Via American Digest, who explains:

This footage was filmed around 1900 in the cities of London, England, and Cork, Ireland. However, it doesn’t look like any 100-year-old film you’ve seen, because it’s been altered to make it more like being there than the film technology of the time could produce. This video has been dramatically enhanced in quality, using modern video editing tools. The film has been motion stabilized and the speed has been slowed down to correct speed (from 18 fps to 24 fps) using special frame interpolation software that re-creates missing frames. Upscaling to HD quality was done using video enhancer software.

First person history.

Excerpt from Wayne Robinson, Move out Verify: the Combat Story of the 743rd Tank Battalion (Germany, no publisher, 1945)

There was another sidelight to the death of fascism in Europe.  Only a few of the battalion saw it.  Those who did will never forget it.

A few miles northwest of Magdeburg there was a railroad siding in wooded ravine not far from the Elbe River. Major Clarence Benjamin in a jeep was leading a small task force of two light tanks from Dog Company on a routine job of patrolling. The unit came upon some 200 shabby looking civilians by the side of the road.  There was something immediately apparent about each one of these people, men and women, which arrested the attention.

Each one of them was skeleton thin with starvation, a sickness in their faces and the way in which they stood-and there was something else.  At the sight of Americans they began laughing in joy-if it could be called laughing.  It was an outpouring of pure, near-hysterical relief.

The tankers soon found out why.  The reason was found at the railroad siding.

There they came upon a long string of grimy, ancient boxcars standing silent on the tracks.  In the banks by the tracks, as if to get some pitiful comfort from the thin April sun, a multitude of people of all shades of misery spread themselves in a sorry, despairing tableaux  [sic]. As the American uniforms were sighted, a great stir went through this strange camp. Many rushed toward the Major’s jeep and the two light tanks.

Bit by bit, as the Major found some who spoke English, the story came out.

This had been-and was-a horror train.  In these freight cars had been shipped 2500 people, jam-packed in like sardines, and they were people that had two things in common, one with the other:  They were prisoners of the German State and they were Jews…

There they came upon a long string of grimy, ancient boxcars standing silent on the tracks.  In the banks by the tracks, as if to get some pitiful comfort from the thin April sun, a multitude of people of all shades of misery spread themselves in a sorry, despairing tableaux  [sic]. As the American uniforms were sighted, a great stir went through this strange camp. Many rushed toward the Major’s jeep and the two light tanks.

Bit by bit, as the Major found some who spoke English, the story came out.

This had been-and was-a horror train.  In these freight cars had been shipped 2500 people, jam-packed in like sardines, and they were people that had two things in common, one with the other:  They were prisoners of the German State and they were Jews…

Read it all. Also, 20 Photos that Changed the Holocaust Narrative.

This gives new meaning to “she’s a firecracker.”

Colin Dickey in Lapham’s Quarterly

In 1725, a tavern owner in Rheims, France named Jean Millet was accused of the murder of his wife. Millet’s wife was overweight, past her prime, and Millet, an otherwise upstanding member of the community, was reputed to be interested in a young servant girl from Lorraine. When Mme Millet’s remains were found smoldering in the kitchen one night—with only her legs, part of her head, a few large bones and some vertebrae identifiable—suspicion quickly fell to her husband, who was quickly tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Luckily for the tavern owner, he was saved at the last minute by one of his lodgers, a young and promising surgeon named Nicholas Le Cat, who argued that because Mme Millet was a known alcoholic, the likely cause of her death was not murder, but spontaneous human combustion. Millet was ultimately acquitted, though the ordeal left him destroyed, and he lived out the remainder of his life in a mental institution—haunted, perhaps, either by the fact that he had gotten away with murder, or that his wife really had, suddenly and without warning, burst into flames from too much drinking…

Larry Elder:

Once upon a time, a group of people known as the “Democrats” expressed great fear of tyranny by government.This was a time long, long ago, when a man from a place called Texas, representing a people known as the Republicans, occupied the White House. Leaders of the Democrats feared tyranny by the Republicans and called the man from Texas racist, oppressive and tyrannical.

