Currently viewing the tag: “Honors”
The U.S. Senate has passed a Boxer/Feinstein-sponsored resolution honoring Elizabeth Taylor. It reads, in part:
Whereas Elizabeth Taylor used her fame to raise awareness and advocate for people affected by HIV/AIDS;
Whereas, at a time when HIV/AIDS was largely an unknown disease and those who were affected by HIV/AIDS were ostracized and shunned, Elizabeth Taylor called for and demonstrated compassion by publicly holding the hand of her friend and former costar, Rock Hudson, after he had announced that he had AIDS;
Whereas Elizabeth Taylor testified before Congress saying, “It is my hope that history will show that the American people and our leaders met the challenge of AIDS rationally and with all the resources at their disposal, for our sake and that of all humanity.”;
Whereas, in 1985, Elizabeth Taylor became the Founding National Chairman for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (commonly known as “amfAR”);
Whereas, in 1991, Elizabeth Taylor founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to provide direct support to those suffering from the disease;
Whereas the extensive efforts of Elizabeth Taylor have helped educate the public and lawmakers about the need for research, treatment, and compassion for those suffering from HIV/AIDS;
Resolved, That the Senate recognizes and honors the courageous, compassionate leadership and many professional accomplishments of Elizabeth Taylor; and offers its deepest condolences to her family.
(Via – LGBTPOV)
Subscribe to Joe.My.God.
Upholding a panel decision that had been issued last August, the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a Federal crime to lie about receiving a military honor,was unconstitutional. The reaction to the decision has been, in most cases, predictable, but as Chief Judge Alex Konzinski noted in the court’s majority opinion, the fact that someone tells a lie doesn’t mean that their speech is unworthy of Constitutional protection:
Why do we lie? Let Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, count the ways.
“We lie to protect our privacy (‘No, I don’t live around here’); to avoid hurt feelings (‘Friday is my study night’); to make others feel better (‘Gee, you’ve gotten skinny’); to avoid recriminations (‘I only lost $ 10 at poker’),” Kozinski wrote recently in a case about an inveterate liar named Xavier Alvarez who, just to drive home the point, is also known as Javier Alvarez.
Kozinski listed 28 other reasons we avoid the truth, including to “avoid a nudnick” and to “defeat an objective (‘I’m allergic to latex’),” and ending sweetly with “to maintain innocence (‘There are eight tiny reindeer on the rooftop’).”
Kozinski’s entertaining treatise was in service to his point about the Constitution.
“If all untruthful speech is unprotected . . . we could all be made into criminals, depending on which lies those making the laws find offensive,” he wrote. “And we would have to censor our speech to avoid the risk of prosecution for saying something that turns out to be false.
“The First Amendment does not tolerate giving the government such power.”
This, I think, is the most important point about the Stolen Valor Act. It’s easy for us to condemn the actions of someone who goes around falsely claiming that they were awarded the Bronze Star or some other military honor. Someone who does that reveals a character that isn’t very worthy of being defended. But, should it be illegal, especially when that means opening up the floodgates to an entirely new category of speech that could potentially be subject to government regulation?
To answer that, I think it’s important to be aware of the facts of this particular case, as set forth in the opinion, which I’ve embedded below:
Xavier Alvarez won a seat on the Three Valley Water District Board of Directors in 2007. On July 23, 2007, at a joint meeting with a neighboring water district board, newly-seated Director Alvarez introduced himself, stating “I’m a retired marine of 25 years. I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy. I’m still around.” With the exception of “I’m still around,” Alvarez’s statement wasa series of bizarre lies, and Alvarez was indicted and convicted for falsely claiming that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Fairly despicable? Yes, but it’s important to note the context of the lies. He didn’t tell them as part of an effort to get elected, he didn’t tell them in order to persuade people to support his position on a particular issue, he didn’t tell them in order to achieve some kind of monetary gain. They were just, as the Court describes them, “bizarre lies” made more bizarre by the fact that determining whether or not a particular person has won the Medal Of Honor is a fairly easy task. There’s no real explanation for why Alvarez did it, but it is fairly obvious that nobody suffered any actual harm as a result of his lies, If they had, then Alvarez could have been prosecuted for fraud, or any other of a number of criminal offenses involving deception being used to deprive people of their property. That didn’t happen in this case, though, and Alvarez’s lies were obviously found out fairly quickly.
