Mr. Rogers testifies before Congress
"What do you do with that mad you feel?"
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Liberal Law Prof Jonathan Turley:
Sandburg's Rule: Congress Attempts To Divert Attention Away From The Mueller Report
Sandburg's Rule: Congress Attempts To Divert Attention Away From The Mueller Report
On this day in 1886,
Haymarket Labor Riot Results in 8 Cops Killed Four Anarchists Hanged
A labor history of this tragic event
Friday, May 3, 2019
Thursday, May 2, 2019
On this day 2011,
OSAMA BIN LADEN KILLED BY
NAVY SEAL TEAM SIX
Team Six Members Later Ambushed in Afghanistan in Suspected Revenge Killing After Biden Discloses Identity
On this day in 2011, Osama bin Laden, was killed by U.S. forces during a daring raid on his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan. At a press conference days after, Vice President Biden broke from protocol and identified the U.S. forces as part of Navy SEAL Team Six. Three months later, 30 Team Six members, including some who had participated in the bin Laden raid, and other special forces were ambushed and killed in Afghanistan in what many believe was a revenge killing abetted by disloyal Afghans with insider knowledge regarding Team Six’s presence and activities. The ambush remains the worst loss of Americans in a single incident during the Afghan campaign.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
On this day in 1863,
More background here from Civil War Trust
LEE ROUTS UNION FORCES AT CHANCELLORSVILLE
Stonewall Jackson Shot By Own Troops, Dies
On this day in 1863, Robert E. Lee cemented his reputation as a tactical genius by outsmarting and routing Union General Joseph Hooker at the Battle of Chancellorsville despite the fact that the Union forces outnumbered the Army of Northern Virginia by a 2:1 ratio. During the battle, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, while returning from a reconnaissance mission beyond Union lines, was mistaken for a Union soldier as he returned and shot three times by his own troops. One of Jackson’s arms was amputated but he died several dies later from pneumonia.
More background here from Civil War Trust
On this day in 1960,
U.S.S.R. Shoots Down U.S. U-2 Spy Plane
Flown By Gary Powers
Did Lee Harvey Oswald tip off the Russians?
On this day in 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a U.S. spy plane over Russia. The CIA told Republican President and former general Dwight Eisenhower that the Soviets did not possess anti-aircraft weapons sophisticated enough to reach the high-altitude plane but, if they did, the plane would self-destruct and the pilot would kill himself. As a result, the U.S. initially said the plane was a weather plane, had wandered off course, and crashed. Soviet leader Khrushchev responded by not only displaying the wreckage but also pilot Powers. At a later major summit of the super powers, Khrushchev blasted the U.S., prompting Eisenhower to walk out. Eisenhower privately called the “stupid U-2 mess” one of the worst episodes of his presidency. Powers spent about two years in a Soviet prison before being exchanged for a Soviet spy. Until the day he died, Powers believed Lee Harvey Oswald had tipped off the U.S.S.R. to the U-2 spy flights during the time Oswald was in Russia.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Monday, April 29, 2019
On this day in 1992
On this day in 1992, riots broke out in South Central L.A. after an all-white Simi Valley jury acquitted four police officers who had been videotaped beating Rodney King. King suffered a broken face bone, a broken ankle, and many bruises and cuts.
The riots continued for four days, during which L.A.P.D. officers pulled out of several areas, leaving law-abiding citizens and local businesses completely at the “mercy” of the rioters. 55 people died, thousands were injured, there were dozens of fires, and over a billion dollars in damage.
Korean-owned businesses were especially targeted by the rioters.
The riots ended only after the National Guard was called in to restore order.
Among those seriously hurt was Reginald Denny, who was pulled from his truck, severely beaten by several rioters, and then left lying on the street, all while a TV helicopter crew caught the incident on camera and broadcast it live on local television. The rioters struck Denny in the head with a cinder block and fractured his skull in 91 places. Four heroic local residents saw Denny’s beating on TV, rushed to the scene, grabbed Denny, put him into a cab, and drove him to a nearby hospital. Denny’s ability to speak and walk is impaired to this day despite years of rehabilitative therapy.
