The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Neo-Nazis rallied around Jefferson's statue
But it was a Jewish family that saved Monticello
by Rachel Siegel
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Phoenix PD Chief Made Secret ACLU
Sanctuary City Deal – Prosecute Dirty Officials
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch joined Gregg Jarrett, filling in for Lou Dobbs, to discuss new information he’s revealing about the secret backroom sanctuary city deals... made by the Phoenix Police Chief, deals which are illegal, as Jarrett later shows. Jarrett says, “So Phoenix pretends it is no longer a sanctuary city. Is it true that the chief of police struck a secret deal that now says police officers cannot get in contact with the feds about somebody who is here illegally?” Farrell replies, “You are correct, and we have the documentation to prove it. Jerry Williams, who actually was a long term Phoenix PD officer, who then left and went out to California, then circled back to become chief. I have knowledge and experience with the chief going back decades now, a full decade. But she met with ACLU members and the ACLU spun off another group that calls themselves “People Power.” Their logo is a clenched red fist.”... http://rickwells.us/phoenix-pd-chief-made-secret-aclu-sanctuary-city-deal-prosecute-dirty-officials/
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State Department Science Envoy Daniel Kammen
Resigns – A Leftover From the liar-nObama-Era
by Thomas
{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ You might be thinking: Why on Earth does the State Department have a “Science Envoy”? If so, that’s a good question... Regardless, Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, resigned from the State Department today. Kammen has been in the role since February 2016 and has held many federal positions during the past two decades. He is a partisan hack and a prominent advocate of “global warming” theory. In his shameful resignation letter, he slammed President Trump’s “attacks on core values of the United States.”... http://thepoliticalinsider.com/daniel-kammen-resign-state-department/?utm_content=4b4ea4948726422aa6473c7b9fa19141&source=CI&utm_campaign=TPI_Morning_Newsletter_8_24_17&utm_source=TPI-Newsletter-8-24-17-morning&utm_medium=email.
Combating Health Tyranny with Knowledge
and Defensive Eating With Mike Adams
by Vin Armani
by Vin Armani
{activistpost.com} ~ In this video, the Health Ranger Mike Adams joins Vin Armani for a powerful discussion on how to protect yourself against the biggest threats to your health – Big Ag, Big Pharma and their partners in government. Adams also talks free speech and gives valuable tips on defensive eating. http://www.activistpost.com/2017/08/combating-health-tyranny-knowledge-defensive-eating-mike-adams.html?utm_source=Activist+Post+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ecc3060ca7-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b0c7fb76bd-ecc3060ca7-387888649
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Conservatives Roll Their Eyes
at Media’s Overhype of Steve Bannon
by Thomas Farnan
{observer.com} ~ Since his departure from the White House, the media has described Steve Bannon as a favorite of Donald Trump’s conservative base... The media picking conservative favorites, though, is sort of like when your parents bought you an album for your birthday. It was always conventional top 40 favorites, and it was never the band you really liked. The media understands conservative favorites about as well as parents understood musical tastes back in the day. They think they’re hip to the lingo—but they’re not... http://observer.com/2017/08/donald-trump-steve-bannon-breitbart-news/?utm_campaign=national-politics&utm_content=2017-24-08-10438384&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=channel-national-politics-distribution.
VIDEOS
VIDEOSGeneral Keane “Pakistan Will Be A Test Of Will For The Trump Team”
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President’s Speech To The American Legion
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Kurt Schlichter: Normal Americans Bored By ‘Fake’ Statue Drama
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Kick A Can Of Tear Gas At Cops Get Rubber Bullet In The Groin
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NY’s Socialist Mayor Wants To Take Down Statue Of Columbus In Columbus Circle
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Sheriff Joe: Trump Will Go Down As One Of Our Greatest Presidents
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There, at the foot of the bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, they chanted, "Jews will not replace us!"
The neo-Nazis and white supremacists who recently descended on Charlottesville ignored one key historical fact, among others: Monticello, Jefferson's beloved iconic mansion just a few miles southeast, was saved from ruin by Jews.