Nobody I’m aware of has made the argument that fraud and defamation should be considered protected speech. However, as Judge Kozinski noted in his concurrence, there is a substantial danger in holding that all false statements are undeserving of constitutional protection:
So what, exactly, does the dissenters’ ever-truthful utopia look like? In a word: terrifying. If false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he’s Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won’t hurt a bit. Phrases such as “I’m working late tonight, hunny,” “I got stuck in traffic” and “I didn’t inhale” could all be made into crimes. Without the robust protections of the First Amendment, the white lies, exaggerations and deceptions that are an integral part of human intercourse would become targets of censorship, subject
only to the rubber stamp known as “rational basis review.”What the dissenters seem to forget is that Alvarez was convicted for pure speech. And when it comes to pure speech, truth is not the sine qua non of First Amendment protection. See Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 419 (1988) (“The First Amendment is a value-free provision whose protection is not dependent on the truth, popularity or social utility of the ideas and beliefs which are offered.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). That the government can constitutionally regulate some narrow categories of false speech—such as false advertising, defamation and fraud—doesn’t mean that all such speech falls outside the First Amendment’s bounds. As the Supreme Court has cautioned, “In this field every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” Id. at 419-20 (internal quotation mark omitted); Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945) (Jackson, J., concurring). Yet the regime the dissenters agitate for today— one that criminalizes pure speech simply because it’s false— leaves wide areas of public discourse to the mercies of the truth police.
Moreover, as Kozinski notes, we lie to each other on a regular basis about all kinds of things. We call them “white lies” in order to make it seem like it’s not so bad, but an untruthful statement is an untruthful statement, and giving the government the power to punish speech just because it is untruthful establishes a dangerous precedent:
It doesn’t matter whether we think that such lies are despicable or cause more harm than good. An important aspect of personal autonomy is the right to shape one’s public and private persona by choosing when to tell the truth about oneself, when to conceal and when to deceive. Of course, lies are often disbelieved or discovered, and that too is part of the pull and tug of social intercourse. But it’s critical to leave such interactions in private hands, so that we can make choices about who we are. How can you develop a reputation as a straight shooter if lying is not an option?
Even if untruthful speech were not valuable for its own sake, its protection is clearly required to give breathing room to truthful self-expression, which is unequivocally protected by the First Amendment. See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 271-72 (1964). Americans tell somewhere between two and fifty lies each day. See Jochen Mecke, Cultures of Lying 8 (2007). If all untruthful speech is unprotected, as the dissenters claim, we could all be made into criminals, depending on which lies those making the laws find offensive. And we would have to censor our speech to avoid the risk of prosecution for saying something that turns out to be false. The First Amendment does not tolerate giving the government such power.
Kozinski gets it absolutely correct here, I think. Yes, Avalrez revealed himself to be something of a jerk for falsely claiming that he won the Medal Of Honor, but why should the law treat that any differently than a guy who lies about his golf game, or how big the fish he almost caught was? Moreover, if you accept the argument that “untruthful” speech doesn’t deserve Constitutional protection, then you have to deal with the issue of how you decide if something is “truthful” or not. In cases like Alvarez’s, of course, it’s fairly easy to determine that he was lying, but that won’t always be the case, and turning government into the “truth police” would be dangerous, for the reasons that Kozinski notes.
So, yea, a guy who lies about receiving the Medal of Honor is a scumbag, but there’s no reason that he should be a criminal.
Upholding a panel decision that had been issued last August, the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a Federal crime to lie about receiving a military honor,was unconstitutional. The reaction to the decision has been, in most cases, predictable, but as Chief Judge Alex Konzinski noted in the court’s majority opinion, the fact that someone tells a lie doesn’t mean that their speech is unworthy of Constitutional protection:
Why do we lie? Let Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, count the ways.
