We hold these truths …

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in May 1775, the revolution against Great Britain was well underway. The outbreak of the revolution occurred less than a month earlier with the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, followed by the Battle of Bunker Hill and the evacuation of the British army from Boston by sea. 

Although it had no authorization from the thirteen colonial governments to do so, the Second Congress began functioning as a national government – appointing generals, sending representatives to European governments, signing treaties, borrowing money, and issuing paper currency (called “Continentals”) – all with the primary focus of managing the war effort.

Initially, the war was not a war of independence; it was a rejection of the authority of Parliament to rule the Colonies without Colonial representation. But as the Second Congress labored on into 1776, it became apparent that the recalcitrance of the advisors to the Crown and Parliament itself made any reasonable accommodation impossible and made independence inevitable. A formal declaration of that independence would be necessary to declare to the world the right and the reasons for Colonial independence; otherwise no world nation would get involved in a family squabble between the Crown and a family member.

The Virginia delegation to the Second Congress included Peyton Randolph, the cousin of Thomas Jefferson. When Randolph was called home to become the President of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Virginia’s government, much to the chagrin of Jefferson, sent him to replace his cousin. Compared to other delegates, Jefferson was relatively young at 33 years, hated cities and public speaking, missed his wife and plantation, and almost from the day he arrived in Philadelphia, began writing the Virginia officials asking to be recalled.

But his reputation for science, reading, and literary composition had preceded him. When the Second Congress decided on June 11 that a formal declaration was needed to proclaim Colonial independence, it delegated the task to a “Committee of Five” consisting of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, the delegate from New York, and Roger Sherman, the delegate from Connecticut. There are no minutes from this committee, but it is puzzling how its youngest member was chosen to write the draft of the declaration. Franklin was not chosen because he had gone home to deal with a severe attack of gout that caused his absence at most of the Committee’s meetings. In letters written decades later, Adams explained that he and Jefferson were therefore assigned the task of writing a draft and Adams, aged 41, deferred to his younger partner after refusing Jefferson’s deference to him. Adams’ letter says he gave Jefferson three reasons: “'Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.”

For the next seventeen days, Jefferson toiled over the document which was written on a mahogany traveling desk that he had commissioned Benjamin Randolph, a noted Philadelphian cabinet maker, to make for him a year earlier. After his presidency ended, the desk was lost when a wagon carrying the Jefferson personal effects overturned crossing a river en route to Monticello.

When Jefferson had his draft, he showed it to Franklin and Adams who made revisions (which can be seen today in their handwriting) along with revisions in Jefferson’s handwriting which may have come from conversations with Franklin, Adams, or the other committee members. From these revisions, Jefferson wrote a “fair copy” which was titled "A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled.” This was presented to the 56 delegates of the Second Congress on June 28.

While Jefferson’s document would become one of the two most important documents of colonial times – the other being the Constitution – it was not so at the time it was written. To Jefferson and the other delegates it was simply one of the many bureaucratic papers that were written during those early days when the delegates were making things up as they went along in their process of becoming a republic. Ignominiously, the document was tabled (literally as can be seen in John Trumbull’s famous painting) while the Congress took up more pressing matters.

One of those matters was a Resolution of Independence that the Virginia Convention had instructed its delegate, Richard Henry Lee, to put before the Philadelphia Congress back in May:

Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Some delegates had not been authorized by their state conventions to vote for independence and thought it was premature to act on Lee’s resolution. Now, on July 1, the delegates were prepared to debate and vote. However, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, the youngest delegate at age 26, asked that the vote be delayed a day so that unanimity might be sought. On July 2 the vote was taken and the resolution passed with twelve affirmations and one abstention, that of New York, whose delegation had not yet received permission to vote for the resolution.

John Adams, writing to his wife on July 3, predicted that the date of July 2 would become an American holiday because of the passage of Lee’s resolution, thinking that the date of the vote on the resolution, not the vote on the declaration and announcement, would become “Independence Day.”

For the next two days, the delegates reworded Jefferson’s text and deleted nearly one-fourth of it, which Jefferson absorbed in silent agony. As Pauline Maier writes in her excellent book, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, “[Jefferson] had forgotten, as has posterity that a draftsman is not an author …” Nevertheless, Jefferson had produced a masterpiece, without benefit of books, and strictly from the recollection of his well-read mind. His ideas as expressed in the Declaration have been the subject of much scholarship and books. My personal favorite is Garry Wills’ Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.

Franklin had rejoined the delegates after his attack of gout, and was sitting near Jefferson during this painful process. “[Franklin] perceived that I was not insensible to these mutilations,” Jefferson recalled years later, and in an effort to give Jefferson comfort while the editing and amputations were going on, Franklin told him a story of a hatter who was about to open a shop. The hatter had a sign made to advertise his business which said, “John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money” followed by an image of a hat. Before hanging his sign, Franklin continued, he asked the opinion of several friends. One recommended that the word “hatter” be removed since it was redundant with “makes hats.” Another said the word “makes” should be excised because customers wouldn’t care that it was Thompson who made the hats. A third friend noted that the term “for ready money” wasn’t necessary since merchandise wasn’t sold on credit. Finally, a fourth opined that “sells hats,” could be stricken because Thompson could surely assume no one expected him to give them away. In the end, Franklin sighed, the sign simply said, “John Thompson,” with a picture of a hat, which said what was needed quite well. It seemed Jefferson’s declaration was headed to the same fate.

On July 4, the Declaration of Independence, as it is called today, was approved and sent to the print shop of John Dunlap a few blocks away where about 200 “broadside” (typeset) copies were printed during the night from the engrossed copy and distributed for public readings. The first public reading occurred in the yard of Independence Hall and readings continued throughout the thirteen colonies. A copy was sent to General Washington, who was in nearby Trenton and who had it read to his troops. After the reading concluded, a long period of silence followed, which gave the General concern. But after contemplating what they had heard, the troops broke out with loud “huzzahs.”

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson became fast friends as a result of their service in the Second Continental Congress, no doubt helped by an eight-year difference in their ages. Both held positions as ministers abroad and were out of the country when the Constitutional Convention was held. The first presidential election unanimously elected George Washington. Adams became Vice President and Jefferson became Secretary of State. However, Jefferson left the Washington administration during its second term and returned to Monticello due to his ongoing disagreements with Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton over the fiscal management of the new nation.

When Washington refused to run for a third term, the election of the second president set friend against friend because both Adams and Jefferson wanted to be the second president. Adams won, and because he received the next highest total of electoral votes, Jefferson became Vice President by default.

The tumultuous election of 1800 tore their relationship asunder when Jefferson’s election as the third president denied Adams a second term. They did not speak to each other again until both reached old age and their mutual friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a noted Philadelphia physician in colonial times, arranged a reconciliation that got them started on a most remarkable letter-writing exchange beginning in 1812. 

In an historical irony, Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 – the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams died a few hours later on the same day.

Jefferson never made pretensions about being president. After his first inaugural, he stood in line at his boarding house waiting his turn to eat. After his second inaugural, he ceased delivering the State of the Union message in person. On one occasion, a visitor to the White House knocked on the front door, which Jefferson himself answered in a tattered house robe and slippers. Not surprisingly, his tombstone mentions his three proudest accomplishments, making no mention of his presidency:

Here was buried

Thomas Jefferson

Author of the

Declaration

of

American Independence

of the

Statute of Virginia

for

Religious Freedom

and Father of the

University of Virginia

Sauce for the Gander

Assume you are a small business owner – say a dozen or so employees.

