I copied the latest newsletter from Family Leader - one of the ten thousand newsletters I get on Child and Family issues - because I think this plea for activism is really worth the time.  I laid down some pretty frank words in my email to Sen. Arlen Specter.  As I see it, the religious conservatives in this country have given our votes to the GOP for a reason and since fiscal conservatism is a failure,  we at least ought to be holding them to account on the culture and values issues.  I've got a big case of "What have you done for me lately" and I reminded the honorable Senator that the morally traditional Republican base has shown allegiance but that this allegiance isn't blind.  These guys need to be aware that our votes are not to be taken for granted.  This country is long overdue for some tightening of the loophole filled laws with respect to child pornography, child abuse, parental neglect, not to mention the elephantine issues like elective abortion and same-sex marriage.  While I believe that all of these issues are fundamentally states' issues, there is no denying that the political pendulum continues to swing toward Federalism.  Perhaps, with South Dakota's new abortion ban, that will change but regardless we have to hold our Washingtonian employees to account.  Please contact Arlen Specter.

FYI:  Since I copied this page directly, the links are ineffective.

		National Update Visit familyleader.net for more articles, news & issues. From: Maurine Proctor Washington, D.C. Take Action: Tell Your Senators to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation Child pornography.  Behind every picture there is pain-an innocent exploited.  Some of these may be children of poverty, lured to help support their family.  Many of them are victims of predators.  All of them need our help-and we have a chance to do something about it. Senators Orrin Hatch and Sam Brownback introduced legislation in December to strengthen laws protecting children from sexual exploitation.  But it is sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee-stalled. Your help is needed to pass this important legislation which adds muscle to the enforcement of child pornography laws.  We'll tell you how below. First, some background. On March 15, the Department of Justice announced new arrests of persons who produce and traffic in child pornography.  Exploitation, however, occurs not only through the graphic "underground" material involved in these arrests, but also in material considered more "mainstream."   Correcting Current Law Current law prohibits producing visual depictions of actual sexually explicit conduct involving minors.  However, the new "Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation Act of 2005-S.2140" corrects some major deficits in the current law.  The new law would require producers of pornography to keep age-related records regarding those acting in the creation of all sexually explicit material.  This includes depictions of actual sexually explicit conduct as well as simulated sexually explicit conduct if it involves minors. The new law also requires that failure to produce this information for inspectors would be considered a crime.  It also defines more clearly who a "producer" of child pornography is. Because the continued existence of child pornography perpetuates the exploitation, the law must hold accountable some who may not have actually held a camcorder or arranged a photo shoot. Vulnerable children need the protection of this law. Act Now Email or call Arlen Specter, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Ask Senator Specter to support the "Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation Act of 2005." It deserves a vote in committee.  Click here for his contact information. Email or call all the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asking them to vote for the "Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation Act of 2005" so that it can be considered on the Senate floor.  This is a bi-partisan issue. The names and contact information of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee can be found by clicking here. S.2140 Corrects Defects in Current Law S.2140 requires age-related records regarding all sexually explicit material.  The current statute applies only to depictions of actual sexually explicit conduct.  S.2140 applies the record keeping and inspection requirements to producers of simulated sexually explicit conduct because producing such material is also illegal if it involves minors.  This means that some producers will now have to keep age-related records for the first time. S.2140 more effectively defines what it means to produce sexually explicit material.  Child pornography is different than adult pornography.  Because the continued existence of child pornography perpetuates the exploitation, the law must hold accountable some who may not have actually held a camcorder or arranged a photo shoot.  S.2140 more effectively defines the term produces and minimizes unintended consequences by including three categories of activity and excluding five others.  S.2140 makes the definition of actual sexually explicit conduct consistent with other statutes.  The current definition of actual sexually explicit conduct in 18 U.S.C. §2257(h)(1) includes only four of the five elements of the definition in 18 U.S.C. §2256(2)(A), the main definition provision.  S.2140 ensures that the definition in the record keeping statute conforms to the rest of the child pornography statute. S.2140 makes refusal to make records available for inspection a crime.  The current statute requires maintaining age-related records and making them available for inspection, but makes only failure to maintain records a crime.  S.2140 criminalizes refusal to permit inspection. Call or email your senators and ask them to support the "Protecting Children from Sexual Exploitation Act of 2005-S.2140."

Heard an interesting bit of news today while shampooing my floors.  Fox news was on in the background and Brian Kilmeade was arguing with a latino about the immigration issue.  I missed the guest's name but here's the essences of what he said:

He was inviting Latinos to boycott all businesses on a certain day - didn't catch that either.  Both Dayside hosts lost their cool and started accusing Sr. Whoever of trying to hurt the US economy. 

So, here's the question:  if it's going to do so much damage to the economy for them to avoid shopping and public transportation for ONE DAY, then how much greater would the damage be if they were rounded up and shipped home to Mexico, Honduras, and Panama. HELLO?!?

Personally, I think this is a great way of reminding the hard liners that these people profoundly impact our economy.  If we could round up every single illegal and deport them immediately - can you even imagine how many apartments and mobile homes would sit empty. How much less would be paid in water and heating bills.  How many fewer boxes of cereal, gallons of milk, packages of chorizo. That's a lot of taxable spending.  When I lived in Georgia, I volunteered among the Latino community and many of these folks were illegal immigrants.  There was a whole barrio (probably 750-1000 people) made up of several trailer parks and small houses that were entirely occupied by these migrant workers.  The men travelled up and down the coast picking whatever was in season or working in factories that had seasonal needs.  They paid rent, shopped, ordered pizza.  I took many of them back and forth to the doctor where I watched them pay in cash for services.  I ran into them at Wal-Mart Christmas shopping and I celebrated baby showers and birthdays with them where many nice presents were exchanged. It wasn't just that. I frequently turned down offers to be taken out to lunch and I often refused gifts offered as a show of gratitude for the times when I carted pregnant wives here or there or dropped folks off at their church services or the market. 

The military tried this same practice once - I can't remember where but the story goes that back before direct deposit when soldiers where getting paid directly, the commanding general of an Army post was frustrated with the complaints of the local community.  "Those soldiers just cause problems!  All they do is drink and keep the prostitutes in business."  The Post comander ordered that all the troops be paid in silver dollars so that the town outside the gate could see the real impact.  He spoke to the complaining civilian community.  "Every time you see a silver dollar in your cash register - you remember a soldier put it there."  It only took one pay period before the compaints stopped.  Water bills were paid in silver dollars, groceries, electric bills, phone bills, everything.  It became clear to all very quickly that in spite of the difficulties of hosting the soldiers - there was a real and positive economic impact.

Many who are taking a hard line approach to the immigration issue have had negative experiences and are all too familiar with the negative press about crime and gangs among the inner city illegals.  But if you reject the bad news coming out of Iraq as filled with bias, how can you accept the news about the Bronx or Chicago's south side without question.  I'm not suggesting that there aren't problems - clearly there are.  But there's a lot of good going on, too.

If illegal immigrants boycott our stores to give us an idea of the real impact they have on the American economy, we shouldn't consider this a vindictive act but an eye-opening experiment. 

The following is a partial list of recently charged criminals who should be seeking legal counsel from the LaFave defense team.  After all, if you can molest one of your students and get away with it, you certainly ought to be able to hide your husband's body in the trunk of your car for a few days.  What's a little death and decay among manic-depressives?

Angela Marie Ferguson (39) Tacoma, Washington who killed her husband and hid him in the trunk of her car.

Unnamed bad mother, New Port Richey, Florida who got paid $600 for letting a neighbor molest her 7 year old son.

Maurice LaGrone Jr.,  Bloomington, Illinois who helped his girlfriend drown her 3 children.

Marquis A. Daniels (17) Tampa, Florida who shot a man in the hand and then went joy riding until he met with a very sudden stop.

David Jordan (44) New York who killed a local preacher and civil rights activist for allegedly inviting him (somewhat forcefully) to break sodomy laws.

And if that isn't enough depressing news, read this before taking your zoloft. 

Hey, Rummy, while we're trying to get more good news out about Iraq can we try to get a little out about America, too? 

Al Jazeera publishing company out of Dubai, UAE (yeah - the ports deal place)  has a very interesting online magazine. 

From their "About Us" page:

About Aljazeera.com
Aljazeera Publishing owns and operates Aljazeera.com, bringing you the world today. Aljazeera Publishing is an independent media organisation established in 1992 in London. Aljazeera.com has a particular focus on events and issues in the Middle East covering major developments presenting facts as they happen.

Important note: Aljazeera Publishing and Aljazeera.com are not associated with the controversial Arabic Satellite Channel known as Jazeera Space Channel TV (also known as Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel) station whose website is Aljazeera.net.

Aljazeera Publishing disassociates itself from the views, opinions and broadcasts of Jazeera Space Channel TV station.

Interestingly, this e-zine capitalizes on the notoriety of the other Al-Jazeera to publish this:  "Conspiracy Theories".  That, I suppose is their way of "covering major developments presenting facts as they happen".  Okay, if you say so.  At least they labelled the page correctly.

Read the story here   and for the al-jazeera version click here  (How's that for fair and balanced?)

An article published in the Washington Post on March 26th gives cause for alarm for anyone concerned about the trend of abandoning traditional family values in America.

Joy Jones begins her insightful article with anectdotal evidence of the decline of marriage among the African-American community.

Jones predicts the trend away from marriage will continue to spread into white America.

Couple this news with Pew research results indicating that fewer Americans are opposing same-sex marriage that were doing so just two years ago and you have to wonder if the marriage insitution is going the way of the dinosaur. 

Alabama high school Spanish teacher Brett Drummond faces a felony charge and a couple of misdemeanor charges after buying porn for two male students.  The news came to light after one of the boys told his parents.  Gotta wonder what the defense is gonna be - Was this homework? Were any of the articles in Spanish?

What makes this the most absurd news blurb of the day is that Mr. D confessed to some of the accusations and yet is still "on paid administrative leave pending the results of the investigation."

What The Freak? He's still getting paid????? Just my honest opinion but this guy should be on unpaid leave and if exonerated paid retroactively.  I'd hate to ruin the life of an innocent man but if this guy has admitted some guilt here, he shouldn't be a tax payer burden. Innocent until proven guilty isn't the same as employed until proven guilty.

Well, the folks who brought us doctored Mohammed cartoons are at work in Iraq.  Hoping to drum up some support, they are now rearranging battle sites to create fake atrocities.  Could this be the work of some Danish Imam?

US troops defend raid, say Iraqis faked "massacre"

With all of the uproar about America's "porous borders" and the fear of terrorists entering the country as illegal aliens, the country is slowly becoming polarized on yet another issue.

Unlike most conservatives,  I find myself comfortably in the middle when it comes to immigration.  I've listened to Bill O'Reilly's rants and I've heard screeching voices on the airwaves hyperventilate repeatedly, "but... but... they broke the law!"  Sorry, guys,  I'm just not buying it.  Here's why:

Everyday millions of Americans break the law.  They speed on back roads and through neighborhoods.  They jaywalk. They eat a grape off the produce stand without paying for it.  And yet, no one is out looking for past offenders.  These lawbreakers get away scot free. We don't punish a lot of prior bad acts.

The same principle applies to any punitive measure we could legislate with respect to immigrants.  Yes they broke the law to enter this country.  Okay, they got away with it.  Let them apply for citizenship.  Demand proof of employment, charge a fine, and make them register.  Any undesirables - criminals and such - would be weeded out in that process.  Economically it makes sense that the more people we have putting into the national coffers, the better we all are.  This is increasingly true as baby boomers age and caring for them becomes more of a burden than subsequent generations can bear. 

Last night, Bill o'Reilly continued his personal battle for putting troops on the border.  He also declared that citizenship should be earned.  I'm left wondering how Bill's ancestors earned entrance into the United States other than stepping off the boat onto Ellis Island in the right century.  There is room and enough to spare for people who contribute.  This nation was once welcome to all who would seek freedom and a better life - how can we turn our back on the very principal that led to the founding of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth.

Yes, yes, I understand the "post 9-11" mentality.  Registering people who pass through open doors is a whole lot easier than trying to seal up an infinite number of cracks.  In fact, with people legitimately entering the country, registering, and seeking citizenship, the number of those trying to sneak in would decrease monumentally raising the odds exponentially that the border patrol could actually catch the folks we don't want here.

Think about it.

Sean Penn, actor, political genius, left leaning Barbie doll sadist.  Yep, he makes me run right out and join a Barbra Streisand sing-along!

From the contactmusic.com news page:

There are a lot of names being hurled at anyone or anything even remotely religious these days.  The so-called religious right in America is described as bigotted and backward and attributed every negative characteristic possible by an increasingly secular society.  Manger scenes have been banned, Easter eggs are becoming taboo and even those little crosses on the side of road that mark the tragic demise of a car crash victim are coming under fire. Often it feels as though anyone who admits to any religious devotion might as well just walk away from public discussion because once you are identified as a person of faith, you are suddenly considered ignorant, illogical and unworthy to participate in intellectual debate.  Heaven forbid you admit your convictions color your politics.  Such heresy!

The complete disregard for all things sacred and the irreverence of previous generations has spawned an atmosphere of absolute disgust for all matters of faith.  Even among those who tolerate the whimsy of the faithful, there is a sense that all things, especially piety must be taken with moderation, as if, like vitamin A,  too much were a bad thing.   Much of the  displeasure that Americans are feeling toward religion and religious devotees is a byproduct of the opposition that the religious right holds to many liberal and seemingly American ideals.

The faithful abhor unrestricted abortion, gay marriage, adultery, permissiveness, lasciviousness and all sort of freedoms that democracy would allow - if only for the will of a majority.  Why, after all, do we oppose such practices?  If individuals are enjoying personal and private freedoms, who are we to impede them their pursuit of happiness?  Some churches have even endeavored to 'keep up with the times' by changing policy and doctrine to allow for shifting political winds.  Why can't that darn religious right just let people explore unfettered freedoms?

The answer lies not in who we are or what we believe, but in who God is and how we perceive him.  As people fundamentally tied to the Judeo Christian doctrines espoused in the Bible, we believe that God is, was and always will be the ultimate authority on moral law.  What he says goes.  Whether or not you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, one thing is for certain, Christians believe that God gave commandments and that he alone is the source who draws the line between moral and immoral.  If we go about changing those laws and supporting politicians who set about to redefine societal norms, then we pit ourselves against the Almighty.  Not an enviable position.  To do such undermines everything we believe.  When man presumes to define right and wrong and dismisses eternal edicts, he redefines God as an arbitrary, powerless, irrelevant being of little or no import and relegates Him to the realm of mythological creatures.  You cannot do that and still be a believer.  It's paradoxical.  Either He exists as He describes himself and we, followers, are bound to obey or He does not, in which case why bother with the pretense of ritualistic sacraments that have no meaning.

In essence, we do not oppose gay marriage (Fred Phelps is an exception here) because we hate homosexuals but because we believe in a designed, purposeful existence that includes marriage between a man and a woman and the raising of children, who are to be trained up in His teachings.  It is not because of who homosexuals are, but because of who we are.  We oppose abortion because we believe in the God who says He knew us before he formed us in the womb.  Whether or not you believe that, is not the issue, we do.  And because of who we are, we cannot help but oppose the practice of ending an innocent human life.

The religious right has become a stumbling block to many bits of liberal legislation and while the discourse is heated and often tempers flare, I ask those who do not believe to understand the magnitude of what you are insisting that we compromise.  To concede to the politically correct environment of our day and give our vote to those who would arbitrarily abolish the few vestiges of an earlier more religious American nation would be to turn our backs on God himself.  It would be abolishing God.

While some politicians and even many churches have sought a middle ground - a level of compromise - with secularists, the religious right cannot. To do so is to concede that God is but a figment and that man is his own supreme authority and that would be to worship at the altar of humanism. 

