*** Updated and Clarified

Out here along the Picketwire, we were mighty surprised ten years ago when we heard about an historian back east who’d proved that nobody to speak of had actually owned guns back in early America. This came as a big surprise, because it wasn’t what we’d heard from our daddies and granddaddies. But this historian, Michael Bellesiles by name, had all the facts and figures to prove it. This was pretty cheering to the New York Times’ reviewer (Garry Wills, “Spiking the Gun Myth,”), who said Professor Bellesiles had “dispersed the darkness that covered the gun’s early history in America” and provided “overwhelming evidence that our view of the gun is as deep a superstition as any that affected Native Americans in the 17th century.” Apparently a lot of people agreed, because Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture was given the Bancroft Prize.

Well, you probably know what happened. Some gun nuts and spoilsports started looking into Professor Bellesiles’ research, and it turned out that the evidence Garry Wills was so happy about didn’t actually exist. Professor Bellesiles had made it up, and the press had eaten it up. “Now many of Mr. Bellesiles’s defenders have gone silent,” the Times had to report a year later (Robert Worth, “Historian’s Prizewinning Book on Guns is Embroiled in a Scandal“):

Over the past year a number of scholars who have examined his sources say he has seriously misused historical records and possibly fabricated them. They say the outcome, when all the evidence is in, could be one of the worst academic scandals in years.

And in the end, they took his Bancroft Prize away, and he lost his job at Emory University in Atlanta. (more…)

That would be Lt. Col. Allen West, running for Congress in Florida’s 22nd district.  Because America needs more clear-eyed, unflinching truth-tellers like him:

You may recall the Atlanta-born Col. West from his service in Iraq, during which he was became embroiled in controversy for his actions in the field and was made subject to an Article 32 hearing, from which he emerged with both his dignity and service record intact and, in the eyes of many, his stature increased.

From his website, here are some of Col. West’s awards, citations and decorations:

In his Army career, Col. West has been honored many times, including a Bronze Star, three Meritorious Service Medals, three Army Commendation Medals (one with Valor), and a Valorous Unit Award. He received his valor award as a Captain in Desert Shield/Storm, was the US Army ROTC Instructor of the Year in 1993, and was a Distinguished Honor Graduate III Corps Assault School. He proudly wears the Army Master parachutist badge, Air Assault badge, Navy/Marine Corps parachutist insignia, Italian parachutist wings, and German proficiency badge (Bronze award).

Wouldn’t he be more interesting to hear from once in a while than another Florida congressman — and MSM darling — the snarky Alan Grayson (FL-8)? You remember him: (more…)

On January 25 a whopping 62 billboard signs sprang up in African-American neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, all with the same message: “Black Children are an Endangered Species.”  The two groups sponsoring the billboard campaign, Georgia Right to Life and the Radiance Foundation, intended the signage to be provocative. Black genocide demands attention — but not, apparently, from the MSM.

Nationally blacks comprise only 12.8 percent of the population but account for 36.4 percent of all abortions. Forty-three percent of all black pregnancies end in abortion. Put another way, “In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women,” according to the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm.

Why? If you build it, they will come. According to Guttmacher, 97 percent of all U.S. abortion clinics are located in metropolitan counties, where minorities and the poor are most concentrated. (more…)

All the Halloween movies of the past decade “got nothin’” on the scary stuff the media threw at Americans over the last ten years. Hardly a week went by without some new scare being reported on to frighten the masses into throwing out their veggies, wearing masks, or thinking their hard drive was going to turn into a cyber pit bull and put a dozen stitches into their iPod.  Herewith, a dozen of the most bogus:

12. Y2K

Jan 1, 2000. The decade began with a whopper. Computers were not going to be able to know how to register the year 2000 and systems as large as the Pentagon’s and as small as your cell phone were going to freak out and party like it was 1900. Of course, nothing happened. Everybody’s computers were fine and the new millennium began much like the last one, except this time we don’t have the very real fears of polio and the black plague to destroy our lives. (more…)