The IRS audits your business tax return and says you’re underreporting your income. There’s no evidence for this, of course, but the IRS doesn’t need evidence. You’re guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. (Hey, what happened to due process? Oh, didn’t you hear? That doesn’t apply to the IRS gestapo.)

The IRS launches a massive invasion of privacy against you, telling you all the records you’re required to produce going back seven years, among them emails. In other words, you’ll be investigated not only for their specific allegation, but also, while the IRS is at it, they will go on a fishing expedition to see if they catch any other misdeeds. You are, after all, presumed to be in a perpetual state of IRS guilt.

Notwithstanding what records you produce, it isn’t good enough. IRS gun-toting goons show up at your place of work and confiscate your computers, servers, and paper files. The fact that this effectively puts you out of business is of no concern to them. (I personally observed them padlock a friend’s retail store during shopping hours for suspected underpayment of payroll tax.)

An investigation of your computers reveals no digital trail past the time that the IRS investigation of your firm began. An explanation is demanded.

“Well, uh, you see sir, the computer system crashed,” you say.

“All twelve of them?” the lead inquisitor asks incredulously.

“Unfortunately so,” you say. “Darndest thing I ever saw. Came in one morning and they were toast – dead as doornails.”

“And the servers?” asks the inquisitor.

“Them too,” says you.

Inquisitor: “Where are they? Where’re the drives?”

You: “Shredded I reckon. No good, you know.”

Multiple choice pop quiz: “At this point, the IRS is likely to (a) curse and terminate the investigation for lack of evidence, (b) charge you with a crime, (c) believe you’re telling the truth and invite you to lunch – at his expense.”

Those of us who have been audited know that this story is pretty much factual down to the start of the dialog. No doubt your sympathies were on the side of the guy being hounded by the IRS.

Reading the dialog, however, I’ll bet you thought, “Oops, this dog won’t hunt.” Okay, maybe you didn’t think exactly in those terms. But I’ll bet you were thinking something equivalent to, “Anyone who would believe the story of crashed drives would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Well that’s what the folks at the IRS (aka Comedy Central’s joke-writing affiliate) would have us believe – “us” being you and me and members of Congress investigating the allegation that the civil rights of targeted groups were suppressed by those wonderful folks who ruin every April 15. The President breaks the law with impunity, after all. Why shouldn’t the IRS?

We know for a fact that Obama and the Senate and House ranking Democrats ran a smear campaign against conservative organizations in the run-up to the 2010 election. That’s a matter of public record, spoken publicly and reported by the complicit mainstream media. We know that Obama and his congressional Myrmidons publicly urged the IRS to investigate these organizations and revoke or refuse their tax exemptions on donations – that’s also public knowledge. All the usual suspects – Chucky Schumer, Carl Levin, Dickey Durbin, and Elijah Cummings (the minority party Co-Chair of the House committee which is investigating the IRS, chaired by Representative Darrell Issa, R-CA) – were up to their armpits in conspiracy complaints they’d written to the IRS about conservative groups.

We also know that Lois Lerner ran a political hit campaign inside of the IRS. We know she took the Fifth after blaming every targeting action, memo, meeting, telephone call, decision, and lunar eclipse on “that office of rogues over in Cincinnati.” Anyone who believes that, line up for the weekly sale of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Additionally we know that Lerner shipped a database of 12,000 non-profit tax returns to the Criminal Division of the FBI, which has no jurisdiction over taxpayers, inviting them to go on a fishing expedition. “Look around, boys. Nobody’s perfect. Surely you’ll find something.” Unauthorized disclosure of confidential taxpayer information is a crime – even among government agencies.

What we don’t know is whether the IRS and elected officials – Obama and the congressional Democrats – collaborated to use the power of government in suppressing the political rights of a group. If that could be shown, it would be a crime. Some folks might go to Big Boy prison.

So, last week as the noose tightened around the neck of a government official who had pled her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid self-incrimination, we learn (a) her computer hard drive crashed in 2011 when the investigation following the 2010 election began, (b) the hard drives of six other IRS employees implicated in this developing scandal also crashed – darndest coincidence, (c) that rather than recover the data on the hard drives – standard practice where I work – they were shredded, quite likely in violation of the Federal Records Act,  (d) the hard drives on the mail servers also crashed and were shredded – wow! must have been an outbreak of something, (e) that there has been no back up of the mail system or network hard drives in two years! – now, where’d ya’ say that Bridge is? (f) that there was no fail-over system in case hard drives start crashing – also standard practice in my office – which would make possible the restoration of lost data, (g) that there were no offsite mirror servers to run in tandem in case of a catastrophic failure – like the place burns down – and prevent the loss of billions and billions of irreplaceable taxpayer records, also SOP – can you believe it? – and saving the best for last, (h) when the new guy, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, took over this Singapore cesspool around the first of the year, he learned in February that “computer problems” had happened, yet he promised Issa’s committee later that spring that Lerner’s emails would be delivered forthwith. That’s called lying under oath in my family – a definite no-no.

Lots and lots of coincidences here – long strings of coincidences, in fact – are making cooperation with Darrel Issa’s committee investigation of IRS wrong-doing dang nigh impossible. Of course, I don’t believe for a heartbeat that most are true, but it’s going to take a Special Prosecutor to get the information and charge someone with a crime. Maybe someone in the IRS will get nervous and ‘fess up or rat out the bad guys and gals.

Memo to John Koskinen: Hey, Kosk; since you guys stopped using the IRS abacus network a while back and switched to the modern invention we call computer networks, well you may not know this, Kosk, but you see, when ol’ Lois there and her fellow conspirators were connected to the network, their keystrokes weren’t writing on the hard drive under their desks; they were writing out on the network drives, so the only thing their drive crashes did was create a bad smell. Might want to tidy up your story before your next congressional appearance. I think Issa is getting royally torqued over all these unbelievables happening in the middle of his investigation.

“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” my Granny used to say. But there’s no gander sauce when it comes to government. It cheats.

You and I are expected to retain seven years’ of taxpayer information available on demand, abide by laws requiring the payment of confiscatory taxes by a minority of income earners while a majority pay little or none, cooperate fully in any investigatory audit that seeks to indict us for not paying Caesar his full pound of flesh including interest and penalties, suffer the presumption of guilt and the adverse consequences of incomplete or lost records, and annually engage experts to complete tax returns for an arcane revenue code that makes the Minoan maze of the Minotaur look like a nine letter crossword puzzle.

Here we have an unimpeachable example of open air law-breaking that is being defended by political interests in the Democrat party who believe obeying the law is just a quaint practice. Where is the public outrage? Why isn’t the Obama approval rating below the 13% Congress is getting?

What the IRS apologists would have us believe that we have here is a government department with the undisputed power of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, charged with the administration of taking in trillions of dollars every year, year after year, with all the record-keeping attendant thereto, yet doing so with Stone Age era technology, we’re told, upon which all the plagues that Moses and God could release 3,500 years ago seem to have been revisited recently, all the while laboring to discharge its duties loyally like good little civil “servants” while right-wing congressional zealots attack them with stupid questions and subpoenas. 

