"Though no U.S. commentators have stated that the U.S. government actively aided ISIS and other Jihadi groups, it is worthwhile stating — at least to my knowledge — that no Arab Jihadis have received American aid. Some confusion may have arisen from the fact that on the Afghan side it is a different story."

"Not contrite about the South's having held a large proportion of the black population of the American Republic in slavery for two and a half centuries, the opponents of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are seeking to undo the act and thereby restrict the right to vote of black citizens guaranteed by the 15th Amendment of 1870, which also gave Congress the authority to enforce that right state by state."

"What this contradiction about the battle flag represents to me is the white South's refusal, even today, to admit that its valiant defeat in the Civil War was also the defeat of a bad cause. Keeping millions of human beings in slave status was hardly a worthy cause to fight for."

"...[A] new vignette in the North-South culture wars appeared in the form of an item on 18 June on BBC World News America: 'One of the Navy's most powerful missile cruisers, the USS Chancellorsville has arrived in Japan'....Though naming a United States warship after a Confederate victory is a rarity,...one may question the propriety of its being named as such at all."

"In this case, an American citizen born in Jerusalem cannot have his country of birth as Israel in his passport. This countermanded a law signed as part of an appropriations bill by President George W. Bush who however said he would not follow the Jerusalem provision which he said interfered with the President's constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs."

"Like a child carrying around a security blanket for protection, metadata is our security blanket. This bulk collection of telephone data is supposed to help us against terrorist attacks. Metadata consists of noting the telephone number calling, the number called, and the time and duration of the call. It does not collect content. (However, if the number is known, the person possessing the phone can become known)."

"In the 1950's the CIA, developer of the U-2 spy plane, carried out reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union, starting from the Pakistani military base in Peshawar. The ISI, the intelligence service of the all-powerful Pakistani Army, was assigned to coordinate these flights with CIA personnel in Pakistan. Thus began the longstanding relationship between the CIA, a civilian intelligence service, and the ISI, a military intelligence service, a relationship that lasted all through the years...."

"Abraham Lincoln became the first public figure to synthesize the idealism and the race hatred at the founding of the American Republic by his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, ending slavery in the South. For this he became the first American president to be assassinated."

"Whatever the case, the majority of believers seem to rely on the assumption that there is a God of providence who intervenes in the affairs of the world. From Andrew Jackson to George W. Bush, the majority of American presidents — including the most notable such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt — seem to have had the conviction, in various degrees, that their actions were guided by the hand of God. Some even gave to understand that they had a personal relationship with God, as when George W. Bush asserted that God had urged him to invade Iraq."

"At the conclusion of this research, and to summarize my bottom line, I would say that the NSA, while operating under the direction of higher authority, nevertheless had a mindset—typically American—of overdoing things and with it, a reflex of protecting the secrets of the organization."