Women in Combat Roles



A soldier from Israel, one of few countries in the world

where women are drafted into military services on the

same conditions as men, sits at the turret of her tank preparing

to take part in a dawn raid on the Gaza Strip in 2009




One of the most famous women in battle, Joan of Arc, who led her troops to victory over the British during the Hundred Years War in early 15th century France

                    

Out-going Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced on January 24 that the military will lift its ban on  women serving in combat roles  which will open about 230,000 posts, including those on the front lines. This issue was discussed in our last class "Presidential War Making Powers" and no one should be surprised to see it coming including what the impact will be on the Selective Service draft down the road.
An excellent balanced view of this decision can be found in this column by Professor Walter Williams in the Washington Examinar and our own local Herald Star entitled  Some Questions About Women in Combat.

And today another  blow to military morale was stuck to further advance this administration's quite clear agenda to destroy our military services. Departing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta extended a list of benefits — all previously denied by the Pentagon — to the same-sex spouses of service members as well as to the unmarried partners of gay troops. The perks, automatically available to heterosexual military spouses, will include child care services, member-designated hospital visits, and the issuing of military ID cards, which will give same-sex spouses and partners access to on-base commissaries, movie theaters and gyms. The policy changes will go into effect once training on the new rules is completed, Panetta said. However, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) still blocks the DOD from enacting more than 85 other benefits now provided to heterosexual military spouses and their children — most notably medical and dental care, housing allowances, and death benefits.

Continue to pray for our military and their leaders as they are clearly under attack.

FINAL EXAM 2012



Of course, This does not apply to Home Schooling  Moms or Dads!



The Final Exam is now posted on ENGRADE  and here on the blog. Remember this is is an OPEN BOOK exam. Questions come from your class handouts, homework assignments, items on our blog site and any articles distributed in class or noted on your handouts. You may ask your parents for advice and help if needed but work apart from other members of the class including your siblings.

The EXAM is to be finished and turned in for grading no later than Saturday, January 12, 2013. Your exam, any ungraded homework and final grades will be returned to you later in January 2013. As I grade your ungraded homework and final exam, I will post grades on ENGRADE and give periodic updates on the blog as I complete grading.  If you have questions, you may send me a message via E-mail , Engrade or simply  clicking on "No Comments" at the end of this post. And there is always the old fashioned phone call @ 275-4029. Sorry but I'm not into texting yet.

MAY YOU AND YOUR FAMILY HAVE A VERY BLESSED NEW YEAR AND MAY THIS OLD IRISH BLESSING BRING FAVOR ON YOU AND YOUR FAMILY.

May you always have work for your hands to do
May your pockets hold always a coin or two
May the sun shine bright on your windowpane
May the rainbow be certain to follow each rain
May the hand of a friend always be near you
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

R.I.P. - President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate Dies

Daniel Ken "Dan" Inouye (September 7, 1924 – December 17, 2012) was a  Medal of Honor recipient and a U.S. Senator from Hawaii, a member of the Democratic Party, and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate from 2010 until his death in 2012, making him the highest-ranking Asian American politician in U.S. history. Inouye was the chairman of the  U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations.

A senator since 1963, Inouye was the most senior U.S. senator at the time of his death. He was also the second-longest serving U.S. Senator in history after Robert Byrd. Inouye continuously represented Hawaii in the U.S. Congress since it achieved statehood in 1959 until the time of his death, serving as Hawaii's first U.S. Representative and later a senator. Inouye was the first Japanese American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and later the first in the U.S. Senate. Before then, he served in the Hawaii territorial house from 1954 to 1958 and the territorial senate from 1958 to 1959. He never lost an election in 58 years as an elected official. At the time of his death, Inouye was the second-oldest sitting U.S. senator, after Frank Lautenerg of New Jersey.

