We hold this historic date in high esteem, along with those days commemorating the anniversaries of our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Indeed, our publication takes its name in honor of this first generation of American Patriots — and all those since. Unfortunately, Patriots’ Day receives little attention nationally, and even less in educational institutions, where our nation’s stirring and singular history is rarely taught to young people.
               The most basic principles of American Liberty and Rule of Law, and the generational sacrifices of millions of Americans who have honored their oaths “to support and defend” Liberty’s enshrinement in our Constitution, are often not understood or appreciated by many young people — and too many adults.
               So undervalued are our forbear’s historic sacrifices for Liberty that among the ranks of entrenched ideological leftists are those who view our nation’s flag with contempt. This is often combined with a deep insecurity-driven fear of the Liberty and self-determination it represents and, consequently, a loathing of those willing to defend it.
               In our conservative East Tennessee community, the American flag is commonly displayed on houses and, to commemorate Memorial, Independence and Veterans Days each year, is attached to every power pole on the main thoroughfares.
               Among the fixed residential flag poles in our community is a 20-foot standard in front of our house.
               I installed that pole in June of 1994, on the 50th anniversary of D-Day — the beginning of the end of World War II. I erected it as a humble but fitting tribute to a neighbor, my father’s lifelong best friend and fellow WWII veteran. So close were these two men that we always referred to my father’s friend as “uncle.”
               In 1944, my “uncle” was a young Army second lieutenant leading a machine gun platoon on the front lines of notable battles against Hitler’s Wehrmacht in France and Germany until the end of the war. On several occasions in urban combat, he killed the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. Though a strong and tough individual of formidable stature well into his 80s, he recounted those battles with great pain and occasional tears for the loss of life — on both sides.
               He has since departed this life, but it’s for him — and for all who have defended Liberty at risk of their own life — that our flag flies high and proud.
               Last month, our flag greeted a gathering of Vietnam combat veterans at our home, some of whom recently returned to that country to make their peace. It was an extraordinary evening, but punctuated by a question asked by one of those decorated veterans which sparked some antipathy. That question: “Do some people object to your flag?”
               It was the fifth time I’d been asked a similar question in recent months, and it stemmed from a plastic yard sign across the street from our flag that asserts, “Hate Has No Home Here” — in multiple languages. Some similar signs popped up in front of a few other residences occupied by “liberals,” ostensibly in response to the clash of socialist and fascist haters in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer.

                All but a handful of those signs disappeared after a month or so.
               Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the message on that yard sign, other than such signs are the epitome of trendy “virtue signaling” and may be intended to project that the views of those occupants have higher moral authority and standing than those of their neighbors. Notably, posting yard signs and applying bumper stickers is most often the full extent of the “sacrifice” these folks undertake to change the world.
               According to the Chicago-based activists who produce and market the signs, they’re needed because, “Hate, unchecked, can make neighbors feel fearful and unwelcome in their own communities. … It’s easy to hate people we don’t know.” But what about the neighbors we do know?
               In a conversation with my friend about his sign, he explained that it is aimed at “jingoistic flag-wavers” and all those deplorable people who did not support liar-Hillary Clinton.
               The implications of that explanation notwithstanding, I genuinely like all our neighbors, regardless of their political affinities. I grew up in a home steeped in the principles set forth in the Greatest Commandments (Matthew 22:35-40) and was taught early that there’s good to be found in just about everyone from any walk of life. As a result, I treasure relationships with many friends and colleagues who hold a wide spectrum of beliefs.
               To maintain relationships with a few of them, as a rule I avoid engaging in any Chardonnay-soaked political debate with folks whose views are antithetical to those I share with generations of Patriots who have devoted their lives to Liberty for all.

             I subscribe to, and recommend Thomas Jefferson maxim: “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
               Of course, Jefferson also advised, “Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.”
