Betsy Newmark

Mother, history high school teacher in North Carolina

[Shiri_Sabra @sabra_the]

Iran’s Minister of Intelligence Esmaeil Khatib was killed overnight in a precision strike, a senior Israeli official told Fox News.

The U.S. government had been offering a reward for information on Khatib, who was responsible for overseeing Iran's entire global terror apparatus.

"His network specifically targeted current and former U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump," the official added.

Via. Mossad

[Sheldon Gilbert @SheldonGilbert]

I first encountered the work of Gordon Wood as an undergrad history major. I thought then that "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" was a tour de force — and its reputation with me has only improved over time.

Over the years, I purchased every single Gordon Wood book. Many years ago, when I was a young husband and new dad, Gordon Wood came to the Mall in Washington DC as part of a book festival. I brought several books for him to sign. I dropped off my wife with our young child (and the pile of books) and then searched for parking.

Dear reader, I had to park very far away. So far, in fact, that Gordon Wood's window for signing books had long since passed. I finally found my wife and young child with Gordon Wood at an empty author's booth. He not only had signed all my books, but he had stayed well past his time to leave and graciously chatted with my wife, who had implored him to wait **just a little longer** so that I could meet him. He was so kind to my wife, our child, and — when I finally showed up — me.

Imagine my delight earlier this year when Gordon Wood agreed to be filmed for The Federalist Society @FedSoc for two days, to talk about America250 and the Founding (in particular, the path from the Declaration to the Constitution) and also to talk about his own life and career as a historian. I was honored to witness my good friends @kurtlash1 and Steve Calabresi interview Gordon Wood.

... and then Gordon Wood stayed long past the agreed upon filming time to talk to me about his life and our shared love of America's Founding.

We lost a brilliant man today. We also lost a good man, a kind man. Too often, that Venn Diagram of brilliance and kindness does not overlap. It did with Gordon Wood. May God receive his soul, and may his memory be a blessing.

[Michael Henry @michaelhenryny]

AIPAC is spending $30 million to try to keep a Jew hating, terrorist sympathizer out of the US Senate.

There I fixed it for you.

[Joanne Mason @JoanneMason11]

I've worked with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault for more than 30 years, and I promise that the message the Dems are sending to women is that their safety means *nothing* compared to Dems' quest for power. Our daughters are watching, you shameless bastards.

[Jim Geraghty @jimgeraghty]

Keep in mind, the desire to support Graham Platner despite his baggage and scandals is not merely a Maine phenomenon; it is thoroughly a national phenomenon. Of the nearly $12 million that Platner’s campaign had raised as of the end of March, just $500,000 was from residents of Maine.

The updated numbers are likely to show additional national surges; Platner’s campaign said that after the candidate admitted to sexting other women, “Fundraising was 17 percent higher than the previous four-day period, and that small-dollar donations jumped 27 percent compared with the week prior.” His campaign said he raised $200,000 in the 24 hours since the New York Times article alleging physical abuse of his girlfriends, “a quarter of it from first-time donors.”

There are people in this world who believed that Platner was not worth financially supporting until they heard about him grabbing a young woman by the shoulders hard enough to leave marks.

[Miss Jo @therealmissjo]

Do you want to know something interesting about the decision to remove Winston Churchill, Alan Turing and Jane Austen from bank notes?

Savanta, a market research company, was chosen to run a focus group.

The result of that focus group is that Churchill was “divisive”, Turing “an imperialist” and Austen “contentious and not representative”.

Yet that focus group had only 119 people in it.

And only one person called Turing “imperialist”. Someone who probably did not even know that he was not only instrumental in the Allies winning WW2 but was a gay man who was chemically castrated to “cure him”.

Turing was left fat, flabby and so unhappy that he carefully injected cyanide into an apple and ate it. He was found with half the apple by his side.

The Bank of England claims that the focus group was only part of its decision and it ran a broader public inquiry that favoured animals and flowers. Who did they ask? Primary school kids?

[Miranda Devine @mirandadevine]

The drugged-up psychopath who allegedly stabbed 5 people at Penn Station yesterday was free after a similar stabbing attack in New Jersey in 2022. Stop letting these lunatics roam the streets.
https://t.co/nbHLl35lG4

[That Guy Trey 🇺🇸 @PowerOwn45]

In September of 2007 I was working an NSA watch floor. During the ‘hand down’ brief (shift change) some folks working a MENA shop informed us that Israel had destroyed a covert nuke site in Syria. They’d used electronic jammers to fly silent and destroy the site in the dead of night. The Syrians had the site bulldozed over before the sun came because they did not want to acknowledge their violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel allowed it to stay silent because they wanted to avoid conflict from spreading in the region or possibly further. This is now all declassified. Google it.

