern military leadership had evolved a coherent strategy for victory which involved the destruction of Confederate armies but went beyond that to the destruction of Confederate resources to wage war, including the resource of slavery, the South’s labor power. By the time Grant had become general-in-chief and Sherman his chief subordinate and Sheridan one of his hardest-hitting field commanders, the North had evolved a strategy that in the end completely destroyed the Confederacy’s ability to wage war. And that combination of strategic leadership–both at the political level with Lincoln and the military level with Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan–is what in the end explains Northern victory." • RICHARD MCMURRY, historian and author of Two Great Rebel Armies, which examines the Confederacy’s defeat, wrote : "If I had to pin the South’s defeat down to one sentence, I would have to say it was due to very bad military commanders: Albert Sidney Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, John C. Pemberton, Joseph E. Johnston, and John Bell Hood (and if you want to go down a notch or two in the command structure, Leonidas Polk, William J. Hardee, and Joseph Wheeler)....Let me point out that every one of those generals was in the West. Any explanation that does not account for the West is irrelevant to your question. The war was lost by the Confederates in the West and won by the Federals in the West. I don’t see how you could even question that. In the crucial theater of the war, the Confederacy did not have a competent commanding general." • HERMAN HATTAWAY, professor of history at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and coauthor of Why the South Lost the Civil War, wrote : "My collaborators and I, in our book Why the South Lost the Civil War, laid out our theory, which is that the South lost the Civil War because it didn’t really want to win badly enough. Defeat was ultimately due to a loss of collective will. But in other discussions with various learned groups, I’ve been induced to admit that in order for the Southern people to have a sufficient degree of will to win the war, they would have had to be a different people than they were. And so, in that sense, victory for the South was ultimately an impossibility. Now certainly the course of the war, the military events, had a lot to do with the loss of will. The Southerners hoped that they would win spectacular victories on Northern soil, and they didn’t. They hoped that they would be able to exhaust the will of the Northern people, and they didn’t. And I don’t know that all of the Southern people put a great deal of stock in their hopes that Abraham Lincoln would not be reelected, but certainly the key Southern leaders did, and this was their great hope and great strategy toward the end. With regard to military turning points, I’m not a fan of those, and I certainly don’t think that Gettysburg and Vicksburg dictated the inevitable outcome of the war. We tend in Why the South Lost to imply that there was really still hope until March of 1865, but really I think the outcome of the war became inevitable in November 1864 with the reelection of Lincoln and that utter determination to see the thing through, and, of course, the finding of U.S. Grant by Lincoln and company. Grant was certainly the man to provide the leadership that the North needed." • EDWIN C. BEARSS, former chief historian of the National Park Service and author of several books about the war, wrote : "The South lost the Civil War because of a number of factors. First, it was inherently weaker in the various essentials to win a military victory than the North. The North had a population of more than twenty-two million people to the South’s nine-and-a-half million, of whom three-and-a-half million were slaves. While the slaves could be used to support the war effort through work on the plantations and in industries and as teamsters and pioneers with the army, they were not used as a combat arm in the war to any extent. So if the South were to win, it had to win a short war by striking swiftly -- in modern parlance, by an offensive blitzkrieg strategy. But the Confederates had established their military goals as fighting in defense of their homeland. In 1861, when enthusiasm was high in the South, it lacked the wherewithal and the resolution to follow up on its early victories, such as First Manassas in the East and at Wilson’s Creek and Lexington in the West. Despite the South’s failure to capitalize on its successes in 1861, it came close to reversing the tide that ran against it beginning in February 1862. In the period between the fourth week of June 1862 and the last days of September and early days of October, the South did reverse the tide, sweeping forward on a broad front from the tidewater of Virginia to the Plains Indian territory. And abroad, the British were preparing to offer to mediate the conflict and, if the North refused, to recognize the Confederacy. But beginning at Antietam and ending at Perryville, all this unraveled, and the Confederates’ true high water mark had passed. In 1864, with the approach of the presidential election in the North, the Confederates had another opportunity to win the war. If the Confederate armies in Virginia, Georgia, and on the Gulf Coast could successfully resist the North and the war of attrition inaugurated by General Grant (with its particularly high casualties in Virginia), there was a good probability, as recognized by President Lincoln himself in the summer, that his administration would go down to defeat in November. But the success of Admiral David G. Farragut in Mobile Bay, the capture of Atlanta on the second of September by General Sherman, and the smashing success scored by General Sheridan at the expense of General Jubal A. Early at Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19 shattered this hope, and Lincoln was reelected by a landslide in the electoral vote. With Lincoln’s reelection, the road to Southern defeat grew shorter." • Believe it or not, the comments on this 20-year-old article are still arriving today. here are some recent comments. §§ The South failed to unite all the slave states against the North. They would have fared much better with Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware in the Confederacy. §§ The South made a big mistake in firing on Fort Sumter. I believe the North was nearly ready to give it up with no battle when they fired. Doing that stirred up a hornets nest similar to Pearl Harbor in WWII. §§ The South fought well in the South. Having good intelligence was a big factor in that. It was different when they invaded the North. For example, discovering Lee's battle plan used as wrapping of a handful of cigars spoiled Lee's first invasion of Maryland and brought on Antietam. §§ The North's artillery was very good and the South's was very bad. §§ The South lost a lot of generals in battle, about 80, most notably Stonewall Jackson and Albert Sydney Johnston. Many have criticized the leadership of the Southern army but it's tough to win a losing hand. §§ Another reason why the South lost the war is that the very principles upon which the Confederacy was founded prohibited their nationalization of a singular fighting force. To put it another way, the basis of secession for the south was to escape "Federalism" and promote the rights of states and individuals. This ideal by its nature prohibits things like conscription or pooling of resources by the several states for a "national" war. In other words, the Civil War pitted one united nation against a bunch of states under a loosely organized agreement. When the Confederacy instituted a single currency and a draft (out of necessity to prosecute the war), they abandoned the principles upon which they were founded, resulting in public backlash. This combined with a currency that was nearly worthless, made this fight unsustainable without significant help from other countries. In the South, citizens struggled with worthless currency, their land being razed, and a limited population base to use as soldiers, and extreme sacrifice to the war effort. In the North, daily life continued without much interruption for many citizens. • • • DEAR READERS, that last comment is extremely applicable to today's talk of secession. Those in leadership positions in rogue Progressive Democrat states like California and Oregon do not talk of seceding -- their goal is to force all of America to agree with them, or at least give up the fight and let them do what they want -- the Constitution be damned. Has Governor Jerry Brown ever mentioned "states rights" or secession as a defense for his actions? Not that I know of. The national ProgDem leadership is hellbent on crushing states rights. This is important, because it illustrates that those who call for secession are those who support states rights. They would, after secession, become a lot like the Confederacy -- "the basis of secession for the south was to escape 'Federalism' and promote the rights of states and individuals. This ideal by its nature prohibits things like conscription or pooling of resources by the several states for a 'national' war. In other words, the Civil War pitted one united nation against a bunch of states under a loosely organized agreement." • My questions about currency, the military, and commercial and industrial relations apply. Secessionist "states rights" states would risk becoming a country organized under an Articles of Confederation theory that leads to little unity. • Now, that may be what those talking about secession want. But, they are also Americans, expecting to be powerful and wealthy. • I am not arguing against secession, per se. I am only saying that a lot of planning needs to be done, and a lot of agreement needs to be reached about the hows, whats, who's, and results of secession. • In his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, President Lincoln said : "On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came." • Today, America is poised, as she was in 1861, at the brink of momentous decisions. The Progressive destruction of the Constitution cannot continue. The effort to unseat a legitimate President cannot continue. The 'madman' work of Deep State bureaucrats and special counsel cannot continue. We agree on these critical problems. But, if I had to choose, I would choose fighting to save the Union. I would not sulk away into secession, destroying the Republic. I would stand with Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, Reagan -- and Trump. For, we must remember that if some states secede, President Trump will still be President of the United States. I would not want to separate from or fight against President Trump, not while he is fighting mightily, himself, to save the Union. Why give up and let the Progressive cabal win. Why let it destroy the Constitution, even for some Americans. Better to stand and fight for Union and the Republic than to slink away into no-man's-land.

