IN AARON'S OWN OPINION...

PRIDE = Matthew Cusick

2006-06-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

This Pride Weekend I would like to remind all my brothers and sisters of a man who taught each of us what LGBT PRIDE really means, Matthew Cusick . The former Cirque du Soleil performer who was fired in 2002 for being honest about his own HIV status. A man who should reminds each of us what it truly means to be proud of who we are.

You will forever be my hero Matthew, and below please find how I chose to reponse to the unlawful employment termination of a friend.

MY LETTER TO CIRQUE DU SOLEIL FOUNDER & CEO GUY LALIBERTE

November 8th, 2003

Please allow me to introduce myself to you. My name is Aaron Baldwin and I am the individual who was very politely asked to leave the parking lot of Cirque du Soleil Algeria show, last Thursday night. I guess the CDS staff did not approve of my handing out leaflets to your patrons, in reference to the current allegations of HIV Discrimination (by Cirque du Soleil) against my good friend Matthew Cusick.

Just a few weeks now before World AIDS Day, (December 5th) and on the heels of the 5th year anniversary of the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, I felt it was my moral responsibility to speak out against this alleged injustice. So last Thursday night, on what was a very cold and rainy San Francisco evening, I went down to the Pac Bell Stadium parking lot. It was my hope that the HIV Discrimination leaflets that I had would help inform some of your patrons of the other side of Cirque du Soleil.

Cirque du Soleil, by your own public admission, chose to terminate Matthew Cusick's employment solely on the basis on his decision to be honest about his HIV status. So the question that I am now compelled to ask is, "did Cirque du Soleil break the law when you did this or were your fears justified?" Although I have no way of intelligently answering this question, as I assume is also the case for yourself, as neither of us has any formal legal training and you have yet to given your day in court.

However I do know how to think for myself, and I know how to read, and I also know how to listen to what my heart tells me. Additionally, I just recently read the 2002 United Nations AIDS report, where it stated that "today the driving forces behind the spread of HIV are the stigma and discrimination of the very disease itself. That the social taboos about discussing sex, the moral judgments that people often place on each other and the stigma too often placed upon People Living with AIDS (PLWA)... are all continuing to drive this hideous disease into hiding. That fear of HIV stigma and discrimination, today often compels an individual to keep their HIV status locked up in some secret closet. That in turn, actually only serves to continue the spread HIV.

However, what you probably do not know is that Matthew Cusick gave up everything he had for the opportunity of fulfilling a lifelong dream of performing with your "great" Cirque du Soleil. That he gave up the two businesses that he had started; in physical training and gymnastic coaching. That he and his lover (whose career would not allow him to move with Matthew to Las Vegas) mutually agreed to end their long term relationship so that Matthew could pursue that dream. That he also left behind his family and a lifetime of friends in Washington D.C., although I would imagine this is often the case for individuals hoping to perform with Cirque.

So I thought you should know that today Matthew Cusick is living in the basement of his mother's home, and he is now without even the means of paying for his own medical care. Medical care that you are aware he may soon one day very desperately need. However Mr. Laliberte, I do not want you to worry about Matthew Cusick, because his friends are making sure that all his medical needs are being met, as he now begins to rebuild his life.

Here in North America there appears to be some growing belief, that we now have the HIV virus under control. But do we really? It is reported that there are currently 1,000,000 Americans and 50,000 Canadians are infected with the HIV virus. Of all the new HIV infections in the North America last year, 51% of then occurred in humans beings under the age of 25, and slightly more than 25% of them are just teenagers. In Canada, 27% of all of the new HIV infections are in people between the ages of 13 to 29. Perhaps this is all some crazy coincidence, but I really don't think so! Education of the facts, and a freedom from unnecessary persecution and discrimination does save lives.

Many of these young human beings who are today becoming infected with HIV, are also fans of the "Circus of the Sun." They are the very same children and young adults who were once sitting on the edges of their chairs (as we all have) while watching the greatest performers in the world. They too have also dreamed that same impossible dream, that one day they might perform for the great Cirque du Soleil.

THE FACTS ABOUT HIV AND SPORTS

To date, there has NEVER been even one confirmed case of an HIV infection relating from sports. This includes; football, rugby, basketball, lacrosse, boxing and every other known sport. Sports where not only is blood often spilled, but where it is encouraged and often viewed as a kind of badge of distinction when it happens. I would dare to say, that if there was even one confirmed case of a sports related HIV infection, parents all around the world would be removing their children from all competitive sports programs.

Over the past years, Cirque du Soleil has encouraged it patrons to go out and to "Dream the Impossible Dream." This is exactly what my good friend Matthew Cusick did. His dreams, like all of our dreams, were very precious to him. You see, our dreams make up the very fabric and foundation of our lives, and no one who ever fulfills another dreams... should ever be able to take that dream back!!

I, too, encourage everyone to continue dreaming that impossible dream. However, I would first encourage you to stop and remember the words of some other great dreamers. Dreamers like the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A man who through his words, shared his dream for this world.... in his speech called, "I Have a Dream." Think about how that dream and through his words, he was able to impact the basic human rights of so human beings around the world.

I would also ask you to remember the words of the great Irish writer and poet, George Bernard Shaw. Think about how even today, Shaw's words can still inspire the masses whenever they are quoted: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream things of that never were and say, 'Why not?' "

Now if the fact about HIV infections during sports and the words of great Dr. King and Mr. Shaw have not caused you to re-think your position, as it relates to Matthew Cusick, then I would ask you to consider these words from the Joe Darion lyrics, from the play "MAN OF LA MANCHA".

To dream the impossible dream,
to fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
to run where the brave dare not go...

To fight for the right
without question or pause
to be willing to march into hell...
for a heavenly cause.
Additionally, I would like encourage everyone to continue supporting all the wonderful and talented men and woman, who make up the casts of the amazing productions, that is Cirque du Soleil! This issue of discrimination should not be their burden to carry, for it truly belongs on the shoulders of CDS management.

I thank you for your understanding on this very important issue.

Grandma’s Last Mother's Day Gift

2006-05-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

On Mother's Day 1999 my mother had gone to church by herself. She was really missing my grandmother that day, who had only passed the previous February, and she so wished that she could just call her on the phone and wish her a happy Mother's Day. When she first arrived at the church she noticed, next to the alter, a vase full of carnations. During the Mass some children in the church came up to the alter, picked up a flower to took it back to their Mother.

However, my mother was thinking that she probably wouldn't be getting any flowers today, because she was there alone in church. Then she remembered how much she used to love when her own children would make her Mother's Day gifts at school and bring them home. However, sadly she knew that also wouldn't be happening either, as we're all grown up now... and her Mother's Day gifts are now all store bought.

After mass she left church and headed to the store. After she parked the car and became to cross the parking a woman she says, "was around your Grandmother age" came up to her and said, "I have something for you." Without even thinking Mom opened her hand, and the woman placed a double hibiscus flower into the palm of her hand (which was her favorite flower). To say the least Mom was stunned!! Still to this day she claims that she doesn't know who that woman in the parking was (maybe we do), and that she has never seen her again.

Later that day, my sister came over to bring Mom a Mother's Day gift. It was a small wooden box that she had decorated with my niece's Brownie Troop. On the top of the box she had cut out three small hearts, and had placed in pictures of her three children. On bottom of the box she had written "Moms are from the Heavens Above," and on both the front & sides of the box she had painted on tiny flowers. She had also given her a four page handmade card.

So that day she got her flowers and her handmade gift!! So I say, “thank you Grandma, for that last special gift to Mom” (the Hisbicus). Thank you to my sister, for helping to make it an extra special day!!

What started out to be horrible Mother's Day turned into a perfect one, and it will always be a treasured memory for our family. A memory that is so precious, that I am now sharing it with all of you.

Thank you God, for listening that day!! Because I now know that Grandma was!!

I love you Grandma, and I do miss you very much!!

V FOR VENDETTA & GUNPOWDER

2006-04-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

"Remember, remember the fifth of November.
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot."
The new movie V for Vendetta, is it a work of fiction or something else? Is it a plot taken out of some DC/Marvel Comic series, or is it something much more than that?

For more than 10,000 years kings, emperors, presidents, popes, corporate CEOs, and other various members of the wealthy elite have been leading the masses unto their deaths on various battlefields all over our planet; while systematically also increasing their own individual wealth and power. Wealth that affords them the luxury and safety provided by their numerous castles and mansions; despite the fact that the masses continue to grow hungier every day.

An elite body that both distract and pacify the masses, by continually scapegoating various people of color, religion and sexual orientation; teaching the people to not only hate the other side of the battlefield, but those on the other side of the street as well. Forcing them to send their children to inferior educational institutions, where the focused is more about civil obedience and conformity than it is about the teachings of mathematics, literature, world history and science. Keeping the masses ignorant by dumbing-down their culture.

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta, as explained on the official movie website, is set in the not-to-distant future totalitarian controlled United Kingdom. "Telling the story of a young woman named Evey, who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by the masked man known only as “V.” The masked hero launches a series of attacks the various government institutions and its leaders, who have chosen to rule over their public with fear, torture, incarceration, murder, media propaganda; eventually inspiring the masses to rise up and overthrow its own morally bankrupted government.

As Evey comes to uncover the truth about "V’s" mysterious background and dealings, she comes to discover the truth about her own past – emerging as an unlikely ally in “V's” plan to bring freedom and justice back to British society."

The Gunpowder Plot

The cornerstone of “V's” plan involves blowing up the British parliament building on November the 5th. But in proving that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, as many Brits will likely know, there was an actual plot to blow up the British parliament during the 17th century; and the date was November 5th, 1605.

The Gunpowder Plot was a desperate, but failed attempt by a group of provincial English Catholic aristocracy to kill James I (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland), his family, and many of the Protestant members of the British aristocracy with one single attack; by blowing up the British House of Parliament building during the 1605 annual state opening. The plotters had planned to even abduct the royal children, who were not to be present in parliament that day, as a means of inciting a major revolt in the Midlands.

The aims of the conspirators are frequently compared to those of modern terrorists, however their real aims were nothing short of a total revolution of the British government and the installation of a new Catholic monarch. Far from helping their fellow Catholics avoid religious persecution, the plotters actually put many loyal Catholics in a difficult position. Before this period Catholicism had been associated with Spain and the many evils of the Inquisition, but after the plot it was largely believed to be treasonous just for being a Catholic.

British & American

What many British and American citizens are likely to not be aware of is the fact that former United States President George Herbert Walker, as well as his wife Barbara (Pierce) Bush, are both descendants of Thomas Percy, one of the main players behind the Gunpowder Plot. A family that so came to fear retailation from King James I, they changed their last name from Percy to Pierce and fled England for America. Making the current US President George W. Bush a direct descendant of Thomas Percy on both his father’s and mother’s sides of the family. In fact the Bush/Pierce family ancestry can be traced back to almost every royal family within Europe, as detailed in Burke's Peerage.

The Central Question

The central question in V for Vendetta begs you to ask yourself "is this guy right, or is he completely and totally mad? What do you, the viewer, think about this? Which struck me as an anarchist approach. Although the movie doesn’t tell you directly what we should think, it does begs us to think; and to consider that some of these admittedly extreme little elements like fear, torture, incarceration, government murder and media-controlled propaganda have been recurring themes throughout human history. History also shows us that the masses do have their limits and will revolt if pushed too far, and for that reason only the "people should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

"America was profoundly changed after the September 11 attacks. We went from a country motivated by hope to a country controlled by fear. For the last several years, feeling neither safe nor secure, Americans have lived in extreme anxiety of another impending terrorist attack. I think that as a result, most Americans sought out their faith and reaffirmed their conviction in God. President Bush and the Religious Right's greatest political weapon has been perpetuating fear. Because of the heightened climate of anxiety coupled with religious fervor, they have been successful in stripping Americans of their personal freedoms, suppressing dissent and winning elections based on moral values.

I also think the unfathomable fear of being a victim of another terrorist attack has allowed for the crumbling of the wall between church and state, which is a vital part of our historical, legal and political heritage. By allowing personal religious beliefs to infiltrate our political framework, we have enabled this administration to wage a war on women's reproductive rights, squelch scientific advancement, take away our freedom of speech and fill important positions within government and possibly the nation's highest courts with religious extremists.

We must not let fear cripple our democracy."

Barbra Streisand
Winner of 2 Oscars, 6 Emmys, 11 Golden Globes, 10 Grammys,
a Tony, and countless additional awards
April 28, 2005

Additional Source:

US Presidential Address to a Joint Session of the United States Congress and the American People - September 2001

HOMOPHOBIA IN THE HEARTLAND

2006-03-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

Hear the message in the words of this great Illinois man!

"Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine
that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage
to renew the battle which their fathers began...."

America’s Greatest President - Abraham Lincoln
During his 1858 debate with Stephen A. Douglas
As many of you are already aware, I was the co-organizer of Matthew Cusick's (a Gay Games Champion) protest campaign against Cirque de Soleil for HIV discrimination. However, it is with the memory of my cousins Roger Nash Baldwin (ACLU Founder & former Executive Director) that I now call upon the GLBT community (and all Americans) to take a stand against the great civil injustice now spreading across our country; and in fact around the world. Because surely if taxpaying Americans can now be denied access to public facilities, separate water foundations and the back of the bus can not be to far off in our future.

But first let me take you back to another place and another time.

1972 Munich Olympics

The Olympics have returned to Germany for the first time since 1936, when Nazism was just starting to hit its stride. Adolph Hitler hoped to use the Olympic Games as a platform to show off and promote the "superiority" of his new Aryan race.

Most Germans had hoped that those Munich Olympics would in some way help to heal the racial wounds caused during the Nazi Holocaust. However, the world was even then still a rife with much political unrest. The Vietnam War raged on, racial tensions throughout the United States persisted, and violence littered the Middle East. The German president Gustav Heinemann welcomed the Olympics as "a milestone on the road to a new way of life with the aim of realizing peaceful coexistence among peoples."

On the morning of September 5, 1972; with just six days left in the Games, the worst tragedy in history of the Olympic Games hit. Eight Palestinian terrorists stormed the Olympic village and raided the apartment building housing the Israeli athletes. Two Israeli athletes were killed and nine more were seized as hostages. The terrorists demanded the release of over 200 Palestinians then serving time in Israeli jails, along with two additional renowned German terrorists.

After a day of unsuccessful negotiations, the terrorists collected the hostages and headed for a military airport in Munich; for a flight that would have taken them back to the Middle East. At the airport, German sharpshooters opened fire, killing three of the Palestinians. An all out gun battle ensued, claiming the lives of all nine of the Israeli hostages, along with one German policeman and two of the terrorists.

2006 Chicago Gay Games

The world is still a rife with political unrest. The Iraqi War rages on, homophobic tensions throughout the United States persist and grow, and violence now still litters the Middle East.

The Crystal Lake Park District Commission has met and rejected the request of the Gay Games Organizing Committee's to hold a rowing competition in a public park. The Park Commissioner & Treasurer David Phelps tells the Chicago Tribune "I do not believe the Crystal Lake Park District should be [used as] a vehicle for the promotion of an agenda." However, Mr. Phelps fails to point out what political agenda he's referring to.

However, one Crystal Lake resident even went as far as to say that "homosexuality is contrary and detrimental" to traditional family values. However, a Unitarian minister named Rev. Dan Larson told the park commissioners the event should be approved, claiming that "everyone has a right to row their boat." Even the Catholic Church says that homosexuality is not a sin, nor is homosexuality against the laws of the State of Illinois or the United States of America.

Crystal Lake Park Commissioner Phelps, and the residents of Crystal Lake City believe the Gay Games are more about politics than they are about athletics, and their actions prove that some residents are prepared to use the Gay Games as a venue to forward their own political agenda. These taxpaying Americans members of Gay Games organizing committee applied for a permit to host an international rowing competition, not a permit to hold an orgy in a public park. Yet Crystal Lake allows the public access to the lake, via venues like the Crystal Lake Rowing Club and the Water Ski Association. (see below)

So Who Is Crystal Lake?

Before the Great American Depression hit, several Crystal Lake residents then concerned about public access to the lake formed the Crystal Lake Park District, which condemned 22 acres for the Main Beach and the park west of the beach. However the original condemnation did not include the bottom of the lake, and this would cause legal consternation for decades.

In 2000 the population of Crystal Lake was just about 38,000, 94.1% Caucasian (almost 40% above the state average of 75.1%), 0.06% African American (almost 98% below the state average of 15.1%) and 2.0% Asian American (almost 32% below the state average of 3.2%). Clearly homosexuals are not the only minority not welcome in the city of Crystal Lake. (click on the URL in "Who Is Crystal Lake? above)

Over the last several years the the lake area has become increasingly crowded, the city of Crystal Lake, the Crystal Lake Park District, the village of Lakewood, and a lakeshore property owners group continued to contest the lake's ownership and control. To alleviate the problem, the city of Crystal Lake devised a plan to create a lake from a large gravel pit on the southeast side of the city for public recreational use, essentially stealing the area originally set aside before the depression.

This is where our legal challenge has some teeth, this where we must make its stance! We simply want access to those 22 acres that were originally set aside for use by the public, and we do not care who owns the bottom of the lake; as we intend to only use the surface of the lake! We want the same access that it afforded to other member of the public, because we are law abiding and tax paying Americans!

Reminiscent of those 1972 Summer Olympics, again it is not the athletes pushing their own political agenda…but the political agenda of the bigots being pushed. In the memory of all of the homosexuals murdered in the Nazi concentration camps, and the nine Israeli Olympics athletes that were slaughtered at that Munich Airport by terrorists, as well all of the GLBT human beings persecuted around the world; we must now stand up and make a stand. It is what we do, because it is what America used to be all about!

Racism and bigotry does not lead to elitism, elitism breeds racism and bigotry; or at least delusions of elitism does!

Roger Sherman, Yale and Skull & Bones

2006-02-28T21:38:00.000-08:00

As the world came to learn during the last American presidential election, one of the most powerful secret societies on the planet is based on the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut. This secret society of Skull and Bones was founded back in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft. (Taft is the patriarch of the Ohio political family and the father of former US President & US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft (S&B 1878)).

During the 2004 election, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates were Yale Bonesmen alumni, (John Kerry S&B -1967 and George W. Bush S&B- 1968 respectively); as were many of their ancestors. Republican Vice President Richard "Dick" Bruce Cheney also comes from one of the largest Bonesmen families.

So who’s the largest family of Yale Skull & Bones members? Kris Millegan, in his book "Fleshing Out Skull & Bones" we learned that it was believed that the Smith family (of Federal Express) was the largest family with fifteen (15) Bonesmen.

Millegan's data shows that certain families have been very well represented, and happen to be related to individual's like Vice President Dick Cheney, Ohio Governor Bob Taft, and the US President George Walker Bush. For an example, the largest known Skull and Bones families with at least 10+ members are:

* Smith (15) (Federal Express)
* Walker (15) (President Bush's Missouri/Illinois relatives)
* Allen (13) (Politics & Investments)
* Brown (13) (Brown Brothers Harriman, Alex Brown & Brothers)
* Clark (12)
* White (12) (Attorneys in New Haven and New York City)
* Day (11) (The Hartford Courant & The Thacher School)
* Johnson (11)
* Jones (11)
* Miller (11)
* Stewart (11)
* Thompson (11)
* Cheney (10) (Silk manufacturers)
* Taft (10) (Ohio political family)
* Williams (10) (Politics & Investments)

For those who are not aware of who Roger Sherman was, Sherman was the only American citizen to sign (while also helping to draft) all of the founding documents of the United States of America; the Declaration of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution.

Roger Sherman

Roger Sherman's father William Sherman first marriage was to Rebecca (Hilton) Cutler on 15 July 1714, who died several months later in early 1715. Sherman then married the mother of Roger, Methitable (Sweetman) Wellington on 15 Sept 1715 in Watertown, Massachusetts. Rebecca Cutler was the daughter of Rev. Timothy (Winswall) Cutler (Harvard - 1701). Rev. Cutler was the first rector of The Collegiate School (later renamed Yale College), who resigned with several tutors in 1722 under great controversy after converting to the Anglican Church faith. One of those young tutors was the Rev. Samuel Johnson, (Collegiate - 1714). Rev. Cutler, Johnson and David Browne's resignation begins the period known throughout New England as the first "Great Awakening."

Many years later Rev. Samuel Johnson assumed the Presidency of King’s College, which is now called Columbia University. Rev. Johnson’s son was the Hon. William Samuel Johnson, who served along side Roger Sherman for almost his entire political career. Both men represented Connecticut in the first U.S. Congress; as state delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the state's Ratification Convention in 1788. Sherman was appointed to fill Johnson s seat in the United States Senate in 1791, when Johnson resigned to become President of Columbia College; which is now Columbia University.

In 1761 Roger Sherman abandoned his law practice and sold his various businesses, moving to New Haven where he operated two stores that catered to Yale students. He soon became both a friend and benefactor of Yale, serving as the college's treasurer (1765-76), and contributing to the construction of its chapel (which was endowed by Roger Sherman's great-nephew Joseph Battell, along with the music department). Sherman's commitment to the school had earned him an honorary master's degree in 1768.

Of Roger Sherman's sons, John Sherman, William Sherman and Roger Sherman, Jr. all graduated from Yale; and all of Sherman's daughters married Yale alumni except his youngest Sarah. Chloe Sherman married Dr. John Skinner (Yale-1773), Mehitable married the Rev. Jeremiah Evarts (Yale-1802), both Rebecca and Elizabeth were married the Hon. Simeon Baldwin (Yale-1781), and Martha married Yale College President Rev. Jeremiah Day (Yale-1756). President Day's great-nephew Charles Seymour (S&B 1905) was president of Yale from 1937-1951.

Sherman’s great-granddaughter, Jane Wakeman (Skinner) Dwight, married Yale President Timothy Dwight V, who was the nephew of Yale President Theodore Dwight Woolsey and the grandson Yale President Timothy Dwight IV. Dwight (S&B 1841) was also the first Bonesmen to serve as president of the university.

Descendants of Roger Sherman

• 1. Roger Sherman Baldwin, Jr. (S&B 1847) - the son of US Senator & Governor of the State of Connecticut Roger Sherman (Yale 1811)& Emily Perkins Baldwin (Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 2. Simeon Eben Baldwin (S&B 1861) - Chief Justice Supreme Court & Governor of the State of Connecticut and a Yale Professor of Law for 47 years. He left an endowment of $500,000 to the Yale Law School when he died. Simeon Eben was the son of Roger Sherman & Emily Perkins Baldwin. (Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 3. George William Baldwin (S&B 1853) - Attorney and son of Governor Roger Sherman Baldwin Sr. (Yale 1811), he was badly wounded having both legs broken by the fall of his horse down an embankment in Dec 1861 at The Battle of Fredericksburg (Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 4. Henry DeForest Baldwin (S&B 1885) - President of the Queens County Water Company; Partner, Lord, Day & Lord; founding member of CFR, Chairman, Peoples Institute (Simeon Baldwin, III 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 5. Sherman Baldwin (S&B 1919) - Author and great-grandson of Roger Sherman (Henry DeForest Baldwin4, Simeon Baldwin, III 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 6. William Maxwell Evarts (S&B 1837) - US Senator (R-NY), US Secretary of State and US Attorney General (Mehitabel Sherman2, Roger Sherman1)
• 7. Maxwell Evarts (S&B 1884) - General Counsel to E.H. Harriman, Southern Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad, and a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1867 (William Maxwell Evarts3, Mehitabel Sherman2, Roger Sherman1)
• 8. Sherman Evarts (S&B 1881) - Attorney with Evarts Choate & Beaman, Evarts & Moffat and Trustee, Windsor Public Library (William Maxwell Evarts3, Mehitabel Sherman2, Roger Sherman1)
• 9. Dwight Foster, Jr. (S&B 1848) - Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court & Attorney General of the State of Massachusetts. He married Henrietta Perkins Baldwin (Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 10. Reginald Foster (S&B 1884) - Attorney and great-grandson of Roger Sherman (Henrietta Perkins Baldwin 4, Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 11. Roger Sherman Baldwin Foster (S&B 1878) - Professor of Federal Jurisprudence, Yale University School of Law (son of Dwight Foster, Jr. S&B 1847) (Henrietta Perkins Baldwin 4, Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 12. Maxwell Evarts Foster (S&B 1923) - Director of Research for Wendell Willkie's Campaign for the Republican nomination for US President, and a member of the US Board of National Estimates (son of Reginald Foster (S&B 1884) (Reginald Foster 5, Henrietta Perkins (Baldwin) Foster 4, Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 13. William Douglas Sloane (S&B 1895) - Chairman of the Board W&J Sloane; Director, Aspen Mining & Smelting Company; Hanover Fire Insurance Company; Union Trust Company*
• 14. Henry Thompson Sloane (S&B 1866) - Treasurer of W&J Sloane (son of William Douglas Sloane) see above. His daughters were Jessie Sloane Dodge Widener (who married William Earl Dodge of the Phelps & Dodge fortune & George Duton Widener Jr.) and Baroness Emilie de le Grange (who married mining aristocrat Baron Amaury De La Grange)
• 15. Thomas Chalmers Sloane (S&B 1868)
• 16. John Douglas Sloane (S&B 1905) - W & J Sloane, Inc (NYC); Trustee, Robert College (Istanbul); Aspen Mining & Smelting Company; Hanover Fire Insurance Company; Union Trust Company, Chairman, National War Work Council. His son married Elizabeth Taylor (Sherman) Sloane.
• 17. Edward Law Baldwin Whitney (S&B 1878) - Assistant US Attorney General and New York Supreme Court Justice (son of Yale professor William Dwight Whitney and the father of Princeton Professor Hassler Whitney) (Elizabeth Wooster (Baldwin) Whitney 4, Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. 3, Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 18. James Lyman Whitney (S&B 1856) - Librarian, Boston Public Library (half brother of Josiah Whitney, William Dwight Whitney & Edward Payson Whitney)
• 19. Edward Payson Whitney (S&B 1854) - Disappeared in 1858, (brother of William Dwight Whitney and half brother of Edward Payson Whitney)
• 20. Timothy Dwight V (S&B 1849) - Yale College President Emeritus 1899-1916, President 1886-99 and Acting Treasurer 1886-88, married Sherman's granddaughter Jane Wakeman Skinner (Roger Sherman Skinner 3, Chloe Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 21. Winthrop Edwards Dwight (S&B 1893) - Fellow, Timothy Dwight College & son of Yale President Timothy Dwight V (S&B 1849) (Jane Wakeman (Skinner) Dwight 4, Roger Sherman Skinner 3, Chloe Sherman 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 22. Emerson Cogswell Whitney (S&B 1851) - Second cousin of Yale professor William Dwight Whitney, who married Sherman's granddaughter Elizabeth Wooster (Baldwin) Whitney
• 23. William Collins Whitney (S&B 1863) - US President Cleveland's U.S. Secretary of War
• 24. Harry Payne Whitney (S&B 1894) - Investment Banker, Guarantee Trust Company; Metropolitan Opera & Real Estate Company; Eastern Steel Company; Fulton Chain Railway Company; Fulton Navigation Company; Raquette Lake Railway Company; Inherited Shares in Consolidated Tobacco Company, Electric Vehicle Company, etc. He married Gertrude Vanderbilt
• 25. Chancey Mitchell Depew (S&B 1856) U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Board of Director of the Vanderbilt Railroad System (including the New York, Harlem, Hudson Valley, Central, Erie, Michigan Southern, Michigan Central, Lakeshore, and Canadian Southern Railroads.) He was the great-great nephew of Roger Sherman, who's brother the Rev. Josiah Sherman was Chancey's great-great grandfather.
• 26. Ganson Goodyear Depew (S&B 1919) - great-great-great nephew of Roger Sherman, who's brother Rev. Josiah Sherman was his great-great-great grandfather. Involved with the Vanderbilt Railway System.
• 27. Charles Atwood White (S&B 1854) - He was the greatgrandson of Roger Sherman, who's mother was Sherman's granddaughter Martha Sherman (Martha Sherman3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 28. Henry Dyer White (S&B 1851) - He was the great-grandson of Roger Sherman, who's mother was Sherman's granddaughter Martha Sherman (Martha Sherman3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 29. George Edward White (S&B 1866) - He was the great-grandson of Roger Sherman, who's mother was Sherman's granddaughter Martha Sherman (Martha Sherman3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 30. Roger Sherman White (S&B 1864) - He was the great-grandson of Roger Sherman, who's mother was Sherman's granddaughter Martha Sherman (Martha Sherman3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 31. Oliver Sherman White (S&B 1859) - He was the great-grandson of Roger Sherman, who's mother was Sherman's granddaughter Martha Sherman (Martha Sherman3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 32. George White (S&B 1848)- He was a grandson of Roger Sherman.
• 33. Dr. John Rogers (S&B 1887) - He married Sherman's great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth Selden White. He was a leading doctor in New York City (Charles Atwood White4, Martha Sherman3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 34. Henry Lewis Stimson (S&B 1888) - married Roger Sherman's great-great-granddaughter Mabel Wellington White. He was the U.S. Secretary of War for four (4) U.S. Presidents (Charles Atwood White4, Martha Sherman3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 35. Rev. Henry Albert Stimson (S&B 1865) - the paternal uncle of Henry Lewis Stimson and a corresponding secretary for American Board of Christian Forgein Missionaires (ABCFM)
• 36. William Kent (S&B 1887) - He married daughter of Roger Sherman, Jr. Elizabeth Baldwin Sherman (Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 37. Albert Emmett Kent (S&B 1853) - Father of William Kent (see above) (S&B - 1887)
• 38. Thomas Thacher (S&B 1871) - the founder of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP and the great-grandson of Roger Sherman (Elizabeth Baldwin Sherman 3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 39. John Seymour Thacher (S&B 1877) - Director of the Dumberton Library at Harvard University and great-grandson of Roger Sherman (Elizabeth Baldwin Sherman 3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 40. Sherman Day Thacher (S&B 1883) - Founder and headmaster of the Thacher School, and the great-grandson of Roger Sherman (Elizabeth Baldwin Sherman 3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 41. William Larned Thacher (S&B 1887) - Assistant Headmaster at the Thacher School and the great-grandson of Roger Sherman (Elizabeth Baldwin Sherman 3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 42. Thomas Anthony Thacher (S&B 1835) - Yale College Professor of Latin and Greek, married two of Sherman's granddaughters. (Elizabeth Sherman Day and Elizabeth Baldwin Sherman)
• 43. Dr. James Kingsley Thacher (S&B 1868) - Professor of Clinical Medicine & Physiology, Yale University Medical School, son of Thomas Anthony Thacher (S&B 1835, who married Sherman great-granddaughter Henrietta Perkins Baldwin Foster (the granddaughter of Connecticut Governor Roger Sherman Baldwin (Yale-1811))
• 44. Thomas Mills Day, Sr. (S&B 1837) - Owner and Publisher of the Hartford Courant, and the nephew of Yale College President Rev. Jeremiah Day
• 45. Thomas Mills Day, Jr. (S&B 1886) - He was the son of Thomas Mills Day, Sr.
• 46. Frederick Roger Sherman (S&B 1836) - Attorney and the son of Roger Sherman's son Roger Sherman, Jr. (Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman1)
• 47. Arthur Pomeroy Day (S&B 1890) - He was the son of Thomas Mills Day
• 48. Clive Day (S&B 1892) - An author, Yale University Professor of Economics and adviser to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. (He was the son of Thomas Mills Day, Sr.)
• 49. Robert Webster Day (S&B 1875) - He was the proprietor, Hyde Park Hotel and the great-nephew of Yale President Jeremiah Day.
• 50. Charles Seymour (S&B 1908) - Yale President 1937-50, Master of Berkeley College 1933-37 and Provost 1928-37. He was the great-nephew of Yale President Jeremiah Day and great-great-great-great grandson of Yale President Thomas Clap.
• 51. Charles Seymour, Jr. (S&B 1935) - Yale Professor of History of Art and Curator of the Yale University Italian Art Collection, 1939-49.
• 52. Evarts Tracy (S&B 1890) - president of Tracy & Swartwout, architectural firm that worked projects like the George Washington Memorial, he was the nephew of William Maxwell Evarts (Mary Evarts3, Mehitabel Sherman2, Roger Sherman1)
• 53. Henry Champion Deming, Sr. (S&B 1836) - Member, US Congress, 1863-67, Mayor of New Orleans, LA 1862-63, chairman, Committee on Expenditures, US War Department (his grandmother Alice Skinner was the sister of Dr. John Skinner, who married Roger Sherman's daughter Chloe Sherman)
• 54. Henry Champion Deming, Jr. (S&B 1872) - Secretary for the Mercantile Trust Company (son of Henry Champion Deming, Sr.)
• 55. Lawrence (Laurent) Clerc Deming (S&B 1883) - Assistant Secretary, Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (son of Henry Champion Deming, Sr.)
• 56. Charles Clerc Deming (S&B 1872) - US Journalist (son of Henry Champion Deming Sr.)
• 57. Clarence Deming (S&B 1872) - Member, Connecticut State Legislature 1849-50 and 1859-60; Member, US Congress 1863-67; US Internal Revenue Collector 1869-72 (nephew of Henry C. Deming, Sr.)
• 58. George Herbert Walker Bush (S&B 1947) U.S. President 89-92, U.S. Vice President 81-88; Director, U.S. CIA, 74-75; Chief U.S. Liaison Officer, China, 73-74; Chairman, Republican Party, 73-74; U.S. Ambassador, United Nations, 71-72; President, Chairman of the Board, Zapata Off-Shore Company, 58-66; Member, US Congress, 66-70;
• 59. James Smith Bush (S&B 1922) President, Inter Mundi; Curator, University of Missouri; Managing Director, Export-Import Bank of Washington, D.C., 59-63
• 60. Jonathan James Bush (S&B 1953) CEO & President, Riggs Investment Bank, 98-2004; Chairman of the Board, J. Bush & Company; General Partner, G.H. Walker & Co, 60-70
• 61. Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917) Member, US Senate R-Connecticut, 52-63; Partner, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, 1930-72, (New York, NY); Vice President W.A. Harriman & Company, 26-30; Director of Pan Am Airways, CBS, Dresser Industries, Inc, Simmons Company, Vanadium Corp of America; Chairman of the Board, Pennsylvania Water & Power Company, US Guarantee Company; Chairman 1942 National Campaign, USO; Treasurer, 1942 National Campaign, Planned Parenthood, President, USGA, 1935; Trustee, Yale University, Member, Yale Corporation, 48-58
• 63 George Walker Bush (S&B 1968) - Governor of Texas and US President
• 64 John Forbes Kerry (S&B 1967) - Former Lt. Governor and current US Senator from Massachusetts
• 65. Dr. William Henry Palmer - (S&B 1864) Valedictorian, College of Physicians and Surgeons, 1866; Professor of Ophthalmology, Cleveland Medical College; a visiting Physician, Cleveland City Hospital (His uncle Benjamin Franklin Palmer married Roger Sherman’s great-great granddaughter Eliza Harriet Hart. (The daughter of Rev. Ira Hart and Maria Sherman)
• 66. Thomas Hooker - (S&B 1869) President, First National Bank (New Haven, CT); and President, New Haven Hospital. His wife was Sarah Bowles, the granddaughter of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (see below). (Sarah Bowles 5, Elizabeth Hoar Bowles 4, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar 3, Sarah Sherman 2, Roger Sherman 1)
• 67. Philip Battell Stewart - (S&B 1886) Trustee of Colorado College, 1900-1953; Baseball Coach, 1902-05. His father was Governor of Vermont and a US Senator. (Emma Battell 5, Philip Battell 4, Joseph Battell 3, William Battell 2, Methetabel Sherman 1)

