GAVEL GAMUT

By Jim Redwine

www.jamesmredwine.com

(Week of 05 January 2026)

HIGHLY RESOLVED

Abraham Lincoln published one of our nation’s solemn resolutions in his address at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. The over three thousand dead Union soldiers were the particular men Lincoln referenced that day. However, since President Lincoln’s main focus of the Civil War was to hold our country together, most likely he had in mind all the dead and wounded on both sides when he said:

“…[W[e here highly resolve that these dead

shall not have died in vain…”

That resolution was not made for a New Year, but it was a noble hope for our country’s future. From 1863 until 1914 this goal was fractured by almost continuous death and destruction, such as the Indian removals, the Spanish American War and then “The War to End all wars”, World War I. After that final war, America fought WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, The Gulf War, Afghanistan, The Iraq War and so many conflicts most Americans cannot recount whom we have fought and are still fighting nor why. We are currently aiding and abetting and directly involved in Palestine and Ukraine along with Venezuela and bellicose behavior bordering on armed conflicts with so many countries and groups even the cable news cannot keep up with them.

President Lincoln’s resolution for our country has gone the way my 2025 New Year’s Resolutions have. I dug through my devout promises to myself last year and find I do not need to address any new 2026 resolutions as, just like our government, the resolutions from 1863 until January 2026 will suffice. 

Therefore, I resolve to give up on exercising more, saving more, losing more weight, being nicer, helping out around JPeg Osage Ranch more and restraining my penchant to gossip about politics. After all, not one of my 2025 ideas that I have offered to our leaders has even been acknowledged, much less implemented.

I, therefore, resolve my 2025 resolutions shall “perish from the earth” should anyone be interested.

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AUTHOR MICHAEL NORDINE

One of the greatest gifts America ever received was originally envisioned for another nation. Before creating “Liberty Enlightening the World,” as the Statue of Liberty is officially known, French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi set to work on “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia,” which was meant to be placed at the entryway of the Suez Canal in Port Said, Egypt. It would have looked fairly similar to Lady Liberty, with an “Upper Egyptian” (Saeid Misr) wearing a robe and holding a torch. Bartholdi was inspired by a trip to Abu Simbel, the site of two iconic temples devoted to Ramesses II, and planned the sculpture to stand 86 feet high on a 48-foot pedestal. 

However, the statue was deemed too costly to produce, and the Port Said Lighthouse was erected instead. Bartholdi then repurposed his design after turning his attention to America due to a proposal by Édouard de Laboulaye, a French historian and abolitionist who wanted to honor the century-old alliance between the U.S. and France, as well as America’s successful effort to abolish slavery. The monument, renamed the Statue of Liberty, was constructed in France and presented to Levi Morton, then the U.S. ambassador to France and later vice president under Benjamin Harrison, in a ceremony in Paris on July 4, 1884. Following its completion the next year, it was disassembled and shipped to New York City, where it still stands today.

• By John Krull, TheStatehouseFile.com

• COPENHAGEN, Denmark—The past makes demands.

  It demands acknowledgment. It demands accountability.

  It demands a commitment to the truth.

  This is the overarching lesson taught by the superb Museum of Danish Resistance here in this lovely Scandinavian city. Neither the past nor the truth will be denied.

  The museum tells the story of a tortured period in the history of Denmark and the world. It covers the years from 1940 to 1945, when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany occupied the country.

  Hitler took Denmark with the acquiescence of the nation’s official government and monarch. Denmark’s leaders made the decision not to fight beyond initial skirmishing when the Germans crossed their border because the king and his government believed two things.

  The first was they believed the Germans were destined to win World War II. Hitler had not yet broken with Josef Stalin’s Soviet government and the attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into the fighting. Only a battered and beleaguered Great Britain seemed to stand between Hitler and the almost complete domination of Europe.

  The second was that they thought the Germans were too powerful to resist. Fighting back would just lead to massive Danish casualties and produce the same result—a German takeover. Capitulating seemed the wisest policy.

  Initially, many—perhaps even most—of the Danish people agreed.

  And yet … there were Danes who disagreed. They believed that the nation should not have surrendered both its autonomy and its principles without a struggle.

  Their determination to resist turned the country into a battlefield.

  The museum relates the tale by having five Danes who took part in that bloody conflict recount what they experienced during those anguished years. These were not grand figures who strode the international stage, but ordinary folks who decided to take stands.

  Two of them—housewife and mother Musse Hartig and baker Karl Christensen—did so for ideological reasons. Both were communists and Christensen had fought in the Spanish Civil War.

  Two—medical student Jorgen Kieler and engineering student Thorkild Lund-Jensen—fought for patriotic reasons. They could not abide the notion that their country would yield without a fight, particularly given that both of Denmark’s national anthems proclaimed defense of their homeland was a sacred duty.

  The fifth and last of them, office clerk and Danish Nazi Henning Brondum, fought to subjugate. He saw strength as an end, not a means toward achieving a larger goal. Power was its own justification.

  These five serve as the museumgoer’s guides through war in Denmark. They speak to visitors through shadowy reenactments, their voices supplied by actors, but all their words and experiences drawn from their writings, their letters to loved ones or their testimony in court.

  The combined story they tell is one of escalating horror. Each of them—except for the Nazi Brondum—finds himself or herself living through moments in which they must do things that make them morally uneasy in the service of preventing a greater wrong.

  Hartig at one point must choose between compromising the safety of her young daughter or that of her fellow resistance fighters. Christensen, Kieler and Lund-Jensen start by making arguments against fascism before coming to resist fascism with deadly violence.

  And Brondum, if he ever had a soul, sells it quickly so he can serve the Nazi Party.

  What the unfolding saga makes clear is that appeasement doesn’t work. The more control the Nazis assumed over Denmark’s government and people, the more it wanted. Every time they drew a line, they crossed it in short order.

  That traumatic half-decade in Danish history altered the destiny of all five of our guides. Lund-Jensen was shot dead by the Germans on May 4, 1945, the day they surrendered control of Denmark. Brondum died by firing squad in 1947 after confessing to 38 murders and assorted other offenses.

  The other three lived long lives but spent their remaining years dealing with and healing from what they had done in the war and what the war had done to them. They never took safety or liberty for granted again.

  They also triggered a national reckoning regarding Denmark’s actions during the Nazi occupation.

  They won acknowledgment that the government and the crown had been wrong. Denmark never should have capitulated to tyranny and lawlessness.

  They forced their fellow Danes to look at the past.

  Because the past makes demands.

  John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.

The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration in partnership with the Indiana State Department of Health launched an initiative in 2012 to develop a statewide strategic plan to integrate primary and behavioral health care services in Indiana. The advancement of primary care and behavioral health integration has received attention and momentum not only in Indiana but throughout the country. This effort has been promoted nationally through leading federal agencies such as Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Health Resources and Services Administration, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Ongoing field studies and evidentiary research indicates the longitudinal benefits of integration and supports the implication that it has overtime improved patient care, improved health of populations, and reduced the per capita cost of health care.

Integration defined:
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With the FDA oversight of e-cigarette and vape products introduced to the U.S. on or after Feb. 15, 2007, it has become clear that this process can be confusing. FDA has put out a two page handout that goes over this process and what to expect. It is mainly on the manufacturer and/or importer to ensure the products they are intending to sell in the U.S. have an approved authorization from the FDA to do so. The handout contains links to multiple resources to assist with further details on how this process works and where to find a list of authorized products. It is important as a retailer to know that if the vaping products you sell are not included on this list that you are subject to enforcement. Please see the list of resources below that can help to ensure your location stays in compliance with these federal laws.

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