Some of the choices were predictable: Ronald Reagan, John Adams. Earlier this year Chairman of the Reagan Legacy Project Grover Norquist pushed for adding Reagan as part of the former president’s centennial anniversary. But others came a little out of left field – for example, Michele Bachmann’s pick of James Garfield, who served but 200 days before being assassinated in 1881.
Art Hoppe, an early satirist of Governor Ronnie Popular, promoter of LawnOrder
(2004) Reagan's political career had many beginnings, but one of the most prominent was his rhetorical confrontation with the students leading the Free Speech Movement demonstrations at UC Berkeley in 1964.
"Look," he is quoted telling political aides only a few weeks into the 1966 race, "I don't care if I'm in the mountains, the desert, the biggest cities in the state, the first question is: What are you going to do about Berkeley? ... And each time, the question itself gets applause."
The issue afforded the easygoing Reagan a chance to show his tough side. He railed against the permissive climate of the campuses, condemned some professors as communists, and promised to restore authority and an appropriate atmosphere.
He also called for "the dismissal of those who contributed to the degradation of the once-great university."
A month into his first term, Reagan fired UC President Clark Kerr, largely credited with having built Berkeley into a great university.
California was at the height of the "Pat Brown era" -- Democratic Gov. Edmund G. Brown Sr. had built the state's college and university system into a jewel, the state's politics were dominated by Democrats, and Democrats held a 3-2 lead in party registrations.
But Brown underestimated Reagan as nothing more than a B-movie actor, and Reagan won with 58 percent of the vote, beating Brown by nearly 1 million votes.
In 1969, as he geared up for a second run at governor, the students of Berkeley provided Reagan with another opportunity. Students and community activists rioted over a patch of campus-owned land they called People's Park.
Reagan sent in the National Guard. The image of a Guard helicopter dropping tear gas on the campus sent the governor's popularity soaring.
The next year, anti-war demonstrations caused more protests and a riot at UC Santa Barbara.
"If it takes a bloodbath to silence the demonstrators," Reagan said, "let's get it over with."
All this during the War on Drugs
As early as 1982, Vice President George H. W. Bush and his aides began pushing for the involvement of the CIA and U.S. military in drug interdiction efforts. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was originally established by the National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988, which mandated a national anti-drug media campaign for youth, which would later become the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. The director of ONDCP is commonly known as the Drug czar, and it was first implemented in 1989 under President George H. W. Bush, and raised to cabinet-level status by Bill Clinton in 1993.
Police Squad!, which hit the air in the fall of 1982, was a thirty-minute comedy on ABC created by Zucker Abrahams and Zucker, who'd had enormous success two years earlier with Airplane!. A broad parody of television crime shows (perhaps especially, of Lee Marvin and M Squad), Police Squad! ran for only four episodes before it was jerked by the network
Domestic Security Alliance Council.
The Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) is a strategic partnership between the U.S. Government and U.S. Private Industry. Its goal is to advance the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) mission of preventing, detecting, and deterring criminal acts by facilitating strong, enduring relationships among its private industry members, FBI Headquarters, FBI Field Offices, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Headquarters and Fusion Centers, and other Federal Government entities. DSAC also advances the U.S. Private Industry's ability to protect its employees, assets, and information by providing ongoing access to security information and to a network of security experts, and by providing continuing education for corporate Chief Security Officers (CSOs) and Intelligence Analysts (IAs).
Detention of American citizens. This was the most controversial section, of the bill, and the most misreported.A Senate compromise amendment to the bill leaves open the question of whether the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks authorizes the president to detain American citizens suspected of terrorism who are captured on American soil. This matter may never be settled, as the risk of getting smacked down by the courts may dissuade presidents with even more expansive views of executive power than Obama from ever trying it.
Now, more than ever, "if it takes a bloodbath..." we may need to watch it in order to appreciate it as ideological division increases
In retrospect, it seems clear that Police Squad!'s only crime was timing. As Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, said in 2010:
If Police Squad! had been made twenty years later, it would have been a smash. It was before its time. In 1982 your average viewer was unable to cope with its pace, its quick-fire jokes. But these days they'd have no problems keeping up, I think we've proved that.
Police Squad! was cancelled because the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it
Ferguson MO
A death squad is an armed group that conducts extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances of persons for the purposes of political repression, genocide, or revolutionary terror. These killings are often conducted in ways meant to ensure the secrecy of the killers' identities.
Death squads are often, but not exclusively, associated with police states, one party states, or military dictatorships. It is not unheard of, however, for democratic governments to form death squads during a state of emergency and then disband them once the crisis passes.
Death squads may have the support of domestic or foreign governments (see state terrorism). They may comprise a secret police force, paramilitary groups, or government soldiers and policemen. They may also be organized as vigilantes.
When death squads are not controlled by the state, they may consist of insurgent forces or organized crime.
We are a civilian volunteer organization that trains, educates, prepares, responds to disasters, and defends the constitution. The intent of the Missouri Militia is to act as the State Defense Force (SDF), as there is currently no SDF for Missouri.
During the Salvadoran civil war, death squads (known in Spanish by the name of Escuadrón de la Muerte, "Squadron of Death") achieved notoriety when a sniper assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero while he was saying Mass in March 1980. In December 1980, three American nuns and a lay worker were gangraped and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing thousands of peasants and activists. Funding for the squads came primarily from right-wing Salvadoran businessmen and landowners. Because the death squads involved were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran military security forces, which were receiving U.S. arms, funding, training and advice during the Carter, Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, these events prompted some outrage in the U.S. Human rights activists criticized U.S. administrations for denying Salvadoran government links to the death squads. Veteran Human Rights Watch researcher Cynthia J. Arnson writes that "particularly during the years 1980–1983 when the killing was at its height (numbers of killings could reach as far as 35,000), assigning responsibility for the violence and human rights abuses was a product of the intense ideological polarization in the United States. The Reagan administration downplayed the scale of abuse as well as the involvement of state actors. Because of the level of denial, as well as the extent of U.S. involvement with the Salvadoran military and security forces, the U.S. role in El Salvador- what was known about death squads, when it was known, and what actions the United States did or did not take to curb their abuses- became an important part of El Salvador's death squad story.". Some death squads, such as Sombra Negra, are still operating in El Salvador.