Special Note: This is not yet believed to be a completed list of Sherman family Bonesmen

So American founding father Roger Sherman (of Connecticut) adds yet another great distinction to his already famous name, the distinction of being the patriarch of the largest American family of the world's most secretive and powerful fraternal society....SKULL & BONES!

Note: Roger Sherman's youngest daughter Sarah married US Representative Samuel Hoar, a Harvard alumni whose grandfather Leonard Hoar had been the President of Harvard College. Sarah and Samuel were the parents of US Senator George Frisbee Hoar and US Attorney General and Massachusetts State Attorney General Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar.

Additional Note: Roger Sherman Baldwin, Sr. (Yale – 1811), married Emily (Pitkin) Perkins nine years after his graduation. Perkins was the great-granddaughter of the first president of Yale College (after its officially changed its name), the Rev. Thomas Clap.

Sources:
• Baldwin, Evarts, Hoar & Sherman Political Families, US Political Families, Wikipedia
• Taft, Lippitt and Chafee Political Families, US Political Families, Wikipedia
• Boardman, Roger Sherman; Roger Sherman, Signer and Statesman. 1938. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.
• Boutell, Lewis Henry; The Life of Roger Sherman. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1896.
• Collier, Christopher; Roger Sherman s Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971.
• Gerber, Scott D.; "Roger Sherman and the Bill of Rights." Polity 28 (Summer 1996): 521-540.
• Hoar, George Frisbie; The Connecticut Compromise. Roger Sherman, the Author of the Plan of Equal Representation of the States in the Senate, and Representation of the People in Proportion to Numbers in the House, Worcester, MA: Press of C. Hamilton, 1903.
• Rommel, John G. Connecticut s Yankee Patriot: Roger Sherman. Hartford: American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut, 1980.
• Millegan, Kris; Fleshing Out Skull & Bones. Trine Day, 2003.
• Baldwin Family Papers, Yale University
• Day Family Papers, Yale University
• Hoar Family Papers, Harvard University
• Foster Family Autograph Collection
• Skinner Family Papers, Yale University
• Thomas Anthony Thacher Papers, Yale University
• George W. Bush Genealogy, William Addams Reitwiesner
• John Forbes Kerry Genealogy, William Addams Reitwiesner

Another Presidential Hiring Blunder?

2006-02-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

First there was James Dale Guckert, who worked under the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, as a White House press reporter between 2003 and 2005 representing Talon News (owned by the owner of GOPUSA). After Guckert came under public scrutiny, in particular for his lack of a creditable journalism background and his "secret" involvement in his homosexual on-line escort service; using alias name of "Bulldog". Ultimately causing James D. Gukert AKA Jeff Gannon AKA Bulldog to resign the GOP friendly Talon News and the United States White House Press Corp one year ago today.

Then it was reported by TIME Magazine on September 9, 2005, that it had discovered serious inaccuracies and false claims within former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown's (former Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)) biography posted on FEMA's and FindLaw's websites.

Now a year to the day that James Dale Gukert AKA Jeff Gannon AKA Bulldog resigned from the White Press Corp, twenty-four year old George C. Deutsch has resigned from his presidential appointment as a public affairs officer at NASA. Apparently Monday's report from Nick Anthis' web blog “The Scientific Activist” proved that Deutsch had also lied on his resume, regarding having earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from Texas A&M University in 2003. Although Deutsch did attend Texas A&M, he left school in 2004 to work in the “War Room” within the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign.

For those not informed, Deutsch was also under fire recently for trying to squelch and/or alter research coming from NASA agencies. Specifically James Hansen (a NASA climatologist) had recently spoken out against Deutsch, claiming that he had silenced him after Dr. Hansen called upon the U.S. Government to face the scientific facts of global warming; further urging the US government "to make a serious, renewed commitment to the environment."

Under an administration that now wants to tap our phones without a warrant, and to gather a week's worth of web tracking data from Yahoo, AOL and Google...doesn't it seem just a little fishy that they're not even checking the college transcripts of their own employees. That an individual under a false name and with bogus credentials can get into the White House?

Now come America, is there really any wonder how this country got attacked on September 11th, 2001; or how we came to invade a sovereign nation as a result of false national intelligence gathering, or why the U.S. government did nothing as 10s of thousands of American died and Anderson Cooper reported the news from New Orleans.... as FEMA director Michael Brown ate his dinner and went to sleep in Washington D.C. during Hurricane Katrina?

My God America, this administration can not even keep idiots like this out of the the White House…ummmm wait a minute here; perhaps this is nothing more than a little case of the blind leading the blind?

SPECIAL NOTE: To demand an end to the unconstitutional censorship of American scientists, those working at NASA and other Federal agencies, please sign the Environmental Action petition.

http:www.environmental-action.org/gw.asp?id=1319&id4=board

Sources:
Ben at zeroblue76 LiveJournal, http://zeroblue76.livejournal.com/
"White House Approves Pass For Blogger" by Katharine Q. Seelye for The New York Times, March 7, 2005
"Democrats Want Investigation of Reporter Using Fake Name" by Katharine Q. Seelye for The New York Times, February 11, 2005
How Reliable Is Brown's Résumé?, TIME Online Edition, September 8, 2005
Climate experts says NASA tried to silence him, New York Times, January 29, 2006, Andrew C. Revkin
George Deutsch Did Not Graduate From Texas A & M University, The Scientific Activist, February 6, 2006, Nick Anthis

WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS WANTED?

2006-01-16T22:19:00.000-08:00

ROGER SHERMAN
1721-1793
We heard many time, "our American founding fathers had said this...and that our American founding fathers had wanted that;" but have any of these silver spoon sucking politicians actually read the writings of our founding fathers? I've read their written works, and it seems pretty clear to me that many of the politicians currently inside the Washington, D.C. beltway have absolutely no regard or respect for what the American founding fathers wanted. Because if they did understand, they would certainly be alarmed by just how far America has strayed from that road paved with the blood, sweat and tears of our Founding Fathers!

ROGER SHERMAN:

For the purpose of this post, I have chosen the most significant member of all of our American founding father. Roger Sherman was a man who risked everything that he had to form the new and independent government. He was father of fifteen (15), and his commitment to cause of democracy kept his family on the very brink of financial ruin during those forming decades.

Roger Sherman’s father died when he was just a young man of twenty, and the responsible for his siblings and mother passed to him. He worked as a cobbler, surveyor, merchant and he was accepted to the Bar of Litchfield in 1754, and represented New Milford in the General Assembly the following year. He was appointed justice of the peace, and then four years later a justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut. By the age of forty, he had become a successful landowner and businessman, while also integrating himself into the social and political fabric of the New England region. He was then appointed commissary to the Connecticut Troops at the start of the Revolutionary War; this was experience that he later put to great use when he was elected to the Continental Congress in 1774. Sherman was a very active and much respected Delegate to the Congress. He served and numerous committees, including the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. He served all through the war for Independence. As active as he was in Congress, he simultaneously fulfilled his other offices.

In 1776 these efforts began to take their toll on his health. Thus, he appealed to then his friend Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull to relieve him of his state duties, so that he could remain in US Congress through 1781. He left that office at the 1781, but returned in 1783 and 84, serving on the committee forming the "Articles of Confederation." His interests in the strength of the federation carried him through to the Constitutional Convention in 1785, where Sherman was one of the most vocal and persistent members. James Madison's notes from the convention credited Sherman with delivering one hundred and thirty-eight (138) speeches to the convention delegates.

Roger Sherman, who is now barely known to many American citizens, is the only American founding father to place his signature upon all of the great founding documents of our country; as well as aiding in the drafting of each of these documents; the Articles of Association in 1774; the Declaration of Independence in 1776; the Articles of Confederation in 1781 and the United States Constitution in 1788.

When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 became deadlocked over the matter of legislative voting, Roger Sherman put forth the proposal of "a proportion of suffrage in the first branch (the house) should be according to the respective numbers of free inhabitants, and that in the second branch (the senate) each state should have one vote," a system similar to one that he had advocated previously for; as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776. Sherman’s "Great Compromise" was adopted on July 16, 1787 by a vote of five states to four, and served to not only save the convention from ruin, but provided the stimulus to resolve additional issues that had yet to be decided.

POLITICAL & RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION:

Perhaps the most notable of Roger Sherman's personal characteristics was his strong and firm religious faith. He even opposed the appointment of his fellow Declaration signer, Gouverneur Morris, as the US Minister to France; believing that this high-living patriot was of an "irreligious nature." He even published works that demonstrated his deep interest in area of theology, including A Short Sermon on the Duty of Self-Examination Preparatory to Receiving the Lord's Supper (1789).

John Adams, himself an heir to the same tradition, described Sherman as "an old Puritan, as honest as an angel and as firm in the cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas." Thomas Jefferson once said of him: "That is Mr. Sherman of Connecticut, a man who has never said a foolish thing in his life."

Yet Sherman was one of the first to deny the supremacy of Parliament, stating that the British Parliament had no right to make laws for America. Sherman’s friends and colleagues on the Connecticut Superior Court; Chief Judge Jonathan Trumbull, Matthew Griswold and Eliphalet Dyer who all became influential members of the “Sons of Liberty” and/or the religious “New Lights” radicals that swept across Connecticut.

Sherman argued against the 3/5 provision, which recognized slaves as being only 3/5 of a person toward representation in the House. He also argued against the establishment of any one national religion, knowing that even in the late 1700s America was a country of great religious and spiritual diversity.

Roger Sherman's descendants continued in the footsteps of their famous grandfather, especially on the issues of great social change.

ABOLITIONISM:

Roger Sherman Baldwin, (Rebecca Sherman 2, Roger Sherman 1) In 1790, Simeon Baldwin, who married two of Roger Sherman’s daughters, was one of the founders of the "Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and for the Relief of Persons unlawfully holden in Bondage . . . having with grief and abhorrence long beheld a considerable number of our fellow men groaning under the iron band of slavery . . . ."

Simeon’s son, Connecticut Governor and US Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin spoke out against the abuses of slavery from the floor of the United States Senate in denouncing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He reviewed the Amistad Slaves case that he won with then former US President John Quincy Adams, attacking the clause in the Fugitive Slave Act which simply accepted the word of a slave claimant without any recourse to judicial action to determine whether or not the fugitive was, in fact, a free individual. At the end of an immensely successful law career he was a Connecticut delegate to the National Peace Conference in Washington in 1861.

Source: Manchester, Mary E. "Baldwin, Roger Sherman." Dictionary of American Biography, Volume I. New York: Scribner's 1936.

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE:

Elizabeth Selden Rogers,(Charles Atwood White 4, Martha Sherman 3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman 1) of New York City, was the wife of a prominent thyroid specialist and was the daughter of a great-grandson of Roger Sherman. She was a civic reformer working to improve the New York public schools, and to also win suffrage for women in the state of New York first and later joining the national suffrage movement.

She was chairman of the Advisory Council of the National Women Party, and was one of the most forceful speakers in the "Prison Special" bus tour across the country; during which suffragists spoke of their experience in jail. Rogers was arrested on July 14, 1917 for picketing in front of the United States White House, and was sentenced to sixty (60) days in Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia; but she was quickly pardoned by US President Woodrow Wilson after just three (3) days.

Source: Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920), 367.

GAY LIBERATION:

Prescott Townsend, (Kate Wendell Sherman 4, Edward Standish Sherman 3, Roger Sherman, Jr. 2, Roger Sherman 1) of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was arrested on 29 January 1943 for participating in an “unnatural and lascivious act.” He was sentenced to an eighteen (18) months jail term in the Massachusetts House of Corrections on Deer Island, although no one in his family applied pressure to shorten his jail time. The Mid-Town Journal headline of 29 January 1943 reported, "Beacon Hill 'Twilight' Man Member of Queer Love Cult Seduced Young Man" and one month later he was officially stricken from both the New York and Boston Social Registers.

Townsend is believed to have been the first individual to organize a public conversation about homosexuality, and the first acknowledged homosexual to address the Massachusetts State legislature, where he urged the lawmakers "to legalize love."

He opened the first art theater on Beacon Hill, and was a founder of the Provincetown Playhouse, where the works of Eugene O'Neil where first performed.

Townsend had for years been suffering from failing health brought on by Parkinson's Disease, and on 23 May 1973 his body was found in the Beacon Hill apartment of John Murray. Murray had been taking care of him during the final years of his life, and the police reported that "when we came in to take charge of the body, Mr. Townsend was found in a kneeling prayer position at his bedside." Of his entire family, only one sister, a nephew and a great nephew bothered to attend his memorial service at the Arlington Street Church.

Source:Randy Wicker, Early Boston gay advocate Prescott Townsend dies at 78, The Advocate, May 24, 1973, Issue 114, page 11.

GOVERNMENT REFORM & PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT:

Archibald Cox (Frances Bruen Perkins 5, Elizabeth Hoar Evarts 4, William Maxwell Evarts 3, Mehitabel Sherman 2, Roger Sherman 1) “Archibald Cox will be remembered for his uncompromising defense of the law against US President Richard M. Nixon during his impeachment trial. When his investigation revealed the existence of secret Oval Office audio tapes, he subpoenaed his boss to provide them.

At a Saturday afternoon news conference hours before Cox was fired, Cox insisted: ‘I'm certainly not out to get the president of the United States. . . . I decided I had to try to stick by what I thought was right." In a formal statement after his dismissal, he said simply that 'whether we shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for the Congress and, ultimately, the American people to decide.’

After two appeals of the subpoenas were turned down, the president offered to give the US Senate and Cox written summaries of what was on the tapes. Cox turned down the deal. President Nixon then ordered US Attorney General Richardson to fire him. But the Richardson refused to fire his former Harvard law professor and cousin, as did Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Nixon then turned to his solicitor general (future Supreme Court Justice candidate) Robert Bork, who was willing to carry out the President’s order. The event which will forever be known as 'the Saturday Night Massacre.'

He would later observe that ‘one of the important lessons of Watergate was that unless the government trusts the people and conducts itself in an honorable fashion, then the people won't trust the government. . . . The long-range aim of the Watergate investigation and prosecution was to show that the government could cleanse itself and be put in a shape that the people could trust."

Source: Bart Barnes, Watergate Prosecutor Faced Down the President washingtonpost.com, May 30, 2004; Page A01

ENVIRONMENTALIST:

Theodore Sherman Palmer (Henry Austin Palmer 5, Eliza Harriet Palmer 4, Maria Sherman 3, John Sherman 2, Roger Sherman 1) He was the first ornithologist within the U.S. Biological Survey of 1890 to 1896. He directs a five months forwarding in the Death Valley in 1891. He was a assistant chief 1896 to 1902, then of 1910 to 1914 attending in load of the hunting preserves of 1902 to 1910 and 1914 1916. Always in this same institution, he becomes expert for the conservation of game of 1916 to 1924, biologist of 1924 to 1928, then senior biologist of 1928 to 1933.

He was vice president of the American Society of Mammalogists since 1927, having declined, after election in 1933, to serve as president. Dr. Palmer was a corresponding member of several foreign ornithological societies, including the Ornithologische Gesellschaft, Bavaria, and the Royal Hungarian Institute of Ornithology, and is an honorary member of the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire (London), the Transvaal Game Protective Society (South Africa), and the International Association of Game, Fish and Conservation Commissioners.

He is also a member of the American Bison Society, the Society of American Foresters, the National Parks Association, and many other scientific and conservation organizations. He was also a co-founder of the National Audubon Society.

Source: Biological Survey, W. L. MCATEE , 367-377

Note: The brother of Theodore Sherman Palmer's father Henry Austin Palmer, Ira Hart Palmer, married Harriet Trumbull. She was the daughter of Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. (who was the son of Roger Sherman fellow judge on the Connecticut Superior Court and also a Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull, Sr.)

HOLISTIC MEDICINE

Evarts G. Loomis (Jane Herring Greene4, Mary Evarts3, Mehitabel Sherman2, Roger Sherman1) Loomis is known as the father of holistic medicine. A homeopathic physician of international renown, he was an advocate of holistic treatment of disease, natural foods, exercise, and meditation. Loomis was licensed to practice traditional medicine in 1946, but began early in his career to diverge from a quiet or dull practice. He has also been a proponent of regulated, monitored 24-36 hour fasts, touting the benefits of both the water fast and the all-juice fast.

Source: American Holistic Health Association (AHHA) - Loomis Bio

Note: Evarts Loomis' grandmother was Mary Evarts, a sister of former United States Secretary of State, Attorney General and Senator William Maxwell Evarts.

All of these descendants of our American founding father were as passionate in the own convictions, as Roger Sherman was about attaining freedom and democracy.

Would Roger Sherman have approved of, or even supported their many various causes and political pursuits? No one can truly say for sure, however, one could assume that he would have likely admired both their passion and drive.

So if you want to emulate our American Founding Fathers, get radical....stand up for the rights you have; or more importantly, the rights you deserve as American tax paying citizen and afforded to you under the United States Constitution!

WHOSE FAMILY VALUES

2005-12-23T10:32:00.000-08:00

“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of,
he always declares that it is his duty.”

George Bernard Shaw
“Caesar and Cleopatra”
1901
As many of us now gather with our families for the holidays, let us think about the man who "God speaks to." United States President George Walker Bush has projected himself as a "compassionate conservative," who combines "traditional Republican values" – such as support for low taxation, a small but effective government, a mighty and strong military and Christian "family values;" with the idea that a greater concern for the underprivileged, demands a larger role for various churches and charities. When President Bush speaks of family values, just who’s family do you think that he is speaking about? Surely he can not be speaking about his own Bush/ Walker/ Lambert/ Livingston family...could he?

Let’s take a look at the Bush/ Walker/ Lambert/ Livingston family, and then you decide if President Bush is speaking about his own family... or some imaginary family that has been created just for you, me and the rest of the world!

STARTING FROM THE TOP

G-great grandfather David Davis Walker's brother marriage to Lily Lambert, the daughter of Jordon Wheat Lambert. J.W. Lambert was the man behind Listerine, and who's family company would become Warner-Lambert...the largest manufacturers of of condoms (Trojan) in America!

Former President George H. W. Bush's father, Prescott Sheldon Bush (the Treasurer for the pro-abortion Planned Parenthood's 1942 Capital Campaign) and his maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker were powerful financial supporters, and it is said that they both also had ties to Adolf Hitler.

George Herbert Walker was president of Union Banking Corporation, a firm that traded with Germany and helped German industrialists consolidate Hitler's political power and Union Banking became a Nazi money-laundering machine.

Walker helped take over North American operations of Hamburg-Amerika Line, a shipping line and cover for I. G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the U. S. Hamburg-Amerika smuggled in German agents, and brought in money for bribing American politicians to support Hitler. A 1934 congressional investigation showed Hamburg-Amerika subsidized Nazi propaganda efforts in the U.S.

George H. W. Bush's father, Prescott, was a board member of Union Banking and a senior partner in a Union Banking affiliate, the investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman. The U. S. government investigated both Bert Walker and Prescott Bush, and under the Trading with the Enemy Act seized all shares of Union Banking, including shares held by Prescott Bush. The government held that "huge sections of Prescott Bush's empire had been operated on behalf of Nazi Germany and had greatly assisted the German war effort."

As a managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, he sat on several corporate boards, including the following: Dresser Industries. An oil drilling equipment supply company. In 1928 W.A. Harriman and Company paid $4,000,000 for Dresser's corporate stock, and sold securities against the company. In 1929 Bush refinanced Dresser "so that we retained a substantial measure of control."

In 1930 E. Roland Harriman and Bush became members of the board (Bush served until 1952), and installed his Yale classmate Henry Neil Mallon as chairman. Mallon and Bush were lifelong friends, as demonstrated by the fact that in 1948 Mallon would hire George H. W. Bush to work at Dresser Industries (George H.W. later named one of his sons Neil Mallon).

In September 1998, Dresser merged with Halliburton and is now known as the Halliburton Company. (Former CEO Dick Cheney was President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense during the Gulf War, and now he is the Vice President and was also the former campaign manager for George W. Bush.)

Prescott Bush went on to become a United States Senator (1952 – 1963) from Connecticut. In a speech given June 6, 1955, in New London, Connecticut, Bush shared his reflections on the Cold War. "We must maintain strong defenses, military and spiritual," he said. "It is our conduct, our patriotism and belief in our American way of life, our courage that will win the final battle."

He maintained homes at One Sutton Place in New York City, a country estate in Long Island, New York; another home in Greenwich, Connecticut; the family compound Walker's Point in Kennebunkport, Maine; a 10,000-acre plantation in South Carolina (with slaves too); and an island retreat in Florida.

George Herbert Walker Bush was the 41st President of the United States (1989-1993). Previously, he had served as Ambassador to the United Nations (1971–1973), director of the CIA 1976–1977, and the 43rd Vice President of the United States under President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989).

As President of the United States, George H.W. Bush is perhaps best known for having lead a United Nations coalition in the Gulf War (1990–1991). After Saddam Hussein lead Iraq's invasion into the oil-rich neighboring country of Kuwait. The then broad coalition sought to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and to ensure that Iraq did not invade Saudi Arabia.

The current US President, George W. Bush, has been arrested three times, once for stealing a large Christmas wreath from a hotel, once for ripping down the Princeton goal posts after the Princeton-Yale game and then he was arrested in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol, in Kennebunkport, ME. He pled guilty, paid fine and had driver's license suspended for 30 days.

George W. was also accused of using insider knowledge, when selling stock while serving on the board of directors of Harken Energy Corp in 1990. After his sale of the stock, Harken reported a $23.2 million quarterly loss.

An SEC investigation in 1992 found that Bush "did not engage in illegal insider trading". However, the SEC also noted that this "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result." Critics of Bush allege that the investigation was influenced by the fact that Bush's father was then the President of the United States. As President, he has refused to authorize the SEC to release its entire report of their investigation. (I could go on, but I think you get my point here.)

In 1989, Bush and his wife traveled to Nigeria with executives of M&W Pump, a Florida-based company that had been selling agricultural pumps to Nigeria. Jeb and Columba Bush were received by Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida and celebrated by tens of thousands of Nigerians who turned out to see the son of the U.S. president. President Babangida expressed his interest in visiting the White House -- a request Jeb promised to pass along to his father -- and by 1992 the Florida pump company had secured $74 million in financing from the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

In 1990, Neil Mallon Bush paid a $50,000 fine and was banned from banking activities for his role in taking down Silverado Savings & Loan, which actually cost US taxpayers $1.3 billion. A Resolution Trust Corporation suit against Neil Bush and other officers of Silverado was settled in 1991 for $26.5 million. And the fine wasn't exactly paid by Neil Bush, a Republican fundraiser set up a fund to help defer the costs Neil incurred in his S&L dealings.

Scott Hinckley, brother of the would be assassin John W. Hinckley, Jr., (who shot former US President Ronald Reagan), had plans for dinner on the same evening that President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, at the Denver, Colorado home of the Neil Mallon Bush. Of course Neil's father, Vice President George H.W. Bush would have become President of the United States, had Hinckley’s brother been successful that winter day.

The Bush and Hinckley families go back several generations together, to the Texas oil-wildcatting days of the 1960s. The families relationship was even closer between George H.W. Bush, Sr., and John Hinckley, Sr., who were once neighbors of each other's in Houston, Texas. John Hinckley, Sr., even contributed to several of Bush's political campaigns, all the way back to when Bush ran for the United States Congress, and he also supported George H. W. Bush when he ran against Ronald Reagan for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. Bush, Sr.'s Zapata Oil even bailed out Hinckley's financially troubled oil company when Hinckley operation came up with six dead oil wells. Amazingly, he was back to making millions of dollars in the oil business just a few year after the Bush bailout.

