Epic Senior Quotes

When she smiles, the lines in her face become epic narratives that trace the stories of generations that no book can replace.

Successive popes included one pontiff whose eldest son, Pierluigi Farnese, was widely accused of raping a twenty-four-year-old bishop, hastening the unfortunate young man’s death (Farnese was subsequently murdered by subordinates of Charles V), while another Holy Father, former principal papal legate at the Council, on being elected Pope Julius III, made his teenage rentboy lover a cardinal. It might seem appropriate that the Council’s official physician, Girolamo Fracastoro, was the first person to name and provide a detailed diagnosis for syphilis; contemporary senior churchmen would have provided Fracastoro with plenty of case studies for his epic poem on the subject.

Despite the refusal of the Obama Justice Department to prosecute anyone at the IRS, it is clear that what happened was an epic clampdown on any conservative voices speaking or advocating against the president’s disastrous policies and in favor of patriotism and adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law. Over the course of twenty-seven months leading up to the 2012 election, not a single Tea Party–type organization received tax-exempt status. Many were unable to operate; others disbanded because donors refused to fund them without the IRS seal of approval; some organizations and their donors were audited without justification; and many incurred legal fees and costs fighting the unlawful conduct by Lerner and other IRS employees. The IRS suppressed the entire Tea Party movement just in time to help Obama win reelection. And everyone in the administration involved in this outrageous conduct got away with it without being punished or prosecuted. Was it simply a case of retribution against the perceived “enemies” of the administration? No, this was much bigger than political payback. It was a systematic and concerted effort to squash the Tea Party movement—one of the most organic and powerful political movements in recent memory—during an election season. [See Appendix for select IRS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.] This was about campaign politics. It was a scandal for the ages. President Obama obviously wanted this done even if he gave no direct orders for it. In 2015, he told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that “you don’t want all this money pouring through non-profits.” But there is no law preventing money from “pouring through non-profits” that they use to achieve their legal purposes and the objectives of their members. Who didn’t want this money pouring through nonprofits? Barack Obama. In the subsequent FOIA litigation filed by Judicial Watch, the IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about what Lois Lerner and other senior officials had done. The IRS, including its top political appointees like IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, have much to answer for over their contempt of court and of Congress. And the Department of Justice lawyers and officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable as well. If the Tea Party and other conservative groups had been fully active in the critical months leading up to the 2012 election, would Mitt Romney have been elected president? We will, of course, never know for certain. But we do know that President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service targeted right-leaning organizations applying for tax-exempt status and prevented them from entering the fray during that period. That is how you steal an election in plain sight. Accountability is not something we will get from the Obama administration. But Judicial Watch will continue its independent investigation and certainly any new presidential administration should take a fresh look at this IRS scandal.

A final note on language: I have endeavored to follow the guidelines recommended by P. Gabrielle Foreman and other senior scholars in “Writing About Slavery,” using the terms “enslaved people” and “enslaver” whenever possible, with the purposeful exception of the title and other situations where the point of using terms such as master or mistress, slave or planter, was precisely to contest the ideologies they represent.

And the reluctance, inability, or outright refusal of the American government to shift targets would contribute to the killing. Wilson took no public note of the disease, and the thrust of the government was not diverted. The relief effort for influenza victims would find no assistance in the Food Administration or the Fuel Administration or the Railroad Administration. From neither the White House nor any other senior administration post would there come any leadership, any attempt to set priorities, any attempt to coordinate activities, any attempt to deliver resources.

the first Senior British Officer (SBO) at Colditz, the confusingly named Guy German.

Running through the very heart of Colditz ran a wide and almost unbridgeable social divide. This was a camp for captured officers, but it also contained a fluctuating population of orderlies, ordinary soldier-prisoners from the “other ranks” employed by the Germans to perform menial tasks and work as servants for their senior officers: cooking, tidying, cleaning, boot polishing, and other chores.

The inmates of Colditz might have lost their freedom but they knew their legal rights, and so did the Germans. The paramilitary SS operated the concentration camps with an inhuman disregard for international law, but in the army-run POW camps most senior German officers saw it as a matter of soldierly pride to uphold the Convention, and took offense at any suggestion they were failing to do so.

From neither the White House nor any other senior administration post would there come any leadership, any attempt to set priorities, any attempt to coordinate activities, any attempt to deliver resources.

Blue still did not organize a response to the emergency. Instead, the senior Public Health Service officer in charge of the city of Washington reiterated to the press that there was no cause for alarm.

a headline in the Daily caught his attention: “Senior Men Face Life with Debts, Few Jobs.” The article made his heart sink. The average debt among graduates was two hundred dollars, it said, and the average four-year tab was more than two thousand. Both were staggering amounts of money for someone like Joe in 1934.

Steve Jobs had once asked his most senior employees to come up with a list of Apple’s top ten priorities, then said the company could manage only three.

If Wilson and his government would not be turned from his end even by the prospect of peace, they would hardly be turned by a virus. And the reluctance, inability, or outright refusal of the American government to shift targets would contribute to the killing. Wilson took no public note of the disease, and the thrust of the government was not diverted. The relief effort for influenza victims would find no assistance in the Food Administration or the Fuel Administration or the Railroad Administration. From neither the White House nor any other senior administration post would there come any leadership, any attempt to set priorities, any attempt to coordinate activities, any attempt to deliver resources.

Not until more than a decade had passed did one reason for this epic failure become clear. The senior British intelligence officer assigned as liaison to the CIA, Kim Philby, was a double agent working for the Soviets. Philby spent years in Washington and knew the top CIA men as well as any outsider. Later he wrote that he had found General Smith to have “a precision-tooled brain,” but was less impressed with Allen.