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Before last week’s flame-out of the federal government’s latest attempt to seize control of the Internet, few had heard of Congress’ latest Trojan horses – SOPA and PIPA. These acronyms are, of course, benignly-named power grabs in accordance with the fed’s standard playbook for expanding its power. Do you remember the laughably-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) which had neither patient protection nor affordable care in mind when this imperial overreach was created by the 111th Congress?

SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA stands for Protect Intellectual Property Act. The SOPA bill was birthed in the Senate and PIPA was a hatchling of the House, but the same wolf is wearing sheep’s overalls in both cases so just consider them two versions of the same Congressional bilge water.

Dare I ask who could possibly be against stopping online piracy or protecting intellectual property – except those who hate moms and are allergic to apple pie? Well, er, uhhh, me … and I love both mom and apple pie. Why my opposition? Because SOPA and PIPA are takeover attempts just as unconstitutional as the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold). Reform and protection weren’t the true purposes those two red herrings any more than gun control is about preventing criminal violence. People who break laws don’t think about law-breaking, only law-abiders do. And every time the airheads in Congress pass laws to prevent something, the law-abiders lose more freedom through compliance and the law-breakers are unconcerned and therefore unaffected.

Do I think there is piracy of Internet-based protected content? Sure I do. But the solution, if there is one (and there might not be), isn’t more laws. Here’s my argument. Judge for yourself.

For years Hollywood and the music industry have fought against the theft of their content. Relying on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) the industry of content producers and the industry of hosting websites have been self-governing and self-policing. Sites like YouTube and Facebook that receive notice under DMCA that their site is hosting pirated content are required to take down the content within a specific time period and, if they comply, there is no penalty. About 99.99% of the time, the system works well without a government nanny.

Without the help of SOPA or PIPA, a well-publicized instance of piracy was recently punished when Megaupload received an unannounced visit from the FBI. Arrests as far away as New Zealand resulted when copies of stolen movies and television shows were seized.

By way of background, some of us can recall the early days of the commercial Internet when content producers were so concerned about piracy and illegal downloading that they were reluctant to post their content online.  Even before the Internet became of age, the record industry tried to prevent piracy by having CD burners on PCs outlawed and the motion picture industry tried to squash VHS recorders. Both were classic examples of mixing outcomes and methods into the same stew. Instead, saner minds prevailed and music and movie content can now be sold online through Netflix and iTunes in convenient and fairly priced transactions that are manifestly more civilized than some government meat axe solution could ever achieve.

Websites and e-commerce companies already operate under contractual agreements that assure copyrighted material isn’t posted. So when WikiLeaks tried to escape a hacker’s denial-of-service attacks on its old servers, it moved its content to Amazon.com servers but Amazon kicked them off. The reason was not to suppress free speech, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights howled. It was because WikiLeaks wasn’t following the terms of service when it posted content it didn’t own or control, classified or otherwise – which strikes at the heart of the WikiLeaks business model. Then when WikiLeaks appealed to its supporters for donations to continue its operations, contributions around the world poured in through PayPal, the payment processor now owned by eBay. PayPal shut down the donation channel because it violated their "Acceptable Use Policy" which prohibits engaging in "activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity," which WikiLeaks clearly does by encouraging submittals of embarrassing stolen content. No SOPA or PIPA help was needed here.

As the Internet has matured and access has become more economical around the world, the problem of content piracy has grown and preventing it has become more complicated. Megaupload.com, for example, is based in Hong Kong but used servers in this country. Shutting down those servers was no problem. But how about content theft that is partly or exclusively located outside the boundaries of the US? Foreign-based content thieves don’t sit down with a US legal statute guidebook in their lap deciding how they can steal American content without breaking US law. No, they spend their energy devising methods that make terminating their operations harder. And they do it in a way so that getting “caught” is not a problem.

For example, illegally hosting content is soooooo “yesterday” because clever content thieves no longer host content. They host thousands, if not millions, of links to content residing on personal computers all over the world. Each of those personal computers hosts pirated films, music files, or software. This pirated content can be downloaded by anyone using special software, which in some cases causes that person’s personal computer to become a host in the network of links, perhaps without even knowing it. There is no legal basis for taking action against the primary link host because it doesn’t host any illegal content. Finding all of the computers in a distributed network is almost impossible.

Enter the powerful lobbyists for the content producers. They ask Congress, who are cyber-tards in this arena, to produce a law that protects their clients from these foreign content thieves. Thieves, of course, aren’t hindered by law, so this was a fool’s errand from the start. SOPA and PIPA are the result – bills written by Congressmen and their staffs who don’t know the difference between a hard drive and a diode. If SOPA/PIPA became law, it would give unprecedented power to Eric Holder’s DOJ to shut down any website with little provocation. For example, an entire website could be shut down if only a single user posts anything that a content producer alleges to be a violation – even something as absurd as a kid posting on YouTube her rendition of a copyrighted song or a person reading from a copyrighted book. Assume a bank robber sticks up a bank. Under SOPA/PIPA the DOJ can shut down the bank.

In effect, this would make every website, search engine, web hosting company, blogger – anyone who allows others to post on his site – responsible for what is posted. The web world would be turned into content cops, imposing an immeasurable liability cost on Internet companies.

And what if some government official didn’t like the political commentary coming from, say, AmericanThinker.com or PJMedia.com? With SOPA/PIPA as law, those and other sites could be shut down just as soon as there is a posted link to content at, for example, ABC News or CNN or the New York Times. If they claimed violations of their copyrights – and who hasn’t violated copyrights – the publishers of American Thinker and PJ Media could be charged and go to jail. Yep. Jail birds would be added to their resume.

Nawh, no one would ever take the law that far. Really? You mean like the TSA zombies who confiscated your nail clippers at the airport security gate? You mean like the lobotomized teacher in a government school (aka public school) who suspended an 8-year old for three days for pointing his finger at another kid imitating a pistol and made a “pow” sound – because the school was a “gun-free zone”? Power in the hands of government bureaucrats is guaranteed to result in an IQ equivalent to that of a Rhesus monkey.

