Barbara Diane (Tobin) Amacher was born on June 4th, 1947, in Bay City Michigan to Robert and Audrey Tobin. Barb was the eldest of six kids and took her role as big sister to heart even setting up pretend classes for the little ones. After graduating from St. Joseph’s K-12, she attended Central Michigan University where she graduated with a degree in teaching. Barb taught for four and a half years at Walsh Elementary in Utica Schools before having to step back due to being diagnosed with Lupus. On July 4th, 1973, she met the love of her life and was married May 4th, 1974, to Richard Amacher. Together they settled into marriage in Rochester Hills and adopted their son, Matthew, in 1980 and their daughter, Meghan, in 1984. Barb thrived in her role as mother and raised two children that absolutely adore her. Barb had many titles in her 76 years including wife, daughter, mother, sister, niece, aunt, friend, teacher, tutor, and her favorite, Grandma. Barb had lifelong friendships and truly impacted those she met whether it was for 5 minutes or a lifetime. Barb was an avid gardener, reader, traveler, bird watcher, puzzle completer to name just a few. She fought bravely for almost 50 years and decided she had had enough. She made the bravest decision to enter hospice at home on 10/13/2023 and she passed peacefully on Sunday October 15th, 2023, surrounded by her loved ones. Barb will be deeply missed, and everyone was better off for knowing her.
With the commencement of an impeachment inquiry this week, the House of Representatives is moving the Biden corruption scandal into the highest level of constitutional inquiry. After stonewalling by the Bidens and federal agencies investigating various allegations, the move for a House inquiry was expected if not inevitable.
An impeachment inquiry does not mean that an impeachment itself is inevitable. But it dramatically increases the chances of finally forcing answers to troubling questions of influence-peddling and corruption.
As expected, many House Democrats — who impeached Donald Trump after only one hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, based on his phone call to Ukraine’s president — oppose any such inquiry into President Biden. House Republicans could have chosen to forego any hearings and use what I called a “snap impeachment,” as then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did with the second Trump impeachment in January 2021.
Instead, they have methodically investigated the corruption scandal for months and only now are moving to a heightened inquiry. The House has established a labyrinth of dozens of shell companies and accounts allegedly used to transfer millions of dollars to Biden family members. There is now undeniable evidence to support influence-peddling by Hunter Biden and some of his associates — with Joe Biden, to quote Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer, being “the brand” they were selling.
The suggestion that this evidence does not meet the standard for an inquiry into impeachable offenses is an example of willful blindness. It also is starkly different from the standard applied by congressional Democrats during the Trump and Nixon impeachment efforts.
The Nixon impeachment began on Oct. 30, 1973, just after President Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate allegations. The vote in the judiciary committee was along party lines. The House was correct to start that impeachment inquiry, although House leaders stressed that they were not prejudging the existence of impeachable offenses. The inquiry started roughly eight months before any indictments of defendants linked to the Watergate break-in. It was many months before clear evidence established connections to Nixon, who denied any wrongdoing or involvement.
Every impeachment inquiry is different, of course. In this case, there is a considerable amount of evidence gathered over months of methodical investigations by three different committees.
Consider just five established facts:
First, there appears to be evidence that Joe Biden lied to the public for years in denying knowledge of his son’s business dealings. Hunter Biden’s ex-business associate, Tony Bobulinski, has said repeatedly that he discussed some dealings directly with Joe Biden. Devon Archer, Hunter’s close friend and partner, described the president’s denials of knowledge as “categorically false.”
Second, we know that more than $20 million was paid to the Bidens by foreign sources, including figures in China, Ukraine, Russia and Romania. There is no apparent reason for the multilayers of accounts and companies other than to hide these transfers. Some of these foreign figures have allegedly told others they were buying influence with Joe Biden, and Hunter himself repeatedly invoked his father’s name — including a text exchange with a Chinese businessman in which he said his father was sitting next to him as Hunter demanded millions in payment. While some Democrats now admit that Hunter was selling the “illusion” of influence and access to his father, these figures clearly believed they were getting more than an illusion. That includes one Ukrainian businessman who reportedly described Hunter as dumber than his dog.
Third, specific demands were made on Hunter, including dealing with the threat of a Ukrainian prosecutor to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter was given a lucrative board position. Five days later, Joe Biden forced the Ukrainians to fire the prosecutor, even though State Department and intelligence reports suggested that progress was being made on corruption. Likewise, despite warnings from State Department officials that Hunter was undermining anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, he continued to receive high-level meetings with then-Secretary of State John Kerry and other State Department officials.
Fourth, Hunter repeatedly stated in emails that he paid his father as much as half of what he earned. There also are references to deals that included free office space and other perks for Joe Biden and his wife; other emails reference how Joe and Hunter Biden would use the same accounts and credit cards. Beyond those alleged direct benefits, Joe Biden clearly benefited from money going to his extended family.
Fifth, there is evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Hunter that could be linked to covering up these payments, from the failure to pay taxes to the failure to register as a foreign lobbyist. What is not established is the assumption by many that Joe Biden was fully aware of both the business dealings and any efforts to conceal them.