               When pondering the deeply held political beliefs of those who errantly embrace statism, without understanding that its terminus is, irrevocably, tyranny, I recall with a smile how kindly Ronald Reagan put it: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
               For the record, I don’t display yard signs or bumper stickers which project political or social virtues, opting instead for action over imagery. (Disclaimer: In recent years a few of my likeminded prankster friends have littered our yard with liar-nObama and liar-Clinton campaign signs — under cover of darkness. All such fraternal insults are answered in kind!)
               But make no mistake: I’ll defend my neighbor’s right to post his yard sign.
               For me, and for American Patriots nationwide, that defense is, in small part, what our flag represents — and has embodied since the original 13-star Patriot flag was raised after those first shots fired at Lexington Green.
               Thus, I’ll always fly our nation’s flag with due honor and pride, and lower it on occasion, as I did at sunrise today in memory of and respect for Barbara Bush. Our flag reflects our gratitude for generations of Patriots who sacrificed their personal safety in defense of Liberty, and the innumerable and extraordinary personal sacrifices under that banner.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/55436-patriots-day-and-the-flags-of-our-forefathers

               Elsewhere, it becomes even more apparent that the textbook seeks to interpret diverse political motivations primarily through the lens of race. For example, the description of President Donald Trump’s cabinet: “They were largely white males, more so than any cabinet since Ronald Reagan.” Or this example that suggests the reason for the political differences in the country are primarily due to race: “Those who had long thought of the nation as a white and Christian country sometimes found it difficult to adjust” to the changing cultural mores. The textbook concludes that Trump’s political positions and views are “not-very-hidden racism.”
               With this kind of promotion of the Marxist paradigm, which claims that political motivations and distinctions can be primarily attributed to class or race rather than ideology, is it any wonder there is a generation of Americans who are more than willing to question the value of the U.S. Constitution? No wonder some are actively advocating for the removal of the First and Second Amendment protections. Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it, but that’s even more so for those who are taught a false narrative on historical events.   
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55398-ap-us-history-textbook-promotes-leftist-bias

               However, what is emerging from all the Leftmedia spin, with no hint of objection, is that Comey, unapologetically, had a “higher loyalty” to liar-Hillary Clinton than to his oath “to support and defend” our Constitution. The interviews reveal more about his abject and reprehensible bias while FBI director than about anything Trump has done. Across the board, political observers conclude there was no “bombshell” in Comey’s book.
               What is also clear is that Comey’s bias enabled Barack liar-  nObama’s deep state FBI operatives to influence the 2016 election in liar-Clinton’s favor. Though Comey has been condemned for his “on again, off again”liar-Clinton investigation review just prior to the election, in fact, as we noted at the time, Comey used the window after absentee voting had ended and before the general election vote to exonerate liar-Clinton.
               And it was Comey’s compromised political views that led to the contrived investigation of Trump/Putin collusion after his election, in order to disable his presidency.
               What follows are a few of what I believe were the most revealing Comey comments from his ABC interview with  liar-Bill Clinton’s former communications director, George Stephanopoulos.
               When asked, “You write that President Trump is ‘unethical,’ ‘untethered to the truth.’ Is Donald Trump unfit to be president?” Comey insisted, “I think [Trump] is morally unfit to be president.”
               Indeed, Trump’s moral failings are considerable. We have noted those failings since he first declared his candidacy, and he does not help his case by engaging in sophomoric name-calling.
               However, it is equally clear that Comey was ethically unfit to be FBI director. He was grossly biased and negligent in his exoneration of liar-Clinton, even though he claimed she was “grossly negligent,” and his investigation of Trump was based on fake information funded by Democrats.
               Comey was, and remains, a “Trump hater,” much as his fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, all of whom colluded in an effort to ensure liar-Clinton would win in 2016.
               Perhaps the best indication of Comey’s personal bias was his repeated reference to being greatly influenced by his wife (as was McCabe). According to Comey: “My wife and girls marched in the Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration. My four daughters, probably all five of my kids, wanted liar-Hillary Clinton to be president. I know my amazing spouse did.”