Anyone who believes that, line up over here on the Left.

Brooklyn Bridge, straight ahead.

Bergdahl’s Betrayal

Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice is the statutory military regulation which addresses desertion:

    (c) Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.

It’s estimated that about 50,000 American soldiers deserted in the European theater of operations during World War II. Over 21,000 were sentenced to various punishments, 49 of which were death sentences. Only one, Private Eddie Slovik, was actually executed.

Walking away from a military post in a war zone will almost always assure that either a charge of AWOL or desertion will be filed against the missing soldier. The difference is not trivial. Using a bit of syllogistic logic, all desertions involve being AWOL, but all cases of AWOL are not desertions. AWOL is somewhat like playing hooky – absence without official or approved leave-taking. In cases of AWOL, the intention is to return to service. In cases of desertion there is no intention to return.

Notwithstanding the ominous sounding Article 85, its wartime application has been lenient. While 50,000 desertions is a small percentage of the total number of men under arms in the fight against Germany, less than half of the desertion charges led to punishment convictions. And only one of 49 death sentences was carried out. Ironically, Slovik did not desert a combat post; he never saw combat. He deserted before getting to the front lines by refusing to go there.

Now comes the case of Bowe Bergdahl. Nine fellow soldiers in his squad accuse him of deserting Afghan outpost duty in 2009. An Army investigation of his disappearance led to a conclusion similar to Bergdahl’s accusers albeit stopping short of calling him a deserter since that would require knowledge of his intent which exists only circumstantially at this point.

Nevertheless it’s surprising that the smartest man ever to be President would risk making a Rose Garden announcement that he had gotten a suspected deserter released from Taliban captivity. Flanked by Bergdahl’s parents, Obama apparently expected that he would be hailed for pulling off another gambit, second only to the killing of Osama bin Laden. What conceit to believe the American public would consider the ransom of a suspected deserter for five known killers a fair trade! As the details have leaked out, polls have shown 55% disapprove of the price paid for Bergdahl’s ransom (i.e. five top Taliban commanders) and close to three out of four want Bergdahl charged with a military crime if he is found guilty of desertion.

An official investigation of the Bergdahl betrayal has now been launched. Allegedly, it will collect facts and evidence to determine if a court martial trial on the merits is warranted, and if so, the charges and punishments that the prosecution will ask the court to consider – if it gets that far. I doubt that it will. Pardon my cynicism about anything this government does while Obama is President, but Bergdahl’s trade is a sideshow for political decision to release Gitmo prisoners. Nothing will come of the military’s Kabuki impersonation of a real investigation except to obfuscate the issues. Remember Benghazi? Obama jailed a guy on a trumped-up accusation that his video caused the Benghazi tragedy. Ever hear how his sideshow turned out? 

There can be little doubt that Bergdahl deserted his post in wartime given the testimony of his fellow soldiers, Bergdahl’s own letters and emails, and information learned in searching for him. Bergdahl is not likely to be as accommodating as Eddie Slovik in admitting his desertion. In those pre-Miranda days, Slovik not only admitted in writing that he would desert, but he also complied with an order from a superior officer to write on the reverse side of his “confession” that he fully understood the gravity of his admission. He expected to go to prison, where he’d spent several stints as a civilian before being drafted into the Army. Three squares a day and a clean bed sure beat living – and quite possibly dying – at the front during the Battle of the Bulge in the worst winter Europe had seen in living memory. The last thing Slovik expected was a firing squad.

In today’s PC world even bad soldiers are treated well. Bergdahl will be treated with respect and deference as he “reintegrates” – whatever that means – after five years in captivity. He has been returned from an Army medical facility in Germany to one in San Antonio where his “reintegration” may take months of medical and psychological care. During that time he will be “off limits” for questioning by investigators who will be his legal adversaries should his case go forward.  

Taxpayers will provide him the best legal defense money can buy and those lawyers will never allow him to testify as a witness if he comes to trial. It’s unlikely that he will even answer questions on the record for investigators. Lois Lerner, move over. 

So circumstantial evidence is all that the military investigation can hope to get in explaining Bergdahl’s disappearance. If that wasn’t good enough to accuse him of desertion in 2009 it won’t be any better in 2014.

Here’s what the circumstantial evidence looks like.

In the last email sent in late June 2009 to his parents before deserting his post, Bergdahl wrote, 

The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be american [sic]. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting. … I am ashamed to be an american [sic]. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools… I am sorry for everything here. The horror that is america [sic] is disgusting…

Okay. Hardly the words of a patriot. Then he concluded his email with the following reference to his uniform, computer, books, and journals, which he was sending back home.

There are a few more boxes coming to you guys. Feel free to open them, and use them.

Why would he send his personal effects home unless he knew he wouldn’t need them anymore? Particularly when he had told a fellow trooper, "If this deployment is lame, I'm just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan."

The evidence speaks to having planned to desert for some time. Bergdahl left at a pre-dawn hour when there was the least light. When he failed to muster for roll call the next morning, his gear was found in his tent neatly arranged – body armor, helmet, rifle, and web gear. He had taken with him his compass, diary, knife, water bottles, and digital camera.

The call for all hands on deck was sounded and Bergdahl was classified DUSTWUN (Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown.) For the next 30 to 35 days the mission of his and other units focused on finding him, knowing that an American wandering around unarmed would fall into the hands of the Taliban – which indeed happened.

The search parties had serious misgivings about putting their lives at risk for a soldier who deserted his post. “The enemy knew we would be coming. While searching for him, ambushes and IEDs picked up tremendously,” one of Bergdahl’s squad members said. Within the first week of searching the Taliban set up ambushes by leaking false intelligence sightings to lure search parties. Teams rushed into a house that was rigged with explosives. A car was wired with a bomb. A suicide vest was set to explode in another area. 

"We went to a school across a field,” Bergdahl’s squad leader said, “and a child told us that he saw him around 6 a.m. low-crawling toward the town, trying to find someone who could speak English.”

Traveling in an armored vehicle, a team entered a town. One of the troopers waved at the local onlookers and noticed that a child who waved back was promptly back-handed by his father. Taking that as a sign that Taliban were watching, the trooper screamed a warning just as an IED blew up under the vehicle breaking it apart. A fire fight followed.

The search for Bergdahl, who was quickly captured by the Taliban, would claim six American lives. As the Army’s intelligence developed in the search, his whereabouts became known on several occasions, even knowing how many Taliban were guarding him. But rescue missions were repeatedly scrubbed because commanders didn’t want to lose more men. Rescuing a soldier who walked away from his post before being captured would risk lives – too high a price to pay for a deserter.

While he was a prisoner, Bergdahl attempted to explain the rationale for his desertion in two letters made public last week in The Daily Beast. One letter is dated 2012 and the other was written in 2013. Here are the unedited excerpts.

Leadership was lacking, if not non-existent. The conditions were bad and looked to be getting worse for the men that where actuly  the ones risking thier lives from attack.

If this letter makes it to the U.S.A., tell those involved in the investigation that there are more sides to the cittuwation. Please tell D.C. to wait for all evadince  to come in.

