47 Vallandighams: The GOP’s Iran Letter and the Shadow of Civil War Treason

JarretR 49 Comments
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton (R-Confederacy) and his GOP collegues don't take kindly to Obama being president of 'Murica.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton (R-Confederacy) and his GOP colleagues don’t take kindly to Obama being president of ‘Murica.

What exactly is treason? Well that’s an easy one, innit? Treason is when a scheming, disloyal jerk betrays a sacred oath they took to their country, usually in the service of an enemy power or for shallow, partisan, political gains. It’s one of those concepts that everyone intuitively understands, but it gets really thorny when brought under the parsing nuance of the law.

Thus, when 47 members of the Republican-dominated Senate sent “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” (seriously, they used a generic salutation more akin to an editorial in a local newspaper) for the express purpose of undermining the Obama Administration’s ongoing diplomatic nuclear talks with Iran, they probably weren’t concerned about committing treason against the United States (besides, Obama’s from Kenya anyhoo, right?). And while their boneheaded attempt to score political points with their war-happy, right-wing base by giving said knuckle draggers yet another collective, foreign-conflict buzz may or may not constitute treason in a constitutional sense, there’s another conception of treason — the popular conception — that’s played a major role in U.S. history, and 47 GOP senators have skirted this line closer than Cubans in a missile crisis. 

As Talking Points Memo notes, the general response to the antics of Tom Cotton (R-Confederacy), Ted Cruz (R-Vichy France), Rand Paul (R-Republic of Judas) and other GOP Senate chuckleheads has been less than glowing — at least outside of the dittohead information bubble. They’ve even inspired the Twitter hashtag #47Traitors. But in addition to being unorthodox and flippant in their blatant attempt to undermine President Obama’s authority, these Upper-Chamber nematodes might have run afoul of the 1799 Logan Act, which states that:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

Now, granted, the constitutionality of the Logan Act hasn’t been much discussed, and only one person has ever been indicted under it (back in 1803), so it’s unlikely that Tom Cotton will be spending any time in Oz. So while the 47 GOPers who sent the brazen letter to Iran — seemingly without understanding basic facts about what constitutes a nonbinding international arrangement — probably haven’t committed treason in the legal sense, they’ve definitely committed it in the popular sense. In this respect, their antics hark back to the Civil War era, when treason was on every American’s mind. During that conflict, President Abraham Lincoln persecuted perhaps the most famous accused Civil War-era traitor outside of the Confederacy — Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham — for undermining the presidency during wartime. This case was controversial, to say the least, and while Vallandigham may or not have been a traitor, he definitely laid the groundwork for Senate Republicans to lambaste another lawyer-turned-president from Illinois.

As historian William Blair writes in his book With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the  Civil War Era, popular conceptions of treason during the Civil War often failed to meet the legal definition of treason, insofar as it referred to a high-crime against the state. Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason as “levying war” against the United States or “adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” Moreover, to be convicted of treason requires the testimony of two persons who witnessed the “overt act” or a confession before an open court. These provisions were put in place to preserve freedom of speech and individual liberties.* During the war, however, this constitutional check on abuse of power didn’t stop northerners (and southerners, for that matter) from “doing their best to stifle speech that was determined to be offensive to the health of the national state.”* Confederate President Jefferson Davis did this, and so did President Abraham Lincoln, especially in the case of Clement Vallandigham.

Ohio Copperhead Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham. Take note, modern GOP.

Ohio Copperhead Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham. Take note, modern GOP.

Clement L. Vallandigham was a Democratic congressman from Ohio, a member of the so-called “Peace Democrats” faction, or, as they were more popularly labeled, the Copperheads. The Copperheads were anti-abolitionist, and they adamantly opposed Lincoln’s war against the Confederacy and generally supported the South’s right to own slaves. They reaped their greatest support from sections of mid-western states like Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Republicans gave them their serpentine nickname, likening the anti-war Democrats to the venomous snake because they (allegedly) represented a sinister internal threat to the Union war effort.