While there is no real consolidation of American religious zealots, among ourselves there is disagreement and often infighting, one thing is certain, we recognize the supreme authority of an eternal God while also respecting the beauty of the American Constitution and the noble concepts that were written into her.  We concede to the will of the majority and we fight within the system to alter those things that offend our moral sensibilities.  Do not make the mistake of thinking that we cannot intellectualize our positions. Or that we cannot understand yours.  But ultimately, in very real terms, giving secular ideals precedence over our faith is not about defining "sinful" behaviors or passing judgements.  It is about allegiance to the ruling authority of our lives;  a father, an exemplar, and a King.

We consider ourselves His subjects and pilgrims in a strange land but also consider ourselves compelled by His laws of integrity and morality to obey the civil leadership to which we are bound.  We render unto Caeser every time we pay our taxes and send our sons and daughters into battle and with each act of compliance to laws, even those that offend our religious sensibilities.  But we cannot and will not simply turn over our votes, silence our voices and walk away from the political arena.  There are things that we simply oppose.  And to be true to our faith, oppose them we must.

An 8 year old was suspended from second grade for sexually harrassing a female classmate.  Seems during a game of tag, jr. may have grabbed the little gal by her hind end and that act combined with the fact that he had sent her a few love notes in class got him sent home for a day.

Priceless quotes from the Morning Journal report:

''It's not a disciplinary action,'' Schnurr said yesterday, adding the allegation will not be placed in the student's permanent record. ''We don't want to put something in the permanent record of a youngster who may not understand what they did wrong.

(oooh the dreaded permanent record!  This kid could give his mother forty whacks and his father forty-one and it'd still be expunged at 18 - what the heck is a permanent record, anyway?!?)

''Apparently, they had to treat it as sexual harassment,'' Barth said, adding the girl has been friends with her son for a long time. ''And then he was given a day off of school because of passing notes that say ÔI love you.'''

Johnson said the incident was harmless and referring to it as sexual harassment is what was ''inappropriate.'''

''Little kids are going to do stupid things like that,'' he said of his son passing love letters.

(Passing love letters is "stupid".  How about "passing love letters is a normal part of development" and though eight might seem kind of young, if you've watched an episode of Jimmy Neutron, you know, that even cartoons are dealing in themes that are too mature for their average viewership. 

Another thought: If I were the second grade teacher, I'd be glad they were writing!  I'd say,  "Hey!  you want to write?  Give me 20 sentences about why Suzie Q is such a hottie and make sure you use this week's spelling words!")

The school system Dean speaks:

''It's our job to teach students at a young age that inappropriate behavior is unacceptable,'' Schnurr said. ''The student did something wrong, admitted he did something wrong and received the proper discipline.''

He added it is unfortunate that this discipline is not emphasized at the student's home.

(Huh?  The kid didn't steal a car and drive to Vegas.  He passed a love note and then may have grabbed the girl's butt during a game of tag.  To excoriate the parents as if jr. wasn't getting home training is ridiculous.  What parent sits down with their 8 year old to explain 'sexual harrassment'?  For grabbing Juliet's bottom, Romeo deserves a talking to and some form of punishment simply to deter future lapses, but punishment for writing love notes is absurd.  On Feb 14th the teacher probably passed out heart shaped red construction paper and taught them to write I love you and now it's a crime?)

The overreacting parents are now considering litigation against the overreacting school system that is assuming something inappropriate happened in the gym simply because a few weeks prior Jr. wrote "I love you" on a sheet of wide rule and passed it to the pig-tailed blonde in the front row.  Sounds like everyone is overreacting.  

Advice to the parents:  Don't sue.  Take the high road and teach your kids that stupid people often make it into positions of power but that isn't reason to pursue the contemporary fix-all approach of taking people to court.  Keep your kids in this school.  Go to every PTA. Stay involved.  Report every infraction - if the school board doesn't listen, the media will.

Advice to the principal and school board:  Crack open a book on human development and then sit down with one of my favorite nursery ryhmes to rethink the stupid position you've taken.  Here's a copy.  It's on me.

Georgie Porgie pudding pie

kissed the girls and made them cry.

When the boys came out to play

Georgie Porgie ran away.

Tony Blair speaks out denouncing the trend toward anti-Amerianism in European politics.  Apparently, much like America's liberal left, Europeans would rather condemn US intervention in the world than acknowledge the slow and painful but steady push toward global democracy that our nation has engaged in since its inception.  Blair says:

"Sometimes they can be difficult friends to have. But the strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in.

"The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved. We want them engaged."

The real problem is not that the world doesn't want us engaged.  If we isolate ourselves, we are accused of cold indifference and selfish disregard.  The problem is that the world wants us engaged on their terms.  Each nation wants a portion of the American economic pie without strings attached.  But requiring nothing of the international community would be akin to extending our "welfare state" domestic policy across the planet.  In essence, we would be subsidizing ideologies that are fundamentally at odds with democracy and capitalism - the two driving forces that created the thriving bastion of affluence and liberty we enjoy.  If we intend to preserve the freedoms we now have, we must wage war, ideologically, economically, and even at times militarily, against every state or institution that preaches or practices oppression. 

You all know how much I support the military!  I was born into - grew up around it - and married into it.  Nevertheless, I am well aware that the qualifications for being a good soldier and a good person do not always simultaneously exist within the people in uniform.  Many of our best and brightest serve and some of our weirdest manage to enlist as well.  Centcom has outed a guy calling himself Rakan Ben Williams, who claims to be an al-quaida operative within the US Army.  Whether or not his emplyement claims are legit - he is one funny guy.  Meet Ben:

“Boycott NBC station, and get rid of its Jewish director, Fred Silverman.  Fight INC station and its Jewish director, Leonard Goldstein.  Take revenge on the CBS station and its Jewish director, William Bailey.  Search for truthful media that brings to you the truth as it stands. Unfortunately, however, you will not find one and do you know why? It is because your apostate country fights honest media.  Even the smallest Internet site could not escape from its grip. Search the web for the publications of the mujahidin to learn about their pure truth, which was marred by your agent television stations.  If you could not do that, at least watch Al-Jazirah television to get 20 percent of the truth if not less.

Wow!  Ben really hates the MSM - are we sure he's an operative and not just some long lost relative of Michelle Malkin?  Just thinking out loud here.  Ben will be happy to know that the guys at the Pentagon watch Al-Jazeera, not sure they're buying the propoganda, though ;-)

WuzzaDem got a hold a of the church sign generator this week and this little treasure is the end result.

Just ask the good folks at the St. Paul, Minnesota city hall!  This isn't a war on Easter - it's simply a rejection of green plastic grass and colored eggs. 

  Here's a newsflash for the PC nuts in the Twin Cities - most Christians don't consider bunnies, plastic grass and dyed eggs to be real symbols of Easter... 

Over at Moving Out, Moving on, Susan Murphy-Milano shares an experience she had this week in the classroom of a public school.  Of course, having been there and done that for a few years, so many memories flooded my mind.  There is so much right about a culture determined to educate their young and yet there is so much wrong with the way we choose to go about it sometimes.

As a public school teacher, I worked under the auspices of a government mandated program - ESL.  I saw how any kid with an non-anglo, ethnic last name (regardless of whether they had ever even heard a word in any language other than English) were immediately funneled into the program if they underperformed.

Classroom teachers, from K to 12, were overwhelmed with too many students, too much apathy, and a system that throws money at problems instead of offering solutions.  These teachers couldn't wait to get kids into "special" programs because it meant they'd have a more manageable class room for several hours a day.  I knew teachers who had anywhere from 30% to 50% of their class in various specially subsidized programs. 

Any kid surnamed Diaz or Rodriguez would immediately come to me.  The basis for determining a need for services was inherently prejudiced - since it was based on any familial experience with a foreign language.  If Grandma spoke french, you were likely to get in.  Much of that was simply the need of the program to justify it's own existence.  That's the innate problem with most beauracracies. 

Some of my kids were third and fourth generation US citizens and their parents couldn't speak a word of Spanish, German, or Korean.  They didn't need ESL, they needed qualified teachers, smaller classrooms, and caring parents. To me it didn't matter why they came - my obligation was still to get them reading, writing and speaking English.  But it highlighted a waste of funding that could have been better spent by adding regular classroom teachers and reducing class size. In my experience, I'd guess 80% of my students didn't need ESL.

In spite of being the more severely challeneged linguistically, the kids who were actually from other countries, benefitted most from the ESL program. They still had the work ethic of their native lands and didn't feel any sense of entitlement about their education - they were respectful and valued the opportunity to attend school. 

And their parents!  I dreaded having to talk to them because I knew that if I had to discuss an issue with a parent from, for example,  the Phillipines or Venezuela - those kids were going to be hearing about it at home for the rest of the year.  In my experience, the foreign parents rode their kids so hard that they couldn't help but succeed and the American parents asked "What are you, teacher, going to do to get my son/daughter to pass this grade?"

Once, I even met with parents of one of my high school classes and asked them to commit to reading a book from the course with their children so that parents could reinforce to their own children the value of a good education.  Some of the parents were absolutely incensed!  They considered it an affront to be asked to participate.  The parents who refused to sign the commitment letter were the very same parents whose kids consistly underperformed and showed apathy for learning.  They were the same kids who were disrespectful and had other behavior issues.  BTW, these weren't my ESL kids, these were suburban American kids.

The problem with education in America isn't a lack of special programs, it isn't a lack of funding for seminars and continuing education workshops, it isn't even figuring out how to tap into little Johnny's particular learning style.  It's too many kids per classroom, too few interested parents, and a system that places higher value on shiny new computers than phonics and a good dictionary.  The problem is a system compelled to teach character because so many parents aren't doing that at home.  The problem is one of cultural values and fiscal irresponsibility.  It's compounded by the fickle fondness that educators have for novel teaching techniques and classroom management methods.  For a program with the noble goal of educating our young, the public school system in this country continues to fall miserably short of its aim.

The thing about being a victim of prejudice in modern society is that as societal conditions continue to improve, you have to find reasons to be offended.  This can be a challenge in a country where the ubiquitous condemnation of racial, gender, and sexual bias is incorporated into nearly every media interaction.  You can hardly get through a magazine or a 30 minutes television show without hearing a sermon on tolerance.

What this means for our contemporaries who are inclined to designate themselves martyrs for one discrimination suffering group or another is that as our culture adjusts to the idea that all men really are created equal, their claims of discrimination have to get more and more outlandish, often to the point of absurdity.

Last night, ABC's Primetime aired another episode of their "What should you do?" series.  The shows are designed to inform viewers and arm them with appropriate responses to difficult confrontational situations.  There was a segment in which actors portrayed a couple fighting in a park.  As the boyfriend character became increasingly abusive, and the girlfriend increasingly upset, there was conjecture about whether or not passersby would bother stopping to intervene.  One of the actresses, a beautiful young African-American posited that another African-American would be more likely to come to her aid.  To ABCs credit, they showed what actually happened.  A middle aged black woman walked right by, shaking her head.  Upon questioning, she commented for the cameras, "They should just keep that at home.  People walk here and there are kids playing."

Shortly, thereafter, as the experiment continued, a middle-aged white woman came upon the quarreling lovers.  She walked right up, interjected herself in the situation, and offered companionship to the young black actress until she found another park patron with a cell phone.  Unfortunately, ABC didn't bother to redress the earlier comments made by the actress.  In fact, at this point the commentary took an entirely different turn and the issue of race fell by the wayside.  No acknowledgement for the white woman who saw not the color of the victim but instead her distress.  And no discussion with the obligatory "expert" about the racism the young black actress showed in designating apathy and a lack of empathy as characteristics of the entire white race.  Interesting.

There are many so entrenched in the fight for equality that they have become blinded to the obvious and steady decline of racial tension.  There isn't a person alive in the US today under 40 or so who has experienced segregation.  By the time most of today's 40 year olds entered the workplace, in the mid eighties, the sounds of shattered glass ceilings were echoing across the continent.  Mr. Mom was chaging diapers and women and minorities were getting PhDs and promotions.  In fact, the disproportionate numbers propelled by affirmative action left many white men, some of whom never knew a segregated world, reeling from shock at being "un" and "under" employed. 

The specter of the past haunts every culture.  Blacks fight prejudice, Whites feel compelled to pay for slavery even though no one alive today ever practiced it, and some women reject all signs of feminity in protest of the limited choices of yesteryear.  The sad reality is that fiercely holding onto a ghost does as much damage to ourselves as it does to our enemies.  When we refuse to recognize progress and encourage our own people to hold bitter grudges against supposed offenders, not only do we do irreparable damage to our group psyche but we undermine our own cause. 

How can there not be a backlash by people forced to pay for the sins of others?  How can there not be hopelessness when your cultural identity centers around being victimized?  There will be some who's knee-jerk reaction will be to call me a racist or a bigot.  That is how these victim perpetuators operate - it is their craft to attack others in lieu of addressing arguments.  Ironically, most of the folks calling for punishment in America against any presumed discriminators are the first to call for education and humanitarian aid in countries that sponsor terrorists.

They call for gentle reforms and for compassion in Iraq and Afghanistan and yet want to use legislation and the judiciary to punish anyone in a majority American subculture that doesn't bow to their demands.  Christians, white men, heterosexuals - all feel they are under attack by very vocal minorities.  And the the rising swell of social backlash is on the horizon. 

Ultimately, those who cry for tolerance may find themselves standing like the proverbial person beating a dead horse.  After the horse is gone - there stands alone in the remnants of the bloody affair a violent man holding a stick.  And no one wants to listen to what a man like that has to say.

Copyright © 2006, WGNO

Remember the phrase "too stupid to come in out of the rain"?  Clearly, there are literal applications for those words.  Not smart enough to arrange for appropriate evacuation is only the beginning of the mayor's issues.  Now he wants to give away 23 million dollars instead of earning 5 million.  Either there is a problem with competency or corruption.   But no matter,  the funds will be meted out undoubtedly from monies funnelled into the state via federal tax dollars (i.e. your hard earned cash)

I'm sure Ray sends his heartfelt thanks, America.

As long as I'm pointing out leftist lunacy, it's no secret the conservative talk radio airways are on fire with condemnation of the Law and Order: SVU actor and his anti-military comments.

My response is simple:  remember the phrase "Consider the source"?  We are talking about a man who pretends to be what real people are.  His makes a living by pretending to be or do something.  Okay, that's generally the behavior of a small child but whatever floats your boat, man.

  Look at me!  My career is playing MAKE BELIEVE.  I get paid for it.  Living in another world and repeating someone else's lines is just what I do.

So, c'mon, Rush, Sean, Laura, anyone else out there railing on this guy, quit foaming at the mouth.  Every villiage has an idiot - and America has a lot of villages.

Speaking to Wolf Blitzer, Democrat Harry Reid declares that America has been in Iraq longer than we were involved in WWII.

Well now, let's take a look at that Harry:

7 Dec 1941    Pearl Harbor is attacked

11 Dec 1941  Congress declares War

2 Sept 1945  Japanese surrender in Tokyo harbor on the deck of the Missouri

Now the way I count it, Mr. Reid that adds up to nearly four years of active combat.  As of this writing, the troops have been at war with Iraq for just over 3 years.  Even if you add the 5+ months between the passing of the Iraq War resolution (Oct, 11, 2002) and actual ground combat - your are still wrong by roughly 4 months. 

The dates above don't include the skirmishes prior to Congress making the WWII official nor do they account for the fact that we had already established a "shoot-on-sight" policy (17 October 1941) against German U-Boats after the attack of the US destroyer Greer.  This timeline also fails to account for the allied effort to "send guns not sons" a slogan associated with the land-lease bill proposed and finally approved in May 1941 which provided arms and financial backing to the struggling European democracies who were losing the fight with Hitler. But, we'll let Reid fudge those extra days...

