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Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Greenwood Cemetery in Cuthbert gets new interpretive sign
By David Dixon CUTHBERT — A new interpretive sign was just installed in Greenwood Cemetery recently, placed beside the monument to the unknown Confederate soldiers buried there. The monument was erected in 2021 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp No. 1855, Calhoun Rifles, of Calhoun County. The camp had been working on it since May 2022 when the monument was dedicated. It was felt that the additional information was needed in order to tell and explain the history of what took place at the three Confederate hospitals located there and historic at Greenwood Cemetery during the last year of the War Between the States. 'The new sign and monument are dedicated to these soldiers and to recognize a group of men that was totally forgotten, unknown, and unappreciated for their sacrifice,' Camp Commander Glenn Sinquefield said. Matrix of Lee County completed the design, and the wording was done by camp member Charles Swann. Greenwood Cemetery is tucked away from the busy main streets of Cuthbert. Founded in 1843, the cemetery was originally part of the First Methodist Church of Cuthbert. Cuthbert itself is one of the oldest communities in southwest Georgia, having first been occupied by white Americans in 1831 as the county seat of the newly formed Randolph County. It was incorporated as a town in 1834 and as a city in 1859. It served as a trading center for this area of Georgia. The Central of Georgia Railway arrived in Cuthbert in the 1850s, further stabilizing its position in that regard. During the latter part of the War Between the States, Cuthbert housed three Confederate hospitals. The three hospitals were named Hood (now the site of Andrew College), Hill and Lumpkin. The hospitals were used primarily for treating soldiers who became sick or wounded during the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. Many of the soldiers who died from disease or wounds at these hospitals were buried in Greenwood Cemetery. Karan Pittman and Lela B. Phillips from Andrew College researched and co-authored a book on the Confederate hospitals in Cuthbert. Twenty-four Confederate graves are marked at Greenwood Cemetery. The pair discovered that the majority of these men died from a smallpox epidemic that touched Cuthbert in December 1864 and January 1865. However, there was a large open space in the cemetery that puzzled the researchers. They and others suspected there might be other graves in this area. They coordinated their research with the Calhoun Rifles to arrange for a ground penetrating radar scan of this space, which revealed 157 previously unknown and unmarked graves. Since the cemetery is located by the railroad tracks, it was thought to be the most convenient for burials, as it was also near Hood Hospital. It is believed some of the men being transported for care, died on the trip south. Thus, it is thought, many of these soldiers were hastily buried in the cemetery after being removed from the railcars. Information on the identities of these men, along with the men who died in the hospitals, has yet to be discovered, so their existence was unknown and forgotten until the research and the monument and sign were completed. While we will probably never know their identities, they are certainly now recognized for their sacrifice.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Really Happened to Suzanne Simpson?