Rodney King was represented by Johnnie Cochran in his civil suit against L.A. and was awarded $3.8 million.
Rodney King Criminal Trial Verdict Acquitting Four Police Officers Announced, Four Days of Riots, 55 Deaths, $1,000,000,000 in Damage
On this day in 1992, riots broke out in South Central L.A. after an all-white Simi Valley jury acquitted four police officers who had been videotaped beating Rodney King. King suffered a broken face bone, a broken ankle, and many bruises and cuts.
The riots continued for four days, during which L.A.P.D. officers pulled out of several areas, leaving law-abiding citizens and local businesses completely at the “mercy” of the rioters. 55 people died, thousands were injured, there were dozens of fires, and over a billion dollars in damage.
Korean-owned businesses were especially targeted by the rioters.
The riots ended only after the National Guard was called in to restore order.
Among those seriously hurt was Reginald Denny, who was pulled from his truck, severely beaten by several rioters, and then left lying on the street, all while a TV helicopter crew caught the incident on camera and broadcast it live on local television. The rioters struck Denny in the head with a cinder block and fractured his skull in 91 places. Four heroic local residents saw Denny’s beating on TV, rushed to the scene, grabbed Denny, put him into a cab, and drove him to a nearby hospital. Denny’s ability to speak and walk is impaired to this day despite years of rehabilitative therapy.
Rodney King was represented by Johnnie Cochran in his civil suit against L.A. and was awarded $3.8 million.
On this day in 1862,
UNION FORCES TAKE NEW ORLEANS
On this day in 1862, Union forces, led by Admiral David Farragut, took the City of New Orleans in a surprise attack from the Gulf of Mexico rather than via the Mississippi River to the north, where most of the Confederate forces were massed. Farragut secured the Union’s takeover of New Orleans by taking the last two Confederate forts between New Orleans and Vicksburg, 400 miles to the north. The Union’s control of New Orleans and the Mississippi split the Confederacy into two and severely hampered its ability to supply its troops.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
On this day in 1970,
More background here
U.S. Invades Cambodia
Nixon announces invasion on national TV two days later
On this day in 1970, Republican President Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia, a decision which caused the resignation of key aides, led to protests and the murder of protesters by the National Guard and local police, and caused Congress to restrict the president’s war powers.
Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had continually argued for a downsizing of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, were excluded from the decision to use U.S. troops in Cambodia. Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cabled Gen. Creighton Abrams, senior U.S. commander in Saigon, informing him of the decision that a “higher authority has authorized certain military actions to protect U.S. forces operating in South Vietnam.” Nixon believed that the operation was necessary as a pre-emptive strike to forestall North Vietnamese attacks from Cambodia into South Vietnam as the U.S. forces withdrew and the South Vietnamese assumed more responsibility for the fighting. Nevertheless, three National Security Council staff members and key aides to presidential assistant Henry Kissinger resigned in protest over what amounted to an invasion of Cambodia.
Source articleWhen Nixon publicly announced the Cambodian incursion on April 30, it set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations. A protest at Kent State University resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops. Another student rally at Jackson State College in Mississippi resulted in the death of two students and 12 wounded when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.
More background here
On this day in 1965,
More background here
U.S. INVADES DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
On this day in 1965, Democrat President Lyndon Johnson sent 22,000 American troops into the Dominican Republic to prevent a claimed communist takeover.
President Johnson declared that he had taken action to forestall the establishment of a “communist dictatorship” in the Dominican Republic. As evidence, he provided American reporters with lists of suspected communists in that nation. Even cursory reviews of the list revealed that the evidence was extremely flimsy–some of the people on the list were dead and others could not be considered communists by any stretch of the imagination.
Source ArticleMany Latin American governments and private individuals and organizations condemned the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic as a return to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the early-20th century, when U.S. Marines invaded and occupied a number of Latin American nations on the slightest pretexts. In the United States, politicians and citizens who were already skeptical of Johnson’s policy in Vietnam heaped scorn on Johnson’s statements about the “communist danger” in the Dominican Republic. Such criticism would become more and more familiar to the Johnson administration as the U.S. became more deeply involved in the war in Vietnam.
More background here
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