To refresh your recollection, we offer a few examples from the distant past:

Billionaire Democratic contributor George Soros. He said the George W. Bush White House displayed the “supremacist ideology of Nazi Germany” and that Bush’s administration used rhetoric that echoed his childhood in occupied Hungary. “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’” Soros said, “it reminds me of the Germans.” Soros later said: “The Bush administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. … Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and communist propaganda machines.”

Former Vice President Al Gore. He said: “(George W. Bush’s) executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. … And every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brown shirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.”

Former two-time Democratic presidential candidate and civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson. After Congress passed new anti-terrorism laws following 9/11, (more…)

Dana Milbank on the rude:

…Back when she was an assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration, she appalled colleagues by flipping her middle finger at Richard Holbrooke during a meeting with senior staff at the State Department, according to witnesses. Colleagues talk of shouting matches and insults.

Among those she has insulted is the woman she would replace at State. Rice was one of the first former Clinton administration officials to defect to Obama’s primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Rice condemned Clinton’s Iraq and Iran positions, asking for an “explanation of how and why she got those critical judgments wrong.”

Clinton got a measure of revenge in 2010 after she worked out a deal with the Russian foreign minister on a package of Iran sanctions to be adopted by the U.N. Security Council. The White House wanted Rice to make the announcement (part of a campaign to increase her profile that included high-visibility foreign trips and TV appearances), but a Clinton aide got Kerry to ask Clinton about the matter during an unrelated Senate hearing.

Rice’s put-down of Clinton was tame compared with her portrayal of McCain during 2008, which no doubt contributes to McCain’s hostility toward her today. She mocked McCain’s trip to Iraq (“strolling around the market in a flak jacket”), called his policies “reckless” and said “his tendency is to shoot first and ask questions later. It’s dangerous.”

David Landau on the ignorant:

…I recalled an interview I had watched on TV during the 2008 election campaign. Susan Rice, then a foreign-policy adviser to candidate Barack Obama, was asked to defend Obama’s statement that as president he would be willing to meet, free of preconditions, with leaders of nations that were hostile to the U.S.

A questioner asked Rice about the difficulties encountered by President John F. Kennedy when he went to Vienna in 1961, at the beginning of his term, to meet with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on an open agenda. Rice asserted that the Kennedy-Khrushchev sessions were actually constructive because the personal relationship established by the two leaders allowed them, the following year, to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I wondered how many people had noticed that answer. At least one other listener had, and had posted a clip on YouTube. You will not find the clip today because YouTube has removed it, citing “third-party notifications of copyright infringement.” Anyway, Rice said of JFK’s willingness to go to Vienna: “Thank God he did, because if he hadn’t we would have not been able to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Like my friend Paula, Ms. Rice delivered her assertion emphatically, with all the confidence in the world. And it counted for nothing that Ms. Rice had been brazenly inaccurate. At Vienna, Khrushchev wiped the floor with Kennedy and the effect was to increase the bellicosity of both men. The meeting let loose violent impulses that raised the Berlin Wall, deepened the Vietnam War and put Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.

The names of mass murderers trip off the tongue: Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot etc. And yet one man who arguably saved one billion lives goes unknown.

Jarrett Skorup in CapCon

Called “arguably the greatest American in the 20th century,” during his 95 years, Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives than any other person.

He is one of just six people to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And yet Borlaug, who died three years ago today, is scarcely known in his own country.

Born in Iowa in 1914, Borlaug spent most of his life in impoverished nations inventing, improving and teaching the “Green Revolution.” His idea was simple: Make developing countries self sufficient in food by teaching them how to use modern agricultural techniques that are easy to implement. Borlaug spent most of his time in Mexico, Pakistan and India, and focused on five areas: crop cultivars (seeds), irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and mechanization. His successes were remarkable.

In 1950, Mexico imported over half of its food. Thanks to Borlaug’s efforts to convince farmers there to try his techniques, Mexican food production increased 10-fold by 1970, and the country had become a net exporter. In India and Pakistan, production doubled. In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug’s efforts, combined with those he trained and equipped, saved the lives of 1 billion human beings.