“We lie to protect our privacy (‘No, I don’t live around here’); to avoid hurt feelings (‘Friday is my study night’); to make others feel better (‘Gee, you’ve gotten skinny’); to avoid recriminations (‘I only lost $ 10 at poker’),” Kozinski wrote recently in a case about an inveterate liar named Xavier Alvarez who, just to drive home the point, is also known as Javier Alvarez.
Kozinski listed 28 other reasons we avoid the truth, including to “avoid a nudnick” and to “defeat an objective (‘I’m allergic to latex’),” and ending sweetly with “to maintain innocence (‘There are eight tiny reindeer on the rooftop’).”
Kozinski’s entertaining treatise was in service to his point about the Constitution.
“If all untruthful speech is unprotected . . . we could all be made into criminals, depending on which lies those making the laws find offensive,” he wrote. “And we would have to censor our speech to avoid the risk of prosecution for saying something that turns out to be false.
“The First Amendment does not tolerate giving the government such power.”
This, I think, is the most important point about the Stolen Valor Act. It’s easy for us to condemn the actions of someone who goes around falsely claiming that they were awarded the Bronze Star or some other military honor. Someone who does that reveals a character that isn’t very worthy of being defended. But, should it be illegal, especially when that means opening up the floodgates to an entirely new category of speech that could potentially be subject to government regulation?
To answer that, I think it’s important to be aware of the facts of this particular case, as set forth in the opinion, which I’ve embedded below:
Xavier Alvarez won a seat on the Three Valley Water District Board of Directors in 2007. On July 23, 2007, at a joint meeting with a neighboring water district board, newly-seated Director Alvarez introduced himself, stating “I’m a retired marine of 25 years. I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy. I’m still around.” With the exception of “I’m still around,” Alvarez’s statement wasa series of bizarre lies, and Alvarez was indicted and convicted for falsely claiming that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Fairly despicable? Yes, but it’s important to note the context of the lies. He didn’t tell them as part of an effort to get elected, he didn’t tell them in order to persuade people to support his position on a particular issue, he didn’t tell them in order to achieve some kind of monetary gain. They were just, as the Court describes them, “bizarre lies” made more bizarre by the fact that determining whether or not a particular person has won the Medal Of Honor is a fairly easy task. There’s no real explanation for why Alvarez did it, but it is fairly obvious that nobody suffered any actual harm as a result of his lies, If they had, then Alvarez could have been prosecuted for fraud, or any other of a number of criminal offenses involving deception being used to deprive people of their property. That didn’t happen in this case, though, and Alvarez’s lies were obviously found out fairly quickly.
Nobody I’m aware of has made the argument that fraud and defamation should be considered protected speech. However, as Judge Kozinski noted in his concurrence, there is a substantial danger in holding that all false statements are undeserving of constitutional protection:
So what, exactly, does the dissenters’ ever-truthful utopia look like? In a word: terrifying. If false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he’s Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won’t hurt a bit. Phrases such as “I’m working late tonight, hunny,” “I got stuck in traffic” and “I didn’t inhale” could all be made into crimes. Without the robust protections of the First Amendment, the white lies, exaggerations and deceptions that are an integral part of human intercourse would become targets of censorship, subject
only to the rubber stamp known as “rational basis review.”What the dissenters seem to forget is that Alvarez was convicted for pure speech. And when it comes to pure speech, truth is not the sine qua non of First Amendment protection. See Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 419 (1988) (“The First Amendment is a value-free provision whose protection is not dependent on the truth, popularity or social utility of the ideas and beliefs which are offered.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). That the government can constitutionally regulate some narrow categories of false speech—such as false advertising, defamation and fraud—doesn’t mean that all such speech falls outside the First Amendment’s bounds. As the Supreme Court has cautioned, “In this field every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” Id. at 419-20 (internal quotation mark omitted); Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945) (Jackson, J., concurring). Yet the regime the dissenters agitate for today— one that criminalizes pure speech simply because it’s false— leaves wide areas of public discourse to the mercies of the truth police.
