If you have a gaming laptop and are planning to use it with an external monitor and a bunch of peripherals, here are some of the best docking stations to buy.

California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is being slammed for a perceived racist remark uttered during an appearance to promote his new memoir.

President Donald Trump hosts angel families for a remembrance ceremony at the White House on Monday, February 23. Angel families are the relatives of victims of illegal alien crime, as the president continues…

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Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) declared that he could not read a speech “like” a black official during a racist weekend chat, but it seems he also cannot read or understand official court sentences…

Anti-ICE students not only stormed out of school to support illegal alien criminals, but they also violently attacked classmates peacefully counter-protesting by holding Trump flags. Advertisement A parent…

How much can $100 million in gold buy?A year after World War II ended, President Harry Truman’s administration thought that was a fair price to purchase Greenland.As you might have guessed, the offer was either ignored or outright ejected. Otherwise, 80 years later, President Donald Trump wouldn’t be so gung-ho about acquiring the world’s largest island “one way or the other.”Related: That time Russia tried to join NATONevermind that Greenland is part of the kingdom of Denmark, which, like the United States, belongs to NATO. Still, Trump sees accessing the 836,000-square-foot island covered predominantly with ice as an issue of national and world security against Russian and Chinese threats.“Greenland sits astride key Arctic sea lanes that are becoming increasingly navigable as ice melts,” Ben Johansen and Eli Stokols wrote in Politico in January. “It also hosts Pituffik Space Base, a critical U.S. military installation for missile warning, space surveillance, and Arctic operations. To Trump, Greenland represents leverage: strategic location, military value, and untapped natural resources.”To be fair, some of those reasons are valid. They also are not new in regard to a country that is three times the size of Texas but has a population less than Kalamazoo, Michigan. Attempts to Acquire Greenland Date to the 19th Century ‘Alaska is ours.’ (Wikimedia Commons) After the Civil War, Secretary of State William Seward was in a spending mood. He agreed to pay Russia $7.2 million (roughly $164 million today) to acquire Alaska in 1867; the transaction was ridiculed as “Seward’s Folly” at the time, but who’s laughing now?Seward didn’t want to stop with the Pacific Northwest, either.Enamored with Greenland’s vast natural resources, he turned the U.S. government’s checkbook toward purchasing it, along with Iceland, the following year. Seward reportedly had settled on a price ($5.5 million, or about $125 million today) but never got around to an official offer after Congress balked about acquiring more Arctic territory. A Proposed Land Swap The United States was at it again in 1910, but this time, it wasn’t offering cold, hard cash. American diplomats approached the Danes with a complicated trade, in which the Danes would hand over Greenland and the Danish West Indies to the U.S., and in return, the U.S. would relinquish some islands in the Philippines. Much like a deal involving three sports teams, the land exchange also would have involved Germany.We’re not sure what the Germans thought of the deal, but the Danes’ answer was decisive. They responded with a hard no.While the U.S. acquired the Danish West Indies–now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands–for $25 million in gold in 1917, Greenland remained out of reach.Next, it was Truman’s turn to try. Cold War Calculations The U.S. values Greenland’s strategic importance. Its ice? Not so much. (U.S. Air Force/Brian Hill) After the Allies defeated the Nazis in World War II, the Russians posed the biggest threat to the United States. The Cold War had barely begun when Truman tried to shore up America’s defense by making another pitch to Denmark.Offering gold seemed to work once before with the Danes, so why not try it again? Just offer more of it, so that’s what the Truman administration did.Valuing Greenland’s strategic importance, the Americans likely thought that $100 million in gold would lead at least to further negotiations. The Danes didn’t see it that way and, in reality, were aghast at the offer.“The Danes were rather horrified that the U.S. thought it could gain a territory by putting that kind of a monetary value on it, and that Denmark would be willing to part with it,” historian Ron Doel, co-editor of “Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice,” said to History.com. The 1951 Agreement Special operators conduct training in austere conditions at Pituffik Space Base, Greenland, on May 4, 2023. (U.S. Special Operations Command) All is not lost, though, from the United States’ perspective. Since 1941, America has had a military presence on Greenland, but it became more robust a decade later.After Soviet-backed communist revolutions toppled several countries in Europe in the late 1940s, NATO was established. The alliance initially included 12 countries, including the U.S. and Denmark. Greenland became a more pressing issue after the Russians detonated their first nuclear bomb and an omnipresent threat lingered that they could strike North America via the Arctic.“The fear was that a Soviet plane with an atomic weapon strapped to its belly could zigzag its way across the high North Atlantic, pop over Eastern Canada, and drop a nuke on New York,” Barry Zellen, author of “Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World,” told History.com. “And so the U.S. wanted to have a presence in Greenland to conduct aerial surveillance of the horizon.”Those concerns resulted in a revised agreement between the U.S. and Denmark in 1951, giving the Americans an expanded military presence on the island. It created Thule Air Base, which is now Pituffik Space Base, as well as redesignated Sondrestrom Air Base. Pituffik is currently the only active U.S. military base on Greenland. While Trump announced last month the“framework of a future deal” regarding Greenland, few details have emerged. Until the matter is settled, in Trump’s words, “one way or the other,” Greenlanders will be understandably anxious. They view their autonomy as priceless, and that’s not something that usually is for sale. Don’t Miss the Best of We Are The Mighty • How extremely cold weather can destroy the military’s best-laid plans• The World War II commandos dedicated to Arctic operations• This Civil War veteran nearly died while exploring the Arctic Featured Military News The time the US offered $100 million in gold to buy Greenland By Stephen Ruiz Movies You could be the next owner of Darth Vader’s revolver By Miguel Ortiz Military Life The undisputed guide to proper treatment of an ROTC cadet By Dave Grove History Operation Highjump was one of the military’s coldest missions to date By Bethaney Phillips Mighty MilSpouse An honest look at how relationships evolve during and after military service By Daniella Horne The post The time the US offered $100 million in gold to buy Greenland appeared first on We Are The Mighty.