               All the while, he was, ostensibly, directing the investigations of liar-Clinton’s communications coverup and the corrupt  liar-Clinton Foundation activities while she was   liar-nObama’s secretary of state.
               Stephanopoulos asked about the fact that Comey leaked the fake Trump dossier to the media, knowing full well it was funded by Trump opposition, and he then asked Comey about Trump’s reference to him as “the leaker.” Comey replied, “Look, it’s true. … I gave an unclassified memo to my friend and asked him to give it to a reporter. That is entirely appropriate.” (Only in Comey’s deluded justification.)
               When asked if he should have advised Trump that the FBI knew the real collusion with Russia was perpetrated by  liar-Clinton and the Democrat Party, the delusional Comey responded, “No.”

He also concluded it was “unlikely” Trump colluded with Russians to swing the election and went on to offer a lot of political speculation about Trump — just as he did a lot of speculating in 2016 as FBI director, when he should’ve been dealing objectively with facts.
               When asked if Trump should be impeached, Comey replied, “I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe they’re duty-bound to do directly.”
               In other words, Comey knows there was no impeachable offense in connection with the fake “Russian collusion” investigation, and since he could not swing the election to liar-Clinton in 2016, he now insists that Americans are “duty-bound” to defeat him in 2020.
               All that having been said, as I have noted before, James Comey is a case study of what happens to once-right-minded citizens who don’t properly maintain their political immunity against Potomac swamp fever. They transform as through metamorphosis into bureaucratic political hacks, and when they lead an agency as powerful as the FBI, they are a formidable threat to the future of Liberty.
               Comey devolved into a sad caricature of a once-reputable and admirable FBI director — one who is demonstrably “untethered to the truth.”
               I should reiterate here that the disgraceful corruption of FBI leadership has cast a long shadow on the 12,484 special agents and 2,950 intelligence analysts in the FBI, most of whom steadfastly abide by their constitutional oaths and live up to the FBI motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. Indeed, most FBI agents, whose reputations are being sullied by the corrupt actions of a few high-ranking officials, are deeply offended both personally and professionally by that corruption.   
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/55395-comeys-higher-loyalty-was-to-hillary-clinton

               Piepenbring sees as problematic the fact that Chick-fil-A’s Atlanta headquarters facility “is adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet,” and that “its stores close on Sundays.” Piepenbring writes, “There’s something especially distasteful about Chick-fil-A, which has sought to portray itself as better than other fast food: cleaner, gentler, and more ethical, with its poultry slightly healthier than the mystery meat of burgers.” He adds, “Its politics, its décor, and its commercial-evangelical messaging are inflected with this suburban piety.”
               He wasn’t done. Piepenbring relates, “The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words ‘to glorify God,’ and that proselytism thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch.” Wow, so any company with traditional Christian beliefs that dares to apply its beliefs is “an infiltration.” How “woke” of him to call out this consistent belief system.
               If any fast-food restaurant deserves praise not just for its quality food and service but also for its treatment of employees, community engagement and public generosity, it’s Chick-fil-A. There’s a reason it’s on course to becoming the third-largest fast-food chain behind only McDonald’s and Starbucks, and that’s not in spite of founder S. Truett Cathy’s “Christian traditionalism” but because of it. What is “creepy” is the number of deeply insecure leftists who produce, promote and feed on this kind of intolerant and hypocritical groupthink. Image if the fast-food chain in question was Muslim-owned — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio would be rolling out the red carpet for it instead of calling for a boycott.