And few Copperheads were more outspoken in their anti-war and pro-slavery views than Vallandigham. During the war he made it his mission to defend the Southern states’ right to secede from the Union, to defend slavery as an unassailable institution, and to excoriate the Republican Party and the Lincoln Administration as brutish agents of unfettered tyranny. In an 1863 speech before the House of Representatives, for example, Vallandigham denounced “the persistent and most vigorous efforts made by this [Lincoln] Administration…to convert the United States into an imperial or despotic government!”* His remarks, however overblown, weren’t entirely illegitimate either. During the war, Lincoln, with the support of Congress, suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, putting loyal states under military jurisdiction and legalizing the arrests of seditious persons who spouted “traitorous” speech that might negatively affect support for the war effort (the Confederate government, under the authority of Jefferson Davis, did the same thing).* With the suspension of Habeas Corpus, loud-mouthed rabble-rousers like Vallandigham didn’t stand a chance.

But here’s the rub about Habeas Corpus: Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution states that, “The Privileges of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended unless when in Cases of Rebellion of Invasion the public Safety may require it.” In other words, the Constitution says that you can suspend Habeas Corpus to protect “public Safety,” but skimps on the details. Lincoln believed that Copperhead croakers like Vallandigham were, indeed, threats to public safety, and he, along with Congress and the military, acted accordingly.

In April, 1863, Gen. Ambrose Burnside, Commander of the Dept. of Ohio, issued General Order No. 38, which stated that those who expressed sympathy for the Confederacy could be charged with treason under penalty of expulsion or death. Vallandigham, of course, railed incessantly against this order in a series of public speeches, and, for his troubles, Federal authorities arrested him under charges of “declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions.” A military tribunal found the curmudgeonly Copperhead guilty, and he was exiled to Confederate territory. Despite his exile, Vallandigham spent the rest of the war being a thorn in Lincoln’s side. He went to Canada, where he ran for the Ohio governorship in 1863. A year later he returned to the U.S. in violation of military orders, but he wasn’t re-arrested, and he spent his time politicking for Peace Democrats and cavorting with secret societies such as the Sons of Liberty (alias: Order of American Knights) that schemed to covertly (and unrealistically) subvert the Union war effort.

So, was Clement Vallandigham a traitor? Well, yes and no. In terms of the popular conception of Civil War treason, he totally was. William Blair writes that Union officials tackled the thorny problem of seditious behavior via the notion of “expressed or implied” treason, which was rooted in British practice. The purpose of this expanded idea of treason was to skirt the hard legality of the Constitution in order to adapt to the unprecedented — and ever-changing — situation of domestic political and military rebellion. Thus, punishing “expressed or implied” treason had one purpose: “to sanction measures against suspicious individuals without following the letter of the law,” albeit with precedents in international law and the U.S. Constitution’s own vagueness on the suspension of Habeas Corpus.*

This headline by the New York Daily News might be hyperbolic, but the stench coming out of the U.S. Senate is certainly unpleasant.

This headline by the New York Daily News might be hyperbolic, but the “expressed or implied” stench coming out of the U.S. Senate is certainly unpleasant.

In light of this Civil War background, we come back to the #47Traitors in the Republican-dominated Senate. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and the other goobers who sought to undermine President Obama’s negotiations with Iran to score cheap political points (and possibly bring on World War III, but whatever) are acting in classic Vallandigham fashion by expressing a popular “expressed or implied” treason. Like the pugnacious Copperhead Congressman before them, they’re explicitly challenging the authority of an elected President amidst highly sensitive circumstances that involve major issues of peace and war with an enemy power. Moreover, by reaching out directly to Iran’s ruling Mullahs, they’re giving the impression that they’d rather deal with an enemy authoritarian government rather than deal with the elected President of the United Friggin’ States.

This type of behavior isn’t far-removed from the antics of Civil War Copperhead Democrats like Vallandigham, who felt it better to undermine their own President not only on the (justifiable) grounds that he took possibly unconstitutional measures to punish dissent, but also because he was the leader of the Republicans, the opposition political party, and the declared enemy of a southern rebellion founded on the perpetuation of racial slavery. Thus, like the Copperheads before them, the modern GOP doesn’t just view Barack Obama as a member of the opposition party; they also view him as a domestic enemy, so much so that they’re willing to spite the President by appealing to the war fever of Islamic theocrats. But, is this treason in the legal sense? No, it ain’t. And, as enjoyable as it might be to see Ted Cruz exiled to a foreign country (perhaps back to that despotic Hell Hole known as Canada), no one should seriously charge Senate GOPers with treason against the Constitution.

But this doesn’t mean that what the #47Traitors did was anything but sniveling, underhanded, cowardly, and mind-blowingly partisan. If the Civil War-era notion of “expressed or implied” treason is alive and well in the twenty-first century, you can find it within the modern Republican Party, which puts its own authoritarian, conservative political ideology above loyalty to the institutions and protocols of the United States of America.

