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Republican Party 1856 vs. 2025

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To the editor: In a recent “ Letter from an American ” (March 15), Historian Heather Cox Richardson recounted the motivating factors that created the Republican Party. Southern landowners (whose wealth was based on free slave labor) were pushing Congress to pass laws that would permit the spread of slavery in the West to gain leverage over the North. A group of Northern politicians from different parties joined together “to stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy.” In 1856, the Republican Party was founded, and in 1859 Abraham Lincoln defined the party as one of “ordinary Americans standing together against the oligarchs of slavery.” Bradford County has many good “ordinary Americans” who consider themselves ‘conservative’ and are registered Republicans. They believe in the once-accepted platform of limited government, fiscal responsibility, law and order, support for veterans. Many of them believed that Trump, master salesman and liar, had their backs. To...
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A Totalitarian Fascist Coup on the United States

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Every order from the Trump Administration is on behalf of Trump's handler, Vladimir Putin. Every order hurts the United States and helps Russia. A few examples follow: -- Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force which investigated violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. -- Bondi disbanded Task Force KleptoCapture which monitored sanctions against Russia. -- Bondi disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. -- Elon Musk gave a 19-year-old with ties to Russia and cybercrime full access to systems and data at the U.S. Government Cybercrime Agency. -- Trump's CIA director sent a list of CIA employees to the White House in an unclassified email. Trump is also giving out security clearances without background checks. -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive operations against Russia. -- Trump is shutting down U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that supports programs for health, ...
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Public Attack on Zelenskyy Wasn’t Appropriate

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I have been a lifelong Republican. As a Vietnam combat veteran and former law enforcement officer, I have been a proud American all my life. Watching the spectacle that took place in the White House on Feb. 28 has made me ashamed to be a Republican and an American. When Ukraine was attacked, and it appeared Russia would overtake their country, we Americans stepped up and vowed to help the Ukrainians, which rallied their people to fight on. Because we Americans promised to support them until Putin was defeated, they sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their soldiers and civilians. Our country’s loudest supporters were our Republican leaders. They encouraged the Ukrainian people to fight on and to sacrifice. These Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the governors now are silent, afraid to stand as proud men and women, cowards to position and power. Because we change presidents should not change our country’s promises. I, for one, will change my po...
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Confederate Names and Images Carry Baggage

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Dear Editor Keeler, Your editorial last week about the re-renaming of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, contains historical errors and misunderstanding. As a grad student of history at the University of Alabama, I learned that Confederate place names and statues across the South had absolutely nothing to do with “an effort to ease tensions between the North and South, heal wounds and reunite the country,” as you stated. This is far from the truth. Fort Bragg was named in 1918 (as you pointed out). The Civil War ended in 1865 and none of the efforts to honor the Confederacy took place until after most of its’ veterans (on both sides) had died. The elevation of Confederate “heroes” was part of white southern efforts to reassert domination. It’s not a coincidence that the Confederate statues, names and romanticism about “the lost cause,” took place right along with Jim Crow laws, the rise of the KKK and the scourge of lynching. All of them were designed to scare and oppress the blac...
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The "Other"

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In " Hearts and Minds ," a 1998 episode of the sci-fi series Outer Limits, a group of soldiers have drug injectors to protect them from "diseases" harbored by their hideous non-human enemy. After an injector malfunction, the soldiers realize that the drugs are hallucinogens that make the enemy -- also humans but from another region -- appear as giant insects. When they try to contact the enemy, they are all killed. The "enemies" hallucinogenic drug injectors did not malfunction. An effective way to ostracize a person or group is to create a fiction that they are the "other" -- somehow different, less worthy, dangerous -- because of "race", ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or social or political identity. Slavery persisted in the U.S. because slaves were labeled as sub-human, mere property. Hitler blamed Jewish people for "blood poisoning" of the Aryan race just as Donald Trump blames immigrants for "poison...
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The Oath to Protect and Defend

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As a new member of the Viet Nam era United States Army I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. There was no expiration date on that oath. I believe that oath has been made by every individual that has become a member of the United States armed forces from private to commander of the armed forces. I also believe that oath is sworn by every member of the congress of the United States: Democrat, Republican, or Independent.  The leader of the present administration is allowing Elon Musk and a small group of professional hackers to enter and observe, or modify, or copy, the once secure systems of our government and to use that yet unpublished information not to reduce but to eliminate entire parts of our government that have been established by laws written by our congress and signed into law. Congress and congress only can write our laws, a president can approve or veto a law. Our judicial system determines if the laws are accept...
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Treason in the United States

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Without  torturing the definition, treason is "the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance," and to which one has sworn an oath to protect and defend. To prove treason, our Constitution requires "testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act." The penalty for treason against the U.S. is death or not less than 5 years in prison with a minimum fine of $10,000. The current problem of treasonous attacks on the U.S. from internal actors is that too few traitors have been held accountable for their actions in the past.   During the Civil War, William Mumford was executed for treason in 1862 for raising a Confederate flag after tearing down an American flag in New Orleans.   Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, and his generals were clearly traitors. After the war, Davis was locked up for only 2 years. There was no accountability for his generals. All were given amnesty by President Andrew Johnson and allowed to return to p...
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Trump and the Law

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I'm not a lawyer, but if Donald Trump, his staff, and Republican members of Congress can pretend to protect the Constitution, I can opine on the law. As a judge has ruled, Trump's executive order to change the 14th Amendment is “blatantly unconstitutional”.  If our laws were actually just, Trump would be indicted for this action. Instead, more judges rule and waste time to eventually conclude that Congress and the States are required to make this change. It is obvious that Trump can't change the Constitution with an executive order. Yet, our legal system plods along glacially pretending to be just, while allowing criminals to remain free to break more laws.  Our “laws” allowed Trump to regain power where a just system would have locked him up for his attempted takeover of the government when he lost the 2020 election. Our “laws” protect the rich and powerful because they were written and enacted by the rich and powerful. Our system needs major changes to hold criminals like...
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Trump's 1st Day

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On the first day of his 2nd term, Donald J. Trump showed that he cares little for the rule of law, and nothing for the U.S. Constitution.   He pardoned over 1500 convicted criminals who invaded and desecrated the Capitol on January 6 while chanting "Hang Pence." Five of those pardoned physically assaulted officers and one helped plan the attack. Trump referred to them as hostages.   They were not hostages. They were tried and convicted under the rule of law.   He issued an executive order to end birth-right citizenship -- a right given in the 14 Amendment to the Constitution. His action is an illegal order, yet will require the courts to strike it down, wasting time and resources better used elsewhere.   Trump and his enablers are showing that they do not support the police, nor do they intend to protect them, regardless of their claims otherwise. They also are again showing complete contempt for the Constitution, treating it as something to circumvent rath...
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Joe Biden Will Be President on January 20, 2021

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Joe Biden will become president on January 20th regardless of what Trump, his enablers, his supporters, and Bradford county (PA) commissioner Doug McLinko believe. How did this happen? There are two scenarios. The first is that Democrats rigged the election. The brilliant plot even sacrificed some down-ballot elections to divert suspicion. The plot even survived scrutiny of Republican led states who certified Biden as the winner because they could find no valid reason to do otherwise. The second scenario is that tens of millions of people already knew or finally realized that Trump is a lousy president who is not interested in doing his job. He golfs obsessively. He has done almost nothing to slow or stop the pandemic and has actively exacerbated its spread. He is a white supremacist with no impulse control who denies science. Democrats merely convinced 81 million people to vote. After losing, he is whining and grifting his supporters for money that he will use personally. Trump's ...
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