Offering a conservative counterbalance to the extreme left-coast liberalism of The Huffington Post
Sunday, July 27, 2014
FIRED CATTLE GUARDS SHOULD BE GIVEN JOB TRAINING FOR OTHER WORK
!!!!
A few months ago, President Obama received and was reading a report that there were over 100,000 cattle

And these two guys are running our country, OH MY!
YA
GOTTALAUGH
TO KEEP FROM
CRYING!
|
For some reason the
cattle will not step on the "guards,"
probably because they fear getting their hooves caught
between the
rails. They also serve to keep the
cattle within their own property boundaries.
READ
ON.......
A few months ago, President Obama received and was reading a report that there were over 100,000 cattle
"guards" in
Colorado . The Colorado
ranchers had protested his proposed changes in grazing
policies, so he ordered
the Secretary of
the Interior to fire half of the cattle "guards"
immediately!
Before the Secretary
of the Interior could respond and presumably try to
straighten President Obama out on the
matter,
Vice-President
Joe Biden,
intervened with a request that...before any "cattle guards" were
fired, they be
given six months of
retraining.
Joe asks for 6
months of retraining for 'Cattle
Guards!''Times are hard,'
said Joe Biden, 'it's only fair to the cattle guards and
their families that they be given
six months of
retraining! '
And these two guys are running our country, OH MY!
Thursday, July 24, 2014
HOPEFULLY THE OPPOSITION TO FORCED ORGAN HARVESTING WILL GROW
!!!!
Caroline Burns woke up in a hospital as doctors
were about to remove her organs and donate them to patients on the
transplant waiting list.
Getty Images
Australian Parliamentarians Unite Against Forced Organ Harvesting
Feedback
SYDNEY—Members of the Australian Parliament have joined forces
for the first time to address the pressing global issues of forced organ
harvesting and transplant tourism.
Forced organ harvesting is the removal of organs from a donor without obtaining prior voluntary consent, according to Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH). Medical tourists from countries including Australia travel overseas to obtain organs, which may come from prisoners executed to order – a practice called transplant tourism.
The newly formed Parliamentary friendship group Parliamentarians Against Forced Organ Harvesting (PAFOH) held their first meeting in Canberra on July 16. More than 10 politicians have so far joined PAFOH, including MPs from the Liberal and Labor parties, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and independents.
“There is no way that you can condone the practice of killing people for their organs in any way, shape or form,” said Senator John Madigan from the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), co-convenor of PAFOH.
“The practice of forced organ harvesting in countries including China should not be ignored under any circumstances.”
Liberal MP Craig Kelly, co-chair of PAFOH, says lifting voluntary donation rates will help bring an end to the illegal organ trade. “If we were able to lift the rate of organ donation in Australia and also worldwide, the barbaric practice of forced organ harvesting would come to an end,” he said.
Global demand for organs is rising, while international supply continues to fall short.
Spain, with its opt-out organ donation system, leads the world with the number of voluntary donations, with 35 out of every 1 million people going on the official register. The consent-based systems of the US and Australia see 21 and 16 citizens per million opt-in for voluntary donation, respectively.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, at least 10,000 transplants take place in China annually, with over 90 per cent of the organs coming from executed prisoners.
The remaining 10 per cent from “voluntary” donations is attributable solely to the China Red Cross Society, which pays high premiums to patients on their death beds for their organs.
This raises important questions about the ethics of organ transplants in China, says medical professor Maria Fiatarone Singh from Sydney University, who gave an in-depth presentation at the PAFOH meeting.
According to a 1984 Chinese law, it is permitted to remove organs from executed prisoners. Since the 1990s, claims have been made that the Chinese regime is systematically harvesting organs from prisoners.
Ethan Gutmann, an award-winning China analyst and human-rights investigator, presented findings from his new book, The Slaughter. Via video link, Mr Gutmann presented an outline of organ harvesting in China. He estimates that by 2008, at least 65,000 Falun Gong adherents had been murdered for their organs. Furthermore, he says that “figures up to 2 million [dollars are] being paid by certain patients for organs”.
Leading medical bodies, like the World Medical Association and The Transplantation Society, condemn the use of prisoners as an organ source.
In 2005, China Daily reported the number of transplants in China to be about 20,000, with more than 90 per cent of the organs coming from executed prisoners.
While Beijing has circulated promises of “phasing out” its reliance on prisoners’ organs since 2007, it appears the regime has backflipped on its promises.
Former Vice-Minister of Health Huang Jiefu reiterated this at a 2010 Madrid transplant conference, saying: “I have no objections to using executed prisoners organ donations if he or she has freely demonstrated that that is his last will.”
Huang, now the director of the National Organ Transplant Committee, was quoted by the China Daily newspaper as saying: “Any organ donations, including those by executed prisoners, have to go through the system and the computerised allocation process.”
Professor Fiatarone Singh says changing the process will simply mean it will become impossible to trace organ origins and gives no guarantees of stopping the unethical practice.
Forced organ harvesting is the removal of organs from a donor without obtaining prior voluntary consent, according to Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH). Medical tourists from countries including Australia travel overseas to obtain organs, which may come from prisoners executed to order – a practice called transplant tourism.
