Friday feed is on.

Well, it's Friday, so you know what I'll be doin' pretty soon. Denise and I will go over and get dad and take him to eat, and then probably to another high school football game in Academy. I think I may have figured something out with the camera, so we'll see if I can get any decent shots.

I was just about to start class this afternoon when one student brought me a hand written note. This is not unusual. They sometimes want me to know why it is that they are having to get up and leave class early, or something. This student has epilepsy, and has occasional trouble, so I originally thought it might be something related to that.

She and her soldier husband are both in the class. He's about to be sent back to Iraq, and is always having to cut class due to some crud or other related to the preparations for the deployment. She sits in class tapping away on a lap top, typing her notes, usually taking notes for the both of them. They both get good grades, and give me no trouble, so I was puzzled when she handed me this note with a big smile on her face.

I opened it and this is what it said. It's a quote from Abraham Lincoln...

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale, and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung."

I looked up at her and we both smiled a huge smile of recognition.

You see, we are in the middle of the Civil War in her class. This quote refers back to the time when Lincoln lashed out at Northern Democrats for being opposed to the continuation of the war and trying to organize draft resistance. They had been against fighting the Civil War from the beginning, and had taken to clipping the copper head of Liberty from a penny and clipping it to their lapels. They became known as "Copperheads", from doing that. Of course, that's also a nasty little snake.

Their major constituency were recent urban immigrant populations, like the Irish, in the slums of Northern cities. They told their constituents that if the slaves were freed, that southern Blacks would come north and take their jobs away from them. They helped instigate some of the worst riots in the nations history in 1863, when the first draft calls went out. Lincoln went as far as to deport one of their leaders to the South, saying "If he likes the Confederates so much, let him go live with them". Their platform in the 1864 presidential race said that if they won, they'd negotiate a settlement to the war. They didn't win though, and Lincoln's victory spelled the end for the Southern cause.

No thanks to those asshole congressmen.

I'll see about posting more pictures from the base over the weekend. Took some interesting ones today. Denise and I are going to a party Saturday night for some folks from school, and then I'm going up to Dallas Sunday to a big gun show with some of the guys. My gunsmith has emailed me to tell me that my AKS-74 is almost ready, and the CMP has emailed my buddy Dave to say that my Garand is almost ready to send. So, I'll be bustin' out with cool new toys in no time.

Well, you guys have fun this weekend too. Cheers.