The cercomstance from the begaining of my time in Afghanistan from immedet top to bottom, where bad for troopers espeshly in my PLT. (Platoon.) Orders showed a high disconcer for safty of troopers in the field, and lacking clear minded, logical and commonsense thinking and understanding from the topsides. The cercomstance showed signs of going from bad into a nightmare for the men in the field. Unexeptable conditions for the men working and risking life every moment outside the wire …

Bergdahl was home-schooled by his parents. Apparently not very well.

Prior to his desertion, one of Bergdahl’s whiney emails to his parents evoked this response from his aging hippy father in an email subject line: “FOLLOW YOUR CONSCIENCE.”

That’s what Bergdahl did. He walked out on his fellow soldiers and got six of them killed. At least Private Eddie Slovik presented himself for arrest.

Bergdahl could have done the same.

Lawless

After a constant stream of news following Obama’s “trade for terrorists” scheme made public May 31, we continue to see the most lawless President in the history of the Republic do what he said he would do before he was elected – transform America. We didn’t know trashing the Constitution was the transformation he had in mind.

George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, a self-acknowledged liberal and faithful supporter of Obama, was to the point in his criticism:

Barack Obama is really the president Richard Nixon always wanted to be. He’s been allowed to act unilaterally in a way that we fought [against] so many decades.

Unilateral indeed. Obama intentionally chose not to notify members of Congress of the “Bergdahl for Bad Guys” prisoner swap as required by the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act. Both Republicans and Democrats are rightly torqued with yet another contemptuous demonstration that Obama believes Congress is irrelevant in the governing process. 

Again, Jonathan Turley:

What’s emerging is an imperial presidency, an über presidency, as I’ve called it, where the president can act unilaterally. He [Obama] told Congress he would go it alone. In our system, you’re not allowed to go it alone.

But Obama has gone it alone anyway. And not for the first time. In this case, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has accused the administration of breaking the law by failing to provide lawmakers with advance notice. Former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) was also less than thrilled with how the White House has handled the situation: “I don’t like it when the White House says the Intelligence Committees were briefed. Because we weren’t.”

When Richard Nixon went rogue 40 years ago, there were placard-carrying demonstrations in the streets and the leading members of his own party in Congress told the Prince of Darkness that he had to go. So, where’s the public outrage now? Why aren’t Democrat congressional leaders banging on the White House front door to tell the Maximum Leader that, like it or not, they aren’t hood ornaments?

We are beginning to learn that between 80 and 90 people in the Obama administration knew that the Bergdahl “trade for terrorists” was going down before it was made public on May 31. Furthermore, for three days prior to May 31 the Gulf Times newspaper published in Doha, Qatar was reporting it. Even the inmates in Gitmo knew it. They had figured it out from the extraordinary activities going on in the prison with the “Five Awfuls.” Yet Congress was out of the loop. It wasn’t briefed – as required by law – because Obama was “concerned” a congressional leak might have gotten Bergdahl killed – or so his talking heads later said.

Mike Pompeo (R-KS) said, “It’s phenomenal. They couldn't brief a single member of Congress because they didn't trust us, yet the Qataris knew about it." And a lot of other folks too, Mike.

The law requires the President or his representative to “notify the appropriate committees of Congress … not later than 30 days before the transfer or release” of detainees from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. This wasn’t done because Obama knew the answer would be “no!” as it was every other time he has tried to engineer a release of Gitmo prisoners since 2010. The solution? Act unilaterally and hope that forgiveness will be easier to get than permission.

Of course, in the aftermath the Obots have given reasons for ignoring the law. There are always reasons why Obama does what he wants to do. Reasons for the unauthorized Libyan attack, reasons for the Benghazi slow-walk, reasons for the “Fast and Furious” illegal gun-running, reasons for IRS targeting, reasons for spying on citizens and reporters, reasons, reasons, and more reasons. And as critics exorcize the devils from the details of the reasons, the reasons change more often than Michael Jackson’s face.

Initially, Obama and his Obots said the health of Berghahl was failing so fast that they had to act without authorization. There wasn’t time to deal with Congress. Yet in testimony last week, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was asked whether Bergdahl's rapidly failing health meant that the exchange had to be expedited. "The intel wouldn't support that," he replied. Moreover, videos of the release showed an undernourished Bergdahl, but otherwise able to walk on his own to the helicopter that came for him. Oops.

Next lie, please. The situation negotiated with the Qataris was developing so fast that Obama didn’t have time to inform Congress. The Obot who tried to pawn that cheap Persian rug on the Sunday shows was told by the show host that we’d been in negotiations with the Taliban and Qataris since 2010. Oops again.

Then came the “We were afraid of leaks” lie which lasted until a delayed briefing of leaders in Congress revealed they were the only people in the universe who didn’t know that the “Taliban Dream Team” had been unilaterally released – er, uh – traded for a traitor. Hmm. Oops again.

Eventually Obama and his Obot team gave up on the lies and simply admitted that releasing the Gitmo prisoners and closing the prison was an Obama priority regardless of what Congress thought of the idea. He said as much in his 2014 State of the Union speech:

… this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay because we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military action but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals and setting an example for the rest of the world.

True to our “constitutional ideals” and “setting an example for the rest of the world,” Obama released five of the meanest human beings (if you can call them human) alive to wreak murder and mayhem on the western world. Two of them are wanted by the UN for killing thousands of Shite Muslims and one is a drug lord that the Mexican and Colombian narcos aspire to be when they grow up.

Paul Rester, the former lead interrogator at Joint Task Force Guantánamo, said, “These are men who ran entire regions for the Taliban, they had thousands of fighters under their command. They survived the Soviets, they survived the civil war, they survived us, they survived Sam Scott’s Gitmo chicken.” Now they have survived America’s commitment to fight them on their turf instead of ours.

Even loyal Obots had recommended that out of the 149 current Gitmo prisoners, 48 should be held indefinitely. “The best military analysts on the planet looked at these [48] guys and they recommended against transfer,” one of them admitted. The 48 include the five Obama released.

Obama likes to beat his breast and boast that he – the warrior president – has broken the back of al Qaeda. Well, he’s hardly done that as the Benghazi raid demonstrated, but he did have five members of the al Qaeda Board of Directors locked up in Cuba (thanks to George Bush.) The reason the rules of war lock up enemy prisoners is twofold: (i) there is no practical way to prevent them otherwise from returning to fight again and (ii) if prisoners are high value types, as these five were, the enemy is less capable to continue the fight and thus has an incentive to end the bloodshed and bring the hostilities to a halt. The Taliban leaders knew this and that is why they negotiated so hard to get these five back. Now Obama has returned the five best commanders in the terrorists war against the west.

Our intelligence experts tell us that at least a third of the bad guys we’ve released so far have returned to fight us again. A classified assessment of the likelihood these guys would fight again has become public. The consensus of our spy spooks during the prisoner-swap negotiation concluded that two of the five would return to active leadership roles in the Taliban, while only one of the five was likely to retire from fighting to reestablish the Taliban and Sharia rule in Afghanistan. In a hearing on June 4, our chief spook, James Clapper, was asked what’s the chance these Nasty Boys will return to the fighting? On a scale of 1 to 10 Clapper gave one an 8 and the other four a 9.

Obama was quick to point out that we can monitor them. With what? Ankle bracelets? Moreover, the Naïve One assures us that they were released to the control of the Qataris. Wow! I feel better already. The Qataris are about as close an ally of the US as Vladimir Putin.