               Piepenbring epitomizes the rapidly spreading bigotry of leftists, who are completely unwilling to offer the same tolerance and deference to opposing views and opinions that they demand from others. Meanwhile, they hypocritically lay claim to the “pro-diversity” moniker. Specifically, the Left hates conservative Christianity because it refuses to bow to its “new morality.” So, no matter how well-made the product or how good the service, if the business’s owner holds a traditional conservative and Christian worldview, then leftist dogma demands it be opposed and maligned.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55375-the-left-hates-chick-fil-a-because-of-christianity

               In 2013, Assad first crossed the “red line” of using chemical weapons. Predictably and unfortunately, Barack liar-nObama didn’t follow through on his threats against Assad and foolishly chose to trust Vladimir Putin with a deal to remove those weapons. When Assad used chemical weapons again in 2017, testing the resolve of the Trump administration, Trump hit an airfield pretty hard, targeting the Su-22 Fitter ground-attack planes at that base.
               Assad has once again tested Trump’s mettle. While we have made significant strides to contain the Islamic State, Assad is challenging how far the administration will go to subdue the Syrian regime now that Putin has provided him with human shields in Russian uniforms.
               After strikes on top of the sustained economic and diplomatic efforts, will Assad, and Putin, get the message this time? Probably not. Moreover, given that Assad isn’t hesitant about using chemical weapons on his own people, he’s not likely to think twice about handing them off to terrorists like Hezbollah or Hamas.
               The good news from this second round of strikes is that we have diminished Putin’s shield. Russia did not use its advanced S-400 systems to try to protect Assad, and in fact moved his ships out of the way. Furthermore, Trump, who is already trying to leverage Putin, has now improved his chances by tying Putin closer to Assad.
               Putin now has two unappetizing options: He can either hang Assad out to dry and lose credibility as an ally in the region, or he can be seen as defending a government that uses chemical weapons on its own people. So Trump’s strategy now is to negotiate a way for Putin to save some face — maybe by offering to lift some sanctions if Putin can talk Assad into leaving power and accepting exile in Russia.
               This situation, though, isn’t risk-free for the United States. If Assad uses chemical weapons again, restoring deterrence would require either escalating the fight or folding. Hopefully, though, Putin and Assad will blink first.
               A final note on the constitutional authority — or lack thereof — for these strikes. It must be reiterated that Trump is aiming to clean up the mess his predecessor left him, and that can limit options. He is also enforcing the Geneva Convention prohibition against the use of chemical weapons. He declared “mission accomplished” already and has no intent (yet) to expand U.S. military action in Syria. That said, he should have sought Congress’s backing. For its part, Congress has no interest in taking such tough votes, and thus happily cedes authority to the president, which has become a terrible precedent going back many administrations. But the Authorization for Use of Military Force against al-Qaida and its safe-haven nations does not cover action against Assad’s regime. Nor does the 1973 War Powers Resolution, because this was not an act of self-defense against an immediate threat to the U.S.
               The U.S. hasn’t formally declared war since 1941. That’s not likely to change any time soon, no matter the administration or the Congress.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55376-hitting-assad-and-putin-where-it-hurts

              While I have attended opening events for good films, in my opinion there are few that merit the commute and expense of theater viewing rather than streaming it a couple months later in the comfort of our family room. Many other folks clearly agree, given that theater attendance was at a 25-year low in 2017, along with Academy Award viewership.
               However, I don’t regret attending this movie, as I’m both familiar with the Kennedy political dynasty, and the Dike Bridge death on Chappaquiddick Island, which almostended that dynasty.
               Not long after Ted Kennedy’s Chappy manslaughter cover-up, I worked the summer before college at the exclusive Edgartown Yacht Club on Martha’s Vineyard. One summer was more than enough on that wealthy leftist glitterati playground — a place that remains a favorite resort destination of Demo-party protagonists, including the liar-nObama and liar-Clinton clans.
               So here’s a little teaser about an event that also shaped my perspective on Chappaquiddick: Ted Kennedy buried a drunken manslaughter conviction in Edgartown, but I was arrested and jailed for an open beer! (If you’re interested in the latter, see the addendum below.)
