Tag Archives: Thomas Jefferson

January 13, 2013 · 5:49 PM

White House responds to secessionists, impeachment advocates and beer aficionados

Thank you Wonk Blog!

The Washington Post – Wonk Blog

You may have heard how the White House has rejected a petition to build a Death Star (“The administration does not support blowing up planets”). But it’s not the only fringe idea that’s prompted an official response from the administration, which promised to reply to any “We the People” petition that gathered more than 25,000 signatures. Here are a couple of choice replies:

Secession? We’ve been through this already, folks.

As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaug(David James /Disney/Dreamworks)ural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.” In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States. (Response to ”Deport Everyone That Signed A Petition To Withdraw Their State From The United States Of America,” which the administration didn’t quite address in its response.)

Thanks for letting us know you want to impeach the president! No, really.

Believe it or not, petitions like the one you signed are one of the reasons we think We the People is such a valuable tool. There are few resources that do more to help us engage directly with people about the issues that matter to them — especially people who disagree with us. So let us use this opportunity to set the record straight…Here’s the important thing, though. Even though this request isn’t going to happen, we want you to walk away from this process with knowledge that we’re doing our best to listen — even to our harshest critics. (Response to “We request that Obama be impeached for the following reasons.)

Want the White House’s own beer recipe? Here you go!

To be honest, we were surprised that the beer turned out so well since none of us had brewed beer before. As far as we know the White House Honey Brown Ale is the first alcohol brewed or distilled on the White House grounds. George Washington brewed beer and distilled whiskey at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson made wine but there’s no evidence that any beer has been brewed in the White House…Like many home brewers who add secret ingredients to make their beer unique, all of our brews have honey that we tapped from the first ever bee-hive on the South Lawn. The honey gives the beer a rich aroma and a nice finish but it doesn’t sweeten it. (Response to “Release the recipe for the Honey Ale home brewed at the White House,” which includes the recipes at the bottom.)

You can read the rest of the White House’s responses to citizens petitions here.

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January 12, 2013 · 1:45 AM

2nd Amendment

I’m bookmarking the following site.  I really appreciate its historical facts…

Cognitive Dissidence

Thanks to the vast right wing echo chamber, it appears that we cannot have a real debate on guns until we first make clear what the Founders had in mind when they authored the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Unfortunately, the right wing echo chamber has been hard at work trying to convince people that the 2nd Amendment was written to protect people from their “tyrannical Government”!   Studying the Founders, we realize that is wrong and just plain silly!

We also know that Founders wanted every man to be part of a “well regulated militia” instead of have a standing army.  They wanted everyone to band together to protect out country when the time came, instead of having a standing army.  Standing armies scared them:  Thomas Jefferson himself called them “an engine of oppression.”

Later, in an 1814 letter to Thomas Cooper, Jefferson wrote of standing armies: “The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.”

Had the early framers of the Constitution embraced a standing army during times of peace, then there would be no need for a regulated militia, and thus no need for the 2nd Amendment.

 Need some more:

In fact, during that first gun debate, the state of New Hampshire introduced an amendment that gave the government permission to confiscate guns when citizens “are or have been in Actual Rebellion.” To those early legislators in New Hampshire, the right to bear arms stops as soon as those arms are taken up against our “we the people” government.

Just ask the ancestors of those who participated in the Whiskey Rebellion. In 1794, armed Americans took up guns against what they viewed as a tyrannical George Washington administration imposing taxes on whiskey. President Washington called up 13,000 militia men, and personally led the troops to squash the rebellion of armed citizens in Bedford, Pennsylvania. No Army. No right to have guns to overthrow the oppressive US government.

Need some more let’s look  at the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion:

On August 1, 1794, President George Washington was once again leading troops. Only this time Washington was not striking out against the British but rather against fellow Americans. The occasion for this was the Whiskey Rebellion. Various efforts had been made to diminish the heated opposition towards the tax on distilled liquors. However, there was only one man who has derived the best course of action. That man, President George Washington, deserves all the credit and recognition for his actions concerning the Whiskey Rebellion. In September 1791 the western counties of Pennsylvania broke out in rebellion against a federal “excise” tax on the distillation of liquor. After local and federal officials were attacked, President Washington and his advisors decided to send troops to assuage the region. On August 14, 1792, under the militia law, Henry Knox (secretary of war) had called for 12,950 troops.

The Founders who had just overcome the British to form our own country, had no interest in the people that they governed doing the same thing to them.  So when there was that possibility George Washington squashed it quickly!

http://youtu.be/dBtZ6go_R4g

So its time to listen to people like General McChrystal:

 “I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a .223 caliber round which is 5.56 mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that,” McChrystal explained. “That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America.”

By the way, Hitler encouraged the ownership of guns….he didn’t take your guns!  