The newly formed Parliamentary friendship group Parliamentarians Against Forced Organ Harvesting (PAFOH) held their first meeting in Canberra on July 16. More than 10 politicians have so far joined PAFOH, including MPs from the Liberal and Labor parties, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and independents.
“There is no way that you can condone the practice of killing people for their organs in any way, shape or form,” said Senator John Madigan from the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), co-convenor of PAFOH.
“The practice of forced organ harvesting in countries including China should not be ignored under any circumstances.”
Liberal MP Craig Kelly, co-chair of PAFOH, says lifting voluntary donation rates will help bring an end to the illegal organ trade. “If we were able to lift the rate of organ donation in Australia and also worldwide, the barbaric practice of forced organ harvesting would come to an end,” he said.
Global demand for organs is rising, while international supply continues to fall short.
Spain, with its opt-out organ donation system, leads the world with the number of voluntary donations, with 35 out of every 1 million people going on the official register. The consent-based systems of the US and Australia see 21 and 16 citizens per million opt-in for voluntary donation, respectively.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, at least 10,000 transplants take place in China annually, with over 90 per cent of the organs coming from executed prisoners.
The remaining 10 per cent from “voluntary” donations is attributable solely to the China Red Cross Society, which pays high premiums to patients on their death beds for their organs.
This raises important questions about the ethics of organ transplants in China, says medical professor Maria Fiatarone Singh from Sydney University, who gave an in-depth presentation at the PAFOH meeting.
According to a 1984 Chinese law, it is permitted to remove organs from executed prisoners. Since the 1990s, claims have been made that the Chinese regime is systematically harvesting organs from prisoners.
Ethan Gutmann, an award-winning China analyst and human-rights investigator, presented findings from his new book, The Slaughter. Via video link, Mr Gutmann presented an outline of organ harvesting in China. He estimates that by 2008, at least 65,000 Falun Gong adherents had been murdered for their organs. Furthermore, he says that “figures up to 2 million [dollars are] being paid by certain patients for organs”.
Following
the PAFOH meeting, Senator Madigan gave a formal Senate address,
saying: “I wish to put on the record that the practice of forced organ
harvesting in countries, including China, should not be ignored under
any circumstances. I and the DLP believe that all should have the
freedom to practise their religion without fear or favour.”
He acknowledged the over 400 Australian Falun Gong practitioners who
had gathered in Canberra on July 16 to commemorate 15 years of
persecution of the practice in China. Its adherents say practitioners in
China have been one of the main sources of organs.Leading medical bodies, like the World Medical Association and The Transplantation Society, condemn the use of prisoners as an organ source.
In 2005, China Daily reported the number of transplants in China to be about 20,000, with more than 90 per cent of the organs coming from executed prisoners.
While Beijing has circulated promises of “phasing out” its reliance on prisoners’ organs since 2007, it appears the regime has backflipped on its promises.
Former Vice-Minister of Health Huang Jiefu reiterated this at a 2010 Madrid transplant conference, saying: “I have no objections to using executed prisoners organ donations if he or she has freely demonstrated that that is his last will.”
Huang, now the director of the National Organ Transplant Committee, was quoted by the China Daily newspaper as saying: “Any organ donations, including those by executed prisoners, have to go through the system and the computerised allocation process.”
Professor Fiatarone Singh says changing the process will simply mean it will become impossible to trace organ origins and gives no guarantees of stopping the unethical practice.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
WE HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY AND IT IS US
!!!!
A deadly enemy within exacerbating immigration crisis
U.S. appetite for drugs begets violence migrants are fleeing
Democrats Seek Asylum Process For Children Fleeing...
The
thousands of children fleeing drug violence and poverty in Central
America could qualify for asylum in the United States and should have
the right to make that case. The U.S. is grappling with a surge of
children...
Related Stories
Pogo,
the possum-philosopher from the Okefenokee Swamp of the comics page,
got it right: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Everything is
spinning out of control, and this is where the passionate pursuit of
pleasure has brought us. Everybody is eager to go somewhere else,
anywhere else, but there’s the dawning realization that “you can’t get
there from here.”
.
The rush to judgment about who to blame for the crisis and chaos on the border only confuses the unwary. Some people want to blame it all on Barack Obama, and he deserves much blame. He’s the leader of the gang that can’t shoot straight.
.
.
Both Democrats and Republicans are contemptuous of the administration’s bungling of the response to disaster on the Rio Grande. Never have so many owed so little to such a shallow river. Everyone agrees that, whoever is at fault for the invasion, we haven’t seen such a parade of helpless and innocent children since the Pied Piper led the kids out of Hamlin in an earlier millennium.
.
Some of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, with their eyes on the prize of an endless stream of prospective voters, which would ensure their control of Congress for as long as the wind blows and the rivers run down to the sea, are angry that President Obama, reluctant as he may be, is willing to talk to Republicans about revising the 2008 law that now makes it difficult to deport children who come to the United States illegally.
.
These Democrats want to eliminate “root causes,” a vague cliche that nearly always means “let’s build a bigger bureaucracy to throw money at somebody.” The War on Poverty was such a big success, so why not try it there? Honduras even suggests a “mini-Marshall plan” for Central America.