Logically, one has to ask what economic loss occurs from piracy. The criminal who creates the content theft scheme wouldn’t have paid for it – law or no law. And the people who download pirated material knowing it is theft have already decided not to pay for it. I would argue that losses due to piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of a free and open Internet which fosters innovation and market reach. But a ham-fisted law that sets onerous penalties for web entrepreneurs and companies who can unintentionally violate it will have a chilling effect on Internet creativity and risk-taking. Rather than worrying about the lost revenue from content theft, it seems to me that content producers would be better served by devoting their energies to creating innovative methods to effectively expand their market so crime doesn’t pay – it isn’t worth the effort.

Steve Jobs showed how to do this when he created the iPod. Napster proved there was a large market for digital downloads although the only way to get digital music was to share files illegally. Jobs convinced recording artists that it was better to get some revenue than no revenue and worked out a revenue-sharing model if they would consent to allow digital downloads in the iTunes e-store. The first day that the iTunes store opened, there were a million downloads. Four months later, there were almost eight million daily downloads. Apple became the largest music retailer in the world. When digital music files became convenient and relatively cheap, theft became a hassle.

This is the point that the content producers are missing. A bad business model isn’t protected by law anymore than high tariffs protect domestic businesses from foreign competition. Tariffs shield businesses from being competitive and in the end they lose. Just look at the American steel industry which hid behind protective tariffs for decades as other world producers became increasingly efficient. Eventually, world producers were able to make a profit on a ton of steel at a price that wouldn’t allow American producers to recover their costs.

Anti-piracy laws produce the same outcome. The recording industry artists association could have come up with the solution that Jobs created, but it would have required a different business model than the one to which it was wedded. Their business model sold music in CD-based albums, forcing customers to buy music tracks that had no interest to them in order to get the one or two songs on the CD that they wanted. Jobs gave the market what it wanted with a business model that sold music by the song instead of the CD album.

Thankfully, within the last 60 days Internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia got wind of the government’s latest attempt to pull a fast one on them with their SOPA/PIPA Frankenstein. Internet companies and users quickly became activists when they learned how the government’s bill would interfere with the openness of the Internet. Last Wednesday, January 18, Wikipedia went “dark” for 24 hours to show what the Internet would be without it. The company posted a message encouraging people who hit their site to contact their Congressman and Senators. Reddit, Mozilla, WordPress, and over 10,000 websites followed suit, going “dark” in protest. An estimated 115,000 other websites posted online protests and petition forms. Google covered its logo, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg issued a comment on Twitter.  Eight million Wikipedia users filed online petitions against the SOPA/PIPA bills. Seven million Google customers protested with Google’s form, three million tweets were sent and over a million telephone calls were made. There were so many incoming emails to the Capitol that inboxes were full and servers ran at full capacity.

Senators and Representatives got the message. Of those who had taken a position favoring the bills, most jumped ship. A majority of those who hadn’t taken a position lined up in opposition to SOPA/PIPA. When Senate Democrat Leader Reid saw he didn’t have the votes, he pulled the bill. The House sponsor tried to tweak the PIPA version enough to get it passed, but in an election year the votes weren’t there and the bill was pulled.

This week Rasmussen came out with a survey that revealed 71% of likely voters believed that government censorship is a bigger threat than illegal downloading even though 67% believed someone who downloads a movie online without paying for it is stealing. Mistrust, not morality, is the reason people don’t want the government involved in the Internet.

In the movie Shane, Alan Ladd’s character defends his gunfighter reputation by saying, “A gun is only as bad or as good as the man using it.” Likewise, technology can be used for good or bad. However, just because a relative few use it for bad doesn’t justify restricting and penalizing the many by making technology more onerous for the good to use. But that’s the government mindset. Because citizens were not alert to the machinations of Congress, all of us must now show identification in order to buy Sudafed, which once sold over-the-counter, simply because a few people bought it to melt down in a meth lab. All of us suffer the indignity of pat-downs or x-rays in airport security because two people boarded planes with devices in their Jockey shorts or shoe soles. A healthcare system that worked well in insuring 85% of the people was turned upside down to insure the other 15%, most of whom were only temporarily uninsured or chose to go without insurance. Means and ends are always inverted in government solutions. Americans deserve better than the dictum of Frederick the Great that it is better to let the innocent suffer than the guilty escape.

As I have said repeatedly in this blog, the greatest threat that Americans face in losing their liberty comes from their own government. The founders themselves recognized this when crafting the Constitution.  In his book of political essays, Here the People Rule, author Edward Banfield laments that – perhaps inevitably – “[t]he ink was not yet dry on the Constitution when its revision began." Almost from its Constitutional inception, Congress began pushing the boundaries beyond the limited government the Framers thought they were giving the descendants of those who had lived under the tyranny of George III. “There is an antagonism,” Banfield says, “amounting to an incompatibility, between popular government … [i.e.] in accordance with the will of the people … and the maintenance of limits on the sphere of government.”

This week’s victory by the people for the people against the imperial overreach of the federal government was a temporary one. Chalk this one up to HTTP 404: Problem not found. But this won’t be the last time we’ll see something like SOPA/PIPA. The Morlock-like inhabitants inside the Washington beltway are inherently mistrustful of the Internet’s power because it is able to mobilize millions in moments as it did to kill this ill-conceived attempt to control more of our lives. Copyright infringement was a sideshow from the get-go. But don’t take my word for it. Read the bills for yourself – they’re online.

We should not underestimate the government’s frustration with a medium that can “go viral” with information and images in minutes, a medium that is not sympathetic with government ideology and is an alternative voice to that of the mainstream news, a medium that can quickly network experts to uncover a cover-up – as Dan Rather sadly learned – and confront politicians with evidence that contradicts their claims, a medium that has a memory which can recall and replay what politicians wish to be forgotten, a medium that is currently outside of government control.

We can be certain that those who seek to control a power that equals or exceeds theirs will not give up easily.

T-Boned

Perhaps no player captured more public attention this football season than Tim Tebow, the last choice quarterback of the Denver Broncos. He replaced Kyle Orton, the starting quarterback, early in the season. Tebow was so low on the Broncos totem pole that at one point, their front office had considered jumping rookie quarterback Adam Weber from the practice squad to the starting position. Orton quarterbacked the first four games of this season, losing three of them. Therefore yielding to the fans, the quarterback job was given to Tebow who engineered seven wins in the next ten games. All seven of those wins were 4th quarter comebacks. With Tebow as quarterback, the Broncos finished their season with an 8-8 record and made it into the playoffs.