               Allow me to offer some insights on how the film portrayed an incident that should have ended the Kennedy political dynasty, but did not, because of their corrupt Massachusetts Democrat Party machine and the voters whose blind allegiance they commanded — and still do.
               Ted Kennedy was 30 years old when he first entered the Senate, the minimum age prescribed by our Constitution for that once-august body. He inherited the seatfollowing the November 1962 “special election” to fill the vacant seat held by his brother, John, whose presidential election had been crafted by “Old Joe” Kennedy. Ted was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and re-elected in a 1970 landslide, just one year after the Chappaquiddick whitewash. Massachusetts Democrats would repeat that offense six more times, and the “Lion of the Senate” remained in office for 47 years until his death in August 2009 — becoming the fourth-longest continuously serving senator in U.S. history.
               That was 40 years after Mary Jo Kopechne was buried, along with certainty of manslaughter charges against Kennedy for her death.
               The movie “Chappaquiddick” accurately depicts the record of that night and the conspiracy to conceal the facts in the ensuing hours, days, weeks and years. It was a fair treatment of the conspiracies and lies that were undertaken to protect Kennedy’s political ambitions. It took half a century to bring the Kennedy conspiracy to the big screen, but I’m frankly surprised it would make it through the Hollywood PC censors even after 50 years.
               Here are the details … according to the record, and portrayed in the film.
               On Friday night, July 18, 1969, then-Senate Majority Whip Edward “Teddy” Kennedy, the youngest senator to ever hold that position of power, was at a party with Kennedy campaign “Boiler Room Girls” on the small island of Chappaquiddick across from Edgartown harbor. The Kennedys were notorious philanderers, and on this night Teddy’s pregnant wife Joan was home at their Kennedy Cape compound while he was out carousing.
               At 11:30, he left the party inebriated with a 28-year-old campaign assistant, Mary Jo Kopechne. En route to a beach where he intended to “party,” he drove his car off the side of the small Dike Bridge that crosses tide-swept Poucha Pond to a vacant beach. Kennedy’s car overturned in a few feet of water, trapping Kopechne, who died of asphyxiation hours later after depleting the oxygen in the air pocket she occupied in the back of the car.
               Kennedy claimed he made several attempts to rescue Kopechne prior to walking back to their Chappaquiddick party house. He passed four residences on the way, where he could have called for help, but didn’t. Upon arriving at the party house, he summoned his cousin Joseph Gargan and former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Paul Markham, and together they hatched the cover-up.
               Gargan and Markham escorted their benefactor Teddy to the Chappaquiddick ferry landing, where he either swam or they boated him the few hundred feet to Edgartown harbor landing.               Once back at his small Edgartown hotel, Kennedy sobered up for ten hours before reporting the incident to police (by which time his car had already been discovered). He was able, thus, to avoid manslaughter prosecution for driving while intoxicated — and avoid the end of his political career.
               He and his political handlers conjured up a claim that he hadn’t reported the incident right away due confusion caused by a concussion — though there was no evidence to support that. Then he decided to strap on a neck brace, until they determined the public wouldn’t buy it. Then they considered claiming that Kopechne was driving, that Kennedy was actually the victim, but that option was rejected.
               Soon after Mary Jo’s body was recovered, it was quickly sent, without autopsy, back to her parents’ hometown, where she was buried.
               As for the cause of her death, experienced Edgartown Fire Rescue diver John Farrar, who recovered Kopechne’s body, testified, “She didn’t drown. She died of suffocation in her own air void. It took her at least three or four hours to die. I could have had her out of that car 25 minutes after I got the call. But [Kennedy] didn’t call.”
               During the “investigation” in the days that followed her death, Kennedy issued a statement that he left the party as a favor to Kopechne, because as he put it, “she was desirous of leaving, if I would be kind enough to drop her back at her hotel.” But Kopechne didn’t tell any of the other Boiler Room Girls that she was leaving, and she left her purse and hotel key at the party house.