The White House is reportedly involved in marshaling the media to swat down any further investigation. In a letter drafted by the White House Counsel’s office, according to a CNN report media executives were told they need to “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans “for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.” It is a dangerous erosion of separation between the White House and the president’s personal legal team. Yet, many in the media have previously followed such directions from the Biden team — from emphasizing the story that the laptop might be “Russian disinformation” to an unquestioning acceptance of the president’s denial of any knowledge of his son’s dealings.
Notably, despite the vast majority of media echoing different defenses for the Bidens for years, the American public is not buying it. Polls show that most Americans view the Justice Department as compromised and Hunter Biden as getting special treatment for his alleged criminal conduct. According to a recent CNN poll, 61% of Americans believe Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business deals with China and Ukraine; only 1% say he was involved but did nothing wrong.
The American public should not harbor such doubts over corruption at the highest levels of our government. Thus, the House impeachment inquiry will allow Congress to use the very apex of its powers to force disclosures of key evidence and resolve some of these troubling questions. It may not result in an impeachment, but it will result in greater clarity. Indeed, it is that very clarity that many in Washington may fear the most from this inquiry.
Jonathan Turley, an attorney, constitutional law scholar and legal analyst, is the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School.
Recently, Jacob Hornberger wrote 2 essays about reducing domestic mass killings. Below are some condensed paragraphs from his essays. I have edit some of the paragraphs to make the text shorter.
Given the recent spate of killings in the United States, the response of the gun-control crowd has been predictable. “These shootings show, once again, why we need gun control in America.”
Never mind that Switzerland is awash in the private ownership of guns and there aren’t regular mass killings there. And never mind that California’s strict gun-control laws have not prevented mass killings there. When it comes to gun ownership, logic and analysis are in short supply within the gun-control crowd.
The real issue is one that the gun-control crowd is loath to address: What is it that is causing so much violence in America?
There are two major causes of violence in America.
One is the drug war. Legalize drugs and you immediately terminate all the cartels, drug gangs, turf battles, and drug-war violence.
The other major cause of violence in America is that the federal government is the world’s biggest killing machine. We don’t know how many foreigners the Pentagon and the CIA have killed in the last 60 years, but it has to number in the millions. Martin Luther King was right when he said that the U.S. government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
The notion has been that so long as the killings were taking place “over there,” they would have little or no impact here. Americans could go about their daily lives and the Pentagon and the CIA could engage in their mass killing sprees in foreign countries.
Those mass killings “over there” have seeped into the subconsciousness’s of Americans.
The biggest effect of America’s overseas killing machine has been on the off-kilter people here at home. Ordinarily, they would just be living their lives a little weirdly but without bothering anyone. But now they are engaged in what amounts to copycat killings.
Thus, to end violence in America, the solution does not involve gun control. The solution is twofold:
Legalize all drugs immediately.
Immediately bring all troops home from overseas, cease all military operations in foreign countries, abandon all foreign U.S. military bases, and terminate all foreign aid, including weaponry and money.
From his second essay
A prerequisite to ending the massive violence that afflicts American society is dismantling the federal killing machine. By wreaking death, injury, suffering, and destruction on millions of people in foreign lands for the past several decades, the Pentagon and the CIA have triggered something inside off-kilter people here at home that has caused them to copy the federal killing sprees in foreign lands.
Americans must recognize that the federal government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Too many Americans are loath to acknowledge the existence of this killing machine, much less call for its dismantling.
An example is an article “Timothy McVeigh’s Dreams Are Coming True” by Michelle Goldberg that appeared in 5/8/2023 New York Times. Goldberg states that the popularity of McVeigh’s extreme rightwing ideology is growing and is usually behind ideologically driven mass killings. Goldberg uses her article to make the standard call for gun control.
What is revealing about Goldberg’s piece is the absence of three words: Ruby Ridge and Waco. How can anyone write about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing without mentioning Ruby Ridge and Waco?
At sentencing, McVeigh stated it was the federal massacres at Ruby Ridge and Waco that motivated him to commit the Oklahoma City bombing. If the feds had not attacked Randy Weaver and killed his wife Vickie at Ruby Ridge and if they had not gassed and incinerated those people at Waco, McVeigh would never have committed the Oklahoma City bombing.
McVeigh was tried for murder, condemned as a ruthless killer, and sentenced to death. Yet, the behavior of federal agents who killed Vickie Weaver and the Branch Davidians was ignored.
Goldberg says that American rightwing groups hail the tyrannical rightwing regime of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. She leaves out of her analysis that the U.S. government inspired and supported the military coup that violently ousted the democratically elected president and then ardently supported Pinochet when his goons rounded up 60,000 innocent people, tortured and raped them, and killed or disappeared 3,000 of them.
The mainstream media’s response to the 9/11 attacks was no different. Immediately after those attacks, U.S. officials declared that the terrorists hated America for its “freedom and values.” It was a position that the U.S. mainstream press wholeheartedly embraced.
