Horror and Honor
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 26th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Horror and Honor
Robert Samuelson, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON — The first Memorial Day — then called Decoration Day — was celebrated May 30, 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War to honor the Union dead. Compared to a national population of 31.4 million in 1860, the Civil War dead, both Union and Confederate, are now roughly estimated at 750,000 and, possibly, more. After World War I, the holiday commemorated all U.S. war dead. In 1971, Memorial Day became an official national holiday. “Historical Statistics of the United States (Millennial Edition)” lists war dead by conflicts as follows: the Revolutionary War, 4,435; the War…
Memorial Day’s Calling
E.J. Dionne, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON — Memorial Day is a peculiarly appropriate holiday for our times. Its origins lie in the Civil War, which resulted from the failure of a deeply polarized political system to settle the question of slavery. Reading the history of the period leading up to the war is jarring because its political conflicts bear eerie similarities to our own — for the sharp regional differences over how the federal government’s powers should be regarded; for the way in which advocates of slavery relied on “constitutional” claims to justify its survival and spread; for the refusal of pro-slavery…
Julian Castro, Shaun Donovan Part of Cabinet Changes
Alexis Simendinger, RealClearPolitics
President Obama plans to revamp his Cabinet on Friday to fill a pending vacancy at the Office of Management and Budget and tap an up-and-coming Democratic mayor from Texas to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Obama will ask the Senate to approve his nominations of Shaun Donovan, his HUD secretary since 2009, to lead the White House budget office. At the same time, he will formally announce Julián Castro, the 39-year-old mayor of San Antonio, to lead HUD. Castro’s rise has sparked discussions in some political quarters that he will one day be on a national ticket as a…
