VETERANS DAY 2011

Today marks the 93d anniversary of the armistice which ended the fighting on the Western Front in the World War. It took effect at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918. Within a few years, November 11 became an American national holiday known as Armistice Day. After we had to start numbering world wars, in 1954, Congress renamed Armistice Day to Veterans Day. While Veterans Day is, and ought to be, marked by solemn ceremonies such as the laying of a wreath by the President at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, it is a day to honor living veterans who may be appropriately wished "happy Veterans Day." This contrasts with Memorial Day which honors those who died on the field of honor and, by definition, ought never be a "happy" day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARINES

Today is the 236th Birthday of the finest fighting force the world has ever known, with the possible exception of the XIII Legion in Gaul and Jackson's Brigade in the Valley. I speak of course, of the United States Marine Corps.

I was privileged to lead Marines in combat as a platoon commander and executive officer of Company C, First Battalion, Fifth Marines. Charlie Company was the successor to John Thomason's company of the Fifth Marines in Belleau Woods in France in 1918.

The Marines and Corpsmen of Charlie Company are always with me, especially Lucas, Zimmerman, Tews, Unfried, Phipps, Wandro and, of course, Chip--2d Lt Fred Andrew Hartman, USMC. Tonight, at sunset, I stood on my deck "at sunset and was silent, over Chilean wine, . . . thinking of those days and those men."

Semper Fidelis


MARINE CORPS ORDERS
No. 47 (Series 1921)
HEADQUARTERS U.S. MARINE CORPS
Washington, November 1, 1921

759. The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not be received by the 10th of November, 1921, it will be read upon receipt.

(1) On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name "Marine". In memory of them it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.

(2) The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world's history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation's foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and in the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.

(3) In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term "Marine" has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.

(4) This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as "Soldiers of the Sea" since the founding of the Corps.

JOHN A. LEJEUNE,
Major General Commandant




The Leathernecks by Col John Thomason (Fix Bayonets!)

LEATHERNECKS


THEY tell the tale of an American lady of notable good works, much esteemed by the French, who, at the end of June, 1918, visited one of the field hospitals behind Degoutte’s Sixth French Army. Degoutte was fighting on the face of the Marne salient, and the 2d American Division, then in action around the Bois de Belleau, northeast of Chateau Thierry, was under his orders. It happened that occasional casualties of the Marine Brigade of the 2d American Division, wounded toward the flank where Degoutte’s own horizon-blue infantry joined on, were picked up by French stretcher-bearers and evacuated to French hospitals. And this lady, looking down a long, crowded ward, saw on a pillow a face unlike the fiercely whiskered Gallic heads there displayed in rows. She went to it.

“Oh,” she said, “surely you are an American!”

“No, ma’am,” the casualty answered. I’m a Marine.”

The men who marched up the Paris-Metz road to meet the Boche in the spring of 1918, the 5th and 6th Regiments of United States Marines, were gathered from various places. In the big war companies, 250 strong, you could find every sort of man, from every sort of calling. There were North-westerners with straw-colored hair that looked white against their tanned skins, and delicately spoken chaps with the stamp of the Eastern universities on them. There were large-boned fellows from Pacific-coast lumber camps, and tall, lean Southerners who swore amazingly in gentle drawling voices. There were husky farmers from the corn-belt, and youngsters who had sprung, as it were, to arms from the necktie counter. And there were also a number of diverse people who ran curiously to type, with drilled shoulders and a bone-deep sunburn, and a tolerant scorn of nearly everything on earth. Their speech was flavored with navy words, and words culled from all the folk who live on the seas and the ports where our war-ships go. In easy hours their talk ran from the Tartar Wall beyond Peking to the Southern Islands down under Manila; from Portsmouth Navy Yard-New Hampshire and very cold-to obscure bush-whackings in the West Indies, where Cacao chiefs whimsically sanguinary, barefoot generals, with names like Charlemagne and Christophe, waged war according to the precepts of the French Revolution and the Cult of the Snake. They drank the eau de vie of Haute-Marne, and reminisced on sake, and vino, and Bacardi Rum-strange drinks in strange cantinas at the far ends of the earth; and they spoke fondly of Milwaukee beer. Rifles were high and holy things to them, and they knew five-inch broadside guns. They talked patronizingly of the war, and were concerned about rations. They were the Leathernecks, the Old Timers; collected from ship’s guards and shore stations all over the earth to form the 4th Brigade of Marines, the two rifle regiments detached from the Department of the Navy by order of the President for service with the American Expeditionary Forces. They were the old breed of American regular, regarding the service as home and war as an occupation; and they transmitted their temper and character and view-point to the high-hearted volunteer mass which filled the ranks of the Marine Brigade.

