Conrad II of Italy

Conrad II or Conrad (III) (12 February 1074 – 27 July 1101) was the Duke of Lower Lorraine (1076–87), King of Germany (1087–98) and King of Italy (1093–98). He was the second son of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and Bertha of Savoy, and their eldest son to reach adulthood, his older brother Henry having been born and died in the same month of August 1071. Conrad's rule in Lorraine and Germany was nominal. He spent most of his life in Italy and there he was king in fact as well as in name.
Childhood.
Conrad was born on 12 February 1074 at Hersfeld Abbey while his father was fighting against the Saxon Rebellion. He was baptised in the abbey three days later. After Henry's victory against the Saxons, he arranged for an assembly at Goslar on Christmas Day 1075 to swear an oath recognising Conrad as his successor. After the death of Duke Godfrey IV of Lower Lorraine on 22 February 1076, Henry refused to appoint the late duke's own choice of successor, his nephew, Godfrey of Bouillon, and instead named his two-year-old son Duke of Lower Lorraine. He did appoint Albert III of Namur, the deceased duke's brother-in-law, as his son's vice-duke ("vicedux") to perform the daily functions of government. He also allowed the march of Antwerp to pass to Godfrey of Bouillon. The total absence of Conrad from his duchy caused or abetted the decline of ducal authority in it. In 1082, while Conrad was in Italy, the peace of God was introduced into the diocese of Liège.
Conrad passed Christmas 1076 at Besançon with his parents. Early the next year (1077) he accompanied his father across the Alps on the way to Canossa, because there was nobody in Germany to which Henry could entrust his son. Conrad subscribed to his first royal charter in 1079. When Henry returned to Germany, Conrad remained in Italy to act as a pledge to the imperialist party there. He was placed in the care of Archbishop Tedald of Milan and Bishop Denis of Piacenza, both excommunicated prelates and opponents of Pope Gregory VII. In October 1080, Conrad was present in the camp when a force from northern Italy defeated the troops of Marchioness Matilda of Tuscany near Mantua.
In December 1080, the Saxon lords who had supported the kingship of the late Rudolf of Swabia against Henry gathered "to discuss the state of their kingdom [Saxony]" in Bruno of Merseburg's words. Henry sent envoys to the Saxons asking them to accept his son Conrad as their king, and in exchange he promised never to enter Saxony. (Conrad was apparently back in Germany.) Otto of Northeim, speaking for the Saxons, "desired neither the son nor the father" since he had "often seen a bad calf begotten by a bad ox."
In 1081, Henry entered Italy, where he endeavoured to wed his son to a daughter of Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia. He offered Robert the march of Fermo as well, but no marriage could be agreed to since the duke refused to do homage for Apulia. Again Henry left Conrad in Italy (July 1081), this time in the care of the lay princes "to watch over the province for him", according to the "Annales Brunwilarenses" and "Annales Patherbrunnenses".
Salian king.
In 1087, Conrad returned to Germany. On 30 May, he was crowned king in Aachen by Archbishop Sigewin of Cologne. The ceremony was attended by Albert of Namur, Godfrey of Bouillon and Duke Magnus of Saxony, according to the "Annales Weissenburgenses". The last reference to Conrad as duke of Lower Lotharingia ("dux Lothariorum") comes from a charter issued at Aachen shortly before his coronation, after which Henry appointed Godfrey of Bouillon duke in his place. By January 1088 Conrad had returned to Italy, with Bishop Ogerius of Ivrea as his chancellor and advisor. Shortly after his return to Italy, his mother died. The passing of Bertha perhaps provoked the rupture between Conrad and his father.
In Italy, Conrad was unsuccessful in resisting Matilda of Tuscany until his father came down in the spring of 1090. In 1091 he was at his father's side, as his "most beloved son". On 19 December 1091 Conrad's grandmother, the Margravine Adelaide of Turin, died. She had named her ten-year-old great-grandson, Peter, as her heir following the death of Peter's father, Count Frederick of Montbéliard on 29 June 1091. Henry, however, declared Conrad the rightful heir and placed him in charge of the march. The southern counties meanwhile were seized by Boniface I of Vasto and Henry granted the county of Asti to the bishop elect Oddo. Throughout 1092 Conrad was campaigning in the march of Turin to establish imperial control.
Rebellion.
In 1093, with the support of Matilda and her husband, Welf V, along with the Patarene-minded cities of northern Italy (Cremona, Lodi, Milan and Piacenza), Conrad rebelled against his father. According to Ekkehard of Aura, he was instigated to revolt by "one of his father's "ministeriales", who was likewise named Conrad". This was perhaps the same person as the Count Conrad sent by the young king as an envoy to King Roger II of Sicily, according to Geoffrey Malaterra. Ekkehard otherwise gives positive account of Conrad's motivation, describing him as "a thoroughly catholic man, most devoted to the apostolic see, inclining to religion rather than government or war ... well enough furnished with courage and boldness [yet] preferr[ing] to occupy his time with reading rather than with sports". Other sources favorable to Conrad include the "Annales sancti Disibodi" and the "Casus monasterii Petrishusensis". Among sources unfavorable to him are the "Annales Augustani" and Henry IV's anonymous biography, the "Vita Heinrici IV", which describes Conrad as a pawn in hands of Matilda of Tuscany. Bernold of St Blasien records that Henry was so abject after Conrad's rebellion that he attempted suicide, but this may be a hyperbole allusive to the suicide of the biblical King Saul.
In mid-March Conrad was captured by his father through a ruse, but soon escaped and in late July was elected king by Matilda, Welf and their allies and crowned in Milan by Archbishop Anselm III. According to the historian Landulf Junior, he was also crowned at Monza, where the Iron Crown was being kept. After Conrad's coronation, Anselm died and the new king invested his successor, Arnulf III on 6 December 1093, although many of the bishops present to celebrate his coronation refused to attend the simoniacal investiture of Arnulf. The papal legate who was present, probably to speak with Conrad, immediately declared Arnulf deposed. The accusation might have been that Arnulf had performed undue service to Conrad to secure his investiture, or that he had been too obeisant, a charge of simony "ab obsequio". Conrad was at the height of his power in 1094, when his father was staying with Margrave Henry and Patriarch Udalric in the March of Verona, unable to enter Italy. His antipope, Clement III, elected at the Synod of Brixen in 1080, who was travelling with him, even offered to resign so that Henry could negotiate with Pope Urban II if that was all that stood in the way. There is a contemporary tract, "Altercatio inter Urbanum et Clementum", arguing the two popes claims should be adjudicated by a council.
Papal anti-king.
In March 1095 Conrad attended the Council of Piacenza and confirmed the accusations of his stepmother, Eupraxia, that Henry IV was a member of a Nicolaitan sect, participated in orgies, and had offered Eupraxia to Conrad, stating that this was the reason for his turning against his father. Shortly after the council, he swore an oath of loyalty to Pope Urban II on 10 April at Cremona and served as the pope's "strator" (groom), leading the pope's horse as a symbolic gesture of humility first performed, according to tradition, by Constantine I. The duty of the "strator" had not been performed for a pope since the ninth century, and was revived specifically for Conrad. On 15 April, in a second meeting at Cremona, Conrad swore an oath, either of "security" or of "fealty", to the pope, guaranteeing the "life, limb and Roman papacy" to Urban. This oath was customary for kings who would be crowned emperor, but Conrad went further and promised to forsake lay investiture. Urban in turn promised Conrad "his advice and aid in obtaining the kingship and the crown of the empire", probably a promise to crown him in the future, after he had control of the kingdom. By these actions Conrad transformed himself from a rebellious son to a papally-sponsored anti-king and supporter of the Reform movement.
In the same year, the pope and Matilda of Tuscany helped arrange a marriage of Conrad to Maximilla (also called Matilda), a daughter of Count Roger I of Sicily. Maximilla, escorted by Bishop Robert II of Troina, arrived at Pisa with a large fleet and a dowry of "many gifts of treasure". The wedding took place in Pisa in 1095. That same year, Matilda of Tuscany divorced Welf V, whose enraged father, Welf IV, switched allegiance and was restored to the duchy of Bavaria by the emperor in 1096. In 1097, Margrave Adalbert Azzo II died and his vast lands were disputed by his sons. Fulk and Hugh were supporters of Conrad, while Welf IV had sided with the emperor. In a sign of the turning tide, Welf, with the help of Patriarch Udalric and Duke Henry of Carinthia, invaded Italy and secured his claims to the inheritance. This reduced Conrad to total reliance on Matilda of Tuscany.
Loss of support.
Early during the episcopate of Anselm IV of Milan, Conrad lost the support of the papalists in Lombardy. He once rhetorically asked Liutprand, one of the leaders of the Pataria, "Since you are a teacher of Patarenes, what do you think of bishops and priests who possess royal rights and present not food to the king?" Without Matilda's support, Conrad became a supporter of the Pataria. The historian Landulf Junior praised Conrad for refusing investiture to neither Arimanno da Gavardo, the bishop-elect of Brescia, nor to Anselm IV.
In April or May 1098 at an assembly held in Mainz, Conrad's father had him formally deposed and his younger brother, Henry V, elected in his place. In a letter of 1106, Henry admitted that Henry V's election had been opposed by many and that he "fear[ed] that there would be civil war between the two brothers and that a great disaster would befall the kingdom."
After this, Conrad could hardly influence political events in Italy. There is no record that Urban or his successor had any contact with him, or that his father-in-law ever sent him support beyond his daughter's dowry. He died unexpectedly of a fever at the age of twenty-eight on 27 July 1101 in Florence. There were reports of poisoning. He was buried in Santa Reparata in Florence, now superseded by Santa Maria del Fiore. Miracles were said to have accompanied his funeral. According to Ekkehard of Aura, "the sign of the cross [appeared] on the arm" of Conrad's corpse, a clear indication that he was a crusader in spirit. Ekkehard also states that Conrad never tolerated any slander against his father, and always referred to him as lord and emperor.


