Posted on 12/14/2023 8:48:43 AM PST by Enlightened1
A group of Republican lawmakers are attempting to stop the Pentagon from taking out a Confederate monument belonging to Arlington National Cemetery.
Led by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), the group of lawmakers penned a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that demands he leaves the Reconciliation Monument, also known as the Confederate Memorial untouched until at least the conclusion of the fiscal year 2024 appropriations process.
The monument was set to be taken out by the Pentagon’s Naming Commission, a group formed to rename and remove military installations named after the Confederacy. This came in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, Fox News reports
https://x.com/blueandgray1864/status/1735023047940210936
"Despite bipartisan support for this monument, the Naming Commission, established by the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, clearly overstepped its legislative authority when it recommended that the Department of the Army remove the Reconciliation Monument from Arlington National Cemetery," the lawmakers wrote.
The Arlington National Cemetery website confirms this removal, with a section stating that "As required by Congress and implemented by the Secretary of Defense, Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) is required to remove the Confederate Memorial located in Section 16 of ANC."
It additionally notes that a "process to prepare for the memorial's careful removal and relocation has been initiated."
Clyde said that the memorial symbolizes American unity after the Civil War rather than bringing honor to the Confederacy, and that its removal would serve to desecrate the graves of Confederate soldiers buried there.
Calls to remove monuments and statues of American historical figures are nothing new; New York City recently weighed a plot to remove George Washington statues as part of a new ‘reparations’ plan.
"[T]he Reconciliation Monument does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; the memorial commemorates reconciliation and national unity," the lawmakers' letter continued.
"Furthermore, the Naming Commission’s authority explicitly prohibits the desecration of grave sites. Considering the hundreds of gravestones encircling the monument, it would be impossible for these graves to remain untouched if the Department of the Army proceeds with its proposed removal of the monument – both being a clear violation of Congress’ enacted statute and legislative intent."
Clyde, who is a Navy combat veteran, penned the letter along with 43 other House Republicans, including Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL).
The plan is for the statue to be moved to a site owned by the Virginia Military Institute, reports Cardinal News.
"The Department of Defense must respect Congress’ clear legislative intentions regarding the Naming Commission’s legislative authority, and to move forward with removal of the Reconciliation Monument would be a clear affront to the separation of powers principles outlined by our Founding Fathers in our Constitution," the lawmakers wrote.
The Pentagon currently faces a lawsuit over the statue's planned removal from Defend Arlington, a group that represents Confederate veterans, among others.
I suspect you can go right to something, and the something I am thinking of are the "Yes" votes in the House and Senate regarding the Corwin Amendment.
I know it passed the House and Senate by the 2/3rds necessary to send it to the states for ratification, but how many were Republicans, which Republicans were they, and how much more than the 2/3rds requirement did it get?
I think there may be some interesting information there.
The point being, that if it takes a "scorecard" to figure out what is what, there's a problem. And with a national issue like slavery, it's even worse to have such a fractured court with multiple concurrences and two dissents. People could complain about the Marshall Court, but people knew right where the Court was coming from regarding any number of important issues (e.g. Incorporation - Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833).
That may be, but segregated bus seating was already being targeted for a possible legal challenge, and civil disobedience was the method to initiate that challenge. Her case and others ultimately led to Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (1956) deciding that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
Parks is an interesting character but have thought she received a bit too much limelight for her racial efforts. Richard and Mildred Loving played a huge role in racial equality and after their case was decided, they kept mostly low key.
The funny thing is that in Plessey v Fergeson, the Supreme court declared that it was!
The antics of our courts would be amusing were it not for the bad consequences and human suffering that results.
But the fact remains, this was a contrived case, created just to provoke a Judicial response.
I believe laws should be changed by legislation, not by Judges. Judges don't represent the will of the people. Legislators supposedly do, but with all the manipulation of people, i'm not sure that's even true.
Of course you do. You always assume that egotism or self-interest is the motivation. We don't know the details of what he knew and when, but that doesn't stop you. George Washington may have thought that what he did would make him honored and famous as the father of his country. Did that mean he was wholly dominated by self-interest?