US Voter Fraud Is Real and It Can Influence the Outcome of Elections

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT ILLEGAL VOTING AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ARE LINKED. Conservative analysts have been telling us this for a long time. • • • ONE MILLION ILLEGALS VOTED FOR HILLARY. That is what Judicial Watch told us back on November 8, 2017. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that that around 1.1 million illegal aliens voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election and that voter fraud represents a “crisis” for the Republican Party going forward. Fitton estimated the number of illegals who voted for Hillary in 2016 at enough in numbers to “change the outcome of elections.” Fitton said the number of illegal votes was somewhere in between the zero claimed by the Democrats and the 6 million figure claimed by Trump : “By my estimation, we had about one and a half million illegal alien votes in the last election, 1.4 million by my guess,” said Fitton during a speech hosted by The Remembrance Project. Of this number, Fitton said that about 80% vote for Democrats, with around 20% typically voting for Republicans. “1.1 million by that calculation voted for Hillary Clinton….so we really face a crisis in this regard. It’s one thing to lose your country because you have no borders, it’s another thing to lose your country because you have no vote.” Fitton, adding that policy discussions are pointless “if elections are stolen through illegal votes.” • InfoWars wrote that : "If a study that came out in June is accurate, Fitton may even be underplaying the amount of illegal immigrants who voted in the election. Just Facts President James D. Agresti and his team of researchers looked at data from a Harvard/YouGov study which included a sample size of tens of thousands of voters, including non-citizens who admit they are not eligible to vote. Agresti concluded that as many as 5.7 million illegals voted in 2008, a far higher figure than previously thought. In 2012, the figure was as high as 3.6 million. Agresti told the Washington Times : “The details are technical, but the figure I calculated is based on a more conservative margin of sampling error and a methodology that I consider to be more accurate.” • After President Trump made the claim that votes by millions of illegal immigrants cost him the popular vote, he was lambasted by the press, who blamed an InfoWars story published on November 14 in which we reported that around 3 million illegals voted. Ever since then, Trump’s assertion that millions of illegals voted has been called a “fake news” conspiracy theory. • And, President Trump last week in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, as reported by Fox News; said that millions of people, including immigrants, vote illegally with the tacit help of state governments like California's, which he noted "shields" voter information from dissemination. "They vote many times It's not a conspiracy theory, folks." • The President then set up a commission to investigate the alleged voter fraud, but it was disbanded in January because some states, mostly those led by Democrat administrations, refused to provide the voter data needed to complete the study. • The UK Mail, as early as Novemver 30, 2016, warned that : "Donald Trump was vilified for his tweet saying 'In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.' It was dubbed 'false' by CNN, 'bogus' by the Washington Post, and rated as 'pants on fire' by Politifact. But experts warn today that the rapid media condemnation of the president-elect is itself flawed -- and that he was at the very least partially right in his claims. They said it is certain that - among other things - non-citizens were registered to vote and cast ballots. It is also certain that there were other instances of illegal voting, including people who vote under false identities, and people who cast ballots in multiple states, which most attacks on Trump's tweet chose to ignore, they warned." • • • SOROS DEFENDS LAX CONTROL OF VOTER REGISTRATION. If you doubt that President Trump has a valid point, just consider what the George Soros Center for Ameroican Progress wrote about "voter rights" in a report published on July 18, 2017 : "The ability to cast a ballot freely is key to having our voices heard and exercising control over our government....But to cast a ballot, every state except North Dakota requires people to register to vote. Many states have made great advances in lowering barriers to voter registration, providing a gateway to voter participation through tools such as automatic voter registration, same-day registration, and online voter registration. Unfortunately, many states are using voter registration tricks that manipulate the voter rolls and keep eligible Americans from having their voices heard....two of the worst practices used to block eligible voters from participation: documentary proof of citizenship requirements, where people must show evidence of citizenship in order to become registered to vote, and illegal voter purges. Like other forms of voter suppression, both of these practices close off the democratic process to wide swaths of eligible Americans. These tricks to prevent Americans from voting have arrived on the national stage in President Donald Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which is set to meet for the first time on July 19. This so-called Election Integrity Commission threatens to reverse the protections of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a transformative law that prevents states from enacting overly burdensome voter registration requirements and engaging in illegal voter purges. The NVRA was passed to increase voter participation by making it more convenient for Americans to register to vote and to maintain their registration. Since its enactment in 1993, the law has been responsible for the successful registration and participation of tens of millions of eligible Americans." • If that doesn't teach us that President Trump is on to a real issue that could reduce ProgDem illegal voters numbers, nothing will. • • • CALIFORNIA LEADS THE WAY IN ILLEGAL VOTER REGISTRATION. Zero Hedge reported last Thursday that : "California has issued over a million driver's licenses to illegal immigrants over the past three years, according to the Sacramento Bee. Following the passage of Assembly Bill 60 which went into effect January 1, 2015, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has granted 1,001,000 illegal immigrants licenses as of March 31, according to a Wednesday announcement by the DMV. The bill, entitled 'The Safe and Responsible Drivers Act' authored by then-Assemblyman Luis Alejo in 2013, was meant to help illegal immigrants 'get to work, drive their children to school, and run everyday errands without the fear of being pulled over,' according to DriveCA." • Why should illegal immirgants be able to "get to work, drive their children to school, and run everyday errands without the fear of being pulled over"??? Alejo, now a Monteret County supervisor, says : "Immigrants are getting tested, licensed and insured and this is making our roads safer for everyone. Today, we see the law working the way it was intended to and has dramatically improved the lives of a million immigrants and their families." NOTE that Alejpo never once labels these new California drivers license holders as what they really are -- ILLEGAL immigrants. • Originally, these special licenses did not grant illegal immigrants the right to vote -- HOWEVER, a new law rolling out this month which automatically registers drivers to vote, the California Motor Voter Act, has raised concern over potential abuse. • Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a national organization that unsuccessfully pressed Governor Jerry Brown to veto the law allowing automatic registration, says : “You’re setting the state up for a disaster. They don’t seem to have a process in place to verify that people are who they say they are. It’s a free-for-all, a process that can be manipulated.” • Linda Paine, co-founder of the nonpartisan Election Integrity Project of California, said her organization has visited DMV offices to observe how workers handle undocumented immigrants. She said the visits, and meetings with state officials, left her with little confidence about any safeguards to prevent illegal voter registration. Paine told Fox News : “There are thousands and thousands of DMV workers across our huge state. They’re not all trained...It’s not even that people who are ineligible want to be registered. They may not know that they have to select ‘Opt out.’ ” • • • OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY GETS IT COMPLETELY BACKWARDS. Also last week, a team of researchers at Ohio State University published a new study that concludes that “fake news” stories had a significant impact on voters in the 2016 presidential election that may have impacted the final result. The study, first reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday, sought to measure the degree to which false news stories dissuaded voters who cast ballots for President Obama in 2012 from voting for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. While the researchers emphasized that they could not definitively say that fake news “caused” Obama voters to defect from Clinton in 2016, they concluded that these stories had a “substantial impact” on voters that may have been sufficient enough to swing the election to Donald Trump : “Our analysis leads us to the conclusion that fake news most likely did have a substantial impact on the voting decisions of a strategically important set of voters -- those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012. Indeed, given the very narrow margins of victory by Donald Trump in key battleground states, this impact may have been sufficient to deprive Hillary Clinton of a victory in the Electoral College.” • PLEASE, DO NOT DESPAIR -- even though this "research" could cause reasonable people to do just that. Because, if we are to believe the OSU "researchers," it was Fake News put out by the Trump team that could have led to Hillary losing the 2016 election. THE PROBLEM with this "research" is that it was Hillary, the DNC, the FBI, Christopher Steele and his Russia Dossier, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC that put out the Fake News -- AND it was 100% against Donald Trump. • The "researchers" said making a judgment about whether the fake stories determined the outcome of the election would have required a larger survey sample. So, what we have here is a non-peer-vetted piece of research trying to blame President Trump for the Fake News that everybody on the Left was using against him. the key to just how FAKE the research is comes in this final statement at its end - - the study has not been published in an academic journal yet -- that is because a panel of academic peers has not agreed that it is valid, publishable research. But, that didn't stop the WP from printing it, did it??? • • • VOTER FRAUD EXISTS IN THE UNITED STATES. Back in November, 2016, before the presidential election, FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) Noncitizens, published areport that said : "The United States sends election monitors around the world to help discourage fraudulent balloting. But, here at home, it has largely turned a blind eye to the possibility that fraudulent voting by noncitizens could influence the outcome of an election. Our voter registration system is susceptible to abuse by noncitizens. In addition, noncitizens and illegal aliens are counted when apportioning congressional districts and when allocating state electors under the Electoral College. This means noncitizens play a role in determining how many congressional representatives a state has and