But one of the important causes is the very destruction of everything that makes a nation a nation in the so-called “Northern Triangle” of Central America — the miserable nations of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
.
Honduras, by the measure of the U.N., is the most violent place on earth. Honduras counts 90 murders per 100,000 residents every year; Guatemala counts 40. By comparison, Afghanistan, where war still rages, and the Democratic Republic (so called) of the Congo, count only 28 per 100,000.
.
Life in the Northern Triangle is almost as lethal as life on the south side of Chicago.
.
John F. Kelly, the Marine four-star general who commands the U.S. Southern Command from Miami, says it’s “the malignant effects of immense drug trafficking through these nations that is responsible for accelerating the breakdown in their national institutions of human rights, law enforcement, courts and eventually their entire society evidenced today by the flow of children north and out … . The human rights groups I deal with tell me young women and even the little girls sent north by hopeful parents are molested and raped by traffickers. Many … join the 17,500 [girls] the U.N. reports come into the United States every year to work in the sex trade.”
.
This fact leads straight to the guiltiest villain of the piece, the American consumer of illegal drugs, without whom there would be no $250 billion drug traffic, the general writes in Military Times, reprising what he had earlier told Congress. “This traffic is what threatens the collapse of certain societies in this hemisphere.” That much money, spent for heroin, cocaine and meth, is irresistible to evildoers. “Many,” says Gen. Kelly, “argue that these threats … do not challenge our national security. I disagree.”
.
.
This takes us straight to Pogo’s point, that the enemy within, with his insatiable appetite for pleasure and gratification through drugs and indifference to the real world, is indeed “us.” Without the market for heroin and cocaine on the streets and in the salons and other places where Beautiful People live their privileged lives, there would be no clamor of children at the border, begging to be let in.
.
The next time you see an endearing child with a dirty face, just off the thousand-mile trail from Tegucigalpa, trying to smile from the front page of the morning newspaper or from the television screens of the evening news, think about what put him there.
.
One young woman arrived back in Tegucigalpa over the weekend with her two children on one of the first deportee flights from New Mexico. “Part of my heart stayed in the United States because I missed a chance to get ahead,” she said. She brought back only souvenirs, $24 for travel expenses, and her little girl got a small backpack and a package of crayons, which she clutched close to her heart.
.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
.
The rush to judgment about who to blame for the crisis and chaos on the border only confuses the unwary. Some people want to blame it all on Barack Obama, and he deserves much blame. He’s the leader of the gang that can’t shoot straight.
.
.
Both Democrats and Republicans are contemptuous of the administration’s bungling of the response to disaster on the Rio Grande. Never have so many owed so little to such a shallow river. Everyone agrees that, whoever is at fault for the invasion, we haven’t seen such a parade of helpless and innocent children since the Pied Piper led the kids out of Hamlin in an earlier millennium.
.
Some of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, with their eyes on the prize of an endless stream of prospective voters, which would ensure their control of Congress for as long as the wind blows and the rivers run down to the sea, are angry that President Obama, reluctant as he may be, is willing to talk to Republicans about revising the 2008 law that now makes it difficult to deport children who come to the United States illegally.
.
These Democrats want to eliminate “root causes,” a vague cliche that nearly always means “let’s build a bigger bureaucracy to throw money at somebody.” The War on Poverty was such a big success, so why not try it there? Honduras even suggests a “mini-Marshall plan” for Central America.
But one of the important causes is the very destruction of everything that makes a nation a nation in the so-called “Northern Triangle” of Central America — the miserable nations of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
.
Honduras, by the measure of the U.N., is the most violent place on earth. Honduras counts 90 murders per 100,000 residents every year; Guatemala counts 40. By comparison, Afghanistan, where war still rages, and the Democratic Republic (so called) of the Congo, count only 28 per 100,000.
.
Life in the Northern Triangle is almost as lethal as life on the south side of Chicago.
.
John F. Kelly, the Marine four-star general who commands the U.S. Southern Command from Miami, says it’s “the malignant effects of immense drug trafficking through these nations that is responsible for accelerating the breakdown in their national institutions of human rights, law enforcement, courts and eventually their entire society evidenced today by the flow of children north and out … . The human rights groups I deal with tell me young women and even the little girls sent north by hopeful parents are molested and raped by traffickers. Many … join the 17,500 [girls] the U.N. reports come into the United States every year to work in the sex trade.”
.
This fact leads straight to the guiltiest villain of the piece, the American consumer of illegal drugs, without whom there would be no $250 billion drug traffic, the general writes in Military Times, reprising what he had earlier told Congress. “This traffic is what threatens the collapse of certain societies in this hemisphere.” That much money, spent for heroin, cocaine and meth, is irresistible to evildoers. “Many,” says Gen. Kelly, “argue that these threats … do not challenge our national security. I disagree.”
.
.
This takes us straight to Pogo’s point, that the enemy within, with his insatiable appetite for pleasure and gratification through drugs and indifference to the real world, is indeed “us.” Without the market for heroin and cocaine on the streets and in the salons and other places where Beautiful People live their privileged lives, there would be no clamor of children at the border, begging to be let in.
.
The next time you see an endearing child with a dirty face, just off the thousand-mile trail from Tegucigalpa, trying to smile from the front page of the morning newspaper or from the television screens of the evening news, think about what put him there.
