Clarence Page and Republic Insult Irish

Bravo to the Arizona Republic for telling off people who hold onto belief in the canard that President Barak Obama wasn't born in the United States.

On the 150th anniversary of the Irish Brigade's fatal assualt on the stonewall at Fredericksburg on the Eve of Emancipation, isn't it about time Arizona Republic apologized for publishing the canard that Irish immigrants were responsible for pushing African slaves off America's ladder of social mobility. Did the Irish write the US Constitution that permitted slavery? Were Washington, Jefferson, Madision, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee Irish? Does Eric Foner's Pulitzer-Prize-winning Fiery Trial claim that Abraham Lincoln, who at first was ambivalent about Emancipation and wanted to resettle freed slaves in the Caribbean, was Irish.

On the other hand all of the North's top generals in the Civil War had an Irish connection: Sheridan, Meade, Reynolds, and Sherman. Even Grant belonged to New York City's Ancient Order of Hibernians.

In the years since celebrating St. Patrick's Day by publishing this canard authored by Clarence Page, neither Page nor The Republic has singled out any other ethnic group and blamed it for America's sin of slavery.   Quite remarkable since not only were the Southern leaders not Irish, but neither were those who led the North's "loyal" opposition:  Clement Vallandigham, Fernando Wood and certainly not August Belmont, leader of the Democrats, who was a German immigrant who came to the Americas as an agent for the Rothschilds.

Chimera: Arizona Jaguar Boondoggle

The idea that the federal government should devote time and money to re-establish the jaguar in Arizona is a colossal, preposterous waste of money, a self-serving, activist driven boondoggle.  There were never very many jaguar in Arizona in the first place and none now. The fearsome predator was so rare even before Europeans arrived that it isn't even a part of Native American folklore in Arizona or New Mexico as it is in Latin America. The riparian habitat along the Salt, Gila and other Arizona rivers that's best for supporting the jaguar is long gone, a victim of humans, starting with Native Americans and then Europeans, diverting the waters for agricultural, industrial and residential purposes. Instead of indulging the fantasies of self-styled environmental activists and wasting money on this chimera, the money needs to be spent on our children or devoted to protecting the jaguar where there are viable jaguar populations and habitats in Central and South America.