exert an indirect influence on presidential elections." FAIR states that : "Mass immigration has had a significant effect on American electoral politics. Despite the fact that it is a crime for aliens to vote in federal elections, noncitizens and illegal aliens are counted when apportioning congressional districts. This means that areas with large numbers of illegal alien residents gain additional representatives in Congress. In addition, there is evidence that both foreign nationals who are lawfully present in the United States and illegal aliens have voted in recent elections. During this election cycle, noncitizens have been discovered on voter registration rolls in both Virginia and Pennsylvania. And the Office of the US Attorney for the Western District of New York recently announced that it charged a Canadian woman with making a false claim to citizenship after she registered and voted in more than 20 elections." FAIR says that because recent presidential and other federal office elections have been very close : "ballots cast by noncitizen voters have the potential to improperly alter the outcome of elections. Consider how close the 2000 presidential election was. Could the outcome have been affected by noncitizen voting? The answer is yes. With the 2016 election fast approaching, and candidates publicly alleging that the system is rigged, the possibility exists that voting by noncitizens could significantly influence the results. Many immigrants' rights groups contend that noncitizen voting constitutes a harmless misunderstanding of the rules and should not cause great concern. However, this approach undermines the rule of law. It also enables individuals whose interests may not coincide with those of the American people to exert influence on our domestic politics. Given the rate at which both the legal and illegal alien populations have been allowed to grow, the United States should be concerned with ensuring that the electoral power of US citizens is not undermined and with protecting the United States from foreign influence through 'diaspora diplomacy.' ” • • • MOTOR-VOTER IS RAMPANT. FAIR says that elections in the United States are governed by a complicated mix of federal, state, and municipal election laws. As a rule, noncitizens are prohibited from voting and are subject to criminal penalties if they do....However, laws requiring voting registrants and voters to establish proof of citizenship have been repeatedly challenged in recent years. The most frequent objections to these reasonable measures are that voter fraud is a “myth” and that voter ID requirements will unreasonably interfere with the right to vote. However, these claims seem patently unreasonable given that there have been numerous reports of unlawful voting by aliens but no virtually no reports of voters being disenfranchised." • NON-CITIZEN voting is coming -- in what FAIR calls "a disturbing new trend," several municipalities in Maryland have begun allowing noncitizens to vote in town elections; and the City of Chicago now allows noncitizen voting in school advisory council elections. To date, no state has extended noncitizen voting beyond municipal elections. This, however, remains a major area of concern. State efforts to extend the franchise to noncitizens undermine the rule of law; blur the distinctions between citizens and noncitizens; and render US elections susceptible to both fraud and foreign influence." • The US does not have a general use identity card or document -- that is a topic for another time -- and so the preferred form of documentary identification in the US is the drivers’ license. FAIR reports that : "Drivers’ licenses are issued by the states, pursuant to a widely varying body of state-specific laws and regulations. Currently, 12 states and the District of Columbia allow illegal aliens to obtain a drivers’ license. Congress attempted to address these issues with the Real ID Act, enacted May 11 2005, which established standards for state-issued licenses and other identity documents -- including verification of immigration status. However, only 24 states and territories are currently compliant. Many of the allegedly compliant states have continued issuing licenses and state ID cards to illegal aliens and short-term visitors. Others -- such as Delaware and Utah -- have continued to issue “driving privilege cards” or other non-license documents. The intentions behind the Real ID Act also continue to be thwarted by certain provisions of the NVRA. These provisions, known as the “Motor-Voter Law,” require state departments of motor vehicles to act as voter registration proxies. The information supplied by license applicants doubles as voter registration information and the registration process has become nearly automatic. Because so many states continue to issue driver’s licenses to noncitizens, it is relatively easy for aliens to commit voter fraud through the Motor-Voter system. When renewing a driver’s license by mail, they simply check the boxes indicating that they wish to be registered as voters and affirming that they are a US citizen. Most often, they are added to the voter rolls without any attempt to verify the applicant’s citizenship." • FAIR says there is a "stunning lack of federal interest" in this issue. The US Election Assistance Commission published its last report on Election Crimes a decade ago in December 2006. This 23-page report mentioned noncitizen voting once, only to note that it had been addressed in media reports. The most recent version of the Department of Justice’s report Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses was issued in 2007. Ostensibly a manual addressing how the Justice Department handles federal election offenses it devotes only three and a half pages to noncitizen voting violations....The Heritage Foundation notes that as few as 300 cases involving voter fraud have been successfully prosecuted since 2010....[voter fraud] cases do not appear to be a priority for the Justice Department. The same appears to be true for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The ICE website lists a 2011 arrest of an illegal alien charged with voter fraud. No other election-related prosecutions appear to have been posted. A diligent search of the Internet will produce several accounts of state arrests for egregious instances of illegal voting but this is clearly not a prominent issue for state prosecutors." • BUT, says FAIR: "Federal and state lack of interest in election offenses is not an indication that noncitizen voting is a minor problem. It is only an indication that election authorities are failing to prosecute violators. Inattention to the phenomenon of noncitizen voting and a failure to impose effective penalties against those who cast votes fraudulently has rendered laws against such activity a paper tiger, without deterrent effect. If the problem is allowed to continue, it will inevitably lead to questions about whether the results of US elections truly reflect the political inclinations of the American people. • • • VOTER FRAUD HAS BECOME ENDEMIC IN THE US. And, isn't that just what ProgDems are trying to enforce -- everybody should vote -- because it helps the ProgDems. • Consider that illegal immigration is a massive and growing problem in the United States. Estimates of the illegal population vary between 11 and 20 million. FAIR believes "there are likely between 11 to 13 million illegal residents. In addition to the illegal aliens already in the country, the Census Bureau estimates that the illegal alien population is growing by a minimum of 500,000 per year. Combining the estimated numbers of both legal and illegal aliens, there appear to be at least 26 million non-US citizens in the United States at any given time. The bulk of them are lawful permanent residents and illegal aliens (a total of 22 million). The balance consists of roughly 1.6 million tourists and other brief-stay visitors; and approximately 2.4 million long-term visa-holders, such as students and temporary workers. Many politicians are taking firm stances on issues affecting migrants, including amnesty, entitlements and sanctuary city policies. This gives noncitizens a significant incentive to register as voters and cast a ballot. For example, in East Chicago, Indiana, a city with 30,000 residents, voting fraud was so systemic in 2003 that the State Supreme Court ordered a new election with heightened verification. When unlawful voters were prohibited from casting a ballot the outcome of the election changed. The problem is not unique to Indiana. A 2013 National Hispanic Survey study by Republican pollster John McLaughlin asked a sample of 800 likely Hispanic voters if they were American citizens -- 13% admitted they were not. In 2014, a study released by a team of professors from Old Dominion University and George Mason University estimated that approximately 6.4% of noncitizens voted In the 2008 presidential election. They also surmised that 2.2% voted in the 2010 midterm election. In addition, the study estimated that 80% of noncitizens who appeared to have voted cast their ballots in favor of one party. Noncitizens are believed to have voted in these elections in numbers great enough to have affected the outcome." • FAIR quotes Nate Silver, an acclaimed statistician with the forecasting firm Five Thirty Eight, who calculated that states with newly implemented voter ID laws will experience turnout decrease by as much as 2.4% of the registered voter population. Opponents of voter ID laws claim that any decreases in voter turnout are evidence that legal voters have been disenfranchised – discounting the possibility that the reductions are due to decreased participation by non-citizens. But, as Silver has noted, this argument doesn’t make sense because the vast majority of adults in America hold some form of photo identification and states with voter ID laws offer qualifying documentation at minimal or no cost. While it is impossible to prove that Silver’s entire 2.4% estimated turnout decrease is entirely attributable to noncitizen voters, it is highly likely that foreign nationals without authorization to vote will constitute the majority of this group. And Silver’s numbers are consistent with the results of other studies more specifically focused on reducing unlawful noncitizen voting. If we take the mean of these three estimates -- 7.25% -- and apply it to just the 22 million non-citizen residents currently in the United States, then approximately 1.6 million non-citizens vote every year. According to the high and low estimates here, that number could be as high as 2.9 million (at 13% of 22 million), or as low as 528,000 (2.4% of 22 million). Both are unacceptably high numbers." • • • WHEN WILL THE US REQUIRE VOTER ID CARDS? There is enough evidence of illegal non-citizen voting to show that it's a growing problem that may have a significant effect on American electoral poitics. The low risk of penalty and the lack of effective controls make alien voting is easy. In states without ID requirements, the only check against noncitizens registering to vote is a box on the application form asking registrants to confirm they are US citizens -- this is rarely verified and few violators are ever prosecuted -- it is a pointless exercise that does nothing to deter voter fraud. In states with voter ID requirements, the lack of a single, standardized document that demonstrates both identity and citizenship makes voter fraud easy. FAIR concludes : "If there is no real penalty for illegal voting, it is unreasonable to expect that an 'honor system' to keep ineligible persons from voting will be effective. The good news is that the problem could be relatively easily addressed through true compliance with the Real ID Act, the implementation of voter ID requirements for all federal, state and local elections, and the consistent use of an automated eligibility verification system like USCIS’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program which provides a fast, secure and efficient verification service for federal, state and local benefit-granting agencies to verify a benefit applicant’s immigration status or naturalized/derived citizenship." • On January 4, President Trump tweeted : " As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification!" The UK Independent noted after the President's tweet that : "Republican-controlled states have in recent years passed voting restrictions seen by critics as an attempt to suppress racial minorities, who tend to vote for Democrats....A study by the University of California, San Diego, found that strict ID laws doubled the turnout gap between white people and Latinos in general elections, and almost doubled the gap between whites and black people in primary elections. • The UK Independent fails to draw the right conclusion -- the very fact that strict voter ID laws weed out Latinos and Blacks is proof that they work. For any of these people who are US citizens, every state with voter ID laws will register them to vote and provide a voter ID at minimal or no cost. • • • THE CENSUS CITIZENSHIP QUESTION. What a farce of a kickback from ProgDems. The New York Post wrote on March 26 that : "The Trump administration has decided to reinstate a US Census question about citizenship to 'help enforce' the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The controversial move was announced Monday night by the Commerce Department. 