Tebow, who was the first round pick of the Broncos, brought to Denver a college record in which he quarterbacked the University of Florida to two national titles, won the Heisman trophy (he was a finalist two other years), and won many other awards for himself and the Florida Gators, while racking up 9,286 passing yards, 2,947 rushing yards, and 145 total touchdowns. He also brought to Denver an overt witness of his Christian faith which he had demonstrated in college with scripture references on his eye black, a practice since banned by the NCAA. Other on-field examples of his Christian discipleship include pointing heavenward and kneeing for prayer as gestures of thanks when his team had cause for celebration in a game – a practice that is euphemistically referred to as “Tebowing.”

Tebow is a good guy on and off the football, a quality all too absent among the over-paid, over-idolized, and over-indulged professional athletes today. The legal scrapes of Plaxico Burris and Michael Vick, both of whom did jail time for some of their high jinks, are well-known. The sordid scandals at Syracuse and Pitt State also come to mind. Ben Roethlisberger has been involved in two sexual assault cases, and for violating the NFL personal conduct policy, he was suspended without pay from playing in the first six games of the 2010 season. Ray Lewis was indicted in an Atlanta murder in 2000 for which he was fined $250,000 by the NFL – the largest non-substance abuse fine ever levied. In the decade between 2000 and 2010 there were 500 NFL player major arrests – about one per week. And last year Sports Illustrated tracked the public arrest records of professional and college athletes over the eight-month period from January 1, 2010 to August 31, 2010 and documented  125, more than one every other day. That number did not include minor arrests.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Now comes a guy who lifts the spirit of the game and, one hopes, the spirits of the fans. I’m unaware that Tebow has ever trash-talked, intimidated, or mocked another player. Yet in the game against Detroit, the Broncos offensive line, which won’t win any awards for protecting their quarterback, allowed Tebow to get sacked seven times, one of which was laid on by linebacker Stephen Tulloch. A film clip shows Tebow struggling to get up while Tullock took a knee in apparent mockery by “Tebowing.” When a news reporter asked him about it later, Tebow said, "He was probably just having fun and was excited he made a good play and had a sack. And good for him!" Yet following the heart-stopping Denver victory over the Minnesota Vikings, Tebow was asked which was the most satisfying congratulatory comment he had received for his win, and he brushed the question aside to tell about a young leukemia patient in Florida who had been moved during the week to terminal hospice care and how excited he (Tebow) was to mention the boy’s name on national television and tell him that he cared.

Each week Tebow flies a person who is suffering with a serious disease or dying to Denver along with family or friends. He pays for a rental car that is waiting for them at the airport and a room at a nice hotel, pays for their meals, gets them free field level seats, visits with them before and after the game in the Denver family room, which is off-limits to the press, and sends them on their way with a basket of gifts.

One such guest was 16-year old Bailey Knaub who has had 73 surgeries for Wegener's granulomatosis, an incurable inflammation of blood vessels that affects the nose, lungs, kidneys and other organs. She has had the condition since she was 7 and it has cost her one lung. Her cousin wrote a letter to the Tebow Foundation about Bailey whose hero is Tim Tebow. When he called her a couple of weeks ago to ask if she and her family would be his guests for the playoff game against the Steelers, she couldn’t believe it. Meeting him was a dream come true and she and her entire family, including siblings, had their picture made with Tebow in uniform before the game just so she could prove to her friends that it happened. Tebow's faith in God was the same as hers, she said, and he was as humble as she thought, as generous as she hoped, and as genuine as he's always appeared to her.

"I had all these ideas in my mind, and it just confirmed everything in my mind," Bailey said. "It was just like 10 times more. It was everything I could have imagined. It was perfect." Tebow gave her a Bible and spent personal time with her and her family before the game. At his request, Bailey joined Tebow for a sit-down televised interview conducted by CBS' James Brown for the NFL Today pregame show that was aired before Denver’s game the following week with Tom Brady’s New England Patriots.

After the Steelers game, which Tebow won in overtime with a pass and 80-yard run to Demaryius Thomas, Tebow left the field for the Broncos family room where he met Bailey again with her family. "Here he'd just played the game of his life," Bailey's mother said, "and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, 'Did you get anything to eat?' He acted like what he'd just done wasn't anything, like it was all about Bailey." He grabbed Demaryius and pulled him in the room, and he asked John Elway and Coach Fox to come and meet her. About her day with Tebow, Bailey later recalled:

It was the best day of my life. It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can't rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises.

Tebow, the son of missionaries, has a heart for people who aren’t as fortunate as he is. At the end of his college football career at Florida, he attended a football awards ceremony at Walt Disney World where he met 20-year old Kelly Faughnan, a Tebow college football fan. She was wearing an “I love Timmy” button at the ceremony which someone noticed and asked her if she would like to meet her hero. Kelly has a brain tumor that has left her with hearing loss and constant conspicuous tremors. Tebow met her and her family and spent a good while talking with them before asking Kelly if she would like to be his date for the award ceremony the next evening. She accepted and Tebow, with a trembling Kelly on his arm, walked down the awards red carpet together.

I could go on and tell about 9-year-old Zac Taylor, a child who lives in constant pain. Tebow visited him in the hospital and whispered a “secret” hospital prayer in his ear. Or I could tell about Jacob Rainey, a 6-foot-3, 215 pound high school quarterback. He had attracted the big name college scouts’ attention while playing high school football, just as Tebow had done in high school. But unlike Tebow, a freak tackle in a scrimmage ruptured an artery and required his leg to be amputated. Tebow flew Jacob and his family to Buffalo where they watched their host get his clock cleaned 40 to 14. After the game, Tebow met the Rainey family with a grin: “Well, that didn’t go as planned,” and immediately shifted the conversation to the Raineys – did they have fun watching the game, what would they like to do before returning home? Or there’s 55-year old Tom Driscoll who was Tebow’s guest for the Cincinnati game. Driscoll is dying of brain cancer.