And what about someone who makes an anonymous donation to some institution? Yes, they want in their own mind to feel that they have made a contribution, but they aren't looking for public praise and often aren't acting out of any sort of self-interest. Among the religious, there's often a concern that one act justly while not making oneself the center of attention -- and the people who do make themselves the center of attention may be the ones who actually get things done.
I understand the principle of altruism, but I just don't believe in it most of the time.
That is your bias, and like all biases it leads to distorted judgments. You may actually be the naive one in some cases. Maybe people understood the role of egotism and self-interest in taking up some cause, and hesitated about taking action, but came to feel that the rights and wrongs of the matter were more important than their own ego gratification or self-interest.
In any case, if self-interest is everywhere and in everything and you don't believe in altruism, why attack people for having some self-interest in their motivation? It may be that there will always be some self-interest behind every action, but that doesn't mean that you are right in assuming that other people who you don't like act wholly out of self-interest.
It's a pretty safe assumption. Year after year we see people go to Washington DC of modest means, and quickly they are multi millionaires. They didn't get that money from their salary, so why is this happening?
I think Nancy has 145 million or some such, and what about Alexandria Occasio Cortez? When she got to DC, she said she couldn't afford an apartment, and now she's a multi millionaire!
Should I assume she cares about children in cages because she made a picture pretending to cry when Trump was president? Strangely, she seems to have no compassion for them now. I wonder what is different?
Where have Antifa and BLM all gone? Did all the problems of black lives and "fascism" suddenly disappear when Joe Biden was placed into power?
There are so many examples of obvious lying and self interest in our politics, that you have to be naive to ever believe anyone does anything for moral upright reasons.
What was that Nathaniel Hawthorne story about "Young Goodman Brown"?
That everyone is corrupt is a safer bet, and the economic evidence i've found surrounding the issue of slavery makes a compelling case that it was so back then too.
I stand corrected 1 (ONE) Republican owned a slave.
But that one was the most famous slave in American history, and the story of his ownership was published by newspapers around the country in 1857.
So your unsupported clam that no Republican owned a slave was proven false. Only one was needed to refute the claim. Now you have a new, unsupported claim that it was only one. What is the basis of your assertion? If you want more....
Dinesh D'Souza's actual claim was limited to one year, 1860. That limited claim was still false, and admitted false.
https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1138075846344880130
Dinesh D'Souza's original false claim
Dinesh D'Souza
@DineshDSouzaDo you know how many Republicans owned slaves in 1860, the year before the Civil War started?
The answer may surprise you if you listen to progressive (fake) historians.
Answer:
In the video "answer", D'Souza claimed that in 1860, the year before the Civil War, not one Republican in the United States owned a slave. Fake historian; fake history.
There were four delegates to the Kentucky Republican Convention in 1860 who were documented slaveholders in 1860. There were five such delegates found in Missouri. Not just any Republicans, but delegates chosen for the Convention. Here is Dinesh D'Souza's twitter response when faced by refutation.
https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1138183439922999296
Dinesh D'Souza
@DineshDSouzaTHREAD: So was I wrong about what I said about the Republican Party and slavery? Yes and no. My specific claim that no Republicans owned slaves in 1860 is incorrect. A handful did. But my larger claim that the Democrats were overwhelmingly responsible for slavery stands
3:37 PM · Jun 10, 2019
Weasel words could not save him. Just "yes" would have done. He made a very specific claim that not one Republican in the United States owned a slave in 1860. His claim was proven false.
And he went on to modify his claim so that now we can count on two hands the number of Republican slaveowners in 1860. That two hands worth was shown just by researching the delegates from Kentucky and Missouri at the Republican convention.
https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1138183480263806976
Dinesh D'Souza
@DineshDSouzaSo I’ll modify my original claim to say that in 1860, we can count on two hands the number of Republican slaveowners. Moreover, the vast, vast majority of the 4 million slaves in the country then were owned by Democrats. I’ll conclude by asking @KevinMKruse if he agrees with THAT
3:37 PM · Jun 10, 2019
D'Souza made an unresearched baseless claim and was caught.
https://twitter.com/dlaquarabbit/status/1137063399706116096
Jordan E. Taylor
@PubliusorPerishWow, so it turns out that this is super easy to verify. So I took 20 minutes and looked at the delegates for the 1860 Republican convention from Kentucky (where my family is from) and cross-referenced them with the 1860 slave schedules for KY: at least four delegates owned slaves
https://twitter.com/dlaquarabbit/status/1137063399706116096
Elon's parents failed him
@dlaquarabbitSo that's 5 of 18 Republican delegates from Missouri alone that were easily proved to own people (28%) in 1860.
