OUSTON – The descendants of Geronimo have sued Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University with ties to the Bush family, charging that its members robbed his grave in 1918 and have kept his skull in a glass case ever since.
Legend has it that Prescott S. Bush stole Geronimo’s skull.
The claim is part of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington on Tuesday, the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death. The Apache warrior’s heirs are seeking to recover all his remains, wherever they may be, and have them transferred to a new grave at the headwaters of the Gila River in New Mexico, where Geronimo was born and wished to be interred.
“I believe strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released,” Geronimo’s great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo, 61, told reporters Tuesday at the National Press Club.
Geronimo died a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Okla., in 1909. A longstanding tradition among members of Skull and Bones holds that Prescott S. Bush – father of President George Bush and grandfather of President George W. Bush – broke into the grave with some classmates during World War I and made off with the skull, two bones, a bridle and some stirrups, all of which were put on display at the group’s clubhouse in New Haven, known as the Tomb.
The story gained some validity in 2005, when a historian discovered a letter written in 1918 from one Skull and Bones member to another saying the skull had been taken from a grave at Fort Sill along with several pieces of tack for a horse…
Members of the Skull and Bones, who guard their organization’s secrecy, could not be reached for comment. Though the society is not officially affiliated with the university, many of Yale’s most powerful alumni are members, among them both Bush presidents and Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.
“Of all the items rumored to be in the Skull and Bones’s possession, Geronimo’s skull is one of the more plausible ones,” said Alexandra Robbins, the author of “Secrets of the Tomb” (Little Brown 2002), a book about the society. “There is a skull encased in a glass display when you walk in the door of the Tomb, and they call it Geronimo.”
President Barack Obama’s administration will engage in “direct diplomacy” with Iran, the newly installed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.
Not since before the 1979 Iranian revolution are U.S. officials believed to have conducted wide-ranging direct diplomacy with Iranian officials. But U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice warned that Iran must meet U.N. Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment before any talks on its nuclear program.
“The dialogue and diplomacy must go hand in hand with a very firm message from the United States and the international community that Iran needs to meet its obligations as defined by the Security Council. And its continuing refusal to do so will only cause pressure to increase,” she told reporters during a brief question-and-answer session.
Her comments, reflecting Obama’s signals for improved relations with America’s foes after eight years under President George W. Bush, came shortly after meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on her first day in her new job.
This is certainly interesting… There’s no doubt that Iran is a major player in the Middle East – the biggest, if you don’t count Russia. Does anyone know of some thinktank policy papers that might shed some light on what’s happening here? Given that this action is contingent on nuclear regulation, is this some good cop/bad cop, when contrasted with Bush? …or is this action intended to engulf the region in conflict, in the somewhat likely situation that Iran does not relent in its nuclear ambitions?
Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought of as cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems. By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater’s speeches in the mid-’60s, or to Reagan’s in the ’80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year’s presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism’s worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation’s public affairs.
American conservatism has always had the problem of being misnamed. It is, at root, the political twin to classical European liberalism, a freedoms-based belief in limiting the power of government to intrude on the liberties of the people. It is the opposite of European conservatism (which Winston Churchill referred to as reverence for king and church); it is rather the heir to John Locke and James Madison, and a belief that the people should be the masters of their government, not the reverse (a concept largely turned on its head by the George W. Bush presidency).
Over the last several years, conservatives have turned themselves inside out: They have come to worship small government and have turned their backs on limited government.
This is a very interesting opinion article from Mickey Edwards, who use to work on Reagan’s presidential campaign and was also a senator. I highly recommend reading the full story.
Despite a financial crisis for the ages, the catastrophic collapse of a Republican Party crippled by his political legacy, and the highest presidential disapproval rating in the history of American polling, outgoing commander in chief George W. Bush has not completely lost his sense of fun. When Rolling Stone caught up with him at the White House shortly after the holidays for what would turn out to be his final extended sit-down interview as president, the graying but still quite fit Texan had just finished his morning exercycle session in an eagle-emblazoned sweatsuit and was fiddling with a new toy.
“They call it a Wii, or a Mee, or something,” Bush tells me, smiling as he waves a wandlike plastic device in front of a 54-inch plasma TV in the Treaty Room, a large, brightly lit chamber on the second floor of the Executive Residence that traditionally functions as the president’s private study. The president is playing a friendly game of Major League Baseball – the Boston Red Sox against his cherished Texas Rangers – and a computer-rendered Daisuke Matsuzaka drills a hard slider right past him, down and in.
“Huh,” says the president. “Might have to choke up a little.”
Although now used as a game room, the Treaty Room still has a classic feel, with a century-old painting by Theobald Chartran depicting the signing of the peace treaty after the Spanish-American War, and a magnificent mahogany “treaty table” first used by Ulysses S. Grant. A bookshelf on the north wall displays standard-issue Americana such as Poor Richard’s Almanack, but it also contains former swimsuit model Kathy Ireland’s Powerful Inspirations: Eight Lessons That Will Change Your Life (”There’s a lot of good life stuff in there, a lot of stuff about patience,” the president says) and a well-worn copy of 101 Dumb Dog Deaths (”Makes me laugh every time, especially the one about cow-tipping”).
Matsuzaka delivers again, but the president looks fastball when the pitch is a change. “Damn it!” he shouts, bouncing the Wii wand off an antique globe in the corner. “Goddamn motherfucking shit!”
Mmmmmm – that’s good satire! The treaty room has become so useless and unused that Bush converts it into a game room. Classic!
Of course, the whole article isn’t online, and I don’t have access to the rest of it, but now I’m curious enough to read it in some magazine store.
U.S. President George W Bush is attacked by an Iraqi reporter with a shoe.
Here’s the obligatory “Bush attacked by man with shoe” post. Reviewing the comments, I can sum up three key perspectives that were expressed by different viewers:
1) Bush is a ninja, and matrixed out of the way
2) Arabs are animals, disrespectful of US troops, and deserve to be nuked once they’ve been liberated
3) If only the shoe hit him, but it was epic lulz nevertheless
And now for my perspective: the reporter who threw the shoe displayed a remarkable amount of respect by using a deeply personal, culturally significant expression of profound disgust. Bush has made a major impact on the region, and people seem to care about expressing their opinions to him. In short, mission accomplished; the Iraqi people have officially been liberated!
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