.
One young woman arrived back in Tegucigalpa over the weekend with her two children on one of the first deportee flights from New Mexico. “Part of my heart stayed in the United States because I missed a chance to get ahead,” she said. She brought back only souvenirs, $24 for travel expenses, and her little girl got a small backpack and a package of crayons, which she clutched close to her heart.
.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
Monday, July 21, 2014
HARVESTING HUMAN ORGANS WITHOUT THE DONOR'S CONSENT; WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD
!!!!
How Much Do You Know About July 20th and Falun Gong? (Quiz)
After Fifteen Years of Persecution, a Victim Still Advocates

Rally in Edmonton Marks 15 Years of Brutal Persecution

15 Years Too Long: Canadian Falun Gong Adherents Mark 15 Years of Persecution in China

Andrei Anghel Dead: Ontario Student ID’d as Canadian on Malaysia Flight MH17 (+Photos)
Commemorating 15 Years of Falun Gong Persecution
By Hon. David Kilgour, J.D. | July 20, 2014
Last Updated: July 21, 2014 10:42 am
Former
Canadian MP and Secretary of State David Kilgour condemns forced organ
harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in China. Falun Gong
practitioners during a rally on July 17 in front of the Chinese embassy
in Ottawa, Canada, to commemorate and protest 15 years of persecution in
China. One of the banner behind them reads, "End Communism Stop
Persecution." (Donna He/Epoch Times)
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15 Years Too Long: Canadian Falun Gong Adherents Mark 15 Years of Persecution in China
Andrei Anghel Dead: Ontario Student ID’d as Canadian on Malaysia Flight MH17 (+Photos)
The following are notes delivered by Mr. Kilgour as a
representative of the International Coalition to end Organ
Pillaging/Trafficking in China and Parliamentarians Against Forced Organ
Harvesting (PAFOH), July 17 at a public demonstration in front of the
Chinese Embassy, 515 St. Patrick St., Ottawa.
Thanks to Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, Paul Li, a survivor of the persecution, and to all of you for coming today to protest the crimes against humanity that have now continued for 15 years against Falun Gong practitioners across China.
This event is part of a global mobilization marking the persecution of Falun Gong in China launched on July 20, 1999. I understand that vigils will be held across Canada and in various other rule-of-law countries around the world in front of Chinese embassies and consulates marking this day of shame.
We call on the Canadian government to urge the party-state in Beijing to end the pillaging/trafficking of organs and to release the largest group of prisoners of conscience in the world, including six Canadian family members.
Canadian citizen Paul Li’s father, Li Xiaobo, has been unlawfully detained in China since April this year for practising Falun Gong and is facing a “trial” soon.
Since July of 1999, the campaign against Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party through mass imprisonment, torture, propaganda, and coercive “reeducation” has resulted in thousands of deaths.
Tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed and their organs forcibly removed for transplant operations. Even today, many Falun Gong practitioners are held extra-judicially and torture is routinely used. The persecution has been condemned by human rights organizations around the world.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a practice of meditation and exercises with teachings based on the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In July 1999, fearing that Falun Gong’s widespread growth was overshadowing his political party, then Chinese Communist leader Jiang Zemin ordered the eradication of this traditional Chinese practice.
In 2006, human rights lawyer David Matas and I, as volunteers, completed an independent investigation into the allegations about organ pillaging/trafficking from Falun Gong, which evolved into a 2009-published book, “Bloody Harvest.”
The book concludes: “We have come to the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true. We believe that there has been and continues to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.”
Our report in 21 languages can be accessed at www.Organharvestinvestigation.net or www.david-kilgour.com. Over the 2000-2005 period we examined, we concluded that 41,500 transplanted organs in China could only come from Falun Gong.
Forced organ procurement in China is unprecedented across the world because organs are sourced from prisoners whose lives are actively terminated to obtain their vital organs for commerce. As Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) have pointed out many times, “The practice shakes the very foundation of medical ethics. It provokes the question: Can one intentionally take a life to save a life? …Thus it is the current focus of…[DAFOH] to call for an end to this unethical practice.”
In April, the Transplantation Society and the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group sent an open letter to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping concerning “corrupt practices of doctors and officials who obtain organs from executed prisoners illegally for sale to wealthy foreign patients from around the world.”
In short, dear friends, what we are doing today is supported by men and women of conscience in China and around the world.
Thank you.
David Kilgour is co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran and a director of the Washington-based Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD). He is a former MP for both the Conservative and Liberal Parties in the south-east region of Edmonton and has also served as the Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa, Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific and Deputy Speaker of the House.
Thanks to Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, Paul Li, a survivor of the persecution, and to all of you for coming today to protest the crimes against humanity that have now continued for 15 years against Falun Gong practitioners across China.
This event is part of a global mobilization marking the persecution of Falun Gong in China launched on July 20, 1999. I understand that vigils will be held across Canada and in various other rule-of-law countries around the world in front of Chinese embassies and consulates marking this day of shame.
We call on the Canadian government to urge the party-state in Beijing to end the pillaging/trafficking of organs and to release the largest group of prisoners of conscience in the world, including six Canadian family members.