Isn’t it a big distraction to spend so much time with these people before and after a game in a sport that puts careers and championships on the line every week? Most players are so focused before the game that they hardly speak to each other, and after a game they are so up or down, depending on its outcome, that it’s hard for them to think about anyone else. Not so with Tebow.

It's by far the best thing I do to get myself ready. Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn't really matter. I mean, I'll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it's to invest in people's lives, to make a difference.

And this kid is only 24 years old.

I’m not an apologist for Tim Tebow. His book, Through My Eyes: A Quarterback's Journey, certainly convinced me that he is a remarkable young man with a life-shaping childhood, but there are many people in and out of the NFL who do admirable things. San Diego quarterback Phillip Rivers and his junior high school sweetheart-wife are devoted to their church and speak to rallies of young people about spirituality and sexual abstinence. Tony Dungy’s faith is well-known, and his mentoring of troubled athletes helped Michael Vick find redemption and a job on the Eagles team. Retired 49ers quarterback Steve Young, a descendent of Mormon pioneer Brigham Young, works with underprivileged children through his foundation. Kurt Warner and his wife Brenda are devout evangelical Christians. Kurt was named by Sports Illustrated the best role model on and off the field in the NFL in 2009, and the following year he received the Bart Starr award for outstanding character and leadership in the home, on the field, and in the community. With the award, Starr said, “We have never given this award to anyone who is more deserving." And who hasn’t heard of the late great, bone-crushing Reggie White, the Hall of Fame Green Bay defensive end who was called the Minister of Defense for his faith and evangelical preaching? Reggie went to his reward too early at age 43 from a fatal cardiac arrhythmia.

Yet Tebow’s humility – dropping to a knee to give thanks and pointing heavenward after a touchdown – drives his critics nuts. Remarkably, the end zone shimmies by other players – some of which border on obscene – don’t seem to bother them. The football talking heads may complain about Tebow’s wounded duck passing, his slow delivery in the pocket, and his jittery scrambling out of the pocket that doesn’t seem to know what to do, but it’s his overt faith and belief that football is a just a game and not his god that really sets their teeth on edge.

In a recent survey 43% of the respondents believed that God was helping Tebow and the Broncos to win and many thought the playoff game defeat of the Steelers was nothing short of a God-given “miracle.” But Tebow has never said that he prays to win or that God helps him to win. Dropping to a knee to give thanks, praying on the bench, and singing hymns to himself on the sidelines at times is his way of acknowledging that he has received something that he hasn’t earned. Sure, some might say that training camp, studying films and playbooks, working hard to be in peak condition is justification for a player to claim he’s earned his success. But God says, “The gold is mine and the silver is mine … the land is mine and you are my tenants. Remember God, for he gives you the ability to produce wealth.” Tebow knows that everything he receives is a gift from the one who owns everything, so anything he receives is cause for thanks.

The cynic believes when something is too good to be true, it’s usually not true and Tebow is too good to be true.

Therefore, Saturday Night Life followed up the Denver win over Chicago with a skit in which Jesus visited the Broncos team in their locker room after the game complaining that too often he had to bail them out in the 4th quarter because of their horrible play in the other three quarters. “I, the Son of God, am responsible for your wins,” he asserts. The flippant Jesus character tells the obsequious Tebow character to “take it down a notch” in his religious fervor.  I checked YouTube to verify that the skit was more or less as the press reported and noticed that it has had slightly over one million hits. When Tebow wore John 3:16 in his eye black during the 2009 BCS championship game, Google had 90 million hits in the following 24 hours searching for the verse.

Bill Maher, one of Tebow’s most virulent critics, is euphoric when Tebow’s religious magic doesn’t work. In MaherWorld a Tebow touchdown is a score for the evangelicals whereas a score by the other team chalks one up for the atheists, which Maher claims he is.  Toward that end, after Tebow threw his third interception, Maher tweeted during the Christmas Eve Broncos game with Buffalo, “Wow, Jesus just (expletive) Tim Tebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is Tebowing, saying to Hitler, ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them.’”

I know of no other NFL players who rate websites like TimmyTebowSuck.com or TebowHaters.com. Who else is disliked with such ferocity to deserve a twitter account like @WhyTebowSucks or an “I Hate Tim Tebow” Facebook page? An Orlando radio station even launched a crudely-named campaign in which one of its female employees declared her intent to sabotage Tebow’s pledge to save his virginity for marriage by taking it by force if necessary. And when all else fails, the critics can ask (and have) how else can a 24-year old millionaire 6-foot-3, 245 pound quarterback who attracts young good-looking women in droves continue to wear a purity ring unless …. he is gay?

Tebow helped give Broncos fans a thrilling season this year, including an improbable win in the wild card playoff game against Pittsburgh. To pull off another improbable win in the divisional playoff against the New England Patriots with a second-year quarterback playing in his first real season would be unthinkable. For all intents, that game was over in the first ten minutes. But Tebow had taken a 1-4 team to an 8-8 season plus a playoff win. That’s something to be proud of.

Will Tebow lead the team next year? "Of course, he's our guy," Broncos rookie safety Rahim Moore said. "People put too much pressure on him. He's going to have some good, some bad. I believe in him, and I would like him to be our quarterback. Our team jells around him."

John Elway, head of football operations was more tepid in his confirmation of Tebow’s future on the team. Tebow will be the starting quarterback when the team starts training camp for next season. That’s all Elway would commit. Like Tebow, Elway is learning a new job because, like Tebow, he can be fired. His less than enthusiastic endorsement of the 24-year old who brought the Broncos back from the dead suggests that who John Elway would really like to see as quarterback … is another John Elway.

In the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, a mythical golf tournament brings together Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones together in a match-up with the central character, Rannulph Junuh. In the club house dressing room before the last round of the tournament, Jones reveals to Junuh that this is his final competitive match. “I've got a wife, three children, and a law practice,” Jones says. “It's time to stop. It's just a game, Junuh.” Jones was returning to the real world.