Thank you @ARothmanHistory for the link to the 1860 Republican National Convention. Like shooting fish in a barrel!
#TakeItBack Dinesh!
1:26 PM · Jun 7, 2019
https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1137444972708409351
Kevin M. Kruse
@KevinMKruseYeah, but as others noted, @DineshDSouza promised he'd "take it back" if people found "one solitary" example of a Republican who owned slaves in 1860 and you've found five.
That's not "one solitary" so … checkmate, libs!
Hey, you forgot to blame it all on Abraham Lincoln! What are you going soft? Abraham Lincoln introduced corruption to the world. AOC is wealthy because of Abraham Lincoln!
I think AJ Harlon hits the nail pretty squarely on the head when he writes:
"Everyone knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons (emphasis added)" and:
"The result of the whole matter is that, while this court has frequently adjudged, and at the present term has recognized the doctrine, that a State cannot, consistently with the Constitution of the United States, prevent white and black citizens, having the required qualifications for jury service, from sitting in the same jury box (note: I believe he is referring to Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880) which ruled that states cannot exclude serving on a jury based on race), it is now solemnly held that a State may prohibit white and black citizens from sitting in the same passenger coach on a public highway, or may require that they be separated by a "partition," when in the same passenger coach. May it not now be reasonably expected that astute men of the dominant race, who affect to be disturbed at the possibility that the integrity of the white race may be corrupted, or that its supremacy will be imperiled, by contact on public highways with black people, will endeavor to procure statutes requiring white and black jurors to be separated in the jury box by a "partition," and that, upon retiring from the courtroom to consult as to their verdict, such partition, if it be a moveable one, shall be taken to their consultation room and set up in such way as to prevent black jurors from coming too close to their brother jurors of the white race." (emphasis added)
A good paper on how "separate but equal" was often not equal is at: Separate But Not Equal: The Sweatt Case
And yes, the Legislature should the driver of laws. But when those laws are suspected of running afoul of equal protection or have any number of other potential deficiencies, the Judiciary is going to get involved.
Good grief. D'Souza is tedious.
The Democrats of yesteryear are not the Democrats of today. Not even close.
George Washington was sympathetic to Federalist policies and had slaves. Thomas Jefferson was a "Democratic-Republican" and had slaves. Zachary Taylor was a Whig and had slaves.
Where there’s power, there’s the potential for corruption, but politics didn’t always involve megadonors and mass media. Representatives were people from the community, people you knew and people who you could hold accountable. Politicians then, as now, were a mixed bag, but they certainly weren’t all Nancy Pelosis or AOCs.
H.R. No. 80
36th Congress, 2nd Session
https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=056/llcg056.db&recNum=444
House, 28 Feb 1861, 133-65
https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=056/llcg056.db&recNum=444
Senate, March 2, 1861, 24-12
36th Congress, membership and party affiliation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary
You have no idea what your talking about you just spin things get out of here and go back to your Tic Toc club.
Your to lazy or to dumb to check out the facts
You idiot you don’t know what you read
Old Farmer’s Almanac to PROPRTED THE FACTS on the issue about U.S. Supreme court.
Do know how to even check out the SCOTUS records.
Stay in your basement it’s where you belong.
Re: 173, 174 - Grow up. Argue the point.
Lost again are we call for help
Re: 176 - Argue the point.
It’s the intellectually honest thing to do.
Old Farmer’s Almanac to PROPRTED THE FACTS on the issue about U.S. Supreme court.
What the hell is PROPRTED?
Do know how to even check out the SCOTUS records.
Yeah, I was the one who linked to the U.S. Reports at the Library of Congress, cited the opinion and quoted from it. You are the moron who cited the Old Farmers Almanac with no quote of anything.