Rudolf V. Perina

Rudolf Vilem Perina () (January 3, 1945 – June 14, 2018) was an American diplomat who specialized for more than three decades in European East-West relations during and after the Cold War, and on the Dayton Accords following the dissolution of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. This includes participating in the 1988 Moscow summit meeting between President Reagan and President Mikhail Gorbachev, during the former's first visit to the USSR. He also served as ambassador to the Republic of Moldova, U.S. Special Negotiator for Eurasian Conflicts in the former Soviet Union (an ambassador-level position), Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Canadian Affairs in the State Department, director of European and Soviet Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council, and was on the policy planning staff of the State Department under Colin Powell before and after the invasion of Iraq.
Following his retirement from the foreign service, Perina served as Chargé d’Affaires at U.S. embassies including those in Chisinau, Moldova (2006), Yerevan, Armenia (2007), Reykjavik (2010), Prague (2013), and Bratislava, Slovakia (2015).
Early life and family.
Perina was born on January 3, 1945 in the town of Tábor in what is today the Czech Republic. His father's family owned a large lumbermill serving Central Europe. His mother's family was subject to Nazi reprisals during World War II, including the execution of his grandfather and great uncle on June 10, 1942. The family members were executed in a coordinated purge of Czech nationalists and public figures that culminated in the razing of the town of Lidice.
Perina and his parents fled Czechoslovakia following the 1948 Communist takeover of the government. Rudolf's mother paid a Croat border smuggler to transport her son in January 1950 to the border into Austria and eventually to Zurich where his father had escaped. The family lived as refugees in Switzerland and Morocco before immigrating to the United States via Le Havre, France in 1951.
He grew up speaking Czech at home. In 1955, the family moved to Cleveland and Perina obtained US citizenship the following year.
Education.
After the family moved to Seattle, Perina attended Franklin High School where he graduated as the valedictorian in 1963. He chose the University of Chicago as it offered him full tuition with a stipend. He earned his B.A. degree in history there in 1967 and did his graduate studies at Columbia University where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in European history, with the idea of going into academia. While studying in New York, he was hired by a film production company to consult and interpret for the filming of a documentary about the 1968 reform movement in Czechoslovakia known as the "Prague Spring". This led to the topic of his Ph.D dissertation: "Intellectuals and Political Change in Czechoslovakia: A History of Literarni noviny and its Contributors, 1952-1969." He had also earned a Foreign Area Fellowship to research his dissertation at the library of Radio Free Europe for two years.
Perina was at Columbia during the 1968 student protests. While supportive of the US civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War, he maintained a moderate political position, saying later "I became suspicious of all political extremism and radicalism, whether right-wing or left-wing. It is a position I have held all of my life."
Career.
Returning from Europe to finish his dissertation, Perina found that there were few academic jobs available in the U.S. He saw an ad for the foreign service exam and encouraged by the example of foreign-born Henry Kissinger, he took it and passed. Delighted to find that it paid better than any academic job, he started in November 1974, his first posting at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, through 1976 during which time both of his daughters were born.
At this post, Perina gave Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn his first US visa, whereby he communicated to him in German. (Already fluent in Czech and French, Perina became fluent in Russian later.) He found that the author of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and other works "took the process more seriously than almost any other applicant" he had processed up to that time. In reflecting on Solzhenitsyn's conscientiousness later, Perina concluded that "if you spend your life fighting a bureaucracy, your first thought is to not make a mistake in an official document that the bureaucracy can use against you."
At Ottawa, Perina also had responsibilities in the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) whose Helsinki Final Act was signed by the 35 participating states in the summer of 1975.
Moscow.
He was then posted to Moscow, and was there during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Upon witnessing the confrontation with 1st Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Korniyenko, he said later he was "shown for the first time how unashamedly people can lie in diplomacy." The US response to the invasion was tough, and included suspending exchanges, diplomatic social events, wheat sales, and eventually boycotting the Moscow Olympics, bringing Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and part of Eastern Europe along as well. Of the time, Perina has said, "our relations with the Soviets there were very competitive. We were always watching what they did, and they watched us."
Although compared to average Soviet citizen, he lived better, Perina has described that life in the Soviet capital "could be difficult". During the harsh winters, he had to remove his car battery each night to prevent its freezing. The Perinas also saw first hand the psychological warfare the KGB enacted on US embassy personnel, Perina describing his wife Ethel's coat disappearing for several months then reappearing in their closet.
West Berlin.
He then started to work at the U.S. Mission in West Berlin in 1981. The US saw East Berlin differently from the GDR. Considered a Soviet zone, the Americans maintained another embassy in East Berlin, and the mission in West Berlin avoided dealing with the East Germans by going to the Soviets for things related to them. (The Soviets on the other hand respected the city as part of the GDR and the capital of East Germany.) Perina also described that in Berlin in 1981 it was so easy for the four occupying powers, which included the UK and France, plus East and West Germany, to spy on each other being in such close proximities that "the city with more espionage going on per square mile than any other city in Europe." He said that "There was a lot of eavesdropping."
As liaison with the Soviets on Russian matters, Perina said that "Nobody seriously thought there was going to be a World War III or an invasion of Berlin by the Warsaw Pact." The diplomat also never got the sense things were loosening up in the USSR. Although he personally did not know whether the Strategic Defense Initiative system (SDIs) would even work, he understood that the Soviets were threatened by the possibility: He said, "They realized their strength as a world power came from possession of nuclear weapons, and not from their GDP or anything else." (There was talk too in Germany about NATO deployment of immediate range nuclear missiles.)
Perina served as interpreter between ambassadors Arthur Burns and Piotr Abrassimov, then Vyacheslav Kochemasov during their twice yearly social lunches. There was bureaucratic protocol too that had to be observed whenever the West German president came to Berlin—the US, French, and British embassies had to greet him formally—which Perina described as a "real nuisance". He also witnessed the tensions in Poland: The country was moving toward martial law, and Perina describes that by the end of his time there, he and his colleagues were witnessing six or seven Polish plane hijacking to West Berlin a year. He also saw the rivalry between the two Germanies, but felt the real threat at the time was from radical groups like the Baader-Meinhof gang.
Brussels and the 1988 Moscow Summit.
Perina then worked at the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels from 1985, as political officer and deputy US representative to the organization's political committee. The group was handling three simultaneous negotiations, on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and SDIs for a number of visits by President Reagan to the North Atlantic Council, according to Perina, "the most comprehensive arms control discussion between the US and the Soviet Union." The diplomat's impression of NATO was that it was an American-run organization, with the allies all deferring to the US.
From 1987 to 1989, Perina was director for European and Soviet Affairs on the National Security Council staff: prior to his arrival there had been a purge from the Iran Contra scandal. He was brought in by Colin Powell who'd been hired by new National Security Council Advisor Frank Carlucci who ran the department differently, and better, in Perina's opinion. Perina had the Soviet portfolio, which included working on Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech. Yet even with this, the Czech-American had no suspicion that the empire was on the verge of collapse, saying "it was not even part of any discussion... We were all watching the top, the Kremlin ... [W]e did not pay enough attention to the internal situation and particularly to the nationality issues." In preparation for the 1988 meeting between the two world leaders, Perina asked the CIA to make a film for Reagan about the Moscow sites the president would be visiting and organized a lunch for him with Soviet experts in the US: It would be Reagan's first visit to the USSR.
Perina attended the 1988 Moscow summit meeting between Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev, the third of only four total people; he later described the tension between the two principals being rooted in different negotiating styles: The Soviet's being deductive and the American's inductive. And although he found the American president very gracious, Perina found the leader of the USSR the more important historical figure "among the most important of our time." He described the former Hollywood actor as having "good instincts" but that he "clearly did not have the grasp of substance that Gorbachev had." Perina believed the summit was significant symbolically, that it influenced Reagan, the Russian people's opinion on Reagan, and changed the dynamics of the US-Russia relationship.
Perina was also in charge of the NSC's Eastern European portfolio and visited Romania under Nikolai Ceausescu. He described it as a "desperate place" where there was no heat or electricity, and hardly any food in its stores. He said he could see clearly "the fear everyone so clearly had in their eyes," even those around the Rleader himself. Perina left the NSC in spring 1989 when President Bush and Brent Scowcroft instituted a complete shift in personnel for political reasons.
Vienna, Belgrade & the Dayton Accord.
From 1989 to 1992, Perina was deputy chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the Vienna negotiations on Confidence and Security Building Measures in Europe (CSBM), held under auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
From 1993 to 1996, he was Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia with the title of Charge d’Affaires and worked with a downsized staff. The country was under UN sanctions, and extreme inflation had forced the country to depend on the black market. Embassy matters were all handled on a cash basis: Perina describes having tens of thousands of dollars driven in from Budapest, Hungary in an unguarded car so as not to arouse suspicion from the gangs who then ruled the streets.
Perina worked with Richard Holbrooke as liaison to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic during the negotiations to end the Yugoslav conflict. (Some considered Holbrooke's work to have merited the Nobel Peace Prize later.) They had a dozen meetings with the Serbian ruler with others around, then met him one on one because they found him more engaging in that capacity. Perina saw a "genuine lack of compassion that was truly frightening" and said that this feeling extended to his treatment of his countrymen, the Serbs. Perina also participated in the talks held in Dayton, Ohio, to which he credits Milosevic's assent, although mostly for self-serving purposes: The leader thought he would gain respectability in the international community and sanctions would be lifted. Perina also met with Ibrahim Rugova, the elected president of the Republic of Kosovo, whom along with Macedonia's Kiro Gligorov Perina found to be the most impressive leaders in the former Yugoslavia.
Perina served as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs; in 1996-97 the majority of his time was spent helping to execute the Dayton Accords from Washington DC while John Kornblum travelled to implement them. This included the outer wall of sanctions that enraged the Serbs and did not satisfy Kosovar Albanians (They would form the Kosovo Liberation Army.) As the former USSR was now handled by the Office of Newly Independent States (NIS) and not the European bureau, the other third of Perina's time was spent on helping to expand NATO, which he said he felt ambivalence towards: The powerful organization did not help integrate the Russians into Europe and damaged the US's relationship to Russia. He has said "I fear the way we handled revanchism made it a self-fulfulling prophecy." He saw and was shocked by Sarajevo at the end of the war, which described as "miles and miles of just rubble." Perina has said European and Canadian Affairs was one of his least favorite because it was so bureaucratic and based in the US capital.
Moldova.
Perina was assigned and confirmed ambassadorship to the Republic of Moldova, serving from 1998 to 2001. He studied Romanian and reviewed his Russian before starting and found the former Soviet republic "a much more pleasant place" than he had imagined: "The people were extremely friendly and hospitable, and the country was a very interesting place to work." His job was to help it develop into a successful, autonomous nation. It was one of the earliest to privatize land, helped by a major USAID project that completed under Perina: The US gave over $50 million in assistance, the third highest amount given to a former Soviet republic, because of its cooperation and its efforts at reform. Several hundred Moldovans were sent to the US every year on exchange programs; Perina was also particularly proud of the Peace Corps contingent he saw there.
Moldava was a main source of the trafficking of women from the former Soviet Union: Many young women were lured into the trade with promises of jobs as nannies and waitresses in Western Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East. The embassy tried to combat this with educational programs and financing a documentary film with victim testimonies that were shown in schools, on billboards and on national TV.
He was in Moldova during the Transnistrian conflict, and though the US was not one of the three official mediators (those being Russia, the Ukraine, and the OSCE), the heads of the OSCE mission were American because the Moldovan government wanted to counterbalance their former rulers. Regardless, Perina met with Moldovan Presidents Petru Lucinschi then Vladimir Voronin on policy toward Transnistria, even initiating dialogue with the breakaway eastern region's so-called president, Igor Smirnov.
Perina describes these half dozen talks with Smirnov as disheartening. This is because the disputed region had become a staging area for smuggling operations that avoided taxes and customs duties. Ukrainians and Moldavans alike profited off the illegal importation of cigarettes, liquor, and "many other commodities" that hurt the republic in lost tax revenue. Another problem was the 40,000 tons of aging Soviet ammunition stored at Cosbasna base in Transnistria: The US was a major contributor of several million dollars to a voluntary OSCE fund to aid in arms withdrawal and though there was a limited destruction of tanks and a half trainload of weapons and ammunition, Russian troops and old but still dangerous armaments were kept in the region for political leverage. The economic conflict of the region was also rooted in a lot of Moldava's industry being located in Transnistria, planned by Stalin.
Nagorno-Karabakh and three other former Soviet territories with conflicts.
Perina became the U.S. Special Negotiator for Nagorno-Karabakh and Eurasian Conflicts from 2001, flying out on September 23 when the US airports were reopened after 9/11. The ambassador-level job was Washington D.C.-based but involved a great deal of travel: He was the lead U.S. representative to international efforts to resolve four conflicts in territories of the former Soviet Union: Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia (Chechnya was the fifth former territory that also had strife but Russia did not let outside influence on it).
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict had roots in the 1990s war between Armenia and Azerbaijan: Perina called it a "true indigenous conflict" between the two countries. The OSCE and its specially created Minsk Group handled the crisis, with many proposals by the latter rejected by both nations, represented by Presidents Kocharyan and Aliyev respectively, over the years. The first meeting of what came to be known as the Prague Process took place outside the capital at Stirin Palace in mid-May 2002, a location that Perina helped arranged for. During the US diplomat's tenure through 2004, it remained a stalemated conflict lacking peacekeeping troops to maintain the separation between the sides with a few soldiers on both sides killed monthly by sniper fire. Perina
's 2002 idea of a referendum became the major consideration by 2004: The idea being that residents of Nagorno-Karabakh before hostilities would be able to vote, using lists from the Soviet era. With the intransigence of the two sides, in the end, the conflict was frozen; Perina said of it "the most you can hope for is stabilizing this conflict rather than really resolving it."
The Abkhaz were an ethnic minority who participating in the ethnic cleansing of several hundred thousand Georgians in the 1990s with the help of Russians and Chechens. There were 200,000 refugees that resulted. In Perina's view, "The hatred between [the two groups] was the worst I had ever seen in either the Balkans of the Caucauses" calling it "even greater than that between the Serbs and the Albanians." The negotiating process over Abkhazia stalled but its very existence reduced pressure on the Georgian side for military action against it.
The hostility in South Ossetia was a result of the succession by an ethnic group in Georgia that didn't want to be a part of an independent Georgia, didn't accept its sovereignty, and was protected in this by Russia. The disaccord, per Perina, nevertheless the most promising of the conflicts as the "hatred was not as deep." He felt that most of the population would have welcomed a settlement. The EU was interested in aiding but the Russians blocked them.
Perina kept working on the Transnistria in ex-officio capacity as the US was not one of the designated mediators. A mandate to resolve this conflict would have institutionalized Russia's presence in Moldava. Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian federation Dmitry Kozak attempted to head off the involvement of other countries by arranging for their own settlement for Vladmir Voronin to sign, giving Transnistria de facto veto power over big Moldavan policy decisions. When the Moldavans got wind of the memorandum, 50,000 demonstrated in its capital. There was also Georgia's Rose Revolution, which ousted President Shevardnadze out, and Veronin was successfully talked out of signing.
Policy planning for the State Department.
From 2004 to 2006, Perina served as deputy director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff. He worked under both Colin Powell then Condi Rice, and the latter focussed only on Iraq and the Middle East. Perina found it bizarre that within the State Department, there was little debate on the decision to invade the former. (There were also no experts on the Muslim world in the department.) "The tipping point came imperceptibly, and suddenly everyone just assumed we would invade. The Afghanistan invasion ... appeared to have been successful." He witnessed the policy tensions between Donald Rumsfeld of the Defense Department and Powell on the issue of responsibility for the administration of Iraq. As no one was prepared to do it, and the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization was created in the State Department which would have a coordinator and a small staff of about a dozen who would come up with action plans and lists of experts including those outside of government to deal with humanitarian assistance, training police, instituting civil authority, and the like.
Under Powell, Perina went to sub-Saharan Africa with an expert to start policy consultation with the African Union. He witnessed the rapid radicalization of Muslim communities on the continent by means of the madrassas staffed by Middle Eastern teachers. The Bush administration faulted the foreign service for this, refusing to see it connected to the invasion of Iraq. Powell, whom Perina called "probably the best Secretary I have worked for" was also the first major leader to name what was happening in Darfur as genocide, calling for a peacekeeping force but no country was up to it. Perina credits humanitarian organizations for relief supplies and food.
Perina officially retired on April 30, 2006, after 32 years in the foreign service.
Armenia, Iceland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.
In 2007 Perina became the Chargé d’Affaires at U.S. embassies for Armenia, 2010 for Iceland, 2013 the Czech Republic, and 2015 for Slovakia.
Non-diplomatic appointments.
In 2007, Perina completed an oral history of his life and career for Frontline Diplomacy: the Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. It is available online through the Library of Congress.
He was the Scarff Visiting Professor of International Relations at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin in fall 2010 and was on the Council of Advisors of the Wende Museum, a research institute and archive of the Cold War located in Culver City, California.
Personal life.
He met his wife, Ethel Ott Hetherington, at the 1968 Columbia student protests, and they married in Salzburg, Austria on May 26, 1972. Ethel taught at the International School of Belgrade while he was Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy there in the 1990s. He was fluent in four languages: English, Czech, Russian, and French and knew Romanian. They have two daughters, Kaja and Alexandra, and four grandchildren and lived in the Washington D.C. area until his death on June 14, 2018.