Shockingly, the Green Revolution was almost entirely funded by developing countries and private charities (notably the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations), rather than by the governments of prosperous nations. At the time, the overwhelming view of academic and (more…)

Jonah Goldberg

Every now and then I watch the actual broadcast-news shows, just to see what they’re up to. Last night I caught NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. In their story on Augusta admitting women Stina Sternberg of Golf Digest said:

This is a momentous day for the game of golf and sports in general. It’s like the Berlin Wall of discrimination finally coming down in golf.

We could be here all day finding new insights into the absurdity crammed into this soundbite. I have no doubt it is a momentous day for the game of golf. And, I’ll leave it to others to argue how big a deal this is for sports. But the Berlin Wall of discrimination? What the hell?

First of all, the Berlin Wall kept people in, not out (a simple fact countless people still seem not to understand when it comes to, say, the Israeli defense barrier). It kept poor people and rich people alike in (though East Germany’s supply of rich people had a rapid half-life). Was Augusta keeping female golfers locked up in the club pantry?

The Berlin Wall was also a symbol of systematic evil and geopolitical nuclear brinkmanship. Augusta was a symbol of . . . well it was a symbol of various sorts to various people. But in no way was it a symbol of anything like the Berlin Wall save to the very dim or the very ignorant.

The fall of the Berlin Wall represented the end of state-enforced tyranny on a continental scale. The admission of women by Augusta represents a private club acquiescing to public pressure. Maybe they were right to do so in the end.  But come on.

In fairness, all Sternberg probably means is that this was the end of an era. The Berlin Wall fell, ending the Cold War and Soviet eras. Augusta admitted very rich and powerful women to its rich and powerful golf club. The parallels are obvious!

I’m going to head into the kitchen now and get another cup of coffee. My cup is empty right now and it’s like the Irish potato famine of coffee drinking.

Those were among George Washington’s favorite foods.

Read what the other presidents like(d) to eat.

BBC:

The run-up to the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in — the burglary that gave rise to America’s gravest political crisis — has inevitably been accompanied by the mythology that has shaped and distorted popular understanding of the epic scandal.

The mythology is both delicious and durable, and revolves around the Washington Post and its Watergate reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They are legends in American journalism, not only because of their award-winning reporting but because of the screen adaptation of their book about Watergate, All the President’s Men.

The movie came out in 1976 and starred Robert Redford as Woodward, and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein. The New York Times called it “a spellbinding detective story”. And the Post once described All the President’s Men as “the best film ever made about the craft of journalism”.

It is undoubtedly the most-viewed of the handful of films and documentaries about Watergate, the scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon and sent to jail 20 men associated with his administration or his 1972 re-election campaign.

All the President’s Men was more than merely entertaining. It was a vehicle for propelling and solidifying prominent media myths of Watergate, five of which are discussed here:

#1 The Washington Post brought down Nixon’s corrupt presidency: This long ago became the dominant narrative of the Watergate scandal. It holds that Woodward and Bernstein, through their dogged reporting, revealed the crimes that forced Nixon to resign the presidency in August 1974…

From AttackMachine in 2003, a historical reminder about Bush’s supposed unilateralism.

___________________________________

In the months preceding the Iraq war, Democrat critics of President Bush decried his “unilateral” approach to dealing with Saddam Hussein. The following was published as an op-ed piece in editions of the Wall Street Journal and signed by eight European leaders. After publication, ten more European leaders came forward to ask that they, too, be allowed to sign the declaration.

So 18 European leaders came forth to back the Iraq war.

The strong support for President Bush’s position by so many European leaders would seem newsworthy. However, it was not reported as a news story in the Los Angeles Times. A media column by Tim Rutten later discussed the provenance of the op-ed piece, but ignored the substance of the views held by so many Euro leaders. In fact, the Los Angeles Times persisted in calling Bush’s policy unilateral.

_____________________________________

United We Stand

By Jose Maria Aznar, Spain
Jose-Manuel Durão Barroso, Portugal
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy
Tony Blair, United Kingdom
Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic
Peter Medgyessy, Hungary
Leszek Miller, Poland Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark

January 30, 2003

The real bond between the U.S. and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law. These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the United States of America. Today they are under greater threat than ever. The attacks of Sept. 11 showed just how far terrorists — the enemies of our common values — are prepared to go to destroy them. Those outrages were an attack on all of us. In standing firm in defense of these principles, the governments and people of the U.S. and Europe have amply demonstrated the strength of their convictions.