Over the course of nearly 90 years after Jefferson's death, two members of the illustrious Levy family purchased and personally saw to the preservation of the property. They did so out of a genuine reverence for Jefferson's role as a Founding Father and for his advocacy of religious freedom. And they did so in the face of the very anti-Semitism that echoed on the streets of Charlottesville decades later.
The first member of the Levy family to own Monticello was Uriah Phillips Levy, a decorated naval officer who served as the first Jewish commodore of the U.S. Navy. He was a leader in the fight against flogging in the Navy and was a hero of the War of 1812. He was also quick to anger and was court-martialed six times, once killing a man in a duel.
As noted by historian Marc Leepson in his book, " Saving Monticello," Uriah Levy had to overcome "more than his share of anti-Semitism to attain the Navy's highest rank." Levy himself said that he was "forced to encounter a large share of the prejudice and hostility by which, for so many ages, the Jew has been persecuted."
At least part of Levy's admiration for Jefferson was born from the president's support of religious equality. In addition to the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson penned the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Such admiration ran in the family - in 1787, Uriah's brother, Jonas Phillips Levy, wrote to the Constitutional Convention to call on the body to endow "all men" "the natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty G0D according to their own conscience and understanding."
Jefferson - a compulsive shopper burdened by substantial debt throughout his life - died at Monticello on July 4, 1826. His family was forced to sell much of his property, including the mansion, which was purchased by Uriah Levy in 1834 for $2,500. Like Jefferson, Levy was a slave owner, and enslaved people were used along with hired workers to repair the mansion.
Fictional tales of the purchase - which survived well into the 20th century - hint at the anti-Semitism swirling around Levy's ownership. One popular and completely false retelling alleged that Uriah Levy took advantage of a drunk relative of Jefferson's to purchase the property. One newspaper account included made-up dialogue between the two that characterized Levy as having a strong Yiddish accent, despite the fact that he was born in Philadelphia and was a fifth-generation American.
When he died in 1862, Uriah left behind no children, and his complicated will suggested he wanted Monticello to become a farm school for the orphans of Navy warrant officers. But before any arrangements could be made, Monticello and surrounding Virginia came under control of the Confederacy through the sequestration terms of the Alien Enemies Act.
No heavy fighting took place near Monticello during the Civil War. Soldiers and civilians alike visited the mansion, often leaving their personal marks behind by writing their names on the walls of the upstairs dome room and snatching souvenirs as they pleased. House furniture was broken, and Jefferson's gravesite badly defaced. By 1865, the house was in ruin.
When the Civil War ended, the house returned to the heirs of Uriah Levy and would eventually come under the ownership of his nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy, in 1879. Named for the deceased president, Jefferson Levy was a three-term New York congressman, businessman and lawyer who turned his immediate attention to the repair and renovation of the mansion.
"That place was never going to collapse, but it was in really bad shape twice," Leepson said. "If it wasn't for Uriah and Jefferson Levy, there's a chance we wouldn't have Monticello today."
Susan Stein, the Richard Gilder Senior Curator at Monticello, agreed, saying the protection of Monticello by the Levy family "was one of the milestones in the history of historic preservation in America."
But like his uncle, Jefferson Levy faced bigotry, this time from those who launched campaigns to place Monticello under federal control. Their main argument, Leepson said, was that the property shouldn't be in private hands and should be open to the public.
"However, the entire campaign had more than a whiff of anti-Semitism," Leepson said. "They used code words, referring to the Levys as 'aliens' and 'outsiders.' "
Most of the effort to boot the Levy family from Monticello came from outside Charlottesville, namely from Maud Littleton, the wife of a New York congressman. Maud Littleton, according to Leepson's book, gave speeches, congressional testimony and interviews threaded with nativist-style rhetoric and tropes of greed and lack of patriotism.
Jefferson Levy ultimately gave in to public pressure and, after Congress rejected his asking price of $500,000, sold Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1923. In an interview he gave that year, Jefferson Levy estimated that he and his family had collectively invested $2.4 million in the property between its purchase, the cost of keeping it up, repairs after the Civil War and the interest on the money sunk in the property.
