Stuart Saves Minnesota Part III

Comic-writer Al Franken [left] and Sen. Norm Coleman (R, Minn) [right] continue to battle over Coleman's seat in the U.S. Senate while the folks in Minnesota long for the days of Jesse Ventura.

Many moons ago, you may recall a blog entry about that goofy ‘ol senate race in Minnesota between Al Franken and the incumbent and disturbing-looking Sen. Norm Coleman [R]. Surely, you have figured that issue was resolved a long, long time ago and one of the men was declared the winner, right? I mean – this is America for Christ’s sake. It’s not like we need to send Jimmy Carter into Minnesota to guarantee a free and fair election, right?

Well, Mr. Carter perhaps should have made that trip to Minneapolis folks, because our northern brethren still can’t figure out whom in the fucking hell won that election back in November between Franken and Coleman. Philosophically, of course, we know that whoever won, the one loser is the whole thing is the state of Minnesota, which will be stuck with whichever one of these goofballs occupies the senate office in Washington.

Indeed, maybe that’s why Minnesotans can’t decide who won the election: they don’t want either of them. Well, whatever the reason, the ridiculousness of the situation is lost on no one, least of all the residents of the state, who fear they will be cast as a bunch of frozen, dim-witted knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who can’t count to four.

This is a perfect description of the two men fighting for the office. Franken became semi-famous as a comedy writer-turned-political-pundit and Coleman has served in the Senate since defeating former Vice President Mondale in 2002. Aside from being the answer to a trivia question [Which Minnesota politician is so disturbing-looking that voters choose Jesse “The Body” Ventura over him in the 1998 gubernatorial election?], Coleman’s undistinguished career has included an even less notable tenure on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a lot of bromides to the Right.

You can see, then, why Minnesota perhaps isn’t in a big hurry to send either one of these geniuses to Washington. A three-judge panel declared Franken the winner on Monday by 312 votes out of roughly 3 million cast. And that was after a seven-week trial. In about three seconds, Coleman announced that he would appeal to the state’s highest court, almost guaranteeing that Minnesota will not get its second senator until the Congressional recess begins this summer.

No one is more frustrated about the impasse than President Obama [except, perhaps, Mrs. Franken, who no doubt was looking forward to Al being out of the house more]. With Franken in the Senate, he would be the 59th Democrat, putting the party just one shy of what they will need to stop Republicans from blocking bills through procedural means.

Also frustrated is the man who was spared from becoming John McCain’s running-mate last summer, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty [R]. Pawlenty is considering whether to seek re-election next year, as well as whether to run for president in 2012. Under Minnesota state law, Pawlenty has to certify the election result before a senator is seated. Needless to say, Pawlenty is getting it from both sides: from Republicans in Washington who want him to do everything to keep Coleman in the Senate, as well as from those Minnesotans eager for the race to end with Franken the declared winner as per the three-judge panel.

Meanwhile, both Franken and Coleman are in limbo, frantically continuing to raise money as if the campaign never ended. Neither man can lay claim to Senate offices in Washington or Minneapolis – meaning that even as the incumbent, Coleman has been forced from his offices since his actual term expired January 3rd. Neither man can begin hiring staff or participate in any official way with Senate proceedings. Not to mention that both of these guys have been out there raising boatloads of money to pay mounting legal bills.

What’s worse, Coleman has gone from just looking weird to actually acting weird. In some strange awakening of his heritage, every morning now he puts tefillin — black leather boxes containing scrolls — on his arm as part of a morning Jewish prayer ritual. “I bind myself every morning,” Coleman told the New York Times. “I bind myself to God every morning because it’s in His hands.” Insert anti-Semitic joke here (which, no doubt, is what Franken would say Republicans want to do in the Senate).

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

All Those [144] Years Ago

President Lincoln's Shakespearean-like death a mere few days after the conclusion of the war he tirelessly sought to first avoid - and then win - resonates 144 years later, as do the medical curiosities surrounding the 16th President of the United States.

Back in 1987 I made my first trip to Washington, D.C. It was part of some bullshit-for-the-thing-high-school-achievement-feel-good-say-no-to-drugs-reward-the-geeks kind of thing that I'm not even sure they do anymore since God invented the Internet. Anyroad, part of the trip was sight-seeing. Our little group of over-achieving geeks visited Ford's Theater, where 144 years ago Tuesday one of the worst jokes in American history was written [and here it is: "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" If there had been a Tonight Show in 1865, that would've been a Jay Leno joke, no doubt] as President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth just days after Appomattox Courthouse formally ended the Civil War.