Angela Corcoran

Angela Corcoran is a former Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, having held the post from 2016 to the end of 2019.
Corcoran has been part of a controversy concerning a champagne toast with Cambodian Foreign Affairs Minister Prak Sokhonn in 2017.
On November 28, 2019, Corcoran told Cambodian Foreign Affairs Minister Prak Sokhonn that Australia is “committed to strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries” which includes continuing financial assistance on top of the $1 billion from 1992 to 2018.


Elizabeth Compton, Countess of Northampton

Elizabeth Compton, Countess of Northampton (19 August 1694 – 13 March 1741), "suo jure" 15th Baroness Ferrers of Chartley, was a British peer.
Elizabeth was the daughter of the Hon. Robert Shirley, eldest son of Robert Shirley, 1st Earl Ferrers. After the deaths of her father (in 1698) and her brother (in 1714), Elizabeth became her grandfather's heiress apparent. She married James Compton, Lord Compton in 1716; on her grandfather's death in 1717, she succeeded him as Baroness Ferrers of Chartley, and became Countess of Northampton when her husband inherited the earldom in 1727.
She died in March 1741, aged 46, when her barony fell into abeyance between her daughters. However, the abeyance was terminated eight years later in favour of her daughter Charlotte. Lord Northampton died in 1754 and was succeeded in his junior title of Baron Compton by his daughter Charlotte. She was the wife of George Townshend, 4th Viscount Townshend, later first Marquess Townshend.