Canadian citizen Paul Li’s father, Li Xiaobo, has been unlawfully detained in China since April this year for practising Falun Gong and is facing a “trial” soon.
Since July of 1999, the campaign against Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party through mass imprisonment, torture, propaganda, and coercive “reeducation” has resulted in thousands of deaths.
Tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed and their organs forcibly removed for transplant operations. Even today, many Falun Gong practitioners are held extra-judicially and torture is routinely used. The persecution has been condemned by human rights organizations around the world.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a practice of meditation and exercises with teachings based on the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In July 1999, fearing that Falun Gong’s widespread growth was overshadowing his political party, then Chinese Communist leader Jiang Zemin ordered the eradication of this traditional Chinese practice.
In 2006, human rights lawyer David Matas and I, as volunteers, completed an independent investigation into the allegations about organ pillaging/trafficking from Falun Gong, which evolved into a 2009-published book, “Bloody Harvest.”
The book concludes: “We have come to the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true. We believe that there has been and continues to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.”
Our report in 21 languages can be accessed at www.Organharvestinvestigation.net or www.david-kilgour.com. Over the 2000-2005 period we examined, we concluded that 41,500 transplanted organs in China could only come from Falun Gong.
Forced organ procurement in China is unprecedented across the world because organs are sourced from prisoners whose lives are actively terminated to obtain their vital organs for commerce. As Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) have pointed out many times, “The practice shakes the very foundation of medical ethics. It provokes the question: Can one intentionally take a life to save a life? …Thus it is the current focus of…[DAFOH] to call for an end to this unethical practice.”
Many around the world have joined DAFOH in this
campaign. In November of last year, for example, 1.5 million persons
from 50 countries signed the DAFOH petition to the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, calling for an end to forced organ
pillaging.
In March of this year, the European Economic and Social Committee
aligned with the European Parliament in condemning China’s “scandalous”
organ procurement practices.In April, the Transplantation Society and the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group sent an open letter to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping concerning “corrupt practices of doctors and officials who obtain organs from executed prisoners illegally for sale to wealthy foreign patients from around the world.”
In short, dear friends, what we are doing today is supported by men and women of conscience in China and around the world.
Thank you.
David Kilgour is co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran and a director of the Washington-based Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD). He is a former MP for both the Conservative and Liberal Parties in the south-east region of Edmonton and has also served as the Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa, Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific and Deputy Speaker of the House.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
THE TRUE STORY OF SLICK WILLY AND THE VIETNAM WAR DRAFT
!!!!

Claim: Bill Clinton was the "first pardoned federal felon ever to serve as President of the U.S."


Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2002]
Origins: The arc of future President Bill Clinton's activities in avoiding the military draft during the Vietnam War years of1968-69
are difficult to trace with certainty in regard to all the details. By
the time the issue became one of national interest in 1992, reporters
and biographers were faced with reconstructing a 25-year-old
account from the decades-old memories of those involved; some of the
key participants were already dead, and the one person who knew the
whole story, Bill Clinton himself,
often responded to questions on the subject with misleading or
inaccurate information. Nonetheless, available documentation and
personal memories have enabled writers to reconstruct the essential
elements of the tale.
The saga began when an eighteen-year-old Bill Clinton entered Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in the fall of 1964. As required by law of all 18-year-old males at the time, Clinton registered with the Selective Service System on8 September 1964, and on 17 November 1964 he was assigned a 2-S (student deferment) classification by Garland County [Arkansas] Draft Board No. 26.
As American military involvement in Vietnam escalated in the mid-1960s, Clinton (like other male students his age) would reasonably have expected that his status as a college student would provide him with deferments from the draft for several more years, especially when in his senior year he was one of thirty-two American men selected to receive Rhodes Scholarships to study at Oxford University in England. However, on16 February 1968 the federal government eliminated draft
deferments for most graduate students, and Clinton would therefore no
longer be eligible for additional student deferments after he completed
his final term at Georgetown in the spring of 1968. Accordingly, his
draft board reclassified him 1-A (available immediately for military service) on 20 March 1968.
In mid-1968 Clinton, who maintained that although he was not opposed to the military or war in general he was morally opposed to the Vietnam War in particular, began to seek ways of avoiding the draft. His first opportunity was provided through the political and social connections of Raymond Clinton, his uncle, and Henry Britt, a Hot Springs lawyer and former judge, who made arrangements with the commanding officer of the local Naval Reserve unit, Trice Ellis, to secure a billet for Clinton in the naval reserve:William S.
Armstrong, chairman of the Garland County draft board, a favor that
would provide Clinton with only temporary protection from the draft but
would allow him to at least start his first year at Oxford without
committing him to military service:
October 1968.
At the end of his first term in December, Clinton received a notice
from the Selective Service instructing him to undergo an armed forces
physical examination at a U.S. air base near London, which he took (and
passed) on 13 January 1969.
An Order to Report for Induction from the Garland County Draft Board
followed three months later, but because the notice had been sent to
England via surface mail it was late in arriving, and the assigned
reporting date had already passed. Clinton had begun another school
term by then (the academic year at Oxford consisted of three terms
rather than two semesters), and the regulations allowed students who
received draft notices to finish out their current terms before
reporting, but he would be obligated to report for induction after the
end of the spring term unless he found an alternative before his new
reporting date of 28 July 1969.