If I remember correctly - dubious, no doubt - Ford's had just been reopened after yet another great restoration project. There was a museum in the basement, with one of Lincoln's suits [whether it was the one he wore on that ill-fated Good Friday evening in 1865, I know not]. I vividly remember, though, walking through the home across the street from the theater where Lincoln actually died. After being mortally wounded, despite 19th-century medicine's best attempts to kill him, Lincoln managed to survive nearly 10 hours before he stopped breathing. Lincoln was taken across the street to a boarding house, where he was laid on a bed that was too small to hold his six-foot-four frame. In that room, a maudlin death watch began, with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton weeping uncontrollably in between having the hysterical Mary Todd Lincoln thrown out of the house for her uncontrollable weeping which was interrupting his own.

On that day in 1987 when I visited the boarding house, under glass was a macabre object identified as the pillow upon which the dying President's head rested during his last mortal hours on Earth. I remember looking at the blackened coloring and wondering what was dried blood, what was brain matter, what was oil from the President's matted hair, etc. I then remember thinking, "Jesus, this is sick." Somewhere, I have a photo of the pillow - taken as only a high school student can take a picture, crooked and with the flash exposed - and I'd upload it to the site here if not for the fact that it was taken in 1987 before God invented the Internet.

I share this morbid story with you because apparently there was a bit of souvenir gathering going on around President Lincoln as he lay dying 144 years ago. You see, that "pillow" upon which Lincoln's head rested, the one under glass at the museum in Washington.....er, well, turns out there's another one. Or at least, another pillow case. Under glass. With blood. At a museum [this one in Philadelphia] and also said to be the one upon which the dying President's head rested.

Jesus, what did they do, take a stack of pillows and jam them one at a time under Lincoln's head long enough to bloody them and turn them into trinkets? Now, it's also possible that because Lincoln's body was too big for the bed they propped him up with more than one pillow, which would explain why there is another pillow(case) under glass. Still, it's a bit morbid, even 144 years after the man died, to think about what it took to preserve one of the pillows he died upon, let alone two of them.

One of the more sobering accounts of John Lennon's murder that I've read in the nearly 29 years since it happened was that of the presiding emergency room physician who - before officially pronouncing the former Beatle dead - personally oversaw the destruction of all bloodied sheets, bandages, gauze, bedsheets and bio-hazardous medical supplies used in the fruitless attempts to save Lennon's life. "I didn't want a freak show where some orderly grabbed this [shit] and tried selling it," the doctor said 25 years later. And, again, that was before God created the Internet and eBay.

Of course, by 1980 we knew the world was nuts and that people had been trying to steal Jim Morrison's dead body a few dozen times over the previous ten years. In 1865, they may have just been seeking to preserve a little something of a beloved President struck down in a Shakespearean-like tragedy on the morn of the victory he had toiled for more than four years to see.

Back to the pillowcase. It's existence has come to light because somebody wants to run a DNA test on it. John Sotos, a cardiologist and author, wants to test it to confirm his belief that Lincoln had a rare genetic cancer syndrome called multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 [MEN2B]. How this will help Lincoln, I'm not sure, seeing as he's already dead and not even 21st century medicine can cure 19th century cancer [wait; it can't cure 21st century cancer either; never mind....]. Sotos has carefully studied 130 period images of Lincoln and - in conjunction with what contemporaries wrote about Lincoln's physical appearance - the good doctor believes Lincoln suffered from MEN2b.

This new pillowcase of which I write is really only a fragment of a pillow case, kept under glass at the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and Library, in Philadelphia's Frankford section. It was donated by a man on the staff of the U.S. surgeon general who treated the President after he was shot. Those on the board of the GAR museum are torn as to whether to grant Sotos' request to test the pillowcase. A decision will be voted on at the board's May 5th meeting.

Sotos has written a book, The Physical Lincoln, in which he attempts to analyze the President's feet, hands, lips, neck, heart, and other parts of the body to conclude that Lincoln had MEN2B.
According to Sotos, Lincoln "suffered from a very rate genetic disorder that affected him, literally, from toe to skull. The physical Lincoln was just as rare as the mental Lincoln."