Returning from its winter recess, the Supreme Court on Monday added just one new case to its oral argument docket. In a list of orders from the justices’ private conference last week, the court agreed to review a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court in Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a case brought under state law by Boulder, Colorado. Boulder contends that oil and gas companies have knowingly played a role in exacerbating climate change and therefore have caused millions of dollars of damage to its property and residents. The oil and gas companies urged the state courts to dismiss the case, arguing that the state-law claims are superseded by federal environmental laws and the federal government’s power to conduct foreign policy. The state courts ruled that federal law did not trump Boulder’s claims. While the Colorado Supreme Court indicated that it was “express[ing] no opinion on the ultimate viability of the merits of” Boulder’s claims, it concluded that the oil and gas companies’ efforts to dismiss the case in state court boiled down to an argument “that a vague federal interest over interstate pollution, climate change, and energy policy must preempt Boulder’s claims.” The oil and gas companies came to the Supreme Court in August, asking the justices to weigh in. They told the justices that the dispute “provides the Court with its best opportunity yet to resolve one of the most important questions currently pending in the lower courts. Energy companies that produce and sell fossil fuels,” the companies wrote, “are facing numerous lawsuits in state courts across the Nation seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries allegedly caused by the contribution of greenhouse-gas emissions to global climate change. But as the Court has recognized for over a century,” the companies said, “the structure of our constitutional system does not permit a State to provide relief under state law for injuries allegedly caused by pollution emanating from outside the State.” Without waiting for a request from the justices for its views, the federal government filed a “friend of the court” brief urging the justices to take up the case. It contended that “Colorado … may not apply its law to the companies’ conduct outside the State.” Boulder urged the justices to allow the lawsuit to go forward. It contended (among other things) that the Supreme Court does not have the power under federal law to review the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling because it is not yet final. Taking up the case now, Boulder argued, “would require the Court to wade into a thicket of preliminary questions that promise nothing but rabbit holes and dead ends.” But in any event, it continued, the companies’ “novel constitutional theory would vest judges—not legislators—with broad authority to decide” whether federal or state law should apply in particular areas. After considering the case at five consecutive conferences, the justices on Monday agreed to grant review. They instructed the litigants to address an additional question in their briefs and at oral argument: whether the Supreme Court has the power to hear the case at all. The justices are likely to hear oral arguments in the fall, with a decision to follow sometime in 2026. The Supreme Court once again did not act on several high-profile petitions for review that it has repeatedly considered, involving issues such as the Second Amendment rights of people convicted of non-violent felonies, whether states can ban AR-15s and large-capacity magazines, and the parental rights of a Massachusetts couple who contend that middle-school officials hid the social transition of their child from them. The justices will meet for another private conference on Friday, Feb. 27. They are expected to release orders from that conference on Monday, March 2, at 9:30 a.m. EST. The post Supreme Court agrees to hear case on Colorado dispute over climate change appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

BOOK REVIEW: Siege: The Canadian Campaign in the American Revolution, 1775-1776 by Donald Grady Shomette (Heritage Books, 2005) Two volumes, paperback, $77.00 In its first year, the American Revolution was unstoppable. The outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord was followed by the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and victories at Moore’s Creek Bridge (North Carolina), […] The post Siege: The Canadian Campaign in the American Revolution, 1775-1776 appeared first on Journal of the American Revolution.