On March 31, 1883, G.W.P.C. Lee surrendered the title to Arlington to the Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln. Robert Todd Lincoln was present at Appomattox Courthouse when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-arlington-national-cemetery-came-to-be-145147007/
How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be
The fight over Robert E. Lee’s beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades
Robert M. Poole
Smithsonian Magazine
November 2009
[excerpt]
On April 6, 1874, within months of his mother's funeral, Custis went to Congress with a new petition. Avoiding her inflammatory suggestion that Arlington be cleared of graves, he asked instead for an admission that the property had been taken unlawfully and requested compensation for it. He argued that his mother's good-faith attempt to pay the "insurrectionary tax" of $92.07 on Arlington was the same as if she had paid it.
While the petition languished for months in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Meigs worried that it would "interfere with the United States' tenure of this National Cemetery—a result to be avoided by all just means." He need not have worried. A few weeks later, the petition died quietly in committee, attended by no debate and scant notice.
Custis Lee might have given up then and there if not for signs that the hard feelings between North and South were beginning to soften. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Union veteran elected on the promise of healing scars from the Civil War, was sworn in as president in March 1877.
Hayes hardly had time to unpack his bags before Custis Lee revived the campaign for Arlington—this time in court.
Asserting ownership of the property, Lee asked the Circuit Court of Alexandria, Virginia, to evict all trespassers occupying it as a result of the 1864 auction. As soon as U.S. Attorney General Charles Devens heard about the suit, he asked that the case be shifted to federal court, where he felt the government would get a fairer hearing. In July 1877, the matter landed in the lap of Judge Robert W. Hughes of the U.S. Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Hughes, a lawyer and newspaper editor, had been appointed to the bench by President Grant.
After months of legal maneuvering and arguments, Hughes ordered a jury trial. Custis Lee's team of lawyers was headed by Francis L. Smith, the Alexandrian who had strategized with Lee's father years before. Their argument turned upon the legality of the 1864 tax sale. After a six-day trial, a jury found for Lee on January 30, 1879: by requiring the "insurrectionary tax" to be paid in person, the government had deprived Custis Lee of his property without due process of law. "The impolicy of such a provision of law is as obvious to me as its unconstitutionality," Hughes wrote. "Its evil would be liable to fall not only upon disloyal but upon the most loyal citizens. A severe illness lasting only ninety or a hundred days would subject the owner of land to the irreclaimable loss of its possession."
The government appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court—which ruled for Lee again. On December 4, 1882, Associate Justice Samuel Freeman Miller, a Kentucky native appointed by President Lincoln, wrote for the 5 to 4 majority, holding that the 1864 tax sale had been unconstitutional and was therefore invalid.
The Lees had retaken Arlington.
This left few options for the federal government, which was now technically trespassing on private property. It could abandon an Army fort on the grounds, roust the residents of Freedmen's Village, disinter almost 20,000 graves and vacate the property. Or it could buy the estate from Custis Lee—if he was willing to sell it.
He was. Both sides agreed on a price of $150,000, the property's fair market value. Congress quickly appropriated the funds. Lee signed papers conveying the title on March 31, 1883, which placed federal ownership of Arlington beyond dispute. The man who formally accepted title to the property for the government was none other than Robert Todd Lincoln, secretary of war and son of the president so often bedeviled by Custis Lee's father. If the sons of such adversaries could bury past arguments, perhaps there was hope for national reunion.
You have no idea what your (sic) talking about you just spin things get out of here and go back to your Tic Toc club.Your (sic) to (sic) lazy or to (sic) dumb to check out the facts
On March 31, 1883, G.W.P.C. Lee surrendered the title to Arlington to the Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln. Robert Todd Lincoln was present at Appomattox Courthouse when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.
Stephen I. Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) holds the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice.
https://stevevladeck.substack.com/p/17-arlington-the-lees-and-the-officer
The One First Long Read: Sovereign Immunity and the “Officer Fiction”17. Arlington, the Lees, and the "Officer Fiction"
A dispute between Robert E. Lee's family and the federal government over a Civil War-era tax has had outsized influence in shaping the modern rules for suing the government
Steve Vladeck
Mar 6, 2023[excerpt]
In June 1862, Congress passed a law (known as the “Doolittle Act,” after its sponsor, Wisconsin Senator James Rood Doolittle) that empowered federal agents to assess and collect taxes on confiscated property in “insurrectionary districts.” Although the statute was partly designed to raise revenue for the war, it was aimed just as much to punish Confederate VIPs like the Lees. If the taxes were not paid by the property owner, commissioners were authorized to sell the land.