It is a pleasure to record that they found good company in the U. S. Army. The 2d Division (U. S. Regular was the official designation) was composed of the 9th and 23d Infantry, two old regiments with names from all of our wars on their battle-flags, the 2d Regiment of Engineers-and engineers are always good-and the 12th, 15th, and 17th Field Artillery. It was a division distinguished by the quality of dash and animated by an especial pride of service. It carried to a high degree esprit de corps, which some Frenchman has defined as esteeming your own corps and looking down on all the other corps. And although it paid heavily in casualties for the things it did-in five months about 100 per cent-the 2d Division never lost its professional character.

Seven years after, across the world from /France, I met a major of the American General Staff, who was on the Paris-Metz road that last week in May, 1918, and saw the Marine Brigade. “They looked fine, coming in there,” he said. “Tall fellows, healthy and fit-they looked hard and competent. We watched you going in, through those little tired Frenchmen, and we all felt better. We knew something was going to happen-“ and we were silent, over Chilean wine, in a place on the South Pacific, thinking of those days and those men.

There is no sight in all the pageant of war like young, trained men going up to battle. The columns look solid and businesslike. Each battalion is an entity, 1,200 men of one purpose. They go on like a river that flows very deep and strong. Uniforms are drab these days, but there are points of light on the helmets and the bayonets, and light in the quick, steady eyes and the brown young faces, greatly daring. There is no singing-veterans know, and they do not sing much-and there is no excitement at all; they are schooled crafts-men going up to impose their will, with the tools of their trade, on another lot of fellows; and there is nothing to make a fuss about. Battlefields are not salubrious places, and every file knows that a great many more are going in than will come out again-but that goes along with the job. And they have no illusions about the job.

There is nothing particularly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with killing tools, going along to fight. And yet-such a column represents a great deal more than 28,000 individuals mustered into a division. All that is behind those men is in that column too: the old battles, long forgotten, that secured our nation-Brandywine and Trenton and Yorktown, San Jacinto and Chapultepec, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, El Caney; scores of skirmishes, far off, such as the Marines have nearly every year in which a man can be killed as dead as ever a chap in the Argonne; traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as regiments hand down forever; and the faith of men and the love of women; and that abstract thing called patriotism, which I never heard combat soldiers mention-all this passes into the forward zone, to the point of contact, where war is girt with horrors. Common men endure these horrors and overcome them, along with the insistent yearnings of the belly and the reasonable promptings of fear; and in this, I think, is glory.

RICHARD NIXON, BILL CLINTON, AND HERMAN CAIN: A Short Study in Damage Control

This has been a bad week for the Cain campaign. They handled the report about some 1995 alleged sexual misconduct (of an unspecified nature, involving anonymous complainants) poorly, allowing the press and his opponents to speculate at will and interview each other, keeping the story alive. Yesterday, for instance, Christiane Amanpour asked former Secretary of State Rice a question to this effect: “Well, although we have no concrete information, assuming that there was some serious misconduct, is his candidacy over?” Yeah, he’s in trouble.

At least one report I heard revealed that the campaign had 10 days notice before the story broke. Why weren’t they prepared?

Instead, when it did break, in the space of one day, Cain denied the story, then “recalled” some of it, then more of it. He quibbled over whether there had been a “settlement” or “only an agreement” to pay one woman $35,000 and another $45,000 “severance packages.” By the end of the week, the “cover up” had become the story. No details of the events are available and the anonymous complainants refuse to speak publicly. A real mess!

This got me to thinking about how two other crises were handled by a presidential or campaign staff.

GENNIFER FLOWERS: During Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential election campaign, it was revealed that Clinton and a model and actress named Gennifer Flowers engaged in a 12-year sexual relationship while Clinton was Governor of Arkansas. His team quickly arranged for Clinton to appear on the CBS news program 60 Minutes. Clinton denied having a relationship with Flowers, and his wife, now Secretary of State Clinton, “stood by her man.” The Flowers accusation was generally accepted by the voting public as a publicity stunt on Flower's part and Clinton avoided any serious threat to his campaign. (Clinton was deposed in January 1998, at which time he admitted that, indeed, he had a sexual encounter with Flowers, but by then he was already in his second term.)