'The citizenship question will be the same as the one that is asked on the yearly American Community Survey,' the agency said in a statement. 'Citizenship questions have also been included on prior decennial censuses,' explained officials. 'Between 1820 and 1950, almost every decennial census asked a question on citizenship in some form. Today, surveys of sample populations, such as the Current Population Survey and the ACS, continue to ask a question on citizenship.' • The decision was made following a request by the Justice Department, which suggested that the question be reinstated for the 2020 US Census in an attempt to better enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Specifically, federal officials claimed that the provisions would help prevent racial discrimination and 'protect minority voting rights.' " The DOJ requested that the Census Bureau reinstate a citizenship question on the decennial census to provide census block level citizenship voting age population (CVAP) data that is not currently available from government surveys, according to officials, who added : "DOJ and the courts use CVAP data for the enforcement of Section 2 of the VRA.” The Commerce Department stated that having citizenship data at the census block level would ultimately provide “more effective enforcement” of voting rights law : “Secretary Ross determined that obtaining complete and accurate information to meet this legitimate government purpose outweighed the limited potential adverse impacts. Congress delegated to the Secretary of Commerce the authority to determine questions to be asked on the decennial census. The Census Act requires the list of decennial census questions be submitted to Congress no later than March 31, 2018.” • ProgDem opponents of the citizenship question have always argued that it causes people to shy away from taking the census -- and experts believe a drop in numbers could lead to an inaccurate count of the US population. Senator Dianne Feinstein, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and her Democrat colleagues on the Committee wrote tothe DOJ in January : “The inclusion of a question on citizenship threatens to undermine the accuracy of the Census as a whole. Given this administration’s rhetoric and actions relating to immigrants and minority groups, the request is deeply troubling. Such a question would likely depress participation in the 2020 Census from immigrants who fear the government could use the information to target them. It could also decrease response rates from US citizens who live in mixed-status households, and who might fear putting immigrant family members at risk through providing information to the government. This chilling effect could lead to broad inaccuracies across the board, from how congressional districts are drawn to how government funds are distributed. Rather than preserve civil rights, as the Justice Department claims, a question on citizenship in the decennial census would very likely hinder a full and accurate accounting of this nation’s population.” • SO TRUE !!! Feinstein and her Democrat colleagues know full well that they must stop the ctiizenship question because it will lead to Democrats losing voters after the 2020 census rrapportions population to congressional districts. • A friend, who is a conservative Republican, somehow received this letter from Tom Perez, the chariman of the Democratic National Committee. The letter shows the real fear Democrats have about finding out how many actual US citizens live in the US. Here is the letter in full : "From: Tom Perez Date: March 28, 2018 To: XXXXXXX Subject: Say NO to 2020 census citizenship question...Join Us...This week, the Trump administration announced that they intend to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census -- and now it's up to us to stop them. Adding this question to the census, especially at this point in the process and without any testing, is extremely reckless. It could decrease response rates in communities with large immigrant populations and produce inaccurate results due to incomplete counts. Congress depends on those results not only to decide how to distribute federal resources -- but also to determine the number of congressional districts in each state. This calculated move is a clear attempt by Republicans to maximize their political power and undermine fair representation in government. We must do everything we can to stop it. Add your name to oppose the Trump administration's decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. SIGN THE PLEDGE. Many immigrants are already fearful of deportation under the Trump administration. Including a citizenship question on the census will spread more fear among immigrants who are worried the information will be used against them. But this move is not only another attempt to intimidate immigrants -- it is an attempt by Republicans to sabotage important census data to rig our political system in their favor. It is critical that we speak out against it. Stand up against the Trump administration's decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Add your name today. Thanks for taking a stand against this reckless decision. Tom Perez, Chair, Democratic National Committee" • NOTE again that there is no mention of "illegal" immigrants, only "immigrants," and the "rigging" that Perez and the DNC accuse the GOP of doing is really what they are doing to pack voter rolls with illegals and other non-citizens who predominanatly vote Democrat. • • • DEAR READERS, voting is a privilege and a right, granted by the Constitution to US citizens. Non-citizens are welcome to apply for US residence and follow procedures to become citizens. But, until they enter the US legally and become citizens, they have no right to vote, and if they vote, they are subject to criminal penalties. • Reuters World News srote on Friday that ; "A 'caravan' of Central American migrants pressed on through Mexico on Friday, greatly diminished in size a day after hundreds of exhausted members left a field where they had been stranded all week, pressured by government officials who have been under fire from US President Donald Trump. About 800 people were left in the caravan, said Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that has since 2010 been staging annual caravans to ensure safe passage for migrants and draw attention to their rights. This year’s caravan had about 1,500 migrants at its peak, but people began to leave the group after immigration authorities stalled it in the southern town of Matias Romero and screened men, women, and children following pressure from Trump. Organizers later decided to end the caravan in Mexico City instead of the US border as had previously been intended. Pueblo Sin Fronteras director Mujica told Mexican radio from Campo Nuevo in the eastern state of Veracruz that he was with about 150 migrants from the caravan who were waiting to board a train on Friday. Another 600 migrants, he said, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, had already made it to the central city of Puebla for a conference with US and Mexican immigration lawyers who were due to give instructions on how to seek asylum. • There is the instant human and Christian reaction to want to help such people. But, letting them into the US as illegals who will be used by Progressive Globalists to further shred the US Republic and its laws is not the right solution. • When we consider that if Hillary Clinton had been elected, the US open border policy would have continued, with more and more illegal immigrants flooding into the US, we can begin to appreciate the wisdom of the Founders, who created a structure called the "Electoral College" as a control system and to ensure the individual states were fairly represented. Otherwise one or two densely populated areas would speak for the whole of the nation -- as would have happened if Hillary's popular vote had been the only vote, including as it did, illegal voters committing fraud to support her and the open borders she represented. The Electoral College, as another friend recently reminded me, was not created as a device to favor Democrats, Republicans, Whigs, Tories or any other political affiliation. It was created as a system of "checks and balances" to guard against any small vocal area, with a specific agenda, speaking for the whole of the nation. My friend shared with me the following list of statistics -- they should put an end to the argument as to why the Electoral College makes sense -- §§ There are 3,141 counties in the United States. Trump won 3,084 of them. Clinton won 57. §§ There are 62 counties in New York State. Trump won 46 of them. Clinton won 16. §§ Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 1.5 million votes. In the 5 counties that encompass NYC (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. In other words, these Five (5) counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote for the entire country! §§ These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles. The United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles. When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election. §§ Large, densely populated cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc.) do not and should not speak for the rest of our country///and somehow the geniuses who founded our country understood this and created a system to avoid that circumstance. • Those statistics should always remind us conservatives to support the Electoral College when any Progressive group comes knocking at our door with the Pied Piper call to eliminate it. The supreme importance of the Electoral College is that it protects us from out-lier groups who oppose the Republic and its Constitution. That is exactly why the Democrats are against it. After all, they seem to be getting millions of illegals to vote in California and Virginia (where it is "legal") and hundreds of thousands of dead people to vote in Illinois and elsewhere. • Yes, to quote my friend : "Hillary won the wrongly-named 'Popular' Vote, but Trump won the votes of living AMERICAN people by at least a couple million...so he did not have to mention the dead votes in Illinois and on the East Coast. Don't expect to read about this in the NYTimes and the Washington Post."

