=)

That a Jefferson-Hemings relationship could be neither refuted nor substantiated was challenged in 1998 by the results of DNA tests conducted by Dr. Eugene Foster and a team of geneticists. The study - which tested Y-chromosomal DNA samples from male-line descendants of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's uncle), John Carr (grandfather of Jefferson's Carr nephews), Eston Hemings, and Thomas C. Woodson - indicated a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants. The results of the study established that an individual carrying the male Jefferson Y chromosome fathered Eston Hemings (born 1808), the last known child born to Sally Hemings. There were approximately 25 adult male Jeffersons who carried this chromosome living in Virginia at that time, and a few of them are known to have visited Monticello. The study's authors, however, said "the simplest and most probable" conclusion was that Thomas Jefferson had fathered Eston Hemings.

Conclusion of DNA study:
Go here:
http://www.monticell...

The DNA study, combined with multiple strands of currently available documentary and statistical evidence, indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, and that he most likely was the father of all six of Sally Hemings's children appearing in Jefferson's records. Those children are Harriet, who died in infancy; Beverly; an unnamed daughter who died in infancy; Harriet; Madison; and Eston.

So where are Harriet, Madison and Eston’s descendants?
Do they live in Virginia?
Do they know the politics going on here?
Do they know the “Macaca Story�?
Would they want to be interviewed if they are still in the area?

Although those same supporters like to claim that the Founding Fathers were Christian, Jefferson was a Unitarian.  He also wrote his own version of the New Testament, taking out all references to miracles, Virgin births and Resurrections.  What he had left were Jesus's ethical teachings.  Jefferson was a great admirer of Jesus's philosophy and ethics.  But Jefferson was a product of the 18th Century Englightenment, who was a deist.

By the way, the Jefferson Bible is still in print and available.

The Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as it is formally titled, was an attempt by Thomas Jefferson to glean the teachings of Jesus from the Christian Gospels. Jefferson wished to extract the doctrine of Jesus by removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists.

Also:

Miracles and references to the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus are notably absent from the Jefferson Bible. The Bible begins with an account of Jesus's birth without references to angels, genealogy, or prophecy. The work ends with the words: "Now, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed." There is no mention of the resurrection.

Jefferson also wrote:

4. Hence the doctrines [Jesus] really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.

  5. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatizing followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught, by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an impostor.

Wow. I had never read this before today.  Frankly, I'm stunned at what Jefferson believed (or, more to the point, did NOT believe). Whatever Jefferson was, he certainly was not a Christian based on these comments. 

Any thoughts, Allen supporters?  Does George Allen really want to be labeled a "Jeffersonian?"

Blessed are the peacemakers:for they shall be called the children of God. Mt. verse 9-from the Jefferson Bible.

Rob Jefferson, descendent of Thomas Jeeferson, told the Senate campaign of George Allen yesterday not to run a pictures of former President on his webpage which accompanies text in which Mr. Allen praises the Virginia Democrat.

The use of images of President Jefferson  "is neither authorized nor appropriate," Mary Smith, curator of the Jefferson Museum in Charlottesville, wrote to Allen in a three-paragraph letter from her office.

"Using the President's name, image or likeness implies endorsement, which is neither fair nor respectful of any candidate, certainly not after President Jefferson's death."

"At the direction of Rob Jefferson, video footage, photograph, likeness and or quotes in any further campaign materials, including television advertisements," Smith wrote.

A spokesman for Allen said the campaign still plans to keep the website up.

"There is nothing negative at all in this ad," an Allen spokesman said. He said the attempt to halt the ad appeared to be politically motivated.

Along with the descendent, three former employees of the Monticello cafeteria denounced the Allen piece.

Allen served as puppet for powerful special intersts after Mr. Jefferson's Presidency. He remains a Republican, not a Democrat as was Mr. Jefferson. He remains confused and bored and is running against Republican Sen. George Allen in Virginia.

sed "s/Webb/Allen/g'

missed the g

However, maybe we can make it come true...

However, Republicans are granted a much larger ration in order to compensate for all the suffering they must undergo in paying those burdensome capital gains and estate taxes.

His contributions to religious freedom and pluralism are among his most important.  As he wrote in Notes on Virginia: "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no gods.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."  This is the kind of tolerance we still need to fight for 200 years later.

Not surprisingly, the Falwells and Robertsons of his day let him have it.  According to Joseph J. Ellis' book, American Sphinx, Jefferson was called an "arch infidel", "a defiler of Christian virtue" and worse.

Sound familiar?

For example: he just joined Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and other historians in denouncing ABC's distorted docudrama The Path to 9/11.  And earlier this year he published a scathing--and, I believe--prophetic article about George Bush entitled "The Worst President in History?".

The Princeton Web site gives his email as swilentz(at)princeton.edu, in case anyone is feeling bold.  I would absolutely love to know what he thinks of George Allen.

Allen scored zero on 'Seperation of Church and State' from Secular Coalition for America.

---

Jefferson wrote:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Allen:
Voted NO on repealing tax subsidy for companies which move US jobs offshore.
Voted YES on reforming bankruptcy to include means-testing & restrictions.
Voted YES on restricting rules on personal bankruptcy.
Rated 100% by the US COC, indicating a pro-business voting record.

---

Jefferson:

"I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to William Plumer, July 21, 1816
http://quotes.libert...

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...

[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers...

And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt.

Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816
http://quotes.libert...

Allen:
National debt approaching $10 trillion.

Jefferson lived in a world that we would find unimaginably strange and alien, as he would find ours.  The most we can do is trace the roots of what is right, and some of what is wrong, about our own era to his ideas and actions, among others'.

So ultimately I find George Allen's claim of a "Jeffersonian" mantle cynical and shallow.  I have no idea what he means by it, and I am quite certain he couldn't offer more than a sentence or two of glib explanation himself.

It's just another example of Allen dressing himself up in historical costume rather than risking--as Jefferson did--his own beliefs and principles in the practice of true political leadership.

And whether the costume in question is a Confederate general's uniform, as in his movie appearance; the fakery of cowboy boots and Confederate flags on a Southern Californian, as in the identity he has falsely assumed since high school; or the claim of affinity with an eighteenth-century genius whose greatest contributions were in laying the foundations of democracy and radical religious freedom, neither of which Allen has done a whit to advance--what we have is the same:  a politician who dresses himself in false plumage and cheap symbolism in order to manipulate the public into voting for him.

And I am quite certain, all anachronisms aside, that Jefferson himself would have found that utterly unworthy of anyone who aspires to Virginia statesmanship.

"I hope we shall take warning . . . and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country."  Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, letter of November 12, 1816.

Wal-Mart, call your office.

LOL...but he won't b/c he doesn't know what Jefferson espoused.

Unlike Webb, who has a thourough knowledge of this subject.

There's just no comparison between these two men.  That's why Webb is so close even though he's not as well known nor does he have the CORPORATE money behind him....but then that's why folks are flocking to Webb.

This country needs a change.  And having a UNITER elected to the Senate is a great first step.

No one could even imagine a more divisive candidate that George Allen....EXCEPT for BUSH and CHENEY....but they run in the same pack....

Buzz...Buzz...

Mosquito
http://mosquito-blog...