Steve Kings remark on rape and incest

Democrat media are trying to portray Steve King's comment on family trees as excusing rape and incest. Not at all. It's just a fact. History, not emotion, and Democrats hate that. He's simply saying those children are a part of the human race, part of us, regardless of the sins of their mothers and fathers. If you chopped off all those branches in your family tree, you'd have a stump. The current craze for DNA family searches has shown that many people do not have the fathers (usually) or family they imagined. Many family genealogies have "aunts" who were actually the mother, or an uncle, grandfather or cousin who were the father. But there it is--in the census and the insert in the Bible record. I used to be part of an e-mail genealogy group, and was amazed at the stories I read of old family secrets before the DNA tests. . . one I recall was a man impregnating his wife's younger sister and her being hidden, then married off and whisked out of state then languishing in a mental institution and the child given away. Democrats see that as immoral, but not aborting a person who might grow up to be a very ordinary citizen, or a very exceptional scientist is OK.

Civilian populations, particularly women, suffered greatly in wars going back centuries, and in Latin class we translated the "Rape of the Sabine Women." You can call it "abduction," but they helped populate Rome. American Indians did the same thing.  Muslims tried and almost succeeded in taking over Christian Europe, but over time turned whole populations Muslim. Africans were exported all over the world mostly to South America (only 6% came to North America) to be slaves. Or more recently in this century, when many of the young Nigerian Christian school girls were freed from Boko Haram--many were pregnant or carrying toddlers.

Just because we have Planned Parenthood clinics down the street or across town in a black or low income neighborhood, doesn't mean we're free of this. Democrats are the ones saying only certain lives matter--the ones in our party, our victims--not your party or your victims. They are the ones pushing eugenics and selling body parts. Democrats for decades have said most children conceived outside and some inside marriage are not worthy if they are inconvenient, a source of shame or disabled.

Look back a few years, decades or centuries, and you'll find this in your own family tree.

Cold case solved through DNA

Dan Flynn of American Spectator reports in today’s email:

“Middlesex County, Massachusetts, authorities solved a half-century old murder-rape case through DNA. The news chills in that on Saturday I drove on the street where the murder took place and walked with my kids where the victim skated with a boyfriend just prior to it. Everything looked pretty peaceful in 2018. In 1969—not so much.

In the years since Michael Sumpter raped and murdered 23-year-old Harvard University grad student Jane Britton, Sumpter raped and murdered 24-year-old Mary McClain and raped and murdered 23-year-old Ellen Rutchick. We discovered all this after his death. The authorities did convict him of a 1975 rape on a woman (Do you think he regretted not murdering her?). But then the administration of Michael Dukakis allowed him out of prison on work release in 1985. Guess what he did. Yes, he escaped the program and raped a woman—two years before Willie Horton did something very similar. In 2000, the state let Sumpter out of prison because he suffered from cancer. He died 13 months after his release, presumably without raping anyone else.

How marvelous that the authorities can use technology to solve cold cases. Too bad they cannot use common sense from preventing them from happening in the first place.”

According to the DA press release: https://www.middlesexda.com/press-releases/news/dna-used-identify-man-responsible-1969-murder-jane-britton

“Sumpter had been convicted of committing the stranger rape of a woman in her Boston apartment in 1975. Mr. Sumpter died of cancer at the age of 54 in 2001, 13 months after he was paroled from his 15 to 20 year sentence for this 1975 Boston rape.  In 2002, after his death, Sumpter was identified by another CODIS hit in connection with a 1985 stranger rape of a woman in Boston committed after Sumpter escaped from work release.

Since his death, DNA testing and the CODIS database identified Michael Sumpter in connection with five sexual assaults, three of which involved the murder of the victim.”
No mention in the press release of the work release program that put him on the streets to rape and kill more women.

Photo of Mr. Sumpter in 1968 file: https://www.middlesexda.com/sites/middlesexda/files/news/michael_sumpter.jpg

Statement from Britton’s only surviving family member on forgiveness:

Statement from Boyd Britton, released by request on his behalf by the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office: 

A half century of mystery and speculation has clouded the brutal crime that shattered Jane's promising young life and our family.  As the surviving Britton, I wish to thank all those -- friends, public officials and press -- who persevered in keeping this investigation active, most especially State police Sergeant Peter Sennott.  The DNA evidence match may be all we ever have as a conclusion.  Learning to understand and forgive remains a challenge.
 
