America has lost a true hero: Dick Winters dead at 92
Last week America lost one of her true heroes when Dick Winters died at the age of 92. I first learned of this great man’s death while visiting Conservative Hideout and reading the tribute that Matt posted there, and I have been saddened by the loss of a man who I never knew because we are losing so many of this generation, soon they will be gone but the liberty they secured for us will be the lasting tribute to these men.
Anyone who has seen the brilliant portrayal of Easy Company in the Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg/HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers” knows exactly who this man is. Dick Williams was a soldier of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne on D-Day, before assuming command of the company when Easy Company’s leader was killed on D-Day. He led Easy Company all the way from D-Day and into the Battle of the Bulge, where he and his company somehow managed to hold Bastogne and end the last Nazi offensive of WWII, ensuring an Allied victory.
His heroics are well documented in the mini-series, and I can not do this man the justice he deserves so instead I will post his obituary here for all to read:
Richard “Dick” Winters, the Easy Company commander whose World War II exploits were made famous by the book and television miniseries “Band of Brothers,” died last week in central Pennsylvania. He was 92.
Winters died following a several-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease, longtime family friend William Jackson said Monday.
An intensely private and humble man, Winters had asked that news of his death be withheld until after his funeral, Jackson said. Winters lived in Hershey, Pa., but died in suburban Palmyra.
The men Winters led expressed their admiration for their company commander after learning of his death.
William Guarnere, 88, said what he remembers about Winters was “great leadership.”
“When he said ‘Let’s go,’ he was right in the front,” Guarnere, who was called “Wild Bill” by his comrades, said Sunday night from his South Philadelphia home. “He was never in the back. A leader personified.”
An other member of the unit living in Philadelphia, Edward Heffron, 87, said thinking about Winters brought a tear to his eye.
“He was one hell of a guy, one of the greatest soldiers I was ever under,” said Heffron, who had the nickname “Babe” in the company. “He was a wonderful officer, a wonderful leader. He had what you needed, guts and brains. He took care of his men, that’s very important.”
Winters was born Jan. 21, 1918 and studied economics at Franklin & Marshall College before enlisting, according to a biography on the Penn State website.
Winters became the leader of Company E, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division on D-Day, after the death of the company commander during the invasion of Normandy.
During that invasion, Winters led 13 of his men in destroying an enemy battery and obtained a detailed map of German defenses along Utah Beach. In September 1944, he led 20 men in a successful attack on a German force of 200 soldiers. Occupying the Bastogne area of Belgium at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, he and his men held their place until the Third Army broke through enemy lines, and Winters shortly afterward was promoted to major.
After returning home, Winters married his wife, Ethel, in May 1948, and trained infantry and Army Ranger units at Fort Dix during the Korean War. He started a company selling livestock feed to farmers, and he and his family eventually settled in a farmhouse in Hershey, Pa., where he retired.
Historian Stephen Ambrose interviewed Winters for the 1992 book “Band of Brothers,” upon which the HBO miniseries that started airing in September 2001 was based. Winters himself published a memoir in 2006 entitled “Beyond Band of Brothers.”
Two years ago, an exhibit devoted to Winters was dedicated at the Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society. Winters, in frail health in later years, has also been the subject of a campaign to raise money to erect a monument in his honor near the beaches of Normandy.
Winters talked about his view of leadership for an August 2004 article in American History Magazine:
“If you can,” he wrote, “find that peace within yourself, that peace and quiet and confidence that you can pass on to others, so that they know that you are honest and you are fair and will help them, no matter what, when the chips are down.”
When people asked whether he was a hero, he echoed the words of his World War II buddy, Mike Ranney: “No, but I served in a company of heroes.”
“He was a good man, a very good man,” Guarnere said. “I would follow him to hell and back. So would the men from E Company.”
I think the sentence that sums up this great man the best is this:
When people asked whether he was a hero, he echoed the words of his World War II buddy, Mike Ranney: “No, but I served in a company of heroes.”
Included in Dick Winters’s will was a provision that the American people not be notified of his death until after the funeral; even in death he wanted to go out the way he lived, with no fanfare. Dick Winters epitomizes the “greatest generation,” they were not seeking glory, they had a job to do and they did it. That job just happened to be the protection of America and the free world and while Dick Williams denied it, this makes him a hero.
Rest in peace Dick Winters, I know you are in heaven because you have already been through hell.
Jim Clyburn wants to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine” in response to the Arizona shooting
Just when you thought that all of the talk about reinstating the “Fairness Doctrine” had died down along comes a politically driven, ideologist sheriff in Arizona looking to capitalize on a shooting to push his partisan agenda and thrusts the talk of the “Fairness Doctrine” back into the limelight.