Because of his seniority, following Senator Byrd's death on June 28, 2010, Inouye became President pro tempore of the Senate; this made him third in the presidential line o succession after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. (Source: Wikipedia)

WEEK 15: Presidential War Making Powers



A Caisson carries the remains of Army Captain John Ryan Dennison during funeral services at 

Arlington National Cemetery, Wednesday, November 29, 2006



The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Captain John R. Dennison, 24, of Ijamsville, Maryland, died on November 15, 2006, in Balad, Iraq, as a result of small arms fire. Dennison was assigned to 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

THIS LAST CLASS IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF CPT JOHN RYAN DENNISON, THE SON OF JACK AND SHANNON DENNISON, OLD FRIENDS OF OURS FROM MY EARLIER MILITARY DAYS. PLEASE GO HERE TO SEE MORE ABOUT THE LIFE AND FAMILY OF JOHN RYAN DENNISON.

In this our last class, we will review the constitutional framework for presidential war powers and discover that the Constitution does not provide us with authoritative answers as to how the powers of the president as commander in chief are to be exercised. In fact, the debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 focused on the power of Congress to declare war and specific powers over the military found in Article 1. However, the commander in chief clause found in Article 2 of the Constitution does give some specific powers to the president and this forms the basis for the debate over presidential power in times of national emergency.

This week in our class handout we will discuss the following topics:

• A Christian Perspective on War
• The Constitutional Framework
• Presidents and the Military Establishment
• The Military Chain of Command
• Presidential Use of the Armed Forces
• Legitimizing Presidential War Making
• The War Powers Resolution of 1973

In more than 300 instances, U.S. presidents have relied on their constitutional prerogatives as commander in chief to use the armed forces abroad in situations of conflict or potential conflict to protect U.S. citizens or promote U.S. interests. Fewer than half of these situations involved any prior legislative or Congressional authorization. In September 2012, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) prepared for Congress an updated report and detailed listing of notable deployments of U.S. Military Forces overseas between 1798 and 2012. To view this listing click on here. In fact there have been only five (5) times in American history when presidents have used the armed forces with congressional declarations of war.

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush named the Axis-of-Evil nations in his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Since then there has been legitimate debate and interpretations of the Catholic just war tradition by Christians as they formulate a responsible U.S. answer to the terrorist threat. In this 2005 article "Bush vs. Benedict", you can read here how Catholic neoconservatives grapple with their Church's just war tradition. 

Mean while back in 2001, after the 9/11 attack, James V. Schall, S.J. wrote an extensive commentary on the War on Terror entitled "Assessing What is at Issue in this War" and Patrick Buchanan commented on Colin Powell's remarks on Terrorism on the 6th anniversary of 9-11 in his article "Is Terrorism Really a Mortal Threat?".

In June 2012, Mr. Buchanan offered commentary on the uprising in Syria by contrasting it to the Spanish Civil War which he describes as the Great Rehearsal for World War II in his article "Dress Rehearsal for a Mideast War?". And most recently last month, he analyzed the darkness of the current situation in the Middle East and suggests President Obama ask himself this question, "How would America's vital interests be imperiled by staying out of this particular quarrel, conflict or war?"  See his article entitled "Is Middle East Peace a Mirage?"

The neoconservatives are not really conservatives at all. They are impostors and opportunists. — Where the Right Went Wrong

WEEK 14: Presidential Diplomacy

Reaching a Critical Junction in Syria

Diplomatic attempts to end the Syrian conflict are "nearly impossible" and not enough is being done to end the fighting, the new United Nations and Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said in a recent BBC interview. 

In this Nov. 29, 2012 photo, night falls on a Syrian rebel-controlled area as destroyed buildings, including Dar Al-Shifa hospital, are seen on Sa'ar street after airstrikes targeted the area, killing dozens in Aleppo, Syria.
Source:  Christian Science Monitor



In this week's class,  we will examine the constitutional powers of the President in foreign affairs. What is diplomacy and how does the Constitution provide for the making of treaties? How does a treaty differ from an executive agreement and are these executive agreements constitutional? The president has three principal groups of officials to help him formulate foreign policy to include diplomatic communities, military communities and intelligence communities. The Secretaries of State and Defense together with the Director of Central Intelligence and the National Security Council (NSC) are key advisors to the President in carrying out his constitutional powers and interacting with Congress and its explicit constitutional powers detailed in Article 1. An example of a controversial diplomatic decision by U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton is the continuation of China's MFN status after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. See a BBC video of this event here, a Chinese video here, and a music video here that chronicles the massacre.