Moreover, as Kozinski notes, we lie to each other on a regular basis about all kinds of things. We call them “white lies” in order to make it seem like it’s not so bad, but an untruthful statement is an untruthful statement, and giving the government the power to punish speech just because it is untruthful establishes a dangerous precedent:
It doesn’t matter whether we think that such lies are despicable or cause more harm than good. An important aspect of personal autonomy is the right to shape one’s public and private persona by choosing when to tell the truth about oneself, when to conceal and when to deceive. Of course, lies are often disbelieved or discovered, and that too is part of the pull and tug of social intercourse. But it’s critical to leave such interactions in private hands, so that we can make choices about who we are. How can you develop a reputation as a straight shooter if lying is not an option?
Even if untruthful speech were not valuable for its own sake, its protection is clearly required to give breathing room to truthful self-expression, which is unequivocally protected by the First Amendment. See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 271-72 (1964). Americans tell somewhere between two and fifty lies each day. See Jochen Mecke, Cultures of Lying 8 (2007). If all untruthful speech is unprotected, as the dissenters claim, we could all be made into criminals, depending on which lies those making the laws find offensive. And we would have to censor our speech to avoid the risk of prosecution for saying something that turns out to be false. The First Amendment does not tolerate giving the government such power.
Kozinski gets it absolutely correct here, I think. Yes, Avalrez revealed himself to be something of a jerk for falsely claiming that he won the Medal Of Honor, but why should the law treat that any differently than a guy who lies about his golf game, or how big the fish he almost caught was? Moreover, if you accept the argument that “untruthful” speech doesn’t deserve Constitutional protection, then you have to deal with the issue of how you decide if something is “truthful” or not. In cases like Alvarez’s, of course, it’s fairly easy to determine that he was lying, but that won’t always be the case, and turning government into the “truth police” would be dangerous, for the reasons that Kozinski notes.
So, yea, a guy who lies about receiving the Medal of Honor is a scumbag, but there’s no reason that he should be a criminal.
The CEO of the Winterfest boat parade and philanthropist BJ Buntrock were among a small cadre of civic leaders honored this week by the city of Fort Lauderdale for public service.
Buntrock was named distinguished citizen, while Lisa Scott-Founds of Winterfest was named citizen of the year. George Burrows was honored with the city’s founder’s award, and Ed Udvardy was named an exemplary former city employee.
More than 200 people turned out for the awards ceremony at City Hall, including former mayors Jim Naugle, Bob Cox, Rob Dressler and Clay Shaw. The people were chosen by a blue-ribbon awards committee and received the recognition from city commissioners.
Here is Cox and Naugle chatting before the ceremony.
Here are videos of the four accepting their awards…
Buntrock is a longtime businesswoman and philanthropist. She has been involved in organizations to help the less fortunate including the Eagle Charter Academy, Hospice of Broward County, Seagull High School and the Pantry of Broward. She also provides scholarships to economically challenged youth.
She accepted her award from City Commissioner Charlotte Rodstrom.
Just as the insistent MoveOn.org lobbying campaign for PBS tells you something about just whom PBS is pleasing, disgraced former CBS anchorman Dan Rather being sympathetically profiled for Mother Jones tells you that all Rather's patter about corporations ruining the integrity of the news has a ready audience on the hard left.
Mother Jones insisted "At 79, the former CBS anchorman is still kicking ass and winning Emmys." (Dan Rather Reports actually won a news Emmy in 2008, so someone is still trying to reassemble Rather's shredded reputation.) They also notice almost no one watches his HDNet show, but suggest that's a terrible shame. Freelance writer Jim Rendon recounted how Rather worked on a story about electronic voting machines, a favorite of the paranoid Janeane Garofalo left, that thinks both Gore and Kerry beat Bush:
The former CBS News anchorman is recounting a story he'd reported in 2007 about problems with electronic voting machines. "We found out that these wonderful, electronic, technological marvels were manufactured in what amounted to a sweatshop in the Philippines—the Philippines, exclamation point!" he says, in that ascending tone so familiar to generations of Americans.