Pope John Paul II : A Great Conservative Pope whose Messages Are Still Relevant in a Troubled World

POPE JOHN PAUL II, WHO DIED 13 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, IS ALWAYS NEWS. Even 13 years after his death on April 2, 2005, the life and teachings of Pope John Paul II -- Pope Saint John Paul -- have many things to say to the world. • • • WHO WAS POPE JOHN PAUL II. Pope John Paul II was born Karol Józef Wojtyla on May 18, 1920, in Wadowice, Poland. He was ordained in 1946, became the bishop of Ombi in 1958, and became the archbishop of Krakow in 1964. He was made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1967, and in 1978 became the first non-Italian pope in more than 400 years. At his death vigil in Saint Peter's Square in 2005, when the word was given that the beloved Pope had died, the spontaneous cry went up from the faithful mass assembled -- Santo Subito -- Sainthood Now. Pope John Paul II was beatified May 1, 2011. He was canonized on April 27, 2014. His Feast Day is celebrated on October 22. • John Paul -- Karol Józef Wojtyla -- was fortunate to have been born and raised in the only really free portion of Polish history after 1777 -- the period between 1920 when Poland had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Red Army at the Battle of Warsaw, halting Lenin's westward march, and 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland. In October, 1942, while World War II continued, Wojtyla knocked on the door of the Bishop's Palace in Kraków and asked to study for the priesthood. Soon after, he began courses in the clandestine underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan Cardinal Sapieha. On February 29, 1944, Wojtyła was hit by a German truck. German Wehrmacht officers tended to him and sent him to a hospital. He spent two weeks there recovering from a severe concussion and a shoulder injury. It seemed to him that this accident and his survival was a confirmation of his vocation. On August 6, 1944, a day known as "Black Sunday," the Gestapo rounded up young men in Kraków to curtail the uprising there, similar to the recent uprising in Warsaw. Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his uncle's house at 10 Tyniecka Street, while the German troops searched above. More than eight thousand men and boys were taken that day, while Wojtyła escaped to the Archbishop's Palace, where he remained until after the Germans had left. On the night of January 17, 1945, the Germans fled the city, and the students reclaimed the ruined seminary. Wojtyła and another seminarian volunteered for the task of clearing away piles of frozen excrement from the toilets. He also helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer, who had escaped from a Nazi labor camp in Częstochowa. Edith had collapsed on a railway platform, so Wojtyła carried her to a train and stayed with her throughout the journey to Kraków. Edith credits Wojtyła with saving her life that day. B'nai B'rith and other authorities have said that Wojtyła helped protect many other Polish Jews from the Nazis. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a Jewish family sent its son, Stanley Berger, to be hidden by a Gentile Polish family. Berger's biological Jewish parents died during the Holocaust, and after the war Berger's new Christian parents asked a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II, to baptize the boy. The future pope refused, claiming that the child should be raised in the Jewish faith of his birth parents and nation, not as a Catholic. In September 2003, Emmanuelle Pacifici, the head of Italy's Jewish community, proposed that John Paul II receive the medal of a Righteous Among the Nations for saving a two-year-old Jewish boy by giving him to a Gentile Polish family to be hidden in 1942, when Karol Wojtyła was just a seminarian. After the war, this boy's Christian adopted parents asked the future Pope John Paul II to baptize the boy, yet once again he refused, as with Berger. After the war, Karol Wojtyła did everything he could to ensure that this Jewish boy he saved leave Poland to be raised by his Jewish relatives in the United States. In April 2005, shortly after John Paul II's death, the Israeli government created a commission to honor the legacy of John Paul II. One of the proposed ways of honoring him was to give him the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. In Pope John Paul's last book, Memory and Identity, he described the 12 years of the Nazi régime as "bestiality," quoting from the Polish theologian and philosopher Konstanty Michalski. • • • JOHN PAUL, A MAN OF MANY FIRSTS. He was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years -- since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI, who served from 1522 to 1523. • Pope John Paul II was the first pope from a Slavic country. • His pontificate of more than 26 years was the third longest in history, and the second longest in modern history after Pope Pius IX, who served for nearly 32 years from 1846 to 1878. • John Paul II's cause for canonisation commenced in 2005 one month after his death with the traditional five-year waiting period waived. On December 19, 2009, John Paul II was proclaimed Venerable by his successor Pope Benedict XVI and was beatified on May 1, 2011, after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints attributed one miracle to his intercession, the healing of a French nun from Parkinson's disease. A second miracle attributed to John Paul II's intercession was approved on July 2, 2013, and confirmed by Pope Francis two days later (two miracles must be attributed to a person's intercession to be declared a saint). John Paul II was canonized on April 27, 2014, together with Pope John XXIII. On September 11, 2014, Pope Francis added John Paul II's optional memorial feast day to the worldwide General Roman Calendar of saints, in response to worldwide requests. It is traditional to celebrate saints' feast days on the anniversary of their deaths, but that of John Paul II (22 October) is celebrated on the anniversary of his papal inauguration. • As part of his effort to promote greater understanding between nations and between religions, he undertook numerous trips abroad, traveling far greater distances than had all other popes combined, extending his influence beyond the church by campaigning against political oppression and criticizing the materialism of the West. He also issued several unprecedented apologies to groups that historically had been wronged by Catholics, most notably Jews and Moslems. • He travelled to the moon 3 times during his lifetime -- well, the same distance : 775,000 miles! John Paul II was on a mission, and he felt that his call as shepherd to a universal Church meant that he really needed to get out there and meet the universal flock : “Aren’t I supposed to be Pope for all the world?” he said. • He was the first pope ever to visit several countries in one year, starting in 1979 with Mexico and Ireland. He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982, where he met Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. While in Britain he also visited Canterbury Cathedral and knelt in prayer with Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the spot where Thomas à Becket had been killed, as well as holding several large- scale open air masses, including one at Wembley Stadium, which was attended by some 80,000 people. He travelled to Haiti in 1983, where he spoke in Creole to thousands of impoverished Catholics gathered to greet him at the airport. His message, "things must change in Haiti," referring to the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, was met with thunderous applause. In 2000, he was the first modern pope to visit Egypt, where he met with the Coptic pope, Pope Shenouda III and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. He was the first Catholic pope to visit and pray in an Islamic mosque, in Damascus, Syria, in 2001. He visited the Umayyad Mosque, a former Christian church where John the Baptist is believed to be buried, where he made a speech calling for Moslems, Christians and Jews to live together. • Pope John Paul II was the first pope to reach out regularly to the world's youth. On January 15, 1995, during the X World Youth Day, he offered Mass to an estimated crowd of between five and seven million in Luneta Park, Manila, Philippines, which was considered to be the largest single gathering in Christian history. • In March 2000, while visiting Jerusalem, John Paul became the first pope in history to visit and pray at the Western Wall. In September 2001, amid post-11 September concerns, he travelled to Kazakhstan, with an audience largely consisting of Moslems, and to Armenia, to participate in the celebration of 1,700 years of Armenian Christianity. • As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonised 483 saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the preceding five centuries. • By the time of his death, he had named most of the College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated a large number of the world's bishops, and ordained many priests. • A key goal of John Paul's papacy was to transform and reposition the Catholic Church. His wish was "to place his Church at the heart of a new religious alliance that would bring together Jews, Moslems and Christians in a great religious armada." • • • JOHN PAUL, POLISH SOLIDARITY, AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION. His outspoken Polish nationalism and his emphasis on nonviolent political activism aided the Solidarity movement in communist Poland in the 1980s and ultimately contributed to the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In June 1979, Pope John Paul II travelled to Poland, where ecstatic crowds constantly engulfed him. During his June 1979 watershed trip back to Poland as Pope, Jean Paul celebrated Pentecost Mass in Victory Square to a crowd of 300,000 people. At one point, their wild applause wouldn’t stop for 14 minutes straight. Imagine that - the Polish people repressed by a Communism that denied their human dignity as persons were standing with one of their own, a Polish boy from Wadowice whio came back, as Pope, to his homeland, with a message of freedom and hope. John Paul told that crowd : “Send down your Spirit! Send down your Spirit! And renew the face of the Earth! Of his land!” This first papal trip to Poland uplifted the nation's spirit and sparked the formation of the Solidarity movement in 1980, which later brought freedom and human rights to his troubled homeland. Poland's Communist leaders intended to use the pope's visit to show the people that although the pope was Polish it did not alter their capacity to govern, oppress, and distribute the goods of society. They also hoped that if the Pope abided by the rules they set, that the Polish people would see his example and follow them as well. If the Pope's visit inspired a riot, the Communist leaders of Poland were prepared to crush the uprising and blame the suffering on the Pope. It was just one more misjudgment of the the Communist government in Poland, which had agreed to the nomination by the church in Poland of its own candidates to replace bishopric vacancies, while they asserted the right to reject any candidates they didn’t like. They actually picked Karol Wojtyla to be a bishop -- they continued to veto names placed before them until they got him. What an awkward moment it was when the man the Polish communist regime had selected later became Pope John Paul II and returned to Poland to topple Communism -- one of the worst underestimation in history ever. The Polish Communist regime should have known what the future Pope would do -- he had already used a James Bond move to evade the Polish secret police who constantly followed him when he was a bishop in Poland during the Communist reign, keeping tabs on him and trying to study him (by