The rationale was a lie. The terrorists had struck because they hated the federal killing machine, a machine that had contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from U.S. sanctions on Iraq. Everyone condemned the terrorists, but one would be hard-pressed to find any commentary in the mainstream press criticizing the federal killing machine’s sanctions-related murder of those Iraqi children.
The same holds true for U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.”
After a foreign terrorist shot several CIA personnel in their cars while they were driving into CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, in 1993, he was captured, brought to trial, and convicted. At his sentencing hearing, he said he was retaliating for the death and destruction that the CIA and the Pentagon had been wreaking in the Middle East. He was condemned for being a ruthless killer, but there was no criticism of the federal killing machine that had motivated him to act.
In 1993, terrorists struck the World Trade Center. When one of them was brought to trial, he too cited the death and destruction that the federal killing machine had been wreaking in the Middle East as the motivating factor in the WTC attack. He too was condemned as a ruthless killer but there wasn’t a peep of protest against the federal killing machine.
A problem we face in this country is the fact that all too many people are loath to confront the federal killing machine, much less bring it to an end. That’s because they consider the Pentagon and the CIA to be a patriotic god, one whose massive killings, they believe, keep us “safe.” But if we really want to bring an end to the massive violence that afflicts our society, it is necessary to confront what Martin Luther King called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” acknowledge its evil nature, dismantle it, and restore our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.
Dr. Ronald D. Hedlund, 81, of Estero, Florida passed away peacefully from complications of Parkinsons on February 25, 2023. Dr. Hedlund was a professor of political science for 50 years. Born in Joliet, Illinois to Reverend Henry G. Hedlund and Betty Marie (Nelson) and brother to the late Doreen Marie Swanson (Herbert), Ron graduated from Clermont (FL) High School, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Augustana College in Rock Island, IL, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from the University of Iowa. His long and storied career in higher education began in 1967 as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where he later rose to associate and then full professor. Within the Political Science Department, he held several administrative positions and, beginning in 1980, served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School. In 1989, he became Vice Provost for Research and Service at the University of Rhode Island. He joined Northeastern University in Boston, MA in 1996 as Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Education, retiring in 2016 as Professor Emeritus of Political Science.
Under his leadership, Dr. Hedlund focused on increasing academic and research excellence, which took many forms, including expanding student learning opportunities, encouraging faculty-mentored research projects, providing research support and professional development for faculty, and strengthening academic offerings on campus. He also nurtured relationships between the universities for which he worked and industry, including initiating and supporting research partnerships. Throughout his career, Ron continued his own research on state legislatures (receiving, among others, 4 National Science Foundation grants). Solely or in collaboration with colleagues and graduate students, he published more than 60 professional journal articles, books, and book chapters; and presented his research at more than 120 professional conferences. Supporting his favorite sports teams, hosting get-togethers, and being involved in the lives of family were also priorities for him.
Ron loved living here and especially enjoyed sitting on his lanai overlooking the lake, thinking “deep” thoughts, and watching the birds, ducks and an occasional alligator. His physical limitations precluded his active participation in many activities, but he did enjoy several seasons of bocce, conversations with neighbors and attending Masters get-togethers.
He is survived by his beloved wife of 58 years, Dr. Ellen (Parrish); his daughter Karen Marie, Norton, MA; his son, Dr. David P., his wife Yi Hsin (Chuang), and grandson Jayden of West Hempstead, NY; and 3 generations of nieces and nephews who loved him and thought of him as their family patriarch.
Prepared and presented by Frank J. Williams at The Lincoln Group of Boston meeting on February 4, 1989 Bridgewater, Massachusetts
The Worcester Telegram of November 28, 1988, reported the death of Dr. Samuel Bachrach the day before. Listed in the long obituary dutifully describing Doctor Sam’s significant accomplishments and community service was his membership in the Lincoln Group of Boston. We tend to see each other in one-dimensional terms when we join together at our four meetings a year and forget that each of us have other lives beyond our common interest in Abraham Lincoln. Sam’s interest and careers were many and successful. Of course, he was a physician, specializing in arthritis and geriatric medicine, with a practice in Worcester for thirty years. An army veteran of World War II, he remained in the Reserves, retiring in 1966 as a lieutenant colonel.
For many years, he was a book reviewer for the Sunday Telegram and editor-in-chief of the Worcester Medical News. In between all of this, he was the founding president of the Age. Center of Worcester Area as well as the founding president of the Worcester County Poetry Association.
He was the last active member of what was affectionately called the Worcester Contingent, who, with Judge Carl Wahlstrom and Archie St. Onge (and Vern Otterson and Rudy Hallen, sometimes), faithfully drove together to attend almost all of our meetings.
Our Lincoln Group histories do not record when Sam first became a member. It certainly antedated his very apt paper “The Physical and Mental Constitution of Lincoln” which he delivered before the Group on April 13, 1957 at the Worcester Historical Society.
Bright, articulate and possessed of an inquiring mind, he did so enjoy our meetings and found them, in the words of his wife, Lilyan, “intellectually stimulating”. He could always be counted on to ask a question or two after each presentation.
He is not only missed because of his interest in Abraham Lincoln, but because of his genuine friendship and grace which he imparted to all of us.