Israel does stuff like that….A LOT. Now, 20 years later, they have become a technological superpower that punches further above its weight than any country its size in human history. To reject Israel as an ally would be the height of stupidity. China sure hopes we view them as an enemy, that I can tell you.

[Ninabecks con Israele e Ucraina nel cuore @ninabecks1]

Alla faccia di chi boicotta…

Tamara Casalan

La storia è stata appena scritta nelle sale operatorie del Centro Medico Ichilov di Israele 🇮🇱 e l'intero mondo medico è in stato di puro stupore.

I chirurghi hanno realizzato ciò che una volta sembrava impossibile: rimuovere un tumore cerebrale raro senza aprire la testa.

Attraverso un approccio transorbitale di punta - entrando con precisione
attraverso la gola ocularia utilizzando robot avanzati e endoscopia - loro hanno escisso completamente la crescita.

Nessuna craniotomia.
Nessuna cicatrice massiva.
Solo innovazione pura, maestria e mani stabili.

Ouesto non è solo una vittoria per la scienza; è un testimonianza profonda del rifiuto dell'umanità di accettare i limiti.

Mentre il mondo si concentra sulla divisione, la medicina israeliana ci ricorda cosa può realizzare la chiarezza morale e l'eccellenza scientifica: vite salvate, futuro ripristinato e speranza data ai pazienti di tutto il mondo.

Israele non innova solo sotto pressione - le sue innovazioni sono da sempre disponibili per l'intera umanità.

Orgogliosi oltre le parole.
Am Yisrael Chai.

#MedicalBreakthrough #lsraellnnovation #Neurosurgery #Proudlsrael #AmYsraelChai

[Bob Elder @southernphd]

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him.

In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over.

Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed.

When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye.

She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession.

As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him.

Rest in peace, professor.

[UN Watch @UNWatch]

BREAKING: 🇺🇸 USAID Inspector General finds 101 additional UNRWA school teachers, principals & staffers are Hamas terrorists who participated in the October 7 terror attacks. U.S. may soon designate UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization.
https://t.co/Vwj0yffkhH @AidOversight

[Betsy Newmark @betsynewmark]

I am so very sorry to hear of his passing. I loved all his books and once had the opportunity to take a class for teachers on the Revolution. He was so interesting, knowledgeable and kind. He was the historian I most respected. How sad that he is no longer with us.

[Joshua Claybourn @JoshuaClaybourn]

On Sunday, my friend Gordon Wood was struck and killed in a car accident. Gordon taught history at Brown Univ. and was among the most accomplished historians America has produced. He won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, and his earlier book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 took the 1970 Bancroft Prize. He also received the National Humanities Medal.

He was, in my view, the finest historian of America's founding—which makes it all the sadder that he did not live to see the nation's 250th birthday. His reputation reached popular culture, too. Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting invokes him by name in the famous bar scene, accusing a Harvard student of simply "regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about [...] the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization."

I feel fortunate to have collaborated with Gordon on several projects. In a 2019 anthology I compiled, he wrote an essay on the possibility of a shared American narrative. He centered his argument on equal rights as "the most radical and most powerful ideological force" the Revolution unleashed. "This powerful sense of equality is still alive and well in America," he wrote, "and despite all of its disturbing and unsettling consequences, it is what makes us one people."

When I needed jacket blurbs for my new book Lincoln's Compass, coming out this November, I turned to Gordon. The fit was natural: the book argues that Abraham Lincoln took the Declaration's claim that "all men are created equal" as his guiding moral compass—and that he refocused the nation on that claim. Gordon, ever the gentleman, offered generous praise.

He was, in many respects, the dean of American historians. He will be very hard to replace.

[Betsy Newmark @betsynewmark]

Whoa! Do these people even hear themselves? Nazi tattoo - okay, but the Jewish state - nyah, no way! Does she know who really committed genocide? What can we do with such people?

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Graham Platner supporter says she’s okay with the Nazi tattoo, but if he had an Israeli flag tattoo that would be a deal breaker for her because then he would support genocide.

[Lisa Cusack @lisa_4_la]

In the minds of California Democrats everything is a “threat to Democracy” except for: third parties collecting limitless ballots, no ID verification, votes left unattended in ballot boxes which may or may not be set on fire, ballots cast by drugged out homeless people, and a month long after Election Day counting period so opaque it would make poll workers from the former Soviet Union blush.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

He was only eighteen years old. His weapon of choice was not a gun, but a tiny bottle of acid. Yet, this teenage boy managed to save fourteen thousand lives from certain death.

