“Our experience of the governments of the world, our knowledge of the weapons at their disposal, and our awareness of our own limitations justify pessimism. But some mysterious factor deep in the human psyche has produced a countervailing conviction that educating, organizing, uniting, and acting will make a difference.”
On April 9, 1969, the “Chicago Eight,” indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, pled not guilty. The eight antiwar activists were David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines. The defendants were ultimately found not guilty of conspiracy, but the jury convicted all but Froines and Weiner of intent to riot. Though the others were each sentenced to five years in prison and fined $5,000, none of the defendants served time because in 1972 a Court of Appeals overturned the criminal convictions.
Did you catch my column this weekend? It’s called “Nonsense, Precedented and Petrified,” and it takes on a common mistake, this time made by one of the better columnists out there.
Here are links in my column worth checking up on:
Have a Happy Easter!
“If Africans were left in peace on their own lands, Europeans would have to offer them the benefits of white civilization in real earnest before they could obtain the African labor which they want so much. They would have to offer the African a way of life which was really superior to the one his fathers lived before, and a share in the prosperity given them by their command of science. They would have to let the African choose what parts of European culture could be beneficially transplanted, and how they could be adapted …”
On April 8, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized almost $5 million to implement work-relief programs, hoping to lift the nation out of the Great Depression, after Congress allowed the president to use the funds at his discretion. FDR created the Works Progress Administration from the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, one of several New Deal programs he hoped would relieve massive unemployment. (Like recent efforts, it didn’t work.) After 1935, FDR lobbied Congress annually to continue funding the ERA Act. In total, the act allocated approximately $880 million in federal funds.
On April 8, 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt froze wages and prices, prohibited workers from changing jobs unless required by the war effort, and barred rate increases by common carriers and public utilities to check inflation.
On April 8, 1952, President Harry Truman called for the seizure of all domestic steel mills to prevent a nationwide strike.
On April 8, 1953, Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta was convicted by Kenya’s British rulers and sentenced to seven years imprisonment with hard labor and indefinite restriction thereafter.
J. Neil Schulman proudly notes his vindication. A CNN Audio Engineer confirms his analysis of the recorded conversations Mr. Zimmerman had with the police. It was widely ballyhooed that Zimmerman had used a racial epithet (starting with a “c”) to describe Trayvon Martin. Instead, he was complaining of the weather:
This case (though not this aspect of it) was most recently discussed here yesterday.
On April 7, 1931, Daniel Ellsberg, an American military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers and whose office was broken into by burglars hired by the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), was born in Chicago. The break-in would lead to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon
On April 7, 1969, the Internet was born with Steve Crocker’s invention of Request For Comments (RFC) documents to help record unofficial notes on the development of the ARPANET, the world’s first operational packet switching network and the core network that would become the global Internet. RFCs have since become the official record for Internet specifications, protocols, procedures, and events.
On April 7, 1994, civil war erupted in Rwanda with Hutu extremists attacking the minority Tutsis after President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down. It is not known whether the attack was carried out by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi military organization, or by Hutu extremists trying to instigate the mass killing. But in roughly three months, the Hutu Interahamwe brutally murdered as many as a million innocent civilian Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) in the worst ethnic genocide since World War II.
“Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie and nothing they say is to be believed. That’s a pretty good rule.”
The Trayvon Martin shooting has gripped the nation for weeks now. In my Townhall column on the subject, nearly two weeks ago when we didn’t know as much of what we think we know now, I withheld judgment on the actual responsibility for the shooting:
We know too little about Mr. Zimmerman’s state of mind before or during this tragic clash. But whether his shooting of Trayvon Martin was spurred by race or an itchy trigger finger or a hero complex or something we know absolutely nothing about, or was actually somehow in self defense, is beside the point.
The point is that our justice system ought to get to the bottom of it.
And I concluded that public reaction and a free press were doing what is required in such cases, spurring government action.
But I need to make an amendment: Not all media are equal; some have behaved in socially irresponsible ways. NBC especially. This major news source aired George Zimmerman’s call to the police, but with a drastic editorial cut — and this sound edit pre-disposed all listeners to think Mr. Zimmerman a racist. After an “investigation,” the network apologized.
But not on air. Those poor souls relying on NBC still may think that Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin, could think nothing but.
Shame on NBC for not apologizing on air, but in a press release. And for not apologizing to Mr. Zimmerman. And for offering no explanation of what happened. The news source’s sound edit was more than a distortion, says Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center, it advanced “a falsehood.”
Poor reporting is disappointing, but the press bearing false witness is something much worse.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”