I'm reading a book by Vincent Bugliosi titled Reclaiming History. If you don't know the name, Bugliosi was the chief prosecutor of the Charles Manson gang back in the 70s and the author of the corresponding novel Helter Skelter and many other true crime books. Reclaiming History is a 20 year research work, 1500 pages long, in which Bugliosi debunks just about every imaginable conspiracy theory regarding the JFK assassination, including an entire chapter devoted to Oliver Stone's JFK. I'm a little over a hundred pages into it and beyond the storyline it's filled with lots of fascinating footnotes, including this one regarding "that the job of the president of the United States is the most dangerous elected job in the world cannot be too vigorously contested."

Bugliosi concludes this saying, "so starting with Lincoln in 1865, approximately one out of every three presidents American presidents either has been assassinated or had an attempt on his life."

In addition to the two attempted assassinations of President Gerald Ford in 1975 (by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme in Sacramento on September 5, 1975, and Sara Jane Moore in San Francisco on set number 22, 1975), the attempted assassination of President Richard Nixon by Samuel Joseph Byck on February 22, 1974, and the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan by William Hinckley in Washington, DC, on March 30, 1981, to other presidents were attacked before Kennedy, but the attempts failed. Additionally, attempts were made on one president elect and even one former president. On January 30, 1835, an English born house painter, Richard Lawrence, fired two pistols, both of which misfired, at President Andrew Jackson. Like William Hinckley, Lawrence was found by a jury to be not guilty by reason of insanity and died in a mental hospital 16 years later. On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to shoot their way into a Blair House, where President Harry Truman and his wife were temporarily residing while the White House was being repaired. Torresola was shot to death by White House guards in a hail of gunfire (one of the guards was also killed). Collazo was seriously wounded and sentenced to death, the Truman commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. President elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was shot at in his car five times at a political rally in Miami Bayfront Park on February 15, 1933 by Giuseppe Zangara, a 32-year-old brick layer and stone mason. All five of Zangara's shots missed Roosevelt. However, one of them hit Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was riding with Roosevelt. Cermak died of his wounds on March 6, and Zangara was electrocuted on March 20, only 33 days after his attempt on Roosevelt. The former president who escaped was Theodore Roosevelt, who is running for president again as the candidate of the progressive or bull Moose party. On October 14, 1912, a German born New York bartender, John Schrank, fired one shot at Roosevelt as he entered his car outside a hotel in Milwaukee. The bullet hit Roosevelt in the chest, but a folded manuscript of the speech he was about to make in the metal case for his eyeglasses absorbed part of the bullet's thrust, and he survived. The Schrank was found to be insane and died in a mental hospital in 1943.

So starting with Lincoln in 1865, approximately one out of every three presidents has either been assassinated or had an attempt on his life.

Labels: government, JFK Assassination, statistics

I sent the following letter to National Review Online today. Just thought it was an interesting interview. This guy's analysis is spot on.

James Miller's interview with author James Piereson ("Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism") was fascinating.

I was struck with Piereson's answer to Miller's inquiry to compare the Lincoln and JFK assassinations.

Piereson responded, "Liberals at the time [of JFK's assassination] were convinced that the nation was threatened more by right-wing radicals like Sen. McCarthy or fundamentalist preachers than by Communists. Given their assumptions, they had great difficulty assimilating the fact that JFK was shot by a Communist — for this was exactly the kind of thing that the hated Sen. McCarthy had been warning against."

Now, replace the words "Communists" with "Islamic extremists," "Sen. McCarthy" with "Neo-Cons," and "JFK was shot by" with "September 11 was performed by," and one realizes that the same persons who couldn't come to grip with reality in 1963 likewise cannot do so today!

Labels: 9-11, JFK Assassination, Moonbats