The Rev. Boyd R. Britton+ Vicar Anglican Church of Our Saviour Santa Barbara, CA

Adoptees face a special problem with genealogy--so do their children and grandchildren

About 6 months ago I got an e-mail from a stranger whose father I barely knew, but we'd attended the same high school. His father was deceased and had been adopted as a young child, so the question was, could I help him find his father's birth family. We chatted a little (via e-mail) and I told him what I could (mostly small town gossip where everyone knew everyone else's business). I heard from him today, he'd done two DNA services and got the same results--a second cousin from a town near where his father and I had grown up--so probably a connection to the elusive grandfather. He's over the moon. He's done extremely well in life, has a wonderful family, good education and great career. But he just always wanted to know. . .

It's in my DNA

When I retired October 1, 2000 I was faced with a unique and wonderful challenge: TIME. A gift of twenty-four hours every day to use any way I wanted. Time is money, and I became an instant millionaire, a winner of the lottery. Unlike most women I knew, I really didn’t have any hobbies, just a variety of interests. I’d always liked writing and art, animals and travel, religion, history and science, but especially research got my blood flowing to the brain. That interest in everything is probably what drew me to library science first as a staffer (high school and college in the 50s), then a professional (University of Illinois and Ohio State University in the 60s). That career is a never ending quest for information in a logical progression, and because I was an academic librarian, publication was a requirement for promotion and tenure. However, both my mother and grandmother were researchers in their own way--so it's in my DNA.

For 30 years I’d been dabbling here and there with genealogy, looking through scraps of paper and family Bibles each time I visited my parents. In the mid-1990s, I even signed up for a pass to use the genealogy sources at the Ohio Historical Society. In 1993 I wrote down the recollections of my father and aunt, “Tales from Pine Creek” and created a family recipe book to use at a 1993 reunion of the 100 or so descendants of my grandparents. However, once I had the time, I soon learned that genealogy is more than a hobby, it’s an obsession requiring more devotion and days than I had left. From time to time, I do look through the records I’ve accumulated and I read the newsletter from Rootsweb, a wonderful resource for anyone interested in beginning this fascinating hobby, step by step from the beginning. December's issue was on one of the newer research tools, DNA testing:

The most common test used today is for the Y chromosome. Males are tested because only males inherit a Y chromosome. Y-DNA testing is surname-based with a specific surname (and variant spellings) included in a project. Surname projects will generally have a group of people whose results indicate that they share a common ancestor. The degree of the match helps to pinpoint the approximate number of generations separating a person from the shared ancestor. Common surnames may have many separate groups whose results indicate they descend from different ancestors.

Although only males can be tested for Y-DNA, females can use a surrogate male relative, usually a brother, for testing purposes. The surrogate male must share the top line of the pedigree with the female relative, usually represented by the father's surname. DNA tests, for genealogical purposes, must be taken from a living person. Most tests are self administered by swabbing the inside of your cheek – no blood, no needles!

mtDNA testing is for everyone (male and female). All children inherit mtDNA from their mother. mtDNA isn't a chromosome like Y-DNA. It comes from the egg contributed by our mother. This type of test tells us about our straight maternal line -- the very bottom line of a pedigree form. Finding a relative based on your mtDNA is quite rare.

Y-DNA and mtDNA tests will provide us with information about our paternal and maternal "haplogroup." Our haplogroup tells us about our deep ancestral origin.

These are the only portions of our DNA that are inherited "intact" from one parent or the other. This means they can be traced back to a specific ancestor and the results compared with others. DNA won't identify the common ancestor. That element is left to the paper records we've gathered in our traditional research.

Keep in mind that Y and mtDNA tests only tell us about the very top and very bottom lines of our ancestry -- a tiny fraction of our overall ancestry. These tests will not tell us about our father's mother's, or our mother's father's, ancestors. For another explanation, see the Ancestry blog entry.