The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.
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George Orwell
Author: Redactor
The high cost of our public servants can be shown beyond their mere inflated paychecks. Click on over to Townhall, then come back here.
- Washington Post: This suburb spends more than $110,000 a year on cars for its lawmakers
- Fox-5 (D.C.): Prince George’s County Council Member Mel Franklin charged with drunken driving
- Washington Post: Md. politician Mel Franklin has wrecked a government vehicle before
- Baltimore Sun: Four charged in alleged Prince George’s County liquor board conspiracy
- WTOP: Ex-Md. delegate admits to accepting bribes; more officials investigated in corruption probe
- NBC: Prince George’s County Delegate Resigns Before Session Start
- Washington Post: Johnson tells wife to put money in bra on FBI phone tap
- Townhall: Stupid . . . Or Worse?
- Wall Street Journal: The Risk of Giving Lawmakers a Raise
- Common Sense: Politicians Must Suffer
- Prince George’s County: Legislative Branch
- MdCounties.org (see page 5): REPORT OF COUNTY EMPLOYEE SALARIES, HEALTH BENEFITS & PENSIONS – FISCAL YEAR 2016
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Scharansky Freed
On Feb. 12, 1986, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was released after spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The amnesty deal was arranged at a summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Scharansky had been imprisoned for his campaign to win emigration rights for Russian Jews — who had been forbidden to practice Judaism in the USSR.
On Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.
On Feb. 12, 1593, approximately 3,000 Korean defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repelled more than 30,000 invading Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
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Auberon Herbert
Our belief in force, our readiness to use it, and our obedience yielded to it, are but forms of fetish worship still left amongst us. Written in almost every heart, though unknown to the owner of it, are the words ‘force makes right.’ Those who wish to escape from this baneful superstition, who wish to destroy its altar and cut down its groves, can only do so by taking their stand on plain, intelligible principle; can only do so by recognizing that there are moral laws standing above our human dealings with each other, laws which we cannot depart from, which we cannot recognize at one moment and ignore at the next to suit our party conveniences. No detached effort, no rising of a few people against some special wrong which personally affects them, will ever alter the world’s present way of thinking. It must be the battle of principles — the principle of liberty against the principle of force.
Auberon Herbert, The Choices Between Personal Freedom and State Protection (1880).
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Mandela Released
On Feb. 11, 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was released by South African authorities.
Mandela had joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944, becoming deputy national president of the group in 1952. Arrested for treason in 1961, he was acquitted — but then arrested again in 1962 for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1964 on charges of sabotage. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison along with several other ANC leaders.
In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and began dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and in February 1990 ordered the release of Nelson Mandela.
Mandela subsequently led the ANC in negotiating an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One year later, the ANC won the country’s first free elections, and Mandela was elected South Africa’s president.
Katie Couric asks E. Snowden a significant question:
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Arthur Twining Hadley
The true basis for an estimate of a nation’s wealth is to be found in the enjoyments of its members. The wealth of a community does not depend on the money value
its means for such enjoyment, nor even on their physical amount, but on their utilization.
Arthur Twining Hadley, Economics: An Account of the Relations Between Private Property and Public Welfare (1896), pp. 4-5.
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Yves Guyot
For all except the very few of extraordinary gifts, the spur of gain is not only powerful, it is indispensable.
Yves Guyot, stating what he called “the third incentive of human action,” in Where and why Public Ownership Has Failed (H. F. Baker, trans., 1914).
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The Twenty-Fifth
On Feb. 10, 1967, the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by Nevada, the necessary 38th state to do so. The amendment sets the process for presidential succession, and reads:
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
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The Age of Tom Paine Begins
On Feb. 9, 1737, Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England.
Paine would come to America in 1774 and by 1776 publish Common Sense, urging American independence. Later works included The Rights of Man (1792) and The Age of Reason (published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807).
Paine died in 1809.