* See William A. Blair, With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the  Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 2, 5, 15, 38, 66-99.

* See Speeches, Arguments, Addresses and Letters of Clement L. Vallandigham (New York: J. Walter and Co., 1864), 424.

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49 Comments

  1. The forty-seven senators did exactly the right thing. The President is offering Iran nukes–a very dangerous and foolish thing–and he’s doing it without first consulting the Senate. Since the President won’t consult the Senate, whose permission he needs, and is acting against their wishes, they’re well within their rights.

    It’s absurd to call explaining the U.S. Constitution a violation of the Logan Act. In fact it’s absurd to talk about laws at all. The same President who says he’ll act if Congress doesn’t has no place to complain.

    As for laws, the President doesn’t follow them, so why should anyone else care about them?

    • “The President is offering Iran nukes.” No, he’s not. “As for laws, the President doesn’t follow them.” That’s a political opinion. “He’s doing it without first consulting the Senate.” No, he’s not, nor does he have to, since the negotiations are not a treaty, but a non-binding international agreement, the likes of which were struck by Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush in the past. If it becomes a treaty, then Congress should have a role, but the GOP’s answer is more sanctions (or war, it would seem), which hasn’t prevented Iran from enriching uranium in the past.

  2. I love it, Jarret. I wondered about the “treason” issue. Your post helps me sort it out. Since the term “copperheads” is already historically taken, why not label the “senators” cottonmouths, in honor of their fearless rookie leader. That’s another poisonous snake, and only apropos, in this case, as you have so well outlined here.

    Bruce

    • Thanks, Bruce. I like the “cottonmouth” idea 😉 Of course, everyone recognizes Iran as a dangerous regime, and while the GOP wants to completing deny Tehran the chance to enrich uranium, how on earth would they enforce that? Their other option seems to be continued sanctions, which haven’t worked in the past but have hit the Iranian populace hard. Peace and diplomacy, however tenusous, should be first priority here. War should always be a last resort.

  3. I think their game is to force the Democrats to stand behind Obama, and lock them in so as to create talking points for the 2016 Presidential election. Cotton, at least, has demonstrated neither knowledge nor concern with weighty matters of international relations. Soon after his stunt, he found himself dining with defense contractors, possibly the only actual beneficiaries of another war.

    • Granted, politically, Cotton’s letter is a great move. But, beyond politics, what is the GOP plan to deal with Iran? Do they have an alternative beyond sanctions? If the alternative is war, then we have a problem, because war with Iran also involves Iran’s allies, such as Russia and China, and if you think the Middle East is destabalized now…

  4. I don’t think they have a plan more complicated than robust jingoism. They don’t do nuance, and actively disdain Knowing Stuff. They just want to kick the can past the 2106 election.

  5. The 47 Senate Patriots courageously performed a great and noble deed on behalf of the United States, and each one of them deserve the thanks of the entire nation. Obama has come very close to committing treason, and these 47 heroes have endeavored to protect America despite Obama’s lawless tyranny. God Bless the 47 Senate Patriots.

  6. They’ve given Obama the Finger two times in a row.
    Goooooood!….
    Gooooooooooooooooood!!!!….
    Can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.

  7. Good essay, Jarret. I spoke with R.B. Bernstein on his FB page and he had the same thing to say about the Logan Act and the actions not being treason. That word gets tossed out way too much by people who do not know what it means.

    • Thanks Jimmy. As bone-headed as guys like Ted Cruz are, they know what they can get away with. Of course, that line is constantly being moved further every day…

  8. Oh please, Let’s not pretend that this any different than what leftists, Democrats, etc. (or right-wingers, Republicans, etc.) have done in the past. First, let’s start with the pro-Soviet Left’s behavior during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact and the early Cold War. They attacked FDR as a warmonger and then suddenly did a 180 when Hitler associated with the Soviet Union. The Communist Party was utterly subservient to a foreign dictatorship. They did their best to discredit true allegations of Soviet espionage. Henry Wallace wrote a letter to Stalin that probably violated the Logan Act. But, OK, they were extremists. Let’s look at some later periods.
    During the Vietnam War, you had students chanting, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh”. Let’s not forget all those people that visited Vietnam- Jane Fonda, anyone?
    After the Vietnam War, in 1975, Sparkman and McGovern visited Cuba.
    Anyone remember Ted Kennedy’s contacting the KGB during Reagan’s Presidency? Or the Democrats’ “Dear Commandte” letter to Ortega? Or Jim Wright’s behavior via Nicaragua generally? For a more recent example, take Pelosi’s visit to Syria in 2007. And yes, there are plenty of Republican examples (Nixon and South Vietnam in 1968 comes to mind.) My point is this behavior is business as usual. Weren’t you the same person telling us just a couple posts ago how wrong it was for the Republicans to question Obama’s patriotism? You’re just angry because your ox is being gored. The next time we have a Republican President, a Democrat will pull a similar stunt, the Republicans will call them traitors and the Democrats will act outraged that anyone would question their patriotism.