Sharon Bush, Neil Mallon Bush's wife, received an email from her husband stating, “He wasn't sure they should remain married.” After 22 years she was stunned. Sharon says, I said, “You're firing me via email? What do you mean, you're firing me?” He said, “No, I just don't love you.” During their divorce proceedings, Neil Bush admitted to accepting some free adulterous sex on a number of occasions during business trips in Asia. "I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong." Neil claims that “the women would knock on his hotel room door, walk in, and have sex with him. He never asked if they were prostitutes, and never paid them.” (hmmmm…Her name didn’t happen to be Monica, was it?)

FAMILY VALUES WORKING OVERTIME

Jeb and Columba’s Children

Noelle Bush

Jan. 30, 2002, Governor Jeb Bush's Daughter Was Arrested for Xanax Prescription Fraud. However, this arrest wasn't her first brush with the law. She has a record of several car crashes and traffic tickets, including one parking lot fender bender, in which she was charged with leaving the scene without calling police. She was also arrested for shoplifting in Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1995.

George P. Bush
On December 31, 1994, George P. Bush showed up at 4 AM at the Miami home of a former girlfriend. He proceeded to break into the house, via the woman's bedroom window and then began arguing with his ex's father. Bush, then a Rice University student, soon fled the scene. However, he returned 20 minutes later to drive his Ford Explorer across the home's front lawn, leaving wide tire marks.

John “Jebby” Bush

On October 7 2002, John “Jebby” Bush (16-years old at the time) was catch getting busy in a Jeep Cherokee… in the parking lot of a Tallahassee mall. As the police report notes, a pair of mall rent-a-cops caught Bush and his 17-year-old female companion fogging the car's windows--both were naked from the waist down, except Jebby's socks. The underage lovebirds were not charged.

George and Laura Bush’s Children

In October 2000, Barbara Bush tried to use a fake ID to buy alcohol at a bar in New Haven, Connecticut, but was not served and was not arrested.

In February 2001, Jenna Bush sent her Secret Service agents to bail her friend out of jail, after he had been arrested for underage drinking.

In April 2001, Barbara gave her Secret Service agents the slip while on her way to a WWF match in NYC, the Secret Services vehicle reached speeds in excess of 119 mph to catch up with Barbara.

In April 2001, Jenna was cited for underage drinking at an Austin bar and pled no contest to the charges. She paid $51.25 in court costs, performed 8 hours of community service doing clerical and research work at the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Texas, and attended 6 hours of alcohol awareness classes.

In May 2001, both Barbara and Jenna were cited for alcohol offenses. Barbara pled no contest to being a minor in possession of alcohol, and was sentenced to probation, 8 hours of community service, alcohol awareness classes, and a $100 fine. Jenna pled innocent to trying to buy alcohol with a fake ID, and was tried in Austin, TX on July 31, 2001. This was Jenna’s third alcohol related infraction, as she had another one in 1997.

SMOKING GUN'S TOP TEN KNOWN BUSH ARRESTS

10. President George W. Bush's DWI.
9. First daughter Barbara Bush, minor in possession of alcohol.
8. First daughter Jenna Bush, minor in possession of alcohol (3 separate times).
7. Vice President Dick Cheney's second DWI.
6. First Lady Laura Bush's vehicular homicide, record was later expunged.
5. President George W. Bush was arrested for petty larceny (stealing a Christmas wreath, really!). All charges were later dropped.
4. Governor Jeb Bush's 24 year old daughter Noelle Bush being arrested for prescription drug fraud at 1:15 am, at a Walgreen's drive-thru pharmacy attempting to obtain the drug Xanax with a fradulant prescription.
3. Jeb's eldest son George Prescott Bush’s arrested for breaking into girlfriend's home and malicious destruction of property.
2. Governor Jeb Bush's youngest son John "Jebby" Bush being arrested for violating state of Florida sodomy law when he was 16... in a Jacksonville mall parking lot. Then when Jebby Bush was 21 he arrested by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for public drunkenness and resisting arrest in Austin, Texas.
1. Governor Jeb Bush's wife, Columba Bush, for smuggling undeclared purchases, upon re-entering the United States (fined $20,000 USD).

AARON ADDS ONE MORE
11. On 2 May 1985 Scott Pierce (brother of Barbara Bush and former Vice Chairman & President of E.F. Hutton & Co.) pleaded guilty to 2,000 counts of money laundering and wire tapping involving millions of dollars.

BONUS:
1. Whatever earned George W. Bush a one year sentence of community service in Houston.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

1. U.S. National Archives, Vesting Order number 248, October 20 1942, Leo T. Crowley.
2. Heir to the Holocaust by Toby Rogers, Clamor Magazine Issue 14 May/June 2002.
3. How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power by Ben Aris in Berlin and
4. Duncan Campbell in Washington, The Guardian, September 25, 2004.
Bush - Nazi Link Confirmed by John Buchanan, The New Hampshire Gazette, Vol. 248, No. 1, October 10, 2003.
5. Cecil Adams on Prescott Bush February 14, 2003.
6. Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Co. v. John J. Reynolds, Inc. (1959)
7. Burning Down the House: How Greed, Deceit, and Bitter Revenge Destroyed E. F. Hutton by James Sterngold (1990)

Connecticut Civil Unions = Sexual Apartheid!

2005-12-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

Recently a good friend in Connecticut sent me an email with a link to a New York Blade article titled, "Conn. couples slow to apply for civil unions." Here is my reply, concerning the state of Connecticut's new civil union legislation.

As I former Catholic, I fell compelled to say that this is in NO WAY a religious issue... it is an American civil rights issue. When a law abiding and taxpaying American is denied the same rights that are freely given illegal aliens...there is a serious problem in America!

Brian,

As a former Connecticut resident, I am glad you are as concerns about Connecticut's civil union legislation as I have been. I have also taken the time to address these concerns directly with the editorial staff at Window Media.

Window Media/New York Blade Editorial Staff
SOUND OFF! ABOUT THIS ARTICLE Section
1408 U Street, NW, 2nd Floor
Washington, DC 20009

To Whom It May Concern:

As a lineal descendant of several former Connecticut governors (Roger Sherman Baldwin and Simeon Eben Baldwin), I have personally find the Connecticut state civil union legislation extremely offensive. The Connecticut GLBT community is wise to be cautious about running out to get there Connecticut Civil Unions.

While many news reports have claimed that Connecticut was the first state to provide a legal status for same-sex couples, without first being ordered to do so by the courts, both Hawaii and California have provided legal protections to same-sex partners for many years now. Connecticut civil unions are clearly no great legal civil rights victory for the Connecticut GLBT community.

In fact, the state of Connecticut has recently even refused to recognize those civil unions performed in state of Vermont. In Rosengarten v. Downes, a Connecticut appellate court held that a Vermont civil union was not a "marriage" under EITHER state's law, and thus could not be dissolved by the state of Connecticut. It found persuasive the fact that in 2002, the Connecticut legislature had considered, but failed to act upon two bills that would have authorized same-sex marriage or same-sex civil unions, respectively. This, the court felt, was indicative of Connecticut's very clear public policy against the recognition of any same-sex marriage-like relationships.

Perhaps even more distributing, was the fact that the week before the civil union legislation was signed by Connecticut governor M. Jodi Rell, the Connecticut House of Representatives amended the bill, at the governor's strong urging, and define the Connecticut law to read that "marriage exists only between one man and one woman." The Connecticut Senate then gave final legislative approval to this amended bill that Wednesday afternoon on a vote 26-8 vote.

After governor Rell signed the bill into law she stated: "I have said all along that I believe in no discrimination of any kind, and I think that this bill accomplishes that, while at the same time preserving the traditional language that a marriage is between a man and a woman," and perhaps closing a legal loop-hole in the process

Connecticut Civil Unions

* Reserved only for only same-sex couples. (Thus it can not be equal, it is in fact sexual apartheid)
* Must be at least 18 years old. (16 for marriage with parental consent for heterosexuals)
* No blood test. (I will not comment on my thoughts about this provision)
* Applications obtained - in person - from a town clerk’s office. (Not available on-line like marriage)
* Clerk must be in the town where Union is officiated, or where either applicant lives.
* After applying, couple has only 65 days to enter into the union, or they must reapply.
* Officiation may be conducted by anyone who performs marriages (justices of the peace, ordained clergy, judges).
* Neither partner can be currently married, or in a Civil Union from another state. (Yet, Connecticut will not even honor the civil unions of other states like Vermont)
* Same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts are not valid in Connecticut.
* One year Connecticut residency by at least one partner is required to dissolve a civil union. (This provision is not required of heterosexual couples)
* No common law civil union provision for partners of 5+ years.
* The Connecticut civil union law provides for group health and other benefits for ONLY Connecticut government employees. (It does not mandate that private sector employers must extend equal health care/employee benefits to their employees).
* The Connecticut civil union law is also not portable; for example, if someone has a Civil Union in Vermont, that union is not recognized in any other state. As a matter of fact, Connecticut and Georgia, have already ruled that they do not have to recognize the civil unions performed in the state of Vermont, because their states have NO such legal category.
* A United States citizen who is married can sponsor his or her non-American partner for immigration into this country. (The Connecticut civil unions have no such privilege.)
* Civil Unions are not recognized by the federal government, so couples are not be able to file joint-tax returns, and are not eligible for tax breaks or additional protections that the United States government affords to married couples.

The U.S. General Accounting Office in 1997 released a list of 1,049 benefits and protections made available to heterosexual married couples, that list was broaden in 2003 list to include 1,138 benefits and protection. These benefits range from federal benefits, such as survivor benefits through Social Security, sick leave to care for ailing partner, tax breaks, veterans benefits and even insurance breaks. They also include things like family discounts, obtaining family insurance through your employer, visiting your spouse in the hospital and making medical decisions if your partner is unable to.

Civil Unions protect some of these rights, but not all of them. Civil Unions creates a separate and unequal status for some of America’s citizens. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial court ruled that creating a separate class for gay and lesbian citizens is not permissible under the state's constitution, and that is why they have voted that only marriage equals marriage.

The United States Constitution guarantees equality protection to all United States citizens. Illegal aliens now have rights and privileges that taxpaying GLBT American do not, such as hospital access, death rights and hundred of additional benefits.

Marriage and civil unions, especially Connecticut's, are clearly not equal or even the same. Creating equal access to "marriage related benefits" is the only fair way to ensure equality for both gay and straight couples alike.

Additional Sources:

Religious Tolerance

yaledailynews.com - Few CT civil unions in first days

Civil Unions in Connecticut

TIME's 2004 Man of the Year

2005-12-17T10:39:00.000-08:00

Henry Luce, Briton Hadden, George W. Bush and TIME Magazine
Before I get into the main subject of my article, "How the Hell Did United States President George W. Bush Get To Be Named The 2004 'TIME Man of the Year'," there is something that I feel I truly need to set straight here... about the Bush family.

The Bush Family comes from a long and illustrious ancestry, which is not confined to just these two U.S. Presidents and his brother the governor of the State of Florida; for the Bushs have the blood of at least a dozen European Kings coursing through their veins. Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush (S&B 1947), George W. Bush’s (S&B 1968), Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917) (along with at least eight (8) other Bush/Walker members of Skull & Bones) royal descendants including; King Henry I, King Henry II, King Edward I, and Queen Elizabeth II of England; King Malcolm III, King Robert II and King William I of Scotland; King Louis XV and King Louis XVI of France; King Bernard of Italy, Queen Isabella I of Castile, Philip II of Macedonia, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and on back to the Pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt.

Through much of the 20th Century, the Bushes family has tried to impress upon Americans that they were just your average ordinary American family. However, ask yourself if this is either average or ordinary (for most Americans). President Bush’s great-great grandfather made his first before the year 1900, his son (Bush’s great grandfather) maintained homes at One Sutton Place in New York City, a Long Island estate, a home in Santa Barbara, CA; as well as maintaining vacations homes at both Walker’s Point, Kennebunkport, Maine and a 10,000 acre plantation in Charleston, South Carolina; often traveling between them in his own private rail car.

His grandparents (Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush) maintained homes on the posh island retreat on Jupiter Island, Florida (America’s wealthiest ZIP Code); where they were neighbors were the Du Ponts, the Doubledays, the Roosevelts, the Lovetts, the Browns, the Vanderbilts, the Mercks, the Whitneys, the Searles, the Harrimans and a number of the other American super elite of the Gilded Age.

Let’s Make No Bones About This, Some Answers Would Be Nice!

The Skulls & Bones at Yale University has likely not changed too much since its founding in 1832. Each year fifteen (15) third year undergraduates are tapped for inclusion into what has become known as America’s most selective secret society. Started one hundred and seventy two (172) years ago by William H. Russell and Alphonso Taft (father of the future United States President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft); now has about 2,580 Yale graduates in its alumni members who have been initiated into "The Order." Therefore at any given time, there is likely about 500 to 600 Yale Bonesmen (as they are referred to) who are alive throughout the world.

However, long before the TIME Magazine's Skull & Bones brothers Henry Robinson Luce (S&B 1920) and Briton Hadden (S&B 1920) had ever even thought about starting their own publishing empire, they were students together at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where Luce had taken a leading role in several of the school's publications. As a scholarship student, Luce was forced to split his time between waiting on tables after school and editing the Hotchkiss Literary Monthly; where he held the position of editor-in-chief. He was also an assistant managing editor of the weekly school newspaper (The Record), working along side its editor-in-Chief Briton Hadden, his best friend and future business partner.

Luce would later recall his relationship with Hadden as: "Somehow, despite the greatest differences in temperaments and even in interests, somehow we had to work together. We were an organization. At the center of our lives - our job, our function - at that point everything we had belonged to each other."

Their camaraderie continued to develop as the two enrolled together as members of the class of 1920 at Yale University. Briton Hadden became the Chairman, and Henry R. Luce served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Daily News. Luce and Hadden also entered into Yale University's Reserve Officers Training Corps, and both rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant. Luce often spoke of the countless nights he spent at Camp Jackson in South Carolina with Hadden discussing journalism and the need for a new kind of newspaper or magazine to help educate a misinformed populace. Luce was voted "most brilliant" of his class at Yale University and, after graduation, but they parted ways with Hadden went to study history at Oxford University in England for a year.

Henry R. Luce returned to the United States and accepted a job as a cub reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He later joined Hadden in Baltimore in December 1921 where they worked side by side as reporters for The Baltimore News. Nightly discussions of the concept of a news magazine led the two, who were both then 23 years old, to quit their jobs in 1922. Having raised $86,000 of their $100,000 goal, the first issue of TIME hit the new stands on March 3, 1923.

TIME Magazine had been created in 1923 as the mouthpiece for the American Synarchists movement, and was focused around the banking interests of J.P. Morgan. Initial members of its board of directors of TIME included Harry P. Davison, Jr. (S&B 1920), a fellow classmate and Bonesmen, whose father was a senior partner and a chief lieutenant of J.P. Morgan (Davison's great Aunt Eliza Davison was married to John D. Rockefeller), who had brought in Dwight Morrow, who was another Morgan partner; to finance the magazine start up. J.P. Morgan's interests were further strengthened, when in 1927, John Wesley Hanes was placed on the board.

Additional TIME start-up funding also came from Rockefeller Standard Oil partner William Hale Harkness, who's daughter Louise was married Luce's fellow Bonesmen David Sinton Ingalls (S&B 1920); who was the grandson of Charles Phelps Taft I and the nephew of Charles Phelps Taft II (S&B 1918) and the Great Uncle of the current Governor of the State of Ohio...Robert A. Taft, II.

Charles Phelps Taft's brother was William Howard Taft (S&B 1878), the only American who has ever held the titles of both President of the United States of America and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; who had also served as the Governor of the Philippine Islands and the United States Secretary of War. William H Taft's father Alphonso Taft (S&B 1833) served as the United States Minister of Austria from 1882-84, of Russia from 1884-85; as the Secretary of War for the United States of America in 1876, the Attorney General of the United States from 1876-77 and had founded the Skulls and Bones with William Russell (S&B 1833) in 1865.

In an article in 1928, Luce declared that the U.S. Constitution obsolete and called for "a new form of government." What was this new form of government? In March of the same year, in a speech to businessmen in Rochester, N.Y., he stated "America needs at this moment a moral leader, a national moral leader. The outstanding national moral leader of the world today is Mussolini." On Nov. 28, 1930, he stated to a Chicago audience, “that Mussolini's Italy was a success story: A state reborn by virtue of Fascist symbols, Fascist rank and hence Fascist enterprise."

Luce further declared, on April 19, 1934 in a speech to the Scranton, Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce, "The moral force of Fascism, appearing in totally different forms in different nations, may be the inspiration for the next general march of mankind." Additionally, as Morgan and the Rockefeller's continued to funnel Luce more start-up cash, Henry tapped even more of his friends from the Yale secret brotherhood to help create and run what would becoming America's great propaganda empire. In 1930, for example, Luce chose Russell Wheeler Davenport (S&B 1923), to become Fortune magazine's very first editor-in-chief.

In 1936, he founded Life magazine and in 1954, Sports Illustrated, which broke all the circulation records set by Life and boasted an initial print order of 550,000. It was these magazine giants, as well as all the other publishing ventures of the TIME Inc. Enterprise, that Henry Luce resided over as editor-in-chief until his retirement in 1964.

However, to truly understand why Henry Luce would be so damn proud to see his fellow Bonesmen (President George W. Bush) as TIME's Man of the Year, one really only needs to read the February 7th, 1941 issue of Life magazine. Here the founder and publisher authored, and signed his own editorial named, "The American Century." In the article Luce announces that the American Synarchists intend to rule the world by the close of the war, and to impose their own version of the "American Values" upon the entire world, through "any means necessary." Luce's thesis was mass reproduced and it then quickly circulated throughout the United States and the World.

Luce was an unabashed promoter of Synarchy, often appearing before business groups and promulgating the idea that America's corporate and banking elites were more powerful and important than the United States government. He is even quoted as saying, "It is not a seat in the United States Congress, but on the directorate of the greatest corporations which our countrymen regard as the greater post of honor and responsibility." Portraying the American financial tycoons as some kind of European aristocracy, and image the fact that a reoccurring theme in the pages of his magazines.

The TIME/LIFE Powerbase

Briton Hadden (S&B -1920) Co-Founder 1923, TIME Magazine; Hadden was the co-founder of TIME, Inc. in 1923 with Henry R. Luce. He died only six years later, at the age of 31, "from a bloodstream infection following an attack of influenza." (Briton Hadden Dies. New York Times, Feb. 28, 1929.) He was a one-third owner of the stock and left an estate valued at $1,028,724 net. (Yale Gets Fortune of Samuel R. Betts. New York Times, Dec. 30, 1930.)

Briton Hadden's grandfather, Crowell Hadden (1840-1930) was a trustee of the Franklin Trust Company in 1898, along with Thomas E. Stillman, formerly of the Butler law firm that created the Central Trust Company, and a relative of Charles L. Stillman of TIME; and Edwin Packard, president of the New York Guaranty & Indemnity Company. Briton Hadden's father, Crowell Hadden Jr., who died in 1905, was its Assistant Secretary. (Display Ad. New York Times, Jan. 10, 1898 p. WFRQS8; Crowell Hadden, Banker, Dies At 90. New York Times, Aug. 10, 1930 - which also states that his son, Howard S. Hadde, was in Berlin at that time.)

William Allen Butler, Jr., the son of Stillman's former law partner, succeeded Stillman after his death in 1906, and was a trustee of the Franklin Trust until it merged with the State Bank of America in 1920, while Crowell Hadden continued as a director of the Bank of America until his death.

Henry Robinson Luce (S&B 1920) Co-Founder of and Editor-in-Chief of TIME Magazine '23, Life Magazine '36, Fortune Magazine '30, Sports Illustrated Magazine, Architectural Forum Magazine, House & Home Magazine, New York City; Director, Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, American Korean Foundation, Korea Society, Union Theological Seminary, University of Andes Foundation; Trustee American Heritage Foundation, China Institute of American, Metropolitan Museum Art, Yale-in-China Association; Sponsor, International Friendship League, Save the Children Fund, World Brotherhood I; Member 47-56, Yale University Council, Bonesman with David Sinton Ingalls and Harry Pomeroy; 2nd Lieutenant FA WW I.

He married Lila Ross Hotz, and then Clare Boothe Brokaw Luce (Editor of Vanity Fair, War Correspondent for Life Magazine, US Congresswoman from Connecticut and Ambassador to Italy).

William V. Griffin, Yale class of 1912 (although not a member of Skull & Bones), was one of the original investors in TIME, Inc. He was the business manager for James Cox Brady, the son of Anthony N. Brady, the largest stockholder in the American Tobacco Company; and president of the Brady Security and Realty Corp. Anthony Brady's original financiers and mentors had been Frederick P. Olcott, President of the Central Trust Company of Albany, N.Y., and his successor, James N. Wallace. (Young Counselors. TIME Magazine, July 31, 1933)

Griffin married Isabel Carden, daughter of Dallas banker George A. Carden. His ushers were Louis Connick, Charles Parson, and Dr. Louis H. Levy of New York, Leone Monichetti of Florence, Italy, A.A. Green and G.W.F. Green of Dallas; and Charles B. Waller of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. was best man. (William. V. Griffin to Wed in Dallas. New York Times, June 21, 1914.)

Griffin's sister-in-law, Caroline Burns Carden, married Captain Gerald C. Maxwell, of the staff of the British Air Ministry (Captain Maxwell Weds Miss Carden. New York Times, March 9, 1920.) His sister-in-law, Mary Elizabeth Carden, married Ralph McAllister Ingersoll, the managing editor of The New Yorker. (Miss Carden Bride of R.M. Ingersoll. New York Times, Nov. 19, 1926.) Ingersoll was later the general manager of TIME, Inc. publications. They were divorced in 1938 (Mrs. R.M. Ingersoll Gets Reno Divorce. New York Times, Mar. 20, 1938; Mrs. Mary E. Ingersoll Is Dead; Was Partner in Literary Agency. New York Times, Dec. 26, 1964.)

Griffin's brother-in-law, Dr. George Alexander Carden, Jr., Yale 1931, married Mary Robinson Lambert, granddaughter of Dr. & Mrs. Adrian V.S. Lambert, (S&B 1893). They were married by the Reverend Henry Sloan Coffin, (S&B 1897). (Mary R. Lambert Bride in Garden. New York Times, Aug. 18, 1940.) She died two years later at the age of 34. (Mrs. G.A. Carden Jr., A Welfare Worker. New York Times, Apr. 29, 1942)

Griffin was Secretary of the Thomson Hill Land Improvement Company, 54 Wall Street, whose president was Andre Weill. The firm held land in Long Island City, N.Y. (Display Ad. New York Times, April 24, 1914; April 24, 1917.) Griffin was its president in 1926-1951. (Thomson Hill Lots Lead Queens Sales. New York Times, Oct. 26, 1926. Display Ad. New York Times, April 17, 1939; April 17, 1951, et al.) Anthony N. Brady's interests in the firm included 25 shares, worth $162,500. (A.N. Brady's Estate Worth $77,042,443. New York Times, Nov. 20, 1913.)

William V. Griffin and James C. Brady, Nicholas F. Brady, Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady, and Vincent Astor were members of the Endowment Fund Committee of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School (Seek $2,000,000 For Post-Graduate. New York Times, April 4, 1920.) Astor and James C. Brady were elected directors, and Griffin was elected a director and First Vice President in 1924. It was the first all-lay board. (Hospital Elects Board of Laymen. New York Times, Nov. 21, 1924.)

Mrs. William V. Griffin was elected Treasurer of the Ladies Auxiliary Committee; Mrs. James C. Brady, Mrs. Henry P. Davison (S&B 1884), and Mrs. Oliver Harriman were members. (Benefit Performance In Aid of Hospital. New York Times, March 1, 1925.) Mrs. Griffin and Mrs. Brady raised more funds ("Whoopee" Will Aide Babies' Ward. New York Times, Dec. 5, 1928.)

In 1930, the Post-Graduate Hospital merged with the Reconstruction Hospital, with Griffin and Astor on the combined board (Two Hospitals Plan to Merge By Jan. 1. New York Times, Nov. 30, 1929; Hospital Union Effected. New York Times, Jan. 2, 1930.) Griffin was re-elected, and Astor was re-elected for four years (Astor On Hospital Board. New York Times, Jan. 28, 1932.) Griffin was a member of the special gifts committee in 1946, along with John “Jock” Hay Whitney. (Group to Aid Fund Drive. New York Times, Jan. 8, 1946.)

Griffin was a director of The Cuba Company, along with Howard Mansfield (S&B 1871), Percy A. Rockefeller (S&B 1900), and George Herbert Walker (father of, father-in-law of, business partner of, co-worker of, brother-in-law of, grandfather and great-grandfather of numerous Bonesmen, including two United States President). Its bonds were sold by W.A. Harriman & Co. and Blair & Co. (Display Ad 32. New York Times, Jan. 14, 1925.) Griffin was elected to the board of directors of the American Brown Boveri Electric Corporation when it bought the Moloney Electric Corporation of St. Louis. (Brown Boveri Buys Moloney Electric. New York Times, Nov. 25, 1925.)

Griffin was elected to the board of trustees of the United Hospital Fund, along with Stanley Resor, president of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. (Harris Pledges Aid to Hospitals. New York Times, Jan. 12, 1926.) Griffin and Winthrop W. Aldrich were trustees in 1930 when John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Edward S. Harkness both contributed $25,000 (2 Gifts of $25,000 Aid Hospital Drive. New York Times, Dec. 9, 1930.)

NOTE: William Lamon & Edith Hale Harkness were the parents of Louise Harkness Ingalls, the wife of David Sinton Ingalls, and a first cousin of Edward S. Harkness.

Griffin was elected to the executive committee in 1938. (Head of Hospital Fund Elected for Fourth Term. New York Times, Feb. 2, 1938.) Griffin was a director when the Interstate Trust Company merged with the Franklin National Bank and acquired Bloomingdale Brothers Private Bank. (Display Ad. New York Times, June 2, 1927; Jan. 18, 1928.)

Griffin was elected a director of the Bank of Manhattan Trust Company. (Changes In Companies. New York Times, May 3, 1930; Display Ad. Jan. 3, 1940.) He was a member of the combined board when the Bank of the Manhattan merged with Chase National Bank, whose directors included John J. McCloy, Chairman, and Laurance S. Rockefeller. (Directors Designated. New York Times, Feb. 18, 1955.)

Griffin and James C. Brady Jr. were directors of investment counseling firm C.W. Young & Company (Advisory Firm Formed. New York Times, July 19, 1933.) Henry R. Luce, William V. Griffin, James A. Linen 3d, and Charles L. Stillman of TIME, Inc. were stockholders in a syndicate that bought seven suburban weekly newspapers in the Los Angeles area. Other stockholders included John Hay Whitney and S. Winston Childs. (Coast Weeklies Bought. New York Times, May 9, 1948). The venture was suspended the next year. (Publishers Suspend Los Angeles Venture. New York Times, Aug. 4, 1949).

Griffin was appointed to the President's Council of Georgetown University in 1953. He was national president of the English-Speaking Union [1947-57], chairman of the Brady Security and Realty Corporation and a trustee of the estate of James C. Brady, and a director of the Bank of Manhattan; Central Railroad of New Jersey; Continental Oil Company; Purolator Products; TIME, Inc.; and the Trudeau Sanitorium, and a trustee of the United Hospital Fund of New York. (Joins President's Council of Georgetown University. New York Times, May 31, 1953; William Griffin, Business Leader. New York Times, Jan. 16, 1958.)

Thomas J. Watson, Jr., the president of International Business Machines, replaced Griffin on Time's board of directors (Watson on TIME, Inc., Board. New York Times, Jan. 6, 1959.)

NOTE:

John D. and William G Rockefeller were the Venture Capital funding behind International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)

Henry Pomeroy Davison – (S&B 1884) Chairman of the Executive Committee, J.P. Morgan and Company; Vice President, First National Bank, 1902 (New York City), Director of the Bankers' Trust Company, Director of the American Foreign Securities Company, Member, 1912 Money Trust, Chairman of the War Council, American Red Cross, 1917 to 1919.1919, in Paris, Chairman, Governing Board of the World League of Red Cross Societies. He married Mary Waterbury (Baldwin) Trubee.

Harry Pomeroy Davison (S&B 1920) Senior Vice President, JP Morgan & Company, Member, 1912 Money Trust, (New York City); Lieutenant, Naval Air Service WWI; Commander, USN WWII. He married Eleanor Sparks.

Artemus Lamb Gates (S&B 1918) Chairman of the Board, Director, Lawyers Title Corporation of New York; President of New York Trust Company 29-41; Director, Union Pacific Railroad, Time, Inc., Boeing Company, American Superpower Corporation, North British & Mercantile Insurance Companies; Trustee, Mutual Life Insurance; Assistant 41-45, Navy Secretary for Air; Under Secretary of the 45, Navy; Lieutenant Commander 17-19, Naval Air Service. He married Alice Trubee Davison, the sister of Harry Pomeroy Davison Jr. (S&B 1920) and Fredrick Trubee Davison (S&B 1918); and the daughter of Henry Pomeroy Davison (S&B 1884) and Mary Waterbury (Baldwin) Trubee.

Daniel Pomeroy Davison - (S&B 1943) General Manager, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company (London); Chairman, President, US Trust Corporation; Senior Vice President, Morgan Guaranty Trust; Director, Scovill Manufacturing Company; Burlington Northern Railroad; Todd Shipyards; Atlantic Companies; Discount Corporation; Northwestern States Portland Cement Company; Yale Development Board; Yale University Alumni Board; 2nd Lieutenant 1943-45, USAAF. He married Catherine Cheremeteff.