Highness

Highness (abbreviation HH, oral address Your Highness) is a formal style used to address (in second person) or refer to (in third person) certain members of a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty. It is typically used with a possessive adjective: "His Highness", "Her Highness" (HH), "Their Highnesses", etc. Although often combined with other adjectives of honour indicating rank, such as "Imperial", "Royal" or "Serene", it may be used alone.
"Highness" is, both literally and figuratively, the quality of being lofty or above. It is used as a term to evoke dignity or honour, and to acknowledge the exalted rank of the person so described.
History in Europe.
Abstract styles arose in profusion in the Roman Empire, especially in the Byzantine. Styles were attached to various offices at court or in the state. In the early Middle Ages such styles, couched in the second or third person, were uncertain and much more arbitrary, and were more subject to the fancies of secretaries than in later times.
In English usage, the terms Highness, Grace and Majesty, were all used as honorific styles of kings, queens and princes of the blood until the time of James I of England. Thus in documents relating to the reign of Henry VIII of England, all three styles are used indiscriminately; an example is the king's judgment against Dr. Edward Crome (d. 1562), quoted, from the Lord Chamberlains' books, ser. I, p. 791, in Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc. N.S. lOX. 299, where article 15 begins with "Also the Kinges Highness hath ordered", 16 with "Kinges Majestie", and 17 with "Kinges Grace". In the Dedication of the Authorized Version of the Bible of 1611, James I is still styled Majesty and Highness; thus, in the first paragraph: "the appearance of Your Majesty, as of the Sun in his strength, instantly dispelled those supposed and surmised mists ... especially when we beheld the government established in Your Highness and Your hopeful Seed, by an undoubted title". It was, however, in James I's reign that Majesty became the official style.
Continental Europe.
At the conclusion of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, His/Her Highness (abbreviated HH), became prevalent for reigning dukes and members of their dynasties in Germany (e.g. Anhalt, Brunswick, Nassau, the three Ernestine duchies of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen, and Saxe-Altenburg, as well as Schleswig-Holstein); for cadets of some German grand ducal houses (e.g., Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach); and cadet members of some imperial or royal families (e.g., Russia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Prussia, Yugoslavia). That custom remains official in the Danish, Dutch and Norwegian dynasties. The "Almanach de Gotha" and Burke's Peerage continued to ascribe "Highness" to members of deposed dynasties of ducal rank.
Among the nobility, the "Almanach de Gotha" notes that "Highness" was accorded to the heads of the families of House of Murat (a royal dynasty during the Napoleonic era), Hohenberg and all members of the House of Ligne.
Example of official holders of the style "Highness":
Modified forms.
Usually members of an imperial or royal dynasty are addressed as Imperial Highness or Royal Highness (French "Altesse Impériale, Altesse Royale"; German "Kaiserliche Hoheit, Königliche Hoheit"; Spanish "Alteza Imperial, Alteza Real", etc.) respectively.
Grand Ducal Highness was the treatment accorded cadet princes of those families of ruling grand dukes who did not simply use "Highness", "viz." Baden, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse and by Rhine and Luxembourg.
While "Highness" ("Hoheit") was used for rulers of German duchies, the sovereign Dukes of Modena and of Parma were heads of cadet branches of ruling dynasties of higher rank. They and their cadets therefore used the imperial or royal styles borne by members of those houses, respectively the royal House of Bourbon and the imperial House of Habsburg-Lorraine.
In modern times Serene Highness ("Altesse Sérénissime") is used as the equivalent of the German "Durchlaucht". In the 17th century it became the general style borne by the heads of the reigning princely states of the Holy Roman Empire ("reichsständische Fürsten"), as "Illustrious Highness ("Erlaucht") became customary for those of the comital houses ("reichsständische Grafen", i.e. Counts of the Empire). In 1825 the Imperial German Diet agreed to grant the style "Durchlaucht" to the heads of all mediatized princely houses domiciled in Germany elevated to the rank of "Fürst" are also styled Durchlaucht. In 1829 the style of Erlaucht, which had formerly been borne by the reigning Counts of the empire, was similarly granted to the mediatized countly families (Almanach de Gotha, 1909, 107).
Commonwealth realms.
"Highness" was the style accorded to princes of the British Royal Family who were the male-line great-grandchildren of a British sovereign (and the wives/widows of great-grandsons), except the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. In 1917 George V revoked authorization for use of that style.
The children and grandchildren in the male-line of a British sovereign were and are addressed as Royal Highness (His or Her Royal Highness, abbreviated "HRH"), as are the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales (decree of 31 May 1898). The sovereign has the right as a legal "fons honorum" to grant or revoke use of the style of Highness, as with other styles, titles and honours.
Republican and non-royal usage.
Very rarely, the style of "Highness" or variations thereof have been used by non-monarchical heads of state, particularly before the 20th century, and often in cases where the distinction between monarchy and republic was blurred. For example, Oliver Cromwell and his wife were styled "Highness" upon his elevation to Lord Protector of the Commonwealth; he also enjoyed the style of "by the Grace of God", was succeeded by his son, and had even been offered the throne.
Spanish-speaking world.
In the Spanish-speaking world, a handful of leaders historically enjoyed the official, if often ephemeral, style of "Highness" (Alteza) or variations thereof.
In Spain, Manuel Godoy, who twice served as Prime Minister from 1792 to 1797 and from 1801 to 1808, was granted the style of "Most Serene Highness" (Su Alteza Serenísima) in 1807 by King Charles IV. He had been created "Principe de la Paz" ("Prince of the Peace") in 1795, but the princely title did not carry the style of "Highness" on its own. The former style was possibly derived from the traditional Spanish honorific of "Excelentísimo Señor" (The Most Excellent).
Baldomero Espartero, Prince of Vergara, who was regent for Queen Isabella II from 1840 to 1843, and three times served as Prime Minister: in 1837, from 1840 to 1841, and from 1854 to 1856, was created Prince of Vergara in 1872. Espartero had previously declined an offer to the throne following the Spanish Revolution of 1868, which instead went to the Italian Amadeo of Savoy, who in turn bestowed the royal princedom on him.
Furthermore, according to the provisions of Royal Decree 1368/1987 promulgated by King Juan Carlos I in 1987, a Regent of Spain is to enjoy the style of "Highness" (as well as protocolary honours equal to those of the Prince of Asturias), unless they were to possess rank conferring a higher style.
During the short-lived "" uprising of 1809 in modern-day Ecuador, the "Junta de Gobierno Autónoma de Quito" ("Autonomous Government Junta of [the Royal Audiencia of] Quito"), granted its President, Juan Pío de Montúfar, 2nd Marquis of Selva Alegre, the style of "Most Serene Highness", while claiming for itself the collective dignity of "Majesty" (as it purported to be acting in the name of King Ferdinand VII). Selva Alegre's pseudo-monarchical government, which was formed following Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 and lasted for a mere seventy-five days, was considered by both contemporaries and later historians to be a thinly-disguised effort to establish a "Kingdom of Quito"; Selva dressed himself in regal vestments, bestowed honours on citizens, and instituted the National Order of San Lorenzo (which was much later revived by Ecuadorian President Camilo Ponce Enríquez in 1959).
Antonio López de Santa Anna, enjoyed the official style of "Most Serene Highness" during his eleventh and final tenure as President of Mexico for life from 1853 until his deposal in 1855.
Elsewhere.
Shortly before the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States, then-Vice President John Adams organised a Congressional committee on the matter of the title and style of the President. There Adams agitated for the adoption of the style of "Highness" (as well as the title of "Protector of Their [the United States'] Liberties") for the President. Others favored the variant of "Electoral Highness" or the lesser "Excellency", the latter of which was vociferously opposed by Adams, who contended that it was far beneath the presidential dignity, as the executives of the states, some of which were also titled "President" (e.g. the President of Pennsylvania), at that time often enjoyed the style of "Excellency"; Adams said that the President "would be levelled with colonial governors or with functionaries from German princedoms" if he were to use the style of "Excellency". On further consideration, Adams deemed even "Highness" insufficient and instead proposed that the Executive, both the President and the Vice President (i.e., himself), be styled "Majesty", with only which the "great danger" of insufficient dignity being attached to the executive could be solved. Adams' efforts were met with widespread derision and perplexion; Thomas Jefferson called them "the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of", while Benjamin Franklin considered it "absolutely mad". The proposal came to naught, and American Presidents, from Washington onwards, have eschewed honorific titles and styles altogether and are simply referred to as "Mr. President".
In modern-day Samoa, the O le Ao o le Malo, the Samoan head of state, has since the country's independence enjoyed the title of "Highness", as do the heads of the four paramount chiefly dynasties. However, as all of the heads of state, elected by the "Fono", the country's parliament (which is itself almost entirely composed of customary chiefs), since independence have been one of the four chiefs, it is ambiguous as to whether the country constitutes a parliamentary republic or a democratic elective monarchy.
In Saudi Arabia, all members of the royal family have the title of Emir (Prince) but sons, daughters, patrilineal granddaughters and grandsons of Ibn Saud are referred to by the style "His Royal Highness" (HRH), differing from those belonging to the cadet branches who are styled as "His/Her Highness" (HH), and in addition to that a reigning king has the title of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.
Emirs of Qatar, Kuwait and UAE also use the style of Your Highness.
African royalty commonly use "Highness" to refer to their junior dynasts. Some ranking monarchs also make use of the style. An example of the former is Princess Elizabeth Bagaya of the Tooro Kingdom in Uganda. An example of the latter is the princess' sister-in-law, Queen Best Kemigisa.
Other uses.
Regardless of the official traditions in the various colonial empires, the style is evidently used to render, often merely informally, various somewhat analogous titles in non-western cultures, regardless whether there is an actual linguistic and/or historical link. Furthermore, in North America, some chiefs of certain indigenous tribes or nations use the style of Highness, which may or may not be recognised by their governments.
The Aga Khan was granted the style of "His Highness" by Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom in 1957 upon the death of his grandfather Aga Khan III. This has been a traditional gesture by British sovereigns since the Aga Khan III allied himself with Britain against Afghanistan.
Variations and precedence.
While the actual precedence depends on the rank itself, and sometimes more specifically on the monarchy, rather than on the style of address, the holders tend to end up roughly in the following order of precedence:


Minister for Africa

Minister for Africa is a junior position in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in the British government. It is currently held by James Duddridge MP who took the office on 13 February 2020.
Responsibilities.
The minister is responsible for the following:


Growth and Transformation Plan

The Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) is a national five-year plan created by the Ethiopian Government to improve the country's economy by achieving a projected gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 11-15% per year from 2010 to 2015. The plan includes details of the cost (estimated at US$75–79 billion over the five years) and specific targets the government expects to hit by pursuing the following objectives.
Details.
The main points of the plan are:
Italic text"
Framework.
The Growth and Transformation Plan was established by the government as a strategic framework for the agricultural sector from 2011 to 2015. The GTP aims to:
Target results.
The overall target is at least 8.1% annual agricultural growth over the five-year period. Sub-sectoral targets include tripling the number of farmers receiving relevant extension services, reducing the number of safety net beneficiaries from 7.8 to 1.8 million households, and more than doubling the production of key crops from 18.1 million metric tonnes to 39.5 million metric tonnes. Specific targets are aligned with and in support of the targets contained in the CAADP Compact and other Ministry of Agriculture-led initiatives.
Agricultural Transformation Agency.
The Agricultural Transformation Agency's programs are designed to help all partners meet the targets. The Agency will measure its contribution to the effort through the metrics established in the GTP as well as in other national strategies such as the CAADP Compact and the corresponding Policy and Investment Framework (PIF). The Agency's work to support the GTP will be organized under the AGP's four strategic objectives that together will contribute to Ethiopia's goal of achieving middle income status by 2025:
Summary.
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development published the Growth and Transformation Plan online. Ethiopia started the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process in 2000, and by 2002 had issued the first three-year Sustainable Development Poverty Reduction Programme (SDPRP), which covered 2002–2005. Under the umbrella of the Development Assistance Group (DAG), in-country staff of bilateral and multilateral donor agencies undertook a review of the final Ethiopian SDPRP and the results of this work were presented a Joint Partner Review (JPR).
The aim of this exercise was to develop a joint in-country perspective on the quality of the SDPRP that would help inform our overall response as development partners – both at the IMF/World Bank Board. In 2005, Ethiopia launched the first five-year Plan for Accelerated and Sustainable Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) carrying forward the SDPRP strategic directions but also bringing in new elements and scaling up the efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
The second Growth and Transformation Plan is published by the National Planning Commission and now the GTP II is the mandate of the National Planning Commission.


Pavel Gagarin

Prince Pavel Pavlovich Gagarin (; 4 (15) March 1789 in Moscow – 21 February (4 March) 1872 in Saint Petersburg) was a Russian statesman from the Rurikid Gagarin family.
He was the posthumous child of Prince Pavel Sergeyevich Gagarin (1747–89), the Commander of the Moscow Kremlin. After his mother's death in 1800, Pavel and his elder brother Andrew were brought up at a private boarding school in Moscow.
He started his career as an aide-de-camp to Mikhail Miloradovich and other notable commanders but, citing ill health, moved to the civil service in 1809. He married Maria, the only daughter of Georg Johann von Glasenapp, Vice-Roy of Siberia. She became known as "the Princess Termagant" for her dreadful character and haughty manners.
As a senior member of the Governing Senate in the reign of Nicholas I, Prince Gagarin inspected several governorates and led a commission investigating the activities of Dostoyevsky and other members of the Petrashevsky Circle. Many years later, Gagarin was also responsible for investigating Dmitry Karakozov's attempt to assassinate Alexander II of Russia.
After Alexander's accession to the throne, Gagarin was involved, together with Yakov Rostovtsev, in the activities of a secret committee that prepared the Emancipation Reform of 1861. Always keen to support the party of wealthy landowners, Gagarin was made Chairman of the Committee of Ministers in 1864.
He was also in charge of the State Council during Count Bludov's final illness and for several months following his death. He had eight children, including Sergey, the governor of Archangel, and Varvara, the wife of Dmitry Sontsov.


American Institute for Free Labor Development

The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was established in late 1961 by the AFL-CIO in the western hemisphere. It received funding from the US government, mostly through USAID (United States Agency for International Development). In the 1980s, it began receiving funds from the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), which is funded through the USAID budget of the U.S. State Department. AIFLD was merged with three similar organizations into the American Center for International Labor Solidarity.
American Center for International Labor Solidarity (1997).
In October 1995, John Sweeney succeeded Thomas R. Donahue as President of the AFL-CIO. Sweeney merged AIFLD with three other institutes to form the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. The archives of the merged center are available at the University of Maryland Special Collections and University Archives.
External links.
FreeLabors Business Blog


CITIC Trust

CITIC Trust Co., Ltd. is a Chinese investment management company, with license to create private equity fund (as trust). The company was a subsidiary of CITIC Group. However, after a reverse takeover, CITIC Limited () became the parent company for 100% stake (via CITIC Corporation Limited and CITIC Industrial Investment Group Corporation Limited).
History.
CITIC Industrial Trust Investment Corporation () was founded on 1 March 1988 as a subsidiary of CITIC Group (formerly China International Trust Investment Corporation). In 2002 CITIC Trust acquired the trust business from the parent company and renamed to CITIC Trust Investment Co., Ltd. (). The share capital had increased to in 2003. In 2006 CITIC Capital, another subsidiary of CITIC Group, had also acquired 20% stake of the company, which was re-acquired by CITIC Group.
In 2014 the share capital of CITIC Trust was increased from to by adjusting the share premium.
Shareholders.
CITIC Trust was wholly owned by CITIC Group (and later CITIC Limited).
In 2012 CITIC Group incorporated a subsidiary "CITIC Corporation Limited" (), and the stake of CITIC Trust (80%) was transferred to the subsidiary. However, the initial public offering of CITIC Corporation Limited was abandoned; It was takeover by CITIC Pacific (), another subsidiary of CITIC Group in 2014 as a reverse IPO; the Chinese name of CITIC Corporation Limited had also dropped the word "shares" ().
In 2012 also saw another direct shareholder of CITIC Trust for 20% stake, Shanghai-based "CITIC East China (Group) Corporation Limited" () was renamed to CITIC Industrial Investment Group Corporation Limited (); The stake of CITIC Industrial Investment Group had also transferred to CITIC Corporation Limited, making CITIC Corporation Limited owned 80% stake of CITIC Trust directly and 20% indirectly.
Joint ventures.
CITIC Trust formed a joint venture with China Guodian Corporation. The joint venture was an in-house investment management company for Guodian. The joint venture raised money from the general public to invest in Guodian's projects.
Equity investments.
CITIC Trust was an investor in Otis Elevator (China) Investment from 1998 to 2001. In 2001 the 3% stake was sold back to Otis Far East Holdings.
CITIC Trust was a shareholder of China Guangfa Bank in 2006 for 20% shares.