In 1943, Paris was a dark place under Nazi occupation. Adolfo Kaminsky was just a young apprentice working in a textile dyeing shop. He spent his days learning how colors reacted with chemicals, which solvents could dissolve certain pigments, and how to alter tones at a molecular level.

He had no idea that this highly specific knowledge about ink and fabric would soon become the thin line between life and death for thousands of innocent people.

During the occupation, the Gestapo used paperwork as their primary weapon to hunt down Jewish people. Identity cards, travel permits, and food rations were all strictly monitored. On the documents of Jewish citizens, the authorities stamped one single word in blue ink: "JUIF".

That one word was a direct ticket to a concentration camp.

The French Resistance desperately needed a way to erase that word without ruining the paper. Standard forgery techniques failed because the official ink was designed to be permanent.

Any attempt to scrape it off left obvious marks that would get someone killed.

They brought the problem to Kaminsky.

The boy analyzed the paper under a dim lamp and remembered a trick from his textile work. Lactic acid could dissolve that exact blue ink while leaving the paper fibers perfectly intact.

It worked.

But erasing the stamp was only the first step. He had to rewrite names, birthdays, and signatures perfectly. The Resistance set up a secret laboratory for him in a hidden attic on the Left Bank of Paris. The demands poured in constantly.

He needed to make fifty birth certificates for children escaping to Switzerland, two hundred food cards for families hiding in cellars, and hundreds of passes to Spain.

The conditions were brutal. Bleach and acid fumes filled the tiny room, burning his throat and making his eyes water constantly. His fingers were permanently stained with dark ink. Kaminsky realized that each document took him about two minutes to make.

That meant he could save thirty people every single hour.

This realization turned into an obsession that haunted him. He looked at the clock and thought, "If I sleep for an hour, thirty people will die."

So, he stopped sleeping.

One week, word came that a local orphanage with three hundred Jewish children was about to be raided by the Nazis. They needed fake papers immediately or they would be put on a train to Auschwitz. Kaminsky locked himself in the attic.

He worked for two straight days and nights without a pause. His vision blurred and his hand cramped so badly he had to physically massage his fingers to keep writing.

Eventually, his body gave out and he collapsed onto the desk.

He slept for exactly one hour. When he woke up, panic gripped him. He cried out, "Thirty people are dead because I was lazy!"

He refused to eat or rest until the remaining papers were finished.

Thanks to his sacrifice, the children were moved to safety in time.

Kaminsky spent years in that suffocating attic, constantly upgrading his skills as the Nazis upgraded their security measures.

When Paris was finally liberated in 1944, the young genius had saved roughly fourteen thousand people.

He never accepted a single penny for his work, believing that taking money to save a life was deeply wrong.

After the war, Kaminsky became a photographer and lived a quiet, modest life. He never bragged.

He did not tell his neighbors, his coworkers, or even his own children about his wartime heroism for decades.

He simply faded into the crowd as an ordinary man.

Adolfo Kaminsky passed away in 2023 at the age of ninety-seven.

He did not want monuments or medals. His true legacy lives on today in the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the thousands of people who survived the darkness simply because a brave teenager chose to stay awake.

[Handre @Handre]

Marx lived his entire adult life as a dependent. The capitalist system funded his "research" through Engels, whose family wealth came from textile factories. The irony cuts deep: capitalism's profits subsidized its most famous critic.

Marx never held a real job. Never met payroll. Never risked capital or faced bankruptcy. He spent decades theorizing about labor value while avoiding actual labor. His insights into production came from library books, not factory floors.

The parasitic intellectual tradition he spawned continues today. Academic Marxists collect taxpayer-funded salaries while denouncing the market system that creates the wealth they consume.

It's time to get rid of these people.

[Amy Reichert @amyforsandiego]

So @nithyavraman came in 3rd place in the very City Council district she’s represented for 5½ years, but we’re supposed to believe a flood of late ballots from Skid Row outside of her district changed everything?

[Today Years Old @todayyearsold]

Hollywood has spent nearly $600 million trying to bring Matt Damon home.

Have they considered maybe he just doesn’t want to come back?

[David Harris @DavidHarrisNY]

Simple questions:

Why do 5 million Palestinians have the "right" to a state, but not 40-60 million freedom-seeking #Kurds?

Why are there endless marches & protests for Palestinians, but not Kurds?

Why is the UN obsessed with Palestinians, but doesn't give a damn about Kurds?

[out of context house m.d. @telyhouse]

Hugh Laurie responded to a criticism of House