Today more than ever, the trans-Atlantic bond is a guarantee of our freedom. We in Europe have a relationship with the U.S. which has stood the test of time. Thanks in large part to American bravery, generosity and farsightedness, Europe was set free from the two forms of tyranny that devastated our continent in the 20th century: Nazism and communism. Thanks, too, to the continued cooperation between Europe and the U.S. we have managed to guarantee peace and freedom on our continent. The trans-Atlantic relationship must not become a casualty of the current Iraqi regime’s persistent attempts to threaten world security. In today’s world, more than ever before, it is vital that we preserve that unity and cohesion.

We know that success in the day-to-day battle against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction demands unwavering determination and firm international cohesion on the part of all countries for whom freedom is precious. The Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represent a clear threat to world security. This danger has been explicitly recognized by the U.N. All of us are bound by Security Council Resolution 1441, which was adopted unanimously.

We Europeans have since reiterated our backing for Resolution 1441, our wish to pursue the U.N. route, and our support for the Security Council at the Prague NATO Summit and the Copenhagen European Council. In doing so, we sent a clear, firm and unequivocal message that we would rid the world of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. We must remain united in insisting that his regime be disarmed. The solidarity, cohesion and determination of the international community are our best hope of achieving this peacefully.

Our strength lies in unity. The combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is a threat of incalculable consequences. It is one at which all of us should feel concerned. Resolution 1441 is Saddam Hussein’s last chance to disarm using peaceful means. The opportunity to avoid greater confrontation rests with him. Sadly this week the U.N. weapons inspectors have confirmed that his long-established pattern of deception, denial and noncompliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions is continuing.

Europe has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. Indeed, they are the first victims of Iraq’s current brutal regime. Our goal is to safeguard world peace and security by ensuring that this regime gives up its weapons of mass destruction. Our governments have a common responsibility to face this threat. Failure to do so would be nothing less than negligent to our own citizens and to the wider world.

The U.N. Charter charges the Security Council with the task of preserving international peace and security. To do so, the Security Council must maintain its credibility by ensuring full compliance with its resolutions. We cannot allow a dictator to systematically violate those resolutions. If they are not complied with, the Security Council will lose its credibility and world peace will suffer as a result. We are confident that the Security Council will face up to its responsibilities.

Jay Nordlinger

Last week, I wrote about a visit to the hydroelectric plant in Telemark, Norway, where those brave saboteurs on skis slowed the Nazis’ drive for an A-bomb. I said I had a memory from student days. It was the historian Ernest May, I think, who told us, “When you study World War II, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Allies assumed they would win all along. Oh, no. It wasn’t until the Casablanca Conference that they even decided to go for total victory — a total victory rather than a negotiated peace. When you study the war, try to rid yourself of the notion that the outcome was inevitable.”

In response to this, a reader from Silicon Valley writes with a memory of his own. Thought you would enjoy it:

Dear Jay,

. . . My father told me something long ago. He was a war refugee, arriving from Hungary in late 1941. He settled in Boston and began a medical career. Shortly after moving to Boston, he went one night to the movies. A newsreel was played. It featured General Stilwell making his famous comment, “I claim we got a hell of a beating.” The audience cheered.

Dad’s first reaction was sheer terror. He was sure the police would storm the theater and arrest the projectionist for showing the newsreel, and the entire audience for cheering an American defeat. That most certainly would have happened in Admiral Horthy’s Hungary. But nothing happened, except that the movie was shown after the news reel.

At the end, there weren’t any police at the theater, and my dad went home relieved. But he was confused. In the following days, he thought a great deal about what had happened at the theater. Until that point, he was absolutely convinced that the Axis would win the war, and that someday the Wehrmacht would invade the U.S. The Germans had of course been winning everything up to then, and, to a newcomer like Dad, the U.S. in early 1942 did not seem strong or serious enough to resist the Germans.

But it finally occurred to him that we were in fact quite strong — far stronger than the Germans — and serious as well. General Stilwell’s full statement had been, “I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back, and retake it.” The cheering was in response to the call to get our act together and retake Burma.