WATERGATE: In June 1972, during Richard Nixon’s second campaign, a burglary was committed in the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Five men were apprehended in the DNC’s offices, apparently attempting to bug, or remove bugs from, the offices of DNC Chair Lawrence O’Brien and others. O’Brien, one of JFK’s “Irish mafia” of political advisors, was then serving his second term as DNC Chair.

It was later determined that the burglars had been paid from a to a slush fund maintained in the Committee to Re-Election the President (CREEP). Evidence developed by the FBI, soon pointed to the inside of the White House.

The Senate established a Committee, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin (D.NC) to investigate. Counsel for the committee included Sam Dash (majority counsel) and Fred Thomson (minority counsel. In the course of the hearing, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. A conspiracy to cover up the break-in, between President Nixon and his two top aides, Robert Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, as well as other aides, was revealed by the tapes. Nixon resisted a Committee subpoena to turn over the tapes, resulting in a protracted series of court battles regarding the President’s claim of executive privilege. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled unanimously that the President had to comply with the subpoena. He resigned the presidency shortly thereafter.

WARNING: Shameless name-dropping follows.

Samuel Dash, the majority counsel of the Watergate Committee, was a legendary lawyer. In his 53-year legal career, he helped draft the independent counsel statute to correct the abuses of that system during the Watergate prosecution, served as ethics counsel to the Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, and was an expert on the law of electronic surveillance.

Mr. Dash joined the Philadelphia district attorney's office in 1952 and was appointed district attorney in 1955 at age 30. He went into private practice the next year and conducted a nationwide investigation of wiretapping, resulting in a 1959 book, "The Eavesdroppers," that is credited with helping change the Supreme Court's position and federal and state laws on electronic surveillance.

Beginning in 1965, he was a a professor at Georgetown University's law school where he also served as director of its Institute for Criminal Law and Procedures.  In the 1970s, he helped Chief Justice Warren E. Burger devise the American Bar Association's ethical standards for prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers. He had a well-deserved reputation for independence and was an advocate for legal ethics throughout his career.

After a scandal arose in 2002, Mr. Dash served on a task force to reform the ethical standards and organization of the United Way of the National Capital Area.

In the 1990s, he was ethics counsel for a case I was involved in with respect to federal election law. One Saturday morning as we waited for a new draft of a pleading to be prepared, we sat in a conference room and talked about some of his experiences.

“You know, Professor,” I said, “if I had been advising the Nixon Whitehouse in June of 1972, I would have done two things. First, I would have advised the President to destroy all of those darned tapes that very day, before anyone knew they existed and before the inevitable subpoenae were issued when their existence was revealed.  There would be no obstruction of justice (at least under 1972 law) because there was no order to preserve or produce them.  I would have told the President, ‘You can’t be a party to unilateral electronic surveillance of people who come into your office expecting confidentiality. It sets a bad example. If you are ever questioned about why the tapes were destroyed, you can cite your concerns for the Bill of Rights.’”

“Well,” he replied, “you just ended our investigation.”

I continued.  “‘Second,’ you need to fire anyone, including Haldeman and Ehrlichman, who might have had anything to do with the break-in. Then, call a press conference to announce right there the firings. Say something like this:

My fellow Americans. One of the things about being president is that everyone wants to please you. If I were to mutter to myself at 2 am that I would like a strawberry baked Alaska, one would appear momentarily.

Now, a few weeks ago, I was talking with my staff about the upcoming election. As you know, after the primary elections, the Senator from South Dakota appears to be the presumptive nominee of the other party. I mused to myself, “I sure would like to be a fly on the wall of Larry O’Brien’s office right now to see how he and the rest of the old Kennedy hands plan to take the nomination away from Senator McGovern and give it to Teddy Kennedy.”

I now believe that those staffers—misguidedly and improperly—took my musing as an order. I have, sadly but necessarily, asked for their resignations and they have tendered them. It is now a matter for the police and the courts to resolve.

But I still do wonder how Mr. O’Brien plans to take the nomination from Mr. McGovern and give it to Mr. Kennedy.

Thank you and good night.