If football were his only goal in life, as it is for so many who play this game, perhaps including John Elway, Sunday’s thrashing by the Patriots would have made it a long flight from Boston back to Denver. But as the Bobby Jones character understood, it’s just a game. In Tebow’s words:

It still wasn't a bad day. It still was a good day, because I got to spend some time before the game with Zack McLeod [a 20-year-old Cambridge native who suffered a traumatic brain injury playing football] and make him smile, and overall when you get to do that, it's still a positive day. Sometimes that's hard to see, but it depends what lens you're looking through. I choose to look through those lenses, and I got to make a kid's day, that's more important than winning the game. So, I am proud of that.

Now that the season is over for him, is Tebow glad to get out of the glare for a while and away from the critics who delighted in every setback he suffered this year?

There are pros and cons with everything. Sometimes, you don't want it all. You just like to be able to go to dinner, hang out with friends, be a normal 24-year old. So that makes it sometimes hard. But I wouldn't change it for the world, because by having that, I have the platform to walk into a hospital and share with kids, I have the opportunity to hang out with Zack before a game, I have the opportunity to go build a hospital in the Philippines or to do a lot more important things than football.

St. Francis of Assisi said preach the gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.

That’s what Tim Tebow is doing.

Our Constitutionally-Challenged President

In the early days of the Republic, the Congress that had been conceived by the Founders functioned as a part-time job. Its incumbents had no problem with that arrangement because, unlike the political hacks who currently inhabit the House and Senate, “doing time” in an elective office was considered a civic – and often an onerous -- duty, not the profession it has become. In those times, Congressional members and the President had farms to look after and a few of them also had additional pursuits that occupied their time.

The genius of the Founders’ design of divided government was to make it difficult to get things done. Writing in Federalist 51, Madison extolled the virtues of “checks and balances between the different departments,”

In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments.

… the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others… Ambition must be made to counteract ambition… such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government… If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Today the people who wring their hands and bemoan the “gridlock” in Washington are obviously ignorant of the fact that the Founders designed government for gridlock in order to minimize the abuses they knew future Congresses and Presidents would heap upon the backs of citizens. The 55 men who met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to design our government required even the most mundane appointments of the President to have the approval of the Senate to assure he didn’t have a free hand to put his cronies in power without oversight. And what happened if the President couldn’t get the Senate to approve his nominees? They didn’t get appointed. Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitution says:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

In a time before email, telephones, or even a good postal system, it was necessary to give the Executive limited power to conduct the affairs of the Republic when Congressmen were at their homes tending to their personal affairs – which was more often than the time they were in session tending to the government’s affairs. Because of weather, imperfect roads, and poor communications, the President couldn’t call Congress back to Washington (or Philadelphia in the days before there was a government seated in Washington) and thus the President was granted certain powers to act in their absence – among them the power to fill positions and vacancies without the advice and consent of the Senate, which is enumerated in Article II, Section 2, paragraph 3 of the Constitution:

The President shall have power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Having just thrown off the shackles of one king, the citizens of the new Republic were not interested in getting another tyrant regardless of his title, so this provision of the new Constitution went down hard with citizens whose colonial representatives were expected to ratify it. Keep in mind that the Constitution was not ratified until May 1790 and the purpose of the Federalist Papers was to drum up support for ratification, particularly in New York. Its various essays were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and to a lesser extent, John Jay.

In Federalist 67, Hamilton explained the Constitution’s recess rule:

The ordinary power of appointment is confined to the President and Senate jointly, and can therefore only be exercised during the session of the Senate; but as it would have been improper to oblige this body to be continually in session for the appointment of officers and as vacancies might happen in their recess, which it might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay, the succeeding clause is evidently intended to authorize the President, singly, to make temporary appointments "during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session."

Although we now live in an era of modern communications and modern travel, which would allow the President to recall a Senate in recess to confirm an appointment to a key office, he isn’t obliged to do so under the Constitution. And as the Founders feared, recent generations of Presidents have gamed the recess mechanism, using it to install office-holders they knew wouldn’t pass Senate muster.

The briefest recess exploited by a President to by-pass Senate approval was pulled off by Teddy Roosevelt on December 7, 1903. In the seconds intervening the first session of the 58th Congress and the second session, which began immediately, Roosevelt made over 160 “recess” appointments, mostly military officers of his choosing. Harry Truman similarly used the two days between sessions of the 80th Congress to make a recess appointment. Presidents of both political stripes have made their fair share of recess appointments, most of them motivated to by-pass the Senate.

Frustrated by Democrat Senators who for five months had blocked his nomination for UN ambassador of John Bolton in 2005, George W. Bush appointed him during recess, for which Minority Leader Harry Reid called Bush’s appointment “an abuse of presidential power.” However, without even presenting a nomination to the Democrat-controlled Senate, Obama appointed Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, knowing Berwick’s controversial views on end-of-life deprivation of care and his adoration of the decrepit British National Health Service would lock his nomination in committee for months if not forever. Obama has also appointed more “czars” than any other president in order to by-pass Senate confirmation.

But no President has ever attempted to appoint people to federal office while the Senate was in session without Senate approval – until Obama did it last week.

On January 4 Obama made “recess” appointments for Richard Cordray to become the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (whose constitutionality is highly suspect), and he appointed three pro-union members of the National Labor Relations Board. The Senate was in session.

Yes, the Obamaphiles cried, but those were just pro-forma “pretend” Senate sessions. Republicans were using them to block Obama’s recess authority. Those bad ol’ Republicans were just faking; they’d call the Senate into session, conduct mundane business or no business at all, and then adjourn minutes later.

Memo to Obamaphiles: Yes, the pro-forma session held by the Republicans did accomplish very little work. But from a legal and constitutional standpoint, that is irrelevant. The Constitution does not say the Senate is required to work at any time. In fact there are more than a few people who wonder, despite the time it spends, if the Senate ever performs any “work.”  If your Maximum Leader can decide when the Senate is working and when it isn’t, he can decide at any time that it is in recess. This would nullify the Senate’s role to advise and consent. Or did you guys bother to think about that?

The Obamaphiles, of course, didn’t bother to mention that pro-forma sessions have been used by both Democrats as well as Republicans for decades to block the recess appointment authority of presidents. And during one of these pro-forma sessions, the Senate extended the payroll tax holiday on December 23, which Obama had been whining to have passed for weeks.