    • If I recall right, FDR faced warmonger accusations from folks in his own party as well as from isolationist Republicans. As far as the Hanoi Jane and pro-Ho Chi Minh student examples are concerned, those would definitely count under the “expressed or implied” category, but those people weren’t high-ranking senators either. And just because the other side has done it in the past doesn’t negate criticism of it in the present.

      Heck, I expect the Republicans to disagree with Obama on these matters, but they should be doing that once the deal is brought to Congress. Going behind the President’s back for purely partisan motives like this fits right in line with their attempt to delegitimize not just his political stances, but his actual identity as an American. It really is just another version of them questioning his patriotism. Plus, I find it really hard to see a recent faction in U.S. politics that compares, in terms of its massive political and cultural influence, to modern Movement Conservatism. The rage and onstructionism that Obama has faced from the mainstreamed paranoid Right is unlike anything seen in recent decades. In fact, the most apt comparison is the ire Lincoln received from the Southern Democrats and Fire Eaters in 1860-61.

      Again, there just hasn’t been a left-wing movement that compares to the current Right’s incredibly destructive influence in U.S. politics. So, yes, my ox is being gored, but one of my primary aims in writing this blog is to push back at the conservative movement, under whose power I came of political age. I’ve actually always been influenced by the vigour (however unhinged) with which they promote and defend their ideas, and I try and respond with equal vigour.

      • What I meant with the FDR-warmongers remark was the people that went from urging FDR to be more anti-Nazi, to suddenly calling him a warmonger when the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed- to suddenly urging American entry into the war when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
        My bad- I should have been more clear.
        And no, just because the other side has done it in the past doesn’t negate criticism of it in the present BUT let’s be honest- as late as Carter meeting with Hamas in 2008, the Democrats were sympathetic to meeting with foreign leaders in defiance of the President’s wishes and the Republicans called it treason. Now, suddenly, everybody’s switched positions. I wonder what happened in the meantime.
        And let’s be clear here- Obama’s SECRETARY OF STATE pulled the same crap with Nicaragua in 1985 that the Republicans are pulling with Iran today.
        You said that you wrote this blog to push back at the movement conservatives, who are currently the dominant force in American society. But you titled this blog “That Devil History”. History doesn’t work that way. It shows unpleasant facts about everybody- conservatives, liberals, the powerful, the weak, etc.

    • True, I suppose I could rail against crap liberals pull more often. Heck, I’m one of those annoying people who complains on a daily basis about the Democrats not being actual liberals. But the common theme on most liberal sites is liberals arguing with other liberals about the failures of liberalism, which bugs me. That said, conservatives still tick me off the most, because in terms of the pushback against the great democratizing revolutions of the Age of Enlightenment, they’re still at the forefront. This site is unabashedly liberal, which I don’t hide, but yes, I recognize the bias, and recognition is the first step towards letting everyone know you’re right 😉

  9. I can’t help but suspect that this is all an act and our government is playing a game of “Good Cop Bad Cop” with the Iranians. Everyone in the West wants to prevent Iran from building a nuke and further destabilizing the middle east, so we are all on the same side. By the Repubs and Netanyahu playing the extremist “bad cop” they make Obama look moderate and reasonable to the Iranian mullahs, who will be saying among themselves “hey, at least we can deal with this guy. When he’s out of office who knows who might be in charge in the U.S.” (Of course they would be saying it in Farsi). Anyway, that would create a sense of urgency for them to negotiate and compromise. The Republican’s threat in the letter about not being obligated to comply with any deal after Obama is out of office is a bit stupid (yes, yes, I know some of them really are that stupid, but I hope 47 of them aren’t). The Europeans would still be holding to the agreement, so unilateral sanctions by the U.S. would be ineffective.
    Oh, and when I first glanced at the title of this post I first thought it said:
    “47 Vaudvillians: the GOP’s Iran Letter…”

    • On one level, I kind of hope you’re right, but on the other hand, you might be giving to much credence to Republican intelligence. I think most of these clowns are of the “Shoot first and never ask questions” variety.

