Matt Ortega

The History Channel updates visitors on historic events throughout world history with “This Day in History.” Here are a few notables for April 15:

1865: President Abraham Lincoln died from the gunshot wound he sustained six days earlier from actor and Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth.

1912: The once thought “unsinkable” Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg two and a half hours before. The ship, spanning 883 feet long, was en route from Southampton, England to New York City in the United States carrying 2,200 passengers and crew.

1947: Infielder Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball when he signed and played for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the Boston Braves.

Megan McArdle:

Mmmm . . . I am in no way unhappy with the outcome of Nuremberg, but my understanding is that most international lawyers regard them basically as show trials. I’m not sure they’re a great example to use.

Reality:

The Nuremberg trials had a great influence on the development of international criminal law. The International Law Commission, acting on the request of the United Nations General Assembly, produced in 1950 the report Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II^[30]). The influence of the tribunal can also be seen in the proposals for a permanent international criminal court, and the drafting of international criminal codes, later prepared by the International Law Commission.

Matt Browner-Hamlin adds more historical background to one of the biggest landmark international criminal court cases that, according to Megan McArdle, is not a great example to use.

Senator Dodd’s father, Tom Dodd, was a lead prosecutor at Nuremberg. Dodd recently published his father’s living history of his experience at the trials in a living history titled Letters From Nuremberg. On the campaign trail, Senator Dodd would frequently reference Nuremberg when talking about the necessity to defend the rule of law here in America. His favorite quote, something that I have since committed to memory, was from chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Justice Robert Jackson:

“That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum called the trials a “watershed moment in international justice.” Sixty years after the trials, the Anti-Defamation League cited the significance of Nuremberg.

Avoid looking as ridiculous as Megan McArdle and read up on the Nuremberg Trials. Harvard Law School maintains digital copies of documents relevant to the trials.

In the meantime, check out the judgment scene from the 1961 Academy Award winning film, Judgment at Nuremberg:

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.

In recent years, Hispanics from the American Southwest have discovered roots that were only the subject of rumor. From the Boston Globe in December 2004:

He tested the DNA of his relatives, along with some of the parishioners at Albuquerque’s St. Edwin’s Church, where he works. As word got out, others in the community began contacting him. So Sanchez expanded the effort to include Hispanics throughout the state.

Of the 78 people tested, 30 are positive for the marker of the Cohanim, whose genetic line remains strong because they rarely married non-Jews throughout a history spanning up to 4,000 years.

Michael Hammer, a research professor at the University of Arizona who is a specialist on Jewish genetics, said less than 1 percent of non-Jews possessed this marker. That fact, along with the traditions in many of these families, makes it likely they are Jewish, he said.

It was through the New Mexico DNA Project that my father tested positive for this marker and our family confirmed rumors that we were descendants of conversos, Spanish Jews that converted during the Spanish Inquisition following the Alhambra Decree issued by the Spanish monarchs, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I.

Read more »

More than a week ago, the BBC reported on a recent study, published by the Public Library of Science Genetics.

European colonisation of Latin America resulted in a dramatic shift from a native American population to a largely mixed one, a genetic study has shown.

It suggests male European settlers mated with native and African women, and slaughtered the men.

The study reaffirmed a brutal history of Spanish colonization –

Explaining the fate of native males when the Europeans arrived, Professor Luiz-Linares said: “It is a very sad and terrible historical fact, they were basically annihilated.

“Not only did the European settlers take away land and property, they also took away the women and, as much as possible, they exterminated the men.”

The life of a person with a mixed background is a truly unique experience.

The title to the autobiography of Governor Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico), born to a Mexican mother and white father, is a rather apt portrayal of the mixed experience: Between Worlds.