National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius

National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court upheld Congress' power to enact most provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly called Obamacare, and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA), including a requirement for most Americans to pay a penalty for forgoing health insurance by 2014. The Acts represented a major set of changes to the American health care system that had been the subject of highly contentious debate, largely divided on political party lines.
The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld by a vote of 5 to 4 the individual mandate to buy health insurance as a constitutional exercise of Congress's taxing power. A majority of the justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, agreed that the individual mandate was not a proper use of Congress's Commerce Clause or Necessary and Proper Clause powers, though they did not join in a single opinion. A majority of the justices also agreed that another challenged provision of the Act, a significant expansion of Medicaid, was not a valid exercise of Congress's spending power as it would coerce states to either accept the expansion or risk losing existing Medicaid funding.
Background.
In March 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. A number of parties sued, including the National Federation of Independent Business, claiming that the sweeping reform law was unconstitutional for various reasons. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to three cases, totaling 5½ hours of oral arguments: "National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius" (which consolidated a part of "Florida v. Dept. of Health and Human Services") on the issues of the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the severability of any unconstitutional provisions, "Dept. of Health and Human Services v. Florida" on the issue of whether review was barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, and "Florida v. Dept. of Health and Human Services" on the matter of the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion.
District Court proceedings.
The state of Florida filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Health and Human Services, challenging the constitutionality of the law. On January 31, 2011, Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the mandatory health insurance "individual mandate"—the provision of Internal Revenue Code section 5000A imposing a "shared responsibility penalty" on nearly all Americans who fail to purchase health insurance—was outside the power of Congress. Vinson also held that the mandate could not be severed from the rest of the Affordable Care Act and struck down the entire Act.
Eleventh Circuit appeal.
The Department of Health and Human Services appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel issued a 2–1 ruling affirming Judge Vinson's findings in part and reversing in part. The court affirmed the District Court's holding that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, but, contrary to the District Court's view, it held that the individual mandate could be severed, leaving the rest of the law intact. The government decided to not seek "en banc" review from the full Circuit and instead petitioned the United States Supreme Court to review the Eleventh Circuit's rulings.
Related cases.
Other federal courts heard cases related to the Affordable Care Act that were not directly reviewed by the Supreme Court, but caused a divide regarding the constitutionality of the law. Two federal judges appointed by President Bill Clinton upheld the individual mandate in 2010. Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a member of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals appointed by George W. Bush, was the first Republican-appointed judge to rule that the law is constitutional in June 2011, as part of a divided three-judge panel that upheld the constitutionality of the law.
Briefings and oral arguments.
On November 14, 2011, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to portions of three cross-appeals of the Eleventh Circuit's opinion: one by the states ("Florida v. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Svcs."), one by the federal government ("U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Svcs. v. Florida"); and one by the National Federation of Independent Business ("Nat'l Fed. of Independent Bus. v. Sebelius").
Oral arguments.
The Court announced in December 2011 that it would hear approximately six hours of oral argumentation over a three-day period, from Monday, March 26, to Wednesday, March 28, 2012, covering the various aspects being questioned by the principal parties involved in this and other related cases concerning the ACA.
The court first heard argument on whether the Anti-Injunction Act, which limits suits "for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax", barred a decision before the ACA fully entered into force in 2014. Since neither the government, represented by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, nor the states, represented that day by Gregory G. Katsas of the law firm Jones Day, were willing to defend that position (which had been accepted by three of the twelve appellate court judges that heard the cases) the Court appointed Robert Long of the law firm Covington & Burling as "amicus curiae" to defend that position.
On the second day, the court heard arguments over whether the "individual mandate" component of the ACA fell under the constitutional powers of Congress. The states (Florida et al.) were represented during the hearings by former Bush administration Solicitor General Paul Clement while the government was represented by current Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
On the morning of the third day, the Court considered the issue of severability—whether the Affordable Care Act could survive if the Court struck down the individual mandate. Paul Clement, Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler, and Court-appointed "amicus curiae" H. Bartow Farr, III of the law firm Farr & Taranto argued their various positions before the Court.
On the afternoon of the third day, the Court considered whether the Medicaid expansion the Affordable Care Act instituted was coercive. Both Paul Clement and Donald Verilli again argued before the Court. Chief Justice Roberts extended the time limit for both parties by 15 minutes during the arguments.
Solicitor General Verrilli's performance during the hearings was widely criticized by analysts.
Outcome.
The case generated a complex division on the bench. With respect to the Anti-Injunction Act and individual mandate penalty, judgment was for the Secretary of Health and Human Services. With respect to the Medicaid expansion, judgment was for the challenging states.
Opinion of the Court.
Chief Justice Roberts authored an opinion, of which three parts gained the assent of five justices (Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan) and became the opinion of the Court, and one part which gained the assent of a plurality (Roberts, Breyer, and Kagan) and became part of the holding. Those parts of Roberts's opinion that gained the assent of five justices were Parts I, II, and III-C. Part I recounted the facts and procedural history of the cases. Part II concerned the applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act to the individual mandate penalty. Part III-C held that, for constitutional purposes, the individual mandate penalty was a valid exercise of Congress's taxing power.
Tax Anti-Injunction Act.
The Anti-Injunction Act prohibits federal courts from enjoining agencies of the federal government from collecting a tax while a challenge to the tax is pending. Congress's motivation in passing the act was to prevent the starvation of the federal treasury while tax issues are being litigated before the courts. Instead, Congress requires a taxpayer who challenges any tax to first pay that tax, and only afterwards is the taxpayer allowed to bring suit and seek a refund. Challengers of the Affordable Care Act maintained that the individual mandate's enforcement mechanism was not a tax. The Court agreed. Because the Affordable Care Act labels the individual mandate's shared responsibility payment as a "penalty" instead of a "tax," it prevents the penalty from being treated as a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act.
Congress's taxing power.
Taking a functional view to the individual mandate penalty, the Court held that it was a tax for constitutional purposes. The Court noted that the label of the individual mandate shared responsibility payment as a penalty for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act did not control whether it was a tax for purposes of constitutional analysis. The Court asserted that the individual mandate penalty, in its practical operation, exhibited all the characteristics of a tax—the penalty "looks like a tax in many respects." That is, the individual mandate penalty had all of the following features of a tax:
Further, the Court reasoned, while the penalty is treated as a tax for constitutional purposes, it is not a direct tax, and therefore is not required to be apportioned among the states according to population. Here the Court concluded that "[a] tax on going without health insurance does not fall within any recognized category of direct tax ... The shared responsibility payment is thus not a direct tax that must be apportioned among the several States."
Finally, the individual mandate penalty operated within the constraints of even the narrowest reading of the taxing power, which disallows punitive taxation:
As Chief Justice Roberts concluded for the Court:
Plurality holding.
As stated above, seven justices agreed in judgment for the states against the Department of Health and Human Services on the issue of the Medicaid expansion, but no opinion among them obtained the assent of five justices. At issue were amendments to the Social Security Act contained in Title X of the Affordable Care Act. These amendments, in expanding Medicaid coverage, made changes to the plan requirements states must meet in their Medicaid plans. The 1965 amendments to the Social Security Act that created Medicaid authorized the Secretary of Health and Human Services to withhold federal payments to state Medicaid plans that were not in compliance with statutory requirements.
The seven justices were in agreement that the Secretary's existing ability to withhold all funds from non-compliant plans, coupled with the substantial coverage changes enacted by the Title X amendments, amounted to an unconstitutionally coercive use of Congress's spending power, given that Congress was not going to cover the full cost of the Medicaid expansion after 2016. Where the justices differed was in what they thought constituted the appropriate legal remedy. Four justices (Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito) believed the Title X amendments should be struck down due to their impermissibly coercive nature. The remaining three justices (Roberts, Breyer, and Kagan) instead opted to exercise the existing severability clause (codified at 42 USC §1303) in the Social Security Act, as amended, holding that the ability given to the Secretary by statute to withhold federal payments could not be applied to the Title X amendments for those states refusing to participate in the Medicaid expansion. Since this latter opinion concurred in the judgment on the narrowest ground ("i.e.", severing only part of the application of the law instead of striking all of the amendments), the three-justice plurality became the controlling opinion under the rule set out by "Marks v. United States" (1977).
Other opinions.
Chief Justice Roberts' opinion.
Chief Justice Roberts, writing only for himself, would have held that Congress's power to "regulate Commerce" (the "Commerce Clause" Art. I, §8, cl. 3) does not extend to the regulation of economic inactivity.
Regarding the argument that the mandate penalizes or taxes "inactivity", Roberts wrote:
Further, Roberts would have held that the individual mandate was unsupported by the Necessary and Proper Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 18).
Chief Justice Roberts concluded:
Justice Ginsburg's concurrence/dissent.
Justice Ginsburg concurred in the judgment in part and dissented in part. Joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, she would have upheld the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause:
Further, joined only by Sotomayor, she dissented on striking down the Medicaid expansion penalty, arguing that it was within Congress's power under the Spending Clause:
Ginsburg's dissent went on to highlight the implications of the majority's finding that the federal government's threat of taking away existing funding from states unwilling to implement Medicaid expansion left states with no "legitimate choice".
Joint dissent.
Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito joined an unsigned dissent that argued the individual mandate was unconstitutional because it represented an attempt by Congress to regulate beyond its power under the Commerce Clause. Further, they argued that reclassifying the Individual Mandate as a tax rather than a penalty in order to sustain its constitutionality was not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it, which they deemed a troubling exercise of judicial power:
The dissent also disputed Justice Ginsburg's claim that the court's opinion failed "to explain why the individual mandate threatens our constitutional order":
Finally, the joint dissent argued that since the ACA exceeded its constitutional powers in both compelling the purchase of health insurance and in denying non-consenting States Medicaid funding, the whole statute should have been deemed inoperative because the two parts were central to the statute's design and operation. The joint dissent mentioned that "the Constitution requires tax increases to originate in the House of Representatives" per the Origination Clause, though that issue was not addressed by the majority opinion.
Justice Thomas's dissent.
In a one-paragraph dissent, Justice Thomas emphasized his long-held belief that the Supreme Court's precedents have broadened Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause in a manner "inconsistent with the original understanding of Congress's powers and with this Court's early Commerce Clause cases". Thomas wrote that he agreed with Roberts' interpretation of precedents allowing Congress to use the Commerce Clause to regulate "the channels of interstate commerce" and the "persons or things in interstate commerce" and disallowing the regulation of commercial inactivity. However, he disagreed with the court's third, "substantial effects" test as established by "Wickard v. Filburn", articulated within "United States v. Morrison", and strengthened by "Gonzales v. Raich".
Reaction and commentary.
Media coverage.
The Court convened on the morning of June 28, 2012, to announce its decisions on the ACA and two other cases; it announced its ruling on the ACA shortly after 10:00 am EDT. CNN and Fox News initially reported that the individual mandate was found unconstitutional, but corrected themselves within minutes. President Obama initially heard from CNN and Fox News that the mandate had been found unconstitutional, but then heard the correct information shortly thereafter.
Speculation over Roberts' vote.
Immediately following the decision, there was speculation that the joint dissent was the original internal majority opinion, and that Chief Justice Roberts' vote changed some time between March and the public issuance of the decision.
On July 1, 2012, CBS News, citing unnamed sources within the Court, said that over the course of internal deliberations Roberts changed his position from striking down the mandate to upholding it. The article, written by journalist Jan Crawford, reported that during the Court's private conference immediately after the oral arguments, Roberts was inclined to strike down the mandate but, in disagreement with the other four conservative justices, was not certain this required striking down the law in its entirety. News articles in May 2012 that warned of potential "damage to the court—and to Roberts' reputation—if the court were to strike down the mandate" increased the external pressure on Roberts, who "is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court [and] is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public", and pays more attention to media coverage of the Court than some of his colleagues. It was around this time that Roberts decided to uphold the law. One of the conservative justices reportedly pressed Roberts to explain why he had changed his view on the mandate, but was "unsatisfied with the response".
On July 2, Adam Liptak of "The New York Times" insinuated that the leak could have come from Justice Thomas, as Liptak pointed out that Crawford has long had a relationship with Thomas, granting rare interviews and Thomas singled her out as his favorite reporter, saying "There are wonderful people out here who do a good job—do a fantastic job—like Jan [Crawford]."
Some observers have suggested Roberts' philosophy of judicial restraint
or the lack of Supreme Court precedents available "to say the individual mandate crossed a constitutional line" played a part in his decision.
The article reported that after Roberts "withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position", with Kennedy, who is typically the swing vote in 5–4 decisions, leading the effort, the conservatives essentially told him "You're on your own."
The conservative dissent was unsigned and did not, despite efforts by Roberts to convince them to do so, make any attempt to join the Court's opinion, an unusual situation in which the four justices "deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate".
In 2019 it was reported that Roberts had originally voted to invalidate the individual mandate and uphold the Medicaid expansion requirement. He believed that the Constitution's commerce clause never was intended to cover inactivity, such as the refusal to buy insurance. But he was uneasy with the political division in the vote tally and also did not want to invalidate the entire law because he thought the individual mandate was only inseverable from "community rating" and "guarantee issue" provisions of the law. Due to this impasse he explored the argument that the individual mandate could be upheld as a tax and invalidating the Medicaid expansion. Breyer and Kagan had previously voted to uphold the Medicaid expansion, but decided to switch and join Roberts' opinion on that section.
Political reactions.
President Obama praised the decision in a series of remarks, while discussing the benefits of the legislation in a statement shortly after the decision. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a longtime proponent of health care reform who died before the bill became law, could now "rest."
The ruling quickly became a rallying cry for Republicans who criticized the Supreme Court's reasoning and vowed to repeal the ACA. Though they had already repeatedly attempted to do so starting in January 2011, they were unsuccessful in enacting a repeal. Conservatives quickly seized on the fact that Obama and the bill's proponents insisted repeatedly throughout the protracted political debate 2009 and 2010 that the mandate was not a tax, but the Supreme Court upheld it on the grounds that it was a tax. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he would repeal the bill, as did Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Several state attorneys general who challenged the law stated that they were disappointed with the Supreme Court's ultimate decision but happy that in doing so, the Court limited the powers of Congress under the commerce clause. Several state Republican officials indicated their desire to utilize the option granted to them by the Supreme Court to not further expand Medicaid.
The American Medical Association, the National Physicians Alliance, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Association of American Medical Colleges said that the ruling was a victory.
"The New York Times" reported the ruling "may secure Obama's place in history".
Academic commentary.
"The New York Times" reported that the court's ruling was the most significant federalism decision since the New Deal. It reported in this respect about the new limits the ruling placed on federal regulation of commerce and about the conditions the federal government may impose on money it gives the states. With respect to the Commerce Clause, the Court ruled that the federal government had no permission to force individuals not engaged in commercial activities to buy services they did not want. With respect to the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court held that the ACA's requirement that states rapidly extend coverage to new beneficiaries or lose existing federal payments was unduly coercive. The health-care law had to allow states to choose between participating in the expansion while receiving additional payments, or forgoing the expansion and retaining existing payments. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the first to challenge the ACA in federal court, praised the limits the Court placed on federal regulation of commerce and on the conditions the federal government could impose on money it gives the states.
Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett stated that by invalidating the withholding of existing Medicaid funding as unconstitutionally coercive the Supreme Court found an enforceable limit on the Spending Power of the federal government. This limit on the Spending Power of the federal government is part of Neal K. Katyal's ruling analysis. Law professor Neal K. Katyal at Georgetown University, who served as acting solicitor general of the United States and argued the health care cases at the appellate level, argued that the Supreme Court ruling could change the relationship between the federal government and the states because of "the existence of an extraconstitutional limit" on the federal government's power under the Spending Clause. Katyal said that until now it had been understood that when the federal government gave money to a state in exchange for the state's doing something, the federal government was free to do so as long as a reasonable relationship existed between the federal funds and the act the federal government wanted the state to perform. He then referred to the Court holding that the ACA's requirement that states rapidly extend Medicaid coverage to new beneficiaries or lose existing federal payments was unduly coercive by noting that the court found that "such a threat is coercive and that the states cannot be penalized for not expanding their Medicaid coverage after receiving funds. And it does so in the context of Medicaid, which Congress created and can alter, amend or abolish at any time. ... This was the first significant loss for the federal government's spending power in decades. The fancy footwork that the court employed to view the act as coercive could come back in later cases to haunt the federal government. Many programs are built on the government's spending power, and the existence of an extraconstitutional limit on that power is a worrisome development." Katyal also mentioned that the federal government told the court that long-standing laws contain clauses that condition money on state performance of certain activities. "The decision leaves open the question of whether those acts, and many others (like the Clean Air Act), are now unconstitutional as well." However Reuters reported later that Katyal reversed his opinion and stated that he didn't see any litigation coming out of the Supreme Court holding in the near term.
In the same direction as Katyal argues Kevin Russell, who teaches Supreme Court litigation at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools and clerked for Judge William Norris of the Ninth Circuit and Justice Stephen Breyer. According to him several significant civil rights statutes, enacted under Congress's Spending Power, are at risk to be unconstitutional, because the Court held that Congress exceeded its Spending Clause authority by forcing states into an all-or-nothing choice by threatening to revoke all of their Medicaid funding if they did not participate in the Medicaid expansion. Russell remembers that a decade ago several states made challenges to a number of important civil rights statutes that condition receipt of federal funds on the state's agreement to abide by non-discrimination principles in the federally funded programs. "These statutes include Title IX (sex discrimination in federally funded education programs), Title IV (race discrimination in any federally funded program), and the Rehabilitation Act (disability discrimination in federally funded programs). States argued that by threatening to take away all of a program's funds if the State's didn't agree to abide by these statutes, Congress was engaging in unconstitutional coercion."
David B. Kopel, an adjunct professor of constitutional law at University of Denver, said that Supreme Court ruling is the court's most important ruling in defining the limits of Congress's power under the Spending Clause, because this clause must, like , conform to the principles of state sovereignty that are embodied in the United States Constitution, the Tenth Amendment and Eleventh Amendment. According to him this has a tremendous impact on state budgets: "Today (and from now on!), states do not need to provide Medicaid to able-bodied childless adults. Likewise, states today have discretion about whether to provide Medicaid to middle-class parents. Undoubtedly, some states will choose to participate in the ACA's massive expansion of medical welfare, but fiscally responsible states now have the choice not to."
University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos told "The Atlantic" that the Court's holding on the Medicaid Expansion could be a landmark decision in federalism jurisprudence, if the Medicaid issue were not in the same case as the individual mandate. He deemed it "a big deal" that the Supreme Court has for the first time struck down a condition on federal spending on the grounds that it coerced the states. In his opinion this means that a number of federal statutes that had not really been subject to effective legal challenge before can now be challenged by the states.
Public opinion.
Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind conducted research on the public's constitutional perspective by asking registered voters about key legal issues brought up by PPACA litigation through two surveys based upon a random sampling of the United States population. The authors, Bruce G. Peabody and Peter J. Woolley contend that, through public response on this case, that despite claims of an ignorant and uninformed public, the masses can be confident, properly conflicted, and principled when considering major controversies and dilemmas. Rather than polling the public on raw personal opinion, the study conducted inquired into the random voters legal judgement on PPACA constitutionality. For example, 56% of Americans (as of February 2012) deemed that Congress does not have the legal right to require everyone to have health insurance, while 34% believed that such a mandate was legally permissible.
Subsequent cases.
"Sebelius" was the centerpoint of the third legal challenge to the PPACA to reach the Supreme Court in "California v. Texas", to be heard in the 2020–21 term. In 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that reduced the health insurance requirement of the PPACA to from 2019 onward, effectively eliminating the individual mandate. Texas and several states sued the federal government, arguing on the basis of "Sebelius" that with mandate eliminated, the entire PPACA was unconstitutional. A district court agreed with this, which was upheld on a challenge by California and other states to the Fifth Circuit, stepping in when the government declined to challenge the ruling. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case to consider not only if the elimination of the individual mandate makes the ACA unconstitutional, but factors related to the severability of the individual mandate from other provisions in the PPACA, as well as whether California has standing.