What should amaze any thoughtful person is Obama’s utter cluelessness in this entire affair. He justified the release by saying it is customary to return prisoners at the conclusion of hostilities. What? Is the war against terror over? Why wasn’t I told? 

The war against terror isn’t over. Obama decided that America should stop fighting it. He announced that fact last week in the West Point speech he gave to our future military leaders. However, the Taliban and al Qaeda have not surrendered, settled, or signed a peace treaty. They will go on killing our troops. And given their hatred for the west, they will kill civilians – as they did on 9/11 – in the US.

In the meantime, Obama held a Rose Garden photo op to announce that he had just released hell on the western world. He considered it an achievement worth taking credit for.

The 70th Anniversary of the Longest Day

This past Friday, June 6, was possibly just another day for most Americans. But it was not “just another day” 70 years ago for the allied troops who stormed the 50-mile wide Normandy beaches on the morning of June 6, 1944 in the largest amphibious assault in history. It was D-Day. For most, it was their longest day; for some their last day.

The purpose of the invasion of Western Europe – code-named Operation Overlord – was to open a second front against Germany. The Italian campaign had begun in the fall of 1943 and lasted until the end of WW II in Europe. Plans for Overlord had been underway for more than two years and took their final shape in the spring of 1944. US General Dwight Eisenhower was chosen to be commander of Allied forces in Europe. Even though he had never been in combat and never commanded a combat troop unit, Eisenhower possessed uncanny political skills to deal with the complex egos of the allied commanders.

The time and place of the invasion of Western Europe was one of the best kept secrets of WW II. It was helped by the many deceptions the allies perpetrated to fool the German high command and German spies in England, which are chronicled in the book Bodyguard of Lies, whose title comes from an observation of Winston Churchill: "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

The allies used double agents and created a fake army with inflatable decoys that at a distance of 100 yards, looked like real landing craft, tanks, and planes. They were stationed at phony bases around the Dover area of England so as to be surely seen by German reconnaissance fly-overs. Bogus radio traffic transmitted thinly disguised messages so any German intelligence unit with reasonable experience would deduce that the invasion point would be the Pas de Calais – the shortest transit of the English Channel – and that it would be “big and bad.” To complete the deception, the military unit to which these fake assets belonged was itself phony – the First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG) – commanded by Gen. George Patton, the allied field commander most respected (and feared) by the German high command. They were convinced that Patton would lead the invasion of Europe.

Both a full moon and the highest tide were needed to cross the Channel and land the invasion force – the former to provide the light for aircraft and landing craft; the latter to provide the tide depth needed to get over the beach obstacles placed by the Germans far out in the beach surf. This narrowed the choice to only a few days each month. June 5 was ideal but the weather in the Channel was terrible. With the assault troops already aboard the transport ships getting seasick in 5-foot swells, the invasion was delayed. If it couldn’t be made the following day, the invasion would have to wait another month. The weather forecast was good enough for June 6 to allow the invasion to begin. Ike said, “OK, let’s go.”

Overlord planning included sabotage by the French resistance, whose leaders were to be alerted by code words broadcasted in nonsense sentences. These would mean that invasion was imminent. The BBC periodically broadcasted meaningless sentences to confuse German intelligence. But a few days before D-Day, the resistance leaders heard the first line of Paul Verlaine's poem, "Chanson d'automne,” which says "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne" (Long sobs of autumn violins) meaning D-day would be soon.  When the second line was broadcast, "Blessent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone" (wound my heart with a monotonous languor) the resistance knew the invasion would happen within the 48 hours. This was their signal to begin cutting communication lines, blowing up rail lines, bridges and key roads, and sending clandestine messages to England giving the latest German troop emplacements. 

The June 5 weather actually gave the allies an unexpected advantage. When the BBC broadcasted the message to the resistance that evening, the German 15th Army in the Pas de Calais area decided that they were code words and went on full alert, but Rommel’s Army Group B guarding the Normandy beaches stood down, believing no one would attack in such turbulent weather. Some German commanders had even left their Normandy units to participate, ironically, in exercises to simulate an allied landing at Normandy. Rommel had gone home to celebrate his wife’s birthday.

The start of Operation Overlord was launched in a two-pronged attack – an airborne drop of 24,000 American, British, Canadian and Free French behind German lines shortly after midnight, followed by a massive amphibious landing of over 160,000 allied infantry and armored divisions at 0630 hours on five French beach segments called Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword from right to left as the beaches were approached. When the troop transports were spotted off Normandy and the war ships began shelling beach fortifications, none of the German high command would awaken Hitler, who was asleep. This froze all German reserves in place, keeping them from reinforcing the beach defenses. 

The Americans would attack at Utah and Omaha, the latter of which was shown in the opening sequences of Saving Private Ryan and was the beach at which the most savage fighting occurred. One 197-man company was killed or wounded within ten minutes of landing on the beach. Germans rained down mortars and artillery, killing many before they could even get out of their boats and nearly wiping out the first wave of invading forces while the survivors struggled for cover. Subsequent waves of assault LCAs had trouble landing because of all of the bodies churning in the surf.

"Every man who set foot on Omaha Beach that day was a hero," Gen. Omar Bradley, D-Day commander of U.S. ground forces, would later write.

The Canadians would land at Juno beach and would have to wade ashore through an enfilade fire screen that was sighted on the high tide mark, giving them a 50% chance of making it to the upper beach alive. As it turned out, one in 18 Canadians was killed, wounded, or missing. Defending the Juno area was the 12th SS Panzer Division, Hitlerjugend, a unit of mostly 18-year old fanatics who executed 12 captured Canadians. The savagery of fighting at Juno was second only to Omaha. The 12th SS Panzer Division would lose almost half of its troop strength before the Normandy campaign ended, after which it was withdrawn to Germany to be refitted and fight again in the Battle of the Bulge

The British would attack Gold beach, where losses would be light, and the British and Free French would land at Sword beach. The battle for Sword beach lasted less than an hour with light casualties, but the fighting inland would be fierce, so fierce that the objective of the Sword beach landing – the road network at Caen – wouldn’t be taken until July 9.

The invasion fleet, under the command of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, had been pulled together from eight navies and consisted of 6,900 vessels manned by 200,000 allied naval and merchant marine personnel – 1,200 warships, 4,100 transport ships and landing craft, 700 ancillary vessels, and almost 900 merchant vessels.

The Normandy beaches face north over the sea. To assure that a beachhead could be established and built up in successive waves of men and materiel, it was essential to prevent German counter-attacks that would need the road and bridge infrastructure behind the beaches – particularly the eastern and western flanks where Sword and Utah beaches were located. Therefore 13,000 men comprising the American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions parachuted into the western flank of the Normandy beaches and 11,000 men comprising the British 6th airborne division including 530 Free French troops dropped into the eastern flank. These troops and their vehicles and light artillery were airlifted from England in about 2,400 aircraft and almost 900 gliders carrying troops and equipment.

Airborne landing zones had been identified by pathfinders – small units that parachute 30 minutes ahead of the main force to set up a transponder beacons to guide the following planes to their assigned areas. The American drop, in particular, bordered on disaster. A night drop had never been attempted before. The transponders didn’t work well. After crossing the Channel at 500 feet to get under enemy radar, the C-47 transports had to climb to 700 feet to get enough altitude for a parachute to open. Many planes flew into a cloud bank, became disoriented, and their pilots hit the green light “jump” switch, not knowing where they were. Others climbed above the clouds and hit the jump switch, which left the hapless paratroopers dangling long enough for Germans on the ground to shoot them on their descent. Anti-aircraft artillery blew up some planes. Seeing the flack, some pilots panicked and hit their jump switches so they could rid their human cargo and turn back to England.