the time he became pope, they had amassed 18 cartons of reports on him.) Once, when the archbishop needed to have a secret meeting with him, Wojtyla’s chauffeur pulled a little traffic weaving stunt which cut off their pursuer’s line of sight; he swapped cars without them knowing, and was able to meet with the archbishop in peace. The government also bugged his residence with listening devices, which he knew about and so he played off of it, talking extra loud when he wanted them to hear something, and saving the private conversations for his secret wilderness excursions. • John Paul II has often been credited with being instrumental in bringing down Communism in Central and Eastern Europe -- by being the spiritual inspiration behind its downfall and catalyst for "a peaceful revolution" in Poland. Lech Wałęsa, the founder of Solidarity and the first post-Communist President of Poland, credited John Paul II with giving Poles the courage to demand change. According to Wałęsa : "Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of Communism. In Warsaw, in 1979, he simply said: 'Do not be afraid', and later prayed: 'Let your Spirit descend and change the image of the land...this land'." It has also been widely alleged that the Vatican Bank covertly funded Solidarity. • The British historian Timothy Garton Ash, who describes himself as an "agnostic liberal," said shortly after John Paul II's death : "No one can prove conclusively that he was a primary cause of the end of Communism. However, the major figures on all sides -- not just Lech Wałęsa, the Polish Solidarity leader, but also Solidarity's arch-opponent, General Wojciech Jaruzelski; not just the former American President George Bush Senior but also the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev -- now agree that he was. I would argue the historical case in three steps: without the Polish Pope, no Solidarity revolution in Poland in 1980; without Solidarity, no dramatic change in Soviet policy towards eastern Europe under Gorbachev; without that change, no velvet revolutions in 1989." • In December 1989, John Paul II met with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Vatican and each expressed his respect and admiration for the other. Gorbachev once said : "The collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II." On John Paul II's death, Mikhail Gorbachev said : "Pope John Paul II's devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us." • On June 4, 2004, US President George W. Bush presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, to John Paul II during a ceremony at the Apostolic Palace. The President read the citation that accompanied the medal, which recognized "this son of Poland," whose "principled stand for peace and freedom has inspired millions and helped to topple Communism and tyranny." After receiving the award, John Paul II said : "May the desire for freedom, peace, a more humane world symbolized by this medal inspire men and women of goodwill in every time and place." Pope John Paul II has been credited with inspiring political change that not only led to the collapse of Communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Eastern Europe, but also in many other countries ruled by dictators. • In the words of Joaquín Navarro-Valls, John Paul II's press secretary : "The single fact of John Paul II's election in 1978 changed everything. In Poland, everything began. Not in East Germany or Czechoslovakia. Then the whole thing spread. Why in 1980 did they lead the way in Gdansk? Why did they decide, now or never? Only because there was a Polish pope. He was in Chile and Pinochet was out. He was in Haiti and Duvalier was out. He was in the Philippines and Marcos was out. On many of those occasions, people would come here to the Vatican thanking the Holy Father for changing things." • "The pope won that struggle by transcending politics, by what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power' -- the power of attraction and repulsion. He began with an enormous advantage, and exploited it to the utmost : He headed the one institution that stood for the polar opposite of the Communist way of life that the Polish people hated. He was a Pole, but beyond the regime's reach. By identifying with him, Poles would have the chance to cleanse themselves of the compromises they had to make to live under the regime. And so they came to him by the millions. They listened. He told them to be good, not to compromise themselves, to stick by one another, to be fearless, and that God is the only source of goodness, the only standard of conduct. 'Be not afraid,' he said. Millions shouted in response, 'We want God! We want God! We want God!' The regime cowered. Had the Pope chosen to turn his soft power into the hard variety, the regime might have been drowned in blood. Instead, the Pope simply led the Polish people to desert their rulers by affirming solidarity with one another. The Communists managed to hold on as despots a decade longer. But as political leaders, they were finished. Visiting his native Poland in 1979, Pope John Paul II struck what turned out to be a mortal blow to its Communist regime, to the Soviet Empire, ultimately to Communism." • John Lewis Gaddis, one of the most influential historians of the Cold War, said of the 1979 trip by Pope John Paul to Poland : "When Pope John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport he began the process by which Communism in Poland -- and ultimately elsewhere in Europe -- would come to an end. • On later trips to Poland, he gave tacit support to the Solidarity organization. These visits reinforced this message and contributed to the collapse of East European Communism that took place between 1989/1990 with the reintroduction of democracy in Poland, and which then spread through Eastern Europe (1990–1991) and South-Eastern Europe (1990–1992). • We must add that Pope John PAul had the mroal and personal courage that elped him prevail and build his reputation while priest, bishop and Cardinal in Poland under Communist rule. His charisma was an over-arching aspect of his call to all people to unite and be free -- "Do not be afraid" became his universal call to freedom. But, he had two extraordinary political leaders standing with him -- Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. That triumverate drove the Soviet Union out of existence. • • • POPE JOHN PAUL -- A CONSERVATIVE THEOLOGIAN. He upheld the Church's teachings on such matters as artificial contraception and the ordination of women, but also supported the Church's Second Vatican Council and its reforms. • A series of 129 lectures given by John Paul II during his Wednesday audiences in Rome between September 1979 and November 1984 were later compiled and published as a single work titled "Theology of the Body," an extended meditation on human sexuality. In it, Pope John Paul condemned abortion, euthanasia and virtually all capital punishment, calling them all a part of the "culture of death" pervasive in the modern world. He campaigned for world debt forgiveness and social justice. In his book "Memory and Identity," he referred to the "strong pressures" by the European Parliament to recognize homosexual unions as an alternative type of family, with the right to adopt children. In the book, he wrote : "It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, more subtle and hidden, perhaps, intent upon exploiting human rights themselves against man and against the family." • In April 2002, John Paul II, despite being frail from Parkinson's disease, summoned all the American cardinals to the Vatican to discuss possible solutions to the issue of sexual abuse in the American Church. He asked them to "diligently investigate accusations." John Paul II suggested that American bishops be more open and transparent in dealing with such scandals and emphasised the role of seminary training to prevent sexual deviance among future priests. In what The New York Times called "unusually direct language," John Paul condemned the arrogance of priests that led to the scandals : "Priests and candidates for the priesthood often live at a level both materially and educationally superior to that of their families and the members of their own age group. It is therefore very easy for them to succumb to the temptation of thinking of themselves as better than others. When this happens, the ideal of priestly service and self-giving dedication can fade, leaving the priest dissatisfied and disheartened." The Pope read a statement intended for the American cardinals, calling the sex abuse "an appalling sin" and said the priesthood had no room for such men. • Liberation theology was also a target of Pope John Paul. In 1984 and 1986, through Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI) as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, John Paul II officially condemned aspects of liberation theology, which had many followers in South America. Visiting Europe, Óscar Romero unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a Vatican condemnation of El Salvador's regime, for violations of human rights and its support of death squads. In his travel to Managua, Nicaragua, in 1983, John Paul II harshly condemned what he dubbed the "popular Church" -- "ecclesial base communities" supported by the Liberation theology group -- and the Nicaraguan clergy's tendencies to support the leftist Sandinistas, reminding the clergy of their duties of obedience to the Holy See. During that visit Ernesto Cardenal, a priest and minister in the Sandinista government, knelt to kiss his hand. John Paul withdrew it, wagged his finger in Cardenal's face, and told him, "You must straighten out your position with the church." • Pope John Paul II was the first pontiff to actively fight against Mafia violence in Southern Italy. In 1993, during a pilgrimage to Agrigento, Sicily, he appealed to the Mafiosi : "I say to those responsible : 'Convert! One day, the judgment of God will arrive!' " In 1994, John Paul II visited Catania and told victims of Mafia violence to "rise up and cloak yourself in light and justice!" In 1995, the Mafia bombed two historical churches in Rome. Some believed that this was the mob's vendetta against the pope for his denunciations of organised crime. • • • POPE JOHN PAUL'S FINAL YEARS AND DEATH. After over twenty-five years as Pope, two assassination attempts, one of which injured him severely, and a number of cancer scares, John Paul's physical health declined. In 2001 he was diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson's disease. International observers had suspected this, and it was publicly acknowledged by the Vatican in 2003. Despite difficulty speaking more than a few sentences at a time, trouble hearing, and severe osteoarthrosis, he continued to tour the world although rarely walking in public. • John Paul II was hospitalized with breathing problems caused by a bout of influenza on February 1, 2005. He left the hospital on February 10, but was subsequently hospitalized again with breathing problems two weeks later and underwent a tracheotomy. • On March 31, 2005, following a urinary tract infection, he developed septic shock, a form of infection with a high fever and low blood pressure, but was not hospitalized. Instead, he was monitored by a team of consultants at his private residence. This was taken as an indication by the Pope, and those close to him, that he was nearing death. It would have been in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican. Later that day, Vatican sources announced that John Paul II had been given the Anointing of the Sick by his friend and secretary Stanisław Dziwisz. The day before his death, one of his closest personal friends, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka visited him at his bedside. • During the final days of the Pope's life, the lights were kept burning through the night where he lay in the Papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. Tens of thousands of people assembled and held vigil in St. Peter's Square and the surrounding streets for two days. Upon hearing of this, the dying Pope was said to have stated : "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you." • On Saturday, April 2, 2005, at approximately 15:30 CEST, John Paul II spoke his final words in Polish, "Pozwólcie mi odejść do domu Ojca" ("Allow me to depart to the house of the Father"), to his aides, and fell into a coma about four hours later. The Mass of the vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter had just been celebrated at his bedside, presided over by Stanisław Dziwisz and two Polish associates. Present at the bedside was a cardinal from Ukraine, who served as a priest with John Paul in Poland, along with Polish nuns of the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, who ran the papal household. Pope John Paul II died in his private apartment at 21:37 CEST of heart failure from profound hypotension and complete circulatory collapse from septic shock, 46 days before his 85th birthday. His death was verified when an electrocardiogram that ran for 20 minutes showed a flatline. He had no close family by the time of his death. Stanisław Dziwisz later said he had not burned the pontiff's personal notes despite the request being part of the will. • The Requiem Mass held on April 8, 2005, was said to have set world records both for attendance and number of heads of state present at a funeral. It was the single largest gathering of heads of state in history, surpassing the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965. Four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers, and more than 14 leaders of other religions attended, along with the faithful. It is likely to have been the largest single pilgrimage of Christianity ever -- with numbers estimated in excess of four million mourners gathering in and around Vatican City. Between 250,000 and 300,000 watched the event from within the Vatican's walls. • • • POPE JOHN PAUL THE GREAT. Upon the death of John Paul II, a number of clergy at the Vatican and laymen throughout the world began referring to the late pontiff as "John Paul the Great" -- only the fourth pope to be so acclaimed, and the first since the first millennium. Scholars of Canon Law say that there is no official process for declaring a pope "Great." The title simply establishes itself through popular and continued usage, as was the case with celebrated secular leaders (for example, Alexander III of Macedon became popularly known as Alexander the Great). The three popes who today commonly are known as "Great" are Leo I, who reigned from 440–461 and persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw from Rome; Gregory I, 590–604, after whom the Gregorian Chant is named; and Pope Nicholas I, 858–867, who consolidated the Catholic Church in the Western world in the Middle Ages. Pope John Paul II's successor, Benedict XVI, referred to him as "the great Pope John Paul II" in his first address from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, and Cardinal Angelo Sodano referred to John Paul as "the Great" in his published written homily for the Pope's funeral Mass of Repose. Since giving his homily at the funeral of Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict XVI continued to refer to John Paul II as "the Great. • • • DEAR READERS, I hope you've learned some things that will give you a fuller appreciation of a man who was "Great" in every sense of the word. I have been devoted to John Paul since he became Pope, praying for his help while he was still alive -- as we often call out to our departed mothers or grandmothers or other cherished family members or mentors for help in difficult times. I think that is not a "Catholic thing," but a universal human instinct to reach out for help to those we revere when we are in trouble. John Paul reached out to all of us -- and to each of us. He was a brilliant theologian who wrote hundreds of treatises and books about being a good Christian. But, he did what many brilliant people can't do -- he translated that advice into concrete action by himself and urged us on to "goodness" in words that we could act upon. John Paul didn't pigeonhole religion. He wrapped the world in it by making us all his fellow believers.He didn't back away from the challenging issues of our time -- abortion, euthanasia, sexual promuiscuity, homosexuality used as a political tool to defeat western civilization, enslavement of the human spirit by godless regimes. "Do not be afraid" is for me the best modern statement of faith in God ever spoken. Pope John Paul the Great. A man with a message for the world -- 13 years after his death, and for a long time to come.

What Are the Arguments for and against the Secession of States from the Union?

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS ABOUT ROGUE STATES. There are several. But, the standout is California, which is in a state of rebellion against the Union and the Republic in practical terms. • • • IS SECESSION THE ANSWER. In two words. NO...BUT. • • • WHAT DOES THE US CONSTITUTION SAY? Article IV concerns the relations among and between states and the relationship of all the states to the federal government. ARTICLE IV, Section 1 states : "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. • Section 2 states : "1: The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. 2: A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime. 3: No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. • Section 3 states : "1: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State. • Section 4 states : "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." • • • CASE LAW CONCERNING STATES' RELATIONS. Current Supreme Court precedent, in Texas v. White (1869), holds that the states cannot secede from the Union by an act of the state. More recently, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede." So, can a state legally secede from the Union? The Texas v. White decision held all acts of secession illegal according to the “perpetual union” of both the Articles of Confederation and subsequent Constitution for the United States. • Some legal scholars have argued for secession as a constitutional right and others as a natural right of revolution. In Texas v. White, while the Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional, it commented that revolution or consent of the States could lead to a successful secession. In Texas v. White, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase wrote : “The union between Texas and the other states was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original states. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.” The majority opinion struck down the Texas Ordinance of Secession, calling it “null,” and crafted a decision that rendered all acts of secession illegal according to the “perpetual union” of both the Articles of Confederation and subsequent Constitution for the United States. Chase did leave an opening, “revolution or the consent of the States,” but without either, secession could never be considered a legal act. • The American Conservative published and articel in 2012 by Brion McClanahan, the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers and The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution. that summarizes UScase law on the question of secession. The entire article is available at < www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-secession-legal/ >. McClanahan quotes a 2006 letter of Justice Scalia in which he argued that a the question was not in the realm of legal possibility because the United States would not be party to a lawsuit on the issue; the “constitutional” basis of secession had been “resolved by the Civil War;” and, there is no right to secede, as the Pledge of Allegiance clearly illustrates through the line “one nation, indivisible.” • In the case of Texas v. White in 1869, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase left only one opening, “revolution or the consent of the States,” but without either, secession could never be considered a legal act. • McClanahan summarizes the Texas v. White decision : "Chase began his legal challenge to secession with a historical discussion of the Union. He suggested that the Union predated the states and grew from a common kindred spirit during the years leading to the American War for Independence. This 'one people' mentality was best articulated by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in his famous Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Story, who channeled John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton, reasoned that the Constitution was framed and ratified by the people at large, not the people of an individual state and thus [the Constitution] held the same legal position of a state itself formed from many counties. 'The constitution of a confederated republic, that is, of a national republic, formed of several states, is, or at least may be, not less an irrevocable form of government, than the constitution of a state formed and ratified by the aggregate of the several counties of the state.' In one sentence, Story reduced the states to the status of a county, shire, or province, and this general argument was used as a hammer both during Reconstruction and after against the sovereignty of the states. Story additionally concluded, as did Chase in 1869, that the term 'perpetual' found in the Articles of Confederation, deemed the Union indissoluble. Chase surmised that the Constitution simply made the Union 'more perfect' while Story suggested that the Constitution superseded the Articles of Confederation but did not change the permanent and 'perpetual' nature of the Union. Story defended his position with the 'Supremacy Clause' found in Article VI, which states that all laws or treaties made 'in pursuance of the Constitution' were the 'supreme law of the land,' and he pointed to the letter sent by the Philadelphia Convention accompanying the Constitution to the state ratifying conventions that the Constitution aimed at a 'consolidation of the Union.' Hence, to Story and Chase, the Union continued to exist in an altered -- i.e. consolidated -- form and could not be dissolved." Article VI states in Section 2 : "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Article VI, Section 3 states : "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution..." • McClanahan gives another argument against secession -- the language of Article I, Section 10, which declares that “No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation….” To those who support of this explanation, according to McClanahan : "Article I, Section 10 unequivocally shows that the states which formed the Confederate States of America were in clear violation of the Constitution, thus invalidating their government and the individual acts of secession which led to it. Abraham Lincoln indirectly defended this position by declaring the seceding states were in “rebellion” and therefore still members of the Union. The Constitution, then, was still legally enforceable in those states, including Article I, Section 10." Finally, McClanahan points out the argument of other legal scholars that "the original thirteen states may have an argument for secession due to the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson’s language establishing thirteen “free and independent states.” But the other thirty-seven, formed at least in part through the common territory of the United States, have no claim to secession. They were not states until Congress granted them statehood and consequently never constituted a sovereign legal entity, Texas and Hawaii to the contrary (though even Chief Justice Chase suggested that Texas had but lost its sovereignty when it joined the Union in 1845). • • • THE ARGUMENTS THAT STATES CAN SECEDE. Because secession is an extra-legal act of self-determination by the people of a state or states, once the States have seceded from the Union, the Constitution is no longer in force in regard to the seceded political body. If the Constitution is no longer in force -- because the states have separated and resumed their independent status -- then the Supreme Court would not have jurisdiction and therefore could not determine the “legality” of the move. But, the Union, says McClanahan : "through a declaration of war could attempt to force the seceded States to remain, but even if victorious that would not solve a philosophical issue. War and violence do not and cannot crush the natural right of self-determination. It can muddle the picture and force the vanquished into submission so long as the boot is firmly planted on their collective throats, but a bloody nose and a prostrate people settles nothing. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut said in 1788 that he feared a 'coercion of arms' in relation to a delinquent state. 'This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, states, in their political capacity. No coercion is applicable to such bodies, but that of an armed force. If we should attempt to execute the laws of the Union by sending an armed force against a delinquent state, it would involve the good and the bad, the innocent and the guilty, in the same calamity.' Ellsworth recognized, as did the majority of the founding generation, that force did not destroy sovereignty. It created artificial supremacy, but sovereignty, the basic tenant of the founding, could not be surrendered in such a manner. Sovereignty, in fact, cannot be surrendered at all; it can be delegated, as in the powers granted to the general government in Article I, but never surrendered." • In the Texas v. White decision, McClanhan shows that Chief Justice Chase "implicitly concluded that the Union was an 'indissoluble' contract between the 'American people' and the federal government, or in this case the people of Texas and the federal government. All contracts are intended to be perpetual. But if this were the case, how could nine States ratify a new Constitution while four States remained part of another Union in clear violation of the language of the Articles of Confederation. Changes to the Articles required the consent of all thirteen States, not nine, and thus the Constitution can be viewed, in part, as an act of secession. Moreover, James Madison argued that the Union was a different type of contract. 'We are not to consider the Federal Union as analogous to the social compact of individuals: for if it were so, a majority would have a right to bind the rest, and even to form a new constitution for the whole...' The Constitution was framed by the unanimous consent of the States present in convention assembled in Philadelphia, but it had no teeth until the States, in convention, ratified it. Even at that point, Madison suggested, the States could not bind the rest into accepting the document or remaining in the Union. The Constitution does not have a coercive principle, as Ellsworth called it. An 'indissoluble' Union would suggest that it does." • • • IS SECESSION ONLY AN ARGUMENT FOR PROGRESSIVE STATES? Again, McClanahan explains : "The checking and controlling influences which afford safety to public liberty, are not to be found in the government itself. The people cannot always protect themselves against their rulers; if they could, no free government, in past times, would have been overthrown. Power and patronage cannot easily be so limited and defined, as to rob them of their corrupting influences over the public mind. It is truly and wisely remarked by the Federalist, that 'a power over a man’s subsistence is a power over his will.' As little as possible of this power should be entrusted to the federal government, and even that little should be watched by a power authorized and competent to arrest its abuses. That power can be found only in the states. In this consists the great superiority of the federative system over every other. In that system, the federal government is responsible, not directly to the people en masse, but to the people in their character of distinct political corporations. However easy it may be to steal power from the people, governments do not so readily yield it to one another. The confederated states confer on their common government only such power as they themselves cannot separately exercise, or such as can be better exercised by that government. They have, therefore, an equal interest, to give it power enough, and to prevent it from assuming too much. In their hands the power of interposition is attended with no danger; it may be safely lodged where there is no interest to abuse it." • That is a "states rights" argument, pure and simple. And, states rights is the fundamental argument used by conservatives to defend the position that the federal govermnent should be small, weak, and able to exercise ONLY those powers expressly granted to it in the Constitution -- it is the "enumerated powers" argument. • During the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania set out this argument : “the distinction between a federal and a national supreme government; the former being a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties, the latter having a complete and compulsive operation.” If the Constitution established a federal government, and it did, then the Constitution did not have a “compulsive operation.” In essence, the people of the states in convention could either interpose their sovereignty to arrest the acts of the general government or withdraw from the Union. Morris, a nationalist, recognized that the states still held sway when he suggested that the Constitution be voted on by state and that the states, not a consolidated people, had to ratify the document. The Constitution as ratified in 1787 and 1788 is “a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties.” That compact can be unilaterally broken at any point by the same people of the States which ratified it. • So, for conservatives (non-federalsits in the Founders' debates), the states still had all powers not delegated to the general government, as the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution clearly illustrates? Note that every state proposed a “Tenth Amendment” in their suggested bill of rights in the months after ratification. John C. Calhoun wrote that, “I maintain that sovereignty is in its nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in a state, and we might just as well speak of half a square, or half a triangle, as of half a sovereignty.” In other words, delegated powers were still retained by the people of the states at large for their exercise if they chose to rescind that delegation. Sovereignty can never be divided or surrendered in part. If the states had it in 1776 as Jefferson wrote, then they maintain that sovereignty to this day and thus can exercise that sovereignty through an act of interposition or withdraw. • As for those who suggest that a state carved from the common property of the United States does not have the same sovereignty as the original thirteen states, McCalahan quotes Jefferson, who made clear in his Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that new states would enter the Union on “equal footing” with the existing states, meaning that they had the same rights, privileges, and immunities as the original thirteen, including the right of interposition and withdrawal. Jefferson himself authored the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, a clear indication that he believed as much. Kentucky was not one of the original states, but the people of Kentucky had the same right of recourse that the people of Virginia had in opposing the unconstitutional Sedition Act of 1798. If the argument against this position is correct, then the original thirteen states, themselves pared from the territory of Great Britain, would be illegal and illegitimate. That is not the case. • McClanahan says that the energy being placed in the various secession movements today "would be more productively utilized in calling for conventions to amend the Constitution. Perhaps limiting the President to one term, as the Hartford Convention proposed in 1815, requiring a two-thirds majority to borrow money, or creating a committee of states to act as a final check on the constitutionality of federal measures could be beneficial alterations to the Constitution. The Founders would certainly agree that changes could and should be made through the amendment process. • The Constitution is very clear about amending it : "Article V. The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." Add to Article V the Supremacy Clause of Article VI : "Section 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. Section 3: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." • If you feel that this gets us right back to the original question -- can a state secede from the Union -- you are right. Just as amending the Constitution is possible, and federal laws are supreme and every federal, state and local official is bound by oath to support the Constitution -- all of it, not merely what favors a given cause -- then, we do not know whether a state can secede. • • • BUT, CALIFORNIA AND OTHER DISOBEDIENT STATES SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO ORDER. Instead of the secession movement in California, and elsewhere in America, that is getting genuine attention from political pundits, the likely to succeed idea is intra-state secession -- a section of a state splitting off to form its own state. This has been growing in popularity. And, Article IV, Section 3, of the Constitution provides the procedure for doing it (see above forthe language). If half od California is so Progressive that the other conservative half cannot support living under a Progressive regime, then splitting into two states can be the answer. Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University in Orange, California, and author of The Human City: Urbanism ForThe Rest Of Us, told Fox News, “The worst thing in the world to be is the red part of a blue state.” Kotkin adds that : "Those running California are 'fundamentally authoritarian' with 'not a lot of tolerance for any kind of economic or political diversity.' As he puts it, their attitude is ’We know the truth, we know what’s right, and it has to apply to everyone.' " Kotkin further notes it’s not just California where this blue versus red battle is brewing, but up the West Coast, where eastern Oregon battles against the policies of Portland, and eastern Washington against Seattle. And, there’s Chicago against downstate Illinois, and New York City versus upstate New York. These policy divisions are not just economic, but often traditional versus Progressive politics regarding issues such as marijuana, gun control and the environment. • • • DEAR READERS, Vermont split from New York in 1791, Maine split from Massachusetts in 1820, and West Virginia split from Virginia during the Civil War in 1863. There haven’t been any states formed by secession in modern US history. As for California and New York today, there is one other course to be taken. As every conservative analyst in the US has pointed out, state legislatures and officials cannot simply ignore federal laws, much less pass legislation to deliberately erase federal law in their state. It is time for the Department of Justice to sue such states to force them into complicance with the Supremacy Clause and federal law. It is also time to sue state and local officials, even under criminal statutes, who are flaunting their Progressive positions and trashing the Constitution in the process. These DOJ actions would surely go some way to bringing a renewed sense of order to the Republic and its Constitution.