               On July 25, after a lot of political machinations, Kennedy appeared at Edgartown courthouse and pleaded guilty to “leaving the scene of an accident.” His family attorneys argued that any jail sentence should be suspended. Nobody was shocked when the prosecutors and Judge James Boyle agreed, and Kennedy’s two-month incarceration sentence, the statutory minimum, was suspended.
               At 7:30 that evening, Kennedy delivered a prepared speech to a televised network audience. In his remarks, he claimed to the nation that there was “no truth whatever to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct,” that he “was not driving under the influence of liquor,” and that he had “all kinds of scrambled thoughts” including “whether some awful curse actually did hang over all the Kennedys.”
               But it wasn’t the “Kennedy curse” in this case, it was the curse Teddy Kennedy.
               He then looked into the camera and said in third person, with all the sincerity of a generationally seasoned method actor:
               “If at any time the citizens of Massachusetts should lack confidence in their senator’s character or his ability, with or without justification, he could not in my opinion adequately perform his duties and should not continue in office.”
               He concluded, “The opportunity to work with you and serve Massachusetts has made my life worthwhile. So I ask you tonight, the people of Massachusetts, to think this through with me. In facing this decision, I seek your advice and opinion. In making it I seek your prayers.”
               Kennedy’s faux appeal for prayers notwithstanding, apparently, his life was more “worthwhile” than that of Mary Jo.
               Following his remarks, predictably the dynasty’s sycophantic devotees showered him with support.
               Notably, a week after the conclusion of the inquest and the suspended sentence, Leslie Leland, foreman of the grand jury convened to consider Kennedy’s crime, told the local Vineyard Gazette, “I think that we were manipulated and I think that we were blocked from doing our job, and if you want to use the term cover-up, then okay, that’s what it was. … There seem to be two sets of rules and justices that are doled out — one for the rich and powerful, and one for the regular people, for you and me.” He later gave a televised interview about the coverup.
               As previously noted, Massachusetts Demos handed Kennedy a landslide re-election in 1970, a year after Mary Jo’s death.
               However, in 1980, despite Kennedy’s command over Massachusetts voters, Democrats across the nation rejected his presidential challenge to then-incumbent Jimmy Carter, who was then resoundingly defeated that November by Ronald Reagan.
               But Kennedy would have his revenge. Between 2004 and 2008, Ted Kennedy and his Massachusetts leftist understudy,  hanoi-John Kerry, were most directly responsible for elevating an unknown community organizer, Barack liar-nObama, to the presidency.
               The systemic Teflon shield that Kennedy perfected has endured well beyond his death, as is evident in the near-ascension to the presidency of liar-Hillary Clinton, the party’s profoundly corrupt 2016 nominee.
               Among the disgraceful Bay State memorials to Teddy is the $38 million taxpayer-funded Kennedy Institute in Boston.
               Astoundingly, the Democrat Party and its MSM propaganda machine are now trying to revive the Kennedy dynasty by promoting Rep. Joe Kennedy III, Ted Kennedy’s great-nephew, to national status. Recall that it was this latest iteration of the dullard Kennedy clan who droned on through a dry response to Donald Trump’s 2018 State of the Unionaddress. Trump’s address that night was titled “Our New American Moment,” but there’s nothing new about Joe Kennedy. Oh, and about that “open beer” addendum…
               Unlike Ted Kennedy, on another Friday summer’s eve when I was working on the island a few years after his DUI manslaughter subterfuge, I WAS arrested and JAILED by the Edgartown police on an alcohol charge. That arrest was in connection with defending my older sister’s honor after some local jerk yelled at her when she was crossing a town street — very pregnant with her first child and with her leashed lab puppy.
               Later that evening, the same jerk cruised slowly down the dirt alley by my sister’s little rental house — and I spotted him from her side yard. Of course, I yelled the same words at him he had yelled at her earlier that day. That was followed by a chorus of the same words from the cottage windows, compliments of a few of her husband’s ice hockey teammates.