Dad told me that from then on he never had any doubt about our eventual victory, or about how fortunate he was to have come to the U.S. when he did…

…after news broke that Obama has “hacked” the White House website to promote himself in the bios of past presidents.

The speed of satire today is astonishing.

Plenty more of President Obama Zelig Obama here.

And speaking of Microsoft, there’s this nugget, from an editorial in the WSJ:

“When I hear people talk about the free enterprise system and entrepreneurship, I try to remind them, you know, all of us made that investment in Darpa [the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] that helped to get the Internet started,” said Mr. Obama. “So there’s no Facebook, there’s no Microsoft, there’s no Google if we hadn’t made this common investment in our future.”

Microsoft—a product of the Internet? That may surprise Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who founded the software company in 1975. The company didn’t introduce its first Internet browser for another 20 years, and in the meantime it became the dominant computer software company long before the Internet became economically important. The irony of Mr. Obama’s error is that for much of Microsoft’s history the Internet was seen as a threat to its desktop dominance.

There’s no doubt that Darpa has done many good things, but the point Mr. Obama misses is that Darpa is engaged in funding research. This is a proper role for government, especially on national defense. But Darpa does not attempt to commercialize products. Facebook and Google, like Apple and Microsoft, were founded by private investors.

The President likes to elide that distinction between government funding for basic research and commercialization, which is how his Administration lost so much money on stinkers like Solyndra.

…not much, but Obama has control over the White House website. Dig into the presidential biographies of past presidents and who do you find mentioned in those bios?

Yep, Obama!

(via Michael Medved on the radio)

From the Calvin Coolidge page:

Did you know?

• On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).   President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.

From the Ronald Reagan page:

Did you know?

• President Reagan designated Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday; today the Obama Administration honors this tradition, with the First and Second Families participating in service projects on this day.
• In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

From the JFK page:

Did you know?

• President John F. Kennedy famously suggested the American people: “Ask what you can do for your country.” In 1961, the Peace Corps was created, facilitating service among citizens working toward peace in developing countries. In 2011, President Obama celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps with a Presidential Proclamation.

From the George W. Bush page:

Did you know?

• After blaming everything wrong with America on President Bush, President Obama took credit for ending the war in Iraq, even though he vehemently opposed the “surge” that cemented the victory. Then he neglected/bungled the diplomatic effort with Iraq, thus squandering our strategic leverage in the region.
• After seeing Bush’s former vice-president Dick Cheney speak out in favor of gay marriage in 2009, Obama began evolving and three years later became, according to Newsweek magazine, the first gay president.

All right — the stuff about Bush I invented.

The rest, I am sad to report, is really there. Or will be until embarrassment sets in.

Let’s hope Obama doesn’t spot his image in the Reflecting Pool or Biden might get his chance.

Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, former domestic terrorists, are the power couple that hosted Barack Obama’s political coming out party.

Now she’s getting federal dollars. Before reading the story below, get a taste of who she is by watching this video (The whole documentary is worth your time, especially for young people who didn’t live through this era.)

WATCH HERE

Rpbert VerBruggen in National Review

Bernardine Dohrn has a history with the Justice Department. More specifically, in the early 1970s, she was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives because of her actions with the Weather Underground, a violent radical organization.

Times have changed. In 2010 and 2011, the Justice Department saw fit to give $400,000 in grants to an organization that lists Dohrn as a member of its board of directors: a $150,000 grant in September of 2010 and a $250,000 grant a year later.

The organization that received the grants is the W. Haywood Burns Institute, and the project that brought in the money is the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. JDAI aims to keep juvenile criminals out of “secure confinement” and to reduce racial disparities in the juvenile justice system.

As a prominent figure in the Weather Underground — which was initially known as simply “Weatherman” — Dohrn helped lead the “Days of Rage” Chicago riot, and during her tenure the group was responsible for numerous bombings of government buildings. Although Dohrn has never renounced her past, her various legal troubles are behind her: She served some probation, several charges were dismissed, and she spent some time in jail for refusing to cooperate with an investigation. She’s now a law professor at Northwestern University, and her husband, fellow Weather Underground co-founder William Ayers, is a retired education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Plenty more here.

