Posted on 01/30/2003 8:56:01 AM PST by stainlessbanner
RICHMOND -- An anonymous Web site dedicated to airing allegations of fraud against the underwriters of a statue of Abraham Lincoln was shut down Wednesday after the statue's sponsors complained. The Web site, hosted by Internet service Tripod.com, had accused the U.S. Historical Society, its chairman, Robert H. Kline, and its president, Martin J. Moran, of illegally misleading state and federal officials and the public about the society's nonprofit status. The site implied that the society's plan to set up the statue at a National Park Service site in Richmond was a ploy to promote sales of replicas of the statue by an alleged for-profit affiliate of the society. On Wednesday, Kathy O'Reilly, a spokeswoman for Tripod's parent company, Terra Lycos, said her company's ``abuse team'' had shut the site down because ``it is in violation of our terms of service.'' O'Reilly said the site violated the company's policy by posting personal information, including salaries and home addresses, about Kline and Moran. She said she did not know whether the identity of the site's creator could be obtained by the society. Christopher M. Malone, an attorney who represents the society, said the Web site's claims were ``all without merit'' and that he contacted Terra Lycos, asking them to remove the site and disclose the name or names of its creators.
Malone said the Web site's accusations were based on a ``confusion of record'' concerning the society's name, resulting from a misreading of documents on file with the State Corporation Commission. According to the anonymous Web site, U.S. Historical Society also calls itself United States Historical Society. However, state corporation records list the latter as a ``fictitious name'' -- that is, a trade name used legally by a business registered under another name -- belonging to FKAO Inc., which is registered as a for-profit company. FKAO, in turn, was known at one time as Omnia Corp. Malone said that Robert Kline had been associated with Omnia but sold all of his interest in it in 1994. At present, he said, there is no relationship between the society or its officers and FKAO. He stressed that the society is not misleading anyone about how the money it raises through the sale of replicas is to be accounted for and spent -- it will go to fund the statue. As for the anonymous Web site, Malone said, ``Clearly there are statements made thereon that are defamatory.'' However, the site also had clearly reignited opposition to the statue. That opposition surfaced immediately after the project was first announced in December but had begun to wane in recent weeks. Now, prompted by the anonymous site's allegations, some opponents have asked officials to start a criminal investigation of the statue proposal. U.S. Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-5th, has written a letter to the National Park Service asking that agency to investigate the claims. Goode did not immediately return a telephone message Wednesday seeking comment. The life-size bronze statue is slated to sit at the park service's Civil War Visitor Center on the site of the Tredegar Iron Works, a major supplier of munitions to the Confederate Army. It shows Lincoln sitting on a bench with his right arm around his 12-year-old son, Tad, who gazes at his father's face. The statue commemorates the 16th U.S. president's only visit to Richmond, in April 1865 after the Confederate capital fell to Union forces. That history is what underlies the outburst of loud opposition that has been voiced in letters to the editor of the local newspaper and on several Web sites. Opponents have said that a statue of the commander in chief of the Union army that fought against the Confederacy doesn't belong in the South. One such Web site, www.petitiononline.com, invites viewers to express their agreement that ``A statue to this politician is no more appropriate in Richmond than one celebrating Sherman who burned Atlanta to the ground or one glorifying the evil Third Reich to Hitler in Tel Aviv.'' Bragdon Bowling, commander of the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, is one of the signers of that petition. He said that while he didn't know who created the anonymous Tripod Web site, he is glad they did it. Opposition to the statue was beginning to die down, Bowling noted, until the Web site's allegations breathed new life into the issue. However, he said, if the allegations of fraud are shown to be untrue, ``I'll be the first to say, 'That's it, they won.'''
On the Net:
Thanks but no thanks. We have enough reminders of the Empire in our everyday lives. We don't need another statue to a tyrant to remind us even more
That's right, a Statue of Lincoln at the Confederate Aramaments factory is appropriate when it could have been put 1/2 mile away where the freed slaves cheered him when he led the charge of carpetbaggers into town the day after it fell or maybe 3/4 of a mile away where the largest antebellum free population lived.
But that wouldn't have started any crap, so let's put it somewhere that it's sure to agitate some cracker or another. Let's be sure we make those folks in Virginia, the only State to ever elect a black govenor, look like the card carrying KKK members we up in the North all know they are.
D**n Yankees. Isn't there anything left for them to screw up at home? They have to come to my hometown and mind my business as well as theirs.
D**n Yankees.
--and deserves to be.
Probably had no right to post anyhow. No free speech, no Constitution for me. I was born below the Mason-Dixon line, I must be some kind of un-Reconstructed redneck or another.
D**n Yankees
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances
last time I checked, they let us back into the Union; if we've been kicked out, or if there is a Constitutional amendment that says the Constitution only applies to Yankees, let me know.
Note the people who put up the website were applauded by the SCV.
The heritage -is- hate.
Walt
The record is pretty clear:
"It is all an hallucination to suppose that we are ever going to get rid of slavery, or that it will ever be desirable to do so. It is a thing that we cannot do without;that is righteous, profitable, and permanent, and that belongs to Southern society as inherently, intrinsically, and durably as the white race itself. Southern men should act as if the canopy of heaven were inscribed with a covenant, in letters of fire, that the negro is here, and here forever—is our property, and ours forever—is never to be emancipated—is to be kept hard at work and in rigid subjection all his days."
--Richmond Examiner, May 8, 1861
Walt
No state has ever been out of the Union.
"It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself."
A. Lincoln 3/4/61
If Virginia never left the Union, then West Virginia was never legally admitted as a State (and Byrd is not legally a senator).
"It is all an hallucination to suppose that we are ever going to get rid of slavery, or that it will ever be desirable to do so. It is a thing that we cannot do without;that is righteous, profitable, and permanent, and that belongs to Southern society as inherently, intrinsically, and durably as the white race itself. Southern men should act as if the canopy of heaven were inscribed with a covenant, in letters of fire, that the negro is here, and here forever—is our property, and ours forever—is never to be emancipated—is to be kept
--Richmond Examiner,May 8, 1861
So is the calender. today is January 30, 2003
D**n Yankees, just can't leave anything alone. How many black govenors been elected in your state? Why don't you bash the enlightened liberals in Mass. who tore the town apart in the early '70s over forced busing while we just went on an let your activists federal judge trash the schools in peace down here? What is it ya'll all the time down here stirring up $h!+? Stay home, if you are already here, go away.
D**n hypocritical Yankees, always raising crap about other peples 19TH century bads, while ignoring their own 20/21ST century screw ups.
The site wasn't taken down through act of Congress or as a result of any law passed by Congress so this isn't a Constitutional matter. Now if you can prove that the site was taken down because of your race, sex, creed, or sexual orientation then you might get them on violating discrimination laws.
Well, I was born and raised in Tennessee.
What has any of what you post have to do with Abraham Lincoln?
He spent the last 100 years under two tons of concrete.
Walt
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