In our classs handout, we will discuss the following topics:

• The Constitutional Framework of Presidential Diplomacy
• Treaty Powers
• Executive Agreements
• The President versus Congress
• The White House Foreign Policy Advisory System
• The Secretary os State and the Diplomatic Community
• The Secretary of Defense and the Defense Community
• The Director of Central Intelligence and the Intelligence Community
• The National Security Advisor and the National security Council

WEEK 13: The President and the Budget



Your Portion of the Federal Debt is $50,563

This week we looked at the budget process and the role of the president, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Congress and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in developing a Fiscal Year (FY) budget for the U.S. government. Along the way we discovered that a budget simply determines government activities for the coming year, specifies when they will take place and puts a price tag on them. We compared the annual budget deficit or surplus for the years 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2000 though 2012 and the increase in the Gross National Debt and the Annual Interest on that Debt over those years. The FY 2010 budget was examined and controllable outlays were defined and identified and contrasted with uncontrollable outlays which include the various government entitlement programs.

The homework assignment requires the student to review the actual U.S. Government Budget totals for FY 2012 that ended September 30, 2012. You should view the Joint Statement of Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, and Jeffrey Zients, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, on Budget Results for Fiscal Year 2012 found under "Useful Links" and answer questions 1-5 of your homework assignment. Questions 6 & 7 are answered by reading the two articles found on the blog under "Useful Links" entitled: "What Would Leo XIII Say About the Social Security System" and "Fiddling While Social Security Burns".

Finally, we did discuss in class the potential impact of the "Fiscal Cliff",  but what often gets lost in the discussion is that "Bush's tax cuts" and "Obama's spending binge" don't begin to address the real problem and that is our Constitution gives Congress ultimate taxing and spending authority and they are ultimately responsible for the mess we are in, not this President nor any President before him.  See Professor Walter Williams article addressing this  "Who May Tax and Spend?" on this blog under "Useful Links".

Kent State Revisited



America in the 1960s and 1970s was filled with turmoil and civil unrest as the nation was divided in a way not seen since the Civil War.  As one looks at the events of this period, there is no doubt that the political activism of the young people on its college campuses contributed to the social unrest.  Civil rights demonstrations and anti-war protests were prevalent on campuses across the nation. Oftentimes violence followed these demonstrations and no other event captures this aspect of student life in those days more vividly than that of the tragic shooting that took place in a small university town in Kent, Ohio in May of 1970.

In a earlier post you viewed a video of this action by clicking on 1970 Kent State Ohio Shootings. Now you can read the rest of the story in an article revisiting those times by Steve Farrrell at "Peace Loving" Protesters: Kent State Revisited.

WEEK 12: The President & the Courts

Little Rock Central High School - 1957

This week we examined the Federal Court System and the Constitutional dimension. Article 3 of the Constitution vests all judicial power in the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. The president nominates candidates for openings to the 800+ lower-court positions in the U.S. District Courts and the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the nine member U.S. Supreme Court. These are life time positions and all of the presidential nominees must be reviewed and approved by the U.S. Senate. Because Presidents take an oath to defend the Constitution and execute the duties of their office, they have a constitutional duty to see that laws are faithfully executed - not only laws passed by Congress, but also federal court decisions. If U.S. Marshals under the Department of Justice are unable to enforce these laws and decisions of the federal courts, presidents may use Federal troops or call the National Guard to Federal service, or both.

Two examples in the 20th century of Presidents using this power to enforce Federal court decisions occurred in September 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas when Federal troops were called up by President Eisenhower. Click on this Little Rock Nine Documentary for more details.

A second example occurred in 1962 when President Kennedy called out Federal Marshals and then Federal troops so that James Meredith could be enrolled in the University of Mississippi. Click on Deadly Riots at Ol' Miss which outlines events leading up to President Kennedy's decision and the events surrounding the riots at Ole Miss and the shooting of 35 U.S. Marshals precipitating the calling in of Federal troops.

And in May 1970, closer to home, the Governor of Ohio called out the Ohio National Guard to the campus of Kent State University where students protesting the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces, clashed with Ohio National Guardsmen. When Ohio Guardsmen shot and killed four students on May 4, the Kent State Shootings became the focal point across the country for a nation deeply divided by the Vietnam War. See a video of this action by clicking on 1970 Kent State Ohio Shootings.