Of course, this isn't the first time modern medicine has sought to diagnose the dead President. Back in the 1960s, the disease-du-jour for Lincoln was said to be Marfan's Syndrome, a genetic disorder of the connective tissue. The diagnosis was based on the absurd: i.e. people with Marfan are usually tall, with long limbs and long, thin fingers, like Lincoln; as well as on a smidgen of science: an examination of a 7-year-old Marfan patient that was an eighth-generation descendant of Mordecai Lincoln, the great-great-grandfather of the President."

When, in the 1990s, DNA testing developed as a way of confirming Marfan's, the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington turned down a request for testing on its own bloodstained artifacts [including that pillow I saw back in 1987], saying DNA science was not sufficiently advanced.

In addition to the Marfan issue, since the 1960s other researchers have studied 11 generations descended from the grandparents of Lincoln and found that a third of the descendants had some form of a genetic defect called spinocerebellar ataxia. Again, how that helps Lincoln [or, for that matter the living], I know not.

Those interested in presidential genealogy, however, may be pleased to learn that all of this has unearthed yet another group who wants Lincoln's genetic makeup DNA-tested. The Enloe family. Never heard of them? Well, probably neither had Lincoln It seems that 21st-century members of the Enrloe family believe Lincoln was the illegitimate son of Abraham Enloe of North Carolina - and not of Thomas Lincoln. Assuming this to be true, I guess the Enloe's will then be suing any surviving Lincoln's for about 200 years' worth of child support, in honor of the dead President's bicentennial this year.

So, we come back to the pillowcase. Back in 1876, the sole surviving son of Lincoln - Robert Todd - was horrified to learn that thieves had concocted plans to steal President Lincoln's body [see, 'Morrison, Jim'] from his grave and ransom the Lincoln family for $200,000 for the return of the remains. In response, Lincoln's coffin was encased in steel and concrete to prevent further theft attempts. Hence the reason why these morbid artifacts from the assassination are the only source of DNA.

As someone who loves history, I can intellectually understand the fascination with all things Lincoln, including medical history. The fact is, though, this was a human being. Even though dead 144 years come 7:13 am on Wednesday, April 15, 2009, Lincoln was someone's father, husband, son, etc. Out of respect for his memory, it's probably best to keep the pillows and pillowcases under glass and out of the lab. Unless there's a way to bring the man back and impart his wisdom to the current occupant of the White House in these dark economic times, it's better to let the man - and the artifacts - rest in peace.

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Book Review: Waking Giant

David Reynolds' Waking Giant aptly demonstrates the innumerable revolutions that transformed America between 1815-1848.

A quick read, David Reynolds' Waking Giant is an excellent primer in early-to-mid-19th century American political, cultural and social history. First, from an "interesting things to say at a cocktail party" aspect, the book is filled with numerous "a-ha" moments. For example, ever wonder where the expression "O.K." came from? Well, wonder no more: it came from Martin Van Buren's 1840 reelection campaign against Whig William Henry Harrison. Known as Old Kinderhook, the Democratic convention campaign used those initials and included them in the slogan "Down with the Whigs, boys, O.K."

Another example - ironically also from that 1840 campaign - is "keep the ball rolling". Harrison supporters would push large leather balls from town to town for each campaign rally - an activity that became an American expression shortly thereafter. I know, I know, 'who the hell pushes a ball from town-to-town'? This is what you did when there was no TV or porn to occupy your time, folks.

Yet another example is "the peanut gallery". During this era, the rise of theaters in America led to a democratization of "the play". There were three separate seating arrangements in theaters. Upper class patrons were in the box seats, middle class folk were in the wooden benches in front of the stage, while the working class (not to mention the prostitutes) were in the cheaper seats known as the "gallery". Those seated in the gallery smoked, drank booze, and chewed peanuts, disposing of the shells on the floor, leading to the phrase "the peanut gallery".

Reynolds argues - persuasively - that the Age of Jackson gave rise not only to democracy in politics, but to a wide range of cultural, social and religious revolutions from 1815-1848. The era of "isms" included abolitionism, transcendentalism, spiritualism, among others and they all made the era one of dizzying changes. Every aspect of American life underwent fundamental change. Sex, religion, politics, even cultural activities all expanded and changed so that a person awaking from a 30-year sleep in 1848 would find American unrecognizable from the world he left in 1818. Few eras in American history - our own perhaps being one of them - can claim to have had that much transpire in such a short period of time.