Anyone who heard the words of Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik could realize that they were politically charged conjecture motivated by an agenda. He was supposed to be briefing the press on the FACTS of the Arizona shooting, but instead used his time in the spotlight to go off on a diatribe about violent rhetoric and talk radio.
It was only a matter of time before someone on the left used the opportunity given to him by the irresponsible words of Sheriff Dupnik to propose taking another look at re-instituting the “Fairness Doctrine” and now that is exactly what Representative Jim Clyburn has in mind.
The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use ‘better judgment.’
There you have it; between the “Fairness Doctrine,” gun control, and the defense of “Net Neutrality,” the left was handed a tragedy and they do not intend to waste it. I find it in extremely bad taste for these people to be looking at this shooting as a means to accomplish political goals while we still have families mourning their loved ones, and others still in the hospital recuperating. But to the left the end justifies the means, and they are going to get as much political mileage out of this as they possibly can; apparently they don’t think there is anything wrong with politicizing this horrible event.
Before I get to the main topic of this post I would like to offer my condolences, thoughts, and heartfelt sympathy to all of the victims and the families and friends, as well as everyone else who was affected by the shooting in Arizona over the weekend. There is nothing that I can say to make anyone feel better, but please know that the nation is with you.
Having said that, this is a post that I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write, but it has become obvious that I must, because–as Larry at Political Realities pointed out–the left has decided to politicize these murders for reasons that I find absolutely despicable. Because I have waited a couple of days to post this I may be repeating things which have already been said, but I still feel this is something I must write about.
It started when I first went on-line after learning about this shooting and was met with the following comment on a totally unrelated post of mine from last week:
You morons will have the blood of the Arizona Congresswoman on your hands. The only consolation is that you’ll eventually all shoot each other
Barack Obama wants to create an internet ID for all Americans
My friend Dominique over at 4Walls and a View sent me an interesting email about Barack Obama’s plan to create an internet ID for all Americans. There is a paragraph in this article that has a very interesting quote from White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt, here it is:
White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is “the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government” to centralize efforts toward creating an “identity ecosystem” for the Internet.
We already know that the FCC is taking the first step–in defiance of a court ruling–towards regulating the internet and now we are learning that Barack Obama plans on creating an “identity ecosystem” for the internet in the next few months. What exactly does this mean? According to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who was trying to assuage fears that the government is looking to create a nation ID card of sorts:
We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities
He claims that this will be a government attempt at providing increased security and privacy for all Americans and may even lead to Americans not having to remember what their passwords are before logging on to secure sites. Does anyone really think that this is just an effort by the government to help Americans manage their passwords? Or is the government looking to create an online central database of all Americans and their internet habits? Howard Schmidt says creating a central database is not a goal of this legislation:
Schmidt stresses that anonymity will remain on the Internet, saying there’s no chance that “a centralized database will emerge.”
There is no chance a central database will emerge, are we really supposed to believe that? We all know how cookies are used to track internet usage and we are supposed to believe that this is nothing more that a benign attempt by the federal government to protect us, and we are supposed to believe that they will not be gathering information on us? And even if the one and only goal of this legislation would be to better protect the online security of Americans, are we actually supposed to believe that they are competent enough to do so? After all, we have a government which cannot protect their own classified documents, as was evidenced by WikiLeaks, claiming that they are going to create this new internet ID to protect Americans’ security and privacy online–we are supposed to believe they can do this for us when they cannot even keep their own house in order?
There is more to this story than meets the eye and between the FCC and the Obama regime, I do not like the sounds of this. We are going to have to keep a close eye on this situation moving forward.
Current New Hampshire law allows the sentencing of the death penalty for the murder of a police officer or judge, or a murder committed during a drug sale, rape, or kidnapping–currently there is one inmate on death row, Michael Addison for murdering a Manchester police officer at point blank range. But the law is about to change if New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien has his way–and it seems increasingly likely that he will. Speaker O’Brien has filed legislation which has been named the Kimberly Cates Bill–also known as the home invasion bill–which would expand the death penalty and apply it to murders which take place during a home invasion.
I am not sure how much airtime the story of Kimberly Cates got around the country–if any–but for those of you who are unfamiliar with the woman for whom this bill is named I will give you a brief summary. But be forewarned, it is extremely despicable and disturbing–you may want to skip the next paragraph.
Barack Obama signs a law which will keep GITMO open
Earlier today Barack Obama signed the defense appropriations bill into law and in doing so virtually guaranteed that GITMO will remain open for the foreseeable future. While signing the bill Barack Obama stated that he did so begrudgingly because of the clause which prevents enemy combatants being held at GITMO from receiving trials in the United States, but that he did so because of the “military activities” in 2011.
