Random News and Notes 15 September

On this date:

• 1776 – The British occupy Manhattan.
• 1788 – An alliance between Britain, Prussia and the Netherlands is ratified at the Hague.
• 1858 – The Butterfield Overland Mail Company begins delivering mail from St. Louis to San Francisco. The company’s motto is: “Remember, boys, nothing on God’s earth must stop the United States mail!”
• 1862 – Confederates capture Harpers Ferry, securing the rear of Robert E. Lee‘s forces in Maryland.
• 1891 – The Dalton gang holds up a train and takes $2,500 at Wagoner, Oklahoma.
• 1914 – President Woodrow Wilson orders the Punitive Expedition out of Mexico. The Expedition, headed by General John Pershing, had been searching for Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary.
• 1914 – The first major trenches were dug in the wake of the Battle of the Marne. The Trench system on the Western Front in World War I—fixed from the winter of 1914 to the spring of 1918—eventually stretched from the North Sea coast of Belgium southward through France, with a bulge outwards to contain the much-contested Ypres salient. In total the trenches built during World War I, laid end-to-end, would stretch some 35,000 miles—12,000 of those miles occupied by the Allies, and the rest by the Central Powers.
• 1916 – Armored tanks are introduced by the British during the Battle of the Somme.

• 1928 – Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovers, by accident, that the mold penicillin has an antibiotic effect.
• 1935 – In Berlin, the Reich under Adolf Hitler adopts the swastika as the national flag. The Nuremberg race laws – stripping citizenship from Jews and other “undesirables” – were passed the same day.
• 1944 – Operation Stalemate – the US landings on Peleliu – kicks off. Within one week of the invasion, the Marines lost 4,000 men. By the time it was all over, that number would surpass 9,000. The Japanese lost more than 13,000 men.
• 1950 – U.S. Marines land at Inchon on the west coast of Korea, 100 miles south of the 38th parallel and just 25 miles from Seoul.
• 1959 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes first Soviet leader to visit the US.
• 1963 – A bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls: Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Carol Denise McNair (11).
• 1968 – The USSR launches Zond 5, which becomes the first spaceship to orbit the moon and reenter Earth’s atmosphere.
• 1971 – The environmental group Greenpeace is founded.
• 1978 – Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter ever to do so.

We start the news in the Keystone State, where the FBI has disrupted a daesh plot. Agents arrested Jonathan Hunter Kramer of Valencia, Pennsylvania, who now faces federal charges for receiving a firearm intended for a terrorism felony in support of ISIS. Under the online alias ‘Hamza Al Rashid,’ he discussed sharing explosives manuals and preparing a ‘mission,’ according to court documents. Agents tracked his movements on the arrest day—buying a disposable phone, picking up a black bag, and purchasing gear—then seized a semiautomatic rifle, loaded magazines, 190 rounds of ammo, knives, and other items from his hotel room and home.

Before you think this was some poor sap set up by the Feebs – which was honestly my first thought seeing the headline – this isn’t Kramer’s first go-round with terrorism. He has a 2023 juvenile adjudication for a prior mass-casualty plot on his record.

As an aside, I shot more rounds Sunday than the FBI seized from homie, a lot more.

SCOTUS denied the Trump administration’s emergency request to allow the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) new ballot-mail rule to take effect for the 2026 elections. The per curiam order leaves in place  U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani’s preliminary injunction. This effectively prevents the rules from going into effect before the midterms. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a signed concurrence and Justice Alito wrote a scathing dissent that Justice Thomas joined.

Before we get to the Justice bashing, it is incumbent on me to point out a couple of things. First, the ruling does not make any factual findings or Constitutional rulings. It was strictly about the stay. Second, despite the President’s crash out on Truth, the entire plan was to propose these rules now to get the court challenges out of the way before the 2028 election. If you read Alito’s dissent, it is pretty clear that the rules are both legal and properly promulgated. What’s more, the plaintiffs in the case don’t seem to have standing. We’ll see as this works its way through the courts.

There is a large-ish wildfire burning in Arkansas. The blaze, reported Monday afternoon near Camden in the Highland Industrial Park, has scorched 2,338 acres by Tuesday morning, prompting Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to send a dozen bulldozers, two Black Hawk helicopters with Bambi buckets, three air tankers, and National Guard personnel. Evacuations are underway north of Arkansas Highway 278, with shelters open at local churches and schools.

The state’s Emergency Operations Center is fully mobilized in an attempt to protect homes and key defense facilities like those of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. No word on the level of containment of the fire yet.

The Dutch rail system has suffered a widespread attack. Coordinated sabotage hit over 20 railway locations, with large metal pipes placed on tracks to trigger signaling failures and widespread service halts. The attacks occurred on Prinsjesdag – Prinsjesdag is the day on which the reigning monarch of the Netherlands addresses a joint session of the States-General of the Netherlands to give the Speech from the Throne, similar to the annual State of the Union in the United States – affecting key routes around Zwolle, Deventer, and Amersfoort, stranding passengers without feasible bus replacements

Police and intelligence services are investigating, with no claims of responsibility or confirmed motives yet. Services are slowly resuming after clearances.

Heading a bit south from The Netherlands, the Vatican has rejected nearly all the French ‘demands’ for when Pope Leo XIV visits later this month. The Holy See declined Macron’s ask for a few private minutes inside Notre-Dame Cathedral with the Pope, along with ideas like a state dinner, Legion d’Honneur award, and a bigger role for the Republican Guard. These choices aim to keep the September 25-28, 2026, itinerary—a pastoral journey with stops in Paris, Lourdes, and Metz—centered on spiritual events like Vespers at Notre-Dame and a Mass at Place de la Concorde.

While French officials hoped for more formal touches, Rome prioritized the Church’s mission over protocol, prompting mixed online views on diplomacy and humility.

And heading even further south, it seems a rhino poacher got his just desserts from the feet of an Elephant in Kruger National Park in South Africa. According to reports, the man was trampled to death by elephants as he and a partner approached the rhino. The incident happened in the park’s northern Pafuri area. Rangers found the man’s trampled body and signs of an illegal buffalo kill.

The poacher’s partner was arrested with community help. Kruger, home to 1,850 white rhinos, lost 175 to poachers last year alone.