Levy also made contributions to Jefferson's beloved University of Virginia, donating a regulator clock for the library and a device that electronically controlled the bells in each of the university's lecture halls. He also provided for the replacement of two steel clock dials for the Rotunda, which had been destroyed in an 1895 fire.
Yet it would be decades before the Jefferson foundation fully acknowledged the Levy family's role in saving Monticello. Levy descendants felt unwelcome when they tried to visit, despite the fact that Uriah's mother, Rachel Phillips Levy, was buried on the property.
In Leepson's book, Jefferson Levy's grandniece, Harley Lewis, recounted how her parents observed what was, for a time, likely the only nod to her family's history at Monticello. Back then, she said, a plaque near Monticello's gate read: "Uriah Phillips Levy, a Jew, purchased Monticello for $2,500 and later sold it."
It wasn't until the mid-1970s that the foundation began acknowledging all the Levys had done at Monticello. In 1985, Lewis, among other descendants, took part in a commemorative ceremony on the property that included the unveiling of a new plaque at Rachel Levy's grave. The visitor center contains a display on the full story of the Levys' ownership.
For decades, Uriah and Jefferson Levy had been branded as intruders, their crucial role in the preservation of Monticello largely forgotten. It was certainly a fact that went ignored as neo-Nazis encircled Jefferson's statue - a masterpiece of Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish sculptor and soldier.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Lewis said she wanted to believe that the anti-Semitism her ancestors encountered had "all disappeared." Now she knows it hasn't. But much as it did when Uriah and Jefferson Levy came to town, she knows the bigots weren't from Charlottesville.
"These are outsiders that came in," she said.
Neo-Nazis rallied around Jefferson's statue
But it was a Jewish family that saved Monticello
by Rachel Siegel
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ They swarmed the monument with Tiki torches that flickered in the dark, their shouts piercing what had been a quiet evening on the Lawn at the University of Virginia.There, at the foot of the bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, they chanted, "Jews will not replace us!"
The neo-Nazis and white supremacists who recently descended on Charlottesville ignored one key historical fact, among others: Monticello, Jefferson's beloved iconic mansion just a few miles southeast, was saved from ruin by Jews.
Over the course of nearly 90 years after Jefferson's death, two members of the illustrious Levy family purchased and personally saw to the preservation of the property. They did so out of a genuine reverence for Jefferson's role as a Founding Father and for his advocacy of religious freedom. And they did so in the face of the very anti-Semitism that echoed on the streets of Charlottesville decades later.
The first member of the Levy family to own Monticello was Uriah Phillips Levy, a decorated naval officer who served as the first Jewish commodore of the U.S. Navy. He was a leader in the fight against flogging in the Navy and was a hero of the War of 1812. He was also quick to anger and was court-martialed six times, once killing a man in a duel.
As noted by historian Marc Leepson in his book, " Saving Monticello," Uriah Levy had to overcome "more than his share of anti-Semitism to attain the Navy's highest rank." Levy himself said that he was "forced to encounter a large share of the prejudice and hostility by which, for so many ages, the Jew has been persecuted."
At least part of Levy's admiration for Jefferson was born from the president's support of religious equality. In addition to the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson penned the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Such admiration ran in the family - in 1787, Uriah's brother, Jonas Phillips Levy, wrote to the Constitutional Convention to call on the body to endow "all men" "the natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty G0D according to their own conscience and understanding."
Jefferson - a compulsive shopper burdened by substantial debt throughout his life - died at Monticello on July 4, 1826. His family was forced to sell much of his property, including the mansion, which was purchased by Uriah Levy in 1834 for $2,500. Like Jefferson, Levy was a slave owner, and enslaved people were used along with hired workers to repair the mansion.
