90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, February 22, 2016

This Pilot is the Only Person to Take Down an Enemy Plane With a 1911 Pistol

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. One might think that the only time a pistol could be used to down an enemy aircraft as the shooter is parachuting to earth would be in a video game or cheesy action movie.

However, it has really happened at least once. Enter Owen J. Baggett, the only US service member who has ever been credited with downing an enemy aircraft with his sidearm.

Before the war, Baggett was a recent college grad working on Wall Street. Then he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942 and became a pilot.

Here is the tale of his legendary feat, from Wikipedia:

On March 31, 1943, when they were stationed in British India, Baggett’s squadron was ordered to destroy a bridge at Pyinmana, Burma. But before reaching their target, the B-24 bombers were intercepted by Japanese fighter planes. Baggett’s plane was badly hit, and the crew were ordered to bail out. The Japanese pilots then attacked U.S. airmen as they parachuted to earth.
Two of Baggett’s crew members were killed, and Baggett, though wounded, played dead, hoping the Japanese would ignore him. One Zero approaching within several feet of Baggett, then nose-up and in an almost-stall, the pilot opened his canopy. Baggett shot at the pilot with his .45 calibre pistol. The plane stalled and plunged to the earth, with Baggett becoming legendary as the only person to down a Japanese airplane with a M1911 pistol.

He survived and was captured by the Japanese. He would remain a prisoner for the rest of the war. Baggett and 37 other POWs were liberated at the war’s end by eight OSS agents who parachuted into Singapore.

Baggett went on to live a long and happy life, rising to the rank of colonel before pursuing opportunities a civilian defense contractor. He passed away at the age of 85 in 2005.

Several well-funded organizations — including the League of Women Voters and the NAACP — are fighting efforts to prevent non-citizens from voting illegally in the upcoming presidential election. And the United States Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, is helping them.

On February 12, these groups filed a lawsuit in D.C. federal court seeking to reverse a recent decision by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The Commission’s decision allows Kansas and other states, including Arizona and Georgia, to enforce state laws ensuring that only citizens register to vote when they use a federally designed registration form. An initial hearing in the case is set for Monday afternoon, February 22.

Under federal law, the EAC is responsible for designing the federal voter-registration form required by the National Voter Registration Act, or Motor Voter, as it is commonly called. While states must register ....

Flanked by liberal legislators, and Black Lives Matter founders Brittany Packnett and DeRay Mckesson, President Obama told White House meeting of young militant leftists that they “are much better organizers” than he was at their age, and that he is “confident that they are going to take America to new heights.”

During Thursday’s meeting on the U.S. criminal justice system, Obama praised Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson for his “outstanding work mobilizing in Baltimore around these issues.”

More than 30 Baltimore businesses and buildings, including a senior living facility, were burned to the ground last April by hundreds of thugs enraged over the police-involved death of Freddie Gray.

Obama thanked the room of leftists for...

Girls With Guns

In an exclusive Q&A with Breitbart News, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council President Chris Crane provides never-before-heard details about the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration fight that are likely to shake up an already tumultuous presidential race.

ICE Council President, Crane represents the nation’s approximately 5,800 frontline ICE officers, agents and personnel who are responsible for enforcing America’s immigration laws in all 50 states and U.S. territories. For the first time ever, Crane details his behind-the-scenes interactions with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as Crane sought to protect the nation’s ICE officers and national security.

Crane was integral to stopping Sen. Rubio’s amnesty plan from passing the House—which, as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) recently explained, “was a near-run thing.”

In his responses, Crane addresses an incident—first detailed by Breitbart News— in which Marco Rubio stood idly by as Crane was ejected from a Gang of Eight press conference for trying to ask a question on behalf of law enforcement.

Crane, an active duty ICE officer, has served as an officer for approximately 13 years and has been elected by his peers as the president of their union, as thus their voice on the national stage. Prior to joining ICE, Crane was a United States Marine.

What follows below are the complete, unedited responses of National ICE Council President Chris Crane.

BREITBART NEWS: It is well known that the Gang of Eight reached out to big business groups and amnesty groups in the process of writing the bill. When Sen. Rubio started writing his bill, did he reach out to you and other ICE officers for your ideas and input?