This brings up something that I find interesting because Barack Obama did more than just undermine his own Executive Order which was supposed to close GITMO–it highlights the fact that Barack Obama failed to deliver on another one of his major promises during his campaign for president. During the campaign Barack Obama–unable to come to any kind of firm timetable for troop reduction in the Middle East–made several claims as to when he would bring all of the troops home. His most aggressive timetable would have had all troops out of Iraq by the Spring of 2008–while he also claimed that he would bring all of the troops home anywhere from one year to eighteen months after becoming president.
It is now almost two years into his presidency and his failure to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as promised is the one reason why he was also unable to deliver on his promise to close down GITMO. According to Barack Obama’s campaign promises there should not be any “military activities” in 2011 which would interfere with his plan to close GITMO, yet it was just announced that Barack Obama is going to send even more troops to Afghanistan–this will be the second troop surge of Barack Obama’s presidency.
But that is what happens when you make reckless promises that there is no possibility of keeping. Many Americans knew that it was not possible for Barack Obama to withdraw the troops in a responsible manner without regard for the situation on the ground, but he sold this position to the anti-Bush, anti-war crowd and they bought into it; I have to wonder what they are feeling right now. Do they feel as if they were duped or do they just blame themselves for buying into the hype?
While I want to see these wars ended, I am glad that the president didn’t recklessly start pulling our troops out of there without regard for the consequences, but I do have to wonder: where are all of the anti-GITMO, anti-war protesters now that it is Barack Obama who is continuing so many of President Bush’s policies? The media will not defend these decisions, so instead they will just ignore them, and so will most of Barack Obama’s supporters.
Showing yet again that she still just doesn’t get it, Nancy Pelosi claimed that the reason why the Democrats lost the House under her leadership last November was not because of her poor leadership, but rather because of former President Bush.
She claims that the Democrats lost because the unemployment rate was at 9.5% right before the election, and she claimed that it was Bush’s fault that the unemployment rate was that high–which led to Democrat defeats in the House.
House Republicans disband the “Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming”
One of the first things that Republicans did after being sworn in as the majority party in the House of Representatives was to put an end to Nancy Pelosi’s global warming committee–The Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming. We first heard that this was a possibility shortly after the November election which saw Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives, and yesterday the Republicans made good on that promise.
The Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming was nothing more than a propaganda tool for the left to promote their radical cap and trade agenda, and with the ClimateGate scandal revealing global warming to be nothing more than the hoax many of us thought it was–and with the Senate unable to pass Barack Obama’s cap and trade legislation–there simply was no need for this committee any longer.
While this is a step in the right direction, this doesn’t mean that we have dodged the cap and trade bullet because Barack Obama has long since moved on to “Plan B.” He intends to let the EPA regulate into law the very same policies which the Congress was unable to pass. While the dismantling of this propagandist entity is a step in the right direction it is symbolic at best because the EPA has already made its first move toward implementing Barack Obama’s liberty and freedom killing cap and trade legislation. Now the new Congress must focus on passing legislation which bars the EPA from moving forward on cap and trade, or else the disbanding of the Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming will mean absolutely nothing.
Earlier this week I wrote a post about the possibility that 14 states–my state of New Hampshire included–could introduce legislation that would eliminate granting automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal aliens, and now it seems that this movement might be picking up some steam as Representative Steve King introduced legislation that would end automatic “birthright citizenship” yesterday in the new Congress.
For those who may be unfamiliar with birthright citizenship: the 14th amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” When this amendment was written it had one narrow interpretation and one narrow interpretation only; to guarentee that the children of freed slaves were granted citizenship after the end of the Civil War. Since that time, liberals have used the 14th amendment to give children who were born to the parents of illegal aliens while they were on United State soil citizenship–thereby making these parents basically immune to the threat of deportation. In other words, the liberals have used the 14th amendment to create anchor babies. Clearly this was not what the authors of the 14th amendment had in mind.
On Tuesday the new Republican led New Hampshire state legislature convened and the House took its first steps towards reaffirming our second amendment rights when they repealed a ban put into effect in December of 2009–thus allowing New Hampshire residents to carry weapons into the State House complex and its surrounding buildings.
Yesterday the House took it one step further and voted 3-1 (along party lines) to repeal a ban that has been in effect since 1971 and will allow House members to carry firearms on the floor of the House. Just to clarify on thing: The repeals of the last two days are repeals of House rules which were written by a rules committee and voted on by the legislature at the time, these were not New Hampshire gun laws which were repealed.
While this second repeal is sure to be seen as controversial–I am sure many people around the nation will be wondering if it is a good idea to let state legislators carry firearms while debating contentious issues–it sure feels good knowing that we have elected such a pro-second amendment state legislature to represent us!
America's Watchtower 