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." From the road outside, the Argyle is shielded by tall cedar elm trees, dense privet shrubs, and no trespassing signs with the private dining club's logo—a fierce boar with tusks—above the words violators will be prosecuted. As temperatures in San Antonio begin to dip and the brush outside thins, though, the property housing this exclusive club in the toniest part of town becomes slightly more visible. The club itself is a stately 170-year-old, three-story colonial mansion, with a tall, photogenic staircase leading up to the entryway and a spacious veranda wrapped around the top floor. In the 1850s the building was the headquarters of a horse ranch that stretched for miles. 'Lavish entertainment was the rule, and visiting celebrities, including Robert E. Lee, traditionally stayed at the Argyle,' according to the club's website. 'During the War Between the States, the Argyle served a grimmer purpose as an arsenal.' Today the Argyle is the sealed-off province of some of the wealthiest, most influential, and most media-averse families in Texas, one of the most elite and most private members-only social clubs in the South. It's also one of the last places Suzanne Clark Simpson, a popular real estate agent and 51-year-old mother of four who lived just down the road, was seen in public. On Sunday, October 6, 2024, Simpson was wearing a short, dark dress and tall, tan heels. She had her sandy blond hair partially tied back. That night she and her husband Brad, 53, an investor in real estate and construction businesses around central Texas—he was later described by one newspaper as a 'tycoon'—took their five-year-old daughter to a party at the club. The couple were seen arguing, and Suzanne left with their daughter. That evening a neighbor also witnessed Brad and Suzanne 'physically struggling' on their block of East Olmos Drive. Later the neighbor 'heard screams coming from the wooded area' across the street, according to a court filing. The next day Suzanne was nowhere to be seen. Friends were concerned, and at 9:57 p.m. one of them formally reported her missing. Shortly thereafter, Brad called the police himself, reporting his wife missing in a voicemail. The disappearance stunned this affluent enclave on the north side of San Antonio. Friends and neighbors passed out flyers with Suzanne's face on them. Police searched the wooded areas near the Simpson house. They searched along a highway a mile away and then searched the family's ranch property in the next county over. As the investigation expanded, the Texas Rangers and the FBI got involved. At a candlelight vigil there were prayers for Suzanne's safe return—or for news of her whereabouts—and for her children, ages 5, 15, 18, and 20. Suzanne's mother Barbara Clark told the crowd that Suzanne had called her the night she went missing, saying Brad had 'hurt her.' Barbara had called her back. 'My plan was to tell her that she could come over to my house and stay there and bring the kids,' Barbara said. 'She never answered the phone. She never heard my plan.' That same week, officers began searching a landfill on the eastern side of San Antonio. A rotating team of investigators from multiple agencies sifted through the site, looking for Suzanne—or any clue to what might have happened to her or where she might be—for four full days. They never found a trace. When you think about capital-M money in Texas, you probably think about the oil and gas fortunes in Dallas and Houston. Or maybe tech billionaires like Elon Musk, sprinkled around Austin. But San Antonio is home to entrepreneurs like Christopher 'Kit' Goldsbury, who sold Pace Foods, his salsa company, to the Campbell's Company for $1.1 billion, and James Leininger, who sold his medical device company to a private equity firm for more than $6 billion. Charles Butt, the chairman and CEO of grocery giant H-E-B, the largest private company in Texas, also calls San Antonio home. Dallas money is, one San Antonio socialite told me, 'bigger, bolder, golder.' San Antonio isn't so flashy. Sure, there are plenty of nice cars, suites at Spurs games, a few private jets, but San Antonio money might mean a stone mansion in the tree-lined, independently governed cities of Alamo Heights or Olmos Park, where the Simpsons lived for almost a decade. San Antonio money is mostly quiet. The Argyle doesn't list its members, for example. There's no way for outsiders to know how many people have access, how much they pay, or even how they're granted membership. I was told repeatedly that 'it isn't just about who has money,' and of the half dozen people I spoke to who were associated with the club, none wanted their name in this story. 