CRANE: Sen. Rubio never reached out to us. He surrounded himself with big business and amnesty groups, most of which were more interested in cheap labor and their own political agendas, and had no real concern for the welfare of immigrants, public safety, or the security of our nation. This while he ignored boots on the ground law enforcement officers who work within our broken immigration system every day and know ...

Our media is surprisingly Orwellian, and it's not always due to government control. People practice "doublethink" at their own volition, without a Thought Police. Social media (Twitter, Facebook) are instituting their own private Thought Police. Online journalism now means that the press is free to edit old articles, to change past reporting to conform to new political realities.

Consider the example in the book 1984 regarding the ongoing war between the three superstates of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia (representing English, Russian, and Chinese empires respectively).

At the start of the book, Oceania is at war with Eurasia. They have always been at war with Eurasia. That's the political consensus, and all historic documents agree. However, Winston Smith (the protagonist) remembers a time five years ago when Oceania was instead at war with Eastasia. Winston Smith struggles with philosophical idea of "truth". Which is more true, what everyone knows and what's in the newspapers, or the memories within his head?

Then Ocean's allegiance switched back again. On the sixth day of Hate Week, as crowds gathered to denounce Eurasia, the Party switched enemies to Eastasia. In a particularly rousing speech against their enemy, the speaker was handed a slip of paper, and in mid-sentence, without pause, without change in content or tone, he changed the name of the enemy he was speaking against to Eastasia. Eurasia was now their dearest friends. Those holding banners denouncing their enemy were suddenly embarrassed to discover they had unaccountably written the wrong name, and quickly trampled and destroyed them.

This change meant work for Winston in the Ministry of Truth:

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs--all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.

Last November, the Tsarnaev brothers (the "Boston Bombers") were "refugees". News articles from all the mainstream news outlets agreed, such as The Washington Post, the Atlantic, Time magazine, the UN/VOA, Vanity Fair, the Huffington Post, Nobody disputed that description. Even Wikipedia described them as "refugees".

Then terrorists attacked Paris, killing 129 innocents. A Syrian passport was found, making it look like terrorists inserted one of their own into the stream of refugees flowing into Europe. This created political backlash in America, where the House of Representatives passed a bill to hinder Syrian refugees coming into the country.

The other, pro-refugee side, has fought back, claiming that no refugee in American has ever committed a terrorist act. It's at this point that the Tsarnaev's become an embarrassing counter example, since indeed they committed the worst terrorist attack since 9/11.

To fix this to conform to the new political reality, the Tsarnaev's were reclassified as "asylees" (asylum seekers) rather than "refugees".

To make this reclassification work, history had to be re-written. The Winston Smith's of the world had to...

I would be behind the CIA's diversity efforts if I could be convinced that they will enhance the agency's ability to keep us safe. But a program dedicated to recruiting transgendered people is not designed to make the agency better – only more "diverse."

Washington Free Beacon:

The plan, released by the CIA’s Diversity and Inclusion Office last week, lays out several goals for “weaving diversity and inclusion throughout the talent cycle.”
One agency goal is “Becoming an Employer of Choice,” and includes “dedicated programs” to recruit every demographic imaginable.
“Cultivating an inclusive culture that encourages collaboration, flexibility, and fairness enables all officers to contribute to their full potential,” the CIA plan stated. “When employees feel included, have a voice, and are given opportunities to develop and maximize their potential, we create an organization of choice and become a model employer for the full diversity of America’s talent.”
“We will continue to enrich our workforce by targeting diverse communities across the United States to meet our talent needs, with dedicated programs for citizens of African, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Native American descent; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Individuals; Persons with Disabilities; Veterans; and Women,” the CIA said.
Among the intelligence agency’s key actions to meet this goal is to teach recruitment officers to

Here are some factoids to help wrap your head around it…

1. #Alaska is about 1/3 the size of the U.S. and is as wide as the contiguous 48 states. It is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined.

2. Alaska has more coastline than the rest of the U.S.

3. Flying from Juneau to Barrow, AK is the same as flying Orlando, FL to New York, NY.

4. It takes at least 24 hours to drive from Homer, AK north to Deadhorse, AK on the north slope. You’d already be in Tijuana, MX checked into a hotel and on a beach coming from Blaine,WA via Interstate 5 having passed through 3 states and traveled 300 miles more, in the same amount of time.

Graphic by Kim Mincer and Vanessa Rathbun
(via: Bureau of Land Management - Alaska)