Regardless of whether anyone thinks pro-forma sessions are an abuse of procedure or not, it was Minority Leader Harry Reid who called Bush’s recess appointment of Bolton “an abuse of presidential power” and then Majority Leader Reid announced on December 19, 2007 that the Senate would be "going ... into pro forma session so the president (Bush) cannot appoint people we think are objectionable."

If voters don’t like these procedural shenanigans, then they should complain to their Senators to stop the gamesmanship and get on with the people’s business – like submitting the nominee to the full Senate for an up or down vote instead of bottling up the nomination in committee.

But before you dial your Senator – and for those of you in Palm Beach County Florida, the land of the hanging chads, there are two at-large Senators per state – you’d best refer to your pocket copy of the US Constitution in which Article I, Section 5, paragraph 2 says:

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings …

Wow! This Constitution thing has got a lot of stuff in it! And this provision happens to be pretty important. Like it or not, the House and Senate can pass a rule to build campfires in the middle of their chambers and toast marshmallows all day if they like. And they can pass rules that keep a chamber in session using pro-forma meetings if they like. They can say they are in session regardless of the amount of “work” produced. The President may not like it, but he should take his complaint to the people – not violate the Constitution as Obama did in appointing Berwick in recess without nominating him and appointing Cordray and three union sympathizers to the NLRB while the Senate was legally in session.

Additional memo to Obamaphiles: Senate rules are called "standing orders." They are the rules of order by which its procedures are governed. Sorta’ like Robert’s Rules of Order. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you? This may shock you guys, but most of the Senate’s work is done by unanimous consent – a parliamentary procedure that allows a proposal to carry without a vote or quorum unless there is an objection from any Senators present. Using unanimous consent a single Senator present on the floor can change the standing order and conduct business. That’s what the Senate did on December 23 to pass Obama’s payroll tax holiday – during a pro-forma session it changed a standing order by unanimous consent. Your guy Obama signed that bill. Either the bill was properly enacted into law, making his bogus recess appointments unconstitutional, or the payroll extension is illegal because it was unconstitutionally enacted. Which is it? You guys can’t have it both ways.

I don’t know who started the silliness with the pro-forma rule, but I do know it will be played tit-for-tat until one side decides to stop. When the Democrats used it to prevent a Republican president from exercising his recess authority, the Republicans stuck it to the Democrats when they were in power. And when the majority shifts parties again, the hits will keep on comin’ as sure as night follows day.

Then there is Article I, Section 5, paragraph 4 of the Constitution which says:

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Oops. Did anyone check to determine if both the House and Senate complied with this provision? It makes no difference that many members of Congress are out of town. Business can be conducted by their appointees using unanimous consent. Ending a session of Congress, however, requires a formal resolution, which never occurred. And even if the Senate passed an adjournment resolution, it has no effect until the House does the same. Read the constitutional provision again. The House never resolved to adjourn.

Now, I know Obama is the smartest president we’ve ever had and he is an expert in the Constitution, having been a Professor of Constitutional Law, but let’s take another peek at Article II, Section 2, paragraph 3, a section of which I’ve capitalized:

The President shall have power to fill up all VACANCIES THAT MAY HAPPEN DURING THE RECESS of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Hmm. The vacancies that the President may fill without the advice and consent of the Senate have to happen DURING the Senate recess. The President doesn’t have recess appointment authority if the vacancy occurred before or after recess. He has no authority to make recess appointments if his candidate is stuck in committee and the Senate goes on recess because the vacancy obviously occurred before the recess.

Since Obama is the smartest president in the history of the Republic, he must know the Berwick, Cordray, and NLRB vacancies didn’t occur DURING a recess. His confrontation with the Senate in these appointments was not only an illegal circumvention of the Senate duty to advise and consent, it was a flagrant violation of the separation of powers – something this President has had problems with since the day he took office. Just look at the executive orders he has issued and the agency regulations he has implemented in total disregard of the legislative branch of government. Just look at his flimsy rationale for going to war in Libya without a congressional declaration authorizing him to do so.

So when Obey did his tough guy imitation in an interview last month saying, "Where Congress is not willing to act, we're going to go ahead and do it ourselves,” he was saying in effect, “To hell with the Constitution!” When he blustered and preened before his adoring campaign audience in Ohio last week, saying that "I refuse to take 'no' for an answer!" concerning Cordray and the NLRB appointees, he was really saying that the Senate was irrelevant – their refusal to confirm his guys is unacceptable to him. But since he swore to “protect and defend” the Constitution, if he really means what he said on these occasions, then he has committed impeachable offenses under the misdemeanor provision of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.

As I said earlier, the Founders intended to hamstring the Congress and the President by dividing government so they had to cooperate, thus preventing one branch of government from ramming through its agenda as Obama is wont to do. Divided governance is frustrating but gridlock was part of its design – thank heaven! No president should be permitted to use unconstitutional methods to circumvent it.

Obama has now thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of the Senate. What are they going to do about it?

Probably nothing.

But taken together, Obama’s executive orders, the czars, the illegal regulations, and now these illegal appointments without recess puts the relevance of Congress at risk. If the 112th Congress does nothing, this and future presidents will be emboldened to make “recess” appointments of their cronies when the chambers close for a weekend or even one night. Worse still, the bar will be lowered for future usurpations of power.

A Winter at Valley Forge – Part II

Despite its defects, Washington maintained an attitude of respect and deference toward Congress which it did not always deserve. He was reluctant to appeal directly to the states for help for fear of undermining Congressional influence in coordinating the war effort. Only after Congress had shown its impotence in feeding and clothing his army did Washington finally resort to a personal appeal to the states.

Congressional impotence was partly due to its tendency to solve problems by committee since there was no chief executive. Most of these committees – over 3,000 would be appointed before the war ended – were three-man affairs. The people selected to serve on a committee usually had no expertise in the problem the committee was created to solve. Congress even created a Committee on Committees to keep track of what everyone was doing.