Professor Dash grinned and shook his head. “I’m glad you weren’t there,” he said. “The whole story thereafter would have been about an attempt to overturn the primary results by the old guard in the Democratic Party.”

I will never forget that conversation.

Fast forward to last week. Here is what I would have had Cain do as soon as the story broke—or preemptively, as soon as I heard that Politico was going to run it.

Background: In the last quarter of the 20th Century, sexual harassment in the workplace became an issue. Several high dollar claims were settled in the late 1980s and early 90s that made more employees aware of the “benefits” of alleging sexual harassment as a basis for dismissal. For instance, between 1997 and 2009, the EEOC dismissed roughly half of all harassment claims filed as “no reasonable cause” claims. In 2010, that percentage rose to nearly two-thirds.

In the 1990s, sexual harassment claims were popular with employees who were being terminated because the claim itself was damaging to a company and thus, the employee had a good bargaining chip. The spectre of bad publicity led many employers and their insurers to be more likely to settle claims early in the process for the “nuisance value” of the claim, i.e., the potential cost of investigation and defense of a suit dwarfed the settlement amount.

In Cain's case, the settlement amounts appear to me to be nuisance value settlements.

All that being said, I would have recommended that Cain say something like this.

In the mid-1990s, while I was CEO of the National Restaurant Association, I became aware that a couple of soon-to-be-dismissed employees were alleging that I had somehow improperly harassed them. While I deny that claim now and denied it then, I knew that the mere allegation was serious and could affect both the morale of the Association’s employees and the reputation of the Association itself.

I promptly recused myself from taking any further part in the matter, assigning it to the director of our human resources department and our general counsel.

I seem to recall that the claims were deemed to be of no substance, but to avoid any damage to the Association, it was decided by those responsible for making the decision (and perhaps our insurers) to “settle” the claims for the value of a few month’s salary for each of the terminated employees. In business, these low dollar settlements (each was around $40,000) are known as “nuisance value settlements.” That means that the company, association, or insurer thinks the claim is meritless, but the cost of investigating the claim and litigating it would far exceed the amount of the settlement.

I had no part in making any settlement decision, but, as an experienced businessman, I think that it is better to spend a few dollars to settle unfounded claims such as these rather than 10 or 20 times the amount to win a legal “victory.”

I do recall that when settling claims such as this, our counsel often suggested that the settlement amount be easily divisible by 3 so that the attorney’s one-third share of the claim could be easily determined.

The filing of unfounded suits or claims such as these, often as a revenue-generating action by trial lawyers, continues to be a real problem in American business. That is why I support tort reform and other reforms to cut the costs of such trivial litigation in American business and medicine, even as the trial lawyers seek more ways to make their fortunes on the backs of plaintiffs who have no real claim.

Thank you and good night.

COL WILLIAM E. RILEY, USMC

I have just learned that Colonel William E. Riley, Jr., USMC reported to Marine Barracks, Heaven earlier this summer. Colonel Riley was my battalion commander in Vietnam about whom I have written here, here, here, here, and here.

The Colonel was a tremendous combat leader, having served in Korea as a lieutenant and then in Vietnam, as Commanding Officer, 1st Battalion, Fifth Marines, 1st Marine Division. It seemed to the junior officers of the battalion that he never forgot what it was like to be a small unit leader. He trusted his subordinates and it showed. He was one of those men who other men eagerly follow, no matter how unpleasant the trip might be. Acts such as the implicit trust he placed in a 19 year old squad leader to adjust a supporting arm that could have killed us all earned him our undying trust, respect, and devotion.

Semper Fidelis.

JEFFERSON DAVIS, PLEASE CALL YOUR OFFICE. ALL IS FORGIVEN.

Not six hours after the announcement that the US had killed Anwar al-Awlaki and one of his key staff, Samir Khan, the sniping begins. The ACLU, which woud be one of the first organizations to be banned and persecuted under an Islamic government, is concerned that these terrorist commanders who have actually waged war on the United States, were not afforded due process of law before the attack. [Yeah, I know Ron Paul spoke up, too, and he is as wrong as the loony left. He ought to know better.]

If killing one enemy commander who happens to have US citizenship is a denial of constitutional rights, the hundreds of thousands of American citizens killed on the order of Abraham Lincoln were grossly violated when they took up arms on behalf of the Confederate States of America. Sadly for them, the ACLU wasn’t around to take up their claim. Or perhaps the ACLU, with its selective “hate America first agenda”, is only interested if the citizen they are worrying about is from a group which the American left likes.