Now, if Bush had made such an erroneous statement, he would be assailed on certain liberal websites as being a liar.  Mr. Reid, I will not make such a charge - I will instead presume that you are ignorant of the facts and repeating, like most people in this country, rhetoric for which there is no factual basis.  My advice for Reid and many of his ideological peers is to crack open a book that doesn't have George Clooney, Michael Moore, or Susan Sarandon on the cover, break out your dictionary, and get educated.

Giving Reid the benefit of the doubt with regard to his intellect and education, we can presume that he is purposefully using only dates regarding actual combat in Europe - the term World War II would not be accurate and his referencing the conflict for comparison would be disingenuous.  In this case, he would be guilty of participating in America's new national pasttime:  spinning. 

but your dog tags are destined for Iraq.  In spite of the best efforts of anti-military voices in America, the Army is meeting its recruiting goals so well that AIP has been suspended.  That's right, the Assignment Incentive Pay deal, special pay offered as an enlistment option to young men and women who take the oath and don the uniform, is no longer available. 

Instituted just as the summer recruiting slowdown hit, the program drew a steady stream of enlistees into the service.  In January, the scope of the special pay was narrowed to recruits in designated specialties who signed on for 36 months or more in one of 17 brigade combat teams.  As of March 17th, new recruits will not have the option of the extra $400 a month.

It turns out, the whole Iraq thing isn't scaring kids away from the military after all.  Better get more speaking engagements on the calendar, Cindy, looks like your message is going unheard.

This video stands alone.  All I can even think to say is "Stuck on stupid".

Little did I realize that I was commemorating the death of Stephen Decatur,  hero of the Barbary Wars last night when I posted about the skirmishes of the early 1800s.  Then again, maybe my subconcsious was putting that history degree of mine to use. 

W. Thomas Smith Jr. has an excellent writeup over at Townhall that paints an amazing picture of the American hero whose famous words call all to patriotism.   “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country right or wrong.”

Just after the turn of the nineteenth century, with Thomas Jefferson in office, the pirates of the Barbary States were reigning with horror off the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean.  Attacking American and European vessels at will, the pirates captured our ships, taking our men prisoners,  and selling them as slaves.  The European response to the disruption of trade routes and the unprovoked aggression against men and ships was mostly a matter for financiers.  Denmark paid the pirates and their government sponsors a large sum of money to keep the peace as did many other European nations.  Initially, the American response was simply to endure the attacks because American merchant ships were bringing significant revenue and goods back to the burgeoning new nation.  Trade for the US had never been better, in spite of the attacks, and thus the piracy went unanswered for some time. 

"Not long after Jefferson's inauguration and Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith's assumption of office, the US Navy had been reduced to just six ships and a handful of officers and men."

"Jefferson's dream of a miniscule navy guarding America's coast as proper for a frugal and peaceful people evaporated in the face of renewed Barabry raids on American vessels in the Mediterranean.  Soon the attacks by Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers forced the land oriented president to reverse himself and call for a naval force to deter the Barabry powers.  Navy monies were doubled."

"Trouble with the Barbary pirates did not end until 1815-1816 when Naval squadrons under commodores Stephen Decatur and William Bainbridge used a show of force to compel Algeria, Tunis and Tripoli to desist.  The Barbary Wars of 1801 to 1805 demonstrated graphically that naval power, especially when projected into an enemy's home waters was a very effective protection for national interests."                    (Morris, History of the US Navy)

"Exasperated with these pirates,  the United States sent a fleet to attack them.  Decatur, a young officer, steered boldly into their harbor one night;  burned one of their vessels [actually the Philadelphia, an American vessel which had been captured], and, before the pirates could get themselves together, sailed coolly out, and was soon beyond their reach.  Many other brilliant attacks were made upon them, until the pirates began to understand they had a new sort of foe to deal with.  Peace was declared, and there was no more trouble with the pirates for a time."                (Pratt, American History Stories Vol. II  reprinted from the original school textbook of 1890)

There are enough parallels between the events of the early 1800s and the fight against terrorists that began in the last century and continues today to fill the pages of a book but that is work for another.  Consider the following points:

1) American military forces had been deliberately weakened by dovish politicians prior to being drawn into war by terrorists in both instances. (Bush 41 and Clinton failed us there.)

2) Appeasement was a policy for most of Europe and even for the US.  It failed and only led to a continuing escalation of attacks. (Khobar towers, USS Cole, WTC '93, embassy bombings...)

3) A growing economy, the object of America's focus caused politicians to turn a blind eye and ignore the growing threat. (It's the economy, Stupid!)

4) Only when the threat materialized into an unavoidable and economy threatening menace were we compelled to act.  The men of the Philadelphia languished imprisoned for three years before the US paid a bribe for their release.  (Whatever did happen to the bombers of the USS Cole?)

5) The Barbary Wars are largely unappreciated by historians and academics.  And most Americans have probably never even heard of them.  In reviewing my college history texts to verify dates, I found 2 whole sentences dedicated to Jefferson's war.  It wasn't until Madison's administration that the Barbary issue was finally put to rest.  It took the interim years to build up a navy capable of dealing with the pirates and the states that harbored them.  Anti-war sentiment presently, runs largely in the same circles and will undoubtedly be reflected in war coverage daily as well as in the books our children read.

6) There was land action against the states that provided safe haven (sound familiar?) to the pirates.  You're familiar, I suppose, with the Marine Corp hymn "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli..."

7) Fighting our enemy, in the Mediterranean sea, in his "home waters",  provided us with victory.  Time will tell with the war on terror.  But clearly history does not support taking a purely defensive position.

I'll leave the rest of the analysis to you folks out there in blog land, if you're interested. 

Kurt Kleiner, reporting for the Toronto Star, made a splash this week with an article describing a UC Berkeley study done by Jack Post of the psych department.  Apparently, the academic followed some children over the past 20 years and has discovered that whiny, insecure children grow up to become conservatives who hold rigidly to traditional values.  The well-adjusted preschoolers all grew up to be confident and resilient liberals.

Some obvious questions about the study come to mind:.

1) Who designated the terms whiny, insecure, confident, resilient and self-reliant?

2) Who determined the criteria for categorizing each child?  Clearly, the children at 3 and 4 years old did not refer to themselves in those terms, although to read the Star article, those precocious budding leftists might very well have.

3) Where does parenting actually come into play in the behavior of a young child?

4) Considering these were local Berkeley children and given that conservatives in that community are an overwhelming minority, is it entirely possible, that the perceptions of those responsible for assigning such descriptives to the children are responding to the natural inclination children of to gravitiate toward strictly defined boundaries versus the local parenting paradigm which includes instructing one's two year old to call the folks Bob and Susan rather than mom and dad?

Could there be a little bias in the study?  Hmm...  We'll never know.  And yet, I've a sneaking suspicion (that would make me a paranoid, whiny conservative, I suppose) that the science here bears some resemblance to the grade school game we girls used to play where we wrote down the names of all the cute boys, crossed out certain letters and then added the numbers of other letters to determine if we were indeed "meant to be".

Kleiner makes a token attempt at addressing the fundamental oddities of this study by haphazardly throwing in a  quote by University of Arizona professor and social psychologist, Jeff Greenberg into the article.

`I found (the Jack Block study) to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best'

While Kleiner's bias as a (cough) journalist is undeniable, the study really does deserve attention and despite his motives, Kleiner does us all a service in bringing it to light.  The reality is that science, for all of its good points, is a weapon of great political power and when wielded as it is in the Jack Post study, reveals the weaknesses of science as a method of examination and of psychology as a means of reasonable explanation of most human qualities.

All in all, the article, the study, and the furor being caused on liberal blogs exposes an amount of bias that could no more be quantified than the level of whininess of a four year old.  But hey, good try. 

Food for thought:  I'll believe that liberals have grown up to be bright adults when they get around to removing the Kerry Edwards bumper stickers from their cars.  After all, if even the MSM knows he lost, how bright can they be?

Sometimes our country mates forget themselves and stand ready to wholly condemn the military because of politcal differences with the civilian leadership - for those, like the better than 60% of San Fran residents who are anxious to "shelter" their children from the men and women in uniform - let this page serve as a reminder that

The men and women who do this,  

also do this .

And this, 

and this,  

and this, 

and this,  

and this,  

and this  

and this  

and this

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive how the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation" 

President George Washington

As I rummaged through some old papers this morning, I came across a few inspiring bits of wisdom that seemed to serve as a timely reminder of the war we are all waging. I say "we are all waging" because one way or another, whether we are actively battling for a particular side or watching from the sidelines and simply living as subjects of one paradigm or another, we are all involved. This quote reflects my position and accurately describes where I have chosen to stand on the battlefield.

"Yet we must not be intimidated or lose our composure even though the once morally unacceptable is becoming acceptable, as if frequency somehow conferred respectability! One of the most subtle forms of intimidation is the gradual normalization of aberration. Alexander Pope so cautioned:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace. (An Essay on Man, epistle i, l. 217.)

Today, lust openly parades as love, license cleverly poses as liberty, and raucous sounds mockingly masquerade as music. Evil even calls itself good and often gets away with it! While I would not shrink the circumference of freedom, the size of that circle is not the sole measure of social well-being. Hence, to exult, as some do, over how much decadence is permissible at the edges ignores the erosive effects of such grossness upon all within that circle.

Yeats’s descriptive imagery fits:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

(William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” st. 1.)

Attributed to historian Will Durant are these relevant words: “If the hunger for liberty destroys order, the hunger for order will destroy liberty.” In this connection, how can there possibly be a disturbing loss of individual impulse control without a corresponding loss of collective freedom?"   N. Maxwell

Apparently, Ann has some method for talking to liberals and  I'm up for some pointers if she'd like to meet for lunch and give me advice.  I'm not just running into liberals - I seem to have a knack for finding the creme de la creme of the entire subculture.  That's right,  I see stupid people.  They only wee what they want to see.  They're everywhere and they don't know they're stupid.

Actually, it could be that the stupid people I'm seeing are really just the same few stupid people in various incarnations.  That's the trouble with anonymous and semi-anonymous blog commenters.  you never know who is really behind the keyboard.  (Not true on this site... that's me up there in the left-hand corner.)  For some reason, the method of choice for some Conversation Cowards, is to jump onto a blog, attack the writer or other people who comment instead of addressing issues.  Interestingly, these foul-mouthed, expletive hurling, name-callers seem incapable of making real arguments so when faced with an opportunity to express themselves and defend their positions, they immediately resort to plaayground bully antics.  They shout insults and try to scare away anyone who poses real questions or presents a different point of view and in the process expose themselves as both morally and intellectually vacant.

So until Ann responds to my invite,  I'll just give you the tricks, I've picked up online...

Everything I needed to know (about liberals) I learned on the blogosphere.

10.  If a liberal calls you a name,  your argument hits home.  Go ye therefore and teach all nations.

9.  If you get banned from commenting on a liberal site,  you're making too much sense.  Have pity for those who cannot handle dialogue.

8.  If liberals continually change the subject and refuse to address the issue at hand, you are winning.  Be a good sport.

7.  If a liberal blogger makes you the subject of parody, laugh with them.  After all,  if they aren't able to handle logical discourse, you should at least appreciate their sense of humor.

6.  Should a liberal actually engage you, be prepared for a lecture about the Bush administration, whether or not that is the topic of the blog.  While this may be fun for sparring it will only serve to derail you from the actual blog issue.  Refuse to get sucked into their vortex.  It isn't healthy.

5.  Often, when confronted with reason, the liberal will introduce peripheal issues and refuse to aswer your questions.  Redirect them as many times as it takes.  They love this.  Addressing them by name repeatedly  helps keep them focused as well.

4.  When liberals shamelessly plug their own sites, it is a cry for attention.  Indulge them but don't engage them - they will just edit away anything they disagree with anyway. 

3.  When liberals attack you personally,  it reflects their own frustration at not being able to converse on an intellectual level. Show them empathy.

2.  When you show deference and respect to liberals who are irrationally dogmatic,  you will never get the same in return.  Learn not to expect it.

1.  When a liberal responds to your logic with profanity, it is because they aren't smart enough to counter your argument. Feel embarrassed for their mother.

"History will prove that Slobodan Milosevic was right. ... At the crucial moment in Serbia's history, Milosevic was chosen to lead Yugoslavia against the awesome might of the West. He protected his people from foreign domination. Slobodan Milosevic resisted, he rejected submission, he sought peace."

— Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general

The above quote is from the eulogy given by Clark at Milosevic's funeral service.  Since my husband has actually been inside the torture chambers and seen bodies that were left in the wake of the "Butcher of the Balkans",  we'll just respectfully disagree with Mr. Clark.

  Name that Anti-American Lefty

To get a glimpse of the larger sized game board, click here A guide to the political left

Well, I never anticipated my blog would become as narrowly focused as it has lately, but there have been some glaring examples of the homosexuals pushing a very anti-family agenda and they had to be addressed.  As a traditional family values kind of girl - I can't let these things pass.  Bear with me...

New York kindergartners will be learning a little more about health than the traditional five-year-old fare.  Come Monday,  in addition to the curriculum that includes tooth brushing, hand washing, and covering your mouth when you cough, little Johnnies and Janes will be learning about AIDS.  According to the NY Sun, they will be given the opportunity to play doctor and patient as to invite discussions about HIV.  It won't be until fourth grade that the kids will be introduced to the facts about contraction of the disease.

This agenda driven educational policy seeks to normalize AIDS as if it were the common cold.  The disease, while spreading, is clearly a lifestyle illness and there are very limited ways of "catching" it.  While it is true that children may be exposed to peers who have contracted the disease (though those cases are extremely rare), the probability of students sharing the classroom with a child who has down-syndrome or leukemia are astronomically higher.  No lectures on those illnesses, though.

For some reason, New York politicians want us to believe that children, naturally curious as they are, won't bother to ask how you "get AIDS".  Either they raise 'em especially stupid in the Big Apple or lawmakers are trying to force parents to introduce children to sexuality and homosexuality at an extremely premature age.  I'm betting on the latter.  What other purpose is there in introducing this disease and the methods by which it is spread to young children?  The reality is that these kids don't know the difference between smallpox and polio or cancer and chicken pox.  They just know sick and well.  That is the way young children think.  The only purpose behind these measures is to foster a sense of normalcy with respect to AIDS and the communities it afflicts, which, since we don't live in Africa, are the gay community, the sexually promiscuous (and their victims), and drug abusers.  You will be hard pressed to find another Ryan White - the cases of HIV contraction that don't involve sex or drugs are so few that they can't even be quantified statistically. 

This is another blatant attempt at legitimizing homosexual behavior.  And a darn good reason to vote for vouchers.

Organizers from the NY St Pat’s Day Parade are accused of comparing the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization to Neo-Nazis.  That’s not quite how it reads but hey, it works to galvanize the troops, right Rosie!  Actually, he made the analogy of a couple of groups being forced to allow organizations with diametrically opposing views to march in their parades. The actual quote is:

"If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow neo-Nazis into their parade? If African-Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?" Dunleavy was quoted as saying.

He followed that up by saying that if the group (AOH), an Irish-Catholic institution allowed Gays there would be a slippery slope. 

People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?" he said.

Ironic that no one was upset about the comparison to prostitutes.

Feingold Says Critics Misjudge Reaction to Push for Censure

Hillary's NY Senate race opponent has already seized on her waffling. 