'There's no benefit to talking about the club,' one told me. A representative of the Argyle told me that the club couldn't comment for this article either and reiterated that 'our membership is very private.' Several people pointed out that Brad and Suzanne weren't members but guests at the party that Sunday in October. (Brad's brother Barton Simpson, I'm told, is a member. Of course, the club wouldn't confirm that.) I knocked on the doors of Brad and Suzanne's neighbors, hoping to learn more about their lives, their relationship, this world. The houses in their neighborhood are century-old castles, with pitched roofs, manicured lawns, and landscaped back yards designed for great parties. By all accounts Suzanne was a friendly fixture in the neighborhood, a regular at a nearby coffeeshop, a bright-smiling supermom who could talk to anyone, a successful real estate agent, a hilariously bad driver, someone who always put others first—especially her children. She loved microwavable Indian food and 'Firework' by Katy Perry and Chris Madrid's, a Mexican-style burger joint around the corner. I had visited only a handful of houses when two Olmos Park Police Department officers turned up, red and blue lights flashing—right there on the side of the road, as a series of Range Rovers and BMWs and $100,000 Teslas drove by. The cops were friendly enough, explaining that someone had called about a 'suspicious person' in the neighborhood. I told them who I was and why I was there, and they understood. The disappearance has received a lot of attention locally. 'This is a see-something-say-something neighborhood,' one of the officers told me in an effort to explain why I had been stopped. And that's clearly true—at least when it comes to outsiders. Perhaps it's less likely that local residents would call the police on one of their own neighbors. On October 9, three days after Suzanne was last seen in public, Brad was arrested on charges of assault-family violence and unlawful restraint. He had lacerations and bruises on his arms and hands and did not appear surprised to be apprehended, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. Brad wasn't, however, charged with murder. Plenty of people in the community wondered when, not if, he would get charged with something more serious—but it's not easy to prove a murder case without a body. Still, he was the obvious suspect in his wife's disappearance. On the night she went missing, they had been engaged in a 'verbal altercation' at the Argyle and were 'loudly arguing' in a neighbor's yard, according to the affidavit. The filing took note of Suzanne's call to her mother that evening, revealing that Brad's assault caused 'pain to her arm, back and neck.' It also mentioned their daughter's confession to a school counselor. That fatal Sunday her dad 'pushed her mother against the wall, hit (physically) her mother on the face and hurt her mother's elbow inside their residence.' The document went on to indicate that a year before Suzanne disappeared, Brad had sent a text message to a friend after taking his wife's phone during an argument. 'I still feel bad about tonight,' Brad texted. 'I never should've grabbed her phone and drove off but she was so protective of it.' And, according to the affidavit, as recently as two months before she disappeared, Suzanne told her personal banker that Brad was physically abusive and that he had often taken her phone and told their children she'd lost it. If she went missing, Suzanne told the banker, 'look for her in a lake.' Ten days after Suzanne disappeared, Brad's brother Barton wrote a public post on Facebook. 'Until Brad chooses to cooperate, we will continue [to] cooperate for him, as we have from the very beginning of this heartbreaking ordeal,' he wrote. 'This is not how he was raised, and this is not who we are.' He signed off: 'We will not rest until we find Suzanne.' Nobody involved with the case has been as outspoken as 20-year-old Chandler Simpson, Suzanne and Brad's eldest daughter. She had spent the two years before her mother disappeared studying fashion design in Paris and New York. In early November, about a month after Suzanne went missing, Chandler posted a series of stories on Instagram directly implicating her father. 'My mom was a victim of abuse from my father,' she wrote. 'My father took my mother's life in a state of rage and control.' She continued: 'Those who choose to remain silent are choosing to blind themselves from domestic violence in our homes. My mother tried to leave my father and lost her life.' Then Chandler directed her ire at the wealthy neighbors of her parents: 'Shame on my community for not speaking about domestic violence,' she wrote. 