As a result, almost half of the units that dropped in the pre-dawn hours of June 6 were scattered over so great an area, they were unable to rally. They stumbled around in the darkness trying to find each other and avoid the Germans. The Germans were as confused as the Americans because they didn’t know the locations and number of the invaders.

After 24 hours only 2,500 troops of the 101st and 2,000 of the 82nd were under the control of their division leaders. Most simply hooked up with NCOs and junior officers and began to improvise missions, their coup de main no longer possible.

Throughout D-day, allied fighter planes flew almost 15,000 sorties (one round trip by one airplane) over and behind the beaches to prevent German reinforcements. Less than 130 planes were lost. The allies had long since gained air supremacy over Germany.

Naval losses were 24 warships and 35 merchant ships or ancillary vessels, and a further 120 vessels damaged – a staggering number considering that German naval power in the Channel consisted of two torpedo boats. Most ships were hit from shore, some of which had crowded into keel depth water to run parallel with the beach and use shipboard cannons to blast German fortifications.

There are no official casualty figures for June 6, 1944. However, research by the US National D-day Memorial Foundation has verified that about 2,500 Americans were killed and about 2,000 allies from other nations died – about 4,500 men on that single day. The wounded and missing were estimated to be about an additional 8,000 total.  

In the end, the allies won the Normandy campaign by the sheer weight of troop numbers and materiel. Three million men and 16 million tons of arms, ammunition, and supplies had been assembled in England for what Eisenhower called the Crusade in Europe. Despite the invasion fatalities, 100,000 soldiers made it ashore and survived the first day. By July, one million allies were in Normandy. Supplies were coming ashore at a rate of 20,000 tons per day. Allied forces crossed the Seine River on August 19. Paris was liberated six days later, ending the Normandy campaign at a cost of about 210,000 allied casualties.

Seventy years have passed since that June 6 in 1944. The shadows have lengthened for the men who went ashore that day – the majority of whom were under 25 years and many still teenagers. Most have gone to their reward.

I often wonder if the current generation could have won World War II. Sadly, I think not. The soldiers today are as brave as those of that day – maybe braver. They are, after all, volunteers whereas the warriors of WW II were often drafted into service. But today’s spineless politicians, the media, and maybe even the American people have no stomach for war on that scale. Too many today think that the options in dealing with the world’s bullies is either war or accommodation (aka appeasement) when the only real choice is, and has always been, either fight or surrender. 

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” Ronald Reagan said. “We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Throughout the year there are many dates I remember for their historic significance. But since my younger teenage years when I began to understand history, I’ve never let a June 6 pass unnoticed or without a whispered, “Thank you.”

Trigger Warnings

When the American colonies decided to part company from England, they formalized it in a declaration to the world, the Declaration of Independence, which a committee of five was chosen to write. The heavy lifting fell to Thomas Jefferson who was well-read and well-spoken and, it was thought, would produce the best written expression of their rationale. His draft was only slightly modified by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, two other committee members, before it went into a “groupwrite” session by the entire delegation.

In an effort to give Jefferson comfort while he witnessed the editing and amputations of his precious draft in surgery, Franklin told him a story of a hatter who was about to open a shop.

The hatter had a sign made to advertise his business which said, “John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money” followed by an image of a hat. Before hanging his sign, Franklin continued, Thompson asked the opinion of several friends. One recommended that the word “hatter” be removed since it was redundant with “makes hats.” Another said the word “makes” should be excised because customers wouldn’t care that it was Thompson who made the hats. A third friend noted that the term “for ready money” wasn’t necessary since merchandise wasn’t sold on credit. Finally, a fourth opined that “sells hats,” could be stricken because Thompson surely couldn’t be expected to give them away. In the end, Franklin sighed, the sign simply said, “John Thompson,” with a picture of a hat. It seemed to both that Jefferson’s declaration was headed to the same fate.

If the PC police have their way, the fate of Thompson’s hat sign may be where higher education is headed in coming years. To quote Gertrude Stein, there will be no “there” there in college education.

What started as a radical feminist left wing idea for website content labeling has now mutated to college campuses – as radical mutations are wont to go these days. The original idea was not without merit – namely, to warn women who had suffered a traumatic experience, like physical abuse or rape, that they were about to be exposed to content involving abuse or rape on a website or in a book or film. The exposure might possibly trigger flashbacks to the personal experience, it was thought, which could trigger unresolved post-traumatic panic attacks, emotional outbursts, urges to flee, etc. Since we never know what has been suffered in the private lives of others, a general warning that content contains extreme social pathologies in some form seems like a good idea. Forewarned is forearmed, therefore, sensitive people could prepare themselves or opt out of the content.

Most parents of socially immature children probably appreciate warnings that content may be inappropriate for children of a particular age or that it contains material they may not want their children exposed to. Even mature adults, I among them, appreciate a heads up that extreme violence is contained in something they’ve unwitting chosen to experience. It might not trigger the reliving of an unresolved experience; however, we routinely warn people that something non-routine should be expected – e.g. “roads slippery when wet” or “not suitable for small children.”

What harm could “trigger warnings” cause you ask? None until the predictably metastatic over-reach morphs into insanity mode, as all movements of this type inevitably do, thereby encompassing even the most benign content. Trigger warning have now been proposed for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it uses the “N” word and is strongly racist in content. No matter that Huck, an orphan, rescued Jim, a slave, and was deeply conflicted because Huck saw Jim as a father figure. But one would have to read – indeed study and reflect on – the novel to arrive at that understanding. And how would any easily offended person get to that point if forewarned that it uses the “N” word and is racist tripe?

This is the way the perpetually aggrieved manage to contaminate the critical thinking of others. They quarantine it. They label it negatively before it can be adjudged objectively. If they can call Mark Twain and Huck Finn racists before a student can even consider the content with a neutral mindset, in time they can control what people learn. They might even extend their influence to book banning – as has happened to the classics in some school systems – despite the fact that not one of the trigger warning advocates is likely educated in literary criticism or is even a trained librarian.

Was Mark Twain a racist? Well, he was born in 1835 – 25 years before the outbreak of the Civil War – in the border state of Missouri. Twain’s Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were 10 to 12-year olds in a setting that existed along the Mississippi River around 1840 so both are most likely caricatures of Twain himself as an adolescent. Slavery was the norm in the Deep South and widespread in Missouri. Because it was not part of the Confederacy, Missouri was exempted from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. What do you think? Was Twain a racist?

Would it surprise you to learn that Twain was an abolitionist? That he believed Lincoln’s proclamation didn’t go far enough? That he paid the tuition for a black man to attend Yale Law School and for another to study ministry at a university in the south? Would you expect a student to read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Adventures of Tom Sawyer with a different perspective first knowing this about Twain? I would. That is what is wrong with trigger warnings.