That sounds a little insulting to Filipino-Americans, perhaps?
"The equipment wouldn't fit in its boxes, so the workers, two of them, had to put their feet on the thing and shove it into the box. They've got to get it in there, it's got to ship, and so they've got four feet in there pushing this thing." He lets out a laugh. "In some cases, the company's explanation of why ." these things are good fell into the category of 'If bullshit were music, these guys would be a full symphony orchestra.'"
That's rich. Dan Rather was a full symphony orchestra of journalistic fakery with the phony documents in the George Bush Texas Air National Guard "expose." If there were a shred of journalistic professionalism in that story, his colleagues would have stuck with him. Instead, he's exiled at HDNet. Rendon acknowledged the debacle, but sticks to the violins and sympathy:
"He was incredibly hurt and angry," says Jim Murphy, then his executive producer. Rather nonetheless agreed to stay on with the 60 Minutes crew. That, he says, is when he realized he was in trouble. He proposed dozens of stories but few were approved, and the handful that he completed aired in the worst slots. He believes that Viacom, which acquired CBS in 2000, was trying to push him off the show to curry favor with the Bush administration.
"The fact that he keeps making these claims is outrageous," says Jeff Fager, the show's executive producer, who keeps pictures of Rather on his office wall even though the two have barely spoken in years. (Rather sued CBS, in part to unearth evidence of Viacom's political meddling, but his case was dismissed in January 2010.) "I think he was distracted, and it was hard for him to focus on just doing stories," Fager adds. "There might be something to his crusade, that the conglomerates in media don't want to take the chance of investing in reporting because it is risky. But not this company."
"These are people that I worked with, I trusted, who came under extreme pressure," Rather responds when I bring up Fager's comment. "I'd like to think they did things they preferred not to do, such as say that I wasn't working hard or that the quality of my work was low. Jeff knows better than that." He pauses for a long time. "He'll have to live with his conscience."
Despite the troubles, it came as a shock for Rather when, in June 2006, the network declined to renew his contract. Even today, it takes considerable prompting to get him to open up about it. While invariably warm and polite, rushing to open doors for a reporter half his age, Rather harbors an old-school journalist's reluctance to color stories with personal sentiment, even when the story happens to be about him. "I felt like hell, of course I did," he finally admits. "I particularly feel bad for other people who lost their jobs." He adds that he was never bitter; he had a supportive family, freedom from financial worries, and a career that had long since surpassed his wildest hopes. But Mapes, his old producer, says Rather felt betrayed. "When you work for a company for that long," she told me, "when you cover everything from the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War, and then to find out that the company was not loyal back—that was really painful to him."
This is not the kind of parade Dan Rather would get from Mother Jones if the target of his phony-document story was Al Gore or Ralph Nader. But it is required for Rendon to get access to Rather and cash his freelance check.
New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter is brought on late in the piece to lament that he has never written about Rather's show, since HDNet not only has few viewers, but are lame at public relations. Does Stelter really mean to tell the public that he doesn't write about anything unless publicists push him hard enough? It's more likely that unlike Rendon, he thinks Rather is damaged goods and doesn't deserve any puffery. That would also be the journalistically honorable position.
For his part, Rendon is still selling how Rather somehow isn't being exploitative by doing a story with an alleged victim of childhood sex abuse from a Catholic priest. (No sensationalism in that subject.)
BACK IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, Rather is interviewing Don McLean, a real estate developer who was molested by two priests when he was 10 years old. Faced with lawsuits from dozens of abuse victims, the Catholic diocese in San Diego filed for bankruptcy protection. But a judge caught the church hiding assets, and Rather's reporting had uncovered a similar pattern in other dioceses. With McLean's wife and children looking on, Rather asks him about the church's response to his accusations, the property that the church had neglected to reveal, and how the abuse changed his life. But he avoids asking about the exact nature of the abuse. "He did come close to tearing up," Rather muses to his crew when we're all back in the car. "I hoped that he wouldn't. We've all seen, all provoked the archetypal tearful breakdown. We were not after that today."