'Within Alamo Heights, women are marginalized by society and misogyny everyday and are told to keep their mouths shut.' Around the same time, Chandler appeared on the podcast of a self-proclaimed 'celebrity medium' named Jonathan Mark, who told her he was communicating with her mother. Mark told Chandler that Suzanne 'is a very funny person' with a 'fantastic personality.' Chandler said she didn't like the home she'd grown up in and that her mother didn't 'have the strongest sense of self.' The community she'd grown up in, she added, was 'so blind by their own narratives that even the thought of my dad taking my mom's life wasn't possible to them.' On November 7, Brad Simpson was finally charged with murder. The 15-page arrest warrant affidavit details his movements before and after Suzanne disappeared, laying out the grim—but circumstantial—case against him. The investigation also pulls back the curtain ever so slightly on the secretive world of moneyed San Antonio. After combing through surveillance footage and evidence discovered during searches of Brad's property, this is what the police found: After she left the party at the Argyle, Suzanne took her five-year-old daughter to the grocery store, then back to the Simpson home. Within minutes of Suzanne calling her mother to say that Brad had been violent, Brad allegedly used the AT&T app on his phone to have Suzanne's service suspended. He would later tell the police that his wife had lost her phone at the grocery store. It was an hour later that a neighbor saw them fighting in his front yard. Suzanne broke free from Brad's grasp and fled, with her husband running behind 'trying to grab her,' according to the affidavit. An hour after that, the neighbor heard Brad start his black 2019 GMC Sierra pickup truck and leave the house, and then return about an hour later. The next morning, when Brad dropped off their five-year-old at school, investigators said the bed of his truck contained at least two white trash bags and a large ice chest. When Brad went to a Whataburger more than an hour later, the drive-thru camera showed that the bed of his truck held three white trash bags, a large heavy-duty trash can, an ice chest, and a large, bulky item wrapped and secured in a blue tarp. A short time later, geolocation data indicated that Brad was at a Home Depot, where video surveillance showed that he purchased two bags of cement, a construction bucket with a lid, a 32-count box of heavy-duty trash bags, a 30-ounce bottle of Clorox disinfectant spray, and insect repellent. While in the parking lot of the Home Depot, he asked a man for directions to the nearest dump. About an hour later Brad went to a gas station, where he bought two one-gallon jugs of water. Surveillance footage showed that the trash bags were no longer in the truck bed, but he still had the blue tarp and a trash can. He had also changed his shoes, from sandals to cowboy boots. Later that day, a Texas Ranger said, Brad went to a car wash to clean the inside of his truck. 'Dried cement splashes' were later located in the rear passenger compartment and bed. On October 9 the Texas Rangers found what they described as a 'burn site' on the family's ranch property, with a burned laptop and multiple phones in it. Brad was later indicted for tampering with evidence for concealing a reciprocating saw—similar to a portable jigsaw—and destroying and concealing 'a human corpse, with intent to impair its availability as evidence.' In December his attorney filed a motion to quash the indictments, arguing that the case against him is 'fatally defective' because the prosecutors had not shown how they intend to prove 'the manner and means' by which a crime had taken place. Brad remains behind bars at Bexar County Jail, with bond set at $3 million. He is allowed to exchange letters with his son but cannot communicate with his five-year-old daughter. His adult children have said they're not speaking with their father. Suzanne is still missing. Her mother told a local television reporter she believed her daughter is dead. 'Because I have not heard from her,' Barbara explained. 'That's the only reason.' The case will likely go on for a while. If Brad goes on trial, it could shine even more light on this cloistered enclave, which has worked hard to avoid attention. One glib San Antonio socialite told me it could be 'the event of the century.' But for now there will be more silence. On December 10 the judge in the case issued a wide-ranging gag order for all family members, friends, and witnesses. As if they needed any more incentive to stay quiet. This story appears in the March 2025 issue of Town & Country, with the headline 'Chronicle of a Disappearance Foretold.' SUBSCRIBE NOW You Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game
USA Today
06-02-2025
- Business
- USA Today
How does the Constitution contemplate tariffs? Can Trump really impose them?
