Originally written by David Kallans on July 5, 2009 2:51 AM Anyway, I appreciate the ironic wish for a happy Fourth from a Brit.

I don't suppose the "7-volley salute" (same number of volleys a ship calling at a foreign port would fire in the olden days) was ironically intended for South Korea rather than the US, in which case, it would then raise the question of how tolerant Obama would be for such "call for attention" (or would that be defiant) behavior?

Originally written by Jacek K. on July 4, 2009 11:56 AM     Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

In fact I think the American anthem is very beautiful, regardless of its distorted syntax and poetic inversions. People just do not know that much about music and poetry these days, and it may be quite difficult for some to sing. If something is too difficult or too incomprehensible, people usually reject it. As for the flag, not too many people have this kind of an attitude, perhaps on comic shows, usually cheap ones.

Originally written by David Kallans on July 4, 2009 7:51 PM Anyway, I appreciate the ironic wish for a happy Fourth from a Brit.

Remember, they still have Canada, Australia and New Zealand left...

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From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124656447523887753.html:

The vote was completed: 12 for independence, New York abstaining, no one opposing. "The break was made, in words at least: on July 2, 1776, in Philadelphia, the American colonies declared independence. If not all 13 clocks had struck as one, twelve had, and with the others silent the effect was the same."

On July 3, Congress argued over the wording and exact content of the formal Declaration. An indictment of the slave trade was dropped. In all, Thomas Jefferson saw roughly 25% of what he'd written wind up on the floor.

On July 4, discussion ended, debate was closed, a vote on the final draft of the Declaration of Independence was called, and the results were as on July 2. Congress ordered the document be printed. They'd sign it in a month. For now, John Hancock and one other, Charles Thompson, fixed their signatures.

Those present thought the great day had been July 2—the vote for independence itself. John Adams, who'd emoted over the 2nd in letters to Abigail, didn't even mention the 4th , and Thomas Jefferson famously went shopping that afternoon for ladies' gloves.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/nyregion/05liberty.html?hp

For the privilege of being the first people in nearly eight years to climb the 354 steps to the crown of the Statue of Liberty, 30 visitors on the sun-kissed morning of July 4 had to first endure a bit of bureaucracy: red tape and stiff security. ...

The statue was closed to the public after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and while the base, the pedestal and the observation deck reopened in 2004, the crown remained closed because of security concerns. For the statue’s reopening on the morning of Independence Day, uniforms were everywhere. Some parts of Liberty Island had the feel of an armed fortress, with officers from the Coast Guard, National Parks Service and the New York Police Departmental Justiceg. Coast Guard cutters and police launches bobbed in the harbor.

Before boarding the ferry at Battery Park in Manhattan, ticket holders had to empty their pockets, open their laptops and pass through magnetometers, only to repeat this experience after they debarked on Liberty Island. There they were herded through large white tents and had to pass through an air sensor that puffed in its search for chemicals, according to a worker. ...

For Erica Breder, the experience had also left her speechless.

That is because when she reached the small room at the top with 25 windows overlooking New York Harbor, her boyfriend of three years, Aaron Weisinger, 26, got down on one knee and proposed marriage. ...

Getting the diamond ring through security without Ms. Breder knowing might have been the most difficult part. Mr. Weisinger said he transferred it from his pocket to a friend’s camera bag at the last moment before going through the second set of detectors. ...

Gold does not sound if you go through metal detectors, neither does silver or diamonds, only bra wires.

Only if it were not gold...

That ring did contain a STONE though and I am sure stones, which historically have been used as weapons, are considered as dangerous as bottled water and would not be therefore allowed for security reasons. A stone is a stone, M'am. Our rules say NO.

I have stones in my rings and they never ring... unless you have an 18 carat diamond or a pink panther.

Most women wear rings in New York, and they are not a problem at all. There are other things that cause problems at security check points, including food and drinks, even water...

Watches, yes, metal watches, not silver or gold. Thank God I don't wear one, because just putting it on and off would drive me mad, belts: these are especially dangerous for men,vvery young men especially with the current fashion of wearing the pants low. Often you could see them in the swimming gear in court.

Originally written by Liliana Boladz-Nekipelov on July 5, 2009 9:25 PM Gold does not sound if you go through metal detectors, neither does silver or diamonds, only bra wires. Only if it were not gold...

Assuming that they have not already known, you've probably endeared your valuable self as a possible candidate for the post of consigliere to ...

I think they know, the people who need to know know: they don't have to make guns out of gold, plastic is good enough, certain kinds of plastic. I think they have already figured it out.
As for the consigliere, the wrong side of the law, on the right side, why not.

Originally written by Scott Rasmussen on July 4, 2008 10:58 PM Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on July 4, 2006 2:38 AM Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-selling "A People's History of the United States"   Zinn's is a grotesque book.

More of the same grotesque: Untold Truths About the American Revolution »

The American Revolution—independence from England—was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?

How many people died in the Revolutionary War?

Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it’s likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let’s take the lower figure—25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.

You might consider that worth it, or you might not.

Canada is independent of England, isn’t it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don’t have. They didn’t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?

In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.

Who actually gained from that victory over England? It’s very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it’s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That’s one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don’t think in class terms. We think, “Oh, we all have the same interests.” For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.

Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line—in the Proclamation of 1763—that said you couldn’t go westward into Indian territory. They didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They didn’t want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.

So when you look at the American Revolution, there’s a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians—no, they didn’t benefit.

Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?

Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it. ...

We’ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.

Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.

We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.