St. Pat's Parade Still a Hot Potato

A New York City councilwoman is verbally duking it out with the St. Patrick's Day Parade organizers.  Speaker Christine Quinn is boycotting the parade because the organizers will not let gays and lesbians use the parade as a platform for furthering their homosexual agenda.  The Parade organizers refused to allow homosexual groups to carry banners identifying their sexual preferences.  Maintaining the integrity of the holiday and refusing to turn the parade from a celebration of Irish ancestry into a celebration of Quinn's love life is now being called "inequality".

WCBS 880 is referring to the matter with the tagline "Marching for Equality"

This is the problem with the differently sexual.  They just don't have any sense of propriety.  The parade is about BEING IRISH not about who you sleep with.  It is just me or are gay people totally single minded and completely unable to compartmentalize sex.  This, to me, is scarier than anything else about the gay movement - it isn't just the homosexuality it's the oversexuality.  They have to advertise who they do "it" with, everywhere they go - no matter how totally inappropriate the forum.  Remember when a group of gay folks protested by wearing rainbow scarves in church - DURING THE SERVICES?!  A silent scarved protest would have been fine but using it to draw national attention and disrupting the worship of others... C'mon.

The truth is that this sexually based agenda is the central tenet in the lives of many homosexuals - all other principles (including propriety and decorum) be damned.  The drive to draw attention to their cause is overshadowed only by the need to force the lifestyle on everyone else around them.  On the gay agenda:

''As much as one may wish to live and let live," Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon wrote in 2004, during the same-sex marriage debate in Massachusetts, ''the experience in other countries reveals that once these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance, and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination . . . Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles."

Back to the parade:  NYC firefighters are also peeved because they can't sport green hats in the parade.  The hats are not an authorized part of the uniform and so they are not being allowed.  But at least the hats have something to do with the holiday at hand! 

Just a reminder of what we are fighting against.  No this isn't in Iraq.  This is an anti-war rally last September, right here on American soil.  I just have one question:  Since when does calling for homicide not qualify as inciteful and unprotected speech?  These people should have been hauled off to jail.  They are suggesting the troops kill their leaders.  So, these peace-loving anti-war activists are calling for my husband's death?  Makes it perfectly plain to see that they are politically motivated and not at all peaceful.  Also reveals just how sick and depraved they are.  

By the way, where's the ACLU on this one?  This is hate speech if ever I heard it - they're calling for the deaths of an entire class of working people.  If the sign said kill all trial lawyers, wouldn't someone be filing an injunction lickety-split?

How about this for a response: We support our troops when they kill mindless pacifists. 

Or how about this adaptation of an old commercial:  A mind is a terrible thing to waste... that's why they all share half of one over at Code Pink.

Mad enough to spit nails tonight.... Cate

Not to fight. He just needs to see it.

That's how the article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger begins.  it's a wonderful piece about the love of a father for his fallen son and the love of a man for his nation.  Mr. Wroblewski has become one of the faces of a new breed of activists.  A Gold-Star parent who stands up against Cindy Sheehan and for the war in Iraq.  This man recognizes the validity of his son's sacrifice and pride comes through in every loving word he utters about the boy he lost over there.  And yet, there is no bitterness, only a deep and abiding concern about the latest threat to the free world: terrorism.

Unlike so many mindless followers in this country who refuse to recognize the dangers of islamofascism and terror wielding madmen, John Wroblewski sees the increasing danger and realizes the cause his son fought and died for is just.  Take five minutes and read his story - it's a refreshing change from the hate and rhetoric filled diatribes that loudly attract so much attention from the MSM - it'll do your heart some good.

The Wachowski brothers, writers of the Matrix trilogy, will be celebrating the release of yet another future based thriller, V for Vendetta.  The film, touted as closely following the identically titled graphic novel by Alan Moore, appears to be the latest in a long line of Hollywood productions that take pot shots at the government, specifically the current administration. 

With taglines like:   People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. and  The only verdict is vengeance  the film is sure to be a big hit with antiestablishmentarians.  Terrorists are glorifed, governments are villified, and anarchy is hailed as an appropriate form of civil disobedience.

The sad fact is that as with other agenda driven Hollywood fare, V will have a subtle influence on the belief systems of the indiscriminating American audience.  And that just what the filmmakers hope will happen.  I find this particularly disheartening because I love a good action flick just as much as any All-American, homeschooling, church-going mom of four.  Bullets flying,  buildings blowing up,  bad guys getting smoked - Wahoo!  Can't I just watch the film without having to listen to political interpretations?  Apparently not.

The W brothers describe their work as designed to make audiences think - these boys are political and provoking and so you can expect like minded viewers to use this work of fiction as a metaphor for everything from the war on terror to global warming.

Interestingly and probably the least known bit of info about this film is that Alan Moore, writer of the original story has not only distanced himself from it but has accused producer Joel Silver of lying about Moore's involvement with the project.  (From Wikipedia)

...Producer Joel Silver misquoted Moore at a press conference for the upcoming V for Vendetta film, produced by Warner Brothers (which also owns DC Comics). Silver stated that producer Larry Wachowski had talked with Moore, and that "he [Moore] was very excited about what Larry had to say."^[4] Moore, who claims that he told Wachowski "I didn't want anything to do with films... I wasn't interested in Hollywood," demanded that DC and Warner Brothers issue a retraction and apology for Silver's "blatant lies." No retraction or apology appeared, and in response Moore announced his departure from Wildstorm/DC/Warner Bros. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Dark Dossier, a hardcover graphic novel, will be his last work for the publisher. Future installments of LoEG will be published by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics. Moore has also stated that he wishes his name to be "Alan Smitheed" from comic work that he does not own.

^{Interesting that Moore considers himself railroaded by Hollywood.  Welcome to the club, Alan.}

^{Arm yourself, conservatives, this will film could be the Farenheit 911 of 2006 and we'll be hearing fiction based rhetoric for the foreseeable future.  Here are some great blogs to help prepare you for the illogical arguments you'll be facing:}

^{Guardian WatchBlog}

^{The Buzz on this Pic}

^{And the other side}

^{A pop culture junkie's take}

^{Review from one who has already seen it}

A poll of New Jersey's residents just released reports that the state's citizens would rather lose government benefits than pay higher taxes as a means to lower the huge state deficit.

That's right - New Jerseyans (60% of them) want to CUT PROGRAMS instead of RAISE TAXES! 

Gotta run check my thermometer - hell must be freezing over.....................

Interesting isn't it how browbeaten Americans have become by the PC police.  We're quick to point the finger at Bill Bennett for using a racial example to illustrate and explain a concept but fill a seven year old girl with the racist hatred of her forebears and she's celebrated with appearances on HBO.  Unbelievable!

As a person who experienced being a racial minority to some degree, I have an unusual perspective on the whole issue of race in America.  I had my own Black. White. experience, only no one painted my face or colored my hair.  I was a poor white kid who attended the only local college I could afford.  A predominantly and historically black college.  Most of my teachers were black, most of my peers were black and many of my required undergrad courses were racially based studies.  My senior seminar, a required course to obtain my history degree, was a study of W.E.B.DuBois.  African-American history was a required course for all students, not just history majors, and liberal politics was pushed with a decidedly racial emphasis.  I stopped counting the number of times our student body president referred to "the man" once he hit the 500 mark.

Nevertheless, there were honest academics who spoke the truth without hatred and with a clear desire to lift young black people up into a better and more prosperous society.  One such professor from the history department, who also, if memory serves, preached at a local AME Methodist church, made the pointed argument that black Africans sold each other into slavery.  He explained the common practice among African communities of selling and keeping slaves,  a group predominantly made up of people captured in war.  The young black students, more interested in gangsta rap than the free education nearly all of them were getting, protested the lecture.  Many shouted at the professor and instigated heated and hateful discussions that all but ruined the class.  Did I mention the professor was an educated, well travelled, leader in the local black community?  They showed him no respect or deference because they had already received an education via music videos and Sharpton soundbytes.

The point is that as a society, we have come to tolerate the miseducation of the African American community by demagogues who preach helplessness and create victims.  And ,while all Americans pay a price in tax dollars for the perpetuation of the poor, black underclass, blacks themselves have become unwitting victims, paying the price in wasted, unfulfilled lives.  If the cycle is ever to be broken, some tough love is going to have to be meted out.  Merit will have to be rewarded and society will have to be completely colorblind.  Otherwise, the black community is doomed to remain a sideshow of American culture.

Bush :                                          Clinton

Accused of using                   Requested

NSA wiretaps illegally to          900 FBI files

wage a war on terrorists.        of prominent

                                         Republicans as part

                                         of a political enemies list.

Accused of misleading           Completely invented Kosovar

Americans into a war             genocide, instead of

in Iraq, a known sponsor        corroborating evidence,

of Palestinian terror               international investigators

groups and ruled by a            proved it never happened.

crazed killer (of his own         Don't forget he wagged the

people).                              dog by bombing a

Mass graves found,               pharmaceutical plant - that soil

weapons caches captured,     sample proving it was

Saddam tapes reveal             a "nuclear" facility got lost

intent to supply terrorists       conveniently somewhere

with nuclear and biological      in the White House. 

weapons.

Accused of never really           Dodged the draft but

serving in the military.             didn't inhale.

Two words:  Jack Abramoff      Six words: Web Hubbell,

                                           Charlie Trie, Marc Rich

Accused of selling out            Sold military technology to

security by leasing ports        the Chinese, who,

to a reputable internat'l          according to satellite images,

conglomerate                       had those weapons pointed

                                         right at us.

Sure Bush is the worst American president - yep, I can see that...

One of the most frequently overused arguments I encounter when discussing abortion with abortion supporters, begins something like "You guys support the death penalty..."  and ends with finger pointing and the word hypocrite being tossed around like a wild baseball pitch.  The reality is that abortion and the death penalty compare about as well as apples and oranges.  In fact, the only thing they have in common is that at the end of each you're staring at a corpse.  The fundamental difference,  that pro-abortionists try to scuttle with inflammatory and inciteful rhetoric,  between these two practices needs to be boldly clarified and shouted from the rooftops if this argument is ever going to be laid to rest.

As I listened tonight to the audio clip of the sentencing of Joseph Smith, the pedophile and murderer who gained national attention for abducting an eleven year old girl in Florida,  the words of his trial judge made me shiver.  I've never before heard the death sentence pronounced.  Tonight, I was glad that I did.  Among the judge's comments was the following: (paraphrase) You have forfeited your right to live among us freely. 

Smith's actions made his life forfeit.  An innocent baby has done nothing to deserve death.  To equate these two deaths would be saying that Carlie Brucia's merciless rape and murder were nothing more than an incovenient accident. 

Smith by his choices and his vile use of his free will abdicated the right to live among free people.  His right to exist as a homocidal pedophile conflicts with the rights of all other citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The same cannot be said of a child who through no choice of his or her own is first afforded life and then stripped of it at the capricious whim of a selfish woman.  No free will was exercised on the part of the child - no crime committed.  The temporary infringement upon the mother is a natural consequence of her choice not the child's.  Nine months and a signature on adoption papers is a small price to pay for unplanned pregnancy.  And yet, these same activists who would house rapists and killers, demand that the government sanction the death penalty for innocents.  The practice of elective abortion must be brought to an end. 

As reasonable as it seems to include some sort of exception clause for women who themselves are victims of trauma,  I stand with South Dakota and the other states who are now seeking to prohibit this practice and will cast my vote for local governments who consider life a valuable commodity in America.

From the first time I read John Leo's On Society column in US News (1988),  I was in love.  This man speaks to sense to me and I love his commentary on the wildly weird and undeniably unique American culture.  His latest column on TownHall does not disappoint.

Titled, Moral Confusion,  Leo's column addresses the strange phenomena of rewarding ridiculous, odd, and even inappropriate behavior by giving awards in honor of the stupid or unscrupulous.

The article begins by describing an award named after peace activist, Rachel Corrie. 

Rachel Corrie, a young American woman accidentally flattened by an Israeli bulldozer during a protest in Gaza three years ago,  is a hero to Palestinians and the anti-American left. When she died, a photo of her burning an American flag sealed her high status on the left. Her honors included many vigils, memorials, buildings named for her, at least two plays, an annual pancake breakfast and  the Rachel Corrie Award for courage in the teaching of writing. Why helping people learn to write should require courage is not explained.

It is interesting that a woman, whose death was a result not of her valor but of her failure to step out of the way of moving vehicle should be remembered as a hero.  Even more intriguing is the fact that Corrie's family is suing Caterpillar, Inc. because they made the vehicle that she stood in front of.  Even more heroic!  What is perhaps most striking about the Rachel Corrie saga is that Rachel, a young American girl of 23, interjected herself into a volatile international situation and expected respect from the world community.  George Bush did that and he was called a cowboy and a meddler and all sorts of names but Rachel Corrie, well, she gets a pancake breakfast.  Go figure.

John Leo's article is enlightening as it exposes the silliness of these celebrations of uncelebratory people and acts.  He concludes his write up with the following conclusion:  Awards are the new frontier of moral confusion.   Unfortunately, Leo's analysis doesn't go quite far enough.  What is simply a reflection of moral confusion today will be a revised truth tomorrow.  This is the way revisionist history works.  Those who tell the stories often and well become the unofficial historians.  The chronicles they write through award ceremonies, scholarships and renamed hospital wings, quickly become the authoritative accounts our children learn in school.  There is a dark and frightening side to this seeming frivolity of rewarding stupidity.  Much like Goebbels Big Lie technique, these little lies add up to form a collage that completely distorts true historical evidence.  This new history, the kind built on urban legend has more power than even the most proven facts, so long as it is believed by the masses.

What Leo observes as confusion now has the potential to be a powerful (un)truth in years to come.  And that, is no laughing matter.

At the moment, our army housing consists of a 1450 square foot townhome.  This is not a lot of livable square feet for a family of six but it is adequate enough.  We also enjoy a 10x10 front lawn and about the same amount of space just out of the back door that we have called our own for almost four years now.  The community is wonderful and I have many dear friends among my neighbors but there is a dark truth that ruins this idyllic Mayberry for me. 

On virtually ever side, I am surrounded by dog owners.  It isn't that I don't like dogs but having my hands full with my children, I've opted out of the pet ownership club for now.  I am not ideologically opposed to owning a dog. And I am very tolerant of all the people who think it is cute to let their dogs rub noses with my toddler. 

The issue is this:  many of my dog owning neighbors aren't cleaning up after their pooches.  Nevermind that post regulations require you to bag up the stuff,  I still find it all over my lawn (the miniscule bit of green my children have to play on) and spend too much of my day cleaning it off of my children's shoes.  The unfairness of the whole mess leaves me feeling angry and annoyed with the thoughtlessness of others who while exercising their right to dog ownership, refuse to take responsibility for the mess they are leaving behind.

That is the same feeling I had after reading Mort Zuckerman's March 6th Editorial in US News.  Mort argues that as Americans, we all need to be more tolerant.  He closes with the following well-written sentences:

In America, religion has long reflected values that unite the country. "In God We Trust" is not just a slogan. But dangers abound. To paraphrase the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, we saw in the Muslim world that intolerance in the name of religion is no virtue. Here in America, we must also remember that tolerance in the name of religion is no vice.

Sounds great:  Why can't we all just get along, right?  Well, increasingly the folks calling for tolerance are the same ones who are leaving doggie doo all over this nation.  They want us to tolerate their rights but then irresponsibly want me to use my tax dollars and my time to clean up their mess.  It's not just unfair, it's abusive. 

There are, for example, responsibilities that accompany alcohol use and it isn't my job to pay for your rehabilitation, your counseling or your stay at Betty Ford's. Nor is it my responsibility to pick up the pieces after you express yourself sexually by purchasing your condoms, your abortions or your AIDS medication.  On some level, as a decentl human being and a Christian I take upon myself the burden of helping others, even those who act in a knowingly irresponsible fashion because I consider it a moral obligation.  on the other hand, at what point do we cease to be tolerant and simply become the neighborhood pooper scoopers.  There is a line to be drawn and we passed the spot for drawing it long, long ago. 

