The term “Founders” is ambiguous. It usually refers to the delegates who drafted today’s federal Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787, but it might as well apply to the members of the state ratifying conventions, who voted to enact it into law. In this case, it doesn’t matter, because a majority of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention rejected proposals by Virginia’s George Mason and others to include a bill of rights in the federal Constitution. The new federal Constitution was then ratified by a majority of the states, even though no bill of rights was included. Neither the drafters nor the ratifiers of the Constitution thought a bill of rights was necessary to protect American liberties.

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“It’s just what they are — they’re jokes ... most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folk ... I can’t determine what offends another person," said Deen.

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About two months after Romney’s loss, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, channeling John Stuart Mill, admonished Republicans to stop being “the stupid party.” Karl Rove, whose bona fides as a political moderate had been fairly well hidden, announced that he would form a super-PAC dedicated to the proposition that only electable -- that is, mainstream -- candidates could emerge from Republican senatorial primaries. (No second amendment solutions, witches, or divinely ordained rapes need apply.) And John Huntsman, erstwhile Governor of Utah, Ambassador to China, and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, went so far as to endorse the formation of a third party. “Someone’s going to step up at some point and say we’ve had enough of this,” he intoned. A third party might not win, but “[it] can certainly influence the debate.”

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Original post: Prospects for peace talks over the Syrian civil war looked grim Tuesday, as the U.S. and E.U. butted heads with Russia over sending arms to opposing sides in the bloody conflict. The U.S. has praised Europe's decision to ease an arms embargo against Syrian rebels, although major European forces Britain and France have not gone so far as to arm Syrian rebels. As the Guardian noted:

British officials said the lifting of the embargo had a political purpose, increasing pressure on President Bashar al-Assad and his supporters, Russia and Iran, to make concessions at Geneva, and most importantly to agree not to play a role in a transitional Syrian government. If that fails, the officials said western arms supplies would strengthen moderate elements in the opposition who are currently outgunned and outfinanced by jihadist groups.

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BEIRUT (AP) — The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah warned Saturday that the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime would give rise to extremists and plunge the Middle East into a "dark period," and vowed his Shiite militant group will not stand idly by while its chief ally in Damascus is under attack.

In a televised address, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah members are fighting in Syria against Islamic extremists who pose a danger to Lebanon, and pledged that his group will not allow Syrian militants to control areas that border Lebanon.

Nasrallah's comments marked the first time he has publically confirmed his men were fighting in Syria, and were his first remarks since Hezbollah fighters have become deeply involved in the battle for the strategic Syrian town of Qusair near the Lebanese frontier.

Hezbollah has come under harsh criticism at home and abroad for sending fighters to Syria to fight along Assad's forces. In his speech, Nasrallah sought to defend the group's deepening involvement, and frame its fight next door as part of a broader battle against Israel.

He also portrayed the fight in Syria as an "existential war" for anti-Israel groups including Hezbollah.

"Syria is the back of the resistance, and the resistance cannot stand, arms folded while its back is broken," Nasrallah told thousands of supporters from a secret location though a video link.

"If Syria falls into the hand of America, Israel and takfiris, the resistance (Hezbollah) will be besieged and Israel will enter Lebanon and impose its will," Nasrallah said. Takfiri Islamists refers to an ideology that urges Sunni Muslims to kill anyone they consider an infidel.

"If Syria falls in the hands of America, Israel and the takfiris, the people of our region will go into a dark period," he said in a speech to mark the anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000. "If Syria falls, Palestine will be lost."

Syria, along with Iran, has been the main backer of Hezbollah and much of the group's arsenal consisting tens of thousands of rockets is believed to have come through or from Syria.

More than 70,000 people have been killed and several million displaced since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011 and escalated into a civil war. The Syrian government and Hezbollah deny there is an uprising in Syria, portraying the war as a foreign-backed conspiracy driven by Israel, the U.S. and its gulf Arab allies.

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In the midst of the Civil War, newspapers North and South featured stories about soldiers whose dreams predicted war’s end. On April 25, 1863, Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette demonstrated the credence it had given to a local artilleryman’s dream by printing a retraction, regretting that the man’s six-week-old vision of April 23 as “the date of Peace” had not been met. The wife of a Union general, meanwhile, could not banish from her fragmented sleep narratives gruesome premonitions about her sons: “One night I dream that Paul is drowned, another that Benny is dead.”

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The Syrian government claims that the UN has attempted to widen the remit of its mission, which it says was originally intended to investigate an alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan al-Assal in Aleppo last month. It says the UN now wants "additional investigations which might allow the UN mission to spread all over the Syrian territories, and this contradicts the Syrian request from the UN and indicates to the presence of hidden intentions at the states which have sought to add those investigations as this constitutes a violation of the Syrian sovereignty".

Syrian state media reported that the government would not allow such "manoeuvres" but would still allow the mission to visit Khan al-Assal in keeping with its original intention

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As the New Yorker magazine’s Reeves Wiedeman wrote of the players’ joint public appearance, ''It is as if Custer and Sitting Bull agreed to deconstruct Little Bighorn.” Or those World War II reunions where aging Army Air Corps men meet the Luftwaffe pilots who tried to shoot them down over Bremen.

So, too, in Washington, four decades after the Watergate break-in scandal that led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. Up onstage was Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, one of the first victims of Nixon’s infamous “plumbers,” the burglars who went skulking into the night to attempt illegal break-ins – including one at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.

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How did we get into this situation?

