On November 7, 1861, a young general named Ulysses S. Grant narrowly “won” the Battle of Belmont, MO, nearly getting captured and shot when his raw troops got a TAD TOO EXCITED after their first firefight and lost all sense of discipline as they looted the Confederate camp …

Naturally, when several thousand young men go Berserk in the middle of a Civil War, there are STORIES TO TELL. So a couple days later, a few of Grant’s men from the 11th, 18th, and 29th Illinois knocked on the door of the local newspaper and asked to use the printing press.

And thus, the first issue of Stars & Stripes -- news written BY soldiers FOR soldiers -- was born. The average Civil War soldier was quite smart, literate, gossipy and funny; reading and swapping newspapers was their version of Twitter. (And, yes, they muted Yglesias, too.)

Stars & Stripes was revived by American soldiers during WW I, and has been a mainstay ever since. Editorially, it’s separate from the Pentagon, which, we’ve learned, wants to eliminate the paper’s $15 million budget -- cuz that’s almost enough to buy a seatbelt for a SPACE TANK!

But don’t take my word for it. If you head over to the Stars & Stripes Museum website -- a.k.a. ANTIFA HEADQUARTERS INTERNATIONAL -- you’ll see a note pleading with Congress to restore funding “for an organization whose sole purpose is to serve our fighting men and women.”

Glancing over that first issue from 1861, I just can’t see what problem Trump and his DOD toadies could POSSIBLY have with it … oh, wait … those pesky Civil War soldiers wrote “The Union, it must and shall be preserved” across the top. That’s gotta be the offending text ...