Still, I’ll bet Isoroku Yamamoto wishes this rule had applied in 1943.

THE GLORIOUS AMERICAN GAME

“In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing ‘base’, a certain game of ball...Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms...the game of ball is glorious.” Brooklyn Eagle, July 23, 1846

I grew up in Missouri (pre-A’s) and Illinois. As someone wrote in SI circa 1966, “St. Louis is a town where a kid grows up with a Budweiser in one hand and a score card in the other.” Cardinals fans are the greatest fans in American sport.

The collapse of the Phillies in 1964 was an answered prayer for me, something I had waited for for as long as I could understand baseball. [For those who are culturally illiterate, the Phils led the league by 6 1⁄2 games with 12 to go. Then came a ten-game losing streak that ended the year for the Phils, although they ended the season tied for second with the Reds.]

The Cards went on to beat the Yanks in seven, only the second time that the Yanks had lost back-to-back World Series. My hero was, in Harry Caray’s words, “Barney Schultz, the Cards’ ace knuckle-baller.”

After I retired from the Marine Corps, I moved to the Philadelphia area, but it was that loveable band of misfits, the 1993 Phils, that captured my heart. Led by Dutch Daulton, John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra, and Curt Schilling, the day-to-day roster also included Pete “Inky” Incaviglia, rookie Mickey Morandini, Jim Eisenreich--a real "big leaguer", Rubén Amaro, Jr. (now the Phils’ GM), Larry Anderson (now one of the Phils’ broadcasters and my candidate for the Joe Garragiola award for best color commentator), and Mitch “The Wild Thing” Williams. In a classic “worst-to-first” season, the “Phighting Phils” took the lead in the NL East on opening day, and never relinquished the lead.

A rain-delayed double-header in July lasted just shy of 12 hours. Folks who left the game at midnight came back in the wee hours to see Mitch Williams win the second game on an RBI single at 4:41 AM.

In the NL championship series, the Phils beat the Braves (then in the West) 4 games to 2. The Series against the Blue Jays went to 6 games, but the Jays won the series on Joe Carter’s walk-off homer off Mitch Williams. [I have never seen that home run. I had a pillow case over my head for the actual hit, and I still cannot bear to see it when it is re-run. At the Hall of Fame in 1998, I turned away from a film clip of the homer. Another visitor looked at me and said, “My God, you’re a Phillies fan!” That was my epiphany.]

Then came the glorious years at the end of the first decade of a new century. 2007 marked the Phils return to post-season play, followed by the World Series win in 2008, which a merciful God allowed Harry Kalas to call just before he was called up to join the broadcast team of Mel Allen, Harry Caray, and others following the Heavenly Choir Nine.

There was a return to the series in 2009, won by the Yanks, a loss to the Rockies in the 2010 LCS, and now, another post season following the best year in Phillies history (102-60). That the 102d win came in an extra-innings win over the hapless, choke-prone Braves (which gave the Cards a thrilling come from behind wild card win) was icing on the cake.

Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Placido Polanco, Raul Ibanez, Shane Victorino, Hunter Pence, Carlos Ruiz, and the pitchers, Roy “Doc” Halladay, Cole Hamels, Kyle Kendrick, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, Vance Worley, Brad Lidge, and Ryan Madson, led by the skipper, Charlie Manuel will push the Eagles off the front page for awhile. I’ll be in agony while the Cards and Phils duke it out. Ironically, I'll be in Tampa which staged its own come-from-behind wild card run, for all of those games.

Still, it is the post season, the best days of the year.

OF SAILORS, DOGS AND SENATOR VEST

Chief Petty Officer Jon Tumilson, U.S. Navy, was a son of the mid-West. From the landlocked heartland, like so many men before him, he joined the Navy. Two weeks ago, this warrior was one of the men who were killed in action when his SEAL Team was shot down in Afghanistan. He was returned to his hometown in Rockford, Iowa to rest eternally until the Lord returns.

At his funeral, one of his cousins, Lisa Pembleton, took a photograph of CPO Tumilson’s dog, Hawkeye, laying beside the flag-draped casket.

I hope that Chief Tumlison, a son of Iowa and Senator George Graham Vest (1830-1904), a son of Missouri, get a chance to be together in Heaven. Both know the truth about dogs.