The trail leads through federal-state interactions, like so much of American history. States were largely independent of the federal government until the 1960s. The federal government began at that time to provide resources for states to expand their activities in healthcare and then other activities as well. These grants have risen from well under $1 billion a year to around $500 billion in recent years. States rely on these funds to give grants to cities and for helping with many other expenses.

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The Times reported that the airlifts, which began in early 2012, now include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, as well as at other Jordanian and Turkish airports. An estimated 3,500 tons of equipment have been delivered through these flights. The Times noted too that U.S. intelligence officers check up on rebel groups and chiefs to determine who should receive the military aid and that Turkey oversaw much of the program.

Via the Times:

[E]ven as the Obama administration has publicly refused to give more than “nonlethal” aid to the rebels, the involvement of the C.I.A. in the arms shipments — albeit mostly in a consultative role, American officials say — has shown that the United States is more willing to help its Arab allies support the lethal side of the civil war.

The inclusion of the term "mostly" in the above paragraph is interesting and raises questions about the small role the CIA is playing outside of consultations.

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The Civil War is like a mountain range that guards all roads into the South: you can’t go there without encountering it. Specifically, you can’t go there without addressing a question that may seem as if it shouldn’t even be a question—to wit: what caused the war? One hundred and fifty years after the event, Americans—at least the vast majority who toil outside academia—still can’t agree. Evidence of this crops up all the time, often in the form of a legal dispute over a display of the Confederate flag. (As I write, there are two such cases pending—one in Oregon and the other in Florida, making this an average news week.) Another common forum is the classroom. But it’s not always about the Stars and Bars. In 2010, for instance, Texas school officials made the news by insisting that Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address be given equal prominence with Abraham Lincoln’s in that state’s social studies curriculum. The following year, Virginia school officials were chagrined to learn that one of their state-adopted textbooks was teaching fourth graders that thousands of loyal slaves took up arms for the confederacy.

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The peacekeepers, who were stationed in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, were all from the Philippines. However, as the Jerusalem Post reported,"the Philippines does not expect any concrete action by Israel to help free [the peacekeepers], in order to avoid dragging Israel into Syria's conflict, the country's ambassador said Thursday." However, Israel has warned that it will not “stand idle” as Syria’s civil war breaches its contested borders -- Israel has already admitted to launching a number of airstrikes across the Syrian border and near Damascus over the past months.

Peacekeepers of the U.N. Disengagement Force mission have been monitoring a cease-fire line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, for nearly four decades.

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As the New York Times noted, "it was the first time that members of the Golan peacekeeping mission, officially known as the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, had been detained by any of the combatants in the Syrian conflict, although the Golan region has been periodically affected by armed clashes and occasional artillery or mortar bombardments that have become a source of concern to Israel."

As Reuters reported, Israel has warned that it will not "stand idle" as Syria's civil war spills over into the Golan region. Israel has already admitted launching a number of airstrikes across the Syrian border and near Damascus over the past months.

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The announcement came as government troops and rebels fought street battles in Syria's strategic northern city of Raqqa, and regime forces dispatched reinforcements in an attempt to push out opposition gunmen who now control most of the city, activists said.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement released in Geneva that the 1 million figure is based on reports from his agency's field offices in countries neighboring Syria that have provided safe haven for refugees escaping the civil war.

"With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster," Guterres said.

Syria's uprising began in March 2011 with protests against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian rule. When the government cracked down on demonstrators, the opposition took up arms and the conflict turned into a full-blown civil war. The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed.

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The fact that the soldiers were on Iraqi soil at all raises questions about Baghdad's apparent willingness to quietly aid the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The well-coordinated attack, which Iraqi officials blamed on al-Qaeda's Iraq arm, also suggests possible coordination between the militant group and its ideological allies in Syria who rank among the rebels' most potent fighters.

Iraqi officials said the Syrians had sought refuge through the Rabiya border crossing in northern Iraq during recent clashes with rebels and were being escorted back home through a different crossing farther south when the ambush occurred. Their convoy was struck near Akashat, not far from the Syrian border.

Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraq's prime minister, provided the death toll and said nine Iraqi soldiers were also killed. The Syrians had been disarmed and included some who were wounded, he told The Associated Press.

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The investigators urged the UN Security Council to "act urgently to ensure accountability" for violations, including murder and torture, committed by both sides in an uprising and civil war that has killed about 70,000 people since March 2011.

"Now really it's time ... We have a permanent court, the International Criminal Court, who would be ready to take this case," Carla del Ponte, a former ICC chief prosecutor who joined the U.N. team in September, told a news briefing in Geneva.

But because Syria is not party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC, the only way the court can investigate the situation is if it receives a referral from the Security Council. Russia, Assad's long-standing ally and a permanent veto-wielding member of the council, has opposed such a move.

Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told a news conference that this was "not the path we should follow ... at this stage it would be untimely and unconstructive."

"We cannot decide. But we pressure the international community to decide because it's time to act," del Ponte said.

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Lincoln is rightly held up as the paragon of the American presidency, so it makes sense that people would ask how he would handle a tough moral question like the use of unmanned killer drones, which has compelling arguments both for and against. WWLD? We consulted experts and the historical record to find out. The answer may surprise you.

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The USS Hatteras images are being released this month to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the battle where the 210-foot ship was lost about 20 miles from Galveston. They show previously unknown details like a paddle wheel, the stern and rudder — and a shell hole that may have been among the ship's fatal wounds.

Archaeologists and technicians spent two days last September mapping the wreckage with sonar imaging technology.

Project manager Jim Delgado, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says the images allow views no diver can get because of the murky water.

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So naturally the GOP would host lawmakers eager to learn about "successful communication with minorities and women" in a room named for those plantations.

Naturally.

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