  10. If treason relied on public opinion, we might as well put all politicians on trial as soon as they’re elected.

  11. Obam’a idiotic notion that he can execute an international treaty which obligates the U.S. to its terms without ratification by the Senate reduces him to a sad spectacle and makes his “negotiations” with Iran a pathetic farce ( yes I know Obama really is that idiotic and pathetic). Nevertheless, and despite Obama’s comedy or errors, the GOP Senators might be able to salvage an agreement by working closely with Netanyahu instead of the dopey administration.

    • Why would they work with a guy who is not in power any more? They can’t work with anyone. They failed to save Netanyahu’s ass and might have actually helped him lose the election.
      As for Obama, he can read the Constitution and knows any treaty he negotiates has to be ratified by the Senate. Now maybe 47 senators are stupid enough to think otherwise.
      The only thing pathetic is the idiocy of those 47 senators and their buddies in the House who continually screw up governing the country. They wanted power. They got it. They don’t know how to use it.

      • “They wanted power. They got it. They don’t know how to use it.” On one level, I think they do: they intentially make government so inefficient that people start hating government, and vote Republican because they’re the “anti-government party.”

    • Plus, it’s not just Obama and Bibi here: the negotiations also involve European countries, so it’s not like American conservatives can raise their magic tough-guy wand and make Iran go away. And, again, what’s their plan? Cotton says he wants a full nuclear ban, which isn’t going to happen. Ever. So, do they want another war? Iran has risen to greater prominence in the Mideast because the neo-conservatives took out Iraq, it’s biggest rival, wanna repeat that? Why do people think that incessant American dick wagging will scare everyone else in the world into submission?

      • It is the same thought process that led the US into the 2003 Iraq War. These GOP folks think the US can go it alone on anything. It cannot do that in the global community any more. The rest of the world is working on a treaty with Iran. Were the GOP types to get their way, the rest of the world would continue to make a treaty with Iran. The international community does not need the US to create such a treaty. That in effect would leave the US on its own in placing sanctions on Iran.

        The GOP senators can make all the noise they want, but the bottom line is that the American people are not going to support a war with Iran. So in the end, all those senators have is noise. They’ve been saying the sky is falling for years. They have been consistently wrong the entire time.

  12. Just a couple of things. If Obama can read the constitution, his Secretary of State evidently cannot. Kerry recently testified before the Senate Committe on Foreign Relations that the “deal” Obama is clumsily trying to negotiate does not requireormandyormal approval process”. This administration is just ass-over backwards incompetent.

    And speaking of raising tough-guy wands, that reminds me of another Kerrey, former Nebraska Democrat Senator Bob Kerrey. He was the liberal Democrat who lead a Navy Seal Team that slaughtered innocent women and children, and the elderly for that matter-during the Vietnam War. Now that’s a tough-guy. Maybe he could negotiate a deal with the Iranians.

    • “Sole-executive agreements can only relay a promise by the current occupant of the Oval Office about the exercise of his own powers. The Constitution vests the president with authority as commander-in-chief to make decisions beginning and ending the use of military force. So, for example, an agreement that halted Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program but imposed no similar obligation on the United States likely would not be a treaty. … But agreements that extend beyond a president’s time in office or make long-term commitments of U.S. sovereignty must undergo the Article II treaty process.” John Bolton

    • That, and I explicitly referred to “former Nebraska Democrat Senator Bob Kerrey”. Although when Democrat Harry Truman decided to incinerate hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, one could argue that that too, was a tough-guy waving his wand.

  16. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men placed in abnormal circumstances. Situations where the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed and have been replaced by a constant round of fear, anger, blood, and death.

  17. Huge, huge win for Netanyahu. Some brainless dolt actually said that he was longer in power and that by inviting him to speak before Congress, the GOP might have “actually helped him lose the election” lol. But then again, the dimwit who said that is as ignorant of contemporary politics as he is of history. Again, HUGE win for Bibi. Thanks GOP, for giving Bibi a platform and helping him WIN the election. HUGE WIN. A HUGE WIN.