               The offender slammed on his car brakes and backed up to the yard gate where I was standing (with a Black Label beer in my hand — I was 18 and of legal age then). He jumped from his vehicle and stormed by me into the house, where there was a verbal confrontation. He then exited by me through the gate.
               We had a few “words,” at which time he grabbed my right arm. I was 6'4" and weighed well over two bills — in response, I slung my arm around, connecting my elbow with his face, and putting him on his, uh, rear. It was only then, as he was getting up from the ground, that “the jerk” pulled a badge from his back pocket, identified himself as an Edgartown police officer, and arrested me for having an “open alcohol container in public.” (I should note here that he shoved me into “public” on his exit through the gate.)
               He called for backup, put me in the back seat of his unmarked car and, much to the distress of my sister, off her younger brother went to be booked and locked up in the old Edgartown jail. Soon thereafter, the aforementioned hockey players showed up under the open jail window in the cell I was occupying, and as they were full of Black Label beer themselves, began serenading me with a spiritual — “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” They were more amused than was I.
               Soon thereafter, I was released from jail with an order to appear in the old courthouse the following week for sentencing — the same courthouse where Kennedy’s sentence had been suspended.
               I arrived for that hearing with my key witness, my sweet expecting sister, who, from the witness stand, tearfully delivered her emotional account of being verbally assaulted by the arresting officer on the day of my incarceration. “Tearfully” is the key word here.
               I knew the winds of justice were turning in my favor when the judge turned to the arresting officer and scornfully asked, “Is this true? Did you yell at this young woman in the middle of our town, and call her a ‘—k’?” He admitted he had and … case dismissed.
               Apparently in Edgartown, it all boils down to how much justice one can afford, or how many tears a young expectant mother can shed!
               For the record, later that week I put my Chevy truck on the two-car barge for the one-minute ride from Edgartown to Chappaquiddick. Late that night, I drove out to Dike Bridge with friends and successfully crossed without incident. That was before the guardrails had been installed and when there was still clear evidence of the damage done to the bridge by the undercarriage of Kennedy’s car as it plunged over the side.   
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/55295-kennedy-kopechne-and-the-chappy-cover-up

               That last part — “so that it is never repeated” — is particularly noteworthy. We noted already that only some Americans commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day. As it turns out, the Holocaust is slowly losing its shock factor among Americans. According to The New York Times, “For seven decades, ‘never forget’ has been a rallying cry of the Holocaust remembrance movement. But a survey released Thursday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, found that many adults lack basic knowledge of what happened — and this lack of knowledge is more pronounced among millennials, whom the survey defined as people ages 18 to 34.”
               All told, 31% of Americans — a number that jumps 10 percentage points among Millennials — are under the impression that Jewish victims numbered about two million, which is one-third of the true total of six million. Furthermore, the Times reveals, “Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. Only 39 percent of Americans know that Hitler was democratically elected.”
               These revelations are partly due to anti-Jewish hostility, particularly on the Left. They’re also due to our failed education system, which glosses over certain aspects of history. Granted, the Times adds: “Despite the gaps in the respondents’ knowledge, the study found an overwhelming consensus — 93 percent — that all students should learn about the Holocaust at school. And Holocaust denial remains very rare in the United States, with 96 percent of respondents saying they believe the genocide happened.” But the lesson is clearly losing its weightiness. And the less impactful atrocities become, the less inclined people are to “never forget.”
               That term also gets thrown around routinely when it comes to 9/11. But based on the vehement uproar leftists in America display when Republicans advocate policy prescriptions that would avert terrorist acts, it’s evident that the significance of that fateful day is also beginning to wane. That’s exactly how history repeats itself and how presumably safe societies end up, quite literally, on the ash heap of history.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55325-in-america-the-holocaust-is-losing-its-shock-factor