As Clinton headed home for Arkansas from England, his options for avoiding the draft were limited. He did not qualify for conscientious objector status because he did not have a history of opposing military service or war in general, only the Vietnam War specifically. The local Army National Guard and Reserve units were full. He took physicals for the Air Force and Navy officer programs but failed them both. (He was undersize and didn't possess the visual acuity required for the Air Force program, and he failed the Navy exam due to substandard hearing.) Clinton's only available out seemed to be joining the advanced ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, which had no quotas and was open to graduate students, but since Clinton had already received an induction notice he would have to obtain the approval of Willard Hawkins, the state Selective Service director (an appointee of the Arkansas governor) to enter the program.
Clinton called upon Cliff Jackson, an Arkansas College graduate who had been Clinton's acquaintance at Oxford and was now working for the state Republican party, and Jackson in turn asked his boss, the head of the Arkansas Republican party, to arrange a meeting between Clinton and Selective Service director Hawkins. Clinton also received assistance from Lee Williams, an aide toU.S. Senator J. William
Fulbright of Arkansas (for whom Clinton had worked as a staffer while
attending Georgetown University). Williams, a University of Arkansas Law
School graduate himself, contacted the director of the university's
ROTC program, Colonel Eugene J. Holmes, to help get Clinton
enrolled. After "an extensive, approximately two-hour interview,"
Colonel Holmes agreed to accept Clinton into the ROTC program on 17 July 1969 (a mere eleven days before Clinton's 28 July
induction deadline), although Clinton would not actually be able to
begin the program until he completed the basic training camp the
following summer. Clinton's draft notice was nullified, and his draft
board reclassified him 1-D (reservist deferment) on 7 August 1969.
Clinton apparently did intend to begin attending the University of Arkansas Law School that fall, but sometime during the summer he changed his mind and decided to return for a second year at Oxford instead:1 October and 15 October 1969, he changed his mind again and asked his draft board to drop his ROTC deferment and reclassify him 1-A .
Given recent policy changes (and rumors of upcoming policy changes) by
the Nixon administration at that time (graduate students who received
induction notices were now allowed to finish out their school years
rather than just the current terms; Nixon was said to be considering
withdrawing 35,000 troops from Vietnam, temporarily suspending the
draft, and changing the draft requirements so that only 19-year-olds
would be called, and only "those draftees who volunteered for service
there" would be shipped to Vietnam; and the administration was
reportedly pushing for a draft lottery system based on birthdates which
would expose eligible men to the draft for one year only), Clinton may
have calculated that he was not risking much by opting to drop his ROTC
commitment in favor of a 1-A classification. As biographer David Maraniss surmised:
1 December 1969, Clinton's birthdate of 19 August
was selected 311th, a number high enough to practically guarantee that
he would not be drafted (and indeed he was not). A few days later,
Clinton sat down and wrote the now-infamous letter
to Colonel Holmes explaining his reasons for reneging on his agreement
to enter the University of Arkansas and its ROTC program.
That Bill Clinton went to great lengths to avoid theVietnam-era
draft, that he used political connections to obtain special favors, and
that he made promises and commitments which he later failed to honor,
are all beyond dispute. However, the timeline quoted above jumps the
tracks when it labels Clinton a "felon," because none of his actions, no
matter how unethical or morally questionable they might have been, were
illegal. When Clinton agreed in July of 1969 to enter the advanced
ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, his draft board rescinded
his induction notice and reclassified him with a reservist's deferment.
That he later changed his mind in October 1969 and opted to forego the ROTC program and be reclassified 1-A did not constitute a "failure to report" or make him "AWOL." At the time of his 1-A re-classification in October 1969 the previous induction notice was no longer in effect, and he was not subsequently re-drafted.
If Clinton had still been obligated to report for induction, his draft board could have got him any time they wanted: they certainly knew where to find him, yet no one ordered him to report to an induction center, no federal agents arrested him for draft evasion, and no MPs came and hauled him away for being AWOL, because he hadn't broken any laws, civil or military. Likewise, President Carter's executive order of21 January
1977, which provided pardons and amnesty for those convicted or
suspected of violating the Military Selective Service Act between 1964
and 1973 did not apply to Clinton because he committed no such
violation.
Although what he did may not have been against the law, Clinton's broken promises and contradictory statements about his efforts to avoid the draft were prime examples of the kind of self-serving doublespeak that later earned him the sobriquet "Slick Willie." As Maraniss concluded in his Clinton biography, First in His Class:
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Felon Groovy
Claim: Bill Clinton was the "first pardoned federal felon ever to serve as President of the U.S."
FALSE |
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2002]
First Pardoned Federal Felon ever to serve as President of the U.S.
Bill Clinton's Draft Records from the Freedom of Information Act files show he was a Pardoned Federal Felon
* Bill Clinton registers for the draft onSeptember 08, 1964, accepting all contractual conditions of registering for the draft. Given Selective Service Number 3 26 46 228.
* Bill Clinton classified 2-S on November 17, 1964.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on March 20, 1968.
* Bill Clinton ordered to report for induction on July 28, 1969.