Now we are watching as our children are indoctrinated into a culture devoid of personal accountability and as our safe, happy communities self-destruct because we tolerate the irresponsible practice of rights that while allowed are harmful to society.  The culmination of unlimited American freedoms has peaked in a disastrous mess of doggie doo and the voices calling for restraint are left holding the bag. 

Mr. Zuckerman, the time for tolerance has past, the time for a moral (notice I didn't say religious) awakening is upon us.

I wrote a lengthy blog earlier explaining the truth about the effort to thwart the IED attacks of terrorists in Iraq but, of course, bloghi was having a "moment" and was inaccessible.  So surfing over at blogspot, I noticed MSNBC's David Gregory had a blog tonight about IEDs. Not surprising since the President spoke to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies at George Washington University this afternoon and a large portion of his speech was about combatting IEDs.  Interestingly, the lopsided comments in response to Gregory's post are clear evidence of just how little te public knows.  I pointed out as much, and of course, my comment failed to pass the screening over at MSNBC.  Interesting.

Well, for those who want the truth about the effort to fight IEDs here's what I can tell you.  If you've followed my blog then you know that our four kiddos and I accompanied LTC Soccermom to a six month assignment at the Pentagon. His service there was as a member of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, a task force designed to address the problem of IEDs. 

In contrast to what some Americans believe, the Pentagon did not just start working on this problem yesterday.  As soon as IEDs became an issue for US forces in Iraq, more than 2 years ago, the task force was set up.  Some of the best and brightest in the military have addressed and are addressing this issue (not that I'm biased) and between them they have years of military training, many advanced degrees, and above all a vested interest in a successful outcome.  Their devotion is matched by civilians who work with equal intensity to provide training and technology and to institute procedures and tactics all designed to nullify the impact of IEDs.

Any member of this task force will tell that there is no technological silver bullet for defeating IEDs.  If there were, Russians would have discovered it while fighting terrorism in Chechnya,   Brits would have found it while fighting in Northern Ireland, and certainly, the Israelis would have unearthed it and put it to use with the Palestinians.  The simple fact is that while we are working on a way to defeat one kind of IED, the terrorists are coming up with different models.  No matter how quickly we react to the product they are using in a given moment, you can bet they will be come up with something else as soon as we defeat what they are presently utilizing.  This means that the JIEDDO is working tirelessly to develop technologies, inorporate predeployment training, and convince locals in Iraq to get involved on the ground and report people who are planting these devices.  And their hard work is paying off.

While we can't quantify the success in terms of complete elimination of the threat, we can point to some very reassuring data that indicates the measures we are currently employing are having increased effectiveness.

"Because the Iraqi people are the targets, primarily the targets of the bombers, Iraqis are increasingly providing critical intelligence to help us find the bomb-makers and stop new attacks. The number of tips from Iraqis has grown from 400 last March to over 4,000 in December. For example, just three weeks ago, acting on tips provided by local citizens, coalition forces uncovered a massive IED arsenal hidden in a location northwest of Baghdad. They found and confiscated more than 3,000 pieces of munitions -- in one of the largest weapons caches discovered in that region to date. Just two weeks ago, acting on intelligence from Iraqis, coalition forces uncovered a bomb-making facility northeast of Fallujah. They captured 61 terrorists at the facility and confiscated large numbers of weapons.

In all, during the past six months, Iraqi and coalition forces have found and cleared nearly 4,000 IEDs, uncovered more than 1,800 weapons caches and bomb-making plants, and killed or detained hundreds of terrorists and bomb-makers."

Some point to the daily news reports as evidence that we are losing this battle, I point to the fact that there are dramatically fewer casualties per attack as evidence that our soldiers are becoming better equipped to deal with this threat.  Consider the fact, for example, that often suicide bombers in Palestine have no results other than detonating themselves.  Consistency of attacks speaks to the tenacity of our enemy not his success rate.

The most challenging part of dealing with terrorist enemies in a modern age is that, with the click of a mouse, they are privy to information that can and does impact the safety of our troops.  The president addressed this very issue in his speech today:

"Earlier this year, a newspaper published details of a new anti-IED technology that was being developed. Within five days of the publication -- using details from that article -- the enemy had posted instructions for defeating this new technology on the Internet. We cannot let the enemy know how we're working to defeat him. But I can assure the American people that my administration is working to put the best technology in the hands of our men and women on the front lines -- and we are mobilizing resources against the IED threat. "

If the media, is angry that the administration is secretive, they have only themselves to blame.  When it comes to the lives of American troops, the media does not find security and safety of our men and women in uniform a worthy consideration for holding back a good story.  In the case of military security, there is no excuse for a president to satisfy the media's curiousity by divulging secrets that could otherwise save lives. As much as David Gregory hates it, he's just going to have to trust Bush on this one.  But even if he doesn't, and continues to put out misinformation - that's okay, too.  As long as the terrorists are reading MSNBC and believing that we aren't onto them, our green suiters in Baghdad will all sleep a little safer.

All in all, the President's speech outlined a much better defined and more practical strategy for winning in Iraq but the truth remains that the war for democracy in the Middle East is far from over.  The road to peace is an arduous one.  We will win some battles and we will lose many, but the simple fact is, that at this juncture, the best policy we can pursue is to follow President Bush's advice and stay the course.

******************Update***********************************************

My comment actually made it onto Gregory's blog.  But so did a slew of misinformed comments posted by people who just don't know what they are talking about.  Oh well, you can't win them all.

While I do maintain a public blog and recognize the heated nature of debate, I ask that you respect this space as the PG rated zone I designed it to be. 

I reserve the right to delete comments that:

 - are inflammatory without addressing the issue of the blog

- are purely malicious in nature

- use profanity or other derogatory language

- otherwise make this blog inappropriate for my teenage nieces and nephews who may visit this site

Thanks for understanding that while both the U.S. government and I find some speech to be unprotected,  I do appreciate the humorous, the satirical and even the defiantly oppositional viewpoints of commenters.  Please post - I just ask that you use creativity to express yourself, not vulgarity.

Cate

Overall, and probably like most folks with a protestant background,  my impression of the Catholic church has never been extremely favorable.  The seemingly neverending discovery of case after case of child molestation by priests has done little to assuage my innate bias.  However,  in the past few years, the church has done a number of things that has made me stop in my tracks and think twice about how I have assessed the institution.  When some Catholic priests held firm to the policy and doctrine of the church and refused communion to publicly outspoken pro-choice politicians,   I saluted them.  When Catholic hospitals fought for the right to refuse emergency contraception, I applauded their principled devotion.  This weekend, I again found myself humbled by the dedication of men who will not yield moral beliefs to an oppressive and unconstitutional encroachment of secular law into the realm of the spiritual.

Catholic Charities of Massachusetts is closing its doors rather than abdicate its right to choose fit parents for children in need.  In repsonse to a state law requiring child placement organizations to consider homosexuals as prospective adoptive parents, the church sponsored operation is now closed for business. 

While the LGBT community is railing the charity's decision as self-centered and neglectful of the needy children it was designed to aid, the simple truth is that the removal of the fundamental right of the church to consider prospective parents based on its own criteria would make Catholic Chrities nothing more than an arm of the Department of Child and Family Services.  Why bother to have Catholic Charities if young mothers can't have some say in placing their children?  The law doesn't only violate the right of the Catholic Charities to screen placement families, it violates the rights of the young women who place their children through the service specifically to guarantee a certain outcome for their child. 

Nevertheless, the homosexual community responded quickly and angrily to the announcement:

In a terse statement, the group said: "Denying children a loving and stable home serves absolutely no higher purpose. These bishops are putting an ugly political agenda before the needs of very vulnerable children. Every one of the nation’s leading children’s welfare groups agrees that a parent’s sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child."

Actually, I wonder about the motives of homosexuals who are so determined to force a private agency to consider them fit for parenting.  I've actually been through the process as a foster parent and an adoptive parent and as it turns out, all kinds of people are excluded.  Many states won't even consider couples who've been married for less than a year, for instance. 

It appears, that the real political football here is being carried by the LGBT crowd, who are demanding equal consideration at the expense of the moral considerations of the church and the mothers who place their children through the church's institution.  Since when did a gay person's right to parent become more important than a believer's right to live by principle? 

If the church is receiving state funds, then cut the funds off.  Otherwise, this law is a clear violation of the Charity's rights.

Gay marriage proponents need to visit truthbearer.org and beg the fundametalist "Christian Polygamists" to stop, uh, helping out with the same-sex cause.  According the article entitled Polygamists Unite! in this week's Newsweek,  polygamists are using the advances made by gay marriage supporters to draw their own line in the sand. 

"Polygamy rights is the next civil-rights battle," says Mark Henkel, who, as founder of the Christian evangelical polygamy organization TruthBearer.org, is at the forefront of the movement. His argument: if Heather can have two mommies, she should also be able to have two mommies and a daddy.

This is one of those times when I just want to jump up and down and yell "I told you so!" at the top of my voice.  We mainstream opponents of gay marriage called this one from the beginning.  Once you redefine marriage, you open the door for the legalization of polygamy and possibly a host of other sexual (or platonic) alliances. 

As a side note: Truthbearer.org makes the following claim: 

Polygamy is in the Bible. Polygamy is found throughout history. These facts prove that marriage's definition includes plural marriage. Polygyny is a far older traditional marriage than anti-polygamy.

I returned to my Old Testament to verify this and was unable to find the account where God created our first parents, Adam and Eve and Susan and Stephanie and.... 

While doing some research for an article on homosexuality, I made a startling discovery.  Apparently, both my husband and I are gay.  How it worked out that we married into a happy heterosexual relationship and produced four offspring, I may never know.

Driven by a socio-poliotical agenda and determined to legitimize homosexual behavior, the scientific, specifically, the psychological, community, is pulling out all the stops when it comes to investigating biological links to gayness.

Even though the Human Genome project, completed in 2003, failed to find a "gay gene", the sexual libertarians are still wedded to the idea that there must be a physiological missing link.

One "scientific" study concluded that it had something to do with left-handedness.  That how I discovered the sad truth about my husband.  Another study indicates that finger-length ratio in women is directly linked to lesbianism.  That's when I got out my Melissa Ethridge CD.  The latest study, which may help any of you who probably didn't even know you were in the closet, concludes that gay men react differently to certain phermones.  Hmm.  Not like that could be a learned, experiential condition or anything. 

The history of scientific study with regards to homosexuality has been a sadly misrepresented one.  The media is quick to respond to any information that seems to justify the "I just can't help myself" defense of said behavior.  Pure science, however, has not been kind to the agenda driven movement and, more often than not undermines the very theory being regurgitated over and over in the news.  Turns out that according to the few hard scientific studies out there, nothing remotely indicates that same-sex attraction is hard-wired into the brain.

Simon LeVay, considered among gay activists to be a stand out in furthering the idea of genetic sexual predisposition, denounced that very idea.  His work did locate a definable spot on the brain where homosexual men and women had measurably different attributes than heterosexual men, however, all but one of the gay men who participated in his study died of AIDS, a condition which would have caused the change.  Futhermore, he assumed that all of the participants with AIDS were gay and all who didn't suffer from the disease were straight.  He never even bothered to ask them.  He also presumed all the women were straight.  Not a very good study, to say the least.  Of this work, he stated:

It’s important to stress what I didn’t find.  I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay.  I didn’t show that gay men are born that way, the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work.  Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain (as quoted in Byrd, et al., 2001, emp. added).

And yet, the camera flashes go off and the headlines are run every time the slightest bit of pseudo-science supports the erroneous conclusion that same-sex attraction is anything but individual choice. 

Part of the reason that American society indulges homosexuals is because they represent a fairly affluent demographic. A 1985 sociological survey revealed that gay white males (by far the largest subgroup of homosexuals) made significantly more money than heterosexual white males.  The implication that gay white males are in positions of power, authority and influence can be verified, not only by the income disparity between them and their straight counterparts but also by the fact that their numbers in no way indicate that they should have the influence that they do.

Despite the fact that most gays are proponents of the 10% theory, the idea the 1 of every 10 humans is gay, the 2000 US census shows that same-sex households make up a mere .42% of the American populace.  The skewed findings of the Kinsey survey that activists have used to validate the 10% theory have been repeatedly proven unscientific, unverifiable, and overwhlemingly unlikely. 

So basically, half of one percent of the American population is determined to convince the other 99.5% that homosexuality is not only a function of biology but also a legitimate and embraceable lifestyle.  It took blacks, who represented a full 13% of Americans more than 100 years after emancipation to end segregation and yet in less than a third of that time, gays have won civil unions and garnered more dollars for AIDS research than have been allocated for government funded medical research of far more common diseases.  Unbelievable?

Another reason for the rapid acceptance of the gay lifestyle has to do with where these higher paid and influential people are working.  The American Psychological Association,  the media, and politics all seem to be professional bastions of homosexuality.  Think about how much influence the people in these three careers alone wield in our society, our families, our individual lives, views, and choices. 

As a society, we need to stop buying into the idea that everything we see on t.v. or read in the news is true.  Just because someone has MD or PhD at the end of his name doesn't make his conclusions valid and certainly doesn't mean the media will do a fair and accurate job of reporting his or her findings. 

What we do know for certain about homosexuality is that the identifiable behaviors of its practicioners cannot produce offspring but they clearly put gays at an increased risk of certain diseases and conditions.  We know that homosexual behaviors are associated with nearly 40% of all child molestation cases, a hugely disproportionate percentage given the baseline percentage of individual homosexuals in America is close to 2.7% of white males and 1.5% of females.  We know that the gay community tries to disassociate itself from these facts by claiming a distinction between gay "acts" and being gay.  But using the accepted logic of "if it walks like a duck..." you must accept homosexual acts during molestation as an indicator of a greater homosexual mentality by the perpetrator.  Given that logic,  there are a whole lot of priests out there who also qualify as homosexual predators and should be identified as such, regardless of whether or not the gay community wants to accept them as bona fide members.

Aside from the moral objections of Christian Americans to the homosexual revolution, supporting the acceptance of this alternative life choice just doesn't pass the common sense test.  If gays were truly biologically predetermined and merely sought legal acceptance, then their numbers would remain relatively stable and they would have no trouble being relegated to the small numerical demographic that Kinsey and others have tried to define.  On the other hand, why would they market their sexuality,  why would they actively seek adherents by demanding disproportionate representation in the media,  why would they seek to  convert our children to this biologically inalterable way of life through the public education system.  Ask yourself, how allowing Americans to breed themselves out of existence makes any political or common sense.

RNC releases another add today in preparation for the upcoming election.  This one takes aim directly at congressional seats that are for grabs by calling into question the leadership (or lack thereof) of the Democratic Party.

Wow!  Harry Reid?  Nancy Pelosi?  Howard Dean?  I thought the leader of the Democrat Party was one of these guys:

Everyone's talking about the refusal of some college campuses to allow or invite the military to recruit on their turf.  Their tax-payer funded turf, that is.  The fight for the right to run recruiters away came to a head before the Supreme Court and, thankfully, two days ago, the justices got it right.  With an 8-0 decision the court upheld the right of the government to refuse funds to colleges that refuse recruiters.

The most striking aspect of this legal battle is not the support it gives the military in a time of relative unpopularity.  Neither is it the blow seemingly doled out to the gay movement - colleges claimed the right to refuse recruiters was an act of free expression against the DOD's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.  It really hasn't even got much, if anything, to do with free speech or civil disobedience.  The most fascinating issue with this case is the parallel between these colleges and the liberal movement generally.