Fredrick Trubee Davison - (S&B - 1918) Director of Personnel, the United States CIA, 51; President 33-53, American Museum of Natural History; Assistant United States Secretary 26-33 War for Air; Trustee, Mutual Life Insurance Company; Member 21-26, New York State Legislature; Member of New York State Assembly, Nassau County 2nd District, 1922-26; Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York, 1932; Member 31-53, Yale Corporation; Lt, Naval Air Service WWI; Brigadier General, USAF WWII.

Henry Luce's Bones Powerbase
(The Brotherhood of Bones)

David Sinton Ingalls (S&B 1920) President, Publisher 54-58, Cincinnati Publishing Company; Vice President & Manager 40-42, Charge of Overseas Operations 45-49 Pan American World Airways; Director 33-35, Health & Welfare (Cleveland); Assistant Secretary 29-32, Navy for Aeronautics; Member 26-29, Ohio House of Representatives; 23-29 w/Squire, Sanders & Dempsey (Cleveland); US Naval Aviation 17-19, 42-45; Captain; Rear Admiral United States Navy Reserves WWI, WWII. (As mentioned above, Ingalls married the Standard Oil heiress Louise Harkness)

Mr. Sinton’s mother was the only daughter of Charles Phelps Taft, who was the editor of the Cincinnati Times-Star. (He was the brother of United States President & Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, the uncle of Robert Alphonso Taft and granduncle of the governor of Ohio Robert A Taft, Jr.), a United States Representative from Ohio; born in Cincinnati, Ohio, December 21, 1843; attended the common schools and was graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., in 1860, from Yale College in 1864, and from Columbia College Law School of New York in 1866; was admitted to the bar in 1866; went to Germany and was graduated from the University of Heidelberg in 1867; commenced the practice of law in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1869; member of the State house of representatives 1871-1873; became owner and editor of the Cincinnati Times-Star in 1879.

Morehead Patterson - (S&B 1920) Vice President, Director, International Cigar Machinery Company; Director, Durham-Enders Razor Company; Deputy United States Representative 54, United Nations Disarmament Committee (London); United States Representative 54-55, International Atomic Agency Negotiations; Assistant Counsel, Assistant Vice President, Vice President, President, Director, Chairman 26-27, American Machine & Foundry Company (New York City); 2d Lieutenant, FA WWI. He married Elsie Parsons, Helen Mitchell and Margaret Tilt Bissell.

Francis Thayer Hobson - (S&B 1920) Chairman of the Board 31-, President, William Morrow & Company Publishers (New York City); Partner, Thayer Hobson & Company; Director, MS Mill Company, Inc. and the Jefferson House, Inc. He married Isabelle Lavis Garrabrants.

NOTE:
The William Morrow & Company Publishers are now a division of HarperCollins, which is a subsidiary of News Corporation (the owners of Fox Broadcasting).

James Mc Henry - (S&B 1920) Partner, Alexander, Brown & Sons, Baltimore; 2nd Lt FA WWI; Captain USMCR WWII. He married Marjorie Ober.

DeForest Van Slyck - (S&B 1920) President, Honorable Chairman of the Board, International Student House (DC); 46-60 with the United States CIA (DC); Partner 37-46, Fahnestock & Company (New York City); Associate 29-37 Lazard Freres (New York City); Instructor and Assistant Professor 20-29, Yale University; Member 57-67, Yale Development Committee; WWI Quartermaster 18, United States Naval Reserves; Colonel 42-45, USAAF WWII.

Frank Peavey Heffelfinger - (S&B 1920) Honorable Chairman of the Board, Executive Committee, Peavey Company (Minnesota); Vice President, General Manager 29-39, Monarch Elevator Company; Vice President 25-29, Globe Elevator Company; Secretary 21-25 Northern Elevator Company; British American Elevator Company 20, Port Arthur Elevator Company 1920; Director, Great Northern Railway Company; Member, Republican National Finance Company; Trustee Hazelden Foundation; Directors Trout Unlimited, North Star Resources & Development Institute, National Football League (NFL) Foundation, National Tax Equality Association; 2nd Lieutenant, United States Army WWI; Regional Director, War Production Board WWII. He married Elizabeth E. Bradley.

John Morris Hincks -(S&B 1920) Chairman 44, Middlesex Mutual Assurance Company (Middletown, Connecticut); 30-42, Partner, Calvin Bullock; 22-30, w/Hincks Brothers. He married Olive Burch Warner.

Charles Harvey Bradley - (S&B 1921) President 24-55, WJ Holliday & Company; President, Monarch Steel Company; President, Chairman of the Board, P R Mallory & Company, Inc.; Private 17-18, United States Marines. He married Carolyn Coffin.

Frederick McGeorge Bundy - (S&B 1921) Chairman of the Board, Cape Ann Bank & Trust; Assistant Treasurer, Chairman of the Board 23-68, Groton's of Gloucester, (Massachusetts); Member 53-54, National Fisheries Instructor; Member 56-59, Yale University Alumni Board; 2nd Lieutenant, United States Army

William Putman Bundy -(S&B 1939) 64-69, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs; 63-64, Assistant Secretary; 61-63, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Senior Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Staff Director 60, President Committee on National Goals; 51-61 Board of National Estimates, the United States CIA; 47-51 Covington & Burling; Member 61-, Yale Corporation; Major 41-46, Army Signal Corps; OSS (WWII). He married Mary Acheson.

NOTE:

William P. and McGeorge’s nephew Harvey H. Bundy III later became John Kerry’s roommate. Harvey introduced John to William, who discussed the Vietnam War with John and influenced his decision to enlist in the officer corps.1 In 2004 Harvey’s son Hollister Bundy, who is Kerry’s godson, helped raise funds for Kerry/Edward’s campaign by emailing out an endorsement titled, “Uncle Johnny Kerry for President.”

1. Brinkley, Tour of Duty, 40-42, 57-58
2. Email from Hollister Bundy III, "From Hollister: ‘Uncle Johnny’ Kerry for President," January 30, 2004, forwarded by Alexander Wood to NY4Kerry – New Yorkers for John Kerry.

Harvey Hollister Bundy – (S&B 1909) Partner, Choate, Hall & Stewart,(Boston); Chairman of Trustees, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Chairman 46-52, Boston Chapter, American Red Cross; Assistant Secretary of State, 31-33; Special Assistant 41-45, Secretary of War, United States; Assistant Counsel 17-19, US Food Administration; Yale University Alumni Board; President, the World Peace Foundation; Secretary 14-15, to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He married Kathy Lawrence Putnam.

NOTE:

His wife Katherine Lawrence Putnam Bundy, was the daughter of Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell and the cousin of Averell Harriman’s first wife Kitty Lanier Lawrence.

Stephen Young Hord - (S&B 1921) General Partner 45-, 32-45, w/Brown Brothers Harriman & Company; 27-32, w/Lee Higginson & Company (Chicago); 21-27 w/Chicago; Northern Trust Company (Chicago); Director 68-, Chairman Investment Committee Pension Fund 70-, Abex Corporation; Director, Member Finance Committee 47-69, American Automobile Insurance Company; Director 57-69, Associate Indemnity Corporation; Director & Member of the Executive Committee 62-, Illinois Central Industries, Inc; Director 45-, Illinois Central Railroad; Director 52-57, Rotary Electric Steel Company (Detroit); Director 57-61, Calvert Drilling Inc.; Director 64-69, National Surety Corporation (New York City); Director 57-68, Symington Wayne Corporation; Director 47-70, Midwest Stock Exchange; Directors, Chicago Tunnel Company, Tunnel Transport Company, Clearing Machine Corporation, Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad; Member 54, Chicago Panel of Arbitrators for the New York Stock Exchange; Charter Trustee 63-68, Phillips Academy Andover; Council of Foreign Relations; Private 18-22, United States Marines. He married Catherine Norcross.

John Stewart - (S&B 1921) Investment Counsel; Vice President, Cooke & Bieler; President 55, Baxter & Stewart, Inc.; Vice President 65, Cooke & Bieler, Inc.; Chairman of the Board 50-54, Henry B. Warner & Company; Salesman 54-55, Harrison & Company; Manager Stock Department 37-40, Merrill, Lynch, Fenner & Smith, Phils; President 40-49, Donner Corporation; Directors, Teleflex, Inc., Bryn Mwyr Hospital, Chesapeake Utilities Corporation; Wellington Tech Industries, Inc., Cooke & Bieler, Inc.; Chairman of the Board, Church Farm School (Pennsylvania); Lieutenant 18, FA United States Army 18. He married Dorothy Browning Rodgers.

Storer Boardman Lunt - (S&B – 1921) Chairman, WW Norton Company, Inc. (New York City); Member, Government Board 55-65, Yale University Press; President 62-65, American Book Publisher's Council; President 65-69, National Publisher's Association; 2nd Lieutenant 17-18, FA. He married Margaret Knox Mc Elderry.

Henry Luce's TIME Bones Staff

Washington Dodge, Jr. – (S&B 1929) Vice President, Clark, Dodge & Co, Inc., (New York City); Member 41-44, New York Stock Exchange; Roberts & Company; Financial Editor, TIME Magazine; Editorial Assignments, Fortune Magazine; Partner 37, Arthur Wiesenberger & Company; Public Relations 33-37, Barrett & Company; Director, AG Spaulding & Brothers, Inc. Washington Dodge Jr., his father and mother all survived the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic.

John Warner Field – (S&B – 1937) President, Mine Hill Consultants (Connecticut); President CEO, Warnaco Inc (Bridgeport, Connecticut); Director, Insilco Corporation, Connecticut National Bank, People Savings Bank, Speedo Holdings Limited (Australia); Trustee 63-70, Colby College; War Correspondent, TIME, Inc. He married Priscilla Brown, and their son John Warner Field Jr. is married to Elizabeth Walker.*

NOTE:

*Elizabeth Walker is the daughter of Louis and Grace Ballard White Walker, George Herbert Walker Bush’s maternal aunt and uncle.

John Richard Hersey (S&B 1936) Author, Writer, Correspondent 40's, TIME Magazine, Life Magazine and New Yorker Magazine (Russia, China); A Bell for Adano, Into the Valley, Men on Bataan, Hiroshima-Author; Member 60-70, Yale University Council; Master 65-70, Pierson College, Yale University. He married Frances Ann Day Cannon and then Jean Barbar.

William Anthony Lydgate (S&B 1931) Chairman, Earl Newsom & Company, Inc., New York; Editor 35-, American Institute of Public Opinion (Gallop Poll); Vice President, Trustee, Yale-in-China Association; Chairman 66-, Foreign Policy Association; Public Relations; Writer 32-35, TIME Magazine; Author, What Our People Think. He married Virginia Everett Smith and then Constance Barry.

James Price McLane – (S&B 1953) Advertising Sales, TIME, Inc.; Venture Manager, General Mills (Minneapolis); Chairman 69, Lee Wards, a subsidiary of General Mills; Chairman 69, Board of Education, Minnetonka School District; Private First Class 53-55, United States Army Counter Intelligence Corps. He married Barbara C. Hamby.

Ralph Delahaye Paine, Jr. – (S&B 1929) Vice President of 64-67, Research & Development, TIME, Inc.; Publisher 52-64, Managing Editor 41-52, Fortune; War Correspondent 45, Pacific; Managing Director 39-40, March of Time, Limited London, In Charge of all TIME Magazines - European Operations, Editorial Assistant to the President of TIME Inc., 38-39, Business Editor 33-38, 31, w/ TIME Magazine; Securities Analyst 29-31, Edward B Smith & Company (New York City)

Barry Zorthian – (S&B 1941) Senior Vice President, Gray & Company (DC); President, Washington/Baltimore Regional Association; Vice President 75-79, TIME Inc.; President 69-74, TIME-Life Broadcasting Inc (New York City);

Gregory Jannig Zorthian – (S&B 1975) New Business Manager, Circulation, Fortune Magazine, TIME, Inc. (New York City); Legislative Aide, United States Representative Jonathan Bingham; Director, Deer Island Corporation. (Barry's son, see above)

Christopher Walworth Brown - (S&B 1968) Administrative Assistant to the Honorable Sam Roberts; Chief Justice, Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania; Publishing Trainee 69-70, TIME, Inc.; Lawyer. He married Amy Forbes Clark (US Senator and former Democratic President candidate John Forbes Kerry’s cousin).

Russell Wheeler Davenport – (S&B 1923) Public Relations Officer 47, CBS; Chief Editorial Writer 42-44, Life Magazine; Editor, Writer, Chairman of the Board 1930-41, Fortune Magazine (created the Fortune 500 companies list); Reporter 24-25, Spokesman Review, (Washington); Editorial Staff 23-24, TIME, Inc.; Private Ambulance Services, WWI AEF. He married Marcia Gluck and then Natalie Sargent Potter.
Other Bonesmen of Related the TIME Staff

U.S. Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush – (S&B 1917) United States Congress 52-63, United States Senate R-Connecticut; Senior Partner, 1930-72 Brown Brothers Harriman & Company; (New York City); Vice President 26-30 W.A. Harriman & Company; Director Pan Am Airways, CBS, Dresser Industries, Inc. (now Halliburton), Simmons Company, Vanadium Corporation of America; Union Banking Corporation, Chairman of the Board Pennsylvania Water & Power Company, United States Guarantee Company; Chairman of the 1942 National Campaign of the USO; Treasurer of the 1942 National Campaign of Planned Parenthood; United States Golf Association (USGA), President 1935; Trustee, Yale University, Member of the 48-58 Yale Corporation. He married Dorothy Wear Walker and they are the Aunt and Uncle of Samuel Sloan Walker, Jr. (see below)

James Stillman (who was Chairman of what ultimately became Chase Manhattan Bank – now J.P. Morgan Chase)

The Stillmans and the Bushs are cousins going back at least six generations.
Percy Avery Rockefeller (S&B – 1900) was the Founder and Vice President of Owenoke Corporation; Directors, Air Reduction Company, American International Corporation, Atlantic Fruit Company, Anaconda Copper Mining Company, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Bowman- Biltmore Hotels Companies, Cuba Company, Chile Copper Company, Consolidated Gas Company, Greenwich Trust Company, WA Harriman & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Company, Mesabi Iron Company, National City Bank of New York, National City Company, New York Edison Company, North American Reassurance Company, National Surety Company, Provident Loan Society, Remington Arms Company, United Electric Light & Power Company, Western Union Telegraph Company; Trustee John Sterling, Yale-1863. He married Isabel Goodrich Stillman.

NOTE:

Percy & Isabel Rockefeller’s daughter Isabel Stillman Rockefeller was one of Dorothy Wear Walker’s bride’s maids at her wedding to Prescott Sheldon Bush (S& B - 1917), at Walker’s Point in Maine.

On May 7, 1915, two years before America’s entrance into the war, a German submarine torpedoed the American ocean liner RMS Lusitania, killing 128 civilian passengers, effectively ending America’s isolationist policy. The Germans claimed the liner was carrying arms, a charge refuted by the American government. But it is now known that the U.S. was, in fact, transporting arms - massive amounts of ammunition produced by Remington Arms.

It has been rumored that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney flew into a rage when she learned that Dodge had packed the civilian ship from of arms and caused the death of her brother Alfred Gywnne Vanderbilt (S&B 1899), who was passenger on the Lusitania. Ultimately pitting the fortunes of the Vanderbilts & Whitneys against the Dodges & Rockefellers.

In 1930 Percy Avery Rockefeller became the acting chief executive of Remington Arms for his brother-in-law Marcellus Hartley Dodge (who had married Percy sister Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller) after Marcellus’ son was killed in an automobile accident in France. The accident caused Dodge to seek ever more solitude of his Hartley Farms estate.

Union Pacific Railroad Company

Gates was elected to the board of directors of the Union Pacific Railroad when W. Averell Harriman (S&B 1913) resigned to become the US Secretary of Commerce. Averell's brother, E. Roland Harriman (S&B 1917) was elected chairman of the board to succeed him.(Becomes Board Chairman of the Union Pacific Road. New York Times, October 16, 1946.)

NOTE:

Robert A. Lovett's father was Judge Robert S. Lovett had been the Chief Financial Officer and later the CEO of the Union Pacific Railroad (UPC).

Boeing Airplane Company

A.L Gates Made Boeing Director. New York Times, May 12, 1948.
Los Angeles Independent Publishing Company

Gates was a stockholder in a syndicate that purchased a chain of seven weekly suburban papers. Other stockholders included Henry R. Luce (S&B 1920); John Hay Whitney* and Starling Winston Childs Sr.,** William V. Griffin, James A. Linen 3d, and Charles L. Stillman of TIME, Inc. (Coast Weeklies Bought. New York Times, May 9, 1948.) The venture was suspended the next year. (Publishers Suspend Los Angeles Venture. New York Times, August 4, 1949.)

NOTE:

John "Jock" Hay Whitney is the son of Payne "William" Whitney (S&B 1898), who was President of Interlake Pulp and Paper Company; Vice President, Whitney Realty Company; 13 w/Great Northern Paper Company (New York); Director of the Knickerbocker Trust Company; Northern Pacific Railroad; Northern Finance Corporation; US Trust Company and the First National Bank of New York.

Other Whitney Skull & Bonesmen Include:

• Edward Baldwin Whitney - (S&B 1878) - Justice 09-11, New York Supreme Court; Assistant District Attorney General of the United States 1893-97.
• Edward Payton Whitney –(S&B 1854) - Disappeared in 1858.
• Emerson Cogswell Whitney –(S&B 1851) - Died on December 1, 1851
• Harry Payne Whitney - (S&B 1894) Married heiress Gertrude Vanderbilt, Investment Banker, Guarantee Trust Company of New York; Metropolitan Opera & Real Estate Company; Eastern Steel Company; Fulton Chain Railway Company; Fulton Navigation Company; Raquette Lake Railway Company; Inherited Shares in Consolidated Tobacco Company and Electric Vehicle Company, etc.
• James Lyman Whitney – (S&B 1856) – Librarian, Boston Public Libraries
• Joseph “Ernest” Whitney – (S&B 1882) Cornell University Professor and Author
• William Collins Whitney - (S&B 1898) - was an American financier and political leader. He became a corporation lawyer in New York City and served (1875-82) as the city's corporation counsel, helping to reorganize its legal and financial affairs and assisting in the prosecution of the Tweed Ring.

A strong backer of President Grover Cleveland in the 1882 New York gubernatorial campaign and the 1884 presidential contest, Whitney served President Cleveland as Secretary of the Navy (1885-89), securing legislation for the construction of armor-plated war vessels.

Lawyers Title Corporation of New York/Title Guarantee and Trust

Gates was named the chairman when Kuhn, Loeb & Company (now Lehman Brothers Holdings) and the Commercial Investment Trust, Inc., jointly acquired the Lawyers Title Corporation of New York, a title insurance firm. Benjamin Buttenwieser was elected to its board. (Banking Firm, Investment Trust Acquire Title Corporation Stock. New York Times, August 2, 1946).

Gates continued as the Chairman of the Board when Lawyers was acquired by Title Guarantee and Trust in 1948; he was in addition a director of Union Pacific, TIME, American Superpower Corporation and North British & Mercantile Insurance Company. (Title Guarantee Names 3 Officials. New York Times, October 6, 1948)

Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases

Mrs. Artemus L. Gates, Mrs. Laurance S. Rockefeller, Mrs. Gardner Cowles, and others, held a luncheon and fashion show in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria to secure rummage to be sold at the Memorial Cancer Center Thrift Shop (Patronesses Named for Fete Aiding Cancer Center Feb. 16. New York Times, January 24, 1960.)

TIME WARNER, INC.

Time Warner Inc., (formerly known as AOL Time Warner Inc.), is a media and entertainment company.

For the nine months ending 9/30/04, their revenues rose 8% to $30.98 billion. Net income from continuing operations and before account change rose 2% to $2.09 billion. Results reflect higher worldwide license fees from television series, partially offset by its legal reserves expense.

It classifies its business interests into five fundamental areas:

1. America Online, Inc., consisting principally of interactive services;
2. Cable, consisting principally of interests in cable systems providing video and high-speed data services;
3. Filmed Entertainment, consisting principally of feature film, television & home video production and distribution;
4. Networks, consisting principally of cable television and broadcast networks, and
5. Publishing, consisting principally of magazine and book publishing.

On December 15, 2004, Time Warner Inc. announced that it; and its subsidiary America Online, Inc. (AOL) had reached a definitive agreement with the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) that resolves the DOJ’s investigation of the Company.

Time Warner also announced that it has proposed a settlement to the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the staff has agreed, subject to agreement on appropriate documentation, to recommend to the SEC Commissioners.

The DOJ has been investigating the Company’s accounting and disclosure practices. Under the terms of a settlement in connection with that investigation, the DOJ will file a criminal complaint against AOL for the conduct of certain employees in connection with securities fraud committed by PurchasePro.com, but the DOJ will defer the prosecution of AOL. After two years, provided the Company fulfills its obligations under the agreement, the DOJ will dismiss the criminal complaint filed against AOL.

In addition, the DOJ will not prosecute Time Warner for the PurchasePro.com transactions and will not prosecute Time Warner or AOL for conduct relating to certain other transactions entered into from July 1, 1999, including the transactions that were the subject of the DOJ and SEC investigations.

The Company’s obligations under the settlement are to:

• Accept responsibility for the conduct of certain AOL employees with respect to the PurchasePro.com transactions;

• Pay a penalty of $60 million and establish a $150 million fund, which the Company may use to settle any related shareholder or securities litigation;

• Cooperate fully with the DOJ or any other federal criminal law enforcement agency regarding the transactions covered by the settlement; and

• Retain and cooperate with an independent monitor, who will review the effectiveness of AOL’s internal controls, including those related to the accounting for advertising and related transactions.

Proposed SEC Settlement

Under the settlement proposed to the SEC staff by the Company, Time Warner will agree, without admitting or denying any wrongdoing, to be enjoined from future violations of certain provisions of the securities laws and to comply with a prior SEC cease-and-desist order issued to AOL in May 2000.

The proposed settlement would also require the Company to:

• Pay a $300 million penalty, which the SEC staff will request be used for a Fair Fund, as authorized under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act;

• Adjust its accounting for the $400 million in advertising revenues recognized primarily in 2001 and 2002 in transactions with Bertelsmann, A.G. and for transactions with two other AOL customers that resulted in approximately $30 million of advertising revenue recognized in 2001;

• Adjust its accounting for the Company’s investment in and consolidation of AOL Europe, consistent with the Company’s announcement in November 2004; and

• Agree to the appointment of an independent examiner, who – within 180 days after starting work – will review the Company’s historical accounting for a limited number of transactions entered into between 1999 and 2002, principally involving online advertising revenue. Depending on the examiner’s conclusions, a further restatement might be necessary.

Final settlement is subject to both agreement on final documentation and approval by the SEC Commissioners.

Lastly, the Company’s chief financial officer, controller and deputy controller have also proposed settlements to the SEC staff that the staff has agreed to recommend to the SEC commissioners. The proposed settlements relate to the Company’s accounting and disclosure of its transactions with Bertelsmann, A.G. Under these proposed settlements, the three officers would, without admitting or denying the allegations, agree to the entry of an administrative order that they cease and desist from any violations of certain reporting provisions of the securities laws. The proposed agreements would not result in any suspension, bar or penalties being imposed on these individuals, who will continue to work for the Company in their current capacities.

The whole deal was approved by SEC Chairman, William H. Donaldson (S&B 1953)
William H. Donaldson – United States Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Committee, 2003-; Chairman of Aetna International 00-01, Chairman, CEO Donaldson Enterprises, Inc., (New York City); Dean 75-80, Professor Management Studies, Yale University; Special Adviser 75, United States President; Under Secretary 73-74, State US; Founder, Chairman of Board, CEO 59-73, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc (New York City); Member 53-70, Yale University Alumni Fund; Trustee 70- Ford Foundation, Beekman Downtown Hospital, Wesleyan University; Member 71-7, Yale Corporation; Member 75-, Yale Investment Committee; Director, Deer Island Corporation; 53-55 Lt United States Marines.

Chairman Donaldson has been the Yale roommate and best friend of George H.W. Bush’s (S&B 1947) brother Jonathan James Bush (S&B 1953). Jonathan Bush is likely now preparing for what may be his own trip in front of his former roommate at the Securities Exchange Commission. Riggs National Bank, where Jonathan James Bush is both the CEO and a Board Director for the Riggs Investment Management Company (RIMCO) division is under investigation of violations of money laundering rules, (associated with accounts of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Equatorial Guinea) compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and the actions of former and current employees. Riggs said it has been attempting to cooperate in the investigation.

Riggs Bank was implicated in a money-laundering scandal involving Saudi Arabian diplomats & Princess and was ordered to pay $25 million in fines. Two of those transactions are alleged to have made their way to accounts of two of the September 11th hijackers.

Riggs Vice Chairman, Director and President of its Riggs Capital Partners venture capital group; J. Carter Beese Jr. had previously been a SEC Commissioner for former President George H.W. Bush from1992 – 1994 and served as the Chairman of the Capital Markets Regulatory Reform Project Center for Strategic and International Studies. Before that he was the Chairman of the big Skull & Bones financial firm Alex Brown International, until it merged with Bankers Trust. Following the merger he served as the Vice Chairman of Bankers’ Trust Alex Brown's Global Banking Group.

Alex Brown Inc. was a blue-blood investment bank whose Baltimore roots were as deep as any institution in the city. There are a total of twelve (12) Brown Bonesmen, beginning with Alexander Lardner Brown (S&B – 1856) himself, and with the last one logging in for 1979.

The Brown family name was associated with Brown & Shipley in London, Alex Brown in Philadelphia, Brown Brothers Harriman in New York, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (the B&O) , Alexander Brown & Sons in Philadelphia, John A. Brown & Co. in Philadelphia, and even Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Allbrittion family owns about 46% of Riggs Bank’s stock, and they have been major George H.W. Bush and George Bush donors for years!

WHAT IS THE POWER OF JUST ONE?

Here I will detail the powerbase of just one Bonesmen, and connect him to countless others; thus showing the power of the Skull & Bones Society. For this exercise I did not want to select someone like a Rockefeller, a Vanderbilt, a Whitney, a Payne, a Pillsbury, a Kellogg, a Ford, a Phelps, a Bush, a Walker, a Taft, a Perkins, a Harriman, a Sloane, a Kerry or perhaps even a Cheney, as their success would have been easy to predict. Instead, I have chosen to profile a Bonesmen by the name of Artemus Lamb Gates (S&B 1918).

Mrs. Davison's Air Force, 1916

In 1916, Yale football player Artemus L. Gates (S&B 1918) was a member of the "Aero Fleet" organized by the wife of Mr. Henry Pomeroy Davison (S&B 1884).

"Mrs. Davison was responsible for the formation of the flying squad. Before giving her consent she had to overcome a conviction that flying was the most dangerous avocation on earth; further than that, Mr. Davison, who held a similar belief, had to be converted before the training school could be established."

Most were Yale students, including four others who all joined Skull & Bones Class of 1918: Their son Fredrick Trubee Davison, (S&B 1918), Robert A. Lovett (S&B 1918), John M. Vorys (S&B 1918), and Allen W. Ames (S&B 1918).

The Davison’s other son, Henry P. Davison Jr., (S&B 1920), serving with the American Ambulance Corps in France, and Lieutenant W.F. Sullivan of the Royal Flying Corps, were to join them in September. (Mrs. H.P. Davison Starts Aero Fleet. New York Times, Aug. 24, 1916.) Henry P. Davison Sr. (S&B 1884), had been senior partner of J.P. Morgan & Company since 1908, he was the Chairman of the 1910 New York Fundraising Committee and later the chairman of the War Council of the American Red Cross, which sent the expedition to Russia to help the Bolsheviks.

The other Bonesmen of this group and their service to their country, included; F. Trubee Davison (S&B 1918), later became the Assistant Secretary of War for Air in both the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations; David Sinton Ingalls (S&B 1920) who became the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air from 1929 to 1932; Robert A. Lovett (S&B 1918), Assistant Secretary of War for Air, and Secretary of Defense during World War II; and Artemus L. Gates (S&B 1918) who was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air in August 1941, under Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox (Names A.L. Gates to Navy Air Post. New York Times, August 20, 1941) , and was Under Secretary of the Navy in the Truman Administration.

A Marriage or Perhaps a Merger, 1922

Artemus L. Gates (S&B 1918) married the Henry P. Davison’s (S&B 1884) daughter Alice Trubee Davison in 1922. Nine members of the Skull & Bones Class of 1918 were ushers for their wedding: Malcolm H. Baldridge (S&B 1918), Allan W. Ames (S&B 1918), Cassius M. Clay (S&B 1918), Robert Barr Deans (S&B 1918), James Gould (S&B 1918), Robert A. Lovett (S&B 1918), John M. Vorys (S&B 1918), J. Elliot Woolley (S&B 1918) and Charles Phelps Taft II (S&B 1918) were the bulk of his ushers, and F. Trubee Davison (S&B 1918) gave his sister away; because their father was recuperating from an operation.
John C. Farrar (S&B 1917), David Sinton Ingalls (S&B 1920) and James V. Forrestal were also ushers; and Henry P. Davison Jr., (S&B 1920) was best man. Mr. and Mrs. George F. Baker Jr. and their kids participated in the ceremony and Mr. Gates' sister Henrietta and Mrs. Adele Quartley Brown-Lovett (S&B 1918) were attendants of the bride. (Miss Davison Weds Artemus L. Gates. New York Times, January 4, 1922.)

In 1927, Mrs. Gates and the Bakers assisted Mrs. Davison with a three-day bash to raise funds for the American Society for the Control of Cancer.

* The only non-Bonesmen usher, James V. Forrestal, enlisted in the Navy and ultimately became a Naval Aviator during World War I. Following the war, Forrestal went to work as a bond salesman for the William A. Read and Company (aka Dillon, Read and Company) , rising to become president of the company in 1938.