Backstory is here.

The Colombian Secret Service prostitution scandal is small potatoes by historical standards. Once upon time, our president, JFK was the one ordering sex a la carte, and using his staff to cover his tracks.

Forget Secret Service agents hiring hookers. JFK had them hustled into the White House.

So much for Camelot.

JFK was a serial cheater who not only risked his political career, but national security because of his uncontrolled impulses. At 44, he was still a rich kid, a spoiled brat.

…One such liaison that Hoover learned about was Kennedy’s relationship with Judith Campbell, later Exner. Kennedy was introduced to Campbell by Frank Sinatra during his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. At the same time, Sinatra also introduced Campbell to mobster Sam Giancana, and they too began an affair. In 1961, Hoover learned of Kennedy and Campbell’s affair from wiretaps placed on Mafia leader John Roselli’s phone. The FBI learned that Campbell frequently called the White House and spoke with Kennedy’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, who was charged with making the arrangements for her visits. With this information, Hoover went to Bobby and informed him that his brother was engaged in a relationship with a woman who was involved with mobsters. In March 1962, Kennedy broke off relations with Campbell and in May, upon Bobby’s advice, he severed all ties with Sinatra.

Hoover also knew of another of Kennedy’s affairs. This time it was with Ellen Rometsch, a twenty-seven-year-old German-born call girl. Bobby Baker, the Senate secretary to the Democrats, was responsible for their introduction. Although it was a short-term fling, Rometsch became a frequent visitor to the White House for naked pool parties during the spring and summer of 1963. On July 3, Hoover informed Bobby that Rometsch might be a spy. On August 21, Bobby had her deported back to West Germany.

This, however, failed to put an end to the matter. One month later, Bobby Baker, who frequently paired call girls with senators, came under the scrutiny of the Senate Rules Committee, which was investigating whether he was involved in unethical financial transactions. Rather then face scrutiny from his colleagues, Baker resigned on October 7. In the meantime, Bobby Kennedy came to an agreement with Baker for his silence about Rometsch. Nevertheless, on October 26 the Des Moines Register reported the story about Rometsch and “some prominent New Frontiersmen from the executive branch of Government.”

In response, Bobby quietly arranged for a meeting between Hoover and Senate leaders Mike Mansfield and Everett Dirksen on October 28. Bobby wanted to make sure that the Senate refrained from investigating the Romestch matter. At the meeting, Hoover reported that there was no evidence to suggest that Rometsch was a German spy. Further, he noted that the FBI investigation had turned up interesting evidence that Baker had provided call girls to numerous senators, and he had the list of names to prove it. The meeting had the desired result. When the investigation into Baker’s activities continued, Rometsch was never brought up.

Although Kennedy escaped the revelation of his tainted private life on this occasion, many details would come out after his death. In November 1975, a Senate subcommittee, which was charged with investigating the CIA’s assassination plots, uncovered the details of Kennedy’s affair with Campbell. Although it comprised just a small footnote, which was buried deep into the report, it was nevertheless exposed. In addition to the affair with Campbell, it was revealed that during Kennedy’s administration, the CIA had given the go ahead for Sam Giancana, Campbell’s other sexual liaison, to carry out a plot to kill Castro. These two revelations of sex and mobster dealings tainted Kennedy’s reputation.

Kennedy also had an affair with Jackie’s press secretary Pamela Turnure. Turnure was a twenty-three-year-old who received the job upon Kennedy’s urging. She was inexperienced, having never worked in a press position, but Kennedy urged Jackie to hire her. Jackie did as he wished, and he continued on with his three-year relationship with Turnure.

At the same time, Kennedy was having an affair with reporter Ben Bradlee’s sister-in-law, Mary Pinchot Meyer. It began in early 1962 after Kennedy propositioned her at a White House reception in December 1961. Meyer was from a political family and Kennedy found solace in their relationship because of her understanding of his political trials. From 1962 to 1963, she visited the White House at least thirty times. The affair was exposed in 1976. Kennedy also had affairs with the White House secretaries he called “Fiddle” and “Faddle,” and with numerous other women.

There’s more, much more.

The White House should fact check the prez before he insults the GOP for being ignorant.