How does the Constitution contemplate tariffs? Can Trump really impose them? | Opinion 4-minute read Show Caption Hide Caption EU officials react to possible tariffs from President Trump After a meeting in Poland, the European Commission committed to staying together and negotiating with President Trump. The taxing power in the federal government resides in the Congress. The Constitution states that Congress has the power to 'lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts' of the federal government. Indeed, in order to emphasize the location of this power in the Congress, the Constitution also requires that all legislation 'for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.' So, if only Congress can impose taxes, how can the president impose tariffs? Here is the backstory. However one characterizes a tariff, since it consists of the compulsory payment of money to the federal government, it is a form of taxation. It is — to use James Madison's language — a duty or an impost. The federal government survived on duties and imposts — some of which were imposed on the states — from the time of its creation in 1789 until the War Between the States. Even under Abraham Lincoln, when unconstitutional income taxes were imposed, they were done by legislation, not executive fiat. Then came Franklin D. Roosevelt and a congressional ban on the exportation of armaments to be implemented at the president's discretion. This sounds fairly benign, yet it fomented the supercharged presidency that we have today. When Congress banned the sale of American arms to foreign countries, it did so by giving FDR the power to decide what to ban and upon which countries to impose the ban. Then it did the unthinkable: It made a violation of the president's fiats a federal crime. I call this unthinkable because under the Constitution's Due Process Clause jurisprudence, at the federal level only Congress can make behavior criminal. In defiance of FDR's ban, Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation, an American manufacturer of military hardware, sold armaments to the government of Bolivia, and the Department of Justice persuaded a federal grand jury to indict the corporation. Then a federal judge dismissed the indictment on the constitutional basis that only Congress can decide what behavior is criminal and it cannot give that power to the president. The trial court merely enforced the well-known and universally accepted non-delegation doctrine. It stands for the principle that the three branches of government cannot delegate away any of their core powers. Among Congress' core powers is writing laws and deciding what behavior is criminal. By giving away this power to the president, the trial court ruled, Congress violated the non-delegation principle, and thus FDR's determination that arms sales to Bolivia was criminal was itself a nullity. The government appealed directly to the Supreme Court. Had the court simply reversed the trial judge and sent the case back to him for trial, we might never have heard of this case or the policy it established. Yet, instead of a simple reversal, the Court issued a treatise on presidential power. Using truly novel rationale written by Justice George Sutherland, the court held that, even though the power to establish foreign policy is not expressly given to the president, that power — are you ready for this? — traveled across the Atlantic in 1789 from King George III to President George Washington and was permanently reposed in the presidency. It doesn't stop there. In furtherance of his pursuit of foreign policy, the president need not consult the Congress and need not require legislation. Stated differently, because the president, Justice Sutherland wrote, is the sole keeper of the country's foreign policy, he requires tools in order to do so, and among the tools available to him to effectuate that policy is the power to make behavior that defies his foreign policy a crime; also among those tools is the power to tax in furtherance of his foreign policy. This logic appears nowhere in the Constitution. Justice Sutherland, who was born in Great Britain, analogized American presidential power in foreign relations to that of British monarchs in the era before parliamentary supremacy. And this utter nonsense is still the law today! Now back to tariffs. Regrettably, the Curtiss-Wright case — though wrongly decided and absurdly reasoned — is still good law today, and presidents from FDR to Donald Trump have relied upon its authority for their unilateral decisions on American foreign policy. I call this regrettable because it constitutes a pronounced transfer of power from Congress to the president, in defiance of the Constitution. FDR gave us the welfare state. Perhaps Donald Trump will undo it. But all this happens at the price of constitutional norms. Before Curtiss-Wright — and even since — the Supreme Court ruled that all federal power comes from the Constitution and from no other source. That's because James Madison and his colleagues created a central government of limited powers — limited by and articulated in the Constitution. But Curtiss-Wright says some federal power comes from Great Britain! So, where does this leave us? The Congress is not a general legislature like the British Parliament, and the president is not a monarch. To argue that powers come from some source other than the Constitution is anti-constitutional. And in this case, to claim with a straight face that George III's powers were reposed into the American presidency is an absurdity that would have been rejected summarily and unambiguously by the Framers. History and politics often change the rules. Until 110 years ago, with the exception of Lincoln's presidency, the federal government operated under the Madisonian model: The federal government can only do that which is expressly authorized by the Constitution. From and after the dreadful Progressive Era, the Wilsonian model has prevailed — the federal government can address any national problem for which there is a political will, subject only to that which is expressly prohibited by the Constitution. Add to the Wilsonian model the nonsense from Curtiss-Wright, and you have a presidency that can tax any foreign event and create a domestic crime. Even George III lacked such powers. Andrew P. Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge, has published nine books on the U.S. Constitution. To learn more, visit