He became Secretary of the Navy on May 19, 1944, when Secretary of War Frank Knox died of a heart attack, and he led the Navy through the closing year of the war and the demobilization following. Forrestal opposed the unification of the services, but even so he helped develop the National Security Act of 1947 that created the National Military Establishment (the Department of Defense was not created as such until August 1949), and with the former Secretary of War Robert Patterson retiring to private life, Forrestal was the obvious next choice.

Forrestal resigned on March 28, 1949, due to a "mental breakdown;" and was checked into the Bethesda Naval Hospital. On May 22, his body was found on a third-floor roof, below the 16th floor room where he was patient. Although officially ruled a suicide, reports of paranoia and of his involuntary commitment to the hospital, as well as suspicions about the detailed circumstances of his death, have all fed a variety of conspiracy theories; ranging from Soviet agents to even UFOs.

Forrestal himself maintained that he was being tracked by Israeli security agents and it was later learned by the United States government, that in fact Israeli agents (fearing that America was making secret arrangements with Arab nations) had indeed been observing Forrestal’s every movements.

In Secretary Forrestal’s suicide note was an extract that he had taken from Sophocles' tragedy, Ajax:

"Frenzy hath seized thy dearest son,
Who from thy shores in glory came
The first in valor and in fame;
Thy deeds that he hath done
Seem hostile all to hostile eyes...
Better to die, and sleep
The never waking sleep, than linger on,
And dare to live, when the soul's life is gone.

The New York Trust

In 1919, Gates became associated with the Liberty National Bank, which merged in 1921 with the New York Trust Company. Gates became a vice president in 1926, and was elected president of the firm at the age of 34. (A.L. Gates, 34, Heads New York Trust. New York Times, June 13, 1929.)

Mortimer N. Buckner (S&B 1895) had been their chairman of the board since 1921. William F. Buckley Sr.* was one of the firm’s incorporators in 1890. (New York Trust Is 50 Today; Represents Merger of Three Banks. New York Times, April 4, 1939.)

In August of 1929, his brother-in-law Harry P. Davison, Jr., (S&B 1920) joined him. (Henry Davison on Board of New York Trust. New York Times, August 23, 1929.)
Gates resigned as President of the New York Trust Company to take the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air in 1941. The New York Trust Company later merged with Chemical Corn Exchange Bank, which later became the Chemical Bank, which was later acquired by Chase Manhattan Bank; and is now a part of J.P. Morgan Chase & Company.

NOTE:

* William F. Buckley. Sr.’s sons William F. Buckley Jr. (S&B 1950), Fergus Reid Buckley (S&B 1952), as well as his grandson Christopher Taylor Buckley (S&B 1975) are all Bonesmen.

Bellevue Hospital

"Several dinners were given before the cabaret entertainment in behalf of the First Division Cardiac Clinic of Bellevue Hospital, which was held last night at the Stork Club..... In the party of Mr. and Mrs. Roger Tickermann were Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Brewster Jennings* and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lamont. With Mr. and Mrs. William Galey Lord (S&B 1922) were Mr. and Mrs. Oswald Bates Lord (S&B 1926), Mr. and Mrs. W. Averell Harriman (S&B 1913), Mr. and Mrs. Ward Cheney** (S&B 1922), Mr. and Mrs. Artemus L. Gates (S&B 1918) and Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Douglas." Others who had guests at the benefit included Mrs. Howard Dean. (Cabaret Benefit Assists Hospital. New York Times, May 16, 1935.) Lewis Douglas was the grandson of James Douglas, the benefactor of James Ewing of the American Society for the Control of Cancer.

NOTE:

*Benjamin Brewster Jennings is the grandson of both Benjamin Brewster (S&B 1882) and Oliver Gould Jennings (S&B 1887).

**In 1838, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s paternal great-great uncles established the Mount Nebo Silk Company in Manchester, CT. The company adopted the family name in 1843. Aided by booming national markets, a protective tariff and innovative production methods, the company grew into the largest and most profitable silk mill in the United States by the late 1880s.

The company pioneered the waste-silk spinning method and the Grant's reel. The company reached its peak in 1923, after which it quickly declined due to industry wide overproduction and competition from new synthetic fibers such as rayon.
Clifford Dudley Cheney (S&B 1898), Frank Dexter Cheney (S&B 1900), Howell Cheney (S&B 1892), Knight Dexter Cheney Jr. (S&B 1892), Phillips Cheney (S&B 1901), Russell Cheney (S&B 1904), Thomas Langdon Cheney (S&B 1901), Ward Cheney Sr. (S&B 1896), Ward Cheney Jr. (S&B 1922) and Ronald Lawton Cheney (S&B 1958).

Pan American Airways

"William S. Paley, president and chairman of the Columbia Broadcasting Company and Artemus L. Gates (S&B 1918), president of the New York Trust Company, were elected directors of the Pan American Airways Corporation at the annual meeting of stockholders held yesterday. Juan T. Trippe was the President. (2 Directors Elected By Aviation Concern. New York Times, May 19, 1939.)

NOTE:

Howard Brush Dean, (Yale University 1918), (the grandfather of the former 2004 U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean) , was a Vice President with Pan American World Airways System from 1943 until his death in 1953. He began his career in the bond department of the Guaranty Trust Company in 1919. From 1921 to 1941, he was a partner in the New York Stock Exchange firm of Struthers & Dean; was a governor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1938-42. (Howard Dean, 53, Airline Executive. New York Times, March 23, 1950) Guaranty Trust was the financial force behind the Life Extension Institute.

Prescott Sheldon Bush Jr. worked for Pan American Airways from 1942 to 1951. In 1944 he married Elizabeth Louise Draper Kaufmann, the daughter of United States Navy Vice Admiral James L. Kauffman and the sister of Rear Admiral Draper L. Kauffman.

In 1943, Vice Admiral Kaufmann assumed the command of all the Pacific Fleet's cruisers, destroyers and frigates, including 401 ships with 150,000 men. In October 1944, he reported directly to General Douglas McArthur as Commander Philippine Sea Frontier. In May of 1946, Vice Admiral Kauffman returned home and was assigned to duty as the Commandant of the Fourth Naval District, where he remained until he retired in 1949.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917) was introduced to William Paley, who was the founder of CBS, by Averell Harriman (S&B 1913), who in 1929 had represented CBS in their merger with Paramount Studios. In 1932, he took an active role in arranging the financing for William Paley to purchase the company. Bush joined the CBS board of directors and retained the position for several years.

Columbia Presbyterian Hospital

Artemus Gates (S&B 1918) and Robert A. Lovett (S&B 1918) Lovett were re-elected to the board of trustees of Presbyterian Hospital in 1946. Gates had been a trustee for thirteen years before resigning in 1941, and Lovett, a partner of Brown Brothers, W.A. Harriman & Co., had been a trustee for fourteen years. Gates was also a director of TIME, Inc. (Elected by Hospital. New York Times, Jun. 25, 1946.) Mrs. Gates had been a fundraiser for the hospital since at least 1925. Other fundraisers whose husbands bore the names of Bonesmen included; Mrs. Ray Morris (S&B 1901), Mrs. John Ellsworth (S&B 1905), Mrs. Stephen H. Philbin (S&B 1910), Mrs. Dean Sage (S&B 1897), Mrs. John Sloane (S&B 1905), and Mrs. Henry Sage Fennimore Cooper (S&B 1917). (Hospital to Begin Fund Drive Today. New York Times, August 29, 1925.)

Ray Morris (S&B 1901) was a senior partner at W.A. Harriman & Company and then later at Brown Brothers Harriman & Company. He was also a director of the Union Banking Corporation, along with Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917), E. Roland Harriman (S&B 1917) and W. Averell Harriman (S&B 1913). The Union Banking Corporation was seized by the United States government in 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, for laundering money for Nazi Germany.

Ray Morris was also the President, Investment Bankers Association of America 25-26; Associate, 10-20, White, Weld & Company (New York City); Managing Editor & Editor of the Railroad Gazette 1903-10; Director, Executive Committee, General Security Assurance Corporation, American Woolen Company; Director of the Finance Committee, Symington-Gould Corporation; Directors, Holly Sugar Company, Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation, McCall Corporation, Sidney Blumenthal & Company, The Best Foods, Inc., Grand Union Company, Punta Alegre Sugar Corporation, SKF Industries, Inc.; he was a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during World War I. He married Katherine Grinnell.

SOURCES:

Smoker's History Website - Carol Thompson.
Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, Kris Millegan, Trine Day Books, 2003
Fight to Glory, Yale Alumni Magazine, October 2003

Religious discrimination???

2005-12-10T20:53:00.000-08:00

Last week the U.S. based drug store chain Walgreens was accused of engaging in religious discrimination after it placed three (3) Illinois pharmacists under suspension without pay, for refusing to fill prescriptions for the new morning after contraceptive.

The American Center for Law and Justice, which was founded by the terrorist-evangelist Pat Robertson, has now filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Robertson, also the host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America called for the murder of the Venezuelan head of state President Hugo Chavez on August 22nd of this year.

PAT ROBERTSON

“There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

WALGREENS

Clearly Walgreens was correct in their firing of these pharmacists, under the laws of the State of Illinois and also the United States of America, no pharmacist has the right to refuse to fill an individual’s prescription...unless they believe that the prescription is fraudulent; such as when Walgreen’s refused to fill the fraudulent Xanax prescription of President George Bush’s niece Noel Bush (who is the daughter of Florida state governor John Ellis “Jeb” Bush).

Additionally, it is also clear that the American Center for Law and Justice is within its rights to file a religious discrimination suit with the E.E.O.C. However, make no mistake, this situation has been planned for months now; and the most basic civil liberties of all American are now at risk.

There are now two (2) major legal issues a foot here. The first, if these pharmacists had been selling contraceptives to individuals, especially without first asking to see proof of a valid marriage license, how strong were their actual "moral and religious convictions"? The bible states clearly states, and as the pope recently reaffirmed, that the use of contraceptives is strictly forbidden and that sex should only be practiced for the purpose of procreation. As President Bush has repeated stated, abstinence should be practiced outside the confides of a marriage of a man and a woman.

Hence, these Walgreen’s pharmacists should have already resigned their employment positions, as their jobs would have already been in conflict with their “alleged” religious beliefs…so why now? And why would they allow themselves to be represented by the terrorist-evangelist Pat Robertson?

THOU SHALL NOT KILL

The commandment "thou shall not kill" (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17), is better understood to mean "you shall not murder," most modern translations of the Bible now even rend it this way. However, according to the Bible not all killing, or the taking of a life, is murder; rather murder is the unlawful taking of human life. The command not to murder applies to human beings, not to killing animals or plant life for food. God gave animals to mankind for his use (Genesis 1:26-30; 9:1-4). But, this does not mean that humans have the right mistreat animals and the environment (Genesis 2:15; Deuteronomy 22:6-7; 25:4; Proverbs 12:10).

Under the Old Covenant, God allowed the Israelites to kill other humans under very special circumstances; such as punishment for certain sins, for example, murder (Exodus 21:12-14, Leviticus 24:17, 21) and also adultery (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22-24). God also allowed the Israelites to engage in warfare and even gave them instructions about waging war (Deuteronomy 20:1-20). God also recognized that humans might accidentally kill each other, and he also made provisions for that (Numbers 35:9-34; Deuteronomy 19:1-13).

No where in the bible does it say referring to Fidel Castro as "like a father," or criticizing America for invading Afghanistan are grounds for death. Neither does it says that developing closer relations with Iran, governing a country where 47% of population lives below the poverty line and where there is 17% unemployment is grounds for death. So what was grievous sin committed by the Venezuelan President that warrants that a man should lose his life without ever being given the right a trial of his peers? There is no proof that he has murder anyone, America has not declared war against Venezuela. In fact, Venezuela has enjoyed full and uninterrupted diplomatic relations with the United States of America since 1822.

WHAT ABOUT THE FOUNDING FATHERS

As the religious right is fond of stating, the American founding fathers “Never called for a Separation of Church and State,” which is a subject for a whole other blog posting…for yet another day. However, when James Madison’s proposed wording for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, he demonstrated that he opposed only the establishment of one federal denomination, not public religious activities. Madison proposal declared: "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established.

“James Madison had been trained for ministry by Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, and Madison's writings are filled with declarations of his faith in both God and in Christ. In fact, for further proof of this, one only need read his letter to U.S. Attorney General Bradford; wherein Madison laments that public officials are not bold enough about their Christian faith in public and that public officials should be ‘fervent advocates in the cause of Christ.’ However Madison did often allude to a ‘wall of separation,’ contemporary writers frequently refuse to allow Madison to provide his own definition of that ‘wall.’ According to Madison, the purpose of such a ‘wall’ was only to prevent Congress from passing a national law to establish a national religion.”

Roger Sherman, largely believed to be the most religious of our American founding fathers, argued that the Madison First Amendment was unnecessary because "Congress had no authority whatsoever to delegate to them [states] by the Constitution to make religious establishments."

Thus the second critical issues here are, can the federal courts force an employer to ignore the laws of their state, thus allowing the beliefs of one specific religion denomination to supersede the laws of that state and the beliefs of other religious denominations; including those citizens who claim no affilation to any one specific religious denomination? If so, are we not now walking a very dangerous line of in fact defying our founing fathers by in essence establishing a national religion within America?

The final issue is perhaps even more important, these Walgreen’s employees were aware their employment at times would be in conflict with their own religious beliefs; hell there is a whole wall of condoms at your local Walgreen’s store. Therefore, is not now a “frivolous lawsuit,” seeking to have state and federal judges legislate from their bench?

SOURCES:

The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, 451, 1st Congress, 1st Session. Washington, D.C.: Gales & Seaton 1834; June 8, 1789.
CNN.com - US dismisses call for Chavez's killing - Aug 23, 2005
CNN.com - Robertson apologizes for assassination call - Aug 24, 2005
Pat Robertson's Webpage
Noel Bush - The Smoking Gun
Morning After Pills - Princeton University
The Morning After Pill - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

A REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

2005-12-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

Christmas is a time for get-togethers. Family reunions, the office party and of course, caroling. Sometimes such seasonal social occasions can bring together rather unexpected people.

Here we are then – gay and straight, religious and not-so-religious – Christmas does have this strange way of bringing together rather unexpected people.

It was like that, in fact, at the very first Christmas. Just think for a moment about those guests that were invited to witness it: a bunch of peasant shepherds on the one hand and a delegation of Persian scientists on the other. Two more disparate groups of people it’s hard to imagine. They can’t have had much in common, how would they have fueled the small talk with Joseph?

What on earth had brought them all there? How was it that their so very different paths, had somehow converged at that very moment of time almost 2005 years ago, in Bethlehem?

The answer is that, diverse as those shepherds and the wise men were as people, they were both came looking for something.

In the shepherds’ case, it was largely a political quest. Like quite a few people in the developing world today, the shepherds belonged to a defensive culture. They felt they were being bullied by the forces of a huge global empire. Western power had invaded their native country, led by Augustus Caesar. His empire had a great massive military and commanded significant economic muscle. Caesar was unmercilessly pushing up his tax bills upon the members of the working classes.

These shepherds hadn’t quite resorted to suicide bombings yet, but you can be sure some of the young men among them were not that far from doing so. They had a glimmer of hope, you see, which kept them militant. As in The Matrix movie, an oracle had years before issued a prophecy that one day a special person would arrive – ‘the son of God’ – who was destined to bring in a new era of both peace and justice. Not every person believed it of course – but these shepherds did. Which is why, when something decidedly odd happened that night, they’d decided to follow it up. Angels, they said it was. Bright shining messengers from another world, telling them the ancient prophecy was about to be fulfilled – the ‘God’ they were waiting for had been born!

What was it they saw, do you think? An hallucination after one too many in the local Bethlehem pub the evening before? Or were these angels actually extra-terrestrial aliens visiting in a flying saucer? There’s plenty of room for scepticism when people tell stories about supernatural encounters. But it is just possible, isn’t it, that as The Matrix rather suggests, there is a deeper level of existence underlying the fabric of this material world which we call ‘reality’, and that just occasionally that deeper reality breaks through to communicate with us?

That was the Shepherds’ interpretation of what had happened anyway. And somewhat similar things do still happen today, you know. Oh, I’m not saying you bump into people who’ve had visions of angels very often. But a surprising number of people do admit to some kind of supernatural experience in their lives.

I remember a man I met in hospital some years ago. He was only about 35, and he was dying of AIDS, his complications had caused him to have a massive heart attack. The doctors said that he had technically died during the attack. But guy claimed he’d never really lost consciousness. He told me about seeing a bright white light, and that he had heard voices. Again, plenty of room for skepticism – but he was never the same again after that near-death experience. He really felt he had met God.

You have every right to be cynical about stories like that, of course. Anecdotal evidence can’t prove a damn anything. I bet those shepherds encountered their own share of cynicism down in Bethlehem that winter night, as they shared their excitement about the angels with their neighbors. But – be sure of this – such things are often reported with surprising regularity.

In fact, maybe something a little bit like it has even happened to you? Have you never had a moment in your life when you felt the presence of God? Not as vivid as the shepherd’s encounter, no doubt, but a ‘sign’ nevertheless. A sign that, if you followed it up this Christmas, might lead you to Bethlehem.

Where, as I say, you would meet some unexpected people!

Persian scientists – what on earth were they actually doing there? After all, this was at the time Israel; both Mary and Joseph were said to have been orthodox Jews. These so-called wise-men were known to be outright pagans. Normally they wouldn’t have been seen dead in Judea. So what had brought these pagan Persians to Bethlehem that night?

Well, as I said earlier, they too must have been looking for something. This time, however, they claim that it wasn’t an angel that had put them on their path – but a star. Not a particularly bright or even unusual star, by all reported accounts. If it had been really conspicuous, surely everyone would have been talking about it, wouldn’t they? No, this seems to have been the kind of celestial event that only diligent scientific observation woould have detect. Detect it they had; and since astronomy and astrology were then pretty much the same thing, they thought it must mean something significant. So, like the shepherds, they too followed it. It took quite a while to do so, mind you – a journey of many hundreds of miles. But eventually their star brought them to Bethlehem too.

It was a crazy thing to do, of course: to set off halfway across the world on the strength of the ancient equivalent of one of Russell Grant’s horoscopes! But once again, similar things do happen today.

In fact, if I’m honest something rather similar happened to me. I was a atheist once, you know – a hard-headed rationalist if ever there was one. There was no use in showing me any visions of angels – I’d have just put it all down to indigestion and gone right back to watching Star Trek. But like those wise-men, I too was looking for something: answers to the big and ultimate questions. Questions like ‘why am I here?’

To my irritation, I discovered science didn’t really have a satisfactory answer for big questions. Don't get me wrong, it was quite good at describing how we had all gotten here; it conclusively proven the theories of a "Big Bangs", and "Evolution". But these theories were absolutely useless when it came to giving some explaination of why?

The best they theories could do was to attribute it all to random chance. That we are all some vast cosmic accident – the product of some chaotic motion of particles that neither knew ...nor cared about our existence. Yet the more I understood the exquisite symmetry and vast complexity of all those elementary particles that make up our universe, the larger the question mark seemed to become in my own mind. I simply couldn’t believe it was all some momentous accident; it didn’t feel like an accident, and more importantly... I didn’t feel like an accident. I had a deep sense of purpose and destiny in my heart – and science had no categories that could rationally interpret this sense of purpose, which did not end up simply explaining it all away as some kind of sick joke played on me by my own cerebral neurones.

No, there had to be something more. A deep intuition has convinced me of that. And the light of that intuition was my own ‘star’ – my inexplicable scientific anomaly. Like those Persian astronomers, I followed it. It has been a long journey – through many books and over several years – but eventually it led me, like those men in the desert, to God.

Maybe you have unanswered questions too? Maybe you, like me, find it hard to live a meaningful life without a satisfying explanation for the great mystery of our existence. Maybe, you like the shepherds and the wise-men – are also looking for something? What do you call it? Justice? Freedom? Hope? Peace? Truth? Love?

Take my advice: pursue that elusive something! Don’t let cynicism or mental laziness take you off its track. Pursue it, I say, and I suspect you will find this Christmas that your path is converging with that of so many others on a similar quest. Black and white, yellow and brown, male and female, young and old, gay and straight – they were all there you know. Some may have followed angels and others a star; some had came from religious families, while others were outright pagans; some came because they felt that God had intervened in their lives in some very magicial and supernatural way, and yet for others it was because they had big questions which they knew only he would be able to answer. But regardless of whatever background they each came from, by whatever route that had traveled...their paths all converge that night in Bethlehem.

There they all discovered that the special smoething that they were all seeking was in fact not a something at all – but a someone – God.

Have a wonderful and happy holidays, and remember...we are all children of God; and most importantly, that no man is worthy of standing in judgment of another.

DISCLAIMER:Although this article may be rooted in the Christian version of the birth of Jesus Christ...I believe strongly that most Christians have forgotten what it actually means to call yourself a Christian. More concerned about abominations, than they are about commandments. It is not God that hates....it is religion!

Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK :by Barr McClellan

2005-12-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

In October of 2003, attorney and authored Barr McClellan published the book Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK. In the book McClellan claims that former US Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the managing partner of the law firm Clark, Thomas and Winters, Edward Clark, were involved in both the planning and later cover-up of the assassination of former United States President John F. Kennedy. McClellan goes on to also named Malcolm Wallace as having been one of the assassins, and alleges that the murder of President Kennedy was financed by several Texas oil millionaires; such as Clint Murchison and Haroldson L. Hunt. McClellan book claims that attorney Edward Clark was paid $2 million for his work.

McClellan claims that the assassination of President Kennedy allowed the US oil depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5%. History confirms that the oil allowance remained unchanged during the entire Johnson presidency. Which according to McClellan book resulted in a saving of over $100 million to the Texas/US oil industry. Soon after President Johnson left White House, President Richard Nixon lowered the depletion allowance to just 15%.

SO JUST WHO IS BARR MCCLELLAN?

Barr McClellan had attended college at the University of Texas at Austin, and it was while he was student that McClellan became a strong supporter of then United States President John F. Kennedy. Shortly after McClellan passed the Texas bar he began working as a licensed attorney, working for another fellow Texan....the United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson. He initially began his work with the US National Labor Relations Board, but in 1964 transitioned over to the US Federal Power Commission.

In 1966 McClellan joined the Texas law firm of Clark, Thomas and Winters, which was headquartered back in Austin, Texas. At that time, the firm was run by the managing partner Edward Clark, and its senior partners Sam Winters, Don Thomas and Frank Denius. Their practice maintained a close associated with the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as the StatTexas Democratic Party. McClellan's work at the firm included advising on overall political strategy, the use of campaign contributions, media issues and local and national labor disputes.

In 1972 Barr McClellan was made a full partner of Clark, Thomas and Winters, and it was only at this junction of career that he was told about the illegal activities that his firm was engaged in. Partner John Cofer explained how the partners dealt with criminal activity: "In short, we helped plan crimes and keep the clients out of trouble." Soon afterwards he discovered that one of the firm's partners, Edward Clark, had been personally involved in planning the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy.

McClellan eventually resigned from the law firm after a dispute with Edward Clark. In 1977 he established his own law practice. Some of Barr's notable cases included litigation for exploding Ford Pintos, tobacco-caused expenses on the health care system, and the licensing & regulation of cell phones. He also obtained a Supreme Court ruling in favor of protecting parklands from numerous freeway systems.

However, it should also be noted that Barr McClellan the author is probably more well known for being the father of Scott McClellan and Mark McClellan. Sons who like their father, also went to work in the presidential administration of another Texan; with son Scott McClellan serving as President Bush's current White House press secretary, and Mark McClellan serving as President Bush's Commissioner to the US Food and Drug Administration.

WHERE'S WAS GEORGE?

Edward Gordon Hooker, who was former United States President George H. W. Bush’s roommate at Phillips Andover, Yale University as well as during their pilot training for the United States Navy. Hooker was also the first cousin of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III. Hooker's mother Cartwright "Betty" Hooker was in fact the sister of Blanchette Ferry Hooker Rockefeller (who married John D. Rockefeller III), and Betty Hooker married Dimitri von Mohrenschildt in 1936.

Dimitri von Mohrenschildt was the older brother of George de Mohrenschildt, Lee Harvey Oswald's best friend while he was living in Dallas, Texas. Shortly after the assassination of United States President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations obtains from George de Mohrenschildt's personal effects, a signed photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald inscribed "To my friend George from Lee Oswald 5/IV/63" and "Copyright G de M." It is a copy of the now very famous photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle and newspaper, which now we know was taken by de Mohrenschildt.

[footnote--FBI document #100-32965-154, p. 67; Phillips Andover student yearbook Pot Pourri.]

Additionally FBI records show that former President George H. W. Bush (who is the father of the current US President George W. Bush), called in and gave a report in reference to a possible suspect involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (see below)

His report clearly shows that George W. H. Bush was in Dallas, Texas for most of the day and night of November 22, 1963. However, strangely the former President appears to try and implicate a rival political activist by the name of James Milton Parrott in the Kennedy assassination.

SOME ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS

Why has former President George H.W. Bush continually tired to keep the records of that FBI telephone call confidential? Why does Bush claim to not even remember making such an important call? Why did wait to call in his warning to the FBI after President Kennedy was assassinated, if he had really thought James Parrott was going to be a serious threat to President Kennedy in Houston... the previous day? Why are all the former President's sources, of this hearsay related information, still unknown to American citizens? Who told Bush this, if anyone actually did? Or perhaps the documented report's sole purpose was to furnish the former President with an alibi and plausible denial?

Almost twenty years later in 1981, when then US President Ronald Reagan is nearly assassinated by John W. Hinckley, (which would have made then Vice President George H. W. Bush the President of the United States of America). However, this time it is the Vice President's own son Neil Mallon Bush, who is personally connected to the assassin's family. Neil Bush had to cancel his dinner engagement with the shooter's brother... Scott Hinckley.

It has now been more than forty years since President Kennedy was murder on the sunny November day in Dallas, Texas; and yet there seems to be more lies surrounding his death than truths. In 1963, the then young CBS reporter Dan Rather makes his career launching broadcast with his coverage of the Kennedy Assassination. Amazingly Dan Rather marked the beginning of his long broadcasting career the very same way that he chose to end it; by lying to the American public. As Dan Rather repeatily tells a traumatized and mourning nation that he was able to see President Kennedy's head move violently forward on the Zapruder film. (listen to the attached)

Forty years, numerous Congressional committee "investigations," a countless number of books, and even several big budget Hollywood films; and yet Americans are no closer to the truth than they were on that horrific day in November of 1963.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

CIAJFK.com - Bruce Campbell Adamson Books

John F. Kennedy. Net

The above document proves that in November of 1963 former U.S. President Bush (#41) was aware of a potential plot to kill President Kennedy, although he states Houston and not Dallas. As well as the fact that former President Bush was also intending to be in Dallas, Texas on the day that President Kennedy was killed. However, that is all that one can really prove from this memo.

Presidential Uncle Theodore Earl Butler

2005-12-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

Theodore Earl Butler was drawn to France by his desire to study art, and then to live there; he eventually died in Giverny, France in 1936. Butler was the son of a wealthy Columbus business owner Courtland Philip Livingston Butler (U.S. President Bush's paternal g-g-g-grandfather), a decendant of Livingston manor lords and successful merchant van Courtlandt New York families. Butler studied at Marietta College in Ohio, then with Albert Fauley in Columbus, Ohio. He then journeyed to New York (Art Students League, 1883-85), and eventually, to Paris, where, between 1887-88 he studied at the Acadacutemie Julian, the Acadacutemie Colarossi, and the Acadacutemie de la Grande Chaumiere. In 1888 he studied privately with Carolus Duran.

"While in Paris in 1888, Butler and Theodore Wendel, a fellow Ohioan and student from the Acadacutemie Julian, both boarded a train for Normandy. They arrived in Giverny and decided to stay and paint in the little village where Monet lived and maintained his studio and famous gardens. Butler learned the techniques of French Impressionism from the master himself. In Un Jardin Maison Baptiste (1895, Metropolitan Museum of Art), an example of the French Impressionist painting that Butler learned at Claude Monet's side, the artist used vibrating daubs of color to capture the hazy envelope of summer light found in the valley of the Seine. Monet was attracting many young American and English painters at this time, and Butler became the cornerstone of the American and English art colony that thrived in Giverny at the turn of the century.

Theodore Earl Butler lived in Paris, that was then home to the father of Impressionism, Claude Monet. Butler's married to two of Monet's stepdaughters, which brought him closer to Monet than any of the other American expatriates. Inspired and influenced by the elder artist's work, Butler's paintings reveal his own personal adaptation of Impressionism. In the spring of 1888 Butler and his artist friend Theodore Wendel arrived in Giverny.

Along with Theodore Robinson, Willard Metcalf, Lilla Cabot Perry, and John Leslie Breck, Butler was among the first American artists to reside there. This original group of Americans relied on Butler to act as their liaison with Monet, who had moved to the quaint village in 1883 and was not altogether pleased with its increasing popularity among the younger American painters. In 1892 Butler married Suzanne Hoschede, Claude Monet's stepdaughter. Suzanne, was the daughter of Monet's second wife, Alice Hoschede, was she was Monet's favorite model and it is said that she remind him of his first wife, Camille.

In these years Butler painted a series of canvases depicting familial scenes of Suzanne and their two children, James, born in 1893, and Lili, born in 1894. Several works from this series, including Bathing the Child, Playing With Jimmy, and Le Bain, Maison Baptiste, exemplify Butler's early impressionistic style with their light palettes and loose brushstrokes.