Such as this jibe for not buying into his windmills approach to energy:

“They might have even sided with one of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, who reportedly said this about the telephone: ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore, because he’s looking backwards, he’s not looking forwards.”

But Hayes never said that. Washington Post:

…Hayes, in fact, was such a technology buff that he installed the first telephone in the White House. A list of telephone subscribers published in the article “The Telephones Comes to Washington,” by Richard T. Loomis, shows that the White House was given the number “1.”

His cocky crap has inspired a hilarious outpouring of crowd-sourced scorn. Here’s just one sample. There are dozens:

Then there are the tweets for the twit.

#BarackObamasPresidentialFacts Woodrow Wilson was lost at sea while attempting to escape with Tom Hanks from a deserted isle

#BarackObamasPresidentialFacts Calvin Coolidge was known by hipsters of the roaring 20s as LL Coolidge and enjoyed his “Coolidge cookies

#BarackObamasPresidentialFacts Ulysses S. Grant was our first Greek president.

Andrew Breitbart did not mislead anyone about Shirley Sherrod, no matter what the obituaries say.

Scientific American:

Drilling at Poland’s first shale gas exploration well using the controversial technique known as fracking has not harmed the environment, according to a government study published on Friday.

Stone-age Europeans were the first to get to North America.

Obama’s car of the future temporarily halts production. He’s planning to drive one once he gets out of the White House, he says.

Welfare reform worked, says LAT oped. That’s not exactly news, as the ten year anniversary stories made clear.

The Other GM Bailout: $18 billion in tax breaks

An author on NPR spoke about this incident, an obscure disaster in which a wall of molasses swept through the streets of Boston at 35 miles per hour.

Twenty-one people died and 150 were injured.

It happened January 15, 1919 when a tank (50 feet high, 90 feet in diameter) containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed.

From Wikipedia

Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was… Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise.

Fresh Air’s Terry Gross interviews Tim Weiner, author of a surprising new book on the FBI based on 70,000 pages of documents newly declassified.

He presents a very nuanced view of J. Edgar Hoover, discounting rumors of his alleged homosexuality, his reasons for bugging and harassing Martin Luther King, the complicity of JFK and RFK in domestic spying and much more.

You can read a transcript here.

Michelangelo’s masterpiece — see it up close.

Navigate in all directions with your mouse or arrow keys. Use your + and – keys to zoom in and out.

Zoomed in, you can see details, such as the wear on the marble steps.

See it here at the Vatican website.

French citizens do not have the right to free speech (Dear Obama, this makes us exceptional in ways no other nation is.)

So the French want to criminalize denial of the Turkish genocide.

The latest dispute with France began late last year when a deputy in Sarkozy’s ruling Union for a Popular Movement party introduced legislation calling for a one-year prison sentence and a $59,000 fine for anyone who espoused a belief that there was no genocide of Armenians under Ottoman rule during and immediately after World War I.

The number of dead is still in dispute, ranging from 300,000 to 1.5 million. Turkey acknowledges that atrocities were committed, but denies that there was a systematic attempt to destroy the Armenian people.

After the bill was passed by the lower house of the French Parliament in December, Erdogan recalled Turkey’s ambassador from Paris, banned the landing and docking of French military aircraft and warships in Turkey and suspended political and economic talks.

They should pass a companion bill criminalizing French involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Rwanda has accused France of playing an active role in the genocide of 1994, in which about 800,000 people were killed.

An independent Rwandan commission said France was aware of preparations for the genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia perpetrators.

The report also accused French troops of direct involvement in the killings.

It named 33 senior French military and political figures that it said should be prosecuted. France has previously denied any such responsibility.

Among those named in the report were the late former President, Francois Mitterrand, and the then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur.

Two men who went on to become prime minister were also named – Alain Juppe, the foreign minister at the time, and his then chief aide, Dominique de Villepin.

The French foreign ministry told the BBC it would only respond to the fresh allegations after reading the report, which was released on Tuesday afternoon.

Checkpoints

Earlier this year France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide, but said political errors had been made…

Thomas Sowell:

Different histories, geography, demography and cultures have left various groups, races, nations and civilizations with radically different abilities to create wealth.