In essence, these schools have been saying to the federal government, we reserve the right to reject your policies and procedures if we so choose but you are required to maintain us.  Like all liberal tenets, this one reflects a need to be afforded paternal sustainment and a desire to be allowed paternal indulgence. 

Contrary to what American leftists would have you believe, our government was never intended to be endowed with in loco parentis style powers.  In fact, the founding fathers and their contemporaries loathed the idea.  The intent was to provide security and protection of basic rights, not to grow a nation of adultolescents.  It is inconceivable that a nation of farmers who worked from sunup until sundown would approve of the spoiled generations of today.  Too many of our citizens believe that the government owes them not just a life but a living.  Early Americans, by virtue of the struggles they endured daily, embodied self-reliance.  And the practice of carrying you own weight didn't end at the property line but extended into public, political and military arenas, as well. 

A comparison of those whose bloody footprints were left in the snow at Valley Forge and the liberals who demand to be subsidized in spite of their unwillingness to offer any sacrifice on the altar of freedom reveals the ugly truth about modern America.  We are a nation infested with spoiled, rotten brats who continue to demand an allowance even when they refuse to do their chores.

Like any parent who realizes that their child is out of control, mature Americans must demand that government put a foot down and hold these sniveling progeny to account.  Many thanks to the Supreme Court for standing up, last Tuesday, and doing just that.

ABC News' Entertainment section features an article today about country music stars (and spouses) Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.  The singers, in a rare politically charged moment spoke harshly of the handling of the hurricane Katrina disaster.  Both Hill and McGraw are from the deep south, Louisiana and Mississippi, and have the right to voice their opinions.  What is more interesting than the fact that the stars are upset is how bad the reporting is on this non-news.

The headline,  Faith Hill, Tim McGraw Blast 'Humiliating' Katrina Cleanup,  is hardly an accurate description of the few words they seem to have spoken on the issue.  While they did use the word humiliating, they didn't seem to blast, lambast, detonate or otherwise explode. Furthermore,  the article states:

Earlier in the day, McGraw and Hill had reason to celebrate. Their duet, "When I Get Where I'm Going," was nominated by the Country Music Association as the Vocal Event of the Year.

Actually, the duet is sung by Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton on Paisley's 2005 album Time Well Wasted. I checked the album label and it doesn't even seem to have been written by McGraw or Hill.  So whatever they were celebrating - it probably wasn't the nomination or Brad and Dolly's success.  Another interesting tidbit is that the 39th CMA awards were just hosted in November of 2005 in New York.  My searches on the internet haven't even turned up a date or nominees for the 40th annual event.  Though the CMA has contracted with ABC through 2012, no information has been released as to the exact date of the event, much less the award nominees - (among whom you won't find Hill and McGraw singing the Brad and Dolly duet).  As for the "Vocal Event of the Year",  well, that award isn't even listed as an award on CMAs nominations page.  See for yourself.  Is it possible that this is old news that has been dressed up and revisited in order to draw entertainment readers into the (recently undermined) Katrina v. Washington drama?  It reads like a really bad cut and paste job.

Any way you look at it, we are left wondering how ABC could get so much factual information wrong.  And wondering how much other information in the article is incorrect.  It's the Entertainment section for crying out loud, they should know their business.  Then again,  it would appear that the real business of ABC is finding any way humanly possible to lead with stories that reflect poorly (even if they are purely the opinions of people, no more informed than you and I, who just happen to be celebrities) on the current administration.

And hey,  if you find this posting in error - just knock out a comment below and I'll gladly print a retraction.  On page 17D.

There's a joke floating around out there among Conservatives about the treatment the President gets from the MSM.

Goerge and the Pope are sailing on Bush's yacht and the pontiff's hat is blown overboard into the water.  As secret service men prepare to dive in after it, W waves them off saying, "Look out boys, I'll take care of this."  He then proceeds to step out of the boat, walk across the water, retrieve the hat and return it to the Pope.  The next morning the headline of the LA Times reads: Bush Can't Swim!

All kidding aside,  GWB has definitely gotten his share of unfair press and it's time someone pointed out the glaring examples of bias.  Here's today's winner of the "We can make George W. Bush responsible for any world tragedy" award:

From a Reuters article on Maoist violence against civilians in India:  "This is not some brutal civil war in a forgotten corner of Africa -- this is the Chhattisgarh state in central India, and a side of the country that U.S. President George W. Bush failed to see on his visit last week."

(This article had absolutely nothing to do with Bush, the administration, or for that matter anything even remotely American - Reuters just threw that in,  one can only assume, to make the President look somehow responsible for brutality completely unrelated to, oh let's see, the western hemisphere!)

Another liberal American university fails the Free Speech test.  Not surprising, I know, but shameful nonetheless.  All over Harvard, permitted and properly posted signs are being defaced and torn down.  The Harvard Right to Life group is has been hanging pro-life themed posters all over campus.  The signs have pictures of an embryo in various stages of development.  The fetus, named Elena, by the group, describes her development on the posters in a childlike crayon print and proclaims "A person's a person no matter how small."

I can see how offensive this must be to those who want to dehumanize babies in order to justify aborting them but a difference of opinions about abortion does not guarantee the right to deface and destroy the ads of anyone you happen to disagree with. 

According to the CNS report:

The student organization began posting the Elena ads in mid-February, according to HRL President Meghan Grizzle. The group posts a new ad in the series every week, and Grizzle said students have to replace them "a few times a day."

Students "find them to be very gruesome photos and believe they have the right to tear them down because it's their right to free speech," Grizzle said. But she thinks it's the message, not the photos that are prompting the negative reaction.

"I don't think it has anything to do with the picture," Grizzle said, "because a lot of these students -- they take science classes and they see the same exact pictures in their textbooks, and it doesn't gross them out."

Grizzle said the administration is "not necessarily on our side but they understand that we have the right to do this."

Interestingly, in a few years, many of the same folks who find these images "gruesome"  will be passing them around the office water cooler, shoving them in the faces of virtual strangers, and pasting them in baby books.  Perspectives change when mom decides she wants to keep the baby instead of killing it.  But whether you find the pictures adorable or horrific, the fact remains that destroying them is not free speech.  It is a violation of someone else's.  So, while it's not much, Harvard Right to Life, you have my virtual bulletin board today. So speak up, Elena!

Reuters is reporting today that two young women who wanted to join the Marines were compelled to have sex against their will with recruiters.  The girls, who were 17 years old are taking the entire Marine Corps to court and suing, among other things, to insure better training of recruiters. 

On the surface, this looks to be an example of two men abusing their position of authority,  and familiar with those dynamics, many who read about this case will look no further for answers than the two paragraph blurb in their local paper.  Admittedly, we just don't know much about the case at this point, but even with the limited information we have from the Reuters report, there are some serious questions that need addressing.

According to the article:

"The complaint alleges that Dunzweiler raped Doe on three separate occasions in the Ukiah recruiting office, each time telling her that she had to have sex with him if she wanted to join the Marines," attorneys Barry Vogel and Michael Sorgen said in a statement. The two plaintiffs are identified by the fictitious names Jane Doe and Mary Roe.

One of the women said she was a virgin who contracted a sexually transmitted disease in the encounter. "Among other injuries, plaintiffs were raped, seduced, coerced and pressured into sexual intercourse against their will," the lawsuit said.

Question:  Why Did Jane Doe return after the first rape?  If she was just THAT gung-ho to enlist, there are recruiting stations all over, not to mention, the internet and a toll free number she could have called.  If she'd been raped, she should have immediately gone to the police.  None gone back for two more sexual encounters.

Question:  Can you even enlist at 17 without parental consent?  If not, why would two separate recruiters take the risk of assaulting girls whose parents they were going to have to face at some point?  You don't rape a girl and then say, "Hey, bring your folks in next Wednesday at 3 p.m. and we'll finalize the paperwork."  Doesn't make sense.

Question:  Isn't it just a little suspicious that these cases happened in tandem in SAN FRANCISCO, the city that voted to keep recruiters away from high school kids?  The city where anti-military and anti-recruiting sentiment runs so deep that other more mainstream cities are refusing to do business with it.

I've spent my entire life around the military and I am, like most people associated with the military, constantly surprised by the few miscreants who somehow make it into the services.  Nevertheless, this story just doesn't sound right and my gut is telling me that there is much more going on here than two louses in uniform raping a couple of high school girls.

***************************************Update*****************************************

Okay, after further investigation, I am still left with many, many questions but here's the skinny:

The two men accused were accused last year and faced charges.  Most of the prosecution witnesses recanted their initial assertions and after all was said and done, the UCMJ charges in the case of Staff Sgt. Joseph Dunzweiler (of 11 only 1 stuck) came down to having sex with potential recruits, which is a violation of ethics, a general order, and military regulations but not a crime in the civilian world (Bill Clinton did it, for example).  The guys involved were busted rank, fined and shortly thereafter ejected from service. 

In Sgt. Brian Fukushima's case there were more charges because he was married and the UCMJ considers adultery a punishable offense. To the end, Fukushima's lawyer claimed that his client was being railroaded and described the charges as being completely "fabricated".

Having sex with potential recruits is dishonorable and deplorable!  And yet... still I wonder why this case is coming back.  And why the girls involved (who are not the girls from the original case) are suddenly feeling compelled to increase their net worth by a million bucks each and join the anti-military political campaign that's raging in San Fran by suing not just the recruiters but the Dept. of the Navy.  Mary Roe (as she is designated in the case) claims that she was intoxicated to the point that the other marines present could have easily recognized her as such.  And yet she went plastered into the recruiters office to enlist?  Where she and her friend, Jane Doe,  were both simultaneously raped by two Marine recruiters? And apparently, an office full of other recruiters could tell she was drunk and just let things unfold the way they did.  Hmmm.

On a sidenote, the girl who actually won the prosecutors case (not Jane Doe or Mary Roe - the two newest plaintiffs), got another marine in trouble (for, you guessed it - sleeping with her) on the same night she supposedly had sex with the recruiter.  However, she failed to mention her exploits with the recruiter to the investigators of the other incident.  Confused, yet?

Doe and Roe claim that the Marines tried to cover up the incidents of 2005 but THE TRUTH is that the whole affair was discovered when one recruit emailed her boyfriend in Iraq and told him the story and then HE got marine officials on the case.  The Marines were investigating the case BEFORE the original victim even approached the police! 

Also noteworthy is the fact that civilian prosecutors declined to file any charges.

This is Political (with a capital P)!  Mark my words!

There's a lot of hullaballoo in the media lately about teachers and professors crossing the line between instructing and indoctrinating.  With the conservative community feeling as if they are under attack by academics and that their children are being Mansonized by left-leaning classroom authoritarians, it's no wonder that Sean Allen sits in the middle of a tornado of media vultures, education system beauracrats, and liberal lawyers determined to depict him as a conspiratorial compatriot of conservative talk radio.

I feel for Sean.  I remember well what it was like to be young, impressionable and to be shut down by a teacher who didn't share my views.  In my case, it was Mr. P.  I sat in his classes for two years as a junior and senior in high school.  He was the resident AP history teacher and I shared his Advanced American and European history classes with a small group of my peers.  As I recall, we students actually signed a petition to show that there was enough interest for the AP European History class - we all enjoyed the way Mr. P. made us think and question everything.  His classes were hard but he made the material seem so interesting that in his classroom, I decided to follow in his footsteps and become a history teacher myself.

Unfortunately, wsdom about the heads of European states wasn't all that Mr. P. passed on.  He was at least a hostile agnostic and showed an unnatural level of detachment from the Southern Baptist community he was a part of.  He frequently spoke ill of religion and on more than one occasion took exception to the specific beliefs of students in the class.  As my church had received some local noteriety, my faith and I were frequent targets of his leading discussions and rhetorical questions.  He really pushed the idea that religion was an opiate.  Not that he was Marxist,  I think his politics were actually quite mainstream for the time, he just held the entire world of the faithful in such low esteem.  By midyear, I was about the most confused eleventh grader on the planet.  I was starting to feel that my parents and all people of faith had been duped into believing a great lie.  There was no God.  There was only the world of men and somehow, I knew that without a god on my side, I would never survive in a Darwinian contest of the "the fittest".  My world grew dark as I began to make choices that reflected the atheistic leaning principles of my high school idol, Mr. P.  I wish I'd had the support and presence of mind of Sean Allen but in my community, in those days, we just didn't question a teacher's authority.  And the world was changing so rapidly back then that I don't think my parents could have comprehended of any recourse against the unethical and damaging words of a beloved teacher.

Life moved on and eventually, I grew out of the funk of adolescence and came to see Mr. P. for the sad person he was, filtering his history instruction through the limiting collander of his personal war on faith.  In spite of his crusade, he still built up quite a following among his AP students and we all spoke very highly of him.  No doubt we would have rallied to his aid if a student would have taken him to task.  But looking back and realizing how many teenagers just like me he may have influenced, I can only say, I wish Sean Allen had been in my class.

This morning's Today Show featured Matt Lauer interviewing now infamous Mr. Jay Bennish, Colorado geography teacher/liberal indoctrinator extraordinaire.  My comments on the interview:

The Interview

Right from the first, Lauer exposes himself as a liberal simpatico.  His first statement to Bennish begins with the leading command, "You should say right off the bat...".  Lauer then advises Bennish on how to answer his critics by encouraging him to say that he recognizes the tape is incriminating but that it isn't an accurate portrayal of the true nature of his classroom lectures. 

Way to set him up, Matt!  The statement/question (whatever the heck it was) goes on for like 75 words explaining Bennish's argument for him.  Thanks again, Matt - you liberal hero, you!

"Like you said and I would like to reiterate..."  Those are the words uttered by Bennish referring to the argument Lauer makes in his defense.  Even Bennish knows when to take help from an interviewer.

The tape plays to which Matt responds, "Again, that's one portion of a much larger discussion."  I wonder if Matt can spell APOLOGIST.

Matt says, "The family.. never contacted the school board?..."  Bennish replies, "they never contacted ME."  Ohoh plausible deniability - clever tactic but... GOTCHA!

Matt, referring to student Sean and his family slanders  "They basically SHOPPED it [the tape]  around to conservative media outlets..."  Matt follows that statement up by accusing Sean of using leading questions to suck Mr. Bennish into a discussion about the State of the Union address.  Hmmm.  Exactly who is the the adult in the classroom.  This is when Matt does his Hillary Clinton impersonation, 'It's just a vast right-wing conspiracy!'  Interestingly, Bennish does not recognize the bone he's been thrown and he answers that Sean and all the students were asking questions about their teacher's opinion of the State of the Union speech.  The real question here is, why would the students try to get Bennish's opinions about the speech unless they knew from previous classroom lectures that their queries would bring a lively response.  The answer is that this 20 minutes worth of tape making the rounds is indeed just a sampling of Bennish's political diatribes - the kids knew that they could get their teacher to turn his back on the day's assignments just by mentioning Bush's name. 

"This is a small section of one class..." See the last paragraph - clearly the students knew that Bennish had a prediliction for tirading against the president and that is why they solicited his opinion.  They could only have known about his personal politics if they had come up in class prior to the day in question.

Bennish then declares that his responsibility as a teacher is to get his students to think about alternative views.  So does he encourage them to consider cannibalism?  Polygamy?  Those are alternative views.  People practice them around the world.  All are practices that could be linked to geography.  Nope. Bennish's alternative views theory is only applicable to the Bush administration - but again, nice try to evade the issue at hand which the NEA doublespeak.  I can see that week long tax payer funded educator's conference really paid off. 

Matt, apparently taking cues from Bill O'Reilly, speaks for his guest and offers him one last chance to condemn Sean Allen, the (to hear Matt Lauer describe him) teenaged self appointed guardian of conservative virtues.  Wisely, Bennish, who opts to politic for reinstatement rather than condemn his former student answers well.