* Bill Clinton dishonors order to report and is not inducted into the military.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-D after enlisting in the United States Army Reserves onAugust 07, 1969 under authority of Col. E. Holmes. Clinton signs enlistment papers and takes oath of enlistment.
* Bill Clinton fails to report to his duty station at the University of Arkansas ROTC, September 1969.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on October 30, 1969, as enlistment with Army Reserves is revoked by Colonel E. Holmes and Clinton now AWOL and subject to arrest under PublicLaw 90-40 (2)(a) 'registrant who has failed to report ... remain liable for induction'.
* Bill Clinton's birth date lottery number is 311, drawnDecember 1, 1969, but anyone who has already been ordered to report for induction, is INELIGIBLE!
* Bill Clinton runs for Congress (1974), while a fugitive from justice under PublicLaw 90-40.
* Bill Clinton runs for Arkansas Attorney General (1976), while a fugitive from justice.
* Bill Clinton receives pardon on January 21, 1977 from Carter.
* Bill Clinton FIRST PARDONED FEDERAL FELON ever to serve as President.
All these facts come from Freedom of Information requests, public laws, and various books that have been published, and have not been refuted by Clinton.
Bill Clinton's Draft Records from the Freedom of Information Act files show he was a Pardoned Federal Felon
* Bill Clinton registers for the draft on
* Bill Clinton classified 2-S on November 17, 1964.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on March 20, 1968.
* Bill Clinton ordered to report for induction on July 28, 1969.
* Bill Clinton dishonors order to report and is not inducted into the military.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-D after enlisting in the United States Army Reserves on
* Bill Clinton fails to report to his duty station at the University of Arkansas ROTC, September 1969.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on October 30, 1969, as enlistment with Army Reserves is revoked by Colonel E. Holmes and Clinton now AWOL and subject to arrest under Public
* Bill Clinton's birth date lottery number is 311, drawn
* Bill Clinton runs for Congress (1974), while a fugitive from justice under Public
* Bill Clinton runs for Arkansas Attorney General (1976), while a fugitive from justice.
* Bill Clinton receives pardon on January 21, 1977 from Carter.
* Bill Clinton FIRST PARDONED FEDERAL FELON ever to serve as President.
All these facts come from Freedom of Information requests, public laws, and various books that have been published, and have not been refuted by Clinton.
Origins: The arc of future President Bill Clinton's activities in avoiding the military draft during the Vietnam War years of
The saga began when an eighteen-year-old Bill Clinton entered Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in the fall of 1964. As required by law of all 18-year-old males at the time, Clinton registered with the Selective Service System on
As American military involvement in Vietnam escalated in the mid-1960s, Clinton (like other male students his age) would reasonably have expected that his status as a college student would provide him with deferments from the draft for several more years, especially when in his senior year he was one of thirty-two American men selected to receive Rhodes Scholarships to study at Oxford University in England. However, on
In mid-1968 Clinton, who maintained that although he was not opposed to the military or war in general he was morally opposed to the Vietnam War in particular, began to seek ways of avoiding the draft. His first opportunity was provided through the political and social connections of Raymond Clinton, his uncle, and Henry Britt, a Hot Springs lawyer and former judge, who made arrangements with the commanding officer of the local Naval Reserve unit, Trice Ellis, to secure a billet for Clinton in the naval reserve:
The first relief Raymond Clinton and Britt found for Bill was a naval billet. This would not only give him more time — he would not have to fill it until after the school year ended in June — but
it also would more likely keep him out of harm's way in the war. Trice
Ellis, the local naval commander, said he was only too happy to
accommodate the request, which he did not consider out of the ordinary,
and was "impressed by the chance to enlist someone with a college
education." He called the Navy command in New Orleans and secured a
two-year active duty billet for young Clinton. Ellis assumed that
Clinton would stop by that summer for an interview, but Clinton never
did. When he asked Raymond Clinton what happened, Raymond told him not
to worry, Bill would not be coming, he had been taken care of in another
way.
The "other way" that had "taken care" of Clinton was a favor Henry Britt worked out with
Britt called draft board chairman Armstrong, his close friend, and asked
him, as he later recalled, to "put Clinton's draft notice in a drawer
someplace and leave it for a while. Give the boy a chance." This is
apparently what Armstrong did for several months. Another member of the
Garland County Draft Board, Robert Corrado, later remembered Armstrong
holding back Clinton's file and saying that they had to give him time to
go to Oxford.
As Clinton biographer David Maraniss pointed out, although the
deliberate delay in issuing Clinton's draft notice was undeniably a case
of special treatment, it was by no means an unusual consideration
granted to Rhodes Scholars:
Special consideration for Rhodes Scholars was not unusual around the
country. The draft board in Alameda County, California, was so impressed
by the achievements of the only black Rhodes winner that year, Tom
Williamson of Harvard, that they granted him a graduate school deferment
even though such deferments supposedly no longer existed. Darryl Gless,
whose small home town in Nebraska was so proud of him that they strung a
banner across the Main Street bank welcoming him back from his
successful Rhodes interview, also was given a special deferment.
Dartmouth scholar John Isaacson visited his draft board in Lewiston,
Maine, and pleaded with them to let him go to Oxford, which they did.