Reynolds looks at literature, the arts, music, dance and other aspects of social history with the same crisp and concise analysis he gives to politics. Children from the "Summer of Love" in 1967 would be shocked to learn that such sexual liberation had transpired 130 years earlier in Jacksonian America. A "free love" movement during the era challenged Puritan sexual mores. Women's rights and abolition began to expand upon who, exactly, "We, the people" really were.
The sexual revolution of the era - granted on a smaller scale than the "fuckfest" that was the 1960s and 1970s - led to other revolutions in the culture. For one thing, the number of abortions performed in the United States increased dramatically. The number of abortions went from 1-in-25 live births in 1830 to 1-in-5 live births a short 20 years later in 1850. Indeed, it was only after the Civil War that what we would recognize as a true antiabortion movement first took hold in the country.

I think my favorite aspect of the book, though, are those "a-ha" moments I mentioned earlier. Whether it's "O.K", "keep the ball rolling", "the peanut gallery", or the even fact that the word "homosexual" did not even appear in the English language until 1892, Reynolds laces his narrative with interesting facts that link the bygone era of mid-19th-century America to our world today. Now, the next time someone says, "we don't need any comments from the peanut gallery," you'll know where the expression came from. Chicks dig that, guys.

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Book Review: Tried By War

Of all the amazing accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln's career, perhaps the greatest was his ability to overcome the urge to travel to General George McClellan's headquarters and blow his head off.

James McPherson - whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom has become one of the great studies of the Civil War era - focuses on Abraham Lincoln as commander-in-chief. Citing a dearth of such studies in the Lincoln historiography, McPherson concentrates on the day-to-day military leadership Lincoln provided to what seemed to be a never-ending line of big-talking do-nothing generals.

One of the main premises of the book is that Lincoln was forced into taking a far more active role in military affairs than he had ever intended, largely because of the ineptitude of his commanders. He spent countless hours studying military histories late at night at the White House, talked with generals and military advisers, asking probing questions that helped to shape his military strategy.

It was not until Ulysses S. Grant's rise through the ranks that Lincoln found a general who shared that strategy: defeat of the Confederate army. More important than capturing Richmond, Vicksburg, Atlanta or even defending Gettysburg was the pursuit and defeat of that army. Lincoln - and Grant - realized that until that army was defeated, the war would continue even if the Union successfully captured every major city in the South.

Throughout McPherson's work, we see an agonized Lincoln waiting at the War Department telegraph office for his generals to attack. He wrings his hands at their lack of movement, at their over-caution, and at their short-sighted aims of capturing pieces of land at the expense of pursuing the enemy. There is the possibly apocryphal story of Lincoln saying, "If General McClellan isn't going to use his Army, perhaps he won't mind if I borrow it." That, in a nutshell, was Lincoln's first two-plus years as commander-in-chief. You only need substitute the names of Joe Hooker, George Meade, Ambrose Burnside and a half-dozen others in place of McClellan to get the full impression of what Lincoln faced.

McPherson confronts head on the natural question that might arise: if these generals were so incompetent, isn't Lincoln at fault himself for appointing them in the first place? As McPherson points out, in each and every case where Lincoln appointed these men, they were universally recognized as the most qualified for the position....on paper. There were some exceptions, military appointments Lincoln made with politics in mind [the appointment of Democrat-turned-Republican Benjamin Butler being one of the more famous].

Incorporating his thesis from Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson points out the evolution of Lincoln's thinking as to the main goal of the war. What started out in 1861 as an effort to reunite the Union as it was, evolves into creating a new Union free of slavery. The abolition of slavery gave the War a greater meaning than simple reunion: there had to be a greater purpose for all of this carnage than simply restoring the Union as it was in 1860. That purpose was abolition.

By 1862, it was abolition and the complete destruction of the Confederate army that served as Lincoln's two main war aims. Many times, however, Lincoln would be frustrated by his generals' inability or unwillingness to comply with his commands. In September 1862 he has to actually spell out for McClellan, "Destroy the rebel army." In June 1863 he says in frustration to Hooker, "Lee's Army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point." In anguish, he chastises George Meade after the latter's inability or refusal to pursue Lee's army out of Gettysburg. If Meade had only accomplished, "the literal or substantial destruction of Lee's army, the rebellion [would] be over."

As McPherson points out, many generals won battles capturing territory. But the war was won by those generals carrying out Lincoln's edict to destroy the enemy army: Grant at Vicksburg, Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, George Thomas at Nashville and - ultimately - Grant at Appomattox.

Indeed, it was not until the team of Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan came to the fore by 1864 that Lincoln had "his man". That is, a general (or, in this case, generals) who would fight the war the way Lincoln wanted it fought.