    • Is it a huge win? Look at the cost. Also, look at what the Arab citizens of Israel gained. For Bibi to create a coalition government with the runner up party to gain a majority it puts the Arab Unity party in the role of the opposition and they get real power for the first time in Israeli history. So Bibi’s victory comes at a price he and the other racists didn’t want.

      Plus Europe is going to turn their backs to Bibi’s policies and probably the US too. So what did he win? He lost but you can’t figure it out because you only see things in black and white. That’s what happens when you ignore context by choosing your simplistic views.

      The treaty with Iran will still happen. Bibi can do nothing to stop it nor can the Republicans. The Democrats will still win the next presidential election and you will still be ignoring facts while screaming that you are right. I also will still be educating students and you will be accomplishing nothing.

      What are you going to do now? Whine about it some more? Claim more victories that are really defeats? Remember, the British won at Bunker Hill. Great victory wasn’t it? I seem to recall from history that the British lost that war, kinda like the confederacy would lose a war in 1865 despite winning some major victories.

  18. Just a few brief remarks:

    1. Netanyahu’s victory is a thumb in the eye of the left. And it is effin awesome.

    2. No amount of bitter and deluded ranting and raving will change that. Bibi effin won!

    3. A fat greasy washed-up army cook teachers nothing to anyone. Not even to a motley collection of brainless community college misfits.

    4. BIBI EFFIN WON THE ELECTION!

    5. Really? Again with that tired, worn-out, lame, weak-ass, gutless “context” cop-out? And isn’t it just the darnedest thing how “context” alway, always, always, always, always works in you favor? I mean, what are the odds?

  20. Anti-Christian, Anti-God, Baby Killing, Anti-Liberty, Anti-gun, and so on. What I hear from the left side of politics makes me sick. Liberals have changed history in the school room so much, they now believe the crap they spew. Your left wing society has always caused your downfall. The massive debt and anti Israel platform that you have formed over time will soon come down on you like God did to Sodom.
    The God fearing Christians will be Bible reading, gun toting constitutionalist till the end. You, inside your beautiful demonic satanist world that you have created will be devoured by the same cretons that you create. When the time comes for this nation to crumble, you will be the first to see your ills, but too late it will be. The very people you feed with welfare and freebies will come into your home and kill you for your last loaf of bread.
    The Christian farmers that you put down will be safely inside their bible reading gun toting homes waiting for all of you to be dead. After it is all said and done, God will rebuild this world without the disgusting pieces that you are.
    So, when someone like Ted Cruz comes along, you are scared to death that what he changes will affect your soiled lives and make it better for real Americans. You rejoice in your poop pushing disgusting lives and find it horrible that true Liberty always comes from the one that created Liberty.
    God is the beginning and the end, you are no more than a speck that shows up on the stool of society. You cannot have Liberty without acknowledging God.
    Since you will not do that, rest in darkness, because with you there will be no peace.

    • Scared of Ted Cruz? No, I’m laughing my ass off at him and anyone that thinks he is correct.
      Might want to read the Bible instead of telling me what you want it to say. Same for the Constitution.
      Yes, we change history. We change it from the propaganda you want to believe in to the history based on facts. I know you don’t like that, but since you are not a historian I guess you can just whine about it.

      I notice you couldn’t use your real name. It must suck to be a coward, but then that’s what all you racist scumbags are.

    • I pondered your hatred while I was at Mass this morning. I reflected upon what Jesus Christ had to say in the four Gospels. Jesus stated two commandments as being the greatest ones. The first was and I quote from Mark 12: 29-31.

      Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second commandment is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

      It is pretty obvious from your post that you do not follow these commandments. Until you can love your neighbor as you do yourself, then you will always be at odds with yourself. You do not get to pick your neighbors nor do they pick you. God has a plan and you are part of it as are your neighbors. They may be part of the LGBT community. They may be atheists. They may be Muslim. They may be Jews. They may be Catholics. They may be black. They may be any race, color, creed, religion, or sexual preference. It does not matter. Christ told you what you are to do.

      Until you can follow those commandments your statements are nothing. You do not get to pick and choose. That choice was made for you a long time ago. I say to you, any religion that advocates killing one’s neighbor is not a Christian religion. I prayed for your soul today because I think it is in danger.

    • Indeed. I’ve got no problem with gun ownership. I grew up in the outdoors, fishing, hunting, etc., and handguns for defense are perfectly reasonable. But there’s a big difference between gun ownership and the firearm-humping death cult of America’s gun-nuts.

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