University of Iowa scholar Mike Shea went to England "happily but
erroneously 2-S " for the first year. Paul Parish's mother
in Port Gibson, Mississippi, received a letter from the governor telling
her that Paul should go to England because they were trying to get an
exemption for Rhodes Scholars. For virtually every member of the Rhodes
class of 1968 there was a similar story.
Clinton set sail from New York to begin his first year at Oxford in
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As Clinton headed home for Arkansas from England, his options for avoiding the draft were limited. He did not qualify for conscientious objector status because he did not have a history of opposing military service or war in general, only the Vietnam War specifically. The local Army National Guard and Reserve units were full. He took physicals for the Air Force and Navy officer programs but failed them both. (He was undersize and didn't possess the visual acuity required for the Air Force program, and he failed the Navy exam due to substandard hearing.) Clinton's only available out seemed to be joining the advanced ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, which had no quotas and was open to graduate students, but since Clinton had already received an induction notice he would have to obtain the approval of Willard Hawkins, the state Selective Service director (an appointee of the Arkansas governor) to enter the program.
Clinton called upon Cliff Jackson, an Arkansas College graduate who had been Clinton's acquaintance at Oxford and was now working for the state Republican party, and Jackson in turn asked his boss, the head of the Arkansas Republican party, to arrange a meeting between Clinton and Selective Service director Hawkins. Clinton also received assistance from Lee Williams, an aide to
Clinton apparently did intend to begin attending the University of Arkansas Law School that fall, but sometime during the summer he changed his mind and decided to return for a second year at Oxford instead:
By Clinton's account, he talked to Colonel Holmes and gained permission
to return to Oxford for the second year since the basic training that he
was required to attend before beginning advanced ROTC would not start
until the following summer. Holmes said later that he allowed Clinton to
return to Oxford for "a month or two," but expected him to enroll in
the law school as soon as possible. But a letter that Clinton wrote in
December 1969 in which he apologized for not writing more often — "I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month" — is
the strongest evidence that Holmes was aware of and approved Clinton's
plan to go back to Oxford. The rest of the ROTC staff was expecting
Clinton to enroll that fall. Ed Howard, the drill sergeant, later
recalled that there was great anger when word spread through the ROTC
office that Clinton was not on campus.
The details of Clinton's subsequent actions and decisions are murky, but
sometime after returning to Oxford that fall (where he later helped
organize anti-war protests in London), probably between
The proponderance of evidence leads in one direction: to the notion that
with each passing week there were more signs that he might not get
drafted even if he abandoned the deferment. If Clinton, acting through
his stepfather, arranged to have the local draft board reclassify him 1-A after October 1, he would have known that it was largely a symbolic act providing him with the best of both worlds — the ability to say he had given up a deferment, and the knowledge that even though he was 1-A again, he would not be drafted that year.
When the first draft lottery of the Vietnam era was held on That Bill Clinton went to great lengths to avoid the
If Clinton had still been obligated to report for induction, his draft board could have got him any time they wanted: they certainly knew where to find him, yet no one ordered him to report to an induction center, no federal agents arrested him for draft evasion, and no MPs came and hauled him away for being AWOL, because he hadn't broken any laws, civil or military. Likewise, President Carter's executive order of
Although what he did may not have been against the law, Clinton's broken promises and contradictory statements about his efforts to avoid the draft were prime examples of the kind of self-serving doublespeak that later earned him the sobriquet "Slick Willie." As Maraniss concluded in his Clinton biography, First in His Class:
"It was just a fluke," Clinton would say decades later, when first asked
how he had made it through this period without serving in the military.
But of course it was not a fluke. A fluke is a wholly accidental stroke
of good luck. What happened to Clinton during that fateful year did not
happen by accident. He fretted and planned every move, he got help from
others when needed, he resorted to some deception or manipulation when
necessary, and he was ultimately lucky.
Last updated: 4 March 2014
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.
Sources: |
Allen, Charles F. and Johnathan Portis. The Comeback Kid: The Life and Career of Bill Clinton. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992. ISBN 1-55972-154-5. Balz, Dan. "Clinton Uncle Said to Have Lobbied Draft Board." The Washington Post. 2 September 1992 (p. A4). Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. "Clinton Bid to Avoid Vietnam May Prompt Fresh Scrutiny." The Wall Street Journal. 8 February 1992. Maraniss, David. First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN 0-671-87109-9. Rempel, William C. "Induction of Clinton Seen Delayed by Lobbying Effort." Los Angeles Times. 2 September 1992 (p. A1). Tyrrell Jr., R. Emmett. Boy Clinton: The Political Biography. Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1996. ISBN 0-89526-439-0.
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Monday, July 7, 2014
SOME PROPHECIES ARE FULFILLED, UNFORTUNATELY FOR US!!!!!!!!!!!
H. L. Mencken
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Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/history/bal-mencken-mencken-pg,0,4704105.photogallery#ixzz36oBSDrXM
Subject: A 94-year-old Prophecy is fulfilled
H.L. Mencken (born 1880 - died 1956) was a journalist, satirist, critic and Democrat.
"As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron."
---H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
So it was written, and so it has come to pass.
Snopes verifies this is true. Check H L Mencken
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