Obama's campaign plane made an emergency landing in St. Louis on July 7, 2008 as a result of a malfunction that was later revealed to have been quite serious. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/15/obama.plane/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Control tower tapes reveal that the pilot of presidential hopeful Barack Obama's plane told air traffic controllers there was an emergency when he made an unscheduled landing last month in St. Louis, Missouri.

On July 7 the Midwest Airlines MD-81 made an unscheduled landing during the flight from Chicago, Illinois, to Charlotte, North Carolina. The owner of the plane initially said the landing was not caused by an emergency.

However the tapes, released to ABC News through a Freedom of Information Act request, contradict that report. ABC first reported on the tapes on Thursday.

...

According to the tapes, the pilot told an FAA air traffic controller that he had limited ability to move the plane's nose up and down.

"We have limited pitch authority at flight levels; we're descending to see if we can regain pitch authority," the pilot told the air traffic controller.

"At this time we would like to declare this an emergency and also have CFR (fire and rescue equipment) standing by in St. Louis," the pilot said. The pilot remained calm throughout the recording.

Midwest Airlines acknowledged at the time that the pilot had detected a control problem in the pitch of the plane after an emergency evacuation chute opened in the aircraft's tail cone while in flight. Normally, the chute deploys only after landing and after the tail cone pops off.

The pitch, or angle of the nose of an airplane, affects the pilot's ability to control the plane.

Two days later, on July 9, Obama voted for the FISA "compromise" in the Senate. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/fisa-j10.shtml

Granted, Obama had already announced his support of the "compromise" earlier, on June 20. http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/obama_backing_fisa_compromise.php . But maybe somebody wanted to remind him to vote the right way.

Erich Kempka, was one of the witnesses. He had the same rank in the SS as Eichmann, Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel). He wrote a book of memoirs published in 1951, under the title Ich habe Adolf Hitler verbrannt (I cremated Adolf Hitler). An English-language version is due to appear in 2010, under the title I was Hitler's Chauffeur: The Memoirs of Erich Kempka. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Kempka

Chalk up one more victory for the military-industrial complex.

Obama administration will not sign land mine ban

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided not to sign an international convention banning land mines.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday that the administration recently completed a review and decided not to change the Bush-era policy.

"We decided that our land mine policy remains in effect," he said.

More than 150 countries have agreed to the Mine Ban Treaty's provisions to end the production, use, stockpiling and trade in mines. Besides the United States, holdouts include: China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Russia.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jElspC9IaV6mPES0OyZiCVBfwGZgD9C66E300

I'm currently reading Heinz H&uouml;hne's history of the early years of the Nazi dictatorship, 'Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit' ["Give Me Four Years"]. In the first chapter, Höhne discusses how, beginning with the fall of the last Weimar Socialist chancellor, Hermann Müller, in 1930, over a disagreement with the Reichswehr over disarmament/rearmament policy, it was the Reichswehr who decided who should be the last three chancellors of the Weimar Republic, and it was with the tacit agreement of the Reichswehr that Hitler, who promised to give the military the rearmament program it wanted, became Chancellor.

So, in those last years of Weimar, the Reichswehr was the hidden government of Germany.

And, in the first years of the Third Reich, the Reichswehr (soon to become the Wehrmacht) was co-ruler, coequal in power with the Nazi Party. Until Hitler outmaneuvered the leaders of the army in 1938.

(As a matter of fact, I think the military officers Keitel and Jodl protested this, and insisted on the military procedure of a firing squad. Which was denied them.)

Here are the relevant paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry on the "Nuremberg trials":

The death sentences were carried out 16 October 1946 by hanging using the standard drop method instead of long drop.[32][33] The U.S. army denied claims that the drop length was too short which caused the condemned to die slowly from strangulation instead of quickly from a broken neck.[34]

The executioner was John C. Woods. Although the rumor has long persisted that the bodies were taken to Dachau and burned there, they were actually incinerated in a crematorium in Munich, and the ashes scattered over the river Isar.[35] The French judges suggested the use of a firing squad for the military condemned, as is standard for military courts-martial, but this was opposed by Biddle and the Soviet judges. These argued that the military officers had violated their military ethos and were not worthy of the firing squad, which was considered to be more dignified.[citation needed] The prisoners sentenced to incarceration were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.

Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution and Martin Bormann was not present when convicted. The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials#The_main_trial