Senator vest was justly famous for a closing argument he made in a case tried in Warrenton, Missouri, in which he represented the owner of a dog, Old Drum, who had been shot by a sheep herder. So powerful was his closing that the it is said that the jury returned a verdict for the owner of $500, ten times the jurisdictional maximum of $50. A statue of Old Drum now stands in front of the Courthouse in Warrensburg.

In his closing, Mr. Vest said

Gentlemen of the jury: The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.

Gentlemen of the jury: A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.

So here’s to Chief Petty Officer Jon Tumilson, loyal son of Iowa, squared away North American bluejacket, and Hawkeye’s shipmate.

PRAYERS FOR FELLOWSHIP PC(USA)

Beginning tomorrow, the Fellowship PC(USA) Gathering will convene in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For a good discussion of what faces the group, see GA Junkie ("Fellowship PC(USA) Gathering -- Some Things To Pay Attention To" 8/15/2011). Some 1900 registered attendees, representing 830 Presbyterian Church (USA) [PC(USA)] congregations will assemble for prayer, teaching of the Word, and examination of possible ways forward for orthodox churches within a denomination that has, in my opinion, completely left the tracks of the Reformed faith in favor of bowing to the demands of the world.

As one of the authors and editors of the report of the New Wineskins Strategy Team, and a ruling elder in one of the first four churches to leave the PC(USA) in 2007, I will view this meeting from afar and with interest.

Some folks who were involved, to one degree or another, with the New Wineskins Association of Churches (nee New Wineskins Initiative) are now involved with the Fellowship. Others appear to be the remnant of the two churches within one structure (the "2 synod model")camp that was so evident some ten years ago at the height of the Confessing Church Movement.

Some will attend who have different lines in the sand than did we who fought our way out of the PC(USA) four years ago. They will probably follow us out, through the holes we opened for them at great cost. And finally, a very few others, mainly the victors in the long-lasting guerrilla war fought by those who demanded that the PC(USA) abandon Scripture in favor of a worldly ordination standard, are admittedly attending with the intent of sowing more seeds of distrust and dissension.

In our Strategy Team Report which was unanimously adopted by the more than 600 delegates to the New Wineskins convocation in February 2007, Rev. Dr. Rick Wolling and I wrote:

In this report, we set out a strategy for achieving a new thing, and for engaging in and effecting a realignment that fosters and nurtures that vision. The goal is to further the Great Ends of the Church, and not to undermine, but to uphold our life together as members of the Body of Christ.

Some of us will be called to follow The Plan detailed in Part III that leads to new relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ who are in a different place. Those who follow this path will leave their parent’s home and join with others to discover new ways to carry out the Great Commission.

Others may be called to stay where they are and be a prophetic witness to what has been our traditional home. Those who follow this path will continue to strive to reform, renew and repair the old homestead so that it can once again be a vibrant and welcoming lodging for those who are lost and hungry for the Word.

That being said, we implore all to whom this report shall come: there must be a new thing, wherever it may occur. To simply stand fast and relax in the status quo is to agree that no change is necessary. Is such a course a faithful response to the moment in time in which we find ourselves? We emphatically respond, “No!”

We believe there are two faithful options for evangelicals to follow:

To realign with an evangelical, Reformed body that is more faithful to Christ, obedient to Scripture and seeks a missionally focused partnership with us than is the PC(USA); or

To stay in place within the PC(USA), while working for the reformation and renewal of that part of the Body of Christ if so led by the Holy Spirit.

From what I have read, the Fellowship is still struggling with those issues.

For those of us who left in the first wave, the line in the sand was the Trinity report and the PUP report received and/or adopted by the PC(USA) in its 2006 General Assembly. For the Fellowship, the issues are the adoption of the New Form of Government and the abandonment of Scripturally-based ordination standards approved by the 2010 GA and ratified by the presbyteries in 2010-11.

If the Fellowship focuses on the important issues of God’s sovereignty and the authority of His Word, I can see the possibility of some real renewal in the PC(USA) as many of its most influential and orthodox congregations finally take a stand. But if the focus is simply on creating two different bodies joined only by common pension, medical, and retirement plans and an endowment fund, in which one body submits to a new, hierarchical denomination controlled from Louisville, while the other hopes to ignore that hierarchy, well…the Titanic will sink, no matter how the deck chairs are arranged.