Life is a traumatic experience for everyone at some level. So do trigger warnings mean traumatized victims of racism will never read Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man or Harper Lee’s equally classic To Kill a Mockingbird because of their racist content? Will victims of sexual assault never read Toni Morrison’s Beloved or The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's moving story of a girl raped, murdered, and watching from heaven the aftermath of her murder unfold on earth? Is the story sad? Yes. Redemptive? Absolutely.

If trigger warning advocates have their way, college professors would be required to warn students that, lest their delicate sensibilities be offended otherwise, Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice smacks of anti-Semitism in its historically accurate reprehensible portrayal of Shylock the money lender. Failing to read this 17th century characterization of Elizabethan anti-Semitism, however, would deprive a student of understanding how bigoted Shakespeare’s world was, not to mention never know Portia’s importunate plea to Shylock, “The quality of mercy is not strain'd …” which students not far from entering their life’s work would do well to memorize.

After singing a verse of “I’m a Little Snowflake,” the students of the University of California at Santa Barbara followed Ohio’s Oberlin College and issued a policy proposal that professors should include trigger warnings in their syllabi for student readings that involve rape or sexual assaults, pornography, suicide, graphic violence, gore, self-abuse, and kidnapping. Almost all of Shakespeare’s plays include something on their list. Some plays include them all. When Prince Hamlet draws his last breath, there are so many corpses lying about that I can imagine on a small stage like the Globe that the sole survivor, Horatio, would have had little room to step.

The trigger warning proposal of the little snowflakes at UCSB surely would be required for the Bible, some parts of which would carry an “X” rating were they made into a theater film.

Nor would Sophocles’ Theban trilogy escape their PC-ness. In Oedipus Rex the protagonist unwittingly marries his mother after killing (murder) the man who, unknown to Oedipus at the time, was his father (patricide.) After fostering several children by his mother (incest), the true identity of mom, dad, and junior become known. Mom hangs herself in shame (suicide.) Oedipus rips the brooch from her hanging body and uses its pin to punch out his eyes (self-abuse) out before asking the townsfolk to send him into exile (alienation) as punishment for his vile mistake. 

Likewise Antigone, another of the Theban plays, would require content warning. The eponymous heroine is sealed in a cave to die. Warning: all claustrophobics beware. After 2,300 years, Sophocles is the gift that keeps on offending.

Indeed the entire canon of Western literature would have to be content labeled if the snowflake policy becomes widespread.

Maybe life will carry a trigger warning.

Predictably the proponents of this goofy idea have given little thought to its implementation beyond the initial do-goodism. To name a few, who decides what type of content deserves warning? Which past experiences qualify as “traumatic”? How is student abuse of the policy prevented? For example, War and Peace containing over a half million words in about 1,500 pages is assigned by a lit prof. Every sane student would groan. The clever ones would be “traumatized” by something in Tolstoy’s tome. “Hey, Prof, I had a near-death experience like Prince Andrei; I can’t go through that again.” Voila! It requires little imagination to see where this is headed. “The entire college educational experience is traumatizing. I opt out. Give me my degree; I’m outa’ here.”

The real trigger warning in this silly idea is not the infantilized content precautions its advocates propose. The real trigger warning is that the idea would be proposed at all for serious consideration. Here is yet another camel’s nose in the tent to limit the freedom of the many for the sake of a few – and that for specious reasons. Once again a metastasizing minority is emboldened when given an inch to take a yard.

Get over it, I say!

If a person has been so traumatized by a past experience that he or she becomes psychologically unhinged by revisiting it in literature or film, I’d ask whether that person should be in the classroom or in therapy.

The Uninvited

I’ve sat through many commencement speeches – my own prep school and three university graduations, not to mention those of my children and friends. I can’t remember the theme of a single speech. I can’t even remember the speakers.

Commencement speeches are that way: forgettable, boringly predictable, cliché-riddled, oratory designed to assure the audience of students and families that the past years’ sacrifices of time and money will prove a worthy investment.

So what’s going on with commencement speakers lately? Nine high-profile commencement invitees thus far in the 2014 graduation season have irked students and professors enough to get four of them “disinvited” by four high-profile universities, and if prior years are an indication, there will be more. Last year 16 speakers scheduled to wax eloquent got student and faculty PC hackles up so much that three speakers withdrew. In 2012, 11 managed to twist the panties of enough over-sensitive students and profs to cause one speaker’s honorary degree to be rescinded and another speaker to be disinvited. And in 2011 six speakers torqued the passions of their intended audience so tightly that two became persona non grata.

Wow! Commencement speaking is becoming a full contact sport.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education – aptly called FIRE – a nonprofit nonpartisan advocate for free speech, has been tracking the growing intolerance of the collegiate community. The cancelation of unacceptable speakers is one of its proxies. Robert Shibley, a spokesman for FIRE says, “Colleges and universities are teaching students to think like censors. Yet colleges are the very institutions that are supposed to be teaching students to think critically and consider all sides of an argument.”

The research done by FIRE discovered that there have been at least 145 instances in which speakers have withdrawn their names or been disinvited or faced protest demonstrations during school years since 1987, 100 of which have occurred in the last five years. Isn’t that interesting? These are “learning” institutions. Or are they indoctrination institutions?

Seems to me that if two people agree on every issue, one of them is unnecessary if beliefs are to be challenged. Do students have all “the right answers” after only four years so that no challenges to their beliefs are needed? One of the many rights protected under the First Amendment is the right to offend. Weren’t universities designed to make a hue and cry for tolerance of offensive ideas? Who knows but that new learning may be lurking there. Instead, “higher” learning seems to have become bastions of Kafkaesque tolerance – tolerance of all views except those opposed to their view. That isn’t the way the lifelong search for truth worked for me. When I was a university prof I told students my job wasn’t to give them answers. It was to tell them how to find answers – temporarily.

Take the case of Condoleezza Rice as an example of a university’s tolerance for contrary views.

By most standards, Ms. Rice is a truly remarkable woman. Born the year of Brown v. Board of Education in Jim Crow Birmingham, she experienced many things a small child shouldn’t have to experience – notably that her skin color was more important than who she was and what she was trying to become in life. She couldn’t attend the circus, amusement park, she couldn’t change in department store dressing rooms to try on clothes (she used a storage closet), she couldn’t use public toilets except those designated for “coloreds.” One of her schoolmates was killed in the bombing of a Baptist church by white supremacists.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. Rice isn’t the only person who has suffered from discrimination. Life itself is discriminatory. That’s not all bad. Experience is what we get from life and innocence is what we trade for it. Rice traded well. She earned a Ph.D. in International Studies at age 27. She was on the Stanford University faculty for 30 years during which she became the first woman and first black person to serve as provost. She was the second woman to hold the office of Secretary of State and the second black person. She is a concert quality pianist and is fluent in several languages.

Yet the worthies of the Rutgers University faculty and graduating intellectuals decided that Rice was undeserving of their commencement attention because she had been associated with the evil Bush regime. In that capacity she had

… mislead the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the existence of links between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime … the lies thus promoted led to the second Iraq war, which caused the death of over 100,000 men, women and children, and the displacement of millions of others [and] … at the very least, condoned the Bush administration’s policy of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, and its attempt to present such techniques as legal …

Some accused her of being a war criminal. Without benefit of trial, witnesses, cross-examination, due process, presumption of innocence, and other constitutional superfluities, they concluded her guilt, and in their self-righteousness, demanded the Rutgers “Board of Governors to rescind its misguided decision to invite former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to deliver the keynote address.”