One final thanks to Matt Lauer for reminding us all that there is no such thing as liberal media bias!  We love you, Mattie.

Separation of Church and State.  We've all heard that phrase more times than we can count.  It's political code for "You can't make me live by your morals."  Interestingly, the phrase doesn't even appear in the United States Constitution.  The first amendment encapsulates, in a mere sixteen words, the basis for what is now being described as a war on God in America.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

To most readers, the limits of Congress on the issue are clear.  No state religion should be established and no religious practice should be prohibited.  Only the Court could so adeptly misconstrue the simplicity of these words.  In 1947, the Supreme Court's response to Everson v. Board of Education restricted religious influence further than the framers of the Constitution ever intended and the wall that Justice Black described as "erected between church and state" has grown higher and thicker.  During these last 60 years, Americans have pushed the Establishment Clause to the extreme limits of even its most liberal interpretation in spite of the clear intention left by James Madison who articulated the reasoning behind the inclusion of the clause in the Bill of Rights. 

  "The people feared one sect might obtain a preeminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform."

The clause in no way suggests that we should have a government devoid of morality or free from religious language.  It does not suggest that we should remove historical references to America's religious past or that piety should be relegated entirely to the non-political areas of our lives.  Instead, it is designed to protect us from the cumpulsion to convert and to guarantee freedom from submitting to any God not of our own choosing. The government's recognition of America's Christian past and overwhleming contemporary Christian majority can hardly be confused with endorsement. 

Even a cursory look through the history books illuminates the fact that religious societies were no more outlawed than gun ownership.  In fact, according to historian David Hackett Fischer, the first amendment religious freedom guarantee was a provision designed not to protect the government from religion so much as to protect the religions from each other.  The clause, Fischer indicates, was written not only to 'preserve religious freedom in Virginia and Pennsylvania'  but also 'to guarantee that the religious establishments that existed in Massachusetts and elsewhere would be safe from outside interference.'

Interesting how a couple of hundred years can confuse an issue.  Contemporary America's disdain for religious institutions has pitted two entirely different ideologies against each other.  The war against God that is being waged all around us now is not a sectarian dispute but something much larger in scope - a battle between belief and the absolute dismissal of faith.

The removal of the ten commandments from public buildings, the erasing of the phrase "under God" from our pledge and the silencing of prayers before high school football games are just a few examples of how, in its latest incarnation, the argument for separation more closely resembles a call for the dissolution of all things sacred.  We have moved from endorsing a denomination to endorsing the religion of atheism.  With the pendulum swinging away from any show of public piety and any discussion of religious views in schools and government funded institutions coming under heavy scrutiny, it is increasingly evident that the Courts have endorsed an anti-God platform as the established religion du jour.

Supporters of this misinterpretation of the first amendment and the "separation" culture it has spawned have become merely a conglomerate of useful fools being used to the advantage of secularists who would reduce religion, in all its forms and denominations, to the mythological realm.  The ultimate goal has become not just to separate but to dissolve the binding ties of religion altogether and to relegate the pious to the fringe of the socio-political spectrum.

Tragically, the effectiveness of the godless, secularist movement is best witnessed when watching religious groups with more commonalities that differences cannibalize each other in their quest to reestablish themselves as American institutions.  This fight, unlike so many religious battles before cannot be won if believers of every sort do not band together to bring a renewed sense of appreciation for the Creator and the inalienable rights he bestowed upon us.  One wonders at what point we will wake up, work together, and bring our civilization back from the brink of the hedonistic chaos of humanistic secularism.

I was channel surfing last night and ran into the 1984 cold war flick called "Red Dawn". This film was brought back to the front page in 2003 when the commander of American troops who captured Saddam Hussein named the mission Operation Red Dawn based on the work of film maker John Milius. 

As I watched the film through I came away with a whole new take on it.  At first glance, it seems to be a movie about a Soviet invasion on American soil.  Young American teens from the local high school become rebels and from fighting positions in the mountains launch attacks on the occupiers.  These kids, unlikely heros, form a bond - a brotherhood of determined insurgents fighting against an overwhelming enemy who is technologically and numerically superior.  They conduct raids, ambushes, and recon missions and spend much of their time hiding from the enemy who pursues them relentlessly through the rocky mountains.  Near the end of the film, there is a particular scene that stuck with me.  As Soviet helicopters pursued the horseback mounted rebels,  shooting machine guns, cannons, and rockets,  one of the boys, his head and face completely covered except for his eyes (it was winter) jumps off of his horse and fires an RPG at a helicopter, bringing it down.

Considering the movie was made in 1984 and our government was arming the Mujihadeen at that point against Soviet occupiers,  is it possible that Milius' film was less of an American film and more of a pro-Afghan resistance piece?

Any thoughts?  Has anyone ever heard an analysis of this film in that context?  According the the Emergency Response and Research Institute (ERRI), firing RPGs at rotary-wing aircraft is actually a tactic developed by the mujihadeen.

According to the the Iranian reformist internet daily, Rooz, women in Iran have been given special license to wear their hair uncovered!  Of course some terms and conditions do apply...

Special Dispatch Series - No. 1106
March 3, 2006	No.1106
Iranian Martyr Recruitment Website: Coalition Forces In Iraq Be Warned –Iranian Martyr Forces on Alert to Move In The Iranian reformist Internet daily Rooz reported on March 2, 2006 that "the Iranian martyrdom-seeking [i.e. suicide] forces have launched a website, http://www.esteshhad.com/index.php , called 'To Die as a Martyr,' [1] and have declared an alert among the Iranian martyrdom-seeking forces." The following are excerpts from the Rooz report: [2] "Thousands of Young Martyrdom-Seeking Iranians are Counting the Minutes Until They Can Give Their Souls" "The website of the Iranian martyrdom-seekers began its operations by declaring an alert amongst the Iranian martyrdom forces... The site also demanded that the Iranian martyrdom-seeking forces intervene in Iraq and protect the Shi'ite holy places [there]." Rooz quoted from an article posted on the site: "The World Islamic Organization's Headquarters for Commemorating the Shahids has set as its goal the unification of the forces of struggle in the Islamic world, in order to confront the heresy [i.e. the forces of the West] and the occupying Zionism. The Headquarters hereby warns the egotistical and debased occupying enemies in Iraq that thousands of young martyrdom-seeking Iranians are counting the minutes until they can give their souls for the sake of their holy places, and until they strike the lightning blow of their sacred rage upon the heads of the agents of world arrogance [i.e. the U.S. and the West]. "Headquarters demands that high-ranking officials of the [Iranian] regime permit the martyrdom-seeking forces to go to Iraq, in order to fulfill their religious obligation and to defend the sacred precincts of the four cities holy to the Shia [Najaf, Karbala, Kazemin, and Samarra]..." "Headquarters Spokesman Muhammad 'Ali Samedi... Claimed That So Far... 53,900 Have Signed Up" Rooz added that the martyrdom-seekers website enjoyed the support and aid of prominent figures amongst "[Iran's] conservatives." No names were mentioned. The report continued: "The site includes a form for registration and membership in the Iranian martyrdom units, as well as an appeal to martyrdom-seekers to join the organization. [It states]: 'Please refrain from indicating your home phone number. If you don't have a mobile phone, wait to be contacted by us via email. The next stages of the registration will be sent to you via email.'" Rooz added: "Previously, the registering of young Iranians for the martyrdom units had been perceived [primarily] as psychological warfare against the West; however, the operation of the martyrdom seekers website, the continued activity of the World Islamic Organization's Headquarters for Commemorating the Shahids, and the call to join Iranian martyrdom units indicate that organized and planned activity is afoot.... Headquarters spokesman Muhammad 'Ali Samedi... has claimed that so far... 53,900 have signed up." "The Planners of This Apparatus for Suicide Missions Have Succeeded in Attracting More Iranian Women and Girls Than Men" "With the launch of its operations, the Headquarters website also posted religious justification for martyrdom operations, and registration for volunteers. In this section of the site, titled 'A Religious Commandment,' it states: 'According to Dr. Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, there is a consensus among clerics that when the enemy attacks one of the Muslim lands, jihad becomes an obligation incumbent upon all. [In such a case,] a woman can participate [in jihad] without her husband's permission, and a son without his father's permission...'" Rooz wrote further that "the news items published about the headquarters of the Iranian martyrdom-seekers... indicate that the planners of this apparatus for suicide missions have succeeded in attracting more Iranian women and girls than men. The posting of the photos of the Palestinian women who carried out martyrdom [operations], and the presentation of photos of martyrdom-seeking women without the hijab [head and body covering] at this apparatus's registration locations, all while emphasizing Koran verses about equality between men and women [in jihad], indicate that the directors of this apparatus are more interested in recruiting Iranian girls and women." Rooz also pointed out that billboards have been out up in various places across Tehran: "One showed the photos of eight Palestinian women martyrs, and another showed a photo of the martyr Reem Saleh Al-Riyashi, who [in January 2004] carried out a martyrdom operation even though she was the mother of two children. All this was in order to devote special attention to [recruitment of] young Iranian women." Rooz also notes that the "Religious Commandment" page of the website offers Muslim women religious justification for exposing their hair: "Should a Muslim who seeks martyrdom be compelled not to maintain her [head] covering in order to carry out the important thing that she has undertaken [i.e. martyrdom], she will commit no crime. One of the principles of Islam is that in time of need, some prohibitions become permitted..."

   "...Christianity reigns without obstacles, by universal consent, consequently.. everything in the moral field is certain and fixed, although the world of politics seems given over to argument and experiment.  So the human spirit never sees an unlimited field before itself;  however bold it is,  from time to time it feels that it must halt before insurmountable barriers.  Before innovating, it is forced to accept certain primary assumptions and to submit its boldest conceptions to certain formalities which retard and check it.

   Thus while the law allows the American people to do everything, there are things which religion prevents them from imagining and forbids them to dare...

   For the Americans the ideas of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of one without the other;  it is not a question with them of sterile beliefs bequeathed by the past and vegetating rather than living in the soul.

   ...Despotism may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot.  Religion is much more needed in the republic they advocate than in the monarchy they attack, and in democratic republics most of all.  How could society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened?  And what can be done with a people master of itself if it is not subject to God."

-- Alexis de Tocqueville   (observations on Religion and Liberty in America during his visit in 1831 and 1832)

There is an old poem titled An Ambulance Down in the Valley that has come to symbolize for me the dilemma of cultural politics in America. Perhaps, you've read it before.

An Ambulance Down in the Valley

T’was a dangerous cliff as they freely confessed,
Though to walk near its edge was so pleasant,
But over its edge had slipped a Duke,
And it fooled many a peasant.

The people said something would have to be done,
But their projects did not at all tally,
Some said, “Put a fence around the edge of the cliff,”
Others, “An ambulance down in the valley.”

The lament of the crowd was profound and loud,
As their hearts overflowed with pity;
But the ambulance carried the cry of the day,
As it spread to the neighboring cities.
So a collection was made to accumulate aid,
And dwellers in highway and alley,
Gave dollars and cents not to furnish a fence,
But an ambulance down in the valley.

“For the cliff is all right if you’re careful,” they said,
“And if folks ever slip and are falling;
It’s not the slipping and falling that hurts them so much,
As the shock down below when they’re stopping.”

And so for the years as these mishaps occurred,
Quick forth would the rescuers sally,
To pick up the victims who fell from the cliff,
With the ambulance down in the valley.

Said one in his plea, “It’s a marvel to me
That you’d give so much greater attention,
To repairing the results than to curing the cause;
Why you’d much better aim at prevention.
For the mischief, of course, should be stopped at its source;
Come friends and neighbors, let us rally!
It makes far better sense to rely on a fence,
Than an ambulance down in the valley.”

“He’s wrong in his head,” the majority said,
“He would end all our earnest endeavors,
He’s the kind of a man that would shrink his responsible work,
But we will support it forever.
Aren’t we picking up all just as fast as they fall,
And giving them care liberally?
Why, a superfluous fence is of no consequence,
If the ambulance works in the valley.”

Now this story seems queer as I’ve given it here,
But things oft occur which are stranger.
More humane we assert to repair the hurt,
Than the plan of removing the danger.

The best possible course would be to safeguard the source,
And to attend to things rationally.
Yes, build up the fence and let us dispense,
With this ambulance down in the valley.

It seems to me that the fundamental argument between the right and left extremes of American culture are embodied in the two choices first laid before the townspeople of, shall we call it, "Ambulanceville".  With the left extolling the pleasure of using freedom to the furthest edge of its limitations and the right urging temperance in all things. 

There can be no doubt that there is pleasure to be found at the edge of the cliff.  Enter any frat house party and I assure you there will be countless drunk college students who'll verify that they are having a good time. 

At some point in the last century, the voices calling for ambulance funding became measureably louder than the voices calling for safety guarding fences.  Perhaps when baby boomers were teenagers, and suddenly the more experienced and wise voices of their parents were overcome by the capricious demands of a bloated cohort of adolescents, the shift occurred.  But whenever the precise moment was we are feeling the impact of the tragedy still.

The shouts of "don't teach abstinence, hand out condoms" ring in our ears as do the vehement objections to showing any deference the the Judeo-Christian ideology upon which this nation was founded.  Too many prefer the clean up after technique of abortion to the repsonsibile method of simply choosing birth control.  We've seen the constant devaluation of human life in our society and yet we rush to protect the rights of all people who would foolishly walk to the line and lean out peering to see the view.  Un inhibited sexuality is only one of the roads, pleasure seeking ambulance supporters promote.  They also believe that pornography is acceptable even though case after case of abuse, violent sexual crime and child molestation links it to sexual offenders.  The ambulance choosers would have us believe that everything should be legal - no legislated boundaries should exist.  And yet when it's time to pay the EMTs and the ambulance driver, they demand our hard earned money.

Clearly, I lean a little more toward the fence opting crowd.  I believe that moral safeguards are the obligation of any responsible government.  No one should tell us what to think but we should be beholden to common sense when asking for a free ride to the hospital after a fall.  Is it the responsibility of all American taxpayers to pay for the risky behaviors of some?  And if so, then where do we delineate between reasonable social responsibility and rewarding absurdity?

A few years back we all wondered at the court case of a woman who spilled hot coffee on her lap and then sued McDonald's for giving her, essentially, exactly what she asked for.  The case was ludicrous but highlights a dilemma we continue to face.  When do victims cease to be victims and become merely stupid people making risky choices?  When does ignoring the warning signs and leaning out over the edge of a cliff disqualify you from access to our sympathy and our tax dollars?

Recently, the culture war has shifted even more toward the ambulance.  Now it is not enough to pay for an ambulance, pleasure seekers want recognition for getting close to the cliff.  They want the world to embrace them for choosing lifestyles and ideals that put them at serious risk.  They want their choices to be accepted, embraced, celebrated.  Elementary school children are reading books about lesbian parented families, high schoolers are writing essays arguing in favor of the legalization of marijuana, and on college campuses students are encouraged to stand firm and fast in favor of a fence free society at all costs.

While I do lean toward limiting personal freedoms or at the least not federally subsidizing them, I still find myself somewhere between the two extremes.  The simple truth is we need ambulances.  There are passersby who don't understand the warnings and some who can't even read the signs.  But ambulances should hardly be the sole, or even the most important, response to the dangers of the cliff.  Warnings should be posted and fences emplaced to keep back those who would unwittingly come to harm.  There should be reasonable safeguards, laws that inhibit some of our freedoms for the purpose of protecting us from ourselves and each other.  Without question, however, we can no longer continue to allow society to celebrate or subsidize the antics of risk taking cliff divers who walk knowingly to the edge jump off and then wait for a tax payer funded, society supported rescue.  This irresponsible and agregious failure of the American townsfolk must come to an end if we are ever to slow the steady stream of casualties.