The proliferation of Congressional committees inevitably began to meddle in the conduct of the war. Washington complained that he was getting inquiries from so many committees that it interfered with his efforts in managing the war. Congress, which had repeatedly demonstrated its ineptitude to provision the war, now began to micromanage its tactical execution without the training or experience to do so. This included second-guessing Washington's chain of command appointments by the several members of Congress who were not Washington enthusiasts. Therefore, one of Washington's challenges during the winter at that “dreary kind of place,” which is what he called Valley Forge, was to rid himself of Congressional micromanagement and neutralize those members who were trying to undermine his leadership. He would do so with hard-nosed politics.

There was never a time during the war that Washington lost the trust, if not the awe, of the soldiers and officers he led. He also had the confidence of the general public, which was apolitical. But a general who does not win victories opens himself to attack from those who would benefit from his demise.

Such was the affair known in history as the “Conway cabal.”

While Washington was being out-maneuvered in the Philadelphia campaign, first losing battles at Brandywine Creek and Germantown and then losing Philadelphia, the capital city, American General Horatio Gates had engaged the British in a battle near Saratoga, New York. The British troops under General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne were surrounded by Gates’ generals, forcing Burgoyne to surrender his entire 5,000 man army. It was a breathtaking victory for the Americans. When Benjamin Franklin, the American ambassador to France, glumly received word that Philadelphia had fallen to the British, the messenger iced the news with word of Burgoyne’s surrender, allowing a jubilant Franklin to now argue compellingly that France should enter the war on the American side.

Although General Gates was the senior commander at Saratoga, the battle turned on the aggressive fighting of General Benedict Arnold, who was wounded in a leg and removed from the field, and Gates’ other subordinate generals. But Gates, a vainglorious self-promoter, claimed sole credit for the victory and his star consequently rose among members of Congress. In a remarkable breach of protocol, Gates sent word of “his” victory and the surrender of Burgoyne’s army directly to the Continental Congress rather than to his superior officer and the army commander-in-chief, George Washington.

Gates had always believed that he, not Washington, should have been appointed commander-in-chief. Yet Washington’s daring attack on Christmas Day in 1776 which captured the Hessian garrison at Trenton, followed by his victory at Princeton, led Congress to believe the right man had been chosen for senior commander. Gates, a cautious fighter, had removed himself from participating in the Trenton attack by feigning illness. He thought Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River at night in rafts to attack Trenton at dawn was too aggressive. Fighting as a detached unit under Washington’s command, Gates was reluctant to attack the British directly at Saratoga giving Arnold cause to refer to him derisively as “Granny” Gates.

With victory over Burgoyne, Gates began to exploit his heroic status to improve his standing in the command structure of the Continental army. He urged his friends in Congress to reconsider him as a replacement for Washington. They succeeded in getting him named President of the Board of War, which Congress had recently announced would change its mission from a legislative committee to an executive agency. When it was made known that Gates would retain his field command as well as serve as President of the War Board, a civilian position, it put Gates in the astonishing position of being a subordinate military officer under the command of Washington and a civilian with authority over Washington’s army.

As Washington fumed, most of a month passed before Gates finally mentioned in passing the victory over Burgoyne in a letter to Washington devoted to another matter. Yet the street-smart Washington did not over-play his hand. He understood that the Gates victory superimposed on his recent losses had turned Congress into a bunch of armchair generals who had become disenchanted with his leadership. Consequently he harnessed his ego and waited for advantage.

Things came to a head when Washington got wind that Congress intended to promote one of his subordinate generals to major general over the heads of more senior brigadiers. Brigadier Thomas Conway was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who had left his birthplace in Ireland to begin a career in the French army. A stint in the Continental army was for Conway little more than a step on his career ladder, enhancing his military standing in France. Washington was a good judge of character and considered Conway a blowhard.  He also knew that Conway had criticized his handling of the battle at Brandywine.

Incensed with the plan to promote Conway, Washington wrote a member of Congress that, “General Conway’s merit as an officer and his importance in this army exists more in his own imagination than in reality. For it is a maxim with him to leave no service of his untold.” Washington seldom spoke so pointedly and was loathe to interfere with civilian control of the military. But by confronting the Conway promotion with Congress, he began demonstrating that he was as adroit at infighting as his critics and as sure-footed in defending his authority as his opponents were in undermining it.

When Gates sent word to Congress of his Saratoga victory, he entrusted it to be carried to York by his young aide James Wilkinson. En route Wilkinson paused at a tavern for rest and refreshment where he happened upon the aide to Major General William Alexander (Lord Sterling), one of Washington’s most trusted commanders. Presumably drunk, Wilkinson revealed to Sterling’s aide a letter from Conway to Gates that was highly critical of Washington. "Heaven has determined to save your country or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it," wrote Conway to Gates. The aide reported the comment to Lord Sterling who passed it along to Washington. Washington was stunned to learn that two of his subordinate generals were besmirching his reputation.

With typical Washington shrewdness, he sent a note to Conway containing the offending line without comment, giving Conway the rope to hang himself. Conway alleged that the line had been taken out of the letter’s context. Confronting Gates with the same demeaning comment, Gates said he was “inexpressibly distressed” by it and alarmed that his personal papers had been purloined by some unknown thief.

When Conway was promoted to Major General as well as Inspector General for the War Board, whose president was by then General Gates, an internecine war between Washington and his two subordinates erupted. Uninvited, Conway showed up at Valley Forge one day in his new capacity as Inspector General and Washington received him with chilly civility, telling him that he was not allowed to inspect anything until Congress sent explicit instructions detailing Conway’s authority.

In the end, Washington won out over his scheming rivals because unlike them he had character and control over his temperament. He was consistently polite to Gates thereafter, allowing his defects as a commander to undo him. Conway inundated Congress with so many abusive letters and threats to resign that Congress finally accepted his offer in April 1778. But Conway’s continued criticism of Washington earned him a duel with one of Washington’s most loyal admirers, who shot him in the mouth. Thinking he was dying, Conway penned an apology to Washington before sailing to France.

Washington showed his skill as an infighter in putting down the so-called Conway cabal. That he was able to do it while dealing with the more pressing demands of feeding and sheltering his men in their Valley Forge encampment shows that Washington was a more worthy leader than his enemies, who thought only of advancing their own interests. A lesser man, besieged by so many critics, ignored by Congress, and confronted with suffering soldiers he was unable to help might have packed it in and gone home. Washington longed for Mount Vernon and Martha, and yet not once during the war did he leave his troops to return home for a visit. Martha had always come to him.