Rather tends to avoid the cheap sensationalism driving today's news cycle. His story was fundamentally about accounting—and the church acting more like a big corporation than an institution of faith. That tension, not the titillating detail, is what interests him.
As if it isn't "titillating" to insist that the world's largest church tolerates pedophilia. It sounds very generous for Rather not to ask the alleged victim for specifics. But doesn't that suggest that he automatically believes the subject? And doesn't that suggest the usual anti-church bias? This is Mother Jones, so no one asks. Instead, we get sappy tributes to how hard Old Man Rather still works:
I heard his alarm sound at 6 a.m. through the thin hotel wall. He was on camera by 8 and then drove from interview to interview all day, never slowing down until 10:30 p.m., when he capped off dinner in Newport Beach with two scoops of ice cream and a yarn about crash-landing in a small plane in Alaska. It was an easy day, he quipped. "He's 79 years old and he's working at the same pace he did when he was 18," Peyronnin marvels.
Whether he's creating a symphony orchestra of BS apparently doesn't matter….as long as the symphony pleases the hard left.
Washington (CNN) – The last U.S. World War I veteran to die will receive an honors burial at Arlington National Ceremony next week, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, announced Friday.
“Allowing our country to pay its respects to Mr. Buckles and all of our courageous World War I veterans is necessary and important. It’s a fitting way to say goodbye to our last Doughboy – a man whose life spanned more than 100 years and who was our last living American connection to the Great War,” Rockefeller said.
Rockefeller had been seeking permission to hold a public ceremony in the U.S. Capitol honoring Buckles, who died at the age of 110 on February 27, but House and Senate leadership turned down his request.
In a statement released last week, Rockefeller expressed disappointment that legislation to allow Buckles to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda had been blocked by House Speaker John Boehner.
“This is a big disappointment and a surprising decision by the Speaker,” Rockefeller said in the statement. “Surely, Speaker Boehner can agree that the Congress should pause for a moment to pay its respects to Mr. Buckles and all our World War I veterans.”
But Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said that no legislation has been blocked, and said that Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Reid decided that Arlington National Cemetery is a more appropriate venue.
“Everyone honors Mr. Buckles’ service to the United States, and the extraordinary sacrifices made by every member of our Armed Forces who served in World War One,” Steel said. “That’s why Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Reid will ask Secretary Gates to allow Mr. Buckles’ family to use the amphitheater at Arlington cemetery for his memorial service – surrounded by honored veterans of every American war.”
Buckles dedicated that last years of his life to advocating for the creation of a national World War I memorial on the National Mall. He made several trips to Washington to work with members of his congressional delegation to persuade lawmakers to grant federal status to an existing World War I monument that currently only honors residents of the District of Columbia.
Both Sen. Rockefeller and Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito – who represents Buckles’ West Virginia district – have been strong supporters of Buckles’ advocacy of World War I veterans, and have cosponsored legislation to rededicate the District of Columbia War Memorial as the District of Columbia and National World War I Memorial.
Buckles will lie in honor for public viewing at Arlington from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on March 15, and will receive full military honors during a private burial service. Flags will also be flown at half-staff on the day of his burial.
Killed in Frankfurt, buried at home in Virginia today.
American Thinker Blog
A small kerfuffle has erupted over the proper way to honor Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War One, who died late last month:
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, wants to honor Frank Buckles — the last surviving World War I veteran until his death on Sunday at age 110 — in a special ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, but not in the Capitol, as suggested by some other lawmakers.
Boehner’s office said the speaker had no plans to allow Buckles’ body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, as some lawmakers from Buckles’ home state of West Virginia have proposed.
“The speaker intends to ask Secretary [Robert] Gates to allow Mr. Buckles’ family to use the amphitheater at Arlington cemetery for his memorial service,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said today.
“That way, it will be near the tomb of the unknown soldier, who also fell in World War I,” said Steel. Steel would not elaborate on why a Capitol ceremony for Buckles was not in Boehner’s plans.