Under the statute, a tax of $92.07 was assessed against Arlington in 1863. Mary, who was stuck in Richmond because of the fighting and was also in no medical condition to travel, asked her cousin Philip R. Fendall to appear and pay the bill. This was a remarkable concession to federal authority, or, at least, to the prospect that the Lees might one day be subjected to it again. But it was to no avail; when Fendall presented himself before federal commissioners in Alexandria, he was told that they would accept the tax only from Mary herself (even though nothing in the text of the statute clearly required the title holder to appear in person). Declaring the property in default, the tax commissioners put it up for sale. On January 11, 1864, the federal government bought the property—and promptly turned it into a national military cemetery, a purpose it has served ever since.
The Lees would spend 17 years after the war fighting to get Arlington back, including through multiple failed petitions to Congress. And after the “Compromise of 1877” seemed to augur a softening of hostility toward former Confederates, Robert and Mary’s son George Washington Custis Lee (known as Custis) decided to try the courts. Custis filed an “ejectment” action in Virginia state court, seeking to have the court physically remove those he claimed were in unlawful possession of Arlington—including Frederick Kaufman and Richard P. Strong, the civilian and military federal officers overseeing the Arlington property, respectively.
Because the validity of Kaufman’s and Strong’s “possession” of Arlington turned on whether the United States had validly acquired it, the federal government removed the case to federal court—where it urged dismissal on the ground that Custis Lee could not have sued the government directly, so that his suit should be barred by sovereign immunity. The lower courts sided with Lee, teeing up the government’s (and Kaufman’s and Strong’s) appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court also sided with Lee, albeit by a 5-4 vote. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Miller agreed with the federal government that the Constitution protects the sovereign immunity of the United States, and thus bars suits against it without its consent. Indeed, Miller’s opinion remains today one of the most robust assertions of the federal government’s constitutional sovereign immunity. But that didn’t resolve the matter in dispute in Lee, Miller wrote, because suits against federal officers, even for actions undertaken in their official capacity as federal officers (no one suggested Kaufman and Strong had taken possession of Arlington in their personal capacities), were often another matter, especially where the underlying claim implicated the constitutional rights of the plaintiff (here, the due process and Takings Clause rights of the Lees), and where it could be shown that the officers themselves bore some personal responsibility for the claimed unlawfulness. In other words, Custis’s suit against Kaufman and Strong did not implicate the federal government’s sovereign immunity because of both the nature of the relief he sought (ejectment) and the legal violation he sought to remedy (a constitutional violation).
[...]
As for Arlington, it turned out that Custis Lee didn’t really want it back. Rather than force the federal government to disinter nearly 20,000 graves, abandon the fort that had been erected on the grounds, and otherwise clear the property, Custis sold the property “back” to the United States for $150,000. Congress quickly appropriated the funds, and Arlington was formally deeded over to the federal government on March 31, 1883.
This is where the history gets too strange for fiction: The federal officer who accepted the title was President Arthur’s Secretary of War, who in 1883 just happened to be Robert Todd Lincoln. Lincoln was not just President Lincoln's oldest son; he had been an eyewitness to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox (and would be the last surviving eyewitness upon his 1926 death).
Lost again are we call for help
On March 31, 1883, G.W.P.C. Lee surrendered the title to Arlington to the Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln. Robert Todd Lincoln was present at Appomattox Courthouse when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.
https://arlingtonhousefoundationinc.wildapricot.org/about/the-stories/witness-to-history
Arlington House FoundationWitness to History
[excerpt]
Following the death of his mother, in 1873, George Washington Custis Lee brought suit against the U.S. Government in hopes of gaining compensation for Arlington after its seizure from his mother for failing to pay her taxes in person in 1862. After a long court battle, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Custis was entitled to the property. Knowing that he could not live at Arlington and operate it as a plantation estate, he sold the title back to the U.S. Government for $150,000. Lee signed papers conveying the title on March 31, 1883, and Robert Todd Lincoln, secretary of war and son of President Lincoln, accepted title to the property for the government.
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