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August 10, 2012 · 12:22 AM

GOP California Lawmaker Opposes Texting And Driving Fine Because It’s Not What ‘The Founders Intended’

 

George Washington, who probably didn’t have much of an opinion at all about cell phones

It’s past ‘silly season’ on the current political calendar but a lot of GOP politicians didn’t get the memo.  I’m now wondering if these people even know that what they’re saying is hilarious?

Think Progress

A California state legislator railed against a proposed $10 “texting and driving” fine increase in an appropriations committee hearing Wednesday, arguing that “policing ourselves” is “what the founders intended.” If passed, the bill wouldincrease the base fine for texting and driving from $20 to $30, with the $10 increase to be used for a public awareness program. Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-59), however, warned that such an increase would cause George Washington to roll over in his grave:

DONNELLY: And I think the fact that you might cause a death, someone else’s death or your own, is such a powerful prohibiter of that, that we really don’t need to be increasing the fine. And I don’t think we need to have the cops pulling people over and giving them texting tickets. I see the cops driving down the street texting. So when a cop is driving down the street texting, and then he’s going to give me a ticket for texting, I think it’s wrong. And I think ultimately, there’s a great consequence to that kind of behavior. And as intelligent, rational human beings who live in a free society, is it too much to ask that we just police ourselves? It just seems that’s what the founders intended. And I feel like this is just more of a nanny state government that costs us a lot of money, and ultimately abridges more and more liberties to the point that – is the government going to tell me where I can go next? Or how many miles I can drive?

Watch it:

For the record, drivers distracted by their cellphones killed an estimated 16,000 people from 2001 to 2007. So this law has nothing to do with some kind of “nanny state” effort to protect people from themselves, and everything to do with eliminating a dangerous activity that kills thousands of innocents every year.

Donnelly is right in one respect, however. There can be no doubt that the founders did not foresee liberty-squashing texting and driving laws, for the same reason their vision of American government says nothing about the Internet, space shuttles, automatic dishwashers, the Industrial Revolution, iPads or the short-lived professional baseball career of Michael Jordan.

Assemblyman Donnelly, for his part, has not yet explained how he thinks Thomas Jefferson would have regulated the nuclear power industry.

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September 15, 2011 · 7:44 AM

Barton Suggests Thomas Jefferson’s Affair With Sally Hemings Was A Liberal Conspiracy

Once again, I have to wonder what color is the sky on David Barton’s planet?   It appears once again, right-wing zealots are trying to distort and dispute facts to fit their own agenda.  Here’s another example…

Right Wing Watch

On September 9th David Barton addressed Liberty University where he delivered a speech on “deconstructionism.” Barton blames deconstructionism for most of the ills in society today, arguing that deconstructionism deliberately distorts history in order to promote a secular, left-wing agenda. Barton said that historians have smeared the Founding Fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson.

According to Barton, the claim that Jefferson had an affair with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered her children was part of a liberal conspiracy to protect then-President Bill Clinton during the impeachment process:

Despite Barton’s allegations, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation found that the “DNA study, combined with multiple strands of currently available documentary and statistical evidence, indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, and that he most likely was the father of all six of Sally Hemings’s children appearing in Jefferson’s records.”

Not so, says Barton, who argues that the DNA study was invented in order to protect Clinton. He specifically points to Joseph Ellis for distorting the record, but Ellis was originally a skeptic of the claim and did not write the study published in Nature. After the study was released, Ellis conceded it was “beyond any reasonable doubt that Jefferson had a longstanding sexual relationship with Sally Hemings,” but the study was conducted by Eugene Foster of the University of Virginia.

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September 20, 2010 · 8:46 AM

Glenn Beck Mocks Michelle Obama At Right Nation Event In Chicago Suburb

So much for keeping the families out of his diatribes against Obama…

Right Nation 2010 came to Hoffman Estates this weekend, bringing Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart and about 300 anti-Beck protesters to the Chicago suburb.

Speakers at the event, which was meant to unify Tea Partiers, Republicans, Independents and other conservatives in a “massive rally for victory in November,” also took the opportunity to rip Illinois and Chicago for its history of corruption.

“Will you raise your right hand and swear you will stop sending politicians to the rest of us, until you get it right?” Beck said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Beck received a standing ovation from the Sears Center crowd when he took the stage, the Chicago Tribune reports. With his chalkboard behind him, Beck discussed many of his usual topics–Thomas Jefferson, the Constitution and God, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He also made fun of First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-junk food campaign:

The Sun-Times reports:

… [Beck] ridiculed first lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to get people to eat healthier snacks like apples or carrots.

 ”Get away from my french fries, Mrs. Obama,” Beck warned. “First politician that comes up to me with a carrot stick, I’ve got a place for it.  And it’s not in my tummy.”

Continue reading…

 

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