Buckles died in his hometown of Charles Town, W. Va. He had entered the Army at 16 – and served in England and France during the war as an ambulance driver and later as an escort for returning German prisoners of war. He spent his latter years working to ensure that WWI veterans were remembered for their service.
In response to Buckles’ death, both Sen. John “Jay” Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. have introduced resolutions to allow Buckles to lie in honor inside the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, which would allow the public to pay their respects to Buckles by filing past his casket. This is a honor usually reserved for former presidents and distinguished members of Congress. On occasion, exceptions are made for extraordinary unelected average citizens. In 2005, Civil Rights hero Rosa Parks lay in state, and the honor was bestowed on two slain Capitol police officers in 1998. Before that, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was the last unelected person to lay in state in the Rotunda in 1964.
“I gotta say, I am stunned that anyone could object to a ceremony here in the Capitol Rotunda honoring the last World War I veteran. We do ceremonies here all the time — I think next week we are honoring the Australian prime minister. What better way to pay tribute to the last veteran of the great war than to have the United States Congress salute Frank Buckles one last time,” said Vincent Morris, communications director for the Senate Commerce Committee, of which Rockefeller is chairman.
Of course both Rockefeller and Captio are from Buckles’ home state so there’s no small degree of politics involved here. All the same, I don’t necessarily see the harm in having a brief ceremony in the Rotunda, not so much for Buckles as for the generation he represents, who were sent off to fight an unfortunate war for frivolous reasons.
A small kerfuffle has erupted over the proper way to honor Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War One, who died late last month:
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, wants to honor Frank Buckles — the last surviving World War I veteran until his death on Sunday at age 110 — in a special ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, but not in the Capitol, as suggested by some other lawmakers.
Boehner’s office said the speaker had no plans to allow Buckles’ body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, as some lawmakers from Buckles’ home state of West Virginia have proposed.
“The speaker intends to ask Secretary [Robert] Gates to allow Mr. Buckles’ family to use the amphitheater at Arlington cemetery for his memorial service,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said today.
“That way, it will be near the tomb of the unknown soldier, who also fell in World War I,” said Steel. Steel would not elaborate on why a Capitol ceremony for Buckles was not in Boehner’s plans.
Buckles died in his hometown of Charles Town, W. Va. He had entered the Army at 16 – and served in England and France during the war as an ambulance driver and later as an escort for returning German prisoners of war. He spent his latter years working to ensure that WWI veterans were remembered for their service.
In response to Buckles’ death, both Sen. John “Jay” Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. have introduced resolutions to allow Buckles to lie in honor inside the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, which would allow the public to pay their respects to Buckles by filing past his casket. This is a honor usually reserved for former presidents and distinguished members of Congress. On occasion, exceptions are made for extraordinary unelected average citizens. In 2005, Civil Rights hero Rosa Parks lay in state, and the honor was bestowed on two slain Capitol police officers in 1998. Before that, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was the last unelected person to lay in state in the Rotunda in 1964.
“I gotta say, I am stunned that anyone could object to a ceremony here in the Capitol Rotunda honoring the last World War I veteran. We do ceremonies here all the time — I think next week we are honoring the Australian prime minister. What better way to pay tribute to the last veteran of the great war than to have the United States Congress salute Frank Buckles one last time,” said Vincent Morris, communications director for the Senate Commerce Committee, of which Rockefeller is chairman.
Of course both Rockefeller and Captio are from Buckles’ home state so there’s no small degree of politics involved here. All the same, I don’t necessarily see the harm in having a brief ceremony in the Rotunda, not so much for Buckles as for the generation he represents, who were sent off to fight an unfortunate war for frivolous reasons.
The Washington Post's "Comic Riffs" blogger Michael Cavna reports "For comics fans, today's image may well be Google's greatest 'Doodle' yet. The latest Google logo celebrates what would have been the 94th birthday of one of the cartooning world's towering legends, Will Eisner. The home-page 'doodle' — as the company calls each of them — features Eisner's iconic character The Spirit" – and some New York tenement buildings shaped into letters. (Eisner died in 2005.)