Destroying an army is not easy, however. It is bloody, lengthy and hard. The sheer number of Americans who died in these battles staggers the mind today. Grant was known as "The Butcher" - and that was what Northerners called him, so appalled were they at the casualties he [and, ultimately, Lincoln] was willing to endure in the pursuit of his war aim.

Tried By War is a quick read, and not too heavy on the detailed military analyses that sometimes makes reading military history a little like watching paint dry. As with most works that analyze Lincoln, the reader comes away from Tried By War with an even greater appreciation of the man and in amazement at all that this brilliant "backwoods lawyer" accomplished in saving the Union.

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Book Review: Dutch

When Edmund Morris' Dutch was published ten years ago, it created a firestorm within the historical and political community. Morris - a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt - had created a fictional character to accompany Ronald Reagan and to help tell his story. At the time, I remember being shocked that a writer of Morris' credibility would 'stoop' to such a tactic. I refused to read the book at the time. Over the years, though, I've been intrigued by it and often thought of finally picking it up. I'm glad I finally did.

For one thing, Morris' publisher does a far better job than the author ever did during that tumultuous book tour ten years ago in explaining why he used this tactic. Morris was announced as Reagan's 'official biographer' by the White House in 1985. Morris was given unprecedented access to Reagan throughout his second term - with the notable exception of when the Iran-Contra scandal exploded. Even then, though, Morris was privy to far more than most biographers. A few years into the project, however, Morris came to a startling revelation: he no more knew Reagan the man after spending nearly three years with him than he did when he started the project. Reagan was impenetrable to biography. There was so little intellectual curiosity in Reagan's mind, and so much 'acting' that knowing the real Reagan - indeed, if there was one - was impossible.

It was while trying to figure out how to write the biography with this major roadblock that Morris stumbled upon the idea of creating a fictional character. This character would be able to color in the blank spots on the pages of Reagan's life. Granted, it would no longer be biography in the strict sense of the word. Undoubtedly, the author's own hypotheses and opinions about aspects of Reagan's life - and why he did what he did - would make total objectivity impossible.

I'm not sure if Morris was right to do it this way, but he was right about one thing: it works. Dutch is an amazing book. The fictionalized character really does add tremendously to the book as a whole. But where it really helps is in the pre-presidential years. All of the quotes in the book from characters other than Morris' fictional one are true: they were obtained by Morris through years of research and interviews. Nothing in the story is 'fiction' in so far as everything everybody says in the book is something they really said to Morris, or that he really overheard during his three-plus years shadowing Reagan around the White House.

There were three 'wow' moments in the book for me: facts that I never knew, and that by themselves make the book a worthwhile read. First, the assassination attempt. By now, we all know that Reagan was far closer to death than we had ever been led to believe. In conversations with the lead emergency room surgeon that saved Reagan's life, and with Reagan's lead Secret Service agent that day, Morris reveals that a single right turn in the motorcade was the difference between Reagan living and a Bush Administration in 1981.

At the moment that John Hinkley fired his shots at Reagan, one bullet hit the presidential limousine's armored right-rear panel. In doing so, it changed shape and became a tiny high-speed circular "saw blade-like" object that spun into Reagan's chest with such surgical precision that there was no apparent entry wound. Indeed, as Jerry Parr - Reagan's lead security agent - threw Reagan onto the floor of the car and screamed at the driver, "Haul ass! Let's get out of here!", Reagan felt tremendous pain in his chest and said, "Jerry, get off, I think you've broken one of my ribs." Parr took one look at Reagan's mouth and saw that he was coughing up blood. Parr, too, believed that Reagan had punctured something internally. Not sure whether he was looking at a world-wide conspiracy, Parr's training took hold. He grabbed the car radio and lied to the agent in the car behind, telling him "Rawhide not hurt" using Reagan's code name. This was to throw off anyone in the area eavesdropping on the Secret Service frequency. With that done, Parr made the key move that would save Reagan's life: he made a split second decision to redirect the motorcade [which was heading back to the White House] to George Washington University Hospital instead. Had he not done so, Reagan's physicians told Morris, the President would most certainly have died.

As it was, getting him to the emergency room as quickly as Parr did almost wasn't enough. The treating physicians assumed the President was suffering from a punctured lung, caused by a broken rib. It was only when a nurse lifted Reagan's left arm to insert an IV line that she saw a neat slit on the side of Reagan's chest open up. "Oh-oh, he's been shot!" she screamed. Reagan - still conscious - looked stunned when he heard this. Reagan would tell Morris that it was only then that he realized he was dying.