Being far more a class act than the Nine Nazgûl apparently in charge of Rutgers, Rice withdrew her name without being uninvited, saying, “As a professor for thirty years at Stanford University and as (its) former Provost and Chief academic officer, I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way."

Next comes the un-inviting of former University of California-Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. I can confidently say that about the only thing Birgeneau and I could likely agree on is today’s date, and I’d probably double-check that. But despite our polar opposition, he has a right to advance his views and I’d listen to his arguments. He advocates the right of illegal aliens to receive taxpayer-funded in-state tuition, he is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-LGBT preferences, and pro-racial quotas. He demonized the supporters of California’s Prop 8 traditional marriage ballot initiative, and he connected Gabby Gifford’s shooting to Arizona’s border enforcement. If anyone should escape the disinvitation guillotine, I would have thought he would.

Well, I obviously miscalculated the high-minded faculty and graduating leading lights of Haverford College, a Quaker institution in Pennsylvania. They would have been “deeply disturbed” were he present on the dais for their ceremony. His sin? Birgeneau oversaw the 2011 forceful removal by the Berkeley police and the arrest of Occupy protesters in Sproul Plaza.

The 72-year old physicist therefore received a letter from 16 graduating seniors stating that “we are extremely uncomfortable honoring you” and insisting that he agree to nine conditions in return for the privilege of speaking to them. In addition he must agree to make reparations to the “victims” of Berkley’s Occupy demonstration. “If you choose not to confront the issues before you, we will have no other option than to call for the college to withdraw its invitation,” they warned.

In effect, Birgeneau told his inquisitioners they could put their demands where the sun don’t shine. It may have taken him ten seconds to write the two sentences of his response: “First, I have never and will never respond to lists of demands. Second, as a long time civil rights activist and firm supporter of non-violence, I do not respond to untruthful, violent verbal attacks.” A letter from him to the Haverford dons canceled his acceptance of their invitation to speak.

In his stead, William Bowen, former Princeton University president spoke. After his remarks he properly scolded the graduates, parents, and faculty for their impudence,

I regard this outcome as a defeat pure and simple for Haverford, no victory for anyone who believes, as I think most of us do, in both openness to many points of view and mutual respect. I’m disappointed that those who wanted to criticize Birgeneau’s handling of events at Berkley, as they had every right to do, chose to send him such an intemperate list of demands. In my view, they should have encouraged him to come and engage in a serious discussion, not to come, tail between his legs, to respond to an indictment that a self-chosen jury had reached without hearing counter arguments.

He got a standing ovation.

Christine Lagarde who heads the International Monetary Fund was disinvited by the prissy pots at Smith College, a liberal arts women’s college. Lagarde canceled her appearance after the good ladies of Smith circulated a petition calling the IMF chief to account for the organization’s “strengthening of imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide." Well, if she’d be allowed to speak, Lagarde might have addressed those concerns but I’m sure IMF policies were in place long before she arrived less than three years ago. Let’s noose the right neck, ladies.

After Condi Rice gave up her seat on the commencement podium, the hapless Rutgers illuminati extended an invitation to Eric LeGrand, the former Rutgers football player who was paralyzed in a kickoff tackle in 2010. He has given wheelchair-bound motivational speeches to over a million people. But before he could begin work on his speech, the offer was withdrawn. “All fame is fleeting” a slave would whisper in the ear of Roman conquerors. So it is with football players. Too few remembered LeGrand’s playing days.

First Lady Obama was scheduled to speak to the combined classes of five high schools in Topeka celebrating the 60th anniversary of Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education. However, each student was allowed only six tickets igniting a grouse campaign among the students’ families. LeGrand was canceled because he wasn’t famous enough. Michelle was canceled because she was too famous.

Then there’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalia anti-Islam activist invited to be the Brandeis graduation speaker. Her family fled Somalia’s enlightened practice of pre-pubescent marriage, clitoridectomy, and female genital mutilation. Somalia is not an equal opportunity mutilator, however, since male genitals do not suffer the razor blades applied to 5-year old girls without benefit of anesthesia lest they should later become promiscuous.

Hirsi Ali’s father was opposed to female mutilation, forced marriage to pedophiles, and other quaint Somalia customs. But for getting in the face of the Somalia government one time too many, he was imprisoned. While there, grandma disregarded her son’s wishes and had his 5-year old Hirsi Ali genitally scarred for life. Thanks, Grandma.

When she was eight and dad was out of prison, the family fled the country, ultimately settling in Kenya. In time she landed in the Netherlands asking for political asylum under questionable circumstances. Those interested can read of her peregrinations in Wikipedia, but of her journey she says

I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage, for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values.

For speaking out against Islam and its various practices of female subjugation and for renouncing Islam to become an atheist, Hirsi Ali was the recipient of a fatwah of death. Calling Islam “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death” didn’t help her case. Then after collaborating with Theo van Gogh on the screenplay for Submission, which was critical of the Islamic treatment of women, he too received a death threat.

Van Gogh was assassinated by Islamic radicals on an Amsterdam street in 2004. The murder weapon, a knife, pinned a note to van Gogh’s chest addressed to Hirsi Ali, which read in part, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you will break yourself to pieces on Islam.” Hmm. The religion of peace?

Eventually Hirsi Ali left the Netherlands for America where she works for the American Enterprise Institute. She married a British historian and they have a son born in 2011. Of Islam she has said,

Once [Islam] is defeated it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars.

Hirsi Ali was invited to speak at the commencement of Brandeis University and receive an honorary degree. Apparently the right and left hands in these laughably high-minded schools don’t communicate with each other until after the fact. The right hand invited. The left hand, unfazed by the practices of female genital mutilation, forced marriage, polygamous marriage, the kidnap, selling, and enslavement of girls, female subjugation by males with intact genitals, honor killing of women, educational deprivation of females, and forcing them to dress as if they were going to a Halloween party as Casper the Ghost, that left hand ignored all of these pre-historic practices to voice its concern that Islamic students might be a tad bit too uncomfortable with someone as outspoken against Islam as Ayaan Hirsi Ali puttin’ on airs and acting equal to men – which would get her killed in most of the Middle East. Well, phooey! I sure wouldn’t want to make a Middle Easterner – a guest of my country with privileged access to a first rate university – feel uneasy!

The Council on American-Islamic Relations contacted Brandeis with concerns about inviting “a notorious Islamaphobe” who would offend the decorum of its commencement – a commencement which was the launch pad for the senior class to enter the real world of ideas where people don’t give a hoot in a high hat about the delicate sensibilities of Brandeis graduates.

Predictably the left hand prevailed and the honorary degree and invitation to Hirsi Ali to speak was withdrawn. This same left hand had no problem in awarding an honorary degree to Tony Kushner who said that the very act of creating the state of Israel was a mistake.

It’s hard to believe that free-thinking Albert Einstein was one of the co-founders of Brandeis, a non-sectarian Jewish university dedicated to overcoming post World War II anti-Semitic bigotry. Einstein turned down a proposal that the school be named for him and therefore it became the namesake of Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Associate Justice.

If you Google its website, you’ll find that the Brandeis motto is the Hebrew word Emet. It translates “truth even unto its innermost parts.”

Perhaps the Brandeis worthies should consider changing it to “We shall not tolerate opposing thought.”