Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On November 21, 1986, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council of the Ronald Reagan administration, was busy shredding documents, destroying evidence of criminal activity of the Reagan administration as part of the Iran-Contra Affair. Digging Deeper North was assisted by his comely secretary, the auspiciously named Fawn Hall, who later traded immunity from prosecution for testimony against North.  Of course, Hall realized that the shredding of documents was illegal, evidenced by her statement that, “Sometimes you have to go above the law.”  This statement was exactly the sort of rationalizing…

A Brief History On November 9, 1965, 22 year old American Roger Allen LaPorte, a former Catholic seminarian, sat down calmly, poured gasoline over himself, and burned himself to death in front of the United Nations in New York in a protest of the Viet Nam War. Digging Deeper LaPorte had dropped out of the seminary, but graduated from Holy Ghost Academy (Tupper Lake, New York) in 1961 and was active in the Catholic Worker Movement.  Although fatally burned (he died the next day), LaPorte was able to talk before dying and said he performed his act of protest against…

A Brief History On November 2, 1900, Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman (1854-1942), President of the First Philippine Commission, stated, “Should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the commission believe that the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy, which would excuse, if it did not necessitate, the intervention of other powers and the eventual division of the islands among them. Only through American occupation, therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, and united Philippine commonwealth at all conceivable.  And the indispensable need from the Filipino point of view of maintaining American sovereignty over the archipelago is…

A Brief History On October 31, 1864, the people of the United States got a big  treat in their Halloween basket, the newly minted State of Nevada, the 36th state of the Union, appropriately known as “The Silver State.”  Right in the middle of the bloodiest war in US history, for good measure. Digging Deeper At the time of admission as a state, Nevada only had about 14,000 people.  Only 4 years earlier the number was a paltry 6857 souls.  For such a large area (the 7th largest state by area) Nevada has for most of its existence been quite…

A Brief History On October 30, 1995, the people of the Canadian province of Quebec voted by the narrow margin of 50.58% to 49.42% to remain a Canadian province.  Quebec, the largest province of Canada by size, was the heart of New France until the British won the Seven Years War in 1763, and with it sovereignty over Quebec. Digging Deeper The Quebecois as the people call themselves maintain their French heritage, and the French language is spoken by the majority of people in the province.  A reminder of this French heritage can be found on their automobile license plates,…