In centuries past, the majority population of various cities in Eastern Europe consisted of people from Western Europe — Germans, Jews and others — while the vast majority of the population in the surrounding countrysides were Slavs or other indigenous peoples of the region.

Just as Western Europe was — and is — more prosperous than Eastern Europe, so Western Europeans living in Eastern European cities in centuries past were more prosperous than the Slavs and others living in the countrysides, or even in the same cities.

One of the historic advantages of Western Europe was that it was conquered by the Romans in ancient times — a traumatic experience in itself, but one which left Western European languages with written versions, using letters created by the Romans. Eastern European languages developed written versions centuries later.

Literate people obviously have many advantages over people who are illiterate. Even after Eastern European languages became literate, it was a long time before they had such accumulations of valuable written knowledge as Western European languages had, due to Western European languages’ centuries earlier head start.

Even the educated elites of Eastern Europe were often educated in Western European languages. None of this was due to the faults of one or the merits of the other. It is just the way that history went down.

But such mundane explanations of gross disparities are seldom emotionally satisfying — least of all to those on the short end of these disparities. With the rise over time of an indigenous intelligentsia in Eastern Europe and the growing influence of mass politics, more emotionally satisfying explanations emerged, such as oppression, exploitation and the like.

But those shortcomings were not the fundamental reason for the economic disparities between Eastern Europeans and Western Europeans. More important, seeing those Western European elites in Eastern Europe as the cause of the economic disparities led many Eastern Europeans into the blind alley of ethnic identity politics, including hostility to Germans, Jews and others — and a romanticizing of their own cultural patterns that were holding them back…

Peter Robinson at Uncommon Knowledge interviews Andrew Roberts, author of a new WWII history. I listened to it in bits over two days and enjoyed every moment of it.

LA Times

Nicolas Steno, recipient of a Google Doodle on Wednesday, was a 17th century brainiac with the type of weird genius that led to his discovery of the human salivary duct and a made him a pioneer in geology. But in the end, he threw it all over for God.

It was Steno, born this day in 1638, who slapped his forehead and said: “Hey, you can see history in these layered rocks.” That simple yet profound observation was at the core of a 1669 treatise with a long and windy name: “The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno’s Dissertation Concerning a Solid Body Enclosed by Process of Nature Within a Solid.”

Because of “Prodromus,” many now see Steno as the “father of geology,” according to James Aber, geology professor at Kansas’ Emporia State University. But Steno’s geology career lasted all of three years. And at the time, his contemporaries pooh-poohed him.

No doubt because the science was settled.

Jennifer Howard in The Chronical of Higher Education

Generations of Protestant Christians have heard God speaking through the language of the King James Bible. Four hundred years after it was first published, in 1611, it still has an unrivalled reputation as a shaper of English prose, its phrases a lasting contribution to how we use the language. It’s given us such expressions as “out of the mouth of babes,” “suffer fools gladly,” “seek, and ye shall find,” and “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Yet the 50 or so learned men who labored in teams to create the King James Bible did not set out to create a literary masterpiece. They wanted to establish as direct a connection as they could to the original languages of the Old and New Testaments. And it’s not a miracle that this monumental exercise in translation-by-committee turned out as well as it did. By the time they set to work, in 1604, the King James translators had a hundred years of pioneering work on which to draw. They leaned heavily on texts and translations put together by theologians and linguists such as Erasmus and William Tyndale.

In recent decades, scholarship on the making of the King James Bible has made it plain just how much cumulative human labor and debate went into its creation. “The King James Bible didn’t drop from the sky in 1611,” says Helen Moore, a fellow and tutor in English at Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford. Moore led the curatorial committee that put together “Manifold Greatness,” an anniversary exhibit at Oxford’s Bodleian Library devoted to the making of the King James Bible. The most famous Bible in English, she says, was “made by many different people in many different places using many different people’s words and many reference texts.”

The King James Bible got its immediate start at a gathering called by Britain’s King James I in January 1604. The Hampton Court Conference brought together high-ranking clergymen and courtiers to discuss the calls for religious reform made in the Millenary Petition, which the Puritans had submitted to the new monarch the previous year…

And then there was Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, which he assembled from pieces of KJ.