As early as the 1890s, and through the first decade of the 20th-century, Butler experimented with decoratively patterned, abstracted interior scenes similar to those by Post-Impressionists such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. These works reflect his interest in pattern and color, animated with complementary dots of color dancing over an underlying matrix of repeated blocks of color. These paintings possess a formal power often associated with the works of the Nabis painters.

Butler was a member of the Salon des Independents, Paris, a life member of the Salon d'Automne, Paris, and a founding member of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. He exhibited his work regularly in Paris galleries, including the Galerie Vollard, the Galerie Thomas, and the Galerie Durand-Ruel. He also exhibited regularly in New York, and in Philadelphia at the annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His work was represented in the New York Armory Show in 1913."

Source: James M. Keny and Nannette V. Maciejunes, Triumph of Color and Light: Ohio Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, exh. cat., Columbus Museum of Art, 1994, 28, 100-101.

See Also: William H. Gerdts, Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, New York, Abbeville Press, 1993; Richard H. Love, Theodore Earl Butler (1860-1936), Chicago, Signature Galleries, 1976; and Richard H. Love, Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet's Shadow, Chicago, 1985.

Fireworks - 1906
Sold at Auction for $72,000.00 in 1998

U.S. President William J. Rockefeller???

2005-12-03T22:56:00.000-08:00

Former U.S. President William Jefferson Rockefeller???

Have you ever wondered how that "poor" boy from Arkansas got to be a multi-term Governor of the State of Arkansas and a two-term President of the United States of America. The Governor of a state that was essentially owned by the former Republican Governor of Arkansas Winthrop Rockefeller. How did Clinton afford Georgetown, Oxford & Yale University Law School, and then jump into politics; it costs a lot of money to run for public office, even back then?

There has long been speculation about the real identity of the actual biological father of the former United States President William Jefferson Clinton. According to Bill Clinton's White House biography his real father was Bill Blythe III, who had been killed in an automobile accident before the President was even born; however many in Arkansas claim that Blythe had only been back in the United States for six months prior to Clinton's birth.

William Jefferson Clinton ran for the United States House of Representatives (not the Arkansas State house) less than six month after getting his law degree from Yale Law School. He served as Jimmy Carter's Arkansas state campaign manager, while also teaching at the University of Arkansas School of Law, and also manages to get himself elected as the Arkansas State attorney general in 1976, and elected as the governor of the state of Arkansas in 1978 (having only been in public services for less than two (2) years).

This means that Bill Clinton began campaigning for the Arkansas U.S. congressional seat while he was still in law school at Yale University. The he ran a statewide campaign for state attorney general, while running another statewide presidential campaign for Jimmy Carter and taught law school when??...all at the same time. Then with less than a year experience as the state's top judicial officer, he begins campaigning as the state's governor and actually wins...just five years out of law school and then the youngest state governor in the United States of America.

WINTHROP ROCKEFELLER

Winthrop Rockefeller was son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Greene Aldrich, and the grandson of John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. who founded the Standard Oil Company. His brothers were John D. III, David, Nelson and Laurence Rockefeller. Winthrop Rockefeller also went to Yale University, 1931-1934.

He marries Barbara "Bobo" Sears in 1948, the beautiful daughter of an impoverished farmer; who the press had a field day with, often referring to her as "Cinderella." Winthrop enters into his self-admitted playboy period, then he as Barbara move from New York City to central Arkansas in 1953; with Win establishing Winrock Enterprises and Winrock Cattle Farms atop the Petit Jean Mountain. Winthrop quickly finds himself in a stormy and very well publicized divorce battle, and was ordered to pay her $5,500,000 in 1954. He was remarried two years later, in 1956, to Jeanette Edris a hotel and theater heiress.

In 1966, despite the fact that there are less than 20% of registered Republicans in the State of Arkansas, Winthrop Rockefeller is elected Governor of the state of Arkansas and has some notable achievements. Horrified by conditions in the Arkansas prison system, he completely overhauls it by establishing the new Arkansas Department of Corrections. He worked to improve the state's dismal educational performance, by securing funding for new school construction and increased teacher salaries. He also built strong bridges with the states black communities, demanding an integrated draft board for the first time.

In 1968, he was the only Southern state governor to publicly mourn the assignation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; stating to the television media from the steps of the Arkansas State capital, "I am not my brother’s keeper. I am my brother’s brother." Rockefeller decisions as Governor provided the state's traditional old guard enough reason to back a young and energetic Dale Bumpers democratic candidate, who defeated him in November 1970.

Still troubled by the state's prison system, as his last act as the state's Governor, Rockefeller commuted the sentences of every current prisoner on the Arkansas' Death Row life without the possibility of parole, urging the other state governors to do the same, saying "I yearn to see other chief executives throughout the nation follow suit, so that as a people we may hasten the elimination of barbarism as a tool of American justice."

In September 1972 Rockefeller was diagnosed with rare kind of inoperable cancer, and he goes through a devastating round of chemotherapy. When he returned to the state of Arkansas, the citizens shocked at the frail and haggard appearance... of what had been a giant of a man. Winthrop Rockefeller died in Palm Springs, California.

Jeanette Rockefeller, his second wife, died on December 8, 1998 at age 79 in Palm Springs, California; where she had volunteered relentlessly for the Palm Springs AIDS Assistance Fund. A non-profit organization that distributes food vouchers for persons currently living with HIV/AIDS in the Coachella Valley region. "She helped lead women into the mainstream of political and public life," according to former President Bill Clinton. "As a tireless campaigner, Mrs. Rockefeller was a strong force against discrimination, with an uncanny ability to relate to the common man and woman," Clinton said in a statement.

Winthrop P. Rockefeller, Jr. has been the Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas since 1996, and he formally announced that he will be running for Governor of Arkansas.

President Clinton has made the battle against HIV/AIDS, a focal point of the work of the Clinton Foundation, just as Mrs. Rockefeller had dedicated her final years. President Clinton says he believes deeply that until we combat the pandemic in the developing world, where more than 90 percent of the 40 million people worldwide who have HIV/AIDS live, it will be impossible for these countries to achieve their social and economic development goals.

BLOODLINES

In the "The Biggest Secret" we learned that all 42 of the 43 U.S. Presidents have all been related to one another (at least distantly). However, Bill Clinton having been number US President number 42, did not even know who his father was, until the record showed up several decades later? David Icke is absolutely correct in his statement that all 41 Presidents of the United States have been directly related to one another. This has been confirmed by a genealogical organization known as Burke's Pearage, and Gary Boyd from the New England Historical Society, William Jefferson Clinton is the one that who somehow does not fit.

You see Bill Clinton was born to Virginia Dellcassidy and William Jefferson Blythe III. At some time in the 1940's Bill Clinton's mother had either divorced William Jefferson Blythe III or he passed on. So in 1946, when she married Roger Clinton, they changed his name to Clinton from Blythe.

EVEN MORE PUZZLING:

1. How did Jimmy Carter come to pick Bill Clinton as his presidential Arkansas state campaign manager, he was in D.C for four (4) years (when Jimmy Carter was not), then he was in England for two (2) years, and New Haven, CT for two (2) more years. This is good old boy Southern politics, when does not just walk in and start calling the shots....and live to tell the story.

2. Who funds the campaigns of some non-family connectED, recent law school graduate with little experience even in the legal field and NO experience in political office?

3. Former U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton now appear to be the best of friends, in fact, according to the Larry King Show this summer .....Bill Clinton joined George H.W Bush for some fishing up at Walker's Point in Maine.

3. What law school in America hires a student right out of law school to be a professor, with no actual experience inside the courtroom....not impossible; but from law student to law professor, is about as rare an occasion... as having a Catholic priest be elevated to a Cardinal. However, at least when Cardinal Avery Dulles made that leap, had three (3) United States Secretaries of State and a former director of the United States CIA in his family, plus his mother was a Rockefeller. Hmmmmmmmmm

Additional Information:

CNN.com - Clinton says he'll give $10M to AIDS fight - Apr 11, 2005

If this pledge is carried out, which I have no reason to believe that it will not, it will be one of the largest individual donations in the fight against AIDS.

CBS News | Clinton Uses Clout For AIDS Fight | June 3, 2004 10:17:03
Arkansas Lieutenant Governor: The Rockefeller Family History
Governor Ryan's Pardons
William J. Clinton Foundation "Presidential Statement on Death of ...

Former Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller
(brother of David, Nelson, John D. III and Laurence)

FOR THE LYNCH LAW & WHIPPING POST

2005-12-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

After I finished the book, The Family by Kitty Kelley, I was interested in reading the entire article written by the President Bush's great-grandfather, "I'm for Lynch Law and Whipping Post; D.D. [David Davis] Walker Writes" The St. Louis Republic, July 22, 1914. Which was referenced in chapter 2, on pages 24-26, and is also referenced on the Random House, The Family website.

So I requested a copy of the article through the San Francisco Public Library, and I was somewhat surprised when I finally got a copy of the "I'm for Lynch Law and Whipping Post; D.D. [David Davis] Walker Writes" from The St. Louis Republican's morning edition. What surprised me was D.D. Walker article is GONE, and has been replaced by the article L"Jones Tells Why He Is Eligible As Member of Board," about U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's appointment of Gilbert M. Hitchcock's as the Chairman of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee (Hitchcock was also a director of McCormick's International Harvester).

Essentially everything else on the front page is exactly the same, including the large Chapin cartoon graphic on the front page.

Additional Information:

Davis David Walker, Sr., was a co-founder of Ely & Walker Dry Goods Company in St. Louis, Missouri. Walker expressed his opinion on the issues of his day in a letter sent from the Walker's Point Kennebunkport Maine compound (Walker's Point) and was published by the St. Louis Republic on July 22, 1914. Walker believed that wife-beaters should be whipped, men who assaulted women should be lynched, and severely handicapped and deformed infants should be euthanized. He believed people should have medical tests for venereal disease before marriage. Walker supported segregation of the races, but also supported women’s suffrage and the constitutional amendment ratified in 1913 instituting an income tax.

Four years after D. D. Walker wrote his letter to the St. Louis Republican, his sons George Herbert Walker and David David Walker, Jr. went to court to tried and have their father legally declared incompetent; complaining that during the previous four years D.D. Walker, Sr. had given away some $300,000 (the equivalent of $3.6 million in 2004). The case was still pending when D. D. Walker, Sr., (who had been born on January 19, 1840), died at his Walker's Point Kennebunkport, Maine on October 4, 1918. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, MO.

David Davis Walker, Sr. was named after he first cousin, who served in the Illinois State Legislature in 1844, and in 1848. After 1857, Illinois Circuit Court Judge David Davis became involved with the new Republican political party... as the campaign manager for Abraham Lincoln's 1860 U.S. presidency bid. Lincoln appointed Judge Davis to the United States Supreme Court, where he served from 1862-77; and was the executor of the assassinated United States president’s family estate.

Also, David Davis was himself considered a potential U.S. presidential candidate in 1872, and served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 1877 to 1883. He died on June 16, 1886.

Additional Sources:

Davis-Bush family (1778-present) 10 members

King, Willard. Lincoln’s Manager: David Davis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960 & University of Chicago Press, 1974

Pratt, Harry. "David Davis, 1815-1886." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1930.

Hughes, Roger. Twists, turns, ties: David Davis & George Bush. Op-Ed page article published in the November 7, 2004, issue of The Pantagraph daily newspaper of Bloomington, Illinois. Page C3, Viewpoint section

Illinois Historic Preservation Agency - David Davis Mansion

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE???

2005-12-02T17:55:00.000-08:00

"The Catholic Church [following the Second Vatican Council] became in a true sense evangelical Paul VI followed this up in many ways. John Paul II has carried this evangelical shift yet further …the evangelical turn in the ecclesial vision of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II is one of the most surprising and important developments in the Catholic Church since Vatican II."

Cardinal Avery Robert Dulles
The Rockefeller Cardinal

Pope John Paul II and then Newly Appointed Cardinal Avery Robert Dulles

February 21, 2001

On February 22th of 2001, something truly incredible happened within the infrastructure of the Roman Catholic Church, when it knowingly experienced two (2) separate first time occurrences in Church's history. Now for most people around the world, having two (2) first time experiences on the same day doesn't seem like anything incredible. However, for one of the world's most traditionally based organizations in the world, which claims that its strength comes from being founded on more than eight (8) centuries of tradition, these two (2) first time experiences must certainly must have been seen as a kind of divine intervention (or at least one might think so)!

Two New Firsts For Roman Catholic Church?

1. The late Pope John Paul II selected Father Avery Robert Dulles to become the very first American to be elevated from priest to a member of the College of Cardinals.
2. The late Pope John Paul II selection Father Avery Robert Dulles makes Dulles the very first former agnostic-Catholic convert to be appointed as a "Prince of the Roman Catholic Church."

So just what made the late Pope John Paul II break with Church tradition and make Father Avery Robert Dulles a Cardinal and a Prince of the Church? The University professor, former United States intelligence's officer and one of the Church's most prolific authors (21 books, 700+ articles and essays - majority being theologically based), ? Because the Father Dulles wrote to the Pope and he asked him to make him a Cardinal; and that is all we will ever know about the conservative and very traditional Pope's rational for such a historic and significant deviation of church protocol. (Which is like Harriet Miers sending George Bush a memo saying, "After all I have done for you...I think I deserve a sit on the United States Supreme Court."

Now I am certainly not trying to call into question Cardinal Dulles' credentials for being made a Cardinal, nor am assuming in any way that he is not "worthy" of the power and prestige that comes with being made a Cardinal. Instead my questions are centered around the circumstances involved in the decision to bastardized tradition, and invite an individual into the most selective and secretive organization of the planet. However, read on and see if you can develop your own theory; because as we are reminded almost daily in by the media...the Roman Catholic Church has a very difficult time when it comes to deviating from their own traditions.

College of Cardinals (90 Million Catholics - 183 Cardinals)

Cardinals are considered to be, "Princes Who Must Be Willing to Shed Their Own Blood for their Faith"

The Roman Catholic Church claims to have an unbroken history that goes back to 35 AD, some nine hundred (900) million followers throughout worldwide, with almost sixty-four (64) million of them living in the United States. These numbers make Roman Catholicism the largest Christian Church in the world today.

Since 1903, there have been a total of just six hundred-thirty (630) men admitted to the College of Cardinals; presently there one hundred eighty-three (183) active cardinals. Which makes this college the most selective and all secret societies throughout the world The late Pope John Paul II had appointed all but two (2) of the current one hundred and seventeen (117) eligible (less than eighty years old) Cardinal electors. The electors come from a total of five (5) separate continents, and hail from fifty-three (53) individual countries. The majority of the current electors seventy-seven (77) currently serve as the head of a major metropolitan archdiocese, while twenty-three (23) work in Vatican and the remaining seventeen (17) have no official post.

According to Canon 350 of the Code of Canon Law, the College of Cardinals is divided into three orders, of which all must be appointed by the Pope himself:

* the Episcopal order (cardinal bishops)
* the Presbyteral order (cardinal priests)
* the Diaconal order (cardinal deacons)

A New Prince for The House of Dulles

On August 24th 1918, Cardinal Avery Robert Dulles, became the scion to the powerful diplomatic House of Dulles, born into one of the most powerful and wealthy of American political families.

In spite of having a spirited and liberal Presbyterians Minister as one's grandfather, who just happened to be a co-founder of the American Theological Society, Allen Macy Dulles must have certainty been surprised by his grandson's claims of being agnostic during the first twenty-three years of Avery Dulles' life.

In 1936, Avery Dulles decided to do what generations of other Dulles men had done; and he went off to attend (what must now be consider the second most selective college in the world) Harvard University, with his childhood and high school buddy John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Kennedy would later become the nation's youngest and first Roman Catholic President of the United States of America, despite frequent protests that it would be like having "The Vatican move into the White House." Conflicting stories make it impossible to know just how Avery's father, John Foster Dulles, really felt about his son Avery hanging with the Kennedy Boys.

Shortly after his graduation from Harvard he began working as an intelligence officer in the United States Naval Reserve, only later deciding to join the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), August 14, 1946.

The Dulles-Foster-Lansing Diplomatic Dynasty

Cardinal Avery Dulles' father, John Foster Dulles, love of diplomacy was said to have been fostered and nurtured by his love of his paternal grandfather John Watson Foster, who had been a former U.S. Minister to Mexico (1873—80), to Russia (1880—81) and to Spain (1883—85) as well as Benjamin Harrison's United States Secretary of State (1892-1893); also being the great-grandson of Theodore Medad Pomeroy, a former United States Congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives; and being the great-great nephew of John Welsch, a former Minister to the Court of Saint James of the United Kingdom (1877-1879).

In 1907, John Foster Dulles, whose grandfather John W. Foster and uncle Robert Lansing both also served as Secretaries of State, in 1892-93 and 1915-20, respectively; embarked on his own maiden diplomatic mission when he was still a college student at Princeton University. Grandpa Foster was then an adviser to the Chinese government in Washington, when he hired his grandson John F. Dulles to act as the Chinese delegation's secretary for the Second Hague Conference in 1907. Although very little was accomplished at that conference, Dulles was significantly enchanted by the proceedings.

Throughout the future Secretary of State's life, Dulles frequently would recall how he managed to subvert a thorny protocol problem; pertaining to which delegates should be received first. Dulles liked to brag that his ingenuity that day that got the conference off to a quick start, and averting a world war for at least seven years.

Cardinal Avery Robert Dulles father John Foster Dulles, former United States Secretary of State; married the late Janet Pomeroy AVERY Dulles in 1917; he is the nephew of Allen Welsh Dulles, who was America's second director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 1953-1961, who was fired by Cardinal Dulles' high school & college buddy President John F. Kennedy for his handling of the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco, but was later appointed by President Lydon B. Johnson as a member of the Warren Commission (one of the investigators of the Kennedy assassination) in 1963; he was the nephew of Robert Lansing, yet another United States Secretary of State, Associate Counsel in the Bering Sea Arbitration in (1892-93) and founders of the American Society of International Law; he was also the nephew of Eleanor Lansing Dulles, who organized of the ‘Berlin Desk’ before the end of WWII, was the U.S. Political Adviser in Austria and assisted President Franklin D. Roosevelt in setting up the Social Security system during her two (2) decades of service in the United States State Department. He was also the nephew of Foster Rhea Dulles, a very well noted United States historian, political theorist and author. I should also perhaps also point out here, the Rockefeller and Avery families have been inter-married since John D. Rockefeller's grandmother Lucy Avery (1786 - 1867) first married Godfrey Rockefeller back on November 20th in 1806..

Avery's father, John Foster Dulles, was appointed in 1918 by the Secretary of War to be its official liaison between the US War Department and the US War Trade Board; and in July of that year he elevated to the role of Assistant to the Chairman of the War Trade Board; he was a 40 year employee and Senior Partner of one of the most powerful Wall Street's law firms - Sullivan & Cromwell; a former US Secretary of State during the Eisenhower administration; a Chairman of the Board for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; former Chairman and Co-founder of the Federal Council of Churches Commissions (1940-1946); Chairman of the General Education Board; namesake of Washington "Dulles" International Airport (located in Dulles, Virginia) and a former Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation; served briefly in the United States Senate from July 7, 1949 to November 8, 1949, when New York Governor Thomas Dewey appointed him to serve the remainder of retiring Senator Robert Wagner’s term.

In 1939, as war threatened to break out in Europe, Dulles published his first book War, Peace and Change; an expression of his views on the growth of fascism and the menace of war. Then later published in 1949, a book titled "War of Peace."

He was a founding member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), as was his brother Allen Welsch Dulles, as well as being a member of the New York State Banking Board, City of New York Bar Association, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Delta Phi, Union Theological Seminary and the New York Public Library. He also served on the board of directors of both the Fifth Avenue Bank and The Bank of New York.

So what does it all mean for America?

Cardinal Dulles' selection was likely a papal tribute to Cardinal Dulles' theology efforts here the in the United States. Avery Dulles, with no argument from of his peers, has been the leader in American theological circles for more than forty (40) years now, and he stands as an exemplar example of some prime intellectual virtues excepted of a priest; virtues that seem to have escaped many of his US colleagues during that same turbulent time period. Thus, in honoring Avery Dulles, Pope John Paul II may have been trying to honor those same virtues. However, there are many other ways that the Pope could honored the efforts of Dulles; but making him a Cardinal was by far... the greatest honor the the Pope could select by himself.

Therefore, this honor may not necessarily be a tribute to Dulles' past works, but more of a seal-of-approval for his future efforts in reforming the US Church.

HOMILY OF CARDINAL AVERY DULLES AT THE 50th ANNUAL RED MASS -- (Extensions of Remarks - November 04, 2003)

SPEECH OF HON. HENRY J. HYDE OF ILLINOIS
IN THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2003

* Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call attention to the remarks given by Cardinal Avery Dulles during his homily for the 50th Annual Red Mass at St. Matthews Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The Red Mass--named for the red vestments worn by the celebrants and the color of fire, symbolizing the Holy Spirit--is celebrated annually in Washington the Sunday before the new U.S. Supreme Court session begins. This liturgy invokes guidance and wisdom on judges, attorneys, government officials and Supreme Court justices in their administration of justice. The Red Mass is sponsored by the John Carroll Society, a Washington area organization of lay professionals. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Red Mass.

* Cardinal Dulles is an internationally-recognized theologian and is one of the leading thinkers of the American Catholic Church. He was born in New York in 1918 to John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under President Dwight Eisenhower, and Janet Pomeroy Avery Dulles, and was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1956. Cardinal Dulles has written over 700 articles and 22 books on Catholic theology and has served on the faculty of Woodstock College and the Catholic University of America. Currently, he is the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals in February 2001.

* During his homily, Cardinal Dulles spoke on the subject of law and spirit. He said that law and spirit are "inextricably conjoined" and that laws are unsustainable without a moral and spiritual foundation. He also talked about our overly litigious society and the dangers of an obsessive legalism in the absence of virtue and grace. To sustain law and to enhance the relationship between spirit and law, Cardinal Dulles emphasized families, schools and churches as the primary agents for transmitting moral values and principles. He stated that "the family, as the nucleus where life is born and where coming generations are formed, is today under severe pressure", and that it needs to be protected.

Ummm, excuse me Mr. Speaker, I would like to now submit these remarks about Cardinal Dulles for the RECORD:

Could a "Separation of Church and State" ever be more blurred here in America, than it is today? If this debate is now about anything at all, it is about rewriting America's history; in particular, as to what the Founders Fathers of America truly wanted the role religion to be in crafting the policies of this country. Separationists (liberals) believe that that our founders always intended that there would be a very clear separation of the church and state, and did so by depriving the states of having any power to either aid or hinder the development of any/all religious institution. However, accomodationists (conservatives) now claim that the federal government had always retained that power (with certain limitations) for itself, so that in the future it would be possible for the federal government to occasionally tweak its Constitution as a means of achieving any necessary religious and/or moral objectives.

Zenit News Agency - The World Seen From Rome - Cardinal Avery Dulles encourages US bishops to dialogue with dissenting Catholic politicians about their moral responsibilities.(Now that's got to be far more effective and much easier to accept coming from a Cardinal... than it ever would have been coming from a priest!)

Cardinal Dulles clarifies "his" support for the death penalty (and that is what really matter most now!)

A Great New Push For Reform

Like a battle cry Cardinal Dulles firmly states, "Reforms ought to be undertaken by the leadership of its bishops. Unfortunately however, the prestige of the American bishops is at the moment at a all time low." But it maybe even worse than that. Dulles goes on to says: "According to the [bishop’s] job description in the official documents, the bishop ought to be a man of high culture, firm in faith, solid in orthodoxy, a paragon of holiness, graciously winning in personality, able to assess the talents and weaknesses of others, skilled at managing large corporations and conducting fiscal policy, eloquent in the pulpit, fearless under criticism, indefatigable, and always self-possessed." However, says Dulles, "Many of the candidates being elevated to the episcopate, it would seem, are men of ordinary abilities…." Ouch! In the past, Dulles’ words would have been deemed as inappropriate of member of the church hierarchy, and Dulles would have been charged for being insubordinate…by his own peers. Thus these are truly blunt words indeed!

But if the Church is in need of "far-reaching" reform and if, as Dulles also says, many bishops are "incapable of measuring up" to their office, then cooperation between clergy and laity will inevitably involve some criticism — even "far-reaching" criticism — of the hierarchy by laymen. However, there are those Catholics, usually on the conservative side, who believe that the bishops and especially the Pope are beyond any sort of fraternal correction or criticism. Cardinal Dulles disagrees: "Since all the members of the Church, including the Pope and the bishops, are limited in virtue and ability, they may fail to live up to the principles of the faith itself. When guilty of negligence, timidity, or misjudgment, they may need to be corrected, as Paul, for example, once corrected Peter (Galatians 2:11)."

There is a great new evangelical push that is spreading across America, it hopes to give birth to a whole new form of "Evangelical Catholic." A Catholic who will be a Christian first, fully committed to living an evangelical life; and always in sink with the image that is presented by its own evangelical ministry, or perhaps an easier definition here might be "we have sparred the rod for far too long, and our child is now spoiled...so now we going back to a time when the sons and daughters were far more obedient and generous with their wallets"

The new Evangelical Catholic will be asked to lament the tragic divisions that our now plaguing the World, which first began rising up during the Reformation in 16th Century. They will hear a far less triumphant attitude from their Catholic or Protestant sectarians, these Catholics will be filled up with the sorrow for the world and its daily impoverishment; which was single-handedly brought about its lost of religious direction, causing a separation of the evangelical from the Catholic aspects faith, thus proving that only an Evangelical Catholic can be truly serving the will of God. Perhaps a better way to define this, "OK, the carrot doesn't seem to be working anymore, so now the Church is going to get the big stick."

Going forward, the Evangelical Catholic will dedicate their entire life to God, if they wish to live their days in the bosom and under the daily protection of the Holy Church; but presumably will be made to suffer a daily deep sense of personal loss, which shall be brought about by daily reminder of the evangelical impoverishment of the rest of the world. Continually reinforcing the fact that only through their blind faith in Lord and by obeying His clergy without question...will they ever come to truly know His love, and share in His treasures; more importantly to be saved from His wrath that will be coming if they change their wicked ways.

FIRST THINGS - True & False Reform - August/September 2003

MY CONCLUSION

In 2000, the late Pope John Paul II, delivered a baroque-like and bombastic confession relating to some of the Church's past transgressions, staged with several of his cardinals at St. Peter's Cathedral, and not surprisingly the Pope remained vague, non-specific and completely ambiguous. However, the pope only asked for the forgiveness of the transgressions brought about by the "sons and daughters" of the Catholic Church, but not for those of the "Holy Fathers," those of the "Church itself" or those of the Church’s hierarchies that were present at the event.

For the Roman Catholic Church on the inside, Pope John Paul II, despite all of his positive aspects, on the whole surely proved to be a great disappointment; and ultimately in the end, a disaster. As a result of his numerous contradictions, this last Pope has left a Catholic Church that is now very deeply polarized, alienated millions and allowed the Church to be plunged into an epochal crisis -- a structural crisis that, after a quarter century, now reveals many fatal deficits in terms of its development and a need for significant reform.

Contrary to the many of the intentions that were conveyed at the Vatican Council II; that medieval Roman system, with a power apparatus that had far too many totalitarian features, it was completely restored by some very clever and ruthless personnel... and by changing a number of academic policies. Bishops were brought into line, pastors overloaded, theologians muzzled, the laity deprived of their rights, women discriminated against, national synods and churchgoers' requests simply went ignored, along with sex scandals far to numerous to count; prohibitions on discussion; liturgical spoon-feeding; a ban on sermons by lay theologians; incitement to denunciation; and a prevention of Holy Communion -- "the world and the 1960s" can hardly be blamed for all of this!!

If the next pope is to continue the policies of this last one, he would only be reinforcing an enormous backup of problems and turn the Catholic Church's current structural crisis into what is certain to quickly evolve into a hopeless situation. Instead, a new pope must decide in favor of a change in course, but this change must be a step forward, one that will inspire the church to embark down some new paths -- in the spirit of John XXIII and in keeping with the impetus for reform that were first brought about by the Second Vatican Council.

However, if Cardinal Avery Dulles is to be the new Chief Marketing Officer of the US Catholic Church. A Prince now possibly charged with reforming His Kingdom, if this is the case then we all may want to drop to their knees and just start praying now. For if this Cardinal is charged with reforming the US Catholic Church, who has the diplomatic genes of a Dulles, the unscrupulous business cunning of a Rockefeller; as well as the blessing and backing of both the Vatican and the White House.......you can expect that the New World Order conspiracy theorist to start screaming any moment now ...."Black Pope...Black Pope!"

Additional Sources:

The Making of a Cardinal

Robert Lansing Papers | Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library

John Foster Dulles Papers, Selected Correspondence and Related ...

Allen W. Dulles Papers - Series 1 Folder List: Correspondence...

Allen Dulles (1893-1969) OSS Operative (1942-45) | CIA Director ...

Foreign Affairs - That Was Then: Allen W. Dulles on the Occupation

Amazon.com: Books: Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles

Fordham Urban Law Journal: Response to Avery Cardinal Dulles

Chamish - Final Thoughts Before My American Tour

“The Catholic Church [following the Second Vatican Council] became in a true sense evangelical…Paul VI followed this up in many ways. John Paul II has carried this evangelical shift yet further…the evangelical turn in the ecclesial vision of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II is one of the most surprising and important developments in the Catholic Church since Vatican II."

·"Religious illiteracy has sunk to a new low."

·"Dissent is rampant…."

"The call for a new evangelization strongly issued by Paul VI and John Paul II has fallen, as it would seem, on to deaf ears."

"Liturgical laws are often flouted."

