Matt Ortega

The History Channel updates visitors on historic events throughout world history with “This Day in History.” There were a number of notables for April 30:

1789: President George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States in New York City and delivered the nation’s first inaugural address.

1803: The land deal between the United States and Napoleonic France known as the “Louisiana Purchase” was concluded. The purchase doubled the size of the U.S. at the cost of $15 million. The Louisiana Territory “comprised most of modern-day United States between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the exceptions of Texas, parts of New Mexico, and other pockets of land already controlled by the United States.”

1945: Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin days before Nazi Germany’s formal surrender to Allied forces. Hitler’s Third Reich was proclaimed to last 1,000 years but collapsed after a dozen under Nazi rule.

1948: Organization of American States (OAS) was officially established with the United States and twenty Latin America nations signed on.

1975: South Vietnam surrendered to communist forces.

In attempts to justify a prolonged, likely permanent, American encampment inside Iraq, conservatives continue to make silly comparisons.

The most first and most common comparison points to the continued U.S. presence in Germany and Japan following the collapse of the Third Reich and the Japanese empire in the Second World War, or Korea following the three-year war on the peninsula in the early 1950s. Stupid, I know, but that is what they claim. (For why this is a stupid argument, there is plenty of reading on that subject.)

The conservative blog, Red State, unveiled a new and even dumber argument. From their e-mail to supporters:

Clearly McCain was talking about a peace time standing presence … Someone should ask the Democrats if they think we’re still at war with the confederacy, the Germans, and the Japanese given all the standing American armies in the South, Germany, and Japan.

Here is what Bill Scher wasted fifteen seconds of his life writing:

But hey, at least Germany and Japan are like Iraq in that they are other countries.

I can’t believe I am wasting 15 seconds of my life to type this, but having military bases in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina does not constitute a permanent occupation. Does RedState really believe that 140 years after the Civil War, American troops have a “peace time standing presence” in the American south?

There you have it — the “Union” is still occupying the “Confederacy” because, apparently, the “Confederacy” never applied nor were accepted back into the “Union” during Reconstruction.

April 9 marks the 143rd anniversary of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender that effectively ended the Civil War.

Academy Award nominee David Strathairn portrays legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow in the 2005 film, Good Night, and Good Luck. The clip below is a condensed version of Murrow’s actual response to Senator Joe McCarthy’s (R-Wisconsin) taped rebuttal to the March 9, 1954 episode of See It Now entitled, “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy.”

Listen to the full audio from Murrow’s response to Senator McCarthy in 1954.

The History Channel updates visitors on historic events throughout world history with “This Day in History.” There were a number of notables for February 25:

1870: The first African-American in the United States Congress, Hiram Rhoades Revels, was sworn in to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, serving in 1870 and 1871. (To date, only five African-Americans have served in the U.S. Senate and 121 have served in the U.S. House of Representatives.)

1913: The Sixteenth Amendment, which paved the way for the federal government to levy an income tax, was ratified.

1964: Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, knocked out world heavyweight champion, Sonny Liston, after claiming before the fight that he was going to “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Watch the final nine minutes of the fight:

1971: Congress blocked widening the Vietnam War without congressional approval.

Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader of Cuba since 1959, resigned from the presidency on Tuesday. This past weekend (February 16) marked the 49th anniversary of his swearing in following the Cuban Revolution that ousted U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista.

And now, a moment of Zen from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.