Fictional tales of the purchase - which survived well into the 20th century - hint at the anti-Semitism swirling around Levy's ownership. One popular and completely false retelling alleged that Uriah Levy took advantage of a drunk relative of Jefferson's to purchase the property. One newspaper account included made-up dialogue between the two that characterized Levy as having a strong Yiddish accent, despite the fact that he was born in Philadelphia and was a fifth-generation American.
When he died in 1862, Uriah left behind no children, and his complicated will suggested he wanted Monticello to become a farm school for the orphans of Navy warrant officers. But before any arrangements could be made, Monticello and surrounding Virginia came under control of the Confederacy through the sequestration terms of the Alien Enemies Act.
No heavy fighting took place near Monticello during the Civil War. Soldiers and civilians alike visited the mansion, often leaving their personal marks behind by writing their names on the walls of the upstairs dome room and snatching souvenirs as they pleased. House furniture was broken, and Jefferson's gravesite badly defaced. By 1865, the house was in ruin.
When the Civil War ended, the house returned to the heirs of Uriah Levy and would eventually come under the ownership of his nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy, in 1879. Named for the deceased president, Jefferson Levy was a three-term New York congressman, businessman and lawyer who turned his immediate attention to the repair and renovation of the mansion.
"That place was never going to collapse, but it was in really bad shape twice," Leepson said. "If it wasn't for Uriah and Jefferson Levy, there's a chance we wouldn't have Monticello today."
Susan Stein, the Richard Gilder Senior Curator at Monticello, agreed, saying the protection of Monticello by the Levy family "was one of the milestones in the history of historic preservation in America."
But like his uncle, Jefferson Levy faced bigotry, this time from those who launched campaigns to place Monticello under federal control. Their main argument, Leepson said, was that the property shouldn't be in private hands and should be open to the public.
"However, the entire campaign had more than a whiff of anti-Semitism," Leepson said. "They used code words, referring to the Levys as 'aliens' and 'outsiders.' "
Most of the effort to boot the Levy family from Monticello came from outside Charlottesville, namely from Maud Littleton, the wife of a New York congressman. Maud Littleton, according to Leepson's book, gave speeches, congressional testimony and interviews threaded with nativist-style rhetoric and tropes of greed and lack of patriotism.
Jefferson Levy ultimately gave in to public pressure and, after Congress rejected his asking price of $500,000, sold Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1923. In an interview he gave that year, Jefferson Levy estimated that he and his family had collectively invested $2.4 million in the property between its purchase, the cost of keeping it up, repairs after the Civil War and the interest on the money sunk in the property.
Levy also made contributions to Jefferson's beloved University of Virginia, donating a regulator clock for the library and a device that electronically controlled the bells in each of the university's lecture halls. He also provided for the replacement of two steel clock dials for the Rotunda, which had been destroyed in an 1895 fire.
Yet it would be decades before the Jefferson foundation fully acknowledged the Levy family's role in saving Monticello. Levy descendants felt unwelcome when they tried to visit, despite the fact that Uriah's mother, Rachel Phillips Levy, was buried on the property.
In Leepson's book, Jefferson Levy's grandniece, Harley Lewis, recounted how her parents observed what was, for a time, likely the only nod to her family's history at Monticello. Back then, she said, a plaque near Monticello's gate read: "Uriah Phillips Levy, a Jew, purchased Monticello for $2,500 and later sold it."
It wasn't until the mid-1970s that the foundation began acknowledging all the Levys had done at Monticello. In 1985, Lewis, among other descendants, took part in a commemorative ceremony on the property that included the unveiling of a new plaque at Rachel Levy's grave. The visitor center contains a display on the full story of the Levys' ownership.
For decades, Uriah and Jefferson Levy had been branded as intruders, their crucial role in the preservation of Monticello largely forgotten. It was certainly a fact that went ignored as neo-Nazis encircled Jefferson's statue - a masterpiece of Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish sculptor and soldier.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Lewis said she wanted to believe that the anti-Semitism her ancestors encountered had "all disappeared." Now she knows it hasn't. But much as it did when Uriah and Jefferson Levy came to town, she knows the bigots weren't from Charlottesville.
"These are outsiders that came in," she said.
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