There are many wonderful brothers and sister in Christ who will join this week to determine the future of the PC(USA), and they need and deserve our prayers.

BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT NOW!

On one of Sunday’s talk shows, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana was asked one of those “Have you stopped beating your wife?” questions that pass for journalism today.

“Governor,” he was asked, “what do you say to your party when in the recent debate, every candidate said they would not accept a deficit reduction plan that had curt spending by ten dollars for every dollar of tax increases?”

Surprise! Mitch belted that one out of the park.

He said that the real problem for at least the past half century has been that every time a deal like that is accepted — multiple dollars in cuts for each new tax dollar — the taxes have always been enacted right away while the cuts just never seem to be made.

Exactly right. I am so sick of hearing the President and the Dems in Congress telling us that there is no need for a balanced budget amendment. According to the Prez, all we need is for “members of Congress to do their jobs.” But the history of the past 80 plus years teaches that politicians are simply unable to pass up the opportunity of spending other peoples’ money on the things necessary to get them reelected. See, e.g., this article from Nevada (coincidentally, the home of Harry Reid) about $490,000 of stimulus money that created 1.72 (yeah, less than 2) permanent jobs.

I want a little piece of that action!

I’M FROM THE GOVERNMENT. YOU CAN TRUST ME.

As we enter a time of bus tour presidential campaigning “investigation,” the proponents of the Obama-led drive towards bigger government constantly assure us that we have nothing to fear from such a government. We are promised that when we are compelled to release all sorts of personal information, including but not limited to medical information, the law will protect the confidentiality of that information.

But now, we learn that even if the regulators try to obey the law, any member of Congress can request any information he wants and then spread it across the media.

According to an August 19 Reuters article by Sarah N. Lynch, confidential oil trading data collected by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been intentionally leaked to a Wall Street Journal reporter. The article states that the leaked information “exposed the extensive positions speculators held in the run-up to record high prices in 2008. . .. Senator Bernie Sanders, a staunch critic of oil speculators, leaked the information to a major newspaper in a move that has unsettled both regulators and Wall Street alike.”

The CFTC is specifically barred from releasing confidential data it collects. However, the law also requires the CFTC to produce such information if a Congressional committee acting within its proper authority requests it. “Once it is in the hands of Congress, there is nothing to prevent lawmakers from releasing it publicly.”

In this case, when the CFTC first became aware of the breach of the data, it conducted an internal investigation to determine whether agency staffers were the source of the leak. The investigation concluded that no CFTC employees were involved. Instead, it appears that the data was first formally requested by the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. From there it made its way into Sanders’ hands. It is interesting to note that Representative Henry Waxman, a liberal Democrat and ally of Senator Sanders, was the Chairman of the Committee when the data was obtained from the CFTC. Unsurprisingly, Sanders’ office refused to say exactly how it acquired the confidential information.

Now I hold no brief for the oil or commodities trading industries. I suspect that there were indeed shenanigans involved in the sudden catapult that sent oil prices skyrocketing in the summer of 2008. In addition to starting the landslide that engulfed our economy, it surely did no good to John McCain’s presidential hopes.

But the larger concern is the egoistic—even egomaniacal—assertion by one Senator that he is above the law, that he can ignore the protections that were consideration for people to produce otherwise privileged information to the government.

Certainly, this precedent must raise concerns at the CFTC, which is legally prohibited from releasing confidential information that identifies trader positions and identities, and other regulatory agencies which are also barred from releasing information. Many agencies are tasked with gathering information for use in proactively preventing future dangers to people, property, and the nation’s economy and security. If people realize that an investigator’s promise that “we cannot release this information,” means nothing, they will be less likely to give information voluntarily and in a timely manner.

But that meant nothing to Sanders. Ignoring the CFTC’s legal obligation to preserve the confidentiality of the information it obtained, we are informed that “In a statement from Sanders provided to Reuters, Sanders said he felt the data needed to be publicly aired. ‘The CFTC has kept this information hidden (sic) from the American public for nearly three years," he said. "This is an outrage. The American people have a right to know exactly who caused gas prices to skyrocket in 2008 and who is causing them to spike today.’" (Emphasis added.)

Perhaps next year he will decide that the American people have a right to know details of my medical treatment by the VA. . . or your vasectomy! It his decision alone, the law be damned.