In the end, Reagan's incredible physical health prior to the assassination attempt saved his life. Because he was in such good shape, and his chest muscles were like those of a 40-year old, his body was able to withstand the trauma.

The second 'wow' moment in the book concerns the controversial visit by Reagan to a Nazi burial ground in Bitburg in 1985. I could never understand how a White House as incredibly detailed in planning as the Reagan administration was could have allowed him to accept an invitation by Helmut Kohl to tour a site that held the remains of Hitler's SS troops. Well, there is a very simple explanation. When Mike Deaver went to Bitburg to advance-scout the cemetery, snow blanketed the graves and their stone markers. Deaver could not see the markers. Had he been able to, he would have clearly seen "SS" on the many graves.

While you might think he should have brushed the snow off a few of them, that is hindsight talking. Deaver joked to Kohl, "Will any of these graves embarrass my President?" Kohl's protocol chief reacted defensively saying, "You think maybe Mengele is buried there?" With that, Deaver left. Had he visited a few weeks earlier or a few weeks later - when there was no snow - the whole embarrassing episode could have been avoided.

The final 'wow' moment concerns the weeks after the Iran-Contra scandal broke. Aides became quite alarmed at how disoriented Reagan appeared. New Chief of Staff Howard Baker was stunned by the deterioration in Reagan's mental acuity. So alarmed was Baker that on March 2, 1987, before lunch in the Cabinet room, Baker and his aides purposely positioned their chairs so that they would be able to observe Reagan literally from all angles. Prior to that lunch, Baker's assistant, James Cannon, wrote an emergency transition paper to set in motion the invocation of the 25th Amendment [Presidential Disability] if Baker and his aides found Reagan to be "disoriented" at that lunch. As it happened, Regan was lucid and "on his game" throughout the lunch. Baker shelved the position paper and the 25th Amendment.

In conclusion, if you haven't read Dutch, do so. While Morris became a little too close to Reagan to truly be objective, the narrative is wonderful and the details extraordinary.”

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Quote of the Day

In 1989, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy [D, Mass] was stalked by paparazzi during a European vacation. One snapped the senator having sexual intercourse in a motorboat. After the National Enquirer ran photos of the tryst, Alabama senator Howell Heflin [R, Ala] joked he was glad to see Kennedy had "changed his position on offshore drilling."

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Death of a Nazi - 17 Years Later

The medical log used by Aribert Ferdinand Heim [above], a.k.a. "Dr. Death". Heim painstakingly logged the innumerable procedures he inflicted on prisoners in the death campus of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen during World War II.



The New York Times reveals today that Aribert Ferdinand Heim, a member of Adolf Hitler's Waffen-SS and a medical doctor at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps - and one of the last fugitive Nazis unaccounted for - died in hiding in 1992 in Egypt, where he had lived comfortably since barely escaping Israeli authorities in 1962. On a positive note, however, he died of ass cancer, which has to really be painful. And he died of ass cancer in Egypt, not exactly known as the Mecca [pun intended] of health care for the ass, or any other part of your body.

Still, even with the realization that he suffered, nothing he endured can compare with the vicious and heinous acts he committed on thousands of victims during the Holocaust. Nicknamed "Dr. Death", Heim performed operations on prisoners without anesthesia; he removed organs from healthy inmates, then left them to die on the operating table; in others, he injected poison, including gasoline, into their hearts; he even took the skull of at least one victim as a souvenir.

Perhaps even more heinous is the ease with which he lived in post-war Germany for nearly 20 years. He lived in the German town of Baden-Baden as a practicing gynecologist with a wife and two sons. As investigators closed in on him in 1962, he fled by car to France, then Spain, then crossing into Morocco, and eventually settling in Egypt. Once in Egypt, he was able to support himself with money sent by his sister - income he earned on an apartment building he owned in Berlin.

Sadly, the United States actually had Heim in custody immediately after World War II, but inexplicably let him go, apparently unaware that Austrian war-crimes investigators were building a case against him. Shortly after his accidental release, a U.S. war crimes team took testimony about his crimes from Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen. On January 18, 1946, Kohl testified:


“Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates’ mouths to determine whether their teeth were in impeccable condition. If this were the case, he would kill the prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked skull, and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration for their desks.”


Again, dying in a fetid Egyptian slum with ass cancer is in no way equal justice for Heim, but at least he suffered. And, with a little luck, he's suffering still today.

copyright 2009 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.