"Religious practice is falling off. Many fail to attend Mass on Sundays. The sacrament of Penance is neglected by the vast majority of Catholics. There is a serious dearth of vocations…."

"The immoral behavior of Catholics, both lay and clergy, is a cause of scandal and defections…. The morality of Catholics all too often sinks below the standards commonly observed by Protestants and unbelievers." (There's a nice dig and a clear message to the people...Roman Catholism is the ONLY right answer)

Various quotes from Roman Catholic Cardinal Avery Robert Dulles

George Bush's Slave Trading Kin - NYC Exhibit

2005-12-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

As you will learn from the attached PDF files, and as is commonly known, the mother of former United States Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush (the father of US President George Herbert Walker Bush and great grandfather for US President George Walker Bush) was Flora Livingston Butler Sheldon. The attached file Margaret Ruth Sheldon.pdf references the family connection to the New York Manor Lords and one of the most prominent slave trading families of the mid 18th century. Philip Livingston, slave trader and slave owner, donated his slave money to endow Yale College's first professorship.

Amazingly, (or maybe not), when the New York Times ran their article on the new $5 million exhibition, "Slavery in New York in their Arts section on September 27, 2005, they didn't feel it was important enough to mention that Philip Livingston's sister Judith Livingston was the g-g-g-g-g-grandmother of United States Bush Presidents. But then again....why keep dredging up ancient American history...he is only the leader of Free World; which somehow sounds like an oxymoron....or a pun?

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE, "A 'Main Event' in Old New York" - By Glenn Collins - September 27, 2005

An exibition on the city's slavery may draw crowds or controversy.

It is called a trading book. In meticulous, spidery notations, it reveals just how the sloop Rhode Island, owned by Philip Livingston & Sons, New York merchants, traded rum, tobacco and cheese for guns, cloth and ivory in 1749.

Then, along the African coast, it traded those goods for 124 slaves.

The ledger is but one of more than 400 artifacts, documents, paintings and maps in a forthcoming exhibition on slavery at the New-York Historical Society that detail the vital connections between New York and the system of slavery that was an economic engine of the Americas for more than three centuries.

"We all grew up with images of 'Gone With the Wind' and we thought slavery was a Southern institution, but for 200 years slavery was a dominant force in New York," said Richard Rabinowitz, the show's curator.

The $5 million exhibition, "Slavery in New York," will open to the public on Oct. 7. Its story begins in the 1620's and ends on July 5, 1827, when black New Yorkers celebrated emancipation in their state. Late next year, a sequel exhibition, "Commerce and Conscience," will extend the chronicle past the Civil War.

The show is a potentially controversial one for the society, a 201-year-old institution that has stirred debate since it was re-energized by two wealthy, conservative businessmen, Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, the forces behind an Alexander Hamilton exhibition that earned mixed reviews from historians last year.

"Many people, blacks as well as whites, have some trouble having the story of slavery told in a major public venue," said James Oliver Horton, the Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University, who is the exhibition's chief historian. "But we do not have the right not to tell the story."

Spanning 9,000 square feet in 10 galleries, "Slavery" will be half again as large as the Hamilton show. Since the topic "is difficult and sensitive, we must be impeccable historically," said Dr. Louise Mirrer, the society's president.

And so in Gallery 2 there is an original letter from the Dutch West India Company to Peter Stuyvesant authorizing him to sell slaves; he hoped New Amsterdam could be the busiest slave market in North America.

New York's busy economy of importing, shipbuilding, borrowing, lending and insuring was based on a far-flung slave-labor force. Slave ships were good investments, Dr. Horton said, and slaves were owners' annuities - property that could be rented out as a source of income for years. Even newspapers were complicit, making money from ads about auctions and runaways. "Slavery was not a sideshow," Dr. Horton said. "It was the main event."

But the exhibition also highlights overt and covert slave resistance, including coroner records of a 1712 revolt in which 9 whites were killed by 38 slaves.

A key curatorial challenge was that much of the historical evidence speaks solely in the voice of the enslavers, said Dr. Rabinowitz, president of American History Workshop in Brooklyn, an exhibition planning firm. But slaveholders revealed much unintentionally, as in "runaway ads saying such things as 'there are whip marks on his back, but he loves me,' " Dr. Rabinowitz said.

In addition to offering interactive visual presentations about slavery, the exhibition tries to portray the experience of being enslaved - through, for example, the saga of the 20-year-old Deborah Squash, who escaped the employ of George Washington, fleeing to freedom behind British lines.

Last fall's Hamilton show, though trumpeted as a blockbuster, drew smaller crowds than expected and was derided by some historians as a glorification of Hamilton revealing a new conservative bent at the society.

No specific attendance predictions are being offered for "Slavery," except that "we will be mobbed," as Dr. Mirrer put it. The society has already kicked off an $800,000 advertising campaign and plans a robust school-outreach effort, a Web site and a companion book.

The show has been a magnet for money, including a New York City Council grant of $500,000 this year (and $625,000 for next year's installment), as well as $803,000 from the federal Department of Education. The lead sponsor is J. P. Morgan.

Although the society's literature portrays the exhibition as an untold story, "historians have, for decades now, been exploring the impact of slavery on the economic, cultural and racial foundations of the city," said Dr. Mike Wallace, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1999 for "Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898," written with Dr. Edwin G. Burrows. Dr. Wallace wrote a scathing critique of the Hamilton show in The New York Review of Books, faulting the exhibition for amateurish museumcraft and charging that "the show opts for one-sided, hagiographic boosterism."

The new exhibition is likely to be scrutinized by New York historians as well. "It would be hard not to, given the unfortunate Hamilton show," Dr. Wallace said. "But given who's worked on the slavery exhibition, I'm assuming it is going to be a worthy, and hopefully exciting, enterprise."

The exhibition's potential to enlighten, as well as to offend, is multiracial, said Dr. Howard Dodson, chief of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which presented a 2000 exhibition on slavery. "With blacks it has been a subject of embarrassment," he explained. "I know that was true with me when I was growing up. And with whites, it's fear of being charged with being guilty because of the sins of the fathers."

Steven H. Jaffe, a former senior projects historian at the society who worked on plans for a show on slavery beginning in 2001 but was dismissed with other staff members after Dr. Mirrer took over, said the society had "gotten really fine scholars on this subject as advisers."

He added: "But the question is how the black communities in and around New York are going to respond when an institution that is perceived as white and patrician starts preening about 'what we're going to tell you about slavery because you don't know it' - when a lot of people in the black community have known this for a long time."

Dr. Horton, a much-praised historian who was the adviser to "Slavery and the Making of America," the recent PBS documentary series, disagreed. "I do not believe that many blacks know this story," he said, adding: "This is not a case of having an elite institution set up an exhibit on slavery without guidance. This exhibit is based on exhaustive research."

His ambitions for the show are large. "This will help to provide historical context for the conversation we need to have about race in this country," he said, adding that it could be a corrective to historical hypocrisy. "The patriots used antislavery rhetoric in reference to America's freedom," he said, "but they were slaveholders - Washington, Jefferson, John Jay, Ben Franklin."

And indeed, Philip Livingston, the owner of the slave-trading sloop whose ledger is part of the exhibition, had a son in the business, also named Philip Livingston, who signed the Declaration of Independence. For New York.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, TheArts, of Tuesday, September 27, 2005.

Additional Sources:

Ancestory.com - George W. Bush

Henry Livingston Family Website

Jamaican Family Search genealogy research library

Yale Insider: Dwight Hall Unveils Plaque Renouncing Timothy ...

Philip Livingston, Slave Trader and slave owner

The Three R's - Vol. 16 No. 1 - Rethinking Schools Online

Race Matters - Getting Rich Off Human Cargo

Also See: I Am For The Whipping Post & The Lynch Law

Anderson Vanderbilt Cooper - Skull & Bones 1989??

2005-12-01T21:02:00.000-08:00

The below information has been taken (with some paraphrasing) almost entirely from biographies published on Wikipedia.com; of which I have contributed to the authoring of and correcting of numerous entries. (see additional sources below)

Anderson Hays Vanderbilt Cooper (Yale '89) is the youngest son of the late author Wyatt Emory Cooper and clothing designer, artist and author Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt.

Gloria Vanderbilt is the daughter of American railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925) and his second wife, Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan. Known as Reggie, he was the son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice Claypoole Gwynne (1845-1934). He attended Yale University, as did his grandson Anderson, where Reggie acquired a reputation for dissipation—and no degree. (1904-1965).

Reginald Vanderbilt left a $4 million trust for Anderson's mother Gloria, which was to have been administered by his grandmother, but it caused a much publicized civil court case for the custody of his mother with Reginald's sister, Gertrude Vanderbilt-Whitney, who did eventually win the custody battle in 1934. The custody case for Anderson's mother was largely won on the grounds that Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan-Vanderbilt frequently made long trips to Europe without her daughter and that Morgan-Vanderbilt had also repeatedly exposed Anderson's mother Gloria to the intimate relationships of both her male & female partners; thus causing the New York City courts to find Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan-Vanderbilt to be an unfit mother and sending Cooper's mother Gloria Vanderbilt to live with his great-aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt-Whitney

As there is currently no confirmed listing of the fifteen members of the 1989 Class of Skull & Bones...one can only speculate as to whether Anderson Hays Cooper only followed his famous ancestor's footsteps to the gates of Yale University...or if he continued over to the doorway of Skull & Bones' tomb (house) as well.

SIDE NOTE:

Gertrude was the wife of Harry Payne Whitney (S&B 1894), who's father was U.S. Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney (S&B 1863), US Secretary of the Navy. Thus making CNN's Anderson Vanderbilt Cooper's also the great-nephew of Alfred Gywenne Vanderbilt (S&B 1900), who on May 1, 1915 boarded the RMS Lusitania bound for Liverpool, England; which on May 7th, in the Irish Channel, the German submarine Unterseeboot 20 torpedoed, triggering a secondary explosion (widely believed to be a huge shipment of weapons from Remington Arms) that sank the Cunard ocean liner in just eighteen minutes. Vanderbilt's body was never recovered.

Harry Payne Whitney's brother William Payne Whitney (S&B 1898) married Helen Hay and they had a daughter Joan Whitney Payson and son John "Jock" Hay Whitney (Yale's Scroll and Key). Joan & Jock both inherited huge trust funds from their father and their grandfather William Collins Whitney when their passed away in 1927. Jock Whitney went on to become a pioneer in the production of color-movies, financier, philanthropist, art-collector, a U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom as well as the publisher of the New York Herald Tribune.

Joan Whitney Payson married Yale University alumni Charles Shipman Payson, she also cofounded the New York Mets baseball team with George Herbert Walker, Jr. (S&B 1927) in 1960. He was also the brother-in-law of former U.S. Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917), and the father of the current U.S. Ambassador to Hungary George Herbert Walker III (S&B 1953). He was also the uncle of former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush (S&B 1947), to whom he was extremely close. "Uncle Herbie" helped fund the former President George H.W. Bush's initial entry into the oil business in the early 1950s.

U.S. President George H. W. Bush (S&B 1968) is son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush (S&B 1947), the grandson son former Connecticut U.S. Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917), the great-nephew of James Smith Bush (S&B 1922), George Herbert Walker, Jr. (S&B 1927), Dr. John Mercer Walker, Sr. (S&B 1931), Louis Walker (S&B 1936), the nephew of Jonathan James Bush (S&B 1953) and the cousin U.S. Ambassador George Herbert Walker III (S&B 1953)of Ray Carter Walker (S&B 1955) and several others.

Sources:

Anderson Hay Vanderbilt Cooper
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt
Wyatt Emory Cooper
Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt
Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt
Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan-Vanderbilt
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Harry Payne Whitney
William C. Whitney;
Payne Whitney
John Hay Whitney
Joan Whitney Payson

Additional Sources:
George Herbert Walker
George Herbert Walkerm Jr.
George Herbert Walker III
Prescott Sheldon Bush
Chief Judge John M. Walker, Jr.
Yale's Scroll & Key;
Yale's Skull & Bones Society

RUBBING IT IN...JUST A LITTLE BIT HARDER!!

2005-12-01T07:54:00.000-08:00

The 4141 Robber Baron Express
(actually named the 4141 Express)

Now Talk About Your Train Wrecks...

Union Pacific Robber Baron Edward Henry Harriman (E.H. Harriman), Standard Oil cofounder William Rockefeller and their business partners Buckeye Castings President Samuel Prescott Bush (who got his job at Buckeye from William and John's brother Frank Rockefeller), and banker George Herbert Walker; who along with their sons W. Averell Harriman (S&B 1913) (US Secretary of Commerce and Ambassador) Edward "Bunny" Roland Harriman (S&B 1917) (Chairman of the American Red Cross), Percy Avery Rockefeller (S&B 1900), George Herbert Walker Jr. (S&B 1927) (President of G.H. Walker & Co. & cofounder of the New York Mets) and Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917)(US Senator from Connecticut).....who were all founding partners of W.A. Harriman & Co. and Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

All of these men must have had their own little Thanksgiving celebration down in Hell last week. Thankful for the fact that Americans have still not yet smarten up to the very blatant raping of their own country! After all.....it was major railroads deals, railcar couplings manufacturing -(the buckeye coupler) and the transporation of oil to the masses that brought these Yale Skull & Bonesmen (and their families) all together!!

It is likely E.H. Harriman's former general counsels were also giving thanks last week. Harriman's first general counsel was the former 50 year (1882-1932) Texas law firm partner Baker Botts, Judge Robert Scott Lovett, who's son (former U.S. Secretary of Defense) Robert Abercrombie Lovett (S&B 1918), who married Brown Brothers Harriman founding partner George Brown's daughter Adele Quarterly Brown and served as a senior partner at Brown Brothers for many years. Harriman's second general counsel was Maxwell Evarts (S&B 1884). Maxwell's father was the former United States Attorney General, United States Secretary of State and the United States Senator from New York...William Maxwell Evarts (S&B 1837). Maxwell Evarts was also the great-grandson of Yale College's former treasurer and America's founding father Roger Sherman.

Note: Prescott Sheldon Bush (S&B 1917) was of course was the father of United States President George Herbert Walker Bush (S&B 1947) and the grandfather of the current United States President George Walker Bush (S&B 1968).

Additional Note: (S&B YYYY) = Yale Skull & Bones and their year of initiation into the world's most secret society.

Train Excursion - November 19-20, 2005
Source: George Bush Presidential Museum & Library

Join us as the Museum at the George Bush Presidential Library presents a unique opportunity to return to simpler days by traveling aboard vintage Union Pacific rail cars pulled by Union Pacific’s newest locomotive dedicated in honor of the 41st President of the United States. You will be surrounded by history and luxury as we travel from College Station to Dallas aboard Union Pacific’s heritage fleet. Along the way you will learn the rich history of how the railroad helped shape Central Texas. The 4141 Express will depart College Station at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 19th and depart from Dallas on Sunday, November 20th at 12:00 p.m. This fabulous weekend trip will be November 19th and 20th and includes round trip train travel, a catered lunch both days, a luxurious room at the beautiful Adam’s Mark Hotel in downtown Dallas with complimentary breakfast Sunday morning, and unlimited travel on the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART).

There are five different rail car seating levels available. With any package, you receive a welcome packet that includes your boarding passes, along-the-way rail trip map, train consist, maps and general information for attractions in downtown Dallas as well as a schedule of special events associated with the Bush Museum exhibit Trains: Tracks of the Iron Horse. Travelers also receive a commemorative lapel pin and lunch both days.

The Coach car features comfortable, roomy reclining seats with leg rests. The Dome Coach has a 360 degree view of the passing countryside. The Diner car features relaxed lounge seating plus a limited edition commemorative Bush Museum overnight bag. The Dome Diner features comfortable bench seats with tables and a 360 degree view. With this package, you also receive a guided “behind the scenes” tour for up to ten people of the Bush Library. The Dome Lounge features plush lounge seating with lots of room to move around. In addition, you will be treated to a 360 degree view of the passing countryside while in the dome. Dome Lounge passengers also will receive unlimited admission to the Bush Museum for one year and invitations to special Bush Museum programs in conjunction with the railroad exhibit.

Many exciting opportunities await the travelers upon their arrival at Union Station in downtown Dallas. Within minutes you can be at the top of Reunion Tower, the Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas World Aquarium, the Sixth Floor Museum and West Village, Dallas’ newest hot spot for shopping, dining and entertainment. Tours are also available of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, home of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. All of these attractions can be reached on DART. No matter how you spend your weekend, we are sure you will have a great time. So get on board and join us for this exciting and historic trip!

Additional Sources:

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, 1991

Oral Interview with Robert A. Lovett, Truman Presidential Museum & Library, July 7, 1971; Richard D. McKinzie and Theodore A. Wilson

WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, by Antony C. Sutton

WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

David S. Brown Biography and Collection

HIV Discrimination in the Workplace

2005-02-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

"We are drawing a line in the sand, which has often been the case here in San Francisco. Discrimination against people with HIV or AIDS is a serious concern for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered people and people in general; we won't allow Cirque du Soleil's discrimination against Matthew Cusick to go unnoticed.

We believe that when enough fair-minded people learn about this discrimination,
they will come to see a completely different side of Cirque than what is currently being presented in ads and on magazine covers,and they will DEMAND an end to this hypocrisy."

Aaron E. Baldwin
San Francisco Activist & Campaign Co-Organizer
"Discrimination: The Other Side of Cirque du Soleil"
November 20th, 2003

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION - HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights Magazine - Winter 2002

Confronting HIV Discrimination in the Workplace:
A Legal Case Study
By Hayley Gorenberg

Even as the quarter-century mark in the HIV/AIDS epidemic approaches, many HIV-positive employees experience job-threatening discrimination, especially if they do not "drive desks." Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights firm for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and HIV-positive people, has recently developed cases for an HIV-positive police officer, a medical technician, an auto glass installer, and, most famously, a talented gymnast whose discrimination claim yielded this year’s record-setting settlement in Cusick v. Cirque du Soleil. (EEOC No. 340-2003-10938.) Matthew Cusick’s job under the big top may have been unusual, but the discrimination he faced in the workplace is all too common. Lambda Legal’s national Help Desk logs thousands of calls each year, and the greatest source of complaints from its HIV-positive callers involves workplace discrimination. This article examines a few of the critical components to success in Cusick’s case.

Cirque du Soleil, the premier acrobatic circus show, hired Matthew Cusick in 2002 and assigned him to the international company’s Las Vegas production, Mystère. In general health discussions with Cirque’s physiotherapy department at the beginning of his training, Cusick voluntarily disclosed his HIV status. At Cirque’s request, he twice visited doctors who assessed his HIV and judged him a healthy athlete. He was cleared for full performance activities with Cirque. Yet in the spring of 2003, fresh from several months of intense training, Cirque fired Cusick based upon fears of HIV transmission, claiming it was acting to protect other employees from "known safety hazards." Shortly thereafter, Cusick came to Lambda Legal.

When Cirque refused to reconsider its decision, Lambda Legal filed a complaint under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with the Los Angeles office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). After the EEOC investigation supported Cusick’s allegations, conciliation talks between the parties eventually resulted in a groundbreaking settlement for HIV-related employment discrimination complaints. It included revision of Cirque’s antidiscrimination policies; ongoing, top-to-bottom antidiscrimination training for Cirque’s employees worldwide; a minimum of two years of compliance monitoring by the EEOC; compensation for Cusick’s lost wages in the amount of $60,000; front pay in the amount of $200,000; and compensatory damages of $300,000, the maximum available under the ADA for a company of Cirque’s size. Lambda Legal also received $40,000 toward payment for its attorney fees.

The Power of Public Disclosure

Public awareness exerted critical pressure throughout Cusick’s case. Lambda’s "Discrimination: The Other Side of Cirque du Soleil" public education campaign encouraged patrons to examine Cirque’s values and standards. Rather than a boycott, Lambda Legal promoted education and individual responses, ultimately sending thousands of petition signatures and messages to Cirque. One evening Cusick himself stood outside a show in California and urged some reluctant patrons to use their tickets and go inside, but to keep him in mind. At another show, local HIV activists donned clown costumes when they distributed educational flyers, attracting local camera crews and colorful coverage.

Lambda Legal’s public education campaign attracted diverse allies. High-recognition performers like Nathan Lane, Bebe Neuwirth, Rosie O’Donnell, and Chita Rivera, as well as the outspoken playwright Tony Kushner, combined with medical experts to focus the spotlight. Many sports groups, including the San Francisco Fog rugby team—which pointed out that it did not exclude people with HIV even while boasting of rugby’s bloodiness—embodied the standards used by groups such as the World Health Organization, the U.S. Olympics Committee, the National Basketball Association, and even the American Academy of Pediatrics’ sports medicine specialists. All agreed that no medical or scientific basis existed to bar HIV-positive athletes from competition, or even to require HIV testing. During the hundreds of thousands of high-contact sports contests played since HIV first emerged, there has never been a single documented case of HIV transmission.

Lambda’s allies helped drive its points home, especially when Cirque du Soleil began suggesting it could justify firing Cusick as protection not only for fellow performers but for members of Cirque’s audience! The presence of allied performers and athletes helped strengthen Lambda’s case by furnishing analogous workplaces that countered efforts to "exceptionalize" Cirque as a one-of-a-kind employer that might deserve some sort of specialized standard. These allies were particularly motivated by Cusick and Lambda Legal’s clear stance that they sought policy change that would help all HIV-positive employees rather than financial compensation alone.

Finally, Lambda Legal and Cusick found allies in local governments with strong antidiscrimination ordinances. San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission, after learning of the EEOC filing, brought its own complaint because the city bans contracts (such as land leases) with discriminatory employers. Had the case continued, Lambda would have investigated the triggers for antidiscrimination ordinances in other cities hosting Cirque. Advocates should more routinely explore these types of provisions in cases opposing employers who hold or seek government contracts.

The power of openness was crucial to success. Cusick’s refusal to file as a "John Doe" and his willingness to face reporters helped obtain critical media coverage for the case. His disclosures were painful, of course. Friends and family who had not known of his HIV status found out via newspapers and the Internet. Ultimately, however, Cusick reaped such emotional support from those who learned of his story that he deemed it well worth the risk. In a similar vein, working toward a public settlement allowed Cusick’s case to have far greater force than a "gagged" settlement would have had. Cusick came to Lambda Legal in part because the organization strives for an impact that extends beyond the individual target of discrimination, even while it advocates vigorously for that person. Because Lambda reached a public settlement with Cirque du Soleil, it set public (if not court-sanctioned) precedent. The dollar figures alone, widely reported in the popular press and verdict reporters, caused employers and defense attorneys to take notice.

The Price of Intolerance

The considerable front pay award in Cusick’s case warrants mention. Late in the case, many months after Cirque fired Cusick, the company announced that it would reinstate him. Ultimately, Cusick did not accept this reinstatement, in part due to continuing hostility from Cirque leadership. Arguably, his decision could have raised a legal issue of whether Cirque’s offer mitigated its damages. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, however, "In cases in which reinstatement is not viable because of continuing hostility between the plaintiff and the employer or its workers, or because of psychological injuries suffered by the plaintiff as a result of discrimination, courts have ordered front pay as a substitute for reinstatement." (Pollard v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours, 121 S. Ct. 1946, 1948 (2001).) Rightly, Cusick’s well-considered and painful decision to reject the late-breaking offer of reinstatement did not affect his case’s success.

As a settlement, the Cirque resolution did not include a punitive damages figure. However, Cirque’s actions, coupled with lack of support for its conclusions regarding the HIV transmission risk, contributed to allegations of heavy liability. Months into the case, a Cirque spokesperson made public statements such as, "We believe that twenty years of experience in this area are enough for us to determine risk."

Not so. The twenty-first century should be an age of enlightenment when it comes to HIV in the workplace. Employers must incorporate medical and scientific information into their operations rather than relying on fears and assumptions. Self-proclaimed expertise should furnish no shield. Matthew Cusick opened his life to the world to drive that point home.

Hayley Gorenberg is the deputy legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. She is a past chair of the Special Committee on AIDS of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
American Bar Association
Section of Individual Rights & Responsibilities
740 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC, 20005
phone: (202) 662-1030
fax: (202) 662-1032
irr@abanet.org

Please feel free to visit Matthew Cusick's website at:
http://www.matthewcusick.com
(View and hear Matthew Cusick speaks out
about his case in the Video Section)

Thank you, and please, please...
Stop The Hate!

President Lincoln Didn't Quit...

2005-02-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

...Because He Had Very Little Reason To!
The motivational story of how "Abraham Lincoln Didn't Quit," is the greatest crock of BS and collection of untruths that are circulating around the Internet today; and it serves as a rank bastardization of American history. The fact that this story has continued to be published in countless magazines and newspaper columns for the past four (4) decades; including an appearance in a 1967 issue of the Reader's Digest; stands as a testament to the propaganda machine that is the United States Media, which continues to be anything but FREE and/or UNBIASED.

"Abraham Lincoln Didn't Quit" is today a little favorite feature of almost everyone's inspirational e-mail list, web sites; and likely more than a 1,000 various "self-help" books. It so completely exemplifies what is so wrong about trying to turn yesterday's American history, into tomorrow’s motivational speech. Our past is something that we should all learn from, but we would be wise to remember that our American past is just that... Our Past. It was a much different time, a significantly different culture, with completely different set of beliefs; and the solutions that were found for our past problems may not necessarily apply to the problems of the present day; or even in the future. In today’s Internet age, history is created from scores of global events that have occurred no more than just one minute earlier.

Abraham Lincoln is the mythical embodiment, and the towering figure that best visually represents our American history. Regardless of whatever you may feel about President Lincoln’s accomplishments, he was indeed both a fascinating and exceptionally intelligent man. He is a true testament to the ethos that "Anyone Can Make It in America." A man of modest means, with little formal education; born in a small one-room log cabin in the backwoods of rural Kentucky.

Lincoln is perhaps most remembered as "Honest Abe," a honest and hard-working man who in fact overcame almost every obstacle that life ever threw his way; eventually moving from that one (1) room log cabin to the one hundred and thirty two (132) room White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C., where he served America during the years of her deepest and darkest internal crisis.

There are three men whose words have always reduced to me to very quiet fits of emotion, each one had chosen to dedicate their life to the vision of a greater tomorrow. Two of them were the Americans: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the 16th President of the United States of America - Abraham Lincoln; and the other was the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet and writer George Bernard Shaw.

Men who dared and chose to speak out loudly, about the need for a more peaceful and tolerate world.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – Reverend and Civil Rights Leader

A man who so vividly share his dream of a more peaceful world, in his speech titled "I Have a Dream." Just stop and think about how his dream, and through those words, he continues to impact the basic human rights of all human beings… throughout this entire world.

Mr. George Bernard Shaw - Irish Writer, Poet and Nobel Peace Prize Winner (Literature)

Think about how Shaw’s words, even today continue to inspire the masses, whenever they are heard: "Some men see things as they are and say, Why?' I dream things of that never were and I say, Why not?"

Former United States President Abraham Lincoln - Clerk, Surveyor, Politician, Attorney, Congressman, Senator, Civil Rights Leader, Writer, and the 16th President of United States of America

Abraham Lincoln’s almost spooky ability to see into the future of America, a country that he loved so, has always captivated and fascinated me so.

"Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began...." Lincoln stated during his 1858 debate with Stephen A. Douglas.

Although "Abraham Lincoln Didn't Quit" appears to present the former United States President as a man who "never gave up", it gross untruths can lead one to believe that it is in fact meant to subconsciously supplant the message that "Honest Abe" (as he is frequently referred to) was in fact a miserable failure; and whose failures caused him to suffered from great self doubt.

That Lincoln’s fragile mental state drove him into a nervous breakdown; and that United States President Abraham Lincoln was in fact poor, uneducated, incapable of making a decision which he would not second guess later, and that he was very likely extremely mentally unfit. Leading the reader to also believe that the President Abraham Lincoln was for those reasons a very poor choice for the Presidency of the United States of America.

So I now feel compelled to set the story about President Abraham Lincoln straight, who I believe to be America’s greatest President, serving his country in the darkest days of its civil unrest. A man who certainly saw more than his fair share of hardship and setbacks, but who also achieved remarkably successful in many different endeavors; and who is certainly deserving of better than this Internet garbage.

So now let’s take a look at the life of former President Abraham Lincoln, who likely was the very last American politician to have the adjective "Honest" used in the same sentence with his/her own name:

1816: Lincoln’s family was in fact forced out of their home, and Abraham did have to go to work to help support them.

Life on the American frontier during the early 19th century was by far no picnic for anyone; it required hours of back-breaking work every day…from everyone who was physically capable of working. In the context of their time, however, the Lincolns in fact lived under some rather unremarkable circumstances.

To say that the Lincolns were "forced out of their home" in 1816 is rather a bit misleading, because it implies they were suddenly and involuntarily uprooted and thrown out of their own home, with any kind of warning and with no place to go.

In fact Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas, who had owned farmland in Hardin County, Kentucky, since the early 1800s; left Kentucky and moved his family across the Ohio River to Indiana in 1816 for two primary reasons:

* One - Kentucky was a slave state, and Thomas Lincoln despised slavery -- both because his church was opposed it, and because he did not want to have to compete economically against free slave labor.

* Two - Kentucky had never been properly surveyed, and many settlers in the early 1800s often found it difficult to establish clear title to their land. Thomas Lincoln, and other farmers in the area, eventually got sued by non-Kentucky residents who held prior claim titles to their land.

Therefore with plenty of land available in neighboring Indiana, a territory where slavery had been excluded by the Northwest Ordinance, and where the state’s government guaranteed buyers a clear title to their property, Thomas Lincoln opted to move rather than spending the time and money fighting over the title to his Kentucky farm. So, I guess in a sense it could be said that the Lincolns had been "forced out of their home," but it did not happen quiet so abruptly, and in the end they opted to leave; because there were better opportunities awaited them in Indiana.