Charles C. Moore

Charles Calvin Moore (February 26, 1866 – March 19, 1958) was the 13th Governor of Idaho, serving from 1923 until 1927. He later served as Commissioner of the General Land Office from 1929 to 1933.
Biography.
Moore was born in Holt County, Missouri. He attended public school and a teachers' training school. He married Minnie McCoy and they had four children. She died in 1909; and he later married Clara W. Wallan.
Career.
Moore was deputy county assessor in 1894, and a county auditor from 1895 to 1898. He moved to Idaho in 1899, where he taught school and worked in real estate. Moore co-founded the town of Ashton, Idaho.
Moore served in the Idaho Legislature as a member of the Idaho State House of Representatives from 1903 to 1906. He was postmaster of Saint Anthony from 1908 to 1913. He was elected the 14th Lieutenant Governor of Idaho in 1918 and served in that capacity during the administration of Governor D. W. Davis.
In 1922 Moore was elected Governor of Idaho, defeating Progressive H. F. Samuels and former Democratic Governor Moses Alexander. Moore became the first person in Idaho history to successfully run for governor after serving as lieutenant governor. He was reelected in 1924, by defeating Samuels and Democrat A. L. Freehafer.
After leaving office, Moore returned to his real estate career. In 1929, he was appointed to as the United States Commissioner of the General Land Office.
Death.
Moore died from a stroke on March 19, 1958, in Saint Anthony, Idaho. He is interred at the Mount Olivet Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Utah.


Lucius Cary (British Army officer)

Lucius Ferdinand Cary, Master of Falkland (1735–1780) was a British Army officer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1780.
Cary was the only son of Lucius Charles Cary, 7th Viscount Falkland and his first wife Jane Butler, daughter of Richard Butler of London, a conveyancer. He was educated at Westminster School from 1747 to 1752 and joined the army. He was an Ensign in the 2nd Foot Guards in 1752. In 1755 he became captain in the 14th Foot which was stationed in Gibraltar for 8 years. He married Anne Leith, daughter of Colonel Alexander Leith at Gibraltar on 28 November 1757. Her father died commanding artillery at the Siege of Havana in 1762. In 1762 Cary became major in the 74th Foot and was put on half-pay from 1763 to 1765. He was major in the 60th Foot in 1765 and was on half pay again from 1768 to 1779.
At the 1774 general election, Cary was elected Member of Parliament for Bridport unseating the sitting MP in a contest.. In 1779 he resumed active military service as lieutenant-colonel commandant of the 89th Foot in the West Indies, and was generally absent from parliament. His brother in law Alexander Leith had a parallel career becoming MP for Tregony in 1774 and being posted to the West Indies in 1779.
Cary died in Tobago on 20 August 1780. He and his wife Anne had two sons and five daughters:
When he died he had a secret service pension of £500 per annum and his father applied successfully to the King for pensions of £100 per annum to each of Cary's five daughters, who were “left in extreme indigence by their father”. His sons Henry and Charles succeeded in turn to the Viscountcy after the death of their grandfather.