There I was, sitting in my doctor's office waiting room yesterday and watching the second hand make it's way around the clock face when I overheard an interesting conversation.  Apparently, some sort of crazy violence had taken place at the University of Chapel Hill. 

As many of you will already know,  it wasn't just run of the mill American violence or even predictable college violence.  When a rented SUV carrying Mohammed Reza Taheriazar went off roading into "the Pit" an outdoor campus hangout, it was with a muslim on a mission in tow. 

From ABC's channel 11 out of Raleigh:    

Sources say Taheri-azar told police he was seeking retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world, according to ABC News justice correspondent Pierre Thomas. Taheri-azar apparently told police he tried to rent the biggest SUV he could find to use in the attack.

Taheri-azar told police Friday, "If you want to know why I did it, go check my bed at my apartment."

"He said it almost in a baiting type of way," Carrboro police spokesman Capt. Joel Booker said.

By Friday afternoon, a police SWAT team had surrounded a Carrboro apartment complex where Taheri-azar lived. Taking no chances, heavily armed authorities blew open the door to his University Commons apartment. After several hours of searching the apartment, Carrboro police sounded the all-clear, allowing residents back inside late Friday evening.

"We may find other things down the road, but right now, we were not in there looking for trace-type evidence," said Booker. "We're in there looking for something that could cause all of us harm. Gladly, we have not found that to this.

Phtot credit:  WRAL.com (CBS affiliate out of Raleigh)

Information on the violence at Chapel Hill:     

The Daily Tar Heel (UNC university paper)  WRAL       NBC17    WFMY2News

Raleigh News and Observer  Charlotte Observer  Winston-Salem Journal

And the bloggers weigh in:

Lockjaw's Lair 

Michelle Malkin

The Galvin Opinion

Jihad Watch

outragedmoderates

Sister Toldja

Survival Theory

For months now, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has joined her Democratic colleagues in condemning the Bush administration for failures in responding the the hurricane Katrina disaster.  Headlines were made yesterday when a recorded phone call to the Bush administration showed that more than 3 hours after the National Weather Service announced the levee system failure and warned of flash floods, Governor Blanco reassured the White House that the levees were still holding.

In any emergency response plan, certainly in a predictable situation - like say, hurricanes in La., a three hour delay in information flow to the head executive officer of the state would be considered a complete and utter failure.  But giving Gov. Blanco the benefit of the doubt and recognizing that sometimes the information is simply slow in confirming, I am still left with questions.

Why, for instance, knowing after the fact that she had misinformed the Bush administration, did she join in the chorus of political opportunists who were so quick to point to Washington as the source of failure?

Why, when impoverished black New Orleans residents were blaming Bush for a slow response, did she not speak up?  Why when newspapers around the country made a racial issue out of the painful aftermath, did she remain silent and let the White House take the rap?

Why did Democrat Kathleen Blanco stand by and knowingly let the public misunderstand the truth of the situation? 

Clearly, Blanco was more concerned about protecting her political posterior than answering truthfully to her displaced constituents.  She played politics while the media and New Orleans residents went on a a verbal witch hunt and accused the Bush administration of being  racist and leaving poor black residents to die.

You voted for her New Orleans - I hope you don't mind getting what you paid for.

A true comparitive analysis between democracy and despotism reveals that the clash of civilizations unfolding before us was entirely unavoidable. 

Democracy presupposes that all men, women and children are born into the human family with inalienable rights.  The mere act of endowing each citizen with a vote carries with it the implication that not only should each voter have a voice in his governance but that he should be free to express his political will without fear of reprisals.  When, in 1787, the founders of the American democratic system gathered to create a constitution for their fledgling republic, they defined a list of inalienable rights that pertained to all mankind. 

Despotism by its nature seeks to concentrate absolute power within the confines of one body, either a solitary human figure or a small group of authoritarian tyrants working in concert.  By definition, this subjugates and denies the rights of other men. 

To falsely believe that these ideologies can peacefully coexist is a denial of their true natures.  Democracy is an evangelistic principle.  The movement begun in Philadelphia could not be confined to white landowners.  Like wildfire, African-Americans and women caught the vision of freedom.  They pursued relentlessly the goal of suffrage and equal treatment under the law.  Once the principles of freedom were penned, these libertarian ideals were carried from one American subgroup to another with missionary zeal.  Despotism, using different means but with similar enthusiam seeks a continual widening of influence and power until it becomes constrained by external forces to limit itself.  Napoleon met Wellington.  Hitler met the Allies.  And Saddam met the wrong end of an M-16. 

Some argue against the use of military force and advocate instead the use of containment.  They seem to forget, however, that the policy of containment that seemed to effectively protect the world from the spread of communism was held securely in place by  bayonet stakes.  American and U.N. soldiers marched into Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and although the fall of the Soviet empire took decades to bring about, the sacrifices made by soldiers, sailors and airmen in those lands kept communism within relatively manageable bounds.  The closely guarded perimeter around the U.S.S.R. proved a vital component in the empire's ultimate collapse.

In the case of despotism in the arab world, containment as a policy is unattainable.  While we could effectively isolate states, sanction governments and guard geographical territory, there is no way to contain terrorists who are not bound by these conventions.  Furthermore, the ties to Islam are so strong that kings, presidents, and cave dwelling cowards can claim surrogacy for Allah whenever the political situation demands thus igniting the flames of a worldwide religious movement that, like terrorism recognizes no political boundaries.

The only recourse is confrontation.  We must bring democratic principles to the Arab world.  We have no alternative.  We can only be assured of relative peace when there is no foothold onto which tyranny can cling.  When the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of independence, a worldwide revolution began.  Their inscription, a veritable call to arms, reads in part:

"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--"

May that movement carry the day and despotism be eradicated in its entirety.

An editorial published today on Al-Jazeer.net attempts to redefine the reasons behind the Cartoon Crusade.  Democratic Solutions for Cartoons, written by Abdelwahab El-Affendi, an academic out of Westminster, London proposes that the war Muslims are waging in the world's streets is not about fredom of speech at all.  He claims that Western libraries are filled with books criticizing Islam.  This speech combined with the treatment of Muslims in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, goes well beyond the intellectual disputings of free speech.  He questions:

What is incomprehensible to you about mass anger against the practices of shackling prisoners in interrogation rooms, smearing their faces with fake menstrual blood, flushing pages of the Quran down the toilet in front of them or trampling them under foot in deliberate attempts to hurt and humiliate people? What is so incomprehensible about anger at such acts of barbarism?

Aside from some factual errors, the whole Quran in the toilet thing is widely disputed, the argument still falls short.  How does playing psychological games with suspected terrorists compare to beheading innocents or killing thousands of people with a jetliner.  Another consideration is that the Western world does not reward the behaviors that violate human decency.  While you may say or believe what you will, there is a bright line dividing the world of words and the real action.  The Abu-Ghraib offenders have been prosecuted, the military, contrary to the comments of its detractors, polices its own better than any other nation or institution public or private.  People are put out of service routinely.  Contrast with the sudden net worth increase of the family whose son or daughter boards an Israeli bus simply to take people out.  In the Muslim world, followers are rewarded for atrocious behavior.  Bloodthirsty terrorists are hailed as heroes and elected into office. 

Mr. El-Affendi continues:

The question, therefore, is not one of freedom of speech or respect for religion. It is a question of respect for other people.

Actually, it seems to me to be all about intolerance.  Firebombing embassies and killing Christians in the streets is hardly the work of respectful people.  Mr. Affendi, and when you learn to police your own backyard and stop praising those who have so little concern for the lives of people who think differently like Theo Van Gogh, countless beheaded "infidels" and thousands of people innocently headed to work one September morning, then we'll talk about respect for other people.

For those out there who are still hesitant to use the religious descriptive "muslim" in front of words like 'terrorists',  'insurgents'  or 'extremists'  here's a newsflash: they are all about religion.  (emphasis added) 

Mujahidin Shura Council Claims Operations in Mosul, Al-Fallujah, Baghdad

CentCom (U.S. Central Command) has jumped feet first into the crazy world of blogging.  Determined to reach the ever growing audience of weblog readers, the folks at MacDill decided it was time to "engage" bloggers on the virtual battlefield.  from the article in DefenseLink:

...the team contacts bloggers to inform the writers about any given topic that may have been posted on their site. This outreach effort enables the team to offer complete information to bloggers by inviting them to visit CENTCOM's Web site for news releases, data or imagery.

The team engages bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information. They extend a friendly invitation to all bloggers to visit the command's Web site....

Team members said they have contacted a full spectrum of bloggers. In one instance, a blogger was writing about the opening of a water treatment plant in Iraq. The writer was presenting the information as a positive milestone for the U.S. military in Iraq, but the information was not complete. The team contacted the writer and offered information via the CENTCOM Web site, and more information was added to the blog to make the article more accurate.

In another blog contact, the team wrote a blogger who had written untrue information about U.S. military tactics. The blogger stated that the U.S. military routinely used children in Iraq and Afghanistan as human shields during their operations by using candy to entice and lure kids near them. The team posted a comment on the writer's blog stating that the U.S. military did not use human shield tactics and explained the full circumstances of the incident where Iraqi children died in 2004 when insurgents attacked U.S. forces in Baghdad.

Most blogs ordinarily have a feature that enables readers to contact the writer or allows readers to post comments. When the team "reaches out" to a blogger, the team members do not conceal their identity. They fully disclose that they are public affairs personnel and identify themselves accordingly. And, McNorton said, they are there to correct information, no more.

"We don't go in there and get into a debate," he said. And officials here are quick to point out that they are not policing Web sites. They are simply offering bloggers the opportunity to get raw information directly from the source.

Check it out for yourself here:  CentCom

While 81 year old delegate, Benjamin Franklin suggested giving the vote to all white males, he was opposed by most of his peers at the Constitutional Convention.  Most thought that land owners would be the best guardians of liberty.  In fact, James Madison voiced the fear that if the vote were given to those without property, they would either combine to deprive property owners of their rights or would become the "tools of demagogues."

bn

George Washington's Prayer for the United States of America

Almighty GOD; we make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection, that thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the United States of America at large. And finally that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of The Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation. Grant our supplication, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen

George Washington's prayer was adapted from his Circular Letter to the Governors of the United States

The godless hordes of America win another court battle

thanks to Judge Rebbeca Beach Smith, high school Spanish teacher, William Lee was forced to remove from his bulletin board articles that mentioned the faith of current administration officials as well as a copy of the famous Arnold Frieberg painting (above) of Washington praying at Valley Forge.  After a parent complained about the religious nature of the postings, Lee found himself in court where his newspaper clippings were deemed an endorsement of Christianity by a public official and a violation of the Establishment clause. 

Question:  Do you think Judge Smith knows Rebecca is a Biblical name? (Rebekah)

Question:  Has Judge Smith ever read any of the writings of our founding fathers?

Question:  Does anyone not wearing a robe actually buy the idea that a newspaper clipping is a ringing endorsement?

Question:  Is it then a violation of the Establishment clause to display witches or use any witch related decorations during the Halloween season?  After all, Wiccans are calling themselves a religion now.

While President Bush and political mastermind Karl Rove are inclined to believe that Hillary Clinton can not win the general presidential election in 2008, pundit and reformed Clintonite Dick Morris argues that to the contrary, Hillary is powerful enough to pull votes from enough different factions to put herself into office.

Between black Americans who are simply enamored of her, white women moved by feminism, hispanics and activist liberal groups, Clinton could certainly form a coalition powerful enough to land her the seat in the Oval office.  According to Morris, "Hillary's candidacy will not be Democratic so much as demographic and not nearly as political as it will be cultural. The pent-up emotions of half of America will rise to the surface just as Catholics rallied to JFK's candidacy in 1960."

Can you imagine the pent-up emotions of half a century of Brokeback Mountain watching, welfare addicted, socialist leaning, and whiny people rising to the surface?  Fortunately, a president is only as good or bad as Congress allows him (or her) to be.  She would need support from a majority of Congress to pass any legislation and the simple fact is that even if Hillary were president, her policies would take more than the anger and frustration of the nation to pass.  And as we all know tha American voter is fickle and forgetful.  Aside from the truly agenda driven, who would fight alongside Hillary for four years as piece after piece of legislation is held up in Congress?  Probably, not enough people to really America profoundly.

I don't suggest that we should give her a free pass and just chalk a Hillary win up to a wasted four years, rather, I mean to say simply, that in the lead-up to the election of 2008, we cannot become the party of "defeat Hillary".  That kind of pinpointing problems without offering viable solutions is the domain of democrats.  The party of opposition - to anything.  If we stoop to mere opposition we are no better than the Bush-haters.   We must not simply stand against her - we must stand for something much much better.

Qualifications:  experience with children a must,  prefer education background as some tutoring may be required,  ability to multi-task imperative as you may be working on several different campaigns,  some background forging passports a plus.

Benefits:  You will be able to run personal business dealings out of my offices with tax payer funded overhead.

For more information please contact Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)

NBC affiliate channel 10 out of Philadelphia is reporting that a 7 year old girl brought cocaine to school in "little pink bags" and distributed it among her second grade classmates some of whom ingested it.  Parents, understandably, are furious at the school about the failure to call an ambulance to the scene and about the questioning of these minors (they filled out incident reports) without their parents present.

Find the story here.

The biggest question in my mind is where in the heck was the teacher?  You can't see everything going on i a classroom but kids tasting cocaine and getting the shakes would be pretty hard to miss.

VOUCHERS, anyone?

Kanab, Utah lawmakers are under fire for passing a resolution defining marriage as a relationship between one mand and one woman, "ordained by God".  Never mind that the resolution is in no way legally binding and is more of a statement of the council's vision of community ideals.  Never mind that anyone, gay, lesbian, transgendered still has all the rights afforded them in any U.S. city or town.  Never mind that it's opponenets are not locals but GLTB activists from around the country.

It's not enough that the homosexual community is trying to blackmail Americans by calling anyone who opposes gay marriage a bigot.  It isn't even satisfactory that they've convinced countless elected officials to join their cause with pledges of votes, against the overwhelming desires of the American constituency.  Now, the city council of Kanab, Utah population 4,492, can't even express the opinion held by it's constituency.

In the argument against the resolution, the GLBT spokespeople are hiding behind the argument of separation between church and state.  Apparently, the phrase "ordained by God" is offensive to them.  Never mind that "God" does not establish any specific religion or denomination  and can hardly be viewed as sectarian supporting. Never mind that we pledge our allegiance "under God", never mind that our "Creator" endowed us with inalienable rights and that we are sworn in "so help me God".

It's almost worth pointing out the error of their thinking but close minded agenda driven bigots like those fighting against Kanab's right to put on paper it's opinions in a non-binding and non-threatening way won't allow the opinions of others to be endorsed by government.  That is a right they reserve for only for themselves.  Never mind that the pro-choice movement was an endorsement of someone's opinion that life doesn't begin until birth.  Never mind that the extension of rights to "partners" is based on the opinion that a non-legal relationship based on sharing the bed and the remote should qualify you for insurance coverage.  Never mind a lot of things that have happened in our country in the last 40 years that are a direct result of misguided opinions and a concentrated effort to legitimize them.

With all that is going on around the world because of a few stupid cartoons, things like Kanab's right to free speech can get overlooked.  Let's not forget that there is a battle going on at home as well.

Apparently, these twelve intellectuals have taken a stand against Islamism.  Publishing a manifesto in Jyllands-Posten, they speak out against the totalitarianism of Islam. Read the manifesto at Michelle Malkin's blog.  

A Solidarity with Denmark Rally is being organized for Friday, March 3rd, in NYC.  For those close enough to attend, this should provide a great way to bring attention to the fight for free speech.  Michelle has included information on her site (or get it straight from the source).

Here's a movement we can ALL get behind!