The other part of this statement, that a seven-year-old Abraham Lincoln "had to work to support" his family, is even more grossly misleading. As young Abraham did not have to take any outside jobs to fend off his poor family financial ruin. Like nearly all American farm children of his era, Lincoln was expected to perform whatever chores and tasks that he was physically capable of handling around his family’s farm. If Abraham worked harder and/or longer than other children, it was not because the Lincolns' financial circumstances were extraordinarily difficult, but because Lincoln was exceptionally tall and very strong for his young age.

1818: His mother died.

This, at least, is no amazing embellishment. Lincoln's mother Nancy did in fact die of brucellosis (known as the "milk sickness") in 1818, when Abraham was then only nine years old. A mother's death is always a tragedy for any child, and it was an especially difficult hardship for any struggling farm family.

1831: Failed in business.

Stating that Lincoln "failed in business" is yet another misleading claim, because it implies that Abraham was the owner or perhaps the operator of the failed business, or that he was otherwise responsible for the failure of the business. None of this is true.

Lincoln left his father's home in 1831, and along with his cousin John Hanks, they took a flatboat full of provisions down the Mississippi River from Illinois to New Orleans for a "none too scrupulous businessman" by the named of Denton Offutt. Offutt planned to open a general store, and he had promised to make the very intelligent young Lincoln his manager after he returned from New Orleans.

Lincoln operated the store as Offutt's clerk and personal assistant for several months (and by all accounts he did a fine job of it) until Offutt, a struggling businessman, overextended himself financially and ran his business it into the ground. Thus by the spring of 1832 Lincoln had indeed "lost his job, but not because his own failure in business."

1832: Ran for the state legislature and lost.

Lincoln did run for the Illinois state legislature (where he was then living) in 1832, although as Lincoln biographer David Herbert Donald noted, "the post he was seeking was not an elevated one . . . [legislators] then dealt mostly with such issues as; whether cattle had to be fenced in or be allowed to enjoy free range."

Lincoln finished eighth (8th) in a field of thirteen (13) (with the top four vote-getters becoming legislators). However, this same year Lincoln also achieved something of which he was very proud of, when the members of a volunteer militia company that he had joined selected him as their captain.

Lincoln would say many years later, that this was "a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since." He would also note later in his career, that his defeat in the 1832 legislative election was the only time that he "was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people."

1832: Also lost his job - wanted to go to law school, but couldn’t get in.

As noted above, Lincoln actually "lost his job" in 1831. The notion that in 1832 Lincoln "wanted to go to law school, but could not get in" (why he couldn't get in still remains unspecified) is just silly. Lincoln did eventually become a lawyer, and he accomplished the feat in the same manner typical of his time and place: not by attending law school, but by reading law books and observing a great number of court sessions.

He was indeed interested in becoming a lawyer as early as 1832, but as Donald wrote, "upon reflection he concluded that he needed a better education to succeed."

1833: Borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business and by the end of the year he was bankrupt. He spent the next 17 years of his life paying off this debt.

Lincoln and William F. Berry, a corporal from Lincoln's militia company, purchased a general store in New Salem, Illinois in 1833. (Lincoln had no money for his half of the business; however he didn't technically "borrow the money from a friend" but instead signed a note with one of the previous owners for his share.) Lincoln and Berry were competing against a larger, and a better organized store in the same town; their outfit did very little business, and within a short time it had simply "winked out."

The debt on the store became due the following year, and since Lincoln was unable to pay off his note, his possessions were seized by the local sheriff.

Moreover, when Lincoln's former partner died with no assets soon afterwards, Lincoln insisted upon assuming his partner's half of the debt as well, even though he was not at all legally obligated to do so. Exactly how long it took Lincoln to pay off this debt (which he jokingly referred to as his "national debt") in its entirety is somewhat unknown. It did with out a doubt take him several years, but not seventeen; nor, as this statement implies, was he completely financially encumbered until it was paid in full. Within a few months of the store's failure, Lincoln had obtained a position as the New Salem postmaster, and by 1835 he was earning money both as a surveyor and as a state legislator.

1834: Ran for state legislature again - won.

In 1834 Lincoln was again one of thirteen candidates running for a seat in the state legislature, and this time he won, securing the second-highest number of votes among the field.

1835: Was engaged to be married, sweetheart died and his heart was broken.

Little is known about Lincoln's relationship with Ann Rutledge, including whether or not they were in fact actually engaged. (At the time that they met, Ann was already betrothed to another man.) Nonetheless, her death in the summer of 1835 was a terrible blow to Lincoln, sending him into a profound depression.

1836: Had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months.

Whether Lincoln experienced a "nervous breakdown" in the aftermath of Ann Rutledge's death is certainly debatable, but how he would have found time to stay "in bed for six months" is a complete mystery.

After Ann's funeral he spent a few weeks visiting an old friend, and within a month of her death, records show that Lincoln had resumed his occasional surveying duties. He surveyed the nearby town of Petersburg, Illinois in February 1836, and then undertook a strenuous two-month campaign for his re-election during that summer; serving in the state legislature throughout the end of the year. All of this would have been very difficult for a man who bedridden from depression for "six months in bed."

1838: Sought to become speaker of the state legislature - defeated.

By the time of the 1838-39 legislative session, Lincoln had twice been an unsuccessful Whig candidate for the position of speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. This was a relatively minor political setback, however, and no mention of the fact that by 1838 he was one of the most experienced members of the entire state legislature, or of any of Lincoln’s other notable successes that he had achieved between 1834 and 1838; namely:

* Lincoln was re-elected to the state legislature in both 1836 and 1838, each time receiving more votes than any other candidate running.

* That the Illinois Supreme Court granted Abraham Lincoln a license to practice law in the year 1837.

* That Lincoln became "one of the most prominent and successful lawyers in Springfield," where he was then living.

1840: Sought to become elector - defeated.

This statement is simply wrong. Lincoln was named as a presidential elector at the State of Illinois Whig Party Convention on 8 October 1839, and he campaigned as a Whig elector during the 1840, 1844, 1852, and 1856 presidential elections (skipping the 1848 campaign, because he was serving in the United States Congress).

1843: Ran for Congress - lost.

One could claim this as a Lincoln failure in that he wanted to be a Congressman, and he did fail to achieve that goal, but it is technically inaccurate to claim that he "ran for Congress" in 1843 and lost: The election was held in 1844, and Lincoln was not a candidate in this election. Lincoln's failure to achieve his party's nomination at the May 1843 Whig District Convention is undoubtedly what is referred to here.

1846: Ran for Congress again - this time he won - went to Washington and did a good job.

Lincoln won a seat as an Illinois Representative to the U.S. Congress in 1846.

1848: Ran for re-election to Congress - lost.

Lincoln did not "lose" the 1848 election. He didn't run for re-election to the U.S. Congress.

This can not be claimed as a failure, simply by assuming that he had declined to run because he felt that he would lose. He didn't run because the Whig policy at that time in America specified that all party members should step aside after serving one term, to allow other members to take their turns at holding office. Lincoln having already been urged to serve two terms, who was a very faithful party member, chose to comply with his party’s rules.

1849: Sought the job of land officer in his home state - rejected.

The position referred to here was that of the commissioner of the General Land Office, which was a federally appointed position and not a state one; and one that came with a fair amount of power and patronage. Since Lincoln's term in the US Congress was about to expire, his friends had urged him to apply for this post, but Lincoln was very reluctant to give up his very successful law career. However, he finally agreed to apply for the job; but only when the choice was then deadlocked between two other Illinois candidates and it looked as if the appointment might be given to someone from outside the State of Illinois.

Whigs from northern Illinois then decided that too many appointments were going to party members from other parts of the state, and hence they put up their own candidates against Lincoln. The choice was then left up to the Secretary of the Interior, who then selected the other candidate…..who was the Secretary’s own cousin.

1854: Ran for Senate of the United States - lost.

It should be noted that in Lincoln's time, candidates for U.S. Senate seats in Illinois were not directly elected by popular vote. Voters cast ballots only for state legislators, and the General Assembly of the state legislature then selected nominees to fill open Senate seats. So, in 1854 (and again in 1856) Abraham Lincoln was not technically running for the United States Senate; he was actually campaigning on behalf of Whig Party candidates for state legislature seats; all throughout Illinois.

Nonetheless, after the 1854 state election, Lincoln made it known that he would like to fill the open U.S. Senate seat for the State of Illinois. The first ballot of a divided General Assembly was taken in February 1855, and Lincoln received the most votes… but he was six votes shy of the required majority. When the process remained deadlocked after another eight ballots, Abraham Lincoln withdrew his name from the race to lend his support to another candidate; ensuring that the US Senate seat would not be filled by a pro-slavery Democrat.

1856: Sought the Vice-Presidential nomination at his party’s national convention - got less than 100 votes.

This is both misleading and inaccurate. Lincoln did not "seek" the vice-presidential nomination at the 1856 Republican national convention in Philadelphia; his name was put into nomination by the members of the Illinois State Delegation and after most national delegates were already committed to other candidates. Lincoln himself was in fact in Illinois, not at the convention, and did not even know that he had been nominated until friends brought him the news.

Nonetheless, in an informal ballot, Lincoln received just 110 votes out of 363, not at all a bad showing for someone who was little known outside his home state and not even in attendance at the convention.

1858: Ran for U.S. Senate again - again he lost.

Again, Lincoln was not directly campaigning for a Senate seat, although it was a foregone conclusion that he would be the Republicans' choice to take Stephen Douglas' U.S. Senate seat if his party won control of the Illinois state legislature. Lincoln actually bested Douglas in that Republican candidates received slightly over 50% of the popular vote, but the Republicans failed to gain control of the legislature, and so Douglas retained his seat in the Senate.

1860: Elected president of the United States.

1864: Abraham Lincoln was reelected for a second term as president of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln’s administration was hampered by the incompetence, but that incompetence was never his own; rather it was that of Lincoln's many Union generals, the inexperience of their troops, and the harassing political tactics both of the Republican Radicals, who favored a harder policy toward the South… and the Democratic Copperheads, who desired a negotiated peace.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, I believe marks the highest point in the record of American political eloquence. Abraham's long search for a winning combination finally brought generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman to the top; and their series of battle victories in 1864 dispelled the mutterings from both the Radicals and Peace Democrats, that had at one time seemed to threaten Lincoln's reelection.

He was reelected in 1864, defeating General George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate. During Lincoln’s inaugural address he urged leniency toward the South:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds . . ."

This policy aroused growing opposition among the part of the Republican Radicals, but before the matter could be put to the test, Lincoln was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, Washington, on April 14, 1865. He died that next morning.

In the opening paragraph I stated that I felt that "Abraham Lincoln Didn't Quit," stands as a rank bastardization of our own American history, and that it is an obvious product of our US Media propaganda machine; because as you can clearly see from what you just read above... Abraham Lincoln’s life was certain powerful enough to be extremely motivating to others. So ask yourself now, why all of the blatant lies and untruths?

Why with all the information about Abraham Lincoln's life out there and freely available, are there still so many lies about Lincoln being circulated today??

I believe that these lies continue circulating for the very same reason that James Madison is known today as Father of the United States Constitution, despite the fact that it was Roger Sherman who drafted the Great Comprise that is credited with saving both the Continental Congress and the United States Constitution (a comprise that is today our two house system of government.) It is also the very same reason, that despite the fact that Roger Sherman was only American to place his signature upon all four of the United States founding documents, (the Declaration of 1774; the Declaration of Independence 1776; the Articles of Confederation 1781, and the Federal Constitution of 1788), he still remains virtually unknown to most Americans.

Roger Sherman and President Lincoln only real shortcomings were their lack of wealth and social ranking (breeding); thus they are not afforded their proper place in our American history books or even in today's US media.

"Roger Sherman is a solid, sensible man."

Former President John Adams
The 2nd President of the United States of America

"That is Mr. Sherman of Connecticut, a man who never said a foolish thing in his life."

Former President Thomas Jefferson -
The 3rd President of the United States of America &
Principal Author of the Declaration of Independence

Note:

Judge David Davis (1815-1886), who was a noted lawyer and judge, politician, and Supreme Court justice. He had been active in both Illinois state and national Republican politics, Davis was elected in 1844 to the state legislature. In 1848 he was elected judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, a position that placed him in regular contact with lawyer Abraham Lincoln. The two developed a close friendship while serving the fourteen-county circuit.

Davis is credited with engineering Lincoln's presidential nomination at the 1860 Republican convention where he worked tirelessly organizing Lincoln supporters and lobbying delegates as his campaign manager. Lincoln later rewarded the very capable attorney in 1862 with a United States Supreme Court appointment, a position that he held until 1877. While on the Court, Davis wrote the majority opinion in Ex parte Milligan, a landmark decision restricting the right of military courts to try civilian individuals. (a law that would later become a thorn in the sides of some of his ancestors.)

When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, even though Justice Davis was then sick in bed, he went to Washington, D.C. and took care of all of Lincoln's affairs. Davis rode on the funeral train that carried Lincoln's body back to Springfield, Illinois. Justice Davis later disassociated himself completely from the Republican Party, after the Civil War, in silent protest of the often alleged Republican Radicals who assassinated his best friend.

In 1872, Davis was nominated by the Labor Reform Party as a candidate for the United States presidency. Five years later he was elected to the United States Senate, a position which he held until he retired, in 1883, back to Bloomington, Illinois.

Justice Davis died there three years later.

Source: Judge David Davis Mansion Website

Additional Note:

Justice David Davis was the maternal first cousin of David Davis Walker, Sr., who moved from Pekin to Bloomington, Illinois before he moved to St. Louis, Missouri. David Davis Walker was also the father of George Herbert Walker, the Grandfather of Dorothy Wear Walker, the Great-Grandfather of former United States President George Herbert Walker Bush and the Great-Great Grandfather of the current United States President George Walker Bush. It would be interesting if one could know just what Uncle Justice David Davis would think of his Republican Presidential ancestors and how they have served this great country.

Source: www.whitehouse.org

NO TAX EXEMPTIONS FOR PEDOPHILES!!

2004-09-10T22:59:00.000-07:00

August 5th, 2004

Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Senator Barbara Boxer
United States Senate
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Representative Nancy Pelosi
United States House of Representatives
450 Golden Gate Avenue, # 145378
San Francisco, California 94102

Honorable Senators Feinstein & Boxer, and Honorable Representative Pelosi: (California's Angels)

Last February 23, my friend Patrick McSorley died alone in his Boston apartment, at the young age of just 29. Patrick had spent the last three years of his life battling a heroin addiction that he just could not kick, which eventually killed him!

"The memories of what had happened to Patrick as a child, he had to battle with every day," a childhood friend of Paul's mentioned to me on the phone right before his funeral. "He would do almost anything to escape the pain that those memories brought him."

As a 12 year-old boy, Patrick McSorley had agreed to go out for an ice cream with Father John J. Geoghan, who had offered his comfort and trust ... as Patrick struggled to understand why his father had just committed suicide. Instead of comfort, Father John Geoghan molested my friend in backseat of his car.

Patrick McSorley was just one (1) of more than 130 victims of this serial predator named Father Geoghan. This Roman Catholic priest had been moved eight (8) separate times... from one parish to next parish... for more than two decades, all while the Church's leaders tried to silenced the accusers. Geoghan was eventually defrocked, but only after his arrest in 1998 for molesting a 10 year old boy. He was eventually sent to prison, where true justice was finally administered.

Patrick McSorley was one of the first sexual abuse victims to go public with his story; he appeared at several news conferences and he became a very vocal critic of how the Boston Archdiocese handled its sexually abusive priests. Although the church knew Father John Geoghan was a pedophile, Catholic authorities shuffled him from parish to parish whenever sexual allegations were reported. Almost all of Geoghan's victims were grammar school boys; one was only 4 years old.

Ironically, the same day that Patrick McSorley's young body was laid to rest in a small Massachusetts cemetery -- American Catholic Church officials had convened a press conference in an effort to bury the whole abuse scandal.

However, this scandal would not be as easy to bury....as so many of the other Church scandals have been. The John Jay College of Law study, which was commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, estimated that sexual abuse had been committed by 4,392 priests against 0,667 children, between 1950 and 2002:

SOME CHURCH SEX SCANDAL FACTS:

* Catholic priests in 95% of all UP.S. dioceses, have been accused of abuse, that is 1 in every 10 priests ordained in 1970.

* Most allegations of abuse were never reported to police by Church bishops--and 95% of the priests were and will never be charged with a crime.

* Nearly 30% of the victims were abused for two to four years, while an additional 10% were abused for up to nine years.

* 149 priests--were brutal serial pedophiles--abusing 2,960, or (27%) of all the known Church sexual abuse victims.

Californians must now bear witness to a whole new phase of these Church sex abuse proceedings, as more than 800 victims from Los Angeles Archdiocese and 140 victims from the San Deigo diocese begin to finally have their own day in court.

Many California Catholics are now struggling with many of their own questions, concerning what involvement (or knowledge) Cardinal Roger Mahony (Los Angeles Archdiocese) and Archbishop William Levada(San Francisco Archdiocese) had about the current sexual abuse scandal. Additionally, what did Archbishop William Levada know about the scandals that just forced his former Portland diocese into bankruptcy.

So the question I guess we all now forced to ask ourselves is, "Does the Catholic Church attract child sexual predator, or does it mold them?" Somehow, after with the California Archioceses now looking at paying out $1.5 to $2.25 billion in legal settlements here, I find myself perplexed by the fact that some people still find this to be an unanswerable riddle.

I find myself now being reminded of a quote from the great British scholar Lord Acton, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts.....ABSOLUTELY."

The unaccountable power that the US Catholic Church now enjoys, may not be exactly absolute... but it is pretty darn close. It appears that the US Church's hierarchy is in fact not accountable to anybody at all, as Cardinal Law is still today a free man.

Catholics don't get to elect their bishops, the Pope in Rome appoints them himself. Catholics also don't get to elect their Popes. A Pope serves for his life, and when he dies his successor is elected by the "College of Cardinals," a relatively small group of elite bishops. The term princes of the Church" still has much real meaning here.

If the members of the United States Congress and the Bush Administration are truly concerned about "Family Values," and protecting the "Family," then why hasn't Congress already stripped the US Catholic Church of their tax free status? More importantly, why has law enforcement not convicted all of the members of the Church, who were involved with these disgusting acts and send them to jail!

Instead, today the United States Congress has chosen to spend millions of taxpayer dollars, and a considerable amount of time, trying to stripe the civil rights of tax paying and consenting American adults.

So there you have it, a non taxpaying organization calling itself a religion of God (God would not turn his back on any His children), has knowingly been robbing the innocence of thousands of American children. Children just like my friend Patrick McSorley and the United States Congress has done NOTHING to end it! Instead it has chosen to once again allow the Church to seek out the homosexuals, and to allowed them to place the weight of the world's problems on shoulders of the LGBT community.

Homosexual or Heterosexual... what does it really matter? United States laws are very clear on this matter, if you committed sex crime against a child(ren) or you were an accessory (before or after the fact) to a sexual crime against a child(ren), and you failed to report it...then you go to jail!

Can there be ANY greater crime in this world, than a sexual crime against a child? I personally do not believe that there is any greater crime, and therefore I say just locked them ALL up, (homosexual, heterosexual or pedophile) and then just simply throw away the keys!

I thank you for time on this very important issue, and I also wanted to thank each of you, for your of your support in the defeat of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Sincerely,

Aaron E, Baldwin
San Francisco, CA 94114-2218

THE EFFECTS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

2004-09-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

Shortly after I attended our company monthly sales meeting on October 3rd 2001, I decided to venture downtown and so I could purchase some much needed memory for my laptop. I had been struggling to restore my laptop, since it had been hit by the “Nimba” worm virus the previous week.

So I stopped by a downtown computer shop, that just a bit smaller than the average American's living room. As I entered the front door of the store, I saw an obviously Middle Eastern man sitting behind the counter and talking on the phone. He spoke with a very heavy accent; however, I could not quite place its origins. I noticed that he somehow seemed unusually nervous and attentive. Then I heard him say, "Excuse me please, Sir. I will be with you in just one more minute."

As I was in no big hurry, so just continued to browse through the stores’ very neatly organized shelves. Then a minute or two later, he again apologized and said that he was almost finished.

Then I began to wonder, "why is he so obviously concerned about me...do I looked like I am pissed off or mad?"

Suddenly I heard the tone of his voice change, as then I heard him say, "Yes, I love you. I love you very much. It is OK. Everything will be just fine. I love you too. Please take care of yourself. Good night my love. Remember, I do love you." Then he set the phone down and apologized...yet again. "I am so sorry to keep you waiting, Sir. That was a very important long distance call that I had to take."

I said to him, "I should imagine so, as you just said good night and it is not yet even Noon here in San Francisco.”Really, Sir it was no trouble at all." I said.

Once we had determined the type of memory that my laptop required, he produced a small Mylar envelope with a 128 MB RAM module inside. He then asked me for $68 -- for an upgrade that I remembered paying several hundred dollars for… not long ago. So I thanked him for his low price, and then complimented him on how nice and clean his store was.

"We offer low prices to our customers, so they can still get what they need right away," he said, explaining that people are always in a hurry, but don't want to spend much money downtown." He was so polite, it was kind of embarrassing me. Then, I suddenly understood why this man was being so polite. I smiled and said to him, is has been a very difficult couple of weeks to be a Middle Easterner in America, hasn't it?"let out a sigh of relief and he said, "Yes, Yes it has...so very much so."

I asked him where he was originally from, and suddenly the fear came back into his eyes. Then, all in one quick breath he blurted out, "Jordan. I came here from Jordan, but I am a Catholic and I have now been in American for 22 years now and I am also an American citizen."

Suddenly, my heart sank as I remembered his telephone call. I knew the answer, before I even asked him if his earlier telephone call had been from Jordan.

"Yes," he replied, "That was my new wife and she is in Jordan right now, she is very much afraid. As I am a US citizen and we are now married, she was able to get her papers from the American Embassy last week. However, now she can not leave Jordan, because there are currently no flights to America. They have also now closed the American Embassy, and maybe indefinitely. She is afraid she will now be stuck there and that something bad will happen to me. I am worried about this too."

He then went on to explain how afraid she was about returning to America. She worries about the growing hatred in the hearts of many Americans, which she hears about on the television. She has read in the newspapers about the wave of hate crimes being committed against Middle Eastern Americans, over these last two week. Then, in a kind of quiet desperation, he said to me "I’m an American citizen and I am a Catholic. I believe in Jesus Christ and I go to church every Sunday."

He went on to say, Most Jordanians are deeply saddened by what happened in here in America. Many of my Muslim friends in America are also outraged, as well as afraid." Then he added, “The people who these horrible things are a very extreme and angry sect of people and they have very little support in Jordan. Most people there do not support any kind of terrorism. People here do not believe this, but most Catholics and Muslims that I know are very peaceful."

We continued on sharing our mutual concerns about current state of the World and wondering what might happen next. Then I finally shook this troubled American's hand and as I was about to leave the store, I turned and said, "I will pray that your wife has a safe journey home. Good luck to you both and I hope you both have a wonderful life together, here in America." He thanked me and walked to the front of the store and then shook my hand once again, as I opened the door.

As I began walking down Market Street, I felt my eyes suddenly filling up with tears. I was staring across the street, at a little boy who was selling hand-sized American flags on the sidewalk. Then tears really started to run down my face. In my mind, I was suddenly young boy again. I was standing beside my school desk and with my right hand placed upon my heart, as I said "One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

Then I remembered how when I as a young child, how I became troubled whenever I read or heard about World War II. I would be horrified as I read or saw photos of what had happened to so millions of innocent people. Many of those innocent murdered Jewish people, still haunted me in my dreams. Then I thought how they had also been proud citizens and shopkeepers. Much like that Jordanian man had been.

Then I thought about a conversation, from the previous weekend, where one of my friends had said to me, "we should no longer trust any Middle Easterner people, because they might be sleeper terrorist. After September 11th, we can no longer take that chance. Even if means we have to arrest them all and put them in jail."

As I continued to look down Market Street, I suddenly felt 225 years of American history reached out and shake me. As I then thought to myself, "is the land of the free and the home of the brave now being forced into watching everything that it has stood for… erode away in just two (2) short weeks?”

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," I thought to myself, as I quietly mouthed the words to myself. "That all men are created equal” and by holding these truths in our hearts, we become who we are... as human beings and as Americans.

What about you? Are you an American citizen? If you are, then be sure that you are living as American.

In fact, I now have challenge for you. Please see if you can follow through with it. Go and find the nearest American flag, then put your hand on your heart and renew your vow to America.

”I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL."

That is what I did that day, as I walking past the San Francisco Courthouse, on my way home.

Copyright 2001

2004-09-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

Guiding Them Home
Posted by Hello

FOREVER CHANGED BY SEPTEMBER 11TH!

2004-09-10T02:25:00.000-07:00

I left New York City on Sunday, September 9th, 2001… on a United Airlines Boeing 757 bound for San Francisco. Several days later, four identical planes were hijacked and killed 43 of my friends, destroyed two icons of the city that was my home for the most powerful years of my life to date and forced me more powerfully than ever before to understand the extraordinarily beautiful life that I have created for myself. I have no means of accurately assessing the full impact that these events will have on my life at this time. By sharing what I have written here, I hope to forever transform the possibilities that exist in your life and mine.

Consider September 11th as a challenge to become the hijackers of your own life. Seize the controls and demand that your journey take you to extraordinarily beautiful places, that are filled with uniquely human joy and great personal triumph. Because I declare that those terrorists, who hijacked four airplanes and used them for the sole purpose of kill thousands of unprepared and innocent human civilians; dedicated their lives to nothing more than the possibility of massive death and destruction without any meaning! By not openly declaring the purpose for their actions, to the entire world, they have taught us only one thing....how tragic a life is when it stands for nothing at all!

I further declare that they were not martyrs, but fools! Fools who wasted the most precious gift of all, and for nothing more than little attention. I have chosen to fill the emptiness that this cowardly deeds left in my life, with my dreams and hopes of a gentle and more humane world for our future. A world where person that I come into contact with feels empowered to lead extraordinary life, and that we all learn to empower others to do so as well.

CAN WE BE TAUGHT?

When will humans ever learn, that we will never be able to prevent acts of prejudice and violence? Prejudice and violence are as much a part of being humans as compassion and love. Every time a tragedy of the magnitude of those attacks occurs, we all stop and lament that the world will never be the same again. However, much of humanity exists with a fundamental denial... of the inescapable truth that; nothing, in all of existence, has ever remained the same… across even the smallest fractional increment of time.

We create constant pain for ourselves, because we choose to live in this denial. An essential part of mourning the loss of what we once had is that we must to embrace what we still have. We must look forward with hope to what has been made possible for our future, because of what we have learned and lost in our past.

Some we believe that someday we can put an end to war, that someday there will be no more pain and suffering to endure. Yet, these now appear to be inextricable parts of the very cycle of life itself. Life seems to require the occasional appearance of these random events, in order for life to exist at all. The very stability of the thing that we call life, is now dependent on the existence of many random instabilities. Yet every time there is significant and simultaneous change, particularly when the loss of many lives occurs in a single instant, (like natural disasters or the bombing of Pearl Harbor) we chose to mourn the change and we sometimes forget to embrace it as well. It is often an essential part of life itself and often a source of future growth.

In times like these, we struggle with the nature of these truths. We cannot easily accept things that come into existence without an easily assignable meaning. We fear that which is violent and ugly, yet much of what is beautiful about being humans, often arises out of that which is not beautiful in any way. This yin-yan cycle is the way all things work. It has always been so and it probably always will be.

Why did those human beings hijack four airplanes and then crash them? Why were these people such savages? Why must there be such violence in our world? Why did all of these people, who I loved so much, have to die on that day? Why was it happening to me? Why did it have to happen then? Why them? Why us? Why else? Why not?

We will never understand, comprehend, explain, prevent or alter the existence of such tragedies, like the one that took thousands of innocent lives that day. It is simply because it did.

It is said that every child falls from a state of grace and innocence, the moment when it first discovers that their emotions are linked to events in the world that surrounds them. Life is forever altered the very first time that a child asks its mother the question, Why? Why is it that each and every one of us refuses to listen and just accept what our mothers tell us? When they find their own way of telling us... in their own special ways, that sometimes “The answer is simply "Because.”

To my Mother I can finally say thank you, because I finally understand what you meant that first you said, “It is simply because it is"

It is said that “two wrongs do not make a right,” and I would say that is 100% correct. Because I believe that for every two (2) wrongs that come into existence, they are often viewed to two rights by others. For each thing that exists in this world as a wrong for one, normally exists as right for another and visa versa. Once again the ancient Chinese yin - yan emerges as the icon for life. However, can it ever be said, that taking something as precious as a human life…. could ever be right for another?

In their own minds, those men who America is today calling "terrorists” were in their minds very much right and justified in their actions… as they each believed that Americans where evil. They sacrificed their own lives, in the name of their own truths and the meanings they had created for themselves.

Many Americans appear to believe that American Government is right and justified in what its now doing, as a means of retaliation. As we now seeks out and these "terrorists" and their "weapons of mass destruction"....killing some innocent civilians in the process. Some now also call the individuals among us, who have given their lives in this pursuit.... a "war hero". Why, because they have given their lives to protect that which the American Government believes to be good and just. However, can a hero arise out of such death and destruction?

I urge you to take a stand for whoever you are, and.to live your life as if each minute were your last, because we are reminded in times like these that it may very well be. So live your life with no regrets, and die leaving behind a world that will be forever better....simply because you were here. This, is how I have chosen to manage the tragedies that were and still are September the 11th, 2001.