Chandannagar Police Commissionerate

Chandannagar Police Commissionerate, established on 30 June 2017, is a police force with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within certain urban parts of Hooghly district. The Commissionerate is part of the West Bengal Police, and is under the administrative control of Home Ministry of West Bengal. It was formed after bifurcation of the Hooghly Police District, and has nine police stations under its jurisdiction. It was established by Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal on 30 June 2017.


Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond

Field Marshal Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, 3rd Duke of Lennox, 3rd Duke of Aubigny, (22 February 1735 – 29 December 1806), styled Earl of March until 1750, of Goodwood House in Sussex and of Richmond House in London, was a British Army officer and politician. He associated with the Rockingham Whigs and rose to hold the post of Southern Secretary for a brief period. He was noteworthy for his support for the colonists during the American Revolutionary War, his support for a policy of concession in Ireland and his advanced views on the issue of parliamentary reform. He went on to be a reforming Master-General of the Ordnance first in the Rockingham ministry and then in the ministry of William Pitt.
Origins.
He was the son and heir of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond of Goodwood and of Richmond House, by his wife Sarah Cadogan, a daughter of William Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan.
Career.
He was educated at Westminster School and Leiden University and succeeded his father as Duke of Richmond in August 1750. He was commissioned as an ensign in the 2nd Foot Guards in March 1752, promoted to captain in the 20th Regiment of Foot on 18 June 1753 and was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society on 11 December 1755.
Richmond became lieutenant colonel of the 33rd Regiment of Foot on 7 June 1756. A second battalion (2nd/33rd) of this regiment was raised and in 1757, and the following year it became an independent regiment, the 72nd Foot; Richmond was appointed its lieutenant colonel, while his younger brother George took command of the 33rd Regiment (1st/33rd). In May 1758 he became colonel of the 72nd Regiment.
Richmond took part in the Raid on Cherbourg in August 1758 and served as aide-de-camp to Prince Frederick of Brunswick at the Battle of Minden in August 1759. Promoted to major general on 9 March 1761, he saw the 72nd Regiment disbanded in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years' War. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Sussex on 18 October 1763.
Richmond was appointed British ambassador extraordinary in Paris and made a Privy Counsellor in 1765, and in the following year he briefly served as Southern Secretary in the Rockingham Whig administration, resigning office on the accession of Pitt the Elder in July 1766. He was promoted to lieutenant general on 30 April 1770 and was briefly leader of the parliamentary Whigs in opposition in 1771 when Rockingham's wife was ill.
Richmond's anti-colonial positions earned him the sobriquet "the radical duke." In the debates on the policy that led to the American Revolutionary War Richmond was a firm supporter of the colonists, and he initiated the debate in 1778 calling for the removal of British troops from America, during which Pitt (now the Earl of Chatham) was seized by his fatal illness. He also advocated a policy of concession in Ireland, with reference to which he originated the phrase "a union of hearts" which long afterwards became famous when his use of it had been forgotten. In 1779 Richmond brought forward a motion for retrenchment of the civil list, and in 1780 he embodied in a bill his proposals for parliamentary reform, which included manhood suffrage, annual parliaments and equal electoral areas. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1787.
Richmond joined the Second Rockingham Ministry as Master-General of the Ordnance in March 1782; he was appointed a Knight of the Garter on 17 April 1782 and promoted to full general on 20 November 1782. He resigned as Master-General when the Fox–North coalition came to power in April 1783.
In January 1784 he joined the First Pitt the Younger Ministry as Master-General of the Ordnance; in this role he reformed the Department, introducing salaries for office holders, starting a survey of the South Coast (which led to the formation of the Ordnance Survey) and introducing new artillery (leading to the formation of the Royal Horse Artillery). He now developed strongly Tory opinions, and his alleged desertion of the cause of reform led to accusations of apostasy, and an attack on him by Lord Lauderdale in 1792, which nearly led to a duel. In November 1795, when Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke were charged with treason and cited his publications on reform in their defence, Richmond became a liability to the Government and was dismissed in February 1795. He became colonel of the Royal Horse Guards on 18 July 1795 and was promoted to field marshal on 30 July 1796. On 15 June 1797 he raised a Yeomanry artillery troop, the Duke of Richmond's Light Horse Artillery at his estate at Goodwood. The troop was equipped with his own design of Curricle gun carriage.
In retirement Richmond built the famous racecourse at the family seat of Goodwood. He was also a patron of artists such as George Stubbs, Pompeo Batoni, Anton Raphael Mengs, Joshua Reynolds and George Romney.
Marriage.
On 1 April 1757 he married Lady Mary Bruce (d.1796), a daughter of Charles Bruce, 3rd Earl of Ailesbury, but produced no legitimate issue.
Mistresses and illegitimate issue.
Mrs Mary Bennett.
As he acknowledged in his will he had three illegitimate daughters (Elizabeth, Caroline and Mary) by Mrs Mary Bennett (1765-1845), described as "his housekeeper", also known at sometime as Mrs. Mary Blesard, 30 years his junior. She was buried in Florence in the "English Cemetery" of the Cimitero di Pinti, where her gravestone survives (next to that of her daughter Caroline Napier) inscribed: SACRED/ TO THE MEMORY OF M. BENNET/ THE FOND MOTHER OF M. NAPIER/ BY WHOSE SIDE SHE NOW LIETH/ SHE DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 13TH SEPTEMBER 1845/ IN THE EIGHTIETH YEAR OF HER AGE To these daughters he bequeathed the sum of £10,000 each, and to Mrs Bennett he bequeathed his estate in Earl's Court, Kensington.
Vicomtesse de Cambis.
By his French mistress Gabrielle d'Alsace-Hénin-Liétard (d.1808), (Vicomtesse de Cambis), wife of the Comte de Cambis and sister of the Prince de Chimay, he had another illegitimate daughter:
Death, burial and succession.
Richmond died at Goodwood on 29 December 1806 and was buried in nearby Chichester Cathedral in Sussex. As he left no legitimate issue he was succeeded in the peerage by his nephew Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond.
Memorials.
After him was named Richmond County, Georgia, created in 1777.


Neil Primrose (politician)

Neil James Archibald Primrose (14 December 1882 – 15 November 1917) was a British Liberal politician and soldier. The second son of Prime Minister Lord Rosebery, he represented Wisbech in parliament from 1910 to 1917 and served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1915 and as joint-Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury from 1916 to 1917. He died from wounds received in action in Palestine in 1917.
Background.
Primrose was born at Dalmeny House in Midlothian, Scotland, the second son of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, Prime Minister to Queen Victoria from 1894 to 1895, and Hannah de Rothschild, daughter of Baron Mayer de Rothschild. He was the brother of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery and writer Lady Sybil Grant. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and played No.1 for the Oxford Polo team in 1904 and 1905. While at Oxford he was also a keen steeplechase rider.
Political career.
Primrose entered the House of Commons at the January 1910 general election as Member of Parliament (MP) for Wisbech. In 1913 he became a member of the Anglo-American Peace Centenary Committee. In February 1915 he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in H. H. Asquith's Liberal administration, but was not offered a post when the coalition government was formed in May of the same year. When David Lloyd George became prime minister in December 1916, Primrose returned to the government as joint-Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (government chief whip) alongside Conservative Lord Edmund Talbot, a post he only held until March of the following year. In June 1917 he was sworn of the Privy Council.
Military career.
Primrose was commissioned into the Buckinghamshire Yeomanry (Royal Bucks Hussars) in 1909. Promoted Captain in 1915, he was awarded the Military Cross in the King's Birthday Honours of June 1916. He died in November 1917 from wounds received in action at Gezer during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign while leading his squadron of the 1/1st Royal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry against Turkish positions on the Abu Shusheh ridge during the Third Battle of Gaza.
Commemoration.
When news of the death of Primrose reached the UK, Prime Minister David Lloyd George paid tribute in the House of Commons on 19 November 1917, alongside his report of the death of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude:
Responding to the Prime Minister, the former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith (who had himself lost a son in 1916) referred to "two very great national losses" and also paid his respects:
Primrose is buried in the Ramleh Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Ramla, in Israel. The inscription on his gravestone reads: . Primrose is commemorated on Panel 8 of the Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall, one of 22 MPs that died during World War I to be named on that memorial. Primrose is one of 19 MPs who fell in the war who are commemorated by heraldic shields in the Commons Chamber. A further act of commemoration came with the unveiling in 1932 of a manuscript-style illuminated book of remembrance for the House of Commons, which includes a short biographical account of the life and death of Primrose. Memorial tablets were erected by his father in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Mentmore, Buckinghamshire, and at Christ Church, Epsom Common, Surrey. Additional memorials were erected to his memory in the form of a stained glass window in St Mary's Church, Knowsley, Merseyside, by his widow's parents, and a further plaque was erected by his father in All Saints Church, Postwick, Norfolk.
Family.
Primrose married Lady Victoria Stanley, daughter of Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, on 7 April 1915.
They had one daughter: Ruth Alice Hannah Mary Primrose (18 April 1916 – 1989), who married Charles Wood, 2nd Earl of Halifax, on 25 April 1936.
Lady Victoria married as her second husband Malcolm Bullock, and had one daughter, Priscilla, by him. Lady Victoria died in a hunting accident in November 1927.