That's great for comics buffs. But Google can celebrate the 94th birthday of Will Eisner with a "doodle," and yet ignore President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday? That's right. As Aaron Goldstein at the American Spectator noted on February 6, "On January 20th, Google marked the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Today, on the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, I looked at the Google front page and….nothing."
Using Goldstein's Google link, you can see that within days of Reagan's big cententary, they Google-doodle-celebrated across their global network the 183rd birthday of Jules Verne and the 164th birthday of Thomas Edison. In January, they did the same for painter Paul Cezanne on his 172nd birthday.
Last fall, Google globally celebrated the 160th birthday of author Robert Louis Stevenson, and unsurprisingly, the 70th birthday of Beatle legend John Lennon.
ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: Calling them a group of people who “reveal the best of who we are, and who we aspire to be,” President Obama honored fifteen people with the Medal of Freedom in an East Room ceremony…
Political Punch
ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: Calling them a group of people who “reveal the best of who we are, and who we aspire to be,” President Obama honored fifteen people with the Medal of Freedom in an East Room ceremony…
Political Punch
Margulies takes home second best actress win in a…
B&C – Breaking News
The Naval Academy has honored the final wishes of a gay Marine who had told his husband that he wanted his ashes interred at the USNA Columbarium. John Fliszar was a 1971 graduate of the Academy, but what’s so heartwarming is how the Academy treated his husband, Mark Ketterson.
The memorial coordinator asked about his relationship to the deceased. Ketterson said that John Fliszar was his husband. “They were always polite, but there was this moment of hesitation,” Ketterson recalled. “They said they’re going to need something in writing from a blood relative. They asked, ‘Are you listed on the death certificate?’ ‘Do you have a marriage license?’ ” He was and they did, the couple having been married in Des Moines when gay marriage became legal in Iowa two years ago. Ketterson sent a copy of the marriage license. That changed everything.“I was respected,” he said. “From that moment on, I was next of kin. They were amazing.” The USNA alumni association sent Ketterson a letter expressing condolence for the loss of his husband. The USNA says Fliszar’s interment followed standard operating procedure. “His next of kin was treated with the same dignity and respect afforded to the next of kin of all USNA grads who desire interment at the Columbarium,” said Jennifer Erickson, a spokesperson for the academy. “We didn’t do anything differently.”
There’s more to this great story, hit the link.
Subscribe to Joe.My.God.![]()
Parents across America who’d like to lift their children out of failing public schools can be grateful that the new leader of the House of Representatives gets it. Speaker John Boehner’s invited guests for tonight’s State of the Union address include students, teachers and other champions of vouchers that allow low-income D.C. children to attend the school of their parents’ choice – a results-getting program targeted for extinction by liberals beholden to government education unions.
One of Boehner’s guests in the Speaker’s Box is a particularly dear friend of Heritage and the education reform movement: Virginia Walden Ford, who is executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, board member of the Black Alliance for Educational and a visiting fellow at Heritage.
What’s more, the Ohio lawmaker and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut have pledged to introduce a bill tomorrow to restore funding for Mrs. Walden Ford’s beloved program, called D.C. Opportunity Scholarships, despite the wishes of the Obama administration.
Three of the 2,000 students in the D.C. vouchers program – Consortium of Catholic Academies eighth-graders Matthew Coleman, Lesly Alvarez and Obiora “Obi” Mbanefo – are among those invited to the Capitol by Boehner to hear President Obama’s address. The speaker’s other guests include Kennie May Jr., another CCA eighth-grader, along with CCA vice principal Lisa Rowe and teachers John P. Kelly, Mary Joyner and Michael Thomasian.
Also honored with seats in the Speaker’s Box were these friends of the D.C. vouchers program: Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington; John Schilling and Andrew Campanella of the American Federation for Children; Jennifer Marshall, Heritage’s director of domestic policy studies; and Lindsey Burke, Heritage education policy analyst.
Obama’s remarks on education should be a fitting curtain-raiser for “The Truth About School Choice,” a Heritage event tomorrow at noon that marks National School Choice Week by examining what the research tells us about the results of empowering parents. (If you can’t come, check it out online, either live or later.)