She did not arrive until February. The death of her sister and the birth of her second grandchild delayed her. And when she did arrive Martha was taken aback by the state of the army, her husband’s somber mood and jangled nerves, and the cramped quarters in which he lived with his aides. But she was made of stern stuff, and notwithstanding her status as the general’s lady, Martha pitched in and helped the other women who along with their children had accompanied their men into the field. There were about 500 women at Valley Forge – some of them the wives of other generals. Lord Sterling’s wife had brought their daughter, whom Washington called Lady Kitty.

These camp following families lifted the spirits of the soldiers, even those who had no family on the field. Their presence kept many from deserting. The women and children did laundry, mended clothes, helped with the cooking, and provided emotional support. Women also caught the diseases that were rampant among the men. Some were killed on the battlefields while scavenging for food and supplies among the wounded and dead soldiers.

When there was food, the women were given half rations. When there was pay they were given half. Children were given quarter rations and quarter pay for work well done.

Martha had brought with her as much food and supplies as she could pack in her carriage. She also brought wool and cloth, sewing needles and thread, and home medicines. When her carriage became stuck in the snow near Brandywine Creek, she hired a sleigh to take her, her servants, and the supplies the rest of the way to Valley Forge.

Her arrival was a great morale boost to the camp including Washington’s, whose steely reserve was no defense in Martha’s company. She organized the women and joined them in knitting, sewing, and caring for the sick. She also organized occasions for receptions and entertainment. February 22 was Washington’s 46th birthday so he allowed himself to enjoy a drum and fife recital and he permitted the play Cato to be performed for him by his junior officers.

But with the advent of spring, the citizen soldiers Washington had led to Valley Forge had to be ready to fight the mightiest army in the world. Once more a providential solution appeared in the form of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludholf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben, once a member of the elite General Staff of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, now unemployed. He offered his services to the patriot cause for the recompense of his expenses.

Steuben arrived at Valley Forge in February. His baron title was bogus. The previous summer, Benjamin Franklin had sent him to America and embellished his credentials to make him more acceptable to Washington. Now the unemployed captain would be elevated to Lieutenant General and charged with turning Washington’s rag tag army into a fighting force.

As the rotund bemedaled newcomer stalked the camp, trailed by his greyhound, Washington’s army was aghast at the trappings of his horse and his holstered pistols. Steuben was equally aghast at the filth he saw all about. The carcasses of dead horses lay near where men were preparing their food, men urinated in the streams from which they drew water, the sick and the healthy intermingled. Steuben immediately instituted sanitation reforms. Latrines were dug 300 feet from huts and were filled after three days of use. The sick were quarantined and the dead immediately buried. Rotting animals were dragged outside of camp and burned.

Steuben next got to work on uniforms that distinguished officers from enlisted men and then attacked the army’s fitness. While British troops moved on the battlefield in brisk marching steps, the Continental army had no methods for uniform movement. Steuben became a tough drillmaster. He spoke almost no English and commands often had to be translated from French. But he had a rich vocabulary of profanities which he liberally used when teaching close order drill to farmers who had never moved in unison. The bayonet had not been used by the Continental soldiers because they did not trust it for any other use but to cook meat over a fire. Steuben taught them to use it as a weapon of terror. He taught them to fire their muskets, load, and fire them again faster. Everything was done with precision. All day he drilled them on the parade field, teaching them to march and wheel, to switch from line to column and back to line again. He cursed and threatened until he got the results he wanted. From dawn to dusk his voice boomed in camp over the sounds of marching feet.

Soldiers and officers were shocked that General Steuben worked directly with the men, breaking the tradition that a general officer worked through intermediary officers and sergeants. In order to leverage his efforts, Steuben trained the first 100 men personally. When he was satisfied with their discipline, they were sent with evangelistic zeal throughout the army teaching others. When basic training in arms was mastered the training regimen became more advanced.

Steuben’s arrival came at an advantageous time. Washington would lose two to three hundred officers in the spring through resignation. Death from disease had reduced the number of fit troops. New recruits were arriving who had to be quickly integrated into military life. Steuben proved to be a Godsend. The army’s rise from the ashes of Valley Forge owned much to him.

Washington hoped to field 12,000 men in the spring – about the number he had brought to Valley Forge before the decimation brought on by disease, death, and desertions. To accomplish that he was forced to do the unthinkable for that time – enlist black soldiers. Rhode Island raised an all-black battalion of 130 men with the promise that they would be freed from slavery at war’s end for good service. Massachusetts and Connecticut followed. An August census showed 755 black soldiers under arms – about 5% of the army. One officer in a French regiment described the black soldiers as self-confident. Another boasted that they were part of a Rhode Island regiment that “is the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers.”

While Washington’s men huddled at Valley Forge, Benjamin Franklin in Paris managed to pull off the diplomatic coup that would turn the war’s tide – a treaty committing the French to fight with the Americans as allies. In addition, France recognized America as a new nation, not a group of zealots in rebellion against their mother country. Washington got the news in April.

Realizing the difficulty in defending Philadelphia, the British and 3,000 Tories would leave the city in June and the war would wear on for three more years. But with France now an ally it was time for pause and celebration. Washington ordered his army to form on the parade field and the French treaty was read aloud. Thirteen cannons – one for each colony – fired a salute followed by the infantry firing their muskets in sequence. The French were cheered and the French officers in the Continental army were embraced and thanked. Steuben marched the regiments smartly in review, proudly showing off their crack precision to a delighted Washington.

An open air table was set for the 1,500 officers of the army complete with wines, liquors, and various meats. Afterward, Washington played cricket with the younger officers. At 5 p.m. Washington gathered his aides and they mounted their horses to return to headquarters. Those that remained hailed them, clapping their hands and cheering “Long live George Washington!” as they twirled a thousand hats in the air. Washington and his aides kept stopping, looking back, and crying “Huzzah!” in return.

It was a day of thanksgiving for having survived that long and horrid winter at Valley Forge.