Random News and Notes 14 May
On this date in 1607, 100 English colonists arrive along the east bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. The colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery.
In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned his private secretary Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead an expedition into what is now the U.S. Northwest. On May 14, the “Corps of Discovery”—featuring approximately 45 men (although only approximately 33 men would make the full journey)—left St. Louis for the American interior.
On September 23, 1806, after almost two and a half years, the expedition returned to St. Louis. They brought back a wealth of information about the region (much of it already inhabited by Native Americans), as well as valuable U.S. claims to Oregon Territory.
On this date in 1948 the State of Israel was declared in what had been British Mandatory Palestine. In 1917, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration which intended to create a Jewish homeland in the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and the southern parts of the Beirut Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of WWI, the league of Nations issued a mandate for the Brits to establish the new state and created the region called Mandatory Palestine. Not long after the Mandate was issued, the Brits cleaved off a large portion of the area east of the Jordan River under the Mandate to form the Emirate of Transjordan.
The day after the Mandate expired and the state of Israel was declared, the Muslim countries in the region attacked with forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Thus started the Nakba – catastrophe in Arabic – the displacement of Arabs from the lands claimed by Israel. DId the Jews kick them out? No, most left because the Islamic leadership told them to, not because of any Israeli threat.
By the time the war ended in 1949, the overmatched Israeli Army controlled not only the land the UN partition plan envisioned, but much of Gaza and Judea and Samaria (now known collectively as the West Bank) and had driven the Arab armies back to their respective countries.
On this day in 1955 the commies in the Kremlin formed the Warsaw Pact. The treaty included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command.
The treaty was created in response to West Germany joining the NATO alliance. The eastern alliance would last until 1992, when the last consultative meeting occurred.
On this date in 1973 Skylab was launched. Eleven days later, U.S. astronauts Charles Conrad, Joseph Kerwin, and Paul Weitz made a rendezvous with Skylab, repairing a jammed solar panel and conducting scientific experiments during their 28-day stay aboard the space station.
The first manned Skylab mission came two years after the Soviet Union launched Salyut, the world’s first space station, into orbit around the earth. However, unlike the ill-fated Salyut, which was plagued with problems, the American space station was a great success, safely housing three separate three-man crews for extended periods of time and exceeding pre-mission plans for scientific study. On July 11, 1979, Skylab re-entered the atmosphere. The parts of the space station that did not burn up on re-entry came crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean.
I don’t know why this is an issue today, but it is trending just about everywhere. The AP ran a story today whinging about the lack of regulations surrounding muzzleloading firearms.
Here’s the deal, under federal law, muzzle-loading weapons are not considered ‘firearms’ for legal purposes. Some states have differing rules. For example, here in the PRNY, modern muzzleloaders now require a background check and despite having some of the strictest handgun laws in the country, you can own a cap-and-ball revolver without a pistol permit. You just can’t possess powder, properly sized ball/bullets or percussion caps.
As far as I’m concerned, if you have been convicted of a crime, sentenced and released then you should get most of your rights back (I think the only one you shouldn’t get back is the right to vote, but only for felonies.) including the right to keep and bear arms. If you cannot be trusted with a gun, you shouldn’t be out of prison.
And remember, all gun laws are unconstitutional. Except those that require you to own one.
This next one puts me in mind of Dr Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park. “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Costco just released 10-liter plastic pails of Kirkland Signature Cabernet Sauvignon. It apparently uses a bag-in-a-bucket design to keep the wine fresh.
Just what the AWFLs need.
An IED type device/bomb was found at the J.B. Converse Reservoir Dam, which supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands in Mobile and Baldwin counties.
A team including the FBI Bomb Squad, local police, and other agencies safely retrieved and detonated it off-site, with no injuries or damage to the water supply. This is a story I will be following, stay tuned for updates.
A report from Cook County Chief Judge Charles Beach II shows that 243 out of 3,048 enrollees in the county’s electronic monitoring program —about 8%—are currently AWOL, failing to stay in approved zones or keep devices connected. These participants mostly face felony cases, including 21 charged with murder and 29 with aggravated criminal sexual assault as of early April.
The disclosure follows the April 25 shooting death of Officer John Bartholomew, allegedly by Alphonso Talley who had escaped monitoring, prompting State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke to call the safeguards ‘alarming’ and the system ‘broken.’ Beach’s office launched an online dashboard for transparency and plans weekly updates plus reforms like faster AWOL alerts.